Chapter Twenty Nine
Fall the Walls of Jericho
Being assistant coach to Kierkegaard Academy's baseball team was generally not a taxing job on Dean. He helped the kids with their warm ups, their form, he organized practices, and so on. As the school's focus was less on athletics than on academics, there wasn't much in terms of expectations for the team. Sure, there were a few bright spots individually, Harvey being one, but the rigorous scholastic demands generally kept success on the field just outside their grasp until that spring when either luck, the fates, or the stars just seemed to coalesce around them. They made it to the State Finals.
Harvey was conflicted.
"What's wrong?" Dean asked on the Friday afternoon before the big game. They were tossing the ball around out back. It was the end of May and Dean had the backyard blooming with purple orchids. Harvey was taking Cam to senior prom the following week and he was determined to fill their limo with her favorites.
"Why does he want me to start?" Harvey questioned of his coach. A noticeable change from a few months prior was that now Harve no longer held his questions in a limbo of uncertainty.
"Because you pitched no hitters the last two games?" Dean offered as an obvious solution.
"I know, but, the other guys actually want to get seen, you know? I don't care."
"Did you tell him that?"
"That's why I'm—" he shook his head. "Half of me says, 'Harve, you don't want it, you don't need it,' and the other half says, 'they need you.' But really sorting through that all I can say is, for the first one, 'you're on a team; who cares what you want,' and for the second, 'you're on a team, stop thinking they can't do it without you,' you know?"
Dean worked his way through that spaghetti monster of logic. "If you think they need you then its over. You already know you don't want it as bad as they do so they're pretty much screwed. That answers both questions, right?" Dean asked.
Harvey blinked. "Wha—wait—how—"
"So, you kinda just have to say they don't need you, then you can do whatever you have to, and then you won't have to feel guilty for starting."
Harvey narrowed his eyes on Dean and murmured, "You've been reading Nietzsche again."
"Was it? Or, wait, Kant?" Dean said with a frown, honestly not sure. He and Harvey had spent eons prepping for finals. Dean hadn't seen so many German names in one book since Penny's mid-term paper on WWII.
"Kant's arguably the nicer one," Harvey said.
It all came back to him as Dean said, "Ohh, right."
The telephone in the kitchen began to ring. They heard Penny zipping in from the living room where she and Auggie were spending their Friday afternoon designing an RPG.
"Because 'paladin' just sounds cooler!" She called out to her design partner before picking up the phone. "Castle of Wonder and Delights," she answered.
Outside, Harvey resigned himself to whatever the next day would bring. "Coach'll figure it out."
"God grant me the serenity?" Dean began.
"To know when I am well and truly confused," Harvey ended.
"Daddy!" Penny called from the open back door. She looked panicked. "That was Uncle John."
"I called Kathy and left a message with Denise. Closed door client meeting, do not disturb, whatever—" Dean said on the phone, waiting for his flight to board.
"What? She should have let you through," Harry said from his office on the other end of the line.
"I don't know how much of an emergency it is," Dean said which was not exactly true. John wouldn't call for backup from two hundred and fifty miles away if it wasn't serious. All he told Penny before the line went dead was the town he was in. From the plain looks of it, the job John was on was going south fast. Dean had quickly weighed the benefits of driving versus his anxiety with flying but when a three hour drive could become a one hour flight then all fear was thrown out. He wouldn't have considered it post 9/11 but in 1990 people (especially LEOs as his ID defined him) could go through airport security faster than they could change a tire.
"You're getting on a plane at a second's notice. Of course it's an emergency," Harry said.
"I just wanted to tell her where I was headed but making it bigger than it is would just make her want to come with me."
"Is it dangerous?"
Dean had to select his words with care. "I don't think so," he lied with enough cushion to cover him. "And not knowing—"
"Yeah." Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. "And you'll be okay?"
"John's just got himself tangled up. It'll be fine," his assurance was calming but completely fabricated. Dean had no idea if it would be fine. He didn't know his own future and how it was twined around his dad's past. All he knew for sure was that eventually he managed to get a message back to Marie regarding Kathy and Harry's first meeting. That could be managed multiple ways, sending a message back with Michael being the most obvious. Beyond that, he didn't know what his future in his past was. Fine wouldn't be how he would describe the current situation. "Harvey's driving Penny and Gus back. I gave them money for takeout. I told him to call you and Kathy to see what you wanted. I'm gonna get back before Harvey's game. I have to be there for him, I know that—"
"Dean," Harry started, "He'll be okay."
"Huh?"
"John. Harvey too but right now I'm talking about John. He'll be fine. I don't think I've ever heard you so worried before."
Dean knew he'd been hiding his anxiety but somehow Harry had dug right through him. Well, why not? Harry Specter was an expert at shielding the things that could expose his heart. It took one to know one.
"Yeah," Dean said, wanting the subject to melt away to nothing as fast as possible. "I'll call when I get in."
"You didn't say where you were headed."
"Right, sorry. The plane's going into Fresno. I reserved a car there. The town's a little more than hour out from there. Jericho." And saying it made Dean feel like his life was suddenly in a different gear. Almost like he'd returned to the beginning. Jericho. It was his and Sam's last known location for their dad when Dean had Shanghaied Sam from Stanford to go looking for him. That was still fifteen years away. Why would John be there now? What the hell was it about that town that twice it would seem like his dad would face unknown danger? And if he was there now, what the fuck was it about that town that would encourage his dad to go back in a decade and a half?
Dean could still see the abandoned motel room John Winchester had vacated in such a hurry. He'd left everything behind: his journal, his notes, so much research . . . it had been like nothing Dean had ever seen from him. And what had the case even been? A Woman in White? At the time it hadn't connected but later on he and Sam figured John had encountered a much bigger fish in Jericho than he'd anticipated and had to do a quick 180° to save himself. But . . . his dad could handle pissant demons. He'd never just drop everything and run like that. John had said he'd gotten a line on Yellow Eyes but still, he'd at least pack up his stuff. It was just sloppy not to. Especially his journal; it had everything in it. As a witness to the original construction and assembly of the journal, Dean knew it wasn't an exaggeration to honestly say it had everything in it. It was the crib sheet to the entire Campbell library.
What the hell had John found in Jericho that would force him to leave that behind?
No. The question was in the wrong linear direction. What the hell had John found now that was not only kicking his ass but clearly leaving such an impression that he would feel encouraged to go back and visit in fifteen years?
"Jericho?" Harry asked. The announcement for Dean's flight was made over the sound system. "An hour out of Fresno? Hell, that's Marc's development."
Dean wasn't sure he heard that right. "What?"
"How he overleveraged the S&L. He bought and rebuilt the town."
"The whole town?"
"Took a project that big to sink the family business. It was an old mining village but after the second war it was totally abandoned. He built Jericho right on top of the old foundations."
"Yeah. Big project," Dean muttered lost in his thoughts. This was wrong. This was very wrong. Marc built Jericho? It had been the project he'd wanted to leave for Harvey. He had even wanted to name it after his nephew. Clearly, the new owners had other plans. Dean knew nothing was coincidental here but he couldn't hash out the importance of this new information until he found out the importance of Jericho.
Boarding was called again.
"I have to go," Dean said. They said their goodbyes before Dean hung up. He slung his overnight bag over his shoulder and made his way to the gate, his brain screaming at him the entire flight.
