Gwaith i Innas Lain: Quenta Ambarmetto 5/10
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Chapter 4
Cartago Delenda Est
By the time Dean was finally able to stay awake for more than two minutes, Pastor Gideon and Rufus had turned up to check on Bobby and the boys and to give an update on the aftermath of the battle. Rufus had had to do a lot of fast talking when Baltimore PD showed up, but they managed to pass it off as a pilgrimage that had gone south when a pack of rabid wolves attacked. Thranduil and his Elves had made short work of the slain, and the Orcs and spiders never came to the attention of the police-but several people from Sacrament Lutheran had died, and quite a few more were severely injured.
“Don’t blame yourself, Dean,” Pastor Gideon said at Dean’s crestfallen look. “We all knew the risks, and we volunteered to be there. At the risk of sounding prideful, I don’t think you could have done it without us.”
Dean sighed. “No, we couldn’t. Don’t mean I feel better about losin’ people.”
“Don’t mean you have to take the blame, either,” Rufus countered. “Lilith chose to fight. Ain’t your fault. And it ain’t like you came out unscathed,” he added, looking meaningfully at the bed that Dean was still too fatigued to leave except for biological necessity-and even then only with Sam’s help.
Dean grimaced and nodded. “Thanks. Both of you.”
They said their farewells and left... but Dean was asleep again before the door closed.
The next several months were surprisingly quiet, apart from a handful of clashes with Pallando and Zachariah and a final attempted solicitation from someone called Crowley, whom Rinc identified as Lilith’s second in command. Even the usual kinds of hunts were few and far between, and Sam didn’t have more than brief flashes of vision that he could recognize as such. The Winchesters thus spent most of their time in Sioux Falls, helping Bobby adjust to life in a wheelchair after he emphatically refused to let Dean try again, even when he’d finally recovered his full strength (which took the better part of a week, to Sam’s dismay). If Bobby got too grumpy or just needed some space, the brothers would stay with Ellen or Maglor, but they tried to be nearby whenever he needed help.
It was both the least they could do for their foster-father and the most they could do to keep themselves occupied while waiting for news of Team Destiny.
But on Veteran’s Day, Ash came to the team with a stack of Internet printouts. “Omens are kickin’ up around Carthage,” he reported grimly. “I’d guess Lilith’s aimin’ for the new moon, the 16th.”
Maglor nodded thoughtfully. “Isil’s light is still sacred; sorcerers might employ its power for some spells, but for a spell strong enough to breach the Walls of the World....”
“The darkness of the new moon would be necessary,” agreed Cas, who was grounded while recovering from wounds sustained during his last run-in with Team Destiny. “Lilith might even seek to veil the stars, though I don’t know if she could succeed.”
Sam took the printouts from Ash and started flipping through them. “Something like this calls for an all-out offensive. Hordes of demons, maybe hellhounds, maybe worse. Think we ought to call Pastor Gideon, Dean?”
“No,” Dean replied. “Even if they’ve recovered from St. Mary’s, Lilith’s got them tagged, and so has the media. They’d attract too much attention this time. We need to make like his namesake and take a small group-harder to track, easier to keep alive, easier to pull out if things go sideways.” He sighed. “Five days. Five hundred miles, need a full day for travel, means we’ve got until Sunday to arm up. Who all’s going-you, me, Maglor, Cas, Ellen, Jo....”
“I’ll stay here, help Bobby,” Ash offered.
“You would.” But there was no heat behind Dean’s statement.
“I don’t need a babysitter, Ash,” Bobby grumbled.
Cas sighed. “The car seats only six. I will ask Rincaro to meet us there.”
Dean nodded. “Seven of us, probably seven of them. Makes sense.”
Sam blinked. “Seven?”
“Lilith, Alatar, Pallando, Zach, Meg, Ruby, and Crowley. Our inner circle against theirs.”
Ash started whistling the theme from The Magnificent Seven. Dean rolled his eyes.
“Did you ever visit Carthage, Maglor?” Jo asked.
“Which one?” the Elf returned wryly.
“The old one-Aeneas and Dido.”
Maglor nodded. “Yes, I remember Carthage in its splendor. And I remember, too, what Cato said of it.”
“What’s that?”
“Cartago delenda est.”
The humans exchanged an uncomfortable look at that.
Thranduil, who had been off hunting Orcs since St. Mary’s, sent word the next day that the corporeal monsters all seemed to be heading toward Detroit. Jo wondered aloud at the change in tactics.
“Well, think about it,” Sam replied. “Spiders, Orcs, and Wargs aren’t going to contribute much to the power of a spell unless there’s a certain amount of blood that has to be spilled, and demons and hellhounds can even do that. But from a tactical perspective, Carthage is kind of in the middle of nowhere-not a major industrial center, not a seat of power, anything. Detroit’s got factories that the Orcs can convert for making weapons, and it’s already kind of an urban wasteland. It’s a perfect place to rebuild Hell on Earth.”
Dean nodded. “So Lilith sends the Orcs to prep Angband 2.0 while the demons congregate in Carthage.”
