Chapter 20 Under Creeping Shadow
June 23, 2013. Sioux Falls, South Dakota
The light faded from the seraphim, gloom returning to the clearing and Dean slid the black sword back through his belt, returning his automatic to his pocket as he looked at Castiel. The construct wasn't exactly Jimmy's face or body, but the shape of the eyes was the same, the irises the familiar deep, oceanic blue. The angel was taller, broader across the shoulders than Novak was, and the wings, polished brass graduating down to a tawny gold through the feathers, suited the angel in some weird way he couldn't quite get his mind around.
"What happened?" he asked, anger stirring down below the emptiness.
"It was all a trap," Castiel said. Apology deepened his voice as he looked at the hunter. "Gabriel was diverted to this plane, and I have been – held – for the last ten weeks."
"We lost people, Cas," Dean said tersely. "A lot of people because you left before –"
"I know," Castiel acknowledged. "I'm sorry. There was nothing I could do to remain here when the summons came."
"Right." Dean took a deep breath and turned away from him. It didn't matter now. "What do you want?"
"The Qaddiysh called us," Cas said, walking after him. He wasn't surprised by Dean's anger or the withdrawal he felt. He'd watched him change, slowly, almost unobtrusively, in the relationship, had watched him deal with things he'd never thought the hunter would deal with and become stronger through that gradual process. And he'd known that Dean wouldn't be the same when he'd heard what had happened.
"The archangel Camael visited them, told them that an army was being raised."
"Yeah, Chuck's had visions about it," Dean said, looking down at the fire. He picked up a small branch and dropped it on the coals.
"I believe that Camael took Kokabiel to raise the demons from Hell, to make that army," Cas said, stopping a few feet from him. "The Grigori have been searching for people."
"You think another one of the arcs finked out on you?" Dean asked, his tone unsurprised.
"I'm almost sure of it," Cas confirmed. "Kokabiel has the power to raise more than a hundred thousand demons from the pit, Dean. If they find vessels, they could overrun the earth in a matter of weeks. The Grigori have been raising the dead."
Dean exhaled sharply, looking over his shoulder at the angel. "This is your mess, all of it," he said, his voice deep and harsh. "Sam and me, we got a job to do and we have to finish it. Tell Michael to get the rest in order – you don't need me."
"You're right," Cas said. "This is Heaven's mess. It has been from the beginning. But it will be your people the army attacks, Dean. The Grigori need the demon tablet. They believe that they will be able to find the angel tablet with it. They will not kill all those in the settlements but they will enslave them."
"Then tell Michael to get his ass down here and fix it!"
"Outright war, between Heaven and the rebels, between Heaven and Hell, would bring down the pillars, Dean," Cas said, his expression tense. "Michael cannot –"
"Can't," Dean snapped, staring at the angel. "Won't. Doesn't matter, does it? Who put Lucifer down after your fucking angels manipulated everyone to get him released? Who went and got the goddamned tablet out of Crowley's hands? What do I get out of this, Cas? What do I ever get out of cleaning up the catastrophic messes Heaven keeps making?"
He took a long stride closer to the angel. "Sam's in Hell, trying to get Lucifer's sword; if he finds it and he doesn't get wiped out by an archdemon down there, he's still got another trial to finish and the contract is killing him." He dragged in a deep breath. "So – tell me, where the fuck's my payoff?"
The angel dropped his gaze under the man's cold glare. A memory of a building, painted sigils and symbols and wards over walls and ceilings and floor, this man staring at him, the anger and defiance a mask for the fear held back, underneath, filled his mind. At the time, he'd been confused by the fear, which had escalated when he'd told him why he'd been raised. It was only after he'd begun to get to know the hunter that he'd seen that Dean had never wanted any of it.
"What the hell does he expect me to do anyway?" Dean said, a moment later, his voice even again.
Cas looked up at him, seeing the impassive face and sighing inwardly. "You could raise an army to fight the demons, here on the earthly plane before they reach Kansas."
The image flickered through Dean's mind again, the mountains and the wide plain, thousands of feet marching in unison. He shoved it aside as the angel's words sank in.
"Christ, Cas, I couldn't raise a fucking posse now," he said, mouth twisting up derisively as he swung his arm out widely in the vague direction of Kansas. "The last couple of months …" he trailed off, shaking his head as he realised he did not want to go into that with the angel. "No one is going to fight on my say-so. Not now. Find someone else."
"There is no one else, Dean," Castiel said. "I think you're wrong. I think they'll follow you if you make plain the consequences of doing nothing."
"Yeah, well, everyone's entitled to an opinion."
"This is not just opinion –"
"Cas, even if I wanted to help – and I'm not convinced why I should – whatever trust those people had in me, that's gone," Dean cut him off abruptly, his voice hardening. "They've got new leaders, and in case it didn't sink in when I said it earlier, Sam and me, we've got the gates to close."
"The gates are not the important thing now, Dean!"
Dean stared at him. "That's not how I see it."
"The archdemons are loose," the angel pressed, his wings lifting slightly in his agitation. "You can't defeat them – they'll kill you both. The archdemons are the problem of Heaven, but the Grigori –"
Behind them a howl issued from the crack in the rock, rising rapidly to a drilling scream and both man and angel swung around.
Tawas Lake, Michigan
The sight of the pulsing heart tore at him, the deer's liquid dark eyes rolling back as he ripped through the thick, curved ribs. The first generations of the children of Nintu can live on the hearts of animals, the curse strong enough to overcome the lack of a human connection. Later generations will slowly become more disoriented and animalistic if forced on the same diet. The old text of the books Tilly and Vince had brought back from New Mexico rolled through the still-human part of Maurice's mind as he stared down at the beating muscle.
His hand reached into the broken cavity and closed around the heart, pulling it free of the attached arteries and veins and biting into it, before the thoughts of what he was doing stopped him completely, uncaring of the splash of blood that covered his face.
"Well done, hunter," Raat said with a low chuckle from behind him. "Food is food and all things must die eventually, there is little point to sentimentality when hunger tears and the fair goddess has provided enough for all."
The rich, dark meat was devoured quickly and Maurice licked his fingers, wiping the dripping blood from his mouth and chin with the back of his hand.
"Why do the later generations need human hearts when we can live off animals?" he asked the werewolf, swivelling around to look at him.
Raat blinked slowly at him, the soft glow of his eyes in the deep sockets brightening momentarily. "The dark gift is a mystery, even to me, hunter," he said, leaning closer to the man. "But do not make the mistake of thinking that we can live from animals indefinitely. Survive, yes. We would be wolves only if that was all that was required to sustain us. And wolves we would become if that is all we feed on. The human heart is connected to the human mind. And the mind is what we really live on – hope and dreams and fears and uncertainties, belief and faith and all those things that animals do not have, cannot produce because their souls have not the divine spark we call imagination."
"So a werewolf must feed on human hearts?"
"Yes," Raat said. "Or we become the animals and lose all vestiges of our own souls."
"By killing people, we've already lost our own souls," Maurice countered bitterly.
"Semantics, hunter," the werewolf said with a cold smile. "Imagination is needed to rule the night and the shadows, and wolf alone cannot."
"Your life is killing and more killing, Raat." Maurice rose to his feet, looking at the woods. They were close to Tawas, too close. "That isn't ruling. It's just gluttony."
