Chapter 26 Kaddish
1941, Vitsyebsk, Belarus
The harsh chatter of machine-gun fire was overwhelmed by the screams and wails of the witnesses, bouncing and echoing down the narrow cobbled streets even as the gutters ran red with blood. The two men looked at each other and drew the collars of their coats higher around their ears, slipping away into the shadows of the closely built buildings.
"There is no hope that God will save us from these monsters," Isaac Bass said bitterly to his companion. "This we will have to do for ourselves, and hope that He will give us strength."
Beside him, striding into the dark, Aleksei Yavoklevich nodded in agreement. Under his coat, his fingers slid over a small, silver pin, feeling its shape and comfort in its power. He would need to report in, as soon as the creature had been raised and set about its purpose. The order would need to monitor the group from now on, and provide help if they were able.
The problem of the others, the dark magicians who'd adopted the party with an appalling ease, that too would have to be dealt with. He suspected he would be told to leave for Berlin, in the not-too-distant future.
The snow fell ever more thickly, coating the buildings and the uneven streets, freezing the bodies and the blood in the square they'd left behind them, covering the atrocity in a blanket of virgin white.
Lebanon, Kansas
"Slow down," Sam said, staring at the coordinates on his phone and the map held under it. "Should be right around here."
Dean glanced up the narrow road, and flicked a look at his brother. "It better be, we're running out of road."
Sam looked up, seeing the forest closing up ahead of them. He scanned the thin woods to either side of them. "There."
Dean let the Impala roll to a stop, a few yards from the road's end, and beside the small utility hut, set back off the road to the right. "This is it?"
Sam frowned, looking down at the phone and map. "We're right here."
"Looks a little … small, don't you think?" He leaned against the wheel, looking past his brother at the frame and metal building. It was a little bigger than a public phone booth, but not by much.
"I don't understand," Sam said, opening his door and getting out. "This can't be it."
Dean turned off the engine and opened his door, looking over the roof of the car. "Maybe Larry stiffed you on the right location?"
"No," Sam muttered. "I'm sure he didn't."
He took several steps toward the hut, and stopped, staring at it in confusion. Most of the front wall was taken up with a metal and timber door, with the decal of Kansas Gas & Electric plastered over it. He looked back at Dean, who shrugged.
"C'mon, there's nothing here, Sammy," Dean said quietly. "I need food and sleep."
The room was dim and almost silent, Dean's restless movements against the heavily starched sheets only a slight distraction to Sam's thoughts. Larry had been definite, he thought for the thousandth time since they'd turned around and driven back. He wondered if he could've gotten on the numbers wrong; it'd been handwritten and by an old man … he sat up, hand swinging out to turn on the lamp on the nightstand, sweeping up the piece of paper with the numbers in the same movement.
No.
None of the numbers were ambiguous.
"Because it is the safest place on earth. It is impervious to any entry, except the key."
Larry's low voice replayed in memory. Safest how? Impervious … how?
Because it does not look like what you seek, a small voice whispered at the back of his mind. It hides in plain sight, a run-down and abandoned site hut for a state utility company and who, really, would suspect that it held the greatest treasure in the world?
An illusion? They used spells, the society, to find out things, to travel … to hide?
"Dean!" He rolled off the side of the bed, stumbling over his boots and grabbing his jeans.
"Dean, wake up!"
"Not again," Dean mumbled into his pillow, closing his eyes more tightly.
"Come on, it's there," Sam said, hopping around the room as he pulled on his socks. "It's hidden, but it's there."
"G'way."
"Get up!"
"M'tired, Sammy, s'just dream," Dean rolled over, and pulled the pillow right over him.
"You've got thirty seconds before I get a pan full of water," Sam threatened, dragging his shirt on.
He wouldn't, Dean thought muzzily, half the fragments of what had been a great dream still floating around behind his eyelids.
Sam pulled on his boots, looking at his unmoving brother in the next bed. He yanked on the laces and tied them, then clumped to the kitchenette and opened a cupboard, rummaging loudly through the meagre collection of pans and pots in it.
Dean heard the clanging and sat up. "You wouldn't."
"You're up now," Sam looked over the counter at him. "Come on, it's there."
With a deep and very audible exhale, Dean rubbed a hand over his face and looked around the floor for his clothes.
The moonlight lit up the dead end brightly and Dean stopped the car, leaning back and closing his eyes. "Looks like the same crappy little hut to me."
Sam opened his door and dug in his pocket for the heavily carved box, pulling it out as he strode across the road. He was right about this, he could feel it. He pulled out the old-fashioned iron key, with it small engraving of the Star of Solomon on the grip and reached out a hand to the door of the hut, vaguely hearing the driver's door open and close and the slow footsteps of his brother walking up behind him.
The air around the door felt thick and viscous, like putting his hand against oil. "Look at this," he breathed.
Dean leaned past him, his attention focussed on Sam's hand as it pushed and slid across a surface clearly not the door itself. Reaching out tentatively, he felt the resistance on his fingertips, his mind offering the feeling of axle grease as the closest comparison.
"Gross," he said, pulling his hand back. "How do we break it?"
