Chapter Twenty-Four
Everyone stared, gawking like fish out of water, before Ivy sputtered, "What the fuck did you just say?"
"I'm sorry, but it's true," Faolán said earnestly, his bright green eyes pained somewhat. "Believe you me, I'd give anything for it to be different but there's no other way."
"And why is that, huh?" Dean demanded.
"She is the one destined to end the war," Faolán said, "and this is how she will end it."
Ivy paced the length of the reading room as she read, desperately trying to remain calm as she searched the pages of her book for some clue on how to kill a Faerie.
"This is insane," she said out loud to nobody. "This is the craziest thing I've ever been told."
She threw her book onto the table in frustration, her last nerves fraying as fast as she tried to think. A mortal killing a Faerie would bring nothing but devastation to his or her family and hometown. Except, of course, Ivy wasn't entirely mortal.
Oh no, she was part Faerie, and on the slippery slope to becoming a full one, apparently.
Ivy slumped into an armchair, raking her hands through her long auburn hair and trying to keep herself together. For the first time in several years a raging sense of hopelessness was slowly permeating her entire body. It was a feeling from long ago that Ivy was, unfortunately, all too familiar with. Following the initial shock of losing first her immediate family, and then her aunt and uncle, Ivy had bounced back in such a way that, had it not been for Charlie's constant presence in her life, she would have become a shell.
She pinched the bridge of her nose, still unable to keep her thoughts straight. Making the entire situation worse was the fact that the dull headache that had been knocking on her skull had grown worse as the day pressed on. Now, in the midafternoon, she was approaching migraine levels.
As she immersed herself in trying to wrap her head around everything, a soft tapping noise entered her sphere of consciousness somewhere in the back of her mind, but she paid no heed.
It was the subsequent knock on the door that pulled her out of her scatterbrained solace; Ivy sat up straight and turned in the chair to see Sam bearing two steaming mugs.
"Cup of tea?" he offered, coming into the room and sitting down on the chair opposite Ivy's.
Ivy took it, smiling her thanks. "How are you?"
"Tired of reading," Sam said with a rueful smile. "I haven't doen much else since this case started, but I'm alright. More importantly, though, how are you?"
Ivy sipped gingerly before replying, "Oh, you know. Turning into Tinkerbell. It's all grand."
They shared an awkward laugh, but Ivy felt her spirits lift a bit, even as she elaborated slightly. "I've started to notice certain things," she ventured tentatively.
"Like?" Sam prompted.
"Well, for starters, the herbs we used on the house today gave me a headache."
"I think everyone got a headache off those."
Ivy shook her head. "Don't be fooled by my composure. I'm approaching a migraine as we speak," she said. "It's been gotten worse over the duration of the herbs burning. Charlie and Faolán have been keeping that fire stoked all day as the spell requires at least twelve hours of burning."
"It's a repellant spell, essentially, right?"
"Yeah. The main components are all meant to cloak the house and everything inside it, preventing the Fey from using psychic powers or magic on any of us," Ivy confirmed. "Charlie's still able to read minds because she's not….genetically Faerie the way I am."
"And your visions?" Sam asked.
"Haven't had any today," Ivy replied. "I've had the power for a couple of years, but I barely have any control over it. I can't see the future at will. It just…comes and goes…and it's usually the same thing over and over again until it…happens."
Her voice trailed off as the memory of her latest vision series hit her. As always, the scene she saw got more vivid with each recurrence, but her last vision had happened a couple of days ago.
"Ivy? What is it?" Sam's voice sliced through her thoughts.
She shook herself back to the present. "Just…going over the latest vision I've been having," she replied shakily.
"I was meaning to ask you about that, actually…but I didn't know if I'm in the position do so," Sam confided.
"That's fine," Ivy assured him. "It's a bit of a weird one, as far as visions go. I mean, all the visions I've had before are concrete, if that makes any sense. Like…" She paused, searching for the right words. "Well, as far as content goes, normally they're to do with a case that I'm already working on. Dangerous hunts. And I see what will happen to the people involved. Not me and Charlie, but the people that the monsters are hurting. As for clarity and accuracy, they're usually a bit blurry at the beginning but with each occurrence I can see more vividly until it's practically HDTV in my head."
"What's different about this time?"
"Everything. I can't see anything clearly, and it's happened about three times now, right? And even though we're on a hunt, the details that I can see don't have anything to do with the case."
Sam nodded, turning the information over in his mind as she gave it to him. "Ivy, would you be able to describe everything you are able to see clearly? Maybe it does have something to do with this case and we just can't see it yet."
Ivy shut her eyes and focused on the memory. "It's very dark," she began, "so maybe that's what's making it hard to see more details. There's candlelight and there's this…this smell."
"What kind of smell is it?" Sam coaxed.
"Damp stone," she replied. "Damp stone, and fire…something burning, like…" Ivy breathed in deeply, trying to aide her memory. "…like roast with too many herbs on it."
Sam raised an eyebrow, but she was talking faster now and pressing the bases of her palms into her eyes. "And blood, there's the smell of blood. There's a man chained oto a stone wall, surrounded by candles…but I can't see his face."
The pitch of her voice was rising, the tone becoming more frantic. Sam realised with a start that Ivy was probably starting to see more than just a memory. As soon as that thought occurred to him, it was confirmed.
Ivy's body began to shake, her voice following suit as hysteria started to set in. "I don't know if he's alive or not. He's cut all over…his entire torso and even his arms – they're cut with strange symbols. And somebody's laughing somewhere in the darkness where I can't see."
Ivy lowered her hands and opened her eyes to look at Sam, but he wasn't there. The reading room wasn't there. She looked around frantically, surrounded by darkness pierced by flickering, feeble candlelight. Her nostrils were assaulted and filled by an unbearable, cloying smell.
She realised where she was, and with the icy weight of dread filling her gut, turned around.
The man on the wall hung lifelessly, but the blood from the symbols cut into his flesh still dripped slowly down his skin. The ground beneath him, from what Ivy could make out, was darkened in gruesome patterns by splatters of dried blood. He was completely off the ground, secured to the wall by iron cuffs on both ankles and wrists, and his head hung down onto his chest.
She approached him cautiously, unsure of his identity but certain she did not want to know. There was something familiar about the toned, muscular body on the wall; something she seemed to know intimately.
A groan escaped him, and Ivy froze. Slowly he raised his head, moaning in agony; his chest heaved as he came to consciousness.
"Ivy…"
She screamed as Dean's face, bruised and bloodied, looked at her through the candlelit darkness.
The laughter – that awful, high-pitched, grating cackle – pierced the air.
She shut her eyes and covered her ears. "What are you doing to him?" she screamed. "Why are you torturing him?"
"Ivy…"
"Dean," she whimpered, collapsing to her knees. "Oh, God, Dean…I'm so sorry…"
"Ivy!"
The voice calling her name wasn't Dean's anymore. It cut through everything – Dean's groans of pains, the evil laughter, even the blood pounding in Ivy's ears. Hands gripped her shoulders, and when Ivy opened her eyes, she was staring up into Sam's face.
"Sammy? What's going on?"
Ivy scrambled to her feet and turned to the door. It was Dean.
Inexplicably, she threw herself across the room and into his arms. She broke down completely into body-shaking sobs.
"Sammy?" Dean repeated.
"She had…she had a vision," Sam stammered. "Dean, I think she saw you getting tortured."