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Summary and warnings in part 1.
Part 4. No longer canon-compliant.
After a while, Samantha turned away from the space where the portal had been. “How mad do you think they are right now?”
Sam shrugged. “How mad is there?”
She attempted a wobbly smile.
“But they’re safe,” he pointed out, and got a look at how his own expression was when Dean said something redundant. It wasn’t all that flattering.
“We should—” she began, and then her hand shot to her head, pressing as if she were trying to stop a spurting wound. Her face contorted, her mouth open on a voiceless scream. She staggered and Sam hurried to catch her, but she righted herself before he could do more than put his hand on her shoulder. She pulled away like he was made of ice and went to sit down, slumping into her chair as she swiped at her face. When she brought her hands down, he saw traces of blood on her fingers, but he couldn’t figure out its source.
“What is it?” If this was what he’d looked like having a vision, no wonder Dean had always hated the powers so much.
She kept her eyes closed. “Two seals, one right on top of the other.”
Sam felt like collapsing himself. It was supposed to be over.
Lilith must have figured out a workaround—as long as she had Samantha, she might not need Dee. Maybe there was some other human for her to fight with, or maybe Castiel had been right all along and the battle was within her soul. For Dean, Sam could have laid down his life. Without him, Sam would have fought, not because he had hope but because he refused to give in. There wasn’t much of a chance that Samantha was different on that count.
He shuffled over to the nearest bed and sat down, rubbing his hands through his hair and not looking up.
After a few minutes, Samantha’s phone buzzed, skittering along the table where it was resting next to her laptop.
She was steady enough to grab it. “Yeah.” She listened for a minute, frowning. “I don’t know, Bobby. Samuel came through all right, but we don’t—No. No. I said, no. This is not the time—I’ll call you back.”
Snapping the phone closed, she grimaced at Sam. “Bobby’s not real pleased with me right now. He mostly puts up with me, but he loves--” She stopped, as if just now considering whether she ought to use the past tense. “Anyway, he says a couple of hunters tried that mass exorcism trick we pulled in Colorado, worked fine but now there are all these comets falling out of the sky.”
Sam nodded. A mass exorcism would account for the seal he’d opened back in his world, and then some separate battle had been lost over the other one.
At the time they’d told Bobby about the recorded exorcism they’d used in Monument, it had seemed like an important advance in the state of the art, one worth spreading to other hunters. He’d forgotten that there was rarely any weapon that an enemy couldn’t also use.
“Bobby knows about how you feel the seals?”
She shook her head, which wasn’t all that surprising. Maybe she was better at extracting information from angels than he was, but he found it hard to imagine any version of himself telling Bobby information withheld from Dean.
At least he had an idea of how to strengthen her against Lilith’s next move. “You’d better get in touch with your Ruby, get a hold of these gauntlets—” he pointed at the little pile on the floor. “They’re creepy and evil, and you really shouldn’t put them on until you need them, but they’ve got power.”
“Fine,” she said. “Any other bright ideas?”
He’d really, really hoped to have a breather. But Dean was safe, which was what counted, so it was time to man up.
“Let’s get to work,” he told her.
****
Five hours later, he kind of wanted to kill her regardless of the apocalypse, and he was pretty sure she felt the same. Each time one of them came up with a new theory about Lilith, the other was able to shoot it down instantly. Not that surprising, given that they’d both been working on the problem of Lilith since they’d heard her name in connection with Dean/Dee’s deal, but frustrating nonetheless. Dean would have made them go out for a run to clear their heads. Instead, Samantha was translating an Aramaic text and Sam was checking to make sure the apocrypha were the same here as they were in his reality.
“This isn’t working,” Samantha said at last.
“I’m open to suggestions,” Sam said, regretting a little bit how annoying his tone was.
Samantha mumbled something that Sam sincerely doubted was flattering. Then she took a deep breath. “We need a break.”
Sam didn’t necessarily want to go out into the world. While they stayed in the motel room, it was almost like Dean might be just around the corner. The duffel shoved in the space between the bed and the wall might be his.
“We could order some food,” he suggested. And then he thought what Dee might have suggested as a break, and felt himself flush like he’d been dipped in boiling water.
Samantha tilted her head curiously, then reddened herself as she followed his thoughts. This double identity thing could get creepy fast, he realized.
On the other hand, Dean and Dee had seemed pretty happy. Understanding your partner perfectly had to be spectacular.
Nobody was there to judge him and Samantha, or make fun of them, or urge them on. They were all they had left.
Sam slammed his book closed just as Samantha stood. He didn’t remember crossing the room, or reaching out.
Sam kissed her, smashing their mouths together until he tasted blood, sweet on his tongue. Their legs tangled and she staggered backwards a few steps, dragging him with her. She was cooler than Dee, but she held on harder, her nails stinging down his back like scourges. It was perfect, rough enough to keep him from thinking.
This was all he had, now. Best to get used to it.
She grabbed at his shirt, fighting with him on the buttons, nearly ripping his T-shirt as they pulled it up and over his head. Her jacket hit the floor, followed by her soft cotton shirt. Her skin was uneven, slick scar tissue at her back where she’d been killed, a burn on her shoulder from Meg’s possession, a dozen dents and rises where violence had left marks. Nothing at all like Dee’s pristine new form, but her fingers were exploring him with the same eagerness and that was what he needed now.
He shoved her back against the wall, hands worming under her bra to cup her breasts even as she tore at his belt. His jeans slumped loose around his hips; she shoved hers down and shook them off, cursing into his mouth as she heeled off her boots at the same time.
“Condom,” he panted.
“I’m on the pill.” Of course: she was organized, reliable. And she would have used condoms with everyone else, just to be sure. But safety didn’t matter now.
He picked her up by her hips, sliding her up the wall just enough that he could sink inside her. It had been years since he’d gone bareback, and the rush of wet heat nearly made him come, but she grabbed his shoulders and hitched herself up and he bit his lip until he was in control again.
Her thighs clamped around his hips as they started moving. There was no uncertainty; they were already galloping, pushing into each other as if they could become one person, not two half-wrecked versions of the same desperate sinner. She fisted her hands in his hair, her fingernails sharp against his scalp, and he nosed at her neck until she tilted her head back and let him bite a line down her jaw and throat. She tasted of salt and a hint of the sweetness he remembered from Dee. Her arms were solid blocks of muscle, unyielding even as he gripped hard enough to bruise.
She was melting quicksilver around him, arching back so that he had to shove forward to keep her pinned against the wall, grunting as he thrust up. Her heels dug into his back, painful pressure that made the pleasure twist even higher in him. Her hair hid her eyes as she screamed, so tight slick fierce that he followed her as soon as he felt her start to come.
