Chapter Fourteen
Trimurti
Maharashtra, 1731
She slapped the backsides of the horses and sent them racing off down the lane. Hurrying to her charge who lay breathless in the dirt she shouted, "Move!" Pulling him up by the scruff of his neck she hauled him the few steps needed to throw them both in shadow behind the tall line of trees. She put her hand over his mouth to stop the sound of his labored breathing as she watched their many pursuers race up on horseback along the dark dirt road. She looked down to his wide coppery brown eyes and furrowed her brow in warning. He nodded and she released him, his breathing calmed.
She pulled an arrow from her deerskin quiver and drew her short bow. The sounds of their own horses, already down the lane and out of sight, drew the men past their hiding place and they zipped by in hot pursuit.
"We have to go back—" he began when she started to pull him up by his arm.
"Unless you have the desire to die, we're going to the harbor and we're leaving—"
He pulled away from her and stood to his full height which was a full five inches over her. Squaring his shoulders the scrawny old ascetic looked far younger than his sixty-four years. "Sara, I appreciate all of what you're doing for me but my life's work is in Mumbai and without it you might as well have let them take me."
"All of what I'm doing for you? What a stupid way to say it! And those books are not worth your life—"
"They are worth fifty of me and I am going for them."
Sara looked as if she would throttle him. "Mani, you are a mad, crazy, foolish old goat and I don't know why I even waste my time trying to save you!"
Immanuel smiled down at her. Her unusual green eyes were luminous behind smooth dark skin and thick black lashes. Apsara Mahalakshmi was four and twenty years of youthful defiance and irritability. And he loved her. "I'm sure you're right. What little I now know of matrimony, I doubt most women would exert as much just to prevent widowhood."
She huffed and gripped her husband's wrist with the shocking strength he was still getting used to. She pulled him forward, almost slipping his shoulder from the socket, exclaiming, "Utterly incomprehensive ass!"
"Are we in the right place?" Dean asked standing in the outskirts of eighteenth century Bombay. "Hell, are we in the right time?"
". . . 1731 is the year they get married so . . ." Spencer absently shrugged, completely awed at the scenes around him. From their vista they could look out over the city as sunset was quickly approaching. It was like looking at history books with old Daguerreotype photography except, where they were now, when they were now, predated the history of photography. No one now living had ever seen what he was seeing. What would soon become the second most populous city in the world was more like an active village now with central locations of large architecture and hurried trade. All along the docks were brick and sandstone buildings and tall ships drifted through the bay. Vaguely he added, "Best chance for getting both of them together in a room."
Derek Morgan had barely traveled beyond the borders of his own country in his lifetime much less hundreds of years outside of his lifetime. Not only was he on the other side of the planet, he was on the other side of reality. "This is wild," he mumbled.
"Great, awesome," Dean said, completely disinterested. "Is there a map on that thing?" He pointed to the tablet in Spencer's hands.
"Dean," Sam gaped at his brother, "How are you not even affected by this?" He asked. Sam had seen the fullness of Heaven and had seen the true, colossal size of angels in all their glory but he'd never traveled so far into the past, so deeply into time, and everything was a delight to his senses.
"Affected? Dude, I'm not here for the sightseeing. We're in and out before we step on a butterfly and change the entire future of India."
"That's not exactly how the butterfly effect happens, Dean," Spencer said.
"What the hell ever. All I know is we're so far back we do anything off the line and we could wipe out entire families from existing. So, as nice as the scenery is, I'd like to get done and move on." He pointed to the iPad, "and I saw Terminator. You drop that thing and when we get back home we'll have flying cars and cyborgs and towers of babies with wires hanging off of them."
Derek grinned at him, "Way too many Keanu Reeves movies."
Dean chuckled, "No such thing."
"Alright," Spencer said, looking to his screen and situating himself with the surroundings. "The abbey should be about half a mile down that road," he said, pointing down a cobbled path that led through trees to the foot of a tree-covered hill. "And a little up the—" Looking up from the screen he scanned the hill and caught sight of the red-tiled roof of the Abbey church of the Apostle Thomas. "There."
"Okay, good, so, uh," Dean looked to Cas, "How do we get the 411 without risking never being born?"
"The four-one—" he began, deep in thought.
"411 means 'information,'" Dean clarified.
"The word 'information' is only one additional syllable. Is it really that difficult—?"
"The topic of never being born is on the table," Dean impatiently reminded him.
