Gilgamesh Wulfenbach and the Men of Letters 10/18
A/N: Oh, why not-I know some folks are waiting to read until the last chapter is posted anyway, so I'll step up the posting pace a bit more.
Previous | Master Post
Chapter 10
Don’t Sleep in the Subway
You know better than this, Jody chided herself as she drove out of Sioux Falls in mid-August, and again as she passed Omaha, the Kansas state line, Topeka. Text messages with mystery coordinates from unknown numbers are not an invitation to cake and ice cream. Youknow that.
But she was going to those mystery coordinates anyway. She couldn’t help it.
That’s what Bobby would have done. It’s what Sam and Dean would have done. And none of them were here to do it for her.
She felt marginally better to arrive at her destination in Wichita and find it was a hospital. A petite Asian woman about Jody’s age sat, slightly hunched as if she were cold despite the summer heat, on a bench outside the entrance. But as Jody approached the doors, the lady perked up a little.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Are you Sheriff Mills?”
Jody blinked and stopped. “Yes, ma’am.”
The lady’s relief was palpable as she stood. “Crowley said you’d come. I’m Linda Tran-I’m Kevin’s mom.”
Jody gasped. “Kevin thought you were dead!”
“I nearly was. Crowley had been keeping me hostage, but then he disappeared, and the guard....” Linda faltered to a stop.
“You don’t have to explain.” Jody pulled out her hip flask of holy water and offered it to Linda.
“Thank you.” Linda drank easily and handed the flask back. “Anyway, Crowley came back and let us all go, but I was in the worst shape, so he brought me here and said he’d send you to pick me up when I was released.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. He said something about a plan to stop Abaddon, but I don’t know any more than that.”
Jody nodded slowly. “Have you eaten?”
Linda grimaced. “Only hospital food.”
“Let’s get something to go, then. I’ve got a safe place where we can spend the night.”
Linda nodded and followed Jody to her truck. Not until they were inside it did she ask, “Where is Kevin?”
Jody sighed. “He’s all right, as far as I know. He’s with Castiel. But more than that’s gonna have to wait until we’ve eaten. It’s a long story.”
“And the short version?”
“They’re looking for the Winchesters.”
Linda drew in a ragged breath. “Crowley said... Kevin had told him to tell me goodbye.”
Jody reached over and rubbed Linda’s thin shoulder slightly. “Cas was going to take Kevin with him to keep Kevin safe. But I don’t even know if they’ve left yet. Sounded like they had a lot of research to do.”
Linda sniffled. “You’re a mother, too?”
“Was. Had a son.”
“Demons?”
“No... not the first time.” Jody steeled herself against the inevitable flashbacks-the hospital, the funeral, her baby boy turning up on her doorstep, getting sick again, turning....
A surprisingly strong hand gripped her wrist as Linda asked, “The second time?”
“He was a zombie.”
Linda gasped. “Oh.”
Jody swallowed hard. “All I can say is, thank God for Sam Winchester.”
“Oh, my dear. I’m so sorry.”
Jody sniffled and huffed in amusement. “Who’s consoling who here?”
Linda chuckled. “Are you sure you’re all right to drive?”
Jody nodded. “Yeah, I’ll make it. Let’s just get some food in us.”
But nothing sounded good to either of them at the time, so they both got sodas and French fries. Not until after Jody had told Linda the full story of the Winchesters’ disappearance, about the time they got to Salina, did either of them have enough of an appetite for a burger. They got groceries in Salina, too, just in case.
The lights were on inside the bunker when they arrived, but calling for Cas and Kevin got no response. So Jody led Linda down the stairs to the library, where both Kevin’s laptop and Sam’s were gone but a leather-bound volume that looked like a journal sat on one table. On top was a note addressed to Mom.
“That’s Kevin’s handwriting,” Linda breathed and snatched up the note. One hand crept up to cover her mouth as she read, although it seemed to take all her willpower not to let the other hand tremble. “Oh, Kevin,” she whispered as she got to the end.
“What does he say?” Jody asked quietly.
“They left two weeks ago. But he didn’t want to go without saying goodbye.” Linda put the note on the table and ran a hand over the journal. “He said he didn’t know when they’d be back... if they even could come back. But this is the journal they’d been looking for, by a-a Lord Heterodyne. Kevin said it should tell us all we need to know, and... p-possibly... how to keep up with what they’re doing, wherever they are.”
Jody put an arm around Linda’s shoulders. “At least we know he’s alive.”
Linda finally broke down at that and let Jody pull her into a hug. But the maternal tears didn’t last more than a couple of minutes before she backed away, wiped her face with a tissue, and reached for the journal with a determined glint in her eyes. “He said I might have some trouble reading-oh!” she exclaimed as she picked up the journal and something fell out of it. Handing the journal to Jody, she picked up the object.
“What is it?” Jody asked, flipping the journal open at random.
“A candy.” Linda looked at it more closely. “A Vietnamese candy-my favorite kind. I haven’t seen any of these in this country for years. How....”
“Welcome to the Men of Letters,” Jody muttered and looked down at the open book. Then she frowned. “What kind of trouble did he think you’d have?”
“Translation.”
Jody looked up again. “This is in English.”
Almost anyone who happened upon Dean stretched out on Baby’s front seat with his hat down over his face and the windows cracked would assume he was dozing. And he was trying to. It had been too short of a night after too long of a day, and he wasn’t sixteen anymore. But there was more to it than that.
He was hiding.
