"Sam! Did you hear?"
He's sitting at attention immediately as Cas bursts in from the adjacent library. He's been attempting research since lunch but has sort of been nodding off over the last half hour. Now though, now he's wide awake. "Hear what?"
"Get out your computer. Something happened in Guam. Hundreds of people died. Collapsed buildings, fires, it's been a bloodbath. Started a few hours ago, shortly before dawn, their time." Cas finally makes eye contact to say, "They're saying it was all done by one man."
Sam's on his feet, heading into the next foyer over, where his laptop is sitting on the table. "Description?"
"There isn't one out. Eloise didn't even have one. She's the one who told me to look into the news there."
"She didn't say anything else?" Sam asks, throwing his computer open a little too forcefully.
"No. She's very busy at the moment." He looks grim. "Doing her job."
Sam stares at his home page as the news feed floods with articles on the "Hagåtña attacks." Pictures flash before his eyes of decimated buildings, a sky full of smoke, streets littered with corpses. He starts to scan the articles on the horror undergone by the village of Hagåtña and the surrounding areas and after the first couple has to stop, having seen quite enough.
They're saying that, as of the most recent update, the police had set up a five-mile perimeter around the most dangerous areas, where many officers had already been lost. Sam suspects that there's more the reports don't say. That the surviving officers heard from their comrades just before they ceased communication that bullets were doing nothing, that tear gas was doing nothing, that they didn't know what else to try.
He blinks at the screen, not really seeing it, for a long moment before standing suddenly and looking to Cas. "We need Eloise," he says decisively. "We need her to get us there. Keep trying to contact her." And without waiting for a response, he tears upstairs to grab another jacket and some supplies.
He doesn't go out of his way to pack any weapons. There's not a single gun or blade or explosive that has hope of helping here anyway.
He just grabs the jeans with his pocket knife in them, because to draw that sigil, they're gonna need Dean's blood.
All the while, a question is tickling the back of his mind—what on earth is Dean doing in Guam? They've never been there, Sam can't think of anything there that would interest Dean, and he's not even sure how he could've gotten there.
Whatever the explanation, it can't be good.
He rushes back downstairs, grabbing his backpack, containing a few choices of containers to catch the blood as well as a couple other items, on the way. In his pockets are his cell phone and a pocket knife. He can think of nothing else that will be needed. But Cas is still standing alone when he arrives back downstairs, and reports, looking rather consternated, "She's out of reach."
For a few seconds Sam just stares at him. He doesn't give a second thought before shouldering off his backpack onto the table next to him, pulling out a chair, taking a seat, and clasping his hands together.
Walter has known plenty of hunters who haven't been good at retirement. They dip in and out, constantly letting themselves get involved with cases regardless of their attempt to turn their backs on the hunting life. He fully understands that his injury is a major part of why he's been more successful than most at truly hanging up the towel. He knows it's not safe for him to do anything physical anymore. There have been plenty of times when hunters across the country have called him up for advice and research assistance, but he hasn't actually been out in the field since his leg was crushed by a demigod almost eleven years ago.
The only exception was eight months ago, when he started noticing strange goings-on in the house next door. Inside a week he found himself busting in on the only kid in the house and his friend almost getting cut open by an ancient spirit.
He knew it was a good thing that he was there to save their lives that day. He lucked out that his injury was inconsequential during the brief struggle that took place. But then… they got interested. Noah dragged his sister along for one hunt and suddenly they seemed hooked, and Cody was along for the ride too, albeit hesitantly. And every time they came to him for help, he tried to dissuade them. To tell them that they didn't know what this life would do to them, that they didn't understand what they were getting into. But he still gave them what they asked for, because he knew they'd be safer with the information than without.
And then, less than half a year after he came out of retirement, a kid died on his watch.
Every day since, he's thought maybe, just maybe, if he'd been more forceful, if he'd tried harder to discourage them, maybe even if he'd outright refused to facilitate their hunting at all, Noah would still be alive.
The kids used to show up at his doorstep all together, just to hang out or do homework sprawled out on his living room floor. He never turned them away. Sometimes they'd have dinner with him, other times he'd make them snacks, still others he'd end up falling asleep in his room without really interacting with them and waking up to an empty house and a note on his door saying "Thanks for the space!" Sometimes conversation turned to hunting, sometimes it didn't. They were a delight to have and he was always glad to see them, even if their fascination with the paranormal worried him to no end.
Now? Now sometimes Adelaide shows up, bringing at least half a dozen very specific questions pertaining to demons, and sometimes Cody shows up, worrying about Adelaide. They never come together.
And Noah, of course, is gone.
When either of them comes to him, he makes himself take advantage of it as much as possible, even though he's never feeling it anymore, because their presence just reminds him of what used to be. When it's Adelaide, he'll invite her in and offer her some tea, which she rarely accepts, and she'll stand in his kitchen as he prepares a cup for himself, rattling off her questions. He answers them as briefly and tactfully as he can, dropping at least a few hints on how dangerous demons are and how little is definitively known about them, and tries to get some insight on how she's been doing. She's nothing like the girl he first met. Some days she's cold and hard—others, constantly on the verge of tears.
When it's Cody, he goes to immediately get them both a glass of water—he knows Cody doesn't drink tea—and they sit together in the living room, Walter in his recliner and Cody on the couch, and he just listens to Cody talk. Cody tells him how school is going, how the Walshes are doing, and predominantly how much he worries about Adelaide. They still talk regularly, but there are so many things Adelaide refuses to discuss, and he knows she's hiding a lot from him. When Walter sees how profoundly unhappy this makes him, he can never stop himself from sharing everything he's learned from Adelaide since Cody's last visit. They worry together, and sometimes they even pray together, though Walter's not much of a praying man. But nothing particularly actionable is ever said. They don't know how to help her.
She says she wants Emery's head on a stick. But they both know she really just wants Noah back.
They do too. Walter always makes Cody talk at least briefly about his own grieving process, because he also worries that he's using his concern for Adelaide as a sort of distraction. Mainly because Walter has been guilty of the same thing.
The only comfort he can find is that Cody hasn't been hunting since the incident. He seems to be fostering no feelings of anger, no desire for revenge. He's just a very broken kid who's lost one of his closest friends and seems to be in the process of losing the other.
When the kids leave, and Walter goes back to his empty house, he turns on the news. Usually he's keeping an eye out for possible cases Adelaide is involving herself in, or might involve herself in in the near future. If it's something she hasn't mentioned, he's quick to send another hunter to check it out, so he can tell her to stay home if she brings it up. And frequently, he falls asleep on the couch with fresh tears on his face and the TV still on.
Usually, when this fails to occur at night, the pattern kicks in for his afternoon nap later.
One such afternoon, he wakes up around 4 to find that every news station is covering what they're calling the "Hagåtña attacks." It's a perfectly lovely greeting, and he sits there for half an hour watching the only photos they have being shown over and over again, and listening to reporters just keep regurgitating the same information—that one perpetrator, a tall Caucasian man, has caused multiple fires and building collapses and killed an estimated two to three hundred people.
As Walter watches—and he's not sure why—a feeling of dread slowly overtakes him.
This could very well be a hunt. But it's so far out of reach, and can have nothing to do with them, there's no sense getting invested in it.
So why does he feel the same way he felt when the kids called him saying they'd found a demon that had stepped right on out of a devil's trap?