Crossroads of Eden - Section Three

[glasslogic]

Chapter Four

When Sam opened his eyes the following sunset, he immediately twisted into a pain-wracked ball of misery. The closest thing he could remember experiencing to the sensation seizing every muscle of his body was being struck by a car in middle school. The details of that incident were fuzzy, other than the blaze of headlights in his eyes and the strange echoing crunch of impact, but waking in the hospital had felt exactly like this.

He forced himself to take deep breaths and try to relax and master the pain, testing each limb individually as he slowly straightened out. When he was finally still and at ease, the pain gradually faded until it was more of a full-body ache than the debilitating distraction it had started as. Other than the throbbing wound in his arm from the Hellhound’s teeth, Sam couldn’t detect any other specific injury. One outstretched hand brushed something on the bedside table and Sam turned his head to look. A glass of water was sitting there, and he was suddenly desperately thirsty. Sam swallowed in anticipation, mouth dry, shocked at how sore his throat was.

Dried blood smeared on his hand reminded him of the straits he had been in when sunrise had stolen his consciousness. To his surprise, a cursory inspection showed that other than the spatters on his shirt and the bed sheets around him, most of the spilled blood seemed to have been cleaned from his face and skin. He had trouble believing Meg or her anonymous helpers would have bothered, which left Ruby. He didn’t know how he felt about that; she just seemed... different, than the others. More human, maybe. Definitely more interested in him. Which, since she was a demon, was possibly not a good thing.

Sam sat up carefully and reached for the glass. It was still cool as if it had been drawn recently and he drank gratefully, rinsing the foul, lingering taste from his mouth and ignoring the uneasy rumbling of his stomach.

“Kinda surprised that you were telling the truth, about the blood and all.”

He dropped the glass, startled, spilling the water onto his lap and blankets where it was immediately absorbed. Sam threw the pale green covers back and swung his legs over the edge, grimacing at protesting muscles. Across the room in the shadows, Ruby was slouched indolently against the wall with a stillness nothing human could manage. She walked forward when he didn’t stand up and perched on the foot of his bed. Sam narrowed his eyes but said nothing.

“Meg was surprised too,” Ruby added after a moment.

“So she believes me now?”

Ruby shrugged. “Let’s just say she’s reconsidering her options.”

“Good,” Sam growled. He picked up the empty glass and pushed himself to his feet. Ruby followed his ginger progress down the hall to the bathroom where he filled the glass back up and sat on the edge of the tub to drink it.

“Is there any particular reason you’re following me around?” he finally asked when she showed no sign of leaving. “It’s been pretty clearly demonstrated to me just how screwed I am and I’m not up for another round with Meg’s pets today. I’m just going to drink this, find some more painkillers and go back to bed.”

Ruby hopped up on the edge of the sink. “You’re more interesting than watching the grass grow. It’s not like I can go anywhere else.”

Sam filled the glass again from the tub. “Don’t you and the rest of my fan club have a deck of cards to play with or something? I’m okay with suffering alone, really.”

“That’s gratitude. Next time I’ll just let the blood congeal.” Which answered Sam’s suspicions about who had cleaned him up. “Besides,” she gave him a sidelong glance, “do you think all demons want the same things? Maybe I’m just not a team player.”

Sam snorted in disbelief. “So you’re going to try and tell me you have my best interests close to your... well, you don’t exactly have a heart, now do you? And I’m pretty sure it was your blood I was choking on when I passed out.”

Ruby twisted a long strand of her hair around one finger.

“I’m also not stupid,” she said flatly. “This is Meg’s show; I’m just here for the popcorn and cheap entertainment.” She looked off sharply towards the kitchen.

“What?” Sam demanded.

Ruby’s expression was hard to read as she slid back to her feet and gave him a look that if Sam had been in a more charitable mood he might have called it pity. “Company.”

She had barely finished speaking when the bathroom door was shoved wide open and a lean man strode in. Sam almost fell into the tub in surprise at the intrusion. He was vaguely aware of Meg and another figure lurking in the hallway behind the newcomer, but most of his attention was focused on the intruder’s shocking eyes. A yellow-eyed demon had slaughtered his mother on the ceiling of his nursery, had poisoned him with its blood, and in all of his and his father’s long years of hunting, only one demon had ever had eyes like that.

“You,” Sam breathed in a low voice.

The demon smiled broadly. “Just wanted to check in on you, Sam. Make sure you were all safe and cozy here in your little vacation home. You know, there are hundreds of special kiddies out there just like you, and none of them have given me half the headache. I hope you turn out to be worth it, I really do; otherwise, I might have to come up with something extra special to show my appreciation for all the trouble you’ve caused.”

“I’ve caused?” Sam asked in disbelief. “What the hell do you want with me?!”

The demon looked surprised and his voice dripped with condescension.

“Why, Sam, I want what any concerned parent wants for their child. I want to know that you are healthy and safe, and some place I can get my hands on you when I need to. Though in your case, I suppose we have to add human to that little laundry list-- you didn’t really think you were going to get away with that, did you? You didn’t think I would go through all that trouble to bring you into the fold only to let you slip off with a bad influence the minute my back was turned? Kids these days.” He shook his head.

