Careful What You Wish For: Season 1.5
The Road Less Traveled
Chapter Six
Not Quite the End
A Few Days Later
Sliding into a booth in a late night diner outside of Ashland, Virginia, the Winchesters found themselves with an unexpected, and unwelcome guest. Crowley already occupied an interior seat, a cup of steaming tea, a small pot for a refill sitting before him. Alarmed, and on edge, both brothers touched the handles of their respective concealed weapons. Instead of opting to sit beside the King of Hell, Dean forced his brother to scoot further in, so they presented a united front.
Sam opened his mouth to speak, but Crowley held up a hand, one finger wagging. "Ah!" The gesture and noise repeated itself when Dean tried to pick up the protest with his brother. Crowley went to take a sip of his tea, but wrinkled his nose at it, and set the mug back onto the saucer without comment. Steepling his fingers before him, Crowley glared at the brothers.
"What have you two lumbering buffoons done this time?" Crowley finally asked, his tone arch and angry. The King of Hell was seething. Practically vibrating in his rage, he barely managed to keep his voice down as both brother's stared at him in bewilderment.
Dean started to boil over. "Well, hell-fucking-o to you too Crowley? Gee, where've you been? The last time we saw you, you vanished after Purgatory got opened."
Crowley scoffed. "Please. I've been rounding up escapee souls and harvesting demons, thank you. But none of that explains why I just had a mass desertion of nearly half my bloody army!"
Sam looked at his brother, Dean never took his eyes off Crowley. "Sounds like poor management to me," Dean snapped back, just daring the King of Hell to lay the blame directly on them.
"Why do you think we had something to do with it?" One of them had to be the voice of reason, and Dean wasn't being cooperative, so it had to be Sam.
"Because, Moose, ninety-nine percent of the time that something fouls up in the universe, you two are at the center of the entire mess!" Crowley's teacup rattled as he banged his fist on the table. "So, are you two going to tell me what you've been up to lately, or am I going to have to drag it out of you?"
Dead crossed his arms, and leaned back in the booth. Crowley wasn't getting any information out of him. Sam, on the other hand, weighed the situation. Crowley was a demon, yes, and the self-proclaimed King of Hell while Lucifer languished in his cage. He'd been a thorn in their side repeatedly, but Sam had to admit, they'd had far fewer issues with demons while Crowley was in control. It was a weird, tenuous kind of balance.
"What do you know about Mammon?" Sam finally asked.
"Dude!" Dean threw his hands in the air, and rolled his eyes.
But Crowley went quiet, and white. The smug superiority drained from his expression as he recognized the name Sam fed him. "Tell me that is a name you read on some paper somewhere?"
Dean sobered too, hearing the note of anxiety that gripped Crowley in the moment. "Something like that." He hedged carefully. The cold fingers of worry started to creep up his spine; they'd left Jessie to cope with her parents death, and her sister's confusion with little more than a farewell hug, and the exchange of phone numbers.
"See," Crowley leaned forward, quiet and urgent. "Mammon was an archfiend, a pagan god that was twisted and corrupted by humanity's belief and worship into a demon of Hell. It was a bloody demotion, and story has it that he took personal issue with the fact. Major. Personal. Issue."
"How much of an issue?" Sam prompted.
"Supposedly he began a campaign that turned brother against brother, that stretched over centuries. Mammon supposedly swole the ranks of his followers, and amassed an army unlike any seen in Hell before. Or since. Mammon simply disappeared. Poof." Crowley shook his head. Sam was putting the pieces together in his head, but Dean still looked.. preoccupied. "Before my demonic time, of course. By the time I was making my way through the ranks, he was being used as an object lesson. Get too big for your britches, yadda yadda."
Dean seemed to relax. "He doesn't sound so bad. Good thing, we killed him."
"You what?" Blinking, Crowley had to double check what he was hearing. "Did you just say you killed an archfiend? A fallen god? With what, your dashing good looks? No one has killed one of the truly fallen. Ever."
Dean couldn't ignore the nagging edge of worry any more. Sliding out of the booth, he made some lame excuse to use the john while his brother carried on the chat behind him. He felt Crowley's eyes following him as he headed towards the back of the diner.
"So, Moose. Tell me. How do you think you killed Mammon if he's been missing for the past seven centuries?" Crowley turned a bemused smile back on the younger brother, waiting expectantly for the answer. He knew the brothers were hiding something. He could feel it like an itch in his vessel's bones.
Sam debated quietly with himself. Without Dean there, no one would stop him from trying to sate his curiosity. Crowley knew something that wasn't being told. And Sam was starting to worry that things had wrapped up a little too neatly in Salem. Which, he figured, was what crawled under Dean's skin.
Sighing, Sam rubbed his face. "Sounds like it's going to be a big deal if Mammon isn't actually dead..."
Instead of heading to john, Dean pushed his way into the kitchen and out the back door, despite a few bewildered looks from the line cooks. No one stopped him; half the key to going where you didn't belong was to act like there was nothing unusual. He was heading into the delivery area as he held the cellphone up to his ear, listening to it ring, silently hoping that Jessie would pick up.
