Hope, Indiana - 1:46pm :
Dean flicked his eyes from the laptop's screen to the window.
Sam still wasn't back. He'd made a quick exit, claiming "personal stuff, don't worry about it." Yeah, like that was happening. Ever since Sam had taken on these trials, Dean was more suspicious than ever of Sam's "personal stuff." It almost literally translated into "hiding stuff from Dean." He was behind his brother, he was, but that didn't mean he spontaneously forgot the past. Sam wasn't exactly candid with activities he knew would worry, disgust, anger or otherwise hurt Dean. He thought of Ruby, in her last form, the dark-haired coma patient she had infested in order to appease his brother. There was so much between them…
Dean pushed the laptop away angrily and headed to the kitchenette for at least his sixth cup of coffee. At least, he thought, it was coffee more often than not these days.
He poured himself a healthy dose neglecting sugar or milk and sat back down.
This case had peaked Sam's interest rather than his, initially. Probably due to the kid burying himself up to his eyeballs in the Men of Letters library. Dean didn't begrudge him that - he sure as hell wasn't sifting through all that shit.
The signs were there, Sam had insisted in self-same library four days earlier. The weird, apparently unconnected series of events pointed directly to some serious mojo being cooked up. Hell-worthy mojo. And with this whole thing coupled with the tablets to close the gates of Hell on the table, Dean wasn't turning away if the facts were enough to send his brother into tailspin.
So here they were in Hope. Ah, the irony just multiplied the more he thought about it.
He angled his eyes back at the laptop. Local newspapers were always slightly garish, and this one was no exception. The article claimed Local woman survives bizarre attack. It was weird, he had to concede that. From the girl's account, someone had tied her up and drained most of her blood, only to hook up an IV to replace it and call the paramedics. Not exactly your run of the mill, give-me-your-wallet kind of mugging. They'd done some preliminary digging - the 911 caller was reported to be a man, who knew the victim's location and blood type, sounding scared. That was all they had down that road.
But there were things that had grabbed Sam's attention other than stressed blood-fetishists, all apparently around the vicinity of Hope. There had been a desecration of one of the graves in the local cemetery, three unexplained fires, the robbery of a local collector in which several extremely rare and apparently extremely expensive fifteenth century heretical religious tests had been lifted, unexplained fluctuations in local power supply, and more recently, several instances of what was described as a flashing effect at night.
"These are signs," Sam had claimed.
"Of what, supernatural schizophrenia?" Dean had asked disinterestedly, his boots crossed on the table.
"No," Sam replied, closing his eyes briefly in an expression that told Dean clearly that he was barely tolerating him right now. "Of someone trying to burrow into Hell."
Dean had shrugged.
"Who cares? They want to go to Hell, let them."
"Not to get into Hell. To get something out."
Yeah, that was more interesting. Dean raised his eyebrows at his brother over the top of his magazine.
"What do you mean," he asked cautiously, tone low.
"Okay," Sam wriggled forward unconsciously, and Dean almost smiled. He really did look like an overgrown kid when he warmed to his topic, the geek.
"All these things, they're signs of someone working some heavyweight mojo, and according to some texts in the Letters library, angled at dragging something out of Hell."
"What, like demon-something? Hold on, how the hell does some random fires, crappy electricity, robbery, grave desecration and one compassionate blood-fetishist all translate into pulling something out of Hell?"
Sam dropped him a look which practically screamed come on.
"Dean, this is only the stuff that got noticed. It seems unconnected because we're not seeing all the pieces of the puzzle here. This stuff is part of a ritual."
That made sense. Dean wished it didn't.
"Okay," he said slowly, not completely discounting the idea. "So you've got human remains, a blood sacrifice, something influencing the power, got to be something workable in those texts that were lifted … what next?"
"Can't know that for sure until we find out more," Sam replied, turning back to the scatter of books littering the table.
"That's kinda what I meant, asshat. Where do we start?"
Sam chewed the inside of his lip. "I dunno, maybe talk to that collector, find out what was in those texts."
"I'm thinking talk to Dracula's bride, too."
Sam nodded, "thinking maybe she had at least a description of this guy?"
"We ever that lucky?"
But they had rolled into Hope nonetheless. The victim didn't have a real solid bead on her attacker - just that he looked average. Average height, middle weight, dark hair. He had hit her over the head, and the next thing she knew she was bound and gagged, and he had stuck a needle in her. After that, she had passed out and came-to again with a paramedic leaning over her. They had asked if there was anything else that stood out about the attack, and she had frowned, remembering. There was something - he kept apologizing, insisting he didn't want to do this, or hurt her, but if she knew what he knew she'd understand. With that not making much sense, they went to grill one extremely irate collector. The value of the texts was priceless, incalculable, he ranted. They were the only known copies in existence, every other had been burned en masse by the church on heretical grounds in 1443.
