Chapter 2
Dean still didn't know how Gil and Agatha Wulfenbach had managed to find a seven-bedroom house for sale in Beetleburg and close on it and have it fully furnished and ready for guests in the space of three weeks. Parts of the process weren't nearly as mysterious as others, of course. Even as expensive as California was compared to Nebraska, the Wulfenbachs' combined consulting income had been high enough that they'd barely touched Agatha's trust fund up to now; they'd been able to pay cash for the house, hire movers, and buy what furniture they lacked. But the speed with which the whole thing had come together really made Dean wonder whether whatever power had been trying to split up the Adventure Club since '98 had somehow failed to discern the reason the Wulfenbachs had left Palo Alto now.
If so, Dean thought, that could only be a good thing. The further inside their enemies' OODA loop the Adventure Club could get, the better chance they stood of thwarting the plan for Sam that the demon in Brady had hinted at. Since they still didn't know what that plan might be, however, it didn't pay to get overconfident about anything.
What Agatha hadn't thought she could manage on her own was fixing enough food for the eighteen people they already knew would be there for Thanksgiving: the Wulfenbachs, including Klaus; the Winchesters; Bobby; the rest of the Adventure Club, minus Theo and Sleipnir DuMedd; Pastor Jim and Violetta Murphy; and Adam and Judy Clay, plus their daughter Max and her family. Agatha had Judy and Colette already there to help her, of course, and Ardsley Wooster if he felt like cooking, and she had wanted to stress-bake when she could. Even so, Dean had wound up spending most of the week in the bunker's kitchen with Zeetha, whipping up sides and alternative heat-and-serve options in case there weren't enough leftovers or everyone voted for Thai instead of turkey sandwiches for one meal. During their married life to date, the Winchesters hadn't been settled anywhere long enough for him to take any cooking lessons from her, but with a professional-grade kitchen now at their disposal and nothing much he could do to speed up the research process... he hadn't been able to resist. Plus, it had been time well spent doing fun stuff with his wife to help their sister-in-law, and Sam and Henry had been enthusiastic taste testers, so he'd been happy to make enough food to fill the Impala's trunk.
Now, as he sat warming up the car while he waited for Zeetha to come out, he wondered how much of that skill and inclination had been his own and how much had been bleed-through from Agatha.
Zeetha opened the front passenger door and got in quickly, shut the door, and slid over to the middle of the seat. Dean looked at her for a moment, then kissed her deeply.
I love you, too, she sent through the merge-link.
I'm scared, Zee, he confessed without meaning to. You heard?
Yeah. Yeah, I heard him.
I don't even know who I am anymore.
Shhh. She kissed him back. You're still you, Dean. You're still the man I married. You're still human. We've still got this—she tugged a little at the consort bond between their souls—and you and Sam still have this—she plucked gently at the strand of his being she'd always said tied him to his brother, which resonated through him at a strange yet familiar deep register. Then she broke the kiss and backed off just enough to look him in the eye. Nothing's changed just because you now have merge-bonds with Gil and Agatha as well.
He studied her briefly. Did you know?
Wasn't sure. I mean, I've had bonds of my own to all of you for so long, I didn't notice a change on my end. Thought there might be some change in your powers, but... it's not like I ever talked with Mom about the possibilities of having an archangel vessel for a consort. Or anything. She caressed his cheek. I'm serious, though—nothing's changed in a way that matters. Nothing ever will.
He kissed her again. Thanks, sweetheart.
They were almost on the brink of merge when Gil interrupted, Will you stop kissing my sister and get over here?
Dean and Zeetha both laughed quietly and broke their embrace, though she stayed cuddled against his side all the way across town to the Wulfenbachs' new place.
Agatha was waiting on the front steps when Dean pulled the Impala up the sweeping half-circular front drive. After hugs and general chatter, Dean unlocked the trunk, and Agatha gathered up a load of dishes to take in. Zeetha loaded herself up next, then stepped aside to let Dean get the Crock-Pot, which was full of stew that he'd thrown together just before Gil had called to tell them definitely to come up before nightfall.
Just as Dean reached into the trunk, however, an unfamiliar alto voice with a more noticeable version of Zeetha's accent and unmistakable undercurrents of power said, "Here, let me take that."
Zeetha whirled around and gasped, "MOM?!"
Dean nearly swallowed his teeth. Just meeting his mother-in-law for the first time with no warning would have been terrifying enough. Knowing that said mother-in-law was a fae queen... that was enough to stop his heart for several seconds.
