Season Three

Episode Twelve: Retribution

By irismay42 & Tree

Part Three

Dory’s Diner,
Plano, TX

“So where d’you suggest we start looking, Sam?” John asked, downing his third cup of black coffee as he pushed away his barely-touched burger.

Sam snagged a cold fry from his father’s plate and popped it into his mouth, unaware he’d done it until he glanced up from his computer screen and noticed John’s raised eyebrow. “Uh –” he stammered. “Sorry. Kinda reflex.”

John’s tired features softened into something approaching a smile. “You two always did have a thing for each other’s leftovers.”

Sam smiled awkwardly, shifting a little on the hot sticky plastic of the uncomfortable diner seat. “Yeah,” he agreed solemnly, averting his gaze back to his laptop, which was resting on a couple of napkins to protect it from the unidentifiable pools of goo splattered across the garish Formica tabletop. “Not that Dean ever left that much.” He stabbed at a couple of buttons on the keyboard, silently berating himself for talking about Dean in the past tense while keenly aware of his father’s eyes on him, a wistful smile on his lips.

“Thank God for free wi-fi, huh?” John said quietly. “Always a good distraction from an awkward conversation.”

Sam glanced back up at him, a trace of anger in his voice. “Dad, this isn’t a distraction,” he protested. “I’m trying to find Dean here.”

“On Face Space?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “It’s Facebook, Dad –” he began, before finally noticing the smile creeping across his father’s lips. For a second he contemplated whether John was being serious or attempting to lighten his son’s sour mood a little. Figuring the latter, he took a breath before adding, “I was thinking of trying to track the GPS in Dean’s phone –”

“That’s possible?” John queried.

Sam shrugged. “If you know the right buttons to push; the right websites to access…”

John nodded skeptically. “But Dean’s cell battery crapped out, right? When Mia messed with his phone?”

Far from seeming disheartened by the reminder, Sam grinned brightly. “Yes it did,” he agreed. “But as far as I know Mia’s phone is still working.”

John almost matched Sam’s grin. “So you’re gonna track Mia’s phone?”

Sam nodded, looking back up at his father triumphantly. “Already did it.”

If Sam didn’t know better, he might have thought he detected a note of pride in his father’s voice. “You found her?”

“Uh-huh.”

John nodded sagely. “She’s in Fort Worth, right?”

Collins house,
Fort Worth, TX

This right here? This was messed up. Way messed up. This was so messed up, even Dean didn’t have a word for how messed up this was, and he had words for everything. And not all of them contained four letters or began with an “f.”

So here he sat in silence, no words to describe it and no one to describe it to.

She’d done it on purpose of course. Left him here by himself.

He’d only ever come completely clean with one other girl before Mia. He’d told her everything: the Big Family Secret, what happened to his mom, his part in the “family business.” Who he really was. And boy, he’d thought that had gone sideways.

But this? Yeah, this was even more messed up than that had been. Because at least Cassie had just freaked out and told him to get the hell away from her.

Mia? Mia’s reasons for lulling Dean into a false sense of security? For cozying up to him until he revealed to her some of his deepest, darkest secrets? For telling him she loved him? Well that had nothing to do with wanting to know him and everything to do with wanting to know his weaknesses: which buttons to push and when to push them. And she knew all right. She knew because he’d been dumb enough to frickin’ tell her.

Which, he figured, was precisely why she’d done it.

Left him here all by himself.

Because she knew he didn’t like to be alone.

So here he was, tied to a chair in a house that reeked of death and despair, his own blood soaking nicely into the floorboards beneath him with only his own thoughts for company.

And his own thoughts were not that much fun to be around right now.

He was so goddamn stupid. To allow himself to be used as bait like this – bait to trap his dad. It was Meg all over again. Jesus, didn’t he ever learn from past mistakes?

God, what if the second Dad busted through that door Mia liquefied him, like she had that poor sap from the Fort Worth P.D.? Because Dean had no doubt his dad would come busting through that door sooner or later.

Dean couldn’t let it happen. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He’d already failed Sammy. Already lost too much….

He shook his head. No way. Self pity wasn’t the way to go and he knew, he knew that Sam wasn’t dead. Dean might have been an idiot to let Mia worm her way into his affections the way she had, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d heard what she’d said to Sam by the roadside back in Plano – taunting him, telling him Dean was dead. She was pulling the same crap here, he knew it. No way was Sam dead. He’d know. He’d know.

But that still left him with the lingering image of the cop splattering all over the floorboards and his dad doing the same thing the second he busted through the door.

No, he told himself. Mia wasn’t going to let Dad die so easy. She wanted to torture John Winchester nice and slow. Dean could see it in her eyes. And he knew he had to stop her somehow. He couldn’t let this happen to his dad just because Dean was stupid enough to believe Mia loved him; stupid enough to want to believe Mia loved him. Like any girl could ever….

Suck it up, soldier! He heard his dad’s voice ringing in his head. Get with the program, boy!