The deep growl reverberated in the alpha's chest and he looked at Raat pityingly. "Nothing can kill you and you will go on and on, building nothing, only destroying. That's what you want?"
"My blood kills me, hunter," Raat snarled at him. "And my get are not loyal, preferring to form their own lines, preferring to hunt the darkness alone."
"That's what your Mother planned for you, Raat," Maurice told him, keeping his voice steady, hiding the flash of excitement at the monster's words. "Did you think it was really about kingdoms and a loving populace throwing themselves at your feet?"
The transformation was complete in an eye-blink and the hunter felt his heart rate accelerate as he looked defiantly into the golden eyes of the huge wolf in front of him. Animal and man stared at each other for a long moment, then Raat turned away, bounding silently into the forest, black pelt, threaded with silver, dissolving into the shadows beneath the trees without a trace.
My blood kills me, he thought, looking back down at the body of the deer at his feet. Silver plus the blood of the alpha? He had to get to the camps, find out if the lore Santos had collected over his lifetime had any indication of how that could be done. Lifting his head, he could smell them, his pack brothers, ranging through the thick forest. He needed something to hide himself from them, strong enough to hide man-scent and wolf-scent. Raat would certainly kill him if he thought he was going to help the human population.
Hell
The second level of Hell was a maze. Sam realised the fact when he passed his marker twice. He didn't think the level was moving around him, or changing in any way. He stopped at the edge of the cavern by the broken gates and looked around carefully. He'd taken the tunnel on the other side that opened to the left of the steaming pool of acid. This time he'd take the tunnel to the right.
From the first level to the second, the way passed through the obsidian gates, he remembered Jerome's instructions, drawn from Chuck's transcriptions. The gates were smashed when Heaven laid siege to Hell to rescue Dean. They were never rebuilt, according to the guides the order had spoken to. He'd found them easily enough, the sight stirring his imagination with visions of angels and demons in battle. In front of those gates, Michael had fought and defeated an archdemon and driven the Horde before him, making the way clear for the smaller unit of angels led by Castiel to move down through the levels where the soul of Dean Winchester had been held.
Shaking his head, Sam pushed his disjointed memories of the histories aside, and concentrated on keeping to a more or less single direction in the labyrinthine tunnels. The chitter of the almost-invisible demons and the scrape of their claws over the rocks above him flooded his body with adrenalin. It seemed too easy that he could see them – after a fashion – and they could not perceive him walking through their domain.
When I was down there, just a soul, there were no tunnels. I was in one place and then in another, Dean had told him on the drive to South Dakota, picking and choosing through his memories for things that might have been of use to his brother. When I got in to get the tablet and the gun, it was different. There were corridors and caverns, and I had to have a clear picture of what I was after to get anywhere. Sam remembered his brother's account of the corridors that looked identical and had kept him circling.
He came to a dead-end and stared in frustration at the smooth blank wall. The tunnels were full of them, there was nothing to do but retrace his steps until he found another turning and take that. His watch had stopped the minute he'd stepped through the gate and time seemed elastic here, moving faster or slower in a way he could sense but couldn't determine. He wasn't hungry, but the dry air and the noxious fumes that filled the tunnels were making him thirsty. He wondered how long he'd been in here, a fleeting recollection of Ellen's research on mortals who'd become lost forever on this plane flashing unwelcomed through his thoughts.
The tunnel opened into a huge cavern and he stopped, staring at the soft sand that covered the floor, the stalactites and stalagmites that rose like stately columns to a ceiling he couldn't see. It was completely empty, the winds that filled the tunnels and caves and holes in the rest of the level gone. Somewhere he could hear the drip of water. In the centre of the cavern, an uneven arch of rock stood, and he remembered that the doorway to the third level was through it.
Striding across the floor, Sam held his breath as he passed under the arch.
Darkness enveloped him, holding him close. There was no air, no sound. Colours flickered through the black, catching his peripheral vision but gone when he tried to stare straight at them. He couldn't move and his chest was burning with the need to breathe.
Then it was gone and he stumbled as he dropped a short distance, the ground of this level lower than that of the second level, catching himself before he pitched headlong to the cracked and fissure rock.
He was again in an enormous space, open but ringed with high black rock, the fast-moving grey and black clouds, tinged with yellow and green, boiling and churning above him. Great nets of tensioned wire were stretched over the space, and Sam swallowed as he saw what hung from them, the wind whipping away the screams and pleas and begging. Looking down, he saw a line of hills to one side and turned to them, clamping his teeth shut on the nausea rising in his throat.
Seven valleys, interlocking and leading ever downward, covered from ridge to ridge with vast wire nets to hold the damned. Following the incline, Sam narrowed his eyes and his focus to the ground immediately in front of him.
It was four months up here, but down there ... I don't know. Time's different. It was more like forty years. They sliced and carved and tore at me in ways that you ... until there was nothing left. And then, suddenly ... I would be whole again ... like magic ... just so they could start in all over.
A fragment of memory, his brother's voice raw and thick, slipped through the guard he tried to hold firm. And behind it, his own voice, the memory of howling in pain and anguish when he'd realised what was happening to Dean, what had happened to him, what it had cost. I can never undo what I've done. Can never atone or pay enough for the choices I made. He gave up everything and I took the wrong path and I never looked back.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. My sin is pride and I can't heal my brother, and I can't see anything but despair in his eyes now.
He stopped as he reached the high rocky wall, staring into the wide, black tunnel that led downward. Why? Why did it have to be Dean? Why had he been forced into giving up himself?
Maybe he wasn't forced. Those were his choices. He made them as you made yours. To do what he thought was right, what was best. Had he known where they would lead he still would've made them. Except, Sam thought bitterly, Dean would never have gotten off the rack if he'd known about the seal. That was the only choice he would've made differently.
And him? What would he have done differently? Killed Jake, when he'd stood over him with the iron spike in his hand? It'd been his fine sensibilities on the sanctity of human life that had been the catalyst, the crux where the lines had joined and they could've taken a different path, Dean could've been spared Hell and everything that had kick-started for his brother and for himself. And when he thought of what he'd done to Jake, the next time he'd seen him … the futility of it all speared through him like a blade of rusty steel.
Not now, he told himself, trying to fight his own growing despair with anger, get through the level. Get through the abyss and across the lake and the wastelands and get the goddamned sword. You might not be able to ever get his forgiveness but you can do what you started, you can finish this place and make sure no demon ever gets out again.
He felt the winds rising, warm and thick and rank in his face, smelled the metallic burn and the brimstone and the odd scent of the soldier demons, an odour of mouldy leather and molten copper. The divisional point between the upper and lower levels, the abyss of the daeva was just ahead.
The sensation was, at first, subtle, and he didn't realise that it came from outside of him, not from his own thoughts and feelings. It grew stronger and he stopped, looking around in confusion before he remembered what it meant. A draining sensation. A desolation and a hopelessness.
Archdemon.
The last ridge and tunnel were a few more yards in front of him, but he had the feeling that was the way the Fallen would be coming. He saw the jumble of broken boulders and jagged rock a moment later, racing across the fractured ground to reach the pile before the demon came through. The talisman might have hidden him, but he wasn't certain of that, and dying here wasn't an option.
