Chapter 4 The Word of God on Demons
Palm Motel, Dickinson, North Dakota.
The room was partially lit by the streetlights outside, coming through the open curtains, and partially by the bathroom light, shining through the doorway on the other side. In the centre, where Sam sat on his bed, and Dean sat on the floor, leaning back against the foot of his, it was dim. It might have made it easier to talk about the things that were important, if there weren't so many things that couldn't be talked about at all, Sam thought.
"Listen, I know this is going to sound crazy to you, I don't even necessarily need you to understand. But ... you need to know. I didn't just drop out, Dean. I found something," he said, looking at the back of his brother's head. "Something I've ... something I haven't had since Jess – something that was only a promise with Jess. But it's real for me now."
Dean looked down at the carpet. "Yeah, what was her name?"
"Amelia," Sam said. He couldn't see Dean's face. Could hear the reluctance in his voice, though. A reluctance to talk about something that had nothing to do with their world.
"So, how'd it happen?"
"I hit a dog," he said, wondering how far the admission would derail the conversation. Did he want to derail it, he wondered?
Dean turned fast and pointed at him. "I knew I smelled dog." The words came out through clenched teeth and Sam sighed.
"And I knew you'd throw a bitch fit," he said.
"Hey, the rules are simple, Sam," Dean snapped back. "You don't take a joint from a guy named Don, and there's no dogs in the car!"
"Do you want to know what happened or do you want to bitch about car?"
Dean looked at him. "Knock yourself out."
"Yeah, there's an invitation to share what happened with you," Sam snorted sourly. He watched Dean turn away. "You don't really give a shit, Dean."
His brother was silent and he drew in a deep breath. "All right, what about you?"
"What about me?"
"Look at you. You've still got that look. You're shaky. You're on edge," Sam said, eyes narrowing as he saw Dean's back stiffen again. "What was it like?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Dean shook his head.
"Try me," Sam said. He was surprised when, after a moment, his brother did try.
"It was bloody," he said quietly. "Messy."
Sam saw him become still, the restlessness settling as he looked inside, remembering. "Thirty-one flavours of bottom-dwelling nasties. Hell, most days felt like three hundred and sixty degree combat."
"But there was something about being there. It felt … pure," he added, much more quietly.
Sam watched him as he fell silent, completely still. Looking back, he thought. Into god knew what kind of hell hole. Three hundred and sixty degree combat. It explained why Dean's reflexes were faster, why it felt like hugging a statue of stone, instead of someone flesh and blood. It explained the twitchiness he could see almost all of the time, the feeling that maybe Dean couldn't sleep, couldn't get used to the idea of sleeping.
It explained the hardness and the impatience with any choice Sam had made that wasn't related to hunting. It didn't explain why his brother hadn't understood those choices though.
Centreville, Michigan
The room was small and bland and anonymous, despite the posters and photos taped and pinned to the walls. One of the girls was sitting in a chair near the bunkbed/desk, laptop on her knees. Channing Ngo, Kevin's girl, stood at the end of the desk, arms folded across her chest, looking at them.
Dean shifted a little, the tight collar and close fit of the suit aggravating the irritation he was trying to keep locked down as he listened to them.
"The last time I saw Kevin was, like, a year ago," Channing said matter-of-factly, looking from Sam to Dean and back to Sam.
"When he disappeared?" Sam asked.
"Mm-hmm." She nodded, screwing up her face at the memory. "He stole his mother's car because he thought he was on a mission from God or something?"
Sam glanced at Dean.
"It was crazy," she added, with a shrug.
"Shut up!" The roommate said, lifting her head to look at them as Channing turned to her. "My friend Adam – who got addicted to Adderall but got a perfs on his SATs, so it was totally worth it – same thing."
"Shut up!" Channing said, rolling her eyes. She looked back at the Winchesters.
"Serious. Mission from God," the roommate added, oblivious.
Sam cleared his throat. "Look, Channing, we know Kevin was here."
"No. He wasn't," she stated flatly.
"And we understand if you're trying to protect him, but," he continued, rolling over her protest, over the dramatised eye roll. "Nobody can protect Kevin better than we can."
"I hate Kevin. I wouldn't protect him," she said disdainfully, staring at him.
Dean frowned at her. "I thought you two had a thing?"
She made a face at him. "Yeah, when he was going to Princeton."
"Wow," Dean said, brows rising as he took that in, realising that Kevin's perfect student life hadn't been as perfect as the kid'd made out. Of course, compared to being a prophet and hunted by demons, it probably looked pretty good anyway. "Just like that?"
Channing glanced over her shoulder at the roommate, who nodded. "Yeah."
She looked back at them, smiling smugly. "Mm-hmm."
They walked through the pleasantly manicured and leafy green campus, conspicuous in suits and ties, dodging skateboarders and students.