Spark. Smart guy. It didn’t make sense. Sam was the smart one. Sam went to college. Oh, sure, Dean had wanted to, a lifetime ago, but now he knew his lot in life. He was just a grunt. He wasn’t the type of guy who... built airplanes with the guy who’d just inherited practically the whole of Europe. Never mind the whole parts-to-plane-in-an-hour business. But they had a job to do here, and even if they could find some way to go home, they couldn’t leave until the job was finished. So... yeah, Dean was hiding, but probably only one other person knew it.
No, make that two other people, if you counted the one who was playing all his favorite tunes at the moment. He’d gotten used to her already-but hell, he’d loved the old girl all his life. Maybe part of him had always known she was in there, waiting for a chance to come out and express herself. And she loved him, too; she’d made that abundantly clear already. It was a gift.
A gift he didn’t deserve.
Would she even be alive anymore if they went back? She’d broken through the same way he had, but was that something that would be undone if they left? If they couldn’t leave without killing her-oh, no, no, no, Dean couldn’t go there, not now. He felt sick enough already. He tried yet again to shut his mind off and just let the music lull him to sleep.
He still hadn’t quite managed it when the music turned down and there was a knock on the window behind him. “Jägers are here,” Sam said quietly from outside. “Have to get Zola settled first, but Oggie’s showing Gil the cell where they broke out from the Deepdown so Gil can have Zola placed somewhere else.”
Dean sighed. “Thanks.”
After a pause, Sam asked, “Want me to stay?”
Baby opened her back door before Dean could answer, and he heard Sam climb into the back seat. She closed the door again after him. Neither brother said anything for a long moment.
“Those kids are in pretty bad shape,” Sam finally stated even more quietly. “Tarvek’s barely holding it together, trying to help them.”
“Runnin’ out of ginger tea?” Dean returned, because it was the only smart remark that came to him.
“Dean.” There was no heat behind it, though.
Another moment passed before Dean said, “Guess it’s a good thing Gadreel came along. Cas doesn’t have his mojo.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Look, I know you don’t like him, Sam. Hell, I’m not sure I like him. But he did save your life and leave, like he’d promised. And he’s tryin’ to help now.”
Sam sighed. “Maybe he should stick with Tarvek. If Gil’s right and renouncing Lucrezia is going to put his life in danger... I mean, we saw what von Blitzengaard was capable of doing.”
Dean raised one eyebrow, though the motion was hidden by his hat. “Don’t you want him with Agatha?”
“Agatha’s got Mechanicsburg, plus Cas. Tarvek’s an ally with a lot of knowledge, a lot of connections, a lot of potential, but he’s also the most exposed. He needs protection, especially after that vow.”
“What about Gil?”
Sam’s smile reached his voice for the first time in this conversation. “Dude, Gil’s got us.”
Baby agreed with a few bars of “The Boys Are Back in Town.”
Dean chuckled, and somehow that made him feel better enough to nod off for real until Sam woke him with news that the Jägers had gotten Zola settled. Groaning, Dean sat up straight and pushed his hat back.
“Thirty-six hours,” said Sam, watching something out the back windshield.
“What?”
“That’s how long we’ve been here.”
Dean blew the air out of his cheeks. “Feels like it’s been years.”
Sam huffed in amusement. “Months, maybe. Here comes Gil.”
Baby opened her doors, and the brothers got out as Gil, joined en route by Higgs, walked over to them. Dean looked past them toward the prison wing of the castle, where Oggie was waiting at the door and the Jäger generals were barking orders to the horde.
“You should wait until they’re all inside,” Gil stated, handing Dean the key to Zola’s cell attached to a huge ring of other old-fashioned keys. “Not only is the door narrow, but Zola’s bound to be able to hear them filing in. Jägers are quiet only when it’s imperative to approach with stealth, but since the odds are that no Geisters are left here, they’re constrained only by the need to actually look for clues rather than charging straight after Oggie, wherever he leads. Zola’s got more pluck than I’d given her credit for, but I’d be rattled if I heard the Jägers tearing around in the basement, and I’m used to them.”
Higgs chuckled.
“How’s it comin’?” Dean asked.
Gil grimaced. “Slower than I’d like. I’ve had to repeat the clemency order five times to get all units to understand it. And we’ve been trying to make arrangements for the coronation, but we can’t find the bishop. Tarvek says he wouldn’t have been among the wasped. Probably ran back to Belfast as soon as things started going pear-shaped here.”
“Well, hell, we’ve got Gadreel. He can do it.”
“Pretty hard to argue divine right when an angel does the crowning,” Sam agreed.
Gil smiled wryly. “True.”
“VE HUNT!” the Jägers roared suddenly, but as ordered, they didn’t charge. Rather, they marched into the prison in a surprisingly orderly fashion.
“The Jägers used to be men,” Gil explained when he noticed Dean’s raised eyebrows. “They were the Heterodynes’ shock troops, the best fighters and the most bloodthirsty. Loyal to the bone. Every one took the Jägerdraught of his own free will-and nine out of ten of them died from it.” He shook his head and looked over his shoulder. “What were they thinking?”
“I dunno,” Higgs muttered under his breath, as if it were a personal affront somehow. Huh. Interesting. “Still damn good soldiers, though,” he added less grumpily and at a normal volume. “Know how to follow orders. Rowdy bunch, but if the general tells ’em to march in a column of twos, they march in a column of twos.”
The four men fell silent and watched the Jägers pass, while Baby played “The St. Louis Blues March” and a few other hits from World War II. Dean wondered idly how she even knew them. But several times he caught the Jägers bobbing their heads along with the music, which was more amusing than it should have been, especially on “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”
“The Andrews Sisters?” Sam teased her at the end of the song. “Seriously?”