"Dean?" At the sound her voice, Dean could breathe again. At first, she sounded happy to hear from him, but then concern surfaced. They had agreed to only use the numbers in an emergency. "What's wrong?"
Faltering, Dean tried to come up with a good reason. "Just checking in. I wanted to see how you were holding up." Wincing, he wondering how lame he sounded. But Jessie's hesitation to answer on the other end let him believe that maybe he was onto something. "Everything is still okay there, right?"
"I guess so? Becky doesn't want my help at the shop anymore. The town feels a lot, I dunno, colder."
"It's January in Massachusetts, Jessie, it's gonna be cold." Joking felt more natural than admitting he was worried. "Nothing really weird's been going on though?"
"It's Salem, Dean. Weird is our daily life. No one's been flicking black eyes at me, if that's what you mean. But.." Jessie trailed off, and sighed. "It's nothing I can't handle. It's fine."
"But what? Tell me." Dean felt someone moving around behind him, and turned to see that he'd been joined by both Crowley and Sam at the loading dock. Gesturing, Dean gave his brother a solid WTF look.
"I wanna talk to her." Crowley pointed at the phone. "The girl with the Mammonite."
Dean mouthed an emphatic no, before getting back to concentrating on Jessie. She was mid-explanation, and Dean found he'd missed part of it. "- just all got swanky cars, like we're talking Lexuses. Lexi? You know those big boats with the six hundred buttons inside? There's like this, keeping up with the Joneses attitude and I got evicted from my apartment because I didn't fit the landlord's image anymore." Jessie made a disgusted sound. "I'm sorry, Dean, you don't need me to dump this shit on you. Really, I'm fine, just... stressed."
Crowley held his hand out. "Let me talk to the girl."
Dean took a deliberate step backwards from Crowley. The demon scowled.
"Fine. We'll all go talk to the girl then." Snapping his fingers, Crowley shunted them all across the distance, dropping them into the bitterly cold parking lot of Jessie's studio apartment.
The cellphone in Dean's hand went dead, unable to make the signal jump to a new tower fast enough, and Dean was just left staring exasperated at Crowley. Undeterred, Crowley began to march up to the door marked Thirty-Two. Dean shoved his phone into his pocket and stormed over to the stairs leading up to Thirty-Two-and-a-Half. Crowley only noticed they weren't following him when he heard the sound of their boots up the stairs. For him, though, following was just a blink and a translocation sideways.
Banging on Jessie's door, Dean tried to ignore the urge to shove Crowley off the landing. She opened after the third bang, visibly confused, and holding her cell phone still. In his pocket, Dean's phone was buzzing. She had tried to call him back.
"What's going on? What're you doing back? Didn't you—"
"Mammon might not be dead," Sam offered, as she moved out of the way to let them both in. She gave Sam's arm a squeeze as he passed by, then did the same to Dean. The third figure she didn't recognize, but he stopped just shy of the threshold, directing his eyes upward at the lintel above her door.
"Jessie, this is Crowley." Dean offered the terse introduction. "Crowley, Jessie. Now, c'mon." Waving him inside, Dean made it clear that he wanted to get things over with.
But Crowley remained at the door. He glanced up once more. "She has to invite me in. Clever little witch, indeed."
Jessie looked at Dean. "He's... a demon?"
"The King of Hell, actually." Crowley rocked a little on his heels as he clarified the introduction. "Your hazel switch is surprisingly powerful, if I do say so myself."
"He's with us, Jessie. And he might have some answers." Sam offered. It soured in his mouth vouching for Crowley, but they needed to know the truth.
After Dean nodded, Jessie stepped to the door, and offered her hand across the threshold. "I invoke the sacred bylaws of hospitality, and invite you inside as my guest."
Crowley's brows raised, but he clasped her hand in return. "I accept your invitation and your hospitality. Many thanks to your and yours."
Jessie backed up again to give the demon room to enter. This time, he could step across the doorjamb without trouble, and carefully closed the door behind him. Fixing his suit jacket, Crowley smiled, his eyes crinkling without mirth. "So rare to find a witch these days that knows the old laws. Quite a treasure actually. Now. I'd like to see the Mammonite, please. The stone."
Jessie shook her head. "It's broken. Whatever was inside is dead." When Crowley scowled, she looked at Dean again. "Right? You said that dagger would kill it." Dean just scrubbed the back of his head with a hand, feeling sheepish. When he didn't answer, she closed her eyes for a moment. "Shit. Shit. Okay. It's packed. I was planning on pawning it when I found someplace new to live."
Dean noticed that her tiny apartment was practically empty. The last time he'd seen it, it had been trashed, and most of her belongings broken by the demons that ransacked her place for the blood diamond. There were four boxes against the front wall, a single suitcase and an empty duffelbag sitting beside them. She unzipped the suitcase and from an interior pocket pulled a familiar silk-wrapped object.
