Fortress - Section Ten

[glasslogic]

Chapter Twenty-Nine:

The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup?
Or disappear into the potter’s ground
When the Man comes around
~When the Man Comes Around, Johnny Cash

“Virgin Ashes? Seriously?”

“Yes,” Sam replied, still regaining his stamina after the ordeal of the last couple of weeks -- most of which he thankfully did not have any recollection of, “seriously. And if you say anything to me about going to kill one ourselves, we are going to have a problem, Dean.”

Dean looked offended. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Sammy. I was just marveling over the injustice of a world where people die virgins.”

Sam rolled his eyes and sank back onto the couch.

They had sat around long enough -- it was dangerous just being at Bobby’s, where all sorts of people knew they occasionally visited; being at Bobby’s long term was insane. They needed to get back on the road and planned to do so before dawn the next day.

Things seemed to have more or less settled back into place as far as the curse and the power balance between them went. Dean had come as close to truly sleeping as Sam had ever seen him since he had reappeared and dragged Sam from his house all those months ago, and had done so for nearly an entire day once he was certain Sam was set back to rights and didn’t need to be hovered over. Even now, there seemed to be a vague lethargy to Dean’s movements, but asking him about it only sent him off on rants about people who sucked all his energy down then asked him how he felt. Sam himself still felt too rundown to deal with it anymore, even after all the much-mentioned energy-suckage, and let the matter lie.

He had asked Dean about the ingredient the angel had given him that had led to their impromptu stay at Bobby’s. Dean had given him a dark look, but gone to retrieve something from the Impala’s trunk. What he had brought back was about the same length and width of a cigarette, but clear, hard and sharp-edged like crystal, rather than a smooth, circular shape. Inside, the crystal shimmered; a substance the same rich blue as the material Dean had ripped from the angel at the church. The exterior of the crystal was smeared with something, and when Sam asked about it, Dean explained how he had had to pry Sam’s fist open to get it, and how the crystal was embedded so deep into his hand that Dean had had to put in temporary stitches to stop the bleeding, since he wasn’t able to heal Sam with blood. Sam hadn’t asked any more questions.

He wasn’t thinking when he made his next observation, though. “I hope I have a vision soon.”

The look Dean gave him was withering. “Or maybe you can just stay awake for awhile, and we can find our own damn Virgin Ashes. Little kids die every day; I’m sure some of them are cremated. Even if we can’t find one already in an urn -- it’s not like we haven’t looted a funeral home or two before.”

“We’re almost done, Dean. Two more things and we will have all the ingredients, which, if you recall, are pretty damn specific -- let’s not screw around with it now. Also, looting blood and looting bodies are a little different.”

“One fits in your pocket, one gets slung over your shoulder; it’s not that different.”

“That’s really disturbing, Dean.”

“Sorry -- I’m a demon back from a few thousand years in Hell; a lovely tourist spot I got to visit as a result of selling my soul to bring you back from the dead, and you’re a freaky psychic future meat-puppet vampire who has a chatty relationship with an angel of Hell, and together we have a relationship no brothers should really share, and do things like rob churches trying to hold off the Apocalypse. Oh yeah, and before all that started, we enjoyed a lively existence digging up corpses to set them on fire and stalking things like witches, werewolves and other Halloween favorites while on the run from the FBI. What part did you say was disturbing, again?”

“I am not a vampire!”

“Of course you are,” Dean smirked. “You drink blood to live, don’t you?”

Bobby walked in before Sam could find the words to express his outrage, took one look at the scene, and tossed a heavy duffle bag to Dean before holding one hand up in a ‘stop’ gesture to Sam.

“I don’t want to hear it. Sam, he’s a demon -- if all he’s poking you with are verbal knives, count yourself lucky. And, Dean, he’s your little brother; stop with the damn teasing. At least where I have to hear it, please?”

Sam still looked outraged, but kept his mouth shut. The new relationship between Bobby and Dean that had apparently developed while he was unconscious for all that time still made him nervous, but not in the ‘who’s-body-will-I-find-today’ sense of their previous visits, more of the ‘welcome to the Twilight Zone,’ one.

Dean wore an expression of total innocence. “Sure, Bobby. Whatever you say.”

~~~~~~~

Three days later found Sam leaning against the filthy wall of a back-country gas station around the side from the actual store-slash-convenience shop, with his eyes clenched shut and nausea welling up in his belly. He had been washing his hands when the vision struck, and was just waiting for the immediate after-effect to pass so he could stagger out to the Impala. He thought he might be feeling Dean’s concern from inside the store, and tried to project reassurance back before Dean did something noteworthy, like kick in the door.

“Need the Internet?” was all Dean asked a short time later, when he slid into the car beside Sam, who was white-knuckled, holding onto an atlas in the passenger seat waiting for the aspirin to start working and take the edge off.

“Yeah. Not for awhile, though. I don’t think I could look at the screen right now. But swing southeast.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw palm trees.”

“Could be California.”

“No,” Sam said firmly, without opening his eyes. “There was also a lattice table, and a pitcher of tea. It was syrupy sweet. That’s not a West Coast thing.”

“You pick-up anything else immediately useful?”

“Not unless you know where Sunland is.”

“What the hell is Sunland?”

“Something on a sign,” Sam mumbled. “Figure out more when I can read again. Wake me when the sun’s up.”

~~~~~~~

Sam’s headache was persistent, and they still had a good way to go before they were even close to the part of the country where people liked tea with their sugar and palm trees were common, so it was past lunch before Dean pulled over at a restaurant advertising free Internet on a highway billboard.

