Dead Gods: Eleven
The first tug nearly takes him off his feet.
Surprise keeps Sam from reacting immediately; he stumbles sideways as his body starts to move of its own volition, but he recovers quickly, plants his feet and holds firm. The sharp, tugging sensation persists; it’s as if someone has slipped a hook under his sternum and is reeling him slowly and inexorably across the room.
The urge to give in is strong.
“Sam?”
He turns. Dean has come up from the bedrooms. He’s got a white knuckled grip on the doorjamb with one hand, while the other presses over his chest in the exact spot Sam can feel the tug.
“You feeling it too?” Dean asks.
“Yeah.”
“What the hell is it?”
Sam shakes his head. “Don’t know.”
The tug comes again. He takes a few steps forward before he takes control again, forces himself to be still. As an extra measure of precaution, he gets a grip on the lip of the table with both hands.
“Outside?” Dean says, from the other side of the room, where he is leaning his forehead against a pillar, chest heaving.
Sam nods; he has the burning, compulsive urge to go outside.
Another tug. Sam fights, but this time, it takes him longer to get control. He’s got one foot on the bottom step before he stops himself from climbing the staircase. He’s breathing hard, sweating like he’s been out on a run. Dean is further up the stairs, both hands wrapped around the wrought iron railing to hold himself still, arms visibly straining and fists bleeding white at the knuckles.
The next tug is deep and hard. He can’t fight it this time. He’s moving up the stairs, pushing past Dean, who seems to be having more success than him.
Sam gets one hand on the door knob, yanks open the inner door-
Screams wash over him.
The outer door is slightly ajar, which is not the way he had left it when he came in earlier, and the screams come ricocheting through the metal antechamber, a ululation of agony and terror.
It’s Ben.
No unexpected tug is needed to get him moving, he’s through the door and up the stairs, the pull of the compulsion falling away in his compliancy. He can hear his brother’s tread hot on his heels, and when Dean sees Ben’s laid out across the hood of the Impala, light spilling from his chest, his inarticulate cry of anger and fear is right in Sam’s ear.
Something in the shape of a man is leaning over Ben, its hand buried in his chest, digging out his soul. It’s wearing a red vest and black slacks like a bellboy or a movie theater usher, has a neatly trimmed beard. Its mouth is twisted into a satisfied smirk.
“Ben!” Dean bellows, and the thing jerks its head up, eyes flashing metal-gold.
“Stop,” it says, and whips its hand out of Ben. The light coming out of Ben’s chest goes dark, and Sam and Dean come to an abrupt stop, their bodies gripped and held by the invisible force of a monster’s will.
Beside him, Dean is panting hard. “You son of a bitch,” he says in a raspy growl, “you let him-“
The high pitched whistle of a projectile interrupts Dean’s threat, and the quick shick-thunk of a silver arrow piercing the thing’s hand. It howls, jerks away from Ben, gold blood dripping from the wound.
Another high pitched whistle, a louder, solid thunk as a second arrow strikes him in the shoulder.
It screams out something in what Sam thinks is ancient Greek, whirling on the dark figure who had suddenly appeared behind him, bow drawn, arrow nocked.
Artemis.
“Watch how you address me, brother,” she says and lets another arrow fly.
The arrow strikes him in the side, and he stumbles away from Ben at the force of it. The unnatural force of its will falls from Sam and Dean, and Dean rushes forward immediately, scoops Ben up. He doesn’t slow, just goes with his forward momentum and heads around the other side of the car with Ben, drops into the dirt next to the trunk. Sam follows, thinking they should have gone back to the Bunker, but Dean was working off of his momentum, and what’s done is done.
Sam drops down next to Dean.
“Shit, Sammy. Shit.” Deans is cradling the back of Ben’s head with one hand and tugging up his shirt with the other. There’s no wound to show that a hand had just been in his chest, though there is a bruise, huge and dark. Sam winces in sympathy; he hadn’t actually been there when Castiel had shoved his fist in into his soulless counterpart, looking for his soul, nor had he been aware when Death shoved it back in, but he still has the memory of the pain, one of the few things his soulless self had ever actually felt.
