Well, here's the next chapter. Also, side note, I'M GOING TO PROM TODAY! Sorry, I'm a little excited about it. *sigh* My first high school prom.
Anyway, enjoy the chapter. ;)
~Christianne
Omniscient POV
"C'mon," Sam half-groaned as he hauled a dazed and half-conscious Nikki through the door of their motel room. Halfway from the suburbs and the motel, Nikki had started mumbling in some odd, slurred-sounding language. When Sam tried to get her out of the car, she started stumbling around, giggling and looking up at the sky (with unfocused eyes) as she spun around.
Sam didn't think making Nikki into the motel would be such a hard thing to do. But she was small and quick; ducking under his arms and skipping out of his grasp every time he grabbed her.
"Nikki—stop moving!" Sam huffed, grabbing the brunette around the waist. "There 'ya go!" He said as he half-dropped her on the bed. She squirmed around for a while before she hugged a pillow to her chest and buried her face into it.
Sam laughed once, and shrugged out of his jacket.
"You have any idea what she was saying?" Dean asked, cracking open a beer.
"No idea." Sam admitted as he fell onto the other motel bed.
Nikki POV
Dani and I used to always go to the same bookstore in Peshtigo on Fridays; when they got their new books in. It's were we met actually; we were both after the next Harry Potter book.
I knew was dreaming since I was seeing the familiar wooden shelves. It had closed its doors when I was off at Yale.
I was about to reach for the Half-Blood Prince when I was suddenly thrown into an empty field.
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
I jumped and spun around when I heard Used-to-be-Fake-Chris glaring at me. Not like he wanted to hurt me, thank God, but like he was disappointed in me. It was how Greg looked at me when I got three detentions in a row.
"W-What-?"
"I asked you to do one thing!" He yelled at me, taking a few steps towards me. "I told you to be careful! And what did you do? You consumed demon blood!"
"I have no idea when you are talking about!" I screamed back at him. "You told me to save them—that's what I did!"
"No! No you didn't!" Used-to-be-Fake-Chris screamed back. He stopped, closed his eyes, took a deep, slow, controlled breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. "What you did, it's dangerous."
"To who?" I asked incredulously. "I saved Sam and Dean. Aside from a little disgust and a headache on my part, what's so damn dangerous?"
"IT'S DANGEROUS 'CAUSE IT'S DEMON BLOOD!"
When he yelled at me, I jumped back. My butt ended up in the dirt as I stared up at him with wide eyes.
"IT COMES FROM CREATURES MADE BY THE FIRES OF DAMNATION!" When he spoke, clouds appeared out of nowhere in the sky, and lightning cracked, sending bright flashes through the sky.
"THOSE THINGS WANT YOU DEAD! THEY WENT TO EXTREME LENGTHS TO TAKE YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE, AND I WON'T ALLOW THEM TO TAKE YOU AGAIN!" More lightning crackled; the air was dry and thick with electricity. I watched Used-to-be-Fake-Chris with wide, fearful eyes. His voice seemed too big for his body; it was booming and echoing, which only made it more terrifying.
"YOU ARE TOO HUMAN TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE IMPLICATIONS OF INGESTING DEMON BLOOD! IF THEY KNEW WHAT YOU WERE DOING, THEY WOULDN'T HESITATE TO DESTROY YOU IN EVERY WAY BUT DEATH!" The more he spoke, the louder the thunder got and the closer the lightning struck. They started small fires wherever they hit the long dry grass.
"I DIDN'T RISK EVERYTHING FOR YOU TO DO SOMETHING AS BLASPHEMOUS AND STUPID AS USING DEMON BLOOD AS A GATEWAY TO YOUR GUARDED POWER! YOUR VESSEL IS TOO WEAK TO CONTAIN IT, YOUR MIND IS TOO WEAK TO CONTROL IT—YOU'RE TOO STUPID TO KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT!"
Lightning struck inches from my hand. I let out a short scream and yanked my hand back. "I'm sorry!" I screamed over the roaring thunder and lightning strikes. I quickly skittered away from the fire, but there had been so much lightning there wasn't any where for me to go.
"I'm sorry!" I said again, curling myself into a ball. "I-I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm-!" I cut myself off with a choking, terrified sob as I looked weakly up at Used-to-be-Fake-Chris.
He looked down at me like he was confused.
"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry—I-I swear I won't do it again! I swear!" I pleaded with him.
With a snap of his fingers, the clouds and thunder went away; the scorched and burning grass disappeared instantly. I heard Used-to-be-Fake-Chris slowly approach me, and sit next to me in the grass; I was still huddling myself into a ball.
