AN: Happy Birthday Worm!
Many moons ago, you asked for this. Well. You didn't ask for the entrails. That was all me.
As this work is a gift for my usual beta, it has not been beta'd.
None of them could remember exactly when it started. It kind of felt like the hives had always been a part of the Bunker.
The thing was, ever since Cas had taken on Sam's madness to save him from his hallucinations of Lucifer—and come out the other side relatively sane—he'd had an affinity with bees. No one had really noticed when Cas started reading up on bee-keeping, or when the hives appeared on the roof of the power plant built over the Bunker. Sam and Dean had initially thought it was a little leftover quirkiness, the result of Cas's mind having gone through so much trauma, and left him to it.
Then Cas started to drop random bits of bee-lore all over the place. Like, "Did you know that bees were once called little servants or messengers of God?" Or, "people used to believe that bees were a sacred insect that could bridge the real world with the spirit world."
And naturally that caused Sam to start reading up on bee mythology in his spare time, and Dean really could have gone his whole life without knowing that the San people of the Kalahari Desert believed that humans grew from a seed planted in a mantis's body by a heroic (or suicidal, depending on how you looked at it) bee. Sam had found a book about old country lore and would follow Dean around reading him excerpts from the section on bees. Sometimes Sam and Cas would spend the evening discussing their new-found knowledge, while Dean heroically tried to ignore them. Apparently one of the most important jobs of a beekeeper of old was to keep the bees up to date on all the local news, particularly deaths, but also births and marriages—anything that affected the family. Bees were basically gossips and would get huffy if they weren't kept in the loop. There was even a handful of gods and goddesses of bees.
Sam found all of this fascinating, but Dean was starting to get annoyed at all the bee talk going on. However, when the third bridegroom in the Lebanon area never made it to the altar on account of having his stomach, heart and liver eaten, things changed.
"It's a Manananggal," Sam had finally confirmed after an all-nighter in the library.
Dean had just walked in with a cup of coffee and a mouthful of bacon, and sat down across the desk from Sam. "A mnngga… Say what, now?"
"It's kind of like a flying vampire witch. She generally prefers to target pregnant women and fetuses," Dean shuddered, "but also has a thing for grooms-to-be, seeing as how she was jilted at the altar. Looks like Lebanon's Manananggal is particularly mad about being jilted and doesn't care so much about the unborn babies."
"Small favors," Dean mumbled. "So how do we kill it?"
Sam rubbed his hand over his face and sighed tiredly. "I haven't been able to find that out yet, but…"
Which was when Cas had walked in purposefully, and declared, "Sam. Dean. There's a Manananggal attacking men in Lebanon."
"Mganalalag… Mnnnganlam… Gmagnal…" Dean murmured to himself quietly, occasionally flicking his tongue against his teeth, as if that would loosen it enough to enable him to wrap it around the word.
Sam gave Dean a look before saying, "Yeah Cas, we know, I just… hang on. I've been up all night trying to find out what the hell this thing is and you just walk in here and announce it? Where have you been? How did you find out what it was?"
"I've been talking to the bees." Cas said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Dean almost expected him to follow up with, "Duh."
Sam looked over to Dean, who shifted his gaze from Cas to his brother and lifted his eyebrows. Had Cas finally lost his marbles for good?
"Um. Okay," Sam started slowly.
Cas looked from Sam to Dean and then back to Sam. "I haven't gone crazy. I tell the bees things, the bees tell me things. I've been telling you both about this for a while now. You should know this."
"Sure Cas," Dean shifted a little awkwardly in his chair. "But, um… The bees talk back to you? Really?"
"You have literally seen a unicorn poop rainbows, Dean. This is not a stretch." Cas was very serious.
Dean looked at Sam, and they both shrugged. "Fair enough," Sam said. "Did the bees happen to mention how we kill this Manananggal?" Sam was taking all this with a large truckload of salt, but he had no better ideas right now, and they needed to do something before another guy's insides were turned to some monster's idea of a bonne bouche .
Cas ignored Sam's scepticism and Dean mumbling "Ngmalnag. Mlangnam. Lmangalalag..."
"The Manananggal splits into two when she flies. Her lower half stays on the ground while her upper half flies away. Trailing entrails, apparently."
"That's attractive," Dean commented, finishing his coffee.
"The bees said that if you sprinkle salt, crushed garlic or ash over the lower half left on the ground it's fatal to the beast. She cannot reattach the two halves of her body and will die by sunrise.
"Huh," Sam and Dean said at the same time. And seeing as it was the only play on the table, Sam went to fetch the duffel bags and Dean went to the kitchen to get some garlic. It wasn't something they normally kept in the arsenal, seeing as it didn't actually work on your common or garden vampire.
To say that the Manananggal was one of the grossest monsters they had had ever seen would not be an overstatement. Sam located the lower half of the creature with some simple spellwork, they covered the thing in salt and garlic (and some ash which Cas got from somewhere. No one asked. Sometimes it was safer.) and waited for the top half to return. Cas hadn't been lying when he said they flew trailing entrails behind them. And dripping… goo. Just so much goo. Dean hadn't been able to suppress a gag. The monster had returned to its other half (so to speak) almost the moment they had finished with the garlic. She must have felt what they were doing somehow and came to defend her nether regions. She had large, powerful wings, very sharp teeth and a long proboscis-like tongue—which she presumably used for sucking up the internal organs she seemed so fond of. But she was no match for the three of them. She couldn't get near enough to them to do any damage with her wings or teeth. Sam and Dean kept up a constant barrage of rock salt shot, keeping her clear of her well-seasoned trunk. She did manage to get near enough to almost lick Dean's cheek with her freakishly long tongue, but Cas stepped up and sliced it off with his angel blade. Of course that set off another round of gagging from Dean, but aside from that it was pretty easy to hold her off till sunrise. After letting out an unearthly and piercing shriek of anger, the Manananggal kind of went poof, leaving behind nothing but a cloud of foul smelling dust. Cue more gagging from Dean.
The moment they got back to the Bunker, before Dean had even fetched them beers, Sam was adding an entry on Manananggals in John's journal. He also added an entry on the usefulness of bee informants.
From then on, they made sure to keep the bees up to date on all the minutiae of their lives. They weren't taking any chances. And when people asked Cas how he knew what he knew, and he answered "The bees told me," and got disbelieving or pitying looks in return? Sam and Dean just smiled.