Chapter 42 The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Lebanon, Kansas
Sam leaned his head against his hand, watching Dean moving around the room from under his brows and wondering if he'd meant what he'd said about leaving. The last couple of days, Dean hadn't said anything about it. He coughed again, feeling the warm, bloody taste in his mouth and spitting it into the tissue, scrunching it unlooked-at in his fist and tossing it into the waste-paper basket. He could feel the heat from his skin against his arm and he lifted his head tiredly, trying to make his eyes focus on the words on the pages in front of him again.
Dean felt his brother's attention shift and glanced over at him. In the last two days, Sam'd gone from half-functioning to barely functioning and neither of them had said a word about it. He wasn't so sure that just careering around the country in the car looking for Kevin randomly was such a good idea now. He wasn't sure of where to look, in any case.
The trill from his phone coincided with a beep from the laptop and he turned around, walking to the laptop as he yanked the cell from his pocket, seeing the same message on both devices.
"It's Kevin," he told Sam, clicking on the email at the top of the screen and on the video link it enclosed.
"Finally," Sam said, getting up and walking around the table, stopping for a moment as blackness closed around his vision then dissolved.
The link opened up a video file and Kevin's face filled the screen. Dean turned the sound up a little as the prophet began to speak.
"Sam, Dean, I set up some software on an anonymous, remote server so that a message would get to you in the event of my worst fears, uh, well, really happening. Actually, Dean, I got the idea from what you told me about that guy, Frank, and his message from the grave … but anyway, the message was supposed to be sent if I didn't reset it with a command once a week … and since you're watching this now … that means I didn't reset it this week."
Dean stared at the tired, hopeless face on the laptop's screen, feeling his pulse accelerate.
"There's only one reason I wouldn't reset it, and I guess we all know what that is," Kevin's recording said, looking away with a shrug. "Crowley must've gotten to me. I don't know how. Maybe we didn't know everything we needed to. Maybe we never knew enough. But the one thing I do know is that I won't break this time. I'm not sure how I know, but I do."
Sam exhaled softly as he listened.
"I've been uploading all my notes, all the translations; I'll send the links separately, so that you can get all of it. You guys are going to have to try to figure out the rest." Kevin looked up at the small camera. "I'm sorry. I know it was my job. My responsibility. I don't know what could've happened, but I guess that I just wasn't prepared enough. I'm sorry."
He leaned forward and the video finished. The laptop beeped again as more emails came in.
Dean turned sharply, his arm sweeping over the table behind him, sending the books and notes and manuscripts crashing to the floor. "Dammit!"
When it will be enough for you? The thought snuck in through the anger and hit him hard. How many bodies do you need to climb over before you decide that it's not worth it?
They weren't new thoughts, had been with him for years. It didn't make them any more palatable, any easier to hear. The job was the job – why the FUCK was it up to him to determine how many sacrifices had to be made – how many he needed to make against the good of the safety and survival of the rest of the population.
You can sacrifice yourself, but no one else, his father's voice whispered in his mind and he tensed against it, driven down the stairs and across the war room, guilt and shame and pain crushing him inside.
Sam watched him walk away and turned back to the laptop, leaning on the side of the table as a flashpoint of heat filled his limbs and organs, the moan very soft, less than a breath. He eased himself down into the chair in front of the computer and opened the links Kevin had sent, leaning over to turn on the small printer that sat at the end of the table.
Dean walked down the hall, heading for the stairs at the end. Safest place in the world, he thought bitterly, remembering the kid's stark fear, the weariness that had shown in every look, every gesture. But no, they'd left him out there. How the fuck had Crowley broken through those wardings without leaving a fucking trace of it? He wasn't some big archdemon, Lucifer's Knights or followers or whatever, just a straight out twisted human soul who'd been a fucking crossroads demon, a salesman, and had somehow gotten control of Hell. How?
He ran both hands through his hair as he made the next landing turn down and shook his head. Didn't matter how. Didn't matter at all. Keep to the facts. He had broken through and he had taken the prophet and maybe Kevin was alive – tortured, broken but still alive and translating Crowley's half of the tablet – or both halves – but maybe he hadn't broken and maybe he was dead.
Sam was failing, every day looking worse, sounding worse. The tablet half that they'd had was gone. Kevin was gone. Even if they could find one of the other prophets, what chance was there of getting them up to speed? And for what purpose since they didn't have anything for them to read? They couldn't even go looking for Crowley since he'd changed whatever it was he'd changed that had screwed up the summoning spell they'd had. And no possibility of finding another one, not now. It would take decades to go through the knowledge that lay inside this building. The catalogue helped a bit but looking for some obscure spell or ritual in the hundreds of thousands of books and texts and parchments the place held … he let out his breath in a long whistle of frustration. All the knowledge and no time.
He pulled his phone from his pocket, dialling Garth, and listened to the message again. Had something happened to the scrawny hunter? It was likely, he knew. Garth wasn't cut out for field work. And after the initial shock of seeing the man trying to take over role of researcher and liaison in what little remained of the scattered and naturally paranoid hunting community, he'd realised that he actually preferred the thought of Garth remaining in one location, feeding info to others, not risking his neck on the hunt. But this … this was smelling a lot like Frank's disappearance. Hunters didn't go missing and turn up again later, as a general rule. Luck ran out. And even without their poisoned and deadly agenda lurking in his background, Garth had been in the front line for revenge by a few things.
