Bone Key (25 page)

The Last Calusa’s belief that none knew of the spirit world in this time and place was apparently a false one.

But vengeance needed to be satisfied. The many dead cried out for it, and their song sang through the Last Calusa.

They sang that song to the Three Gods, and they began the dance.

Dean saw what the Last Calusa was doing, and said, “Nuh-uh, Tonto. No rain dance for you.”

Combat instincts that came, not just from Dean and a lifetime of training by John Winchester, ex-Marine, but also from the spirits of dozens of naval officers, not to mention former artillery officer Harry S Truman, all became focused into a single blast of spiritual energy, and Dean took it and threw it at the Last Calusa.

It had no effect.

“Screw this,” Dean said, and did it again. Still, the Last Calusa continued their dance and their chant, unaffected.

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Jonathan Gomez’s spirit whispered into Dean’s ear.
Violence without passion doesn’t mean
nothin’. It’s just anger that’s all over the place.
Heeding the poet’s advice, Dean brought forth Mel Fisher’s passion for treasure seeking, Bonnie’s passion for playing music, Jonathan’s passion for his poetry, Hemingway’s passion for the many loves of his life, and more.

Again, he struck the Last Calusa.

Though they continued the dance, the Last Calusa did stumble, both physically and verbally. Lightning crackled across the twilight sky, and clouds came rolling in seemingly from nowhere.
Christ, it really
was
a rain dance.
Raising their arms to the darkening sky, the Last Calusa bellowed, “It begins!”

“Like hell.” The protective instincts of Truman, who wanted to keep his people safe, of Hemingway, who wanted to safeguard the lives of soldiers when he drove the ambulance, of Captain Naylor, who always put the crews of his wreckers before himself, and of Dean his own self toward Sam came to the fore, and Dean was able to create wards of his own around Sam and the others under the tarp.

Thunder boomed, echoing off the sea, even as the lightning struck Dean’s wards—but did not penetrate them.

Turning to face Dean through their freaky mask, 258 SUPERNATURAL

the Last Calusa said, “You will not deny us our vengeance!”

“Watch me.” The passion, the combativeness, the protectiveness, Dean wrapped it up all into a ball and thrust it at the Last Calusa, who stumbled backward away from the construction site. Dean moved forward, the spirits flowing through him, and he kept at it. Truman’s surety that dropping one atom bomb would not be enough, the soldier’s instinct to make sure that the enemy was well and truly defeated, Dean’s own knowledge that you had to make sure the creature of the night you fought was all dead, not just mostly dead, all combined to make him hammer away at the Last Calusa. The lightning and thunder crashed down all around them, and a hard rain started to pelt South Street. Dean couldn’t feel it touch his person, but he could sense the power of the storm, see it strike the pavement and the dirt with more intensity than even a typical Florida rainstorm generally managed. So sudden was the onslaught of the rain that Dean hesitated for only the briefest of seconds. Then came the pain.

Dean had suffered plenty of pain in his life. He’d been beaten up, beat down, shot at, stabbed, cut, electrocuted, punched, kicked, bit, thrown across more rooms than he could count, and run over by a Mack truck.

If you combined all that pain, it was only a frac-Bone Key

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tion of what Dean felt now. The flip side of feeling
everything
like this was that—well, he
really
did feel everything. Perception was magnified, and so was agony.

No matter how bad it got, though, he refused to let the protection for Sam and the others falter. It didn’t matter if he died in the effort—he was dead anyhow—but that sonofabitch wasn’t taking Sam with him.

And then the pain grew worse, in tandem with the intensity of the rain. It was coming down hard enough to dent the roofs of the police cruisers (but not, Dean dimly but proudly noted, the Impala’s). Despair started to overwhelm him, and that, too, was made worse by the spirits of the dead. Hemingway’s manic depressiveness that led to his suicide, Althea’s devastation at being gang-raped and no one believing her that led to
her
suicide, the degeneration of José as AIDS ravaged his body, the terror of Caleb when the church condemned him to death, all combined with Dean’s own usually hidden despair over his inevitable trip to hell to crush him. He almost gave in.

Sam . . .

Dean shoved the despair into the back of his mind where he kept his own fears and doubts, and instead tapped into Bonnie’s music, Jonathan’s poetry, Mel’s obsession, Hemingway’s lust for life, and fought back.