When he finally managed to peel his hands off the Crock-Pot's handles and turn around, Van and Ardsley were collecting Zeetha's load of dishes from a table that hadn't been there thirty seconds earlier, and Zeetha was hugging her mom for dear life. Her mom was easily seven feet tall, had darker skin than Zeetha's, and had hair that would have passed for black had the light not been right to catch its green hue; but her haircut was modern, and her clothes looked like any other American woman's of her physical stature. Dean almost had his feet back under him when Zeetha and her mom exchanged a few quiet words in a language he hadn't yet learned to recognize. Then they both turned toward him, and he found himself staring into the deathless face of a legend he'd never expected to meet.
Zantabraxus, formerly Warrior Queen of Indochina. Zeetha and Gil's mom. Klaus' wife. And Dean's... mother-in-law.
"Mom," Zeetha said in English, "this is Dean."
"Your Majesty," Dean managed without squeaking.
Zantabraxus smiled at him—a genuinely pleased smile that made her eyes almost disappear—and he wondered if maybe there really was a God. "Come, my son, you need not be so formal with me. After all, you are Zeetha's consort and brother in all but blood to Gilgamesh. And truth be told, you might easily have been my son by blood. Your father caught my eye even before Klaus did; had John not already been marked for another, I might have chosen him instead."
Dean didn't blush easily, but that remark made his cheeks flash hot before his brain seized on a key word. "Wait, whoa, what do you mean, marked?"
Zantabraxus looked at Zeetha, who said, "This might be better discussed inside." I've got my keys, she added through the link. Ardsley can show me where to park.
Dean nodded, as did Zantabraxus, and he followed her inside to a sitting room just off the front hall. She sat down on the couch; he sat down on the loveseat, facing her.
"I think this matter is most easily explained by comparison," she began and held out her hands, cupped as if they were holding something. "Here is an image of your heart."
A ball of light formed over her hands and then morphed into a... well, a hologram, sort of, exactly depicting his physical heart. He could tell because it was beating in time with his own. Intrigued, he leaned forward to examine the image more closely, and she rotated it to show him the right side first. Emblazoned on the right ventricle, like a dark green tattoo, was a winged sword; somehow he knew that was the mark of his union with Zeetha. Above that, on the right atrium, was a blue-green winged trilobite he recognized as Gil and Agatha's mark. That one was shallower, though, more like a stamp. He nodded his understanding.
The consort mark lit up brighter green, like the fae light he'd seen in Zeetha and Gil. "All of these marks are unique to you," Zantabraxus noted, "but remember the consort mark, especially its location."
He nodded again. "Why's it a sword? This one's just wings." He held up his left hand, displaying the black marriage mark under his wedding ring.
"That I can only partly explain. When the choice to love and to wed is freely made on both spouses' part, it is typically only the mortal spouse who bears the marriage mark upon the skin, and the mark itself is typically only the sigil of the other spouse. Gilgamesh and Agatha are unusual in this regard, not least because they chose each other long before becoming conscious of their choice; I cannot explain why, unless perhaps it has to do with the unique nature of the Heterodyne line. In any case, the consort mark upon the heart, which anchors the bond between souls, combines the sigils of both houses. The sword must therefore bear some significance as an identifier of your self."
He blinked and murmured, "The Michael Sword..."
She studied him a moment, then nodded. "Yes, you are of that line. I had not fully recognized it until now."
He ran a hand over his face. "Wow. Okay. So, uh... Zeetha's got one of those, too?"
"Yes, and also the mark of your merging with Gilgamesh and Agatha—you were the vessel, true, but since none of them are pure spirit, their bodies were blended with yours as well. That bond differs in many respects from the consort bond, as is clear from the position and depth of the mark, but all four of you share it. This mark, however, is yours alone." She rotated the image to display the left side of the heart.
And there, gouged knife-deep into the muscle, was a rough S. W.
"Sammy," he breathed, unable to keep a fond smile off his face or to stop himself from reaching for the image. His fingers met air—but the brother-bond quivered a little anyway.
She arched one elegant eyebrow. "You knew of this bond?"
He nodded. "Yeah, Gil an' Zee both told me, but... never seen proof before." He paused. "Would these show up on, like, x-rays and stuff?"
"Perhaps not on x-ray, but other forms of imaging, possibly."
"Just wondered why Sun never said anything if he saw that."
She chuckled. "Sun Jen-djieh is of my people, the grandson of one of my handmaidens. He knows when and how to keep secrets."
He blinked several times. "Wow. Okay. Huh."
"Now." The image dissolved into light. "This is your father's heart, as I recall it."