“Fucker,” Dean says. “Think he got it out?”
Sam puts two fingers to Ben’s pulse; it thumps on steadily under his skin, so he isn’t dead. Ben’s head rolls loosely against Dean’s shoulder, mouth slightly open. “I don’t think so. I think we interrupted him early enough.”
“Got your keys?”
Sam nods. He digs them out of his front pocket, gets the trunk open and props open the hidden compartment. He sorts through the weapons and tries to keep out of sight while the gods have their little family dispute on the other side of the Impala.
“I hear you killed Father, Artemis,” the unidentified god is saying, his tone is sly and amused, the sound of one sibling taunting another.
“I didn’t kill him. I put him down.” Artemis’s voice is thick with pain. “Please don’t make me do the same to you.”
“That’s the dude.” Dean whispers. He’s peering around the edge of the car as he holds Ben close.
“What dude?” Sam asks, distracted as he sorts through the weapons. They haven’t got shit to help them with a god; it usually takes a specially made weapon of some kind to put them down, something that is unique to each. He had no idea which god the movie usher is, let alone what they would need to kill him. All they’ve got is their usual assortment of guns, a few knives, a crowbar, a gallon of holy water, and a compound bow they used to hunt a selkie a couple weeks back. There’s not even an angel blade; they’re both in the Bunker.
“The one from that hotel in Muncie. Remember, with Kali and Gabriel? I mean, he’s got the evil Spock beard going on now, but it’s him. The creepy dude at the reception desk.”
Sam pauses, considers the heap of coincidences involved with this case, and peers around the side of the hood.
“You think you can take me, Artemis? I’m nearly at full capacity. Look.” The movie usher god thrusts his hand towards her, golden fluid dripping down his wounded hand. Dean’s right. It is the god who was playing front desk clerk in the hotel in Muncie - Mercury, if Sam remembers correctly. “Do you see? I’m bleeding ichor again. When was the last time you bled like this? The tenth century? Maybe the eleventh?”
Artemis looks devastated, but her aim is true, her arms steady as she keeps her brother at a distance with her bow. “So, it’s true then. You’re using Titan magic.”
“Well, there’s little else left.” Mercury pulls the arrow out of his hand, tosses it negligently on the ground. “No ambrosia, no nectar, no blood sacrifices or proper worship. This is the only way to regain our former power.”
“But you’re destroying our family. The children, Poseidon-“
“And Triton and Amphitrite. Thetis and Nereus. Even old Oceanus came for the fight.” He pulls out the arrow in his side with a grunt, tosses it after the first one. “It wasn’t easy, but eventually, I took them all.”
“And Chicago? Was that you?”
“Kali thought she was a match.” He twists awkwardly, but manages to get his hand around the arrow in his shoulder and pulls it out with another grunt. “If you’ve ever wondered how the other pantheons taste, I’d say a little spicier than I prefer, but quite palatable.”
Artemis frowns. “That’s in poor taste.”
“Oh, sister, you made a joke,” Mercury says, the corner of his mouth quirking, gold-flashing eyes gleaming with amusement. “It only took you a few thousand years, but nevertheless, a joke!”
The expression on Artemis’s face is one of devastation and pain and deep sadness. “Look at you. You’ve gone mad.”
He shrugs, unconcerned. “It happens to us all, eventually. Remember Hera and the Salem Witch Trials? And do I need to mention what Dionysus has been up to lately? I mean, let’s be honest. What I’m doing pales in comparison, really.”
“I don’t understand.” She is just shy of pleading. “Why didn’t you just go with Mercury?”
He rolls his shoulder with a grimace of pain. “Go where? Do you know where we go when we die? Nowhere! I spent millennia shepherding human souls to the underworld, but not once, not once did I take a dead god. We dissipate. We become nothing. I’m a god, Artemis. I refuse to become nothing. ”
Sam drops back down, turns to Dean. “You’re right. That’s Mercury.”
“I thought Lucifer killed him.”
“I guess he didn’t do it right.” Sam turns back to the trunk, shakes his head and pulls out the shotgun for lack of any other option. “We’ve got nothing useful here.”
“We gotta get back in the bunker, it’s the only way we’ll-“
There’s an inarticulate cry of pain.
