March-Stalkers Mighty: 1/22
Passus I: Pes dexter.
Gabriel looked up, a sudden shock of too-expressive eyes that caught and reflected every flicker of the firelight and turned it into something living and real, and every one of Dean’s instincts was screaming its head off.
The outlaw dire
took mortal hurt; a mighty wound
showed on his shoulder, and sinews cracked,
and the bone-frame burst. To Beowulf now
the glory was given, and Grendel thence
death-sick his den in the dark moor sought,
noisome abode.
Beowulf, anonymous, manuscript c. 1000 (poem older), trans. Gunmere 1910. (XII)
The Trickster tossed back his head and laughed his stupidly open laugh, like everything in the world was so simple for him.
“Tell me you didn’t, Sam-bug.”
Dean’s enormous little brother snort-laughed into his beer. “Don’t call me that either, Gabriel. ’Course we did - it was a long winter and we were bored as hell. How about you? Stupidest thing you’ve ever done sober?”
The Trickster grinned like a wolf. “Kid, if I told you, your big brother there would put a round through my skull for screwing with your innocent little mind.”
Dean narrowed his eyes at the smug son of a bitch. “Yeah, don’t flatter yourself. Head shots are fucking messy. I’d go for your heart instead.”
“Oh hey, no harm no foul.” The pedlar’s smirk widened. “A man can’t hit what ain’t there.”
Sam shuddered and tipped his chair back on that stupid angle Dean had given up telling him off for years ago. “Hey, don’t even joke about that, man. Me and Dean, we tracked down this weird-ass ghoul thing a couple of months back. And when we killed it, the ribcage? Completely empty. I’m telling you, there’s creepy and then there’s just plain wrong.”
“Neat, a holwe hathel.” The Trickster perked up, tipping his head on one side and crinkling his eyes up at the corners. The guy was charming, Dean could give him that. “I haven’t heard of one of those for years. How’d you take it out?”
“Cut off its head, salted and burned the corpse, put the ashes under a slab of marble,” Sam answered promptly. “Don’t know if it needed the marble, but it was acting kinda like a barrow wight, so we figured, better safe, you know? And nothing nasty likes salt. Well, angels don’t seem to give a shit about it, but apart from them.”
Gabriel leaned forward to scratch the ear of Dean’s faithful Chevy, who had just flopped down beside his chair with a heavy sigh. “Yep, not much out there that’ll do jack to get under an angel’s skin, is there, girl?”
Chevy gave a happy rumble and pressed her head into his hand.
Dean cleared his throat and changed the subject, because that was edging too close to talking business. The Trickster’s wagon had only bounced and rumbled in through the Gates forty-five hours ago, so there were still three hours left of guest-grace to go before that was fair game, and they weren’t uncivilised savages here. “So, hey, you joining us at the Roadhouse, man? Ellen’s making her apple crumble.”
Gabriel practically purred. “For Ellen’s apple crumble, I would cross mountains on a three-legged goat, ford an ocean, face down a wild boar on foot, or even put up with your grumpy ass for one evening.”
“So, Sam and the pedlar-man.”
Bobby grunted as he sank into the other chair in their usual corner. “You sound like a teenage gossip, boy.”
“Yeah, and don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean, old man.” Dean shot a glance over at the main table in the middle of the Roadhouse. Sam and Gabriel were tag-teaming in that good old game Mocking Ash’s Hair, smooth as anything. Not that either of them had any room to be poking fun at anyone else’s hair - seriously, they were as ridiculous as each other. Jo was snickering helplessly into her spoon, Charlie was sneakily giving Sam a thumbs-up out of Ash’s line of sight and getting her hair everywhere, Sam had one arm completely engulfing Ash’s shoulders because he was incapable of not touching people all the time, Gwen was wearing her Everyone But Me Is So Immature face, and even Christian was trying not to look amused.
Dean resolutely ignored the hurt little curl in his gut that said how usually it was only him who could team up with Sammy like that. Because Dean was awesome at shoving stupid, unhelpful shit down when it was getting in the way of working out what was best for Sam.
“Y’think Sam’s going to want to go with him?” Bobby followed Dean’s gaze, his eyes sharp and narrow under his hat.
“I think Sammy’s gonna want to get gone pretty damn soon either way.” Dean dropped his eyes back to his bowl, because he really didn’t want to watch. “And hell, maybe he should. Probably got a better chance anywhere that isn’t here, the way things are looking.” And hadn’t that taken Dean months to admit - months of Sam’s passive-aggressive bullshit and earnest touchy-feely explanations and epic bitch-faces. “I mean, all those other places out there - they can’t all be this bad, can they? All the angels and demons crap?”
Bobby made a sound like he wasn’t going to commit himself either way. “Going from what Gabriel and the other pedlars say, sure. Sounds more like what it was like when you were kids. Just regular evil crap. That don’t mean we just trust those folks out there.”
Dean nudged his foot back against the reassuring heat of Chevy’s flank under his chair. “Yeah, you wanna be the one to lock Sam down if he wants out? He’d just hate us both then run off at the stupidest possible moment and get himself eaten by an angel, or whatever. Least the Trickster already knows how to survive outside.”
Bobby gave him an odd look sideways. “So, what, that’s it, you’re just gonna trust him with your brother? Just ’cos he’s human don’t make him dependable.”
Dean exhaled messily. “That’s what I’m asking you, Bobby. I just can’t get a handle on the guy.”
Bobby ate his crumble inscrutably for a minute. “Sam seems to like him.”
“And that’s just it.” Dean scowled over at the other table. “Sam does. Sam thinks he’s just awesome - always has, even when he got too old for those kids’ toys and candy the guy carries on top of the usual stuff. And I gotta listen to him now. He’s a grown- okay, an over-grown man, and screw trusting Gabriel, I gotta trust Sam, to make his own calls.”
