Fic: The Road To Heaven Bestrewed With Amaranth (11/??)
Title: The Road To Heaven Bestrewed With Amaranth (11/21);
Rating: overall R for language, violence, blood and sexual themes;
Genre: romance, adventure, time travel;
Pairing/Characters: Dean/Castiel, Sam, Bobby, OFC;
Spoilers: The fic starts from the middle of season 6 and alternates the end of it, but also has spoilers for 7x1;
Beta: eridanie;
Word Count: WIP (6100 this part);
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Masterpost
Chapter 11
Not A Time for A Wedding (part 3)
“You’re the most arrogant being I have ever known.” Castiel bit out in annoyance. “The word ‘arrogant’ doesn’t even start to describe it, actually…” He sighed, looking at his charge who was walking beside him with a cocky grin on his face.
He and Dean had been walking through the dense tropical forest for over an hour already, in an attempt to find any clues for the first challenge, but the only thing they’d had to face so far were mosquitoes who would have eaten Dean alive if not for the help of Castiel, who might be drained, but was still capable of something as minor as influencing insects to ignore a very appetizing meal.
“Hey, cheer up!” Dean slapped his friend on the shoulder, thankful that the angel was allowed to wear his usual attire. “Now at least we have a chance to get out of here, you know, all of us!”
“Or we both die, instead of only me dying in the case that Acoya wins.” The angel grumbled.
“Hey, I’m trying to stay positive here!” Dean protested.
“Yes, after doing the stupidest thing out of all the stupid things you have ever done!”
Dean gave the angel an annoyed look but didn’t reply. To tell the truth, Castiel was actually right. Dean had no idea what kind of bug had bit him yesterday, but after Tawa revealed that the challenges would end with either Castiel staying forever, or dying, he simply hadn’t been able to contain himself. He had stood from his place, rushing toward his friend and had volunteered to join the challenges to try and win Castiel’s freedom.
“Yeah, maybe it was,” Dean finally agreed, “but I’ll be damned if I’ll just leave you here.”
Castiel suddenly froze in place, looking at Dean with surprise. “Why?” He asked.
“Why? Really?” Dean laughed. “Well, I dunno, maybe because defeating Raphael and the Mother of all without you is gonna be a bitch of a task,” Dean noticed how a distinct trace of disappointment crossed Castiel’s features when he said this, “or maybe it’s because you are my friend and I care about you getting stuck in a place like this, or even worse, dying.” He added more seriously.
A nearly imperceptible smile appeared on Castiel’s face. “Dean…” he whispered quietly, stepping closer into the hunter’s personal space.
“Umm… Cas?” Dean tried to step back, but was stopped by the angel’s hand grabbing his shoulder, making the hunter feel slightly dizzy and weak on his knees. “Ca…”
But he never got the chance to finish because Castiel silenced him by pressing the palm of his free hand over his mouth. “Did you hear that?” The angel asked, looking around.
Dean froze, trying to listen. At first he could hear nothing but the wind rustling around the treetops, but then he understood that this was exactly what had alarmed the angel. Less than a minute ago the forest was filled with bird songs, the trill of cicadas, and even the occasional whoops of small primates, but now it was so quiet that the hunter felt goose bumps raise on his skin.
“We need to be very careful.” The angel warned taking his palm away from Dean’s face.
“Dude, it’s just a goat!” Dean said casually, reaching for the bow he was given.
Dean moved further into the forest holding his bow aloft. Although a shotgun would have made him feel more comfortable, growing up in a hunting family had made him familiar with most any type of weaponry, so using a bow wasn’t a problem. Castiel, even if his grip on the weapon was correct, on the other hand looked uneasy without his sword.
Dean slowly moved forward, listening to every sound. In less than a minute he distantly heard a crack of a small branch, like someone had stepped on it. After a few more seconds he heard a similar crack from the opposite direction.
“Looks like there are a bunch of goats around here,” Dean smiled, “gotta be an easy task.”
“Dean, it’s a ram, not a goat.” The angel corrected.
“Big difference.” He dismissed, pulling the string and shooting an arrow at the source of the sound. The arrow hit something with a soft thud, like it was penetrating flesh, and the bushes started to rustle.
Dean expected the injured animal to start running away so they could track it easily by the blood it would start to loose, but instead the creature rushed towards the human, roaring in pain and anger.
