Gilgamesh Wulfenbach and the Men of Letters 11/18
Previous | Master Post
Chapter 11
Of Cabbages and Kings
Metatron put down his book with a dissatisfied sigh. He wanted to read everything-always had-but this book had been so badly written, it had bored even him. And there were two more in the series just like it. He almost never gave up on books, but he might have to give up on these.
Truth be told, it wasn’t just the book. He was beginning to regret his decision to cast down all the other angels. Here he was, home at last, and there was no one to talk to and no one to serve him. If he was taking over in Father’s stead, he deserved service, didn’t he? But none of the angels were present to serve him even if they’d wanted to. And the humans were all safely locked in their own private heavens, and if he went to them, they either didn’t realize he was there or didn’t want to talk to him. Bobby Singer had even run him off with a shotgun, which had actually hurt!
No, the time had come (the walrus said) to write his epic masterpiece and lead the angels home, united under one banner-his own. The trick was going to be charting out the right plotline.
Studying the angels’ current predicaments, Metatron found Bartholomew and Malachi proclaiming themselves leaders of the main factions and waging war on each other with tremendous collateral damage to humans. Most of those who were attempting to remain neutral did so out of love for humanity and rejection of the notion, prevalent among the warring angels, that Castiel had been responsible for the fall. All of them wanted to go home; none of them agreed on who should lead.
It was going to be easy, Metatron concluded, to cast Castiel as the villain of the piece and use him as a foil to promote Metatron’s own agenda. Opening the portal to allow the return was going to require killing Kevin Tran and retrieving the angel and demon tablets, all currently under the Winchesters’ protection. Ordinarily, that obstacle would be insurmountable, but Metatron already had a potential way around it: Gadreel, who was hiding in Sam and who was so desperate to clear his name that he should be easy enough to manipulate. Recruit Gadreel to do his dirty work, and Metatron could sit back with popcorn while the Winchesters self-destructed in the wake of Kevin’s death and Gadreel’s betrayal. Meanwhile, it shouldn’t be hard to convince Castiel to come out of retirement and lead the neutral angels, especially with the right sort of trap. A few nudges in the right direction, and Dean would do the unforgiveable, with Castiel backing him all the way. Or at any rate, Metatron would have no difficulty making it look like he supported Dean, especially if Dean did something Castiel’s supporters thought worthy of death; the angels would demand that Castiel kill Dean, and Castiel would refuse like the loyal chump that he was. Disappointed, the angels would defect from his cause to Metatron’s, and then... well, Father’s throne would be his for the taking. And “it’s good to be the king,” right?
Metatron re-read the Supernatural books to be sure of his material, then sat down at his typewriter and worked up an outline. It all looked perfect on paper, so he set about making preparations. His first order of business was making sure no new prophets would be activated after Kevin’s death. Those were quests he could accomplish on his own, so he did. It was a cakewalk compared to framing Castiel for the fall.
Then Metatron discovered that a side effect of pulling that lever was closing Heaven to the arrival of new souls, meaning the dead were trapped in the Veil for the moment. Oops. Oh, well, that should be easy enough to rectify once the portal was open, and it would be another credit line on his hero CV. As long as he solved the problem, no one should care that he caused it, right?
The next item on the agenda was locating his scapegoat, his sacrifice, and his sidekick. Castiel wasn’t visible to Metatron, but that wasn’t surprising because he had that warding tattoo hiding him. Gadreel was also invisible to heavenly radar, as were the Winchesters, but they might also have hidden themselves. But Kevin...
... Kevin was nowhere to be found.
Metatron searched. He scried. He did every tracking spell known in heaven and on earth and under the earth. He sought for the tablets and couldn’t find them, either. It was like they had simply but literally dropped off the face of the earth-the Winchesters, their angels, the prophet, the tablets, and all.
He was still trying to figure out whether to panic when he suddenly became aware of new souls streaming into heaven. Someone, somewhere, somehow had opened the gates. Did that mean the prophet lever had been reset? A new prophet hadn’t been activated, but... but this could spell disaster for Metatron’s plan.
He was just about to leave his office to see what he could learn when he heard a quiet huff of amusement. Turning, he found himself joined by a tall, thin, dark-clad male figure.
“Really, Metatron,” said Death. “Did you honestly think you could get away with it so easily?”
Panicked for real, Metatron fled, not even remembering to take a towel with him.
“Passholdt,” Tarvek echoed wearily over supper, which Gil had had sent down from Castle Wulfenbach for the four of them-Higgs had taken over helping Gadreel while Tarvek came inside to eat. “Yes, I suppose it would make sense for the Geisters to go there.”
“I had Boris ask Selnikov,” said Gil. “Zola was telling the truth about the Jotun brothers. Selnikov went in with them to clean up before Father could find out what had happened.”
“What did happen in Passholdt?” Sam asked, finally awake and cleaned up after his library freak-out. He barely remembered anything from the moment he’d charged into the library until he’d come to in a bathtub somewhere in the guest wing with Dean scrubbing bug splatter out of his hair. He was back in jeans and T-shirt, though, because that was all that was in his go bag and because even if he had another suit waiting back on Castle Wulfenbach, he needed to save it for Tarvek’s coronation the next day.
Tarvek sighed. “We’ll need to get more details out of Agatha and Zeetha. Apparently they were among the members of the circus who actually saw the creatures.”
“So was Oggie, if we can get him out of the Deepdown,” Gil noted.
“In any case-well, no, let me back up a bit. What are revenants in your world?”
“They’re a type of zombie,” Dean replied. “Brought back by necromancy, usually. To kill one, you have to nail it in the coffin with a silver stake.”
“And be careful they don’t throw you into a headstone,” Sam added with a grimace. “First one we fought broke my wrist.”
“Yeah, and then you ripped your jeans filling in the grave.” [1]
“Dean.” Sam hadn’t thought he could be more embarrassed in one evening than the library incident had already made him.
Dean snickered and took a drink of beer. “Good times, good times.”
But Tarvek actually managed to smile before he took a drink of wine, so maybe it was worth it. “That’s what folklore says about revenants in our world, too. And because some people who are infected with slaver wasps become mindless shamblers like zombies, the rest of Europa started calling them revenants. But as you’ve seen, the zombie-like revenants are a statistical minority.”
