fic: Unspoiled Salt - Part 4

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Back to Part 3

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Stefanus, thus given a reprieve, however brief as it turned out to be, was determined to make the most of it. He possessed a series of Julia’s coworkers while they worked at her side, trying to make conversation about her baby and where it had gone. But Julia had nothing to say to these women that she didn’t really know. She looked shell-shocked and hollow, moving through the motions of her day. Maybe she missed being possessed or being pregnant, he had no idea, the woman had always been dim and dull and inherently uninteresting. He quickly bored of tormenting her coworkers, making each of them have sex with the horrible boss just because he could.

Stefanus watched Julia recover from her post pregnancy depression, but he didn’t bother to possess her again. He made do with her mailman instead. Spending year after year walking the same exact neighborhood delivery route was soothing and lovely and perfectly boring. He found himself almost forgetting about reporting in to Crowley, but there wasn’t anything to report. Not that Crowley would have minded too much what with Lilith being killed and all the chaos in Hell afterwards. Stefanus did not wish he was back there in Hell—at all. Instead he watched with a certain amount of satisfaction as Julia’s house fell into disrepair, her garden gone weedy and overgrown. She was pathetic, even for a human. She never recovered from his possession and her pregnancy. It was some sort of divine retribution for her having hidden the child away from them.

Wherever the child was, it was hidden from them, the demon’s promised cambion, the weapon they needed to win the war against Heaven forever lost to them. He sometimes wondered why Crowley had left him here to monitor Julia, instead of just killing him for his failure. It seemed a futile waste of time. Right up until the second the Winchesters had arrived in their flashy black car, roaring up to her decrepit house in the gloomy October afternoon. He watched them closely from the safety of his post office delivery jeep, and then briefly smoked out of his captive mailman to surveil them from within her house. Hal the postman would sleep it off until he returned.

Swirling about the house’s heater vents unnoticed, he watched the Winchesters banter back and forth and then encounter Julia with her damn salt. He listened to Julia babble on about her poor sob story of possession and pregnancy and birth. He heard her say, ”But demons are dumb, not even smart enough to figure out the Nebraska adoption system, thank goodness. So my Jesse got a chance. At least he got to grow up to the ripe old age of eleven before he ever encountered a demon.”

The brothers seemed surprised, impressed even that she knew that small thing about demons and salt. But then they were just a couple of stupid hunters. Stupidly attractive hunters—why hadn’t Crowley mentioned that about them? But then he watched the brothers leave, how closely they walked back to their car. How the older one checked over the tall giant for injuries before letting him get into his car. Hands lingering for an unnecessary amount of time, eyes resting on the other’s lips, but there was still a hesitance on both of their parts. Like something was new or being re-made between them. He pushed his smoky self closer, entering the heater vents of the car, his curiosity driving him to keep observing the brothers.

Both of them were protected against possession unfortunately, because that would have been the very definition of a fun time. After inhabiting a dumpy Nebraskan postal worker all this time, these two prime specimens were tantalizing in their angst and drama and virile striving quest to pretend they didn’t want the other one so desperately. He laughed to himself with his smoky lips, the delicious mutual pining coming off the brothers in waves as they sat in the car and talked about the mother and the boy.

The boy. The boy. The boy.

That reminded him with a lightning bolt, the boy, they were talking about the lost cambion, he had to go back inside Julia, push her to follow them, they had found the kid—The Weapon, and they were going back to see him. Maybe he had a small chance here to redeem himself with Crowley. With a little luck he might get a better assignment up here to stay on Earth, he’d sure like to see more of this modern world than just Nebraska. He rushed into Julia’s nose and throat in a black swirling mass, her panic deliciously familiar, almost tastier than her inability to stop him. Stupid useless woman, she could have gotten an anti possession charm or a lovely tattoo like the brothers. But no, she’d just sat in this house with her piles of road salt bags. He pushed and pulled her body into her car, hoping that the pile of junk would make it to wherever the brothers were headed.

He’d had a lot of practice driving as Hal the postman, so it wasn’t a problem, her car was a lot easier to drive than the post office delivery Jeep. He followed the trail of the brothers easily, once he’d zeroed in on the plume of over-the-top feelings they left in their wake as the black car cut through the night. It was ridiculously easy really, they’d probably be embarrassed to know that this was how he’d found them, best them, with their own weakness in wanting each other. Did Crowley know all this? Had Lilith? Maybe he’d get even more of a boost in Crowley’s eyes providing this sort of personal intel on the Winchesters.

Julia screamed and battered against him, for the first hundred miles or so, but then she calmed down. He started up an internal dialogue with her just to pass the time and hopefully keep her screaming down to a bare minimum.

“What did you think of those hunters?” Stefanus asked.

“Fuck you!” Julia screamed.

“No really, I want to know your thoughts on those two,” Stefanus said.

“They’re killers, stone cold killers, and I hope they kill you,” Julia said.

