Quid Pro Quo: Part Three: The Deal
If you want all the specifics on the story, feel free to check out the previous posts on it.
Part One: The Dream
Part Two: The Man
Three
“Oh now, I don’t mean to be cruel,” the man was saying as he reclined in an overstuffed armchair opposite the two boys, who were crammed together on a small loveseat. The black leather furniture was sitting in the middle of the field where the restaurant, cars, and the town had once stood. “Only that I come all the way here to talk to the both of you, and you treat me so horribly. Such a pity, really.” He shook his head, eyes downcast upon the glittering gems around his fingers. “Drink?” He looked from Sam to Dean. “No? Well, then I’ll drink alone.” He snapped his fingers and a small crystal glass filled with a clear liquid appeared instantly in his hands.
“You’ve been following me,” Sam blurted out, surprising himself and Dean. Looking at this creature that was so much like a man but so much more, he thought he had been completely silenced through the bone.
“Very astute, aren’t you? Yes, I have been following you. Both of you, really, but your older brother here was far too intoxicated to have noticed my presence the way you did.”
“It’s called ‘living’,” Dean muttered.
Sam glanced over at Dean before speaking. “Why? Why follow us?”
“You’ve caught my attention, and for me to notice mere mortals where I come from, well, it’s an honor, I should say. I’ve known you were ‘hunters’ for quite some time, but I had to come and see for myself if you were really as valiant and daring as everyone has said you are.” Slowly, the man took a small sip of his drink and ceased talking, as if the brothers were supposed to be completely satisfied with the vague answer he had just given them.
“Who are you?” Dean asked.
“Ah, so you speak?” The man smiled faintly. “Perhaps the better question you should be asking is, ‘What are you’? Am I correct? Your primitive minds cannot seem to process what I really am. Perhaps if you challenged all your theories, you would accept my identity more readily than if I were to merely tell you. Here, have your car back and all of its trivial weapons.” Again another bored wave of the hand, and the Impala crashed down, dropped clear out of the heavens with an explosion of thunder a little less than ten yards away. Dean jumped his own height off the couch, falling on top of Sam, who hissed a curse through his clenched teeth. “Now go on, open the trunk, I insist.”
Dean hesitated and pushed himself off Sam. The car seemed to be visibly undamaged, fortunately, but Sam knew that when dealing with ghosts-especially one as powerful as this-there could always be more than met the eye. Slowly the two brothers walked to the trunk, as Dean pulled out his keys and popped the latch. For a brief moment, Sam expected to find rotting corpses, slimy bones, or hell, even spiders, believing that the car was only an image of Dean’s precious Impala, and the man resting in the chair, peacefully drinking a likely fatal beverage had stuffed the fake car with typical ghost tricks. But, when the lid popped open, the last thing Sam expected to see was the familiar worn interior with the secret compartment below filled with Dean’s weapons.
Sam watched as Dean tenderly ran his fingers over one of the sleek guns loaded with silver bullets Dean himself had melted into the deadly little pellets. Knowing what they were preparing to commit, Sam forced himself to expel all thoughts of his future actions in case the monster could read minds. He concentrated on pretending to be shocked, and he visualized himself preparing to cry.
Without warning, Dean whipped around, gun held out in front of him, and pointed it at the man. “Eat shit, bitch!” he screamed, and he fired. Sam raised his hands to his eyes, his own gun still held in his hand, leaving the massacre to Dean. The blast of the gun was deafening, and even though Sam knew it was not possible for an echo to exist in such a barren land, reverberations of the gunshots rolled over each other in the distance nonetheless.
Dean was the better marksman of the two brothers. He was better than most wildlife hunters, and there was rarely a time he ever missed his target. This event was no different, as the man sitting in the chair had a round of bullet holes through his chest. They were small holes, and the fabric of the man’s clothes was charred around the edges of each cavity, as if someone had pressed the burning end of the cigarette to his chest. Sam waited, holding his breath, wanting the man to dissipate, wanting the man to scream in rage, wanting the man to do anything but touch his spidery fingers to the openings in his chest in that calm and dreamlike manner.
“Why, I believe you shot me.” Then the man reached into his chest, just as one would reach into a body to perform deep surgery and plucked out the bullets. He held his open hand out to the boys, where the silver bullets, glittering like new, set in his palm. “Now what do you wish to try? Holy water? Voodoo? Finding my corpse and burning it? Really, what do you wish to do?”
“This isn’t possible,” Sam said out of nowhere. His voice sounded hollow and faint to him suddenly. Although equally as panicked as Dean, he was nevertheless the more rational of the two at the time being.
“Of course it’s possible. You cannot kill a deity.”
“A deity?” Sam echoed. “You mean a god?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Although with that Christianity nonsense these days, it’s difficult to get anywhere with you mortals calling yourself a ‘god.’ They, of course, automatically assume you’re with ‘God,’ which is completely different than what I am. No affiliation whatsoever.” He shook his head a bit dramatically, as if the allowance to express his displeasure overwhelmed him.
“Then what damned ‘deity’ are you?” Dean growled, approaching the man, but keeping his safe distance. He had replaced his gun with a different loaded one, if only for the mental security of carrying a weapon.
“The Greeks called me ‘Hades,’ and the Egyptians favored the name of ‘Osiris.’ Not that I’m fond of either of those names now.”
“God of the Underworld,” Sam whispered under his breath.
“God of the what-world?” Dean incredulously echoed. “You’ve got to be shitting me. There’s no such thing. Gods.” He snorted in disgust. “You’re just some arrogant, narcissistic ghost.”
“Coming from you, I’m surprised,” the man said, a genuinely confused look on his face. “After all, Dean, I’d thought you’d seen everything there was to see in this pitiful excuse of a world. I truly believed you would be the more accepting of you two.”
“I don’t accept bullshit.”
“What are you here for?” Sam asked, interrupting. This man, this supposed deity, fascinated Sam. It was a strange sort of attraction, a line between the desire to study the creature and to run away screaming. Never before had Sam witnessed something so powerful it could destroy and create matter, a law of the world no ghost could defy.
“I’m here to make a deal with you. Both of you.”
“You can’t make a deal,” Dean protested. “You have nothing we would want.”
“Oh, but I do.”
“C’mon, Sam, let’s get going. The ‘Big O’ here seems to think we’ll fall for as much of his bullshit as he has.” Dean began to close the trunk lid with Sam close by. They didn’t know where to drive, but driving was better than sitting and talking.
“Haven’t you ever wondered, Mr. Winchester,” the man continued nonchalantly from his seat, “why the god of the underworld would come to see you? It’s not as if I’m a bored deity. I have plenty to do without fraternizing with mortals.”
“Dean, shouldn’t we see what he wants?” Sam said under his breath as Dean strapped a large hunting knife to his belt.
“Keep working and ignore the son of a bitch,” Dean shot back angrily.
“In case you’re not familiar with the god of the underworld, he has unlimited control to the souls of the dead, which in your case may be very helpful. You see boys, I can give you something you want. Something that would make your lives a whole lot sweeter. I can give you your mother.”