Chapter 23 Swords of Light and Darkness
Hell
Inside his veins, inside his cells, he could feel the burning pain, a struggle for dominance between the blood of a fallen angel and the power of the entity he'd bound himself to. Raging heat and icy cold flushed through him in waves, localised sensations tore at him; an unbearable rash of itching along his side, escalating then gone; a numb feeling spreading through one leg, almost dropping him to the ground, creeping higher – then gone.
Sam flinched to one side as the demon drew a long sword from beneath the ragged cloak, the black metal of the blade seeming to pull in the light rather than reflect it.
He forced himself to straighten up, to find his balance on the broken rock under his feet, dragging the strength he had left from bone and muscle by a sheer act of will. He hadn't missed that that archdemon was favouring one hand – the hand that had touched him – or that the demon was wary, circling around him instead of attacking directly. He wasn't sure if it was the memory of their previous encounter or the sword he held in his hand, but the wariness sent a surge of hope through him.
Perception narrowed to his opponent and every action and sense became discrete, isolated and unconnected to any other. A whicker through thick air. A ringing clang as metal met metal. The juddering impact of the demon's blow against the sword, travelling from fingers to shoulder. Twisting his wrist to disengage the blade. Sweeping it low then up abruptly as he strode forward. A catch on the material, a deeper snag against something hard. A hiss from the stygian depths of the hood.
Asmodeus stepped back, and the black blade sizzled as it came for him. He dropped to one knee, rolling toward the rent hem, and his sword burst into flames, igniting the shroud and lighting up his face.
The noise hit Sam without warning, excruciatingly high, a whining deep in his mind. He felt a warm liquid rush from his nose, from the corners of his eyes and down over his cheeks as he thrust upward, finding no resistance. He rolled back, not seeing or hearing the black sword, feeling it somehow as it descended toward him. The point hit the rock where he'd been as he pushed himself to his feet. He could feel trickles down his back and side, cuts from the jagged rocks he'd scraped over.
The demon attacked again, a flurry of strikes, the sword swinging and diving at him, and Sam blocked automatically, feeling the long-ago training kicking in. John Winchester had believed in being prepared and if he tried, Sam could still remember the bruising of the split bamboo swords he and Dean had used, brutally punishing but leaving no permanent damage.
Lucifer's bright blade moved faster, almost of its own volition and Sam's fingers tightened and loosened on the hilt without the need for thought. A monstrous shaft of agony bit into his side as he turned too slowly, muscles throbbing and aching with the effort being demanded of them and the demon's sword running through him.
Finish it, he thought savagely, blinking away the blood that filmed his eyes. His hand closed tightly around the hilt and he staggered to the left, dropping and rolling as the demon turned that way, shoving himself upright, a pained grunt bursting from him as he rose by its left flank. The wreathed blade slid up through the dusty folds of the black cloak and under the ribcage, and for a micro-second, Sam and the demon were completely still, locked inches from each other, the draining force of Asmodeus tugging and dragging at him, its rank, rotted breath on his face.
The flare of light, deep within the demon where the sword had lodged, was excruciatingly and Sam fell backward, his arm thrown over his eyes. The force of the silent explosion dragged his hand from the hilt as he fell, leaving the sword in the demon's body. He rolled onto his chest, pressing his face against the pitted stone as the light erupted again, doubling and tripling, filling the world in unbearable argent, and the blood inside of him reacted, heating suddenly, an agonising conflagration that he couldn't escape from, incinerating his organs, roasting his bones. He couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't hear the scream that ripped up through his throat.
Golden, Colorado
Dean stared blankly at the smoke drifting across the sky, across his field of vision. He knew that it should mean something to him but he couldn't make the effort to decipher what that was. He couldn't hear anything. Couldn't feel anything. He wondered vaguely if that was going to be a problem.
The view of the sky lurched and swayed and pain hit him at the same time, pain from everywhere. Feeling returned in expanding detonations. In his head. His arm. His side. His back. He could feel the dampness of his clothes, sticking to his skin, the reek of blood and the acrid taste of burned skin and metal in the shallow breaths through his mouth. A face swam into view above him and he looked at it without recognition, seeing the lips moving, opening and closing, no words or even sounds emerging. Blazing trails of fire and curling white smoke lit up the sky behind the face, a lot of them, and he wondered what the hell was going on, the thought skimming through his mind and disappearing as the pain jacked up again and his nervous system finally overloaded.
Franklin walked down the slope to the rapidly-erected tents, wiping the sweat off his forehead and smearing the soot and dust that coated him from head to foot. A stride behind him, Jack followed, his face hollowed-out with the shock that was still making everything seem surreal.
"Who'd we lose?" Franklin asked Jack tiredly, ducking to enter the tent where Joseph and Billy were trying to attend to the wounded.
"Nate and Willis, Morrison, Wiezbowski, Jerry and Taylor," Jack told him as he ducked in behind him. "Two dozen others who are wounded, not counting Dean, Rufus, Winifred and Elias."
Franklin stopped beside the cot near the door, looking down at Rufus. The hunter's wounds had been cleaned and dressed but he would be out for awhile, he thought morosely. Winifred had fared a little better, she would keep her eye and the use of her arm. He walked between the hastily made-up cots and stopped at the end.
"How's he doing?"
Joseph looked up at him. "Lost blood, bruised everywhere, cracked ribs, more likely from being thrown than from the blast," he said, looking down at the man lying in the cot. He picked up a six-inch length of metal shrapnel from the box beside the cot. "Pulled this out of his right arm, but it missed the major blood vessels. Had some bleeding from the ears, but that stopped."
"Can we move them out?"
Joseph's gaze flicked around the room as he nodded. "Yeah, if we can take them down to Golden ahead of everyone else, keep them under."
"Not a problem," the grizzled ex-soldier said shortly. "Load 'em up, we need to get going." He turned to Jack and gestured abruptly to the tent flap. "Tell the boys to get this packed up pronto, I want the wounded on their way down five minutes ago and we're going to leave some surprises for the zombies, at every damned bend."
Jack nodded, straightening up. "We got a count yet?"
Franklin shook his head. "Guesstimate only. Somewhere between twelve and eighteen hundred."
"That's not bad."
The older man grinned evilly at him, his eyes cold and hard. "Oh, boy, we're not finished yet, not by a long shot!"
Apollo Soucek Field, Virginia
Rona sat back on her heels, looking up at the wiring that snaked and looped through the engine above her. The harness had been replaced and it was all connected up. She swivelled on the balls of her feet and straightened, locking the engine bay cowling in place.
"Done?"
"Yeah," she said, looking over her shoulder at Travis. The pilot had been enslaved in Vegas and he bore the lines and scars of that experience, more in the shadows that lived in his eyes than anywhere else. Both he and Marsh had started their flying careers in the Navy, flying the same planes they were attempting to get operational again. She hoped he remembered it all.
As if he could see her doubts, his face suddenly creased into a grin. "You don't forget flying one of these, Rona."
He ran his hand along the fuselage gently. "It's seventeen hundred miles give or take to Colorado," he added, looking at the armaments loaded under the wings. "This baby's range is about twelve hundred, we'll need somewhere to re-fuel along the way."
She nodded. "Ernie said there's an air-force base in Missouri. Should have underground tanks and a manual pumping system in place."
"Whiteman?"
"I think so," she said, lifting her hand to shade her eyes as she looked at him.
"That'll be fine." He turned away and walked across the concrete deck to the other Hornet.
"Rona!" Vince called out from the carrier's flat aft deck. "Got the hydraulics back online!"
Nodding, she turned for the superstructure amidship, heading for the controls that would bring up the elevated deck. Ernie met her at the door, his craggy face lit up with excitement.
"We're going to Colorado in style," he said with a wide grin as he handed her a pair of binoculars and gestured over the long line of docks to a hangar on the other side of the access road.
Lifting the glasses, Rona stared at the shadowy shape within the hangar. "What is it?"
"US Marine Corp KC-130J Hercules, aerial refueller," Ernie said, with the frank delight of a small boy discovering unsuspected candy in his pocket. "Thirty-six hundred gallons capacity, we can refuel in the air and give them some kind of surprise with the rest of the payload."
"What are you thinking?" she asked, lowering the glasses.
