Chapter 1
AN: Okay, folks, here we go again! My thanks to BlackIceWitch for a wonderful cover for this story and for helping me with all the ins and outs of planning, plotting and character development issues, as well as just making sure that I made sense! Once again, I've borrowed some of BlackIceWitch's concepts, this time of the Men of Letters organisation, as I think they work beautifully. The story they appeared in has now sadly been removed, but paraphrased, will live on here!
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
It was a lot harder to explain my slackness in not keeping track of the darned contraceptives than I thought it would be. I ummed and aahed for a few minutes and saw Dean's gaze drop to the empty pack I was clutching, and come to his own conclusions. He took a step back as he stared at the pack.
"I'm…um…not sure…um…how long it's been…" I stammered and looked down at the pack as well.
"You're pregnant?"
The thought of that – the sound of it! – sent the air whooshing out of my lungs and turned my knees to some jellified substance that I knew was going to be incapable of supporting me.
"No," I squawked at him, hearing the high pitch and crack in my voice with an internal wince. "I mean, no, I – uh – I don't think so," I tried again, shaking my head forcefully. "I – uh – I – well, I don't know."
From the stunned look on his face, I figured that his knees were also on the verge of collapsing under him and I tried to find some way to make it seem…I don't know…less of a world-changer. Or yet another responsibility being laid on his shoulders.
"I'll take a test in the morning," I promised, the words falling over each other as I got them out, my brain in feverish high-gear as it immediately leapt to the worst case scenario. We lived in a cabin in the woods that was barely big enough for the five adults here. Where on earth – how on earth – would a baby fit into this situation?
"Uh…" he said, finally lifting his gaze from the pack and looking at me. His expression softened slightly and I couldn't imagine what I looked like to have caused that. Probably on the point of hysteria? "We'll, um, figure it out. If you are, I mean."
He took a slightly unsteady step toward me and I realised straight away that he was a long, long way from being able to process the whole what-next part. Fatherhood was something he clearly hadn't been considering.
I didn't know what to say either. As a matter of timing, I don't think it could've been any worse. On the other hand, my churning emotions insisted, there was no way I could take the alternative course of action. I wasn't religious by any definition of the term and maybe it was just my biological clock ticking away, but…if there was a child, it was his child, and for some reason I wasn't looking all that closely at, that changed everything I'd ever thought or felt.
Dean seemed to come to some sort of decision, taking another step toward me and dropping his arm around my shoulders to steer me out of the bathroom and back toward the bed.
"Come on," he said, his voice deeper than it'd been a minute ago. "Nothing we can do about it right now."
We got into bed and he flicked off the bedside lamp. In the almost complete darkness of the room, it felt like our thoughts, the unspoken ones, were crowding around, thick as a fog in spring, smothering in their intensity. We were lying side by side, unmoving and I guessed he was probably staring open-eyed at the ceiling the same as I was. I wasn't actually thinking about the actuality of it, you know? I was trying to, but my thoughts kept veering away and yammering about other things. Whistling in the wind, I guess, trying to pretend that there was nothing wrong, nothing earth-shattering had happened, all good in the 'hood here.
Honestly, sometimes my capacity for self-deception is really quite depressing.
After a time – and it could've been minutes or hours, who could tell? – Dean let out a noisy exhale and rolled over, sliding his arm under my pillow.
"It'll be okay," he said quietly, his breath gusting against my cheek.
I wasn't nearly as sure that it would, but I nodded. "Sure."
There's a very strange dynamic at work in these circumstances, I found. A minute before, the idea of sex was probably the furthest thing from my mind, something on par with performing plastic surgery on, say, grizzly bears, for instance. Then he moved closer and I felt a rush of heat tremble through me, curling up my toes and I turned automatically toward him, half my mind thinking, well, it's too late now. The other half kicked in a second later and reminded me that I didn't know that for sure and I swear the same thought process must have gone through his mind because he kind of froze with his mouth about a quarter-inch from mine.
"Uh, maybe we should, um, wait to find out?" he said, pulling back a little. My thought exactly, except that skin-to-skin, it was harder to remember why that was a good idea.
"Right," I managed to get out, a flush of red creeping up my neck from my hypocrisy.