“Thou aeronautical boll weevil,” the Mills Brothers retorted, “Illuminate yon woods primeval!” [1]
Even Higgs laughed at that one.
A few minutes later, the end of the column finally came into view, so the men walked over to the prison and waited for the path to be clear, falling in at the end of the line so as to make their tread less distinguishable from the Jägers’ trampling. Inside, the Winchesters followed Gil and Higgs to the staircase that led to Zola’s cell.
They were still climbing when they heard, “STOP YELLING AT ME!”
All four men froze.
“It’s not my fault, Auntie! I’ve never seen that kind of clank before! ... Well, you didn’t know who they were, either! Besides, it had a Sturmvoraus flag; I thought they were part of the Order. And how was I to know the Jägers were so close behind them?” Zola sobbed. “How am I supposed to do that when I can’t even walk?!”
Gil swallowed hard. Higgs gently but firmly pulled him away. Sam, meanwhile, had his notebook out, pen poised over the paper.
“It was a fluke that we were in earshot of your other self at the hospital. We can’t count on there being anyone here we can seduce into healing us the same way. And even if I did have my Moveit #11, I couldn’t take on the entire Jäger horde by myself. ... What can they even find here, anyway? Your priestesses burned everything they didn’t take. ... But if they’re going to the Citadel of Silver Light-” Zola paused, then burst into a flurry of furious French. Dean couldn’t follow more than a cuss word here and there, but Sam was scribbling notes as fast as he could.
Wait, if they were in Transylvania, how come everybody spoke English? Or did they? If Sam and Dean were subject to some sort of universal translator spell, though, why didn’t it work on French?
Dean decided not to worry about it for the moment. He needed to come up with a bad-cop approach quickly to deploy as soon as Zola stopped arguing with Lucrezia. He’d already shot her once; she should know she couldn’t seduce him. But maybe... she was worried about the Jägers... hmmm... he’d had fangs once himself....
Zola broke off in mid-sentence and started crying loudly. There was a chance, of course, that the whole thing was an act, but much as he hated to admit it, he could scare even Lucrezia if he had to. He’d spent ten years under the tutelage of Hell’s torture master, after all, and the demons didn’t call him “Alastair’s apprentice” for nothing. If he did have to tap into that side of himself, though, he prayed Sam would be able to pull him back from the abyss.
Silently, Dean drew a deep breath and signed Listen to Sam. Sam nodded once. Then Dean deliberately jingled the keys in his hand and walked the rest of the way up the stairs to the next floor. Zola’s was the first cell on the left. He opened the door and took in the windowless walls, bare even of light fixtures or shackles, and the solid stone floor, on which Zola lay with only a blanket beneath her. The only light was coming from the torches in the hall behind him. There was absolutely nothing in this cell she could use as a weapon, even when the bones he’d shattered finally knitted. Zola herself had been bandaged per Gil’s orders, but her gown still showed bullet holes and blood spatter, and her tear-streaked face was pale and lined with pain.
Dean leaned against the door jamb with a contemptuous snort and a shake of the head. “And they thought you could pass for the Heterodyne. Pathetic.”
“Please,” she blubbered. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Nah. I’m under orders. The baron wants you alive. I think he wants to find out just how you wound up with The Other in your head. But y’know, me an’ him, we’re pretty tight. Maybe he’ll let me help out with his... experiments.”
She sniffled angrily. “You’re lying. You had a Sturmvoraus badge on your clank; you’re not a Wulfenbach man, even if Gil was with you. And the baron wouldn’t dare experiment on me-Gil wouldn’t allow it!”
“You tried to kill his girlfriend. And it’s not the first time you’ve killed a human, is it?”
“What... what do you mean?”
Instead of answering directly, he started casing the cell again. Not quite as escape-proof as reinforced concrete, but it would definitely keep Zola contained as long as she was injured. “I used to be a vampire,” he said casually.
She gasped audibly.
“Oh, it was only for a couple of days. We found a cure. But you know, vampires, they can smell things most people can’t. Some of those smells... man, I’ll never forget.” This much was true. The bluff required him to look her in the eye again. “And there’s one I can smell on you.”
“Blood?”
“Death.” Granted, given his line of work, he’d learned to recognize that smell years before his brief stint as a vampire. But at the moment, it was all he could do to hold off a flashback to the night Sam and their resurrected maternal grandfather had found him in the middle of the building after he’d single-handedly slaughtered all the other vamps in the nest that had claimed him. He had a script-a conversation between Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in Chisum-and he needed to stick to it.
Sam’s hand landed on his shoulder, grounding him. “Hey. Ease off, Big Casino.”
Good, he’d caught the reference. Dean just managed not to sigh in relief.
But Zola gasped as Dean turned to pretend to snipe at Sam. “Heterodynes!” Had she finally noticed the pattern in their vests? “But that’s... that’s... well, how would you know, Auntie?! Didn’t they go to America before you married Uncle Bill?”
Sam and Dean frowned at each other in confusion.
“But how do you know they’re not constructs or.... The baron came back from Skifander, didn’t he?!”
Dean’s eyebrows rose. The baron had been in Skifander? Had he known Zeetha or anyone Zeetha knew?
-Come to think of it, Zeetha was about Gil’s age, and they did look a lot alike....
Sam, on the other hand, murmured something Enochian under his breath. Dean had no clue what or why.
“But maybe they aren’t even from the same branch of the family,” Zola went on. “Maybe they’re related to one of the old Heterodynes. I mean... I mean....”
Sam cleared his throat. “Miss Malfeazium, we do have a few questions to ask you.”
