Criminal Minds/Supernatural Fic: I'll Lay Your Soul to Waste 2/4
~*~*~*~*~
“Speak now or forever hold your peace,” Penelope joked, twirling her favorite pink sparkly pen thoughtfully.
“Well you wouldn’t want that,” Morgan drawled, deep and sexy as always.
Penelope shuddered appreciatively; the man was good. “The world would mourn. What do you want?”
“Prentiss and I are at White’s house. Wife says no enemies, but can you look anyways?”
“Can do my fabulous one,” she replied, already typing Randy White’s name into police databases, the social security administration’s database, and Google - just for kicks. “Ok, Randy White married Eleanor Tollhouse six months ago, nothing hinky about that. Their financials aren’t great though - wow.”
“What Garcia?”
“Your man Randy is burning through money like he’s found the lost episodes of Doctor Who on Bluray.”
“What?”
“Not important,” she replied quickly. Note to self - do not make nerd jokes unless Prentiss or Reid is there to appreciate her witticism (note to self two - find lost episodes. She’s a genius, shouldn’t take too long, right?). Derek Morgan may be sexiness personified, but he lacked a proper knowledge of important cultural events. Luckily she has Kevin for that.
Morgan cleared his throat and she realized she hadn’t said anything in a long moment. Whoops, time to get back to work. “Their bank account shows Randy’s been spending something like ten grand a month and they’ve got absolutely nothing saved. It’s a bit weird considering they don’t make nearly the amount of cash money to support that kind of habit.”
“Gambler?” Morgan suggested after updating Prentiss.
Penelope checked the White’s financial statements again. “The money’s being routed to a website with a really fake billing address. I mean come on, who doesn’t see Wholesome Bunnies, Inc. and think ‘man, I bet that is a family friendly and totally real company’?”
“You have a suspicious mind mama.”
“And for good reason,” she replied, having finally traced the company name to the website. And in under five minutes too - man she is awesome. And her hair looks amazing. This day rocks. Ok, now to go through the White’s home computer to get all the saved passwords, browsing history, and match everything up. She loved lazy computer owners - Randy apparently hadn’t bothered to clear his browser history or his saved passwords in quite a while.
“Oh gross,” she muttered once she accessed the website. Day suckage resumed then. She was going to need serious cuddle time with Kevin to recover from this latest discovery of human depravity.
“What?”
“So Wholesome Bunnies Inc. is the name used for billing purposes by a really gross website. Apparently, you contact this group if you really enjoy having sex with young women, taping the experience, and watching it again and again. And based on how much time and money White has spent on the site, he really enjoys it.”
Morgan swallowed harshly on the other end. “You sure it’s not just girls that look young?”
“She looks twelve,” Penelope whispered. “And she’s crying.”
“Go through the background of the others, let me know if you find anything we might have missed before,” Morgan commanded before he hung up the phone.
Penelope mentally added, “And DDOS the shit out of the disgusting website” to his order. She uploaded the story and the plan of attack to a few of her favorite haunts before digging into the financials and police records of the others.
~*~*~*~*~
Cas sat awkwardly in the passenger seat, his hands folded and placed in his lap, studiously examining the dash of the Impala as if he’d never seen it before.
“I can’t believe you kept the cell phone,” Dean said after a few miles had passed and the angel hadn’t said a word.
Castiel blinked solemnly in response. “I have found it has uses.”
“Whatever, dude,” Dean replied. “Who ya gunna call, the Ghostfacers?”
He slapped his leg, but Castiel didn’t so much as pretend to smile.
God Dean needed more friends, especially friends with an appreciation for 80s pop culture references and puns. When he said as much to Castiel, the angel frowned darkly.
“Are we friends Dean?”
“Dude, we stopped the Apocalypse together, I’m pretty sure that means we’re best friends for life.”
Castiel didn’t look appeased; in fact, he looked even pissier than he normally did. “My study of human friendship has led me to believe there are certain niceties friends exchange. Ones that you failed to exchange today.”
Dean managed to stay in his lane, but it was a close thing. “Really? This is what you want when I tell you my Lucifer might have escaped from Hell wearing Sam?”
Castiel looked a second away from opening the glove compartment and organizing Dean’s box of fake IDs.
“Fine,” Dean ground out. “Hi Castiel, how are you doing?”