"We got no time to load up with Franklin's specials," Ernie said, gesturing vaguely at the ordnance sheds that lined the long road. "So we're going to want to make sure that nothing bigger than a finger is left in one piece."
She nodded. "Are you good to fly it?"
He grinned smugly at her, blue eyes twinkling. "Cut my teeth on them and they haven't changed one little bit."
"Good to know," she said, the snort only half-disbelieving. "I'll meet you over there with Vince as soon as these birds are off the deck."
Turning to watch him stride fast down the carrier deck, Rona turned back to the controls, lifting the Hornets from their under-deck storage, the machinery greased and oiled, new pipe, new wiring, and the sunlight glinted off the tips of the missiles that lay like talons under their wings when they rose from the shadows of the hold to meet it.
"We'll go first," Ernie said, looking at his fellow pilots and the two hunters. "Our cruising speed is under half of the Hornet's, so we'll meet you in the friendly skies over Missouri."
Travis nodded. "Loaded and ready, even got time for a leisurely breakfast while you guys get going."
"Will we be able to pick up Franklin's boosted signal before we get to Colorado?" Marsh asked, brows raised. "Timing is going to a bitch to arrange if we can't."
"He gave us a two-hundred and fifty mile range, in clear weather," Vince said slowly. "We should pick them up just before the state line from Kansas, maybe earlier depending on altitude."
Ernie looked at Travis. "Get up to your ceiling and do a circle when you get your orders. You'll have time to drop most of what of you got before we even make it, and then we'll finish off what you boys miss."
"Yeah, here's hoping it's not an all-out skirmish by then."
"Even if it is, our target's going to be plenty big enough." Marsh looked sourly at the dark sea to the east. "S'long as they don't have anti-aircraft guns."
Rona smiled. "No working aircraft since Lucifer went down? Would you drag along a few tons of metal on the chance that you might need it?" She stretched her neck and back. "'sides, you boys keep telling me you can bullseye anything bigger than trashcan from one of these things, so knocking out whatever artillery they have dragged along is gonna be priority number one."
Julesburg, Colorado
He walked across the shattered roads and through the deep golden fields, dark eyes glinting beneath black brows as the winds rose behind him and the clouds gathered in a long line along the broken horizon, curving around to either side like wings.
In the air between the cloud and earth, there was movement, gleams and spears of reflection on slick hide and long, translucent fangs, spiralling in the gathering gloom, a barely heard buzzing, constant and insistent. Under the long shadow of the cloud, the creatures that walked and crawled and flew hid in their nests and dens, sensitive instincts cowering from what passed overhead.
Belial could feel the pull of the angel who held dominion over the demons now on earth. He was further to the west. His fingers opened and closed involuntarily, in rhythm with his stride, with the scuff of his boots over the earth, or the tock of their heels on the asphalt, with the slap of the leather-sheathed sword that hung loosely at his side.
What filled the space that had once been mind was a maelstrom of images, too diffused to be called memory, too splintered to be called thought. There was purpose, flickering here and there like sheet lightning. There was hunger and thirst, for pain, for blood. There was a muted glee that danced slowly around the edges of the chaos, waiting. Their bones would be picked clean in the depths of the abyss by those who rode the shifting air currents under the darkness of the clouds. All of them. Bones in the dark. In the deep black.
Cache Valley, Utah
Beyond the fast-moving river, the cliffs were wreathed in a thin, yellowish cloud and Father McConnaughey swallowed uncomfortably, his fingers clenching tightly around the vial in his hand. Sam was in there, somewhere, he thought. The job wasn't completed and all he had to do was to get in and find him. He ignored the icy thread of fear that slithered up his spine at the thought of what that would entail and looked along the riverbank.
Curving away from him, he could see the flat rocks protruding from the water's flow in between the willows, a few yards upriver. He walked toward them quickly, the feel of the silver and iron pendant warm against the base of his throat. He'd taken the talismans in case, just in case he might be required to get into the accursed plane. He hadn't really expected to use them.
The stones were simple to cross, a couple of feet between them, their surfaces broad and flat and dry. The priest had no idea of where along the near-vertical cliffs the door was and he walked along the river's edge, looking for a sign, for any clue that might lead him to the right spot.
The splash of the oar behind him made him jump in alarm, and he swung around to see the prow of a narrow, timber-hulled boat bump up against the bank. Standing at the stern, the boatman stared back at him. Charon, he realised belatedly, the recognition bringing a spurt of fear and one of astonishment simultaneously. The ferryman of the River Styx. Taller and broader than a man, the boatman's hair blazed red, hanging long down his back and tangled in the red beard that hid half of his face. Beneath the thick, reddish brows, his eyes gleamed silver, the over-sized craggy features expressionless.
"There is not much time."
Father McConnaughey's brows rose. "For Sam?"
Charon nodded, stepping to the bow of the boat in one stride and onto the bank with another. "The door is here," he said, pointing to the base of the cliff in front of them.
The priest walked to the cliff and opened the vial, pouring the blood of the guardian onto the ground. He stepped back rapidly as the rock split and groaned, a pulsing red light spilling out from within the door, turning the grey soil to russet.
"How do I find him?" He looked at the boatman.
"In here," Charon replied, tapping a thick finger against his temple. "All things Hell recognises."
Think of him, Father McConnaughey thought, the moment's relief at having one question answered squashed as the gate rumbled further open and he saw into the flickering dark tunnel behind it. He stepped in before he could think of a reason not to, and hurried toward the brighter light. Sam Winchester. Tall. Hazel eyes that were often filled with pain. Torn. Uncertain. Determined.
Sam's face filled his mind and he gasped as the plane shifted around him, a thick blackness swallowing him whole, his stomach lurching in protest at the feeling of falling, his arms swinging out wildly, looking for anything to hold.
Golden, Colorado
The jerking halt of the truck brought Dean to consciousness, his eyes opening and taking in the curving canvas roof of the truck, inexplicable above his aching head. He tried to lift an arm to check if the lump he thought was there actually was as large as it felt, and the tug of soft restraints and the sharp bite of an injury froze the movement. Other sensations returned slowly, a dull ache in his back, a numbness along his side, from hip to ribcage.
Light flooded the interior of the truck back as the canvas flap at the rear was unzipped and held back. He squinted against the brightness, seeing a couple of blurry shapes moving up past him.
"Hey."
Both stopped and looked at him, despite the fact that he hadn't heard his own voice say the word, heard only the intention of it, in his head.
One figure moved closed, the outline resolving into the tanned face of Joseph as he leaned close, his expression worried and his mouth moving. Dean saw the question in the raised brows, the slightly widened eyes, but he couldn't hear it. Couldn't hear anything.
"What happened?" He knew he'd asked it, out loud, since Joseph exchanged a fast look with the other figure but the silence surrounding him remained.
Joseph looked back at him and shook his head slightly. He straightened and went to the rear flap, pushing it back a little and looking out. Dean lay still. He slowly became aware that he could, in fact, hear something. A very distant ringing in his ears. What the fuck had happened? He remembered hearing the screams from the team on the other side of the cut, remembered hitting the road and dumping the Stig and his bag and firing the M60 at an oncoming horde of the demon-possessed corpses. That was it. His memories stopped there.
Something cut the light and he held himself still against the need to turn and look. Whatever it was that had happened, he'd done a reasonable amount of damage, he thought uneasily. Keeping still and quiet seemed like a good idea.
Franklin's face leaned in toward him, coming gradually into focus. He watched the man's mouth move and winced as an unconscious frown set off a deep-seated throb behind his eye.
Franklin turned to look over his shoulder, gesturing impatiently at Joseph. The trainee produced a pen and a pad of paper and Dean watched through half-closed eyes as the hunter scribbled something across the page and held it up for him.
Bomb went off close to you. You got some pretty serious injuries, need to put you out for a bit, but we think the deafness is temporary, he read the writing on the page.
Temporary. He hoped so. Another part of the note registered belatedly and he lifted his left hand, the fingers twitching. After a second, Franklin slid the pen between them and braced the notepad.
No. Not out.
He watched the older man's face screw up in frustration as he scribbled something beneath that.
You're full of shrapnel, doc has to dig it all out.