The only time Dean had seen anything like this before was in the Ice Age movie he watched with Ben: a large feline jumped gracefully out of its hiding place starting to close the distance between itself and the two of them. Its coat was light brown, similar to a lion, each paw ended with deadly looking claws, and its jaw was equipped with large fangs reaching lower than its chin.
The hunter reached for the second arrow shooting the saber-toothed cat once again, this time aiming for the neck. The third arrow came from Castiel’s direction. The cat fell on the ground, shaking and hawking up blood, and then it went absolutely still.
Dean lowered his bow, but the next moment another cat appeared from the bushes. And then another came from a different direction, then a third, and a fourth - it seemed there was no end of those things.
The hunter took a step backward eyeing the increasingly numerous animals. “Run!” he commanded.
The moment Dean turned to run, the whole pride rushed after him and the angel. Dean thought he was a goner for sure, because he didn’t have a single chance of outrunning the predators, he felt them getting closer with every second. The next instant Dean tripped on the root of a tree falling to the ground, and starting to tumble down the slope of a hill.
***Mary was sitting on the edge of the bed in Sam’s room watching her uncle moving methodically from one corner of the room to the other with a phone in his hand, reaching it up to the ceiling. The phone didn’t have any signal which meant they didn’t have any connection to the outside world.
“The satellite probably moved out of reach or something.” Sam sighed finally after ten minutes of trying to find a corner with even a smidgen of signal. “It worked yesterday in Dean’s room.”
It did. But today Sam had checked all of the rooms they had access to and it was useless. They would have tried outside of the guest wing of the palace, if they were allowed to go anywhere else. Of course Tawa tried to convince them that they were guests here, and could feel absolutely free, except that they couldn’t leave, or wander aimlessly around the place. Tawa called them guests, Mary on the other hand would call them ‘captives with better than usual accommodations’.
“The worst part is that we’re absolutely cut off, and we can’t help Dean.” Sam sighed, dropping on the bed on the opposite side of Mary. “I don’t even have the internet to try and dig up anything on their current challenge.
Earlier in the morning Dean, Castiel and Acoya had been given their first challenge - to track and hunt down a golden ram living somewhere in the jungle north of the palace. Mary still wondered what a ram would do in jungle since their natural habitats were rocky slopes of mountains and not tropical forests. On the other hand nothing in this area seemed very true to reality, so a ram wandering around the jungle might not be that weird after all.
“Dean is still a hunter.” Mary said. “Granted he mostly hunts werewolves and vampires and other supernatural things, but I think he has a really good chance.” She encouraged.
“Yeah, he’s only competing against an angel and a demigod.” Sam shook his head, bringing his hand up to rub the bridge of his nose like he had a headache.
“Sam, I’m still not sure about Acoya, we can’t exactly tell what he is.” She replied before suddenly realizing her mistake.
As a Nephil Mary possessed many angelic abilities. One of them was the ability to see through a human body, being able to look at a person’s soul the same way angels could. She could see demons’ true faces, could understand if a person was a shifter or a vampire or even an angel. But when she looked at Acoya he saw nothing but a human and if she had met him in any other circumstances she would have never even notice anything off, but Acoya had been hit by a car pretty hard and hadn’t even gotten a single scratch, he had talked about gods and angels like he had been around for centuries. So Mary had dug deeper in the motel room yesterday, trying to look through him, but she saw nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, she had seen perfectly that Acoya had been blocking her.
“What do you know about it?” Sam asked. “I mean I saw you staring at him in the motel like you knew him.”
“Huh…” Mary blinked, trying to come up with something believable to explain it away.
“Mary…” Sam looked her right in the eyes, “I think it’s a good time to tell us the whole truth. Otherwise we won’t be able to help.”
Mary wanted very badly to tell Sam the whole truth. In fact, out of all the people around, her uncle would be the only one who could understand her, who could even help her. But not right now, not here, where someone could listen to their conversation.
“It’s just… “Mary finally nodded. “Do you remember Cas saying he can’t look through me?” She asked receiving a nod from her uncle, “the thing is I can feel it when someone is doing it to me. And I felt him doing so. But when he found that he couldn’t see anything, he wasn’t surprised. He looked like he knew why.”
