Chapter 13: Back to Reality part 1.

Mickie James was not particularly happy about the phone call she'd gotten from her husband just a few minutes previous. She'd agreed to John spending one night away, then catching the first flight back to Atlanta on Monday morning. Now, after just a few hours of investigating, it seemed that John needed to take at least part of Monday to follow a lead in Indiana, some two hours away from where he'd said he was originally going.

Which was all well and good. Mickie truly wanted John to get to the bottom of whatever was happening with Alexa, and if there was information in rural Indiana that would help with that, then he wanted John to go. But there were two screaming toddlers at the dinner table, and Mickie was by herself, trying desperately to prepare dinner and get her three children ready for bed.

After a few more excruciating minutes, Mickie's heart leaped at the sound of the front door opening, and soared even higher when she heard the bright, sweet voice of her sister's daughter.

"Hey Aunt Mickie!"

"'Lexa!" Brynlee shouted joyfully, running toward the girl who'd become a big sister to her.

"Hi sweetie," Alexa returned, scooping the ten year old up into her arms and squeezing her tightly. Behind the tiny blonde, Dean Ambrose traipsed through the door, greeted by the cat he'd brought over from his mom's house and a friendly wave from Mickie.

"Hey Dean," she called from the kitchen. "Thanks again for staying the night and looking out for us. We may need you tomorrow, too?"

"A sleepover on a school night?" Dean shot back, his voice full of exaggerated shock. Brynlee and Alexa giggled softly, and even Mickie gave a small smile, as Dean nodded and slid his arm around Alexa.

"Absolutely," he returned resolutely. "Dad's home, but he blames me for having the party that made it easy for someone to burn the boats down, so I don't think I'm gonna show up there for a couple more days."

Mickie chuckled again. "I get it. And I appreciate you being so kind."

Ambrose shrugged, squeezing his girlfriend and the child she held closer to him. "It's no problem. I do have a favor to ask."

"Shoot," Mickie chirped cheerfully, her attention only partially on the young man.

"If Alexa is still sleeping on Bryn's floor, can I sleep in her bed? That couch is… not great."

Mickie snickered. She hadn't signed up for teenage boys sniffing around her house, at least not yet, but Dean was so earnest in his good intentions that Alexa's aunt had no problem letting the young linebacker sleep where he asked.

"Of course you can, babe," Mickie replied, using the pet name she'd adopted for her nieces boyfriend. "Just make sure Alexa is securely inside Bryn's room before you go down there. Fair?"

Ambrose nodded. "Absolutely."

Alexa carried her cousin into the kitchen, eager to help Mickie feed the three children she was responsible for. As Macy jumped up onto Dean, stopping him dead in his tracks, Alexa strode into the kitchen confidently, eager to help her aunt feed the twins and in turn indulge in a bit of normalcy.

…..

By the time Monday morning forced itself upon the hapless students of Blue River High, a good many of them were convinced that they themselves would be dead before this ordeal was over. For Dean Ambrose, however, every day was a chance to push towards normalcy. At that very moment, for example, Dean felt as normal as he ever had. He was currently lounging in his Expedition, radio blaring and passenger seats filled to the brim with his closest friends. Parked in his familiar spot across the street from Blue River High School, the young man did his best to pretend the world wasn't falling in around him and his friends.

Bayley, as always, was perched lazily in the passenger seat. As far as Dean was concerned, it was "her" seat. Even when Dean wasn't staying with his dad and her mom, he never minded going to pick her up from the Ambrose compound. Behind them, Roman Reigns and Zelina Vega were struggling mightily to keep their hands off of each other while not in Zelina's Fiat or Roman's SUV. In the very back, much to Dean's chagrin, sat Seth Rollins and Sasha Banks.

This pairing weirded Dean out for a couple of reasons. One, it broke a long-established yet unspoken rule between male friends: "No sex with your friend's ex." Dean wasn't sure they were being intimate yet, but it still bothered him slightly that Rollins wasn't a better friend than that. Secondly, it bothered Dean that Sasha herself seemed so okay just hanging around with him after callously cheating on him with a rival athlete over the summer. Finally, it made Dean slightly curious that Sasha was able to start a relationship with Seth so soon after the death of Adam Page.

All of those thoughts, however, came to an end when Alexa parked her sporty new electric blue Civic next to Dean''s sprawling SUV. She'd purchased the car with inherited money a couple of weeks prior, but the vehicle had needed minor repairs before it could be used, and so she'd just now gotten it returned from the dealership.

"Hey guys!" Alexa called brightly, waving her waifish hand at the half dozen adolescents in the Expedition.

Dean smiled and nodded, before popping the door open and handing his keys to his stepsister.

"Lock up, Bayley, Lexi and I are gonna 'walk and talk.' Cool?"

Bayley rolled her eyes at how whipped her stepbrother was by this new love interest, even as she thought to herself how good the tiny blonde had been for him.

"Got it," she muttered externally, not bothering to glance away from her copy of All the King's Men.

Dean shut the car door loudly behind him, hoping he sent the appropriate message regarding his current annoyance with his friends. Alexa giggled, always amused by Dean's antics.

