Supernatural: War of the Sons (12 page)

“Dean, it was stolen,” Sam retorted. Then, realization dawned on him. “... By a
girl
. Brunette, cute, about five-foot six?”

Dean nodded.

“Could be the same girl that brushed past me in the hall,” Sam continued. “Right before I realized the knife was gone.” He walked to the Murphy bed, pulled it down, and extracted the gun-filled duffel from the bed’s cavity. “As for these, they’re safe and sound.”

Dean watched Sam wistfully.
The kid really has become a good hunter, despite everything
, he thought. He grabbed the weapon-laden bag and opened it.

“Fifties women, dude,” he said as he appraised the contents. “It’s like a big riddle, and Betty Draper is the... thing you get for solving a riddle.”

“Wait, are you still
into
the girl who you know is
on to
you? We got robbed already, Dean. We don’t have time for you to get played.”

“Don’t start. I know. I’m not hitting on anything that was born before the microwave.” Dean hefted one of the shotguns, and expertly tilted the weight of it back and forth to feel its balance.

“I was thinking...” Sam began, then trailed off.

“Spit it out, big guy,” Dean said. “Thinking about taking a crap? Thinking of getting us some toothpaste? ’Cause your breath is
ripe
.”

“If this wasn’t 1954, we’d be loading these with salt, right?” Sam asked, grabbing a few of the shotgun shells. “But here, we’re not. Because we’re not just fighting demons and ghosts and things that go bump; we’re robbing humans. Humans who didn’t do anything to us, or to anyone, didn’t do
anything
wrong, and we’re going to hold guns to their heads? Doesn’t it faze you even a little to be the bad guys?”

“We ice Lucifer, nobody’s crying over a little bit of armed larceny,” Dean retorted.

“So the end justifies the means?” Sam paused. “’Cause it sure didn’t when it meant me juicing up on demon blood.”

Sam’s words drilled into Dean.

“That was different,” he growled.

Sam shook his head and started to pace the room, the creaky floorboards giving slightly under his weight.

Dean looked at his brother impatiently.
Why does he always have to make things so complicated?

“It
was
different,” Dean persisted. “Look, I’m willing to go pretty damned far to get this stupid scroll. Whether that includes killing or maiming some poor bastard who gets in our way, I’m not sure yet. Won’t know that till my finger’s on the trigger. But Sammy, I sure as hell am not willing to lose my little brother.” Dean let out a sigh. “Saving you is the reason we’re here.”

But Sam’s face was resolved.

“Nobody else gets hurt,” he said. It wasn’t a statement, it was a command. “I have enough blood on me already.”

Dean reached into his pocket, felt the wad of bills, and started toward the door.

“Where are you going?” his brother demanded.

“To buy salt,” Dean responded, and the door shut on him.

James McMannon stood on the threshold of his sister’s brownstone house, bathed in the flashing red and blue of a police cruiser’s revolving lights. Peering through the open curtains, he saw his sister. Maria’s face was blotted with tears, her left cheek pressed into the thick of an older man’s shoulder.
Maybe a neighbor
, James thought, not recognizing the man.
At least she has someone
. If he went inside, they’d ask him to explain something that couldn’t be rationally explained, to tell a story that no sane person would believe.

Two uniformed officers were visible as well, both of them wearing the forlorn grimace of men sharing bad tidings.
Your son is dead
, they’re saying.
We found his body
. James didn’t need to read their lips, all he had to see was his sister’s anguished face.

The sight drove James off the stoop and back onto the narrow sidewalk. He began to shamble slowly northward.

Over the course of the evening, he had managed to piece together his shattered memories of what had happened to Barney—what he had
done
to Barney. He had never felt particularly in control of the direction his life was taking, but this was something different entirely. For a good chunk of the past few days, James hadn’t been in control of his hands, his feet, or anything in between. Now he felt like a stranger in his own body, just stopping by until the next occupant moved in. Every few hours, he would simply wake up in a new place, unsure of how he had got there. The memories might eventually return, or they might not. Only one had stuck—

I killed Barney
.
And people are going to be looking for me
. New York was a city with a million small, dim corners to hide in, and his only option was to find one of them and disappear into it.
My sister’s son
, he thought, the words burning into his psyche.
The only person she had left
. Facing her was not an option. He had to vanish.

However, as the swirling light from the police cruiser faded into the distance, James found himself doing something peculiar. He was walking back toward Manhattan, toward the first place people would be looking for him—the Waldorf Astoria. A nagging voice in the back of his mind insisted that everything could be worked out, if only he was back at the hotel.

If only he was near the vault.

Sam left the apartment before the sun had crept above the skyline, knowing it would be hours before Dean woke on his own. They weren’t accustomed to staying in one place for this long, and with the auction still two days away, there wasn’t a particular need to roll out of bed early. For Dean, that was an overdue invitation to get more than four hours sleep. For Sam, it was an excuse to get some time to himself.

Dean had indeed bought salt for the shotguns, but he had stayed out nearly the whole night finding it. Sam didn’t want to know how Dean had spent the rest of his time, considering Dean’s tendency to fraternize with less-than-virtuous characters.
I suppose I’m one of them,
Sam realized.
Nothing less virtuous than jump-starting Armageddon.

After a twenty-minute walk, Sam arrived at the clerk’s office for the borough of Manhattan. It was just before eight in the morning, but there was already a line forming at the information desk. A young woman, probably twenty years old and wearing a slightly too-tight sweater, stood behind the desk.

By the time it was Sam’s turn, she was starting to sound frazzled.

“Can I help you, sir?” she asked, the tone of her voice indicating that she hoped she couldn’t.

“Long morning already?” Sam responded with a smile, thinking that charm would be the best way to pull this off.