“Exactly.”
“So why did she have the Orcs attack in Ilchester?” Jo pressed.
“She may have suspected that the convent would be held against her,” Maglor noted. “And she could not simply abandon it without a fight; there had already been a connection to the Void opened there once. The spell may gain power from the blood already spilled in the Battle of Carthage, but it will likely take far more work to harness that power for Lilith’s purpose.”
“Not only that,” Sam continued, “but Ilchester’s right on the outskirts of Baltimore. If she’d gotten in, then having the monster army right there would mean Morgoth could take advantage of the chaos from his arrival and take control of the city before anyone could react.”
“But he can’t use brute force to his advantage in Carthage,” Dean added. “I mean, from Baltimore, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to DC, and once he had that, he could-presumably-unleash our nukes and subdue the whole world in a matter of days. What’s he gonna invade from Carthage... Kansas City?”
“They got some crazy-lookin’ women there,” Maglor deadpanned.
Dean howled and Jo booed. Cas just looked confused.
Ellen sighed. “Well, clearly we can’t take on however many thousands of demons there’ll be with just seven of us. But I guess we oughta at least stock up on salt rounds.”
“Four humans, two Maiar, and an Elf, Mom,” Jo returned. “Think positive.”
“And it’s not like we need to take ’em all out,” Sam agreed. “Like Dean said yesterday, all we need to take out is the inner circle.”
“That’s all?” Bobby asked dryly.
Dean suddenly sighed heavily. “I dunno, guys. I got a bad feelin’ about this.”
Packing box after box of shotgun shells with rock salt over the next three days did nothing to improve Dean’s sense of foreboding, not even when Rinc turned up to help. But it did succeed in lifting his mood from grim determination to something closer to his usual pre-hunt humor by Saturday evening. Sam was seeing to dinner for a change by the time Dean finished with the shells and Ellen and Jo finished cleaning and loading everyone’s guns, so Dean went into the kitchen and snitched a bite.
Sam huffed but didn’t call him on it. “What time are we leaving tomorrow?”
“It’s a seven- to eight-hour drive,” Dean observed. “We ought to leave as early as possible-first light, maybe earlier.”
“Gonna go ahead and load the car tonight?”
“Yeah, might as well.”
“Need my help?”
“Nah, I’ll get it.” Dean snitched another bite and winked at Sam’s annoyed face before going back to the study and gathering up the ammo boxes.
Just as he tucked the top of his armload of boxes under his chin, Maglor, Cas, and Rinc walked in. They exchanged a look, and Maglor started gathering guns.
Dean blinked. “Um....”
“Ah, let us help,” Rinc said with a shrug and followed Maglor’s lead. “It’ll save you some time.”
Cas gently took the ammo boxes from Dean. “You will need your hands free to open the trunk,” he noted.
Dean blinked again, then smiled gratefully. “Thanks, guys.” He gathered a few more supplies that he could carry with one hand, then led the others out to the Impala.
While Dean unlocked the trunk, however, Maglor scanned the sky, frowned, and murmured something to himself in Sindarin.
Dean turned to him. “What was that?”
“Eärendil Gil-Estel-he should be there.” Maglor pointed to a spot in the sky that, when Dean looked at it, was conspicuously vacant. “Never before has the Mariner failed in his rising and setting. He might wander, and for great events his course might be diverted, but....”
Rinc looked and cursed quietly. “You’re right, Maglor. He’s not up there at all. And there’s only one reason Manwë would ground him.”
“Was he not recalled during the Breaking of the World?” Cas frowned.
Rinc shook his head. “Technically, no. Happened in the middle of the day; he was already home.”
“What are you tryin’ to say, Rinc?” Dean demanded.
“That there’s a better-than-even chance this won’t work,” replied the Trickster with a glare. “At least, that’s what Manwë’s thinking.”
“Oh, so what, we’re just supposed to give up, let Morgoth walk in unopposed?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Cas looked at the blank patch of sky again for a moment and then shook his head. “No, brother, this is not Lord Manwë’s doing. Eärendil guards the Door of Night; Lord Manwë would not relax that guard. I fear Lilith’s forces have engaged him in another part of the sky.”
“Whatever the reason,” Maglor said firmly, “it is an ill omen. But Dean has the right of it-we must not be deterred, even by certain death. Failing to act now would be unconscionable.”
“’Long as I get to put a slug between Zach’s eyes and wipe that smug smile off his Valar-cursed face, I’ll die happy,” Dean grumbled and started stuffing supplies into the Impala’s trunk.
The temptation to have a last-night-on-earth blowout was strong, but everybody knew they had to be up early the next morning. So Sam and Dean had only a couple of beers each; Ellen stopped short of letting Cas drink her under completely under the table when Rinc suggested that the former bar owner teach his naïve little brother how to do shots; and the only last-night-on-earth comment to be made was by Cas while they took a group photo with Bobby’s camera. Dean didn’t even hit on Jo, reasoning that Lisa might still give him what for if they didn’t die. The humans all went to bed at a reasonable hour for hunters, and after a good breakfast-cooked by Ash, of all people-the Winchesters and Harvelles piled into the Impala with Maglor and Cas and were on the road by 6:30. They stopped for lunch in Kansas City and got to Carthage a little after 2:30, which left them three hours to check out the town before sundown.
