fic: Worlds In Collision [Prologue]
Series: Parallel Highway
Title: Worlds In Collision
Chapter: Prologue
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairing: John Winchester, Rufus Turner, Jessica Moore, Castiel
Rating: T
Word Count: 3853
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Summary: In 1996 Jimmy Novak disappears on his way back home from Chicago and Castiel asks a dying man permission to use his body. In 1999 Jessica Moore encounters an angel while burning a man’s remains in a Mississippi town, far from the road to Stanford. In 2005 Sam and Dean Winchester return from Jericho with their father’s journal to an apartment on fire, where Sam learns that his girlfriend is a hunter and Dean is pulled out of the flames by something that burned a handprint into his shoulder.
With nowhere to go but to John for the truth the brothers and Jessica take off, following a trail littered with coordinates, newspaper clippings, rumors, phone calls, and messages from an angel of the Lord. Standing in their way are vengeful spirits and tricksters, poltergeists and werewolves, fallen angels and premonitions, demons and family secrets.
And then there’s Azazel.
Author’s Note: I pulled out of deancasbigbang at the last second when I realized my Big Bang fic wasn’t going to be completed in time. I decided to finish it and revise it the way I wanted it to. Then it fell into revision hell and I moved fandoms. So, I’m pulling an amnesty and posting what I have so far. Who knows, maybe it’ll encourage to actually finish revising the +200k monster.
What John Winchester is feeling right now isn’t anxiety. He just barely missed running over the orange cones set up on the side of the road and crashing into the abandoned car, that’s all. With all this snow it was hard to see the wrecked sedan in the ditch, the hood and driver’s side crushed in. John wonders why nobody’s towed it yet; in this weather the car is a hazard.
He maneuvers around it and continues down the highway to Pontiac. He wishes he’s not out here driving through frozen farmland; he’d rather be back at the dry, warm motel in Chicago, looking up the next hunt with Dean while Sam reads a few books he borrowed from Jim. But when there’s a lead on the thing that killed Mary John will brave anything to find it.
The motel isn’t in the town proper but a couple minutes out at what looks like a truck stop. He pulls into the parking lot but doesn’t kill the engine; the Impala hums, warming the air inside the car, while he pulls the torn piece of paper out of his pocket and double-checks the address and room number. He then folds it up and tucks it back into his pocket, turns off the engine, and grabs the paper bag sitting next to him.
“You want him to talk? Bring Johnnie Walker Blue.”
John breathes out two clouds of steam that dissolve into the gray sky as he tucks the bottle in his coat pocket and trudges through the snow to the front door. As soon as he pushes it open hot air blasts him in the face and starts melting the white clumps on his boots.
The woman at the lobby looks at him curiously. He gives her a curt nod as he passes the desk and towards the hall of doors. Room 18. He feels the glass bottle through the paper bag, hopes Bobby’s advice will do the trick, even though Bobby hasn’t seen or heard from the man in about three years.
John stares at the gilt number on the plain door. He can’t hear anything on the other side but he does hear the family down the hall, children and wife spilling out of their room, bundled up in coats and scarves. Then the husband emerges, locks the door, and gestures towards the exit with an exaggerated sweep of his arm. They’re all smiling, faces glowing with happiness, the children bouncing off the walls and squealing over snow as their parents herd them out to the lobby.
It hurts him whenever he sees that, feels that slow yearning ache in his chest as he follows their path out the doors with his eyes. You should be here, he thinks as he turns back to the door and raises his hand to knock. We should be that family.
John raps his knuckles on the door and waits. After a moment the deadbolt slides and the door opens slowly. A chain stops it and an older black man peers out.
“Who the hell are you?”
John leans forward, notes the hard suspicious glint in the other man’s eyes as he drops his voice and asks, “Rufus Turner, right?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about-”
“Bobby sent me.”
The man frowns. “I haven’t talked with him in years. In fact, he knows why I haven’t talked with him in years. So why the hell would he send you to me?”
John sighs. Of course he shouldn’t have hoped that Rufus would let him in without question; man’s made from the same mold as Bobby. “He said you worked a case a couple of years ago and you never solved it. The kid’s name is Elaine Evans.”
It takes a long second for Rufus to make the connection between the name and the case and once it does his weatherworn face becomes a cold hard wall.
“John Winchester.”
John nods. “That’s right.”
He’s careful to maintain eye contact and an open expression. Unlike Bobby his name won’t earn him any special favors; it’s up to Rufus to decide whether to let him in or slam the door in his face. Not that it’s going to stop John from getting what he wants but he’s getting tired of leaving behind a trail of dead hunters.
“Then you know I’m retired,” Rufus says carefully.
“Semi-retired. You’re here working a case. Look.” John pulls the paper bag out of his pocket. “This won’t take long-”
“That better be Blue Label or I have nothing more to say to you.”