The brothers nodded and kept eating.
“Well, Snarlantz had been entrusted with most of the hive engines, which generate the queen and the warrior wasps that protect her. The actual slaver swarm comes from the queen. But Snarlantz thought he could improve the hives, so he experimented. One result that actually worked was the spark wasp Lucrezia used on the late baron. But his last experiment... went horribly wrong.”
“How so?” Sam prompted.
“The report from Master Payne said that by the time the circus arrived outside Passholdt, the entire populace had become worse than revenants-pale, deformed, like humanoid spiders or bats. Fast-moving, though easy to kill. Afraid of bright light. And vicious. If the Jägers hadn’t followed them from Zumzum, nobody from the circus would have made it out alive.”
“Croats,” murmured Dean.
“The Croatoan virus didn’t cause deformations, though,” Sam noted.
Dean shrugged his eyebrows, conceding the point.
Gil and Tarvek were frowning in confusion, so Sam explained, “The virus was developed by a demon. Pestilence was supposed to unleash it as part of the Apocalypse chaos. We managed to stop that, barely, but we saw what the virus could do.”
Gil nodded in understanding and looked back at Tarvek. “So all those hive engines Oggie saw in the Deepdown-those had been retrieved from Passholdt?”
“That would be my guess,” Tarvek answered and took another drink. “Like I said, no one involved with Lucrezia’s plans ever trusted me terribly much. The Geisters certainly didn’t. And I really only know about the spark wasp because I’d been keeping tabs on the contents of Father’s secret safe.”
“Well, if there are any revenants there by now, I think the safest thing to do will be to have Agatha order them outside and then fly over with the spray. That might work on the Geisters, too; I don’t know. But we should probably wait to worry about it until after the coronation. Assuming Agatha comes, we can talk to her about it afterward.”
Tarvek took off his pince-nez with a sigh, set them on the table, and rubbed his forehead. “Gil, I know why we’re waiting for dawn, but... oh, I don’t know. Part of me wants to have it over with now; part of me feels like I’ve failed my people so miserably already that I don’t deserve to go through with it at all. And then there’s the Order. They may not acknowledge me even if we can find the bishop. If Gadreel has to officiate-”
“Then we’ll find an archbishop to authenticate one of Gadreel’s miracles.” Gil took a drink of wine and studied his old pal more closely. “Sweet lightning,” he breathed with a frown as he realized the truth. “You’re afraid.”
“They’ve tried to kill me three times already, just since we’ve been back,” Tarvek confessed quietly. “The Smoke Knights have already dealt with the assassins, but... well, there’s a reason I assigned Violetta to Agatha. They won’t stop. I’ll never be free of them, always having to look over my shoulder, be on my guard. Though I don’t know why they bother-why I even try to stop them. I’m such a shameful, wretched failure, helping Lucrezia, ignoring what she was doing to people. Those p-poor children... so many orphans... and I did nothing to stop her... it’s all my fault....”
“Wait, no, this-this isn’t like you. Gadreel!”
Gadreel appeared behind Tarvek’s chair just as Tarvek buried his face in his hands with a sob. “I’m losing my mind, aren’t I? They’ll drive me insane-I-I c-c-can’t-”
“Enough,” Gadreel growled and yanked Tarvek’s chair back from the table, which caused Tarvek to drop his hands in surprise. Then Gadreel touched two fingers to Tarvek’s forehead.
Tarvek gasped and sat back, face clearing. “What-was-was I being an idiot?”
“You were drugged,” Gadreel replied. “It was some kind of depressant, but not one known in our world. I believe the intent was to prompt you to kill yourself.”
“Blue fire,” Tarvek sighed and slumped against the back of his chair. “That’s four.”
“But it can’t be the food,” Dean noted. “We’re all eatin’ the same thing.”
“Could be the wine, though,” Sam added. “Or maybe the wineglass.” Both Winchesters were drinking beer, and Gil didn’t seem to be feeling any ill effects.
Gadreel looked at Gil and nodded before looking back at Tarvek and handing him his glasses. “Yes, I believe the drug was placed in your wine alone. That suggests one of the servants, or perhaps the Smoke Knights have been compromised.”
“Servant, more than likely,” Tarvek replied, putting his glasses back on. “A Smoke Knight wouldn’t bother with the wine. They are slipping, though; I’m going to have to have a talk with them.”
“Is there some way you could ward him?” Dean asked.
Gadreel shook his head. “Against evil spirits, yes. Against evil men, no. I shall have to stand guard until morning.”
“I hate to impose,” said Tarvek, “but it would be a great relief, if you don’t mind. Not that I can’t take care of myself, but I am exhausted. Perhaps even until we can root out Lucrezia’s followers among the Knights of Jove-they’ll be most likely to want me dead.”
“Not to mention those nasty cousins you were talking about yesterday,” Sam said. “We took care of von Blitzengaard, but....”
“He was in charge of only one faction. Cousin Leopold is another, just for a start-and he’d be in league with Lucrezia, considering the role Dr. Mongfish played in his conception.”
Dean groaned, put his fork down on his plate, and pushed the plate away.
“And if they can’t kill me,” Tarvek continued, “they’ll probably go back to inciting revolts. It really is going to be touch and go for a while yet.”
“We can worry about that when the time comes,” Gil stated firmly. “The first thing we have to do is get you crowned as Prince of Sturmhalten. Maybe by then the Jägers will have finished excavating the tunnels leading up from the Geisters’ base-Gen. Goomblast thinks they don’t all lead to known parts of the castle.”
“Well, as long as I get to sleep in my own bed tonight, I don’t much care. Speaking of which, where will you three be staying? There’s plenty of space here, obviously; I can order one suite set up for you and one for the Winchesters.”
Gil grimaced. “For security purposes, I should probably go back to Castle Wulfenbach, especially since we know there’s a lunatic poisoner at large. But of course, Dean, if you’d rather stay on the ground-”
Dean shook his head. “It’s all right. I can handle it once we’re up there. Besides, there’s something we need to talk to you about, in private.”
Gil frowned. “All right.”
“SIRE! SIRE!” someone outside started yelling suddenly, and a moment later, a Sturmvoraus trooper burst into the dining room. “Your Highness-Herr Baron-it’s Fräulein Malfeazium. She’s dead!”
