Chapter 24 Litteris Hominae
I-55 S, Illinois
Dean flicked another glance over at his brother. It'd been two hours since Sam had said anything, or done anything other than stare blankly out the window as the scenery rolled past.
"You alright?" he was finally driven to ask. Sam blinked and looked around at him.
"Yeah, I'm okay," he said, brow wrinkling up slightly. "Why?"
"You know, no talking, no movement, not sure if you're alive or dead – the usual reasons," Dean said, an edge to his voice, his grip a little too heavy on the wheel.
The corner of his brother's mouth lifted slightly. "Just thinking about stuff."
"What stuff?"
"Stuff," Sam said evasively. Demon stuff, personal stuff, Crowley stuff, angel stuff … most of it had tracked through his head in the last two hours. "When do we get to Warsaw?"
"Three or four more hours," Dean said, flicking another glance over. "You know, if you don't want to talk about it …"
"I don't want to talk about it," Sam agreed. "Not yet."
"Fine."
"Good."
Sam turned back to the window and Dean felt his fingers tightening slightly around the wheel again.
He didn't want to be his brother's keeper or guardian or whatever you wanted to call it anymore, he thought sourly. He had a job to do and he needed to be able to do it without having to think of anyone else. But at the same time he couldn't just turn that part off all that easily. It worried him that Sam wasn't talking about the revelations he'd come up with in Michigan. Worried him that his brother didn't want to talk about it.
Charlie's assertion floated back into his mind and an association rose with it. "Your happiness for all those people's lives, no contest. Right? But why? Why is it my job to save these people? Why do I have to be some kind of hero?"
He let out his breath slowly. It had been a long time since he'd thought of himself like that, as a hero for what he spent his life doing. He remembered telling Sam that Dad was a hero, that they were, back when all Sam wanted was to be able to go to school and make friends and not lie to everyone.
When had that changed? When they'd started losing everyone around them? When he'd realised that being a hero was about on par with being a street-cleaner – minus paycheck and medical benefits and a crappy pension? They'd cleaned up a lot of messes but they weren't even going to get a pension out of it, because it would never be over and sooner or later, one of them, or both of them, would die, unnoticed by the world, alone, unsung heroes with no grave markers to show that they'd been there.
He'd looked it up once, the definition of a hero, in some library in some town in some state he couldn't remember now. The definition had stayed with him. Hero - a man distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility and fortitude.
Courage. Nobility. Fortitude. A lot of words that meant nothing in the real world where a man would kill an old woman for the buck and change in her purse, where a woman drowned her kids in the family car because the new boyfriend didn't like them, where a child would beat another child to death because there was nothing good on TV. Where were the heroes who should've prevented those deaths?
He rubbed his hand over his jaw, eyes narrowed as the oncoming headlights on the other side of the wide road spilled into them for a fleeting second and were gone, leaving only a bright after-image of brilliant eyes floating against the back of his eyelids.
His father's voice spoke patiently to him. "There are cops and firemen and social workers and doctors for a lot of the bad stuff that happens to good people, Dean. But there's no one but hunters to take care of the monsters and evil that people don't see, ninety percent of the time. Hunters like us. When a person has the ability to do something about evil, they also have the responsibility to take on that job."
Warsaw, Missouri
"Amigos! Long time no see, mi casa es su casa," Garth said with a cheerful grin as they walked up to the gangway. He leaned the mop he held against the cabin-side and gestured expansively for them to come on board.
Dean sighed and walked up the wooden and steel stairs to the broad timber gangplank that spanned the gap between the concrete jetty and the high deck of Garth's converted commercial fishing boat, hearing Sam's boots clumping up behind him.
"Garth, hey, Kevin around?" he asked as he stepped onto the wet deck, feeling his bootsoles slide a little.
"Yeah, he's still at it," Garth said, nodding to the door further along. "Poor kid looks like hell but he's got grit."
"Any good news at the end of the tunnel?"
"Not so far." Garth shook his head. "Mama Tran was calling daily but that was just bumming him out even more so he stopped it."
Sam raised a brow. "How'd he do that?"
"Changed phones," Garth said with a shrug.
Dean glanced over his shoulder at Sam. "Perfect, so we've got the wrong number now as well."
"I'm sure he'll give you guys the new one," Garth murmured reassuringly. "Just go straight down, I've still got some swabbing to do."
In the cabin at the bottom of the steep companionway stairs, Kevin was sitting in the same position as Dean had last seen him, the table in front of him piled with papers and notes and books and scratchings, the half of the Demon tablet acting as a paperweight for a few of them.
"Garth, I said I didn't want to be disturbed!" the prophet said without turning around.
"Well, we won't disturb you for long," Dean said, walking up to the table. "Just checking in."
Kevin looked up at him, glancing back to Sam, his expression twisting up into a bitter grimace.
"I would've called if I had any news," he said angrily. "How can I figure this out when it's been one interruption after another!"
"Dude, we haven't been here for weeks," Dean said defensively.
"You were here yesterday!"
"No, Kevin, not for a month," Sam said soothingly. "With Cas."
Kevin stared blankly at him for a moment, and then looked down at his watch. "Goddamn it!"