“Really, Dean -- Wendy’s? This is better than a coffee shop?”

“Not better than a coffee shop, better than your coffee shops. Five dollars for coffee, Sam --honestly?”

The conversation, such as it was, wound down as Sam became more involved in what he was finding on the Internet, though he did look up occasionally to find Dean happily devouring what was a truly impressive mountain of chicken nuggets.

Early on, once he had started talking to Dean, Sam had asked why he ate so much if --as he claimed-- the body was actually dead and it was an effort to mimic all the functions and activities of life. His brother had told him that it was the difference between turning the crank-shaft of a machine by hand for every second it was running, or just dumping fuel in occasionally and making sure nothing was broken. Sam pointing out that the latter didn’t sound that different from any other body -- to which Dean had replied, “If your brain gets fried, your machine could still run. I walk away from mine, and it just grinds to a halt.”

Sam had decided he probably didn’t want more of a technical answer and stopped asking for fear Dean might actually provide him one. Sam had enough problems in his life without seriously contemplating himself as a necrophiliac too.

“Tallahassee.”

“You sure?”

Sam nodded. “Sunland Hospital. A facility for children with both physical and mental handicaps, psychiatric disorders, things like that. Closed in 1983 amid a wave of scandals and accusations of neglect, abuse and general poor conditions.” He turned the laptop around to face Dean, who read through the Wikipedia site before turning a skeptical glance back on Sam.

“It says that there were branches all over Florida. Palm trees are more of a South Florida thing, so why do you say Tallahassee?’

Sam pulled the computer back and pulled up another tab before shifting the laptop so Dean could see again. Now, instead of a Wiki page, was a lurid red and black website with a series of photos, showing a fenced-off and greatly overgrown version of the hospital from the Wiki site, featured prominently. “That’s my vision, Dean. Even the sign; see it? That’s where I saw the name.”

“Dude, is this a ghost hunter’s website? Are we going on a ghost hunt, Sam?”

Sam closed the computer and rested his hands on top of it while leaning in to keep their discussion private. “The hospital ruins have a reputation for that, but we’re going because that’s where my vision is taking us, Dean. Because that’s the only way we’ve gotten as far as we have, remember?”

Dean shrugged and slid out of the booth. “I suppose where there are ghosts, there are bodies to ash. You ready?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the big deal with virgin ashes, anyways?”

“Well, maybe it’s a bloodline thing again; that’s why it’s specific. Maybe she just happens to be a virgin; maybe the angel didn’t know what else to call her -- how am I supposed to know?!”

“Or him,” Dean mused, pulling open the Impala door.

“What?”

“We could be looking for a guy.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “They could just happen to be a virgin, happy?”

“Not in the least. But get in and let’s go see what a haunted children’s hospital has to do with the end of the world.”

~~~~~~~

Finding the Sunland location wasn’t a hardship; everyone in the diner of the gas station they filled up at off I-10 on their way into town knew where it was, though they called it ‘Sunnyland’ and suggested staying far away at night. And the daytime too, for that matter. No one seemed to have any specifics, though, and the general air was more that of a relished local urban legend than something that inspired true fear. Dean didn’t like the cashier when they checked out, really didn’t like him. But he couldn’t give Sam a reason why, so his brother dragged him out.

“You should have let me question him.”

Sam sighed. “Because you didn’t like him?”

“I barely notice most people! They don’t even show up on my radar, but I really didn’t like that guy.”

“And that means…?”

“It means he was bad news. And possibly a spy for freaking Lilith.”

“A human?”

“A lot of humans are stupid, Sam. This can’t be news to you. They think the magic is harmless, they cut a deal with a stranger, or they are just really idiots and go looking for demons on purpose. There’s a lot of ways to get involved, and the only thing that would surprise me is if we hadn’t been tagged by Lilith’s human flock before now.”

“Do you think he heard us ask about the hospital?”

“I think it would be really easy for him to find out where we’re headed.”

“We have to go in tonight, then; the longer we wait, the worse our chances.”

Dean nodded; he was giving Sam a rare opportunity to drive while he looked through a stack of print-outs on the hospital Sam had done at a copy shop a few hundred miles back.

“This is a lousy place to hunt for ghosts, Sam. They didn’t even have a morgue. No suspicious deaths or disappearances, no fires or specific tragedies. I mean, it sounds like a sucky place to end up -- but not the kind of sucky that makes ghosts, you know? And if there were real ghosts hanging out, you would think the legend would have garnered a little more respect after twenty years of idiot teenagers poking around the place.”

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Dean.”

“You could start with what the hell any of this has to do with palm trees.”

“I saw the sign, I saw palm trees, I heard dripping water and felt like my feet were falling out from under me, though that last part may have been from having the visions rather than in the vision. There was an antique-looking metal table and a pitcher of tea. I knew what it would taste like. Mmmm… I saw a couple holding hands, and I think Ruby’s knife. That’s it.”

“Ruby’s knife? You didn’t mention that before.”

“Sometimes it takes awhile before I get a grip on what I see; you know that. Besides, it was just a flash. I think it was the knife; could have been a different blade maybe.”

Dean frowned and looked up. “Just a flash? Like in a fight?”

Sam shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“That’s freaking great, Sam.”

“Hey! Next time, you can have the mind-crushing visions, and I’ll sit on my ass and come up with unhelpful commentary and criticisms.”

Dean looked like he was going to snap back, but visibly changed his mind and just grumbled something, turning his attention back to the papers he was reading.