Swearing, men and angel jumped up from the table and followed the trooper to the prison, where other soldiers were guarding Zola’s cell but stood aside as soon as the princes arrived. While Tarvek grabbed a torch, the trooper-the jailer, maybe?-unlocked the cell and opened the door, proving Dean’s earlier words prophetic. The air that rushed out of the cell did smell of death... and almonds.
“This is no trick,” Gadreel said sadly. “She is truly dead.”
Frowning, Sam looked down at Zola’s body, and her blue lips confirmed his suspicion. “Cyanide.”
“But she didn’t have any on her,” Gil noted. “The Jägers searched her thoroughly. So someone found out she’d talked and broke in to silence her.”
“No sign of forced entry,” Tarvek observed.
Dean raised an eyebrow. “You kiddin’? Sam could pick this lock in five seconds flat.”
Sam took a closer look at the lock. “Three.”
Gil and Tarvek exchanged a disturbed look.
“Plus,” Sam continued, “we already know palace security’s been breached. The same person who drugged Tarvek could have come here before or after that attempt. It’s a similar enough MO. Or they could just as easily have run a hose under the door and pumped hydrocyanic gas into the cell. As fast as it acts, she might not even have had time to call for help.”
Gil ran a hand over his face and sighed. “All right, then, she’s dead. Arrange for a requiem at once; I want her buried before sunrise.”
“Yes, Herr Baron,” the jailer replied and hurried off.
Tarvek closed and locked the door again, then nodded to the guards to resume their earlier position. “You’re not going to try to revive her?” he asked Gil as they started back down the stairs.
Gil shook his head. “Too dangerous, even if Dr. Sun had the equipment. But even if the castle has the hospital itself rebuilt by now, the machinery may take even him quite some time to rebuild and repair.”
Several Wulfenbach soldiers with a stretcher arrived just then, so Tarvek’s group stepped back to let them pass, both on the way to Zola’s cell and on the way down with her body.
As they followed the stretcher toward the cathedral, Tarvek put a hand on Gil’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Gil sighed. “I will be. At least... at least we got some information out of her before she was killed. Now we know where to start looking for the beacon engine. And I suppose we’re going to have to find a way to go to the moon at some point.”
“Actually, we might be able to help you there,” said Dean. “Maybe not with actual plans for a lunar module, but-”
“What? You’ve been there?!”
“Well, not personally, but....”
“We at least know the basics,” Sam agreed. “The first Americans on the moon landed in 1969. We learned all about it in school.”
“Sweet lightning,” Gil and Tarvek chorused.
“Well, our world is a long way ahead of this one time-wise. I’m more impressed that anyone’s managed to get there before now.”
Tarvek frowned. “Wait, Vrin told Lucrezia something about a gateway from their world to ours that was destroyed. I wonder if that’s anything like the gateway in the cathedral in Mechanicsburg.”
Gil hummed thoughtfully. “If so, it would save us a lot of work, assuming the gateway on the other end remains intact. But we’d still have to find the right settings so we don’t end up on Mars or something, as well as some way to neutralize any guards on the other end. It might not hurt to have the Winchesters’ ideas for a backup.”
Just then the jailer came running back. “Sire, there’s nobody at the cathedral. The priests may still be out dealing with the dead from Mulverschtag. I-”
Tarvek frowned. “Bearers, halt!” When they obeyed, Tarvek jogged up to the stretcher and lifted the blanket covering the corpse’s face, looked at it a moment, and said, “Right, forget the requiem. Bring wood, salt, and petrol. Now!”
Dean frowned in turn as the jailer scurried away. “Salt and burn? Why?”
“That’s still Zola’s body,” Tarvek replied, folding the blanket down so that the face remained visible. “But Gil’s right. It’d be too dangerous for anyone to revive her, and I don’t intend to give the Order a chance to try.”
Suddenly, Baby started honking as if someone had set off her alarm, except she didn’t have one.
“I’ve got this,” Tarvek stated, not taking his eyes off Zola’s corpse. “Go.”
“Right,” said Gil, and he and the Winchesters raced back to Baby.
And Baby, it turned out, was doing a very good impression of having an alarm, with her lights flashing in time with the honking, head and tail. As a result, even if it had been closer to twilight than it was, it would have been very easy to see the pale, disheveled, wild-eyed woman Baby had pinned to the wall-and the bomb in the woman’s hand, consisting of what looked like several sticks of dynamite strapped together (but, given where they were and what Sam had already seen, was probably some weird spark invention like a matter destabilizer or anti-matter fragmentation bomb or something). It had some kind of clockwork device attached to it as well, probably a detonator and/or timer. The Winchesters covered the woman at once, and Baby stopped honking when Dean nudged her with his hip.
“Now, then,” Gil began sternly.
But the woman didn’t give him a chance to say more, because she started screaming at him. “YOU! You brainwashed our prince! Heretic! Tyrant! In the name of the Mistress, DIE!!!” She reached toward the bomb.
Before either Sam or Dean could fire, however, Baby let out a V8 roar and rammed the woman. Bone met stone with a sickening crunch, and the woman slumped forward over Baby’s hood like a rag doll.
As Gil started shouting orders for the disposal of the body and of the bomb, Dean frowned at Sam. “‘The Mistress’? What the hell was she talking about?”
“The Geisters worship Lucrezia as their mother goddess,” Sam replied. “Tarvek just told Gil and me over breakfast. We wondered at the time whether anyone other than the Geisters worshipped Lucrezia. Looks like at least some of the revenants did.”
Dean swore.
Soldiers came over to carry out Gil’s orders, and Higgs came running from another direction. “Herr Baron! What happened?”
“Assassination attempt,” Gil replied tersely. “We need to go.”
Baby backed up and held her doors open for them. Barely had they all gotten in, however, when she slammed the doors shut again, locked them, peeled out, and sped out of town the way they’d come.
“Baby, what the hell?” Dean demanded.
“We gotta get out of this place,” sang The Animals, “If it’s the last thing we ever do.”
Sam frowned. “Was that woman trying to plant that bomb on you?”
Beep-beep, Baby answered.
“Why?”
“Where the boys are....”