"You may manage to change events but history is fixed," Cas lightly responded, walking past Dean and moving towards the cobble-stone road. "You've learned this lesson many times. Retrieve your four-one-one as you wish."
Derek, Spencer and Sam walked past him on Cas' heels along the path. Dean grumbled, "Jackass," behind Cas' back before rejoining the group.
The guards that had been sent to lay in wait at the abbey were lying dead on the ground, their bodies dragged off to the side and out of sight of any passersby. Sara brushed the dirt off her hands and eyed the road. The men who were in pursuit of them before would soon be back, a pair of unmanned horses hardly serving as a permanent diversion. She looked to the horse and cart that was half-filled with old tomes and she grumbled, "Jackass," before heading back into the abbey in search of Immanuel.
She was simply dressed in buckskin pants and a long-sleeved chemise topped with a man's small brown waistcoat. Her fellow countrymen couldn't comprehend her choice of dress as she passed through the country with her long black hair tied up in a loose bun and dressed as a young European boy and the European men figured her a strange fancy as the women labeled her impertinent and quite abnormal. Her black riding boots fell lightly over the stone abbey floor and she kept her focus straight and didn't look to the bodies lying on the ground in the various rooms she passed. All of Mani's colleagues were dead, killed by the men who were now cooling out by the dry old well, both with arrow shafts protruding from their hearts. Seeing what was left of his friends affected him in a way she would discover soon, when he allowed it to penetrate. He was like that to a fault: he would absorb something, never forget it but also never allow himself to face or address it without help. She didn't know how he survived all these years without her. Surely even geniuses needed a shoulder to lay on when the world got too grand for even them to comprehend.
"Mani?" She called, heading up the stairs three at a time.
He peeked over the rail from the third floor. His cheeks were flushed and he was breathing heavily. "Was it always this many?"
"Lord knows how you got all of it out of Rome," she sighed, sprinting up the remainder of the stairs. On the third floor landing she saw him with his arms full as he struggled not to topple over. "How many are left?" She asked, pulling a few from his arms to steady him.
"Just one shelf," he replied, peeking into the library.
Following his line of sight she spied the leftover books. "Alright, not so bad. One more trip," she said, taking a few more from his arms before they bounded down the stairs. As they started to pass by the bodies she could sense his tension. "How are you feeling?" She asked him.
"You never want to talk about your own feelings, just mine," he said with a shadow of a smile.
"Your feelings eat you away. I have the happy knack of being able to laugh myself out of a dark mood."
"Liar," he said as they emerged into the low sunlight. "You get positively violent."
"Yes, and then I laugh," she smiled before something stopped her steps. Hooves, racing fast.
"They're coming," she quietly said to him, hurrying to the cart and tossing the books in.
"Careful!" He hissed, laying his own burden gently down into the cart.
"You have got to be joking!" She harshly whispered before unhitching the horse. She mounted the animal and pointed to another just to the side, "Hurry yourself."
"What about the last shelf?"
Her jaw dropped, "You think you can go in and drag them out before we're surrounded? Have you no concept of time or danger?!"
"Those are the books your father left us—"
Her demeanor quickly changed when, for a moment, she moved as if she would jump down off her horse and race up into the abbey all by herself, damn the danger, but then she looked to Mani and remembered herself. Her job was to protect him; it had always been her job to protect him.
"Let's go," she said, darkly. She had made up her mind and what she said was final. He could see that and he knew she was right. It was down to a choice of save what he had or risk losing itall along with his life.
Moving to mount the horse, Immanuel got one foot on the stirrup when something buzzed by his ear and his horse squealed, rearing up on its hind legs and its front legs thrust madly forward. An arrow shaft was deep into the animal's breast. Sara's horse reacted and jittered, almost throwing her off. Immanuel dodged as the wounded animal kicked and kicked when another whistling almost made it past him before he heard an inner thud and felt himself falling forward.
"Mani!" He heard his wife scream as he fell lifelessly to the ground.
"My Latin's not exactly conversational," Dean said, looking to Cas. "And if she starts talking Hindi or whatever—"
"I have already taken care of the language barrier," Cas said.
"What do you mean already?"
"They will speak, you will understand. You will speak, they will understand. It is the same way you can understand me even though I'm not speaking English."
"Wait, what the hell do you mean you're not speaking English—"
Spencer smiled, "So, you're like the TARDIS?"