Falling to his knees, Sam crawled into the narrow cleft between two immense rocks, feeling his energy draining away from him, struggling to keep himself moving through the mire of despairing thoughts that filled his mind. The black blade grated over the rock and he froze, gripping the hilt and lifting it as he edged deeper into the small space between the stones, his free hand rising and gripping the pendant around his neck tightly, trying to ignore the rising heat he could feel in his hands and feet, around the joints of shoulder and knee and hip. Not now, please, not now, he thought desperately.
Through a narrow crack between the boulders, he could just see the entrance to the tunnel that led to the abyss. In the darkness something moved, and he squinted slightly, trying to make out the shifting shape that emerged slowly, the winds fluttering torn black cloth, pressing the thin fabric against a skeletal form.
Before Lucifer had his first human soul, he tortured those who Fell with him. Was it Jerome or Jasper who'd told him that? For a thousand years the Fallen were tormented and twisted, until the very frequencies of their celestial origin had been altered and nothing remained of the light that had once filled them, and all that left was hatred and pain and the desire to swallow the lands and seas in a darkness that would have no end.
The creature moved out of the tunnel slowly, head turning from side to side within the black hood, a hand, stripped of meat, just bone and tendon, lifting slightly from the black robe and gesturing impatiently to the demons that swarmed around it.
It stopped abruptly and Sam held his breath as its gaze seemed to focus sharply on his hiding place. The human mind is powerful, his father's voice said quietly in his head. Just focussing on something too hard or for too long can draw its attention to you, even animals can feel that concentration. Screwing his eyes shut, Sam thought of a song, a song he'd used to hear in California, a song that swept him away from the tight, dark crevice and the eerie regard of the demon and diffused the focus that had drawn its attention to him.
The draining sensation dissipated gradually. He couldn't look, couldn't open his eyes to check that the demon had really gone. He hid in his memories, the song a wall between him and the reality he was in, arms wrapped around his knees and his face buried against them.
Strawberry Peak, Utah
Lehmann stood in the shadows of the basement room, his pale face lit by the flickering candle flames and the eldritch glow of the active circles, looking coldly at the Qaddiysh who knelt in the centre.
Harrer stood beside him, thick brows drawn together. "He believes that he still the liaison with Hell?"
"Yes," Lehmann said, a small smile curving his mouth. "Yes, he believes that he is in Heaven, and that God has commanded him to raise the demons from the Pit, to raise an army to counteract the wickedness of mankind." He blinked and turned to Harrer. "How many do we have now?"
"Felice returned with five hundred and forty, from Washington. We're expecting Marius and the boy back soon."
"And the women?"
Harrer dropped his gaze. "The door was a part of the old fortifications," he said slowly. "It led down to the wine cellar under the older part of the house, and from there, there are several tunnels, leading into the caves. We haven't found them yet."
Julian turned away from him abruptly. "Stay here, watch over him," he snapped over his shoulder. "When we have enough, I will need to be here."
Harrer nodded, relief filling him as he heard the footsteps recede.
Following the narrow and low-ceilinged hall down to the sub-level holding the cells, Julian seethed as he considered the vampire's escape. The lore had stated that it had needed the blood of the dark mother to regain the strength after its long imprisonment. They had taken Usiku from his prison well before Nintu could get there, and had fed him the blood of the women, thinking it would strengthen the first vampire slowly, give them time to prepare the ritual of binding, time to build a cage that could hold the monster. Obviously, the blood had had a greater effect than they'd realised.
It was, he decided when the anger had cooled slightly, a bearable loss – for the moment. The cambion had found the vampire once, they would be able to do so again, once the Demon Master had brought forth the demons they needed to animate their army. The old prophecy had proved quite an inspiration, and it would be a sufficient obfuscation to ensure the demons that Kokabiel raised would fight to the death. Crowley had been unable to command such loyalty.
He stopped in the centre of the long room and looked dispassionately at the floor. Blood still stained the stone where Alec had been killed. Beyond the stain, the door that led down and into the caves stood open, a dark rectangle into the depths of the mountain. Usiku had taken the women and his fledglings. He was not then strong enough yet, Julian thought. He would hide until he regained his strength, until he was ready. It gave them some time.
Tilting his head slightly, he became aware of activity above. Marius must have returned, he thought distantly. The older cambion was shrewd and talented but nowhere near the class of Hubertus. That loss rankled deeply. It'd taken a long time for them to find and execute the spells of summoning and binding on the half-breeds and they grew up too quickly, their powers diminishing year by year. Hubertus had been useful in many ways. He needed time, he realised with a pang of ironic humour, more than the three thousand years he'd spent down here on this stinking rock. Time to study for the means to release the cambion from the mirror. Time to bind the first children to his will. Time to find the tablet that would enable them to go home.
Lee looked in disbelief around the compound, head pounding and nausea slopping up his throat. The boy … he remembered the boy smiling at him, then nothing, a black void, a jarring sensation of falling, his ears aching then popping and this.
Milling in confusion, filling the square, he saw everyone was here, from Archie, the oldest of the survivors he and Krissy had found, to Melissa with her newborn infant still held in the sling over her shoulder, faces slack with the same incredulity he felt, weapons gone, disorientation in every pair of eyes he could see.
"What happened, Dad?" Krissy whispered beside him, the fourteen-year old pressing against him for reassurance.
"I don't know, baby," he said, forcing himself to look past his people, to the high stone walls surrounding them, razor-wire glinting evilly in the bright, clear sunshine. In the southern wall, tall metal gates were tightly closed. "I don't know."
He saw Seth, pivoting in place and walked slowly to him. "You got that little pig-sticker you carry in your boot?"
Seth stared at him for a moment then shook his head. "Haven't got anything, not even the wire I had threaded through the seam of my jacket," he told him in a low voice. "This demon work?"
"I don't know," Lee said, looking at the men who stood on the square platforms at the corners of the compound. "They don't look human."
Following his gaze, Seth saw the tall figures, broad-shouldered and long-haired, his eyes narrowing as he belatedly took in the symmetrical perfection of their features. "What the fuck are they?"
"Nephilim."
Both men turned to look at the old man who stood behind them. Archie jerked his chin toward the closest tower. "Children of the fallen."
"What do you know about this, Arch?" Seth asked, frowning at him.
"Not enough," Archie said, his gaze settling on Lee, the pale grey eyes watery. "Not enough to help you plan a way out here against them."
"Then what?" Lee asked. Any information would be more than he had right now, he thought sourly.
"I told you when you found me, Lee," Archie said quietly. "I was a writer."
"Yeah." Seth shifted impatiently. "And?"
"Made a living from fiction," Archie continued, refusing to be hurried. "Did a lot of research into a lot of stuff." He looked back at the platform. "I got interested in the religious mythology, and I studied it for a few years. The Book of Enoch, the heretical or non-canonical texts that pre-dated the Old Testament."
"This better have a point, Arch," Lee said softly.
"When the sons of God fell, they took human women as their wives and had families. The offspring were known as the nephilim, the children of human and angel," he said. "There were a lot of legends around them, but the juicy ones were hard to find. God sent the Flood to wipe them out, when he decided that it was no way for angels to be behaving."
"Then what are they doing here?"