“She was screaming at me,” Gil objected, sounding confused.
Sam looked back at him. “I don’t think that matters to Baby. The bomb would have killed all of us.”
“And if I may say so, sir,” Higgs added, “I do believe Miss Impala has a soft spot for you, too.”
The radio hissed with static for a moment-was Baby flustered?-before she settled on “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.”
Gil smiled and rubbed the armrest. “Thanks, Baby.”
She drove them out to the clearing where Higgs’ ship was still waiting, and from there it was only a short flight back to Castle Wulfenbach. Dean barely had time to get nervous before they docked. Then the crew took Baby back to what was apparently now Dean’s lab, while Gil ordered a pie and some coffee, since they’d missed dessert, and took the brothers to a suite just a few doors down from the lab. The space was far bigger and nicer than their usual cheap motel rooms, with two king-sized beds and a sitting area as well as an en-suite bath, and the wardrobe already held a couple more suits for each of them as well as the clothes they’d worn the day before.
“I thought you might want to be closer to Baby,” Gil explained as the brothers looked around. “It’s yours for however long you’re with us.”
“Dude, this is awesome,” said Dean. “Thanks.”
Dolokhov arrived at about the same time as the pie and joined them, at Gil’s insistence, to give Gil the latest news while Gil and the Winchesters ate their first piece of pie. Tarvek had been right about at least some of the Knights of Jove factions starting revolts, and Gil had to take several minutes to sort out troop movements to deal with them. Fortunately, however, Mechanicsburg appeared to be safe for the moment, so Gil could spare the troops to deal with the rebels. He also dispatched Capt. Dupree with a regiment and several air wings to Passholdt, along with something called Hoomhoffers and a “Mecha Mole” brigade, and sent questors to investigate noblemen whose names Dolokhov had gotten from Selnikov.
When Dolokhov finally left, Gil sighed in relief and turned to the Winchesters. “Now. What was it you wanted to talk about?”
“How much do you know about your past?” Sam asked. “Like, where you were born, anything like that.”
Gil shook his head. “Father didn’t tell me any of that. And I haven’t had a chance to go through his notes yet.”
“Zola thought we were Heterodynes of some sort,” Dean said. “Distant relatives, Agatha’s half-brothers or cousins, Bill and Barry in disguise....”
“She said something about constructs, too,” Sam added. “Guess she thought maybe the Heterodyne Boys might have transplanted their minds into our bodies or something.”
Gil snorted in amusement.
“She was arguing with Lucrezia about it, though,” Dean continued. “Apparently Lucrezia objected that we couldn’t be Bill and Barry because she knew they were missing or something. And Zola’s retort was, ‘The baron came back from Skifander, didn’t he?’”
The smile and the color left Gil’s face. “Sweet lightning.”
“How well do you know Zeetha?”
“Not very. I just met her a few days ago. But that would make so much sense-I don’t know why Father thought she might have been sent to kill me, but the ‘ancient Skifandrian warrior disciplines’ she said were hardly ever taught to outsiders, her face, her hair, her-oh, red fire.” Gil buried his face in his hands, blushing hard. “I used that Wacky Weave Destabilizer on my sister.”
Sam and Dean looked at each other. “Um....”
“No, no, it’s probably not what you’re thinking.” Gil dropped his hands and flopped back against the back of the couch. “I needed to draw a crowd to make sure word would get back to Father that I was going into Castle Heterodyne to help Agatha. He’d given orders for the castle to be destroyed, but I knew he wouldn’t follow through if I was inside. So Zeetha and I staged a fight to attract attention. I was trying to get her with a Jolly Fun Oxidation Enhancer to make her buttons dissolve, but instead I grabbed the Wacky Weave Destabilizer, and... well, it’s a good thing she’d been with the circus long enough to know what those do and was wearing leather underwear.”
Dean slapped a hand over his face, clearly fighting laughter.
“Zeetha is my sister,” Gil repeated incredulously. “My twin sister, probably. That... that makes me Prince of Skifander. And Boris knew. Confound it, Father, why couldn’t you tell me while you were alive?” Tears welled up in his eyes. “All those years, being bullied for being a commoner, and you could have stopped it just by being honest about who I am. Why were you so afraid that you couldn’t even trust me?”
“We went through the same thing with our dad,” Sam confessed quietly. “He thought keeping us in the dark was the best way to keep us safe. But at least he trained us to hunt. We found out a few years ago that we had a half-brother-but Dad hadn’t told him anything at all. And by the time we got there, we were too late. He’d been killed by ghouls.”
Dean nodded. “Yeah, and then the angels brought him back to house Michael because I kept refusing to. Couldn’t save him that time, either, though God knows we tried.”
“We did.” Sam shook his head. “We loved Dad. We know he loved us. He did the best he could. But sometimes....”
And finally Gil’s grief caught up to him. He buried his face in his hands again, but this time they were muffling deep, wracking sobs. Sam and Dean let him cry himself out, Dean sitting with him while Sam cleared away the pie and coffee to an end table.
“I’m sorry, guys,” Gil whispered as he finally stopped crying and fumbled for a handkerchief, shaking badly. “I... I didn’t mean....”
“Hey,” Sam interrupted. “It’s okay.”
“Why don’t you stay with us tonight?” Dean offered. “We’ve all gotta be up at the same time anyway.”
“And we should probably go on to bed soon. Got another long day ahead tomorrow.”
Gil nodded and barely managed to stand without his knees buckling. Dean steered him to one bed, and Gil was out like a light before Dean could even get his boots off. The brothers sighed in unison and set about getting ready for bed; Dean locked up and set salt lines while Sam worked out how to set the alarm clock, and after a brief silent argument, Dean took the couch and left the other bed for Sam. Sam really wouldn’t have minded sharing, but evidently Dean felt he needed some space to himself for the night, and Sam couldn’t begrudge him that after everything.
As tired as Sam was, he fell right asleep, but somehow he still managed to wake up a good ten minutes before the alarm was due to go off. He looked around and discovered Tarvek’s wasp eater asleep on Gil’s chest. And when he opened the door to see if he could flag someone down to send for coffee, he found Baby parked as close to the wall as she could, presumably to keep out any assassins who might have tried to break in overnight.
