Season Three

Episode Three: Hole In The World

By irismay42

Part Four

It took Sam several seconds to figure out why his chest hurt.

He’d been so intent on the blazing sinkhole belching several inches of thick, dark blood over the concrete floor below him, he’d actually forgotten to breathe. And that was without taking into consideration the shadowy shape rising ominously up through the flames toward them.

Sucking in a huge lungful of acrid air, he barely smothered a hacking cough as smoke from the fire dancing higher and higher toward the ceiling of the old cannery’s waste processing facility mercilessly burnt his esophagus.

“Sam –?”

Realizing he was still maintaining a death grip on Dean’s shoulder, Sam inched further away from the edge of the walkway, dragging his brother back with him; further into the shadows; further from the Hellgate. Further from Lucifer.

“Dude!” Dean protested at the manhandling, trying to squirm out of Sam’s firm grip with little appreciable success. “Personal space!”

“If he sees us we’re dead meat,” Sam hissed at him through gritted teeth, punctuating his point by once again yanking back on Dean’s shoulder.

Dean looked as if he might protest some more, but obviously thought better of it, meekly allowing Sam to maneuver the both of them until their backs were flat against the warm gray wall. When Sam still didn’t let go of him, Dean raised both eyebrows and inclined his head in the direction of Sam’s clawed fist. “Okay, Mommy, you can let go now,” he insisted sarcastically.

Sam glanced from Dean to the sinkhole and back again, trying to gauge Dean’s relative level of freaked-out-ed-ness from the reflected firelight dancing in his eyes.

Dean didn’t always do so good around fire. Sometimes it took them both by surprise, Dean momentarily freezing up when confronted by an unanticipated blaze. It wasn’t a phobia exactly – Dean had torched plenty of corpses in his time after all – but Sam was convinced this was what had happened when his brother had almost taken a nosedive into the literal bloodbath beneath them, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to risk that again. Especially when images of another man’s horrific torture in the bowels of the Fiery Furnace were still so raw in Dean’s memory.

So Sam kept his fingers entwined in the shoulder of Dean’s jacket and tried not to make it too obvious when he narrowly avoided jerking his brother back as he leaned forward to get a better view of what was going on at the Hellgate.

If Dean had noticed Sam’s convulsive grip on him, he was refusing to acknowledge it. “Dude, I take it back,” he burst out, almost forgetting to blink. “Lucifer? So much more of a drama queen than you!”

It was almost as if the dark silhouette rising slowly from the flickering flames was absorbing all light around him, the fire becoming a muted yellow, further emphasizing the coal-black emptiness of the thing at its center.

Although Sam couldn’t make out any facial features, there seemed little doubt as to the identity of this unwelcome visitor through the Hellgate.

For in that black hole of nothingness hovering unmoving amidst the flames, there were two barely discernable points of red light. Blinking. Windows onto a soul so bloody and malevolent that anyone looking into their crimson depths for too long was liable to be driven mad by the very sight.

Sam looked away. “We so need to get out of here,” he reiterated.

“No argument here,” Dean agreed, eyes widening as he suddenly gestured to the Gateway. Or, more specifically, to what was emerging from the Gateway. “What the hell…?”

Apparently Lucifer wasn’t crashing this party by himself.

Hovering above the roiling pool of blood and fire, the demon spread his arms wide, as if welcoming something into the world in his wake. With a whoosh of superheated air that tore at the pipes directly above the Hellgate, ghostly after-images of people long dead inexplicably began to emerge from the depths of the bloody pool, translucent faces twisted into frozen masks of agony and despair.

“Oh my God,” Sam breathed. “This is it, Dean. This is where the dispossessed souls have been coming from. This is where they’ve been escaping from Hell –”

“And Lucifer was the one to let them out?”

“Go! Go!” Lucifer’s booming voice sliced through the roar of flames and thick black smoke as if in answer to Dean’s question, reverberating around the room like a heavily-struck church bell on a Sunday morning. “This is your opportunity, my children! Your opportunity for redemption! Go now! Take the chance I offer you! Go!”

“Redemption?” Dean echoed. “Why would he be offering his own captives a shot at redemption when they’ve already been condemned to Hell?”

“He’s not,” Sam said, eyes never straying from the spectacle taking place beneath them. “Remember what Malik said? The soul inside him somehow thought he could be saved? It’s a lie! There’s no redemption waiting for them in this world – just madness and chaos until they’re finally sent packing back to Hell!”

“Make me proud, young ones!” Lucifer continued to exhort the frantic creatures continuing to stream out of the sinkhole. “Perform my work and you shall be rewarded! Spread my word throughout this world! I am here! The day is at hand! Make these human fools tremble and quake in fear, beat their chests and rend their garments in terror as the End of Days approaches! You will be my foot soldiers! My army! Harbingers of a new dawn when this world and all that breathes within it shall be subjects of my dominion! Go forth and spread the news, my children! For darkness comes and who amongst them will challenge the Bringer of Light?”

“Man, this asshole really loves the sound of his own voice –” Dean began to gripe, Sam cutting him off by literally grabbing his collar and hauling him to his feet. “Dude, will you stop doing that?” he protested. “I’m not your own personal poseable action figure you know –”

“Dean, you want another of those things in your head?” Sam saw the indignation drain from Dean’s face as he realized Sam was trying to nudge him along the walkway and past the locked door, toward another potential escape route.

“Good point,” he admitted finally, glancing down at the sinkhole as the agitated specters began to swirl around their leader like some hellish tornado, spinning further and further out into the room. Further and further toward the walkway; toward them.

Diving toward another of the gunmetal gray doors, Dean grabbed the handle and yanked hard. “No dice, Sammy!” he reported, glancing back to where Sam was still standing looking out toward the Hellgate, his back to his brother. “Sam?”

“Stay there, Dean,” Sam threw over his shoulder, backing up a few paces so as to position himself between Dean and the sinkhole.

It took Dean longer than Sam expected to realize what his little brother was up to. “Hell no, Sammy –”

His protest was never finished as a sudden gust of hot air threw him back against the solidly bolted door. Sam was knocked backwards several paces with him, but miraculously managed to stay on his feet, stubbornly positioning himself between his brother and the approaching wall of disembodied souls currently hurling themselves in their direction, translucent teeth bared and reflected flames blazing in the dark spaces where their eyes should have been.

Sam never turned to check Dean was still behind him, somehow knowing exactly where Dean was standing without having to look. Suddenly it seemed vitally important that he not turn around, that he face the clamoring souls head on, that he not turn away from the hellish creatures who were gravitating to the one thing they all currently desired above all else: human vessels in which to obey their master’s will.

It wasn’t the same as it had been with the displaced soul who had attacked him in the motel room last night, Sam mused, his mind calmly contemplating the multitude of voices screaming and wailing in his head. That single entity had been cold, logical. Focused. The voices currently clamoring for his attention were disorganized, frenzied, all desperately crowding into his brain as each attempted to find purchase there, get a foothold. Find a vessel. Each voice trying to dominate all others. Each voice trying to drive away the rest and take this vessel for its own nefarious purposes and those of its demonic leader.

Sam breathed deeply and calmly, closing his eyes as he felt the almost physical build up of pressure around him.

“Get out.”