"'m sorry I yelled," Used-to-be-Fake-Chris mumbled. I peeked over at him and saw he was playing with the grass in front of him.
"I promised your mother I'd look after you, ok?" He blurted out, frustrated. "And-And I'm not good at parenting." He put air quotes around the last word.
I sniffled and finally looked at him head on. I hoped the tear tracks down my cheeks and my red nose hurt him. "You said you weren't my dad."
"And I'm not." He confirmed. He saw my doubtful look, and rolled his eyes. "Look, kiddo, as sure as the Loch Ness Monster is real, I'm not lying to you."
"The Loch Ness Monster isn't real," I pointed out, clearing my throat a few times.
"The hell is isn't!" Used-to-be-Fake-Chris chuckled, smiling wide. "I play catch with Nessie every Thursday!"
I laughed, and pulled my legs away from my chest, copying his pose; cross legged with one hand behind my back to prop myself up.
"The demon blood makes you feel powerful, right?" Used-to-be-Fake-Chris asked me; it was a rhetorical question. I just clenched my jaw. "It breaks down the barriers in your head and lets you do all the stuff you know you can do."
I looked down.
"I-I think so…I don't really remember much, after I wake up." I looked back at Used-to-be-Fake-Chris. "It's a high, you know? It's a soaring, blissful, powerful high, but when I crash back down I feel like I was hit by a truck."
Used-to-be-Fake-Chris just nodded slowly. "You're not ready, Nikki. You gotta wait."
My gaze narrowed at his words. "What do I have to wait for?"
He chuckled once. "As much as I like you thinking I know everything, I don't. This is out of my hands, sweetie-pie."
I huffed and crossed my arms. "How will I know when I'm done waiting?"
Used-to-be-Fake-Chris laughed once and shook his head. "Trust me, Nik, you'll know."
I rolled my eyes at his vague answer.
"Why do you care about me so much?" I asked him after a while; we were sitting in the grass and looking up at the clouds. "I mean, if you loved my momma so much, and I'm your brother's kid, why do you care so much?"
"I care about you 'cause she did." Used-to-be-Fake-Chris said simply. "And you're all I have left of her."
I snorted. "So, what? I'm some surrogate for her? The closest thing you can get?"
"Not in your life." Used-to-be-Fake-Chris said automatically. "Her kid or not, I know what you can do, and I'm one of the very few in our family who think you deserve to have a few thoughts of your own."
I looked over at him, and bit the inside of my cheek. Not that it did much; it didn't stop me from asking what I wanted to ask. "How'd she die?"
Used-to-be-Fake-Chris's jaw clenched, and he fisted the grass so hard a few clumps came out. "They found out." He said simply.
"I…I told her things," he admitted. "Things she as a human had no business knowing. I knew she was good person; she'd die before she told the wrong people anything about me…She told them, I told them…and they killed her anyway."
"How'd she die?" I repeated, my throat thick.
Used-to-be-Fake-Chris shook his head. "You shouldn't-"
"How. Did. She. Die." I ground out.
"They cut her throat."
Omniscient POV
"Everything hurts." Nikki moaned.
"Care to be more specific?" Dean asked from the table.
"No." Nikki moaned. "It all—Oh God."
Nikki shot up and ran to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
Dena was about to go to the door and ask what was wrong with her, but then he heard some disgusting vomiting sounds, and sat back in his chair.
"Hey Dean?" Nikki called from the bathroom, leaning over the toilet seat. "Open up my duffle bag and find the jar with the big 'in case of emergency' label on it."
Following Nikki's simple instructions, Dean went through her bag. After pausing briefly to snicker boyishly at her array of panties and bras, he found the jar. "Bringin' it to 'ya now," Dean called through the door.
"It's not for me!" Nikki groaned, gagging once more. "Drink it."
Dean's eyebrows raised up. "What?"
"Drink it, then go to my grimoire and find the potionis purgatio and make it for me." She snapped at him.
"Why do I have to drink this crap first?" Dean yelled, half-complaining.
"You need to be able to read the book!" Nikki half-yelled back.
"'You need to be able to read the book!'" Dean said in a quieter, mocking voice. He unscrewed the lid on the jar and took a cautious wiff.
"Hm," he muttered, surprised. It didn't smell that bad. In fact, it smelled great; like fresh baked cherry pie, coffee and rare stake. He knew those things shouldn't smell so good together, but damnit they did. He tossed back the watery, blueish substance in the jar, and when he'd emptied it, he idly wished he had more; it tasted better than it smelt.
