"Screw this! My life is always like this! Why can't I just get a rest?" Henry shouted over the roar of the wind.
The blinding white light of the vortex shifted, the funnel angling directly toward him. The suction doubled, tearing at his jacket, nearly pulling him off his feet. He could feel the pressure in his bones.
The portal wasn't just dragging everything around it anymore. It was focusing on him.
The cabin began to come apart. Boards ripped from the walls and vanished into the swirling black-and-white vortex. Annie screamed as her hands slipped from the table and her body was dragged upward into the rift.
"Annie!"
James's unconscious body lifted off the floor a second later and disappeared after her.
Ash cursed as the cast-iron grate he'd been holding tore loose from the fireplace. "Oh, you gotta be kidding me!"
He went up with it still in his hands, shotgun clutched against his chest, both vanishing into the vortex.
Sam's knife scraped across the rotting floorboards as the force dragged him forward. "Dean!" His fingers slipped from the hilt. The wood cracked beneath him, and he was ripped upward.
Dean had both hands wrapped around an iron wall rod, the metal bending under his weight as the bolts pulled free from the timber. "Son of a b—!" The last bolt tore loose, and his feet left the floor.
Henry was the only one left.
He gritted his teeth and summoned an Ether lance, driving it straight through the floorboards into the bedrock. For a moment it held. He grabbed it with both hands, arms shaking against the pull.
"Not... happening."
The ground around the lance cracked. He looked down. "Oh, come on."
A fracture spread through the earth. With a deafening crack, the ground broke apart, and Henry was torn from the cabin and thrown into the vortex.
Then the portal snapped shut.
BOOM!
The sound rolled through the forest, leaving the ruined cabin silent.
***
Sam and Dean hit a hard marble floor.
Dean groaned, rolled onto his back as the last of the vortex vanished with a sharp pop. Neither of them moved for a few seconds.
He opened one eye. The room was nearly dark, faint streetlight filtering through high windows, catching the edges of glass display cases scattered around.
He patted himself down, checking pockets and waistband. "Sam."
Sam coughed and pushed himself upright.
"You okay?"
"Yeah."
Dean glanced around. "Open your eyes."
"They are open."
He ignored that, got to his feet, and brushed the dust off his jacket. "Okay. Where the hell are we?"
Sam stood and looked around. Then he saw it — the enormous T-Rex skeleton looming over the darkened exhibit hall.
"This is the museum."
Dean followed his gaze. "The same place?"
"Yeah."
Sam walked farther in, checking the cases, the displays, then the entrance. He turned back. "Dean."
"Yeah?"
"Henry isn't here."
Before either of them could process that, a shrill security alarm tore through the museum. Red emergency lights started flashing, heavy footsteps and voices closing in from the hallway.
Dean turned toward the nearest exit. "Crap. We can figure out where Henry went later. Come on, Sammy!"
Sam didn't argue. Whatever had brought them back had already vanished, and explaining to security why they were standing in a closed museum wasn't something either of them wanted to do.
They hurried through the back of the exhibit and out an emergency exit, disappearing into the alley just as guards rushed into the wing.
Dean kept moving until they were well clear of the building. "Okay," he said, catching his breath. "Now we figure out where the hell we are and what happened to Henry."
Sam looked back toward the museum. "He's probably still wherever that portal sent him."
"Yeah. Let's hope."
***
Somewhere else entirely, Henry hit the ground hard.
The air was freezing, dry, thick with sulfur and stagnant water. He coughed, rolled onto his side, spat ash from his mouth, and pushed himself upright.
Every muscle in his body ached from the trip through the vortex. "Ow..."
He wiped the dirt from his face and looked around. No cabin. No forest.
Just a barren landscape stretching into the distance — dark rock broken by deep cracks and pools of murky water, a pale mist drifting slowly between the stones.
He got to his feet. A massive mountain dominated the horizon, its jagged peaks disappearing into thick, ghostly mist. The whole place carried a strange pressure he could feel even without using his powers.
He stared at it. "Okay." He looked around at the empty wasteland. "Definitely not Kansas."
A strange sound rose from beneath his feet.
Crack.
He looked down. The rocky ground split open. Rotten hands burst through the cracks, clawing their way out, more following, fingers scraping stone as pale, decaying arms pushed up around him.
Henry backed away slowly. "Ummm..."
Another hand shot out right beside his boot.
He looked around — the barren ground, the sulfurous air, the dead things crawling up out of the earth, the mountain vanishing into pale mist.
"Fuck me."
"I'm in Hell."
*****
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