Sam didn’t know what he was thinking. One minute the demon was talking and the next moment Sam had dropped his glass and was lunging for him without even registering the movement.

“You aren’t my parent,” he snarled, as the demon flipped a hand and sent him slamming off his feet and into the wall, pinned by invisible force. “You destroyed my life! Let me go!“ Sam yelled, struggling against the constricting pressure.

The yellow-eyed demon’s smile didn’t dim at all as he motioned Ruby out to the hallway. “Let’s have a chat while Sam here takes a little time out to collect his nerves.” He shifted his gaze to an unnamed demon in the hallway. “Put him in his room; keep him there.”

Ruby cast Sam an unreadable glance and followed the yellow-eyed demon out. As they walked out, the force pinning Sam in place vanished like a popped bubble. His feet had barely touched the floor before his guard herded him down the hall into the tiny bedroom. Sam didn’t resist, thoughts tumbling over themselves as he struggled with the shock of the unexpected meeting. In that instant, the past four years dissolved like candy-floss and he was again a hunter with the elusive quarry that his life was dedicated to destroy close at hand. Tantalizing, frustratingly, finally close-- for all the good it did him. In his current situation the demon might as well have been on the moon.

For the first time in a long time, Sam genuinely missed his dad.

His guard took up a position outside the door with a supremely bored expression, paying Sam little apparent attention. Inside the room, Sam didn’t bother turning on the lights, just paced back and forth on the creaky floorboards in the dark, limited options churning in his head.

After a few minutes he was calmer and slid down to sit against the wall. Without the relentless squeak of the ancient floor he realized he could hear the faint buzz of conversation through the glass of the window. A quick glance at the door showed the back of the demon that loitered there, so Sam crawled over to the window and forced it up an inch or so. Immediately the faint buzz crystallized into intelligible words, and the conversation made his blood freeze.

“...but he survived,” the yellow-eyed demon said, sounding unimpressed.

Sam could hear the shrug in Meg’s voice when she replied. “You want him alive. The reaction looked serious. I don’t know much about vampires of any kind. He might be telling the truth.”

The yellow-eyed demon made a noncommittal sound. “Or he might not. Show me.”

Sam tensed; he had to get to the kitchen before anything else was poured down his throat or the game would be up. Leaving the bottle of garlic pills safely anonymous in a pile of other bottles had seemed the best gamble at the time, but he hadn’t considered that he might not be able to get access again. The demon guarding him was built like a football player and Sam was already injured. If he had to fight his way out... Fighting against them the night before and in the bathroom had been futile and Sam knew his chances of breaking past his guard were slim-to-none, but any chance was better than the certainty of what would happen if he stayed.

Meg’s voice snapped his attention back to the conversation outside. “Now?”

“In a bit. First I want to hear your report on the activity in Peoria...” The voices receded as the demons moved out of range of his hearing. Sam forced himself to relax a little. Luck had bought him some time and now he needed to make the most of it by not showing how desperate he was to get out of the room. He ignored the demon guarding the door and picked up The Count Of Monte Cristo from the bedside table. Sam flipped through the pages for a while but registered nothing that his eyes skimmed over. When he estimated about fifteen minutes had passed, Sam set the book back down and slid casually off the bed.

“I need to get some more water. I don’t feel well.”

The demon gave him an appraising look, then motioned Sam into the hallway. But when Sam made to head towards the kitchen the demon grabbed him just below the bandages on his bad arm. Sam sucked in a sharp breath as he felt thin scabs split.

“There’s water in the bathroom,” the demon grunted, pointing towards the closer room.

“But there’s glasses in the kitchen,” Sam pointed out. “It’s not like I’m masterminding some great escape.” He glanced meaningfully at the bright red stains slowly seeping through his bandages. “Meg made her point.”

His guard slowly released him. Sam continued into the kitchen, painfully aware of the sullen presence trailing as close as his shadow. Once he reached his thankfully deserted destination he made a show of drinking several glasses of water. His claims of thirst hadn’t been entirely a ruse; after two days of imprisonment with only a single glass of water, and the blood that had been forced on him, his body was screaming for a little more in the way of liquid and nutrition. Sam had a sensory flash of the taste of Dean’s blood like the sweetest of sun-ripened berries over his tongue and his stomach growled. He grimaced, but at least his body differentiated. There had been absolutely nothing in Ruby’s blood that had appealed to him on any level. Having had some time to consider the matter, Sam didn’t think it would have been any different even if he had already transformed. Dean had told him that no vampire, of any stripe, had anything to gain from the dead. They could feed from the living, and in some respect from each other, but never from those who had already passed. It was anathema to lesser vampires, and just futile for Dean’s kind. What was a demon but the damned inhabiting the deceased? At least Sam hoped they were deceased, the alternative made his skin crawl.

