Chapter 9 - There's A Ghost In My House

Frank, Gail, Cas, Sam, Nicole and Dean were all sitting around in the living room area of Nicole's house, having a drink and decompressing at the end of their hectic day. Barry, Carolyn, Mike and Rob were all upstairs, with the kids. Peter and Ilene had been upset about the monster scare, and they had each told their respective parents they were afraid to sleep alone. Barry had magnanimously agreed to take both of them in his room, so that Carolyn and Mike could spend the night alone together. Carolyn had smiled gratefully at her brother-in-law. They didn't often get a chance to be alone for a night, without one kid or the other interrupting their attempts at romance. And tonight, Ilene and Peter would need some extra TLC after the real-life fright they'd had.

Angela seemed a lot more pragmatic about the whole thing, but Frank supposed that was to be expected. She was older than Ilene and more mature than Peter, and she came from a family of Hunters. Besides, her father had said with a heavy dose of sarcasm, when a kid's homework included pointers on how not to get shot in Math class, fear of actual, monster-y monsters was probably no big deal, any more.

But Rob had elected to stay with his little sister, because he knew that sometimes, these kinds of things had a way of coming back on you. He himself was still pretty freaked out about having been grabbed by that Wendigo. It had all happened so fast. He was more embarrassed than anything else. Psychic or not, Rob sure hadn't seen THAT coming. It was good to know that his Dad and the other guys had his back, but now that Rob didn't have his brother Eric with him as a backup any more, maybe he'd better ask his father and his uncles for some more training.

Meanwhile, the group of six who were socializing in the living room were having a laugh at Frank's expense. Sam and Dean had gleefully reported what Gail's brother had said to the Wendigo, and Gail and Nicole were laughing about it now.

"Oh, how I wish I had a recording of that," Gail said, shaking her head.

"Hey, maybe you guys should put out a cookbook for monsters," Nicole joked. She was on her third drink already, and she was definitely feeling the effects. She was just so relieved that everyone was okay. Even the guy who had stumbled out of the woods with part of his arm missing was alive. Gabriel had popped over to the general area where those who had been on the hayride had seen him, and the Archangel had scooped up the young man and taken him to Mercy Hospital in Ottawa. He would, unfortunately, have to go through life missing half an arm, but otherwise, he would be fine.

All six of them were in very high spirits. It was great to have had a case involving a giant, scary cannibal where the monster had been killed so easily, and nobody had died.

Cas and Gail were snuggling together in one corner of the big, plush couch that faced the fireplace. Cas kissed his wife tenderly on the forehead. He had been so impressed with the way she had coordinated the other Angels, and by her idea about how to obtain the numbers of the customers they were looking to match, to make sure they had gotten everyone. She was the only one of them who had thought of that. He hated to think of what might have happened had a child been left behind.

Cas told her what he was thinking now, and Dean smirked. "Of course she was good at that," the elder Winchester remarked. "She loves bossing people around."

Before Gail could work out a suitable retort, a book fell to the floor from the bookshelf unit on the opposite side of the room, startling them all.

"What the hell?!" Nicole exclaimed. She scrambled to her feet and rushed across the room, picking the book up from where it had fallen. "Whoops, I guess I'd better rephrase that," she added sheepishly, showing them the cover of the book. "Holy Bible" was embossed there, in gold.

"Look; Cas's biography is flying off the shelves," Sam quipped, and Frank extended his hand for a high-five.

But Nicole's forehead was wrinkled. How had the Bible fallen from its place among the other books? Had there been a tremor, maybe? The Ottawa region had the occasional earthquake, although to her knowledge, they were never that big of a deal here. She looked up at the empty slot where the book had fallen from. If there had been a tremor that powerful, wouldn't the other books have been dislodged, as well?

"Geez, Cas, I was only teasing Gail, you know," Dean wisecracked. "There was no need to get all Biblical about it."

"That wasn't me, Dean," Cas said earnestly, and Gail shook her head. "Me, either," she stated, and then she couldn't resist adding, "If that'd been me, it would have knocked you in the head."

"Is that your family Bible?" Frank asked Nicole. "My neighbour used to have one of those. She had, like, generations of family members in there, going back to the 16th Century. It was pretty cool, actually."

Nicole was intrigued. Now, she wondered. Truthfully, she hadn't really looked that closely at it. She wasn't particularly religious, despite some of the company she kept, she thought with a grin. Besides, weren't all Bibles pretty much the same?

