Manny got off his motorbike as the Impala pulled up behind him, alongside the lonely forest road. He checked that his aging Desert Eagle was safely in its holster, then started buckling his sword-belt as he walked to the rear of the car where the brothers were selecting from an impressive arsenal.
"I suggest you go for stopping power," he said. "I doubt these things'll even notice if a bullet goes through them."
Dean looked up briefly, not quite succeeding in the attempt to hide his suspicion. He'd barely spoken since Manny had heard the pair getting up and gone to tap on their door.
It was Sam, who was doing a better job of pretending to think Manny was normal, who spoke. "Anything else?"
"Blades. Dismemberment is the only way to stop them."
"And that's only temporary, right?"
"Oh, the pieces will still be trying to kill you. The real trick is making sure they don't find their way back to the Cauldron to get put together again."
"What were you going to tell us about burning them?"
For a few long moments the only sound was the rhythmic whisper of Dean's machete against a whetstone.
Manny swallowed hard. "They try to get away... actually, it – it might be worth a shot if there are only a few."
"And if there are more than a few?"
"Then they'll run right over anyone who tries to stop them. It's like a shoal of piranhas. Strips men to the bone in moments."
That one actually made Sam's eyes widen a little. He accepted the whetstone Dean offered him and started sharpening a big hunting knife.
Manny continued, "For all anyone knows, even ashes might be able to get back to the Cauldron in the end. The guys back then didn't really have time for empirical testing."
"Swell," muttered Dean.
"So, Manny – why don't you take us to where you got bitten and we'll see if I can pick up a trail?"
"Sounds fine to me."
The day was overcast and breezy. As Manny led the way through the whispering trees, he felt watching eyes all around; there was a time when he'd have been able to see them. He skirted a fallen tree – yes, he'd been by here. A possum's bright eyes peeked at them and then swiftly vanished into the darkness beneath. He wriggled his shoulders, trying to dissipate the tension crawling up his spine. Closer... they'd be there soon and he was finding it harder and harder not to jump at the least little noise, even the ones he knew perfectly well were a rabbit or a bird. Oh, and there was a smear of blood on a tree-trunk – his blood.
Finally he laid a hand on a moss-covered boulder, smooth and rounded and why did he have to go thinking of a skull? "This is it." He pointed to a snapped sapling, recently-disturbed leaves and a deep groove in the soil where he'd slipped in his scramble to get away.
"Okay," said Sam. "Let's fan out and see what we can find."
It was Dean who pointed out the small bootprint in a patch of mud, then a broken twig with a few olive threads hanging from it.
"It matches her waistcoat – uh, vest," said Manny. "Did you find out anything about her, by the way?"
"I think her name's Donna Steiner. Vanished from a hiking trip six months ago." Sam paused. "You'd have told us if you knew any way to... save her?"
"The Cauldron's a thing of death. It empties bodies out before it fills them up again. This isn't like demonic possession."
Dean's eyes narrowed. "Oh yeah, and we should just take your word for it? She could be still in there!"
"She's not." Manny walked around him and strode through the trees.
Behind him, a heated response was quietly interrupted by Sam, who caught up with ease and asked, "How do you know?"
He didn't slow down. "We checked. I was the best druid around and Bran had more of our father in him than Branwen and me put together. If there was anything human in there, I'd have sensed it yesterday if not before. Even de-powered gods can tell these things. And by the way, if you want to stop us overhearing you, the bar down the road isn't far enough."
He walked on without looking around, and all he knew of the brothers' reaction was the significant click of a cocked pistol – Dean's.
"Bobby didn't know a way to kill me, then. Actually, I'm not certain low earth orbit is far enough. I must check on that sometime. Philosophical question, meaning no disrespect – how much steak would you eat if you knew how the cow felt?"
There was a moment's pause, presumably so that the human could sort through the leaps from one subject to another. "So we're cattle, huh?"
Manny sighed, stopped and turned to look Dean in the eye, trying to ignore the gun. "Not to me, that's the point. Most gods always were gods. To them, you're a different species. To many, yes, you're cattle. But I started out a mortal man. I thought I'd live out my span and die like the rest of my family – except Lir, of course. I've spent over four thousand years hanging onto that humanity."
Dean's jaw was set, his gaze hard. It was Sam who spoke. "You don't eat human flesh?"
