Fic: Honey and the Hive Queen (1/2)
Madison Owens’ heart pounds and she breathes impossibly quickly, but there’s no ache in her lungs. She runs faster than she’s ever run before - and in high heels even - but there’s no pain in her feet or legs. Her long hair whips around her face, hopelessly disheveled, but for once Madison couldn’t care less. She’s too caught up in the chase, high on adrenaline and power and being really alive for the first time.
Kurt has passed through this alleyway; Madison can smell him. He’s always smelled like Doritos and stale pot and bitterness. She had hated the way Kurt smelled while they’d dated - no matter how often Madison had made him shower or brush his teeth that sourness had clung to his clothes and his breath and his skin. Sometimes, when they’d been lying in bed together Madison had felt like she might suffocate under his stench and the sound of his heavy breathing. Even though they’ve broken up, she’s still suffocating under the weight of his constant stare when she’s at work, out for drinks with friends or even home at her apartment.
The scent still repulses one part of her now - the human part - but her other half, her older, primal half is excited by it. The smell makes her blood pulse hot and her mouth water. Her ears strain to find her ex-boyfriend’s nasal wheeze. If she hears it that will mean she’s close enough to strike, almost to taste.
There’s a pain in Madison’s jaw and in her fingers that means the transformation will start soon. She welcomes the discomfort; the momentary suffering is nothing compared to the rush and the freedom, that always follows. She will transform, she will find Kurt, and she will kill him.
Unexpectedly, there’s a sudden flash of bright light in the street ahead. Madison steps back, startled at the interruption.
“Hello?” a clear female voice that definitely doesn’t belong to Kurt calls out into the darkness. Ahead, standing in front of a dumpster where there had been only a shadow moments before, stands a young woman. Her blond hair shines under a nearby streetlight, giving her an angelic aura. She wears a red and white plaid blouse and blue jeans, and she smells of sawdust and shampoo and competence. She is in every way the opposite of Kurt, and Madison’s wolf-self is so thrown off by the change it turns tail and retreats. Madison feels the ache in her jaw and her nail-beds fade away.
“Are you Madison?” the girl asks, taking a step forward. A pretty girl like her shouldn’t be out alone so late at night. Madison’s mother had trained this knowledge into her when she was still a little girl. Especially in San Francisco, and especially given all the attacks in the neighbourhood lately, but this girl is either unaware of or unfazed by the danger. “Madison Owens?”
Madison shakes her head to clear it and the girl looks puzzled, “You’re not?”
Finally finding her voice, Madison remembers. “Yes,” she says decisively, “Yes, that’s me.”
“Good,” the girl answers, her voice all business and her words clipped short at their ends. “We don’t have a lot of time. My name is Jo, and I need you to come with me.”
Perhaps there’s still something of a lapdog in her after all, or maybe it’s just that Jo sounds so much like she knows exactly what’s going on, but for whatever reason Madison finds herself unable and unwilling to disobey the order. “Okay,” she says.
The girl raises her eyebrows at Madison’s easy compliance, but closes the distance between them, grasping Madison’s arm firmly. She tugs Madison towards the dumpster and Madison is briefly concerned she’s being attacked by a very unusual mugger. Then Jo reaches into her pocket and pulls out not a gun, but a corkscrew. Holding the corkscrew in her right hand, she uses it to stab the index finger of her left hand. Though it must hurt, the girl doesn’t flinch as she pokes once, twice, three times before one perfect round droplet of blood breaks the surface of her skin.
Fingers moving too quickly for Madison’s eyes to follow, the girl traces a complicated design into the empty air before their faces. Then she reaches out as if grasping at something invisible - like a magician about to pull a rabbit out of his hat - and twists her wrist.
Between one blink and the next a large wooden door appears before Madison’s eyes, iron doorknob under Jo’s hand. Madison can only gasp and Jo smirks at her, looking quite pleased with herself.
Then she turns the knob and pulls open the door. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” she says.
***
Through the doorway there is - inexplicably - a worn down bar, well-stocked with booze though there are no patrons in sight. Only one greasy looking guy stands behind the bar, bent over a battered laptop. Madison can hear Elvis crooning, the sound echo-y and slightly mechanical from the old jukebox in the corner.
“Welcome to the roadhouse, Madison,” the girl - Jo - announces, spreading her arms wide. “She’s not much, but she’s ours.” Her voice is fierce and territorial, and Madison wonders why this girl cares so much about such a dump. “Have a seat,” Jo continues, steering Madison towards a bar stool by the shoulder, “the others should be here soon.”
