Dean shifted the pickup into gear and floored the accelerator, racing toward the spiked iron fence and gaining speed every foot of the way. He aimed the front of the pickup at the small gap between two sections of fence closest to the oni.
Sam braced his hand against the dashboard.
Time seemed to slow down.
Looking at the tips of the spiked fence, Dean tried not to think about all the ways the collision could go wrong. He hoped his theory of the oni maxing out his mojo was sound, and tried to coax a little extra bit of speed out of the pickup.
Two seconds before impact, the oni turned toward the truck, his back to the blue and white van. He raised the ironbound cane in both hands and swung the pointed tip toward Dean’s head.
The pickup slammed into the iron fence and, after a brief moment of resistance, the two sections swung apart and down like a mangled gate. As the pickup burst through the gap, Dean ducked his head below the dash, unimpeded by airbags that, naturally, failed to deploy.
The pickup seemed to slam into a wall. Dean and Sam were hurled bodily against their seatbelts then fell backward in unison.
Groggily, Dean looked up and saw what appeared to be a bullet hole through the windshield directly in front of where his face had been. The center of the hood had crumpled in a U-shape.
“Where’s the … ?”
Sam rubbed the side of his head and looked around. “Bobby?”
The Ford’s engine had stalled. Dean shifted the transmission into park and climbed gingerly out of the cab.
McClary was kneeling by the side the road, doubled over in pain as he clutched his injured wrist against his chest. Walking past him, Dean scanned the street. The gray Subaru hadn’t moved after Bobby smashed the windshield. Dean’s gaze traveled forward several yards, his heart in his throat, until he spotted Bobby, lying motionless in the middle of Ellisburg Pike.
Bringing down the stadium from several hundred yards away had taken all Tora’s concentration and power. In comparison, the pedestrian overpass collapse had been simple. He had been in physical contact with the overpass and the structure was simplistic. With the stadium, he had attacked from a distance to avoid interruption by the fleeing masses and to give himself, appropriately enough, a larger playing field on which to wreak havoc. His third eye guided his destructive power to where it would cause the greatest damage, and his kanabo, currently molded into the shape of a cane with an ironbound handle and tip, directed the waves of force to the intended targets.
While his third eye became dominant—and he reveled in the destruction it facilitated—his other senses lost priority. A human might have described his state of consciousness as a trance. As a result of his inattention, the two men he remembered from the previous night’s car chase snuck up on him. The one in the uniform fired bullets at close range that actually stung the oni. Though they couldn’t break his skin, they did break his concentration. Then the other man fired the shotgun at him, another distracting annoyance.
He broke the wrist of the lawman and would have ripped the offending gun hand off that wrist if the other man hadn’t fired his shotgun—as if the weapon could harm him, even with the muzzle pressed against his skin. After batting away the toy, he tossed the older man aside like an impudent child.
Finally, two young men—the Good Samaritans from the overpass collapse—had tried to run him down with a pickup truck. He had given a moment’s thought to disabling the truck, but its momentum would carry it forward regardless, even if he’d had time to create a fuel line leak, generate a spark and have it blow up in a glorious fireball. His second option was to spear the head of the driver like a fish in a slow-moving stream, but the man had already ducked out of sight in anticipation of such an attack. As a result, the tip of his cane stabbed air beyond the windshield.
The oni took the brunt of the collision, which damaged the bumper and hood of the truck, but not his body. He was slammed unceremoniously into the side of his van, but the damage to his vehicle was cosmetic and minimal.
Fortunately, his large-scale ritual of blood had already been a resounding success. The calling would become undeniable, a beacon drawing them to his side. Everything had been prepared. Once they were together as a family, he would complete the demon gate ceremony with the human woman on the new moon.
Tora had no need to remain at the site of the stadium collapse, so he shoved the pickup truck back an arm’s length while the humans inside were too stunned or cowed to interfere, and walked around to the driver’s side of his van.
He had briefly considered killing the interlopers there and then, by hand, one after the other, but the ritual’s success had lifted his spirits while simultaneously draining him of his stored energy. The waves of fear, grief and misery wafting out of the stadium parking lot were slowly replenishing him, but he needed some time alone, without distractions, to recharge. Moreover, he had left the woman alone for too long and she could not be trusted while she remained human. She would not believe his promise to let her live if she made no attempt to escape, and she was also too unenlightened to desire the fate he had in store for her. A death threat was effective only when the alternative had greater appeal. Losing her now would delay his plans, whether he attempted to retrieve her, locate and execute her, or seek another woman for the ceremony. Because the new moon was tomorrow, he had to complete the ceremony tonight. By dawn, she would be remade in the oni’s image.
He started the van and drove to the bowling alley.
Twenty-Seven
“Bobby, you are not dead!” Dean said, shaking Bobby’s shoulders where he lay in the middle of Ellisburg Pike. He had scraped his face, but otherwise, Dean saw no obvious injuries.
Internal bleeding wouldn’t … No! “D’you hear me?”
Bobby opened his eyes. “Thanks for clearing that up.”
Sam walked up beside Dean. “Bobby, are you okay?”