Sam lifted the key and pushed it into the illusion and they both blinked as the illusion vanished as completely as if it had never been there. The hut was gone. They stood in front of a door, twice the width and half again the height of a normal-sized door, with an oily black patina over the smooth, metal surface, set seamlessly into a concrete wall. The wall had been framed and poured against the side of a hill, and Dean blinked as he noticed how high it rose. In the illusion, it hadn't been there at all. To one side, a keyhole was a deeper black. Sam pushed the key into it and twisted it.
Inside the door, there were a series of deep clunks, and a rattle of gears. Sam glanced to the side of the door, seeing no hinges or even more than a paper-fine line between the metal door and the equally smooth metal frame that held it. The noises stopped and he pushed the door open, holding his breath warily. No smell of stale air rushed out at them.
"Ventilation must be good," he commented, pulling the key out and stepping into the darkness beyond.
"Let's hope everything else is, too," Dean said, following, his flashlight beam flicking on. "How long has this place been empty?"
"Well, fifty-five years, at least, I guess," Sam said. They were on a high gallery, overlooking a deep, wide room below. The lights picked out tables and chairs, shelving and a series of old devices, against the wall.
"Huh, ham radio," Sam looked at the ancient set. "Telegraph. Switchboard." He turned around to look at Dean. "This must have been the nerve centre."
"Why didn't one of the other groups take over when Henry's bunch were killed?" Dean said, walking left along the gallery as Sam turned for the stairs leading down to the room.
"Good question." Sam shone the beam over a large table, a map of the world painted meticulously over its surface, a number of markers resting on top. It was a strategist's table, he realised suddenly, showing … cases? Wars? Areas of interest? He'd have to go through the documents to be sure.
Halfway along the gallery, Dean saw a box on the wall and stopped, opening the door. Circuit box. He looked at the switches, both in the off position now, and a number of fuses below them. He couldn't see any signs of burning or broken wires, they looked like they'd just been switched off.
He lifted the first and a low, resonant hum rumbled through the floor and walls, deep enough to reverberate faintly in his teeth. Around the room, the filaments in the old-fashioned light bulbs heated up and light filled the room. Looking down at Sam, he saw his brother switch off his flashlight, tuck it back into his pocket.
"Generators?" he called down. Sam nodded, glancing up at him.
"Yeah, from the sound and the start up time. Hard to tap into KG&E if you're pretending not to be here." He looked down at the floor. "How big do you think this place is?"
"No clue," Dean said, lifting the second switch. He turned as he heard his brother's low whistle below. Beyond the room, on another half-level more lights had come on, illuminating a large chamber. The walls were lined with shelving, from the floor to the ceilings high above, the centre of the room held long, polished tables. Every shelf was filled with books, manuscripts, papyrus and skin scrolls, coarsely-stitched hand bound texts.
Nirvana, Dean thought, glancing down at Sam with a one-sided smile. From his vantage point he could see doors leading out of the library to both sides. In the room immediately below him, the war room, he'd already mentally nicknamed it, he saw more doors, two per wall, leading to other parts of the building.
He walked down the stairs and followed Sam up into the library, looking around. A sideboard sat to one side of the half walls next to the broad, shallow flight of steps leading to the war room, holding a silver tray set with several crystal decanters and a dozen glasses, the light reflecting from the delicate facets. Above the sideboard, a framed map of the continental United States of America gleamed dully under the dusty glass. On the other side of the steps, a tall, heavy-looking, black cupboard with glass-fronted doors held more books, older looking and worn.
Sam walked along the shelves, skimming over the titles, most of which were too faded to read, some in Latin, some in Greek. To one side, before the door to the left near the end of the room, a carved and polished bookstand held an a large, old parchment book open, and as he got closer he recognised the diagrams, drawn finely in ink, on the pages. The Key of Solomon. They still had Bobby's copy, in Whitefish, down in the basement with the hundreds of books Bobby'd managed to replace before he'd died. Looking around the room, he felt a brief and savage wish that the old man could've seen this.
The door ahead stood open and he walked through it, the lights already lit in the wide hallway he came into, more doors leading off from it. The first three were private offices, bookcases lining the walls, filled with books, ancient and modern – relatively modern, he amended – maps framed and hanging in the spaces that were clear. Big timber desks, with green or red or black leather tops, sat in the offices, which seemed to have belonged to the senior members. Everywhere, there were occult objects, charms and symbols, sigils and seals, some casually left on the desks or in cupboards, others set in glass-and-timber frame cabinets, neatly lettered labels in front of them.
Beyond the offices, he came to a staircase, one flight leading up and the other leading down from the broad landing. He glanced behind, seeing no sign of his brother, who'd probably gone the other way and he started up the flight to the floor above.
Another long hall extended straight from the top of the flight, doorways evenly spaced along it. He opened the first, looking into a large and well-appointed bathroom, a huge enamelled cast-iron, claw-foot tub taking up half of one wall, the tiled floor and walls gleaming in cream and a soft green, the cabinetry polished and sealed timber. Set into the floor between the door and the tub, a devil's trap had been drawn out in small golden tiles.
The next room was a bedroom, spacious and containing a carved and polished walnut double bed, the spread a warm golden brocade, the Star of Solomon picked out in brighter gold bullion in the centre. The room also held a capacious armoire, several chest of drawers and cupboards and a small writing desk. Shaking his head, Sam backed out of the room and moved along to the next one.
