Chapter Thirteen

Blood Memory

"Their easiest way of keeping the truth from you was by telling you that the Bible readily available to everyone has errors not only of translation but also of basic process and direction but they lied to you, Dean. It's exactly what you said in my kitchen—there are only so many players in an Apocalypse and we know all of them."

"Yeah, and I'm not Michael. The Bible only lists two other good guys when it all goes down: God and Jesus."

"And you're neither."

Dean snorted, "Obviously." Then the unsaid implication came to him and he frowned. "Wait, are you saying I'm on the other side—"

"No, no, not at all. What I'm saying is that you were also right when you said that the King James Version misses certain things. Point of fact: translation and interpretation. Dean, Cas tells you that the man who starts it has to end it. Alistair tells you that a 'righteous' man has to be the one to break the first seal. This is all true but because of interpretation what should have been obvious, because the angels and Heaven filled your head with Michael and being his vessel you were never allowed to take a breath and ask, 'what is the truth?' but you didn't fall for it which, I really have to say, Dean, resisting them you really did save the world."

"Kid, spit it out."

Spencer went to a shelf and selected one of the many Bibles there. Flipping through to the end he held it out to Dean who took it with an uncomfortable rumbling fluttering through his gut.

"Revelation, chapter five."

Dean read it aloud, "Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, 'Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?' But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, 'Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.' Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb—" Dean slammed the book shut before reaching the end.

Spencer took the book from him and felt Dean's fingers shaking. "It was right there the whole time," he said quietly.

"Dude," Dean began, his voice rough and low. He avoided Spencer's eyes. "The Lamb of God is—"

"If you read it carefully you'll see there's a second creature being conflated with the original. Look at the wording—'then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain.' That flies in the face of the entire Christian tradition if it's to be held as a fact that Christ overcame death. Why would he, at the end of it all, look slain? Contrast that with a man who was . . . endlessly tortured in Hell for thirty years . . ."

Dean's jaw muscles tightened and he nodded. "Yeah," he said stiffly. "I guess I wasn't gonna win any beauty pageants back then."

Hearing Dean speak about the time, the decades he'd spent down there, times Spencer had just read about in gruesome detail, unnerved him but he had to get all of it out. "They tried to find someone worthy enough to break the seals: 'Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?' and that's exactly what Alistair paraphrased when he said, 'And it is written, that the first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in Hell. As he breaks, so shall it break.'" Spencer stopped speaking when he saw Dean cringe at Alistair's words. "I'm sorry."

"It's really all in there, huh?" Dean silently mused.

"Dean, only you can put this all back together."

With a clipped motion, he nodded, "That's why they want me."

"It has nothing to do with revenge. As long as you're alive, you can finish this."

"But I'm not doing anything. I haven't been doing anything. So I started it, so I'm . . . whatever, point is, I don't exactly know what the fuck to do and my great big accomplishment is being the guy who broke in Hell." He stared into Spencer's eyes and said, "I don't have it in me to fix this."

"It's so much more than you think—"

"How does it get bigger than that?"

"There are situations here; clues that you, drawn into the cyclone of events, never had a chance to consider but they mean something."

"What clues?"

"Um, okay. Um . . . the, uh, Whore of Babylon," Spencer blushed. "Only a servant of Heaven could kill her. You've never said it or felt it but you're the only one who—"

"I did what I had to do—"

"Dean, you killed Zachariah!" Spencer exclaimed needing him to just get it, to just understand what he was telling him.

He tried to counter Spencer's words but those parameters had been made very clear: only an angel could kill another angel. He frowned and couldn't think of anything that would make that make sense.

Spencer continued, "You only questioned it for a second but Dean, all of this combined means that yes, somewhere inside you do 'have it in you to fix this.' They tried to convince you that the only way you could have defeated Lucifer was with Michael inside of you but you didn't need Michael. At all."

"What are you talking about? The only thing I did that day was have my ass handed to me." Spencer fidgeted with his fingers a little and Dean gave him a 'you gotta be shitting me'-look. "There's more?"

Bending his hands and fingers as if he were about to play a concerto, Spencer glanced to the floor and quirked a small smile as his mind painted the entire scene before him. "There's a telling three-situation foreshadowing. It's sometimes referred to as the magic three and it's a form of repetitive designation. It's a type of literary device used that repeats an action dispersed throughout a text so as to hide it from the reader so when a surprise or a twist occurs at the end or climax it will seem, with hindsight, not to have come completely out of left-field."

"Wait, you read that in my life? How the hell wouldn't I notice it?"

"To you it was spread across a distance of years but to me it was only a few hours. I saw the connection immediately and it's so specific that it has to mean something."

"What is it?"

"Okay. Um, when . . . when Azazel was possessing Uncle John—"

Dean's voice darkened, "Really?"

"I'm sorry. It's not going to be an easy set of comparisons but you have to hear me out . . . eye to eye and face to face with you Uncle John managed to break through the possession and he regained control of himself. If this kind of thing only happened once then you could credit your dad's fortitude but then the same situation happens again with you and Bobby. Again he breaks out of the hold. Twice becomes a curious chain but not a pattern. Not yet. It's only when it happens a third time that you can't just rely on the individual strengths of the people being possessed and you have to look at the thing they all have in common in those situations. The third time it happens is when Sam breaks free of Lucifer. The common thread in all three was you and the overwhelming impulse that stopped them from killing you."