But the town was strangely quiet, and Rinc wasn’t at the rendezvous point when they arrived. Something else, according to Maglor, was.
“Castiel?” he asked quietly. “Do you see....”
“Reapers,” Castiel replied with a nod. “Hundreds of them. They only gather like this at times of great catastrophe. Excuse me, I should find out why they are here.” And he vanished.
Dean frowned. “You can see Reapers?”
“Not as with sight,” Maglor replied... and shivered.
Dean’s sense of foreboding trebled at the sight of someone so ancient looking so disturbed. And it wasn’t like Rinc to be this late. So Dean checked his cell phone, couldn’t get a signal, and switched to the handheld radio Ash had insisted he carry just in case. “KC5 Fox Delta Oscar, come in.”
“KC5 Fox Delta Oscar, go ahead,” came Bobby’s reply.
“Bobby, please tell me Rinc is with you.”
“Wish I could, son.”
Dean cursed.
“What’s goin’ on?”
“Cas and Maglor say there’s Reapers everywhere-and it looks like the whole town’s dead. No sign of human life anywhere that we’ve seen yet.”
Bobby cursed in what sounded like Japanese. “Omens are headed off the charts. Y’all be careful.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Dean clipped the radio back on his belt with another quiet curse.
“Should Cas have been gone this long?” Sam asked, visibly worried.
“Probably not. If somethin’ snagged Rinc, they’ve probably got Cas, too.” Dean sighed. “Do we split up or not?”
“Be faster if we did,” Ellen replied. “You boys go that way. We’ll head back the way we came into town. Rendezvous at the battlefield, if we don’t meet up before.”
Dean nodded, and the hunters split up on foot.
The sun had almost set by the time Sam, Dean, and Maglor headed back toward the Impala, having found neither Cas nor Rinc nor anyone else. They were still a mile or so from the car, with Dean walking down the middle of the street while Sam watched the left side and Maglor the right, when a female figure suddenly appeared in the middle of the street in front of them and said, “Howdy, boys.”
“Meg,” growled Sam.
Meg chuckled. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
“Could say the same about you,” Dean returned and drew Maeglach.
“Didn’t come alone, Deano.”
And a chorus of growls and barks rose from an unseen source.
“Hellhounds,” Dean surmised, trying to quash his sense that something really bad was about to happen.
“Yeah!” Meg grinned. “C’mon, boys, my father’s on his way. He’ll want to meet you.”
Sam shook his head. “I think we’ll pass, thanks.”
“Your choice. You can make this easy or really, really hard.”
“When have you known us to ever make anything easy?” Dean retorted and shot the hound closest to Meg, which had given away its position by stepping in a puddle.
“Run!” Sam yelled, and they did so, though Dean kept looking over his shoulder and shooting those hounds he could spot. He’d killed three more by the time he realized that he had one shot left and couldn’t reload Maeglach on the run.
And then he heard a sound that he would never in a million years have expected to hear, one that chilled him to the bone.
Maglor screamed.
Dean spun and managed to shoot the hellhound that was attacking Maglor just as Sam grabbed Maglor’s arm and hauled him toward a hardware store that was close behind them. Then Dean switched to his shotgun and fired round after round of salt at the hounds to cover the retreat as he backed toward the store. When he got inside, Maglor was leaning heavily against the counter, clutching his sides, and Sam was running back to the door with bags of salt. Together, the brothers got the doors salted and chained shut.
Dean caught his breath and handed the shotgun to Sam, then dumped the empty brass out of Maeglach and used a quick loader to reload it. “You all right over there, Maglor?”
He was answered by the thud and groan of Maglor collapsing.
The brothers were at the Elf’s side instantly. Maglor was ashen-faced, and a frightening amount of blood was soaking into the right side of his shredded shirt.
“Stars, Maglor,” said Dean, “I’m so sorry. Here, let me....” He reached over to examine the wound.
Maglor caught his hand. “Spare your strength, mellon-nin,” he said weakly. “I am slain.”
Dean froze. “No. I can’t-I won’t-”
“Dean. This hroa will not last much longer. I shall, I hope, be granted another in the West. But there is one final way I can aid you ere I depart. Build a bomb of salt and iron, and I shall trigger it to destroy the hellhounds.”
“No. No, there’s... there’s gotta be another way, somethin’ we can do....”
Maglor shook his head. “Only Estë herself could heal these wounds. And I am weary-you cannot imagine what it has been like to live alone with the knowledge of my folly these twelve thousand years.”
“He’s right, Dean,” Sam said sadly. “We’ve gotta do something about those hellhounds, or we’ll never get out of here in one piece.”
Dean ran a hand over his nose and mouth to try to pull himself together. “Yeah. Okay.”
