The Angels Have The Impala // Part One
Part One
“Friggin’ angels, man.”
“I am sorry, Dean.”
“I thought you were supposed to have a memory like a steel trap?” Dean stalked past Castiel, who was sitting on an armchair in the corner of the tiny motel room. The angel nodded slowly, his hands resting in his lap.
“For some things, yes. Things of import.”
“Things of...what the fuck? Pie is of import, Cas.” Dean threw his hands in the air, exasperated. They had been driving all day and all he wanted when they rolled into New Orleans was pie and sleep. He sent Cas on one little pie run and the angel came back with a whole lot of nothing.
“What did you do then? When you were supposed to be getting my non-important pie?” He started unpacking his things, throwing clothes onto the bed haphazardly. He held a shirt up to his nose, sniffed, then tossed it across the room.
“I was surveying the area - something here is abnormal and ancient.” Castiel watched the clothes flying, still sitting placidly in the corner.
“The desk clerk? Yeah, that bitch looked about two hundred.” Dean agreed, pulling a beer out of the mini-bar fridge, apparently abandoning his effort to unpack.
“No, Dean, something else. Ever since we drove into this place I’ve felt it.”
Something about Castiel’s voice made Dean pause, swallowing his beer audibly as he flopped down onto the bed to look over at the angel.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what it is, though.” Cas looked out the window, his brow furrowed.
Dean felt uncomfortable, sipping his beer again slowly.
“But it’s obviously worrying you?” He asked after a little while.
“Yes.”
Dean and Castiel had been hunting together ever since Sam and Dean had agreed to go their own ways. A trial separation of sorts. Dean had grown used to having Castiel tag along, and as a by-product he was beginning to understand the gentle shift in his companion’s moods. Not that there were many - Castiel wasn’t exactly high drama in the mood department - but there were little changes here and there that Dean was starting to recognize.
And he definitely didn’t like this one, because he’d never really seen Cas so unsettled.
Clearing his throat, he set his beer down on the nightstand and rolled up his sleeves. The motel room was stifling, and he quickly decided he needed more air. He got up to open the window near Cas, gesturing outside offhandedly.
“Maybe it’s just New Orleans, you know? There’s a lot of history and voodoo around here.”
“Perhaps.” Castiel nodded, and promptly disappeared.
“I mean, it’s not exactly Godly territor-” Dean turned back from the window to an empty room.
“Goddamnit!” Dean yelled into thin air, and then started nodding vigorously. “Fine, alright then. I’ll use this time without your creeper feathery ass to have a shower!” Satisfied with this burn that he convinced himself Cas would have heard, he gathered his things and stalked into the bathroom.
A little while later, as he let the steam from the bathroom propel him back into the room, Dean found a box with a note on the small table near the armchair.
The note simply said (somewhat redundantly, and in a funny childlike scrawl) ‘From Castiel’ and the box held a gorgeous smelling pecan pie.
Dean woke the next morning, relieved to find he wasn’t being watched in his sleep but curious as to where Cas had run off to.
He shaved half-heartedly, dressed and decided that what he most needed was a big southern breakfast. It was the most important meal of the day, after all. He found the pokey dining room of the budget motel in an uproar. There were cops milling around everywhere and he heard a woman sobbing from the corner table.
Yawning, Dean sidled up to the ancient hotel mistress. She was leaning against the kitchen door frame, smoking a cigarette, her hair - dyed a bright shade of purple - pulled back in a tight bun.
“What’s all the hubbub?” He asked sweetly, giving her a dazzling Winchester smile.
Unimpressed, she blew a smoke ring in his face. He coughed and waved his hand in front of him.
“Hmph. What’s it to you, boy?”
“Well, everyone seems fairly distressed, that’s all,” he pointed out reasonably, “Unless this is what breakfast is usually like around here?” He leaned past her to pick up a pastry from the cart. She slapped his hand away.
“Cheeky,” she motioned over to the woman sitting in the corner, her shoulders hunched with sobs, being consoled by...
“Cas?” Dean squinted and then stood upright and shook his head.