Next
[1] In our world, this was a blooper reel moment.
Chapter 11
Of Cabbages and Kings
Metatron put down his book with a dissatisfied sigh. He wanted to read everything-always had-but this book had been so badly written, it had bored even him. And there were two more in the series just like it. He almost never gave up on books, but he might have to give up on these.
Truth be told, it wasn’t just the book. He was beginning to regret his decision to cast down all the other angels. Here he was, home at last, and there was no one to talk to and no one to serve him. If he was taking over in Father’s stead, he deserved service, didn’t he? But none of the angels were present to serve him even if they’d wanted to. And the humans were all safely locked in their own private heavens, and if he went to them, they either didn’t realize he was there or didn’t want to talk to him. Bobby Singer had even run him off with a shotgun, which had actually hurt!
No, the time had come (the walrus said) to write his epic masterpiece and lead the angels home, united under one banner-his own. The trick was going to be charting out the right plotline.
Studying the angels’ current predicaments, Metatron found Bartholomew and Malachi proclaiming themselves leaders of the main factions and waging war on each other with tremendous collateral damage to humans. Most of those who were attempting to remain neutral did so out of love for humanity and rejection of the notion, prevalent among the warring angels, that Castiel had been responsible for the fall. All of them wanted to go home; none of them agreed on who should lead.
It was going to be easy, Metatron concluded, to cast Castiel as the villain of the piece and use him as a foil to promote Metatron’s own agenda. Opening the portal to allow the return was going to require killing Kevin Tran and retrieving the angel and demon tablets, all currently under the Winchesters’ protection. Ordinarily, that obstacle would be insurmountable, but Metatron already had a potential way around it: Gadreel, who was hiding in Sam and who was so desperate to clear his name that he should be easy enough to manipulate. Recruit Gadreel to do his dirty work, and Metatron could sit back with popcorn while the Winchesters self-destructed in the wake of Kevin’s death and Gadreel’s betrayal. Meanwhile, it shouldn’t be hard to convince Castiel to come out of retirement and lead the neutral angels, especially with the right sort of trap. A few nudges in the right direction, and Dean would do the unforgiveable, with Castiel backing him all the way. Or at any rate, Metatron would have no difficulty making it look like he supported Dean, especially if Dean did something Castiel’s supporters thought worthy of death; the angels would demand that Castiel kill Dean, and Castiel would refuse like the loyal chump that he was. Disappointed, the angels would defect from his cause to Metatron’s, and then... well, Father’s throne would be his for the taking. And “it’s good to be the king,” right?
Metatron re-read the Supernatural books to be sure of his material, then sat down at his typewriter and worked up an outline. It all looked perfect on paper, so he set about making preparations. His first order of business was making sure no new prophets would be activated after Kevin’s death. Those were quests he could accomplish on his own, so he did. It was a cakewalk compared to framing Castiel for the fall.
Then Metatron discovered that a side effect of pulling that lever was closing Heaven to the arrival of new souls, meaning the dead were trapped in the Veil for the moment. Oops. Oh, well, that should be easy enough to rectify once the portal was open, and it would be another credit line on his hero CV. As long as he solved the problem, no one should care that he caused it, right?
The next item on the agenda was locating his scapegoat, his sacrifice, and his sidekick. Castiel wasn’t visible to Metatron, but that wasn’t surprising because he had that warding tattoo hiding him. Gadreel was also invisible to heavenly radar, as were the Winchesters, but they might also have hidden themselves. But Kevin...
... Kevin was nowhere to be found.
Metatron searched. He scried. He did every tracking spell known in heaven and on earth and under the earth. He sought for the tablets and couldn’t find them, either. It was like they had simply but literally dropped off the face of the earth-the Winchesters, their angels, the prophet, the tablets, and all.
He was still trying to figure out whether to panic when he suddenly became aware of new souls streaming into heaven. Someone, somewhere, somehow had opened the gates. Did that mean the prophet lever had been reset? A new prophet hadn’t been activated, but... but this could spell disaster for Metatron’s plan.
He was just about to leave his office to see what he could learn when he heard a quiet huff of amusement. Turning, he found himself joined by a tall, thin, dark-clad male figure.
“Really, Metatron,” said Death. “Did you honestly think you could get away with it so easily?”
Panicked for real, Metatron fled, not even remembering to take a towel with him.
“Passholdt,” Tarvek echoed wearily over supper, which Gil had had sent down from Castle Wulfenbach for the four of them-Higgs had taken over helping Gadreel while Tarvek came inside to eat. “Yes, I suppose it would make sense for the Geisters to go there.”
“I had Boris ask Selnikov,” said Gil. “Zola was telling the truth about the Jotun brothers. Selnikov went in with them to clean up before Father could find out what had happened.”
“What did happen in Passholdt?” Sam asked, finally awake and cleaned up after his library freak-out. He barely remembered anything from the moment he’d charged into the library until he’d come to in a bathtub somewhere in the guest wing with Dean scrubbing bug splatter out of his hair. He was back in jeans and T-shirt, though, because that was all that was in his go bag and because even if he had another suit waiting back on Castle Wulfenbach, he needed to save it for Tarvek’s coronation the next day.
Tarvek sighed. “We’ll need to get more details out of Agatha and Zeetha. Apparently they were among the members of the circus who actually saw the creatures.”
“So was Oggie, if we can get him out of the Deepdown,” Gil noted.
“In any case-well, no, let me back up a bit. What are revenants in your world?”
“They’re a type of zombie,” Dean replied. “Brought back by necromancy, usually. To kill one, you have to nail it in the coffin with a silver stake.”
“And be careful they don’t throw you into a headstone,” Sam added with a grimace. “First one we fought broke my wrist.”
“Yeah, and then you ripped your jeans filling in the grave.” [1]
“Dean.” Sam hadn’t thought he could be more embarrassed in one evening than the library incident had already made him.
Dean snickered and took a drink of beer. “Good times, good times.”
But Tarvek actually managed to smile before he took a drink of wine, so maybe it was worth it. “That’s what folklore says about revenants in our world, too. And because some people who are infected with slaver wasps become mindless shamblers like zombies, the rest of Europa started calling them revenants. But as you’ve seen, the zombie-like revenants are a statistical minority.”