Mary didn’t mention that she was scanning him too, but at least she wasn’t lying.
“Well, maybe he’d heard about this blocking technique or whatever it is.”
“Sam… It’s not exactly a technique, more of a spell. The point is that the spell has angelic origins, and it’s so rare, that most of the angels don’t even know about it.”
Sam blinked listening to his niece carefully and nodded: “and he talked about angels very casually, while all the other pagan deities despise them. So, does that mean…”
Sam never finished his sentence because his phone suddenly started to ring. He rushed to pick it up and saw Bobby’s caller ID.
***Dean woke up in a very dark place feeling his head aching like someone had hit him pretty hard. He tried to rise from the cold damp floor he was laying on but his body refused to comply.
“Shh...” he heard Castiel’s voice next to him. “You should take it easy.”
Dean groaned, not giving up his attempt to stand, he opened his eyes, trying to look around himself, but it was too dark, although according to the smell of moss in the humid air, he could assume that it was some sort of a cave.
“What happened?” He asked his friend as he felt a pair of strong arms wrapping around his waist helping him get up.
“You fell into a crack in the ground and hit your head. I was able to heal the concussion, but it looks like I didn’t have enough power to take all of the pain away.” The angel explained.
The memories started to slowly return to Dean, he remembered the palace, the Sun God, the challenges, their escape from the saber-toothed lions. The hunter took a small step closer to his friend, stepping on something that made a loud crack, he fumbled forward falling into angel’s arms.
“What was that?” Dean asked trying to regain his balance and separate himself from Castiel’s embrace.
“Your bow…” The angel clarified still holding Dean tight against his body.
Breaking the bow meant loosing the first challenge because they couldn’t exchange weapons to help each other, since it would be viewed as cheating, and they would be disqualified, which in its turn meant death. “Shit…” Dean whispered.
“It was already broken when you fell here.” Castiel explained.
“Great. Just great. Any ideas of how to get out?”
“We don’t need to get out.” Castiel said. “We are where we are supposed to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you have a lighter?”
“Matches,” The older Winchester nodded and reached for the pocket of his jeans, extracting small rectangle and passing it to his friend.
Dean heard the angel lighting the match, illuminating the small area of the cave they were standing in, the next moment two rows of torches lit up, finally making it possible for the hunter to look around. Dean’s eyes were momentarily attracted to a large gate no further than twenty feet away from them, the gate was made of two stone slabs with the golden head of a ram carved in its surface. They were built into a stone wall in a really large cave, with high ceilings covered in stalactites, and when the hunter looked up he could see many bats starting to move, disturbed by the unexpected source of light.
“You think it’s the place?” Dean inquired, finally managing to stand on his own feet.
“Most likely,” the angel replied starting to move toward the gate.
The hunter followed his friend until they reached the slabs. They looked immovable and Dean wasn’t even sure if it was possible to open it. From the right side of him, Castiel started to palpate the carving of the ram head with his fingers, tilting his head in a sign of concentration. A second later his fingers moved to the side of one of the slabs and pressed on something. The ground started to shake nearly sending the hunter back to the ground, but somehow he managed to stay upright. Disturbed bats started to squeak loudly flying off the ceiling and disappearing somewhere in the far end of the cave as the two large stone pieces started to move apart opening a passage way into another room.
“Stay behind me.” The angel commanded reaching for his bow and stepping into the next section of the cave.
“Like I have any other choice.” Dean huffed, following his friend.
The next room was already lit with several torches and looked even larger than the previous one. It was absolutely empty except for a pedestal in the middle of it with a ginormous looking ball of golden fur laying on it.
The moment the two friends entered the room, the ball of fur moved and turned its horned head towards the direction of the intruders.
“That’s the biggest fucking goat I’ve ever seen.” Dean whistled in awe.
The golden ram was watching the hunter and the angel carefully, but otherwise not moving. Dean could have sworn that looking in the animal’s eyes, he could feel the intelligence behind the crystal of its dark irises.
“Stop staring at the thing,” Dean whispered. “Kill it already.”
Apparently that was the wrong thing to say, because in the next moment the hint of intelligence disappeared from the creature’s eyes, to be replaced by fear and madness. It stood from its pedestal gazing at the intruders and breathing furiously. It started to stomp the ground with its front hoof, and then charged, making Dean and Castiel jump in different directions. Missing the two friends, the ram hit a wall of the cave with its horns, making a cluster of stalactites fall to the ground.