“That woman next to the fancy man in the coat, she just lost her husband. They found him dead this morning in Lafayette Cemetery.”
“That’s usually where the dead go.”
“Not in a tomb, stupid.” She shook her hands in the air, bangles clanging together, “Someone butchered him right there in the cemetery.”
Dean watched Castiel sitting beside the woman, patting her shoulder in an awkward but infinitely well-meant gesture.
He waited until the dragon turned her back to him, swiped the pastry from the cart and approached the table, sliding into the booth opposite Cas and the crying woman.
Castiel looked over at him and nodded.
“Hi,” Dean offered in a soft voice, “I’m Dean. I see you’ve met Cas.”
The woman nodded pitifully, sniffling. Castiel looked at her earnestly.
“Elizabeth, do you need to clean your nose again?”
Elizabeth frowned slightly and Dean cleared his throat.
“I’m very sorry about your husband, ma’am.”
“I just don’t understand!” She wailed suddenly, causing Dean to jump. Cas, to his credit, stayed completely still beside the hysterical woman.
“I mean, Saul was a good man. A little thick maybe. And challenged in the wallet department. And maybe not so good in bed...”
Castiel, who was looking ever more confused, opened his mouth to say something at that but was stopped by Dean.
“Did he have any enemies? People who he might’ve pissed off?”
Elizabeth shook her head, brow knitted tightly.
“He wasn’t interesting enough to have enemies, you know?”
“Hitler was not particularly interesting, and yet he had many enemies,” Cas said suddenly, causing Dean to choke on his mouthful of pastry.
“What kind of reporter did you say you were again?” The woman looked at Castiel oddly, then turned to Dean who smiled awkwardly at her.
“He’s new. So did your husband-”
“Saul.”
“Saul. Did Saul often work late nights?”
She shrugged her shoulders, resigned.
“I guess so, I don’t know. I begged him to go work for one of those rich Garden District families but he wouldn’t. Said he was happy at the graveyard. That was Saul all over, no ambition.”
After another half hour of speaking ill of the recently deceased, the police came to take Elizabeth to the station to make a formal statement.
Dean leaned over the table to talk to Cas in a hushed voice.
“We need to check out that cemetery. The sooner the better.”
“This is not what we came here for, Dean.”
“I know, I know. Just call it a hunch.”
Castiel agreed reluctantly, sighing heavily.
“She didn’t seem very happy with her husband,” he said after a little while.
“Yeah, no shit. Maybe she did it?” Dean stuffed the rest of the pastry into his mouth. He wished he’d thought to steal another. He watched Cas, who was frowning. “What’s wrong?”
“Why stay with someone who makes you so unhappy? Who was deficient in wallet and bed matters?”
Dean raised an eyebrow slightly.
“I don’t know...that’s love I guess? You put up with a lot of shit.”
Castiel looked up at Dean, who shifted slightly under his friend’s intense stare. Now troubled himself, he stood up.
“C’mon. Let’s go to the graveyard to meet the infamous Saul.”
*
“What seems to be the trouble here, Officer?” Dean asked, approaching a policeman hunched over what was obviously a body under a sheet.
The police officer stood, his jaw working at a piece of gum, staring at Dean through black aviators.
“And you are, son?”
“Angus Young, I’m a reporter.” Dean flashed a press pass as quickly as humanly possible in the general direction of the policeman’s aviators.
“I see,” the policeman leaned slightly to the right to look over Dean’s shoulder, “and your friend?”
Dean let out a breath and then smiled slightly at the policeman.
“Bon Scott. Also a reporter.”
“Yuh-huh,” the officer hitched up his trousers, apparently satisfied, “well it looks an awful lot like a dead body.”
You’re shitting me. Seriously, no shit? Dean thought, but bit his tongue and waited patiently for the police officer to continue.
“Well, off the record and without the M.E.’s report I’d say his neck was snapped. No other signs of disturbance. Victim’s name was Saul, worked as a groundskeeper here for fifteen years.”
