Chapter 14 One Fine Day
Litteris Hominae, Kansas
Ariana stood outside the door of the building that was mostly hidden in the hillside, feeling the liquid drying over and around her eyes, resisting the impulse to rub it off. The long strokes of burned blood were what enabled her to see the building, the door, amidst the illusions she knew were all that were visible to the demons crowding uneasily by the edge of the road.
In front of the doorway, however, there was a circle she could not cross.
Draxler walked up to her, the young boy trailing behind him. The loss of the other child had infuriated Baeder almost to the point of losing his reason. The half-breed had taken the child from the ranting man and brought him into the forest. Both man and child had the same blackened red streaks painted over their eye sockets, extending out to wrap around the temples and disappear into the hairlines. The fallen were capable of that level of sorcery, at least, Draxler thought sourly.
Glancing to the right of the nephilim, Draxler nodded to the son of Harrer, the only other non-scarred offspring of the Grigori with them. They hadn't expected to see the wards against the nephilim. The original plan had been jettisoned without hesitation and the children had become the keys instead. It had put them back some hours.
"The circle bars us from this place," Ariana said softly to him, gesturing at the sigil drawn in blood over the ground and door and reinforced walls.
"That will not be a problem," Draxler said neutrally, holding his hand to the boy beside him. "When the way is clear, enter and destroy all resistance."
She nodded, watching the man and boy walk toward the door.
The flash was soundless and the door, the warding circle and nearly three foot all around the frame was simply gone. Automatic fire rattled from the inside but the cambion walked through it, and Ariana looked at Joaquin and nodded, walking together through the hole in the hillside, lifting the barrels of their rifles.
Marla stared up as the man and boy walked along the gallery, followed by another two people, a tall woman and a broad-shouldered man, their guns lifted and spraying bullets around the room as they descended the curving staircase.
She scuttled under the cover of the iron steps, lifting her weapon as the soldiers dropped to their knees across the library's entrance and fired continuously at the four intruders, blinking as they disappeared a moment later, charred ash on the top step where they'd been. The boy lowered his hands without missing a stride.
Chuck stood in the centre of the library, the tables pushed aside. Above and below him the traps had been laid into ceiling and floor and holy oil burned in a circle around him, the flames lighting his face and reflecting in his wide, frightened eyes.
The prophet had to be saved. It was the only thought she had left. She leapt out of the alcove, her thumb automatically flicking the gun in her hands to automatic and pulled back on the trigger.
The woman turned as a row of black holes stitched across her chest and through her face, knocking her backwards into the man. Changing the aim slightly, Marla held the gun down, the savage recoil numbing her wrists and shoulders as another line of holes appeared across the man's body. She was already moving away when she saw the barrel of his gun lift toward her, her magazine out and a long, rolling dive taking her behind the situation table.
Felix and Davis started shooting from both sides of the library's doorway as the man and boy climbed the steps toward the prophet, the bullets stopped by a force surrounding them. Davis leapt up, the falchion in his hand swinging in a low hissing arc, and felt the blade shudder as it impacted with the unseen wall, the jarring vibration travelling through his fingers and up his arm as the man turned impossibly fast and swept it aside with a thicker, heavier blade. A big hand wrapped around the old man's throat and lifted him effortlessly from the floor. He was shaken once, the crack of his vertebrae loud in the room, and dropped.
The boy stood in front of the circle of flame and looked at the man standing within it. From the hall, Adam raced across the room, booming retorts from the .45 held in one hand echoing around the high ceiling, the holes punching through into the man as he turned back to the boy.
Don't shoot at the boy, he told himself, ducking and rolling behind the table as the man brought a rifle up and bullets filled the air where he'd been. Kill the man, he doesn't have the same power, then the boy.
He saw the man stagger back as Jerome threw a ball of lightning at him, saw him shake his head and catch hold of the shelves beside him, and lifted his gun, firing smoothly at the side of the man's face he could see. The bullets punched through, exiting at the back of the man's head and spattering the books behind him with gore, then Adam was turning at the movement in his periphery.
Two more walked up the stairs, bleeding freely from a number of holes that glinted red through their clothing. Nephilim, he thought, swinging his gun around. The dark-haired man was down, the woman and younger man had split up, moving up both sides of the room.
He lifted his gun to aim at the tall man when he heard Chuck shout out, spinning around and seeing the boy walk across the flames. Chuck backed away, his gaze swinging to either side of the burning oil, his face frantic with fear as he saw the nephilim waiting for him.
A hand closed around the back of Adam's neck and he struggled as he was lifted from the floor, the thumb driving into the nerve centre, paralysing him as a nightmarish face filled his vision. A small entrance hole marred one stubbled cheek and a much larger, torn-apart exit hole on the other side revealed the half-breed's jaw and teeth through tattered flesh. Dark eyes stared into his.
"Where is the tablet?"
The grip shifted on him, thumbs driving into the softer flesh to either side of the neck. Adam stared at the man silently.
"I won't ask again," the man said, the words mushy with the air aspirated through the hole in his cheek. "Where is it?"
The barrel of the man's gun rose and he felt it press hard into his abdomen. He stared defiantly at the man. The shot was muffled by the contact and Draxler dropped him, leaving him on the floor as he looked around the library. He gestured to the nephilim abruptly.
"Search – every level!"
In the circle, Chuck stared at the boy in front of him. "You don't have to do this," he said softly. "You have the power to do anything you want."
Jesse looked at him blankly. "Alison died today."
"I'm sorry," Chuck said, seeing the shock behind the boy's big hazel eyes. "I'm sorry but do you want more people to die?"
Jesse shook his head, lunging forward suddenly, his small hand closing around Chuck's wrist. "No," he whispered and closed his eyes.
The flames around the circle shook and bowed as Chuck and the boy disappeared.
Draxler looked at the man in the wheelchair. His head was tipped back, a spreading stain of red appearing from the hand that was pressed against his side.
"Where is the tablet?" he asked him, crossing the room.
Jerome looked up at him, his face drawn and pale. "You're cambion," he said, coughing at the effort. "You can find anything."
For a moment, he thought that the man would break his neck, but he stopped, turning as the nephilim returned to the library, shaking their heads.
"Tell your leader that we have hostages, and we have the prophet. We will trade in Iowa. Highway 34. Ottumwa. Iowa."
Swinging around, Draxler walked back down through the library, his gaze scanning the shelves as he passed. This would be a place he could search, he thought distantly. When he had freed himself of the fallen. He would return here and look.
Hastings, Nebraska
It was full light when the truck's engine growled and the heavy vehicle slowed down, bumping as it pulled off the road. The engine was turned off and they heard the other vehicles stopping, voices shouting around them. Alex looked at Ellen, one brow lifted slightly. Ellen shrugged.
The opening of the flap at the back of the truck startled all three of them and they drew back from the man who stood silhouetted against the brighter light outside. As her eyes adjusted, Alex realised that she was looking at one of the Grigori, the details that remained fuzzy and blurred actually burn scars, his features gone from one side of his face.
"Get her unlocked from the others," Baeder commanded, and a dark-haired man climbed into the back of the truck, grabbing Alex's wrists and jerking them upward, the chain connecting her to Ellen and Kim tautening and pulling them forward.