Quickly they found towels and Ace wraps to make a pressure bandage. Then they built a bomb out of the materials in the store, and it was Dean who pressed the trigger into Maglor’s hand, noting the long-faded burn scars from the Silmaril that the hellhounds’ poisoned bite had made livid once more. Sam stood behind him, radiating sorrow.
Dean bit his lip and tried to think of something, anything, to say that would be adequate. “Hey, um....”
Maglor smiled wanly. “Dean. You need not speak. Nor you, Sam. I shall see you again in Eldamar.”
And Dean had a sudden flash of vision-himself and Sam, Cas and Bobby and all the rest of Team Free Will, on the deck of an old-school ship as it docked in a harbor full of white buildings that gleamed in the sun, and Maglor there on the quay in the middle of a group of Elves who’d turned out to welcome them-and nodded, oddly heartened. “Yeah. Yeah, and soon.”
“What do we do about letting the hellhounds in?” Sam asked.
“Unchain the doors ere you leave,” Maglor replied. “I shall order the salt away from them once you are out.”
Dean blinked. “You can do that?”
Maglor chuckled. “I am a prince of the Noldor. My command of the elements is... stronger than most.”
Dean quirked a wry smile and stood, nodding at Sam. Together they unchained the doors before going back to Maglor and crouching on either side of him.
“That’s it,” Dean told him. “Give us two minutes to get out.”
Maglor nodded. “Good hunting, my friends. Írë lúmë tuluva.”
“’Til Eldamar,” Dean nodded back, squeezing Maglor’s shoulder.
“Namárië,” Sam breathed, squeezing his other shoulder.
They were rewarded with the barest ghost of Maglor’s usual smile. “Go quickly.”
The Winchesters stood and ran to the building’s second floor, out across the roof to a fire escape, and down the alley, only the echo of the hellhounds’ baying following them. And exactly two minutes after they left Maglor’s side, the hardware store exploded.
They paused briefly to watch the fire, then swallowed their heartache and raced back to the Impala.
It took until well after dark, but Ellen and Jo finally found the building where Lilith and Alatar had trapped Cas and Rinc in what looked like a circle of fire. Alatar was in the middle of a monologue about how the other Maiar should give up and join Morgoth, so the women hid and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Finally, though, the demon and the Istar cleared out, reasoning that the trap would suffice to hold their captives. No sooner had Lilith teleported away with Alatar than Ellen and Jo emerged from their hiding place, checked that Cas and Rinc were okay, and went in search of fire extinguishers.
No sooner had they put a break in the fire, however, than Rinc dragged Cas out of it and said, “We gotta get out of here now.”
The Harvelles dropped their fire extinguishers, and Rinc snapped his fingers.
They found themselves at the battlefield, which was littered with fresh corpses, just in time to see Lilith fall with Dagnir-en-Raughoth sticking out of her chest while Ruby fell beside her, burning from the inside out, as Dean stepped out of the shadows with Maeglach blazing. At the first report, Crowley and Meg vanished, but the second shot brought down Pallando and the third felled Alatar. Dean rounded on Zachariah while Sam swiftly retrieved Dagnir-en-Raughoth and turned to break Lilith’s altar.
But alas, the damage was already done. Even as Dean shot Zachariah squarely between the eyes, the ground began to shake as Lilith’s spell opened the breach between Arda and the Void. Cas and Rinc flew everyone (including the Impala) back to Sioux Falls before Morgoth actually came through, but they hadn’t been back at Bobby’s three minutes when the shockwave reached them and knocked humans, Maiar, and half of Bobby’s books onto the floor.
“Stay down!” Bobby cautioned, and everyone obeyed. Sure enough, a minute and a half later, the secondary shock came through and knocked down even more books, killing the power before it faded.
The fact that the explosion was felt that strongly over five hundred miles away was... disturbing.
While Rinc snapped the room back into a semblance of order and Cas and Ellen helped Bobby back into bed, Sam got a fire going, Dean and Jo rounded up candles and hurricane lanterns, and Ash scrambled for a battery-powered radio and finally managed to pick up an emergency shortwave station. And what they heard sent Ellen and Jo back to the kitchen for Bobby’s emergency stash of Wild Turkey.
Devastating earthquakes throughout the Midwest, others likely to be triggered elsewhere, and fears that the Yellowstone Caldera was significantly destabilized and might finally erupt, especially given one massive quake northwest of Laramie that had destroyed a group of historic private rail lines. The electronic infrastructure of the whole United States destroyed. Power out across the country and into Canada and Mexico. Sudden disappearances, on the order of two billion people worldwide. Sudden appearances of wolves and what were variously described as demons, zombies, and Orcs, as well as unconfirmed reports of giant spiders and dragons. The news just kept getting worse, and even though all of the hunters were headed toward being well and truly drunk by the time Ash switched off the radio, the whisky wasn’t helping.
They’d failed.
Finally, Dean startled everyone by jumping to his feet and throwing his glass against the back of the fireplace with all his might. He watched it shatter, watched the flames leap as the alcohol hit them, then turned to Cas, eyes blazing.