He wasn’t sure whether he said it aloud or in his head, the resultant frustrated howl of the loudest of the voices drowning out any sound he may have made in the real world.

Slowly, the pressure began to recede, a tide ebbing away from him, releasing him.

Opening his eyes, he still sensed the insistent crush of souls all around him, each trying to force themselves closer to him, into him, but it was as if an invisible barrier had erected itself around him and his brother, a barrier their assailants were unable to breach or destroy. Faces pressed against glass, able to see but not touch.

He could hear Dean breathing heavily behind him, and suddenly felt it was safe to turn and look at him, his brother wide-eyed and pale at Sam’s shoulder as the barrier continued to hold with minimal effort on the younger brother’s part. It was almost comical the way the determined specters merely seemed to bounce off thin air a foot or so all around them, their frustration finally getting the better of them as they gradually began to wheel away until every last one of them had withdrawn back to the relative safety of the Hellgate. Back to their master.

Lucifer was watching them.

“S – Sammy?” Dean stammered, gingerly laying a hand on Sam’s arm as if only now daring to touch him. “What – what the hell just happened?” He blinked owlishly at his brother as Sam turned calmly toward him, expression almost serene. Dean swallowed. “What did you just do, man?”

If Sam hadn’t known better, he would have sworn Dean looked…afraid.

Of him.

“Is that what you did to Alyssa? What you did to the thing that came for you last night?”

Sam shrugged, expression suddenly darkening, like the sun slipping behind a cloud. “I don’t know,” he said honestly, his voice cracking on the last word. “I don’t know, Dean.” Suddenly he felt all of five years old, desperately wanting his big brother to chase the monsters from under his bed and tell him everything was alright.

“It’s okay, Sammy,” Dean said, slipping into the role with practiced ease, but barely disguising a tremble in his voice. “We’ll figure it out. You – you did good, kiddo.”

“Yes,” a booming voice suddenly rang out loudly beneath them. “You did very good, Samuel. Neat little trick you picked up there. You’ll have to show me how you did that someday.”

Both brothers’ attention snapped back to the Hellgate.

But Lucifer was no longer there.

Instead, their field of vision was completely filled by a pair of huge obsidian wings rising up directly in front of them, beating once, slow and powerful, as if created from the shadows themselves.

Sam drew in a sharp breath as Lucifer hovered before them, skull solid and corporeal, eyes crimson pinpricks in an ash white face, while his body seemed insubstantial as drifting shadow, long dark swathes of blackness swirling around him as he slowly began to ascend.

With a loud crack, the wings snapped open behind him, unfurling to their full twelve feet span and holding there, barely moving, solid and terrible.

Sam stared transfixed, the flickering light of the gathering flames glinting off each individual raven black feather, refracting into opalescence and creating an unearthly halo all around the demon.

It would have been terrifying beautiful had it not been for the fact that this was Lucifer.

Lucifer, who hovered only eight feet away from them.

“Sam and Dean Winchester, as I live and breathe!” the demon chortled, wings beating once so hard both boys were thrown back another step as Lucifer advanced toward them. “Well actually I do neither, but let’s not bicker over semantics.”

Sam just stared at him, a steely glint in his eye. And for a brief moment, Lucifer stared right on back.

Finally, the demon laughed, low and menacing. “Your Jedi mind tricks won’t work on me, boy!” he told Sam, positively beaming at the reference. “Ah, Lucas,” he added, shaking his head. “He always did believe good could triumph over evil. What a sap.”

Sam gritted his teeth, still hyper-aware of the souls relentlessly patrolling at the edge of his consciousness, pushing, testing. When he pushed back he could feel them give ground, like a physical presence in his mind.

But Lucifer?

Sam couldn’t sense Lucifer at all. Not on the instinctive level he could sense Hell’s latest batch of desperate escapees.

He crinkled his brow in annoyance. What good were these freakin’ abilities if he couldn’t use them on the one creature he really needed to use them on?

“You keep on fumbling about in the dark there, kiddo,” Lucifer taunted him, deliberately echoing Dean’s earlier term of endearment. “You knew sooner or later something would have to stick!”

“Your minions can’t touch me,” Sam reminded him, oddly calm. “Or my brother.”

“Ah yes. Your brother.” Lucifer shifted his attention to Dean then, another beat of his giant wings elevating him several feet so he was looking down at them now.

Dean swallowed as he gave the door behind him another fruitless shove.

“This gift of yours,” Lucifer continued, addressing Sam even as his eyes lingered on Dean. “As a rule, it only seems to kick in when he’s in danger, doesn’t it?”

Sam’s eyes widened in alarm at the implication. “No! Don’t –”

But the warning came too late, Dean suddenly finding himself yanked three feet into the air before being mercilessly slammed into the concrete wall behind him.

“Goddammit!” he swore through clenched teeth. “I’m not your goddamned sock puppet you sonofabitch!”

“Dean!” Sam made to run to Dean’s aid but suddenly discovered he couldn’t move, feet seemingly welded to the walkway as he helplessly watched Dean being dragged several feet up the wall, all the air temporarily knocked out of him so he couldn’t even bitch about it.

“I could put him on the ceiling if you’d like,” Lucifer suggested brightly, red eyes glimmering obscenely. “Light him up like a Christmas tree. If that’d make you feel more at home.”

“Sonofa –” Dean managed to grunt.

“Now now,” Lucifer chided him. “What would Mommy say if she heard language like that from her little boy?” He beat his wings once more, the movement propelling him upwards and closer to Dean, who flinched despite his best efforts not to. “Mommy’s little angel. You know, Haris may have been a whiny little upstart with all the personality of Swiss cheese, but he did have a certain flair for the melodramatic. I mean, torching mommies on the ceiling while their babies slept blissfully unaware below? Definitely one of his more creative ideas. Kinda wish I’d thought of it really.” He eyed Dean again thoughtfully. “She was a real looker your Mom. Before she burned to ash. You remind me of her in so many ways…it’d be almost poetic if you met the same fate, wouldn’t it? In honor of Haris, our fallen comrade…”

“Wait!” Sam burst out suddenly, eyes locked with Dean’s as he struggled pointlessly against whatever the hell had him pinned to the wall like a bug in a display case. “Wait.”

Lucifer’s deep rumble of laughter once again reverberated around the room. “Come on, Sammy,” he said. “Your brother’s in mortal danger! Let’s see some more of that little ‘gift’ of yours! C’mon, Sam! Just like you did with the tupilaq!” He glanced sidelong at Dean, whose focus had shifted completely to his brother, confusion clouding his features. “Oh, but you never really told Dean about that, did you Sammy?”

Sam’s jaw tightened and he maintained a stony silence, refusing to be baited despite the wide-eyed inkling of hurt betrayal creeping across Dean’s face.

Lucifer chuckled, grinning broadly. “You think what you did to that creature – what you forced it to do to its creator – you think you did that out of self-preservation, Sam? Or maybe it was part of this ‘higher purpose’ that Valkyrie pain-in-my-forked-tail kept insisting you have?” His grin widened, lifting up at one corner as Sam unconsciously began to grind his teeth together. “Or maybe, just maybe, the real reason you forced that crazy critter to chow down on the shaman that created it is because it tried to chow down on your brother first? Huh? Sound plausible?”