"Watch it –" Kim snapped at him, and his hand moved in a blur of speed, loosely closed, the crack of his knuckles against her cheekbone and eye socket shockingly loud. Ellen saw her head snap back from the blow, her eyes rolling up in their sockets and leaned forward, ready for the pull of weight on her wrists as Kim slumped to the side. Alex stared down at her hands in silent fury, watching as the man unlocked the cuffs, taking Kim's unconscious weight from them.
He pulled her to her feet and pushed her toward the open flap and she climbed down, looking carefully at each of the faces that surrounded her. Another tall man, his skin burned over the scalp and one ear, but his face unmarked. Another Grigori, she thought, Dean's descriptions coming back to her as she stared at them.
A shorter man, dark hair receding and dark eyes watching her thoughtfully, the crisp black suit and polished black shoes an unnecessary affectation in battle conditions. Dean's caustic comments about the King of Hell returned to her and she felt a slight satisfaction at her identification. Crowley.
Behind him, a tall, impossibly beautiful woman with a long fall of auburn hair and vivid silvery-grey eyes watched her, the young man standing beside her as beautiful as she was. This was the offspring of angels and humans, she thought, looking at his chiselled features and brilliant sky-blue eyes, the blond hair cut short around his face the exact colour of wheat ready to harvest.
"Come with me," the man with half-a-face said to her, and she walked away from the truck, aware of the dark-haired man close behind her, the others following more slowly.
She couldn't imagine what they wanted with her. Dean would be no more or less likely to deal with them if they treated her kindly or tortured her. Perhaps they didn't know that about him, she considered. They'd taken Ellen and Kim. They must've had some clues to realise that he would trade the stone for either woman as well. Or was the deal just a charade?
The Grigori had stopped in front of a large, long truck. She watched him climb the set of stairs that extended from the smaller door in the rear. A hand prodded her back and she climbed into the truck reluctantly.
Inside the steel framed back, equipment lined the walls and partially filled the centre, the forward end of the truck mostly hidden behind a thick black curtain that covered three-quarters of the width of the truck.
The fallen angel turned to face her, his mouth lifting on one side, remaining fixed in place on the other. The effect was stilted, as if she were looking at a robot attempting a human expression, she thought.
"You understand why you are here?"
She looked at him expressionlessly. He would try and trade her and Ellen and Kim for the tablet. He seemed very confident that Dean would make the deal. He didn't need any other information from her about the matter, she decided, remaining silent.
As if he'd read her thoughts, he nodded understandingly. "Silence is indeed a potent weapon in many situations. Fortunately, this is not one of them. I need very little from you. But I'm afraid you will suffer."
The door behind her slammed shut and she spun around. The truck was empty except for the two of them, and she thought suddenly of weapons, anything she could use to disable the man in front of her. She didn't see his hand rise suddenly, just felt cold metal against the side of her neck and the sharp stab of the needle as it slid into the artery in her neck.
Ellen leaned back against the metal side of the truck, pressing her hand against the throbbing ache in her head. Despite all their preparations, the little boy had walked in unimpeded and just taken them, she thought caustically. She'd overhead him telling the dark-haired man that Alison had disappeared in the keep – a second demon child, she wondered, caught in the trap as the little boy and the man should've been? It was possible. The boy had sounded upset.
There were two demons guarding the truck, she knew. They'd been standing there when the back flap of canvas had been lifted. She thought back through all she knew, trying to find the pieces that would fit together, would give her an idea of the shape of the plans of those holding them, something she could use.
"What do they want with Alex?" Kim asked her in a soft voice. The slender doctor had a bruise, swelling and purpling the side of her face and a tooth missing from the front of her mouth.
"I don't know, hon," Ellen said, her voice equally low. If they had been ordinary men, she might have hazarded a guess as to what they wanted, but they weren't, and her feeling was strong that whatever needs they had, it didn't include the assault of their prisoners.
They had Chuck. She'd seen him dragged between two demons and put onto another truck as the sky had lightened. She thought they'd have just been killed and dumped if they'd found the tablet. And they obviously hadn't searched for any of the translations of the tablet either; the dark man who'd taken them from Jesse and chained them together had come out with the two nephilim carrying nothing else.
Looking at her hands, the wrists held together by simple handcuffs, she thought of how she was going to get out of here. Kim wouldn't survive on her own, over the miles of country to get back to the town. Alex might, she thought, depending on what shape she was returned in. They'd probably been looking for Ben, she thought. Had thought they'd all be together. They had all been together, but Ben had been running a message from Maurice to Liev about the tunnels at the time they'd come in. Alex was the key to Dean. She and Kim were more or less expendable at any point. Would they miss her if she slipped out once Alex was back? She wasn't sure. The demons outside the truck had been talking earlier about the route they were taking. Due east mostly. They'd mentioned Cleveland, but she didn't get the feeling that was the final destination.
The flashlight beam bobbed on the outside of the canvas covering, giving them a moment's warning. It'd been dark for close to an hour, Ellen realised, glancing at her watch as the flap opened and Alex was forced back to the bench seat beside Kim. She held the cuffs tightly as the chain was pulled through the rings, her fingers curled up under her palms.
"Alex, are you alright?" Kim leaned toward the younger woman, looking worriedly at the dazed expression on her face.
"Fine," Alex said, shaking her head slightly as the cuffs were refastened around her wrists. "They didn't hurt me."
"What happened?" Ellen asked shortly, leaning forward a little as the demon left the truck and zipped the flap.
"He just talked," Alex said. She looked down at the floor, her brow wrinkling a little, her expression bewildered. "Didn't even ask me any questions, just kept talking about what a great world they were going to make once they had the tablets."
Ellen frowned. "For ten hours?"
"Is that all it was?" the younger woman said, lifting her hand carefully and rubbing the heel over her temple. "It felt like a lot longer than that."
The engine of the truck started, vibrating through the floor and into their feet. "Listen, both of you," Ellen said, glancing at the back flap as the truck lurched forward. "These cuffs are just standard issue, nothing to them."
She let the cuffs drop. "Hold out your hands."
Kim and Alex leaned forward, extending their hands to her, and she slipped the reconfigured bobby pin from her sleeve and began to work on them. "What else did he say, Alex? Did he say where he was going to trade with Dean?"
"He said the army was expendable," Alex told her, brows drawing together as she tried to remember the details of the conversation. "I think he said Ottumwa. Is that right? Iowa? I thought they came through Missouri?"
"The demons said something about Cleveland," Ellen said, huffing a strand of hair back from her face as she twisted the wire in the cuff lock. "Iowa would fit if they're angling north. What did he mean, expendable?"
"I don't know," the younger woman said, exhaling. "A lot of it just seemed to be rambling, as if he wasn't talking to me, but to himself."
"Did you get the impression he wasn't as together as he seemed before?"
"Sometimes, yeah." She looked away. "He was vaguing out, from time to time – would stop talking and just stand there."
The lock sprang free and Ellen turned to the other one. "We've got a couple of hours at most. I don't know if they're going to make regular stops or not, but we have to go while we're moving."
"Ellen, that's a risk for you and Alex," Kim said sharply.
"It's a risk we have to take," Alex said immediately. "Without us, the Grigori have no bargaining power."
"I think we're on the 14," Ellen said. "Not far out of Hastings. It's about forty miles back to Lebanon. But the further we go, the harder it'll be to get back, and the more likely they are to find us before we can."
"You want us to jump out of a moving truck?"
"Yeah," Ellen said, glancing up at her with a grin. "And preferably before we hit the interstate." She eased the pin and felt it catch the mechanism, the click almost inaudible above the roar of the engine. "There's a section of this road where the bank drops away, and ends up in a forest."