Sam couldn’t just riffle the collection of bottles on the table without drawing the demon’s attention to his actions. Instead, he opened the refrigerator to see what there was to eat. The demon shifted impatiently but didn’t object, so Sam continued looking for food. Five minutes later, he took a seat at the table with a jar of pickles, two apples, a few slices of cheese and some stale bread. He munched steadily through the assortment of food while poking idly through the collection of supplement bottles scattered around the table. The demon’s attention had drifted again, its gaze fixed though the window into something out in the yard, so it didn’t notice when Sam’s idle poking turned almost frantic. Only after he had been through the entire collection three times did Sam let the truth sink in.

The bottle he was looking for was gone.

Sam swallowed his renewed panic, mumbled something about granola, and stood up to make a careful search of every drawer, nook and cranny in the kitchen. The demon glanced at him occasionally, but whatever was in the yard was more interesting than Sam hunting through cabinets. By the time he had finished searching, Sam was certain that the little white bottle he desperately needed was truly missing. In his mind’s eye, Sam could clearly see it sitting on the table where he had left it when he had followed Ruby...

Ruby.

Her voice floated out of the darkness of the hallway as if conjured by Sam’s thought. “We might have to wait a while. It looks like he might not be hungry anymore.”

His head shot up just in time to see her, Meg and the yellow-eyed demon no one had bothered introducing him to walk into the kitchen. Sam definitely didn’t like the expression on the new demon’s face now any more than he had liked it earlier.

“Sorry.” Sam climbed to his feet and crossed his arms defensively. “If I’d known you guys were going to join me, I would have fixed more.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Cupcake. We brought dessert.” Meg’s sly smile didn’t touch the calculating coolness in her eyes. She reached out to brush a finger over the knife at Ruby’s hip and Sam’s heart sank. Time was up.

“I thought we all agreed that was a bad thing, remember? You wanting me alive and all that jazz?”

“I don’t want you at all. But that’s up to the boss here.” She jerked a thumb towards the yellow-eyed demon.

Ruby was conspicuously silent. Sam’s attention was on Yellow-Eyes as he spread his hands in an apologetic manner and spoke up. “What can I say, Sam? I’m just a ‘don’t believe it ‘til I see it,’ kind of guy. Meg has been telling me all sorts of crazy tales and I thought I would stop by to see what I can do to help out.”

Sam stepped back, feeling irrationally safer with the table between them. “There isn’t anything you can do. Demon blood will kill me as long as I have vampire blood in my veins. And if I don’t get more vampire blood, I’ll die anyway. Sorry, guess you’ll just have to find another toy to play with.”

“I heard that part, and don’t think I don’t appreciate your helpfulness and all. But I think I’m going to have to see a practical demonstration.” The yellow-eyed demon nodded, and Sam’s guard and another demon from the hallway stepped forward to grab him.

“Last time almost killed me! What kind of good can I be to you dead?!” Sam demanded, backing away.

“You aren’t doing me any good now.” The yellow-eyed demon shrugged. “You seem fairly resilient. You survived last time; I’m sure one more round won’t be much of a problem.”

Sam swore and fought, but like the previous night, he was overmatched and was inexorably dragged back towards the bedroom. Halfway there he caught hold of the edge of a wall and clung until a particularly hard yank on his arm ripped his grip free. The yank tore the wounds in his upper arm wide open all over again and Sam screamed despite himself. A second later he heard Ruby snarl something and the grasping hands let go. Sam slipped to his knees cradling his elbow in his good hand and blinked back tears of pain.

“Sam.” Ruby crouched in front of him. “This is stupid. You can’t win and you’re only going to get hurt. Didn’t your father teach you about picking your battles?”

“You don’t know a damn thing about my dad,” Sam spat at her.

“I know he was too good of a hunter to waste his strength instead of biding his time.” She stood and held her hand out.

From his awkward sprawl against the wall, and with one of his arms almost unusable, Sam was left with the unenviable choice of accepting her help or being dragged down the hall. He grudgingly reached for her hand. “Is too good of a hunter, unless you know something I don’t.”

She hauled him to his feet, but pulled too hard at the end and he staggered into her. While Sam fought to rebalance, Ruby slung her free arm around the back of his neck and smirked into his face from inches away.

“If I’d known you were into this, we could have worked something out sooner.” Then, before he could reply, she locked her lips onto his and buried her tongue in his mouth. Sam heard Meg’s laughter over the blood pounding in his ears and was about to bite down, but then realized that whatever Ruby was doing with her tongue wasn’t like any kiss he had ever had before. The faint flavor of garlic hit his taste buds and he stopped resisting her attempt to shift something into his mouth. The hard tablets were a little dissolved by the time Sam had them tucked under his tongue, but he felt nothing but gratitude when she slipped her arm free and let him reel back.

Gratitude and confusion. He swallowed the tablets and made only token resistance when the jailer from the kitchen caught him by the good arm and dragged him the rest of the way to his room. Now that he had swallowed the garlic, he needed what was coming to happen fast before he started getting sick. Sam deliberately didn’t look at any of the other demons for fear they would read something on his face, and sank onto the bed when Meg ordered him to sit.

