by Ally Blue
“Sure.” Kyle unfolded his long legs, stood and followed Sam and Dean into the hall. “What’s up?”
Dean glanced at Sam, a question in his eyes. Sam nodded. He didn’t really want Kyle to know about the situation with Bo, but he didn’t see any way around it. Not if he expected Kyle to help them.
“Bo’s gone missing,” Dean said, linking his hand with Kyle’s. “He took the car, and we think he might’ve gone to Fort Medina. He, um…he might not be entirely well. We need to find him. Can you help us out?”
Kyle nodded, his eyes huge and his face pale. “Sure. We can take my car.”
Smiling, Dean stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “Thanks, babe. Bring your cell. I’m just gonna run get mine. Sam, have you got your phone?”
“Yeah.” Sam patted the front pocket of his shorts. He watched Dean run down a short hallway which evidently led to the bedroom he and Kyle shared. “I tried calling you, but got your voice mail.”
“Damn. Sorry, we were watching a movie and I didn’t have it on.” Dean came hopping out of the bedroom on one green-sneakered foot, pulling the second shoe on with one hand and clutching his cell phone in the other. “Kyle, we’ll need your umbrella. Oh, and I stuck my raincoat there in the hall closet, Sam, will you grab it?”
While Kyle ran into the back, Sam obediently went to the closet and pulled out Dean’s long, bright green raincoat. “Yeah, no point in both of y’all getting as soaked as I am.”
“Oh, it’s not for us. It’s in case anything’s happened to Bo. There’s a blanket in Kyle’s car, which we might need, but if something’s wrong and we need to warm him up, we’re gonna need to keep the rain off him too.” Dean glanced up as Kyle joined them. “Did you tell everyone else you’re leaving?”
Kyle nodded. He was still pale and looked nervous, but he seemed calm enough. “Yeah. Y’all ready?”
“Uh-huh.” Shoving his phone in the pocket of his cargo shorts, Dean squeezed Sam’s arm. “Let’s get going. I’ll make sure we all have each other’s numbers in our phones on the ride over.”
Sam followed Dean and Kyle out the front door in silence. Dean’s words had brought home to him the fact that Bo might be in real danger, and not only from the creatures inhabiting the other side. By now, Sam was convinced something was wrong with Bo. Something which made him potentially a danger to himself. Sam had no idea what that might be, but after everything that had happened in the past few days he was sure he was right.
He climbed into the backseat of Kyle’s ancient Nova, handed Dean his phone and tried to sit still as Kyle drove along the narrow road. Staring out the window into the night, Sam found himself silently pleading to whoever or whatever might be listening for Bo’s safety.
The short drive to the fort seemed to last forever. Bo’s car was parked in front of the closed and locked parking lot gate. Sam’s insides twisted with a mix of relief and apprehension. “He’s here.”
“Yeah.” Dean glanced back at Sam. “And the gate’s locked. I’d forgotten about that.”
“Me too,” Sam confessed, feeling stupid.
“What do we do?” Kyle asked. He turned a nervous look to Dean. “If we go in it’s breaking and entering. I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“We won’t ask you to do that. You can wait out here while Sam and I go in.” Dean turned to hand Sam his phone, encased in a plastic sandwich bag to keep it dry. “Sam, you and I can climb the fence. We’ll separate and look for Bo. Whoever finds him calls the other.”
“All right.” Sam stuck his phone in his pocket. “You take the umbrella. I’m already soaked anyhow.”
“Sure. You take the raincoat. That way we’ll each have something to cover Bo with if we need to.” Dean turned back to Kyle. “When we find him, I’ll call you, okay?”
“Okay.” With a self-conscious glance at Sam, Kyle hooked a hand around the back of Dean’s head, pulled him forward and kissed him. “Be careful.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.” Smiling, Dean touched Kyle’s cheek, then scooted away and opened his door. “Ready, Sam?”
“Yeah.”
Sam got out of the car, with Dean a couple of steps behind. Pulling on the raincoat, he started scaling the fence. Within seconds, he and Dean were on the other side and jogging through the rain toward the floodlit entrance. Dean opened the umbrella as they went. An oval of brighter light swung across the parking lot as Kyle pulled the car off the road, into the shadows of the trees.
