Chapter 21 Original Sin
And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.
And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother?
And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?
And the Lord said, what hast thou done?
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.
Now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand, when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.
And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear.
Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth;
and from thy face shall I be hid;
and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth;
and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.
And the Lord said unto him, therefore whosoever slayeth Cain,
vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.
And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.
~ Genesis 4
Utica, New York
The bar was ordinary, no different from any other low-rent drinking establishment he'd been in to sink one or several beers or to drown out his memories with one or several glasses of something stronger. Neon lighting, straight counter in front of the door, pool table to one side, booths and tables on the other. And Barry Lewinski was as ordinary as the fucking place he'd worked in. Emphasis on the past tense.
Dean picked up his beer and swallowed another couple of mouthfuls as he thought about the last three days' work. The hospital'd had the details of the bartender. He'd found the dude's address easily enough. Place of work was extracted from the next-door neighbour who'd walked Barry home a few times after they'd both had one or two too many.
But Barry had gone the day they'd pulled the angel out of Sam and the trail here, at least, was stone cold.
Don't go thinking that's the problem. Sam's words had taken to ambushing him without warning, no matter what he was doing and he signalled to the bartender for another. No, he knew what the problem was, what it'd always been.
One of the two waitresses working tonight walked behind him, and he turned his head, absently noting that she was attractive, her ass fit her jeans pretty tightly and it'd been a while since he'd had the time or the inclination to indulge in tension release the old-fashioned way.
"So."
Dean's head snapped around at the voice beside him.
"Is that boudoir smile for me?" Crowley asked him speculatively, a carnation held to his nose.
The knife was in his hand and held below the counter top as he stared at the demon, wondering if anyone here would really care if he stabbed the sonofabitch and walked out.
"At least buy me a drink first," Crowley quipped, glancing down at it.
"I said the next time I see you –"
"Death, yes, rings a bell," Crowley cut in, his hurry-up gesture as aggravating as always. "But let's not dwell on the past, shall we? This bar is a bust, as you well know. That waitress," Crowley added with a pointed look past Dean at her. "is trouble with a capital VD and your prey has left the building."
The demon had an annoying habit of cutting through the crap and Dean felt his fingers tighten slightly around the knife's hilt. It would go a long way to making him feel better about everything else if he could gank the King of Hell and take that item off the list of things he had to do.
"So it's time to move onto more pressing matters," Crowley continued serenely, apparently oblivious to how close he was to dying. "Like destroying Abaddon."
"Yeah, good luck with that," Dean said, the tension in his shoulders easing fractionally as he looked at the demon. Crowley might've gotten out from under his last meeting with the archdemon, but he was sweating slightly. "You do know what 'immortal' means, right?"
Crowley smiled tightly at him. "Immortality is highly overrated. There is something that can kill a Knight."
Dean lifted a brow sceptically.
"The weapon the archangels used to execute them," Crowley elaborated. "The First Blade."
"Never heard of it," Dean said. "Can I kill you now?"
"I've been chasing that blade for centuries, Dean," Crowley told him, and Dean sighed, setting the knife on the counter under his forearm and picking up his beer. The demon was almost as persistent as his brother when he was determined to share.
"The closest I got to it was in '89. One of my associates got wind of a protégé of Abaddon's, who claimed knowledge of the blade. But sadly, before he could nab him, a hunter … by the name of John Winchester … killed the protégé. I'm here to see if there's anything in the John Winchester Memorial library that might lead us to the First Blade – to killing Abaddon."
Dean looked at the demon, mouth curving up sceptically to one side. "You want to hunt – with me?"
"Well, I do love a good bloody comedy," Crowley said, the slight lift of his chin a challenge.
Every alarm was going off and Dean studied Crowley, wondering if the demon was scared enough to be playing straight with him. It wasn't in the demon's track record, he considered, remembering all too clearly Crowley's plan to capture Brady, a plan that had involved setting him up as bait. Crowley's word was one thing, but he had a habit of arranging other, less easily seen, angles for himself on any job.
He slid the knife back into the inner sheath of his jacket and pulled his father's journal from the more spacious interior pocket. Some traps had to be sprung, to see the players, to get the job done.
"There isn't much here about the Knights," he told the demon, flipping open the pages to the single, small reference they'd found when their paternal grandfather had come into their lives and died. At the hand of the archdemon.
"Oh, yeah, here it is," he said, skimming down the page and noting the code his father had left. "Yeah, he picked up a demon, made bones with Abaddon, but that's about all it says in here."
Crowley reached out, pointing at the page and Dean slid the leather-bound journal along the counter away from the demon automatically.
"What do those numbers in the margin mean?" the demon asked exasperatedly.
"None of your business."
"You're gonna play hard to get?" Crowley looked at him with a sour incredulity. "Do we have all the time in world?"
"It's code," Dean allowed, very reluctantly. "For one of my dad's storage lockers."
"And?"
"And he may've put something about the case there."
"What about the 'T' next to the numbers?" the demon persisted, looking at the open page.
"No clue," Dean said, shutting the journal with a snap and replacing it in his coat.
"Well, let's tootle along and find out, shall we?"
Dean looked at rows of bottles behind the bar, his face stony. Crowley got most amiable when he did have an angle. He knew that from long experience. And he was entirely too happy with himself right now.
Crowley frowned at him. "I'm sensing a degree of distrust here."
"Shocking."
"I have a pressing need to get rid of the archdemon," Crowley said with a gusting exhale. "You have a pressing need to get of an archdemon. Occasionally, our goals are aligned –"
"And the last time our goals were aligned, I got beaten to a pulp by a demon we were supposed to be trapping while you stood around and watched," Dean snapped. "How do I know this isn't going to go down like that did?"
"You don't," Crowley admitted freely. "That's what makes it fun."
"I'm having fun right here."
The demon slid off the bar-stool and leaned against the bar, looking at him speculatively. "We both know that sooner or later, you're going to need a weapon to kill Abaddon. What's the percentage in waiting?"
He turned on his heel and left the bar and Dean's expression slid into sour resignation as he slapped a couple of bills on the bar and followed.
Lebanon, Kansas
Castiel stood at the kitchen bench, looking down at the bread and peanut butter and jar of grape jelly on the counter in front of him. He couldn't understand where he'd gone wrong.
The distinctive clunking of the ring bolts at the front door of the bunker broke his contemplation of the failed sandwich and he hurried down the hall, meeting the youngest Winchester in the library.
"You look disappointed," Sam said, shifting the weight of his groceries as he walked past him to the kitchen.
"I am disappointed," Cas confided. "As a human, I had to eat all the time. It was time-consuming and wasteful and I found it irritating … but I think I might've developed, well … a taste … for food. Some food," he amended as Sam slowed and stopped by the counter and looked at the ingredients sitting there.
"PB&J's?"
"Yes, primarily."
"What's the problem?" Sam packed up the debris and moved it aside, unpacking the bag of groceries.
"I no longer taste it," Cas said with a deep sigh. "Neither singly nor in combination."
"You don't?"
"No, I can't … taste … anything, really. Not the way humans experience the sensation. I can analyse it at a molecular level, differentiate the components including the quantities of carbohydrates, sugars, oils, saturated fats and the number and type of additives and preservatives that have been included."