"Only when it's been freely donated by its owner. Willing sacrifices have been thin on the ground these past couple of thousand years, hence my current condition." Manny edged backwards and to his left, gaze still locked with Dean's.
"Ohhh," Dean drawled. "Well, that obviously makes all the difference!"
"You're damned right it does, Mister Twenty-First Century American! I'll wager you've never been hungry more than a few hours together in your life. You've no idea how it feels, knowing one disastrous harvest or, or ill-timed war – or a hungry monster – could end you and everyone you ever cared about. So yes, people would give their lives to make sure I could protect their communities, and who the hell are you to say they were wrong? To tell me, what, I should have thrown it back in their faces and told them they were on their own because I was too squeamish to do what they were asking me – on bended knee – to do?"
"Squeamish? How about -" Dean started forward and vanished with a yelp. Sam froze for a microsecond before yelling his brother's name and dashing over to the spot.
"Huh," said Manny, "I didn't think it was that deep."
"Didn't think – there are old mines all over this place! Dean!"
A muffled voice came from below. "I'm okay. Hang on." Scrabbling. "Nah, I ain't getting back up there. Go get a rope an' I'll check where this tunnel goes."
"I've got a better idea," said Manny.
From the hole came a very specific and colourful suggestion as to what he could do with his idea, followed by an equally colourful warning about the consequences if he harmed Sam.
Manny shrugged it off. "Really, it'll only take a minute."
Sam gave him a dirty look. His own weapon was drawn, but not pointed at Manny - yet. "You just dropped my brother down a hole."
"Bullets hurt. Are you going to let me help?"
Instincts warred behind the young man's eyes. "Convince me."
"You wouldn't have figured it out if I hadn't at least been honest about my name. If you've read the Mabinogion you know what kind of man I was. That's still me. I don't want stray dead things hurting innocent people, and I definitely don't want that damned cauldron back in the world. And I don't eat humans. We're on the same side – at least for now."
"What exactly is this idea?"
"Have you lost your frigging mind, Sammy?"
"Shut up, Dean."
"There's a reason I came this way," Manny said hurriedly. "Over there."
Sam looked. "That's a yew, isn't it? Looks old."
"An English yew, to be exact. Almost as old as I am, I'll wager, and its roots go deep. If there's another way out, it'll know – and it'll know if the cauldron's here, too."
"And it'll... tell you?"
"Oh, trees are loquacious things. You just need to know how to listen." Manny approached the ancient tree slowly, respectfully and laid his fingertips on the bark. For several moments there was nothing – with his senses open, it was hard to tune out Sam's agitation.
Then – there. Earth and water and the whisper of wind. Leaf and seed and sap and time. Was his forehead pressed against bark, or was there flesh touching his trunk? Deep, deep roots and deeper memories. Twigs, branches, new trunks, four thousand flowerings and more. Creeping things, climbing things and flying things – and the creatures that walked upright. There had been plenty of those, above the ground and below. Finally he found it, the poison beneath it all, the slow, slow heartbeat of something that should never have been in the world. His stomach lurched and he pulled away sharply.
"Got it," he muttered, then leaned on his knees, breathing hard, pulling back into himself, his awareness of Sam's contained impatience fading.
He was out of practice. It shouldn't take him this long to recover.
Finally, he was back. Sam's heartbeat was quick, his pupils dilated, but outwardly he was still and calm, his gun back in its holster.
"You were right. It's an old mine. The deeper parts have been flooded since they built the dam downstream, but the entrance is dry. This way."
Sam relayed the important details to Dean, ignoring his protests, and they set off. It was only a few minutes before they emerged from the trees within sight of a reservoir. Manny led the way through the bushes to a spot he'd learned of from the yew. He muttered a curse as his shin smacked into a low branch.
"This used to be a tin mine, I think," Sam informed him, scrubbing moss from a barely-visible wooden lintel. "Yes, here – Horse Feathers Mine. I was reading about it last night. It was sealed up in eighteen-sixty-eight, after a cave-in. Killed over thirty men."
"They abandoned a profitable mine over one accident? You think that's the whole story?"
"I'm kind of doubting it." Stones tumbled as Sam excavated the mine's entrance.
Manny stopped rubbing his shin and went to help. "And when you consider that they went to the trouble of bricking the place up..."
"Yeah. Nice big hole there, though." Sam examined the bright red brick dust on his fingers.
"My godlike tracking senses tell me that's a recent break."
