Fic: In Country, Chapter II, Part One
Aug. 23rd, 2010 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oselleTitle: In Country, Chapter 2 of 5 (posted in two parts due to length)
Genre: SPN slash, AU based upon Episode 5:04, "The End"
Pairings: Dean/Castiel
Principals: Future!Dean, Future!Castiel
Rating: R for Chapter II (NC-17 for Chapter I)
Warnings: Sex, language, angst, violence, racial slurs (dubcon and implied noncon for Part I)
Spoilers: For SPN Episode 5:04
Word Count: 15,000 for Chapter II (~23,000 for story so far)
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters are the intellectual property of their creators. All original characters are mine. No money was made or sought in the writing of this story.
Summary: It's 2015 and the world's gone to hell in the Croatoan apocalypse and Dean and Castiel are going to Detroit to put a lid on this mess one way or the other.
The Story So Far: Dean and Castiel have made it to Detroit and now find themselves in somewhat unwilling residence at one of the city's finer establishments.
Go back to Chapter I, Cairo
Author's Note: This chapter would not have been possible without the assistance of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
baylorsr and liptonrm who spent last Saturday driving me around Detroit, where I saw many of the city's finer establishments, including the real Michigan Central Station, which truly is a thing impossible to describe, and the tunnel of terror which is also very real and very, very scary. I don't know if Satan's living in that place or not, but someone's brand-new silver Cadillac was parked right at the front door of that vacant building, a real-life detail that was literally too strange, even for this story.
II. Michigan Central, Part One
He woke on a concrete floor that was cold against his cheek. He opened his eyes and saw the glinting spokes of a wheel and he raised his head and saw that the wheel was attached to the steel crossbar of a wheelchair. He lay there dazed for another second and then he came to himself with such a jolt that he had to pinwheel for balance and he grabbed the arm of the wheelchair but it went rolling out from under him and crashed to the floor. He got up on his hands and knees and saw a cinderblock wall behind him and around him three walls of black bars inset with black grilles. His cell was in the middle of a row of identical storage lockers and outside of them was Asher.
"Good morning," he said. He sat in a folding chair next to a card table and his elbow was on the table and a Phillies blunt smoked between his thick fingers. Cass stared at him through the grilles.
"Where is he?" His voice was dry and cracked as if he hadn't spoken in days.
"Dean."
"Dean. Where is he?"
"I sent him on his way."
"What does that mean?"
"He had a job to do and I sent him along to do it."
Cass took three hard breaths through his nose.
"You sent him to Lucifer."
"He went to Lucifer. With my counsel and blessing, of course."
Cass bent over and yanked up the leg of his jeans and thrust his hand down into his boot and Asher said, "Looking for this?" Cass looked up and saw Asher holding Ruby's knife by the handle between his thumb and forefinger with the point sunk down in the table. He spun it gently back and forth. "What were you going to do? Stab me from eight feet away? Throw it at me and see if it could penetrate welded steel?" He laughed. "It's not that special."
Cass got to his feet and crossed to stand at the front of the cell.
"Let me out."
Asher raised an eyebrow.
"Let me out."
"No."
He slammed his fist against the grille. "Fuck you! Let me out of here now!"
"Fuck you and no."
"It was trap, wasn't it?" He hammered the grille again and it rang like a tuning fork. "Wasn't it?"
"Not a trap or a trick. A test, like I said."
"Test. What test?"
"To see if you could be trusted. Clearly, you couldn't."
"What are you talking about?"
"You're in love with him, you stupid fuck."
Cass stood there and stared. Asher squinted at him and sucked on the blunt.
"If you were just buggering him it would be one thing but you're in love with him." His words chimneyed out on gray smoke. "Your head's all twisted up over this guy. You don't know whether to fuck him or worship him or take a fucking bullet for him. You're a goddamn mess."
"What happened upstairs was your doing."
"Right. I had my dick up his ass."
"You made that happen."
"People always blame someone like me for their horrible shit, but all I ever do is set the mood. I knew our post-traumatic friend never stood a chance but I had a little more hope for you."
Asher stubbed the little cigar out on the table then sat there and sucked his teeth and contemplated the ashes as if he were reading tea leaves.
"There's only one thing in your head and that's Dean," he said. He looked at Cass. "You don't give a shit about Lucifer, this job, the whole goddamn world. Dean Dean Dean. That's a problem. That's a big fucking problem."
Cass couldn't find anything to say. He curled his hands into fists and dug his nails into his palms. Finally he said, "Dean is with Lucifer now."
"Yes he is."
"You turned him over."
"No, he went willingly once he understood the situation."
"You lied to him."
"Exactly the opposite."
"He wouldn't have gone alone unless you lied to him."
"He knew that was the only way."
"And he went, just like that. No questions asked."
"He took some convincing."
"What? Ten minutes' worth?"
"No, about three days' worth."
Cass blinked.
"What?"
"Time is different in Detroit these days. It's been three days since you and Dean had your little fling up in the ah...honeymoon suite."
Cass swallowed. He stared at Asher and then down at the floor and then up.
"What did you do to him?" he whispered. "What the fuck did you tell him?"
Asher leaned back and crossed his left ankle over his right knee. He pointed a waxy finger at Cass.
"You ever see a ship in a bottle?"
Cass didn't answer.
"Have you ever? Seen a ship? In a bottle?"
Cass pressed his lips together. He took a deep breath and held it.
"Yes."
"Everyone thinks it's hard to get it in there but it's a lot harder to get it out. You really want it out, you're gonna have to break the bottle. But what if you can't break the bottle? What if you can't break the vessel?" He cocked his head at Cass. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Lucifer's vessel. Sam."
Asher nodded.
"Dean has to kill Sam."
Asher shook his head.
"Lucifer's untouchable as long as he's in his vessel. He has to be gotten out of there first. Only Dean can get him out."
"How is he supposed to do that?"
"Because Lucifer's not alone in there," Asher said. "We've got a man on the inside. And that man is Dean's baby brother."
"Sam is dead."
"Sam is not dead."
Cass shook his head. "No..." he said. "No. That's a lie."
"It's the truth and now Dean knows it."
"Oh God..." Cass said. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and couldn't say anything else.
"This is something only Dean can do. You understand?"
"Lucifer will kill him," he said. "Or torture him or have him possessed or drive him out of his mind. He'll do it just to make Sam watch."
"Maybe," Asher said. "But he'd probably have done it to make you watch, too, loverboy. And I have bigger plans for you. You, my last remnant of the heavenly host on earth, are going to bind Lucifer once he's out of his nice warm vessel."
Cass smirked and shook his head.
"With what?"
"I have Lucifer's chains. The very same ones that kept him nice and tucked away for all those years."
"That's impossible," Cass said. You couldn't..."
"Oh, but I do. He was in an awful hurry to get them off, didn't stop to look around and see who might be picking them up." He pointed at Cass. "But only an angel can use them."
"Then you're shit out of luck because I'm not an angel."
"These are hard times," Asher smiled. "We all gotta learn to make do."
Asher stood up. The legs of his chair scraped back and his calloused heels made a leathery clap on the floor and he came right up to the cell and grinned at Cass through the grille.
"The firstborn son and the fallen angel. One to release the devil. The other to bind him. You're the only ones who can do it but one of you isn't up to the task yet. You're too in love to think straight. That's why you're here. I need you out of Dean's way so he can do what he has to do and meanwhile, you need to cool off and get your fucking head back in the game."
"For how long?"
"I'll have to get back to you on that."
"No," Cass said and looked up. "How long?"
"When the time comes, you'll be the first to know."
"Asmodeus," Cass said. "Let me out of here."
"No."
"If you have these chains, let me out of here and show me how to use them."
"Not yet. You wouldn't even hear a word I said, you'd just go running out of here half-cocked to rescue the damsel in distress." He shook his head. "Look at yourself," he said with disgust. "You were an angel, for fuck's sake. Look what you've become."
He turned away and went back to the table and picked up the knife and disappeared it somewhere under his suit jacket and without a look back he walked off into the shadows of the basement.
Cass pressed his face against the grille. "Asmodeus! Asher!"
