Unexpected Destinies Chapter 131
Title: Unexpected Destinies
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: up to and including Exile on Main St., AU from the end of season 5
Warnings: AU, slash
Word Count: 3,376
Summary: Dean and his archangels go to the Vatican once more.
PAST
"Simiel?" Dean repeated, startled.
A quick look behind him showed Dean that his archangels had heard the news and were now completely focused on his conversation, their own forgotten.
"She matches the description, but we have film footage of her if you wish to confirm it."
"Yeah, we'll be there right away," Dean replied, eyeing his coffee machine forlornly. "Where exactly are you all now?"
"We are in the Archives, the southern wing."
"We'll be right there."
Since he'd heard his lover moving closer, Dean wasn't surprised when he turned around and Castiel was right there. Two fingers touched his forehead and then he was back in the Vatican Archives. Unlike before, though, the halls were far from being either quiet or empty. No, this time they were full of people, mostly men in the clown suits of the Vatican security forces, though there were others present as well. The cacophony of sound after the relative silence of the apartment took a moment to sort through.
Most immediately obvious was the blaring of alarms, probably from the shattered display room windows that Dean saw everywhere. He winced at the sound but figured that taking care of the wounded was definitely a far higher priority than getting someone to go shut off the alarms. He didn't even need to ask to know that Simiel had used her true voice down here as far too many of the clown guards had blood coming from their ears for anything else to have transpired. He'd just turned to look towards Michael and Raphael, hoping they'd be amenable to lending a hand, when he saw that they already were. That Castiel would do so had never been in question.
"Are they healing them?" Father Mancini asked, suddenly beside him.
"They'll do their best," Dean replied. "If Simiel used her true voice, the voice of her true form, then I don't think that they can fully heal them."
"They will be deaf forever?"
"Yes, unfortunately."
Father Mancini seemed to ponder that a moment before nodding. "They have survived an encounter with an archangel and fought directly in the fight against Lucifer, they should be proud. And they will be honored."
"I doubt that they'll let this prevent them from trying to help out even more."
"Yes, I believe that you are right. It is good to see you again, even if it is under these horrible circumstances."
"And even better to see Castiel again?" Dean teased and knew he was right when the priest's eyes wandered towards his archangel and filled with awe and no little disbelief, as if the man still couldn't believe what he'd been allowed to see before.
Oddly enough, Dean felt a little twinge of jealousy deep within him and he frowned. If anything he should be glad that someone was giving his lover the reverence and respect that he felt Castiel so rightly deserved. So why did he feel this way? It wasn't like there was any danger whatsoever of Father Mancini trying to steal his angel away from him or anything ridiculous like that. Besides, even if they were somewhere where someone was actively trying to steal his lover away from him, he now knew that Castiel wouldn't be interested and that was only if his angel even realized what was going on. Despite everything that had happened and how thoroughly he'd introduced Castiel to sex and romance, his lover was still painfully naive in a lot of areas when it came to sex and humans. Especially when there was no love or serious affection involved as integral parts of the relationship.
So, yeah, Dean knew without a shadow of a doubt that his lover was his. So why the jealousy? It didn't make any sense, but he had the sneaking suspicion that Castiel would be turned on by it given his angel's own propensity for jealously and his lover's kink of claiming him as thoroughly as possible so he filed it away for the next time that they were alone. He had a feeling that he would like the results of doing so very much indeed.
Dean did his utmost best to keep the inappropriate look of glee off his face as he turned back towards Father Mancini. "Father Giordano said that you had video of the attack?"
"Yes, Colonel Anrig has it over there."
Father Mancini was pointing off towards the left and Dean followed him after a last glance back at his archangels who were still tending to the wounded and gathering a group of awed followers who didn't want to miss a single miracle. Or at least that's what it looked like to him and he left them to it. All three of his archangels had seen more than their fair share of humanity's darker side so it was probably a good thing that they now saw how grateful and awed that humans could be as well. Father Mancini was leading him through a group of far more alert and less wounded clown guards, all of whom parted easily when they caught sight of him and they were soon at a make shift command center where Colonel Anrig stood in the middle of a hum of controlled chaos.
