Episode Twelve: Cult

By Kittsbud & BurstynOut

Part Two

The side wall of the mill seemed to collapse in on itself as debris and plaster burst into the air like the mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion. Cult members scattered in confusion and panic, some believing the intrusion was actually a police raid.

John put a hand protectively across his face and was the first to realize what had happened. Amidst the bricks and rubble was a familiar black shape, bent and contorted from the impact, but still growling like a vehicular tiger.

“Sonofabitch!” Finally, Dean recognized the Chevy too, along with the very scared priest at its wheel. “Hell, I just fixed that freakin’ hood from last time!” The hunter’s face reddened, but he scurried to the rear door and tugged it open before the bad guys realized what was happening. With the help of his dad, he carefully bundled Sarah onto the back seat and then dived in the front, amazed the dented door actually still opened. “Moses, you better hope for a miracle after what you did to my car, dude.”

Kyle’s pupils widened as he actually considered what Dean Winchester might do to him once they escaped. “I…I didn’t know how else to get you out.” He stammered out the meek response and then yanked the column shift into reverse, gunning the gas until the Impala emerged from the mill like a dust-covered projectile.

* * * *

Hospital ER
Trauma Room One

"Any word on the girl we brought in, yet?" Dean asked. He hissed into his chest, his head tipped forward while the intern put in the last of the sutures he'd earned on one of his many unplanned flights across the steel mill.

"Not yet," the intern stated flatly, patting him on the shoulder. "'Kay, got the last one. You can sit back here…"

Not waiting for the rest of his instructions, Dean hopped down off the exam table, certain they'd already wasted too much time tending to his trivial injuries while Sam was somewhere unprotected and alone. After landing solidly on both feet, he remembered exactly why it was that his father had insisted that he get himself checked out while they waited for word on Sarah. His knees buckled, and he barely managed to catch hold of the paper-covered table in time to save himself from faceplanting on the linoleum.

"Mr. Tyler…" the med student reprimanded, quickly wrapping her arm around his waist to balance him and almost dropping him anyway once he grunted from the incidental contact she made with his bruised back. "Mr. Tyler," she repeated. Sighing, she softened her voice. "Steven, you took quite a hit to the head. Now we can't force you to stay for the CAT scan we scheduled you for, but as long as you're within our department, you are going to stay still."

Dean smirked. "Oh baby, if you want me to lie back down, all you gotta do is climb up here with me." He patted the paper suggestively. The petite brunette with the long, thick ponytail draped down her back, blushed a deep shade of red. "C'mon, don't get all shy on me. I'm sure there's a reason they put locks on these doors," Dean teased. He was actually quite surprised that she got so flustered. Pretty girl like that should've been getting hit on all the time. On the other hand, she was probably a book worm, like Sam. Dean would never understand how his baby brother had landed a hot babe like Jess, let alone Sarah.

Sarah.

He remembered with a start that he was only still here until they received word on the injured girl's condition. No time for chit-chat or being injured himself. They were only waiting until they knew she was going to be okay. Dropping a dying girl off at an ER and ditching her would've been more than a little suspicious, but their time was drawing short. Adjusting his position more carefully this time, he eased down off the table and did his best to ignore the spinning of the room.

As the intern – Stacy, her badge indicated - attempted to reprimand him once more, he raised his hand so that the front of it was all she saw. "Sorry, hon. Steven Tyler never offers more than once. Shoulda taken me up on it when you had the chance." He opened the door, strode out defiantly, and abruptly headed into the nearest restroom to throw up as silently as possible before wiping his mouth, spitting, and striding out defiantly once more to where his father and Kyle waited.

John stood hastily as Dean weaved, his wobbly knees defying even his Winchester stubbornness, through the waiting room. Dean eyed him suspiciously but didn't hesitate to take his father's chair, muffling a sigh as he leaned back and closed his eyes.

"So, do we know anything, yet?" Dean huffed, not opening his eyes.