He ended up leaning against her, still pinning her to the wall, wiped out, breathing in the hot wet air between them. She was still twitching, almost uncomfortable but not enough to motivate him to move. Her nails scraped against his skin as her hands clenched, making him shiver.
“Sam,” she said, her voice wrecked. He hummed into her shoulder and thought about putting her down. “Sam,” she repeated more urgently.
Reluctantly, he bent his knees and slid all the way out with a gasp, letting her fall back against the wall. “Wanna—” he began, pushing his hair out of his face as he checked to see whether she was okay—
Her eyes were yellow, shot through with green-brown veins.
“The fifty-ninth seal just broke.”
****
At least, Sam thought, at least this couldn’t be happening back in his world, because he wasn’t there. He’d mistaken Dean’s role—guardian, not part of the seal—but he had to believe that he’d taken all his folly and destruction with him.
Now that they were down to the last seven seals, Sam expected that things would happen quickly. Samantha checked the news on her computer and reported that there had been at least twelve earthquakes 5.0 or above in the last hour. Over a thousand dolphins had beached themselves on the California shore. The Ganges had, almost instantly, turned red.
Someone pounded on the door.
Samantha went over, picking up a gun from the side table as she went, but as soon as she looked through the peephole she shot the lock and opened the door.
The man who stood on the threshold was a brunette, maybe an inch taller than Samantha, clean Midwestern good looks and deep blue eyes. His eyes flicked over Sam, stopping for a second on his tattoo, and then dismissed him. “Get rid of your fuck, we’ve got problems.”
“He’s a friend,” Samantha said. “You have anything useful to tell me, Ruby?”
Ruby snorted and stepped into the room. Sam searched around until he found his T-shirt, then threw on his overshirt.
If this was Ruby’s meatsuit in this dimension, Sam must be looking at the body of one of Samantha’s unfortunate hookups. For some reason, that made him feel worse than Cindy/Susie/whoever had.
“Where’s your sister?” Ruby demanded instead of answering. “And don’t bother lying.”
Samantha shrugged. “She’s not in play any more.”
Sam saw the despair flicker over Ruby’s face before it went blank. “You always meant for D—Dee to kill her,” he realized. “You knew how the gauntlets would affect Samantha, how neither of them would be able to stay in control for long. You were counting on that, so that Dee would take her out before Lilith could get to her. That was your plan to save the world, wasn’t it?”
Ruby grimaced. “You think you know a lot, new boy,” she said dangerously.
Before she could try to beat him up, Samantha held up her hand. “It’s okay if it’s true,” she said softly. “Just give me another option.”
Ruby made a sound, nearly a scream, strange and terrible to hear from a male body. “There is no other option!” The mirror over the dresser shattered, shards spraying in all directions.
“If I died some other way—”
“Do you have some other person who loves you more than anything and can use Michael’s sword on you?”
Samantha didn’t even bother looking over at Sam. “Not at the moment, no.”
Ruby crossed her arms over her chest. Her voice was icy. “Then Lilith will bring you back and use you. She can even use your corpse. So if I were you I’d prepare to spend the rest of my short and unpleasant life fighting.”
Samhain had been able to use the warlock’s dead body, Sam recalled. In fact, the supercharged demon had apparently needed a 700-year-old practitioner’s body, dead or not, in which to manifest. Otherwise there would have been no need for the evil siblings to offer each other to Samhain.
Maybe Lucifer also needed something more than the factory standard model of human.
Boy King, indeed. More like, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
He could see the horror on Samantha’s face as she worked through the same thoughts. And he knew, down to his marrow, that Samantha wouldn’t be able to just let it happen. She’d fight Lucifer’s possession, and her struggle itself would break the seal, according to the prophecy.
Sam couldn’t feel his legs. He only knew he was standing because he hadn’t fallen down. Even without demonic powers, rage shook his body, like he was made of ninety-nine percent fury instead of water. He’d given everything to protect Dean, and Samantha had done the same, but they couldn’t get out from under the black cloud of destiny, more evil than any demon.
“Do you want me to kill you?” Samantha asked evenly.
Sam jerked his head up. It was a useful question. If Ruby wanted true death, then she really had concluded it was hopeless.
“Shit,” Ruby swore, turning away. “Ask me tomorrow,” she said at last. “If you’re still alive.”
Sam closed the door behind her. “Maybe I should draw a Devil’s Trap around the room,” he suggested. Ruby’s ability to walk right up was a reminder that other demons might do the same thing.
Samantha shook her head. “I need to be able to move around.”
They couldn’t look at each other. They’d both agreed on the plan, gambled and lost the world. After a while, Sam went to the bed nearest the door, the one Samantha hadn’t been using, and knelt beside it. This reality’s angels couldn’t hear his prayers (not that they’d listened before), but he was out of ideas.
Samantha hesitated before she copied him. When he glanced over, he saw that her nose was bleeding, and her lips were cracked and swollen, as if even mouthing the prayers had burned. He felt even worse for her: she was going to die with the demonic blood still twisting hot inside her, the direct cause of Hell on earth. At least he’d been able to escape for a few hours.
****
The terrible irony was, they’d been raised to fight. Refusal to submit to another’s will was ingrained so deep in him that he was even ready to fight with Samantha, even though they were the same person.
Of course, they weren’t the same any more, now that Sam had crossed over and disabled his demon blood.
Sam’s demon couldn’t fight.
He jumped to his feet, ignoring the whining of his muscles, and started shuffling through the books Samantha had spread out on what should have been Dee’s bed. Behind him, Samantha made an inquisitive noise. “Have the final seals started to break?” he asked her, flipping through The Book of the Worm.
“Two,” she admitted.
“What if we summoned Lucifer?” Sam asked.
Her eyes narrowed. This was probably the way she looked at Dee when Dee suggested one of her stupider plans.
“No, listen,” Sam insisted. “If we’re right, he’s supposed to manifest in Sam Winchester. We summon him into me, you kill him with the knife, Hell goes back under.” The very thought was a relief. He’d screwed up so much, and now that he’d managed to get Dean clear, he could rest. Dean wouldn’t ever have to know. And Samantha would do fine, because—because she had to.
Samantha opened her mouth to object, then tilted her head and thought about it. He appreciated that she wasn’t wasting time with regrets. She could double up on his behalf if she got the chance later.
He knew she’d come to the same conclusion he had, which was that it was possible, maybe even likely, that Sam’s body couldn’t hold Lucifer properly in this reality. If so, it stood to reason that Lucifer would be vulnerable if he tried to use the wrong host.
“But can you summon anything, here?” Samantha asked, her nose wrinkling in a way that under other circumstances Sam would have found half charming and half deathly embarrassing.
Most witches and warlocks had never been dosed with demon blood, and magic still worked for them. Sam rummaged for the chalk, not bothering to say ‘one way to find out’ aloud.
