Fortress - Section Two

[glasslogic]

Chapter Six:

I got the hangman, I got milagro
I got the celebration too
Your flesh is strong, my spirit’s stronger
So shed your skin baby, let it through
~Shed Your Skin, Indigo Girls

Seven Years Later…

The bar was smoky and crowded; the heavy smell of cigarettes accented by the higher notes of a good amount of weed. People were pressed in against the bar, laughing, talking and calling orders. The pool tables were bordered with quarters and the classic rock coming through the speakers melded everything into an indistinct buzz of human sound.

The woman he was looking for was easily picked out of the crowd. Among the Friday night floozies with their tight clothes and their low-cut shirts, she stood out. Beautiful without any effort, and carrying herself with an air of sensuality that caused every guy in the bar to give her a thorough look-over. She wasn’t actively shielding herself, so his subtle push --here, here, here-- didn’t set off any alarms in her mind. Just an easy, low-key compulsion. One she wouldn’t even notice if she was otherwise engaged.

Her night must have been slow, because it wasn’t five minutes after he started projecting that she sauntered through the back door and into an alley lit only with a flickering streetlight on the corner, and the occasional flash of headlights turning in the parking lot beyond the chain link fence at one end. They were alone in the squalid gloom. He barely let her clear the door before he grabbed her by the throat with one hand and slammed her into the brick wall.

She gasped in shock when she saw him, both of her hands clutching his wrist, tips of her boots barely brushing the trash-littered pavement.

“Ruby.” He flashed her an icy smile, eyes flooded black. “I wanted to thank you for all the help in getting out of the Crossroads deal,” he said sarcastically. “Gratitude I think we should discuss somewhere more private.” He pitched her through a boarded up doorway on the other side of the alley and into the back area of an abandoned store. Before she could get back to her feet, he dragged her up by the jacket and shoved her a little further.

Ruby landed on her knees on hard concrete, coughing and trying to repair her crushed windpipe. She didn’t need it to breathe, but it would be hard to talk without it. Dean paced around her, an ominous presence that felt odd to her senses. That he was a demon, she couldn’t dispute, but he felt... strange. Like his anchoring to the plane was weaker than it should be for an embodied demon.

“Nice meat-suit. Where’d you dig it up?” Ruby smirked, trying to hide her unease. “I hope it didn’t cost you too much.” She was in the middle of a chalk circle lined with ritual work. It seemed to be one half of a figure-eight design. She didn’t recognize the words or symbols, and that was never good.

“This old thing? Nah, got it off the clearance rack. You’d be amazed what kind of deals you can make if you know the right people.” He smiled down at her, green eyes bright. To a random stranger, there was probably nothing in his demeanor that would give him away as other. But Ruby had spent months shadowing and studying him and his brother. To her, his was a disjointed mask. A restless, shifting something beneath a thin veil of humanity. The absence in his eyes was disturbing, and she tried to shift out from under his scrutiny -- only to slam into the edge of the ring like it was a solid wall.

“Problems?”

“What do you want with me?” she demanded, braced for a fight.

“I don’t want anything with you, Ruby.” He walked a few feet away and stood in the other loop of the design. “But you do have something that belongs to me. I’m sure you won’t mind if I just take it back.” He crouched with a piece of chalk he pulled from his jeans and muttered under his breath, sketching sigils around his half that mirrored the ones trapping her.

“I don’t have anything of yours! Sam has all of your stuff.” Mention of his brother’s name caused him to pause for a moment, but he quickly went back to drawing. Ruby slammed one frustrated hand against the magical wall, and landed on her ass when the force recoiled back onto her. She glared at Dean, but made no move to stand again.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, bitch. This isn’t gonna hurt.” He tossed the chalk outside of the ring and rested his hand against the invisible wall, leaning into it gently until it caught his weight and stood firm. “Now, what I do to you afterwards, that’s gonna hurt a lot.”

“What do you want from me, Dean?” she asked again, calmer and more wary.

“You’ve got a leash on my brother, Ruby. You have him all tied up in knots with a blood bond. It just so happens I have plans for Sam, so I’m going to take it off you. I’m sure you understand.” He pointed to the delicate tattoo that was just barely visible on the skin between the waistband of her skirt and where her blouse had twisted up when she fell.

“You’re dreaming, Dean. This spell can’t be removed, no matter what tricks you think you have.”

“Now who told you that? Don’t you know you can do anything with enough will and motivation?” He smiled sharp enough to cut. “And trust me, Ruby, I’ve got both in spades.”