"Sound like fun," Sam said, dimples deepening as he smiled reluctantly.
"It's not," Cas said, his tone frustrated. "It was tiresome, having to eat all the time, but the taste frequently made up for it."
"Sounds like most of the human condition, Cas."
"Yes." The angel finally gave up on his sorrowful contemplation of the sandwich and turned to look at him. "We need to continue with your healing. We're almost done."
Sam sat on the edge of the broad pine table and closed his eyes as Cas reached out with two fingers. He felt them settle against his skin, lightly, cool at first, then warming abruptly as what he thought of as Cas' power seeped from angel into him.
Usually, the last two times, at least, that warmth had grown to an almost unbearable heat before fading away. This time, it remained warm and nothing else happened.
"What?" Sam opened his eyes to look at the angel. Cas' expression was … unsettled, he thought.
"Nothing," Cas said, pressing his fingers a little more firmly against the man's forehead.
"You're a terrible liar," Sam told him, sweeping the hand from his forehead.
"That is not true," Cas burst out. "I successfully deceived and betrayed both you and your brother, more than once."
"Not the point, Cas," Sam said, holding his hands up pacifically. "What's wrong?"
"I noticed something," the angel said. "Uh, it's resonating inside you."
"What?"
"Something angelic," Cas said, not clarifying the problem anywhere near enough for Sam.
"Okay, uh, what the hell does that mean?"
"Maybe we should call Dean," Cas said.
"What?" Sam looked up at the angel in confusion. "Because my brother will understand something angelic resonating inside me better than I will – or you will?"
"No, because he is hunting Gadreil, and I think what I'm feeling is the residue of that angel's Grace against your soul."
Sam absorbed that. It didn't matter, not so far as he was concerned, anyway. "No."
"Sam –"
"He wanted to go and he's gone," Sam said, getting up and walking out of the kitchen. "We'll handle this."
"Sam, you understand that –"
"Cas, find everything you can on angelic lore, angel spells, Kevin's notes and transcripts from the angel tablet – I'll get the stuff from the files, and I'll meet you in the library."
He turned abruptly at the hall and headed downstairs, leaving Cas to make his way up to the floor of the oldest documents.
Thudding down the stairs, Sam shunted the thought of his brother aside with practised ease, forcing himself to concentrate on where the bulk of the order's case files on angel visitations would be located within the cavernous rooms housing the millions of cases, personal accounts and investigated phenomenon.
The problem wasn't the way Dean felt about himself. It'd never been that, and he knew, better than anyone else, exactly how his brother thought of himself; broken and damaged, in ways for which there weren't even words, unfit to be with people who didn't know what he'd done – or apparently, even those who did.
The problem was – he cut off the thought as he unlocked the first of the dark, silent rooms, and shoved it down deep as he walked to the card catalogue. He could bypass some time by checking out the rest on the computer interface, but he knew he'd seen a number of case files here, on meetings the legacies had had with the angels over the years. They'd called them the messengers.
Troy, New York
"How much longer?" Crowley said peevishly from the back seat, his voice somewhat muffled by the hood he was wearing.
"You're lucky," Dean said. "Dad had a few storage places, one of them's in Anchorage." He glanced in the mirror at the demon's twitch, mouth quirking up. "This one's closer."
"I don't see why this rigmarole is necessary," Crowley muttered.
"Because I don't trust you one fucking inch, Crowley," Dean said, glancing into the back through the mirror.
"Charming."
"You asked," Dean said with a shrug, making the turn onto Rover Street.
The entire yard looked about four years worse for wear, rust eating at the doors and here and there where the reinforcement steel was poking through crumbling concrete. Stopping in front of the unit, he looked at the pressed steel doors for a moment. The last time he'd been here had been in '09. Looking for the Michael sword.
He rubbed a hand over his face. Another play. He'd wondered why, later, it had been so easy for trust the angels when he'd never even believed they'd existed.
Turning off the engine, he pulled the keys from the ignition and opened his door, going to the rear to drag Crowley out and keeping the demon in front of him as he unlocked the storage unit door and pushed it open.
The door rattled loudly as it rolled up, Dean checking the floor before he pushed the demon inside. There was a demon trap on the floor at the doorway to the interior caged section of the unit. He glanced up and made a mental note to put one above the outside door before he left.
He flicked on the light and pulled off the black hood, Crowley sputtering and smoothing his hair down as the bag was yanked up his face.
"Oh yeah," he said sourly, looking around. "I can see why this has to be guarded like the fucking Crown Jewels."
In the outer space of the unit, metal frame and wire mesh shelving were squeezed in alongside hastily built timber shelves and every surface was cluttered with objects, glass jars of cloudy liquid and powders that sparkled faintly in the oscillating flat white light of the fluorescent tubes; books, crammed tightly in between boxes and ceramic urns; tools, army footlockers and tradesmen cases, survival equipment, tarps and a tall cupboard with padlocked steel mesh doors that held a surprising variety of firearms.
Ignoring him, Dean walked across the devil's trap and into the heavily secured cage that held the more dangerous items his father had collected.
"I'll be right here," Crowley called after him, looking down at the painted circle on the floor.
The filing cabinets were under a high, clear bench with a desk lamp on it, and Dean flicked it on, pulling out the first drawer and looking through it. '89, the demon had said, and his father had filed by year and month, then by case numbers. His fingers wandered down the edges of the files, and he blocked out most of Crowley's non-stop muttered commentary.
There.
He pulled out the slim manila folder, setting it on the bench and opening it. "Here we go," he said, half to himself. "Looks like my dad was working with another hunter when he grabbed Abaddon's pet."
He set the photograph of a young woman, tall and lean with cropped blonde hair and striking features, aside on the bench. Crowley skirted the trap carefully and pressed the side of his face against the mesh, straining to see the contents of the file.
"Well," he said, looking down at the photo as Dean picked it up again and turned it around to look at the back. "Guess the 'T' didn't stand for 'terrible' father, it stood for –"
"Tara," Dean said, his face thoughtful. "Monahan. Doesn't ring a bell."
"What else?"
Dean read through the neat handwritten account, his expression becoming stonily empty. John's description of the capture and the subsequent interrogation was clinical and without emphasis for most of the first few pages. Then it changed.
The demon is almost powerful enough to break through the trap. Tara brought in the chains and that stopped it, but we only caught a few words of the spell it was using, to bind the air, it looked like, forcing apart even the invisible walls of the circle.
Terribilis ut ego sum filius Violatrix, moriemini. Mori tardius. Carnem et ossa avelli. There is only one in Hell known as the Destroyer, demon of the abyss. Not a demon at all but a fallen angel. Is this what I'm looking for? The demon knows little of the fallen other than its master. Tara set up the intravenous drip and it's working, blessed salt and holy water seeping into its veins but it's too slow. We need more time.
He recognised the pulse of anticipation in his father's writing, the questions that riddled the narrative in this, as it did in John's journal. He also recognised the stages his father and the other hunter were taking the demon through, breaking through more and more layers, peeling them one at a time to get deeper, to get everything it knew.
The First Blade. A weapon of angels.