He looked at the list of numbers on the phone. Some of them he knew, in passing only, a couple from the roadhouse, a couple through Garth. The others were just a list of numbers Garth had passed on, hunters in various parts of the country. He didn't want to pull them in, didn't want to draw attention to them, but he needed information and he needed it fast. He dragged in a breath and dialled the first number, turning around when he reached the bottom of the stairs and starting up again.
He was on the fifth call when he reached the war room, and walked slowly up the stairs to the library.
"Yeah, I know you haven't seen him, Kale, nobody has. What was he working on?" he asked impatiently. "Does anyone know? Alright, well, if you talk to him, could you just ask him to call in? Yuh."
He stopped at the table as he finished the call, leaning on the back of the chair. There was nothing. From anyone. No Garth. No signs or omens. No nothing.
Sam looked around. "Garth still MIA?"
"Yeah."
"Anyone found Mrs Tran?"
"No." Dean didn't want to think about Kevin's mother. Didn't want to think about the responsibility that fell on him for both of them.
"How about the other prophets in line?" Sam said tentatively. "I mean, if Kevin is, uh, dead, then won't one of them be … um … activated?"
Dean looked at him. "There's been no signs, at least none that any of the hunters we know have seen. Nothing."
He rubbed a hand over his face. "No one knows what Garth was even working on."
"Do you want to check it out?" Sam asked, a little reluctantly. It would slow down the search for the tablet, the new prophet, everything.
Dean heard the reluctance in Sam's voice, knew what caused it. The bottom line was that they had the same number of leads to finding Garth as they did everything else. A big, fat zero.
"No," he said finally, unable to meet his brother's eyes. "I got nowhere to start looking. Like everything else. No leads. No tablet. We got jack, Sam."
"Well," Sam said, lifting a thick pile of paper from the printer tray. "We got this."
"We should've moved him here," Dean said, not looking at the printouts, thinking of Kevin. "I shouldn't've left him out there, on his own."
"The boat seemed safe, Garth was there and it was a lot less likely that the demons or Crowley would happen on him there –" Sam said, brow creasing as he recognised his brother's expression.
"Unlikely," Dean said slowly. "Yeah, that's always a good benchmark of the odds, isn't it, Sam?"
Sam looked at the paper in his hand. They should've brought Kevin here, no doubt. At the time, it'd seemed like a good idea to keep them separated but Larry had told him, straight out, that this was the safest place. And he hadn't wanted to remember that because for the first time in a long, long time, he'd felt like this place could be their home. A place where they could both think. Both rest. Both remember what it felt like to be brothers again. He hadn't said anything because he hadn't wanted to lose that.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
"Wanna refill?"
The hard, drawling voice snapped the angel's head up and he turned to look at the waitress standing beside his table, coffee pot in hand, one brow arched up in bored query.
"Ah, yes, thank you," he said, flustered that he hadn't felt her approach. "I seem to be acquiring a taste for it."
She glanced at him, her long, dark hair held back but one lock escaping and brushing a rounded cheek. She didn't really look like … anyone, Cas thought as she filled his cup.
"I'll be sure to cut you off before you start tap-dancing on the ceiling," she said, with a slow, one-sided smile. He stared at her.
"You know, I remember when you first discovered it," he said in a rush, not sure why he wanted to talk to her, talk to someone. "Before you learned to brew it, you just chewed the berries."
The waitress' eyes narrowed slightly as she looked back at him. "You been on the road awhile, huh?"
He ducked his head. "It feels like forever."
"Well, don't forget to take the blue pill sometime," she said, glancing over her shoulder at the cash register, her voice dropping slightly. "Listen, you wanna keep the table, you're gonna have to order something more than coffee."
"Of course," Cas said, looking around, the special on the table snagging his gaze. "I'll have the Smart-Heart, Beer-Battered Tempura Tempters."
She smiled and for a moment she didn't look anything like … anyone else. "Sure, that'll do something for the caffeine high," she said cheerfully. "Coming right up."
He watched her go. The scabs were itching again. It was a small price to pay for his invisibility, he thought, scratching at them discreetly through his shirt. No one could see him, not even the highest ranked of Heaven. And while that situation remained, he would be safe. The tablet would be safe. The Winchesters would be … not safe, he thought, looking out through the wide, plate-glass windows. Safer, perhaps. A little safer without him around.
"Here you go," the waitress put the plate down in front of him.
"Thank you."
She hesitated for a moment and he looked up at her questioningly.
"You know, you seem like a nice guy," she said abruptly, looking at the order pad in her hand. "Whatever it is, it'll work itself out. Just the way it works, right?"
"Ah, right," he agreed politely.
Lebanon, Kansas
Sam made a noise in his throat, and Dean looked up tiredly. They'd been reading Kevin's notes for four hours and so far, hadn't found a single thing that had moved them one inch further in any direction. There was a lot of filler in the Word of God, he thought, blinking as he took his brother's furrowed brow.
"What?"
"I don't know," Sam said, chewing absently on the inside of his lip as he stared at the symbol that punctuated the comments in the pages he was reading. "This looks … familiar. Really familiar."
He turned the page around and pushed it across the table. Dean looked down at it. There were several similar ones on the pages he'd been reading.
"Familiar – how?"