Dean couldn't respond to that. He couldn't rationalize it away.

"Doc told me to look for holes and lapses in logic and impossibilities and they all converge on you."

"Cas knew?" The doubt and uncertainty was supplanted with anger.

Spencer blanched. "Not at first. That's why he tried to speak to you when he pulled you from Hell. Whatever his superiors told him, he did honestly think you were a vessel when he pulled you out. Vessels can understand when an angel speaks to them just like Cas' vessel, Jimmy, understood him and Lucifer's temporary vessel, Nick, understood him." Dean frowned and Spencer understood that only he was privy to the Lucifer side of the story he'd just read. "Both Cas and Lucifer were disembodied at the time but the vessels heard them clearly. When Cas tried to talk to you—"

"My eardrums still ring," Dean huffed.

"Exactly. I think that's when Cas realized something was wrong. Doubt began. He started to question things and he did eventually find out that you weren't Michael's vessel. He discovered that you didn't need Michael. He was going to tell you the whole truth but that's when Heaven brought him back up for reprogramming—"

"This, all of this is what he wanted to tell me?"

"Yes."

"And they stopped him." Dean paced back and forth. "But why? That's what I don't get. If I could end it on my own, why try to get Michael to wear me?"

A sigh caused them both to spin around to see Cas seated at the desk. Sam was by the window looking as pale as his impervious body would allow. Dean had no idea how long they'd been there but by Sam's expression, he'd heard it all. Cas spoke, "Because whoever defeated Lucifer inherited the Earth."

"Bullshit," Dean said.

"The race, Dean, not the person himself," Cas corrected. Dean almost shuddered at the idea of being King of Earth or some other such batshittery. "Whoever held dominion over Earth held dominion over Heaven. That's why angels are in service to humans. So it is written. That's why they stopped me from telling you. That's why they wanted Michael inside of you."

Spencer looked to Dean and said, "That's why Doc's been helping us."

"The war wasn't between Michael and Lucifer as brothers, it's always been between humans and angels as brothers."

That statement fell into the room like a solid piece of lead. The entire conflict had been as Dean always said it was—a battle for the human soul of Earth.

Sam's voice was empty and an overwhelming sense of shock painted his features. "Heaven's been against us the whole time?"

Castiel looked away from him, sharply staring ahead, unable to answer him to his face. "The first lamb was a sacrifice to redeem man from Hell and the need of Hell. The second was supposed to redeem man from Heaven and the need of Heaven. Revelation paints Earth as the final and ultimate paradise."

"That's the fucking 'paradise' Raphael and Zachariah and all those assholes have been talking about? Earth?" Dean demanded.

"Those above me, the Elders," Castiel replied. "They started this, using the demons and Lucifer as a means to an end. They initiated all of this to take away the human birthright. With Michael inside of you they would have accomplished this."

"But I kept refusing," Dean said, shaking his head in complete disbelief.

Cas gave him a small, nearly imperceptible grin, "Your stubbornness was unaccounted for and it all grew beyond their control. They panicked. That's when they decided to bring Adam back."

"He was Michael's actual vessel," Dean said, understanding.

"Michael's fight with Lucifer is only a battle within the war but just like the seals, everything has to fall in an order. If you defeated Lucifer then it would all be over before it began. This is why they sent in Michael—"

Dean wiped his face with his hands, "Only a battle? What the fuck, Cas! You made it sound like the whole book of Revelation was a massive rewrite but you're telling me that it's actually closer to the original?"

"I am sorry—"

"Don't be sorry, I don't need you sorry. I need you telling me the truth! You could have said something; you could have told me what the hell was going on. You reamed my ass when I told you I was going to say yes to Michael. You know what would have worked better than beating me to a bloody pulp? The goddamn truth!"

"I tried—"

Dean opened his mouth then closed it. He remembered the state of affairs when he and Sam found Jimmy Novak in the middle of what looked like a war zone. Biting his lip, Dean nodded, now knowing there had been a time when Cas wanted to tell him everything and was stopped as forcefully as he could have been stopped.

"Right."

"No matter what," Sam began, his gaze unfocused, his words soft. "I was supposed to be Lucifer's vessel?"

"You didn't let him win," Dean said to his brother.

Sam turned to him, his eyes wide and his gaze lost. "I almost did," he said softly. "Dean, do you know how I got control of my body again?"

"You've always been strong—"

"Dean, like Dad and like Bobby, all that went through my head was you. One minute I didn't have any control and the next I was digging my nails into the skin of my hands just to stop from hitting you again." He gulped and looked away. "I don't think strong had anything to do with it."

"Sam—"

"I . . ." Castiel stood from behind the desk and squared his shoulders. "I have something to say. Once I say this, you may think otherwise than what you think of me now but I must say it." He glanced away to nothing in particular as he confessed, "It was me who let Sam out of the panic room." Both Dean and Sam stared at him with sheer incomprehension painting their faces.

"Cas?" Sam said to him, unsure he'd heard right.

Dean looked beyond all emotion of betrayal. He only asked, "How far did the company line go, Cas?"