“I have been leading the ongoing civil war in Heaven that was wrought by my association with you. There are traditionalists who are still wed to bringing about the Apocalypse as initially intended. Preventing them from this goal has taken all of my time and energy, leaving me little time for the petty goings on of humanity.”
Dean groaned. Of course this was his life.
“And Lucifer does not walk the Earth. It is Sam.”
Dean jumped across four lanes of traffic and managed to park the car before launching himself at Castiel, a primal sound of rage erupting as he punched Castiel in the face. He was winding up for a second shot, when Castiel opened the passenger door and dragged him across the seat and out of the car, holding him against the chassis by his throat.
“Do not presume to press your luck,” he growled.
“Fuck you,” Dean wheezed. “Sam…” He would have said more, but airflow was becoming an issue. After a few moments of weakly struggling, Castiel finally released him. Dean massaged his throat warily, all the while glaring.
“We would have felt Lucifer walking the Earth, but he remains in the cage. However, Sam has walked the Earth for the past four months, yes.”
Castiel looked warily at Dean after the revelation, as if wondering when he’d have to restrain Dean again, but all the rage had gone. Dean just felt blank, numb, elated, confused. It was as if the Earth had shifted beneath his feet and Dean was suddenly a second behind everyone else. He could see Castiel’s lips moving, but the sound was garbled and slow. Like in the Godzilla movies.
He could hear Castiel, but it didn’t make sense. His brother… was alive?
Sam wasn’t in Hell, screaming from the torture as Dean had done for so many, many years (he never let himself think about how many years it’d been for Sam without even the option Dean had to break to get the torture to end), wasn’t stuck in a cage with two pissed off angels - one of whom been kicked out of heaven for being a sick fuck and the other head of the creep brigade - and Adam (poor kid, he didn’t deserve the Winchester legacy), hell he… clearly whatever Prentiss saw wasn’t Sam.
Sam wouldn’t let him think he was in Hell. He wouldn’t. When Castiel first raised Dean, he looked for Sam before he’d even finished coughing up dirt, and when that first failed he grabbed Bobby and didn’t stop ‘till he found the kid. Because you don’t let family think you’re being tortured for all eternity in hell when you aren’t. You don’t let your brother wake up every morning feeling refreshed only to have the awful, soul-crushing truth that you failed and your brother is paying the price of that failure in blood and, by now, sanity.
You just don’t. It’s not right.
So something has hijacked his brother’s body and Dean knows how to deal with demons. In the far corner of the Impala he’s got a bag full of tools just for the occasion.
And he’s angry enough at the nerve of whatever it is that would dare wear his brother, after all his baby brother had given up, to happily use all the tricks he’d learned at Alistair’s hand.
~*~*~*~*~
They just wouldn’t give up, would they? All he wanted to do was talk to the living victim to figure out what those agents had missed, because there was no way Mr. Max Hetton had coincidentally come down with the exact some thing that had killed five, wait - now six other people in town. Those kinds of coincidences didn’t happen in his kind of work.
The skinny agent finally left the room and he was able to stop pretending to be visiting with the old woman rooming across from Hetton. After a full minute without a nurse or annoyingly persistent federal agent returning, he left the old woman mid-story. He thought it was mid-story; he hadn’t exactly been listening closely.
Hetton was pasty where he wasn’t covered in dark, ugly boils. He was sleeping lightly, moaning occasionally but unable to move too far due to the restraints. Perfect. It was as if they’d known he was coming and wanted to give him a present.
He hit Hetton in the arm as he dropped into the hard plastic chair by the side of the bed. His back twinged angrily, but he ignored it easily. Bodily pain wasn’t important, not now anyway.
He hit Hetton again when the man was slow to wake, making sure to hit one of the large groupings of boils on his right arm. That woke him up quickly enough.
“What the hell,” Hetton demanded angrily, groaning theatrically.
Wimp, he thought with a soft scoff. “You know what’s weird?” he started conversationally, as if he and Hetton had been chatting the whole time.
“Do I know what’s weird?” Hetton sputtered. “Who the hell are you? Why the hell did you hit my arm? I’ve been getting poked and prodded for three goddamn days after going through a psychotic episode and trying to gouge my eyes out with my fingertips and you want to know what’s weird? Go to hell.”
