Ruby’s knife.
The one weapon the boys had had with them had vanished from the inside pocket of Sam’s jacket somewhere between the library and the apartment. It was, as far as Sam and Dean knew, one of a kind.
And now it was gone.
Dean may not have been the smartest Winchester, and he certainly wasn’t the one you wanted to help translate an ancient document, but after years of digging through yellowed lore books, he had picked up a few things. He knew, for example, that when he saw crazy-ass lettering, he was better off calling Sam than trying to figure it out himself. Dean figured his value came more from his ‘give ’em hell’ attitude than from his G.E.D.
The symbols on the side of the crate certainly fell into the ‘crazy-ass’ category. Was it Hebrew, or something older? A crate with biblical text on it getting dropped off at the Waldorf? This is almost too easy, Dean thought. All he had to do was follow it to its destination, grab the scroll, and get clear of the place before any more hot girls saw him in his embarrassing monkey suit.
Trouble was, Dean had already lost the crate. The workman who had delivered it must have slipped into the service elevator while Dean was sorting all of this out in his head.
He hurried along the loading dock to the service elevator’s oversized doors. As he reached out to press the ‘down’ button, assuming that’s where the crate was headed, the doors sprang open.
“A lot of guests need their luggage taken to the loading dock?” asked the mustached man who was waiting in the elevator. Dean recognized him as one of the asshole desk clerks from upstairs.
“Uh, yeah, lady wanted to see the...” Dean trailed off, looking around the poorly lit dock for anything that could possibly interest a guest, “the place where we keep the carts.” He gestured weakly toward a line of derelict luggage carts parked in the corner.
The clerk stared hard at Dean for an excruciatingly long moment, then cracked a wry smile.
“Kind of an unspoken rule that we wait until our shift’s over, buddy,” the man said, patting Dean on the back. “If a lady wants to see your, uh, cart, she’ll still wanna see it after you’re done working.” He pulled Dean into the elevator by the shoulder, but Dean resisted.
“Maybe give me a minute here?” Dean asked.
“You got a phone call. Your dad.”
Dean shrugged the man’s hand off his shoulder and forced open the closing elevator doors. John Winchester had been dead for years, or, depending on how you looked at it, was not even born yet.
“My what?” Dean demanded, suddenly deadly serious.
“Or brother? Or your cousin? I don’t know. Some guy. Sounded kind of annoyed. And annoying, for that matter.” The man pulled Dean’s hand off the elevator door, which continued to close. “And here’s a pro tip. Don’t actually try anything on those carts. You’ll end up rolling all over the place, the lady will bonk her head, and it’ll be all tears and whining for the rest of the night. Trust me.”
It wasn’t a dignified position to be in, but Sam didn’t have a choice. He was on his hands and knees, clawing around the base of the phone booth for dropped change. He had only had a few coins, and Dean was taking his sweet time to get to the phone. Probably got distracted, Sam thought. If he’s with a woman...
“Sam, that you?” a voice sounded through the phone.
“Dean! I’ve been waiting a—”
“Yeah, ’bout that, couldn’t you have waited a little longer to check in on me, Mom? Made me lose a lead on our scrolls.”
“I’m not checking in,” Sam said, aggravated. “I thought you’d want to know we got robbed.”
“We? I didn’t get robbed. All I own here is this stupid hat, and I sure as hell still have that.”
“Our apartment was broken into—”
“What?”
“They tore the place apart.” Sam started to pace with the phone, then realized there was only a foot of space for him to move either way in the booth. He suddenly understood why cordless phones had been invented.
“Calm down, big guy. You sound a little pissed.” Dean said, lowering his voice.
“They took... my BlackBerry.”
“Yeah, that’s rough Sammy,” Dean said, obviously faking sympathy. “Seriously though, who the hell cares? Who you planning on texting in 1954?”
