Part I: Beneath the Red Hills
Part I
Castiel appears at midnight, just as the remains of a San Diego housewife have started throwing sparks into the night air. One minute Sam is alone in the cemetery, gaze drifting through the churning flames, the next he’s staring at Castiel across the open gravesite.
He curses and nearly stumbles into the fire.
“Dammit, Cas. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Hello, Sam.”
It’s been five years, but Castiel’s vessel hasn’t changed. His coat wavers in the heat-bent air, and his blue eyes cut across the distance. Sam knows, even before Castiel opens his mouth to answer. He feels it in his bones, suddenly icy despite the roaring fire.
“It’s Dean. He needs your help.”
*
“Still with the trenchcoat, huh?” Sam asks.
Castiel looks down at himself, confusion and something that might be hurt knitting his eyebrows together.
“I admit I’ve become attached,” he says. “Is there something wrong with my clothing?”
“…nevermind. It’s great.”
“Unless there’s some pressing matter with my coat, we need to talk about Dean.”
“Right.” Sam takes a breath. “Sure. Do you want a beer?”
There’s a mini-fridge in his motel room, and Sam drums the top of it with nervous fingers. Castiel is looking at him like he’s grown a second head, and Sam feels only slightly less monstrous.
“Sam,” he says. “I’m well aware of the rift between you and your brother, but Dean - ”
Sam shakes his head. “How did you find me, anyway?”
“I’ve been checking on you periodically. I thought I might need to find you again someday.”
“Dean’s idea?” Sam asks sharply.
Castiel hesitates, and Sam puts up a hand. “You know what? I don’t want to know. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“He’s gone, Sam. He was calling for me, and then he just disappeared. He’s left no clues that I can decipher, and I’m afraid you’re the only one who might be able to make sense of the research he left behind.”
“I get it, I do,” Sam says desperately. “But there has to be someone else. Another hunter…Garth. Someone who knows him better someone…” Anyone but me, Sam’s brains supplies, and he shakes the vicious thought away. He clenches his left hand into a fist out of habit, feeling pain shoot across his palm. A wraith put a spike through his hand two years ago, and Sam fucked up the stitches, disoriented with poison and exhaustion. It’s never healed right. He uses the pain sometimes, to ward himself away from stupid decisions. Don’t go after a wraith alone. Don’t go home with the swaggering stranger from the bar. Don’t run back to Dean, out of habit or fear or anything else.
“I’m the last person you should be asking,” he finishes.
“Sam, he said your name. “
Sam jerks up straight, the pain from his hand forgotten. “What?”
“Right before he disappeared. It was a message, or maybe a warning. I don’t know, but I think he wanted me to come for you.”
Sam’s heart is suddenly pounding. ”Are you sure?”
“I’m not prone to mishearing,” Castiel says wryly. “I think it was a message.”
“But…” Sam tries to sort through the jumble of his thoughts. “Why now? It’s been five years - he has to have gotten himself in trouble before. What’s different this time?”
“I don’t know. I know he’s been taken by something powerful enough or knowledgeable enough to shield itself from me.” Castiel’s eyes are a penetrating blue, his shoulders slumped. He’s worried, like Castiel rarely is.
Sam looks down. Fuck, Dean. Dean doesn’t pray for help, and he doesn’t disappear without warning. Most of all, he doesn’t call for Sam. Not anymore.
Maybe it’s their training, or maybe it’s instinct, or maybe it’s been too long since he’s heard Dean’s voice. He prods at the old wound inside of him and waits for the burning anger.
There’s a dull ache instead, melting into a burgeoning panic. Dean needs help, and every cell in Sam’s body snaps to attention.
He looks back up, and Castiel is still staring at him, earnest and supplicating.
“Let me pack a bag,” he says. “And I’ll come with you.”
*
The ride on angel express is as disorienting as always. One moment he’s in his hotel room, the next the scenery has changed around him. He has the impression of great speed even though his feet don’t seem to have left the ground. He wobbles, and Castiel catches his shoulder.
