Find him, they did not.
Nor did they ever set eyes on the Delphi Strawberry Farm
The blasted company didn't exist, and even though there were documents and countless people who got their strawberries from there, the freaking place didn't exist. The Winchester brothers had combed the forests around where it supposedly was, tailed the delivery trucks, even tried to knock a few drivers out to take their place or hide in the back of the vans, and every attempt failed. Even Castiel told them the place didn't exist, and that's when they finally got angry.
Got angry, then gave up.
They spent a whole two months searching for their target, keeping an eye out for Nico, and they were no farther in figuring it out than when they started. It didn't help that while they were there, two taxis got totaled in less-than normal circumstances with the drivers being unable to tell anyone what had happened, and yet those events got them no farther than wandering around the woods looking for the place on foot.
They'd heard from other hunters who'd tried the same thing they were doing over the years, and no one had succeeded. Confident in the "Winchester Legacy" of being the first in a lot of things—meeting an angel, returning from hell, etc.—the two had tirelessly gone after this unbeaten target. Two months later, they'd acknowledged they wouldn't be the first at this particular job.
They'd sent out the humiliating sign of defeat, as Dean put it, or the word that they couldn't crack it to all the hunters they knew, as Sam phrased it, and packed up their car and headed west for another job. It killed Dean in particular that Nico had been right, and Sam was just dying to know what they were missing. Nico had known, and hidden it. The wanted desperately for those answers, and there was someone out there who knew, but it seemed Nico had disappeared just like the Delphi Strawberry Service. No one in that town or any nearby towns knew anything about a little pale Italian boy running around the streets. Sam hoped he's found somewhere safe to go, but his logic told him the boy would be dead in a couple weeks. He was so young, and living on the streets like that….
But the mystery of the Delphi Strawberry Farm and Nico di Angelo quickly faded away as job after job arose, troubles with Lucifer in hell, the angels butting in as their usual ass-hole selves, demons popping up so inconveniently, and all the normal day-to-day stuff in the life of a hunter. A year passed, and then two, and the third was quickly underway as time move too quickly as it was want to do when you risked your lives and lived in adrenaline every single day.
The whole event had become a common "one that got away" background thought for the boys as they went around the country saving people from the supernatural, until it slipped away as nothing more than a story to groan about when they were drunk and complaining about their hard-ass lives to Bobby over three bottles of whiskey.
That was, until a girl named Marcia Harper was murdered under strange circumstances.
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"Nico." The boy in question jumped, not really expecting any one – much less the voice of his father—to disrupt him as he sat in a pensive silence atop the roof a mausoleum in a cemetery an hour outside of New Orleans at nearly three in the morning.
He glanced up and saw the familiar mist of an Iris Message floating above him, his father's cold features glaring at him. Not glaring specifically, that's just the way he looked. Looking at him, but even though Nico spent a lot more time with his dad than most demigods, he still couldn't tell if he was looking or glaring.
"My Lord," Nico said in surprise, inclining his head and sitting up straighter. His dad never contacted him personally. Usually he sent a messenger ghost or something. This was new.
"Come here immediately." He said in his deadened voice (ha! See the pun?) and the mist dissolved. Nico frowned, but willed the shadows around him to wrap him up and he was suddenly falling into a cold abyss. His feet hit the ground in an impact he was prepared for, and the shadows melted away, leaving him standing at the foot of his father's throne, looking up at the god of the dead as he toward forty feet high in his godly-ish form.
"Father?" Nico asked, inclining his head again.
Did Hades just smile?! Oh gods, he was going to die, wasn't he?"
"Nico," Hades said, and Nico shifted uncomfortably at his tone. "I have a quest for you."
Nico blanched. "A-uh, I…. what?" He said brilliantly, and Hades rolled his eyes, opening his palm and letting a slivery blue cloud if mist float down and land right before the boy. The cloud shifted, and formed a ghost of a girl with blonde hair cropped just under her ears, and pale gray eyes. She smiled sadly at him.