All the rooms along the hall were either bedrooms or bathrooms, all with the same furnishings, the same linen, the same detailing. He came out of the fourth identical bedroom and saw Dean coming up the hall.
"This place is like a hotel," Dean said, rubbing his eyebrow tiredly. "All bedrooms and bathrooms down that way."
Sam nodded. "Here too – how many were there?"
"Six bedrooms, three bathrooms," Dean said.
"Yeah, same on this side," Sam agreed. "Not a hotel, though. A club house, I think. Home away from home."
"Think there'll be any water?"
"I don't know." Sam turned around. "There's another flight of stairs going down."
Dean shrugged. "Sure, why not spend the night walking around?"
Sam ignored the comment and hurried toward the stairs he'd come up. The place was unbelievable, a complete set up for them, safe, guarded, comfortable, filled with a reference library and – and – and who knew what else?
He went down the stairs and stopped when they reached the lower level, looking at a further flight that led deeper still.
"Go down to the bottom and work our way back up?"
It took nearly two hours to work their way through the whole building. At the lowest levels, they found the generators, eight huge diesel gensets powered in serial, four running, the other four idle, gleaming with grease and oil and sparking interest in Dean as he walked around them, checking everything he could think of to check. An engine-driven pump connected to a multitude of copper pipes was also down there, and as they both looked over the valves and runs of the pipe, the plumbing for the building became more obvious.
"Someone put a hell of a lot of time and thought into this place," Dean had remarked as they'd climbed up to the next level.
Sam agreed. "Someone meant this place to survive anything."
The next level up had killed conversation completely. Room after room were filled with shelving and cupboards, glass cases and boxes and crates stacked unevenly along the walls in places, filled with the relics, the artefacts and objects from around the world that had a place in supernatural mythology and legend. It was Plutus' auction, multiplied by a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand. They looked at the items, gold, silver, metals neither recognised, glass and crystal and materials that defied identification completely. All catalogued, Sam noted, seeing the neatly arranged card drawers and filing cabinets. Hopefully with their lore, their origins and their uses detailed.
There was an apothecary, the walls lined with glass-fronted shelves, filled with jars and boxes, bottles and small, shallow drawers, the scents of herbs and spices, of poisons and cures and skin and bone and old, dried blood thickly filling the air. One wall held filing cabinets with a tall bookcase to one side, dark brown ledgers packing the shelves. Sam walked over and pulled one at random from the shelf, opening it.
In a fine, copperplate hand, the dark blue ink filled the page, detailing the cure for the bite of the Vlost Wurm, a creature of subterranean habitat in northern Germany, see catalogue C-1001344 for complete details. The recipe was clearly explained, the diagrams scientifically drawn and, he thought, probably anatomically correct. He flipped through the pages, glimpsing spells and poisons and cures and divination liquids and herbal tonics on them, and he closed the book and set it back into its place with a faint, disbelieving sigh. It was one of more than a hundred, packed tightly into the shelves.
All the answers. Perhaps not all, but so many that the advantage might truly be with them for a change. He looked at the single bookshelf with it's numbers of books and thought of reading them all – of reading all the texts on the other floors. No matter how long it took, he was itching to do it.
Adjacent to the apothecary were store-rooms, holding barrels and boxes and chests of many of the ingredients required for the apothecary's shelves, or for other works that they didn't know anything about. Feathers and scales, claws and teeth, bottles of liquids with labels that read out of a fairy-tale.
"Do we still have the list for the demon bombs?" Dean asked quietly, looking at the labels on the containers surrounding him.
"Cas had it, Kevin could make us another, I guess."
"I'll go see him," Dean said, the decision made abruptly. If they had the ingredients here, in this kind of bulk, he could make an arsenal and give Crowley the fright of his life. The thought raised a wide grin.
The last room at the end of the hall was rectangular and almost empty. Shelving lined the walls and the books that were there were wrapped, in silk and chamois and linen. The oldest texts, Sam thought, lifting the coverings carefully on one. The History of the Lilith, the title read, and he swallowed against a surge of memories, wrapping it again. One day, he would read through these, all of them, and then he would know for sure if he'd allowed himself to be played or if he'd truly had no choice in the matter. But not today.
"Sam, check this out," Dean said from the other side of the room. He stood next to a metal door, embedded in the wall.
"A safe?"
"Looks like."
"Can you crack it?" Sam looked at him curiously as he rested the side of his head against the cool metal door.
"Maybe. It's an old one," Dean allowed softly, turning the lock slowly, hearing the clicks through the reverberations in the metal.
The combination was six numbers and he opened it after a minute's work. Inside, several long, deep metal boxes sat on shelves. Sam pulled one out and Dean took another, setting them down on the table in front of the safe. The boxes weren't locked and they lifted the lids. Sam's box held share certificates, a lot of them, and his eyes widened as he fanned through them, the familiar names leaping out at him, the numbers of shares held astonishing. Dean's box held two dozen black silk bags. He pulled one out, pulling the drawstring free and tipping the contents onto his palm. The light sparkled and reflected and refracted from the simply cut or polished stones, prisms of colour lighting up his skin. Diamonds, he thought, picking one up that was the size of a large shooter. He had no idea of what a stone like that could be worth, but he suspected their pool-hustling days might actually be over.