"Winchester," Colonel Anrig said as soon as he caught sight of him.
"Colonel," Dean replied, knowing he'd butcher the guy's name if he tried to pronounce it and now was just not the time for that kind of stuff. "Father Mancini tells me you think it was Simiel that was here?"
"The woman was small and blond as you'd said Simiel is and she got past all of our multilayered demonic defenses as if they weren't even there, so I have to assume that she was an angel."
"Oh, of that I'm already certain seeing the kind of damage she wrecked on your men."
"That is the nature of the true form damage that Michael had mentioned to us the last time?"
"Part of it, yes. Though, trust me, it could have been far worse than this. I'm assuming that all she did was speak with her true voice as I don't see anyone with their eyes burned out."
"And you can take all of that inside you without damage?" Father Mancini questioned, awed.
Dean shifted uncomfortably, wishing the man was less awed now. It wasn't like he'd done anything to deserve that particular ability, it had just been the result of his ancestral lineage. "If it's Michael, then yeah, I don't think that I could survive it if any other angel were to try though I haven't ever actually asked them about that."
"What is it like?" Colonel Anrig asked and Dean suddenly realized that he had the complete attention of everyone around them.
"Uh, intense, it's really, really intense. I'm not quite sure how else to explain it beyond that as it's so different from anything else I can remember ever having experienced before. I guess it's more of a soul experience than a body one so you'd need to know what it's like to be just a soul, completely separated from your meatsuit. Not to say that your meatsuit isn't important as it most definitely is as your get pushed down inside of it when the angel comes in, but the feeling of Grace wrapping around your soul simply overrides anything else."
"You are aware of their Grace touching your soul?" Father Mancini all but whispered.
"Yeah," Dean replied, shifting uncomfortably under all of the attention. "Michael kinda wraps around me, he says it's to make sure that nothing can harm me while we're together."
And that still sounded wrong to Dean no matter how completely he now understood what it meant and how much he had come to enjoy all of the benefits of allowing his friend in. It was one of the few occasions where he disliked the fact that his mind lived quite happily in the gutter more often than not. He should have known that it would get him into trouble sooner or later and it was almost a miracle in and of itself that he hadn't truly come to regret it long before now.
With the flutter of wings, Castiel was suddenly beside him and Dean took far more satisfaction out of the fact that the others all jumped and made startled sounds than he really should have. After all he knew only all too well how annoying it could be to suddenly have an angel appearing in your midst. Still, it was funny when it was happening to someone other than him and to have it happen to a group of people, most of whom were dressed like clowns, then it became downright hilarious.
"Everyone healed?" Dean asked in lieu of laughing, though his lips twitched traitorously.
"Michael and Raphael are finishing up with the last two just now," Castiel replied. "Was Simiel the culprit here?"
"I don't know yet, we got sidetracked with questions about the damage a true form angel can do and what it feels like for vessels to experience all of this power unshielded."
"We do have the footage right here," Colonel Anrig said, pulling out a thin book like thing.
Dean frowned as he looked at it and it wasn't until clown guy flipped open a thin cover that he realized it was one of those newfangled pad thingies. The quality of the picture when Anrig brought it up was amazingly good though so he figured it might have some advantages but he still didn't get how you were supposed to do internet searches without a keyboard to actually type things in with.
"That's Simiel alright," Dean confirmed as soon as she appeared on screen, flying into the middle of a previously empty Archive hallway. "When did she attack?"
"It was just earlier this morning, Father Giordano called you as soon as we had the time to do so," Colonel Anrig replied.
"Why did you not call us during the attack itself?" Castiel asked. "We could have fought her off."
"It all happened so quickly, no one was expecting her to attack here and we couldn't do much to prevent her from just going wherever she chose to."
"Of course you couldn't, she's an archangel, remember?" Dean stated. "You're lucky that she didn't just kill everyone as she could have done that quite easily if she'd wanted too."