****
Sam tried a minor scrying, just as proof of concept. He was able to make the front entrance to the main library at Stanford appear in a bowl of water. Then Samantha sliced through his tattoo, which hurt the way knife wounds always did, but worse because she took a chunk of inked skin just in case a thin slice was insufficient. She didn’t look at his face while she bandaged the cut. The care she took reminded him of the way death-row doctors would wipe an inmate’s arm down to sterilize it before injecting the lethal dose, somewhere between futility and mockery. But he guessed he did need to stop the bleeding.
The summoning would have to be carefully done. They could have used Latin, or Sumerian, but it was easier to stick with English and just as effective, if you didn’t feel the need for random showmanship. They worked on the wording for a couple of hours, during which time two more seals fell. It was a solid spell, Sam thought, simple and direct. They would have made excellent lawyers, in some other worlds than their own.
Neither of them was willing to chance a trip even as far as the vending machines, so they were reduced to eating the jerky and trail mix out of Dee’s emergency stash, washing it down with lukewarm water from the bathroom sink. The room stank of them, sweat and fear and old sex, and under that the hint of rotten eggs that Sam almost didn’t notice any more.
In the middle of her thousandth circuit around the room, Samantha jerked back like someone had grabbed her by the neck and collapsed.
When he helped her to her feet, blood-tinged tears were slipping from her eyes. “One more,” she whispered, not really to him. Her skin was clammy, unpleasant to touch, and her sweaty hair stuck in dark chunks to her neck and shoulders. Her face looked little better than a skull, the skin too thin over bone, red spots high on her cheeks like demon kisses. He settled his arm around her shoulders and helped her over to the bed, where they sat down, like two crows perched on a powerline.
“You want me to close the circle?” What Sam had drawn was nothing like a Devil’s Trap, and he imagined that, if he’d still had active demon blood, it would have felt cozy. It was a welcome mat for darkness.
Samantha shook her head. “Wait.” If they jumped ahead of the penultimate seal, they probably wouldn’t be able to raise Lucifer, and Sam wasn’t sanguine about what other entities might answer the call.
Sam put his hand between her shoulderblades, pressing against the tense muscle.
“Hey,” she said, tilting her head back. The blood was already drying, flaking against her cheeks. “You remember when we were kids, Dee always said Mom had one full-time job up in Heaven?”
Sam smiled. Looking after you, Sam. “I remember when I was about ten, I asked—”
“‘Then who looks after you?’ and she said—”
“‘I’m so awesome I don’t need anyone to watch over me.’” He snorted fondly and felt the echo move through her body.
“They’ll take care of each other, right?” Samantha asked, letting her head slump further so that it rested on his shoulder. Her skin was too cool and her hair smelled more like evergreen than the citrus and leather he kept expecting, but he pulled her in tighter anyway.
“Of course they will,” he told her. “And you—you settle down, okay? Let somebody else do the cleanup. You’ve—it’s enough.”
“Sure,” she said, easy enough that he knew what she really meant was that she had no particular thought of surviving. The future was a fogbank and they were rushing towards it at a hundred miles an hour. And it was unfair of him to expect anything else from her, since she was getting stuck with the hardest part. He got to check out, but she had to stay.
They needed a distraction. “I also remember Dean telling me how I could get a girl pregnant by holding her hand.”
Samantha gave a choked-off giggle. “I pretended to believe her.”
Sam nudged her with his hip. “Remember who you’re talking to. You believed her for a month.”
“Speak for yourself, girls mature faster.” She waited a second. “It was a week, tops.”
The silence then was nearly comfortable.
When Samantha pitched backwards, Sam spared a second to make sure she wasn’t swallowing her own tongue and then hurried to complete the circle. He didn’t feel a thing when it closed, but Samantha moaned like she was being beaten, her back arching off the bed and then collapsing.
He slashed his palms with the blade he’d set aside and squeezed his fists tight, until blood bubbled out between his fingers and down onto the sigils drawn in chalk mixed with graveyard dust.
The grinding fear of the past few months was as familiar and unremarkable as his pulse, but apparently it could still get more intense. His heart thumped like a bird with a broken wing, and he tasted silver, his tongue thick and swollen in his dry mouth.
“I am Sam Winchester,” he said. “Azazel prepared me and I am here. I am your vessel, Lucifer, Light-Bringer, son of Dawn.”
The room turned gray, colors leaching out with the light. He needed a second to realize that dark clouds had covered the sun, turning late afternoon to dusk in an instant.
“I am Sam Winchester,” he repeated, kneeling in the middle of the circle of blood he’d created. “Azazel prepared me and I am here.” Demon summonings required intent. But magic was a little like law, too. Sometimes it was possible to follow the letter and disregard the spirit. “I am your vessel, Lucifer, made of fire.”
He shuddered and had to struggle to continue. He didn’t want to die. The thought was a little surprising, but it was also irrelevant. He didn’t want to die possessed by the worst demon in Creation; so what? And if they were wrong about summoning Lucifer—well, then he would most assuredly get the punishment he deserved. If he was very, very lucky, watching the apocalypse from a front-row seat would drive him mad.
Sam forced his mouth open and began again.
Samantha grunted, and he heard her pry herself off the bed and shuffle towards him until she was right behind him. Sam kept up the chant, his voice wobbling like the car when Dean had first started teaching him to drive. His hands were ice, his still-streaming blood sucking heat from him with every drop that fell to the carpet.
It occurred to him that Castiel and Uriel had always seen this moment coming, except they’d been completely mistaken about the underlying intent. He wondered if there was a lesson in that.
Crash and sear of lightning outside, so near that the thunder hit even as Sam’s eyes were still whited out. The strikes quickly sped up until they were almost constant, brightening the room past what the cheap lightbulbs had been able to do. The noise was like being inside a snare drum. Samantha was kneeling now as well, her knee bruisingly hard against his calf. He stumbled in his recitation, just for a moment, fighting the staticy terror that threatened to crowd out everything else in his head.
Sam’s voice was growing hoarse with repetition when he felt the first pulse from below, a hot spike up his thigh and through his groin, almost like he’d pissed himself.
He didn’t remember Meg’s possession, not even the first moments when she’d been pouring down his throat, so he had no way to tell whether this was anything like.
His chanting faltered. Samantha reached around, Ruby’s knife flashing white with reflected lightning. Sam pulled his shirt free from his jeans to give her better access, blood from his fingers soaking into the cheap cotton like a preview of coming attractions. The blade was inches from his skin.
Sam swallowed and resumed the chant, inviting Lucifer further in. Stiletto stabs of pain, molten orange, making his heart seize in his chest. His lungs choked closed and he could almost feel the cells start to die, squeezed of oxygen. He wanted to vomit but he was losing even autonomic functions, shoved aside in his own body like curtains being parted to let in the dawn light. His vision was jaundiced, the stupid tawdry motel room distorting, melting as he watched.
