50 States, Colorado - Wanted (Part 3)
Dec. 23rd, 2011 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberdreamsWanted
Part 3
It was the humming that woke him up and it was the fire in his gut that kept him awake. Dean shifted uncomfortably and managed to pull himself up a little so his head was propped against a rock, giving him a view of their makeshift camp. He took in Sam curled on his side, sleeping soundly, and across the fire, he could now make out the source of the humming. The Pinkerton agent was feeding branches into the flames, singing softly under his breath.
“See, there above the centre, where the flag is waving bright,
We are going out of slavery; we're bound for freedom's light;
We mean to show Jeff Davis how the Africans can fight,
As we go marching on!”
Henricksen had come to the chorus, and Dean joined in, though his voice was hoarse and breathy.
“Glory, glory hallelujah.
Glory, glory hallelujah.
Glory, glory hallelujah.
As we go marching on.”
Victor had stopped singing, and Dean could see the man’s eyes glittering like obsidian across the leaping flames.
“So, you must have been with the First Arkansas, then.” Dean said.
Victor nodded. He rose to his feet and came over to sit, Indian style, close by. Dean appreciated the courtesy. It hurt his chest to raise his voice, and besides, he didn’t want to wake his little brother. Even in the dim flickering firelight he could see lines of exhaustion on Sam’s face.
“How’d you know that?” Victor asked.
“Heard the words you were singin’,” Dean explained. “You know we got different words to that song than you black guys. Had a friend who left our town to join up with the Firsts, said he wanted to serve alongside his brothers.”
“What happened to him? Your friend?” Victor asked.
“He got captured, went and got himself killed escaping.”
Victor nodded. “That’d be at Mountain Plantation. I was lucky, escaped in ’63, rejoined my regiment and saw the war out. What about you and Sam?”
“Sam stayed home. He was too young when the war started. Our daddy’s friend, Pastor Jim, well he was working the Underground Railroad, had come down to Lawrence to run things, so we settled Sam in with him to help with that.
Me, I was with the Kansas Regiment from ’64, joined as soon as I turned eighteen, though our daddy weren’t none too pleased. He couldn’t say nothin’ though, seein’ as how he’d been fighting for the North from the start.”
Dean couldn’t see the Pinkerton man’s face too clearly, what with the deep shadows and the fact his vision seemed to be starting to blur, but he thought the man looked a little shaken up.
“Your family helped with the Underground Railroad? You know back in ’50, that was when my Momma got me and my little sister out of the slave plantation down in Louisiana. It was the Railroad that got us out, all the way to Chicago and freedom. Got those folks to thank for my job and my life.”
Dean nodded, but he wasn’t sure Victor saw. His head was swimming and the fire in his belly seemed to be spreading through his chest. Sparks from the fire seemed to have taken on a life of their own, they were shooting up into the sky like stars and he could hear a flute playing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, echoing their voices from earlier. Sweat ran down his face and he felt a sudden chill. He sat up, heart thudding uncomfortably hard in his chest.
“Do you hear that?” He asked, but Victor didn’t reply, didn’t seem to hear him. The agent appeared to be lost in some sort of trance, perhaps remembering his troubled past. Sam slumbered on oblivious.
Dean had a bad feeling about this. This did not look good.
Dean groped by his side for a weapon, his trembling fingers finding the reassuring coolness of his Remington. Sam must have persuaded Henricksen to return their weapons after the demon had been killed.
He cocked the pistol and aimed it at the slight figure that was stepping out of the shadows of the juniper trees that surrounded their camp, still playing the flute whose music he had been hearing. He held the gun as steady as he could, cussing his trembling hand.
The figure was a man, not a boy as Dean had first thought, though a very small man. His back was slightly humped, as if he’d spent a lot of time hunched over a plough, and he was naked. His hair was black and wild, standing out from his head in tangled strands. As he lowered the double barrelled wooden flute from his lips, he raised his other hand and Dean’s gun dropped from fingers suddenly unable to maintain their grip.
“You do not need a weapon, Dean Winchester,” the little man said.
“Who are you? How do you know my name?” Dean demanded with more bravado than courage in his heart.
“I hear things.” The small man said in answer presumably to the latter question, which Dean thought, was pretty cryptic and not very helpful. The man stepped closer, and Dean backed up cautiously, wondering how he came to be on his feet seeing as how he had no recollection of having stood up. He looked around a little wildly, taking in Sam’s motionless form – automatically checking his brother was still breathing, peacefully asleep – the horses standing undisturbed in the shadows, Victor Henricksen still sitting on the ground beside….