"Didn't manage to get all of them," Archie said with a slight smile. "They were tall and perfect, like angels. Only way to kill them was to cut out the heart. They were capricious and cruel, looking down on pure humans and looked down upon by pure angels. Made for a lot of trouble through our history."
"Why are they here?" Lee asked, his gaze flicking up to the platform.
"End of the world, limited populations, maybe they're figuring on re-establishing themselves as a ruling class?" Archie shook his head. "I don't know, Lee. What I do know is that this is trouble with a capital 'T'."
"Tell me something I don't know," Seth grumbled.
"Do you remember any weaknesses? Anything we can use?" Lee asked.
Archie shrugged. "A few, but I don't think we can use them."
"Great," Krissy snapped. "We know what they are but we can't do anything about it?"
The gates on the southern wall of the closed-in compound opened, and they turned to watch as more people walked into the square. Lee felt his eyes widen as he took in the number, all with the same dazed expressions as his own people were wearing.
"What the hell is going on?"
Archie looked past him and shook his head. "They're collecting us, for some reason."
Litteris Hominae, Kansas
Bobby glanced at his watch surreptitiously, acutely aware he'd been away from the keep for more than two hours and feeling the antsy prickle of his worries beginning to bite deeper. On the other side of the long, polished table, Elias and Rufus were also shifting restlessly in their chairs, listening to the latest of Chuck's fragmented visions.
"When the army poured out of the narrow pass at the foot of the mountains, the great plain was empty, the gold and silver grasses bowing before the vagrant breeze like the long steady waves of an inland sea," Jerome read. "The pale man lifted his arm as he looked over the land, his laughter snatched away. The shadow was deep and black, and under it, nothing moved."
"This army, of the Grigori's," Rufus said, looking at Jerome. "Chuck get a number?"
"No," Jerome answered shortly. "Just that it is 'thousands'."
"Not real helpful," Bobby said caustically, pushing his cap higher. "Alright, this is – what? – the third or fourth vision we've had concerning the army?"
"Yes, the fourth fragment," Jerome confirmed. "I don't think there's any doubt that is what the Grigori are doing."
"And they're heading here?" Elias asked. "For sure?"
"They need the demon tablet," Baraquiel interjected from the other side of Jerome. "They believe it holds the key to the whereabouts of the angel tablet. I don't believe they will kill this population, but they will subjugate it."
"But the wards and guards Chuck's already translated – the protection that Liev has been building into the new walls, that'll stop them from being able to overrun us," Elias said, looking from Jerome to the Qaddiysh. "I mean the demons couldn't cross the walls before, and the new stuff is a helluva lot more powerful."
"A siege would defeat us as thoroughly as a full attack would," Baraquiel said quietly. "We have almost five thousand people within the keeps and farms, and that number will double, at least, soon. Without being able to harvest the crops that were put in, to take care of the stock that you have brought here, starvation will drive the people to surrender."
"Not for a while," Elias argued, glancing at Jackson. "We've got stockpiles."
"No," Penemue agreed. "Not for a while, but without a countering force the end result will be the same. And it would be better for the people here to have the battle as far away as possible."
"What if the boys get the gates closed?" Bobby asked.
Baraquiel looked at Penemue and shrugged. "We don't know."
Rufus watched Bobby scowl and turned to Jerome. "The reason Chuck isn't seeing an opposing army – is that because we haven't raised one, or because we don't?"
Jerome scratched his brow, looking at him. "That's an interesting question. Chuck's visions have changed – or evolved – depending on what has been happening with the lines. And the man who changes them. I believe that what he's seeing at the moment is not set – that's the reason for the fragmentation, that he sees only possibilities, not actualities."
"But he's not seeing Dean or Sam at all right now?" Elias asked.
"No," Jerome confirmed. "So far, both men have been absent from even the most fractured visions."
"What the hell does that mean?" Rufus demanded, the unease he felt at the way the conversation was going rising sharply.
"We don't know," Jerome told him. "He hasn't had another vision of the gates or the archdemons. There could be a number of possible reasons for that."
"Including that they die in the attempt," Bobby said tightly.
Jerome looked at him. "Including that."
"What else do we need to know about?" Jackson said, clearing his throat. "We got a message from Boze about the werewolf, did anyone find out anything else about it?"
"Katherine and Marla have been going through the library Tilly brought back from New Mexico," Jerome said, gesturing to the other end of the library absently. "Everything we've learned of the first werewolf we've sent to Tawas. There are some unsubstantiated and vague hints about killing Raat, but we're still tracking the sources on those."
"Boze swears that the silver didn't miss the heart, but the wolf didn't die," Rufus said.
Jerome nodded. "That's what we're trying to track back," he told the hunter. "The protection that Nintu laid over the first monsters had what we think is a single weakness – a vulnerability to her blood, to the blood that flows in them. If we can any verification, however slim, it might make the difference."
"Any word on Maurice?" Bobby asked.
"No, I'm sorry." Jerome looked down at the table. The loss of the hunter had been a huge shock to everyone who'd started out in Chitaqua. "We had word from the French, this morning. Luc and Marc have been following a massive zombie army, through Italy over the past few days."
"Italy?" Elias asked, brows rising. "I thought they were heading for France?"
"They turned east," Jerome said. "We're not sure why, but the hunters confirmed that nine of the Grigori and several nephilim are travelling with them. They crossed into the Balkans a day ago, and appear to be heading for Turkey."
Baraquiel straightened in his chair, looking at his brother. "They are either heading for us or positioning themselves for the tablet."
Penemue nodded his agreement. "It will take them months."
"We need to warn the others," Baraquiel insisted, the deep, normally tranquil baritone rising. "They must have time to prepare."
Penemue looked away. "We came here with a purpose, Baraquiel, and until that purpose is completed, we will not leave."
Rufus watched the red-haired angel's face twist in anger, saw the beautifully-shaped mouth thin out as he repressed whatever it was he'd been about to say. He didn't have to say it anyway, the hunter thought wearily. They all knew what had caused the delays in the capturing and imprisoning of the creative forces that the Qaddiysh had come here for. He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he realised they were running out of allies.
Bobby's face tightened as he watched the expressions of those seated around the table. "Dean was right to go after the gates first," he said abruptly, daring anyone to argue with him about it. "Shutting out the hellspawn reduces everyone's risk."
Penemue looked at him steadily. "We do not," he began, glancing at Baraquiel, "presume to question the decisions that have been made for the human population, Bobby. We Fell to safeguard mankind as well, our goals in these matters are aligned."
"Good to hear," Bobby admitted, his gaze shifting to Baraquiel. The angel looked away.
Turning to his brother, Penemue said, "Father Emilio discovered a spell that may allow us to contact the others without risk to those here." He waited for Baraquiel's gaze to meet his and nodded slightly as the Irin's shoulders relaxed, his anger draining away.
Turning back to the hunters, the dark-haired Irin gestured in the direction of the keep. "Our loyalty is not in question. But the population here may not follow the Winchesters into battle, particularly after the last skirmish they had with a demon-possessed army."
Rufus watched Bobby drop his gaze to the table, saw Elias' expression become stony. Neither was going to argue the point, he realised. They lived in the keeps, heard the popular opinions and despite the best efforts of Jackson, Riley and Liev, there was a growing dissatisfaction in the people here.
