Chapter 17
Hell. Third Level.
Dean felt the incline before he saw it, pulling at his hamstrings slightly as he rounded another bend. The first few shallow steps appeared ahead. The tunnel's ceiling was closer, he thought, lifting his hand and brushing his fingertips along the rough rock, not far over his head.
None of his memories were of any use here. Nothing they'd seen since they'd crossed over had triggered even the vaguest recollection. Except the light, he thought. He wasn't sure if he was annoyed or relieved that was the case. He'd spent forty years of remembered agony down here and it was almost insulting nothing from those years could be put to good use.
The flashlight beam played over the walls and floor of the tunnel, Sam's light behind him throwing his elongated shadow against the pitted rock.
Behind him, he heard his brother grunt suddenly and he looked over his shoulder. Sam had a hand pressed against his head.
"Ceiling's getting lower," Dean said. "Watch your head."
"You think?" Sam rubbed his hand over the crown of his head, bringing the flashlight up again. "Thanks for letting me know after I concuss myself."
Dean grinned humourlessly. "Not my fault you grew the extra inches."
His little brother's retort went unsaid, the beam twitching past Dean and Sam's eyes narrowing. "What's that?"
Dean turned, his gaze following his brother's light. He lifted his flashlight and the two beams reflected on a scrap of white, several yards deeper. Ducking his head a little, he hurried toward it, Sam's footfalls echoing softly behind him.
A scrap of cloth had snagged on the rock, and Dean reached for it, pulling it free.
"That Ellie's?"
"No," he said, turning it over. The cotton was dirty, smudged with what might've sweat or blood. It was stiff, without the elastic feel of a tee shirt. In the images graven into his memories, she'd been wearing a dark green shirt, a white tee under it.
"The other cable ties?" Sam guessed, his brow furrowing. "Someone else down here?"
"Yeah, maybe." He looked up the tunnel. The fabric was dry and the surrounding walls were moist, glistening slightly in the beams of their flashlights. "It's, uh, recent."
"Someone Ellie took with her?"
Dean shook his head. He couldn't speculate about it. He thought if the cloth'd been torn more than a couple of hours ago, it would've absorbed at least some of the moisture on the walls. Trying to work out anything else about it was a waste of time. Pushing it into his coat pocket, he turned and played his light over the gradually steepening steps ahead, swallowing against the vague and amorphous hope that was filling his chest.
"Whoever it is, they got a head start on us," he said, walking up to the steps and starting to climb. "We gotta catch up."
Hell. First Level.
Ellie passed Frank one of the curved steel wires from her bra. "It's not much, but it's steel," she said quietly, "They'll feel it."
He nodded, tucking it against his palm and closing his fist around it, the end protruding a couple of inches out from his knuckles. It was inconspicuous. If he didn't just get thrown against a wall or ripped to shreds, he thought he'd probably be able to do some damage with it. Perhaps take an eye out, at least.
The thought brought a pleasurable feeling of anticipation. He might not have worked in the field for a while, but he'd had enough of being dragged around, tied up and beaten. It was time for a little payback.
The stone staircase they'd come up had ended at one end of a long, wide hallway. Toward the other end, a long, long line of people were shuffling along slowly, moving under a suspended lit sign that showed a twenty-six digit number.
Crowley's queue.
Ellie looked at the faces of the damned, seeing resignation, apathy, lethargy, a little frustration, here and there. The general torpor visible wasn't going to do much to the souls forced to endure it.
On the opposite side, facing their crouched position just within the staircase, there was a short, narrow hall, a heavy, metal-sheathed door visible at the end. Through the door and up another winding rock staircase, and they'd've reached the gate – or transdimensional portal between planes, more accurately – that opened in Ohio.
She'd used the gate once. The real-world exit was in the middle of the reserve to the west of Cleveland's airport. They could get transport in the long-term lot.
Maybe it would be better to send Frank off on his own. She would be visible to Crowley from the moment she stepped out of Hell, she thought, chewing on her lower lip. Warding a vehicle, making hex bags to hide her from the demon's view was going to be problematic. The nearest source for what was needed was in Buffalo, a hundred and fifty miles distant from their exit.
And, she considered, there was a still a good chance he'd see her, despite whatever protection she could come up with. Only the angel spell had really hidden her from everyone's view.
Worry about it once you're out, she told herself. There was a more immediate problem. Two demons were standing in the corridor, a little closer to the queue, but still between them and the door.
They weren't actively looking for anything; Ellie guessed they'd been posted there to keep an eye on things only. She watched them, noting the boredom on their faces. Looked like they'd been there a while.
There weren't exactly a lot of ways she and Frank could take them, armed only with the thin steel wire. She couldn't see their arms, didn't know if they were marked with the sigil that the others had been. Was Crowley paranoid enough about his rule in the underworld to bind every demon serving him? She didn't think so. Demons on foot were a lot slower than demons who could smoke in and out of meat suits. He probably only used the sigils for those who served him personally, or those he wasn't sure of.
"Nooo-oooOOO! I've been to the back of the line FOURTEEN THOUSAND FUCKING TIMES!"
The anguished howl came from the distant end of the corridor, and Ellie's mouth tucked in at the corners as she glanced back at Frank. Dropping to her stomach and inching out past the rough stone wall, she watched the two demons saunter down the corridor, away from the little hallway.
"That's our cue."
Easing herself up, Ellie kept one eye on the demons as she moved across the corridor to the hall, turning to nod back at Frank when she reached it. Frank lurched to his feet and hurried after her.
He hunched down into the corner beside the door as she examined the lock, handing her the short strip of wire.
"Can you keep an eye on what's happening out there?" she whispered to him.
Nodding, he belly-crawled back to the corridor, face close to the ground and peeked around the edge of the wall.
Hell. Second Level.
"Alright. We've searched all of third and second levels. They must have made it further up," the demon said, looking around at the twelve possessed men he'd managed to round up for the search. He was having a hard time keeping the deep-seated throb of fear-driven urgency from his face. Crowley would send them to the abyss if they really had lost the two humans.
"We'll split up here," he continued, dragging in a fortifying breath of sulphur-laden air. "You six, take the elevator and start from the top, working your way down. We'll take the stairs and work our way up. There're only two of them, and they're both pretty harmless."
"Tell that to Richards," one of the demons muttered. "Heard that gal just about tore his fucking head off."
"Enough!" the leader snapped. "That was before Crowley spent a few hours working her over. Is there anyone here who believes she's a danger to us? Speak up now and I'll direct you to the daeva immediately." There was no response from the demons and he nodded. "At this moment, she's about as dangerous as a kitten, so try not to allow your lily-livered tendencies overcome good sense."