Cas frowned, "I have no idea—"
"You hear that?" Derek asked, cutting off their conversation, his ears perking to a sound just beyond the tall banyan trees.
Spencer paused and listened. "Is that fighting?"
"Honeymoon over already?" Dean absently said, clearly hearing the clash of bodies and metal. He looked over to Cas who was gone. He turned to Sam who had also disappeared. "Yeah, just leave us behind—" he said as he, Derek and Spencer darted forward, heading to the abbey. They hit the clearing and were shocked to stillness to see a circle of about fifteen men, most of them bruised and bloodied, fighting a young woman who was practically still a girl. Another set of men were facing down Cas and Sam. Many more were already on the ground, locked in death, arrow shafts protruding from this way and that.
All of the men had completely black eyes.
Derek shivered hard. These were demons. Just like Meg. Just like . . . His jaw clenched.
"Tell me what to do," he said to Dean, his eyes growing hard.
Quickly reaching into his jacket Dean drew out a six-shooter and handed it to him along with a small box of ammo.
"Didn't figure we'd need this but always come prepared, right?" He grumbled, glad Bobby had kept the weapon safe for the last few months. "You've only got so many shots," he said, drawing out a long steel blade for himself, "Make 'em count."
"What about me?" Spencer asked, looking to the fray.
"Stay there," they both barked to him as they ran forward into the fight.
"Wha—" Spencer began but they were gone. Spencer had read about the Colt and the Demon-Killing-Knife as Dean liked to call it. Beyond that, there was no real way to fight demons if you weren't lucky enough to be Cas and Sam who were busy exorcising the horde by touch.
Off to the side of the battle Spencer saw a long, thin figure curled in on himself on the ground. There was an arrow embedded in his back. Spencer hesitated, wondering if he was one of the demons but he realized the arrow in him wasn't at all like the ones in the others. By the raven-black color of the feather fletching he could tell they were the same arrows the demons were carrying. Spencer ran to him.
"Hello?" Spencer said, dropping to the ground beside him. He knew it was best no to touch the arrow. Castiel could heal him. Spencer knew his job was just to keep him alive long enough for Cas to help. The old man flinched, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain. "Don't worry, I'm here to help."
"Who are you?"
"I'm, uh, a police officer . . ." It was almost the truth, or it would be almost the truth in a few hundred years.
The man opened his eyes and looked to Spencer. There was a moment within that moment where something deep inside of them both felt in motion and completely still. Their eyes were the same, exactly the same, and behind that, down into the soul, was a mirror.
"I know you?" The man asked but it was just barely a question.
"Do I?" Spencer said before pushing sharply away, having felt something inside of him draining away. He'd completed another person's thought. How was that possible? He looked back down into the eyes of the man bleeding out on the ground. His eyes. "Immanuel?" He asked.
The man hissed, clutching his chest. Spencer spun around to the fighting. More demons on the ground but Cas was in the thick of it now and so was Sam. Spencer turned back to Immanuel Veritas and pressed his hand against his bloody shoulder blade around the arrow shaft.
Immanuel began to cough.
"You'll be alrigh—" Spencer began before a cough rattled through him as well.
"Alright," they both said through a shared cough. Spencer and Immanuel frowned before looking back to each other. "What?" They both said, their facial expressions now mirroring each other. Another set of coughs raged within until they both felt like they could no longer draw in air.
Immanuel shouted for Dean just as Spencer screamed for Sara. Both Dean and Sara turned to them, confusion marking their faces. With a long wheeze, Spencer and Immanuel tried to breathe but it was as if their lungs had completely closed. Spencer's eyes rolled and he collapsed to the grass alongside Immanuel, his hand still flat against the wound.
"Cas!" Dean shouted to Castiel. "Spencer!"
Cas darted his eyes over to the still form of Spencer Reid. There were still just under twenty demons against the five of them. Time was now an issue and Cas evaluated an interesting and completely experimental solution. Reaching two fingers forward he pressed his tips to the head of the demon facing him. A half a second later Cas appeared laying hands on another demon some feet away. And on and on until just a few seconds had passed but like child's flipbook, Castiel seemed to be in more than one place at once as he breezed by exorcising one demon after another. In the blink of an eye there were nearly twenty Castiels and in another blink all the demons were falling to the ground. A moment later there once again stood only one Cas and he was crouching over Spencer and Immanuel.