Dean’s whole body ached as he fell face first on the ground, but pain was the last thing he cared about at the moment. One of the stalactites had landed just a foot away from Dean, and cracked into several large chunks. Dean tried to move away from the shards, but he was too slow. One of the shards landed on his feet, trapping him under its weight. Dean tried to get free, but it was useless, meanwhile, behind his back he heard the ram getting ready to charge again.
An arrow from Castiel’s side pierced the air, hitting the flank of the animal, but that didn’t even scratch it. Dean turned his head toward the angel, noticing him notch another arrow to his bow.
“Get away from him, he is not armed!” Castiel warned shooting another arrow. Although the second arrow couldn’t penetrate the golden coat either, it did the trick, forcing the ram to divert his attention from Dean to the angel. Castiel managed to reload the bow once again before the giant animal charged sending Castiel flying several feet.
“Cas!” Dean yelled, concerned that no human could survive such a hit. Of course Castiel was not human, but the hunter couldn’t help but worry anyway.
The room shook once again and Dean heard a crack from above. He raised his eyes to the ceiling, spotting a very large stalactite shaking dangerously above his head. Dean tried to move away once again, but the rock on his feet was immovable.
The angel meanwhile had risen from the floor, but the ram seemed to have no intention of letting him go. Once again the creature started to stomp the ground with its hoof, exhaling steam out of its nostrils. The angel shot once again, aiming now for the creature’s eye, but the ram moved his head effortlessly before the arrow reached its target.
“Hey!” Dean suddenly heard from another side of the room. He turned his head spotting Acoya who picked a up a rock from the ground and sent it flying into the ram. The rock, it seemed was more effective, and the ram lost any kind of interest in the angel, switching its full attention to the gray-eyed man. “Castiel, aim where the fur doesn’t protect it!” Acoya yelled at the angel.
Castiel nodded preparing his bow, but the ram got on its hind legs to hit the ground with its front ones. The cave shook as the massive hooves touched the ground, but none of the standing men were affected by it. Unfortunately Dean couldn’t say the same about the stalactite above his head. It cracked once more and started to fall down.
Dean closed his eyes preparing for the worst.
“Castiel, shoot!” the hunter heard Acoya’s command. “Castiel!”
A pair of familiar hands wrapped around Dean’s torso, and the next moment he found himself ten feet away from the place where the stalactite had landed. Castiel fell to the floor next to him, breathing heavily and shaking. His face was facing the ground and his eyes were shut.
Dean placed a hand on the angel’s shoulder, and returned his attention to the other man, who met his gaze with something like childish happiness in his eyes. Then Acoya smiled, reaching for his bow but not an arrow, and started to pull the string. The moment the bow was fully drawn, a glowing bolt appeared in it. Acoya shot the moment the animal started another charge. The white glowing arrow reached the exact middle of the creature’s forehead passing through the skull like it was incorporeal and disappeared from the view.
The ram stopped still.
Dean was sure that the creature would fall dead any moment, but the ram looked around the cave as though surprised, and the intelligence in its eyes suddenly returned.
“I didn’t kill it,” Acoya explained, walking to the injured hunter and his friend, but was stopped by the golden animal who pressed its nose to the Acoya’s arm.
The gray-eyed man gasped in surprise turning his attention back to the creature. “It… cannot be…” He whispered reaching to the ram’s snout with his fingers. The creature closed its eyes sniffing now over the men’s face, then suddenly it started to glow and decrease in size, changing its shape to the point that it started to look like a very familiar woman.
“Hey, are you all right?” Acoya asked the daughter of the sun.
The girl leaned on her lover’s torso kissing him gently on the neck. Then she turned her face to the hunter and the angel “we need to talk,” she said, “all of us.”
***“Where have you been?! I’ve been calling you since yesterday!” Bobby yelled on the other end of the phone.
The signal was terrible, it was too quiet and mixed with white noise but at least it was something.
“Bobby!” Sam exclaimed glad that the old hunter was finally able to reach them. “It’s a long story, everything is fine… for now.”
“Long story, huh? Well I have time!”