Bobby took a long pull from his glass, then clinked it back loudly onto the wood. “Sounds to me like you’ve been doing a hell of a lot of thinking on this already.”
Dean pinched the bridge of his nose. He kinda missed the days when Bobby would just tell him what to do. “Course I’ve been thinking, Bobby. It’s Sam.”
“So what are you asking me for, y’idjit?”
Dean opened his mouth, then shut it again. Because if Sam did decide to do this... if he wanted to go with the pedlar...
Tell me I’m doing the right thing here. Tell me I’ll see him again if I let him go. Tell me the Trickster can be trusted with him.
“... I guess I’m not.”
“So how are those hounds doing for you?”
The Roadhouse had almost emptied for the night. Ellen and Jo and Bill, of course, couldn’t exactly go to bed before all the guests had cleared out (and on a late night like this, one or two of the last folks out would usually stick around to help them tidy up, because no one wanted to piss Ellen off). Looked like Sam wasn’t going to shift his ass until Gabriel did, which meant Dean and Bobby were sure as hell not leaving. Jody had left to put her son to bed, but Rufus was waiting to talk to Gabriel about the dogs, Charlie had come rushing up from the apple orchards after some new kind of carboy or other that Gabriel had apparently promised her last year, and Colt the blacksmith would be looking to get some more silver off him because they were running low on blades and bullets for shifters and the like.
Rufus, who commanded the pack on hunts, leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table, then took them off again in a hurry when Ellen raised her fearsome eyebrow at him.
“Not too shabby,” he allowed. “Doing their job pretty damn well. Two litters this year - six and four. Might get you to take some of them next year, swap ’em off for some new blood from one of those other places out there.” He flicked one hand in a sort of circular motion, to indicate ‘everything outside the Wall.’
The Trickster made a thoughtful noise, and bit into his apple. “So that makes, what - twenty-three in your pack here?”
“Twenty-one,” Dean amended. “Sully got himself gored by a boar pretty bad last spring, and I had to put him out of it. And Ribbons caught the nasty cough that was running through them just when she was getting over birthing and feeding six babies, so she went down fast as hell.” He’d taken the pups away for hand-feeding as soon as she’d started breathing rough, and stayed up with her two nights straight, but there’d been no strength in the poor girl to save.
Still, two dogs in a year wasn’t bad - it was a hell of a lot fewer than the human lives they’d lost. And only three children born.
Gabriel pulled a face that was probably meant to be sympathetic (Dean thought it looked smug, but he thought everything the Trickster did tonight looked smug, and he was big enough to admit that he might be kind of biased just now). “Hard luck. Anyway, solved your little angel problem, I hope?”
“Solved it?” Bobby snorted into his drink. “What planet are you from, boy? Angels don’t give up that easy. But we’re holding our own.”
A faint line dug itself in between the pedlar’s eyebrows and he opened his mouth to ask something, but Jo cut in, “Oh, please. Bobby’s doing his surly old modesty thing again. We’re doing better than holding our own. Brought down two in the last six months.”
Something odd flickered on the pedlar’s face, subtle enough that Dean thought he probably wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been watching him like a protective mother hawk all evening. “Brought down...?”
“Right out of the sky,” Sam confirmed, leaning forward conspiratorially, because he always was a ridiculously happy drunk. “You explained how the hounds’ baying gets right up inside an angel’s head and confuses them, yeah? Well, Bobby found a way to ramp that way up. Enough hounds baying on an angel’s trail and the feathery son of a bitch can’t work out where he’s heading, can’t get up high enough to be out of shot, can barely keep his wings sorted out. Keep them hot on the trail long enough and you can shoot an angel right out of the sky.”
Sam beamed proudly over the table at Gabriel’s admiring whistle; but Dean hadn’t taken his eyes off the Trickster’s face once during Sam’s little speech, and he’d seen the way the bolt at the back of the jaw had got tighter and tighter, the way his eyes went all wide and shocked-bright, too bright, too gold, with something like horror swimming deep inside them.
“Not bad, Singer,” the pedlar said; and no, Dean wasn’t imagining that little tremor in his voice, like something was broken and rattling about loose in his throat. “But how d’you shoot down an angel? Last I checked most everything just slides right off that skin.”
“Trade secret, pedlar boy,” Bobby retorted gruffly (because, after all, they hadn’t exactly got much else to sell or trade with these days, and more than that, you didn’t want to trust those people out there to bleed the hounds gentle and let them rest properly after). But he drew his favourite angel knife from his belt, the one quenched after forging with Chevy’s second blood-letting, and let it drop with a ringing clatter on the table between them. The Trickster’s eyes fastened on it, sickly fascinated, even as his grin didn’t falter. “If I told you we can make blades and bullets that’ll kill angels, what’d they be worth?”
“Huh.” The Trickster reached for the knife, like he just wanted to check it over; and Dean leaned forward to catch his wrist, hard.
Gabriel looked up, a sudden shock of too-expressive eyes that caught and reflected every flicker of the firelight and turned it into something living and real, and every one of Dean’s instincts was screaming its head off.
“Careful,” he said, voice grating low and harsh in his own ears. “Don’t want to cut yourself.”
Gabriel should have snapped back right away, like he always did. Something barbed and witty, easing the rest of the table into a laugh. But instead he just froze, held onto Dean’s gaze for a moment like he thought it might shatter and slice him up if he dropped it. Then he jerked his arm away with a snort and a glare, and picked up the knife.
And Dean had spent whole summers as a kid reading sentences and paragraphs off people who never said a word.