“Even if you could remove it,” Ruby said hastily, not liking the way some of the sigils had started to glow softly, “you don’t want this spell. It’s not just the blood, Dean. It’s sex too, with Sam, your baby brother!”

Dean gave her a disgusted look. “I just spent a few thousand years exploring different vacation spots in Hell, courtesy of you and your friends.” His voice was cold. “You can’t imagine a little thing like incest would even slow me down now, not when I have so many things I want to do to properly demonstrate my appreciation.”

“What about Sam, then?” she asked in a low voice. “How fine do you think he’s going to be with the situation? Rescuing you from Hell is the only reason he’s been willing to put up with me at all. And now this? He’s going to off himself the first chance he gets.”

“Sammy’s a big boy now, Ruby. I’m sure once I explain things to him, it won’t be a problem.”

“Things? What ‘things’ have you got to explain, Dean, that are going to make him okay with drinking blood from and having sex with his dead brother?”

“Well, for starters, I’m going to explain that I’m a demon who has the names and locations of almost every person he has ever known, including most of his Stanford buddies and half the hunters in the Northern Hemisphere. After that, I’ll get creative. Now be a good bitch and shut up.” He closed his eyes and the sigils flared up in a blinding light; his chanting was lost to peal after peal of Ruby’s piercing screams as the magic flayed the spell from her spirit, leaving gaping wounds in its place.

After an eternity of pain, the light vanished and with it the chalk lines and barriers. She collapsed on her side and gasped.

“I thought you said this wouldn’t hurt,” she panted. She didn’t have the strength to escape the flesh she wore now even if she had to.

The man standing a few feet away looked up from examining a lacework of black now spidering up from beneath the waistband of his jeans to eye her dispassionately.

“I lied. Demons do that, you know.” He straightened and walked towards her. “I didn’t lie about what comes next, though.” She tried to scoot away, but injury slowed her. He twisted his grip in the front of her jacket and dragged her upright again. “You can make everything a lot easier by answering a question or two.”

She licked blood off her lips and eyed his grip warily. “What questions?”

“You’ve been inside the house. How do I get in?”

She looked at him like he was an idiot. “You have the spell; you just walk in.”

“Just like that?” His grip relaxed slightly and he lowered her so her feet were flat on the floor

“Yeah, just like that. He had to give me access during construction for some of the foundation wards, and I couldn’t swear I would be wearing this body forever, so he couldn’t use that.” She shrugged as best she could. “So he cued the wards to recognize the spell.”

“Why not just cue the wards to you personally?” Dean asked suspiciously.

“Something about not wanting to contaminate his precious magic with something inherently demonic.”

“So he can’t block me from entering,” Dean mused.

Ruby licked at her lips again. “He can fix most of the wards to lock you out, but without razing the entire place and redoing the foundation, there will be ways in. The chimney, attic ventilation, washer and dryer hook-ups, places like that.”

“Sam would have thought of those.”

“I wasn’t telling you where, just making suggestions, bright light,” she snapped. “Somewhere there will be a chink. Just go through the wall!” Her look turned sullen. “I’ve answered your questions; can I go now?”

“I said answering questions would make it easier, not that I was going to let you go.”

She didn’t wait to see what he did next; she lashed out with her knee and ripped free when he doubled over. Wearing flesh made you vulnerable to its weaknesses; he might be able to disregard the pain in a manner no real human could, but he was new enough to the skin game that he was going to react to it first. She landed on her backside and scrambled away.

He lunged after her, but before he could reach her, she spat out some words and vanished from the room. The demon that had been Dean Winchester rocked back on his heels and eyed the place she had been with annoyance. Not that it much mattered. He had already gained from Ruby what he needed, and his vengeance on her could wait until he had dealt with larger matters. She was a traitor and a liar and had been instrumental in what had happened to him, but at the end of the day, she was just a tool. She would get what was coming to her, but it was her master he was really after. And towards that end, he needed to be working on more important things, not getting distracted by petty pleasures.

Things like Sam.

Through the newly acquired bond, Dean could feel his brother faintly on the other end. He could feel an undercurrent of all sorts of emotions, but they were very... vague. He focused on the ones the spell best conveyed: hunger, discomfort, pain; weighing them uncertainly against how he understood the link to work and his own feelings, and decided it wasn’t time yet. Sam was feeling the edge, but he wasn’t desperate, wasn’t crawling out of his skin with need. Dean would have to pay attention, but it had only been about ten days since Ruby’s last visit, so there was probably at least a week, maybe more, until Sam was where he wanted him to be. Which was just as well; the curse would ensure Sam’s compliance at the time, but once the haze cleared, he would still have the memories, and would probably be more cooperative in the long-run if those memories didn’t involve being overly hurt. Hell had given Dean ample experience in a variety of sexual arenas he had not explored while properly alive, but those lessons focused on pain, degradation and the breaking of the spirit. He needed to practice a bit in a more casual setting before the bond between them drove Sam into his bed.