"Well, this is what Kevin's been using to show the notations of Metatron, within the text of the demon tablet," Sam said slowly.
"Okay?"
"And I've seen it before." Sam closed his eyes, trying to force the memory back. "A long time ago."
"How long?"
"I don't know," he said, opening his eyes and staring at the page. "It was on …"
The memory came back as a flash, sharp and bright and in full colour. The classroom had been small, the school had been small. The teacher had been Native American, a tall, graceful woman with thick black hair that had reached down to her hips. Dean had been sick. His father had been hunting something, in the wild hills and mountains outside of the small town. Something that wasn't dangerous to the people, but that was dangerous … somehow. In his mind's eye, he looked out the school room window and saw the towering, snow-covered peaks outside.
"We were in a town, in the mountains," he said quietly. "You were sick, Dad was looking for a –"
"Ghost-dancer," Dean supplied, remembering the town, remembering his father's hunt. "You were in eighth grade."
"Right," Sam said, shutting his eyes again. "It was a school project. A history of the people who'd lived there. It was on their homes, on the pictures …" He got up abruptly, walking fast out of the library, his eyes half-closed but, Dean noticed, not the slightest hint of clumsiness in his brother at this moment, as he rounded the table end and walked into the hall leading to the staircase. Dean got up and followed him, lengthening his stride to catch up as Sam started down the stairs.
"Where are you going?"
"There's a section on Native American lore, on the second level," Sam answered, gesturing vaguely down the stairs. "They were a tiny offshoot of the Ute," he added, half-running down the steps now. "And when all the other nations were moved out of the mountains to the reservations, they stayed … the town – do you remember the name of the town?"
Dean thought back. His father had been hunting the ghost-dancer, warned by a shaman of the local people that she had to be found. He remembered that John had left, telling him he'd be back that night, but he hadn't come back for three days. He'd managed to catch a cold or the flu or a bug of some description and had been lucky to get on and off the bed. Sam had been studying … something, he thought, something that'd taken his attention fully. It had been in southern Colorado, close by the border of Utah. The mountains had towered over the valley. It'd been cold, early spring. He remembered almost everything, but not the name. That was usually the least important thing He shook his head.
"No, too long ago," he said, following Sam as he strode along the hall to the much larger library on that level.
He slowed as he watched Sam walk straight to one stack, going straight to a single book and pulling it out, his eyes glittering slightly as he flipped through the pages. It was freaky to watch. It reminded him of his brother's certainty, led by something not in his genetics, but in his blood. In his mind. Years ago.
"Here," Sam said, slamming the open book down on the table. "They were there from 1500 AD, according to the history, but the teacher said they'd been there longer. A lot longer."
Dean leaned past him, looking down at the book. At the top of the page, a line drawing showed a rock, with the petroglyph drawn onto it; a circle intersected by three others, with a triangle in the centre and a hexagon held within that. "That's the symbol? The same symbol?"
Sam nodded. "It was a petroglyph, a territorial marker. It was on the mountains, carved into the trees along the edges of their borders." Sam scanned the passage beneath it. "In the local dialect, the symbol meant 'messenger of God'."
Dean looked at him. "Or … scribe of God?"
"The town is Ignacio," Sam said, his finger stabbing at the book. "Is that it? Is that where we were?"
"Could be," Dean said. He didn't have that detail. Too long ago. Too many other towns, other schools, other hunts.
"We have to go," Sam said, shutting the book and heading for the hall again. "We have to go there now!"
"Hold up a minute, Sammy," Dean called, following him back up the stairs. "What the hell makes you think that we're gonna find anything there?"
"Because I have a feeling, a hunch, I – I don't know what to call it," Sam stopped on the steps, turning around. "I know there's an answer there."
Dean felt his stomach dip. "A feeling … like a vision-kind of feeling?"
"No!" Sam snapped, turning away. "Not like that. You said it yourself, we've got no leads, no prophet, we can't figure this out on our own – this is – this is something, Dean, I can't explain it any more than that. What if he is there? Has been there, all this time? He wrote the damned tablets!"
"You think we're going to find the scribe of God in this town?" Dean stopped, looking up the stairs at his brother's disappearing heels. "Doing what?"
"I don't know," Sam said, glancing back over his shoulder as he slowed down slightly. "I just know that we have to go."
Behind him, Dean closed his eyes. When he was all fired up, the symptoms – or illness – or whatever the hell was wrong with him – disappeared. He could still feel the heat, radiating off his little brother like a furnace, and he wondered how much energy all this took out of Sam, energy he wasn't putting back. But he admitted to himself unwillingly, it was better than watching Sam swaying and running into things and coughing up blood.
It was about an eleven hour drive, he thought, reaching the library and seeing Sam's shirttails flapping as he power-walked down the hall that led to his room. He glanced at his watch. They could stop for the night in Rocky Ford, not too long a haul in a single sitting. Get some sleep and be there before lunch tomorrow. Maybe it would help.
Heaven
In the room that was all light and glass and reflections, Naomi sat behind the desk, eyes narrowed and face tight as she stared at the angels in front of her.
"You can't find him," she said, her voice low and rasping.
"We think that he's probably marked himself permanently with the wards," Aion said expressionlessly. "We can tell where he's been, can follow his … track … but no, we cannot get ahead of him, cannot see him, only the ripples of his passing."