Dean sat back in his chair, heart thudding sickly in his throat, and met Sam and Jo’s identical pissy dude, what the hell faces across the table. Then he looked away, looked at Bobby, and shook his head.
He didn’t really hear the Trickster slip into haggling mode, the usual quick-fire game of negotiations and calculations and estimated demand. He only noticed when Gabriel stopped suddenly, like a hound with a strange scent, and stared intently at the bright metal in his hand.
“It’s the dogs, isn’t it? Something about the dogs.”
“Something about the dogs,” Bobby agreed. Then, all gruff and easy like he meant it, “Why don’t you come on through to the barn and I’ll show you where we do it?”
There was just a hint of a flinch where the Trickster’s fingers were pressed tight on his glass; then he made one of those ridiculously chirpy noises of his and tossed the rest of his drink back. “Sure, why not? Promise to keep my mouth shut. Well, until someone else pays me big to open it.”
Bobby and Gabriel rose, and Rufus and Dean rose to come along, because the hounds were their charge and their pride. And Sam rose, of course, because he was Gabriel’s own personal fan club for the week; then Dean caught the subtle little gesture Bobby flicked to Ellen and Bill, one of the hand signals they used on hunts. The one that said “come this way, follow my lead.”
Ellen stood up. “Jo, you’re on clean-up tonight. Charlie, mind helping her out? Come on, Bill.”
Jo scowled half-heartedly, but she had already got five of the empties pinned together in each hand before Bill’s chair legs scraped on the floor. The room was enough of a mess that it’d keep Jo busy for long enough. She was shaping up to be a damn fine hunter - better than her dad already and some of her moves were tighter than Sam’s, Dean could admit it - but if this went down the way Dean was really hoping it wouldn’t, she shouldn’t have to see it. And leaving Charlie out, well, that wasn’t even a question. This was hunter business now.
Dean sort of wished he could think of a handy excuse to sideline Sam too.
Across the yard and down the darkened street, with Bill’s steady rumble of a voice asking after the linens and cottons the pedlar was carrying, because growing fabric plants around here was a bitch at the best of times. (The Trickster chattered back, bright and sharp, but still with that weird little undercurrent in his voice, the tight hunch in the line of his shoulders.) Past the byre and the sheep fold, where the woolly guard dogs lifted their heads and flapped their tails as they passed, and Chevy made an eager semi-circle out of her path to touch noses with each of them. Through the stables and the sweet smells of straw and sleepy horse, and the pedlar stopped for a moment to rub his cheek affectionately against the nose of his own chestnut mare.
Then into the barn, that vast echoing space where the cattle lived in winter. The stronghold and the last safe space for the humans, just in case. And Dean fell back, just enough that he could watch the Trickster, really watch him, when he stepped through the line of the wards. The wards that no human should be able to feel.
Gabriel stumbled.
Dean closed the door behind him.
Cunning. They were all cunning. And a good hunter had to be able to think ahead with them, see what they were going to do just before they did it, because otherwise there was no time to react. One stumble might be chance, but still... the wards. Wards for everything, all over these walls, complete and impregnable once the door was shut, so that nothing could get in, and so that anything inside was powerless. And another circle in the middle of the ceiling, so that nothing could get out. The Trickster had been in here six years ago, had strolled right across the middle and out the other side. The only thing different since then was the angel warding.
Dean’s hunter brain ticked on nice and smooth, ignoring the sick clench in his gut. If he can feel it, first point of order will be to account for that stumble -
“Shit. Uh, guys? Think I just twisted my ankle on this board here...”
- which might be true, but next thing he’d do if it wasn’t would be stall for time, put off the moment when it had to become obvious that he couldn’t cross that invisible line in front of him, get the humans to leave so he could try to think of a way out -
“... nah, you guys go on, I’ll just strap it up and be right behind you.”
Well, fuck.
A man can’t hit a heart that ain’t there.
“You okay, man?” Sammy was hovering, looking earnest and concerned just like he always did for anything from a paper cut to an amputation, and Dean gritted his teeth to stop himself from snarling get the fuck away from my brother.
Bobby turned to look, leaving Rufus with his hand on the far door, the one that led to the dog sheds and the smithy, and Ellen must have cottoned on at some point - well, she would - because she hooked up her lantern beside the main barn lamp (just outside the circle) and drawled, smooth as anything, “You want to bring it up into the light to take a look, honey? Sam, why don’t you give him an arm?”
“Yeah, sure,” Sam began; and then he stopped. Because the pedlar, the fucking Trickster, was looking from Bobby to Ellen to Dean, to the set of their faces, to Bill’s frown and Rufus’ dark “I got no idea what’s going on but I’ve got Bobby’s back” expression. And the look on the Trickster’s face said he knew the game was up.
“Chevy,” Dean growled, “sing.” And his girl tipped back her sleek black head and bayed.
The Trickster keened, an inhuman noise, low and hurt and resonant, clawing at his ears with his hands.
“Holy...” Sam leaped back, stumbled and almost fell, eyes wide and horrified even as he grabbed the handgun from his belt. Bill stepped in closer, Ellen right by his side, and Bobby stepped back into the circle a moment later. Dean drew out his own handgun, nodded at Rufus as the other hunter did the same, and stalked over to cover them from outside the circle.
“Angel, huh?” Bobby said conversationally.
And hells, this was Gabriel, who’d been part of their life for eight years. Gabriel, always the first around every spring after the snows had melted. Who’d earned the nickname and the adoration of the kids for the intricate, ingenious little toys he made. Gabriel, the only pedlar who had the balls to travel alone.
Well, now they knew why.