"We came this way to Michigan last time," Alex said, nodding as she remembered the road, rubbing the marks on her wrists.
"We'll go there," Ellen confirmed, working on Kim's cuffs. "There's a bend before it, the headlights of the truck behind us will be off the truck for at least a few minutes. That's the window we have."
"How soon?" Kim asked, lifting her free hand to the bruising on her face as Ellen worked on the last shackle.
"Less than fifteen minutes."
"Can you see if they're walking behind us?" Alex said in a low voice, crouching beside Ellen at the back of the truck.
Ellen shook her head. "They lost most of the force they brought," she said. "Everyone's riding now, that's why we're moving fast."
If there had been demons walking alongside the trucks, escaping like this would've been impossible. But with the bend and the darkness and the hillside, she thought it might work. Always provided they didn't run into tigers, her mind threw at her. She repressed a shudder and pushed the thought aside.
"Alright, it's just up ahead," she told Alex, glancing past her to Kim. "You ready?"
The doctor made a face. "As I'll ever be."
The truck took the turn slowly, and Ellen watched as the headlights from the vehicle behind them shifted from the back and played over the hillside on the other side of the road as it followed. She forced the canvas up and slipped out.
They weren't going fast, but the road surface was unforgiving and her knees and ankles took the brunt of the impact, as she forced the roll across the shoulder, feeling the ground drop away from underneath her at the edge. Steeper than she'd thought, rolling down across the dried up and flattened grass, rocks and low bushes, one arm curled protectively over her head, the other around her stomach.
There was shouting from the top of the road, and the sound of gunfire, and she scrambled into a low crouch as the slope began to even out, running doubled-over for the shelter of the woods that had grown up the valley's sides. She stopped behind a tree trunk and dug into the flattened leaf fall on the ground under it.
Voices. Lights. She heard the thump of feet on the ground distantly and lifted her head slightly, looking frantically around, pushing backwards down the slight incline to get deeper under the trees. The hole was all black when it caught her peripheral vision and she stopped, focussing on it suddenly. Fox den. The thought came whole to her. The opening was quite large.
Above her on the steeper slope she could hear the demons pushing through the undergrowth and she launched herself into the hole, wriggling as it closed around her further in, smelling dry earth and nothing else, hoping it meant the den had been abandoned. The narrow tunnel opened up again a little after a few feet and she wormed her way faster along the soft earth, freezing as she heard muffled voices much closer.
She couldn't turn to see behind her, unsure now if there'd been enough bends to hide her feet from anyone pointing a light into the hole. For a man, it was far too small, she thought, and her pursuers might not realise that she could fit into it, a part of her aware that she was clutching at any hope at all.
No light penetrated the darkness she lay in, her breathing shallow and silent. Ellen lay there for a long time, unwilling to move in case they were waiting, just outside, waiting for her to move or come out.
West Keep, Kansas
Rufus watched the crane cable rising, lifting the block of concrete with it, his heart racing as he waited to see if anything else was going to fall on the man lying under it.
He had no idea how Singer could've managed to get so much of the fucking tower to fall directly on top of him, but if they got him in one piece and still breathing, he intended to make the sonofabitch pay for the scare.
The casualty figures for the two days of fighting hadn't been high on their end. He'd seen Merrin when the army had left and most of the wounded would survive. That'd made him doubly furious when Mel's call about Bobby had come in.
"Alright," Joseph yelled, waving an arm at the two stretcher bearers. "Gimme five minutes then come in – carefully!"
The ex-paramedic picked his way through the rubble and crouched beside Bobby, face expressionless and hands moving gently over the old man's body, his thumbs-up easily visible less than five minutes later. Rufus let out his breath in a long, whistling exhale and walked across what was left of the keep's bailey.
"How long to rebuild this?" he asked Liev, the builder looking up at the still-standing walls.
"Oh, a month or two, if we can get the materials, and the people," the swarthy builder told him. "I'm pretty amazed this much is still there," he added, pointing at the join in the walls that were blackened and scorched. "Tower took a direct hit from something pretty big."
Rufus nodded sourly. All of the destruction of their food and shelter had just been a diversion. Crowley had known about most of the defences and sent his demons in anyway, to make enough noise and confusion that they could slip the cambion in without them being questioned. It would take months to rebuild the order's safehold, and he was just grateful that they hadn't decided to burn the library while they'd been in there. They'd lost Davis and Aaron in the fighting, along with five of Franklin's soldiers. Adam, Marla and Jerome were all critical and of course Kim had been taken. He wondered vaguely if they'd thought she was their only doctor.
Turning at the heavy crunch of boots behind him, he saw the two men carrying Bobby over the rubble and to the truck, easing the injured man inside. He hurried to the rear, nodding at Lee and Perry as they walked around to the front of the truck and waited for Joseph to climb in first, following him and sitting near Bobby's head.
"He gonna be alright?" he asked the young man tersely.
Joseph looked at him and nodded. "Bruised, broken ankle, cracked ribs. He'll be okay." He looked down at his patient. "He's unconscious at the moment, just exhaustion, I think."
Unconscious was alright, Rufus thought. Unconscious would put off the moment when he had to tell his friend that Ellen had been taken.
Litteris Hominae, Kansas
Jasper looked at the mess and sighed deeply. Oliver and Frances had been working for the last twelve hours, clearing away what had been broken or destroyed beyond repair, helping Deirdre and Mitch to put the comms and computers back online, to get the documents that had been collateral damage of the shooting sorted from the rest and put downstairs for the restoration work that would take months, if it could even be done.
He hadn't liked the pompous professor but he would miss him, he thought tiredly. And Aaron, Jerome's assistant. The place seemed almost unbearably empty, just the four of them now rattling in it on their own. It also, he thought sourly, seemed horribly naked, vulnerable with the illusions and the door with its massive locking rings completely gone. How easy would it be to replace those, he wondered?
"We have a communiqué from France," Deidre said, looking over her shoulder at him. "Do you know Jerome's status?"
Status, Jasper wondered? Was the woman so utterly immersed in her technology that she related everything to working or not working?
"He's still in critical condition," he told her, a slight edge to his voice. He saw that she picked up on it, her eyes brightening fractionally, and sighed inwardly. People dealt with their shock and grief in their own ways, he rebuked himself. It wasn't his place to judge her for how she expressed that grief. "Bob was pretty certain he'll pull through but we won't be able to talk to him for a few more days," he added, more gently. Jerome had remained conscious until he'd given the cambion's message. The bullet had taken a chunk of liver and colon on its way through the professor's body.
"It's on the printer," she said, sitting down and typing in a progress update to the other chapters.
He walked across and picked it up, scanning over it. The Qaddiysh had managed to get through to Illinois. His brows shot up as he read that they'd found Dean and Sam Winchester along the way. Reaching for the phone on the desk beside him, he dialled the single digit that connected him to the exchange and the two digits that accessed the keep. The phone rang six times before it was picked up.
"West Keep," the soft female voice said.
"Maria?" Jasper asked.
"Yes."
"It's Jasper, is Rufus there?"
"Not right now, he's gone to Lightning Oak."
"What about Maurice?" Jasper frowned, belatedly remembering the news about Singer.
"Yes, hold on, I'll get him for you," she said.
"Just pass –" he stopped as he heard the clunk of the handset being dropped at the other end of the line. A few minutes later it was picked up and he heard the hunter's warm tenor at the other end.
