Chapter 17 Cruciatus Inferni
Nahant, Massachusetts
Dean staggered sideways as his feet hit the rock, dragging Sam with him. He lifted his head and saw the guide, the dark eyes wide with shock and fear, staring at them.
"What have you done?" Kopaki whispered, the long dark coat lifting up as he turned. Dean's hand flashed out, his groan at the pain of the sudden movement smothered and locked behind his teeth as he caught the Crow's arm.
"Not so fast," he ground out.
Kopaki stared down at the hand on his sleeve. "You killed the guardian!" he hissed at Dean.
"And we're not done," Dean growled at him. "Take us back to the car."
The guide's mouth thinned out, then he turned back to the men, reaching out and gripping both.
The shift was instantaneous this time, an eyeblink of darkness and they stood in the silent clearing next to the black car and the broken building, gravel and weeds under their feet.
"We're done!" Kopaki said, glancing over his shoulder at the trees to the south.
"One more thing," Dean told him, straightening up as he pushed Sam back against the car. "You said that was Crowley's gate?"
The Crow nodded, brows drawing together.
"He got a place around here? On this plane?" Dean asked tersely. A long shot, but worth it if he did.
Kopaki's head jerked back toward the trees. "There, on the cliff edge."
"What?"
The psychopomp vanished, a faint pop as the air rushed in to fill where he'd been and Dean blinked. Here? Right fucking here?
"Sonofabitch," he muttered, turning back to his brother and leaning past him to unlock the car door. "Goddamned sonofabitch."
He manoeuvred Sam along the car and around the door, hand over his head as he pushed him inside. Limping around to the trunk, he shook his head slightly again at the Crow's revelation. Didn't change the validity of his arguments, he realised as he opened the trunk and slowly dragged the med kit from the well, they couldn't have gotten in to get the gun without taking the risk of being seen. But … three bullets from that gun and they could've done it – he could've done the job – from a nice, safe distance …
Sonofabitch.
Closing the trunk, he turned back and opened the rear door, pushing the heavy box along the seat and climbing in after it. In the front seat, Sam lifted his head, turning to look at him.
"What are you doing?"
"Stopping the leaks," Dean told him shortly, pulling his jacket off and tossing it on the floor, the ripped and stained shirt following it. "How're you doing?"
"Better." Sam twisted slightly on the seat to look back at him.
"What happened?"
"I don't know." He saw the disbelieving expression on Dean's face and ran his hand through his hair. "Honestly, Dean. I didn't feel anything – then it was like I'd had a transfusion of butane instead of blood and someone lit a match."
Dean pulled his t-shirt over his head carefully, peering down at the soaked dressing under his ribs and the makeshift dressing Sam had wound around his shoulder. Both had moved in the action, both were saturated. He dropped the tee shirt onto the pile of clothes at his feet and eased the adhesive tape off his skin, the fragile crusts of scab that had covered the bullet hole coming off with the reddened gauze. In the cold salt air, the raw flesh stung.
"Is it still burning?"
"A little," Sam admitted reluctantly. He'd taken off his ichor-soaked clothing and tossed it into the trunk, wiping as much of the hound's blood off himself as he could and changing. He was still burning. "Mostly, I just feel hot."
"Mmm-hmm."
"I can do that."
Dean looked up and shook his head. "I got it."
"You can't even see the exit hole." Sam exhaled loudly and slid feet first out of the car, walking around the rear door. "Move over."
"I got it, Sam," Dean said again, patience wearing thin.
"You want a shot?" Sam ignored him, leaning past to rummage in the kit. "Take the edge off?"
"No."
At the tone, Sam looked more closely at him. "You're not going in after the gun."
Dammit, Dean thought, keeping his gaze firmly on the sterilised pack he was ripping. He'd hoped Sam'd been too out of it to hear the Crow.
"Dean."
"Hmm?" He looked up expressionlessly. "If you're gunna help with this, how 'bout you get a move on?"
Sam took the pack from his hands and opened the other end, pushing his brother ungently against the back of the seat. "Lean the other way, so the skin's flat."
Dean obliged, eyes closing as another wave of pain numbed his toes and made his stomach roll. He felt Sam's hands, deft and efficient, cleaning the mess on both sides, smelled the meadow scent of the soft, cool unguent he packed into the wound, heard more packs torn open and felt the silky gauze pads taped firmly over the top.
"Lean forward and toward me," Sam instructed, thoughts churning. Knowing where the house was, of course Dean wanted to go in. The injuries wouldn't stop him, would barely slow him down once they were properly dressed and firmly taped. He wouldn't have much use of his right hand, but as he'd said before, a frontal assault would be suicide, he'd be thinking about sneaking in.
The problem was that the cambion were there. And the nephilim. Even if the medallion hid him effectively from their sight, from the Grigori and the demon, they'd probably notice when Chuck disappeared, assuming Dean could find the prophet, the tablet and the gun at all. He unwrapped the make-shift dressing around his brother's shoulder, lower lip caught between his teeth as he tried to think of a way to convince Dean to let him come along.
"I can sneak in," Dean said, watching at his brother's transparent expressions through half-lidded eyes. "You can't."
"Even if you can get in unnoticed, getting Chuck out won't go the same way."
"I'll get the gun first," Dean countered, wincing as Sam tugged at the cloth stuck in the deep cut, his brother's fast glance at him forcing him into smoothing out his expression. "Enough ammo to take them all and Chuck can walk out."
"Dean, make a fist with your right," Sam said, leaning back a little, his attention on his brother's face. Dean scowled, looking down at his hand. The fingers closed up a little, three of them, anyway.
"I can shoot with my left," he said stubbornly, letting his hand relax. The pain of trying to close his hand had brought beads of sweat to his face and he knew Sam had seen it, taking a clean dressing from the kit and wiping the sweat away without comment.
"If you can find the gun," Sam argued. "If Draxler doesn't see you first. If they don't have wards and protection already in place that trigger an alarm." He soaked the thick pad in the saline solution, lifting it carefully free as it loosened.
"Buzzkill," Dean said through closed teeth, focussing his concentration on breathing through the freshnets of agony, on staying fucking conscious, as Sam sluiced the open flesh of his shoulder with the solution. "Any of that stuff in there?"
"The topical painkiller?"
Dean groaned softly, trying to nod. Sam pushed the dressings aside and found the small aerosol can.
"It'll hurt worse until the numbing can take affect," he warned him.
"Just spray it in, pack the fucking hole and seal it off," Dean told him, trying not to tense any further. There was a grating sensation in the right collarbone, and he had a feeling it was either cracked or broken. He wasn't going in there with a sling so the whole area needed to be shut off.
Sam looked down at the mass of pulped flesh in front of him. The carnassials of the hyena were cutting teeth, set further back than was normal for a canid, to take advantage of the greater power of the jaw's action. They were designed to crack and crush bone, the animal more scavenger than hunter. And he could see that they'd cracked through the collarbone, shearing the flesh in deep cuts on both sides of Dean's shoulder. It was a miracle he could even lift his hand, he thought as he washed the cuts clean with the saline.
"I'm going to pour some alcohol through this, kill anything that hyena had in its mouth," he told his brother as he unscrewed the lid of the plastic bottle, seeing the muscles tighten again in anticipation.
He was trickling it in when the second blast of burning hit him and he tipped the bottle over, Dean grunting as a gush of raw alcohol flooded his shoulder. He couldn't stop it, dropping to his knees on the door rim of the car, one hand biting deep into the upholstery of the front seat, the other shaking uncontrollably, clear liquid spattering everywhere.
"Christ, Sam!" Dean snarled as he regained control over his nervous system and turned to look at his brother.