June 25, 2013. West Keep, Kansas
Rufus stopped the engine and sat in the truck, staring blankly at the wall in front of him, his thoughts churning uneasily around the same track they'd been on all morning, no closer to getting it clear than he'd been four hours ago at the order.
What the fuck was he doing, he wondered bleakly for the fiftieth time. He should never have let Dean take off with Sam in the middle of everything that was going on in the settlements right now, should never've let him convince them that the people could choose their own leaders.
Getting out of the truck reluctantly, he looked up as Franklin came hurrying across the bailey toward him.
"Glad to catch you," the stocky hunter said shortly. "Got some trouble."
"What kind of trouble?" Rufus asked, following him toward the tunnel that led to the southern bailey.
"Civil unrest," Franklin said as he disappeared into the gloom of the tunnel, his boots echoing loudly from the concrete walls and floor and ceiling. "Got half my boys keeping an eye on things, but we need to give them a united front on this."
"On what?" Rufus lengthened his stride to keep up.
They came out of the tunnel and Rufus looked around the open space. It was filled with people, most standing and watching, some calling out. Pushing through the crowd, Franklin bulled his way to the centre, pausing beside a young man in fatigues.
"Mick, go get Danielle and tell her to bring all the trainees," he muttered. "Now!"
Rufus watched him force his way out of the crowd, the light assault rifle in his hands clearing a slight path for him. He turned his attention back to the fracas in front of him.
"What the hell's going on here?"
Three men and a half a dozen teenagers stood in the centre of the bailey, the crowd loosely corralling them. Rufus frowned as he recognised Gary Tomlinson, Denis Holbert and Ryan Macey, all three with rising bruises and trickles of blood escaping from scrapes and cuts on their faces, all three sheened with sweat in the warm midday sunshine. Beside them, he saw Ben and Alan, four other kids he didn't know standing near them.
On the other side of the informal circle, Jason Kirkby, Joe Hanrahan and three others were equally bruised and bloodied, chests heaving as they glared at their opponents.
Looking from one group to the other, he shook his head. "You're kidding, right? What the fuck do you think is so important to fight over when we're in the middle of chasing down monsters, gods and half-breeds?"
Jason's gaze swivelled to him, one eye half-closed, his lip curling up. "Yeah, that's the story you're giving us."
"That's how it is!" Rufus snapped, feeling his irritation soar into anger.
"We're the ones out in the fields, working from dawn to dusk to grow the food for you parasites –"
"Looking at that paunch, I'm doubtin' you're doin' a lot of dawn-to-dusk plantin', Kirkby," Rufus cut him off dryly.
"Doesn't change the fact that we do the hard labour and you lot sit around making up crap that you're supposedly protecting us from," Joe spat out, his face reddening. "We got families to look after and a lotta kids on the way and we're not seeing anyone worrying about that!"
"That's a load of horse-shit, Joe," Liev said, stepping through the press of the crowd. "You know full well that the hunters have been onsite working on the new accommodations same as everyone else."
"Yeah, and throwing their weight around," one of the others said. "Hitting folk and putting them in hospital –"
"Should've made you a bit more cautious about picking fights," Rufus growled at him. "Although I see you're not going after the hunters anymore, just ordinary people and kids now."
"We don't need you – not like you need us," Jason said furiously. "Living off our sweat, sitting around like goddamned lords –"
"Might be the case," Jackson said, as he walked through the crowd and stepped between them. Behind him, the trainee hunters walked out and positioned themselves loosely around the edge of the circle, Franklin's garrison following them, all of them armed, the barrels pointed at the ground, fingers on the trigger guards. "Might not, but you all sat down two weeks ago and put me in charge," he continued, stopping in front of the men and looking expressionlessly around at the crowd surrounding them.
"And while that stands, I'll be making the decisions as to who's of use in this community – and who ain't," he said, his gaze returning to Kirkby with the last words. "You got a problem with anyone, you bring it to me."
"We haven't seen any monsters –" the man standing behind Joe said truculently.
"Lucky for you, Clem," Jackson cut him off dryly. "Not sure how many'd go after it to save your sorry hide."
He looked at the boys and men standing on the other side of the circle. "Same goes for everyone. You got a problem, it comes to me. No one is taking justice or their own misguided feelings into their own hands. Not here, not while I'm in charge."
Looking around the crowd, he added, "Some people have been spreading rumours, that the wars are over, that the devil's dead and we don't have any more problems." He paused, looking into the faces of the people standing there. "That's not true, and I should've told you this before. We got a lot of problems. Right now, there's a war going on, between powers that we never had to take into consideration before. In some ways, we're the prize, the few human survivors. The monsters, the demons and the angels – they all want us. As their slaves, or their food, or just for their amusement. That's the fact."
Gesturing vaguely toward Rufus and the trainees, he took a breath. "These folks don't have to be here. They can survive without us, less responsibility, less to worry about. Without us, they'd be mobile and well-able to take care of themselves and any of you who's ever been out on a supply run with them should know that. It's their work that kept our homes and families as safe as possible over the last few years. Their blood and scars that have gotten us here, with everything we've got to survive and keep going."
"Franklin," he said, looking over his shoulder at the grizzled hunter. "You got a cooling off place?"
Franklin looked at him steadily and nodded. "Sure do."
"Jason Kirkby, Joe Hanrahan, Clem Tuckman, Steve Miles, Allan Pearson and Jeremy Gibbs, you boys are spending the next couple of days thinking about what you've done here," he ordered. The men began to bluster as Franklin's soldiers surrounded them, the barrels lifted now.
"The rest of you," Jackson called out, raising his voice over the protests behind him as he turned to look over the crowd. "You think about how you got here. I got no room for those with short memories and no gratitude. I see another situation like this and it won't be a matter of cooling off, it'll be packing your bags and getting the hell out of here."
The silence was loud and Rufus watched the faces, relief trickling through him as he realised that Dean had made exactly the right choice for the leader to replace him. No one was going to argue with Jackson anyway, but backed up by Franklin's boys and the hunters, he thought there would be a lot more thought about the situation and a lot less belly-aching for the next few weeks, anyway. And by then, he knew, they would've either won or lost, one way or another.
He walked over to Ben as the men were marched away and the silence was broken by the crowd leaving, people talking and moving across the stone-paved bailey, returning to their jobs and families.
"What happened?" he asked the boy, looking down at him.
Ben glanced to his right, catching the eye of Liev's apprentice, Tomlinson. "They were saying stuff about Dean," he said in a low voice.
Rufus raised a brow at the underlying anger. Tomlinson nodded.
"Started out a slanging match," he told the hunter. "Got pretty personal and then Kirkby started in with man of the land crap and a lot more people gathered around."
"Most of them don't even know what Dean did," Ben burst out, his face reddening with the emotion banked up. "They don't know about Lucifer or Atlanta or-or-or anything!"
There wasn't much they could do about that, Rufus thought acerbically. Dean wouldn't thank them for bringing it to anyone's attention.
Gary looked at him. "I was there when the croats overran us in Michigan," he said in a low voice. "A lot of these folks weren't. Jackson was right about that, most people got short memories when it comes to gratitude."
Thinking of the siege in Tawas, Rufus agreed silently. "Not much we can do about that," he said, looking down at Ben. "But Jackson was also right about seeing him first, when it comes to this crap. They voted him in, and he can deal with it."