The light re-formed into another heart image, which she rotated to display the right ventricle more clearly. There was a different sigil, much smaller and silver-white, in the position where the consort mark had been on Dean's heart; she enlarged the image and made the sigil light up green to give him a better look at it. The sigil looked sort of like a stylized M, not quite heart-shaped, with a bar across the center point. And the texture, from what he could make out, looked more like a branding scar than the marks he'd seen on his own heart.
"That don't look like two house sigils to me," he finally said aloud.
"You are correct. This mark is Enochian."
He looked up at her sharply.
She dissolved the image and lowered her hands. "Do you know what cupids are?"
"Yes, ma'am. Chubby little kids with wings and bows 'n' arrows, show up on valentine cards."
"That is only a mortal marketing image. In truth, the cupids are the lowest rank of angels, who act only on the orders of their superiors. The 'arrow' they shoot is but a metaphor for the placing of that mark. In most cases, the marks are placed in pairs, forging a bond between two souls that may or may not have already inclined toward each other. Those so marked invariably fall in love with one another."
He felt the blood drain from his face as he caught the implications. A cupid had marked Mom and Dad for each other even before Dad had left Lawrence to join the Marines. That meant the angels had wanted Mom and Dad married—had wanted the Letters out of the way—had wanted Mom dead—
He was on his feet and pacing before he remembered where he was. This wasn't some cheap motel room he could trash; Agatha would have his hide if he broke anything. He jammed his hands into his hair to stop himself. But if he didn't break something, or kill something or hit someone, he might just explode.
The angels Mom had trusted, had promised him were watching over him, they had just stood by and let Azazel kill her, let Azazel put that curse on Sammy—
"Come, my warrior," Zantabraxus said, putting a hand on Dean's shoulder. "Shall we spar?"
He dropped his hands and nodded tightly. She waved her other hand... and suddenly they were in a sweltering jungle somewhere, and he was holding swords like Zeetha's and was... well, not naked, but wearing a lot less clothing than he'd ever expected to wear in front of his mother-in-law. Then again, Zantabraxus wasn't wearing much aside from some mostly-decorative armor, either.
"We cannot hurt each other here," she assured him before the embarrassment could really catch up with him. Then she stepped several paces away and raised her own swords. "You know the forms, do you not?"
He took a deep breath and nodded.
"Come, then. Begin when you are ready."
He took another deep breath—and suddenly the image of the sigil flashed in his mind again, followed by Mom on the ceiling, himself running outside with Sammy while their world burned down, Dad coming home drunk and bloody and crying for Mom, Jess on the ceiling, Henry waking up pale and shaking from the nightmares of Abaddon's slaughter of the Letters—
—and the angels had let it all happen—
He attacked.
This wasn't like his friendly matches with Zeetha, safeguards of whatever pocket dimension they were in notwithstanding. Zantabraxus never made a move he couldn't block, but she didn't pull her blows, and neither did he. He even landed a few hits, although his swords never penetrated her skin; the blade either retracted or turned soft or disappeared altogether, only to return to normal when he pulled the hilt back. He fought with all the force of twenty years of hunter training, fueled by rage and grief, and she gave as good as she got.
He had absolutely no sense of time in this place, but the fight wasn't a short one. Eventually, however, she succeeded in disarming him, which was the first point at which he realized that his strength was flagging. Still caught in the fervor of battle, though, he rushed at her empty-handed... tripped... and suddenly he was on his knees, in her arms, sobbing his eyes out. She rubbed his back and made soothing noises, and he clung to her, that part of him that was forever four years old desperately drinking in a mother's love once more.
When he finally came back to himself, physically spent and emotionally drained, they were back on the couch in Gil and Agatha's sitting room in their regular clothes, and what he could hear of other conversations elsewhere in the house told him that no time had passed at all.
"There, now, my son," Zantabraxus murmured. "Do you feel better?"
He nodded. Yes, ma'am, he meant to say, but what croaked out was, "Thanks, Mom."
Before he could even cringe at the slip, she kissed his forehead gently, and a wave of comforting warmth washed over him. "You fought valiantly, dear prince. My children have chosen well. And yes, you may call me 'Mom' or 'Mother' if you choose, or 'Zanta' if you prefer."
"'Kay. Thanks." Some knot of tension in his chest relaxed and vanished, and he didn't think it was just because she approved of him. She'd never replace Mom, of course; nobody could, even if they looked like Mom, which Zanta didn't. They were totally different in almost every way, and Zanta wasn't even human. Still... there was that inner four-year-old in his beloved I Wuv Hugz T-shirt, crying with relief while the outer twenty-six-year-old was too exhausted to even sit up.
He had a mom again.