~~~~~~~

They waited until close to midnight, when the area would be quiet and hopefully deserted. Sunland Hospital was set off from nearby office complexes by a tangle of trees, but during the day, it was still a busy intersection and police patrols were fairly frequent. Not to mention Sam’s insistence that, in his vision, it was dark.

There were patrols at night too, but seldom, and they did barely more than enter the parking lot long enough to turn around and leave. The building itself was a tall, narrow five-story structure that had been abandoned to the elements around it. About half the windows were broken out, and what had once been a building-tall glass elevator shaft glittered ominously from beneath a heavy weight of climbing vegetation in the lights of occasionally passing cars. A tall construction fence surrounded the entire building, hung with ‘danger’ and ‘no trespassing’ signs.

“Flashlight, rock salt, shotgun, knife, lock-picks, wire-cutters… What am I forgetting, Sam?”

“Loose salt,” Sam replied, from where he was rummaging in the trunk. Going into a strange building that might be haunted, or might have some other kind of infestation, or might not be home to anything more dangerous than bats and field mice, always made the decision of what to bring exciting.

They had decided to leave the Impala in the parking lot of a business center a short walk through the trees over from Sunland Hospital. At least there was a legitimate reason for there to be cars in that lot, even overnight, if someone had had engine trouble or something. But no cop would be able to justify not investigating a car showing up at an abandoned hospital, especially not one that was apparently an attraction for teenagers.

“I don’t think I’m going to be rockin’ the loose salt tonight; you feel free to go ahead, though.”

“Thanks.” Sam’s sarcasm didn’t evoke any comment from Dean, who was looking in the direction of the hospital intently. “Something wrong?”

Dean hesitated, then shook his head. “No, just thought I felt something for a minute. It’s gone now.”

“Felt what?”

“I don’t know, something. It’s gone -- you ready?”

Sam nodded and eased the trunk closed. It was less than ten minutes through the woods. Dean led the way, not bothering with the light at all, and Sam was careful to keep the beam trained down to avoid the attention of anyone passing by.

“You want to climb it or cut it?” Sam asked in a low voice, as they reached the back side of the building and stopped at the fence.

Dean pointed down to where the wire of the fence had been extensively clipped, then pinned back down so it looked intact by someone shoving a stick through the bottom links and into the ground.

“These aren’t new cuts,” Sam commented, crouching down to examine the damage.

“No, but I think it’s a popular entry.” Dean nodded back towards the woods and Sam turned his flashlight that way. The light glinted off of metal and he walked over to take a look.

A cheap motorbike was laid down on its side in the tall grass. It had obviously not been there long.

“Fantastic. So-- what? You, me, my vision, a possibly haunted hospital, and one clueless teenager?”

Dean snorted. “Get real, Sam. You don’t come to a place like this alone, and you don’t ride tandem on a bike like that with your buddy. You bring your girl along and hope to scare your way into her pants.”

“This just gets better and better.” Sam bent, pulled the stick out of the ground and crawled through the curled back fencing. “Hopefully, they will be busy in a closet somewhere and stay out of our way.”

Dean followed Sam through and stood up, then froze.

“What?” Sam hissed, feeling exposed in the somewhat clear area between the fencing and the vine-covered back of the building.

“I think you can drop the ‘possibly’ part.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The ‘possibly haunted hospital’. No need to use the ‘possibly’ part.” Dean turned to face Sam, his eyes completely black in the shine of Sam’s flashlight. “This place is alive with spirits.”

“Shit.”

~~~~~~~
 

 
Dean stood just outside the main hospital entrance, eyes closed, feeling out the building. There were no back doors that looked like easy access, and the main door had been obviously open on their pass-by earlier in the day. The vegetation was heavy enough on that side of the building that they could easily hide from a passing patrol, and the entry was big enough to give them lots of room to maneuver if it came to a fight just over the threshold. Sam was a big believer in maneuvering room.

 

“What are you picking up?”

“Honestly, Sam,” Dean replied without opening his eyes, “I’m surprised you aren’t vibrating like a tuning fork. You seriously don’t feel anything?”

“Maybe a little… cold?”

Dean snorted and relaxed, giving Sam a disgusted look.

“Any humans?”

“The spirit activity in this place is unreal. I might even have trouble finding you through the static. But it doesn’t feel especially hostile, and there is definitely something going on up around the third floor. Can’t tell you more than that. What I don’t get is why. There wasn’t anything that happened here that should have sparked something like this.”

Sam looked up at the height of the abandoned hospital, with its broken windows, stained facade and the spidering greenery that was slowly reclaiming it for the elements. “This place was full of neglected children, Dean. Probably thousands of them over its operating years. Kids that were abandoned, unloved, unwanted, and who suffered from all sorts of casual abuse and misery. Back in those days, if you went to a place like this, your parents were pretty much expected to forget about you. Visiting was discouraged, and once admitted, most of these children never saw a relative again. I’m sure there were worse places to be, but this was bad enough. I’m not surprised all that negative energy created a spiritual hot-spot over the years; I’m just surprised to hear you say it’s not hostile.”

“That’s not what I said, Sam. I said not especially hostile, but just because the overall flavor is benign doesn’t mean there aren’t a few rogue elements that would be completely happy to toss us out a window. Don’t let your guard down.”

They moved in cautiously, but nothing seemed out of place. The building was in a great state of disrepair, but the floor and ceiling, and least for the ground level, seemed intact. Water was in standing pools in some places and mangled equipment could be seen against walls or in rooms. The place was liberally decorated with graffiti, and empty beer or soda cans were strewn about with the general debris.

“Charming. Why are we here again?” Dean muttered, annoyed.

“You know as much as I do.”

“So just do a top to bottom walk-through and see if anything jumps out at us?”

“You have a better idea? Because if this doesn’t pan out, I have no clue what we do next,” Sam hissed, keeping a wary eye out for movement in the shadows.

Dean walked along considerably less concerned, trusting his instincts to warn him of anything getting too close. “I liked my staking out a funeral home idea.”

Sam snorted but refrained from comment.

Dean pushed on half of a double door and it swung open easily. “Stairs.”

“I guess we go up, then.”

They both froze at the sound drifting down the open stairwell. A repetitive squealing, like from a gurney wheel, was receding down what sounded like a second floor corridor.

“Teenagers?” Sam asked hopefully.

“Let’s find out.”
 

 

