Chapter 16
Sunrise, Wyoming
The four cars rolled along the dirt road off the 318 with their headlights off. The night sky was clear, blazing with stars so far from a big town, and the starlight was sufficient to stay on the lighter-coloured road.
Garth leaned forward against the wheel of his Pacer, peering through the dust cloud raised by Twist's pickup, trying to see the potholes and washouts before he hit them.
Demons he knew about. His one and only close encounter had been a TKO, but he'd spoken to hunters who'd exorcised them, had worked with Bobby Singer, who'd told him enough about hellspawn to give him nightmares for several months afterward, and had learned to recognise the distinctive tells of demon activity on jobs, enough to call in others to help. He'd never heard of Samuel Colt or even considered the possibility of a gate into Hell and the conversation in the Rapid City bar kept playing in his head, legends that weren't legends but real; a gun that could kill anything and five churches, joined by a railway line in the shape of a pentagram, an impassable barrier to hellspawn.
Sucking in a breath that coated his tongue in dust, he squinted harder at the vehicle ahead.
Crowley he'd also heard of. He'd missed out on meeting the King of Hell in person, something he was still ambivalent about, but Dean'd talked about the demon every now and then, and he knew the Winchesters had a history with him. He hadn't met Ellie Morgan, had known of her through Bobby's conversations and from the couple of passing comments Dean and Sam had made when he'd worked with them in Vegas. Dwight'd filled him a bit more while they'd waited for the Winchesters to show up, and Marcus had added what he'd known, about the red-haired hunter and about her relationship with Dean, after the brothers had left.
He wasn't sure how Dean was holding it together. His imagination had gone into overdrive when Sam'd told him and the others what'd happened, unable to stop himself from conjuring scenarios of losing someone he loved to a demon. It'd taken nearly two hours of driving to be able to wall those up and keep them from distracting him.
Uh, Dean can be kind of hard to get along with, Bobby'd said, when he'd called about helping the hunter out in Delaware. Don't ask personal questions. In fact, don't get into anything personal. He'd heard about the Winchesters, of course. Some from Bobby but a lot from other hunters as well.
The man's reputation had, he was willing to admit, made him wonder if they'd even be able to talk. The reality, when Dean'd walked into the diner and sat down on the other side of his table, had been a surprise. Instead of a fire-breathing crusader, he'd seen a tired-looking man in his thirties, reluctant to be there but putting aside any personal feelings in order to focus on the job. He'd been … not friendly, but not antagonistic, Garth thought. Worried about his brother. Worried about a lot of things, he'd thought at the time, most of which he hadn't talked about.
A glance in the rearview mirror showed a featureless cloud of dust rising up behind his small pickup, not as much as was being churned and lifted by the vehicles ahead, but enough to almost obscure Marcus' Chevy, trundling along behind him. The navy-blue car was now the same off-white, beigey colour as the road.
"Crowley's running scared," Dean'd said to his brother as they'd walked out of the Pike Creek bar.
"Think he had a meeting with Dick?" Sam'd asked.
His recollection was a little hazy. He'd been knocked out, a hard collision with a wall courtesy of the demon they'd been hunting and his ears were still ringing when Dean'd asked him if he was alright.
"Yeah," Dean'd replied. "Lookin' to cover his ass."
"What'd Ellie say about demon sightings?"
"Dropped to nothing." Dean'd shrugged. "Not just us, every hunter she knows reported the same thing."
"Who's Ellie?" he'd asked them, wondering if he'd missed out on more than meeting the King of Hell.
Dean'd looked away, increasing his stride, and it'd been Sam who'd answered, distracted as he'd watched his brother walk off. "She's a friend of ours. Has a lot of contacts."
He hadn't paid the conversation much attention at the time. When he'd seen them again, on the shojo case, Dean hadn't mentioned her and Sam hadn't either.
He couldn't see the railway tracks across the road, but he felt the tyres lift and fall over them, breathing in a sigh of relief. They were finally here. The dust cloud ahead began to dissipate as the flatbed and pickup slowed and pulled off the road and he drove the Pacer next to Twist's pickup, parking and turning off the engine.
Twelve lengths of four-feet long, eight-and-a-half inch gauge rail lay along Dwight's flatbed, along with several dozen sleepers. Dean'd told them the missing track was along the road that ran to the east of the pentagram. The locked Gate was in the centre. Once the line had been replaced, they would be safer inside Colt's pentagram than anyone outside of it. He was hoping the hunter was right.
The Chevy pulled in next to him as he got out of the car, reaching back in for his flashlight.
"Where's the broken track?" he asked Marcus as the older man got out.
"Should be here," Marcus said, flicking on a flashlight and moving out ahead of the other vehicles.
Garth followed him, the beam of his light playing over the sand and scrub and grass. To one side, he could see Twist, Dwight and Trip, walking in the same direction, their flashlights strobing the ground as they looked for the line.
"Here," Trip called out.
Garth swung around, hurrying to the young man's position. Almost buried in the soft, loose soil, he stopped in his tracks when he saw the uplifted section. The buckled I-beam of the rail was bent more than eight feet from the ground, and the spikes hadn't given, he noticed, pointing the light at the sleepers still lying there. The rails had been torn from them.
"Wow," he breathed.
Dwight stood behind him. "Yeah."
"Alright, ladies, we got half an hour to get this laid out," Marcus said, turning away. "Dwight, back the truck a bit closer. We need to hustle."
Garth walked closer to the ripped-up rail. Another part of legend, he thought, staring at it. A demon's plan, for an army. Children infected, their lives torn apart.
"C'mon, Garth." Twist interrupted his thoughts. "We ain't got all night."
"Right," he said, turning away. Another part of the Winchester legend, he corrected himself absently as he moved out of the way of the reversing truck. He wondered if he'd ever hear the full story.
Hell. First Level.
Crowley stood in his office, a glass of whiskey in one hand, his gaze fixed on the original oil painting hanging on the wall in front of him without seeing it. The Nightmare had been stolen in 2006 and, like the other priceless artworks that decorated his private sanctum, the paintings themselves gave him less pleasure than the knowledge the world above was admiring and fawning over the fakes he'd left in their place.
He was too distracted to enjoy the usual fillip of amusement they gave him now. He hadn't expected the Winchesters to just give in and do what they'd been told. Over the up-and-down history he'd had with them, they'd never once taken orders well. He knew they were planning something; he just couldn't see the shape of it and the information coming in about their movements was drying up rapidly.
He blinked, focussing on the painting briefly and turning back to his desk, reviewing the last report he'd had.
They'd met up with a bunch of hunters in Rapid City two hours ago. Now, they were headed east.
The tracking coin he'd hidden in the boxy four-wheel drive in Kalispell was now useless. It was still sitting in the parking lot of the South Dakota bar. His lieutenant had managed to secrete a second coin in the vehicle Dean'd swapped to, a '68 Plymouth Road Runner, but that was now sitting behind a Gas'n'Go in Kennebec and no one had been close enough behind them to be able to follow the boys when they'd left it there or even to see what they were driving now.