Sam scratched his forehead thinking about telling Bobby all the details, but then he imagined his foster father’s face when he got the bill and decided against it.
“We are in Peru in the palace of the Sun god, trying to get Castiel out of here.” He explained quickly.
“All right, so, I take it you managed to find the angel?”
“Yes, but right now he’s doing the challenges and…”
Sam didn’t finish his sentence as he got interrupted by the old hunter: “Challenges? Listen to me boy, you need to get out. Faster is better!”
“Yeah, but…”
“Don’t feed me butts, you have to get out! If I understand it right, those challenges are nothing but a trap. No one has ever been able to pass them, you hear me? No one!”
Sam gulped. “Ok, ok… But we need a plan, we need a weapon. Did you by any chance figure out what can harm the Sun god?”
“Yeah, in fact I did.” Bobby announced. “heliolite, it should be able to harm him…”
“Heliolite? You mean a stone? Bobby?”
Sam never got a response back as the signal started to fade away and the call disconnected. With a sigh he returned the device to his pocket and looked around the room. So, Tawa had never intended to let any of them go, and all of it was just a trap. They had to find Dean and Castiel and figure a way out and soon.
“Heliolite?” Mary asked. “Isn’t that just another name for sunstone?”
“I believe so.” Sam confirmed. “And in this case we even know where to get one.” He said recalling the moment Acoya transported them here - he’d used an amulet made of sunstone.
“Now I only wonder what the chances are to get to him in time and the likeliness he would agree to help us are.”
“Umm,” she replied, looking behind the hunter, “why don’t you ask him?”
Sam turned on his heel and saw Acoya standing right behind him. The hunter opened his mouth to tell him not to come up behind people like that, but he stepped forward, grabbing Sam by his shoulder, and Mary by her hand. The next moment they were no longer in the brightly lit room.
***Dean approached the gates of the palace displaying a large hoof that he held in his raised hand. In the other hand he held a lock of golden fur. The guards sized him up, and Dean could see a trace of surprise on their faces.
“The golden ram has been defeated.” Dean announced in a serious tone. “Let me in!”
The guards were not sure how to react, but finally started to open the gate.
Dean walked down a long corridor leading to the main hall trying to ignore the wave of heat that washed over him as he stepped inside. It felt like someone had turned on a heater, making him start to sweat within a few minutes. Dean didn’t remember it being this hot the day before, so perhaps Tawa was preparing another trap for them? Or maybe he simply didn’t expect Dean to return and hadn’t had the chance to make the accommodations more comfortable. Dean clenched tighter into the hoof, trying to gain more confidence in the plan he and the others had come up with, and remembered suddenly where this hoof came from. The hunter fought off the unpleasant feeling in his stomach as the picture of Chuqui-llantu tearing off a nail from her hand played in his head. That had to be painful.
Tawa looked at the older Winchester not even trying to hide his surprise. Then his eyes descended to the hoof in Dean’s hand.
“The rest of the body is back in the cave where I fought it.” Dean announced throwing the hoof and the lock of ram fur to the sun gods feet.
“It is not possible for a human to defeat it.” Tawa’s expression relaxed, as he suppressed his surprise. “You do know that I will be able to find out if it was really you who killed it?”
“I’m perfectly aware.” Dean nodded with a smirk. “But to determine that you will need to send someone to the cave to bring the body in. It was too heavy for a mere human to carry.”
Tawa looked at the hunter with distrust, but motioned the guards to go. Three out of five men standing in the room bowed their heads and left. Of course it wasn’t enough, and Dean for sure couldn’t take down the two left ones if he was alone. But Dean wasn’t.
“So, the first challenge is over.” The hunter smiled, “I’m assuming I can rest up for the second one?”
“I suppose it would be wise.” The Sun god nodded with a smile.
“But… first, allow me to ask you a question.” Dean started. “What kind of sick bastard would do something like that? Would turn his own daughter into a goat?”
“I have no idea what are you talking about!” Tawa growled angrily.
“Oh no, you do have an idea… I might not be the most educated person in the world, but I was able to dig up some info on pagan gods. You see, The Sun god was supposedly the most just pagan god in existence, you can’t kill people for fun, not if you don’t have a reason for it.” Dean was speaking, trying to look as casual as possible. His devotion to the practice of sarcasm was paying off, Tawa was getting more and more angry with every word. “But…” Dean pointed his finger up into the air. “What if the one performing the challenges went to hunt a supernatural creature, but instead killed your own daughter? A very good maneuver, even if we survived the fight, you could still blame her death on us.”