Sam knelt beside the seat, head thrown back and the tendons in his neck standing out, his mouth open and his eyes rolled back. Lifting his hand, Dean felt the heat in him before he could touch Sam's skin, seeing every muscle locked and contracted as he shook in anguish.
"What the fuck?" he muttered, catching the almost-empty bottle and righting it. Grabbing his brother's shirt, he pulled Sam onto the seat, half-expecting the upholstery to start smouldering under the heat being generated.
Sam dragged in a breath and pitched forward, leaning out of the car as he managed to throw up a little bile from his stomach, seeing blood in the pool when he opened his eyes.
Resting his hand on his brother's back, Dean felt the heat dissipating again and Sam sat up, wiping an arm over his face.
"Same thing?"
"I think so," Sam replied shakily, spitting again as he tried to rid his mouth of the acid aftertaste.
"No warning?"
"No." It'd lit him up instantly, he thought, replaying the moment unwillingly. One minute, fine, the next on fire and the pain so intense that he was surprised his heart hadn't given out with the shock of it. He could feel his pulse, booming in his ears, but it was steady and it was slowing.
"I think this is clean enough now," Dean said, looking at the reddened mess of his shoulder. He leaned across the lid of the kit and picked up the spray Sam'd dropped.
Looking at him, Sam spat again and turned around. "Give it to me."
"Jesus, no," Dean said, pulling his hand back. "You go up in flames again who the fuck knows what you'll do to me."
"Wow, you're funny," Sam said, glancing at the front of the car, and snatching the can off him when Dean involuntarily followed his gaze. "Was it bad?"
Dean lifted a brow. "I was waiting for your head to explode, dude, like in that movie."
"What movie?"
"The movie where the fucking dude's head explodes!"
"Hold still," Sam said, uncapping and spraying the contents over the open wounds.
Dean's breath hissed in between his teeth, his eyes screwing shut as he forced his jaws to remain closed. The spray hit like a million needles, stabbing into him viciously. He shunted the sensation to one side, his breath coming easier as the analgesic slowly began to numb the nerve endings.
"You can't go in there alone," Sam said, watching Dean's shoulders unclench slowly.
"You can't help with this," Dean said, opening his eyes and looking at his brother. "Whatever that is, it's coming on without warning, and it's fucking incapacitating you, man. You'll be a sitting duck if it happens in the middle of things."
There was no argument against that simple fact, Sam realised with an inward grimace. He could visual the scenario easily enough. He'd be helpless and Dean would be stuck with protecting him, even if it meant losing what he was going in there to find.
Seeing the capitulation in the slump of his brother's shoulders, Dean felt himself start to relax a little as well. The odds were stacked high against him as it was, Sam would've been more than a liability.
"How long do I give you?" Sam asked resignedly.
He looked at his watch. "Till morning. If I'm not out by then, I won't be coming back."
Barely feeling the cool paste Sam was packing the wounds with, Dean thought about how to do actually do it. They'd caught a glimpse of the house from the base of the cliff. In the moonlight against the dark sky, it'd seemed enormous. He was willing to bet there was a basement, possibly more than one level. He'd start with that. Work his way up.
It gave him a place to start, but that was all. Mostly, winging it like this, opportunity arose and was either seen or not. And something was missing; something was nagging at him, buzzing at the back of his mind.
Sam set the gauze dressings over the open slashes and around and over the shoulder, binding them firmly around the shoulder, arm and chest. "Busted your collarbone, I'll try and give it some support."
Nodding, Dean looked down at the pile of filthy clothes on the floor. His duffle was in the trunk, he could get some reasonably clean ones out of it. He closed his eyes and probed mentally at his body, accepting the weak areas and noting what was still strong. He hadn't lied to Sam. He could shoot with his left hand. He was a fucking lousy shot with it, but he could do it. Sneak in and out, he told himself. No heroics. Nothing fancy. Just … unnoticeable.
The navy jacket was oil-stained but otherwise clean. He blended in against the darkness of the trees better in it. The automatic was in the pocket, Sam's long black-bladed knife held by his belt, Ruby's knife sheathed at the back of his hip. He looked around the silent clearing, Sam standing beside him, trying to shake the feeling that he'd forgotten something.
"Morning." He turned away, moving toward the trees at the southern end, the sea breeze freshening on his face.
Sam nodded, then called out softly as his brother disappeared at the treeline. "Dean … don't do anything stupid."
US 191, Utah
"There's a road going through," Peter said softly.
Elias nodded. "They're on the eastern flank, between the peak and the next ridge. We can follow the road to within a couple of miles – I don't want to get any closer."
Penemue looked at him. "That is a wise decision. Even with the sigils, if they have laid trap wards and triggers around the area, we wouldn't see them before setting them off."
"What angles are our best bets?" Vince asked, scratching unconsciously at the paste-filled cuts that marked his chest beneath his clothing.
"You and Peter check it out from that south-west peak, below the ridge line if you can. The scopes'll give you a pretty close look. Me and Penemue'll take the north-east ridge line, before the woods head down the slope. We'll be dark," he added, looking from Peter to Vince. "Lee and Joseph will stay with the cars here."
"Dark?" Penemue raised an eyebrow at Peter.
"No voice, no signals. On our own," Peter clarified briefly, glancing at Vince. "Ready?"
The younger hunter nodded, a cocky grin lifting one cheek. "Always."
Elias refrained from commenting about the expected lifespan of cocky young men and gestured to the Qaddiysh. "We'll go north, and then cut over."
Lying in the thick wet mass of dead leaves and pine needles, Elias moved the scope incrementally across the distant compound, automatically filing numbers, layout, vehicles and the guards he could see. He knew the tall, dark-haired fallen angel was a few feet to his left but he could neither see nor hear him, and he liked that just fine.
Dean was going to be rabid to get here, he thought, staring at the buildings. They'd counted five Grigori at least, a dozen nephilim and several others he wasn't sure of, hoping that Penemue would be able to identify them when they returned to the cars. There were twenty or more humans moving around as well, some of them guards, but others were prisoners, leg chains limiting their movement and all wearing some kind of collar around their necks. They looked fed, the ones he'd seen. He couldn't make out much more detail than that.
It might've been a resort or a private ranch, he couldn't tell. There were a lot of buildings, of varying sizes, some of which had obvious functions, others more obscure. If the humans he'd seen were identified as cambion, they would need more than the node stones to take them out, they'd need weapons. At least three were still teenagers, and he wasn't sure if that made a big difference or not.
Easing his gaze down to his watch, he realised that it was time to go. He looked slowly around the compound again, double-checking that he had all the information that could be gleaned from such a distance and started to ease himself back down the eastern slope of the ridge.
"Cambion, definitely," Penemue told him as they walked together down the narrow dirt road another two miles further from the ridge. "I counted six, as you did. Three still under their majority, and the other three mature adults."
"What'd you think of the slave setup?" Elias asked, most of his attention on the woods around them, the road behind them and the normal, expected sounds from both.
Penemue glanced at him quizzically. "It looked like they were slaves," he said, somewhat mystified. "Captured to serve the Grigori."
Elias blinked, lifting a thick auburn brow as he turned his head to look at him. "They want servants?"
"They always had slaves," Penemue told him dryly. "Household, farm, workers, sexual – that was one of the many reasons people disappeared in the areas they settled."
"Actually, that's something I noticed," the hunter said, shunting the disgust aside as he remembered another detail. "None of the nephilim or the cambion women were pregnant, or at least, they didn't seem to be showing, and the women at home all are now – didn't Ninshursag have the same effect on them as on the regular humans?"