The rest of the hunters had been followed by two other demons, and those idiots had lost them somewhere in Colorado. A demon had been dispatched to watch the interstate into Iowa but hadn't reported back in. Crowley's fingers tightened around the glass he held.
You just couldn't get good help any more.
He was hoping Dean would try to welch out of the deal somehow. Killing Morgan would go a long way to restoring his good humour; the sweetener being the effect on the eldest Winchester. She might've been telling the truth, he considered, about the two of them no longer being together, but Dean's reactions had proved without a shred of doubt it hadn't been his choice, no matter what he'd done.
"Crowley."
He turned to look at the demon standing nervously in his doorway. "What?"
"They've picked up the other hunters again. They're in Wyoming. It looks like they're heading toward Sunrise."
Crowley's brows drew together. "Are they now?"
"Yessir."
The King of Hell rolled his eyes and waved a dismissive hand at the demon. What were they planning? An ambush? Some kind of heroics for the swap? He shook his head.
Morons.
All of them. Waste of his time even trying to do things the right way.
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Dean watched the pale mauve smoke rising from the brass bowls. Sam's voice sounded unfamiliar as he spoke the words of an ancient and guttural language, commanding the earth to reveal the gate.
He wasn't sure they'd got it all right, everything they'd needed to make this work. The rock wall seemed unmoved by Sam's painstaking speech. His stomach was agitating and he wanted a drink. His fingers itched to be locked around the Colt, on the trigger, with Crowley behind the sight. Everything was taking too damned long, and he couldn't think of her, couldn't let those thoughts in, but it was getting harder and harder to keep them out, time ticking away like a death-watch at the back of his mind.
It took another minute before the effects of the spell began to manifest. His gaze sharpened as he heard grating, deep in the lower registers, a vibration in his teeth and bones more than a sound at first, swelling as tons of rock moved over the gravel and soil at the base. He stared at the wall, eyes narrowing as a dim, reddish light spilled from a widening gap in the rock face, one section moving incrementally away from the rest.
"This it?" Sam's whisper reached him and he swung his head around to nod at his brother.
"Looks like." Dean glanced at the fire and the tendrils of smoke drifting upward from the bowls. "We just leave that?"
Sam glanced down at the spell in his hands. "Doesn't say. I guess."
Turning back to the rock, Dean took a step closer. The gap had increased, the light throbbing in a disturbing rhythm. A splinter of memory intruded and he tensed against it, not wanting to recall anything to do with the place they were about to enter. None of it would help them. What a soul saw was different to what was there for the still-living.
"You ready?" he asked his brother. Sam's memories of the plane were just as detailed as his, he knew. He could do this alone if he had to.
"I don't think 'ready' is the right word, but yeah," Sam said, staring at the pulsing light. "Let's go."
Dean nodded and they walked toward the gate, ducking under the low entrance and stepping into Hell.
Hell. Second Level.
The bolt slid out of the mortise and Ellie straightened, pushing the door open as she tucked the stiff curved wires into the back pocket of her jeans. Behind her, she could hear Frank's breathing, a little quick, a little ragged.
"You alright, Frank?"
"Uh, yeah," he said, in a croaking whisper. "Ticker's dicey."
He grimaced at her expression. "Uh, you know, sometimes. Left my nitroglycerine in my other jacket."
Filing that away unhappily, she dropped to her knees and eased out the doorway until she could see up the corridor. It was empty. She turned her head to look the other way.
"No one here but us chickens," she murmured, steadying herself on the bars as she got to her feet and walking out of the cell.
"Which way?" Frank looked down toward the elevator doors. "Are there stairs in this place? I don't feel like getting trapped in that."
Ellie nodded, pulling the barred door closed behind them. "Other way," she said, gesturing to the left. "There're stairs all over the place, but I don't know how many of them Crowley has modified."
Frank heaved a sigh. "You'd think if he wanted to do the whole corporate thing, he'd have just set up shop in Manhattan."
Smiling, Ellie nodded. "Not like anyone would have noticed."
The demon'd made a lot of mistakes, with all his ideas of a more modern Hell, she thought as they turned left and walked up the corridor.
"So," Frank said, his voice low. "You, uh, said Crowley wasn't exactly in line to take over this place?"
"Not even close," Ellie said, glancing at him. "The archdemons would've taken over if Lucifer had been killed or put back in the cage."
"Archdemons?"
"Lucifer's fellow fallen angels," Ellie told him. "When he was cast down in Hell, nine of his followers were thrown down with him. The archangel, Michael, cut off their wings. The mythology says Lucifer tortured them for failing him, twisted all the angel out of them and turned them into creatures of pure evil."
"Uh, okay."
She smiled as she heard the uncertainty in his voice. "Hell's always existed, in one form or another, but it wasn't until Lucifer took over that it became an industry for creating demons."
"Creating demons?" Frank turned to look at her. "You mean, from the souls of the damned?"
"That's the idea," she said. "Lilith was the first human he took. He was trying to get back at his Father."
"By ruining God's most loved creation?" Frank's tone held a note of disparagement. "Why didn't he just leave it to us? We seem to be doing fine on that job."
"Cynic," Ellie said, smiling. "Yeah, well, Lucifer was never known for his patience."
The corridor was changing, she noticed, the smooth and straight walls and floor were roughening and starting to bend a little.
"So, uh, Lucifer was undoing God's work down here," Frank said, glancing around. "And, uh, the archdemons were helping?"
"That's the myth. Each of the archdemons ruled a level of Hell, and there're nine in total, although each level has multiple levels within it. The actual levels are more, um, dimensional, than literal."
"Dimensional?"
"They exist in different dimensional planes from each other," she said, her tone matter-of-fact.
Frank stopped and stared at her. "You're kidding me."
"No," Ellie said, stopping as well. "I'm not. Apparently, Heaven is structured in the same way."
"Apparently?" Frank frowned at her. "Where the devil d'you find out about this?"
"I had a partner, when I started out," she told him, gesturing to the corridor and turning away to keep walking. "He knew a lot about the other planes."
"Alright." Frank followed her. "Say I'm willing to buy into all of this, since I'm here and the argument's pretty goddamned hard to ignore. If there're nine angel-turned-demons down here, and you say Crowley's just an ordinary demon, how could he have taken over?"
"The sixty-four dollar question," Ellie agreed. "I don't know."
"Could they be tricked?"
"I doubt it." She slowed a little, rubbing at her temple with the ball of her thumb. "Which is not to say somewhere down here or in one of the devil's storehouses, there isn't a spell or device that's strong enough to bind them. Crowley might've found something like that."
Frank shook his head. "This is – ah – a little out of my pay grade."
"Yeah." She grinned at him. "Bobby traced Crowley's history. He was made a deal, back in the sixteen hundreds and was taken to Hell for it. He became a crossroads demon."
"Is that what it sounds like?"
"A demon who makes deals to broker more souls for Hell," Ellie confirmed. "That's all he was. He never had any real power of his own, other than what most older demons possess. He was working for Lilith."
"Lilith, the – uh – first demon?"