"What just happened?" Sara breathed, looking to the mixed pile of dead and unconscious men on the ground.
"They got touched by an angel," Dean said, quickly stepping over bodies as he made his way over to Spencer. Sara was close behind him.
Sam dropped in close next to Cas and just quietly said to his mentor, "You do realize you have to teach that to me now?"
"When I figure out what it was I exactly did then I will teach it to you," Cas said, separating Spencer and Immanuel. With a touch, he healed Immanuel and as soon as Spencer released him his eyes began to blink open.
"What the hell happened, kid?" Derek asked, helping him to sit up.
"Wish I knew," Spencer groaned, his throat sore.
"Mani," Sara said, dropping in next to him. She inspected his wound but there was nothing there, not even blood. "Mani?"
Frowning, Cas said, "He should be conscious."
"What do you mean? I don't understand. What just happened?" Sara asked them, her bun undone, her long black hair disheveled and in a mass around her face. She looked back down to Immanuel, "Mani, come on, Mani!"
"Sara, I'm fine, I don't understa—" Spencer said before his eyes widened.
"What?" She snapped, looking at Spencer for the first time before she gasped. His eyes . . .
"Something's wrong," Spencer said, his voice very still and quiet. He looked down to the still body of the old man on the ground and then to his own bloodstained hands.
"Spencer?" Dean asked.
"Yeah," Spencer replied.
"Mani?" Sara asked.
"Yes," Spencer replied, looking pale.
"What's going on?" Sam asked, looking to Cas. "Are they both in there?"
"I know very little about reincarnation, as I told you. Could it be like demonic possession? I do not know. It doesn't seem likely since they are both essentially the same soul."
"Ohh," Sara said before a relieved smile crossed her features. She looked to Spencer before poking his chest, "This is your avatar, old man. Now do you believe me?"
Spencer frowned for a moment before memories from a life he'd never recalled living passed through him. It was such an odd feeling. He didn't feel like two separate people in one body, he felt like one body that had simply lived one very long life. There was no division, no delineation between what he knew as Spencer Reid and what was now a part of him in the form of Immanuel Veritas.
"Your father's books," he breathed, looking up to the third floor of the abbey.
"Exactly. Now I'm sure you'll realize why I was set on being furious with you forever for leaving them for last."
Dean looked to her and said, "You're taking this well, sweetheart."
Apsara looked up to him and froze. Those mossy green eyes.
"Oh my God—" Sam said, looking between the both of them. She and Dean had the same exact eyes. "What—"
Apsara laughed, "Lord, I'm a boy." She poked him in the chest as well. "I haven't been a boy in over a thousand years," she hummed.
"What the—" Dean began.
"We have to separate you," Apsara said, looking back to Spencer. "We may as well hole up in the abbey now that we have reinforcements."
"Can we just verbalize what the hell is going on?!" Dean shouted.
"The sun is almost down and we're out in the open. Can we answer questions inside the large stone building or do you prefer being an easy target?" She lightly asked him.
Spencer turned to Dean who looked like he was a minute away from popping her in the face.
"Dean, she's right. We have to get inside."
"Just tell me what's after them . . . you . . .guys?" Dean heaved a heavy sigh.
"Aeshma," Spencer said, throwing a knowing look to Cas.
A flutter of fear passed over Cas' face before he nodded. "Yes, we should get inside."
"Who is Aeshma?" Sam asked, unused to that look in Castiel's eyes.
"He's also known as Asmodeus. Some of his story is found in the Book of Tobit, the story of Tobias." Everyone turned their glances to Spencer. "He's the King of the Nine Hells. Each level has its own master. When my battalion stormed Hell to retrieve Dean we had to pass through all the way to the ninth-level where he was being kept. A petty demon controls every individual level of Hell but there is only one king of all nine levels."
"But he's still just a demon—" Dean said.
"No, he's not. I told you," he said, looking to Spencer, "that Lucifer initiated the fall of a third of the angels from heaven. That was from all orders of angels including from the ranks of the Elders."
"Wait, you're saying this Aeshma is a fallen throne angel?" Dean said, the severity of the fact finally hitting him. "But why is he after them?" Dean asked, gesturing to Apsara who was holding the still body of Immanuel.
Spencer sighed, "Selective breeding. He's building the perfect vessel."
"Whoa, hold on, he wants to . . . with you . . ." Dean asked, looking to Sara.