Dean was staring at him so intently Sam felt his cheeks begin to burn.

“Sam?” Dean asked at length.

Sam looked at him, an apology in his eyes, uncertain why he needed to apologize for saving his brother’s life but feeling it was somehow necessary. “Dean, I didn’t know what –”

“Like that lovely Alyssa girl,” Lucifer interrupted, both brothers’ attention whipping back to the demon. “Messed with her noggin good after she messed with Dean’s, right? And Max Miller? All he did was off your brother in a vision and that big brain of yours was tossing furniture left right and center so you could go kick his scrawny ass! Gotta love Haris. Gotta love the poetry of it: give these kids all these amazing powers but absolutely no clue what to do with them. Sammy. You figure out what to do with this power of yours and you and I could be pals! I mean really! So come on. Use the Force! You know you want to!”

“Go to hell!” Sam spat, aiming for defiant as he tried to disguise the fact that he had no clue what he’d actually done to repel the assault of the displaced souls. Or the tupilaq. Or Alyssa. Or Max.

“You know, I’d love to,” Lucifer beamed cordially. “But you know how it is. Places to burn, people to torture. The Earth’s ripe for it. Ready. Corrupt and degenerate. To be honest, Down There was getting to be a bit of drag. Sure, Prince of Darkness, Master of the Underworld, yada yada yada. But day in day out? Sometimes even a demon needs a change of scenery. Fire, screaming, torture. Flaying, cutting, lashing. Same old same old. You know, it just wasn’t as much fun anymore. Guess I needed a new challenge.”

“And that’s what this is to you?” Dean finally managed to find his voice again. “A challenge?”

Lucifer raised a brow. “You? No. Your brother? Mm, maybe. The world. Oh yes. One big, delicious challenge. Pastures new.”

One more beat of his wings and he was looming over Dean, only a few feet away from him, palm held out and upwards, an orange ball of lazy flame materializing out of nowhere and just hovering there, in his palm, feet from Dean’s face as the light flickered in his eyes.

“So much like Mommy,” Lucifer cooed. “How do you see your future career as a charcoal briquette, Dean –?”

Lucifer got no further with his threat, suddenly lurching back a foot as if physically tugged from behind, wings beating furiously in order to regain his equilibrium.

He whirled on Sam, pinprick eyes blazing, but Sam just stared at him, a tiny trace of shock registering on his face.

Lucifer’s smile had slipped momentarily, but he quickly restored his sneer to its rightful place. “That’s more like it, Sammy!” he crooned. “That almost tickled.”

The next thing Sam knew, he was hurtling backwards through midair, violently crashing into the concrete wall beside his brother.

“Sammy?” Dean managed to turn his head enough to glimpse his brother, who seemed winded but largely undamaged.

“Sammy, Sammy, Sammy,” Lucifer chortled, wings beating lazily. “You were right earlier weren’t you? When you called Dean a ‘damsel in distress’?”

Both boys’ eyes shot to the demon, this time shock registering on both their faces.

“I told you I notice everything, boys,” Lucifer grinned broadly. “Thing is, Sammy, I think you must get off on it. Dean being your own personal damsel in distress. Why else would that be the only time you can ever get those sucky abilities of yours to do anything worth a crap?”

Sam made no reply, continuing to stare Lucifer out like two dogs hanging onto the same bone. It was Lucifer who gave first.

“You know if you want to win this war, Sam,” he said slowly, wings beating a little harder. “You do realize you’re going to have to get the bad guys to threaten to hurt the crap out of your big brother at every damn turn if that’s the only way you’re ever gonna get those ‘powers’ of yours to work for you?” He shook his wings as if he was shrugging his shoulders, feathers brushing Dean’s cheek as if by accident as he did so.

Dean cried out, an icy-hot pain lancing out from where the feathers touched him, and when Sam turned to look at him, a gash had opened up on his cheekbone. “What the…?”

Lucifer laughed. “Go on, Sammy. Look, he’s bleeding! Let’s see what you can do!”

“Leave him alone!” Sam growled, Dean’s eyes widening in alarm as the demon once again brought his massive wingspan up toward him. “No!”

Lucifer stopped suddenly, body shaking in silent mirth. “Poor Sammy. Afraid of a few feathers?” He shook his wings out again, preening like a peacock. “You like these? Beautiful aren’t they? Humans always seem surprised that I should still have them, being a fallen angel and all. But just because I fell, doesn’t mean I can’t still fly when I want to! How else do you think I got back up here?”

“Hell spat you out ’cause you tasted like crap?” Dean suggested, wincing slightly as the effort of speaking caused the cut to open wider on his cheek.

Lucifer actually laughed at that. “You could be right,” he agreed. “I’ve been around longer than time itself. Maybe my blood doesn’t taste as fresh as someone younger.” His eyes met Dean’s menacingly. “Someone like you, Dean. Maybe I should taste some of yours, just to find out?”

He made a sudden move toward Dean, but again found himself meeting resistance.

“Don’t touch him,” Sam growled.

“There’s my boy! Proving my point as usual.”

“I swear, you touch him again and I’ll –”

“What? Kill me? Ooh, color me scared, Sammy.”

“It’s Sam,” Dean ground out through gritted teeth. “And you damn well should be scared you punkass little bitch!”

“You talk tough for a boy pinned to a wall, Dean,” Lucifer said. “I thought you already had that whole ‘disguising fear with humor’ conversation with Haris a while back? And you’re scared right now, aren’t you Dean? It’s alright. You’re among friends. You can admit it. You’re just a little bit scared of your brother right now aren’t you? Of his freaky psychic mojo?”

Dean studiously refused to look at Sam right then.

“Your silence speaks volumes. Don’t you think, Sam?”

Sam didn’t answer. “You know you can kill us,” he said instead. “But others will just take our place. They’ll put your little uprising back in the ground where is belongs so fast you’ll think you’re falling for a second time.”

“Uprising?” Lucifer echoed. “You make me sound like some piss-poor rebellious nobody, Sam! Hell, you make me sound like Haris. I think I’m offended.” He inched closer to Sam, wings barely moving. “This is no uprising, boy. This is war.” He threw out his arms, backing away a little, once again stretching out his wings to their full span. “This is an army, Sam! My army! It’s genius, don’t you think? An army of devoted followers on Earth controlled by damned souls from Hell? Puppets. All of them looking for redemption. Everyone deserves a little redemption, don’t they Sam? Even the most evil of us. We all want redemption. Even you, Sam. All I had to do was dangle the promise of it in front of them and they were only too happy to obey. Go possess a few sappy humans, create a little Hell on Earth. And what better place to do that than a shiny new den of iniquity like the one I’m going to build above my Hellgate? A constant stream of eager new recruits all looking for their own brand of redemption. It’s one of Humanity’s greatest failings, Sammy. This myth anyone can be redeemed if they truly repent. It’s all predesigned. Destiny. We all have a destiny, Sam. It’s just that some of us are more willing to accept it than others.”

