“Will that hold two?” she demanded.
“What the eff, lady?” Dean snapped back, stepping away from her.
Seconds later, James barreled into the room, his face twisted into a canine snarl.
Behind him, the police officers stared in awe at the mortally wounded man bounding across the room. Their rifles dropped to their sides as James hurled himself into Julia, who in turn fell into Dean. The trio stumbled, off-balance, then toppled out of the open window.
FIFTEEN
Friggin’ demons! Dean’s thoughts screamed as the cold New York breeze rushed through his hair. With Julia gripped tightly to his side, he swung nearly fifteen feet out of the window before gravity whipped them back against the Waldorf s stone façade.
Under the combined weight of two people, Dean’s harness was near its breaking point. That he had started to saw through it a minute earlier certainly wasn’t helping. As they impacted the granite wall, Dean could feel Julia’s grip loosen. Given the circumstances, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if she fell, he reflected. Non-crazy ladies don’t bum-rush you next to an open window on the thirty-fifth floor.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dean spotted James clinging to a small outcropping. Guy must be built, he thought. I sure as hell couldn’t hold on to that tiny ledge. That thought was short-lived, however, as James spun toward the suspended couple and flung himself at them. He was risking a long drop if he missed,which was a good possibility considering the strong winds.
He didn’t miss. Julia’s grip slackened even further as James impacted her. The two of them flailed desperately, further straining the integrity of Dean’s harness.
“Pull me up!” Dean shouted at the open window above them. A second later, a policeman’s head popped out, but he didn’t grab the rope. Instead, twelve stories above him, Dean clocked Marco watching in shock from the roof. “Marco! Pull!”
Then Dean’s attention was drawn to the demon clawing its way upward, toward the object Julia was still clutching in one hand—the metal briefcase.
“He’s after the case! Drop it!” Dean urged, but Julia ignored him. Instead, she kicked at James, trying to dislodge him. The frayed rope connected to Dean’s harness began to twist apart, the strands snapping one by one.
“Drop it or we all die!” he yelled. Julia locked eyes with Dean, and he could see how torn she was. Guess that scroll’s just as important to them as it is to us.
“You can’t read it if you’re a corpse!” Dean asserted desperately.
Reluctantly, she held the case away from her body, as if she was about to let it drop. James dug his fingers into Dean’s legs, using them to push off toward the briefcase.
That guy’s suicidal, Dean thought. Oh wait—demon.
James thrashed through the air, grabbing the case tight and wrenching it out of Julia’s hand.
Both demon and briefcase plummeted toward the city street below.
Dean looked down at Julia, who was still barely clinging to his harness. Even with both hands free, she wouldn’t last much longer.
“You’re a crazy bitch, you know that?” he declared.
No one had noticed Eli’s exit. As the big guy’s partner dangled out of the window with the lady and the briefcase, Eli had taken the opportunity to leave the premises. He prided himself on recognizing opportunities as they presented themselves, and the opportunity to survive was an enticing one.
Upon exiting the Waldorf Astoria, Eli was thrust into a large crowd that had gathered around the security guard’s fallen body. The taxi cab the guy had landed on was totaled, its engine compartment several inches shorter than it had been a minute earlier. The sight of his body was sickening. It was as if he’d been hit by a freight train—every part of him smashed into an unrecognizable mess. Fully half of the assembled people couldn’t take their eyes off the gruesome display, while the other half gawked at the theatrics taking place 300 feet above, where the two idiots still swung perilously.
What no one seemed to notice was the steel briefcase that had landed a dozen yards from the demolished taxi.
What a day the Lord has made, Eli mused, as he casually picked up the briefcase and disappeared into the bustle of New York City.
Inside the Presidential Suite, chaos reigned. Sam had nearly jumped out of the window after his brother, but was quickly restrained by the two policemen. The room was in shambles, with broken clay, glass and furniture littering the floor. Mr. Feldman tried to relate what had happened to the officers as they cleared the adjacent rooms, but none of them could explain how the security guard had come back to life after apparently being fatally shot. It was nearly a minute before anyone else realized that Dean and Julia were still hanging outside the window.
“Everyone get back,” the older policeman ordered. “We have this under control.” The officer leaned his head out of the window and tried half-heartedly to grab the taut rope that they were dangling from.
I have to get to the roof, Sam realized. If they pull him in here, we’re going to be stuck in prison until the Apocalypse.
As the other policeman was occupied with trying to radio a dispatcher, Sam’s opportunity to escape had arrived. Leaving the main room, Sam saw Walter crawling toward the exit. He considered what Walter had said about the War Scroll: If the wrong people get their hands on it... Well, that would be bad. What were the chances that Sam and Walter were on the same side? Despite strong impulses to the contrary, Sam decided not to abandon the guy. Slinging a hand under the injured man’s arm, Sam quickly had him out of the suite and to the bank of elevators.
“Thank you...” Walter managed to gasp, his breath ragged.
“Don’t.” Sam didn’t want gratitude from the man until he had decided what to do with him. Entering the elevator, he pressed the button for the forty-seventh floor.
“Down,” Walter wheezed. “We need to get to the street.”