“What the…!” Dean took another step backwards as he saw Victor still sitting next to himself - his own body was there, outstretched under two blankets, his head resting back on his jacket, his eyes closed. Victor was tapping his cheek with one hand, feeling in his neck for a pulse with the other. Dean found himself drawn towards the strange tableau in a kind of horrified fascination.
“Am I dead?”
The small man laughed. “Not yet, Dean Winchester. But you will be soon, if you do not come with me now.”
The stranger’s assertion seemed to be born out as the Pinkerton agent sat back on his heels looking relieved, satisfied that the wounded man was still breathing.
“You didn’t answer my question before,” Dean said, turning to the mysterious flautist. “Who are you? Or maybe I should ask … what are you?”
“I have been known by many names over the years, but the Hopi call me Kokopelli and named my people Hisatsinom, the People of long ago. The Navajo called us the Anaasází. It means ancient ones, their ancient enemy. My people lived in these lands a very long time, long before the Hopi or the Navajo, but now they are long gone. Only I remain, here at the heart of my country. So if you want a name to call me, Kokopelli will do.”
Dean shook his head. “Alright, Mister Kokopelli, that was a long winded way of telling me your name, but, well, I guess you ain’t a demon, so I’ll come with you.”
Looking down at himself, or at the body he appeared to be occupying, his real self was lying there unconscious by the camp fire, Dean seemed to be exactly the same as he always was. He was even carrying the same injuries, although at the moment the pain appeared to be under control, and the feverish burning had abated somewhat. The bandages (made out of torn up undershirts from the look of it) were stained with blood in exactly the same places as those on the prone figure next to Victor. Dean could see also that whichever of these two bodies he cared to stay in was unlikely to live much longer if something wasn’t done to stop the demonic infection spreading.
Kokopelli had moved to the edge of the pool of fire-light their little campsite nestled in, flute raised to his lips once more. He gestured to Dean to follow, and stepped into the dark. Dean hesitated for a moment, then turning his back on himself, the watching agent and his sleeping brother, followed the floating notes of music as quickly as he could manage.
****
Huh. Typical.
Dean knew this body wasn’t real. He knew, intellectually, that he must be spirit walking with Kokopelli, yet within a few minutes of leaving their campsite, he was hurting. And wasn’t that just the calf slobber on top of the pie. If he hadn’t been struggling to breathe due to the cold burning pain in his chest from the demon wounds, he’d have been breathless with the sheer injustice of it all.
The tiny Anaasází god, ghost or whatever he was, never looked round to check if the stumbling outlaw was still following, he just kept playing that damned flute as if the music alone would ensure compliance. Like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn or something. But it was working, and Dean did keep following, even though every step was an effort.
Kokopelli’s route seemed to be a steady climb to the top of the mesa, and Dean could see the sky was starting to lighten with the first touches of dawn when they finally came to a halt at the edge of a cliff, where a deeply shadowed canyon split the broad sandstone table top. Dean clutched his stomach as if his guts might spill out if he were to let go, and looked around in puzzlement. If this was their final destination, it was hard to see what good the Anaasází deity was going to accomplish here, unless his aim was to throw the injured hunter off the cliff. Which, Dean knew, he could have done a few miles back with far less effort. One thing this desert landscape was not short of was precipitous drops.
“So, um. Nice view and all, but..,”
Kokopelli ignored him, but the tone of the music changed to something more urgent and demanding, that made Dean feel twitchy. His nervousness was not helped when, presumably in answer to the music, a dark head suddenly popped up at his feet, seemingly from nowhere. Dean jumped backwards swearing loudly as first one, and then a procession of small dark-haired people climbed up out of the canyon. When he looked closer, he could see the top of a ladder made of two slender saplings sticking up at the edge of the cliff.
Kokopelli stopped playing his flute and beamed a smile at the small group of folk gathered around.
“My people,” he said, waving a hand in introduction.
“Right, I think I got that part,” Dean said, desperately trying to stay on his feet, feeling his every breath rasp in his throat.
He was wondering what had possessed him to trek all the way out here, leaving Sam behind, just to be introduced to some long dead Indian ghosts that in any other circumstances he’d be looking to salt and burn. He was starting to forget that he wasn’t really there. This spirit walking fiddle faddle was confusing, especially when you couldn’t even leave the pain behind you.
“This is crazy. I need to get back to my brother.”
Kokopelli shook his head, his face grave.
“You cannot return until the evil you brought with you has been cleansed.”