Sam didn’t watch as Meg made another deep slice into Ruby’s forearm. His nose caught the heavy scent of blood and he wasn’t sure if the queasiness was from the garlic or from the knowledge of what was about to happen. Polished shoes came into his view and he looked up to meet the yellow-eyed demon’s mask of humanity. There was speculation in the gaze that made sweat break out along Sam’s spine.

“You’ve become awfully cooperative all of a sudden.”

“You’re going to pour it down my throat whether I fight you or not,” Sam retorted sullenly. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner you believe me.”

“I thought it was going to kill you,” the demon pointed out. “Aren’t you still worried about that?”

“Sounds like I win either way.”

The demon looked amused and stepped back. Meg held the cup half full of rich, dark blood out.

Sam was tempted to smack the cup from her hand, but he could tell from the ache in his head and the roiling in his belly that there was no time for games like that. He took the plastic cup and drained its contents in three swallows. The blood was still warm and coated his mouth and throat with an iron-tinged thickness that made him want to retch just on principle. He lay down, ignoring the low conversation at the bedside and concentrating on his own misery. The last time, Meg had jumped him just before sunrise and he hadn’t had to consciously suffer the results of his machinations, but there were still hours before dawn this time.

In less than ten minutes Sam was biting back screams as every drop of blood in his body felt like it was boiling out of his pores. By the time the convulsions started, he had already, mercifully, blacked out.

~~~~~
Dean pulled open the heavy screen door and let it slam behind him with a bang. Bobby glanced up from the paper he was reading after a deliberate pause and looked pointedly between the vampire standing in his kitchen and the screen door. “Don’t you need to be asking my permission for something?”

Dean’s expression was equally unimpressed. “What do you think this is, some B horror flick? You can take your permission and--”

“Anything?” the voice from the hallway interrupted the conversation, such as it was. Dean allowed himself to be distracted.

“I’ve had about as much success as you have.” He dropped unceremoniously into a chair, the weight of his years heavy in a way he seldom felt.

John grunted in acknowledgment and glanced at Dean. “You look like crap.”

“All part of my clever disguise so I can fit in around here with the good ol’ boys,” Dean grumbled. “You get your shit together?”

John’s expression darkened but he didn’t rise to the bait. He tossed a folded map onto the table and took his own seat while Dean spread out the map of North America. Around twelve circles had been drawn from Northern Mexico through Canada, each one an area of thirty miles or so.

Dean groaned. “This is the best you can do?”

“It’s better than anyone else can do,” John said levelly.

Dean said nothing, studying the map closely. He barely glanced up when John left the room and ignored Bobby when he leaned in to give it his own look-over. Dean was still intently focused when John came back in, showered and dressed in clean clothes.

“Well?”

Dean sat back with a shrug. “It is what it is; we’re racing the clock now. These aren’t exactly precise locations you’ve marked.”

John nodded. “It’s not a precise art. Some of these may be wrong, I might have missed others. I usually spend a week just finding one hot spot. I can keep looking--”

Dean cut him off with a sharp shake of his head. “There’s no time. This is already going to stretch what resources I have, and that’s assuming you can handle the three or four closest to this place. If they’re wrong, they’re wrong-- and I’d really like to think the demons aren’t up to so much crap that all of these are centers of activity. If we check all of these, and don’t find squat, then you can go back to your drawing board.”

Bobby tugged the map around so he could see it better. “We can hit these three,” he pointed at the red circles nearest to his property, “and maybe this one up here, depending on how long it takes to poke around. You and your contacts can cover the rest?”

“You just worry about your end of things; I’ve got mine under control.” Dean stood back up and reached for the map. “I can keep this?”

John waved a hand. “It’s all yours.”

“Fantastic. You’ve got my number, call if you find anything.”

Bobby waited until the door had closed behind the vampire and they could hear the rumble of the Impala pulling away before he spoke. “Do you trust him?”

“I’m a bad parent, Singer. Not a total idiot.”

“You did the best you could.”

John’s expression darkened. “That’s pretty cold comfort when my only child has taken up with a vampire and been abducted by demons.”

The long silence between them was heavy with a question John had seen weighing in his old friend’s eyes for days. It asked for a decision John couldn’t bring himself to face yet.

He looked away rather than answer.


Chapter Five

“Well?” Sam croaked, squinting against the glare of the overhead light and struggling to sit up.

Ruby shrugged from her position against the wall. “Convulsions, a spectacularly high fever, and everyone’s favorite cake topping-- your heart stopped.”

“My heart what?”

“Stopped,” she repeated with a maddening kind of nonchalance. “But only for a second or two. More like it skipped a couple of beats. It was very convincing.” Ruby paused. “So. Not eating a lot of Italian these days?”

Sam slumped back into the lumpy softness of the bed with a sigh. “Just don’t order me a pizza. And, uh--”

“Don’t say it,” Ruby cut him off before he could launch into any expression of awkward gratitude. “I had my own reasons.”

Sam let the silence fall again for a few minutes before asking in a low voice, figuring that if there were eavesdroppers Ruby would tell him somehow. “How did you know?”

Her expression was unreadable. “Not all demons are the same, Sam. Some of them value other things than brute force and sadism. Observation skills, for example.”

“That’s all you’re going to say?”

“I think so.” Ruby glanced towards the open doorway. “Besides, your favorite people are here.” She stood up from her slouch just as the yellow-eyed demon sauntered in.

Sam sat back up and swung his legs over the side, glaring from beneath his messy hair. “Still think I’m lying?”

“Let’s just say I’m reviewing my options.”

“I won’t do you any good dead,” Sam reminded him. “My heart stopped this time; who knows what will happen next time?”

“Someone’s been chatty.” The yellow-eyed demon shot a glance at Ruby, who shrugged defensively. “Like I said,” he refocused his attention on Sam, “I’m considering options. I don’t think we will be repeating this experiment for at least a few days, though, so you go ahead and rest up. You’ll need your strength for what I have planned.”