She brought the book over to where she had been sitting, beside Dean. There was a silk bookmark near the front, and Nicole opened it there. "It must be," she mused aloud. "Here's my grandfather's name. He was Evgenyi Dmitri Hasemov."

"That's a mouthful," Frank stated, smirking. "So, how do you get 'Baxter' from that?"

Nicole looked up from the book with a smile. "I changed my name when I got the job on the TV show. You think THAT'S a mouthful? You should try my grandmother's last name: Buxhoveden. I'm pretty sure my mother married young just so she could have a last name you could actually pronounce." She looked down at the Bible again. It was open on her lap. Suddenly, the pages riffled, and the book fell open to the overleaf, where there was another name embossed in gold: ROMANOV.

Nicole looked at that, puzzled. "Maybe it's NOT my family Bible, after all," she said, showing the others. "I don't know who 'Romanov' would be."

"Isn't that a kind of noodles?" Dean joked, but Frank frowned. "Uhhh...since when do books take themselves off bookshelves and turn their own pages?" he asked aloud.

"Umm, I can see your breath," Sam said to Gail's brother. He looked at Nicole. "Do you have any salt in the kitchen?"

"Oh, man, not this again!" Nicole groaned. "I thought you guys got rid of my ghost!"

"We did," Dean said, frowning. He and Frank rushed towards the kitchen to get the salt, while Sam said, "Cas..."

Cas was already on alert. He stood, looking at Gail and Nicole. "I'm taking Sam to the bunker to get some weapons," Gail's husband said, and the two men vanished.

Nicole looked at Gail, wide-eyed. Then she put the Bible on the coffee table. Suddenly, she wasn't so sure she wanted it on her lap, any more. The room was getting colder now.

As Frank and Dean hurried back into the room with one lone box of salt between them, Angela came down the stairs and entered the living room from the door on the opposite side of the room.

"What are you doing up?" Frank asked his daughter. Geez. Talk about bad timing.

"Rob's snoring, and there's a lady in our room," Angela replied matter-of-factly. "She says her name is Tatiana, and she's Nicole's grandma."

Now, Nicole was really confused. "My grandmother's name was Victoria," she said, glancing over at Dean, who was pouring salt on the floor at the opposite end of the room.

Angela looked behind her. "She's coming!" the little girl exclaimed. She rushed over to her father. Frank gathered Angela up in his arms as Sam and Cas reappeared, carrying guns loaded with rock salt.

The ghost of a woman materialized at the other end of the room. "Nicole," she said, smiling warmly. "My granddaughter."

Nicole's jaw dropped. "OK, what the hell?! Seriously! What kind of stupid-ass practical joke is this?" she exclaimed angrily.

The ghost was a corporeal manifestation of a young woman in her early 20s. Grandmother, Nicole's ass. The spirit glided smoothly into the room. "There is no need for weapons," she said calmly. "I don't mean anyone any harm. I just wanted to speak to my granddaughter."

"My grandmother's name was Victoria, and she was much older than you when she died," Nicole said in a trembling voice. Dean went to her side, handing the box of salt to Sam on his way by. He put his arm around Nicole's shoulders.

"No, child. You were TOLD that it was she who was your grandmother," the spectre said softly. "Let me tell all of you my story."

This was the most surreal experience Nicole had ever had, she thought, and she had hung out with God, teleported with Angels, and been possessed by an ancient entity with a doggy face and razor-sharp claws, so that was really saying something.

Frank had taken Angela upstairs again, with a stern warning to stay there with her brother. As a seasoned Hunter, he didn't sense any malevolence coming from the spirit who claimed she was Nicole's grandmother, but he wasn't taking any chances.

As he came back downstairs, the ghost sighed, and then she began: "My father was Tsar Nicholas, and I am Tatiana Romanov. Most of you are probably familiar with the tragedy that befell our family in the year 1918, but in case you are not, I will tell you what happened.

"I was 21 years old, when the soldiers came to round us up," Tatiana continued matter-of-factly. "I found out many of the facts I will divulge to you now many years after the fact. The process lasted about twenty horrific minutes, and most accounts I have read have the final tally of bullets at 70, as well as the numerous bayonet stabbings that my mother and brother and sisters had to endure, along with our nurses and our governesses. I myself received a single gunshot to the head. In retrospect, I was the lucky one. I should have received more wounds, but my mother had sewn several pounds' worth of the family crown jewels into my clothing, and they served as protection from the bullets. My dear mother." Tatiana smiled sadly. "She was naive enough to think that we might all emerge from there alive."