"So why would Kevin come sniffing around here if not to see her?" Dean asked, his eyes moving ceaselessly around them, looking at every student he could see, assessing, dismissing.
"No idea. Maybe we should split up, ask around, see if anybody's seen him?"
"Yeah, Asian kid, yea high, at a university. That should be easy," Dean said mockingly. Sam shrugged.
"Any other ideas, happy to hear 'em."
In the cramped dorm room, Channing sat at her desk, rummaging in her open bag. Behind her, her roommate glanced over and straightened slightly in her chair.
"Okay. Are you ready to forget all about what's-his-name? Okay, this guy's name is Kyle, he's Jewish, um, I'm pretty sure he has an Asian thing. Perfs, right?" She glanced at Channing's back then looked back at the screen on her lap.
"Shut up, bitch," Channing snapped, the chair swinging around as she got up, an engraved bronze bowl in one hand, a small wide-bladed knife in the other. She strode across the room to the roommate.
"What?" The girl looked at the knife, her gaze flicking up to the black-filled eye sockets of her former friend, unable to comprehend either.
The knife slashed from right to left, separating skin, cartilage, muscle and tendon. Channing gripped the girl's head firmly as blood spurted from the carotid artery into the bowl, filling it with surprising speed. She pushed the girl out of the chair when she had enough.
Sweet Lucifer, she thought, looking down at the girl as she bled out all over the floor, she'd thought teenagers were bad in the fifteen hundreds.
"Inferni clamavi ad te regem sermonos meos," she intoned over the bowl and the blood began to bubble, then boil as the connection to her master was made.
"The Prophet still has not yet shown his face to me. But you should know Dean Winchester is back."
Sam looked down at the laptop screen, then up as he heard the bark of a dog. It hadn't sounded anything like Riot's but it brought up what he'd been trying hard not to think about. Dean had been right about his responsibility to Kevin. About their responsibility to Kevin. He couldn't leave now. And the longer it took to find Kevin, the more Amelia would be hurting, he knew. The harder it would be for her to maintain the fragile trust that she'd been building in him, to be there, to stay. Not to leave. Not to die. The other thought, the one he tried to keep from thinking about, pushed in too. The longer he took here, the more likely it was that she would see the mistake she'd made with him and realise that her real second chance had come with the return of her husband.
He chewed on the corner of his lip uneasily. How long could it take to find the kid?
The answer was obvious but he didn't want to know it. He looked up as Dean sat down opposite him.
"Don't judge me. I got bupkis," his brother said tiredly, throwing his hands in the air.
"Well ..." He looked up as the waitress came up to the table and gave him a beaming smile.
"And here you go," she said, setting a burger and fries down beside him.
"Ah, thank you," Sam said, pushing the plate across the table to his brother.
"Sweet mother of God," Dean said reverently, looking down at the plate. "It's for me? Seriously?"
Sam's brow creased slightly at Dean's uncertain expression. He nodded dismissively and looked back at the screen. "Check this out. So, I went through campus security archives around the time Kevin should have been here."
Dean unwrapped the burger and took a bite, eyelids fluttering shut as the ambrosial mixture of tastes filled his mouth.
"Anyone look familiar?" Sam asked, turning the laptop with a freeze-frame of Kevin on the screen around to face Dean.
"Dude."
Dean's eyes snapped open, looking at him.
"It's a burger," Sam pointed out mildly.
"It's a treasure," Dean corrected him, still chewing. "All right, so, what, Kevin comes all the way to campus and doesn't see his girlfriend?"
"I don't know... but I went to the computer lab and found the computer he was on."
"And?" Dean took another bite. The burger was better than good. It was unbelievable. It was moist yet firm, tangy yet rich. The bread roll was crunchy on the outside, yet as soft as cloud on the inside. The way the lettuce and tomato and onion provided the contrasts to the pattie, and all of it …
Sam looked at him, seeing his attention drifting off, and started talking – fast. "And I found the website he was visiting, found his account username, hacked in to the website, found when else this username logged in, and then I reverse-tracked the IP address back to the original user, Kevin, who has apparently been using the same wireless router for the past two months."
… Dean lost track of his thoughts on the burger as Sam hammered the information at him. He looked at his brother dryly.
"That is ... spectacular work. Any chance I can get that in English?" He ate a fry, swallowing the mass of food down hard.
"Yeah. I think he's in Iowa – at a coffee shop," Sam said, swivelling the laptop around again. It was good to see that Dean's appetite – and food appreciation – hadn't been marred by the past year, he thought. It was going to take time to find Kevin, no matter which way he looked at it and no matter how hard he tried to hide that fact from himself. And, he recognised, a little bleakly, seeing the way his brother was right now, he didn't feel exactly easy leaving him either.