"This is Marcia Harper, and unclaimed child of Athena." Hades explained, oftly… gentle if Nico wasn't mistaken, but that… that just didn't happen…
Hades continued, "She was ten, and had not yet found her way to camp half-blood, though she was living on the streets and would have undoubtedly made it there within a few months. Her mother was greatly anticipating that."
Nico blanched again. Sure, since Percy made the gods make that promise for them to treat their kids better, things certainly had improved, but this was a new one, even for the rapid progress. You see, with more and more kids being claimed, the gods were getting more and more hero worship, more love (albeit slightly unwilling for some, every child deep down loves their parents) and thus were becoming more and more powerful. The more love flowing from parents to children was making both the demigods and the gods advance, and fostered a better, more family-like environment than before the war. The gods took an almost active role in their children's lives now, though not terribly good compared to mortal parents, they do look out and act more in their kids' lives, sometimes even personally guiding their way to camp to be trained.
It sounded like Athena was actively trying to point her daughter to camp, but something had happened. That wasn't huge news, demigods died every day. Why was Athena bringing this up with Hades of all people?
Hades seemed to sense this, or just see it written on his son's face.
"This girl's death was unusual, to say the least, and it angered Athena greatly. She has begged me to take action, and for once, I am willing to listen, even agree whole heartedly with what she says."
Ok, he'd lost it, hadn't he? He'd shadowed travel into a parallel universe or something, right?
"What is so… important about her death?" Nico frowned. "I mean, people die, and I think it's sad, I just didn't think you'd care…" He didn't finish, letting it hang there, and Hades nodded in whole-hearted agreement, much to Nico's relief.
"And I don't, normally. I care less about how they get here, more about what to do with them once they arrive, but this is unacceptable. This girl was murdered by a mortal."
Nico blinked. He had to think about it for a moment, but it suddenly clicked. Demigods were killed every day by quests, monsters, mythical traps/creatures, each other, even the gods, but no demigod—in at least 800 years according to Nico's research in the Library of the Dead beneath Hades' palace—had been killed by a mortal. It seemed as if that was the one threat in the world they'd be ok from: normal humans.
"I… that's…" Nico tried to find words, and was surprised by the anger that coursed through him. Like demigods didn't have enough to worry about without having to deal with mortals killing them too! Murders ended up in the fields of punishment , but it was usually demigod-on-demigod, or mortal-on-mortal, and mortal-on-demigod was just an absurd and despicable thing Nico couldn't even stomach. "Horrible." He finally spit out, and Hades nodded solemnly. The ghost of Marcia frowned, looking down rather sadly.
"My quest for you is simple: bring him to me."
Nico's head snapped up. "Uh, my lord?" Nico asked. "Doesn't this fall under Thanantos' job description? Bringing souls to you?"
Hades looked slightly annoyed, but answered. "Thanantos brings the souls I tell him to, the souls whose time has come, and keeps them here if they attempt to escape. This man, this murder's time is not for many years, but his actions have brought it upon himself to face a trial that I will conduct with Athena and Marcia's ghost against him. Thanantos is bound by ancient law not to take those before their time, and I will not bend the rules so drastically to force him to for this one man of little worth. You, however, do not follow those rules."
Wow, that made a sick kind of sense. "Bring him here alive, not just his soul, right?" Nico clarified, and Hades nodded smiling a bit at his son's acceptance of the quest (which scared the heck out of Nico, seeing his dad smile, even just a little…*shudder*). "How am I supposed to find him? Where should I start, like, where did Marcia die exactly."
"His name is David Utley, and I can give you a trace on his soul, that will lead you right to him like a homing beacon. However, the moment I do, he will be warned in his dreams that someone is coming for him, and he may try to run. However clever or strong he is will decide if he gets away from you."
Nico frowned. "How strong he is? He's a mortal, I'm sure I can take him…" He studied his father's expression and noticed something he didn't like. "… right?"
Hades sighed. "The reason I agreed with Athena so easily, is that this man has somehow managed to take the life force of Marcia's soul—or at least a part of it—and add it to himself. He has become stronger than an average mortal would be, but perhaps not as great as a demigod. I'm unsure, this is a new occurrence."
