Catch a Falling Star
England, 1608
The night was cold. The frozen ground crunched underfoot and Anne Winchester could see her breath as a puff of white fog with every exhale. Frost glittered all around her, sharp and chilled, reflecting the stars that littered the skies above. There were no clouds tonight but also no moon. Nevertheless the night was bright. A ball of burning fire cut across the sky, bathing the world below in an eerie yellow glow.
Was it a light shining out of the window of heaven, or a reflection of the hell-fires that burned far below?
The men gathered around the telescope in the library of the big house behind her were debating that very question right now. When they had caught Anne listening, they had sent her away and shut the door, telling her to go to bed. A child had no place among the great debates of the Men of Letters.
"Anne! We're not supposed to be out here!" Anne's little brother Thomas trailed after her, huddled in his winter goat, eyes darting back toward the house as if expecting an adult to come and scold them back inside at any moment.
"So go back in!"
Tom did not slow down or turn around, even though at age 8 he had to run to keep up with Anne, who was 12.
"Where are you going? The comet is up there!" Tom pointed to the light burning a trail across the sky.
"Something fell." Anne slowed her pace, allowing her little brother to catch up. Anne pointed to the comet's tail. A thin line broke away from the white trail, cutting its own path toward the earth below. Black smoke curled up from the ground, and Anne picked up her skirts to better navigate the rocky terrain.
Thomas paused to stare at the sight. "You should tell father's friends!" Thomas said, scrambling to catch up again.
"Father's friends don't want to listen to me," Anne said.
The scent of scorched earth and metal singed Anne's nose. She slowed her pace, searching the ground around her.
There! A black scar cut through the dirt, a dark mirror of the white, smoky tail that chased the comet above. The scar ended in a smoking pit, where a lump of molten metal glowed red. Anne leaned forward, but Tom caught hold of her arm.
"Don't! It could be from the Devil!" Tom's tone was hushed with awe. He, too had, heard the mutterings of the Men of Letters.
"Or it could kill a devil," Anne said, but she did not lean any closer yet. She could feel the head from from the lump of metal, and had no blacksmith tools handy to help handle the thing. Slowly, the angry red glow faded. The comet had left the sky and dawn colored the horizon red. Thomas had fallen asleep at Anne's side, head in her lap.
Anne fetched a stick and pried the cold lump of metal from the ground. It was still warm to to the touch, but did not burn her skin. The size of two fists, the meteorite was gray and dull. In short, unremarkable. Yet Anne felt a thrill of anticipation when she touched it. This unremarkable lump of metal was important in some way. She carefully tucked the meteorite out of sight, then shook her brother awake so that they could both crawl back into their beds before their father realized they had been gone at all.
Lebanon, Kansas, 2017
Don't you worry, girl. Dean ran his hands over the crumpled lump of metal that had once been The Colt. She was in two pieces now, her parts damaged beyond any repair Dean knew how to perform. He doubted even Bobby would have known how to fix her. There were antique dealers who might be able to re-form and re-assemble her parts, but they would know nothing of her inner workings.
They could hammer her back together again, but they couldn't make her capable of killing monsters again.
We're gonna get you all fixed up.
The only man Dean knew of who could fix the Colt was the man who had made her. A man who had died over a century ago.
A man who Sam had met just a few years ago.
We're gonna go find your dad and he'll know what to do.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway and Sam turned the corner into the Men of Letters library, dressed in his Western best. Their usual jeans and flannel were gone, traded out for canvas trousers, cotton shirts, and long leather jackets. Sam had done the shopping this time, via an online costuming company that promised authenticity. Having been to the Wild West once before, they knew what they would need to blend in.
"This is a really bad idea, Dean."
"Yeah, Sammy, I heard you the first five times." If Sam really objected, he would have refused to help with the preparations. "It'll be fine."
"Every time one of us time travels, we almost get stuck in the past."
"That's why we prepared everything we need for the spell to get home ahead of time." Dean nodded to Sam's duffel bag. "It is ready, right?"
