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alchemyaliceTitle: On the Wings of War
Author: Alchemy Alice
Genre and/or Pairing: Action/Adventure/Horror, possibly Dean/Castiel
Rating: R for violence
Warnings/Spoilers: Up to 5.14-ish? It goes AWOL from there. Also further abuse of Revelations, and the occasional major gore-fest.
Word Count: No idea yet, but very, very long.
Disclaimer: Entirely not mine. Just playin'.
Summary: The Horsemen are not just people with fancy rings. They aren’t even demons with fancy rings. They are another species entirely, a force unto themselves, and Lucifer is kidding himself if he thinks that they are at his beck and call. They are separate. They are discreet. They are neutral. Dean Winchester is not built like them.
A/N: There is a chapter super early this week because instead of doing my real person work my brain got kidnapped by plot points and internal consistencies and then all of a sudden it was the middle of the night and this was on my computer instead of my research notes. I feel productive, but also really, really not. So yeah.
Also, anyone who spots the White Collar reference gets a prize!
Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Sam was really, really glad they didn’t have to drive to Portland. Because even though this was like getting his fingernails ripped out, eighteen hours in a confined space would have been like getting his face ripped off instead. So he’d take what he could get.
Even so.
“I can’t believe you! What did those plants ever do to you?”
“Disobeyed,” Crowley said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “But see, now they don’t. They’re the most beautiful rubber plants in the world.”
“You’re a very particular kind of bastard,” Gabriel replied. “I think I’d actually like you more if you were a little more straightforwardly demonic.”
“If I was more straightforwardly demonic, I wouldn’t be helping you.”
“And then I wouldn’t have to restrain myself from drawing my sword on you.”
“Gosh, I had no idea I had such an effect on you. Enough to relapse from your pagan days! Are you going to go about with a trumpet again? I miss those times.”
“I will throw you back to Hell and leave you for Lucifer. Better yet, I’ll trap you in a pocket of Heaven where no one will find you, and the light of righteousness will rip you apart like Prometheus upon the rocks--”
“…And that’s enough,” Sam said, and resolutely stepped between them on the sidewalk. “Can we please go get Pestilence now?”
“Sammy Winchester, large and in charge,” Gabriel noted with a smirk.
“Don’t start,” Sam warned.
“Are you going to take that?” Crowley inquired of Gabriel.
“And as for you, I’m going to put holy water in a water pistol and start spraying you with it,” Sam said, as Gabriel puffed up like an indignant bird. “Let’s go.”
The clinic was a few blocks down, and there was a line out the door. Sam looked at wan faces and muffled coughs and said, “Why aren’t these people in the hospital?”
“Dude, you don’t go to the hospital,” one of the people in line spoke up. He was a thin man, early thirties by Sam’s estimation, wearing plaid like it was still the 90s and grunge was king. The guy next to him murmured congested agreement.
“Why not?” Gabriel asked, but his voice was already sharper, like he was honing in.
“Nobody comes out of there,” the guy’s friend said. “It’s more a hospice than a hospital. Better deal than assisted suicide, I hear.”
“And no one’s…doing anything about that?” Sam asked slowly.
Plaid Shirt Guy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know where you’ve been living man, but around here the government’s been getting really good at not doing shit lately. Like, more than usual.”
Sam had noticed. But then again, he’d also had more pressing things to worry about than the slow breakdown of law and order that followed Lucifer’s rise. Things like his brother growing wings. Not for the first time, he wished intensely that Dean hadn’t taken so long adjusting to his transformation, because in the time that they’d spent arguing and negotiating and cleaning blood off the panic room walls the Apocalypse clearly hadn’t waited for them. And then Sam promptly felt guilty about wishing. He said, “Right. What direction is the hospital, then?”
“Come on,” Gabriel said. “I already know.”
They stepped into the alley alongside the clinic and a snap of fingers later, they were in front of the hospital. Just like the high rise in Austin, it seemed to gather the shadows to itself. Sam couldn’t blame anyone for wanting to go to the clinic instead, even without the unspoken ‘no exit’ policy.
“Oh yeah,” Crowley said, breathing out. “He’s here.”
Gabriel nodded. Silently, they headed inside.
It wasn’t crowded. The staff milled around, looking mostly normal, but there was a pervasive air of worry that manifested even more strongly than the usual medical sterility of chemical smells and sweat. The patients themselves were mostly quiet, but also mostly grim.
“Where should we start?” Sam said.
“Upstairs,” Gabriel said. “In quarantine.” He looked at Sam assessingly, and then snapped his fingers. Abruptly, Sam was wearing scrubs and an ID badge. Gabriel, of course, had the lab coat and stethoscope. He raised his eyebrows at Crowley, hand opening again.
“Don’t you dare,” Crowley growled. “This is my best suit.”
“I’d bring it back,” Gabriel complained.
“Elevator,” Sam said through gritted teeth. This was reminding him way too much of TV Land. TV Land, and general suckage. He could almost feel his balls twinge in some sort of awful muscle memory.