“Fifteen years, huh? Well that’d make me want to snap my own neck.” Dean laughed, but stopped when he turned to see Castiel looking at him oddly. “So...no disturbance then? No signs of a fight or struggle? No strange tracks?”
“No.” Snap went the gum.
“I see...well, thank you, Officer.”
“Yuh-huh.” The police officer nodded slowly, watching as Dean and Castiel made their way over towards the other side of the lane, beside a tall stone angel.
“Hey Cas, relative of yours?”
“No, Dean.”
“Right, so where’d you run off to last night, Chuckles? Apart from getting the pie.” Dean gave a small smile, “Thanks for that.”
“Surveying. I told you. I have a bad feeling about this place.”
“Is it Top Gun? I didn’t like the cut of his jib either.”
Castiel looked at Dean as though he had two heads. Dean sighed.
“Seriously Cas, anyone would be creeped out around here. Between the voodoo men shaking chickens at you in the street to the creepy Psycho traffic cop to the hundred year old hotel lady and the hysterical woman with the dead limp-dick husband. It’s fucking freaksville here.” He looked up at the tall angel beside them. “I like her though. You think she’s naked under that toga?”
Castiel continued to look at Dean cluelessly.
“It’s from Ghostbusters 2... oh Jesus nevermind. Let’s just go and get something to eat-”
“You’re always hungry, Dean.”
“Let’s just go and get something to eat,” Dean said forcefully, and come back when this place is a little less guarded by Magnum P.I.”
*
Castiel offered to teleport them both back to the cemetery when the sun went down using his angel mojo, but Dean refused. “Why don’t we just, you know, walk there and get a feel for the atmosphere? See if anything else is weird,” he had suggested, satisfied that this was a good excuse not to be angel-zapped anywhere.
The motel proprietress nodded at them both in a curious sort of acknowledgement as they passed the front desk.
“Most couples do like to take in the Garden District at night,” she said offhandedly, doodling in a ledger in front of her. Dean baulked, but Castiel nodded amiably.
“It seems most pleasant to do so.”
Dean dragged him outside by the sleeve of his trenchcoat.
“I think she’s of a mind that we’re a couple, Dean.”
“You don’t say, Cas?”
“Does that bother you, Dean?” Castiel watched him carefully, a small smile playing on his lips.
Dean walked quickly ahead, not stopping to check if the angel was keeping up.
“No...it’s just, I mean we’re not.”
“No.”
They managed to navigate the next few blocks without incident, and Dean almost sighed out loud with relief when they approached the wrought iron gate at the front of Lafayette Cemetery. His relief was short-lived.
“Shit.”
“It appears to be locked.”
Dean shook the gate feebly anyway.
“Should I ‘zap’ us in?” Castiel asked, even using the air quotes. Dean’s shoulders slumped.
“Fine.” He gritted his teeth as Cas grabbed a hold of his shoulder, and winced as he felt himself pulled through space and time in a million tiny fragments, only to be put together whole again on the other side.
“Fuck!” Dean yelled, nearly falling flat on his face. He felt even more irritated when he noticed Castiel standing casually next to him, completely unruffled by the experience. Well, looking the same amount of ruffled as he usually did.
“Goddamnit, I will never get used to that.”
“Dean, please, this is a resting place.” Castiel walked carefully into the darkened laneway of the cemetery.
“I’ll give you a resting place,” Dean mumbled, then, deciding that sounded slightly dirty, concentrated on checking he was still carrying his silver knife inside his leather jacket.
Castiel stopped suddenly, and Dean, who had been fumbling through his jacket with his eyes on the ground, ran right into the back of him.
“What the-?”
“There’s someone here,” Castiel motioned over to a dark figure slumped against one of the tombs on the right.
“Demon?” Dean hissed, his body tensing slightly, but Cas shook his head. All of a sudden the figure started to sing in a slurred, high-pitched voice. It was the worst thing Dean had ever heard.
“Sounds like you talking with your angel pals, Cas.”
Cas threw a look at Dean over his shoulder.
“I think this man is intoxicated.”