"Looks like Sarah's going to be okay," John said. "Seems like our friend," he turned to Kyle questioningly, "Haris, did you say it was called?" Kyle nodded. "Our friend Haris was just toying with her. The cuts were pretty shallow, mostly for show. She still needed a few units of blood and some heavy antibiotics to ward off infection. They're patching her up."

Dean started to snicker but stopped himself as the tremors pained his head. He scowled instead, wishing his eyelids were thick enough to keep out every last trace of the torturous fluorescent light. "So Haris was just fronting for us," he breathed. "Seems to be a lot of that going around."

Even after months of separation, John easily recognized the accusation in his son's tone. He supposed he did have a lot to account for. "Dean…"

Dean held up his hand, cutting someone off with the gesture for the second time in less than five minutes. "Not now," Dean dismissed. "I don't have time to listen to your righteous explanations of how whatever that crap was back there with the fake bullet and leaving us high and dry AGAIN was for our own good. Sam doesn't have time for it. So blah, blah, friggin' blah. Agree to disagree, for now, and I'll kick your ass later when balancing on one leg doesn't seem like an act out of Cirque du Soleil."

John sighed heavily. The Dean he'd left in New Orleans two years ago would never have talked to him like that. The Dean he'd met in Salvation a year ago had been downright shocked at himself for raising his voice to his father. The Dean he'd seen through his own possessed eyes, raising a gun against him, had questioned the fact that John had ever been proud of him and still saved his life. He didn't deserve this Dean, but he sure wanted to get to know him, to prove to him that he always had his sons' best interests at heart. But Dean was right. Not now.

"Agreed," John said without argument.

Dean was surprised enough by the response to open one eyelid and quirk a questioning brow at his father before closing it once more and putting a hand to his head with a grimace. "Good." After a second the pained expression faded from his face and he opened his eyes and slowly sat up in the chair. "Moses, dude, gimme a paper and pencil."

Kyle reached for the thick book he'd let fall into the empty seat beside him after spending a good portion of the last hour attempting to pass the time by researching anything that might lead them to discover where Sam had been taken. They were working under the pretense that Haris and his cohorts would wait until after dark to fulfill the agreement Sam had made with them. That didn't give them much time, but they let themselves believe that the cultists would at least keep Sam alive until then. They weren't rushing off half-cocked like they had earlier.

Kyle pulled a folded paper out from between the pages and plucked the pen he had hooked onto his collar off brusquely, clicking it once to extend the writing point as he handed both items to Dean.

Dean smoothed the paper over his knee a few times, then huffed and grabbed Kyle's book as well, making himself a writing table. He worked the pen over the paper for several minutes, stopping now and again to put a hand to his forehead, pressing into his eye sockets as though trying to recall something locked deep in his memory. John and Kyle leaned toward the paper inquisitively but hung back to give Dean room to accomplish whatever it was he was attempting to do.

After several long moments, Dean sat back, held the paper up for final inspection and, seeming satisfied, handed it to John. "That's the tattoo those demon gang bangers were sporting on their hands. And I've seen it before."

John looked at him in disbelief. "The same one?" He asked.

What? Is my speech slurred now, too? Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought. The biting remark died behind his lips. Though he would've said exactly that to Sam, if he were there, Dean couldn't let himself talk to his father that way. Not now. The man had just used the last bullet to save him, after all. He'd cut him some slack until after this was over.

"Yeah." He cleared his throat. "Uh, yes, sir," he answered. Sam was his top priority, and Dean and John had been one bad-assed team once. They needed to be again. At least for now.

"Look," Dean said a few seconds later. "There were a whole lot of those dudes back there, and the ones I got a look at all had this tattoo. I'm thinking that it's connected to the Demon, somehow, probably a sigil or something," he said indicating the drawing. "Now, unless they all got the same prize in their box of Cracker Jacks, they probably had the same tattoo artist. I mean, they looked pretty professional, not your typical prison block handiwork."

"And a town this small can't have more than a few tattoo parlors…" John concluded, following Dean's logic with a pleased grin. "I'll check the phone book," he offered, striding over to the block of payphones at the corner of the lobby.