"The hell you mean there're no cars?" Dean demanded of the short, stocky, and persnickety fellow behind the desk. "I reserved a car."
"I know, Mr. Garcia, and I am so sorry but there was an error in the computer—" he said gesturing to said computer.
"I don't wanna hear this."
"There's a big convention in for the weekend and we didn't—"
Rather than waste time reaming the guy out, Dean just gave him a half wave 'see ya,' and turned around. That wasn't the only rental place in Fresno—
"Oh, sir—Sir—Mr. Garcia—" The clerk went around the desk and tried to stop him from leaving. As Dean was in a comfortable old pair of faded blue jeans, a grey Henley, and a blue flannel shirt with his old Samsonite overnighter slung over his shoulder, not half so much deference would have been shown him by the man following him had Dean not initially approached the counter, pulling out his driver's license to pick up a car he had expected to be there and instead unknowingly flashed his Platinum AMEX and his badge. "There aren't any cars available anywhere else around the airport—"
Dean turned to him with a glare that could fry stars. The man froze and fumbled his words a little. Dean wasn't even seeing him at that moment. All he was really thinking was had he known this was going to be such a hassle he would have taken the Charger and driven in. "Sorry—I—I've been coordinating the last hour with the other lots and every where's bone dry."
"You've gotta be shitting me," he swore mostly to himself.
"Again, I am so sorry."
"You really like saying that."
"If maybe you could take a cab to your hotel and tomorrow I'll see if I can send a car over to you—"
"If I was staying at a hotel that might be an option," Dean growled. What the hell was he gonna do without any wheels?
"I am so—"
Dean held up his hand and quieted another 'sorry' from escaping the other man's lips. The man hurried out in front of Dean and raised his hand like a skycap and hailed a cab. Dean was about to protest the very idea of bringing a civilian cab driver into what was most assuredly a hairy boogey-laden situation when a long, black checkered car drove up emblazoned with the words, 'Black Cat Car Service.'
"Seriously?" Dean asked to the cosmos.
The clerk opened the passenger door and gestured to Dean for his bag.
"No, I'm cool," he blankly said, bending a little and looking towards the driver. It was a man Dean had never seen before. The last black cat that had crossed his path had been luck or providence (okay, providence). Would it hit twice? He peered in a little further and caught sight of the driver's ID. He then looked to the driver who simply grinned with a surety of knowing that implied secret keeping.
Dean slid into the back of the cab. There was something so familiar about that backseat, something so comfortable. He felt . . . good there. The clerk shut the door and hit the roof. A moment later the cab was navigating out of the terminal.
"So," the driver began. "Where are we headed?" His accent was a mixture of French and British that was too cosmopolitan to pinpoint.
"Are we gonna play games? 'Cause I'm not in the mood."
"Ah, yes, your father. Right," the driver nodded. "You would be preoccupied with that."
"Who are you?" Dean asked. He wasn't Michael. Dean had sent prayers up to Michael to help his dad that went unanswered hours ago.
The driver tapped the photo ID that was posted on the dash.
"Seriously?" Dean repeated. "Really not subtle."
The driver shrugged. "You gave it to me. Said it was the only reason you got into the cab at all."
Closing his eyes, Dean realized he was once again locked in a temporal loop. "I send you here."
"And here I am, not a minute late."
"Is that all I do in the past? Send cars for people?" He asked himself feeling ridiculously frustrated. First he sent Kathy to Harry and now this. "I'm not marrying you," he grumbled, knowing the parallels would end there.
The driver screwed up his face like he'd visualized something no one should ever witness and reproached, "Mother, please." That chipped at Dean's anger and left awkward discomfort and quiet. They remained in silence for a while.
"When do we meet?" Dean asked.
"So you can close the paradox? You must have a laundry list of them by now. Almost two hundred years ago. Same vessel, you'll recognize me."
"New Orleans?" So, he survives to time travel. That was . . . comforting.
"The one and only."
"So, what do I call you?" Dean asked the question in another way but received the same reply: the driver tapped the ID. "I'm not calling you 'Easter,' that's not a name, it's a holiday."
"I couldn't very well be called 'Resurrection Sunday,' or 'End of Passover.' It's 'Clyde Easter.' I don't know why you gave me a name you dislike."
"Why 'Clyde?'" Dean asked.
"Bonnie and," he replied. "Something about some FBI agent calling you and Sam that and that would be a kind of password for you to know, 'yes, John Connor sent me,' or something. You know you overload with pop trivia when you speak, right?"
"Who's your 'Bonnie'?" Dean asked, ignoring the question, knowing he didn't give people nicknames, especially doubles, with no reason.
"Noémi. At least she was. I was tasked to be her family line's genius."
"Why?"
"Demonic possession sometimes has a degenerative effect. Her line didn't have very much latent power and so, not a lot of self-protection. Well, that is until this generation of course. My new 'Bonnie' as you call her is almost done with high school and doesn't realize just how much power she'll be able to throw around soon enough."
Dean recalled his daughter's namesake, his older sister as Marie's memories recognized her, on the night they picked Penelope up. Where Marie welded the electric power of lightning, and Kitty held a fiery inferno, Noémi, the eldest le Blanc sister, carried an ice cold storm in her fingers.
"What's her name? And don't say 'Bonnie,'" Dean said. If past was prologue he knew the descendent of a certain raven-haired French beauty would be connected to this entire thing in some way already. When God Himself was orchestrating details, shock or surprise had no place.
"Spoilers?" Clyde asked with a grin. Clearly he had already had this conversation with Dean. Not taking the bait, Dean waited. "Well, that's deflating. Emily Prentiss."
Another brick in the wall. Nearly the entire team was accounted for. He could just imagine Penny's petrified face in twenty years if Derek wound up a long lost cousin, or her aunt. It was now too much to deny. Chuck built Penny and Spencer's team for some purpose. Dean was sure whoever hadn't been accounted for simply hadn't been revealed yet. David was a Campbell, Emily was a le Blanc, and JJ came from at least two generations of hunters. What was the endgame? What was over the horizon that was so powerful they would need all hands on deck? Aeshma? Please. Dean was pretty sure he could turn that little bitch into jerky. No, it was something else, something bigger, and something he, Sam, and Spencer couldn't face down alone. The idea of that possibility horrified him.
"Gah." He just said it out loud and then slouched.
Clyde frowned. "Problem?"
"Fuck everything!" Dean snapped. A sudden streak of lightning pierced the night sky.
Clyde looked through the rearview mirror and said with a hum, "Mothe—" Another shock of lightning was then almost immediately followed by thunder. A chai tea appeared in Dean's lap.
"What the—"
"You seem stressed."
Dean's anger, once again vanished. He closed his eyes and breathed, getting his head back in the game. He drank the tea. "You know in a bunch of places the word for 'tea' is 'chai?' So chai tea is a really stupid name for something," Dean said referencing the foodie inside of him as he finished.
"Are you missing Spencer or something?"
Dean didn't bother to delve into how much he missed both Spencer and Sam. "Just talking names. What's yours?" Dean asked a third time as the empty cup vanished. "Your real name."
"And here we are," Clyde said as they passed the Jericho town limits sign. Something about the car changed at that instant but it was too dark on that country road to tell what exactly happened.
"What—" Dean exclaimed. An hour drive had taken a few minutes. Not that he should have been surprised though—if he had wanted to, Clyde could have blinked them right to his dad. Hell, he could have just beamed John right to his living room in San Francisco. The thought finally caused Dean to frown.