She visibly cringed. “Please don’t hurt me.”
Dean chuckled unpleasantly. “Darlin’, we’ve already hurt you.”
“I said ease off,” Sam growled. “You know what the baron’s orders are.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m just sayin’.”
“This isn’t like when you and Benny-”
“Leave Benny out of this,” Dean snarled. The fact that Dean had come back from the combat zone of Purgatory with vampire Benny Lafitte for a war buddy had been a real sore spot between them over the last year. Sam finally understood their unlikely friendship, but his change of heart had come too late to save Benny’s unlife. Not that Dean resented Sam’s resentment anymore, but still, this blow was a little too close to the belt to be brotherly banter. “You know I wouldn’t have even met him in the first place if-”
“You are Heterodynes!” Zola wailed. “Stay away from me!”
Sam ignored her. “Look, Dolokhov said the baron’s about to dispatch units to the Citadel of Silver Light. Go see if Dupree will let you go with her.”
“HA!” Zola crowed. “I knew you were lying. He’ll never be able to take the Citadel of Silver Light!”
“Oh, yeah?” Dean shot back. “What makes you so sure?”
“It’s on the moon!” A look of utter horror crossed Zola’s face as soon as she’d said that.
So the Enochian was a truth spell, and apparently some magic did still work here. Well done, Sammy.
“So where did the Geisterdamen go when they left Sturmhalten?” Sam asked.
“To the Jotun brothers,” Zola replied reluctantly. “They have the only other copies of Gottmurg Snarlantz’s notes. They’re supposed to take some of the slaver engines to the sparks among Auntie Lucrezia’s other servants in the Order to see if they can replicate Snarlantz’s work and improve the slavers in other ways. Then the Geisters are taking the rest of the slavers and the beacon engine to Passholdt. The baron’s already been through there to clean up Snarlantz’s last experiment, so he won’t be looking for anything else related to Auntie Lucrezia’s work. But not many people know anything’s happened to Passholdt, so the Geisters can catch people to wasp or to put through the beacon engine without too much trouble. The more revenants they have to rebuild the town, the less likely it is that anyone will suspect the Geisters of being there.”
“Where are the Jotun brothers?” Dean asked.
She shook her head. “Auntie Lucrezia won’t tell me.”
“His Highness will know,” Sam noted and flipped his notebook closed. “Thank you, Miss Malfeazium. I’m sure we’ll have more questions for you later.”
She sniffled miserably. “The... the baron’s not really going to experiment on me, is he?”
And suddenly Sam chuckled in a way Dean hadn’t heard him chuckle since he’d gotten his soul back after it had accidentally been left behind when Cas rescued his body from Lucifer’s Cage. “Not until after you stand trial, anyway.” He motioned for Dean to back up, then slammed the cell door shut and locked it with an audible clack.
Dean waited until they were nearly to the foot of the stairs to whisper, “Dude. I thought I was supposed to be bad cop.”
“She thought we were Heterodynes,” Sam replied at the same volume. “The kind of Heterodynes who could create something like Jägers. And from what little I’ve heard, even Bill and Barry had a ruthless side. I mean, I do remember what I was like with no soul. I was just... trying to stay in character.”
“Hate that we even know how.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
Dean sighed. “C’mon. Let’s go find Gil.”
Human Wulfenbach troops were in the process of setting up as guards around the palace when the Winchesters came back out into the courtyard. It took several minutes of being directed from one commander to another, but they finally caught up with Gil and Higgs in one of the palace halls.
“Oh, good, I’m glad you’re finished,” Gil said when he saw them. “We need your help. I think there might be information in the Deep Library, but I’d forgotten that Tarvek had said it’s infested with giant smudge beetles. We can’t get to any of the books until we’ve gotten rid of the beetles.”
An odd expression crossed Sam’s face.
“Uh, sure,” said Dean. “Lead the way.”
On the way to the library, the brothers briefed Gil on what they’d learned from Zola about Lucrezia’s marching orders. Nodding, Gil gave Higgs orders to dispatch scouts to Passholdt and made a note to ask Tarvek about the Jotun brothers and the other sparks who might be working on slaver improvements. Sam seemed to be okay as they talked. But then they got to the library, where beetles Dean could see even from the door seemed to be everywhere, and Sam went pale and started breathing hard.
“You see the problem,” Gil stated.
“That’s... that’s...” Sam stammered.
“... Uh, Sammy?” Dean prompted.
“That’s-I-YAAAAAAAAH!” Sam screamed and launched himself into the library, moving so fast Dean couldn’t even keep track of where he was. There was a lot of squealing and squelching before the beetles stampeded out of the library and toward the nearest exit, and Sam finally came to rest, leaning against a pillar on the far side of the library, panting harshly and spattered with bug guts.
“What the hell?” Dean asked.
Gil chuckled kindly. “Yup. He’s an information science spark.”
“Oh.” Had Dean gone into that kind of frenzy working on Baby? He decided he didn’t want to know and was glad there’d been no witnesses either way. “Hope your people know how to get bug out of silk,” he added, noting the state of Sam’s vest.
Gil laughed. “They’ve gotten far worse stains out of my clothes.”
“HOY!” a Jäger voice called from somewhere outside. “Bog for dinner!”
That announcement was met with a roar of approval.
“Aaand I don’t think we need to worry about a repeat performance,” Gil added with a wry smile. “At least not until we can get the beacon engine out of Passholdt.”
“Dean?” Sam called, sounding dazed and surprisingly young. “I saved the library.”
“You sure did, dude,” Dean replied, going in to collect him. “C’mon. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Sam tottered three steps away from the pillar and faceplanted.