Dean looked down at his hands where they were still pressed to his wounds, as though he could see through the bandages to the streaks of poison that radiated out from the claw punctures in his stomach. He thought about his real body, lying back in the clearing by the camp fire, about cashing in before his time, about leaving Sam all alone and unprepared - at Lilith’s mercy.
“I don’t understand. Why are you doing this? Why do you even care?”
“Because you have an important purpose. A job to do and it isn’t finished.”
Dean stared, wide eyed with shock, as Kokopelli’s words echoed Reverend Le Grange’s from two years back. Then the Anaasází god grinned. “And because you have music in your heart, Dean Winchester.”
****
Dean’s dream body was aching and trembling by the time he reached the bottom of the long, long ladder that hung in the void off the edge of the precipice. He shook off the many hands offering to help him with a grumpy “I’m no Molly!”
Although the sun was climbing higher as he conversely descended, the crevasse itself was still in deep shadow, and Dean had to trust that his new companions were leading him down to something constituting safety at its base – or indeed that there was a bottom to be reached. This was a dreamscape, after all, and the weary hunter wouldn’t put it past whoever created this place he was lost in to have filled it with never-ending ladders, just to mess with his head.
He looked around in growing wonder as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, and eventually the shaking in his legs gradually eased. He was standing on a wide flat ledge, above him swept a curving roof of pale golden rock. If he took a step to his right he would be at the edge of another drop of a couple of hundred feet down to the canyon floor, obscured by a tangled growth of pines. That was not what had taken his little remaining breath away, however. All around him the ledge was crammed with buildings, some made of pale gold mud brick, others carved out of the rock itself. It was like a great palace built into the cliff, and totally invisible from above. Take away the ladder he had just climbed down, and the place would have been virtually impregnable.
Gaping a little he muttered. “This must have been fine as cream gravy in its heyday. Sammy would love to see this!”
He was distracted from his contemplation of his strange surroundings by a gentle tug on his sleeve. One of the short Indian guys (no, not Indian but Anaasází) was pulling him towards a low wall built surrounding a circle of beaten earth, where what looked like another of the large wooden ladders was sticking up out of a hole at its centre. Kokopelli appeared out of nowhere at his side, startling him again as if he were a nervous horse.
“Now you must enter the kiva, Dean Winchester, and meet your spirit guide. Together you may be able to banish the blackness that is poisoning your blood.”
“May? This isn’t a sure thing then?”
“Only if your will is strong and your spirit brave enough will you succeed.”
“Oh ain’t that just fine and dandy. I reckon I’ve been dealt a dead man’s hand here,” Dean complained, but without much vehemence. There was a feeling of inevitability about the whole situation, and he knew he was going to have to cave. After all, he’d come this far, it would be churlish to chicken out now.
Kokopelli just stood watching him impassively as the young hunter ran a trembling hand through his hair. Dean took a deep breath and winced at the twinge in his ribs.
“Come on Winchester, quit beating the devil round the stump will ya!”
Still muttering under his breath, he forced his weakened spirit body into one last climb, down into the pitch darkness of the underground room Kokopelli had called a kiva.
“Here goes nothing,” he said to no one in particular, as the small square of light that was the entrance to the kiva was covered up, and he was sealed into utter blackness.
****
The Winchesters were on the edge all the time, and normally it would be harder to catch one of them unawares than it would be to catch a weasel asleep. Probably it was the effects of his head wound and a belated reaction to the broken wrist, but that night Sam’s exhausted sleep gave him strange and turbulent dreams, and sucked him in deeper than he or Dean would usually go.
Sam wasn’t sure what woke him, but he snapped from deep slumber into full alertness and was groping for his gun before he had even opened his eyes. He was too late. A booted foot kicked his good hand and his gun went flying. His instinct to kick out with his legs and bring his assailant down was aborted when he saw the scene being played out in front of him.
Across the glowing embers of their camp-fire, were two other strangers. One had the drop on Victor, who was on his feet with his hands in the air and a look of frustrated rage on his face. The other – Sam’s gut twisted and he felt the blood freeze around his heart - because the other man had Dean.
His brother was white as death in the pale morning light, eyes closed and head lolling as the guy heaved his brother up from under his blanket, limp as a kid’s rag doll, and pressed the broad gleaming blade of a hunting knife to Dean’s throat. Sam could see the blade was sharp; already it had nicked Dean’s skin and a thin trickle of blood was running down the unconscious man’s neck.
So Sam didn’t resist when the man who’d kicked him stuck the muzzle of his pistol to Sam’s temple, and yelled at him to hold still. He just knelt quiet and tense as a coiled spring, biding his time.
“So you’re the famous Winchester brothers,” the guy holding Dean drawled.