A heavy door slammed and then Cass heard nothing else. He shouted for Asher twice more and then he stepped away from the bars and looked around himself in a blind panic and fury and all he saw was the wheelchair and though it could do no good he picked it up and hurled it at the bars of his cell and it burst apart in a great clang of rusted metal and the front wheel went spinning off across the floor until it stopped against the wall and toppled over. Then it was quiet. His heart pounded in his ears and he stood there panting.
He's lying, he thought.
What if he isn't?
"He's lying," Cass said out loud but knew that even if Asher wasn't lying it didn't matter because Dean had gone to Lucifer believing that his brother or some shadow of him was imprisoned in that body and he knew that Dean would do anything and subject to anything for his brother's sake. If Asher had told the truth Cass had lost three days already. He thought about that. About himself lying senseless and useless in that basement. About Dean alone with Asher for those three days. He began to shake and he couldn't allow himself that so he grabbed his elbows and steadied himself.
He looked around the locker. The only thing in there besides the broken husk of the wheelchair was a steamertrunk against the wall and he went and looked down at it. There was a yellowed and curling shipping label on the top from the Union Transfer Company in San Francisco, Telephone Douglas 83. For no reason he reached down and picked at it and the parchment-thin paper turned to dust between his fingers.
He picked through the remains of the wheelchair until he found a bar that was long enough and he went back to the trunk and crouched down and got the bar under the brass lock and wrenched it back and the entire lock tore off with a rotting strip of leather attached to it. Inside the trunk he found women's clothes and shoes and hats. An ivory hairbrush with the boar bristles falling out. Pearl earrings gone brown with age. He picked up a leatherbound address book and out of it slipped a black-and-white photo of a woman in dark lipstick and an elaborate coif of curls. The name Eunice was written across the bottom in florid penstrokes. He let the lid of the trunk fall closed and stood up and looked toward the door of the cell. It was fastened with a padlocked chain and he crossed over to it and pulled at the chain until the padlock was flush against the grille and he worked the wheelchair bar through the mesh and tried to get at the hasp of the padlock but he couldn't so he set to work on the chain. Within a few minutes he was sweating and the bar was slippery in his hands and he banged his knuckles against the bars until he finally struck them so hard that he cursed out loud and dropped the bar and stuck his fingers in his mouth.
He tasted blood and he counted to ten. He opened his eyes and pulled the chain taut again so that the padlock was against the grille. He bent over and stared at it. After a while he let it go and it rattled back into place. He went to the back of the cell and picked up the little wheel that had come off the wheelchair and examined the spokes. One of them was already sticking out. He squatted down and put the wheel on the floor and braced it with his knee and tore out three spokes. They were maybe six inches long. He studied them from tip to tip and then he bent over and began filing the ends of two spokes against the concrete floor. Every now and then he would stop and lift them to his eyes and blow on them and turn them this way and that and then go back to filing. When he was finished the spokes were as finely pointed as needles and he smiled because it was Dean who had taught him how to do things like this after he'd lost all of his other, better talents.
He went to the door and pulled the chain towards him and wedged it with the wheelchair bar so that it wouldn't fall back. With the unfiled spoke he angled the padlock up so that the keyhole was facing him and he went to work on the keyhole with the two picks he'd made.
"Come on," he whispered. "Come on, come on." He gnawed his lip. Sweat ran into his eyes. His fingers were slick with blood.
His legs started to shake and he stopped and got the trunk and dragged it over so that he could sit on it. It sagged under his weight but held. He went back to work.
He'd been at it for a while when he heard the basement door squeal open. He stopped, listening. The door squealed again, slowly, as if someone were closing it with great care to be quiet. Then he heard footsteps. He stood up quickly and pulled out the bar and threw it and the spokes into the trunk and closed it and sat on it. When he looked up the bony girl from upstairs was standing there. She was wearing the same clothes if they could even be called clothes but now she had platform sandals on both feet. They didn't match.
He stared at her through the grille and she stared at him. She scratched her stomach and didn't say anything. She looked nearly imbecile.
Finally she said, "You're awake."
Cass nodded.
"I'm not supposed to be down here."
"Then why are you?"
She shrugged. "I wanted to see if you were all right."
"How did you know I was here?"
"Marcus told me."
"Who's Marcus?"
"The guy who watches the door."
"Oh."
"He put you down here."
"When?"
"A few days ago."
"Did he..." Cass leaned forward. "Did he see the man who was with me?"
"The really hot one?"
"Yeah. The really hot one."
She shook her head. "No. He's gone."
"Do you know where he went?"
"Asher took him someplace."
"Does Asher do that a lot? Take people away?"
She shrugged. "People just sort of come and go around here."
"Do you know where they go?"
"No. I never go anywhere."
"But Asher goes away?"
"Yeah, sometimes."
"Where does he go?"
She shut her mouth and looked around the basement. She scratched her stomach again. Her fingernails were black with dirt.
Cass put his hand against the grille and curled his fingers through it and smiled.
"What's your name?" he asked.
She smirked and snorted. "Phyllis."
"That's pretty."
"That's not my name," she snapped. She put her head down and absently worked the tip of her thumb under the top of her bikini bottom. "It's short for syphilis. You get that from screwing." She looked up at Cass. "I don't have it!"
"No, I'm sure you don't. What's your real name?"
"If I tell you will you promise not to tell anyone?"
"Yes."
"Because only Marcus knows and I don't want anyone else to know."
"I won't tell anyone."
She looked away and then looked back and whispered, "It's Tanya."
"That's much prettier than Phyllis."
"I know. Don't tell anyone."
"I won't," Cass said and she smiled and took a step toward the cell and asked his name.
"My name is Cass."
She put her hand on the grille. "Is that short for something?"
"No."
"It's nice. Cass. Why did Asher lock you up?"
"I don't know."
"Did you piss him off?"
"No."
"What did your friend do?"
"He didn't do anything."
"Asher's a mean prick," she said. "He probably just wanted to fuck him. He goes both ways. And he was really hot. Your friend, not Asher." She made a face. "Asher's disgusting. He stinks like rotten eggs. Even his jizz stinks like..."
"Tanya?"
"Yeah?"
Her hand on the grille was close enough for Cass to touch. He laid two fingers over her pinkie and she looked at that.
"Do you know where Asher goes when he leaves?"
She shook her head. "I don't. But Marcus...Marcus once told me he goes to the train station a lot."
"The train station?"
"Yeah. I don't know what he goes there for, it's all banged out."
"Where is the train station?"
"I don't think it's that far from here. But I don't go out anymore." She looked at their hands again and then looked at him. "You could do me if you want. I wouldn't mind doing it with someone like you."
She smiled up at him in a sad pantomime of flirting and Cass looked at her and studied her and for a moment he almost turned away from her but he didn't.
"Do you have the key, Tanya? We can't do anything with this grille here."
"No look!" she said. She grinned and pointed. "There's a little place down here where it's busted out!"
He looked at the gap in the grille down near the edge of the cell. He looked back at the girl and she seemed so hopeful that it made his heart sick.
"Tanya, I don't want to screw you through a hole in a grille. Okay? If you could get the key..."
"Marcus has keys."
"Would you be able to get the key from Marcus? Without him knowing?"
"I don't think so. I wasn't supposed to come down here at all."
"Is Asher around?"
"I don't know where he is."
"What if you told Marcus you just wanted to party? Would he give you the key?"
"Marcus says I party too much."
"Do you think you could try? Tanya? Do you think you could do that?"
She stared at him wide-eyed as a doll. She put her face against the grille.
"Would you kiss me?" she whispered.
"Yes."
"Would you hold me afterwards?"
"I'd hold you as long as you wanted."
"Marcus might have to stand outside the door while we did it. But he won't come in. He never does."
"That's okay. We just need the key."
"Okay," she breathed. She smiled and turned away. When she was halfway across the basement she ran back and kissed Cass's fingers and she beamed up at him. In that second she was almost pretty and Cass could see the girl she might have been in some other time and place and would never be and then she turned and ran to the door in her towering awful shoes with her skinny white legs flashing like neon beams in the shadows. And though Cass was shaking over what he'd just done and was about to do, he opened the trunk and took out the long wheelchair bar and sat down to wait for Tanya to come back with the key.
