Gilgamesh Wulfenbach and the Men of Letters 5/?
Previous | Master Post
Chapter 5
One Problem at a Time
Gil hadn’t meant to fall deeply asleep-or to fall asleep at all, really-but in the quiet after the Winchesters’ conversation, something about the motion of the car got past his guard, and he dropped off for real. He roused a little when the car slowed, just enough to be aware of voices.
“Oh, it’s you, sir.” Was that Higgs? “Evenin’.” It was-Airman Third Class Axel Higgs, who was far more than he seemed and had some kind of loyalty to the Heterodynes that predated his service in the Wulfenbach air fleet.
“Hey,” Dean returned. “This is my brother, Sam.”
“Sir,” Higgs acknowledged. “Master Gil with you, is he?”
“And Prince Tarvek. Gotta get ’em back to Sturmhalten. The baron’s dead.”
“What?!” gasped a female voice.
“Oh, hey, Zeetha.”
Higgs cleared his throat. “I’ve the princess to see back to Mechanicsburg, but I’ll just radio ahead, shall I, let them know to expect you?”
“That’d help, thanks.”
“Very good, sir. Expect I’ll be seein’ you in Sturmhalten.”
“All right. See you.”
The car sped up again as Sam asked, “Who’s the green-haired chick?”
“Princess Zeetha of Skifander. It’s some lost city of Amazons-not our kind; more like Wonder Woman....”
Gil was out again before he could work out what that meant.
The next time he surfaced briefly, the car was stopped and a recording of Father’s voice was playing somewhere outside, over the summery sound of crickets and frogs. Sturmvoraus and the wasp eater were both snoring softly. But Gil didn’t really wake up until sometime later, when he felt two hands on his shoulders and two on his upper arms, all shaking him in tandem.
“Your Highness? Your Highness, wake up.”
Gil forced his eyes open a sliver and recognized the drone of an airship engine in the background. “’M here.”
“Not quite, you’re not.” One hand moved off his arm, and Gil smelled coffee.
That got his eyes open better, and he finally realized that all the hands belonged with the face looking at him in concern. “Boris? You look terrible.”
Boris handed Gil his coffee with one of his lower hands while the upper hand on that side released Gil’s shoulder and rubbed Boris’ head. “It’s been a nightmare, Your Highness. Your father’s commands grew... erratic, irrational. When I questioned him, he sent me to oversee the ongoing effort to restore order in Sturmhalten. But for the past two hours or so, Princess Anevka’s been trying to countermand all of my orders.”
That, along with the first sip of coffee, jolted Gil fully awake. “Anevka?!”
“What?!” gasped Sturmvoraus from the other end of the seat. “Is she here?!”
Boris shook his head and dropped his hands to gesture with. “No, no, she’s still on Castle Wulfenbach. We’re headed back to meet it. The Winchesters have given me all the information they have and played me a recording of your father’s last address, along with some images of the late Prince von Blitzengaard.”
Somewhat startled, Gil looked toward the front seat, where Dean was humming under his breath, drumming on the steering wheel, and staring out the windscreen at the closed loading ramp and Sam brandished a little clank that looked like one of Agatha’s. Gil nodded and took another drink of coffee. Right, he’d forgotten that Gadreel had borrowed that and somehow stepped back in time a few minutes to record from a different angle than his own memories would have allowed. And judging from his reactions that morning, Dean hated to fly. Gil really had slept harder than he meant to.
“But I need to ask,” Boris continued. “Why did you react that way to Princess Anevka’s name?”
“She’s The Other,” Gil and Sturmvoraus chorused.
“Or more accurately,” Sturmvoraus continued, “her processor houses a copy of The Other’s consciousness. The version that used to be in Agatha created this copy to help ensure our escape from Sturmhalten.”
“Used to be?”
“The Winchesters... exorcised her, I suppose. I didn’t think it would work because she wasn’t a demon per se, but evidently enough of Lucrezia’s spirit was downloaded into Agatha for the exorcism to work.”
Boris nodded slowly. “That confirms what they told me. Thank you, Your Highness.”
Gil’s eyes narrowed. “You approved her presence on Castle Wulfenbach, didn’t you?”
Boris took off his pince-nez with one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose with another. “She came with your father, but she’d been with him at the hospital, and I had approved that. The reports from Dr. Sun said he listened to her when he wouldn’t listen to anyone else. I knew that, as a clank, she couldn’t be a revenant. I suppose I should have guessed, especially after what you and Prince Tarvek discussed about the new slaver wasps, but....”
Gil sighed. “You couldn’t know, Boris. She’s a good enough actress to fool the unwary. What about that army you said was coming from Sturmhalten?”
Boris put his pince-nez back on. “Our forces retreating from Mechanicsburg should be meeting them any moment now. Orders are to engage immediately, accept surrenders but use revenant containment measures on all prisoners, and otherwise drive the attackers back to Balan’s Gap.”
“No wonder Anevka’s been trying to countermand. Have her arrested at once.”
“I’ll give the order, Your Highness, but to the best of my knowledge, no one knows where she is.”
“She’s near a radio, obviously,” Dean stated flatly.
“That doesn’t actually help much,” Gil admitted. “Castle Wulfenbach dwarfs this airship. There are far too many places she could hide.”
“Then we’ll have to be ready for her,” Sam said. “And we’ll make her come to us.”
Sturmvoraus frowned. “And how, exactly, do you propose to do that?”
“She started countermanding Boris after the baron left to come do something to Mechanicsburg.”
“Stasis bomb,” Dean reported. “Woulda trapped the city in a bubble where time stopped.”
Boris gasped. “Are you certain?”
“Have it on the highest authority.”
“Anyway,” Sam interrupted, “Anevka clearly thinks both the baron and Gil are dead or out of commission, and probably Tarvek, too. She’s supposed to be Tarvek’s sister, which should mean her authority trumps Boris’. But Gil’s the new baron, and Tarvek’s still alive. So if Gil starts issuing orders personally....”
“She’ll be there to meet us,” Gil agreed. “If she thinks she can win me over, she’ll come alone and try to talk her way out of any accusation of treason. If she knows she can’t, she’ll come ready to fight. Either way, she’ll come to us.”
Boris nodded slowly. “But can we fight her? She’s strong enough to keep up with your father, after all.”
Gil smiled at the back of Dean’s head. “Oh, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that.”
Sturmvoraus gave him a sidelong look. “Why does that make me nervous?”
Gil chuckled, drank the last of his coffee, and went with Boris to the nearest radio. Once he had repeated Boris’ orders and also ordered the castle’s crew to detain Anevka if she was found, he suddenly realized he had no idea where they were. “How much time do we have?” he asked instead, given the limited possibilities as far as location went.
“We should meet the castle within the next five to ten minutes,” Boris answered. “Capt. Patel won’t take evasive action even if Anevka orders him to-even if the castle could move that quickly. I don’t expect any trouble until we’re safely in the hangar.”
