Dean awoke with a groan.
His gut was on fire. Each shallow breath sent a stitch of pain shooting up like lightning from his abdomen. It was quite a feeling, pain in this new body. Well, it was the same body he'd always had, but he was different. He knew from memory that this intensity of pain would normally have him either unconscious for the long haul or curled up and gasping around the pain.
One of the many things he had learnt in recent months was how to control pain. His old self had always feared it.
This throbbing in his gut did not scare him. It wouldn't kill him. He would survive it. There was nothing to fear.
He opened his eyes and squinted in the bright light. The rest of his body started to check in and he realised with a flicker of annoyance chased by contempt that he was chained.
Thick grey chains were wrapped around his arms from the wrist to the elbow. He was standing, pinned, with his arms held straight out to either side and his legs, chained tightly by the shins, were fastened beneath him, shoulder width apart. His feet only just reached the cold floor. If he stretched – which hurt – he could take the weight off his arms and hold himself up on the pads of his feet.
He looked around, taking stock of this new and surprising predicament.
He was chained to what was unmistakably an Enochian Devil's Trap. He couldn't be sure from his restricted angle, but he thought it looked identical to the one Cas had made all those years ago to contain Alistair. Only the Trap on the ground wasn't chalk, but iron.
It looked almost like a garden gate. The metal had been worked into the shape of the Key of Solomon, the joints welded unceremoniously together. Thick hinges were visible in the underside.
It was collapsible. Neat.
Raising his head, he saw the source of the sharp light. A buzzing bulb hung unadorned from the ceiling, swaying slightly in a distorted circle.
The room was bare. Apart from the Trap he was chained to, the only other furniture in the place was a simple table. With a shock, he recognised the Colt lying docilely beside an angelblade and a collection of other pointy objects. Where the hell had that come from?
He glanced down to the hole in his stomach, noting that his shirt was gone. The Colt must have been what they shot him with. That was reassuring – if a normal gun had knocked him flat, that would be beyond embarrassing. His stomach and the right leg of his jeans were stained with a deep burgundy, but the bleeding had already stopped.
Being a demon was great for your health. He couldn't bleed out. It didn't matter if his heart stopped, or even if he was shot with the kill-all handgun, apparently. That's immortality for you. His body healed itself at an astonishing rate. He'd broken his arm in the second week of his new life – Crowley had tried to fight him, which was adorable – and four days later it was good as new.
This wound, however, might take a bit longer. He could still feel the silver bullet inside him. They hadn't removed it. Rude.
Speaking of 'they', where was that angel? And the girl? He clenched his teeth. He owed her a shot.
More importantly, where was the Blade? He glanced again at the torture table, but the old bone knife was noticeable only by its absence. He reached out with his mind, calling to it the way the Mark had taught him. He couldn't feel its presence. Frowning, he closed his eyes and concentrated harder, willing himself to find his last puzzle piece.
Nothing.
That could be a problem. It was either too far away, or warded against him, though he couldn't feel the tell-tale repellent pressure from a cursebox.
Apart from the single table and the Traps, the walls of the small room were covered in sigils. Dean recognised most of them as demon warding, and, now that he was more alert, he could feel their compressing pressure on his chest. He'd never been in such a densely warded room before. Even the bunker hadn't felt as stifling as this.
He drew a deep breath experimentally. Pain shocked from his side and he hissed. He couldn't draw a full breath if he'd wanted to. The warding was so strong it seemed to clog his power. He knew he couldn't just zap out of this one.
He wished he'd saved a few souls after taking Hell. Even without the Blade as a conduit, he could've blown this cage apart in seconds. Note to self.
Dean raised his head as he heard a door behind him open. Two sets of footsteps echoed around the bare room. He switched to his demon eyes, wanting to see the angel's face again.
He came into Dean's line of sight from the right, the girl from the left. Circling like wolves around a trapped meal. Dean stifled a snort. They had it the wrong way around.
The angel's face was as fascinating as it was ugly. Where a demon's visage seemed to be made of flame and smoke and raw, fiery bone, the angel's was a constantly shifting array of bright bluish light. There were recognisable features in the light, in lighter shades of blue and white. Demon faces shifted beneath the skin too, but this ... this was almost painful to look at for more than a few seconds. The features looked ethereal, even though Dean knew the angel inside the stolen meat was as real and tangible as a hostless demon. It was uncomfortable to stare at the hideous fluctuating blueness. It was so bright that Dean wondered how humans couldn't see them shining through the vessels.
Stranger still were the two enormous, broken wings held primly behind him. They too, seemed to be made of undulating light, though they looked far more substantial than the angel's face. Dean's eyebrows rose. He had to admit they were impressive, even in their sorry state. They were tattered and uneven, the majority of their bulk burnt away in the fall from Heaven. Only the bony limbs remained, but if Dean squinted he could make out the texture of hundreds of blue-white feathers covering the flesh. On the rare occasion he had imagined angels' wings, he had envisioned oversized bird wings strapped to their human forms. These were far more awe-inspiring.