* * *
He stood up when he heard the basement door open and he listened to the clop of Tanya's sandals on the concrete. She sounded as if she were tripping over her feet in haste and he could hear the jingle of keys and he put the bar behind his back and stepped away from the door. When she hove into view out of the dark Asher was at her side with his hand around her arm. She was half-dangling in his grip.
"Phyllis said you want to fuck," Asher said. He held up a ring of keys. "She said you told her to get these."
Cass didn't answer. He let the bar slip out of his hands and it thudded softly onto the lid of the trunk. Asher stuck the keys in his pocket and dragged Tanya over to the door of Cass's cell. He yanked at the bars and the door sprang open and Asher shoved the girl in and slammed the door and picked up the lock and looped it through the chain and snapped it shut.
"Go ahead and fuck."
Tanya stood there with her head down. Cass didn't move. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and then she pulled her half-shirt over her head and dropped it on the floor and scrawny and nearly naked she started to untie the bikini bow over one jutting hip.
"Stop," Cass said. She looked up at him and he picked up her shirt and handed it to her and she stared at it as if she hardly knew what it was.
"What are you doing?" she said.
"Nothing, just...I'm sorry. Get dressed."
"Don't you wanna..."
Outside the cell Asher started laughing.
"No, he don't wanna. I think our guest prefers boys. Pretty boys with green eyes. Ahh, why are all the cute ones queer, eh Phil?"
She hugged her shirt to her chest. "I didn't wanna tell him," she said to Cass.
"I know you didn't. It's okay."
Asher let out a deep belly laugh and shook his head. This time he opened the lock with the key and he ran the chain through the bars and opened the door.
"Come on outta there, sugar."
She ducked her head and turned away and at the door she looked back at Cass and Asher grabbed her arm and pulled her out so hard she went stumbling across the room and crashed into the card table and fell over in a sprawl.
"Leave her alone!" Cass said. "She didn't do anything!"
Asher raised his hand and Cass was lifted up off his feet and thrown across the cell. He hit the wall hard and thudded to the floor and when he tried to get up he couldn't. He couldn't move at all.
"You gonna play the hero now? Hm? Knight in shining armor? Where was the chivalry when you were tricking some dumb cunt into letting you out? Weren't worried about her then, were you?"
Asher got Tanya up off the floor and dragged her over and threw her against the bars. She stood pinned there with her eyes squeezed shut and Asher's hand on the back of her head.
"See what I mean, Cass? You're not thinking about anything but Dean. If I told you that doing this..." He yanked the girl back by the hair and slammed her forehead against the bars. "Would get Dean back here, you'd be fine with it, wouldn't you?" He did it again and the girl cried out and her hands flailed and she dropped her shirt and her knees buckled. "Wouldn't you?" He pulled Tanya's head back a third time and Cass shouted, "No!"
Asher stood there with one hand on the bars and the other fisted in Tanya's hair. She was staring at the ceiling and gasping.
"What?"
"Just let her go. Do whatever you want with me but don't hurt her."
Asher smiled and released the girl and she staggered away with her hands on her head. Her eyebrow was split and bleeding.
"Dick," she spat at Asher.
"You see how she talks to me?" Asher turned on her grinning. "Get the fuck upstairs you stupid twat." She glanced once at Cass and then picked up her shirt and tottered across the floor and somewhere in the dark the basement door screamed open and slammed shut. Asher looked at Cass and shrugged.
"These bitches. Impossible to keep in line."
He came into the cell and picked up the bar and threw it out. He kicked the rest of the broken wheelchair out of the cell too. Then he opened up the trunk and stared down into it and shook his head, smiling. "You've been busy." He picked up the spokes and folded them into the palm of his hand and they disappeared. He held his empty hand up to Cass with a flourish and said, "Magic!" The lid of the trunk fell with a hollow boom. Then he came over and squatted down on his hams in front of Cass. He stank. His eyes were all white.
"When I know it's time, I'll let you out. Not before. I don't care if it takes ten days or ten years."
"We don't have ten years."
"Ten years is but the blink of an eye to one like me. When you were Castiel, it would have been the blink of an eye to you too. Understand?"
Cass turned his face away.
"Understand?"
"Just leave that girl alone."
"I will if you do."
"Yes."
"Good boy."
He stood up. Both of his knees popped like cap-pistols. He let himself out of the cell and picked up the chain and fastened the door and bolted the lock.
When he was gone Cass could finally move. He curled up on the floor and then he turned over to face the wall. He put his hands over his face and then he prayed, for whatever good it could do. He felt wholly beyond the reach of heaven. When he couldn't pray any more he pushed himself up and set his back against the wall and sat there.
* * *
His next visitor was the man who'd been at the door the night he and Dean had first come there. The one Tanya had called Marcus. He came up to the locker with a steaming bowl in his hand and he looked at Cass for a second and then bent over and pushed the bowl through the place where the grille was missing. Cass glanced at it and looked at Marcus and didn't move or say anything. Marcus turned to go and then turned back and pointed at the bowl.
"You better eat that," he said. When Cass didn't answer Marcus said, "You better eat that or Asher's gonna find a way to make you eat that."
"All right," Cass said.
The man left and Cass pushed himself up the wall and went over and looked down into a bowl of spaghettios in orange sauce. He sat down cross-legged and picked up the bowl and began to eat. While he was eating Marcus came back with a can of Diet Coke and pushed that through the broken grille.
"Thank you," Cass said. He tipped the empty bowl at Marcus. "Do you want to take this?"
"Yeah. Push it through the slot."
Cass pushed the bowl out and Marcus stooped and picked it up.
"You gotta take a piss?" he asked and Cass shook his head. "You gotta shit?"
"No."
"Well, if you gotta piss you can do it in the corner. Try not to take a shit in there, cause I ain't cleaning it up."
"Got it. Piss in the corner, no shitting."
"That's right."
He stood there watching Cass and Cass looked up at him.
"Anything else?"
"No," Marcus said, but he didn't leave. Finally Cass said, "You're Marcus, right?"
"Yeah. I guess Phyllis told you."
"Tanya."
Marcus raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. Tanya."
"She made it sound like you were a friend. If you're her friend, don't let her come down here again."
"Damn straight I won't."
"Is she all right?"
Marcus shook his head. "Naw, she ain't all right. She's sick."
"Sick? Did Asher do something else to her?"
"Not that kind of sick, man. Girl's got the love bug. You all she talks about. What the hell happened down here?"
Cass said, "I tried to use her to escape so Asher beat her up to teach me a lesson."
"Whoo," Marcus said. "That sure ain't the way she tells it."
"She probably has a concussion."
"Her story is you wouldn't fuck her when Asher told you to and that you stuck up for her when he was slapping her around. That's what she says. That would make you about the nicest guy she ever met."
"Then Tanya's had a very sad life."
"You don't even wanna know."
"I'm sure I don't."
Marcus stood there like he wasn't going anywhere. Cass picked up the soda and pulled the tab and drank.
"What's your story?" Marcus said quietly. "Why's Asher got you boxed up down here?"
"You don't even wanna know."
"Try me."
"I think you should go back upstairs."
"What, you only talk to little girls?"
Cass took another pull on the can and didn't answer. Outside the cell, Marcus crouched down to his level and put the bowl on the floor.
"What do you know about the old man?"
Cass started to push the empty can out of the cell and then he took it back.
"I think I'll save this to piss in, if you don't mind."
"Hey. I asked you a question."
Cass looked up. "I know you work for him. That's all I need to know."
"So what? Everybody's gotta work for someone. This is the first goddamn job I've had since oh-eight."
"Well then, congratulations."
"You know, you don't gotta be like that..."
"What do you know about him?" Cass said. "What do you know?"
"I know he's a fuckin pimp. Came into town draggin that girl with him like a damn dog. Moved in here...got the lights back on, running water in some of the rooms. Then..." Marcus paused in thought.
"Then what?"
"Then I don't know what. It was like he'd always been here. Like I'd never been anyplace else in my life either but the goddamn Cairo. Sometimes I have to work real hard just to know which end is up and even then I'm not so sure. Sometimes I think..."
He put his head down. Then he sat down cross-legged like Cass.