John allows himself a slow knowing smile; Bobby’s right after all. “It is.”
Rufus doesn’t shut the door to pull off the chain immediately; he looks away while fishing something out of his pocket. John is then handed a warm silver flask.
“Is this really necessary?”
“Do I look like an idiot?”
He thinks about Bobby shoving holy water in his face every time he swings by either to drop the boys off or poke at his growing library. John drops his eyes to the floor and sure enough, there’s a line of salt running across the length of the door.
After he hands the flask back Rufus shuts the door to pull off the chain and then reopens it. John steps over the salt line and walks into the middle of the room. While Rufus locks the door and checks the line for breaks John walks over to the coffee table; he tilts his head at the monochromatic photocopies while setting the Scotch bottle down. Despite the variations on the same scene it looks familiar but he can’t put his finger to it. He slides out a lined piece of paper from the pile and skims its contents.
“Elaine Evans died two years ago,” Rufus suddenly says somewhere behind John. “Family got into a car crash, just like the one I’m investigating.”
“What makes this one so special?” John narrows his eyes at one of the photographs; he can almost make out the crushed hood.
“Traces of sulphur all over the hood and front seat.” Papers shuffle and John glances over his shoulder to see Rufus pulling clothes and notebooks out of one of two duffel bags on the single bed. “Accident already looked suspicious; that car didn’t flip or slide off the road, and there’s no evidence of another car on the road. Include the sulphur-”
“Demons,” John finishes as he sidles around the table to look at the notes on the wall. They’re filled with names, phone numbers, and addresses; Rufus also has a map of Pontiac and the surrounding area tacked onto the wall with various spots marked in a red pen. The one that draws his attention is the small red “x” on North East Road and the words “J NOVAK” right next to it. Now he knows why the sedan is out there on the side of the road. “You need help?”
“No.”
A Polaroid photograph shows a blood-soaked driver’s seat. Too much blood, John thinks. There’s no reason for a demon to attack a potential host before possessing it and Rufus hasn’t mentioned any victims
“So what happened to the driver?”
“Vanished. Cops went looking for his body, couldn’t find it.”
“If he’s possessed-”
“Demons don’t go through all that hassle just to possess someone. They attacked the man for a reason.”
John turns his attention back to the wall. “You haven’t found any demons here. Is this recent or does the town have a history of-”
“Are you here to do my job?” Rufus asks as he sits down at the coffee table and sets down two empty glasses. He gestures to the other chair as he takes out the Scotch, twists off the cap, and starts pouring.
There’s a battered journal on the table now, sitting on top of the photocopies of the wrecked car. John stares at leather cover while Rufus lifts his glass of whiskey and drinks; his fingers curl around the glass as he thinks about what’s written in there, wondering if Elaine’s mother died the exact same way as-
“Trail went cold years ago,” Rufus says. “Never found out what killed Sheila.”
John tilts his glass of untouched whiskey towards the journal. “What can you tell me about it?”
Rufus pours himself another glass but doesn’t touch it, stares at it with an unreadable expression. He says nothing and John feels the time crawl by, starts itching to slide the journal over and flip the cover to find out for himself.
“Sheila died in a fire in her daughter’s nursery on June 12, 1983. Her husband Harold first said he found her on the ceiling, bleeding from her stomach, but later insisted he imagined it. Elaine was six months old.” Rufus gives him a sharp look. “Sounds familiar?”
Like the back of his hand and the Impala’s engine and the weight of his rifle. “Yeah, it does.”
“You think you can find what killed her, thirteen years after the fact?”
He wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night thinking about Mary. Thirteen years later he still feels the burning need to find her killer. “Yeah.”
Rufus frowns as he glances at the journal. “I’ll give you it, but with a warning - drop it. Drop this hunt. It’s only going to kill you and your sons.”
John bristles. How many times has he heard this? How many times have they told him that he’ll never find the monster that killed his Mary and tore his family apart? It’s been a while since he gave up trying to explain his grief and rage and he’s not about to do it now. It doesn’t matter anyway, he tells himself. His hunch paid off.
What happened that night in the nursery wasn’t a fluke after all.
John lifts the journal and turns it, flips the pages; everything is written in a crisp hand and every page is dated so John easily finds what he’s looking for.
“So you have no idea what killed her,” he says as he reads a near-exact description of what he saw the night Mary died. His heart sinks; there’s nothing new here, nothing he hasn’t poured over himself night after night for years. “Found no clues? Husband didn’t notice anything strange leading up to that night?”
“Everything in there is everything that I know, and it’s not much. It wouldn’t be a cold case if I had an idea.” The table shifts as Rufus leans forward. “Whatever it is you’re hunting it’s not like anything I’ve ever come across, and I’ve seen plenty in my day.”
“I don’t care how strong it is,” John says. “When I find it I’m going to kill it.”