Fairfield, Iowa
Sam woke abruptly at the faint noise. He looked around the motel room and saw Dean standing by the window.
"Man, go back to bed. You gotta get some sleep."
Dean turned his head slightly and looked back outside. Sam rolled onto his side, pulling the covers back and swinging his legs to the floor.
"What is it?"
"Nothing."
"Bullshit," Sam said, running his fingers over his head. "Don't lie, not now, not after … everything."
For a long time, Dean stood there, and Sam didn't think he was going to answer. Then he turned around, and started to pace the room restlessly.
"I don't sleep great – yet," he said, glancing at his brother as he passed him. "Didn't have to down there, and you couldn't, not really. You could rest a bit, but it wasn't safe to stay in one spot too long, Sammy."
"What do you mean?" Sam stared at him. "You didn't sleep at all for a year?"
Dean shook his head. "It wasn't like that. There was … something there, I can't explain it."
He stopped in the middle of the room. "I didn't have to eat either. That was weird."
And that explained the burger reaction, Sam thought. "So you've been moving, hunting, fighting, literally non-stop … for a year?"
"Yeah." He looked at the window and walked back to it. "Felt like longer."
Sam couldn't raise a smile at the joke and Dean looked away. Sam looked at him, wondering how long it would take before that hair-trigger tension would dissolve. Would it ever dissolve? He thought it might, maybe. One day.
"How is it – I mean, to be back here, where that's, uh, that's not needed so much?"
"I don't know," Dean shrugged. "Every noise, every flicker of shadow or light. I can't shut it off."
"You can't keep going like this," Sam said. "You'll burn out."
Dean laughed softly. "The last year didn't burn me out. This won't."
It will, bro, you just won't notice until it's too goddamned late. He thought of the speed of Dean's attack in the cabin. Everything had a price. Sometimes you didn't see it until it was too late. Sometimes the price was a lot higher than you were prepared to pay. Of all people, he thought that Dean knew that.
It felt pure, his brother had said. He wanted to ask what Dean had meant by that. Pure in what sense, exactly. Kill or be killed? That was pure, in its own way. It wasn't possible here, in the real world though.
He got up and pulled the salt canister from his bag, popping the lid as he walked to the window. He tipped a line along the window ledge and then another across the threshold of the room's front door.
"Get some sleep, Dean. We're okay now," he said, putting the lid back on. "We'll be safe until morning."
Dean looked at the salt lines and nodded slowly, walking to the bed and lying down on it. Sam watched as he closed his eyes, walking back to his bed. What the hell was going on in Dean's mind, he wondered? What had really happened to him?
The church was an old, simple frame building, clad in weatherboard, the paint peeling here and there. To one side, mature trees were planted thickly, screening and protecting it, leaving a narrow dirt yard between the woods and the building. On the other side, the ground dropped away to the road below.
Dean pulled up next to the trees and they got out, walking around the corner of the building to the steps that led to the front door. A plain timber railing formed a balustrade around the landing.
"A church? You sure this is right?" Dean asked Sam in a low voice as they approached the steps.
"Guy at the coffee shop swears he's seen Kevin ducking in here for the past few months," Sam said. They climbed the steps and stopped in front of the door. Sam tried the handle, then knocked. Dean pulled out his lockpicks and sorted through them.
"Kevin. It's Sam and Dean Winchester. Open up."
He leaned against the door, listening for a moment, then shook his head. Dean stepped forward, crouching a little in front of the door as he slid the torque wrench and pick into the lock and felt through the pins. The lock clicked a moment later and they opened the door.
Inside, the church was cool and shadowy, the evidence of neglect more apparent in the water marks and stains and scoured paintwork of the walls, the missing or broken panes in the windows. The vestibule was small and they moved cautiously through the next set of doors into the main room.
Kevin Tran fired at point blank range.
"Don't! Stop! Stop!" Dean yelled, holding his hands over his face as the heavy duty water rifle fired streams of liquid borax and saline over them. He lowered his hands as the spray stopped, spitting out the foul-tasting stuff that had gotten into his mouth and glowering at Kevin. "Not Leviathans. It's us."
"What the hell happened to you guys?" Kevin asked accusingly, the rifle still aimed at them.
Dean dropped his gaze, feeling the liquid dripping off his face and soaking through his jacket. "Cliff Notes? I went to Purgatory. Sam hit a dog."
Kevin stared at him. "For real?"
He glanced at him then wiped the borax from his face with his soaked sleeves.
"You want some towels?"
The main room long and narrow, fitfully lit by the stained glass windows. Over the walls and floor, sigils and wards and guards had been painted. Dean and Sam looked around, expressions veering from wariness to astonishment as they took in the protections that layered the place.
"Who taught you all this?" Dean asked, wiping his face and neck with Kevin's towel.
"I guess ... God." Kevin said, looking around as he walked down the aisle in front of them.