"Hey, time flies, right?" Dean leaned back against the filing cabinet. "What's the word?"
Kevin got up, straightening his back wearily as he walked to the counter and looked at the empty pot of coffee, his shoulders slumping.
Sam glanced at his brother, and walked to the counter. "I'll make you a fresh pot," he said hurriedly, taking the empty jug and filling it at the sink.
"Sam thinks that you're not going to have any luck because the tablet can't be read while it's broken," Dean said as Kevin dropped into his chair.
"What?" Kevin looked back at Sam. "You think I would've wasted months of my time and driven myself almost blind and crazy if I hadn't made any progress at all?"
Sam glanced over his shoulder, shrugging as he spooned coffee into the filter. "Well, you didn't seem to be getting anywhere …"
"God!" Kevin hunched over the table. "I can see a lot of it, but it's – you ever tried to read really small print when you're drunk?"
Dean snorted. "Yeah, all the time."
"Well, it's like that," Kevin said sourly. "You think you're getting words or bits of words but they're unfocussed and fuzzy and sometimes they seem to disappear entirely. But I think I've got a key to it now."
"You have?"
"Yeah, for some reason, the tireder I get, the better I do."
Dean glanced at Sam. "Well, you should be flying through it 'cause you look like shit."
"No, I don't mean – gee, wouldn't it be nice to have a nap tired – I'm talking about verging on sensory-deprivation-tired," Kevin clarified irritably. "And I'm not quite there yet, but I need – I desperately need to have the time with no interruptions, no one around."
"Like a monk sitting on a mountain-top?" Sam asked, brow wrinkling up.
"Exactly." Kevin nodded. "So both of you – get out and let me do my job."
Sam turned on the pot and nodded, looking at Dean. "Right, we're going."
"We are?"
"Yeah, we are."
Hays, Kansas
The Impala pulled into the motel parking lot and drove up to the office, Sam getting out and getting the room while Dean drummed his fingers against the wheel impatiently.
"Seventeen, across the other side," Sam said as he got back into the car. The engine rumbled, the noise echoing back from the building's walls as Dean found the slot and nosed into it.
The room was, well, mostly orange, and Dean's nose wrinkled slightly as he looked around. He should have been completely oblivious to their ever-changing surroundings by now, but he still found that the primaries and geometric patterns that had been the gift of the decade of his birth had the power to pull his attention, no matter how tired he was or how indifferent to décor in general.
"You buy Kevin's speech about needing the mountain-top or whatever to get the tablet figured out?" he asked his brother, dropping his duffle and the gear bag at the foot of his bed and pulling off his jacket.
"Yeah, actually." Sam shrugged as he closed the door and locked it, turning around to see Dean heading for the bathroom. "It's kind of well-known, needing no distractions for the mind to concentrate completely on difficult problems."
"Lucky for us, we can still think when there're monsters attacking us and all manner of unholy crap flying around, huh?" Dean grinned, and shut the door.
Sam dropped his bag on the floor and pulled the laptop from its satchel, setting it on the formica table top. Garth had given them a job in Colorado, regular haunting he thought, but the file of clippings was thin and he wasn't convinced there was anything supernatural going on in the little town of Appleside.
He could hear the shower running through the thin walls. Dean had been more relaxed and cheerful in Michigan than he'd seen him for a while, seeming to have let go of the tightly wound-up control he'd been holding. It wasn't surprising, exactly, Sam thought. Just unexpected.
Watching his brother worrying about Charlie, putting her safety above the hunt, he'd had a hard time reconciling those actions with the man who'd been willing to kill a civilian in order to kill Crowley, who'd gotten him out of the way to protect a vampire. It seemed as if the hard edges that had defined his brother when he'd gotten out of Purgatory were being ground away.
Or maybe he'd really changed. He remembered the argument over using the kid as bait for the shtriga. And Dean's decision to use Jo to draw in H.H. Holmes in the abandoned sewer in Philadelphia. Even killing Amy, because she was a monster and he couldn't've lived with himself if he'd let her go and she'd killed again. Those were all his brother's decisions – to put the hunt, the need to get the evil thing, above the people they were supposed to be protecting.
Now … now, he didn't know if that hardness was still a part of Dean.
Motel coffee sucked, Dean thought, staring at the cup of bitter liquid he'd been attempting to drink. He needed real coffee. A lot of it. Fast.
"Come on, Sam, let's get out of here," he said, grabbing his boots from beside the bed and sitting in the chair to pull them on. "Daylight's wasting."
Sam rinsed his mouth out and put his toothbrush back in the small travel bag on the counter. He hadn't tried the coffee, but he knew that it was responsible for Dean's impatience to leave, and for the edge he could hear in his voice.
On the other side of the room, the closet door flew open and a man fell out onto his hands and knees on the floor, staring up at them with wide eyes.
"Which of you is John Winchester?"
Dean stared at the man as Sam spun around. For a long moment, the three men were frozen in their positions in silence, then the man got to his feet, gesturing impatiently. Dean got to his feet and took a step closer.
"Please! Time is of the essence, which of you is John Winchester?" the stranger repeated, looking from Dean to Sam.
The brothers exchanged a loaded glance.