Dean sighed, pleased, and leaned back in the chair again. Noticing that Kyle was feverishly flipping through his book, he rolled his head in the priest's direction, wincing as the bumps in the plaster made contact with his freshly stitched gash. "You find Waldo, yet, Moses?" He asked.

Kyle looked at him, not amused, but not angry either. "Well, Waldo, no," he explained, "But I think I may have the sigil pinpointed."

Dean didn't bother to sit up again. His stomach was starting to protest the rocking motion, and he didn't care to see anymore of that sandwich he'd scarfed down earlier. He held out his hands, palms up and fingers wiggling expectantly, as he indicated for Kyle to hand him the book. "Lemme see."

Kyle obliged him, laying the book in his outstretched hands and pointing to the diagram he'd discovered. Dean let just his eyes move and looked down his nose at the open book, squinting slightly at the glare off the ancient pages.

"Um, it's not an exact match," Kyle explained, placing Dean's drawing next to it. "There are a few extra lines, here, and here," he indicated, pointing out the discrepancies. "But I'm pretty sure it's a Sumerian sigil used to summon the demon, Azazel."

Dean missed the explanation. "Whattya mean it's not an exact match?"

"Well, you probably just remembered it incorrectly," Kyle speculated. "I'm sure this is the correct one, however. It's only off a bit…"

Dean misinterpreted the priest's theory as an accusation. "Let's see how well you draw with a concussion, Moses," he snapped bitterly, closing his eyes against the vibration of his own voice. "I'm telling you that's the tattoo," he argued, pointing to his drawing.

"Look, it doesn't matter," Kyle assuaged. "The two are close enough, and Azazel is another of the names for Haris that I mentioned earlier. It all fits."

"Whatever, dude." Dean huffed. "I'm gonna take your word for it, just because Sam trusts you, but if you steer us wrong on this, and it turns out there's another sigil that matches the one I drew EXACTLY, then I’m gonna kick your ass, dog collar or no."

Kyle gulped slightly. "Understood," he replied meekly. "But I'm sure on this."

"Yeah," Dean said. "So am I."

"Three," John said, striding up, phone book in hand. When Kyle and Dean looked at him with furrowed brows, he explained. "Three tattoo parlors in this town." He paused for a second. "I talked to the doctor, and Sarah's being moved into a room. She's gonna be out of it for the rest of the night, so we should get moving on this ASAP. I can take my truck and get the first two…"

Dean leaned forward to stand, but rested his hands on his knees with his eyes focused on the floor as the room spun around him momentarily. To cover his moment of weakness, he gestured a hand toward Kyle without looking up. "Moses, here, says the tattoo matches the sigil for our boy, Haris. So, the obvious question, besides what the hell do they see in that bastard, is what does a demon need with a bunch of demon wannabes?"

John rubbed his left hand across the back of his neck as he jotted down the address of the third tattoo parlor. "Can't say for sure. They probably do his dirty work, just grunts, I think."

"Dirty work, like steal my necklace?" Dean asked, finally lifting his head to gaze inquisitively at his father.

"They did what?"

"Stole my necklace," Dean repeated. "Remember, I told you I lost it, and you sent us to see that Mann dude? Turned out it wasn't lost but stolen, and the two freaks who arranged the whole thing were a little cleaner cut than our guys from today, but they had the same tattoo."

John's face paled slightly, but quickly regained its color as he pretended to study the address on the page intently. "You're sure?" He asked, almost indifferently.

"Well, sure I'm sure," Dean retorted, face pinching with hurt disbelief. "Dad, these are the guys that have my brother. I wouldn't be throwing this out here if I didn't think it was important."

"I believe you, Dean," John conceded, meeting his son's gaze. "And I think you're right that maybe there's more to these guys than a tattoo and an 'I Love Haris' campaign button. But we'll have to fill in the blanks later, after we get Sam back."

Dean looked away again, unable to meet his father's gaze. "How do you…" A beat. "How do you know we're not too late already?" He lifted his eyes expectantly, having forced the dreaded words past his mouth, and waited for the answer.

