Supernatural: Carved in Flesh (32 page)

Sam didn’t know what he was supposed to do, or if the voice was real or just another hallucination, so he just started talking and hoped something would come to him. “Catherine, I know you only wanted to bring your family back. The pain of losing someone you love... it’s indescribable. And no matter how much time passes, that pain never goes away, not completely. You think if only you could have a little more time with them, you’d say all the things you never got around to saying, do all the things you put off when they were alive. You pray for a miracle, and sometimes, one happens. In your case, Conrad found you, and with his help, you learned how to restore life to the dead. But when people come back, they’re not the same. Their personalities, their souls are gone, and what returns is... something else. My brother and I, we’ve seen it happen before. We knew a girl called Trish...” He trailed off. “My point is we watched someone we loved brought back as a horrible, murderous thing, and we had to—to make it right again.”

Catherine’s face gave no hint of whether Sam’s words had any impact on her, or indeed, if they’d registered at all.

Hel sneered at Sam. “How sentimental.” She raised her hands and tendrils of darkness began to emerge from her fingers.

Sam could feel Dean tense, and he knew his brother intended to go down shooting. It might not stop Hel, but it was better than standing there and letting her kill them without a fight. Neither of them had gotten a chance to reload, and he didn’t know how many rounds remained in his clip, but he didn’t care. Whatever he had left, he’d make sure they counted.

Before the brothers could begin firing, Catherine said, “Wait!”

She stepped off the deck and came walking toward them. She glanced at the remains of her husband. The flames had died away for the most part, leaving behind only a blackened, smoldering husk. Sam thought he saw her lips tighten, but otherwise her expression remained neutral as she joined them.

Sam exchanged a look with his brother. They couldn’t shoot now, not without hitting Catherine, too.

“Before this goes any farther, I want you to tell me something, Hel. I understand that you’re in control of Bekah’s body, and that your spirit is dominant, but is she anywhere inside? And if so, is she aware of what’s happening?”

The ebon tendrils slithered back into Hel’s fingers, and she turned to face Catherine. “If I say yes, will you follow me loyally and without question? Even though I no longer need an agent in the physical world, I have to admit that Conrad had his uses. You would make a suitable replacement.”

“If my daughter is within you, then yes, I will serve you.”

Hel smiled. “Of course she’s here. Can’t you tell?”

Catherine stepped closer and peered into Hel’s eyes. She stared for several moments, looking deeply, before finally nodding. “I can see her. She
is
in there.” She stepped back. “I am yours, Hel.” She smiled. “Till death do us part.”

Hel let out a laugh and then turned to face Sam and Dean. Once more the goddess raised her hands, and Sam knew they couldn’t wait any longer. They were going to have to start firing and hope Catherine didn’t catch a stray bullet.

Catherine reach into the pocket of her lab coat and withdrew something sharp and silvery. Sam had just enough time to realize it was a scalpel before she plunged it into the base of Hel’s skull. Hel’s eyes went wide, more from surprise than pain. Catherine flicked the scalpel’s blade back and forth with a single deft motion. Hel’s eyes rolled white. She collapsed to the ground, the scalpel handle still protruding from her skull.

Catherine, Sam, and Dean stood looking down at the body of Bekah Luss for several seconds. Then Catherine spoke in a toneless voice. “If you want to know death, study life. It’s why doctors make the best killers.”

“You severed the connection between her brain and spinal cord,” Sam said.

Catherine nodded. “I don’t know how long it will take Hel to heal the wound and restore life to Bekah’s body. I left the scalpel in place in the hope it will slow her down, at least a little. But as powerful as she is, she will heal. It’s just a matter of time.”

“We should burn her,” Dean said. “If Hel can’t work her mojo, fire should take care of her as easily as...” He glanced at Marshall’s charred remains. “...anything else.” He reached for the flamethrower’s nozzle.

“Not yet,” Catherine said. “There’s something we should do first—as insurance, if nothing else.”

“What’s that?” Sam asked.

She raised her eyes and regarded the Winchesters grimly. “Disassembly.”

Sam looked at Dean. In unison, they put away their pistols and reached for their KA-BAR knives.

