Fic: The Shattered One (15/?)
See the masterpost for disclaimer, summary, and previous parts.
“Oh no, no way… do I look like a babysitter?”
Jo was putting up a spirited fight, but her mother was not to be outdone.
“What you look like, Joanna Beth, is a non-com,” Ellen returned, gesturing at Jo’s wounded leg. “We need every fit and able body on this one that we can get, and it doesn’t make sense to make Dean or Sam stay here to watch the baby when they’d do us more good out there.”
Jo crossed her arms with a grunt. “This sucks.”
“Welcome to the end of the world,” Sam quipped. When Jo shot him a scathing look, Sam shrugged. “Hey… if it helps, he’s a really good baby. You shouldn’t have any trouble with him.” Sam didn’t see whatever withering look Jo might have sent his way for that, because he was busy frowning down at his clothes. Major Owens’ quartermaster didn’t have any fatigues on hand on such short notice that would fit Sam, so he looked like the Army had gone three-quarter sleeve, Capri-style fatigues.
“I don’t see why this is necessary,” Dean bitched a few feet away. Even though his at least fit.
The Watering Hole was packed with Army troops, prepping for what Ellen had dubbed ‘Operation Wendigo Inferno’ (which sounded like a bad 70’s B horror flick to Sam)… and part of that operation involved having Sam and Dean dress the part.
“You’re one whiny princess, you know that, Winchester?” Major Owens snapped back.
Sam bit his cheek to keep from smiling.
At that, Dean had himself an appropriately royal hissy fit. “Hey, we’ve hunted our fair share of these things, and they never cared if we looked like G.I. Joe.”
“Maybe they don’t, but we have a whole city on lockdown, people trapped in their homes, scared and many of them armed. A lot of them haven’t seen one of these so-called rioters yet, so the fatigues aren’t so you feel like you’re being all you can be, it’s so some nervous homeowner is less likely to shoot you out their living room window.”
Dean shut up at that, but he still looked really annoyed that he looked like an upstanding member of society in desert camo fatigues and boots. At first blush, desert camo seemed an odd choice for Iowa, but they weren’t trying to blend in on this particular occasion… they wanted to stand out. And the pale colors would best reflect firelight.
“You sure we have enough torches for everyone?” Sam heard Ellen ask Strafe. He, too, was geared up for the op, though he actually looked like he wore it with ease. “Got sixty-odd torches, two hundred flares, two dozen flare guns, some of them boys have flame-throwers,” Strafe sounded envious of that, “and enough Bics to make a smokers’ convention pea green. Say we’re set for a good wendigo roast.”
Ellen slipped her own lighter into her BDU jacket and gave a harrumph that sounded eerily like Bobby. “Don’t forget we’re going to be in heavy civilian territory… we start the wrong fire, we could hurt a lot of people.”
Because the mob of wendigos wasn’t enough to worry about.
Dean wandered over, still morose from his tongue-lashing from the major. It was a rare person who could get one over on the unflappable Dean Winchester, and Sam couldn’t deny a smidgen of little brother delight at the seeing the tall poppy take a whack to the head.
“With these old-school torches,” Dean commented, “it’s going to look like we’re the angry villagers from those black and white horror movies.”
“As long as it gets the wendigos on the move,” Strafe said.
Operation Wendigo Inferno was, without doubt, the most coordinated, involved, and large-scale hunt the Winchesters had ever been on, if only because hunters rarely worked in teams much bigger than four (they were, by and large, a prickly, antisocial bunch). It was definitely the first time they’d worked alongside the military on a hunt.
But the scale of the problem in Des Moines called for desperate measures.
In a nutshell, the plan was to wait until sundown to get into position. The urban wendigos took to ground during the day, uncomfortable outside their woodland environment, but they came out at night in force. The troops and hunters would form a large living corral around the most concentrated areas of wendigo activity (presently, a southwest quadrant of the city). After nightfall, once the wendigos were in the open and on the move, the fire-wielding soldiers and hunters would start constricting the human noose, driving the wendigos ahead of them. Any that were killed in the process were gravy, but herding them was the main goal. In a neglected lot out the outskirts of town, an abandoned building had been filled with gas cans, stacks of newspapers, and gunpowder… a veritable matchbox, primed to go up in flames (and hopefully far enough away that civilians would be in a minimal amount of danger from the blaze). When the wendigos had been pushed into the building and cornered, the fire would be ignited, and they’d watch a building full of wendigos burn.
It sounded easy enough, but when did any hunt go off without a hitch?
The most critical (and most secretive) part of the plan rested on Castiel’s shoulders. The troops were confident they could herd the enemy without trouble, but the hunters knew better. Wendigos were fast… they could give humans the slip and outrun them any day of the week. But they couldn’t run faster than an angel could fly. And since Castiel was back to flying, he was critical for them to pull this off. If they had to crunch numbers on the distribution of labor for this operation, the credit for this hunt (if it worked) would be seventy percent Castiel’s victory. He would be the one truly rounding up wendigos, forcing them into the holding pen of torches brandished by the humans. And while the humans were handling the masses, Castiel would monitor the perimeter, picking off stragglers, escapees, and making sure the fallible human line did not break.