Both he and Dean share a look of panic and peer around the car. Somehow the not-quite-dead Mercury has disarmed Artemis, and has her down on her knees. There’s some kind of huge curved knife, or maybe it’s a short sword, protruding from her shoulder, and he has his hand buried in her chest, the whole world lit up with the golden glow of light spilling around his hand.
Artemis’s eyes are wide, mouth open in a silent scream.
“We’ve got to go, now, Dean. While he’s-”
Ben’s body suddenly jerks upright. “No,” he says, and lands one elbow in Dean’s solar plexus.
Dean lets go of him with a grunt that’s half pain, half surprise. Ben all but flows to his feet, pivots around. His eyes are a shimmering metal-gold like Mercury’s, and something that is not Ben is looking out at them, something old and angry and powerful.
“He will not have Artemis,” it says, and reaches past Sam to snag the compound bow out of the trunk.
Ben moves fast, too fast for Sam to get his hands on him, and then he’s around the car, reaching back over his shoulder as he goes, pulling a silver arrow out of a quiver that shimmers into existence, strapped across Ben’s back.
“Ben!” Dean lunges after him but the thing riding Ben flicks a hand without looking back, sends him flying. He lands on top of Sam, throwing them both back into the dirt.
The impact is hard enough to knock the breath out of Sam, and he’s left gasping under the hundred and ninety pounds of big brother trying to get back on his feet. They fumble around stupidly for a minute, trying to untangle their limbs, and when they manage to get themselves under control, to get up and around the car, the first arrow is already whistling through the air, striking Mercury in the shoulder.
Mercury cries out and stumbles back, jerking his hand out of his sister; the light shining from Artemis’s goes dark as she slumps forward, curling in on herself. Gold ichor gushes from the arrow wound, soaking Mercury’s red vest and white shirt sleeves, and he turns his metal-gold eyes on Ben, fury sliding over his face like clouds across the sun.
Dean starts forward, ready to throw himself into the fray, to grab Ben out of the line of fire or die trying, but Sam flings an arm around his neck, hauls him back.
“Sam, let go.” Dean tries to heave himself away.
“No, man. Wait.” Sam holds tight, puts his extra thirty pounds and four inches into keeping his brother right where he is. It’s only a guess, but he’s pretty sure that whatever is possessing Ben has been leeching power from him for quite a while now, and jumping in between it and Mercury is only going to get them killed. Ben’s going to be okay. He’s not sure how he knows that, but he does. “Look at how Mercury is bleeding. Whatever is riding Ben is way stronger than Artemis.”
It seems to work. Dean stills, stops trying to wrench himself away, but he’s strung tight like a livewire in Sam’s grasp. Sam keeps his arm around him, just in case.
“Brother,” Mercury says with a smile that would curdle milk. His vest is completely soaked with ichor now, gleaming gold in the bright moonlight. “I knew you were awake in there. Nice of you to join us.”
The thing in Ben doesn’t reply, just withdraws another arrow and nocks it, sends it arcing into Mercury’s chest.
Mercury stumbles back again, gasping in pain. More ichor gushes from his chest. “Really? This is how we’re going to do this?”
“You swore that you would never steal from me again,” the thing in Ben says, voice icy and flat. “You even took an oath. There is no other way to do this.”
A third arrow, in Mercury’s thigh. He goes down on one knee with a cry of pain, and Dean relaxes subtly in Sam’s grasp.
“You swore on the River Styx, Hermes.” Another arrow into his chest.
Mercury hunches over, one hand wrapped around one of the arrow shafts in his chest. “Yes, well, you’ll get no justice there. There’s no River Styx anymore, just a tepid stream running through Purgatory.”
“I am not interested in justice.” Two more arrows, drawn and nocked and shot faster than Sam’s eyes can follow also strike Hermes in the chest. “Only vengeance.”
“Brother,” Hermes chest is heaving with effort. He holds up his injured hand, still dripping ichor. “Have mercy.”
“Why?” Ben’s movements are fluid as he draws yet another arrow and nocks it. “You had none for my children.”