“That’s enough!” Tawa shouted standing up from his throne. “It is true, that I don’t kill people without a reason, although I consider making me angry a very good one. Let it be said, Dean Winchester, that you’re the first mortal who’s managed it. Guards!”
The next moment Dean heard a familiar rustle of wings and Castiel stepped up to the hunter’s side, meanwhile two glowing arrows pierced the air hitting simultaneously both of the guards and making them drop their spears. They looked awkwardly at each other, and in the next moment, to Dean’s great surprise, the two guards rushed toward each other for the most epic gay make out session imaginable.
“Sorry, it’s the best I can do!” Dean heard Acoya apologizing behind his back. “Beloved, close the doors!” The gray-eyed man commanded and Dean noticed all of the doors leading to the room started to shut one by one.
Dean meanwhile rushed to the Sun god, holding a wooden pole with a tip made of sunstone - one of the three pieces they broke out of the stone Acoya had in his possession.
“You think, you can take me down?” Tawa yelled moving towards the older Winchester.
With a wave of his hand he knocked the pole out of Dean’s hands, and then grabbed Dean by the lapels of his jacket with one hand, and starting to punch his face with another. Dean wasn’t surprised at how hard the punches were. He still had a headache after falling into the cave, and now he started to feel like he was about to lose it and fall unconscious. Castiel chose this moment to jump on Tawa with the sword in hand, he managed to stick the blade through the god’s neck, but it didn’t even slow Tawa down. He stopped hitting Dean and waved his hand at the angel instead of throwing him to the opposite wall.
“You think you’re smart? You have no idea how many worshipers I still have, you don’t know how powerful I am!” Tawa grinned turning his attention back to Dean. “You think that just because you have some success killing minor gods you’re ready for any of us?” He asked.
“As long as he’s not alone!” Mary replied in place of her father.
Dean turned his head and saw his daughter standing the corner of the room holding a bow with a sunstone arrow notched up - that was the second piece they’d crafted.
At first Tawa floundered, but then suddenly a smile crossed his face.
“Are you going to shoot me?” He asked mockingly, suddenly dropping Dean’s lapels and allowing him to nearly fall to the ground. “I’m waiting!” The god laughed holding his hands up in mock defeat.
Mary’s bow was drawn and aimed right at Tawa’s chest, her posture looked straight, but her hands were shaking.
“What is it girl? You can’t do it, can you?” Tawa grinned. “Or don’t you know how a bow works?”
Mary clenched her teeth, shaking even more. She may not have had a clue how to assemble guns, but Dean could see that her hold on the wooden weapon was perfect, everything about her stance and grip made it obvious that she knew how to use it. Mary just… wasn’t shooting.
“Little girl…” The pagan god shook his head. “I have no idea who you are or where you came from, I can’t see it even with all the power I possess. But I don’t need powers to see that you’re no threat to me. A warrior who can’t kill should not come to the battlefield.” He laughed and stepped towards Mary, raising his hand.
Another arrow flew through the room from the opposite side. This time it was Sam. The arrow easily pierced the flesh of the god’s body, painting his golden tunic with red blood, which started to rush out of the wound rapidly. Tawa only had time to turn his head to look where the arrow came from before falling to his knees on the ground and bursting into flames. And that was piece number three.
***Dean never thought he could be so happy to inhale the familiar air of the northern states, still too chilly in the second week of April. All six of them stood on the edge of the forest looking at a field, in the middle of which were rising the domes of colorful tents, and the machinery of various rides.
“I want to thank you for your help.” Acoya bowed his head addressing the four of them. “Without you I would never have had the chance to be with my beloved.” He reached out to Chuqui-llantu’s hand taking it in his own.
“I’m very sorry that we caused so many troubles for you, but we didn’t have a choice.” She sighed.
Acoya squeezed her hand.
“What is your real name?” Castiel suddenly asked Acoya.
“Real name? I don’t know what you are talking about.” Acoya protested, but after receiving the angel’s intent stare he sighed: “Camael… our kind used to call me Camael.” He confessed.