“Good, we won’t even need to use our press passes, Bon.” They approached the man, who they could see on closer inspection was swigging from a silver flask that caught and reflected the light from the full moon.
“Nice night for it?” Dean said casually. The man stopped singing, looking up at Dean through glassy eyes.
“I’ll drink to that!”
“Do you work here?” Castiel asked, and the man’s head lolled up and down.
“Yessuh. I surely do.”
“So you would have heard about the man who died here last night?” Dean asked, and when the man tipped his flask in the affirmative, Dean continued, “did you know the...uh...deceased?”
Not for the first time since chatting to the locals, Dean wished Sam was there. Cas and he were rudimentary interviewers at best, whereas Sam had a natural way with people. Dean felt a wave of guilt, and tried to push it away and concentrate on the man in front of him.
“Yessuh, I did. I knew Louis too.”
“Louis?”
“Yeah, you know. The other groundskeeper. The one what’s missing now.” Dean glanced sideways at Castiel, who raised an eyebrow slightly and turned back to the man who was trying to tip the last remaining drops of drink into his mouth.
“I too, find imbibing sometimes helps. With situations such as these,” Cas offered, and Dean tilted his head slightly at the angel, clearing his throat.
“It just doesn’t make sense, ol’ Louis running off like that,” the man continued, apparently oblivious to his two inquisitors.
“Maybe he is responsible for the human Saul’s death?” Cas asked, and while Dean winced slightly at the delivery he had to admit Castiel had a point. It did look suspicious.
“No, no, no!” The man slurred loudly, “Louis and Saul was friends!”
“Friends fall out.” Dean shrugged, but the shaking grew more vigorous until eventually the man was shaking his whole body, flask included, in both of their faces.
“NO! I tell you that wouldn’t have happened.”
Dean hastily thanked the old many and pulled Castiel further into the cemetery, before the drunk could get more hysterical.
“He seems fairly certain the missing man is not reponsible.”
“Yeah, but come on Cas. I mean, he’s not exactly the most reliable character witness, is he?”
They walked deeper into the darkness and silence of the cemetery. Castiel strode forward, barely seeming to touch the ground, his eyes searching the dark for something unknown.
They stopped in front of the weeping angel statue they had seen earlier that day.
“We meet again,” Dean said, wagging his eyebrows at the stone angel. Castiel took a step closer to the statue, the palm of his hand flattened facing towards it.
“Is this some freaky sort of family reunion thing?” Dean asked, but Castiel ignored him.
“There’s a strange energy emanating from this statue.” He eyed the stone angel warily, before following Dean further down the laneway.
“So how come Kojak didn’t mention this missing Louis guy?” Dean asked, stopping to turn and look back at Cas trailing behind him. He paused, looking past Castiel.
“Very funny, Cas,” he said, not looking at all amused.
“What are you talking about, Dean?”
“Your little trick, that’s what I’m talking about.”
Cas simply looked at Dean patiently.
“I still don’t know what you’re referring to.”
“You moved the friggin’ angel.” Dean pointed over Castiel’s shoulder at the statue that had apparently started following them. See this is the downside to having you hang out with me, Dean thought, you’re starting to act like me.
Cas turned to look at the direction Dean was pointing, his shoulder level with Dean’s.
“Dean,” he said very quietly, his voice grave, “I didn’t move that statue.”
“You mean...” Dean exhaled slightly, “you didn’t stretch its arms out like that either?”
Castiel shook his head slowly, his eyes fixed on the stone angel. The face, once covered reverently by stone hands, was contorted, staring at them both, mouth wide and fangs - fangs! - bared.
Suddenly the ground beneath them shook, kicking up leaves and dirt from the cemetery floor. The air was filled with a whomp!whomp!whomp! noise and then a loud thud from behind them.
Dean, too horrified to really take in this latest development and still riveted to the stone angel’s face, then heard the sound of a door opening and felt a strong hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t. Blink,” said a voice in a cool, clipped British accent, and then he was pulled backwards off the cemetery floor and out of the stone angel’s reach.