He smiled darkly. “Did that, wouldn’t recommend it. But seriously, do you know what’s weird?”
Hetton tried reaching for the call button, but it was slightly out of his range. He eyes widened when he realized he couldn’t call for security and took a deep breath.
He easily palmed Hetton’s face and pushed down slightly. “You can behave or we can do this the hard way. Doesn’t really matter to me. Now, you going to be good?”
Hetton nodded, clearly willing to agree to anything if only he could breathe easily again. When the hand was finally lift, Hetton breathed deeply several time. After a few moments he finally noticed the glare sent his way and his eyes widened.
Sam didn’t have time for this and leaned forward again, arm reaching forward.
Hetton shrunk back as far as possible into his pillow and quickly asked, “What’s weird?”
“Well, six people have died from the same thing you got,” Sam replied conversationally, “And yet you’re all alone. Your wife isn’t here. Isn’t that weird?”
Hetton paled even further.
This was going to be a… productive conversation.
~*~*~*~*~
Aaron wasn’t ashamed to admit he learned the skilful art of delegation from the best; David Rossi could - and had on multiple occasions - pawn off the worst of the legwork on the junior agents. If Seaver were here, Aaron would have no compunction about sending her to re-interview all the families with Morgan, Prentiss, or Reid to supervise. But she wasn’t and if he had to stay here and wait for another call, wait for another victim that just might give them the clue they need, well… it wouldn’t be pretty.
It was only logical to start from the beginning. Alexandra Collins was the first victim, single with no family in town. Detective Mendoza had spoken to her parents earlier, but beyond Collins’ parents’ disapproval of her move to New Hampshire from New Mexico, nothing in the case files had pinged Aaron’s radar as odd.
Dectective Irving’s interview with Collins’ best friend in town, Cady Stanton, however, had been pushed aside once the second victim showed up three days later. It was a long shot, but the best they had at the moment.
Stanton was in her mid-thirties, dark hair, and well groomed but something was just off. Her sweater was high quality, but he could see a dark stain standing out on the collar. Her hair had clearly once had highlights, but it appeared she hadn’t bothered in the last few months. It could be monetary issues, but there was something more.
“I’m sorry to be so abrupt, but I have to ask,” he said. “Did Alexandra have any enemies? Any problems in town? Anyone who might have wanted to harm her?”
Stanton grabbed a blanket from the couch and wrapped herself tightly.
Defensive position, he noted, something had hit a nerve.
“I thought they ruled Alexandra’s death accidental?” she asked, sniffing nervously.
“At the time they thought so, but since then there’ve been a number of similar cases, leading us to believe she might have been murdered.”
Stanton blinked nervously. “Alexandra was a really nice woman, I can’t think who’d want to hurt her.”
“How did the two of you meet?”
She froze. “We met at a bar downtown. Isn’t it silly, but I don’t even remember which one now?”
“What’d you talk about at the bar?”
“Which time?”
Aaron paused to consider his next question carefully. Stanton was working hard to present an image of a well-to-do, upper middle class woman, but it was fraying badly. The stain combined with the quality sweater implied recent money problems. The sniffing could be a cold, but taken with her shaking hands and inability to sit still implied otherwise. Medical problem?
But wait, the bar. No clear memory of the first time she met her best friend and the implication of repeated trips. Detox, he realized. An attempt at sobriety.
But who quits, apparently cold turkey, immediately after the death of a close friend?
He ignored Stanton’s question and asked another of his own. “Why did you quit drinking after Alexandra died?”
She looked at him resignedly. “Alexandra was a lot of things, but she was also a hell of an enabler. I lost my kid, my husband, hell, even the house because I couldn’t stop. Every time I tried AA, she’d ask me out so we could catch up.”
“And you’d catch up in a bar?”
“It was our place, you know?” Stanton explained weakly. “And she was my only friend left in town; Henry got them in the divorce too.”
~*~*~*~*~
Emily looked at the photos spread across her desk despairingly. Six dead victims and one possibly on the mend, no common races or ages, no common religious or political beliefs, just hallucinations, brutal facial lacerations, and death. Not even a common cause of death; the coroner’s reports listed everything from suffocation to massive simultaneous organ malfunction (and one confusing note referring to indications of organ liquidation).