The auburn-haired angel closed her eyes. "What about the Winchesters?"
Castiel would come out of hiding for them, she knew. He would come to save them if they were being held at the point of death.
"We haven't been able to see them since they left Beloit."
"That is not what I wanted to hear!" she snapped, her face darkening. "You were supposed to keep track of them, so that we wouldn't be in this position!"
Aion bent his head. There was nothing he could do about losing the two men, who'd disappeared into thin air in the middle of a small highway heading west. Disappeared from their thoughts, at least. He hadn't been there to see if they'd actually disappeared from the earthly plane.
At the back of his mind was the slowly growing conviction that neither Heaven nor Hell really cared about the jobs they'd been assigned, guardians and keepers of knowledge, tempters and punishers of sin. The lines had been blurring between them for the last thousand years and power and control was all that he'd been able to see around him, not love or obedience, not wisdom or tolerance or … anything he'd believed his Father had instilled in them.
"Are there any places he's been more than once?" she asked him.
"A couple," he said uncertainly. "We've found signs of him twice in Oregon, and three times in New Mexico. Why?"
"Because Castiel has been with humans for a long time now, and he is not entirely angel, not any more," she said, looking past him, her chin resting on her hand. "He will seek to connect, even on the most superficial levels. And he might not realise he's doing it."
Her gaze snapped up to him. "New Mexico. We'll search it until we find the one he has been talking to."
Amherst, Massachusetts
Kevin looked up at the hollow banging of the cabin door. He wasn't feeling right. Something was missing but he couldn't remember … couldn't remember what it was. He walked slowly to the door, relaxing fractionally as he heard the deep-timbered voice, edged with impatience outside.
"Kevin? Come on, it's us, open up."
There was supposed to be a protocol, Kevin thought, the uneasiness returning. They'd put it in place when he'd started to get worried. A knock, he thought. Dean's idea. A way for him to tell if it was them or not. He couldn't remember the exact conversation now.
The pounding on the metal door got louder. "I'm freezing out here!"
He opened the door to see Dean standing there. "Come on, man, it's me."
Point and fire, he thought, squirting half the gun's contents over the man standing in front of him.
Dean looked at him sourly. "Now it's wet me."
"You forgot the knock! What's the point of having a secret knock if you don't use it!?" Kevin snapped at him.
"Sorry, Kevin." Sam appeared from behind the wall and Kevin's finger tightened on the trigger automatically, soaking him mid-sentence. He shook off the droplets and held up a canvas duffle. "We got it."
Kevin unwound the chain that held the door handle to the wall next to the door and Dean stepped through, taking the duffle from his brother as he passed him.
"We caught a tip that Crowley was moving his earth-side operations, so we, uh, laid ourselves an awesome trap," he said, heading for the main cabin and dropping the bag on the table. "And it worked."
He unzipped the bag and pulled out a broken piece of stone as Kevin watched them both suspiciously. Holding it up, Dean smiled. "We got the other half of the tablet."
"What?" Kevin breathed, stepping closer to them as he stared at it.
"It's the light at the end of your tunnel, kid," Dean said, holding it out to him. "Don't say we never gotcha nothin'."
"Holy crap." Kevin took it, feeling the conduit flutter open in his mind. "We can get the third trial," he said, moving to the work table down the cabin. "We can finally close the gates of Hell on Crowley's ass forever."
Sitting down, he bent over the tablet and picked up a pen, his hand smoothing out the page of the notebook under it automatically.
"Sounds good to me," Sam said. "So … we digging up the other half of that thing or what?"
"Don't need to," Kevin said, gesturing distractedly at the wall of notes and diagrams that covered the cabin wall.
One of the reasons he'd acquired the house had been for the multiple level cellars, and Crowley sat in the lower level, surrounded by emptiness as he stared at the boy hunched over the small table in the middle of that stone-flagged space.
Virtual reality, he mused. Hell-style. Nothing more required than a push into Kevin's head and he had a cast of thousands and sets that made de Mille's seem like mall holiday pantomimes.
Three trials, he thought, straightening in his chair. And the prophet was busily working on the third with his helpful little push.
He'd tried everything when he'd gotten Kevin here. The usual rounds of torture, dismemberment, disembowelling, flaying, acid, everything physical and psychological he could think of. He'd tried loved ones going through the same routine. But for some reason he hadn't been able to ascertain just yet, Kevin had resisted it all. And he didn't want to do it for real. Just inside his head was enough. Not one of the prophets he'd gathered before had struck him as being either as intelligent or as malleable as the boy.
Hell's trick of renewing everything every twelve hours had helped. He'd scrubbed Kevin's mind clean and started again. This time the name of the game was … Persuasion. Persuade him he was safe, in the iron boat, with the wards and guards surrounding him. Persuade him that Dean and Sam were at the ready. Persuade him that nothing as nasty as the King of Hell making an appearance had ever really happened.
And it was working. After a fashion, he thought. Kevin wasn't as forthcoming with the Winchesters as he'd thought he'd be. But perhaps with the whole paranoia thing happening, that was to be expected. He was translating. That was the main thing.
And he'd let a lot slip, in the occasional dialogues with faux Sam and Dean. That Sam had successfully completed the first two trials. It wasn't really a worry, so many favourites came down at the post or just before. And Sam wasn't looking well. Not well at all. He didn't know why but the trials appeared to be taking their toll on Moose.