After a moment, she handed him a box of Kleenex, and he mustered the energy to wipe his face and blow his nose. Then he took a deep breath and let it out again. "We can't tell Sammy," he whispered hoarsely.
She frowned a little. "Tell him what?"
"About the cupids." He sighed and sat up enough to lean against the back of the couch instead of her shoulder. "How much do you know? About us?"
"My children have told me little. Our sparring match showed me much."
"Sammy still believes—I mean, he still prays and all that jazz. He's having a hard enough time with this whole thing, knowing what we know an'... an' what we can guess. The demon said somethin' about Mom havin' sold 'im, but I can't believe that. At least, not... not at face value. Maybe Mom made some kind of deal to get out of the life, marry Dad, but... there's no way she coulda known, is there?"
"I have not heard of a deal that set the second-born as the price, no. Most demon deals require the deal-maker's soul. It is only the gods and the fae who require a child, and then most often the first-born. Rarely, they take the youngest child, but your mother was too young for any but the Fates and the Most High to know for certain whether Sam was to be the last."
Dean dragged a hand over his face. "I was cool with... with thinkin' God didn't exist, or at least not bein' sure. But if... if the angels set this whole thing up, whatever the hell really happened that night, however the hell Azazel got in the house to put that curse on Sammy and kill Mom... it would kill Sam, knowin' that." He finally met her eyes, silently begging her to understand.
She nodded slowly. "I cannot promise that he will not learn some other way. But I will say nothing to him of this matter."
He heaved a quiet sigh of relief. "Thanks."
She smiled a little and squeezed his hand, and his weariness from sparring fled. "And now I think you are expected in the kitchen, and I have someone else I must meet."
He nodded and stood just as Gil's and Klaus' voices became audible in the hall. Suddenly catching Gil's sense of mischief, Dean went out to meet them and exchanged a few pleasantries with Klaus.
"And in here," Gil said, "we have a surprise for you, Dad."
Eyebrows raised, Klaus turned—and gasped loudly as Zanta stood up from the couch. "ZANTA?!"
"Nyob zoo,* Klaus," Zanta returned with a grin.
Klaus tried to say something several times, but nothing came out. Finally, he gave up, rushed into the sitting room, and swept her into a passionate kiss.
Gil nudged Dean. C'mon, he sent through the merge-link.
Even as Dean followed Gil further into the house, he heard Klaus murmur, "I thought I'd never see you again..."
"So you and Mom got into it, huh?" Gil asked, drawing Dean's attention away from his in-laws' reunion.
"Yeah, in a good way," Dean replied. "You hear much?"
"Not as much as Zeetha did. Did hear your conversation at the end, though. Good thing I wasn't actually talking to Dad at the time; I'm not sure I'm ready to let him in on that side of things."
Dean nodded. "And?"
Gil sighed. "Sam needs to find out eventually, and it'd be better if it comes from one of us than from a demon. But we all agree—'eventually' isn't today."
"Or tomorrow," they chorused.
"What are you going to tell Henry, though?" Gil continued.
"Aw, hell, hadn't even thought about Henry." Dean blew the air out of his cheeks. "The basics, if he asks. He's smart enough to put the pieces together from there."
Gil nodded. "Mom really likes you, by the way."
Dean blinked. "Huh?"
Gil pointed to the spot on Dean's forehead where Zanta had kissed him. "It's not visible to the human eye, but she's sealed you as a member of her family. Gives you way more protection than even the consort bond does. She did the same thing to Agatha when she first got here."
"Huh. Wow. Awesome." Dean made a mental note to ask her to seal Sam and Henry the same way.
As it turned out, however, he didn't have to. He was still reassuring Zeetha that he was all right when Bobby arrived with Sam and Henry; Jess, they reported, had opted to stay at the motel that night but would call in the morning to let them know for sure whether she was coming for lunch. Agatha took charge of introducing Bobby around while Gil went to get his parents. Klaus' hair looked more rumpled than usual when they came back, which made Zeetha grin, but both Klaus and Zanta were composed enough to greet the newcomers cordially. Zanta only shook hands with Bobby, but she kissed Sam and Henry on the cheek—and Dean caught the barest green flash each time.
Yeah, Zeetha confirmed at his silent sigh of relief, sliding her arm around his waist. There's another mark for the greater household; she might give that to Bobby and Jim. I've already seen it on Ardsley and Van, and I think she gave it to Tarvek and Colette, too. But what she gave Sam and Henry was the family mark. It won't be as strong without the consort bond, but... they're your blood, and you're practically our blood.
I love you so damn much, Dean thought back and kissed her temple.
.
* Hello (lit. "live well"—Hmong)