Sam nodded. "Two sets of ingredients, in separate bags, sealed so that they won't get ruined if things get wet.
"So we won't get stuck."
"If Samuel Colt even agrees to help us-"
"He helped us last time."
"This will be a younger Samuel Colt, I think." Sam looked down at the bowl full of spell ingredients that sat ready beside the remains of the Colt. "It supposed to take us to the gun's origins. We should come out on the night that Colt is actually making the gun."
Dean felt goosebumps crawling up his arms at the thought, and knew there was no way he could hide his excited smile from Sam. His little brother just raised his eyebrows in a familiar, how-am-I-related-to-you expression, and shook his head. Dean gathered up the broken pieces of the gun carefully, as if handling the wounded body of a friend, and tucked them away safely in his bag.
Sam had selected the door to one of the storerooms for the spell. It was a simple enough ritual, and soon the closet door they had chosen was glowing with blue light.
"Who needs a Delorian?" Dean gave his brother a congratulatory nod and opened the door into the past.
o0o
Diary of Thomas Winchester, Man of Letters
Being an account of his journey to the New World
December 1, 1620
It has been two months since we set sail from England, and we have lost two of our company. Poor souls, I cannot blame her for wishing to depart this world. We have nothing to eat but hard tack, jerked beef, and the water tastes like someone has been washing his feet in the barrel. It is very curious, the deceased were found pale and cold, as if drained of blood. It is possible there is a vampire on board.
"Possible? Ha! I'd say it's a bit more than possible." A familiar voice laughed somewhere in the space behind his head.
Tom flicked his hand toward the back of his neck as if flicking away a fly buzzing in his ear. "Anne! Stop reading over my shoulder."
"Yes, but you hide your journal when I'm not looking, so how else am I supposed to find out what's going on?"
Thomas scowled, and Anne rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on! It's not like your journal is where you put all of your deepest, darkest secrets. It's a chronicle that will go in the Men of Letters' archives and be studied by future generations. Why can't I read it, too?"
"I don't care if you read it, just not over my shoulder while I'm writing it!" Thomas put his quill back in the ink pot with a resigned sigh. Clearly, he wasn't going to get any more work done today. He set the journal side and faced his sister with a somber expression that immediately turned her smile into a worried frown.
Did she know what he had in mind? Because she looked ready for a fight, and he hadn't even said a word yet.
"So we both agree there is a vampire on board. What are we going to do about it?"
Anne's frown deepened. "I don't see what we can do about it. You are a scholar. You don't know how to kill a vampire."
"Anne! We both know that to kill a vampire you have to take off its head."
"Exactly! You have no idea how to hold a sword, much less swing it at the right angle to decapitate a grown man. A grown man who will be much stronger and faster than you. You don't know how to fight, or dodge, or stop him from eating you. And what do you think will happen if you kill a man were one of the crew or the passengers can see?" Anne crossed her arms, her glare pressing into Thomas with the weight of her irrefutable logic.
He couldn't deny she had a point. "If we do nothing, the vampire will continue to kill passengers and crew! We might be next!"
"I didn't say I will do nothing." Anne reached into her pocket and pulled out the pistol that she carried hidden in her skirts. She checked the powder and the bullet as the spoke. "While you were inside studying with father, I was out learning to hunt pheasant and foxes. I'm a good shot, Thomas."
"Shooting a vampire won't kill it!"
"It will slow it down enough for me to shove it overboard." Anne tucked the pistol back into her pocket. "The water is deep and cold. It will freeze before it can get back to the ship."
"And what if someone see you shoot it?" Thomas fired Anne's objection back at her.
Anne reached into her trunk and pulled out a sachet of herbs. "A pinch of this and a few words, and they will fall right asleep. When they wake, they will think it was all a dream."
"Or they might not!" Thomas shook his head. "No, Anne! You can't go hunt this vampire."
"Well neither can you!"