"Why—"
"And you finally ask the question," Clyde said. "You can't see it but each and every tree is warded. Not full angel-proofing; there are still some errors in how they're laid but whoever is doing it is good. Instead of blocking us it's like falling head first into a mud pit. No sane angel would step into this place; it would wreak havoc between vessel and grace."
"So you don't count as a sane angel?"
"I count as an angel who is used to disruptions between vessel and grace."
"You mean the occasional attack of humanness?" Dean guessed.
"Just so."
"How?"
"Yes, well that's why I didn't want to tell you my name before now. I'm . . . clipped at the moment."
"Fallen?"
"More like . . . prodigal son. My rebellions were the antics of a child compared to those who fell and so my wings are just . . . clipped. You told me to tell you to think about what Castiel went through, only more punitive, whatever that means." Right. Dean remembered what an almost powerless Cas had been like.
"So, you're more human than angel?"
"No," he protested. "Perhaps at the beginning but I'm well past the fifty percent mark. I'm not completely without resource. Unfortunately with the wards I can't access even that. This place is a node to us. A blank spot on the map."
"So when you say 'clipped' you mean your grace—"
"Is diminished and the El was removed from my name. I have to do good works to earn it back." Dean recalled the conversation Cas and Spencer had about angelic names and the -el that ended them. Theophory.
"How long have you been at it?"
"Redemption you mean? Well, the last decent party I ever went to was in Gomorrah." Clyde then smiled as if remembering some exciting times.
"Nothing like progress," Dean said. Great. He'd sent himself a powerless angel. Well, it explained why Michael stayed away—could he get through and operate at full strength in all of the angel-proofing? Maybe in his true vessel, John Winchester, but John was inside the lion's cage and Michael was out. If Michael came and was powerless then he risked capture and that alone would be fifty shades of bad.
The lion's cage. Jericho was surrounded by Enochian sigils. It was completely invisible to Heaven. Jericho, the town that Marc built. Kathy had asked Dean that first day they met why he had sent her to Harry. What was it about Harry that was so special? Maybe Dean hadn't sent her to Harry for Harry but as a way, through him, to get to Marc. Dean had only seen one creature that hadn't been an angel angel-proof anything and that creature had been a demon. Was Marc Specter doing business or somehow working for demons?
The car stopped. It was pitch dark save from some pale moonlight.
"He's in there," Clyde said, gesturing to a warehouse, maybe an old meat packing plant. It had clearly been from the previous generation of Jericho as it was ancient and worn down.
"How do you know?" Dean asked as he took out his mini Maglite and reached into his overnight bag. He pulled out a small arsenal.
"You told me to follow hi—" Clyde began before he spun around in his seat. "How on Earth did you get that on a plane?"
"I'm a G-man. I have privileges."
"What you are is a telekinetic. What do you need them for?"
"Yeah, lemme pull a full-on Carrie in front of my dad."
"The alternative to saving face is of course dying a horrendous death."
Dean rolled his eyes. Angels. He looked to Clyde and asked, "What are we up against?"
"We?" He asked incredulously. He gestured to Dean, "Amazon," he gestured to himself, "Dead weight. When you're done I'll join you."
"You're very helpful," Dean said, his tone indicating the opposite.
"Oh," Clyde looked at Dean's gear, "All of these and what's that supposed to do? Leave that."
"Serious?"
"I'm nothing if not helpful," Clyde said, bringing it right back to him.
Dean adjusted his inventory and exited the cab. In his preoccupation over Chuck's plan and John's danger, Dean hadn't realized the plaintively obvious until it was staring him in the face. "What the—" Somehow the cab had gone from checkered to glossy black somewhere along the drive. No wonder it had felt so right inside. The Impala.
"You stole my car?" Dean whispered in tight anger.
"Not yours yet, Mother," Clyde observed. It was perfectly hidden amongst the shadows. They were surrounded by trees on all sides save the dirt road behind. "I have his things in the trunk."
"Don't get comfortable," Dean warned.
Leaning back like a contented cat, Clyde said, "Too late." Dean was tempted to whip out the Missouri side of the family on him. Instead a grumbling above the cloud cover was heard. Clyde sat up looking sufficiently chastised.
"Name," Dean demanded.
With a sigh, Clyde looked up to Dean and introduced himself for the second time in a lifetime, "Balthazar."
"How you gonna know when it's gone green light in there?" Dean asked.
"One one-thousand. Two one-thousand," Balthazar began to count.
"For fuck's sake," Dean exhaled and looked down to his watch before silently taking over the count as he walked up to the ramshackle building. "Three one-thousand."
Zombies.
Not the full of rage but still human-looking type he'd become accustomed to when Sioux Falls had their revenant problem but the Thriller-extra kind.
"Five one-th—" Dean froze for half a moment. There were dozens of them. It was like a cemetery decided to go on vacation and left its residents behind. Cas had said dead bodies couldn't be animated in the zombie-like way. When he'd explained why demons needed fresh bodies to inhabit he also discounted the idea of zombieism. Death/Michael/Grandpa Joe had resurrected the dead in Sioux Falls so from an angelic point of view, Dean supposed Cas informed his opinion based in experience but . . . there was no discounting what these things were.
"Holy—"
They all turned to him. From the dim light coming in from the open door behind him, their rotted eyes seemed to inexplicably glow.
Shit.
"John?!" Dean screamed as he pumped his shot gun. He heard a muffled sound off to the back of the warehouse, a wall blocking it. Dean kept that location pinned to a map he quickly drew in his mind.
"Okay," he said as a horde bore down towards him. "Six one-thousand."
Silver buckshot loaded, Dean fired off a round and infused the shot with a force of power that amplified the blast up to the roar of thunder. The shot shredded the lead creature and Dean carried the silver bearings through rotted flesh to rotted flesh, a streak of metallic glint sparkling through the darkness. Dean let off round after round like this, each shot taking out a line of the walking dead. He was careful to stop the pellets from penetrating the wall behind them where his dad was.
Click.
Fuck.
He was out. He scrambled to load regular ammo but after the first two shots he realized his gun might as well have been shooting Silly String. Yeah, Balthazar told him to load more of the silver and Dean hadn't been stubborn about it but you only expect to need so much of one type of ammo when you pack an unknown monster-hunt Go bag.
He tossed the shotgun to the ground and pulled his machete, facing the remaining twenty or so zombies that were coming towards him. Hand to hand was not looking like a winning strategy to tell the truth.
Problem: He needed silver.
Observation: What silver he had was embedded in twice-dead corpses on the ground.
Fact: "What you are is a telekinetic."
Solution: . . . He actually had all the silver he needed.
He re-sheathed the blade and with the nearest zombie just seconds away from clawing distance, he extended his hands, palms down, to the fallen bodies. Curling his fingers into fists, Dean used the motion as a mirroring guide. As his grip formed the silver pellets tore out of the downed creatures and rose as if impossibly magnetized. Quickly drawing his hands into a fluid figure 8 gesture, the gore-covered silver whipped around the open space in a blur of reflective grey as it caught the isolated streams of moonlight. They moved in a whirr, cutting the air with a highpitched tone and slicing through bodies like the blades of a blender. All that remained in the air after half a minute was a thick black and dark red plume of atomized ichor. Dean pulled his shirt over his face as the smell of it hit him.