The only ones who knew about Castiel’s role, though, were the hunters. The truth about Castiel’s identity hadn’t been revealed to Major Owens, but he kept a wary eye on Castiel whenever they were in the same room… he’d seen the angel’s disappearing-reappearing act earlier, and he knew something was unusual about Castiel. For a guy who just found out the true nature of wendigos, anything outside the sphere of normal was highly suspect.
Though Sam speculated that Major Owens was prone to be suspicious, wendigos aside.
Major Owens looked toward the dying light coming through the windows, then down at his watch. “All right, Team One, grab your torches, head out, and get into position. Team Two, I want you ready to move out in ten minutes. Let’s go!”
Castiel was suddenly at Dean’s side, Daniel in his arms. Major Owens caught sight of him out of the corner of his eye, glanced over, and gave Castiel a measuring, suspicious look. It probably also didn’t help that no amount of staring could browbeat Castiel into donning fatigues… among a sea of Mojave drab, he was a sore thumb in his suit and trench coat.
“I don’t think he likes you much,” Strafe said, drolly stating the spectacularly obvious.
“Our ability to establish a meaningful friendship is immaterial to our mission,” Castiel replied evenly. When the major continued to give Castiel his best scary-major stare, Castiel gave him a scary-angel stare right back. Dean smirked when the major was the one who backed down. Sam didn’t blame him… when Cas wanted to be scary, he was really scary. Hard to believe when he just looked like this slim tax accountant to the inattentive eye.
“You sure you’re up for this?” Dean asked the angel softly.
Castiel gave him a measured look.
“Just that you only got back in the air today… and this is going to be logging a lot of flight time on your part.”
“I am still a weapon against evil; I will not fail.” Castiel sounded predictably miffed that his abilities to tackle dark forces would be called into question. Then he paused and glanced down hesitantly at Daniel. “What are we going to do with Daniel?”
“I’m going to watch him,” Jo said grudgingly, limping forward to take the baby. Castiel glanced at Dean and waited for the nod from him before he passed the baby into Jo’s arms. She looked down at Daniel a moment, then cracked a smile, despite doing her best to remain disgruntled about babysitting duty. “Okay, fine… he is cute.”
“Yep, total lady-killer,” Dean quipped. Then he looked toward Strafe. “Yo, Strafe… you wouldn’t happen to have a little travel hooch, would ya? One for the road?”
Strafe opened his mouth to answer…
… but didn’t get a word in edgewise.
“You really think a drink’s a good idea right now?” Ellen lectured, all the brunt of her motherly disapproval looming. It was even enough to buckle Dean… but then, Sam noticed his brother had always been a little bit afraid of Ellen Harvelle.
“Oh, come on… just one? Have a heart, Ellen; it looks like it’s shaping up to be a really long night.”
Sam got the feeling Dean would be proven right very soon.
*************
Dawn was breaking red and orange, making it look like the burning building had caught the sky on fire. From within, the inhuman chorus of wendigos igniting and flaming out was a haunting dirge to welcome the day. There had been moments when Sam doubted that the night would ever end.
The strident scent of burnt human hair mingled with the smell of human sweat as a wall of steely-eyed fighters stood nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, watching the monsters inside burn. Sam looked among their faces, and they were all masks, homogenous faces with glittering dark eyes and stony expressions. Some were bloody. Others sullied with dirt or soot. Sam could see the burns on some of their limbs… the danger of using such an indiscriminant weapon like fire - it didn’t care who it harmed.
Sam glanced toward the engulfed building. He saw dark figures through the fire-curtains in the windows, writhing and flailing, skinny hands and savage claws raking blindly to fend off death. The choir song of screams sent a chill down Sam’s spine. He could feel his heart still pounding in his chest… he wondered how long it would take to go back to normal. Right now, it felt like it never would. The combat-readiness of the long hours, the endless fight against the darkness and its beasts, was still too raw and close. The tickle of smoke would stay in his lungs for days, no doubt.
Sam looked over at his brother. Dean was standing awkwardly, favoring a vicious wound on his shoulder. His desert camo jacket was torn and stained dark with blood. Sam remembered what had happened all too vividly… they’d been moving through an alleyway, Dean leading with fire, Sam covering their asses with fire. Suddenly, Dean had yelled, and Sam whirled to find a wendigo had dropped a clawed hand on his shoulder, almost like he was trying to get Dean’s attention. Then it had ripped, tearing jacket, shirt, and flesh alike. Sam shoved his torch in its face, and it let go and ran, but not before Dean was hurt.
