Becoming Human – Chasing Shadows II
Hi guys! I am so sorry about the lateness of this chapter! It was supposed to be done weeks ago, but some real life stuff got in the way, and it ended up getting delayed. Anyway, here it is, part two of Chasing Shadows!
~InK
…
Bobby was unsurprised when Sam Winchester appeared on his doorstep at six thirty in the morning, every line of his body set with determination, Janelle standing beside him.
"Morning Bobby," Sam said, shyly thrusting a cup of coffee out at the older hunter. "It's Irish. And apparently Janelle's made up her mind."
Behind him, Janelle smiled thinly.
Bobby nodded, looking over the girl with an impassive expression.
"Well, come in then."
He got down to things relatively quickly, gesturing for Janelle to grab the chair across from him, so that they were facing each other over the small table in the motel room. Sam leaned against the dresser, arms crossed so that he could fight the urge to keep his hand on his weapon at all times.
It wasn't that he didn't trust Bobby, really. Well, yeah. It kind of was. Bobby had said that he was there for Sam, and Sam believed Bobby when the older man said he didn't want to kill him. But that didn't mean he wouldn't change his mind. Sam wanted to trust the older hunter. He really did, with every part of his soul, which is why he wasn't going to do so just yet. He wasn't going to let his pathetic abandonment issues put him or Janelle in danger.
"Ever shoot a weapon?" Bobby asked from the other side of the room. Janelle shook her head no.
"Ever get in a fight?"
"Yes," Janelle replied. "Few times."
"Did you lose?"
Janelle snorted.
"Lost a few, won a few, that's how fights go, right?"
Bobby shared a smirk with her.
"How fast can you run a mile?"
"Uh, no clue," Janelle frowned, scratching the back of her head. "Why-"
"You need to be able to sprint fast," Sam supplied from his position by the dresser. "Say you're hunting and some cops get on your scent. You need to get away from the law and find somewhere to hide quickly. Say you hear someone screaming a few alleys down – you need to get there as fast as you can. Endurance is important too, but I'd say more hunts come down to speed than endurance, right Bobby?"
"Right," Bobby agreed. "Sam, how fast is your mile?"
"Four nineteen," Sam smirked.
"Right, Janelle, you should be up to a mile in five minutes before you're in the field," Bobby said. "It'll get faster with practice."
What followed was possibly the most intensive Q and A on the supernatural that Sam had ever witnessed. Bobby was brutal, bringing Janelle through about sixteen species, even a few Sam were pretty sure had never even been seen in the U.S.
It was late in the afternoon by the time Bobby nodded, seeming satisfied that he'd managed to get a measure of the newest hunter among them.
"Well, Sam's given you a pretty patchy education," Bobby scratched the back of his head. "Come to think of it, Sam's education is kind of patchy itself."
"Hey!" Sam called good naturedly from the other side of the room.
"Oh right, I forgot you're sixteen and obviously know a hell of a lot better than I do," Bobby said sarcastically, and Sam looked down with a small smile. "I was hunting demons when you were still in diapers, ya idjit."
Sam's cheeks colored in embarrassment, and Janelle giggled.
"Okay, okay, just chill," Sam said, raising his hands in surrender. "What does our wise old sensei prescribe as a remedy to our shameful ignorance?"
Janelle sniggered, and Bobby's lips twitched into a smile even as the rest of his face tried to frown with disapproval.
"Well, you could spend a few weeks with me," Bobby suggested. "Give Janelle here an intense crash course on hunting, get her stamina up, run drills, that sort of thing."
"Huh," Sam said, hoping he could pass his pause off as being thoughtful, rather than terrified. He liked Bobby, and he wanted to trust him, but dare he? Dare he risk getting hurt all over again.
"Well, if Sam's got not objection, I think I'll trust his instinct that you're not some crazy serial killer," Janelle broke the silence, looking to the teenager.
"Bobby's on the up and up," Sam assured her. "Wouldn't hurt a fly unless it was a poltergeist or a vamp or something anyway."
Bobby met Sam's eyes, and the older hunter seemed to know what Sam was afraid of – what he was asking without words, what he was so afraid of.
"Nah, I just don't hurt anything that ain't doing any harm," Bobby said, and the fist clutching Sam's heart seemed to ease it's grip a little.