"Neither," Sam said, studying him. Well-dressed – snappily dressed even, Sam thought – he spoke distinctly, as if used to orating, thought the delivery was needlessly fussy and more than a little melodramatic.
The man frowned at him, his gaze cutting away. "That's impossible! That's absolutely …" he trailed off uncertainly, his finger touching the edge of his nostril as he felt the wetness there. "What did I do wrong?"
"Who the hell are you, mister?" Dean demanded, walking closer.
"Not now, I'm thinking," the man muttered dismissively, and that was about all the aggravation he could take this morning, Dean thought, striding forward, grabbing the man by the lapels and shoving him hard back against the wall, pinning the douche with one arm across his chest.
"Please, I can assure you there's no need for violence," the man looked down at the floor as Dean stared at him. "One of you must know John Winchester –"
"I'll tell you what," Sam said, walking up beside him. "When one of us falls out of your closet, then you can ask the questions!"
"Yes, my apologies," the man agreed quickly. He looked down at the arm pressed against his chest. "Is it absolutely essential that you keep your hands on me?" he asked Dean, looking up briefly.
Not if I shoot you. The thought flitted through Dean's mind and he released him, taking a step back. The man was annoying in every conceivable way, but the closet trick and the mention of his father's name had done the job. There was no way he was leaving until he'd spilled absolutely everything he knew.
"Thank you," the man said, pulling a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiping the blood that had pooled inside his nostril. He sniffed, and straightened his jacket, doing up the buttons again. "Gentleman, in the absence of any and all other reasonable explanations, I'm afraid this has been a tragic misunderstanding."
Neither Dean nor Sam moved, or showed any discernible reaction, bracketing the stranger between them, pinning him with the intense stares of carnivores in the wild. The man gestured to the door of the room. "I'll be on my way."
He managed a couple of strides before they flanked him, Sam getting ahead of him easily. "That's not happening."
"There are matters I must attend that are of grave importance," the man said, his voice rising as he realised that he couldn't go through them or get past them. "I do not have time to deal with the likes of you!"
Dean pulled a pair of 'cuffs from the gear bag sitting on the table, as Sam corralled the man closer to him, grabbing an arm and forcing it toward his brother as Dean snapped the bracelet around his wrist.
"You're not going anywhere," he said, yanking the other cuff down and through the back of the chair at the table. "'Til we get some answers."
The man struggled against them for a moment, then twisted around, his hands moving fast and the dual clicks of the handcuffs loud in the sudden quiet of the room. Dean looked down at his wrist disbelievingly as the man walked away fast, opening the motel room door.
"How'd he do that?!" He looked past his brother, whose wrist was locked into the other 'cuff, the chain through the curving back. "Oh, you gotta be kidding me!"
The motel room door closed with a soft snick of the lock.
"Key!" Sam gestured to the bag and Dean's fingers searched along the bottom of the bag for the small ring of keys, finding it and pulling it out. He unlocked the 'cuffs and checked the mag on the Colt, striding across to the door and yanking it open.
He'd just made it to the sidewalk when he heard the glass smash, and saw the man getting into the Impala. Behind him, Sam reached out and clamped a hand around his forearm.
"Don't shoot him."
"No promises," Dean said, crossing the parking lot and pointing the gun at the man's head as he leaned forward for the ignition wires. He cocked the gun, saw that the click had gotten the man's attention.
"Nice taste in wheels."
The man let go of the wires, sitting upright and looking up at him. "Yours, I presume?"
Sam opened the passenger door.
"Out," Dean said coldly, stepping back from the door. "And back to the room, if you don't mind."
"Oh," the man said, opening the door and sliding out. "Courtesy, now?"
"It comes and goes," Dean allowed, lowering the gun to his hip and stepping behind him. "But it's really not a good day to push my patience."
The man walked back into the room, and Dean held the gun on him as he unwillingly sat down in the chair, leaning back against the table to watch him. Sam glanced at his brother and Dean nodded.
The silver knife had no effect and the blood that flowed from the small cut was red. Salt and iron similarly produced no reactions and Sam pulled out the flask, tossing the contents over the man.
"And there with the holy water," the man said, laughing sourly.
Sam looked down at him. "He's clean."
"I could have told you that," the man snapped prissily, pulling his coat sleeve down over the cut.
Dean straightened up, walking over to him. "Yeah, well you can tell us everything, before I beat it out of you."
The man looked up at him. "I'm quite certain this all beyond your understanding, my friend." He looked down at the gun in Dean's hand disdainfully. "And violence will not help you comprehend these matters with any greater ease."
The dripping patronisation in the man's voice, the unconcealed sneer on his face, the certainty in his eyes that nothing was going to happen unravelled what little remained of Dean's fragile control.
"Let me tell you what I understand." He lunged forward and grabbed him by the coat, the gun barrel rising to his face, finger on the trigger. "Some asshat pops out of my closet asking about my dad, smashes up my ride – so why am I not getting violent again?"
"Dean," Sam said quietly.
The man looked at Dean disbelievingly. "John Winchester is your father?"
The superior tone had vanished, along with the sneer, and Dean's fingers loosened a little on the man's coat. Then the room began to shake, and he stepped back, his gaze flicking to his brother. The stranger got to his feet, moving away from the chair and turning slowly to look at the closet.