But although Dean was holding his shoulder oddly, he didn’t seem to really notice the pain. He was watching the bonfire rage, consuming the enemy. It wasn’t the first house Dean had watched burn… the first had been their own. Sam wondered why they seemed so eternally plagued by fire.
The hunters - and for that moment, they were all hunters - stood mesmerized and watched the building start to collapse on itself. Strafe and Ellen were standing to Sam’s left. Strafe was holding his right arm to his body like it was broken. Ellen had a dried trial of blood tracing a line from her nose to upper lip, and a real shiner of a black eye was blooming on the right side of her face. Sam felt like he’d gotten off light; he’d suffered only a minor burn to his arm. But they all looked like shades of hell, various degrees of banged up and battered.
Until Castiel was suddenly there, looking windswept but otherwise nonplussed, trench coat and suit as clean as ever.
Dean looked over at him. “Hey, Cas… is that all of them?” He jerked his head toward the fire.
Castiel glanced at Dean, hesitating a fraction of a second to frown at Dean’s bleeding shoulder. Then he cast his eyes toward the crumbling building. “That’s all of them.”
“Good.” Dean seemed to ratchet down from combat ready, letting a hint of his exhaustion and pain show. He looked over the angel. “You okay?”
It was almost laughable… Castiel was the only one of them who didn’t look like he’d gone three rounds with a Tasmanian devil. Castiel scowled again at Dean’s shoulder. “You’re hurt.”
“Nothing a band-aide won’t fix,” he said, dismissive (noticeably not including a devil-may-care shrug), but he didn’t try to escape Castiel’s hand when the angel reached for his shoulder. With great care, he peeled away the torn material of Dean’s clothes and studied the slashed flesh underneath. Dean grit his teeth but held himself still for inspection.
The angel scowled. “This is more serious than can be treated with a small adhesive bandage.”
Dean’s eyes crinkled. “Hey, I’m just impressed you know what a band-aide is.” Dean pinched his lips, and Sam knew the signs of brother-in-pain. “Don’t suppose you could fix it up, could you?”
Something remorseful flickered through Castiel’s fire-kissed gaze. He glanced surreptitiously at the long chain of people surrounding the fire, nearly all of them to a person wounded in some way. Castiel dropped his voice. “I’m not strong enough to heal them all.” Then he regarded Dean intently, falling easily into that habit he had of looking at Dean like he was the answer to the mysteries of the universe. His expression twitched almost painfully, and he snaked up a hand and rested his palm against the side of Dean’s neck. Sam knew the second the injury was gone, because Dean’s posture straightened and the ashen tinge to his face disappeared.
Castiel withdrew his hand with care, trying not to draw attention to what he’d done as he studied Dean. Sam smiled a little, despite it all. Castiel couldn’t stand seeing Dean in pain.
Ellen snorted to Sam’s left.
They were joined a moment later by Major Owens. He’d taken a claw to the face… three jagged cuts slashed at angles from his hairline to chin… Sam could swear he saw the bloody bone-shine of a tooth through the damage done to the major’s bottom lip.
“Evey’un ‘lright?” he asked at great pains, his speech butchered by the ruin of his mouth.
“We’re all okay,” Strafe answered his old friend, despite the way he was cradling his arm.
Major Owens took stock for himself, eyes resting on each of them in turn. When his eyes landed on Castiel, the major glared mistrustfully. It seemed unfair to Sam… Cas was the reason this Operation Wendigo Inferno had worked, but because he was so plainly not human, he was one heartbeat away from no better than the wendigos in the officer’s eyes.
If Sam ever wanted to see where the hunter’s world began and normal people’s ended, there it was.
“How about your men, Badger?” Strafe asked.
Major Owens broke eye contact with Cas and sighed, offering up a ‘so-so’ hand see-saw motion that didn’t require him to talk. Next, he hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the building. The screaming had slowly died out as the wendigos did. Now it was just the crackling of the fire and the moaning of the building buckling. In the distance, Sam thought he could hear the sirens of a fire truck.
The major’s wordless gesture was unclear to Sam, but Strafe got the meaning. “That was the lot of them.”
Owens didn’t question how Strafe knew that… he just accepted it. He blinked slowly, nodded, then gave Strafe and his team a weary thumb’s up and turned around to return to his men.
The soldiers were starting to break ranks, sensing that their enemies were dead and their mission complete. The living fence line broke apart, and comrades began to seek one another out, assessing injuries and doing a headcount of missing friends.
It left the hunters huddled together, separate.
“Anyone seriously hurt?” Ellen asked the moment they were left to tend their own. Strafe brushed off Ellen’s attempts to assess the extent of the damage to his arm. She gave him a disapproving glower for being an obstinate ass, then her eyes landed on Dean and his conspicuously blood-drenched shoulder. “Dean?”
Dean rolled his shoulder tenderly to prove just how undamaged he was. “I’m fine… just a scratch.”