Gabriel finished the second snap, but only to pin an ID on Crowley’s lapel, which the demon endured with small affronted noises. They stepped into the elevator along with two nurses and an empty stretcher.
On the third floor, the nurses exited, and on the fourth, they did. Crowley sniffed the air, and then jerked his head to the left. As they walked, Sam coughed suddenly.
Gabriel shot him a look. Sam coughed again, and this time it felt phlegmy, his chest tight with fluid. “Crap,” he said, and it came out a rasp. Throat going, too. That was fast.
“Guess we’re close,” Crowley said, and kept walking. Gabriel followed close behind, his hand finding Sam’s elbow and pulling him stumblingly forward.
Crowley stopped in front of a locked ward, and peered inside. He looked back over at Sam, who now looked pale and uncomfortably damp. “After you,” he said.
Sam gave him a bitchface actually strengthened by the green tinge the skin around his eyes had developed, and the vague aura of a man on the verge of vomiting. Without saying anything, however, he walked forward and heavily put his hand on the door handle.
Gabriel made a slight flicking motion with his wrist, and the handle gave way.
Sam was barely through the door when it slammed shut behind him. He leaned back against it heavily, his mind fuzzed with fever. So much for backup, he thought hazily.
The ward was full—patients in every bed. All of them looked on the verge of death, pale and unmoving, breathing shallowly but with rasping desperation loud enough to make the whole room resonate with the hushed, horrifying sounds of slow disintegration. The halogen lights overhead flickered slightly.
“Mr. Winchester, I presume?”
“That’s me,” Sam said, but it came out through the thin scratchy whisper of laryngitis.
Pestilence looked normal enough. Just a man in a suit, like War had been. Though where War had been sharpness and hard lines and sneers, Pestilence was smeary at the edges, like he’d walked out of a particularly abstract watercolor painting. His eyes were dewy and faintly red, lips damp with saliva. His suit was yellow tweed that frayed at the cuffs and wasn’t buttoned right. He looked like a professor during exam week.
He tapped one limp hand against the foot of a sleeping man in the bed next to him. Abruptly, the man let out a rattling gasp, and several seconds later the sharp scent of bloody urine reached Sam, who immediately tamped down on the urge to retch. He said, “You know why I’m here.”
“Mm, yes. Your brother, wheeling and dealing with mine. It’s quaint. It’s different. Color me somewhat impressed.”
“It’ll free you from Lucifer,” Sam said. Unsteadily, he drew his knife from his pocket.
Pestilence eyed it with distaste. His lip curled before he smiled.
“It’s very fortunate that I value my freedom as much as I do,” he said. And then he went over to a cart, and pulled it to him. With slow careless movements, he cleared its surface and then, very deliberately, placed his hand on it.
The ring on his finger was dull and slightly mottled with grime. He was still a good fifteen feet from the door on which Sam leaned.
Pestilence said, “If you can get close enough to me to do it, the ring is yours.”
Sam groaned slightly; even in the brief time the exchange had taken, he’d felt his fever raise enough to make his vision swim. His skin felt slick and shivery, wanting to contract in on itself but his stomach wouldn’t let it, wouldn’t tolerate it without turning itself inside out.
He put his knife back in his pocket. He had a feeling he’d need both hands by the end of this. Fifteen feet never looked so vast. He pressed his hands flat against the surface of the door, reveling in its coolness for a brief second, and then pushed himself upright.
Almost immediately he staggered. His joints weren’t really working right anymore, they creaked in unexpected places and felt leaden and inflamed.
“Osteoarthritis,” Pestilence said helpfully. “It follows the swine flu. If you hurry up, you may manage to avoid the syphilis.”
Sam grunted. So that’s why his arms felt like they were detaching from him. He took several unsteady steps forward, and then had to stop as his vision warped out into a haze of bright colors followed by blotchy darkness. He blinked hard. A terrible part of his brain wondered with no small measure of hysteria whether he was going to start bleeding from his ears soon, because God, cranial bleeding wasn’t far behind if he’d only gone five feet and there were ten more to go.
He steadied himself on the bed frame next to him and pushed himself forward. Got three feet further before his legs gave up altogether and he nearly cracked his jaw open on the floor.
Pestilence tutted with faint impatience, though not without an additional air of fascination.
Sam coughed up blood, and spat it out on the floor before inching several more feet closer.
“Lung cancer,” Pestilence tallied, like he was trying to fill a bingo sheet. “You shouldn’t have tried that one cigarette in college. Carcinogens stick around. At least, around me, they tend to. You had best hurry before the plague catches up to the party.”
“Glad this a party for someone,” Sam said, and with what felt like an arm made of jelly, grasped the wheel of the cart, and pulled.
Pestilence obligingly followed it, and as a result, Sam was violently sick on the bottom shelf.
When it felt like his stomach was done pulling itself into new and interesting shapes, he got a firm grip on the cart with both hands and pulled himself up. When Pestilence came back into view over the edge of the top shelf, there was two of him.
“Shit,” Sam muttered.
