Supernatural: War of the Sons (29 page)

“Yeah, man. I get it. It’s cool man,” he grunted.

A couple of minutes later, Julia and Walter pulled up in a station wagon. They took an end parking space, closest to the exit. If Julia looked in her rearview she might see them, but she was engrossed in surveying the people milling under the bright lights of the drive-in’s carport.

Dean reached into the back of the car with his hunting knife and cut the cords on the guy’s wrists.

“Go get your money, scumbag.” Dean opened the back door.

The man scrambled out of the car and approached the back of Julia’s on the driver’s side. She swiveled around as he approached. Twenty yards back, Sam and Dean watched from inside their car. The guy touched his face, where Dean had repeatedly punched him. From afar, it seemed like he was making some excuse for his appearance. Julia passed over an envelope. The guy glanced back at Sam and Dean and then started walking at a rapid pace through the crowd around the driv e-in.

“You’re just going to let him go?” Sam asked.

“We have bigger fish to fry,” Dean said coldly.

Dean watched Julia pull the car out of the parking lot. They followed slowly behind.

Julia turned right onto a main street and headed for downtown St. Louis. Dean stayed two car lengths behind her; he didn’t take his eyes off the station wagon.

“Dean, try to calm down. We’ll figure this out,” Sam said as tactfully and gently as he could.

“Leave me alone, Sam.” Dean gripped the steering wheel even tighter. “She just murdered an innocent woman. She’s a liar. Who knows how many other people died tonight? I’m not going to let any more people get killed because of this God-damned Apocalypse.”

Sam was silent. They drove for the next twenty minutes without speaking.

Julia pulled into a large brick industrial-era warehouse on the outside of town. She drove the car around back, so it was hidden from the street. Dean idled the car at the curb. He was perfectly still.

“Do you want me to go in?” Sam asked.

“No,” Dean said, shaking the cobwebs away. “I’m good. I got this.”

They took two shotguns, one salt-filled and one they had loaded with regular bullets, and of course Ruby’s knife.

“Let’s go,” Dean said.

He headed off into the dark toward the looming building. Sam followed close behind. They crept around the back of the structure and spotted half a dozen cars. There were no lights. But it didn’t look like anyone was lurking around. A large steel door was cut into the back of the building. Dean tried to push it, but it was locked from the inside. It would probably make too much noise to open it anyway. He spotted a six foot-long transom window, which was about nine feet off the ground and swung open from the top.

“Sam, give me a lift.”

Just then a large bear of a guy careened around the corner and barreled headfirst into Sam. Sam went down in a heap.

Dean swung at the guy with the end of his shotgun. It connected right under the guy’s chin, but only sent him stumbling back a couple of steps. Dean picked up a handful of gravel and threw it in the guy’s face, momentarily blinding him. He threw a blind swing and went down on his ass. Dean leap on top of him, and landed elbow first, smashing into the big man’s kidneys. He curled up like an infant. Dean put both hands round the guy’s throat, constricting his airway until his face turned purple. Just before the guy passed out, Dean let go.
That should keep him down for a little while
.

Dean held out his hand to Sam. “Come on, let’s go. Stop laying around.”

“Do you think there are more of them?” Sam asked, rubbing his head.

“That guy was big enough to be three guys. Come on. Alley-oop.”

Sam held Dean by the knee. Pushing his weight up, he managed to grasp the ledge above. In an impressive rock-climbing move, Dean swung his leg onto the cement ledge underneath the window, pulling himself so he was half inside the building and half out, balancing on his stomach.

He disappeared into the black interior of the building.

Sam was glad that the little bit of action had made Dean communicative again. When Dean was silent and brooding things could get rough.

A couple of minutes later, Dean pushed open the large steel door.

“This place is a fortress. Not good,” Dean said as he slid the steel portal closed behind Sam.

Inside the building, there was a steel staircase that led up one side. In the centre was a very large open space, and for the first time Sam noticed a pair of railroad tracks that led underneath the massive steel door. On the tracks sat an old steam engine, facing toward the door as if ready for a quick get away. The building was a large repair station for many Midwest rail lines. It didn’t look active to Sam.

Dean motioned for Sam to follow him as he slid against the wall and peered over a railing. Beneath was a basement. One side was open and the other was underneath the cement and steel floor. It allowed for about ten feet of space from the ceiling to the floor. Old steam engine parts had been pushed up against the walls and a long steel table had been placed in the middle of the basement structure. About fifty people milled about, crowding around something on the table. When the bodies parted, Sam caught a glimpse of the War Scroll laid out on the table.

A wooden door opened and Julia and Walter appeared. Dean’s eyes turned steely.

When Julia spoke, everyone quieted down.

“Thank you all for coming. First off, I’d like to say that I appreciate your sacrifice. And it will be a sacrifice, because as we go into this battle, despite our precautions, some of the people standing next to you may die. You may die. And though what we are embarking on is bloody, it is necessary. We are faced with the destruction of the Earth. To stop it there are actions that we as people, and as hunters, need to take. As you see, we have the last bit of the War Scroll, the sacred scroll written by the Essenes outlining the battle plan for the Sons of Light to overtake the Sons of Darkness.”

A murmur rose from the group.

“We were brought together decades ago for this express moment,” Julia continued. “Many of you knew my grandfather, and my grandfather knew your great grandfathers. We have waited for this moment for generations. And now it is here. We are all meant to play a part in defeating evil for the very last time. The Apocalypse we know will come. The Mayans weren’t far off; though the threat to end the world will come three years earlier than they thought. I unfortunately have intimate knowledge of this. But with this scroll we can stop it. What you see written behind the main text of the scroll is a list of names.”