Next
[1] Actual lines from the third verse of “The Glow-worm.”
Previous | Master Post
Chapter 10
Don’t Sleep in the Subway
You know better than this, Jody chided herself as she drove out of Sioux Falls in mid-August, and again as she passed Omaha, the Kansas state line, Topeka. Text messages with mystery coordinates from unknown numbers are not an invitation to cake and ice cream. Youknow that.
But she was going to those mystery coordinates anyway. She couldn’t help it.
That’s what Bobby would have done. It’s what Sam and Dean would have done. And none of them were here to do it for her.
She felt marginally better to arrive at her destination in Wichita and find it was a hospital. A petite Asian woman about Jody’s age sat, slightly hunched as if she were cold despite the summer heat, on a bench outside the entrance. But as Jody approached the doors, the lady perked up a little.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Are you Sheriff Mills?”
Jody blinked and stopped. “Yes, ma’am.”
The lady’s relief was palpable as she stood. “Crowley said you’d come. I’m Linda Tran-I’m Kevin’s mom.”
Jody gasped. “Kevin thought you were dead!”
“I nearly was. Crowley had been keeping me hostage, but then he disappeared, and the guard....” Linda faltered to a stop.
“You don’t have to explain.” Jody pulled out her hip flask of holy water and offered it to Linda.
“Thank you.” Linda drank easily and handed the flask back. “Anyway, Crowley came back and let us all go, but I was in the worst shape, so he brought me here and said he’d send you to pick me up when I was released.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. He said something about a plan to stop Abaddon, but I don’t know any more than that.”
Jody nodded slowly. “Have you eaten?”
Linda grimaced. “Only hospital food.”
“Let’s get something to go, then. I’ve got a safe place where we can spend the night.”
Linda nodded and followed Jody to her truck. Not until they were inside it did she ask, “Where is Kevin?”
Jody sighed. “He’s all right, as far as I know. He’s with Castiel. But more than that’s gonna have to wait until we’ve eaten. It’s a long story.”
“And the short version?”
“They’re looking for the Winchesters.”
Linda drew in a ragged breath. “Crowley said... Kevin had told him to tell me goodbye.”
Jody reached over and rubbed Linda’s thin shoulder slightly. “Cas was going to take Kevin with him to keep Kevin safe. But I don’t even know if they’ve left yet. Sounded like they had a lot of research to do.”
Linda sniffled. “You’re a mother, too?”
“Was. Had a son.”
“Demons?”
“No... not the first time.” Jody steeled herself against the inevitable flashbacks-the hospital, the funeral, her baby boy turning up on her doorstep, getting sick again, turning....
A surprisingly strong hand gripped her wrist as Linda asked, “The second time?”
“He was a zombie.”
Linda gasped. “Oh.”
Jody swallowed hard. “All I can say is, thank God for Sam Winchester.”
“Oh, my dear. I’m so sorry.”
Jody sniffled and huffed in amusement. “Who’s consoling who here?”
Linda chuckled. “Are you sure you’re all right to drive?”
Jody nodded. “Yeah, I’ll make it. Let’s just get some food in us.”
But nothing sounded good to either of them at the time, so they both got sodas and French fries. Not until after Jody had told Linda the full story of the Winchesters’ disappearance, about the time they got to Salina, did either of them have enough of an appetite for a burger. They got groceries in Salina, too, just in case.
The lights were on inside the bunker when they arrived, but calling for Cas and Kevin got no response. So Jody led Linda down the stairs to the library, where both Kevin’s laptop and Sam’s were gone but a leather-bound volume that looked like a journal sat on one table. On top was a note addressed to Mom.
“That’s Kevin’s handwriting,” Linda breathed and snatched up the note. One hand crept up to cover her mouth as she read, although it seemed to take all her willpower not to let the other hand tremble. “Oh, Kevin,” she whispered as she got to the end.
“What does he say?” Jody asked quietly.
“They left two weeks ago. But he didn’t want to go without saying goodbye.” Linda put the note on the table and ran a hand over the journal. “He said he didn’t know when they’d be back... if they even could come back. But this is the journal they’d been looking for, by a-a Lord Heterodyne. Kevin said it should tell us all we need to know, and... p-possibly... how to keep up with what they’re doing, wherever they are.”
Jody put an arm around Linda’s shoulders. “At least we know he’s alive.”
Linda finally broke down at that and let Jody pull her into a hug. But the maternal tears didn’t last more than a couple of minutes before she backed away, wiped her face with a tissue, and reached for the journal with a determined glint in her eyes. “He said I might have some trouble reading-oh!” she exclaimed as she picked up the journal and something fell out of it. Handing the journal to Jody, she picked up the object.
“What is it?” Jody asked, flipping the journal open at random.
“A candy.” Linda looked at it more closely. “A Vietnamese candy-my favorite kind. I haven’t seen any of these in this country for years. How....”
“Welcome to the Men of Letters,” Jody muttered and looked down at the open book. Then she frowned. “What kind of trouble did he think you’d have?”
“Translation.”
Jody looked up again. “This is in English.”
Almost anyone who happened upon Dean stretched out on Baby’s front seat with his hat down over his face and the windows cracked would assume he was dozing. And he was trying to. It had been too short of a night after too long of a day, and he wasn’t sixteen anymore. But there was more to it than that.
He was hiding.