Sam stopped mid-stride, mouth open. "God taught you how to trap demons?"
Kevin turned around to face them. "Technically, yeah."
"Wait, wait, hold on. Crowley kidnapped you. I saw that," Sam said, eyes narrowed as he looked at Kevin. "But then you left a message saying you escaped. How?"
"Well ... it's kind of a long story."
Dean looked at Sam. "Got all day."
Kevin shrugged. "We were in the lab, then we were somewhere else. I didn't find out the name of the town – or city, or wherever it was. I don't even know how long I was there for. This demon just walked me into a warehouse and Crowley was in there, waiting."
"There was a tablet there, like the last one," he continued, eyes half-closed as he looked at the memory. It hadn't been so long ago. It felt like it had been a long time ago.
"Wait, there's another tablet? So another Word of God," Dean interrupted, glancing at Sam.
"Yes."
"How many Words of God are there?" he asked, affronted by the thought of more. Just the one had caused enough trouble. Kevin looked up at him disparagingly.
"I just became a Prophet, like, a year ago."
"Well, did this tablet have a name?" Sam asked.
Kevin looked at him. "Demons."
"What about demons?" Dean cut in.
Kevin remembered the tablet's contents, the traps and the warnings, the summonings and the incantations and the descriptions. "As far as I could tell ... everything."
"Crowley wanted me to find something specific, but he didn't want to lead me to it. Didn't want me to know what it was that was important to him," he looked at them, seeing that they understood that about the demon who had styled himself the King of Hell. "There was one thing that stood out, one thing that I thought he wouldn't know himself. So I told him I could see something about the Hell Gates."
"What about Hell Gates?" Sam's voice filled with worry.
"There's one in Wisconsin. The tablet told me how to open it. There were ingredients for a spell," he replied. "They got the ingredients and I followed the instructions."
"You showed the King of Hell how to open a Hell Gate?" Dean asked incredulously, his voice getting higher. "So that all the demons in Hell could come out all at the same time?"
Kevin looked at him scornfully. "What? No."
He turned away, walking down the room, a deeply satisfied smile filling his voice as well as lighting up his face. "I told Crowley I was opening a Hell Gate, but I was reading from another chapter – how to destroy demons."
Dean started to grin as he followed Kevin between the pews. "You son of a bitch."
Kevin turned around, the smile widening.
"Wait. Kevin? Where's the tablet now?" Sam asked.
The smile disappeared. "Safe."
"Safe where?" Sam pressed. No matter where the kid had hidden it, it wasn't safe. Nothing in their life had ever been safe.
"Hey. As long as it's safe, okay?" Dean cut in, a warning in the look he gave his brother. He turned back to Kevin. "You read anything else off the tablet before you stashed it?"
Kevin smiled wryly. "Only the stuff about closing the gates of Hell." He paused for effect then added. "Forever."
Dean blinked. Kevin had not just said what he'd thought he'd said. Had he? "Come again?"
"Banish all demons off the face of the Earth, lock them away forever," he confirmed, the small smile still playing around his mouth as he looked at Dean. "That could be important, right?"
The brothers exchanged a look.
"Closing the gates of Hell forever?" Dean asked, rolling the words around his mouth as he savoured them, savoured the thought of the earth demon-free, savoured the idea of Crowley, gone, locked down for good. "Yeeaah. Yeah, that could be important."
No more demons. Ever. He couldn't get his head around it. Like winning a hundred million dollar lottery, there was no way to deal with something that big, that final, all in one hit. But he wanted it. He wanted it so badly he could smell and taste and feel it, a white fire racing through his nervous system as powerful as a full-throttle orgasm.
He looked out over the railing, then turned to Sam as he moved up beside him. "Okay, if this kid is right, he's sitting on a bombshell. Hell, he is the bombshell."
Sam exhaled gustily, leaning on the railing and looking away.
"What?"
"That. I mean, there's no way that Kevin's getting out of this intact, is there?"
"Well, he's doing pretty well for himself so far." Dean glanced back at the church doors. He was impressed with Kevin, he had to admit it. For a total civilian, the kid had been resourceful, smart and courageous as hell to double-cross Crowley, get out with his hide intact, and stay out of the demon's clutches for a full year.
Sam nodded. "Yeah, he got out."
"And now he's in it," Dean said with certainty. "Whether he likes it or not."
Sam looked at him, a half-smile crossing his face and disappearing at the tone of Dean's voice. "So ... free will, that's only for you?"
Dean looked at him, the fizz in his blood dissolving at his brother's words. "And that's supposed to mean?"
"You fought against being dragged into the power plays of demons and angels, Dean. Doesn't he get that chance?"
Dean dragged in a breath. "Sam, we fought against it – we – and we never got out, never got clear. Not once."
Sam looked away. Dean stared at him, brows drawn together.