Castiel looked only to Sam, his apprentice, and had to have him understand. "You were forced this role, the same way Dean was almost led to accept Michael. It is why they had you drinking the demon blood, why Azazel fed it to you as an infant and why Heaven pushed you towards Lucifer. This was not your fate, Sam. You weren't meant to be his vessel. That aspect of your destiny had to be manufactured."

"By Heaven and Hell," Spencer said, almost to himself. He had wondered the motivations that had spurred Cas when he read that part of the story. Now he knew.

Sam, in the three months he'd held onto Castiel as a mentor, in the three months he'd only had one other person to really talk to, did something he never imagined he could ever do. Moving in the blink of an eye, Sam reared back and punched Cas square in the jaw. He may not have been all angel but there was power enough behind the blow to spin the angel's head to the side. Most of the pain was localized in Sam's fist but so was a mountain of satisfaction.

"Ouch," Cas groaned.

Spencer watched the exchange with his mouth ajar. Dean mirrored his expression.

There was so much Sam wanted to do, so much anger he just wanted to unleash on Cas but every time he thought of something to attack him with, his own choices and bad decisions sapped the salient points from his arguments. Cas and Ruby and Heaven and Hell all pointed him in the wrong direction but, like Dean, the ultimate choice had always been his. Unlike Dean, he hadn't been strong enough to fight their pressure.

"I understand if you can not forgive me," Cas said, touching his jaw line.

"I want to—" Sam began, sounding as if the words that were supposed to follow would be kill you but he bit down on his lips and looked away. Instead he only said, "I trusted you." Folding his arms across his chest, Sam thought back to the last year that had passed between then and now and everything they had been through since Lucifer rose from his prison, everything Cas had done to help and protect them. He finally said with a stiff nod, "I trust you."

Cas looked to Dean who reluctantly nodded, "Yeah, me too. But don't figure I wouldn't kick your ass right now if I could."

As glad and as grateful as Spencer was that the relationship between the three wouldn't degenerate he was also dumbfounded by the immediacy of forgiveness.

Dean, seeing the question in his face asked, "What?" Sam and Cas looked to Spencer. "We forgive a lot of shit in this family."

Rotating his chin, Cas said, "Of course, not without physical confrontation."

Sam shrugged, "You'll get used to it."

"Is that supposed to be encouragement?" Spencer asked with a playful smile but soon that smile disappeared. He looked down, avoiding everyone's eyes.

"Spencer?" Dean called to him.

"I've read all of it and I still don't know what my role is in all of this. If I even have one," he said, fidgeting with his watch. He glanced up and looked to Cas. "Where do I fit?"

Cas nodded and said, "What was written of the destinies of you and Sam has been lost. The Elders are the only ones now living who could say but they do not wish you to succeed. I'm sorry."

"We've never been much for destiny around here anyway," Dean said to Spencer and glancing to Sam, hoping his words helped, even a little.

"As it stands now," Cas said to them all. "If Dean fails to end Armageddon then Lucifer will rise."

Sam shook his head, "You mean if Dean doesn't stop me . . . kill me."

"No. Sam, you remain and will remain in full control of your body. The only way Lucifer can overtake you is if you let him."

With a sure determination, Sam said, "I never will."

"And the demons know this. They also know what would happen if they got their hands on Dean. They know that without him you're—"

"Yeah," Sam said, cutting him off. There was no one in that room who didn't know how far Sam had fallen when Dean died and went to Hell. It was true. If it happened again, especially now with his own memories of what that place was like . . . "I know."

"So . . . if they manage to drag me back to Hell . . ." Dean began but the thought triggered his gag reflex. "They get me, Sam goes evil Super Saiyan and Spencer . . ."

"Would potentially be the last hope for humanity."

Spencer's stomach made a squirrelly squeak. Actually, no one was sure if it was his stomach that squeaked or if it was just him. He suddenly wanted out of this family.

"So that's why they want us both," he said, sinking to a chair.

"It's why they need you both. If the Elders are manipulating the demons to their own ends then they've been told it's necessary to have you. That's why you're so sought after. Whether they have the details or not, which I doubt, they are working towards a common goal and that involves capturing you and Dean."

"All of this cosmic tug of war just to get the thing inside of me to show his face," Sam ground out. "Great."

"The Elders know they can destroy Lucifer. They are not afraid of him in any sense. The conflict of the last year was to stop Dean from destroying him."

"Is that what it comes down to, then?" Dean asked, looking to Sam. "I have to kill Lucifer to end this?" Sam and his brother looked to one another and a world of understanding passed through them. They were used to overcoming impossible situations and they'd figure this out no matter what.

"Yes, but Lucifer is too strong for you to simply kill within a vessel. Unlike the other archangels, he and Michael cannot be killed within vessels. That is why the Colt didn't work on him. That is why their fight, as deadly as it would have been for their vessels, is only a battle within the larger war in Revelation. In the end, Lucifer isn't destroyed by Michael."

"Shit," Dean said, recalling the story. He knew the book in three languages and Revelation 20:10 flashed in his mind in Greek, Latin and English. "I have to find a fucking lake of fire?"

Cas shrugged.

Dean threw his hands up. "So, not only do I have to essentially exorcise Satan from my baby brother, who, might I add, is an angel now so that by itself might be completely impossible, I also have to find a lake of fire to throw the now shapeless Satan into?"

With a hum Cas said, "I believe it will not be a simple task, no."