Several of the chained human women had been pregnant, the ones who hadn't looked as if they might've been too old.
The Qaddiysh shrugged. "I don't know. They might have been protected or might have protected themselves."
Too many fucking things that they didn't know about these creatures, Elias thought sourly, and not enough that they did. Felix and Frances were working full-time on getting all of this information together, they might finish in time to help the next generation.
"How long have you known the Winchesters?" Penemue asked him, his face cool and expressionless.
Elias turned to look at him, wondering at the change in subject. "Not long. I met their father, a long time ago, heard rumours about them, a lot of rumours in the last few years."
"You were there, weren't you? In Iowa?"
"Yeah," Elias allowed warily. "I was there."
"Do you trust Dean to lead these people?" The Qaddiysh asked, his tone clipped. "Will you still follow him?"
The auburn-haired hunter stopped on the dusty road. "That's probably not a question you should be throwing around right now," he said slowly.
Penemue stopped and turned to him. "Nevertheless, I am asking it."
"Yeah, I trust him," Elias said, steel-blue eyes narrowing slightly. "I'll follow him."
"Why?"
"Because he won't give up," Elias said after a moment's thought about it. "He won't give in – no matter what else happens."
"His resolve, it is still strong?"
"I guess you could put it that way."
"Thank you," Penemue said, turning away and resuming his pace down the road.
"Hold on." Elias strode after him, catching the fallen angel's arm and dragging him to a stop. "Why'd you ask me that?"
"My brothers and I, we have risked our lives to come to this country, to do what we can in the face of the events that are unwinding," Penemue said, looking down at the hunter. "We watched Winchester kill Lucifer, in the city to the south." He shook his head slightly. "His own people are questioning him now, questioning his loyalties, his ability to lead. We must know where we stand, Elias."
"Who's questioning Dean?" the hunter asked, frowning.
"The people in the keeps," Penemue said, gesturing vaguely eastwards.
"They're civilians, they don't know what the hell is going on."
"But they are losing that trust in him," the angel told him. "And it may be that he will need their support, one day soon."
"What the fuck do you know, Penemue?" Elias growled softly.
"Nothing," the Qaddiysh said quickly. "Nothing concrete. You know he is supposed to be standing over the lines. Changing them?"
"Yeah, Jerome's talked about it."
"The second trial involves the retrieval of Lucifer's sword, from the Cage on the ninth level of Hell," Penemue explained. "None but Lucifer and his chosen vessel may touch that sword – any other faces instant death."
Elias licked his lips as he took that in. "So Sam's supposed to do these trials?"
"We believe so."
"And Dean?"
"We don't know about that," Penemue admitted. "Without more knowledge, we don't know if that was meant to be from the beginning or not."
"Son of a bitch," the hunter said softly. Dean had been told by Death that he would close the gates of Hell. What'd changed in the last six months to make that impossible? The trials had been written more than two thousand years ago, according to the scholars. Why would Death see something other than what had been spelled out for that long?
Nahant, Massachusetts
Dean crouched in the herbaceous border that separated the huge house from its nearest neighbour, looking at the lights in the rooms he could see from the front and side, his fingers brushing against his collar, feeling automatically for the chain.
He looked down when he couldn't find it, the memory flooding his mind at the same time. Gleaming around the yellowing-ivory tooth. Choking him. The lift of the wolf's head and he'd dropped to the ground, slipping through it.
It was still on the banks of the Acheron.
He swore silently for two minutes, eyes shut and teeth clenched. Then he opened his eyes and looked back at the house. With it or not, he was going in. He was too fucking close to back out now.
With the views of the sea on two sides of the house, and the front an unlikely prospect, he moved back out of the border and worked his way through the overgrown woodland on either side of the straight driveway, moving as slowly as he could to the western side of the building. The trees had encroached much closer to the house, over what had once been lawn, and he stopped as he neared the north-west corner, pressed back against a tree-trunk as golden light, spilling across the dead grass from a curtainless window, gave him a view into the house.
Baeder and Dietrich stood there, in a parlour or drawing room or whatever the hell it was, both Grigori holding glasses, their expressions reflecting their conversation.
Baeder looked pissed, Dean thought, with a thin thread of satisfaction at the sight; Dietrich appeared amused as he lifted his glass in a mocking salute to the other man.
Dragging his gaze from them, Dean studied the room, then the side of the house. If the rooms to either side of the central hall were mirrored, there would be a back hall to the kitchen and wherever they'd stashed the servants back in the day, and at least two staircases leading to the upper floors, a grand one at the front of the house and a smaller, narrow one somewhere at the back. On the other side, maybe mirroring the dining room, he had a good possibility of finding Crowley's study or some variation of it. And he was sure, Crowley would be keeping the firearm in there, as it had been kept in the echo of this house on the lower plane.
The back of his neck prickled sharply and he stopped moving, turning very slowly, his gaze tracking his immediate surroundings from the ground up. He saw it a moment later, jammed in the fork of the tree behind and to one side of him. Apple-sized, the wizened and crinkled ball of leather didn't look particularly threatening but he hesitated as he took a step closer, the creases seeming to shift minutely, shadows deepening fractionally. Better to leave it alone, he thought, stepping back from it. And give it a wide berth.
Backing through the undergrowth, he skirted the tree and its peculiar decoration widely, watching more carefully as he moved through the thickly growing trees and saplings. The prickle vanished as he'd backed up from the tree, and he worked his way around the corner of the house without feeling it again, looking at the slanted basement door with a wash of relief.
There was no lock on the peeling, planked doors, just a bolt on the outside. He drew it back gently and opened one side, staring into a black void below the top three steps. He waited a minute, senses desperately stretched out for a wrong noise, wrong smell, wrong feeling, then sensing none of those things, he climbed down into the darkness, easing the door shut behind him.
At the bottom of the steps, he hesitated again, wondering at the wisdom of turning on a flashlight in a place so full of enemies. The alternative, blundering through the dark into who-knew-what was not appealing. If, for some reason, there was a delicately piled heap of stuff that would make a racket if he ran into it, it would be a lot better if he could see to avoid it, he decided. He pulled out the flashlight and thumbed it on, moving the beam slowly around the room. It was bare and dusty and empty, a timber and metal chute beside the steps he'd come down suggesting that it was the coal cellar. The space wasn't anywhere near the size of the house and in the corner, the flashlight beam showed a door, heavy and closed with a simple latch.
He flicked off the flashlight and lifted the latch carefully, cracking the door. A sliver of light fell into the room.
Peering out cautiously, he saw a wide hall with a staircase at both ends and closed doors punctuating the length. Multiple choice, he thought bitterly, hesitating on the threshold. Gun first.
With it, he could go through the house like a dose of salts, cleaning as he went. Without it, even if he found Chuck and the tablet, he would only have the black knife and Ruby's knife and he didn't think either would be enough to give him an advantage over Draxler or the nephilim. The knowledge that he'd come in here, loaded with rage but not much else, gnawed at him. It had not been a smart move.
He slipped into hall, drawing the door closed behind him, and headed for the stairs to the right. He could smell the salt on the faintly damp air, a remote curiosity about how thin the cliff walls were between the basement and the sea flickering through his mind then pushed aside.
At the top of the stairs, another door led into the brightly-lit kitchen, and he crossed the exposed room quickly, finding the narrow hall on the eastern side of the house. Every door along it was shut. He tried the first, finding a small bathroom. The second, on the other side of the hall, was a store-room. His hand closed around the door-knob of the third door, when he felt a breath on the back of his neck.
No warning. Again.
"You shouldn't have come here," the not-quite-familiar baritone told him mildly. "Not your time yet."