"Jasper?"
"Yeah, we got a message from Michel," Jasper said, looking down at it. "The Qaddiysh are in Missouri. They found Dean and Sam in Illinois."
"Good," Maurice said, relief obvious in his voice. "How soon will they be here?"
"They've got a vehicle," he said, thinking about the route. "The army cleared the 70 when they came through. Perhaps a few hours?"
"Alright, thanks."
Behind the relief was trepidation, and Jasper put the phone down, running a hand over his head as he thought about the news that would be waiting for the leader and his brother. He was glad he didn't have to deliver it.
Red Cloud, Nebraska
The bridge was still there. It was a relief to see it as she looked at the turgid flow of the snow-melt. The curving metal frames were flaking paint in sheets, rust dark and growing beneath it, but still intact.
She pushed her hair back from her face, ignoring the stinging cuts and started to cross. Only another twenty miles from here, Ellen thought tiredly.
She'd waited over an hour before easing herself back out of the fox's den on the other side of Hastings. The trucks had long gone but she didn't trust the road and had followed the stream west until she'd reached the outskirts of what had been Hastings. From there, she thought it was safe enough to follow the highway south. Hearing the wolf music in the hills, she'd debated finding a place to hole up, and rest until dawn, but the urgency to keep moving had kept her on her feet, the bright moonlight flooding over the cracked road in front of her almost as strongly as day.
From memory the road would lead her straight home. Rufus and Bobby could organise a pursuit team, to watch the army, if nothing else, while they tried to figure out where to look for Dean and Sam. And if they're dead, she asked herself bleakly? Trapped or killed by the archangel they'd gone to help Cas contain?
She shook her head, trudging between the spans, the hard soles of her boots clocking on the concrete. It was impossible to imagine that either could be killed. Against her better judgement, she'd offered them help when she'd realised whose boys they were. Against her better judgement, she'd put herself and the people she knew into danger by continuing to try to help them. The memory of a young man, sitting on the edge of the table in the bar, his face stony with grief, came back to her. Even then, she'd wanted to help him because she'd had the strong sense that fate – or destiny – or whatever you called it – had held those young men deep in its machinations, and they'd needed all the help they could get. She didn't regret that her choices had killed many of her friends. She still didn't know if the spur-of-the-moment decision to restock the pretzels had been chance or her own fate playing out as it was meant.
Bobby had given her Jim's journal, when they'd moved from Michigan to Kansas. In it had been the truth of what had happened down in Devil's Gate Reservoir, the gate Bill and John had gone to investigate. The pain from those truths had been immense, not just what she'd learned about her husband and his death, but the injustice she'd done to John, the hatred that driven her for so many years. She'd come to understand why John had taken the blame, why he'd lied to her about what had happened, but she didn't know if she'd ever forgive him for that.
She could help his sons. That was all that was left to do. Help them to do the jobs that fate seemed to be putting in front of them. She could add her shield to those that had gathered around them. They weren't dead, she knew with a spearing jab of clarity. Death wouldn't have allowed it. They'd been removed from the scene deliberately because the threads hadn't yet played out, but they weren't dead.
Looking up, she saw the road stretching out ahead, gently rising and falling over the low hills that surrounded her. A glance back showed the bridge more than a half a mile behind her. The sky was getting lighter, silver streaks slowly spreading from behind the eastern horizon. If she picked up her pace, she could be home by midday.
West Keep, Kansas
Sam sucked in his breath as he saw the black smoke rising in the distance. Beside him, he felt his brother tense.
The wide car bounced over the fields when Dean had to leave the road, craters and piles of earth and concrete and asphalt littered over it where the mines had gone off. He followed the deep tracks of the army vehicles around the half-burned woods and over the trampled pastures and ploughed fields, slowing but not stopping as they passed the broken fort, its blackened stones tumbled across the scorched earth.
As the land rose, they saw the shattered and smoking remains of the keep to the north-east, and the bodies of the dead, piled and burning, around the standing buildings. Sam's gaze swivelled west, eyes widening as he saw the gaping holes in the massive curtain walls that surrounded the town – what had been a town and had been rebuilt into a fortress.
A group of men in the churned up mud of the fields of Ghost Valley looked at the car as it approached them, rifle barrels rising in unison as they came closer. Dean felt a flush of relief sweep through him as he recognised Jackson's grizzled face under the soot and dirt.
"Missed all the fun," the farmer said to him when he stopped, gesturing around vaguely. Dean looked at the pyre.
"How many we'd lose?"
"Not many," Riley said, stepping close behind Jackson, his face equally grimy with the unpleasant task. "These are from the other side."
"Keeps got hit pretty solidly," Jackson told him, his faded blue eyes narrowed as he looked into the car, his gaze flicking around the faces watching him. "But it was just a diversion."
Dean nodded. He knew that. They'd only come for the prophet and the tablet. He didn't know how to ask what he needed to know.
"You get any reports from the keep or the order?"
Both men dropped their gazes, and he felt his heart sink.
"They got Chuck," Jackson said carefully, looking at the ground. "And they took some hostages."
"We lose much of the stores?" Dean asked, looking past them at the fields. He'd known it for the last four days, known they would be too late, known it was the only reason to get them out of the town. It was taking everything he had to keep his imagination under control. "Stock?"
"No, not much," Riley said, his face drawn beneath the muck covering it. "We'll be able to clean up."
"I'll see you later."
They nodded and stepped back as he drove past them, over the field to the small road that led into the town.
"Crowley'll make a trade," Sam said, bracing his hand against the roof above him as the car bounced over the bank. "He only wants the tablet and the gun back."
Dean didn't respond, his gaze fixed on the broken battlements that had come into view as the humvee growled in low range along the road.
The small group of offices that had been turned over to the hunters living in the keep were virtually undamaged. All of them were there now, sitting wherever there was a space, the dust cleared out and a fire burning on the hearth as they listened to Ellen.
"Expendable?" Dean repeated slowly. "That was what she said?"
Ellen nodded, chewing and swallowing the rich stew in between questions.
Looking around at the faces in the room, his gaze flicking back to his brother every few minutes, Sam saw nothing but cold resolve in them. Everyone there was experienced. They had all earned the right to be here, putting their nickel's worth of opinion into the plans that were being formulated. Only someone who knew his brother very, very well could've picked the underlying tension that hummed in him.
"Did she see Crowley?"
"I don't think so," Ellen said, pushing the clean bowl away and sitting back in the chair, brows drawing together as she thought about the brief conversation. "She said that the Grigori was rambling, as if he was talking to himself, not to her."
"Losing it?" Rufus asked.
Ellen shrugged. "Maybe."
"We should be so lucky," Bobby growled, unable to scratch the itch under his cast that had been driving him nuts all afternoon. His relief, when Ellen had walked down the road to the outer towers and been brought into town with the guards, had just about given him a coronary. He didn't think he could deal with that kind of scare again. And the emotions had centred on the half-inch square of skin, just above the bone and four inches from the edge of the cast, that itched unbearably.
"They want to do the trade in Iowa," Nate said thoughtfully, turning to look at Dean. "Why?"
"Too far for us to hit them and take it all back?" Sam suggested diffidently. He'd been wondering about the location as well. It was too far for them to mobilise sufficient people to get there; against the fallen and the half-breeds, they needed weapons and a strategy that wouldn't get them all killed. But the sense that there was something else persisted as well.