"Yeah," she said, turning to grin at him. "It's a long and very complicated story, Frank."
"But Crowley – uh, despite being a lower ranked demon, somehow managed a feat no other demon could."
She nodded. "I did some digging around as well when he took over. His mother, his human mother, was a witch. Disappeared in Scotland sometime before Crowley made his deal."
"Persecutions were ramping up around then," Frank commented.
"Yeah, they were," Ellie agreed. "It's possible he inherited some of her talents. Enough to be able to work magic more effectively, in any case."
"Spells don't work for anyone?" Frank asked.
"God, no." Ellie snorted. "Some do, simple ones, like finding lost objects, but most depend on the strength of the wielder."
She stopped as the corridor turned, glancing backwards. The smoother floors had gone, the rock under their feet rough and porous. Ahead of them, partially hidden by the bend, she could see the walls were following suit.
"Looks like the renovations only extend so far," Frank commented.
"Yeah," Ellie said absently. "This has to be the third level. The first and second have been changed right through."
She started walking again, and as they followed the curve of the corridor, the ceiling closed in on them. More like the tunnels she'd seen before, she thought. There would be a stair, leading up and down, when they reached the end. She wondered what Crowley had done about the maze of dead ends that'd comprised the second level originally.
"Why did you ask Crowley about making demons?" Frank asked, wheezing a little as he lengthened his stride to keep up with her.
"Crowley changed Hell," Ellie said, slowing when she heard the heaviness of his breathing. "The human soul is incredibly resilient and extremely strong. It's also complicated. It used to take centuries of time to twist a human soul into a demon; centuries of unremitting torture and unbearable pain to strip every last bit of remorse, compassion, memory and empathy from the soul, even the most tainted and foul of them. And that's all Lucifer wanted, was to twist the souls into nothing but hunger and pain, the complete opposite of what they'd been created."
"And Crowley's methods aren't doing that?"
"No," Ellie said, making a face. "Boredom, tedium, even intense frustration wouldn't make a dent on the mind or soul. He knows it too."
"He won't admit it?" Frank slowed as the tunnel narrowed further. "That it's not working?"
"He stopped working on the caverns," she pointed out. "Left the lower levels as Lucifer built them." She shrugged and slowed a little as the tunnel began to twist and turn more often.
"The thing is," she said, glancing back at the man following her. "Hell, like Heaven, is powered by the souls. Crowley's good at getting them, like any born salesman. But his power is going to lessen, unless he recharges Hell with more tortured souls and more demons."
"Not a bad idea," Frank offered.
"It would solve a lot of problems," she agreed readily.
Singer'd been holding out on him, Frank thought sourly as he followed Ellie along the gradually narrowing tunnel. Demons, demonkind, fallen angels … he had a lot of catch up to do when he got out.
He felt the tail of his shirt snag on something and yanked it hard. There was a tearing sound as the material gave way and he was free. A new shirt was a cheap price to pay for getting out alive. Although, he amended quickly, there was no guarantee of that yet.
The corridor began to climb, the increment very gradual. Frank flinched away from the walls, now gleaming with an oily residue, and covered here and there by mosses and lichens that glowed with faint phosphorescence. Ahead of him, he noticed Ellie only gave them a passing glance as they walked past.
"Don't touch those," she warned him, unnecessarily. He had no intention of letting any part of him come close to the inhabitants of the tunnel.
His legs were aching, along with his feet, back and face. Multiple levels for each tier of Hell, he reminded himself. He wondered briefly how badly his trailer had been trashed.
He stopped as she did, belatedly seeing her cock her head as she listened for something. Straining his ears, he could just make out what she'd heard, ahead of them, somewhere, distant shouts and screams, the sound of running feet, echoing oddly in the strange acoustics of the tunnel. She drew back to one side, and he did the same, and the sound began to fade, moving away from them.
Frank let out the breath he'd been holding. "Someone's been stirring the hornet's nest."
She nodded, her face taut with tension and started walking again, picking her way across the broken surface.
Dean, Frank thought. And his brother. He hoped whatever they were doing would act as a diversion that would help them get out.
Hell. Fourth Level.
The tunnel went up and down, a twisting and narrow throat of black rock, the steeper sections cut into steps. The scent of sulphur thickened as they walked deeper, the unsettling red light brightening in some parts of the tunnel, then dimming to darkness in others. Periodically they passed doors, closed and tightly fitted, to the left hand side of the staircase. Dean ignored them, following the stairs.
"Do you know where you're going?" Sam asked as he followed Dean down, bending awkwardly to avoid braining himself on the low roof.
"No." Dean looked down the tunnel that ran on ahead of them. "Didn't get a guided tour when I was down here."
He glanced back at his brother. "I'm not even sure how this place works. It's real – I mean, we're here, in the flesh, but I think it looks different if you don't have a body." He frowned, trying to retrieve some of the memories of his time here, memories he'd spent years trying to bury for good. They were all still there.
"For souls, there aren't any …" He gestured to the tunnel around them, the stairs they were descending, "… uh, physical ways of getting around – no tunnels, no steps, no roads. But there were a couple of times when I saw Alastair in a meatsuit down here … and then there would be passages or stairs, lying over the top of what I could see."
He shook his head. It was too hard to explain the layers he'd been aware of but only sometimes able to see. He'd remembered his body. All the nerves, and muscles, skin and blood and bone, but that'd worked against him and he'd never seen any way out.
Sam nodded. "Maybe it exists on a couple of different planes? Like, uh, overlays?"
Dean shrugged. He didn't care how Hell was structured. The only thing that mattered was finding their way to the right place.
"In the, uh, mirror, Ellie was somewhere big. I got the feeling she was somewhere deep." He waved at the tunnel, leading them down. "When we get to the bottom, we'll start looking and we'll work our way back up."
What if there is no bottom? Sam thought uneasily, but he didn't say it aloud.
Hell. First Level.
Unbelievable.
Crowley looked into the bronze cup, his brows rising in outrage at the images that formed on the slick surface of the blood that filled it.
The poxy, maggot-ridden, pustulant nerve of them!
He turned to his lieutenant, standing on the other side of the desk. "Get every mothering demon you can find. Use the Bear River gate in Utah, it's the closest."
Looking back into the cup, he added, "Stop them before they close that line. Kill them and leave the bodies in pieces. A lot of pieces."
The lieutenant nodded once and left the office at a run.
Crowley rubbed his temples, his fury at the blatancy of the Winchester's plan growing exponentially, the veins of the meatsuit throbbing in atonal syncopation. He swung around, stalking across the office to the long sideboard. In delicate crystal decanters, the deep colours were soothing, even just to look at.
He should have killed those two when he'd had the chance, taken whatever Castiel had been prepared to hand out. The angel wouldn't have killed him outright, no matter what he'd said. He'd been completely committed to the opening of Purgatory. If he'd just done it when he had the chance, he wouldn't be facing this utter cluster-fuck right now!