The other boxes held money, printed in the '50s, banded into packs of hundreds, some smaller esoteric items that even Sam couldn't identify and in the last one, an envelope with the logo of a Pennsylvania law firm in the top left hand corner. Sam opened it and started reading.
"Title deeds, a lot of them, not just to this place; corporate papers defining the society as a legal entity, probably for the property purchases; bank accounts, trust accounts …" he muttered softly under his breath, flipping through them. "We should see this firm, Dean."
Dean looked up, frowning. "Why?"
"These shares, the dividends from them, over the years, even in a single year at the prices they're valued at, they're going into the Litteris Hominae's accounts. We need access to those accounts –" He gestured around the room vaguely. "This is all fine for just reading and staying in, but we need to be able to tap into the research that's available online and – and buy fuel for the generators …"
"What makes you think they're going to give us access to that money?" Dean asked, an edge of mockery in his voice.
"Because the accounts are accessible to whoever holds the key," Sam said, holding out the letter he'd just read.
"Huh."
"Yeah."
From the sub-basement, they climbed back up to the main floor, finding the kitchen, with pantries, cool rooms, butler's pantry and scullery; a long, narrow dining room, with a formal dining table and a dozen chairs, sideboards and dressers, all in the same beautifully fine-grained and polished timbers that had been used throughout the rest of the building.
It was the four rooms on the other side of the library that really got Dean's attention, however. Each was quite small and they led, one into the next, along the exterior wall of the building. The first two had no shelving. Boards with pegs and racks took up every wall and hanging on them was every kind of weapon either had ever seen. Guns, of all makes and models, from powder-and-ball muskets to the Enfields and Webleys, Browning and Lewis guns of World War II. Bows, unstrung and hung in descending sizes, long bows and recurve, cross-bows and the simple short bows of the Plains Native Americans, designed for shooting from horseback. Swords, from the simple bronze gladius of the Roman Legions to the exquisitely folded samurai swords of ancient Japan, Arabian scimitars, cutlass, epee, rapier, long swords and broad swords. Spears and javelins, halberds and shields and plate armour, chain mail, leather and brass and iron greaves and cuirass and vambrace and helmets.
"Holy cow," Dean breathed, turning in a slow-motion pirouette as he crossed the first room. Beyond the armoury, the last two rooms held ammunition. Shelves of it. Floor to ceiling. Boxes and bags and footlockers of it.
"So I guess it's okay to stay now?" Sam asked, his voice holding a faint edge of derision. Dean looked at him blankly.
"Sure, yeah, whatever," he said, turning back to the shelves, finding the boxes for the Colt he carried, eyes widening slightly as he read the labels – spelled cartridges and silver, iron-tipped and salt-filled … there was a small box labelled Sirens Blood. He shook his head disbelievingly.
York, Pennsylvania
The law offices of Bronson, Maurice and Yaklolevich were located in a small, old building on a corner. Dean and Sam had sat watching the building for two hours, noting who came in and who went out. People had come out, and returned. They hadn't seen a person go in.
"Not much of a clientele, huh?" Dean commented, watching as the buxom red-haired secretary returned to the building and walked in.
"Doesn't look like it."
"You still want to do this?" He wasn't sure about it himself. The benefits would be substantial but his name and image were still embedded in a dozen or more law enforcement agency databases and he didn't like the idea of introducing himself in public.
"Yeah," Sam said, turning to look at him. "This is the break, Dean, the break we've needed for the last god-knows-how-long. We can concentrate on what we have to do instead of trying to make all the pieces fit with no resources, no help, no funding."
Dean slouched down in the driver's seat and sighed. He couldn't argue the logic.
"Alright, let's do it."
Inside, it was obvious that no thought of modernisation or renovation had ever entered the law firm's mind. The panelling that lined the walls was hundred-year-old oak, dark as ebony with age and polished to a high sheen. Their boots echoed from the sprung, hardwood floors and sank into thick, lush rugs as they approached the receptionist.
"May I help you?" She smiled at them, but Dean noticed that her smile didn't reach her eyes and her hand was under the desk. He glanced around the room, spotting the discreet security camera as it panned around the room to stop on them.
"I'd like to make an appointment to Mr Yavoklevich?" Sam said, tugging at the jacket of his suit as inconspicuously as he could. For some reason it no longer fit as well as it had.
"One moment, please," she said, picking up the handset of the phone at her desk and listening. "Mr Yavoklevich can see you now, if you like. Just through that door."
Hiding his surprise, Sam turned to look at Dean, one brow lifted slightly. Dean nodded and they turned and headed for it.
It opened into a very short corridor, with a single door at the other end. Above them, the fluorescent flickered once, then stabilised as Dean reached for the door knob. Neither missed the implication of the flicker and Dean's fingers were already lightly touching the hilt of the knife in his coat as he swung the door open.
The office, after the dimness of the rest of the building, was filled with light, pouring in through the broad, multi-paned sash windows on two sides of the room. It was a very large room, a desk with a bank of monitors and keyboards facing them, legal tomes in a large bookshelf and several filing cabinets lining the other wall.
Mr Yavoklevich was an old man, Dean saw, leaving the knife where it was for the moment as he rose from behind the desk and walked around to it to greet them. Fine, white hair adhered here and there to a spotted and wrinkled scalp, dark brown eyes peered out from beneath the sagging folds of skin of brow and eyelids. His grip was firm and the suit he wore was immaculate, tailored silk in a very dark grey-green fabric.