“How do we find the Straight Road?”
Glossary | Next
Chapter 4
Cartago Delenda Est
By the time Dean was finally able to stay awake for more than two minutes, Pastor Gideon and Rufus had turned up to check on Bobby and the boys and to give an update on the aftermath of the battle. Rufus had had to do a lot of fast talking when Baltimore PD showed up, but they managed to pass it off as a pilgrimage that had gone south when a pack of rabid wolves attacked. Thranduil and his Elves had made short work of the slain, and the Orcs and spiders never came to the attention of the police-but several people from Sacrament Lutheran had died, and quite a few more were severely injured.
“Don’t blame yourself, Dean,” Pastor Gideon said at Dean’s crestfallen look. “We all knew the risks, and we volunteered to be there. At the risk of sounding prideful, I don’t think you could have done it without us.”
Dean sighed. “No, we couldn’t. Don’t mean I feel better about losin’ people.”
“Don’t mean you have to take the blame, either,” Rufus countered. “Lilith chose to fight. Ain’t your fault. And it ain’t like you came out unscathed,” he added, looking meaningfully at the bed that Dean was still too fatigued to leave except for biological necessity-and even then only with Sam’s help.
Dean grimaced and nodded. “Thanks. Both of you.”
They said their farewells and left... but Dean was asleep again before the door closed.
The next several months were surprisingly quiet, apart from a handful of clashes with Pallando and Zachariah and a final attempted solicitation from someone called Crowley, whom Rinc identified as Lilith’s second in command. Even the usual kinds of hunts were few and far between, and Sam didn’t have more than brief flashes of vision that he could recognize as such. The Winchesters thus spent most of their time in Sioux Falls, helping Bobby adjust to life in a wheelchair after he emphatically refused to let Dean try again, even when he’d finally recovered his full strength (which took the better part of a week, to Sam’s dismay). If Bobby got too grumpy or just needed some space, the brothers would stay with Ellen or Maglor, but they tried to be nearby whenever he needed help.
It was both the least they could do for their foster-father and the most they could do to keep themselves occupied while waiting for news of Team Destiny.
But on Veteran’s Day, Ash came to the team with a stack of Internet printouts. “Omens are kickin’ up around Carthage,” he reported grimly. “I’d guess Lilith’s aimin’ for the new moon, the 16th.”
Maglor nodded thoughtfully. “Isil’s light is still sacred; sorcerers might employ its power for some spells, but for a spell strong enough to breach the Walls of the World....”
“The darkness of the new moon would be necessary,” agreed Cas, who was grounded while recovering from wounds sustained during his last run-in with Team Destiny. “Lilith might even seek to veil the stars, though I don’t know if she could succeed.”
Sam took the printouts from Ash and started flipping through them. “Something like this calls for an all-out offensive. Hordes of demons, maybe hellhounds, maybe worse. Think we ought to call Pastor Gideon, Dean?”
“No,” Dean replied. “Even if they’ve recovered from St. Mary’s, Lilith’s got them tagged, and so has the media. They’d attract too much attention this time. We need to make like his namesake and take a small group-harder to track, easier to keep alive, easier to pull out if things go sideways.” He sighed. “Five days. Five hundred miles, need a full day for travel, means we’ve got until Sunday to arm up. Who all’s going-you, me, Maglor, Cas, Ellen, Jo....”
“I’ll stay here, help Bobby,” Ash offered.
“You would.” But there was no heat behind Dean’s statement.
“I don’t need a babysitter, Ash,” Bobby grumbled.
Cas sighed. “The car seats only six. I will ask Rincaro to meet us there.”
Dean nodded. “Seven of us, probably seven of them. Makes sense.”
Sam blinked. “Seven?”
“Lilith, Alatar, Pallando, Zach, Meg, Ruby, and Crowley. Our inner circle against theirs.”
Ash started whistling the theme from The Magnificent Seven. Dean rolled his eyes.
“Did you ever visit Carthage, Maglor?” Jo asked.
“Which one?” the Elf returned wryly.
“The old one-Aeneas and Dido.”
Maglor nodded. “Yes, I remember Carthage in its splendor. And I remember, too, what Cato said of it.”
“What’s that?”
“Cartago delenda est.”
The humans exchanged an uncomfortable look at that.
Thranduil, who had been off hunting Orcs since St. Mary’s, sent word the next day that the corporeal monsters all seemed to be heading toward Detroit. Jo wondered aloud at the change in tactics.
“Well, think about it,” Sam replied. “Spiders, Orcs, and Wargs aren’t going to contribute much to the power of a spell unless there’s a certain amount of blood that has to be spilled, and demons and hellhounds can even do that. But from a tactical perspective, Carthage is kind of in the middle of nowhere-not a major industrial center, not a seat of power, anything. Detroit’s got factories that the Orcs can convert for making weapons, and it’s already kind of an urban wasteland. It’s a perfect place to rebuild Hell on Earth.”
Dean nodded. “So Lilith sends the Orcs to prep Angband 2.0 while the demons congregate in Carthage.”