He lets the arrow fly, but Hermes blinks out of existence before it meets its target, and the arrow sinks futilely into the ground.
There is half a heartbeat of heavy, stunned silence, while the thing riding Ben’s body stands rigid, one last arrow nocked. Then it lowers the bow, lets the arms so slack, slips the arrow back into the quiver.
Sam loosens his grip, lets his arm drop away from Dean, and Dean immediately starts forward, slow and cautious, a hand out like he’s approaching a rabid dog. “Ben?”
Ben’s body turns, and the metal-gold eyes fix on Dean.
Dean stops dead. “Ben?”
“Ben’s fine.” Its eyes flicker to Artemis. “But she isn’t. Help her, please.”
Then the gold eyes go dark and Ben’s body slumps to the ground, unconscious.
Sam braces Artemis’s right shoulder with his left hand and wraps his right hand around the hilt of the curved short sword protruding from her left shoulder. He flexes his fingers, gets a good grip, and says, “Was that you using compulsion mojo on me and Dean?”
Artemis looks up at him from beneath her bangs, her hands tight on the edge of the library table, waiting for him to pull out the sword. Her eyes are glassy with pain, and a few strands of her long, dark hair stick to her tear-dampened cheek.
“I told you I was your goddess.”
“Do it again to either of us,” Sam says, and yanks hard and sudden, dragging the blade out of her shoulder with a wrenching pull, “and I’ll kill you.”
She cries out, bends forward, wrapping one hand over the wound. Human-red blood gushes between her fingers and pours down her back, though there’s an extra gleam to it, flecks of gold like craft glitter sparkling under the library lights.
Sam tosses the bloody sword on the floor for now and pushes her back, knocks her hand away so he can press thick pads of gauze to either side.
“I’m sure you’d try,” she says after she’s taken half a dozen deep breaths. There a few tears of pain trailing down her cheek, and she’s docile while Sam wraps more gauze around her shoulder, a slap-dash triage job until the bleeding stops and he can bandage it properly.
He guides her into a chair, where she slumps, breathing heavily, hand over the spot where Mercury had his hand in her.
“You done with her?” Dean says, stomping into the room, all focused fury and wrath of God.
“ Yeah,” Sam says, tossing the gauze and padding back into the first aid kit. “For now.”
“Good.” Dean slaps his hands down on the table next to Artemis, and leans into her space. “Talk.”
Artemis’s expression is blank of all but stone-like indifference. “About what?”
“About what’s happening to Ben, if he even is Ben. About why Mercury, who I know for a fact was killed by Lucifer, is trying to kill my kid.”
“Hermes,” she says.
Dean blinks. “What?”
“The god you just met was Hermes.”
Dean straightens, crosses his arms. “Isn’t it the same guy, different name?”
“Not precisely, though right now the biggest difference between the two is that Mercury is dead while Hermes is not.”
“That cleared up nothing at all.” Dean’s impatience and frustration are obvious, and he’s got a look on his face like he’d like to tie her down and start extracting information with the blade of a knife. It always scares Sam a little, Dean on edge like this.
Artemis sighs contemptuously. “You’re a brother. A son.” She quirks an eyebrow at Dean in a manner that can only be described as contemptuous. “A father. Now imagine having that aspect of yourself ripped from you like an appendage or an organ. You still exist, just not all of you.”
Sam gets it immediately; he’s intimately familiar with having something vital ripped out. “So you’re saying when Lucifer slaughtered those gods in Muncie, the Roman aspect of Hermes died, but not the Greek?”
“Basically. I can’t imagine how painful it was, pulling away from his other aspect like that.” She pauses for half a breath and her eyes go distant like she’s giving it the old college try. Finally she shakes her head. “He was holding onto his sanity by a thread before that, but the separation from his Mercury aspect has driven him mad.”
“So, what are we looking at here, Artemis?” Sam’s pretty sure he knows already, but he’s going to ask anyway. “I mean, he caused a tsunami in the Atlantic, and Chicago’s burning. That’s apocalypse level destruction, and you guys aren’t that powerful anymore. What exactly is he doing with the souls of those children to gain all that power?”