Ellen looked dubious at first, then she glanced speculatively at Castiel standing at Dean’s side. She finally gave a curt nod. “All right, let’s head back to the Watering Hole, take care of any broken limbs, get cleaned up, and get some sleep.”
“I don’t have beds enough for everyone,” Strafe threw in guiltily. He lived above the bar, and Sam had walked through the living space earlier… there really wasn’t much to it.
“I don’t think anyone’s going to turn up their nose at a clean spot on the floor,” Ellen quipped.
Hell, Sam thought he could fall asleep on his feet if everyone would stop talking for a few minutes. All-nighters were common for hunters, but that didn’t make them any less draining. A lumpy pillow and a place to stretch out on the floor sounded awesome.
“Right,” Dean stifled a yawn. “We’ll grab some sleep, then head on to Bobby’s.”
“There is something here I still need to attend to before I leave,” Castiel said, matter-of-fact.
“Ah, crap… don’t tell me more wendigos…” Dean groaned.
Castiel cocked his head. “No… at least, not yet. But there is the matter of how this infestation could have happened in the first place. Wendigos are extremely uncommon creatures - fifty-seven should have accounted for the entire population of them in the North American continent, not the concentration one would find in a single city.”
“Yeah, no one’s arguing the what the fuckery of that,” Dean snorted. “So, you have any idea how this happened?” Dean sounded like he really didn’t want to hear it, even if Castiel did have a good guess. Dean didn’t look like he was up for anything but crashing for a few hours. Sam was with his brother on this one… talking bad, sleep good. Sleep now good.
“Perhaps,” Castiel postulated anyway. “Do you remember me speculating that Lucifer might try to find a way to bolster his ranks on earth without tapping into his resources in Hell?”
“Shit,” Sam hissed when he realized what Castiel was saying.
“No way,” Dean said.
“Wendigos do not have the same abilities as demons, nor their obedience to Lucifer’s commands, but they are a rough earthbound approximation… possibly close enough to serve his purposes.”
“You boys talking Lucifer like the Devil?” Strafe asked.
“Yeah… our lives really suck,” Dean replied.
“You saying this was literally the work of the Devil?” Ellen asked grimly.
“I suspect so. And if there is something nearby that is accelerating the process by which a human being becomes a wendigo, it must be destroyed.”
“Or else this was just a temporary fix at best,” Sam groaned, waving feebly at the fire. He had no interest in coming back again for a recreation of this miserable night. This was definitely one crappy 70’s horror movie that did not need a sequel.
“While I was in flight, I saw what appeared to be several underground tunnel systems,” Castiel began.
“How the hell did you have time to notice anything up there with all the wendigo-wrangling you were doing?” Strafe asked, incredulous.
“Angel,” Dean retorted smugly.
Castiel glanced between the two, then settled his eyes on Strafe. “Are you familiar with those tunnels I saw?”
“Well, sure… Des Moines was big time coal mining territory way back in the day, but all the mines were closed by the early 1900s. I imagine the mine shafts are still there, though… not that I’ve ever gone spelunking in them.”
“Well, we know wendigos like them,” Sam noted.
“And such a large network hidden from the public’s sight would be an ideal location for transforming humans to wendigos,” Castiel mused aloud, rolling the idea over like a cat with a mouse, deciding on the best way to go in for the kill.
Dean frowned. “But those wendigos had to come from people. Wouldn’t fifty missing people be noticed?”
Would they, Sam wondered. “Hey, Strafe… Des Moines have any homeless?”
“Well, sure, what city doesn’t?” Then Strafe’s face went slack. “Oh, hell.”
“What?” Ellen asked.
“Well, I go into Des Moines about once a week for supplies, and the places I go, I usually see my fair share of homeless on the streets… but I can’t remembering seeing one in at least a month.”
“Well, now we know where the human dough for baking a wendigo came from,” Dean groused tiredly.
Castiel was gazing out into the lightening sky, pensive and focused. Unlike the rest of them, the all-nighter did not seem to be dragging on him. He didn’t look at Dean as he spoke to him, “You and Sam may continue the journey to Bobby’s without me… I’ll stay behind to eliminate this threat.”
Sam saw Dean immediately open his mouth to say something, to protest, to complain… but before a sound escaped, he snapped his jaw shut and looked crossly at Castiel. Then he grunted. “Yeah, sure… you have your phone with you?”
Castiel nodded.
“Then remember to check in. We’ll call you when we get to Bobby’s.”
Sam wondered if Castiel could hear the tension in Dean’s voice. Probably not. But boy, Sam did. He suspected he knew why, too… but there wasn’t a chance in hell he would mention it.
In the next moment, Castiel was gone, leaving Strafe, Ellen, Sam, and Dean swaying on their feet, drained and barely awake. Strafe snorted in the wake of Castiel’s disappearance. “Don’t know how you guys ever get used to that.”
“You wouldn’t believe half the weird shit that doesn’t even phase us anymore,” Dean countered wearily.