Sam met his burning gaze coolly, icy exterior not once revealing the cracks spreading through him on the inside. “What about free will?” he demanded. “What about self-determination? Nobody has to do anything they don’t want to do –”

“Like hunting? You didn’t want to do that did you, Sammy? Yet you came back. After poor little Jessica. Came back to join Daddy’s big bad crusade against the darkness.” Lucifer inclined his head jovially. “How is John, by the way? Retiring to a condo in Florida now that Haris is dead and gone? You know, he’s got quite the reputation where I come from. Quite the price on his head Down There.”

Dean tensed, a muscle twitching in his cheek.

Lucifer glanced at him dismissively. “You seem surprised Daddy’s Hell’s Most Wanted, Dean,” he said. “Don’t worry though. I’ll get to him in time, even if none of them do. I’ll get to all of you damned hunters in time. You two? Easy pickings. Have to admit, your little bit of resistance took me a tad by surprise, Sam. But as you can see, everything is easily compensated for. Here you are. You and your brother. Maybe you weren’t the challenge I’d hoped you’d be after all. Pinned to a wall. At my mercy while my army reduces your world to rubble –”

“Hate to burst your bubble, pal,” Dean put in suddenly. “But those ‘devoted followers’ of yours don’t seem to have gotten a copy of the script. You wanted all Hell to break loose on Earth, but all you got is a little zombie action and a few trashed cars. Your little demon army is tearing itself apart out there. And you’d know that. Y’know. If you noticed everything.”

Lucifer beat his giant wings, shrugging slightly. “Acceptable losses,” he said coolly. “Every general is prepared for them. Maybe not as prepared as I am. So what if a few of my troops are a little –”

“Whacked out of their gourds?” Dean offered. “They’re tearing each other apart out there! Jumping into rivers; killing themselves and each other.”

“Chaos,” Lucifer nodded. “Exactly. Oh I noticed, Dean. I know what’s happening out there, and you know what?” He spread his arms wide again. “It’s all good. Or – y’know – evil, depending on your point of view. As long as those damned souls are out there creating havoc – making a Hell on Earth – then I’m golden. I don’t need to take over the world before lunch, boys. I have nothing but time. Eternity. This is just my advance guard. A little experiment. Nothing more.”

“But it’s not the End of Days,” Sam pointed out, shifting slightly beneath the pressure on his chest. “It’s just a cheap hoax. You’re a bad con artist, that’s all. You say you notice everything, yet even now that river out there no longer runs with the blood you put in it –”

“Ah, that pesky little preacher,” Lucifer said, voice like honey. “He’s tenacious, I’ll give him that.”

Sam baulked slightly, and Lucifer didn’t fail to notice.

“I see everything, Sam. I already told you that –”

“But you couldn’t stop him. You couldn’t stop him from purifying the river.”

If Lucifer was bristling, it was only visible in the sudden tautness of his wings. “He’s just one man,” the demon pointed out, the broken glass back in his voice. “I’d like to see him fix the eternal darkness!” He laughed, more for dramatic effect than out of amusement. “One believer does not an army make, Samuel. What chance does he stand against me, against the power of Lucifer? Soon the waters of Hell will flow freely where I see fit and the human race will taste but blood and ash!”

“Swallowed that Big Book of Evangelical Clichés again, huh?” Dean observed. “Yeah, I heard that can make a person sound like an asshole.”

Lucifer just looked at him, no trace of anger in his face. “Ever been to Hell, Dean?” he asked casually. Dean glanced sideways at Sam, who was making that Just Shut Up, Dean! face of which he seemed so fond. “I’m not sure you’d like it down there. The temperature can be a bit up there, and, well it’s a tad humid for a place with no water. I understand the eternal thirst alone has driven people mad.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not planning any vacations right now,” Dean returned. “And if I was, I’d choose somewhere a little more beachfront, if you know what I mean.”

“But I feel so ungrateful,” Lucifer continued. “I’ve seen your home. It seems only fair I should show you mine…”

Dean gulped in a breath. “That’s okay,” he assured the demon. “I’ve been to L.A., I get the idea.”

Lucifer glided closer to them once more, the sneer back on his lips. “If you thought L.A. was scary,” he said, “you ain’t seen nothing yet. Really. I insist.”

Sam grunted in surprise as his spine lost the intimate contact it had had with the wall for the last few minutes, suddenly finding himself drifting six feet above the walkway, arms pinned tightly to his sides, his entire body completely rigid and immobile.

“Uh, Sam…?” Dean sounded vaguely panicky as he unwillingly followed his brother’s trajectory, eyes drawn down to his boots as he cleared the walkway and suddenly found himself gazing down at a dizzying thirty foot plummet beneath him.

“Oh, how thoughtless of me,” Lucifer crowed, one finger crooked as it slowly arched toward the Hellgate. “You don’t like flying do you Dean?”

Dean swallowed a string of obscenities and instead managed his customary sardonic grin. “Oh, I don’t know, this flying thing could have its upside. I mean, Superman got some half-decent chicks, right? And that was a dude wearing tights.”

Lucifer’s upper lip curled into a sneer. “Don’t think you’ll have much time for sins of the flesh where you’re going, Dean,” he said. “In fact, you might not have much flesh left at all by the time I’m finished with you.”

Dean’s jaw clamped shut, and Sam could tell he was barely hanging on to that grin.

“What do you want?” Sam demanded abruptly, attempting to draw the demon’s attention away from his brother for a second.

Lucifer frowned. “Peace on Earth. Goodwill to all men.” He sniggered. “I’m just kidding. What do you mean, Sam? What do I want? What do you think I want?”

“Well you can’t take us to Hell,” Sam insisted, clearly playing for time. “Not while we’re still – well – breathing.”

“Why can’t I?” Lucifer asked placidly.

“Well for starters,” Dean chimed in, still eyeing the considerable drop beneath him if Lucifer should decide to lose his concentration, “don’t we get a – a trial or something? ’Cause as far as I know we’ve not been damned to spend all eternity in the Fiery Furnace. Well not yet anyway.”

Lucifer laughed dryly. “You forget who’s in control here, boys,” he crowed. “Just because you’re not damned – yet – doesn’t mean anyone’s going to intercede on your behalf. If you think it does then you’re as deluded as those poor saps down there who really believe they’re escaping to salvation!”

“You’ll never gain the respect of an army if you lie to them all the time,” Sam pointed out.

“Who needs respect?” Lucifer demanded. “What do I need with respect? I need chaos! Violence! Anguish and death! Why would I crave respect? You’re attributing human desires to someone who clearly isn’t human, Sammy. It’s going to be the death of you.”

“Sam,” Dean muttered, glancing from Lucifer to the sinkhole, which was growing ever closer the further they drifted out over the sea of roiling blood. “I think Philosophy 101’s gonna have to wait, man. Mortal danger here! Could do with some of that SuperSammy Kerpow action right about now! Any time you feel like it, dude.”

Sam knew they were in trouble but he just didn’t know what to do about it. As far as his powers were concerned, it was all about instinct and very little about control. As much as he hated to admit it, Lucifer actually seemed to have hit the nail on the head when he pointed out Sam’s psychic whatever-it-was only tended to kick in when Dean was in danger.

Instinct.

If Sam could just work out how to control it, to harness it, to use it when he decided to use it…

He was focusing so hard on trying to sense Lucifer, sense his power the way he had Alyssa’s, or the souls still whirling around them in dizzying circles, that it took him a second to realize he’d stopped moving.

