Supernatural: The Unholy Cause (13 page)

Sam turned and saw the Union demon standing in front of him, holding the demon-knife.

“We’re not interested in you,” the demon said, with all the intensity of an IRS auditor going over a list of deductions. “Let us do our work here and we’ll be on our way.”

“What work is that?” Sam demanded.

When the demon didn’t answer right away, Sam realized that, for better or worse, he was going to have to act. He lunged for the demon, and it swung the knife at him in a scooping, desultory arc. Sam dodged left, recoiling, and felt the tip of the blade snag the fabric of his shirt as he sprinted around in front of the howitzer. The hillside dropped off sharply underneath his feet and he fell to his knees, starting to slide. But the Union demon kept its footing, raising the blade to deliver the killing blow.

“You should have stayed out of our way,” the demon said. “It would have been much simpler.”

Directly behind the demon, the howitzer roared. At the last second the thing seemed to realize what was happening, but it was too late. Sam shut his eyes as the entire upper half of the demon’s body disappeared in a sulfurous spray, drenching him from above.

Sam reached up and, by sheer luck, caught the blade in mid-air. It was an astonishingly cool move, which of course meant that there was no way his brother could have seen it.

And Dean hadn’t.

Because he was too busy getting the unholy snot beaten out of him by the last remaining demon on the hill.

Sam flung himself toward it. He could hear the faint gargling noises that his brother was making as the demon went about the business of strangling him.

Hearing him coming, the demon snapped around and glowered at Sam, onyx-eyed and seething with fury.

“You wouldn’t dare intrude on this,” he said, “if you knew the mission we were given.”

Sam flicked his wrist, throwing the knife at the demon’s face. The creature laughed and ducked easily, so that the blade went whistling over his head, landing in the dirt.

“We serve a greater purpose here.” Releasing Dean, the demon stalked toward Sam, managing to look both heavy and impossibly graceful in its human meat-suit. “You’re only one part of that.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t serve any purpose at all,” Sam responded. He realized that he wasn’t shouting anymore. He didn’t have to. The guns had fallen silent.

From down below, a smell was rising up the hillside on the breeze. It was indescribably foul and rotten, as if tons of flyblown decaying flesh had been left out to bake in the sun.

“You wait,” the demon told him. “Just wait. The way our numbers have waited, for so very long, suffering in the darkest hollows of—”

“Don’t you ever
shut up
?” Dean shouted hoarsely from behind it, with what sounded like genuine exasperation. “You want us so bad, quit talking and kill us already!”

“An excellent idea, Dean Winchester.”

The demon in the Union uniform pivoted and strode back toward him, taking two steps, then three, then freezing when it saw the ground beneath its feet, where Dean had used the knife to carve a Devil’s Trap into the grass.

“Dumbass,” Dean muttered, and he started muttering the exorcism rite.

After the exorcism, the smell of sulfur just got worse.

“Ugh, what did they open up down there?” Dean asked, gazing down between the howitzers at the smoldering battlefield below. He covered his nose and mouth with one hand and fanned the other in front of his face, as if he could somehow sweep a hole of clean air into the thick fumes that were accumulating around them.

“Smells like...”

“I know,” Sam said. “And it’s only getting worse.”

Mortar shells from the cannons had torn the battlefield to shreds, uprooting trees and opening dozens of holes across the acreage. Through huge clouds of dirt and dust, he saw emergency personnel and state police—and probably the sheriff too, he thought glumly—gathered around one of the craters, peering down into it.

Long shafts of sunlight poked down from the clouds above in almost palpable pillars, as if God himself was taking an interest in what had been unearthed there. Although it was hard to say from this distance, Dean thought he saw debris down inside the hole, mixed in with the rocks and roots of trees. And from the reactions of those standing around it, they seemed to be seeing it too.

He noticed something else, as well.

“Didn’t that train used to be inside the shed?”

Sam looked down on the other side of the creek, to the steel rails that ran across the battleground. Far off to the left, an 1850s steam locomotive sat in front of a railway shed. Its engine, coal car, and caboose were in full view, as well as the artillery field piece, a Gatling gun mounted to the flatcar.

“Part of the re-enactment?” Dean asked hopefully.

“Then how come we didn’t notice it before?” Sam countered. “Kind of hard to miss.

“That demon said he was serving a bigger purpose,” he added. “I don’t think they were trying to kill anybody. I think they were making holes. Trying to get down to what’s in that hole in particular.” He shrugged. “If they got those cannons working, who’s to say they couldn’t stoke up an old steam engine, as well?”

Dean was looking back out along the hillside, fixating on something in the middle distance.

“I want a closer look.”

“The sheriff’s down there,” Sam said.

“So?”

“We’re not FBI anymore, remember?”

“I’ve got a plan.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Hey.” Dean clapped his shoulder. “Where’s the trust?”

Sam was about to answer when he felt his phone vibrate in his back pocket.

“Hold on.” He checked the screen. “It’s Bobby.”

“Not now.”

“This could be important.” Sam watched his brother rubbing his neck where the demon had tried to strangle him. “And are you really gonna tell me you couldn’t use a breather?”

“Fine. Five minutes—tops.” Sighing, Dean found a relatively secluded spot behind a pile of rocks and squatted down to watch the action below while Sam answered the call.