The pair crossed the street in front of the high school before disappearing into a vast sea of parked vehicles. Alexa took Dean's hand with a huge smile, pulling him between two raised pickups and guaranteeing no other students could see them.

"Where are you taking me, young lady?" Dean asked sarcastically.

Rather than answering him vocally, Alexa pushed the young man against the higher of the two vehicles, then smiled wickedly as she slid her arms around the much taller boy's neck and kissed him deeply.

The shock running through Dean Ambrose's body was a sensation he wasn't used to feeling. Alexa had very rarely, if ever, been the aggressor when it came to the physical sector of their relationship, and the stunned elation he felt as Alexa attempted to jam her tongue down his throat was a new and uncharted course for them.

"Mmmmm," the tiny blonde moaned, her lips still pressed full against Ambrose's. "I really needed that. Thank you."

"What's up with you?" Dean asked quizzically. He never, ever had a problem with Alexa just wanting to kiss him, but there seemed to be some other motives behind this particular show of affection.

Alexa shrugged, herself not completely sure why she'd felt the need for a very uncharacteristic PDA. "I dunno. I guess I'm just ready to not be afraid. If someone's trying to kill me, they'll have to come for me eventually, and I know you and Uncle John and Deputy Breeze won't let that happen."

Ambrose nodded. "I won't. That's for goddamn sure."

Alexa giggled, before rising to her tiptoes and kissing Dean again, though this one was briefer and more innocent. "I know," she cooed, "and that's why I was so tempted to crawl into bed with you after Aunt Mickie went to sleep last night."

Now Ambrose was as confused as he was aroused. In the time he'd known Alexa Bliss, she'd been affectionate and assertive, but she'd never been this brazen with her attraction to him.

"Really?" He asked, afraid to say anything else.

Alexa smiled again and nodded. "Yeah, but I was afraid I'd fall asleep and she'd catch us and you wouldn't be allowed to watch over me anymore. And you make me feel safe, so I can't have that."

As she spoke, the tiny blonde began gently pulling Dean through the maze of parked vehicles, towards the front door of Blue River High School and towards the bubble of mundanity she so desperately craved. From across the parking lot, a hooded figure watched the pair canoodle, his or her gaze fixed upon them with the fiery focus of unbridled and relentless rage. Snickering, the figure felt a buzz from their pocket, before pulling their eyes from the couple to the screen of his or her cell phone.

The text was only one line. It was, on its own surface, a fairly innocuous statement. But given the circumstances, it was the most intense and revealing sentence the recipient had ever seen.

Cena is in Ohio. It's time.

With an evil, yet satisfied smile, the hooded figure slid the device back into their pocket, before following the couple at a safe yet intentional distance…

John Cena hated Indiana. From the first time he'd driven through as a boy, there was nothing about the landlocked flyover state that appealed to his tastes. Even now, as he sat wedged in a diner booth that was clearly not meant for a man his size, there was nothing about this side excursion that seemed pleasurable to him.

That wasn't why he was here. Les Thatcher said he had a contact that could shed some light on this "Seeds of Nephilim" that Rory Fox had told them about, and John Cena was willing to do whatever it took to get that valuable intel. After far longer than Cena found acceptable, a disheveled man in his late thirties slinked his way through the crowded restaurant and slid into the booth occupied by Cean and his companions.

"Sorry I'm late," the latecomer muttered.

"Gents, this is Al Snow," Thatcher asserted, his voice the same raspy baritone indoors as it was at the fire site the day previous.

Rather than any sort of spoken greeting, Snow gave a half-wave and a nod, though Cena could immediately tell he was terrified of having this meeting.

After several seconds of awkward silence, John Cena inhaled deeply and took the responsibility of beginning a new line of conversation.

"So, Al, Les here said you might know something about cult activity from some years back around here."

Snow nodded again, his eyes darting back and forth. "Yeah. A long time ago."

Cena nodded. "...and?"

Snow glanced around the dining room, as though he were worried that someone might hear him. "My parents were members of the 'Seeds of Nephilim.'"

Cena's eyebrows raised in frank surprise at this first revelation. "Really?" He fired back incredulously.

Snow nodded. "Yeah. From what I could tell they joined sometime in the mid-seventies. I was going through some of their stuff last year, trying to find some documents I needed to sort out their life insurance payouts for when my brother died, and I found just oodles of weird shit."

"Like what?" Jim Cornette inquired, riveted by this new topic.

"Well, for one, this group photo. It looks like a composite, doesn't it? Like, almost when they take pictures of a pledge class in a fraternity."

As he spoke, Al Snow thumbed through one of several manila folders he'd brought with him into the small diner. His eyebrows raised when he stopped at one faded color photo, indicating that he'd found the picture he was looking for.

"Here. This is the earliest one I could find with my parents in it."

Snow slid the glossy across the worn table to Cena, who scanned the picture quickly from one side to the other. He was about to discard the photo as useless to his cause, but in the bottom left of the three rows of people pictured, John saw a face that closely resembled his wife's brother in law.