He looked around at the rest. "They're not to be killed. Do I need to repeat that? Lucky has plans for them and the demon who deprives our King of his sport will be spending the rest of eternity as a toothpick for the shadow daemons."
The group nodded and peeled away, six heading for the elevator, the others following the leader up the corridor, toward the twisting rock staircase at the opposite end.
They would find them, the leader told himself. Hell was infinite but they'd be heading for the first level and trying to find a way out and good luck to them with that, he thought, face screwing up in a grimace. He'd been trying to find a way out for the last three hundred years. Hadn't managed it so far.
Crowley'd been gone for an hour. Whatever had happened in Wyoming, it would be over by now. Lucky the Leprechaun, a misnomer that'd gained a great deal of popularity, had been the subject of some ridicule in the lower hierarchies, and had known it. When he'd become King, he'd killed most of those too stupid to keep their wit to themselves. His reputation for blind rages was well and truly documented now.
They would find the prisoners and get them back into their cells before the crossroads demon knew they'd been missing, he repeated to himself, trying to ignore the flutter of doubt that snaked down his meatsuit's spine.
Sunrise, Wyoming
Crowley stood by the iron railway tracks, staring at the church less than four hundred yards away. The hunters were in there, five of them according to his lieutenant. Not the Winchesters, who'd somehow managed to disappear off the face of the earth.
He looked down at the lines again. A double line of iron, intact and unbroken around the entire perimeter. He didn't think he could break through it. One, maybe. But not both. He didn't want to try and fail in front of the horde that hovered, waiting, along this side of the pentagram.
Letting out a savage exhale, he admitted the problem to himself. He didn't have enough power from the souls in Hell.
It had been an unforeseen side effect of changing the place to run more efficiently that the tedium, frustration and anger of waiting endlessly in lines was not a sufficient goad to either twist the soul into a demon, or to release the power of the soul that torture and agony and anguish invariably did, no matter how long the souls remained looping through the same pattern.
A good idea at the time, he thought with a resigned sigh, but not good enough. He was going to have to reinstate the labour-intensive torture regime if he wanted to have enough juice to further his plans.
He could feel the power of the iron even from where he stood, glaring down at it. It was a strange metal, and it had a strange effect on creatures that were not a part of the natural laws of creation. He'd heard, centuries ago from the ancient daeva at the bottom of the Abyss, it'd once been called the blood metal, back in the days when magic had been more acceptable, people'd known more about the world they'd lived in. The pure iron had been forged and tempered with demon blood and salt and a touch from it meant death to any but the most powerful hellspawn. He wasn't sure if that was fact, or the results of living too long on a diet of pain and darkness, but he could feel its resistance to him, to the demons that waited around him.
He thought of another solution. Not an elegant one. Not a clever one. But it would work.
"Stay here. We'll starve them out."
The tendril of charcoal smoke that was his lieutenant swirled up and around him.
He looked at the church thoughtfully. He couldn't penetrate the iron barrier, not enough to see inside it. To his demon's vision, the church had been ringed and defended as well, with the sigils and signs that deflected the eye, that repelled the essences of evil. Someone in that little building knew what they were doing, he thought with a scowl.
The Winchesters weren't there. They'd gone in the opposite direction when they'd left Rapid City. He shrugged off that disappointment. It didn't matter, either way. They couldn't ward the angel enough to hide him. If they tried to move Castiel, he'd have them. The hunters here would be dead in a month. One way or the other, he'd be rid of them of all of them.
The air came together with a sigh, the rain falling unimpeded again as he vanished.
Marcus leaned on the window sill, staring through the binoculars as the man vanished.
"Well, now that's interesting."
"What's interestin'?" Twist looked up from the gun he was cleaning.
"That fella, Crowley, he just disappeared." Marcus turned to the others, the corner of his mouth lifting. "Guess the lines were too strong for him."
"Good. Was getting' on my nerves, wonderin' 'bout that." Dwight poured a cup of coffee from the pot. "Anyone bring any cards?"
Trip got to his feet, walking across to the window. Against the lightning flashes that lit the landscape every few minutes, he could see the black cloud, spreading out a little more, along the lines.
"Looks like the rest of them are staying," he said.
"Probably try to wait us out," Dwight said, leaning over and rummaging through the duffel at his feet.
"Why's he wanting this place so bad?" Trip asked.
Twist scratched the stubble along his jaw. "Guess he wants the gate available," he said, glancing at Marcus.
"But – but Sam said he couldn't open it. Ain't that right?" Trip's brows knitted up. "Said no one could. Key's gone."
"Anyone know whose gate it is?" Marcus pulled out a couple of decks of cards from his pack and put them on the table. "Has to be important, that Colt'd try to lock it up like this?"
"Baal's gate," Dwight said, lifting a bottle of whiskey from the duffel. "Yeah, major player, back to the beginning. You remember what Elkins used to say about it, Marcus?"
The other hunter nodded. "Baal got out this way, once, back in the early eighteen-hundreds," Marcus said. "Massacred about a thousand of the local Indian population and brought out hundreds of demons. Colt heard about it, when he was East. Elkins reckoned it was the reason he designed and built the gun, the gate, the tracks, everything."
"Yeah, well, what I wanna know is how an archdemon gets outta Hell without help," Twist said, picking up his tin cup and holding it out to Dwight. "Whole point of having gates is to keep 'em locked up, idn't it?"
"Dunno what the point of having gates is to begin with," Trip said, walking back to the table and sitting down. "A good lockup, there's no way out."
"Well," Marcus said, pulling out a chair. "There's Judgement Day."
"What about it?" Trip asked, his tone belligerent. "Thought that was so the faithful get to Heaven?"
"What'd you think happens to the rest of us when those trumpets blow, son?" Dwight gave the younger man a wry smile.
Garth stood by the window, watching the storm and the charcoal cloud and listening uneasily to the conversation behind him. He looked at his watch. An hour and forty minutes had passed since Dean and Sam had entered Hell. He hoped they'd found what they were looking for, because he thought Crowley was headed back there.
Hell. First Level.
In the short hall, Frank lay on his stomach, looking down the corridor from floor level. The two demons were still at the other end, although, from the increased noise levels down there, it sounded like the problem was getting worse, not better.
Behind him, Ellie was crouched by the door, using one of the curved underwires as a torque wrench for the lock, applying pressure to the plate, and feeling her way through the pins with the other. She'd told him the lock was stiff and heavy and it would take a little while for her to get it open.
There were a number of much louder shouts from the end of the corridor, and Frank narrowed his eyes, edging out into the corridor a little further, trying to see what was going on.
There appeared to be a lot more demons down there, he thought, lifting a hand and wiping at his glasses. More demons and a lot more of the souls were getting involved in the protest about the line and the waiting. He watched, eyes widening, as two demons suddenly ran into the crowd, the damned pushed and shoved in both directions. A scream, high pitched and wavering, came from the centre of the disturbance and within moments, every demon was hacking and slashing at the line, screams and cries filling the stone corridor in a deafening cacophony. He sucked in a breath as he realised the melee was moving steadily toward them.