Madison has no idea what “others” Jo is referring to, but that’s just one of the wide array of things that make no sense right now. She settles herself onto the stool and cracks open the ice-cold can of beer the greasy guy slides down the bar in her direction. If she waits patiently she knows she will either wake up or something will start to make sense again. Besides, they seem busy and Madison doesn’t want to interrupt.
“How we doing, Ash?” The girl bends over the guy’s laptop screen, squinting at it as if suspicious it might explode at any moment. She taps her fingernails nervously against the back of Ash’s stool, and Madison notices the dirt under her nails.
“Two minutes and counting,” Ash answers, taking a long sip of his beer. “You’ve got to take it easy. You were really quick this time. The others are probably having a bit more trouble, but they’ll make it.”
“Motherfuckers better not be stopping to enjoy the view,” Jo mutters through clenched teeth, and Madison is taken aback. Jo looks innocent enough, and she seems gentle, but there is steel underneath.
If Ash responds to Jo’s threat Madison doesn’t hear his answer. It’s drowned out by the front door of the bar banging violently open, its hinges squealing in protest. The noise is so loud Madison nearly falls off her stool. Something inside her cringes away from the sound and forces her to turn away, sure that some terrifying creature - probably with claws and fur and a blood-stained muzzle - will be standing in the doorway if she looks.
She waits, but the only growling comes from Jo. “Took you long enough,” she snaps, “I was back ages ago. And if you break that door you’re gonna be the one fixin’ it. There’s no call to be so dramatic.”
Unless Jo makes it a habit to lecture werewolves, Madison figures it’s safe to turn her head. There are two figures standing in the wide-open doorway, and neither of them is terrifying. One of them is bent double, coughing loudly and brushing white powder out of his hair in miniature clouds. The other man, the one Jo had been yelling at, seems irritated and might be at least slightly frightening if there weren’t cheerful streaks of white across his dark skin.
“Whatever. Job’s done,” he snaps right back at Jo. “Is Pamela back yet?”
“No sign of her yet,” Ash intervenes, “But she’s got a good thirty six seconds left.”
“Fucking hell,” grumpy guy answers, wiping powder off his face, “She’s cutting it a little close, isn’t she?”
Jo merely grunts in response. She turns her attention towards the other guy who has just arrived, who is still trying to get all the white out of his thoroughly mussed hair. “Why don’t you come sit down?” she says, guiding him by the arm onto the stool next to Madison. The man follows her willingly; he is wearing a dress shirt and poorly-tied tie, and he looks about as confused as Madison feels.
Madison hears another sharp bang, this time from in front of her, in the room off behind the bar. “Honey, I’m ho-ome!” a low female voice sings out. “You can stop holding your breath now, Henriksen.”
Madison leans over to the confused guy next to her, comforted the idea that someone else is as lost as she is. She holds out her hand. “Hi, I’m Madison.”
The man looks at her hand warily for a moment before shaking it. His handshake is limp and his palms damp. “Jimmy,” he says, “Jimmy Novak.”
“Do you have an idea what’s going on here?” Madison asks, though she doubts he knows much. Away from the bar Jo embraces a dark-haired woman wearing a concert t-shirt. There’s another newcomer too, a kid wearing a polo shirt, madly scribbling notes in a small spiral-bound notebook.
“Not a clue,” Jimmy answers, “I was making pancakes with my wife and daughter when that guy barged in and told me I had to come with him. He spilled all our flour. I wouldn’t have gone, except he said he was an FBI agent. He led me out of the kitchen, and then suddenly I was here.” Jimmy frowns. “Come to think of it, that’s kind of weird.”
Madison can understand how he’s feeling. One moment she’d been chasing Kurt down the alley behind his run-down apartment building, and then suddenly Jo had been there. Apparently, the Roadhouse is attached to both Kurt’s shitty San Fran neighborhood and Jimmy Novak’s pancake-house.
Jo leads the new kid to the next stool at the bar, while Henriksen and the dark-haired woman have some kind of argument. Ash closes his computer and takes a long sip of his beer, leaning back contentedly as if he’d just finished a good day’s work.
“Okay,” Jo says, clapping her hands once before addressing the entire room, “let’s get started!”
Get started with what, Madison wants to ask.
“Get started with what?” Jimmy says from Madison’s side, sounding deeply suspicious. Madison’s relieved to have someone else speaking for her. She’d never been good at confrontation - well, not before she was bitten.