He’s done here; he shuts the journal, contemplates the untouched whiskey, and then rises to his feet. He sweeps his eyes over the notes, photocopies, and Polaroids on the wall before turning to the door.
“How are you going to kill it?” Rufus suddenly asks.
“I’ll think of something.”
He thinks about the drive back to Chicago, hopes the boys haven’t gone completely stir crazy being holed up in the motel room for days on end while he went around looking for a temporary job, a hunt, new information. He thinks about picking up some pizza along the way or taking them to the diner down the block, thinks about spending the night perusing Rufus’s notes with a mug of coffee while Dean and Sam sleep.
“You know Elkins?”
John stops and looks over his shoulder. “Daniel? What about him?”
Rufus hesitates. He stares at the whiskey in his glass, tilts it as if to observe the amber color in the yellowed light. “Last time I saw him he was looking for a weapon.”
John frowns; Daniel’s never mentioned a weapon to him in all the years he’s known the veteran vampire specialist. “What kind of weapon?”
Rufus sits back in the chair with a shrug and picks up the glass. “Wouldn’t say. Supposedly it can kill anything.”
* * *
John pulls over the side of the road across from the cones and the abandoned sedan. He stares at it, at the layers of snow lining the road, at the black and white landscape that stretches for miles and dissolves into the gloom. He glances at the journal on the bench next to him and then sighs, leans against the window and presses his hand to his forehead.
For the first time in years John feels relieved. There is nothing like the sense of validation and knowing his persistence and hard work is finally paying off. He always knew there was something very strange about Mary’s death, even by supernatural standards, and is grateful that Rufus felt the same about Sheila’s. Now he knows to look for a pattern when he goes to the Evans house in Trenton, New Jersey.
First he has to drive in the opposite direction. Daniel’s still living at that cabin in Manning and John has a few questions for him concerning a weapon that can kill any supernatural creature.
He pops in a tape and turns up the volume; the Band accompanies him as he steers the Impala back onto North East Road and heads up to his boys in Chicago.
~* * * * *~
Jessica Moore meets him a mile out from the third Mississippi town in a month. She’s fighting soft mud and the downpour with her shovel; the sky is the overcast gray of late afternoon and she has one hour to reach the casket before she loses light. She hates digging up dead bodies in the night.
It’s her fault she’s out here, soaked through to the bone and standing ankle deep in graveyard sludge while surrounded on all four sides by solid earth. She should’ve dug deeper into the newspaper archives, should’ve asked more questions, should’ve made up better lies to get into the police department records, should’ve done this, should’ve done that, should’ve, should’ve, should’ve. The list of things she should’ve done can go on forever. If she finishes the job with a mild cough and a sore body then it’ll be a good day.
Through the thick stew of dirt and turf her shovel hits something hard. Thank god, she thinks and starts scooping mud off the casket. She steps off the lid and hammers at the latches with the shovelhead, breaking them; she then wedges the edge under the lid and pops the coffin open. The gray light reveals a body long past the bloated stage of decay and her stomach twinges in disgust. The rain smothers the stink; all she can smell is mud, mud, and more mud.
Jessica tosses the shovel up, digs the toes of her boots into the soft earth, and hauls herself out of the hole. Her hands slide over the slick grass and she almost falls back on her face; swearing she pushes herself to her feet and staggers over to her duffel bag, looks for the lighter fluid, salt, and waterproof matches.
Her hand pockets the matches and picks up the lighter fluid and salt, and that’s when she hears a voice say, “Behind you.”
She may be a rookie at research but her father taught her well; she drops flat on the ground, letting go of the lighter fluid and salt to grab the broken iron crowbar in the bag. She leaps back to her feet swinging, and Joshua Harper screams as it cuts through his chest and banishes him.
Breathing heavily and licking rainwater and iron off her lip Jessica turns around, dragging wet hair behind her ear as she looks for the voice. She’s alone in the cemetery and the clouds are turning charcoal. The sun is betting and Joshua will be back if she doesn’t burn his bones.
“What the hell,” she mutters.
Her lip throbs from where her teeth dug in when her jaw hit the lawn and she smears red on an army green sleeve. She tucks the crowbar under her arm and picks up the salt and lighter fluid.
She gets to the edge of the grave when the voice comes back, a low growl in her ear. “To your right.”
Joshua loses his head when he’s six inches from her.
Rain-slick fingers uncap the container of lighter fluid and squirt it all over the body; liberal amounts of melting salt follow it into the hole. With a quick flick of her wrist five waterproof matches light up, glows yellow-orange and defiant. She watches the trail of light down into the earth and sighs slowly when the lighter fluid ignites. The corner of her mouth curves up as the glow rises up six feet and for once something else goes right - she doesn’t have to hear Joshua’s anguish as his ghost burns up like lit tissue paper.
