Supernatural: War of the Sons (13 page)

Dean nodded toward the stack of rock salt shells he’d been working on.

“Hey, I’ve been doin’ my part. ’Sides, you’re the one that dumped us on the Magic School Bus for this field trip.”

Sam didn’t protest, but he also didn’t jump in to apologize. Dean shrugged. Sam’s stubbornness was genetic—their father had it as well, and it was the thing that had driven them apart. Ironically enough, Dean, the boy who worshipped the ground his father walked on, was less like John Winchester than the son who wanted nothing to do with him.

“Look, you wanna do your part, find another way to get into that meeting,” Sam said.

“Maybe we need to consider you flying solo,” Dean suggested.

“Are you serious?” Sam asked. “A few weeks ago you weren’t sure I was even cut out for hunting anymore, now you want me to commit armed robbery by myself?”

“You don’t think you can do it?”

“Of course I can do it,” Sam answered, agitated. “But is that our best plan? I show up, claiming to have 200,000 dollars in a briefcase, grab the scroll and run?”

“Sounds like a Winchester plan to me,” Dean said, licking his fingers clean of burger grease.

“Sounds like a stupid plan.”

“Usually it’s both.”

“Then let’s come up with a better one,” Sam offered. “From what Walter Sawyer told me, there could be a dozen people and institutions interested in the scrolls, so security is going to be tight. Maybe we can use that to our advantage. Create a diversion.”

Dean didn’t like where this was headed.

“By diversion, you mean me doing something stupid so you can smash-and-grab the scroll.”

“They know you,” Sam replied. “The guards upstairs will recognize you, so it won’t be hard for you to get a little attention.”

“And then they shoot me, you take off with the War Scroll, they shoot you, and our angel buddy can zap our corpses back to 2010,” Dean scoffed.

“What if your distraction isn’t, you know, violent?” Sam asked.

“Like I ask politely?”

“Like you pretend to be a Fed,” Sam said. “Or somebody who doesn’t believe the documents are genuine, come to warn the buyers that the seller’s a fraud.”

“Alright,” Dean said, gears clicking into place in his head. “Say that works. I bust up the proceedings, your boy Feldman is distracted, you grab the scroll... What about the demon?”

Sam’s face fell. If the demon was acting as a protector of the scroll, there was no telling what it would do.

“Last I saw, that guard seemed back to normal,” Dean said. “So it could be in anyone. Assuming it is some kind of protector, he’ll be there at the sale.”

“And we don’t have the knife.”

“You mean you
lost
the knife,” Dean pointed out.

“If we could get up there early, we could set up a Devil’s Trap, lure him into it,” Sam said, blowing past Dean’s accusation.

“But we can’t, so plan B,” Dean said.

Sam nodded toward the stack of rock salt shells Dean had spent the morning preparing.

“Salt shells will keep a demon at bay, but how do we get a couple of shotguns upstairs?”

“Easy,” Dean said. “We find a case big enough to fit ’em, and you waltz right in carrying it. 200,000 bucks must take up a lot of space.”

“Security, Dean. They’ll check the case.”

As it was still untouched, Dean took another large bite out of Sam’s burger, letting the taste linger in his mouth for a bit. He did his best thinking while eating.

“Luggage,” he said finally.

“What about it?”

“We wait around the loading dock till it’s unattended, which it will be, because those bellhops are frickin’ lazy, trust me,” Dean answered. “Then we throw the shotguns in a bag headed for the suite. They’ll be there waiting for us.”

“That’s never going to work.” Sam let out a sigh.

“Don’t see you coming up with a better plan,” Dean said angrily, though he knew Sam was right. Getting the guns upstairs was one thing, getting access to them and pulling off the heist was something else entirely.

“We’re a little outside our comfort zone, Dean, but we’ve got to figure this out.”