What was he doing, sitting here getting all emo-brained because his girl had turned out to be a half-demon, possibly murdered his brother and was out to torture his father to death? What was he, a frickin’ girl? He had to get out of this, that’s what he had to do. Quit his bellyaching and figure a way to get himself free. Before his dad could show up and get himself splattered all over the floorboards. This was his chance. Maybe his only chance.

Problem was, he had no idea where Mia was right now. And she wasn’t stupid either. No way she’d just leave him here, alone and unguarded, if there was any possibility of escape. Not when she was so close to completing her endgame; getting her stupid retribution.

God, he hated her so much right now he just wanted to… Then he remembered the scrape of the shovel as she scooped up the sticky, smoldering remains of the cop. That was the last he’d seen of her. A cheery grin and an instruction to “Sit tight. I’m just gonna bury this loser out back in the family plot.” And Dean didn’t have the first idea what that meant but all he could hear was the sound of the shovel scraping against the floorboards.

He swallowed, eyeing the patch of dark wetness still spread across the floor not more than six feet away from him.

After Mia was done doing whatever she was doing out back, she’d moved the police cruiser – he’d heard the engine and recognized it as the same one the cop had pulled up in – and then the last thing Dean heard was the sound of the Impala’s engine revving throatily – over-revving – before the skanky half-demon had driven off in his car. His car! And didn’t that just make him crazy? The thought of her touching his baby infuriated him almost as much as the thought of her touching him.

So if he was going to get the hell out of this before his dad could step into it, he knew he had to do it now. He might not get another chance.

God, he so needed to get to Dad. Needed to make sure he was okay. Make sure that bitch didn’t get to lay a skanky half-demon finger on him before he could send her skinny ass to Hell where it belonged.

But maybe even more than that, he needed to get to Sam. Because even though in some part of his brain he knew Sam was okay, he had to see his little brother – whole and well – with his own two eyes before he’d be able to do much in the way of calm, rational strategizing. Before he’d be able to do much of anything.

Hell, right now he could barely remember his own name.

Everything would be okay once he saw Sam; once he saw Sam was okay and in one piece.

But then he remembered the sound of a horn blaring, the heavy thud of something big and fast hitting immobile flesh and bone and he was back to thinking about the sound of the shovel as Mia scraped the cop up off the floor.

“Guy’ll be scraping bits o’ Sammy off o’ there for months.”

No.

That hadn’t happened to Sam.

Dammit, he so needed to get out of here.

He began to struggle anew against the twine binding him to the chair, but it felt as if the more he fought, the tighter it got, and his wrists were already starting to go numb from the damage he’d inflicted on them.

The damage she’d inflicted.

Skanky half-demon Wicked Witch of East Texas.

Dammit, Sammy had even been right about her not having an Oklahoma accent.

Somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed about that. He just hoped Sam got another opportunity to embarrass his big brother by demonstrating the power of his planet-sized brain.

Don’t think about that, he ordered himself, ceasing his struggles and once again performing an inventory of the place – although this time he wasn’t on the lookout for potential threats, rather for potential escape routes.

But the bare, bleak room hadn’t changed any in the interminable hours he’d been sat here, useless and – and hungry. Damn it, concentrate, Dean!

There had to be a way out of this.

He took a breath, shuddering slightly as a chill breeze blew across him, seeming to circle him before dissipating around his ankles. He frowned, unsure where the sudden current of air could have come from, exhaling only to see his own breath mist in front of his face.

Crap.

“Not now, Casper!” he muttered, as the temperature in the room plummeted still further. “Unless you got a knife on ya?” he revised, glancing about himself hopefully. “’Cause that I could use.”

But nothing materialized in front of him, and for a second he convinced himself he was imagining things.

Which was when the few remaining pieces of glass in the windows began to rattle in time with his chattering teeth.

“Mommy?”

Dean froze. Almost literally.

He couldn’t see a damn thing, twisting against his bindings, trying to see behind him or into the little kitchen through the doorway to his left. But no matter how much he shook it, the chair didn’t budge, and Dean figured Mia must have done something to it, secured it to the floor somehow. Figures. Yeah, Mia wasn’t stupid.

Sure didn’t help his escape plan any, though. Nor did it enable him to see where the child’s voice had come from.

“Mommy, where are you?”

Dean’s head twisted to the right, in the direction of the little voice, before another voice chimed in to his left.

“Mommy, I can’t see you! Mommy, where are you?”

“Daddy’s hurt, Mommy –”

“Don’t hurt Daddy, Mommy –”

“The baby! Don’t hurt the baby –”

“Save the baby, Mommy –”

“You gotta save the baby –”

“The baby –”

Mine.

Dean started at the sudden addition of a third voice, abruptly silencing the two children.

Mine.

Like the chiming of a bell. Maybe it was a woman…but somehow it didn’t sound right, not like a woman should sound. Almost like…

Mine.

…Two voices, one over the top of the other, one female, one…

Mine.