“Where’s its wings, then?” Bill’s voice was grim. He’d taken Cassie’s death last month pretty hard - had seen that angel take her and drop her - and there was a streak of vindictiveness in him that Dean didn’t really like.
The angel looked up at him, at them, and its eyes went wide. “Okay!” and there was something like a disarming laugh, so strange to hear coming out of a creature’s throat. “So I’m half an angel, one of them attacked my mum and did the dirty on her, nasty story, not the sort of thing you spread around, that’s how I know what works. But come on, guys, you ever see an angel that could talk? An angel without wings?”
“How’s an angel travel with dogs whose voices it can’t stand?” Ellen asked Rufus, like the angel hadn’t spoken at all.
“Muzzles,” Dean put in, because he’d noticed those in the wagon three years back when Gabr- the pedlar had brought the first hounds, broad soft bands of leather that fit to hold their mouths almost closed, just enough give so they could drink and pant. “Said they kept him awake at night otherwise. And they wouldn’t bark at him once they knew him.”
The angel darted another look around, but not at the people this time. At the room. Checking for weaknesses, escape points.
“Hah, so.” Its eyes flicked down for just a moment to the knife in Bobby’s hand, the knife it had held and haggled for twenty minutes before, then back up to slip into an ingratiating salesman’s grin. “You guys are pretty good. Where’d I slip up?”
You cared too much, Dean didn’t say, because talking to it by now was pointless, and because Sam’s face was wounded and furious.
Bobby stepped in closer, caught its wrist in one strong hand, and, “Hold his other arm” to Bill. The angel stumbled back a step, brought up sharp when Bill grabbed its other arm, and hell, were all angels that tiny without their wings?
The trouble with the monsters that looked human was that you could see the panic on their faces when they worked out they were for it.
“Uh, guys?” the angel started again, its voice rising.
Bobby drove the knife into the meat of its shoulder.
The angel screamed. And fuck, the wards kept the worst of the punch out of it, but that was still one hell of a nasty noise. Then suddenly, bursting out vast and powerful and almost as wide as the circle, tearing his shirt to shreds, there were wings. Great red and gold wings, brilliant and velveted, their colours deep and rich in the lamp light, and Sam had to jump back to keep from being knocked over.
“Apparently they can hide their wings,” Ellen observed drily.
“Freaking terrific,” Dean muttered. “Cos we don’t have enough nasty sons of bitches out there that can look like people when they want to.”
There was that weird angelic white light leaking from the wound with the blood, but not enough to kill it. Dean guessed it would probably heal by late tomorrow. (Grazes and bumps from falling out of oak trees, gone in a few hours. A gash to the head from tripping onto a rock, dark curls matted close with blood, closed over by the end of the day. Unhelpful memories, those, and Dean was really good by now at shutting them down.) It was sort of half sagging between Bobby and Bill’s hands, with the blood creeping in two ticklish-slow lines down one side of its bare chest; but its head was up, and its eyes were hot and furious.
“You want it, or should I kill it?” Bill asked Bobby.
The angel snarled like a wolf at bay, all teeth, and kicked out savagely at the back of Bill’s leg. Bill staggered and swore, the angel wrenched its arm away and slammed its elbow into his gut, and then Sam had it in a headlock from behind. It took Bobby’s fist to the face and the butt of Ellen’s gun to its stomach almost at the same moment.
“Hey,” Sam spat in its ear. “What happens if I break an angel’s neck?”
The angel went limp, gasping and coughing. Then, one last word, almost like a plea. Just Sam’s name, all incredulous and defeated.
Sam shoved its body off him like it made him sick, and the angel fell to its hands and knees, retching.
Sam stormed out of the barn, looking younger and angrier than Dean had seen him for months, and the angel had the nerve to watch him go. Then the butt of Ellen’s rifle slammed into its jaw and knocked it out cold on the floor.
Good thing about wards? Anything trapped inside them had to take a beating just like any human. Sure, it’d probably heal itself up nice and quick with its freaky mojo, but it was a hell of a lot easier to move them when they weren’t kicking and cursing.
Bobby prodded the winged creature sprawled all over the floor. “Put him in the bull press. Ellen, go fetch Colt, tell him I need a collar with angel containment sigils pronto. Rufus, set a couple of dogs to guard him, get them to make a din if he moves. Bill, help me daub up the bars of the press.”
Which just left Dean. Dean caught Bobby’s eye, nodded, and went after Sam.
They mourned Gabriel properly, because Ellen glared at anyone who didn’t.
There weren’t really any proper forms for mourning a pedlar, though, because you never really knew when one died. If he didn’t show for a year or two, you figured, well, that was it. But Ellen adapted the forms and customs for mourning, cut out the bits about looking after the bereaved family and all the bits the family was meant to do itself and so on. And Jody, who kept the town records and history and law, entered his name and the date with the heavy rubrication that meant ‘deceased’ in the annals for the year. Everyone followed their lead, because they were the only ones who seemed to really know what to do.
After all, they had lost somebody.
And going through the forms sort of kept people from getting too angry, or too scared, or just confused. Bobby didn’t want to have to stop people who’d been muttering too much to each other from charging into the barn and poking at the angel through the bars of the bull press.
(Bobby couldn’t get it to speak again. It just sat against the wall with its wings splayed out against the dark stone like a challenge, and bared its teeth at anyone who came near.)
No one wanted to pick over the contents of the wagon. It would have been too much like stealing grave-goods. They just locked it up in the shed by the cattle pastures, where the winter timber sleds were kept. You couldn’t just lock a horse away out of sight, though, so she was fed and groomed and exercised like the others. Come autumn she’d probably have to earn her keep, but until then using her would have been... weird.
It was all screwing with Dean’s head, but yeah, thinking of Gabriel as dead kind of helped. Ellen was sneaky like that.