“Your daughter is hanging by a thread, Walter. You’re just going to abandon her?”
“She is? She’s alive?”
“Not if we don’t pull her up to the roof quick.”
They exited the elevator and worked their way up the service stairwell as fast as Walter’s damaged legs allowed. On the roof, they found a stocky, swarthy man already trying to reel in Dean and Julia.
“What in God’s creation is going on down there?” the man asked, nodding at Walter’s torn-up legs.
Sam searched for the words to explain what had just happened. As usual, the exploits of the Winchester brothers were beyond rationalization.
“Communists,” he said decisively. It was the best he could do.
“Help me lift them up.”
By that point, the rest of the window washers strapped to the side of the Waldorf Astoria had stopped working and directed their full attention to Dean and Julia. Dean had started to wall-walk horizontally away from the open window of the Presidential Suite. Sam noted at least three sets of uniformed arms reaching out of the window, indicating that backup had arrived. Won’t be long before they think to come up here, he surmised.
The mechanism for raising the suspended window washers was little more than a hand crank attached to the system of pulleys and levers. The man leaned into the crank with all his weight, but couldn’t get it to turn. Sam moved to help him, adding his strength to the guy’s considerable heft. Between the two of them, they got the crank to turn, but very slowly. It would take at least ten minutes to pull Dean and Julia up at that rate.
“Little help Walter?” Sam asked, but he could see Walter was in no shape to exert himself. His skin was pale from the blood loss. All of his energy was dedicated just to remaining upright.
“This gear ain’t designed for two,” the Italian stated.
Glancing around the roof, Sam tried to come up with another option. If he could tell which room Dean was outside of now, he could break the window and pull him inside. Of course, the police were just as likely to come up with that plan, and they were a lot closer to Dean.
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“How long’s the rope?” Sam asked as mental gears clicked into place.
“Long.”
“Long enough to lower them to the ground?” The man mulled that for a beat, examining the thick coil of rope. “Should be.”
Sam wasn’t reassured but he knew they didn’t have another choice. He nodded and the two of them began rapidly unspooling the line. At ground level, a cluster of police cruisers had assembled at the 50th Street entrance.
Either way, up or down, I’m handing Dean over to the cops. Better that than waiting for him to fall, Sam thought, continuing to turn the crank.
When roughly half the line had been let out, a shotgun blast echoed between the buildings. Sam peered over the edge and saw Dean scrambling through an open window— presumably one he had just broken with the other shotgun in his duffel.
“Change of plans,” Sam called out to Walter, who was leaning woozily against the railing. “We’re going to the subway.”
Dean had chosen the window at random. That the room belonged to an attractive Asian woman was mere happy coincidence. That she was drying off after a shower had to be, in Dean’s opinion, God’s cosmic reward to him for saving Julia’s life. If there is a God, the logical half of Dean’s brain chimed in. All signs point to absentee Father.
Unfortunately, the situation demanded that Dean hurry along. Though if cell phone numbers had existed in 1954, he certainly would have left his.
Dean decided that the stairwell was less of a risk than the elevator. Skipping two steps at a time, he practically galloped down the stairs, his duffel jostling on his back. Julia kept up the pace despite everything her body had just been put through. When they reached the bottom floor, Dean knew they’d have to switch stairwells—and that meant going through the lobby.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Julia demanded.
Dean’s snort was his only response.
“Because if you don’t, I’d just as soon go my own way.”
“You and me both, sugar. But if you want to get out of here a free woman, the only way is my way.” That seemed to shut her up, for the time being. “From the look of things, you royally jacked our plan back there.”
“Likewise.”
“Hey! I saved your ass. Without me, you’d be just another spot of bird poop to clean off the sidewalk.”
Julia opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out.
“Yeah, that’s right. What have you done for me, ’sides throwing me out of a window? I knew you were trouble the minute I saw you.”
“You wanted to sleep with me the minute you saw me,” Julia shot back.
‘But I didn’t. Because you looked like trouble.” They had arrived at the bottom floor, where a myriad voices were audible outside the stairwell door.
“Quiet.”
Julia scowled. “You’re the one who’s ranting,” she hissed.
Timing their dash perfectly, Dean and Julia were able to slip into the Park Avenue lobby unnoticed. Most everyone had hurried outside after hearing that a man had jumped. Dean held open the door to the garage-access stairwell— but Julia was no longer behind him. Scouring the lobby, he clocked her walking toward the main entrance.
“You trying to get yourself arrested?” Dean asked as he caught up with her.
She turned to face him, now ice cold.
“I need what’s in that briefcase. You have no idea how important it is.”
“You’ve got it all backwards. I need that scroll. You don’t know how important it is. But neither of us is gonna go out there after it.”
“You can’t stop me.”
Dean leaned in intimately close. “If you’re going to go out there, at least tell me you still have your gun.”
Julia reached down to her waist, but the pistol wasn’t there. She looked mournfully out on to the street where it had fallen.
“Thought so. Let’s get one thing straight—I’m not helping you get away. You know things about the scroll, and I need to know those things too. You’re my prisoner.”