~~~~~
The comforter was scratchy under his knees and palms, but the feeling barely even registered against the hands roaming over his chest and the cock thrusting deep into him with a rhythm designed to drive him crazy. He tensed and tried to move, to encourage a faster pace or a different angle, but one of the hands slid down to grip his hip firmly, holding him in place. Sam hung his head and tried to be patient, but the hands wouldn’t touch him where he wanted it the most, and his neglected cock was hard and aching against his belly. Sweat stung in the scratches across his back from earlier play, and he just wanted to come... He tried shifting again, to just change the angle a little... Dean growled and caught a handful of his hair, using it to wrench his head aside exposing his neck in a graceful curve. A sharp sting and then Sam's world dissolved into waves of the most intense pleasure...

Sam’s eyes flew open as the sun sank under the horizon. He had forgotten what dreaming was like in the long months since he had lost the sun, but now the space between when he closed his eyes and woke again seemed filled with vivid sensation and color. Maybe a little too much sensation. His skin was slick with sweat and the sticky mess inside his sweatpants guaranteed it would be another day of laundering his clothes in the shower. Drying them took forever, but he didn’t have anything else pressing to do.

It had been several days since Meg had bothered him or Yellow-Eyes had even shown up. Ruby was there on and off, a surprisingly agreeable presence. Sam hoped she wasn’t watching him sleep, just in case his body reflected his dreams. She continued to be frustratingly close-mouthed about what was going on regarding his situation, but seemed uninterested in tormenting him and was a welcome relief from endless hours with nothing to do and the strange thought that he was getting sick. Sam woke up each morning with a sore throat and the tight feeling in his chest that he was losing something, something faint and subtle that slid further from his grasp with every beat of his heart. It was weird and disturbing and Ruby helped him focus on other things. He had to keep reminding himself she was a demon, and no ally of his, no matter how sympathetic she seemed at times. He was also hungry, and stores in the kitchen were running both low and unappealing. It didn’t seem to matter how much he ate, there was always a hollow feeling in his belly like he needed more, but Sam doubted he was going to be allowed to do grocery shopping anytime soon.

Sam fell asleep each dawn with his fingers crossed hoping that this would be the night that Dean would show up and help him escape. There was the possibility that he truly couldn’t survive without Dean, and he wondered what it would feel like when the dying started. If it would be like the explosion at the cabin, the ripping pain and then the slow bleed, or if one evening he just wouldn’t wake up. Dean had been vague on it, and Sam hadn’t pressed. It wasn’t supposed to have ever been an issue, they weren’t supposed to be separated. Sam promised himself that if he lived through this experience there were a lot of questions he was going to get actual answers to, no matter how fiercely Dean squirmed.

On the fifth evening, Sam’s eyes flew open with the red strains of sunset still streaking up through the trees. His face was wet with tears and the sense of loss made him want to scream. There was an emptiness inside, like something essential he hadn’t even been aware of had been scoured away. But like a bad dream the feeling was already fading by the time he sat up, drifting away like smoke, shredding even as he tried to understand what was happening. Ruby could barely get his attention that night. She had brought him a deli sandwich and some chips but Sam barely picked at them though his stomach growled. It just wasn’t appealing but he forced himself to eat some anyways. After a few hours she finally shoved the checkerboard she had been trying to entice him with back in the box and stood up to leave.

“What are they waiting for?” he asked quietly. “What does he want with me?”

Ruby paused at the question with one hand on the doorframe. She looked back at where Sam sat against the wall by the window; it was the first time he had looked directly at her the entire evening.

“Does it matter?” she finally asked.

Sam turned back to watching the cloudy sky. It really didn’t. He wasn’t going anywhere anyway.

