Chapter Text
The building seems to be a hotel. It looks remarkably clean, but the ceilings are cracked in places, water damage spotting the floors beneath, and the wood of the walls is pitted and cracked here and there. Old and probably abandoned, Sam guesses, until Azazel took it over.
Out the windows, he finds wild-looking grounds cut through with a road at some distance, and much further beyond a glitter that might have been a nearby town. Nothing looks familiar, and he can’t shake the suspicion that somehow, in the last half-awake night, they’d traveled a lot further than they should have been able to on foot. So, where he is—no clues there. His phone is long gone, and in the first few rooms he checks, he only finds one or two places where holes seem to indicate something electrical might have been ripped out. No way to call anyone. And he can’t leave, not if he wants to keep the deal.
He wants Dean, for a moment, so badly it hurts. Just—to take charge, set a definite course, even if it’s stupid as hell and something Sam will immediately argue with him about. He spent a few years without Dean at Stanford but for the rest of Sam’s life he was a constant, the rock that the rest of the universe was built on. Without him, Sam feels unmoored, absent and strange enough he checks to see if he’s dreaming once or twice more.
No such luck.
He goes down to the first floor and starts opening doors. There's evidence of demons having passed through—scuffed footprints on the floor, the stink of sulfur still in the air—but the building seems empty. He turns Azazel's words over in his mind, trying to fit pieces together. I already have my army. And now he might know who they're meant to fight, although if Heaven has stood by and watched the world for this long, he wonders if a few thousand more demons up above will really provoke them to show themselves. Or maybe he's thinking of it the wrong way; maybe the war's been going on all this time, just on a level humans were unaware of. Sam shakes his head in frustration. He doesn't know enough—and the strangest missing piece is his part in all this. Despite what Azazel said, Sam doubts that having the skills of a hunter really made him better than the other 'special children'. Can't imagine knowing that knowing what kind of knife kills a lamia will be any advantage against an angel.
He's still lost in thought when he opens a door into the sudden hush of a conversation, and realizes he's not alone. The room before him, less dusty than the others, seems like some kind of lounge; a bar runs along one wall, old yellow wood with a vicious slash of a burn mark scarring up one end. A woman leans against the bar from the inside, and a girl maybe a year or two younger than Sam perches on a stool with a drink in her hand. Sam stares at them, tongue-tied for a moment.
The girl with a drink in her hand smiles at him, slow and dark and sweet, the kind of smile he’d more expect to see in a bar around midnight. He almost expects her to say hey, sailor. What she says is, “Oops. I don’t think we’re supposed to meet yet.”
Sam says, intelligently, “What?”
“I was supposed to be out of here already. Didn’t think you’d come downstairs so soon. You won’t tell the boss on me, will you?”
The boss—Azazel. “I’m not gonna tell him anything.”
The girl smiles more brightly and Sam finds himself smiling awkwardly back. He stops himself. Demon, Sam, he tells himself. Tries to picture damp black creeping over those big brown eyes. It helps him stop smiling, at least, but the girl doesn’t seem to be bothered by that.
“Aren’t you going to ask my name?” she says.
“I—to be honest, I wasn’t going to. A lot of you things don’t seem to use them.”
The woman between the bar laughs to herself and walks away to the other end; to do what, Sam doesn’t know. The girl purses her lips briefly, eyes dropping. Sam half-expects them to go black but they don’t. She just looks back up a moment later, smile back and just a fraction tighter than before.
“It’s Ruby,” she says, and her tone makes Sam instinctively guilty, even if he tells himself she’s not really a girl, she doesn’t have feelings to hurt. “A lot of us— things keep our names to ourselves around hunters. They’re not usually interested, you know?”
“I thought it was something to do with names having power.” Sam says.
Ruby’s smile turns just a touch patronizing. “It’s just a name someone gave me,” she says. “Not big mojo attached to it.”
