Leanne pulled the jar from its hiding place and carried it into the main room. She peaked outside to make sure Rose wasn’t coming down the hallway, then set the jar on the table. It was tall and oblong, and the same dusty color as all the pieces that littered the floor. Leanne thought that surely the owner would be happy that one of the jars wasn’t broken.
Then curiosity got the better of her. She dug her nails into the seam of the jar. At first, the lid wouldn’t give, it was stuck by some sort of tar-like substance. Finally, it twisted a bit and Leanne managed to separate it from the jar. Beneath it was a horsehair stopper formed with more tar. Leanne looked around for something to pry the stopper off. She spotted a letter opener on the floor and shoved that between the seal and the lip. A whooshing sound escaped from the jar.
Leanne was knocked to the floor, her legs splayed akimbo, as a dark, thick smoke poured out of the jar, taking shape on the floor. It grew larger and broader, almost to full human size. Leanne tried to pull herself up, but the black smoke enveloped her ankles—it felt like her legs were caught in two tons of wet cement.
The last thing Leanne remembered was the acrid smoke shooting up into her mouth and forcing itself down her throat.
Ten minutes later, when Rose returned to the room with Sal the maintenance guy, Leanne was nowhere to be found.
“Children these days. You just can’t trust them. Leaving the job on the first day. My stars,” Rose sighed.
Sal nodded his head in agreement and they went about their business cleaning up the Presidential Suite.
At first Anthony didn’t notice the leggy blonde girl as she rushed into the Roman Art wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum got hundreds of visitors a day, and he thought she was just in a rush to meet up with the group of elementary school children who were wandering around on a class field trip. It wasn’t until he heard the sound of glass breaking that he decided to step into the hall and take a look around.
The girl stood in the middle of the hall. At her feet lay the remains of a glass case that housed several Roman jars from about 70 AD, if Anthony recalled correctly. As he watched, she pushed another glass case over and grabbed the pottery jars one by one, smashing them to the ground.
A column of smoke began to rise from each of the smashed jars. Anthony’s first thought was to find a fire extinguisher, but then the woman moved to another case and did the same thing.
“Hey lady, you can’t do that!” Anthony labored toward her, reaching for his gun. “Stop it or I’ll shoot.”
The woman didn’t seem to hear him. She turned on her heel and pulled at a long case displaying a half-dozen small silver boxes. The case toppled and broke. Puffs of smoke rose from the boxes.
Anthony aimed his pistol at her. “I mean it ma’am. Don’t touch another case!”
The woman turned toward him. Her eyes were pure black.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Anthony exclaimed fearfully as he instinctively squeezed the trigger. The shot hit her in the shoulder. Children screamed and ran out of the room. But the bullet hole didn’t even slow her down. She pulled over another case, and more smoke filled the air. Columns of greasy vapor drifted down the hall where the cases had been smashed, seeming to rise and move with a will of their own.
Anthony stepped closer. A pillar of smoke billowed up in front of him. That was the last thing he remembered.
* * *
Dean noticed the train moved faster than he thought it would.
“Come on, Sam,” Dean shouted as he pulled himself onto one of the ladders that hung from the side of the cars. He held out his hand to his brother. Sam pursed his lips as he huffed alongside the tracks. He took off the duffle bag and threw it at Dean.
“Come on, tough guy. You’re running like a seventy year old.”
Sam kicked his ass into high gear and thrust his hand toward Dean. His brother pulled him onto the steel grating between the two cars. Safely on the platform, Sam doubled over, trying to catch his breath.
“It’s hard to run in these pants,” he gasped.
“Sure it is Sammy.” Dean brushed the tunnel soot off Sam’s shoulders. “Let’s find Dad and Sis.”