“I know. Stop the Apocalypse, kill the Devil, reunite the Spice Girls, there’s a lot on our plate,” Dean said, starting to pace the small room. “Maybe we’re looking at this wrong. Maybe we go after the scroll once the buyer leaves with it. Jump ’em outside.”

“How are we supposed to know who the buyer is?” Sam asked. “We wait outside, they could walk right past us with the scrolls in a briefcase and we’d never know.”

Picking up one of the rock salt shells, Dean started to flip the cartridge between his fingers.

“Well, whoever has a frickin’ demon following him, screaming bloody murder, that’s probably him.”

The discussion went round and round, not leading any place productive for over an hour. Dean wanted nothing more than to get out of the cramped apartment, but this particular dilemma needed all brains on deck. Finally, Sam relented and stepped into the bathroom, giving Dean the perfect opportunity to escape outside for some air. No one wanted to be near the bathroom when Sam was in it.

Seated on the front stoop of the apartment building, Dean watched as a stream of New Yorkers marched past, hurrying away the afternoon.
They don’t know what’s coming
, he thought, feeling for a moment like Sarah Connor in
T2
, the harbinger of doom nestled amidst the blissfully unaware.
Of course, these people have fifty-six good years left. Not like us.

Sam joined him after a few minutes, both of them listening intently to the sound of traffic, taking in all of the sights and sounds of the run-down neighborhood.

As if he could read Dean’s thoughts, Sam suddenly laughed.

“Admit it,” he said. “You miss
Dr. Sexy
.”

Early the next morning, Sam and Dean headed uptown to the Waldorf. Sam had insisted on another walkthrough of the lobby, and if they could get up as far as the Presidential Suite without arousing suspicion, then all the better.

While Dean skulked around the loading dock, Sam headed to the stairwell. He wanted to make sure that the exit strategy he had formulated from the blueprints would hold up in real life.

Slogging his way up the many flights of stairs was the most exercise Sam had done in weeks. Around the twentieth story, ascending to the top began to feel like an impossible task.
It’d be pretty sad to die of a heart attack now,
Sam thought. Whether that would be a good or bad thing for the world was another matter.

In the middle of contemplating that idea, a thunderous
bark
echoed up the stairwell, jolting Sam to attention. A second later, another bark pounded his eardrums, and he gripped his hands against his head tightly.
If that’s a dog
, Sam thought,
I don’t want to meet its owner.

With the third bout of vicious howling, Sam realized that the noise was getting closer. It was coming up the stairwell—and fast.
Dean said the demon barked. I don’t really want to find out if he’s right
. He took the steps two at a time, hoping to outrun whatever hellish beast was downstairs.
Hellish beast
, Sam thought.
It sounds exactly how I always imagined a Hellhound to sound.

Satan’s guard dogs, Hellhounds were the invisible beasts responsible for keeping up the nasty end of Hell’s bargains. If the demon that Dean met was somehow a Hellhound, or something like it, they were in even more trouble than they had thought.

The sound of water dripping was driving Dean crazy. Somewhere, some jackass hadn’t tightened a valve, or a nut, or whatever it was that kept water from leaking, and now it was ruining both Dean’s day and his nice new suit jacket.

He had been forced to hide in a storage locker when a truckload of perishables was delivered to the loading dock, only to have the kitchen staff take their lunch break right outside. It wasn’t the most undignified place Dean had ever hidden, but it was up there.

“Have I told you what happened at the Yankees’ game?” a muffled voice said outside the locker. For a moment, Dean pictured himself holding a baseball bat and using it to punish the kitchen workers for the twenty minutes of dull-as-shit conversation he’d been forced to endure.
I bet Sam’s having fun
, he thought bitterly.

The metal edge of the stair rushed at Sam’s face, catching him between the ear and eyebrow and momentarily blurring his vision. He had tripped while running up the flight of stairs, and from the sound of it, the Hellhound—or whatever it was—was only seconds behind him. Pushing himself upright, Sam risked a glance down the cavernous opening in the middle of the stairwell. It led all the way to the ground floor, maybe even underground.