~~~~~~~

The next floor was as uninteresting as the first. The squealing died away as they climbed the stairs and didn’t reoccur. Faint breezes occasionally brushed by them, but those were easily explained by the broken windows. The walkway on the second level was in a more questionable state than the ground floor had been -- clearly the decades of water and weather exposure had weakened it in places, and Dean flatly refused to let Sam go first.

Reaching the glassed-in elevator shaft, Sam kept warily back from the edge while Dean craned his neck over to get a good look around. The doors had been pried open and stood crooked in their tracks, the space beyond them was empty.

“What do you suppose happened to the elevator?”

“Aliens,” Sam snapped, from where he stood nervously inside the doorway to a stairwell; neither one of them wanted to cross back down the second floor hallway to reach the main stairs if they didn’t have to. “Is there anything interesting in there, or can we go?”

“A super nasty pool of water and who knows what else at the bottom, more cans. Some chairs, I think. Nothing good.”

Sam opened his mouth to demand they keep moving when the sudden crash of slamming doors from above ricocheted through the building.

“Shit!” Dean growled, holding onto the elevator shaft frame with a white-knuckled grip. Sam shone the flashlight on him and could see all of his brother’s fingers sunk into the actual metal. “I almost jumped in the stupid shaft. What the fuck was that?”

“One way to find out.”

“It sure as hell better not have been the damn kids, or it won’t be the ghosts they need to be afraid of.” Dean frowned and looked up as a banging started up above and what sounded like muted yelling drifted down the stairwell to their ears. “Got the rock salt ready, Sam?”

“I thought you said this place didn’t feel hostile?”

“That was then, this is now,” Dean replied grimly, pulling Ruby’s knife out. “It still doesn’t really feel like there is much interest in us, but something up there has definitely got the locals agitated.”

“You think we’re going to find something to use that knife on?”

“I think I’d rather be prepared than sorry.”

They climbed the stairs cautiously, finally stepping out onto the third floor to be faced with a heavy double security door. The doors were buckling under frantic pounding, but not giving way. Through the mesh-inset safety glass in the windows, they could see the panicked faces of two teenagers fighting to get out.

“Guess that answers that question,” Dean muttered, shoving the knife back into its sheath and reaching for the door. He twisted the handle, expecting to have to break through some kind of lock or resistance… and was surprised when it twisted normally in his grip. Dean pulled it open and the teenagers tumbled through the open doorway.

“Hey, hey!” Sam grabbed the girl by the shoulders to steady her. “What happened?”

She looked up at Sam, mascara smeared down her cheeks from crying, stumbling over her words. “We weren’t doing anything; we just wanted to look around. Then the doors started slamming and we tried to get out and the big ones closed and they wouldn’t open.”

Dean was just watching with his arms crossed, clearly unwilling to get involved. The guy who had come tumbling out of the hallway with the girl brushed himself off and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He was still shaking too, but making an obvious effort to pull himself together for his girlfriend.

The girl twisted violently and shoved him back, her fear flashing over to anger. “Stay away from me, Seth! You only brought me to this place so you could comfort me when I freaked out. You happy now?! Am I freaked out enough now?!”

Sam grabbed the girl’s arm to stop her from hitting her boyfriend when she advanced towards the guy, clearly intending to swing at him. The light jacket she was wearing fell open when he yanked her back. She was wearing a Key West tourist shirt with two palm trees crossed on the front. Sam sucked in his breath like he’d been punched.

“Don’t be like that, Vicky,” Seth protested. “I didn’t know the place was really haunted; you know I wouldn’t have taken you anywhere dangerous.”

“We’re surrounded by dead people, Seth!” She missed the eyebrow Dean raised or the warning look Sam shot him. “This has been some great anniversary date. When we get out of here, I never want to see you again!” She pulled out of Sam’s grip and wrapped her arms around herself.

“Okay, kids!” Dean announced, clapping his hands and stepping forward. “This has been really entertaining, but my brother and I? We actually have some other things planned for this evening. So if you two would like to just mosey on back to the front door and take your little lover’s spat with you, I’m sure the fine spirits of this establishment would be appreciative. I know I would be.”

“Oh, we aren’t lovers,” the girl spat. “I told the bastard I was saving myself for marriage, and he still drags me out to a creep show like this, hoping -- what, Seth? That I’ll let you in my pants for a ride home?!”

“Vicky, that’s not fair! Rhonda and Mark were here last week and they said it was awesome. I didn’t know!”

Vicky looked ready to try another swing at Seth, but Sam saw a more serious danger. There was no light but the flashlight Sam kept aimed at the floor on the landing, but Sam felt certain that if he could see Dean’s face, his eyes would be inhuman black. Dean was utterly still, and Sam was pretty sure he knew what the problem was.

