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Lou came to slowly, her head aching and her entire back soaked through. Through the haze of throbbing pain, she saw sky and a soft masculine face that relaxed its concerned pinch as its owner saw her awaken.
“Oh good,” the boy said, sitting back on his heels. “I was starting to worry that you weren’t going to wake up.”
“Nnnngh.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Take a minute. You’ll probably need it.”
She took a few breaths and waited for the pain in her head to subside a bit. “Where am I?” she asked finally.
He sighed. “That’s the million-dollar-question, isn’t it. We don’t know.”
“We?”
“Yeah. There are five of us. Well. Four, now.” He looked uncomfortable and a little sad, saying that. Lou hoisted herself up into a sitting position.
“Now?” she asked shrilly.
“Yeah. Lily, um. The demon got her. She was trying to escape.”
Lou stared at him for a long, long moment. “I’m going to need you to explain some things,” she said finally.
“Okay, um. Since you missed official orientation.” He cleared his throat. “We’re in a ghost town called Cold Oak in South Dakota, because a demon decided that we were its chosen. How old are you?”
“Rude,” Lou muttered, before clearing her throat. “Nineteen.”
The guy frowned. “I guess the demon didn’t have a type after all. The rest of us are twenty-three.”
“You keep saying demon,” Lou said.
“Yeah. Um. So far we don’t know much, but. We can’t leave, and there are achiri demons here, so we have to keep it together. I was just about to move you inside when you woke up.”
“Demons,” Lou repeated.
“Yeah.”
She paused, then sighed. Deeply. “Fine.”
“Really?”
Lou stared at him. “I just got spirited out of the worst algebra lecture of my life. Fight me.”
The guy laughed, then held out a hand to help her up. “I’m Sam.”
She took it. “Lou.”
* * *
Lou met the others. Ava, Andy, Jake. Sam. She watched the group dynamics form. Sam the fearless leader, Jake his second in command. Ava was quiet, especially when she was alone. Emotionless, like she was thinking about something way too hard. Andy was nice but a little off-kilter, chattering away about stupid things he’d done, pranks he’d pulled on people with his Mind Powers.
Yeah. Mind Powers.
Lou thought she’d been going crazy the first time she touched someone and felt emotions she couldn’t place. The internet called it being an empath, but she called it weird and unnecessary.
They laid salt lines around all the doorways and windowsills and stayed in one room, together: starving, tense and tired. Andy passed out on the table within twenty minutes, while Ava sat quiet and mournful across from him. Jake and Sam took turns on watch.
Lou leaned herself against a grimy wall, fighting sleep with every ounce of her willpower, and eventually lost, waking out of a restless doze when Sam suddenly stumbled to his feet and called out to Jake. With bleary eyes, Lou watched the men go outside like they were on a mission, and wondered if she should be concerned.
Ava followed after them, and Andy sat up with a start, staring after her in confusion. “Where’s she going?” he asked. “Where’s Sam?”
Lou shrugged and pushed herself to her feet, dusting off her jeans uselessly. She crossed to the window and looked outside, watching Jake and Sam talk briefly before splitting up and heading in opposite directions.
Floorboards creaked as Andy leaned out of the doorway, calling for Ava.
She came back after a few minutes, looking oddly calm as she crossed to the window. Lou felt hairs rise on the back of her neck and she watched the other girl warily.
“Ava!” Andy exclaimed. “Where’d you go? Didn’t you hear us yelling?”
“Yeah, I heard you,” Ava murmured. Lou’s breath caught. Something was wrong. She backed up a few steps.
Ava raised her hands to her temples and frowned in concentration. Black smoke poured in through the window—the window with the salt lines, what the—and took the form of a little girl in a dirty white dress, talons curving out from her fingertips.
“What are you doing—?”
The achiri leapt for Andy in the space of a blink, talons sinking into his torso and spraying blood. Andy was screaming, Lou was screaming.
Ava was watching.
The achiri let him go when he was dead, turning slowly to look at Lou. Lou backed up until she couldn’t any more. ”Sam!” she shrieked, praying. “Sam!”
The achiri hit her just as she ducked; instead of finding purchase in Lou’s rib cage, its claws closed around her shoulders and squeezed, piercing deep. She wailed in pain, trying to slap it away but it wasn’t quite solid, wasn’t quite air, and it didn’t move, only hurt.
Sam thundered into the house, into the room. “Lou!”
“Sam!”
The demon dissipated as the iron passed through it, and suddenly Sam was kneeling in front of her, hands hovering like he didn’t know what to do. “Are you okay? Where did it get you? Lou, talk to me!”
“Ava,” Lou choked. “It was Ava. Andy—“
Sam’s face a mask of confusion. “Ava?”