Tatiana sighed again. "It was horrifying. One of my sisters cried out for mercy. I don't even know which one; we were all crying and begging at that moment. But, the executioners didn't care. They were told to kill us all. My sisters and I were screaming, trying to defend ourselves, but it was no use. They were shooting, and stabbing, and clubbing us..." She trailed off as the six of them looked at each other, sickened by her tale.

"They dumped us all in a shallow grave, and then, they proceeded to drink vodka and schnapps over us, celebrating what they had done," Tatiana went on, and now they could hear the bitterness in her voice. "Then, after a while, they threw a few shovelfuls of dirt on us, and then, they staggered off. My family were all dead. But, not me. Despite my very painful head wound, I was still alive. So I dug my way out of there, using my bare hands, and the bodies of my family as my stepladder."

"Oh my God," Nicole said in a hushed voice. Her face had gone white, and Dean took her hand.

"I found out later that the soldiers were reprimanded for doing such a poor job with the burial, so they returned," Tatiana said, continuing with her story. "I was far enough away by that time, barely hanging onto consciousness. But I kept on crawling through the woods, desperate to get away." She frowned. "The soldiers stripped my family naked and burned their bodies, but because the men were so drunk, and there were so many bodies piled on top of each other, they didn't notice that I was gone. There had been eleven of us there, in the execution chamber."

"That's unbelievable," Sam remarked, dazed. "It was always rumoured that one or the other of the Romanov family had escaped, but..."

"...Most of the legends said that it was my younger sister, Anastasia," Tatiana finished for him. "How I wish that some of them HAD survived. But I was the only one, and I was terrified. I crawled to the nearest village, and a very kind peasant family took me in. They had no idea who I was, of course. But I needed help, and I had no idea who I could trust at that point. So, I took a risk: I told them who I was, and I offered them every jewel I had concealed in my dress if they would take me to my mother's holy healer."

"Wait a minute," Nicole said, holding up a hand. "If you're Tatiana Romanov, my grandmother, then who's Victoria Buxhoveden?"

"She was my lady-in-waiting," Tatiana replied. "I took her name as my alias, so that no one would know that I had survived. She was one of the servants who was murdered in that basement room, along with my family. Her only crime was loving us too much." The ghost seemed to be on the verge of tears now. "It was rumoured that Victoria was actually my birth mother, not Tsarina Alexandra. I wish I knew for certain. But, it would not surprise me if that turned out to be true. My father Nicholas was the Tsar, at the time. The absolute ruler. In those days, servants were expected to obey any request made by a member of the Royal family, and Victoria would have been no exception. It's not too hard to imagine her having ended up in the family way. My young brother, Alexei, was a very sickly child, and my father desired an heir to the throne. If I was born to Victoria, I would not have qualified, being a female. But, as a servant, she would not have been allowed to keep the baby. My father probably took mercy on her and gave me to the Tsarina to claim as her own, allowing Victoria to stay and raise me."

The six of them stood there, astonished. Finally, Nicole let out a breath. "Wow," she said softly. "I never knew. I'm so sorry that happened to you. I'm so sorry that happened to all of you."

"The question is: Why?" Sam inquired in a subdued tone.

"Does it really matter?" Tatiana said quietly, but with a bit of an edge to her voice. "Politics. People hungry for power. It was rumoured that Lenin himself ordered the Bolshevik troops to execute the entire Royal family, so that he could then set up his own puppet government. But, what did I care about such things? I was just a young woman at the time, living my life. I nursed wounded soldiers and headed Red Cross committees during the Great War, right up until my family and I were arrested, following the Russian Revolution. I tried to help others. Even though I was the 'Grand Princess', I was just 'Tanushka', to my loved ones. I never wanted to be an elitist, one of the idle rich."

Nicole gave the ghost a thin smile. "You know what? I'm very honoured to be your granddaughter."

Gail piped up, now: "What happened to you, after you escaped? You said you asked those people to take you to your mother's holy healer. You don't mean..." She glanced at Sam.

"...Grigori Rasputin?" Sam finished.

Dean couldn't help himself. "Why is it that you two seem to know everything before the rest of us do?"

"It's called 'reading', Dean. You should try it, sometime," Sam said dryly.

Dean looked at Cas. "Do YOU know what's going on, here?" he asked his Angel friend. "You were probably there, at the time."

Cas merely frowned. He had been, of course, but this was not the time or the place for that conversation.

