Ahh! 5 reviews! You people are truly amazing!
I'm in the middle of final exams right now, so when you guys get 5 reviews on this chapter **wink*wink** I might not update as soon as I'd like to. :( But, I'll do my best!
~Christianne
Nikki POV
I stood outside my house as the Impala peeled out of my driveway. The dust that was kicked up by the back wheels blew in my face.
Jee. Gonna miss you too Dean.
I guess I deserved it in one way or another.
After I dug a key out of my backpack, again, I pushed the door open, locking it behind me.
I turned around and let my backpack and duffle bag fall off my shoulder. They made echoing thumps in the foyer as they hit the floor.
Was this place always so empty?
I kicked off my shoes and headed upstairs, planning on taking a long, hot bath in my roomy claw-foot tub. As I walked up the stairs, I stopped. I squinted at the door behind the salt line, leaning over the banister and tapping my socked foot on the stairs.
I unlocked the door and stepped over the salt line and into the mess of a guest room.
This time, I felt something. This…this presence was around me. But it wasn't a present presence, as stupid as that may sound. It was like a foot print of the aura of the thing; calculated, controlled, stern, and, above all, powerful.
I shucked off my jacket, tossing it into the hall behind me as I walked to the center of the dimly lit room, gnawing on my lip as I swiched into my Wicca mind set.
"Ok…" I said out loud, looking around the room. "I don't know who you are, or what the hell you're doing in my house…But you messed up my dark room."
Silence.
"Now…I know I'm still kinda new to this whole magic thing, but I've been doing some serious damage lately." I paused. I'm not sure why, but I did. "So…I expect this place to be exactly how I left it by tomorrow morning, got that?
"I know a few things that could haul your ass back here, and a couple of hunters who I'm sure would be very interested in the thing that wormed it's way into a salt-walled, warded house." I waited a couple of seconds, then turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind me.
Just as I closed the door, I heard a semi-familiar sound, kind of like an eagle take off. Only bigger. A lot bigger.
I spun around and opened the door again.
"Nice work." I said, seeing the room put back together perfectly, down to the arrangements of the pillows on the king sized bed.
The tables I'd had my photo equipment on were folded up and leaning against the wall, the bottles of chemicals where now new and still sealed up, all lined up neatly against the wall.
Still cautious, I started going through the room, looking for my photos. I all but tore the room apart in the span of 10 minutes before I stood in the center and looked up as I talked. "What? Didn't like my pictures? C'mon! Give'um back!" I said loudly.
After waiting angrily for about a minute and a half, I huffed and left the room, slamming the door behind me.
Just as I suspected, I'd been replaced at CJ's. There were now three high schools kids who worked my shifts. I didn't really care, but I didn't like how Wendy was just being a complete bitch about me not being around much anymore.
We'd yelled at each other for a good ten minutes before I just gave up in trying to get her to understand that I wasn't the type of person to stay and screw in the same town I was born in all my life. She threw a plate at me (not that it came any were close to hitting me).
I was in the back of the dinner now, like I had been for the last three weeks, reading any of the books I hadn't already plowed through. Open to close, I was there, in the back, reading.
"Night Jeremy!" I called over my shoulder as I left. It was just before 10 on a Friday, if I stayed any later, I'd be in the crowd of drunks.
My walk home was relaxing. It always was. A two mile, flat trail through some of the most beautiful forests in the state. You could hear crickets and the leaves rustling if you stopped on the gravel.
I was about half way home when I heard it. It sounded like whispering. I stopped and tried to hear it better; distinguish where the sound was coming from.
"Hello?" I called out, putting a hand on my side, where my knife was.
When the whispering stopped, I walked quicker to my house, locking the door tightly behind me.
I woke up late, something odd for me. I'd always been an early riser, not sleeping much later that 8 or 9 in the morning. It was almost noon now.
Like I did every morning, I got up, padded lightly down three flights of stairs in my sleep shorts, tank top and a sweatshirt, turned on my coffee maker and went to the mailbox at the end of my mile-long drive way.
After pulling on my shoes, I quickly skipped to the end of my drive way, and pulled the handful of bills, letters and junk mail (Jeremy had been taking care of my mail while I was gone). I started my leisurely walk back to the house, but stopped about halfway down.
I was hearing something, in my head. Not through my ears, in my head; like I was remembering a song I'd heard.