Making the movement as small and slow as he could, Dean shook his head. He saw Franklin's expression slide from irritation to resignation and felt for the edge of the pad.
What?
The question mark wasn't entirely recognisable but Franklin knew what he was talking about.
He bent over the page, writing as fast as he could, shifting out of the way as Joseph and the other young man whose name Dean couldn't remember, lifted one of the stretchers and moved it out of the truck.
Lost about 150 when they got their mortars in place. We took somewhere between 1200-1500, best guess. Blew up every bridge and bend as we came back down.
Dean touched the pen, pulled it free of Franklin's grip.
Boze?
Franklin looked at the single word and wrote again.
Contacted us last night. Should be here before morning.
Dean scratched out the immediate question on the paper.
How long since?
Franklin glanced at him and held up the page.
2 days.
Two days he'd been out cold? Dean thought incredulously. Two fucking days?!
He grabbed the pen, his hand moving across the paper soundlessly.
Sam?
Franklin read the question and took the pen back.
No word.
Thinking about it, Dean realised that the demons would've disappeared or dissolved or whatever it was they were gonna do if his brother had managed to close the gates. He counted back to the last time he'd seen Sam. It was almost a week since Sam had left the keep. It couldn't have taken that long. Could it?
Franklin got up and Dean looked up at him. The ex-soldier held up the notepad.
You're out of it. Rest. I'll bring Boze and Tim by when they get here.
The hell he was out of it, he thought mulishly as Franklin climbed out of the truck and Joseph and … and … Perry, he thought suddenly, a wash of relief at the achievement fluxing through him, the other trainee's name was Perry … climbed back in to lift out another stretcher. He needed Cas, that's all. Needed Cas' magic touch and he'd be back in business.
He closed his eyes, trying to focus his thoughts on the angel.
Cas? You hearing me? Cas, need you here, man. Need you here NOW.
Schlossweg, Switzerland
Luc looked around the empty shore cautiously. The Seestrasse had long been broken into pieces, weeds and trees growing through the cracks right down to the shores of Lake Thun now. The forest that had climbed the terraced hill behind the small village had grown as well, the trees tall and dark, spreading across the slopes and climbing to the peak. A good hiding place for all sorts of things, he thought uneasily.
Twenty feet below him, Marc's flashlight was still just visible, the beam playing around the interior rooms of the building. He touched the microphone that rested on the front of his throat lightly.
"Anything?"
"Not yet," Marc's voice came back through the small earpiece, slightly muffled.
They'd back-tracked the trail left by the army through the mountains, the trail easy enough to follow. The building was old and ornate, a summer escape for some aristocratic family in the old days, he thought distractedly, turned into a lake-side hotel before the virus had changed the world. The Grigori had been here, had raised their spells here, he could almost smell the pungent odour of their magic clinging to the stone and brick of the place. The last place their comms had been able to reach the order, Michel had told them that the nine in the United States had raised an army as well.
Where the hell had they'd gotten all the demons, he wondered? Winchester had killed the upstart king. No one thought that the archdemons, once loose, would ever deal with the Fallen. The documents they'd been able to free from beneath the Vatican's vaults had give some histories of Heaven and Hell that were older than any other they'd had or seen or even heard of, and in them, the antipathy felt for what Lucifer had termed the 'Tainted Ones' had been extreme.
"Luc," Marc's voice whispered against his ear and he scanned the countryside briefly before answering.
"Yes."
"Get down here, this is –" Marc's voice trailed away to a breath. "This is unbelievable."
Luc frowned, unable to pinpoint the exact emotion he could hear in the other man's voice. Something that was close to awe but with an edge of disgust, he thought, the analysis setting off his internal alarms. He dropped, sliding down the steep, grassy slope feet first.
"On my way."
Drawing his knife, a long silver blade with a thick, serrated back edge, he walked into the dark building cautiously, following Marc's small symbols, chalked on the walls and doors.
He found the hunter in the basement of the building.
The room was square, taking up almost the same footage as the building above. To one side of the narrow, curving staircase, shelving lined the walls, and dozens of books, manuscripts and ledgers were still there, along the soft, dry scent of old paper. On the other side … Luc stopped as he saw the machine.
"Merde," he muttered, glancing across to Marc. "What the hell is it?"
"Baisée si je sais!" Marc said miserably, gesturing at the other end of the enormous barrel-like shape. "If you want to keep your breakfast and your sleep, don't look at this."
Luc walked slowly forward. The machine was perhaps twenty feet long and four feet in diameter, a long tube, reminding him incongruously of a mini-sub. The metal skin was curved into sheets and bolted together to form the cylindrical shape, attached to and set within a framework that appeared to protrude through the cylinder, in and out with no apparent purpose. Hoses, pipes and wiring covered most of the surface.
On one side, a bank of monitors, computers and sensors fed tubes in and out of the peculiar device. He rounded the end and caught the odour before he saw the high-sided, rectangular bin that stood beneath the end of the cylinder, throat closing up in an automatic gag reflex, his face paling beneath the tan skin.
Holding a hand over his nose and mouth, he edged closer and peered inside, swinging away immediately, his eyes shut tightly as he walked across the room to the bookshelves. A long fucking time since he'd come that close to seeing anything that could make his stomach react, he thought, the images still engraved on the back of his eyelids. He pulled in and let out several deep breaths, leaning against the shelving on one stiff arm, forcing the twitching muscles in his abdomen to relax.
Marc walked over to him, a bundle of loose papers in one hand, his face pale and waxen.
"This was under it," he said, leaning a shoulder against the shelving and handing over the papers. "They were testing something, or making something – my German isn't so good."
Luc took the papers and straightened up, flicking through them. Half were covered with scribbled formulae; he frowned at the symbols, picking out familiar chemicals randomly. The others were notes, of a procedure, he thought, reading the uneven hand slowly. He couldn't decipher enough to decide what it was. The image of the contents of the rectangular bin slid into his mind again and he stared at the notes, feeling the edges of the puzzle drawing together, but not into a picture, not yet.
"Come on, we'll have to check through what they left and take it all. Francesca and Alain will be able to do more with this than we can."
Marc nodded, looking around the room. "I do not know why, but it looks slightly familiar to me, this room, these … things," he said, gesturing toward the machine without looking at it again. "Not as if I've seen this, but something like it."
"It might come," Luc said, lifting a dark brow. "Leave it alone and it might come back without you prodding at it."
"Yes." Marc turned away and began to gather the books. "Maybe."
Hell
Father McConnaughey tripped and fell onto his hands and knees as the blackness disappeared and the ground wasn't where he expected it to be. The sharp rocks sliced easily through his palms and knees, and he grunted in pain, looking up at the cloud that boiled and churned above him, his eyes stinging at the bite of the fumes of sulphuric acid that filled the air.
He turned his head and scrambled to his feet, running the short distance to where Sam lay on his back, clothes torn and blood-soaked, his skin almost luminescent beneath them.
"Sam?" He dropped to his knees, gaze flicking past the man on the ground. A shapeless bundle of dark cloth lay a few feet beyond Sam, the edges charred and crumbling. Looking back down, the priest slid his arm beneath Sam's shoulders and lifted him, shifting closer as his head fell back. At the base of Sam's neck, the cross he'd given him stood out in the vee of his ripped shirt, as blackened and scorched as the demon's shroud.
He could see a faint pulse, beating erratically just above the cross and he let his breath out, hand reaching for his jacket pocket and pulling out a small flask of water. It was holy water, but he didn't think it would matter at a time like this. He undid the cap with his teeth and poured a little over Sam's face, and the flickering light under the pale olive skin brightened for a second, then slid away, deeper perhaps. Tipping a little more into Sam's mouth, he waited and after a few moments, he saw him swallow slowly, eyelids fluttering as he struggled to return to consciousness.
"Sam?"
The hazel eyes were bloodshot, the pupils huge and black as they focussed on him.
"Bless … me … Father," Sam croaked, his eyes rolling back for a moment and the lids closing. "I … have … sinned."
"Sam, don't talk," Father McConnaughey said quickly, moving again to get his arm further around the broad-shouldered hunter. "Take a minute, son."
"No," Sam said, and his eyes opened again, the pupils a little smaller, a grimace twisting his face. "No."