His hand shook as he poured the Balvenie into a glass. He was King of Hell for fuck's sake! He'd fought and schemed and planned for this bloody job. Had spent centuries searching for and finding the spells, then the necessary items, to bind the Princes. He'd killed every other contender out of hand, and no one, least of all the fucking denim-clad nightmares, was going to stuff it up for him now.
He resisted the impulse to toss the whiskey down like a common shot. It was the finest single malt on the face of the planet and it deserved to be appreciated with proper form. Taking a deep breath, he let it out and drew in another, lifting the glass and savouring the sweet development, tastes of fruit and marzipan and almond. Control returned as the after-taste of ginger filtered back through his senses. He let out an exhale.
What he did want to do, he decided, was to vent a little of the rage on some well-earned revenge.
The demon appeared in the doorway at his thought.
"Get the woman," he ordered.
A scene from a film popped into his head and he smiled slowly at the thought of replicating it for Dean, taking his time and getting it all just right.
Not just the head, of course, he considered, pouring another inch into his glass, but all the other bits and pieces as well. It was undoubtedly crass and over the top, but he would relish the reactions of the hunter with the same reverent appreciation as he did the whiskey.
Sunrise, Wyoming
Dwight looked up at the sweeping breadth of the star-filled night sky, his nerve endings itching and prickling in his palms. "I think they're coming. How're we doing?"
Garth and Twist swung the long-handled mauls, slamming the spikes through the rails and into the hardwood sleepers, their steady rhythm counting off the seconds like the tick of a clock. Marcus nodded tightly, aligning the last stretch of rail to match up with those in place.
"Almost done. One more to fix in," he said, knocking the rail gently with the mallet until the end butted up against the next.
Dwight picked up a maul and walked over to him, bending to take a spike from the pile next to the line. "Let's get it fixed then, 'cause I think we're out of time."
He set the spike into the slot and swung the tool, the reverberation travelling up through the wooden handle, through his hands and up his arms as he hit the head of the spike and it sank an inch into the sleeper beneath. Marcus grabbed his maul and set in the next spike, swinging the heavy tool around and over his head, his eyes fixed on the head of the spike in front of him.
Along the western edge of the sky, the stars were being covered, blotted out, as a huge, fast-moving black cloud raced toward them.
Hell. Second Level.
The staircase was narrow, steep and winding. It was a perfect place for an ambush or a trap, Frank thought, as he climbed after Ellie. His heart was pounding and he was puffing with the effort, but he kept going, forcing the ill-prepared muscles of his legs and back to lift, take his weight, lift again. He was really out of shape, he thought tiredly.
Ahead, Ellie moved soundlessly over the rock steps, slowing occasionally to listen. The twisting ascent had been hewn out by hand, Frank thought, through ancient igneous rock. Briefly, he wondered how long it'd taken to dig these tunnels, cut these stairs. And for what purpose, since she'd already told him that souls and minds didn't even see them?
"How many times have you been in here?" Frank asked her, pausing between each word to catch his breath. Ellie glanced back at him over her shoulder.
"Maybe a dozen times in the last six years."
"Why?"
"The first time, I was looking for a way to get Dean out of here."
"Dean was here? In Hell?" Frank stopped, taking a deep breath.
Ellie stopped as well, turning around. "He made a deal when he was younger."
Frank waited for a moment, slowly realising that was all the information he was going to get about that event. "Obviously, you succeeded."
"I didn't, actually." She turned back to the stairs and started climbing again, her pace easier. "He was raised by someone else. But since I had access, it was a useful place to get information and things that aren't available anywhere else."
"Uh huh." Frank followed her, glad she'd slowed down. "It, uh, seems risky."
"A little. Sometimes," she allowed, glancing back. "But it's a big place, and it's thinly guarded. Very few people break into Hell."
Frank snorted. "True. Most people would try to stay as far away as possible."
He'd thought Singer was mad. And Turner. And the rest of them. None of them held a candle to the woman climbing ahead of him. He couldn't imagine trying to find a way into this place for any reason.
He stopped climbing, leaning against the rough rock wall, his heart beat accelerating and a shiver chilling the sweat that was running down his back as memories swirled back from the distant past. He would've tried, he thought, if he could've brought them back – or stopped it from happening. He lifted his gaze to Ellie, watching her move steadily up the roughcut stairs.
Ellie looked up the stairs. Was the light brightening? Just a little?
The cell had been somewhere on the third level.
Hell could be a difficult place to travel through. From the second level to the third, there'd been a gateway, a stone arch that more or less folded the dimensions, one to another, enabling the crossing. Within some of the staircases that wound up and down between the levels and sub-levels, there were also portals. Invisible to the eye, nothing but a fast, disorienting wrench, and impossible to tell if they were up or down. This staircase, she thought was different. It bypassed the levels in some practical application of chaos theory, taking longer but without the risk of ending up someplace not intended.
She thought about the closest gate they could use to get out. From the inside, without the items that were necessary to the spell, it would take a blood key to open it. She pushed the thought away. She'd deal with that when they got there.
There hadn't been a sound from above them for quite a while. She hoped whatever Dean and Sam had come up with, it was enough to clear out the upper levels for a while. The souls, waiting in endless lines in the pseudo-torture of boredom and futility, wouldn't be a problem.
The tunnel was definitely getting brighter. She climbed faster, leaving Frank behind. He caught up with her several minutes later, ducking as he saw her crouched behind an outcropping and looking into a wide corridor, the hewn stone of the tunnel merging seamlessly into cream tile and tan vinyl.
"We're on the lowest part of the second level, I think," Ellie whispered. "About ten more levels more to climb and we'll be able to get to a gate."
Frank nodded, wiping the sweat from his forehead and the back of his neck. Ellie looked a little more closely at him, seeing the weariness in his face.
"Hang in there, Frank," she said. "We can take it slower now, but we're nearly there."
Hell. Fourth Level.
Sam breathed a sigh of relief when the stairs finally ended, the tunnel opening into an enormous cavern, pitch-black and utterly silent. His relief was short-lived.
"Where are we?" he whispered, not sure why he was whispering. His ears felt full, as if they'd changed altitude and the pressure differential was pushing against them.
"I don't know," Dean said, his flashlight beam swallowed by the immensity of the stygian darkness surrounding him, his voice low. The light didn't touch anything, not the walls of the place, or the ceiling. Air moved around them, warm and filled with the scents of burning rock and brimstone.
"I think we've come down too far," Dean said, turning back to the tunnel. "In, uh, one of the books I got, it mentions there's a split."
"Split?" Sam took a step backwards, eyes narrowed as he tried to find anything his flashlight would reflect from.
"Yeah," Dean said. "Supposed to be a – uh – split between the upper and lower levels."
That didn't sound good, Sam thought. "So we're – what? – at the bottom of the fourth level?"
"I think so."
Thinking of the miles of stairs they'd just descended, Sam shrugged. He'd rather climb back up them than walk into this darkness.
"We go back?"
Dean nodded.
Sam climbed doggedly on, his thighs and calves burning. They'd passed the doorway they'd come in through hours ago, he thought, pushing sweat-soaked hair back from his forehead, although figuring time here was an exercise in futility. Ahead of him, his brother was climbing steadily, Dean's breathing even and quiet.
