As the last bit of the War Scroll disappeared into ash, there was a bright flash of light.
THIRTY-THREE
Castiel had told Dean many times about the difficulty of moving objects through time. How it exhausted him, and left him barely able to think, much less fight. Dean was beginning to learn, from first-hand experience, that it was also true for the traveler. As the 1954 world flashed out of existence around him, a deep, gurgling something bubbled up in his stomach. He mentally prepared himself for the possibility that he’d puke when they got back to 2010. God, I hope it comes up as puke, not out the other side.
When the world re-formed, Dean was no longer standing. He was sitting in the back booth of the Waubay bar, a cheeseburger and a freshly poured beer waiting on the table in front of him. Sam was seated next to him, uncomfortably close.
“You want to give me some breathing room?” Dean scooted sideways slightly.
Sam didn’t respond. He just tapped the glass in front of him, as if it wasn’t real.
“Hey, you want to sit on a guy’s lap, wait till Christmas,” Dean said.
Finally, Sam slid out of the booth and stood up, surveying the rest of the room.
“Do you see him?”
Dean looked around the bar. Don, or Abaddon, or whoever the hell he was, apparently hadn’t stuck around to greet them.
“Dude zapped us back. Gotta be around here somewhere.” Remembering their earlier encounter, Dean looked toward the back of the bar. “Check the bathroom. Guy has a woman’s bladder. Then we’ll check outside.”
Unfortunately, the bathroom’s only occupant was a large Peruvian man, who incidentally did not like having his privacy invaded. Sam learned that lesson very quickly, much to Dean’s amusement.
As they left the bar, Dean saw something that nearly brought a tear to his eye. The Impala, in all its glory, rested under a nearby oak tree.
“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he said, running his fingers over the cool metal of the hood.
“Why are you stroking a car?” Sam asked.
“Give me a break, I haven’t seen her in weeks.”
“Her?”
Dean was distracted when he noticed a white spot on the windshield. That’s when it hit him —something was seriously wrong here.
“Didn’t park it here,” he said, mostly to himself.
“What do you mean?” Sam asked.
“I left the car at the motel. We... we got zapped back from the motel, not the bar. The Impala shouldn’t be here.”
He pointed at the white spot. “And when have I ever parked her under a tree, where birds can... do things on her?”
“Sorry about that, Dean. I moved it for you,” Abaddon’s voice called out from behind them. “Thought you’d appreciate a welcome home meal, rather than a stuffy motel room.”
“That’s awfully nice of you, Donny, but why don’t you cut the crap?”
Abaddon hung his head, as if in shame.
“Ah. So I take it your trip didn’t go well?”
“You know exactly how it went. You knew all along what we were going to find, and what we’d have to do when we found it.”
“You know, Dean, you really should let your baby bro get a word in edgewise sometimes. I think he’d really appreciate it.” Don looked amused.
Sam was apparently speechless with anger. His face had contorted in rage at the sight of Abaddon.
“See, he looks a little... piqued.”
“Don’t worry about him,” Dean said. “Worry about me, and what I’m going to do to you. What the angels are going to do to you when they find out you’ve been batting for the other side.”
“Oooooh. I’m scared.” Abaddon shielded his face in mock alarm. “Don’t tell Daddy on me. Oh wait, my dad’s dead. Gone to wherever omnipotent but lazy deities go when they finally get bored with their creations and abandon ship.”
“So what, now you kill us? Put us through the funhouse and then slit our throats when we find our way out?”
“Buddy, you’re not getting the lesson at all.”
“What can I say. I’m a drop-out.”
“That’s fine, since it’s not really for you to get, anyway. It’s for our good friend over here.” He nodded toward Sam.
“Tell me if you’ve heard this before: You’re going to say yes. And it’s not because you’ll be tricked, or because you’ll be forced. It’s because the other options don’t work. Not for you.”
“You don’t know all our options,” Dean retorted.