"I can't believe what I'm hearing. We have an opportunity to wipe the slate clean. We take Kevin to the tablet, he tells us the spell, we send every demon back to hell – forever. And you're not sure?"
It would take months, Sam thought. Maybe longer. He could feel the buzz of energy rising from his brother. Feel the hunter whetting his blade and testing the edge, lips drawn back from bared teeth, ready and willing to fight to the last breath, the last drop of blood. But under that, he could feel – he was sure he could feel something else – something that was manic and wild and could lose control in an eyeblink. And that scared the hell out of him.
Even with the candles, the church was dark at night, the single streetlight down the road below not reaching far enough to throw its light against the windows. Sam looked around, and saw Kevin sitting on a pew near the front. He walked down the aisle and sat down in the pew behind him.
"Kevin, I, uh ... I owe you an apology. Um ... look, when you disappeared and Dean disappeared, I ... needed to clear my head, and ... I'm thinking maybe you were one of the pieces that I should have been there to pick up." His face screwed up as he heard the words come out of his mouth. He sounded like a dick. "I'm sorry. Sorry I didn't come when you called. Sorry I wasn't around to help you."
"You've been a hunter since you were a kid, right?" Kevin asked, looking toward the altar.
"Yeah, mostly," Except for two years of freedom. Two years of normal. "Yeah."
"Ever since I realized – I accepted - that I was a prophet ... it's … just hard to believe this is actually my life." He exhaled softly.
Sam looked at him and thought that it was probably an understatement. No matter what you accepted, it was still a hard gig to get your head around the fact that supernatural creatures with powers that far outstripped your own, were hunting for you, gunning for you. Kevin had done extraordinarily well for someone with no background, no training. But then, Sam thought belatedly, he'd had God on his side.
"If we can do this, get the tablet, get you everything you need to close the gates of Hell, there's a world out there where nobody – not Crowley, no demon – is chasing you anymore," Sam said quietly. Kevin turned to look at him.
"I guess I just don't see how I get from here to there," he said with a slight shrug.
"I used to not be able to see it, either," Sam told him. "But there is a way."
After a moment, Kevin nodded. "Just give me five minutes."
Sam nodded, leaning back in the pew as Kevin got to his feet and walked out through the doorway at the nave end of the room.
In the shadows by the main door, Dean stopped and looked at his brother. Sam was staring at nothing, his shoulders hunched.
Dean turned to look at Sam, when he heard his brother's footsteps on the vestry floor behind him, one brow raised a little. "You give Kevin the big it'll-all-be-okay-one-day speech?"
Sam lifted a shoulder. "Seemed a better idea than the you'll-be-dead-one-day option."
His brother shook his head, looking down. "Anything wrong with giving people the straight story, Sam?"
"When you give me the 'straight story', Dean, you can give me a hard time for not doing it, how's that?" Sam straightened, crossing his arms.
Dean looked at him, eyes cold, face like stone, then walked past him, carrying the heavy gear bag into the church. Sam followed him slowly, wondering what why he was fighting his brother so hard on this. They'd both made choices they'd regretted. They'd both done things, suffered things that couldn't be fixed or corrected or atoned for.
The building trembled. They both looked down at the floor. On the window sills and cupboard ledges, the flames of the candles were shaking. The trembling increased, and plaster began to drop from the walls, smashing onto the painted floorboards. At the end of the room, Kevin came through the doors, hurrying down to them and Sam brushed Dean's shoulder, gesturing to the floor in front of them, the three of them watching the floorboards crack and lift, along a line. The line passed through the devil's trap that guarded the doors.
"We got company," Dean said, turning from the doors to the gear bag on the pew beside him. "Sam."
He pulled out the serrated knife, passing it to his brother, bone hilt first. Sam took it, and looked along the blade. It was a familiar knife. Ruby's knife. It didn't exactly feel like an old friend, but perhaps a companion in many wars. He looked back at Dean, eyes widening as he saw the weapon his brother had pulled from the bag.
Leaning toward him, he reached out and touched the chipped edge, seeing the fine red line appear as the razor sharp stone sliced effortlessly through the skin of his incautious fingertip. "What the hell is that?"
"It's Purgatory," Dean said, hefting the bone handle familiarly. They turned to stand together, shoulder to shoulder in the aisle, Kevin behind them. On the other side of the broken trap, the arched doors burst open, and two men stood there, eyes black.
"Dean Winchester," the taller man said slowly. "Back from Purgatory."
"Spanky, the demon," Dean quipped as Sam moved back to cover Kevin. Dean pointed the axe toward the demon. "Yeah, I heard about you. You're the one who uses too much teeth, right?"
The taller demon rushed him, hands outstretched, knocking stone to one side and crowding him against the pew. He broke the hold as the hands tightened around his throat, ramming the axe upward into the demon's jaw, forcing it back, swinging wide then jabbing close, the man's face softening under each blow as the bones cracked and fractured.