Mary Anne Struthers couldn’t believe her eyes. She was sitting on her fire escape facing north, with the Hudson River and New Jersey to her right, trying to get cool in the midday heat. That was when she saw a group of people on the overpass of the tunnel above the train tracks. About twenty of them were standing there, some even looked like children. As the 4:40 train left Grand Central Station headed toward Albany, every single one of the people stepped off the bridge and disappeared below. Mary Anne wiped her brow, thinking she must have imagined it or it was some kind of mirage. But as the train pulled further north she saw the same people swarm down its sides and into the caboose. Strange, she thought. Then she shrugged.
She felt for the bottle of cold beer by her foot and continued to watch the world go by.
TWENTY
Dean and Sam found Walter and Julia’s car. Julia opened the door, and Dean noticed she must have decided now was a good time to freshen up because she had styled her hair and put on a fresh blouse and skirt. The brothers squeezed into the sleeper cabin. It had two pull-down beds, one on each side of the roughly six foot-square space. Velvet jumper seats ran parallel on either side of the car. Walter was sitting down, studying the book that he and Sam had retrieved from the Bible Society.
“So what’s next, sports fans?” Dean said. “We just going to sit around here and do our summer reading list? ‘Cause I’m still trying to finish James and the Giant Peach.”
“Sit down. I’ve found a couple of citations that might relate to what I think is possessing James.” Walter looked at Dean and Sam over a pair of smudged reading glasses. “And yes, in lore they are very often found with Lilith. But not only Lilith, there are other demons which are identified with them as well.”
“Like who?”
“Like Satan’s wives, Eisheth and Agrat Bat-mahlat.”
“Wait, Satan’s wives?” Dean didn’t like the sound of that at all.
Sam blanched. “So we’re dealing with pre-biblical scrolls, which most likely have pre-biblical demons like Lilith protecting them? That could be a bloodbath.”
“What do you mean?” Julia gripped her hands together.
“It means that everyone on this train could be in danger,” Sam explained. “It’s impossible to get everyone off. We’re going to have to demon-proof the entire train.”
“How?”
“Okay, well, we can trap them or we can kill them with a knife—that we no longer have.”
“Can a demon jump from body to body? I don’t want to be possessed by a demon.” Julia’s voice caught in her throat as she continued, “If you guys spend so much time around demons how come you don’t get possessed?”
In unison, Sam and Dean loosened their ties and pulled at their collars, revealing their protection tattoos. Julia blushed as she looked at Dean’s.
“Oh. I see. Okay then. So what’s our next step?” she asked.
The boys formulated the plan. First they would need to get Eli into a safe place. Then they would have to set it up so that as James followed Eli, they could trap him in a Devil’s Trap. The unfortunate thing was James, the real James, was probably toast. The guard dog was having a field day, probably pissing all over everything. There was no way the man’s body was going to come out unscathed, especially after the gunshots and that fall he took. After that they were going to have to relieve Eli of the scrolls. And they had to do that carefully, because no one knew what else was lurking in the jars. Then there was Eli. They didn’t know anything about him. The safest thing now was to just assume he was human, he would bleed like everyone else.
“So what do we do first?” Julia asked.
“I think dinner,” Dean said with a smile.
“Really?” Sam asked.
“I reckon the dining car is going to be our best bet for the showdown—set up sal
t and Devil’s Traps. Later tonight, when it’s closed down, we draw Eli in there. James stays out, we rough up Eli, take his milk money and run.”
“I’ll stay here. There are still a hundred questions I have. I’ll order in.” Walter made himself comfortable.
“I’ll go.” Sam said.
“Why don’t you stay here with Walter. Or start marking up the other end of the train, away from us?” Dean motioned with his eyes toward Julia, who was paying no attention to him.
Sam shook his head. “Fine.”
Dean grinned at Julia. “I guess it’s just you and me.”
She looked at him. “I think you need to wash your face first.” She motioned toward the small bathroom.
Dean opened the door and, looking in the mirror, noticed a large smudge of soot on his cheek. He rubbed it off with some spit and his fingers.
“Good as new. Let’s go sweetheart.” Dean opened up the cabin door. “Food’s on you, money bags.”
