~Nearby Are Yellow Eyes~
~Meet me yesterday. Yellow.~
Dean stares at the texts again and bites his lip. Still no new messages. Apart from the ones from Castiel.
Dean's nerves are all jangled. This radio silence is not part of the plan. His father and Jim were meant to stay in contact. He could understand why his father might have fallen off the radar, any number of complications might have come up to keep him from contacting his children. His dad was extra cautious that way. But Pastor Jim? Something must have gone very wrong.
"Anything?" Asks Sammy beside him.
Dean shakes his head.
"That's bad."
"Not...bad," says Dean carefully, trying to reassure himself as much as his brother, "Just means we might be on our own for now."
"But what if he shows up?"
"He won't. Dad said."
"Dad could be wrong."
"He's never wrong."
"Jesus, Dean," says Sam, rolling his eyes, "He's not God. He can be wrong."
Dean sighs, not in the mood to have this fight again. Even at ten years old Sammy could go at it with the best of them and never so much as with their father. John and Sam were at eachother's throats more often than not, forcing Dean to play referee far more frequently than he ever cared to. And a good portion of the brothers' fights were about this very subject. Sam seemed to take issue with Dean's unquestioning obedience. He'd once called Dean weak for following orders without even asking why. But Dean knows he's just being a good son. Sammy will have learn that too, one day.
"If he shows up we'll deal with it."
Sam just snorts.
"Like you dealt with that Gordon guy? Let's just pray Dad's not wrong."
Dean doesn't answer. He stares down the aisle toward the double doors. And he prays that his dad isn't wrong.
When Cas shows Sam and Dean's picture to the arcade manager he recognizes them right away. Apparently, they'd caused quite a ruckus by hustling some of the other children out of their tickets. And once they'd accumulated a record-breaking amount, they'd split without claiming any prizes, leaving their tickets abandoned on the floor inciting ruckus number two. The boys had boarded a north-bound bus after exiting the arcade according to some of the other kids, but after that the trail got much colder.
Cas arrives back at the office and pulls up the list of stops for the particular bus. In an amazing stroke of luck, the list is short. Only four other stops before the end of the line. He brings the news to Anna.
"How did you find them?" She asks.
Cas hesitates. What is he supposed to say? Um, I have a quasi-magical sixth sense and a freakish connection to Dean Winchester I can't explain.
"I found an old associate of John's. Bobby Singer. He pointed me in the right direction." Sort of.
"Well, however you did it, this is amazing. Let's go."
The two of them head off to canvas the four stops. The first three are dead ends. The last one leads them to a sketchy area just on the outskirts of town. They show the boys' pictures around and wind up outside an old church. It's a shabby looking place from the outside. Pieces of stone broken off, wood splintering, the old bell rusted and dull from disuse. It's dusk by this time, the setting sun casting strange colors over the dim landscape. There's something very ominous about the chapel itself and a kind of sick unease hovers in the air surrounding it, like something undead is lurking in the numerous shadows, like malignance has taken root in the very trees, like like a thousand painful deaths have found their resting place in the cemetery around back.
Looking at it, Cas feels himself grow cold.
They pull open the heavy doors with a sickening creak. It's dark inside. No light source is visible aside from the fading sun trickling in through the tinted windows. And it's quiet.
"Cover me," says Anna.
Cas waits in the threshold as Anna moves into the darkness. There's one panicky moment when he loses sight of her, but then there's a loud, echoing click and suddenly the space is flooded with light.
The chill in Cas's bones sinks deeper as he looks around. There is nothing specific which makes him feel uneasy but the interior of the church is about what you'd expect from the outside. It's simple and old, with same sense of foreboding permeating the air. Cas looks along the short aisle up to the darkly colored alter and feels himself shudder. Something evil happened here. He can sense it.
Cas swallows hard, fighting the urge to flee.
"Anna?" He calls.
"Over here!"
He heads toward the direction of her voice. Rounding the corner of the confessionals, he freezes in his tracks.
"Hello again, Agent," says a familiar voice.
6 Hours Earlier
Patience is a very important quality for a killer. Without patience, you get hasty. When you get hasty, things get messy. And when things get messy, everything goes to shit very very fast. Pete Sheridan may not be dripping with virtue, but patience is something at which he excels. He wouldn't have lasted very long at all if it weren't.