"Oh, God that's nasty." He hadn't gone grave digging in years and he was more used to the smell of almond croissants than corpses. He waved his hand and a strong breeze whipped in from the door behind him and dispersed the cloud and odor. It was only the thought of needing to get to his dad that stopped him from taking a minute to collect his breath and maybe gag just a bit. "John?" Dean called, stepping over body after body. Some of these people were dressed for a different century. Most should have been bone or dust by then instead they ranged from seeming a few days old to at most a week dead. Something had brought these people back, almost resurrecting them as Cas had resurrected him, only he hadn't come back hungry for brains and with a fatal case of dermatitis.
"Dean—" From just beyond the room came the barely breathed voice of John Winchester.
There were deep gouges in the wood around the iron door as bloody fingernails from dozens of fingers were embedded in the splintered frame. The door itself looked as if it would survive a nuclear event. Dean tried the door but it was locked.
"John—"
"Yeah," his dad coughed and the sound was wet. A panic level Dean hadn't reached yet was immediately surpassed. "I'd let you in but . . . no way I'm moving."
"You're hurt?" Dean asked, feeling stupid for asking the obvious but he wasn't thinking clearly as he looked over the lock and analyzed the best way to pick it.
"Nah," John said with a weak laugh, "just don't like you."
The John he knew only made jokes when he was worried. It's why Dean, as a child, never knew his dad as even possessing a sense of humor; he stowed all his anxiety away when he was around his boys.
Without caring about the consequences, Dean placed his hand over the lock and pushed against it. Pressure rapidly built behind his palm and stripped the interior of the lock as if a screwdriver and a mallet had just gone on a field day. The sound of the metal screaming filled the empty room but the bodies on the ground prevented too much bounce back. The lock broke and the door lurched. Dean grabbed the handle and opened it.
The relatively smaller room beyond the main must have been a meat locker or a smoking room as an array of hooks hung from the low ceiling. Dark old stains told stories in the wood. New stains told others. A trail of fresh blood led from the door to the far corner where John, as pale as the zombies who had tried to break into the room, sat on the floor, his pistol in his right hand and his small intestines pressed against the left.
The word, 'dad' was just on Dean's lips but his shock took all speech from him. He was at his side before he realized he'd moved.
"Don't—" John breathed, "don't chew me out. Not yet," he asked with just a faint smile shrouding his fear. Dean frowned at that for a moment before a horrible realization hit him: part of John's fear really was that Dean was gonna ream him for dropping the ball in some way. It was in that moment, from the dim light that seemed clear as the brightest day, that his dad was looking at him the same exact way he had always looked at his dad when he was positive he'd failed him. To his dad, Dean had become his dad.
"Hush up, John," Dean said, not even hearing what he said or how he'd said it until it echoed back to him and all he heard was vintage John Winchester. John nodded and kept quiet and a flood of guilt larger than the sides of the Red Sea loomed over Dean.
"I mean, breathe," he amended, inspecting the wound. Dean suddenly had flashes of Jo bleeding out in the same exact position in Carthage, Missouri. God, Jo. She was what? Five now? Bill and Ellen had even sent out Christmas cards. He had to pull himself out of the rabbit hole of memories because all that followed was the realization that like Jo, his dad's injury was just as fatal.
"I'm glad the boys are at Singer's," John said, biting back the pain. "That goddamn horde overran the house I was in. Barely managed to get that call out before I had to jump ship."
There was no way they'd make it half a mile with John in that condition.
"If it was them and not you that got through that door, I was gonna eat one of these," he whispered, gesturing to the pistol. Dean took the gun from him without a word. With a heavy sigh, John nodded as much as he could. "I've seen these before, Dean," he said of the wound. "Guys younger than me didn't last long with something like this."
"You're not gonna die," Dean said knowing it was true but also now knowing that if he had never been here, his dad would have died in Jericho, California. Angels couldn't have saved him here. Chuck had sent the only person who could have made sure John would survive this so he could go pick his boys up from Sioux Falls.
Dean looked up to the ceiling, his expression unreadable. He then glanced to his watch and murmured, "Yadda yadda one-thousand."
Balthazar poked his head into the small room. "It's like the plagues of Egypt hit all at once out here."
John frowned to the newcomer and then to Dean.
"Never mind him," Dean said before he took a breath. "I need you to trust me, okay?" John nodded. "Okay." Dean placed his hand over his dad's, both holding the bloody gash. Dean thought to himself that would be to date the most extensive healing he had ever attempted. He had choices: he could do a transference and turn a square acre of Jericho into dry kindling or he could create energy in the same way the stars had been created. Either way would leave his dad healed but Dean knew he'd personally be left out of commission for a while no matter which he chose. He decided against the Fern Gully flower show and selected a straight transfer of energy.
As when Cas healed someone, the action came easily. A moment of concentration and then the blink of an eye. Like with the goldfish, it was over and done as quickly as it began but unlike with the goldfish, where he felt he'd been hit with a shopping cart, now he felt like an 18 wheeler had done pirouettes in his cranium. He felt arms on him, settling him against the wall and he looked up to see Balthazar. He tasted blood on his tongue and fought to keep himself together as violent coughs felt like they were tearing him apart from within.
"You really have to get better at this," Balthazar said and Dean could see the worry and concern in his face.
"No shit." Dean couldn't contain his sarcasm as a wave of 'everything hurts and I'm dying' washed over him. He looked over to John. He was out. "Did it work?" He asked, his entire body shivering with the feel of sudden cold.
"As much as it could before it killed you. His body will do the rest."
"Is he in pain?" Dean asked as he recalled the hours in agony he'd spent after Sam had 'healed' him at Spencer's apartment.
Balthazar seemed exasperated, mumbling, "Not as much as you," before examining John. "Good color. No, you got him over the worst bit." The angel leaned over to help Dean up when Dean protested.
"Take him first," he insisted. Balthazar rolled his eyes but obeyed, raising John up and taking him in a fireman's carry out of the warehouse.
Alone in the dark, Dean drew in closer to himself to stave off the chill.
"What do You want me to do here?" He quietly asked the Being he knew was listening. Dean's carefully divided worlds were starting to melt together. Joan's warning was still as clear as a bell in his mind. There were so many threads that had seemed scattered and unrelated before that were now starting to join together and it terrified him. It absolutely terrified him. Dean had been comfortable enough in the past, knowing the future and what it would hold, but he realized he really didn't know anything. Ignoring his ignorance had been easy before, there had been nothing presented that had changed what he knew as real. Okay, so his dad and Bobby weren't as fringe as they had seemed but it wasn't like the Agency would ever confirm their existence, it wasn't like knowing that truth could affect him in his timeline. But the possibility that these creatures came from a town linked to his day job—that the Specter side of his three-sided household wasn't just a passive member, that Marc could bring a shitload of pain into Dean's family led him to contemplate the rest. How all these connections were tied to Penny, Spencer, and Dave and the rest of their team.
Jericho. The first fissure in Dean's happy mundane life occurred because of Jericho and Marc's involvement with it. The kids had to uproot their lives and their sense of stability was shaken. The first fissure in his family, in the way he and Sam understood the world and their father's role in their lives occurred in Jericho when in 2005 John went MIA and everything went topsy in an already crazy life.
There was an arm around him and his legs tried to support him as he was being led out of the building.
"Wait," he breathed as Balthazar opened the passenger door to the Impala.
"If you think you're driving—" the angel began to protest.