“I just gave you a great one. And what did you do? You went out of your way to keep things the way they are. You got your friend killed to save Lucifer.”
“We didn’t kill anybody.”
“Honestly, it’s a win-win for us either way,” Abaddon continued. “If you’d tried to kill all those vessels, you would have failed. You would have moped and felt terrible for trying, and we would have ended up in this exact same place, only you’d be one step closer to damnation. Like it or not, all three of us know that the fight is inevitable. And that’s why you did what you did.”
Sam could no longer hold his silence.
“You pretend that you thought of everything, that the outcome was determined before you set things in motion.”
Abaddon turned to Sam, a little disconcerted by his calm tone. And there was something else in his voice as well. Abaddon frowned slightly.
“But you’ve left a loose string,” Sam said. “You forgot about my destiny.”
“Your destiny... is with Lucifer.” Abaddon seemed suddenly uncertain.
Sam smiled broadly. It was so out of character in that moment that it even rattled Dean.
“That’s more true than you know,” Sam said. “And when I’m finally returned to him, I’ll be sure to tell him how easily you were fooled.” Sam’s eyes flashed red.
“Eisheth.” The truth hit Abaddon heavily. It looked as if the air had been pressed from his lungs.
Dean’s heart was racing. They had taken an awful risk, and so far it had paid off. With any luck, Abaddon had been weakened enough by transporting them to be an easy target for Eisheth. Whether Eisheth behaved herself in Sam’s body was another question.
“I’m going to make you suffer, Abaddon,” Eisheth said. “For at least 2,000 years.”
She flew at Abaddon, supernaturally propelled at an impossible speed. Bones crunched as they slammed against an oak tree. Abaddon was up in a flash, fiercely pounding Sam’s body with his fists.
“Careful with my brother,” Dean shouted from the sidelines.
Without looking up, Eisheth lifted Abaddon off his feet and threw him clear across the parking lot. He struck the metal dumpster outside the bar, crumpling its sides like an empty beer can.
The possibility that the fight would go on for hours was very real. Dean had no idea how powerful either creature was, but he knew the human bodies they wore would be destroyed long before the twisted souls within them. Alright, time to figure out an endgame.
As Abaddon lifted himself from the buckled dumpster, Dean made his move. He ran full-tilt toward the bar’s front door, swerving to avoid the scuffle. Abaddon landed a solid blow across Sam’s face just as Dean entered the bar.
“Phone. I—I need to use your phone.” Dean’s pale face and desperate tone were enough to convince the bartender to immediately grab the receiver from below the bar.
“It’s not long distance, is it?”
“Well, I’m calling Heaven...”
Thirty seconds later, Castiel picked up his cell phone. “Hello?”
“Cass. It’s Dean. I need your help. Right now.”
“Dean. Your absence has been... concerning me.”
“That’s great, man, I’m touched, but I need you to get your ass moving. Waubay, South Dakota. It’s the only bar in—”
Castiel appeared next to him. The bartender and his pack of regulars looked on in awe.
“—town.”
“Where’s Sam?” Castiel
asked.
“Look outside,” Dean said. “I think we might need some backup.”
Within a minute, Cass had assembled a mixture of odds and ends he had found in the bar’s tiny kitchen. Herbs, a pile of toothpicks, and an assortment of other seemingly random ingredients that apparently formed a potent magical cocktail.
“You’re the MacGyver of magic, Cass.”
“I need blood,” Castiel said, as if he was asking Dean to pass him the salt.
“Whose?”
“Yours. That’s what will attract the angels. They’ll be looking for any sign of you.”
At that very moment something—or someone—was thrown against the side of the building, knocking knick-knacks off the walls. Dean took that as a sign. He grabbed a knife from behind the bar and opened a deep gash on his palm.
“A sigil,” Castiel said. “Quickly.”
Outside, Sam’s face was bloodied, his body bruised and beaten, and the fight was nowhere near over. Eisheth used Sam’s good left arm to smash Abaddon across the face, toppling him to the ground.
