Chapter 27 The Good Man
The guy was looking down at his drink when Dean came around the pillar near the table.
"Special Agent Baldwin," he said, holding his ID open in front of him.
Small, slender build, a long face framed by short dark hair and a clipped beard, pale skin and a black coat over a sweater and collared shirt. Not the usual type he was used to seeing lurking around in the background. The guy was young, maybe just a grad student, maybe a little older. It was hard to tell.
"Well," the young man said, leaning forward to look at the badge in the plastic window of the leather wallet. "Oh … I thought you were a head-hunter or something," he said, looking up and smiling awkwardly.
"This is the second, maybe third time I'm seeing you today?" Dean said, brows drawing together. "Why are you following me?"
He watched the guy's bright expression fall, his eyes cutting away and back to him as he rubbed at the corner of his eye. "Oh … so … we didn't … um … we didn't have … a thing back there."
The words were in English, and he knew he should be getting what the guy was saying but it wasn't coming at all. Thing? Back there?
"Back where – wh-what now?"
"I'm sorry, man, I thought," the guy said apologetically, gesturing vaguely toward the door. "I thought we had a thing back at the quad …"
Leaning forward, Dean's eyes narrowed as he tried to work out what the hell the dude was actually saying. Thing? What the fuck was a thing? What thing? At the quad? What was a quad?
"… a little eye magic – moment – and I saw you here –" the young man continued, fluttering his lashes in embarrassment.
Suddenly all the pieces came together. And fell on him. Dean slid his hand across the table, closing the ID wallet, looking around to see if anyone else was hearing this because the guy wouldn't fucking well shut up.
"– and figured I'd wait until you were done with your meeting and then we might … uh …" he trailed away, shrugging lightly at the possibilities.
"Yeah, uh … okay." Dean felt his stomach lurch and he swallowed hastily. "But no. No moment. This is … uh …" He looked down at the wallet nervously. What the fuck? Why the hell was the guy's mistake making him so goddamned uncomfortable? "A-a Federal investigation."
The guy leaned toward him. "Is that supposed to make you less interesting?"
Dean lifted his gaze, looking at him in confusion. Was this guy still coming on to him? Why? More importantly, why was he still standing there, unable to get one fucking word out?
"No," the young man said hurriedly. "I'm sorry, man, I hope I didn't freak you out or anything." He looked away, lifting a hand in apology.
Shit. Fuck. Crap.
"Nah. No, no. No," Dean said, shaking his head. "Nah, not freaked out, it's just … uh … Federal … thing." He tucked his ID away and looked back at him, suddenly, uneasily, aware that he was actually staring at the guy.
"Uh … okay … citizen," he cleared his throat, hearing his phone start to ring. Get out of here. Get out. Get out. Get OUT. "As you were."
"You have a good night," the guy said as Dean turned abruptly away. Glancing back at the dude, he nodded inanely.
"Y-you-you have – uh –" He backed into the table behind him, glasses tinkling as they knocked against each other. "Okay."
Wheeling away, he strode for the door, grabbing his phone and bursting out onto the campus grounds.
"Yeah." He pulled in a deep breath.
"Hey," Sam's voice was loud against his ear, reassuring in its normality, although not nearly as reassuring as the distance he was putting between himself and the weirdness he'd just left behind.
"So I looked into the rabbi's research. Doesn't make a lot of sense," Sam said, walking out of the library and across the paved courtyard. "Um …"
A movement in Sam's peripheral vision caught his eye and he turned to look at the corner of the next building, seeing someone slip back behind it, little more than a flash of a pale shirt.
"… bird watching."
"Huh," Dean said, glancing back at the bar behind him. "Well, the two very hot co-captains of the women's volleyball team agree that the rabbi's death was very unnatural. I think we've still got a case."
"That would explain why I have something stuck to my shoe," Sam said mildly, walking away from the corner in the other direction.
"You being followed?" Dean asked, the thoughts of volleyball captains vanishing abruptly.
"Yeah, I think so."
"That's weird. I thought I was being followed earlier. Turned out to be a gay thing," he said, trying to brush off the peculiarity of that encounter.
"What?"
"Nothing," Dean said, wishing he hadn't brought it up. "You need a hand?"
"Yes, please," Sam said, looking around. "Got someplace quiet?"
"Visitor's parking. The boonies. I'll park in the back, thirty minutes," he said, getting into the car and hanging up the phone. He turned the key and the rumble of the engine was even more reassuring.
Reversing out of the parking slot, he drove slowly around the lot, looking for the signs he'd seen earlier to the Visitor's lot, on the other side of the campus, his fingers drumming lightly against the wheel.
What the fuck? It didn't matter how many times he repeated to himself that the girls had been hot. Very hot. Delectably hot. Neither had raised more than a fleeting moment's interest, barely a flicker of imagery. It would've been like going to bed with a couple of blow up dolls, he thought sourly.
I prefer ladies with experience.
The memory rose, talking to Sam in the bedroom of the girl who'd been taken by a dragon. It'd been true then and he guessed it was true now. And apparently that'd been expanded a little to preferring ladies with some kind of capacity for reasonable conversation as well.
The realisation hit him and he almost laughed. The lack of response to the two girls had … well, yeah, okay, it'd worried him. He'd been with a couple of women since getting out of Purgatory and neither experience had been more satisfying than what he could've managed on his own. He wasn't sure what the problem was. Wasn't sure what the difference was. But the guy's blatant interest and his own disinclination to spell it out more clearly had both come as a shock, as if there was a small possibility or a vague feeling … he felt his stomach leap again, and shook his head.