Fighting demons should be like riding a bicycle, Sam thought as he ducked the first wide-swinging haymaker and slashed upward with the knife. Unfortunately, it was too easy to forget their strength. He blocked the next blow and felt the demon's grip on him, then he was crashing into the wall, under a window, scrambling back to his feet as Kevin squirted a drink bottle full of holy water at the demon's face.
Dean felt a red tide rising in him, swinging the stone axe and feeling it bite deep into the side of the demon. The demon shrieked and turned, yanking the embedded blade from his grip, thrusting him backward as it pulled the axe from its abdomen, the stone clattering on the floor. Freeing himself from the broken remains of the pew he'd hit, he got in close and slammed his fist into the demon's face, hearing the satisfying crunch of bone on bone, feeling the nose disappear under the impact.
Sam rose behind the demon facing Kevin, wrapping his arm around the still-smoking throat and plunged Ruby's knife deep into the chest, holding on as the man convulsed, the demon inside of him lighting up in volcanic shades.
On the other side of the aisle, Dean drove the taller demon back, hearing the skull beneath its skin snap after the second king hit, his world narrowed to the enemy he faced and the need to put it down as fast as he could. He gripped the demon's coat, the material creaking as it bunched in his fists and he lifted, throwing the demon over his shoulder onto the table behind them, the table almost disintegrating under the force of the impact.
Kill.
His fist hit the face, the throat, slammed into the breastbone, repeatedly, his weight behind it.
Kill. Kill.
Somewhere, far down deep inside, he knew that if it had just been a man, he'd be beating a dead body now. But the demon's hands reached up, oblivious to the carnage of its vessel and he reared back too late, feeling them tighten around his windpipe, fingers scrabbling to get under those hands before they crushed his airway completely.
"Dean!" Sam twisted around, reversing Ruby's knife and swinging the hilt into his brother's outstretched hand. Dean's fingers closed tightly around it and he contracted the muscle and tendons of his throat, holding the demon's fingers at bay for a second as he drove it into the chest in front of him. The hands dropped away as the demon coruscated wildly inside the meatsuit.
He leaned back, his breathing ragged and painful and rolled onto his feet, straightening slowly, the knife held loosely now, blood dripping to the floor beside him.
"Hello, boys."
Dean turned around, already knowing the voice and who was standing insouciantly behind them.
Crowley stood in the doorway, Channing Ngo beside him, her eyes black across the sockets.
"Dean, you're looking ..." Crowley strolled down the aisle toward him, the demon-possessed girl following him. "Well, let's just say Purgatory didn't do you any favours." His gaze cut from side to side. "Where's your angel?"
"Ask your mother," Dean croaked, his voice rough from the demon's manhandling of his throat.
Crowley almost smiled. "There's that grade-school zip. Missed it. I really did." He glanced at Sam. "Moose. Still with the pork chops. I admire that."
Kevin stared at him. "Let Channing go."
"That's not Channing, Kevin," Dean said abruptly. "Not anymore."
Kevin looked at him uncertainly.
"What an awful thing to say to the boy. Of course it's Channing," Crowley said reprovingly. He looked at Kevin. "Kev. Last time we danced, you stole my tablet and killed my men. Tell you what. Come with me now, bygones. And I'll let the girl go back to ... What's-the-Point U."
"He's lying," Dean said, watching Crowley narrowly. "You won't get Channing back. She's probably dead already."
Crowley let out an exasperated sigh. "Will you please stop saying that?" He turned to the demon. "Let the girl speak."
He snapped his fingers and Channing's eyes cleared immediately. Confusion filled her face as she blinked and looked around, a tentative smile appearing when she saw Kevin.
"Kevin?"
"Channing?"
"What's going on?"
Kevin looked at Dean helplessly, then back to Channing. "There's a demon in you."
"What?!" Her eyes widened, and she took a step back, looking at Crowley.
"But it's going to be okay," Kevin said quickly. "I promise."
Dean sent a darkly disbelieving look at him. He ignored it, looking at her.
"I-I-I-I just – I can't," Crowley winced.
"No, no, wait," Kevin stammered, looking at Channing. Crowley snapped his fingers again and Channing's eyes filled with black.
"Okay. I'll do it," Kevin looked back at Crowley.
"Kevin," Sam warned him softly.
"Myself for the girl," Kevin continued, ignoring him.
Next to his brother, Dean swore inwardly. He wasn't about to let Kevin make that trade, or any trade with Crowley. Not now. Not ever.
"But this ends. All right? No fighting, no nothing. It ends," Kevin said, staring at Crowley.
"Can't let you do that, Kevin." Dean said quietly, looking at Crowley.
