Well, here's the next chapter! I don't have that much to say about it, so, go ahead! Enjoy it!
And, just as a warning, it's a bit cliffhanger-y. But, I don't think you'll mind that much. ;)
~Christianne
Nikki POV
"Buckle up buttercup."
"Why do I feel the need to run?" I asked randomly, rolling my eyes as some leggy blondes in short Roman-ish looking tunics fed Used-to-be-Fake-Chris grapes.
"Oh, if you don't feel the need to run, I'm not doing my job right." Used-to-be-Fake-Chris told me.
"So, you know how you can sense demons? Like you did with that blonde skank?" Used-to-be-Fake-Chris called down to me.
"Yeah, Jane could do it, so…" I trailed off with a shrug.
"You know that feeling you got?" Used-to-be-Fake-Chris asked, quirking an eyebrow at him. I nodded, remembering the uneasy, anxious feeling easily.
"Good, now, what I want you to do, is hold onto that feeling, and, at the same time, remember how it felt to see your ex-honey-bunny doing the night time nasty with your GBF." Used-to-be-Fake-Chris said, a grin on his face.
I shifted uncomfortably, my boots getting dusty. I was actually kinda angry now. I felt something deep inside me start to stir. "Great, you storta pissed me off. What now?"
Used-to-be-Fake-Chris grinned, and looked up at one of the skanky toga girls. "Alexis? Open the door." He said. She nodded and turned to pull a large gold rope. She smiled a sweet smile that almost gave me a cavity, and blushed when Used-to-be-Fake-Chris smacked her ass when she turned her back to him. With all the class of a pornstar, she pulled the heavy gold rope hanging off to the side.
A wooden door on the other side of the arena opened.
It was quiet.
"That was anticlimactic." I said, looking up at Used-to-be-Fake-Chris.
"Yeah…Yeah it was, wasn't it?" he sighed, letting one of the toga girls drop a grape in his mouth.
I was about to say something sarcastic, but I was thrown into the wall. I groaned as I pushed myself off the sandy ground. A few feet from me, I saw an average looking guy. Brown hair, the most average face in the world, but his eyes were black.
"U-Used-to-be-Fake-Chris…What the Hell are you doing?" I asked slowly, stumbling to my feet and pulling off my hoodie and tossing it on the ground; I was burning up. I started walking to my left, keeping the distance between me and Demon Boy.
"Well, I'm not really a teacher, you know? So, I figured, what better way to learn, than by experience!" he said enthusiastically.
The demon came at me, and I narrowly dodged him, skidding to a stop in the sand.
"No! Not learning by experience!" I said as I dodged another lunge. "If you haven't noticed, I have no idea what I'm doing!"
"Hey, you got instincts! Use them! Remember, your ex-BF and your GBF!" Used-to-be-Fake-Chris yelled at me. I just groaned and dodged another swing. "Sam!" he said simply.
That feeling deep inside me stirred up again, I don't know what it was, could have been anger, love, or something else entirely, but it was powerful. This time, then the demon ran at me, I ran towards him too. I turned my shoulder towards the center of his chest, and hit him as hard as I could. The demon fell onto the ground, and took me with him. He got in a few good hits, but I still had the upper hand, I mean my shoulder hurt, but I had the upper hand.
I got one hand grabbing his throat, the other was digging into the side of his face.
"Remember princess; Sam!" Used-to-be-Fake-Chris yelled again, just pissing me off more.
The feeling that had once just stirred inside me suddenly flowed through me, exploding through my veins and pulsing outward. It felt like I'd been under water, holding my breath with a cinderblock on my chest; with every pulse that left me, I felt relief.
The demon under me screamed. My hands felt heavy and were glowing faintly. The demon kept screaming, and I held on tighter. The pulsing became one continuous feeling, and my eyes fell shut. I was marveling at the unburdened, powerful feeling flowing through me as the bottled up magic left me. It was amazing. This was exactly what I'd been trying to avoid, feeling all powerful, but now that I knew what it felt like, to actually be in control of my own magic, I never wanted to go back to feeling powerless. My mind was racing, trying to think about as many things as I could before the clarity left. And while this was all going on in my head; the demon was screaming like someone was playing Operation in its body with pair of red hot tweezers.
With one final scream, black smoke started to come out of its mouth. I jumped back, skittering away from the black cloud forming over the possessed body.
The cloud dissipated, and the man the demon had been inside was slowly sitting up, holding his head and mumbling about his head hurting in an Australian accent. He disappeared after a few seconds.
I remained sitting on the ground, panting. I fell back, resting on one elbow while the other hand my dark curls back.
I heard Used-to-be-Fake-Chris laughing. "WOW! Nikki, I knew you had a side like this—but damn! You kicked his ass princess!"
I wiped my mouth, leaving a red smear on the back of my hand. "What-What did I just do?"
Used-to-be-Fake-Chris just chuckled. "There are a lot of ways to exercise a demon kiddo."
He appeared in front of me, pulling me up. "You just learned the easy one." He said, brushing dust off my arms. He raised a hand to my face, and I flinched back. He rolled his eyes and lightly swiped his thumb over my split lip. After his hand dropped back down, I pulled my lower lip into my mouth and ran my tongue over it.
No blood. He healed me.
"Whoa whoa whoa, wait—Thats the easyone?" I asked after I realized what he said.
I just got another smirk. "Well if it really was easy, everyone would do it." He chuckled, tossing me my hoodie. "May not be the easiest way to get a demon out of some poor shmuck, but it's the only one that works, no matter what."
"Now, for next class I want you to practice channeling all those squishy gushy human-y feelings into destroying shit." He said in a teacher-like tone, even standing up straight trying to look all authoritative.