“Double vision? Just the fever still doing its work,” Pestilence said, looking at his watch. “I’d aim for the hand on the left, that usually works.”
Sam hoisted himself up on his elbows, and prayed the cart would hold his weight, because there was no telling now long his knees could keep him upright. He wanted to be fast, he wanted this to be over so badly with the childish desperation that made him want Dean to give him soup and tell him to man up because everything hurt now, it tasted sour in his mouth and ached. He fumbled the knife back out of his pocket with one hand and with the other made a grab at Pestilence’s hand.
The Horseman hissed as Sam grasped it, his clammy fingers stilling when he felt the ring. He looked blearily up at Pestilence as he put the knife-edge at the base of his finger. “Okay?” he said, and coughed wetly.
Pestilence nodded, a strange expression of clinical interest and amused respect on his slouchy, professorial face.
With the last of his strength, Sam pulled the knife across and down, clumsily severing flesh, sinew and bone. He felt the finger and ring come away in his hand as he fell back onto the floor, slipping in his own blood, before consciousness abandoned him.
***
“You’re going to have to follow me,” Castiel said. “If we are to end up in the same part of Marrakech.”
“If I’m even gonna get to Marrakech,” Dean corrected, “Given I’ve never gone before.”
“That’s the least of our worries,” Bobby interrupted. “Boy, you’ve got wings. Extremely visible, extremely scary-looking wings. And did I mention, visible?”
“I believe I can create an illusion that will prevent people from seeing them,” Castiel said, “But any supernatural creature we come across will be able to penetrate it.”
Dean frowned. “How much of your mojo is that gonna take up, Cas?”
Castiel’s mouth twisted slightly before he said, “Not an inconsiderable amount, but it is doable.”
“Dude, no. This isn’t life or death; we’ll deal with it some other way.”
“It’ll be life or death if someone decides to take a crack at you,” Bobby grunted.
Dean glared at him. “No. I’ll cope, I’ll stay out of sight until you call me or something. It’s stupid to waste your grace on something like this.”
“If it keeps you out of harm’s way—“
“I can take care of myself, Cas,” Dean cut him off. “Especially with spiky wing things. Now, what do I have to do to follow you?”
Castiel explained. Apparently despite traveling in impossible ways through time and space, angels and other supernatural flying things did leave a trail, of a kind. Dean listened intently, and then nodded. “Okay. We go there, I’ll find a place to hang that’s close by. You guys are gonna need to check out the churches, but as soon as you find the right one, you call me, and we’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect it. By the way, Cas, how’s Lucifer gonna go about desecrating these places?”
“Killing a holy man inside it is the most straightforward way,” Castiel said briefly. “But there are wards we can put up to prevent such things.”
“Right. We’ll have to break in to put those up.”
“Actually,” Castiel said consideringly, “We may not have to.”
***
Marrakech was huge and bustling and beautiful. Dean sort of just wanted to tour around, but obviously that was out of the question. Directly after landing, Cas had grabbed him and brought him to one of the churches, which actually wasn’t a church at all.
“A former Koranic boarding school,” Castiel said briefly, checking the door to the small room they now stood in for possible prying eyes. “There is only one major Christian church in Marrakech, but there are multiple mosques and other holy ground that can serve as a potential building point for the gate. This is one of them.”
“That…certainly widens the search,” Dean said, blinking. “Are we in a dorm room?”
“Which is why we should be grateful for Crowley’s cooperation. If we can secure the three locations that he knows, then I can build the coordinates of the others off of them. Stay here until I call you.”
And then he was gone.
Dean looked around at the empty bedroom, which was empty and clean and appropriately Spartan, for a religious dorm room. He sighed, and belatedly realized that when he did so, his wings drooped slightly. Well this was great.
***
Bobby was looking thoroughly bored by the time Castiel popped back into existence beside him at the main entrance to the building. “Got him squirreled away?” he said, as Castiel straightened the cuffs of his trench coat.
“He should go unnoticed where he is, yes.”
“And you’ve got a plan for when we actually need him.”
Castiel quirked that very subtle smile that Bobby was very slowly learning to spot. “I do.”
The boarding school, Ben Youssef Medersa, was not the locale they were looking for. Neither was the Church of the Saints-Martyrs, or the mosque, Moulay El Yazid. Bobby wasn’t entirely sure how Castiel could tell, but each time the angel popped them into an alcove from which they could emerge unseen, he led the way into the building, stopped in its main entrance, and then made the call and walked out. Bobby was beginning to feel redundant when finally they arrived at the Saadians tombs and as Castiel walked under the humble entrance arches he froze momentarily before pulling out his phone.
Bobby had time to hear him say into the phone, “I’m coming to retrieve you, we’ve found it,” before he’s alone in the hallway. He grumbled and wandered further inside, dodging tourists to get to where the hall opened into…Christ.