…Not.

Mine.

Dean suddenly remembered the conversation he’s had with Mia earlier – when she’d said her name meant “mine” and he’d asked her who she belonged to.

Mine.

Was this it? Was this who she belonged to? This other voice? This bassy thrum vibrating beneath the almost-female treble?

MINE.

“No!” A little boy’s voice suddenly rang out loudly. “You’re not my mommy! And you can’t have the baby!”

“You’re not going to hurt the baby!”

There was a pause, a complete absence of sound, and Dean suddenly realized what he was listening to: a single moment frozen forever in time – in the memories of the two little boys who had died here all those years ago.

“You’re not going to hurt the baby!”

And then a sound like breaking glass and a single word vibrating throughout the entire house:

MINE!

Outside the Collins house,
Fort Worth, TX

John sighed heavily as he gazed out of the truck window at the broken-down house across the street. “This isn’t how I remember it, Sam,” he said quietly, eyes never straying from what had once been a normal, suburban family home.

Sam glanced sideways at him, fidgeting a little in the truck’s passenger seat as if uncomfortable with his father’s uncharacteristically reflective demeanor.

“Before I came here,” John continued, eyes still never leaving the house. “They were just an ordinary family: Mom, Dad, two little boys. Baby on the way –”

As if reading the regretful cadence in his father’s voice, Sam put in, “This wasn’t your fault, Dad.”

John knew that. Or, at least, he thought he knew that. Until now. Until this moment. Sitting here. Waiting. Again. Waiting for someone to die…. He looked back at his youngest son, eyes heavy, mouth tensed into a hard line. “The way the guy screamed…” he trailed off, shaking his head. “And those little boys… The family who died here…” His eyes glistened, and he had to blink rapidly to stop tears leaking down his cheeks. He couldn’t lose it in front of Sam. Never in front of Sam. “It – it could have been you and Dean, Sammy.”

Sam put a gentle hand on his forearm, squeezing slightly, and John wondered when his baby boy’s hands got so big. “But it wasn’t, Dad,” Sam said softly. “You saved us, remember?”

John nodded, turning his attention back to the house. “But not them.”

“Dad, nothing you could have done –”

John’s attention snapped instantly back to his son, voice low, his anger and frustration clearly evident. “I could have gone in sooner,” he insisted. “Instead of sitting out here with my thumb up my butt wondering what to do about some poor possessed pregnant woman.”

“You were a rookie, you said so yourself,” Sam tried to soothe him, and when the hell did Sam ever try to soothe him?

“It’s no excuse, Sammy,” he said. “I shouldn’t have waited.” Suddenly his hand flew to the door handle. “Maybe I shouldn’t wait now –”

“Dad, no!” Sam grabbed onto John’s sleeve like John remembered Dean doing so many times when he was a little kid. Don’t go, Dad! And John was oddly compliant, despite the firm set of his shoulders and the grimace of determination on his face. “We don’t know what’s going on in there,” Sam reminded him, throwing his own words back at him. “We don’t know if Mia or – or Dean are even in there –”

“But if my boy’s in there, Sam. If she’s hurt him –”

“Dad, think about it! You see the Impala anywhere? You said it yourself, we need to stake the place out a little before we go charging in, guns blazing. She’s got to know you’d come here eventually – this could just be one big booby trap and she and Dean could be miles from here!”

John stilled a little, letting his breathing even out. “Never had you down as the level-headed one, Sammy,” he said, gently patting his son’s hand where it rested on his arm.

Sam shrugged awkwardly. “Yeah, well. Just don’t want to see you making another rookie mistake…”

John just stared at him for a second before snorting. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I made enough of those already.” He turned his gaze back to the ramshackle building across the street, expression becoming pensive. “But if Dean’s in there –”

“Dad.”

“I know, Sam,” John agreed reluctantly. “You know, after all the times I watched Jim Murphy or Bobby Singer performing exorcisms – all the hunts they took me on – and believe me, I was taught by the best, Sam – Jim, Bobby, Jefferson, Tanner – I still don’t understand how this job got away from me so bad.”

Sam’s brow crinkled. “Tanner?” he queried.

“Tanner Marks,” John explained. “Met him at Jim’s place. He was in a similar place to me back then. Lost his family to something out there in the dark. I guess we kinda bonded over whiskey and weaponry. He taught me a lot, even though he wasn’t much more than a rookie himself back then. Showed me the ropes. You’d be too young to remember him – he got out of hunting a while ago.” His eyes slid back to the Collins house wistfully. “Maybe I should have done the same.”

“Dad,” Sam’s hand was on his shoulder. “You’ve saved a hell of a lot of lives over the years. That’s not something to take lightly.”

“But not this family.”

“No, not this family,” Sam agreed. “But you’ve said it before – we can’t save everyone. And at least you tried. It’s not your fault.”

There is was again, that little get out clause. Not your fault. Like Mia wasn’t his fault. Like Mary wasn’t his fault….

