Title: The Curse of Bittersweet Kisses
Chapter 25
~~~~~~~~~~
Purgatory demons were no more cooperative than hell demons and were even more apt to squabble and bicker over the tiniest thing. Hard to believe, yet completely true. Meg discovered that over her months-long partnership with one of the very first changed souls Castiel had loosed from himself. It actually began to drive her crazy how some of them wouldn’t stick to a host, bouncing around and generally causing trouble when they were supposed to be working towards common goals. Nor were they willing to follow orders without being threatened or bribed in some way.
Just what the world needed, more demons behaving like…demons.
“Stick to a damn host already,” she’d tell them and, “follow your orders.”
Some did stay in their hosts and she’d begun to distinguish between the broad types of the creatures by the way they behaved and the characteristics they exhibited. Purgatory demons were as different within their levels as hell demons were and there was a hierarchy between them as well. The natives were at the top, the former humans changed in the middle, and those born as monsters at the bottom.
The ones that didn’t change their host’s genetic makeup very much when they took them over were the Purgatory natives, ones who’d possessed humans in their natural forms and already held similar characteristics to what they had become through Castiel. They were highly intelligent, cunning, and many gave some higher up hell demons a run for their money in the wicked department. Not all of them, however. A few seemed to wish to blend back in to human society and escape into anonymity, a thing lost to them because of Castiel. When they took hosts, they kept them. The one she’d been working with was a native and hell-bent on finding Castiel, even obsessed by it.
She understood obsession very well.
Meg wondered why they called themselves natives if all monster souls went there. Had they somehow been created in Purgatory? Had the Mother of All experimented while in there? It raised intriguing questions as to the sort of place Purgatory was, but Meg doubted she’d get any answers and it didn’t really matter anyway. It wasn’t like she was planning actually going there herself.
Purgatory demons who changed their host’s makeup completely and had no focus to remain in a host were the lower tiers of monsters when they’d been on earth, the ones born to it and only concerned with mayhem and madness to begin with, which could account for why they drove hosts insane. They were the most dangerous in Meg’s opinion and she considered them little more than animals to be carefully controlled and directed, much like Daevas.
She’d been experimenting with Zoroastrian symbols as a means to control them like she had Daevas, but with little success. It had been a long-shot anyway. She’d hoped that since the creatures were similar that the same symbols would have an effect.
And then there were the ones who were waiting and watching, circling the earth and only occasionally taking hosts, the ones the native leaders identified as having been the humans turned monster, their humanity stripped away to the point that they couldn’t go to heaven or hell, only Purgatory. The former vampires, werewolves, and other creatures, some remembering what they’d once been and others too old to remember. They were the powerful ones, the ones who manifested powers and when they took a host, the host did change, but only when the creature was in it. When they left their hosts, they left them catatonic, yet looking human once more.
Meg had seen it happen several times. It was fascinating to watch. Did the host ever recover? She’d yet to see one come out of it, but that didn’t mean it never happened. It only meant she hadn’t seen it happen.
That category was the most like hell demons, with some similar powers. They really were cousins after all and all of the categories had similar weaknesses to hell demons. Meg theorized that the knife the Winchesters had and the Colt Crowley had made off with could effectively kill them. Possibly. It’d remain a theory until she proved it otherwise. She’d have to obtain both the knife and gun and maybe some day soon she would.
She’d determined quickly that she was going to have to be as much of a tyrant as Azazel had been if she was going to be successful and had instituted a similar threat system to what he’d had enforced. She used the threat of being tossed back into Purgatory to keep them in line and was trying to figure out how to open a door back into it. The door Castiel had used wasn’t available, so Meg was determined to make her own door if she had to rip it open. Thus far, a number of the creatures didn’t realize she couldn’t carry out her threats.
In the meantime, there were silver and iron that hurt them. Meg had enjoyed discovering all the ways to hurt them and she’d been experimenting with symbols and rituals, using her knowledge and the knowledge of a few of the PD’s themselves to figure out their weaknesses. Meg was pleased with her progress on that front. She thought she had a firm grasp of them as a whole, definitely more so than anyone else running around.
What she wasn’t pleased with was the progress in finding Ellen and Jo Harvelle. Her human power base had to be completely incompetent if they couldn’t find two women because they outnumbered them by thousands. She was suspecting some of them of hiding the two and not reporting sightings. It was possible. Without Castiel showing up all the time healing the sick or talking at the world about love and caring, people were falling away and going back to their former religions. They were being completely fickle humans and with whatever spells Castiel had been using on the world fading away, she was losing numbers. Even her assurances that he was still watching them wasn’t helping. What people needed was a live sighting and soon.