Sam takes a moment to get his bearings. Dean’s motel room is plastered in dirt-and-moss motifs. The lamps are in the shape of grizzly bears with sparrows circling the shades. The peeling wallpaper is a dark plaid that coats the whole room in brown. The shag carpet looks grimy in the low lighting. Dean must hate it. Even more, he must hate having no one to make fun of it with.
The whole place smells familiar, and it takes Sam a moment to realize it’s Dean’s scent. There’s a dark spot on the carpet that’s probably gun oil and a capped bottle of whiskey sitting on the table. Dean’s dirty socks are in a heap by the bed, and it sends a ridiculous jolt of nostalgia through Sam.
There’s a second bed in the room; Sam doesn’t think Dean’s been working with a partner, but old habits are hard to break. Half the time Sam finds himself staring at an empty queen in his room with no memory of having requested it. Dean’s second bed is littered with newspaper clippings, crumpled scribblings, and haphazard books. Dean has always been shit at organizing his research.
“People have been going missing for the last month,” Castiel supplies. “I did a search, but they’re either hidden from me or gone from the area.”
“And Dean’s the latest one,” Sam says quietly.
“He prayed to me for help around eight o’ clock this evening. I came almost immediately, but he had already disappeared by the time I arrived.”
Sam shifts through a few missing person flyers. One has St. Agnes? written in Dean’s slanted script in the corner. Colin Murphy is the subject of the flyer. He looks about twelve years old, red hair, freckles, and cocky smile. He’s wearing a baseball cap. There are others as well. Joshua Harding was a middle-aged business man who went missing a month ago. Rachel Johnson was a local school teacher who went missing just before Colin. She’s blonde and pretty, and barely looks old enough to be out of college herself. Sam swallows and puts the sheaf of papers down.
“Was he in the motel when he called for you?”
Castiel shakes his head. “Very close, but not here. I had to check multiple rooms to find which one Dean was staying in.”
Sam gets an unbidden image of Castiel flickering in and out of every room, startling the neighbors. He bites down on a smile.
“You know, you could have just…” Sam pulls the curtain aside, and sure enough the Impala is parked outside the door like a foot soldier, waiting patiently.
Castiel looks abashed. “Yes, that would have worked as well.”
Sam sighs and sinks down in the chair by the window. Dean’s been missing nearly six hours. If Dean was taken, he could be two states away by now, too injured or incapacitated to call for Castiel again. It’s a long shot, but Sam pulls his phone from his back pocket and punches in Dean’s number. It’s stupid to think Dean wouldn’t have changed phones, but…
Voicemail clicks in almost immediately. It’s Dean. You know what to do.
Something tightens in Sam, a knife twist of grief. He hasn’t heard Dean’s voice in five years.
“Okay,” he says to Castiel. His voice sounds rough to his own ears. “Let’s find him.”
*
Cane Creek, North Carolina lies halfway up the western mountains. The sun is throwing pinpoints of light over the pine-studded horizon when Sam finally finishes sorting through all Dean’s paperwork. All together there are five missing residents, plus Dean. Sam can see why Dean was drawn to the case; it follows the same pattern as three other small towns up and down the eastern seaboard. All mountainous areas, all host to a series of vanishing residents. None of the victims ever found.
Before every rash of disappearances there have been reports of a minor earthquake.
“Demons,” Sam mutters. “Weird weather, people going off the map, gotta be…”
“No,” Castiel says calmly, and Sam jumps. He’d almost forgotten Castiel was there.
“Demons wouldn’t be able to hide from me. There’s something else involved.”
“Then it’s demon-related. Something working for demons, or some kind of hell-creature.”
Castiel looks troubled. “There are some creatures, very old, who have learned to shield themselves from angels and demons. But these creatures pre-date even humans, and they’re very powerful. Dragons, sea creatures, leviathan. If one of them has Dean then he’ll be very difficult to find.”