She nodded, "Every few generations he tries when he can find us. Sometimes he succeeds. A few of my ancestors were akin to Nephilim. It's the only way to build a vessel strong enough to contain him."
Spencer continued, cobbling information from a different lifetime with what he knew of the current situation. "His power eclipses Lucifer's exponentially and the way it's written, if he defeats Lucifer in combat, then it will be the race of demons that claim the Earth."
It was all about the bloodline . . .
Everything suddenly fell into place and made perfect, horrific sense. That's why they needed Spencer, that's why they tried to break him. It wasn't to stop him from performing his destined role, they had no plans for it to get that far; it was so he would fall in line to perform a role they had destined for him. Aeshma was a fallen angel which meant Spencer would have to invite him into his skin. Only if Spencer were broken down enough would that even become a possibility.
What was it Cas had said? The race that defeated Lucifer inherited the Earth. Dean's death was the trigger to draw Lucifer out from within Sam . . . Spencer was the vessel for the king of the demons. They weren't trying to rescue Lucifer, they wanted him to stand as an opponent for Aeshma so he could fall. Both sides were gunning for a grand final fight, each with their own prize-fighter in their corner. Heaven wanted Michael riding Dean, Hell wanted Aeshma riding Spencer and Sam was the ultimate target.
Dean turned a suspicious gaze on Sara, "And how do you know about all of this?"
"It's not my fault your beliefs limit the plausibility of reincarnation. Mine don't." She stared into Dean's eyes which were her own, "You and me, we've been around since the dawn of time." He gulped. "Now can we get inside?"
"Yeah."
Night fell over the Abbey church of the Apostle Thomas. Castiel and Sam removed all the bodies from the church and set up wards around the perimeter as Spencer and Apsara poured over the shelf-full of books left to Sara by her father.
"So, your family are hunters?" Dean asked as he and Derek stood guard, looking over the dark woods surrounding them for signs of activity.
"Yep," Sara said, rubbing her eyes. "It's not so much a genetic line as it is a history that follows our souls. There are certain symbols and events to look out for when one of us is born and when we're found, we're adopted into the family, charged with the task of finding the others like us. That's why Aeshma keeps trying. The bloodlines fail to intersect and then they die off. The souls jump around as they please. In one of my lifetimes I was a Mayan. Of course, we didn't call ourselves Mayans but as you know, they're all dead now and so is the blood. "
"How many are you?" Dean offhandedly asked.
"Oh come on, if you're here you know. There are three of us. From the look of your brother's eyes, he completes your circle."
"How do you—"
"The eyes. They're the windows to the soul and remain the same generation through generation."
She held up the book she was holding which showed a set of illustrations depicting eyes. There was a set of round green eyes with long, feminine lashes. There was a set of deep, narrow, blue-green hazel eyes which had an almost black shadow over them. The final set were wide and inquisitive and a golden brown. She looked to the body of Immanuel which lay prone on a small settee in the corner and then to Spencer. "Mani found me and didn't even realize it." She shook her head, "Aeshma can tell that the blood is starting to merge. Mani is outside of my generation but we met in our lifetimes. That's why you're here isn't it? All three of us in one generation?" With a sigh she said, turning back to her book, "Must be the end of time."
"What are we?" Dean asked, turning from the window.
"Every belief gives us different names; we're different aspects of fate, of God, of life. In the belief I'm being raised in currently we're considered the Trimurti, the Hindu trinity. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Mani and Spencer are the incarnations of Brahma, you and me, we're the avatars for Vishnu and Sam would be the incarnate of Shiva. Brahma is the creator and generally remains neutral."
Spencer nodded, feeling like all of this should be some kind of a shock but it wasn't. He'd heard it all before, he'd just been living as another person when he heard it.
"Strict librarian," she smiled to him. "Then there's us," she said, gesturing to Dean and herself. "We're the preservers. We fight and don't stop fighting just to keep everything together. If you've ever felt the weight of the world on your shoulders, it wasn't your imagination. It's exhausting, isn't it?" She asked him. Dean blinked. "Oh God, I have to realize this is all new for you. I was raised with all of this from when I was a child. It was easy for them to find me. There aren't a lot of Indian women with green eyes."
"And Sam?"
"Oh, Shiva, he's the only one of us with a dual role. He is destroyer and transformer. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Everything that is destroyed is transformed. He is the only one of us that lives with a choice to make."