The four of them became very quiet as the task settled over them. Even if they managed to do all of that before midnight, which, huh, wasn't gonna happen, they still had to deal with a horde of demons out for their skin. Great. Never mind royally pissing off the 'Elders' Cas kept mentioning.

Dean reached over and took a bottle of six day old rotgut from Bobby's desk. He pulled out four dusty glasses from one of the shelves and poured three fingers into two of them and stacked it to the brim for the others. He passed the two heavy ones to Sam and Cas and took the others for him and Spencer. He held up his glass in a toast as he checked the clock.

"Mazel tov boys. We've got less than eight hours to save the world or watch everyone we care about suffer and die." He knocked his drink back. It burned a satisfying hole all the way down his esophagus.

Sam gave a resigned grin before doing the same. Spencer pondered over the glass before putting it to his head. He thought he was going to die. Cas downed his drink and then reached out for the remainder of what was in the bottle.

"The hell you doing?" Bobby demanded from the doorway with Derek right behind him. He snatched the near-empty bottle from Cas.

Derek looked between the four of them, especially at the drowning-rat expression on Reid's gasping face. "What just happened?"

Dean pointed to him and said, "Better question: What didn't just happen?"

Diana Reid didn't at first recognize where she had woken up. The long night had appeared in her memory as only a dream before she took in the familiar space of Bobby's house. She felt as rested as the situation would allow and so she rolled out of the narrow bed and went to the small bathroom down the hall. In the tiled space and being just to the mouth of the stairs she heard her son and her nephew speaking from the library. Most of what they were saying sailed over her understanding but bits started to fit pieces and a full story was shaping in her mind. Decades spent wondering what had been the motivations for the Yellow-Eyed Demon to take her sister fell into place.

The story was far more involved than she had suspected from Sam's telling silence. Words like Apocalypse and Armageddon weren't bandied around for shock value, not in their world. These were literal uses and listening to it all, culminating with her son's unsure destiny in all of it made her sick. Of course she knew Spencer could face any challenge and triumph but this was so different and so unlike anything she'd ever encountered. It was well beyond anything she had ever imagined. She did not want the weight of the world on his shoulders. It wasn't fair to ask that of him or of anyone else, especially her nephews who had lived through so much already. This was her family. They were all she had left. But her impulse to deny was countered by that new impulse gained over years of deliberate, rigid and methodical living—the impulse of completion. The impulse of getting the job done, doing as asked so the asker could stop messing around in your affairs. It was both a sensation of liberation and one of submission. She had fought for so long and all she had to show for it was a son who, yes, loved her dearly, but who also felt immeasurable guilt every time he saw her, blaming himself for a circumstance that was all her own.

"Mom?" Spencer said and Diana realized that she had made her way down the stairs. She felt lost and alone and oppressed. The feeling was familiar to her and she knew she was entering that dark road.

"Castiel," she called out weakly for help. She felt two fingers on her forehead and the cobwebs cleared, the dark path brightened and fell away. She was standing in the library and she had six pairs of eyes on her.

She sighed, crossing her hands across her chest. "Really? I'm a certified paranoid schizophrenic. You can't possibly be all that shocked."

Dean knew there was a reason he'd always liked her, the now obvious resemblance to his mom notwithstanding. "How you feeling?" He asked her.

"Like I could use some coffee and some answers," she said, glancing between him and Spencer.

"Quick version?" Sam asked.

"I heard you were on a time restriction," she said, sitting.

"How much did you hear?" Spencer asked.

"Everything. Understood much less."

"Well, apparently, demons want me and Dean in Hell so they can get to Sam and to Lucifer who is sealed inside of Sam. Angels want to bring about the end of the world but only on their terms and remember Doc Shurley, my old English teacher from high school? He's God."

Diana blinked. Her mouth opened and then it closed. Pursing her lips she said, "Yes, that coffee would be great right about now."

"Mom?"

"Strike the quick version, I need the explain everything to me right now version."

Slowing down the telling of the story but only hitting the major points, Spencer explained to his mom and to Derek, who was digesting all of this information for the first time as well, what the years had woven for himself and his cousins. His words detangled the confusion that had settled over her when she'd been eavesdropping. She had known that Azazel had marked her family ten years before Sam had been born but she hadn't heard the rest of it since entering the sanitarium.

"The three of you have something going on beyond Lucifer and demons?" She looked to Dean and was struck by how much he'd grown into an image of his mom. She hadn't seen him in so long and now that she was finally looking at him she could see Mimi in so much in him. "Lamb of God?"

"Fancy title for 'Guy He chucked in a hole for forty years so Hell could work him over but good.'"

She reached out and touched his shoulder with a smile, "Well, Lamb of God probably looks better on letterhead." Dean snorted and for the first time in a while he genuinely laughed. Yeah, he definitely liked her.

"What I don't understand," Sam began. "If being Lucifer's vessel was never my destiny, of all the kids Yellow-Eyes went to who's to say I'd be left standing at the end? That can't possibly be luck. Or, bad luck," he corrected.

"You weren't," Dean said, what happened to Sam still affecting him all those years later.

Spencer looked to Derek. "It was a kind of a cage fight with a town serving as the cage," he explained, clarifying a part of the story he'd glazed over.

