spnxdf: Lost Sons Chapter 10
SPNxDF: Lost Sons
Chapter 10
wc: 3,251
Chapter Ten
Morning came in the form of Sergeant Murphy with gifts from the Missing Persons Department of Illinois and Dunkin' Donuts. She handed over the coffee without a single word, sitting on the couch and sipping her own while Harry built up the fire and proceeded to gulp down the hot, bitter nectar from its Styrofoam grail.
"I have something else," Murphy announced once Harry was coherent enough to understand what she was saying.
Harry packed a glazed donut into his cheek and watched her intently for more.
"I got a phone call from patrol last night. They impounded a 1967 black Chevy Impala abandoned at the intersection of Thorndale and Broadway," she informed, taking a sip from her coffee.
"And that concerns me…how?" Harry asked, still chewing on the donut.
Murphy sighed. "It's the same make and model of the car that belongs to the Winchesters. I put out a notice on the car and said I wanted to know if anyone saw it in the city."
Harry stilled. "Really?"
"Someone called in the car, said it was just sitting in the middle of the street." Murphy frowned and stared into her coffee. "There was blood on the sidewalk and the driver's side door was left open. They found a couple of guns in the back seat and fake ids in the glove compartment. There was also a cell phone and a syringe in the ditch."
"Hell's bells Murph," The wizard sat up. "Was someone killed?"
"No," Murphy looked a little hopeful. "But it looks like someone was abducted…and put up a hell of a fight. The toxicology report I snuck a peak at said the syringe was filled with a powerful sedative. There wasn't enough blood at the scene to confirm a death."
Harry blinked at her in surprise before sitting back and letting out a huff of disbelief. "Wow," he said.
"I checked with Mercy before I came too. Anthony is stable. He might come around sometime today they hope. Michael was there most of the night with Sanya." She noticed the carefully stacked files on the floor, those that had been lifted from Forthill's private office and the one Harry had been lugging around with his own investigation of Carthage. Murphy jerked her chin at it. "What did you turn up from the files?"
Harry told her. He started with the Seals and finished with the discovery of the Horsemen. He recounted the testimony of the River Pass priest, who claimed hunters arrived in their town and saved them from destroying each other. Murphy took the news in stride, her brows lifting in surprise as the wizard produced solid evidence of the Harvelle women working in tandem with the Winchesters.
"I hate to tell you Murph…" Harry said when he was done. "After last night, I was thinking of tracking down the Winchesters if they were still in town." He sighed and gulped down the last of his coffee. "Now it looks like there might be a problem with that."
Murphy nodded slowly.
"So…" she said after a long pause. "It really is…"
"Apocalypse Now? Yes." Harry said dryly.
Murphy's lip quirked in a very small, very weak smile. "That's not funny," she said. She hid her expression behind the rest of her coffee and toed the white evidence box across the floor to Harry. "Novak's file."
Harry flicked the coffee cup into the trash as he picked up the box and looked at it. He frowned for a moment and set it back down.
"Something wrong?" Murphy asked.
"I'm worried," the wizard admitted. "Novak was in the vicinity of the rising of a Horseman. I…I would rather hand this off to the Council and let them deal with it." He sighed and rubbed at his eyes. "Why am I always the one saving the world?"
Murphy watched him carefully for a minute, seeing the actual fear that loomed over the wizard as he stared down at the box. His eyes drifted to the files and then back to the box. The officer slid down the couch and reached out with her hand to take a hold of his and give it a squeeze.
"No one is going to blame you for asking for help." She said. "You don't need to always save the world. And you don't always have to do it alone, Harry. I will not think less of you if you let this one go. You have done more than enough in the last decade than most people will ever do in their lifetime."
Harry looked at her hand holding is and bit his lip. He squeezed back.
"But…I can't sit here and do nothing," he replied. "And…whatever was in Carthage…whatever brought the hellhounds…is here now." Harry glanced up at her. "This is our home. All of our friends are here. Their lives are in danger."
Karrin reached out with her other hand and placed it gently over both of theirs. "I took an oath to protect the lives of the people in this city. You know that I'm going to stay and I'm going to fight it."
"I'm not going to let you do it alone, Karrin." Harry whispered. "Nobody should confront this alone."
"Then let's try to stop it before more people die," Murphy said. "Together."
Harry nodded slowly at her, holding her hand tight. He started to say something more when he stopped himself. A long time ago, there was the possibility…that maybe there was something more between the two of them than just being friends. And maybe it was still there. Having just been confronted with the possible end of the known world, the wizard wondered if he shouldn't just take the initiative that he had refused to before now. Maybe that door wasn't closed all the way. Maybe-
"You give me the 'end of the world' speech, and so help me I will shoot you." Murphy announced. She had the look of someone in deep thought, but a faint smile touched her lips. There was no humor in her eyes though. In that one instant, they had both had the same thought.