“We should’ve brought flashlights,” Sam said, wiping the water from his eyes to peer at the blackness under the brick arch. “Shit. I was so anxious to get here I wasn’t thinking straight. It’ll be seriously dark in the inside rooms.”
“I brought some lights. Hang on a sec.” Dean stopped and dug through the side pocket of his shorts. He pulled out a small metal flashlight and handed it to Sam. “It’s waterproof.”
Sam took the light. It was heavier than it looked, and when he switched it on the beam proved to be quite powerful. “Thanks.” He turned it off and stuck it in his pocket as he and Dean started moving forward again. “What are you going to use?”
“My penlight.” Dean held up something that looked rather like a thick ballpoint pen made of fluorescent green plastic. He clicked it on, revealing a bright, narrow beam of light, then turned if off again and stuck it in his pocket. “It won’t light up anything very far ahead, but I can see well enough with it. I have great night vision.”
Sam nodded. “Why don’t I start with the rooms inside the walls, since my light’s stronger? You can search the courtyard and the walkway on top of the walls. The floodlights inside should be bright enough that you won’t need a light at all.”
“Sounds good.”
They crossed the rest of the parking lot in silence. Beneath the sheer outer wall of the fort, Sam hunched his shoulders and scowled at the heavy steel gate guarding the interior. It was closed. The light on the lock’s keypad winked on and off, waiting for them to input the security code. The code they didn’t have.
Sam swore. “Shit. How do we get in?”
“Hm.” Dean pursed his lips. “Maybe we don’t need to.”
“But he would’ve gone inside if…” Sam trailed off as he realized what Dean meant.
“If he could get in,” Dean finished for him. “But obviously he didn’t get in. Not through the gate, anyway.”
It made sense. “So what do we do now?”
Hands on his hips, Dean turned in a circle, surveying their surroundings. “Let’s each take a direction and scout the outside perimeter. He may have found another way in. We’ll eventually meet up, but if either of us finds Bo or any sign of him before that, we’ll call each other.”
Sam nodded. “Sounds good to me. I’ll take the beach side. There’s more floodlights on the inland side, and I have the strongest flashlight.”
“Okay.” Dean laid a hand on Sam’s arm. “We’ll find him, Sam. It’ll be all right.”
Sam managed a smile despite the fear curdling his stomach. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Sliding his hand down to Sam’s, Dean squeezed his fingers, turned and strode off to the right, following the line of the fort’s outer wall.
Sam drew a deep breath and blew it out, willing himself to keep it together. Panicking wouldn’t help anyone, least of all Bo. When he felt calm enough, he started making his way along the ancient brick wall.
The first leg of the search was easy. The security lights bathed the wall and most of the parking lot in a harsh yellowish glare in which nothing larger than a gnat could possibly hide. Raindrops glinted silver and gold in the glow. An occasional cockroach scuttled along the wall or flew into the night as Sam approached, and once he spotted a drenched brown rat darting through a crack in the bricks, but there was no sign of Bo.
The dark reasserted itself when Sam rounded the curved corner between one side of the pentagonal fort and the next. There were lights along the top of the wall, but their illumination seemed to dissipate as the
scrubby grass gave way to sand and sea oats. The beach sloped away into the darkness beyond. Sam heard the thunder of the waves on the sand, though he couldn’t see them. Overhead, the thick clouds obliterated the moon and stars.
Taking the flashlight out of his pocket, Sam switched it on and played it over the ground at his feet and the wall looming on his right. A candy bar wrapper half caught under a stone flapped in the rising wind, the only sign of recent human activity. Sam turned to shine his light toward the beach. Just beyond the edge of the beam, on the other side of the chainlink fence cutting across the dunes, something small and white darted between two clusters of sea oats. A ghost crab, Sam realized as the little creature stopped and raised its claws in clear threat.
Something about the presence of the normal nocturnal animals made Sam feel better. Hopefully it meant he wouldn’t be dealing with a portal tonight.