She was also displeased with her demon hunters. It pissed her off not a little that her supposedly well trained teams were far less effective as a whole than the two Winchester brothers. Sad really, that two men dispatched more demons in various ways than several trained teams.
Still, she was Queen Bee. She was head of the Church of Castiel, had a sort of control over the PD’s as a whole and a partnership with one, and she was gaining control of world agencies through both of those. One way or another, the earth was hers. Now, she just needed to move forward on the hell front.
Crowley was in hiding, possibly back in hell, sticking his head out occasionally to thumb his nose at her and send her messages about how unworried he was about her ‘little army’. She was ready to kill him the second he looked out again.
The office door opened and a voice sounded behind her. “I found him.”
Meg turned. In the doorway was a girl and she motioned her forward. “Found who?”
“Him, of course. Castiel. I found him and you won’t believe where he’s been hiding.”
“Where?” The girl relayed the information and Meg smiled. “A camp with the Winchesters. How surprising.” She’d expected them to kill him, not keep him with them. What were they up to? Dean had to have a plan if he’d kept Castiel alive.
“Have I proven myself?” The girl’s eyes flashed black.
“Of course,” she reassured the demon and made a mental note to have her taken care of before she left the building. Meg made that call as soon as the demon stepped from the room, then made another call. “We’re doing a special broadcast this afternoon. It’s very exciting news we have to tell the world. Castiel is returning to us.” She smiled wide as she made arrangements for the broadcast and other arrangements for bringing him back to Sioux Falls.
Bringing him back to her. She couldn’t wait to see her former angel again.
~~~~~~~~~~
Jo fell asleep nearly the second she laid down on the bed and Dean drew the covers up over her. She looked good and he thought she looked healthier overall than both Morgan and Ellen. He sat at the bedside, admiring her determination to survive despite the handicap her pregnancy had been.
She’d survived this crappy new world, the PD’s, and pursuit by the CoC, with narrow escapes with the latter two. Jo had mentioned in one of those videos that Morgan was sure they’d had divine intervention on a few of the CoC encounters. Members had looked right at them and let them go like they hadn’t even seen them. Dean both wanted to hear everything that had happened over the months and didn’t. She was here now, so did he need to know about all of the close calls? He was curious though, and knew he’d be telling her all about the months here at the camp.
Knuckles rapped on the open door and he looked up to see Sam standing there. “How is she?”
“Surprisingly good for having been out there in her condition.” Getting up, he went into the living area, closing the door behind him so they could talk without disturbing Jo’s nap.
“Kind of a shock, her being pregnant.” His words were only slurring a tiny bit and Dean was glad he wasn’t out of it today.
Sitting on the couch, he stretched his legs out. “Not entirely a shock,” he admitted. “That last night…we weren’t too careful.”
“You? Not careful?” Sam dropped into the chair across from him. “That doesn’t happen.”
“I know, right? We weren’t though. I should have been. I know better, but…it didn’t seem to matter at the time and now she’s here and there’s a baby on the way.” He sighed and crossed his arms. “Man, I’m still trying to figure this whole thing out. A baby. I’m a dad. Me. How is that going to turn out well? Kid has the odds stacked against it before it even comes out.”
“Still trying? Dean, you haven’t even known about the baby for half a day yet. Might take longer than that. Give yourself a break.”
Sam meant to encourage him and, while he appreciated the effort, Dean knew very well that he didn’t have the luxury of time. This baby was going to come soon, maybe within the week, and he had to be ready for that day. Jo needed him to be ready and so did that baby. “I don’t have longer, Sam. According to Morgan, she’s ready to pop any day.” He waved one hand in the air to emphasize the words. “I don’t have time. Jo’s scared to death. Her words even, and I can’t be scared, too. She needs me strong.”
“I think it’s okay to be scared.”
“Might be okay for regular guys, but not for me. I can’t be scared when she needs me strong. Jo needs me to support her and I want to do right by her, you know? I wasn’t there these months and I need to be now.”
“She’ll be glad to hear that.”
He licked his lips. “A baby, Sam.” Dean mimed holding a baby. “A little, helpless, tiny baby.”
“You like kids and they like you. Now, if it was me, I’d be in big trouble. Kids aren’t exactly my thing.”
Sam didn’t need kids in his condition anyway. He jiggled one foot. “I need to talk to Morgan again, find out a few more things. Stay here? If Jo wakes up before I get back, tell her I had to run an errand.”
He found Morgan on one path not far from his cabin. She was chatting with Jimmy and Mindy, Jimmy’s ‘friend’. Dean asked Morgan to accompany him to the infirmary in order to make sure they had everything they’d need for the birth. The conversation as they did that inventory turned out to be something of an eye opener regarding Morgan herself.