He got up and stretched. At the table in front of him, Kevin scribbled on, oblivious to his actual surroundings, his eyes open and on the notebook, his mind convinced of the illusion that embraced him. All well and good.
His spy had told him that Naomi had upped the ante in the search for Cas, the rebellious angel eluding her operatives. He smiled. He would watch her. And she would lead him to Cas eventually. She was too uptight to make a very good Intelligence leader, he thought. Too … bureaucratic to understand that sometimes things were hidden in plain sight. You just had to know your subject and know where to look.
US-71 S, Colorado
Dean glanced across at Sam. He was still fiddling with the unwrapped burger and fries bag in his lap.
"How long since you ate?"
Sam looked over at him, shrugging. "Uh … yesterday –"
"Three days, Sam," Dean corrected, trying to keep his impatience out of his voice. "Last time I saw you swallow food was three days ago."
"I can't eat," Sam said quietly, looking down at the bag and pitching it into the back in frustration. "I can't. I know you're worried, man, I'm worried too. But this isn't a cold or a fever, or whatever it is you're supposed to feed. I'm not going to get better. This is all a part of it."
"A part of what?"
"The trials. Those first two – they're not just something I did. They did something to me, they're still doing something to me. They're changing me. And it's not going to get better. Not until I can start the third trial."
"Trial?" Dean shot a look at him. "You can hardly stay on your feet. I know we're on the rails here, Sam. I know there's no way out but through, but we gotta do something about this or you're not going to last until the third trial."
"There's nothing to do, Dean," Sam said, looking out the window beside him. "We talked about this – no amount of tests or doctors or food or sleep is going to do anything."
"How do you know that?"
"I can feel it," Sam said softly, looking at his hands. "In my veins – every blood vessel in my body is burning, all the time now. Something is burning up in me, I don't know what, but it's been accelerating the last few weeks. It's why I can't eat. Or sleep for more than an hour at a time. It's why I have to keep going, even if it makes no sense to you – it makes sense to me."
"I can't sit here and watch you dying and do nothing, Sam."
Sam turned to him. "I don't think that's what's happening. I can't make you believe that. I can't prove it. I can't even speculate about it. But I think this was meant to happen."
"That's not reassuring me," Dean said, staring at the road.
There'd been a lot of times in his life when he'd felt helpless, pushed and pulled by the forces surrounding them that were just out of sight, that'd thwarted every counter he'd been able to think of, or were just too fucking big to fight against, no matter how hard he'd tried. Times when he'd watched as people had died, had made choices that had led them to their deaths. Good people, who'd trusted in him. People he hadn't been able to save. He'd never had to do it in slow motion, though. Never had to sit around and watch his brother get weaker and weaker, watch him disappearing right in front of him. He wasn't sure how long he could take that.
"You remember that place on the Gulf, Dean?"
He turned to look at Sam, feeling his stomach plummet as he saw his brother's slack expression, eyes half-closed and sweat standing out on his face, his cheeks bright red and heat rash standing out on his neck.
"What place?" he said, the words crawling out past the fear in his throat.
"I was ten, I think," Sam continued dreamily. "We were there for a week while Dad talked to some people. There was a long beach and I got stung by a jellyfish."
He remembered. Sam's shrill screams of pain and his frantic attempts to peel the stingers off, his fingers and hands raw and blistered with the poisons by the time he'd got them all off and Sam back to the small motel they'd been staying in, and had washed his brother's legs down with vinegar.
"Yeah."
"I remember your face. You were so scared," Sam mumbled, eyes closing. "Made me more scared, then you must have realised that, I think, 'cause you got all gruff and dragged me back to the room and kept telling me to shut up and sit still." His mouth curved up in a slight smile. "I didn't know that you got stung too. Didn't pay attention til I saw you trying to clean the guns."
Dean frowned, glancing at him again. "Where'd that come from?"
"I dunno," Sam muttered. "I keep remembering things."
He didn't like the vagueness in Sam's voice. Or the heat that he could feel radiating out from him. Or any of the goddamned things that were happening, he thought sourly.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Naomi stood in the restaurant, against the wall, watching the people eating, drinking, talking, walking, moving around, all oblivious to her.
Castiel had returned three times to this place in his driven wandering. It wasn't for the food, she thought, nose wrinkling up in distaste as she watched the meals placed in front of the patrons. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at each one of the people who were dressed in the bright red uniforms. Someone who'd been there all the time. Someone he could reach out to, if only in a small way, to connect to the humans he'd become so fond of. Someone …
Amherst, Massachusetts
Kevin looked up from the tablet and rubbed his forehead. He was alone on the boat, the conduit blocked, his hand cramped and sore. He looked down at his notes. The tablet's information was not linear, he'd told Dean, months ago. And that fact was becoming more and more clear to him as the pieces began to mesh together to form a whole that was intoxicatingly vivid. Crowley had no idea, he thought. No idea of the power of the information, of the work on the tablet. The demon who prided himself on his extensive vision had failed to see the enormity of the power potential in what he'd held.
He looked vaguely around the cabin. There was no food and he was starving. And at the back of his mind, doubts were nagging at him. He looked up at the banging on the metal door. Again, Dean had failed to use the knock. The man wasn't stupid or careless. He wouldn't have lived long if he had been, Kevin thought.