Gil took a deep breath and let it out again. “Not a demon,” he murmured to himself. “Just a clank. We can do this.”
“... Your Highness?”
“That recording. Did it show Agatha’s exorcism?”
“I-yes, I saw... something come out of the Lady Heterodyne.”
“Did you see it try to attack my father?”
“It... did something before the clank struck it. But how the clank itself moved so quickly....”
“The-the clank is just a shell. It’s being driven by an angel.”
There wasn’t much that could shock Boris into open-mouthed silence. That statement did so.
“Look, Boris, the Winchesters... their world is vastly different from anything we know. So I’m afraid you’ll have to pardon me being a bit off kilter as a result of working with them.”
“Are you certain they’re trustworthy?”
“They tried to save my father. They would have succeeded if he hadn’t forbidden them to let Gadreel heal him.”
Boris wearily scrubbed a hand over his face. “I suppose I have no choice but to trust your judgment.”
“Oh, don’t trust just my judgment. Come see what they have in the back of the car.”
By the time they returned to the car, Sturmvoraus and Sam had finally coaxed Dean out of the front seat and were inspecting the arsenal. Dean looked up and saw them coming, reached back into the hidden compartment, and pulled something out. “Hey, Gil, catch,” he said and tossed a weapon to him.
Gil caught it easily and examined it-it was a gun, for sure, and the diameter of the side-by-side barrels suggested it was a shotgun. But the barrels were short, ending just past the end of the handguard, and the stock was shaped to fit comfortably in the hand rather than resting against the shoulder. “What is it?”
“Sawed-off shotgun.” Dean handed another to Sturmvoraus while Sam pulled a sword like Gadreel’s out of another section of the arsenal and hid it up his sleeve. “Shells are packed with rock salt-it’s a spirit deterrent. Aim for the head.”
“Will the salt have the velocity to pierce the metal?”
“Depends on how thick the metal is, but if it’s just possessed, we’ve got two options: salt and burn, or exorcise it and hit the spirit with the angel sword. Either way, we hit the head with enough salt, we’re halfway home.”
“And if nothing of Lucrezia’s spirit is there, or if the clank keeps going without her?”
Dean patted his handgun, and Sam hooked a blowtorch on one of his belt loops and closed the arsenal.
“Ah.”
“Erm,” said Sturmvoraus as the wasp eater woke up and scampered up to the top of his head. “Do we have to destroy the head?”
Dean closed the luggage compartment lid with a slam. “You said that’s where the processor is.”
“Yes, but-”
“But nothing. She probably ordered the baron to use that stasis bomb on us. She dies. Now.”
“She also has all of Lucrezia’s memories. The version in Zola doesn’t, or at least Zola doesn’t have conscious access to all of them. If we hold her for interrogation-”
“We can get the information from the beacon engine if we have to,” Sam interrupted, his voice taking on a sparky edge. “We can find a way to analyze the data safely without allowing a new version of Lucrezia to come to full awareness. But we can’t risk letting Anevka get away again.”
Sturmvoraus sighed unhappily. “You do have a point. I just... put so much work into the design, and now... to see it destroyed....”
“If we don’t destroy her, she’ll destroy Europa. Is that what you want?”
“... no.”
“Then help us clean up your mess.”
“This is not my mess! This was not my plan!”
“You gave her that clank, dude. Like it or not, it is your mess now. I may have let Lucifer out of his cage, but I put him back in. Lucrezia’s not even an archangel; she’s a digitized ghost with delusions of godhood.” Sam stepped into Sturmvoraus’ personal space, looming over him despite the relatively small difference between their heights. “Aim. For. The head.”
The wasp eater squeaked and cowered, and Sturmvoraus gulped and nodded.
“Good heavens,” Boris murmured to Gil. “You were right, sir.”
Gil allowed himself only the smallest of smirks.
“Sir!” called one of the crew. “Approaching Castle Wulfenbach; stand by to dock!”
“All right,” Dean rumbled. “Let’s do this.”
He and Sam went back to the front of the car and got in. Gil and Sturmvoraus did the same. The wasp eater, perhaps wisely, climbed off Sturmvoraus’ head and curled up in the space between the top of the back seat and the back windscreen. Moments later, the airship shuddered slightly as it set down in one of Castle Wulfenbach’s massive hangars. Dean started the car’s engine.
“Er, why are we doing this?” Sturmvoraus asked.
“Gotta make an entrance,” Dean replied, resting his hand on a knob on the front control panel. As soon as the ramp began to lower, he turned it with a flick of his wrist.
And music began blaring from speakers somewhere in the car-a harsh, electronic sound that might be some kind of guitar. And just about the time the ramp reached the hangar floor and Dean started moving the car forward, the guitar was joined by pounding bass, distorted organ, and driving drums.
Sturmvoraus might not understand Dean’s reasoning, but Gil certainly did. Not only would such an entrance make an impression on everyone in the hangar, but it also made him feel ready for battle. Anevka-Lucrezia didn’t have a prayer.
Dean turned the car and drove toward the door leading to the castle’s interior, parking it in the center of the largest available clear space-well out of anyone’s way, but still making an obvious statement. Neither Gil nor Sturmvoraus needed any prompting to open their doors and get out at exactly the same time the Winchesters did, just as the voices that had joined the song crooned, “Smoke on the water, fire in the sky!”
Grantz, Father’s monster hunter who looked even bigger than Sam, was waiting at the door and immediately bowed slightly to Gil before taking a few steps forward to report. “Herr Baron, we’ve got squads searching all over the castle, but so far, nobody’s found Princess Anevka.”
“Well, of course not, darling,” said an electronic version of Agatha’s voice with Lucrezia’s inflections, and Gil looked over to see a female-shaped clank in the doorway, its white wig and white riding outfit matching its white skin. “I’m right here.”
Grantz snarled and lunged at Anevka. But the clank was stronger than it looked and easily hurled the hunter away... and Grantz landed with a sickening crunch on the front end of the car, shattering the windscreen and severely denting the metal. Swearing bitterly, Dean leveled his shotgun and fired six rounds at Anevka’s head, ignoring her screams and Sturmvoraus’ yelp of dismay.
Unfortunately, the commotion drew the attention of people out in the hall, some of whom came running with cries of, “My lady!”
“KILL THEM!” Anevka shrieked. “KILL THEM ALL!”
“SKREEEEEEEEE!” shrilled the wasp eater.
Wild-eyed, the revenants roared and charged toward Dean, who switched to his handgun to keep firing at Anevka. But Sam leveled his shotgun and fired at the first revenant, hitting the revenant’s chest and knocking him down.
“What-” Sturmvoraus began.
“Non-lethal!” Gil answered and followed Sam’s lead.
As Sturmvoraus joined them, Dean put one round through Anevka’s voice box, silencing her, and three more into her head. The third apparently hit something vital, as it caused a burst of electricity that crackled loudly enough to be heard over the gunfire. The clank’s body didn’t fall, but it did freeze. By that time, guards had arrived to subdue the revenants and take them into custody, and Boris started shouting orders for removal of the disabled clank.