"My mother's people lived in Alabama. They was some real holy rollers down there. Shit. We used to go down there in the hottest goddamn part of summer and have to sit in that church without a damn lick of air conditioning every Sunday morning for two hours listening to the preacher and the choir and the whole damn congregation testify. My granny'd sit there all dressed up in her Sunday best with her Jesus fan flappin away, smiling like God's own breeze was blowin just for her. Me, I'm sitting there in a tie and socks and pants, sweatin like a damn pig. I'd always fall asleep and she used to smack me with that Jesus fan. I mean she used to let me have it right across the back of the head and she'd say, 'Marcus, you stay awake and listen to the Word or the devil's gonna come for your soul.'" He looked up at Cass. "I think I should've stayed awake and listened to the Word."
Cass stared at him.
"Why did you just tell me that? What are you?"
"What? What the hell does it look like I am?"
"If I say Christo does that mean anything to you?"
"No," Marcus said and his eyes stayed fixed on Cass and did not change. "Except it sounds like Christ, like Jesus Christ...is that what you mean?"
"Close enough."
"I knew it," Marcus said slowly. "I knew there was something different about you. I seen all sorts of people at The Cairo but I never seen that old bastard put his eye on someone like he's put his eye on you. You and that friend of yours that you came here with."
"My friend..." Cass said, and then he stopped and shook his head. "You should go."
"Asher not here, not now. I got my eye on him too. I see his comins and goins, he don't even know it."
"Do you..." Cass took a deep breath and said. "The train station. Why does he go to the train station?"
"I don't know. I don't wanna know. If there's any place in Detroit worse than The Cairo it's that place. I've heard that sometimes it's dark like it's still empty inside and sometimes it's all lit up. A fella came through here a little while ago who said he'd been up there. He didn't say nothin else but he looked like he'd been to hell and back. He went up in one of the rooms and hung himself with his shirt. I wanted to cut him down and Asher made me just leave him there. You couldn't even go near that floor for weeks because he stank it up so bad."
"Did my friend go to the train station? Did Asher take him there?"
"I think so."
Cass closed his eyes. He folded his hands together and breathed.
Marcus said, "He's the devil, ain't he? Asher? He's the devil and we are all in hell."
"No," Cass said, almost to himself. "The devil is in the train station."
When he looked up Marcus was just staring at him.
"God sent you here."
"Marcus..."
"That's why Asher locked you up. That's why he took your friend away."
"Marcus, go back upstairs."
"Tell me what I have to do to help you."
"You have to go upstairs and forget that we talked."
"No. No way, brother. You're the one. A lotta folks've been waitin on you."
"No one's been waiting on me. You can't help me."
"Yes I can."
"Like I helped Tanya?"
"I'm not Tanya. She ain't even all there anymore, poor thing. I see a lot. I know a lot."
Cass was shaking.
Ask for the keys. Tell him to let you out of here
"Come on, man."
"I can't," Cass said. "I...not yet. Please go upstairs. Please."
Marcus sat outside the cell for another minute and then he picked up the bowl and got to his feet. He looked down at Cass.
"You ain't seen the last of me," he said. "I may've fell asleep a lot but I still heard enough of that Word and Asher ain't the only one got his eye on you."
When he was gone Cass went to the back of the cell. He sat down and drew up his knees and put his head on them and crossed his arms over his head and stayed like that for a long time.
* * *
He didn't sleep but he fell into a doze and in that state he was back in the room upstairs and he heard the noise throbbing in the belly of the place and the white light now stuttered on and off like a photoflash and he could see himself and Dean on the mattress and then he could not and then he could again and he tried to stop it or look away but he couldn't do either one. In this half-dream he understood that all men were equal parts angel and demon and that on the sixth floor the demon had done those savage things to Dean even as the angel had looked on horrified and helpless. He knew that this was what Asher called love because Asher was a demon only and so was ignorant of many things.
The sound of his own name softly spoken roused him and he turned over and sat up. Asher was in his cell. He had pulled the steamertrunk against the bars and he sat on it with his palms upturned on his spread knees and his old-man's belly swelling out over the cracked belt of his trousers. There was a gray steel box between his bare feet.
"What do you want?" Cass said.
Asher sat in silence and stared down at the floor. One of the bulbs in the ceiling had burned out and the demon sat half in darkness, his nose casting a long shadow down over his chin. He put his foot on the box and pushed it toward Cass and in that brown halflight Cass saw or thought he saw that the nails on Asher's feet were claws, long and yellow and curved, and the joints of his toes and his heels were set with hard spurs of bone.
"Take the box," he said. He pushed it closer. "Open it."
The box was long and had a hinged handle on the front and Cass reached out and grasped it and pulled it to himself. He saw where the lid would flip up and he put his hand on the lid and looked at Asher. Asher was still staring at the floor but Cass could see that his eyes were white inside their hooded sockets. His hands on his knees were now taloned like his feet.
"Open it," he repeated so Cass opened it and Asher said, "Pick it up."
From the box Cass pulled not chains but a single length of chain. It seemed to go on and on so that he had to loop it between his hands. Each link of the chain was a bright silver oval and they chimed softly against each other and although the chain looked fine it was heavy as iron and hot and thrummed with the power of heaven that Cass had still not forgotten.
"I can't touch it again," Asher said. "You see how it burned me?"
Cass looked up and the demon was sitting on the steamertrunk with his arms outstretched before him and his human guise was little more than a caul or veil stretched shapeless over him. His hands were burned down to the bone, the black flesh curled and flaking. He set them back on his knees. He was naked and his penis hung like a dark twisted root between his thighs.
"Still I took it," Asmodeus said. "The chain that bound Lucifer for thousands of years, I took it. Which of your brothers made this chain, Castiel?"
"No one of them alone," Cass said. "But it was Michael who bound him."
"Of course," Asmodeus said and grinned to himself. "I knew him, too. Spoiled brats, the lot of them. Michael especially, taking his toys and going home just because he couldn't get his way. They're all gone now, and good riddance. All but you. Do you think it's beautiful?"
"It is beautiful. It's the work of heaven."
"So it is." He raised a clawed hand to his temple. "But put it away now, it burns my eyes."
Cass let the chain down into the box, link upon silver link falling like water. He held the last length of it in the palm of his hand for a moment and then released it and closed the box. When he looked up he saw only Asher in his dirty suit.
"You see, I told you the truth. I have the chain."
"Please...tell me how to use it."
"You'll know what to do when the time comes."
"How much longer?"
"A little while." He stood up and bent over and picked up the box and put it under his arm and when he turned to go Cass scrambled up onto his knees and grabbed the edge of Asher's jacket.
"Asher, please...just tell me if Dean's all right."
Asher looked over his shoulder and smiled.
"I show you the glory of your lost heaven and you ask me about Dean."
"If I didn't love him I would have left with all the others. Don't you understand that? Love isn't always a weakness. Sometimes it's the greatest strength we have."
"Not for men."
He gripped Asher's jacket in his fist. "I loved him before I was ever human."
"You believe that?"
"I know that."
"More's the pity," Asher said. He pulled his jacket out of Cass's hand and let himself out of the cell.
"Is he all right?" Cass pleaded, but Asher was gone.
* * *
After that he was alone. He knew that The Cairo must be carrying on as before all above him but from his cell in the basement he heard nothing. He paced and prayed and paced again. He studied the lock on the door as if there were any point to that. He sat down and closed his eyes and thought of Dean and tried to seek him out in his mind as he'd once been able to do, as he'd found Dean in hell without even searching. Dean's soul lit up for him like a lamp in all that black chaos. Now there was nothing. He put his head in his hands and dozed again and then he slept. He dreamt that he and Dean were hitchhiking by night along a southern highway and the night was warm and drowsy and thick as it only ever is in that part of the country and in the dream a truck pulled up along the shoulder with its running lights all glowing and he could feel the heavy rumble of its engine in the blacktop under his feet and hear the chuffing wheeze of the brakes and Dean swung himself up into the cab of the truck as if he belonged right there at that moment and nowhere else. That ease of his that he always had in those days when the world had still been the one he'd always known and understood. The road and the night and miles of highway slipping off under the wheels and music on the radio and the hot summer night slipstreaming through the open window. Chasing headlights. Dean turned and held a hand down to Cass and his face was lit up in the glow of dashboard lights just like so many nights in the Impala and he held his hand down to Cass and smiled and said, In all my ways, Cass, and Cass took his hand and felt it in his own so solid and real. He woke up with his hand curled into a fist, holding onto nothing.