[Part Two]
“Friggin’ angels, man.”
“I am sorry, Dean.”
“I thought you were supposed to have a memory like a steel trap?” Dean stalked past Castiel, who was sitting on an armchair in the corner of the tiny motel room. The angel nodded slowly, his hands resting in his lap.
“For some things, yes. Things of import.”
“Things of...what the fuck? Pie is of import, Cas.” Dean threw his hands in the air, exasperated. They had been driving all day and all he wanted when they rolled into New Orleans was pie and sleep. He sent Cas on one little pie run and the angel came back with a whole lot of nothing.
“What did you do then? When you were supposed to be getting my non-important pie?” He started unpacking his things, throwing clothes onto the bed haphazardly. He held a shirt up to his nose, sniffed, then tossed it across the room.
“I was surveying the area - something here is abnormal and ancient.” Castiel watched the clothes flying, still sitting placidly in the corner.
“The desk clerk? Yeah, that bitch looked about two hundred.” Dean agreed, pulling a beer out of the mini-bar fridge, apparently abandoning his effort to unpack.
“No, Dean, something else. Ever since we drove into this place I’ve felt it.”
Something about Castiel’s voice made Dean pause, swallowing his beer audibly as he flopped down onto the bed to look over at the angel.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what it is, though.” Cas looked out the window, his brow furrowed.
Dean felt uncomfortable, sipping his beer again slowly.
“But it’s obviously worrying you?” He asked after a little while.
“Yes.”
Dean and Castiel had been hunting together ever since Sam and Dean had agreed to go their own ways. A trial separation of sorts. Dean had grown used to having Castiel tag along, and as a by-product he was beginning to understand the gentle shift in his companion’s moods. Not that there were many - Castiel wasn’t exactly high drama in the mood department - but there were little changes here and there that Dean was starting to recognize.
And he definitely didn’t like this one, because he’d never really seen Cas so unsettled.
Clearing his throat, he set his beer down on the nightstand and rolled up his sleeves. The motel room was stifling, and he quickly decided he needed more air. He got up to open the window near Cas, gesturing outside offhandedly.
“Maybe it’s just New Orleans, you know? There’s a lot of history and voodoo around here.”
“Perhaps.” Castiel nodded, and promptly disappeared.
“I mean, it’s not exactly Godly territor-” Dean turned back from the window to an empty room.
“Goddamnit!” Dean yelled into thin air, and then started nodding vigorously. “Fine, alright then. I’ll use this time without your creeper feathery ass to have a shower!” Satisfied with this burn that he convinced himself Cas would have heard, he gathered his things and stalked into the bathroom.
A little while later, as he let the steam from the bathroom propel him back into the room, Dean found a box with a note on the small table near the armchair.
The note simply said (somewhat redundantly, and in a funny childlike scrawl) ‘From Castiel’ and the box held a gorgeous smelling pecan pie.
Dean woke the next morning, relieved to find he wasn’t being watched in his sleep but curious as to where Cas had run off to.
He shaved half-heartedly, dressed and decided that what he most needed was a big southern breakfast. It was the most important meal of the day, after all. He found the pokey dining room of the budget motel in an uproar. There were cops milling around everywhere and he heard a woman sobbing from the corner table.
Yawning, Dean sidled up to the ancient hotel mistress. She was leaning against the kitchen door frame, smoking a cigarette, her hair - dyed a bright shade of purple - pulled back in a tight bun.
“What’s all the hubbub?” He asked sweetly, giving her a dazzling Winchester smile.
Unimpressed, she blew a smoke ring in his face. He coughed and waved his hand in front of him.
“Hmph. What’s it to you, boy?”
“Well, everyone seems fairly distressed, that’s all,” he pointed out reasonably, “Unless this is what breakfast is usually like around here?” He leaned past her to pick up a pastry from the cart. She slapped his hand away.
“Cheeky,” she motioned over to the woman sitting in the corner, her shoulders hunched with sobs, being consoled by...
“Cas?” Dean squinted and then stood upright and shook his head.