"What did I have to make?" He asked, looking at the grimoire; he could read it now. Dean paged through it curiously as he waited for Nikki to stop throwing up to answer him.
"Potionis purgatio!" Nikki groaned, vomiting again. She'd already lost all the food in her stomach, now she was just coughing up stomach acid and snot.
Dean found the page, and wrinkled his nose at the complicated looking list of ingredients. He found an empty jar, and slowly began putting pinches and scoops of different herbs and dried plants 'n crap in it.
Sam, who had gone for a food run, frowned when he opened the motel door. He could hear Nikki cussing and vomiting in the bathroom, and Dean was at the table with some of her Wiccan stuff in front of him and making faces at the book.
"This is disgusting," Dean said, shaking something into a bowl. He leaned back when a puff of blue smoke rose up from the bowl.
"What are you doing?" Sam asked, walking to the table.
"Nikki wanted me to make somethin' for her…" Dean muttered, wrinkling his nose as he looked down at the old book. "Bloodroot…Stuff sounds nasty."
"How can you read this?" Sam asked, turning the book so he could see it; it looked like the words, made up of letters that Sam couldn't even understand, were swimming and jumping around the pages.
"She had this stuff in her bag," Dean said, pinching out one of the burgundy/red roots out of the small jar. He dropped it in the bowl, and the sharp, copper tang of blood filled the air. Both brothers coughed, and held a hand over their noses and mouths. "Must'a been a anit-charm or something."
Sam frowned as he watched Dean use only the tips of pinched fingers to put things in the bowl over a hot plate, making little disgusted comments at almost everyone.
"Ok, she has to be screwing with me," Dean snapped a moment or two later. "Coconut, Sam, this thing said you need to put coconut shavings in it."
"Witches from the western cultures found that it had purifying and protection elements if it was picked, cleaned and ground properly." Sam mumbled, frowning a little deeper; he should be doing this. Dean would know what damiana was if it hit him in the face, let alone know what it did.
Besides, it was Sam and Nikki that were close, not that both Winchesters didn't think of her as family (they did), but from the beginning, Sam and Nikki had been closer. A hot, acidic jealous feeling churned in Sam's stomach. He got himself a cup of coffee and choked it down in one long gulp; it didn't help.
"Ok…Ok, I got it," Dean called through the bathroom door, holding a mason jar in a toweled hand; it was hot, practically boiling.
Nikki threw the door open, letting the smell of vomit waft through the motel room. She greedily grabbed the jar right from Dean's hand with both of hers, no regard for its scalding temperature, and drank it. Dean raised his brows a little; that crap was hot, he could barely hold his hand over it for a few seconds, and she was drinking it like she hadn't had water in weeks. It took her a few gulps to get it all down; she leaned on the bathroom door frame as she drank it. Nikki dropped the jar to the floor when she finished, and let out a relieved sigh, a little smile coming over her face (smeared with the brown/green potion she'd drank), and her eyes drooped shut.
"Thanks," she sighed, taking one step towards Dean before she collapsed forward. Sam jumped up to help her, but Dean beat him to it. Even in a state of surprise, it was easy for Dean to catch Nikki. Grunting slightly, he lifted her into his arms and dropped her on the bed; Sam stayed frozen by the coffee maker. Dean made a slight face and pulled his sleeve over his hand, wiping Nikki's mouth and chin. Sam felt his jaw clench, and his grip tighten around the cheap mug in his hand.
Dean glanced over at Sam before hopping onto the next bed and grabbing a plastic gas station bag from the floor. "What'cha get Sammy?" He asked, digging through it.
Sam tore his gaze away from Nikki, blinked a few times, shrugged and sat down at his laptop. "See for yourself." He mumbled, booting the computer up.
Dean, while stuffing his face with pork rinds and chasing it down with beer, was too busy to notice that Sam was sitting in front of his fully booted laptop and not even looking at the screen. He was looking at the unconscious girl in the bed next to Dean's.
Sam was trying to figure out when exactly she got to pretty. Well, maybe it wasn't that she magically became pretty, but that Sam was such an oblivious man that he didn't notice. His mind flickered to the dream he had not too long ago; him and Nikki getting hot and heavy in Bobby's salvage yard, the way she yanked on his hair, and the way she reacted when he got a little bit rough.
Nikki made a little noise on the bed and rolled over, her face catching the light. Her skin, which was normally an even, olive tone was flushed pink from her ears to the neckline of her v-neck t-shirt, her dark hair was tamed slightly from sweat, and Sam thought she looked just as pretty now as she did when Bela stuffed her in a dress and made-up her face.