Chapter Seven:

Carve your name into my arm.
Instead of stressed, I lie here charmed.
‘Cause there’s nothing else to do,
Every me and every you.
~Every You, Every Me, Placebo

As a child, Sam had hated traveling the Western states. The long, empty highways, dusty, isolate towns, and endless hours of having nothing more interesting to do than kick the back of Dean’s seat. Once he was old enough to understand exactly what it was his father vanished to do, it was even worse. The monsters that stalked the more heavily populated regions, with their overcrowded schools and their massive libraries and museums, tended to be more garden variety. He had faith in his dad to handle these problems in an area where the serious threats were detected fast and stamped out early. But out West, the legends and nightmares could roam for decades before they caught a hunter’s attention. Potentially, centuries of craftiness and power. Sam couldn’t muster the blind faith in their father’s prowess that Dean had; he was always sure that this hunt would be the one their dad didn’t come back from. Sam never slept well while in the West.

As an adult, the West had become his salvation. A place to build a bastion of isolation and freedom. Even if the freedom was limited to a hundred acre plot of land and what the Internet could provide him. Or at least what the one fenced acre in the hundred protected by his wards could provide him; the rest just prevented neighbors, and he rented it out to the locals as pasture.

Between Bobby’s contact, his newly established fortune, and six months of intensive research and planning, he felt confident that he had constructed a place where no demon could walk without his permission. The yard, the house: both enclosed in buried, salt-filled silver piping. Warded fence posts were run through with rails of continuous iron, the sigils and invocations culled from a dozen languages and religions. The foundation of the home itself was charmed and marked, and Devil’s Traps were carved into the wood flooring below every window and door. When he was bored, and the weather was bad, or he couldn’t bear to read anymore, Sam would amuse himself sometimes with a pocketknife on the woodwork, adding more charms. Every cut a denial of his past failures; a promise to his dead that he would continue the fight.

After seven years of self-imposed imprisonment, his private occult library was one of the best in the world; shelves and shelves of rare books of lore and magic. He had developed a reputation as a resource hunters could trust when they had questions, and he had even started doing business with other groups that dealt with the supernatural world: benign covens, religious groups -- anyone who battled monsters and needed help. They knew him as Sam Smith; it was innocuous and untraceable.

Of those with whom he did business or who knew who Sam Winchester had been, only Bobby knew where he lived, and was permitted to visit. Well, Bobby and Ruby. But she was as necessary to him as oxygen; his self-loathing and rage did not lessen the siren call of her blood or her body. Since he had no use for the power she amplified in him anymore, he was able to go longer between visits than he had when they had traveled together, when he was still hell-bent on killing Lilith. Every three or four weeks, she would show up on his porch.

Slip into his bed.

They seldom spoke. It was unnecessary and he had no interest. She had tried for the first few years to draw him out, tease and mock him, to seduce him in his loneliness. But the more she pushed, the colder he grew, so finally she let it lie. It was a great relief to him when she did.

That first year of his exile, he had thought he would go mad. Made frantic as he found answers nowhere and the walls closed in on him. Learning to garden had helped; relaxing enough to chat with the boy from town who brought him groceries had helped more, given him a line to humanity that wasn’t through a computer monitor or a phone cord. Helped him keep strong the walls he used to hold Ruby out. He knew she could read something of him through the link they shared, but he was never sure how much, only that it was strongest right after they had... spent time together. She had only given him a maddening smile in the early days when he had demanded to know. When he realized she would never give him any answers he could trust, was when he stopped talking to her outside of the brief and necessary.

He tried very hard not to think about his brother. Even with all his failures before the deal was due, and in the madness of the months after, he had held onto hope that once he was safe, once he could clear his mind and focus only on saving Dean, he would find an answer. That belief had sustained him for the first year; and when it had crumbled, guilt had driven him through the second. But by the time the third year rolled around, he found it almost painful to pick up a book, to try to think of a new angle to explore. Bobby had picked up on his change in mood, because he had started calling more often for assistance, and eventually just directed people to Sam. His business had slowly grown from that, until his research into helping Dean consisted of making notes of anything potentially useful that cropped up while consulting on other matters.