"But we can't do nothing!" Thomas crossed his arms and glared at his sister, who crossed her arms and glared back. The staring match lasted a full minute before Thomas looked away. He gathered up his coat and moved toward the door. Anne stuck out a hand to stop him.
"Thomas!"
"I'm just going to ask a few questions and learn a little more. That's all. I promise."
Anne did not look like she believed him. "Don't do anything foolish, little brother."
o0o
Sam and Dean stepped through the door of the bunker into a small, cramped room with a low ceiling, one tiny window, and two narrow beds. At the foot of each bed was a large trunk, and tucked into one corner was a writing desk. The air was cold, and Dean shivered. He had been expecting a desert in summer.
"Mr. Colt?!" Sam called. "Samuel Colt!"
No one answered. The room was quiet, but for a creaking sound coming from the wooden timbers. Dean shifted his weight as the floor tilted underneath him, and his stomach did a flip-flop as if he were on an airplane and not on solid ground. He turned to look back through the doorway behind them. There was a wide, wooden floor that gave way to gray, choppy water under a wide, cloudy sky. A seagull flew past, the breeze from its wings ruffling Dean's hair. He slammed the door and turned to glare at his brother.
"Sam, I think you go the spell wrong."
"I did the spell just fine, Dean!"
"Then why are we on a boat?"
"A boat?"
Dean cracked the door open again. "Yeah, a boat."
Sam stared. A crewman walked across the deck, dressed in something that looked like it belonged to a pirate movie, not a western. Near the railing was a cluster of women in long, black dresses with wide, white collars. Dean narrowed his eyes. They looked familiar, like something out of a painting, or a school pageant.
"They look like Puritans," Sam said. The women turned away from the water, and Dean hastily pulled the door closed before anyone could notice two strangers who didn't belong on board, wearing clothing that didn't belong in this century.
"Puritans?"
Sam didn't explain. He crossed the room, which took all of about two steps, to flip through the book that sat out next to a feather quill and bottle of ink. "Diary of Thomas Winchester, Man of Letters."
"Winchester?"
"Men of Letters," Sam said. Dean could see the gears in his brother's head turning, connecting bits of random information to come up with yet another wild theory. "Hey, Dean. What is Samuel Colt knew the Men of Letters? I mean, what if he was a Man of Letters."
"Sam, the diary says Winchester!"
"Yeah, well we know the Winchesters were Men of Letters, but the knowledge that Samuel Colt would have needed to make the gun- Think about it. That sounds more like Men of Letters than Hunters."
"Well, it doesn't matter because this is not Samuel Colt's workshop." Dean turned back to the closet door they had come out of. "Do the spell again and take us home!"
Sam's eyes were still fixed on the book. He ran his fingers over the pages of cramped writing, trying to decipher the old-style script. "An account of his journey to the New World...December 1, 1620." Sam frowned. "Dean-I think we're on the Mayflower!"
"Huh?"
"1620. That's when the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth. That explains the Puritans."
Mayflower meant Pilgrims, and Thanksgiving and apple pie. "Puritans?"
Sam nodded. "Yeah, the Pilgrims were Puritans, except they called themselves 'Saints,' and they had a bunch of strict religious rules."
Dean was start to remember a few things now, more from horror movies than his elementary school days. "Didn't Puritans like to burn people at the stake if they use witchcraft?"
"Uh-"
"Yeah, let's get that spell going before anyone finds us here."
"Right." Sam opened his bag to fetch the spell ingredients. He had everything laid out when the doorknob turned. The brothers only had time to exchange a panicked look before the door swung open.
A man stepped into the room. He had his hands raised, his movements careful as if afraid of making the wrong motion. He had a wary look on his face, and all his attention was focused on the woman behind him.
The woman had a gun in one hand, the barrel pushed into the man's rib-cage, prodding him forward. She froze when she saw Sam and Dean, and then the muzzle of the gun slowly moved to point directly at Dean's face.