Spark. Smart guy. It didn’t make sense. Sam was the smart one. Sam went to college. Oh, sure, Dean had wanted to, a lifetime ago, but now he knew his lot in life. He was just a grunt. He wasn’t the type of guy who... built airplanes with the guy who’d just inherited practically the whole of Europe. Never mind the whole parts-to-plane-in-an-hour business. But they had a job to do here, and even if they could find some way to go home, they couldn’t leave until the job was finished. So... yeah, Dean was hiding, but probably only one other person knew it.
No, make that two other people, if you counted the one who was playing all his favorite tunes at the moment. He’d gotten used to her already-but hell, he’d loved the old girl all his life. Maybe part of him had always known she was in there, waiting for a chance to come out and express herself. And she loved him, too; she’d made that abundantly clear already. It was a gift.
A gift he didn’t deserve.
Would she even be alive anymore if they went back? She’d broken through the same way he had, but was that something that would be undone if they left? If they couldn’t leave without killing her-oh, no, no, no, Dean couldn’t go there, not now. He felt sick enough already. He tried yet again to shut his mind off and just let the music lull him to sleep.
He still hadn’t quite managed it when the music turned down and there was a knock on the window behind him. “Jägers are here,” Sam said quietly from outside. “Have to get Zola settled first, but Oggie’s showing Gil the cell where they broke out from the Deepdown so Gil can have Zola placed somewhere else.”
Dean sighed. “Thanks.”
After a pause, Sam asked, “Want me to stay?”
Baby opened her back door before Dean could answer, and he heard Sam climb into the back seat. She closed the door again after him. Neither brother said anything for a long moment.
“Those kids are in pretty bad shape,” Sam finally stated even more quietly. “Tarvek’s barely holding it together, trying to help them.”
“Runnin’ out of ginger tea?” Dean returned, because it was the only smart remark that came to him.
“Dean.” There was no heat behind it, though.
Another moment passed before Dean said, “Guess it’s a good thing Gadreel came along. Cas doesn’t have his mojo.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Look, I know you don’t like him, Sam. Hell, I’m not sure I like him. But he did save your life and leave, like he’d promised. And he’s tryin’ to help now.”
Sam sighed. “Maybe he should stick with Tarvek. If Gil’s right and renouncing Lucrezia is going to put his life in danger... I mean, we saw what von Blitzengaard was capable of doing.”
Dean raised one eyebrow, though the motion was hidden by his hat. “Don’t you want him with Agatha?”
“Agatha’s got Mechanicsburg, plus Cas. Tarvek’s an ally with a lot of knowledge, a lot of connections, a lot of potential, but he’s also the most exposed. He needs protection, especially after that vow.”
“What about Gil?”
Sam’s smile reached his voice for the first time in this conversation. “Dude, Gil’s got us.”
Baby agreed with a few bars of “The Boys Are Back in Town.”
Dean chuckled, and somehow that made him feel better enough to nod off for real until Sam woke him with news that the Jägers had gotten Zola settled. Groaning, Dean sat up straight and pushed his hat back.
“Thirty-six hours,” said Sam, watching something out the back windshield.
“What?”
“That’s how long we’ve been here.”
Dean blew the air out of his cheeks. “Feels like it’s been years.”
Sam huffed in amusement. “Months, maybe. Here comes Gil.”
Baby opened her doors, and the brothers got out as Gil, joined en route by Higgs, walked over to them. Dean looked past them toward the prison wing of the castle, where Oggie was waiting at the door and the Jäger generals were barking orders to the horde.
“You should wait until they’re all inside,” Gil stated, handing Dean the key to Zola’s cell attached to a huge ring of other old-fashioned keys. “Not only is the door narrow, but Zola’s bound to be able to hear them filing in. Jägers are quiet only when it’s imperative to approach with stealth, but since the odds are that no Geisters are left here, they’re constrained only by the need to actually look for clues rather than charging straight after Oggie, wherever he leads. Zola’s got more pluck than I’d given her credit for, but I’d be rattled if I heard the Jägers tearing around in the basement, and I’m used to them.”
Higgs chuckled.
“How’s it comin’?” Dean asked.
Gil grimaced. “Slower than I’d like. I’ve had to repeat the clemency order five times to get all units to understand it. And we’ve been trying to make arrangements for the coronation, but we can’t find the bishop. Tarvek says he wouldn’t have been among the wasped. Probably ran back to Belfast as soon as things started going pear-shaped here.”
“Well, hell, we’ve got Gadreel. He can do it.”
“Pretty hard to argue divine right when an angel does the crowning,” Sam agreed.
Gil smiled wryly. “True.”
“VE HUNT!” the Jägers roared suddenly, but as ordered, they didn’t charge. Rather, they marched into the prison in a surprisingly orderly fashion.
“The Jägers used to be men,” Gil explained when he noticed Dean’s raised eyebrows. “They were the Heterodynes’ shock troops, the best fighters and the most bloodthirsty. Loyal to the bone. Every one took the Jägerdraught of his own free will-and nine out of ten of them died from it.” He shook his head and looked over his shoulder. “What were they thinking?”
“I dunno,” Higgs muttered under his breath, as if it were a personal affront somehow. Huh. Interesting. “Still damn good soldiers, though,” he added less grumpily and at a normal volume. “Know how to follow orders. Rowdy bunch, but if the general tells ’em to march in a column of twos, they march in a column of twos.”
The four men fell silent and watched the Jägers pass, while Baby played “The St. Louis Blues March” and a few other hits from World War II. Dean wondered idly how she even knew them. But several times he caught the Jägers bobbing their heads along with the music, which was more amusing than it should have been, especially on “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”
“The Andrews Sisters?” Sam teased her at the end of the song. “Seriously?”
“Thou aeronautical boll weevil,” the Mills Brothers retorted, “Illuminate yon woods primeval!” [1]
Even Higgs laughed at that one.
