An Apostle of the Lord, Chapter 6
In Terre Haute three waitresses were taking a short smoke break outside the kitchen door of a roadside diner that commonly served a lot of travelers who cruised down Interstate 70 in Indiana. Their conversation turned toward a couple of regulars who often stopped in on their way back home to Kansas. The two men never gave consistent stories about what they did for work-once even showing FBI badges-or even the same names, and that was part of their entertainment whenever the guys stopped in. One of the trio, Celia, had overheard them referring to each other as "Sammy" and "Dean" and was sure that was their names, but the girls in conversations among themselves referred to them as "Long-and-lean" and "Freckles."
"Well, time to go back in." Barb stubbed out her cigarette.
Jeannette followed suit and wished a cheerful, "Have a good day!" to three customers that passed closed by on the walkway that led behind the diner to a housing addition.
They turned to go in the kitchen door when something above cast a dark shadow over them. Looking up in unison, they were startled at the sight of a dark gooey mass descending upon them, too quickly for any other reaction. All three were immediately covered completely in the mass, which soon was drawn back up, leaving nothing but three red oily puddles outside the door.
A duplicate set of women in waitress uniforms with name tags reading "Celia," "Barb," and "Jeannette" circled around the bloody spots and entered the kitchen.
"I said I'd warm Freckle's coffee," said Celia. She grabbed the coffee pot, but paused to report to the others that she didn't know any more in this body about the Winchesters than they had known before. The others confirmed the same before she and Jeannette headed towards Sam and Dean at a table in the back corner of the diner.
Celia poured hot coffee into Dean's cup and pushed the sugar packet holder in his direction. "So, Sweetie, what will it be? Cherry or apple? I'll heat it up." Dean grinned broadly, thought better of replying "You already are," and opted for cherry pie. With whipped cream.
Barb approached the counter where a white-haired man was squinting at the menu on the wall behind it. Of course it was Eddie. He perked up as she arrived and ordered a "stack of cheese toasties" and black coffee. She took a guess as to how many a stack of toasties would be and turned around to grill them. She guessed correctly, proved by the wide-eyed glee expressed in the man's eyes when she returned with the cheese toasties.
She had noticed Eddie watching the Winchesters as she fixed his breakfast. So, when she warmed his coffee from a fresh pot, she leaned in and said, "You know those guys back there, Honey?"
Eddie grinned broadly and took a sip of coffee. "Neighbors!"
Barb was intrigued and leaned closer. "Really?' You're from near Lebanon, too? So...which side of the bunker is your place? Are you Joe Riley? One of the Landrums?"
Eddie's cackles rose. How would this woman know about the bunker? The Winchesters weren't known to be open to just anyone about their hometown or home life. He decided it was time to disappear in the usual Eddie Timms style.
He pulled out a pencil and pad and scribbled "Give to Sam" on the top sheet. Then poked the pencil through the paper and held them up with a finger at each end of the pencil.
"I gotta pee," he said and stood up. "Could you give this to Sam over there while I'm gone? I'll be back." Barb watched the pencil turn from wood into silver between his fingers. He handed them to her and turned toward the restroom.
"Sure," Barb said through the odd sense of awe she was feeling. She walked towards the Winchesters, but stopped short of their table. Give to Sam. She knew which one Celia had identified as Sam, but for the life or her she could not recall why she was standing there with a note for him with a silver pencil piercing it.
At the boys' table, she handed the pencil and note to Sam. "Someone said to give this to you."
Sam took the pencil and note and waved the silver pencil in front of Dean's face. "Eddie," he said.
Both brothers and all three waitresses turned to look back into the room. There was no Eddie. And no cheese toasties on the counter. Just a cup of coffee and a some money. And Barb could not give a reason she didn't know where the note came from. The brothers glanced knowingly at each other and said it made no difference to them. They were sure they would hear about it later, if not from Eddie himself, then from Castiel when they got home.