The tombs were both vast and intricate, scalloped arches so familiar as architecture and yet so intrinsically different in aesthetic from any building Bobby’d ever been in that it took him a moment to take it all in. Tile work stretched across the walls and floor in that bleached out dusty pastel unique to warm countries, and aside from the people it was just peaceful. Bobby found himself hoping to ward the place not because violence couldn’t happen here if they wanted to stop the apocalypse, but because it just shouldn’t.
Dean and Castiel appeared behind a pillar in a huff of air, and Bobby wanted to hiss at them to ask what the hell they think they’re doing, there are still people around, who wouldn’t take kindly to a mysterious stranger with massive angelic wings appearing out of nowhere.
Massive angelic…oh shit.
Bobby did a quick scan of the surrounds. Yes, not a lot of tourists—it was noon, lunchtime, and while the site was popular, it was still a necropolis, and people had better things to do during lunch than look at tombs.
Bobby looked back over to the column. Dean was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. He was also urging Castiel to take his trench coat off, so that the angel ended up cutting a slim, monastic profile in his black suit. Bobby shook his head. The angel was insane.
Castiel stepped out from behind the column as the most of the lingering tourists left and security began milling around, picking up discarded pamphlets and other detritus.
One of the guards looked up and frowned when he spotted him. Castiel looked gravely back with that strange innate authority, and said something in smooth, pitch-perfect Arabic that sounded both firm and kind.
And on cue, like the con man that he was, Dean fucking Winchester appeared in the largest archway, wings outstretched. He said, with a surprisingly competent accent (as far as Bobby could tell which, well, shit), “As salaam alaikum.”
The three tourists left over shrieked and sped to the exit. The two guards staggered back, and one reached for his radio but Castiel was in his space and placing a hand on it before he could get it out of his belt, and it made a sad fizzling noise like a wet cell phone. From there, the guards went the way of the tourists, scrambling as fast as they could.
Castiel said something else from behind them, and then there was a series of urgent shuffles followed by the doors closing at the entrance.
“The hell did you say to them?” Bobby asked, sort of knowing but needing to hear it anyway.
Castiel said, with no small amount of satisfaction, “I told them that an angel of the lord had descended and wished to pray for the dead. Also that they should lock the doors on their way out and not return until tomorrow.”
“There’s gotta be some rules about this idjit pretending to be an angel,” Bobby grumbled. “That’s like police impersonation.”
“To be fair, I do feel kinda blasphemous,” Dean said from the doorway, but Bobby could tell that he was enjoying himself, possibly more than he should. His wings were still framed in the arch like he was part of some sort of ridiculous portrait, and they flicked and flared like he was itching to use them to do something huge and impressive.
“I don’t think anyone could have predicted a need for such a rule,” Castiel said. He went and retrieved his coat from behind the pillar, and placed it neatly on a wooden bench. “We should begin,” he added, “There is still much to do, and we must hope that Lucifer does not find this place before we are done.”
***
“Sam. Samuel. Up and at ‘em.”
Sam became aware that he could breathe. Breathe deeply, and without hacking up chunks of lung.
He cracked his eyes open, and found Gabriel’s face hovering above his own. A blur of Crowley was further back. “What happened?” he asked.
“Pestilence fucked off after he was done testing you,” Crowley said. “He let us in to retrieve you. Well done on not dying. At least, not entirely.”
Gabriel nodded, “It would have been pretty inconvenient if you’d all the way died. Feeling all right now?”
“I think so,” Shakily, Sam sat up, weirdly surprised by Gabriel’s hand at his back, easing him upright. “You healed me?”
“You had about eighteen separate viruses in your system,” Gabriel said. “Along with a number of degenerative conditions, two sorts of cancer, and the first stages of syphilis. Would have been rude of me not to lend a hand.”
“Thanks,” Sam said. He was overwhelmingly tired. Everything still ached, though now it was with the strange return of health, tissue rebuilding itself and being surprised at its own usefulness. It was a thoroughly confusing sensation.
Gabriel helped him to his feet. “Still got the ring?” he said lightly.
Sam reacquainted himself with his left hand, which did in fact still clutch at a severed finger, and a sickly looking gold band. He discarded the finger with a grimace, the digit bouncing once on the floor before rolling away across the tiles and under the cart (a cart filled with his sick, ugh). Then he held up the ring and pocketed it. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
Crowley nodded, and Gabriel snapped his fingers.
Chapter Nine.
Author: Alchemy Alice
Genre and/or Pairing: Action/Adventure/Horror, possibly Dean/Castiel
Rating: R for violence
Warnings/Spoilers: Up to 5.14-ish? It goes AWOL from there. Also further abuse of Revelations, and the occasional major gore-fest.
Word Count: No idea yet, but very, very long.
Disclaimer: Entirely not mine. Just playin'.
Summary: The Horsemen are not just people with fancy rings. They aren’t even demons with fancy rings. They are another species entirely, a force unto themselves, and Lucifer is kidding himself if he thinks that they are at his beck and call. They are separate. They are discreet. They are neutral. Dean Winchester is not built like them.
A/N: There is a chapter super early this week because instead of doing my real person work my brain got kidnapped by plot points and internal consistencies and then all of a sudden it was the middle of the night and this was on my computer instead of my research notes. I feel productive, but also really, really not. So yeah.