Glancing down, he drew in a sharp breath as the flames surrounding the sinkhole parted, and suddenly he was looking straight down into the maw of Hell itself, blood and fire and darkness, suspended in midair, completely helpless and at the mercy of Lucifer himself. He swore he could hear the sound of distant wailing, souls screaming in utter agony, cries of terror, pitiful pleas for mercy. Help us! Help us!

He tried to close his ears, tried to close his eyes, but he could do neither, could merely listen as the sounds of Hell rose up all around him, and he prayed he and his brother would never have to experience such a place in person.

Dean himself appeared less than happy, only a couple of feet away from Sam but a little closer to the sinkhole, the flames closing in around him as the bubbling blood reached crimson fingers up toward his boots.

Don’t look down, a little voice in Sam’s head chanted over and over, and yet still all he could focus on was fire and blood, dark red liquid churning at the mouth of the sinkhole, flames licking at the rim of blasted concrete as more and more blood continued to ooze up out of the giant hole.

“I hope you brought sun block,” Lucifer said from somewhere over Sam’s shoulder. “Not that either of you will ever see the sun again. Although you boys could probably use a little color in your cheeks right about now.”

“You can’t do this,” Sam informed the demon through gritted teeth. “There are rules –”

“My Hell, my rules,” Lucifer countered, spinning Sam to face him as firelight glinted over his white teeth. “What good’s a two-way Gateway to Hell if you’re only going to use it to get out?”

“Sonofa –” Dean tried to kick out as his feet skimmed the oozing surface of the bloody pool, soles of his boots dripping gory red. He turned his gaze back up to Sam, whose eyes, reflecting the scarlet firelight, appeared momentarily as red as the blood beneath them. Not for the first time Dean seemed afraid of something that wasn’t Lucifer. “Sam,” he said shakily. “I think maybe we could use that miracle right about now.”

Slowly, the blood beneath Dean’s feet began to swirl around him, gradually picking up speed until it was a giddy whirlpool of ever decreasing circles leading down, down, down toward the Hellgate, a cone of red twisting only into total darkness.

As Lucifer’s bellowing laugh rang out around them, the encircling flames shot higher, and higher, reaching up once more for the ceiling as the demon slowly paused for a breath he didn’t need to take.

“All too easy.”

“Dean!” Sam’s breath caught in his throat as he brother dropped like a stone toward the Hellgate, and he was suddenly aware of gravity and motion and Dean’s weight and darkness like cloying quicksand.

Dean’s unexpected plummet halted abruptly, feet and legs already swallowed by the entrance to the Hellgate, and Sam swore he could hear his brother’s heart hammering even as he made a noise that sounded very much like a strangled squeak.

Lucifer’s laughter continued unabated. “Come on, Sammy. You can do better than that.”

“Sam.” Dean’s eyes skittered around the wall of blood and flame rising up on every side of him before darting up to find his brother’s, asking for help without saying a word.

Dean dropped another foot, halting again as Sam crushed his eyes closed and tried to think of nothing but stillness and solid ground beneath their feet, even as a distant rumbling noise caught the edge of his hearing.

“Why do I suddenly feel like a chew toy?” Dean muttered to himself over the roar of whatever awaited him on the other side of the Hellgate and the increasing rumble of something else; something beyond the sinkhole and the blood and the fire and his little brother trying desperately to access a hidden part of his brain that might prevent them both from plunging straight into Hell.

“Dean, hold on!” Sam instructed his brother, scrunching up his eyes in concentration, vaguely aware of the rumbling around them, a slight shake to the concrete floor.

“Sam I think it’s you that needs to hold on!” Dean returned, mild panic creeping into his usually stoic voice. “Seriously, dude! Hell’s gonna play havoc with my complexion!”

“Comedian to the last, huh Dean?” Lucifer glared down at him, wings beating rhythmically, slow and measured. “Let’s see how funny you find red hot pokers and pitchforks shall we?”

“My dad warned me about places like that,” Dean snickered nervously, somehow managing to keep the quiver out of his voice. “But I’m really not into that S and M stuff.”

“Oh Dean. You don’t know the half of it, boy. Believe me, you’re gonna be real popular Down There.”

Dean’s defiant grin slipped a little, eyes darting to Sam, who himself suddenly started to plummet toward the Hellgate.

“Crap.” He halted a couple of feet higher than Dean, who had slipped right into the Gateway, an insistent tug at his ankles as the smell of sulfur and ash became almost unbearable.

“Uh, Sammy? This ain’t lookin’ so good…”

“Dean – I can’t – I don’t know how –”

Their eyes locked just as the distant rumbling became a thunderous roar, and beyond the rim of the Gateway water suddenly exploded from every pipe in the cavernous room, raining down onto the bloody pool as the floor began to shake violently.

Blood hissed as water made contact, huge plumes of steam shooting up toward the ceiling.

Lucifer’s blood red eyes widened and for a second time seemed to stop, droplets of water splashing as if in slow motion onto his wings and his skin, hissing and steaming as he threw back his head and let loose a guttural scream of agony and anger as his flesh began to sizzle like meat on a barbecue.

“Nooooooooo!” he howled, holding red raw hands up to the heavens as more and more water poured down into the room, an echoing wail of agony and despair welling up all around them as the dispossessed souls screeched out in anguished pain.

“What’s wrong, bright eyes?” Dean asked, relief flooding his voice. “Getting a little hot up there for you?”

“What did you do?” Lucifer spat, darting toward the opening of the Hellgate, wings beating furiously as steam continued to rise from each feather, eyes narrowed in pain and fury.

“That ‘one man’?” Sam explained, grinning triumphantly. “That single believer, the preacher who purified the river? Remember him?”

Water continued to pour into the room, the blood beginning to wash backwards toward the sinkhole, steaming and hissing as the flames guttered and died all around them.

“What about him?” Lucifer’s voice hissed almost as violently as his sizzling skin.

“Holy water,” Sam explained. “Just like when he blessed the river.”

“One man, one river. There’s plenty more –”

“Did we mention we know a guy who works at the local water processing plant?” Dean added, grin back to its full wattage. “Introduced the preacher to a whole helluva lot of water up there.”

“Soon every water source you tainted will be cleansed,” Sam added. “And your ‘End of Days’ will be over.”

“Still think we’re easy?” Dean asked casually, grinning maniacally despite his still-precarious situation.

Lucifer’s face contorted in fury as more and more water poured into the room, flushing the concrete clean of all traces of blood, the water flooding into the sinkhole with an audible hiss.

And then there was an ominous silence.

Not a single sound emanated from the Hellgate beneath them; no screaming, no wailing, no begging. Nothing.

“You don’t even know what you’ve done,” Lucifer growled into the silence. “You don’t even know –”

A low rumble began deep in the earth beneath them, slowly growing in intensity as holy water continued to pour down into the Hellgate.

Sam looked up, the rim of the sinkhole beginning to tremble, the walls above them shaking visibly as pipes rattled and the metal walkway swayed dangerously.

“You don’t even know what you’ve done.”

“Uh, Sam,” Dean said slowly, as pieces of masonry started to shake loose from the high ceiling, raining down onto the concrete floor as more and more holy water flooded into the chamber, into the sinkhole. Into Hell itself.