He groaned as he put his hand behind him, pushing upward out of the priest's grip.
Father McConnaughey felt a warm rush of liquid over his arm as Sam moved and looked down, his face tightening as he saw the gaping wound there.
"Stop, stop moving – I have to stop the bleeding." He dragged his jacket off, ripping the sleeves along the shoulder seams, wadding the cloth up and pressing it against Sam's side.
"No." Sam turned his head and stared at him. "Just hear me, Father. Hear me and … give me absolution."
"Sam, let's get you out of here –"
Sam smiled gently at him, the expression underlaid with pain. "I'm not leaving, Father … it's been – I don't know … how long it's been … since my last confession."
Father McConnaughey bowed his head and turned aside, looking at the jagged outlines of the cliffs as Sam spoke, his breath catching and wheezing, the words forced out slowly.
"I told myself I didn't know … what I doing, but I knew, Father. Somewhere … buried pretty deep, but still in me … I knew."
He didn't recite his sins. He told his story, all of it, from the moment he'd realised he never wanted to do what his family did, and realised he would never be able to make his father and brother understand that, to breaking free. And Jessica. And her death.
Father McConnaughey listened, his hands locked together in front of him, his knees aching from the sharp rock, blood drying on the torn edges of his clothing. He heard of John Winchester's sacrifice. And of Dean's. He heard the despair in Sam's voice as he told him of the months that had followed his brother's death. And the way he'd tried to blot it out. Drinking. Killing. Searching. Begging.
"When he got out, the second I saw him, I knew that what I'd been doing all this time, it was wrong. I knew it. But I couldn't admit it. Not to him. Not to myself," Sam said, clearing his throat abruptly. "And when he found out, I knew it again, knew it in the expression in his eyes. He looked at me, and – and –"
Father McConnaughey waited, listening to the struggle of the man beside him to get past his memories, in the thickness of his voice, in the odd gaps and silences.
"He was disappointed … and right … there, I could have … stopped. Could've followed him. But I chose not to do that. I told him … I told him … he was weak," Sam said, his breath hitching at the crystal-clear memory he had of Dean's eyes at that moment, the shadow that passed through them and vanished. "And I told him … he was broken. And I tried to kill him."
He licked his lips, his fingers tingling with the feel of his brother's neck beneath them. "Something stopped me. I don't know what it was. I wanted to. At that moment, it was in my head that if I killed there and then I would finally be free of him, of them. My family. My duty. I would be able to do what I wanted."
Temptation, the priest thought. Lucifer reaching out through the bars even then. The killing of his brother would have stained Sam's soul sufficiently to enable the rest of the plan to proceed more swiftly.
"But something stopped me and I left. And when I got to the convent –"
The deeply drawn breath brought a fit of coughing, and Father McConnaughey turned back to Sam, wrapping his arm around his shoulders and holding him tightly as he jerked with the sharp, wracking attempts to get air into his lungs. Neither looked at the blood spray that covered Sam's jeans, and the rocks around him. The priest gave him the flask as it began to ease, and Sam swallowed the water convulsively, his fingers white-knuckled around the small metal case. Sweat dripped from the ends of his hair and he lifted a shaking hand to wipe it from his forehead, the gesture surreptitiously wiping the moisture from his cheeks as well.
"I k-killed her, Father, an innocent woman. In cold blood, knowing exactly what I was doing," Sam said, his voice raw and cracked. "I wasn't human when I killed Lilith and broke the last seal on Lucifer's cage. And I held Ruby as Dean killed her." He looked down, sagging slightly in the priest's hold, his eyelids falling a little. "In that one moment, when I knew what I'd done, I've never been that goddamned scared in my life. Not because the devil was getting out. But because everything I'd thought, everything I'd told myself – it'd all been a lie. And I'd been the one doing the lying. Dean had been right all along, and I'd chosen to believe the lie instead of him."
The priest felt the shudder ripple through Sam's frame, and tightened his grip around his shoulders as it deepened, shaking them both. It was almost as if it were a response to – or a recognition of – what the hunter was saying, he thought uneasily.
"I thought I'd paid for it," Sam said, and Father McConnaughey frowned as he listened, hearing the stentorian rumble from Sam's chest, his words losing their endings as he tried to breathe faster. "Thought … I paid."
"Sam?"
"Thought …" Sam murmured, his eyes closed. "Thought I could make my brother understand that I'd changed."
"Sam, you don't need to keep going –" the priest said, looking worriedly at Sam's face, at the almost-dreamy expression on it. Sam's eyes opened, focussing on him.
"Yes, I do." He straightened a little, spitting out a mouthful of blood. "Someone has to hear it, someone has to know about it, not just me," he said, the vagueness disappearing abruptly, his voice rising as he turned to look at him. "Dean won't let me say it. He doesn't want to hear me say it, but I have to get it out of my head, Father, please –"
"You've confessed, Sam," Father McConnaughey said, cutting him off gently. "I can give you absolution."
For a moment, he thought that the young man would argue. But something in Sam tightened and his expression was flat when he looked back at the priest.
"What do I do?"
"Pray for forgiveness, if that's what you want," the priest told him, feeling Sam's skin heating under his arm. "And make an atonement."
The deep shudders became more pronounced, and his head rolled back. The light was flickering more rapidly beneath his skin and the heat rising from his body was well past what the priest considered a normal high temperature. The man was going to combust in his arms, he thought.
Heat flashed and crackled through him, lightning strikes from the storm he could feel building in his body. He searched for what he wanted to say, what he wanted to ask, the words slipping in and out of his thoughts, as impermeably as water through the meshes of a net, unable to grasp onto them.
I'm sorry. It seemed the most important thing but he couldn't continue. Sorry for what? For everything. For the choices made. For the things he'd done. The things he'd said. For the pain and the suffering and the ongoing lie that he'd had to keep close to keep it all going. He was sorry, he was so damned sorry for all those things that he could hardly breathe with the anguish that was filling his chest and throat.
I turned away from what I knew. That was true as well. Turned from his conscience, from his family, turned away from everything he knew mattered and had turned toward a path that had felt wrong from the start.
I killed.
His heartbeat accelerated as the heat increased, oceanic waves of heat that rolled through him, a rising conflagration without an end. He could feel sweat running down his face, hear the priest who supported him talking, yelling. He couldn't pay attention to those things now.
Please … forgive me.
Pain coruscated up his spine, from tail-bone to skull, blinding him and contracting every muscle into steel rigidity, bursting the thin walls of the smaller blood vessels and bulging the walls of the larger, expanding out into bone and tendon and nerve and into every cell.
Then it was gone.
All of it. He felt nothing but the slow, steadiness of his heart, beating quietly in his chest, saw darkness behind his closed eyelids, heard Father McConnaughey's hoarse, panting breaths next to his ear.
Sam opened his eyes and sat up, leaning forward uncertainly, eyes unfocussed as he searched his body for any trace of the heat or pain that had filled him a second ago. There was none.
He turned his head, looking at the priest. "It's gone."
Father McConnaughey nodded slightly, face flushed and shining with perspiration, his eyes wide. "And you are absolved of your sins, in the eyes of the Almighty."
The spell to complete the third trial blazed in Sam's mind and he spoke the words without thinking about it, his hands closing and tightening around the hilt of Lucifer's sword.
The single chime of a bell.
White.
Nothing.
Father McConnaughey stared as Sam arched up, his back bowed, his skin lit up from beneath with a brilliant light that crawled through his body, brightening over his heart and in his face, throwing bone and tendon and muscle striation into painfully sharp relief. The light died and Sam crumpled, eyes half-open and staring sightlessly, the angel sword falling from his hands and clanging on the rock, his head hitting the ground once with a dull thud.
"Sam? Sam!" He leaned forward, uncaring of the fresh cuts that the rock tore into his palms as he reached for the hunter, his fingers pressing tightly against the side of Sam's neck.
"SAM!"
There was no pulse beating in the artery there. He bent and pressed his ear against Sam's chest, grimacing at the stillness and the silence that was all he could feel or hear.
Test unto death, the tablet had said. They'd thought it meant after the closing of the gates, but that hadn't happened yet, Sam hadn't done that yet. The blood had been burned out, he was sure of it, the contract had been fulfilled with the completion of the third trial. He swore to himself, his head snapping up to look accusingly at the sky of the accursed plane above him.