The brothers nodded and kept eating.
“Well, Snarlantz had been entrusted with most of the hive engines, which generate the queen and the warrior wasps that protect her. The actual slaver swarm comes from the queen. But Snarlantz thought he could improve the hives, so he experimented. One result that actually worked was the spark wasp Lucrezia used on the late baron. But his last experiment... went horribly wrong.”
“How so?” Sam prompted.
“The report from Master Payne said that by the time the circus arrived outside Passholdt, the entire populace had become worse than revenants-pale, deformed, like humanoid spiders or bats. Fast-moving, though easy to kill. Afraid of bright light. And vicious. If the Jägers hadn’t followed them from Zumzum, nobody from the circus would have made it out alive.”
“Croats,” murmured Dean.
“The Croatoan virus didn’t cause deformations, though,” Sam noted.
Dean shrugged his eyebrows, conceding the point.
Gil and Tarvek were frowning in confusion, so Sam explained, “The virus was developed by a demon. Pestilence was supposed to unleash it as part of the Apocalypse chaos. We managed to stop that, barely, but we saw what the virus could do.”
Gil nodded in understanding and looked back at Tarvek. “So all those hive engines Oggie saw in the Deepdown-those had been retrieved from Passholdt?”
“That would be my guess,” Tarvek answered and took another drink. “Like I said, no one involved with Lucrezia’s plans ever trusted me terribly much. The Geisters certainly didn’t. And I really only know about the spark wasp because I’d been keeping tabs on the contents of Father’s secret safe.”
“Well, if there are any revenants there by now, I think the safest thing to do will be to have Agatha order them outside and then fly over with the spray. That might work on the Geisters, too; I don’t know. But we should probably wait to worry about it until after the coronation. Assuming Agatha comes, we can talk to her about it afterward.”
Tarvek took off his pince-nez with a sigh, set them on the table, and rubbed his forehead. “Gil, I know why we’re waiting for dawn, but... oh, I don’t know. Part of me wants to have it over with now; part of me feels like I’ve failed my people so miserably already that I don’t deserve to go through with it at all. And then there’s the Order. They may not acknowledge me even if we can find the bishop. If Gadreel has to officiate-”
“Then we’ll find an archbishop to authenticate one of Gadreel’s miracles.” Gil took a drink of wine and studied his old pal more closely. “Sweet lightning,” he breathed with a frown as he realized the truth. “You’re afraid.”
“They’ve tried to kill me three times already, just since we’ve been back,” Tarvek confessed quietly. “The Smoke Knights have already dealt with the assassins, but... well, there’s a reason I assigned Violetta to Agatha. They won’t stop. I’ll never be free of them, always having to look over my shoulder, be on my guard. Though I don’t know why they bother-why I even try to stop them. I’m such a shameful, wretched failure, helping Lucrezia, ignoring what she was doing to people. Those p-poor children... so many orphans... and I did nothing to stop her... it’s all my fault....”
“Wait, no, this-this isn’t like you. Gadreel!”
Gadreel appeared behind Tarvek’s chair just as Tarvek buried his face in his hands with a sob. “I’m losing my mind, aren’t I? They’ll drive me insane-I-I c-c-can’t-”
“Enough,” Gadreel growled and yanked Tarvek’s chair back from the table, which caused Tarvek to drop his hands in surprise. Then Gadreel touched two fingers to Tarvek’s forehead.
Tarvek gasped and sat back, face clearing. “What-was-was I being an idiot?”
“You were drugged,” Gadreel replied. “It was some kind of depressant, but not one known in our world. I believe the intent was to prompt you to kill yourself.”
“Blue fire,” Tarvek sighed and slumped against the back of his chair. “That’s four.”
“But it can’t be the food,” Dean noted. “We’re all eatin’ the same thing.”
“Could be the wine, though,” Sam added. “Or maybe the wineglass.” Both Winchesters were drinking beer, and Gil didn’t seem to be feeling any ill effects.
Gadreel looked at Gil and nodded before looking back at Tarvek and handing him his glasses. “Yes, I believe the drug was placed in your wine alone. That suggests one of the servants, or perhaps the Smoke Knights have been compromised.”
“Servant, more than likely,” Tarvek replied, putting his glasses back on. “A Smoke Knight wouldn’t bother with the wine. They are slipping, though; I’m going to have to have a talk with them.”
“Is there some way you could ward him?” Dean asked.
Gadreel shook his head. “Against evil spirits, yes. Against evil men, no. I shall have to stand guard until morning.”
“I hate to impose,” said Tarvek, “but it would be a great relief, if you don’t mind. Not that I can’t take care of myself, but I am exhausted. Perhaps even until we can root out Lucrezia’s followers among the Knights of Jove-they’ll be most likely to want me dead.”
“Not to mention those nasty cousins you were talking about yesterday,” Sam said. “We took care of von Blitzengaard, but....”
“He was in charge of only one faction. Cousin Leopold is another, just for a start-and he’d be in league with Lucrezia, considering the role Dr. Mongfish played in his conception.”
Dean groaned, put his fork down on his plate, and pushed the plate away.
“And if they can’t kill me,” Tarvek continued, “they’ll probably go back to inciting revolts. It really is going to be touch and go for a while yet.”
“We can worry about that when the time comes,” Gil stated firmly. “The first thing we have to do is get you crowned as Prince of Sturmhalten. Maybe by then the Jägers will have finished excavating the tunnels leading up from the Geisters’ base-Gen. Goomblast thinks they don’t all lead to known parts of the castle.”
“Well, as long as I get to sleep in my own bed tonight, I don’t much care. Speaking of which, where will you three be staying? There’s plenty of space here, obviously; I can order one suite set up for you and one for the Winchesters.”
Gil grimaced. “For security purposes, I should probably go back to Castle Wulfenbach, especially since we know there’s a lunatic poisoner at large. But of course, Dean, if you’d rather stay on the ground-”
Dean shook his head. “It’s all right. I can handle it once we’re up there. Besides, there’s something we need to talk to you about, in private.”
Gil frowned. “All right.”
“SIRE! SIRE!” someone outside started yelling suddenly, and a moment later, a Sturmvoraus trooper burst into the dining room. “Your Highness-Herr Baron-it’s Fräulein Malfeazium. She’s dead!”