But Frank could always be counted on to lighten the mood. "Come on, Dean," he said, breaking into a grin. He started to dance. "'Rah-rah, Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen'," he sang, in an off-key voice. "Boney M? Come on!"

"I'm actually ashamed to even be seen with you, right now," Dean said, rolling his eyes.

Tatiana had been looking at all of them, frowning. "Yes, that's exactly who I'm talking about," she said in a serious tone. "I knew that, if anyone could help me, he could. When we were growing up, the reports of Rasputin were conflicting, even within my own family. Victoria had nothing but contempt for him, but she also said that she had witnessed his miracles first-hand, and she was baffled by his powers. The Empress Alexandra, the woman I believed to be my mother, believed whole-heartedly in Rasputin, as a healer and a holy man. So much so that she taught us all to love and revere him. But my lady-in-waiting and some of our nurses were upset because our mother allowed him to visit us in our nursery, while we were clad only in our nightgowns. But it was all very innocent, at least from our point of view.

"Then one of the nurses went to Alexandra, alleging that he had raped her. But the Empress was enraged, saying that she was trying to poison our minds against him, so she fired the woman. It was a good thing our father never found out about those particular allegations. But as it was, I now believe that the Empress and Rasputin were carrying on an affair. My father must have found out about it, because he ordered Rasputin to leave St. Petersburg, shortly after the trouble with the staff."

Gail muttered something about a double standard. Apparently, it was all right for Nicholas to fool around with a lady-in-waiting or two, but not for his wife to do the same? Not that any extramarital affair was exactly morally right, of course, but the sexism infuriated her, just the same.

Tatiana said nothing in response to Gail's remark, merely continued on with her story: "Despite his exile, our family's association with Rasputin continued, until his alleged death in 1916. He was a very complex and contradictory individual, but my sisters and I held a great deal of affection for the man. He was like a revered uncle to us, and for every report and rumour that he was a sinner, who engaged in debauchery and perversion, we also found him to be a profound person, with a lot of love to give. I kept a notebook, in which I recorded a few things he said that remained with me, throughout my life. He said, 'Love is Light, and it has no end. Love is great suffering. It cannot eat, it cannot sleep. It is mixed with Sin, in equal parts. And yet, it is better to love. All is in Love, and even a bullet cannot strike love down'."

"That's beautiful," Nicole remarked, smiling warmly. Gail was smiling, too. She agreed. That almost sounded like something that Cas would say. She'd read a fair amount of things about the notorious Rasputin, but most of the accounts had suggested that he was a controlling Svengali, with hypnotic eyes and a con man's patter, with no substance or sincerity. But hearing Tatiana speak about him like this made her wonder. Curious, Gail looked at Cas's face. Now, she was even more confused. He was tight-lipped, and his expression was grim. Was he simply reacting to the horrifying tale that Tatiana had told them about the massacre of her family, or did he know something they didn't?

"I fell in love with Evgenyi, your grandfather, in 1916," Tatiana told Nicole. "I nursed him back to health during the Great War, or, what you would call World War I. But then, he went back to the trenches, and I was sent to my death. I thought I would never see Evgenyi again. But in my case, at least, God was merciful. After Rasputin healed my gunshot wound, he modified my appearance, as well."

Cas's frown deepened then, and the others exchanged glances as Tatiana continued, "I changed my name to Victoria Buxhoveden and moved to Copenhagen, and then to London, England. And it was in London that I was reunited with your grandfather. He didn't recognize my face, but he courted me anyway, and I confessed my true identity to him on the morning of our wedding. I'd been afraid that he wouldn't want to marry me, because of who I had been. But he told me that it didn't matter to him; that he loved me, no matter who I was, or had been. He swore that he would keep my secret, always. And he did."

Nicole was open-mouthed. Wow. Did he ever. She'd had no idea. None. Her grandmother was a Romanov, a member of the Royal family. Nicole was descended from Russian royalty. Holy crap.

Sam was fascinated, but there were a few things that stood out to him from Tatiana's story, things that had gotten him to thinking. How had Rasputin "healed" a near-contact gunshot wound to Tatiana's head, and how had he "altered her appearance"? But, the biggest question of all was: "Wait. What did you mean, when you said that Rasputin's death in 1916 was 'alleged'?" Sam asked her, his brow furrowed.

"Just what I said," Tatiana replied. "Historical records state that he died in 1916, but those accounts are wrong. There is much more to the story. Rasputin lives, even to this day. He has unlocked the secrets of the universe. He has transcended the bonds of mortal existence."