Harry managed a nervous chuckle. He pulled Murphy's hand up to his lips and kissed her knuckles. "Okay." He finally let go of her hand and started to reach for the box.
It took all of Harry's willpower to let go.
The chances of the tracking spell actually working were nil to none.
But somehow it caught and the little compass with a bit of Novak's hair taped to it spun wildly for a moment and then pointed to the south. Murphy called Sanya and the Knight joined them at Michael's house, leaving in the Sergeant's Saturn for parts unknown according to the compass.
They ended up on the fringes of Hyde Park, just off the grounds of the University of Chicago. Harry decided, since they were on the territory of the Alphas, the college's very own werewolf pack that protected area from supernatural threats, to call in to William and Georgia Borden and have them join in the search. Unlike the typical werewolf, the Alphas were in fact humans who could transform their physical bodies with an incantation into that of large wolves and still retain their human consciousness.
Will accepted the challenge and met them at the entrance to the skating rink. He came jogging across the college's open quad in his winter's best, a black down coat that added more bulk to his already toned body. His rich brown hair was left to defend itself though.
"Murphy said we're looking for a guy?" Will said, not even short of breath from the great distance he took to reach them from his apartment on the other side of campus.
"Thought you might want in on it." Harry said, holding the compass. It was pointing past the entrance of the ice rink. Throngs of people milled about, both on and off the ice. With the extended holiday weekend, whole families were out in the November morning, enjoying each other's company.
A flicker of pain coursed through Harry, who suddenly remembered that only the night before he had discovered the End of Days was in full swing.
And everyone, except for them, were unaware of it.
"Here's his picture." Murphy held up a photograph that had been found in the evidence box. "His name is James Novak."
Will nodded as he took a good long look at the image. "This got anything to do with the hunters I heard about being in town?" he asked.
"I don't know," Harry replied. "But it's got everything to do with Carthage."
The werewolf snapped out of his study of the picture. If he had shown any concern about a couple of guys that would probably shoot him on sight, it paled in comparison to the carefully schooled focus that the young man now bore.
Harry tuned and started in the direction pointed on the compass. Murphy and Will broke off and started walking several feet away, sweeping through the crowd of parents and children. They entered the Warming House and continued to move briskly towards the ice rink.
Outside again, the ice was covered in a spinning circle of people. They talked and laughed, children squealed in excitement. The scraping of blades against ice was sharp against the cold air over the park.
Harry looked down at his compass and followed it to the southwest, along the edges of the rink. The wizard had an advantage over many of the people milling about. He stood nearly six and half feet tall and could see easily over the heads of the crowd. Harry looked up and started scanning the crowd as he moved forward, hoping to see Novak before he walked right into the guy.
Standing on the fringes of the crowd looking in towards the rinks, stood a man in a long tan colored trench coat, his eyes focused on the skaters. His expression was distant and yet serene. His overall appearance was unkempt and Harry found it slightly disconcerting that the man wore so little in the face of the chilly November air.
Sanya leaned over him, adjusting the strap of the plastic tubing that held his sword. "Harry, do you see him?"
"Yeah," Harry looked down at his compass and up again. "Yeah, I think I do." He swallowed and pocketed the compass as Murphy and Will came over to join them.
"What do you want to do?" Murphy asked, adjusted her coat in case she needed to reach for her gun tucked into a shoulder holster. Will had apparently been informed of the situation at hand, because he looked incredibly grave. He was fixing his own coat, read to peel it off and transform at a moment's notice should he have to.
Harry held out his hand to stop them. "Stay here. If this goes south, Murphy, these people are going to need you."
The officer started to open her mouth in protest when Will took her by the arm. He was going to standby with her without an argument.
The wizard motioned to Sanya and the two started through the masses for the man in the coat. They made their way towards the edge, coming from behind where the man would be least likely to see them. Harry approached casually, taking in the profile of the man as they neared and was more than certain that this haggard guy in a suit was the one they were looking for. He had wind swept jet-black hair that matched the strands Harry had taped to the compass and a day's growth of stubble along his jaw.
Harry started to reach out and touch the man's shoulder, but his hand and his keen wizard sense realized a moment too late that there was something between the two of them that was protruding out of James Novak's back.
The air shifted and that feel of…something slammed into Harry, passing right through him. He realized a second too late that Novak had been standing absolutely still, his body free of the subtle shifts of weight and twitches. And now he moved with an almost perfect inhuman grace, spinning around. The air around him in about a six foot radius moved with him as he turned.
There is something on his back that I can't see! Harry thought. The air around them suddenly tasted and smelled like the ozone given off in lightning strikes and the hair on the back of the wizard's neck stood on end.
The last warning Harry got that Novak wasn't entirely human was when he pinned two starting blue eyes on his own.
Normal humans didn't look one another in the eye.