There wasn't. He wasn't changing the habits of a lifetime. Didn't explain the lack of desire for the gender he was interested in, but maybe that was a side-effect of what had been going on for the last few months. He'd had long, dry stretches before. Not where any willing and comely partner was ignored because of their lack of potential conversation, a small voice whispered at the back of his thoughts. Yeah, well, that … that was weird. Conversation or lack of it normally wasn't a factor.
He pushed the tangled mess of thought and emotion aside as he saw the Visitor's lot ahead. It'd sort itself out, sooner or later. Wasn't like he was going to die from the lack, after all.
The Impala was parked at the back of the lot when Sam around the last building, taking the keys from his brother as Dean passed him, heading in the opposite direction. He walked down to the asphalt lot, hearing the rustling in the bushes to one of the parking area, and dropped the keys, bending to pick them up.
Working his way around the lot through the thin woods and undergrowth, Dean saw the crouched figure staring at his brother from a few yards away, a pale shirt bright against the darker foliage. He moved up behind him.
"Hey, pal," he said.
The figure in front of him turned slowly, rising from the crouch to his full height in an endlessly long moment. Dean looked up past the tree-trunk legs, the wide, slab chest and monstrously huge deltoid muscles that lay over the shoulders to the man's head, out of proportion to the rest of the body, cold, blue eyes staring down at him.
He slammed a fist into the man's abdomen, feeling his hand creak at the impact, the reverberation travelling from knuckles to shoulder in the split second it took for the huge hands to clutch a handful of his jacket and wrap around his arm. He didn't realise he was moving until he saw the ground under him change from vegetation to the black asphalt and he only just managed to tuck his head down as he hit the side of a car with his back, feeling and hearing the window smash, dropping to the ground with one wrist awkwardly taking the brunt of the fall.
"Dean!" Sam spun around, his gaze going to his brother who was moaning on the ground, then drawn to the figure emerging from the bushes at the side of the lot. The huge figure.
He scrambled to get the Impala's trunk key into the slot, yanking the lid open, lifting the false lid, and grabbing at the first thing he saw. His fingers tightened around the sharkskin hilt of the short machete and he swung the blade up and around as he turned to see the creature almost on top of him.
The blade sliced through the flesh easily enough and bit into the bone, wedging there as Sam looked up disbelievingly. He tugged at it furiously but it refused to come free and the man's lips lifted a little as his hand reached out and closed around Sam's throat and jaw, lifting him easily from the ground.
"Stop."
Incredibly, the creature did, releasing its grip from Sam's neck and letting him fall, taking a step back as it looked down and over to the small man who commanded it.
Sam looked at him too. He was slim, a black coat buttoned up over dark jeans. Short dark hair framed a long face, and dark-brown eyes looked back at him. On the ground beside the truck he'd hit, Dean muttered something indistinct about a sprain.
"What – the – hell – is - that?" Sam stared up at the creature in front of him.
"He's a golem," the young man said calmly. "He's my golem."
"Right." Sam felt his heartrate easing back to normal parameters. "And who the hell are you?"
The man shook his head. "I'd rather not talk here, out in the open like this." He glanced at the car behind Sam. "If that's yours we could drive to my place. It's safer."
"Fine." Sam picked up the machete, throwing it back into the trunk and shutting the lid. "Give me a minute."
He walked to where Dean was lying on his back, face scrunched up with the pain that was shooting from wrist to shoulder.
"You okay?"
"No!" Dean rolled onto his side as Sam crouched down to push him upright. "A golem?"
"I guess we'll find out all about it."
The house was small and ordinary, on a street that was narrow and ordinary and filled with dozens of others, all of them identically small and ordinary. Aaron Bass pushed the key into the lock and opened the door, pushed aside as the golem entered the hall first. He followed it into the small living room, leaving Sam and Dean to close the door behind them.
"The rabbi who was murdered, he was my grandfather," Aaron said, flipping on the lights. "When you guys started to follow up on his case, that's when we started following you."
The golem walked past them, heavy boots clunking over the floorboards. "Hmmm."
"What?" Aaron snapped at him. "Yeah, well keep walking."
Dean and Sam looked at each other.
"So that's a golem?" Sam asked, pointing at the creature as it disappeared into another room.
"Yes," Aaron said, gesturing to the sofa and chairs as he pulled off his coat. "Shaped from clay and brought to life by rabbis to protect the Jewish people in times of … I don't know … general crappiness."
"And he's yours?"
"Hardly," Aaron said disparagingly. "My grandfather left him to me. I'm the last surviving descendant of this thing … this Initiative …"
"The Judah Initiative."
"Right," Aaron looked around, hearing the clumping footsteps of the golem on the other side of the house. "You want a beer?"
"Yeah," Dean said immediately, Sam nodding a moment later.
Getting three cans from the kitchen, Aaron handed two of them over and dropped into an armchair across from the sofa. Dean and Sam walked around the sofa and sat down, popping the tabs on the cans.
"So your grandfather, he was into all this supernatural stuff too?"
"Yeah," Dean said, swallowing a mouthful of beer. "Mom, Dad, grandparents, a truckload of cousins, whole family's lousy for it, but we –" He stopped, looking at the golem as it walked through the room. "Never had a golem."
"Right, yeah, we grew up in it," Sam continued. "But you didn't?"
Aaron leaned forward in the chair, rolling his eyes. "My grandfather's adventures, the Initiative, the golem, the war – they were the stories they told me when I was a kid … I thought it was make-believe, so did my parents. You know, fantasies to help him cope with all of the horrible stuff he'd seen. He was in Vitsyebsk when they massacred eight thousand people, I mean … who could blame him, right?"
"But every once in a while, crazy old Grandpa Bass would come back from one of his trips, hand me a twenty-dollar savings bond and say … 'One day, you'll inherit the mantle'." Aaron stared at the cheap low table in front of him. "Sure enough, a few days after he dies, this big box shows up at my apartment."