“I’m getting tired of digging graves,” Dean said.

“Me, too.”

The crapmobile cruised through the night on I-70, heading west, Dean behind the wheel, Sam riding shotgun.

After they’d “disassembled” Bekah’s body, they’d burned the parts and buried them separately in the Luss’s back yard. When that chore was finished, they buried Marshall’s remains as well. The sun had long dropped below the horizon by that point, and Catherine invited them in for a drink. They accepted, feeling more than a little awkward. As they stood in her kitchen and drank tap water, she thanked them for their help.

What am I going to do now?
Catherine had asked.
I’ve done terrible things. I never asked where Conrad found the limbs and organs I needed, but I knew where they came from
—
especially the freshest ones. And the experiment that got loose, the dog... it killed people. Those deaths are on my hands, too. I may not have taken any lives directly, but I’m just as responsible as if I had. I don’t even have Dippel’s excuse of being manipulated by a dark goddess. I was just a sad, lonely woman who missed her family. I’d go to the police and turn myself in, but what good would it do? No one would believe my story.

The only physical evidence left was her homemade lab in the basement. She could lead the cops to the remains of Marshall and Bekah, but there was a chance that, like Frankenmutt and the Double-Header, they’d decay to nothing soon. Besides, she didn’t want anyone disturbing Bekah’s various graves, just in case doing so somehow freed Hel. They had no idea if the goddess’s spirit had returned to the realm it had come from—Sniffleham or something like that; Dean couldn’t remember—but none of them wanted to take any chances.

Start your practice back up,
Sam had suggested.
Return to helping people. Isn’t that why you became a doctor in the first place? Besides, what better way to fight death than by preserving life?

Catherine had thought for a moment.
I think... I think maybe Marshall and Bekah would like that. But should I? Is redemption even possible?

Dean had taken that one.
Doc, if we didn’t believe it is, we wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning.

“Too bad the Lapis Occultus was destroyed,” Sam said. “I think it might have been another name for the Philosopher’s Stone, in which case it could’ve made a powerful weapon to use against Dick Roman.”

Dean shrugged. “No use crying over shattered mystical artifacts. I’m glad to see you’re feeling better, though. You finally manage to fight off that infection?”

Sam smiled. “Looks like it.” He crossed his leg and pulled up the cuff of his pants. “See? No more weird black veins.”

“That’s a relief. We’ll save a ton of money on coffee.” Dean paused before asking his next question. “You... seeing things?”

Sam tugged his pants cuff back down. “You mean like a strange shadow man? Don’t worry. I don’t think I’m going to see him anymore.”

Something about Sam’s tone made Dean think he was missing something, but he decided to let it go. “You think the doc is going to be okay?”

“I don’t know. We were raised in this life, and the stuff we go through still messes us up. I can’t imagine how much worse it is for a normal person. But if she starts seeing patients again, surrounds herself with life instead of brooding on death, I think she stands a chance.”

“In our business, sometimes a chance is all you need.”

They drove in silence for a while. Dean almost turned on the radio, but he decided against it. He didn’t feel like music just then.

After a time, Sam said, “I’ve been thinking.”

“There’s a shocker,” Dean said.

“Remember those dreams I had about Trish?”

“Yeah.”

“It occurred to me that we never did anything about the Rifleman.”

Dean did some quick mental calculating. “It’ll only take thirty-five or forty hours to get to Washington State from here, assuming we drive straight through.”

“I’m wide awake,” Sam said, smiling.

Dean sniffed the air and caught a whiff of stink coming from the trunk.

“Maybe we should stop at a Laundromat and wash our funkified clothes first.”

“Let’s find a Dumpster to toss them into, and buy more when we get to Washington.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

The brothers continued traveling through the darkness.

Tim Waggoner’s novels include the
Nekropolis
series of urban fantasies and the
Ghost Trackers
series written in collaboration with Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of the
Ghost Hunters
television show. In total, he’s published close to thirty novels and two short story collections, and his articles on writing have appeared in
Writer’s Digest
and
Writers’ Journal,
among others. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College and in Seton Hill University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program. Visit him on the web at
www.timwaggoner.com
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