“Ma!” a small voice called from the front of the house.
The figure turned, his eyes shifting around the living room. He peeled off his ski mask. The man’s sandy blond hair was matted down with sweat. He put on a smile and approached the stairs. On the top of the landing was a small boy, about four or five years old. He was in his pajamas.
“Ma, Bertrand fell again.” The little boy’s eyes focused on the man in black, standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of your mom’s.” The man said through a plastered-on smile. “Can I help you find Bertrand?”
“Okay.”
The man had just stepped onto the staircase when the door flew open. A policeman stopped in his tracks, and surveyed the situation. The man opened his mouth as if to offer some excuse. That’s when the cop tackled him. Cory screamed and ran back to his room.
The man drew a knife and plunged it into the cop’s soft belly. The dead weight collapsed onto him, but he managed to roll out from underneath.
A second, younger cop appeared at the door, gun drawn. The intruder rose to his full height. The cop let loose three bullets, but two went wide, with the third passing straight through the man’s shoulder. He turned and took off through the back of the house. The cop dove over his partner in pursuit, but the man had apparently vanished into the summer night.
He returned to his partner’s side and fell to his knees. The prone cop opened his shirt to reveal the deep stab wounds. He tried to speak, but a stream of blood poured out of his mouth. His eyes rolled back. He was dead.
Sam and Dean had heard the police call. Following the patrol car to the scene, Dean left Sam waiting outside, while he headed around the side of the house.
“Dean, he’s coming through the back!” Sam yelled.
Hearing his brother, Dean jumped a fence and went around the back. That’s when he saw the man in black sprint out of the house across the backyard. Dean took off after him.
The man vaulted over a six-foot wooden fence. Dean was close behind. He reached for the guy’s black sweater. It half ripped as he pulled away, but the small delay allowed Dean to punch him in the back of the throat with his right hook. The man fell to the ground. Dean flipped him over and started pummeling him in the face.
“You a hunter? Hey, you a hunter?” Dean growled.
“Go to Hell,” the man spat.
“Been there, done that.” Dean punched the guy in the ear, knocking him out.
“Dean?” Sam hissed.
“Over here.”
Sam appeared with a flashlight. “Let’s get out of here.”
Sam took the guy’s legs and Dean wrapped his arms underneath his shoulders. They made their way to the car, opened the trunk, swiftly bound the guy’s hands and feet and roughly folded him inside.
Then they jumped into the front seats and took off.
The brothers pulled into a motel, checked in, and, under the cover of night, carried the guy into their room.
Dean threw a cup of cold water at the man’s face. He opened his eyes and tried to move.
“Hey, get these off me!” He struggled against his bonds.
“You need to answer some questions first,” Dean said.
“Screw you. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
Sam leaned over the guy menacingly. “You just murdered two people. We’ll be happy to let you go. I’m sure the police will completely understand as they tear you limb from limb. They have the death penalty in Missouri, Dean?”
“Please, it’s 1954, of course they do.”
“Fine, what do you want to know?” the man hissed.
“What were you doing in that woman’s house?” Dean demanded.
“I was asked to do a job. I did it.”
“Who asked you?”
“I don’t know, never saw the guy. He called me up and said he wanted some skirt laid up, and I told him my price.”
“Which is?”
“Normally I don’t like to kill ladies. But he offered me a grand.”
“A grand to kill a woman? And the kid?”
“I didn’t know there was a kid. I wasn’t going to hurt him. Honest.”
“How were you going to collect the money?”
“The guy said to call him and we would meet up.”
“You really think you were going to get paid? Do you even know where this guy lives?”
“I’m not an idiot. I got a bead on him. He’s some old guy.”
Dean’s face hardened; deep down he was still hoping their suspicions were wrong and Julia and Walter weren’t behind this. But he had a bad feeling they were right.
“Call him.” Dean grabbed the telephone off the night-stand and forced the receiver into the guy’s face.
“Um, hello? Hands are tied.”
“What’s the number?” Dean held his hand over the rotary telephone. “Come on.”
The guy recited the number. Dean put the receiver to his ear. On the other end of the line it rang, and then there was a female voice.
“Hello? Hello?”
Dean scowled—it was Julia. She and Walter had hired someone to kill the first of the angelic vessels.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” Julia said impatiently.
Sam quickly took the receiver from Dean, and put it up to the guy’s ear. He motioned for him to speak.
“Hey, it’s Grant. Deed’s done. When can we meet up?”
“One second,” the end of the line was silent for a moment. “Rick’s Drive-In. One hour. I’ll see you.”
There was a click. The guy looked up at Dean and Sam.
“Can you loosen these ropes now? I can’t feel my dick.”
Dean punched him hard in the face.
TWENTY-NINE
It was around midnight, and the drive-in was hopping. Dean pulled the car into the darkest corner of the parking lot. They had bound the guy in the backseat, and tied him down.
“Hey, I can’t see. How are you going to find her?”
“We’ll find her,” Sam said.
Dean noticed a young couple making out in the car nearest to them. The windows were all steamed up.
“Very American Graffiti” he spat.