Dean hushed him and turned to the dry tomb they'd just left. The trees around them were dead and looked like standing driftwood. He didn't know if he'd overextend himself doing it but Dean knew they couldn't leave anything behind. Both he and his dad had bled in there and whatever power could bring back the long dead could do some nasty things to them with their blood. He also didn't know if those zombies were successes or failures but leaving them behind wasn't an option either.
Bone would mostly disintegrate at over 1400° but too much would be left behind. No. Simple fire wasn't enough.
A streak of light flashed across the sky. A sharp pain clawed at the back of Dean's eyes but he kept his focus. Another flash lit up the sky.
"What are you doing?" Balthazar asked, watching as the strikes became more and more rapid and began to coalesce over the warehouse. "Stop—" he said, turning to Dean. "It's too much too soon."
Pressure collected and a thick feeling of static overlaid them. The air sang with tension. The wind whipped up around them and the dry leaves from the newly dead trees blew in a chaotic cloud. Dean knew he shouldn't be doing that, he knew the exertion of that much power would be too much on a normal day much less after what he'd just done but nearly seven years before he'd watched his mother die, and that had been twice in his lifetime. Now he'd nearly watched his father die a third time. Balthazar would never understand that feeling. His Father would never be taken from him. Whatever Dean was under his skin would also never die. None of the angels could comprehend what it was to lose a parent. Dean had nearly felt it for the fifth time that night but in fifteen years it would be unavoidable. His mother, his father, those three months where he'd lost his brother for the second time . . . Jo, Ellen . . . all the people he had mourned and would mourn . . . Kathy and Harry. A never-ending cycle of death and loss and he was angry.
"Please," Balthazar begged as he watched blood pour from Dean's ears and also over his lips but his eyes . . . the angel had to avert his glance as the force and power behind the look nearly burned a hole through his vessel.
A lamb, looking as if it had been slain. . .
The fury of Heaven roared in a tunnel fifty feet in diameter down the center of the warehouse. A blast of energy pulsated over and around them wiping out another hectare of trees. The smell of ash and burnt meat was fleeting before being replaced by the toxic smell of ozone. In a moment it was over and the only evidence left of the warehouse was a molten hot puddle where that old iron door had been.
Dean's legs buckled and Balthazar caught him. The angel sighed. He placed an unconscious Dean into the car and muttered, "Hell hath no fury." He turned back to the scorched earth with marvel. At least this time it wasn't a flood. "And to think, Mother . . ." he said as he got into the driver's seat, "Between you, Sam, and Spencer, you're the sweet and gentle one."
Dean woke up for the first time in ten years in a roadside motel, at least that's what the rough sheets and slightly stale air told him it was but he couldn't be sure. Blinking, he tried to clear his vision but everything stayed blurred. His throat felt like course grit sandpaper. He needed to use the toilet like his life depended on it. He turned to the window and saw no glow behind the shades. It was still night. He didn't know when but whatever it was, he could still get back home in time for Harvey's game . . . once everything stopped looking like he was wearing beer goggles.
"What time is it?" He asked to a roughly human-shaped figure that was sitting at the foot of his bed. As much as he narrowed his eyes he couldn't really tell who it was but from the approximately blonde top he was almost sure it wasn't his dad.
"You don't need a clock, Dean, you need a calendar," Balthazar corrected. He placed a bottle of water into Dean's hand. The bottle opening ripped his dry lips but he didn't care. He didn't even seem to register what Balthazar had just said.
Choking a little from drinking too fast, Dean looked around to see if he could make out any other humanoid shapes. "Where is he?"
"Payphone out at the front desk. Checking in with, well, you."
"He's okay?"
"You just woke up and he's making a long distance but you're questioning if he's alright?"
"Jesus Christ, he's my dad. Can I ask?"
"How's your vision?"
"Why?"
Mimicking him, Balthazar simply said, "Jesus Christ, can't I ask?"
Dean let out a sigh and just leaned back. "Blurred."
Balthazar nodded as if he'd expected it. "Well, at least by the time I meet you it would have corrected," he quietly said.
"What?"
"What was that about not wanting to pull a full-on Carrie in front of your father?" The angel asked with an edge of frustration. "You nearly killed yourself tossing around all of that power. Father sent you back here for a reason and you just—" he shrugged. "Why?"
"A: zombies. B: a shitload of blood left behind. C: I was pissed," he shook his head. "And, yeah He sent me back to do what I just did, okay? John wasn't supposed to die and I wasn't about to leave special voodoo ingredients behind. Got it?"
"This isn't me just getting on your ass about this. You can't do that again, not like that. If you even attempt another healing anytime soon you're . . ." he didn't finish. "Dean, you've been out of commission two days now, next time who knows if you'll wake up in the same year."
A jolt suddenly snapped Dean up. "Harvey's game—" two days? Penny must have been in a fullout panic. He moved to jump out of the bed when Balthazar put his hands on his shoulders.
"Is that all you can think about? Is that all you care about?"
Dean couldn't fight him. De-powered angels were still stronger than he was on his best days. "You don't want me to worry about my dad or my kids but I'm supposed to piss myself because what? I survived. The worst that happened is I see as well as I do after one too many Jose Cuervos. Really? I'm not that guy; I'm not gonna be that guy, not again. Last time I was him I opened the first seal to Armageddon, okay?" He gestured to his eyes, "I can deal with this."
How could you argue with someone when they lay that sort of thing right out there? Balthazar nodded. "Okay."
"Alright. Now I have to get home—"
"Stop, just, you really want them to see you like this? The game's over," he said. Dean couldn't make out the hesitation in his eyes as he added, "And they won."
"What? Really?"
"Yes. So, don't worry. John and I have been in contact with Katherine. They know you're out of commission. Just try and rest."
They won. Dean smiled. They won. God, he wished he'd been there but he didn't feel so bad knowing that Harvey and the team got through in the end.
"Harvey, did he get to start?" Dean asked.
Again there was a visible hesitation that Dean didn't see. "Yes. He did."
Dean smiled even wider. That kid. Dean sat up but trembled as he did, his arms shaking.
"You're like a whack-a-mole, just lay down."
Dean gestured to himself, "The human needs the bathroom."
"Oh, right." Balthazar helped him up. "I'm working on my navigation around the whole human body system. I cleaned you up well enough and made sure you didn't make a mess of yourself— "
Dean held up his hand, "Just stop talking." At the bathroom door Dean held him at bay. "I can handle the rest." He locked the door.
"You weren't all this puritanical back in the day," Balthazar said.
"I hope you mean humans," Dean replied from behind the bathroom door, hoping an incarnation of his hadn't been partying in Sodom . . . not that he was against it, but what was the point without the memories, you know?
"Oh, not you in particular. If I'd been aware of you back then I'd worry you could be anyone. I would have been far more dutiful, like Castiel. It's actually a horrifying prospect."
"Thanks?"
"Consider going to a bacchanal with one of your parents and tell me how that flies."
Dean cringed. He shook his head. "Why do you call me that? It feels . . . weird. Like, I don't know."
"Well, thank you. That makes a person feel very secure," Balthazar said with a mischievous grin.
"Yeah, I've scarred you for life," Dean rolled his eyes. "Work out the traumatic childhood memories somewhere else; I'm serious." He looked to himself in the mirror and from what he could make out he was beat up with brass knuckles. Yeah, Balthazar was right: the kids couldn't see him like this. Hell, Penny wouldn't sleep for days just watching over him.