Sliding the couple of inches backward until he was covered by the edge of the rock wall again, he turned his head. "Ellie, good possibility we got ourselves some trouble."
At the door, Ellie frowned, gentling the pick through the last couple of pins. "What kind of trouble?"
"Reinforcements for one thing." He pushed his glasses back up his nose. "Crowd's rioting. Looks like the demons've lost the tenuous grip they had on that virtue called patience, being as how they've started to massacre the damned." He glanced over his shoulder. "And, yeah. They're heading this way."
"I need another minute." She caught her lower lip between her teeth, bending closer to the lock, shutting out the distractions around her forcefully.
"Don't know we've got a minute."
He got to his knees with difficulty, the joints protesting. A scraping noise made him turn his head suddenly toward the staircase on the other side of the corridor and the pain and his worry about the approaching fracas vanished as he looked into the surprised face of a demon, as it came around the last bend of the stairs.
"Oh … crap."
The scream bounced from the narrow rock walls, high-pitched, drawn-out and filled with agony.
Sam looked up suddenly. "D'you hear that?"
Dean nodded, already accelerating as he took the stairs two and three at a time, sucking in the foul-tasting air and forcing his legs to move faster, forcing himself to ignore the burn of hours already spent climbing the uneven steps. The scream from above them had been distant, but not that distant.
He could hear his brother behind him, knowing Sam was running nearly doubled-over, the ceiling'd gotten so low in the last few hundred steps. His head was down as well, his hand gripping the bone hilt of Ellie's knife tightly. The Colt was under his coat, pushed through his belt. He left it there. With three bullets left, he wasn't going to waste them.
Ellie lifted the last pin and heard the lock click as she saw Frank go down in her peripheral vision. She yanked the wire from the lock, spinning around and back against the wall as the demon behind her brought a club down, missing its target but landing on the point of her shoulder.
The blow to the already agonised joint sent fresh shrieks of pain through her nerves and a wave of intense nausea up her throat. Clamping her teeth together, she swung her hand, slashing across the demon's throat with the curved wire. It leapt back in surprise, hands going to the gash as blood began to pump from the severed artery, aspirated with air and bubbling out through the gaping hole in its windpipe.
Behind it, Frank was being dragged out of the narrow hall, back into the larger corridor, black-eyed meatsuits to either side of him. She took a step toward him, instinct making her swing around when another demon appeared at her side, one hand reaching out for her, its eyes the flat black of a shark's, lips drawn back in a chilling smile. The wire flashed out again and it stumbled backward into the demon behind it, staring in disbelief at the long split in its hand where the wire had severed the tendons and separated the bones.
"Oh, for Lucifer's sake!"
The voice was educated, a high tenor, and the demon it belonged to was tall and long-limbed, shoulder-length silver hair brushed back from a high forehead and tied with a ribbon at the nape of its neck, in keeping with the tattered and filthy frock coat and knee breeches it wore. It's exasperation was obvious as it pushed past the wounded demons and raised its hands.
Ellie barely had time to duck her head forward before she was slammed against the wall beside the door, invisible hands pinning her neck and arms immobile against the stone, the air knocked from her lungs. The power of an older demon, she realised as she took in its appearance, struggling against the telekinetic grip and the reluctance of her lungs to take another breath. A lot older and a lot more powerful than the others.
"What's wrong with you!?" It swung away from her and made a sharp gesture, Frank yanked free of the two demons holding him, hitting the ceiling with a thud, his face pressed against the smooth rock, the impact cracking the frame of his glasses. "You're demons! Try to act like it!"
Ellie renewed her attempts to break free when she saw it turning back toward her.
"You," it said, pointing a long finger at her. "The King wants to –"
It stopped talking and its arm dropped limply. For a moment, it stared at her, mouth opening and closing, a growing trickle of blood spilling down over its chin, then red-gold light filled its face, bursting from nose, from mouth and eyes and ears and she saw the protrusion, sticking out from one side of its neck, silhouetted against the brightening glow that boiled inside the body and lit up the corridor.
The power holding her against the wall disappeared abruptly and she fell to the floor, breath hissing out as she landed on her hands and knees, both shoulders jarred and twisted. She ducked her head, eyes screwing shut as she tried to let the pain wash through her, too conscious of how vulnerable she was. When the initial shockwave had eased, she lifted her head, and saw Dean stride into the corridor from the staircase, Sam close behind him.
Dean yanked Ellie's knife free of the demon's neck. The brief glimpse he'd gotten of her had knotted his stomach up and he pushed the after-image and reactions back down, ducking automatically under the swing of the next demon's long knife, springing upright to shove it backwards. A familiar, grizzled face looked up at him from behind its knees, the demon flailing its arms as it catapulted over Frank, kneeling on the floor.
"Dean!"
Didn't take a rocket scientist to know what the sudden widening of the older man's eyes meant, and Dean was already down, twisting around as he balanced on a hand and foot, his leg scything out the demon's. It fell, its feet tangled up with him, blood spattering across them both as tried to hit him with a hand that'd been split up the middle.
"Get back to Ellie," he snapped at Frank, driving his knife into the demon's eye, and turning his head aside as the demon's body blazed with tawny light.
There was no time for thought, for questions or answers. Jerking the knife free, he pushed the body aside and rolled onto his feet. In front of him, another possessed meatsuit was staggering aimlessly, blood spurting between the fingers it held at its neck, and he reached out, grabbing its shoulder and plunging the blade through the ribcage and into its heart from the back. Its hands fell from its neck, the signature rose-gold incandescing from the yawning wound and every orifice as it pitched forward and fell face-down.
His foot slid out on the blood-slicked floor, dropping him to one knee as another demon lunged for him, grinning like a shark. The grin fell away when the curved tip of a knife emerged under its Adam's apple and Dean saw his brother's face, luridly painted with the lightshow, behind the demon's shoulder.
"Thanks," Dean said, feeling the wrench in his knee as he got to his feet.
"Don't mention it," Sam answered, turning to look down the corridor. "Ellie okay?"
"Alive." Dean flexed his foot, putting his weight on it. "Frank's here too."
"You kidding?" Sam said, taking a couple of steps away and peering through the surging mass of souls down the hall. "Looks like we got more company."
"Yeah." He glanced back into the stubby hallway. Frank was sitting at the end, his back against the wall, one arm around Ellie. Neither looked in especially good shape, but they were both breathing.
"How many?" he asked, turning back to Sam.
"Five or six."
"How many you want?"