Sam handed Dean a half-dozen red wax pencils out of the duffel bag. “Mark as you go.”
Posing as a young couple in love, Julia took Dean’s arm as they negotiated the narrow hallways to the dining car. At each door leading to a new car, Julia would keep look out while Dean pulled up the carpet. On the bare floor he drew a Devil’s Trap, and then laid the carpet back over it.
“What about the windows?” Julia asked.
“Hopefully we’re only dealing with one. But if there are more demons coming, we’ll have to salt the windows and any other way they could get in.”
The dining car was functionally opulent, with white linen tablecloths, plush springy red-velvet seats and flowers in crystal bud vases on each table. A maîtred’ led them to a table. Dean pulled out Julia’s chair for her.
“I didn’t know you could be such a gentleman.”
“It’s a working dinner, sugar nips, don’t get any ideas.” Dean squinted at her. “Plus, there’s our guy now.”
Eli Thurman was reading a newspaper while shoveling beef bourguignon into his mouth. The case—presumably containing the scrolls—was placed firmly between his knees. Dean looked around, and noticed that on the other side of the door, at the far end of the car, James was pacing past the window, glancing in frequently to check on Eli.
“Wow, that guy is hardcore.”
“Hard what?”
“Never mind.”
“So can I ask you a question?” Julia smiled at Dean.
“Sure.”
“Who are you guys, really?”
Dean looked into Julia’s eyes. He instinctively knew better than to trust her. But something pulled at him from inside, he felt some sort of connection to her. He resisted.
“I’ll lay it out straight. We are exterminators of a sort. And I am in the family business. But what I do and how I do it, it’s best if you don’t know.”
“But you know about demons, inscriptions within ancient pre-biblical urns. You mentioned a knife that can kill demons. And it’s not the first time you’ve run into whatever almost killed my father,” Julia said carefully. “It seems to me that there is much more to you than meets the eye.”
“There’s always much more than meets the eye—but we haven’t known each other for that long,” Dean said with a wink.
“So, my life is in your hands and I’m just going to have to trust you?”
“Basically.” Dean looked down at the menu. “No burger?”
“I’m serious. I want to know who you are.”
Dean closed his menu in a huff.
“Okay, listen lady, I know you’ve been playing it pretty cool up till now, but I don’t trust you or your dad. I don’t know what your bag is and I don’t want to know. But in my experience a gun-toting pretty face only leads to one thing. Trouble. So I’m steering clear of you. We’re here to get the scroll and get back home. We can pretend this is all for one and one for all musketeers crap, but when the time comes I’m going to do my job, just make sure you do yours.”
Julia didn’t blink, she didn’t even blush.
“You think I’m pretty?”
TWENTY-ONE
Sam took a couple of wax pencils and decided to start from the back of the train. As people slept in their seats in the economy cars, Sam quietly moved through, marking all the doors with Devil’s Traps. He had to move quickly, Devil’s Traps took a while to draw and it was a long train.
Sam finally reached the storage cars, and made his way to the caboose. On the ceiling as well as on the floor, he carefully drew a Devil’s Trap. His back was to the door when a man in a uniform opened it and stepped in.
“Hey, what are you doing in here?”
Sam spun around. “Oh sorry, I was trying to find my bag. I forgot to bring my shaving kit to my cabin.”
“Well, let me help. You take that side, I’ll look on this side,” the guy said as he waddled toward Sam. “What’s the name on the suitcase?”
“Ahh, George. George Michael.”
“What do you do George?”
Sam tried to seem anxious about finding his suitcase.
“Oh, you know.” Sam was drawing a blank. “I’m a song and dance man.”
“Really? Because I would have said you were a liar!”
The uniformed man dived at Sam just as he ducked and rolled out of his way, knocking a pile of steamer trunks over. The man’s eyes flashed black as he flung himself over the trunks. Sam didn’t have a weapon—he had stupidly left the salt-packed shotguns in Walter and Julia’s cabin—and he doubted that there was any salt hanging around the storage car. Sam kicked the demon in the face, then swung at him with a heavy-handled suitcase. The large man fell face first, giving Sam an opportunity to move toward the door, past the Devil’s Traps.