John looked down, handed him the paper with the address copied onto it, and closed the phone book loudly. "I just know."

* * * *

Commune, Outskirts of Town
Sunset

Sam's head snapped up reflexively after lolling to the side far enough to painfully stretch the muscles in his neck and rouse him slightly from his drugged haze. The sudden jerk brought him back to consciousness for a moment, eyelids fluttering wearily beneath the weight of the narcotic stupor he dwelled helplessly within.

A small groan escaped from his lips before he could muster the presence of mind to stifle it. A shudder wracked his body as he sat propped against damp concrete, wearing nothing but his t-shirt and blue jeans, hands bound behind him. His jacket, as well as his shoes and socks had been stripped from him, and a cold like a glacial stream clawed its way into his marrow.

He twitched again, losing the battle to keep his heavy, pounding head held upright.

"It's alive!" A voice mocked from some less dark corner of his lidded field of vision. The taunt had a distinctly juvenile timbre to it and was answered by a chorus of childish giggles. Kids?

Sam shook his head, slowly becoming aware of a tingling sensation in his flesh that blossomed to out-and-out unbearable itchiness under the smears of blood on his face. His feet kicked out involuntarily as he tried to find a way to rub at the stickiness, but they met solid resistance in every direction, including up. Wherever he was, it was damned close quarters, no more than five by five from the feel of it. With his hands bound, he could do nothing to relieve his torment but thrash around weakly until his burning face met the rough concrete of the wall.

For several seconds, he just slouched against the cool masonry and let the dampness put out the fire of the itch. That immediate distraction quelled, he coughed out a stagnant lungful of air and forced one eye to open.

"Geez!" He slammed his head back and into the concrete in horrified surprise as his one open eye met another that peered at him inquisitively through a whole in the cell wall.

"Ha, ha, he's a big one all right," a childlike voice cackled as the lone eye crinkled in amusement. "Think I scared him."

An older-sounding, though still juvenile, voice echoed from somewhere farther outside of his concrete barriers. "Don't be messing with the Chosen, Baker. The master says we can look but not touch."

Chosen? Choose? Chose? Chose what? Sam's head spun as he tried to assess his situation and how exactly it was that he'd come to be in it.

"Take the deal…"

"Aaahhh!" Blood, and screams, and pain.

"They'll never be safe, Samuel. I will always find you."

"Stop!"

Chosen. Sam remembered. He was chosen, had always been chosen, yet had never had the luxury of making the choice. Not until now. He slouched back against the wall. Hell, if this was how they treated a guy who agreed to their terms, Sam would hate to see what happened to the ones who got in the way. But then, that was the problem. He had seen.

Mary, Jess, Sarah, Dean…

Sam chose them. So, why did he still feel like a selfish bastard? Time to end this. I can end it. For them…For me. His head sagged against his chest.

"No, Sammy. Don't do it."

He'd stood by Dean when his brother had insisted that their father was possessed. Why? Because he was Dean. He'd heeded his brother's pleas to spare the Demon if it meant saving their father. Because Dean had asked. But this… He'd made the deal. Dean had known it was a mistake, but Sam had taken it anyway. He'd had no other choice at the time, but did that make it the right choice? Could he still change his mind? Did he want to?

Selfish bastard. He wanted the powers gone. There was no point in denying it. He'd wanted them gone since they'd surfaced. How could he go back to normal when he was anything but? What was he gonna do the first time he had a vision at law school? Call Dean or Dad and send them into the line of fire while he prepared depositions for mock trials and wondered if he'd sent them to their deaths? He wanted the visions gone.

And the rest of his "gifts," whatever there was of them, only taunted him with their come-and-go nature. He couldn't count on them, couldn’t count on himself to save anyone in the clutch, because he couldn't tell from one minute to the next what he could or couldn't do. His life had spun so out of control. There was no way to study for the tests he'd encountered since picking up this torch, no bell curve for him to throw out of whack with his tenacious conviction and attention to detail. Nothing but surprises and feartormentdread around every corner now. Because he was special. Some gift.