Gabriel looked up, a sudden shock of too-expressive eyes that caught and reflected every flicker of the firelight and turned it into something living and real, and every one of Dean’s instincts was screaming its head off.
The outlaw dire
took mortal hurt; a mighty wound
showed on his shoulder, and sinews cracked,
and the bone-frame burst. To Beowulf now
the glory was given, and Grendel thence
death-sick his den in the dark moor sought,
noisome abode.
Beowulf, anonymous, manuscript c. 1000 (poem older), trans. Gunmere 1910. (XII)
The Trickster tossed back his head and laughed his stupidly open laugh, like everything in the world was so simple for him.
“Tell me you didn’t, Sam-bug.”
Dean’s enormous little brother snort-laughed into his beer. “Don’t call me that either, Gabriel. ’Course we did - it was a long winter and we were bored as hell. How about you? Stupidest thing you’ve ever done sober?”
The Trickster grinned like a wolf. “Kid, if I told you, your big brother there would put a round through my skull for screwing with your innocent little mind.”
Dean narrowed his eyes at the smug son of a bitch. “Yeah, don’t flatter yourself. Head shots are fucking messy. I’d go for your heart instead.”
“Oh hey, no harm no foul.” The pedlar’s smirk widened. “A man can’t hit what ain’t there.”
Sam shuddered and tipped his chair back on that stupid angle Dean had given up telling him off for years ago. “Hey, don’t even joke about that, man. Me and Dean, we tracked down this weird-ass ghoul thing a couple of months back. And when we killed it, the ribcage? Completely empty. I’m telling you, there’s creepy and then there’s just plain wrong.”
“Neat, a holwe hathel.” The Trickster perked up, tipping his head on one side and crinkling his eyes up at the corners. The guy was charming, Dean could give him that. “I haven’t heard of one of those for years. How’d you take it out?”
“Cut off its head, salted and burned the corpse, put the ashes under a slab of marble,” Sam answered promptly. “Don’t know if it needed the marble, but it was acting kinda like a barrow wight, so we figured, better safe, you know? And nothing nasty likes salt. Well, angels don’t seem to give a shit about it, but apart from them.”
Gabriel leaned forward to scratch the ear of Dean’s faithful Chevy, who had just flopped down beside his chair with a heavy sigh. “Yep, not much out there that’ll do jack to get under an angel’s skin, is there, girl?”
Chevy gave a happy rumble and pressed her head into his hand.
Dean cleared his throat and changed the subject, because that was edging too close to talking business. The Trickster’s wagon had only bounced and rumbled in through the Gates forty-five hours ago, so there were still three hours left of guest-grace to go before that was fair game, and they weren’t uncivilised savages here. “So, hey, you joining us at the Roadhouse, man? Ellen’s making her apple crumble.”
Gabriel practically purred. “For Ellen’s apple crumble, I would cross mountains on a three-legged goat, ford an ocean, face down a wild boar on foot, or even put up with your grumpy ass for one evening.”
“So, Sam and the pedlar-man.”
Bobby grunted as he sank into the other chair in their usual corner. “You sound like a teenage gossip, boy.”
“Yeah, and don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean, old man.” Dean shot a glance over at the main table in the middle of the Roadhouse. Sam and Gabriel were tag-teaming in that good old game Mocking Ash’s Hair, smooth as anything. Not that either of them had any room to be poking fun at anyone else’s hair - seriously, they were as ridiculous as each other. Jo was snickering helplessly into her spoon, Charlie was sneakily giving Sam a thumbs-up out of Ash’s line of sight and getting her hair everywhere, Sam had one arm completely engulfing Ash’s shoulders because he was incapable of not touching people all the time, Gwen was wearing her Everyone But Me Is So Immature face, and even Christian was trying not to look amused.
Dean resolutely ignored the hurt little curl in his gut that said how usually it was only him who could team up with Sammy like that. Because Dean was awesome at shoving stupid, unhelpful shit down when it was getting in the way of working out what was best for Sam.
“Y’think Sam’s going to want to go with him?” Bobby followed Dean’s gaze, his eyes sharp and narrow under his hat.
“I think Sammy’s gonna want to get gone pretty damn soon either way.” Dean dropped his eyes back to his bowl, because he really didn’t want to watch. “And hell, maybe he should. Probably got a better chance anywhere that isn’t here, the way things are looking.” And hadn’t that taken Dean months to admit - months of Sam’s passive-aggressive bullshit and earnest touchy-feely explanations and epic bitch-faces. “I mean, all those other places out there - they can’t all be this bad, can they? All the angels and demons crap?”
Bobby made a sound like he wasn’t going to commit himself either way. “Going from what Gabriel and the other pedlars say, sure. Sounds more like what it was like when you were kids. Just regular evil crap. That don’t mean we just trust those folks out there.”
Dean nudged his foot back against the reassuring heat of Chevy’s flank under his chair. “Yeah, you wanna be the one to lock Sam down if he wants out? He’d just hate us both then run off at the stupidest possible moment and get himself eaten by an angel, or whatever. Least the Trickster already knows how to survive outside.”
Bobby gave him an odd look sideways. “So, what, that’s it, you’re just gonna trust him with your brother? Just ’cos he’s human don’t make him dependable.”
Dean exhaled messily. “That’s what I’m asking you, Bobby. I just can’t get a handle on the guy.”
Bobby ate his crumble inscrutably for a minute. “Sam seems to like him.”
“And that’s just it.” Dean scowled over at the other table. “Sam does. Sam thinks he’s just awesome - always has, even when he got too old for those kids’ toys and candy the guy carries on top of the usual stuff. And I gotta listen to him now. He’s a grown- okay, an over-grown man, and screw trusting Gabriel, I gotta trust Sam, to make his own calls.”