Janelle looked from one to the other, trying to figure out what had passed between them, but Sam ducked his head.
"If you can stand us, we'll take you up on training for as long as you can bear it," Sam said.
"Good choice," Bobby said with a smirk, and shooed the two younger folks out so that they could pack.
…
Bobby hadn't been kidding when he'd said that he'd work Sam as hard as he was training Janelle. Sam 's morning regime was doubled under Bobby's watchful gaze, and he was so sick of shooting guns at bottles that Sam considered turning the sawed off on Bobby a few times.
The first time he complained, however, Bobby swatted him on the back of the head.
"Idjit," he growled. "And before you let me know just how many monsters your foolish self took on alone in the last year, let me remind you of something. You are sixteen, still a minor by any standard, and me giving you a gun borders on criminal in a way that's got nothing to do with any laws, do you understand me?"
Sam shook his head.
"Put another way," Bobby said. "Janelle, what were you doing at sixteen?"
"Playing computer games and blogging all day!" Janelle called from where she was setting the table in the other room."
"I can take care of myself," Sam said quietly, and it was just as much a threat as it was self-validation.
"And I know that," Bobby said as Sam vanished into the other room with the pot of stew he'd just decreed finished. "But you shouldn't have to."
It was only later, when Sam was lying awake in bed musing on what Bobby had said, that he really got it.
Bobby didn't think that Sam was unprepared to fight monsters in the field. Not by a long shot. But it had been a long time since anyone cared whether or not Sam was battle ready, and Bobby was giving Sam someone in his life that could be his safety net, that could watch out for him and push him to do better, no matter how good he was.
He felt his heart swell with gratitude, and blushed, even though nobody could see it.
…
The dream was back.
"What are you?" Sam demanded of the yellow-eyed man he was reasonably sure now was a demon, given all his rumination on the subject. "Why do you want to teach me how to use these powers?
"For you," the maybe-demon smiled earnestly. "You have the power to own the world, to see those that would hurt you groveling at your feet. Don't you want that Sammy?"
And oh what a temptation that was. To cut John as he had cut Sam, to betray Dean as Dean had betrayed him, it would be sweet, sweet victory.
Sam was filled with a satisfaction and vengeance that was not his own. Not entirely, at least.
Even at his most desperate, he hadn't been filled with this, this lust for blood and pain, and his eyes opened in momentary panic, hands tightening around his cup of cocoa.
The man across from him just set his mug aside, and Sam could feel his panic calm, submerged in a sea of contentment and belonging.
Son of a bitch.
Whatever this man was, he was playing with Sam's dreams, his head, and Sam did not appreciate that.
He hurled the cup at the man sitting next to him, but it vanished before it hit its target.
"Now, Sammy, that wasn't very nice, was it? I'm just trying to help you."
Sam found himself frozen in the chair then, and he looked up at the man in front of him.
"Christo," he ground out, and the demon flinched.
Son of a bitch.
Son of a fucking bitch.
Sam backed away as quickly as he could.
"Oh Sammy, just calm down," the demon said, flashing it's yellow eyes. "But I haven't lied to you."
Sam glared up at the yellow-eyed demon, narrowed eyes promising violence.
"Look, I'm just trying to make a name for myself," the demon told Sam earnestly. "You have power, and I want to help you access it, for a myriad of good reasons, and all I want is your help in return, every now and again. Those are all my cards on the table, I promise."
Sam's gaze didn't waver.
"I told you, I don't want what you have to offer," he growled. "I'm not interested."
"Oh Sammy," the demon said, sitting back down in his chair, leaving Sam pressed against the nearest bookshelf, unwilling to abandon the protection it offered his back, even in a dream. "So scared of going darkside you won't even claim what's rightfully yours."
Sam grit his teeth.
"Not interested," he said again.
"No?" the demon asked, surprise etching every feature of his face. "Not even to protect yourself and your friends? That lovely lady Janelle, or even Robert? You don't want to be sure that you could defend them from hunters or demons coming after them?"
The hunter looked away, trying to pretend he wasn't listening.
"Because there are demons that will come looking for you," the demon continued casually. "Some really big, bad players that would just love to have an untrained human psychic in their grasp."
"Like you?" Sam bit out.
The demon chuckled.