“Really, guys, this has been great -- but you should be going. Angry spirits, remember?” Sam suggested urgently.

“What’s the hurry, Sam?” Dean drawled. “The lower floors are dangerous and they don’t look like they have a light.”

“It broke when we were, uh, pounding on the door,” Seth offered sheepishly, sounding grateful to talk to someone other than Vicky.

“See, Sam? They need our help to get out.”

“No, Dean, I don’t think they do. Give them your flashlight; you aren’t using it, anyway.”

“Not that we don’t appreciate the rescue, guys, but who are you and what are you doing here?” Vicky was calmer when not railing at Seth, but with the edge of her anger spent, the reality of their situation was creeping back up on her and she was looking around at the dark corners nervously. She was completely oblivious to the real danger, though -- Dean was standing in arm’s reach behind her.

“Sam and I are ghost hunters.” Dean held the spare flashlight out to Seth. “We’re just passing through town and wanted to take a look at the local tourist spots. You’re just lucky we were here tonight.”

“Yeah, thanks. Can we get out of here now?” Seth was also looking around warily.

“Sure thing.”

“They can get themselves out, Dean,” Sam repeated, having no intention of allowing Dean to stay anywhere near Vicky.

“No, wait! My purse.” Sam gave the girl an incredulous look that she missed in the dark. “I dropped it when the doors were slamming; it has my paycheck in it!”

Sam was all set to suggest her life was worth more than a paycheck when Seth piped up, emboldened by the presence of the Winchesters and the flashlight. He seized a chance to get back into some of his girlfriend’s good graces by doing something macho and stupid. “I’ll get it, Vicky.”

He stepped back past the fire doors and headed down the hallway before anyone had a chance to grab him.

“Seth! Crap.” Sam still had a hand on Vicky, so Dean rolled his eyes --green again in the light of Sam’s flashlight-- and started after the teenager. Before he could cross the threshold into the third floor proper, the fire doors slammed shut again.

“Seth!” Vicky yelled, panicked, at the same time a, “What the fuck?!” could be heard from past the doors.

Dean tried the handle again, and they turned freely, but this time turning them didn’t help the doors open. He tried pulling at human strength, then threw his demonic muscle into it, but even with the power that should have ripped the doors off their hinges, they held firm. Dean slammed an elbow against the glass as a last-ditch effort, but it had no more effect than his attempts on the actual doors had. He turned to Sam with a ‘what now?’ expression.

Seth was on the other side now, watching them through the glass. He was clearly trying to keep it together but his face was pinched white with fear.

“Ah… maybe he can walk to the other end and take the main stairs down?” Sam suggested.

Dean was skeptical. “You think the ghosts only care about the one entrance?”

“There aren’t any doors on the other side,” Vicky said, sounding like she was about to cry. “But the floor is all messed up down there, really bad. Rhonda said this was the coolest floor, so we tried to come up that way first, but it looked too dangerous so we went up to the fourth and then back down on this side to reach it.”

“Was the fourth floor okay?” Sam asked.

Vicky nodded. “It’s some rooms at each end, then a big, open space in the middle.”

Fine,” Dean snapped. “Sam, take Vicky back downstairs. I’ll go get Seth and then we can do… whatever.”

Sam really didn’t like the way Dean kept eyeing Vicky-the-self-proclaimed-virgin, but approved of a plan that moved one of the civilians out of danger and kept the girl away from Dean. “Okay.”

“No!” Vicky protested. “I’m not leaving without Seth!”

Dean huffed in exasperation. “Look, lady. Your boyfriend is trapped in an abandoned mental hospital full of ghosts, who for some reason want to keep him around. You have a lot of experience with that? Because, otherwise, I don’t see where you will be a whole hell of a lot of help getting him out. What you can do is get the hell out yourself, so we have one less target to worry about. Got it?”

“I’m not leaving him!”

“Five minutes ago, you never wanted to see him again!”

Vicky ignored him and ran to press her hand up against Seth’s through the glass.

Dean threw his hands up in frustration and stomped over to Sam.

“Don’t even suggest it,” Sam hissed at Dean in a low voice.

“I saw her shirt too, Sam. She’s in this hospital, and practically the first thing she did was throw herself at me and announce she was a virgin! That’s like screaming ‘it’s me!’ for the spell. It was your vision.”

“I don’t care if my vision included her name, address, social security number and she came gift-wrapped on a pyre -- I have a rule about killing people! Remember?”

“And I have a rule about this spell,” Dean growled back meaningfully.

Sam raked the hand not holding the flashlight through his hair in frustration. “Look, let’s just get them out of here and then think about it. A day or so isn’t going to change anything -- maybe we can, I don’t know, cut her hair and use ashes from burning that or something. And what the hell are these ghosts doing? Is that door and some sound effects the only things they can manage?”

Dean was still gaping at Sam’s suggestion they use burned hair for virgin ashes, but pulled himself back together for Sam’s second question. “That is a serious supernatural lock on that door, Sam. I get the impression the locals can do pretty much whatever the hell they want, but they still don’t feel hostile. Maybe… mischievous?”

Sam sighed. “Better than homicidal.”

He walked over to Vicky and grabbed her shoulder. The girl turned her head, startled.

“Look, Vicky, that door clearly isn’t going to open, and it sounds like trying to cross the floor on the other side is a stupid thing for someone with no experience to try, so if you are sure you won’t do the smart thing and let us get you out of here first, then probably the best bet to get Seth out of here is for all of us to head back across the fourth floor and then let Dean go get Seth and lead him back. Then everyone can go home. Sound okay?”