A low, rattling/humming paired with a low groan sound snapped Sam out of his little daze. Dean had put a few quarters in the Magic Fingers next to his bed, and was now staring up at the ceiling with glassy eyes, earbuds in his ears. Briefly looking back at Nikki, Sam then forced his gaze back to his laptop.
"I'm sure it's nothing." Sam said lowly, just in case he woke up Nikki or Dean didn't have the volume on his MP3 up very high. "It's just…been a while." He added on.
Nikki made another little noise, and rolled over until her face was smashed into the next pillow. Her hair was springing up at odd angles, her t-shirt was wrinkled and starting to hike up her side. She let out a breathy giggle, and her lips pulled up into a lazy smile.
"It's nothing." Sam repeated, staring intently at the screen in front of him. "It's nothing." He said again.
When he opened up his browser, it was already on a page about Wiccan legends. Not the serious ones associated with spells and magic; these were silly little ones about children with uncontrollable magic, a witch who cast spells in her sleep, and a boy who could turn into a dragon. One side of his mouth pulled up into a smile, and he laughed once; just a little breath out of his nose. He leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the chair next to him, put his computer in his lap and started reading what Nikki had been a few hours ago.
A little teaser for the next chapter, enjoy it ;) 15 reviews and I'll post again, or you'll all have to wait until Wednesday.
*evil cackling, brief choking, a few minutes of coughing, two puffs on an inhaler and some more weak cackling*
I was walking through a desert. My feet hurt from the sand in my socks and Converse. I had tried walking barefoot, but it was like walking on lava.
I had my hand up to shield my eyes, not that it did any good. I squinted ahead of me, and wished I had a hair tie on my wrist. My dark hair was heavy and hot against my neck which was, like the rest of me, slick with sweat.
Once I climbed to the top of a hill (a sand dune, really), I saw two places I could walk towards; a small city with buildings made out of mud about a mile to my right, or a small speck several miles to my left.
I chose the speck.
About half way there, I found what appeared to be a path in the dry, arid land. Once I had both feet on the path, I raised my brows. The speck, which had still seemed miles away, had grown closer in distance and larger in size. Instead of the tiny speck, it became a massive jungle oasis. Palm trees and banana trees, massive ferns and flowered bushes were a cool green against the harsh orange sand.
I ran towards them until I crashed into them; I had to make sure they were real. I sighed and rubbed my face against the massive, cool fern as I inhaled the equally cool, humid air instead of the dry, hot air. I giggled as I stumbled happily through the little jungle, stopping now and then to smell a flower.
The jungle broke into a clearing. The ground had thick green grass, and a few feet of white sand as fine as powdered sugar along a clear stream. There was a large, square, white tent in the grass. Back in middle school, we'd watch these poorly made movies with actors depicting parts of the bible. They were a little on the boring side, but they were better than listening to Sister Mary Olivia talk for 47 minutes. In those little movies, they always showed tents like these; the types of tents most common in the early first century and the BC era.
I took a step towards the tent, wanting to reach out and touch the soft looking material. Someone stepped out of the jungle and I spun around, reaching for my pocket knife.
It was a woman, a little taller than me, wearing a rough looking woolen dress that came down to her sandaled feet, and a mauve, hemp-looking scarf over her head and around her shoulders. She didn't see me; she was looking at the various fruit and plants in the basket she was holding. She and I had a similar skin tone; an olive shade that was just a little too pale to be considered tan, though hers was several shades darker. She pushed the mauve scarf off her head, and dark, curly brown hair tumbled down her shoulders.
When she looked up at me, her kind features morphed into a smile. She had dark eyes like I did. I could see similarities in our faces that as a little girl I had stayed awake imagining. This dark haired woman was a few years older than me; some lines around her eyes showed, and on her cheeks when she smiled.
I was still frozen, my hand on my hip. My jaw was clenched, and I kept telling myself it was hallucinating from heat stroke.
The woman set the basket down on the grass, and took a few steps towards me. She briefly had a hand over her mouth before she clasped them together and pressed them to her chest. I watched with a hawk-like gaze as she stopped just a few feet in front of me. She slowly reached out towards me. I leaned away from her hand, but that didn't stop her. She continued reaching and touched one of my curls, letting out a soft sob.
She gently pushed the curl over my shoulder, and brought her hand back to her chest.
She said something softly, her voice shook slightly and her eyes looked watery.
I didn't recognize the word, but I recognized her. I spoke in the same soft, breathy voice she did.
"Mom."