“Hold on.” Sam roots through the mess of Dean’s notes and finds what he’s looking for. “Anything that looks like this?”
Sam holds up a rough sketch of a dog on lined paper. Dean isn’t exactly Picasso, but he’s managed to create a vaguely canine-like shape in pencil, shaggy and shaded in. It has hulking shoulders and a lowered snout, and Sam shivers. He’s not sure if it’s meant to be truly frightening or if it’s just Dean’s crappy perspective work, but either way it has him thinking of hellhound claws and rancid breath, the ugly viscous blood drying on his shirt.
Castiel shakes his head slowly. “I don’t recognize it.”
There’s no explanation underneath, and no mention of a dog anywhere else in Dean’s notes. In the upper right hand of the page, Dean has scratched out a set of letters and numbers that don’t make sense in Sam’s bleary brain.
teulu 97
Sam tries to speak the syllables in his head, but he can’t fit the sounds into any language he knows.
“Maybe it’s a hellhound thing,” Sam posits tiredly. “Maybe Crowley’s behind the whole thing and he needs human sacrifice for some reason. It could have been a trap for Dean, or maybe - ” Sam cuts himself off with a yawn, eyes watering and chest expanding. He suddenly feels every minute of the last thirty hours; he’s been awake since long before Castiel came to find him in San Diego.
“Sam?” Castiel prompts.
“Yeah,” Sam responds wearily. “Hey, I know we’re sitting on a time-bomb here, but I need some sleep. I can’t pretext like this.”
Castiel’s mouth thins slightly. “I can repair your cells so that you don’t need sleep. We can’t afford to waste anymore time.”
He reaches out with two fingers, and Sam twists away.
“Uh…thanks, but I’ll pass.”
“Dean is…”
“Missing, I know. I get it. I want to find him, too. But I need some sleep, here. Human sleep.”
Castiel doesn’t look pleased, but he withdraws his hand. “How long?”
“Three, maybe four hours. Look, if you want to help, put the interview transcripts in order from newest to oldest. And find me some food and coffee. Can you do that?”
Castiel sighs. “Yes.”
“Thanks.”
He collapses out on the empty bed, right on top of the cheap, scratchy comforter. He buries his face in the pillow and tries to ignore the way it smells like Dean’s shampoo and aftershave, generic and minty. There’s a weird ache in his chest that he thought he left behind five years ago. He half-expects Dean to walk through the door any second, a shit-eating grin and miss me? riding his lips. This hotel room is as empty as the last one, and the one before that, and every one before that for the last five years.
“Wake me in four hours,” Sam says. “And Cas?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks for coming to get me.”
*
5 Years Ago
Topeka, Kansas
Sam wakes up to the steady beeping of hospital machines and the smell of antiseptic. His whole body is numb, and his head feels like it’s webbed in cotton. The room is dim and bare, the TV eerily blank above him.
Dean is propped up in the chair next to him, sleeping with his arms stiffly crossed. The skin around his eyes is puffy and dark like a bruise. Even in sleep, his mouth is pulled tight with worry. Sam tries to reach out and shake him awake, but the movement sends a twinge all up and down his arm. He has an IV stuck in the back of his hand, buried under layers of white bandages.
He’s not as numb as he thought. Spikes of pain start to emerge in his consciousness - his legs, his back, his chest, his arms. His skin is burning like a low-grade fire, feverish in the tepid room. He can’t remember how he got here. He remembers ancient floorboards, a circle of red, and the slick slip of blood.
“Dean,” he tries to say, but it’s barely a rasp.
Dean’s eyes flick open, instantly awake. He’s moving before Sam can speak again, leaning over the bed rails.
“Dude, you’re fine. I’m right here.”
Sam tries to speak again, but there’s something over his face. He claws at it, irritation and panic mingling dully in his chest.
Dean swears and grabs his wrists. There’s blood on Dean’s shirt, but Dean doesn’t look injured. Sam doesn’t think they were fighting anything, so it’s Sam’s then. All Sam’s.