I felt his exhale against my neck and another thought occurred to me, no doubt driven by a less-than-ladylike desperation. "Unless you have some –"
"Yeah!" he exclaimed, his voice endearingly breaking high. A second later he slumped down. "Uh, no…I didn't think…uh, well we weren't…" he trailed off uncomfortably and the despondent tone would've been funny if not for the situation.
"Uh, well…" I said inadequately.
"Yeah, I guess…" he murmured reluctantly.
Desire is one of those things that when you let it out of the box, it's darned near impossible to stuff back in and the more I tried not to think about it, the worse it all got. Even the small movement as we breathed in and out created a friction that became more and more demanding, like an itch you can't reach. Ha ha.
In the room, the silence stretched out, and I could feel myself tensing up, could feel him tensing as well, little by little. There was a solution, of course…any normal person would have gotten up and found somewhere else to sleep…but that didn't occur to me and if it occurred to Dean, he must have repressed it, preferring the torture of the current impasse.
He moved his head a bit, and I felt the brush of his lips over my neck, shuddering slightly with the feelings that provoked. As I turned my head to look at him, he raised his head and that was the end of any hope of restraint. He moved the half-inch needed and I moved as well, and caution and everything else was forgotten when his lips met mine.
"P'bly bad idea," he growled, when the kiss broke and he moved down, mouth leaving a fiery trail along the skin of my neck.
I arched up involuntarily against him. "Y-yeah, bad idea, really tempting fate here," I agreed mindlessly, making no effort to stop him. It was as intoxicating as ever, possibly even more so since it was a bad idea, and my ability to think clearly was vanishing rapidly. "Oh…the heck–"
"–with it," he finished the thought, voice gruff.
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
We stopped after driving for nine hours, in Sheridan, Wyoming. From the way Bobby was creeping closer as we turned off the interstate, I thought he was probably pretty surprised. It wasn't dark and Dean would normally have kept going. Behind Bobby's truck, Sam and Lauren followed along in Sam's SUV.
Despite the whole day together, alone, in the close confines of the car, we hadn't talked about it. Conversation had been pretty thin the whole way, actually, something that for me, at least, was due to finally thinking about all the repercussions I was going to be facing if the pee-on-a-stick test came back positive. I'd already decided that getting more than one was probably a good idea. I didn't know what Dean had been thinking about, although he'd asked several times over the course of the drive if I was okay, if I was comfortable, if it was too hot or too cold in the car, which I guess showed that it was certainly at the forefront of his mind.
As soon as we'd checked into the small motel near the outskirts of the town, we got back into the Impala and drove down the main street, Dean grunting in satisfaction as he spotted the all-night drugstore and swerved into its parking lot. We walked in together and split up at the door, me heading over to the ladies section of the pharmacy, and him searching the aisles for the items we'd been missing last night.
There are a surprising number of pregnancy test kits on the market. I looked at all of them, reading the blurbs about their ease of use, their accuracy, the disclaimers on getting a doctor's confirmation rather than relying on the tests themselves and all the other junk pharmaceutical companies seem to like to plaster their packaging with. I'd used a couple of the brands before, and I chose one of each plus another one I hadn't, just to keep it fair. I was going to need to drink a heck of a lot of water to manage to use all three, I thought uncomfortably, holding the boxes close to my chest as I made my way up to the counter. The lady serving behind the cash register was obviously trained in discretion because she didn't even lift an eyebrow at the purchases, just rang them up and ask if it was cash or charge in a bored voice. Dean came up behind me as she was packing the boxes carefully into a paper bag and he raised his eyebrows.
"Three of them?"
I took the bag and the change and looked at the dozen or so boxes of condoms he dropped on the counter, arching a brow back at him. "Better safe than sorry, right?" I said.
He looked away with a defensive kind of shrug and I headed back to the car. There's something so obvious about a couple when she's clutching a bag full of pregnancy tests and he's just cleared out the condom rack, don't you think?
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
Sam and Lauren had done the food run by the time we got back to the motel, and no one asked where we'd been, thankfully. Dumping our purchases in our room, we walked next door to Bobby's and ate together there, the smell of burgers and tacos and skinless grilled chicken filling the small area pungently. When it was all cleared away, Bobby pulled out the local map of Benoit and stabbed a finger at the cemetery.