Sam kept his face as blank as he could while rage bubbled inside his chest. “Who?” He asked.
“Funny. No point in pretending, we know who y’are. Bin following y’all since Round Rock, had a bit of trouble tracking you down but,” he grinned, showing a mouthful of rotten teeth, “here we all are, nice an’ cosy-like.”
He gave Dean a little shake, and Sam bit down on his lip to restrain himself. “Don’t look so hot, does he? Thought this one was supposed to be a crack shot, but he looks like watered down belly wash. What happened to him?”
It was Victor who answered. Sam had almost forgotten the bounty hunter was there, so focused was he on his brother.
“Bear attack. And you got these boys wrong, they ain’t no outlaws. Just a couple of cowpokes looking for work.”
“Sure they are, and you’d be..?”
“I’m a cookie, make the best chow you ever did eat.”
Sam had to hand it to Henricksen, his lies flowed with a fluency Dean would have envied, had the elder Winchester been conscious enough to hear it. Sam felt a momentary warmth in his heart for the Pinkerton man he’d not have thought possible a few days, or even a few hours, before. He couldn’t help but wonder what had changed the bounty hunter’s mind about them, then a cynical voice in the back of his mind said maybe Henricksen just wanted to keep the $20,000 reward for himself.
Whatever Henricksen’s motive, the three ambushers were not swallowing his story. The guy with the rifle trained on the Pinkerton man never wavered, the one with the gun pressed to Sam’s head hawked and spat a wad of tobacco juice at Sam’s feet, while the guy who seemed to be their leader just laughed. He let Dean’s limp body slump boneless back to the ground and standing up, he sheathed his bowie. Sam tensed, thinking there might be an opportunity to spring, then froze again as the big man casually drew his side arm and aimed it down at Dean’s chest.
“You must reckon we’re three complete coots if you think we’re gonna believe that corral dust tale, nigger-boy.” He sneered, looking over at Henricksen.
Sam saw Victor’s shoulders tighten at the insult, and he shifted uncomfortably. His knees were starting to protest at his cramped crouched position, but he felt the muzzle of tobacco-chewing guy’s gun press harder against his temple when he moved, so unwillingly he stilled again. The opportunity would come to turn the tables on their captors, but he was just going to have to be patient.
Sam realised afterwards, he had waited a moment too long to make his move. It was something he would regret for a good long while.
“Turn around, nigger.” The man commanded, throwing a meaningful look at rifle-guy. Victor turned his back on the group slowly, reluctance showing in every muscle. “Now walk away, boy.”
Victor started to walk and Sam saw rifle-guy shoulder his weapon. Tardily, Sam moved. Quick as lightning his hand whipped out and the tobacco-chewer’s pistol was no longer in his hand but in Sam’s. The next second, tobacco-guy was folded in half, left groaning on the floor, Sam’s vicious elbow having punctured his gut. In the time it had taken for Sam to disarm his blowhard, Rifle-guy was firing at Victor’s back and the Pinkerton man was falling forward, a bloom of blood spreading bright across his spine…but all Sam could see was the leader’s gun pointing down at Dean’s chest, so he knew it was the threat to his brother that had to be eliminated first.
But before Sam could shoot his borrowed gun, miraculously Dean was in motion, taking out the gang leader in one fluid movement with the knife that he always kept hidden in his boot somehow in his hand. Though shocked (and relieved beyond measure) by his brother’s sudden return to the land of the living, Sam still had the presence of mind to turn his weapon onto Rifle-guy and brought him down without a second thought, with a single clean shot to the head.
****
Dean didn’t know how long he floated in a darkness so black it was like something he could touch, like a thick velvet pall surrounding his body. But after some time (hours, minutes, days) there was light, and with it, music. A wild music that at first sounded like Kokopelli’s flute, then like water running merrily over rocks, then like wolves howling love and passion and territoriality at the moon.
His eyes were open, and he could smell resin mixed with earth – rich and strong. Sunlight dappled the ground at his feet, and a faint breeze raised the short hairs on the back of his neck. He felt rather than heard the massive wolf that joined him, warmth radiating from its pelt where it stood silent by his side, his fingers a hair’s breadth from brushing against its coarse fur.
He didn’t know how long they stood like that, he and the wolf, just breathing, but after a while (hours, minutes, days) the air around him started to chill. He felt the wolf’s hackles rise, and it started to growl, low in its throat. Dean looked around for the first time and saw the elegant pines surrounding them bend and tremble in an invisible wind. The chill from the wind grew colder, and he looked down at himself to see that the source of the wind was coming from his wounds, a wavering darkness that poured out from him and dissipated into thin air as the sunlight touched it.