A roar came from his throat, and the symbols on the floor burst into flames, flaring and filling the room with the smell of burnt bone, leaving black smudges like a starfield in reverse. “Hic sum!” his mouth screamed. “Hic sum!”
The lightning outside was no longer lightning, but a veil of fire, reaching from the sky to the earth, blood-red.
He began to come off of his knees, ready to stand—
And pushed himself deeper onto the knife.
His arms went out as he screamed, but Samantha held on, digging through him like his flesh was no more resistant than water, slashing side to side and then up and down. He could feel her fists sink into his abdomen. His head dropped, still not under his control, and he saw the familiar crackling of fire around the edges of his mortal wound.
He coughed, and felt something thick and hot run down his chin.
The pain hammered him flat just as the embers died out, leaving him alone in his body, but not in any more control. His blood was burnt metal in his mouth, choking him, and the hole in his middle was pumping his life out fast enough to count in seconds.
“Sam?” He knew that voice, but it wasn’t the right one. Dean, where was Dean? He should be here, letting Sam’s head sag onto his shoulder, holding him up, holding him together. “Sam, the sky’s clear.”
He was pretty sure that ought to be meaningful, but he just hurt so much.
Over the sea-roar in his ears, he heard another sound, an arrhythmic pounding. The knife left his body like a tooth pulling free, a deep sucking sound followed by a fresh gout of blood. He was staring at the ceiling now, abandoned, as the person who’d been holding him—Samantha, he remembered, Samantha—hurried away. More by accident than design, his head fell to the side and he saw her. Her hands were red almost to the elbow and she had the knife raised in one hand as she opened the door with the other.
The fortune-teller sailed inside like the QE2, lacking only an actual volley of trumpets. Her stumpy little dog was clutched under one arm, much like a purse that drooled. She looked at him and his body clenched and jerked, the pain fading into manageability. His blood was everywhere, but it wasn’t going any further; she’d frozen him at three-quarters dead.
Samantha fell back, possibly to get out of range of the dog’s breath.
“Here to gloat?” Samantha asked wearily, and turned back to Sam.
The fortune-teller tilted her head and her soft roundness dissolved into the Trickster’s ratface. His faded blue T-shirt said “This Way Up” with an arrow pointing towards his crotch. The dog was now a rolled-up newspaper.
Sam let out a tired breath, staring up at the Trickster. He’d had the thought in the back of his mind for a while. There just hadn’t been any point in bringing it up.
The Trickster was a violator of boundaries. The line between realities was a pretty big boundary. Not to mention that the Trickster was associated with gender-switching in many cultures, so bringing Dee across would have been just the kind of private joke to satisfy a god who liked to torment humans for sport.
He was living on the Trickster’s sufferance. An extended death scene was something else for the rat bastard to savor.
“Now, Sammy,” the god said chidingly. “Is that any way to think about your savior?”
“You’re not my savior,” he forced out along with another bubble of blood. His gut felt like an alligator was chewing at it. He tried to curl inwards, but his limbs wouldn’t cooperate.
The Trickster shrugged, kneeling so that he could get a better look at Sam’s wounds. He ran his fingers through the blood pooling on the floor. “I kinda wanted to see what you boys would do with a distaff version. And you did not disappoint. I knew Dean was a pervert, but you, Sammy—” he shook his head as he wiped his fingers clean on Sam’s shirt, sending new spikes of pain through Sam’s chest. “Whew. And Samantha, late to the party but making up for lost time.”
Sam felt his face screw up in disgust, and knew Samantha was doing the same. He really would have loved to see how Samantha’s demonic powers did against a small-g god who’d been deprived of worshipers for centuries.
“What do you want?” he asked. The pathetic uncertainty in his voice took him straight back to childhood, when he’d asked Dean over and over why their lives had to suck so much.
“Just to point out that you guys really screwed the pooch this time. I thought you had the brains to realize that you needed a full swap.”
“I think we’ve paid for that,” Samantha said, tugging the Trickster away from Sam. He wasn’t going to get to die with dignity—more than anything, the Trickster hated dignity—but he appreciated the attempt.
The Trickster tilted his head. “Well, Sammy here’s well on his way to paying the ‘ultimate price’”—he made air quotes—“but you, my dear, seem to be getting off scot free.”
“You really couldn’t be more wrong,” Samantha said as she crouched to put herself between Sam and the Trickster, her hand settling into Sam’s where it laid limp on the floor. She curled her fingers around his.
“You are just so darling,” the Trickster said. His T-shirt now said STUPID’S WITH ME. “Also, as much as it pains me to admit it, you did manage to preserve this dimension’s existence, albeit in a bumbling and overly dramatic way, and I did spend all this time decorating. So I’m going to grant you a dying wish.”
Sam couldn’t suppress his laugh, even though he felt like a combine had rolled over him.
“No, no,” the Trickster said, his face falling as if Sam had hurt his feelings. “No tricks, no monkey’s paw. A pure gift from me to you.”
A gift horse from the Trickster was most likely a pooka. Sam shook his head.
The Trickster frowned. “Did I say this was optional? Tell me your wish, or I’ll make one up for you. But you know me, I get creative. Unless you tell me, and then I’ll play it straight.”
The blood loss was working on him now. The pain was fading, and he started to shiver with cold. Samantha squeezed his hand, reminding him that he still had a job to do.
“Make them happy,” he said, or thought he did. His face felt numb. The Trickster’s face was neutral. “Dean,” he tried to clarify, though the name came out sounding the way it probably had when he’d been two. “Dean ‘n Dee.” And then he turned his head, because black dots were beginning to swarm at the edges of his vision, like angry cockroaches, and he refused to die with the Trickster’s smug face as the last thing he saw.
Instead, he was staring at his hand, joined with Samantha’s. Their fingers were shining and sticky, scarlet with Sam’s blood. Samantha’s grip shook his nerveless fingers as she trembled above him.
“This is gonna sting,” the Trickster warned.
Sam let his eyes fall closed and tried to imagine his mother, smiling at him as her ghost had smiled, and his father, rising from Hell to vindication.
Every nerve took fire; he was being roasted alive, seared into charcoal. He was skewered, his muscles twisting and his bones cracking, hot marrow dripping through his ripped flesh to fall into the flames and make them jump higher.
Darkness wrapped around him and squeezed.
On to Part 6.
Part 4. No longer canon-compliant.
After a while, Samantha turned away from the space where the portal had been. “How mad do you think they are right now?”
Sam shrugged. “How mad is there?”
She attempted a wobbly smile.
“But they’re safe,” he pointed out, and got a look at how his own expression was when Dean said something redundant. It wasn’t all that flattering.