"Oh, I can take three," Sam said, wiping an arm over his face and lifting the tip of Ruby's knife as the first demon cleared the panicking, surging crowd and lunged up the hall toward him.
Ellie watched the fight in the corridor, eyes narrowed and her fingers twitching slightly. In her mind's eye, she was with them, facing the demons, making moves and dodging weapons. Her shoulders throbbed, the ache from them numbing her arms and hands but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the combat.
"They have good timing," Frank grunted, his hand lifting to touch the rapidly swelling laceration on his forehead. He winced as his fingers found it.
"Yeah, they do." Ellie watched Dean drop into a slide, going under the demon's guard and driving his knife – her knife – into its legs. "Any dizziness?"
Frank shook his head. "No, lost my wind, got a bump on the noggin, that's all."
She reached out, teeth settling into her lower lip against the pain of the movement, and pushed the door to her right. It opened slowly. Beyond it lay another staircase, hewn from the rock, lit by a pulsing red light.
"That's the way out," she said, her gaze on Sam. "Soon as they're done, we're going."
Frank nodded, turning to look back at the blood-spattered corridor. "Anything we can do to help?"
"Stay out of their way," Ellie told him.
Dean and Sam had moved to the centre of the corridor, standing back to back. The two Kurdish knives; one long and slender, the other short and thicker, were coated in red. Around their feet, scattered over a twenty-yard section of the corridor, lay the bodies of ten demons, nothing but empty shells now, the demons gone.
The last three circled them warily, Ellie thought. The Winchesters had taught them some respect for the weapons they carried and used with such deadly effect.
Dropping his shoulder, Dean twisted to the left, lunging at the furthest demon. The second, to his right, bought the feint and stepped in close, over-extending as it swung a long, heavy blade at him.
Ellie watched as the hunter shifted his weight, balanced and smoothly intercepting the blade. Set into the hilt of the knife he carried, the small brass fillet caught the edge, the softer metal holding it for long enough for Dean to pivot in close, his elbow slamming back into the demon's face and wrench the weapon from the demon's hand. The blade fell to the floor with a ringing clatter and Dean swung back, driving the long knife up through the underside of the meatsuit's jaw. Light burst from its wide-open mouth, adding to the unmistakable impression of its shock as it died. He pulled the knife free and let the body fall.
Sam had driven the third demon against the wall, the knife in his hand embedded to the hilt through the demon's abdomen, the light show outlining his features in carnelian-suffused gold. He pushed the body to one side, and turned, the tip of Ruby's knife up and ready as his older brother harried the last demon around the floor, pushing it backwards toward him. The two blades pierced the heart, Sam's from the back, Dean's from the front as they sandwiched it between them and the demon's scream was cut off abruptly when its body ignited and glowed.
Ellie pushed back against the wall behind her, wincing as the rough rock scraped her skin, inching her way to a standing position. The once-orderly queue was a shambles, the damned souls milling like shocked cattle, running this way and that at the other end of the corridor. There didn't seem to be any demons left. She watched Dean's gaze move from the corridor back to them, a shiver goosefleshing her skin when his eyes skipped past her.
Gesturing at the doorway, she said to Frank, "Get started. We'll be right behind you."
"You okay?" Sam asked, walking toward them.
"On my feet," she said lightly. "Can you help Frank? He's getting too old to be doing this sort of thing."
He nodded, glancing back at his brother. Dean was dawdling behind him, seemingly focussed on cleaning his knife.
"Yeah, uh, sure," he said. "Where's this go?"
"To a gate," Ellie told him. She glanced back at Dean. He took a couple more steps toward her.
"Right." Sam nodded, walking through the door and following Frank's heavy breaths up the narrow stairs.
"It looks worse than it is," Ellie said, waiting for him to reach her. "Really."
He stopped a couple of feet from her, drawing in a deep breath and tilting his head, looking at her from beneath his brows.
"Not sure that's saying much," he said.
She saw his hands close into fists, the knuckles standing out white by his sides. She hadn't thought much about what she looked like, but if his expression was anything to go by, she thought it was probably pretty bad. Between them there was a wall of discomfort. All the things that'd been left up in the air when he'd left her house. All the things that'd happened in between then and now. All the things that shouldn't have been there but were, because they were in Hell and there was no time to get any of it straight.
"We should go," she said, glancing at the open door. "There's a gate, at the top."
He shook his head, and she saw his throat work, his eyes close briefly. Then he took a long stride and he was there, in front of her, his arms coming around and stopping just before they touched, his face screwing up uncertainly.
"Can I – uh –?" His gaze flickered down her body. "Is there, uh, any place you don't hurt?"
"Yeah," she said, closing the final inches between them and hiding her wince as she forced her arms to wrap around him. "Won't be doing any weights for a while, but I'm okay."
His arms closed gingerly around her, and she felt the gust of his exhale against her hair, felt the rigid tension in him soften.
"Jesus, Ellie," he murmured, ducking his head until his cheek was pressed against hers.
He was trembling, his breath coming out in short, harsh puffs. The short-lived, savage wish to hold him tightly, convince him she was fine, dissolved as her injuries protested. She couldn't even press the side of her face against him, the swelling there too tender. His hold on her was light, barely there, but it was still too much.
"Let's, uh, get out of here," she said, not pulling away, not yet, but lifting her head a little.
He let go, stepping back and looking down at her. "You, uh, want me to carry you?"
"No." The thought brought a smile, tugging at the pain in her cheek, as she met his gaze. "That would hurt. I need to walk, keep moving or this is all going to stiffen up."
Sunrise, Wyoming
Marcus threw down his cards in disgust. Another bunch of twos and threes. They were only playing for matchsticks, but it was the principle of the thing. He looked at his watch and frowned.
"Garth, those demons still out there?"
Garth glanced over his shoulder. "Yeah, they haven't moved."
Marcus got up slowly, feeling his joints creak with the static and moisture in the air. The storm had been pounding them for two hours now, and the call from the Winchesters was overdue.
He walked to the window and stood next to Garth, staring out into the wild night. "How much food we got, Twist?"
"Enough for a week or so, ten days if we're careful." Twist looked up. "Why?"
"Hellspawn have settled in. King of Hell couldn't break the trap so he's gonna try to starve us out."
"Well, they can try." Dwight shifted a handful of matchsticks to the pile and smiled at Twist. "See your ten and raise you twenty."
"We gotta a ten stick limit here, Dwight!" Twist looked down aggrievedly.
"He's bluffing," Trip said, adding ten sticks to the pile. "I call."
Turning back to the window, Marcus watched the smoky cloud that drifted along the perimeter of the railway lines.
"Can they starve us out?" Garth looked from Dwight to Marcus.
Marcus shook his head, rolling his shoulders and turning back to the table. "Not likely. Hellspawn have a limited attention span. We'll be alright."