“Titan magic.” Her mouth twists in disgust. “He probably used the demon he trapped in that devil’s trap at first, making it fetch the souls of the children while he holed up in that house convalescing, but now he’s strong enough to do it himself.”
“What do you mean, Titan magic?” Dean asks.
“Before I was born, my grandfather Kronos - I’m sure you remember him, I understand you killed him.” Artemis eyes them both pointedly, though she doesn’t seem too upset by the loss. “Kronos heard a prophecy that he would be overthrown by his sons as he had overthrown his own father. So as my aunts and uncles were born, he swallowed them.”
Sam nods. “Right, except for Zeus, who Rhea hid away. I know the story. But how is that Titan magic?”
“Titan magic is basically cannibalism, except instead of consuming flesh, it’s the consumption of a god’s numen, our divinity.”
“Your souls.” Sam says.
Artemis nods. “In essence, yes. Mortals can be used, but their souls don’t have enough divinity nor the right kind to return us to godhood. They can really only be used to give us temporary flesh - that’s how Asclepius usually gets by - but once the souls are gone, the body is useless. But the kind of power Hermes has acquired? It would take millions of mortal souls to give him even a fraction of his current power. But since the children Hermes has destroyed are Apollo’s children, and therefore have a small spark of his numen, he’s been able to rebuild his power enough to begin consuming those of us who are weaker.”
“So, they’ve got the right kinds of spices and seasonings. Got it.” Dean’s less angry now, but more scared, but he’s up there at the edge of the abyss again. Sam can see it in his eyes. “And Ben? What’s happening to him? Because there’s something riding him, and it’s about time it finds a new place to hide.”
“It’s Apollo,” Artemis says.
“What do you mean ‘it’s Apollo.’”
“I mean,” Artemis says, irritated, “the numen of my brother, Apollo, the god of music, medicine, and prophecy, is lodged in Ben’s chest, devouring his soul. Titan magic.”
“How?” Dean asks. “How did it get there?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do we get it out?”
“I don’t know.”
Dean huffs impatiently. “Do you know anything?”
“No. I don’t,” Artemis snaps, clearly frustrated. “I honestly don’t even know how Ben is still functional and cognizant. Apollo’s numen should have withered his soul away to little more than a candle flame by now. But Ben is a divine child and the strongest we’ve had in millennia, so the usual rules don’t seem to apply.”
“You’ve said that before.” Sam is getting rather frustrated himself. For every question they get an answer to, another one pops up. “That Ben is the strongest child you’ve had in millennia. What do you mean?”
“In another time, there may have been a beast to kill or a quest to complete. He would have been able to visit the Underworld and return again. His name would have echoed through history in epic and song-“
“Wait,” Sam says. “Are you saying he’s a Greek hero?”
Dean runs one hand over his mouth, paces away a few steps and back again. “No, hey, why not? Sam’s Lucifer’s vessel. I’m Michael’s. Ben’s a Greek hero. It all makes sense, now.”
Artemis rolls her eyes. “Is the hysteria really necessary?”
“Dean, dude, calm down.”
Dean flaps one hand at Artemis. “Sam, she’s saying Ben is a Greek hero.”
Sam shrugs. “Well, could be worse, right? Remember Jesse Turner? Remember that guy in Missouri who didn’t know he was a Rugaru? I feel like we’re getting off easy, here.”
“You’re not just getting off easy,” Artemis snaps, waspish. “You should be honored that you were chosen to be his mortal father. Ben is a powerful healer, and if the prophecy is anything to go by, the strength of his power hasn’t even begun to manifest itself.”
Sam stiffens, and Dean gives him a startled, terrified look.
“What prophecy?” Sam says.
Artemis looks between them, licks her lips uneasily. She clearly hadn’t meant to say that.
Dean takes a threatening step towards her. “Artemis, what prophecy?”
Artemis tenses, like she’s preparing for an attack, but she doesn’t answer.
Another menacing step from Dean, and Sam tenses, about to grab him. He can’t let Dean kill their only source.
“I’m only going to ask you one more time.” Dean’s voice is hard. “What proph-“
A heavy pounding comes from above, cutting Dean off. They all look up, startled by the sound.
“Is that...knocking?” Dean asks.
