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"The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink."
~ T.S. Eliot
Gravel crunched under dark, leather boots.
The night had grown cold, and the headlights only managed to pierce the fog mere inches in front of the classic green Roles Royce. The driver bent down and grabbed a handful of broken asphalt, stained a deep, dirty red from the blood of a fallen Baltan brother. He kneaded the sullied rocks in his palm, looking out into the gloom swirling around the beams of light.
The sounds of another engine and a quick snippet of a wail from a police car's siren sounded behind him. Footsteps approached.
"Hey, Sir, you can't just stop in the middle of here. It's the main road. Are you having some car trouble?" A young Chancellorville police officer said, shining his flashlight at the mysterious man. He turned his attention to the priceless car.
"Quite a beauty you're driving. Lemme call a tow truck and maybe we can fix her up...Sir?"
The man stood up slowly, still facing out into the haze of the fog. The officer walked closer, seeing the man's hand move around something he was carrying.
"Sir..." The officer approached cautiously, "D-Did you lose something?"
The man peered over his shoulder at the officer, his eye glowing red. The officer backed off in fright. The man finally turned around, and the officer realized that the person before him couldn't be more than 18 or 19 years old.
"Did I...lose something? Did I lose something, you ask?" He said slowly, taking a step forward, his chin and malicious grin now visible in the car's lights.
The officer cried out in fear, almost tripping over himself as he turned and ran back to his squad car. Just as his hand reached the door, another clamped down on his wrist. The man, with the same smug devilish smirk on his face, squeezed the officer's wrist as it began to crack under the strength. The officer began to scream "please stop, please stop," and the man paused.
"For one to lose something, that thing must be of personal value. It must hold a special place in his heart, don't you agree?"
His mind clouded with fear and pain, the officer nodded frantically, helplessly trying to yank his wrist from the man's grasp.
"I have not lost anything. No," The man drew his face closer so the officer could stare right into his blood red eyes, "I am hunting something."
A large blade plunged into the officer's ribs and he fell to the ground, his blood pooling around him.
"Why does your blood have to be the only one's to paint this road, Brother?" The man stared off into the fog one more time, throwing the bloodied asphalt at the squad car windshield and leaving several breaks.
"I'm on my way, Jane. Hope you're ready for another little family reunion." He muttered to himself as he drove off and disappeared into the night.
"Can I get a round?" Jane said, trying to flag down a waitress.
"I thought you were hungry?" Sam said, chuckling as he raised his arm to help her out. In five seconds flat, four beers were on the table along with a menu. Jane watched the blushing waitress retreat to the kitchen window, chewing vigorously on her gum. Jane rested her elbows on the table with a sigh, slightly irritated.
"Well, maybe it's just because they're so busy." Jane said, looking around at the other two tables of people at such a late hour.
"Or maybe you're just not her type." Dean snarked, his foot teasingly kicking hers. She shot him a sharp glare and grumbled as she picked up the menu.
"Do you think that thing is walking around out there?" Dean said, looking at Sam.
"I doubt it," Jane said, looking up from the dessert section, "I saw it sink into the ground. It just disappeared when we left."
"So that whole scream and dirt flying everywhere bit was like its warning to us." Sam speculated, taking a swig of beer.
"Sounds like my ex." Dean said, taking a sip and grabbing the menu out of Jane's hands.
Jane nudged Sam, "What ex?" she whispered.
He looked at her and smiled, trying not to laugh at her sincerity, "He's joking."
"Ah." She replied, starting to laugh along with him.
Cas stared at the two across the table, eyeing the untouched beer intended for him. He didn't like alcohol that much, although truthfully, he saw no point since one bottle would have absolutely no effect on him, but he took it anyway. It would be a waste let one of the others have it.
Once they received their food, they got down to business.
"So, to defeat this thing, we need something so strong it puts God to shame?" Dean clarified between bites of hamburger.
"Or thereabouts." Jane said, looking at Cas.