"Mr Yaklovlevich, thank you for seeing us on such short notice –" Sam started to say, holding out his hand as the old man reached for it.
"Mr Sam Winchester," Yaklovlevich said dryly, glancing at Dean. "And his older brother, Mr Dean Winchester. Your knife is not necessary at this moment, Dean, I'm neither demon nor ghost nor any other kind of monster."
Dean hesitated and the old man smiled. "Sit. There is a lot to discuss."
He gestured at the two armchairs in front of the desk as he walked back around and drew a file from the drawer. It was thick, bound with red legal ribbon and it thumped against the desk blotter heavily as Yavoklevich dropped it.
"You've found both the key and the safehold, I take it," he said, sitting in the chair and looking at them. "Let me see the key."
Sam drew it slowly from his jacket pocket, holding it up. Yavoklevich nodded.
"The possessor of the key has the rights to the deeds and funding of the sect."
"How'd you know who we were?" Dean asked him suspiciously, looking around the office.
"Ah, modern technology is a wonderful thing," Yavoklevich said lightly, opening the ribbons and the file. "Our security cameras took your image, ran it through a couple dozen databases and … yes, here we are."
He picked up a thin sheaf of papers. "Dean Winchester, born January 24, 1979. Height, six foot one inch, weight, one hundred and ninety pounds, hair – dark brown; eyes –green; small scar on the right side of chin; scar on the right side of forehead … hmmm … let's see, multiple arrests, charges … credit card fraud, GTA, grave desecration, assault, attempt to murder, murder … yada yada yada … believed dead." The old man looked up at him, smiling slightly. "I believe that covers it, yes?"
Dean squirmed in his chair, shooting a sideways glance at his brother.
"Sam Winchester, born May 2, 1983," Yavoklevich continued blithely. "Height, six foot four inches, weight two hundred and five pounds, hair – light brown; eyes – hazel; no distinguishing scars … a less impressive rap sheet than your brother, but that's only what the public knows, isn't it, Sam?"
Yavoklevich looked at him, eyes twinkling under the white brows. "One of the first things we need to do is remove these references to you both from the federal and state databases. And check your identification. It is changing very rapidly now. The cost is a little more but we can issue the new papers at the same time as they're being issued to the actual departments, so I believe it is worth it."
Dean and Sam exchanged a dumbfounded glance.
"Now, as to the accounts –" he said, looking past the file and pressing a button on his desk. "Myra, we'll need the new cards, signatory papers in both sets of names, and identification verification insertions in one hour."
On the speaker, a bored female voice responded. "Yes, Mr Yavoklevich."
"Good, bring them in when they're ready." He looked at them. "Do you have any questions?"
Sam felt his mouth drop open slightly. "A few."
Yavoklevich smiled. "We have been doing this for a long time, gentlemen. The procedures have been in place for almost as long, updated to suit the changing times, of course." He leaned forward. "I was very pleased to see that the building had been opened. It meant that Larry had found someone suitable to pass the key to, and people such as yourselves are not so easy to find in these times."
"You knew when we entered the building?"
"Yes, of course," the old man said, brows lifting. "Each of the safeholds reports on its status here. At least in this country."
"So you know all about the society?" Dean asked, frowning.
Yavoklevich's smile grew wider and he eased the lapel of his suit jacket aside, revealing a small, silver pin, pinned to the breast pocket of his shirt. The pin had been wrought in the Star of Solomon.
US-36 W, Illinois
The Impala's engine rumbled soothingly, a basso hum that Dean could feel through his feet. The headlights picked out the lines on the road and he drove easily, the stereo playing quietly, enough to drown out Sam's soft snores from the passenger seat. In between them, a stack of files had slid out of their neat pile and drifted against his brother's leg, all of them with the unicursal hexagram printed on the covers. They were, apparently, the updated and detailed workings of the order, of which they were now – apparently – members, by virtue of nothing more taxing than showing the old man the key.
He wasn't sure he trusted the order or the secrecy in which it operated. It was probably hypocritical of him, but it bothered him that Yavoklevich had known so much about them and they had little so information on him, or anyone else in the organisation.
As digs went, on the other hand, he couldn't fault the building. It was secure, private, comfortable as all get-out, conveniently located in the middle of the country and had more than enough room for them. And it was a hell of a resource.
But he could feel the sticky fingers against his back. Pushing him and Sam into something they didn't know enough about. Pushing them to be something or to become something that he didn't know if he wanted.
He glanced at Sam's over-sized frame, hunched between the door and seat, the side of his face pressed against the glass. It was what Sam wanted, he thought. Or, at least, it was something that suited his brother, perhaps more than hunting did. He wasn't sure about that. They hadn't talked about anything, not related to day-to-day stuff since they'd left Whitefish.
The last couple of months had left him with a backwash of conflicting and confusing thoughts. About himself. About his brother. About his life. About the things he didn't want to spend time thinking about it, if he could possibly avoid it. He'd lost the clarity of Purgatory a lot quicker than he'd thought he would. Lost the ease of decision-making. The sense that he'd know what to do.