"Yes, Rufus," Ben mumbled, his gaze fixed to the ground. "When will they be back?"
He didn't have specify who he was talking about. Rufus shook his head. "Another few days," he said, shrugging. "No timetable for this stuff, you know that."
"Rufus, there were a lot of people who were saying … they were saying Dean doesn't care anymore."
Rufus glanced at Gary and the other man lifted his hands helplessly. "Which people, Ben?"
"I didn't know all of them," the boy said uncomfortably, his hands thrust into his pockets. "I think some of them were friends of that guy, you know, the one that Dean hit?"
The hunter nodded, looking over Ben's bowed head to Gary and tilting his head slightly. Gary took the hint and walked away, and Rufus looked back at down at Ben.
"You think they're right, Ben?"
"No," Ben said, shifting his feet. "I don't know. He – he's not the same …"
"He's out there, risking his life," Rufus pointed out. "To help his brother close the gates, so we can cross demon attack off our list of things to worry about."
"I know," Ben said, looking up at him. "I know what happened, and I know what he's doing."
"But?"
"Even after Mom died, he wasn't mean," Ben said. "It's not just me, a lot of people've been saying the same thing."
Rufus sighed. "Kid, you know why he's angry."
"It just feels like he gave up on everyone else," Ben said, looking away, his voice thick.
"He didn't give up on anybody," Rufus said slowly, wondering how to explain. "He's just had to cut out anything that doesn't have to do with the job, Ben. If he didn't, he wouldn't be able to do it."
"You mean, he'd get distracted?"
Rufus' mouth twisted up to one side. "Yeah, sort of."
It wasn't the distraction, although he supposed that everything the hunter wasn't looking at would be a helluva distraction if he let it out. He couldn't go into that with the fifteen-year old in front of him though.
"So, he'll be okay again, after the gates are closed?"
See where lying gets you, Rufus told himself irritably. "Yeah, I think, after a while, he'll probably be okay."
"Okay."
Hell
The light vanished as Sam came out of the short tunnel into what he could sense was a huge space, feeling the hot winds drying the sweat on his face and neck, ruffling his hair, carrying the scents of demons and sulphur and the brassy, acidic smell of molten rock.
He felt in his jacket pocket for the small globe of red glass Jerome had given him, pulling it out and cupping it in both hands as he tried to focus his attention solely on it. The legacy had shown him how to do it, in the deep basement levels of the order's safehold, and for Jerome, the ball had lit up softly, casting a dim, reddish glow over the man's face and hands, just enough light to see by. He'd tried twice, getting a slight flicker on the second attempt, but feeling a growing doubt he'd be able to get even that now.
Just concentrate, he told himself. Remember what he told you. Clear your mind. It's all just energy. The spell in the glass will do the hard bit, just concentrate on what you want.
The glass grew warmer in his hands and he risked opening his eyes a fraction. There was a very dim red glow at the heart of the globe and the sight gave him the belief in himself to make it grow stronger and brighter.
Looking around, he felt his breath leave his lungs in a fast exhale. The space was huge. He couldn't see the far walls, or the ceiling and in front of him was a blackness that seemed impenetrable.
The angels call it Adoian Baltim, Jerome had said. The Face of Fury, in Enochian. A crack in one of the joins between the planes that was miles deep and divided the accursed plane between the upper and lower levels. At the bottom a river of lava flowed to wastelands and the Cage, and the shadow daemons endlessly tore apart souls for treason and betrayal. There was a stair that led down into the depths, and five thousand steps down, a narrow rock bridge crossed the abyss. The crack was guarded by the daeva, haunting the rising thermals on leathern wings, their sightless eyes as black as the void in which they lived.
Holding the glass ball in one hand, Sam moved cautiously to the edge of the drop. In the stygian darkness he could see a faint red thread, far below. Grosb Cnila. Bitter Blood. He pulled his attention back to the cliff top and looked around. The worn and mismatched stairs were to his left and he walked to the top, seeing the indentations in the centre of the stone steps, the mark of the feet that had gone down to the depths. The light of his spelled ball wasn't strong enough to see more than a few yards ahead of him and his fingers closed around the talisman tightly.
By the time he was halfway down the stairs his legs were aching and he no longer particularly cared if the shadow daemons could see him or not. He was counting the steps off in his head, each thousand reached and passed eliciting a deeper sigh. The thought of the other side, with its five thousand stairs going up to the other side of the ravine, he kept locked away, unable to contemplate the idea.
He felt a fleeting and unwelcomed moment of nostalgia for the game he and his brother had played at their father's behest. Stair racing. His best effort had been at fifteen, tying with Dean on the Grouse Grind trail when a hunt had taken them across the border into British Columbia. Neither of them had raced the stairways again, to their father's intense disappointment. He wasn't sure if it'd been the trail or the tie that had caused the mutual but unspoken decision to quit.
At thirty-five hundred, he stopped, leaning against the rough rock wall to his left, waiting for the muscles of thigh and calf to stop trembling. Aside from the moan of the wind as it rose up the abyss, he hadn't heard or seen anything at all, the wall of blackness marking what he presumed was the void of the crack as impenetrable to his small light more than halfway to the bridge as it'd been at the top.
The drying heat was parching him, he realised as he started down again. He should've brought some water at least, his tongue thick and sticky in his mouth with every breath he inhaled.
Lifting the glass when he counted five thousand, he saw the bridge, a slender arch of rock between the two sides of the chasm, the top polished and smooth. Stepping out on it, he pushed aside the thought of collapse and the long, long way down to the fine red line he could see from the edge. A unit of angels had trampled across this bridge, he told himself firmly, and wings or no, their weight would've taken it down if it'd been inclined to go.
The movement to one side caught his peripheral and he stopped, heart thundering in his ears as he watched the dim light gleam over a wrinkled and scabrous leathern wing, the shape barely seen before it disappeared beyond the light's reach. The daemon hadn't looked at him or shown any interest and he clutched the talisman, holding the light higher as he edged across the narrow isthmus of stone, hearing now the snap and crackle of the wings and catching glimpses as they flew close, of black, bulbous, pupilless eyes, and long crystalline claws and overlapping teeth, protruding from the slender jaws. How the hell had the angels fought them off on this bridge, he wondered as he hurried across to the other side.
The stairs leading up were as ill-cut as the ones that had brought him down and he stopped several times on the long climb, muscles and tendons aching, the smell of brimstone and acid burning in his lungs, toxic fumes he could imagine eating their way through the delicate membranes of lung and throat and nose.
The halls and rooms and grand, curving staircases had all been carved from the black basalt rock, Sam realised as he walked through the empty level. Every column, fluted and filigreed into fantastical shapes, into delicate cages holding only air, the bevelled and polished floor and arched and groined ceilings, the elaborate balustrades and banisters and gracefully pointed gothic doorways had once been a mass of solid stone. He'd noticed only because on one section of the wide and high hall, the grain of the rock continued unbroken through each of the architectural details he could see.
How long it had taken? And what was the purpose of the level that held no souls, no demons, nothing but elegant, spacious rooms and halls and the winds of Hell, sighing through the larger rooms, singing faintly in the arabesque carvings. It was, to use his brother's phrasing, creepy. Incredibly creepy.