"Sam was fighting those other kids?" Derek asked. "You said they were being evaluated."

Spencer shrugged. "A euphemism for death match."

"I lost," Sam said.

Derek didn't at first understand as he clawed through all of Reid's euphemisms but he soon got it. "You died," he said.

A sudden understanding washed over Sam and he grit his teeth as rage boiled inside of him. "I was supposed to die, wasn't I? So they could get Dean to sell his soul."

Dean nodded having already come to that conclusion. "They had to make sure I'd be down there to break the seal."

"And with that they made sure I'd still be alive at the end to be the only survivor."

Spencer traced the timeline and asked, "All of this happened in '07?"

"Yeah," Dean answered. "Why?"

Spencer tried not to imagine too many unnecessary connections but just a few hours ago he was wondering why demons would use Tobias' name in their interactions with him and now, placing the time he met Tobias against the time all of this was happening with Sam and Dean he realized it was all running concurrently. Hadn't it been Charles Hankel who taught his son to hunt? How to ward off demons? How to live a life so isolated it didn't look much different than how Sam and Dean were raised? Granted, Charles Hankel became psychotic when his wife left him for another man. John Winchester became a hunter when his wife was summarily executed by a demon. One of those situations should have been rationally handled by a stable mind and the other should have sent a man over the edge of sanity. Unfortunately for Tobias, his father wasn't made of the same stuff John was made from. Tobias ended up an insane killer, Sam ended up an angel and Dean . . . hell, Dean was Biblical. Spencer had the uneasy feeling that his time with Tobias Hankel may have been more than his own bad luck, more than his being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Spencer felt now that maybe Tobias wasn't as insane as he had seemed . . . perhaps there had been something else inside of him and its name wasn't Raphael.

"Reid?" Derek called out to him.

What if it was fate pulling strings again? Or just Heaven and Hell manipulating the situation? What if Tobias Hankel wasn't all Tobias Hankel split by grief but by something else? If this entire situation moved with all three of them being affected hand-in-hand then it made sense that around the time Sam died and Dean sold his soul that something should have been active in his life as well and thinking back on it, something was.

"Kid?" Derek called to him again, a hand on his shoulder.

Spencer blinked out of his thoughts. "Sorry."

"Something was burning a hole in that brain of yours. What was it?"

Spencer looked to him and said, "End of winter, 2007."

There was only one event during that time that jumped out with unmistakable clarity to him. "Hankel?"

Diana immediately extended her hand to her son and held fast to his arm. Bobby slowly nodded.

Dean glanced to Sam who only shrugged.

Spencer said to them, "Tobias Hankel was an unsub with dissociative identity disorder."

"Split personalities?" Dean asked. Bobby and Sam looked at him curiously and he grumbled, "Seriously? Is it so shocking that I watch TV?"

Continuing, Spencer said, "One of his personalities was his father and the other was the archangel Raphael." That immediately set Cas, Sam and Dean on alert. "His father had been obsessed with religion and demonology and hunting. He burned a cross into Tobias' forehead when he was still a child."

"Isn't that lovely," Dean grumbled.

"They lived out on a rural patch of farmland in Georgia. Charles, Tobias' father, eventually became sick and asked Tobias to kill him to end his suffering."

Sam looked to Dean before saying to Spencer, "How did he get over the contradiction? Tobias I mean. To have your dad tell you you'd have to kill—"

Dean immediately caught Sam's implication and he couldn't help shooting his brother the stink eye.

Spencer, who wasn't lost on Sam's reference, just looked at him and said, "He didn't. He killed his father and then he went insane."

Sam bit his lip and slowly nodded before looking away.

"In his mind he kept his father alive, adopting his personality and as a buffer between the two he manifested the personality of Raphael. That was the personality that was driven to kill. His target was people he called sinners."

Castiel crossed his arms and seemed deep in thought. His sudden pensiveness brought the group around to him. Knowing he was being watched and knowing he was expected to speak he simply nodded towards Spencer and said, "He had no intention of killing you."

Spencer looked overwhelmed for just a moment before saying, "I'm right, aren't I? The timeline and the subject are too familiar to be a simple coincidence."

"What's going on?" Dean asked.

Derek looked to Dean and Sam and said, "Hankel kidnapped Reid. He tortured him."

"What?" Dean snapped. He turned to Bobby. "You knew about this?"

Bobby retorted, "You gave me pretty clear instructions to keep you out of the kid's life—"

"I didn't mean—"

Derek held up his hand and looked to Cas, "Wait, but Hankel came pretty damn close to killing him. I watched the whole thing. Reid stopped breathing."

"And yet he is still here," Cas said very calmly.

"He gave me CPR," Spencer said to Dean and Sam, his voice sheepish.

Cas addressed Spencer, "Certain demons have specific assignments and you're right, the timeline cannot be denied. If you died before coming into your destiny it is possible that another would be chosen to replace you and the search for him would take time. It seems they had to be careful not to kill you."

"So, it just wanted to scare me?"

"The assignment would be more involved than that. Whatever of you they couldn't physically harm, they would go after you mentally or spiritually. Perhaps both. Something that would leave you unable to carry through your task."