He looked at Sam. "He always said I'd know what to do. Which … was crap, because when I opened that box this big, naked, potato-faced lunatic wakes up and goes crazy." Aaron pointed at the golem, his voice rising in pitch and volume as the memory of the moment flashed back in its entirety.
"This boy," growled the golem from the window. "Knows nothing, observes none of the mitzvahs, labours on Sabbath, dines on swine." It turned and walked to Aaron. "He's no rabbi. Lheyvet hevreym!"
"Don't start with that stuff again," Aaron warned impatiently.
"Lheyvet hevreym!" The golem insisted, his voice louder.
"Enough! Please! Quiet time!"
The golem's eyes narrowed and he walked away.
"Alright, what was that? What was he saying?" Sam asked Aaron, leaning forward in the chair.
"It's Hebrew, for something like – take charge – but I have no idea what he means," Aaron shook his head frustratedly. "Look, I grew up in Short Hills, I cheated my way through Hebrew school, I never really listened to my grandfather or what he was saying."
"So, what? He just sends you this golem and expects you to work it out?" Dean asked, wondering if the rabbi really had been losing his marbles. Thing was like a tank, and it was obvious that it wasn't entirely under Aaron's control.
"He didn't get much of a chance to prepare me, I guess," Aaron said. "My parents, they did everything they could to prevent him from screwing me up with all his crazy talk. See after the war, my grandfather spent the rest of his life trying to track down something he called the Thule Society."
Sam nodded. "The Thule Society were Nazis, but not much interested in the politics of the situation, only in the opportunities." He realised he'd left the copies of the files he'd made in the car.
"Nazi necromancers," Dean said musingly, the conversation in the bar returning.
"Necro-who?" Aaron looked from Dean to Sam.
"Necromancers," Sam said quickly. "Witches. Sorcerers. Dark magic, mostly with dead people?"
"Okay," Aaron nodded slowly. "The only things I could find out on the Thule was that they were this twisted secret fraternity hell-bent on world-domination that sponsored the early days of the Nazi party." He shook his head a little. "My grandfather said that the Judah Initiative was formed to fight them."
Sam was nodding. "That's the cover story and it's stood up for the most part." He got to his feet. "I've got the files in car, on both the Thule Society and the order's files on the Judah Initiative, you need to read them."
He turned and walked out of the living room, opening the front door and going to the car. The files were in his bag, lying on the back seat and as he opened the rear door of the car, he heard the scrape of shoes along the concrete sidewalk. He stopped, looking up, scanning the shadows that chequered the street, the house fronts to either side of Aaron's home. He couldn't see any movement. It might have been a branch, or something scraping against a fence or siding, he thought uneasily, leaning into the car to retrieve the bag. He didn't really think it had been.
Returning to the house, he wondered what protection they could put up to keep the house safe – if any. Demon or angels, yeah, they had that down. Dark sorcerers and the ritual of necromancy, not so much. Another thing he needed to know, he thought, dragging in a deep breath.
"Here," he said, sitting down and dragging out the files. "This is the file we have on the Initiative." He passed it to Aaron and pulled out the second, thicker file. "And this is what the order has on the Thules."
"This is my grandfather," Aaron said, lifting the photograph from the inside of the file and pointing to one of the men in it. "I don't know any of the others, though."
"A lot of them were killed, in the war," Sam said. "What did your grandfather tell you about the Initiative?"
Aaron rubbed a hand over the bridge of his nose. "Ah … he said they formed in '41, after the massacre, to fight evil." He shook his head. "A lot of what he said was fragmentary, and it didn't make a lot of sense. He told me about raising the golem, when the bodies were being thrown into the river, and the survivors were singing Kaddish."
"Kaddish?" Dean looked at Sam, who lifted a shoulder.
"It's a Mourning Prayer," Aaron said. "For the souls of the dead."
"You should be saying Kaddish for Isaac! Your grandfather was murdered by the Thule," the golem said stridently, emerged from the darkness of the other room without warning, its face harsh. "Find them so I can do my work!"
"He's right," Aaron said softly, looking down at the file in his hands as the golem disappeared back into the shadows again. "My grandfather left a message on my machine, the day he died. And he said that he'd found something that the Thule were willing to kill him for. He said he was hiding it, in plain sight. He left me this – I don't know what it is, some kind of equation?" He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolding it and smoothing it out.
"It's not a phone number or an address or coordinates. QL-673W38?" He passed the paper to Dean.
"What is that? A combination?" Dean looked at it and passed it to Sam.
"No. It's call-number, for a book," he said, looking down at it. "It's the Library of Congress classification system. Q is Sciences … uh, QL ..." He stopped, looking up at Aaron. "Birds, I'm guessing. Let's go."
"Go?" Aaron said, brows rising.
"Go where?" Dean said at the same time.
"College library, he switched what he found with something else, and he hid the real thing in plain sight." Sam glanced back over his shoulder as he reached the door. "Come on."
Dean parked the Impala close to the doors, and turned off the engine, feeling the car lift several inches as the golem exited the rear door. He'd have to check the shocks on that side when they were done with this fucking job, he thought sourly.
He and Sam reached the glass doors and he pulled out his picks, slipping the wrench and pick into the simple lock and feeling his way through quickly. The lock clicked and he pulled the door open, Sam going in and looking in both directions.
Aaron walked in behind him. "So you two just break in wherever you go?"
Dean tucked the picks back into a soft leather case. "Yeah well, our dad wanted us to have a solid career to fall back on, just in case this 'hunter thing' didn't pan out."
Sam looked at the board on the wall next to the stairs. Sciences were on level two.
"Be right back," he said, running up the stairs. Behind him, Dean walked to the stairs and sat down, replacing the case in his coat pocket and Aaron and the golem stood and waited.