“Hold it, fuck,” Dean says. “Gimme a sec.” There’s movement by Sam’s ear, and then Dean’s lifting the oxygen mask off his face. Sam struggles to sit up, and Dean pushes him back with an irritated huff.
“Take it easy, will you?” he says. He’s looking studiously elsewhere. There’s a dull dread expanding in Sam’s chest, and it has everything to do with the dark guilt in Dean’s eyes.
“What happened?” he manages. His voice is ruined, throat raw and painful.
“How do you feel?” Dean asks instead of answering, and it should be genuine concern, but it’s not. There’s something else, and Sam pushes up on his elbows. Memories are starting to leak back into him, fuzzy and feverish, but horribly real.
“The last trial. Did I…?”
“Talk about it later, okay?” Dean says, far too gentle. “Focus on yourself. You almost died, man. It’s been three days, and I….” He cuts himself off, rubbing his hands nervously against the front of his jeans.
And Sam remembers. God, he remembers. And Dean…
“Dean, what did you do?” he asks, and Dean closes his eyes.
*
Castiel brings him dark, sweet coffee in the morning, and some sort of egg sandwich that’s better than Sam expected. He puts on the least wrinkled suit he can find, strolls out into the sunshine, then stops dead in front of the Impala. It feels wrong to drive her while Dean is missing. Besides, the keys have disappeared with Dean, and if Sam breaks a window and hotwires her, he’s pretty sure that will stop any reconciliation attempt in its tracks.
Castiel touches his shoulder. “You have to,” he says gently. “I believe Dean will understand that.”
Sam takes a breath. “Right.”
He’s as gentle as he can be with the lock and the tangle of wires, but he can’t shake the image of Dean’s scowl.
It feels wrong to be in the driver’s seat, off center and upside down. Even so, sinking into the seat feels good, like a guilty pleasure Sam’s been denying himself. There are tears and blood and sweat soaked into the leather. The car is Dad and Dean and safety, roadside breakfasts and impromptu swims and shelter from wind and rain and hail. It was Sam’s only home for eighteen years. He’ll never tell Dean how much he’s missed the Impala.
Cane Creek doesn’t have a center. It has a main street, a few churches, and three schools. It’s a three-minute drive to the main drag, and two minutes further to the municipal buildings. Dean’s last interview was with the headmistress of the Sheldon P. Lafayette Middle School, so that’s where Sam starts.
The headmistress is a rod-thin woman in her fifties with sleek gray hair and sharp eyes. She barely clears five feet, and yet Sam feels very small when she levels her gaze at him.
“This is the second FBI visit this week,” she informs him. “I trust this is the last time the federal government intends to infringe on this school’s instructional time?”
“Yes. Sorry,” Sam says hastily. “Ma’am.”
“Good,” she says crisply. “Then what can I do for you?”
“I’m actually here following up for my br- partner. I think you probably met him yesterday?”
Her mouth purses distastefully. “Agent Palmer, I believe? More good looks than sense?”
Sam winces. “That would be him.”
“I didn’t care for his attitude,” she says, sparing Sam a look that says it’s somehow his fault.
“Yeah,” Sam says wearily. “I get that a lot. If you could just confirm what you told him, that would be helpful.”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t much help at all the first time,” she says. She swallows, and Sam sees the first real sign of distress in her eyes. “Rachel was young, but she was shaping up to be one of our most gifted teachers. Her students adored her. And Colin…” She clears her throat, and Sam looks down at his notebook, giving her a chance to compose herself.
“He could be…a handful. But that’s to be expected, given his situation.”
Sam raises his eyebrows. “Situation?”
“Yes. Losing his parents and sister like that. Tragic.”
Sam racks his brain, but there hadn’t been anything about Colin Murphy’s family in Dean’s notes. “And he lost them…how?” he asks, attempting to look pleasant instead of clueless.
