Chapter 34 The Devil You Know
Lebanon, Kansas
The long, high-ceilinged room was only half-lit by the overhead lights, the corners and some of the cases and shelving in shadows and a murky dimness that even his eyes couldn't penetrate too well. The order had taken a bulk order in some funky old lightbulbs, and he hadn't found the rest of the stash yet, and the bulbs in the lower levels were burning out at a steady rate.
Dean stopped by a case and looked at the number. He held the corresponding catalogue for this part of the collection and he found the number listed. LHW001499432. The Spear of Destiny. The listing contained a short description. He'd finally figured out that the prefix 'LHW' meant 'lethal holy weapon', and the numbers had started at 000000001. It was some collection here.
"Spear of Destiny," he read, in a soft mutter to himself. "The Roman spear that killed Christ on the crucifix. Mixed legends and myths about its power. Claims of being able to protect the bearer from any evil, able to kill any corporeal or non-corporeal entity with a touch. Bears the blood of Christ on the tip. May be the only weapon capable of killing the archangel, Lucifer. See related reference LHM003949493, Wandering Soldier."
Looking at the small four inch spear tip in the glass case, he could see the faint rust-coloured patterns around it.
"Could've used this three years ago," he said, turning away in annoyance and walking to the next case.
He'd woken four hours ago, snapping upright from a nightmare and had decided against trying for more sleep. He'd been getting dressed when he'd heard his brother, coughing down the hall. Two days ago, he'd found a glass with a red line around the rim. But Sam still wasn't talking about it.
You told him you'd follow him, he reminded himself for what was possibly the five-hundredth time. Told him you'd trust him when he said he was good. That the trust he'd extended warily and with conditions wasn't being met was bothering him more than he was ready to admit just yet.
A part of that was the waiting. The paste Sam had mixed up had done a great job, and aside from the residual stiffness that he was slowly working out, he could feel himself getting antsy about doing something again. A job. Out there. Fighting evil. Saving people. All that good stuff. The thought brought a derisive inward snort, only faintly edged with bitterness. He'd only started looking at the order's collections because he couldn't think of what else to do, and he'd figured that knowing what they had was probably going to be a good idea, somewhere down the track.
"Dean?"
Sam's voice sounded distant and Dean put the catalogue down and walked to the door of the room, sticking his head out and looking down the hall.
"Here!"
"Where?" His brother sounded a little closer.
"Collection rooms!" Dean yelled back as he walked down the hall in the direction of the stairs.
He stopped at the end of the hall as Sam came around the corner. "What?"
"I think I've got a job," his brother said, turning on his heel and heading back up the stairs. "Weirder than usual."
"How can it be weirder than usual?" Dean asked discontentedly, following Sam back to the library. He surprised and more irritated to find that he didn't actually want to leave now that the opportunity had arisen. What he wanted was to find the magic book that detailed all the tablets that God had seen fit to write down, already transcribed and filed neatly under W for Word. And he wanted to know what the hell was wrong with his brother before they headed out into the big bad again.
"Look at this," Sam said, throwing himself into the chair at the polished walnut table. "Dead bodies showing up all over the mid-west last week. Bidden, Indiana … Downer's Grove, Illinois … uh, Novai, Michigan … and then again, last night in Lincoln Springs, Missouri."
"What are you looking at?" Dean asked, rubbing his eyes. Could've used the extra four hours, he thought absently. His gaze dropped and he saw the trash can next to his brother. It was filled with tissues. He looked up and saw the box on the table next to Sam's elbow.
"VICAP, got tagged because of the MOs," Sam said.
"This is the punchline, right?" Dean glanced back at the trash can. They'd been screwed up when they'd been pitched in, but he could see still the red on most of them, soaked through the thin layers of soft paper. "The bit that's us?"
"Right," Sam said. "Each of the victims had severe burns around their eyes, hands and feet. Puncture wounds in the backs of their hands. Oh, and their eyes and internal organs? They were liquefied."
"That sounds like us," Dean allowed, dragging his gaze from the trash to his brother's face.
"Yeah," Sam said, glancing back at the screen. "There's no link between the victims. One was a real estate agent. The second victim was the priest for the parish. Third victim was a local historian. Last night was a teacher –"
"Those wounds sound … religious," Dean said, thinking about them.
"Yeah, to me too." He looked up and saw the wary expression on Dean's face. "What's the problem?"
"Nothing," Dean hedged, shifting in the chair. "You feeling ready to get back into the angel/demon thing?"
Sam tilted his head slightly, weighing Dean's words against the decided unease he could see in his brother's body language.
"You were the one who just about ripped apart every muscle and sinew you have drawing an immortal's bow, remember?"
"Yeah, right," Dean backtracked. "No, I'm okay, I just wanted to make sure, you know, that you're fine … as well."
"Dean, you've asked me that at least fifty times in the last week. I'm good. Same as last time you asked."
"Right, okay then." He looked at the table.
Sam leaned back in the chair. "So, what happened to trusting me to tell you if there was anything wrong? That was you, right?"
Dean suppressed the urge to throw the contents of the trash can over the table. "Yeah, no. That's right. You're good. I get it," he said shortly, getting up. "Let's get over to Missouri."
"Yeah."