He stared, feeling strangely detached and hollow as he steadily emptied, in a stream of pain and deathly chill.
Time passed (hours, minutes, days).
He had forgotten everything – even his name - when the huge wolf pounced on him, knocking him to the ground so hard he was winded, emptied of breath just as he was now empty of demon taint. Its jaws opened and teeth fastened around his throat as he lay on his back in a classic submission pose, sharp incisors just barely breaking the skin. He stared up into ice blue eyes, bluer than the sky – and blinked.
When his own eyes opened again, it was to the muzzle of a gun not a wolf, held over him by a large ugly man whose attention was – foolishly, Dean thought with dispassion – fixed elsewhere. A shot fired – from a Winchester rifle, if he was not mistaken – and Dean heard the sound of Sam hand-to-hand fighting. Instinctively he knew it was Sam, just as he knew exactly what to do next. Wounds forgotten (though he did remember his name now), Dean’s hand whipped hummingbird quick down to his boot-knife and in one smooth swift motion he was thrusting up into the ugly guy’s sternum, the three inch blade buried unerringly in exactly the right place to kill instantly, with all of Dean’s rising weight behind it.
He stood, swaying as the blood rushed to his head and he remembered then that he was injured, and standing up so quickly was perhaps not advisable. (Or maybe even standing up at all, for that matter).
Then he forgot all that as he took in the sight of Victor Henricksen spread-eagled on the ground, blood dark on the centre of his back. Two strangers lay dead, a third was crawling as fast as he could away into the brush; Sam was standing proud, glancing contemptuously at the retreating figure but not making any move to stop the guy.
Dean staggered towards the prone Pinkerton agent, his legs gone to rubber but holding himself upright through sheer cussedness. Sam mobilised with alacrity, was grabbing him and swinging one of Dean’s arms over a too-tall shoulder, so that Dean was drawn to thinking once again that his kid brother should never have grown so damned tree-like these past few years, twasn’t natural.
Victor was still alive, but only just. Dean allowed Sam to help him kneel down next to their erstwhile enemy, and gently turn him over. He could see it in Victor’s dark eyes, and knew Henricksen would be able to see it writ clear in his own. There would be no coming back from a wound like this one. For a second Dean tore his gaze away to look around in the vague hope that Kokopelli might be standing there in the shadows of the trees, flute in hand ready to play Victor back to life. After all, the ex-slave had music in his heart too – but the clearing was empty, the Anaasází god had gone. Long gone, together with his people, lost in the mists of time.
Only Dean remained and he was helpless, hopeless, useless. And in a few months, he would be in Hell. He still couldn’t understand what purpose that would serve that was so important.
Victor grasped Dean’s hand, held it in a loose grip that the hunter knew was as strong as a dying man could manage.
“Thought I might have joined your fight, but seems I won’t get a chance now,” Henricksen whispered. His eyes closed, and the muscles in the bounty hunter’s face that had been tight with agony softened and relaxed, and Dean knew he was gone.
“Help me burn him, Sam.” Dean said, his voice hoarse with unspoken emotion. Sam just nodded.
Victor Henricksen had been a good man. He was a good agent, but would have made an even better Hunter. The world was a poorer place now the Winchesters had salted and burned his bones.
FIN
Author’s note:
The Anaasází village I describe is based on Cliff Palace, one of the amazing cliff dwellings you can visit (by way of steep climbs up and down ladders) in the Mesa Verde national park – I was lucky enough to spend 4 days there last year and it was an incredible place. If you are interested, there are a load of photos here on my Flickr album! http://www.flickr.com/photos/housefullofbooks/5092841075/in/set-72157625218940414
Kokopelli is a flute playing fertility god who I felt would definitely appreciate Dean’s lust for life.
Victor’s unit in the Union army was the First Arkansas, a black regiment who had their own version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, whose lyrics I’ve reproduced here.
The Underground Railroad was a network of subversives who helped escaped slaves find their way to freedom.
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Date: 2011-12-23 10:51 pm (UTC)The Winchesters fit into this setting so naturally, and Henricksen is one of my favorites. I'm still sad we lost him.
This was a great story, with a really rich environment, and I LOVED the idea of a possessed bear. I've wondered a few times why demons don't take animals more often, actually.
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Date: 2011-12-23 11:22 pm (UTC)So glad you enjoyed this, I too miss Victor....and I thought he could so well have been a Union army man in the right period.
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Date: 2012-01-04 01:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-04 02:04 pm (UTC)