"He wasn't finished yet!"
West Keep, Kansas
"How is she!?" Bobby leapt from the wooden bench in the wide hall as Merrin came out of the door leading to the surgery. "It's been hours!"
The stout-figured, dark-haired nurse looked at him patiently. "She's doing fine, Bobby. You're a father."
"Wha –" He pushed the hat off his head, staring past her at the closed door. "Really? It's all okay?"
"A girl and a boy, both healthy, with all their fingers and toes," Merrin confirmed dryly, glancing at the room. "Dr Malley is just putting in some stitches, but everything went well, and Ellen's doing great."
The weight he'd been carrying around for the last day and a half vanished and he wondered distractedly if he actually was floating an inch or two above the floor.
"Can I see her? Them?"
"Give Bob five minutes," Merrin told him, turning for the pharmacy. "They'll be finished and she'll be ready for you."
He nodded and paced back to the bench, staring at it for a long moment, then turning and striding back to the door. He couldn't sit. Needed to move.
A father.
The last two weeks had been busy ones for the medical staff in every one of the keeps, he knew. The trainee midwives and nurses had seen increasing numbers of births every day, and were going to get their twenty-five years of experience in every possible childbirth problem in the next six weeks. Jo said that Meredyth and Doc Hadley were finding the same thing in Michigan. She didn't sound nervous, exactly, but there'd been an edge to her voice. She was due in a few days.
A boy and a girl. He marvelled at the idea. One of each. Pigeon pair. The parental clichés kept popping in and out of his thoughts and he couldn't make them fit with anything he'd done in the last twenty-eight years. A father.
Bob Malley stuck his head through the door and looked around. "Bobby, you ready?"
He wasn't. Not nearly ready for any of it, he thought apprehensively. But it was too late now. He nodded, a nervous grin almost disappearing in the scrubby auburn beard as he hurried to the door.
Ellen lay in the room at the end of the short hallway that served the rooms set aside for the medical team, the lines in her face a little deeper and her cheeks a little hollowed out but smiling at him as he edged through the door, hat clutched in both hands.
"Thought you'd never show," she said, one brow raised.
"I, uh, I was, Merrin said –" Bobby stammered, walking to the bed and looking at the floor.
Ellen laughed softly. "God, Bobby, relax, I'm joking." She watched his shoulders slump a little and the corner of her mouth lifted slightly. "You can sit in on the next one."
His eyebrows hit his hairline before he realised she was winding him up again, and he gave her a mock scowl, pulling the chair over from the wall and sitting next to her.
"Told the doc to tie it all up," Ellen told him, the glint of amusement still in her warm, brown eyes. "These'll be enough for us."
He nodded and looked at her. "How are you doin'?"
"Sore," she said with a slight shrug. "Tired. Forgot about all that."
"Nothing, uh, serious?"
"No," she reassured him, and glanced to the other side of the bed. "Your son and daughter are just there, Bobby. Aren't you going to look at them?"
He got up, and walked slowly around the bed, leaving his cap on the end as he passed it. Shep and Miller, the keep's carpenters, had been making nothing but simple cradles for the last four months, and the two babies were wrapped and bundled in two of them, where Ellen could see them. He saw the identical shocks of bright red hair and turned to her, mouth opening.
"I know," she said, the side of her mouth tucking in. "My dad was a redhead, not all your fault."
Leaning closer, he started a little as the infant wrapped in the blue blanket opened his eyes. It took a moment for Bobby to realise that they were slightly unfocussed, huge and a bright blue.
"Merrin wants to know what their names are," Ellen said, as he gently touched the baby's cheek with the tip of one forefinger.
"Uh …"
She snorted softly. "I was thinking I like Elizabeth."
Bobby lifted his head and stared at her. Elizabeth had been his mother's name. He nodded slowly, his eyes a little brighter than they'd been.
"I like William, for our son," he said, very quietly, smiling a little as he saw her expression change.
Golden, Colorado
The angel looked out through the tent flap and back at the man lying on the cot beside him. He leaned forward and rested his fingertips against Dean's forehead, his eyes closing. The frequencies in his mind harmonised, and the power of billions of souls slid through him and into the man.
Dean sucked in a deep breath, arms and legs twitching as his body heated, cells forced into instant action to repair the damage that naturally took months, the tears and breaks and bruising flushed through and rejoined, his senses returning to him in full force.
Castiel looked into his eyes and straightened, stepping back a little. Dean was strangely particular about how close others got.
"Didn't think you heard me," the hunter said, sitting up, a half-disbelieving smile tugging at his mouth as he heard the shouts and sounds of engines and gunfire from outside. He looked up at the angel.
"Sam is in Hell," Cas told him bluntly, his face expressionless. "Father McConnaughey followed him."
Dean felt a small relief that his brother wasn't completely alone in there. He swung his legs off the edge of the cot and stood up cautiously, his gaze unfocussed as he waited for his body to tell him about any problems. It didn't have anything to report and he looked at Castiel.
"We need help," he said, gesturing vaguely toward the flap. "We're cutting them down but they're gonna overrun us. Just a matter of time."
The angel nodded unhappily. "I know."
"Any of your wingmen willing to come down here and kick some Fallen ass?"
Cas blinked. "I don't know. I've been summoned by Michael."
"Will he help?"
"I don't know," Cas repeated, looking away. He suspected he wouldn't.
Seeing the angel's discomfiture, Dean turned, getting his gun and knife from the box that sat near the head of the cot.
"I will ask, Dean," Cas said to his back. "But don't – don't expect help."
He shrugged. "Nah, I know better than that," he said, turning to look at the angel. "I need you to do me a favour."
"What kind of favour?"
"Same for the others as you did for me," Dean said, gesturing at the other cots in the tent. "If Heaven's gonna pretend this has nothing to do with them, I need every single person here on their feet."
Castiel's mouth tightened as he nodded and walked to the next cot, Dean following him slowly. Elias and Winifred, Markson, Deke, Herb and Drew. And Rufus.
The flutter of wings stirred the edge of the flap tied back next to the open doorway and Dean looked down at the old hunter.
"Rise and shine, princess."
Rufus opened his eyes warily, looking around before his gaze returned to Dean's face. "What the hell happened?"
"Second chance," Dean said, extending a hand to him and pulling him up. "I wouldn't bet on getting another one."
"Cas got business in Heaven?"
"Some kind," Dean said dismissively. "We need to find Franklin."
He walked outside, Rufus on his heels and the other hunters following more slowly as they looked around and gathered their gear.
Dean saw the burly hunter across the concrete interchange, and lengthened his stride. He was going to enjoy the double-take, he thought, looking around. The junction had been turned into a base-camp, vehicles and tents and sandbagged defensive walls surrounding it. They were too low for any of that to do much good, he realised, glancing back over his shoulder at the gently sloping road that led west into the mountains. They'd be sitting ducks here.
Franklin turned and Dean watched his eyes widen as he saw them coming toward him.
"What the fuck?"
"Pays to have friends in high places," Rufus said dryly as they reached him.
"What's the story, Franklin?" Dean turned to watch the activity around the camp. "We can't stay here."
"No," Franklin agreed readily, nodding to the hunters as they walked up. "Boze called in, he's close. Said he'll be here before dawn. We'll meet him halfway out, make them come to us and take the height advantage away."
"On open ground, they'll flank us," Rufus said, looking east, his brows drawing together sharply as he saw the black cloud spread out over the countryside to the north. "What the hell is that?"
Dean and Franklin turned to look and Franklin shook his head. "No idea."
"It's the archdemon," Dean said expressionlessly. "Supposed to be pulling that cloud around so the hellspawn don't get sunburned."
Rufus looked at him. "Well. That ups the ante."
Shrugging, Dean turned away. "The more demons up here, the less Sam has to worry about."
Franklin and Rufus exchanged a fast glance. Elias cleared his throat.
"How far is the army up the interstate?" he asked Franklin.
"About fifteen miles," Franklin said, his gaze following the hunter's. "We blew up a helluva lotta crap on our way out, and it's slowing them down. They'll probably make it here by morning."