"Won't get there 'til after dark now," he said, with a pointed look at Dean who ignored it.
Lauren said, "Benoit's funeral home has gone online. We found a layout of the cemetery and the four men mentioned in the article are buried in a private plot, to one side of the grounds. It won't be hard to find."
"No movement on the tracking bug either," Sam said, the app on his phone showing a stable red dot in Boston. "They're taking their time about getting out here."
"Maybe they already know what's in the grave?" I suggested diffidently. I can't say I was really interested myself in what body was lying in the grave of Albert Magnus. The paper bag lying on the bed in the room next door was preying on my mind.
"Or they're onto it and left it sitting somewhere in Boston nowhere near them," Bobby pointed out acidly.
"We'll head out early tomorrow," Dean said, getting up. He threw a sideways glance at me and I knew he was as anxious to check the contents of that paper bag as I was. "See you in the morning."
I got up and ignored Lauren's speculative look. Tomorrow, if I let her get within a yard of me on her own, I would be grilled about the early stop, the disappearing act and our rush to leave the room now, I thought with an inward sigh.
Following Dean out and along the path to our room, I was sloshing slightly from the two extra large sodas I'd just consumed. If that didn't give enough to perform all three tests, I would regard as a sign, I decided, somewhat morosely.
Dean didn't say anything when he opened the door and held it for me, his gaze cutting straight to the bed. I nodded without stopping, picking up the bag and heading for the bathroom. Once in there, I opened all three packs and read the instructions a couple of times, just to make sure I would know what I was doing. The first two needed collection, the third one could be performed 'in stream' as it were. I decided to attempt that one first and then collect for the other, setting out the sticks, cups, droppers and cards as neatly as a surgical array along the bathroom's narrow vanity. Apparently I had an over-rated view of my capacity for fine control.
Happily, two sodas produced a volume that was more than enough, even without the stop-start finesse I'd been so sure I would have.
Each test required some waiting time and after a couple of minutes, Dean knocked on the door impatiently.
"Hey."
"Yeah?"
"You messing with me?"
"No, they have waiting times," I told him, looking at all three tests. All three had a slightly different waiting time, of course.
"Huh."
Looking at the door, I shrugged to myself and opened it. "See for yourself."
He came in and looked at the stick and cards lined up with military precision along the counter. "What are you looking for?"
"The stick is supposed to turn blue," I said, pointing to it. "That one shows a line under the control line if it's positive. And that one shows a donut if it's positive."
"A donut?"
"A ring," I clarified. For some reason, the instructions referred to it as a donut. Ring too sensitive? Donut more common? Who knew?
"Uh huh," he said, looking at them. "How long?"
I looked at my watch. "Another minute and a half."
We stood there, eyes glued to the three tests and it was the longest ninety seconds in all of recorded history.
The stick remained stubbornly white. The single line on the test card remained stubbornly single. And no donut – or ring – formed on the third one. Dean was looking at his watch as obsessively as I was looking at mine.
"Does that mean –" he asked, turning to look at me. I checked each test again and nodded, bending to grab the small trash can.
"Yeah, I think so." I swept the empty boxes, wrappings, sticks, cups, cards and instruction sheets into the can and set it back down again, not looking at him as I went to the sink to wash my hands for the third time.
I didn't want to be pregnant, not now, I really didn't. The sadness that was leaking in around that conviction was inexplicable, I thought, scrubbing my nails vigorously. It was not only the worst time imaginable, with all that was going on, but we hadn't sorted out ourselves yet, so it would've only added pressure to a relationship that didn't need any more pressure. All good points. Didn't change the disappointment.
"You okay?" he asked me, and I looked into the mirror above the sink. He stood behind me, his expression worried.
"Yeah, sure, all good," I said quickly, turning off the taps and slipping away from him to dry my hands on the towel by the shower. "I'm relieved."
He nodded uncertainly and backed out of the room and I leaned against the wall for a moment or two, trying to force myself into believing that. I was relieved. Mostly. For the most part.