Grantz stood with a grunt. “Sorry about your coach, Herr Baron.”
“It’s not mine,” Gil replied, “and it’s not your fault. Have it brought to the nearest empty lab; I’m sure Dean will want to repair it himself.”
“Very good, Herr Baron.” Grantz bowed and left to obey.
Sam came over to collect Gil’s shotgun and put it back in the arsenal, but Dean was despondently surveying the damage and swearing under his breath. As Sam opened the back, Dean opened the driver’s door, completely ignoring the wasp eater as it ran out and made a beeline for Sturmvoraus, and pulled a lever that caused the large panel at the front to open with a metallic groan.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Dean said, sounding almost tearful, and went back to inspect the damage more carefully.
Cautiously, mindful that Dean did seem to be a spark but might not be fully broken through, Gil walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve sent Grantz to set up a lab for you.”
Dean blinked and looked up at Gil. “Lab? I can-”
“It would give you the space to work in privacy, without interruptions.”
“Oh. Thanks.” Dean’s eyes dropped back to what looked like the ruined engine compartment, which was a mess of tangled wire and twisted metal.
“Hey,” Sam said, coming around the other side. “It’s just the front end. You’ve rebuilt her from the frame up twice before. You can fix her.”
“I know that, Sammy, but... but here....”
“Make a list of what you need,” said Gil. “Tools, parts, materials, everything. What we don’t have, we’ll find, and what we can’t find, we’ll make.”
Dean nodded slowly once, twice... and then the Spark took hold and he nodded again, more decisively. “Sam?”
Sam pulled a notebook out of his pocket and handed it over. Dean hurriedly scribbled a list and handed the notebook back to Sam and the list to Boris. He paced impatiently as members of the maintenance crew loaded the car onto a cart to transport it to the lab, then stalked after the cart as if... well, as if he were a hunter stalking prey. Fortunately, the lab wasn’t far, and the equipment Dean had requested was already arriving. As a result, he still retained enough self-control to thank the crew members as they unloaded the car and to pay attention as Gil showed him around the lab.
“Do you need anything else?” Gil asked as he finished the tour. “Can I have some food sent down to you or something?”
Dean was already starting to fixate on the car again, but he answered absently, “Uh... bacon cheeseburger, extra onions; a beer; and some cherry pie.” He took off his coat and laid it over the back of a nearby chair.
“What’s a cheeseburger?”
“I’ll explain,” Sam replied. “We should probably leave him to it.”
“Er, right. Okay.”
“Dean?”
Dean shook his head to break his focus and looked at Sam. “What?”
“Need my help?”
“Huh? Nah. You get some sleep. And don’t forget the pie.”
Sam huffed and smiled. “Sure. Good night.”
“Night, Sammy. And Gil? Thanks.”
Gil smiled. “You’re welcome. Sam? This way.”
As the door closed behind them, Gil heard Dean start singing quietly, “Hey, Jude, don’t make it bad....”
Sam looked wistful. “He definitely needs the pie, even if the cheeseburger can’t be done.”
Gil frowned. “How do you....”
“That song. Dean says Mom used to sing that to him instead of a lullaby.” Sam shook his head. “He’s more upset than I realized.”
“Your mother... died young?”
“Murdered.”
Boris cleared his throat. “Ah, Prince Tarvek, would you come with me to Operations? You may be able to assist....”
“Yes, of course,” Sturmvoraus replied. “Wulfenbach?”
“I’ll join you later,” Gil said. “I think I need some pie myself. You want any?”
“Ah, no, thank you. I... don’t seem to have much of an appetite.”
“All right. Keep an eye on him, Boris.”
“Of course, Your Highness,” Boris answered with a bow and escorted Sturmvoraus away.
“There are rumors about Prince Aaronev’s wife,” Gil explained as he led Sam toward the nearest kitchen. “It’s never been proven, but my father strongly suspected that Anevka killed her-before Sturmvoraus gave the clank to Lucrezia, I mean. I gather Anevka also killed Prince Aaronev. I haven’t tried to talk to Sturmvoraus about it, but I don’t know that he had much affection for either of his parents-not that I can blame him, knowing what I do about his family.”
Sam sighed. “Not sure if our story’s better or worse. Gadreel probably told you about the Apocalypse.”
“Briefly.”
“What he probably didn’t tell you was that a demon broke into my nursery the night I turned six months old. I’ll spare you the details, but he essentially cast a spell on me to prepare me to house Lucifer. Mom caught him, and he killed her-in front of Dad.”
Gil hissed in sympathy.
“That’s why Dad became a hunter. Raised us in the life. I hated it growing up, but... I dunno, I guess... as long as I’m doing it with Dean, it’s not so bad. I... kinda love it, really. Saving people, hunting things-the family business.”
“At least you had your father,” Gil grumbled.
“How’s that?”
“My father... I guess he was trying to protect me, but he hid me for a long time. I didn’t even know he was my father until... well, you heard about the day Sturmvoraus and I broke into the records vault.”
“Yeah, you were talking about that-uh, earlier.” Sam clearly caught himself before he could say on the way to your lab. “So before that, you thought you were an orphan?”
“I didn’t know. Nobody knew, at least among the students on the castle. Everybody either picked on me or ignored me, except for Sturmvoraus.” Gil shook his head. “I thought he was my friend. Turns out, he was probably just using me.”
“I’ve had a couple of those.”
“Really? The demon girlfriend?”
Sam drew in a deep breath. “Yeah, her, and before that, my best friend at Stanford. He went off the rails our sophomore year... didn’t find out until the Apocalypse that that was when he’d been possessed. The demon introduced me to a girl I eventually decided to marry. And he killed her before I could propose.”
“Sweet lightning. And I thought my life was bad.”
“At least you know Agatha’s protected, and she can take care of herself.”
“As long as she listens to the right advisors, sure. It’s Sturmvoraus that has me worried.”
“She kissed you a lot longer than she kissed him.”
Gil felt his cheeks flush as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, well... actually, I have an idea I’d like to discuss with you and Dean once things are a bit calmer. Since you’re not my vassals and you’re here to help Agatha, you might give me a better opinion than anyone else around here.”
Sam shrugged. “I dunno how much help we’ll be, but we’ll try.”
“Thanks.” Gil paused. “You don’t seem terribly worried by how Dean was reacting to the damage to the car.”
“Are you kidding? He’s always like that where the Impala’s hurt-er, damaged. You should have seen him when she was totaled the first time. Of course, that was right after Dad died, but still, we used to have to drag him away long enough to eat. Probably won’t be that bad this time, actually, since it’s just the front end.”
They arrived at the kitchen just then, and Gil was treated to a very entertaining half hour in which Sam tried to explain how to make the perfect bacon cheeseburger to a chef who was scandalized at the very idea of using ground beef for anything but sausage. Sam ate her first attempt and declared it passable; Gil ate her second attempt and understood why Dean liked these sandwiches so much; and she finished the third attempt just as the pie came out of the oven. So Gil ate his slice of pie on the way back to the lab, while Sam carried Dean’s tray (which included the rest of the pie) and told even more entertaining stories about meals on the road.