And he didn’t have to wait long for at least one of his answers. When he woke up next it wasn’t to a stained horizon and the shadows of night, but rather to uncomfortable warmth and the deep panicky feeling that something was terribly wrong. And bright. He squeezed his eyelids shut tighter and tried to twist away under sheets that felt as heavy as lead to his sluggish limbs. Hands on his shoulders held him in place and finally Sam reluctantly forced his eyelids up to see what the hell was going on. It was hard to think past the discomfort and exhaustion that was trying to drag him back down. But even his struggling consciousness couldn’t miss the afternoon sunlight striping across the blankets through the cheap, flimsy blinds, and the yellow-eyed demon’s pleased face smiling down on him.

~~~~~
Dean staggered and hit the ground hard on both knees. It took a moment before he registered the dirt under his palms through the haze of chaos in his mind. He had felt the faint and wavering link between him and Sam weakening for days, and had known what would inevitably happen if the search took as long as he feared it would. But he had still been unprepared for the shock of the break when it finally happened, bringing echoes of a pain so vast he had not thought it survivable at the time, a memory that still seared, centuries after the loss. The bond he had shared with Sam had never been very strong, not in the way he remembered from... before. No tangle of emotions, or sharing of thought. None of the instinctive push and pull between fledgling and master that ruled his own memories of transformation, and the single time he had tried this in the distant past. Dean had spoken to others of his kind, frustrating conversations where he tried to figure out if his bond with Sam was normal, damaged, or just weird. The novelty of trying to transform a human who was already claimed by another type of supernatural being had attracted a great deal of discussion, but ultimately the only answers had been speculation.

And accusation. Low whispers that he deserved to fail again, to lose this one as he had lost the first. For his guilt. And his crimes. Thief. Betrayer. But if time and age had taught Dean anything, it was that striking back would bring him nothing but more shame, though it stung him that anyone would wish harm on Sam for things that happened centuries before his birth.

Or believe that he should be left as a plaything for demons simply because they had him first. As if Dean would recognize a demon’s claim.

It didn’t matter who had Sam first. It mattered who had him last. And that was a game Dean was determined to win. The breaking bond hadn’t been death. Having felt it before, Dean was certain of that much. And there was only one thing he could think of short of death that the demons could be doing to cause that stretching and snap.

He only hoped that the blood they were forcing on Sam now would keep him alive until Dean could reclaim him.


Chapter Six

When Sam opened his eyes again it was to the familiar darkness of night. He sat bolt upright and looked around wildly, overwhelmed by a memory of the impossible, burning light of day.

“So I guess it’s working then.”

Sam jerked around, startled. Ruby was slouched against the wall where Sam usually sat. He had missed her in his momentary panic. She stood up and walked over to flip on the light.

“What’s working? What are you people doing to me?!” Sam demanded, wincing from the sudden illumination.

“I wasn’t allowed to tell you before. I’m kind of on a short leash, something about proving myself and all that jazz. Loyalty’s not real big in Hell.” She gave Sam a sidelong smile he didn’t return. “I guess it doesn’t matter now, though. He... knew. Somehow. About the garlic, or maybe that was just a guess. But he knew you were doing something. Or he could have just decided that you were as useful dead as undead and he might as well take the chance.”

Sam glared. Ruby’s expression grew exasperated, but she continued and got to the point.

“They’ve been feeding you blood,” she said bluntly. “Lots of it, with a tube down your throat while you’re asleep in the daytime.”

Sam blinked at her, not understanding for a moment. And then comprehension rushed in and he flopped back with a groan. No wonder his throat hurt every night. He couldn’t come up with language bad enough to even start to encompass his situation and just lay mute across the unmade bed, staring at the ceiling.

Wishing Dean was there.

All of that time running and hiding and waiting for the vampire blood and the transformation it would bring to break him free from the demon’s grasp-- all for nothing. He’d been in denial before, hoping that if it was only once or twice maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe Dean would find him and they could do something to undo the damage. But he couldn’t ignore the magnitude of the problem anymore, not if what was being done to him was so powerful he was waking up in daylight again. He could only hope that the demonic infusion was just pushing him back towards humanity as it undid the transformation’s progress, and not just twisting him into some new horror entirely.

After a moment, the mattress sank beside him and he looked over numbly to meet Ruby’s blue eyes. She reached out and brushed her hand over his arm. “Maybe it’s not so bad.”

Sam blinked, baffled. “How can this possibly be ‘not so bad’?”

She glanced warily at the open door and lowered her voice. In the distance, the occasional creak of a floorboard told of other presences in the house. “What do you want, Sam?” His expression was incredulous as he opened his mouth to answer her, but she cut him off with an impatient shake of her head. “Not to get out of here, but what you really want?”

That wasn’t a hard question either and Sam started to reply with the answer that he had carried in his heart for most of his life: revenge. For his mother’s murder and the mad obsession it had brought his father. For Jessica, and for the utter ruin of anything good in his life.

He was surprised when that wasn’t what slipped out.

“Dean.” Dean, who was more than capable of watching his own ass, and who brought with him the promise of a life untroubled by the plagues of Sam’s past. He wasn’t bad at watching Sam’s ass either, and there were other... perks.

“Really?” Ruby’s eyes widened and she looked surprised, and not entirely happy about it. “Because after all the crap demons like the one running this show have put you through, I would have thought you might be interested in a little payback.”

Sam propped himself up his elbows. “And how am I supposed to get that? I can’t even get myself out of this house!”

“He never told you what he wanted you for...”

“No,” Sam agreed in disgust. “Just that I was special.”

“You are,” she said.

“How?” Sam demanded.

“They’re trying to do something. This one and other powerful demons like him. They have--” She broke off and gave another hard look at the doorway. After a moment one of his jailers drifted by the doorway and glanced inside, Ruby scowled and the other demon kept on walking. She lay back beside him on the mattress and continued, voice low enough that Sam had to lean in to make out her words. So close that he could feel the warm sweetness of her breath against his face and feel the length of her body against his own. “They have a plan. They’re working to do something very important to them, but they have to have exactly the right pieces in place or the whole thing falls apart. It could be centuries before the time is right to try again.”

“What are they trying to do?” Sam asked, matching her cautious tones.

Ruby shrugged with infuriating nonchalance. “Destroy this, dominate that, free Lucifer from his cage-- does it matter?”

“Free Lucif-- That’s just an example, right?”

She said nothing.

“Right? ” Sam repeated with more emphasis, not even sure he believed in the devil, but sure that if he existed, his freedom would be a very bad thing.