Diana stole a quick glance to Bobby and Derek watched them and Reid's face as it fell. It made sense, didn't it? Someone as violent as Hankel, confronted with Reid in the corn field doesn't shoot him but takes him. He tortures him, fills his mind with doubt about what kind of person he is. The track marks weren't lost on the EMTs and the doctors who looked over Reid after his captivity in Tobias' graveyard shack. They all knew he'd pushed Dilaudid on him. Reid was expected to fall apart and anyone else would have but he didn't. All on his own he got through the doubt and the addiction.

Damn.

They'd been gunning for the kid that entire time.

Tobias. Spencer wondered if any part of the man he'd met was Tobias Hankel. Had he even met a man? Had it all been a set up formulated to break him hiding under the guise of a case, of a child broken by his father's psychosis? How much of Tobias Hankel had actually been a reflection of himself and how much of that reflection had been purposefully formulated. He'd recovered as much as he could have after that ordeal but he'd never quite felt himself again. He'd lost a part of himself in the exchange and now he knew that had been the plan all along. How often in just the last few hours had he doubted his role in all of this? Asked if a huge mistake had occurred? How much of that doubt had been tied to Georgia and what happened in those nights and days in the cemetery? Tobias and Charles, both personalities lived and breathed the Bible for decades but neither personality has acknowledged when Spencer purposefully misquoted it. He had assured himself he'd been smart even though all evidence existed to the contrary. The Charles side of the personality would have and should have known. The Raphael side should have known. Mission-based killers always knew their missions to an irrational extent. Either should have called him on his misquotation but neither did. They knew and let it slide. Why? And forcing him to dig his own grave? Hadn't Spencer reflected later that this was so outside of Tobias' signature as to be a warning of something? Was the demon's mission over by then and it was just biding time to complete the narrative?

Was any of it real or was that shack in the middle of a graveyard just a construct built to tear his soul apart?

Dean and Sam glanced to one another and could tell by the immediate silence of the group that something had happened to Spencer.

"What was it?" Sam asked all of them in general.

"It's not important now," Spencer said, his voice relating that at some point it had been important, very much so in fact, but he was dealing with the consequences of the revelation at the same moment they wanted answers.

"Spencer—" Dean began but Spencer only replied,

"Later. I promise. I just want to deal with what's in front of us now." For all the questions Spencer had held back in the last day he now saw Dean and Sam log their own questions to ask later.

"Just tell us if you're okay," Dean said.

"You mean if I'm in any shape to fulfill my cosmic destiny?" Spencer asked him with an ironical grin. "I'll be fine."

That was such an echo of Dean's own 'I got this' that he had to smile.

"My God," Diana said as the tapestry finally formed in completion in her mind's eye. "All of this, to the last detail, was planned."

"Everything fits together now but there was something else Doc said to look for that I'm having trouble with."

"What?" His mom asked.

"Missing branches," he said, pondering over the phrasing. "The implication is clear, he meant the branches as they related to the story and the story, being biographical would suggest that the branches meant—"

"Family tree," Diana replied.

"Yes, but how do you find missing branches of a family tree?"

Diana looked to Bobby. He nodded before moving over to a shelf. "You should probably," he began, reaching out to grasp onto a large, flat book. Diana cleared off the surface of his desk to make space and Bobby laid the book open for them all to see. "Start with your family tree."

Over the span of two enormous, yellowing pages, the family genealogy of the present Campbell/le Blanc clan went back generations. There were many names, dozens of branches and small captions next to the branches detailing just how many hunting clans fed into the mainline and just how many continents the family was derived from.

"Holy shit," Dean said, looking over the document. "We have cousins in China?"

"Dragon slayers," Diana said with a nod. "A great aunt on my mother's side did some medical training over there."

"Witch stuff?" Sam asked.

With a blush, Diana nodded.

Dean gaped, "Witch stuff or which stuff like what stuff?"

Bobby huffed, recalling his multiple experiences with Marie Heloise's spell book, "The le Blanc family line, your maternal line, vampire slayers and witches, the whole lot of them." Spencer nodded. "Hell, you had Campbell cousins killing vampires on the Mayflower."

"Am I the only one who didn't know this?" Dean asked, looking around.

"Me raising my hand won't really help, will it?" Derek asked with an astonished grin.

Dean pointed to Spencer's iPad, "I'm gonna have to check that thing out."

"Boy, hush," Bobby said.

Diana continued, "She sent over her research with a note that she was staying."

"There was a guy, wasn't there?" Dean guessed.

Diana shrugged, "There's always a guy."

Spencer studied the family tree, reading it as a kind of road map as he sought out clues and patterns but there was nothing there he could identify as special or noteworthy. The whole perusal lasted less than a minute but everyone could see by the way his brow knotted and the way he bent over with his jaw in his palm that his mind was processing information at a speed no one could begin to comprehend.

"I think I'm operating under a false premise," he finally said, straightening up, adjusting his glasses. "You can't actually identify missing branches from a family tree because that's the point of the tree, to provide a historical record with no holes and questions in it."

"The way he said it means something," Dean said, studying the tree.

"The way he said it means everything," Spencer corrected, moving his long fingers across the aged paper.