The room was almost oppressive in its silence; Rossi reverting back to writing in his notebook in the corner, Morgan stalking between the victim timeline board (god, how had this all happened in a month?) and the so-far-useless geographical profile whiteboard, Hotch sitting absolutely still ever since he’d returned, head bowed deep in thought, and Reid ducking in and out of the room to check “just one more time” if the pathology report had been faxed to the station yet.
The phone ringing was the sweetest sound Emily had heard in days. She barely beat Morgan to the office phone and switched Garcia over to speaker.
“This case is officially getting weird,” she said, not bothering with the niceties.
“The shared hallucinations and a possible dead guy walking weren’t enough clues?” Emily couldn’t help snarking. Hotch glared, but he was clearly thinking along the same lines so she didn’t let it bother her.
“What’d you find,” Hotch asked brusquely.
“So you asked me to dig deeper into the victims’ backgrounds to see if there were any similarities that might have been missed the first time around. And we’re still at bupkis on that front. So please stop doubting the power of my awesome, ok? Repeating work is boring.”
“Garcia,” Hotch warned.
Emily could hear Garcia’s answering smirk through the phone.
“Right. Anyway, I started thinking about the problem sideways, because laterally wasn’t working out so well. So I asked, what if the similarities are something that wouldn’t readily be obviously similar?”
“My brain hurts,” Morgan whispered playfully. Emily shushed him, but threw him a sympathetic grin. Penelope’s logic just plain hurt sometimes.
“So I started looking deeper, but that didn’t turn up too much either. Hetton and his wife are having problems trying to have a kid - poor women miscarried a couple months ago. White had the creepy pedophile thing going for him. Victim number three, Melissa Needham, her husband Dan has been in and out of the E.R. a bunch in the last couple years, yikes! Last time for a broken cheekbone, poor guy. Apparently he fell off a ladder doing some yard work, which appears to be the same explanation for the broken rib he was treated for two years ago as well.”
“Abusive wife?” Rossi speculated.
“Little too late to ask now,” Reid replied.
“I’m not done!” Garcia protested. “I work and I work, and you just chatter all over me like I don’t even matter.”
Like children, Rossi and Reid fell silent, shamed, and if she didn’t fear the wrath of Garcia, Emily would laugh.
“Ok, here’s where the weird part comes in. Victim number four, Dr. Tabitha Gravesend, treated Dan Needham. Every time he came into the E.R. apparently.”
“Any notes?” Morgan asked.
“Nothing,” Garcia replied. “With these kinds of repeated injuries, you’d think she would have at least given him a pamphlet or something. But apparently she took his excuse at face value - all five times she treated him over the last three years.”
~*~*~*~*~
“It’s the goddamn plague,” Bobby’s tinny voice shrieked when Dean finally picked up his cell.
For all of Dean’s anger, and it’s closer to rage right about now, he has no idea what Bobby’s talking about. He sat back in the drivers seat heavily, Castiel primly entering the passenger seat as if he’s stepped out for a bit of fresh air. “Wait, what?”
“New Hampshire, you idjit. Case you asked me for help on after not speaking to me for four months while living it up in suburbia? Ringing any bells or has the brain damage finally kicked in?”
Before Dean could protest further, Bobby continued. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say Pestilence had come back.”
“No, we killed him last year,” Dean confirmed, still glaring at Castiel. The angel was still doing his whole “I’m a badass angel of the lord who would never get kicked out of a whorehouse for being a lameass so don’t even pretend to talk to me that way” routine. Not everyone would be able to interpret such a nuanced look, but Dean and Castiel had a profound bond.
Or so Dean had thought until the fucker failed to inform him his brother was walking the Earth sans Lucifer. And now he was furious again, but Bobby interrupted what was going to be a truly epic rant. Dean made a mental note to remember the phrase “emotionally retarded ass-monkey” and reluctantly turned his attention back to the case.
Story of his life.
“Well, something is taking a page from Pestilence and killing people in a mighty Biblical way if you know what I’m saying.”
“Hold on, I’ll ask Castiel-“
“Castiel?” Bobby snorted. “The two of you fight over who gets to have the pretty, pretty princess crown?”
“No, I know how much that tiara means to you Bobby,” Dean replied. “I’d never try to take it from you… He knew Sam was back.”
“Well shit.”
Dean loved Bobby more than anything at that moment.
“He sure it’s Sam?”