“Whoa!” Dean exclaimed. “Are you a freaking angel?!”
“Dominion*…” Camael scratched the back of his head.
“Will you help me stand against Raphael’s army?” Castiel asked.
“And what would I do? Shoot him with an arrow of love? I used to rule cupids not fight battles.” The angel sighed.
Castiel looked him in the eyes and then sighed. “He is right.” He said.
“But,” Camael smiled. “I can help you in other ways.” With those words he reached to the pocket of his pants, extracting a very old looking piece of parchment and gave it to Castiel. “It is a scroll with a cloaking spell.” He explained. “It was lost from the libraries of heaven a long time ago. I didn’t steal it, but found it here, on earth. This is a very unique and useful spell, no matter how powerful a being you cast it on appears to be, the end result is that you will never be able to see anything more than a human. It has other properties as well, you will never be able to read the person’s mind, or determine their bloodline through magical means. You have already seen this spell in work. Twice.”
Dean looked at Mary and she looked at him. “Oh…” She blinked.
“That is not all.” The dominion continued turning his attention to his girlfriend as she extracted a book from her leather bag. “I heard some rumors that you’re searching for something called Logos.” He said taking the book from Chuqui-llantu and passing it to Dean. “This should help you.”
The older Winchester looked at the book he was given. “What the…” he managed as he saw the cover portraying three bare-chested men one of which had a pair of white wings behind his back and a word ‘Supernatural’ above the picture. “How can this help us?” He asked turning his eyes back to the couple they had helped, but as he did, he realized that they were no longer there.
***The sun had slowly started to disappear behind the horizon when the four of them finally crossed the field to return to the fair.
“Should we go back to the motel, pick up the car, and return to Bobby?” Sam asked his brother.
“No, first we need to do one more important thing.” Dean smiled.
All four of them, including Castiel, looked dirty and tired, but Dean didn’t want to leave just yet.
“The Ferris wheel!” The older hunter announced pulling them to the very center of the fair.
It was Sunday night, the last day before the fair was going to move on to somewhere else. Most of the families with small children had already left, leaving mostly younger couples to enjoy the last night. The narrow passages between the tents were still pretty crowded, but it wasn’t as bad as a day ago.
The lady operating the Ferris wheel looked at the four of them with distrust, but Dean didn’t give a damn about her opinion. He smiled slyly and moved to the car, following his family. Mary hurried to take a place next to Sam, leaving Dean the spot close to the angel.
“So, looks like all four Winchesters finally can relax a little?” He looked around the small car when the wheel finally started to move.
“I am not a Winchester.” Castiel informed.
“Oh yeah, and what about this?” Dean chuckled starting to search his pockets till he was able to find what he was looked for - a fake plastic ID he made for Castiel when the angel was pretending to be Mary’s father before the school principal. “You see, it’s says ‘Winchester’” Dean give the ID to the angel. “Keep it.”
Castiel looked at the plastic card curiously and Dean could swear the angel was blushing.
“Thank you.” Castiel finally managed to reply.
“Dean, if you really wanted to give Cas our last name, you could’ve just married him!” Sam laughed, but upon receiving the judgmental look from his older brother added: “Ok, not my best joke.”
Dean kicked Sam’s shoe and smiled. Then he turned his head to his daughter. The girl wasn’t paying attention to anything going on around her, she was probably too tired. Instead she watched the view from above. The Sioux Falls looked beautiful from up high. Most of the buildings had already turned their lights on for the night, and now the city looked like a net of garlands was covering it whole. The light of the city reflected in Mary’s eyes making her look even more beautiful.
It was really a small miracle in Dean’s life. She had appeared unexpectedly, and already had time to occupy a large space in Dean’s heart. The hunter imagined how he would feel if he’d had the opportunity to care about her from the very beginning, the chance to watch her grow up…
Dean reached for Mary’s shoulder placing his hand on it and squeezing. “Happy Birthday.” He said smiling.
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* Dominion The "Dominions" (lat dominatio, plura dominationes, also translated from the Greek ter kyriotites s "Lordships") are presented as the hierarchy of celestial beings "Lordships" in th De Coelesti Hierarchia. The Dominions egulate the duties of lower angels. (Wikipedia)