And so it had gone for years. But in the last few weeks, something had changed. There was just a... difference. A sense, so subtle there was nothing to point to, but sometimes, at odd hours of the night, the hair stood up on the back of his neck. He would be reading something and suddenly be absolutely certain he was being watched. He never found anything, and even an exhaustive check of his wards revealed nothing. But the sense remained. Ruby had come three weeks after it had started, and that night was the worst yet. Even the taste of her blood could not distract him from the itch of observation, though the sex that followed certainly did.

He slept restlessly that night, but easier after that. After a few days, he decided it was a symptom of his justifiable paranoia and dismissed it entirely from his mind.

~~~~~~~

The Impala was all but invisible in the dark, moonless night; no lights gave her away. The region was desolate and the driver wasn’t worried about causing an accident. He drove past the fenced yard and silent house set back from the road, until the slope it was set on leveled out, and he could drive off into the rustling grasses and park just outside the fence posts. None of the wards on the posts reacted when he crossed them; they had been carefully crafted to permit him access, after all. With the spell-born connection between himself and the man sleeping inside, he was shielded by a fake veneer of humanity. It easily let him slip through and across the protections tied to Sam. Not even the iron and the salt slowed him down, the sheer weight of the magic bound into the land strong enough to distort even their natural properties when faced with the quandary of the spell that linked him to his brother.

Almost four weeks of immersing himself in the World and learning how to be human. Or as human as he could act. His original estimate on time had been short; he had underestimated how long Sam could sustain himself when he wasn’t actively using the power. Dean had spent his mornings in the yard where he had located the Impala, getting her into running shape after seven years standing idle. It was an interesting exercise. His hands and his instincts seemed to know what to do, but when he went to find the memories that informed his actions, they were fragmented and colorless. Most of his memories still were. Some things had been kept intact --he recalled in crystal clarity everything that had happened between his family and the demons since his father’s death-- but the memories around them were dulled. There was no feeling attached to anything that wasn’t rage, fear, hatred, despair, anger: emotions of Hell. The longer he was free in the World, the more that would change; he had been promised that would change. That it would all come back with exposure and time. But he couldn’t wait for that. Lilith wasn’t going to wait for anything. And Sam’s time --though he didn’t know it yet-- had run completely out.

~~~~~~~

Sam woke up drenched in sweat and twisted into a pain-wracked ball. He grimaced through the agony, and when it receded, glanced at the alarm clock beside his bed. The numbers blinked a depressingly small change since the last time he had looked at it. His sleep was fitful and brief; the pain was intense and regular. He was tired enough that even recognition of his impending death didn’t provoke anything more than a wish that it would hurry up.

Calling Ruby had proved futile. Five days ago, he had broken to the point of leaving her increasingly desperate messages, instead of just the call log as usual. Now he wasn’t even sure where his phone was. He didn’t remember the last time he had eaten anything either; he had been drinking tap water from the bathroom for at least two days -- when he could stand up. The cramps in his muscles unclenched enough to let him stretch out across the mattress on his belly, the most pain-free he had been for the greater part of a week. Sam buried his face in the mattress and almost sobbed in relief. He didn’t know if he wanted Ruby to come anymore or not. He wasn’t sure what he would be willing to agree to, to stop the pain.

Another spasm ripped through him, and the bulbs in the overhead light fixture exploded, along with the tableside lamp and the glass in the picture frames along the wall. Arms wrapped instinctively around his head kept shards from his face, but now his hair and back and bed were littered with razor-edged pieces of glass. They weren’t the first things he had broken with his mind since the fits started, but nothing else had created a danger like this, and his thin t-shirt and sweatpants provided little protection.

Sam slid carefully off the bed feet first; he felt a few pieces catch and drag shallow slices across his skin. Glass crunched under his bare feet, but eventually he was free of the blankets and stood very shakily in the middle of the minefield. His eyes would barely focus. He flinched with every movement, expecting the agony to flare back up in his muscles, sending him crashing onto the glass-covered planks of wood. He didn’t know where to go, but the door that led to the kitchen was closest, and he could get water and food there. He was probably going to die, but he didn’t have to just give up yet.

The kitchen was cool, dark and blessedly clean of glass. Sam reached the island counter and froze, leaning heavily against it. There was someone in the room. It was deadly quiet, just the soft hum of appliances, but he was absolutely certain he wasn’t alone.

“Ruby?” he called softly.

The hand that clamped across his mouth was running with blood that filled his senses with an explosion of euphoria. Weakness was a thing of the past, and he grabbed hard to the person to stop them from ever pulling away. The rush was swamping his senses and eating great chunks of his consciousness. Before it dragged his rational mind under completely, the last thing he registered --along with the heat sparking in his veins and the warmth of the body pressed against his back-- was the last voice he had ever expected to hear again.