"He has achieved immortality?" Cas said suddenly. His jaw was clenched. No. It couldn't be.

Tatiana's eyes widened. "Who are you?" she asked Castiel. But before he had the opportunity to answer, a cold wind swept through the room, and a fearful expression appeared on Tatiana's face. "I must go," she said, and she promptly disappeared.

Epilogue - Endgame

"After the New Years' celebration, we will escalate the programme," Benoit was telling his cabinet.

"With respect, Monsieur Levesque, are you certain that this is what must be done?" his chief Press Agent inquired.

Benoit glared at the man for a moment. He wasn't accustomed to having his instructions questioned. But then, he relented. Jean Hamelin was one of the premier "spin doctors" in the political arena, and the man had thus far been able to sell the French people on all of the increasingly restrictive programs their President had been instituting. Border closings, racial profiling, clamping down on immigration. Slowly but surely, his government was becoming a Fascist regime. And Benoit Levesque's approval ratings were through the roof.

"Oui. I am sure," France's President said earnestly. "It is the next logical step in cleansing our nation. The officials at Interpol have advised that, despite our successes in keeping the wrong sorts of people out of our country, a fair number of them are here, already. The only way we will all feel safe is if we are able to identify those people. The mark will be placed on their forearm, using a subdural applicator. That means it will only be visible under a special light. Those who dissent will be deported, immediately."

The cabinet members exchanged glances. Didn't that sound like...?

Jean sighed. He could see the unease on most of his colleagues' faces, but none of them would speak up, he was sure. Too afraid to jeopardize their positions. Fine. He would be the one, then. As usual.

"Monsieur President, aren't you concerned that this new policy will be viewed as...sounding like..." Jean swallowed, hard. "...Concentration camp tattoos?"

The room fell into a hush as Benoit's expression darkened. "No," he said firmly. "Those were branded onto peoples' skin, etched there for everyone to see. This mark will be invisible to the naked eye. Only government officials will be issued the special hand-held unit that will be able to detect the markings. That should keep the civil rights factions happy. Besides, terrorists don't HAVE any civil rights, in my country. If they don't like it, they are free to leave. It is for the benefit of everyone. If the people who are selected to receive the mark are honest, law-abiding, legal French citizens with nothing to hide, they should have nothing to be concerned about."

But Jean was troubled. Everything Benoit was saying had the ring of logic and sincerity to it. But the idea was disturbing, all the same. The Press Agent eyed the President carefully. How far was the leader of France prepared to go? How far was too far?

"All right, well, if no one has any further business to discuss, this meeting is hereby at a close," Benoit said briskly. "Enjoy the All Saints' festivities, everyone."

"What are you doing for the holiday, Monsieur?" Jean asked him.

"My lovely fiancee has flown in, to celebrate with Gerard and myself," the leader responded with a smile. "Soon, we will legally be a family, and I thought it would be nice for them to get to know each other a little better." His expression had softened, as it always did when he was talking about his loved ones. Jean felt a little better now, just for having seen that expression. Benoit Levesque genuinely cared about his own people, and if this was what he felt he had to do to help keep them safe, Jean supposed there would be no harm, really.

The meeting ended and everyone went their separate ways, eager to begin celebrating their holidays with their own loved ones. But Cecile dawdled as the others left the building, and she was making a show of packing some files to take home for the weekend. Once her colleagues had cleared out, she got into her car and drove to the outskirts of the city. She parked on the back lawn of the ranch style house and took her keycard out of her purse. She put the card in the slot of the outer door, and it swung open. Then she keyed the current week's code into the keypad on the wall beside the inner door and pushed it open when she heard the beep.

Everything was quiet inside, but then again, it would be, wouldn't it? There had only been the one car in the back, besides Cecile's own. Her sister's. Many of their members would be at home for All Saints', like everyone else. Like the cabinet she had successfully infiltrated, the Resistance had regular meetings, as well.

Cecile was conflicted. What she had just heard had been so shocking, so disturbing, that she believed their members should hear about it right away. But on the other hand, All Saints' was a very big holiday in France. She would let her sister decide.

A slender, brown-haired woman approached Cecile, smiling at first. But when she saw the look on her sister's face, she stopped short.

Cecile thought for a moment. What was the sign she was looking for? Her hands gestured frenetically.

"What do you mean, 'we're screwed'?" Eileen signed back, frowning.

- END OF BOOK 43. -