Sam nods. “Yeah, I think so.”
Dean grabs the Colt while Sam grabs an angel blade.
“Don’t move,” Dean says, sternly aiming one finger Artemis before he heads up the stairs.
The knocking starts up again, and as they open the inner door, it becomes pounding, and someone is shouting, too.
“Dean! Open the door!”
It’s a woman’s voice. Sam doesn’t recognize it and shoots his brother a questioning look; Dean just shrugs. “No idea, dude.”
Sam a hand on the lever, angel blade raised and ready. With a nod from Dean, he throws it open with a heavy metal creak, and Dean swings into the doorway, gun raised.
A woman in workout clothes and a heavy down jacket is on the other side of the door. When she sees them, sees the gun aimed at her face, she stumbles backwards with a gasp, eyes wild with terror, her hands half raised like this is a hold up.
They all stare at each other in surprise for half a heartbeat.
Then Dean lowers the gun and says in a voice strained with disbelief, “Lisa? What are you doing here?”
Lisa Braeden drops her hands, her terror quickly becoming fury. “That’s an excellent question, Dean. Now where the hell is my son?”
Lisa nearly drives into a tree when the guy in the trench coat suddenly appears in the middle of the road.
One minute there’s nothing, just a dark stretch of road, and the next she gets just a glimpse of a person shaped thing in the gleam of her headlights before a body is tumbling over her hood.
Her heart leaps into her throat, and her stomach bottoms out. She slams on the brakes reflexively; the car skids to the left, the squeal of the tires high and piercing, comes to a stop half on the shoulder, just shy of a huge oak tree.
She sits there for a minute, shaking.
She has just hit a person with her car.
Shit.
She has just hit a person with her car.
Her heart is pounding so hard she thinks it might burst through her chest as she scrabbles at the door frantically. She stumbles out into the road, the door open noise beeping at her insistently, and rushes over to the guy, surprised to see that he is already getting to his feet casual and easy, like he didn’t just go flying over the hood of her CRV.
“Oh, hey, stop,” she says, hands hovering just short of touching him. “Don’t move. Let me call an ambulance.”
“There is no need.” He straightens his coat with a shrug of his shoulders. “I am well.”
“But I just hit you with my car.” She gestures at the CRV, still idling on the shoulder of the road, just to make sure he understands the gravity of the situation.
“I know. My landing was badly timed.” He turns in a circle, the tails of his coat swinging, an expression of consternation on his face. “It is eight-twenty.”
“Uh, yeah?” Lisa is caught off guard by the non-sequitur; he seems distracted, scattered. He may look okay, but he could have a concussion or something.
He stops, looks her over like he is seeing her for the first time. “There is nothing present that is a threat to you.”
Alarms are starting to go off. Lisa takes a step back. She’s alone on a dark road with a strange man who rolled over the hood of her car without any apparent harm. All those urban legends about women being abducted under unusual circumstances come to mind - rapists impersonating police officers, a serial killer luring a woman from her homes with a recording of a baby crying, men slipping into the back seat of a car while the victim is pumping gas. She doesn’t usually leap to such hysterical conclusions, but she was going at least 40, the CRV is pretty big, and yet here he is, walking around no worse for the wear.
Something just isn’t right here.
She starts backing away. “So, um, you seem alright. I’ll just be going now.”
The guy’s attention jerks back to her again, his brow furrowing. “Please don’t be afraid, Lisa.”
Fear jolts through her body. “How did you know my-“
But she has no time to finish the question before the man is reaching out, touching two fingers to her forehead.
Her spine thrums, the vibration running up along the line of her chakras, and then suddenly she has a head full of memories that hadn’t been there a moment before: Dean, young and pretty, and grinning across a pool table. Dean, standing on her doorstep, broken beyond her ability to comprehend. Dean, under her SUV, patiently explaining to Ben how to change the oil. Dean, roaming the house at night because he can’t sleep, a glass of whiskey in hand, checking the devil’s traps under the rugs and the salt lines in the windows. Dean, raking the leaves in the backyard like it’s a ride at Disney World. Dean, bringing Ben back to her after the changeling burst into flames right before her eyes. Dean, pressed up against her in the kitchen, stealing a kiss before Ben comes in to make gagging noises at their PDA. Dean, tolerating Sarah’s chattering and Bill’s dickery with far more patience than Lisa sometimes managed. Dean, telling her he would have been proud to be Ben’s father.