“You don’t get it,” Sam responded. “They took my 2010 phone, full of 2010 technology, meaning we could have a serious Back to the Future II situation.”
“What, so Biff is going to steal our Delorean?”
“No, we could seriously alter the timeline. Introduce things now that aren’t supposed to exist for decades—”
“Am I gonna have to kiss Mom?” Dean said, his smirk evident even over the phone.
“Dean.” Sam knew he had to break Dean out of his streak or he was going to be hearing Marty McFly jokes for the rest of the day. “Please.”
“Fine. Remember what Cass told me, though—whatever we do, that’s what happened. We can’t change history, we can just live in it for a bit. We break something, it was always broken, that’s how it was—always.”
“Cass told you that because he was trying to prove a point. Why would Don send us back if we couldn’t change anything?” Sam asked. “If the scroll really was destroyed in 1954, we are going to change that.”
“Well don’t count on the d-bag coming by to clarify any of it.”
“There’s something else,” Sam admitted. “Whoever broke in was thorough. Not just a smash and grab job.”
“So they were motivated. Had something particular in mind,” Dean said.
“Could someone have overheard us, someone else who wants the scroll?”
Dean exhaled loudly. “This is gonna be harder than I thought.”
“In 2010, the last thing I loaded on the phone was the Wikipedia page for the scrolls. Probably no one will ever be able to recover it. But what if they can? What if there is someone out there—”
“Who is a technological genius fifty years ahead of their time, and also cares about the scrolls? I don’t think so,” Dean said.
Sam was silent. He knew he had to tell Dean the rest of the story, but couldn’t face letting his brother down. Finally, he gulped down a breath and bit the bullet.
“There’s one more thing that’s missing. Ruby’s knife.”
“Damn it, Sam—”
“I know,” Sam replied, trying to head off Dean’s inevitable tirade.
“You left the knife in the apartment? What were you thinking? I thought I was supposed to be the dumbass?”
“I didn’t leave it. Someone must have taken it off of me.”
“What, so now we have ninjas after us?” Dean asked, exasperated.
“There was this girl, in the hallway...” Sam trailed off, letting Dean’s imagination fill in the rest.
“That’s just perfect. I mean, we’ve been porked before, but this takes the cake.” Dean took a breath. “Sammy? You there?”
“Yeah, Dean. I’m here.”
“With or without the knife, we gotta move forward,” Dean said, then added in an undertone. “This crate I saw, it had a bunch of markings on it, I think in Hebrew.”
“Sounds right.”
“My point is, if the package is in Hebrew, imagine what language the scroll itself will be in—”
“You’re just thinking of that now?” Sam chided. “According to the books I found, similar texts from that region and time period were written in early Herodian square script, but that’s more the symbology than the language. The language would be Aramaic.”
“Save it, Dan Brown. My point is, how are we gonna read this thing?”
“I’m working on it,” Sam said. “Let’s worry about finding the scroll first.”
“Good chat, Sam,” his brother responded, an edge in his voice. “I’ll try to track down the scroll before the Hamburglar catches up with me. Try not to lose your pants.”
“Wait,” Sam spat out, “when are we meeting up?”
“Meet me back here when my shift ends. Eight o’clock.”
Sam heard Dean hang up.
He stepped out of the phone booth and back into the swirling storm of people outside. I guess Dean can handle himself for a few hours, Sam thought, turning south, away from the Waldorf and back toward the library.
Two hours later, Sam was no closer to speaking Aramaic. Being in one of the biggest libraries in the world, the texts were certainly available, but the language was far more complex than Sam had imagined. Without help, it could take months to get an accurate translation.
I wonder if Bobby knows Aramaic? It wasn’t that crazy a notion, since a large portion of the biblical lore books that Bobby studied were in ancient languages. Not that we have Bobby here, Sam thought. For a brief moment, he considered looking up the Singers in the phone book. Bobby was born in the fifties; it was possible that at that very moment an infant Bobby was first learning to scowl.