Sam leaned back and stuffed the nose of the gun into the guy’s stomach.
“Remember, if you mention one word about the kid to them, you’re dead. You understand?” Sam’s face and voice made it clear that he was completely serious.
“Yeah, man. I get it. It’s cool man,” he grunted.
A couple of minutes later, Julia and Walter pulled up in a station wagon. They took an end parking space, closest to the exit. If Julia looked in her rearview she might see them, but she was engrossed in surveying the people milling under the bright lights of the drive-in’s carport.
Dean reached into the back of the car with his hunting knife and cut the cords on the guy’s wrists.
“Go get your money, scumbag.” Dean opened the back door.
The man scrambled out of the car and approached the back of Julia’s on the driver’s side. She swiveled around as he approached. Twenty yards back, Sam and Dean watched from inside their car. The guy touched his face, where Dean had repeatedly punched him. From afar, it seemed like he was making some excuse for his appearance. Julia passed over an envelope. The guy glanced back at Sam and Dean and then started walking at a rapid pace through the crowd around the driv e-in.
“You’re just going to let him go?” Sam asked.
“We have bigger fish to fry,” Dean said coldly.
Dean watched Julia pull the car out of the parking lot. They followed slowly behind.
Julia turned right onto a main street and headed for downtown St. Louis. Dean stayed two car lengths behind her; he didn’t take his eyes off the station wagon.
“Dean, try to calm down. We’ll figure this out,” Sam said as tactfully and gently as he could.
“Leave me alone, Sam.” Dean gripped the steering wheel even tighter. “She just
murdered an innocent woman. She’s a liar. Who knows how many other people died tonight? I’m not going to let any more people get killed because of this God-damned Apocalypse.”
Sam was silent. They drove for the next twenty minutes without speaking.
Julia pulled into a large brick industrial-era warehouse on the outside of town. She drove the car around back, so it was hidden from the street. Dean idled the car at the curb. He was perfectly still.
“Do you want me to go in?” Sam asked.
“No,” Dean said, shaking the cobwebs away. “I’m good. I got this.”
They took two shotguns, one salt-filled and one they had loaded with regular bullets, and of course Ruby’s knife.
“Let’s go,” Dean said.
He headed off into the dark toward the looming building. Sam followed close behind. They crept around the back of the structure and spotted half a dozen cars. There were no lights. But it didn’t look like anyone was lurking around. A large steel door was cut into the back of the building. Dean tried to push it, but it was locked from the inside. It would probably make too much noise to open it anyway. He spotted a six foot-long transom window, which was about nine feet off the ground and swung open from the top.
“Sam, give me a lift.”
Just then a large bear of a guy careened around the corner and barreled headfirst into Sam. Sam went down in a heap.
Dean swung at the guy with the end of his shotgun. It connected right under the guy’s chin, but only sent him stumbling back a couple of steps. Dean picked up a handful of gravel and threw it in the guy’s face, momentarily blinding him. He threw a blind swing and went down on his ass. Dean leap on top of him, and landed elbow first, smashing into the big man’s kidneys. He curled up like an infant. Dean put both hands round the guy’s throat, constricting his airway until his face turned purple. Just before the guy passed out, Dean let go. That should keep him down for a little while.
Dean held out his hand to Sam. “Come on, let’s go. Stop laying around.”
“Do you think there are more of them?” Sam asked, rubbing his head.
“That guy was big enough to be three guys. Come on. Alley-oop.”
Sam held Dean by the knee. Pushing his weight up, he managed to grasp the ledge above. In an impressive rock-climbing move, Dean swung his leg onto the cement ledge underneath the window, pulling himself so he was half inside the building and half out, balancing on his stomach.
He disappeared into the black interior of the building.
Sam was glad that the little bit of action had made Dean communicative again. When Dean was silent and brooding things could get rough.
A couple of minutes later, Dean pushed open the large steel door.
“This place is a fortress. Not good,” Dean said as he slid the steel portal closed behind Sam.
Inside the building, there was a steel staircase that led up one side. In the centre was a very large open space, and for the first time Sam noticed a pair of railroad tracks that led underneath the massive steel door. On the tracks sat an old steam engine, facing toward the door as if ready for a quick get away. The building was a large repair station for many Midwest rail lines. It didn’t look active to Sam.
Dean motioned for Sam to follow him as he slid against the wall and peered over a railing. Beneath was a basement. One side was open and the other was underneath the cement and steel floor. It allowed for about ten feet of space from the ceiling to the floor. Old steam engine parts had been pushed up against the walls and a long steel table had been placed in the middle of the basement structure. About fifty people milled about, crowding around something on the table. When the bodies parted, Sam caught a glimpse of the War Scroll laid out on the table.
A wooden door opened and Julia and Walter appeared. Dean’s eyes turned steely.
When Julia spoke, everyone quieted down.