Some of that came from the feeling that they were just waiting, waiting for Kevin, waiting for Cas, hanging around and waiting like a couple of wallflowers at a highschool dance. Ever since he'd heard that there was a way to shut the gates, to end the particular nightmare of demons and Hell and Crowley, most particularly, he'd been itching to get onto it, to find it, to get moving on it. But the closer they got to an answer, the further it went away from them. They'd had the tablet, and Kevin, and lost them both. Crowley had had both and lost them in turn. It was a weird, uncomfortable and damnably frustrating dance that none of them seemed to know the steps to.
Now, they had a whole new pile of secrets and mysteries to unravel and he couldn't raise the energy for it. They had a job. A big, fucking important job.
There's so much you don't know. You need me.
The demon's voice echoed through his thoughts again. There was a lot they didn't know. There was too much they didn't know. Why had Crowley run, when they'd broken in to save Alfie? Why had Cas killed the poor sonofabitch the second they'd rescued him? Why was Kevin having such a hard time reading the fucking tablet?
He saw his arm swing down in his memory, the serrated knife punching into the demon's chest. He didn't regret that decision. Not entirely. Mostly, he didn't. Because Sam'd been right. Demons lied. All the time. Especially when it came to saving their own skins. He shoved the thought aside impatiently, and drummed his fingers against the leather grip of the wheel.
Was he coming up short tactically? Had he lost the edge he'd come out of Purgatory with? He didn't know. Couldn't tell, anymore. Deeper things nagged at him.
Maybe the society held the answers he was looking for. He didn't know that either and looking around at the books and everything that filled the building, he'd been drowned in a feeling of futility. Reading through all those books? That wasn't him. He could manage focussed research. Not sifting through millions – or billions – of words looking for answers that he hardly knew the questions for. He needed action. He needed to work. To do stuff, kill things, save people.
Atone.
The word, the feeling, came out of his subconscious like a savage right hook and he jerked back slightly against the seat. Was that what he was doing? Trying to do? Buy his way back to feeling less like a monster by saving as many as he could? By doing as much as he could?
Have you got that low of an opinion of yourself? Are you that screwed in the head? Bobby's voice, low and raw and filled with pain and bewilderment. It'd been that moment that he'd seen that the old man would've done anything for him, but he hadn't recognised it, hadn't acknowledged it until Bobby had wrestled control from the demon and driven the knife into his gut.
How can you care so little about yourself? What's wrong with you? His brother, drinking to dull the same feelings, pain and confusion and a desolation because Sam had realised so much earlier than he had where he'd been heading and what it meant and that he was never coming back.
What's the matter? You don't think you deserve to be saved? Castiel, the angel's eyes searching his face for an answer that he couldn't give, couldn't face up to. No, the answer was, but it felt – too exposed, too exposing to say it out loud. Even to an angel. No. He didn't.
The memories were all deep. Not deep enough to keep them from floating free in the night, but deep enough that he could enjoy driving, behind the wheel with the road stretching out and the music playing and not a thought in his head about anything. Deep enough that he could sink a beer or three and not need to drown them out with whiskey morning, noon and night. Deep enough that he'd thought he could live a normal life, right up to the moment when he'd realised what that would cost.
He looked at his watch and thought he could keep going, through the quiet hours of darkness. They'd be there by dawn.
Lebanon, Kansas
Sam's fingertips circled over his temple, rubbing unconsciously at mild pain of the headache centred there. He was sitting at the library table, several stacks of files surrounding him, including the law firm's, reading. He'd cross-checked the lists of associates and contacts, groups and individuals, that he'd found against the public records he could now access via a wireless modem to his laptop. Most of those the order had been in touch with were dead, long dead in point of fact. Several groups were impossible to find, although he had the sense they were still out there.
There'd been a few familiar names in amongst the files and he was getting a sense of the network of people who were working in the shadow world, not just hunters but researchers, people with specialised skills, groups with ancient contacts. It was far bigger than he'd imagined and he thought of Henry's rising despair when his grandfather had begun to believe that he'd been alone.
In Henry's time, the world had been smaller, and communications simpler. Now, there were a million ways to hide much more effectively. And over the last few years, the dangers to the people who lived in this life had risen dramatically.
From what he could tell, could piece together, a lot of the groups had been wiped out over the years between Dean's rescue and the killing of Dick Roman. Angels and demons, ghosts and the Horsemen, and the devil himself had targeted and destroyed the experienced members, leaving initiates with little knowledge or power, or no one at all. While the forces for good had struggled and died, the forces of evil seem to have flourished and prospered in a world where in fifty short years money and power had become the new gods and life – human life – had decreased dramatically in value.
He leaned back, closing the file in front of him. They were out there, he thought tiredly. Just hiding themselves too effectively within the ones and zeroes of a data-centric world.
He'd replaced the equipment in the war room. A dozen processors sat humming along the long tables against the wall of the room now, running searches on everything he could think of, automated bots looking tirelessly through the news of the world, through the databases he could access, through the death notices and obits of a hundred online newspapers, looking for names, looking for keywords, looking for signs.
Getting to his feet, Sam walked slowly down to the kitchen. He'd updated the lists with the deaths he'd found, and learned a lot about the inner workings of the society, thanks to Yakovlevich's files. It hadn't helped to realise just how much there was that he still had to learn, had to absorb. The answers he wanted could've been in one or more of the books that filled the building, in an ancient text or carved into the rim of some object held here – but reading them one by one, it would take him a lifetime to find them.