The rumbling grew louder, closer, pipes loosening themselves from the walls as a section of walkway tore loose and clattered to the ground with a sickening screech.

Lucifer surveyed the shaking room, flesh and feathers still steaming and sizzling in the blessed downpour, grinding his teeth as the light in his eyes flashed orange.

“You think this is over?” he hissed, swooping down toward the brothers, inches from Sam, wings beating furiously. “Your little parlor tricks won’t save you from this. You and your brother are Hellbound however hard you fight it and when I get you Down There you’ll wish your parents had never been born! You two had better keep looking over your shoulders because one of these days I’ll be looking back at you.”

With that, Lucifer twisted into a dive straight down into the depths of Hell as the walls of the sinkhole shook violently, rock and dirt, holy water and lost souls raining down in his wake.

Dean let out a yell as he was unceremoniously released from Lucifer’s grip and gravity took over, and Sam was suddenly aware of falling fast and hard, rock walls speeding past his vision as he prepared himself for the longest fall he was ever likely to make.

Then he stopped.

Looking up, his eyes met Dean’s, his big brother hanging on to his wrist as if his life – both their lives – depended on it.

“Don’t let go, Sammy!” Dean yelled, and Sam followed his gaze as he turned to look upward, up to where his right hand was clinging to an outcropping of rock, fingers digging desperately into sandstone.

Sam brought his other hand up with an effort, grabbing hold of Dean’s wrist and hanging on with every bit of strength he had left. “Not if you don’t let go first,” Sam managed to yell back. Don’t look down, don’t look down…

Suddenly there was a sound like a distant explosion, the rumbling becoming a full-on quake as jets of steam shot up from the Hellgate, hot wind curling around them, tearing at them, trying to pull them down.

Sam cried out as he and Dean were slammed into the side of the sinkhole, his fingers slipping as invisible hands tore at his body and chunks of plaster and piping rained down from above.

“Don’t let go!” Dean screamed again, grunting as something stronger than gravity seemed determined to drag them both down into Hell, but somehow managing to keep his hold on both the sinkhole wall and his brother.

Gradually the jets of steam retreated back to the Hellish depths from which they had escaped, but the quaking continued, the room above them shaking itself to pieces as Sam, breathing hard, managed to find his own handhold on the sinkhole wall, lessening the burden on his brother, whose arm looked like it might pop out of its socket at any minute.

“Sammy,” Dean gasped, still hanging on to Sam’s wrist even though his brother had managed to find a foothold. “Now would be a really good time for you to break it to me your weird-ass superpowers include flying, dude.”

Sam shook his head, finding another handhold. “Sorry. But if you want to stop holding my hand for a second we might be able to climb out of here the old fashioned way.”

As satisfied as he could be that Sam had a decent hold on the sinkhole wall, Dean reluctantly let go of him, setting about making his own way out of the Hellgate.

It would have been easier if the walls and the ground above them hadn’t been shaking so hard, Sam observed, as he made slow progress toward the rim of the sinkhole. His hands were wet from the continued downpour of holy water and the rock was slippery, and every now and then something dislodged from the room above them and smashed into the wall, narrowly missing valuable body parts on several occasions.

Dean reached the top first, hauling himself up and over the rim before reaching down for his brother.

Sam took his proffered hand gratefully, allowing Dean to help pull him up the last foot until the two of them collapsed atop the sinkhole, trying to breathe as each surveyed the damage around them.

“We need to go,” Dean observed, the flood of holy water lessened considerably, but the ground, the walls and the ceiling still shaking themselves to pieces. “Now, dude.”

Sam nodded, hauling himself to his feet just as a crack widened where he’d just been slumped and a huge chunk of concrete snapped off and fell into the sinkhole.

“Which way?” he asked, trying not to think about what would have happened if he hadn’t moved when Dean told him to.

Dean took stock of the shuddering room around them as huge cracks began to snake up the walls and sparks rained down on them as electrical conduits shorted. “Same way we came in,” he decided, pointing to the pipe where they first emerged into the waste processing room.

Sam nodded, following Dean’s lead as he made a run for it, a loud crack above them causing them both to duck instinctively as a huge chunk of ceiling broke loose and came crashing down on top of the Hellgate, partially blocking the opening.

“Dean, I don’t think the holy water can be all that’s causing this –” Sam began, picking up the pace as he dashed after his brother.

Dean jumped into the entrance to the pipe, turning and waiting for Sam to join him. “We can talk theology later,” Dean told him, as if plucking the thought that had just occurred to Sam right out of his head.

Sam nodded, turning back toward the sinkhole as another thunderous crack shook the room, the entire ceiling seeming to come down in one almighty crash, effectively stopping up the Eighth Gateway to Hell just as the last of the dispossessed souls swirled back down from where they’d come.

“Let’s get the hell outta here!” Dean yelled, ending on a splutter as plaster dust bloomed into the pipe from the collapsing ceiling. Grabbing Sam’s arm, he began to run, Sam keeping pace despite the cramped quarters, the darkness and the slippery metal beneath their feet.

Behind them it sounded as if the world was coming to an end, the battered metal all around them vibrating as the rock surrounding it shuddered and shook and more debris from the disintegrating structure above them collapsed into the entrance to the pipe in their wake.

Sam had never felt as relieved as when he saw a glimmer of light up ahead of them, the brothers scrambling toward it as the sound of the former cannery collapsing in on itself some way above their heads chased them the length of their would-be escape route.

Once they reached the end of the trembling pipe, Dean virtually threw himself out onto the riverbank, Sam close on his heels, both hitting the ground running and neither turning back to survey the site of Luciano Ferinacci’s erstwhile new pleasure complex until they were safely a quarter mile away.

Only then, standing on the sodden riverbank, clothes once again dripping with an odd combination of blood and holy water, did they finally stop running across the juddering ground and turn to look at the devastation they had left behind them.

What they saw was a whole new level of destruction that was impressive, even by Winchester standards.

The old cannery building was busy self-destructing, thick concrete walls quaking to their very foundations as the rock below bucked and crumbled, the whole structure collapsing in on itself with an eerie howl reminiscent of the screams of tortured souls filtering up through the Hellgate and into the world, where the only sympathetic ears to hear had been powerless to help.

A mushroom cloud of smoke and debris blossomed up into the inky black late afternoon sky as the building finally gave up the ghost completely, and Sam knew it would be some time, both literally and figuratively, before the dust settled on this one.

As soon as the building finally crumpled the earth beneath them seemed to cease its quaking, a deathly quiet descending on the river and the surrounding area, and the stunned people still standing along the riverbank holding their collective breath.

Dean turned his face up to the sky as a gentle rain began to fall, the pitter-patter of the raindrops oddly soothing in the unnatural silence.

The sudden screech of the last remaining guard at the pleasure complex’s front gate startled both brothers out of their contemplative reverie, splitting the quiet air in two before the man collapsed into a quivering heap in the mud at his feet, the implications of what that signified were almost inconceivable.

“It’s raining holy water?” Dean glanced up at Sam, who turned his own face upwards, tasting the rain sweet on his tongue. “How is that even possible?” Dean pressed. “Sam?”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk theology?”

Dean just blinked at him, before laughing a little uncertainly. “Nah, Sammy!” he burst out. “Come on! You’re not serious?”