“Introductions,” Jo says, pulling up a stool so she can sit too. Jo is a small woman, and she wears her blond hair in a childish braid down her back, but something about her is intimidating. Madison is internally a little relieved when she takes her seat. “I’m Jo Harvelle, and I’m the boss around here.”
From across the room, the grumpy man - Henriksen? - snorts, but doesn't interrupt as Jo continues. “The guy with the attitude there is Victor Henriksen, formerly of the FBI. Next to him is Ms. Pamela Barnes, and the computer genius with the mullet is the brains of this little operation, Ash.”
An awkward silence fills the bar as Jo finishes her introductions. The only sound is the scratching of the blond kid’s pencil in his little notebook.
“So what?” Jimmy asks, apparently the spokesperson for the trio at the bar. “What the heck are we doing here?”
Jo smiles in a way Madison imagines she means to be reassuring, though it comes off more threatening than anything else. Apparently Jo’s less impressed with Jimmy’s bluntness than Madison. “We were hoping you guys could tell us.”
“Oh, that’s reassuring,” Jimmy says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’ve had enough of blindly following orders for one lifetime, thank you very much. I’m going home.” He rises from his stool and starts purposefully towards the bar’s front door.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, honey,” Pamela warns, but Jimmy ignores her. He yanks the door open and takes half a step outside before he stops and scrambles back inside. Beyond the door is nothing. The threshold opens onto perfect whiteness - no ground, no sky, no horizon. Outside of the Roadhouse is pure, blinding white nothing.
“I haven’t booted up the program yet, man,” Ash says nonsensically, “there’s nowhere for you to go.” He strokes his closed laptop lovingly. “We’ll get moving again soon, though.”
“Not soon enough,” Jo says lightly, as if she intends it to be a joke or a playful tease. But there is a threat in the undertones of her voice, and an impatient anxiety. “Listen,” she says in Jimmy’s direction, “why don’t you sit down while I explain?”
“I think I’ll stand,” Jimmy answers, crossing his arms as he leans against a wall - well away from the front door - and turns to her expectantly.
“Okay,” Jo says. “The program Ash developed is designed to find specific people, people with common experiences or a common past. People who know something about hunting or the supernatural.” She pauses as if this announcement might shock her audience, but Madison feels no surprise, only a sinking sense of dread. She knows so much more about the supernatural than she wants to. Beside her the boy’s note-taking becomes even more frantic, and across the room Jimmy’s frown deepens.
“I have a pretty good idea who you are,” Jo says, indicating Jimmy with a nod of her head, “but I’ve got no clue about you two.”
The blond boy jumps excitedly into the conversation, taking notes even as he speaks. “I know a ton about the supernatural,” he gushes. “My name is Corbett. I intern with the world’s most prestigious ghost hunting team: the Ghostfacers.” He pauses to let his announcement settle in. “Maybe you’ve heard of them?” he asks hesitantly.
Jo’s face is blank. “Okay,” she says, “so you’ve actually had contact with the supernatural? Actual ghosts and monsters?”
Corbett’s face falls. “Well,” he says, pencil still, “once. It uh, got me. But then I helped Sam and Dean get it!”
Jo’s mouth goes tight, and she nods. She looks over her shoulder at Ash. “At least it’s consistent.”
“What’s consistent how?” Jimmy demands, arms still crossed. He seems less patient with not knowing what’s going on than Madison is. But then Madison has been a personal assistant for years, so she’s used to silently observing people talking over her head.
“The program Ash designed. It brings us people who knew Sam and Dean Winchester - they seemed as good a starting point as any, given how many times they’ve been up here.”
“Well I knew them.” Jimmy confirms, though he doesn’t volunteer any further information.
“I know,” Jo says, and her voice is sympathetic.
“Angels are dicks,” adds Pamela. “The one who was riding you stole my eyes.”
“He’s done worse,” Jimmy counters. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Hey,” Jo says, “Cas and I worked a case together. My last case, actually. At least he’s fighting on the right side.”
“Yeah well, when he was riding my body he wasn’t, and I doubt it would’ve made much difference to me. I can only remember snippets of it, and I’m grateful.”
“That’s over,” Jo snaps, then turns to face Madison. “And you?”
Madison swallows the lump in her throat. “I knew Sam and Dean too,” she says, praying that Jo doesn’t pry for any more information. These people don’t even like angels, so she doubts they have anything nice to say about werewolves. “So where are we? Why did this program bring us all together?”
“We’re in heaven,” Jo says.