Vicky nodded. Seth, having been able to hear Sam from being pressed up against the door near the seam, also nodded in the glass.

“Great, then.” Sam steered Vicky back towards the stairwell, ignoring Dean’s annoyed presence following at their back.

~~~~~~~

“You two are totally retarded,” Dean growled again, for the third time in as many minutes.

“We didn’t know,” Vicky mumbled again in answer, clinging to Sam’s free arm despite being told repeatedly not to do so, in case he needed to shoot at something. She had finally noticed the shotgun slung over his shoulder, but was terrified and scared enough for her boyfriend that she had accepted a hasty explanation of rock salt versus ghost and resumed her clinging.

Dean’s problem was that despite Vicky’s assurances everything was fine, the walkway of the fourth floor was by far the worst one yet. Something neither Winchester had noticed in time to stop Vicky from getting ahead of them in her eagerness to reach the other side.

They would have turned back as soon as they caught up with her and just gone back to the ground floor, then up the main stairway to reach Seth on the third floor, but Dean had no sooner started berating Vicky for idiocy when a plaintive voice had called down the hall, “Is that you, guys?”

Dean’s swearing had reached new heights at that. Apparently, Seth had been too creeped out waiting where it was safe, picked his own way across the third floor walkway, and decided to meet them upstairs. Unfortunately, luck had not been with him on his second trip, and he had slipped on water and damaged his ankle, after making it almost to the center of the floor. Not to mention breaking the second flashlight. Dean, Sam and Vicky had been nearly to the middle as well, once they had caught Vicky, and after that, it made no sense to do anything but press forward and hope they didn’t miss any weak spots -- or rather that they missed all of the weak spots. Now, Dean was being forced to test almost every foot of ground ahead of them.

“I’m going to kill you both,” Dean snarled, crouching down to check another patch of floor.

Vicky made a sound like she was going to start crying again. Dean had absolutely forbidden her to talk to Seth until they were done with the hallway, because he needed to listen to what he was doing instead of, “hormonal, brain-dead kids.”

Sam patted her back, keeping the flashlight shining where Dean was working, even though the demon didn’t need it. It would be a little suspicious for him to be picking his way across the floor without one. “He doesn’t mean it.”

Vicky nodded miserably. When they finally reached Seth, he was white-faced for an entirely different reason and looked unbelievably grateful.

“Can we talk now?” he whispered.

“Sure,” Sam told him, “just keep it quiet.” He knelt down beside the teenager to check his ankle while Vicky wrapped herself around his neck.

“Well?” Dean demanded, a couple of minutes later.

“It’s broken,” Sam pronounced.

“Fucking excellent.”

“He can hop on one foot if I brace him.”

Dean looked disgusted. “Hopping. On a weak floor that could give way under our feet at any second.”

“Well, short of carrying him, Dean, I don’t see we have a choice. And it’s a whole lot harder to dump someone you’re carrying if an emergency crops up, than to just let go if you only have an arm around them -- you know?”

“Whatever. Let’s go.”

Dean, with Vicky at his heels and Sam following with Seth a few feet behind, had just reached the corridor again when the wall beside them exploded outwards, sending Dean and Vicky flying across the room. Vicky landed on Dean, who immediately shoved her unconscious weight aside and leaped back to his feet. Sam let go of Seth, shoving the flashlight into the teenager’s hands and grabbed the rock-salt gun off his back, training it on the man who emerged from the gaping hole in the wall.

“Well, look who we have here,” the man said with an oily smile. “Sam and Dean, or is that Sam and the demon-formerly-known-as-Dean. Hmmmm?”

“Who are you?” Sam demanded.

“Oh, my name doesn’t matter,” the man assured him. “I’ve just come on a tiny little errand, you see.” He took a few steps closer and Sam edged nervously back, aware suddenly of the sounds of more footsteps in the hallways.

“No need to be shy, Sam; we don’t want to hurt you. In fact, where we want to take you, you will only receive the best of care. Your continued health is my mistress’ greatest concern now.” It took another step and Sam brandished the gun.

“Lilith can bite me; I’m not going anywhere.”

“You heard him, Peter Pan,” Dean called from somewhere in the darkness behind Sam. “Now why don’t you and the rest of the Lost Boys here pack up and go find something else to do tonight. Before we have to get ugly about this.”

“You should really stay out of this, Dean. I’m afraid your invitation must have been lost in the mail.” The man reached out snake-quick and snatched Seth away from the wall, pulling the injured teenager in front of himself like a shield and holding him there by the throat while Seth made desperate gasping noises and struggled to stay balanced on his good foot.

“Let him go!”

“You’re worried about the life of one boy, Sam -- when you have within you the power to save millions? Billions, even?”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s talking crap, Sam. Totally grade-A bullshit,” Dean yelled from the other side of the room, where he was squaring off with three other demons, trying desperately to remember where the weak spots were so he didn’t put a leg through the floor and handicap himself.

“Am I? Lucifer is going to rise, Sam. One way or another, our master will be free. Even if you take yourself out of the running, in a few more years, there will be another, equally as suitable. But maybe this new Vessel won’t care so much. You care; you could whisper to him maybe, influence him to spare the lives of the people you don’t want to see hurt. He will be very grateful to you for everything you will have done to free him, after all.”

There was a long heartbeat of silence in the near blackness of the room, then Sam snorted. “Get real.”

Something flew by Sam’s ear and a split-second later, there was a howl of agony as Ruby’s knife sank hilt-deep in the demon’s eye with a distinctive flash and the demon collapsed to the floor.

The other demons rushed in, but in the darkness, Sam was blind to their locations. The flashlight was still spinning slowly in the corner behind the body where it had flown when Seth had been grabbed, but Sam was afraid to go for it because of the instability of the floor. He settled for ducking down and trying to find Seth, whose ragged breathing he could still hear.

Cries and the sounds of a fight filled the air; strong hands grabbed Sam by the arm. He pulled away instinctively and tripped over Seth, falling to the floor and pulling the demon down on top of himself, but the ground seemed to be only the thinnest of barriers and he barely registered hitting it before he was falling through. The last thing Sam heard before he was buried under masonry and debris was Dean screaming his name.