Also, anyone who spots the White Collar reference gets a prize!
Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Sam was really, really glad they didn’t have to drive to Portland. Because even though this was like getting his fingernails ripped out, eighteen hours in a confined space would have been like getting his face ripped off instead. So he’d take what he could get.
Even so.
“I can’t believe you! What did those plants ever do to you?”
“Disobeyed,” Crowley said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “But see, now they don’t. They’re the most beautiful rubber plants in the world.”
“You’re a very particular kind of bastard,” Gabriel replied. “I think I’d actually like you more if you were a little more straightforwardly demonic.”
“If I was more straightforwardly demonic, I wouldn’t be helping you.”
“And then I wouldn’t have to restrain myself from drawing my sword on you.”
“Gosh, I had no idea I had such an effect on you. Enough to relapse from your pagan days! Are you going to go about with a trumpet again? I miss those times.”
“I will throw you back to Hell and leave you for Lucifer. Better yet, I’ll trap you in a pocket of Heaven where no one will find you, and the light of righteousness will rip you apart like Prometheus upon the rocks--”
“…And that’s enough,” Sam said, and resolutely stepped between them on the sidewalk. “Can we please go get Pestilence now?”
“Sammy Winchester, large and in charge,” Gabriel noted with a smirk.
“Don’t start,” Sam warned.
“Are you going to take that?” Crowley inquired of Gabriel.
“And as for you, I’m going to put holy water in a water pistol and start spraying you with it,” Sam said, as Gabriel puffed up like an indignant bird. “Let’s go.”
The clinic was a few blocks down, and there was a line out the door. Sam looked at wan faces and muffled coughs and said, “Why aren’t these people in the hospital?”
“Dude, you don’t go to the hospital,” one of the people in line spoke up. He was a thin man, early thirties by Sam’s estimation, wearing plaid like it was still the 90s and grunge was king. The guy next to him murmured congested agreement.
“Why not?” Gabriel asked, but his voice was already sharper, like he was honing in.
“Nobody comes out of there,” the guy’s friend said. “It’s more a hospice than a hospital. Better deal than assisted suicide, I hear.”
“And no one’s…doing anything about that?” Sam asked slowly.
Plaid Shirt Guy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know where you’ve been living man, but around here the government’s been getting really good at not doing shit lately. Like, more than usual.”
Sam had noticed. But then again, he’d also had more pressing things to worry about than the slow breakdown of law and order that followed Lucifer’s rise. Things like his brother growing wings. Not for the first time, he wished intensely that Dean hadn’t taken so long adjusting to his transformation, because in the time that they’d spent arguing and negotiating and cleaning blood off the panic room walls the Apocalypse clearly hadn’t waited for them. And then Sam promptly felt guilty about wishing. He said, “Right. What direction is the hospital, then?”
“Come on,” Gabriel said. “I already know.”
They stepped into the alley alongside the clinic and a snap of fingers later, they were in front of the hospital. Just like the high rise in Austin, it seemed to gather the shadows to itself. Sam couldn’t blame anyone for wanting to go to the clinic instead, even without the unspoken ‘no exit’ policy.
“Oh yeah,” Crowley said, breathing out. “He’s here.”
Gabriel nodded. Silently, they headed inside.
It wasn’t crowded. The staff milled around, looking mostly normal, but there was a pervasive air of worry that manifested even more strongly than the usual medical sterility of chemical smells and sweat. The patients themselves were mostly quiet, but also mostly grim.
“Where should we start?” Sam said.
“Upstairs,” Gabriel said. “In quarantine.” He looked at Sam assessingly, and then snapped his fingers. Abruptly, Sam was wearing scrubs and an ID badge. Gabriel, of course, had the lab coat and stethoscope. He raised his eyebrows at Crowley, hand opening again.
“Don’t you dare,” Crowley growled. “This is my best suit.”
“I’d bring it back,” Gabriel complained.
“Elevator,” Sam said through gritted teeth. This was reminding him way too much of TV Land. TV Land, and general suckage. He could almost feel his balls twinge in some sort of awful muscle memory.
Gabriel finished the second snap, but only to pin an ID on Crowley’s lapel, which the demon endured with small affronted noises. They stepped into the elevator along with two nurses and an empty stretcher.
On the third floor, the nurses exited, and on the fourth, they did. Crowley sniffed the air, and then jerked his head to the left. As they walked, Sam coughed suddenly.
Gabriel shot him a look. Sam coughed again, and this time it felt phlegmy, his chest tight with fluid. “Crap,” he said, and it came out a rasp. Throat going, too. That was fast.
“Guess we’re close,” Crowley said, and kept walking. Gabriel followed close behind, his hand finding Sam’s elbow and pulling him stumblingly forward.
Crowley stopped in front of a locked ward, and peered inside. He looked back over at Sam, who now looked pale and uncomfortably damp. “After you,” he said.