* * *
Go on to Part Two of this chapter...
Genre: SPN slash, AU based upon Episode 5:04, "The End"
Pairings: Dean/Castiel
Principals: Future!Dean, Future!Castiel
Rating: R for Chapter II (NC-17 for Chapter I)
Warnings: Sex, language, angst, violence, racial slurs (dubcon and implied noncon for Part I)
Spoilers: For SPN Episode 5:04
Word Count: 15,000 for Chapter II (~23,000 for story so far)
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters are the intellectual property of their creators. All original characters are mine. No money was made or sought in the writing of this story.
Summary: It's 2015 and the world's gone to hell in the Croatoan apocalypse and Dean and Castiel are going to Detroit to put a lid on this mess one way or the other.
The Story So Far: Dean and Castiel have made it to Detroit and now find themselves in somewhat unwilling residence at one of the city's finer establishments.
Go back to Chapter I, Cairo
Author's Note: This chapter would not have been possible without the assistance of
baylorsr and liptonrm who spent last Saturday driving me around Detroit, where I saw many of the city's finer establishments, including the real Michigan Central Station, which truly is a thing impossible to describe, and the tunnel of terror which is also very real and very, very scary. I don't know if Satan's living in that place or not, but someone's brand-new silver Cadillac was parked right at the front door of that vacant building, a real-life detail that was literally too strange, even for this story.II. Michigan Central, Part One
He woke on a concrete floor that was cold against his cheek. He opened his eyes and saw the glinting spokes of a wheel and he raised his head and saw that the wheel was attached to the steel crossbar of a wheelchair. He lay there dazed for another second and then he came to himself with such a jolt that he had to pinwheel for balance and he grabbed the arm of the wheelchair but it went rolling out from under him and crashed to the floor. He got up on his hands and knees and saw a cinderblock wall behind him and around him three walls of black bars inset with black grilles. His cell was in the middle of a row of identical storage lockers and outside of them was Asher.
"Good morning," he said. He sat in a folding chair next to a card table and his elbow was on the table and a Phillies blunt smoked between his thick fingers. Cass stared at him through the grilles.
"Where is he?" His voice was dry and cracked as if he hadn't spoken in days.
"Dean."
"Dean. Where is he?"
"I sent him on his way."
"What does that mean?"
"He had a job to do and I sent him along to do it."
Cass took three hard breaths through his nose.
"You sent him to Lucifer."
"He went to Lucifer. With my counsel and blessing, of course."
Cass bent over and yanked up the leg of his jeans and thrust his hand down into his boot and Asher said, "Looking for this?" Cass looked up and saw Asher holding Ruby's knife by the handle between his thumb and forefinger with the point sunk down in the table. He spun it gently back and forth. "What were you going to do? Stab me from eight feet away? Throw it at me and see if it could penetrate welded steel?" He laughed. "It's not that special."
Cass got to his feet and crossed to stand at the front of the cell.
"Let me out."
Asher raised an eyebrow.
"Let me out."
"No."
He slammed his fist against the grille. "Fuck you! Let me out of here now!"
"Fuck you and no."
"It was trap, wasn't it?" He hammered the grille again and it rang like a tuning fork. "Wasn't it?"
"Not a trap or a trick. A test, like I said."
"Test. What test?"
"To see if you could be trusted. Clearly, you couldn't."
"What are you talking about?"
"You're in love with him, you stupid fuck."
Cass stood there and stared. Asher squinted at him and sucked on the blunt.
"If you were just buggering him it would be one thing but you're in love with him." His words chimneyed out on gray smoke. "Your head's all twisted up over this guy. You don't know whether to fuck him or worship him or take a fucking bullet for him. You're a goddamn mess."
"What happened upstairs was your doing."
"Right. I had my dick up his ass."
"You made that happen."
"People always blame someone like me for their horrible shit, but all I ever do is set the mood. I knew our post-traumatic friend never stood a chance but I had a little more hope for you."
Asher stubbed the little cigar out on the table then sat there and sucked his teeth and contemplated the ashes as if he were reading tea leaves.
"There's only one thing in your head and that's Dean," he said. He looked at Cass. "You don't give a shit about Lucifer, this job, the whole goddamn world. Dean Dean Dean. That's a problem. That's a big fucking problem."
Cass couldn't find anything to say. He curled his hands into fists and dug his nails into his palms. Finally he said, "Dean is with Lucifer now."
"Yes he is."
"You turned him over."
"No, he went willingly once he understood the situation."
"You lied to him."
"Exactly the opposite."
"He wouldn't have gone alone unless you lied to him."
"He knew that was the only way."
"And he went, just like that. No questions asked."
"He took some convincing."
"What? Ten minutes' worth?"
"No, about three days' worth."
Cass blinked.
"What?"
"Time is different in Detroit these days. It's been three days since you and Dean had your little fling up in the ah...honeymoon suite."
Cass swallowed. He stared at Asher and then down at the floor and then up.
"What did you do to him?" he whispered. "What the fuck did you tell him?"
Asher leaned back and crossed his left ankle over his right knee. He pointed a waxy finger at Cass.
"You ever see a ship in a bottle?"
Cass didn't answer.
"Have you ever? Seen a ship? In a bottle?"
Cass pressed his lips together. He took a deep breath and held it.
"Yes."
"Everyone thinks it's hard to get it in there but it's a lot harder to get it out. You really want it out, you're gonna have to break the bottle. But what if you can't break the bottle? What if you can't break the vessel?" He cocked his head at Cass. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Lucifer's vessel. Sam."
Asher nodded.
"Dean has to kill Sam."
Asher shook his head.
"Lucifer's untouchable as long as he's in his vessel. He has to be gotten out of there first. Only Dean can get him out."
"How is he supposed to do that?"
"Because Lucifer's not alone in there," Asher said. "We've got a man on the inside. And that man is Dean's baby brother."
"Sam is dead."
"Sam is not dead."
Cass shook his head. "No..." he said. "No. That's a lie."
"It's the truth and now Dean knows it."
"Oh God..." Cass said. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and couldn't say anything else.
"This is something only Dean can do. You understand?"
"Lucifer will kill him," he said. "Or torture him or have him possessed or drive him out of his mind. He'll do it just to make Sam watch."
"Maybe," Asher said. "But he'd probably have done it to make you watch, too, loverboy. And I have bigger plans for you. You, my last remnant of the heavenly host on earth, are going to bind Lucifer once he's out of his nice warm vessel."
Cass smirked and shook his head.
"With what?"
"I have Lucifer's chains. The very same ones that kept him nice and tucked away for all those years."
"That's impossible," Cass said. You couldn't..."
"Oh, but I do. He was in an awful hurry to get them off, didn't stop to look around and see who might be picking them up." He pointed at Cass. "But only an angel can use them."
"Then you're shit out of luck because I'm not an angel."
"These are hard times," Asher smiled. "We all gotta learn to make do."
Asher stood up. The legs of his chair scraped back and his calloused heels made a leathery clap on the floor and he came right up to the cell and grinned at Cass through the grille.
"The firstborn son and the fallen angel. One to release the devil. The other to bind him. You're the only ones who can do it but one of you isn't up to the task yet. You're too in love to think straight. That's why you're here. I need you out of Dean's way so he can do what he has to do and meanwhile, you need to cool off and get your fucking head back in the game."
"For how long?"
"I'll have to get back to you on that."
"No," Cass said and looked up. "How long?"
"When the time comes, you'll be the first to know."
"Asmodeus," Cass said. "Let me out of here."
"No."
"If you have these chains, let me out of here and show me how to use them."
"Not yet. You wouldn't even hear a word I said, you'd just go running out of here half-cocked to rescue the damsel in distress." He shook his head. "Look at yourself," he said with disgust. "You were an angel, for fuck's sake. Look what you've become."
He turned away and went back to the table and picked up the knife and disappeared it somewhere under his suit jacket and without a look back he walked off into the shadows of the basement.
Cass pressed his face against the grille. "Asmodeus! Asher!"
A heavy door slammed and then Cass heard nothing else. He shouted for Asher twice more and then he stepped away from the bars and looked around himself in a blind panic and fury and all he saw was the wheelchair and though it could do no good he picked it up and hurled it at the bars of his cell and it burst apart in a great clang of rusted metal and the front wheel went spinning off across the floor until it stopped against the wall and toppled over. Then it was quiet. His heart pounded in his ears and he stood there panting.