“Exactly.”
“So why did she have the Orcs attack in Ilchester?” Jo pressed.
“She may have suspected that the convent would be held against her,” Maglor noted. “And she could not simply abandon it without a fight; there had already been a connection to the Void opened there once. The spell may gain power from the blood already spilled in the Battle of Carthage, but it will likely take far more work to harness that power for Lilith’s purpose.”
“Not only that,” Sam continued, “but Ilchester’s right on the outskirts of Baltimore. If she’d gotten in, then having the monster army right there would mean Morgoth could take advantage of the chaos from his arrival and take control of the city before anyone could react.”
“But he can’t use brute force to his advantage in Carthage,” Dean added. “I mean, from Baltimore, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to DC, and once he had that, he could-presumably-unleash our nukes and subdue the whole world in a matter of days. What’s he gonna invade from Carthage... Kansas City?”
“They got some crazy-lookin’ women there,” Maglor deadpanned.
Dean howled and Jo booed. Cas just looked confused.
Ellen sighed. “Well, clearly we can’t take on however many thousands of demons there’ll be with just seven of us. But I guess we oughta at least stock up on salt rounds.”
“Four humans, two Maiar, and an Elf, Mom,” Jo returned. “Think positive.”
“And it’s not like we need to take ’em all out,” Sam agreed. “Like Dean said yesterday, all we need to take out is the inner circle.”
“That’s all?” Bobby asked dryly.
Dean suddenly sighed heavily. “I dunno, guys. I got a bad feelin’ about this.”
Packing box after box of shotgun shells with rock salt over the next three days did nothing to improve Dean’s sense of foreboding, not even when Rinc turned up to help. But it did succeed in lifting his mood from grim determination to something closer to his usual pre-hunt humor by Saturday evening. Sam was seeing to dinner for a change by the time Dean finished with the shells and Ellen and Jo finished cleaning and loading everyone’s guns, so Dean went into the kitchen and snitched a bite.
Sam huffed but didn’t call him on it. “What time are we leaving tomorrow?”
“It’s a seven- to eight-hour drive,” Dean observed. “We ought to leave as early as possible-first light, maybe earlier.”
“Gonna go ahead and load the car tonight?”
“Yeah, might as well.”
“Need my help?”
“Nah, I’ll get it.” Dean snitched another bite and winked at Sam’s annoyed face before going back to the study and gathering up the ammo boxes.
Just as he tucked the top of his armload of boxes under his chin, Maglor, Cas, and Rinc walked in. They exchanged a look, and Maglor started gathering guns.
Dean blinked. “Um....”
“Ah, let us help,” Rinc said with a shrug and followed Maglor’s lead. “It’ll save you some time.”
Cas gently took the ammo boxes from Dean. “You will need your hands free to open the trunk,” he noted.
Dean blinked again, then smiled gratefully. “Thanks, guys.” He gathered a few more supplies that he could carry with one hand, then led the others out to the Impala.
While Dean unlocked the trunk, however, Maglor scanned the sky, frowned, and murmured something to himself in Sindarin.
Dean turned to him. “What was that?”
“Eärendil Gil-Estel-he should be there.” Maglor pointed to a spot in the sky that, when Dean looked at it, was conspicuously vacant. “Never before has the Mariner failed in his rising and setting. He might wander, and for great events his course might be diverted, but....”
Rinc looked and cursed quietly. “You’re right, Maglor. He’s not up there at all. And there’s only one reason Manwë would ground him.”
“Was he not recalled during the Breaking of the World?” Cas frowned.
Rinc shook his head. “Technically, no. Happened in the middle of the day; he was already home.”
“What are you tryin’ to say, Rinc?” Dean demanded.
“That there’s a better-than-even chance this won’t work,” replied the Trickster with a glare. “At least, that’s what Manwë’s thinking.”
“Oh, so what, we’re just supposed to give up, let Morgoth walk in unopposed?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Cas looked at the blank patch of sky again for a moment and then shook his head. “No, brother, this is not Lord Manwë’s doing. Eärendil guards the Door of Night; Lord Manwë would not relax that guard. I fear Lilith’s forces have engaged him in another part of the sky.”
“Whatever the reason,” Maglor said firmly, “it is an ill omen. But Dean has the right of it-we must not be deterred, even by certain death. Failing to act now would be unconscionable.”
“’Long as I get to put a slug between Zach’s eyes and wipe that smug smile off his Valar-cursed face, I’ll die happy,” Dean grumbled and started stuffing supplies into the Impala’s trunk.
The temptation to have a last-night-on-earth blowout was strong, but everybody knew they had to be up early the next morning. So Sam and Dean had only a couple of beers each; Ellen stopped short of letting Cas drink her under completely under the table when Rinc suggested that the former bar owner teach his naïve little brother how to do shots; and the only last-night-on-earth comment to be made was by Cas while they took a group photo with Bobby’s camera. Dean didn’t even hit on Jo, reasoning that Lisa might still give him what for if they didn’t die. The humans all went to bed at a reasonable hour for hunters, and after a good breakfast-cooked by Ash, of all people-the Winchesters and Harvelles piled into the Impala with Maglor and Cas and were on the road by 6:30. They stopped for lunch in Kansas City and got to Carthage a little after 2:30, which left them three hours to check out the town before sundown.