“Says it’s not Lucifer at least,” Dean replied.
“Doesn’t mean it’s not some random demon taking a joy ride.”
“He says it’s Sam.”
Bobby was silent on the other end. “Don’t know what to tell you, except to strap on your big boy pants and ask your bestie what’s going down in New Hampshire.”
“Hold on,” Dean covered the speaker with his hand. “Cas,” he ground out, “Do you know what else could cause Biblical plagues to be showing up in New Hampshire?”
“What do you mean?”
Dean uncovered his hand, “He wants to know what kind of Biblical shit’s going down?”
“All the victims report hallucinations, try to gauge out their eyes, and generally die faster than a virgin in a horror movie.”
“That’s not exactly screaming Biblical, Bobby,” Dean pointed out.
“Ok, how about the fact that only survivor’s covered in boils, at least one of the victim’s organs liquefied so much that when they cut him open it apparently rained blood, and apparently at least two of the victims are first born sons.”
“Got me there,” Dean replied before summarizing for Castiel. “Uh, Bobby? I’ll call you back. Cas has his ‘imma smite a bitch’ face on.”
Dean managed to shove his phone into the pocket of his jeans before Cas lunged across the seat and suddenly they were gone.
~*~*~*~*~
Max grumbled when he finally opened his eyes and didn’t see his wife. Hell, right now he’d even take a neighbor. He’d known someone was standing at his bedside for a while now, but he’d held out hope Ginger had finally visited.
He should have known better; Ginger Brinker-Smith was not one to forgive easily, after the miscarriage and his confession, the continual silent treatment and limp that had lasted for two weeks were testament enough to that.
His visitor was standing over his bed, head cocked curiously as he examined Max. Was this guy a doctor? Why was he so interested in Max’s rash, he’d been told it was pretty common. Oh god, he had cancer.
The visitor was holding something reverently, a stick? Ok, Max amended mentally, not a doctor. Escaped mental patient? Would certainly explain the rash of deranged visitors he had today. He was going to make a complaint once he was out of here.
“You know what you’ve done, right Max?” he asked softly.
Max stared at him, what is this psycho up to? He reached for the call button, but the bastard had already moved it out of his reach with the restraints - again. He rattled against the supports of the hospital bed furiously, sick to death of being here alone and unable to do a damn thing by himself.
“It must be difficult for you,” the man said sympathetically. “Usually such a powerful guy, now stuck here, unable to even make a phone call without help.”
He sank slowly into the chair next to the bed. “Big shot in town, right Max? Partner in the largest law firm for miles - gives you a pretty nice life. I’ve seen your house, it’s beautiful. You’ve got everything - beautiful wife, cars, nice vacations. But it’s not enough, is it?”
This was stupid; Max was going to reach that call button once and for all to get this creep out of here. Who did he think he was coming in here and lecturing him?
“You like prostitutes, don’t you Max?” the creep continued. “Like how they make you feel - you can do anything you want, and they just want more. They’ll thank you for it. Like you deserve.”
Who was this fuck to sneer at him? Who cared if he liked prostitutes? It was his money, his time, his life.
“It’s too bad you don’t like condoms,” the man continued, his voice rising slowly.
Was this guy really going there?
The man rose and started pacing by the foot of his bed. “It’s really too bad you don’t like condoms. You know you killed them, right Max? You killed your children because you didn’t care about those women, you didn’t care about your wife, you certainly didn’t care about your children - it was just you. It’s always about you.”
“That isn’t true,” Max protested, the words hitting deep and leaving him slightly breathless.
“You didn’t bother getting treatment until after the miscarriage. You knew about the disease for six months before that.” The man wasn’t convinced. “You’ve killed and if you get out of this hospital bed, it’ll only be a matter of time before you do it again. I know your type: you don’t change. You won’t change, you don’t want to. So what we have here Max, is a problem.”
Max didn’t like the look in the man’s eye as he raised the wood he had been holding earlier. The man mumbled something, but he had more pressing concerns than trying to figure out what the psycho was saying to a stick.
It was getting harder to breathe. There was something growing in his throat, something soft and pulsating softly and utterly relentless. He clawed for his throat frantically, but his arms wouldn’t reach.
There was something wrong with his arms, too, he noted hazily as the room started going black around the edges. They were lumpy … and … they… hurt….