Sam gave him a bitchface actually strengthened by the green tinge the skin around his eyes had developed, and the vague aura of a man on the verge of vomiting. Without saying anything, however, he walked forward and heavily put his hand on the door handle.
Gabriel made a slight flicking motion with his wrist, and the handle gave way.
Sam was barely through the door when it slammed shut behind him. He leaned back against it heavily, his mind fuzzed with fever. So much for backup, he thought hazily.
The ward was full—patients in every bed. All of them looked on the verge of death, pale and unmoving, breathing shallowly but with rasping desperation loud enough to make the whole room resonate with the hushed, horrifying sounds of slow disintegration. The halogen lights overhead flickered slightly.
“Mr. Winchester, I presume?”
“That’s me,” Sam said, but it came out through the thin scratchy whisper of laryngitis.
Pestilence looked normal enough. Just a man in a suit, like War had been. Though where War had been sharpness and hard lines and sneers, Pestilence was smeary at the edges, like he’d walked out of a particularly abstract watercolor painting. His eyes were dewy and faintly red, lips damp with saliva. His suit was yellow tweed that frayed at the cuffs and wasn’t buttoned right. He looked like a professor during exam week.
He tapped one limp hand against the foot of a sleeping man in the bed next to him. Abruptly, the man let out a rattling gasp, and several seconds later the sharp scent of bloody urine reached Sam, who immediately tamped down on the urge to retch. He said, “You know why I’m here.”
“Mm, yes. Your brother, wheeling and dealing with mine. It’s quaint. It’s different. Color me somewhat impressed.”
“It’ll free you from Lucifer,” Sam said. Unsteadily, he drew his knife from his pocket.
Pestilence eyed it with distaste. His lip curled before he smiled.
“It’s very fortunate that I value my freedom as much as I do,” he said. And then he went over to a cart, and pulled it to him. With slow careless movements, he cleared its surface and then, very deliberately, placed his hand on it.
The ring on his finger was dull and slightly mottled with grime. He was still a good fifteen feet from the door on which Sam leaned.
Pestilence said, “If you can get close enough to me to do it, the ring is yours.”
Sam groaned slightly; even in the brief time the exchange had taken, he’d felt his fever raise enough to make his vision swim. His skin felt slick and shivery, wanting to contract in on itself but his stomach wouldn’t let it, wouldn’t tolerate it without turning itself inside out.
He put his knife back in his pocket. He had a feeling he’d need both hands by the end of this. Fifteen feet never looked so vast. He pressed his hands flat against the surface of the door, reveling in its coolness for a brief second, and then pushed himself upright.
Almost immediately he staggered. His joints weren’t really working right anymore, they creaked in unexpected places and felt leaden and inflamed.
“Osteoarthritis,” Pestilence said helpfully. “It follows the swine flu. If you hurry up, you may manage to avoid the syphilis.”
Sam grunted. So that’s why his arms felt like they were detaching from him. He took several unsteady steps forward, and then had to stop as his vision warped out into a haze of bright colors followed by blotchy darkness. He blinked hard. A terrible part of his brain wondered with no small measure of hysteria whether he was going to start bleeding from his ears soon, because God, cranial bleeding wasn’t far behind if he’d only gone five feet and there were ten more to go.
He steadied himself on the bed frame next to him and pushed himself forward. Got three feet further before his legs gave up altogether and he nearly cracked his jaw open on the floor.
Pestilence tutted with faint impatience, though not without an additional air of fascination.
Sam coughed up blood, and spat it out on the floor before inching several more feet closer.
“Lung cancer,” Pestilence tallied, like he was trying to fill a bingo sheet. “You shouldn’t have tried that one cigarette in college. Carcinogens stick around. At least, around me, they tend to. You had best hurry before the plague catches up to the party.”
“Glad this a party for someone,” Sam said, and with what felt like an arm made of jelly, grasped the wheel of the cart, and pulled.
Pestilence obligingly followed it, and as a result, Sam was violently sick on the bottom shelf.
When it felt like his stomach was done pulling itself into new and interesting shapes, he got a firm grip on the cart with both hands and pulled himself up. When Pestilence came back into view over the edge of the top shelf, there was two of him.
“Shit,” Sam muttered.
“Double vision? Just the fever still doing its work,” Pestilence said, looking at his watch. “I’d aim for the hand on the left, that usually works.”
Sam hoisted himself up on his elbows, and prayed the cart would hold his weight, because there was no telling now long his knees could keep him upright. He wanted to be fast, he wanted this to be over so badly with the childish desperation that made him want Dean to give him soup and tell him to man up because everything hurt now, it tasted sour in his mouth and ached. He fumbled the knife back out of his pocket with one hand and with the other made a grab at Pestilence’s hand.
The Horseman hissed as Sam grasped it, his clammy fingers stilling when he felt the ring. He looked blearily up at Pestilence as he put the knife-edge at the base of his finger. “Okay?” he said, and coughed wetly.
Pestilence nodded, a strange expression of clinical interest and amused respect on his slouchy, professorial face.