"Advice that you'd do well to remember as well, Dean," Castiel pointed out.
Dean scowled. "I've got experience with how to handle angels and I'm not sitting out if you guys are fighting."
The wings that came up to half wrap around him let Dean know that Castiel wasn't really arguing with him and given the scare they'd both had just the other day, he was more than willing to put up with a bit of protectiveness just now. And if that feeling led to more later when they were alone, well then so much the better and it would make him far more amenable to being on the receiving end of it in the future. So long as it always led to sex anyway.
There were times when Dean really had to wonder at how he could have as pure a soul as he did given how frequently his mind went straight into the gutter.
"She was looking for something," Castiel deduced as he watched Simiel's actions on the pad.
"That was our conclusion too and why we wished to halt her search, so that we could prevent her from finding what she wanted," Colonel Anrig explained. "We were unsuccessful."
"What did she get?" Dean asked.
He winced as he watched some of the fight on the footage. Not that Dean really thought that it could be called a fight at all so much as a one woman smack down of multiple highly trained clown guards. It would have been awe inspiring in a way if it hadn't been so horrible to see. Simiel's vessel couldn't be more than five foot two or three and yet she was successfully pulling off attacks that even the most ambitious of movie heroines wouldn't dare try on her opponents. It would be comical if it wasn't Lucifer's side gaining something else that they wanted for reasons that they hadn't managed to figure out just yet.
"We are not entirely sure," Father Mancini admitted with a little shrug. "It was an artifact that we procured a few centuries ago from the chambers of an extremist Christian group but were never able to identify. All we know is that they placed great value on it and that it is exceptionally old."
"How old?" Castiel inquired.
Now both Father Mancini and Colonel Anrig looked uncomfortable and Dean frowned, wondering what was bothering them.
"Carbon dating tests insist that it comes from the fourth millennium before the birth of Jesus Christ," Father Mancini finally replied.
"Making it most likely Sumerian in origin," Castiel mused.
"Sumerian?" Dean repeated. "What, like the stake we used to kill the Whore?"
"No, that was Babylonian, just like the Whore herself, no, this is even older than that."
"Oh."
"A pot of Enki," Michael stated when he arrived just in time to see Simiel examine her prize before flying off.
"Enen what?"
"Enki, he was a Sumerian god."
"Of what?"
"Depending on which religion you are looking at, everything from water, crafts, mischief, male fertility, intelligence and, what I suspect is most important here, both creation and knowledge."
Dean's eyebrows rose at that seemingly random collection of attributes before moving on. "You think Lucy's interested in something that he knew?"
"Perhaps."
"Enki was killed over a thousand years ago, wasn't he?" Castiel questioned.
"Yes, a group of hunters managed to corner him and drive a virgin blood soaked stake of beech and oak through him after he killed the child of one of them."
"The pagan gods are real?"
The voice belonged to Father Giordano whose arrival Dean had missed. The poor guy was now pale as a sheet and he was a bit afraid that Father Giordano would faint.
"All of the ancient gods are real, though they do not deserve the name god," Michael stated. "They might have seemed as such to humans once, but they were really nothing more than extremely powerful supernatural beings who were able to maintain their position by being worshipped and believed in. Now that most humans do not do so anymore, they have lost much of their power and are now vulnerable to being killed if the right tools are used."
"Yeah, yeah, but what does the pot of Enki do?" Dean demanded. "Is it powerful?"
"It has the potential to be extremely so," Castiel replied. "Enki was very powerful at his zenith."
With a flutter of wings, Raphael arrived and he looked at Michael. "Yes, Brother?"
"Do you know why Simiel may have come here after a pot of Enki?"
"No."
"Great, so we know that Lucifer has a pot of Enki and the chalice of Saint John the Evangelist but we don't have a clue why he'd want either one," Dean summed up.
"That is correct," Michael agreed.
"The chalice of Saint John the Evangelist?" Father Giordano repeated. "The one he was given with poisoned wine and upon his blessing became pure with the poison rising from it in the form of a serpent?"