"No, really? Those rocks weren't there accidentally, were they?"
"Probably not. Remember we're not up against zombies here. These things are smart enough to hide if they need to. Let me go first. I can survive something ripping my head off."
"Uh, yeah, I think so. You could've killed my brother. I'm not real inclined to turn my back on you."
Manny grinned. "One problem at a time, huh? Practical. Good."
Sam's lips tightened disgustedly; he disdained to reply.
Manny stepped over the remains of the wall and went a few paces before stopping to look, listen, and use the other sense he couldn't truly have described in any human language. Upon seeing a torch-beam shine past, he whirled and snapped, "Switch that thing off!"
The young man did so immediately, and a heartbeat later looked astonished at himself. Manny stifled a grin and turned away again. Being a prince was just like riding a bike.
"You do remember that humans can't see in the dark, right?"
"The light'll alert them. I'll tell you when you need it."
"I'm supposed to just trust you?"
"Look, apart from the time I had a gun pointed at me, have I ever led either of you astray?"
Again the disgusted lip-tightening. "All those careful half-truths you told us yesterday?"
"Didn't you have to talk your brother out of killing me on principle? You hunters have to lie all the time, and so do I. I hate it, for the record."
"Let's just get on with finding him."
"Mind your head."
Off in the deeps, Manny could hear... more noise than Dean could have made. There was shuffling and thumping, the rattle of dislodged pebbles.
"Is that them?" Sam whispered.
"Either that or some sodding big moles. Grab on to me, we can move quicker that way."
After a moment the other man's hand took hold of his elbow, and he quickened his pace a little. It felt good to have human company – even if it didn't like him very much – and yet to be himself, able to be honest. Too bad it was accompanied with a slight nervousness about what they might yet do to him.
He muttered a warning to Sam and bent further as the ceiling lowered – or, to be more accurate, as the floor rose slightly. After a few minutes he stopped, hearing Dean calling for his brother. There was suppressed desperation in the voice, and Manannan found himself wanting, very badly, to keep quiet, his unease abruptly blossoming into terror. Let them be distracted tearing the man to pieces, while he and Sam kept the element of surprise.
His hesitation lasted perhaps long enough for Sam's heart to beat twice, and he was furious with himself. "Switch on. Run. He's in trouble."
Sam shot past him faster than he'd have believed possible in the cramped tunnel, while he stood like a stump, willing his feet to start moving again. The light had already vanished around a corner before he managed it. He wanted, very badly, to throw up again. There was a gunshot. Then another.
With a final push he uprooted himself and stumbled around the corner, catching up to Sam almost at once. The young man was standing at the end of the tunnel where it fell away into a natural cavern, tumbled boulders below and stalactites above. His torch-beam picked out Dean on the other side, perched on a boulder and hanging on for dear life with one hand whilst blowing away any Cauldron-spawn that managed to climb up near him. Manannan was relieved to see he'd been willing to take advice about stopping power – not that it would help in the long run. Surveying the writhing mass below it was clear the boy couldn't possibly have enough bullets.
Sam's eyes were wide. "So many," he whispered.
"Four and a half thousand years' worth," Manny answered. "Any bright ideas?"
"Sammy!" Dean pounded a foot into the face of a too-near spawn, knocking it into the ones below it.
Sam swung his torch around, picking out geological formations. "There's gotta be some way across."
"There does? Why?"
A long arm shot out and grabbed his lapel, getting some skin along with it. "Because my brother's not dying down here, that's why! You're a god – there's got to be something you can do!"
"A powerless god."
"Because you won't accept unwilling human sacrifice, right?" Sam let go of Manny and pulled out his knife. His jaw was set. "How much do you need?"
"W-what?"
"Do I have to die? Would an arm be enough?"
"Uh – no, no, you don't need to cut anything off. Just some of your blood."
There was a flash of... something in Sam's eyes at the last word; but whatever it was, he swiftly hid it, set the torch down and yanked at his sleeve.
Manny glanced over at Dean, who was hacking off a hand – claw – which had achieved an iron grip on his boot, and decided not to mention that sacrifices tended to work better if done with awe and reverence. At least the proper selflessness was there. He took Sam's hand and gently guided the tip of the knife to an artery. "Say a few words about dedicating your sacrifice to me. Then push. I'll patch you up when I've got enough."
Sam frowned and with bad grace muttered something that sounded about right – not that it mattered in the end. The form helped, but intention was sufficient.