"Oh my god …" he murmured, his eyes widening as he stared at the door.
"What?!" Dean snapped, feeling the building bouncing under his feet, seeing the walls tremble violently.
"Run!" the man ordered them vehemently, backing away, his attention locked onto the closet door. It flew open, filled with a blinding light, and the indistinct outline of a woman stepped through, gaining detail as she entered the room. Auburn hair piled on her head in a smooth roll, a dove-grey silk cocktail dress, spattered in blood, bright red lipstick outlining a full, wide mouth. The light disappeared abruptly and she walked into the room, heels clicking on the floor.
Dean stared at her, feeling as if the day was actually becoming a little more surreal than even he was used to. She looked like a pin-up girl for WWII posters, the wide, cat-like green eyes extended out to the edges of her cheekbones with long, fake lashes, a pearl choker matching simple pearl studs in her ears.
"Henry!" She looked at him, laughing throatily at his expression. "Silly man, you forgot to lock the door."
Taking a long look to either side at the brothers, she turned back to Henry, the humour disappearing from her expression. "Why don't you be a doll and give me what I want and I promise to kill you and your friends here quickly?"
Henry shook his head. "You know I can't do that."
She tilted her head slightly, her voice softening. "You're not a fighter, Henry."
Dean lifted the gun and she raised her arm, flicking the wrist with the emotional detachment of a woman flicking a fly. He felt himself lifted and flung backward across the room and into the wall, hitting it with his shoulders, the force winding him and cracking the plaster as he fell to the floor. She made the same languid move to her right, and Sam was thrown into the opposite wall as she kept her gaze on Henry.
He looked at Sam, half-turning as if to go to him then abruptly stepping the other way, and her hand rose toward him, holding him in place, her lips parting as she tightened her grip around him. Against the wall, Dean watched the woman controlling Henry. Preoccupied, he thought, pulling the knife from his jacket and easing himself silently to his knees. He was probably just within her peripheral vision, he thought, able to see the curve of her cheekbone, so he moved very slowly.
Henry looked at her, reaching out to what he knew lay somewhere inside the woman's body, behind the hold of the demon. "Josie, I know you're still in there. You must fight this!"
The woman laughed delightedly, her expression smoothing out. "I'm afraid Josie's indisposed, pet. It looks like it's just you and me."
Henry's eyes widened as he saw Dean move up behind her, one hand gripping a smooth bare shoulder, the other thrusting a knife through her ribcage and into her heart.
She lit up inside, gold and red light boiling and flickering as she dropped to her knees on the floor. Henry and Dean stared at her from behind and Sam from the other side of the room as she gasped and shrieked with the pulses of light, her eyes shut tightly, the light diminishing as the moments ticked by.
None of the men moved as the light disappeared from her flesh and she opened her eyes.
"Well, that is no way to treat a lady," she said softly.
As if the words had broken a spell, Dean, Henry and Sam raced for the door, barrelling down the motel's hallway and skidding into the parking lot. The Impala was unlocked and they dove into the car, Henry taking the passenger seat as Sam threw himself into the back. Dean started the engine and reversed out of the slot, spinning the wheel and taking off as Sam's door swung shut.
"Pull over," Henry moaned through mostly closed lips. "Pull over!"
"Don't you hurl in my car!" Dean flashed a sideways glance at Henry, pulling off onto a narrow road leading down to the river. He stopped at the bottom, and Henry wrenched the door open, one hand plastered over his mouth as he staggered to the grassed verge a few feet away. Doubled over, he retched helplessly onto the ground.
"This just gets better and better," Dean said, opening his door and getting out as Sam did the same.
"Are you okay?" Sam asked tentatively, as another liquid rush erupted from Henry's stomach and sprayed across the grass.
Henry leaned on one hand, the other reaching for his handkerchief. "I will be," he said weakly, wiping at his mouth and getting slowly to his feet.
"I usually enjoy dangerous situations vicariously, through the remove of literature," he added, looking at Sam. "I'm not trained for field-work."
Sam glanced at his brother. Dean shook his head tiredly. "Yeah, well, if you're done blowing chunks, you want tell us who the hell Rita Hayworth back there was?"
"She was Josie Sands," Henry said slowly, turning to look at him. "A very experienced hunter who was working with us. She was possessed by a demon."
Dean's mouth twisted sourly. "Yeah, we got that. That's all the info you got?"
Henry shook his head. "No. The demon calls itself Abaddon –"
"Abaddon was a place, a place of destruction, in the Hebrew texts," Sam interrupted him, brows drawing together. "Not a demon."
Henry nodded. "Not until Christian faith began to overtake the older religions. Abaddon became a personification of destruction – the Destroyer, the fallen angel who was given the key to the Bottomless Pit and released a plague of locusts upon the world to devour and desolate it."
Dean looked at him warily. "You brought a very high-level demon here? Now?"
"Unintentionally!" Henry replied defensively. "I was charged with the protection of – it doesn't matter."
"Where are you from?"
"Normal, Illinois. Circa 1958."
"Yeah, right," Dean scoffed, his derision fading as he saw Henry's expression.