"Huh?" Dean questioned.
"No, this was a chalice which he created while in Heaven," Raphael corrected. "It was in an attempt to aid the plight of the souls in Purgatory but which he abandoned when he realized that the souls would have to spend their allocated time in Purgatory even if he managed to purify them faster."
"You say that Lucifer has acquired this chalice?" Colonel Anrig asked.
"Yes, he had his demons obtain it from its hiding place in Teotihuacan," Castiel confirmed.
"So that was why the demons were there. What about the demonic attack on Angkor Wat in Cambodia?"
"What attack?"
"You didn't know?"
"We were a little focused on the one at Teotihuacan," Michael replied. "How do you know about that one?"
"We have a massive information network," Colonel Anrig explained. "This attack was hastily performed with none of the effort made at Teotihuacan to keep it hidden from public view."
"They know we have realized that they are up to something," Castiel concluded.
"The question is why we didn't know about this one," Dean growled as he pulled out his phone and dialed, only just remembering to switch back to English (though he did wonder if perhaps the demon could speak multiple languages). "Crowley."
"Cupcake, I wa-" Crowley began.
"Why didn't you tell us about Angkor Wat?"
"Ah, you heard about that have you?"
"What do you think?"
"Touchy, touchy. Just calm down, pet, I've only just heard about it myself."
"So what use are you to us then?"
"Hey, now hold on there, cupcake, I did warn you about Teotihuacan. That was the one my contacts had heard about. This second attack happened practically as soon as the demons involved learned about it. There was simply no time for me to find out and warn you about it in advance."
"What about anything else? Are there any more whispers?"
"Not yet." Dean gritted his teeth and started to pull his phone away to kill the connection when Crowley continued. "But I might have something for you. You said you knew about the attack on Angkor Wat, but do you know why they attacked it?"
"You know?"
"Give me a little credit here, cupcake. Do you really think that I'm anything less than fully committed to this cause? Lucifer's put a price out on my head and his lackeys ate my tailor, remember? I want him gone just as much as you do."
"I highly doubt that."
"Say please now."
"Crowley."
"Oh come now, cupcake, I'm not asking anything unreasonable here, just a little politeness."
"How about I get a friend of mine over here to trace this call and have Cas pay you a little visit?"
"Now, now, no need to get threatening, lover boy," Crowley replied. "Oh alright, it was the unicorn blood."
"Unicorn blood?"
"There's been this rumor in demonic circles that Lilith once orchestrated a large massacre of unicorns and collected their blood."
"What? Why?"
"Who knows? It was Lilith and most of what she did never made much sense. Lucifer might have broken her a wee bit when he demonized her," Crowley replied. "Personally I think it was because she hated their purity as they say she had once been pure enough herself to actually touch them and now she wasn't. Regardless, the rumor was that she hid the unicorn blood at Angkor Wat."
"And it was never found?"
"Many looked but nothing was ever found, hence the reason it was believed to be nothing but a rumor, a story that was circulated enough that made it into demonic lore."
"So how did they find it now?"
"My guess is that Lucifer knew something that they didn't. He did create Lilith after all."
"So how much blood are we talking about here?"
"A bloody lot from what I've heard."
"Any clue what Lucifer wants with it?"
"How should I know? Ask your lover, he's Lucifer's brother."
With that Crowley hung up and Dean scowled at the phone before looking back at his archangels. "Any ideas?"
"Unicorn blood is generally used in purification rituals, but those all require the blood to have been donated willingly by the unicorn," Michael stated.
"Not all of them," Raphael countered, a troubled expression on his face. "Just the approved rituals."
"Approved?" Dean asked, a bad feeling rising within him.
"Yes. There are many Dark Arts uses for unicorn blood as well which don't require it to have been obtained from a willing donor," Castiel explained. "What are you thinking, Brother?"
"Both the blood and the chalice of Saint John the Evangelist have purification properties," Raphael began before he looked right at Dean. "I fear that Lucifer might have found a way to overcome the Rite of Contressa by treating it as a curse or other taint to his Grace and dissolving it that way."