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It wasn’t enough.

Crap. Where’d he get this power from?

And only then did Dean realize that the Last Calusa had that power all along—he just hadn’t cut loose on Dean at first.

But Dean refused to give up. He drew upon the stubbornness of Truman, who spent most of his political career not being taken seriously, of Hemingway, whose obstinacy cost him more than one marriage, of Bonnie, who dealt with all the tribulations of being a woman in a male-dominated art, of José, who kept his chirpy optimism throughout most of his dying days, of Jonathan, who never gave up the dream of being a famous poet even though he died a janitor, of Caleb, who never let go of his anger and frustration. And he drew on his own stubbornness, which could be a wonder to behold.

All of that, he fed into keeping Sam safe. That was what was important.

Then the pain increased
again,
and Dean screamed to the heavens, the rain pelting into his open mouth . . .

Bobby Singer had seen a lot in his life, but nothing quite like this before. All of his hairs—on his head under his ball cap, his beard, the back of his neck—were standing on end.

He stood on the sidewalk facing the tableau, Bone

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across the street from the construction site, parallel to where the demon was hovering over the pentagram. To the right, Dean was fighting the Last Calusa.

All three were glowing. A line of spiritual energy no thicker than a fishing line connected the demon to Dean. It had gotten dark in a hurry thanks to the rainstorm the Last Calusa called down on them, and all the nearby streetlights were out, but South Street was lit up like a Christmas tree. The glow around Kat was a fire orange color, as was the link between her and Dean. Dean himself was more red. In both cases, the flame-related color probably had something to do with the origins of the demon’s power.

The glow around the Last Calusa was blue. Bobby had no idea what
that
meant . . . Two things had Bobby worried.

The first was that Dean appeared to be losing. He’d gained the upper hand for about half a second, but the Last Calusa came from behind in a hurry.

Dean’s scream was as soul-chilling a sound as Bobby had ever heard. And that was against some mighty stiff competition. Worse, the glow around him dimmed to a fainter, lighter red, while the Last Calusa’s became a cobalt blue.

However, the second thing was the bigger concern. Bobby had seen Dean come back from far-262 SUPERNATURAL

ther down in a fight, and he was willing to hang on to a hope that he might still triumph. But then he took another gander at Kat, who was not looking at all well. Blood was trickling out of her nose and eyes and mouth. Her silky brown hair was getting stiff and strawlike. Blisters started to break out on her arms and stomach and legs. The demon was burning out her host. And while she could always get a new one—Bobby himself was charmed against it, but he wouldn’t be surprised if the demon had kept a human nearby in reserve—the break the demon would have to take to leave Kat and enter the new host would likely be fatal to Dean.

And there was always the possibility that Bobby’s charm wouldn’t work, and the demon
would
possess him.

The notion chilled Bobby something fierce. There wasn’t much that scared Bobby anymore, but that was on the short list. He would rather die than go the way of his wife, of Sam, of Meg . . . Bobby kept the Colt ready. And kept himself ready for whatever might come.

Sam broke completely free right before he heard his brother scream.

He’d heard Dean’s taunting arrival on the scene, and from the sounds of it, he had some kind of mystical mojo on his side.
Oh God, did he actually take
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up Fedra on her offer?
Urged on by this thought, and by his success in moving one hand, Sam pushed hard against the Last Calusa’s force, and eventually fell face-first onto the ground. He’d been still for so long that the rough taste of dirt was actually pleasant. The cops and lab techs were still immobilized.

“What’d you do?” “How’d you do that?” “Christ, get
us
outta here, willya?”

Sam clambered to his feet and moved as if to run toward the tarp, but just as quickly as he’d freed himself he was trapped again. He was stuck in midrun, and his body started to slowly move back into position in the circle with the others.

“Oh no you don’t,” Sam said through gritted teeth as he fought against the Last Calusa, trying to will his long legs not to move, to stand still, to do what
he
wanted.

Blinding pain ripped through his skull, much like the headaches he used to get with his visions, as he tried to fight against the Last Calusa. Somewhere during this, it had started raining, hard, and the staccato rhythm of the rain slapping against the tarp echoed in Sam’s ears in time with the pounding in his head.