Before he could move or even figure out what that meant, an arm had hooked around his neck, muscle and tendon contracting, cutting off the blood supply on either side. The sleeper hold was fast and effective and darkness swallowed him without protest.
Litteris Hominae, Kansas
Father McConnaughey pushed aside the pile of paper in front of him and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes tiredly with his fingertips. On the other side of the table, Baraquiel sucked in a sharp breath, long red hair spilling forward over one shoulder as he leaned closer to the typed transcription, his eyes narrowing.
"The penitent will enter the Cage and take the sword of the Most Unclean from him. The sword is brought back and the trial is completed with the renewal of the contract with God."
Father Emilio looked curiously across the table at him. "What is it?"
"The second trial requires the sword of Lucifer," the Qaddiysh said, staring at the page.
"Yes," Father Emilio agreed mildly, leaning toward him. "And?"
"And no one can touch an angel's sword." Baraquiel lifted his gaze to the priest. "Each sword resonates with the angel's frequency – their exact frequency – to touch one would create a dissonance in the energy and destroy the person attempting to take it."
"It's impossible?" Father McConnaughey looked at him, silver brows drawing tightly together. "It can't be."
"Not impossible," the angel said, shaking his head as he turned to him. "One man can retrieve Lucifer's sword. His vessel."
"Sam," Father Emilio said. The Jesuit closed his eyes.
"Yes."
"And if Dean has already killed Cerberus?"
Baraquiel stared at him helplessly. "I do not know."
"Only one can complete the trials, and once the contract has begun, to forfeit the quest is to forfeit life," Father McConnaughey said slowly. "Is there a way to shield the sword? To handle it without touching it?"
"An angel may," Baraquiel nodded. "Silk is a powerful shield. Or lead. That is what we would use to collect the weapons of the dead after battle, and bury them together. I have never heard of a human doing so, but that means nothing."
"We'll know when they return," Father Emilio said decisively. "Until then, we must hope that they have either failed, or that somehow, Sam killed the hound."
"Thin bloody hope," Father McConnaughey said caustically. "I told you this wasn't set."
The Jesuit looked at him with a tired smile. "So you did. Would you like a medal?"
"The way in is cleared by the dog's death," Baraquiel interjected quietly, seeing the older priest's face darken. "Did they know this? The blood of Cerberus is the key to the doors of Hell. They will need it to enter to perform the second ordeal."
"I'm not sure," Father Emilio said, frowning at the pages in front of the Qaddiysh. "We weren't looking for the answers to the second trial before they left."
"What a great bloody mess," said Father McConnaughey, pushing his chair back irritably and getting to his feet. "We've been one step behind the whole time."
"Well, we will just have to pick our pace." The Jesuit looked up at the old man. "Sam included the details of moving through the accursed plane with what we have on the second trial before he left. Alex underlined this in those notes – no weapon save the divine will wound or kill them. There is an order to these instructions but it was designed to be clear only to the prophet, studying the entire tablet over time. The blood of Cerberus is necessary to open the doors to Hell once the borderlands have been entered. The first trial was to kill the dog. And presumably, take it's blood. The second trial is to retrieve the sword of an angel from the deepest level. The instructions on getting there are spelled out. Only a divine weapon can kill an arch demon. The only divine weapon available will be Lucifer's sword –"
"You think the third trial will be to kill one of the Fallen?" Baraquiel looked at him uncertainly.
"I am reasonably sure that it will be," Father Emilio said. "Each trial increases in difficulty, but each provides the essential key to the next. It is logical."
"We don't know what happened to the Fallen," Father McConnaughey pointed out, his tone acidic. "We don't know how many there are."
"There are – were – four left, after Winchester was raised," Baraquiel said, looking at him. "Crowley could not have taken them by force."
"And the angel said that the gates had to be closed before they were released," Father Emilio added. "The demon found a way to bind them."
"If they are bound, then killing one or all of them should be an easier task?" Baraquiel suggested. "Getting past them to the Cage should also become less of a risk to the penitent."
Father McConnaughey shook his head impatiently. "This is pure speculation. And we have no further information on the arch demons – it may be on the tablet, but it is not here."
"It is," Baraquiel said, getting up and moving around the table to the stacks of typed transcripts. "It is just not obvious."
"The histories?"
"Yes."
Lightning Oak Keep, Kansas
Ellen sat down as she felt the kick, running her hand automatically over the curve of her belly. So far, so good, she told herself. She was forty-five and it'd been a long time since she'd done this, but everything had come back, as if the intervening years hadn't existed, the tiredness and the surges of emotions, the powerful desire to make everything ready, to have her home back.
The tower had been rebuilt, wider and stronger, Liev had assured her, with additional accommodation added to the keep's interior for the population explosion to come. They'd lost most of their possessions in the attack, and finding more had proved more difficult than she'd imagined. There were undoubtedly cities throughout the country that held what they needed, wrapped and stored and waiting for them to find, but it required people to go out and find them, and everyone had too much to do as it was. Ryan had been teaching basic carpentry for the last four weeks, and their table and chairs were simple, straight-legged and straight-backed, shining pale gold under the fresh coats of varnish, a plain sofa and armchairs built by the apprentices and upholstered in the thick newly-woven wool mixes of Sarah's group, weavers in training. For a moment, looking at them, Ellen wondered if this was a glimpse into their future – no more exotic fabrics, at least not until the weavers had mastered the techniques. Everything utilitarian until time wasn't such a precious commodity.
"You alright?" Bobby walked into the room, pushing his cap back as he saw her.
"Fine," Ellen told him, shunting the introspective worries aside. "What did Boze have to say?"
Sitting in the armchair across from her, Bobby scratched the short beard consideringly. "They tracked the pack into the forest – the older forest – and killed most of them last night," he told her. "Some got away. Said that the werewolves were different though."
"Different how?" Ellen asked, a trickle of unease rising up her spine at his expression.
"It was night," Bobby hedged. "Boze said that they could've made a mistake."
"Bobby," Ellen said warningly. "Mistake about what?"
The hunter sighed. "He said that a lot of them looked like wolves."
"Actual wolves?"
"That's what he said."
"What does that mean?" she asked him. "Werewolves barely transform in real life. Teeth, eyes, they get stronger … that's about it."
"Yeah, I know," he said, lifting his hands helplessly. "I'm just the messenger."
"Did they get any footage?" Close circuit video had been SOP for the camps and the keeps here since the croat attack two years ago.
He shook his head. "No, they were too far out."
"Whose word are we taking on this?"
"Boze saw one. Maurice reported the same thing, when they got back to the camp," Bobby said. "If they re-gather, try and attack the camps again, we might get some pictures."
"Did you ask Michel where Nintu is now?" she asked. He looked at her, feeling the smooth hum of their thoughts in synchronisation. That'd been the first thing he'd done when he'd heard the Tawas report.
"Yeah, she's north, eastern Canada, in the high lats," he told her.
"So she could've released Raat?"
"I think she did that before she went south to Texas." He looked down at his hands, resting on his knees. "That pack was circling Tawas before we got word of the skinwalker's location."
"What's the lore on the early generations of the werewolves?"
"Not much," Bobby said unhappily. "Santos specialised in them, but I haven't heard from him for years."
"Santos? He died in '09, Bobby," Ellen said. "Mariana took over the research but she wasn't hunting."
He looked at her with a surprised chuckle. "How'd you keep in touch?"
"I keep tabs on everyone," she told him dryly. "Even if Mariana didn't make it, she wouldn't've left that library unprotected."
"Alright, who can we spare to take a look?"
"Did you meet Tilly when they came in with Maurice?"
He scratched his brow, looking down. "The woman who learned about hunting from Chuck's books?"