A few minutes later, the end of the column finally came into view, so the men walked over to the prison and waited for the path to be clear, falling in at the end of the line so as to make their tread less distinguishable from the Jägers’ trampling. Inside, the Winchesters followed Gil and Higgs to the staircase that led to Zola’s cell.
They were still climbing when they heard, “STOP YELLING AT ME!”
All four men froze.
“It’s not my fault, Auntie! I’ve never seen that kind of clank before! ... Well, you didn’t know who they were, either! Besides, it had a Sturmvoraus flag; I thought they were part of the Order. And how was I to know the Jägers were so close behind them?” Zola sobbed. “How am I supposed to do that when I can’t even walk?!”
Gil swallowed hard. Higgs gently but firmly pulled him away. Sam, meanwhile, had his notebook out, pen poised over the paper.
“It was a fluke that we were in earshot of your other self at the hospital. We can’t count on there being anyone here we can seduce into healing us the same way. And even if I did have my Moveit #11, I couldn’t take on the entire Jäger horde by myself. ... What can they even find here, anyway? Your priestesses burned everything they didn’t take. ... But if they’re going to the Citadel of Silver Light-” Zola paused, then burst into a flurry of furious French. Dean couldn’t follow more than a cuss word here and there, but Sam was scribbling notes as fast as he could.
Wait, if they were in Transylvania, how come everybody spoke English? Or did they? If Sam and Dean were subject to some sort of universal translator spell, though, why didn’t it work on French?
Dean decided not to worry about it for the moment. He needed to come up with a bad-cop approach quickly to deploy as soon as Zola stopped arguing with Lucrezia. He’d already shot her once; she should know she couldn’t seduce him. But maybe... she was worried about the Jägers... hmmm... he’d had fangs once himself....
Zola broke off in mid-sentence and started crying loudly. There was a chance, of course, that the whole thing was an act, but much as he hated to admit it, he could scare even Lucrezia if he had to. He’d spent ten years under the tutelage of Hell’s torture master, after all, and the demons didn’t call him “Alastair’s apprentice” for nothing. If he did have to tap into that side of himself, though, he prayed Sam would be able to pull him back from the abyss.
Silently, Dean drew a deep breath and signed Listen to Sam. Sam nodded once. Then Dean deliberately jingled the keys in his hand and walked the rest of the way up the stairs to the next floor. Zola’s was the first cell on the left. He opened the door and took in the windowless walls, bare even of light fixtures or shackles, and the solid stone floor, on which Zola lay with only a blanket beneath her. The only light was coming from the torches in the hall behind him. There was absolutely nothing in this cell she could use as a weapon, even when the bones he’d shattered finally knitted. Zola herself had been bandaged per Gil’s orders, but her gown still showed bullet holes and blood spatter, and her tear-streaked face was pale and lined with pain.
Dean leaned against the door jamb with a contemptuous snort and a shake of the head. “And they thought you could pass for the Heterodyne. Pathetic.”
“Please,” she blubbered. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Nah. I’m under orders. The baron wants you alive. I think he wants to find out just how you wound up with The Other in your head. But y’know, me an’ him, we’re pretty tight. Maybe he’ll let me help out with his... experiments.”
She sniffled angrily. “You’re lying. You had a Sturmvoraus badge on your clank; you’re not a Wulfenbach man, even if Gil was with you. And the baron wouldn’t dare experiment on me-Gil wouldn’t allow it!”
“You tried to kill his girlfriend. And it’s not the first time you’ve killed a human, is it?”
“What... what do you mean?”
Instead of answering directly, he started casing the cell again. Not quite as escape-proof as reinforced concrete, but it would definitely keep Zola contained as long as she was injured. “I used to be a vampire,” he said casually.
She gasped audibly.
“Oh, it was only for a couple of days. We found a cure. But you know, vampires, they can smell things most people can’t. Some of those smells... man, I’ll never forget.” This much was true. The bluff required him to look her in the eye again. “And there’s one I can smell on you.”
“Blood?”
“Death.” Granted, given his line of work, he’d learned to recognize that smell years before his brief stint as a vampire. But at the moment, it was all he could do to hold off a flashback to the night Sam and their resurrected maternal grandfather had found him in the middle of the building after he’d single-handedly slaughtered all the other vamps in the nest that had claimed him. He had a script-a conversation between Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in Chisum-and he needed to stick to it.
Sam’s hand landed on his shoulder, grounding him. “Hey. Ease off, Big Casino.”
Good, he’d caught the reference. Dean just managed not to sigh in relief.
But Zola gasped as Dean turned to pretend to snipe at Sam. “Heterodynes!” Had she finally noticed the pattern in their vests? “But that’s... that’s... well, how would you know, Auntie?! Didn’t they go to America before you married Uncle Bill?”
Sam and Dean frowned at each other in confusion.
“But how do you know they’re not constructs or.... The baron came back from Skifander, didn’t he?!”
Dean’s eyebrows rose. The baron had been in Skifander? Had he known Zeetha or anyone Zeetha knew?
-Come to think of it, Zeetha was about Gil’s age, and they did look a lot alike....
Sam, on the other hand, murmured something Enochian under his breath. Dean had no clue what or why.
“But maybe they aren’t even from the same branch of the family,” Zola went on. “Maybe they’re related to one of the old Heterodynes. I mean... I mean....”
Sam cleared his throat. “Miss Malfeazium, we do have a few questions to ask you.”
She visibly cringed. “Please don’t hurt me.”
Dean chuckled unpleasantly. “Darlin’, we’ve already hurt you.”