Sam wished it wasn’t so painfully true.
Next
“Oh no, no way… do I look like a babysitter?”
Jo was putting up a spirited fight, but her mother was not to be outdone.
“What you look like, Joanna Beth, is a non-com,” Ellen returned, gesturing at Jo’s wounded leg. “We need every fit and able body on this one that we can get, and it doesn’t make sense to make Dean or Sam stay here to watch the baby when they’d do us more good out there.”
Jo crossed her arms with a grunt. “This sucks.”
“Welcome to the end of the world,” Sam quipped. When Jo shot him a scathing look, Sam shrugged. “Hey… if it helps, he’s a really good baby. You shouldn’t have any trouble with him.” Sam didn’t see whatever withering look Jo might have sent his way for that, because he was busy frowning down at his clothes. Major Owens’ quartermaster didn’t have any fatigues on hand on such short notice that would fit Sam, so he looked like the Army had gone three-quarter sleeve, Capri-style fatigues.
“I don’t see why this is necessary,” Dean bitched a few feet away. Even though his at least fit.
The Watering Hole was packed with Army troops, prepping for what Ellen had dubbed ‘Operation Wendigo Inferno’ (which sounded like a bad 70’s B horror flick to Sam)… and part of that operation involved having Sam and Dean dress the part.
“You’re one whiny princess, you know that, Winchester?” Major Owens snapped back.
Sam bit his cheek to keep from smiling.
At that, Dean had himself an appropriately royal hissy fit. “Hey, we’ve hunted our fair share of these things, and they never cared if we looked like G.I. Joe.”
“Maybe they don’t, but we have a whole city on lockdown, people trapped in their homes, scared and many of them armed. A lot of them haven’t seen one of these so-called rioters yet, so the fatigues aren’t so you feel like you’re being all you can be, it’s so some nervous homeowner is less likely to shoot you out their living room window.”
Dean shut up at that, but he still looked really annoyed that he looked like an upstanding member of society in desert camo fatigues and boots. At first blush, desert camo seemed an odd choice for Iowa, but they weren’t trying to blend in on this particular occasion… they wanted to stand out. And the pale colors would best reflect firelight.
“You sure we have enough torches for everyone?” Sam heard Ellen ask Strafe. He, too, was geared up for the op, though he actually looked like he wore it with ease. “Got sixty-odd torches, two hundred flares, two dozen flare guns, some of them boys have flame-throwers,” Strafe sounded envious of that, “and enough Bics to make a smokers’ convention pea green. Say we’re set for a good wendigo roast.”
Ellen slipped her own lighter into her BDU jacket and gave a harrumph that sounded eerily like Bobby. “Don’t forget we’re going to be in heavy civilian territory… we start the wrong fire, we could hurt a lot of people.”
Because the mob of wendigos wasn’t enough to worry about.
Dean wandered over, still morose from his tongue-lashing from the major. It was a rare person who could get one over on the unflappable Dean Winchester, and Sam couldn’t deny a smidgen of little brother delight at the seeing the tall poppy take a whack to the head.
“With these old-school torches,” Dean commented, “it’s going to look like we’re the angry villagers from those black and white horror movies.”
“As long as it gets the wendigos on the move,” Strafe said.
Operation Wendigo Inferno was, without doubt, the most coordinated, involved, and large-scale hunt the Winchesters had ever been on, if only because hunters rarely worked in teams much bigger than four (they were, by and large, a prickly, antisocial bunch). It was definitely the first time they’d worked alongside the military on a hunt.
But the scale of the problem in Des Moines called for desperate measures.
In a nutshell, the plan was to wait until sundown to get into position. The urban wendigos took to ground during the day, uncomfortable outside their woodland environment, but they came out at night in force. The troops and hunters would form a large living corral around the most concentrated areas of wendigo activity (presently, a southwest quadrant of the city). After nightfall, once the wendigos were in the open and on the move, the fire-wielding soldiers and hunters would start constricting the human noose, driving the wendigos ahead of them. Any that were killed in the process were gravy, but herding them was the main goal. In a neglected lot out the outskirts of town, an abandoned building had been filled with gas cans, stacks of newspapers, and gunpowder… a veritable matchbox, primed to go up in flames (and hopefully far enough away that civilians would be in a minimal amount of danger from the blaze). When the wendigos had been pushed into the building and cornered, the fire would be ignited, and they’d watch a building full of wendigos burn.
It sounded easy enough, but when did any hunt go off without a hitch?
The most critical (and most secretive) part of the plan rested on Castiel’s shoulders. The troops were confident they could herd the enemy without trouble, but the hunters knew better. Wendigos were fast… they could give humans the slip and outrun them any day of the week. But they couldn’t run faster than an angel could fly. And since Castiel was back to flying, he was critical for them to pull this off. If they had to crunch numbers on the distribution of labor for this operation, the credit for this hunt (if it worked) would be seventy percent Castiel’s victory. He would be the one truly rounding up wendigos, forcing them into the holding pen of torches brandished by the humans. And while the humans were handling the masses, Castiel would monitor the perimeter, picking off stragglers, escapees, and making sure the fallible human line did not break.
