Chapter 41 : Tick Tock

by

     I stared down at the bloody binds on my wrists, wishing I hadn't tried so hard to break them. Struggling had been useless, and now, I was not only bound to a chair next to a man I had never met, but I was in excruciating pain with no chance of escaping. At least not before Meg came back, and even if there had been, I had no idea where I was or what the sleeping man next to me would do if I even managed to break free. 

     It could have been a trap. 

     He could have been there to make sure I didn't move. Meg could have been waiting on the other side of the door, waiting for him to signal to her that I wasn't following her orders. One wrong move, and Dean was dead. Her words. John Winchester was still alive, which meant, at least to Meg, that Dean was fair game and the only leverage she had to get me to play along with her sick and twisted game. 

      Minutes passed hours, and I waited, as patiently as possible, for the man next to me to stir. His calloused hands were bound to the chair as well as his legs, and if it hadn't been for the excessive amount of dirt and blood that stained his clothes, I wouldn't have doubted my suspicions. I was on the fence. He was either a mole, tied up next to me, hoping I would tell him that the Winchesters were after something that could save us all - or he was like me, another casualty of war. 

       When his eyes finally opened, it took him a moment to realize he wasn't alone, and he stared at me in confusion. "Where the hell am I?" He asked, almost panicked, as he began to pull at his binds. I watched for a minute in silence, as if he bounced up and down, slamming the legs of his chair against the floor. He may have been a decent-sized guy, but he wasn't going anywhere - just like me. 

      "Who are you?" I finally asked him as he gave up on the tight ropes. At least his jacket gave the thin skin of his wrist protection from the burns I had dug into my own. "What are you doing here?" 

       "How the fuck am I supposed to know?" He shouted at me. 

       "How do you know Meg?"

       "Meg? Who the fuck is Meg?" he spat at me. I watched him rack his brain for any semblance of a clue, and when his eyes fell shut, and he began pulling and kicking in frustration, I knew he figured it out. "That little bitch!"

      "So you do know her?"

      He tilted his head as he looked at me, anger flooding his eyes. "Tall, skinny, with short blond hair?" I nodded. "Yeah, I bought her a drink at Bellamy's two days ago."

       "Two days ago?"  I scoffed. "You've been here for two days?"

       He glanced around the room, his gaze trailing from the tears in the dingy floral wallpaper to the bare dirty mattress in the middle of the floor. Wherever we were, I was certain no one had been here in at least a decade, and the smell alone brought me to believe that there may have been one or more dead bodies hidden in other rooms of whatever kind of shit hole we were in. 

       My head fell back, and I closed my eyes as I sighed. The confusion on his face was all too real. You'd have to be an Oscar-worthy actor to play up that kind of fear, and even though demons were damn good at their jobs, for some reason, the fear in his blue eyes felt authentic. 

       "We need to get out of here," he muttered as he pulled against the ropes. "if she comes back, we're dead." 

       "Good luck," I told him. "I've been at it for hours."

       His eyes followed mine to the blistered rope burns on my wrist. "Try harder." 

       I rolled my eyes and sat back, ignoring him as he continued to try and break the legs of his chair. Nothing I told him would get him to stop. Not even the fact that Meg was probably waiting on the other side of the door, with her ear to the wood, waiting for one of us to break.

      And if that was the case, she already knew the answers I needed. "What does she want with you." 

      He growled and gave one final slam but slunk back in defeat. "Same as you suppose."

      "Same as me? What's that supposed to mean?" 

       His thick brows narrowed, and I watched the sweat begin to bead on his balding head as the panic slowly began to return. "It means I'm going to die. That's what it means." He took a deep breath and dropped his head back, blindly staring into the sky before sighing and clenching his eyes closed as he shook his head. "You fucking Winchesters." 

     I sat back and stared at him in awe. "I'm not a Winchester."

      He spat the floor in front of him, his eyes finally meeting mine. "Might as well be. You've been runnin' round with John and his boys for months. Causing trouble for the rest of us that are trying to do some good in this world."

     The door swung open before I could press him for more information, and though my back was against the cold chill that followed the footsteps, I knew it was Meg - and I could only imagine the blood-thirsty smirk she wore across her face as she ran her fingers along the back of my chair. 

       "I'll assume you two have exchanged introductions." I shared a concerned look with the man but turned back to Meg as she smiled. "Good, then I guess we can get this party started." 

     I quickly cast aside the brief anger I held for this unknown man as Meg pulled my cellphone from her pocket. I wasn't sure how she had gotten it or where she had found it, seeing as how I had tossed it somewhere along interstate seventy, but it didn't surprise me that she had. And it didn't surprise me when she flipped it open and dialed the first number on my speed dial. 

       My heart fell to my stomach as his voice echoed around the room. The bitch had the nerve to put it on speaker, and before I had a chance to tell him I was okay, she pulled a standard blade from her back pocket and held it against my lips, the cool metal stunning anything I could say at that moment. 

       "Andi! Please answer me. Where are you? Are you okay?" 

        Meg smiled down at me and pulled the blade away from my lips. "I'm sorry, Andi can't come to the phone right now. She's a little - tied up at the moment."

      "You listen to me, you bitch - "

       "No, you listen!" She shouted back at him, cutting him off. "I understand you're upset with me, Dean, but if you don't put John on the phone, the last thing you will ever hear is the sound of your girlfriend choking on her blood." She leaned down in front of me and held the phone out. "Isn't that right, Andi."