"Did you, uh, find ways to open the gates, when you were in Cicero?" Sam asked. The thought hadn't left him alone, really, since he'd seen Ellie's books.
There was a moment of silence before his brother answered. "Yeah, there were a couple of, uh, rituals," he said, glancing back over his shoulder. "They would've let me in."
Dean took another couple of steps upward before he continued. "The problem was I couldn't find a way into the cage, or figure out how to get past the archdemons, or work out how to get you out without letting Lucifer and Michael go as well."
"Where you'd get the information?"
He looked up, seeing Dean's head duck down.
"There's a – uh – this bookstore, kind of, in Richmond," Dean said. "Bobby told me about it, a while ago, before, uh, before Lucifer got out."
Sam heard his brother's breath, a rough inhale as Dean kept climbing. "They, uh, specialise, in this stuff. You know, hard-to-find stuff."
Getting into Hell, Sam thought? Yeah, that would be pretty hard to find. He'd never managed it.
"They have a lot of books like that?" he asked, not entirely sure why he wanted to know. "I mean, books on what we do?"
"Rooms of 'em," Dean affirmed, his tone disparaging. "Like one of your wet dreams."
"Funny." He resisted the impulse to take a swipe at the back of his brother's head. "Like, uh, Ellie's library?"
Dean snorted, shaking his head. "Imagine that, times about ten."
"Whoa."
"Yeah." Dean slowed, and from behind him, Sam saw red light spilling out, a few steps above them. "I think we made it to the third level."
The stairs opened out unexpectedly into a long cavern, walls and floor pitted black rock, pools of some acrid, steaming liquid here and there in the hollows. In the centre, two tall rock pillars stood, chains and shackles hanging from them. The light had continued to brighten as they'd come out of the tight, narrow staircase, and it pulsed overhead, beating unsteadily, constantly out of time with his heart. Sam dragged in a deep breath, trying to ignore that insidious throb that was making him feel as if he was going to have a heart attack at any moment. Staring around the open space, he forced himself to pay attention to the features of the cavern, reluctantly comparing them to the details he remembered from the mirror.
This was where they'd seen Ellie.
Dean walked across the uneven ground slowly, his gaze divided between the cracked and hollow-sounding floor and the columns of rock. He stopped ten yards from them, going down on one knee, brushing his fingertips over the stone.
"What?" Sam asked, lengthening his stride to catch up. His brother lifted his hand and Sam saw blood on the ends of his fingers, sticky and gelatinous. Pooled and dribbled and splotched over the ground where his brother was kneeling, there seemed to be a lot of it.
He didn't know what to say, or even if he could say anything that would help. Dean rose and kept moving, stopping by one of the pillars and reaching up to touch the heavy shackle hanging there.
They were bronze, Sam realised, as he followed him. Demons couldn't touch iron. The inside of the thick, roughly cast cuffs were stained, a rusty-looking dark brown crumbling around the edges. Dean let the shackle go, the metal clanging softly against the rock. Sam watched him as he turned away, shoulders rising and falling as he pulled in one deep breath after another.
"This is definitely the place."
Dean nodded, staring down at the ground under the columns.
"Yeah." He turned around, his face expressionless. "Well, she's not here anymore."
Touching the hilt of the knife sheathed on his belt, Sam looked around. They hadn't seen a demon since they'd walked in, and although that'd been the point of the diversion in Wyoming, it was still making him nervous.
"Where now?"
His brother gestured vaguely around the cavern. "See if we can find anything."
Looking around the open area, Sam let out a soft exhale. It was a couple of hundred feet long, maybe a hundred wide. He started to walk away from the pillars, going anti-clockwise in a widening spiral, his eyes on the ground.
In the past year, he'd learned more about his older brother than he had in the previous twenty. Had seen him in a way he hadn't even imagined he could be. Vulnerable. Scared. Tender, astonishingly so. Open. Needful. Complex.
It'd changed something between them, those glimpses. Not in a bad way. He'd spent too many years thinking of Dean as impervious to emotion, real emotion. He had, he thought uncomfortably, bought the masks his brother'd created to hide what was inside.
No, that wasn't even right, he amended as a dozen memories flitted through his mind. Frowning as he studied the ground, he realised he'd added to his brother's masks and disguises himself. He'd been looking at Dean through some kind of filter, through childhood memories and the things he'd decided were characteristic of his brother. Simple. Black and white. Tied to family. Insensitive. Boorish. Brash. His brother was none of those things but, a lot of the time, that's the way he'd tried to see him. Easy to understand. Dismissable.
Seeing Dean as he really was – finally recognising he hadn't known him as well as he'd thought – and seeing him getting to so close to what he wanted ... that had brought back spectres from his life and past, he realised. All the might've-beens and all the regrets. He missed Jess more when he saw Dean with Ellie. Missed what he'd had. What could've been. The time they'd spent together felt like something from someone else's life. Not his any more. There was no getting away from the ache in his heart. He thought of Sara, and of Madison. They'd been promises, not the reality he'd lived once upon a time, but beautiful promises. Empty promises, he thought, drawing in a deep breath against the memories.
He didn't begrudge his brother any chance of happiness, of peace and content, but he … envied … him those things.
The flash of white on the dark ground caught his eye and he stopped, crouching to pick up the short strips of plastic.
"Got cable ties here," he said, glancing around. Dean was over at the far side of the cavern. "Dean?"
His brother strode back to him, wiping his hands on the sides of his jeans. "What?"
"Cable ties," Sam said, holding them out. "Cut off."
"This is what Crowley's using for restraints?" Dean took them and looked around. "Just two?"
"And a rope," Sam said as he saw the thin line curled on the rock beside a pool. He leaned over and picked it up. "Looks torn, not cut."
He heard the crunch of Dean's footsteps behind him. "The hell's that?"
Turning, he followed his brother's gaze. At the edge of the pool, something protruded from the quietly bubbling liquid. They moved around the rim, both dropping to their knees to get a closer look.
Sam started back when he realised what he was looking at, the slightly curled digits stained with a greenish-yellowish colouring.
"Fingers," he said, stretching out a restraining arm as Dean leaned out over the pool. "That's likely to be sulphuric acid."
Dean pulled Ruby's knife from the sheath at his hip and drove the tip into the wrinkled flesh, lifting it higher.
A man's hand, Sam thought, as the fingers and half the palm was exposed. What the –?
Changing his grip on the knife, Dean lifted the hand higher, and they both saw the puckered and stained symbol on the arm together.
"Demon."
"Meatsuit," Dean said at the said time. "Not in here long."
"No, the acid's not that concentrated but it'd still be eaten through if it had," Sam agreed. He looked at the columns of rock.
"You think Ellie fought back here? Killed one of them?"
Pulling out a car rag from his pocket, Dean wrapped it gingerly around the steaming hand and straightened, pulling straight back. The body came out of the pool, the hair mostly gone and the details of the features blurred and softened. He saw the ligature marks around the neck and glanced at the rope Sam held.