Unwrapping the silk,she offered the two parts of the diamond to Crowley, who selected only the larger of the two. As she moved to wrap it back up, he caught sight of an angry red mark across the palm of her other hand. Catching her wrist, he turned her palm up.
"What happened here?" he asked curiously.
"The blade I used to cut the diamond open burned me. It took a lot of energy to burn through the spellwork." Jessie explained, trying to pull her hand away from the King of Hell. Crowley wouldn't let go however, and it took Dean stepping up behind Jessie to remind the demon of his guest-status in her home. Jessie rubbed her wrist when she was freed from Crowley's grasp, gratefully remaining in the protective shadow that Dean offered.
Sam watched Crowley like a hawk, as the demon held the diamond up the light, turning it this way and that. A few sickly rainbows of light scattered over Crowley's face as the diamond acted like a prism at a certain angle. "It asked you to bleed on it, didn't it?" When Jessie nodded hesitantly, Crowley demanded: "Well, did you?"
"No!" But she didn't sound sure, closing her hand to hide the healing burn on her palm as she protested.
Crowley rolled his eyes, and tossed the rough diamond in the air once, before offering it back to the witch. "Ruby's little pigsticker doesn't have a snowball's chance to kill one of the fallen gods. Even your angel buddy wouldn't so much as scratch him... the green-eyed vixen though, she might have a chance. Speaking, of... where are Castiel, and what's-her-name?"
It was Dean's turn to hold Sam back, grabbing his brother by the jacket and giving him a warning tug. Kayla was still a sore spot. They had no idea what had happened to either of them. Crowley seemed interested in the very visceral reaction from the younger Winchester.
"Ooh," Crowley held a hand up, begging forgiveness. "Looks like they didn't quite make it, did they? I am genuinely and truly sorry."
"Somehow I doubt that," Sam snapped back.
Dean pulled on his brother's arm again, pointing him towards the back of the tiny apartment, a visual command to walk away and cool off for a minute. They had more important things to deal with, and Jessie was turning the diamond over in her hands repeatedly, thinking.
"You think he's still alive." Jessie tried to paraphrase what Crowley was insinuating. "You think Mammon is released, back out in the world."
"I don't think it, chickadee, I know it. The binding spell on that rock was the kind that can only be broken by someone of the same lineage as it's creator. You're also going to be the only person who can put Mammon back on ice, as it were. That ice, in particular." Crowley pointed at the two pieces of precious stone in her hand. "Now, seeing as I'm not inclined to lose my position as King of Hell any time soon, I could be persuaded to help you track down the likes of Mammon."
Dean immediately shook his head. "No way. Deals with you always go south, Crowley. We'll figure this out on our own."
Crowley looked at the witch, appraising her carefully. "And what say you, chickadee?"
Sam was pacing back up the short hallway from her bedroom, looking no less upset, but perhaps slightly more controlled. Dean had stayed close to Jessie's back, and now framed her shoulders with his hands, even as she tipped her head back to look at him. She was looking for support, and some idea of what to say. The brother's were obviously old hats at dealing with this Crowley, and he seemed to know more about the situation than anyone else in the room, but there was a heavy undercurrent of mistrust.
Finally, Jessie shook her head slightly. "We'll do this ourselves."
She regretted the words the instant they were out of her mouth, because Crowley vanished in between two blinks, leaving behind the trace scent of rotten eggs.
Dean let go of Jessie's shoulders to gesture at the empty spot where Crowley once stood. "Oh, come on! You have got to be kidding me!"
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Sam tried to let the last gasp of his hopeless, directionless anger out in a heavy sigh. "Think we can get a ride back to Virginia?" He asked without a trace of hope or humor.
It took Jessie a hot minute to figure out that he wasn't joking. The question was made in all sense of seriousness. A quick glance out the window showed that the Winchester's muscle car wasn't parked in the little lot below. "And then what?" She asked finally. "What am I supposed to do now? Was he telling the truth? Am I going to be the only one that can put Mammon back in the gem? Do demons even tell the truth?"
"Crowley does. Especially when it's his skin on the line." Dean leaned against the narrow counter next to the sink. Reaching out an arm, he popped the fridge open, to find it heartrendingly empty. Pouting slightly, he shut it and stared across the room at her small collection of belongings.
Sam could see what his brother was thinking. He also knew that Dean wouldn't ask it. It was his job to be the annoying little brother in that moment. "You could always come with us. We can help you find Mammon, and help you bind him. There's a few things that you could help us with too. It might be nice having a good witch on our side."
Jessie was stowing the halves of the diamond back in the small suitcase. She cast a wan smile over at Sam when he quipped about being a good witch. She kept her doubts to herself. After all, what kind of good person unleashes a fallen god on the world, even if it was an accident.
"If you guys wanna help me carry this down to my car, I'm supposed to be out tonight."
Dean looked up, suddenly hopeful. "You'll come?" He repressed the urge to hug her, and instead shot a pleased look over at his little brother. Sam was already grabbing a couple of boxes, happy to help.