"I'm not looking for a human slave, just insurance," he said, raising his hands in defeat. "I'm just as interested in keeping you out of our fights, actually. Humans make things… messy. The politics of hell belong downstairs, but with some of the shit people are pulling, I need to be careful."
Sam couldn't detect a lie, but this was a demon. They practically invented lying.
But he did have a point.
If there were demons coming after him because of these supposed powers… Oh hell, he'd need to be armed up the teeth, and that might include whatever psychic mojo he could muster.
"So these powers," he said finally. "They're from the demon blood, right?"
The demon shrugged.
"I've heard rumors," he said. "Nothing I'd put too much stock in though. More than likely, you're one hundred percent human psychic. There are a few of those running around, and they're rare. It's possible that the demon that paid you a visit when you were just a baby was trying to take you for himself."
There wasn't a lie in that either, not that Sam could tell. But again, the thing was a demon.
If anything though, this was proof enough that he needed to be able to better defend himself, and most weapons were useless against a demon. They were terrifying and powerful, and Sam was just some teenager who hadn't even broken seventeen yet.
These powers he might or might not have, if they weren't caused by demon blood, what was the harm in them? It wasn't like Sam was going to use them to hurt anyone, and if this demon tried to force him to, well…
He'd fight back, and get Bobby to help him.
"Alright," he said, stepping away from the wall. "You've got a deal. Provided you never force me to use these powers or whatever to hurt anyone who's not a demon."
The demon smiled.
"Deal," he replied.
"So how do we do this?" Sam asked.
"Well, you probably wont begin to manifest any of these powers outside of your dreamscape for a while, but this preparation will make it easier to direct the development of your powers and control them when they do start acting up. It might jump start their development, but we'll have to find that out together."
"So you get to play Mr. Miyagi in my skull, that it?"
"Well, you know me, here to help."
Sam evaluated that response. It was sarcastic, but it reminded him of the way Dean used to be, in the before, when he would try and take care of Sam. He always did it with a vaguely mocking smile rife with sarcasm, because god forbid he showed he cared.
Or maybe he didn't, not even then.
Sam grit his teeth and shrugged.
"Well then, if we're gonna do this, let's do it man."
…
And that's how it began. The demon would show up in Sam's head once or twice a week. He had a near constant headache these days to go along with the aches in his body, which was being pushed to its limits by Bobby's training regimen.
Every few dreams, they would switch off. Sometimes, the demon would try and get him to move things with his mind.
"You might be able to do this in the real world under extreme duress," the demon explained to Sam as they were settling down to that lesson. "But to achieve reliable control over telekinesis, you must have control over yourself. The world is putty in your hands Sammy, and you just need to stay focused long enough to shape it properly."
To that end, there was a lot of sitting and thinking and silence involved in those lessons, which came as a welcome relief, given the insanity of Sam's daylight hours.
That is, until he cased a stack of books to levitate away from the single book he'd been looking for in the dream world library.
Then he'd woken up with a nosebleed and a headache.
"It'll get easier with practice and focus," he was assured repeatedly.
Sometimes the demon tried to get him to touch things and summon energy – fire or ice, electricity or water.
"I don't know exactly what kinds of powers you have," the demon relented under the unending stream of bitching that Sam had on the topic of many of these lessons that never seemed to stick. "I know you're powerful, but for some psychics, that might just mean really powerful control over a single ability, or over several."
They worked on sensing auras – "demons don't just carry sulfur with us when we leave the pit, our power hangs around us, like yours does around you. It's why most supernatural things tend to leave me alone, and why they flock around you. I scare them. You… you're interesting."
And that was kind of frightening.
Sam still wasn't telling Bobby about the dreams. By now, he trusted that he wasn't going to get knifed in his sleep, and even regularly turned his back to the older hunter. There was trust there, but Sam was sure Bobby would take his dreams for more than what they were.
Besides, Sam was the only one who could decide exactly how his power was going to be used, and in what circumstances, and he wasn't going to let that talent go to waste out of fear. He wasn't going to go darkside. Not ever. Any battles the demon asked him to fight were going to be against other demons, or not at all.
Sam was in control.
Day by day, Sam could see Janelle's improvement. She could reliably aim a shotgun and a handgun, and while she had yet to beat Sam in a hand to hand fight, she had left him some spectacular bruises, and was wickedly accurate with the mock wooden knives Bobby let them train with.