“We should—” she began, and then her hand shot to her head, pressing as if she were trying to stop a spurting wound. Her face contorted, her mouth open on a voiceless scream. She staggered and Sam hurried to catch her, but she righted herself before he could do more than put his hand on her shoulder. She pulled away like he was made of ice and went to sit down, slumping into her chair as she swiped at her face. When she brought her hands down, he saw traces of blood on her fingers, but he couldn’t figure out its source.
“What is it?” If this was what he’d looked like having a vision, no wonder Dean had always hated the powers so much.
She kept her eyes closed. “Two seals, one right on top of the other.”
Sam felt like collapsing himself. It was supposed to be over.
Lilith must have figured out a workaround—as long as she had Samantha, she might not need Dee. Maybe there was some other human for her to fight with, or maybe Castiel had been right all along and the battle was within her soul. For Dean, Sam could have laid down his life. Without him, Sam would have fought, not because he had hope but because he refused to give in. There wasn’t much of a chance that Samantha was different on that count.
He shuffled over to the nearest bed and sat down, rubbing his hands through his hair and not looking up.
After a few minutes, Samantha’s phone buzzed, skittering along the table where it was resting next to her laptop.
She was steady enough to grab it. “Yeah.” She listened for a minute, frowning. “I don’t know, Bobby. Samuel came through all right, but we don’t—No. No. I said, no. This is not the time—I’ll call you back.”
Snapping the phone closed, she grimaced at Sam. “Bobby’s not real pleased with me right now. He mostly puts up with me, but he loves--” She stopped, as if just now considering whether she ought to use the past tense. “Anyway, he says a couple of hunters tried that mass exorcism trick we pulled in Colorado, worked fine but now there are all these comets falling out of the sky.”
Sam nodded. A mass exorcism would account for the seal he’d opened back in his world, and then some separate battle had been lost over the other one.
At the time they’d told Bobby about the recorded exorcism they’d used in Monument, it had seemed like an important advance in the state of the art, one worth spreading to other hunters. He’d forgotten that there was rarely any weapon that an enemy couldn’t also use.
“Bobby knows about how you feel the seals?”
She shook her head, which wasn’t all that surprising. Maybe she was better at extracting information from angels than he was, but he found it hard to imagine any version of himself telling Bobby information withheld from Dean.
At least he had an idea of how to strengthen her against Lilith’s next move. “You’d better get in touch with your Ruby, get a hold of these gauntlets—” he pointed at the little pile on the floor. “They’re creepy and evil, and you really shouldn’t put them on until you need them, but they’ve got power.”
“Fine,” she said. “Any other bright ideas?”
He’d really, really hoped to have a breather. But Dean was safe, which was what counted, so it was time to man up.
“Let’s get to work,” he told her.
****
Five hours later, he kind of wanted to kill her regardless of the apocalypse, and he was pretty sure she felt the same. Each time one of them came up with a new theory about Lilith, the other was able to shoot it down instantly. Not that surprising, given that they’d both been working on the problem of Lilith since they’d heard her name in connection with Dean/Dee’s deal, but frustrating nonetheless. Dean would have made them go out for a run to clear their heads. Instead, Samantha was translating an Aramaic text and Sam was checking to make sure the apocrypha were the same here as they were in his reality.
“This isn’t working,” Samantha said at last.
“I’m open to suggestions,” Sam said, regretting a little bit how annoying his tone was.
Samantha mumbled something that Sam sincerely doubted was flattering. Then she took a deep breath. “We need a break.”
Sam didn’t necessarily want to go out into the world. While they stayed in the motel room, it was almost like Dean might be just around the corner. The duffel shoved in the space between the bed and the wall might be his.
“We could order some food,” he suggested. And then he thought what Dee might have suggested as a break, and felt himself flush like he’d been dipped in boiling water.
Samantha tilted her head curiously, then reddened herself as she followed his thoughts. This double identity thing could get creepy fast, he realized.
On the other hand, Dean and Dee had seemed pretty happy. Understanding your partner perfectly had to be spectacular.
Nobody was there to judge him and Samantha, or make fun of them, or urge them on. They were all they had left.
Sam slammed his book closed just as Samantha stood. He didn’t remember crossing the room, or reaching out.
Sam kissed her, smashing their mouths together until he tasted blood, sweet on his tongue. Their legs tangled and she staggered backwards a few steps, dragging him with her. She was cooler than Dee, but she held on harder, her nails stinging down his back like scourges. It was perfect, rough enough to keep him from thinking.
This was all he had, now. Best to get used to it.
She grabbed at his shirt, fighting with him on the buttons, nearly ripping his T-shirt as they pulled it up and over his head. Her jacket hit the floor, followed by her soft cotton shirt. Her skin was uneven, slick scar tissue at her back where she’d been killed, a burn on her shoulder from Meg’s possession, a dozen dents and rises where violence had left marks. Nothing at all like Dee’s pristine new form, but her fingers were exploring him with the same eagerness and that was what he needed now.
He shoved her back against the wall, hands worming under her bra to cup her breasts even as she tore at his belt. His jeans slumped loose around his hips; she shoved hers down and shook them off, cursing into his mouth as she heeled off her boots at the same time.
“Condom,” he panted.
“I’m on the pill.” Of course: she was organized, reliable. And she would have used condoms with everyone else, just to be sure. But safety didn’t matter now.
He picked her up by her hips, sliding her up the wall just enough that he could sink inside her. It had been years since he’d gone bareback, and the rush of wet heat nearly made him come, but she grabbed his shoulders and hitched herself up and he bit his lip until he was in control again.
Her thighs clamped around his hips as they started moving. There was no uncertainty; they were already galloping, pushing into each other as if they could become one person, not two half-wrecked versions of the same desperate sinner. She fisted her hands in his hair, her fingernails sharp against his scalp, and he nosed at her neck until she tilted her head back and let him bite a line down her jaw and throat. She tasted of salt and a hint of the sweetness he remembered from Dee. Her arms were solid blocks of muscle, unyielding even as he gripped hard enough to bruise.
She was melting quicksilver around him, arching back so that he had to shove forward to keep her pinned against the wall, grunting as he thrust up. Her heels dug into his back, painful pressure that made the pleasure twist even higher in him. Her hair hid her eyes as she screamed, so tight slick fierce that he followed her as soon as he felt her start to come.
He ended up leaning against her, still pinning her to the wall, wiped out, breathing in the hot wet air between them. She was still twitching, almost uncomfortable but not enough to motivate him to move. Her nails scraped against his skin as her hands clenched, making him shiver.
“Sam,” she said, her voice wrecked. He hummed into her shoulder and thought about putting her down. “Sam,” she repeated more urgently.
Reluctantly, he bent his knees and slid all the way out with a gasp, letting her fall back against the wall. “Wanna—” he began, pushing his hair out of his face as he checked to see whether she was okay—
Her eyes were yellow, shot through with green-brown veins.