“I wasn’t prepared,” he said shortly. “I wasn’t ready. I didn’t know what I was doing and I didn’t take the time to do the research. I could have called Bobby. Or Jim. Or Tanner. But that would have been admitting I wasn’t up to the game – wasn’t ready to fly solo. I was too damn proud to pick up the phone and ask someone, Sam. And this is what happened. I should have stuck around after, instead of – instead of just wanting…” He trailed off, and Sam quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Just wanting what?” he asked.

John couldn’t bring himself to meet his boy’s earnest gaze. “Needed to get home,” he said thickly, his tongue suddenly feeling too big for his mouth. “After those little boys – after what I saw…what it did to them… I just needed to get home. To you boys.”

Sam swallowed hard. “Dad –”

“But I should have stayed. Or – or I should have come back more often, checked on the baby more regularly. Once wasn’t enough. But there was never the time. I was so damn busy fighting this private little war of mine that I forgot her.” Slowly he met Sam’s concerned gaze. “I forgot her, Sam.”

“You didn’t forget her, Dad. You figured she’d be okay, right?”

“But she wasn’t, and I should have checked.”

“And what would you have done?” Sam squeezed his father’s shoulder firmly as he tried to avert his gaze back to the house. “Huh, Dad? If you’d found out she was a monster? What would you have done? Put a bullet in her brain? Ventilated a defenseless little kid? Dad, you couldn’t have killed her any more than you could have killed me.”

John’s eyes shot back to his son. “Sam –”

“Some people think I’m just as much a monster as she is, Dad,” Sam continued, his voice strangely neutral. “And I know you’ve known a helluva lot longer than you ever let on. About Haris. About his plans for me.”

John didn’t reply to that, just looked away, looked across the street, looked anywhere but at Sam.

“But you didn’t kill me, Dad. Even when you must have been wondering. Wondering what I was going to become…”

“Sam, I never thought you’d let Haris win. I never thought you’d follow the path he’d laid out for you. Never.”

Sam nodded. “And I appreciate that,” he said. “I do. But you see my point, right? Even if you’d known Mia was a half-demon back in 1985, when her mom was giving birth to her right in that house across the street, you could never have brought yourself to end her. You couldn’t. Even if you’d come back here every year to check up on her, even if you’d seen her setting fire to her grandparents’ house, you wouldn’t have just killed her without trying to save her first.”

John stared at his son appraisingly for a second, considering his words, turning them over in his head and wondering whether Sam was right. Could he have killed a little girl? Just killed her because he was afraid of what she might become?

“I don’t think we can save her now, Sam,” he said at length.

Sam shook his head. “No,” he agreed. “She’s a half-demon, Dad. I’m not sure anything could have saved her.”

John nodded, turning back toward the house and losing himself for a few minutes as his mind pondered what if and what could have been….

“Dad,” Sam suddenly tensed on the seat next to him, and John ripped himself abruptly back to the present. His son pointed up the street just as the sound of a familiar engine rumbled toward them. “She’s here.”

John’s whole body stiffened as the Impala drew to a smooth halt across the street. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sam scooch lower in his seat, trying to disguise his massive frame a little in an effort to avoid blowing their advantage and revealing to Mia that he wasn’t quite as dead as she might have previously thought.

John, however, didn’t move, just fixed his gaze on the young woman pulling herself lithely from Dean’s car.

She glanced about herself slowly, and John wondered fleetingly whether she somehow sensed she was being watched. If she did, she seemed to dismiss the idea, tossing long brown tresses over her shoulder before walking purposefully around to the back of the Impala and popping the trunk.

Sam’s breath caught in his throat before he heaved a long, low sigh as Mia merely removed a couple of brown paper grocery bags as casually as if she’d been shopping for dinner. Who knew, maybe she had?

“You think she had Dean in there?” John asked suddenly, picking up on the way Sam’s color had only just started to bleed back into his face.

Sam shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “When she and I were fighting back in Plano I – I kinda felt like he was nearby somehow…”

John didn’t question it, just turned his attention back to the half-demon, who had closed the trunk and was heading on up the path John remembered sprinting up so many years earlier.

“Doesn’t look like she’s got him in there now.”

“No,” Sam sounded relieved. “And at least now we know she’s here for sure.”

John nodded. “Let’s just hope Dean’s with her.”

Collins house,
Forth Worth, TX

Dean tried his best not to flinch when Mia kicked open the door, but he was pretty sure she caught the involuntary muscle spasm regardless.

She glanced over at him, a self-satisfied smirk on her face, as she dumped grocery bags onto the rickety-looking table by the boarded-up window before turning back to rake her eyes over him appraisingly.

“You look pale, baby,” she purred. “What happened, you see a ghost while I was gone?”

Dean considered that for a second. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he informed her.