Hell. First Level.
Crowley stood in his office, his teeth gnawing at the edge of a fingernail. He probably should have tried to break the trap, he worried, his hand dropping to his side when he realised what he was doing. He walked around the end of the desk restlessly. It didn't do for a demon in his position to show any signs of weakness.
Ah, well, couldn't be helped now, he told himself, trying to dismiss his misgivings. In any case, by the time the hunters were taken care of, the demons would have forgotten his decision. They had all the long-term memory capability of gnats.
It wasn't the problem. Not the real problem.
The power he'd felt – back when he'd found the Throne and sat on it the very first time – had been draining away. More likely than not, it was due to the decrease in the pain of the souls. He had more souls than Hell'd seen at any other time, the numbers steadily rising on deals from the moment he'd been seconded to the First Demon, and for a while, his power had grown, magnified and amplified by the sink of pain every soul fed.
Since Lucifer had been returned to the Cage, and had subsequently and mysteriously disappeared from it, that power had been waning.
The little bitch'd been right, he thought, swinging around for the sideboard. Without the torture, the souls here did little more than clutter up the place. More worrisome was how fast that was happening.
He walked to the sideboard and lifted the stopper of the crystal decanter there, pouring an inch of Balvenie into a clean glass. Tipping it up and swallowing the first aromatic mouthful, he belatedly recalled his last instructions before he'd left for Wyoming.
They should've been carried out, whether he was here or not, he thought, setting the glass on the tray. Nothing would please him more right at this minute than peeling the skin from her flesh and hearing her screams.
He glanced at the cup on the desk. It was still and silent. Like the rest of the place, he realised. Too silent. Where the bloody hell was everyone?
Turning, he walked out of the office.
The staircase wasn't long, the steps broad and shallow. From no discernible source, the dark red light of the plane pulsed strongly here, casting sinisterly moving shadows over their faces and tinting their skin to varying shades of red. Ellie watched as Dean locked the metal-clad door behind them, turning for the steps when he reached her side.
"How'd you get in here?" she asked him, using the wall beside her to keep herself steady.
"Found a spell and some books in your study," Dean said, his voice thickening. "Were you, uh, ever planning on telling me about … this? Getting' in and out of Hell?"
"I did tell you I'd been to Hell," she said, keeping her gaze on the next step and the one after.
He made a disparaging noise in his throat. "You said it like you were joking. How long? How long you been sneaking in here?"
"A while," she admitted.
"Why?"
She could hear his confusion in his voice. "I looked for a way in after you were killed."
He didn't say anything, and she risked a quick sideways glance at him. His gaze was on the steps, his jaw tight.
"Michael told me about crossing over, in mind alone. I didn't think that would help. I spent a few months looking for the ways to get in, read up on the lore of this plane and found the ways to open the gates.," she continued, a little reluctantly. It'd been a long time before Nebraska and Raphael. Two years before she'd told him how she felt. "Katherine told me she gave you some of that information too."
He nodded.
Ellie sighed. She had to tell him sooner or later. It wasn't the way she'd wanted to talk about this. "I told you I'd been in Egypt, you remember? I was looking for a way to return your soul back to your body when I heard you'd been raised."
Beside her, his inhale was harsh. "You were trying to get me out?"
"Yeah."
He stopped on the stairs and Ellie stopped as well, looking down at the rough-cut stone at her feet.
"Why?"
"I couldn't leave you in Hell," she said.
In the narrow staircase, she could hear his breathing, rough and uneven.
"Hey," Sam's voice called down. "C'mon."
It wasn't fair to hit him with this stuff right now, she thought, reluctantly raising her gaze to meet his. She'd thought they'd have the time to talk about it at their own pace, not pushed and shoved by anything else.
"We need to keep going," she said, very softly. "We can talk later."
His eyes were full of questions, his face twitching with emotions she couldn't define and couldn't look at right now. Glancing to the top of the stairs, she took a step upward, hesitating as Dean's hand closed gently around her forearm.
"We're not done with this," he said. She nodded.
"I know."
He let her go and turned to the stairs. "Yeah, we're coming."
Climbing up the stairs beside her, Dean forcibly corralled the churning mess of questions and doubts she'd stirred up with her admission, trying to keep his mind on what they needed to do next. On top of the mess he already had spinning him around, it was too much. They were in Hell. They had to get out. Those were the priorities, he told himself, sucking in a breath between his teeth.
She'd tried to find a way to get him out.
The spike of adrenaline was like a punch, flooding muscle with a steel edginess that wasn't helping.
From the moment he'd seen her, pinned like a fucking bug against the wall, he'd been resisting the surges of emotion, trying to suppress every instinct he had. He couldn't let any of it loose until they were out, out and in some place safe enough to deal with it. Right now, he couldn't even think of where a place like that might be. The cabin was probably compromised; Crowley's eyes would know it by now. Ellie's place was out, its protection broken.
Most of her face and both shoulders were misshapen, the flesh swollen and bruised. Cuts, raw and fresh, covered every inch of skin he'd been able to see. Crowley'd done it for show, he knew. It didn't change the way it was hitting him.
She'd broken into Hell to find a way to get him back.
Christ, he thought, shut it. If they were caught here, everything they'd done would be for nothing because Crowley would be foaming at the mouth to kill her in front of him, and at the back of his mind, the images were waiting, coiled and expectant, looking for a way back in to rip him to shreds.
Just hold it together for a while longer. Get out, get somewhere the demon wouldn't be able to see her.
What the demon had done. Where they were. What she'd said. What he wanted. What he knew. How the hell to talk about it all. Crowley. The Colt, heavy in his belt. A safe place. How? Where?
He ran his hand over his jaw as they reached the top of the stairs, eyes screwing shut. They could deal with everything else after.
"Gate's shut." Sam gestured to the blank rock wall as they stepped into a wide room. On the other side, another tunnel indicated a second staircase, its entrance filled with shadows.
Ellie looked sharply from the wall to Sam. "You didn't use this one to get here, did you?"
"Uh, no, we came in through Sioux Falls." Dean cleared his throat. "Came out somewhere else, lower down."
"At the top of the Fourth level?" Ellie asked, her gaze shifting to him.
He nodded, wondering just how much she knew about Hell and it's layout.
"You used the Akkadian spell, the one on parchment?"
Sam glanced at Dean and nodded. "Yeah, Bobby translated it."
"You leave the fire burning, outside?"
"Uh, yeah," Sam said. "We didn't, uh, add more firewood or anything."
Ellie shook her head. "Then it'll be closed too."
"What?"
She glanced at Sam. "It's a – a sort of fail-safe, I guess," she told him. "You have to keep the fire burning to keep the gate open. Otherwise, it closes."