With the last of his strength, Sam pulled the knife across and down, clumsily severing flesh, sinew and bone. He felt the finger and ring come away in his hand as he fell back onto the floor, slipping in his own blood, before consciousness abandoned him.
***
“You’re going to have to follow me,” Castiel said. “If we are to end up in the same part of Marrakech.”
“If I’m even gonna get to Marrakech,” Dean corrected, “Given I’ve never gone before.”
“That’s the least of our worries,” Bobby interrupted. “Boy, you’ve got wings. Extremely visible, extremely scary-looking wings. And did I mention, visible?”
“I believe I can create an illusion that will prevent people from seeing them,” Castiel said, “But any supernatural creature we come across will be able to penetrate it.”
Dean frowned. “How much of your mojo is that gonna take up, Cas?”
Castiel’s mouth twisted slightly before he said, “Not an inconsiderable amount, but it is doable.”
“Dude, no. This isn’t life or death; we’ll deal with it some other way.”
“It’ll be life or death if someone decides to take a crack at you,” Bobby grunted.
Dean glared at him. “No. I’ll cope, I’ll stay out of sight until you call me or something. It’s stupid to waste your grace on something like this.”
“If it keeps you out of harm’s way—“
“I can take care of myself, Cas,” Dean cut him off. “Especially with spiky wing things. Now, what do I have to do to follow you?”
Castiel explained. Apparently despite traveling in impossible ways through time and space, angels and other supernatural flying things did leave a trail, of a kind. Dean listened intently, and then nodded. “Okay. We go there, I’ll find a place to hang that’s close by. You guys are gonna need to check out the churches, but as soon as you find the right one, you call me, and we’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect it. By the way, Cas, how’s Lucifer gonna go about desecrating these places?”
“Killing a holy man inside it is the most straightforward way,” Castiel said briefly. “But there are wards we can put up to prevent such things.”
“Right. We’ll have to break in to put those up.”
“Actually,” Castiel said consideringly, “We may not have to.”
***
Marrakech was huge and bustling and beautiful. Dean sort of just wanted to tour around, but obviously that was out of the question. Directly after landing, Cas had grabbed him and brought him to one of the churches, which actually wasn’t a church at all.
“A former Koranic boarding school,” Castiel said briefly, checking the door to the small room they now stood in for possible prying eyes. “There is only one major Christian church in Marrakech, but there are multiple mosques and other holy ground that can serve as a potential building point for the gate. This is one of them.”
“That…certainly widens the search,” Dean said, blinking. “Are we in a dorm room?”
“Which is why we should be grateful for Crowley’s cooperation. If we can secure the three locations that he knows, then I can build the coordinates of the others off of them. Stay here until I call you.”
And then he was gone.
Dean looked around at the empty bedroom, which was empty and clean and appropriately Spartan, for a religious dorm room. He sighed, and belatedly realized that when he did so, his wings drooped slightly. Well this was great.
***
Bobby was looking thoroughly bored by the time Castiel popped back into existence beside him at the main entrance to the building. “Got him squirreled away?” he said, as Castiel straightened the cuffs of his trench coat.
“He should go unnoticed where he is, yes.”
“And you’ve got a plan for when we actually need him.”
Castiel quirked that very subtle smile that Bobby was very slowly learning to spot. “I do.”
The boarding school, Ben Youssef Medersa, was not the locale they were looking for. Neither was the Church of the Saints-Martyrs, or the mosque, Moulay El Yazid. Bobby wasn’t entirely sure how Castiel could tell, but each time the angel popped them into an alcove from which they could emerge unseen, he led the way into the building, stopped in its main entrance, and then made the call and walked out. Bobby was beginning to feel redundant when finally they arrived at the Saadians tombs and as Castiel walked under the humble entrance arches he froze momentarily before pulling out his phone.
Bobby had time to hear him say into the phone, “I’m coming to retrieve you, we’ve found it,” before he’s alone in the hallway. He grumbled and wandered further inside, dodging tourists to get to where the hall opened into…Christ.
The tombs were both vast and intricate, scalloped arches so familiar as architecture and yet so intrinsically different in aesthetic from any building Bobby’d ever been in that it took him a moment to take it all in. Tile work stretched across the walls and floor in that bleached out dusty pastel unique to warm countries, and aside from the people it was just peaceful. Bobby found himself hoping to ward the place not because violence couldn’t happen here if they wanted to stop the apocalypse, but because it just shouldn’t.
Dean and Castiel appeared behind a pillar in a huff of air, and Bobby wanted to hiss at them to ask what the hell they think they’re doing, there are still people around, who wouldn’t take kindly to a mysterious stranger with massive angelic wings appearing out of nowhere.
Massive angelic…oh shit.
Bobby did a quick scan of the surrounds. Yes, not a lot of tourists—it was noon, lunchtime, and while the site was popular, it was still a necropolis, and people had better things to do during lunch than look at tombs.
Bobby looked back over to the column. Dean was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. He was also urging Castiel to take his trench coat off, so that the angel ended up cutting a slim, monastic profile in his black suit. Bobby shook his head. The angel was insane.