"That's her," Ellen said, stretching her legs out. "She trained up five or six people while they were stuck in Minnesota, not bad either."
"Christ, Ellen, they're total rookies!"
"No, they looked after themselves before Maurice found them and they've been on a refresher course with Kelly and Franklin, who has a few new trainees himself, by the way," she added, tilting her head as she looked at him. "Vince can take point, he's had a couple of days off now."
"Alright, alright," he gave in abruptly. "I'll give Franklin a call, tell him to get the trucks ready."
"Bobby, Vince asked me what I thought Dean would want to do about the Grigori settlement they found."
"What can he do?" he asked. "He and Sam won't be back for at least another few days. They weren't moving, he said. Just … waiting, by the sounds of it."
"The passes are all clear, they could come for us at any time," she argued.
"But they haven't," Bobby countered reasonably. "An' they probably won't on their own, they'll wait for Crowley to rustle up another army before they try to take us."
"I thought Dean would want to take them out before it got anywhere near that," she said.
"Yeah, probably he would." He looked at her. "Probably, he will, when he gets back. In the meantime, I'm not losing sleep over it."
Watching the expressions cross her face, he moved from the chair to the sofa, putting his arm around her. "What?"
"After what happened with Lisa, I didn't think he'd ever get past that," she said softly, leaning her head back against his shoulder. "But he did, somehow, and a few days before the attack, when I was over at the keep, I got such a strong feeling that he'd figured something out, found what he'd been searching for."
Bobby sighed, his arm tightening around her a little. "Yeah, I know."
"He can't keep taking this punishment, Bobby," Ellen said, thinking of what Dean had told Bobby before he and Sam had left. "It's going to take everything good out of him."
Bobby thought about the man he'd helped John Winchester to raise. He'd met the boy at eight, and he'd known then that Dean had carried the responsibilities of an adult, had borne the load of an adult, guardian to his brother, backup to his father. That load had crippled something inside of him, but he'd never acknowledged it, had never admitted to his fear that he couldn't keep going, doing whatever he had to, sacrificing whatever was needed from him.
It'd come as a surprise to him when Dean had told him to include Alex in whatever information they had. Lisa had been kept firmly at arm's length when it came to what they were fighting, what they were doing. He'd wondered back then, but hadn't asked, if that had been his decision, or Lisa's. The situation was different, he admitted to himself. Alex's responsibilities for the keep population – she did need to know what they were facing, who would be there and who wouldn't. But it hadn't been that. It hadn't been that at all.
The last conversation, outside the order, he'd finally seen what Dean had kept inside, what her death had done and was continuing to do. He thought Ellen might be right about the hunter, although he wouldn't've been able to believe it before. Everyone had an end point, a point beyond which they just couldn't go. He'd never thought he see Dean's.
Nahant, Massachusetts
Cold, damp air goose-fleshing his bared skin. The smell of a reluctantly burning fire, newly lit, the wood wet and charring. His shoulder was a mass of agony, the broken bone and open flesh twisted up, his wrists burning with the rope that held them together, his weight hanging from them. The hole in his side was throbbing insistently, the dressing gone, the skin stretched out between ribcage and pelvis. He couldn't feel ground beneath his feet. For a terrifying moment, his memories filled him, this situation familiar, missing only the nauseating smell of brimstone and the heat of the fires, the chittering of demon's wings high above him, the laughter of the silver-eyed demon. He swallowed, forcing the memories away. Not the same. Not.
Didn't mean he wasn't in big trouble, he thought, opening his eyes slightly, the flickering light from the fire casting moving shadows over rough stone walls, the overhead lights dim and murky and not dispelling the shadows at all. Baeder stood beside the smoking fire, poking at it with a long iron bar. Dietrich leaned against a cupboard, under a frame on the wall that had been hung with a black cloth. The detail snagged his attention for a moment but he couldn't work out why.
Behind him, he heard a soft rumbling, and a faint scree of metal on stone. The image explaining the noises popped into his mind effortlessly. Grinding stone. Someone was sharpening something.
"He's conscious," the baritone voice of the cambion said from behind him.
"Mr Winchester, you are proving to be a most persistent and irritating obstacle to our plans," Dietrich said, straightening up and walking toward him.
Dean looked at him expressionlessly.
"Ah … today we get the silent treatment," Dietrich said understandingly. "I'm afraid that won't be acceptable."
He looked past Dean, nodding slightly and Dean heard the scrape of a chair being pushed back across the stone floor, heavy footsteps moving around, a soft hiss and slur that he couldn't identify. The footsteps stopped and he thought Draxler was standing behind him, forcing himself to keep his eyes on Dietrich and ignore the cambion. Whatever was going to happen, he wouldn't be able to talk himself out of it, and for the time being, he didn't have any other options.
Physical pain is a key. Alastair's voice spoke languidly through his memories. It must be wielded carefully, when the victim is flesh and blood, but down here, it can utilised to the full extent. Almost all souls retain a memory of body, of nerve and muscle, sinew and tendon and blood and bone. Those memories are what we carve, Dean.
"How did you find this place?" Baeder stepped up beside Dietrich, his single eye glittering in the thick, uneven light, his breathing quickening as his gaze moved over Dean.
Dean stared at him, lips thinning out in the effort to hold down the fury he felt, his fingers curling slightly with the desire to tighten around Baeder's neck.
Baeder saw the hunter's eyes darken and felt a frisson of fear spark through his nerves. It'd been a long time since anyone or anything had awoken that sensation in him, and in any other time or place, he might have been intrigued by it, a reaction so unfamiliar. But they didn't have the time. And the knowledge he had of this man, this … monkey wrench, as the demon called him, insisted that they strip whatever information they could from him, and kill him.
Watching an unidentifiable emotion twitch the side of Baeder's face, the side that still had movement, Dean wondered remotely if it had been fear. He saw the Grigori nod and a sharp, whistling noise filled the air behind him. The hardened points and knots of the multiple lashed whip struck his skin, tearing at it and leaving several small, shallow cuts in his upper back, the assault shocking and agonising. He clenched his teeth together as the involuntary tension through his body dragged fresh pain from shoulder and side, feeling his blood welling in the cuts and trickling down.
You're just not getting deep enough. Well, you lack the resources. Reality is just, I don't know, too concrete up here. Another memory, more recent.
He'd been right, Dean thought. Couldn't pull the wings off up here, nope, nervous system overload and body shock and bam, no more questions. Up here, all they could do was hurt. And he had a wealth of experience with pain.
"How did you find us?"
The moaning whistle of the leather strips through the air. Fire and acid. Lower this time. Blood, running in rivulets over his skin.
He sucked in a deep breath, lifted his head, stared at the Grigori.
"Use the salt," Dietrich said and Dean heard the rustle of a bag.
It burned into the cuts, and then poured into the much deeper tears over his shoulder, the cambion's big hand pressing it in and closing hard around the torn up flesh. Dean felt the bone-deep, wracking shudder from head to foot as he drowned in agony, some distant part of himself watching for the overload.
"Eric, this isn't–"
"How did you find this place?" Baeder cut Dietrich off, his voice rising.
The hardened leather sliced through his flesh again, lower down, the cambion's freakish strength bruising skin and muscle, hammering deep.
In Hell, he'd retreated, behind walls, keeping himself apart when the pain had corkscrewed into unbearable, into excruciating, keeping himself sane with the memories of life and his family, with real things he'd hoarded like precious gems. He'd told the demon he'd dreamed of revenge but he'd lied to Alastair. His dreams had been strings of tiny pearls, tiny, discrete moments remembered from life, strung together and each one anchoring him, reminding him who he was.