Opening the fridge, he pulled out the fixings for a sandwich and set them on the long island bench, his hands busy with the task while his thoughts rocketed ahead. Dean would be back in a couple of days. His brother was hoping to be able to use the things here to be able to tip the balance back into their favour against Crowley, even if Kevin hadn't managed to find the way to close the gates yet. He was, in fact, itching to take the fight to the demon, although what use it would be, at this stage, hadn't been articulated.
How much of what they'd done, of what had happened, had actually been preordained, Sam wondered uneasily? There was free will and he could see its effects, but fighting against the things that were going to happen, one way or another, because they'd been written in the stars a millennia ago, that was a waste of their time and their energy.
Picking up the sandwich absently, he stood at the bench and ate it, the food pushing the headache back a little.
I-70 W, Missouri
Dean watched the traffic automatically, fingers light on the wheel, adjusting his speed with unconscious reactions that required no thought at all.
Kevin'd looked like all kinds of hell, and had been mostly out of it when he'd arrived. The list was still there, though, lying in among the loose piles and drifts of notes and drawings, and he'd grabbed it, his eyes running down the items, matching what was there with what he'd noticed in the store rooms. They had quite a lot of what they needed on hand, he'd thought.
He didn't want to think about Cas, but the angel drifted into his thoughts anyway. The blood trickling from the corner of one eye. The oddly blank expression on his face, as if he'd been listening to something, someone, while he'd spoken to them. The strange choice of words before he'd left … all of it sounded alarm bells in his head and set off the prickling sensation at the back of his neck and he couldn't imagine what had been going on with him.
The angel hadn't responded to any of the requests, prayers or demands he'd sent out into the ether. He didn't know what to think about that. So far as he knew, he still had the Enochian wards over his ribs, but Cas had managed to find him, find them, anyway. It raised another question. Was the building in Lebanon warded against angels? They hadn't seen any sign of the sigils and guards that they'd expected, covering the walls of the building when it'd become visible. Had the order known about them?
His attention refocussed on the road as he crossed into Kansas, turning west to bypass St Joseph. Just another couple of hours or less, he thought distractedly.
Lebanon, Kansas
The key worked, the hut disappearing and the door opening with its clunks and rattles, and he walked in, shifting the gear bag over his shoulder as he came down the stairs.
"Hey."
"Hey," Sam looked up from the files on the table. "So? How's Kevin doing"
"I don't know, he's okay, I guess," Dean said as he came up the steps into the library and dropped his bag onto the table. "In his corner, hacking out his Da Vinci code."
He walked out and down to the kitchen, getting a beer from the fridge and returning to the long room.
"Nothing actionable yet," he continued, walking up to the table and looking over the stacked files surrounding Sam. "Anything from Cas?"
Sam looked at him, his forehead wrinkling up a little. "No, not a peep. You?"
Dean lifted the top file off, reading the label on the one beneath absently. "No, he's not answering."
"Right," Sam looked at the laptop screen in front of him. Dean was worried about the angel, but it wasn't the first time Cas had been unresponsive. Of course, the last time it'd happened, the angel had been plotting with the King of Hell to open the gate of Purgatory … he shoved that memory aside and shook his head slightly.
"Well, so, I've been trying to chart the order's network of hunters, their allies, affiliated groups they worked, kept files on –"
"Circa 1958?" Dean interrupted, his tone mildly mocking.
"Yeah, true," Sam acknowledged. "Most are dead, or defunct but others, I'm not so sure. And this one –" He picked up a file marked with the Star of Solomon and passed it over the table. "We should definitely check out."
Dean rubbed a hand over his face as the file dropped to the table in front of him. "The Judah Initiative?"
He opened the file. A black and white photograph showing a number of men was on the inside cover.
Sam nodded. "European team. They were active during World War II."
"Really? Hunters fighting in a war? That's cool," Dean said, looking at the photo.
"Not exactly hunters," Sam said quickly. "Not exactly … uh, fighting … but –"
"Rabbis." Dean skimmed through the first page. He looked up, one brow lifting. "Rabbis? Really?"
Sam gestured at the file. "The file on them is sketchy, but apparently they were hard-core saboteurs."
"Inglourious Bastards kind of thing?" Dean asked, looking down at the file again.
Sam grimaced. "Yeah, kind of. I ran a search on the Initiative's entire roster … and I got a hit." He brought up the news report on the screen. "One Rabbi Isaac Bass. He was seventeen years old when he joined the Initiative, and eighty-five when he died. Two weeks ago." Sam turned the laptop around on the desk.
"In a college town back East," he continued. "He was capped."
"Capped?" Dean pulled the laptop closer, tilting the screen back and reading the article.
"Yeah. He was there doing research and according to eye witnesses, he spontaneously combusted."
Dean looked at the screen. "So … this is a case?"
Sam inclined his head and Dean felt the last five hours drive drop heavily onto him. He picked up his beer with a deep sigh.
"I just got back."
"Well, get a clean change of underwear," Sam said cheerfully as he got up. "We need to get there as soon as we can. One of the things the file does have on the Initiative is that they were fighting the Thule Society."
"The what?"