Sam turned toward him, wiping the rain from his face on the sleeve of his damp jacket. “Look at that building, Dean,” he said, gesturing at the pile of rubble that had once been a cannery. “We may have gotten Malik to talk Preacher Warriner into blessing all the water at the processing plant,” he said, “and we may have gotten him to max out the old cannery’s water pressure,” he continued. “But no way, no way did we cause an earthquake, no matter how much we’d like to believe it. Don’t tell me you seriously think we were responsible for bringing down that building and blocking the Hellgate?”

“So what’s the alternative?” Dean asked. “You said it yourself, Sammy, it was an earthquake, nothing more, nothing less.”

“Pretty conveniently-timed earthquake, Dean.”

“So we were lucky.”

“When do we ever get that lucky?”

Dean screwed up his face as he tried desperately to think of an example. “Uh –” stumbled. “Well – there was – okay I got nothing. Doesn’t mean the fairies saved our asses –”

“I wasn’t talking about fairies, Dean –”

“Angels, fairies. Whatever.”

“It’s raining holy water, Dean!”

“It’s still dark, Sam!”

“You sure about that?” Sam gestured toward the distant horizon where pale gold fingers of light were beginning to feel their way across the midnight-black sky.

Dean didn’t say anything for a good couple of minutes, and when he finally opened is mouth Sam abruptly cut him off.

“You say ‘coincidence’ and I’ll throw you off that bridge again.”

Dean huffed, crossing his arms across his chest sullenly. “I was gonna say you screamed like a little girl back there.”

“At least I didn’t squeak.”

Main Street,
Leicester, MA

Watery late afternoon sunlight had washed the sky a pale turquoise by the time Dean pulled the Impala into Leicester’s town center.

The place still looked like the set of a Charlton Heston movie, vehicles of varying sizes and degrees of destruction abandoned in odd places all over the roads and the sidewalks. An SUV had crashed through the plate glass of the local Starbucks, scattering glass and cardboard cups all over the place, while a gaggle of dazed onlookers had gathered outside the police station, all gazing distractedly at darkened windows in the hopes that someone would come out and tell them what to do.

A couple of shell-shocked patrol officers stood shaking their heads at a police cruiser parked atop a gushing fire hydrant outside the copy shop, water cascading down Main Street and creating an almost perfect rainbow from one side of the road to the other.

No children splashed around in the impromptu fountain, not like Dean remembered him and Sam doing when they were kids and had come across such wonders of crap-ass engineering. Instead they seemed as out of it as their parents, the vast majority of Leicester’s inhabitants wandering around aimlessly, wondering how the hell they got there and why they seemed to have a gaping hole where their memory ought to be.

“Hey, you found your brother!” Brenda, the sugar plantation-owning diner waitress, lifted a hand toward them as she hung out of one of the diner’s broken windows.

“You remember that?” Sam strode across the street toward her, leaving Dean little choice but to follow, although he wasn’t entirely sure what Sam was actually asking the girl.

She blinked false eyelashes reminiscent of crane flies at him, staring at him blankly. “You were looking for him,” she told him a little hesitantly. “Earlier.”

“Earlier?” Sam seized on the word. “And you remember that?”

Brenda shrugged. “Yeah sure,” she said, but shook her head as she said it, confusion clouding her face. “Maybe.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I found him,” he said, turning to Dean before heading off along the street without a second glance at Brenda. “Thanks for your help with that,” he tossed back over his shoulder.

Dean frowned at Sam’s dismissal of the girl, smiling an apologetic little smile at her which she returned with a lascivious smirk that was anything but apologetic. “Glad to see you’re feeling better,” he told her, grinning back in an almost Pavlovian reaction to any pretty girl who looked at him that way. Before he could even take a step toward her, however, Sam grabbed his arm and pulled him away down the sidewalk. “Hey,” he protested. “I distinctly remember us having a discussion about personal space, Sammy!”

Sam halted, suddenly turning to his brother. “You remember anything else?” he demanded.

For a second Dean couldn’t read the expression on his brother’s face, taking an unintentional step backwards that was anything but subtle. “Like – what?” he faltered uncertainly.

“Like when that – that soul had control of you?” Sam clarified, his voice speeding up a little impatiently.

“Sam –”

“Where did you go, Dean? Before the bridge? Where were you? What did it make you do?”

Dean’s brow creased a little. “Why, Sam?” he asked. “What does it matter? And what makes you think it made me do anything?”

“Dean, it tried to make you kill yourself!”

“Exactly,” Dean agreed, although he wasn’t entirely sure what he was agreeing to. “I wasn’t in control –”

“No you weren’t.” Sam nodded. “And we don’t know who really was, do we? That dead farmer whose memories you shared, or – or Lucifer.”

“Sam –”

“Dean, if you remember what you did – where you went – maybe we could get a better idea of what Lucifier’s big plan was here! What the point was of all of this.”

“He told us his ‘big plan,’ Sammy,” Dean insisted. “Chaos! I don’t think he had a plan beyond that!”

Sam shook his head. “No. There’s gotta be more to it than that. This was a pretty elaborate stunt just to cause a little civil unrest –”

“You call this ‘civil unrest?’”

“– In a town that probably won’t be any more than a blip on the local evening news tonight.”

Dean considered that. “He said it was a test,” he recalled.

“A test for what?” Sam asked. “The real End of Days?”

Dean swallowed. “This ain’t the End of the World, Sam –”

“And do you remember what you were doing before the bridge?”

Dean’s stomach twisted into a whole series of knots. “No,” he admitted eventually. “Not until the bridge. Not until I saw you. I don’t know where I was or what I was doing.”

“And why is that, huh?” There was an edge of desperation in Sam’s voice. “Why could this thing get control of you when Haris’ shiniest Hellspawn couldn’t? Huh?” It was as if Sam expected Dean to have answers the way Dean had always had answers when they were younger.

Dean glanced down at the amulet for a second, no answers forthcoming. “Maybe this thing just protects me from demons –”

“And maybe next time Lucifer could walk you off the top of the Empire State Building!”

“Sam, you’re over-reacting to this –”

“Over-reacting?” Sam suddenly turned and grabbed Dean’s shoulders so hard the older brother winced. “You could have died, Dean!”

“Yeah, but I didn’t –”

“You could have died because he wanted to make a point!”

So that was what this was all about? “Huh?” Dean frowned, unable to shake the impression Sam was getting his panties in a bunch over a whole lot more than Lucifer managing to play Puppetmaster with big brother. “Sammy, what –”

“Were you scared?”

The sudden shift in gears left Dean feeling he was rapidly losing his grip on this conversation. If he and Sam were even having the same conversation. “Scared?” he clarified. “When?”

“When Lucifer had you dangling over that Hellgate like bait on a hook.”

Dean shifted his feet, mildly embarrassed. “You were dangling too –”

“Dean.”

Dean knew that tone of voice. Any minute now he was gonna get the bitchface. “What?”

“Were you scared?” Sam repeated the question with a roll of his eyes punctuated by an exhale, and Dean could see his little brother was rapidly losing his patience.

“Sam, I thought I was about to take the express elevator to Hell!” he burst out. “Minus the elevator!” He shifted uncomfortably, eyes downcast. “Of course I was scared.”