She hefts the crowbar in her hands as she watches the fire devour the emaciated corpse and waits until she hears footsteps; gripping the iron tightly she whirls around on the balls of her feet and swings. She doesn’t see what’s behind her but she feels the crowbar hit something solid. The violent impact travels up her arms and she nearly drops the iron. Gasping from the numbness vibrating in her hands she staggers back and feels the crowbar slide out of her hands.
“Who are you?” she demands as she clenches and unclenches her hands, unable to pull out the hunting knife tucked snuggly behind her back.
He’s a tall slender man, shoulders slumping forward and hiding his height. His pale face is grim, shaped by a blunt jaw and an aquiline nose; his eyes are bright in the damp firelight. He’s wearing a fairly creepy trench coat over a dark suit and she feels a sudden itch to straighten out his crooked tie for him. Instead she stares at his hand, which is holding her crowbar. It’s bent.
Okay, what the hell. What are you? “Who are you?” she asks again as she slowly steps to the side and away from the fire. His eyes follow her and then he slowly turns so he’s facing her. “What do you want?”
He tilts his head while his expression goes from blank to confused. “I don’t want anything.”
He speaks in a growling monotone, revealing nothing, but his eyes tell her everything. Well, everything his body doesn’t tell her.
“You’re not from around here,” she decides to say instead of “What the hell are you?”
The man shakes his head once and then steps forward, his eyes suddenly narrowing and focusing on her. The intensity and weight behind his gaze throws her off and she feels pinned down. It takes her a long moment to realize she’s not moving towards her duffel bag.
“You’re too young to hunt alone, Jessica Moore,” he says. “Go back to your family. Your mother’s been praying for you.”
So he’s a hunter. Her parents asked someone to find her and bring her back home. Annoyance flares up in her at the thought, and promptly extinguishes itself when she stumbles over the shovel. She quickly bends over to pick it up; her hands cooperate and she hefts its weight, holds it between them as she inches towards the shotgun in her bag. Her eyes never leave him.
“I’m not going,” she says.
“I’m not forcing you,” he replies.
That’s not what she expected him to say. “What? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means if you don’t want to go back home I won’t force you to,” he says and makes a point of dropping the crowbar while taking a step back.
That’s even more bizarre than her parents asking someone to go find her. Something’s off here; the warning bells won’t stop going off in her head. Jessica considers the distance between her and the strange man as she slides her feet across the ground towards the bag, and then she starts considering the man himself. He’s not at all dressed like a proper hunter - the trench coat can get caught between his legs, snag onto obstacles, and hinder his movements, and the suit is just not proper attire for getting down and dirty.
Did her parents actually hire a private investigator and bribe him to keep his mouth shut about the actual reason for her running away? This is so not like them at all.
“I do advise you to return home,” he says quietly. “As you can already guess you’re still too inexperienced to hunt alone.”
“No need to rub it in,” she mutters as she quickly lets go of the shovel with one hand to wipe the rain out of her eyes. “If you don’t make mistakes you don’t learn.”
“You won’t learn from your mistakes if you die from them,” the man replies, and she shivers at the thought. “You’ll graduate in a year; your calling can wait until then.”
“Is that what Mom told you to tell me?”
He tilts his head again, frowning. It takes him too long to speak and she knows right there and then that no, her mother didn’t send him. Her grip on the shovel tightens and she glances quickly at her bag. Her heart drops as she wonders if the shotgun will even work in this weather.
If her parents didn’t send him, then who did? If nobody sent him how did he find her? How did he know her name?
Is he even human?
Her heart starts beating heavily as fear floods her body; she swallows and adjusts her grip on the shovel again. The man hasn’t moved in all this time; he’s a little more than a silhouette in this late hour but she can still see his face in the dying firelight, can see the line of his full lips quirk upwards in an awkward smile. There’s something absolutely eerie about him.
And beautiful and terrible, her mind whispers. You’re not human.
“Mom didn’t send you,” she says instead, clamping down on the tremor in her suddenly small voice. Play it cool. Play it safe. You know how to defend yourself. Remember what Mom and Dad taught you. Be calm, Jess. Be calm.
“Jessica,” he says and she starts. “If I didn’t find you, you’d be dead. Go home.”
She presses her lips, feels her bottom lip throb in protest. She wonders if the shovel can make a dent in him. Probably not, considering the curved crowbar by his feet.
The stark reminder prompts her to say, “What are you?”
The air suddenly hums as the clouds rumble overhead; streaks of lightning snap at the earth and she flinches. The bright flashes of electric light illuminate deep shadows stretching and spreading from the man’s shoulders; they cast themselves over the trees in this overgrown corner of the cemetery and rise so high she finds herself tipping her head back to gape at them.
They’re shaped like great feathered wings.
“My name is Castiel.”