Ruby shrugged again dismissively. “Whatever they’re up to won’t be healthy for people.”

“What does this grand plan they are working have to do with me?” Sam wanted to reach out and shake her to make her hurry, afraid something would interrupt the only answers he might get before she finally spilled them out.

“They need you. I... don’t know what for. But I know about twenty-five or so years ago they marked a couple hundred kids all over the planet. Special kids; kids with powers and abilities. And one of them is going to be the linchpin to all the nasty plans they’re cooking up.”

“Power?” Sam repeated, baffled. “What kind of power? I don’t have anything like that.”

“Really?” Ruby watched him closely. “Because there’s a kind of aura around those humans who are part of this grand plan that demons can feel. It’s strong around you, as strong as I’ve ever felt it. You’re sure you’ve never experienced anything that might be an... ability?”

“Like what?” Sam demanded. “Being exceptionally good at getting screwed over?”

Ruby frowned and Sam had the distinct impression that whatever she was after, he wasn’t supplying. “Visions, maybe. Prophetic dreams; intuition? Psychic stuff?”

Sam thought about it, then shook his head. “No, nothing like that.”

“You really feel like you should.”

“Well I can’t help what I feel like to you; I’m telling you I have no idea what you’re talking about!” His stomach chose that moment to growl and he shifted against the dull, persistent ache of hunger.

There was a heavy silence in the room. Ruby looked away and muttered something about ‘fucking vampires’ that Sam ignored. His mind was chasing something else, something nagging, jarred loose by her words. Something awful, and blood soaked, and-- “What about telekinesis?”

Her head whipped back around. “What about telekinesis?”

“Is that one of your so-called special powers?”

“It can be. Usually it shows up secondary to other things. More impressive things,” she added pointedly.

Sam nodded, lost in memories.

“Why?” she pressed.

He could see it as clearly as the moment it had happened. Gordon, the cabin, the blood running down his face. The morning song of the woodland birds and the shotgun leveled at his chest.

Sam’s life had been spared by the sudden, unexpected relocation of a couch carved of solid oak. He hadn’t seen the furniture move; he’d been busy trying to get off the floor at the time. But Gordon, dying, had sworn it was something Sam had done. He had all but forgotten in the chaos, pain and wonder of the next few days; there had been so many other things to dwell on and absorb.

Gordon’s death wasn’t something he liked to think about.

“Why, Sam?” Ruby asked again intently. It was Sam’s turn to shrug, unwilling to discuss it.

“Why do you think having my life hijacked by demons is maybe ‘not so bad’?” he returned to his original question.

Ruby studied his face for a minute before nodding slowly, like she was confirming something to herself. “If you can do one thing, then you can learn to do other things. Powerful things, Sam. You feel--”

“Enough with what I feel like!” he snapped.

She ignored him, “--like you can carve your own path in this. They’ve given you this power, but what you do with it is up to you. Including revenge. Including making them pay for everything and everyone they’ve hurt in your life!”

“How?” Sam demanded.

“Embrace it,” she breathed. “It’s a weapon, Sam. You can rip them out of their bodies; you can rip them out of this plane. And maybe, if you’re as strong as I think you are, you can learn to destroy them completely. Destroy them, Sam. Do you know what that means? ” Her eyes were alight with passion and intensity. “I can show you, I can help you strike back at them and set yourself free...”

Sam stared, the idea almost unbelievable. “Why would you help me learn to do that?”

Ruby sat up, expression suddenly shuttered. “You aren’t the only one they’ve screwed over. Demons aren’t free agents, Sam. We’re slaves of Hell, at the whim of more powerful masters.”

Sam sat up beside her and scooted to lean against the headboard. “What would I have to do?”

“Stop fighting this. You need our blood to unlock your gifts. You need enough of it to undo what that vampire has done to you before you can even start to learn. If you stop fighting and... cooperate, once he’s satisfied you’re mostly restored, I can talk him into leaving you to me. I can show you how to get everything you want, how to make them pay.” She scooted to sit up next to him again. Her hand rested on his thigh and he felt his eyes drifting down her body despite himself and swallowed. She was a beautiful woman.

A beautiful demon. The woman was probably dead, if she was lucky, and he was admiring a corpse. If the demon fled, the body would be so much decaying meat. Sam had to swallow again for a different reason.

He shook her hand off and slid off the bed. Sam knew he wasn’t imagining the flash of irritation that crossed her face.

“In other words, if I give up my-- how did Meg say it?-- my ‘evil vampire ways,’ and let the demons who wrecked my life do whatever they damn well please with me, then I might be able to take some wild swing back at them. Maybe. Meanwhile, I lose the only relationship I value, justify anything anyone has ever said about me, and I’ll still be drinking blood and on the run-- while possibly helping demons accomplish some kind of world-ending scheme!”

She leaned towards him and lowered her voice. “I helped you,” she said. “I risked everything to help you! It didn’t quite turn out the way you wanted, but do you have any idea what he would have done with me if he found out what I did? Because I have to tell you, Sam, death doesn’t even get a spot on the scale of horrors he could inflict on me for that.”

“Yeah.” Sam crossed his own arms and stepped back. “You helped me, and then you left me to hang. You could have told me what they were doing, you could have--”

“For what purpose?” she demanded. “So you could kill yourself trying to escape? You couldn’t have stopped them, and dead you can’t do anything.”

“It would have been my choice,” Sam hissed.

“It still is!”

It was tempting, it was so tempting. The idea that he could do something to lash back at his tormentors. They had killed so many people, hurt so many people... And all he had to do was exactly what they wanted. Without fuss or complaint. And Ruby... She had given him the pills when he couldn’t find them in the kitchen, but she also had to be the one who took them in the first place. She hadn’t warned him about the blood, or the demon, or given him even a hint of the grander scheme. Now she spoke of vengeance and power, of getting free of the spiraling trap that had ensnared him almost since birth, of growing strong-- by giving in.

She was a demon.

And distinctly not Dean.

... More flies with honey than vinegar...

Traps within traps.

“No.” Sam shook his head. “I won’t do it. I won’t do anything to cooperate. If I’m this special person you say they want, then by ruining myself for this plan, I’m doing more to screw with them than I could even if I did learn how to kill them. I won’t give up Dean, and I won’t be your student.”

His lips curved into a humorless smile at the idea of what his father would say if he did agree to cooperate with a demon. The vampire was bad enough, but a demon…

Sam shook his head. “Thanks, if you really are trying to help me, but no thanks.”

Ruby looked as though she wanted to say something, changed her mind, started to speak again, then her face grew completely still, looking in that instant like the flesh mask it was. “You’ll be sorry, Sam. This is the only chance you have.” Her voice grew almost cold. “The only choice you have.”

“That sounds like a threat.” He crossed his arms and stepped back, clearly indicating she was welcome to leave. “Someone is looking for me, Ruby. And when he finds me, I won’t be the sorry one.”

She left the room, and didn’t come back.