“Sorry, Sam.”

Dean.

~~~~~~~

Dawn was barely starting to stain the edges of the horizon through the windows. Dean scratched at skin itchy with a mess of blood, sweat and the aftermath of fast, messy sex. Beside him on the tile, Sam was still limp in unconsciousness, even more of a mess than Dean. Bruises, shallow cuts and the signs of the last few days of pain were already fading or gone. His face was relaxed in sleep and his body was easy in posture. There was almost no sense of anything from him humming in the link, certainly not the waves of fear and pain that had swamped Dean before he had even reached the house last night.

Somewhere in another room, a clock chimed. It registered on Dean that the tile was cool, too cool for human comfort probably. And they could both do with a shower, and then some packing, and it was already far later than he had wanted to still be here. Forces in the world were starting to turn their attention to this quiet corner of the map, and it was past time they were gone. He tried to wake Sam, but his brother was still mostly out of it. He did manage to rouse him just enough to help stagger down the hallway to the bedroom still covered in glass. He left his little brother slumped against the hallway wall and went to find a broom.

Half an hour later, he had stripped the mattress bare, leaving it glass-free, and swept enough of the floor that every footstep didn’t crunch. He and Sam were both clean, if still damp, and his brother was curled up on the bed wearing the sweatpants, t-shirt and hoodie that had come first to Dean’s hands when he rummaged through the dresser. There was still no indication of any actual consciousness, so Dean left him there while he packed up some stuff.

Two trips through the house and out to the car gathered books he recognized as exceptionally rare or potentially useful into the trunk. He grabbed a laptop from a desk, and the books open there, so Sam could continue with whatever he had been working on. Dean recognized Sam was likely to handle the situation poorly; maybe work would distract him while he adjusted. He found a huge duffle bag coated in dust in the top of the closet, probably from when Sam moved in originally. Clothes, toiletries, some prescription drug bottles from the kitchen, an address book he found in a desk, various other sundries. There was still room, so he added a folded blanket from the top of the closet and a couple of towels. In the closet he found a scarred leather jacket and slipped it on almost without thought. It felt… right.

He crouched to zip the duffle up and noticed the mattress wasn’t lying quite flat against the box springs. He glanced at Sam, who was still dead to the world, and reached to gently tug out whatever was hidden in the bed. He turned the worn leather journal in his hands, letting hints of all the memories its stained, battered cover raised wash through him, a confusing jumble of sight and sound that only time could sort.

His father’s journal.

He let it fall open, and flipped slowly through its yellowing pages of cramped, spidery writing, sketches and newspaper clippings. A single photo was taped into the back cover: a Polaroid of two boys sitting on the hood of a black car. Young teenagers, dressed only in cut-offs, everything bright and glinting with sunlight. The older-looking one was smiling at the camera, while the younger was looking at him with an expression that left no doubt who the center of his universe was. It was a happy summer picture that would have been well at home in any family album, but this aging, bloodstained journal of monsters and magic was as much of a family album as the Winchesters had.

The demon that had been Dean Winchester brushed a thumb slowly over the cover, and closed his eyes as the feel of the leather journal melded suddenly with the scent of the leather jacket he wore -- and another barrage of imagery poured in. He shook his head to clear his senses and shoved the journal into Sam’s duffle bag. There was no time for any of that now.

He hauled Sam out to the Impala and settled him in the backseat, covered with blankets to block out the cold of the early spring morning. He stuffed the duffle bag into the trunk with the books, then he went back into the house for one last task.

The fiery streaks of dawn across the sky were no match for the firestorm engulfing the house as the Impala pulled away. Collapsing spellwork gave the flames an unnatural hue, but in moments, there was no one left to see it.



Chapter Eight:

you are the only one
born in the sun
riddled to spend your time
defending my plan
~Chickenman, Indigo Girls

Sam woke up slowly, so slowly that at first he didn’t realize he was waking up. For seven years, every waking had been the same. The same mattress, in the same room, always, always the same. This was different. The scratchiness of the sheets under his cheek, the unfamiliar squeak of bedsprings, the odor of cheap air freshener… like a dream of his life before.

He shifted against the mattress and felt cold metal bite hard into his wrist. That made his eyes snap open. If he had ever dreamed of being handcuffed to a bed, it wasn’t while wearing clothes. He squirmed upright and looked around, trying to figure out where he was. The generic wallpaper, peeling at the corners, worn carpet, rattling heater under the window, all signs of a cheap motel. The handcuff was different, but the metal bed frame was welded solid, and he doubted he would be able to break it anytime soon.

