A/N: As we draw towards the final series of events, I want to send hugs to Padawan-BubbyKenobi for faithful feedback and encouragement on every single chapter of this monster, which somehow developed out of a handwritten page made in a lecture theatre last year. So thank you sweets, it does help!
Back behind the wheel of the Explorer, Adam got his phone out and started to write a text.
"Bobby or David?" Ben asked.
"David. We should check out the cemetery north of town – its the biggest for miles. Night is probably best to avoid visitors."
Ben nodded, though Adam wasn't looking at him. Adam seemed perfectly calm and intent. Just a little more – humourless – than he usually was at this stage of the hunt. Adam didn't enjoy violence, but he normally liked the puzzle-solving part of a case.
They killed the rest of the afternoon watching TV and reading the local papers; Adam did press-ups on the motel room floor, a sign of suppressed nervous energy. When he got back up on his bed, Ben felt like he ought to do something. Make some kind of gesture. They weren't generally physically affectionate – when they kissed it was a teasing 'You're hot', or 'You wanna?' and when they weren't having sex they still tended to keep separate beds. Ben had never gotten used to sleeping with anyone in the literal sense of the words. But Adam had comforted him in those early days, when Ben was wrecked and grieving, and he wasn't supposed to be the one keeping it together now, wasn't he? So he positioned himself with his back against his headboard, and when Adam had finished his exercises, he opened his arms in an inviting gesture.
"You want to cuddle?" Adam raised his eyebrows, reminding Ben for a split second of Dean.
Ben shrugged and half-smiled. Adam crawled up and joined Ben on the bed. Instead of curling up against him though, he cupped Ben's face and forcefully parted his lips with his own tongue. Ben made an involuntary surprised sound, unprepared for his air supply to be so abruptly cut off.
"O-kay," he laughed, pulling back a little, "What's gotten into you?"
"Nothing – yet," said Adam suggestively. Then he fell silent and determined.
Afterwards, a strange unease crept over Ben.
"Still okay?" he asked hesitantly.
"You can ask me as much as you like, I'm still going to keep saying yes," said Adam mildly.
"Now let's get something to eat. It will be dark soon, and I'm starving."
The Elbert-Kiowa cemetery, located a half mile north of the town, was a surprising size for such a small local population. High wire gates marked the entrance on a dirt road; David was waiting for them at sunset, dressed in the same black jacket and dark jeans he'd worn the first time Ben had met him. 'Lurking', Ben thought uncharitably, and pushed the thought from his mind. David nodded to them both and Ben returned the nod. The mysterious Rachel Tracer was still absent.
"Sample?" David asked, addressing Adam only. Adam produced the small plastic bag in which he'd kept some of the grave dirt. "I made a contact at the Denver U labs this afternoon," said David and pocketed he bag. "I'll take it up tomorrow and have her analyse it. Shall we?" he raised his eyebrows and gestured with his head to the cemetery. The graves in the first field were sparse and mostly small, just headstones with dates and names:
"What, uh, are we looking for exactly?" Ben felt like the newbie again.
"The sort of hideout amenable to ghouls," said David evenly, and Ben absorbed that.
"You've hunted ghouls before?" he asked.
"Few times."
Ben and Adam shared a look. Adam shook his head slightly, communicating that he hadn't been there. Ben wished David would share a little more information. It got worse:
"Michigan," said David, raising his eyebrows at an ivy-twined angel monument. He looked at Adam and Adam nodded:
"Just a bit."
"Satisfying."
"For you, maybe!"
"You loved it," David smirked. Adam smiled too:
"Yeah I kinda did."
"Anything I should know about?" Ben said casually.
"David and I once hunted a witch who was animating statues," Adam filled in. "Had a thing for creepy angels." It was creepy - tall, with empty, white marble eyes, hands clasped together imploringly. Night had properly fallen now, and the figure gleamed dully in the moonlight, the edges of its wings bladelike against the sky. "David figured out how to turn her own spell against her when she tried to catch it – but of course, because she was already animated, it, well, worked in reverse." He grinned.
"That's pretty cool," Ben admitted.
"Takes a mirror and some brains." David was headed towards an adjacent field, where Ben could make out dark shapes that looked like the entrances to crypt or burial vaults: square and hulking shadows. "This will go faster if we split up." David nodded towards the slope of the land at the horizon, and Ben if squinted, he could make out more larger graves – this time stone containers above ground that reminded Ben of sarcophagi.
"Seems a lot for a dead body, huh?" Adam mused. "When I go, burn me."
"Don't say that," Ben frowned.
"Gotta go sometime," David reminded him. "Pretty much all hunters get burned. I suppose we've just seen too many possibilities with the alternatives…."
"You and me?" Adam said to Ben, and gestured with his head towards the field of sarcophagi.
Ben nodded and they started walking, leaving David to his crypts. The first row of graves yielded nothing – just expensive stone boxes, but when they got to the end of the second row, Adam's eyes widened. He pointed to the last box and said:
"Bingo."
Ivy was broken at the crack where the stone slab lid met the sides. Dirt had been recently moved away, leaving nothing at the thin black line of the opening.
"We should get David," Adam said. "It will take two to move that, and we need someone standing ready with a weapon. Ben nodded, seeing the sense. Quietly they backed away from the tomb, and crossed over into the field of crypts.
"David," Adam called softly. There was no answer. They headed around to look at the back of the entrances. Some of the grass was disturbed where someone had been walking, as it had been at the front of the crypts, but there was no sign of the hunter. Moonlight glinted off Adam's face – he looked worried. Ben went to look at the front again, when something caught his eye, pulling his gaze down.
A slender black cell phone lay nestled in the grass, the screen dimly glowing. "Adam," Ben called quietly, not touching the phone. Adam came and saw what he was looking at. In a shocked voice, he said,
"They got him."
TBC