They spent their evenings comparing memorized exorcisms, and having Bobby quiz them on the supernatural. Every night, they got more answers correct, and even though they were full on cramming during every second they had just to keep up their knowledge on the research end of hunting (though Sam had a bit of an advantage, with several years of field experience), in between training scenarios and workouts that left them both gasping for air, they were getting better in both.
By the time Sam and Janelle returned to San Francisco a month later, they were exhausted, spent, and ready to take a few days off to recover from their time with Bobby. They'd thanked him profusely for taking so much time to train them, and to make sure that they were ready to face the field. Bobby waved them off with a stern order for both of them to keep in touch.
Sam didn't realize until nearly two weeks after the fact that a whole year had gone by in the after, and he was doing okay.
…
Sam and Janelle disposed a ghost together not a week and a half after unpacking their bags.
"That wasn't so bad," Janelle said, panting for breath over the smoldering remains of Andrew Bently, who'd been picking off championship surfers in San Diego.
And it hadn't been bad, for a salt and burn. Neither Sam nor Janelle was injured – due mostly to the fact that Janelle had played baseball with the spirit with an iron poker while Sam dug up the remains.
He'd forgotten how much easier this was with a partner. How much safer.
How much less lonely.
Janelle was riding an adrenaline high all the way back up to San Francisco; Sam wasn't sure if she was more excited about helping to take down her first restless spirit, or the entire concept of interviewing witnesses, which involved a lot of subterfuge and outright lying that Janelle seemed worryingly good at.
Janelle picked up her job at the diner, and Sam finally found gainful employment in a bookstore. It covered his quarter of the rent and groceries, which meant that Sam spent his evenings reading at home or in the library, or talking to Bobby about his books on demonology, rather than walking the streets.
He was getting his life back.
Kylie was spending more and more time out of the apartment, and she seemed thinner, more exhausted every time Sam saw her. He was getting worried about his roommate, but both times he tried to confront her about it, she brushed him off with a smile and tossed a pillow at him.
She was probably just going through a hard time at work or something, Sam decided, and left it at that.
The dreams started up again not long after he and Janelle got back home.
"So you're a demon right?" Sam asked when the yellow-eyed demon appeared in the library. The demon inclined its head.
"I think we've covered that," it said.
"I'm curious about something," Sam explained slowly. "Something attacked my mother when I was a little kid, just six months old. Smart money's on it having been a demon, which you've laterally confirmed when you explained that I could use my powers to avoid being hunted."
"And your point?"
"Which demon was it?" Sam asked. "Why'd they do it?"
Yellow-Eyes paused, a thoughtful expression coming over the features of whatever form it had decided to take in Sam's head.
"Oh I heard about that alright," Yellow-Eyes finally said. "Lots of excitement about that job going around, but nobody knows any real details. It was just some bigwig trying to build up his psychic army, which is why you were targeted, but obviously, it didn't work, whatever the guy had planned. Word was down on the streets that it was someone high up, someone real important. It was way over my head, anyway – I just handle the weapons."
Huh.
Sam smiled and shrugged as they went back to their lesson, but his inside's twisted with a terrible certainty – the demon was lying to him. About how much, he didn't know, but Yellow-Eyes definitely knew something he wasn't sharing with the class.
Something that Sam needed to know.
…
"We need answers, right?" Janelle asked one sunny afternoon. "About the demon blood?"
"Yeah, those would be nice," Sam grumbled.
"So let's summon a demon, see what we can find out," she offered. Sam snorted.
"I'm not putting a civilian in danger to ease my curiosity," he replied. "And I won't torture the answers out of some poor bastard that just happens to be some grab happy demons' host of the day."
"Then don't put a civilian at risk hon," Janelle smiled over at him, and Sam picked up the gist of her intentions at once.
"Oh no," he shot back immediately. "No friggen way. Not happening."
"Why not?" Janelle demanded.
"You really have to ask me why I'm opposed to summoning a demon into my best friend and then torturing it?" Sam demanded.
"Use salt and holy water," Janelle shot back. "Won't hurt me because I'm not a demon, but the thing inside me…"
Sam didn't even consider it for a second.
"No."
"Why not?"
"If it does hurt you-"
"Then that's my decision to make," Janelle shot back stubbornly. "And I wouldn't mind being hurt it if could help you!"