“That woman next to the fancy man in the coat, she just lost her husband. They found him dead this morning in Lafayette Cemetery.”
“That’s usually where the dead go.”
“Not in a tomb, stupid.” She shook her hands in the air, bangles clanging together, “Someone butchered him right there in the cemetery.”
Dean watched Castiel sitting beside the woman, patting her shoulder in an awkward but infinitely well-meant gesture.
He waited until the dragon turned her back to him, swiped the pastry from the cart and approached the table, sliding into the booth opposite Cas and the crying woman.
Castiel looked over at him and nodded.
“Hi,” Dean offered in a soft voice, “I’m Dean. I see you’ve met Cas.”
The woman nodded pitifully, sniffling. Castiel looked at her earnestly.
“Elizabeth, do you need to clean your nose again?”
Elizabeth frowned slightly and Dean cleared his throat.
“I’m very sorry about your husband, ma’am.”
“I just don’t understand!” She wailed suddenly, causing Dean to jump. Cas, to his credit, stayed completely still beside the hysterical woman.
“I mean, Saul was a good man. A little thick maybe. And challenged in the wallet department. And maybe not so good in bed...”
Castiel, who was looking ever more confused, opened his mouth to say something at that but was stopped by Dean.
“Did he have any enemies? People who he might’ve pissed off?”
Elizabeth shook her head, brow knitted tightly.
“He wasn’t interesting enough to have enemies, you know?”
“Hitler was not particularly interesting, and yet he had many enemies,” Cas said suddenly, causing Dean to choke on his mouthful of pastry.
“What kind of reporter did you say you were again?” The woman looked at Castiel oddly, then turned to Dean who smiled awkwardly at her.
“He’s new. So did your husband-”
“Saul.”
“Saul. Did Saul often work late nights?”
She shrugged her shoulders, resigned.
“I guess so, I don’t know. I begged him to go work for one of those rich Garden District families but he wouldn’t. Said he was happy at the graveyard. That was Saul all over, no ambition.”
After another half hour of speaking ill of the recently deceased, the police came to take Elizabeth to the station to make a formal statement.
Dean leaned over the table to talk to Cas in a hushed voice.
“We need to check out that cemetery. The sooner the better.”
“This is not what we came here for, Dean.”
“I know, I know. Just call it a hunch.”
Castiel agreed reluctantly, sighing heavily.
“She didn’t seem very happy with her husband,” he said after a little while.
“Yeah, no shit. Maybe she did it?” Dean stuffed the rest of the pastry into his mouth. He wished he’d thought to steal another. He watched Cas, who was frowning. “What’s wrong?”
“Why stay with someone who makes you so unhappy? Who was deficient in wallet and bed matters?”
Dean raised an eyebrow slightly.
“I don’t know...that’s love I guess? You put up with a lot of shit.”
Castiel looked up at Dean, who shifted slightly under his friend’s intense stare. Now troubled himself, he stood up.
“C’mon. Let’s go to the graveyard to meet the infamous Saul.”
*
“What seems to be the trouble here, Officer?” Dean asked, approaching a policeman hunched over what was obviously a body under a sheet.
The police officer stood, his jaw working at a piece of gum, staring at Dean through black aviators.
“And you are, son?”
“Angus Young, I’m a reporter.” Dean flashed a press pass as quickly as humanly possible in the general direction of the policeman’s aviators.
“I see,” the policeman leaned slightly to the right to look over Dean’s shoulder, “and your friend?”
Dean let out a breath and then smiled slightly at the policeman.
“Bon Scott. Also a reporter.”
“Yuh-huh,” the officer hitched up his trousers, apparently satisfied, “well it looks an awful lot like a dead body.”
You’re shitting me. Seriously, no shit? Dean thought, but bit his tongue and waited patiently for the police officer to continue.
“Well, off the record and without the M.E.’s report I’d say his neck was snapped. No other signs of disturbance. Victim’s name was Saul, worked as a groundskeeper here for fifteen years.”