I-80 E, Missouri
There probably wasn't much that was more aggravating than being caught trying to wriggle out of a promise by your kid brother, Dean thought morosely as he stared at the wet concrete ahead of them. On the other hand, he had to wonder if he wasn't being chumped out by everyone, because he seemed to be the only one left who remembered about keeping promises, and being loyal, and letting people fucking know what was going on.
Sure about that? The annoying voice in his head asked. There were certain occasions, after all, where you didn't –
He looked over at Sam. "Which one is in Missouri?"
"The teacher," Sam said, pulling the file from the pile beside him and opening it. "Anne Morton. Taught history at the high school, had an interest in the history of the town, apparently."
"Who are we talking to?"
"Her husband. He found her body," Sam grimaced as he read the police report.
"That'll be fun."
"That's why they pay us the big bucks."
Dean snorted and reached for the tape deck.
Lincoln Springs, Missouri
Sam stood in the living room of the house awkwardly, looking down at his notebook, Eric Morton standing in front of him.
"We just a few routine follow up questions about your wife," he said, lifting his gaze. The man looked like he'd been hammered by the recent events of his life, and he felt a stab of pity for him. Behind him, he could hear Dean moving around the room, looking at everything. "Did she have any enemies?"
"Agent, honestly, I can't think of a soul who'd want to hurt her," Morton said tiredly. "Even after everything that happened."
"Everything that happened?" Dean turned to face him.
"About a week ago … something … changed," the man said slowly. "In Anne. She was out of sorts. Not herself at all."
Sam's brow creased up a little. "Out of sorts – how?"
Morton sighed. "It'll be easier if I show you."
He turned around and they followed him out of the room and down the hall.
The basement door was opposite the kitchen doorway and a flight of wooden stairs led down into a large open area, roughly lined and floored in concrete tiles. Workbenches and shelving stood around the walls and in the centre a ping-pong table held what seemed to be a roughly constructed model of a town. Sam looked up, staring at the dozens of small plastic bags, filled with what looked like soil, that were suspended over it.
Sam frowned as he saw the street, familiarity nagging at him. "Is this … is this a model of here? This town?"
Morton nodded unhappily. The replication had been made of milk cartons and shoe boxes and cereal boxes, all haphazardly smeared with grey primer and, Sam thought with a frown, pretty close to scale.
"She stopped sleeping," he said to Sam. "She stopped eating. She started going out in the middle of the night god knows where. I tried to talk to her." He gestured a little helplessly at the model. "But she would just mutter to herself."
"About what?" Sam asked, moving closer to look at the bags hanging from the ceiling.
"Something about an orchard?" Morton said uncertainly. He shrugged. "Finally I just followed her one night. She went to the playground," he said, pointing out the location on the table. "Over here, at the elementary school. And she started digging."
Sam glanced across at Dean. He shook his head very slightly.
"I followed her for three nights. She would leave with these little bags of dirt," Morton said, looking at the bags over the table. "These represent the holes she'd dug in the ground, all over town."
"These holes," Dean asked. "They were around six feet deep?"
"No," Morton said, shaking his head. "She would dig for hours. She never broke a sweat. It was like watching a machine. She would dig straight down … twelve feet, maybe fifteen feet. At first, the county was understanding … then they started to get nasty."
"Did you notice anything else?" Sam asked, looking at the number of bags. Fifteen foot deep holes all over town. He was surprised she hadn't been locked up.
Morton looked down at the model, dragging in a breath. "The third night, when she came home, I confronted her. She was on the phone –"
"Do you know who she was talking to?" Dean asked him. He shook his head.
"No." He looked from Dean to Sam. "But I know what I saw. And it wasn't my Annie. After I called her out … her eyes … they turned black."
He looked away, his face tense. "I know I must've imagined it, I know I did. But I left, I went to the bar, I had too much to drink … I couldn't get that image out of my head," he admitted, staring down at the table. "And by the time I came back …"
His voice trailed away as his shoulders slumped dejectedly. "I should've stayed."
Dean glanced at Sam. She'd been found at the kitchen table, the report had read. Tied to it, puncture wounds through the back of both hands, strange ones. The coroner hadn't been able to identify the object used to make them. Her eyes had been burned out of the sockets, and all the internal organs had been soup.
"Mr Morton, we'd like to take another look at this model –" Sam started to say. Morton nodded, lifting a hand.
"I'm moving into my sister's place today," he said, pulling a set of keys from his pocket and tossing them to Sam. "I can't be here anymore. Just leave the keys in the mail slot when you're done."
"We will. Thank you very much for your time," Sam said, putting the house keys into his coat.
"We're sorry for your loss," Dean added quietly, turning back to the stairs. He stopped suddenly. "Oh, when your wife began to change, did you notice a smell in the house?"
Morton looked up at him, his face twisting slightly in confusion. "The sulphur?"
Dean looked at Sam.
"I couldn't figure out where it was coming from … how did you know?" the man asked, doubt in his eyes.
"There have been three other victims of this killer, sir," Sam said smoothly. "We're just verifying the reports."
"Oh. Do you, uh, know where it came from? The smell?" Morton asked vaguely.
"No, sir, I'm sorry."
"So … someone's killing demons," Dean said as they walked down the stairs from the porch and onto the street. "Feels like we should send a thank you note."