It was singing, that much I knew. I couldn't understand it, but it was beautiful. One of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. I stood still on the drive way, letting the mail slip from my grasp.
It hit me a few seconds later that this wasn't normal, and spun around, looking for anyone or anything that could be doing this to me.
"Who's there?" I yelled, my voice slurring a little as the singing got louder. I wish I had my knife with me. Traces like this could be easily broken by intense physical pain, a slice across the arm sound bring me out of this.
I took off towards the house as fast as I could with the singing intensifying in my head.
I pushed my door open, leaving it like that as I stumbled up my steps, stopping a few times to focus on the task I was doing.
But the voices. I've never heard anything more beautiful, more calming, in my entire life. All I wanted to do was lay down on the steps, close my eyes and let the sweet, sweet music lul me to sleep like a lullaby.
Requiem lux corporis caelestis est fugere usque. Quies, filia ira Dei non plus diaboli. Dormite jam, carissima est, ne forte tibi non est. Dominus custodiat introitum tuum, domum ad somnum ne equites mundus. Sed ut via dies veniet tenebris dolor eget diam quietem.
It was the same verses over and over, but it didn't matter. Nothing had ever sounded so perfect.
I made it to my room and fumbled to get my knife.
Requiem lux corporis caelestis est fugere usque. Quies, filia ira Dei non plus diaboli.
I was sluggish, my eyes drooping as I shook the sheath off the knife and readied it over my arm. I tilted my head over my shoulder to get a mouthful of my sweatshirt hood to bite onto as I ran the blade of my knife over the inside of my arm.
I let out a yell, muffled by my sweatshirt, and let myself fall to sit against the foot of my bed.
Dormite jam, carissima est, ne forte tibi non est. Dominus custodiat introitum tuum, domum ad somnum ne equites mundus. Sed ut via dies veniet tenebris dolor eget diam quietem.
"…No." I groaned, not bothering to wipe the blood away. As the singing intensified, I got my phone out of the jeans I was wearing yesterday and struggled to dial Sam's number.
"It's Sam. Leave a message."
"Sam!" I said as urgently as I could, my head starting to spin from the singing. "Some-Something-i's wrong…" I slurred out before the singing was too much for me to take and I blacked out.
Omniscient POV
Sitting in the driver's seat of the car he'd just lifted, Sam plugged his dead phone into the jack in the car. He looked back at the road as his phone lit up and played a chime that he couldn't get rid of (it was part of the start-up sequence).
The next sound he heard was the beeping that signaled he had a voicemail. He glanced at his phone as he used his un-cast-encased hand to play the message and hold the phne to his ear.
"S-Sam…" A slurred, drowsy, unrecognizable voice said through the phone. It was a little hard for Sam to hear, there was a high pitched sound in the background, like what Nikki had made happen in the motel room a few weeks ago. The moment Nikki's name crossed Sam's mind, he slammed on the breaks, making the car come to a screeching halt. This was Nikki leaving him a message, sounding, well, sounding drugged.
"Some-Something-i's wrong…" Nikki murmured before she seemed to let out a long breath and so silent. The message was still playing, and Sam listened to the white noise over the line. He was about to take the phone away from his ear, when he heard something else.
"Non memini." He heard Nikki mumble, just before the lie went dead.
Sam sat in the stolen car for a moment, letting the message sink in. The time and date of on his phone said that it was left the morning they got to Rivergrove, right before the Croatoan incident; about three days ago.
Sam put his foot on the gas and started driving again, his good hand searching through the contacts on his phone. When he found the one he was looking for, he pressed Call and held his phone to his ear again.
"Damnit," he said under his breath as the call went to voice mail. "Hey, Jeremy. It's Sam Winchester. I got a call from Nik a few days ago, sounded bad. I was hoping you could swing by and make sure she was ok." He said, then hung up and called Nikki.
"We're sorry, the number you are calling has been disconnected. Please dial the number and try again." The automated voice said.
Cursing, Sam threw his phone onto the driver's seat and turned the car onto the highway. With any luck, he'd make it to Pennsylvania in a little under three days.
A day and a half later
Sam was exhausted. He was used to sitting through long road trips, but not driving them. Dean never let him drive the Impala, so he usually sat and dosed during the rides. He offhandedly thought how he owed Dean a stake or something.