“Fifteen years, huh? Well that’d make me want to snap my own neck.” Dean laughed, but stopped when he turned to see Castiel looking at him oddly. “So...no disturbance then? No signs of a fight or struggle? No strange tracks?”
“No.” Snap went the gum.
“I see...well, thank you, Officer.”
“Yuh-huh.” The police officer nodded slowly, watching as Dean and Castiel made their way over towards the other side of the lane, beside a tall stone angel.
“Hey Cas, relative of yours?”
“No, Dean.”
“Right, so where’d you run off to last night, Chuckles? Apart from getting the pie.” Dean gave a small smile, “Thanks for that.”
“Surveying. I told you. I have a bad feeling about this place.”
“Is it Top Gun? I didn’t like the cut of his jib either.”
Castiel looked at Dean as though he had two heads. Dean sighed.
“Seriously Cas, anyone would be creeped out around here. Between the voodoo men shaking chickens at you in the street to the creepy Psycho traffic cop to the hundred year old hotel lady and the hysterical woman with the dead limp-dick husband. It’s fucking freaksville here.” He looked up at the tall angel beside them. “I like her though. You think she’s naked under that toga?”
Castiel continued to look at Dean cluelessly.
“It’s from Ghostbusters 2... oh Jesus nevermind. Let’s just go and get something to eat-”
“You’re always hungry, Dean.”
“Let’s just go and get something to eat,” Dean said forcefully, and come back when this place is a little less guarded by Magnum P.I.”
*
Castiel offered to teleport them both back to the cemetery when the sun went down using his angel mojo, but Dean refused. “Why don’t we just, you know, walk there and get a feel for the atmosphere? See if anything else is weird,” he had suggested, satisfied that this was a good excuse not to be angel-zapped anywhere.
The motel proprietress nodded at them both in a curious sort of acknowledgement as they passed the front desk.
“Most couples do like to take in the Garden District at night,” she said offhandedly, doodling in a ledger in front of her. Dean baulked, but Castiel nodded amiably.
“It seems most pleasant to do so.”
Dean dragged him outside by the sleeve of his trenchcoat.
“I think she’s of a mind that we’re a couple, Dean.”
“You don’t say, Cas?”
“Does that bother you, Dean?” Castiel watched him carefully, a small smile playing on his lips.
Dean walked quickly ahead, not stopping to check if the angel was keeping up.
“No...it’s just, I mean we’re not.”
“No.”
They managed to navigate the next few blocks without incident, and Dean almost sighed out loud with relief when they approached the wrought iron gate at the front of Lafayette Cemetery. His relief was short-lived.
“Shit.”
“It appears to be locked.”
Dean shook the gate feebly anyway.
“Should I ‘zap’ us in?” Castiel asked, even using the air quotes. Dean’s shoulders slumped.
“Fine.” He gritted his teeth as Cas grabbed a hold of his shoulder, and winced as he felt himself pulled through space and time in a million tiny fragments, only to be put together whole again on the other side.
“Fuck!” Dean yelled, nearly falling flat on his face. He felt even more irritated when he noticed Castiel standing casually next to him, completely unruffled by the experience. Well, looking the same amount of ruffled as he usually did.
“Goddamnit, I will never get used to that.”
“Dean, please, this is a resting place.” Castiel walked carefully into the darkened laneway of the cemetery.
“I’ll give you a resting place,” Dean mumbled, then, deciding that sounded slightly dirty, concentrated on checking he was still carrying his silver knife inside his leather jacket.
Castiel stopped suddenly, and Dean, who had been fumbling through his jacket with his eyes on the ground, ran right into the back of him.
“What the-?”
“There’s someone here,” Castiel motioned over to a dark figure slumped against one of the tombs on the right.
“Demon?” Dean hissed, his body tensing slightly, but Cas shook his head. All of a sudden the figure started to sing in a slurred, high-pitched voice. It was the worst thing Dean had ever heard.
“Sounds like you talking with your angel pals, Cas.”
Cas threw a look at Dean over his shoulder.
“I think this man is intoxicated.”