"Maybe," he said, frowning. If she'd used the rope, how could it've ended up torn and on the ground? The depth and width of the trench in the demon's windpipe and throat looked about the same size.
"If she was tied up with the rope …" Sam said, glancing over his shoulder. "… who was in the cable ties?"
Good question, Dean thought. The demon's body had been left here. It could explain the amount of blood near the base of the pillars. The rope had come close to taking its damned head off, and it'd been torn, not cut.
It wasn't enough for hope, he reminded himself, letting go of the body and watching it slip back into the pool, the liquid closing over it. If she'd fought, it'd been before what he'd seen in the mirror. Whatever'd happened after … that was unknown.
This isn't an ordinary life. If we make a bad decision, it's not putting up with a lemon of a car, or having to repaint the living room. People die. People we love. Or we have to do things we never wanted to do, never even imagined we'd have to do.
"C'mon," he said to his brother, turning away from the pool and the memory. "Still got a lotta ground to cover."
Sam got to his feet, following Dean over the rising rocky ground, his brow furrowed as he tried to reconstruct what might've gone on here. Crowley'd brought Ellie – and possibly someone else – down here. To torture her, but mainly, he thought, to give the right atmosphere for the show'n'tell he'd been planning for Dean. Before they'd managed to get Ellie into the shackles between the two pillars, she'd killed one of the demon's henchmen. The binding sigil had kept the demon inside the man trapped. It hadn't been enough, not to stop Crowley from doing what he'd planned. But Crowley kept his deals, and she – and whoever had been in the cable ties – had been taken away again. Why?
He glanced back at the columns of rock. He couldn't have left her there. As Dean'd already considered, in Hell's time, it would've been close to a year and her body couldn't have handled the strain. So, he'd moved her someplace secure.
Where?
The cavern's wall curved around ahead of them and he stopped abruptly, glancing at the doors, his gaze swinging back when he belatedly recognised them. What the fuck?
His brother stopped as well, turning to look at him over his shoulder. "What?"
Sam gestured to the doors. "Uh … that's an elevator."
Dean turned to look, shrugging. "Yeah, d'you want to walk back up the stairs?"
"Dean, it's an elevator." Sam couldn't believe his brother couldn't see how wrong it was. Here. In Hell.
"Guess Crowley doesn't like stairs," Dean said, brows drawing together. "You got a problem with it?"
"Uh …" Sam walked over to the doors, starting a little as they opened with a soft hiss. "This doesn't seem wrong to you?"
"Not particularly," Dean said, stepping into the car. He looked at the panel beside the door. "Any ideas on figuring out which floor they went to?"
Stepping in warily, Sam pulled out his flashlight and shone the beam opaquely across the panel. Two of the buttons showed an oily gleam.
"Either twenty-nine or one," he told his brother.
"How's that?" Dean leaned closer to the panel.
"Human skin secretes oils. It's why people leave their fingerprints at crime scenes," Sam said, straightening. "Usually it dries off after a while, although if we had printing dust it'd still show, but those are the last two buttons that were pressed."
Dean was looking at him, one brow lifted, his mouth curving up to one side.
Sam shrugged. "What? I saw it on the Discovery Channel," he said, looking back at the panel. "Level one would be Crowley, wouldn't it? And if you wanted to keep someone locked up for a while, you'd use the lower levels?"
"Sounds logical."
"Twenty-nine it is," Sam said, using the end of the flashlight to push the button. It lit up and the doors closed. There was the familiar subtle jerk of the cable tightening and the car started to rise.
"An elevator in Hell," Sam muttered.
Hell. First Level.
"WHAT!" Crowley bellowed at the cup of blood. The blood bubbled with frantic apology, slopping up around the edges.
He threw his glass against the opposite wall, and strode around the desk, his face purpling at the catalogue of excuses that foamed and hissed from the liquid.
"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU MORONS?"
The office walls trembled, the priceless artworks rattling against them. Pacing in front of the desk, the demon's mind raced through a thousand possible solutions, rejecting them just as quickly, as he tried to work out a way to fix the latest disaster.
One simple job. Even a child could've understood it. But no, they couldn't do it. Devil's Gate shut off – again – after all the trouble Azazel had taken to get it open. He leaned against the edge of the desk, fuming.
Alive or dead, human or demon, no matter what century it was or which side of the world, if you wanted something to be done right, you had to do it yourself.
He straightened, glaring at the cup. "Shut up. Just keep them there."
The demon who appeared at the door of the office cringed back as Crowley whipped around, his eyes glowing a dark red.
"WHAT NOW?" The King of Hell screamed at him. One more mishandled duty or botched task and he'd start disintegrating everything in sight, he promised himself.
"Nothing." The demon backed away, shaking his head.
Crowley scowled and vanished, the air sighing as it filled the place he'd been.
In the hall, the demon let out a relieved exhale. There were times when you could tell Crowley bad news, and there were times when it was wiser just to wait.
It looked around the empty corridor. There were maybe a dozen demons wearing meatsuits left in the upper levels, he'd have to find them and start searching. Bad enough that the prisoners had escaped but if they were still missing when Crowley returned, there would be hell to pay.
Sunrise, Wyoming
Behind the demon cloud, thunderheads were building over the mountains to the west, towering formations of charcoal and gunmetal near the bottoms, shading through steel and dove and ash to pure white at their peaks.
Dwight looked at them, seeing the ominous flickers of light deep within the broad, dark bases. There were a few theories floating around, as to why the massed electro-magnetic disturbances caused by demons affected the local area, drawing storms and wild weather. He had a feeling that chaotic energy called like to like, the swirls and eddies in the planet's natural electrical fields in the same way that excessive heat affected the weather, pushing and pulling the atmosphere's currents. Unlikely ever to be proven, he thought with an inward grin.
"Storm's building," he said to the others.
Watching the equally ominous animate cloud in front of them with Marcus and Twist, Garth was conscious of his eyes almost bugging out of his skull as the cloud flattened and crawled against the unbroken iron line as if it was a glass wall. It moved with a sentient evil that was sending icy chills down his neck, writhing and twisting away to search for another way in.
How many demons were there, he wondered, feeling another shiver ripple up his neck, goosefleshing his arms. A thousand? A hundred thousand? The cloud had easily blocked out the eastern half of the sky.
"There's a church, 'bout half a mile away," Marcus said, dragging his attention away from the hypnotic sight. The older hunter waved an arm to the north. "We should get in there, going to be raining cats and dogs soon."
Massive thunderstorms, lightning storms and out-of-season weather events were a good indicator of demon activity, Garth remembered Bobby telling him. Along with the more biblical-styled omens like blight and pestilence, famine and drought for no reason and more rarely, bodies of water changing colours, or inexplicable falls of rodents, amphibians or the widespread deaths of birds, there were a lot of things that went on in the natural world when the unnatural came out to play.