Turning on the taps in the shower, I stripped off mechanically and stepped under the gush of water, washing everything about as obsessively and thoroughly as I had done with my hands. Maybe I thought I could scrub the thoughts and feelings away? I don't know. I got out after a few minutes and dried off, and leaned forward to wipe the steam from the mirror. I looked the same, you know, in the reflection. I stared a bit longer, unable to work out what it was I was trying to see.
The main room was dim, just the nightstand light on. Dean was sitting at the table, a bottle of beer almost full beside his elbow, staring, apparently, at nothing. He looked around when I walked out, getting up from the chair. I had the towel in my hands and I hurriedly raised it, pretending to dry my hair a bit more.
"Plenty of hot water left if you want a shower," I said, muffled from inside the towel's fluffy depths.
"Terry –" he started to say then stopped. I peered out from between the towel's folds to look at him.
"Never mind." He turned and went into the bathroom and a moment later I heard the water running.
When he came out, a few minutes later, I was in bed, the covers drawn up over my shoulder and my eyes closed. It wasn't his fault and he sure didn't do anything wrong, but there was a weird kind of empty feeling that made me feel cold and alone, and he seemed to sense it, staying on his side of the bed and turning out the light.
"Did you want to be –?" he asked awkwardly after several minutes of silence.
I shook my head. "No, I didn't. Really. I just – you know, I thought, and then…"
"Yeah."
The flatness of his voice made me wonder and I turned slowly over toward him. "Did you?"
He didn't say anything for a few moments, and I waited nervously in the dark.
"I guess so," he said, very softly, rolling onto his shoulder. "I don't know. I was thinking about it today."
"So was I."
"Do you want to have a kid? I mean, not now, but, uh, sometime? In the future?" he asked hesitantly and I wished I could see his face.
It was a tough question and one I didn't feel comfortable with answering right now. An act of fate was one thing, but an active plan? That was something else entirely. I'd never planned anything in my life, and I wasn't sure I could start now.
"Uh…um, yeah, maybe," I hedged. "Do you?"
From the pause that followed, I had a feeling he was having the same difficulty as I was making a solid answer to that.
"Yeah," he said finally, his voice so quiet I could hardly hear him. "Sometime."
He inched closer and I did the same and his arms came around me. Unlike the previous evening's flashpoint, I don't think either of us wanted anything more than comfort and sleep. The boxes of rubbers remained unopened on the nightstand.
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
We hit Benoit a little before nightfall and found a motel first, then piled into the Impala to make the short drive across town to the cemetery. The funeral home's diagram of the plots made it easy to find the secluded and fenced in private section and Lauren and I both stopped and looked at the unicursal hexagram that had been wrought into the iron gates.
"Iron all the way 'round," Bobby remarked as he walked past us, following the brothers to a row of graves.
Dean read out the names, his flashlight illuminating each of the headstones in turn. "David Ackers, Ted Bowen, Albert Magnus, Larry Ganem…whoa, what's wrong with this picture?"
The flashlight beam flicked from stone to stone. On three of the markers, the unicursal hexagram had been carved deeply but it was missing from the last. Instead, there was a different symbol. Bobby leaned closer to it, brushing the weathered stone with one hand.
"That's the Haitian glyph for talkin' to the dead," he said gruffly, getting to his feet. "A bit obvious but these idjits seem to think they're the only ones who know anything about anything."
"So we're digging up ol' Larry here?" Dean asked, handing the flashlight to me and picking up a shovel.
"That'd be my bet," Bobby agreed, taking a step back as Sam and Dean drove their shovels into the turf.
I might've said it before…watching people dig up a grave is a really long and boring business. Lauren was looking over the rest of the enclosed plot, making muttered comments about rowan, oak and ash trees and Bobby was leaning on tombstone, eyes half-closed under the brim of his cap, either dozing or thinking about something else entirely. I kept the flashlight down where the brothers were digging and tried not to yawn too blatantly.
Even when the soil is not too compacted, doesn't contain too many rocks and hasn't settled for too long, it does take a while to dig a hole that's six foot long by three foot wide by six foot deep. And this grave had been sitting undisturbed for more than fifty years, the soil settled and hard. Bit by bit, Dean and Sam removed their jackets, then their shirts as they grunted and dug and threw the soil out, until they were digging in their tee shirts, which had darkened with sweat. It was definitely a way of keeping fit, I thought, watching them get deeper and deeper into the hole.