“I trusted you,” Eisheth said coldly. Sam’s fist pounded down against Abaddon’s cheek, sending blood spilling out of his mouth.
“You were never his favorite,” Abaddon hissed, barely able to move his lips. “You were no more than a pet. Why’d you think we put you—”
Eisheth punched him in the face again.
“—with the dog?” Abaddon cackled, blood pouring down his face and onto the dirt. A second later, his manic smile froze. He had seen something behind Sam that terrified him.
Eisheth turned and saw it as well. Five black specks dotted the otherwise clear sky. Within a heartbeat, they filled the heavens —five men, held aloft by invisible wings, fury in their eyes.
The angels descended on them in a flash, knocking Sam aside and plunging their heavenly daggers deep into Abaddon’s flesh. As he writhed in pain, Dean and Castiel rushed forward.
“Cass, get us out of here!” Dean cried as the angels turned from Abaddon to Sam.
Castiel and the closest angel were both speeding toward Sam. For Dean, time seemed to slow. If Cass didn’t reach him first, the angels would show Eisheth no mercy. Sam would die as collateral damage.
The next thing Dean knew, he was standing outside a greasy burger joint.
“What happened?” he asked, looking around.
Next to him, Sam stood, much the worse for wear, but alive. Castiel stood on his other side, having teleported them clear of the fight.
“Abaddon was destroyed. They’ll... Excuse me, but why is there a demon inside Sam?”
“It’s a long story, Cass.”
Castiel narrowed his eyes at Sam, studying him closely.
“Don’t. Don’t start anything. Just... let her go.”
Eisheth turned to Dean, surprised. “Let me go?”
“That was the deal. You save our asses, we save yours.”
“Dean, this is not just any demon,” Castiel said gravely.
“I know. And it could very well bite us in the ass. But that’s what’s happening.”
Five minutes later, they were sharing an odd farewell with Missy Fuller, former employee of Burger Junction, current bride of Satan.
It had been a strange few weeks.
Sam and Dean recounted their journey to Castiel over burgers. Sam noticed that Dean left out a lot of details, most of them concerning Julia.
That there had been a list of angelic vessels wasn’t news to Castiel. He’d heard rumors over the millennia that the list existed, but no one in Heaven had ever known its exact location.
“Except Abaddon,” Sam pointed out. He was still in considerable pain, despite Dean having patched him up and forced a cocktail of painkillers down his throat.
“His deception will have caught Heaven off guard. The angels are not going to blindly trust each other nearly as much as they once did.”
“So at least we’ve accomplished something,” Dean said with a touch of bitterness.
After eating their fill, Castiel helpfully teleported the Impala to the Burger Junction, then disappeared. He was off, once again, to try and find his absentee father. Sam and Dean both empathized.
As they climbed into the Impala, Dean frowned. “What do you think it’d be like? Having a home base like Walter and Julia did? Hunter HQ?”
“We’ve got Bobby. Besides, it didn’t work out very well for them.”
“I can’t shake this feeling... that our lives could have been different if they were still around. They were organized. They were everywhere.”
“Dad didn’t report in to anyone, and he got by just fine,” Sam said. “That’s what made him Dad.”
“What if they could have stopped Yellow Eyes. Saved Mom.”
Sam didn’t answer. He already felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. He didn’t particularly want to feel any more.
EPILOGUE
Dean’s footsteps creaked on the ancient wood floor of the Rustic Pines Retirement Community. It smelled like a hospital— every surface regularly wiped with disinfectant chemicals, stale processed air. Old people.
At the end of the hallway, a woman was waiting for him. She introduced herself as Betty, the resident coordinator. As they walked toward the East Wing of the building, she rattled off a list of facts that left Dean’s consciousness as soon as they entered. He really didn’t care about the bingo schedule. He was here for something else entirely.