He got up and walked down through the cabin and the hall to the access door, opening it and standing aside as they walked in past him. Neither said anything about being let in without so much as squirt from the water gun. Kevin looked down at the devil's trap that covered the floor in front of the door. From a distance, it looked intact. From a distance.
"How you doing?" Dean said, putting the six-pack down on the table and pulling one out.
"Slow," Kevin said, shrugging. "I'm not sure I'm getting the translation exactly right."
"Isn't that impossible?" Sam turned to look at him as he walked past them and sat down at the table. "I mean, you're the only one who can read it."
"I need food," Kevin said, looking down at the notes he'd scrawled that morning, glancing back up at the brothers from under his brows.
Dean turned to look at Sam, shrugging slightly.
"What do you want?" Sam turned to the table.
Kevin wrote down a list and handed it to the younger Winchester, getting up again and following them down to the door.
"Alright, barbequed ribs, mashed potatoes –" Sam read through the list as he walked up to the door.
"That's garlic mashed potato," Kevin corrected him tersely.
"Garlic mashed potatoes," Sam repeated. "Mixed greens with … baby lettuce … cornbread, and … Pad Thai."
"Garth says there's a good little place on the other side of town," Kevin said, looking at them.
The brothers exchanged a glance and Dean shrugged. "What the hell, kid's been working hard."
They walked out and Kevin locked the door behind them. Not in a million years, he thought, feeling a frisson run up his spine. The question was, what was he going to do about it?
Ignacio, Colorado
The Two Rivers Hotel and Casino was an imposing building, three stone-built storeys under a steeply-pitched tile roof, with the wide plain, rising foothills and snowy peaks as its backdrop, it seemed a place that had been forgotten in time.
Dean pulled into the almost-empty parking lot and looked around as the engine ticked softly in the silence.
"Not the high season," he said distractedly, looking at Sam.
His brother nodded, pulling his jacket on and opening the door. Dean saw him squint as the bright sunshine hit his face, watched him stagger slightly and lean against the car.
I need you to watch out for me.
The memory of his brother's face, vehement and unfocussed came back to him suddenly.
Yeah, I always do.
Sam had wanted a promise and he'd given it, knowing he would break it. Knowing he wouldn't be able to keep it, no matter what happened. Now, that choice, that decision, had been removed from his control.
He rubbed a hand over his face and got out of the car, walking around to the trunk to get their gear. He'd said that his body was burning, he thought distantly, pulling out the duffles and locking the trunk again. No, he corrected himself, that his veins were burning. Was that different, he wondered? Was he right, something was being burned out of him?
There were no prizes for guessing what the something was. If God had wanted to ensure that only one man could complete the task of closing the gates, he guessed that he might do whatever was needed to make sure that the man was the right one for the job.
Following Sam into the bar, he wasn't exactly surprised to see that it was as empty as the parking lot had been. Tables and chairs filled the space between the polished L-shaped bar and the lobby of the hotel, a couple of slots sitting inconspicuously against the square columns. Not a speck of dust anywhere. Not a single sign that anyone had been in there for – for a long time, Dean thought, glancing at the machines. They were eighties vintage.
"Nice place," he commented. Sam looked around disinterestedly and shrugged.
The lobby counter was empty and Dean tapped the bell. The town wasn't big but even small towns had a few people who craved a drink through the day. He wondered if the exclusion was deliberate – either on the hotel's part, or the town's.
A man walked out of the office behind the counter; tall, a long fall of black hair incongruous against the creaseless western suit and white shirt. Deeply tanned skin pointed to his heritage and the dark brown eyes were expressionless.
"Good morning," Dean said. "We'd like a room?"
For a long moment, the man looked at him. His gaze flicked to Sam and Dean wondered if the guy was gonna turn them down.
"Here," he added, trying to get the guy's attention off his brother, who was gazing around vaguely, staggering a little to one side as he took a step. "Please."
The manager turned away, picking up a register book and putting it . Dean looked at Sam. His little brother didn't seem to have noticed the manager's persual, his brow creased up, one hand lifting to his ear as he turned away.
The sound was odd, Sam thought, looking around for a possible source. Like someone striking a tuning fork in the upper registers, he could almost feel it in his teeth, the connection between ear and jaw reverberating slightly as he turned his head. It vanished a moment later and he turned back to the lobby counter.
"Did you hear that?" he asked Dean.
Dean glanced at him, looking back at the manager nervously. The man was staring at Sam, brows drawn together.
"He's got the flu," Dean said quickly. The manager looked back at him and he ducked his head, completing the details in front of him. Surrounded by the weird, he thought uneasily.
He took the key and picked up the bags, checking that Sam was following as he headed for the stairs.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Naomi looked around the restaurant, her gaze flicking idly over the bodies and the blood, sprayed over the walls, to return to the woman sitting in front of her, half-sprawled against the long counter, the blood spilling from the corner of her mouth a darker shade as it soaked into the red shirt she wore.
"Please, don't hurt me," the waitress said, looking up. "I didn't do anything!"
"No, of course not, dear," the angel said, closing her fist slowly. The woman gasped as pain rippled and gouged her from the inside and another thread of blood trickled over her lips.
"Can you pray? I want you to think about the man you served here, the one you talk to," Naomi said quietly, crouching down beside the woman as she loosened her fingers. "Do you know who I mean?"