"To decide to either kill everyone or . . . not?" Dean asked her.
"Pretty much," she hummed.
"So, Brahma is God?"
"Not the God. That would be Brahman, the Supreme Cosmic Spirit."
Spencer looked up to Dean and Derek and said, "Doc Shurley."
Dean threw up his hands, "Of course. Chuck."
That seemed to be the only thing that burst her shell of nonplussed-ness. Sara looked up, her eyes wide, "You've met Brahman?"
"Oh look, she's alive," Dean huffed.
Her smile slowly fell. "It really must be the end of time."
"Not helping," Dean said. He looked to Spencer, "Now that you're all mind-melded, anything in those books about making a lake of fire?"
Spencer looked up to him and furrowed his brow, "I'm not really done but—"
"Anything about exorcising an angel?"
"I wouldn't think s—"
"Alrighty then, untie this knot and let's go."
"Dean, you act like we haven't learned so much already—"
"Kid, that demon, angel, whatever is looking for the perfect vessel. That's you. You stay here and you're dead, got it?"
Spencer gulped. "Oh . . . right."
Dean gestured to the door, "Sam's out there, hello Satan. It's all he needs for his battle royale."
Spencer turned to Sara and said, "We really need to undo this . . . now."
"How did it work in the first place?" Derek asked her. "You didn't seem too surprised about it when it happened."
"Mani was injured and Spencer held him. The souls are the same so it just escaped the weakened body. I know there's a remedy here. I never really looked for it because I never figured we'd ever meet our incarnations. There's lore on it, of course, but it was all fable."
"How is Aeshma walking around without a vessel?" Dean asked them.
"He has one," Spencer replied. "Just not a 'perfect' one. Same way Lucifer had a vessel but it wasn't Sam so it wasn't right."
"How did they survive this in the original timeline?" Derek asked.
Spencer gulped and said, "He's so much more powerful than Lucifer, he . . . burns through his vessels faster."
"How much faster?"
Sara quietly answered, "Three days."
Dean's jaw practically hit the floor. Lucifer hadn't burned through his vessel even after months. If this was a sign of the power . . . "How much time do we have left?"
Sara looked to the clock on the wall. "Mani and I were married almost seventy-one hours ago. That's when the vessel was taken. If we survive the next hour, Aeshma won't be able to take another vessel in this generation."
"Which vessel is he using now?"
Sara and Spencer exchanged glances before she said to them, "Gandharva . . . my brother."
He walked along the docks shrouded in heavy bark cloth. His bare feet singed the wood beneath him. Apsara and Immanuel had not been seen at the harbor and the contingent of rakshasas he sent looking for them had yet to return. It was now night in Mumbai and his vessel, promised to him by a misguided brother who believed his pure strength of will could protect his sister from him, was falling apart. The boy declared he would stop him or die trying. Aeshma grinned; the teeth behind dry and chapped lips were charred and blackened. Either way he would die trying but not before he won his chance to plant his seed. The end of the world was coming and he needed a vessel that was truly worthy of him.
But damn it! He was running out of time. Once he burned through this body, finding another vessel would take another lifetime. Where were they?
He glanced up towards Malabar Hill and his eyes narrowed on the faint dot of light he saw there. Everyone in the abbey should be dead. If so, who was there to light the candles at night?
"Guys, I think I've found it," Spencer said, looking up and catching Cas' eyes.
Sam looked down to the book sitting open before Spencer. "Oh crap. That's a long list."
"Whatever," Dean said to them all. "We zap everybody in this room to fucking Chile and wait out Aeshma for, what? The next ten minutes?"
Sara smiled to him, "And that's why I'm the smart one."
"Hells yeah," Dean grinned and winked at her before catching himself. He seriously wondered if he should feel dirty for doing that. Whether she was him or not it didn't matter. She was definitely his great-great-etcetera-etcetera-grandma.
"Alright, let's go," Sam said.
Cas' face was shocked still. "I just tried."
Derek looked to him, "What do you mean?"
"There's something—"
"Do you smell that?" Sara asked, hurrying to the window. They all ran to the window only to see the bright red and orange of flame in the near distance. The side of the hill was on fire. "He's here."
Dean looked to Cas, "He can block your signal?"
"Aeshma was a seraph. The burning ones. I can do nothing in his proximity."