The shower was running in the bathroom. Sam felt lightheaded and his mouth was dry; he used his free hand to awkwardly check the pockets of his sweatpants for anything he could use to pick the lock, but they were empty.

The water shut off in the bathroom.

There was something terribly important he needed to remember. All tied up with... There was no pain, he realized suddenly. No shaking. Other than a little fuzziness, he felt... great. His last memory was the glass exploding. And the kitchen, and then--

The bathroom door opened and a man stepped out.

Sam was shocked into keeping silent.

“That’s all you have to say?” Dean asked, looking hurt. “No, ‘Thanks for going to Hell for me; nice to see you again,’ or ‘I missed you; glad you’re back’? Where’s the gratitude, Sam?”

“Who are you?” Sam demanded.

Dean raised an eyebrow and leaned against the television stand. “It’s not been that long. Not for you, anyways.”

Sam glared furiously. “You think you’re going to get something from me because you’ve made yourself look like my brother? My brother’s dead.” He jerked angrily against the cuff. “What the hell are you? Shape-shifter?”

“One hundred percent, grade-A demon, Sammy.” Dean grabbed a battered chair from the desk and spun it around so he could straddle the seat and rest his arms on the back, facing Sam. “I thought about going for a different model.” He traced a finger over his own cheekbone. “But then I thought, Nah, better to stick with what’s familiar. Why mess with perfection?”

He smiled at Sam, and Sam’s heart clenched. It was Dean’s smile, carefree and cocky.

“Well, maybe a little less than perfect,” Dean continued. “The Hellhounds did a number on it, and seven years moldering in the ground sure wasn’t pretty. But I always liked a challenge, you know, and it’s not any different than fixing a bullet hole, or a busted tire. Just patience and time. And I’ve had lots and lots of time, Sam.”

“Now I know you’re lying,” Sam spat. “My brother had an anti-possession tattoo that--” He cut off. The self-proclaimed demon was rolling its shirt up, revealing smooth, flawless skin, and just to the left of the base of its throat, the anti-possession tattoo with its stark black lines -- and a thick, pale weal like a long-healed scar slashing through the bottom margin.

“Hellhound. I fixed the rest of the wounds, but repairing this one seemed counterproductive. I decided to leave the mark and just smooth it over a bit.”

Sam swallowed but said nothing. He was still glaring, but now the expression was tempered with an edge of real fear.

“That’s not the mark you should be most concerned with anyways.” Dean stood up and reached for the fly of his jeans.

Sam turned his face away as the zipper came down. “You don’t have anything there I need to see.”

“You might be surprised.”

“Really, I don’t--”

“Look,” the demon ordered.

Sam reluctantly turned back, then stared. The demon had shoved the denim down to bare most of its right hip. The lacy intricacy of the pattern there was very familiar to Sam. He had copied the pattern off Ruby’s body, and spent hours in research trying to identify and unravel its mystery. To undo the spellwork that destroyed his life.

“What is that?” Sam breathed in horror.

“Spoils of war. I ripped it off a bitch who thought she could drag my brother around on a leash.”

“Is it… Does it still work?”

“Yeah, sorry. It is what it is. All indications are that when it stops working, it will be because you’re dead. I had to look into it when I found out about Ruby’s little connection to you.”

“So instead of needing blood and sex with Ruby, now it’s with you?”

“I have places to go and things to do, Sam. I need your help with some of them, and I didn’t think Ruby was going to be willing to ride along with us, in the backseat of the Impala. Besides, you didn’t seem to mind last night. Or, this morning,” it mused. “I wasn’t paying that much attention to the clock.

“Oh, my God.” Sam had some vague sense-memories, he thought, but no details. Sometimes when it was bad, details would come back later. He hoped they wouldn’t this time.

The demon was still talking. “Speaking of the bitch -- some of my memories are a little fuzzy, but I seem to distinctly recall wanting to kill her before I went to Hell. I can’t believe I died and you shacked up with her! Did you even wait until my corpse was cool? She’s a demon, Sam, and you just hopped in the sack with her because… why, again? She fluttered her lashes at you and took off her shirt? You’re lucky a blood-curse was the only thing you got. What the fuck were you thinking?!”

The demon seemed to gather itself and calm down.

“But I’m going to let that go and move past it, because we’re brothers, and family, and family forgives. Right? You’re still my brother, aren’t you?”

“My brother would never do this to me,” Sam said in a dead voice.

“Really? That’s funny, because I seem to remember selling my soul to Hell for you. I wouldn’t think a little blood-letting and some incestuous sex would rate much on that scale. Do you know how long seven years is in Hell, Sam?”

Sam flinched, but stayed silent. And he wouldn’t look at the demon in his brother’s skin.

The demon cursed under its breath. “I need your help.”