Nico absorbed that. "I'll go… if I find anything else, as to what the heck he thinks he's doing with a demigod life force, I'll report it." Hades nodded in—was that approval?!—down at his son, and Nico felt a flutter in his stomach as being able to prove himself to his father. He better not fail at this…
"Take the trace, and my luck be with you." Hades opened his palm again, and something small and silver fell, and Nico caught it reflexively. It was a pocket watch, and it hummed to life under his fingertips.
The shadows sprang to life and wrapped around him in a cold darkness, as his father's final command echoed from the place he left at the speed of darkness.
"Bring him to me."
0000000000000
"Yes, we're with the FBI, we've reason to believe this murderer as been across state boarders, several in fact, and we need to look into this to see if this is our guy," Dean lied smoothly—albeit with half ass lies only blatant confidence would get anyone to believe—flashing his fake FBI badge to the cop guarding the crime scene where Marcia Harper had died.
The cop looked surprised, and slightly suspicious—what else is new?—but let them in, taking up his guard on the front porch.
Marcia Harper had died in a one-room shack-of-a-building on the outskirts of an equally run down town in southern Pennsylvania. It might have once been a hunting cabin or something, and then they built thirty more, a grocery store, and a post office and called it a town.
The reason it caught the Winchester's attention was that there was no cause of death. No strangling, no exposure, no heart failure, no terminal illnesses, no stabbing, no drowning, nothing. She was just… dead.
That, and she was ten, a runaway from Colorado, with no family or record of existing except a record from an orphanage saying she lived there for a couple months last year. Other than that… nothing.
"Definitely something up our alley," Dean noted causally. "There's not a mark on her!"
Sam looked sadly at the little girl's corpse, so cold and lying perfectly still in the middle of the barely-furnished, splintery hardwood floor. He'd take a minute to note the sadness and give a moment of silence, but Dean would've called him a wimp and ignored him.
"What do you think could've done it?" He wondered aloud, and Dean shrugged as he crouched over the girl, trying to see is anything was apparently wrong that the cops might've missed but he and his "super supernatural sleuth" training would notice.
"I got nothing, she's clean. Let's wait till they do the autopsy and we'll make a few copies for ourselves." He stood and straitened his tie in irritation at the garment and they headed for the door.
0000000000000
As usual, progress for the Winchester boys was slow at first, consisting of research and hitting the streets to ask around if anyone's seen or noticed anything off. All they got was that a man named David Utley owned the shack, claiming it for storage purposes seeing as he owned an apartment in Philadelphia—nearly nine hours away. Not a very convenient storage unit, especially since there was nothing but a broken fridge, an old couch, a table, and a couple chairs in it. Oh, and a corpse.
More suspicious still, no one had heard from Mr. Utley in three days. The brothers immediately drove to Philly, and interviewed the neighbors around Utley's apartment, and what they got was strange.
He wasn't there the day Marcia was thought to have died. That made sense if he killed her, he was nine hours away in this "storage house". But then, he was back in his apartment the next day, acting like nothing was wrong and being all nice and cordial to the neighbors like your average guy living his life. The next day too, but that night, two days after he supposedly killed Marcia, his neighbors recounted the mighty hurry he left in at around two in the morning. He made such a racket, everyone on the floor heard his panicked departure, and practically screaming something was after him. They even called the cops and searched the building, but no one was there that wasn't supposed to be, and Utley was long gone. That was three days ago now, and he hasn't been back and no one's heard a word from him. Even more unhelpful, was that Marica's autopsy came back and she was perfectly edvoid of any cause of death. Her heart and systems just stopped working, like they mysterious force that keeps all hearts beating just vanished.
Dean really ribbed Sam for saying that one.
"Finally, I was starting to think this might actually be a regular murder, but we still might be in business!" Dean said in relief as Sam knelt to pick the lock on Mr. Utley's apartment door. Sam just rolled his eyes at his brother's morbid train of thoughts.
"Wait, this place is normal," Dean huffed in frustration, taking in the very average-looking bachelor pad as Sam pushed the door open and they swiftly moved inside. Dean sighed, knowing this guy wouldn't make it easy to figure out his crazy. But it was here somewhere, they just had to look.