She shakes her head. “Like I explained to Agent Palmer, I was never privy to the details. I sent him to St. Agnes. It’s the only Catholic parish in the county, and they take custody of students with no place else to go - orphans, foster children in transition, that sort of population.”
There are no transcripts from St. Agnes. Dean had never made it.
“Right,” Sam says. “St. Agnes. That was my next stop.”
The headmistress has more to say, but the rest is a rehash of Dean’s transcript. Five disappearances in the county over the last six weeks, and the last two from the middle school. Parents terrified, local cops on watch. Suspected serial killer.
And one missing brother.
The western mountains are shaded by evergreens, and the soil is red-brown that looks like dirt and blood. The drive to St. Agnes is straight uphill. Unlike the Presbyterian and Baptist churches, the Catholic parish is on the outskirts of town, hidden at the end of a dark, rocky drive. The church itself is a small, shabby building, nothing like the stone-and-stained-glass fortresses John used to take refuge in when Sam was a kid. The paint is chipped, the cross weathered and thin, and the front steps creak dangerously under Sam’s weight.
The pastor meets him at the door, alerted by the headmistress. He’s seventy years if he’s a day, slow-moving and drawn. Sam has a sudden, fierce nostalgia for Pastor Jim, for his leashed energy and endless sprawl of weaponry. Pastor Jim was bravery and faith, and the only hunter besides Dean that Sam has ever wanted to be like.
They stop in the office first. The young assistant smiles up at Sam with big green eyes and long fringed lashes, and he wishes more than anything that they didn’t remind him of Dean.
“I’m looking for records,” he says, trying to temper the brusqueness of his voice. He’s never had Dean’s ability to charm and flirt when his mind is elsewhere. “Death, birth, and residency. Whatever you have.”
She’s undaunted. “Of course,” she says, all dimples and lilting southern accent. “Anything for the FBI.”
Thank god for southern hospitality.
Sam asks for a tour while the assistant makes duplicates on their rickety old photocopier. The building doesn’t look big enough to house an orphanage, but the upper floor is made up of a narrow hallway with five rooms branching off. The one at the end of the hall leads to the choir loft, and the one closest to the stairs belongs to the pastor. The last three are for wards.
“Colin was our only resident at the moment,” the pastor says, wheezing from the slow climb up the stairs. “He came to us from Boston this past fall. In trouble a lot at school, but he’s a good boy.”
“In trouble how?” Sam probes.
The pastor sighs. “Nothing unusual for a twelve-year-old boy who just lost his family. Some defiance with his teachers. A few fights. Showing off for the girls in class instead of doing his work. He was one of the strongest hitters in the local youth league.” The pastor sounds fond, and sad, and Sam flashes back to the photo of Colin Murphy in his baseball cap.
“I see,” he says softly. Colin’s room is tiny and bare, cleared out by the local police. There are orange crime markers everywhere - his bed, the desk, the closet. One of the only things left is a framed picture on the bedside table. It’s Colin and his family, smiling and happy. Colin’s holding a giggling toddler up to the lens, and Sam realizes that must be his sister.
“Can you tell me about his family?” Sam can’t take his eyes off the photo. It’s painful, somehow, to see what Colin Murphy’s life could have been.
“Car accident,” the pastor says. “Tragic. The parents were killed instantly, and the baby girl died in the hospital later. Colin was thrown from the car and broke his collarbone. He has no other family and the Boston agencies were full, so he ended up here.”
Shit. The room is suddenly too small, Colin’s bright smile too vivid. Sam presses shaking hands against his thighs to steady them. Whatever took Dean has no mercy, for kids or orphans or lost souls.
The pastor puts a wizened hand on his shoulder. “Come on,” he says, and Sam can hear the sympathy there. “I’ll show you the rest of the parish.”
Sam pockets the photo on the way out the door.
The pastor likes to talk as much as most old men. In a voice like rustling paper, he gives Sam the history of the place. “St. Agnes is the first Catholic church in the county, and the last one standing,” he says proudly. “Most priests get moved around nowadays, but I’ve been pastor here for forty years.”