Dean, shoulders heaving, crying silently for Sam when he thinks she’s not looking.
Dean, his voice coming from a great distance, forcing the demon loose while she struggles against the dark presence holding her soul captive.
“What the hell?” She puts a hand to her head. She feels disoriented, displaced; nothing has changed, yet everything has changed. Dean isn’t in her life anymore, but Ben is, and she can’t look at Ben without seeing Dean. Except for the past two years, she had, had looked at her son and wondered who his father might be. “Did I forget Dean?”
It’s meant to be a rhetorical question, but the guy she just hit with her car answers. “Yes. Dean felt that you would be safer if you didn’t remember him.”
It takes her a minute to process what he had just said.
Lisa jerks her attention back to him. “Wait. Dean did this?”
“Don’t be angry at Dean. He was scared and grieving. I should have said no.”
“Don’t be angry?” There’s this sound that comes out of her. She might say it is a laugh, but it’s too harsh, too bitter. English has no word for the feeling rising up within her, flooding through her in a burst of adrenaline and fury. It’s too big and too hot, too immense to use such paltry terms as anger or rage, too sickening and painful to be called betrayal. “Are you kidding me?”
He cocks his head to the side, bird-like. “I would not joke about such a serious matter.”
His deadpan response makes her pause. She looks him over, adds up the trench coat and his inability to understand idiom and his lack of injury. “You must be Castiel.”
“Yes.”
“You’re an angel.”
“Yes.”
“Shouldn’t you know better?”
He considers her grimly. “Perhaps.” His attention wanders away again. He scans the road, the trees, the darkness. “It’s eight twenty-five.”
“So?” She’s a little distracted herself. So many of her memories had been rewritten, those five days when Ben was conceived had been utterly erased, the thing with the changelings had been changed into the kids sneaking out to play in a half built house, the year Dean had lived with them a year of memories riddled with holes.
And the accident that had been a kidnapping and demon possession, an oily black cloud that had suffocated her soul, burrowing into her deepest thoughts and memories, controlling her body like a puppet on strings-
She shudders, pushes away the memory of literal evil coursing through her veins. She really wants to sit down, preferably with a stiff drink and possibly some kind of prescription sedative.
“There is still no threat,” Castiel says.
Lisa comes out of her daze of unwanted memories. “What are you talking about?”
A car comes around a distant corner, its headlights swinging through the darkness before falling on them. Castiel stares into the light, head cocked to the side. His eyes are an arresting shade of blue.
He nods to himself. “I see,” he says, and takes her by the arm.
Before she can protest, there’s the rustle of wings, a split second of nothingness-
And then they’re on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Wind whispers through the tree tops, backed by the deep silence only found in the countryside. The stars glitter crisply over their heads. There’s a river behind them and a half-buried, abandoned building in front of them, old and out of place on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.
And parked out in front, the Impala, gleaming in the moonlight.
“Where are we?” She turns in a circle. “Where’s my CRV?”
“Lebanon, Kansas,” Castiel replies, distracted again, his eyes turned skyward. “I do not know where your vehicle is.”
Something like panic claws at her. “Kansas? How are we in Kansas?”
“I brought us here.” Castiel finally turns his attention to her. “I must go.”
“What?”
“It is dangerous for me to remain any longer. Just knock on that door. Ben is waiting for you.”
“Ben? Wait.” She starts to ask how the hell Ben got from their couch in Michigan to some abandoned building in Kansas, but there is the rustle of wings, and the angel is just gone.
But the Impala is here, so Dean must be here. If not Dean, then Sam. And whoever it is had better give her some answers.
She circles around the car, fingers trailing across the hood just to make sure it’s real, then trots down the half-flight of stairs to the metal door. It’s inscribed with a stylized A, or maybe it’s a star. It doesn’t matter, she supposes, as long as the door opens from the other side.
Lisa raises her hand and knocks.
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