Darkness Ch. 4

Alex sheathed her blades without cleaning the blood from them and walked up to the group on the ground with all the confidence of a panther in its natural habitat. Her every movement was fluid and graceful at the same time they were threatening and intimidating. In the months that she had survived on her own, killed things ten times stronger than herself, she had learned to become one with every muscle in her body. Her body was a tool that her mind used as a conduit for its power.

She stopped short of the brown haired man where he sat on the ground holding the girl she had rescued from the backseat in his arms. He set the girl down gently, though quickly, and stood up slowly to face her. Her eyes shifted wildly as her heart warred with her soul and tried to bring back the humanity that was lost on her. Her hand shot out and wrapped around his throat in a vise like grip no mortal could hope to break. For a moment she struggled with herself and nearly pulled her arm back but her demonic half won out and her grip remained around his throat, even though her arm was shaking from the internal war within.

“You have two seconds to give me a reason not to kill you,” she stated flatly. Her eyes became blacker than ever before and her arm ceased to shake.

Tristan watched her graceful movements. It hurt him to know that such grace came from such darkness. He set Emily down on the ground and stood back up. Almost faster than he could see he found her hand tightly gripped around his neck. Tristan looked down at her, locking eyes with her. He noted the shift in color and a small smile formed on his features. Tristan looked down at her and managed using his strength to pry himself from her grip. It was difficult though. She was stronger than he thought. "If you kill me Dean will die," he answered simply.

Alex snorted derisively, not deterred at all by the fact that he had just outmatched her strength. Her demonic half was raging inside her, begging for release, for more bloodshed. It filled her soul and threatened to consume her entire being. For a moment it raged so fiercely that her body burned, a feverish spike brought on by too much power in one body. She broke out into a sweat and her color paled severely. She stood strong as her nose began to bleed and her hands began to shake. Her fever soared higher, spiking more than a human body should be allowed to have without an ice bath, and her body struggled to remain on its feet. She felt like she was being torn apart on the inside as two halves of a soul battled each other viciously, the demon half trying to take complete control and the human half trying to regain a bit of ground. The power was too much, the blood too strong for a human body with no human soul to absorb it. She wasn’t a full-blooded demon and therefore without her human soul fully intact to steal some of her demonic half’s thunder than her body was going to die from the inside out. Only a full blooded demon could handle the power that went along with the title.

Alex felt as though someone were driving spikes into her head as her vision blurred and she involuntarily cried out from the pain. The sound was human, completely Alex, and as she had sudden flashbacks of who she really was her knees buckled.

Tristan watched for a moment. He would wait for the right moment to intervene. He looked over at Sarah then back at Alex. When he saw her begin to lose footing he stepped forward and caught her body as she fell. Tristan lowered her onto the ground slowly, holding her in his arms. He brushed her hair back and ran his hand along her cheek. Her fever was much higher than he anticipated. He hadn't meant to let it go so far. "Shh, Alex,” he whispered, knowing that there wasn't much left of her to hear him. Tristan closed his eyes and held her close, keeping one hand resting on her face. He felt his body chill, the cold flowing from his body to her own. This was harder than he thought. It would take more energy. Tristan looked down at her and waited. He was regenerating the bits of her broken soul to at least give her enough to fight with. Tristan used memories of her and Dean to piece back together the shattered pieces of her soul. At the same time he was mending her broken body as well. When he felt her temperature lower to that of a normal human temperature he released her and set her gently on the ground. He looked down at her and leaned over her waiting to see if she'd wake up. He worried what Sarah would think and hoped that Sarah would believe he was helping.

Sarah ran to her sister, tears in her eyes, and fell to her knees beside her. Her heart raged with pain, fearing that she was going to lose Alex all over again. She had seen this before. Alex had had many wars with her demonic half in which her body had become a victim, but her human soul had always won out and the symptoms had always receded. She met Tristan’s eyes over her sister’s body and wondered what he had done to save her. She knew that it had been him, from the moment that he had caught Alex and lowered her to the ground she knew that he had done something that had saved her life. Her eyes were questioning but grateful and her tears fell freely down her face to drop onto her sister’s chest.