"Turn him around." He heard Baeder say distantly, his ears filled with the accelerating rush of his blood.
"Eric! Did you read Crowley's file–" Dietrich's voice had risen.
"How did you find us?!"
The cambion kept the whip at chest height, and the broken rib flexed sickening under the blow, a hundred razors slicing through him and one knot catching the edge of the hyena's bite, sizzling in the raw flesh.
"Give it to me!"
"Eric! He was forty years in the–"
"HOW DID YOU FIND US!?"
Dean screamed as the lash ends hit and cut into his abdomen, burning across his skin, the Grigori maddened past control and the knout rising and falling repeatedly, leaving bleeding slashes in furrows from collarbone to thighs.
Carved you into a new animal, Alastair whispered in his mind. No. No, you didn't carve anything, Dean replied, unsure if he'd said it aloud or just in his head. You just gave me 101 in pain management, Alastair.
The epiphany was there and gone as his body began to overload, his throat raw and tasting of copper, excruciating pain everywhere and no place to turn. Baeder's voice became shrill and the sharp, hardened ends and knots raked across his face, leaving cuts over forehead, cheeks and jaw as he tried to jerk back from it, eyes screwed shut.
He felt hot breath against his cheek, a cold, clammy hand clamped around his jaw.
"She screamed, you know," Baeder croaked to him, flecks of spittle hitting his mouth. "Screamed and begged me not to kill her children, your children–"
Inside of him, there was a sudden, deep silence, blocking out the voice that breathed its obscenities at him, the crackle of the fire and the other Grigori's shouting. It shut out the fury that shrieked in his mind, the pounding blood-lust that filled his veins. Inside of him there was a silence and a stillness and he was forced to listen.
I do, you know. He heard her voice, clearly. I do love you.
The rush of emotion came much faster than the last time and this time he knew what was happening, knew what would happen. His eyes opened as pure power flushed the pain from his body, wiping him clean of everything but an expanding strength, pulsing in time with his heart.
Turning his head a little, Dean caught a fragmented glimpse of Baeder's eye, widening at whatever it saw in his face. Then he slammed his head forward, feeling the precise hit on the angel's skull, seeing a split through the skin and under that a crack appear, seeing it widen as the Grigori dropped like a stone to the floor. He was already moving, legs drawn up tightly, twisting himself around, the chain between his ankles looping over the cambion's head, and a flat roll between the ropes holding him crossed the chain, tightening it instantly around the thick neck, Draxler's hands dropping bag and knife to clutch at it.
With the momentum of his weight and the swing, he dragged the half-breed around, twisting the ropes further, building the kinetic energy in them. He grunted with the effort, using the power flooding his body to lift himself almost horizontal, the cambion swung off his feet and sent crashing into the wall above the cupboard, smashing the covered frame above it.
The ropes had reached their breaking point and they sheared above his head, dropping him to the floor. Dean landed on his hands and the balls of his feet, looking down at the broken chain between his ankles, the links had stretched and snapped with the weight of the half-breed and his impact into the wall. Lightning and thunder were filling him up, and he knew he was going to pay for this strength later, if there was a later, but right at this minute, he felt invincible as he hit Dietrich with his left shoulder, knocking the fallen across the room and into the opposite wall.
The deep growl from behind him gave him a half-second's warning and he was turning, catching the closed fist as it sailed past him, dropping to the stone floor and planting one bare foot into Draxler's ribs. The long muscles of his thighs stretched out and lifted, the man's own weight and speed sending him flying across the room as Dean thrust him off.
Rolling over, Dean felt something slice into his palm and looked down, a long sliver of mirror reflecting a part of his face unrecognisably. He picked it up and swung around, holding the shard out as the cambion rushed for him, bracing himself for the impact.
He watched Draxler glance down at the glass in his hand, saw his eyes widen, almost comically, in terror and then he was gone, the piece of glass much heavier and almost slicing his fingers off as his arm sagged. Dropping it, Dean caught a flashing glimpse of a dark-haired, dark-eyed man as it hit the floor, then the broken glass reflected the ceiling only.
Baeder was still out, he noted, scanning the room fast, Dietrich shaking his head and rolling onto his stomach on the other side of the room. He had no time to hang about and wonder about the fucking half-breed. His clothes and the long black knife had been dumped in a pile near the door and he grabbed jeans and the knife, feeling the strength that had filled him dissipating slowly.
Running for the door, he was glad to see that it had a bolt on the outside, and he reached out and made a grab for the handle. He dragged it shut behind him, slamming the bolt home and turned around, to look up and down the hall. He was in the basement, on the eastern side, he thought, recognising the cellar door he'd come through however long ago that'd been. He sprinted toward the stairs.
River Acheron, Border of Hell
Crowley crouched by the wolf's head, absently stroking the long fur as he tried to figure out what had happened. It had to have been the Winchesters, either one or the other or both down here. What possible purpose could killing Cerberus have served? Chuck had produced volumes of paper which were virtually unreadable, but none of it had mentioned the killing of the guardian – he froze as he thought of the prophet and the tablet.
Unprotected prophet and tablet.
Unprotected on the earthly plane prophet and tablet.
Thrusting the pendant in his jacket pocket, he lurched to his feet and disappeared.
Nahant, Massachusetts
Leaning against the kitchen cabinet, Dean pulled on the jeans, trying to ignore the bright spears of pain as the denim dragged over the cuts and abrasions. The power he'd drawn from himself had almost gone, and the only thing he had left between him and an overload of pain was the adrenalin that was pumping through his system. It wouldn't last much longer either. He picked up the knife and ran for the hall.
The woman who came around the corner was tall, almost as his own height, slender and shapely in close-fitting, tapered dark pants and a thin fluffy-looking white sweater, long black hair gathered loosely at the nape of her neck. Large, periwinkle-blue eyes widened as she saw him skid to a stop in the hall in front of her.
He leapt forward, the blade plunging into her stomach, stopped as the hilt hit her ribs and for a long second, they stood as close as lovers, Dean's gaze shifting from the surprise in her eyes to the trickle of blood that slipped from the corner of her mouth. His hand gripped her shoulder and shoved her backwards, off the knife's long blade, the metal whickering through the air as he strode forward in time with her backwards stagger, ignoring the dull thud of her head hitting the wall.
Has to be the heart, he reminded himself, dropping beside her and ramming the blade through the ribs of the fallen body, twisting it and sliding his fingers into the opening. He yanked back on the ribs as the knife sliced through the cartilage holding them together, and drove the edge through the lung, feeling for the large muscle that beat obscenely in his hand as he dragged it free of the chest cavity.
His head snapped up as he heard the pounding of booted feet down the hall, rising fast to his feet and dropping the heart to one side of the body. He yanked out the knife, wiping it and his blood-covered hand haphazardly on his jeans. The room he'd thought might be Crowley's study was the third door, he remembered, and he half ran to it, pulling it open and slipping inside as the pounding grew louder.
The lightswitch was where he expected, his hand slapping at the wall to the side of the doorway. The room lit up with a dozen wall sconces and a delicate small chandelier overhead and he looked around a little dazedly. It was, down to the last detail, exactly the same as the room in Hell. Striding fast to the desk, he drove the knife's edge in the thin line between the door and frame of the cupboard, hoping like hell that Crowley had been stupid enough to put the gun back in the same place he'd found it.
The pearwood box was there and it had weight. Dean dropped the knife on the blotter and lifted it out, dragging in a deep breath as the effort pulled at his wounds. He picked up the knife and rammed the blade into the thin gap between the lid and the box next to the lock. A hard twist and the lock broke, the lid flying open. His fingers moved surely over the barrel, breaking the breech and loading the bullets, taking the rest and shoving them into his pockets as he reassembled the barrel, breech and cylinder and felt them click into the grip.