***
The bedroom is tiny. The twin bed and wooden chest of drawers barely fit in the room, and Jo can’t even open the door the whole way because it bumps into one of the legs of the bed. Madison has to turn and sidle through the door before Jo closes it behind them.
“I think I’ve got something you can wear in here,” Jo says, rummaging through one of the drawers across the room. She pulls a black t-shirt emblazoned with white text - the name of some band Madison has never heard of - out of the mess with a victory cry. She tosses it to Madison.
Jo pulls a similar shirt out of the drawer for herself. She unbuttons her plaid blouse facing the wall. Madison’s mouth goes dry at the sight of Jo’s bra, blood red against the pale skin of her back.
“I hope you don’t mind sharing a room,” Jo says, unbuttoning her jeans now.
“Not at all,” Madison answers, snapping back to her senses and removing her own white work blouse. “I have two sisters, so sharing a bed’s nothing new to me.” The concert shirt is way too big on Madison; it reaches nearly to her knees. It still feels stiff, like t-shirts do before they’ve ever been washed or worn. Madison kicks off her shoes, and tucks her socks into their toes. She removes her black skirt, hanging it over the end of the bed because the room doesn’t even have a closet. She uses the hair band she habitually keeps around her wrist to tie her hair back into a messy bun for sleep.
When Madison turns around again, Jo is already sitting on the edge of the bed. She’s watching Madison with a strange mixture of fear and sympathy.
“What?” Madison asks. Her cheeks burn red under Jo’s gaze.
“The bite mark on the back of your neck,” she explains, “what did it?”
It’s still hard for Madison to say the word, but there doesn’t seem to be a way around it. “Werewolf.”
Jo’s slight inhale of breath sounds loud in the tiny room. “And the Winchesters?”
“They were too late.” It’s not the whole truth, but it’s not a lie either. For some reason, Madison doesn’t feel right about lying to Jo.
“I’m sorry,” Jo says. Then she smiles, a little wickedly. “But hey, we have something in common.”
Madison pulls the bed’s quilt back and crawls underneath, holding it up so Jo can join her. “What’s that?”
“We were both killed by monster dogs, and the Winchesters couldn’t save us. Though I think Hellhounds are way more badass than werewolves, to be honest.”
“Maybe.” Probably, if they killed someone as strong as Jo. “What do they look like?” Madison is very conscious of the way Jo’s body heat and her own fill up the space underneath the quilt, mingling to fight back the chill and the draft slipping in from the hallway through the crack under the door.
“They’re invisible.”
Madison snorts. “What?” She can’t hold in her laughter. “You were murdered by invisible dogs?”
“Hey, shut up,” Jo says, laughing a bit herself now. “They’re a lot scarier than they sound.”
“My baby sister used to have an imaginary friend who was an invisible dog.”
Jo kicks her, under the covers. It barely hurts, and Madison would bet Jo could kick a lot harder if she wanted to. She leaves her leg tangled with Madison’s. It’s slightly prickly, like Jo hasn’t shaved in a few days and the sensation is simultaneously familiar and alien, on someone else’s legs instead of her own.
When the giggling dies down the air goes strangely silent and serious. “Jo?” Madison asks, “is everyone’s Heaven really just one memory, on a loop?”
“Yeah,” Jo answers, “it’s kind of a letdown, isn’t it? Sam and Dean have this whole network of heavens, actually, but we think that’s because they’ve died so many times.”
“And it’s supposed to be our favourite memory?”
“Or something like it.”
Jo mistakes Madison’s silence for disappointment. “Listen,” she says, “it’s not so bad. We get to visit each other’s heavens, so in a way we get more than one. Like, the Roadhouse is Ash’s heaven, and Pamela’s is this wicked rock festival. It’s where I got these t-shirts we’re wearing.”
“And yours?” Madison’s willing to bet Jo’s heaven is loads less incriminating than her own.
“Maybe I’ll show you some time,” Jo answers. “Now go to sleep. Big day tomorrow and all that.”
Madison closes her eyes, but it takes her a long time to drift off. She’s afraid to sleep, lest her dreams reveal more of her apparently deeply fucked up subconscious. Eventually, though, she can’t keep her eyelids open any longer and settles into a dreamless sleep, legs still twined with Jo’s.
***
Madison wakes up the next morning to a pounding noise and the bed rattling beneath her. Jo is up and out from under the covers in a flash, pulling on yesterday’s faded jeans under the concert t-shirt.
She throws open the door, and Henriksen is standing there, hand raised to knock. Evidently it wasn’t him making the pounding noise, because the racket continues.
“How many?’ Jo says, already on her way out the door, even as she buttons up her jeans.