Chapter 132
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: up to and including Exile on Main St., AU from the end of season 5
Warnings: AU, slash
Word Count: 3,376
Summary: Dean and his archangels go to the Vatican once more.
PAST
"Simiel?" Dean repeated, startled.
A quick look behind him showed Dean that his archangels had heard the news and were now completely focused on his conversation, their own forgotten.
"She matches the description, but we have film footage of her if you wish to confirm it."
"Yeah, we'll be there right away," Dean replied, eyeing his coffee machine forlornly. "Where exactly are you all now?"
"We are in the Archives, the southern wing."
"We'll be right there."
Since he'd heard his lover moving closer, Dean wasn't surprised when he turned around and Castiel was right there. Two fingers touched his forehead and then he was back in the Vatican Archives. Unlike before, though, the halls were far from being either quiet or empty. No, this time they were full of people, mostly men in the clown suits of the Vatican security forces, though there were others present as well. The cacophony of sound after the relative silence of the apartment took a moment to sort through.
Most immediately obvious was the blaring of alarms, probably from the shattered display room windows that Dean saw everywhere. He winced at the sound but figured that taking care of the wounded was definitely a far higher priority than getting someone to go shut off the alarms. He didn't even need to ask to know that Simiel had used her true voice down here as far too many of the clown guards had blood coming from their ears for anything else to have transpired. He'd just turned to look towards Michael and Raphael, hoping they'd be amenable to lending a hand, when he saw that they already were. That Castiel would do so had never been in question.
"Are they healing them?" Father Mancini asked, suddenly beside him.
"They'll do their best," Dean replied. "If Simiel used her true voice, the voice of her true form, then I don't think that they can fully heal them."
"They will be deaf forever?"
"Yes, unfortunately."
Father Mancini seemed to ponder that a moment before nodding. "They have survived an encounter with an archangel and fought directly in the fight against Lucifer, they should be proud. And they will be honored."
"I doubt that they'll let this prevent them from trying to help out even more."
"Yes, I believe that you are right. It is good to see you again, even if it is under these horrible circumstances."
"And even better to see Castiel again?" Dean teased and knew he was right when the priest's eyes wandered towards his archangel and filled with awe and no little disbelief, as if the man still couldn't believe what he'd been allowed to see before.
Oddly enough, Dean felt a little twinge of jealousy deep within him and he frowned. If anything he should be glad that someone was giving his lover the reverence and respect that he felt Castiel so rightly deserved. So why did he feel this way? It wasn't like there was any danger whatsoever of Father Mancini trying to steal his angel away from him or anything ridiculous like that. Besides, even if they were somewhere where someone was actively trying to steal his lover away from him, he now knew that Castiel wouldn't be interested and that was only if his angel even realized what was going on. Despite everything that had happened and how thoroughly he'd introduced Castiel to sex and romance, his lover was still painfully naive in a lot of areas when it came to sex and humans. Especially when there was no love or serious affection involved as integral parts of the relationship.
So, yeah, Dean knew without a shadow of a doubt that his lover was his. So why the jealousy? It didn't make any sense, but he had the sneaking suspicion that Castiel would be turned on by it given his angel's own propensity for jealously and his lover's kink of claiming him as thoroughly as possible so he filed it away for the next time that they were alone. He had a feeling that he would like the results of doing so very much indeed.
Dean did his utmost best to keep the inappropriate look of glee off his face as he turned back towards Father Mancini. "Father Giordano said that you had video of the attack?"
"Yes, Colonel Anrig has it over there."
Father Mancini was pointing off towards the left and Dean followed him after a last glance back at his archangels who were still tending to the wounded and gathering a group of awed followers who didn't want to miss a single miracle. Or at least that's what it looked like to him and he left them to it. All three of his archangels had seen more than their fair share of humanity's darker side so it was probably a good thing that they now saw how grateful and awed that humans could be as well. Father Mancini was leading him through a group of far more alert and less wounded clown guards, all of whom parted easily when they caught sight of him and they were soon at a make shift command center where Colonel Anrig stood in the middle of a hum of controlled chaos.