"It was a group in Germany, occultists and folk-lorists supposedly. They sponsored the Nazis as a political party and were supposedly no more than over-zealous nationalists. Except …"
"Except?" Dean looked up at him.
"Except they weren't," Sam said, pulling another file from the stack beside him and sliding it across the table to his brother. "They were practitioners, not theorists. Black magic, sympathetic magic, symbolic magic."
"Huh."
"Yeah. There were a lot of accounts of people executed by the magicians of the society. Mostly dissidents against the party line," Sam said, gesturing to the file. "One of the more common methods was spontaneous combustion of the victim."
Dean nodded slowly. "Alright."
Wilkes-Barr, Pennsylvania
Dean drove up to the library's entrance and Sam got out, tugging at the jacket he wore. He walked up the steps to the library and over to the counter.
"Can I help you?" The librarian was a tall, balding man with dark brows and dark eyes, his bearing more military than civilian, Sam thought warily.
"Uh, yes. My name is Sam Page, I work – I was working with Rabbi Bass and I was hoping I could get a list of the materials he was researching here at the library?"
The man tapped a few keys on the computer beside him, his attention seemingly absorbed by what was on the screen. "So you worked with the late Rabbi Bass?"
"I was a research associate of Rabbi Bass, yes," Sam said, nodding as he wondered if the librarian had known Bass' associates. "I'm trying to complete his last paper for publication. I'd just like to review what he was after here."
"Well, that would be quite a lot of material," the librarian said shortly, looking at the computer monitor. "He was here open to close for almost a week."
"Wow, um … how 'bout just the stuff he was looking at … you know, the day he … uh … caught fire?"
The librarian looked at him expressionlessly. "That'd shorten the list a bit."
He turned and walked away, returning a few minutes with a large, grey plastic box and carrying it to a cubicle. Sam followed him, nodding as he turned away. On top of the box, a pair of white cotton gloves were plainly there to be used. He put them on awkwardly, waited impatiently for a woman to walk past, then opened the box.
'The Explorer's Guide to North American Birds' lay in the bottom. Sam felt his stomach drop.
The bar was a long, high-ceilinged room that was varnished golden timber everywhere he looked. The décor appeared to be something that was supposed to resemble a ski resort, maybe, Dean thought. The circular hearth in the centre, dim lighting from frosted shades hanging overhead. Ah, college bars. He returned his attention to the girls seated on the other side of the booth and glanced at his empty notebook.
"He was a really nice old kook," the dark-haired girl facing him said, nodding sagely.
"Really nice," the blonde beside her added, her head bobbing up and down sympathetically. Dean looked from one to the other.
"Kook? How so?"
"You know, he'd talk – a lot – to us, to himself, to anyone who'd listen," the blonde said, warming to the topic as she got going. "He was always talking about this secret war that nobody knew was going on –"
"Conspiracy stuff," the brunette interjected. "He was obsessed with Nazis." The blonde turned to her, nodding enthusiastically.
"But he said they were 'special' Nazis," she said, looking back at Dean and lowering her voice. "You know … necromancers."
"Necromancers," Dean repeated, brows rising.
"Yeah, you know, like from that 'World of … whatever' crap that my little brother is always playing," the blonde elucidated.
Dean felt a headachey throb behind one eye. Don't know your friggin' little brother, he thought tiredly, closing his teeth to stop that response from emerging. How was it that these were college girls, smokin' hot college girls and they couldn't hold a coherent thought in their pretty heads, he wondered cynically? The college girls he'd gone out with had been so smart he'd had trouble following their conversations.
"Nazi … necromancers," he said again, writing it down in the notebook in front of him that had hitherto been empty of useful information. The Thule Society, he thought. Sam would happy.
"It's sad, isn't it?" the brunette said, unaware of the patronising tone that was creeping into her voice.
Dean lifted his gaze to look at her quizzically.
"That old people have to go so crazy," she explained, lashes dropping over dark brown eyes in an unfortunately unconvincing show of sorrow.
"I know, it is sad," the blonde chipped in earnestly. Dean looked at her, deciding that something noncommittal was probably his least offensive option.
He shifted his gaze between them, noticing the young man several tables away. It was the third time he'd seen him, as he'd walked around the campus, and each time the guy'd made eye contact. Now the dude lifted his fingers from the table in a discreet wave, sipping from a long fruit and alcohol concoction with an umbrella sticking out to one side.
What kind of asshole follows someone and then waves when they're made, he wondered distractedly. Get your head back here, he told himself, struggling to remember the next question he wanted to ask the girls.
"You … uh … you both saw the accident?"
"I can still hear his screams," the brunette answered, her gaze dropping theatrically to the tabletop.
The blonde nodded. "It was like … the fire was alive, like – like it was attacking him."
"It was like watching the most watching the most awful movie of the most terrible thing you could possibly see," the brunette added fatuously, her eyes a little distant with the memory.
"It was like that," the blonde confirmed immediately.
Did they hear themselves, Dean wondered absently? There had to be something wrong with him because despite the smooth skin and the shining hair and the enticing curves he could see under their matching team t-shirts … he just wanted to leave. Now.
"Yeah," he nodded sympathetically, catching sight of the young guy at the far table again.
"Thank you, ladies, and I … uh … thanks," he said abruptly, getting to his feet and abandoning whatever pretence he'd thought he'd worked out for his exit. He was getting too old for this shit.