“Just two this time, we think,” Henriksen answers. “Pamela’s already working on the sigils with Novak.”
“Good,” Jo glances briefly over her shoulder as she leaves. “You should come down if you want to help.”
The doubt in Jo’s voice stings, so Madison hurries to pull her own pants back on. If Jimmy is helping, she thinks should be able to as well.
That is, until she gets to the bottom of the stairs and sees the blood dripping through the fingers of his closed fist. Helping out, it turns out, won’t be brewing coffee or making photocopies. “Are you hurt?” she asks, but he ignores her completely, crossing to the side door and starting to paint something on it with his own blood.
“What’s going on?” Madison whispers to Corbett, who’s standing off to the side and taking notes, thankfully not in his own blood.
“They’re under attack,” he answers. “By angels, I think. They’re drawing those funny looking symbols on the walls to keep them away.”
Now that Madison looks around properly, she can see that Pamela, Henriksen, Jo and Jimmy are all spread around the room, drawing complicated symbols on each of the Roadhouse’s walls. Ash is hunched over his computer, eyes flicking rapidly back and forth across the screen, which is making screeching noises that hurt Madison’s ears.
“Upstairs,” he yells, “They’re giving up here and heading upstairs.”
Corbett and Madison jump out of the way as Jo hurtles up the stairs, closely followed by Victor and Pamela. They leave a trail of blood droplets in their wake. Jimmy follows, moving less quickly. He’s pale, and Madison isn’t sure if it’s from terror or blood loss.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asks. She resists the urge to search for a first aid kit.
“Yeah,” he answers. “I just really fucking hate angels.” He pushes pass Corbett, who is apparently taking notes about Jimmy’s angel-hatred, and up the stairs, adding his blood to the trail.
“I think,” Madison decides, “we’d better stay out of the way.”
Corbett nods. “We should leave this to the experts.” Madison’s sure that the fact that the worst of the pounding has moved upstairs, where it sounds like all the furniture is threatening to fall over at once, has nothing whatsoever to do with his decision. They sit at the bar and watch dust fall from the shaking ceiling above their heads, until the screeching noises from Ash’s computer die down, and the pounding stops.
“All clear,” Ash calls. “Come have a beer.”
The others come back downstairs, exhausted and still dripping blood. Ash pulls yet another t-shirt from behind the bar and tears it into strips, which they wrap around their bleeding palms. Pamela, Victor and Jo look merely tired; Jimmy looks exhausted, and collapses onto a bar stool, dangerously pale.
“You did good, kid,” Pamela says, sliding a beer down the bar, where it bumps gently against Jimmy’s outstretched palm. “You remember any other useful information?”
“No,” Jimmy says, “It’s all blurry. I didn’t even really remember the sigils until I saw you drawing them. And honestly, I’d rather forget what little I do remember.”
Madison leans over to Corbett. “What’s his story?”
Corbett makes a show of flipping through his notebook. “Jimmy Novak was the chosen vessel of the angel Castiel. Apparently he spent months with the angel riding around inside him, with no control over his body. Lost his wife and kid, too.”
Madison frowns. “Angels again? Aren’t they supposed to be the good guys?” Good and evil don’t seem to be keeping to their assigned places in Madison’s life, lately.
Jo laughs from over Madison’s shoulder, and Madison nearly falls off her stool. “Honey,” Jo says, and her voice is both affectionate and a little condescending, “angels are definitely not the good guys. They’re not really the bad guys either, they just have their own agenda and humans aren’t a priority.”
“If we’re not a priority,” Madison asks, stung by Jo’s tone, “why are they attacking Ash’s Heaven?’
Jo smirks. “Good point. ‘Course I’m not sure we’re really human any more - considering we’re dead - but we’ve certainly put ourselves on the map. We’re fucking with their system, you know, by going out and finding you guys and banding together. They keep trying to put a stop to it. But why should we be satisfied with a single memory, when there’s a universe’s worth out there?”
“Hey, Jo!” Victor calls from across the room, where he’s already finished his celebratory beer. “I bet the new recruits are getting hungry. Come with me to pick up some grub?”
“Yeah,” she answers. As she walks away she pats Madison on the shoulder. ‘It’s going to be okay,” she says. “I’ll be right back.”
Madison nods. She wants to ask how Jo knew that her leaving made Madison anxious, but it seems like a stupid thing to say. Maybe all the new recruits get nervous when the leader goes away. “Do you have to go?” she asks, trying not to sound too pathetic.