Dean, back in his other-world clothes, was so deep in his fugue state-reinstalling the rebuilt motor, evidently-that he didn’t even hear Sam and Gil come in. And the song he was singing, apparently off key, didn’t make any sense to Gil.
“Metallica, ‘Enter Sandman,’” Sam explained quietly, not that it helped. “Guess he’s doing better. Hey, Dean?” he called. “Food’s here. Gonna leave it on the workbench.”
“Pie?” Dean asked.
“Almost a whole one. Gil ate a piece.”
“Hell, ’s his house. Thanks, Sammy.” Dean started whistling something decidedly more cheerful.
Sam smiled and nodded toward the door, and Gil followed him out into the hall before leading him toward Operations.
“Now, you mentioned taking data from the beacon engine,” Gil asked as they went. “Is there a way to do that without... waking Lucrezia, for lack of a better term?”
“There should be, as long as I can access the base code without running the program. Sifting through the code to decipher actual memories as opposed to the consciousness simulation could take a while, though. I’ll probably have to have Dean build me a computer that can handle it. Wish I could call a couple of our friends,” Sam admitted with a rueful chuckle, “but one’s dead and the other’s in a universe even more different from ours than this one. But I’ll see what I can do.”
Gil studied Sam’s face for a moment. “Tell me something, Sam. How anxious are you to go back?”
Sam looked down briefly, then shook his head and met Gil’s eyes again. “I don’t know. I don’t know if we can. Time passes so differently there that if we’re here for more than a few days... we might be going back to a world we don’t even recognize.”
“Are you willing to risk that?”
“Gil, we’re here to help Agatha. We’re not leaving until we’re sure she doesn’t need our help anymore.”
“What about those you left behind?”
“Cas and Kevin are here. Charlie’s in Oz. Jody’s a friend, but she doesn’t need us. And everyone else is dead.” Sam shrugged. “If we stay here, no one else there can get hurt on our account. I mean, yeah, there’s stuff that I’ll miss, and we wouldn’t get to see our family again after death, but... we’ve been to Heaven in our world. Best I can say about it is that it beats the alternatives-and we’ve seen those first hand, too.”
Gil blinked. “Even Purgatory?”
“Yeah, I spent a few hours there once. Dean was stuck there for a year.”
That must have been the time Sam had said he’d thought Dean was dead and hadn’t looked for him. Rather than ask to confirm his surmise, however, Gil went with, “So you think your world can get along without you for a while?”
“Every time we try dropping off the radar, something pulls us back. Maybe it’s time that world has to get along without us.” Sam huffed. “I’m sure Death will be happy we’re not messing up the natural order anymore.”
“Death? As in....”
“The Horseman. Dean tried to get on his good side once by giving him fried pickle chips.”
“... Did it work?”
“Well, it might have, if we hadn’t had to bind him because we needed his help dealing with a rogue angel who’d declared himself God. That annoyed him. But we did clean up as much of that mess as we could, so I think he still sort of likes us. Mostly. Or at least he likes Dean. Which is probably the weirdest thing I’ve admitted all day.”
On the off chance the rogue angel in question was Castiel, assuming Gadreel’s information was trustworthy and that there wasn’t some other rogue angel that had gone mad enough to cause problems that severe, Gil decided the best course of action was just to make a vague noise of agreement and stop asking questions. He knew his father’s tendency to jump to conclusions, especially where Agatha was concerned, and that wasn’t a mistake he wanted to repeat from the opposite perspective.
Sam gave him a sidelong look. “Look, I dunno what Gadreel told you about Cas. If he said Cas went off the deep end, it’s true. But he came back, as much as anyone can come back from making that kind of mistake. He’s still Dean’s best friend. He’s human since another angel stole his grace. And if we thought he would make trouble for Agatha, we’d have shipped him back to our dimension right away.”
Gil returned the look. “You don’t read minds, do you?”
Sam snorted. “Hell, no. Who would want to?”
Gil couldn’t help smiling at that. “But did Death like the pickle chips?”
“Actually, yeah. He even said so, after he threatened to kill us if we tried to bind him again.”
“That... actually sounds like Castle Heterodyne.”
Sam chuckled.
By the time they got to Operations, the combined Wulfenbach forces, joined (to the surprise of the whole High Command except Boris) by the Jägers, had pushed the army of revenants several kilometers back toward Sturmhalten. But Sturmvoraus was practically asleep on his feet, and Boris insisted that the Deep Thinkers had the situation well enough in hand that Gil wasn’t needed to oversee everything personally. So Sam and Gil carted Sturmvoraus off to Gil’s quarters and put him to sleep on the bed that had belonged to Gil’s valet, Ardsley Wooster, who also happened to be a British agent. Sam, waving off Gil’s objections, made himself a pallet on the floor, leaving Gil what might be his last chance to sleep in his own bed. Gil gave Zoing strict instructions to wake him at daybreak and let himself fully relax for the first time in months.
Morning came too early, of course, but Gil decided to let the others sleep and went to check on Dean after breakfast. He could hear music playing when he got to the door, and the tray Sam had brought the night before was outside; both the cheeseburger and the pie had been devoured. But Gil’s knock went unanswered-until the music changed to a very clear “Walk right in, sit right down, / Daddy, let your mind roll on!”
The volume turned down as Gil let himself into the lab, but Dean wasn’t visible from the door. “Dean?” Gil called.
There was a brief hiss of static, and then a voice that wasn’t Dean’s sang, “Hey, Jude, don’t make it bad....”
Cautiously, Gil approached the car, which looked fully repaired and still smelled of fresh paint, and found Dean sound asleep on the front seat. “Ah,” he whispered. Then he looked toward the dial Dean had turned the night before to start the music. “And you are....”
Static again, then a bell rang, after which a male voice said, “Hello, baby!”
“Baby. Right. Hi. And Dean’s finished repairing you?”
“Hey hey hey hey, / Hey hey hey hey, / Well, I’m back in black, / Yes, I’m back in black!”
“I thought Sam called you her.”
“She was a long cool woman in a black dress, / Just a smile and a beautiful song....”
“Ah, so... this music is your voice.”
“She’s got it, / Yeah, baby, she’s got it!”
“Fascinating!”
A longer burst of static was followed by a female voice singing, “Nothing you can say can tear me away from my guy, / Nothing you can do, ’cause I’m stuck like glue to my guy.”
Gil chuckled in spite of himself. “No, no, I’ll just ask for plans when he wakes up. For now, let’s let him sleep. All right?”
“Don’t you worry ’bout a thing!”
He chuckled again. “Deal. Nice to meet you, Baby.”
That was answered with an almost cheeky-sounding, “You say goodbye, and I say hello!”
Even though he held no illusion that the rest of the day would be as cheerful, he left the lab smiling.