"You have to move out," Dean said, looking at the sloping hillsides to either side of the junction. "Take everyone down and get those earthmovers going on some banks."
Four sets of narrowed eyes stared at him suspiciously. "And you'll be?"
Dean heard the argument in Franklin's voice, ready to leap out at the slightest provocation. "Up there."
He pointed to the heavily wooded crest of the slope above them. "I need three volunteers, that's it. We'll take the launchers and keep firing until we run out of ammo."
"Or they figure out where you are and kill you," Franklin said sourly. He looked at the slope. "Even if you could get back out through the woods behind that hill, you'd be trapped back there. Only take them a few minutes to send a good-sized bomb your way and you won't get out at all."
"No," Dean said, shaking his head. "Look at the range. We can keep hitting them from here, they won't have any defences set up. They can't set up defences because we'll be above them."
"We don't need to buy that sort of time, Dean."
"Yeah, we do," Dean contradicted him sharply, looking down toward the plain. "Boze ain't here and there's more than five thousand coming down that road and you've got less than three hundred and no time to get clear. We need the time. And I can get it."
Elias ducked his head and took a step closer to him. "Not alone."
Rufus looked sourly from one to the other. "Four of us should be able to make enough noise to let you pull back, Franklin, right back and wait for Boze and Tim." He looked up at the hill. "One to load, one to fire, each side."
Dean nodded, not liking the way the older man had said 'us'. "Right, but you're going with Franklin," he told Rufus.
"Says you?" Rufus snorted, lip curling up. "Jack and I'll take the southern slope."
"No. You're needed here, with them," Dean argued, his voice deepening. "We don't have that many people here who know how to run a battle."
Franklin nodded, glancing at the hunter. "Hate to say it, but he's right, Rufus. Could use you."
"Win and me'll take the southern slope," Herb said, stepping forward after he'd glanced at the slim woman for confirmation. The burns had healed, mostly, thickened scar tissue patterning her dark skin down her left side. She'd looked harder and meaner before the attack, Dean thought irrelevantly.
For a moment, there was a silence between the small group. It wasn't quite suicidal, Rufus thought, just damnably close to it. He looked at the forested top of the hills then back at Dean.
"You make sure you get out of there when you run out of ammo."
Dean's mouth twitched up on one side. "You make sure you're ready when the rest come down onto the flat ground."
Franklin let out his breath and shook his head. "All finished with the tearful goodbyes? Can we go now?"
He turned away and whistled, lifting an arm and swinging it slowly around. The camp leapt into activity as everyone fell to their assigned duties.
Rufus looked at Dean. "You think this'll make a big enough diversion?"
Dean looked at the cloud heading for them. "Sam can take on one archdemon with that sword. Not two. So long as that fucker's heading for us, he can do what he has to do."
"It's been nearly a week," Rufus said quietly.
"Hell's a bitch to find your way around."
From the crest, Dean looked down as the last of the trucks pulled away, the line trundling slowly east, skirting the holes and cracks in the wide, concrete road and heading out to the plain. He turned his head and looked up the road.
The army would be in sight the whole way down and they would be in range. They wouldn't be able to hold them very long, he knew, would have to make their hits count for as much as possible. But he thought that they'd be able to keep their attention, and give the rest time to get dug in somewhere.
Elias tossed him a water bottle and he caught it, unscrewing the cap and tipping the water into his mouth, swallowing it down.
"They're here," Win's voice said softly into his ear and he screwed the cap back on the water bottle, dropping it at his feet as he nodded to the auburn-haired hunter. Picking up the launcher and settling it onto his shoulder, he ducked his head to look through the scope.
The leading edge were all corpses, he noted emotionlessly, feeling the weight of the shell as it slid down into the tube. He wanted the big guns they were dragging behind them.
"Yippee ki yay," he murmured and slid his finger over the firing button.
Heaven
Castiel looked around the empty throne chamber and walked out through the double doors, looking around at the wide, empty halls. Where were they all, he wondered?
The city of angels was a vast complex of mostly open-sided buildings, each with their own purpose, set on the varying levels of the folds and hillsides of a valley that wasn't a valley at all. In some respects, the city didn't exist. The plane was an elaborate construct with many co-existing levels, for all of its inhabitants. And it was a resting point, a place to receive peace and contentment before the call to return became irresistible. For the angels who watched over the worlds of their Father, it was a grand city, its pale, cool colours and gentle silences conducive to their work. For the souls of humanity, it was entirely different. Even the landscape between the individual boundaries was different.
He heard shouting ahead, echoing from the polished stone walls of the hall and began to run.
At the end of the hall, a colonnaded walkway led to another building and Cas slowed as he saw the flashes of light and heard the ring of metal on metal. From the end of the walkway and spilling down over the grassy slopes to either side, angels were fighting, wings raised and glowing, faces hard and angry, all beauty gone.
He drew his sword as Michael appeared on a stone terrace on the other side of the shallow valley. The archangel was dressed in armour, alabaster wings spread out to either side as he raised his sword and the Host behind him followed him like a flock of birds into the melee, blazing more brightly than stars in the diffused pearly light, a shout from massed throats filling the valley like a clap of thunder.
Plunging down the incline from the walkway, Cas recognised the rebels and felt his stride falter. Many there were those he'd expected to see, malcontents and those who'd spoken for Lucifer but had turned away before being cast down, the factions who had disapproved quietly of humanity's favour for millennia, but there were others he had not thought discontented, friends who had never hinted at the desire for violent treason. He swept through the outer skirmishes, and started as a hand fell onto his shoulder.
"Cas, impeccable timing, as usual," Balthazar's voice drawled behind him.
"What happened here?"
"Good question." The angel swung around and fought off an attack, looking back at Cas as his sword disappeared into the attacker's chest and light flooded out of the dying construct. "Camael has fled to the earthly plane. He stirred this lot up first, big speech about the natural order of the universe and the usual embellishments."
"Has Michael commanded you to remain?" Cas asked, ducking under a swinging sword and twisting around to drive his own upward under the ribcage and into the heart. He turned away from the blinding burst of light and looked at Balthazar.
"No," Balthazar allowed warily.
"Can you get to the Watchers, take them to where the humans are fighting?"
"Why?" The angel drove his sword backwards in a single, smooth action, shifting to one side as the angel behind him fell to the ground, his construct solidifying as the light poured out.
"They need help and Michael may not provide any," Cas told him. "But I must stay and ask. Kokabiel is trapped. If his brothers can free him, the demons will be forced to leave their vessels."
Balthazar looked at him steadily for a moment, then nodded abruptly. Cas turned away from the empty spot where the angel had stood and swung his sword, cutting down the angel in front of him.
Hell
Sam opened his eyes. A part of him was aware that they weren't really open, that here, in this place of shifting colour and light, he had no eyes. Habits of a lifetime died hard.
You have completed the trials.
The words surrounded him and penetrated him, wrapped in a feeling of contentment and satisfaction.
Where am I?
On the threshold of life and death, between the worlds.
Am I dead?
Clinically.
The feeling changed subtly to a gentle amusement and he blinked.
I haven't closed the gates.
No.
Sam waited, unsure of what feeling had accompanied the quiet agreement.
Have I failed?
No.
The light flickered around him, brightening slowly. He realised disorientedly that he couldn't see himself, no hands or arms where he expected them to be, no body or weight or responding sense of anything surrounding him. He wondered distractedly how he was perceiving the light.
The same way you perceive my intent.
The gentle amusement returned.
You have given up your life to close the gates. You are purified in soul and in body. You could leave your mortal existence. Choose a path of peace everlasting.
I can't leave them to die.
All things die.
In their right time, Sam argued, feeling a rush of uneasiness at the lack of feeling in the words.
Do you know their right time, Sam Winchester?
Fragments of memory slipped through his mind. Images and sounds and feelings. He recognised them but he couldn't find a connection to them, a feeling to go with them. They made him feel sad.
Are we just an experiment to you?
No.
I want to finish what I started.
The amusement vanished and Sam was cocooned in a vast sensation of warmth and approval, of contentment and certainty.
Sam opened his eyes and threw an arm over his face at the brightness that flooded them, glimpsing the shock on the priest's face as he struggled to sit up.
"Sam?"