“Yeah,” Jo answers, “he can’t go alone. I’ll be back soon.”
Victor draws a complicated symbol on the front door with his own blood, then turns the doorknob with one hand and shields his eyes with the other. White light floods into the bar, casting long shadows and revealing columns of sparkling dust in the air.
“You’re good to go,” Ash says, and they both disappear through the door, which slams shut behind them, plunging the bar into semi-darkness again.
“Quick,” Ash says, “while they’re gone. Either of you any good with a computer?”
***
Jo and Victor return with dishes laden with turkey and mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, cabbage rolls and an entire apple pie. Corbett’s eyes practically pop out of their sockets as he stares at the feast being laid out on the bar, and it makes Madison aware of her own hunger for the first time since she’d arrived here.
“Where did you get that?” Jimmy asks, cautious.
“My heaven is Christmas dinner with my family, ten years back,” Victor answers. “We don’t strictly need to eat here, but if you’re not used to not having a body it feels like you still need to. Dig in.”
Madison does, followed shortly by Corbett and more reluctantly, by Jimmy. They don’t have enough cutlery, and no plates whatsoever, so it’s messy and haphazard, but maybe the most delicious meal Madison has ever eaten.
When they’re finally full, Pamela and Jo decide to go ‘scavenging’ in Pamela’s heaven. Madison notices that Jo never stays still for long, that while Pamela and Victor are happy to put their feet up and rest for a few moments, Jo is always in motion. The two women take the Roadhouse’s side door, decorated by Pamela’s blood, and disappear into a flood of white light.
A moment later, Madison pulls a stool up beside Ash, and leans in to look at his screen.
“Okay,” she says, “tell me how it works.”
Victor coughs loudly from across the room, and Ash looks up in irritation. “What?”
“You know Jo wouldn’t like you teaching one of the newbies to work the system.”
“Yeah, well what Jo doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
“Do you even think she’ll get it? I mean, it makes no sense at all to me and she was what, a personal assistant?”
Madison takes a deep breath and clears her throat. “Actually,” she says, trying not to let her voice waver, “I minored in computer science at college and I did most of the programming for my boss’ website. You were what, an FBI agent? So the most you ever had to do was type up a report?”
Victor raises an eyebrow, then chuckles. “Alright, I stand corrected. I still don’t think Jo will like it.”
“I’m not afraid of her,” Madison insists.
Victor scoffs, cutting himself a slice of pie. ‘Yeah, right. Everyone’s afraid of Jo.”
Madison ignores him, turning her eyes back to the screen. The background of the screen is light blue, superimposed with white wave-like patterns, sliding across the screen like amoebas under a microscope. The screeching noises, quieter, now that they’re no longer under attack, vary with the rhythms of the white waves.
“There are two main functions of the program. This is the walkie talkie window. If we stay tuned into the right frequency, we can listen in to the angels’ conversations. Now I haven’t finished the Enochian-English translation dictionary yet, but we’ve been able to figure out a few words.”
Ash clicks on one of the white wave patterns, highlighting and isolating it. Red words appear on the screen, floating over the wave and changing only periodically. They read “angel” “rebel” and “attack.”
“We only catch one out of every hundred words or so,” Ash continues. “We can only figure out what these ones mean because they say them a lot when they’re around us. Once they switched to English when they were trying to threaten us, and that was good. I keep an eye on this page so we know when they’re planning to make a move.”
“And the other function?”
Ash clicks to change windows. The page fills with a series of interconnected hexagonal shapes, each labeled with a letter and number. It looks to Madison like the blueprint of a beehive’s honeycomb. The hexagon in the center of the page, however, is labeled “HQ.” When she looks closer, Madison notices several other cells also labeled with words. “Jo Harvelle” is written on one, “Jimmy Novak” on another, and way up in the right hand corner of the screen, “Madison Owens.”
“This is a map of Heaven,” Madison says, the ridiculous sentence leaving her a little bit breathless.
“Yeah,” Ash says. “Obviously it’s bigger than this, you can zoom in and out and you’d see everybody else’s heavens too.” Ash scrolls out to demonstrate. A clump of cells to the left are interconnected, and highlighted in red. Their label reads “Sam & Dean Winchester.”
“Their heavens are connected?” Madison asks, “And they have more than one?”
“Well they’re soulmates, aren’t they?” Ash says, smirking slightly. “Because their heavens are adjacent, they’d be able to travel freely between them without a companion. It’s really rare. There are almost no other areas like it. At least, not yet.”