But the town was strangely quiet, and Rinc wasn’t at the rendezvous point when they arrived. Something else, according to Maglor, was.
“Castiel?” he asked quietly. “Do you see....”
“Reapers,” Castiel replied with a nod. “Hundreds of them. They only gather like this at times of great catastrophe. Excuse me, I should find out why they are here.” And he vanished.
Dean frowned. “You can see Reapers?”
“Not as with sight,” Maglor replied... and shivered.
Dean’s sense of foreboding trebled at the sight of someone so ancient looking so disturbed. And it wasn’t like Rinc to be this late. So Dean checked his cell phone, couldn’t get a signal, and switched to the handheld radio Ash had insisted he carry just in case. “KC5 Fox Delta Oscar, come in.”
“KC5 Fox Delta Oscar, go ahead,” came Bobby’s reply.
“Bobby, please tell me Rinc is with you.”
“Wish I could, son.”
Dean cursed.
“What’s goin’ on?”
“Cas and Maglor say there’s Reapers everywhere-and it looks like the whole town’s dead. No sign of human life anywhere that we’ve seen yet.”
Bobby cursed in what sounded like Japanese. “Omens are headed off the charts. Y’all be careful.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Dean clipped the radio back on his belt with another quiet curse.
“Should Cas have been gone this long?” Sam asked, visibly worried.
“Probably not. If somethin’ snagged Rinc, they’ve probably got Cas, too.” Dean sighed. “Do we split up or not?”
“Be faster if we did,” Ellen replied. “You boys go that way. We’ll head back the way we came into town. Rendezvous at the battlefield, if we don’t meet up before.”
Dean nodded, and the hunters split up on foot.
The sun had almost set by the time Sam, Dean, and Maglor headed back toward the Impala, having found neither Cas nor Rinc nor anyone else. They were still a mile or so from the car, with Dean walking down the middle of the street while Sam watched the left side and Maglor the right, when a female figure suddenly appeared in the middle of the street in front of them and said, “Howdy, boys.”
“Meg,” growled Sam.
Meg chuckled. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
“Could say the same about you,” Dean returned and drew Maeglach.
“Didn’t come alone, Deano.”
And a chorus of growls and barks rose from an unseen source.
“Hellhounds,” Dean surmised, trying to quash his sense that something really bad was about to happen.
“Yeah!” Meg grinned. “C’mon, boys, my father’s on his way. He’ll want to meet you.”
Sam shook his head. “I think we’ll pass, thanks.”
“Your choice. You can make this easy or really, really hard.”
“When have you known us to ever make anything easy?” Dean retorted and shot the hound closest to Meg, which had given away its position by stepping in a puddle.
“Run!” Sam yelled, and they did so, though Dean kept looking over his shoulder and shooting those hounds he could spot. He’d killed three more by the time he realized that he had one shot left and couldn’t reload Maeglach on the run.
And then he heard a sound that he would never in a million years have expected to hear, one that chilled him to the bone.
Maglor screamed.
Dean spun and managed to shoot the hellhound that was attacking Maglor just as Sam grabbed Maglor’s arm and hauled him toward a hardware store that was close behind them. Then Dean switched to his shotgun and fired round after round of salt at the hounds to cover the retreat as he backed toward the store. When he got inside, Maglor was leaning heavily against the counter, clutching his sides, and Sam was running back to the door with bags of salt. Together, the brothers got the doors salted and chained shut.
Dean caught his breath and handed the shotgun to Sam, then dumped the empty brass out of Maeglach and used a quick loader to reload it. “You all right over there, Maglor?”
He was answered by the thud and groan of Maglor collapsing.
The brothers were at the Elf’s side instantly. Maglor was ashen-faced, and a frightening amount of blood was soaking into the right side of his shredded shirt.
“Stars, Maglor,” said Dean, “I’m so sorry. Here, let me....” He reached over to examine the wound.
Maglor caught his hand. “Spare your strength, mellon-nin,” he said weakly. “I am slain.”
Dean froze. “No. I can’t-I won’t-”
“Dean. This hroa will not last much longer. I shall, I hope, be granted another in the West. But there is one final way I can aid you ere I depart. Build a bomb of salt and iron, and I shall trigger it to destroy the hellhounds.”
“No. No, there’s... there’s gotta be another way, somethin’ we can do....”
Maglor shook his head. “Only Estë herself could heal these wounds. And I am weary-you cannot imagine what it has been like to live alone with the knowledge of my folly these twelve thousand years.”
“He’s right, Dean,” Sam said sadly. “We’ve gotta do something about those hellhounds, or we’ll never get out of here in one piece.”
Dean ran a hand over his nose and mouth to try to pull himself together. “Yeah. Okay.”