Next
Chapter 5
One Problem at a Time
Gil hadn’t meant to fall deeply asleep-or to fall asleep at all, really-but in the quiet after the Winchesters’ conversation, something about the motion of the car got past his guard, and he dropped off for real. He roused a little when the car slowed, just enough to be aware of voices.
“Oh, it’s you, sir.” Was that Higgs? “Evenin’.” It was-Airman Third Class Axel Higgs, who was far more than he seemed and had some kind of loyalty to the Heterodynes that predated his service in the Wulfenbach air fleet.
“Hey,” Dean returned. “This is my brother, Sam.”
“Sir,” Higgs acknowledged. “Master Gil with you, is he?”
“And Prince Tarvek. Gotta get ’em back to Sturmhalten. The baron’s dead.”
“What?!” gasped a female voice.
“Oh, hey, Zeetha.”
Higgs cleared his throat. “I’ve the princess to see back to Mechanicsburg, but I’ll just radio ahead, shall I, let them know to expect you?”
“That’d help, thanks.”
“Very good, sir. Expect I’ll be seein’ you in Sturmhalten.”
“All right. See you.”
The car sped up again as Sam asked, “Who’s the green-haired chick?”
“Princess Zeetha of Skifander. It’s some lost city of Amazons-not our kind; more like Wonder Woman....”
Gil was out again before he could work out what that meant.
The next time he surfaced briefly, the car was stopped and a recording of Father’s voice was playing somewhere outside, over the summery sound of crickets and frogs. Sturmvoraus and the wasp eater were both snoring softly. But Gil didn’t really wake up until sometime later, when he felt two hands on his shoulders and two on his upper arms, all shaking him in tandem.
“Your Highness? Your Highness, wake up.”
Gil forced his eyes open a sliver and recognized the drone of an airship engine in the background. “’M here.”
“Not quite, you’re not.” One hand moved off his arm, and Gil smelled coffee.
That got his eyes open better, and he finally realized that all the hands belonged with the face looking at him in concern. “Boris? You look terrible.”
Boris handed Gil his coffee with one of his lower hands while the upper hand on that side released Gil’s shoulder and rubbed Boris’ head. “It’s been a nightmare, Your Highness. Your father’s commands grew... erratic, irrational. When I questioned him, he sent me to oversee the ongoing effort to restore order in Sturmhalten. But for the past two hours or so, Princess Anevka’s been trying to countermand all of my orders.”
That, along with the first sip of coffee, jolted Gil fully awake. “Anevka?!”
“What?!” gasped Sturmvoraus from the other end of the seat. “Is she here?!”
Boris shook his head and dropped his hands to gesture with. “No, no, she’s still on Castle Wulfenbach. We’re headed back to meet it. The Winchesters have given me all the information they have and played me a recording of your father’s last address, along with some images of the late Prince von Blitzengaard.”
Somewhat startled, Gil looked toward the front seat, where Dean was humming under his breath, drumming on the steering wheel, and staring out the windscreen at the closed loading ramp and Sam brandished a little clank that looked like one of Agatha’s. Gil nodded and took another drink of coffee. Right, he’d forgotten that Gadreel had borrowed that and somehow stepped back in time a few minutes to record from a different angle than his own memories would have allowed. And judging from his reactions that morning, Dean hated to fly. Gil really had slept harder than he meant to.
“But I need to ask,” Boris continued. “Why did you react that way to Princess Anevka’s name?”
“She’s The Other,” Gil and Sturmvoraus chorused.
“Or more accurately,” Sturmvoraus continued, “her processor houses a copy of The Other’s consciousness. The version that used to be in Agatha created this copy to help ensure our escape from Sturmhalten.”
“Used to be?”
“The Winchesters... exorcised her, I suppose. I didn’t think it would work because she wasn’t a demon per se, but evidently enough of Lucrezia’s spirit was downloaded into Agatha for the exorcism to work.”
Boris nodded slowly. “That confirms what they told me. Thank you, Your Highness.”
Gil’s eyes narrowed. “You approved her presence on Castle Wulfenbach, didn’t you?”
Boris took off his pince-nez with one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose with another. “She came with your father, but she’d been with him at the hospital, and I had approved that. The reports from Dr. Sun said he listened to her when he wouldn’t listen to anyone else. I knew that, as a clank, she couldn’t be a revenant. I suppose I should have guessed, especially after what you and Prince Tarvek discussed about the new slaver wasps, but....”
Gil sighed. “You couldn’t know, Boris. She’s a good enough actress to fool the unwary. What about that army you said was coming from Sturmhalten?”
Boris put his pince-nez back on. “Our forces retreating from Mechanicsburg should be meeting them any moment now. Orders are to engage immediately, accept surrenders but use revenant containment measures on all prisoners, and otherwise drive the attackers back to Balan’s Gap.”
“No wonder Anevka’s been trying to countermand. Have her arrested at once.”
“I’ll give the order, Your Highness, but to the best of my knowledge, no one knows where she is.”
“She’s near a radio, obviously,” Dean stated flatly.
“That doesn’t actually help much,” Gil admitted. “Castle Wulfenbach dwarfs this airship. There are far too many places she could hide.”
“Then we’ll have to be ready for her,” Sam said. “And we’ll make her come to us.”
Sturmvoraus frowned. “And how, exactly, do you propose to do that?”
“She started countermanding Boris after the baron left to come do something to Mechanicsburg.”
“Stasis bomb,” Dean reported. “Woulda trapped the city in a bubble where time stopped.”
Boris gasped. “Are you certain?”
“Have it on the highest authority.”
“Anyway,” Sam interrupted, “Anevka clearly thinks both the baron and Gil are dead or out of commission, and probably Tarvek, too. She’s supposed to be Tarvek’s sister, which should mean her authority trumps Boris’. But Gil’s the new baron, and Tarvek’s still alive. So if Gil starts issuing orders personally....”
“She’ll be there to meet us,” Gil agreed. “If she thinks she can win me over, she’ll come alone and try to talk her way out of any accusation of treason. If she knows she can’t, she’ll come ready to fight. Either way, she’ll come to us.”
Boris nodded slowly. “But can we fight her? She’s strong enough to keep up with your father, after all.”
Gil smiled at the back of Dean’s head. “Oh, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that.”
Sturmvoraus gave him a sidelong look. “Why does that make me nervous?”
Gil chuckled, drank the last of his coffee, and went with Boris to the nearest radio. Once he had repeated Boris’ orders and also ordered the castle’s crew to detain Anevka if she was found, he suddenly realized he had no idea where they were. “How much time do we have?” he asked instead, given the limited possibilities as far as location went.
“We should meet the castle within the next five to ten minutes,” Boris answered. “Capt. Patel won’t take evasive action even if Anevka orders him to-even if the castle could move that quickly. I don’t expect any trouble until we’re safely in the hangar.”
Gil took a deep breath and let it out again. “Not a demon,” he murmured to himself. “Just a clank. We can do this.”