The guy leapt to his feet with surprising grace, and threw himself at Sam, landing rather nicely in the middle of the hastily drawn symbol on the floor.
“Get me out of here,” he growled.
“Sorry, guy. You need to answer some questions first.”
“Go to Hell.”
“Really, that’s all you got? How many more of you are there?”
“You’ll never possess the scroll. It doesn’t belong to you.”
“What do you know about it?”
With that the demon took out a pistol.
“Don’t!”
Sam lunged at him, but the demon put the barrel to his head and pulled the trigger. Sam lay on top of the brain and blood spattered corpse. Black smoke screamed out of his mouth, and gathered as a dark cloud on the ceiling. With a whoosh it flew out an air vent.
Crushed and frustrated, Sam pulled himself up and retreated back to the cabin.
Walter was finishing a ham sandwich.
“Good lord, what happened to you?”
“Guy, or demon rather, just blew a man’s brains out. Where’s Dean and Julia?”
“Still eating.”
“We have to tell them. Let’s go. Grab your books too.”
Walter hurriedly picked up his jacket. Sam grabbed his duffle bag and handed Walter a shotgun.
“Do you know how to use one of these things?”
“Of course. I fought in both wars.”
Sam had forgotten that this was an era where generations of people had lived through two world wars. It seemed strange to think that the third war would be Armageddon itself.
Sam and Walter made their way to the dining car.
Eli dabbed at the corners of his mouth and set the napkin onto his plate. He then grabbed for the case that housed the scrolls.
Dean looked at Julia. “You’re on.”
Julia glanced at Eli, and drained her martini glass. She approached Eli’s table.
“May I join you?”
Eli didn’t look up as he pushed out his chair. “I’m sorry, I’m leav—” His eyes met Julia’s large baby blues.
“Oh please, do have one drink with me. It’s so dull traveling alone. Don’t you think?”
“I thought you were with that f
ellow over there?” Eli looked up, but Dean was nowhere to be found.
“Oh that plebian, not at all. He invited himself to sit with me. All the while, I was hoping to join you for dinner.”
“Me?”
It was clear that Eli did not remember Julia. The refined woman wearing a blouse and a nice-fitting red suit looked quite different from the gun-toting, jeans-wearing, 1950s Lara Croft who had stormed the Waldorf’s Presidential Suite.
As Julia continued to chat up Eli, Dean met Sam and Walter in the hallway in the next car.
“Another demon,” Sam reported.
“Damnit. From where?”
“I don’t know. The one in the caboose was a security guard. Strange thing was his uniform said he was from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
“Let’s get everyone out of the dining car and get this freaking scroll from Howdy Doody. ’Cause I want to get back home,” Dean said.
Julia was still talking to Eli when the boys and Walter walked into the dining car. Even though Eli was only giving one-word answers to Julia’s questions, he was clearly enthralled. Walter sat at the table right behind Eli.
Sam quietly ushered the other diners out of the car. After flashing a police badge, he said he was train security and there had been a series of thefts. Everyone was asked to go back to their cabins and seats and check all their belongings.
Dean asked all the waiters, most of whom were African-American, to go back to the kitchen car. This was official train business, he explained, and they needed to use the dining car.
None of them moved. “What kind of official train business? We weren’t told of anything,” a lithe black guy said to Dean, “and they always tell us if it has to do with service.”
Dean noticed that James had disappeared from the doorway. That’s not good, he thought. He turned to the waiter.
“Can you get me all the salt you have in the kitchen?”
“Salt? Sir, I’m truly sorry, but I can’t—”
“Listen, dude, I get it, you’re just trying to keep your job. But right now there is a distinct possibility that a whole host of very ancient and pissed off demons are on this train. And I need that salt.”
Supernatural: War of the Sons Page 15