"That looks like Dave, my brother in law," he blurted, although not so loudly as to be overheard.

Al Snow checked a sheet of paper that appeared to John to be a list of who was on the photo. "Dave Bliss?" He asked, hoping Cena would confirm the man's identity.

"Yeah," John affirmed. "He married my wife's sister, although I don't see her anywhere on this page."

Snow shrugged. "I was too young to remember most of this, but I have talked to several people from this particular group who claim that they weren't always allowed to be in the same orientation group as their spouse. They said Dan Spivery told them that 'their earthly entanglements and commitments were just a distraction from becoming.'"

"Becoming what?" Rory Fox followed, completely drowning in this cascade of new information on this topic he'd been pursuing so passionately.

"Yeah," Al continued, lowering the document he'd been perusing. "I guess 'becoming' was their big objective or whatever. Best my mom could tell me was that it was ascending to a higher plane of consciousness or some such shit."

Cena nodded, squinting down at the grainy photo. "Who's this?" He asked, pointing at another face.

Snow threw his hands up in befuddlement. "Dunno. We've had trouble identifying some of the folks in these photos. My guess is that no one knew everyone's true identities, that way if there was a police raid everyone could deny knowing people."

Cena gazed at the picture another minute and thought back to the conversation Tyler Breeze had told him about. The one he'd had with the attractive yet mousy girl from the carnival party. More specifically, he pondered what Tyler's written summary had recounted about who Serena Deeb said Jake Roberts had been in a previous life.

"I think I know who this is," Cena finally revealed, pointing to a face on the picture that had as yet gone unidentified. "He's running a carnival now, and they happen to be in Blue River at this very moment. His name is Jake Roberts, and we have a credible source on record as saying she heard he used to lead a cult or cult-like group."

Snow chuckled wryly. "That would at least make sense. A lot of cults start from small groups of transient workers and destitute people. This Roberts character would've been around a LOT of those during his time in 'Seeds of Nephilim.'"

Cena nodded curtly, contemplating this latest revelation. He wasn't 100% sure that the man in the photo was even the same man that he'd met at the lakeside campground with Deputies McCool and Breeze, but it was a very, very close resemblance.

"Anything else you can tell us?" Cena asked, beginning to feel a sense of urgency about getting back to Ohio so he could return home that evening or early Tuesday morning.

"Uh, yeah," Snow muttered, distracted by something in his many small stacks of paper. "I've found most of the pictures I remember them taking, but I can't find a single one of the kids from the compound. And I was in several, so I'm baffled."

"Hmmm," Cena pondered this latest revelation. Eager to show his knowledge on the topic, Rory Fox chimed in.

"I know in Waco and in a lot of those FLDS compounds they raided in the eighties there weren't any photos taken of kids, especially not together. They didn't want Child Services knowing how many kids were on the property so they didn't know how many to look for in the event of an incursion. It wouldn't shock me if that were the case for this group, too."

Thatcher nodded. "I remember reading something about that. Would make it pretty hard to track down the folks we need to talk to, wouldn't it?"

"Yep," Snow confirmed. "I did manage to track down one of my schoolmates from the compound, but I can't get together with him until this weekend. If you want you can leave me your number and I'll get ahold of you if he has anything good."

Cena nodded. "That'd be great."

Snow sighed deeply. "I'm sorry I wasn't more help."

Cena shook his head in the negative. "Horseshit. You were hugely helpful. Why do-" Cena stopped his sentence mid-thought as a notion occurred to him for the first time since Al Snow sat down across from him. "Wait, let me see that photo again."

Snow shrugged, then nodded his agreement. "Of course." He slid the glossy styled group picture back to Cena, then watched with mild amusement as the off-duty Captain pulled a ragged photo of his own from a small yellow office envelope he had with him. Squinting down at both portraits, Cena gave a small grunt of affirmation, as though he'd found something he was looking for. "Look. The emblem on the shirts."

Cena slid the picture over to Snow, who studied the photos with the quiet intensity of a man on the verge of a major breakthrough. "Holy shit," he muttered to himself. "I haven't seen any of these folks in any of my pictures."

"Really?" Cena shot back. "That's odd."

Snow peered down again, desperately hoping to glean more information from what he was seeing. "Hey, check this out," he replied after a moment. "Look at the building in the background."

Cena gazed into the photo's blurry horizon, noticing that the shape of the cabin-like structure certainly had the appearance of being the same in both shots.

"We need to find out where this was taken," Cena muttered.

Snow shook his head. "I've been looking ever since I found these pictures. My folks have some really meticulous records at the house, and the best I can find is that this property was owned by a fake corporation set up exclusively to hide ownership of stuff like this."

"Well, shit," Cena spat. "At least I know what this symbol indicates now, even if I don't know what the hell it is."

The five men at the diner booth chatted another few minutes. Eventually, breakfast was ordered and the hunting party split up and went about their day. What was apparent to John, however, was that there was still far more to discover about what these "Seeds of Nephilim" were, and how Alexa's family came to be entangled with them…

I'll get part 2 up soon. Y'all review. Any thoughts as to who the killer is?