The stacks were well-spaced and the number for each shelf was at the end of the rows. Sam moved fast down the aisle, noting the ascending numbers as he passed them. QL – Zoology, he nodded to himself and turned into the narrow passage between the two rows of shelving. Five-fifty-four, six-twenty-nine, six-seventy-three. He stopped in Ornithology, and looked along the shelves. That certainly didn't belong there, he thought, seeing the edge of the ledger against the brightly coloured dust jackets of the modern books. Easing it out, he looked at it. It was an old-fashioned bookkeeper's ledger, thick and bound in red leather, the cover and corners blackened and charred a little. Opening it, he looked at the entries – some kind of number, identification perhaps, one or two paragraphs written longhand in German, dates, times. He closed the book and turned.
The sharp hiss was simultaneous with the bright, deep pain he felt in his neck, just under the jaw, and his hand flew up to find a soft-feathered object embedded in his neck. Pulling it out, Sam realised he couldn't see it properly, his vision rippling suddenly. Poison, he thought, staggering back against the shelf behind him. Some kind of poison. He turned for the end of the stack and lurched out, feeling his muscles beginning to resist his control, as the darkness seemed to close around his field of vision.
"I owe you thanks." The accented voice belonged to a man who emerged from the end row of books, and Sam spun around, falling back against a shelf as he squinted at the man, light flashing from a pair of round glasses. "The rabbi led me this far, but you …"
Sam widened his eyes as the man approached him, something long and straight in his hands that he couldn't make out.
"… you took me all the way."
It was getting hard to breathe, hard to think and Sam tried to keep his eyes open, wide enough to at least see what was happening, what was around him. The return cart stood in the aisle between them. He couldn't see a weapon or anything he could conceivably use as a weapon, not falling-down-drugged against an opponent who was unimpaired.
"Now, give me the ledger!" the man said sharply, stepping forward. Sam straightened and kicked out, a clumsy forward kick that nevertheless managed to connect with the end of the cart, sending it hard into the other man.
He twisted around, almost falling without the support of the shelf and forced himself to run along the aisle, expecting to hear that soft hiss and feel the pain of another dart hitting him at any moment, reaching the stairs and stumbling down the first few, barely able to see his brother or Aaron near the bottom.
"Ne-necromancer," he gasped out and stuttered down the next few steps, collapsing on the wide landing half-way down.
Dean was on his feet, his gun in his hand as he ran up the steps and dropped to one knee next to his brother. Sam's face had whitened, and spreading down his neck and up over his jaw, a darkly purple bruising grew as he watched it.
"Crap."
Behind him he heard a hiss and Aaron's cry as a dart struck the younger man in the abdomen, the black feather fletching standing out against the grey sweater. Dean watched Aaron drop to the floor beside the golem.
"CRAP!" He turned to look back up the stairs, acutely aware that he was lit up clearly in the lighting overhead and the upper level was mostly in shadow. He looked back down the stairs at the golem. "Hey! They're both gonna die unless we get whoever cast that spell!"
The golem walked toward the stairs, going up them with the same unhurried pace he'd used in the house, the length of stride taking the stairs three at a time without effort. Dean watched him for a moment, debating with himself. Stay or go with him? He looked down at Sam, back at Aaron. Both were helpless. He lifted his head as he heard the golem thumping along the second level. And it was damned near indestructible.
"Come on," he said to his brother, lifting Sam up, getting his shoulder under an arm and half-carrying, half-dragging Sam down the stairs to the ground level. He turned Sam's head, his mouth tightening as he saw the bruising ripple outward further, darkening in the centre as it went.
He turned to Aaron and pulled the dart from him, throwing it away. He didn't want to look at those same dark patterns spreading out over Aaron's skin. Were they penetrating deeper than the skin? Rotting the tissue and organs underneath?
Jesus, he thought, sucking in a deep breath, don't go there.
From the second level he heard a banging, something on metal, going on and on, and he shifted between his brother and Aaron, moving past them to the foot of the stairs, the Colt aimed at chest level above the top step. The barrel twitched right as he heard a dragging sound, then the golem came into the light, one massive fist holding the collar of a man, dragging him along behind.
The golem came down the stairs and Dean watched as the body he pulled bounced off every step. At the landing, it stopped, lifting and throwing the body down and the man in the black suit lifted his head slightly, turning to look down the stairs at Dean, blood dripping from a wide wound in the side of his head, from his mouth.
"Long live the Thules," the man said slowly. Dean's finger tightened against the trigger when the golem reached down and curled its hand around the man's collar, lifting the upper torso from the floor. The other hand stretched out and gripped the man's head, twisting it sharply to one side, the crack of the bone loud and distinct in the quiet library.
"Or not," Dean remarked prosaically. He slid his finger from the trigger, his thumb finding the safety automatically as he pushed the gun back into the waist band of his jeans. He looked at Sam, who was moving his head slowly, the livid bruising disappearing, his brother's eyes squeezing shut as he came back to consciousness. Not a poison then, he thought, his eyes narrowing as he watched the colour fade out of Sam's skin. A spell of some kind. Something that died along with its maker.
"You okay?" He crouched down beside Sam. Sam looked at him blearily.
"Can't see too good," he muttered, wincing as he turned his head to one side.
"Thule dude poisoned you," Dean told him, glancing over his shoulder. "And Aaron. You both need some rest."
"No argument," Sam said, putting his hand on the ground and trying to get up. He wobbled for a moment and fell back. "Might not be that fast."
Dean nodded, ducking his head as he dragged Sam's around his shoulders, and lifted. He looked at the golem.
"Can you take him?"
The golem nodded, walking down the stairs and picking up Aaron as lightly and easily as if he'd been a child. Feeling Sam's weight over his shoulders, Dean shifted his brother's position a little more and hooked his arm around Sam's ribs, staggering after them.