Scrawled almost illegibly in one margin, Dean read the comment John Winchester had made on that and closed his eyes. Not once in his childhood or the years they'd hunted together after Sam had gone to college had his father ever mentioned angels. Or vampires, for that matter, he thought with a thin, whistling exhale.
Nine angels had fallen into the Pit with Lucifer. Nine of his most loyal followers, his guard. His lieutenants in the war. A thousand years had passed before the first human soul, Adam's first wife, Lilith, had been cast down as well. Dean knew, better than most, that Lucifer had been a child, spoiled and petulant and vicious. He had a feeling that those who'd followed him hadn't had much fun over that time.
"Well? What?" Crowley pressed hard against the wire and Dean looked up, his eyes slowly re-focussing on the demon.
"First Blade."
"I love it when I'm right," the demon smiled smugly. "Where is it?"
"No idea," Dean told him, hiding his satisfaction as the smile was wiped away. "The demon said it was the weapon of the archangels and had wiped out most of the Devil's boys by the time it was made. Didn't know where it was, thought it was a legend."
He looked back at the file. It had talked of a spell, to call to the blade, but John had either been not interested, which he thought was unlikely since a blade that could kill an archdemon would certainly have been of interest to the hunter, or that he'd found something else in the demon's confessions, something that had been more important. He frowned and closed the file.
"That's it," he told Crowley, picking up the photograph of the hunter and tucking it into his jacket pocket, then closing the file and replacing it in the cabinet. He needed to get this stuff to the order, sometime, he thought, looking around the cluttered room. What his father had learned, the curse boxes, the ingredients for spells that he didn't even know about, they all needed to be there, under the order's security measures. He flicked off the desk lamp and walked to the door of the cage, pulling it open as Crowley hovered at the edge of the trap.
"We'll see if Tara's still kicking," he said, pulling the door closed behind him and going to the shelf where he'd dumped the hood. As he picked it up he looked at the demon's expression, repressing a smile when he saw Crowley swallow. Three months in the unrelieved darkness had done something for the King of Hell, given him a healthy respect for what his mind could conjure in the way of torture, he guessed.
"Come on, won't take long," he said, injecting just the slightest hint of sympathy into his voice as Crowley stared at the hood.
Scowling, Crowley reached for it and pulled it on. The demon was easy to manipulate so long as his little weaknesses were remembered, Dean thought, letting the smile out as he pushed him through the door and turned to pull it shut and lock it. Self examination seemed to be Crowley's most vulnerable point.
Lebanon, Kansas
Sam stared sightlessly at the open file in front of him, hearing but paying no attention to the click of the leather soles of the angel's shoes on the parquetry floor behind him. Memory held him fast in its grip and he couldn't stop the flow, couldn't shut it down.
I tried, Sammy. I mean, I really tried. But I just can't keep pretending that everything's all right. Because it's not. And it's never going to be. You chose a demon over your own brother — and look what happened.
In that moment, he'd understood that something he'd taken for granted his whole life had been broken, probably irretrievably.
I would give anything—anything—to take it all back. He'd told Dean desperately, a cold sweat icing the back of his neck as he saw how his brother was trying to keep his feelings muffled and padded and not spill out everywhere.
I know you would. And I know how sorry you are. I do. But, man ... you were the one that I depended on the most. And you let me down in ways that I can't even ... I'm just—I'm having a hard time forgiving and forgetting here. You know?
It wasn't until a lot later, a lot of thinking and going back over the years later, that he'd fully understood what had happened in that moment. He'd known, vaguely, in the way that family knows things without ever needing to articulate them, that there was a need, more than a need perhaps, in Dean to have someone to trust. Someone he could count on. For a long time, that had been shared between several people in his brother's life. Jim Murphy. Caleb. Their father. Then one by one, they'd been taken away and Sam had known, the minute he realised what his brother had done to save him, that he was the only one left.
He'd known Dean had needed it … and he'd betrayed that trust. The demon blood had been surging and fizzing in his veins. He'd felt the power ripple through him, stronger and stronger. Ruby had played on his need to avenge his brother's death, his brother's suffering – suffering that Dean had deliberately offered himself up for to ensure that Sam could live the life he'd wanted. He'd been lost and alone and he'd never been alone before. Never felt that gaping, yawning hole of no one caring for him, no one watching out for him. They were all good reasons to forget that what he was doing was not what Dean had wanted. But they weren't good enough.
I just don't ... I don't think that we can ever be what we were. You know? I just don't think I can trust you.
At the time, that had hit him hard and low but he'd seen that pain in his brother's eyes from the perspective of what he was losing, not what it was costing Dean.
In the little house in Kermit, he'd tried to bury his past, bury all that had happened and all that it had meant, to live in the here and the now. It hadn't worked particularly well, and those memories had surged up, bloated and poisonous, in his dreams, sometimes in his waking hours as well. He couldn't tell Amelia about them. He could barely acknowledge the guilt and shame that had filled him for himself. But he'd understood, finally, that for Dean, losing the one person he'd trusted, had loved … that had been worse than all the torments that Hell had inflicted. Worse than the sacrifice and death of their father. Worse than the losses and guilt he'd endured stoically over the years.
He let out his breath slowly. He'd done it again, after he'd found what Dean had done to Amy. Running an impatient hand through his hair, Sam's eyes closed tightly. He'd been angry but it'd been more than that. Amy had been a friend, but his anger hadn't stemmed from Dean's killing her. It'd come directly from his brother making a decision to override his arguments, he thought tiredly. From Dean's not trusting in him.
He wasn't sure why, at that time, he'd ever thought that his brother could trust him again. Nothing had happened in the years between the devil's rising and the return of his memories of being in Hell to rebuilt that trust. He'd been soulless. When his soul had been returned to him, he'd barely acknowledged what Dean had been struggling with. Leaving him in Cicero, both he and Bobby had thought had been the best for Dean. Neither had known him well enough to know that it had been torture. His brother had done his best for Lisa and Ben, shouldering those responsibilities as he'd shouldered every other … then he'd lost them as well.
Dean, you know, you've pulled some shady crap before, but this … has got to be the worst. Whitewashing their memories? Take it from somebody who knows –
He cringed at the memory of what he'd said then, oblivious to the deep fissure that had been in his brother over a decision driven by that same sense of responsibility. Dean hadn't asked Cas to remove their memories of him for their safety, to keep them from being used as leverage against him. He'd done it, Sam realised unhappily, to keep himself from ever going near them again. Cutting himself off from yet more people who'd given him some solace, even if it'd been limited. He'd done it because if he couldn't go back to them, they would be safer. From him.
OK, fine. You know why I didn't tell you about Ruby, and how we're hunting down Lilith? Because you're too weak to go after her, Dean. You're holding me back. I'm a better hunter than you are. Stronger, smarter. I can take out demons you're too scared to go near. You're too busy sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. Whining about all the souls you tortured in hell. Boo hoo … I can see how broken you are, how defeated. You can't win, and you know it. But you just keep fighting. Just... keep going through the motions. You're not hungry, Dean, because inside, you're already...dead … Everybody leaves you, Dean. You noticed? Mommy. Daddy. Even Sam … The very touch of you corrupts. When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost!