Swearing, men and angel jumped up from the table and followed the trooper to the prison, where other soldiers were guarding Zola’s cell but stood aside as soon as the princes arrived. While Tarvek grabbed a torch, the trooper-the jailer, maybe?-unlocked the cell and opened the door, proving Dean’s earlier words prophetic. The air that rushed out of the cell did smell of death... and almonds.
“This is no trick,” Gadreel said sadly. “She is truly dead.”
Frowning, Sam looked down at Zola’s body, and her blue lips confirmed his suspicion. “Cyanide.”
“But she didn’t have any on her,” Gil noted. “The Jägers searched her thoroughly. So someone found out she’d talked and broke in to silence her.”
“No sign of forced entry,” Tarvek observed.
Dean raised an eyebrow. “You kiddin’? Sam could pick this lock in five seconds flat.”
Sam took a closer look at the lock. “Three.”
Gil and Tarvek exchanged a disturbed look.
“Plus,” Sam continued, “we already know palace security’s been breached. The same person who drugged Tarvek could have come here before or after that attempt. It’s a similar enough MO. Or they could just as easily have run a hose under the door and pumped hydrocyanic gas into the cell. As fast as it acts, she might not even have had time to call for help.”
Gil ran a hand over his face and sighed. “All right, then, she’s dead. Arrange for a requiem at once; I want her buried before sunrise.”
“Yes, Herr Baron,” the jailer replied and hurried off.
Tarvek closed and locked the door again, then nodded to the guards to resume their earlier position. “You’re not going to try to revive her?” he asked Gil as they started back down the stairs.
Gil shook his head. “Too dangerous, even if Dr. Sun had the equipment. But even if the castle has the hospital itself rebuilt by now, the machinery may take even him quite some time to rebuild and repair.”
Several Wulfenbach soldiers with a stretcher arrived just then, so Tarvek’s group stepped back to let them pass, both on the way to Zola’s cell and on the way down with her body.
As they followed the stretcher toward the cathedral, Tarvek put a hand on Gil’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Gil sighed. “I will be. At least... at least we got some information out of her before she was killed. Now we know where to start looking for the beacon engine. And I suppose we’re going to have to find a way to go to the moon at some point.”
“Actually, we might be able to help you there,” said Dean. “Maybe not with actual plans for a lunar module, but-”
“What? You’ve been there?!”
“Well, not personally, but....”
“We at least know the basics,” Sam agreed. “The first Americans on the moon landed in 1969. We learned all about it in school.”
“Sweet lightning,” Gil and Tarvek chorused.
“Well, our world is a long way ahead of this one time-wise. I’m more impressed that anyone’s managed to get there before now.”
Tarvek frowned. “Wait, Vrin told Lucrezia something about a gateway from their world to ours that was destroyed. I wonder if that’s anything like the gateway in the cathedral in Mechanicsburg.”
Gil hummed thoughtfully. “If so, it would save us a lot of work, assuming the gateway on the other end remains intact. But we’d still have to find the right settings so we don’t end up on Mars or something, as well as some way to neutralize any guards on the other end. It might not hurt to have the Winchesters’ ideas for a backup.”
Just then the jailer came running back. “Sire, there’s nobody at the cathedral. The priests may still be out dealing with the dead from Mulverschtag. I-”
Tarvek frowned. “Bearers, halt!” When they obeyed, Tarvek jogged up to the stretcher and lifted the blanket covering the corpse’s face, looked at it a moment, and said, “Right, forget the requiem. Bring wood, salt, and petrol. Now!”
Dean frowned in turn as the jailer scurried away. “Salt and burn? Why?”
“That’s still Zola’s body,” Tarvek replied, folding the blanket down so that the face remained visible. “But Gil’s right. It’d be too dangerous for anyone to revive her, and I don’t intend to give the Order a chance to try.”
Suddenly, Baby started honking as if someone had set off her alarm, except she didn’t have one.
“I’ve got this,” Tarvek stated, not taking his eyes off Zola’s corpse. “Go.”
“Right,” said Gil, and he and the Winchesters raced back to Baby.
And Baby, it turned out, was doing a very good impression of having an alarm, with her lights flashing in time with the honking, head and tail. As a result, even if it had been closer to twilight than it was, it would have been very easy to see the pale, disheveled, wild-eyed woman Baby had pinned to the wall-and the bomb in the woman’s hand, consisting of what looked like several sticks of dynamite strapped together (but, given where they were and what Sam had already seen, was probably some weird spark invention like a matter destabilizer or anti-matter fragmentation bomb or something). It had some kind of clockwork device attached to it as well, probably a detonator and/or timer. The Winchesters covered the woman at once, and Baby stopped honking when Dean nudged her with his hip.
“Now, then,” Gil began sternly.
But the woman didn’t give him a chance to say more, because she started screaming at him. “YOU! You brainwashed our prince! Heretic! Tyrant! In the name of the Mistress, DIE!!!” She reached toward the bomb.
Before either Sam or Dean could fire, however, Baby let out a V8 roar and rammed the woman. Bone met stone with a sickening crunch, and the woman slumped forward over Baby’s hood like a rag doll.
As Gil started shouting orders for the disposal of the body and of the bomb, Dean frowned at Sam. “‘The Mistress’? What the hell was she talking about?”
“The Geisters worship Lucrezia as their mother goddess,” Sam replied. “Tarvek just told Gil and me over breakfast. We wondered at the time whether anyone other than the Geisters worshipped Lucrezia. Looks like at least some of the revenants did.”
Dean swore.
Soldiers came over to carry out Gil’s orders, and Higgs came running from another direction. “Herr Baron! What happened?”
“Assassination attempt,” Gil replied tersely. “We need to go.”
Baby backed up and held her doors open for them. Barely had they all gotten in, however, when she slammed the doors shut again, locked them, peeled out, and sped out of town the way they’d come.
“Baby, what the hell?” Dean demanded.
“We gotta get out of this place,” sang The Animals, “If it’s the last thing we ever do.”
Sam frowned. “Was that woman trying to plant that bomb on you?”
Beep-beep, Baby answered.
“Why?”
“Where the boys are....”
“She was screaming at me,” Gil objected, sounding confused.