Getting Aaron into one bedroom and Sam into the other, Dean looked at the small puncture wound that was all that remained of the magician's poison. What the hell had it been? Not a straight poison; that would've remained when the man died. Something he controlled? A spell that was somehow able to be activated by contact with the victim? He shook his head tiredly. He'd never seen anything like that. Never even heard of it. He wondered if there would be a reference to a spell like that in the library of the order.
He walked out of the bedroom and closed the doors, looking longingly at the sofa, but turning to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee instead. They'd been behind every step of the way on this case. Staying that way was going to get them killed.
Carrying the cup of hot black coffee to the living room, he pulled the order's file on the Thule across the table and opened it.
Next morning.
Sam rubbed his jaw gingerly as he walked into the kitchen. Dean looked up at him from the table and got up, pulling out a chair on his way to the coffee pot. He heard Sam drop into it as he poured his brother a cupful from the freshly brewed pot.
Taking it gratefully, Sam sipped the coffee and looked at his brother's face, belatedly noting the shadows under his eyes. "You didn't sleep?"
"Did some reading instead," Dean allowed, pouring himself another cup. "Nearly all the hard-core members of the society got away at the end of the war."
Sam nodded. "Yeah, it was one of the things the Initiative was still involved with, tracking them down."
"Well, they're not that hard to find," Dean said, returning to the table and sitting down. "But they're fucking near impossible to touch."
"What do you mean?"
Dean turned the laptop screen toward him, and opened the file. A pile of photographs, mostly grainy black and white, sat on the top of the pages. "Check out the top one."
Sam put down his cup and picked up the photograph. "What am I looking for?"
"Dietrich Eckart, third from the end, back row," Dean said, tapping the edge of the laptop's screen. "And here he is today."
Sam shifted his gaze from the cold-eyed, dark-haired man in the photograph to the media photo in the article. It was the same man. And he hadn't aged a day. The heading of the article was even more ominous. "Strasburg Business Tycoon Donates Twenty Million to Charity". The picture showed Eckart smiling as he shook the hand of a smartly-dressed and coiffed woman in front of an orphanage.
"Guess that Hitler was just the jumping off point?" He looked over the screen at his brother. Dean nodded.
"Looks like." He flipped through file, stopping as he came to the later section. "Eckart was one of seven men who were never publicly members of the Thules. They were careful to keep their hands clean, and they weren't even questioned after the war – no fleeing to South America or Africa, just business as usual."
"How come no one noticed that he hasn't aged?" Sam frowned at the photograph.
"Oh, that's Dietrich Eckart, Junior," Dean said, his lip curling up. "Full paperwork, so far as I can find out. He'll no doubt get married in a year or two and pull the same trick again."
"What about the others?"
"Got a Rosenberg in France, a Karl Harrer in South Africa, Julius Lehmann in London, Hans Frank living in our own New York City, Karl Haushofer in Italy and Gottfried Feder in Morocco," Dean confirmed.
"Frank and Rosenberg were tried at Nuremberg, and put to death," Sam contradicted, running a hand through his hair as he dragged back the few details he remembered of the trials that had been a part of his pre-law course at Stanford.
"Not them. Someone who looked and sounded like them but not them," Dean said. "Same with Eckart, supposed to have died in '23. And a couple of the others, supposed to have committed suicide." He leaned across the table, flipping through the pages of the file. "There were bodies. There were walking and talking Xerox copies of those men, but it wasn't them."
"Crap."
"Yeah." Dean leaned back in his chair, eyes hooded as he looked at the file. "Like fucking Roman all over again."
"This is …" Sam trailed off unwillingly, looking at Dean.
"Out of our league?"
He nodded.
"Maybe. Maybe not. They're human, Sam, sort of," Dean said softly. "Regular bullet will do the job."
"How do we find them? Get close to them? Without them seeing us coming a mile off?"
"Yeah, well, that's what we have to figure out," Dean agreed, straightening up in the chair and stretching his back. He flexed the fingers of his right hand. It was stiff and sore but just bruised, not sprained or cracked. "Speaking of figuring out, that book you rescued is all in another language."
"German, yeah," Sam said, finishing his coffee. "We need a translator."
"Lucky for us we're in a college town," Dean said, getting up.
Language Lab, East Building.
Dean looked at the woman sitting on the other side of the table. He had no idea how Sam'd found her, but he approved. In her late twenties, Clarissa Montrose had smooth, creamy skin, wide, grey eyes and long, coffee-brown hair that hung in curls and waves down over her shoulders.
"You need this translated?" she was asking Sam, and her voice was warm and expressive, low for a woman, with a very faint lilt to it, suggesting that English wasn't her first language.
"Yeah, at least some of it." Sam pushed the ledger across the table to her, and glanced at his brother. Dean's gaze was locked onto her face and he suppressed a smile.
She opened the book and looked down the columns, and they both saw her face pale slightly as she took in the first entry.
"What?"
"This –" She looked up at him, her eyes wide, her throat working as she swallowed. "This is disgusting."
"What's it say?" Dean leaned forward across the table.
Looking back down at the entry, Clarissa read the entry aloud, her voice thick and her face tight. "The merchandise has been delivered to Šumilina. Three hundred in total, one hundred males, eighty females, one hundred and twenty issue. Preliminary experimentation in stimulation tolerance will begin as soon as the processing is complete."
She closed her eyes and the book, sitting still for a long moment. Dean looked at her and then at his brother as he replayed the words in his head. Merchandise. Issue. Stimulation tolerance. When the meanings sank in, he swallowed against the taste of bile that had risen in his throat.
"This is a record of what they were doing?" He looked at Sam.
"Looks like," Sam agreed quietly. "No wonder they killed Bass for it."