"Ariana!" Joaquin screamed, running down the hall and falling to his knees beside the dead nephilim. Behind him, Baeder lurched along the hallway, his face a brilliant red with fury, Dietrich half-running behind him. Neither knew what had happened to the cambion, nor to the boy who'd disappeared as well.
"The office!" he snapped at Joaquin, gesturing to the blood-smeared door knob.
"What the fuck is going on here?!" Crowley snarled, materialising on the other side of the nephilim's body, his gaze flicking from the headless corpse to the enraged Grigori. "What happened?!"
"Winchester is here," Baeder said, gesturing at the study door as Joaquin turned the knob and threw himself in.
"No – the gun–" Crowley shouted.
The door burst open, a tall, young man leaping into the room, a deep shout from outside and Dean fired, the first of Colt's bullets ploughing smoothly into Joaquin's chest, blue fire lighting up the punctured heart as the nephilim fell to the floor. He was moving, accelerating, and he jumped over the body, rocketing into the hallway as he belatedly recognised the voice that had shouted.
Baeder shrieked at him, lunging forward and Dean lifted the gun unhurriedly, the barrel steady as he pulled the trigger. The bullet hit Baeder in the face, blue lightning crawling over his skull as he seemed to rise straight into the air, neck stretching up, then fell, crumpling as his feet hit the ground. Dean looked down at him, firing again, the second bullet punching through the ribs and into the heart, a flare of cerulean fire lighting the chest cavity.
Crowley swung around, dragging the pendant from his pocket and trying to pull the silver chain over his head, and Dean snapped the barrel up, hitting the demon in the back of the thigh with the first shot. The demon staggered forward, his attempt to disappear failing as the magic of Colt's bullet cut him off from Hell, crackling through his limb and lighting it with a mixture of red and gold and blue and black. The barrel of the revolver lifted and Dietrich fell at the corner of the hall, the small round hole in the centre of the shining burned scalp spitting and sparking blue.
Stepping over Baeder, Dean walked past Crowley, moving along the hall to the other Grigori. Dietrich was dead, the eyes open and staring, but he put another bullet through the back and heart anyway. Just in case.
Turning back, Dean walked slowly back down the hall, stopping in front of the demon and looking at him coldly.
On the floor, Crowley looked up at him, focussed first on the small round hole at the end of the barrel, then gradually taking in the details of the man holding the gun behind it. Atropos had been wrong. The thought intruded suddenly, through the pain that coruscated up and down his leg. Bruised from head to foot, his blood smeared and still trickling from the wounds that had been inflicted over most of the skin the demon could see, staining the fabric of the jeans he wore, making a mask of the expressionless face, Dean Winchester was the one still standing, holding Colt's gun.
The barrel lifted and Crowley cowered back against the wall. Dean pulled the trigger and the gun clicked. On the floor, the demon sagged backwards, his vessel's heart pounding furiously, surges of mindless relief alternating with the acidic torture of the bullet in his leg.
Turning impatiently away, Dean broke the gun, his fingers automatically feeling and gathering five bullets from the front pocket of his jeans, pulling them out and slotting into them into the revolver's cylinder, his gaze locked onto the demon who was trying to crawl away down the hall, injured leg dragging behind him.
He slid the last one in and replaced the cylinder and breech, the click of the hammer on the empty chamber louder than the demon's frantic breaths. Walking unhurriedly after Crowley up the hall, Dean pulled back the hammer and the cylinder turned.
The demon stopped, twisting on his side as he stared back at the man behind him.
"Wait!" he said, moaning as the power of the bullet in his leg sucked at him. "I can–"
Dean pulled the trigger and Crowley fell backwards, his body convulsed with light. The Colt fired again, the bullet hitting the demon's vessel in the chest. The cylinder revolved and the hammer fell, the retorts echoing in the high-ceilinged hallway until it clicked empty again.
He leaned over, looking at the silver chain with its small silver medallion, hanging from the demon's hand. Reaching out, he curled his fingers around it, yanking it free of the stiffening fingers and turned away,
He could feel exhaustion and overload reaching for him, and he wasn't finished yet. Do it by the numbers, he told himself, reloading the Colt and tucking the medallion into his pocket. Chuck was in here somewhere, along with the tablet, and he had to get them out before he could acknowledge anything else.
Looking back down the hall, he thought the basement was probably the best bet and he walked back toward the kitchen, stumbling a little, the muscle in the point of his jaw jumping as he set his teeth and kept going.
Chuck was in the basement. The prophet was in a room at the end of the hall that ran east to west under the house. Dean opened the door and saw a body, lying on the floor between the table and wall. Leaning over, he put his fingers against the neck, straightening as nothing registered against them. A guard? It was possible. Bailed when it got an inkling.
At the table, Chuck was sitting upright, staring fixedly ahead, his hand moving fast over the notepaper, the other hand lying flat and hard against the stone tablet on the table top.
"Chuck," Dean said, walking unsteadily around the table. "Chuck!"
Chuck paid no attention to him, the conduit open in his mind, the Word flowing through him to the paper. Dean looked down at the pad and reached over, pulling it out from under Chuck's hand. Chuck kept writing, the pen digging into the wood of the table top and Dean let out a frustrated exhale.
He'd have to touch the tablet. He'd been okay before, but Chuck hadn't been plugged into it then, and he could see the faint glow in the stone, outlining the writer's hand where it rested over the symbols. He was going to collapse right here if he didn't keep going, he thought sourly, feeling the clawing pain creeping back up through his already-fried nerves.
Don't think about it, just do it, he told himself and his hand snapped out, gripping the edge of the stone and pulling it.
The backlash between himself, the stone tablet and the prophet was instant and immense.
Dean was flung across the room and Chuck was thrown back from the table as the connection broke, searing white light filling every corner of the basement room and whiting out every shadow and colour before it vanished back into the tablet.
"What the –" Chuck said, his hands pressing against his temples as a giant migraine headache pounded behind his eyes, colours smearing and bleeding into each other wherever he looked.
He saw Dean, crumpled on the floor at the far end of the room and got to his feet, weaving across the floor until he reached him.
"Dean!"
The hunter opened his eyes, blinking furiously as he tried to bring the writer's face into focus. "Chuck, you okay?"
"Yeah," Chuck said, looking down at him in shock. "Better than you are."
"That rock – got a kick, huh?"
"Is that what happened?" Chuck asked him in disbelief. "You touched it?"
"We have to go," Dean muttered, pushing himself upright and using the wall behind his back to help him to his feet.
"You could've been killed, grabbing it like that," Chuck marvelled, looking back over his shoulder at the table. "You're bleeding."
"Where?" Dean asked, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes as an uncontrollable shudder wrenched through him.
"Everywhere," Chuck said, frowning. "You look like you've been–"
Dean heard the bewilderment in Chuck's voice slowly disappearing and knew that the writer was really looking at him now. He opened his eyes and pushed off the wall, grabbing Chuck's arm and forcing him around.
"Can you grab the stone now?"
"No, the conduit's still open – the headache –"
Which meant he had to do it, he thought uneasily, ignoring the rest of Chuck's explanation. "Think it'll throw me again?"
"No," Chuck said certainly. "That was because you got between me and the Word."
"Uh-huh."
"It should be okay now."
"Should be?"
Chuck smiled hesitantly. "Pretty sure it'll be fine now."
Pretty sure, Dean thought tiredly. He reached for the tablet, stopping as his fingers hovered above the stone. Don't be a fucking girl, he told himself. His hand curled around the stone and he felt something pass into him, a warmth or a peace or something that eased the agony throbbing in his body for a second's bright respite.