"Yeah –" he croaked, mouth and throat desert-dry, his tongue too big. "Water?"
He felt the small flask pressed into his palm and tipped it into his mouth, the trickle of tepid holy water relieving the thickness.
"You were dead."
Lowering his arm, Sam squinted at the man beside him. "I was?"
"For fifteen minutes," Father McConnaughey confirmed worriedly, staring at his face. "What do you remember?"
Sam's brow wrinkled as he tried to answer that. "I remember talking to you, confessing. I remember the pain was gone, from everywhere."
"Do you remember saying the spell?"
He thought for a moment then shook his head. "No, blanked out that bit."
"You said the spell and went into convulsions, Sam," the priest said slowly. "Then you were gone."
The two men looked at each other for a moment, both considering the implications of that, then Sam pushed it aside as he rolled onto his knees.
"I have to close the gates."
"Do you know how?" Father McConnaughey climbed stiffly to his feet.
Sam looked at him, a slight smile lifting one side of his mouth. "Yeah, I do. Don't ask me how."
"I can manage that." The priest looked around the level.
"You need to get out of here," Sam told him, glancing around as well. "I don't know how long there'll be to get clear when they start closing."
"Not without you, Sam," Father McConnaughey said firmly.
Sam smiled a little at the tone. "This is the easy part, Father. I'll be fine, but I can't start while you're in here."
Golden, Colorado
"We're out," Elias' voice said in Dean's ear and he lowered the business end of the launcher, looking at the road through the rising smoke and flames that filled the shallow cutting.
On the other side of the interstate, Herb and Win had confined themselves to hitting the ranks of the dead, and from one side to the other, corpses were piled deep, blocking the road completely, more of the Grigori's soldiers dying as they pulled aside the bodies. It'd left him free to concentrate on what was behind the foot soldiers, the lines of vehicles that carried weapons and ammunition, judging by the spectacular explosions when he'd hit them, and behind those, the armoured vehicles. He'd taken out six tanks before the cumbersome and slow machines had managed to turn around and inch their way back up the road to the bend that would give them cover. The last one had been a lucky hit as it'd disappeared around the corner.
"Let's go." He dropped the heavy weapon on the ground and Elias looked up at him.
"Leave or take?"
"Leave," Dean said, rolling his shoulder and picking up the black canvas gear bag that held a couple of rifles, Franklin's carefully engraved ammo and several mines. "We're gonna have company any minute."
As the trucks and tanks had vaporised in fireballs, he'd seen the second wave of the army's infantry running down toward them. Not corpses, he'd realised, seeing the healthy skin, the smooth co-ordination of their limbs. They would be climbing the sides of the cutting, looking to flank or box them in. The back of his neck was prickling furiously with instinctive alarms and he tossed Elias a rifle, pulled out his own and slung the bag over his shoulder, walking fast through the thick trees east and north to avoid any possible entanglements.
Through the sensitive ear-piece he could hear Herb and Win's low muttered conversation as they abandoned their vantage point and started down, angling further south.
The crackle of the undergrowth, behind and below them, gave him warning. He stopped, hearing Elias freeze to his right, sinking slowly down beside the trunk of a tree as the snap of a branch sounded a little higher.
They were maybe two miles from the vehicles Franklin had left for them, down at the end of the junction, and in between was a wooded saddle and an open valley. Outrunning the demons who were creeping across the slopes behind them wasn't going to be option, he thought. A sideways glance at Elias confirmed that as the auburn-haired hunter rolled his eyes. He made a short chopping gesture and Elias nodded, shifting silently around the thick stand of bracken and moving doubled-over between the trees. Rising slowly, Dean leaned out from behind the trunk, scanning the close woods for any sign of movement. He edged past the trunk, ducking and moving carefully across the steeper ground.
"Ready." The word was little more than a breath in his ear and he straightened, running across and down, swinging the rifle through the clumps of bushes and letting his feet thud over the ground.
Behind them, the woods erupted with movement and Dean ducked and dropped as he heard the demons racing toward them, from both higher and lower on the slope, converging where he'd started. He lifted the rifle, angling it back and both hunters fired at the same time as the vessels came into view.
The cross-fire was vicious, the guns on automatic sending a hailstorm of bullets through the trees, ripping apart the vegetation and the possessed running through it indiscriminately. The continuous loud chatter was barely muffled by the woods as they emptied their clips and reloaded. Further down and much closer, he heard a rustle and swung around, the M60 cutting through the intervening saplings and shrubs, hearing the thuds of bodies as the bullets found their marks.
The silence was inordinately loud when Dean lifted his finger and the gunfire ceased. He just could see Elias' head through the undergrowth up slope, knowing the older hunter was listening as hard as he was. After two minutes, he got to his feet.
"Grouped tight?" Elias asked, voice still a whisper.
"Looks like." Dean looked around. "Two miles to the cars, let's go."
They could see the line of Franklin's force, bunched tight along the interstate and heading east, their lights fading against the paling sky ahead of them. Dean accelerated a little, swerving to avoid a deep crack across the seamed concrete and glancing at the mirror, seeing Win take the same line as she kept the Jeep barrelling along behind them.
"What the hell is that?" Elias said, and he followed the man's gaze.
Along the eastern horizon, growing and more obvious as the sky lightened, a long line of pale dust cloud was churning across the plain. He flicked an involuntary glance to the north, frowning as he saw the deeper, darker line of cloud there.
"No idea," he told the hunter, his foot going down again, the sturdy truck bouncing on its stiff suspension as he looked for lines of least resistance and problems along the road.
They hit the flat plain a few minute later, and the truck surged forward. The pale cloud had grown in that short amount of time, in the still air it seemed to hang above the flat ground, glinting as the first rays of sun crested the horizon and lit it from behind.
Byers, Colorado
Twenty miles east of Aurora, the interstate turned south-east and the 36 joined it. Dean eased back as they saw Franklin's troops spread out along the two sides of the intersection, forming long lines to either side of the county highway.
The truck and Jeep pulled in between the parked vehicles and stopped along the edge of the road, narrowly avoiding the constant stream of men and machinery as they dug trenches, set up tents behind the line of vehicles and moved weapons to the hastily built embankments along the western edge of the interstate.
Dean got out of the truck and saw Franklin standing by the edge of the road, the stocky ex-soldier staring at the cloud that was getting closer, one arm shading his eyes.
"What is it?" he asked, walking up behind him.
Franklin half-turned, eyes crinkling and mouth lifting slightly. "You don't recognise the style, Dean?"
Dean frowned, looking at the cloud.
"That's Boze, son, with everyone he could grab and tanks and enough armament to sink a battleship," Franklin said quietly, a chuckle in his voice. "Glad to see you made it out. How much time you buy with that stunt?"
"A couple of hours, maybe," Dean said dryly. "We took out some of their artillery."
"Good."
"How many?" Dean looked back at the cloud, able to make out the lead vehicles now through the sunlit dust storm.
"Twenty-five hundred, he said," Franklin said, dropping his arm and turning to him. "We'll dig in here, check the tanks behind us and blow the crap out of the road."
Looking past him to the vehicles that were spread across the eastern line of plain, Dean asked, "This a suicide mission for these people, Frank?"
For a moment, Franklin didn't answer, his eyelids drooping half-closed as he considered the younger man in front of him.
"Fighting for your home? For your family and your life?" he asked quietly. "No. Not a suicide mission. No more than any other war this planet has ever seen."
Dean nodded, his mouth thinning out slightly.
Boze looked back down the road as the long, long line of vehicles went past him, pulling out and circling around to form a defensive line almost two miles across. The tanks and artillery trailers were positioned behind the lines, spaced evenly in a diamond pattern to accommodate the estimated range.
He looked at Dean and grinned. "Right on time, eh?"
Dean glanced up, his gaze moving past the big man and the vehicles still passing them to the horizon. "Who're they?"
Boze's grin got wider. "Got a call from Bobby a day ago. Seems like the Kansas boys decided to join us after all."
"What?"
"You heard me," the hunter said, slapping a meaty hand on his shoulder. "They're your people."
He looked at the cars, trucks and carriers getting closer, coated with the thin, pale dust of the plain, hundreds of them heading straight for them. Franklin, he thought uneasily, they're here for Franklin. Or Elias. Or maybe Kelly. Not for him. Not to follow him.