Sam looked back at him. “I don’t think that matters to Baby. The bomb would have killed all of us.”
“And if I may say so, sir,” Higgs added, “I do believe Miss Impala has a soft spot for you, too.”
The radio hissed with static for a moment-was Baby flustered?-before she settled on “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.”
Gil smiled and rubbed the armrest. “Thanks, Baby.”
She drove them out to the clearing where Higgs’ ship was still waiting, and from there it was only a short flight back to Castle Wulfenbach. Dean barely had time to get nervous before they docked. Then the crew took Baby back to what was apparently now Dean’s lab, while Gil ordered a pie and some coffee, since they’d missed dessert, and took the brothers to a suite just a few doors down from the lab. The space was far bigger and nicer than their usual cheap motel rooms, with two king-sized beds and a sitting area as well as an en-suite bath, and the wardrobe already held a couple more suits for each of them as well as the clothes they’d worn the day before.
“I thought you might want to be closer to Baby,” Gil explained as the brothers looked around. “It’s yours for however long you’re with us.”
“Dude, this is awesome,” said Dean. “Thanks.”
Dolokhov arrived at about the same time as the pie and joined them, at Gil’s insistence, to give Gil the latest news while Gil and the Winchesters ate their first piece of pie. Tarvek had been right about at least some of the Knights of Jove factions starting revolts, and Gil had to take several minutes to sort out troop movements to deal with them. Fortunately, however, Mechanicsburg appeared to be safe for the moment, so Gil could spare the troops to deal with the rebels. He also dispatched Capt. Dupree with a regiment and several air wings to Passholdt, along with something called Hoomhoffers and a “Mecha Mole” brigade, and sent questors to investigate noblemen whose names Dolokhov had gotten from Selnikov.
When Dolokhov finally left, Gil sighed in relief and turned to the Winchesters. “Now. What was it you wanted to talk about?”
“How much do you know about your past?” Sam asked. “Like, where you were born, anything like that.”
Gil shook his head. “Father didn’t tell me any of that. And I haven’t had a chance to go through his notes yet.”
“Zola thought we were Heterodynes of some sort,” Dean said. “Distant relatives, Agatha’s half-brothers or cousins, Bill and Barry in disguise....”
“She said something about constructs, too,” Sam added. “Guess she thought maybe the Heterodyne Boys might have transplanted their minds into our bodies or something.”
Gil snorted in amusement.
“She was arguing with Lucrezia about it, though,” Dean continued. “Apparently Lucrezia objected that we couldn’t be Bill and Barry because she knew they were missing or something. And Zola’s retort was, ‘The baron came back from Skifander, didn’t he?’”
The smile and the color left Gil’s face. “Sweet lightning.”
“How well do you know Zeetha?”
“Not very. I just met her a few days ago. But that would make so much sense-I don’t know why Father thought she might have been sent to kill me, but the ‘ancient Skifandrian warrior disciplines’ she said were hardly ever taught to outsiders, her face, her hair, her-oh, red fire.” Gil buried his face in his hands, blushing hard. “I used that Wacky Weave Destabilizer on my sister.”
Sam and Dean looked at each other. “Um....”
“No, no, it’s probably not what you’re thinking.” Gil dropped his hands and flopped back against the back of the couch. “I needed to draw a crowd to make sure word would get back to Father that I was going into Castle Heterodyne to help Agatha. He’d given orders for the castle to be destroyed, but I knew he wouldn’t follow through if I was inside. So Zeetha and I staged a fight to attract attention. I was trying to get her with a Jolly Fun Oxidation Enhancer to make her buttons dissolve, but instead I grabbed the Wacky Weave Destabilizer, and... well, it’s a good thing she’d been with the circus long enough to know what those do and was wearing leather underwear.”
Dean slapped a hand over his face, clearly fighting laughter.
“Zeetha is my sister,” Gil repeated incredulously. “My twin sister, probably. That... that makes me Prince of Skifander. And Boris knew. Confound it, Father, why couldn’t you tell me while you were alive?” Tears welled up in his eyes. “All those years, being bullied for being a commoner, and you could have stopped it just by being honest about who I am. Why were you so afraid that you couldn’t even trust me?”
“We went through the same thing with our dad,” Sam confessed quietly. “He thought keeping us in the dark was the best way to keep us safe. But at least he trained us to hunt. We found out a few years ago that we had a half-brother-but Dad hadn’t told him anything at all. And by the time we got there, we were too late. He’d been killed by ghouls.”
Dean nodded. “Yeah, and then the angels brought him back to house Michael because I kept refusing to. Couldn’t save him that time, either, though God knows we tried.”
“We did.” Sam shook his head. “We loved Dad. We know he loved us. He did the best he could. But sometimes....”
And finally Gil’s grief caught up to him. He buried his face in his hands again, but this time they were muffling deep, wracking sobs. Sam and Dean let him cry himself out, Dean sitting with him while Sam cleared away the pie and coffee to an end table.
“I’m sorry, guys,” Gil whispered as he finally stopped crying and fumbled for a handkerchief, shaking badly. “I... I didn’t mean....”
“Hey,” Sam interrupted. “It’s okay.”
“Why don’t you stay with us tonight?” Dean offered. “We’ve all gotta be up at the same time anyway.”
“And we should probably go on to bed soon. Got another long day ahead tomorrow.”
Gil nodded and barely managed to stand without his knees buckling. Dean steered him to one bed, and Gil was out like a light before Dean could even get his boots off. The brothers sighed in unison and set about getting ready for bed; Dean locked up and set salt lines while Sam worked out how to set the alarm clock, and after a brief silent argument, Dean took the couch and left the other bed for Sam. Sam really wouldn’t have minded sharing, but evidently Dean felt he needed some space to himself for the night, and Sam couldn’t begrudge him that after everything.
As tired as Sam was, he fell right asleep, but somehow he still managed to wake up a good ten minutes before the alarm was due to go off. He looked around and discovered Tarvek’s wasp eater asleep on Gil’s chest. And when he opened the door to see if he could flag someone down to send for coffee, he found Baby parked as close to the wall as she could, presumably to keep out any assassins who might have tried to break in overnight.
Next
[1] In our world, this was a blooper reel moment.