~*~*~*~*~
“The victimology suggests our unsub is mission-oriented, ridding the world of people he views as undesirable, and HOLY CRAP!”
Aaron had definitely not shrieked like a little girl at the sudden appearance of Dean Winchester and his angel friend… Castiel? No matter what Dave later claimed. Considering that Dave had been pressed flat in the corner, Aaron didn’t think he had a leg to stand on.
“Hey dudes,” Winchester said nonchalantly, as if popping into random room in the middle of highly-armed and still twitchy FBI agents was a regular occurrence.
Though given his life, Aaron reflected, it’s entirely possible it was normal.
Prentiss recovered first. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were in Indiana?”
Winchester frowned. “I told you I was on my way. You think I’d stay there when you call me to say you saw my dead brother walking around?”
“Wait, I thought you said you had limited powers,” Aaron said to Castiel, frowning. If he’d been lying last year, lying when he could have helped Prentiss sooner, instead of leaving her in the cold to face pneumonia, then he was going to have words with the man - angel of the Lord or no.
“Events have changed that in the last four months,” the angel replied solemnly. “My Father elevated me above my former station and powers after Lucifer was once again trapped in the Pit.”
“Wait a minute,” Prentiss interrupted. “Let me get this straight - four months ago, Sam dies, Cas gets super-powered, Lucifer, who had apparently been walking around Earth and you didn’t bother to tell us, was thrown back in the Pit, and you apparently decided to move to Indiana. Why do I think they were related?”
Dean grimaced. “It’s a long story.”
“Sam gave in and agreed to let Lucifer inhabit his body, Adam Winchester was resurrected and then gave his permission to allow Michael to inhabit his body, and the two met as prophesied for the end of days. Dean was grievously injured attempting to stop the coming Apocalypse, Bobby Singer and I were then killed.”
“Wait, what?”
Castiel continued, unconcerned with the chaos erupting around him. “After my Father restored me, and I restored Bobby Singer, I discovered Sam had wrested control from Lucifer and was able to throw himself and Michael into the Pit via the portal to Hell Dean created from the rings of the Four Horsemen.”
Aaron felt faint when he realized Castiel wasn’t finished. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were real? Castiel and Bobby Singer had died? And then been resurrected? By God?
Aaron knew his Bible, what good blue blood Virginian didn’t? But despite a debate with Reid on significance, he’d always believed in the Clock Maker Theory. That all the bad things in life that happened - his father, the disgusting things they saw each day, Haley - resulted from humans who’d been created and set loose by a benevolent God to do as they might with Free Will.
So why did Bobby Singer get a second chance and not Haley?
He’d apparently missed some of the conversation while internally debating theology. From Rossi’s sympathetic look, he’d been fairly obvious.
“So Sam Winchester managed to escape Hell by himself?” Reid asked dubiously. “And you don’t know how or why, even though it’s never been done before, and there are other, more pressing, problems. This I’m finding a little hard to believe.”
Winchester was glaring at the unruffled man, clearly the issue had come up before.
“It is not entirely unknown among the Winchesters,” Castiel replied. “But you are correct that there are more important issues at hand. We must locate the weapon causing the recent deaths before it can do more harm.”
“Can we go back to the Sam being alive thing?” Dean asked.
“As I have told you previously,” Castiel replied. “All I know is that Samuel Winchester is free of Lucifer’s essence. We must focus our efforts on regaining the weapon.”
“A weapon is doing this?” Morgan asked doubtfully, speaking up for the first time “Biological warfare?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Castiel confirmed.
Aaron had a hard time reading the man’s emotions. His face was so shuttered, almost blank, but it wasn’t anything he’d seen on the myriad faces of criminals across the country. Rather, it was as if he’d forgotten he had muscles in his face and couldn’t be bothered to learn to use them. Instead of hiding emotions, that blank face seemed to say that emotions were a foreign concept altogether.
Looking at him, short, spiky hair and a slightly askew tie, it was all too easy to forget that Castiel wasn’t human until moments like this.
“So what is it?” Prentiss asked. “What killed those people?”
“There has been much turmoil in Heaven since the Apocalypse was averted,” Castiel stated. “In that time many of Heaven’s most powerful weapons went… missing.”
“Heaven has a weapons locker?” Aaron asked faintly.