Sam didn't even know how to respond to a statement that was just preposterous. He'd bleed and hurt and die for Janelle, but how could she do the same for him, the boy with the demon blood? How could she even stand to look at him?
He grit his teeth.
"I refuse to do anything to hurt you," he growled, and when Janelle fell silent, he'd hoped it was the end of it. They returned to their perusal of old and dusty tomes.
A week later, Sam discovered that the matter wasn't as settled as he'd imagined.
"Bobby said that salt and holy water won't harm the host, since there's nothing about the human body that could have a reaction. I'd be able to feel an echo of what the demon feels, but it wouldn't really hurt me."
Sam closed his eyes, and counted to ten, wondering if that would dispel the urge to hit something.
"No," he answered, slamming the book in front of him closed.
"Besides, he told me that exorcising a demon hurts them plenty, and doesn't harm the host."
"I'm not hearing this," Sam grumbled to himself, hiding his head in his arms. "You asked Bobby to help you on this?"
"Not in so many words," she told him sheepishly. "I may have heavily implied that we were discussing better ways to deal with demonic possession."
Sam had a headache.
"I'm not hurting you, and that's that."
Apparently, that wasn't that, because a week and a half after that, Janelle slid into a chair beside him at the library.
"Sam, we've read every tome that is even a little bit reliable on the subject of demons, demonic possession, and satanic rituals," she told him. "We aren't going to find anything about demon blood in any book. This is some serious shit, and we need answers. Sam, I want to know that you're okay, and I want to kill the son of a bitch that hurt you. Please let me help you find these answers."
It took Janelle another two weeks to wear Sam down to the point where he was willing to even tentatively agree with her.
It took the two of them nearly three weeks to make their battle plans after that, debating and discussing different ways of containing demons. Bobby had given them his seal of approval on the Devil's Trap Sam had found – apparently it was a relatively well used symbol among hunters that dealt with demons, and was an effective way to hold demons, if it could be carved or painted on something that couldn't be easily broken or blown away by the demon in question.
They debated back and forth what kinds of torture would work on a demon but not the human inside.
During those weeks, Sam and Janelle saw very little of Gary or Kylie, the former of whom was starting to undergo midterm exams, and the latter of whom was just… missing. A lot.
Finally, the two young hunters had agreed on a course of action, and, one year to the day into the after, set out to summon themselves a demon.
Sam was irritable and on edge, his restlessness obvious as he and Janelle made their way over to the warehouse that they had prepared for this event.
"You okay?" Janelle asked.
"I'm fine," Sam answered. He was, in a way. He was ready to get some answers at last.
Within the hour, they had the summoning spell set up, and Sam was locking Janelle into iron chains that bound her to a chair they had bolted down in the middle of a Devil's Trap.
They had painted three overlapping sigils, one on the floor, one on the ceiling, and one on the roof. The demon would have to break through all three to free itself, which would give Sam more than enough time to exorcise it before it went wild.
"Right, let's do this," Janelle said, shifting inside of her bonds.
"Are you sure?" Sam asked. "This isn't going to be a walk in the park."
"You're my friend Sammy," Janelle said. "You need to get some answers. Just… be careful, okay?"
Sam nodded.
"It will still hurt some," he warned her. "I won't think any less of you for saying no, for backing out-"
"Sam, this was my idea," Janelle said firmly. "I trust you, okay? So do what you need to do."
Biting his lips, he began the ritual to summon a demon. The two of them sat in the dark for a moment, wondering if it had worked.
And then a cloud of black smoke forced it's way through Janelle's mouth, and she opened pitch black eyes.
"Hello hunter," she said in a voice that wasn't her own.
"Hey there," Sam said with a smile that had nothing to do with happiness. He was angry, and ready to finally get some answers. "So, since you're just hanging around, mind answering a few questions?"
Anger chased understanding across Janelle's face as the demon realized why it had been summoned.
"Go to hell."
"Hm, I would, but I think I like the beaches here better," Sam smirked. "My name's Sam. Sam Winchester."
The name felt heavy on his tongue after so long in disuse. He wasn't a Winchester. John and Dean had certainly made that clear enough.
The demon paused, considering Sam with a curious expression.
"So you've heard of me," Sam said, folding his arms. "Alright, let's start from the beginning. What do you know?"
"I know your daddy's not very happy with you at the moment," the demon sneered, recovering from its moment of indecision.