“... Your Highness?”
“That recording. Did it show Agatha’s exorcism?”
“I-yes, I saw... something come out of the Lady Heterodyne.”
“Did you see it try to attack my father?”
“It... did something before the clank struck it. But how the clank itself moved so quickly....”
“The-the clank is just a shell. It’s being driven by an angel.”
There wasn’t much that could shock Boris into open-mouthed silence. That statement did so.
“Look, Boris, the Winchesters... their world is vastly different from anything we know. So I’m afraid you’ll have to pardon me being a bit off kilter as a result of working with them.”
“Are you certain they’re trustworthy?”
“They tried to save my father. They would have succeeded if he hadn’t forbidden them to let Gadreel heal him.”
Boris wearily scrubbed a hand over his face. “I suppose I have no choice but to trust your judgment.”
“Oh, don’t trust just my judgment. Come see what they have in the back of the car.”
By the time they returned to the car, Sturmvoraus and Sam had finally coaxed Dean out of the front seat and were inspecting the arsenal. Dean looked up and saw them coming, reached back into the hidden compartment, and pulled something out. “Hey, Gil, catch,” he said and tossed a weapon to him.
Gil caught it easily and examined it-it was a gun, for sure, and the diameter of the side-by-side barrels suggested it was a shotgun. But the barrels were short, ending just past the end of the handguard, and the stock was shaped to fit comfortably in the hand rather than resting against the shoulder. “What is it?”
“Sawed-off shotgun.” Dean handed another to Sturmvoraus while Sam pulled a sword like Gadreel’s out of another section of the arsenal and hid it up his sleeve. “Shells are packed with rock salt-it’s a spirit deterrent. Aim for the head.”
“Will the salt have the velocity to pierce the metal?”
“Depends on how thick the metal is, but if it’s just possessed, we’ve got two options: salt and burn, or exorcise it and hit the spirit with the angel sword. Either way, we hit the head with enough salt, we’re halfway home.”
“And if nothing of Lucrezia’s spirit is there, or if the clank keeps going without her?”
Dean patted his handgun, and Sam hooked a blowtorch on one of his belt loops and closed the arsenal.
“Ah.”
“Erm,” said Sturmvoraus as the wasp eater woke up and scampered up to the top of his head. “Do we have to destroy the head?”
Dean closed the luggage compartment lid with a slam. “You said that’s where the processor is.”
“Yes, but-”
“But nothing. She probably ordered the baron to use that stasis bomb on us. She dies. Now.”
“She also has all of Lucrezia’s memories. The version in Zola doesn’t, or at least Zola doesn’t have conscious access to all of them. If we hold her for interrogation-”
“We can get the information from the beacon engine if we have to,” Sam interrupted, his voice taking on a sparky edge. “We can find a way to analyze the data safely without allowing a new version of Lucrezia to come to full awareness. But we can’t risk letting Anevka get away again.”
Sturmvoraus sighed unhappily. “You do have a point. I just... put so much work into the design, and now... to see it destroyed....”
“If we don’t destroy her, she’ll destroy Europa. Is that what you want?”
“... no.”
“Then help us clean up your mess.”
“This is not my mess! This was not my plan!”
“You gave her that clank, dude. Like it or not, it is your mess now. I may have let Lucifer out of his cage, but I put him back in. Lucrezia’s not even an archangel; she’s a digitized ghost with delusions of godhood.” Sam stepped into Sturmvoraus’ personal space, looming over him despite the relatively small difference between their heights. “Aim. For. The head.”
The wasp eater squeaked and cowered, and Sturmvoraus gulped and nodded.
“Good heavens,” Boris murmured to Gil. “You were right, sir.”
Gil allowed himself only the smallest of smirks.
“Sir!” called one of the crew. “Approaching Castle Wulfenbach; stand by to dock!”
“All right,” Dean rumbled. “Let’s do this.”
He and Sam went back to the front of the car and got in. Gil and Sturmvoraus did the same. The wasp eater, perhaps wisely, climbed off Sturmvoraus’ head and curled up in the space between the top of the back seat and the back windscreen. Moments later, the airship shuddered slightly as it set down in one of Castle Wulfenbach’s massive hangars. Dean started the car’s engine.
“Er, why are we doing this?” Sturmvoraus asked.
“Gotta make an entrance,” Dean replied, resting his hand on a knob on the front control panel. As soon as the ramp began to lower, he turned it with a flick of his wrist.
And music began blaring from speakers somewhere in the car-a harsh, electronic sound that might be some kind of guitar. And just about the time the ramp reached the hangar floor and Dean started moving the car forward, the guitar was joined by pounding bass, distorted organ, and driving drums.
Sturmvoraus might not understand Dean’s reasoning, but Gil certainly did. Not only would such an entrance make an impression on everyone in the hangar, but it also made him feel ready for battle. Anevka-Lucrezia didn’t have a prayer.
Dean turned the car and drove toward the door leading to the castle’s interior, parking it in the center of the largest available clear space-well out of anyone’s way, but still making an obvious statement. Neither Gil nor Sturmvoraus needed any prompting to open their doors and get out at exactly the same time the Winchesters did, just as the voices that had joined the song crooned, “Smoke on the water, fire in the sky!”
Grantz, Father’s monster hunter who looked even bigger than Sam, was waiting at the door and immediately bowed slightly to Gil before taking a few steps forward to report. “Herr Baron, we’ve got squads searching all over the castle, but so far, nobody’s found Princess Anevka.”
“Well, of course not, darling,” said an electronic version of Agatha’s voice with Lucrezia’s inflections, and Gil looked over to see a female-shaped clank in the doorway, its white wig and white riding outfit matching its white skin. “I’m right here.”
Grantz snarled and lunged at Anevka. But the clank was stronger than it looked and easily hurled the hunter away... and Grantz landed with a sickening crunch on the front end of the car, shattering the windscreen and severely denting the metal. Swearing bitterly, Dean leveled his shotgun and fired six rounds at Anevka’s head, ignoring her screams and Sturmvoraus’ yelp of dismay.
Unfortunately, the commotion drew the attention of people out in the hall, some of whom came running with cries of, “My lady!”
“KILL THEM!” Anevka shrieked. “KILL THEM ALL!”
“SKREEEEEEEEE!” shrilled the wasp eater.
Wild-eyed, the revenants roared and charged toward Dean, who switched to his handgun to keep firing at Anevka. But Sam leveled his shotgun and fired at the first revenant, hitting the revenant’s chest and knocking him down.
“What-” Sturmvoraus began.
“Non-lethal!” Gil answered and followed Sam’s lead.
As Sturmvoraus joined them, Dean put one round through Anevka’s voice box, silencing her, and three more into her head. The third apparently hit something vital, as it caused a burst of electricity that crackled loudly enough to be heard over the gunfire. The clank’s body didn’t fall, but it did freeze. By that time, guards had arrived to subdue the revenants and take them into custody, and Boris started shouting orders for removal of the disabled clank.