He followed the widest hallway down a fan-shaped set of shallow steps and through an expansive double-doorway and stopped. The … room … was enormous, a vast chamber a thousand feet long and at least a third of that in width, carved columns of a smoky dark crystal supporting the unseen ceiling down the length of it. At the far end, Sam's eyes widened as he saw the low dais and the golden chair that sat upon it.
Memory doubled over vision and he closed his eyes, seeing again the white and black halls in the mansion in the city to the south, gold-veined marble and the dais at the end, the throne his captor – his possessor – had used nothing like this one but still familiar enough to be disorienting, carved and jewelled, the outstretched wings curving around, each feather detailed …
Opening his eyes, Sam blinked rapidly, staring at the golden chair that was now only a few feet from him. He looked back over his shoulder, the broad doorway through which he'd entered at the far end of the long room. He hadn't walked here. Had he?
The throne held the soft lustre of pure gold, the details picked out in diamond and ruby, emerald and sapphire. Sam backed away from it as the wind sighed through the room, its whisper almost a voice.
No, he thought, looking around. There's no one here.
It had to be you. It always had to be you, Sammy.
NO! Lucifer was dead. Dean had killed the fallen angel for good.
But you didn't see that, did you, Sam? Didn't see it happen. You were out cold, lying on the cool grass of the stadium. Everyone told you that's what happened. But did it really happen like that, Sam?
Lucifer was dead. He was sure of that, a hundred percent sure of it. He stared at the throne and the whisper brushed against his hair.
I told you I would give you everything, Sam. I promised you the world – let me deliver it.
Sam felt something roll down his face and he lifted his hand, wiping the back of it over his cheek. It came away wet and he stared at the sweat that dripped from his knuckles. He was hot. And, he realised suddenly, getting hotter.
God can't help you, Sam. Sit on the throne, drink the power that you've looked for your whole life, more power than you could possibly dream of, the power to destroy the traitors, those crawling angels who fled my defeat; the power to destroy the monsters that terrorise your people once and forever and keep those you love safe. Your brother couldn't do it, couldn't even keep his own family safe, but you can, Sam. Sit on the throne and it will all be yours.
Sam grunted as heat flushed through his veins and arteries, rippling through his cells and consuming him. His head fell back as he fell to the floor, every muscle locked in steel-hard contraction, his nervous system frying as his blood boiled and steamed inside of him.
Dean ran to him, sliding an arm under his shoulders and lifting him up, pressing something cool against his lips, ice water trickling over his tongue and he tried to open his eyes, hands reaching up to grab the container, tipping it into his mouth. He swallowed great gulps, feeling the cold put out the fires that flickered and burned, the sweet moisture replenishing him, cooling him, bringing him back. He looked into his brother's worried face.
Dean, did you kill Lucifer?
The dark brows drew together in the characteristic frown as Dean stared at him. Of course I did, hell, Sam you were there.
I didn't see it, he said, searching Dean's face, searching his eyes for the truth. Please, just tell me the truth, did you kill him? Did he really die?
The Spear went into him, Sam, went in and blew him apart. There wasn't even anything left for Death to hold onto, Dean told him steadily, the frown still there. Why? Why are you asking me that now?
I saw … I heard … Sam faltered and looked down at himself, seeing the patches of smouldering cloth where the conflagration had reached out through his skin and torched his clothing. Nothing … must have been a … a dream … or a hallucination … or something.
Hallucination? Dean asked worriedly. Sam, what's going on?
Nothing, it's all good, he said, cool and in command of his body again. I've got to finish the trial, Dean.
His brother disappeared and he fell back without the support of Dean's arm, his elbows cracking on the smooth stone floor.
What had just happened, he asked himself, sitting up and rubbing his elbow? Had it all been a hallucination?
Sam rolled over, his stomach cramping and convulsing as he ejected a small stream of bile and blood onto the floor. Pushing himself to his knees, he wiped his mouth and staggered upright, his back to the golden throne and his gaze fixed on the doorway at the other end of the long chamber. He walked as fast as he could for the hall, ignoring the shudders that wracked through him, ignoring the dryness of his mouth and throat, ignoring the icy fear centred in his stomach.
It took him a long time to get to the doorway and he stumbled through, leaning against the wall and wiping the perspiration from his face, rubbing it with the already-damp sleeve of his coat. Whether or not it had really happened or had been a trick of Lucifer's, left behind after the angel had perished, or just a fever dream brought on by the battle for possession in his blood vessels, it didn't matter. He had to keep going. He was more than halfway to the ninth level and he had to keep going.
The gates between the fifth level and the sixth were monstrous, and thankfully, standing ajar, Sam thought as he walked toward them. He slipped through the gap, and felt his feet sink into the soft, light, grey rocks that made up the ground on the other side. Pumice, he thought in surprise, and looked up. The sixth level was a bubble, a vast spherical cavern, half-filled with a lake of molten rock, the searing heat and toxic fumes hitting him together as he took a few more steps down over the shifting layer of rounded stones.
For a long moment he stood on the shore and stared at the roiling waves, feeling the heat bake his skin and his mouth and nose and throat, the poisonous gases making his eyes water helplessly, his confidence gone and his will broken by the sight of the impossible level. Nothing could cross this.
The angels flew over the lake, Jerome had told him. But they were not precisely flesh and blood when they stormed the accursed plane. Every manifestation creates a different reality. Flesh and blood forces different laws into play, laws that do not exist for beings of unencumbered energy.
He had no wings and he was definitely encumbered. And there was nowhere else to go but forward.
He felt his brows and eyelashes crisping as he approached the lava, felt his chest seizing and hitching as the moisture was sucked from his body. He didn't look down, keeping his gaze fixed on the wavering, heat-distorted horizon of the lake and he stepped out into the brilliant red and black liquid rock.
His boot hit rock and Sam looked down, the razor-edged and humped over wave that he'd stepped onto solid and hard under his feet. He looked up and saw that the lake had disappeared.
Not disappeared, he thought, looking more closely. Solidified. Cooled. Here and there puffs of superheated steam rose through the cracks and holes and fissures in the jagged uneven plain, but where he stood it felt stable and steady and he took another stride onto the hard stone, lifting his head again to look at the distant horizon. For flesh and blood, the lake was solid. Catching some breaks, he thought a little incoherently, looking down at the lacy stone, frozen full of air pockets.
Forty miles, Castiel had told Jerome when the legacy had buttonholed the angel for the account of the rescue. The lake followed the spherical dimensions of the bubble that lay between the planes and it was forty miles in diameter. He started walking faster.
The far horizon didn't seem to get any closer, but when he stopped to look back, the shore he'd set off from had disappeared from sight. Above, the cavern ceiling was almost out of view, curving upwards gently from all directions, the details lost in the miasma of steam and smoke, tinged with red. Everything down here was tinged with red, he thought acidly. A world bathed in blood.
Better not to watch the horizon, he decided ten minutes later when he noticed with frustration that the horizon was remaining as flat and featureless as ever. Better to look at the ground under his feet, and just keep going until the surface itself changed.
It did, perhaps an hour later, or longer, or shorter. He couldn't tell. He looked up and instead of the flat horizon, cliffs towered above a pale grey beach, a pair of gargantuan porphyry gates set in the middle and an inscription carved into the lintel over them in no language he recognised.