The only ones who knew about Castiel’s role, though, were the hunters. The truth about Castiel’s identity hadn’t been revealed to Major Owens, but he kept a wary eye on Castiel whenever they were in the same room… he’d seen the angel’s disappearing-reappearing act earlier, and he knew something was unusual about Castiel. For a guy who just found out the true nature of wendigos, anything outside the sphere of normal was highly suspect.
Though Sam speculated that Major Owens was prone to be suspicious, wendigos aside.
Major Owens looked toward the dying light coming through the windows, then down at his watch. “All right, Team One, grab your torches, head out, and get into position. Team Two, I want you ready to move out in ten minutes. Let’s go!”
Castiel was suddenly at Dean’s side, Daniel in his arms. Major Owens caught sight of him out of the corner of his eye, glanced over, and gave Castiel a measuring, suspicious look. It probably also didn’t help that no amount of staring could browbeat Castiel into donning fatigues… among a sea of Mojave drab, he was a sore thumb in his suit and trench coat.
“I don’t think he likes you much,” Strafe said, drolly stating the spectacularly obvious.
“Our ability to establish a meaningful friendship is immaterial to our mission,” Castiel replied evenly. When the major continued to give Castiel his best scary-major stare, Castiel gave him a scary-angel stare right back. Dean smirked when the major was the one who backed down. Sam didn’t blame him… when Cas wanted to be scary, he was really scary. Hard to believe when he just looked like this slim tax accountant to the inattentive eye.
“You sure you’re up for this?” Dean asked the angel softly.
Castiel gave him a measured look.
“Just that you only got back in the air today… and this is going to be logging a lot of flight time on your part.”
“I am still a weapon against evil; I will not fail.” Castiel sounded predictably miffed that his abilities to tackle dark forces would be called into question. Then he paused and glanced down hesitantly at Daniel. “What are we going to do with Daniel?”
“I’m going to watch him,” Jo said grudgingly, limping forward to take the baby. Castiel glanced at Dean and waited for the nod from him before he passed the baby into Jo’s arms. She looked down at Daniel a moment, then cracked a smile, despite doing her best to remain disgruntled about babysitting duty. “Okay, fine… he is cute.”
“Yep, total lady-killer,” Dean quipped. Then he looked toward Strafe. “Yo, Strafe… you wouldn’t happen to have a little travel hooch, would ya? One for the road?”
Strafe opened his mouth to answer…
… but didn’t get a word in edgewise.
“You really think a drink’s a good idea right now?” Ellen lectured, all the brunt of her motherly disapproval looming. It was even enough to buckle Dean… but then, Sam noticed his brother had always been a little bit afraid of Ellen Harvelle.
“Oh, come on… just one? Have a heart, Ellen; it looks like it’s shaping up to be a really long night.”
Sam got the feeling Dean would be proven right very soon.
*************
Dawn was breaking red and orange, making it look like the burning building had caught the sky on fire. From within, the inhuman chorus of wendigos igniting and flaming out was a haunting dirge to welcome the day. There had been moments when Sam doubted that the night would ever end.
The strident scent of burnt human hair mingled with the smell of human sweat as a wall of steely-eyed fighters stood nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, watching the monsters inside burn. Sam looked among their faces, and they were all masks, homogenous faces with glittering dark eyes and stony expressions. Some were bloody. Others sullied with dirt or soot. Sam could see the burns on some of their limbs… the danger of using such an indiscriminant weapon like fire - it didn’t care who it harmed.
Sam glanced toward the engulfed building. He saw dark figures through the fire-curtains in the windows, writhing and flailing, skinny hands and savage claws raking blindly to fend off death. The choir song of screams sent a chill down Sam’s spine. He could feel his heart still pounding in his chest… he wondered how long it would take to go back to normal. Right now, it felt like it never would. The combat-readiness of the long hours, the endless fight against the darkness and its beasts, was still too raw and close. The tickle of smoke would stay in his lungs for days, no doubt.
Sam looked over at his brother. Dean was standing awkwardly, favoring a vicious wound on his shoulder. His desert camo jacket was torn and stained dark with blood. Sam remembered what had happened all too vividly… they’d been moving through an alleyway, Dean leading with fire, Sam covering their asses with fire. Suddenly, Dean had yelled, and Sam whirled to find a wendigo had dropped a clawed hand on his shoulder, almost like he was trying to get Dean’s attention. Then it had ripped, tearing jacket, shirt, and flesh alike. Sam shoved his torch in its face, and it let go and ran, but not before Dean was hurt.
But although Dean was holding his shoulder oddly, he didn’t seem to really notice the pain. He was watching the bonfire rage, consuming the enemy. It wasn’t the first house Dean had watched burn… the first had been their own. Sam wondered why they seemed so eternally plagued by fire.