Barb and Jeannette walked back to the counter. They looked around themselves on the way.
"I don't remember any Eddie. I don't even remember anyone giving me that paper and pencil!" Barb said.
Jeannette surveyed the few customers in the diner and spied a man with black hair just finishing up his meal. She pointed. "That guy's name is Ed. Remember him? He drives a blue pickup."
"No," said Barb, "I'll have to assume it's him and that he knows about the Winchesters. I'm going after him when he leaves. We'll at least have transportation to Lebanon. You two follow us."
Eddie had grabbed his food and dashed into the kitchen and out the back door as soon as Barb turned her back to walk to the boys' table. Outside the door he slipped and stopped to see what was slick. He studied the three red puddles for a moment and shrugged his shoulders. No idea. He headed to the Jeep to eat and wait until he was sure the waitress had forgotten him before going back in to say "Hiya" to the Winchesters.
He sat on the hood of his Jeep and ate. Now and then he pulled off a piece of toast and poked it through an opening in the side window behind him. Castiel's cat Cassandra was in there and she devoured the offerings.
It wasn't long until "Ed" came out of the diner and walked towards his pickup.
It wasn't much longer than that until Barb slipped through the door and hurried after him.
"Ed, you forgot something!" Barb said.
The man turned around to see her pointing up. He looked up and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Eddie was watching this from atop his Jeep hood. He saw the man look up and at the same time the woman morphed into a very tall gangly black figure that began to swell and grow upward and then down onto the customer, engulfing his body totally. His form disappeared inside the mass and it all drew up back into the blob it came from. The mass reshaped into the man it had just dissolved, leaving only a puddle of red as evidence.
Eddie still watched, but now from under the Jeep. Cheese toasties were scattered on the ground and he hoped fervently that the being hadn't noticed his less-than-graceful scramble from the hood to theground and under the vehicle. The man looked about the lot and finally towards the Jeep. He walked over while Eddie sweated. He heard Cassandra start hissing from the front seat above and the man sneered and turned to walk to the diner.
He watched as the other two waitresses came out the front door to join the man.
"This isn't the guy Eddie," the man scowled at them. "But, we have transportation." He pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and the three climbed into the truck.
Eddie poked his head out from under the Jeep to watch the truck leave the lot and take the road leading to the interstate.
After the truck was out of sight, Eddie climbed out and stood up. He pushed another piece of bread through the window for Cassandra and then went to inspect the puddle.
He held his hand over the spot, half-expecting it to jump up at him. But, no, there was no life, just minute particles of blood and tissue. No essence of a human, so it would be useless for him to chase after the truck and restore the soul into the new body. There was no soul to restore. There was no essence of a demon either. So, Eddie couldn't have put a soul into that thing's body anyway; there wasn't anything he could have been able to draw out of the body to replace.
Eddie paused to ponder over the loss of one, and possibly four, souls that day. A failure he sincerely dreaded would happen whenever Timothy would send him out on his missions. He stood and soaked in the sadness. The eternal loss.
The beings were definitely shapeshifting monsters. That's what Timothy warned Eddie he would be dealing with when he got to the bunker. And silver was the weapon material of choice for killing shapeshifters. So he leaned down and touched a finger to the puddle, which turned to silver and then dissolved into air. He did the same to the three puddles outside the kitchen. He was sure they weren't going to evolve into something demonic or otherwise, but let's not take chances. He did not want to have to go back to clean up a bigger mess due to his lack of thoroughness.
Looking towards the diner, Eddie was not in the mood to talk to anyone. He'd rather stew in his dark mood right now. Besides, he would see Castiel and the Winchesters in Kansas in a few hours. He hopped into the Jeep and drove out of the lot and headed towards the bunker. He could greet Sam and Dean when they got home and warn them then what was coming. He was sure the blue truck ahead of him was going that way, too. But when would its occupants show up at the bunker and what would they look like by then?