Mia paused for a moment, nodding as she pulled something from one of the grocery bags and headed over in his direction. He tensed as she suddenly grabbed his chin and turned his face up toward her. “You’re not wrong, sweetheart,” she said. “Right now I don’t think I’d believe a word that came out of those pretty lips of yours.”

Her grip tightened on his jaw and she forced open his mouth, upending a bottle of Southern Comfort into it before he could do much to stop her. He choked as the liquid burnt its way down his throat, a good deal of it ending up on his shirt as he spluttered in an attempt to swallow and catch his breath at the same time.

Mia grinned at his discomfort, taking a swig from the bottle herself before leaning down toward him and casually licking the spilled alcohol from his chin. She pulled away from him slowly, eyes never leaving his, before turning back toward the table and the grocery bags. “Wouldn’t want you to get dehydrated, Dean,” she told him. “Need you to keep your strength up after all.”

Dean spat the last of the alcohol onto the floor next to him where it mingled with the pool of his own blood drying beneath his chair. “More of a Jack Daniels man myself,” he choked out. “Southern Comfort’s a girl’s drink.”

Mia raised the bottle in his direction. “Cheers,” she agreed, taking another swig.

“Shouldn’t you be drinking baby’s blood out of a sheep’s skull or something?”

Mia slammed the bottle down on the table, and Dean smiled at her sweetly before she regained her equilibrium and began removing items from the grocery bags without sparing him another glance.

He watched as she piled candy bars, bags of chips and bottles of water on the table, and as she opened a bag of peanut M&Ms and shoved a handful into her mouth, she finally turned back to him, chewing slowly before opening one of the bottles of water and taking a long drink.

His mouth began to water as he wondered how long it had been since he’d eaten anything, while the forced alcohol had only made his burgeoning thirst even worse.

“Oh, you want some, honey?” Mia asked him, holding the bottle of water out toward him as his eyes followed it reflexively. “Seriously, where are my manners?” She took a step toward him, the bottle still held out in front of her as if she was going to offer him some, before she suddenly pulled it back in toward her and spun on her heel. “Nah,” she said with a smirk. “But maybe I’ll let you drink your Daddy’s blood after I’ve eviscerated him.” She heaved herself up onto the table, which wobbled under her weight.

Dean found himself wishing it would just collapse right out from under her and break her neck.

But no such luck.

She opened a bag of Lays, switching between the chips and the chocolate as she ate noisily, and Dean turned away from her, clenching his jaw and refusing to be baited. She was just trying to mess with his head. He wasn’t going to beg. And no way was he going to make himself any more of her bitch than he already had.

“Always did love the strong, silent type, Dean,” Mia said around a mouthful of M&Ms. “Shoulda followed my first instincts and shacked up with your brother. You’ve hardly shut up since the day we met.”

“Hope you choke on your chips,” Dean returned, before adding, “Or develop a sudden inexplicable peanut allergy. Or both.”

“Good comeback, Dean. Obviously that little brain of yours don’t function so good without the calories, huh?”

“You know I heard your little brothers while you were out,” Dean burst out suddenly, and for a second Mia actually did look like she might choke on one of her snacks. Dean smirked, reveling over any little victories he was still able to win over her.

She jumped down off the table, food and drink forgotten. “What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded, striding over to him as he looked up at her, batting his long eyelashes innocently.

“What, you didn’t know they were still here?” he said, feigning concerned surprise. “Spirits are often born of violent death, sweetheart. Or didn’t you learn anything from tagging along with me n’ Sam?”

“You’re lying,” she spat, suddenly once more in his face with a hand wrapped around his throat.

“Why would I lie?” he croaked. “I heard them. They were right here.” He paused, trying to catch his breath as Mia squeezed a little harder. “This is where they died, right? Your brothers? Your mom and dad?”

Mia let go of him, pushing his head back roughly as she did so. “You wanna know the whole story, Dean?” she asked him, turning away and heading back for the table. “Fine. This is where your dad destroyed my family, okay?”

“Yeah, you told me that already,” Dean said, affecting a tone of utter boredom.

Mia whirled back toward him. “You think it’s funny?” she said, suddenly thrusting out her hand as if it was still gripped about his throat, and for a second it felt as if it actually was.

Dean choked as Mia released him.

“Apology accepted, Captain Needa,” she hissed.

Dean laughed hollowly. “Just my luck, I finally hook up with a chick who can quote Star Wars and she’s demon hellspawn.”

“Not hellspawn,” Mia corrected him. “That’s not how I came to be.”

“Oh no?” Dean asked casually. “Then your mom wasn’t doing the horizontal hula with one of Hell’s finest?”

Mia turned on him, eyes for a second completely black. “Watch your mouth, boy,” she spat, voice all wrong, like the one Dean had heard echoing around the house earlier. Her lip curled ever-so-slightly, and Dean actually tensed in his chair, steeling himself for another physical assault.

But it never came.

Mia seemed to regain her composure just as her irises regained their usual chocolate-colored hue. “Don’t talk about my mom like that,” she said, voice sounding completely normal again. “She was an innocent. Just like yours.”