“Good, we won’t even need to use our press passes, Bon.” They approached the man, who they could see on closer inspection was swigging from a silver flask that caught and reflected the light from the full moon.
“Nice night for it?” Dean said casually. The man stopped singing, looking up at Dean through glassy eyes.
“I’ll drink to that!”
“Do you work here?” Castiel asked, and the man’s head lolled up and down.
“Yessuh. I surely do.”
“So you would have heard about the man who died here last night?” Dean asked, and when the man tipped his flask in the affirmative, Dean continued, “did you know the...uh...deceased?”
Not for the first time since chatting to the locals, Dean wished Sam was there. Cas and he were rudimentary interviewers at best, whereas Sam had a natural way with people. Dean felt a wave of guilt, and tried to push it away and concentrate on the man in front of him.
“Yessuh, I did. I knew Louis too.”
“Louis?”
“Yeah, you know. The other groundskeeper. The one what’s missing now.” Dean glanced sideways at Castiel, who raised an eyebrow slightly and turned back to the man who was trying to tip the last remaining drops of drink into his mouth.
“I too, find imbibing sometimes helps. With situations such as these,” Cas offered, and Dean tilted his head slightly at the angel, clearing his throat.
“It just doesn’t make sense, ol’ Louis running off like that,” the man continued, apparently oblivious to his two inquisitors.
“Maybe he is responsible for the human Saul’s death?” Cas asked, and while Dean winced slightly at the delivery he had to admit Castiel had a point. It did look suspicious.
“No, no, no!” The man slurred loudly, “Louis and Saul was friends!”
“Friends fall out.” Dean shrugged, but the shaking grew more vigorous until eventually the man was shaking his whole body, flask included, in both of their faces.
“NO! I tell you that wouldn’t have happened.”
Dean hastily thanked the old many and pulled Castiel further into the cemetery, before the drunk could get more hysterical.
“He seems fairly certain the missing man is not reponsible.”
“Yeah, but come on Cas. I mean, he’s not exactly the most reliable character witness, is he?”
They walked deeper into the darkness and silence of the cemetery. Castiel strode forward, barely seeming to touch the ground, his eyes searching the dark for something unknown.
They stopped in front of the weeping angel statue they had seen earlier that day.
“We meet again,” Dean said, wagging his eyebrows at the stone angel. Castiel took a step closer to the statue, the palm of his hand flattened facing towards it.
“Is this some freaky sort of family reunion thing?” Dean asked, but Castiel ignored him.
“There’s a strange energy emanating from this statue.” He eyed the stone angel warily, before following Dean further down the laneway.
“So how come Kojak didn’t mention this missing Louis guy?” Dean asked, stopping to turn and look back at Cas trailing behind him. He paused, looking past Castiel.
“Very funny, Cas,” he said, not looking at all amused.
“What are you talking about, Dean?”
“Your little trick, that’s what I’m talking about.”
Cas simply looked at Dean patiently.
“I still don’t know what you’re referring to.”
“You moved the friggin’ angel.” Dean pointed over Castiel’s shoulder at the statue that had apparently started following them. See this is the downside to having you hang out with me, Dean thought, you’re starting to act like me.
Cas turned to look at the direction Dean was pointing, his shoulder level with Dean’s.
“Dean,” he said very quietly, his voice grave, “I didn’t move that statue.”
“You mean...” Dean exhaled slightly, “you didn’t stretch its arms out like that either?”
Castiel shook his head slowly, his eyes fixed on the stone angel. The face, once covered reverently by stone hands, was contorted, staring at them both, mouth wide and fangs - fangs! - bared.
Suddenly the ground beneath them shook, kicking up leaves and dirt from the cemetery floor. The air was filled with a whomp!whomp!whomp! noise and then a loud thud from behind them.
Dean, too horrified to really take in this latest development and still riveted to the stone angel’s face, then heard the sound of a door opening and felt a strong hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t. Blink,” said a voice in a cool, clipped British accent, and then he was pulled backwards off the cemetery floor and out of the stone angel’s reach.
[Part Two]