Bobby took a long pull from his glass, then clinked it back loudly onto the wood. “Sounds to me like you’ve been doing a hell of a lot of thinking on this already.”
Dean pinched the bridge of his nose. He kinda missed the days when Bobby would just tell him what to do. “Course I’ve been thinking, Bobby. It’s Sam.”
“So what are you asking me for, y’idjit?”
Dean opened his mouth, then shut it again. Because if Sam did decide to do this... if he wanted to go with the pedlar...
Tell me I’m doing the right thing here. Tell me I’ll see him again if I let him go. Tell me the Trickster can be trusted with him.
“... I guess I’m not.”
“So how are those hounds doing for you?”
The Roadhouse had almost emptied for the night. Ellen and Jo and Bill, of course, couldn’t exactly go to bed before all the guests had cleared out (and on a late night like this, one or two of the last folks out would usually stick around to help them tidy up, because no one wanted to piss Ellen off). Looked like Sam wasn’t going to shift his ass until Gabriel did, which meant Dean and Bobby were sure as hell not leaving. Jody had left to put her son to bed, but Rufus was waiting to talk to Gabriel about the dogs, Charlie had come rushing up from the apple orchards after some new kind of carboy or other that Gabriel had apparently promised her last year, and Colt the blacksmith would be looking to get some more silver off him because they were running low on blades and bullets for shifters and the like.
Rufus, who commanded the pack on hunts, leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table, then took them off again in a hurry when Ellen raised her fearsome eyebrow at him.
“Not too shabby,” he allowed. “Doing their job pretty damn well. Two litters this year - six and four. Might get you to take some of them next year, swap ’em off for some new blood from one of those other places out there.” He flicked one hand in a sort of circular motion, to indicate ‘everything outside the Wall.’
The Trickster made a thoughtful noise, and bit into his apple. “So that makes, what - twenty-three in your pack here?”
“Twenty-one,” Dean amended. “Sully got himself gored by a boar pretty bad last spring, and I had to put him out of it. And Ribbons caught the nasty cough that was running through them just when she was getting over birthing and feeding six babies, so she went down fast as hell.” He’d taken the pups away for hand-feeding as soon as she’d started breathing rough, and stayed up with her two nights straight, but there’d been no strength in the poor girl to save.
Still, two dogs in a year wasn’t bad - it was a hell of a lot fewer than the human lives they’d lost. And only three children born.
Gabriel pulled a face that was probably meant to be sympathetic (Dean thought it looked smug, but he thought everything the Trickster did tonight looked smug, and he was big enough to admit that he might be kind of biased just now). “Hard luck. Anyway, solved your little angel problem, I hope?”
“Solved it?” Bobby snorted into his drink. “What planet are you from, boy? Angels don’t give up that easy. But we’re holding our own.”
A faint line dug itself in between the pedlar’s eyebrows and he opened his mouth to ask something, but Jo cut in, “Oh, please. Bobby’s doing his surly old modesty thing again. We’re doing better than holding our own. Brought down two in the last six months.”
Something odd flickered on the pedlar’s face, subtle enough that Dean thought he probably wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been watching him like a protective mother hawk all evening. “Brought down...?”
“Right out of the sky,” Sam confirmed, leaning forward conspiratorially, because he always was a ridiculously happy drunk. “You explained how the hounds’ baying gets right up inside an angel’s head and confuses them, yeah? Well, Bobby found a way to ramp that way up. Enough hounds baying on an angel’s trail and the feathery son of a bitch can’t work out where he’s heading, can’t get up high enough to be out of shot, can barely keep his wings sorted out. Keep them hot on the trail long enough and you can shoot an angel right out of the sky.”
Sam beamed proudly over the table at Gabriel’s admiring whistle; but Dean hadn’t taken his eyes off the Trickster’s face once during Sam’s little speech, and he’d seen the way the bolt at the back of the jaw had got tighter and tighter, the way his eyes went all wide and shocked-bright, too bright, too gold, with something like horror swimming deep inside them.
“Not bad, Singer,” the pedlar said; and no, Dean wasn’t imagining that little tremor in his voice, like something was broken and rattling about loose in his throat. “But how d’you shoot down an angel? Last I checked most everything just slides right off that skin.”
“Trade secret, pedlar boy,” Bobby retorted gruffly (because, after all, they hadn’t exactly got much else to sell or trade with these days, and more than that, you didn’t want to trust those people out there to bleed the hounds gentle and let them rest properly after). But he drew his favourite angel knife from his belt, the one quenched after forging with Chevy’s second blood-letting, and let it drop with a ringing clatter on the table between them. The Trickster’s eyes fastened on it, sickly fascinated, even as his grin didn’t falter. “If I told you we can make blades and bullets that’ll kill angels, what’d they be worth?”
“Huh.” The Trickster reached for the knife, like he just wanted to check it over; and Dean leaned forward to catch his wrist, hard.
Gabriel looked up, a sudden shock of too-expressive eyes that caught and reflected every flicker of the firelight and turned it into something living and real, and every one of Dean’s instincts was screaming its head off.
“Careful,” he said, voice grating low and harsh in his own ears. “Don’t want to cut yourself.”
Gabriel should have snapped back right away, like he always did. Something barbed and witty, easing the rest of the table into a laugh. But instead he just froze, held onto Dean’s gaze for a moment like he thought it might shatter and slice him up if he dropped it. Then he jerked his arm away with a snort and a glare, and picked up the knife.
And Dean had spent whole summers as a kid reading sentences and paragraphs off people who never said a word.