Those memories came in a cascading waterfall of pain, pain he'd witnessed his brother stand there and take, time after time, no arguments to refute the lies or half-truths thrown at him. Now with the twenty-twenty clarity of hindsight, Sam could see how his brother had been eaten away, a little more with each one of them. Now, he could see Dean's reactions, clearly, maybe for the first time.
Look ... Dean, the thing is, tonight ... it almost got you killed. Now, I don't care how you deal. I really, really don't. But just don't – don't get killed.
Had it already been too late back then? Dean had never mentioned Emma again. Never said anything about anyone he'd lost. He wasn't so sure it was just the Winchester stoicism anymore. He was beginning to wonder if his brother had ever really let go of anything.
I'm just tired of all the fighting. And, you know, maybe I'm a little bit envious. I could never separate myself from the job like you could. Hell, maybe it's time for at least one of us to be happy.
Sam felt a shudder hit him as he remembered that moment, the fight gone from his brother as he'd said it, his pain visible in the slump of the wide shoulders, in the shadows that made his eyes look so much darker.
"Sam, I've found … well, something," Castiel said, breaking through the thoughts and memories as he walked to the table, Kevin's notes in his hands. "From the tablet. It's a detail of when angels leave their vessels."
Looking around at the angel, Sam sucked in a deep breath, pushing aside the past and forcing himself to concentrate on what Castiel was saying.
"I think," Cas continued. "The translation Kevin's done is a bit vague."
"Okay?"
"And the departed shall remain, and the remains shall be the departed," the angel read, frowning at the sheet.
"So, when an angel leaves the vessel, he leaves traces of himself behind," Sam conjectured. "You said that you thought it was the residue of Gadreil's Grace in me."
"Yes, but each time I heal you, it is reduced," Cas said, dropping the sheet onto the table.
"Is that good or bad?" Sam asked.
"Well, it's harmless, to you, I mean," the angel said, looking through the files of the order that were scattered across the table. "I saw, earlier, something about a ritual …"
He pushed several files to one side and picked one up. "The Grace itself might be helpful," he added distractedly, opening the file. "I don't know how the order managed to get this information but this contains a spell to track an angel through their Grace."
"Cas, didn't you say you took the Grace of another angel?" Sam frowned at him. "What if this angel did the same thing?"
"He didn't," Cas told him certainly. "I could see him, clearly when he was in you. I had never seen him before."
"Alright, what do we need to do?"
"We need to extract that remains."
"How do we do that?"
Cas looked down at the file. Looking over his shoulder, Sam saw the diagram the angel was looking at, a long, elaborate syringe, with a large gauge needle attached.
"Well," the angel said with a slight grimace. "Painfully."
Sam lifted the pages of the file, stopping when he saw the photograph of the syringe.
"Any idea where that is?" Cas asked.
"Yeah, it's in the apothecary," Sam said, staring at it. There were a number of what he thought were specialist tools the order had made for different rituals in the glass-fronted cupboard beside the filing cabinets. "Do you need anything else to do the spell?"
"A few ingredients," Cas said, looking down at the file.
"Come on then." Sam turned, heading past the tables for the hall. "Everything'll be in there."
Kingston, New York
Dean pulled the drapes tightly across the windows of the motel room, glancing over his shoulder at the demon who was drawing out the circle on the square table by the kitchenette. The photograph was enough for a key, Crowley had said when he'd pulled in, the demon's face pale and sweating slightly from the hour under the hood.
"I need candles," Crowley said, turning to the sink and washing the blood paste from his hands. "And that pendulum."
Refraining from telling him where he could stick the pendulum, Dean walked to the bag he'd retrieved from the black car's trunk and pulled out four candles and the unwieldy pendulum frame, unlocking the legs and extending them to half their full length.
The map on the table was a small-scale of the country. To one side, a beaten silver bowl held Tara's photograph, powdered bone and cat blood, ground quartz and dried herbs. He watched the demon set the candles at the four corners of the map and handed him the opened frame, the demon positioning the legs to align exactly with the corners of the map, just in front of the candles.
"Alright," Crowley said, looking over the table critically and ignoring the box of matches Dean held out. He snapped his fingers and the candles leapt into flame, the contents of the bowl lighting as well, filling the room with a pungent odour as they burned. Dean saw the photograph curl up and disappear, the ashes mixing with the other ingredients. At the corners of the map, the candle flames turned green then purple and in the centre, the pendulum began to move.
"Marion, Indiana," Crowley said, peering down at the pinpoint shadow on the map when the pendulum stopped and hung there, pointing at the town like an accusatory fingertip.
Dean nodded. "About an eight hour drive," he said, glancing at his watch. He could catch four hours now and they'd be there by midday tomorrow.
"What are we waiting for?" Crowley asked as he watched Dean pick up the bowl and empty it into the trash can.
"Sleep, food," Dean said with a shrug, tossing the empty and now-cool bowl back into the bag. He glanced at the demon's hastily-concealed grimace. "Some of us need those things, occasionally."
"Of course," Crowley said.
"Gimme four hours, we'll go then."
"Right you are." The King of Hell disappeared and Dean let out his breath, relieved to be on his own. Crowley had been circumspect for the last day, but he couldn't expect it to last and the tension of waiting for the demon to say something, raise something that he didn't want to look at or talk about was grinding at him.
He finished packing up the spell and gave the table a rudimentary wipe over with a cloth from the kitchenette. There'd been a bar and grill on the way into the town, and he'd thought about going there, getting some food and having a beer or two, maybe finding himself some less aggravating company, but he found that his enthusiasm for the idea had waned. He'd get a couple of burgers and beers to go, he decided, walking from the room and locking the door behind him. And get some sleep.
I-76 W, Ohio
The sun rose behind them, throwing the car's shadow out in front, a long, crisply-edged black silhouette the black car clung to, over the pitted charcoal asphalt. It was too familiar, this driving at dawn, seeing the world around just waking. Aside from the fact that riding shotgun was demon, instead of his brother, Dean thought with a caustic twitch.
"So, where's Moose?" Crowley asked, on cue.
Dean's gaze cut right and back to the road. He was too aware that not answering would give the demon an answer anyway.
"He still had some injuries," he decided on, after a second's hesitation.
"In the tender care of our favourite angel, eh?"
"Something like that," Dean said heavily.
"S'your problem," Crowley said, leaning back in the seat. "You don't let go of anything."
"Thanks for sharing."
He hoped the demon would take the hint. Traffic was starting to increase and he didn't want to take his attention off the road if the impulse to hit Crowley got too much.
"I meant to ask, what the story was on those books about you two," Crowley said a moment later, his voice casual.
The involuntary flinch at the mention of the series written by Carver Edlund sent the Impala veering into the next lane and Crowley lifted an eyebrow at the blaring horn of the driver almost collected to his right.
"A bit of a thorny issue?"
The demon had found them, somehow, he remembered. Charlie had told them it was the quickest way to know that much about their lives, as the reports of the deaths of those they'd saved kept filling up the printer bins at the bunker.
"Bad luck," he told Crowley repressively.
"Did you know about them?"