Grantz stood with a grunt. “Sorry about your coach, Herr Baron.”
“It’s not mine,” Gil replied, “and it’s not your fault. Have it brought to the nearest empty lab; I’m sure Dean will want to repair it himself.”
“Very good, Herr Baron.” Grantz bowed and left to obey.
Sam came over to collect Gil’s shotgun and put it back in the arsenal, but Dean was despondently surveying the damage and swearing under his breath. As Sam opened the back, Dean opened the driver’s door, completely ignoring the wasp eater as it ran out and made a beeline for Sturmvoraus, and pulled a lever that caused the large panel at the front to open with a metallic groan.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Dean said, sounding almost tearful, and went back to inspect the damage more carefully.
Cautiously, mindful that Dean did seem to be a spark but might not be fully broken through, Gil walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve sent Grantz to set up a lab for you.”
Dean blinked and looked up at Gil. “Lab? I can-”
“It would give you the space to work in privacy, without interruptions.”
“Oh. Thanks.” Dean’s eyes dropped back to what looked like the ruined engine compartment, which was a mess of tangled wire and twisted metal.
“Hey,” Sam said, coming around the other side. “It’s just the front end. You’ve rebuilt her from the frame up twice before. You can fix her.”
“I know that, Sammy, but... but here....”
“Make a list of what you need,” said Gil. “Tools, parts, materials, everything. What we don’t have, we’ll find, and what we can’t find, we’ll make.”
Dean nodded slowly once, twice... and then the Spark took hold and he nodded again, more decisively. “Sam?”
Sam pulled a notebook out of his pocket and handed it over. Dean hurriedly scribbled a list and handed the notebook back to Sam and the list to Boris. He paced impatiently as members of the maintenance crew loaded the car onto a cart to transport it to the lab, then stalked after the cart as if... well, as if he were a hunter stalking prey. Fortunately, the lab wasn’t far, and the equipment Dean had requested was already arriving. As a result, he still retained enough self-control to thank the crew members as they unloaded the car and to pay attention as Gil showed him around the lab.
“Do you need anything else?” Gil asked as he finished the tour. “Can I have some food sent down to you or something?”
Dean was already starting to fixate on the car again, but he answered absently, “Uh... bacon cheeseburger, extra onions; a beer; and some cherry pie.” He took off his coat and laid it over the back of a nearby chair.
“What’s a cheeseburger?”
“I’ll explain,” Sam replied. “We should probably leave him to it.”
“Er, right. Okay.”
“Dean?”
Dean shook his head to break his focus and looked at Sam. “What?”
“Need my help?”
“Huh? Nah. You get some sleep. And don’t forget the pie.”
Sam huffed and smiled. “Sure. Good night.”
“Night, Sammy. And Gil? Thanks.”
Gil smiled. “You’re welcome. Sam? This way.”
As the door closed behind them, Gil heard Dean start singing quietly, “Hey, Jude, don’t make it bad....”
Sam looked wistful. “He definitely needs the pie, even if the cheeseburger can’t be done.”
Gil frowned. “How do you....”
“That song. Dean says Mom used to sing that to him instead of a lullaby.” Sam shook his head. “He’s more upset than I realized.”
“Your mother... died young?”
“Murdered.”
Boris cleared his throat. “Ah, Prince Tarvek, would you come with me to Operations? You may be able to assist....”
“Yes, of course,” Sturmvoraus replied. “Wulfenbach?”
“I’ll join you later,” Gil said. “I think I need some pie myself. You want any?”
“Ah, no, thank you. I... don’t seem to have much of an appetite.”
“All right. Keep an eye on him, Boris.”
“Of course, Your Highness,” Boris answered with a bow and escorted Sturmvoraus away.
“There are rumors about Prince Aaronev’s wife,” Gil explained as he led Sam toward the nearest kitchen. “It’s never been proven, but my father strongly suspected that Anevka killed her-before Sturmvoraus gave the clank to Lucrezia, I mean. I gather Anevka also killed Prince Aaronev. I haven’t tried to talk to Sturmvoraus about it, but I don’t know that he had much affection for either of his parents-not that I can blame him, knowing what I do about his family.”
Sam sighed. “Not sure if our story’s better or worse. Gadreel probably told you about the Apocalypse.”
“Briefly.”
“What he probably didn’t tell you was that a demon broke into my nursery the night I turned six months old. I’ll spare you the details, but he essentially cast a spell on me to prepare me to house Lucifer. Mom caught him, and he killed her-in front of Dad.”
Gil hissed in sympathy.
“That’s why Dad became a hunter. Raised us in the life. I hated it growing up, but... I dunno, I guess... as long as I’m doing it with Dean, it’s not so bad. I... kinda love it, really. Saving people, hunting things-the family business.”
“At least you had your father,” Gil grumbled.
“How’s that?”
“My father... I guess he was trying to protect me, but he hid me for a long time. I didn’t even know he was my father until... well, you heard about the day Sturmvoraus and I broke into the records vault.”
“Yeah, you were talking about that-uh, earlier.” Sam clearly caught himself before he could say on the way to your lab. “So before that, you thought you were an orphan?”
“I didn’t know. Nobody knew, at least among the students on the castle. Everybody either picked on me or ignored me, except for Sturmvoraus.” Gil shook his head. “I thought he was my friend. Turns out, he was probably just using me.”
“I’ve had a couple of those.”
“Really? The demon girlfriend?”
Sam drew in a deep breath. “Yeah, her, and before that, my best friend at Stanford. He went off the rails our sophomore year... didn’t find out until the Apocalypse that that was when he’d been possessed. The demon introduced me to a girl I eventually decided to marry. And he killed her before I could propose.”
“Sweet lightning. And I thought my life was bad.”
“At least you know Agatha’s protected, and she can take care of herself.”
“As long as she listens to the right advisors, sure. It’s Sturmvoraus that has me worried.”
“She kissed you a lot longer than she kissed him.”
Gil felt his cheeks flush as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, well... actually, I have an idea I’d like to discuss with you and Dean once things are a bit calmer. Since you’re not my vassals and you’re here to help Agatha, you might give me a better opinion than anyone else around here.”
Sam shrugged. “I dunno how much help we’ll be, but we’ll try.”
“Thanks.” Gil paused. “You don’t seem terribly worried by how Dean was reacting to the damage to the car.”
“Are you kidding? He’s always like that where the Impala’s hurt-er, damaged. You should have seen him when she was totaled the first time. Of course, that was right after Dad died, but still, we used to have to drag him away long enough to eat. Probably won’t be that bad this time, actually, since it’s just the front end.”
They arrived at the kitchen just then, and Gil was treated to a very entertaining half hour in which Sam tried to explain how to make the perfect bacon cheeseburger to a chef who was scandalized at the very idea of using ground beef for anything but sausage. Sam ate her first attempt and declared it passable; Gil ate her second attempt and understood why Dean liked these sandwiches so much; and she finished the third attempt just as the pie came out of the oven. So Gil ate his slice of pie on the way back to the lab, while Sam carried Dean’s tray (which included the rest of the pie) and told even more entertaining stories about meals on the road.