They asked the usual sort of questions, fishing for anything useful - had they recently been on display, somewhere where someone might catch sight of them? Had anyone strange been around showing an interest? Who even knew he owned the texts? But everything was hitting a dead end. The collector hadn't noticed anyone suspicious, they had not been displayed, and as for who knew he owned them, he informed them that rare books of that calibre are all listed in publicly viewable catalogues. Anyone could have looked up his. Investigation of the fires turned up similar zilch. Apparently they even had no clue if they were accidental, or deliberately lit. It was like … well, like something supernatural was going on, Dean thought with a snort of laughter as he leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head and rubbing at his hair. He had whittled it down to checking out the dates, times and places involved. If this was ritual, then those kinds of things could figure. A certain step had to be completed at a certain time, or a number of times, at a particular place or on a certain date. He was still coming up dry. Nothing about this case seemed to be adding up at all.
Before his mind could wander much further, Sam slid into the room.
"Hey, you okay?" Dean asked reflexively.
"I'm fine," Sam replied equally.
Dean narrowed his eyes. Sure. Sam was pale and his eyes were skittering.
"Sure about that?" Dean asked, tone flat.
Sam's eyes caught on Dean's face, and he scowled.
"Leave it alone, Dean."
Dean decided to drop it, for now at least. He pulled in a breath.
"Happen to find anything useful?"
"Yeah, actually," Sam said, clearly grateful to be changing the subject, which only made Dean more suspicious.
"About those texts. I know they're the only surviving copies, but what he said about rare book catalogues being publicly viewable made me think about source books."
"The what now?"
"Source books. Reference books that give like a cliffnote on the old manuscripts. If these books are as big a deal as the collector seems to think, then yeah maybe they're covered. It won't be the full text, and they're no genuine article, but at least we can get some idea of what the books covered. "
"Knew a Stanford education was good for something," Dean smiled. "So, what - do your thing and hit up the libraries?"
"Yeah. I'm hoping if the books belonged to a local collector, the source books covering them will be in the local library collection."
Dean hated being in libraries. This was always Sam's thing, not his. Something about the enforced quietness and stillness crossed with the narrow aisles between high shelves made him feel confined. It meant spending hours sifting through masses of information, usually to come up with only a few answers. That and he had always hated John sending him on fact-finding detail while he took on the hunt alone. Being in a library translated to Dean feeling generally frustrated and useless. He dropped the book on ceremonial magic he had been staring at onto the table and looked up at his brother. Sam was hunched over the fourth classic reference book, looking up the scattered bits and pieces from the original texts.
"Oh."
"Oh?" Dean pounced on any excuse to move this along.
"Oh man, this could be bad."
"No shit. When has dragging something out of Hell ever been a good thing?" He tipped Sam a grin. "Present company excluded."
But his brother wasn't taking the bait, and his eyes were still glued to the book.
"No I mean, really bad. As in raising Hell, opening the Devil's Gate bad. This, from what I can tell so far anyway, deals with human souls. Someone is trying to spring a human soul from the pit."
That was … actually kind of anti-climactic. Dean frowned at Sam.
"So, why the big bad? We've both been sprung from Hell, need I remind you."
"Dean … I know we forget because Cas is a friend, but you have to remember what he is. He's an angel. It took Cas and several other angels to pull that off, and even then, I still ended up soulless, need I remind you. Even with a thing like Death involved, it still would have killed me if not for Cas taking on the crazy. The kind of power that took kept everything else contained, but this guy is just a human. If he stuffs this up, and it's really likely he will, the finger comes out of the dam."
"That sounds vaguely dirty, but point taken," Dean replied. "So … any clues in that to tell us what his next move's gonna be?"
"It's not that simple," Sam answered. Of course not, when is it ever that simple, Dean thought, but said nothing as Sam rambled on. "This isn't exactly a manual. He's been … improvising, using other sources. That's going to make this harder to track down. Summoning a demon from Hell is one thing, but Ruby told me she knew of nothing powerful enough to raise a human soul, no demon, nothing. Before we met Cas. If a human is doing this, to pull another human soul from the pit - it goes against every cosmic rule in the book."
"Okay, so if it takes some serious juice to even swing this, how is one regular guy supposed to do it on his own with a bag of borrowed blood and an old book? Case closed, it's going to flop."
"Maybe," Sam conceded. "But maybe not. And that's the part we should be worrying about. We don't know the full story here, what we're actually dealing with."
"Alright," Dean signed, rubbing a hand down his face. "Start at step one."