Sam again wished that he had gotten more information from Don before being sent back. What were they supposed to do once they found the War Scroll? Translate it in the past, or hide it Bill & Ted-style for their future selves to find?
The boys didn’t often get a chance to plan ahead, so when the opportunity presented itself, Sam decided he was going to take it. He found a phone book in the lobby and used his last ten cents to call the American Bible Society—apparently it was home to the greatest concentration of biblical texts outside of the Vatican. It was as good a place to start as any.
SEVEN
The benefits of Dean’s job were manifold. The women he helped to their rooms were uniformly stunning, from which Dean surmised that even in 1954, enough money could buy you beauty. They were also generous. The twenty dollars a week the manager had quoted turned out to be on the very low end. Dean had no idea how much his tips could actually buy, but he imagined it was a lot. He wondered if most people knew such arcane facts—had Dean been out hunting demons on the school day when the kids learned about inflation rates?
The most obvious benefit to the job was access, but that was also the downside. He was tantalizingly close to the scrolls, but he was now under the close supervision of the more dickish of the two desk clerks. After several hours of work, he still hadn’t been able to venture down to the vault.
His opportunity came shortly after sunset, when the clerk finally left the front desk. Dean pushed his luggage cart into the elevator and asked Rick to leave it on the top floor, hoping that nobody would come looking for him this time. Slipping into the employees-only corridor that led away from the ornate lobby, Dean marveled at how quickly the hotel went from world-class to low-class. Water stains ran down the cheap wallpaper, bringing to mind the Winchesters’ usual stomping grounds. While Dean enjoyed the change of pace that the Waldorf represented, the drab familiarity of the hallway helped put him in hunting mode.
Not taking a chance on the service elevator being in use, Dean took the back stairwell. Calling it dank would be an understatement. The bare-bulb lighting was hardly enough to see by, but probably helped cover up the unfortunate state of the stairs themselves.
Toward the base of the stairwell, he heard a low scraping noise and slowed his pace. It sounded like something was being dragged across unfinished cement.
“My God, I...” intoned a man’s voice, before fading to a murmur. Glass clinked against glass, followed by the sound of a bottle slowly pouring out its contents.
Dean padded down a few more steps and craned his head around the corner. He was glad, for once, that Sam wasn’t stomping his heavy feet beside him. There were advantages to being the less muscle-bound Winchester. Despite that, the stair he was perched on felt less than stable.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” the man said, his voice full of quiet desperation. “You know I would never...”
Leaning forward as he listened for a reply, Dean nearly slipped off the crumbling concrete step, and pieces of the slab skittered downward. The voice stopped and moments later Dean heard feet pounding away from him. Crap, he swore under his breath, the noise had clearly spooked the man enough to send him running.
Dean slammed his shoulder through the doorway into the sub-basement hallway, sending a radiating pain through his arm that probably wouldn’t go away for a week. The man hadn’t gotten far, having slipped to the ground less than ten feet from the stairwell.
“Whaddaya doin’, trying to... ugh,” the man said, gulping down air. “Trying to give me a coronary?”
“Slow your roll, dude,” Dean answered as he approached. The man’s face was flush and covered in sweat, and Dean recognized him immediately as the guard who had brought the War Scroll crate into the Waldorf earlier. He also recognized the bottle of Wild Turkey that was upended and dripping onto the cement floor. “Hard day, I take it,” he said, leaning in to read the man’s ID badge. “Mr. McMannon?”
The man shuddered back a sob and lifted the bottle to his lips to swill down what hadn’t spilled.
Dean inclined his head at the sorry sight. “Been there.”
Was it possible that this mess of a guy was responsible for guarding the vault? If so, it was just a matter of keeping him acquainted with that bottle. Dean had no qualms about robbing a passed-out drunk.
“Hasn’t been a great few days for me, either. Hell, hasn’t been a great decade,” he said.