Letting his exhale whistle out through his teeth, Dean realised that no matter what he did or said, the demon wasn't going to let go of this. "We came across them a few years ago."
"And you let the writer live?" Crowley asked incredulously. "There's a lot of personal information in them. Not just to an enemy," he continued, oblivious to the creaking of Dean's tendons as his hands tightened on the wheel. "But even, well, neither of you seem like the type to wear your hearts on your sleeves, as it were."
"We didn't get the chance to voice our objections."
"Ah … angel intervention."
"Something like that." He turned and looked at the demon. "What are you angling for, Crowley?"
"Me? Just making a little polite conversation on a long and boring road trip," the demon said with a shrug. "I was totally enthralled when I came across the additional publications."
Dean frowned, thinking about the events that Charlie had told him made up the last two sets of the books. "Because you're in them?"
Crowley smirked slightly, smoothing down the lapels of his suit.
"Like it or not, accept it or not," he said, his tone coloured with a smugness that made Dean's hands clench tighter. "You two couldn't have put the Devil back in his cage without me."
"What'd you steal Sam's blood for?"
Crowley blinked. "What?"
"You heard me," Dean said, flicking another sideways look at him. "What did you want with purified human blood?"
"Just a fleeting moment of insanity," Crowley told him airily, waving a hand for emphasis. "I realised there was a better way."
"An' what's that?"
"Look around."
Marion, Indiana
As pawn shops went, Dean thought, pulling open the front door and stepping inside, this had to be the neatest he'd ever been in. Stereos, tvs, radios, cameras, computer monitors and peripherals were stacked on the shelving that ran around the room. A glass-fronted and topped counter faced the door, and a lean and muscular blonde woman leaned on it, reading a magazine.
"Tara Monahan?"
She straightened slowly, setting the magazine down and looking at him. Around her neck a long necklace held a pendant, a small, leaf-shaped blade. He'd seen them before, but not often.
"That's what the sign says," she allowed. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she watched Crowley walk in behind him. "Can I help you?"
"Yeah, hope so," Dean said, strolling up to the counter. "John Winchester ring a bell?"
She looked from Crowley back to him, the faintly surprised expression in her eyes disappearing almost before he'd noticed it.
"I'm his son," he said.
"Are you?" she asked, looking down at the counter "Which one?"
"Dean."
He saw her face tighten, heard the sharply indrawn breath as she leaned to one side and rubbed her knee.
"Still in the family business?"
"Yeah, can't quit." He caught the snaking look she gave Crowley. "Listen, a bunch of years back, you worked a job with my dad," he continued, glancing at the demon. "Well, me and my – uh, associate here –"
The shotgun was a sawn-off double-barrel, older kind and it must have been behind the counter. The business end was now pointed at Crowley. Tara stared at the demon flatly.
"Ever since '92, I've had a painful little tickle in what's left of my knee whenever a demon shows its ugly face," she said conversationally. "Useful on a number of occasions."
"Hunters," Crowley said, rolling his eyes. "So trusting. I'll go grab a nice latte while you two catch up."
He stepped back and stopped dead, his expression flickering from sour to panicked instantly.
"You're not going anywhere."
"Listen, uh, Tara," Dean stepped forward, putting himself between the gun and the demon. "My associate –"
"Friend," Crowley interjected, stepping forward. "Besties actually –"
"Not helping!" Dean snapped at him.
"Not caring," Tara said, raising the gun to chest level and cocking both barrels.
"Look," Crowley said quickly, staring at the round holes at the ends of the gun. "I'm the King of Hell, he's a Winchester – there's a reason we're working together –"
"Yeah," Tara agreed, turning to pick up a flask from the shelf behind her. "It's called possession."
She threw the contents over Dean and watched him sigh and wipe his face with one hand.
"See?" He forced a smile. "I'm good."
Her expression didn't change and neither did the direction of the barrels of the shotgun.
"And yes, he's a demon," he said, looking sourly at Crowley. "But he's helping me on this."
"Helping you on what?" she asked, the gun lowering slightly and moving to rest between the man and the demon.
"You heard what happened?"
"I keep up with some folks, now and then," she admitted. "Angels fell."
"Yeah, that ain't the half of it," Dean said, pulling out the sheet from his father's file. "One of the Devil's finest is back and here on earth as well."
"They were all killed," Tara argued, glancing down at the sheet. "By the archangels, the legends said."
Dean shrugged. "With something called the First Blade."
Tara looked past him, through the front windows of the store, people coming and going on the sunlit street outside, and she nodded. "Gimme a minute."
She walked around the counter and flipped the store sign on the front door to Closed, locking the door and pulling down the slatted blinds on the front windows. She flicked on a light switch as she moved across the room to a door behind the counter.
"You found your dad's notes?"
"Yeah, but there's a lot missing."
"Not missing," Tara said, opening the door and walking through into another room. As the light came on, Dean saw another devil's trap, this one poured metal in a concrete surround, centred in the threshold to the room. "Come on."
He walked past Crowley, giving the demon an almost-rueful smile as he walked around the counter.
"Partners," Crowley called out behind him. "Remember!?"
"Shut the door," Tara told him and she turned to the wall, touching a brass sconce to one side of a bookcase that took up most of the wall. "This is my place, I live upstairs," she said as the wooden case swung lightly open. "Every door, window, vent and chimney is warded but I'm still paranoid."
"Old habits," he commented.
"Sure are."
Behind the bookcase, a massive iron safe had been embedded in the doubled thickness of the walls. Kneeling in front of it, Tara twisted the combination lock and pulled it open.
"The demon told us that he was working for a Knight of Hell," she said, pulling out files and books. "Your dad and me, we never heard of a demon like that, but it must've meant something to John because he got every last shred of information out of that demon, mostly in ways even I couldn't watch."
Dean looked at her as she ducked her head, keeping her gaze fixed on the pile of folders on her knees.
"Here," she said, separating a section of notes and diagrams and handing them to him.
He recognised the handwriting immediately and read fast down the pages. In the centre of the page there was a drawing, done in pencil and fine black pen. A demonic-looking skull.
"What's this?"
Tara looked at it. "That was the demon, near the end." She shook her head. "It was … changing the meatsuit's body, changing the texture of the skin, the bone structure, everything. I thought it was doing it to scare us back then, now I'm not so sure. I think it might've been happening without its control."
Frowning, Dean let that go. He read over the last few pages and looked up at her.
"Where's the rest?"
"That's it," she told him. "All that he wrote down and showed to me, anyways. He didn't say why he thought the story meant something. I figured at the time that maybe he was going after the blade – he used to talk about a gun, sometimes, a gun that could kill demons, but it was just talk."
"What happened?" Dean asked, looking down at the pages so she wouldn't see his reaction to that.
"He figured he'd gotten everything and we took it out," she said, pushing the files back into the safe and moving them aside to retrieve something deeper. "Sent it back to Hell. Had a helluva weekend together and that was the last time I saw him," she added as she pulled out a bottle rack holding several square-sided glass bottles, stoppered with cork and wax.
"What's that?"
"Ingredients to a spell that I can't complete," she said, getting awkwardly to her feet and putting it onto a table. "I couldn't get the idea of the First Blade out of my head and for a long time I was searching for a way to find it."