"Maybe," Dean said, his eyes dark and studying the floor at his feet. "Doesn't matter. We'll go in five hours – me and Sam, Elias, Rufus and Win," he decided. "Everyone else is on clean up here and rebuilding."
There was a general movement as the hunters who weren't going got up and finished their drinks, making their way out and back to their responsibilities. Win got up and Elias caught her arm, drawing her back down to the chair she'd been sitting in again.
Dean looked at Rufus. "How many were left?"
Rufus raised his brows at Ellen. "We got a body count here of about nineteen hundred," he said. From the side of the desk, Ellen nodded in agreement.
"I thought they had maybe a hundred and fifty, two hundred left at most."
"That's too many for a direct attack," Bobby pointed out, pouring another inch of whiskey into his glass.
"Yeah," Dean agreed absently. "What about their vehicles? When they stopped, did they make a camp, or just pull off the road in a line?"
"In a line," Ellen remembered. "I don't think they expected to be stopped that long."
She saw an expression flash over his face, there and gone before she could identify it. The army had stopped for Baeder, she thought belatedly. For Baeder to talk to Alex. It made no sense, unless Crowley had other reasons to call a halt. She hadn't seen any signs of it.
"Who's the best long-range shooter we got?" Dean asked Rufus and Bobby, gaze cutting between them.
"Besides you?" Rufus glanced at Bobby, one brow lifted. "Toby."
Bobby nodded. "Did two tours in Afghanistan before they let him out."
"Win, could you tell Toby to come back?" Ellen looked at the slim, wiry girl. She nodded and left the room.
"What do you want to do?" Elias asked Dean, leaning forward slightly.
"They'll expect me to come with backup," Dean said slowly. "That'll be Sam, you and Rufus. Toby and Win can hang back, as far as needs be to get the shot. Franklin did up some of his specials on the ammo we use in the M40, we'll take that."
"It won't work on the fallen or the half-breeds," Sam said quizzically.
"No, but it'll keep Crowley in his meatsuit, and keep him from zapping off somewhere. He'll want the tablet and the gun to be in his hands," Dean said, rubbing a hand along his jaw. "The big half-breed, his job seems to be protecting the Grigori."
He shrugged and stood up, walking distractedly to the fire. "I think the plan is to get them and then abandon ship – take Chuck and the tablet, the fallen and the half-breeds and leave everyone else there."
"You want to stop Crowley from leaving?"
"Even if Baeder or Dietrich take the tablet, they're not interested in the Colt," Dean said, turning around to look at them. "And Crowley is. And that gun can kill them all."
He didn't have to say that if he'd been there, nothing would have stopped him from using the gun. Every hunter in the town had realised that if they'd pulled the damned thing out instead of hiding it, they could've stopped the half-breeds, the nephilim and gone out hunting the Grigori and the King of Hell as well. It'd dawned on Rufus much later that'd been Dean's plan all along.
Sam looked up as the awkward silence was broken with Win returning with Toby. Dean nodded to the hunter.
"Need your shooter's skills," he said, and Toby sat down, taking the whiskey that Ellen offered him.
"Range?"
"Likely to be outside a mile."
"No problem, depending on other factors," Toby said, smiling slightly at him as he swallowed the whiskey and set the glass down. "But you know that."
Dean nodded. "Win'll spot for you."
"Okay," he said, giving her a smile. She looked back at him coolly.
"We can be compromised here," Dean added, glancing at Sam. "If there's a problem, you stand down, no arguments."
Toby looked back at him. "Sure."
"Okay, we're leaving in four hours. Two cars. The roads are crap so pick something that can handle them."
Toby and Win got up and walked out, Elias finishing his glass and putting it on the table as he got up as well.
"Toby takes out Crowley and …?" Ellen asked, leaning her chin against the palm of her hand.
"His gun takes a .50 calibre round," Dean said shortly. "One to immobilise Crowley. And one of those through the half-breed's head'll knock him down. I get the Colt back and put everyone else down."
He got up and shrugged. "Depending on the situation."
"Dean –" Rufus started. Dean walked to the door, cutting him off as he turned back.
"Get your gear together and get some rest, we won't be stopping once we're on the road," he told Rufus and Elias sharply then walked out.
Litteris Hominae, Kansas
Penemue looked around the room curiously. It was laid out in a similar manner to the French safehold. He turned as Jasper came down the stairs. The old man glanced at the Irin, close-cropped and thinning silver hair framing a rounded face, the razor intelligence visible in pale blue eyes contrasting sharply with an amiable smile. He wasn't a legacy, he'd told them on their arrival, merely a professor of dead languages. The man who'd died, Cutler Davis, hadn't been a legacy either, nor the short, plump woman who had looked them over the previous evening with equal parts suspicion and astonishment.
"Jerome is still unconscious," Jasper said abruptly.
"You were lucky," Shamsiel remarked, looking around. "I am surprised they didn't wipe you out entirely."
Baraquiel shot him a quelling look and Jasper smiled. "I am also surprised they didn't," he told them. "Particularly when the nephilim could not find the tablet. Nothing we had touched them."
"No," Penemue agreed. "We do have something that will 'touch' them, but still, the heart must be removed."
He saw Jasper's gaze slide away to look at the box that sat on the table.
"That's it then?" the scholar asked, walking slowly to the table. "Pandora's Box."
"Yes," Baraquiel said, following him. "The French order had a means of following the energy of the goddesses – have you been able to replicate that device here?"
He looked down at the situation table, at the clusters of red and yellow and blue lights that were static or moving over the map.
"No as precisely as Michel," Jasper said distractedly, staring at the box. "Deirdre and Mitch are working on that now." He looked up. "We are running to several different priorities here at the moment."
"We understand." Penemue nodded. "The closing of the gates will reduce the danger of both Hell and the Grigori."
"The closing of the gates is essential to prevent the archdemons from gaining control," another voice said from the library steps and the Irin turned around.
"Ah, this is Father McConnaughey," Jasper said, as the priest walked down the steps. "Father, this is Penemue, Baraquiel and Shamsiel."
"Interesting times indeed to meet the sons of God who fell with their Grace," Father McConnaughey said, bowing his head slightly to the Qaddiysh. "I was given a message."
Baraquiel exchanged a look with his brothers. "From an angel?"
"Yes," the priest said. "I believe it was an angel. I was told that the gates must be closed before Crowley could make any other alliances, before the Fallen could escape their bonds."
Shamsiel lifted a brow. "Anything else?"
"I was told that the Winchesters would be the ones to close the gates," Father McConnaughey told him. "One of them, at any rate."
"Which one?" Baraquiel asked.
"I don't know," the priest said bluntly, looking at him. "We have assumed it would be Dean."
He watched the fallen angels exchange a look. "Do you have further information about that?"
Penemue shook his head. "No, nothing that is fixed."
"My colleague, Father Emilio, believes it will be Sam," Father McConnaughey said, and he saw that the Qaddiysh were aware that he was fishing, their expressions carefully neutral.
"It could be," Shamsiel agreed mildly. "The instructions were, as I recall, rather open to interpretation."
Jasper hid a smile as he saw Father McConnaughey's face twitch.
"The instructions are so vague as to be practically useless," the priest snapped at the angel. "And our prophet is gone."
"Did you get the details of the trials?" Penemue asked curiously.
"The first two, we have the most basic idea," Jasper interceded smoothly. "Enough to attempt them. We don't have any details on what the actual contract with God is, and the wording is rather ominous."