The woman shook her head hopelessly. "I see a lot of men."
"This one is quiet and has deep blue eyes," Naomi said. "He is very polite and a little strange."
The woman nodded suddenly, remembering him, and Naomi smiled. "That's good."
She rose to her feet, looking down at the woman.
"See his face in your mind, and pray to him, dear, to come and help you." She closed her fingers again, tightening them savagely.
The woman's eyes were screwed shut, her face spasming in pain as the agony increased.
"Help me," she whispered.
Manhattan, New York
Castiel closed his eyes, seeing her face, distorted in pain, hearing her voice in his mind, her pleading.
A trap, a part of him realised distantly. She was bait because he'd talked to her.
Then it didn't matter, he thought. He had brought it onto her, through his weakness, his desire to connect. He would have to go.
The curtains next to the table fluttered a little as he disappeared from the small table. At the next table, the old woman who'd been watching him absently, thinking what a nice-looking man he was, dropped her cup in astonishment.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
"Let her go," Cas said, staring down at the woman.
"Gladly," Naomi replied, squeezing her hand tight. Cas saw the woman's eyes fix in place, open and unseeing as a gout of blood spilled from her mouth.
He turned to auburn-haired angel, his face bitter. "We were supposed to be their shepherds."
Naomi shrugged. "Not always, Castiel. When our Father commanded it, we were warriors and followed Gabriel into the land of Egypt. Every firstborn, even the firstborn cattle were slain in one night. We lay ruin to Sodom and Gomorrah, we brought down the walls of Jericho and slew eighteen thousand in Assyria – did you ever doubt that angels are not the weapons of Heaven?"
Cas looked away. I thought angels were supposed to be guardians. Dean had looked at him challengingly. Not dicks.
Read the Bible. Angels are warriors of God. I am a soldier, he'd said told the man. It was true. Had been then, was now. The unthinking, unquestioning swords of God.
"The weapon does not make the decision to strike of its own accord, Naomi," he said to her. "Who is directing you?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Where is the angel tablet, Castiel?"
"It's safe," Castiel said. "That's all that should concern you. Safe from everyone."
"Where is it!?"
"In the words of a good friend of mine … bite me," Cas said, smiling at her.
"Oh, we will bite, Castiel," Naomi said bitterly. "Have no fear of that."
She turned to Aion and Araphiel, her voice hard and clipped. "Search back along his route. He must have hidden it along the way. Find it."
Ignacio, Colorado
Dean walked into the room, glancing at Sam as he closed the door. "Regular tourist mecca, we got here. We're the only guests in this whole place; last entry in the registry was in '06 –"
"Hey," Sam said, cutting him off. "Hey."
"Hey."
"I remembered something else."
"Yeah?"
"The rats. I remembered the rats," Sam said, rolling restlessly onto his side to look at Dean. "You remember them?"
Dean looked down at the pamphlets he was still holding, courtesy of the lobby rack. "Yeah, Sam, I remember them."
"That was my fault," Sam said abruptly. "I made us go down there. But you told Dad and Jim it was your idea."
Dean sighed. These trips down memory lane were not helping. "You were nine."
"I was a pain-in-the-butt kid brother," Sam said, his voice softer, muffled again. "When the tunnel filled up … and they all came out …"
"Sam –" He really didn't want to think about the goddamned rats again. Or his brother barely conscious on the top of that stone plinth. Or the flashlight dying because he'd fallen in the water and the battery had been soaked. Or the feel of them, using him as a life-ring as the water had kept rising.
Sam opened his eyes and sat up, looking at him, the confusion gone from his face. "I remember you had nightmares for a while after that."
Dean rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, our childhood, man, good times."
"I remember you lied to Dad."
"Stop it, okay?" he said, getting to his feet. "I'm gonna go check out the museum and trading post."
"Yeah," Sam said, nodding as he swung his legs off the edge of the bed. "I'm gonna follow the creepy hotel manager …"
"No," Dean told him, stepping across between the beds and putting a hand on his shoulder quellingly. "What's going on?"
"With what?"
"With your ambition to become Miss Colorado 2013," he said in exasperation. "With the blasts from the past, Sam. Why are you remembering all this shit now?"
"I don't know," Sam said, looking up at him. "It's just coming back, more and more. You taught me how to swim, you and Dad, that summer we were stuck in Jersey, you remember that?"
Dean looked at him. Sam had been six. Their father had three broken ribs, a cracked pelvis and a broken wrist from a tussle with a ghost that had been resistant to being laid to rest. They'd spent ten weeks in some crappy cabin near the shore and it'd been stinking hot and humid as hell and he'd spent every day in the water, his brother heartbroken that he wasn't allowed to do more than paddle. He'd taught him to float and dog-paddle, and Sam had followed every instruction with a ferocious obedience. He'd been swimming pretty well by the time their father could move around easily again.
"Yeah, hot summer," he said noncommittally. Sam shook his head, the clarity vanishing from his eyes. Dean's brows drew together as he watched exhaustion crash over his brother again.
"Yeah, well, no chasing after anyone," he said. "You get some rest."
Sam considered it for a moment and nodded. "Yeah, I can do that too." He fell back on the bed, eyes closing instantly. Dean looked down at him, the faint frown still there.
What the fuck was going on with him, he wondered uneasily as he walked out of the room. The trip was going backwards, he'd noticed that. Thirteen, then ten, nine then six.