"Question," Sam said, ignoring the comment, his brows drawn together as he thought back over the conversation. "Who's killing demons? And why? And how?"
"That's three questions, Sammy," Dean retorted, walking around the car to the driver's door. Sam looked at him across the roof.
"And since when does a demon possess someone and start digging in the dirt? You ever heard of that? A demon possession that's not purely for the fun of it? Does any of this seem right to you?"
Dean shrugged. "I like the part about killing demons," he said lightly. "That seems right."
Sam sighed. "I need to get a trace on that call."
"I need to eat," Dean countered. "Can we do both at the same time?"
"Yeah."
The Impala pulled up in front of another neatly painted house, two suburbs away. Dean and Sam got out, Sam still talking on the phone.
"Well, thank you very much for all your help, I really appreciate your time. Right. Bye." He closed the connection and looked at his brother as Dean came around the front of the car.
"So, real estate guy's wife said he was acting weird," he said, putting his phone in his pocket. "Historian's husband said the same, just got all obsessive, and then … weird." He gestured vaguely. "Aah … no one saw any black eyes, but still … you know, where there's smoke … you know. I wonder what they're all looking for."
They walked up the path to the house, climbing the steps to the porch. Dean flicked through his notebook. There wasn't much there. Just … weird.
"Well, Wendy Rice was the last person to speak to Anne, so let's see if she can tell us," he said, closing the notebook and looking at the number on the wall.
Sam knocked lightly at the glass-paned door. Demons searching for something. It wasn't unheard of and Crowley'd had his minions searching for a lot of things lately, but not using random people to do it, and not attracting someone or something that was killing them off with the efficiency of a Howitzer.
The door opened and both men smoothed out their expressions to identical bland smiles as Wendy Rice looked at them.
"Special Agent Lang," Sam said, holding up his badge. "This is my partner, Special Agent Tandy. We'd like to ask you a few questions about Anne Morton?"
"Oh, uh … of course," Wendy said, lifting a hand uncomfortably to the rollers in her hair as she looked at him. "Please come in."
She stepped back, opening the door wider, a slender woman in her mid-thirties, dressed in workout grey leggings and a couple of layers of brightly-coloured soft stretch shirts.
Dean walked past her, followed by Sam, both looking over the house discreetly as they walked into the living room off the hall.
"Would you, um, like some coffee?" Wendy closed the door and followed them.
"Black, please," Dean said, nodding. Sam glanced at him and caught the flicker of his brother's eyelid.
"Black would be great, thank you," he said to Wendy.
"Just make yourselves comfortable, I won't be a minute," she said, backing out of the room.
"What?" Sam looked at his brother, who was standing next to a bureau. Dean looked at him and tapped the lined notepad sitting on top.
"Notes," he said in a low voice. "Wendy's conversation with Anne, the night she died."
Sam walked over and skimmed down the page. The handwriting was thin and spidery, with a lot of abbreviations. He backed away to the sofa as they heard footsteps in the hall.
Wendy came in, holding a plain wooden tray with three white mugs on it. The rollers were gone, leaving a tousled mop of shiny curls spilling chaotically over her shoulders. She looked at them as they sat down, putting the tray on the coffee table.
"I'd never met her before she called the other night," she said, picking up the mugs and passing one to each.
"Now, why was she calling you?" Sam asked, holding the mug.
Wendy looked at Dean, then back to him. "She was looking to find an original map of the city," she said. "She wasn't very specific about what she wanted it for, but she did mention that she was looking for an old orchard, one that had gone missing in the rebuilding."
"Rebuilding?" Dean asked, putting the mug on the table.
"The town has been rebuilt several times," Wendy confided, waving a hand vaguely. "We're mostly on a flood plain, and the river has flooded six times in the last four hundred years." She put her mug down with a small shrug, getting to her feet and walking to a cupboard near the door. Pulling out a thick binder from the shelf, she brought it back to the table as she continued. "You'd think the county would have moved it back from the river, but it's always rebuilt over the top of the old site. The river just … sweeps it away, every hundred years or so."
"And I guess the original records – locations, history and so on – that was all lost?" Sam looked at her.
"Yes, a few times now," she said, opening the binder. "My dissertation is on the town's history, you see, I've been working on piecing together what the town was like originally, and through all the changes over its history. I've put together a map that I think is probably accurate as anyone will get." Flipping through the sheafs of paper that filled the binder, she pulled out a printout of a map, pointing to a central location on it. "This is the old Juchubiac orchard here. It was planted when the town was settled and was lost in the first flood. I only found out yesterday, it's where Downey meets Bond Street."
"Crossroads," Dean remarked to no one in particular, looking at his mug. "Shocker."
"Did Anne tell you why she was interested in the site of an old orchard?" Sam leaned toward Wendy.
She looked at him uncomfortably. "No. We set a time to meet … and she never showed."
"And I read about her in the paper," she added sadly.
Neither of the two men could think of any significance a demon would find in an orchard planted four hundred years ago, one that had been swept away by a flood no less.
"Anne's assistant called this morning, though," Wendy said, taking a breath and looking up at Sam. "Asking if I still had the map."
"Assistant?" Sam and Dean exchanged a look. Eric Morton hadn't mentioned an assistant and they were both damned sure that the demon possessing her hadn't required one.