Quickly they found towels and Ace wraps to make a pressure bandage. Then they built a bomb out of the materials in the store, and it was Dean who pressed the trigger into Maglor’s hand, noting the long-faded burn scars from the Silmaril that the hellhounds’ poisoned bite had made livid once more. Sam stood behind him, radiating sorrow.
Dean bit his lip and tried to think of something, anything, to say that would be adequate. “Hey, um....”
Maglor smiled wanly. “Dean. You need not speak. Nor you, Sam. I shall see you again in Eldamar.”
And Dean had a sudden flash of vision-himself and Sam, Cas and Bobby and all the rest of Team Free Will, on the deck of an old-school ship as it docked in a harbor full of white buildings that gleamed in the sun, and Maglor there on the quay in the middle of a group of Elves who’d turned out to welcome them-and nodded, oddly heartened. “Yeah. Yeah, and soon.”
“What do we do about letting the hellhounds in?” Sam asked.
“Unchain the doors ere you leave,” Maglor replied. “I shall order the salt away from them once you are out.”
Dean blinked. “You can do that?”
Maglor chuckled. “I am a prince of the Noldor. My command of the elements is... stronger than most.”
Dean quirked a wry smile and stood, nodding at Sam. Together they unchained the doors before going back to Maglor and crouching on either side of him.
“That’s it,” Dean told him. “Give us two minutes to get out.”
Maglor nodded. “Good hunting, my friends. Írë lúmë tuluva.”
“’Til Eldamar,” Dean nodded back, squeezing Maglor’s shoulder.
“Namárië,” Sam breathed, squeezing his other shoulder.
They were rewarded with the barest ghost of Maglor’s usual smile. “Go quickly.”
The Winchesters stood and ran to the building’s second floor, out across the roof to a fire escape, and down the alley, only the echo of the hellhounds’ baying following them. And exactly two minutes after they left Maglor’s side, the hardware store exploded.
They paused briefly to watch the fire, then swallowed their heartache and raced back to the Impala.
It took until well after dark, but Ellen and Jo finally found the building where Lilith and Alatar had trapped Cas and Rinc in what looked like a circle of fire. Alatar was in the middle of a monologue about how the other Maiar should give up and join Morgoth, so the women hid and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Finally, though, the demon and the Istar cleared out, reasoning that the trap would suffice to hold their captives. No sooner had Lilith teleported away with Alatar than Ellen and Jo emerged from their hiding place, checked that Cas and Rinc were okay, and went in search of fire extinguishers.
No sooner had they put a break in the fire, however, than Rinc dragged Cas out of it and said, “We gotta get out of here now.”
The Harvelles dropped their fire extinguishers, and Rinc snapped his fingers.
They found themselves at the battlefield, which was littered with fresh corpses, just in time to see Lilith fall with Dagnir-en-Raughoth sticking out of her chest while Ruby fell beside her, burning from the inside out, as Dean stepped out of the shadows with Maeglach blazing. At the first report, Crowley and Meg vanished, but the second shot brought down Pallando and the third felled Alatar. Dean rounded on Zachariah while Sam swiftly retrieved Dagnir-en-Raughoth and turned to break Lilith’s altar.
But alas, the damage was already done. Even as Dean shot Zachariah squarely between the eyes, the ground began to shake as Lilith’s spell opened the breach between Arda and the Void. Cas and Rinc flew everyone (including the Impala) back to Sioux Falls before Morgoth actually came through, but they hadn’t been back at Bobby’s three minutes when the shockwave reached them and knocked humans, Maiar, and half of Bobby’s books onto the floor.
“Stay down!” Bobby cautioned, and everyone obeyed. Sure enough, a minute and a half later, the secondary shock came through and knocked down even more books, killing the power before it faded.
The fact that the explosion was felt that strongly over five hundred miles away was... disturbing.
While Rinc snapped the room back into a semblance of order and Cas and Ellen helped Bobby back into bed, Sam got a fire going, Dean and Jo rounded up candles and hurricane lanterns, and Ash scrambled for a battery-powered radio and finally managed to pick up an emergency shortwave station. And what they heard sent Ellen and Jo back to the kitchen for Bobby’s emergency stash of Wild Turkey.
Devastating earthquakes throughout the Midwest, others likely to be triggered elsewhere, and fears that the Yellowstone Caldera was significantly destabilized and might finally erupt, especially given one massive quake northwest of Laramie that had destroyed a group of historic private rail lines. The electronic infrastructure of the whole United States destroyed. Power out across the country and into Canada and Mexico. Sudden disappearances, on the order of two billion people worldwide. Sudden appearances of wolves and what were variously described as demons, zombies, and Orcs, as well as unconfirmed reports of giant spiders and dragons. The news just kept getting worse, and even though all of the hunters were headed toward being well and truly drunk by the time Ash switched off the radio, the whisky wasn’t helping.
They’d failed.
Finally, Dean startled everyone by jumping to his feet and throwing his glass against the back of the fireplace with all his might. He watched it shatter, watched the flames leap as the alcohol hit them, then turned to Cas, eyes blazing.
“How do we find the Straight Road?”
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