“The fifty-ninth seal just broke.”
****
At least, Sam thought, at least this couldn’t be happening back in his world, because he wasn’t there. He’d mistaken Dean’s role—guardian, not part of the seal—but he had to believe that he’d taken all his folly and destruction with him.
Now that they were down to the last seven seals, Sam expected that things would happen quickly. Samantha checked the news on her computer and reported that there had been at least twelve earthquakes 5.0 or above in the last hour. Over a thousand dolphins had beached themselves on the California shore. The Ganges had, almost instantly, turned red.
Someone pounded on the door.
Samantha went over, picking up a gun from the side table as she went, but as soon as she looked through the peephole she shot the lock and opened the door.
The man who stood on the threshold was a brunette, maybe an inch taller than Samantha, clean Midwestern good looks and deep blue eyes. His eyes flicked over Sam, stopping for a second on his tattoo, and then dismissed him. “Get rid of your fuck, we’ve got problems.”
“He’s a friend,” Samantha said. “You have anything useful to tell me, Ruby?”
Ruby snorted and stepped into the room. Sam searched around until he found his T-shirt, then threw on his overshirt.
If this was Ruby’s meatsuit in this dimension, Sam must be looking at the body of one of Samantha’s unfortunate hookups. For some reason, that made him feel worse than Cindy/Susie/whoever had.
“Where’s your sister?” Ruby demanded instead of answering. “And don’t bother lying.”
Samantha shrugged. “She’s not in play any more.”
Sam saw the despair flicker over Ruby’s face before it went blank. “You always meant for D—Dee to kill her,” he realized. “You knew how the gauntlets would affect Samantha, how neither of them would be able to stay in control for long. You were counting on that, so that Dee would take her out before Lilith could get to her. That was your plan to save the world, wasn’t it?”
Ruby grimaced. “You think you know a lot, new boy,” she said dangerously.
Before she could try to beat him up, Samantha held up her hand. “It’s okay if it’s true,” she said softly. “Just give me another option.”
Ruby made a sound, nearly a scream, strange and terrible to hear from a male body. “There is no other option!” The mirror over the dresser shattered, shards spraying in all directions.
“If I died some other way—”
“Do you have some other person who loves you more than anything and can use Michael’s sword on you?”
Samantha didn’t even bother looking over at Sam. “Not at the moment, no.”
Ruby crossed her arms over her chest. Her voice was icy. “Then Lilith will bring you back and use you. She can even use your corpse. So if I were you I’d prepare to spend the rest of my short and unpleasant life fighting.”
Samhain had been able to use the warlock’s dead body, Sam recalled. In fact, the supercharged demon had apparently needed a 700-year-old practitioner’s body, dead or not, in which to manifest. Otherwise there would have been no need for the evil siblings to offer each other to Samhain.
Maybe Lucifer also needed something more than the factory standard model of human.
Boy King, indeed. More like, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
He could see the horror on Samantha’s face as she worked through the same thoughts. And he knew, down to his marrow, that Samantha wouldn’t be able to just let it happen. She’d fight Lucifer’s possession, and her struggle itself would break the seal, according to the prophecy.
Sam couldn’t feel his legs. He only knew he was standing because he hadn’t fallen down. Even without demonic powers, rage shook his body, like he was made of ninety-nine percent fury instead of water. He’d given everything to protect Dean, and Samantha had done the same, but they couldn’t get out from under the black cloud of destiny, more evil than any demon.
“Do you want me to kill you?” Samantha asked evenly.
Sam jerked his head up. It was a useful question. If Ruby wanted true death, then she really had concluded it was hopeless.
“Shit,” Ruby swore, turning away. “Ask me tomorrow,” she said at last. “If you’re still alive.”
Sam closed the door behind her. “Maybe I should draw a Devil’s Trap around the room,” he suggested. Ruby’s ability to walk right up was a reminder that other demons might do the same thing.
Samantha shook her head. “I need to be able to move around.”
They couldn’t look at each other. They’d both agreed on the plan, gambled and lost the world. After a while, Sam went to the bed nearest the door, the one Samantha hadn’t been using, and knelt beside it. This reality’s angels couldn’t hear his prayers (not that they’d listened before), but he was out of ideas.
Samantha hesitated before she copied him. When he glanced over, he saw that her nose was bleeding, and her lips were cracked and swollen, as if even mouthing the prayers had burned. He felt even worse for her: she was going to die with the demonic blood still twisting hot inside her, the direct cause of Hell on earth. At least he’d been able to escape for a few hours.
****
The terrible irony was, they’d been raised to fight. Refusal to submit to another’s will was ingrained so deep in him that he was even ready to fight with Samantha, even though they were the same person.
Of course, they weren’t the same any more, now that Sam had crossed over and disabled his demon blood.
Sam’s demon couldn’t fight.
He jumped to his feet, ignoring the whining of his muscles, and started shuffling through the books Samantha had spread out on what should have been Dee’s bed. Behind him, Samantha made an inquisitive noise. “Have the final seals started to break?” he asked her, flipping through The Book of the Worm.
“Two,” she admitted.
“What if we summoned Lucifer?” Sam asked.
Her eyes narrowed. This was probably the way she looked at Dee when Dee suggested one of her stupider plans.
“No, listen,” Sam insisted. “If we’re right, he’s supposed to manifest in Sam Winchester. We summon him into me, you kill him with the knife, Hell goes back under.” The very thought was a relief. He’d screwed up so much, and now that he’d managed to get Dean clear, he could rest. Dean wouldn’t ever have to know. And Samantha would do fine, because—because she had to.
Samantha opened her mouth to object, then tilted her head and thought about it. He appreciated that she wasn’t wasting time with regrets. She could double up on his behalf if she got the chance later.
He knew she’d come to the same conclusion he had, which was that it was possible, maybe even likely, that Sam’s body couldn’t hold Lucifer properly in this reality. If so, it stood to reason that Lucifer would be vulnerable if he tried to use the wrong host.
“But can you summon anything, here?” Samantha asked, her nose wrinkling in a way that under other circumstances Sam would have found half charming and half deathly embarrassing.
Most witches and warlocks had never been dosed with demon blood, and magic still worked for them. Sam rummaged for the chalk, not bothering to say ‘one way to find out’ aloud.
****
Sam tried a minor scrying, just as proof of concept. He was able to make the front entrance to the main library at Stanford appear in a bowl of water. Then Samantha sliced through his tattoo, which hurt the way knife wounds always did, but worse because she took a chunk of inked skin just in case a thin slice was insufficient. She didn’t look at his face while she bandaged the cut. The care she took reminded him of the way death-row doctors would wipe an inmate’s arm down to sterilize it before injecting the lethal dose, somewhere between futility and mockery. But he guessed he did need to stop the bleeding.