~~~~~
The next day almost set a new record low for Sam as far as bad times went. First of all, because it was day, and the oppressive and skin-crawling weight of the sun overhead just felt so incredibly wrong and threatening. And secondly, because he woke up choking and gagging on thick plastic that seemed to fill his mouth and throat-- all under the looming, satisfied gaze of the yellow-eyed demon.

“I’m proud of you, Sammy,” the demon remarked while Sam struggled on the bed, anchored in place by blankets that felt heavy as lead over limbs that moved sluggishly at best, and by the firm, unyielding pressure of hands on his head and shoulders. “After spending that much time in close quarters with that vampire--Dean? I wouldn’t have thought you’d have that much of a gag reflex left.”

Sam barely registered the comment; between the tube in his throat and the instinctive panic, he couldn’t keep track of the words being spoken over him and around the room. He couldn’t seem to wake up all the way, and felt like he was being strangled while violent currents tried to drag him under deep, relentless waters. Sam would have been more than happy to succumb, but couldn’t stop fighting long enough to fall into it.

Eventually, he couldn’t muster the strength to continue even the pathetic struggle and was forced to lie still in semi-conscious misery. When they eventually pulled the tube free from his throat, its smooth length felt coated with sandpaper and crumbled glass. The pain was enough to rouse Sam back to some semblance of lucidity from the drifting state he had slid into. With the hands removed and the choking sensation gone, Sam managed to roll onto his side and curl into a protective ball, but could do nothing about the slow, hot tears of frustration and lingering pain that slid down to soak into the pillowcase.

The yellow-eyed demon gave Sam’s shoulder a satisfied pat. “You were awake earlier and for twice as long this time. Stick with us, kid, and you’ll beat this vampire thing yet!”

“Go to Hell,” Sam managed to slur roughly. The demon’s chuckle was the last thing he heard before the water finally closed over his head.



Section Four