He hurried to his Pacer, opening the driver's door and sliding in. Dwight had told him Colt's pentagram was a hundred miles a side. The doubled lines of iron, held to the earth by iron spikes, created a barrier to the outer edges of the planet's atmosphere. Why should that matter to a creature that wasn't even flesh and blood, he wondered distractedly, putting the car in gear and following Marcus' sedan along the pale dirt road.
The first fat, heavy drops of rain plunked onto his windshield as the Chevy pulled nose-in to the front of a small and simple wooden framed and clad building. The steeple was above the arched doorway, topped by an iron cross and grounded with a wire cable that was swaying and shaking in the rising wind.
Garth parked next to Marcus, getting out and startling as a huge fork of lightning struck the ground outside the pentagram, the brilliant after-image remaining even when thunder crashed and boomed around him, making the fillings in his teeth zing and oscillate.
"Close," Twist said, giving him a grin as he hurried past, his arms loaded with a camp stove, flashlight and blankets. "Get your gear and get inside, Garth. Gonna be a wild one tonight."
He nodded and shut the door, unhooking and lifting the tarp cover for the tray and grabbing his sleeping bag and two jerricans of water. Another strike hit along the edge of the iron tracks, followed immediately by a deafening roar of thunder and the fat drops increased, hammering on the car and tinging loudly from the church's tin roof.
Marcus, Dwight and Trip had unloaded their gear inside when Garth stepped through the narrow doorway, passing Twist on his way out again, a can of spraypaint in the hunter's hand. He dumped his gear on the floor and turned around to watch Twist kneel on the silvered porch boards, uncap the can and paint a devil's trap across the threshold of the building.
The lines and circle and the symbols that marked each quadrant of the trap were precise, and Garth realised he might need to put some time into practising it as well, if he was going to have much to do with the Winchesters.
"Garth, use your help here," Marcus called out from inside and Garth turned away reluctantly.
"Grab the salt, pour a line all the way around," Marcus said, gesturing to the bags of rock salt lying near the door, and to Trip who'd already started pouring along the baseboards. "Better safe 'n sorry, right?"
Right, Garth thought, picking up a bag and opening it. Much better.
He couldn't believe he was in the middle of a demon siege. Couldn't seem to make himself believe it. He'd been in the life for five years, having stumbled, or rather backed, into his first case inadvertently, a non-demanding poltergeist that'd invaded his then-girlfriend's rent-controlled Soho apartment courtesy of a garage-sale painting. The poltergeist had been about as malevolent as the green blobby ghost from the movie, Ghostbusters, and he'd had plenty of time to learn as he went, trying a dozen different approaches to get rid of it. He'd finally lucked onto the source, and burned up the painting, dissipating the not-so-much angry spirit along with it, and had lost his girlfriend at the same time.
It'd taken six months to realise he'd enjoyed doing it and another two years of actively trying to find more jobs like it before he'd met Bobby Singer and been taken under the hunter's wing. Kind of.
Bending over to pour the line, he glanced around the church's interior. Marcus had set up the two campstoves, a pot of coffee brewing on one, the other holding a saucepan full of canned stew, he thought, looking at the empty tins surrounding it. Trip had finished his side of the church and was inching along behind the pulpit to meet him. Twist had finished the front door and was painting additional protective circles and sigils on the walls. Dwight had a hammer and a screwdriver in his hands, moving slowing around the building and looking for weak timbers, he thought. He applauded the attention to detail. Not much point surviving a demon horde if the church fell on them in the middle of the storm.
Hunting with Bobby had given him a small taste of what the life was really like. Following the demon's trail of too quickly called in deals in Pike Creek, then hunting the shojo with Dean and Sam had given him a lot more. Being here, with men who had more than forty combined years of experience, in the middle of an attack by what looked every demon on earth … that was a different ballgame altogether.
He finished his line, overlapping Trip's and carried the almost-empty sack back to the pile. Thunder rumbled, shaking the church's frame, vibrating through the floorboards and rattling the windows, and he walked closer to the window, looking at the lightning as it struck the earth again and again. The charge in the clouds above them was enormous and he wondered if the church's steeple was actually grounded. He was turning away to ask Dwight if he thought it was, when he caught the movement of the demon cloud in the corner of his eye. He turned back, watching the smoke part and swirl up along the barrier of the lines, the gyrations slowing and finally stilling completely.
Lightning hit the ground between the church and the line, and Garth saw a figure standing on the other side of the iron rails.
"Uh … guys? I think we've got company."
They walked over to him, looking out.
The King of Hell stood there, watching them.
Hell. Third Level.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened onto a long, empty corridor, the walls and floor smoothed rock, both walls punctuated at intervals by barred doors.
"Well, you were right," Dean said, stepping out and walking to the nearest door. "Cells."
He glanced into the room through the iron bars. It was about eight by twelve, an empty stone room.
"How long have we been down here?" Sam asked, peering into the cell.
Dean glanced at his watch. It'd stopped, at the time they'd crossed into the different dimension. "No clue."
"I'll check this side," Sam said, turning to the other side of the hall and looking in the first cell.
Dean looked up the length of the corridor. There were dozens of cells here. He wondered if he should yell out, the back of his neck prickling in alarm making the decision for him. The last thing they needed was extra company. Walking to the next cell on the left, he glanced around it, and moved on, hearing his brother's footsteps to his right.
Reasonable condition, Sam'd told him Crowley said. Reasonable could mean anything that included alive. His pulse was hammering again. The cavern had been too familiar, not just from the mirror's images. When he'd looked at the two columns of rock in the middle, he'd had a hard time shutting down the visions that'd come rushing back, the blood they'd found not helping with that at all.
Sometimes … it feels like something is playing us.
He slowed down as that memory came back to him. They'd been in the cabin in Whitefish, in the upstairs bedroom they'd taken over and dawn's grey light had been edging around the corner of the closed curtains. Ellie'd sounded unsure – vulnerable – and that'd gotten his attention fast.
"What d'you mean?" he'd asked her quietly, turning onto his side, his heart giving an odd, extra beat when he'd seen her expression.
"I don't know," she'd said, her gaze on the far wall. "Too many near-misses? Too many times something just happened at the wrong time? The wrong place?" She'd shaken her head. "It's just a feeling."
He'd been uncomfortable with the idea. Hadn't wanted to look at it too closely, had wanted to focus on the fact she was in his arms and there was nowhere else he wanted to be, and nothing else he wanted to think about.
There'd been plenty of near-misses, he thought, glancing into the cells as he walked past them. Plenty of times he'd needed her, plenty of times when her being around might've made a big difference to his choices and decisions. Plenty of times she'd needed him too, he knew.
He glanced into the next cell and stopped.
"Sam."
In the middle of the cell floor, there was a blood-soaked white rag.
He pushed at the door and it opened easily. Crossing the stone floor in a couple of strides, he dropped to a crouch, picking up the remains of what'd been a white tee shirt. It'd been slashed, both sides of the edges red.
"Dean, you better take a look at this" Sam said from the doorway. He turned and looked over his shoulder at his brother.
Sam was kneeling beside the door, looking at the old-fashioned lock.
"What?"
"Here," Sam said. "The lock."