"Winchester," Colonel Anrig said as soon as he caught sight of him.
"Colonel," Dean replied, knowing he'd butcher the guy's name if he tried to pronounce it and now was just not the time for that kind of stuff. "Father Mancini tells me you think it was Simiel that was here?"
"The woman was small and blond as you'd said Simiel is and she got past all of our multilayered demonic defenses as if they weren't even there, so I have to assume that she was an angel."
"Oh, of that I'm already certain seeing the kind of damage she wrecked on your men."
"That is the nature of the true form damage that Michael had mentioned to us the last time?"
"Part of it, yes. Though, trust me, it could have been far worse than this. I'm assuming that all she did was speak with her true voice as I don't see anyone with their eyes burned out."
"And you can take all of that inside you without damage?" Father Mancini questioned, awed.
Dean shifted uncomfortably, wishing the man was less awed now. It wasn't like he'd done anything to deserve that particular ability, it had just been the result of his ancestral lineage. "If it's Michael, then yeah, I don't think that I could survive it if any other angel were to try though I haven't ever actually asked them about that."
"What is it like?" Colonel Anrig asked and Dean suddenly realized that he had the complete attention of everyone around them.
"Uh, intense, it's really, really intense. I'm not quite sure how else to explain it beyond that as it's so different from anything else I can remember ever having experienced before. I guess it's more of a soul experience than a body one so you'd need to know what it's like to be just a soul, completely separated from your meatsuit. Not to say that your meatsuit isn't important as it most definitely is as your get pushed down inside of it when the angel comes in, but the feeling of Grace wrapping around your soul simply overrides anything else."
"You are aware of their Grace touching your soul?" Father Mancini all but whispered.
"Yeah," Dean replied, shifting uncomfortably under all of the attention. "Michael kinda wraps around me, he says it's to make sure that nothing can harm me while we're together."
And that still sounded wrong to Dean no matter how completely he now understood what it meant and how much he had come to enjoy all of the benefits of allowing his friend in. It was one of the few occasions where he disliked the fact that his mind lived quite happily in the gutter more often than not. He should have known that it would get him into trouble sooner or later and it was almost a miracle in and of itself that he hadn't truly come to regret it long before now.
With the flutter of wings, Castiel was suddenly beside him and Dean took far more satisfaction out of the fact that the others all jumped and made startled sounds than he really should have. After all he knew only all too well how annoying it could be to suddenly have an angel appearing in your midst. Still, it was funny when it was happening to someone other than him and to have it happen to a group of people, most of whom were dressed like clowns, then it became downright hilarious.
"Everyone healed?" Dean asked in lieu of laughing, though his lips twitched traitorously.
"Michael and Raphael are finishing up with the last two just now," Castiel replied. "Was Simiel the culprit here?"
"I don't know yet, we got sidetracked with questions about the damage a true form angel can do and what it feels like for vessels to experience all of this power unshielded."
"We do have the footage right here," Colonel Anrig said, pulling out a thin book like thing.
Dean frowned as he looked at it and it wasn't until clown guy flipped open a thin cover that he realized it was one of those newfangled pad thingies. The quality of the picture when Anrig brought it up was amazingly good though so he figured it might have some advantages but he still didn't get how you were supposed to do internet searches without a keyboard to actually type things in with.
"That's Simiel alright," Dean confirmed as soon as she appeared on screen, flying into the middle of a previously empty Archive hallway. "When did she attack?"
"It was just earlier this morning, Father Giordano called you as soon as we had the time to do so," Colonel Anrig replied.
"Why did you not call us during the attack itself?" Castiel asked. "We could have fought her off."
"It all happened so quickly, no one was expecting her to attack here and we couldn't do much to prevent her from just going wherever she chose to."
"Of course you couldn't, she's an archangel, remember?" Dean stated. "You're lucky that she didn't just kill everyone as she could have done that quite easily if she'd wanted too."
"Advice that you'd do well to remember as well, Dean," Castiel pointed out.