Clarissa's eyes snapped open and she stared at him. "I cannot do this."
"No, I – we – understand. We don't need any more detail," Sam said quickly, watching her get up and gather her coat and purse.
Dean sighed. He'd been going to ask her out, get a drink, something to eat … etcetera … but he had the feeling that possibility was out the window now. Typical.
"Alright, this is hot stuff, and we can't ask just anyone to translate it for us," he said to Sam, getting to his feet.
Sam picked up the ledger and nodded. "Give Garth a call?"
Dean shrugged. The man might know of someone who spoke German and could be trusted to keep what was written a secret. He felt a prickle along the nerves of his neck and increased his stride.
"We should get back to Aaron, he's probably a target too by now."
Isaac Bass' House.
Aaron was still sleeping when they came into the house, the golem prowling the rooms ceaselessly, slowing to look at them carefully, then moving on.
"How do we find them?" Sam said, dropping the ledger on the table as he pulled the laptop from his bag.
"No clue," Dean said, walking to the fridge and pulling out a couple of cans. "The other thing is what do we do about the man-monster in there?"
Sam looked at the doorway. "There's plenty of lore on them."
"Well, I get the feeling that Aaron's control over it is not that strong," Dean said, popping both tabs and setting one can beside his brother. "And if it decides to go solo, we need a way to put it down."
Nodding, Sam opened the laptop, typing in the query. He got over a million hits and sighed as he clicked on the first. Dean dialled Garth's number and wandered into the living room to talk to him.
"Garth, hey. Yeah, need some help. You know any hunters who speak fluent German?"
He looked at Sam as he came back in a minute later. His brother was resting his head on one hand as he wrote with the other.
"Anything?"
"Nothing solid," Sam said. "I mean … the lore is all over the place. They're made of clay and blood and earth, brought to life in times of need. According to one legend, it can be shut down if you erase one of the letters off its forehead." He looked up at Dean expectantly.
"I didn't see any letters on clay-face." Dean frowned.
"Exactly," Sam said, looking back at his notes. "So, sidebar that. Another one, uh, some have a scroll in their mouths which you're supposed to rip out."
"Wouldn't that give him some sort of lisp or something?" Dean reasoned tiredly.
Sam snorted. "Classically, they're even supposed to speak. We do know that he took on an entire camp full of heavily armed German soldiers and Thule necromancers … and won."
"One badass humble figurine," Dean said, looking at the floor.
"That we have no idea how to put back in the box," Sam confirmed.
"Great."
"So that's your plan?" Aaron said from the living room doorway. "Taking out my golem?"
He walked toward the kitchen, and both Dean and Sam shifted their positions, a little defensively.
"It's not a plan," Sam said, keeping his voice low and reasonable.
"We would just feel a lot better if we knew how, that's all," Dean added, looking at Aaron.
"What makes you think you have any right to make that decision?" Aaron looked at them.
Dean blinked, his exhaustion rapidly disappearing as anger took over. "Believe me, if we need the right – we will take it," he said distinctly.
"Look, he may be a pain in the ass, but he's my responsibility," Aaron said, holding his ground despite the lurch his stomach had given when the hunter had straightened up and stared coldly at him.
"Aaron, the golem was built to go to war," Sam said calmly, flicking a warning look at his brother. "You're not trained for that. How're you going to take that on?"
Dean watched Aaron absorb that.
"I don't know."
"There are some weapons that you can't keep idle," he said carefully to the man in front of him. "You either shut them down, or you have to use them, in the way they're supposed to be used."
Aaron's gaze dropped away and Dean saw the choice register in his face. Turning away, now, going back to the life he'd lived before his grandfather had died. Or taking the other path, to a life that was going to be hard, and brutal and might get him killed. That would be lonely and filled with pain … and that would mean something.
It was a fucking awful choice, he knew. One that offered cowardice and a loss of belief on the one hand, or a life lived without connection or comfort on the other. He'd faced that choice a few times now. Every single time, he'd wanted to choose to walk away. Every single time, he hadn't been able to.
The front door exploded back on its hinges, splinters flying out from around the lock and Dean shoved Aaron back against the wall as a dark-suited man burst into the hallway. He reached for the shotgun in the gear bag as Sam grabbed the ledger, pushing it under his satchel next to the wall.
The man facing Dean strode forward, gripping the end of the shotgun's barrel before he could cock the damned thing and yanking it forward slightly as he swung a fist into Dean's face, sending him flying backwards.
Sam lurched to his feet, hitting a second man then freezing as the end of the Uzi machine pistol centred on his chest. The third man took a fistful of Aaron's shirt, dragging him up the wall and holding him pinned there.
There was a low growl from the hall and Dean looked around. It increased in volume as the golem came into the room, striding to the man holding Aaron and grabbing him, arms tightly wrapped around his chest, the muscle-man's tongue forced out as he was lifted from the floor and squeezed.
"Enough!"
The command cracked through the room and the golem stopped, dropping the man he held to the floor as he turned to face the sorcerer who'd managed to escape him the last time.
"There you are, a grim piece of work, after all these years."
"Eckart," the golem breathed as he stared at the man by the front door. He began to walk toward him, stride lengthening and speed increasing as he got closer.
"Hevmer shel adem lhesgeyr at bevned ley," Eckart said, his voice deep and measured, raising his hand, palm outward, to the golem.
The golem stopped at the doorway, shoulders dropping as the animation died out of it. Aaron stared at the still figure in disbelief as Eckart walked past it, patting it gently on one shoulder.
Dean looked up at the SMG pointed at him, a flicked glance to one side showing his Colt under the folds of his coat, lying on the floor less than a foot away. Sam was moved from the kitchen to the doorway, and each of the gunmen had a single target.
Eckart looked around and walked back to the golem, standing in front of it.