There was a sharp rap on the door, and Wendy looked down at her watch, a little flustered. "Oh, that's probably him. Maybe he can help you?"
She got up and hurried down the hall to the front door. Sam and Dean got to their feet, following her.
The three men standing on the stoop when Wendy opened the door didn't look like anyone's idea of research assistants, Dean thought as he caught a glimpse of them past her. The youngest, on the left, was dark-haired and dark-eyed, with a thin, bony face. The one in the middle was much older, fading strawberry-blond hair cut short above a fair-skinned face that was as hard as stone. On the right, the tallest was staring down at Wendy, with short dark hair and a cold, hard-eyed look. They looked like the neighbourhood thugs.
All three turned to him and Sam as they came up behind Wendy and their eyes flashed to black, corner to corner.
"Are – are you –" Wendy started to say when she noticed the change and what came out instead was a long, wavering scream.
The tallest shot inside, heading straight for Sam. The dark one lunged for Wendy, grabbing her arm and the front of her clothes and lifting her easily. The blond swung at Dean, his fist passing through the air as Dean dropped under him and jack-knifed back up, taking his weight and lifting and throwing him across the sofa. He turned with the throw and vaulted the sofa after him.
Wendy felt herself thrown bodily from the hall into the living room, her back hitting the coffee table, smashing it beneath her, the sudden smell of black coffee filling her nostrils as her vision rippled in and out, greying at the edges. She was barely of the young man as he strode over to her, plucking the map from the debris that was scattered over the floor around her.
Sam grimaced as he felt the strength of the demon-possessed man he was fighting, his forearms beginning to ache from blocking the fast blows. The man rushed him again, both falling backwards through the glass-paned doors dividing the living room from the dining room, Sam's shoulder taking the brunt of both their weights on the hardwood floor, his air whistling out of his chest as the man landed with both knees on his chest. He couldn't drag in enough air to do anything but block, his muscles losing their strength as he tried to shift the man's weight off him.
Behind the sofa, Dean's fingers curled around the hilt of the knife and he raised it, looking coldly down at the man under him. The demon exited in a thick coil of charcoal-grey smoke, spiralling up to the ceiling and plunging back down, into the mouth of Wendy Rice. He watched her back arch up, fists clenched by her sides as the demon forced its way inside. She sat up abruptly, her eyes black, then she was on her feet, heading for the door, and he rolled off the blond man, racing after her.
He turned around at the hall. She'd vanished. The light that filled the dining room caught his peripheral vision, and he twisted around, reaching the shattered glass doors in time to see the angel release his grip on the demon that had been attacking Sam, one hand clenched in the riot of curls on Wendy's head.
Back. Just like that. He couldn't take it in. Trenchcoat and everything.
Castiel.
Sam looked up at the angel disbelievingly as Cas turned away, dragging the woman behind him. He sat up and saw Cas' gaze flick briefly to Dean before he passed him, heading for the kitchen. His brother looked like someone had pole-axed him, he thought, rolling to his feet, wincing as his shoulder took the weight.
"He's got good timing, I'll say that for him," he said, walking over to Dean.
"Yeah." Dean nodded vaguely, brows drawing together suddenly as he took in Sam's favouring of his right side. "What happened?"
"Nothing," Sam said, walking past him to the living room. "Just landed awkwardly."
Not nothing, Dean thought, turning to follow him to the sofa. From the back it was clear that the bruising had gone deep. He let out his breath slowly. One fucking problem at a time.
Cas came out of the kitchen, his face hard and drawn as he looked at them. "The other demon escaped," he told them bluntly. "I've bound the one I caught in a devil's trap, I'm going to interrogate it now."
He turned back to the door and Sam looked at him, brow creasing up. "Wait a second, Cas – how 'bout you answer some questions first," he said, shunting the pain aside. "Like, where the hell have you been?"
The angel stopped in front of the door, his back to them.
"You heard me, didn't you?" Dean said, looking at him.
Sam looked around curiously. "What – you prayed to him?"
He watched Dean's face tense a little. That he knew of, that his brother had told him, Dean'd only prayed maybe twice in his life. Both times had been when he'd been unable find another way out of a situation that would have harmed his brother. Sam let his gaze fall. Did Dean know about what was happening to him? Was that why he'd asked for help from the angel?
"Yes," Castiel said sharply, turning back to them. "I heard you. But that's not why I'm here." He walked to the armchair opposite the sofa and sat down, looking past them. "I've been hunting demons."
Sam looked at his face. He should've known it – the burned out eyes and liquefied internals, the strange four-edged puncture wounds on the victim's hands – angel swords had that peculiar configuration, four edges meeting at the tip.
"So this is you …" Sam said. Cas nodded. "Why?"
Uncertainty filled the angel and he looked inwards, to the bright and shining room of reflections and the red-haired woman who sat behind the glass desk there.
"What should I tell them?"
"The truth," Naomi said, getting up and walking around the desk. "Most of it, anyway. Maybe they can get us closer."
"I've been searching for the other half of the demon tablet," he told the men, his gaze refocussing on them.
Dean leaned forward. "Without us?"
Cas flinched inwardly at the accusation in the man's words. "I've been trying to help, Dean," he snapped defensively. "And in my search, I've found out that Crowley has sent out demons to find Lucifer's crypts."