“What do you mean?” Madison struggles to keep up. Ash’s heavy drawl - and slightly slurred words - certainly aren’t helping.
“Our heavens are moving,” Ash says, looking smug. “Every time we travel between someone’s personal heaven and The Roadhouse, the other cell moves a couple of slots over. We’re building connections between them. We’re actually rearranging heaven.”
“Holy shit,” Madison exhales.
“Yeah,” Ash says, “and the angels aren’t happy about it. They told us it was unnatural, what we were trying to do by finding people and building something. They’re getting kind of scared. They keep saying the word we think means ‘collapse.’”
“Do you think they’re right?” Madison looks up at the ceiling, She doesn’t like the idea that it could fall down on her at any moment.
Ash shrugs. “Does it matter? Right now everyone’s living in their stupid little memory loops and calling it heaven. I’d rather go down fighting to bring them together and wake them up, even if it means pulling half of heaven down with me.”
Madison nods. She remembers what her heaven looks like, and she sure as hell doesn’t want to go back. The Roadhouse is confusing, but at least she feels like herself here. “Okay, what do you need me to do?”
Half an hour later, Madison has learned how to track down particular cells and identify their inhabitants. It’s a matter of tracing the relationships between the dead, and following the trail from an identified cell to the arbitrary location of people they knew in other cells. Mostly, it involves a lot of waiting while the computer does its calculations.
“We’ve been tracking down anyone who had a relationship to Sam or Dean,” Ash explains, “because we’re hoping to find people who might be able to tell us about the angels or what’s going on with the Apocalypse. Also, we were hoping for a bunch of hunters.”
Madison feels suddenly self-conscious. She looks down at her perfectly manicured fingernails, resting on the worn keys of the battered keyboard. A victim - and a monster - was definitely not what Ash and Jo - especially Jo - were hoping for. She’s not cut out to join in a war. Before she had been “mugged” - and turned into a monster - she hadn’t even been able to stand up to her deadbeat boyfriend.
“Once we find someone,” Ash continues, “we go in and bring them here.”
“And then you start all over with another round?”
“Yeah,” Ash says with a grin, “And the community gets bigger and bigger. Hopefully we get someone else’s heaven connected to the Roadhouse soon, or we won’t have enough places to sleep. Though I’ve volunteered to sleep on the bar.”
Madison smiles. “You barely seem to sleep anyway,” she notes.
“Well, now that I have you to do the menial stuff, maybe I’ll have more down time. If you take over watching the tracking program and programming the doors for scavenging trips, I’ll be able to spend more time on the dictionary and the modifications I’m trying to make.”
“Okay,” Madison says, though she’s had less training on Ash’s bizarre program than she’d had on the e-mail application at the office. “So when do you think -”
The computer makes a loud beeping noise. “Incoming!” Ash calls. He scrolls out and clicks first on a cell marked “Pamela -“ and next on the “HQ” cell Madison knows to be the Roadhouse. Moments later, there’s the sound of a door closing, and Madison moves away from the computer, busying herself pretending to drink a glass of water.
Jo and Pamela are laughing as they enter the room, and Madison feels an absurd twist of jealously in the pit of her stomach, remembering how she and Jo had laughed together the night before.
They dump armfuls of stuff onto the bar, and Victor fairly pounces on it. “Tell me you brought me some new clothes.”
“Yup,” Jo says, “though it wasn’t easy to find a guy so drunk he’d taken off his pants.” She nods in Madison’s direction. “There were girls mud-wrestling - they looked about your size - and we nabbed their clothes.”
***
The rest of the day, Madison peeks at Ash’s computer every time Jo leaves the room or goes upstairs, moving away whenever she hears the sound of Jo’s cowboy boots on the wooden floor. The program is running, searching for another person related in some way to Sam or Dean Winchester, but it’s a slow and tedious process where every cell must be eliminated one by one, and there are billions of cells. Before they call it a day, Ash announces that he hasn’t found anything yet, but that he’ll leave the program running overnight.
Jo is quieter as they get ready for bed that night. She curls in on herself, making sure to stay on her side of the bed. Madison tries to sleep, but she can’t seem to keep her eyes closed, straining them to see Jo in the dark, tracing the curve of her neck, and the tension in her shoulders. Jo’s breathing doesn’t slow and her muscles don’t relax.
“Are you okay?” Madison finally asks. “Are you worried they’re going to attack again?”
Jo rolls to her other side, now facing Madison. “No,” she says, “sorry. It usually takes them a few days to regroup and find us again - they don’t have Ash’s program. Don’t worry about it. Get some sleep.”