And it took all of a fraction of a second for the wizard and the man in front of him to fall into a soulgaze.
Wizards are gifted with the unique ability to see someone's soul. It was also a two way street, so the other person, wizard or not, could also do the same to Harry. And what ever you saw in a soulgaze, much like with the Sight, would stay with you forever, good or bad.
He had not been prepared at all for a soulgaze. So when Harry literally fell into it, everything in the physical world fell away. The last thing he wanted to do was to see into the soul of a guy that was probably not in anyway human and had been at the epicenter of Carthage. Harry braced himself for the worse…
And found himself standing in the entryway of a modest home.
Harry saw his shadow stretch out in front of him on the hardwood floors. He turned and glanced over his shoulder at the door. The wizard winced at the painfully bright light that seemed to filter through the glass. Noise, like the sound of a roaring wind was buffered by the door but there was nothing else to see beyond it. He stepped away from the door and put it to his back, blinking the spots out of his astral vision. The wizard came to the intersection of a dinning room to his left and a living room to his right. More of that painful light streamed in through the windows, but it was muted by the shades.
Stairs lead up to a second story and the hallway Harry stood in headed towards the back of the house. He walked carefully forward, taking a moment to look at a picture he found on the wall of a family. There was a little girl and a woman, both blondes, standing with Novak, who looked better cared for and not as rugged. A happy family.
He heard the wood floors creak. Harry froze and watched as someone stepped through the end of the hall, which looked like it had another intersection beyond the stairs. Light cascaded into the hall from them and Harry swore he almost missed the form of a man dressed in a black suit, passing between the rooms.
Harry stepped forward, shielding his eyes from the light as he turned into the room that he had seen the man go. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust, but he found himself standing in a home office. The man in the suit was Novak, clean shaven, hair brushed, and wearing a black suit with a blue tie. The trench coat that he had been wearing in the physical world was missing.
He was standing at the desk, holding a picture frame he had lifted off it's surface and trailing a finger over the image of what was probably his wife and daughter.
"James Novak?" Harry called out tentatively.
Novak flinched as if he wasn't sure someone was actually speaking to him. Harry called out again and the man turned, looking up from the picture in his hands. Their eyes met and this time there was no soulgaze.
James Novak looked him over once, he was surprised at first and then confused. "What are you doing here?" He asked, setting the picture back on the desk, turning it away from Harry to see the images.
"Um…it was an accident. You looked me in the eye and started a soulgaze. I'll be gone in a minute." Harry said, raising his hands in a peaceful gesture.
James's hand was coming round the end of an envelope opener. "You're not a demon?" He asked, his expression hardening.
"Just a regular guy."
"You shouldn't be here." James said, relaxing his hold on the letter opener. "If you're a psychic, you should leave before you see him."
Harry felt a bolt of nervousness run through him. "You're not alone in here, are you James…" The last time he had been in a soulgaze with someone with more than one tenant at home, the wizard had been in for a whole new world of ugliness.
"He burned out the eyes of the last one," James announced, his voice tinged with concern. "You really should leave before he does the same to you."
Harry glanced around the room again, this time trying to make sense of what he was seeing. This was some construct inside of Novak's soul, a very elaborate one. Harry didn't need to stretch the realm of possibilities that this was probably the man's very own home.
Something was holding James Novak a prisoner in his own mind and soul.
There was a sinking sensation in the pit of the wizard's stomach. He took a step back from James.
"Who else is here?" Harry asked. "Is there something holding you against your will?"
James stared at him, his expression turning into resolve. "I gave him permission to be here." He said, resolute. There was a look of sorrow in his eyes, but a firm determination there.
Oh crap. Harry thought. He turned to exit the room, figuring that maybe if he opened the front door, he could exit this soulgaze as fast as he could. He turned into the hallway and faced the blinding light spilling through the oval window of the door…
And came face to face with an exact duplicate of James, the one he had seen in the park with the trench coat. There was the ghost of what looked like wings coming out of his back, translucent and shadowy.
Instead of the brilliant blue eyes though, there was bright silvery light…and a glowing sigil looming over the metaphysical third eye at the center of his forehead in angelic script.
"Denarian!" Harry whispered in horror.
The second James lurched back as if he had been physically struck by Harry's words. He was shocked and suddenly appalled by the declaration. But that only lasted a moment; because the doppelganger was on him in a flash, hand around his throat and undeniable fury twisting across his stolen face.
Harry's back collided against the wall at the end the hall.
The original James appeared out of his office, panicked. "Castiel! NO!"
The Denarian held tight, glowing eyes narrowed in fury at Harry. They stared at each other for a moment and then the fallen angel opened his mouth and spoke. It came out as an ear splitting ring that made Harry shudder to core of his very being.
LEAVE!
Harry felt the wall behind him go as he was flung out of Jimmy's soul and back into his own body.
Just in time to hear people screaming.
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