She blinks against the rain and he’s gone.
Collide
Title: Worlds In Collision
Chapter: Prologue
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairing: John Winchester, Rufus Turner, Jessica Moore, Castiel
Rating: T
Word Count: 3853
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Summary: In 1996 Jimmy Novak disappears on his way back home from Chicago and Castiel asks a dying man permission to use his body. In 1999 Jessica Moore encounters an angel while burning a man’s remains in a Mississippi town, far from the road to Stanford. In 2005 Sam and Dean Winchester return from Jericho with their father’s journal to an apartment on fire, where Sam learns that his girlfriend is a hunter and Dean is pulled out of the flames by something that burned a handprint into his shoulder.
With nowhere to go but to John for the truth the brothers and Jessica take off, following a trail littered with coordinates, newspaper clippings, rumors, phone calls, and messages from an angel of the Lord. Standing in their way are vengeful spirits and tricksters, poltergeists and werewolves, fallen angels and premonitions, demons and family secrets.
And then there’s Azazel.
Author’s Note: I pulled out of deancasbigbang at the last second when I realized my Big Bang fic wasn’t going to be completed in time. I decided to finish it and revise it the way I wanted it to. Then it fell into revision hell and I moved fandoms. So, I’m pulling an amnesty and posting what I have so far. Who knows, maybe it’ll encourage to actually finish revising the +200k monster.
What John Winchester is feeling right now isn’t anxiety. He just barely missed running over the orange cones set up on the side of the road and crashing into the abandoned car, that’s all. With all this snow it was hard to see the wrecked sedan in the ditch, the hood and driver’s side crushed in. John wonders why nobody’s towed it yet; in this weather the car is a hazard.
He maneuvers around it and continues down the highway to Pontiac. He wishes he’s not out here driving through frozen farmland; he’d rather be back at the dry, warm motel in Chicago, looking up the next hunt with Dean while Sam reads a few books he borrowed from Jim. But when there’s a lead on the thing that killed Mary John will brave anything to find it.
The motel isn’t in the town proper but a couple minutes out at what looks like a truck stop. He pulls into the parking lot but doesn’t kill the engine; the Impala hums, warming the air inside the car, while he pulls the torn piece of paper out of his pocket and double-checks the address and room number. He then folds it up and tucks it back into his pocket, turns off the engine, and grabs the paper bag sitting next to him.
“You want him to talk? Bring Johnnie Walker Blue.”
John breathes out two clouds of steam that dissolve into the gray sky as he tucks the bottle in his coat pocket and trudges through the snow to the front door. As soon as he pushes it open hot air blasts him in the face and starts melting the white clumps on his boots.
The woman at the lobby looks at him curiously. He gives her a curt nod as he passes the desk and towards the hall of doors. Room 18. He feels the glass bottle through the paper bag, hopes Bobby’s advice will do the trick, even though Bobby hasn’t seen or heard from the man in about three years.
John stares at the gilt number on the plain door. He can’t hear anything on the other side but he does hear the family down the hall, children and wife spilling out of their room, bundled up in coats and scarves. Then the husband emerges, locks the door, and gestures towards the exit with an exaggerated sweep of his arm. They’re all smiling, faces glowing with happiness, the children bouncing off the walls and squealing over snow as their parents herd them out to the lobby.
It hurts him whenever he sees that, feels that slow yearning ache in his chest as he follows their path out the doors with his eyes. You should be here, he thinks as he turns back to the door and raises his hand to knock. We should be that family.
John raps his knuckles on the door and waits. After a moment the deadbolt slides and the door opens slowly. A chain stops it and an older black man peers out.
“Who the hell are you?”
John leans forward, notes the hard suspicious glint in the other man’s eyes as he drops his voice and asks, “Rufus Turner, right?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about-”
“Bobby sent me.”
The man frowns. “I haven’t talked with him in years. In fact, he knows why I haven’t talked with him in years. So why the hell would he send you to me?”
John sighs. Of course he shouldn’t have hoped that Rufus would let him in without question; man’s made from the same mold as Bobby. “He said you worked a case a couple of years ago and you never solved it. The kid’s name is Elaine Evans.”
It takes a long second for Rufus to make the connection between the name and the case and once it does his weatherworn face becomes a cold hard wall.
“John Winchester.”
John nods. “That’s right.”
He’s careful to maintain eye contact and an open expression. Unlike Bobby his name won’t earn him any special favors; it’s up to Rufus to decide whether to let him in or slam the door in his face. Not that it’s going to stop John from getting what he wants but he’s getting tired of leaving behind a trail of dead hunters.
“Then you know I’m retired,” Rufus says carefully.
“Semi-retired. You’re here working a case. Look.” John pulls the paper bag out of his pocket. “This won’t take long-”
“That better be Blue Label or I have nothing more to say to you.”