"Seriously?" He looked at his brother sourly. "Dudes time-travelling through motel-room closets? That's what we've come to?"
"We're wasting time," Henry said, wiping at his face again. "I need to see John Winchester."
"I told you, that's not gonna happen," Dean told him, the edge back in his voice as he felt a return of irritation with the guy.
"Why not?" Henry looked at him, his expression tightening.
"Because he's dead!" Dean snapped. He watched Henry's eyes widen in shock.
"No." Henry turned away from them, his shoulders hunching slightly as he absorbed the information. "No."
Sam looked at Dean, one brow lifting.
"What's it to you?" Sam asked.
"Everything." Henry turned back to them, head bowed as he looked at the ground absently, his face pale with shock. "I'm his father."
Dean heard the words but he couldn't connect them, not this man to his father, not this glimpse into a past he'd never ever heard about. He heard Sam's harshly indrawn breath and turned to look at his brother. Sam's eyes were wide, his mouth open as he stared back.
Pull your shit together, Dean told himself. Just because the guy says he is, doesn't make him so.
"We're going to need a bit more than just your say-so," he grated. Henry looked up at him and nodded.
"I have proof, but we need to get away from here, away from the demon and her means of tracking us."
US-54 E, Kansas
"Alright, let's hear it," Dean said as the car hummed along the highway.
Henry leaned back in the rear seat. "My name is Henry James Winchester. I was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1930. I was educated at Yale University. It was there that I discovered that my father, and my grandfather before him, had been members of the society. I was recruited, covertly at first, to become an initiate of Litteris Hominae."
Sam glanced across at Dean. "Men … of Letters?"
"Yes," Henry leaned forward. "The order has existed for nine hundred years, formed from an even older order. We are scholars, primarily, gathering information, studying it, understanding it. We are preceptors … observers … and ultimately chroniclers of the world beyond this world, a world of shadows and powers that have seeped into human consciousness only as mythology and legend."
"Fascinating," Dean said, glancing in the mirror at the man sitting behind him. "Where's your proof that you're John Winchester's father?"
Henry pulled out a photograph, a black and white portrait of himself, standing beside a young boy who held a baseball bat. He handed it to Sam. "That was John two months ago."
Sam turned the photograph over. The inscription on the back said: Henry and John 1958.
"John was born on April 22, 1954 in Lewis Memorial Hospital in Chicago. His mother and I moved to Normal two years after, when I became an initiate of the society. Unfortunately I do not carry his birth certificate around with me."
Dean looked at Sam obliquely and Sam gave a slight nod. Those were the details of their father's birth.
"And this … secret society of yours?" Dean prompted.
Henry shook his head. "I don't understand why you don't know about this? Didn't John train you?"
Sam smiled dryly. "Oh, he trained us, alright. But not in whatever you're talking about. We've never heard of this society – or you, for that matter."
Dean looked back at Henry. "Dad's father disappeared when he was four. He never spoke of him. We only found out because we were looking for relatives and saw the different name on the birth certificate. His stepfather was a mechanic, in Lawrence, Kansas. Edward Landis died with his wife, Dad's mom, in 1980 in a car crash."
"What?" Henry stared at him. "No, that's – that can't be."
"He was four when you left to come here, right?" Sam asked quietly. Henry looked at him, realisation of what that meant dawning in his eyes.
Dean heard him sink back against the seat. He remembered the two months he and Sam had spent trying to find their father's people. Ruby had told Sam that all of Mary Campbell's relatives had been murdered and they'd gone looking for anyone with a connection to John Winchester.
They'd found virtually nothing. John's birth certificate, registered in Illinois. The gravestone of his mother – their grandmother - and stepfather, in Stull Cemetery, before the county had moved to the new cemetery on the other side of Lawrence.
They'd found out that Maeve Landis had been married to a man named Henry Winchester, who'd vanished without a trace in 1958. At the time, neither had thought much of it. Sam had speculated that he'd died, but there was no record of a death certificate, missing person or anything else to suggest that. Dean wondered if that's why his father hadn't mentioned it. John had been gone, there were no more leads to follow and they'd both lost the heart for the search anyway. And they'd had other things to do by then.
Seemed pretty certain that Henry hadn't died, he thought, his fingers tightening around the wheel. He'd come back through time and either stayed, or died, here.
Iola, Kansas
The fast-food place had a seating area, and Dean glanced over at Henry, sitting at a table by the window, staring at the photograph.
"What do you think?" he asked Sam, leaning against the counter.
"Dates are right, the little detail he's given us fits as well. His driver's licence, dated 1958, by the way, says he's Henry Winchester, from Normal, Illinois," Sam said, shrugging. "I believe him."
"So … what? He was into something, got the attention of some major-league hellspawn, jumped into a closet in '58 and brought it with him here, leaving his family on the way?"
"Looks like," Sam said, looking over his shoulder at the man. "Dean, he's our grandfather."
"Yeah, well, I wasn't crazy about the other one, Sammy," Dean said, looking up as the waitress approached.
"Here you go," she said, smiling as she slid their trays across to them. "Enjoy!"
"Thanks," Dean muttered, taking one and turning. Sam picked up the other one.