“Eggs are scrambled, but the shell ain’t broken,” Bobby said, wincing as he tried to sit up. “On second thought…”
The driver of the gray Subaru, a young mother with a toddler gripping her hand, approached. “Is he okay? He came out of nowhere, hit my windshield before…”
“Dean, where’s the—?”
“The van!” McClary exclaimed.
Dean and Sam, distracted by Bobby’s plight, had assumed the oni fled on foot after the collision. They both turned around, reaching for their concealed automatics, as the blue van raced away from the curb and slipped into the rush of traffic skirting around multiple fender benders.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean whispered.
He and Sam put away their guns and helped Bobby to his feet.
“Not an invalid,” Bobby groused, despite looking unsteady. “Don’t need help crossing the street. Get after him!”
“We catch him,” Dean said dejectedly, “then what?”
“He’s right, Bobby,” Sam said. “You shot him point blank. Dean hurled a pickup truck at him. Nothing hurt him. Nothing slowed him down. We’ve got nothing.”
“Find his lair, wherever he goes to ground,” Bobby said, helping McClary to his feet to prove he’d recovered from the windshield collision. “We’ll figure something out.”
Dean and Sam hurried back to the pickup truck. When it wouldn’t start, Sam looked back into the parking lot.
“Forget it,” Dean said. “Even if it didn’t blow up, you’ll never get it out of the lot.”
But Sam had already jumped out. He called back over his shoulder, “We made our own exit.”
Less than a minute later, the Monte Carlo rumbled over one of the flattened sections of fence and Dean hopped into the passenger side before Sam brought it to a complete stop. Once they were in the flow of traffic, Sam drove aggressively, ducking in and out of lanes to gain ground. Dean scanned left and right, checking each side street they passed.
“D’you think Bobby’s okay?” Sam asked.
“It’s not like he’d say if he wasn’t,” Dean replied.
“The windshield probably cushioned his fall.”
“Seriously?” Sam asked incredulously. “How?”
“Compared to asphalt,” Dean said, shrugging. “Sure.”
Sam thought about it and nodded.
“Of course, he ain’t gettin’ any younger,” Dean said. For a moment back there, staring at Bobby’s unmoving body, Dean thought they’d lost him. Dean had watched too many people he cared about die, and wondered how many more he would lose before his own number was up. How many heavy losses can you face before you stop caring if your own ticket gets punched?
“Dean, you okay?”
“Yeah,” Dean said as he craned his neck to see around a New Jersey Transit bus. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Good call,” Sam said, “on the lucky break.”
Dean smiled. “Now and—Whoa! Blue van, up ahead. Turned right at the intersection.”
As Sam accelerated, the Monte Carlo gave a shudder, as if it might stall, then it surged forward and he maneuvered around the slow-moving transit bus, cutting in front of it just in time to turn at the intersection.
“Easy, Bullitt,” Dean cautioned. “Let’s not tip our hand.”
“Right,” Sam said. “Reconnaissance.”
Sam stayed back, leaving a couple of cars between the blue and white van and the Monte Carlo. The oni had no reason to suspect they were in the old car. He’d only seen them driving the red pickup truck. If he did suspect a tail, he might trigger a blowout or engine failure to lose them.
Eventually, he led them to an abandoned bowling alley. When the van turned into the parking lot, Sam initially passed the ramp, then made a U-turn to cross to the other side of the street when the oncoming lanes were clear. As Sam neared the bowling alley’s parking lot, Dean saw that the van had bypassed the front lot to drive behind the building.
“He went around back,” Dean said. “Service entrance maybe.”
“There’s a fence back there,” Sam said. “No outlet?”
He turned onto the lot, coasting toward the front door, where a realtor sign taped to the window indicated the property was for sale. Sam parked the Monte Carlo next to a chain-link fence, away from the front doors and windows, all of which were covered with plywood, on the chance that the oni might peek out through a gap.
They exited the car quietly and crept along the front of the bowling alley, ducking below the level of the windows. Before they reached the doors, Sam leaned forward and peered into the building through a small gap between the plywood covering the plate glass windows and the edge of the doorframe.
“Two bodies hanging in there,” Sam whispered. “Like a meat locker.”
“Its pantry,” Dean said, recalling Sam’s oni research. “It eats human flesh.”
“Dean,” Sam said. “We’ve got a problem.”
Sam looked at his brother, his eyes wide.
“One of the bodies is alive.”
“So much for surveillance duty.”
* * *
When the oni returned to the bowling alley, he found the woman where he’d left her, hanging from the hook in the ceiling. She had managed to shake off the burlap sack he’d tied around her head. Her dark hair was matted against the sides of her face, her skin covered with perspiration. Her wrists looked raw above and below the ropes that bound them. Her arms and legs trembled with exhaustion. If he cut her down now, she probably couldn’t stand on her own.
“I warned you,” he said, glancing down at the burlap bag at her feet.
“I couldn’t breathe with that over my head,” she said quickly, her voice raspy. “Even with the hole.”
“This will be over soon,” he promised, slipping his cane through his belt as if it were a scabbard. “The calling is almost complete. By dawn tomorrow, you will pass through the demon gate.”