“Wow,” Sam says, suitably impressed. “You must know everything about this town, then.”
The pastor’s mouth turns upward. “Almost.”
“The other victims, then. Did you know any of them?”
The pastor gives him a strange look. “They didn’t tell you at the school?”
Sam narrows his eyes. “Tell me what?”
“Rachel Johnson was a ward of St. Agnes. She grew up right here, in the same room as Colin.”
*
Castiel is waiting for him by the car, trenchcoat blaringly conspicuous in the humid Carolina sun. Sam gives him a tight-lipped look, then gets in the car. His hair is sticking to the back of his neck, and the Impala’s air conditioner is primitive at best. The Impala may be home, but his Hyundai had climate control.
“Local library,” he says. “I might have found something.”
The library is surprisingly modern, small but bustling. He finds his way to the reference section with the ease of experience. He takes over one broad table with Dean’s scattered research and his own notes and files from the day. Castiel watches with a furrowed brow.
It takes over an hour to make his way through the church records, which date back to the early 1800’s. There are descriptions of several exorcisms, but none that would have left an unfriendly spirit behind. There are no murders on file, no mysterious deaths, no signs of a haunting. Moreover, there’s nothing to connect the other victims to St. Agnes. One of them was an active Presbyterian, and the rest showed no church affiliation at all.
Sam sits back, frustrated. “I don’t get it,” he says. “They’re all different ages, have different jobs, different religions, come from different parts of the country… What am I missing?”
“Perhaps it has nothing to do with the victims. Perhaps it’s coincidence.”
“That’s the thing. As far as I can tell, Colin Murphy never even stepped inside the same grocery store as the others. One was visiting from out of town and had never been anyplace outside his friend’s house and the local Gas ‘n Sip. There’s no common place, no common activity…nothing.”
Sam looks at his watch, just as his stomach rumbles. It’s four in the afternoon, and he has nothing to show for the day. Dean has been missing for almost twenty-four hours.
They drive back to the motel in silence. Sam doesn’t want to listen to whatever mullet rock Dean has in the tape deck, and he left his iPod in the dock of his car back in San Diego. Castiel is a welcome presence next to him, but angels in general kind of suck at small talk. Dean’s running commentary used to drive Sam crazy, but it feels wrong to be in the Impala without it. The silence is too big to fill up with voices or music or talk radio.
He needs food, and more coffee, but what he wants is sleep. He wants to close his eyes and wake up to find that this is a dream, and that Dean hasn’t disappeared, and that Sam’s still on the San Diego coast, listening to the waves as a body burns to ash below him.
Better yet, he wants to wake and find that it’s five years ago, and he and Dean aren’t fractured yet. He wants to pretend that something could have gone differently, that there was a path to choose that didn’t lead them to this point.
Not even Sam’s that delusional.
He sighs and pushes the door open, and just then, something flares in his peripheral vision. He freezes, then moves his head carefully back the way it was. Something reflects off the mirror, like a coin in the sun. It’s half-hidden by one of the boulders on the outskirts of the parking lot, but Sam can see it all the time. There’s something metal there, reflecting in the afternoon light.
It’s probably a soda can, or a penny, or a shard of glass. But his nerves are pinging, and he moves slowly, keeping his eyes on the patchy soil behind him.
“Hold on,” he says to Castiel, and Castiel waits, head cocked.
Sam treads carefully, gun drawn. He can see it now, lying at the base of the rock, black plastic and flat glass screen, gleaming in the sun’s rays.
A burn phone, plastic and anonymous, shining like a beacon in the sunlight.
He swallows, the bends down to pick it up. It’s hot to the touch, and it doesn’t turn on when Sam presses the power button.
“What is it?” Castiel asks from directly behind him, and Sam jumps.
“It’s, uh…” he clears his throat. “I think it’s Dean’s. He must have dropped it here. This must be where it…got him.”