Chapter Thirty:

For everything I learn there are two I don’t understand
That’s why I’m still on the search through the weather-strewn church
I’m doing the best that I can
And it’s alright
~It’s Alright, Indigo Girls

The hospital, a real one this time, sucked even more than Dean had anticipated.

His plan had been to finish off the demons in reach, find Sam --who he could feel in the fabric of his being was still alive-- check Sam’s wounds, and decide if he needed to do some bloodletting on the spot, or if Sam could wait until they cleared the area.

Getting thrown from the second floor as the fight raged through the building, then ganged up on so that his little two-minute diversion became a thirty-minute adventure had not been okay with Dean. When he finally got the upper hand, he made sure the bastards that had delayed him understood exactly how unhappy he was.

Running back to where he had left his brother and finding police cars and an ambulance loading Sam up had made Dean kinda wish he had left one or two of them alive for a little more venting. Apparently, Vicky had gathered her wits enough when she regained consciousness to call 911.

Police and paramedics had shown up and found Sam lying unconscious in the rubble doing his best to bleed to death. The fight had taken Dean some distance from the ruin by that point, and on return, there was nothing he could do but watch from the shadows, then go to meet the ambulance at the hospital.

He couldn’t remember ever being more grateful to Bobby Singer than he was when he was able to pull out an actual insurance card at the hospital for Sam. Dean considered himself Sam’s own personal insurance, but last time they were at the junkyard and Dean had been mulling over the decision aloud, Bobby had given him a look that even now was able to make him feel like a slow child, and told him to buy a damn policy and shut up. It’s not like it was their money, anyway. Having it had certainly eased things at the hospital once he was able to find out where they had taken Sam.

After convincing them that he was Sam’s brother, and he had no idea what had happened, and telling some rambling, vague yarn about a road trip and hearing a girl scream from the hospital when they had slowed down to take a look at a local legend from the street, not having a cell phone so letting Sam go check it out while he went to find a phone, then coming back and seeing the police cars, and how shocked and appalled he was, and was Sam okay… Well, being able to hand over some legitimate insurance seemed to seal the deal as far as the cops and the front desk people were concerned, and he had been left to brood in the waiting room on his own.

Down the hall, he could hear hysterical crying.

Sam was still alive, but Seth wasn’t. It sounded like they were going to have to sedate Vicky. Dean knew he should feel bad about that, but mostly he felt bitter that it hadn’t been Vicky to go down when the floor gave way. She was the one Sam’s visions had marked. He supposed they could try with Seth’s corpse, but that didn’t feel right to Dean. And despite how badly he wanted to just kill her and do what his instincts were insisting was the right thing, he had the ghosts of older instincts that helped him stay his hand, and he had the memory of the look in Sam’s eyes when he had stood in a Texas kitchen, looking at the corpse of a woman who’s death he had felt responsible for.

Vicky’s crying was getting on Dean’s nerves, nerves already shredded by not being allowed to check on Sam.

Finally, they called Dean to the desk and explained what was wrong with his brother, summed up as about a hundred and thirty stitches in his torso, a slight concussion and blood-loss. No organ damage, a minor head wound, and he was awake and being difficult -- so Dean was more than welcome to head on back and try and make him stay in bed. Right.

It took about twenty minutes from the time they let Dean see his brother until the time he was carefully easing Sam into the back of the Impala so he could lie down while Dean looked for a suitable place to hole up. The only stop was an all-night pharmacy by the hospital that was nice enough to fill the prescription for pain-killers the doctor had insisted Dean take for Sam. There were a variety of other annoying instructions; the medical staff had not been really pleased with the Winchesters’ decision to vacate the premises, but Dean planned on tanking Sam up with his own magic healing elixir just as soon as he found a place he felt safe, so he wasn’t terribly worried about pain management.

At least he wasn’t until Sam started bitching at him even through the haze of the injections he had already received at the hospital. Dean let him rant on weird, unconnected topics until he was back onto Dean’s, “stupid, irresponsible decision-making,” for the third time before he pulled onto the shoulder of the road, grabbed a bottle of water and the prescription, and crawled into the backseat enough to force two of them down Sam’s throat, despite Sam’s general uncooperativeness. It was a much more pleasant drive after that, even if he did have to practically carry Sam into the motel room.

Dean stripped Sam down to check the stitches and reassure himself there weren’t any other wounds. The stitches looked neat, if gruesome, in the Frankenstein track they carved across Sam’s bruise-mottled skin from beneath the waistband of his boxers to brush his right clavicle.

With the pain clearly a far away thought for Sam’s heavily drugged brain, and an assurance from the doctors that he wasn’t in any danger provided his wound was cared for, Dean was content to watch Sam lie in a dreamy haze across the bed while he cleaned and checked all the weapons. He personally didn’t rely much on them, but Sam did, and it was a routine enough way to spend a few hours while he tried to find a way around what he felt he needed to do and what Sam would allow him to do -- as much as allow was applicable. A little blood, a little sex, a little sleep, and Sam would be more-or-less fine.

But there was no rush, so Dean took what time he needed to make some decisions. Sam couldn’t be allowed to compromise the spell because he got a little squeamish over the details, but maybe giving him a little time to reach that realization himself while they poked around another abandoned Sunland hospital or two wouldn’t be a terrible thing. But time was quickly becoming something they didn’t have more of, and Dean was torn between the expediency of his agenda and the cooperativeness of his brother -- who was himself a vital component of Dean’s plan.

As soon as he fed Sam, he was going to have to pick all those little stitches out before the skin healed, and he had ideas for how best to distract his brother while he did that. Ideas that were likely to lead to not-another-damn-thing getting done that evening, so best to finish the job he started while he could.