“What kind of weapons we talking about here?” Dean demanded.
“There could be a range really,” Reid replied thoughtfully. “There are a number of Biblical artifacts that could qualify-”
Castiel cut him off before the lecture could get too involved. Apparently he remembered Reid’s tendency to ramble.
“You’re wrong,” Castiel stated flatly. “Angelic weapons are forged in heaven or imbued with divine power. In addition to the more mundane swords and holy oil, there was a cache that contained our most powerful weapons - Lot’s Salt, the Staff of Moses and Aaron’s Rod, Gabriel’s Horn of Truth, and the Ark of the Covenant to name a few.”
“How’d they go missing?” Rossi demanded.
Detective Irving entered the room suddenly, but stopped whatever explanation he had planned to give when he caught sight of the two extra inhabitants of the small room. He raised an eyebrow curiously at Aaron.
“Consultants,” he replied to the unanswered question. “What’s going on?”
Irving shook his head slowly, as if not quite believing the nearly homicidal man in flannel and his smaller, more rumpled, companion could be FBI consultants (because he wasn’t an idiot, Aaron thought sarcastically). He pushed on admirably and said, “Got some bad news. Hospital called, Hetton didn’t make it.”
“Reid, Rossi, go check it out,” Aaron commanded. The two gathered their things and left quickly, but Irving still stood awkwardly in the doorframe. “Anything else?”
“We think there’s been another attack,” he replied. “Just called in a few minutes ago.”
“Let’s go.”
~*~*~*~*~
Winchester and Morgan were disturbingly similar at times Emily noted, watching the two men prowl around the room in a strange parallel. Neither could stand still for very long, and each had examined every nook and cranny in the formal living room several times.
Father Merrill lied splayed out on the carpet, broken tea cup by his hand. It was weird, Emily thought, to see a priest in jeans. They’d never been that informal in Italy, she mused.
Hotch was interviewing Sister Mary-Beth Baird, who’d finally stopped crying a few minutes ago. So far, nothing interesting had come up besides Father Merrill’s penchant for sermons on the evils of premarital sex and unwed mothers.
Emily batted another bug away irritably damn things were everywhere. “Anything?” she asked Morgan, leaving Dean to his prowling and Castiel… to his standing in the middle of the room and not blinking.
“Doesn’t look like there was anyone else here,” Morgan said. “Just like the others. I don’t get how some kind of weapon could be used. The head wound is new though.”
“Could have come from a fall,” she suggested. She knelt down to check; sure enough the coffee table was tacky with blood.
Dean swatted a bug and then froze, dropping suddenly to examine Father Merrill’s body intently. “Nasty,” he muttered softly.
She followed his line of sight, bugs were crawling in the Father’s head wound. Nasty indeed.
“Anything?” he asked Castiel softly, dragging them both to the far end of the room away from Hotch and the Sister.
“I think that Aaron’s Rod may be responsible,” Castiel replied after a moment’s consideration.
Dean barely suppressed a snigger, but Emily couldn’t stop her eye-roll. Boys.
“It is no laughing matter Dean,” Castiel replied archly. “It is a fearsome weapon indeed.”
Dean didn’t appear impressed. “So Aaron’s dick is doing what exactly? Bringing the plagues back, one at a time?”
“You said yourself in Ohio - a rain of blood, boils, and now locusts. We need to find the Rod and its bearer.”
“And Sam,” Dean added pointedly.
“And the guy responsible for murdering eight people,” Emily reminded them both.
The two men looked surprised at her intrusion, but damn if she was going to let something as minor as an angelic weapon, a man escaping from Hell, and the Biblical plagues stop her from solving the case.
Castiel nodded. “Yes, we must find out who was responsible for the Rod leaving Heaven. Good point.”
“That not what I meant,” Emily said flatly.
Castiel looked confused.
“Give it up,” Dean advised tiredly, leaning against the wall and looking out the window wistfully. “He’s been on a ‘human affairs are too puny for my awesome attention’ kick lately.”
He tensed suddenly, then bolted out of the room. Emily could see him running down the road frantically.
“Prentiss,” Hotch commanded, but she was already following the hunter’s desperate run. She wasn’t sure if he had planned on ordering her to follow or to stay, but in any case it was too late now.
She could see Dean gaining on a tall figure and redoubled her pace.
Part Three