Even that admission didn’t seem to satisfy his brother.

“No,” Sam said shortly, eyes averted, just as Dean’s had been. “Not of that.” He took a breath. “Of me. Were you scared of me?”

Dean felt like a light bulb just exploded in front of his eyes at the exact same moment someone ripped out his guts with a soup spoon. “Sammy, what – what the hell are you talking about?” He knew what Sam was talking about. He knew only too well. But he needed to hear Sam say it.

“Dean,” Sam still wouldn’t look him in the eye. “What I did – what he made me do –”

“Saving my ass you mean?”

Sam finally met Dean’s gaze. “He used you. To get to me. To see what – what I could do with – with whatever the hell Haris left behind in my head.”

“Damsel in distress?” Dean smiled crookedly, but it didn’t quite meet his eyes.

“Dean –”

“I get it, okay, I’m not blind,” Dean continued. “What Lucifer said – about your abilities only seeming to kick in when someone’s trying to kill me? He was testing you, right? Pushing you?”

Sam nodded minutely, looking up at Dean through lowered lashes like a sulky six-year-old. A pretty terrified sulky six-year-old.

“But you pushed back,” Dean continued. “Huh? Used his own power against him? Like Alyssa. And Max. And whatever the hell you did to those body-snatchers back there.”

Sam nodded again reluctantly.

“And the tupilaq?” Dean pushed hesitantly. “That’s what you did to the tupilaq and the shaman up in Canada, huh? That’s how come the shaman ended up with his throat on the outside?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Sam blurted, absolute agony in his eyes. “I never meant to kill anyone, Dean! You gotta believe me! If I’d known what would happen – what the tupilaq would do…” He trailed off, shaking his head.

“Sammy, that guy had it coming!”

“But what if – what if Lucifer’s trying to pick up where Haris left off? Trying to make me into – something – whatever Haris was trying to make me into? What if –”

“Sammy.” Dean put a hand on his brother’s neck, stilling his anxious movements and forcing him to look at him. “Dude, chill. We already had this conversation, remember? Whatever happens with these superpowers of yours, you’re not gonna turn into Darth Vader, okay?”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know you, Sammy! You don’t have it in you to go Darkside! Sure, you can get pretty damn dark when you want to – especially when your freaky telekinesis thing is stopping Lucifer from dropping me into Hell! But Sam, you don’t need someone to stop you going Darkside because you’d never let it happen! Okay? Whatever I may have said to the contrary in the past, you’re a good person, Sammy. And good people don’t just up and turn evil overnight. Not even in our family. Sam, if it wasn’t for this ‘gift’ of yours I’d be roasting my ass off in the Fiery Furnace right about now! Now sure, some people might not agree with you, but I for one think that’s a good thing. You did a good thing, Sammy!”

Sam looked up at him, a glimmer of hope in his darkened eyes. “Yeah?”

“Damn straight! You did the female population of the world a huge favor keeping me around!” He grinned big. “Oh, and of course there was that little averting the Apocalypse thing, too.”

“Oh yeah,” Sam cracked a small smile. “That.”

“Plus,” Dean added, “you ever get the urge to shove me in a pit of molten lava and start walking around in a black plastic Halloween mask, leather jumpsuit and cape, you know I’ll kick your ass all over town.”

Sam actually laughed softly at that, some of the tension retreating from his eyes as Dean caught his shoulders and turned him back toward Main Street.

“Now stop being a little girl and come thank Malik for helping us kick Lucifer’s scaly butt, huh?”

Dean inclined his head toward the next street corner, where the engineer was lingering at the rear of a small crowd gathering around a beat-up flatbed Ford.

He turned when he saw them, beaming brightly as they approached.

“Hey!” he greeted them, throwing open his arms to indicate the town around him. “We saved the world!”

“And not a single cheerleader in sight,” Dean agreed, before adding, “More’s the pity.”

Malik caught his hand and shook it vigorously before repeating the maneuver with Sam. “When I heard about the plant –” He whistled. “I thought you two were hamburger meat for sure!”

Sam laughed at that. “Hellgates and collapsing buildings?” he said. “All in a day’s work for us.”

Malik nodded. “I’m starting to get that.” He inclined his head behind him, to where Preacher Warriner was climbing up onto the bed of the truck. “And so’s he.”

“The Lord has delivered us from evil!” Warriner began to inform the crowd animatedly. “He spoke and the ground trembled! He spoke and the Devil cowered in fear! He brought rains from the heavens to cleanse us – sunlight to warm us – instruments of His will to protect us –” the preacher was looking right at them as he said this, “and the evil spirits within us were gone! He shook the world to its foundation and the Beast was cast back down into the Pit where he belongs! We are saved because God wills it so! Pray with me, neighbors…”

“Wow, he got a lot of new material outta this thing,” Dean observed.

“And a lot of people to try it out on,” Malik agreed. “Thanks to you guys. We pumped enough holy water into the local water table and the reservoir so that pretty much everyone from here to Worcester should be straightened out by now –”

“Worcester!” Sam burst out. “Rosa! The doctor at the hospital there – I hope she’s –”

“They’re back open to trauma cases,” Malik informed him. “So I guess the folks there must be okay.”

Sam breathed a sigh of relief, once again shaking Malik’s hand. “Listen, thanks again, man,” he said sincerely.

“Couldn’t o’ done a thing without you guys.”

“We owe you a beer,” Dean told him. “Hell, we owe you a keg of beer!”

Malik frowned slightly, seeming a little disappointed. “You guys not sticking around?” There was something in Dean’s tone that suggested he wasn’t going to be sharing that keg with him.

“No,” both brothers said simultaneously.

“You think we want the blame for destroying a multi-million dollar development site?” Dean asked. “Nah man, we’re outta here before Smokey spots the out-of-towners and hauls us into jail just for the hell of it!”

Malik nodded. “Understandable,” he said.

“You take care,” Sam told him, nodding gratefully at him before he and Dean turned back in the direction of where they’d left the Impala.

“You too.”

“Oh we always do,” Dean assured him, as he and Sam made to head on out. “Except when we don’t and Lucifer tries to drop us into Hell,” he added under his breath.

“Nobody’s perfect,” Sam told him, grinning as the sound of Warriner’s sermon began to recede into background noise.

“Maybe the Preacher’s right though,” Dean grinned up at him. “Maybe you’re – like – an instrument of God or something – smiting the wicked. You always did look the smiting type.”

“Shut up.”

“Better than being Lucifer’s bitch.”

Sam had to agree on that one. “Yeah, I guess.”

“This could be inconvenient though,” Dean continued.

“Huh?”

“Your SuperSammy superpowers only kicking in when someone wants to kill me.”

Sam snickered, shoving his brother playfully with one shoulder. “Oh I dunno,” he said. “I wanna kill you myself ninety-nine percent of the time so I think maybe this could work for us.”

Dean grimaced up at him. “I’ll remember that next time we’re about to fall through a Gateway to Hell and your humungous ass is pulling my arm outta its socket.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Sam advised him, before glancing sideways at him. “And stop calling me ‘SuperSammy’.”

“Huh?”

Sam grinned just a little. “It’s ‘SuperSam’.”

The End

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The Winchester Chronicles