"Or what? You'll kill me?" Kevin turned to look at him. For once he had the high cards. He'd escaped Crowley once, he could do it again, and he wasn't going to sacrifice anyone to save his own skin. He looked back at Crowley. "I'll grab my stuff."
He turned and walked from the room, not looking at Sam or Dean as he passed them.
"Chin up, gentlemen. I'm a professional," Crowley said reassuringly.
"This ain't over by a long shot, Crowley," Dean promised.
"And as you can see, I'm quivering in anticipation of your next move, as usual," the demon said drolly, inspecting his fingernails. "But for now, let's call a deal a deal, and just get on with it, shall we?" He looked at the doorway Kevin had gone through. "Come on, Kevin. Chop, chop."
There was no answer from the rear of the church, and Dean wondered if Kevin had decided that those who fight and run away live to fight another day. Crowley clearly was thinking the same thing, his eyes narrowing as he listened for some sound from the back.
"Kevin?"
Crowley took a step forward, and Dean stepped forward as well, raising the serrated knife, Sam filling the gap behind him. Crowley's eyes narrowed and he snapped his fingers. In his hand, the blade of Ruby's knife glowed red hot, the heat penetrating the hilt.
Dean gasped, dropping the knife as it burned into his palm and along his fingers, looking down at it when the blade returned to its plain dark metal. Sam glanced down at the knife on the floor and back to Crowley.
"Really, boys." Crowley raised his brows disbelievingly at the foolhardiness and walked toward Sam, going past him and heading for the back of the church without another look at them, the demon in Channing following along behind him. "Kevin!"
They turned to watch him go, then Dean picked up the knife gingerly, looking at the hilt. There was no sign that the blade tang had ever been hot enough to burn. No charring on the hilt or oily gleam on the metal, the tell of tempered metal heated again.
Crowley pushed open the door to the sacristy impatiently to see Kevin standing in the middle of the room holding a cord.
"Kevin." The single word was filled with an aggravated disappointment.
Kevin looked back at him expressionlessly as he yanked on the cord and the long container held above the door was pulled forward against its pivot, dumping the full load of holy water over Crowley and the demon beside him.
"Sam, Dean, run!" Kevin yelled, turning and racing out the rear door of the church.
Dean and Sam bolted out the front, reaching the Impala at the same time as Kevin shot around the corner of the church and pulled open the back door. Dean started the engine and gunned it, flicking on the headlights and driving them out of the churchyard's gates to the road.
Crowley and Channing came out of the front door as the car barrelled down through the gates and Crowley wiped at his face with a handkerchief, the sting of the holy water irritating but nothing to the pain he knew the demon in Channing was feeling.
"Find another meatsuit," he said softly to it. A thick ribbon of charcoal smoke poured out of the girl's mouth, writhing and twisting into the night sky. Crowley looked down at the car as it passed the church on the road below, seeing Kevin and Sam looking up at him. He lifted his hand and pressed his fingers against his lips and Channing's head spun sharply to the left, her body falling to the landing limply. In the car below he saw Kevin's mouth open, then the car had passed, increasing its speed and Crowley lifted the handkerchief to his face again, watching the red taillights disappear.
It would take time to find the little twerp in the company of the boys, he thought. But he had time. Eons of it. And he would get the prophet and the tablet back. And then he would do what no other ruler of Hell had ever accomplished before him. Hell would rise on this plane. Demonkind would populate the lands and people … well, people would become an endangered species.
One day later. Galesburg, Illinois
Dean pulled the car into the gas station, stopping next to the pumps. He turned the engine off and his phone started to ring. Pulling it out, he glanced at the screen then lifted it to his ear.
"Hello? … wrong number," he said, hanging up and tucking the phone back into his pocket. "Automated jackass. All right, anybody want anything?"
"I'm good," Sam said quietly. Dean twisted around to look at Kevin, resting his arm along the back of the front seat. He glanced back at his brother.
Sam turned to look at Kevin, who was sitting silent and angry in the back seat. "Kevin? How you holding up?"
"Great. Just great, Sam. The King of Hell just snapped my girlfriend's neck. How about you?" he said tersely.
Sam looked at his brother. Dean saw the look and turned back to Kevin. He – they – didn't need a basketcase prophet riding with them on this job, just the biggest fucking job he'd ever had, to shut down the underworld under Crowley's nose. He was aware that there was nothing he could do about the way Kevin felt. You dealt with the guilt and grief as best you could and it took however long it took. But he could tell him how it was. He could tell him how it was gonna be.
"All right, listen to me," he said, his voice low and hard. "I'm sorry about your girlfriend, okay? I am. But the sooner you get this, the better. You're in it now, whether you like it or not. That means you do what you got to do." He could see Kevin's anger dissipate slightly under the brutal truth, the young man staring at him as if he'd never seen him before. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. And he admitted readily to himself that he didn't really care. Kevin had to toughen up or he'd be a liability. "I'm hitting the head."