They carried the trays over to the table and set them down, sitting opposite Henry.
"How you doing?" Sam asked, looking at Henry.
"I'll be … fine," Henry said, looking up at him. With the light behind him, it was hard to see his eyes, but Sam thought they looked too bright. "After all, despite everything, I've just met my grandsons, haven't I?"
He looked at Sam and held out his hand. "Henry Winchester, it's a pleasure."
Sam took it. "Sam."
"Hello, Sam."
Henry held his hand out to Dean, holding it there for a moment as Dean picked up the third basket of food and slid it across the table to him.
"Dinner."
Looking at the basket in front of him, Henry lowered his hand.
"This is Dean," Sam said tersely.
"Right," Henry said.
"Well, this has been touching," Dean said briskly, picking up his burger. "How 'bout we figure out how to clean up your mess, huh?"
He took a bite of the burger, ignoring both his brother's sideways glance and the feeling in his gut that he was letting his feelings get the better of him. The defensive anger on his father's behalf was still sitting heavily in his chest. He didn't know what impact losing his father had had on John Winchester. Maybe a lot. Maybe not. When he'd met John in '73 and then again in '78, his father had seemed … pretty happy with himself to tell the truth. And when the Yellow Eyed demon had taken Mary, John had been driven by far worse things, far greater fears and grief than an old loss.
"Abaddon. Also known as Amon. And the Destroyer. Early Christian writings mixed up the Fallen with the Arabic daemons and djinn, confusing Abaddon with the Adversary, the Angel of the Abyss. It took nearly two thousand of study to create a complete demonology," Henry said thoughtfully. He looked up to see his grandson's eyes glazing over. "Yes, of course. She must be stopped."
"How come she didn't die when I stabbed her with the knife?" Dean asked, through a mouthful of burger.
"Because you cannot kill a demon with run-of-the-mill cutlery," he said shortly. "At the very least, for the lesser hierarchies, the knife must be the Kurdish blood metal –"
Dean rolled his eyes and eased the bone hilt of Ruby's knife from his jacket pocket.
"That would be this," he said sardonically.
Henry looked at the knife avidly. "Where did you get that?"
Pushing the knife back into the sheath, Dean stared at him blandly. "Demon gave it to me."
"Now, that portal or whatever it was you came through – is it still open?" Sam cut in, unwilling to see the conversation derailed again.
"I highly doubt it," Henry said, looking from Dean's jacket to Sam. "Why?"
"I'm just thinking, if we can't kill this demon –"
"– maybe we can shove her ass back through to wherever she came from," Dean finished Sam's thought, taking another bite. "How'd you do it?"
"It's a blood sigil. Blood leads to blood," Henry said. "Or the next closest blood kin."
Sam looked at him. "But why bring you here? To our time? You were travelling forward, why didn't the sigil take you to Dad, before he died?"
Henry looked away. "I don't know."
Dean swallowed his burger and looked at Sam. "That's a good point, Sammy. Did you specify what time you were coming to?"
"No," Henry admitted. "The sigil calls to the closest blood bond – but – I don't know why it brought me here, to this time when my son is already dead."
"Huh," Dean said, wiping his fingers on a serviette as he looked at Henry thoughtfully. "So, you used a spell without really knowing how it worked?" He glanced at his brother. "That's what the demon said too, something about your spells, Henry?"
Henry scowled at the table. "I'm just an initiate. Not an adept. Most of what we learn is theoretical."
"Oh," Dean said, leaning back in the chair. "Theoretical."
"We need to go," Henry said abruptly, getting up. "I've done this mostly on luck but it can't last much longer. I need to find an Adept, or an Elder."
"No argument," Dean said. "But first, let's just all get on the same page. Then we can go look for your friends." He looked up at Henry. "Sit down. Eat. You'll need the fuel."
Sam shook his head. "Henry, what was the blood sigil spell? Can you open another doorway?"
"Uh … I can, but I don't see what good it will do – the blood sigil is tied to my blood. It will take the demon only where I go or to my relatives, none of whom would be happy to meet it."
"What about using a different blood source?" Dean asked.
"Like what?" Henry stared at him. "No matter whose blood we use, it will carry the demon to more people."
"Not necessarily," Sam said, looking at Dean. "There are definitely some blood sources that are stuck in the distant past and went no further."
Henry studied him. "An extinct species? Where would you find the blood?"
"The Smithsonian, for one." Sam said. Henry shook his head.
"Even if we could use another blood source, there is still the power required to open the portal and that is not transferable."
"What do you mean?"
"I would need … a week … at least for my soul to recover from the effort of opening the portal I came through," Henry explained. "And I can only use the power of my own soul, not another."
"You tapped into your soul to get here?" Sam leaned forward, brows rising. "I thought only angels could that."
"Angels do not have souls, Sam. They use the power of the billions of souls in Heaven for their strength. As do the Fallen use the power of the souls in Hell to become stronger on this plane. I am human, and I can use my own soul, and it is a powerful source of energy but not an infinite one. It needs to rest as well."
He looked at Sam's expression, and glanced to Dean. "You don't know really know what I'm talking about, do you?"
"Dad trained us to be hunters, not whatever you are," Sam said.
