Supernatural: War of the Sons (7 page)

While Sam was contemplating that dilemma, Dean appeared in the doorway wearing a burgundy wool bellhop jacket with golden rope tassels hanging from the sides and gleaming brass buttons down the front. A petit fez perched on his head, with a braided, golden chinstrap pinching his scowling face.

Sam smirked.

Dean stepped past him.

“
Don’t
say anything.”

That afternoon, Dean found himself lugging a seemingly endless stream of leather suitcases up to various different guests’ rooms. He quickly bonded with Rick, the African-American elevator operator, and they were soon discussing baseball as Dean rode between floors.

After a particularly heavy set of bags, Dean was not-so-attentively leaning against the lobby’s centerpiece—a large, statuesque clock trimmed in gold leaf—when a girl who looked to be in her mid-twenties approached the front desk. She was wearing a royal blue suit with a pencil skirt, and a pillbox hat that matched her canary-yellow shoes. A cabbie brought a suitcase in and dropped it at her feet. She tipped him elegantly and he bowed his head before heading back outside.

“Ms. Julia Wilder checking in, please,” she said to the receptionist. Her brunette hair was pulled back, and Dean noticed with surprise a long scar on the side of her neck.

The young woman turned her head toward Dean, looking him up and down. Her glare was so intense that Dean felt as though she’d just given him the third degree without even speaking a word. She turned her head back to the front desk and demurely pulled her hair over the scar. Dean kept staring, transfixed by her lithe but strong legs and her serious demeanor.
She’s hot
, he thought.
Maybe I won’t have to track down Marilyn after all.

Dean sidled up to her, completely forgetting he was supposed to be working.

“Hi,” he said giving her the full-on hundred-watt Dean Winchester smile.

The girl ignored him. Had she known more about Dean, she wouldn’t have bothered.

“You here for business or pleasure?” he asked. “Or just to see the big clock?”

She looked at him. “May I help you?”

“No. But I could help you,” Dean whispered. “Maybe I could buy you a drink?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You here with your husband?” Dean probed.

“I’m not here to socialize. I’m here for an auction.”

“Dead Sea Scrolls?” Dean asked without thinking.

She squinted at him.

“No,” she said.

“Excuse me, boy,” interjected the desk clerk. “Are you going to get the lady’s bags?” He eyed Dean with venom.

“Of course.” Dean bent down, but before he could grab the suitcase, Stevie, a smelly kid from New Jersey who wore his bellhop pants a little too tight in Dean’s opinion, swiped the bag and placed it on a cart. He wheeled away, Ms. Wilder striding behind him.

Dean stood by the reception desk shell-shocked, though still alert enough to salute when Ms. Wilder turned to take one last look at him before entering the elevator. It was rare for a woman to truly grab his attention as she had. Of course, he’d faked interest plenty of times; it used to be a hobby of his while he and Sam were in between cases. Dean would bet himself just how many minutes it would take him to convince the bartender, waitress, or lonely female patron into his bed. Dean’s belt notches were many. But this girl... this girl seemed special.

Not far away, Sam sat in the main branch of the New York Public Library. Rows of shelves lined every inch of the room; thousands upon thousands of books, and not an Internet connection in sight. Sam didn’t mind doing the research, but Google had become his crutch, and he felt handicapped without it.

First he pulled a series of books on archeological digs, but found very little information. After trawling through the card catalog, he decided to look at the archived New York newspapers. The scrolls, Sam remembered, had been first discovered in 1947, so there must be at least one article somewhere that could lead them to a contact. After fruitlessly pouring over several months’ worth of broadsheets, Sam was flipping through a June 1
^th
Wall Street
Journal
when he spotted a small ad in the classified section:

Four Dead Sea Scrolls, Biblical Manuscripts. Would make an ideal gift to an educational or religious institution.

The ad gave a local number and an address, which Sam jotted down on a scrap of paper and slipped in his pocket. That was as solid a lead as he was going to find on the scrolls themselves—now they just needed a translator. He wished that Don had briefed them a little more thoroughly before the unceremonious time-jacking. Sam regretted going behind Dean’s back to talk to the angel, but at the time, there seemed to be no other choice. The secret fear that Sam had been carrying around since they got to 1954 was that they would never find their way back. What if they were unable to procure the War Scroll—would Don just leave them to rot?

Without occult books to refer to, Sam was limited to commonly available biblical texts.
I don’t even know Don’s real name
, Sam realized.
All I know is his job description: guardian of Hell’s gates
.

Luckily, that was all he needed.

Flipping through an especially old book, Sam found a list of angel names and one in particular stuck out: Abaddon, Guardian of the Gates.
Don, Abaddon—has to be the same guy
, Sam thought. Further down the page, the book traced Abaddon’s motley history. Scholars couldn’t seem to decide on the angel’s true nature, some believed that he was among the most powerful of the Heavenly Host, others claimed he was fallen and in league with Satan. In fact, in some places, Abaddon was used as an alternate name for Hell, and even the Devil himself.
Great
, Sam thought.

For the moment, Sam decided that he wouldn’t share those particular juicy details with Dean.
I’m in enough hot water with him as it is
, he figured. But, to be safe, he discreetly tore the relevant page out of the book and slid it into his pocket, alongside the scrap of paper with the information from the advert. If it turned out that Don had less than angelic intentions, Sam wanted to be ready.

Dean tugged at the chinstrap on his hat. He needed a break. Mercifully, the lobby was quiet and the dickhead front desk guys were engrossed in their work. He made his way downstairs and threaded his way through the halls under the building, finally reaching a set of steel doors. Throwing caution to the wind, he swung them open.