“But you’re worried about something,” Madison presses. It makes her nervous imagining that Jo might have weaknesses, too.
Jo moves closer, so that she can whisper. The walls of the Roadhouse are thin, and Corbett and Henriksen are in the room next door. “You’re sort of pushy, aren’t you?” she says.
Madison bites her lip to keep from apologizing.
“I kind of like it.” Jo’s smile is sad. “Do you really want to know?”
Madison nods. She’s very tired, and finds the movement of Jo’s perfect mouth sort of mesmerizing.
“It’s not that I wasn’t happy to find you guys. Corbett’s very sweet, Jimmy works really hard and it might come in handy to have an angel’s vessel and you’re … I like you a lot.” Jo trails off.
“But you were hoping you would find someone more useful. A hunter, maybe. Not the stupid girl who got bitten by a werewolf and then asked a one night stand to shoot her.”
“What?” Jo says, “I thought you were killed by a werewolf?”
Madison’s heart stops beating. “Oh,” she says, “yeah. Indirectly. I…I was turned. Sam and Dean found me after I’d already been turned. I didn’t want to hurt anyone so I asked Sam to -”
“To kill you,” Jo interrupts. “After you’d slept with him?”
“Well it sounds pretty stupid when you say it out loud like that.”
Jo coughs out a laugh, which at least makes her look less sad. “No, honey,” she says, “I don’t think you’re stupid for getting bitten. You couldn’t have known, and even great hunters get nabbed sometimes. And as for Sam Winchester… those two have a huge weight on their shoulders, and sometimes they get so caught up in the mission they don’t realize who they have to step on to do what they think is right. They can be really convincing. And also total dicks.”
Madison nods, and swallows hard. She’s desperate to change the subject. It’s one thing for Jo to be so generous now, she knows, but what would Jo think if she knew about Madison’s heaven, if she knew the best moment of Madison’s life had been the moment she transformed into a monster. “If it’s not us, then what…?”
“My mom,” Jo says. “I was hoping we would find my mom. She was a hunter - she taught me everything I know - and she was pretty close with Sam and Dean and their dad. We died together and at the time I thought we’d go to the same place, you know? When Ash came up with this program, I thought we’d find her in no time, but I had no idea the Winchesters knew so many dead people. It took us weeks to track down you three, and I just…miss my mom.”
There’s an uncharacteristic shakiness to Jo’s voice, and it pulls Madison forward. She leans over and wraps one arm awkwardly around Jo’s shoulder. Jo sniffles loudly, then laughs. “You know,” she says, “I don’t think anyone but my mom’s hugged me in a really long time.”
“I’m sure Ash will find her soon,” Madison says. Secretly, she hopes that with her help he’ll be able to speed up the program.
“And you’re going to help him?” Jo answers, her voice sly. Madison gapes. “You didn’t think I wouldn’t find out, did you?”
“Are you mad?” Madison asks.
“No,” Jo says. “It’ll be good for Ash to have some help. And I trust you.”
“You don’t even know me,” Madison reminds her, remembering the feeling of long claws growing out of her fingernails as grips Jo’s shoulder.
“I know you slept with Sam Winchester and then let him shoot you,” Jo says, “What could be worse?”
“Hey! I didn’t have any other choice!”
“You couldn’t just stay awake or chain yourself up during the full moon?”
“Sam and Dean - they said one day I would escape and I might attack someone. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“But someone did get hurt,” Jo insists, her eyes wide and her perfect mouth set, “you. If I had been the hunter who found you, I would have found another way. Especially if I had feelings for you.”
Madison feels suddenly aware of the places where she and Jo are touching. There’s Jo’s hand against her hip, her fingers against the back of Jo’s neck, stroking her hair. Their knees bump together under the quilt.
Madison resists the urge to clear her throat or duck her head, struggling to maintain eye contact even as the blush rises in her cheeks. “Yeah, it was probably a bad call,” she admits. “But maybe being dead isn’t quite as terrible as it’s made out to be.”
Jo smiles, and it makes Madison feel dizzy. “I know, right? Honestly, I feel more in control of my life now than when I was alive.” She leans forward, and for a moment Madison is sure Jo is going to kiss her; she can almost already feel the warmth of Jo’s mouth against her own. Instead, Jo squeezes her in a tight hug for a moment, before rolling onto her back again.
“Goodnight, Madison,” she says.
“Goodnight,” Madison answers, closing her eyes and doing her best to ignore the sour taste of disappointment in her throat.
Part Two
Master Post