They walked past a dozen rooms, all of them occupied. The faces inside looked friendly, content, which comforted Dean. Not a terrible place to grow old.
“The storage area is downstairs,” Betty said with a glued-on smile. “Excuse the conditions. We don’t usually bring guests down here.”
She wasn’t kidding. The basement was damp and unwelcoming, to say the least. Dean imagined he could feel the chill of the bare concrete through the soles of his shoes.
“Just through here,” she indicated.
A large door blocked their path. Its hinges were rusty and groaned loudly as she tugged on the metal handle. Inside, a sea of musty, ancient boxes greeted them. The remnants of entire lives, Dean thought. Like in the pyramids.
“I believe the articles you’re looking for are over here.”
With practiced swiftness, Betty navigated the maze of boxes and pulled out one in particular. The cardboard sagged at the bottom from the weight of its contents.
“Tell me again, what was your relation?”
Dean struggled with his answer. In the moment, with that box right in front of him, he couldn’t remember what he had told her on the phone. He took a stab in the dark.
“She was my great aunt.”
“She never talked about family. And no family ever visited.” That last sentence contained a jab directed squarely at Dean. An accusatory “Where were you?” was definitely implied.
“Yeah. Things were strained.”
“Better late than never, I guess. Although, for Julia, I guess not.” With that, Betty left Dean alone with the box.
He opened it delicately, almost afraid to touch the material inside.
Once Betty was definitely out of earshot, Dean whispered quietly, “I’m sorry you didn’t get your picket fence, Julia.”
Sam waited outside, leaning wearily against the Impala. Things are finally back to normal, he thought. More or less. Not that normal was good. In fact, Sam found himself missing 1954. For all of the tragedy, it had been nice to experience a time when things had been less complicated for a while. No Apocalypse. No horsemen. No impending battle to end all battles.
Dean walked slowly down the front steps of the retirement home, carrying a single piece of paper.
“You found her stuff?” Sam asked.
“Yeah. Let’s get moving.” Dean’s voice was gruff. Sam recognized his I-don’t-want-to talk-about-it face. Not that Sam ever let him get away with it...
“Dean, come on, what did you find?”
Dean stopped at the driver’s
side door.
“Nothing worth yapping about.”
In one swift movement, Sam reached over the hood and snatched the piece of paper from Dean’s hand.
“Hey!”
“We’re gonna talk about it eventually. I’m just skipping a six-hour car ride with you brooding the whole way.” Sam unfolded the paper, finding a list written in blocky handwriting. A guy wrote it, Sam realized. Specifically, Walter.
Sam held in his hands Walter’s transcribed list of bloodlines. At the very end, the words “Michael” and “Lucifer” were written on two consecutive lines. Next to each—nothing. The paper had been cut, Dean and Sam’s names removed from the list.
“She kept it,” Dean said after a while. “Don’t know what that says.”
“But she took our names off,” Sam said. “I think that says a lot.”
Dean opened his door and sat heavily in the driver’s seat. He exhaled loudly enough for Sam to hear it.
“You... You think you could drive?”
Those words were so seldom spoken that it took Sam a second to register them.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I’ve been in the driver’s seat a little too much recently.”
Reluctantly, Sam rounded the front of the car and swapped seats with Dean.
“Where we heading?”
In the passenger seat, Dean had already closed his eyes.
“Surprise me.”
As night approached, the Impala motored onto the open road. Toward—for better or worse—their destiny.
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I was pleased to be asked by Christopher Cerasi to write a novel for Supernatural. Since the deadline conflicted with my impending wedding, I asked David Reed if he wanted to collaborate. I owe him great thanks for picking up the ball and running with it when I was crying over the cost of chair rentals. Also much thanks to Christopher for the support and fun phone calls; he has turned out to be a great friend and believer in the show. Thank you to Cath Trechman, who exhibited patience and professionalism throughout this process, and whose love for the written word shines through in her impeccable work. — Rebecca Dessertine
Supernatural War of the Sons Page 24