She rubbed her knee reflexively, her expression distant, lost in the past, Dean thought as he watched her.
"I looked all over the world," she continued after a moment. "Destroyed my knee, and my life."
"For what?"
"Location spell," she said, gesturing to the bottles. "All except one ingredient that I couldn't find."
"How sure are you that it's good?" he asked, looking at the oils and herbs and powders in the different bottles.
She smiled thinly. "Oh, I'm sure it'll work. I paid enough for it."
Keeping his thoughts to himself on that matter, Dean asked, "What's the missing ingredient?"
"Essence of kraken."
He nodded. "Give me a minute."
Walking to the door, he was turning the handle when Tara spoke behind him.
"John's dead, isn't he?"
He stopped, leaving his hand curled around the doorknob.
"I heard from a few people, but it's – it was hard to believe," she said, a little awkwardly.
"Yeah, he died a few years ago now," he said, keeping his back to her.
"Sorry."
He opened the door and looked at Crowley. "Heard of essence of kraken?"
"Essence of kraken? Got a whole warehouse full, in Belize," the demon confirmed. From the room at the back, Dean heard the safe close with a clunk, the dials spinning. "Tell her to break the trap and I can be there and back before she can say 'Presto'."
"Presto," Tara said, standing in the doorway behind the hunter.
"I can help," Crowley said, looking at her in exasperation and back to Dean. "Dean?"
"He wants Abaddon as dead as I do," Dean said, turning to look at her.
"And what's my cut of the deal?" Tara asked, looking from him to the demon. "Since I'm pretty much out of the business."
Dean looked around the store. "I don't know, what do you want?"
For a long moment she stared at him, and he looked back, unsure of what she was thinking behind the cool eyes and poker expression. Then she shook her head and picked up the shotgun, kicking back the faux Middle Eastern carpet and hitting the edge of the trap with a shellfull of iron pellets mixed with salt. The wooden floor splintered and split under the impact and the demon vanished.
"What are you doing?" she asked Dean. "Even if that blade is real, it ain't worth being bosom-buddies with the King of Hell."
Looking away, Dean sucked in a breath. "Abaddon – way worse," he told her, looking back to her face. "I'll deal with Crowley after. Trust me."
"You sound just your dad," she said, her mouth twisting up derisively. "Trust isn't a commodity I hand out to strangers."
"Ahem."
Dean turned to see Crowley standing at the doorway, a polished brass urn in one hand.
"Shall we?" the demon said, waving the urn suggestively.
Tara's gaze was still on him when he turned back to her. "Your party."
"In there."
"I can't go in there," Crowley complained, looking down at the second trap. "I'm not just a bleedin' go-fer!"
"Shut it." Dean walked past him and took the urn. "I'll tell you all about it."
The demon's breath hissed out in frustration as the door shut in his face.
"What was that all about?" Tara asked, getting a ceramic bowl from a shelf and pulling out the sheet of parchment with the spell from the file on the table.
"Who knows?" Dean said disinterestedly, reading through the spell and picking up the first bottle.
The ingredients combined as soon as they were mixed, the resulting liquid a deep amber and smelling of burned sugar and baking hot asphalt.
"Anywhere in the world?" Dean asked, looking at the map of the US lying on the table beside the ingredients and the bowl.
"Not according to the demon," Tara said with a quick shake of her head. "It said that the guardian of the Blade came to the New World in 1717."
Dean watched as she tipped the liquid over the map, pulling out a box of matches from his pocket as the paper soaked through to each corner. He lit the match and dropped it and the map caught fire, burning fiercely over the wettest surfaces then erupting in flame across the entire sheet. The flames died as quickly as they'd risen, one part of the map untouched.
"Missouri," Tara breathed, looking at the state.
"Big state to look for a needle," Dean commented acerbically.
"Wait."
At the corner of the state's border a single, small flame remained, wavering a little in an unfelt draught. They watched as it brightened to the cool blue of gas jet flame and moved in small jerks across the remains of the map, leaving no trail of char, meandering alongside the fine blue line of the Missouri River for a few moments then turning sharply south. It flared and died, leaving a perfectly round black mark in between two forested regions.
"Larger scale?" Dean asked, peering at the spot.
"Here," Tara passed him the large scale map from a pile at the other end of the table. There was only one town in the area.
"Salem it is," Dean said, straightening up. Another six hours if he bypassed Indianapolis, he thought.
"Look," Tara said softly, pointing to the map. Where the blue flame had died, a crystal sat, a little smaller than the size of a pea.
"What's that for?"
"Close encounter warning?" she speculated, looking around for something to pick it up with as Dean picked up the sheet of parchment detailing the spell. "You can't exactly break into every house in the county."
"Doesn't say anything about it in the spell."
Taking the crystal, Tara handed him a small silk bag. He opened it and she dropped it inside. "Can't hurt to take it along, right?"
"Unless it's a tracking device for whoever wrote the spell."
"Optimist."
He tucked the bag into his coat and shrugged. "You want in on this?"
She looked at him and smiled wryly. "No. I don't move fast enough anymore." Glancing at the closed door, she added, "And I don't ride with demons."
Dean let that go.
"Thank you," he said, looking down at the map. "Can I take the file notes?"
"Yeah, I have copies. I don't know why John gave me those anyway," she said, replacing the bottles in the keeper and sweeping the mess of ash and charred fragments of paper from the table. "I thought maybe he'd be back for them."
Dean rubbed the heel of his hand over one eyebrow as he looked down at the file notes in his hand. "He thought he'd be doing a lot of things that he never got around to," he said, tiredly.
"Same as all of us, right?"
"Yeah," he answered, not wanting to think about any of that. "That's the way it goes."
"Good luck, Dean," she said, letting her hand drop on his shoulder as he turned for the door. "Don't take your eyes off the ball."
Nodding, Dean left the room, tucking the sheets of paper into his jacket pocket. "Alright, we got a location, let's go," he told the demon.
"C'mon, that's it?"
Stopping at the front door of the store, Dean swung around and looked at Crowley, his face shuttered and his eyes dark.
"This ain't Butch and Sundance, Crowley," he said, his voice dropping. "We're not friends, never have been, never will be. Don't push me because I would love nothing better than to see you shining from the inside out with that angel sword sticking out of your neck."
He didn't wait for answer, turning away and unlocking the door, pushing it open with more force than was necessary as he walked out onto the street.
In the woman's eyes, when he'd told her that he was working with the demon, there'd been disappointment, and concern, but underlying that there'd been something else. A sadness, or regret. He'd known without her having to say anything that she'd been thinking of his father.
Lebanon, Kansas
Sam lay back on the reclining chair, uncomfortably aware that it was very similar to the one he'd been strapped to less than two weeks ago.
"The Grace is where?" he asked, trying to think of something that would take his mind off his memories.
"In physical terms, an angel occupies the endocrine system of the vessel primarily," Cas said, looking at the needle in his hand. "Control of the entire body through the hormonal release and the nervous system is possible from it."
"Huh."