"If what I read is true, this thing has only one weakness, and it's a small one...or I guess it would be a big one if you can imagine the actual size of this thing..." Sam said.
"Oh, I can imagine." Jane mumbled, taking a sip of beer. Dean eyed her for a moment, but said nothing.
"The size of this thing is what we have to use against it. Like Goliath. I swear, from what I saw, it really is huge."
"It is humungous," Castiel said, "and it was feared by every other beast on Earth."
"Well, that's because it can control fear." Jane said, "We need to find a way to protect ourselves from its manipulations. If we go in cold-turkey, we all freeze up and then it's 'Game Over: Thanks for Playing!'"
There was a brief silence, broken by the waitress, "How is everything?" She said with a bright smile on her face.
"It's good. Thank you."
"Where y'all coming from?"
"We're local. Just stopping by." Sam said.
The waitress beamed a little too obviously before she said, "Well, let me know if you need anything!" and then walked off.
"Wow...the service here is great." Jane said, rolling her eyes.
"Why is it women always have to hold some sort of resentment for each other?" Dean teased, lightly kicking Jane under the table again.
Jane gave him a more powerful bitch face, "It's not that we hold resentment for each other on principle. Women can just see past the masks of others more easily."
"No way that's true. Sammy is the most sensitive person I know." Dean chuckled, taking sip of beer. This time it was Sam's turn to kick under the table, making Dean choke in surprise.
Jane laughed, and the sound made Castiel smile as he took his first sip.
Back at the bunker, the gang sat down and began to do some more research on the Behemoth. Castiel's connections in Heaven hadn't pulled through like he'd hoped, so now they were back to square one.
"They know something has come, but they refuse to say otherwise."
"Stuck-up winged Bastards." Jane blurted out monotonously, her nose stuck in a Men of Letters journal.
"Dammit, why does it feel like we keep hitting dead-ends?" Dean said, practically slamming his laptop closed.
"Because we do." said Jane, still deep in concentration.
"Our solution is we need something strong enough to phase it. If we can knock it off its feet, we can buy enough time to send it back to Purgatory." said Sam, looking up from his own screen.
Jane's eyes coasted over each word, pages and pages of Men of Letters research on the most obscure and obscene things, from torture to Vampires to a "how-to" on The Torture of Vampires. Line after line was an exhaustion of symbols and synonyms for the same thing: Death to all Monsters.
Unfortunately, that excluded one, dreadful monster in particular.
She tossed the book in the growing pile of dead-ends, picking up yet another with a sigh. This one was dustier, and the pages were more brown and weathered from age. There was no name in it, simply the Men of Letters symbol messily stamped inside the front cover in deep, red ink. Flipping through the pages, hideous drawings of black figures with piercing eyes and name after name in different languages: daemonium; Idemoni; setan; daimonio...
They all meant the same thing.
Demon.
She kept flipping through the pages, intrigued and mesmerized by the jagged lines and manic splatters of black ink that took the form of the monsters from Hell. In her life, she had never met a demon quite like, well, any of these. She kept turning page after page until her eyes met with two, giant ones engraved into the page, the symbols on the page written in what looked like Arabic.
"Cas?" Jane looked across the room at the angel, waving him over.
"What is it, Jane?"
"Can you read this?" Cas looked down at the page and his eyes grew wide. He stared at the illustration for a moment, looking like he was sinking into the floor.
"Where did you find this book?" Castiel asked instead, his voice very grave.
"It's one of the Men of Letters journals I found here in the library."
Dean looked up from the computer he had reluctantly opened back up again, "Find something?"
"What's wrong Cas?" Jane asked, looking up at the angel and trying to hide her anticipation for his answer.
"Those words there, written in Arabic..." Castiel pointed to the symbols, "They translate to shakhs dakhm jiddaan. It most literally means 'beast.' But another translation could be..."
"Behemoth." Jane said breathlessly as she stared into the cold inky blackness of the eyes on the page.