"The ordeals will test 'unto death', according to the tablet," Father McConnaughey confirmed sourly. "Not a great incentive to take them on."
"Contracts with God have always tested faith, Father," Shamsiel said, a faint touch of rebuke in his tone. "You should know that."
"Faith is difficult to maintain in the situations that Heaven have brought down upon us," the priest argued. "Even for those who have lived by it their entire lives."
"It is in the times of utmost despair that faith is most important," Baraquiel said quietly. "No matter what Heaven is doing – or Hell – or anything else that walks the world in darkness, Father, it will be faith – in our Father, in each other and in ourselves that overcomes."
The priest turned away, muttering something under his breath.
"Didn't catch that, Father," Jasper said brightly, flicking a glance at the Qaddiysh.
Father McConnaughey turned and scowled at him. "I was merely asking myself if these gentlemen have met the Winchesters." He turned back to look at Baraquiel. "It is their skills and knowledge and their own courage they look to, not faith in a power that has deceived them from before they were born!"
US-34 E, Nebraska
The black car sped along the roads, the headlights barely visible as dawn greeted it, powering into the growing light and throwing a long, lilac shadow onto the asphalt behind it.
Dean manoeuvred the car around the worst of the holes and cracks without thought or effort, the occasional glance in the mirror showing Toby behind him, mimicking the Impala's movements and maintaining a steady four car-lengths back in the green SUV. He'd decided to leave Rufus behind at the last minute, unwilling to risk a man who could protect the population effectively, and a friend who'd already risked his life several times in following him.
Behind the layer of rigid control he was holding onto, fear and rage and memory and speculation were lapping and surging at the walls, the tension between feeling and thought, and the tight grip he had over himself manifesting in aching muscles and a white-knuckled stranglehold on the wheel. He was going to burn out before he got there, he thought caustically, looking down at his hands and deliberately flexing them again.
He would kill Crowley. And the Grigori. And the half-breeds. For a fractional second, the images were so powerful, so vivid in his mind's eye – the blue fire of Colt's bullets penetrating and immolating their bodies – that he felt a frisson of release from the iron bands compressing his chest, as if it were already done. He shook the feeling off impatiently.
A lot would depend on the situation, he told himself savagely. And his ability to react with it. Opportunities would be there, that he was sure of. They always were if you knew how to look for them. But what form they'd take, how easy they'd be to see and use, that was the difference in the life between those who reached thirty, and those who didn't.
The other two men in the car were silent, sometimes lost in their own thoughts, but sometimes, he knew, wondering about him. Sam knew him well enough to not even attempt a conversation, keeping his concerns locked away. He could feel Elias' gaze on him from time to time, the hunter watching him but not offering anything. He couldn't go near the thoughts he'd bottled up and sealed away since he'd seen the black smoke rising above Lebanon. Couldn't afford to lose the hard, cold edge that would get him through the next few hours. Couldn't let himself think or feel anything that wasn't a hundred percent focussed on what he was going to do.
Most of the signs that had been present along the roads had fallen or been cannibalised for other uses. He knew this stretch of highway, well enough to know that Creston was coming up. The half-breed had told Jerome the trade would be in Iowa, and Alex had Ellen that the Grigori had mentioned Ottumwa.
He slowed as the bend came up, indicating and watching Toby in the mirrors as he pulled over. The SUV pulled up alongside his window.
"We didn't get a specific location for the trade," Dean said, window down as he looked across to Toby. "I think he's gonna use the railway crossing, about two miles this side of the town."
In the other vehicle, Toby nodded. "Elevated and clear view all around."
"Used to be fairly clear," Dean corrected him. "To the north-east of the tracks, there's a hill, had some woods on it last time I went through there, probably a lot more now."
"Think they'll post guards?"
"Yeah, definitely," Dean said. "But not past a few hundred yards. You take the back way in, through what used to be farmland to the north, the highest part of that hill is near a gravel road north of the 34."
"I know the place you mean," Winifred said, turning to Toby. "It's thick woods there now, but the line of sight is straight down to the overpass."
"Right," Dean confirmed. "We'll give you an hour to get into position then we'll be coming through."
"If they're not there?" Toby asked, scratching an eyebrow.
"They'll be there," Dean said, his certainty growing as he thought about it. The town itself would be ruins, too many places for ambushes if Crowley thought he was bringing more people. The railway line would force a one-on-one meeting, down the embankments and on the open ground of the tracks. He might or might not think of a sniper, knowing that he couldn't be killed with one of their bullets and the range would be too great for Colt, even in plain view.
"Alright," Toby agreed readily. "Who do you want first?"
"Crowley," Dean told him. "Head shot if you can. I need him immobilised. Then the half-breed. The others can't just up and disappear without them."
The green car moved slowly out past him, heading north at the next turn. Dean watched them go, his fingers drumming restlessly on the wheel as he dragged up every detail he could remember of the overpass before the town. It'd been wooded, and there was a small river running alongside the tracks, he remembered. He thought that Crowley would use the iron tracks as a half-way point. He wondered briefly who they'd send down to get the tablet. The half-breed, more than likely. The others would remain at the top.
Ottumwa, Iowa
He came around the bend in the road and saw them, on the other side of the concrete span that carried the road over the railway line; trucks and the demon-possessed soldiers and the unmistakable figures of the fallen. Slowing, he pulled in on the shoulder a few yards before the asphalt joined the concrete.
"You ready?" Sam asked, looking at his brother's profile. Dean didn't answer, turning off the engine and getting out of the car, and Sam sighed, opening his door and following. The rear door clunked shut as Elias got out and looked over the roof of the car at Dean.
"Down at the tracks," a demon called out from the other end of the span. Dean nodded, turning to get around the low concrete wall that bordered the edge.
The embankment wasn't long or particularly steep and the three men hit the flattened ground divided in half by the metal tracks in a couple of minutes, watching the opposite bank as Crowley and the Grigori walked down from the road and stopped along the top.
They should be good, clean targets up there, Dean thought distantly. His stomach knotted as a tall young woman pushed Alex and Kim down from the highway, the two women stumbling and blinking in the bright light, hands bound behind them. They looked unhurt, he told himself.
Crowley glanced at them and back down to the tracks. "Alright, you can see they're in good health. Where's the tablet and the gun?"
"Send them down first," Dean called back, his fingers itching for the Colt's grip. "When they're safe, you'll get them."
"No," the man standing behind Alex said, shaking his head. "No, Mr Winchester, we will send them down to you when the tablet and gun is on its way back here." He turned, gesturing and Dean saw the half-breed step out from behind Crowley, his face expressionless as he looked down the hill.
"Mr Draxler here will take the tablet and the gun," the Grigori said loudly. "When he is a reasonable distance from you, the women will be freed."
"Not going to happen," Dean said shortly, folding his arms over his chest as he looked up.
He saw the man draw a gun from his belt, holding the barrel against Alex's temple as he gripped her bound wrists with the other. Crowley glanced across at the concrete parapet that lined the overpass, the sound of rifles cocking loud in the still air.
"On the contrary, Mr Winchester," the Grigori said. "This is exactly how it will happen, or this woman will die in the next thirty seconds and you will be mown down by our shooters. And we will take the stone and gun from your dead body."
Dean looked at him for a moment, then nodded. They were, at least, predictable he thought, letting his shoulders slump. It was the least he could do to be seen as predictable as well. He watched the half-breed continue down the slope toward them, skirting the brown and withered-looking clumps of dead grass and low bushes that speckled the incline.