Dean had no response for that, just tensed his jaw and swallowed hard. “So if that’s not how it happened,” he asked, consciously changing the subject, “if your mom wasn’t getting it on with some demon, then how did you come to be – y’know – the half-demonic bitch we all know and hate so much?”

“Aw Dean,” Mia sighed. “It was only a couple of days ago you told me you loved me.”

“Things change.”

“And men are so fickle.” She stood looking at him for a second, as if appraising him. “You really want to know?”

Dean nodded. “Sure. Why not. Nothing better to do.”

Mia continued to look at him, as if trying to decide whether he was genuinely interested or whether he just wanted to use any information he might glean against her. “My mom was already pregnant when the demon possessed her,” she eventually began at length, and Dean figured she’d decided telling him was no biggie considering she was planning on killing him in the very near future.

“And it was your mom who killed your father and your brothers?”

“No,” Mia corrected him shortly. “It was the demon inside of her. When your dad tried to exorcise it – after he let my family die –”

“No way he let your family die, Mia,” Dean interjected testily.

Mia ignored him. “After your dad let my family die and tried to exorcise my mom, the demon decided it didn’t want to go back to Hell. Best I can figure it, the stress of the exorcism sent my mom into labor, and as that was happening, rather than trying to possess me, which would still have led to its being exorcised, the demon somehow fused itself with me while I was still in my mother’s womb. His essence and my – soul, I guess – became parts of the same whole.”

“So while you’re busy blaming my dad for losing your family, the thing that actually killed them is now a part of you?” He snorted. “Honey, you might wanna take another look at who you’re actually pissed at here. ’Cause I was wrong. You’re more than just a bitch; you’re the thing that destroyed your family’s bitch.”

Again, he readied himself for some kind of attack, but again it never came.

“Is that who I heard earlier?” he pressed on, figuring while Mia was busy internalizing her anger he might stand a chance of getting a little more information out of her. Know your enemy. One of Dad’s favorite sayings. “That voice I heard when your brothers were here. It kept saying ‘Mine,’ liked it owned you or something. Does it own you? The demon part of you? Can you hear it? Can you feel it? Is that who orders you to do this crap?”

“It’s not possession, Dean,” Mia said quietly, subdued, studiously looking away from him. “It doesn’t order me to do anything. It’s a part of me.”

“But it owns you.”

“I don’t belong to anyone.”

“Then why did it keep repeating that word, Mia? ‘Mine.’ Why did it keep saying that if you’re not just its meatsuit?”

Mia finally spun in his direction, face suddenly so close to his he could count her eyelashes. She didn’t touch him, didn’t put one hand on him, but he could feel – something – something almost vibrating in her. Something like – like when Sam had kicked the crap out of Lucifer back in Leicester, or Alyssa in Phoenix. Something prickling his skin. Energy. Power.

“I don’t belong to anyone, Dean,” she hissed, eyes glazing over coal-black. “No one owns me, boy.” Her voice had taken on that same cadence, the voice beneath the voice, and Dean had the weirdest sensation that suddenly he wasn’t talking to Mia at all. “You still want to make excuses for me, don’t you? Like you do your little brother? Not his fault. Big family curse. Sins of the fathers.” He blinked at her, and she grinned broadly. “Thought I didn’t know about that, huh? The Winchester family curse? The other brats Haris latched on to whose families shared the same fate? Ever wonder why him and not you? Huh? Eldest son and all that. But no. You’re left with a little bauble to play with while Sammy wins the Freaky Psychic Lottery.”

“How…?” Dean snapped his jaw shut abruptly. Mia hadn’t known about the amulet. When she’d leaned over him in the car and it had burned her, she’d been surprised. Where the hell was all this information coming from? How was she accessing it? Unless the demon part of her already knew…?

“Come on, Dean. I’m no different to Sammy. I do what I do because I want to do it. Destiny? Your brother might believe in that crap but you and I both know it’s a load of old hooey. There’s no such thing as Fate, Dean. Fate’s what we make of it. No one’s directing us, no one’s telling us what to do. Not Haris. Not God. Not Lucifer. There’s no Big Plan, no Powers That Be. Just us. Just me and what I decide to make of my life. My mother didn’t give birth to a possessed baby. I’m a single entity, Dean. A single creation. I’m something entirely different. Something that’s never been seen before in the whole of Creation – Heaven, Earth or Hell.”

Dean sighed. “Well don’t we have a high opinion of ourselves?”

She did hit him that time, not using any weird psychic telekinesis or Darth Vader death grip. Just backhanded him because she wanted to. Because she wanted to feel it. He could see it in her smoldering black eyes.

She moved in close to him again, breathing hard, gripping his chin and licking at the blood oozing from the split in his lower lip.