"Lucifer had crypts?" Dean's brows shot up as he looked at the angel.
"Well," Cas said, straightening a little. "He was trapped in the cage for over three thousand years. And he was by no means idle during that time. He heard things. He sent out the demons he created to find things," he said slowly. "And he hid them away again, for his own purposes."
"What kind of things? What are they looking for?" Sam stared at him.
"It would be more helpful if they knew everything," the angel said to Naomi.
She turned to him and shook her head. "They cannot be trusted."
"But –"
"Lie, Castiel," she told him firmly.
He felt something in him shifting, sliding like a snake through his mind. Angels were not built to lie. They were not built for deception. Once, there had been no need for it. Lucifer had taught them that it was possible, the first of his crimes, teaching the angels to lie and deceive and manipulate each other. He could feel a wall, smooth and impermeable and impenetrable. It had not been there before. He couldn't remember much from before.
"Tell them what we discussed," Naomi insisted, staring at him.
Obedience, before all else. The two orders were conflicting. They were creating a schism. He didn't know what would happen when that widened.
"They're looking for a text, an old one. It would allow them to decipher Crowley's half of the demon tablet," he said, pausing to look from Sam to Dean. "Without the prophet."
"Demonic decoder ring, in Crowley's hands. Awesome," Dean summarised sourly, rubbing a hand over his jaw.
"The crypts were … lost, over time," Cas said. "Only those closest to him knew their location."
"Well, that wasn't Crowley," Sam said, looking at Dean. "So how'd Crowley find them?"
"His demons have been possessing some local people, people with special knowledge," Cas said, uncomfortably aware that the longer he had to explain the situation, the more holes were appearing in his story.
"Well, that'd explain the crazy room at Anne's house," Sam muttered to himself. "But how'd they know where to start looking in the first place?"
"I don't know," Cas said, getting to his feet. The questions, the evasions, it was reminding him of something, something that he'd tried hard to forget, tried to not look at for a long time. Lying to his friends. Hoping they wouldn't piece together the clues that were there. Hoping they'd never find out. It had not worked out that way before. "I'm hoping the demon in the kitchen is more knowledgeable than the others I've interrogated."
He walked to the kitchen door and went through, and Sam let out a breath, looking at his brother.
"He's definitely off," Sam said to him.
"Off?" Dean turned to look at him. "He hasn't been right since he got out of Purgatory, and we still don't know how he got out of there."
"You know," Cas' voice came through the closed door. "I can hear you both. I am a celestial being."
They looked at each other uncomfortably and got up, walking to the door and going into the kitchen.
The small room had been only slightly modified. A devil's trap, drawn in chalk, marked the linoleum floor beneath the table and chair where the woman who had been Wendy Rice sat. Her hands were bound to either side of the table, the chair centred in the trap. The angel stood behind her.
"Sam and Dean Winchester," she said slowly as they leaned against the counter looking at her. "You made quite an impression on our Wendy, you know. The thoughts she had about you two … well … mostly about you, Sam." She smiled, tilting her head to one side as she considered him. "What can I say? She had a thing for s-s-smutten chops."
Dean straightened up. "Alright, you douche bag –"
Cas drove the tip of the angel sword through her hand, and red-gold light boiled through the flesh and tendons, lighting up her wrist and arm as he left it there. The demon shrieked, throwing her head back, the tendons leaping out in bold relief in her neck. Cas pulled the sword out and she slumped in the chair.
"Who told you about the crypts?" he asked her, walking around to the other side of the table.
"I thought angels were supposed to be the good cops!" she snarled at him, her breath catching and hitching in her chest.
Cas looked down at her and drove the sword into her other hand, his expression unchanging.
Her scream filled the small kitchen, drilling in their ears and Dean glanced at Sam, both looking back to the demon.
"Wait! Stop!" she yelled at him, her hand stretched out, her face twisted in agony. "STOP! We have a hostage!"
Cas pulled the sword free and waited.
"It's one of Crowley's … pets," she said quickly, struggling to draw in enough air to speak. "She's at the Murray Hotel, down by the interstate." She looked from Cas to the Winchesters. "She knows where all the crypts are. She saw them all, back in the day."
Sam looked at her. "And she told you about the code key?"
"What code key?" the demon snapped.
"Hey!" Dean stepped to the end of the table, looking down at her. "You think he's the only bad cop in this room? We know what you're really looking for, so stop lying!"
He watched her expression shift, from anger to a slowly growing confusion, and the sight of it set off his alarms.
"No. I'm not lying," She stared at him. "We're looking for –"
Kill it!
Cas' hand moved without his volition, plunging the four-edged sword deep into the demon's chest. His face was lit up as the demon burned alive in the vessel, the shades of fiery gold flickering over his features, reflecting in his eyes.
Dean looked from the dead woman to the angel in astonishment.
"Cas!" Sam shouted, shocked. "What the hell was that?"
The angel pulled out the sword and turned his head to look at the younger Winchester. "It told us what we needed."
"No, she didn't – you can't just –"
"I started this hunt without you, because I didn't want anything to slow me down" Cas cut him off, his voice louder. "We have to get to the motel now."