He's lying, he thought.
What if he isn't?
"He's lying," Cass said out loud but knew that even if Asher wasn't lying it didn't matter because Dean had gone to Lucifer believing that his brother or some shadow of him was imprisoned in that body and he knew that Dean would do anything and subject to anything for his brother's sake. If Asher had told the truth Cass had lost three days already. He thought about that. About himself lying senseless and useless in that basement. About Dean alone with Asher for those three days. He began to shake and he couldn't allow himself that so he grabbed his elbows and steadied himself.
He looked around the locker. The only thing in there besides the broken husk of the wheelchair was a steamertrunk against the wall and he went and looked down at it. There was a yellowed and curling shipping label on the top from the Union Transfer Company in San Francisco, Telephone Douglas 83. For no reason he reached down and picked at it and the parchment-thin paper turned to dust between his fingers.
He picked through the remains of the wheelchair until he found a bar that was long enough and he went back to the trunk and crouched down and got the bar under the brass lock and wrenched it back and the entire lock tore off with a rotting strip of leather attached to it. Inside the trunk he found women's clothes and shoes and hats. An ivory hairbrush with the boar bristles falling out. Pearl earrings gone brown with age. He picked up a leatherbound address book and out of it slipped a black-and-white photo of a woman in dark lipstick and an elaborate coif of curls. The name Eunice was written across the bottom in florid penstrokes. He let the lid of the trunk fall closed and stood up and looked toward the door of the cell. It was fastened with a padlocked chain and he crossed over to it and pulled at the chain until the padlock was flush against the grille and he worked the wheelchair bar through the mesh and tried to get at the hasp of the padlock but he couldn't so he set to work on the chain. Within a few minutes he was sweating and the bar was slippery in his hands and he banged his knuckles against the bars until he finally struck them so hard that he cursed out loud and dropped the bar and stuck his fingers in his mouth.
He tasted blood and he counted to ten. He opened his eyes and pulled the chain taut again so that the padlock was against the grille. He bent over and stared at it. After a while he let it go and it rattled back into place. He went to the back of the cell and picked up the little wheel that had come off the wheelchair and examined the spokes. One of them was already sticking out. He squatted down and put the wheel on the floor and braced it with his knee and tore out three spokes. They were maybe six inches long. He studied them from tip to tip and then he bent over and began filing the ends of two spokes against the concrete floor. Every now and then he would stop and lift them to his eyes and blow on them and turn them this way and that and then go back to filing. When he was finished the spokes were as finely pointed as needles and he smiled because it was Dean who had taught him how to do things like this after he'd lost all of his other, better talents.
He went to the door and pulled the chain towards him and wedged it with the wheelchair bar so that it wouldn't fall back. With the unfiled spoke he angled the padlock up so that the keyhole was facing him and he went to work on the keyhole with the two picks he'd made.
"Come on," he whispered. "Come on, come on." He gnawed his lip. Sweat ran into his eyes. His fingers were slick with blood.
His legs started to shake and he stopped and got the trunk and dragged it over so that he could sit on it. It sagged under his weight but held. He went back to work.
He'd been at it for a while when he heard the basement door squeal open. He stopped, listening. The door squealed again, slowly, as if someone were closing it with great care to be quiet. Then he heard footsteps. He stood up quickly and pulled out the bar and threw it and the spokes into the trunk and closed it and sat on it. When he looked up the bony girl from upstairs was standing there. She was wearing the same clothes if they could even be called clothes but now she had platform sandals on both feet. They didn't match.
He stared at her through the grille and she stared at him. She scratched her stomach and didn't say anything. She looked nearly imbecile.
Finally she said, "You're awake."
Cass nodded.
"I'm not supposed to be down here."
"Then why are you?"
She shrugged. "I wanted to see if you were all right."
"How did you know I was here?"
"Marcus told me."
"Who's Marcus?"
"The guy who watches the door."
"Oh."
"He put you down here."
"When?"
"A few days ago."
"Did he..." Cass leaned forward. "Did he see the man who was with me?"
"The really hot one?"
"Yeah. The really hot one."
She shook her head. "No. He's gone."
"Do you know where he went?"
"Asher took him someplace."
"Does Asher do that a lot? Take people away?"
She shrugged. "People just sort of come and go around here."
"Do you know where they go?"
"No. I never go anywhere."
"But Asher goes away?"
"Yeah, sometimes."
"Where does he go?"
She shut her mouth and looked around the basement. She scratched her stomach again. Her fingernails were black with dirt.
Cass put his hand against the grille and curled his fingers through it and smiled.
"What's your name?" he asked.
She smirked and snorted. "Phyllis."
"That's pretty."
"That's not my name," she snapped. She put her head down and absently worked the tip of her thumb under the top of her bikini bottom. "It's short for syphilis. You get that from screwing." She looked up at Cass. "I don't have it!"
"No, I'm sure you don't. What's your real name?"
"If I tell you will you promise not to tell anyone?"
"Yes."
"Because only Marcus knows and I don't want anyone else to know."
"I won't tell anyone."
She looked away and then looked back and whispered, "It's Tanya."
"That's much prettier than Phyllis."
"I know. Don't tell anyone."
"I won't," Cass said and she smiled and took a step toward the cell and asked his name.
"My name is Cass."
She put her hand on the grille. "Is that short for something?"
"No."
"It's nice. Cass. Why did Asher lock you up?"
"I don't know."
"Did you piss him off?"
"No."
"What did your friend do?"
"He didn't do anything."
"Asher's a mean prick," she said. "He probably just wanted to fuck him. He goes both ways. And he was really hot. Your friend, not Asher." She made a face. "Asher's disgusting. He stinks like rotten eggs. Even his jizz stinks like..."
"Tanya?"
"Yeah?"
Her hand on the grille was close enough for Cass to touch. He laid two fingers over her pinkie and she looked at that.
"Do you know where Asher goes when he leaves?"
She shook her head. "I don't. But Marcus...Marcus once told me he goes to the train station a lot."
"The train station?"
"Yeah. I don't know what he goes there for, it's all banged out."
"Where is the train station?"
"I don't think it's that far from here. But I don't go out anymore." She looked at their hands again and then looked at him. "You could do me if you want. I wouldn't mind doing it with someone like you."
She smiled up at him in a sad pantomime of flirting and Cass looked at her and studied her and for a moment he almost turned away from her but he didn't.
"Do you have the key, Tanya? We can't do anything with this grille here."
"No look!" she said. She grinned and pointed. "There's a little place down here where it's busted out!"
He looked at the gap in the grille down near the edge of the cell. He looked back at the girl and she seemed so hopeful that it made his heart sick.
"Tanya, I don't want to screw you through a hole in a grille. Okay? If you could get the key..."
"Marcus has keys."
"Would you be able to get the key from Marcus? Without him knowing?"
"I don't think so. I wasn't supposed to come down here at all."
"Is Asher around?"
"I don't know where he is."
"What if you told Marcus you just wanted to party? Would he give you the key?"
"Marcus says I party too much."
"Do you think you could try? Tanya? Do you think you could do that?"
She stared at him wide-eyed as a doll. She put her face against the grille.
"Would you kiss me?" she whispered.
"Yes."
"Would you hold me afterwards?"
"I'd hold you as long as you wanted."
"Marcus might have to stand outside the door while we did it. But he won't come in. He never does."
"That's okay. We just need the key."
"Okay," she breathed. She smiled and turned away. When she was halfway across the basement she ran back and kissed Cass's fingers and she beamed up at him. In that second she was almost pretty and Cass could see the girl she might have been in some other time and place and would never be and then she turned and ran to the door in her towering awful shoes with her skinny white legs flashing like neon beams in the shadows. And though Cass was shaking over what he'd just done and was about to do, he opened the trunk and took out the long wheelchair bar and sat down to wait for Tanya to come back with the key.
* * *
He stood up when he heard the basement door open and he listened to the clop of Tanya's sandals on the concrete. She sounded as if she were tripping over her feet in haste and he could hear the jingle of keys and he put the bar behind his back and stepped away from the door. When she hove into view out of the dark Asher was at her side with his hand around her arm. She was half-dangling in his grip.