Getting to his feet, he walked to the door, the shirt crushed in one hand. He leaned closer to the lock and saw it immediately.
Scratches. Fine and instantly recognisable.
"She was here, and got out," his brother said, straightening. "Under her own steam, by the looks of this."
"Yeah."
Hope and relief were every bit as difficult to control as his fear'd been, he thought, staring at the lock and sucking in a deep breath.
"C'mon, man," Sam said, resting a hand on his shoulder. "Let's go find her."
He nodded, looking down at the shirt in his hand. After a moment, he dropped it on the floor, striding out through the cell door and turning left, his speed increasing with the acceleration of his pulse. She was out, but hurt, somewhere in this place. This was not going to be another near-miss.
Sam followed his brother out of the cell and along the corridor, lengthening his stride as Dean quickened his pace. His gaze flicked from side to side, glancing into the cells they were passing.
Why would Crowley – or Lucifer – need these, he wondered? Dean'd told him some of the things he'd learned, when he'd been trying to find a way to open the cage, a bit of the history of Hell, as his brother'd understood it. Mortals had been here, from time to time. Looking for treasure of one kind or another, paying the boatman to take them through the hinterlands and across one of the three rivers that bounded the plane. Searching for ways to get Dean out, he'd seen some of that mythology but had dismissed it. Too fanciful. Too fantastic.
Hell, he thought, running a hand through his hair. Back then, they'd found it hard to believe in vampires, even when they'd seen them. But Ellie hadn't, he reminded himself.
When they'd thought her dead – the first time, he amended wryly – he'd asked around a little, about her partner, about what other hunters had known of her. He wasn't sure why. Dean wouldn't talk about her at all, but he'd felt like he had to do something. Something to mark the efforts she'd made on his brother's behalf and the cost she'd paid.
He'd heard a lot of rumours and maybe a few facts, about both of them … Furente had been considered a top-of-the-line hunter by some – an elitist, arrogant prick by others. He'd heard he'd been elusive, evasive, opinionated, frightening. That he'd been a priest once. That he'd been in the military. That he'd had monster friends, demon friends and hadn't been all human. That he'd spent years in a psych ward. That he'd hunted alone until he'd met someone, someone younger. That he'd had two partners, before Ellie, and both had been killed. That his family were gypsies. That he'd been a member of an ancient and secret order. That he'd been a psychopath, delusional and living on the edge of rage … the more people he'd asked, the more contradictory answers he'd gotten. Mostly rumours, he'd thought at the time, trying to put all those pieces together.
He walked along the corridor, his gaze automatically moving from one side to the other, aware of his brother, striding fast ahead of him, doing the same thing. The corridor went on and on, containing nothing but empty cells.
It'd been similar to the way others'd seen Ellie, he remembered. A stuck-up bitch, Rick Gellun'd told him, working a salt'n'burn in east Texas. Too big for her britches, Jack Elliott had remarked when they'd chased down a lead on a demon sighting in Kentucky. Got her partner killed. Unfriendly. Heartless. Cold … but at least he'd enough personal knowledge of her to separate out the patent lies.
"You know her?" Sam asked, surprised.
"Yeah, worked a job with her in Carson City," Ryerson said, leaning back and tilting the chair he was in. "'Member that one, Roy? The werewolf?"
2009, Sam recalled. They'd run into the partners in Syracuse. No job, just a few drinks at the local watering hole, on their way someplace else. Walt had brought up the subject, asking if they'd seen Ellie around.
The other hunter gulped his beer from the bottle as he nodded. "Yeah, Walt, I remember her. Remember you chasing after her for a week, tryin' to get into her pants," he added with a grin.
"Yeah, okay, I was interested," Ryerson admitted with a shrug. "Love me the redheads," he asided to Sam with a wink.
Sam glanced at his brother. Dean was sprawled back in his chair, watching Walt with hooded eyes, his face expressionless, drinking his beer without comment.
"Didn't have no luck with her," Roy said, looking at Sam. "Walt, he was tryin' hard, even bought her a bunch of flowers."
Walt shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Didn't buy her flowers, you asshole."
"Wouldn't've worked anyhow." Roy shrugged. "She would'a broken your nose for you if you'd kept at her any longer." He slid a sideways look at Sam. "Ol' Walt, he doesn't like to take 'no' for an answer, sometimes."
"Yeah, well, I figured she was – you know – into girls, or just frigid, maybe," Walt said, picking up his shot and tossing it back. "Met a few like that."
Sam saw Dean duck his head, his brother's mouth twist into a contemptuous smile. "Bet you have."
"Who bagged the werewolf?" Sam asked, diverting the conversation when he saw Walt was slowly digesting his brother's comment.
"She did. I mean, I think she did," Roy said, before Walt could respond. "Took Walt by surprise, knocked him into next week. I got a round off but the fucking thing was faster than a snake an' I missed the first shot. Came at me like a goddamned freight train."
He shrugged. "Woke up the next morning in the ER. Walt was in the next bed," he said, grinning at his partner. "Was a fracture, wasn't it?"
Walt scowled, looking away. "Hairline."
Dean finished his beer, putting the empty on the table. "Guess it was lucky for you two she was there," he said, getting to his feet. "C'mon, Sam, gotta lot of miles to Tennessee."
A lone wolf, Ellen'd told him, over a couple of whiskies at Bobby's place. Kept herself to herself and didn't ask for favours, didn't want to get too close to anyone since her partner had died. Ellen's gaze had been on her daughter, Jo sitting at the table with Dean and Bobby. A good hunter, from the accounts she'd heard, and still alive, a testament to skill in itself. Knowledgeable, surprisingly so. Respectful, courteous, helpful when she could be, Ellen had shrugged. She'd thought Ellie'd been burned by Michael's death. The two of them had been together, and the young woman had been more open, more at ease when Michael had been alive.
Under his feet, the stone floor was roughening, pocks and holes and divots catching at his bootsoles and pulling his attention back to the present. He glanced to either side, realising the cells had disappeared, the walls to the left and right were no longer smooth or straight, bending this way and that, each twist a little more pronounced than the last. The light was murky, he thought, turning to look back over his shoulder. Behind them, it was a lot brighter.
Turning back, he saw Dean was still moving fast. His brother's gaze was swinging from side to side, taking in every inch of the ground he was covering. Extending his stride a little more, he caught up and looked past Dean at the narrowing corridor, brow wrinkling up as he realised the twists and turns ahead were getting pronounced enough to hide what was coming.
"Is it getting darker?"
Dean glanced at him. "Looks like."
They pulled out their flashlights, flicking them on together.
"You, uh, read anything about how big Hell is?" Sam asked, when another few minutes had passed and they were still walking.
"Nothing you'd call, uh, definitive," Dean said, glancing back at him. "Why?"
Sam shook his head, lifting the beam higher. The corridor – tunnel, he corrected himself – had turned again, the walls a lot closer together than they'd been. He flinched a little as he felt his hair brush against the ceiling. It felt as if they'd been down here for days, he thought, blinking as he realised a second later that could easily be the case, at least in Hell's accelerated time.