It only took three minutes for Sam to unearth the first sign of a fanatic.
"What is it?" Dean frowned as Sam held up a book, old and primitively bound.
"A book on Greek Mythology… not just mythology, but, like, history."
"Oh great, a history lesson, fabulous…" Dean grumbled pacing away to keep searching.
"No, I mean like, this was written in some old language, Ancient Greek I think, but translated in English in the margins. It talks about these old myths like… like it's a diary or something."
"You're reading somebody's diary? That's nice of you."
"No! I mean, yes, but only if this person killed a hydra on the Feast of Fortuna, or fought a hellhound before dinner activities… at least, this person believed they did… and it's not Utley either," Sam said flipping through the pages. "This thing is legit, must be thousands of years old…"
Dean raised an eyebrow. "It doesn't look over a couple decades." He muttered, but Sam ignored him.
"No matter how old it is, it's definitely real, and some ancient person was either pretending to be a Greek Hero, or thought they were, or something odd, but it really got Utley hooked. He's been scribbling all over the margins talking about these powers and sons and daughters of gods that are supposedly regular people with powers… and fantasizing about these powers it seems."
"Aw, what little boy doesn't want super powers?" Dean cooed sarcastically, shuffling through a bookshelf.
"The question is, what thirty year old man fantasies about them to the point he starts writing equations and potions on how to actually get them." Sam said, raising his eyebrows as he turned a page in the journal to reveal complicated plans that talked about killing a half-immortal to steal their powers and abilities.
"You've got to be kidding me." Dean looked at Sam, coming over to glance down at the book too. "Crap. He might just be a looney, dude, killing a girl thinking she's one of these kid's of a Greek god, and trying to steal her 'powers' or whatever." He shrugged. "So far as I know, that girl didn't have powers, and Utley isn't more advanced for killing her from anything we've seen."
"I don't know, we still don't know how he killed her," Sam allowed. "Perhaps it'll tell us in here…"
0000000000000
The journal did more than tell them how Utley planned on killing the first "demigod" he could find, but also where to find him.
Apparently there was a group of people (a group meaning four or five whack-job, unemployed, bums who got together on Thursday nights to fantasize about having powers) who Utley was planning with, and all their names listed in the book that the brothers tracked down. Unfortunately, each man compared the group to grown-up geeks having fun, like a poker club or something. When Sam showed them Utley's book, they'd backed up and thrown their "friend" under the bus by calling him a looney. None of them took it that seriously, and it scared them to know one in their group had.
Still, they'd all pointed out to a place Utley once brought them for their meeting, but the dumpy old warehouse on the outskirts of town was too weird for their tastes, and they'd never gone back, choosing to hold it at one of their member's homes. Utley had seemed attached to it, and they suggested they look there for him.
Dean wanted to call the cops, tell them where Utley was because he didn't think the man was anything supernatural, just a crazy who'd killed a girl in his delusions, but Sam insisted something was wrong. The methods used to kill Marcia depicted in the book… they were almost magical or something.
"You better be right about this Sammy, 'cause if it's just some freaky guy with a loneliness issue and delusions of grandeur, and there's no supernatural shit going on, I swear I'm gonna-"
"I get it," Sam said impatiently, slightly nervous, not knowing if his hunch was right with quite the certainty he was projecting to convince Dean to join him on this, but going with it anyway.
They stood outside the warehouse they'd been directed at, and could see the flickering of some sort of fire light-source form within it. They nodded, Dean shouldering his shotgun, and Sam dropping to pick the door lock. The door swung open and Dean rushed forward, Sam right on his heels, his own gun up quickly as well.
There was a long metal table with two chairs, one on each side the short way facing each other, as if two people were about to play a card game, stood in the middle of the vast room of the relatively small warehouse, two powerful lanterns simulating fire set on the table, casting an orb of orangey yellow light in the center. The door clanged shut behind them, and they realized the gentle squeak of its rusty hinges from the outside, echoed like someone scraping a nail against a chalkboard in the wide open room.