Tristan looked up at Sarah. His breathing was labored and his skin much more pale than before. He locked eyes with her and after a moment he smiled. "She has strength like I've never seen Sarah," he said simply. He wasn't really referring to physical strength. After a moment Tristan leaned back and turned his attention back to Emily. She looked terrified. "It's all right now Emily. Everything's going to be all right."Alex stirred beneath Sarah’s hand and when she opened her eyes they were black again, but steady. Sarah blew out her breath; she had been hoping that Alex was back and would remember everything. It would seem that accomplishing that would be harder than she thought. Sarah felt her sister’s emotions through her touch and was shocked to realize that there were none. Alex was devoid of any emotion at all. Sarah moved away quickly, motioning Tristan away as well. She came to his side and pushed him away, gripping his arm in her hand and she was startled to realize that the interaction was more to steady herself than to move him. She was overwhelmed with the knowledge that there was so little left of her sister’s soul that it was almost completely demonic. She wanted to fall to her knees and cry until everything ended and she could wake up happy again. She found herself unconsciously gripping Tristan’s arm tighter before looking up to meet his eyes.

“I don’t know what you did,” she said quickly. “I’m not even going to ask. But you have to know that it will happen again. As long as the demonic side is stronger, it will happen again and next time she might not live.”

Tristan looked at Alex and his heart broke to see her. He tried so hard to save her but it hadn't worked. He took note of Sarah pulling at him and he turned to face her. Tristan wrapped his arms around her in a comforting way. "I'll do everything in my power to get her back Sarah," he whispered. "I promise. I will die before I let you lose another sister." Tristan knew what he was doing was wrong. It had been wrong since he picked Emily up on the side of the road. He wasn't supposed to intervene like this but he couldn't just sit back and watch them die. Emily meant too much to him.

Sarah pushed him back farther away from Alex as she rose to her feet, steady as a rock and just as solid, and lowered her voice so that only Tristan could hear. “I’m not going to pretend that I understand you. And we still have to talk later. But I know that you did something to save her life and for some reason I have this feeling that you’re the only one that can do it again. Alex might not mean that much to you, but she is all I have left. So I need to know . . . I need to know . . . ,” she hesitated, knowing that she was overstepping the bounds of some unseen rules with her question. “I need to know if you’ll do it again. I’m asking you, because for whatever reason I trust you, to stay close. I need to know that when this happens again you’ll be there to stop it.”

She looked into his eyes and glanced over her shoulder to where Alex was lifting Dean into her arms with care.

Tristan watched Alex's movements carefully but heard every word that Sarah said. He heard the pain and the plea in her voice. Then he looked over at her locking eyes with her. He couldn't say no. He knew he should, but he couldn't. How had he gotten so involved in this? Tristan averted his gaze for only a moment then looked back at her. "I promise Sarah," he said softly. "I need your help now though. You can't carry Sam, but I can. I was thinking maybe you could carry Emily. She's much lighter than any of them." Tristan turned to Emily. "Sarah's going to take care of you and I'll be with you the whole time." Then he looked back at Sarah. "Dean's lost a lot of blood, all of them have. They need to get to a hospital now."

Sarah nodded quickly, pulling herself from her own emotional trauma, and moved to Emily’s side. She stared into the younger girl’s eyes for several seconds, seeking to establish a bond of some kind of trust before she lifted her into her arms.
“It’s okay, Emily,” she told her. “I’ll make this painless I promise. I told you I’ll keep you safe and I mean it.”

Sarah focused her mental energy to Sarah’s pain and dulled it. She concentrated before she lifted and planted the emotion in Emily’s heart that she couldn’t feel the pain. She didn’t want her to feel her broken legs being moved around and she took all of her energy and put it into that one goal.

Emily watched the scene unfold before her. She stared at Tristan in amazement. There was something about him that was frightening but calming at the same time. Every time he looked at her all the bad things went away. She heard him speak of Sarah taking her and she nodded slowly. However, when Sarah moved closer she backed away. She looked at Sarah with terror in her eyes. She felt the girl pick her up and for a brief moment she felt the searing pain but it faded. She wrapped her arms around Sarah's neck the way she had with Tristan and rested her head on the girl's shoulder. Tristan looked over at them as he picked Sam up slowly. He looked down at John; he would have to come back for him. "Would you believe I don't have any transportation," he said with a laugh. Considering he was in the middle of nowhere on a highway without transportation, as if everything else didn't seem strange about him that just added to it.

When Sarah got Emily into her car safely and with no pain involved she turned and allowed Tristan to place Sam beside her. Dean and John went into Alex’s car and she turned the engine over to pull out onto the highway. Sarah followed her with Tristan in the front seat and together they roared down the highway to the nearest hospital.