She gulps the remains of her drink and slides down off her stool; she’s short, maybe a foot shorter than Sam, making her neck into a pale straight line as she looks up at him. He feels oddly ashamed and angry for feeling so, but unable to do anything with his anger; she’s not threatening him, not doing anything much. Just looking, like she’s waiting for him to do something, or trying to memorize his face. He might be—is probably imagining it, but there seems to be a touch of sadness in her eyes.
“Well,” she says, finally. “See you around.”
“Wait,” he says impulsively, as she turns to go. “Wait. Can I ask you something?”
She arches an eyebrow. “Last I checked, talking’s free.”
He swallows hard. “Do you know where Dean—where my brother is?”
Ruby’s face goes perfectly still, mask-like for a moment. Then she pulls an awkward face. “His body, or, uh…”
Sam closes his eyes for a moment. “Both. Body and soul.”
“Right. Body? Under lock and key already, I imagine. Being kept fresh and safe. Don’t know where, not my job. Soul?” Ruby dropped her eyes meaningfully to the floorboards. “Other than that, again, don’t know, not my department. Sorry.”
Sam swallows. “Right.” He wants to snarl at how useless the reply is, but he restrains himself. He’s going to be stuck dealing with demons for a while; he probably shouldn’t alienate one that seems willing to answer questions. “Thank you.”
Ruby smiles and it’s so genuine and bright he’s warmed by it, despite himself. “Aw, you’re cute when you’re polite. Hope they don’t rub the shine off you too fast.”
While he’s still struggling to respond to that she takes off again, heels clicking on the bare floor, and is out the door before he can come up with something. The woman behind the bar returns to his section, leaning on it with an easy smile. She’s young, he realizes—that is, the woman she's wearing is young, not even thirty, but something about her eyes and smile make her seem older.
“Hell of a morning for you, huh?” she says.
“Yeah.” He hesitates. “So uh, do you… have a name?”
"Call me Amy."
"Amy."
She raises an eyebrow. “What were you expecting? Moloch? Raz’dah, Eater of a Thousand Babies?”
He doesn’t take the bait. “This place seems pretty empty. Why are you here?”
“Well, somebody’s gotta keep an eye on you.” She gives him a slightly patronizing smile. “And I’m not the only one, honey. Bell and Book are just out right now, reinforcing the border. We don’t want any unwelcome guests.”
“Are those other demons, or Saturday morning cartoon villains?”
She laughs. “Some of us chose our names, some of us got them other ways. Azazel named Bell and Book—and Candle, obviously, though she’s not here at the moment.” She winks at Sam. “Between the two of us, she’s not very bright.”
Bell, book and candle. Seemed more like nicknames for witches than demons, but Sam put that curiosity aside for now. “You know his real name. Azazel. How much do you know about him?”
“How much do you know?” Amy countered, leaning back from the counter. “I’m not putting my skin on the line to answer any questions, kid. I’m just the chef.”
“The… chef?”
“You’ve got to eat, right?” Amy’s eyes crinkle at the corners with mirth. “I haven’t worked under Azazel before, but as it turns out, none of his people really knew much about cooking. Focus on the whole pillage, rape, burn bit and finer skills fall by the wayside. So he called Lilith—my lady—” Sam can’t help but notice the words my lady are tinged with a faint, bitter disdain, “—and she sent me up with all the soldiers.” Amy spread her hands. “And here I am, at your service.”
“You’re seriously here just to cook—just for me ?”
Amy shrugs. “I mean, demons eat too. Even if we don’t have to for long, hosts get all scrawny and weird without food sometimes. And the higher-ups eat for pleasure, now and then. But you’re my top priority, yeah, Azazel made that clear.”
Sam takes a minute to process that. It makes sense, in a way. Whatever was going on, Azazel seems to want him alive and healthy for a while yet. But overall, Amy is just adding more questions to his already lengthy list. He picks two.
“Can I get something to drink, then?” he says. “And if you can’t answer anything more important—how is it you know how to cook?”
“What’s your poison?”
“Whiskey, if you’ve got it.” He folds his arms on top of the bar, waits for an answer to his second question. Amy glances at him and sighs.