“This camp is a gift, you know.” She ran a finger along the shelf, then tapped that finger by one stash of bottles and nodded. “Perfect. We’ll need this one here for after.”
“It’s a what,” he asked. No one had called the camp a gift before.
“A gift from God,” she clarified, carefully closing the door and locking it. “Have you picked up any diapers, formula, bottles, and things like that?”
“A gift from God,” he repeated. “It’s not a gift from God, Morgan. It’s a camp put together by a team of determined men and women.” Dean stepped to one stack of boxes and tapped the side of one. “There’s some in here. Jody might have more put aside elsewhere. Check with her.”
“It’s that…and it’s obviously from God as well.” She pointed at the next cabinet. “Unlock this one? I’ll talk to Jody later tonight.”
“How is it obvious?” He unlocked it and stood back so she could look inside.
“For one thing, how do you just happen to have everything Jo will need to give birth in comfort? Look around this room. Dean, you’ve got this place stocked as well as the maternity ward at the small hospital my patients went to most of the time. I couldn’t ask for a better place for her.”
“It made good sense to take the ambulances and supplies from the local hospital,” he argued. “It was abandoned after the tornados, then the area got caught in the quarantine. They weren’t allowed to come back and as far as I know, still aren’t. They couldn’t get their equipment out. It was all there and meant to be used anyway. We took it to use.”
“Your team just decided to lift neonatal equipment? You have a transportable incubator, an infant bassinet, a baby weighing scale…. Need I go on?”
He couldn’t explain those and had been baffled when Jimmy, Jody, and the team had brought that haul back. They’d been proud of themselves for it, too. “They’re efficient and wanted to be prepared for anything. That means babies, too. There are other pregnant women out there.”
“Okay.”
It sounded like she didn’t believe him and he leaned against the counter along one wall.
She crouched down, peered at the lower shelves of the cupboard, then stood back up. “You go with that explanation and I’ll go with mine.”
“You’re seeing God where He isn’t.”
“Am I?” Slowly, she closed the doors. “I have faith that He took care of me, Jo, and Ellen and that He’ll continue to do so. It’s a miracle that we survived. I pray when things go well and when they don’t. I prayed constantly for a place like this when we were traveling.” She raised her hands and gestured all around the room. “Here we are, Dean. A place exactly like what I prayed for.”
Praying. Geez. Maybe she would be a good match for Sam. They could pray together, since Sam still prayed even after everything.
He never did broach the other subject he’d been wanting to ask about, too thrown off about her insistence that this was all God’s work to ask about sex. Probably, he shouldn’t be thinking about having sex with Jo at this point in her pregnancy, but it’d be nice to know if he even could.
He spent a quiet evening with Jo in the cabin, cooking a light meal for them both from the supplies he had on hand there. Sam bowed out, claiming he was going to play cards with Jody and Morgan at Ellen’s cabin and keep them company. Dean and Jo went to bed early, with none of the awkwardness he’d thought might be there.
Moving closer in bed so that he was pressed against her, Dean touched her cheek. His fear was that he was asleep and dreaming and he’d wake to find her still missing. “You’re here.”
“I’m here,” she confirmed, covering his hand with hers. Jo grasped his hand and lowered it to her belly, laying it palm down. “We’re here.”
Beneath his palm, he felt the baby kick and sat up, lifting his hand in time to see the skin push up and lowering his hand to feel a third kick. “He’s kicking.” He’d felt babies kick before. Lisa’s sister had been big on letting everyone and anyone feel her stomach when her baby kicked, but this was completely different. This was his own child.
“Baby kicks a lot these days.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No. Doesn’t hurt at all.”
They talked in the quiet, dark room and he fell asleep with Jo cradled in his arms for the first time in months.
His dreams were mild and when he woke in the morning, he declared it a beautiful day without even looking outside. Even if it really wasn’t a beautiful morning, Dean was determined it was.
Carefully, he got out of bed, trying his best not to disturb Jo. Dean dressed as fast as he could and left the cabin. A quick look in at Ellen found her resting a lot better, though Morgan wasn’t happy with the state of her broken leg. They discussed the actions they might need to take and when they’d agreed, he headed towards the dining hall. His plan was to bring a tray back for Jo and to give her the pampering she deserved. After her months of running and hiding while pregnant, she deserved to be pampered even more than he would have otherwise.
Dean was feeling more relaxed and cheerful than he had since he’d thought Castiel was dead and finally gone. Jo and Ellen arriving safely was like a weight off his shoulders and with the baby coming, he hoped things would start improving.
Sam and Jimmy waved at him from one table and he stopped there.
“It’s a beautiful day,” he told them.
Sam smiled and stirred his oatmeal. Dean thought Sam was the only one who actually ate the oatmeal on a regular basis. Not once had he actually seen anyone else eating it.