"Stop the demons from slipping out with no one around to see?" Frank suggested.
"Probably," Ellie agreed, glancing around the open area. Turning back to Dean, she asked, "Your gear's all back in Sioux Falls? You didn't bring anything with you?"
"Uh, no." He glanced at Sam. "Car, our gear, all back at the other gate. Why?"
"This gate opens in Cleveland, in the reservation near the airport," Ellie told him. "We'll be sitting ducks there, no warding, no equipment."
"What do you mean?" Sam asked.
She looked at Dean. "Crowley is going to figure out what happened."
"Yeah. He'll see you," he said flatly.
She nodded.
He thought of the gun tucked through his belt. Maybe they should let him. "I've got the Colt."
Her brows shot up. "Colt's Colt?"
"Yeah."
"It won't just be Crowley."
No, he thought. Not just Crowley. The King of Hell'd bring as many demons with him as he could rustle up.
He had three bullets, and he and Sam had a knife each. Against one, even Crowley, that might be enough. Against a hundred – or more – demons, it wouldn't cut it.
"How do we get out?"
"If we go out through Sioux Falls, we might be able to seal the gate," Ellie said, a crease appearing between her brows. "Give us some lead time."
"To go where? He'll know the cabin by now," Dean said. "Your place is trashed."
"Sunrise." Sam cleared his throat, his gaze shifting from Ellie to Dean. "We got reinforcements there. We could use the Devil's Gate. Lock it back up with the Colt?"
"You know where that is? From, uh, this side?" Dean raised a brow at Ellie.
"Baal's gate," she said, the crease between her brows deepening. "It's on the Third level, below the cells, down near the bottom."
"How do we get down there fast?"
"Elevator would be the quickest way, but it'd be a trap if anyone noticed us," she said, glancing across the level ground. Dean followed her gaze.
"Stairs it is," he said.
The elevator doors opened onto the floor and Crowley stepped out, eyes widening as he stared around the corridor in disbelief. More than a hundred souls lay on the floor around the counter, torn to shreds, their remembered blood pooled around them and covering the vinyl floor from side to side.
He kicked at the closest, feeling his blood pressure rising. They'd be restored in twelve hours time but that wasn't the fucking point. The rest of the line, two or three hundred more, were huddled back against the right-hand wall, silent and unmoving. Further up the corridor, there were more bodies, scattered across the width of the corridor.
Striding up the corridor, he stopped at the first group. The demons he'd left here to keep things under control, he thought, upper lip curling as he recognised a couple.
His gaze flickered over them, noting the wounds that'd killed them. Picking his way fastidiously through the bodies and across the blood-slicked floor, he slowed again as he recognised the demon he'd left in charge. It lay sprawled on the floor, the deep puncture in one of side of its neck telling him all he needed to know.
A diversion. Wyoming had been a diversion.
The fucking Winchesters had been in here, actually in here to get her. He looked at the blood sprays and spatters that coated the walls and floor of the corridor, his eyes narrowing when he saw two pairs of red boot prints, leading to the narrow hallway at the end of the corridor.
The hallway that had a door to a staircase. A staircase that led to a gate.
The gate opened in Cleveland. He was sure its topside location was unknown. He ran to the door, slamming a palm above the lock and shoving it open when the lock turned to ash. Taking the shallow stairs three at a time, he came out next to the smooth rock that marked the gate. It was undisturbed.
They'd lost the boys in South Dakota, he recalled. There was only one gate in South Dakota. An old, powerful one, its master dead for years.
The Winchesters had gone to Sioux Falls. As the realisation dawned on him, his face contorted with anger. Snuck in through Azazel's gate and had broken into Hell, no doubt using the same spell the bitch had found.
He wasn't aware of the fine tremble shaking his meatsuit, the muscles of his vessel twitching and jerking with the rage that consumed him. How long? How long ago had they left?
Swinging around, he ran back down the stairs, sliding to a stop beside one of the lifeless guards. Dipping his fingers deeply into the wound of the demon, he let out a savage exhale. The blood was cool, but not cold.
No more than forty minutes, at most.
They hadn't used the elevator, which meant they were taking the stairs down. Racing back along the corridor, he thought he'd have to get to his office first, get his lieutenant and some reinforcements back here.
He cursed himself for sending every available demon of the upper levels to Wyoming. Demons could descend through the levels of Hell, but once down, they couldn't come up again. Not unless he was on the Throne. And getting there would take too fucking long.
"You okay?" Dean looked back at Ellie as they went down the winding stairs. She wasn't moving fast, her hand on the wall beside her was a give-away for the fatigue that had to be eating through her.
Ahead of him, Sam and Frank were moving downwards. Ellie'd told them this was one of the stairs in the plane that would lead them straight down to the fourth level.
"Tired, but yeah, I'm good," she said.
"There was nothing about the gate closing on its own in the spell," he said.
"No," Ellie agreed. "Had to find that out from experience."
Clamping down on the images that comment raised, Dean asked, "Any ideas on where we go when we get outta here?"
"Richmond," Ellie said. "The Hidden Door."
"Won't that be bringing a shitload of trouble down on your friends?"
She shook her head. "The store and house are protected – better protection than anywhere else I can think of."
"It's a long haul from Wyoming to Virginia," he pointed out.
"Yeah," she agreed. "Nothing we can do about that."
"We'll need to make a detour too," he said. "Stop at Sioux Falls, get our gear."
Nodding, Ellie asked, "Who's at Sunrise?"
"Dwight, Trip and Marcus," Dean said. "Twist and Garth."
"They repaired the line?"
He glanced back at her. "Yeah. Figured it'd draw Crowley's attention but give them enough protection."
She smiled, lopsidedly. "Well, it does that alright."
Crowley waited impatiently by the cup, fingers drumming on the desk.
"I know what I said," he ground out thinly. "I need a hundred back right now. The rest can stay and starve them out."
The blood bubbled, splashing slightly around the edges, then subsided into stillness.
Turning away from the desk, he closed his eyes. The elevator only went to the lowest part of the third level. Getting to the fourth level meant using the portal and walking. He'd lose those demons, taking them down there. It couldn't be helped. He could reinstate them on the higher levels once the Winchesters and Morgan were dead.
Bloody Lucifer and his archaic ideas of control, he thought bitterly.
"Wait, need a moment," Frank said, stopping on the staircase and leaning against the wall.
Sam stopped and looked around. "Sure."
He glanced up as Dean came to a halt beside Frank, and Ellie stopped behind him. His brother's face was tense and set, he thought. He'd heard the murmur of their conversation a while ago, too low to make out what it'd been about and it'd stopped somewhere after the thousandth step, he thought.
"We know how much further?" he asked Ellie.
"We're close to the middle of the third level," she said, gesturing behind them. "That last door was the bottom of the second."