The summoning would have to be carefully done. They could have used Latin, or Sumerian, but it was easier to stick with English and just as effective, if you didn’t feel the need for random showmanship. They worked on the wording for a couple of hours, during which time two more seals fell. It was a solid spell, Sam thought, simple and direct. They would have made excellent lawyers, in some other worlds than their own.
Neither of them was willing to chance a trip even as far as the vending machines, so they were reduced to eating the jerky and trail mix out of Dee’s emergency stash, washing it down with lukewarm water from the bathroom sink. The room stank of them, sweat and fear and old sex, and under that the hint of rotten eggs that Sam almost didn’t notice any more.
In the middle of her thousandth circuit around the room, Samantha jerked back like someone had grabbed her by the neck and collapsed.
When he helped her to her feet, blood-tinged tears were slipping from her eyes. “One more,” she whispered, not really to him. Her skin was clammy, unpleasant to touch, and her sweaty hair stuck in dark chunks to her neck and shoulders. Her face looked little better than a skull, the skin too thin over bone, red spots high on her cheeks like demon kisses. He settled his arm around her shoulders and helped her over to the bed, where they sat down, like two crows perched on a powerline.
“You want me to close the circle?” What Sam had drawn was nothing like a Devil’s Trap, and he imagined that, if he’d still had active demon blood, it would have felt cozy. It was a welcome mat for darkness.
Samantha shook her head. “Wait.” If they jumped ahead of the penultimate seal, they probably wouldn’t be able to raise Lucifer, and Sam wasn’t sanguine about what other entities might answer the call.
Sam put his hand between her shoulderblades, pressing against the tense muscle.
“Hey,” she said, tilting her head back. The blood was already drying, flaking against her cheeks. “You remember when we were kids, Dee always said Mom had one full-time job up in Heaven?”
Sam smiled. Looking after you, Sam. “I remember when I was about ten, I asked—”
“‘Then who looks after you?’ and she said—”
“‘I’m so awesome I don’t need anyone to watch over me.’” He snorted fondly and felt the echo move through her body.
“They’ll take care of each other, right?” Samantha asked, letting her head slump further so that it rested on his shoulder. Her skin was too cool and her hair smelled more like evergreen than the citrus and leather he kept expecting, but he pulled her in tighter anyway.
“Of course they will,” he told her. “And you—you settle down, okay? Let somebody else do the cleanup. You’ve—it’s enough.”
“Sure,” she said, easy enough that he knew what she really meant was that she had no particular thought of surviving. The future was a fogbank and they were rushing towards it at a hundred miles an hour. And it was unfair of him to expect anything else from her, since she was getting stuck with the hardest part. He got to check out, but she had to stay.
They needed a distraction. “I also remember Dean telling me how I could get a girl pregnant by holding her hand.”
Samantha gave a choked-off giggle. “I pretended to believe her.”
Sam nudged her with his hip. “Remember who you’re talking to. You believed her for a month.”
“Speak for yourself, girls mature faster.” She waited a second. “It was a week, tops.”
The silence then was nearly comfortable.
When Samantha pitched backwards, Sam spared a second to make sure she wasn’t swallowing her own tongue and then hurried to complete the circle. He didn’t feel a thing when it closed, but Samantha moaned like she was being beaten, her back arching off the bed and then collapsing.
He slashed his palms with the blade he’d set aside and squeezed his fists tight, until blood bubbled out between his fingers and down onto the sigils drawn in chalk mixed with graveyard dust.
The grinding fear of the past few months was as familiar and unremarkable as his pulse, but apparently it could still get more intense. His heart thumped like a bird with a broken wing, and he tasted silver, his tongue thick and swollen in his dry mouth.
“I am Sam Winchester,” he said. “Azazel prepared me and I am here. I am your vessel, Lucifer, Light-Bringer, son of Dawn.”
The room turned gray, colors leaching out with the light. He needed a second to realize that dark clouds had covered the sun, turning late afternoon to dusk in an instant.
“I am Sam Winchester,” he repeated, kneeling in the middle of the circle of blood he’d created. “Azazel prepared me and I am here.” Demon summonings required intent. But magic was a little like law, too. Sometimes it was possible to follow the letter and disregard the spirit. “I am your vessel, Lucifer, made of fire.”
He shuddered and had to struggle to continue. He didn’t want to die. The thought was a little surprising, but it was also irrelevant. He didn’t want to die possessed by the worst demon in Creation; so what? And if they were wrong about summoning Lucifer—well, then he would most assuredly get the punishment he deserved. If he was very, very lucky, watching the apocalypse from a front-row seat would drive him mad.
Sam forced his mouth open and began again.
Samantha grunted, and he heard her pry herself off the bed and shuffle towards him until she was right behind him. Sam kept up the chant, his voice wobbling like the car when Dean had first started teaching him to drive. His hands were ice, his still-streaming blood sucking heat from him with every drop that fell to the carpet.
It occurred to him that Castiel and Uriel had always seen this moment coming, except they’d been completely mistaken about the underlying intent. He wondered if there was a lesson in that.
Crash and sear of lightning outside, so near that the thunder hit even as Sam’s eyes were still whited out. The strikes quickly sped up until they were almost constant, brightening the room past what the cheap lightbulbs had been able to do. The noise was like being inside a snare drum. Samantha was kneeling now as well, her knee bruisingly hard against his calf. He stumbled in his recitation, just for a moment, fighting the staticy terror that threatened to crowd out everything else in his head.
Sam’s voice was growing hoarse with repetition when he felt the first pulse from below, a hot spike up his thigh and through his groin, almost like he’d pissed himself.
He didn’t remember Meg’s possession, not even the first moments when she’d been pouring down his throat, so he had no way to tell whether this was anything like.
His chanting faltered. Samantha reached around, Ruby’s knife flashing white with reflected lightning. Sam pulled his shirt free from his jeans to give her better access, blood from his fingers soaking into the cheap cotton like a preview of coming attractions. The blade was inches from his skin.
Sam swallowed and resumed the chant, inviting Lucifer further in. Stiletto stabs of pain, molten orange, making his heart seize in his chest. His lungs choked closed and he could almost feel the cells start to die, squeezed of oxygen. He wanted to vomit but he was losing even autonomic functions, shoved aside in his own body like curtains being parted to let in the dawn light. His vision was jaundiced, the stupid tawdry motel room distorting, melting as he watched.
A roar came from his throat, and the symbols on the floor burst into flames, flaring and filling the room with the smell of burnt bone, leaving black smudges like a starfield in reverse. “Hic sum!” his mouth screamed. “Hic sum!”
The lightning outside was no longer lightning, but a veil of fire, reaching from the sky to the earth, blood-red.
He began to come off of his knees, ready to stand—
And pushed himself deeper onto the knife.