He hated the leap of anticipation in his chest as the knife pierced skin. The gush of blood seared across his vision, red in a world of greys, so vivid that suddenly all the centuries-suppressed longings struck him like a kick in the head and then there was the taste of it in his mouth, heady lusciousness that seared its way down his throat and he knew, he knew there was something very wrong with this young man, but he barely noticed the avalanche of images in his head, just the incredible half-forgotten rush of human self-sacrifice filling him up after so many long years.
It seemed like some time before he realised he'd taken more than enough, but it couldn't be, he realised as with an effort he wrenched his lips from the fount and sealed it up with a thought; Sam was steady on his feet, his heart still thumping strongly and his veins mostly full. The world was a cacophony, his every sense gushing information like a broken tap, and it seemed incredible that there had been a time when he'd been used to this. Across the cavern, Dean's frantic heartbeat seemed barely fainter, and the rock and earth around them was full of things that squirmed and scuttled and breathed. The worst of all was the sixth sense, the one he could never have put into human words. He hadn't been a god the last time he'd faced them, hadn't been equipped to truly perceive the ghastly void within the creatures. Nature abhorred a vacuum.
"And I'm part of nature," he muttered, resting a hand against the rough-hewn stone of the tunnel. Dean bellowed as one of the monsters finally sank its teeth into his thigh, but it didn't matter – Manny knew exactly how he'd fix it. All of it.
He was a sea god, and the reservoir was fresh water; but that wouldn't stop him. At his call, it answered – swiftly, readily, joyously it poured uphill, over the crumbling brickwork and into the tunnel. Gods, what a rush!
"Relax," he muttered as Sam's eyes widened. "I'm in charge here." True to his word, he nudged the onrushing wall of water so that not a drop got onto the young man. He took no such action for himself; there was no need. The water knew who its friend was. It burst into the ancient cavern and swiftly became a vortex, seizing the defiled corpses and smashing them into the walls, the boulders, each other, smashing them to pieces. A sneaky little wave plucked away Dean's attackers but left the man himself only slightly damp. Manny was pleased to see that he was too smart to look a gift horse in the mouth, simply scrambling higher.
Once satisfied that the monsters were sufficiently pulverised, Manny encouraged the water to drain away through whatever holes and cracks he could find, and pulled some back the way it had come; it took with it all but the biggest pieces of Cauldron-spawn. Sam looked grudgingly impressed. Dean was poking in confusion at the spot on his thigh where there was no longer a bite mark.
"I can fix your jeans too, if you like," Manny called.
Dean's gaze flicked up to him, to Sam, then back. "No thanks."
"Suit yourself." He scrambled down and made his way over the boulders to the far end of the cavern, then laid his hand on a block of stone that had the whole sad story engraved in pictures around its sides. "There was a quarter here. Someone's taken it."
"You sure it's nowhere around?" Sam asked.
"I'm sure. In my current state, something that powerful – I'd sense it miles away. The good news is, now that it's gone the bodies it's... transformed should finally stop. Eventually." He sighed. "That must be why any of them bothered to climb out at all – their instinct was to find it. I should have guessed. I'm sorry."
"We needed to be sure. At least they won't hurt anybody else."
"Look at this," said Dean, indicating a slowly-moving shape at his feet. "Damn thing's trying to get somewhere."
Manny frowned at the disembodied forearm. The hand was opening, closing, dragging itself by fractions of an inch across the stony ground. There was definite purpose there and, after a moment's contemplation, he snatched the thing up, broke off the hand and wrapped it in his handkerchief, discarding the rest.
"What the hell?"
"It's trying to get back to the fragment. If I can do some triangulation before it dies properly, I'll narrow it down a lot."
"Great. How'd you get all mojo'd up again, anyhow?"
Manny met Dean's challenging gaze and said, "With your brother's kind co-operation. Fight with him, if you must."
Sam glanced up from inspecting the carvings. "Come on, Dean, I've gone through tougher donations at blood drives. And it did save your ass."
The older brother mumbled something about bloodsuckers but seemed willing to concede the point.
"Then I think we're done here," said Manny. "I'll do some divinations, see whether I can't get some kind of read on who took the thing. And now I'm powered up again it'll be easy to track down that hiker and any others who got out... dangerously intact."
"Not if we find 'em first," said Dean.
"As you wish. Thank you, anyway. I really couldn't have got this far without you."