"Who's leading them?" he asked Boze, turning away from the sight.
"Drew Ryan and Russ Lambert, Bobby said."
"The teacher?" Dean asked, his voice rising a little.
The hunter shrugged. "I guess."
"Dean!"
They turned to see Rufus striding toward them, his face hard. "They're coming."
The sun was well above the horizon, the air close and still as Dean lay on top of the embankment, glasses pressed hard against his face.
A little over a mile distant, spread out from north to south along the county road that ran under the interstate, the demon army waited. Dean moved the binoculars slowly, scanning the placement of their remaining tanks and artillery, his mind calculating and considering advantage and disadvantage automatically, a simple tactical computer his father had given him with night after night of war stories instead of fairy-tales for bedtime.
The enemy were a little higher, and both sides were well within range of each other's armaments. No advantage there. There were a little under six thousand, at Franklin's best guesstimate, on the other side. With the thousand that had driven west from Kansas, they had almost thirty-six hundred ranged along the gently rising ground to the north of what had been the small community of Byers, a natural defence in front of them, in the form of the small river that ran north-south between the town and the road. It would give them the height advantage if the demon-possessed infantry came at them. The other side of the river was mined, and the cracked interstate had also been mined.
Silence hung over the small valley.
"What are they waiting for?" Rufus asked, his voice low and strained.
Dean adjusted the focus as he saw the unmistakable figures of the fallen angels near one of the trucks.
"For the archdemon, I think," he answered absently, lifting a hand to press the throat mike a little more firmly against his neck. "Franklin, take out the overpass."
"Affirmative."
Rufus turned his head to look west as four of the twenty tanks behind them boomed, spouting fire from the smooth bore hundred-and-twenty millimetre guns. The shells arced gracefully over the ground in between, striking the thick concrete pillars that supported the big road precisely, sends fragments of concrete and steel outward in vicious circles and billowing clouds of dust and flame in every direction surrounding the targets. Dean's mouth quirked to one side as he watched the army scatter and run from the destructive force, three vehicles blown aside from the concussive force, rolling over the infantry that had been too close to them.
"INCOMING!"
He scrambled backwards down the bank, one hand reaching to grab Rufus' arm as the older hunter followed, the distinctive whistling noise filling the air above them as the shell rocketed overhead. The aim was a little off, Dean thought, twisting around to lie on his back and watch the hit, missing the tank that sat behind a heavy earthen berm, but rocking it sideways as the missile hit the ground beside it.
"Give 'em everything," Dean said, and heard Franklin's humourless laugh as the tanks and mounted guns returned fire, a fusillade of shrieking missiles arcing overhead and a cannonade of explosions along the edge of the narrow road.
"Got their positioning right," Franklin's voice said in his ear as he scrambled back up the bank to see the damage.
"Highest ground facing us," Dean said shortly, the glasses swinging as he scanned the line of fires and deep craters that marked the side of the rise. "Returning fire! Everybody down!"
It was a mug's game, throwing explosives at each other, he thought as he rolled fast down to the bottom of the trench, arms covering the back of his head. But they only needed a few minutes to convince the Grigori that they were going to follow standard battle procedures.
The sun disappeared and he twisted sharply around, staring up as the leading edge of black, roiling cloud passed overhead. There was a scream, somewhere close and he dragged the rifle from beneath him, eyes narrowing at the barely-seen shine and crackle that swept over him. The barrel swung up and his finger was already on the trigger, spraying a short burst into the hellish apparitions that shrieked and dove in the darkening air, almost but not quite drowning out another sound, a distant rumble that kept getting louder and louder, rising in pitch.
Hell
Sam watched the priest cross to the doorway and slip out of the widening gap. The perpetual wind that blew over and through the levels lifted his hair, and he turned into it, nose wrinkling involuntarily at the acrid stench it carried. His fingers closed lightly around the hilt of the sword, and he looked at the broken shells of the gates that led down to the second level, picking his way across toward them.
The spell lay quiescent in his mind, as familiar to him as the features of his brother's face, or his own. He didn't question that familiarity or the knowledge of what would happen when he spoke it, accepting that in between the moment of his dying and the instant he'd awoken, something had happened. Something that had left a residue, a lightness and bright energy inside of him that fizzed along his nerve endings and brought a deep, welling feeling of contentment to his heart.
The anger had gone. Completely. Looking inward, searching himself for any signs of anxiety or resentment, fear or vengeance, he was a little astonished and a lot relieved to find none of them. What would happen would happen, and the thought didn't feel fatalistic, it felt certain and full of hope that he would complete his task. And that he would see his brother again.
He felt the evil miasma before he saw the movement in the shadows, felt the thin, directionless wind, filled with the bitter bite of cold metal and the flutters of mental fingers over his skin, through his hair.
The archdemon walked out of the shadows between the levels, the thin flat light glinting from the black metal blade he carried, it's long, curved shape almost sweeping the ground.
"Baal," Sam said, almost unaware he'd spoken.
The demon hesitated at the threshold, torn and crumbling black robe shivering in the constant zephyrs that swirled around the pitted rock pinnacles.
"Human."
The voice was as rawly reft as the encompassing shroud of the demon, as if it came through a throat that hung in pieces. Sam lifted the sword in his hand, and the blade erupted into flame, silver and gold, the light painting his skin and reflecting in miniature against his pupils.
Nine there were, Jerome's voice said softly in Sam's head. Then three, Baraquiel added. Now there were two left. Baal and Belial. And Belial was on the earthly plane.
He'd never felt as peculiarly graceful as he did now, never felt muscle and sinew and nerve work together like a symphony of intent. The demon's sword slashed in a whining downward arc and he stepped aside, the fire-wreathed blade meeting it and the demon staggering back at the force of the blow, twisting away as the silver and gold sword slid upward toward the hood.
Flexing his hand, Sam felt a rush of power surging through him as he stalked after Baal, a strength that was, at once, titanium strong and feather light. He flicked his arm forward and the tip of Lucifer's blade caught the edge of the archdemon's cowl, tossing it back. The demon hissed as the pewter-coloured light touched its skull, black bone gleaming in the curved arch of brow, thin scraps of what might have been flesh hanging from the edge of the high, sharp cheekbone. The light was swallowed by the empty eye-sockets and Sam swung the sword as the demon stumbled back, watching the flames shoot out and reach for it.
"No!"
The sepulchral voice was filled with disbelief. Sam ignored it, lengthening his stride and half-jumping over the pool of sulphuric acid between them, capturing the lower half of the hilt in his other hand as he drove the demon backward, slashing two-handed, the sword almost giving in his hands so that he felt no impact jar when it met the other sword. The black blade was dimming, he realised gradually, each time it met the edge of the sword in his hand. And the demon's strength was failing as well. He pressed forward again, his face expressionless and cold, his strength boundless and infinite, the flashing silver blade chopping and slicing closer and closer to the demon.
Baal stopped at the cliff wall and lunged forward, and his sword's blade shattered as Sam slammed into it, sweeping it aside. When the archdemon dropped the hilt, Sam turned, and kept turning and the silver blade sang through the air, barely slowing as it passed through the demon's neck and the head bounced back against the black rock.
Standing still over the crumpled body, he felt a warmth infuse him, that sense of certainty returning strongly. Time to end it, he thought, drawing in a deep breath and releasing it. Once and for all.
He recited the spell, his voice ringing out against the cliffs, and the pools of sulphur began to burn and boil in their rocky pools, the ground vibrating then trembling. Turning to look around, Sam saw the huge obsidian gates fall from their pintles, smashing on the ground, saw a deepening red in the depths of one of the yellowish pools near him.
He stepped back from the cliff as rock cracked and fell, the trembling become a roller, the ground lifting and falling under his feet.
Oh … shit.
He swung around, seeing the far ridges that marked the boundary of the first level with the join between the planes and he started to run, sliding the sword back through his belt, jumping as the acid of the pools spat and geysered into the air, lengthening his stride and forcing himself to go faster.
The gates were closing, he thought, his lungs pumping like bellows, the foul air burning his throat and mouth and nose. He had to get to one before they all locked, or he was going to be a world of trouble.