“Thank you all for coming. First off, I’d like to say that I appreciate your sacrifice. And it will be a sacrifice, because as we go into this battle, despite our precautions, some of the people standing next to you may die. You may die. And though what we are embarking on is bloody, it is necessary. We are faced with the destruction of the Earth. To stop it there are actions that we as people, and as hunters, need to take. As you see, we have the last bit of the War Scroll, the sacred scroll written by the Essenes outlining the battle plan for the Sons of Light to overtake the Sons of Darkness.”
A murmur rose from the group.
“We were brought together decades ago for this express moment,” Julia continued. “Many of you knew my grandfather, and my grandfather knew your great grandfathers. We have waited for this moment for generations. And now it is here. We are all meant to play a part in defeating evil for the very last time. The Apocalypse we know will come. The Mayans weren’t far off; though the threat to end the world will come three years earlier than they thought. I unfortunately have intimate knowledge of this. But with this scroll we can stop it. What you see written behind the main text of the scroll is a list of names.”
All heads bowed once again to look at the scroll.
Up above, hiding in the darkness, Sam peered at his brother. Dean didn’t take his eyes off Julia as she moved around the room, almost military style. If she hadn’t been rousing people to murder, it might have been impressive.
“This is a list of names, each is a bloodline which will produce the vessels for the angels to fight Lucifer. We know that these bloodlines have been cultivated over 3,000 years by the angels, all for the impending fight with Lucifer. But, if the angels don’t have the vessels, there is no fight. Do not think of this task as extinguishing a heavenly light in this world. That’s not what we are doing. We are preventing that from happening. We are preventing the greatest fight man will ever know. We will be saving a billion lives.”
Dean watched Julia as she handed out a list of names to each hunter.
“On these pieces of paper there is a list of about fifty names, all are within your specific regions. Pass them to everyone you are working with. My father and I have already started and we have the name of Lucifer’s vessel and intend to take the appropriate action. Be careful, crafty. Dip into the funds if you need to hire someone in your stead. Do it quickly to avoid prolonged hysteria. We would like to extinguish these bloodlines by the end of the month. That gives you about ten days.
“Go out there and do this for the love of man. Good luck.”
One hunter pounded the butt of his shotgun on the table. Then another and another. The sound was a somber drum beat of death echoing through the large building. Then silence. Maps were laid out on the table. The people split into groups and the planning began.
As Julia spoke to a tall older man, she looked up into the darkness of the building, almost directly at Dean. Dean’s breath caught in his throat. Julia’s face registered a half second of recognition and then she looked back to the man in front of her.
“Let’s get out of here,” Dean whispered.
“We’re just going to let them do this?” Sam asked.
That’s when Dean heard it; it was far off in the distance, but the sound was unmistakable. It was the chugging of a train. The tracks below the brothers started to shake. Dean looked around—there wasn’t a Devil’s Trap to be found. How could Julia be so stupid?
Downstairs, the group fell silent, then en mass they grabbed their guns and ran up the staircase like battalions exiting u-boats.
“Turn on the lights!” someone called.
There was the clunk of a large switch being flipped and all the lights flickered on. That’s when Julia spotted Dean and Sam standing above her. Dean’s eyes met hers; Julia’s immediately welled with tears.
Outside, the engine had reached the outer edge of the train yard. It flew through the chain link fence, flinging cars out of the way like falling dominos.
The engine crashed into the steel door with such force that a six-foot-high span of bricks above the door cracked and fell to the ground. The
door folded in half like an envelope. The hiss of the engine blew steam into the rafters forty feet above.
A silhouette appeared at the top of the engine.
Dean whispered, “Eisheth.”
THIRTY
70 A.D. Khirbet Qumran, West Bank
The evening wind blowing in over the Dead Sea was, appropriately, as cold as death. Eisheth detested it, it whipped open the tents, and sand would kick up and cut into faces like glass, sending humans running for cover. She just about detested everything about life on Earth. After what she had seen, no one could blame her. Within the Lord’s Kingdom there was no bad weather, no wanting for food—and there certainly were no foul-smelling goats. Which wasn’t the case when living amongst the Essenes.
Her host was a girl of only eight years. At that age, children naturally demonstrate enough idiosyncratic behavior that no one noticed a little bit of demonic possession. That’s one positive thing about my new life, Eisheth thought, no more begging and pleading with vessels. “Please, it’s for the greater good,” she used to say. “It’s God’s Will. Say ‘Yes.’” The life of an angel required constantly asking for consent, and constant capitulation to the whims of others.
Demons didn’t have to ask. They took what they wanted, when they wanted it, used it up, and left what remained to rot. It suited her personality so much better.
Yet, what Eisheth wanted most, simple as it was, she could not take.
Sick of the biting gale, for after all she was in a human body and hated when it was uncomfortable, she sought shelter within one of the many canvas-walled tents that made up the majority of the settlement. The colony was substantial, but dwindling. Thousands of people, mostly men, gathered here to celebrate their shared faith... that unfortunately required them to remain celibate. How they intended to keep their faith alive into the next generation, Eisheth wasn’t sure. Her “father” had settled here after his wife died in childbirth, believing her death was his punishment for selfishly valuing his own pleasure over his God. Humans.
Inside the tent, Abaddon was already waiting.
“I don’t have long,” he said.
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