But it wasn't all bad. And that was the clinker. He'd saved Alice, saved Dean, saved Rosie. Had he really saved Rosie, though? He'd been saved the same way, once, and now look where he was. He couldn't help but wonder if, twenty years down the line, when Haris came for Rosie, would it be Sam's powers the demon wielded against her? Selfish bastard. His head slumped against his chest.

"Chosen?" The bubbly, young voice repeated from outside the box. "Like one of THE Chosen?" Baker asked.

"The first one," the elder grunted distractedly.

"Well, who choosed him?"

"The master. He chose all of them," came the muffled reply.

"Why?"

Sam's head lifted slightly. Yeah, kid, I wanna know why…

* * * *

Main Street- same time

Dean folded his phone and slid it into his coat pocket, eyes closed beneath his sunglasses, despite the fact that the sun was low on the horizon and dim. "First tattoo parlor was a bust," he explained as Kyle looked over questioningly from the driver's seat.

Dean looked out the window and pointed to a colorful storefront in the middle of the block on the right side of the quiet main street. "Here's our stop," he said.

The car rumbled to a stop several parking spaces up from the front of the store, right blinker clicking like a metronome. "Oh, God, shoot me now," Dean heaved, throwing his hands up impatiently. "My brother's being held hostage by a bunch of crazed demon worshippers, and you're parallel parking?" He snapped. "Dude, there's an empty spot right there. You can drive right in."

"There's a fire hydrant there," Kyle protested weakly.

Actually, there were three fire hydrants there. It was the fact that it had taken Dean three separate, clumsy tries to grasp the door handle on the car that had landed Kyle in the driver's seat in the first place. John had insisted. Apparently, his father valued the lives of the people on the sidewalk who were in mortal danger with his concussed son behind the wheel. Dean, on the other hand, could not believe that his dad had even suggested allowing Kyle to drive after the priest had rammed his baby through the wall of the steel mill. In the end, though, Dean had consented with his usual, "Yes, sir," and had slid begrudgingly into the passenger seat.

"Yeah, well we're not gonna be in there long enough to get a ticket. Just park it already." Kyle sighed and headed for the illegal space. "You drive like a grandma, you know that?"

Kyle nodded. "Well, my grandmother did teach me…"

Dean glared at him over the top of his sunglasses. He wasn't even going to justify that with a response. "Never mind, dude. Let's just get this over with," Dean dismissed, stepping slowly out onto the curb. He straightened like a geriatric giraffe with an arthritic neck and took in the full storefront display.

Tidal Wave Tattoos was colorfully decorated with sample tattoo designs that had been painted on, of all things, surf boards. It would have looked perfectly ordinary in Cocoa Beach or Malibu. Last Dean checked, though, this was South Dakota. "Oh, this just keeps getting better," he grunted with one eyebrow cocked.

The inside of the store looked pretty much the same as the outside, only with magazines and chairs. There was no one at the desk.

Dean leaned heavily against the counter and smirked sheepishly as he picked up a gag pen with a girl in a hula skirt submersed in water inside of it. He turned the pen upside down, handed it to Kyle nonchalantly, and snickered at the way the priest's ears turned red after only a quick glimpse of the now-nude hula girl in all her god-given glory. He had to give the guy credit, though. Kyle quickly covered his surprise and set the pen back neatly on the counter where Dean had taken it from.

Ooookay. Dean quirked his eyebrows and was about to ring what looked like a lifeguard tower bell for service when a dark, bushy-haired head popped out of the closed off studio. "Be right with ya, dudes." The man went to duck back behind the door, accidentally caught his ears in the too-small space, and let the door twang back open, revealing some poor girl draped over a cushioned table with a fairly large part of her backside exposed and freshly tattooed.

The parlor owner raised his eyebrows sheepishly. "Oops. Don't worry. She passed out about five minutes in." He glanced back at the unconscious posterior and rubbed his neck as though he'd spent the day working a construction job. "Aw, hell," he said. "She'll wait. What can I do you for?" He asked, and Dean couldn't help but think that he looked an awful lot like Keanu Reeves' character from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. At any rate, Malibu Ted looked about as far out of his element as he could get.