Sam did his best not to react to that. He wasn't going to give the demon an inch of room to play inside of his head.
"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus," he intoned in a calm voice. The demon screamed and jerked where it stood. When the chanting had trailed off, the demon stood there, breathing heavily.
"What have you heard about me and demon blood?" Sam asked.
"Go to hell."
"Yeah, you've said that already, thanks," Sam replied, nothing but ice-cold confidence and swagger. "And I'm still not going anywhere. You on the other hand? You've got a one-way ticket to the fast lane straight down. Well, after a fashion."
"What the hell do you think you can do to me?" the demon sneered. "I've been through hell."
Sam smirked.
"Let's find out," he said. "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio-"
The demon screamed.
Sam paused, leaning against the wall while the thing recovered.
"That looked painful," he observed. The demon just sat there, trying to catch its breath. Sam hated the pain etched into Janelle's face, but she wasn't actually hurt – the exorcism wouldn't case her any pain.
The demon was breathing heavily, gasping for air it didn't need, trying to find some way to escape a pain that was in no way physical.
"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas."
More screams.
Sam smiled.
"It can all end, you know," he said conversationally. "Tell me what you've heard, and I'll send you straight back to hell, no games."
When the demon was silent, Sam picked up the container of holy water.
"That all… you got?"
Sam rolled his eyes.
"Attitude, man," he said. "Lose it."
He picked up the syringe.
Injecting water into the human bloodstream isn't lethal. It's not healthy, but it wouldn't hurt Janelle. Sam clung to that, because right now, all he could see was his best friend writhing in pain that he had manufactured, and he hated himself for that.
I'm so going to hell.
Sam plunged the needle into the demons neck.
Shrieks filled with pain tore through the abandoned building.
"Bit of a screamer, are we?" Sam snarked a few minutes later, when the demon had ridden out the pain of holy water searing through its veins. "Good thing nobody can hear you."
"Go… to hell."
"You've got a bit of a one track mind, huh?" Sam asked patiently. "Any other helpful tidbits you want to share? The reason why my father thinks I'm infected with demon blood, for example?"
The demon laughed.
Sam prepped another injection, this time aiming for Janelle's thigh. The demon possessing her spent another several minutes in biting agony.
"Are you done being stubborn yet?" Sam asked.
Silence, except for the sound of the demons labored breathing.
"I can do this all night," Sam continued helpfully, walking back over to his bowl of holy water. "Exorcizamus te, omnis immudus spiritus-"
"Azazel!"
Sam stopped reciting.
"What about him?"
"Azazel, he's the demon you want," the demon gasped. "Fed children demon blood to lead his army… a bunch of kids hopped up on our blood, fighting for hell… I don't know anything else, please!"
Sam frowned.
It was true.
It was all fucking true.
He had demon blood.
Demons lie, Sam thought with a frown.
But sometimes, if the truth hurts more…
Well, point to John Winchester, he supposed.
"So this Azazel, he fed me his blood?" Sam asked quietly, wanting to be certain.
"You and kids like you."
"What exactly did he expect that to do?"
"Look, I'm nobody, I got out of hell by luck, didn't even-"
Sam emptied the container of holy water onto the thing's head, wanting to be absolutely certain that it was telling the truth.
It screamed, inhuman and in pain beyond words. When it finally caught its breath, Janelle's features were twisted in agony as her voice begged him to end it.
"Please! Stop, I don't know anything, okay?"
Sam sent the thing back to hell, and rushed forward over the salt lines he'd drawn, into the devil's trap.
"Janelle, can you hear me?"
"Yeah honey, I'm fine," Janelle groaned. "Man, that was weird."
"You weren't hurt, were you?" Sam asked. "I'd hoped-"
"Honey, I'm fine," Janelle said. "Feeling a bit off from having some water injected right into my body, and some demon rattling around inside my head, but I'm not hurt."
Sam breathed a sigh of relief.
"So, did you find out what you needed to?"
Sam nodded absently, cutting the ropes holding Janelle to the chair and supporting her as they stood.
"Well, it sounds like John was telling the truth," Sam muttered. "This demon, Azazel, he fed me his blood. And he's done it to other kids too. Apparently, the son of a bitch is building an army."
Janelle just stared at him.
"And that would be bad."