The hunters - and for that moment, they were all hunters - stood mesmerized and watched the building start to collapse on itself. Strafe and Ellen were standing to Sam’s left. Strafe was holding his right arm to his body like it was broken. Ellen had a dried trial of blood tracing a line from her nose to upper lip, and a real shiner of a black eye was blooming on the right side of her face. Sam felt like he’d gotten off light; he’d suffered only a minor burn to his arm. But they all looked like shades of hell, various degrees of banged up and battered.
Until Castiel was suddenly there, looking windswept but otherwise nonplussed, trench coat and suit as clean as ever.
Dean looked over at him. “Hey, Cas… is that all of them?” He jerked his head toward the fire.
Castiel glanced at Dean, hesitating a fraction of a second to frown at Dean’s bleeding shoulder. Then he cast his eyes toward the crumbling building. “That’s all of them.”
“Good.” Dean seemed to ratchet down from combat ready, letting a hint of his exhaustion and pain show. He looked over the angel. “You okay?”
It was almost laughable… Castiel was the only one of them who didn’t look like he’d gone three rounds with a Tasmanian devil. Castiel scowled again at Dean’s shoulder. “You’re hurt.”
“Nothing a band-aide won’t fix,” he said, dismissive (noticeably not including a devil-may-care shrug), but he didn’t try to escape Castiel’s hand when the angel reached for his shoulder. With great care, he peeled away the torn material of Dean’s clothes and studied the slashed flesh underneath. Dean grit his teeth but held himself still for inspection.
The angel scowled. “This is more serious than can be treated with a small adhesive bandage.”
Dean’s eyes crinkled. “Hey, I’m just impressed you know what a band-aide is.” Dean pinched his lips, and Sam knew the signs of brother-in-pain. “Don’t suppose you could fix it up, could you?”
Something remorseful flickered through Castiel’s fire-kissed gaze. He glanced surreptitiously at the long chain of people surrounding the fire, nearly all of them to a person wounded in some way. Castiel dropped his voice. “I’m not strong enough to heal them all.” Then he regarded Dean intently, falling easily into that habit he had of looking at Dean like he was the answer to the mysteries of the universe. His expression twitched almost painfully, and he snaked up a hand and rested his palm against the side of Dean’s neck. Sam knew the second the injury was gone, because Dean’s posture straightened and the ashen tinge to his face disappeared.
Castiel withdrew his hand with care, trying not to draw attention to what he’d done as he studied Dean. Sam smiled a little, despite it all. Castiel couldn’t stand seeing Dean in pain.
Ellen snorted to Sam’s left.
They were joined a moment later by Major Owens. He’d taken a claw to the face… three jagged cuts slashed at angles from his hairline to chin… Sam could swear he saw the bloody bone-shine of a tooth through the damage done to the major’s bottom lip.
“Evey’un ‘lright?” he asked at great pains, his speech butchered by the ruin of his mouth.
“We’re all okay,” Strafe answered his old friend, despite the way he was cradling his arm.
Major Owens took stock for himself, eyes resting on each of them in turn. When his eyes landed on Castiel, the major glared mistrustfully. It seemed unfair to Sam… Cas was the reason this Operation Wendigo Inferno had worked, but because he was so plainly not human, he was one heartbeat away from no better than the wendigos in the officer’s eyes.
If Sam ever wanted to see where the hunter’s world began and normal people’s ended, there it was.
“How about your men, Badger?” Strafe asked.
Major Owens broke eye contact with Cas and sighed, offering up a ‘so-so’ hand see-saw motion that didn’t require him to talk. Next, he hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the building. The screaming had slowly died out as the wendigos did. Now it was just the crackling of the fire and the moaning of the building buckling. In the distance, Sam thought he could hear the sirens of a fire truck.
The major’s wordless gesture was unclear to Sam, but Strafe got the meaning. “That was the lot of them.”
Owens didn’t question how Strafe knew that… he just accepted it. He blinked slowly, nodded, then gave Strafe and his team a weary thumb’s up and turned around to return to his men.
The soldiers were starting to break ranks, sensing that their enemies were dead and their mission complete. The living fence line broke apart, and comrades began to seek one another out, assessing injuries and doing a headcount of missing friends.
It left the hunters huddled together, separate.
“Anyone seriously hurt?” Ellen asked the moment they were left to tend their own. Strafe brushed off Ellen’s attempts to assess the extent of the damage to his arm. She gave him a disapproving glower for being an obstinate ass, then her eyes landed on Dean and his conspicuously blood-drenched shoulder. “Dean?”
Dean rolled his shoulder tenderly to prove just how undamaged he was. “I’m fine… just a scratch.”
Ellen looked dubious at first, then she glanced speculatively at Castiel standing at Dean’s side. She finally gave a curt nod. “All right, let’s head back to the Watering Hole, take care of any broken limbs, get cleaned up, and get some sleep.”