Nothing.

Hellhounds are invisible
, Sam reminded himself.
Keep running
.

Lactic acid burned in his calves as he sprinted upward. Ahead of him, the door to the fortieth floor was only meters away. A terrible growling reverberated through the stairwell. Any moment Sam expected to feel the dig of teeth clamping onto his leg, but the sensation never came.

He darted into the hallway of the fortieth floor, slamming the door shut behind him. He scanned the space around him, but didn’t see anything that could be used to barricade the door. He did, however, hear something. The familiar electric buzz of a vending machine was coming from a nearby room. Bolting inside, Sam quickly locked the door. He found himself in what looked like a staff break room.

The snack machine weighed far more than Sam expected it to, and as he attempted to slide it along the floor it tipped over on its side. The laminate flooring shook with the massive crash, and Sam flinched.
Everyone on this floor must
have heard that
. On the plus side, the machine was much easier to move now it was on its side. Sam slid it toward the door, effectively blocking it.

Bags of pretzels hung haphazardly inside the vending machine, with big chunks of Kosher salt on them. Sam kicked through the glass and pulled out as many bags of pretzels as he could. He crushed them in his hands and poured the contents across the vending machine. Whether that was enough salt to keep a demon or Hellhound at bay, Sam wasn’t sure.

He took a few moments to catch his breath, his ragged gasps for oxygen overpowering any noise from beyond the door. Leaning against the downed vending machine, he held in his breath for five seconds, allowing him to hear a raspy intake of air from the other side of the door. Some of the pretzel crumbs retreated under the door with the beast’s inhale.

It’s sniffing me out
, Sam realized.
It knows I’m here
. But the door never rattled and the beast never brayed. Instead, Sam heard the hollow clomping of feet on metal stairs. The creature was moving on.

Sam waited a couple more minutes, then pushed the vending machine away from the door. He stepped over his makeshift salt and pretzel line and sighed.
That was close
.

“You must of been hungry,” a voice said from down the hall. Sam looked up to see an elderly woman standing there, wearing a plaid bathrobe and holding an empty ice bucket with both hands. She nodded toward the pile of snacks that had spilled out of the machine, and the accompanying broken glass.

Sam shrugged. “It stole my quarter.”

For Dean, sweet relief came in the form of a hotel supervisor, who marched down to the loading dock and admonished the kitchen staff for letting the perishables sit for so long without refrigeration. Dean was spared. As they exited, a burly-sounding line cook with a Jersey accent said something about a package being moved through the kitchen, but Dean couldn’t hear the full exchange. The one phrase he definitely heard was “big-ass jars.”
They must have been moving the scrolls upstairs
, Dean thought.
Hope Sammy hasn’t run into any trouble
.

Wringing the moisture out of his jacket, Dean exited the loading dock and headed back toward the Park Avenue entrance where he was supposed to meet Sam.

Oddly, Sam wasn’t waiting. Being the more punctual of the two of them, it wasn’t like Sam to miss a
rendez vous
. Taking a chance on not being recognized again, Dean smiled at the hotel doorman and strode boldly into the lobby. The dick desk clerk was on duty, so Dean joined a large crowd that was milling near the lounge’s piano. Sam wasn’t in the lobby, but the stairwell he’d taken would spit him out right in front of the crowd. A red-haired man was playing the piano with some proficiency, although Dean didn’t recognize the song.

Trying to blend into the group, Dean watched as a woman approached the pianist. She patted him kindly on the shoulder, whispered in his ear... and with the practiced skill of a professional, lifted the wallet from his jacket pocket.

She moved off quickly, but Dean was only seconds behind her. As she made her way toward the elevators, Dean grabbed her by the arm and spun her to face him.

“Should have friggin’ guessed,” he said.

The woman was Julia.

“Ah, how nice to see you again, Mister... I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name,” she said formally.