"Humans that won't flinch at the name of god, that won't be stopped by salt or iron or anything else we know that will work on demons? Humans that may or may not have all sorts of special powers thanks to the demon blood inside of them?"
His stomach twisted.
The demon in his head, Yellow-Eyes, he wanted Sam to use the powers Azazel had given him. He might even be working for the asshole, pushing Sam towards the final jump that would turn him into a weapon in the hands of hell, rather than against it.
This was so not good.
This was really, really, not good.
…
And yet, life still went on. Barely a day later, word came that there were demonic signs down in Irvine. While Janelle recovered from her possession, Sam decided to go check things out – though only after he'd promised Bobby multiple times that he would call if he ran into trouble.
Sam 'borrowed' a truck to drive down and see what was going on. He traced a line of murders to a motel room with a do-not-disturb sign over the handle. He picked the lock, and found himself looking down at one of the more gruesome crime scene's he'd ever witnessed something supernatural leave behind.
There were bits of blood and flesh everywhere, the victim's from laying prone on the carpet, too mutilated for recognition.
But the first thing Sam noticed was the broken salt lines and devil's traps by the door.
Well, it was good to know those worked, but handy to recognize that demons that were powerful enough to force the wood or plaster they were drawn over to crack, breaking the symbol themselves.
On the other hand, this man was a hunter. One of Sam's own and he'd been targeted by a nasty demon attack that had left him dismembered and disemboweled, and his motel room torn to shreds.
Sam sighed as he knelt down, examining the burned flesh that should have made up the hunter's face.
He didn't even know the hunter's name, but he was a hunter, and that made him kin, of a sort. It was never a good thing to see a hunter go down, even if the man might have been out for Sam's blood in any other situation.
He picked up his phone, and hit speed dial, calling Bobby.
"It's Sam," he said without preamble. "I've got a dead hunter in Irvine. Demons got him. I just found his motel room, it's ripped to shreds, sulfur all over the place. They're long gone, but I've never seen an attack like this."
"Any idea who the hunter is?"
"Nobody I recognize," Sam said, moving over to the table. "All his fake IDs have been wiped, all I could find was his salt and his weapons. Didn't even keep a journal from what I found."
"Shit," Bobby said. "Nobody I know was working demons near you, or I'd have sent a head's up. Poor idjit. Must have gotten caught off guard."
"Yeah," Sam agreed.
"Well, you know the drill," Bobby said. "Get anything illegal out, hide it or snatch it, salt and burn the body, and get the hell outta dodge, you hear me?"
"Got it Bobby," Sam replied absently. "I'll call Janelle down, this could use more than one pair of hands. Those demons really did a number on him. Tore the place apart, almost like they were…"
Like they were looking for something.
There wasn't a single spot left uncovered in the room. Even the mattress had been overturned and torn open.
"Let me call you back," Sam said, shutting the phone.
If they were looking for something, it was important. And even if they had found what they were looking for, the hunter might have left some clues behind to explain what it was that they were after. Sam didn't like that alternative, because demons getting what they wanted rarely ended well.
With the ick factor on this job steadily rising, Sam grit his teeth and rummaged through the unknown hunter's clothes, not knowing what he was looking for.
Sam found the man's journal tucked away in his foot, curled around his ankle and laced in tightly. Sam pulled it out gently, flipping through it, and suddenly it didn't matter if the demons had found what they were looking for.
Oh no.
No.
Sam's fingers shook as he traced the letters that made up the name on the first page of the journal. He didn't need it, of course. The handwriting was familiar enough to recognize on it's own, but the name there just gave Sam extra confirmation.
Caleb.
Caleb, who'd first taught Sam and Dean to handle different kinds of weapons, who would sometimes watch them for weeks at a time when John went off hunting or binge drinking. Caleb, who had decked John Winchester in the face when he'd gotten drunk enough to start raving at his own kids.
"Bobby," Sam whispered into the receiver that was suddenly back in his hands, though he had no memory of dialing. "It's Caleb. I found his journal, tucked in his shoe. He was too… they carved him up so badly, I didn't even…"
Sam seemed vaguely aware of the fact that it had become incredibly difficult to fill his chest with air.
"Caleb's dead?" Bobby asked, his tone moving between angry and incredulous. "Damn it. Good man. Damn idjit. What did he think he was doing, going after demons on his own? Fool knew better."