"By the Covenant of your makers, Clay of Adam, surrender your bond unto me," he said softly, and lifted his hand, holding it under the golem's mouth. Its jaw dropped open and the small scroll fell out, into Eckart's open palm.
Eckart turned away, looking up at Aaron as he untied the scroll. "So you are the golem's rabbi?"
The black-suited gunman pushed Aaron across the room to Eckart, holding him by the back of his sweater as Eckart unrolled the scroll and read the names it held.
"You woke him, but you didn't take possession of him," he said contemptuously, looking at the young man's wide eyes, watching Aaron's gaze dip to the scroll in his hand.
Eckart smiled. "You write your name on this scroll, boy," he explained. "That's how you lheyvet hevreym."
"I didn't know what he meant," Aaron said, his gaze cutting back to the scroll.
"Knowledge is power," the necromancer said slowly. "Isn't it?"
He swung his arm, the back of his hand hitting Aaron and knocking him into the corner.
The three gunmen shifted their positions, covering Dean and Sam as Eckart settled himself in an armchair. "Now, which of you is going to tell me where I can find a certain red ledger?"
The bald gunman moved around the rooms, looking for it. Sam lifted his head.
"How 'bout you screw yourself?"
"Ah, gentlemen," Eckart said, drawing his gloves off slowly. "Is there a need for conflict and ill mannered remarks?"
"No, it's a necessity," Dean said. "We don't play well with witches."
"Oh, we are more than just witches, hunter," Eckart said, leaning forward. "That's what you are, isn't it? A hunter of shadows?"
"And you're the Commandant," Sam said coldly. "The one who authorised all those experiments."
"Invented, if you don't mind," Eckart corrected him. "Many, many spells require living subjects, as I'm sure you know."
Dean looked at Aaron, tuning out the conversation. The shotgun was three feet from him, behind the men who were covering them. Meeting his gaze, Aaron shook his head a little, his eyes widening in fear.
"Not exactly much for loyalty, are you?" Sam said, looking at Eckart. "One minute you're tight as ticks with the Nazis, the next you never heard of them."
"Loyalty is a much-overrated commodity," the Thule mage said with a casual shrug. "It requires trust and respect, whereas fear is an easier tool to use."
"And what about you?" Sam asked. "You're not … undead? You cast a little Forever-Twenty-One spell on yourself, like your little friend at the library?"
Eckart's eyes narrowed slightly. "His name was Torvald. And you will suffer for that."
The bald-headed man moved next to Sam, lifting the satchel and pulling the ledger from beneath it. Sam's head turned slightly and his mouth thinned. The gunman walked back to Eckart, holding it out.
"I gotta say, spell or no spell, he broke easy," Dean said conversationally, feeling his brother moving slightly further away from him, seeing Aaron looking at the heavy timber legs of the smashed cupboard beside him. If he did it, if he found the courage to move, that would be their chance.
Eckart took the ledger reverently, opening the cover and reading the first page of the entries. He flicked through several more then closed the book, turning to look at Dean with a smile.
Keeping his gaze fixed on the necromancer, Dean caught the movement of Aaron's hand, curling around the long, thick piece of timber from the corner of his eye.
"Let me tell you what I see – a magic Jew at my feet, not a master in sight, our sacred secrets safe once again." Eckart got to his feet, looking down at them. "We are more powerful than you can imagine, and this is our time. Unfortunately for you, we will not meet again."
Aaron gripped the timber tight and sprang to his feet, swinging it wildly at head height, the words of his grade school baseball coach shouting in his mind to keep his elbow level and the reverberation of the blow as it hit the man's skull travelling up his arm just as the coach said it would on a sweet spot.
Dean dropped to the floor and rolled instantly, his fingers curling around the Colt's grip and he was lying on his back, not bothering to free the gun from his coat, firing through it at the man in front of him.
Sam had rolled the other way, grabbing the Taurus from the satchel and shooting, his bullet hitting the other gunman a fraction of a second after Dean's target went down. They got to their feet, guns trained on the bald man as he backed to the hall and the front door, dragging Aaron along, held in front of him, releasing him and running when he was out of their view.
Eckart rose from the floor unsteadily, his hand pressed against the back of his head, his gaze cutting around the room. "Fools!"
"Guessing you're rethinking the value of loyalty right about now," Dean suggested mockingly. "Sucks when things change so fast, right?"
Eckart lifted his gaze, staring at him. "You can kill me, but you will never kill all the Thule."
Dean's finger tightened smoothly on the trigger, pulling gently past the point of resistance. The two guns fired at the same time, both bullets punching through Eckart's head and the window behind him. He dropped to the chair, the ledger falling to the carpet with a thump.
Lowering the gun, Dean looked at the body. "Well … that's a start."
He heard Sam's soft snort behind him and walked to the body, kicking Eckart's arm clear as he bent to pick up the ledger. Handing it to his brother, Dean turned to look at Aaron.
"You okay?"
Aaron was standing beside the golem. He nodded.
"Yeah," he breathed, glancing back at the slack face of the golem. "Yeah."
Sam looked at the bodies. "Got some cleaning up to do here."
Four hours later.
Aaron unlocked the door, walking inside, his body aching from the digging, his feelings numb from the events of the day, but his mind sharp and clear and his decision already made.
"Well, now we know," Dean said, walking past the golem into the living room. "Paper beats golem, fire beats undead, Nazi zombie freaks."
Sam looked from the golem to the man standing beside him. "So? What do you say, Aaron? I mean, we got a place where we can keep him."
Reaching into his pocket, Aaron pulled the scroll out. "No. I mean … Eckart might be dead, but you heard him. The Thule are still out there … hidden. Active."
He looked down as his fingers unrolled the cloth, stopping when he saw the last name on the list. "That was my grandfather."