Lumbering to his feet, McMannon gave Dean a wary look.
“Decade just—” he began, then hiccupped, “started.” Clearly, the guard wasn’t ready for a heart-to-heart with an intrusive bellhop.
Dean gave him his best car salesman grin.
“How ‘bout I get us another bottle?”
James McMannon was in control of himself for the time being. He couldn’t exactly recall how he had come to be in the sub-basement, or even what day it was, but at least he felt in control.
He watched the bellhop scurry back up the stairs to get another bottle. Something about the man—was it his smell?—was unsettling. James briefly considered killing him when he returned, but quickly banished the thought. Why would I do that? Why would I even think it? It was then that the image popped back into his mind: his nephew, Barney, head hanging like a rag doll’s, his eyes totally lifeless.
Where had he seen that? Was it a terrible dream? Deep down, a part of James knew that he had done an unspeakable thing—but that part of his brain was currently drowning in Bourbon. At any rate, it wasn’t James that had killed Barney; it was the strange animal living inside him, and that animal seemed to be, for the moment, asleep.
He shook his head to banish the strange thoughts. Now where was that kid with the new bottle of whiskey?
Paranoia was deeply ingrained in the hunter lifestyle, and Sam Winchester had been checking for tails since he was five years old. Walking through the maelstrom of mid-town Manhattan was proving to be unimaginably difficult for him, especially with the knowledge that he’d been followed once that day already.
Double back, wait a few minutes, then keep moving, Sam repeated to himself over and over. It was his father’s mantra, and it was clearly designed for small town America, not the overflowing streets of New York City.
The towering brick building that housed the American Bible Society was located at 57th Street and Park Avenue, a few blocks north of the Waldorf. Sam had resisted the temptation to check in on his brother while walking past, but he was still feeling the frustration of living without a cell phone. He imagined Dean had already made another attempt to get near the scroll, but it would be a few hours before his shift was over and Sam could find out for sure.
Sam’s contact was waiting for him in the Society’s front lobby. He was a well-built man stuffed into a suit that was too small for him. His thin necktie accentuated the unflattering fit. His arm was in a canvas sling, leading Sam to wonder what sort of trouble the man had gotten himself into.
“Mr. Sawyer?” Sam asked.
The man nodded and gestured toward a set of chairs.
; “Please, call me Walter. Have a seat. Can I get you a drink?”
Before Sam could respond, Walter dropped ice cubes into two tumblers and poured amber liquid into each one.
“I regret I couldn’t be more helpful on the telephone,” Walter said as he handed Sam his drink. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re looking for.”
“I’m not sure either, not yet. I’m in the process of buying a religious relic, something of family interest—”
“You’re Jewish?” Walter interrupted with a slight squint.
“No, it’s not... not that, exactly.”
Walter knocked back his drink absently, his attention fully on Sam.
“But you mentioned something about Hebrew relics, Old Testament manuscripts.” He paused for a moment, his eyes asking the obvious question. “If you don’t mind my asking, what’s the ‘family interest’?”
“In-laws,” Sam said with a shrug.
The scholar seemed to accept that, for the moment.
“And once you have acquired the documents, you’ll need them interpreted.”
“Translated,” Sam corrected. “I think biblical interpretation is best left to the individual.”
Walter pulled a crooked half-grin. “Fair enough.” He brushed a lock of his unkempt brown hair from his forehead. “Does this have something to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls?”
Sam was careful to keep his face neutral. “What do you know about the scrolls?” he asked.
“They’re the most important historical discovery of the century,” Walter said with precise, almost rehearsed diction, as if he had said it many times, to many people. “Any century, really. Though whether people accept that is a different matter entirely.”
“It’s not the first apocryphal Old Testament text,” Sam replied, studying Walter’s reaction.
“Apocryphal. What makes it any less relevant than Genesis or Revelations? Or Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, for that matter?” Walter spat with thinly veiled distaste.
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