He walked down the stairs and out of the hotel, following the street to the museum, three blocks down.
It wouldn't be so bad if Sam was sticking to the good memories, he thought distractedly as he strode down the street. But their childhood had some pretty bad ones as well and he couldn't think of any good reason to drag those back into the light.
He pushed open the door to the single storey stone building and walked in, shunting thought and feeling aside as he looked around.
Hot. He was unbearably hot. Burning. From the inside out. He couldn't breathe, his lungs filling with hot liquid, the taste rising up his throat.
Sam thrashed on the bed, the pillow and sheets soaked through with the sweat that poured off him, his t-shirt clinging to him.
He was awake, listening in the dark. Beside him, he could feel his brother's warmth, but Dean was asleep. His father's voice sounded from the next room, harsh and afraid.
"Jesus, Jim! What am I going to do?"
"Nothing," Jim Murphy said quietly, so quietly that he almost couldn't hear him. "You're gonna look after them and we'll find out where the thing is hiding and we'll take it down, John, but it's not the child's fault and it's not even really Mary's fault it happened."
"I know that!" John Winchester almost shouted. "Why us? Why her? What did it want? What does it want?"
"I don't know."
"What could it do to him, that blood?"
"I don't know that either," Jim said slowly. "There's nothing even in the Church's heretical texts – not even a hint of it. I don't know that we'll find a precedent for this."
Sam listened in the dark. At three, he hadn't known what he was hearing, only registering his father's fear and the worry in Jim's voice. With his adult mind, he knew what they were talking about.
He'd lived with it all his remembered life. He'd had no idea of that until Jessica had been murdered and all his dreams of a normal life had been overturned and slashed to ribbons in one fiery night, his brother's arms pulling him out of the small apartment, the sirens and the shouting and the flames that had lit everything up. He'd known there was something about him, though. Something different. Something that fought endlessly against his father and brother and their life. Something that slumbered until his twenty-second birthday and then lit him up with levels of difference that had shaken and terrified him.
Freak. Cambion. Demon child. Monster. He'd thought them all in the years since he'd discovered exactly what had been done to him. He'd seen the same thoughts in his brother's face, not often, not willingly, but there, and those times had cut through him like a white-hot knife, Dean's misery and his own entwined and separate and no way for them to ever find that closeness that had characterised the way they'd been when it'd been the three of them on the road forever.
Dean looked around the simple store. Mostly tourist stuff, a few old photographs. The man serving behind the counter was Ute, long, greying black hair and seamed, brown face.
"The Nuciu, the People, came to this land more than eighteen centuries ago," he said slowly. "It was not an easy land, then or now."
"How is it that you stayed, when the others went?"
The man smiled dryly. "When Ouray went to see President Hayes, in 1880, he did not speak for us. None cared or wanted the land. The leader of the People told them this place was the home of the Great Spirit's sacred messenger, that it would protect them, would give them what they needed as long as they cared for it and made offerings, their blessings would be many."
Dean's attention sharpened. "And what were the offerings? What did the Great Spirit's sacred messenger ask for?"
"Stories," the man said. Dean turned around to look at him.
"That was all," he said, seeing the doubt in the younger man's face. "There is a trail, from the end of the road, up into the hills. Many people take it. Few understand what it is they see when they look back. You might be one of those few."
"A trail?"
The man nodded and walked out from behind the counter, moving to the door. "I am closing up now."
Dean raised a brow as he walked past him. "End of the road?"
The man nodded and closed the door behind him. He heard the snick of the lock being turned and glanced back, the store's Closed sign flipping over decisively.
It was a confirmation of some sort, he thought, turning and walking back toward the hotel. The Great Spirit's sacred messenger. All the biblical texts called Metatron the Messenger. Or the Voice. Or the Scribe. The one who talked to God and passed on whatever information he was supposed to. Kevin had told them about the farewell note, written into the demon tablet. If the angel had just decided to drop out, would he have picked a tiny tribe to live with, in the middle of nowhere? Possibly, Dean thought. If he thought he needed to hide. Certainly no one had twigged to his location over the last couple of thousand years.
He saw the trailhead and turned off, boots lifting puffs of dirt as the land began to climb slowly.
The countryside was silent, not even a far-off plane disturbing the peace. On the sun-warmed trail, barely visible at times, scattered with thin vegetation and loose rock, he felt a little of the tension of the last few weeks dissipating reluctantly. Too many balls up in the air, he thought distantly, watching the ground at his feet. Crowley. The angels. Cas and the angel tablet. Kevin and the demon tablet. Garth. And Sam, always Sam, deteriorating before his eyes. He dragged in a deep breath as he reached the peak of the low hill, turning to look back at the town.
For a long moment, he didn't see the pattern. When he did notice it, it leapt out at him, the streets and buildings, the lower hills and ponds. The entire town, and beyond to the edges of the open country, had been precisely designed, exactly laid out.
In the shape of a sigil. An Enochian sigil. The town was a sigil of deflection.
No wonder the fucking angels never saw it, he thought, the corner of his mouth lifting very slightly as he looked at it. No demon would've seen it either. The scribe, or voice, or messenger or whatever the hell he'd called himself, had been thorough. And Sam was right, he realised. Metatron was here. Still here, after all this time. Somewhere within the borders of that sigil.