At first there was no sign of life anywhere, then Dean cocked his head in half amusement, half confusion at the table, and used his gun to point at the table. Sam looked and noticed a dark form under the metal table, shaking like a tuning fork.
"Mr. Utley!" Dean called in a strong voice. "We're here to talk to you!" What's wrong with trying to be diplomatic first?
The form just quivered and they quickly approached the table, guns still up and ready, and they heard the man beneath it whimpering rather pathetically.
"Who are you?!" A surprisingly high and obviously stressed voice shot at them. He sounded like a kid expecting to be kicked at any moment.
"Uh… FBI?" Dean shrugged. "We're not here to hurt you, we wanna talk." The form beneath the table froze, and slowly turned until they could see the shadow of his head poke out from under his arms.
"KILL ME!" He yelled, flinging himself out of the shadows and gripping the barrel of Dean's gun and pointing it at his face. "Kill me! Please! I beg of you! Before he gets here!"
The brothers were thrown off guard and they jumped back, Dean ripping his gun away from the clearly unarmed and desperate man.
"Why am I killing you?!" Dean frowned, not at all expecting this.
"The Angel! The Angel is coming, please! Just kill be before he gets here…!" The man begged, he looked about ready to wet himself.
"Ok, ok, just calm down a minute," Sam tried to reason, his eyes darting to Dean for back up, but he looked just as confused as he felt. "We only came here to ask you about a girl named Marcia Harper. Do you—"
"Yes! I killed her! I'm a murderer! I deserve to die! Kill me, please!" Sam just stared slack jawed at the pathetically begging man on his knees. He glanced at his brother, who just shrugged like that was good enough for him and nodded to the man with that look that said ask your question.
Sam gathered his wits and focused on Utley. "How did you kill her? We found your journal, we know you thought she was a demigod or something, you wanted her powers, but how did you kill her?"
The man seemed confused by the question. "I tricked her mother into claiming her, and after I had proof of who she was, I tricked the girl into pledging her soul to me."
The Winchesters exchanged looks. "You what?" Dean said skeptically.
Utley shivered. "She didn't know, she didn't know that pledging your soul to another would kill her. When a demigod is claimed, they must pledge to their patron, their godly parent, and if they pledge it to another, their parent is forced to withdraw the portion of their soul they gifted to their child, who is deemed by the ancient laws ungrateful, and thus, half their soul is removed. Their mortal half goes to the underworld, the godly half returns to their parent… unless it's captured."
"And you captured it," Sam realized, remembering complex equation he could figure out scrawled in the back of the book.
"I… I did. I cast an old spell, long forgotten, and I capture the girl's godly soul." He began to cry, shaking, not in grief or guilt, but in fear. "And now I know! I know more… I'm clever, I don't understand it! But I know, I know he's coming, the Angel is coming and he will make me pay…" He sobbed again in despair. "I've been trying to hide, moving everywhere, but he's always right behind me. I've only been here a day, I've tried every spell I know to hide myself… but… but I know he's coming."
"The Angel?" Sam said slowly. He knew a lot of angels, angels that wouldn't think twice about killing him, but they never spent so much energy on one person before. He didn't even believe half of what the man was saying about godly souls and whatnot, that was a bit farfetched, even for him, but the guy seemed honestly scared about this Angel or whatever.
"Listen, man, we've met angels, and what makes you think they'd be interested in your pathetic hide?" Dean said, finally lowering his gun as he realized the guy was in no shape to fight back. Sam followed suit.
"H-he's not an angel of heaven, he's and angel of death," Utley sobbed, and Dean's frowned deepened.
"Those two angels can be the same thing, trust me." Really, if anyone would knew how big a dick angels could be, it would be Dean, so Sam didn't doubt his words for a second.
"Forget it!" The man on his knees shouted out. "You don't even believe in the Greek gods, you wouldn't understand!" He gripped the floor to keep himself from falling over.
"No, we don't." Sam agreed. "But if anything, we're practical, and practically speaking, we need some hard proof someone's following you before we even consider—"
CRASH!