“Hey, Bobby.”

“Sam?” Bobby didn’t bother hiding his concern. “You sound winded, kid. Everything all right?”

“Dean and I just took out a demon kill-squad.”

“Yeah, well, I got news about that.”

“Go ahead.”

“That coin you sent me a picture of,” Bobby said, “is a shekel of Tyre—an ancient Phoenician coin. It’s one of the thirty silver pieces that Judas got for betraying Christ. Where’d you get it?”

“Inside one of the victim’s bodies,” Sam said.

“Were you the one that found it?”

“I got it from the sheriff’s office, but—”

“Sam, this is important. Did the sheriff know you took it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Why?”

“Did she ever try to stop you?”

Sam frowned.

“I’m not following you.”

“It’s blood money, Sam. There’s only thirty coins like it in human history. It’s payment for services rendered.”

“What kind of services?”

Bobby’s voice grew into an even more urgent growl.

“The lore says there’s only way you earn that kind of silver. Same way Judas did. By betraying the people you love.”

“So should I get rid of it?”

“You’re not hearing me, Sam. It’s a done deal. Wouldn’t make a difference now if you did.”

“Bobby...”

“I’ll call you when I find out more,” Bobby said. “In the meantime, you better let Dean know what he’s up against.”

“I will,” Sam said. But when he looked back behind the rocks where his brother had been sitting, Dean was gone.

Sam made his way back down the hill. He found Dean squatting down behind the stands of cypress and live oak clustered along the creek, watching a Georgia State Police mobile crime lab that had pulled into the lot, finding its way between the clutter of other vehicles.

“What happened to you?” Sam asked, crouching down beside him.

“Just came down for a closer look.” Dean glanced back at him, his expression unreadable. “What’d Bobby have to say?”

“The coin’s two thousand years old.” As he said these words, Sam realized he’d started to reach up and touch his collar, where his FBI agent’s tie still hung loose around his neck. He consciously lowered his hand. “It confirms the Judas hypothesis that Cass was talking about.”

“That’s it?”

Sam let out a long sigh. “No. No, it isn’t.”

Dean looked back at his brother and narrowed his eyes.

“What going on, Sammy?”

“This is blood money.” Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out the shekel. “Bobby says the only way anybody gets their hands on this...” The rest of the sentence was getting stuck somewhere in his chest, and he made himself finish it, “is by betraying someone you love.”

Dean stared at him.

“I haven’t done anything, Dean!”

“So maybe it’s a down payment.”

“What do you want me to say? You think I’m happy about this?”

“I think you’re in over your head.”

“So what, you want me to sit this one out? Handcuff myself to a tree till it’s over?”

Dean turned away and shook his head, looking more exasperated than anything else.

“Is this part of that nightmare you had?”

“It might be,” Sam said. “I still don’t remember most of it.” He stared down at the silver piece, then closed his fist around it and threw it as hard as he could into the creek, where it sparkled once and disappeared into the brown, slow-moving water.

For a silent moment they just sat there behind the trees, looking across the battleground and the parking lot, neither knowing what to say. The police forensics van reached the proximal end of the parking lot and was angling for a place to park. There was a tow-truck behind it, and Sheriff Daniels was directing it backward between the patrol cars, pickups, and civilian vehicles still filling the lot.

Watching all of this, and observing his brother out of the corner of his eye, it seemed to Sam that Dean was just waiting for an opportunity to move forward again and put this conversation behind them. If he had any more that he needed to say, now was the time.

“Dean...”

“Look,” Dean broke in. “Don’t get too hung up on it, okay? It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.” He stood up and brushed off his jeans. “Whatever happens between us, we’ll deal with it then. Besides, you’ve still got a whole bag of those coins back in...” He stopped abruptly, galvanized by what he was staring at. “The
car
!”

“Dean, what—?”

“That
bitch
.” Dean pointed at the parking lot where the tow-truck was hoisting the Impala up on its winch. Seconds later he was fighting his way through the trees. “She’s towing my baby!”

“Dean, wait.” Sam caught up and grabbed his brother’s arm, holding him back. “Let’s stay focused.”

“Oh, I’m
so
focused,” Dean said, straining against the grip.

“If you go running out there now, we’ll both be in a holding cell in twenty minutes. You know that.” Sam took hold of Dean’s shoulders, holding his stare. “We’ll get her back, okay? I promise.”

“If there’s so much as one scratch on her fender, I swear—”

“Okay, okay, got it.” Sam nodded. “Now, you said you had a plan?”

Dean drew back and nodded across the river at the mobile crime unit. The technicians who climbed out of the back were garbed in heavy protective gear—suits, respirators and isolation masks that draped over their heads and shoulders like arc-welders’ hoods.

“Those guys,” he said. “That’s where we start.”

The disorganized crowd of police, civilians and re-enactors in the parking lot was still thick enough that Sam and Dean were able to approach the mobile crime lab undetected.

The lab technicians were already moving through the battlefield, and the state troopers and local police were busy evacuating the re-enactors and civilians. In all of the activity, nobody appeared to notice as Sam and Dean climbed into the back of the lab vehicle and procured two extra isolation suits and masks.

Sam grabbed two laminated ID badges by the lanyard and tossed one to Dean.

Dean looked at the name.

“How do you pronounce this—Cerasi?”