The clunk of metal on wood was a relief. Bobby's eyes snapped open, Lauren returned to the graveside and I felt my curiosity drive out the boredom as I inched closer to the edge and shone the flashlight down at Dean's feet.
They threw the shovels out and knelt to clear the dirt from the coffin's lid, Bobby passing a pry bar to Dean as soon as it was all visible. The creepy screak of old, rusted nails being prised free of the wood filled the cemetery and I looked around nervously. Flickering lights, weird, shivery noises…no wonder people considered cemeteries haunted, I thought to myself. Not to mention the ew factor of actually digging up dead bodies.
"Huh." Dean looked down at the body blankly then up to Bobby. "Uh, World War One is a bit early for these guys, isn't it?"
The body, skeletal remains mostly, was dressed in an old soldier's uniform, a number of medals pinned to the left side of the chest.
"Got me," Bobby said with a frown. "Any of those medals got a name on them?"
Sam crouched and checked them, lifting up one that was on a chain. "Captain Thomas J. Carey, III," he read.
"Well, let's go find the good Captain and see what he has to say," Bobby grunted.
Dean and Sam groaned in unison at the thought of shovelling all the dirt they'd carefully excavated out of the grave back into it but they closed the coffin lid and climbed out and picked up their shovels without further comments. I watched the play of muscle under their soaked tee shirts admiringly and kept the light steady on the grave.
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
It wasn't far off sunrise when we got back to the motel, the brothers disappearing into the respective bathrooms of their rooms while Lauren, Bobby and I went to Bobby's room and pulled out the computers.
"Got him," Bobby said a few minutes later. "Okay, got confirmation from two sources, county and KG&E. Tom Carey is living in Lebanon, collecting his pension and a very happy one hundred and twenty-seven year old."
"Lebanon?" Lauren frowned at him. "You know that's –"
"The exact centre of the country?" Bobby cut her off, looking up. "Yeah, knew that."
"That's not a coincidence," I said, hiding another yawn behind my hand.
"No coincidences in this life," Bobby agreed sourly.
The door opened and Dean and Sam came in, wet hair sticking out in all directions and dressed in clean clothes.
"What'd we miss?" Dean asked as he veered to the kitchenette and fridge for a beer.
"Found your WWI vet," Bobby said, closing the laptop and leaning back in his chair as Dean handed him a beer. "In Lebanon, living the good life."
Sam sat down next to Lauren and looked at him. "Lebanon?" he said, his brow creasing up a bit. "You know that's the exact contiguous –"
"Centre of the country? Yeah, already been through that non-coincidence," Bobby said, finishing his beer and thumping the bottle on the table. "Alright, we got time to grab a couple hours of zzz's before we go see him, so clear out."
He got up and walked pointed to the door, opening it and holding it for us. I can't say I wasn't relieved by the thought of a bit of sleep, it'd been a really, really long day.
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
Larry Ganem's house was a neatly painted two storey frame on a street full of similar neatly painted frame homes, with a lush and well-tended garden out the front. Five of us standing on the porch really crowded out the space, and when Sam knocked on the door, and a woman came to open it, her eyes widened at the sight.
"Can I – uh, help you?" she asked, looking from Sam around the rest of us and back to him.
"We'd like to speak to Captain Thomas Carey, ma'am, about some old friends of his," Sam said, making his voice soft and soothing. He really was good at this bit, being non-threatening and boy-scoutish and I saw both Dean and Bobby look away, the corners of their mouths tucking in as they obviously repressed comments about puppy-dog eyes and the like.
"Oh, uh…" She looked uncertainly back down the hall. "Could I let him know which old friends?"
"David Ackers, ma'am," Bobby said, pushing his cap back on his head slightly. "And Henry Winchester."
"One moment," she said, closing the door.
She was back a couple of minutes later, opening the door wide and standing to one side as we trooped in. "Larry's in the parlour," she said, clearly privy to the whole scam. "Just down the hall and the second door on the left."
Sam led the way, followed by Lauren, Bobby, Dean and I. The woman followed me and paused at the doorway as we entered the room.
"Could I offer anyone refreshments?" she asked.