"Yeah, sure." I said, rolling my eyes. "How is this gonna help me find Sam?" I asked as I pulled my hoodie on over my dusty tank top.
"All it good time, grasshopper." Used-to-be-Fake-Chris said with raised eyebrows, and a mischievous grin. I laughed once, shaking my head.
I groaned as I rolled over.
I checked my phone; it was 3:45 am.
I sat up, and wiped sweat off the back of my neck. I made a small, disgruntled little sound as I searched for a hair-tie on the nightstand. When I found one, I grabbed it and quickly got the sweaty hair off my neck.
I got out of bed, and went in search of pants. I'd been so exhausted the last few nights that I just went to the room I'd claimed, shut the door, stripped down, and got under the covers.
I found a pair of jeans on the floor, and was about to put them on when I noticed a brownish yellow smear on them. I frowned and tossed them aside. He could make a freaking coliseum, but couldn't get the dust out of my shirt.
I found clean clothes and went down stairs. Bobby was asleep on the couch.
I didn't want to wake him, so I left a note saying I couldn't sleep and was going to take a walk through the salvage yard.
It was a little cold out, but I didn't mind. I mean, it had to have been at least 80 degrees in that Roman coliseum.
I stopped in one of the garages, in search of a can of spray paint, then just wandered around, looking up at the sky and recognizing constellations I learned about in both a high school astronomy class and from my Wicca books.
I didn't stop wandering until I could see the back fence.
I found a nice, clear area and stood in the middle, shaking out my hands and shifting from foot to foot.
"Ok." I said, looking at the drippy blue demon I'd drawn on the back of a rusty van, about ten feet from me.
Like Used-to-be-Fake-Chris told me to, I focused all my squishy gushy human-y emotions into destroying shit.
I stared at the blue demon. I outstretched one hand and took a deep breath.
Percy cheated on me with my best guy friend.
My bitch of an aunt didn't let me be adopted.
My family is dead.
Sam is missing.
In my focusing, my hand had turned into a fist. The longer I held it, the more pressure I felt on my temples, like my head was being squeezed like a grape. My eyes pinched shut in pain, and I pressed my free hand to my forehead, but I didn't, for a second, stop concentrating. Magic was like a muscle. If it was unused and weak, it hurt more when you exercised it.
The sound of groaning and protesting metal got my attention, and I opened my eyes.
The back of the van, where the blue spray painted cartoony-demon had been, looked like the back of a car that had been hit with a golf club. The back doors were twisted and mangled almost beyond recognition.
I dropped my hands, then raised one to brush under my nose. No blood.
I grabbed the can of spray paint again and painted another demon, horns and all, on the side of another busted car.
That's what I did for the rest of the night, until it was around 7:00 am, then I went back to the house to let Bobby know I was alive, and get a bottle of water and an apple. Then I went back out to the maze of cars and kept trying to use my abilities like Used-to-be-Fake-Chris told me too.
The sun was setting.
I found an old, not in so bad shape car that was on a bit of a hill. I was laying on the hood, my back on the windshield and a bottle of whisky by my knees. I hadn't drank any of it, I just took it from one of the garages and stared at it.
I'm not sure why I didn't drink it. Maybe it was because it didn't seem to matter if I drank or not. Sure, now and then I'd have a beer, or at a bar I'd get a rum and Coke, but I never felt anything. Well, on my 21 birthday I did 21 tequila shots. I felt a tipsy after that.
It'd been more than a week. Nine days. 216 hours. 12,960 minutes. 777,600 seconds.
And still no Sam.
The pessimistic part of me kept saying he was dead. The optimistic part of me was screaming that he couldn't be dead. That he couldn't be gone. He just…He just…He…He couldn't be gone.
I'd been practically living in the back of the salvage yard, destroying cars with my mind. I'd given myself a few nosebleeds and splitting headaches, but I didn't care. I'd do anything not to think about Sam being dead.
I heard someone walk up behind me. "I'm fine Bobby." I said, looking away from the whisky to the sky.
"Hey Nik." I heard a soft voice say. I froze.
"I…Uh…I just…Got, back." It continued. "Dean and I came here after he...fixed what I messed up. Bobby said you were back here."
I sat up quickly and whipped my head around. I wasn't sure if I was going to start laughing or start sobbing as I saw the man standing a few feet behind me. I think I let out a sound that was between the two. I swung my legs off the hood, about to run towards him and give Sam a hug that would break his ribs.
"Sam—Oh my God—!" I started, but stopped when Sam took a few long strides towards me and grabbed me in a tight hug. One strong arm was around my waist, pulling me towards him and holding me there. The other was looped under my right arm and crossed my back to hold just under my armpit. His head was resting on my shoulder, his face buried in my hair.
I grabbed onto his broad shoulders with one hand, the other arm wrapped around his neck as I buried my face in his chest and cried. Every time he moved, I clutched onto him tighter, like he was going to disappear on me again.
"Wait!" I said, pulling my head back to look at him. "Wait, What-What about Bobby—Oh God what about Dean-"
"They're talking in Bobby's house." Sam said quickly, then looked like he was gonna say something, but I started babbling.
"Where the Hell have you been? Do you have any idea how worried-?" I didn't get to finish my sentence.
Sam still had one arm wrapped around my waist. That one tightened, and at the same time he used his knee to spread my knees, which were hanging over the side of the car, apart so he could get even closer to me. His other hand grabbed the back of my neck, his fingers knotting and twisting into my hair.
Sam used his hold on my hair to tip my head back. I barely got a chance to take a breath before Sam smashed a hot, searing kiss on my lips.