He had a sudden urge to see Castiel. Would he look any different to Dean? Any less ugly? Probably not.
He turned his black gaze on the young dark-haired girl. Out of that knock-out dress she'd been wearing the night before she looked plain. She wore jeans, white t-shirt, and no makeup. He met her gaze and smiled as she shivered almost imperceptibly. She feared him.
Good.
But there was more than simple fear in her eyes. Hatred? She'd teamed up with an angel, or maybe had been duped into working for him, but either way, the way she'd acted last night ... She wanted to see him chained like this. It was more than hatred that burned in the intelligent brown eyes.
Dean knew that look.
"Good of you to join us, Dean Winchester," the angel said, his words lilting with an Arabic accent. Made sense, the guy looked like Joe Muhammad. "My name," he continued, "is Maalik."
"Good to meetcha, Maalik. I'd shake your hand, but ..." Dean waggled his bound hand sarcastically.
"This," Maalik said, gesturing to the girl, "is Melanie Harker."
He paused.
Dean raised his eyebrows. "That supposed to mean something to me?"
Anger flashed through Harker's eyes and the muscles in her neck popped out as she clenched her jaw.
"So," Dean drawled. "You got my attention. Coulda just phoned me or, I dunno, left a message with my secretary. Bit melodramatic, this, don't you think?"
He flicked back to his human eyes in time to see Maalik's face – his human face – twitch in annoyance.
Dean smiled, running his tongue over his teeth.
Maalik strolled calmly over to the table and picked up the gleaming silver angelblade. Twirling it deftly in his long fingers, he paced slowly around Harker and came to a stop in front of Dean.
He was shorter than Dean in his suspended prison. Maalik looked up from the tip of the blade that kissed his index finger. "You have information that I, and my companion, want."
Dean snorted, ignoring the stab of pain it drew from his gut. "Seriously? You're gonna torture me? A demon? C'mon, Maalik, I thought you angels were supposed to be smart. Wait no," he said as though suddenly remembering something. "You're just dicks."
Maalik's lips curved in a dangerous smile and he raised the angelblade. Its point rested on the exact spot through which Metatron had stabbed him. He stared back at Maalik, daring him to try.
"Perhaps you need to understand that we mean business," Maalik suggested in a dreamy voice.
Maalik pressed. Blood materialized just beneath the tip and trickled down Dean's torso. It was a pinprick, no more.
Holding Dean's gaze, challenging him with his eyes, Maalik then drew the angelblade lovingly down the line of red, pressing hard enough to scrape Dean's sternum with a sickly scrunch.
Dean couldn't hold back the howl of pain that punched itself up from his diaphragm. It echoed around the room, bouncing off the sigil-strewn walls.
Maalik inserted the tip of the angelblade at the point where the first cut ended, just above Dean's belly button. Like an artist with a paintbrush, he slowly, carefully, carved another line that curved away from the first to end in a tight swirl under his left breast. Dean felt it grate across his ribs as more blood spilled down his front as though eager to escape.
With the same careful precision, Maalik drew an identical line in Dean's flesh, mirroring the second and ending in a swirl just under his right breast. The growling cry of pain that left Dean's throat didn't sound human. He sounded like a soul on the rack.
Maalik finished the third line with a flourish and stepped back to admire his handiwork.
Dean laughed, ignoring the stinging of his wounds.
"That the best you got?" He spat out a globule of blood onto Maalik's shining black shoe. "Pathetic."
Maalik only smiled.
Harker remained by the torture table, her eyes fixed on the blood oozing from the cuts on Dean's chest.
"We wish to know, Dean Winchester, how many Knights of Hell you have created. How do you intend to attack Heaven? And is the traitor Castiel your ally?"
Dean snorted. "Cas? Why the hell would I be working with him?"
"He is your friend."
"Was my friend," Dean corrected. "He did put a bounty on my head. Besides, angels and demons don't exactly make good playmates."
Maalik rolled his eyes, seemingly at Dean's attitude. Well, Dean thought gleefully, if that annoys you then I'm not the only one in store for torture.
Maalik reached out with the angelblade and drew another red line from the centre of Dean's chest to his left shoulder. He hissed in pain and then laughed aloud.
"Seriously, Maaly, if that's the best you can do it's no wonder Heaven's gone to crap. You angels are useless."
A flash of sliver and a shock of crimson and Dean was cut from sternum to right shoulder. He gasped in between fits of painful laughter.
"Are you ready to answer my questions?" Maalik inquired politely.
"Bite me, Wings," Dean spat, along with a spray of bloody saliva.
Maalik smiled pleasantly. "Very well, then." He turned to Melanie, handing her the angelblade. "To work, Miss Melanie."