Nothing Left To Fear

12

The demon is bound to the spot with a Seal of Solomon, tied in place with maiden hair and her hands nailed to the chair with silver grave nails. She is wearing the remnants of a night gown, and her face and hair are stained with old gore. She is a lesser demon, a bruxa, and Dean thinks they caught her within a week of her spree starting. This is handy, the general consensus is that the bitches hibernate in the third week for upwards of fifty years.

She lashes and bites at empty air and screams, there is nothing human about her except her form, lovely and pale, but the skin is wrinkled like it's too large and hangs on her like a hand me down dress, and thin enough to show the empty veins and arteries underneath it and the pull of muscle against muscle and bone thrust against vellum skin.

Her breasts are full and high on her chest, her nipples pointed and her pubic hair obvious through the rags she's wearing, but her entire chin, neck and the top of her breast is stained with gore.

Her eyes hold a terrible liquidity.

She screams and yells as they inject holy water into her veins, and then her head falls down, old Campbell realizes that this is the moment to ask her. Dean doesn't hear the question, he's stood by the back wall with Castiel.

"Ah, say, sell," she breathes it out through her mangled throat, mangled by her nature and not what they have done to her.

All of them step back. "Ah say sell," she is forcing the word out, long past the point where she knows she can escape. Then she starts to laugh, although even the sound of it is broken.

All of the monsters that can imitate speech or form can laugh.

"Ah say sell." She can see the effect it's having on them, the look of growing horror. "Kah, me, Ah say sell kah me." The laugh is a crowing of delight now.

"Bobby," Dean says, "do we need anything else from her?" If Bobby says no, they'll end it here and now and burn the house down.

"Dean," Castiel says suddenly, cocking his head to the west "her kiss is coming, she was not alone."

Dean's entire posture changes from louch indifference to battle ready without shifting a muscle. "All of you, go back to the van, send Cho and the other one to me, they could do with a little exercise."

When the two demons come in, totally different in mien and appearance Dean undoes their Limiters then joins the others in the van.

There are screams at first, female ones. The only Limiter not in his hands is Castiel's.

It takes hours, which doesn't surprise Dean at all- Farfarello always did like to play with his victims.

Then Cho comes out, tall and urbane, with not a drop of blood on him. Farfarello behind him, wary and loping like a big cat, but blood soaked, and Castiel, with a terrible splash of blood across his shirt, arterial spray by the look of it, suggesting one of the Bruxa had just eaten.

It wasn't supposed to have a Kiss.

Their information was wrong. It was meant to be a single Bruxa. They are not supposed to hunt in packs. If they did it means something stronger was controlling them. Bruxa attack and kill other Bruxa on sight. And it named Azazel.

"I need a cup of tea." Cho says, clipping his Limiters back on his ears himself, "and a long hot bath."

Farfarello holds out his wrists and Dean clamps the cuffs in place. "Do you feel better?"

Farfarello's smile is hideous, he has filed his vessel's teeth down to points and his eyes are slitted and yellow. His hair is shock white, other than that he sort of looks like Billy Idol, had Billy Idol worked at a slaughter house where a cow had exploded all over him. "Better is relative," he stretches his neck at an almost inhuman angle, it creaks and clicks under the gesture. "you said one Bruxa, you give twelve."

"Twelve?" Dean asks, Cas just smiles and picks a fleck of dried blood from the Limiter around his neck, his nail picking at the twisted coils of his torque.

"Fuck," Campbell breathes, twelve would have been a massacre for upwards of twenty Hunters. It took four to restrain the one that they had caught.

"I don't suppose you left anything for salvage." Bobby says, climbing off the bench seat, "we're running low on Nazean salts." And that is their reality, from imminent death to horror to practicality in moments, then back to the camp to shower, shit and sleep. And tomorrow they'll do it all over again.

After he's gathered what he wants from the Bruxa Bobby will burn down the old house with salt and turpentine to make sure there is nothing left. Local cops will blame it on bored kids- the house had been abandoned for years after all.