“That might mean you die, just so you know,” Stefanus advised.

“I don’t give a fuck, I don’t care, if it means I’m not stuck carrying your ass around again, it’ll be fine.”

“Even if you’re in Hell?” Stefanus asked.

“Why would I be…there?” Julia asked, suddenly much quieter.

“Because you gave birth to Hell’s greatest weapon against Heaven of course, why would the assholes running Heaven let you into blissful eternity?”

“That wasn’t even my fault! You’re the one who got me pregnant!” Julia protested.

“True, but that’s not how the angels will see it. Once they get Dean really on their side, it’s all going to be over anyway. Hell and Heaven won’t even be a thing anymore.”

“What about Sam?”

“Oh, he’s meant for Lucifer,” Stefanus said.

“What are you talking about? Lucifer’s for real?”

“Julia, you’ve known about demons for how long now, twelve years? And you haven’t bothered to figure the rest of all this out? You really are just a useless meat bag.”

“One you keep coming back to apparently, so I guess I’m not totally useless. Tell me more about Sam,” Julia said.

“Oh of course, you’d like Sam, he was the one who, well—I probably shouldn’t say,” Stefanus said.

“C’mon, I’m dying soon anyway, right? What could it possibly hurt?” Julia pleaded.

“Sam is going to be the vessel for Lucifer, to fight on Hell’s side against Heaven. So he was the one who provided the swimmers for your precious little bundle of joy.”

“He must have been, what fourteen? Wait a damn second, you didn’t make me fuck a teenager, you would have made me remember that!”

“No, no nothing as lovely as that, you weren’t worthy of an honor such as that. It was just you, me and Crowley’s turkey baster full of Sam’s swimmers.”

“It is really messed up that scenario sounds a lot better than the alternative,” Julia said.

“What, better than you being a child-rapist? Besides, he’s belonged to another for quite a long time now.”

“Who, what?”

“You didn’t see it, between them when they were at your house?”

“No…I was too scared to really look too closely at them.”

“They’re cursed with being soulmates and brothers, quite a nasty trick played on them by the supposed good guys.”

“Soulmates? Is that a real thing?”

“Yeah, it is, right along with Lucifer. Honey, you have no idea what’s out there in the world, shit you puny humans would freak if you even knew half of it.”

“I wish I knew none of it,”Julia said.

“Oh count yourself lucky, sweet thing, you got to be involved in the Apocalypse. As a minor player of course, but still, more than most humans will be able to claim at the end of all things.”

“Apocalypse?”

“Battle between Heaven and Hell, you know to end the world and start the new one through fire and flame? Lucifer’s reign will be a glorious change for all who are lucky enough to be there,”

“What are you, like some sort of Lucifer loyalist or something?”

“Do you remember all the things I used to show you while you were pregnant, all the prophecies coming true, the world being remade in His glorious image?”

“I thought that was just stuff to scare me, I didn’t think it was a real possibility.”

“And it’s your son, the cambion, who will help Lucifer, secure Hell’s victory, just like I told you. It’s going to be all your fault that the world as it is now will be no longer.”

“What about all the people? It’ll be my fault?” Julia asked in a small voice, barely above a whisper.

“Pffft, who cares, acceptable casualties of war, this isn’t about humans anyway, it’s a death match that was set up by God and all of them big mucki-ty mucks way back when.”

“Sounds like a bunch of demon fairytales to me,” Julia said, punching him hard right between the metaphorical eyes.

Stefanus gasped in pain and locked her down, pushing her back down into her own depths, cramming her into the smallest space she could fit in. He rubbed the space between his eyes and went back to concentrating on following the brothers.

As he drove he reminisced about the glorious day that he and Crowley had done the deed. Right there in Julia’s small dingy bedroom, he fondly recalled how he’d held Julia’s legs open as Crowley had fucked her with the plastic turkey baster. That had been the best feeling, giving himself over to the King all the while holding Julia down like he was now. Knowing that he was making a contribution to the future of all demon-kind.

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The brothers soon pulled up in front of a large farm house. They walked up to the front door, side-by-side, in each other’s space, elbows and hands brushing. It was ridiculous. They let themselves in by the big one, Sam, picking the lock. He was parked on the other side of the street watching with the engine shutoff, trying to regroup. He took a few deep breaths and made sure that Julia was still stuck where he’d stashed her.

It was the sight of her boy, just seeing her Jesse, all beautiful, and grown-up and strong, that beat Stefanus this time. He’d almost gotten the brothers handled, but then the boy had intervened when Julia had managed to use her voice to call out.

“Jesse, please help me! I’m stuck in here, he won’t let me out! I don’t want to hurt them, make me stop!”

Jesse had heard her, and turned, his face a mask of rage. “You sit down and leave them alone!”

Stefanus felt Julia’s body slam into a chair and invisible bonds wrapped themselves around his arms and legs, tying her to the chair.

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Part 5