Jimmy glanced at the window, then at him, his gaze a little puzzled. “It’s going to rain any time.”
“Maybe we need the rain. It’ll wash away things we don’t need anymore.”
“How’s Jo this morning,” Sam asked.
“Sleeping, but good. I can just tell.”
Jimmy cleared his throat. “You know, her and Ellen being here doesn’t solve anything really except them having been missing. We still have the CoC, the PD’s, and a decaying society to worry about and deal with.”
“Don’t be a Deputy Downer, Jimmy. Allow me one day of delusional thought before the real world slams into me again.”
“Deputy Downer…. Right. Um…. If that’s what you want, then…” He shrugged. “Everything is beautiful today.”
“There you go.” He jerked a thumb at the food line. “I need to get a few things and get back.”
He managed to return before it started pouring and was uncovering the tray when Jo woke up.
~~~~~~~~~~
The first night in the camp had been a good one. Jo stretched. The sheets beside her were still warm and she called out for Dean. He didn’t answer and neither did Sam peek in to say anything. She got up from the bed and went out into the living area. There was no one in the cabin aside from herself. Sam’s bedroom door was open, as was the bathroom door.
Jo made use of the bathroom and returned to bed. It was nice to lie down and be able to really rest instead of plan the quickest route out of there. So much of the tension she’d had was gone just by finding this place and seeing it was functioning. Even more was gone at the realization that Dean wanted to pick up where they’d left off even with the baby.
Closing her eyes, she drifted back to sleep and woke a short while later to find Dean rearranging items on a tray on the bedside table. She sat up and eased the pillows behind her back. “What’s that?”
His glance was affectionate. “Breakfast.”
“I could have gone to the dining hall.”
“I didn’t get to spoil you all these months so I have to do it now.”
“Would you have spoiled me?”
He uncovered a plate, gaze sliding sideways to her. The emotion she saw in his eyes brought a lump to her throat. “Yes. Spoiled, pampered…. Whatever word you want to use for it.”
She had no doubt he would have, too.
“It’s not a big breakfast, but I remember you don’t eat much in the morning anyway. Toast, apple butter, and bacon.” He looked her over. “You want it in bed or would you rather have it in the other room?”
“The other room might be best unless you want crumbs everywhere. My coordination hasn’t been the best the last couple weeks.”
They ate at the small table by the kitchen area. Dean’s plate held considerably more than hers.
“Have you seen mom this morning?”
“First thing. Her fever has broken and she’s resting pretty well. She won’t be happy later, though. She needs a real cast and we might have to re-break her leg.”
“You have the stuff for casts?”
“Yeah.”
“Some well-stocked ambulance you stole.”
“We looted a couple doctor’s offices and pharmacies, too. A small private hospital. The towns closest had a lot of useful things for us. The government hasn’t given anyone real permission to come back to a couple of these towns, yet. We didn’t bother asking for permission. When Sam picked this place out we’d just hoped for someplace that might be safe for a few weeks.”
“Sam picked it out?”
“He did. We were all studying maps and he pulled out the one of this area and zeroed in. Jody and Jimmy did a thorough sweep, checked out the towns, and started moving in and making plans. We spent a lot of time on the phone back then, when cell service was still good most places.”
Towers had been destroyed all over the country and now most people didn’t bother with trying their cell. Landlines had made something of a comeback in some areas.
“You want to see more of the camp today,” he asked, pushing his plate away.
“I’d like that.” She took a drink of water and considered everything else she wanted to get done. “I need to double check the van, too. I sort of grabbed yesterday. Not sure I got everything. Mom’ll need her bag, too, unless you took it to her later. I didn’t see it when I was at her cabin yesterday.”
“We only took her, not her things. Maybe Morgan got it this morning.”
“I’ll ask.”
“We’ll do those two things and you can spend the rest of the day relaxing.”
“It’s been so long since I could relax, I don’t know what to do with myself.” She set her empty plate on his and stacked their silverware together. “Do you wash these here or take them back to washed there?”
“Take them back. You could try sleeping. I’m sure you’re sleep deprived.”
“A nap or two might be in order,” she acknowledged. “I’d like to talk to Jimmy today, too. Maybe this afternoon. Get to know him a little.” And see if she was imagining that sensation. She’d be relieved if it was just Jimmy, yet Jo had a feeling there was more going on than Jimmy was telling them.
“Not a bad idea, Jo.”
“I agree. It’s a pretty good idea.”
Jo showered and dressed. She felt calm and peaceful, happy to be there. The baby wasn’t even giving her trouble, his kicks gentler than they’d been and outward rather than straight at her bladder like the past couple weeks. She hoped it was a sign that things were looking up.