"How do these work again?"
"I don't know the technical details," Ellie said, her mouth curling down. "Most of Hell is about perspective, there's not much reality to it. That's why it changes so much depending on how you get in here."
"But the levels are separate dimensions, right?" Sam's forehead creased up, not sure if he had that right. "So how does a single staircase incorporate them?"
"I don't think it does," Ellie said. "This stair – and there's another one, on the other side of the plane – seem to be a separate dimension, lying alongside the levels but only touching them where the doorways are. Crowley's elevator uses that same plane to move between all the upper levels."
Sam blinked at her. "So, uh, each doorway is a portal?"
She nodded. "Further in, the, um, interior staircases also contain portals," she added. "You could be going up or down and find yourself in a completely different part of Hell, on another level, or on the same level but on the opposite side."
He opened his mouth to ask more about it, and caught his brother's gaze, Dean's expression dark, holding a warning. He'd asked her about getting into Hell, Sam thought, looking away. And, from the looks of his brother's reaction, she'd told him.
"How you feeling, Frank?" Ellie asked.
"Ha. Whaddya think?" Frank said, tipping his head back against the rock. "I'm alright. Haven't had this much exercise in a while and the machine's complaining."
"What about you, Ellie?" Sam looked at her.
"Moving's good," she said. "Not going to tell you I'm great, but keeping the blood flowing is helping."
Sam watched Dean tuck his chin against his chest. They weren't out yet, he thought.
He looked at Frank. "Ready?"
"No," Frank said sourly. "Lead on."
He straightened slowly, pushing off the wall with one hand and Sam turned around and started down again.
Crowley tapped his shoe impatiently on the elevator floor as it descended. The demons who'd returned from Sunrise were moving down the staircase; a single, writhing column of smoke keeping its distance in the corner of the elevator's car.
"When we get to the staircase, we move fast. They'll be at the gate but they have to open it, and unless the Winchester IQs went up miraculously, they'll have to use a blood key," the King of Hell said. "That'll reduce their effective force to one."
Dean would give up his blood before he let anyone else do it, the demon knew. The amount necessary would leave him a far less capable opponent, and put the burden of fighting on his brother. Moose, for all his size and experience, didn't have the same predatory nature as his older brother. That kill or be killed mentality. They'd take them easily and then he'd give Dean a refresher in Pain 101.
Hell. Third Level.
Sam crossed the rocky ground, his nerves jumping and crackling. The third level was a mess of eroded rocky ridges, gravel scree and ankle-breaking loose stone, lit dimly in shades of ochre and crimson, the light variable under a continuous, roiling cloud cover.
Above the broken, black plateau, a vast wire net was suspended, anchored to towering poles of scoured and pitted metal. The twisting canyons were filled with the moaning of a capricious wind, pungent with the stench of sulphur, hot enough to dry out his nose and eyes, make his cheeks and forehead sting. It sighed across open ground, whispered through tunnels and holes in the tortured rock, wailed through the taut cables above. He couldn't see any signs of anyone there, but around the edges of consciousness, he thought he could hear them.
The damned. The souls.
"Why can't we see them?" he asked Ellie, his voice hushed. He glanced around, feeling movement; behind him, to either side, almost but not quite visible. "I can feel – something – as if they're there." He shook his head. "Feels like I can almost hear them."
"They are here," Ellie told him. "But they're spirit; mind and soul, and we're flesh. They don't see us, but they can sense us, like we can them."
She glanced up at the net, the thick metal cables a grid against the poisonous cloud-filled sky. "Look."
Sam looked up, swallowing and wishing he hadn't when he saw what she was looking at. From the net's joints, barbed hooks had been hung, some connected to each other with rods or chains, others spaced out in a particular order. They weren't hanging loosely. He dropped his gaze as the hooks he was staring at shivered and moved, tugging against each other.
"How far is it to the gate?"
"Not far," Ellie said, turning and walking toward the end of the open area. "This level, it's like the badlands in Montana, a lot of broken up ridges and valleys make it slow going."
Sam tilted his head to look down at her as he matched her pace. "How much time have you spent in here?"
Her gaze cut away. "On and off, a fair bit, I guess. There were things I was looking for, a couple of years back, some stuff that was rumoured to be here."
Sam let out a soft sigh. His brother's pensive withdrawal was more understandable.
"Why didn't you go and see him, when he was in Cicero?" he asked.
Ellie ducked her head, her gaze dropping to the rough ground, and Sam wondered if he'd get an answer.
"He was out," she said, a few moments later. "It was – um - one of the things I knew about him first. How much he wanted to be out, to have a family and a home."
"Not like that," Sam said. He reached out, his fingers curling gently around her arm and she looked up at him. "I made him promise to find them, Ellie. Find them and stay with them."
"Bobby told me he was happy. He asked me not to intrude, if he was." She glanced down at his hand, pulling her arm away gently. They reached the narrow throat of the valley, and she turned right, following the flat ground through the rock walls. "He said you wanted him to stay that way."
"I did," Sam admitted, moving up beside her as the path widened. "But not for him."
He glanced over his shoulder. Dean had taken rear, walking behind Frank, his gaze mostly on the ground.
"Ellie, he never really said how he felt about you," he continued quietly. "And I never really asked, or even looked at it that hard."
He'd tried to talk to Dean about it, a few times. But even seeing the changes in his brother at the time, he hadn't known what they'd meant. Hadn't known his brother well enough to know how deep they'd gone.
"We were in Blue Earth, after the angels broke the sixth seal. Dean – uh – he killed the Whore – and she –"
Ellie turned to look at him. "The Whore can only be killed by a servant of God," she said softly. "It's in Revelation."
Sam nodded. "Cas told us."
Drawing in a breath, he said, "Dean didn't – he – uh – thought I'd say 'yes'. To Lucifer. Thought he was going to have to say 'yes' to Michael, to, uh, make sure Lucifer didn't destroy everything." He tipped his head back, trying to shut out those memories. "He – uh – didn't really believe it, until he killed her. Then, he – uh - he took off, left me and Cas behind."
"I figured if he was going to hand himself over to Michael, he might go to Cicero. Say goodbye to Lisa and Ben. When I got there, he'd already been and gone, but Lisa – she, uh, said she was worried about him. Told me he'd talked about bad things about to happen, had told her she and Ben would be looked after."
He turned and looked at Ellie. If Lisa had left it at that, would he still've made his brother promise to find another life, he wondered? He didn't know. Lisa hadn't left it at that, and what she'd said had made the decision for him.
"She told me … she said he'd told her that, uh, when he imagined himself happy, it was with them. I thought it meant – I thought it was what he wanted."
Ellie's face smoothed out, expression vanishing. She kept walking, and Sam realised abruptly that what he'd just told her had been to justify what he'd done, not even asking himself if she needed to hear it.