It had taken patience to work his way up through the ranks to Detective. It took patience to wait for that golden opportunity to come along to make him richer than he could ever hope be on a government salary alone. It took patience to carefully feed just information to Alistair to keep the payoffs and drugs coming his way.
And it took patience to frame John Winchester for all the murders he's had to cover along the way. Both his own and others' under Lilith's command.
It was only when he started to lose his patience, when all the threads of his carefully woven tapestry of lies and deceit had started coming undone at a rapid pace that his world had started falling to shit. If he'd only had the opportunity to be more patient, he could have waited to murder Karen Giles. Would have waited to help Winchester "escape." Wouldn't have rushed into his interrogation of Agent Novak.
But time was not on his side.
Now, though, Pete needs to be patient one more time. And this time the payoff will be bigger than ever.
Pete sits in a car borrowed from impound a little ways down the block from an out-of-the-way arcade. He's trailing Mr. Novak. It's his hail mary pass. If he can't get the fed to tell him where those boys went, then this is the next best thing.
He follows Novak back to headquarters, then all around town in a seemingly random collection of stops. But Pete is patient. He waits.
It pays off.
Long after the sun has started to set, Novak and Milton pull into the parking lot of an old church on the edge of town. There's something very creepy about the building that Pete can't quite put his finger on, but he shakes it off. He won't be rattled. Not now.
The place is perfect.
Pete parks the car and scurries in the back door before the two agents even cut the engine.
He makes a call.
Everyone is disappearing.
First John Winchester escapes, then Pete goes missing, then Karen Giles doesn't show for the boys' transfer which didn't matter because the boys had disappeared. And now Pete's gone missing again.
They have only one lead on the others, the pastor from Minnesota who, on the report of the FBI office there, has also vanished into thin air, leaving them with exactly squat.
And on top of all that, it's starting to look like Giles might actually be missing. No one's heard from her in two days and, according to her partner, just falling off the radar like this is completely out of character for her.
Diana is having trouble keeping herself together. The last time her partner and John had gone missing together, it had turned out Pete was responsible. Now, Pete's gone missing once more while John, Karen and the boys are all in the wind. She doesn't like it. She hates herself for it, but something about this doesn't sit well at all.
She tries to shake the intruding, nagging, nasty thought from her mind. Pete would never. She trusts him with her life. He is more than her partner, he's her friend, her confidant, and, yes, her lover.
She knows it's against the rules, they both do, but they just couldn't help themselves. And something about the forbiddenness of it all had just made it that much more exciting. She loves him. And yet...
Nothing about this situation is adding up the way it's supposed to. There's holes no one seems to spot but her and they just keep getting bigger and bigger. Pretty soon the whole thing is going to tear down the middle and Diana has a terrible feeling about who's going to be standing on the other side when that curtain falls.
Diana fingers the silver necklace around her throat and closes her eyes as the sinking feeling takes over.
"Oh, Pete," she whispers, "What have you done?"
"Hello again, Agent."
Castiel stops dead where he stands.
"So glad you could join us."
Anna stands, tense, gun pointed at the man holding a young boy to the front of his body like a human shield. The barrel of his own gun is pressed to the child's temple. Dean grips Detective Sheridan's forearm, chin lifted high so as not to choke. His eyes are wild and bright. They land on Castiel, fear clear as day, asking, begging for help.
"Gun on the floor," says Sheridan lightly, nodding at Anna, "You too, Agent Novak."
"What's going on?" Asks Cas, eyes fixed firmly on Dean or, more accurately, on the gun to his young friend's head.
"Where's the other one?" Anna demands, before the detective can answer.
Right on queue, the back door bursts open and a large man stalks in, holding a squirming Sam against his chest. Sam immediately stops wriggling when he catches sight of his older brother with a glock to his head.
"Dean!" He cries, tears already streaming down his face.
"It's okay, Sammy," Dean gasps.
"Shut up," snarls Sheridan, adjusting his hold roughly.
The monster stops a little ways away and drops Sammy to the floor, gripping him tightly by the shoulder. He pulls out a scary-looking blade and presses it to Sammy's throat.
Castiel feels his blood turn to ice.
"Like I said," says Sheridan, "Guns on the floor."
Anna shakes with anger and Castiel can feel something akin to rage boiling up inside of him too, but they do as they're told, kicking the guns across the floor toward the maniac.
"What's going on?" Cas repeats, gaze still on Dean.