"Angels aren't living, in that we're not mortal, but we can die and we were born, so the spirit of life has a hand in our existence. That's you, last I checked. I first met you as Marie and though the youngest, you were the matriarch of your clan. So, I've called you that for a while. Everything's a spirit. This is my face as much as that's yours. When I see you, I see . . . you, not 'Dean.'"
"There we go," Dean said as he rummaged for a toothbrush before finally finding a new plasticwrapped one.
"What?"
"And here I am wasting my time with 'Dean' problems, right? Dean's dad, Dean's kids. That about the size of it?"
Balthazar realized the truth of it and felt ashamed. It was a rare feeling. "I'm sorry."
"S'okay. Mommy's remarried, got herself a new family, and little Clyde's jealous," Dean chuckled.
Balthazar simply exhaled before commenting, "Now I've got a complex."
Dean was halfway through his mouth when he contemplated Aeshma and his actions through time. He had been one of the angels in God's throne room. He would have known this alternate connection and still he. . .
If he had eaten anything the last two days it would all have come up in the sink. He wanted to consider alternatives that didn't make it half so bad, as bad as it was. He wanted to compare it to Apsara being married to Immanuel in one life and then being mother and daughter in the next. He wanted what Balthazar had said about everyone being a creature of the spirit to somehow nullify that specific way in which he'd been targeted but somehow it didn't. Aeshma had tracked the spirit of life through the epochs in the effort to build himself a vessel he could then use to destroy that spirit.
"Dean?"
The fatigue of the last few days was hitting him harder than he thought it would when he first got up. He finished up at the sink and slogged to the door. He figured he could use a shower but he wasn't sure he could stay upright much longer.
"You look worse," Balthazar observed, helping him to the bed and regaining his position at the foot of it.
"Charmer, you." Dean curled up under the covers, wanting to block the world out. "What'd you tell John?"
"About myself?"
"Yeah. Cover story."
"Interpol."
"He believed that?"
"The CIA doesn't employ foreign citizens and my American accent is Montana circa 1870. Not a good look."
That was true. Dean was glad he gave himself a U.S. birth certificate when he finally got around to forging what he needed when he first started working for Harry. His 'raised in Veracruz' back story still worked given everyone knew he was part of the le Blanc clan but the papers made everything so much easier. Hell, if Bruce Lee could be born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, Dean Garcia could track a slightly similar path.
Dean smirked. "Clyde, you were a cowboy?"
"Shut up, Mother."
The door handle turned with the opening of the lock and John Winchester entered the room. Dean couldn't see the warning look Balthazar shot John or the resigned look of agreement John sent back.
"Awake?" John asked.
"Yeah," Dean replied, turning towards him. He was a tall, dark shadow. Dean rubbed his eyes but it didn't help.
John settled in the bed opposite. "How you feeling?"
"Fine," Dean lied.
"Don't listen to him," Balthazar interjected. "He can barely see you right now." Dean kicked him though he wasn't strong enough to make it more than a symbolic, 'shut the fuck up,' gesture. "Overstressed himself," Balthazar ignored him. "He's lucky he isn't blind."
"But I'll be fine," Dean said, throwing a dirty look at the angel. He turned to John, "You didn't have to stay." Though he couldn't see the, 'you're kidding, right?' look John tossed him, he could feel it.
"Of course I had to stay. I was giving myself last rites in there and now I'm fine without a scar to show for it? Yeah, I had to stay." He sighed. "Why didn't you tell me you could do that?"
Dean gestured to himself and shrugged, "Not exactly battle-ready."
John couldn't help letting out a small chuff. "Right." Everyone on Mary's side of the family had some secret they kept close to the vest he'd just thought Dean had told him everything. Considering the condition Dean was in after displaying that secret, John could see why he kept it to himself. That kind of power in the field? It would be great for whomever Dean was partnered with but it would probably leave him dead before his first month on the job was up. Dean had run to John on the thinnest of threads, to help him in a situation he'd been wholly unprepared for and he'd nearly died saving him. And that job had just been a simple salt and burn that had spiraled out of control. Yeah, John could see why Dean headed a hub and stayed out of the field.
"Thank you," John said.
"You don't—"
"Dean, I'm just the widower of one of your cousins. You didn't have to help me in any if this—"
"John, just—" Dean held up his hand with guilt raging through him and John fell silent. Damn, it felt so weird when his dad did that and yet again even more guilt followed. "You're welcome. It's done. Okay?"
"Okay."
Balthazar stood and pointed to Dean, "Mr. Unconscious could probably use some food?"
Dean frowned at the idea of eating.
"Pie?" The angel offered. Dean was a little more receptive. Balthazar pointed to John, "Same as last night?" Receiving confirmation, Balthazar exited the motel room leaving father and son alone.
"Last night?" Dean repeated with a laugh. "You two besties or what?"
"He's—" John shrugged. "Lively."
"Oh, Christ."
"Not that bad. Knows you pretty well. Better than I do."
"Not possible," Dean absently said as he closed his eyes to stave off a building headache. He couldn't see his dad's reaction to what he'd said. It was visible as a sense of acknowledgement and pride. "What did Kathy say? I gotta call Penny soon as I can talk without sounding half dead."
"They're fine," John lied. It was a genetic skill that ran in the family.
Dean nodded at that. "Dean and Sammy?" He asked, no longer feeling odd about asking about himself and Sam.
"Bobby's letting them stay up, eat pizza, watch movies, and he pretty much tells me to go fuck myself every time I tell him I didn't leave them with him so he can just ignore training them."
"And you keep on leaving them with him," Dean observed.
John almost helplessly shrugged. "When else do they get to just be kids?"
"You're a big softie, John."
"I'm an idiot. They need the training more than they need pizza and movies."
"Dean needs those movies," he said of himself but it was only faintly a joke. Movies were how Dean escaped when he was a kid.
John grinned. "The kid's Rain Man." Dean hadn't heard that in so long. A depressive wave of childhood memories was going to sink him if he didn't get out from the undertow.
"At least tell Singer he's playing good cop in all this," he suggested. Dean had always wished his dad and Bobby had a better relationship than they did. They both wanted the same thing: for Dean and Sammy to survive into adulthood, they just had different ways of doing it. Bobby wanted the boys to have as normal a life as possible and John knew there was no such thing as normal for them anymore. Dean didn't know if there were halves or a middle ground in their situation but the way he saw it Dean and Sammy had two parents who split time with them and they were always fighting over how to raise them. John would always get last say no matter what so it was imperative that he recognize his boys needed their downtime.
"And give him the satisfaction? My ass."
"Real adult, John," Dean said, shaking his head.
"Honestly . . . I wish they didn't have to do any of it."
"I know."
"How the hell'd you avoid it?"
"You mean not training my kids? Staying out of the life? Well, as much as I can, anyway," he said, neither forgetting his present condition or his nighttime occupation.
"Yeah."
"I saw what the life did to my family," Dean said, almost glad he couldn't make out the clarity in his father's features. "It took my mom, took my dad," he then thought about Sam getting stabbed in the back and that picture becoming Sam falling into the Hell pit. "Almost took my brother."
He could hear his mother's words echoing to him and through him from almost two decades ago when they first met in Lawrence and he absently repeated her words as the images of all his dead family, from his grandparents to Sam, flashed thought his vision, "The worst thing I can think of? The very worst thing? Is for my children to be raised into this like I was."