"Are you telling me we can't fight him, we can't run and he's gonna be here in—"
A wall of flame erupted up the side of the wall and they all fell back from the window, the oxygen singeing from their lungs. The fire swallowed the ceiling and Spencer looked up to the flames, recalling the night before, nearly three-hundred years into the future when he was under a roof of fire.
Dean coughed, gasping for breath, "He's here," he choked. He spun around to take stock of his companions and locked eyes with Sara. For once in this entire mess of a situation she seemed scared. How else was she supposed to seem, Dean asked himself. A demon wearing the skin of her brother wanted to . . .
"Wait . . ." Dean said before rushing over to Apsara and pulling out the Demon-Killing Knife. She looked up to him and a moment of understanding passed between them before she took the knife from him and sliced a gouge in her palm. Gripping hands they held tight as ravaging coughs began to tear through them.
The double doors leading to the library were thrown open, pushed off their hinges as a man entered the room. Half of his face was seared completely off the bone; the other half was covered in swollen red welts. He was covered in ash and stood naked before them. Everyone in the room was rendered completely immobile. They couldn't move, they couldn't speak. With terrified expressions they could only watch the fallen seraphim burn through the room.
Aeshma's gaze scanned the space until it hit the unconscious form of Apsara Mahalakshmi, the nth incarnation of the Paraclete. How . . . pretty she was in this life.
He bent towards her, his fiery hand just hovering over her when he felt the emptiness inside of her. The void. The body was just a shell.
"What—" he looked to her hand which was linked with the hand of the man lying next to her. He saw the blood dripping between them. Taking his palm he hovered it over the man and felt that soul his vessel was used to calling sister. "No," he rumbled, low and long, the floor beneath them trembling and shaking, the plaster of the walls cracking and falling. Bending quickly he gripped the throat of the man, the usurper. He squeezed hard and drew him up to standing, his hands burning the skin at his neck.
Dean wheezed and gasped as his eyes fluttered open. He could feel his skin burning, he could smell it scorch. Aeshma would squeeze the life from him and turn the bone in his neck to dust for this. Dean clawed at the hand but it was like hot iron.
"Stop," he choked, two lifetimes now melded and the sister looked down to the eyes of the brother. "Please."
A curl came to Aeshma's lips. "Yes. Beg."
Those green eyes began to roll when something inside of Aeshma began to fight and resist. It was a voice, a small voice, that of a child's really and it was calling for his sister. What was left of Gandharva clawed and punched and kicked and fought the monster restraining him. This would be his last act as a living man and his last gift to his sister was a life free of worry from the monstrous demonic angel.
This would soon be a lesson Aeshma would remember for the last days. When he was ready for the very end, when his vessel was perfected, the Paraclete would have to die.
Gandharva pulled his hand back and Dean's body fell gasping and choking to the floor, deep red and black burns eaten through his flesh. Dean squinted up to the man standing before him and for a moment, Sara saw the spirit of her brother. He was free. He had thought he could win against the darkness but it wasn't his destiny even if it was his dharma.
Wrapping his arms around himself, Gandharva ground out, "Leave this place."
Cas felt his power return and in a moment their group was transported clear across the city of Mumbai as the Abbey church of the Apostle Thomas burst into an inferno of flames.
"God that's nasty," Dean said, swallowing the concoction Cas assured him would separate out his girly memories from his actual memories. Granted . . . he wasn't sure which was which anymore. "This is so confusing," he added, shivering in the pre-dawn light.
"Isn't it?" Spencer asked, adjusting his glasses and taking the potion in one gulp. "I mean, I feel as if I've really been alive sixty-plus years. Everything is just as real as anything."
"Dude, don't get me started. I have two and a half decades of a girl's life in my head. Trust me, I don't give a damn how many years you've been around, nothing compares. I suddenly completely understand feminism."
They were holed up in an abandoned old granary at the outskirts of the town. The future Campbell library rested in a horse cart to the side and the volumes from Apsara's father that had been lost in the fire found themselves downloaded in full to Spencer's iPad. The unbinding potion had taken a few hours to steep and cure and during those hours, Dean did his best to avoid any and all eye contact with Spencer. Dude was his cousin but now half of him was only seeing her husband and it was beyond uncomfortable.
"Make the connection," Cas told them and Spencer and Dean took the hands of their respective
unconscious other-selves.
"What if the wrong half transfers?" Dean mumbled, looking down to Apsara, seeing himself.
"That would be . . . disconcerting," Spencer frowned.