He got out of the car and headed for the restrooms on the other side of the building.
Sam looked at Kevin apologetically. "He's kind of … focussed right now."
"He's fucking Rambo right now," Kevin retorted furiously, his bitterness returning in full force. "What does he know about putting someone you care about in danger?"
Sam tipped his head back and closed his eyes. "More than he wants to, Kevin. More than you would ever want to."
Kevin looked at him and felt the anger that his guilt had raised die back a little. "What do you mean?"
Sam shook his head. "Long story." He opened his eyes and turned around again. "Look, the delivery wasn't that great, but the message was valid. This is the road from here to there. When you deal with demons, there are always casualties and they're usually the people you never wanted anything to happen to, do you understand?"
"No."
"We can't keep people safe any more, Kevin," Sam said, unwillingly. Maybe Dean had had it right. Maybe the truth – as cold and brutal and unyielding as it was – was the only way to deal with what they were going to have to do. "From now on, we don't go near friends or family. We don't make new friends. We don't trust anyone. It's the way it is."
"Sounds like fun," Kevin looked out the window to the busy street beyond the station. "How long for?"
"For as long it takes," Sam said.
Dean glanced over his shoulder as he rounded the corner of the building and stopped on the other side of the concrete privacy divider next to the restrooms. He pulled out his phone and dialled the last number.
"There he is," Benny's soft drawl sounded close and familiar over the airwaves.
"How did you get a phone?" Dean asked peremptorily.
"Would you believe they sell these things in convenience stores now? A lot's changed in 50 years," Benny said, the smile evident in his voice.
"Must be a hell of a lot to take in."
He couldn't imagine how the vampire would do it, could do it. He'd only been down there for a year and he couldn't make the adjustment. Couldn't feel the freedom. Not yet, he thought, ignoring the voice that sometimes wondered if he ever would.
"Mostly it's the choices, you know? So many choices." The vampire's voice held a strange note, contented yet not.
"Yeah, I hear that. Listen, Benny, not to beat a dead horse. What we did down there is what we had to do. Now, I don't regret it for a second. But … you know, maybe until we both adjust, it's best we don't talk for a while."
"There it is." Benny's voice softened further, and Dean knew what he meant.
"One day at a time, just like we talked about, right?" he pressed, needing to hear the vampire's acknowledgement, needing it more than he'd realised. He didn't want to hear about the Louisiana vamp someone had taken down, the vamp that had thrown caution to the wind and had lost it, unable to deal with the world so changed.
"I think you had it right, cher," Benny said, the smile and contentment gone from his voice.
"What's that?" Dean asked.
"Purgatory was pure. I'm kind of wishin' I had appreciated it more. You know? Like you," he said, and Dean heard the wistfulness, the loneliness, now.
Like me, he thought, not knowing what to make of that. He'd loved the black and white picture until he'd realised that the picture hadn't been black and white, he'd made it that way, and all the shades of grey that he'd hated up here had been there as well, just better hidden under the flat pewter light and the instant decisions governing life and death.
It some ways, of course, it'd been pure. And in some ways he could still wish himself back there. Like now, for example. Kevin and the tablet. Guilt and shame and anger and the death of innocent people who were always in the wrong fucking place at the wrong fucking time. But it was a pipedream, that purity, in other ways. It worked fine so long as you never got out. And living down there would have destroyed him if he'd had to stay any longer.
He could still feel the handful of hair he'd held, as he'd watched his own knife tip slip beneath a man's face. The images and memories were locked down, but sometimes his body remembered things that he never allowed his mind to revisit. Sometimes he felt the warm gush of blood over the skin of his hands.
"Listen, you got an emergency, you call me, you understand?" he said, shunting those thoughts aside. He'd said it himself. He didn't regret it, but it didn't belong up here.
"I hear you," Benny said, the smile back in his voice. "You keep your nose clean, too, brother."
"Yeah," Dean said, closing the phone. He couldn't. Nothing was the way he'd thought it would be, when he'd been praying and fighting and struggling to find a way out. All those things he'd hung onto down there, had turned out to be illusions.
He leaned back against the concrete wall and closed his eyes. He remembered thinking about food and sleep and sex and … just everything, and he couldn't enjoy any of it, couldn't get near most of it. He'd thought that Sam … he couldn't understand what had happened with Sam and he couldn't ask about it, because he had a secret too. Hell, he had a truckload of secrets that he couldn't tell Sam, ever. He could already see doubt in his brother's eyes. He knew he wasn't hiding his reactions well – or at all, maybe.
He straightened up. He just needed time, he thought. Time to get used to things again. Time to forget about what happened. That was all. He was still hunting. He still had Sam. It was mostly good.