Dean sat back in his chair, heart thudding sickly in his throat, and met Sam and Jo’s identical pissy dude, what the hell faces across the table. Then he looked away, looked at Bobby, and shook his head.
He didn’t really hear the Trickster slip into haggling mode, the usual quick-fire game of negotiations and calculations and estimated demand. He only noticed when Gabriel stopped suddenly, like a hound with a strange scent, and stared intently at the bright metal in his hand.
“It’s the dogs, isn’t it? Something about the dogs.”
“Something about the dogs,” Bobby agreed. Then, all gruff and easy like he meant it, “Why don’t you come on through to the barn and I’ll show you where we do it?”
There was just a hint of a flinch where the Trickster’s fingers were pressed tight on his glass; then he made one of those ridiculously chirpy noises of his and tossed the rest of his drink back. “Sure, why not? Promise to keep my mouth shut. Well, until someone else pays me big to open it.”
Bobby and Gabriel rose, and Rufus and Dean rose to come along, because the hounds were their charge and their pride. And Sam rose, of course, because he was Gabriel’s own personal fan club for the week; then Dean caught the subtle little gesture Bobby flicked to Ellen and Bill, one of the hand signals they used on hunts. The one that said “come this way, follow my lead.”
Ellen stood up. “Jo, you’re on clean-up tonight. Charlie, mind helping her out? Come on, Bill.”
Jo scowled half-heartedly, but she had already got five of the empties pinned together in each hand before Bill’s chair legs scraped on the floor. The room was enough of a mess that it’d keep Jo busy for long enough. She was shaping up to be a damn fine hunter - better than her dad already and some of her moves were tighter than Sam’s, Dean could admit it - but if this went down the way Dean was really hoping it wouldn’t, she shouldn’t have to see it. And leaving Charlie out, well, that wasn’t even a question. This was hunter business now.
Dean sort of wished he could think of a handy excuse to sideline Sam too.
Across the yard and down the darkened street, with Bill’s steady rumble of a voice asking after the linens and cottons the pedlar was carrying, because growing fabric plants around here was a bitch at the best of times. (The Trickster chattered back, bright and sharp, but still with that weird little undercurrent in his voice, the tight hunch in the line of his shoulders.) Past the byre and the sheep fold, where the woolly guard dogs lifted their heads and flapped their tails as they passed, and Chevy made an eager semi-circle out of her path to touch noses with each of them. Through the stables and the sweet smells of straw and sleepy horse, and the pedlar stopped for a moment to rub his cheek affectionately against the nose of his own chestnut mare.
Then into the barn, that vast echoing space where the cattle lived in winter. The stronghold and the last safe space for the humans, just in case. And Dean fell back, just enough that he could watch the Trickster, really watch him, when he stepped through the line of the wards. The wards that no human should be able to feel.
Gabriel stumbled.
Dean closed the door behind him.
Cunning. They were all cunning. And a good hunter had to be able to think ahead with them, see what they were going to do just before they did it, because otherwise there was no time to react. One stumble might be chance, but still... the wards. Wards for everything, all over these walls, complete and impregnable once the door was shut, so that nothing could get in, and so that anything inside was powerless. And another circle in the middle of the ceiling, so that nothing could get out. The Trickster had been in here six years ago, had strolled right across the middle and out the other side. The only thing different since then was the angel warding.
Dean’s hunter brain ticked on nice and smooth, ignoring the sick clench in his gut. If he can feel it, first point of order will be to account for that stumble -
“Shit. Uh, guys? Think I just twisted my ankle on this board here...”
- which might be true, but next thing he’d do if it wasn’t would be stall for time, put off the moment when it had to become obvious that he couldn’t cross that invisible line in front of him, get the humans to leave so he could try to think of a way out -
“... nah, you guys go on, I’ll just strap it up and be right behind you.”
Well, fuck.
A man can’t hit a heart that ain’t there.
“You okay, man?” Sammy was hovering, looking earnest and concerned just like he always did for anything from a paper cut to an amputation, and Dean gritted his teeth to stop himself from snarling get the fuck away from my brother.
Bobby turned to look, leaving Rufus with his hand on the far door, the one that led to the dog sheds and the smithy, and Ellen must have cottoned on at some point - well, she would - because she hooked up her lantern beside the main barn lamp (just outside the circle) and drawled, smooth as anything, “You want to bring it up into the light to take a look, honey? Sam, why don’t you give him an arm?”
“Yeah, sure,” Sam began; and then he stopped. Because the pedlar, the fucking Trickster, was looking from Bobby to Ellen to Dean, to the set of their faces, to Bill’s frown and Rufus’ dark “I got no idea what’s going on but I’ve got Bobby’s back” expression. And the look on the Trickster’s face said he knew the game was up.
“Chevy,” Dean growled, “sing.” And his girl tipped back her sleek black head and bayed.
The Trickster keened, an inhuman noise, low and hurt and resonant, clawing at his ears with his hands.
“Holy...” Sam leaped back, stumbled and almost fell, eyes wide and horrified even as he grabbed the handgun from his belt. Bill stepped in closer, Ellen right by his side, and Bobby stepped back into the circle a moment later. Dean drew out his own handgun, nodded at Rufus as the other hunter did the same, and stalked over to cover them from outside the circle.
“Angel, huh?” Bobby said conversationally.
And hells, this was Gabriel, who’d been part of their life for eight years. Gabriel, always the first around every spring after the snows had melted. Who’d earned the nickname and the adoration of the kids for the intricate, ingenious little toys he made. Gabriel, the only pedlar who had the balls to travel alone.
Well, now they knew why.
“Where’s its wings, then?” Bill’s voice was grim. He’d taken Cassie’s death last month pretty hard - had seen that angel take her and drop her - and there was a streak of vindictiveness in him that Dean didn’t really like.