“I don’t have beds enough for everyone,” Strafe threw in guiltily. He lived above the bar, and Sam had walked through the living space earlier… there really wasn’t much to it.
“I don’t think anyone’s going to turn up their nose at a clean spot on the floor,” Ellen quipped.
Hell, Sam thought he could fall asleep on his feet if everyone would stop talking for a few minutes. All-nighters were common for hunters, but that didn’t make them any less draining. A lumpy pillow and a place to stretch out on the floor sounded awesome.
“Right,” Dean stifled a yawn. “We’ll grab some sleep, then head on to Bobby’s.”
“There is something here I still need to attend to before I leave,” Castiel said, matter-of-fact.
“Ah, crap… don’t tell me more wendigos…” Dean groaned.
Castiel cocked his head. “No… at least, not yet. But there is the matter of how this infestation could have happened in the first place. Wendigos are extremely uncommon creatures - fifty-seven should have accounted for the entire population of them in the North American continent, not the concentration one would find in a single city.”
“Yeah, no one’s arguing the what the fuckery of that,” Dean snorted. “So, you have any idea how this happened?” Dean sounded like he really didn’t want to hear it, even if Castiel did have a good guess. Dean didn’t look like he was up for anything but crashing for a few hours. Sam was with his brother on this one… talking bad, sleep good. Sleep now good.
“Perhaps,” Castiel postulated anyway. “Do you remember me speculating that Lucifer might try to find a way to bolster his ranks on earth without tapping into his resources in Hell?”
“Shit,” Sam hissed when he realized what Castiel was saying.
“No way,” Dean said.
“Wendigos do not have the same abilities as demons, nor their obedience to Lucifer’s commands, but they are a rough earthbound approximation… possibly close enough to serve his purposes.”
“You boys talking Lucifer like the Devil?” Strafe asked.
“Yeah… our lives really suck,” Dean replied.
“You saying this was literally the work of the Devil?” Ellen asked grimly.
“I suspect so. And if there is something nearby that is accelerating the process by which a human being becomes a wendigo, it must be destroyed.”
“Or else this was just a temporary fix at best,” Sam groaned, waving feebly at the fire. He had no interest in coming back again for a recreation of this miserable night. This was definitely one crappy 70’s horror movie that did not need a sequel.
“While I was in flight, I saw what appeared to be several underground tunnel systems,” Castiel began.
“How the hell did you have time to notice anything up there with all the wendigo-wrangling you were doing?” Strafe asked, incredulous.
“Angel,” Dean retorted smugly.
Castiel glanced between the two, then settled his eyes on Strafe. “Are you familiar with those tunnels I saw?”
“Well, sure… Des Moines was big time coal mining territory way back in the day, but all the mines were closed by the early 1900s. I imagine the mine shafts are still there, though… not that I’ve ever gone spelunking in them.”
“Well, we know wendigos like them,” Sam noted.
“And such a large network hidden from the public’s sight would be an ideal location for transforming humans to wendigos,” Castiel mused aloud, rolling the idea over like a cat with a mouse, deciding on the best way to go in for the kill.
Dean frowned. “But those wendigos had to come from people. Wouldn’t fifty missing people be noticed?”
Would they, Sam wondered. “Hey, Strafe… Des Moines have any homeless?”
“Well, sure, what city doesn’t?” Then Strafe’s face went slack. “Oh, hell.”
“What?” Ellen asked.
“Well, I go into Des Moines about once a week for supplies, and the places I go, I usually see my fair share of homeless on the streets… but I can’t remembering seeing one in at least a month.”
“Well, now we know where the human dough for baking a wendigo came from,” Dean groused tiredly.
Castiel was gazing out into the lightening sky, pensive and focused. Unlike the rest of them, the all-nighter did not seem to be dragging on him. He didn’t look at Dean as he spoke to him, “You and Sam may continue the journey to Bobby’s without me… I’ll stay behind to eliminate this threat.”
Sam saw Dean immediately open his mouth to say something, to protest, to complain… but before a sound escaped, he snapped his jaw shut and looked crossly at Castiel. Then he grunted. “Yeah, sure… you have your phone with you?”
Castiel nodded.
“Then remember to check in. We’ll call you when we get to Bobby’s.”
Sam wondered if Castiel could hear the tension in Dean’s voice. Probably not. But boy, Sam did. He suspected he knew why, too… but there wasn’t a chance in hell he would mention it.
In the next moment, Castiel was gone, leaving Strafe, Ellen, Sam, and Dean swaying on their feet, drained and barely awake. Strafe snorted in the wake of Castiel’s disappearance. “Don’t know how you guys ever get used to that.”
“You wouldn’t believe half the weird shit that doesn’t even phase us anymore,” Dean countered wearily.
Sam wished it wasn’t so painfully true.
Next