"Now hold on a second –" Sam started and the angel vanished, the sound of beating wings and a faint scent of feathers left in his place. "CAS!"
"Cas?!" Dean looked around the kitchen. "Dammit, go, go."
He pushed Sam toward the door, and they raced through the house and down the steps, diving into the car.
"What the fuck, man?" Sam sat in the passenger seat, fists clenched at the unexpected behaviour of the angel as Dean pushed the car through the suburbs toward the interstate.
"I don't know," he ground out, running the red and swinging the car through a sea of blaring horns and braking vehicles left.
Neither of them could say out loud what both were thinking. Lies and betrayal. Superman and kryptonite. An angel doing what he thought was best, bringing a curse to the world that had almost been worse than the devil.
Tyres squealing, the Impala pulled into the kerb opposite the Murray Hotel and they opened the doors and got out, both catching the brilliant flash of light from the first storey window as they ran across the street.
"There," Sam said, hitting the lobby door with his shoulder and blinking against the pain as it rocketed through his arm and side, ignoring it when he saw the stairs in the corner.
A second flash of light outlined a door in the first floor hallway, and Dean slammed into it, breaking the lock and sending the door crashing back against the wall as they saw a man fall to the floor, landing on top of a body already down, both of them without their eyes.
Castiel stood in the middle of the room, looking down at the bodies.
"Thanks for waiting," Sam said shortly. The angel shrugged, jerking his head toward the closed door on the other side of the room.
"The hostage is in there."
Dean walked across to it, reversing the knife blade in his hand, hearing Sam's footsteps behind him. He turned the knob and pushed the door open, staring down at the small woman who sat on the floor in the corner of the room, blonde hair in rat's tails around her swollen and bloodied face. She looked up at him, and her mouth lifted at one corner.
"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?" Meg asked drolly, delighted to be able to use the line.
Dean looked back at his brother for a moment, and slid the knife back into its sheath. He took the couple of steps needed to reach her, holding out his hand unwillingly. Meg looked at the expression on his face and her smile widened slightly, followed by a wince as the movement pulled at the cuts and sent a little more blood trickling down her cheek.
She took his hand and he pulled her to her feet, looking down at her. Whoever had been working her over knew their stuff, he thought clinically. Nothing life-threatening, but all guarantee to hurt like hell and keep hurting, the bones bruised, maybe fractured, but nothing broken too badly.
"Alright," he said, shifting aside to let her precede him through the door. "What's up, Meg?"
Walking across the room to the bed, Meg sat down and closed her eyes, blocking out the throbbing ache in her head and shoulders, arms and abdomen. After a moment, when most of the pain had receded to the middle distance, she opened them, taking a deep breath as she watched Dean and Sam sit down opposite her. Her gaze flicked up to Castiel. The angel stood stiffly behind the two men, his eyes cutting away as hers lifted to them.
"So, I gotta ask," Dean said, staring at her. "What's with the hair?"
"Awww, thanks for noticing, Dean." Meg smiled at him, her voice becoming bright and brittle as she continued, "But this wasn't my idea. It was Crowley's. And it's just another reason I want to stab him in the face."
"You've been telling Crowley the location of Lucifer's crypts," Sam said, his voice tight with accusation.
Meg looked at him, her face twisting a little. "What can I say? I needed a break from the constant torture," she said dryly. "And I'm one of the very few who did visit all of them, with my father."
"Lucifer was trapped." Dean frowned at her.
"Not my spiritual father, Dean," Meg said, lifting a hand and pressing lightly against the throb in her temple. "My actual father. Azazel. He was looking for things too."
She let her hand drop wearily as she turned to Castiel. "But don't worry, I haven't exactly been giving them the Glengarry leads."
The angel ignored the unknown reference, extrapolating her meaning from the context … and her smirk.
"You mean you've been lying to them," he guessed.
Meg nodded. "I just get them in the general vicinity. Enough time's passed, and enough's changed, that they bought it."
"Why lie at all?" Dean asked her.
"Buy myself some time," Meg said, her eyes widening a little at him. "Enough time for them to make a mistake, for me to find a way to get the fuck outta here."
"Wait, so, a bunch of innocent people died, so you could buy yourself some time?" Sam asked her.
She felt a flash of white anger zap through her at the ridiculous piety of the remark.
"Hi. I'm Meg. I'm a demon," she said coldly to him. "And Sammy? Until you've spent a year in Crowley's torture chamber, getting worked on every single fucking day, I would suggest that you keep your opinions on the relative morality of survival techniques to yourself. I seem to recall a lot of rumours about the innocent lives Sam Winchester was taking, trying to pump himself up strong enough to –"
"Meg." Dean's voice was low and implacable and she stopped, looking at him sourly.
Castiel cleared his throat. "And what have they have found?"
Meg turned her head to look at him, making an effort to let go of her anger. "Bupkis. Every crypt has been one Al Capone's vault after another. Dusty. Empty." She smiled at him. "And on top of that, someone kept picking up the trail and icing demons. I'm guessing that was you, Castiel."
His gaze slid aside and that gave her the answer.
"But … Crowley just keeps sending more," she continued. "He's hell bent on –"
"She's going to tell them the truth," Cas said to Naomi, his arms crossed defensively over his chest. "Do I have to kill her?"