"It's not entirely a physical procedure, however," the angel continued, his fingertips slipping along the skin of Sam's neck, seeking the precise entry point that would enable him to get the deepest into the thyroid. "In some crucial aspects it is a metaphysical connection, between the mind, body and soul of the vessel."
"Okay."
"But the residue of the Grace should be in the thyroid."
"Great."
"Unfortunately, to reach the gland with the needle without damaging anything else, I need to go in from the top," Cas continued, placing his hand over Sam's forehead and settling the needle point against his skin. "I'm sorry you cannot dull the pain."
"Get on with it, Cas," Sam said, turning his head away as he felt the prick of the needle against his neck.
The angel pushed in and Sam's teeth came together with a snap as he held himself still, his gaze fixed to the opposite wall. He could feel it, scraping along the cartilage of his windpipe as Cas forced it deeper and his hands balled into fists. In some senses, he'd endured far worse, but he acknowledged dryly to himself, he'd always been restrained and helpless at those times, not relying on his own will to hold himself in place.
The needle stopped and he was surprised to find that he could take a breath without feeling it.
"The process of extraction will be the part that actually hurts," the angel told him emotionlessly.
Really? He wanted to say it out loud, with a huge helping of his brother's built-in sarcasm but he couldn't make the word come out.
Cas moved his hand to the syringe, holding it steady as he drew back on the plunger.
The pain was excruciating.
Sam's eyes screwed shut and he gripped the arms of the chair until the metal frame began to bend. He didn't know what it felt like, more localised that the burning out of the demon blood during the trials, more diffused than any injury he'd sustained over the course of his life, it felt as if the angel's residue was clinging to his cells, and each incremental withdrawal of the plunger was ripping him apart.
"Is it working?" he wheezed as Cas paused slightly in the extraction.
"Yeah."
"But?!"
Cas didn't respond immediately and Sam's breath whistled out through his teeth.
"Cas! What!?"
"I – I need to push the needle deeper," the angel told him apologetically. "We need more Grace to cast the spell."
Deeper. The thought, the concept, swirled through the pain filling him and disappeared. One time pays for all, he told himself.
"Do it."
"Sam, if I get too close to the –"
"Dammit, Cas, just do it!" Sam ground out, his face twisting as the suction of the syringe sent waves of agony through him, spiralling up into his head at the same time as it flooded down his body, the clusters of nerves sparking and burning in response.
The groan that emerged from between his teeth was low and controlled as Cas pressed the needle steadily deeper into the gland, but no less tortured for that. Behind his closed lids, colours and shapes exploded and twisted and the overload of his nervous system pulled him away, to the edge of darkness where thought and memory and emotion intertwined.
I'm gonna take you care of you. I've got you. That's my job, right? Watch out for my pain-in-the-ass little brother? Sam? He'd slid into the black with Dean's voice getting more and more distant.
FLASH! A burst of brilliant light and the demon had died under his hand, the girl lying in a pool of blood next to him.
Get in there and heal him. Miracle. Now! The angel had shaken his head, and Sam had seen his shame. I can't. You and Uriel put him in there—
FLASH! He could feel the burning, through his arms and chest as the blood burned in him, a whispering voice, familiar but distant in his mind, telling him to go on, finish what he'd started, complete the contract.
Believe in that! Believe me, okay? You gotta believe me. You gotta make it stone number one and build on it. You understand? His brother had been holding his hand, pressing hard against the half-healed wound on it, and the devil had disappeared, and he'd seen Dean's fear, a black shadow beneath his brother's determined expression, at the back of his eyes. He'd believed and the pain had taken the devil away. Not for good, but for long enough.
FLASH! Leaning over Castiel, watching the deep stab wounds stop bleeding, close up, disappear.
This is what happens when you throw a soul into Lucifer's dog bowl. And you think there's just gonna be some cure out there? He'd seen Dean flinch from the words, seen his eyes shine for a second before his brother had turned away. The cut of the accusation hadn't been meant, not really, he thought, but it had cut just the same.
The pain diminished rapidly, soreness taking the place of the agony.
"What – what happened?" Sam asked, his voice cracked and thick.
"Your body is regressing to the state it was in before Gadreil," Cas said, looking doubtfully at the amount of Grace the syringe held.
That hadn't just been his body regressing, Sam thought, his hand lifting to hold the throbbing ache of his neck.
"Do we have enough Grace for the summoning spell?" he asked, pushing aside the too-vivid memories.
"Sam –"
"Do we or not, Cas?!"
Looking down at the syringe, Cas said, "No."
"Then keep going," Sam told him, turning his head aside again, the red circle that marked the needle's entry clear against the pallor of his skin.
"I could undo all that Gadreil has done for you, Sam," Cas argued half-heartedly. "All that I have done."
"Do you think that matters?" Sam closed his eyes. "Just get the Grace, we have to find that angel."
"Dean said," the angel started, hesitating as he saw the spasm twitch Sam's features. "He said that you chose to live, instead of completing the trial, closing the Gates."
I'm in here, with you. As you're in here, with me. You're ready to let go, Sam, ready to die.
Sam stiffened at the barely audible whisper of memory. Was it memory, he wondered disjointedly?
"Yes," he said to the angel.
"Why then did you want to die, Sam?"
"I –," Sam stopped, his reasons, all those reasons that had seemed so clear before, gone.
"It was my choice," he said finally, pushing aside the unease that filled him at not being able to remember.
"Was it?" the angel asked.
Something in Cas' tone, made him turn his head. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know," Cas admitted uncomfortably. "Only that I think the final trial, curing Crowley, was not as simple as a transfer from you to him."
"Wha-what do you mean?"
The angel shook his head. "You were ready to live, you wanted to live, then … you didn't. If nothing else, these last few months of living as a human being, struggling with the concept of mortality and the pain of life, have taught me that it is not a natural state of being, to want to lie down in the earth and let it be over." The angel bowed his head, eyes half-closed with memory. "I had more reason than most to want an ending – to the guilt and shame of what I have done, to the pain I can see I have brought to those around me – and yet, I would not let go, not while breath still filled my body."
You're not looking at a – a dead end anymore. You were right. I see light at the end of this tunnel. And I'm sorry you don't. I am. But it's there, and if you come with me, I can take you to it.
Sam dragged in a deep breath as the memory of his words to his brother played across his thoughts. He'd promised Dean that he would be there, and at the time, he'd meant it, had wanted to keep that promise more than anything else in the world. He had seen a way through, for both of them. A life that could mean something and still include what they both desperately needed.
"Cas –" he stopped again. There was no time to work this out right now. There was a job. And he knew what his brother would do. What his father would've done. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one.
"My life … it's no more important than anyone else's," he said slowly, his eyes closing. "Not yours or Deans … or Kevin's." He couldn't keep making the choices that were about what he wanted. He understood how his brother felt, bound and gagged by a lifetime of responsibility for everyone else. "Please. Please help me to do something right."
Pushing the needle back through the hole, Cas flinched as Sam arched a little on the chair, the colour in his face vanishing abruptly, every muscle contracting to steel rigidity as he forced himself to remain unmoving.
"Keep going," he managed to get out, his voice barely a whisper. "Get it all."