The headshot would take Crowley as the half-breed began the climb back up, he thought, looking at the ground and listening to the cambion's descent. The second shot would hopefully put Draxler down long enough for him to get across the tracks and to him, get the Colt and start shooting. He was hoping Toby would see the other targets and keep firing. They hadn't been able to plan out anything further without knowing how the situation would be.
Pulling the gun from his belt and the tablet from his jacket pocket, he waited, the seconds ticking off in his head.
He looked up as Draxler stopped in front of him. An inch or two shorter, the cambion made up for it in breadth of shoulder and the hard, heavy muscle that was evident even under the loose combat jacket and pants. Looking into his face, he saw that the half-breed hadn't forgotten their last encounter, and wouldn't make the same mistakes again. His eyes narrowed as a flickering expression lit the dark eyes for a moment as he handed the gun and stone to the man. He couldn't be sure, it'd been too quick, but it'd looked something like an apology. Draxler was turning away, long strides taking him across the iron tracks, to the beginning of the upward rise of the embankment.
The flat crack of the rifle was too far away to hear, and the hole appeared to one side of Crowley's forehead as if by magic, the impact knocking him to the ground. Dean was sprinting for the half-breed as a second shot hit Draxler in the side of the chest, sending him sprawling against the slope.
Sam and Elias both turned, drawing the short-barrelled sub-machine guns from beneath their coats, strafing the concrete overpass with automatic fire as they bolted under its cover.
On the top of the embankment, Baeder looked at Jesse and nodded and the little boy disappeared abruptly. He watched the eldest Winchester reach the cambion and laughed, the shrill, raw cackle echoing down the narrow ravine.
Sam's head snapped up to see the Grigori silhouetted against the overcast sky, head thrown back as that laugh broke through the sudden silence.
Dean dropped onto Draxler's back, hearing the whoof of the man's chest compress under him, air driven out and his grip on the Colt loosening. He was reaching for the gun when the two gunshots rang out, one after the other with barely a second between them. He looked up, time slowing down as he watched the men push Alex and Kim toward the edge, telescoping out as he watched them fall, seconds drawing out to minutes, then hours as he saw them tumble headfirst down the slope, rolling bonelessly to the bottom.
Draxler twisted around. The boy appeared next to him, touching his wrist and the cambion disappeared from under Dean as he staggered to his feet, the Colt forgotten. He was running, something booming in his ears, something shuddering in his chest, something screaming in his head.
Elias watched Dean reach them and drop to his knees. He looked back up, seeing Crowley rise, the Grigori and the cambion close up together and vanish, seeing the demon-possessed remnants of the army slowly realise they'd been abandoned, backing away from the overpass, turning and running.
Staring at his brother, Sam remembered Chuck's vision … and the whole world seemed to hold its breath in the silence that filled the narrow ravine. The silence was there, too loud against his ears, too thickly surrounding the man kneeling next to the bodies of the women.
Walking across the heavy gravel bed of the railway, he saw the blood stain as Dean lifted Alex, spreading out from the hole in her back, coating his brother's hands and seeping into his sleeves. On the ground next to him, Kim's face was slack, her eyes open and unseeing, and he knew a similar stain would be spreading out under her as well.
Dean shifted his grip as Alex's head fell back, her eyes half-open but covered in dust, a long scratch from the roll down the hill open and almost bloodless along her cheek. His fingers pressed against the side of her neck, harder and harder as he tried to find the pulse that should've been there, ducking his head to feel for her breath along his cheek.
He heard footsteps behind him, recognised Sam's tread. "I can't find her pulse," he told Sam.
And as the words came out, their meaning became clear to him.
Against the walls of the control he'd been holding onto, something titanic shoved at him. If you let go now, if you let that in, you won't get up again. The thought flashed through his mind and he tipped his head back, mouth opening as he dragged in a deep breath. The dead weight in his arms caught at him and he lowered her body to the ground, turning away and closing his eyes, batting Sam's hand away from him as he got to his feet.
You know what you have to do.
He knew.
The walls held. The tumult receded and silence, frigidly cold, with fingers like razor blades, dropped over him, filled him up and pushed out everything else.
Dead inside.
Maybe Famine had been right all along, he thought disinterestedly. Maybe Death had been right too. It didn't matter now. There was a job to do. A demon to kill. The thoughts were tasteless and dry in his mind, no emotion attached to them, no feeling flickering as he stared at the scrubby slope in front of him and considered how he would do that.
"Dean?"
He looked around at his brother's voice. "Yeah?"
"We need to make a pyre," Sam said softly, gesturing vaguely behind him.
"Right."
"Dean …"
His eyes narrowed a little as he focussed on Sam's face, seeing the pain in the hazel eyes, in the lines that bracketed his little brother's mouth. He knew what Sam wanted to know.
"I'm fine, Sam," he said briskly. "Build the pyre, I need to check on Toby and Win."
He started to climb the embankment before his brother could respond, feeling the pull and stretch of the muscles in legs and back, concentrating on that visceral sensation as he reached the top and looked at the black car. There was another road that led to the hill less than five hundred back behind the bend, he thought distantly. He could use that.
At the tracks, Elias walked to Sam and laid a restraining hand on his arm. "Leave him, let him deal however he has to."
"He doesn't deal," Sam said worriedly. "That's the problem."
Elias followed his gaze as they both heard the engine start. "He'll have to eventually, but that's up to him, not us," he said quietly. "We've got a job here, Sam. Let's get on with it."
Dean got out of the car and walked along the narrow trail that led into the woodland and curved up to the summit of the low hill. He could smell burning and he rubbed a hand over his face, disoriented slightly by the smell and his brother's conversation. He wouldn't be able to smell the pyre from a mile away, even if the wind was blowing in this direction, which it was not.
Coming into the small space the hunters had chosen, he looked down at the charred ground disbelievingly.
The boy.
The conversation with Jasper came back to him and he remembered seeing the boy appear next to Draxler, seeing him touch the man and disappear them both right from under him.
The boy was cambion too.
Young. Extraordinary power.
It explained the attack on the keep and how they'd gotten Chuck from the spell circle. Aside from the stones, nothing they'd found could affect the half-demon, half-human monsters.
He heard a low groan and spun around, finding Win lying several yards from the clearing, her clothing burned off half her body, the skin beneath weeping and blistered, her eyes rolling in agony as she tried to drag herself through the trees.
"Win," Dean said tightly, moving around her and putting a hand on her unburned side. "It's Dean."
"Boy," she said indistinctly, the skin pulling back from the corner of her mouth.
"I know," he told her. "Hold still, I'm gonna pick you up."
Another moan and he saw the fear in her eyes.
"Okay, just stay here," he said, looking over her quickly. They had a good medical kit in the car, he could cover the burns before he tried to move her at least. "Don't move. I'm coming back."
He straightened up and walked down through the woods to the car, unlocking the trunk and grabbing the kit and the thick blanket from above the well lid. He could hear his father's voice in his head. Biggest danger with burns is infection. You cover them with sterilised gauze until you can get to a hospital. Put the vic out and irrigate with saline if they're already covered in crap. You remember this, Dean? Yessir.
He did. He remembered all of it. Everything. He hurried back up the trail, the wash of relief disorienting when he saw she hadn't moved.
There were two shots of morphine in the kit, each one allowing about nine hours of unconsciousness. The stuff depressed respiration and it was hard to work out beforehand how much was too much.