"No, thank you," Sam said, his gaze fixed on the man in the wheelchair near the fireplace. "We're fine, Mrs Ganem."
She smiled at him. "Mrs Carey, actually."
"Uh, oh…sorry," Sam said.
"Vera, we'll be a few minutes," the man, Larry, I presumed, said. "Maybe these folks might feel more like something later?"
She nodded as if this was a common situation between them and left the room.
Larry looked around at us carefully. He'd been a big man, once, his frame shrunken with age and infirmity. A twisting scar ran from his forehead, dragging down across the right eye-socket and to his cheek, and I could see shiny burn scars over his hands and neck and the side of his face.
"Who're you?" he barked, looking at Bobby.
"Bobby Singer. Hunter," Bobby said with more patience than I'd given him credit for. "These boys are Henry's grandsons, Dean and Sam Winchester," he added. "And this is Professor Lauren Saunders –"
Ganem looked at Lauren, his eyes narrowing. "Nephilim," he said and she looked back at him, startled.
"How did –"
"Oh, I've spoken to my share of the other entities on this plane," he said comfortably, turning his gaze on me. "And you?"
"Uh…" I hesitated, not sure of what to say. "Therese Alcott, sir."
"No special history? Or powers?"
"'Fraid not," I replied, a little sharply. Just an ordinary tag-along, I thought, looking down at the floor.
"You have news about Henry?" Larry asked, his attention back on Sam. "Sit down, give me a bad neck to have look up that far."
He waved an impatient hand at the sofa and chairs grouped around the coffee table and we found ourselves seats. Not for the first time since I'd come to this world, I was wondering what I was doing here. Aside from Crowley's desire to use my soul, there didn't seem to be anything I could add to the brothers' quest. Beside me, Dean moved a little closer, his thigh pressing against mine and I glanced at him. He was watching Larry, but I got the impression he'd sensed what I was feeling anyway.
"Henry Winchester disappeared the night of the fire that took out our group, in '58," Ganem was saying, his head tilted slightly in favour of the missing eye. "I never saw or heard from him again."
"We met a Legacy, Dominic Wickfield, last week," Sam said. "He was surprised about the Albert Magnus grave."
"Wickfield! Ha! I bet he was," Ganem said with a humourless chuckle. "Bunch of self-righteous prats, those Boston boys." He scratched his brow. "When I got out of the hospital, David and Ted had been interred by Wickfield's superiors, I would imagine. Henry had gone and I had a number of other aliases, one of which Vera, my wife, used when I was hospitalised. I put the Magnus tombstone there to alert the others if they came looking. Apparently they never did."
"They know about it now," Bobby told him. "Wickfield thinks that these two have some kind of claim on whatever your group had set up, being as they're surviving family?"
"Yes," Larry said, nodding. "Yes, they do. Legacies are primarily passed down from generation to generation. Henry should have been around to pass it on to his son, John. And then John to you. I take it that never happened."
"First we heard of you guys was last week," Dean said, his lip curling up. "And we still haven't had a straight answer to what exactly it is we were supposed to be a part of."
"Not surprising," Larry said with a shrug. "Not much of a secret society if we talked of our business with anyone, eh?"
He changed position, wincing a little. "I spent my lifetime building on what the order had already collected. Mythology, ritual, lore and artefacts of the world we live in and the world of darkness and shadows that lives behind it, the histories of the other dimensional planes of existence, the demonologies, angelologies and the low-down on every god, demi-god, force of nature and elemental spirit that has been to known to mankind since the dawn of Time. We are, at our most basic level, occultists and chroniclers of the shadow world. But we are also teachers and guardians of that knowledge." He looked at Bobby. "We provide the knowledge to enable your sort to go out and address the balance of power between light and darkness."
"Whoopty-doo," Bobby said sourly, bridling a little at the 'your sort' comment, I think. "I never even heard of you."
"No," Larry acknowledged with a wry smile. "I don't suppose you have. Only the most skilled of the oldest hunting families was allowed into the inner sanctums of our libraries. That –" He held up his hand as if he could see Bobby's face working in readiness for another sarcastic protest. "– is not to say that there aren't many fine hunters who have stumbled into the life, however, most of those who are driven to become hunters from personal tragedies, who have not been raised to be hunters, I think you would agree are not generally-speaking the most stable individuals."