Dean pictured Penny's life growing up as a hunter and he imagined her getting hard, losing her infinite brightness. He thought of Kathy and Jess and imagined them ending as Jo and Ellen had. If Harvey had ever lost the people he loved, he'd hide away everything he was and become someone like Gordon Walker. And Harry? Thrust into whatever his brother might be involved in? As distant as he already was he'd isolate himself, like Rufus, and no one could reach him ever again. No, that couldn't be their life.
He looked up to John. For the first time since the very beginning John's resolve seemed to falter. His boys had already lost their mom and grandparents and Annie had told him the origin of Mary's deal: that he had died in '73 and she brought him back. How much could his boys go through before the children John wanted to save became men who had lives they didn't want to live?
Sammy still didn't know exactly what John did but he questioned the way they lived and he questioned the training. Sam didn't have one memory of Mary so when he started fighting he wouldn't have a reason he could really hold onto. John couldn't tell him all of it was to save him—that the demon was after Sammy. Not being able to say that, to instead make the story all about revenge . . . John couldn't imagine what the consequences if his reticence could be. Instead he held on tight to Sam, knowing what the future might bring.
And then there was Dean. That spark of life that had been there when he was little was long gone. He saw Mary die; he knew the impossibility of it. Getting him to speak much less speak about what he saw had taken a very long time. The life had already changed Dean. He always smiled to keep Sammy happy but he was always sad. That wasn't a sustainable way of being. Eventually, one day, and John feared soon, Dean would just stop pretending and there would be no smiles left in their family.
"It's different with Dean and Sammy," Dean said, only hearing the silence, not seeing the devastation on John's face. "You're not choosing for them. They'll believe that for a while, they'll blame you, don't think for a second they won't, but eventually they'll realize why you're doing this." Yeah, years after you die and Lucifer goes gung-ho for Sam, but none of that needed saying.
Almost as if he had to be reminded of that point, John said, "You're right. Hell, growing up my life was pretty much the most normal thing you could imagine and here I am anyway so I guess the life chooses you, right?"
"Yeah," Dean said as he heard his Aunt Diana say almost the exact same thing to Sam about Spencer. "So, where will you go now?"
"Back to the boys; you know, touch base with sanity for a minute. Then. . ." He got quiet.
"What?" Dean asked.
John didn't know how to say this to Dean, he was after all Mary's family, but he was also the best friend he had. "Back in January . . . I was in Windom, Minnesota on a job. There was this girl, a nurse at the hospital—"
Dean knew exactly who John was talking about. As John's friend he was curious but as his son, hearing his dad talk about being with a woman who wasn't his mom made the conversation just a little awkward as much as he tried to hide it.
"She's pregnant," John said as if it were the first time he'd ever said it out loud. "Says the baby's mine."
"I'm pretty sure you know he is," Dean said, figuring his father's hesitation likely didn't stem from his opinion of Kate Milligan's honesty.
"He?" John asked. Dean shrugged. "Thought you weren't one of the family psychics?" John questioned but there wasn't an accusation in it. He'd known Dean for too long to suspect he had an ability akin to Missy. His present condition was submitted as exhibit A.
"God wouldn't give you a daughter, John Winchester. Your head would explode on your shoulders," Dean said and he knew it was probably the literal truth.
John chuckled. "Yeah." He rubbed at his jaw. "Dean and Sammy, they're in this. I can't change that but maybe—" he shrugged and looked away. "Maybe I can keep one of my kids out of this goddamn mess." His voice was quiet, hopeful.
It was only then, after everything that had been said that night and done the last few years that Dean understood why John had been incognito most of Adam's life. "You wanna protect him," he whispered.
"Maybe he can have what your kids have, you know? A normal childhood? Baseball games? Maybe the life can just skip past one of them, right?" Dean closed his eyes. It physically hurt him to consider what next to say and so he said nothing. Adam. The life didn't pass him over, did it? He got his baseball game, he got the hope of college, but in the end he was killed by monsters. All of John's three boys would be taken in some way but in that moment, in that motel, he still had something that looked like hope, didn't he?
John could feel Dean's silence far more than he was hearing it. He wasn't sure why it gave him a greater sense of dread then anything he'd ever felt before. "I'm gonna go wash up," John said as he rose from the bed. He grabbed a change of clothes from his bag and got into the shower.
Dean tried to sleep but his thoughts now hovered over the idea of kids and how he'd never been so long out of contact with Penny. Weekly communications with Jess was expected and during summer when Harvey was at ball camp he'd go radio silent for days but even when Penny went to computer camp in the summer, a morning and afternoon call was obligatory. He needed to talk to her.
Getting out of the room wasn't difficult as architectural shapes were easy to make out. Making his way along the rows of rooms was alright as long as he kept a hand on the wall and over the doors. The neon light over the main building made the rest a cake walk. The phone was a door less booth and was the first thing in the vestibule. It was unoccupied. The best thing about payphones in the early '90s was the fact that one quarter could connect you anywhere for a decent amount of time.
"Hello?"
"Jess?"
"Dean, oh my God, are you okay?" Clearly the report of his death had been greatly exaggerated.
"I'm fine. Why aren't you at school? You have finals this week."
"Oh . . . I came down for Harvey's game," she said and Dean noticed how suddenly careful she got with her words. She was lawyering up.
"That was on Saturday."
"Tomorrow's just Reading Day, no tests—"
"Jess, what's going on?"
Apparently the lying gene skipped her generation. "I had to stay with Penny."
"Why?"
"Don't freak. Promise you won't. Mama said you had to stay where you were and rest, so, just do that, okay?"
"Jessica Lourdes Pearson—" Dean had only a handful of opportunities to use her full name but each time came with a lengthy term of being grounded. He didn't care that she was a grown woman.
"They went to pick Harvey up at the hospital."
"What? Why is Harvey at the hospital?"
"At the game, he was in the box and a ball went foul. Clipped him pretty bad, Dean. Cracked his collar and dislocated his shoulder."
"What?!" He wasn't sure he was having real thoughts after hearing that. "I—I'm coming home—"
"You can't—"
"Jess, I'm coming home," he said with finality. There was a sudden pressure at the back of his head and then nothing.
"Jessica?" Balthazar said into the telephone, having caught it from Dean's limp fingers.
"Mr. Easter?"
"He'll be staying. Have a good night, dear." He hung up the telephone. He looked to Dean who was lying unconscious in his arms and just sighed. "Whack-a-mole."
Marcus Specter drove through the heavy tree cover, over dirt roads, to a cordoned off site in the middle of the woods. The sun was bright in that part of the forest seeing as no trees for about half a mile had any leaves remaining on them. In the center of the space was a huge char mark.
Black-eyed workers were being directed to and fro by a man in an expensive black suit. Marc immediately recognized the man as the person who had summoned him. As the red-eyed woman had described herself as being 'in acquisitions,' she had transferred control of Marc's contract to a subordinate of hers who was tasked with the everyday details of life in 'meatsuitopia' as she had called it. She had a pretty healthy distaste for people.
"You'll like your new boss," she'd said the day SpecterSoft met its new CEO. The board was now occupied by old friends with new-colored eyes that would make the vote non-controversial. "He's pretty much the same as your old boss."
"I don't work for you," Marc had protested but to her it was a familiar refrain. They both knew she owned him.