Henry let out a disbelieving laugh. "You're not. Are you? Hunters? Well, hunters are ... hunters are just the muscle," he frowned as he looked at Sam. "You're supposed to – you're Legacies. Your father was supposed to –"
Sam looked away uncomfortably. "I don't think you –"
"Made it back there," Henry finished the sentence brusquely. "No, I believe you are right. But one of the others should have overseen John's training." He stopped, looking down at the table.
"Henry, I know you're still trying to protect this society or whatever it is, but enough is enough," Sam said, looking at him. "We're as involved in this as you are, and we need the truth."
"The truth?" Henry looked away. "There are as many truths as there witnesses to the events, Sam. That's one thing you should've learned from life itself by now."
"Tell us what happened then," Dean said, curbing his impatience with the man's mumbo-jumbo. "When you came through."
Henry looked at his hands, resting on the tabletop. "I was supposed to complete the initiation. That was why we had gathered. It's why I don't know anything other than the theoretical aspects of this work," he admitted reluctantly, looking at Dean. "The secrets should have been revealed and I was to have started on the foundations of the next level."
"Josie Sands was the hunter contact with our sect." He rubbed his hand over his forehead wearily. "She was an experienced hunter, from the correct bloodline and she was invited because we'd had a series of connecting premonitions indicating that something powerful was moving in the lower planes. The order is divided into individual sects, and each had only a few members. Legacies, we're called," he continued slowly. "It was to protect the order from being penetrated by those who seek the knowledge we have for their own gain, you see?"
Sam nodded encouragingly.
"We didn't know Josie had been … compromised … until she started killing. David passed me the key, told me to run. His eyes, they were filled with blood and more was pouring from his mouth, his nose, his ears. There was no time to explain, to understand … I made the blood sigil and I fled, but she was right, I didn't cover my tracks and she followed along the open path I'd left."
"So Abaddon wants this key?" Dean cut the story down the bare bones. "For what?"
"I don't know."
"What does it do?" Sam asked.
"I don't know."
Dean let out a gusty exhale. "Let me get this straight. You travelled through time to protect something that does you-don't-know-what from a demon that you know nothing about?"
Henry's mouth compressed. Dean looked at him, then flicked a glance at his brother. "Good."
Sam ignored the look, turning to Henry. "But you still have it? The key?"
"Yes," Henry said, nodding. "And the demon will stop at nothing to get it from me."
"Alrighty then," Dean said. "You're right, we need some help from someone who actually knows something."
"So we can leave this establishment now?" Henry half-rose from his chair. Dean nodded.
The alley way was narrow, steam rising in the cool air, leaf fall filling the cracks and crevices of the doorways, piled against the dumpsters. Graffiti coloured the walls and the door Henry paused before had been painted over, the symbol carved into the top panel half-obscured.
Dean looked up at the store sign over the doorway, advising passers-by that Astro Comics inhabited the building.
"No," Henry breathed, his fingers tracing the symbol gently. "This is a façade, a way to rook our enemies into believing we are housed elsewhere."
Rolling his eyes, Dean turned to Sam. "You know when you can just feel another massive time-wasting moment on the way?"
"Give him a minute, Dean."
Henry opened the door and walked inside, unsure of what he was looking for, only that if he took too long in finding it, the only people he had left, the only ones who could help him would leave.
Dean and Sam followed him down the hallway and into an open series of rooms, comics and action figures, posters and fantasy art murals covering the walls completely. Henry looked around the room, struggling to hide his bewilderment.
"Hand me your walkie-talkie," he said to Sam, realising he should have tried this hours ago.
"You mean my phone?" Sam asked, pulling it out of his pocket.
"Even better," Henry agreed, taking it and holding it in front of his mouth. "Operator, I need Delta 457."
Dean closed his eyes. "Who are you … not calling?"
"Our emergency number," Henry said, looking at him. Dean nodded understandingly and took the phone out of Henry's hand.
"Yeah. Not anymore." He passed it back to his brother.
"They can't all be gone," Henry said, looking around. "There must be another Elder out there who can help us discover how to stop Abaddon and what to do with the key."
Dean looked at the girl standing behind the counter. Dressed in a black vinyl jacket, spiked dog collar around her neck and an eye-shadow application that must have taken an hour at least to apply, she was using a bright-red laptop.
"Hey, uh, hi. Can we hijack your computer for a hot second?"
Behind him, Henry laughed. "Like you could fit a computer in this room."
The girl's gaze shifted to Henry for a moment. "Sure."
"Thanks," Dean said, turning the laptop around and angling it toward his brother. "Sam."
"Yep. All right, um ... give me a name – anybody who, uh, might have been there that night – one of those Elders." Sam minimised the apps running and brought up the news search screen.
Looking over his shoulder, Henry watched wide-eyed as Sam typed in commands. "Um ... Ackers, David. Larry Ganem. Um, Ted –"
"Okay, here it is. August 12, 1958," Sam said, reading the listings and clicking on the first one. "Tragic fire at gentlemen's club. 242 Gaines Street."
"This is 242 Gaines Street," Henry said shortly. "But that was no fire."