I could see Bobby wanted to argue the point but couldn't, not even from his own personal experience. That had to be galling.
"That collection of knowledge is hidden and warded and guarded and is the safest place in the world," Larry continued, unfazed by the simmer of the hunters surrounding him. "Only one key allows access and only a Legacy bloodline can use the key."
Dean and Sam exchanged a look. "Do you know where the key is?" Dean asked.
"Yes, I do, I placed it there myself."
"Allll-right," Sam said, brow creasing up questioningly. "Do we need to do some sort of test?"
"No," Larry said, clearly enjoying himself. If Vera hadn't returned to the room with a tray full of coffees that very instant, I think Larry would've gotten himself some education in the finer and more inventive points of cursing, going purely off the rock-like tension in the thigh that was pressed against mine. "Vera, could you bring the Salina safety box deposit key, m'dear?"
She nodded, setting the tray on the table between us and left to get it.
"Help yourselves, there are some details you need to know."
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
By the time we stumbled out of the place, I was hoping that mine was the only head close to exploding with the density of information the guy had rammed at us.
"We'll get the key," Sam said, rubbing the heel of his hand over his forehead. "We'll meet you at the coordinates in two hours."
Dean nodded, turning for the Impala with Bobby and I trotting along behind his long – and from the back, annoyed –stride.
"You tryin' to give me a heart attack?" Bobby panted as we caught beside the gleaming black car.
"Should be working harder, Bobby," Dean shot back but it was automatic, he was clearly thinking of other things. "You buy that hunter's bloodlines thing?"
Bobby looked over the car's roof at him, and I knew that he knew what Dean was talking about. I did too. The Cupid had made a big deal of Heaven forcibly manipulating the Campbells and Winchesters union. He hadn't said why, but being as Dean had been the only man capable of breaking the first Seal and Sam the only one capable of breaking the last, it'd seemed obvious.
"You think this is going back further than we thought?" Bobby asked.
Dean frowned and shrugged, unlocking the doors. "I don't know," he said uncertainly. "Just seems like it's not entirely random."
Larry had spoken of a bunker, of some sort. I hadn't gotten a good visualisation from the way he'd described it, other than to imagine some sort of Aladdin's cave of supernatural-related treasures, spilling from room to room. He'd said the library was the second largest of all the groups of the order, and that most of the world's collected artefacts of power were stored there as well. He talked of the turn of the century (the previous one) when there'd been nine Legacies living and working there, with three Associates – or Initiates, I wasn't too sure on that difference either – aiding their research, all of them going on field trips, liaising with hunters…it'd sounded pretty organised to be honest, and I'd seen Sam's eyes light up as he'd imagined a set up like that. Judging by Lauren's small smile, I guessed she'd seen his excitement as well.
Dean had been far more cautious about the old man's tales. He hadn't shown so much as a suddenly indrawn breath in the way of excitement and he'd questioned everything. Most of the time, Larry had fobbed him off with the line that the bunker would show them what to do. None of us had really gotten what that meant, I'd thought.
It was a five-minute drive back to the motel and Bobby muttered something about it being a long day, likely to go on all night and some people needed their rest. I was complete agreement with him, and I think Dean looked relieved as well. There wasn't much more we could do until Sam and Lauren got back and by golly, that bed looked comfortable.
As it turned out, we didn't get any sleep, but we did get past the uncertainties of the last few days.
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
Dean got out of the car and looked around. In every direction there were trees.
"You sure the coordinates are right?" he asked, looking over his shoulder as Sam got out of the SUV.
"Yeah, this is it."
There was one building there, a tiny utility hut for KG&E, surrounded by trees and undergrowth and about ten yards from the road. Dean jerked his head toward it. "On the small side for what Larry was talking about, isn't it?"
Sam frowned, holding his phone up and staring at the screen. "This can't be right."
"No shit, Sherlock," Dean mumbled, leaning back against the car.
It was a few minutes past five o'clock and the sun had already dropped below the horizon, the air that purply-grey colour it goes in between day and night. I stayed in the car and hid my yawns behind both hands.
"He said it was warded and guarded and hidden," Lauren reminded them, getting out of the other side of the SUV. "Do we have anything to break illusions, Bobby?"