Sam watched as they passed over the document and to the multitude of names written there. For a moment he considered what it would have been like to have grown up knowing all of this family. The Winchester boys had only grown up with their father and each other as pieces of their blood relation and now they knew they not only had Spencer and Aunt Diana, they also had family all across the world. He wondered just how crazed and hectic and wonderful a family reunion would have been combining the Campbell men, the le Blanc women and how many others there were in their bloodline. He'd probably be overwhelmed by the sheer number—

"Wait—" Sam began, leaning over the book and spying the next to last generation on the map. Mary and Diana sat there above the names of their boys and a thought, a memory, rattled through him. "What if he didn't mean missing branches from the written record but—" he looked to Castiel, "from the blood record?"

"What?" Dean asked.

"Of course!" Spencer exclaimed.

"Hello?" Dean chimed in over Spencer. "We're not gonna keep playing the game of only Spencer knowing what the hell you're talking about."

Sam ignored him, his eyes still on Cas, "What would it mean if a soul didn't leave an imprint?"

"It would mean that the soul never actually moved on," Cas hesitatingly said. "That scenario is highly unlikely."

Dean waved his hands, "Hello?"

"But ghosts aren't uncommon—" Sam began.

"No, even a ghost leaves an imprint. I mean there was no spirit to actually leave an imprint."

"Like they didn't die? Immortality?"

"Immortality is a possibility but it would have to be the kind of immortality involved in something like an assumption. A supernatural version of immortality, like vampirism, still involves a death. Only a handful of people over the course of all humanity have been assumed and I can tell you they are not on this list."

"Is there another way a spirit wouldn't leave an imprint?"

Cas frowned. "For a soul not to leave a blood memory marker would mean they have never transitioned. The connection between soul, body and spirit was never broken. If the body failed then another would have to be immediately found otherwise they would be trapped to the corpse."

"Wait. You're talking reincarnation and zombieism."

"Reincarnation, yes. Zombieism, no. A dead body cannot be animated in that way. That's why angels and demons need a living host. I mean the soul and the spirit would be tied to their body until the connection is broken. It's the same reason you have to salt and burn the remains of ghosts. It's their anchor to the physical world."

"So in this case, since you said a ghost would leave a marker anyway, we're looking at reincarnation?"

"Yes. If the body failed then it would simply be an anchor before the soul could move to another."

Dean looked between Cas and Sam and shook his head, "Reincarnation? Are we serious? Whatever happened to it is appointed man once to die blah blah?"

Castiel gave him a dispassionate look and asked, "Do you have any idea how many times you have all died?"

Dean's brows rose, "Good point."

"Reincarnation is exceedingly rare. It only exists as fairytales among the angels."

"Better not tell the Hindus and the Buddhists," Dean said. "So, how can we tell if someone in our family tree's been reincarnated?"

Sam, Cas and Spencer all replied at the same time, "Blood memory."

"I am about to kick all your asses," he warned.

Sam exhaled and said, "Blood memory is a kind of visual catalogue that angels can see. Everyone who ever died in your family, going back generations, is there. Got it?"

"Kinda," Dean snapped back.

Rolling his eyes, Sam turned back to the family tree. "So, I can take a look again at Aunt Diana and trace the name that's missing."

"Names," Spencer said. "He said missing branches so there'd be more than one."

"Hold up," Derek said, "In one family?"

"Maybe it's the same soul being born over and over again?" Bobby offered.

Everyone looked to Dean.

He huffed, "Oh come on!"

"We would be safe to assume the possibility," Cas said.

"We're three seconds out from finding the truth so let's not assume jack shit, okay?" Dean countered.

"Okay," Sam said. "You guys get to the wall. Aunt Diana, you stand in the center there." Pulling up the book in his arms, Sam looked down to the tree. Spencer pulled a pad of paper and a pen from the desk and readied himself to write down the names. Sam and Diana locked gazes and Sam, remembering all Cas had said to guide him, activated his blood memory vision. All except Cas gasped at the bright electric blue that filled Sam's eyes. Sam watched as a multitude of people and faces rushed past him. Narrowing his concentration on the first name listed on the tree, a figure formed solitary in the space between him and his aunt. Shaking his head, he spoke another name. That new figure emerged from the first. He continued laterally, across the pages and then down to the next generations, tributaries to rivers.

Minutes passed with a new form appearing for every name he called until his mind spoke the name, 'Immanuel Veritas.' There was nothing there. No one came forward. The space was empty.

"Immanuel Veritas," he said to Spencer with a little surprise in his face. He knew that name. Diana had told him about Cardinal Veritas that very same day. The name wasn't lost on Spencer either. He knew, of course, that an occurrence of one did not a pattern make but there had to be something not entirely coincidental in it.

"Try Apsara," Spencer said to Sam.

"Who?" Dean asked.

"Immanuel's wife. They married in India."

Sam looked to his aunt and called Apsara. Nothing appeared. "She's not there either." He immediately understood Spencer's train of thought. Next he called up David Campbell. Nothing. His wife, Nishtha. Nothing. Their son, Ezekiel. Nothing. Marie Heloise le Blanc. Nothing. Jean Louise le Blanc. Nothing.

"All seven of them aren't here."

"I'll buy a clue for $300, Alex," Dean groused.

"I," Diana began, "I was telling Sam about the family and during the course of the conversation I named those seven people."

"How's it possible—" Derek began.

"Chuck's a writer," Dean said, wiping his face with both hands. "He also happens to be God, creator of the universe and everything in between. That's how it's possible."