"I think he was looking for something," Sam said quietly. "He might have found it too, because the demons came after him to get it back. At least, from the look of the room, it seems like the demons thought he'd found something."
"What was he looking for?"
"I don't know," Sam frowned, hands tightening around the cover of the well-worn journal. "But I'll find out."
…
It took him less than an hour to have the weapons cleaned out, once Janelle had arrived in a beat-up old pickup truck that she definitely hadn't rented (Sam was beginning to suspect that he was becoming a very bad influence on his friend). They wrapped Caleb's body in tarp, and took him out into the local woods.
They salted and burned his body, and gave him a proper hunter's funeral, before burying his ashes, and hiding his weapons. Later, Sam would call Bobby, and he'd put out the word for any hunter who wanted to grab the weapons for themselves to come and take what they needed.
Sam was buried in Caleb's journal. He'd once been a great hunter, but he'd retired in the only sense that hunters could, and dealt arms for hunters while taking on the occasional side job. Much like Bobby, he was a common contact point for hunters, well liked and known by the people that worked their trade.
A lot of people would mourn Caleb's passing.
Sam buried his grief in his quest for information. He needed to know what Caleb had been looking for when he died.
The last pages of Caleb's journal were a confused muddle of cryptic passages, as though he was in a hurry, or afraid of putting too much information down on paper, where it could be found and stolen.
Talked to John Winchester today…
Sam's stomach clenched. Was that why Caleb had been near San Francisco? Had he been found? Had the man that had once taken care of him as a child been coming to kill him?
Need to find a weapon to kill demons…
"You and me both Caleb," Sam muttered, but he stiffened with interest as he read the next few passages.
Samuel Colt.
And then, with an arrow pointing to the phrase underneath the name, was a question.
Where did he hide his gun?
What gun? And who the hell was Samuel Colt?
From the context, Sam could guess that maybe this Samuel Colt had managed to make a gun that could kill demons, but that couldn't be true, could it?
Caught the Colt's scent in CA. Will investigate. Demons watching.
And that was the end of it.
Caleb had come to California looking for a weapon to kill demons.
It was here.
Unless the demons had it.
Sam wanted to scream in frustration, because if they had taken it from the hunter, then there was nothing he ever be able to do to get the damn gun.
Then again, there wasn't any proof that Caleb had found the gun to begin with. Sam hadn't found anything other than Caleb's usual sawed-offs and a few nine mils with silver bullets, but perhaps the demons had only attacked Caleb to stop him from finding the gun. They might still have no idea where it is.
And if that were the case, Sam was running against the clock. He needed to find this gun before the demons did, if there was any chance of that happening whatsoever.
Sam dialed Bobby's number again disregarding the fact that it was nearly two in the morning, hands shaking with excitement.
Because if the demons didn't have the gun, if Caleb hadn't found it, or hid it before they could… Then it was still out there, and Sam could find it, and use it to kill the demon that had torn apart his entire life.
"Find anything boy?"
"Ever heard of a hunter named Samuel Colt?" Sam asked.
"What?"
"Samuel Colt," Sam said. "Made some kind of a gun, might be capable of killing demons."
"The Samuel Colt?"
"Yeah. So you've heard of him?"
"I thought he was just a story," Bobby answered.
"Well, whatever the story is, Caleb and John Winchester were pretty convinced it was true," Sam supplied dryly. "He came to California looking for Colt's gun, and was killed for the trouble. Sounds kind of suspicious, doesn't it?"
"Sam-"
"We need to find this gun," Sam said, looking down at the journal again. "If the demons don't have it… this could change the entire game, Bobby."
"Maybe," Bobby hedged. "I'll dig around some, do some research. Off the top of my head, I can tell you that legend says that Colt lived in the eighteen hundreds, and he made a gun that could kill anything, and fashioned thirteen bullets for it. He used it half a dozen times before the gun was lost. Hunters have been looking for it for years, but until tonight, I always thought it was just a bunch of fairy dust."
"Doesn't seem like fairy dust to me," Sam said obstinately. "We will find this thing Bobby. We have to."
He didn't want to think of the ominous information that the demon he'd tortured had given him. He didn't want to think of the fact that if he didn't find something to kill this Azazel, he might just not have a choice in deciding which side he was on.
I can't let him win.
It was as simple as that, really.