Knowing the way to Nikki's estate (the place was too big to call a 'house'), he floored it through the empty streets, the breaks screeching as he stopped in front of the drive way.
Trees were uprooted and thrown across the road. There was an, at least four foot deep, ditch about 50 yards into the mile long drive. And another one 50 yards further out than that.
Unless Nikki had gotten way stronger in the last three weeks, someone—something—else did this.
After checking the clip in his gun, Sam started what he knew would be the very daunting task of getting to Nikki's front door.
Half-way to the door, Sam noticed something on the ground. Pausing to get a closer look, he knelt down and saw what looked like what was once a flyer or something. The paper had been wet, then dried in the sun, uneven on the gravel. A few feet away, more used-to-be-envelopes.
She went to get her mail…Walked out to the box, started back… Sam ran through a possible scenario in his head. Maybe she heard something…Dropped the mail and ran to the house.
A few minutes later, Sam had cleared the trees and ditches preventing him from driving up to the door. Speaking of the door, Sam stiffened and put a hand behind his back, taking his gun out as he walked up the steps to the open door.
Nudging it open, he walked into the foyer. There were some dried water marks on the marble floor by his feet, proving that it had in fact rained. Sam followed the dusty foot prints from the door to the steps, and up to the third floor.
They'd became harder to see by the second floor, and completely gone by the third, so Sam had to go room by room. It wasn't till he got to one of the farther rooms that he saw something that tested his well-developed and trained nerves; blood.
As he walked further into the room, he saw a pair of bare legs by the footboard of the bed, a pair of Converse on her (it was clearly a 'her') feet.
"Nikki," Sam said, sticking his gun in the waist band of his pants as he walked around to where Nikki was haphazardly laying. Her hands were bloody and her knife was lying nearby; within her reach. Her cellphone was the same.
"Nikki," Sam said gently, rolling the brunette on her back, carefully holding her neck as he did so. He quickly took her pulse, relieved when it was strong and steady. "Hey, Nikki!" He said, shaking her a little.
"Mmm," she sighed, groaning a little at the end and shifted, trying to roll back on her side.
"Nik!" Sam said, a little more urgently. This time, Nikki's eyes pinched tightly shut, her long, dark eyelashes brushing a scrunching against her cheek as she did so.
"Sam?" Nikki asked weakly, grumpy and groaning as she tried to roll off her left shoulder.
"Hey," Sam said, catching her shoulders and pushed her back down as she started to sit up. "Hey, just-just stay still, ok?" he asked, grabbing a discarded t-shirt off the ground and ripping a strip off.
"I got your message." Sam said, using the strips of t-shirt to wipe away and wrap up her arm. "I was sorta…in the middle of something, so I didn't get it until yesterday." Sam kept talking as Nikki let out soft whimpers and mumbles.
Once he'd wrapped her arm up, Sam sat back on his heels and tried to think about what to do next. Nikki looked absolutely exhausted, so he picked her up (easily, she didn't weigh that much) and put her in her bed. As he was pulling the fluffy down comforter over her, Nikki whimpered again and rolled onto her stomach before she contently sighed and snuggled into her bed. Sam chuckled slightly before covering her small frame with the soft blanket.
After making a quick trip to Nikki's well stocked kitchen for salt, Sam made a thick line over the doors and windows, just in case. He really hesitated to leave her again, but he needed some of his stuff from the car he boosted. Sam took a key hanging on a coat rack by the door, locking it behind him.
When he turned around, he stopped dead in his tracks. He blinked a few times, even rubbed his eyes with the heel of his good hand.
The ditches, trees, and other obstacles that made his trek to Nikki's front door way more difficult than it had to be; completely gone, and replaced with a wide gravel strip that lead right to his car. Taking his gun out, he walked calmly, but on high alert, to the car.
After driving it closer to the house, Sam grabbed his duffle bag and backpack out of the trunk and went back in the house. He lazily tossed his bags in the living room off the foyer, and sat on the large sectional in front of the TV. After plugging his phone in, he debated calling Dean, this whole Nikki situation threw him for a loop.
Tossing his phone onto the side table, he fell back onto the sofa and groaned as the soft, suede covered cushions seemed to work out the kinks and knots in his back. After crossing his arms and maneuvering himself on the couch better, happy he actually fit on it, he fell asleep.