"Dean's right. He sent us looking for clues which implies he was the one who left the clues. Chekhov's gun," Spencer said.

"Say what?" Dean asked. Bobby and Sam rolled their eyes. He shot them an evil look.

"It's another literary device like repetitive designation. The name comes from the writer Anton Chekhov who made clear that the rules are different than regular foreshowing or repetitive designation. The thing being introduced only has to be introduced once but at the time it has to seem insignificant. Later on it would have a definite importance. Just like we're finding blood memory to have. Those seven names are a perfect example."

"That means there could be a ton of crap we've overlooked so far that could come back to bite us in the ass later?"

"Essentially."

"Perfect."

"The point is, even in the 'story' we're in right now, all the literary elements and devices should be expected to be in use. My mom told Sam about those seven ancestors, we can be sure only those seven will be missing from the blood memory record."

"Okay, so we've got two couples, one of their kids, and a mom and her kid," Dean said, looking over Sam's shoulder to the family tree. "No way that's just one soul being born over and over."

Diana shook her head, going to Sam and taking the book from him. "Especially in the case of David, Nishtha and Ezekiel. All three of them were a family. All three souls were coexisting at some point in time."

"So we're talking three," Derek said. "At least three souls being reincarnated."

Now it was Diana, Bobby, Cas and Derek who looked not just to Dean but to Spencer and Sam as well. Spencer's eyes got very large and his throat got bone dry. Sam looked completely bowled over. Dean shook his head and flopped down onto a chair.

"Awesome."

"There's no way to be sure about that," Sam said, clinging to some kind of sanity. "That's speculation at this point."

Cas pondered it over and walked over to Sam, "There's a way to be sure, but it will seem counterintuitive."

"This entire situation is counterintuitive," Sam replied.

"See if you can call forward yourself and Dean through the blood memory."

"What?" Sam asked, his tone incredulous. "We're both here, Cas."

"But you have both died and entered Heaven and Hell. You should have made a mark on Diana. If you are both not there, that would be a confirmation."

Exchanging uneasy glances, Sam and Dean weren't sure what they would feel if Cas' theory turned out true and they weren't there, redefining the phrase 'born again,' or how they would feel if they were there, parts of their souls already existing as phantoms.

"I've never . . . transitioned," Spencer said. "So I wouldn't be there, regardless, right?" Cas nodded and Diana brushed her son's cheek, happy for that.

She moved back to the center of the room and Sam wished he could feel the air in his lungs as he took a breath and called his own soul forward. Cas gave a flinch of a frown before slowly nodding. Sam's face fell and his eyes became saucers.

"Nothing," Sam said. "I don't—" he began before biting his lip. Steeling up his courage he called Dean's imprint. Sam had instantly made up a million excuses for why his imprint wouldn't have been there and they were all tied to the knowledge that every time he had died it had never been long enough to mean anything but he couldn't make the same excuses for Dean.

Dean had died. He'd had a funeral. He'd been buried. He'd transitioned forty years in four months. Dean had gone and yet . . . the space between he and his aunt remained empty.

"Nothing," he said again. The room was bordering on an unnatural quiet.

"I was dead months," Dean started, his voice low and rough. He turned hard eyes to Cas. "Did you know this? Did you even have the faintest fucking clue?"

"No," Cas said and the surprise in his own expression proved his words. "If this is true, if you, Sam and Spencer have moved through the generations then nothing is what we thought it was. I find it hard to believe that demons discovered the truth before Heaven. I don't know what the Elders are hiding but it's extremely important."

"Who are these 'Elders' you keep talking about?" Dean asked.

Sam and Cas exchanged glances. "The Elders are the seraphim, the cherubim, and the ophanim. They are the highest of the angelic orders and are at the top of the hierarchy."

"The throne angels?" Dean asked, narrowing his eyes. When Bobby and Sam again looked at him he huffed, "I'm not illiterate."

Bobby grumbled, "Stop acting like it then."

"Yes," Cas said, answering Dean's question. "These are the angels assigned to God's throne room."

"But since Chuck's been AWOL they've got way too much time on their hands now?"

"Essentially. What He knew, it would be expected that they also knew, which within the terms of the universes is very much."

"Universes?" Spencer interjected. "Plural?"

"Focus," Dean said to him. "Okay, so the Elders need to stop me from tossing Lucy into a lake of fire and Chuck points us to these seven people who may or may not be . . . us. Any chance they know not only how to exorcise an angel but also how to build a lake of fire?"

"I believe that is what Father is telling us."

"Alright. So, what? Do we do a spell or something? It's not like we can do a séance if they're us."

"The kind of magic involved in exploring a past life would be far too dangerous for the current incarnation of the soul."

Sam frowned, "So we have to caucus and we don't really have a way to actually do that?"

"We do," Spencer said and everyone turned to him. "How else do you have a face to face with people who lived in the past?"

"Oh, Christ," Dean swore, knowing exactly where he was going.

"Kid, you're not saying what I think you're saying?" Derek asked with curiosity and trepidation warring inside of him.

Spencer moved to the side of the room to where an ancient sepia globe stood. He spun it pointing to India, Britain, Boston, Hispaniola and New Orleans. "If Doc Shurley can play Doc Brown then so can we."

Sam smirked and said, "Time travel."

Dean groaned, "This is not happening."