"Not here," he said, shaking his head. "Back at the cabin, sure."
Getting out of the car, I shivered in the cool evening air. Everything looked real, the trees and road and hut, I mean. It was hard to believe that any illusion would have lichen growing on the wooden frame and paint peeling in little curly strips from the guttering.
The gravel road had been barely visible from the main road, hidden on a corner. We'd gone nearly a mile to come to this dead end, driving mostly under an overhanging canopy of trees. The road petered out thirty yards ahead of where the cars were parked, a dense line of saplings and suckering birches blocking it. But at the turnoff, there'd been no sign, not even a cryptic utility company one, to indicate to maintenance workers that the hut was there. And there usually are, you know? Signs, I mean, so that the techs can find their way around?
"Sam, try the key in that door," I suggested as I studied it.
He gave me a quizzical look but stepped off the road and walked to the hut, pulling a carved wooden box from his coat pocket. It was a snazzy little container, but no more difficult to open than a puzzle box and I wondered if someone in the order had just liked the ritual of opening it, instead of putting the old-fashioned and bulbous iron key on a ring.
As soon as the key touched the lock on the door, the entire world began to dissolve around us. Very, very weird sensation. It looked like a watercolour that someone has spilled water over, and the paints runs and thins out until the paper's mucky but the painting's gone.
The trees wavered and faded away, showing a much more straggly and scrubby wood in their place. Behind the hut, a hillside appeared, with a massive stone and brick building built into the side of it. Almost windowless, it towered up three or four stories above the ground, sigils and symbols, some familiar, some not, wreathing the walls in a very faint shimmering light that disappeared completely if you looked straight at them. The door Sam was standing in front of grew, kind of, turning to a dark metal, becoming taller and wider and round, and the key slid straight into a hole meant for it under a big whorled and knobbled doorknob.
When he turned it, there were a number of loud clanks and knocks, from somewhere in the building's wall. It sounded like a bank vault opening, although I'd only heard that sound in the movies about heists and those could've been enhanced by some foley editor.
Sam pulled at the door and it swung open, a round mouth of pitch black revealed behind it. I heard Dean snort and looked around. The road, which under the illusion had gone nowhere, now seemed to curve a little further around the bottom of the hill, still weed-infested gravel, but maybe a little better built than what we'd seen earlier.
"Open sesame," Bobby murmured and walked around a previously invisible wrought iron railing to the doorway, following Sam inside.
Dean walked in after him, his gun in his hand, and Lauren and I looked at each other.
"After you," she said to me with a grin.
"Oh no, I insist," I deadpanned back at her, waving a gracious hand at the black doorway. "Angelic beings definitely get to go into black holes first."
"Wimp," she said, passing me and following Dean.
"Why I'm still breathing," I agreed amiably.
Inside the door there was a small…uh, vestibule, I guess, and another, plain wooden door directly opposite. Sam didn't need a key for that, turning the handle and pushing it open. As soon as he did it, however, the front door closed behind me with a laborious groan and the clunking noises indicated that we were locked in.
Sam pulled the wood door closed again and Dean's flashlight beam hit me in the face as he lifted it and pointed it past me at the door. "Can you open that?"
Squinting and blinking, I turned around and felt for the handle, turning it. The clunking resumed and the door opened readily enough, the dusky light gently flooding in.
"Okay," Dean said, letting out an audible exhale.
Sam opened the inner door again and the outer door shut and by that time I'd heard enough of its clangs and clunks to last me a lifetime.
Three flashlight beams lit up the space on the other side of the door, not exactly illuminating much but giving an impression of a big void. I caught a glimpse of another elaborate wrought iron railing as Sam stepped through. Dean sidled along the wall, his light showing a big box further along the narrow balcony and I walked after him, looking around as much as I could. Big, dark and silent was the primary impression.
That changed when he opened the box, revealed to be a circuit box of some kind, and flipped the first old-fashioned lever switch up. For a minute, nothing seemed to happen, then there was a low-pitched vibration, felt first through my feet, then in my teeth and Sam and Bobby looked across from the other side of the curving balcony.
"Generators?" Sam asked no one in particular. Bobby nodded.
And the lights above us came on.
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~