The thought was unpleasantly complicated. She was a demon, and not just any demon, but an old demon with enormous power of her own, even cut off from the souls of Hell. There was a history between them. A strange and patchwork history of being enemies … and of working together, to defeat the King of Hell. The feelings that had stirred when he'd seen her walk out of the bathroom, limping and hurting and filled with pain that glowed in his vision, were not the feelings of an angel.
Naomi hesitated. To kill the demon now would mean losing the location. The choice was not simple. The Winchesters would know the angel had lied to them. But the tablet was more important. Much, much more important.
"She does know the location of the crypts," she said to herself. "But working with a demon is … unclean."
She wasn't sure if she said it to convince Castiel or herself. It would not be the first time. Nor, probably, the last.
"We could use her," Cas said abruptly. "As Crowley did."
He watched the woman think that over. "Agreed," she said.
"– finding that angel tablet," Meg said, looking at Sam.
Sam's brows rose slowly as he took in the words. Beside him, Dean's gaze flicked to Castiel and back to Meg.
"Did you just say … angel tablet?" Sam asked her disbelievingly.
"You know … I get why Crowley calls you Moose now," Meg said, her mouth curling up as she looked at him. He ignored the insult and lifted a brow at her.
"Yes. Angel tablet," she said. "Crowley found out Lucifer had it, figured it was stashed in a crypt."
Dean looked at Castiel. The angel stood against the windows, his features dim and unreadable with the light coming from behind him. Not again, he thought uneasily. He didn't want to go through that again. He needed someone to trust.
"Well," Cas said uncomfortably, his gaze brushing Dean and past him to Sam. Both brothers were looking at him narrowly now. "This is news to me as well."
"The demons I interrogated … they must have been lying about their true intentions," he continued awkwardly. Angels don't lie. The wall shivered slightly as he tried to look into their eyes.
"Really?" Dean asked, doubt edging the word. "'Cos I saw you work on that demon. You were more than persuasive."
Castiel looked away and Dean felt his stomach drop.
"You're both missing the point," Meg interrupted, looking at Dean. "I lied to them, which means they're –"
"Digging in the wrong place," Sam said softly.
She smiled at the reference briefly. "But not for long. They'll be back here soon."
Dean looked back at the angel. He did not want to leave this hanging, his doubts about Cas filling him and distorting everything again.
"So … who's up for fleeing?" Meg asked, looking from him to Sam.
"She's right," Sam said, glancing at his brother. Dean was staring at Cas, his face expressionless. He knew that mistrust would be eating through him. For the second time. There wasn't enough time for them to get it sorted now. "We need to find those crypts before they do," he continued. "Meg, you're the only one who's been there."
Castiel nodded. "We need your help."
Meg looked at him, her gaze wandering to Dean and then to Sam. When had everything gotten so damnably complicated, she wondered?
"Any of you dummies got a map?"
Sam looked at Dean. "The model?"
"We got the keys, and it's probably about as safe as anywhere else, for the moment," he agreed. "Let's roll."
Meg sat next to Castiel in the back seat. The angel sat close by the door, staring silently out the window. Inside himself, he could feel stressors, things giving way under the pressure that was growing. He didn't know why or how or how he was going to fix it. He couldn't remember things of the past year, couldn't remember details of events that he must have participated in. The sense of atoning, of his penance, had gone. Completely. He didn't know why.
Dean glanced back at him through the rear view mirror as he drove them back across town. He wasn't mistaken, he knew. Cas had lied to them, and the reason didn't matter, any more than it had mattered the first time. It wasn't like trust came so easy to him that he could ignore it, that he could pretend to himself it didn't – that it wasn't a concern.
He pulled up in front of the Morton house and got out, shunting his thoughts aside. They would find this goddamned crypt and the angel tablet and they would get it to Kevin and he would deal with the angel later on.
Sam unlocked the front door and they followed him down to the basement, Meg's low whistle the only sound in the room when they stood around the table holding Anne Morton's scale model of the town.
"There," she said, looking down at the miniature street. "That's where the crypt was."
"What's there now?" Sam asked.
She turned to him. "Do I look like Google to you?" she asked him dismissively. "None of these buildings were here, way back in the day, so figure it out, genius."
She felt hot and light-headed and hurting. Turning away from the table, she walked a little unsteadily back to the stairs. "Is there any booze in this dump?"
Castiel watched her stop by the stairs, leaning against the rail for a moment before she began to climb them.
"I should make sure she doesn't leave," he said to the Winchesters.
"Sure," Dean agreed without looking at him. "You do that."
They listened to the sound of his footsteps receding to the stairs and climbing after the demon, the basement door at the top closing with a soft click.
Sam pulled out his laptop as Dean paced around the table, watching his brother's restless agitation from under lowered brows. He was beginning to understand some of the things that drove him. Some of things that were necessary to him. Trust was one of those things. Dean couldn't take too much of being fucked over in that department.
"He lied to us," Dean said a moment later, stopping beside him and folding his arms over his chest.
"Yeah. Maybe," Sam said pacifically. "But I can kind of understand why."
He looked up at Dean and back to the screen. "I mean, an angel tablet? If the demon tablet is mankind's protection against demons, with the bombs and the traps and shutting the gates of Hell … what's going to be on the angel tablet?"