Keeping the flashlight beam trained on the uneven ground, Sam made his way along the strip of grass and mud between the fort and the fence. He couldn’t help thinking how easy it would be for someone to climb the fence as he and Dean had done to gain access to the fort. Of course, the ramparts rose thirty perpendicular feet above the ground, with the sturdy stone parapet jutting outward at the top. A person would need some serious climbing gear to scale that wall. Since the fort contained very little in the way of removable objects with any value, Sam doubted most people would bother.
The obvious difficulty of getting in this way eased some of Sam’s fear, since it seemed clear to him that Bo could not have climbed over the wall. Which meant he must be outside somewhere. Considering his near-pathological obsession with Fort Medina during the past few days, Sam figured Bo would keep close to the fort rather than wandering off to the beach, or into the woods on the inland side. With any luck, either he or Dean would find Bo within the hour.
With hope spurring him on, Sam hurried along the edge of the fort, swinging his flashlight this way and that as he went. The rain had slacked off a bit in the last few minutes, though the wind had picked up enough to lash the falling drops against Sam’s face with stinging force. He brought his free hand up to shield his face as he went.
Sam turned the next corner of the pentagon without finding any sign of Bo. He stopped, playing his light around to survey the stretch of land ahead of him. The fence continued along the inside of the sea wall where the land curved and the Gulf met Mobile Bay. On this side, the fort stood with its feet practically in the water of the bay. The floodlights lining the top of the wall all pointed toward the interior of the fort, lending only a faint illumination to the outside. Enough to see by, barely. A rock jetty ran some way out into the water, sheltering the fort from the waves rolling in from the Gulf. The narrow space between the fence and the fort’s outer wall was a jumble of rocks, all slick surfaces and sharp edges. The air was heavy with the smell of salt, fish and wet earth.
Turning to his left, Sam squinted through the rain and mist at the low hump of land just barely visible on the other side of the bay. A few scattered lights winked in the dark. Mobile was too far north for Sam to see, but he knew where it lay. He wished he and Bo were over there right now, safe and warm and dry in their cozy apartment.
When I find him, we’re going straight home. No more Fort Medina, no more beach house. We’ll finish our vacation at home.
Thus resolved, Sam switched his light to his left hand, put his right hand on the wall to steady himself and started picking his way across the jumble of rocks. It would have been tough going in any conditions, but the low light, the rain and the wind made it downright dangerous. Sam fought off the urge to hurry and forced himself to take his time. The last thing any of them needed was for him to fall and injure himself.
He was about halfway along that leg of the rampart when a movement behind the parapet at the top caught the corner of his eye. Heart pounding, he stopped and peered upward. A figure stood there, a smoky blackness in the yellow glow of the floodlights inside the fort.
“Bo?” Sam called, though something told him he was looking at one of the fort’s many ghosts. “Bo, are you there?”
Moving faster than Sam would have believed possible, the apparition shot off toward the interior of the fort and disappeared. Sam didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Turning his attention away from the parapet, he started making his way along the rocks once again.
He’d barely resumed his journey when a sudden wave of purposeful menace struck him like a hammer. Staggering under the psychic blow, he fell to his hands and knees. He lost his grip on the flashlight. It bounced on the rocks and went out.
Sam climbed to his feet. He hardly noticed the searing pain in his right knee, or the burn which told him his palms had been scraped raw. His entire being was focused on the alien thoughts pulsing through his brain.
He recognized the feeling of cold, malicious intelligence invading his mind. Somewhere nearby, a portal had just opened. And he hadn’t done it.
Bo. Fuck.
Heedless of the danger of falling, Sam ran.
Chapter Thirteen
The portal was nearby. Sam could feel it. But he couldn’t see it. He ran on, slipping along the rocks in the near-dark.
“Bo! Can you hear me?” His voice was almost lost in the howl of the wind and the pounding of rain on stone, but he kept yelling every few seconds anyway, hoping Bo would hear him.
He heard the sound he’d been dreading just as the end of the sea wall came into sight. A deep rasp almost below the level of hearing, accompanied by a flood of strange images and shades of meaning Sam couldn’t quite grasp. Following the thread of alien energy in his head and the crackle of electricity in the air, he turned to peer into the dense shadows beneath the pines crowding near the next corner of the fort.