Sam gave a disbelieving laugh and looked up. “Yeah, you said that before. My help. Help?” He looked like he wanted to stand, but the cuff still shackled him to the bed frame. “You know how I know it’s not my help you’re after? If you wanted my help, you would have called. You would have found Bobby and convinced him you were serious. You might have even stopped by and waited past the fence to see if I would talk. Instead, you go and get a spell that--” He broke off, shaking his head. “I don’t even have words for this, I don’t even have words. How could you think I would help you after this?”

“Had to save you, Sam,” Dean said quietly.

“From Ruby?” Sam’s voice was thick with tears. “You didn’t save me from Ruby, man. I had that under control. You wanted to save me, you would have left me where I was.”

The demon watched him silently for a few minutes while Sam rubbed at his eyes and looked at anything else in the room.

“Here’s the deal,” it said finally. “And you don’t have to cooperate, or agree, or anything else. You just have to shut up and do what I say. I have to find some things, which means I’m going on an extended road trip. I can’t just stick you someplace, because that would make you a sitting duck, and also because you need me to survive--”

“You can’t possibly believe I care about that,” Sam interrupted in a low voice.

“The shutting-up part? That starts now. But since you brought it up -- I do expect you to care about that. I expect you to give your continued survival your most diligent and careful attention. Because if you don’t…” He paused until Sam reluctantly lifted his head again. “Well, without you, I can’t finish what I came here to do. Which means I would have to find new entertainment. And I can’t think of anything more entertaining than carving my way through your address book and sending all your little friends into the afterlife to let you know exactly how unhappy I am with you. Not to mention all the hunters, contacts and various other nice, helpless people we met on the road together. What do you think, Sam? Does Bobby go under ‘R’ for Robert or ‘S’ for Singer?”

Sam’s breathing grew more ragged and his hands clenched white-knuckled in the bedspread.

“And don’t even think of running out on me,” Dean added. “I’m going to take that as a suicide attempt, and then we are back to my being unhappy and all that jazz.”

Rage was boiling through the link between them, underwritten by a heavy foundation of despair. It was going to have to do for now.

“It feels like you understand my point, so let’s move on. Now, after I have all my shiny souvenirs, there is some spell-casting to be done, which I expect you to play a principal role in. It should be pretty basic, since the entire thing fits on one paper. After that rabbit gets ripped out of the hat, and all of my enemies are exactly where I want them, I will be happy to dedicate my time to finding a way to untangle you from this blood-curse, and letting you get on with your life. I’ve been assured it can’t actually be done, but that’s what they said about me climbing out of Hell. And hey! Here I am.”

Sam swallowed. “What is it exactly you want me to help you do?”

“I want you to help me stop Lilith.” Dean knew it was a mistake as soon as the words left his lips. He didn’t know why it was a mistake, but he felt walls slam up in Sam’s mind as impregnable as any castle’s. A solid sheet of rock-hard denial where only moments before had been traces of reluctant interest.

“Go back to Hell.” The resolve in Sam’s flat tone was as clear and unshaking as the barrier in his mind.

Dean’s eyes bled black with anger and frustration, but without knowing what had set Sam off, he couldn’t try and fix it. Fine. Whatever. Sam still had to come with him. If he wanted to come dragged as a captive instead of treated like an accomplice, Dean could work with that. Hell, he’d half planned on it anyways.

He walked over and brushed his fingers over the chill metal of the cuff; it released with a soft click from Sam’s wrist and the bed frame. He slid it in a pocket.

“I’m going to go get some of that free food from the office; you go ahead and take care of whatever you need to. I’d suggest a shower at the least. There’s clothes in that bag by the wall. I can see this door through the window. Believe that it had better not open while I’m gone.”



Chapter Nine:

Was it ever so the evil creeped like ivy
A toehold on the stronger half of nature’s dichotomy
I’m beating back a path through nothing more than pure insistence
So here becomes the distance
~Leeds, Indigo Girl

Weeks passed like a nightmare for Sam. He would startle awake in random motel rooms, relieved that the last seven years was all a vicious dream, then his wrist would catch on the handcuff, or the arm around his waist would tighten, and reality crashed in.

The Impala was worse. It tugged at a deep part of his memory, a reminder of all things safe and familial. Time when his family was still alive; time when it was his dad and his brother traveling the country chasing hunts; time when he and Dean were traveling together chasing their dad. And later, when it was truly just the two of them. To wake up slumped in his familiar seat, feeling safe and protected, head tipped against the glass, then opening his eyes and looking over at his brother -- finding the demon in his place as it watched him, was horrible. Sam preferred the shared beds and casual touching of the anonymous motel rooms; that didn’t feel like such a desecration --a violation-- of his brother’s memory as the false safety of the Impala did.