John allows himself a slow knowing smile; Bobby’s right after all. “It is.”
Rufus doesn’t shut the door to pull off the chain immediately; he looks away while fishing something out of his pocket. John is then handed a warm silver flask.
“Is this really necessary?”
“Do I look like an idiot?”
He thinks about Bobby shoving holy water in his face every time he swings by either to drop the boys off or poke at his growing library. John drops his eyes to the floor and sure enough, there’s a line of salt running across the length of the door.
After he hands the flask back Rufus shuts the door to pull off the chain and then reopens it. John steps over the salt line and walks into the middle of the room. While Rufus locks the door and checks the line for breaks John walks over to the coffee table; he tilts his head at the monochromatic photocopies while setting the Scotch bottle down. Despite the variations on the same scene it looks familiar but he can’t put his finger to it. He slides out a lined piece of paper from the pile and skims its contents.
“Elaine Evans died two years ago,” Rufus suddenly says somewhere behind John. “Family got into a car crash, just like the one I’m investigating.”
“What makes this one so special?” John narrows his eyes at one of the photographs; he can almost make out the crushed hood.
“Traces of sulphur all over the hood and front seat.” Papers shuffle and John glances over his shoulder to see Rufus pulling clothes and notebooks out of one of two duffel bags on the single bed. “Accident already looked suspicious; that car didn’t flip or slide off the road, and there’s no evidence of another car on the road. Include the sulphur-”
“Demons,” John finishes as he sidles around the table to look at the notes on the wall. They’re filled with names, phone numbers, and addresses; Rufus also has a map of Pontiac and the surrounding area tacked onto the wall with various spots marked in a red pen. The one that draws his attention is the small red “x” on North East Road and the words “J NOVAK” right next to it. Now he knows why the sedan is out there on the side of the road. “You need help?”
“No.”
A Polaroid photograph shows a blood-soaked driver’s seat. Too much blood, John thinks. There’s no reason for a demon to attack a potential host before possessing it and Rufus hasn’t mentioned any victims
“So what happened to the driver?”
“Vanished. Cops went looking for his body, couldn’t find it.”
“If he’s possessed-”
“Demons don’t go through all that hassle just to possess someone. They attacked the man for a reason.”
John turns his attention back to the wall. “You haven’t found any demons here. Is this recent or does the town have a history of-”
“Are you here to do my job?” Rufus asks as he sits down at the coffee table and sets down two empty glasses. He gestures to the other chair as he takes out the Scotch, twists off the cap, and starts pouring.
There’s a battered journal on the table now, sitting on top of the photocopies of the wrecked car. John stares at leather cover while Rufus lifts his glass of whiskey and drinks; his fingers curl around the glass as he thinks about what’s written in there, wondering if Elaine’s mother died the exact same way as-
“Trail went cold years ago,” Rufus says. “Never found out what killed Sheila.”
John tilts his glass of untouched whiskey towards the journal. “What can you tell me about it?”
Rufus pours himself another glass but doesn’t touch it, stares at it with an unreadable expression. He says nothing and John feels the time crawl by, starts itching to slide the journal over and flip the cover to find out for himself.
“Sheila died in a fire in her daughter’s nursery on June 12, 1983. Her husband Harold first said he found her on the ceiling, bleeding from her stomach, but later insisted he imagined it. Elaine was six months old.” Rufus gives him a sharp look. “Sounds familiar?”
Like the back of his hand and the Impala’s engine and the weight of his rifle. “Yeah, it does.”
“You think you can find what killed her, thirteen years after the fact?”
He wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night thinking about Mary. Thirteen years later he still feels the burning need to find her killer. “Yeah.”
Rufus frowns as he glances at the journal. “I’ll give you it, but with a warning - drop it. Drop this hunt. It’s only going to kill you and your sons.”
John bristles. How many times has he heard this? How many times have they told him that he’ll never find the monster that killed his Mary and tore his family apart? It’s been a while since he gave up trying to explain his grief and rage and he’s not about to do it now. It doesn’t matter anyway, he tells himself. His hunch paid off.
What happened that night in the nursery wasn’t a fluke after all.
John lifts the journal and turns it, flips the pages; everything is written in a crisp hand and every page is dated so John easily finds what he’s looking for.
“So you have no idea what killed her,” he says as he reads a near-exact description of what he saw the night Mary died. His heart sinks; there’s nothing new here, nothing he hasn’t poured over himself night after night for years. “Found no clues? Husband didn’t notice anything strange leading up to that night?”
“Everything in there is everything that I know, and it’s not much. It wouldn’t be a cold case if I had an idea.” The table shifts as Rufus leans forward. “Whatever it is you’re hunting it’s not like anything I’ve ever come across, and I’ve seen plenty in my day.”
“I don’t care how strong it is,” John says. “When I find it I’m going to kill it.”