All heads bowed once again to look at the scroll.

Up above, hiding in the darkness, Sam peered at his brother. Dean didn’t take his eyes off Julia as she moved around the room, almost military style. If she hadn’t been rousing people to murder, it might have been impressive.

“This is a list of names, each is a bloodline which will produce the vessels for the angels to fight Lucifer. We know that these bloodlines have been cultivated over 3,000 years by the angels, all for the impending fight with Lucifer. But, if the angels don’t have the vessels, there is no fight. Do not think of this task as extinguishing a heavenly light in this world. That’s not what we are doing. We are preventing that from happening. We are preventing the greatest fight man will ever know. We will be saving a billion lives.”

Dean watched Julia as she handed out a list of names to each hunter.

“On these pieces of paper there is a list of about fifty names, all are within your specific regions. Pass them to everyone you are working with. My father and I have already started and we have the name of Lucifer’s vessel and intend to take the appropriate action. Be careful, crafty. Dip into the funds if you need to hire someone in your stead. Do it quickly to avoid prolonged hysteria. We would like to extinguish these bloodlines by the end of the month. That gives you about ten days.

“Go out there and do this for the love of man. Good luck.”

One hunter pounded the butt of his shotgun on the table. Then another and another. The sound was a somber drum beat of death echoing through the large building. Then silence. Maps were laid out on the table. The people split into groups and the planning began.

As Julia spoke to a tall older man, she looked up into the darkness of the building, almost directly at Dean. Dean’s breath caught in his throat. Julia’s face registered a half second of recognition and then she looked back to the man in front of her.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dean whispered.

“We’re just going to let them do this?” Sam asked.

That’s when Dean heard it; it was far off in the distance, but the sound was unmistakable. It was the chugging of a train. The tracks below the brothers started to shake. Dean looked around—there wasn’t a Devil’s Trap to be found. How could Julia be so stupid?

Downstairs, the group fell silent, then
en mass
they grabbed their guns and ran up the staircase like battalions exiting u-boats.

“Turn on the lights!” someone called.

There was the clunk of a large switch being flipped and all the lights flickered on. That’s when Julia spotted Dean and Sam standing above her. Dean’s eyes met hers; Julia’s immediately welled with tears.

Outside, the engine had reached the outer edge of the train yard. It flew through the chain link fence, flinging cars out of the way like falling dominos.

The engine crashed into the steel door with such force that a six-foot-high span of bricks above the door cracked and fell to the ground. The door folded in half like an envelope. The hiss of the engine blew steam into the rafters forty feet above.

A silhouette appeared at the top of the engine.

Dean whispered, “Eisheth.”

70 A.D. Khirbet Qumran, West Bank

The evening wind blowing in over the Dead Sea was, appropriately, as cold as death. Eisheth detested it, it whipped open the tents, and sand would kick up and cut into faces like glass, sending humans running for cover. She just about detested everything about life on Earth. After what she had seen, no one could blame her. Within the Lord’s Kingdom there was no bad weather, no wanting for food—and there certainly were no foul-smelling goats. Which wasn’t the case when living amongst the Essenes.

Her host was a girl of only eight years. At that age, children naturally demonstrate enough idiosyncratic behavior that no one noticed a little bit of demonic possession.
That’s one positive thing about my new life,
Eisheth thought,
no more begging and pleading with vessels.
“Please, it’s for the greater good,” she used to say. “It’s God’s Will. Say ‘Yes.’” The life of an angel required constantly asking for consent, and constant capitulation to the whims of others.

Demons didn’t have to ask. They took what they wanted, when they wanted it, used it up, and left what remained to rot. It suited her personality so much better.

Yet, what Eisheth wanted most, simple as it was, she could not take.

Sick of the biting gale, for after all she was in a human body and hated when it was uncomfortable, she sought shelter within one of the many canvas-walled tents that made up the majority of the settlement. The colony was substantial, but dwindling. Thousands of people, mostly men, gathered here to celebrate their shared faith... that unfortunately required them to remain celibate. How they intended to keep their faith alive into the next generation, Eisheth wasn’t sure. Her “father” had settled here after his wife died in childbirth, believing her death was his punishment for selfishly valuing his own pleasure over his God.
Humans
.

Inside the tent, Abaddon was already waiting.

“I don’t have long,” he said.

It took all of Eisheth’s considerable willpower to maintain her composure.

“Did he send word?” she asked. Abaddon avoided her gaze. “Of course. The Morning Star sends his deep affection...”

Not his love
, she thought.

“... and wishes to know what you’ve found.”

Eisheth nodded, her cracked lips quivering.

“The prophet finishes his work as we speak.”

One half of Abaddon’s face pulled into a smile, while the other remained eerily blank.

“Where is he?”

Prophecy was laborious and frustrating, coming in fits and starts, with no set schedule and no guarantee that the results would make sense. Eisheth hated being here among the zealots of the day. Despite that, she had dutifully watched the group... for him. Finally, one of the men she was particularly close to had written something of interest. She had immediately called Abaddon.

Abaddon and Eisheth entered the cave slowly, their human eyes adjusting to the dim surroundings. The prophet sat with his back against the rock wall, a small fire burnt to embers in front of him. At his side, a set of clay jars waited to be filled and sealed.

Fear flitted across the prophet’s face as Abaddon approached.

“Who... who...” he stuttered.

Without a word, Abaddon reached out and touched the man’s forehead. He collapsed to the ground with a dull thud, his mind wiped completely of a year’s work.