Slapping the side of his duffel, Dean smirked.
“Now unless you want to get an ass full of rock salt, how about you follow me?”
The Presidential Siding was a custom-built underground train station, constructed to allow Presidents, dignitaries and celebrities direct access to the Waldorf Astoria. Their train cars could pull directly up to the hotel, bypassing the need to secure Grand Central Terminal, or sit in New York traffic. Most of the time, the rail siding sat unused, which made it perfect for their getaway.
By the time Sam and Walter made it to the rail platform, Dean and Julia were already there. Sam wasn’t overjoyed to see Julia again after her actions upstairs, but watching the tender moment she shared with her father helped take the edge off the hostility.
“You okay, Dean?” Sam asked.
“I will be, soon as we get out of here.”
Walter steadied himself against the platform wall.
“I’m almost afraid to ask, but are we meant to cross this?” He pointed at the vast expanse of tracks in front of them. Since they were underground, with almost no lighting, the tracks seemed to extend forever. A steady stream of trains was moving in and out of the area. The mayhem of Grand Central Terminal was just audible over the din of the engines.
“That’s the idea,” Sam answered. “Before anybody thinks to look down here.”
Julia’s eyes caught on her father’s pant leg, which was dripping with blood.
“He can’t dodge a train like that,” she said.
Dean pumped his shotgun with conviction. He threw the duffel at Sam.
“He doesn’t have to dodge one. He’s got to catch one,” he said.
The group made their way across the tracks in silence, none of them comfortable with their new-found fellowship. Sam noticed that Dean kept his shotgun leveled at Julia the whole time, which was probably a smart move. Even if they were playing for the same team, Julia had been a little too gung-ho during her aborted heist. He also still wondered if she had been the one to swipe the knife.
With some difficulty, they were able to hoist Walter onto the back of a south-bound train. For the first time in hours, Sam relaxed. They had completely failed in their mission, but somehow, they had survived. Seated across from him, Dean looked glum.
“What is it?” Sam asked.
Rubbing the train’s shoddy upholstery with distaste, Dean sighed.
“I miss the Impala.”
SIXTEEN
James McMannon felt as if a heavy burden was lifting off his back. A white light appeared before him, and he wanted to go toward it.
There was an eruption of noise.
The light disappeared. James forced his eyes open. In front of him, he could see a wavering group of people—they looked like they were in an enormous, swirling heat devil— as if they were caught in the hot air that rose off the black streets of the city in the middle of summer.
He heard a voice in his left ear.
“Hey. Stay still, the ambulance is coming.”
James thought he was answering to the voice, but he realized that all he could hear was ringing. Then he saw that white light again. He got up, at least he thought he did, and walked toward its beckoning glimmer.
At that moment, everything that James McMannon had every thought, felt, or loved left his body.
All that was left was the animal.
In all of Hank Caprezie’s years on the force, he had never seen a man fall thirty floors and live, but here he was. And he was one of the family, a security guard.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Hank peered into the guy’s eyes. “You need to go to the hospital, stay still.”
Without responding, the man slid himself off the crushed taxi. Standing in the middle of the crowd, he looked around, as though searching for something. His neck was at an unnatural angle, which he corrected by grasping it on both sides and twisting his head back into place. When he turned back to Hank, his eyes were pitch
black. Hank took an involuntary step back.
“Hey man, I really think you should stay!” Hank called.
The guy didn’t listen. Instead, he walked toward the throng of people and disappeared.
I’m going to have a hell of a time explaining this to the captain, Hank thought.
Dean spent the train ride trying to interrogate Walter and Julia. Unfortunately for him, they weren’t talking. It was clear they knew much more about the scrolls than Walter had let on in his meeting with Sam, but their motivations were still hazy. Do they want to protect the scrolls, or destroy them? Dean wondered. It was possible that they were all on the same side, working toward the exact same goal, but without more information from Walter and Julia, Dean had no way of knowing.
When the group got off the train in lower Manhattan, the bleeding from Walter’s leg had slowed, but he was still in need of a doctor’s care. They looked at one another. They didn’t have the scrolls, nor any idea how to find them. They had reached an impasse.
Sam looked at Dean, his feelings obvious. It’s time to go.
Just like that, the Winchesters turned and started walking uptown.
“You’re just going to leave us here?” Julia cried. “I thought I was your prisoner?”
Dean turned on his heel. “I release you. And from what I can tell, sweet cheeks, you’ll do fine on your own. Both of you.”
“You’re going to need us,” Julia called as Walter faltered a step. Sam’s face registered a slight flash of sympathy. What Julia really meant, of course, was that she needed them. Are we really going to leave a bleeding old man on the street, especially if his daughter might be in possession of our stolen knife?
Dean punched him in the shoulder. “Let’s get going.” Apparently, they were.
That evening, Sam and Dean checked into a dive hotel on the Lower East Side. With all the chaos they had caused at the Waldorf that day, it was too much of a risk to go back to the apartment, even if they had used aliases. They bought a pizza and took it back to their room. Despite their exhaustion, they still had to eat, and neither of them was in the mood for the human interaction a restaurant visit would require.
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