He’s done here; he shuts the journal, contemplates the untouched whiskey, and then rises to his feet. He sweeps his eyes over the notes, photocopies, and Polaroids on the wall before turning to the door.
“How are you going to kill it?” Rufus suddenly asks.
“I’ll think of something.”
He thinks about the drive back to Chicago, hopes the boys haven’t gone completely stir crazy being holed up in the motel room for days on end while he went around looking for a temporary job, a hunt, new information. He thinks about picking up some pizza along the way or taking them to the diner down the block, thinks about spending the night perusing Rufus’s notes with a mug of coffee while Dean and Sam sleep.
“You know Elkins?”
John stops and looks over his shoulder. “Daniel? What about him?”
Rufus hesitates. He stares at the whiskey in his glass, tilts it as if to observe the amber color in the yellowed light. “Last time I saw him he was looking for a weapon.”
John frowns; Daniel’s never mentioned a weapon to him in all the years he’s known the veteran vampire specialist. “What kind of weapon?”
Rufus sits back in the chair with a shrug and picks up the glass. “Wouldn’t say. Supposedly it can kill anything.”
* * *
John pulls over the side of the road across from the cones and the abandoned sedan. He stares at it, at the layers of snow lining the road, at the black and white landscape that stretches for miles and dissolves into the gloom. He glances at the journal on the bench next to him and then sighs, leans against the window and presses his hand to his forehead.
For the first time in years John feels relieved. There is nothing like the sense of validation and knowing his persistence and hard work is finally paying off. He always knew there was something very strange about Mary’s death, even by supernatural standards, and is grateful that Rufus felt the same about Sheila’s. Now he knows to look for a pattern when he goes to the Evans house in Trenton, New Jersey.
First he has to drive in the opposite direction. Daniel’s still living at that cabin in Manning and John has a few questions for him concerning a weapon that can kill any supernatural creature.
He pops in a tape and turns up the volume; the Band accompanies him as he steers the Impala back onto North East Road and heads up to his boys in Chicago.
~* * * * *~
Jessica Moore meets him a mile out from the third Mississippi town in a month. She’s fighting soft mud and the downpour with her shovel; the sky is the overcast gray of late afternoon and she has one hour to reach the casket before she loses light. She hates digging up dead bodies in the night.
It’s her fault she’s out here, soaked through to the bone and standing ankle deep in graveyard sludge while surrounded on all four sides by solid earth. She should’ve dug deeper into the newspaper archives, should’ve asked more questions, should’ve made up better lies to get into the police department records, should’ve done this, should’ve done that, should’ve, should’ve, should’ve. The list of things she should’ve done can go on forever. If she finishes the job with a mild cough and a sore body then it’ll be a good day.
Through the thick stew of dirt and turf her shovel hits something hard. Thank god, she thinks and starts scooping mud off the casket. She steps off the lid and hammers at the latches with the shovelhead, breaking them; she then wedges the edge under the lid and pops the coffin open. The gray light reveals a body long past the bloated stage of decay and her stomach twinges in disgust. The rain smothers the stink; all she can smell is mud, mud, and more mud.
Jessica tosses the shovel up, digs the toes of her boots into the soft earth, and hauls herself out of the hole. Her hands slide over the slick grass and she almost falls back on her face; swearing she pushes herself to her feet and staggers over to her duffel bag, looks for the lighter fluid, salt, and waterproof matches.
Her hand pockets the matches and picks up the lighter fluid and salt, and that’s when she hears a voice say, “Behind you.”
She may be a rookie at research but her father taught her well; she drops flat on the ground, letting go of the lighter fluid and salt to grab the broken iron crowbar in the bag. She leaps back to her feet swinging, and Joshua Harper screams as it cuts through his chest and banishes him.
Breathing heavily and licking rainwater and iron off her lip Jessica turns around, dragging wet hair behind her ear as she looks for the voice. She’s alone in the cemetery and the clouds are turning charcoal. The sun is betting and Joshua will be back if she doesn’t burn his bones.
“What the hell,” she mutters.
Her lip throbs from where her teeth dug in when her jaw hit the lawn and she smears red on an army green sleeve. She tucks the crowbar under her arm and picks up the salt and lighter fluid.
She gets to the edge of the grave when the voice comes back, a low growl in her ear. “To your right.”
Joshua loses his head when he’s six inches from her.
Rain-slick fingers uncap the container of lighter fluid and squirt it all over the body; liberal amounts of melting salt follow it into the hole. With a quick flick of her wrist five waterproof matches light up, glows yellow-orange and defiant. She watches the trail of light down into the earth and sighs slowly when the lighter fluid ignites. The corner of her mouth curves up as the glow rises up six feet and for once something else goes right - she doesn’t have to hear Joshua’s anguish as his ghost burns up like lit tissue paper.