“That’s harder to answer than you know, kid.” She turns to the shelves half-hidden behind her. “How much did Azazel tell you, when he talked to you upstairs? I know there’s a lot he needs to say to you; I don’t know how far he got.”
Sam swallows against the tightness that rises to his throat, feeling the weight of all the secrets he’s already learned, the weight of ones that promise to somehow be worse. “I already know… He told me the stories of fallen angels had truth to them. That he was one. And before, before we came here, he told me about the blood.” He opens and closes his hand, distracted by a moment by the veins in his wrist. The taint he could all too easily imagine coursing through them. “How he changed me, and the other children…” But that wasn’t all. There had to be more to Sam’s story; more than the others that had died, burned out as Azazel had put it, out in the world or in Cold Oak. Otherwise he wouldn’t be here.
It could be as simple as the explanation Azazel had offered, that he had some advantage through how he was raised, but Sam can’t believe that’s all. What you are, Azazel had said, after he showed Sam his wings. Sam feels certain, somehow, that he wasn’t just talking about the blood. There was something more different, more wrong with Sam than the others.
He just can’t piece together yet what that difference is.
Amy slides a glass across to him, snapping him out of his reverie. She’s smiling a little, an unexpected softness on her face; a smile full of nostalgia. “That’s enough for me to answer your question,” she said. “I know how to cook because I didn’t always serve Lilith. My lord was Shemhazai, one of the first among the Fallen. All of them were interested in the world in different ways, but Shem—he was always enchanted by material things. Sex, pain, food. I started learning about the last to please him. It was fun.”
“Why are you with Lilith now?”
Her smile faded. “Because Shemhazai’s dead.”
Sam already has his mouth open, stunned, to ask what could kill a fallen angel, when understanding dawns on him. “The—it was the Colt?”
Amy makes a face as if just hearing the word tastes sour. “That thing. Yeah, we didn’t know what it was back then. Didn’t know to be afraid of it. So Shem…” She trails off, turns away. When she looks back at Sam, her face is emotionless, her tone casual. “So he died, and those of us that were more the fighting type got folded into Azazel or Dagon’s forces, and those of us who didn’t went to Lilith, or… yeah. I don’t envy them.” Without any explanation for that last bizarre sentence, she ducked to a nearby tiny fridge and pulled herself out a bottle of beer. “Anyway, I’d better shut my mouth now. I ramble too much when memories come up, you know? Hazards of being old.”
Sam takes a slow sip of the whiskey, grimacing a little at the burn on his tongue. It can’t answer his questions, but it does help focus his mind. He feels like he’s coming dangerously close to understanding what drove John Winchester to hit the bottle every time he came off a particularly bad case. Wanting more than anything to distract himself, he says, “How old? If the higher-ups are fallen angels—are the rest of you, the rank and file demons, something different?”
Amy twists the cap off her beer. “Wow, reports of you being a scholar weren’t lying. Afraid I’m gonna have to cut you off, though. Can’t answer those questions before I know for sure what Azazel wants you to know.”
Sam bites his lip, trying to keep his anger in check. “OK. So I’m just stuck here doing nothing until Azazel decides to fill me in?”
Amy made an apologetic face. “I can get you lunch.”
“I’m not hungry.” It’s not quite true, but his stomach cramps with nausea at the thought of eating right now.
She drummed her manicured nails on the bar for a moment. “I’ve got a pack of cards around here somewhere. I know poker, or I could teach you how to play Eleusis.”
Only curiosity stopped him from immediately turning the offer down. “Eleusis?”
“It’s more fun with more players, but you can do it with two. One’s the dealer, and the other doesn’t know what’s going on.” She smiles slightly. “You just play cards, and the dealer tells you whether it’s a wrong move or not, but never why. You have to guess it for yourself.”
“That sounds… insane.” Sam picks up his glass. “And I’m not really in the mood for games.”
Amy shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
“Do you know when Azazel will be back?”
“By tonight, probably. He’s—actually, sorry, shouldn’t tell you what he’s doing. But you’re a high priority, Sam. He won’t leave you hanging for long.”
She says it like that should reassure him. In a twisted way, it almost does.