Dean looked around and saw another chair by the workbench. He walked to it and dragged it to the table, dropping it into as he considered that question.
"The Levi tablet gave all the details about killing the levis, right?" he said slowly to his brother. "And the demon tablet is the same. All about Hell, all about the demon weaknesses, the way to shut them out forever …"
"Yeah," Sam said distractedly, zooming through Google Maps down to the street level of the town.
"The angel tablet probably has all the protection people need against angels," Dean said softly. "Maybe how to keep the dicks up in Heaven where they belong instead meddling down here with people's lives." He let his thoughts drift a bit further. "What if God put all this down so that people could gradually shut out all the crazy stuff that keeps fucking us over and trying to kill us?"
Sam found the address, and replayed his brother's last comment back belatedly. "Like a how-to manual for getting rid of evil?"
Dean shrugged. "I don't think there's going to be a tablet for getting rid of the evil that humans are capable of, but yeah, maybe everything else, maybe all the stuff we hunt?"
Sam looked at him. "We need to get that tablet to Kevin."
Dean rubbed a hand over his face. "No argument."
Meg sat on the sofa, taking a long pull on the bottle in her hand as the angel irrigated the pus-filled wounds with clear alcohol, her nerves and muscles twitching with the pain.
"These wounds have festered," Cas told her, wrapping a clean gauze dressing around the rope wounds on her wrists and binding it in place with a bandage.
"You really do know how to make a girl's nethers quiver, don't you?" she quipped, slurring a little on the sibilants.
"I am aware of how to do that," Cas admitted prosaically. "Although it doesn't usually involve cleaning wounds."
Meg felt the alcohol back the pain off a bit further and herself relaxing a little more. The world had been turned upside down and inside out in the last three years, she thought vaguely, and now she was sitting next to an angel who was binding the wounds that a demon had torn into her flesh … and she felt no desire whatsoever to kill him.
At first, teasing him had been a way of getting him off balance, confusing and alarming him. It'd been fun to watch him trying to process all her innuendo and the double or triple meanings inherent in everything she'd said to him. Then it had stopped being fun in the same way. And she'd no longer wanted him off-balance. And she couldn't work out why.
"Why are you so sweet on me, Clarence?" she asked him softly.
The angel wound the bandage around her arm firmly. "I don't know," he said honestly. "And I still don't know who Clarence is."
"Would it kill you to watch a movie? Read a book?" she said curiously, tipping the bottle to her lips again and swallowing a fiery mouthful.
"A movie? No," he said, reaching for the scissors. "But a book, with the proper spells, yeah, it could theoretically kill me."
"You know, you're much cuter when you're shutting up," she said, looking at him.
For a moment, he lifted his gaze, his eyes meeting hers. Both felt the odd reaction, neither mentioned it. Opposites, Meg wondered? Angel and demon. About as opposite as anyone could get. She watched him drop his gaze and let her breath out softly.
"So, which Cas are you now?" she asked him. "Original Macon model … or Crazy Town?"
He tied off the bandage and looked at her, wondering how to answer that. "I'm … just me."
"So your noodle's back in order?"
He nodded. "Yeah, my … noodle remembers everything. I think it's a pretty good noodle."
"Really?" Meg said, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly. "You remember everything?"
Cas looked at her. Her expression had changed a little, he thought. She was clearly remembering something that she didn't think he did. The memory came back to him, and he looked down. Warm, soft body tightly pressed against his. Her lips, softer than he could've imagined, demanding, exciting. Her breath in his mouth and her arms around him and thoughts that had flooded his mind and made it difficult to fill his lungs.
"If you're referring to the Pizza Man incident, then yes, I remember that," he said slowly, looking at her. "And it's a good memory."
She smiled, ignoring the pain in her face. She liked him. As absurd as that was, it was nevertheless true. She liked him a lot.
"This is it," Sam said, zooming down to the building. "The crypt is under that warehouse. He flicked to another screen. "Abandoned. Factory closed shop six years ago."
"Good times," Dean said. He looked at the stairs thoughtfully. "You think we can trust those two?"
Sam shrugged. "No. But what choice do we have?"
"You ever miss the Apocalypse?" she asked him.
"No," Cas said, smiling. "Why would I miss the end of times?"
"I miss the simplicity of it," she admitted, waving the bottle for emphasis. "I was bad. You were good. Life was easier."
Cas rolled his eyes.
She snorted at the human expression. "Well, it was. Now it's all so messy." She downed another swallow of the rum. "I'm kind of good … which sucks. And you're kind of bad –"
She stopped speaking and Cas looked at her curiously.
"Which is actually all manner of hot," she finished quietly, staring at him. "We survive this? I'm gonna order some pizza and we're gonna move some furniture around … you understand?"
He leaned forward, his mind searching for the associations that would make the words make sense. "No … I –"
He looked into her eyes and saw the invitation in them and abruptly they came and his eyes widened a little.
"Wait … actually, yes," he said. "I –"
"Alright, we got an address and this place is giving me the creeps," Dean said from the doorway. "Let's roll, campers."
He walked out, and Sam looked at the odd, still tableau for a moment then followed him.
"It's a date then?" Meg asked the angel lightly.
"Yes," Cas agreed. "A date."