"Ellie, look, I think –"
"Sam," Ellie shook her head, cutting him off. "You don't have to explain anything."
"Yeah. I do," he said. He glanced behind them. Frank was about twenty yards back, Dean another two or three behind him. "Making him promise to go live that life was one of the worst things I've done to him. And trust me, that's quite a list."
She didn't respond, didn't look around at him, but she slowed a little. Trying to find a way to explain it – what he'd thought, what he'd wanted for his brother, what he'd thought Dean would need – was tangled up with the events, the emotions, the changes in both of them. Dean'd acknowledged, for the first time, his little brother was a grownup, had put aside the dictums and habits and love of a lifetime to let him choose his own path.
"He agreed to back my play, with Lucifer, you know, and I knew – when it happened? – he'd – uh – he'd be lost. I thought he'd be able to forget his life," he said, shaking his head. "I thought he'd be able to make a new one. Uh, put the past behind him, be someone else, someone he'd never had a chance to be."
The narrow passage of rock opened, widening into a long valley, the walls of the ridges rising high around it. He stopped, turning to look down at her when she slowed beside him.
"What I didn't think about … what I, uh, didn't know about him … was he might need to be himself," Sam admitted, his fingers carding through his hair. "I didn't think about what I'd asked him to do."
"Sam – this is the past, alright?" Ellie said. "It's done. Finished."
He shook his head. "You don't believe that, Ellie. You know it keeps impacting, everything we've done and thought and said."
"What I know is Dean learned a lot about himself, that year," she said, finally turning to look at him. "He needed it, whether he wanted it or not."
He'd thought that as well, when he'd seen his brother again. Dean had been a different man.
"Maybe," he allowed. "But you didn't."
"We there?" Frank asked, coming up behind them. Sam grimaced internally at the old man's timing, glancing past him.
Dean slowed as he got closer, his face expressionless. Behind the façade of indifference, Sam got the feeling his brother'd been putting himself through the wringer. Choices and doubts, past and present, the what-ifs and might've-beens; all Dean's demons, coming out to play.
Ellie nodded, pointing to the end of the valley. "The gate's there."
Following Frank across the valley floor, Dean found he couldn't look around much. His first glimpse of the net, stretched out above them, had brought a sheen of cold sweat to his skin, and unexpected sense memories; tearing in the muscles between shoulder and collarbone and ribs, sudden phantom pain in his knees and ankles and hands. He'd dropped his gaze and kept it on the ground as much as he could.
He could hear them. See them occasionally, from the corners of his eyes. They vanished when he turned his head but they weren't gone, he knew. Just not visible directly. Souls screaming out for mercy, for death, for anything to take away the agony. They were answered by his memories, silent screams that'd never stopped, that lived still, even when they were buried.
The things that I saw ... there aren't words. There is no forgetting. There's no making it better. Because it is right here. Forever.
It wasn't, he knew, the guilt and shame so much anymore. Not about what he'd done. What'd been done to him had left its scars, more hidden, and deeper than he'd realised.
But daddy's little girl? He broke. He broke in thirty.
That wasn't something he could face up to, or find a way to forgive. It was something he needed to learn to forget. In those years, he'd been stripped of everything and left like garbage, submerged and drowning in the rank foetor of his own flaws, his weaknesses and failings, barely a few shreds of himself left to hang on to.
The first stage of the breaking is the dehumanisation, Dean. You will be nothing more than filth, nothing more than pain, nothing left of the man you were born.
He glanced up, careful to keep his eyes below horizon level. Frank was walking in front of him, slowing down some, his breathing clearly audible even from five yards away. Ahead of Frank, Sam and Ellie were walking side-by-side, talking.
The demon'd explained everything to him. What would happen. What it would do. How long it would take. Alastair'd laughed the whole time, drinking in his dissolution like fine champagne, sputtering in delight on the bubbles.
She'd tried to get him out.
Hey, Dean.
A pair of jade-green eyes, flecked with gold, filled with emotion, looking up at him as if he hadn't thought her dead and gone, not enough left to burn or bury.
In his mind's eye, the memory came too fast and too vividly; the dark hallway, lifting the balaclava and seeing her face, lit up by the bathroom light behind him. The expression in her eyes as she'd looked at him. He hadn't known what that was, back then. Hadn't even thought of the possibility. But he knew now.
Dean.
He'd looked up and she'd been standing there, next to the table, as if the months of silence'd never happened, as if once again he hadn't been edging his way toward accepting she had to be dead.
Near misses, he thought uneasily.
He'd gone to Indiana. She'd been a few weeks too late and he'd been living with someone else, in a whole new life.
That'd been more than a near miss. That'd been right on target, a bullseye by whatever'd been trying to force them into doing the things they had to do.
And she'd returned to Hell. And he knew why.
Slowing down as they approached the rock wall, Dean wiped both hands over his face. Too fucking much information, he told himself. Too much to deal with in one hit, and way too much to think about in the middle of trying to get out of this goddamned place.
He focussed on the sheer rampart, searching for a shape, or a seam, or a crack that might indicate there was a gate. The wall was solid. He couldn't see any part of it that looked any different to any other part.
Sam was shining his flashlight along the wall, looking for the same tells, he thought. Frank'd stopped and was leaning over, his hand against a outthrust of black rock, breathing heavily. Ellie wasn't looking at the rock wall, he realised belatedly. She was studying the ground at the base.
"What're you looking for?" he asked, taking a few steps closer.
She glanced up at him. "Anything that's different from the rest of the wall."
Walking to where the wall began to curve around the narrow end of the valley, Dean stared at the ground, moving slowly back toward her and Sam. Anything that was different from the rest, he told himself, hoping like hell it would leap out at him 'cause he sure couldn't imagine how one patch of ground was going to be significantly different from the others.
He stopped after thirty yards. Ahead of him, there was a change. Instead of the loose, broken rock and gravel that characterised the rest, there was a four-yard square of fine, black earth. He dropped to a crouch, brushing his fingertips through the dirt, pinching some and lifting it closer.
Smelled burnt, he thought. Scorched. Casting around, he saw a shiny, flattish rock, as black as the rest, but clear. He picked it up. It was translucent, a smoky flake that looked like glass.
"Got something," he said, lifting his gaze to his brother and Ellie.
Sam reached him first, holding out a hand for the smooth, sharp piece.
"Obsidian?"
"Yeah," Ellie said as she came up behind him. "This is it."
"How do we get it to open?" Sam asked, looking at the wall.
"Without the spell – without the ingredients to compel the plane, opening the gates from the inside requires something else," Ellie said, her gaze dropping to the ground.
"What?" Dean looked at her carefully, recognising her discomfort.
"A blood key."