“I said ease off,” Sam growled. “You know what the baron’s orders are.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m just sayin’.”
“This isn’t like when you and Benny-”
“Leave Benny out of this,” Dean snarled. The fact that Dean had come back from the combat zone of Purgatory with vampire Benny Lafitte for a war buddy had been a real sore spot between them over the last year. Sam finally understood their unlikely friendship, but his change of heart had come too late to save Benny’s unlife. Not that Dean resented Sam’s resentment anymore, but still, this blow was a little too close to the belt to be brotherly banter. “You know I wouldn’t have even met him in the first place if-”
“You are Heterodynes!” Zola wailed. “Stay away from me!”
Sam ignored her. “Look, Dolokhov said the baron’s about to dispatch units to the Citadel of Silver Light. Go see if Dupree will let you go with her.”
“HA!” Zola crowed. “I knew you were lying. He’ll never be able to take the Citadel of Silver Light!”
“Oh, yeah?” Dean shot back. “What makes you so sure?”
“It’s on the moon!” A look of utter horror crossed Zola’s face as soon as she’d said that.
So the Enochian was a truth spell, and apparently some magic did still work here. Well done, Sammy.
“So where did the Geisterdamen go when they left Sturmhalten?” Sam asked.
“To the Jotun brothers,” Zola replied reluctantly. “They have the only other copies of Gottmurg Snarlantz’s notes. They’re supposed to take some of the slaver engines to the sparks among Auntie Lucrezia’s other servants in the Order to see if they can replicate Snarlantz’s work and improve the slavers in other ways. Then the Geisters are taking the rest of the slavers and the beacon engine to Passholdt. The baron’s already been through there to clean up Snarlantz’s last experiment, so he won’t be looking for anything else related to Auntie Lucrezia’s work. But not many people know anything’s happened to Passholdt, so the Geisters can catch people to wasp or to put through the beacon engine without too much trouble. The more revenants they have to rebuild the town, the less likely it is that anyone will suspect the Geisters of being there.”
“Where are the Jotun brothers?” Dean asked.
She shook her head. “Auntie Lucrezia won’t tell me.”
“His Highness will know,” Sam noted and flipped his notebook closed. “Thank you, Miss Malfeazium. I’m sure we’ll have more questions for you later.”
She sniffled miserably. “The... the baron’s not really going to experiment on me, is he?”
And suddenly Sam chuckled in a way Dean hadn’t heard him chuckle since he’d gotten his soul back after it had accidentally been left behind when Cas rescued his body from Lucifer’s Cage. “Not until after you stand trial, anyway.” He motioned for Dean to back up, then slammed the cell door shut and locked it with an audible clack.
Dean waited until they were nearly to the foot of the stairs to whisper, “Dude. I thought I was supposed to be bad cop.”
“She thought we were Heterodynes,” Sam replied at the same volume. “The kind of Heterodynes who could create something like Jägers. And from what little I’ve heard, even Bill and Barry had a ruthless side. I mean, I do remember what I was like with no soul. I was just... trying to stay in character.”
“Hate that we even know how.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
Dean sighed. “C’mon. Let’s go find Gil.”
Human Wulfenbach troops were in the process of setting up as guards around the palace when the Winchesters came back out into the courtyard. It took several minutes of being directed from one commander to another, but they finally caught up with Gil and Higgs in one of the palace halls.
“Oh, good, I’m glad you’re finished,” Gil said when he saw them. “We need your help. I think there might be information in the Deep Library, but I’d forgotten that Tarvek had said it’s infested with giant smudge beetles. We can’t get to any of the books until we’ve gotten rid of the beetles.”
An odd expression crossed Sam’s face.
“Uh, sure,” said Dean. “Lead the way.”
On the way to the library, the brothers briefed Gil on what they’d learned from Zola about Lucrezia’s marching orders. Nodding, Gil gave Higgs orders to dispatch scouts to Passholdt and made a note to ask Tarvek about the Jotun brothers and the other sparks who might be working on slaver improvements. Sam seemed to be okay as they talked. But then they got to the library, where beetles Dean could see even from the door seemed to be everywhere, and Sam went pale and started breathing hard.
“You see the problem,” Gil stated.
“That’s... that’s...” Sam stammered.
“... Uh, Sammy?” Dean prompted.
“That’s-I-YAAAAAAAAH!” Sam screamed and launched himself into the library, moving so fast Dean couldn’t even keep track of where he was. There was a lot of squealing and squelching before the beetles stampeded out of the library and toward the nearest exit, and Sam finally came to rest, leaning against a pillar on the far side of the library, panting harshly and spattered with bug guts.
“What the hell?” Dean asked.
Gil chuckled kindly. “Yup. He’s an information science spark.”
“Oh.” Had Dean gone into that kind of frenzy working on Baby? He decided he didn’t want to know and was glad there’d been no witnesses either way. “Hope your people know how to get bug out of silk,” he added, noting the state of Sam’s vest.
Gil laughed. “They’ve gotten far worse stains out of my clothes.”
“HOY!” a Jäger voice called from somewhere outside. “Bog for dinner!”
That announcement was met with a roar of approval.
“Aaand I don’t think we need to worry about a repeat performance,” Gil added with a wry smile. “At least not until we can get the beacon engine out of Passholdt.”
“Dean?” Sam called, sounding dazed and surprisingly young. “I saved the library.”
“You sure did, dude,” Dean replied, going in to collect him. “C’mon. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Sam tottered three steps away from the pillar and faceplanted.
Next
[1] Actual lines from the third verse of “The Glow-worm.”