"You allergic to anything?" he asked, pulling the cap off the needle and tapping the end.
"No." The word was barely a breathy exhale and he looked down at her. She would overload on the pain shortly and that would bring its own problems. He found a vein on the inside of her elbow and slid the needle in, depressing the plunger and giving her half the shot, washing the needle with a squirt of alcohol before recapping it.
Fingers pressed lightly against the pulse at the base of her throat, he looked at his watch, timing her heart beat and the in and outtake of breath as the drug took her deep.
When she was out, he sluiced the bottle of saline solution over every burn he could see, picking out the melted and charred bits of fabric that were all that remained of her clothing on that side, sluicing again until he was reasonably sure that nothing remained. He ripped the sterilised packs open and laid the gauze pads over the burns, winding open-weave bandages around them as lightly as possible, covering every inch. He opened the blanket and lifted her onto it, folding the edges over and easing his arms under her to take her weight.
Sam looked up as Dean came back down the slope, frowning as he saw the damp and bloody patches over his brother's shirt.
"What happened?"
"The boy, the cambion, got to Toby after the shot that hit Draxler," Dean said shortly, looking at the mound of branches and twigs that the men had built while he'd been gone. The sight brought nothing more than a careful appraisal. "Win wasn't targeted but she tried to save Toby."
"Where is she?"
"In the car."
"Out?"
Dean nodded. The bodies were wrapped in blankets, lying together on the top of the pyre. "Where'd you get the blankets?"
"Crowley's army took off, left a lot of their vehicles here," Elias said, walking up to them. "Guess that's what Baeder meant by expendable."
Sam cleared his throat and looked at Dean. "You, uh, want to –"
"No. Just get it lit," Dean told him brusquely. "We have to get Win back to the keep."
Elias nodded and turned back to the pyre, lighting a branch and thrusting it deep into the pyre. They'd emptied most of a can of gasoline over the wood and it went up with a rush of air and flame as the fumes caught.
The three hunters watched it burn. Sam's gaze slid sideways, seeing his brother motionless and hard, arms folded over his chest, his gaze fixed to the centre of the fire, his face expressionless. He couldn't see Dean's eyes, but he had the feeling there would be nothing in them, just the same cool appraisal with which he'd looked over the pyre, making sure the job was done right.
When the bodies were afire, Dean turned away and Elias shook his head at Sam, gesturing for him to follow his brother up the hill. The Impala was already facing west, and they got in, Sam watching the smoke rise behind them through the side-mirrors until the bends of the road and the distance hid them completely.
Dean took them back to the SUV up by the woodland where Toby had been killed. Elias got out without a word and climbed into the vehicle and the two cars retraced their path back to the highway as darkness settled in over the countryside, headlights on, silence filling both.
US-77 S, Nebraska
Sam watched the headlights on the black road ahead of them, the shadows of the humps and cracks obvious, Dean avoiding them in plenty of time. The car was filled with the soft roar of the tyres, the rattle of the heater, the breathing of the wounded woman on the rear seat. They hadn't said a word to each other since bypassing Omaha.
He'd seen this before.
It wasn't the same, he knew. Back then, in amongst the grief had been his father's final words, the last command for the obedient son. Dean'd told him that those words had been screaming in his head the whole time he'd kept them from him. He remembered being so angry that his brother hadn't told him sooner, that he'd completely missed the meaning of that confession, the doubled and then tripled impact of losing the father he'd loved, trying to accept what he'd been told, realising what his father had done to save him and where he was. With a hindsight that came much, much later, he'd realised how impossible it'd been for Dean to say anything, to let anything out over the months that had followed his miraculous recovery. He'd suffered the loss and the terror and the guilt alone for as long as he'd been able.
He'd been twenty-seven then. Now, the layers and walls and armour went much deeper, were much thicker. It didn't matter that he knew Dean had shut down and refused to go through the process he needed to recover. He'd never admit to it, and he wouldn't allow a discussion of it. Not now. The situation wasn't the same but the coping mechanism was still in place and he would handle it the same way.
Back then, their father's death had changed the dynamic between them. Not a huge amount, just enough so that Dean had come to see his entire life as a single job. Glancing at the stony profile to his left, Sam wondered if that would be the same as well. He could easily imagine the job his brother had signed himself up for now. The one that would give him a death that he wouldn't be ashamed of, the one that would let him think of dying as an honourable thing to do, even if his reasons for wanting that were not.
Running a hand impatiently through his hair, Sam turned back to the window beside him, the cool glass soothing against his temple. He remembered – in shocking, Technicolour detail – how it had been for him for the endless months after Jess' murder. All the details he'd gone over and over, wondering if anything he could've done would've made a difference. Back then, it had all seemed to him that he was the one who'd failed her, failed to see, failed to say, failed to stay with her and keep her safe. He knew now that it those details hadn't mattered at all. Brady would've killed her anyway, no matter what he'd done because that was the plan. The ultimate plan to build the key to the last seal of the Cage. Lucifer had delighted in sharing every detail of it with him.
Was that why Alex had been killed, he wondered? To force a course of action onto his brother? To take away the things that might've changed the path he was supposed to be on? Death had told him that he would close the gates of Hell and Heaven. But Cas had said that Dean had been changing the lines, changing the paths. Was the If statement still functioning?
When he'd gotten into the black car after a week of searching every square inch of Palo Alto, he had been unable to talk to his brother about any of it. The nightmares, the waking visions, the god-awful pain that had felt as if he'd ingested acid and it was eating its way through him. He'd taken a leaf out of his older brother's book and had bottled it up, swallowed it down and pretended he was fine. He hadn't been but he couldn't have stood to see the pity in Dean's eyes, couldn't have borne to talk about the relentless, unending agony of it. And he knew that Dean couldn't either. Not back then when John had dropped dead on the hospital floor, and not now with the memory of the gunshot and the hill and the half-open, dust-filled dead eyes staring up at him.
Elias'd been right, he acknowledged unwillingly. To force a confrontation, to open a crack in whatever armour his brother had built in that moment between trying to find a pulse and realising that he would never find one, that would only weaken him, only give him less to live for.
The window fogged as his breath hit the glass in a long, slow exhale.
Hidden Lake, Montana
The dark-haired woman knelt beside the clear waters of the lake and cupped her hands, filling them and drinking deeply of the ice-cold liquid, letting it spill down her chin and chest, tipping her head back to the sun and closing her eyes. The pull was very strong to the south. She opened her eyes and turned her head, her face hard and expressionless as she looked at the mountains that cupped the valley and lake. Many, many miles to the south. She felt hunger and madness as her child beat its fists against the rock that imprisoned it. They were all here in this vast land, she knew. She could feel a fainter pull to the east, uncertain if that was due to distance or to the strength of the prison. It wouldn't matter in the end. She would find them and break their cages, release them back to the world and the growing population her sister was creating. Life throbbed potently all around now, hers and the other's. They were made to create a balance between all things but it had always been a race, to see if one could out-make the other. This time, she thought contentedly, she would be the winner. Her children were faster, stronger and she had more time.
She wiped the last droplets from her face and got to her feet. The sun would set soon and she always walked faster at night.
In the burrows and dens, the setts and nests and tunnels, the animals shuddered in their sleep as she passed indifferently by, their dreams twisted and distorted, filled with primal fears and tastes and smells. Filled with copper and iron and the bitter taste of long-dead carrion.