Dean leaned over the counter, sunglasses in hand, and passed the attendant - Scuba Joe, according to the sign on the desk - the sketch he'd drawn earlier. Joe took the paper absently and said, "Dude, what are you on, and where can I get some?"

"Huh?"

"Your eyes are totally, like, glassy, man."

Dean put on his biggest, falsest, most condescending grin. Normally, he'd have fun with a guy like Joe, but he was kinda in a hurry. He lifted the sketch again and slapped it down on the desk. "Love to stand here and trade brownie recipes with ya, MAN," he returned sarcastically. "But I need your undivided attention right here." He waved his finger around in front of the man's eyes, as though Joe were a kitten and Dean's finger the elusive piece of string, and then jammed it down in the center of the paper. "I had a run-in with some dudes that had a tattoo that looked something like that. You ever seen it before?"

Joe blanched beneath his South Dakota/Malibu tan.

* * * *

Commune

Sam leaned closer to the lone hole in the concrete in anticipation of the answer. As he did so, his muddy brain picked up on a sliding background noise, a strange combination of slip, and catch, and crackle, and pop, like breakfast cereal in milk. He cocked his head slightly so that his ear was closer to the hole. It sounded familiar, but he couldn't grasp how. What he really wanted to hear was in the foreground, not the back. Why?

"'Ts complicated," the older child answered.

"I ain't dumb," Baker returned.

There was a brief pause. "Well, it's like when someone else has something, and you don't. You don't know you want it, until they have it, but as soon as you see it, then you want it, too."

"Oh." A beat. "So, if he's Chosen, how come he can't get hisself outta there?"

"Dunno. Prolly cuz he's all doped up."

"Why's he doped up?" More scraping, something wet, and a sound like peeling grapes.

"Cuz it ain't time, yet. It's a big night. Lotta big nights ahead, after this. Lotta work to do before we need him."

"They gonna need all these, too? For the ceremeony?" A thump, like fish tossed into a cooler.

What the hell are they doing?

"Mm-hmm," the elder said distractedly. "Lot more, too."

Lot more what?

"Bring me that other knife."

Knife?

His curiosity piqued, Sam wiggled around, stifling a grunt as his shoulders pressed into the concrete and wrenched his wrists awkwardly beneath him. He pressed one blood-red eye to the hole in the wall, squinting against the glare from the one bare light bulb that swung from the ceiling of the cellar.

As his eyes adjusted to the moving shadows, he realized there were more than just the two kids down there. At least five more were working diligently at a table beneath the swinging bulb.

"This one?" A girl of about eight, with a long dark braid down her back, held up what looked to be a fillet knife, the likes of which he'd handled himself many times by the time he was that age. That, in itself was suspicious. So, Baker's a girl. He wondered what children were doing working in a cellar with large knives and no apparent adult supervision.

"Yeah. Thanks, Baker, now go finish yours," the other familiar voice answered. From the way the boy put his hand on the girl's shoulder and turned her gently around to her own work station, Sam thought he could tell that they were brother and sister. He watched as the boy's eyes followed the girl back to the other side of the table. There was no mistaking a dark sadness and protectiveness in the gaze that reminded Sam of Dean. He wondered how often his own brother had looked at him that way, all the while feigning nonchalance and confidence.

Sam felt a twinge as his Dean-instilled "noble protector of innocents" mechanism sparked to life somewhere within his drugged fog. He wiggled closer to the tiny portal and considered trying to get the boy's attention. Sam knew he'd never get out alone, but maybe if he could convince the kid that he'd take the boy and his sister, too…

As he was about to turn his eye from the hole and place his mouth close enough to shout through it, one of the silent children stood up from the table and moved away, allowing Sam his first glimpse at what the children were working on.

His stomach jolted violently and forced a surprised gasp from his mouth as he clamped his jaw shut around the surge of rising bile.

Apparently, there was some truth to the old saying: There really was more than one way to skin a cat.

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