Welcome to the Seventh Level of Hell, he speculated humourlessly? Walking up the shifting slope, he stopped in front of them. They were possibly thirty feet high and about the same across, smooth and polished and he had no idea how to open them or even if he could.
Stepping closer he laid a hand against the flat surface and said, "Belloch!"
The gates remained impervious and he smiled a little at himself, looking up at them. "Open Sesame!"
And that was the sum total of his magic words, he thought wearily, stepping back. On either side, the cliffs that ringed the seventh level were much higher than the gates, eighty or ninety feet, Sam estimated. But not smooth. They were almost vertical, in places bulging out, but as he walked along them to the right, he saw that there were plenty of hand and foot holds for climbing, provided he was careful. He kept walking until he saw a section that was a little rougher and turned in, reaching up for the first protrusion, finding a narrow ledge for his foot and pulling himself up.
With no safety lines or cams, nuts or hexes, he was relying on his own strength to keep from falling. He checked each hold carefully before letting it take his weight, jamming his fingers or fist into the cracks and splits in the rock face, tightening them in place and taking his time to find the next foothold. It was slow. And tiring. And hard on his fingers, knuckles and joints.
The top of the cliff was convex, bulging outward a little and Sam reached over the lip, feeling around for something, anything, to give him a strong anchor to pull himself over. The fissure felt solid, but he didn't trust it, and the edge crumbled in his fingers as he dug them in. He took a deep breath, thrusting aside the involuntary visions of his body lying broken on the rocks beneath him and reached out again. The next one was better.
Rolling away from the edge at the top of the cliff, he lay on his back, staring at the not-quite-sky with its red and yellow and green-tinged clouds, feeling a breeze that wasn't hot and dry slip over his skin, evaporating his sweat and cooling him.
Time no longer meant anything in particular. Moving was the only thing he could think of, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. The light never varied, the temperature remained the same. There was no day and no night. No seasons or any sense of anything ever changing. He realised he hadn't seen any souls or demons since the third level and wondered why. It wasn't a compelling enough thought to hold his interest. When the tremors of the climb had bled out of his muscles, he rolled onto his stomach and crawled to the other side of the cliff top.
Spread out under him, the maze stretched out as far as he could see, black volcanic rock forming the walls, the ground in between some kind of glittering white soil, mostly shadowed but here and there catching the light of the not-exactly-sky. From the perspective of the cliff top, high above the ground, he could see the twists and turns that led to the centre. The gate between this level and the next was another dimensional portal, he remembered. In the centre of the maze. He stared at the patterns and memorised as much as he could, then got to his feet, walking along the top of the cliff to the stairs that were cut into the rock on the inside of the wall.
The centre was a circle, a hundred and fifty yards in diameter, covered with the same glittering white sand that filled the maze paths. Looking around for the gate, Sam walked across the soft, shifting ground, criss-crossing the arena. To one side, he saw a skeleton, half-buried, the bones black and gleaming, much larger than human. Kneeling beside it, he let his fingers brush lightly over the shoulder joint, seeing the protrusion from the scapula at the back, a ragged stub of bone.
Fallen angel, he thought, looking at the elongated, over-sized skull, sand spilling through the empty eye sockets. One of the archdemons. He didn't know which one, and he dusted the sand from the high, curving rib-cage, seeing two of the ribs smashed and bent outward.
He got to his feet and turned toward the other side of the amphitheatre. A massive stone table sat incongruously there. Beside it, there was a large metal frame, rusted gears and pulleys and wire hanging from it. Both table and frame were stained with a dark red-brown, patches and dried up pools, drips and runs.
They took me off the rack, and I tortured souls, and I liked it. All those years; all that pain. Finally getting to deal some out yourself ... I didn't care who they put in front of me, because that pain I felt, that just slipped away …
Sam felt his throat close as he stared at the table and the frame. He turned abruptly away, looking at the sand at his feet. In the centre of the circle of rock, the ground dipped a little, the sand ridges spiralling inward around the hollow.
The gate was under the sand. He felt a wash of relief at the thought, relief that he could push aside the memories of the past and get on with what he'd come to do. He couldn't change anything, couldn't undo the past for himself or … anyone else. He could only keep going.
He felt the smooth metal disk less than twelve inches below the surface, his hands scraping back the soft, dry grains as he cleared it. There didn't seem to be any mechanism for operating it and he remembered the arch. Just stepping through that had triggered the transfer. He took a deep breath and stepped down onto the disc and everything disappeared.
Nebraska
The birds and animals felt it first, a subterranean growl, too low to hear, felt in bones and teeth and claws. They didn't know or care how they knew, but they ran from the deep vibrations, scurrying and leaping, a flock of grackles taking wing from the forest and wheeling eastwards, their agitated calls filling the air.
The ground split, the sod tearing apart as the fissure widened and deepened, a wound opening in the earth. The trees to either side of it fell, roots pulled from the dense soil, branches cracking and breaking as they hit the ground. Steam hissed from the crack and a light shone from the depths, a pulsing red light that wasn't quite light, wasn't quite red, was of a frequency that had no correlation on the material plane.
The creature that dragged itself over the lip of the split was not material and not really spirit. Once it had been a wavelength of pure energy. Now it sucked the energy from every living thing and as the tattered black cloth shrouding it touched the soil, the grass withered and charred, the leaves from the nearby trees died and dropped to the ground, the sap solidifying in the trunks, the colours bleaching out from shrub and bush. It crawled out of the hole and away, and the ground closed up behind it, poisoned and blackened and dead along its trail.
Sunlight picked out the gleam of bone and yellowing sinew and it hunched slightly, pulling the rent cloth around itself. It could not tolerate the light for long and it drew the shadows closer, a hissing sound coming from the blackness of the hood and cloud forming over it, small and white at first, growing larger and darker, the wind picking up as the air was moved this way and that, pulling more moisture from the soil.
The vortex began as a small dustdevil, picking up the smashed branches, the crumbling clumps of blackened earth and the poisoned leaves, spinning them around until they were a blur, pulverised into their component parts, earth and dust and the dead cellular structures. The black cloth fell as the whirlwind touched the creature and it exerted its power to manipulate the contents, clothing itself in something more permanent, something more durable for the laws of this plane.
A man stepped out of the wind a moment later, tall and lean. His weather-beaten face was long and narrow, with dark eyes set deep under black brows, a long, slightly crooked nose and a wide, thin-lipped mouth. Creases bracketed mouth and eyes, and black hair, straight and lank, was brushed back from the high forehead and fell to his narrow shoulders. A black denim shirt, dark blue jeans and scarred boots covered the hard-muscled body.
No memories still existed of the life he had once lived. No feelings or thoughts stirred in the darkness of his mind. His master had stripped that from him, in excruciating love and the agonies of his deepest attention. It had been more than forty thousand years since he'd walked on this plane.
Behind him, the wind freshened and he turned south of west, distantly aware of the pull of his once-brother's ritual, a fish-hook in his consciousness, a summoning that could not be cast off and ignored.
Striding away from the burned and dead patch in the forest, moving faster as he settled into the newly constructed form, he was barely aware of the force he exerted on the world and behind him, the cloud gathered and built, faint flashes of light forming within the gravid bottoms, hiding the sunlight and spreading a deepening shadow over the man and the land through which he walked.