She hefts the crowbar in her hands as she watches the fire devour the emaciated corpse and waits until she hears footsteps; gripping the iron tightly she whirls around on the balls of her feet and swings. She doesn’t see what’s behind her but she feels the crowbar hit something solid. The violent impact travels up her arms and she nearly drops the iron. Gasping from the numbness vibrating in her hands she staggers back and feels the crowbar slide out of her hands.
“Who are you?” she demands as she clenches and unclenches her hands, unable to pull out the hunting knife tucked snuggly behind her back.
He’s a tall slender man, shoulders slumping forward and hiding his height. His pale face is grim, shaped by a blunt jaw and an aquiline nose; his eyes are bright in the damp firelight. He’s wearing a fairly creepy trench coat over a dark suit and she feels a sudden itch to straighten out his crooked tie for him. Instead she stares at his hand, which is holding her crowbar. It’s bent.
Okay, what the hell. What are you? “Who are you?” she asks again as she slowly steps to the side and away from the fire. His eyes follow her and then he slowly turns so he’s facing her. “What do you want?”
He tilts his head while his expression goes from blank to confused. “I don’t want anything.”
He speaks in a growling monotone, revealing nothing, but his eyes tell her everything. Well, everything his body doesn’t tell her.
“You’re not from around here,” she decides to say instead of “What the hell are you?”
The man shakes his head once and then steps forward, his eyes suddenly narrowing and focusing on her. The intensity and weight behind his gaze throws her off and she feels pinned down. It takes her a long moment to realize she’s not moving towards her duffel bag.
“You’re too young to hunt alone, Jessica Moore,” he says. “Go back to your family. Your mother’s been praying for you.”
So he’s a hunter. Her parents asked someone to find her and bring her back home. Annoyance flares up in her at the thought, and promptly extinguishes itself when she stumbles over the shovel. She quickly bends over to pick it up; her hands cooperate and she hefts its weight, holds it between them as she inches towards the shotgun in her bag. Her eyes never leave him.
“I’m not going,” she says.
“I’m not forcing you,” he replies.
That’s not what she expected him to say. “What? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means if you don’t want to go back home I won’t force you to,” he says and makes a point of dropping the crowbar while taking a step back.
That’s even more bizarre than her parents asking someone to go find her. Something’s off here; the warning bells won’t stop going off in her head. Jessica considers the distance between her and the strange man as she slides her feet across the ground towards the bag, and then she starts considering the man himself. He’s not at all dressed like a proper hunter - the trench coat can get caught between his legs, snag onto obstacles, and hinder his movements, and the suit is just not proper attire for getting down and dirty.
Did her parents actually hire a private investigator and bribe him to keep his mouth shut about the actual reason for her running away? This is so not like them at all.
“I do advise you to return home,” he says quietly. “As you can already guess you’re still too inexperienced to hunt alone.”
“No need to rub it in,” she mutters as she quickly lets go of the shovel with one hand to wipe the rain out of her eyes. “If you don’t make mistakes you don’t learn.”
“You won’t learn from your mistakes if you die from them,” the man replies, and she shivers at the thought. “You’ll graduate in a year; your calling can wait until then.”
“Is that what Mom told you to tell me?”
He tilts his head again, frowning. It takes him too long to speak and she knows right there and then that no, her mother didn’t send him. Her grip on the shovel tightens and she glances quickly at her bag. Her heart drops as she wonders if the shotgun will even work in this weather.
If her parents didn’t send him, then who did? If nobody sent him how did he find her? How did he know her name?
Is he even human?
Her heart starts beating heavily as fear floods her body; she swallows and adjusts her grip on the shovel again. The man hasn’t moved in all this time; he’s a little more than a silhouette in this late hour but she can still see his face in the dying firelight, can see the line of his full lips quirk upwards in an awkward smile. There’s something absolutely eerie about him.
And beautiful and terrible, her mind whispers. You’re not human.
“Mom didn’t send you,” she says instead, clamping down on the tremor in her suddenly small voice. Play it cool. Play it safe. You know how to defend yourself. Remember what Mom and Dad taught you. Be calm, Jess. Be calm.
“Jessica,” he says and she starts. “If I didn’t find you, you’d be dead. Go home.”
She presses her lips, feels her bottom lip throb in protest. She wonders if the shovel can make a dent in him. Probably not, considering the curved crowbar by his feet.
The stark reminder prompts her to say, “What are you?”
The air suddenly hums as the clouds rumble overhead; streaks of lightning snap at the earth and she flinches. The bright flashes of electric light illuminate deep shadows stretching and spreading from the man’s shoulders; they cast themselves over the trees in this overgrown corner of the cemetery and rise so high she finds herself tipping her head back to gape at them.
They’re shaped like great feathered wings.
“My name is Castiel.”
She blinks against the rain and he’s gone.
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