"Phyllis said you want to fuck," Asher said. He held up a ring of keys. "She said you told her to get these."
Cass didn't answer. He let the bar slip out of his hands and it thudded softly onto the lid of the trunk. Asher stuck the keys in his pocket and dragged Tanya over to the door of Cass's cell. He yanked at the bars and the door sprang open and Asher shoved the girl in and slammed the door and picked up the lock and looped it through the chain and snapped it shut.
"Go ahead and fuck."
Tanya stood there with her head down. Cass didn't move. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and then she pulled her half-shirt over her head and dropped it on the floor and scrawny and nearly naked she started to untie the bikini bow over one jutting hip.
"Stop," Cass said. She looked up at him and he picked up her shirt and handed it to her and she stared at it as if she hardly knew what it was.
"What are you doing?" she said.
"Nothing, just...I'm sorry. Get dressed."
"Don't you wanna..."
Outside the cell Asher started laughing.
"No, he don't wanna. I think our guest prefers boys. Pretty boys with green eyes. Ahh, why are all the cute ones queer, eh Phil?"
She hugged her shirt to her chest. "I didn't wanna tell him," she said to Cass.
"I know you didn't. It's okay."
Asher let out a deep belly laugh and shook his head. This time he opened the lock with the key and he ran the chain through the bars and opened the door.
"Come on outta there, sugar."
She ducked her head and turned away and at the door she looked back at Cass and Asher grabbed her arm and pulled her out so hard she went stumbling across the room and crashed into the card table and fell over in a sprawl.
"Leave her alone!" Cass said. "She didn't do anything!"
Asher raised his hand and Cass was lifted up off his feet and thrown across the cell. He hit the wall hard and thudded to the floor and when he tried to get up he couldn't. He couldn't move at all.
"You gonna play the hero now? Hm? Knight in shining armor? Where was the chivalry when you were tricking some dumb cunt into letting you out? Weren't worried about her then, were you?"
Asher got Tanya up off the floor and dragged her over and threw her against the bars. She stood pinned there with her eyes squeezed shut and Asher's hand on the back of her head.
"See what I mean, Cass? You're not thinking about anything but Dean. If I told you that doing this..." He yanked the girl back by the hair and slammed her forehead against the bars. "Would get Dean back here, you'd be fine with it, wouldn't you?" He did it again and the girl cried out and her hands flailed and she dropped her shirt and her knees buckled. "Wouldn't you?" He pulled Tanya's head back a third time and Cass shouted, "No!"
Asher stood there with one hand on the bars and the other fisted in Tanya's hair. She was staring at the ceiling and gasping.
"What?"
"Just let her go. Do whatever you want with me but don't hurt her."
Asher smiled and released the girl and she staggered away with her hands on her head. Her eyebrow was split and bleeding.
"Dick," she spat at Asher.
"You see how she talks to me?" Asher turned on her grinning. "Get the fuck upstairs you stupid twat." She glanced once at Cass and then picked up her shirt and tottered across the floor and somewhere in the dark the basement door screamed open and slammed shut. Asher looked at Cass and shrugged.
"These bitches. Impossible to keep in line."
He came into the cell and picked up the bar and threw it out. He kicked the rest of the broken wheelchair out of the cell too. Then he opened up the trunk and stared down into it and shook his head, smiling. "You've been busy." He picked up the spokes and folded them into the palm of his hand and they disappeared. He held his empty hand up to Cass with a flourish and said, "Magic!" The lid of the trunk fell with a hollow boom. Then he came over and squatted down on his hams in front of Cass. He stank. His eyes were all white.
"When I know it's time, I'll let you out. Not before. I don't care if it takes ten days or ten years."
"We don't have ten years."
"Ten years is but the blink of an eye to one like me. When you were Castiel, it would have been the blink of an eye to you too. Understand?"
Cass turned his face away.
"Understand?"
"Just leave that girl alone."
"I will if you do."
"Yes."
"Good boy."
He stood up. Both of his knees popped like cap-pistols. He let himself out of the cell and picked up the chain and fastened the door and bolted the lock.
When he was gone Cass could finally move. He curled up on the floor and then he turned over to face the wall. He put his hands over his face and then he prayed, for whatever good it could do. He felt wholly beyond the reach of heaven. When he couldn't pray any more he pushed himself up and set his back against the wall and sat there.
* * *
His next visitor was the man who'd been at the door the night he and Dean had first come there. The one Tanya had called Marcus. He came up to the locker with a steaming bowl in his hand and he looked at Cass for a second and then bent over and pushed the bowl through the place where the grille was missing. Cass glanced at it and looked at Marcus and didn't move or say anything. Marcus turned to go and then turned back and pointed at the bowl.
"You better eat that," he said. When Cass didn't answer Marcus said, "You better eat that or Asher's gonna find a way to make you eat that."
"All right," Cass said.
The man left and Cass pushed himself up the wall and went over and looked down into a bowl of spaghettios in orange sauce. He sat down cross-legged and picked up the bowl and began to eat. While he was eating Marcus came back with a can of Diet Coke and pushed that through the broken grille.
"Thank you," Cass said. He tipped the empty bowl at Marcus. "Do you want to take this?"
"Yeah. Push it through the slot."
Cass pushed the bowl out and Marcus stooped and picked it up.
"You gotta take a piss?" he asked and Cass shook his head. "You gotta shit?"
"No."
"Well, if you gotta piss you can do it in the corner. Try not to take a shit in there, cause I ain't cleaning it up."
"Got it. Piss in the corner, no shitting."
"That's right."
He stood there watching Cass and Cass looked up at him.
"Anything else?"
"No," Marcus said, but he didn't leave. Finally Cass said, "You're Marcus, right?"
"Yeah. I guess Phyllis told you."
"Tanya."
Marcus raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. Tanya."
"She made it sound like you were a friend. If you're her friend, don't let her come down here again."
"Damn straight I won't."
"Is she all right?"
Marcus shook his head. "Naw, she ain't all right. She's sick."
"Sick? Did Asher do something else to her?"
"Not that kind of sick, man. Girl's got the love bug. You all she talks about. What the hell happened down here?"
Cass said, "I tried to use her to escape so Asher beat her up to teach me a lesson."
"Whoo," Marcus said. "That sure ain't the way she tells it."
"She probably has a concussion."
"Her story is you wouldn't fuck her when Asher told you to and that you stuck up for her when he was slapping her around. That's what she says. That would make you about the nicest guy she ever met."
"Then Tanya's had a very sad life."
"You don't even wanna know."
"I'm sure I don't."
Marcus stood there like he wasn't going anywhere. Cass picked up the soda and pulled the tab and drank.
"What's your story?" Marcus said quietly. "Why's Asher got you boxed up down here?"
"You don't even wanna know."
"Try me."
"I think you should go back upstairs."
"What, you only talk to little girls?"
Cass took another pull on the can and didn't answer. Outside the cell, Marcus crouched down to his level and put the bowl on the floor.
"What do you know about the old man?"
Cass started to push the empty can out of the cell and then he took it back.
"I think I'll save this to piss in, if you don't mind."
"Hey. I asked you a question."
Cass looked up. "I know you work for him. That's all I need to know."
"So what? Everybody's gotta work for someone. This is the first goddamn job I've had since oh-eight."
"Well then, congratulations."
"You know, you don't gotta be like that..."
"What do you know about him?" Cass said. "What do you know?"
"I know he's a fuckin pimp. Came into town draggin that girl with him like a damn dog. Moved in here...got the lights back on, running water in some of the rooms. Then..." Marcus paused in thought.
"Then what?"
"Then I don't know what. It was like he'd always been here. Like I'd never been anyplace else in my life either but the goddamn Cairo. Sometimes I have to work real hard just to know which end is up and even then I'm not so sure. Sometimes I think..."
He put his head down. Then he sat down cross-legged like Cass.