Of course, the times when the touching wasn’t so casual were the worst of all.

Sam wasn’t keeping track of time in the usual sense. Those first few days, he had been in a state of hyper-aware shock, then as the reality of his situation sank in, things had dimmed around the edges until the entirety of his world was his immediate surroundings. He didn’t see any way out; no rescue, no escape, and so he drew deeper and deeper into himself until entire weeks would blur by without anything but the most casual attention. The demon made him eat and drink, and left him generally free to move about as he wished in the rooms they shared most nights. The demon itself never seemed to rest. Sam fell asleep under its expressionless gaze, and woke up the same way. It didn’t seem to sleep, but it would lie on the bed with him and work on a laptop most nights. Sam thought about trying to destroy it, all those months with Ruby, learning how to drag demons from their hosts and send them back to Hell, then advancing the lesson to true destruction… it burned in his mind sometimes, how easy it should have been, and the demon beside him was feeding him blood and power, after all… But the blood he took never felt as potent feeding from this demon as the blood he had taken from Ruby had. As if it was able to control how much power Sam drew from it, as if it was keeping him on a short lease. Feeding his need without ever letting him truly power-up. The itchy, worn, exhausted feeling that weighed on him constantly certainly supported the idea.

He wasn’t entirely sure of how long it had been since the nightmarish trip had started. A few months at least; the seasons were changing.

Sam tracked time by the tides of his body. He had been aware of the shifting pull of need with Ruby, but then he had had a variety of distractions to focus on. Now there was nothing but the hypnotic rhythm of the road and a bone-deep awareness of the monster beside him. He knew to the hour when certain symptoms would start up. It was more frequently than he had needed Ruby’s… attentions. Sam knew how many nights he would have of his normal restless sleep before dreams of sex and blood would start creeping in. How many times he would wake up rigid on the edge of the bed, as far from the demon as he could get, before he would start waking up pressed against it in a parody of lover’s passion.

The demon never said anything about it. It would give Sam so many days and enough pain of withdrawal to remind him how much Sam needed its blood, and then one night the silver knife would be beside the bed: simple, innocuous. Sam greeting its sight with misery and relief. He hated himself those times.

More than he hated the demon.

His mind fought frantically against his body’s need, until that knife split skin and the heavy scent of blood filled the air. There wasn’t anything in the scent that Sam could point to as different or desirable, but it sent shivers down his spine and goose bumps over his skin in pure longing. His will melted and he was pliant to whatever the demon wanted as long as it let him taste. And then he was just mindlessly frantic. Heat and fire under his flesh, cooling to a smoldering burn of pure pleasure everywhere it touched him.

It seemed to find Sam’s reactions fascinating. Sometimes, it allowed things to go quickly, letting Sam rub off on it, then shiver through the aftermath in its arms. Sometimes, it would drag things out for hours, until Sam ached everywhere, every inch of him willing and desperate -- the idea of resistance not even comprehensible.

Later, after Sam recovered from the inevitable deep sleep that followed every cycle of the curse between them, he would lie in misery for hours. Slow tears leaking down his face where he curled against the door of the Impala, or into the clean, laundered pillowcases of wherever they were staying. He figured that one day even that would stop, and he would cease to feel anything at all; that oblivion would be better than the deep shame and self-loathing and grief that haunted him.

For its part, the demon didn’t really seem to pay him much attention most of the time. It spoke to him sometimes; Sam thought it might have said something about his work at one time or another, but since he was making a conscious effort to ignore it, he couldn’t be sure.

He hated when it sang along with the radio, his brother’s voice familiar in its off-key enthusiasm.

It forced him out of the car sometimes to go running. Usually late at night on deserted high school tracks. Running until he was drenched in sweat and could barely stand up, and then he would glance over and see it leaning casually against the Impala, waiting for him to finish so they could take off again, and he would find the endurance to go another few laps. Anything to stay out of that car.

The first few times, Sam had tried to refuse, not wanting the disruption in his own private hell and generally unwilling to comply with the monster wearing his brother’s skin. But it had casually suggested that if Sam couldn’t be bothered to take care of his body, then they would have to up the frequency of the blood consumption so that the natural magical properties of it could help keep him in good repair.

After that, whenever the Impala rumbled to a stop at a track, Sam just couldn’t get out of the car fast enough.


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