Dean scowled. "I've got experience with how to handle angels and I'm not sitting out if you guys are fighting."
The wings that came up to half wrap around him let Dean know that Castiel wasn't really arguing with him and given the scare they'd both had just the other day, he was more than willing to put up with a bit of protectiveness just now. And if that feeling led to more later when they were alone, well then so much the better and it would make him far more amenable to being on the receiving end of it in the future. So long as it always led to sex anyway.
There were times when Dean really had to wonder at how he could have as pure a soul as he did given how frequently his mind went straight into the gutter.
"She was looking for something," Castiel deduced as he watched Simiel's actions on the pad.
"That was our conclusion too and why we wished to halt her search, so that we could prevent her from finding what she wanted," Colonel Anrig explained. "We were unsuccessful."
"What did she get?" Dean asked.
He winced as he watched some of the fight on the footage. Not that Dean really thought that it could be called a fight at all so much as a one woman smack down of multiple highly trained clown guards. It would have been awe inspiring in a way if it hadn't been so horrible to see. Simiel's vessel couldn't be more than five foot two or three and yet she was successfully pulling off attacks that even the most ambitious of movie heroines wouldn't dare try on her opponents. It would be comical if it wasn't Lucifer's side gaining something else that they wanted for reasons that they hadn't managed to figure out just yet.
"We are not entirely sure," Father Mancini admitted with a little shrug. "It was an artifact that we procured a few centuries ago from the chambers of an extremist Christian group but were never able to identify. All we know is that they placed great value on it and that it is exceptionally old."
"How old?" Castiel inquired.
Now both Father Mancini and Colonel Anrig looked uncomfortable and Dean frowned, wondering what was bothering them.
"Carbon dating tests insist that it comes from the fourth millennium before the birth of Jesus Christ," Father Mancini finally replied.
"Making it most likely Sumerian in origin," Castiel mused.
"Sumerian?" Dean repeated. "What, like the stake we used to kill the Whore?"
"No, that was Babylonian, just like the Whore herself, no, this is even older than that."
"Oh."
"A pot of Enki," Michael stated when he arrived just in time to see Simiel examine her prize before flying off.
"Enen what?"
"Enki, he was a Sumerian god."
"Of what?"
"Depending on which religion you are looking at, everything from water, crafts, mischief, male fertility, intelligence and, what I suspect is most important here, both creation and knowledge."
Dean's eyebrows rose at that seemingly random collection of attributes before moving on. "You think Lucy's interested in something that he knew?"
"Perhaps."
"Enki was killed over a thousand years ago, wasn't he?" Castiel questioned.
"Yes, a group of hunters managed to corner him and drive a virgin blood soaked stake of beech and oak through him after he killed the child of one of them."
"The pagan gods are real?"
The voice belonged to Father Giordano whose arrival Dean had missed. The poor guy was now pale as a sheet and he was a bit afraid that Father Giordano would faint.
"All of the ancient gods are real, though they do not deserve the name god," Michael stated. "They might have seemed as such to humans once, but they were really nothing more than extremely powerful supernatural beings who were able to maintain their position by being worshipped and believed in. Now that most humans do not do so anymore, they have lost much of their power and are now vulnerable to being killed if the right tools are used."
"Yeah, yeah, but what does the pot of Enki do?" Dean demanded. "Is it powerful?"
"It has the potential to be extremely so," Castiel replied. "Enki was very powerful at his zenith."
With a flutter of wings, Raphael arrived and he looked at Michael. "Yes, Brother?"
"Do you know why Simiel may have come here after a pot of Enki?"
"No."
"Great, so we know that Lucifer has a pot of Enki and the chalice of Saint John the Evangelist but we don't have a clue why he'd want either one," Dean summed up.
"That is correct," Michael agreed.
"The chalice of Saint John the Evangelist?" Father Giordano repeated. "The one he was given with poisoned wine and upon his blessing became pure with the poison rising from it in the form of a serpent?"
"Huh?" Dean questioned.