It takes Sam a while to find Dean’s charger in his duffel. The bag smells like Dean - dirty socks and all - and Sam has to zip it up once he’s done. He can’t let himself think of Dean when he has to save Dean. It makes panic rise up in him, and he can’t afford it; he needs a clear head.
He sorts through Dean’s notes again while the phone is charging. His eyes keep returning to the sketch of the dog, and the strange word in the corner.
“Ninety-seven,” Sam murmurs. Could be a year, or an address, or a….
“Page number,” he says out loud. Castiel looks up.
“Page ninety-seven. Cas, I need your help.”
Sam’s barely made it to the second book before Castiel finds it. It’s in a book Sam recognizes from long nights browsing the library in Kansas. He’s been cautious about returning to the Men of Letters headquarters in the last five years, but he’s gone once or twice when he was stuck on a case. He guesses Dean must have as well. He’s not sure if he’s disappointed or relieved that they never ran into each other.
“Here it is,” he says excitedly. There’s an outline of a dog, wild black fur and fierce, glowing eyes. It’s snout is tipped red what Sam guesses is blood, and underneath the sketch is an inscription.
Cadw teulu ger. Nothing else.
Sam snaps his fingers. “Cas, can you recognize this? What language is this?”
Castiel glances at it. “I’m hardly a language specialist, but I believe it’s Welsh. ‘Keep family near.’”
Everything clicks into place, and Sam lets out a breath. “Family. I’m such an idiot.” He opens his laptop. A brief google search on each victim reveals what Sam knew the moment Castiel said the word family.
“Every one of them, alone. Dead parents, no siblings, no family to speak of. Rachel and Colin were orphaned young, but the rest of them lost their families to natural causes later in life. Cas, this thing is going after people without relatives. But then…” Sam shakes his head. “Why Dean? Dean has me.”
Castiel’s blue gaze is very gentle. “Perhaps Dean didn’t realize that.”
Shit. Pain shoots up Sam’s arm, and he realizes he’s clenched his fingers so hard around the book cover that his knuckles have turned white. He slowly, deliberately relaxes, joints aching. Dean had figured it out. It’s why he had called for Sam, and Sam had been nowhere to be found. Again.
“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay. If we’re going to get him, we need to figure out what this is and how to kill it. I need to get to Lebanon and into the library. Can you bring us there?”
Castiel’s hand is already moving toward Sam’s forehead. A touch and the world shifts around him.
*
Five Years Ago
Warsaw, Missouri
“Cleansing?” Dean asks. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Look, I don’t know. I’m just letting you know what the tablet says. ‘For the final trial, a cleansing must be undertaken.’ It’s like confession, I think. There’s a ritual.”
Kevin looks terrible, unshaven and exhausted. He blinks at them, dull-eyed and defiant. Sam would have pity, but he’s pretty sure he feels even worse. There’s a pit of apprehension in his stomach, and every breath is a marathon effort. Dean’s face is shuttered all the time now, angry and stone-faced when he looks at Sam, tired and worried when he looks away.
Sam coughed for five minutes straight this morning and had to be helped to the bathroom. He’s having trouble staying upright in the flimsy kitchen chair, and if he stares at a fixed spot for too long, the world goes gray around him. He’s ready to end this, whatever the price may be.
“What do we have to do?” he asks. His tongue feels too big for the words, too slow and clumsy.
Kevin shoves a piece of paper into his hands, and Sam studies it. There’s a diagram - a circle filled with unfamiliar sigils, and an Enochian prayer underneath.
“You make the symbol and sit in the middle of it. You say the prayer, and then…God cleanses you, I guess.”
“Of what?”
Kevin shrugs. “Whatever you need to be cleansed of.”
“That’s a pretty long list,” Dean says, and Sam glares at him. Dean holds up his hands in surrender. “For both of us,” he amends.
“Okay,” Sam says. “Tell us about the ritual.”
Part II | Masterpost