“Everyone’s going to know who I am someday, Dean,” she told him, still holding his face so he couldn’t pull away from her. “Everyone’s going to fear me. Everyone’s going to tremble at the sound of my name.” She blinked, and her eyes cleared of their blackness. “I’m the Angel of Death, baby,” she told him, her voice having returned to normal again, and without warning she pressed her lips hard against his. He tried his best to twist his head away, but she’d been right earlier. She was damned strong. “Don’t worry, sugar,” she whispered, mouth still hovering close to his own. “Daddy’s coming. It’ll all be over soon.”

She stood, releasing his chin roughly as she pulled away from him, her hand digging in her jeans pocket as she straightened.

“See this?” she asked him, pulling his cellphone out and holding it up in front of him.

He raised a questioning eyebrow, trying desperately to regain some kind of composure as his heart rate failed abysmally to return to normal. “My phone?” he asked casually. “Yeah, so?”

The half-demon held the little cellular in the flat of her left hand. “Your brother’s not the only one with a few parlor tricks up his sleeve,” she told him, bringing her right hand up so her palm was hovering half an inch above the phone. She closed her eyes for a second, taking a deep breath, as a bolt of blue-white electricity arced straight out of her hand and into the cell, the air around her seeming to crackle with it as Dean’s nostrils filled with the distinctive smell of ozone.

Mia smiled triumphantly as the front of the phone lit up, even though Dean knew the battery was dead. “Something else Little Brother was right about,” she told him, grinning.

“Yeah,” Dean agreed, schooling his features carefully so that he didn’t look too freaked out. “You’re a regular Miss Dynamo. If I were the Duracell Bunny, I’d be worried.”

“Funny,” Mia commented humorlessly, opening the phone and scrolling lazily through the phone book. “Not as funny as the fact that you and your dad are about to die right where I was born though. Now that’s frickin’ hilarious. Don’t you think, Dean?”

Outside the Collins house,
Fort Worth, TX

“What we need is a plan.”

“What we need is a miracle.”

“That’s not helping, Sammy.”

Sam sighed, dragging a tired hand through his hair. “So what do you suggest we do, Dad? We already know we can’t go rushing in there. We need to do this smart! Even if Mia doesn’t have Dean, we don’t know what the hell we might be up against –”

“And if she does have Dean, then I’m not leaving him in there with her a second longer than I need to. I’m not making the same mistake again, Sam. This is my son. I’m not gonna go getting him killed because I underestimated what the hell I’m dealing with –”

“What we’re dealing with, Dad,” Sam reminded him stubbornly. “There are two of us in this cavalry, remember?”

“I know that, Sam –”

“Do you?” Sam straightened. “Dad, this isn’t just about you or the mistakes you think you made twenty years ago! Dean might be your son, but he’s my brother, too! I want to get the hell in there just as badly as you do – I mean, she could be doing anything to him in there – but we gotta think about this! Think this through! We go in there all guns blazing, someone’s gonna get caught in the crossfire and I’m sure as hell not gonna let it be Dean!”

John took a deep breath. “So what do you suggest we do?”

Sam’s eyes skittered to the floorboards, and he scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably. “These powers of mine,” he began slowly, trying to pretend he didn’t notice his father’s posture suddenly stiffen. “I’m not gonna pretend to know how the hell they work, and I certainly don’t have much of a handle on controlling them. But so far they seem to kick in when – when Dean’s in trouble.”

John looked up at him a little incredulously. “You’re kidding, right?”

Sam shook his head. “No. First time I ever did anything but have a death vision? We were at this kid’s house – Max Miller. He was like me, mom died on fire on the ceiling.” John shuddered. “He locked me in a closet and I had a vision of his blowing the back of Dean’s head off. Next thing I know, the dresser he’s got pressed up against the closet door goes flying across the room.”

John continued to gaze at his son steadily, and Sam finally managed to meet his gaze, almost relieved to see no judgment in his dark eyes.

“Max Miller was telekinetic, Dad,” Sam continued to explain. “That was the first time I felt something like that. Happened again with Alyssa Medina – another of Haris’ ‘kids.’ She could steal memories. Wipe people’s minds. When she tried to do it to Dean, I – I did it to her instead.”

“Sam –”

“Dad, it even worked with Lucifer. With Lucifer, Dad! He tried to push Dean through a Hellgate – I pushed him back. That’s how it works, I think.”

John nodded, his face carefully neutral. “You think you could take this chick?” he asked slowly.

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But if I can control it – if I can somehow use whatever this is I can do to turn her own powers back onto her, then that might be all we need. Even if I can’t waste her ass, it might be enough to subdue her enough to get Dean the hell away from her.”

“These ‘powers’ of yours didn’t seem much help when she was kicking your ass all over Plano, son,” John pointed out.

“No,” Sam agreed. “Not until she let slip Dean was still alive. As soon as that happened, I was back in the game. Well, for a little while anyway…”

John considered his son for a long moment, breathing slow and controlled. “No,” he said at length, shaking his head. “I’m not risking it. Not risking you, son. I already did that – tried to sacrifice one son to save the other – and look what happened? I almost lost both of you. I can’t do that again. I can’t, Sam. I won’t.”