When he turned to look at her, there was nothing but hurt on her face. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Don’t lie to me, Ava,” Sam growled. “What happened?”
“I don’t know, I just—“
“Ava.”
Ava froze, sighed, and her shoulders slumped. “Fine.”
“Fine, what?”
“I’ve been here a long time,” she said flatly. “And not alone, either. People just keep showing up. Children, like us. Batches of three or four at a time.”
“You killed them?” Sam asked, looking horrified. “All of them?”
Ava squared her shoulders. “I’m the undefeated heavyweight champ.”
“Oh my God,” Sam breathed.
“Don’t think God has much to do with this, Sam.”
“How could you?” Sam asked.
Ava shrugged. “I had no choice. It’s me or them.” She smirked. “After a while, it was easy. Even kinda fun. I just stopped fighting it.”
“Fighting what?”
“Who we are, Sam. If you’d just quit your hand-wringing and open yourself up, you have no idea what you can do! The learning curve is so fast, it’s crazy, the switches that just flip in your brain. I can’t believe I just started out having dreams!” She paused. “Do you know what I can do now?”
Sam swallowed. “Control demons.”
She tutted. “You are quick on the draw.”
Ava put her fingers to her temples again and Lou whimpered. Fuck. She was gonna die here. She buried her head between her knees and covered her neck, making herself small, listening to Sam stand up to defend himself—
—And heard the awful crunch of snapping bone followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.
Lou untucked her head and looked up to see Jake standing over Ava’s body exchanging a look with Sam that seemed to be equal parts shock and horror. Sam finally nodded and shifted his weight, turning back to her. “Lou, can you walk?”
She gulped. “I think so.”
“I think we can make it out of here now,” he said, gingerly helping her to her feet. “Let’s go.”
“But the achiri demon—“ Jake protested.
“No no no, Ava was summoning it, controlling it. It shouldn’t come back now that she’s dead.” Sam looked around like he doubted his own words. “We’ve got to go.”
Jake stopped walking, and Lou felt her hackles rise again at the look on his face. “Not ‘we,’ Sam,” he said softly. “Only one of us is getting out of here. I’m sorry.”
“No, stop it,” Lou said, voice cracking. “Jake, please. We can get out together.”
“Lou’s right,” Sam said, his voice tinged with desperation.
“He said only one of us is getting out. I like you guys, but. We can’t take the risk. If we cheat the game he’ll kill all of us.”
“Please,” Lou pleaded.
“Jake, don’t play into its hands,” Sam said. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake said. “But it does.”
His first strike sent Sam hurtling back twenty feet, but he didn’t stay to watch the landing, instead turning towards Lou, who was scrambling back towards the house. “Jake, please
don’t do this. We can work together. Please!”
Her vision blurred when he struck her, the pain not sinking in straight away. Lou felt the steps to the porch dig into her back as she fell against them, something hot and wet sliding down her face into her mouth. It tasted coppery. Blood.
“Lou!” Sam’s voice sounded far away. “Lou.” Closer.
She was shaking. No, someone was shaking her. What the f—? Oh. Sam.
“Lou, are you all right?”
“M’ head hurts, Sam,” she slurred.
“Okay, okay. Let’s get you out of here. Come on, lean on me, I can’t lift you—“
“’Ze dead?”
“Nope,” Sam grunted. “Just taking a nap. Hopefully a long one.”
“Sam!”
Flashlight beams crossed over the gravel on the road, making her head hurt.
“Dean!” Sam shouted, relief evident in everything from the tone of his voice to the way his whole body relaxed, somehow still managing to bear most of her weight as she
stumbled along next to him.
“Sam, look out!”
Suddenly Sam bucked beside her, taking her with him to the gravel. Her wounds pulled savagely, making her gasp in pain, tears welling in her eyes. There were gunshots, loud
and close, and Lou just wished everything would be quiet…
Someone crashed into the gravel in front of her. “Sam! Sam, hey, look at me—“
Lou felt the change in Sam’s body before the man holding him did. “Sam,” she murmured. “Sam, wake up.”
Then the man started shouting.
“Dean!”
“He’s gone, Bobby,” the man sobbed. There wasn’t another word for it.
“No…”
There was no reply.
Then.
“Who are you?”
Lou peeled her eyes open, and her vision was taken over by the—slightly blurry—face of an older man in a trucker cap. “’M Lou,” she croaked. “’M Sam’s friend.”
Trucker Man swore. “She’s concussed, Dean.”
“Sam’s dead.”
“So there’s nothing we can do for him. Come on, Dean. We gotta help her. We gotta get back to the car.”
Someone was helping her stand up, but that was too much for Lou to handle. Her vision swam one last valiant time before everything faded to black.