The angel looked up at him, at them, and its eyes went wide. “Okay!” and there was something like a disarming laugh, so strange to hear coming out of a creature’s throat. “So I’m half an angel, one of them attacked my mum and did the dirty on her, nasty story, not the sort of thing you spread around, that’s how I know what works. But come on, guys, you ever see an angel that could talk? An angel without wings?”
“How’s an angel travel with dogs whose voices it can’t stand?” Ellen asked Rufus, like the angel hadn’t spoken at all.
“Muzzles,” Dean put in, because he’d noticed those in the wagon three years back when Gabr- the pedlar had brought the first hounds, broad soft bands of leather that fit to hold their mouths almost closed, just enough give so they could drink and pant. “Said they kept him awake at night otherwise. And they wouldn’t bark at him once they knew him.”
The angel darted another look around, but not at the people this time. At the room. Checking for weaknesses, escape points.
“Hah, so.” Its eyes flicked down for just a moment to the knife in Bobby’s hand, the knife it had held and haggled for twenty minutes before, then back up to slip into an ingratiating salesman’s grin. “You guys are pretty good. Where’d I slip up?”
You cared too much, Dean didn’t say, because talking to it by now was pointless, and because Sam’s face was wounded and furious.
Bobby stepped in closer, caught its wrist in one strong hand, and, “Hold his other arm” to Bill. The angel stumbled back a step, brought up sharp when Bill grabbed its other arm, and hell, were all angels that tiny without their wings?
The trouble with the monsters that looked human was that you could see the panic on their faces when they worked out they were for it.
“Uh, guys?” the angel started again, its voice rising.
Bobby drove the knife into the meat of its shoulder.
The angel screamed. And fuck, the wards kept the worst of the punch out of it, but that was still one hell of a nasty noise. Then suddenly, bursting out vast and powerful and almost as wide as the circle, tearing his shirt to shreds, there were wings. Great red and gold wings, brilliant and velveted, their colours deep and rich in the lamp light, and Sam had to jump back to keep from being knocked over.
“Apparently they can hide their wings,” Ellen observed drily.
“Freaking terrific,” Dean muttered. “Cos we don’t have enough nasty sons of bitches out there that can look like people when they want to.”
There was that weird angelic white light leaking from the wound with the blood, but not enough to kill it. Dean guessed it would probably heal by late tomorrow. (Grazes and bumps from falling out of oak trees, gone in a few hours. A gash to the head from tripping onto a rock, dark curls matted close with blood, closed over by the end of the day. Unhelpful memories, those, and Dean was really good by now at shutting them down.) It was sort of half sagging between Bobby and Bill’s hands, with the blood creeping in two ticklish-slow lines down one side of its bare chest; but its head was up, and its eyes were hot and furious.
“You want it, or should I kill it?” Bill asked Bobby.
The angel snarled like a wolf at bay, all teeth, and kicked out savagely at the back of Bill’s leg. Bill staggered and swore, the angel wrenched its arm away and slammed its elbow into his gut, and then Sam had it in a headlock from behind. It took Bobby’s fist to the face and the butt of Ellen’s gun to its stomach almost at the same moment.
“Hey,” Sam spat in its ear. “What happens if I break an angel’s neck?”
The angel went limp, gasping and coughing. Then, one last word, almost like a plea. Just Sam’s name, all incredulous and defeated.
Sam shoved its body off him like it made him sick, and the angel fell to its hands and knees, retching.
Sam stormed out of the barn, looking younger and angrier than Dean had seen him for months, and the angel had the nerve to watch him go. Then the butt of Ellen’s rifle slammed into its jaw and knocked it out cold on the floor.
Good thing about wards? Anything trapped inside them had to take a beating just like any human. Sure, it’d probably heal itself up nice and quick with its freaky mojo, but it was a hell of a lot easier to move them when they weren’t kicking and cursing.
Bobby prodded the winged creature sprawled all over the floor. “Put him in the bull press. Ellen, go fetch Colt, tell him I need a collar with angel containment sigils pronto. Rufus, set a couple of dogs to guard him, get them to make a din if he moves. Bill, help me daub up the bars of the press.”
Which just left Dean. Dean caught Bobby’s eye, nodded, and went after Sam.
They mourned Gabriel properly, because Ellen glared at anyone who didn’t.
There weren’t really any proper forms for mourning a pedlar, though, because you never really knew when one died. If he didn’t show for a year or two, you figured, well, that was it. But Ellen adapted the forms and customs for mourning, cut out the bits about looking after the bereaved family and all the bits the family was meant to do itself and so on. And Jody, who kept the town records and history and law, entered his name and the date with the heavy rubrication that meant ‘deceased’ in the annals for the year. Everyone followed their lead, because they were the only ones who seemed to really know what to do.
After all, they had lost somebody.
And going through the forms sort of kept people from getting too angry, or too scared, or just confused. Bobby didn’t want to have to stop people who’d been muttering too much to each other from charging into the barn and poking at the angel through the bars of the bull press.
(Bobby couldn’t get it to speak again. It just sat against the wall with its wings splayed out against the dark stone like a challenge, and bared its teeth at anyone who came near.)
No one wanted to pick over the contents of the wagon. It would have been too much like stealing grave-goods. They just locked it up in the shed by the cattle pastures, where the winter timber sleds were kept. You couldn’t just lock a horse away out of sight, though, so she was fed and groomed and exercised like the others. Come autumn she’d probably have to earn her keep, but until then using her would have been... weird.
It was all screwing with Dean’s head, but yeah, thinking of Gabriel as dead kind of helped. Ellen was sneaky like that.