"Okay," he said, turning and gesturing to the doorway. "Let's go."
Holding the stone against his chest, he followed Chuck up the stairs.
Hell, Eighth Level
The Throne shuddered on its plinth, and every demon turned in the endless tunnels and caverns and pits of Hell, looking toward the Fifth Level.
Wind, formless and directionless and smelling of cold metal and acid, twisted through the rock, soughed through the thick wire of the nets, lifted and eddied over the molten lake and swept through the daeva in the abyss. It reached through the bonds holding the three, and they felt the diaphanous touch of the dark shrouds against skinless, bony faces, stepping back from each other, turning to look upward, like the rest, toward the Fifth Level and the golden throne it held.
"The demon is-s-s-s-s-s dead."
"The Faithless have fallen by his side."
The Throne should've protected the ruler, they knew. It should've protected their Prince as well. It hadn't. There was only one reason for that, but it wasn't time. Wasn't the end of time. Minds, black and ancient and tortured into entirely new frequencies, joined together and searched through the width and breadth and depth of the planes, noting the changes as they saw them.
The Guardian of the Gates, dead. Raphael, dead. Heaven on the brink of civil war. Hell in chaos. The remaining Faithless in their fortresses, hiding from whatever had killed their brothers. Nintu, Dark Mother, walking free and her children awakening.
A time of chaos. A time of change.
Nahant, Massachusetts
Sam leaned against the Impala, legs still shaking as the heat and burn dissipated from his body from the last conflagration. In the east, along the endless line of the ocean's flat horizon, he could see the sky lightening. It was morning. He wasn't going anywhere.
The crack of a branch in the trees sharpened his attention and he pushed himself off the car, lifting his flashlight and flicking it on, the beam skating along the dark trunks and catching a pale face in its light.
He walked toward them, eyes widening as he saw Chuck half-carrying, half-dragging Dean beside him, his brother covered in blood and barely moving his feet.
"What the hell happened?" he asked Chuck, taking Dean's arm from him and wrapping his own around him, leaving Chuck to stumble along beside them.
"I'm not sure; he's not very coherent," the writer said, hurrying ahead of them and opening the rear door of the car, relieved to see the first aid kit already there. "They had him, were torturing him, I think, and he got away somehow, got the gun and killed them, came and broke the connection between me and the tablet …" he trailed off as Sam approached, realising the tall hunter wasn't really listening to him.
Sam eased Dean into the back seat, pressing his fingers against the side of his neck and feeling a wave of relief spread over him as he felt the steady heartbeat. Under the sharp brightness of the interior light of the car, he saw the cuts and bruising, the slashes and chunks of bloodied salt packed into Dean's shoulder and the longer, deeper open wounds on his back, rope burns circling his wrists, the iron shackles with their trailing ends of chain still fastened to his ankles. Tortured. Yeah, he thought, a ripple of nausea turning his stomach over slowly.
Clutched in one hand, Dean held the tablet, in the other, held bundled against the side of his chest, what was left of his clothes, Ruby's knife, the black metal knife of the Qaddiysh and the long black barrelled Colt. Looking down at the treasures his brother carried, Sam felt his mouth quirk up to one side.
"Dean," he said, gently uncurling his brother's fingers and moving the items piece by piece to the floor. He glanced at Chuck, sitting in the front seat. "You can't touch the tablet, can you?"
Chuck shook his head. "Not without going into a trance."
He couldn't touch it either, not comfortably. He decided to leave in it in Dean's grip. The shoulder needed cleaning out again, he thought, leaning over his brother to peer at it more closely. And the hole in his side was bleeding again. The rest of the cuts, although many, looked more superficial. He thought the bruising and trauma to the skin and muscle underneath would be worse than the cuts themselves. And trying to get him cleaned up might wake him. It could only have been the pain that'd put him under at this point. He didn't want to bring him back up to that.
Looking back over the front seat at the prophet, he gave Chuck a rueful smile. "Since Dean is fucked and I'm likely to burst into flames at any minute, that leaves you to get us home, I'm afraid."
Chuck's mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. "What?"
"Come on, don't tell me you haven't been dying to drive this car since you first wrote about it, Chuck," Sam said, pulling out the saline solution and the gauze dressings again. "He won't know."
I-70 W, Indiana
Chuck drove like an old lady, Sam thought, wrung out from the last hour of burning up and throwing up. Just as well maybe, given that Dean would kill him if he put a scratch on her.
He turned his head, feeling his neck creak as he looked into the back seat. Stretched out along it, a blanket loosely tucked around him, the tablet still clutched in one hand and resting on his chest, Dean had been out for the last fifty-two hours. They'd stopped in New York, just before they'd hit Pennsylvania, for a couple of hours, Chuck needing more meds and some sleep, and Sam needing to move around, the constant cramping in his limbs and abdomen becoming an intolerable torment after hours in the car.
He'd cleaned his brother up a little then, swallowing often as he catalogued the injuries, his imagination providing him with detailed suggestions as to how they'd been inflicted. He'd put stitches in the larger cuts, across his back where the lash had gone into muscle, and taped the rest, practically coating Dean's skin in Oliver's healing paste, hoping it would do the job. He'd been vaguely surprised to see that the bullet hole had closed again, noticeably smaller than when he'd re-dressed it the first time. The deep tears in Dean's shoulder had also seemed … smoother, less torn up … when he'd gone to change the dressings and re-pack it with the sweet-smelling unguent. His gaze fell on the tablet, and he stared at it uneasily, wondering if it had had anything to do with his brother's deep sleep, or the accelerated healing of the wounds.
At the rate Chuck was going, it would be another two days to get back to the keep. There was still no predictability to the … attacks? episodes? proddings of an unmerciful God? He could feel almost-fine one minute and be rigid the next, unable to move or breathe, every cell in his body feeling as if it had been filled with acid, the burning penetrating deeper each time it happened.
This blood, it's not in you the way it's in me.
He remembered saying that to Dean, in the car, driving away from Carthage and his heart hammering against his ribs with the replays of Jack Montgomery's transformation going on and on in his mind.
The blood had been there since he'd been six months old. He'd thought it would always be there, something he would always have to live with, like – like the possibility of a remission.
He didn't think that now.
He'd watched the blood spill out of his brother when he'd taken the vampire cure. Ejected by the cure's ingredients, by the alchemical process and the way they'd interacted to draw it, cell by cell, from his arteries and veins and capillaries, returning it to his stomach so that it could be expelled for good.
Only the penitent could close the gates of Hell. In the translations, Alex's transcriptions from Chuck's notes, that was what the applicant to the trials had been called.
The Penitent.
Repentant. Contrite. Humble and seeking forgiveness from God.
The definitions played through his mind. He was closer now. But he guessed that the physical evil had to be burned out before much else could progress. The thought terrified him.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
Would he have to confess his sins? Out loud? To someone else? He wasn't sure he could go that far, be that naked and vulnerable in front of someone. Dean knew what he'd done but his brother couldn't talk to him about it. The times he'd tried to apologise, to explain, had only made things worse between them. He hadn't understood then, but he understood it now. Dean had already known the explanations. What he couldn't do was hear Sam say it aloud. Say it to him.
Pride was the Father of all sins, and Greed the mother, he'd heard that somewhere once. Pride had been his sin. Was it still? How could he be sure that he wasn't still acting from his pride, telling himself that there'd been reasons for what he'd done? He knew the answer to that too. He was. Still. And the blood was being burned out of him, ejected from him, the contract he'd signed willingly was going to force him into purity and test him unto death.