Dean, back in his other-world clothes, was so deep in his fugue state-reinstalling the rebuilt motor, evidently-that he didn’t even hear Sam and Gil come in. And the song he was singing, apparently off key, didn’t make any sense to Gil.
“Metallica, ‘Enter Sandman,’” Sam explained quietly, not that it helped. “Guess he’s doing better. Hey, Dean?” he called. “Food’s here. Gonna leave it on the workbench.”
“Pie?” Dean asked.
“Almost a whole one. Gil ate a piece.”
“Hell, ’s his house. Thanks, Sammy.” Dean started whistling something decidedly more cheerful.
Sam smiled and nodded toward the door, and Gil followed him out into the hall before leading him toward Operations.
“Now, you mentioned taking data from the beacon engine,” Gil asked as they went. “Is there a way to do that without... waking Lucrezia, for lack of a better term?”
“There should be, as long as I can access the base code without running the program. Sifting through the code to decipher actual memories as opposed to the consciousness simulation could take a while, though. I’ll probably have to have Dean build me a computer that can handle it. Wish I could call a couple of our friends,” Sam admitted with a rueful chuckle, “but one’s dead and the other’s in a universe even more different from ours than this one. But I’ll see what I can do.”
Gil studied Sam’s face for a moment. “Tell me something, Sam. How anxious are you to go back?”
Sam looked down briefly, then shook his head and met Gil’s eyes again. “I don’t know. I don’t know if we can. Time passes so differently there that if we’re here for more than a few days... we might be going back to a world we don’t even recognize.”
“Are you willing to risk that?”
“Gil, we’re here to help Agatha. We’re not leaving until we’re sure she doesn’t need our help anymore.”
“What about those you left behind?”
“Cas and Kevin are here. Charlie’s in Oz. Jody’s a friend, but she doesn’t need us. And everyone else is dead.” Sam shrugged. “If we stay here, no one else there can get hurt on our account. I mean, yeah, there’s stuff that I’ll miss, and we wouldn’t get to see our family again after death, but... we’ve been to Heaven in our world. Best I can say about it is that it beats the alternatives-and we’ve seen those first hand, too.”
Gil blinked. “Even Purgatory?”
“Yeah, I spent a few hours there once. Dean was stuck there for a year.”
That must have been the time Sam had said he’d thought Dean was dead and hadn’t looked for him. Rather than ask to confirm his surmise, however, Gil went with, “So you think your world can get along without you for a while?”
“Every time we try dropping off the radar, something pulls us back. Maybe it’s time that world has to get along without us.” Sam huffed. “I’m sure Death will be happy we’re not messing up the natural order anymore.”
“Death? As in....”
“The Horseman. Dean tried to get on his good side once by giving him fried pickle chips.”
“... Did it work?”
“Well, it might have, if we hadn’t had to bind him because we needed his help dealing with a rogue angel who’d declared himself God. That annoyed him. But we did clean up as much of that mess as we could, so I think he still sort of likes us. Mostly. Or at least he likes Dean. Which is probably the weirdest thing I’ve admitted all day.”
On the off chance the rogue angel in question was Castiel, assuming Gadreel’s information was trustworthy and that there wasn’t some other rogue angel that had gone mad enough to cause problems that severe, Gil decided the best course of action was just to make a vague noise of agreement and stop asking questions. He knew his father’s tendency to jump to conclusions, especially where Agatha was concerned, and that wasn’t a mistake he wanted to repeat from the opposite perspective.
Sam gave him a sidelong look. “Look, I dunno what Gadreel told you about Cas. If he said Cas went off the deep end, it’s true. But he came back, as much as anyone can come back from making that kind of mistake. He’s still Dean’s best friend. He’s human since another angel stole his grace. And if we thought he would make trouble for Agatha, we’d have shipped him back to our dimension right away.”
Gil returned the look. “You don’t read minds, do you?”
Sam snorted. “Hell, no. Who would want to?”
Gil couldn’t help smiling at that. “But did Death like the pickle chips?”
“Actually, yeah. He even said so, after he threatened to kill us if we tried to bind him again.”
“That... actually sounds like Castle Heterodyne.”
Sam chuckled.
By the time they got to Operations, the combined Wulfenbach forces, joined (to the surprise of the whole High Command except Boris) by the Jägers, had pushed the army of revenants several kilometers back toward Sturmhalten. But Sturmvoraus was practically asleep on his feet, and Boris insisted that the Deep Thinkers had the situation well enough in hand that Gil wasn’t needed to oversee everything personally. So Sam and Gil carted Sturmvoraus off to Gil’s quarters and put him to sleep on the bed that had belonged to Gil’s valet, Ardsley Wooster, who also happened to be a British agent. Sam, waving off Gil’s objections, made himself a pallet on the floor, leaving Gil what might be his last chance to sleep in his own bed. Gil gave Zoing strict instructions to wake him at daybreak and let himself fully relax for the first time in months.
Morning came too early, of course, but Gil decided to let the others sleep and went to check on Dean after breakfast. He could hear music playing when he got to the door, and the tray Sam had brought the night before was outside; both the cheeseburger and the pie had been devoured. But Gil’s knock went unanswered-until the music changed to a very clear “Walk right in, sit right down, / Daddy, let your mind roll on!”
The volume turned down as Gil let himself into the lab, but Dean wasn’t visible from the door. “Dean?” Gil called.
There was a brief hiss of static, and then a voice that wasn’t Dean’s sang, “Hey, Jude, don’t make it bad....”
Cautiously, Gil approached the car, which looked fully repaired and still smelled of fresh paint, and found Dean sound asleep on the front seat. “Ah,” he whispered. Then he looked toward the dial Dean had turned the night before to start the music. “And you are....”
Static again, then a bell rang, after which a male voice said, “Hello, baby!”
“Baby. Right. Hi. And Dean’s finished repairing you?”
“Hey hey hey hey, / Hey hey hey hey, / Well, I’m back in black, / Yes, I’m back in black!”
“I thought Sam called you her.”
“She was a long cool woman in a black dress, / Just a smile and a beautiful song....”
“Ah, so... this music is your voice.”
“She’s got it, / Yeah, baby, she’s got it!”
“Fascinating!”
A longer burst of static was followed by a female voice singing, “Nothing you can say can tear me away from my guy, / Nothing you can do, ’cause I’m stuck like glue to my guy.”
Gil chuckled in spite of himself. “No, no, I’ll just ask for plans when he wakes up. For now, let’s let him sleep. All right?”
“Don’t you worry ’bout a thing!”
He chuckled again. “Deal. Nice to meet you, Baby.”
That was answered with an almost cheeky-sounding, “You say goodbye, and I say hello!”
Even though he held no illusion that the rest of the day would be as cheerful, he left the lab smiling.
Next