Sam sighed. “Dad, it’s the only way. We have an advantage, here. A small one, granted, but it’s the only one I can see –”

John seemed about to reply when a sudden buzzing from his pocket announced his cell was ringing. Tugging the phone from his jeans, he glanced at the caller ID, a frown forming a line between his dark eyebrows. “Dean,” he said quietly, and Sam straightened.

John took a breath before cautiously answering the call.

“Hey, Johnny. Been a while. You don’t know how much I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again.”

He closed his eyes for a second, head swimming. “Where’s my son?” he demanded, wiping his hand across his forehead before flicking the phone onto speaker so that Sam could hear what was going on.

“Dead by the side of the road, last time I saw.”

John’s eyes flicked to Sam. “I meant Dean.”

Mia laughed. “Oh, him. I thought you meant tall, dark and splattered for a second. My condolences, by the way. So much to live for. Life’s a bitch, right?”

“Where’s Dean?” John continued frostily, noting Mia’s ignorance of Sam’s miraculous recovery with a degree of satisfaction.

“Dean’s fine, John,” Mia replied. “Little hungry. Little thirsty. Little scared, although he’d never admit that. Just keeps lookin’ at the door like he’s expecting Daddy to come bustin’ through at any minute to save his worthless little ass. Although it’s a nice ass. Would kinda be a shame if you didn’t save it.”

“What makes you think I won’t save him?” John demanded coolly.

“Well you’re not exactly holding all the cards, honey,” Mia sneered. “One boy dead, the other –”

John heard a crackle of static down the phone, then the unmistakable sound of Dean crying out in pain. “Mia –”

“Dad!” Dean’s voice cut him off, screaming out of the cell. “Dad, don’t! Don’t give her the satisfaction –”

Anything else Dean might have said was choked off harshly, Mia’s calm, sadistic tone returning to the phone line smoothly.

“You wanna try me, John?” she asked. “Wanna see how many pieces I can tear him into before I run out of flesh?”

“Don’t you touch him,” John growled menacingly. “This is between you and me. He has nothing to do with this –”

“Oh, but he has everything to do with it, John. Don’t you get it? I’m gonna take your family apart piece by piece until you have nothing left; slaughter them like my family was slaughtered. I already got Sammy. Dean’s just next in line. When I’m done with him, I start on your friends. Bobby Singer. That asshat Bearwalker. Jefferson. Shame someone already took out Jim Murphy and that Caleb guy. They would have been fun. Probably as much fun as Tanner Marks was…”

John ground his teeth together in a silent scream. “Tanner?”

“How d’you think I found out about your little boys, John?” Mia taunted. “Tanner was –” she paused, “– not particularly easily persuaded, but he gave you all up eventually. Pretty high threshold for pain though. Gotta say, I was impressed.”

John fumed silently, trying not to think about another death he’d been indirectly responsible for. “What do you want?” he demanded through gritted teeth.

“Isn’t it obvious? I want you, John. I want retribution. You surrender yourself to me, and all this can stop. Maybe I’ll even let your friends carry on breathing.”

“When and where?”

Sam cut his eyes to his father’s in alarm, and John held up a hand to silence him.

Mia chuckled. “Come on, Johnny. I know you’re not far away. And you sure as hell know where I am, right? Come play with me. You know you want to. And if ya don’t? Well I’m gonna start slicing and dicing your little boy here pretty damn soon. Wouldn’t want me to peel the skin of his pretty face would you?”

“Mia –”

The call disconnected abruptly, and John hesitated for a second, frozen in place, before suddenly launching the phone at the back seat where it slammed into the headrest, slid down onto the seat and finally bounced off onto the floorboards.

John looked up at Sam, hands clawing angrily at his thighs in impotent frustration. “I have to go,” he told his youngest flatly. “I have to go or she’s gonna kill him, Sam.”

“Dad, no!” Sam caught John’s jacket in a vivid action replay of their earlier exchange. “You can’t! It’s suicide! She’ll kill you, Dad!

“Sam.” John put a calming hand against Sam’s cheek, the sudden unexpected contact causing Sam’s breath to catch in his throat as he read the look of resignation in his father’s eyes. “It’s the only way, son. And she still thinks you’re dead. Maybe there’s still time to use our secret weapon.”

“Dad –”

“Sam, it’s gonna be okay. We can do this. We can save your brother.”

“But at what cost?” Sam pulled away from him furiously. “At what cost, Dad?” He slammed his fist against the dashboard, and a crackle of energy arced from his palm, sparks scattering into the radio, which abruptly blared into life despite the truck’s engine and electrics being switched off.

John pulled back a little, and Sam didn’t fail to notice the look of surprised shock on his father’s face. “Sam…?”

The younger Winchester grimaced coldly, sparks still jumping from his fingers. “I’m gonna kill that bitch!”

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The Winchester Chronicles