Castiel stepped out from behind the column as the most of the lingering tourists left and security began milling around, picking up discarded pamphlets and other detritus.
One of the guards looked up and frowned when he spotted him. Castiel looked gravely back with that strange innate authority, and said something in smooth, pitch-perfect Arabic that sounded both firm and kind.
And on cue, like the con man that he was, Dean fucking Winchester appeared in the largest archway, wings outstretched. He said, with a surprisingly competent accent (as far as Bobby could tell which, well, shit), “As salaam alaikum.”
The three tourists left over shrieked and sped to the exit. The two guards staggered back, and one reached for his radio but Castiel was in his space and placing a hand on it before he could get it out of his belt, and it made a sad fizzling noise like a wet cell phone. From there, the guards went the way of the tourists, scrambling as fast as they could.
Castiel said something else from behind them, and then there was a series of urgent shuffles followed by the doors closing at the entrance.
“The hell did you say to them?” Bobby asked, sort of knowing but needing to hear it anyway.
Castiel said, with no small amount of satisfaction, “I told them that an angel of the lord had descended and wished to pray for the dead. Also that they should lock the doors on their way out and not return until tomorrow.”
“There’s gotta be some rules about this idjit pretending to be an angel,” Bobby grumbled. “That’s like police impersonation.”
“To be fair, I do feel kinda blasphemous,” Dean said from the doorway, but Bobby could tell that he was enjoying himself, possibly more than he should. His wings were still framed in the arch like he was part of some sort of ridiculous portrait, and they flicked and flared like he was itching to use them to do something huge and impressive.
“I don’t think anyone could have predicted a need for such a rule,” Castiel said. He went and retrieved his coat from behind the pillar, and placed it neatly on a wooden bench. “We should begin,” he added, “There is still much to do, and we must hope that Lucifer does not find this place before we are done.”
***
“Sam. Samuel. Up and at ‘em.”
Sam became aware that he could breathe. Breathe deeply, and without hacking up chunks of lung.
He cracked his eyes open, and found Gabriel’s face hovering above his own. A blur of Crowley was further back. “What happened?” he asked.
“Pestilence fucked off after he was done testing you,” Crowley said. “He let us in to retrieve you. Well done on not dying. At least, not entirely.”
Gabriel nodded, “It would have been pretty inconvenient if you’d all the way died. Feeling all right now?”
“I think so,” Shakily, Sam sat up, weirdly surprised by Gabriel’s hand at his back, easing him upright. “You healed me?”
“You had about eighteen separate viruses in your system,” Gabriel said. “Along with a number of degenerative conditions, two sorts of cancer, and the first stages of syphilis. Would have been rude of me not to lend a hand.”
“Thanks,” Sam said. He was overwhelmingly tired. Everything still ached, though now it was with the strange return of health, tissue rebuilding itself and being surprised at its own usefulness. It was a thoroughly confusing sensation.
Gabriel helped him to his feet. “Still got the ring?” he said lightly.
Sam reacquainted himself with his left hand, which did in fact still clutch at a severed finger, and a sickly looking gold band. He discarded the finger with a grimace, the digit bouncing once on the floor before rolling away across the tiles and under the cart (a cart filled with his sick, ugh). Then he held up the ring and pocketed it. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
Crowley nodded, and Gabriel snapped his fingers.
Chapter Nine.
yay!
Date: 22 Jun 2010 09:27 (UTC)But Gabriel and Crowley's snarking fest in the begining? And Cas beeing all sneaky and Dean scaring the crap of peaple passing himself for an Angel? * \0/ /0\ \0/ /0\ *
I bow to your genius!
Oh but I love you! That was fantastic!! 8D
Winged Golden Tiger
Re: yay!
Date: 22 Jun 2010 19:05 (UTC)Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the snarking and badassery! I couldn't resist Dean's conman ways!
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Date: 22 Jun 2010 16:22 (UTC)no subject
Date: 22 Jun 2010 19:05 (UTC)no subject
Date: 22 Jun 2010 19:56 (UTC)no subject
Date: 22 Jun 2010 18:07 (UTC)OMFG, I LOVE YOUR BRAIN. LOVE, DO YOU HEAR ME?
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Date: 22 Jun 2010 19:08 (UTC)no subject
Date: 22 Jun 2010 22:45 (UTC)Man, I love this. Poor sick Sammy, Dean pretending to be an angel, and Crowley and Gabriel being antagonistic. <3
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Date: 23 Jun 2010 01:05 (UTC)no subject
Date: 24 Jun 2010 10:27 (UTC)How the heck do you come out with these words? It's descriptive and vivid and I can just picture Dean with his Batman wings greeting the guards, sending them all running.
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Date: 24 Jun 2010 14:36 (UTC)As for words...I guess being an English major helps some? :P Thank you!
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Date: 29 Jul 2011 19:19 (UTC)no subject
Date: 29 Jul 2011 22:38 (UTC)YOUR COMMENTS ARE FILLING ME WITH JOY!