Then he heard Dean scream.

“Dean!” Sam cried, even though he doubted that his brother could hear him. But he used the anguish of his cry to egg himself onward, to push against the Last Calusa.

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And then he fell forward once again, as did all the others.

“God, I can
move
!” “How the hell—?” “Ow, my leg!” “How’d that happen?”

Sam immediately ran out to the tarp, pushed it aside, felt the rain pelt down on him—

—and saw his brother
glowing
while screaming. And then light shot out of his fingers and hit the Last Calusa.

Every time I think I’ve seen everything, some-
thing comes along and raises the damn bar
, Sam thought, staring at the agonized face of his brother. He also saw Bobby across the street pointing the Colt at a woman who was hovering over the pavement. The woman had the black eyes that signaled demonic possession, and was above a reverse pentagram. Sam also noted that there seemed to be a glowing string connecting the woman to Dean.
He really did do the deal with Fedra. Desperate
times, I guess . . .

In that moment, Sam realized that he’d been an idiot.

For two years, Sam had been displaying psychic powers that linked him to Azazel, and also to other children who, like Sam, had been touched by the demon. Sam had been concerned that entire time that he was somehow unclean, different—

evil. Dean kept insisting—as he did fairly often, truth be told—that Sam was being a jackass. Bone

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Now, he saw Dean, almost literally charged up by a spell being cast by a demon. Sam could
feel
the power that Dean was now channeling—so could the Last Calusa, to his detriment, though the Native spirit was giving as good as he got. Despite this, there was no doubt in Sam’s mind that his brother was in there and that he was—

well, not all right, but still Dean. Just as Dean saw that, premonitions or not, he was still Sam. But Dean couldn’t do this alone. Luckily, he no longer had to. Dean’s attacks had obviously either weakened the Last Calusa, or simply forced the spirit to draw on the energy needed to hold the sacrifices in place in order to defeat Dean. So Sam was free to do his part.

He made a beeline for the Impala, which was parked right on the street. He considered checking the cop cars, which were closer, but this was Florida—they wouldn’t have what he’d need. Bobby noticed Sam running toward the car, and called out, “Sam?”

Running to the trunk, Sam dug his set of keys out of his pocket and opened the Impala’s trunk, rainwater sluicing down the sides of the car as the trunk was lifted. Digging around, he found the bag of salt they kept back there for just such an occasion, as well as a can of lighter fluid.

“Sam, what the hell’re you doin’?” Bobby asked, as Sam ran back to the construction site. 266 SUPERNATURAL

“Whatever I can,” Sam said.

Once back under the tarp, Sam, clothes and hair now sopping wet, ran straight for the unearthed bones.

“What the heck’re you doin’?” one cop asked. Ignoring him, Sam ripped open the bag of salt and upended it onto the Calusa bones. Once the bag was empty, and every exposed bone was covered in salt, Sam unscrewed the lighter-fluid can.

“You’re salting and burning the bones, aren’t you?” another cop asked.

A lab tech said, “Hang on, you said that wouldn’t kill it.”

“It won’t,” Sam said after he’d sprayed the fluid around enough of the bones. Then he pulled a matchbook out of his pocket, yanked one free, lit it, and dropped it onto the bones, grateful that the tarp was keeping the rain out.

“Then why you bothering?”

Sam shoved his wet hair out of his eyes with one hand. “You know what they say—that which does not kill you still hurts a helluva lot.”

The Last Calusa screamed as a part of them burned away.

They did not know how this had happened, but the pain was blinding. It was as if the Calusa were dying all over again, one by one being removed Bone

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from the Last Calusa as they had been removed by the outsiders’ diseases and guns.

Gathering up their strength, the Last Calusa patched the hole that this event had made, making themselves whole again.

But that took time, and it took effort, and doing so left them vulnerable to the dead soul. Out of the corner of his mind, Dean had seen Sam running to the Impala and returning with salt and lighter fluid.
That’s my brother,
Dean thought, proud that Sam had broken free, prouder still that he was pitching in. While it was true that salting and burning the bones wouldn’t kill the Last Calusa, it’d probably still have an effect. The spirit of Caleb whispered to Dean,
Yes, that will weaken
this foul creature. Perhaps then we can gain the
upper hand.