“No, sir. Did you have a records request, or is this a social visit?” she said tersely.

Sam was momentarily thrown.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah I do,” he stammered, and pulled out his wallet. He flipped through the selection of counterfeit IDs and badges, none of which were appropriate to the era. Settling for the most promising one, Sam flashed it at her briefly, then folded it back into his wallet before she could get a good look.

“Secret Service,” he intoned, changing tack to sound more serious.

The girl glanced over her shoulder at a morose-looking man sitting behind a typewriter, toward the back of the cluttered office.
Her boss
, Sam decided. He didn’t look any happier to be there than she did.

“Just one moment,” she said, getting up to talk to her boss. After a brief back-and-forth, the man came to speak with Sam directly. His narrow tie was knotted too tightly around his neck, making his head look like a bright-red balloon about to pop.
Must be part of the dress code
, Sam thought.

“Can I help you?” the man asked gruffly.

“Hi...” Sam replied, looking down at the man’s nametag, “Mr. Walker. The Secret Service requires a selection of blueprints for the Waldorf Astoria hotel.” Sam pulled out the fake ID again, intending to flash it for only a moment, but Walker grabbed the wallet out of his hand.

“Counterfeiters,” he barked.

“Uh, excuse me?” Sam responded, his hand reaching protectively for his wallet.

“What does this have to do with counterfeiters?” Walker asked, handing the wallet back to Sam.

“Oh, right. I don’t deal with counterfeit money,” Sam said, then he lowered his voice. “I protect President...” His mind raced,
Who was the President of the United States in 1954? After Truman, before Kennedy.
“Eisenhower. Sorry, we usually refer to him by his code name.” He leaned in, whispering, “It’s ‘Papa Bear.’”

The girl, who was now standing next to her boss, gave Sam a curious look, but Walker didn’t seem to have noticed Sam’s lapse.

“That right?” he said.

“He’ll be staying at the Waldorf Astoria in a few days. In the Presidential Suite,” Sam said.

“I’ll be damned. Ike staying right down the street from us!” Walker said, excited.

“Yes,” Sam agreed. “It’s very exciting for the people of New York. We—my colleagues and I—need to review the plans to look for security weaknesses in the hotel.” It was half true. With the plans, Sam was hoping to find an alternative entrance into the suite that wouldn’t draw suspicion from the Waldorf’s security, who would recognise Dean.

“They ain’t got that at the hotel? Seems they probably got a better idea about their plans and such than we would.” Walker had a point, of course, but the Waldorf employees would also know that Eisenhower had no plans to visit in the near future. This was the only way.

“Just doing my due diligence,” Sam replied.

“Marcia, see if we ain’t got that in the records,” Walker commanded, sending the girl scurrying away into the back room. “Say, what’s old Ike like, anyhow?”

“Oh, he’s... great. Just a swell guy. Really... tall.”

“Yeah? Got any stories?”

“Of course, but, you know, they’re top secret,” Sam said, trying to hold his poker face.

“Ah. ’Course.” Walker said, disappointed. He looked like he was going to persist when, to Sam’s relief, Marcia returned to the desk with the plans.

Finding a corner table in the Records Office reading room, Sam poured over the blueprints, searching for a back door, a nearby service elevator—anything that would make their trip in and out of the Presidential Suite easier. He couldn’t help but think about how much simpler this would be in 2010. Electronic records had saved them more times than Sam could count, and symbols that were taking him ages to decipher could have been explained with a ten-second Google search. He’d definitely appreciate that convenience more when—if—they ever got back to the present.

Just as Sam was about to give up, Walker barged into the reading room, another rolled-up set of blueprints under his arm.

“Can’t believe I forgot about these,” he said, plopping the prints onto the table in front of Sam.

Sam looked at the designs, but wasn’t able to make head or tail of it.

“Being as he’s the President, it seems appropriate that he use the Presidential Siding,” Walker explained.

“The what?” Sam asked.

“Are you kiddin’ me?” Walker’s face creased. He pointed at a knot of intersecting white lines against the field of blue paper. “You don’t know what’s under the Waldorf?”

And with that, Sam’s plan began to come together.

Dean woke up with a start to the noise of a dump truck reversing down the street outside. The sun blazed in through the small, barred window, brightly illuminating the fact that Sam wasn’t in his bed.

“Sam?” Dean called out. “You up?”

When no one responded, he slid off the couch and headed for the shower.
Eight hours of sleep plus time for a hot shower
. Dean hadn’t had both in months, probably not since Lucifer had been popped from his cage.

After his shower, he went straight to work disassembling the shotgun shells Sam had bought and refilling them with rock salt. He was nearly finished when the sound of keys rattled in the door’s deadbolt.

“Sam, that you?”

“It’s me. Don’t shoot,” came the muffled reply. As the door swung open, Dean’s eyes caught on the brown paper bag in Sam’s outstretched hand. It bore the unmistakable grease stains that came along with a cheeseburger, and instantly dispelled any hard feelings Dean had left over from the previous night’s conversation.

“Fastest way to a man’s heart, right?” he said, grabbing the bag and opening it. The smell was amazing, just the thing to remind Dean why life was worth living. “Where you been, anyway?”

Sam sat down next to Dean on the couch and grabbed his own burger from the bag.

“Clerk’s office, looking for blueprints,” he said.

“And?”

“And the good news is I may have found us an exit. The bad news is there’s only one elevator that services the Presidential Suite, and a security desk is right outside it.” Sam set his burger down without even taking a bite.

“You not eating that?” Dean asked, mouth full, then registered Sam’s annoyance. “What?”

“This would be a lot easier if you hadn’t been banned from the hotel,” Sam said.