His arms went out as he screamed, but Samantha held on, digging through him like his flesh was no more resistant than water, slashing side to side and then up and down. He could feel her fists sink into his abdomen. His head dropped, still not under his control, and he saw the familiar crackling of fire around the edges of his mortal wound.
He coughed, and felt something thick and hot run down his chin.
The pain hammered him flat just as the embers died out, leaving him alone in his body, but not in any more control. His blood was burnt metal in his mouth, choking him, and the hole in his middle was pumping his life out fast enough to count in seconds.
“Sam?” He knew that voice, but it wasn’t the right one. Dean, where was Dean? He should be here, letting Sam’s head sag onto his shoulder, holding him up, holding him together. “Sam, the sky’s clear.”
He was pretty sure that ought to be meaningful, but he just hurt so much.
Over the sea-roar in his ears, he heard another sound, an arrhythmic pounding. The knife left his body like a tooth pulling free, a deep sucking sound followed by a fresh gout of blood. He was staring at the ceiling now, abandoned, as the person who’d been holding him—Samantha, he remembered, Samantha—hurried away. More by accident than design, his head fell to the side and he saw her. Her hands were red almost to the elbow and she had the knife raised in one hand as she opened the door with the other.
The fortune-teller sailed inside like the QE2, lacking only an actual volley of trumpets. Her stumpy little dog was clutched under one arm, much like a purse that drooled. She looked at him and his body clenched and jerked, the pain fading into manageability. His blood was everywhere, but it wasn’t going any further; she’d frozen him at three-quarters dead.
Samantha fell back, possibly to get out of range of the dog’s breath.
“Here to gloat?” Samantha asked wearily, and turned back to Sam.
The fortune-teller tilted her head and her soft roundness dissolved into the Trickster’s ratface. His faded blue T-shirt said “This Way Up” with an arrow pointing towards his crotch. The dog was now a rolled-up newspaper.
Sam let out a tired breath, staring up at the Trickster. He’d had the thought in the back of his mind for a while. There just hadn’t been any point in bringing it up.
The Trickster was a violator of boundaries. The line between realities was a pretty big boundary. Not to mention that the Trickster was associated with gender-switching in many cultures, so bringing Dee across would have been just the kind of private joke to satisfy a god who liked to torment humans for sport.
He was living on the Trickster’s sufferance. An extended death scene was something else for the rat bastard to savor.
“Now, Sammy,” the god said chidingly. “Is that any way to think about your savior?”
“You’re not my savior,” he forced out along with another bubble of blood. His gut felt like an alligator was chewing at it. He tried to curl inwards, but his limbs wouldn’t cooperate.
The Trickster shrugged, kneeling so that he could get a better look at Sam’s wounds. He ran his fingers through the blood pooling on the floor. “I kinda wanted to see what you boys would do with a distaff version. And you did not disappoint. I knew Dean was a pervert, but you, Sammy—” he shook his head as he wiped his fingers clean on Sam’s shirt, sending new spikes of pain through Sam’s chest. “Whew. And Samantha, late to the party but making up for lost time.”
Sam felt his face screw up in disgust, and knew Samantha was doing the same. He really would have loved to see how Samantha’s demonic powers did against a small-g god who’d been deprived of worshipers for centuries.
“What do you want?” he asked. The pathetic uncertainty in his voice took him straight back to childhood, when he’d asked Dean over and over why their lives had to suck so much.
“Just to point out that you guys really screwed the pooch this time. I thought you had the brains to realize that you needed a full swap.”
“I think we’ve paid for that,” Samantha said, tugging the Trickster away from Sam. He wasn’t going to get to die with dignity—more than anything, the Trickster hated dignity—but he appreciated the attempt.
The Trickster tilted his head. “Well, Sammy here’s well on his way to paying the ‘ultimate price’”—he made air quotes—“but you, my dear, seem to be getting off scot free.”
“You really couldn’t be more wrong,” Samantha said as she crouched to put herself between Sam and the Trickster, her hand settling into Sam’s where it laid limp on the floor. She curled her fingers around his.
“You are just so darling,” the Trickster said. His T-shirt now said STUPID’S WITH ME. “Also, as much as it pains me to admit it, you did manage to preserve this dimension’s existence, albeit in a bumbling and overly dramatic way, and I did spend all this time decorating. So I’m going to grant you a dying wish.”
Sam couldn’t suppress his laugh, even though he felt like a combine had rolled over him.
“No, no,” the Trickster said, his face falling as if Sam had hurt his feelings. “No tricks, no monkey’s paw. A pure gift from me to you.”
A gift horse from the Trickster was most likely a pooka. Sam shook his head.
The Trickster frowned. “Did I say this was optional? Tell me your wish, or I’ll make one up for you. But you know me, I get creative. Unless you tell me, and then I’ll play it straight.”
The blood loss was working on him now. The pain was fading, and he started to shiver with cold. Samantha squeezed his hand, reminding him that he still had a job to do.
“Make them happy,” he said, or thought he did. His face felt numb. The Trickster’s face was neutral. “Dean,” he tried to clarify, though the name came out sounding the way it probably had when he’d been two. “Dean ‘n Dee.” And then he turned his head, because black dots were beginning to swarm at the edges of his vision, like angry cockroaches, and he refused to die with the Trickster’s smug face as the last thing he saw.
Instead, he was staring at his hand, joined with Samantha’s. Their fingers were shining and sticky, scarlet with Sam’s blood. Samantha’s grip shook his nerveless fingers as she trembled above him.
“This is gonna sting,” the Trickster warned.
Sam let his eyes fall closed and tried to imagine his mother, smiling at him as her ghost had smiled, and his father, rising from Hell to vindication.
Every nerve took fire; he was being roasted alive, seared into charcoal. He was skewered, his muscles twisting and his bones cracking, hot marrow dripping through his ripped flesh to fall into the flames and make them jump higher.
Darkness wrapped around him and squeezed.
On to Part 6.
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oh man...the trickster...i shoulda guessed BUT i didnt!
and what happened back with dean and dee...
poor sam and samantha, thinking dee and dean could be happy WITHOUT them...
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Wow!
Wha?!!!! That was unexpected! 0.0 Brainiac Sam indeed. :)
The very thought was a relief. He’d screwed up so much, and now that he’d managed to get Dean clear, he could rest. Dean wouldn’t ever have to know. And Samantha would do fine, because—because she had to.
Aw, Sam. *pets them both*
Samantha asked, her nose wrinkling in a way that under other circumstances Sam would have found half charming and half deathly embarrassing.
Hee! :)
“I also remember Dean telling me how I could get a girl pregnant by holding her hand.”
LOL! *eg*
Terrific tension and suspense in the summoning scene!
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Re: oh man...the trickster...i shoulda guessed BUT i didnt!
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Re: Wow!
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