"My mother's people lived in Alabama. They was some real holy rollers down there. Shit. We used to go down there in the hottest goddamn part of summer and have to sit in that church without a damn lick of air conditioning every Sunday morning for two hours listening to the preacher and the choir and the whole damn congregation testify. My granny'd sit there all dressed up in her Sunday best with her Jesus fan flappin away, smiling like God's own breeze was blowin just for her. Me, I'm sitting there in a tie and socks and pants, sweatin like a damn pig. I'd always fall asleep and she used to smack me with that Jesus fan. I mean she used to let me have it right across the back of the head and she'd say, 'Marcus, you stay awake and listen to the Word or the devil's gonna come for your soul.'" He looked up at Cass. "I think I should've stayed awake and listened to the Word."
Cass stared at him.
"Why did you just tell me that? What are you?"
"What? What the hell does it look like I am?"
"If I say Christo does that mean anything to you?"
"No," Marcus said and his eyes stayed fixed on Cass and did not change. "Except it sounds like Christ, like Jesus Christ...is that what you mean?"
"Close enough."
"I knew it," Marcus said slowly. "I knew there was something different about you. I seen all sorts of people at The Cairo but I never seen that old bastard put his eye on someone like he's put his eye on you. You and that friend of yours that you came here with."
"My friend..." Cass said, and then he stopped and shook his head. "You should go."
"Asher not here, not now. I got my eye on him too. I see his comins and goins, he don't even know it."
"Do you..." Cass took a deep breath and said. "The train station. Why does he go to the train station?"
"I don't know. I don't wanna know. If there's any place in Detroit worse than The Cairo it's that place. I've heard that sometimes it's dark like it's still empty inside and sometimes it's all lit up. A fella came through here a little while ago who said he'd been up there. He didn't say nothin else but he looked like he'd been to hell and back. He went up in one of the rooms and hung himself with his shirt. I wanted to cut him down and Asher made me just leave him there. You couldn't even go near that floor for weeks because he stank it up so bad."
"Did my friend go to the train station? Did Asher take him there?"
"I think so."
Cass closed his eyes. He folded his hands together and breathed.
Marcus said, "He's the devil, ain't he? Asher? He's the devil and we are all in hell."
"No," Cass said, almost to himself. "The devil is in the train station."
When he looked up Marcus was just staring at him.
"God sent you here."
"Marcus..."
"That's why Asher locked you up. That's why he took your friend away."
"Marcus, go back upstairs."
"Tell me what I have to do to help you."
"You have to go upstairs and forget that we talked."
"No. No way, brother. You're the one. A lotta folks've been waitin on you."
"No one's been waiting on me. You can't help me."
"Yes I can."
"Like I helped Tanya?"
"I'm not Tanya. She ain't even all there anymore, poor thing. I see a lot. I know a lot."
Cass was shaking.
Ask for the keys. Tell him to let you out of here
"Come on, man."
"I can't," Cass said. "I...not yet. Please go upstairs. Please."
Marcus sat outside the cell for another minute and then he picked up the bowl and got to his feet. He looked down at Cass.
"You ain't seen the last of me," he said. "I may've fell asleep a lot but I still heard enough of that Word and Asher ain't the only one got his eye on you."
When he was gone Cass went to the back of the cell. He sat down and drew up his knees and put his head on them and crossed his arms over his head and stayed like that for a long time.
* * *
He didn't sleep but he fell into a doze and in that state he was back in the room upstairs and he heard the noise throbbing in the belly of the place and the white light now stuttered on and off like a photoflash and he could see himself and Dean on the mattress and then he could not and then he could again and he tried to stop it or look away but he couldn't do either one. In this half-dream he understood that all men were equal parts angel and demon and that on the sixth floor the demon had done those savage things to Dean even as the angel had looked on horrified and helpless. He knew that this was what Asher called love because Asher was a demon only and so was ignorant of many things.
The sound of his own name softly spoken roused him and he turned over and sat up. Asher was in his cell. He had pulled the steamertrunk against the bars and he sat on it with his palms upturned on his spread knees and his old-man's belly swelling out over the cracked belt of his trousers. There was a gray steel box between his bare feet.
"What do you want?" Cass said.
Asher sat in silence and stared down at the floor. One of the bulbs in the ceiling had burned out and the demon sat half in darkness, his nose casting a long shadow down over his chin. He put his foot on the box and pushed it toward Cass and in that brown halflight Cass saw or thought he saw that the nails on Asher's feet were claws, long and yellow and curved, and the joints of his toes and his heels were set with hard spurs of bone.
"Take the box," he said. He pushed it closer. "Open it."
The box was long and had a hinged handle on the front and Cass reached out and grasped it and pulled it to himself. He saw where the lid would flip up and he put his hand on the lid and looked at Asher. Asher was still staring at the floor but Cass could see that his eyes were white inside their hooded sockets. His hands on his knees were now taloned like his feet.
"Open it," he repeated so Cass opened it and Asher said, "Pick it up."
From the box Cass pulled not chains but a single length of chain. It seemed to go on and on so that he had to loop it between his hands. Each link of the chain was a bright silver oval and they chimed softly against each other and although the chain looked fine it was heavy as iron and hot and thrummed with the power of heaven that Cass had still not forgotten.
"I can't touch it again," Asher said. "You see how it burned me?"
Cass looked up and the demon was sitting on the steamertrunk with his arms outstretched before him and his human guise was little more than a caul or veil stretched shapeless over him. His hands were burned down to the bone, the black flesh curled and flaking. He set them back on his knees. He was naked and his penis hung like a dark twisted root between his thighs.
"Still I took it," Asmodeus said. "The chain that bound Lucifer for thousands of years, I took it. Which of your brothers made this chain, Castiel?"
"No one of them alone," Cass said. "But it was Michael who bound him."
"Of course," Asmodeus said and grinned to himself. "I knew him, too. Spoiled brats, the lot of them. Michael especially, taking his toys and going home just because he couldn't get his way. They're all gone now, and good riddance. All but you. Do you think it's beautiful?"
"It is beautiful. It's the work of heaven."
"So it is." He raised a clawed hand to his temple. "But put it away now, it burns my eyes."
Cass let the chain down into the box, link upon silver link falling like water. He held the last length of it in the palm of his hand for a moment and then released it and closed the box. When he looked up he saw only Asher in his dirty suit.
"You see, I told you the truth. I have the chain."
"Please...tell me how to use it."
"You'll know what to do when the time comes."
"How much longer?"
"A little while." He stood up and bent over and picked up the box and put it under his arm and when he turned to go Cass scrambled up onto his knees and grabbed the edge of Asher's jacket.
"Asher, please...just tell me if Dean's all right."
Asher looked over his shoulder and smiled.
"I show you the glory of your lost heaven and you ask me about Dean."
"If I didn't love him I would have left with all the others. Don't you understand that? Love isn't always a weakness. Sometimes it's the greatest strength we have."
"Not for men."
He gripped Asher's jacket in his fist. "I loved him before I was ever human."
"You believe that?"
"I know that."
"More's the pity," Asher said. He pulled his jacket out of Cass's hand and let himself out of the cell.
"Is he all right?" Cass pleaded, but Asher was gone.
* * *
After that he was alone. He knew that The Cairo must be carrying on as before all above him but from his cell in the basement he heard nothing. He paced and prayed and paced again. He studied the lock on the door as if there were any point to that. He sat down and closed his eyes and thought of Dean and tried to seek him out in his mind as he'd once been able to do, as he'd found Dean in hell without even searching. Dean's soul lit up for him like a lamp in all that black chaos. Now there was nothing. He put his head in his hands and dozed again and then he slept. He dreamt that he and Dean were hitchhiking by night along a southern highway and the night was warm and drowsy and thick as it only ever is in that part of the country and in the dream a truck pulled up along the shoulder with its running lights all glowing and he could feel the heavy rumble of its engine in the blacktop under his feet and hear the chuffing wheeze of the brakes and Dean swung himself up into the cab of the truck as if he belonged right there at that moment and nowhere else. That ease of his that he always had in those days when the world had still been the one he'd always known and understood. The road and the night and miles of highway slipping off under the wheels and music on the radio and the hot summer night slipstreaming through the open window. Chasing headlights. Dean turned and held a hand down to Cass and his face was lit up in the glow of dashboard lights just like so many nights in the Impala and he held his hand down to Cass and smiled and said, In all my ways, Cass, and Cass took his hand and felt it in his own so solid and real. He woke up with his hand curled into a fist, holding onto nothing.
* * *
Go on to Part Two of this chapter...