He unfastened the handcuff that had shackled her to the upside-down corpse and she visibly shuddered as she swung a few inches farther away. Reaching up, he unscrewed the eyebolt suspending the headless cop and carried the body to the shoe rental desk.
“Take me down,” the woman said. “Please. My arms are coming out of their sockets and my legs are on fire.”
“Soon,” he said. “First I must complete the calling.”
He crossed the bowling alley and retrieved his duffel bag from the counter in the pro shop. Except for a few chairs and a filing cabinet, nothing of value had been left behind. Placing the duffel bag on the counter near the dead cop’s feet, he unzipped it and removed a gleaming meat cleaver. With one powerful whack, he lopped off the cop’s right arm below the shoulder.
“Oh, God,” the woman gasped. “What are you doing?”
Another whack of the cleaver separated the humerus from the radius and ulna. He removed a curved knife from the duffel and stripped the bone clean of decaying flesh, muscle, tendons, and nerves.
“Normally, this is a hilltop ritual,” he explained as he worked. “The roof of this building will have to suffice. The calling ritual is complete when I break the human bone in half, signifying their break from their humanity. They will have no choice but to come to me, Tora, father of all, and together, we will celebrate.” He turned to leave, but paused as a thought occurred to him.
“Do you wish to observe the ritual?”
“No, not at all,” she said quickly. “I’ve … I’ve seen enough.”
“Then I’ll leave you as you are until I return.”
Behind the bowling alley, next to where he had parked the van, stood a dinged brown Dumpster. Tora jumped up and landed on the lid of the trash bin, then jumped to the roof of the van, and from there he leapt the remaining distance to the gently sloped roof of the bowling alley. Walking to the center of the roof, he sat cross-legged and began the final stage of the calling ritual.
Sam watched the oni take down the headless corpse, lay it out on the shoe rental counter, then return with a duffel bag and a meat cleaver to lop off the arm and strip the bone clean. He talked to the woman the entire time as if she were a willing participant. Though Sam couldn’t hear a word either of them said, he gave Dean the play-by-play without attempting to guess at the meaning behind the oni’s actions.
While Sam stayed by the door, Dean opened the trunk of the Monte Carlo and filled two bottles with gasoline from the two-gallon jug and stuffed rags inside each one. Since bullets were ineffective against the oni, they would each have a Molotov cocktail at their disposal.
When the oni walked out of the back door again, carrying the gleaming bone over his shoulder, Sam whispered to Dean, “He’s leaving. Without the woman.”
“It might be our best chance to get her out.”
“If he sees our car—”
A metallic clang sounded, followed by a muffled thump.
“He jumped on the roof,” Sam guessed, “with the arm bone.”
“Ours is not to reason why,” Dean whispered. “Let’s go.”
Dean rushed by Sam, running along the side of the bowling alley, his prepped Molotov cocktail down at his side. Sam followed with his own gasoline grenade, glancing upward a couple of times, expecting a trap or sneak attack. Since they couldn’t guess at the purpose of the human bone, they had no idea how long the oni would stay on the roof
When Dean grabbed the handle on the back door, Sam placed his palm against the steel to stop him and whispered, “Quiet.”
Dean nodded, understanding. Squeaky hinges would alert the oni.
One inch at a time, Dean eased the door open until they could slip through the gap and hurry to the woman.
“Thank God, thank God,” the suspended woman whispered hoarsely. “Get me out of here. Please hurry! He’s performing a ‘calling ritual’ on the roof.”
“How long?” Dean asked.
Sam reached above the woman’s hands and sawed through the ropes with a pocket knife, while Dean untied the ropes binding her ankles.
“I don’t know. He said ‘they’ would have no choice but to come t
o him, the father of all. Called himself Tora. Earlier, he peeled the skin off that cop’s face and said, ‘They must shed their human face.’ It was horrible!”
With her wrists released, the woman’s full weight came down on her feet and her legs buckled. “I—I can’t stand. My legs, too weak.”
“I’ve got you,” Sam said, wrapping a hand around her waist after picking up his Molotov cocktail with his other hand. “Anyone else here—alive?”
“No,” she said, trying to walk, but stumbling. “Is he some kind of—? He’s not human? Is he—a demon? The horns …”
“Something like that,” Dean said without elaborating as they hurried toward the back door. “Did he mention his plans? A goal?”
“Something about taking me through a demon gate,” she said, shaking her head. “Said I wouldn’t be human anymore, that I would be … like him somehow.”
“Why you?” Sam asked, wondering if the oni wanted a mate.
“I think he tried before,” she said. “Ended up killing them. He said he’d kill me if I tried to escape. Pick somebody else.”
When they reached the door, Dean leaned close and listened. “All quiet.”
“Let’s go,” Sam said, still supporting the woman.
Sam took the lead while Dean watched their back, Molotov cocktail in one hand, a Zippo lighter in the other. As they crept along the building, moving as quietly and efficiently as possible, Sam thought he heard chanting from above, in a guttural language he didn’t recognize. A few more minutes, he thought. That’s all we need.
Dean opened the driver side door and climbed in with extra care.
Supernatural 10 - Rite of Passage Page 23