She stepped aside and gestured to the door of his office. "Then leave," she encouraged. He didn't move. "Oh." That sound was all she had to make but it was audible evidence of her possession.
Specter Savings and Loan was reincorporated as Niveus Investments. "Why 'Niveus?'" Marc had asked her when she told him to file the documents for the change.
"You do realize that Specter means phantom, right? Not exactly a shot of confidence when people want to invest their money. Niveus on the other hand is Latin for 'white.' As close to 'specter' as you can get without the ghostly association, don't you think?
There was a knock at the door.
Marc shook out of the memory of the first day he'd been introduced to his new employer. "What happened?" He asked as he emerged from his car. The scorch would have led him to think fire if it hadn't been so perfectly even. It was more like a crop circle.
"They're still trying to figure it out," his boss said. "Of course they want to say it was the celestials but I keep having to remind them that's not possible," he pointedly said to the demons near him.
"Celestials?" Marc asked.
"Angels. But I personally angel-proofed the town."
"Angels?" Marc asked in amazement.
"Really? You're shocked? Hello, demons—" he pointed to the others. "Ergo, angels."
His boss didn't like when he fell too far behind in understanding so he tried to keep up. "Alright. If it wasn't angels . . . ?" Marc felt ridiculous having that conversation but he then remembered who he was having the conversation with.
"Working theory is hunters but we're still looking for evidence of that. In the meantime, five miles in that direction we have a vacated cemetery and the residents are just gone. One plus one equals bonfire."
"Hunters?"
"Call them Special Forces if that helps. They hunt supernatural things. An empty graveyard might qualify but we've no idea what happened."
Five miles in that . . . "The graveyard's by the plant?"
"Exactly."
"I don't think I—"
"There was a bit of a spill last week. Might have gotten to the water table. The water towers for town are clean but some product may have made its way to the graves."
"You never told me what you were making at the plant. Are you saying it did something to the bodies?"
"Why do you think I called you, Marcus? It's about time we settled your relationship to the company." He looked to his collection of workers. "Since it seems everyone else is a pack of fools!" Everyone cringed. He turned back to Marc. "We need to branch out. Diversify just in case we can expect more visitors. We can't simply have one plant and expect it to survive this," he gestured to the destruction.
"You want to spread this," he pointed to the dead trees and scorched land, "to other towns?"
"Of course. That is the goal of Jericho." He said it plainly and Marc balked at that. "Oh, do I have to do this again? Should I send an interoffice memo outlining that we do shit like this?"
"I can't—"
"I've heard it before. All of it. You can, you will. Done."
Marc looked down and away. His hands were shaking. He put them into his pockets. "You built Jericho to—"
"It's a stomping ground. A test site."
"What are you testing?"
"A honey trap. Souls are power and we're playing a zero sum game. The more that go upstairs the less that go down."
"You shouldn't be having an issue with that. The world's not packed with saints," Marc said, clearly speaking from personal experience.
"Oh, that's not how it works. People have to sell their souls or be particularly nasty to get into hell. Most people are just mean and selfish rather than wicked, merciless, or evil. And then there was that whole crucifixion and resurrection thing along with the theft of the keys to Hell two thousand years ago that effectively bottlenecked the influx."
"So, you want more deals?"
His boss made an 'eh' sound. "People are generally leery of making deals if they know about them at all. It's not a product we can really do a thirty second spot for. Like colonoscopies, do it when you have to but there's not much to sell. No, deals are the more assured but slower way to fill our ranks and there's a fight coming up soon. We need you little Energizer bunnies downstairs and in the process we need to keep as many as possible from fueling the fires of Heaven."
"So, what are you building in Jericho?"
"Wickedness. Malice. Bitter conflict. We're breaking the connection between soul and body. Do you know what people are like without their souls, Marc?"
He gulped. "You're building evil? How?"
"The only way people do anything these days: by force. Unfortunately things are still being worked out. For now, from initial testing, we haven't reached a true sever. Not yet. Guilt remains. Guilt implies conscience." He shrugged as if what he'd just said meant nothing at all. "Conscience doesn't get one to Hell."
"And the cemetery?"
"Evidence that the bodies clawed their way up and out. Since there's been no zombie sightings in town we believe whatever happened here was the end of it."
"Zombies?"
"A body without a soul. What else? But of course those don't do us any good since those souls are already vacated, understand? They can't be corrupted."
"And you want the souls trapped inside so whatever they do can corrupt them."
"And we're finally on the same page."
"That's why I'm here? You think I'd help you with this?"
"Of course you will. Do you know what your own intestines smell like where they're ripped from your body?" Marc gulped. "You have been walking down the path of least resistance for the better part of a decade now. I own you. We didn't have to buy your soul; you've given it to us."
"Then just kill me."
"Ohh, big boy thinks he's got nothing to fear from Hell. Do you even comprehend what Hell is? Fuck fire and brimstone, that's the Fourth of July compared to the real thing. You think you suffer into being a component of Hell? When the fuck did suffering motivate anyone? You're tortured into service. Months. Years. As long as it takes. Everyone is assigned to a master craftsman and he will do whatever he wants and whatever it takes to twist you into a tiny little cog in a much larger machine that couldn't give two shits about you when it's done. You're stripped of everything; you have no name, no voice, and no identity outside of what he gives you and by the end of it you will love and worship him for it. I'll kill you when I'm ready and then that'll be me and you with you on my table, capisce?"
Marc couldn't find his voice. He looked around to the other dark eyes surrounding him. Fear. They feared the man in the dark suit. Marc realized it was time for him to fear him too.
"We're interested in new developments. Your job is to set them up. Jericho is too hot right now. We would have to scale back to effective non-functionality which is useless. We need progression."
"To torture people," Marc said quietly.
"You misunderstand. That's how we change people in hell. Up here torture does nothing for us. You don't get evil from duress, just desperation, perhaps the odd case of Stockholm but nothing significant."
"Then how—"
"My predecessor. Who I . . . apprenticed under."
"The demon who tortured you."
"He was an artist. They said he rivaled Alistair but who knows if there's any truth to that? He developed the first incarnation of the weapon we're developing in Jericho. Deployed it in Roanoke, Virginia in the sixteenth century. The recipe was lost but we've been rebuilding it ever since."
"Lost? He doesn't remember it?"
"He was killed in Hispaniola in 1790. We're still not sure how it happened. Gunshot wounds. The bullets had unique markings. Unfortunately he took his secrets with him."
"So, he built a, what? A poison that can make people evil?"
"Spiritual warfare, Marcus. Infect the mind, infect the spirit."
"Infect? It's a disease?"
"A virus that is so powerful it can drive a man to murder the love of his life, a mother to kill her children, all potentially without remorse. In its purest form the virus destroys all sense of right or wrong. My predecessor named it after himself as it was his legacy: Croatoan."
"And it makes humans act like demons."
"We have a little more finesse than those creatures. I'd say, more like human hellhounds."
"But if the goal is to keep souls from Heaven, won't you have victims? Won't you need victims to . . . I don't know . . . to qualify the evil? To define it? Those victims, won't they just go to Heaven?"
"Do you know what a violent death does to the soul of a person who cannot comprehend why they were killed in the first place?" Marc shrugged. "It creates a terrestrial spirit. A ghost. Bound here for all eternity." Crowley looked out over the devastation. "I'm not seeing much of a downside, are you?"