Sam skimmed through the article in front of him. "Larry Ganem, David Ackers, Ted Bowen and Albert Magnus – all deceased."
"Albert Magnus," Henry repeated.
"He a friend of yours?" Dean asked.
"Even better." He turned away abruptly and walked out of the room. Sam looked up, closing the search engine down and swivelling the laptop back toward the girl as Dean followed Henry out.
"Hey, Henry," Dean said as he caught up to Henry at the door. "What's going on?"
"We need to go to the cemetery," Henry said. "I need to see the graves."
"We're on a slight time-table here," Dean said, looking back for his brother. "Paying your respects, that's nice and all, but –"
"No," Henry snapped impatiently. "There will be a message for me there."
"From one of your dead buddies?"
Henry stared at him as he stopped by the car. "I believe so."
"Albert Magnus." Sam walked up beside him. "I know that name."
"You do?" Dean's brows rose questioningly. Sam nodded.
"Albertus Magnus was a Catholic saint, an advocate for the peaceful co-existence of religion and science in the Middle Ages," Sam said, getting into the car.
Henry snorted as he slid into the backseat. "That's not all he was."
Sam caught Dean's expression as his brother started the car.
"What else was he?"
"He was the greatest alchemist and magician of the Middle Ages," Henry told him, his tone edging back into loftiness. "The knowledge he gathered for the order was unmatched."
"Huh," Sam said, not looking at Dean. "So why is he buried in Iola, Kansas?"
"He's not." Henry watched the sun sinking below the horizon as Dean drove out of town. "We used his name – or a variation of it – as an alias, if we needed to travel incognito."
"Incognito," Dean repeated softly. Sam shot a quelling look at him.
"Unrecognisably," Henry said stiffly, hearing the remark. Dean looked in the mirror.
"I know what incognito means."
Sam sighed.
Dean pulled off the road next to the cemetery gate and they got out, turning on their flashlights, the beams flickering over the headstones and tombs, through the trees and along the paths.
"Okay, can we narrow this down a little?" Dean asked. The cemetery seemed to cover acres.
"It will be a private plot, fenced off from the rest," Henry said, looking around. "On the eastern boundary, and planted around with hawthorn and rowan and oak."
"Right." Dean turned left and followed the winding path through the trees and graves until the beam of his flashlight picked up the boundary fence. A clump of trees sheltered a private plot, the picket fence surrounding it leaning slightly.
"Look like a winner?" Dean asked, walking to the lych gate. Henry looked at the tombstones within the plot and nodded.
"As you say, a winner," he said absently, walking along the edge of the graves as Sam shone the light over each of the headstones. "These were my mentors. My friends."
He stopped in front the headstone engraved with David Acker's name. "My only friends."
"Here's Magnus," Dean said, holding the light steady on the headstone. "I know this."
Henry glanced over at it. "It is the crest of Litteris Hominae, our order, the Star of Solomon."
"My mother had this on a charm bracelet," Dean said. The memory came with only a little prodding, the flash of the silver charm in the morning light as she'd poured milk over the cereal in his bowl. He'd asked her what it was, and she'd told it was a magic star, for protection of the wearer.
"Star of Solomon," Sam repeated softly. "Yeah, it was in the Key of Solomon, the one Bobby gave us for the devil's traps."
Henry's mouth quirked to one side. "So it would seem that you have learned some things of use in spite of your upbringing."
Sam saw Dean's shoulders tighten and he stepped around Henry quickly.
"The only one of these headstones without the star is this one. Larry Ganem?"
"I believe someone planted the name in the article, one of the order, designed to lead anyone who knew what they were looking for here," Henry said slowly, looking at the headstone. A cruciform symbol had been carved above the name and dates and he crouched down in front of it. "This is the Haitian symbol for speaking to the dead. This is the message."
Straightening up, he turned to look at them. "You two ever exhumed a body?"
Dean smiled humourlessly. "Once or twice."
They went back to the car for the shovels, and started digging. Dean glanced at Henry who remained on the graveside, watching their progress and holding the light, in mostly the wrong place.
"Tell me how we got stuck doing this?" he muttered to his brother as Sam's shovel hit the coffin.
"Quit griping and give me a hand," Sam said, tossing his shovel out of the grave and crouching down to clear the dirt from the coffin lid. They lifted it together, out of the hole.
In the coffin, a soldier lay in uniform. An old uniform, Dean thought, looking down at it.
"Hey, was, uh, Larry a World War I vet?" He looked up at Henry.
Henry shook his head slowly. "No."
"Well then, who's the stiff?"
"I have no idea," Henry watched as Sam lifted a metal tag from the skeleton's body.
"Captain Thomas J Carey, the third," he said, reading it. "Mean anything to you?"
Henry shook his head. Dean sighed.
"Well someone wanted you to see this so maybe that someone is Larry?" He glanced at Sam who nodded as he straightened up.
"So … what? He survives the attack, and hides out with this guy's identity?"
"Walking and talking like a duck, Sam."
"I agree," Henry said, getting to his feet. "What are we waiting for? Cover this up, and we'll be on our way."
He turned and started to walk back to the car. Dean watched him go and looked at Sam.
"If I shoot him now, that won't actually erase our existence, right?"