Those Campbell Boys
"I don't think anything's happening—" Dean began when Sara and Mani's eyes began to slowly blink open. Dean and Spencer looked to one another, concerned. "Do you feel—?"
"Yeah," Spencer replied, completely understanding what he was saying.
Immanuel and Apsara rolled up onto their elbows and squinted to the guys across from them.
"Do you feel—?" They both began to ask.
"Yeah," Spencer and Dean answered.
"What's going on?" Derek asked them, looking between Reid and Dean.
"Well, thankfully the passion—"
"Dude, different word," Dean warned, screwing up his face.
"The . . . conjugal affection is gone."
"But?" Sam encouraged.
"The memories. They're all still here," Spencer said, visibly confused.
Mani and Sara looked to each other and nodded. Sara grinned to him, cocking her brow, "Passion?" He grinned and shrugged.
"Oh come on!" Dean said, turning away from them in disgust. "How the hell can you still get all fire-in-the-pants and have our memories?"
Sara shrugged, "We didn't live 'em. And dude," she said, using a new word from her shiny new vocabulary, "Remember that whole, never being born concern? If we don't get all fire-in-the-pants you don't get living. Got it?"
"This is so wrong on every level," Dean said, jumping up to his feet.
"Oh come on, it'll come in handy," Sara said, likewise jumping to her feet.
"How?" Dean asked, crossing his arms over his chest. "Now I know how to do a French twist?"
She scoffed and reached behind her and pulled an arrow from her quiver. She arched her brow and it came to him.
"Holy—" he began, looking down to the arrowhead. Etched on it was a set of tiny sigils. They were the same kind of sigils on the Demon-Killing-Knife.
"My family's brand of hunting. Dhanurveda, science of the bow. Now you know how to replicate it," she said. "Make those markings on pretty much anything and kill all the demons you want."
Dean nodded fighting to contain himself, "Okay. This is suddenly a trip that's kinda worth it."
Sara smiled, holding out a fist and Dean arched a brow before giving her a bump. He smirked at her, "Still don't know how to cook, though." She punched him in the arm.
Immanuel went to Spencer and they both looked down to the iPad. "Hmm," Mani hummed.
"Still prefer paper."
"Me too, but, hey, I don't have to worry about an inferno at least," Spencer shrugged.
"Very true," Mani said, chewing on his lip. "Next stop?"
"Hispaniola?"
"Agreed."
"When is the only issue."
"You decided to come here the year we were married because mom—" Mani closed his eyes and pursed his lips before correcting, "Because your mother mentioned I was married to Apsara when she told you our story. Simplest way to evaluate a new when would be to revisit the story and see what bullet-pointed event she mentioned for Marie's time in Hispaniola. I mean, youeasily could jump over everything and head straight for New Orleans when you could meet up with Marie and Jean Louise in one setting but there must have been a reason Haiti is specifically separated in the story."
"More than one visit?"
"It's rather telling she is the most powerful witch in the family and Bobby said that an exorcism can be a form of potent spell. She may be the key to the first part of the problem: exorcising Sam."
"Very true," Spencer said, pondering over it before a bright and sunny smile engulfed his features. "I have always wanted to brainstorm with myself. This is amazing!"
Mani beamed, "Exceedingly!"
Derek watched Reid and Reid and shook his head with a grin. How the universe even managed to contain all of that was a miracle in of itself.
Cas looked to Sam as they stood off to the side, separated from the rest, "We're going to have to find a way to limit Aeshma's control over us or the next time we meet with him—"
"I know, Cas," Sam said, nodding. "I know. He'll wipe us out." And Sam knew that statement was most true for him. Both Heaven and Hell wanted to dig his grave as soon as possible.
"1790," Spencer announced, looking up from the screen that displayed the family tree. "Our next when."
"Time to vamoose," Dean said. He looked to Sara and for a moment the walls between them dropped. "He did it to protect you," he quietly said.
"Brothers," she replied, stealing a glance to Sam. "Always doing the wrong things for the right reasons."
"Yeah."
"Be careful," she said to him before looking him up and down. "We only get to be boys once in a blue moon. Don't break this one. He's kind of handsome."
"Thanks, Grams."
She punched him again. Hard.
Spencer and Immanuel awkwardly waved each other goodbye. Sara and Mani clasped hands and just as the sun rose, the group of five time-travelers left Maharashtra, India behind.