~~~~~~~

“My head hurts.”

“That’s the fifth time in the last hour, Sam. There isn’t anything wrong with your head anymore. Give it up already.”

Sam rolled over on the bed and reached for the remote control on the nightstand. Dean was sitting on the other bed, doing something on the laptop. Sam was out-of-sorts after the previous evening, most of which was a painful blur after the sensation of falling through the floor; his brother had run out of sympathy before Sam even woke up properly.

“What are you looking for anyways?”

“Getting the addresses for the other Sunland Hospitals. You were sure about the sign; it was the rest that was …unspecific. Maybe it is another hospital, one further south.”

“You don’t really believe that,” Sam said.

Dean looked up, annoyed. “No, but I’m feeling a little out of options at the moment, Sam.”

“I’m almost surprised you haven’t snuck out and hunted her down on your own yet.”

“I’m not going to tell you that I didn’t think about it, but I’ll give it another stop or two. For you.”

Sam clicked the remote on and let his eyes drift closed again as the television droned on a local news station. He didn’t feel like quiet at the moment; he wasn’t really tired either, it was just easier than getting out of bed -- there wasn’t anywhere to go at the moment anyway.

Sam was just drifting off to sleep when the announcer’s words caught his attention and he sat up, completely alert, just as he heard Dean close the laptop and shift on his bed.

“Did he just say what I think he said?” Sam demanded, as the news turned to commercial.

“That depends on if what you think he said was that a local teenager killed herself this morning after her boyfriend died in a tragic accident last night while exploring an abandoned hospital.”

Dean was quiet after a moment. Sam glanced over and caught his eyes. “You don’t have anything else to say about it?”

Dean shrugged. “Good things come to those who wait?”

Sam gave him a withering look and reached for the phonebook on the nightstand. “Throw me my phone.”

~~~~~~~

That night, they stood together in a deserted junkyard watching a body burn. The heaps of junked cars hid the flames from casual passersby, and in a part of the country where people still burned their garbage on occasion, no one was likely to report the smoke.

“I don’t understand,” Sam said finally, as the flames were winding down. It was close to dawn and they needed to gather up the ashes and leave before anyone arrived to catch them.

“Understand what, Sam?”

“Why she did it. I mean, what the hell did this accomplish?”

“She’s not in pain anymore.”

“He died in a stupid… accident,” Sam growled. “This was completely pointless.”

“Maybe she felt guilty.”

“For what?” Sam demanded. “She didn’t drag him to that building.”

“She forgot her purse.” Dean squinted at the sky, judging light and time. “If he hadn’t gone back for it, he would have been with us and outside, not on the fourth floor in a brawl.”

“That’s just… dumb. You weren’t going to let Vicky out of your sight and we were going to get jumped by demons anyway. His odds of survival started dropping as soon as you and I walked in. Which reminds me -- the demons? I thought you could detect them.”

“I told you that place was alive with ghosts. When the supernatural static hits, that kind of detection is one of the first things to go.”

Sam kept his arms tightly folded and said nothing.

Dean elbowed him. “This wasn’t your fault, Sam. The girl did what she wanted to do, and it wasn’t on us to look out for her. People die all the time, and most of them don’t have loved ones hanging themselves from banisters the next day. She was obviously unstable. Nothing we did caused it.”

“That doesn’t make it better, Dean. It’s just such a waste.”

“We’ve got bigger problems to worry over than this.”

Sam nodded reluctantly. “Lilith isn’t waiting around anymore.”

“No, we’re down to one Seal, and she’s it. You’re on deck for two teams, and we still have one ingredient left to find before we’re ready to make our play.”

“Back to the motel, then?”

Dean shook his head negatively. “Let’s keep moving. You can read the spell in the car and we can stop at a diner to start research later; I want to clear out of this place ASAP. I wouldn’t have stopped so soon for this even, except I didn’t want to risk getting caught with a body in the car. Nothing gets the police excited faster than if you have to start killing them to cover your tracks.”

“That’s… really considerate of you, Dean.”

“I’m a fucking saint, Sam. You have no idea how much. Now grab that shovel and let’s get this over with."




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Masterpost

Comments

[keerawa.livejournal.com]

Dean standing perfectly still in that dark hospital corridor, Sam knowing without looking that his brother's eyes had gone black as he contemplated killing the girl who had just announced she was a virgin. *shivers*

[glasslogic.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed writing the hospital part, not least of which because I spent some time in Tallahassee once and that hospital was every inch as creepy as I tried to describe it, which made it great to use for this section! It's gone now, but lives on in pictoral memory. I think they built an apartment complex on the site - which you would never catch me living in.

[angeblond.livejournal.com]

For a strong demonic being, Dean has far much restrain than anyone could tell. Even more nicer than alive ^^