"What's going on?" Sheridan practically chuckles, "I'll tell you what's going on. This is me. Finally taking control."
"The hell are you talking about?" Spits Anna.
"You. You incompetent fools. And these," he shifts Dean in his grip, "little shits have been making my life a living hell. It was all supposed to go so smoothly. But you lot seem to fuck up everything you touch."
"Or maybe that's you," offers Anna boldly.
She's trying to throw him off-guard, Cas knows, but he's not so sure he would have had the nerve to risk upsetting the man in that way, given the precious cargo he was currently threatening.
"Funny," says Sheridan easily, "I'm glad you can make jokes. We should all be in such a good mood before we die."
"Is that a threat?"
Sheridan cocks his head, "Just fair warning. You haven't left me with a whole lot of choice, here. Winchester's in the wind and his boys refused to cooperate."
"They were cooperating!" Cas protests
"For you maybe. Not for me. Not the way I need them to."
Cas and Anna's expressions must have let on how crazy he sounded because he went on.
"You might as well know," the SOB continued, "John Winchester did not commit the murders we at the station have been working so hard to pin on him. Not that he's an angel, far from it. And, hell, he may have even dropped a body or two, who knows? But the point is, there's no evidence linking him to murder. So I've got to create some."
"Why?"
"Why?" Pete chortles, "Why do you think?"
Anna puts it together first, "You're protecting someone."
"Bingo."
"You?"
Pete shrugs, "In part. But there's a much bigger picture here. One you idiots could scarcely wrap your minds around even if you bothered looking in the right fucking direction."
"Why don't you enlighten us?"
"You'd like that wouldn't you? Get me monologuing while you search out an angle. Sorry, no such luck, agent. I'm a patient man, but time's run out. And so has yours."
Pete cocks his gun, "No, you won't live to tell this tale. As far as everyone out there will know, John Winchester is villain of this piece. And he's going to kill every last one of you. Starting with you," says the monster, leveling the weapon at Cas.
Dean's eyes widen.
"No!" He shouts, making a wild grab for the gun. The glock goes off with an earsplitting bang and for a moment Cas swears his heart stops.
Anna drops to the floor, blood pouring from her temple.
"No!" Cas echos.
Sheridan shakes Dean off his arm and throws him to the ground, refocusing the gun on the poor boy's frame.
Cas falls to Anna's side.
"Stay where you are!" Sheridan shouts, swinging around and aiming the gun at Castiel. The second the barrel is away from him, Dean scrambles behind the pews, out of the line of fire. For now.
Castiel stands, raises his hands, but his eyes are glued to Anna, panicked, desperately searching for signs of life. He thinks he sees her chest move and the relief is overwhelming.
Sheridan glares at the space where Dean disappeared.
"I should have known that little bastard would find a way to fuck this up. Oh, well," he says leveling the gun at Anna's motionless form, "In for a penny..."
"Wait!" Cas shouts.
Suddenly, the man stops, staggers a little, and falls to his knees.
A dribble of blood escapes from his lips.
Cas watches in horror as the short figure standing behind him, pulls the bloody knife from his back and expertly slices his throat with a sickening squish.
Young Dean looks up from his work, blood splattered across his face and clothes, meets Castiel's horrified eyes, and smiles . Smiles a brilliant, deranged grin showing just how pleased he is with what he's just done and how thrilled he is that Cas has seen it.
"Sammy!" He shouts without looking away, tossing the knife aside.
Cas's eyes follow the path of the blade for just a moment, just long enough for him to see the even smaller hand reach out and catch it in midair. Sam quickly slashes the hand holding the knife to his throat. The villain shouts and drops his own blade with a clatter. Without turning around the ten-year old violently stabs the man in the thigh, then spins around and slices open his gut, simultaneously kicking him in the groin. The man crumbles to the floor with a groan.
A ten year old David taking out Goliath.
By that point, Dean is standing by his little brother's side, gently taking the knife from his reddened hand, murmuring something to him quietly.
There's a loud honking, suddenly, and a distant shout of, "Boys! Now!"
Sammy gives his older brother's arm a yank before sprinting toward the double doors.
Dean hesitates a moment longer. He slowly turns back to Castiel, blood and sweat dripping down his face, but no sign of tears.
"See you, Angel," he says just loud enough for Cas to hear, then turns and disappears after his brother, lost to Cas forever.