Bo stood on a rounded hump of rock a few feet from the spot where the sea wall gave way to grass. The floodlights atop this corner of the wall pointed outward, bathing Bo in a harsh glow. He had his back to Sam, and he was wearing only the shorts he’d had on earlier in the day. Not fifteen feet from him, beneath the spreading boughs of a gnarled old pine tree, crouched a shadowy, nebulous shape—one of the things which still haunted Sam’s nightmares. The air around it swirled and sparked. That, plus the dense, pulsing darkness around it, told Sam he was looking at a newly activated portal.
For a heartbeat, Sam stood frozen. Then the monster darted straight toward Bo, mud flying from its claws as they dug into the rain-soaked ground.
Sam was halfway to Bo before he even knew he’d moved. His stomach lurched when he realized the creature would reach Bo long before he would.
“Bo!” he shouted. “Bo, run!”
Bo turned toward Sam. The glare of the lights high above revealed blank eyes in an expressionless face. His bare feet remained rooted to the rock.
The thing flowed toward him, one serrated claw held high, and time slowed to a painful crawl. Sam kept running, trying to focus his mind enough to send the thing back where it came from. The creature wavered and slowed, but didn’t stop. It felt to Sam like beating his mind against a stone wall. He had a torturous eternity to watch the gleaming black claw slice downward, down through the rain, inevitably down toward Bo’s naked back. Sam let out a wordless cry as the razor-sharp claw hit Bo’s body and he stumbled forward.
Time jerked into motion again. Sam lunged the last few feet and caught Bo before he hit the ground. Laying Bo as gently as he could on the rocks, Sam flung himself between his lover and the horror in front of him.
“Go away!” he screamed. “Just go the fuck away!”
The monster seemed to hesitate, as if uncertain of whether or not it could harm Sam. It was only a split second, but it was enough. Gathering his psychokinetic powers, Sam followed the umbilical cord of energy linking the thing to its world and focused every ounce of his mind on that spot.
His vision dimmed and he felt as if someone was sitting on his chest, but he didn’t dare relax his concentration. This portal was strong,
resisting his efforts to send the entity back through and close it. If he lost control of it, he and Bo were both dead, and a terrible threat would be loose.
Just as Sam felt unconsciousness closing in, the balance of power shifted. He felt the pull of energy from the other side as the portal began to close. The air swirled, the fabric of reality twisting in a way that hurt Sam’s eyes.
Calling on reserves of strength he didn’t know he possessed until that moment, Sam redoubled his efforts. With a shriek more felt than heard, the creature collapsed in on itself and vanished. Sam felt the gateway seal behind it.
Sam’s knees buckled and he dropped to the ground, gasping for breath. He no longer sensed the portal in his head. In fact, the inert residual energy felt almost exactly like what he’d experienced at Sunset Lodge. That, more than anything, told him this particular gateway must now be permanently closed.
Relieved, Sam turned to Bo, who lay huddled on his side on the rocks, facing the fort. Sam tried to get a look at Bo’s back, to see how badly he was injured, but Bo’s position kept his back in shadow and Sam couldn’t see anything useful. He cursed, wishing he hadn’t dropped his flashlight.
Leaning down, he brushed the streaming hair from Bo’s face. “Bo? Are you all right?”
No answer. Sam laid a hand on Bo’s cheek. His skin was cold, the jaw muscles tense and quivering beneath Sam’s palm.
Heart in his throat, Sam pressed two shaking fingers against the proper spot in Bo’s neck. Bo’s pulse beat fast and thready beneath Sam’s fingertips. He bent closer, until his ear nearly touched Bo’s lips. Bo’s breathing sounded shallow and harsh, but at least he was breathing.
Sitting up on his knees, Sam slipped the raincoat off and laid it over Bo, then reached for his phone. He had to call Dean, and they had to get Bo out of here.
“Sam! Where are you?”
Dean. Sam looked up, and saw the flash of Dean’s penlight coming around the corner of the fort. “Over here!” He raised a hand and waved.