A hotel security guard stood on the other side with his back to Dean, and a box truck idled outside the loading dock. The man was tubby and middle-aged. He turned around slowly, looking as if he’d been caught committing a crime.

Dean politely nodded a greeting. “Guess I’m lost,” he said. “Where’s the little boys’ room?”

Instead of answering out loud, the man simply pointed back the way Dean had come.

“Great,” Dean said. He was about to call off his reconnaissance mission, when he saw what the security guard had been hovering over—it was a simple wooden crate, damaged on one end, covered in strange characters.
Probably worth getting a better look at
, Dean decided. “Actually... I think I can hold it,” he said. “I’m gonna get some fresh air.”

Under the guard’s watchful eye, Dean maneuvered his way past the crate and to the edge of the loading dock, but he wasn’t able to get a better look at the contents.
Damn security goon and his thighs
, Dean thought. He jumped off the loading dock and walked down the alleyway, rounding the corner onto Park Avenue, then stopped.

Hebrew? Could the lettering have been Hebrew?
By pure chance, he may have just come impossibly close to the scrolls, and he couldn’t pass up such an opportunity—even if that meant beating the ass of a civilian. He turned around and started back to the loading dock.

James peered inside the truck. Barney’s crumpled body was pushed to one side on the floor, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle. The sight of his nephew’s corpse prompted no reaction in James. If anything did, it was the smell.
Meat
, James thought.
Still fresh
.

James turned and grabbed a black rubber hose attached to a waterspout. He turned on the water and sprayed down the inside of the truck. The water ran pink as it flowed out and over the bumper. He turned off the hose and pulled Barney’s body onto the dock. Then he picked the body up easily with one hand, opened the top of the crate and pushed it inside.

Clunking the crate closed, James wheeled the carton into the back of the Waldorf Astoria.

It’s still safe
, he thought with pride.
She’ll be pleased with me
.

Holding onto his stupid bellhop hat, Dean hurried back down the alleyway. He slid back around the corner just as James disappeared into the hotel. With finesse, he jumped onto the dock and banged through the steel doors.

The security guard and the carton were gone.

After a couple more unproductive hours at the library, Sam decided to stop off at the new apartment; he wanted to call Dean. As he fiddled with the key in the lock, he noticed out of the corner of his eye one of their neighbors walking toward him down the hallway. He half-nodded a greeting as the young woman brushed past him in the narrow corridor, briefly glancing up to admire her petite dark-haired figure as she moved away from him, before carrying on fiddling with the stubborn lock.

Finally there was a click as the key connected with the mechanism and Sam managed to get the door open. By this point his mind had wandered far from the mission at hand to fantasies about living a normal life—one that held room for girls and movie dates and romantic dinners. It all came crashing back as he took in the sight before him. The apartment had been completely ransacked.

Sam wondered how, after being in 1954 for less than twenty-four hours, he and Dean had already made an enemy.

No sulphur,
Sam noted, sniffing the air.
It wasn’t a demon.

He kicked at the shards of glass that littered the scummy tile floor of the apartment’s tiny bathroom. The intruder had been thorough, upending or smashing just about every object in the small space that wasn’t built into the floor.
They even smashed the toilet,
Sam realized. The bathroom mirror had also been broken, which accounted for all the glass on the floor.
Just what we need,
he thought,
more bad luck.
Sam closed the water valve leading to the sputtering half-toilet.

It wasn’t like there was much to steal. They had been whisked through time with only the clothes on their backs and the contents of their pockets.
Who had done this? Were there angels here too?
Sam wondered, a nervous chill running through him.

He felt helpless. Lost in an unfamiliar time and place, with all his usual tools unavailable to him, and the end of the world in sight.
Because of me,
he remembered.
I did this.
My fear, my weakness, brought on the end for everybody.
In these moments, when the guilt overwhelmed him, and images of the billions who would die filled his mind, Sam craved the blood. It didn’t make any sense. Demon blood had given him strength, but it had also clouded his judgment. It had made him turn his back on Dean, the only person who could ever truly understand Sam’s situation.

It had made him start the Apocalypse.

Despite all of that, Sam craved it for one simple reason: it made him feel powerful. The demon blood unlocked something deep within him, something that had been left there by Azazel, the yellow-eyed demon who had killed their mother, Mary Winchester, and marked Sam as part of his growing army of special, part-demonic children. Sam was the only one left alive.
Was that why I was chosen to be Lucifer’s vessel? Because Azazel made me this way? Because I was the most special of the special? Or simply because I survived?

Sam moved cautiously back to the main room, pushing those uncomfortable thoughts from his mind. The lock on the front door didn’t show any signs of being forced, though it had been difficult to open. Sam was definitely paranoid enough to have checked the locks in both the door’s handle and the deadbolt when he left a few hours earlier. He scanned the main room of the apartment for other entry points. There was a small, metal-barred window overlooking the street.

Looking down, Sam saw the bustle of a New York street at midday. The window was high enough up that it would take a ladder and some patience to get to it, making it unlikely someone would be able to break in without attracting attention. Not that Sam was sure the good people of New York would bat an eyelash at broad-daylight larceny, but the window’s metal bars were still firmly in place.

Attached to the main room was a small kitchenette, much like the ones in motels that the Winchesters had become intimately familiar with over the last few years.
Scratch that
, Sam thought,
I’ve become familiar with
. Dean never, ever cooked... unless you counted assembling bread and shoplifted deli meat as cooking. Even when they were kids and Dean was ostensibly the caretaker, Sam had had to fend for himself.