"No, this was a chalice which he created while in Heaven," Raphael corrected. "It was in an attempt to aid the plight of the souls in Purgatory but which he abandoned when he realized that the souls would have to spend their allocated time in Purgatory even if he managed to purify them faster."
"You say that Lucifer has acquired this chalice?" Colonel Anrig asked.
"Yes, he had his demons obtain it from its hiding place in Teotihuacan," Castiel confirmed.
"So that was why the demons were there. What about the demonic attack on Angkor Wat in Cambodia?"
"What attack?"
"You didn't know?"
"We were a little focused on the one at Teotihuacan," Michael replied. "How do you know about that one?"
"We have a massive information network," Colonel Anrig explained. "This attack was hastily performed with none of the effort made at Teotihuacan to keep it hidden from public view."
"They know we have realized that they are up to something," Castiel concluded.
"The question is why we didn't know about this one," Dean growled as he pulled out his phone and dialed, only just remembering to switch back to English (though he did wonder if perhaps the demon could speak multiple languages). "Crowley."
"Cupcake, I wa-" Crowley began.
"Why didn't you tell us about Angkor Wat?"
"Ah, you heard about that have you?"
"What do you think?"
"Touchy, touchy. Just calm down, pet, I've only just heard about it myself."
"So what use are you to us then?"
"Hey, now hold on there, cupcake, I did warn you about Teotihuacan. That was the one my contacts had heard about. This second attack happened practically as soon as the demons involved learned about it. There was simply no time for me to find out and warn you about it in advance."
"What about anything else? Are there any more whispers?"
"Not yet." Dean gritted his teeth and started to pull his phone away to kill the connection when Crowley continued. "But I might have something for you. You said you knew about the attack on Angkor Wat, but do you know why they attacked it?"
"You know?"
"Give me a little credit here, cupcake. Do you really think that I'm anything less than fully committed to this cause? Lucifer's put a price out on my head and his lackeys ate my tailor, remember? I want him gone just as much as you do."
"I highly doubt that."
"Say please now."
"Crowley."
"Oh come now, cupcake, I'm not asking anything unreasonable here, just a little politeness."
"How about I get a friend of mine over here to trace this call and have Cas pay you a little visit?"
"Now, now, no need to get threatening, lover boy," Crowley replied. "Oh alright, it was the unicorn blood."
"Unicorn blood?"
"There's been this rumor in demonic circles that Lilith once orchestrated a large massacre of unicorns and collected their blood."
"What? Why?"
"Who knows? It was Lilith and most of what she did never made much sense. Lucifer might have broken her a wee bit when he demonized her," Crowley replied. "Personally I think it was because she hated their purity as they say she had once been pure enough herself to actually touch them and now she wasn't. Regardless, the rumor was that she hid the unicorn blood at Angkor Wat."
"And it was never found?"
"Many looked but nothing was ever found, hence the reason it was believed to be nothing but a rumor, a story that was circulated enough that made it into demonic lore."
"So how did they find it now?"
"My guess is that Lucifer knew something that they didn't. He did create Lilith after all."
"So how much blood are we talking about here?"
"A bloody lot from what I've heard."
"Any clue what Lucifer wants with it?"
"How should I know? Ask your lover, he's Lucifer's brother."
With that Crowley hung up and Dean scowled at the phone before looking back at his archangels. "Any ideas?"
"Unicorn blood is generally used in purification rituals, but those all require the blood to have been donated willingly by the unicorn," Michael stated.
"Not all of them," Raphael countered, a troubled expression on his face. "Just the approved rituals."
"Approved?" Dean asked, a bad feeling rising within him.
"Yes. There are many Dark Arts uses for unicorn blood as well which don't require it to have been obtained from a willing donor," Castiel explained. "What are you thinking, Brother?"
"Both the blood and the chalice of Saint John the Evangelist have purification properties," Raphael began before he looked right at Dean. "I fear that Lucifer might have found a way to overcome the Rite of Contressa by treating it as a curse or other taint to his Grace and dissolving it that way."
Chapter 132