That faint voice that had been with him … had it been there in the church? Or had he heard it after? He didn't remember enough of after to be sure. It was gone now. Completely, he thought.
Pain coruscated throughout muscle, nerve and bone, and the scream that tore out of him was involuntary, bursting the small blood vessels in his throat in its power, erupting from his mouth with a spray of fine red droplets that hung in the air as the plunger drew back.
Salem, Missouri
Against the side of his chest, there was a warmth. Dean turned right at Main Street and felt it increase. Demon games, he thought, following the subtle temperature fluctuations onto a sodden gravel road.
"You seem pretty sure we're heading in the right direction," Crowley said, breaking the last two hours of silence.
"Got a feeling," Dean told him, his tone warning the demon to leave it at that.
The farmhouse was the last one, right at the end of the narrow road, and the Impala pulled up a little past the open gateway. He turned off the engine, the deep glub-glub fading into a silence that suggested that their arrival had been announced at least a couple of miles back.
"Out," he said to the demon, not waiting to see that the order had been obeyed.
Getting out of the car, he looked around curiously. The scene, although cold and damp with low cloud covering the surrounding low hills and puddles reflecting a chill, grey sky, was still bucolic. Neat gardens and a truck parked tidily to one side of the driveway suggested an orderly mind.
"Wait," Crowley said, stopping by the front of the car.
"What?"
"I'm feeling something," the demon told him, clutching the lapels of his coat together as he looked around uneasily.
Dean exhaled audibly, turning back to the house. He stopped as Crowley's hand closed on his arm.
"I feel something dark."
"What? Darker than you?" he asked a little disbelievingly, pulling his arm free of the demon's grip.
Crowley made a face as his gaze moved around the farmyard. Dean saw him freeze.
"Oh no …"
Turning to look, he saw a man in a bee-keeper's suit walking through the garden, a trail of pale grey smoke ribboning out behind him from the smoker held in one hand.
"We need to leave here," Crowley said tightly. "Now."
Dean looked at back at the demon. "What? Are you allergic to bees?"
"He's not a bee-keeper," Crowley said through clenched teeth. "That's the Father of murder."
"Sorry? Who?" he asked, looking back at the man who was pulling the slides from a box hive. The demon's sense of the melodramatic was tiring at times.
"It's Cain."
"As in … Cain and Abel?"
"Dean, we need to be a world away from here," Crowley said, his gaze flicking between the hunter and the man half a field away. "From him."
He turned around and Dean started back as the bee-keeper materialised in front of the demon.
"You're not going anywhere," Cain said, lifting the veil and wide-brimmed hat from his head and staring at the demon. "Crowley."
"Little misunderstanding," Crowley sputtered, taking a step back.
Cain smiled. "I think not." He looked over to the house. "It's tea-time, and you and I are long overdue for a conversation. You'll join me, of course."
Dean watched Crowley's face twitch uncomfortably. "Of course."
"You're invited as well," Cain said, looking past Crowley at him. "I insist."
He gestured with the hat toward the house and Dean kept his face expressionless as he watched Crowley turn and walk down the drive with jerky, uneven little steps, following the demon across the wet grass and up the porch steps.
"Make yourselves comfortable," Cain said, holding the door as Crowley stuttered inside on stiffened legs. "I'll make the tea."
Dean watched with a detached amusement as the demon turn right and walk through the doorway into a living room, stopping in front of the long sofa and dropping helplessly onto it. He gave the room a cursory once-over, noting the exits as he sat down on the sofa next to Crowley.
The room matched the house, plain and simple, ancient wallpaper in some unidentifiable shade of yellow picked up by the old and threadbare furniture that was grouped in a friendly huddle in front of a fire burning on a plain brick hearth. To either side of the fireplace, matching stained glass windows depicted a bee-hive. Two doors opened from the internal walls, the double doors opening to the hall and across from that, another set of glass-paned doors half-open and showing part of a comfortably-sized kitchen. A single door led into a smaller room, lined with shelves and containing a large desk and a couple of armchairs. Study maybe, he thought, his gaze shifting back to the demon.
"Why don't you just zap out of here?" he asked, looking past him to the soft sounds that were coming from the other room.
"I'd never leave my domestic partner-in-crime," Crowley said distractedly, his hands knotted together on his lap.
Dean snorted and got to his feet. "Yeah, think your heart grew three sizes? You can't zap out of here, can you?"
"Cain's doing something to me," the demon admitted unwillingly.
"Well, it's not your day for getaways, is it?" Dean remarked, walking around the room and peering into the kitchen cautiously. "Alright, so tell me about this Cain," he said, keeping his voice low as he turned back to the demon.
"Well, after Cain killed Abel, he became a demon," Crowley said tersely, looking up at him.
"What d'you mean – became a demon?" Dean asked, turning back from the window to look at him.
"I mean … became the deadliest demon to walk the face of the earth," Crowley said, the pitch of his voice rising slightly in exasperation. "Killed thousands. The best at being the worst. And then he just – disappeared," he said, shrugging. "Everyone thought he was dead – or at least, hoped he was."
Dean looked at the free-standing timber-and-glass frame, positioned between the fire and a comfortable club-style armchair. In it, hundreds of bees crawled between the panes of glass.
Became a demon, he thought, wondering at the King of Hell's phrasing. Not … went to Hell and was made into a demon. He couldn't work out if that was meaningful or not. Crowley was usually pretty precise when it came to word choices.
"Do either of you keep bees?" Cain's voice intruded on his thoughts and he straightened up slowly from behind the bee case, watching Cain set a tray with teapot and cups and saucers, sugar and milk bowls and a pot of comb honey down on the low table in front of Crowley. "It's very relaxing. And the honey … well, I keep it right on the comb."
"There you are." He poured tea into a delicate china cup and passed it to the demon. Dean walked around the chairs and sat on the sofa, sliding a sideways at Crowley as the cup rattled in the saucer in his hand.
"The bees are dying. Too many pesticides they say," Cain continued meditatively, pouring a second cup for Dean and handing it to him. "One of God's more intricate ironies. It will be peaceful."
"Peaceful?" Crowley asked hesitantly, tea slopping into the saucer.
"When the bees are gone, humanity will perish." Cain smiled as he picked up his own cup and sipped the hot tea. "A not completely unsatisfying thought."
His expression smoothed out as he studied them over the rim of the cup. "So, what are the King of Hell and a Winchester doing at my house?"
Dean looked at him warily. "You know who we are?"
"I'm retired," Cain said, setting his cup on the table beside him as he leaned back comfortably in the chair. "I'm not dead. What I don't know, is why you're looking for me – and more pertinently, how you found me?"
"Ah, it's a funny story, really," Crowley said, the words coming out in a rush on his exiting breath. "Bit of a mishap with a spell."
Dean scowled as the demon turned to him. "We really should be go–"
In the armchair, Cain lifted a finger to his lips. "Sssss-ssssssshhhhhhhh."
Like a soft draught, the sibilant sound seemed to sweep across the room and Dean's eyes widened fractionally as the volume of Crowley's voice faded and disappeared, the demon's utterances reduced to soft breathy whispers, his mouth opening and closing ineffectually.
He turned back to look at Cain. "Oh, you gotta teach me how to do that."