Holding the scroll, he reached into his pocket again, drawing out a pen. "He left me something important. Something only I can do."
Aaron wrote his name in Hebrew, under his grandfather's, rolling the scroll up tightly and tying the string around it again.
"Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba," he spoke the words of Kaddish, almost under his breath.
Walking to the golem he put the scroll inside the creature's mouth and the great jaw closed again. Aaron watched as it straightened up, turning slowly to him.
"B'al'ma di v'ra khir'utei."
"Looks like I'm the Judah Initiative now," he said softly to the golem.
"Lheyvet hevreym," the golem returned gently.
Aaron looked at him, confusion filling his face. "But … I thought I did."
"Yes," the golem said, bowing its head to him.
"V'yam'likh mal'khutei b'chayeikhon uv'yomeikhon."
"Keep the files," Sam said, stacking them on the kitchen table. "I – we haven't been through all the documents in the library yet, but if we find any that relate to the Thule or to the Initiative, I'll send them to Yavoklevich. Keep in touch with him."
Aaron looked at him, nodding. "I'm insane, right? To be doing this?"
Dean tipped his head back, looking at the ceiling. "Yep."
"But it's important," Aaron said, looking at him. Dean closed his eyes.
"Yep."
"And someone has to do it," Aaron pressed him.
"Yeah."
"My grandfather … I did him a great injustice, you know." He looked down at the table, at the files and the signet ring of the late Eckart. "He was something I'd never seen before, something I'd never thought about before. But when I was a kid, I knew it, knew it so deeply it never needed to be said aloud."
Sam's brow creased up slightly. "Knew what?"
"Knew he was a hero," Aaron said simply, turning away from them. "He told me, he said it over and over and it never, ever sunk in until that man was standing here, ready to kill us all just because we were in the way, because we'd seen his filthy secrets …" He drew in a deep breath and turned back to them, his eyes a little too bright, his jaw muscle twitching faintly.
"He said … he told me … 'all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.' I know that's a quote from someone else, Burke or Tolstoy or whoever. But it was the touchstone of his life, and now, I guess, mine too."
Sam flicked a look at Dean. His brother was looking at the floor.
"Ours too, I guess," Sam said, looking back at Aaron. "You're not on your own, anyway."
Lebanon, Kansas
Sam walked down the stairs and along the hallway, knowing where Dean would be. He'd added the copy of the Thule ledger to the file, along with the translation they'd gotten from a friend of Garth's. He'd read a little of that translation, putting it down when he realised that he was getting angry with no way to get vengeance. If Aaron needed help, they would help, he thought. But they had another job to do first.
In the store-room, Dean was walking slowly along the shelves, reading label by label, looking down at the list he held in his hand. Sam glanced at the table in the centre of the room, already stacked with boxes.
"We got everything?"
Dean looked around, shaking his head. "No, I think we're gonna be missing a couple of things, but if Cas ever shows up again, he can get them."
Sam leaned against the table. "You alright with this?"
His brother turned slowly and looked at him. "You mean – this? Being here, being a part of this?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"I'm not sure," Dean said honestly. "It's a hell of a base, you know, everything we need …"
"But?"
"Yeah." He leaned back against the shelf, trying to find the words to describe the sense that they weren't as free anymore. The trouble was it was a dream to imagine that they'd ever been free. And Sam would certainly argue that case.
"I don't know what it is," he finally admitted. "Something in me, something that doesn't feel comfortable being –"
"Caged?" Sam offered, watching Dean's brows rise slightly.
"I feel it too, Dean," Sam said quietly. "Maybe it's what was planned for us … but what bothers me is by who? For what purpose?"
"So … we use what we need, maybe don't get too caught up in all?" Dean suggested, not really knowing what he wanted to say.
"I don't think it'll work that way," Sam said, chewing on the corner of his lip as he thought about it. "But I don't know what way it will work." He folded his arms over his chest, looking at the floor. "All I know is that Aaron was right. We can't do nothing and let it go by – I can't be a pure scholar the way Henry was or wanted to be, just observing and recording events and not doing something about them."
Dean's mouth quirked a little. "Henry was pretty keen to get in on the action when it came looking for him."
"Maybe," Sam allowed. "I just know that I can't. I like this place. I like the fact that we might have the answers, the resources to really help. But I have to fight too."
"Yeah, well, it's not like I'm planning to go strictly solo any time soon," Dean said lightly, relief that his brother wasn't planning on turning bookworm completely filling him.
"You just about done in here?" Sam straightened up, looking around.
"Yeah, couple more shelves."
"I'll see you up there."
Dean nodded, looking down at the list. Three things for the bombs that the store-room didn't seem to have in stock but he was pretty sure Cas could get. If the angel ever came back.
He was a little surprised at Sam's decision. He'd thought that being here, ferreting out the answers and solving the problems would be his brother's idea of heaven. He thought that there'd be times when he could hunt solo, if need be. But there would always be times when he'd need Sam, need someone to put his back against when he faced the darkness. He wondered absently if Sam felt that too. He hoped so.
Looking along the last couple of shelves, he found another box, sea serpent scales, and pulled it off the shelf and put it on the table, tucking the list under it. He walked to the door and flipped off the light, closing the door behind him.
All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing. Sam had felt the resonance in the words. He had as well. It was hard to walk away from, that idea, once it had rooted in the mind and heart and soul.
Had he done nothing? Down there? Actus me invito factus non est meus actus. The act done by me, against my will, is not my act. Sam had tried to convince him with that one. But it had never been about what he'd done. He understood that. It was then, now and forever about what he'd felt. And the creeping belief that in those feelings, in the midst of the screams that still echoed through his mind in the deep watches of the night, in the remembered scents and tastes and tactile memories … he'd damned himself.