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"It must be Thursday. I never got the hang of Thursdays."
"Look, if it's about your house…"
John turned the TV off. Whatever was on the television was annoying as hell, aliens are nothing but bullshit, and there is only one Man in Black and his name is Johnny Cash.
But he didn't say that out loud because he wasn't the kind of guy who talked to himself. Think to himself, that was a whole different matter. Then again, he supposed that he'd earned the right to talk to himself if he wanted: living, dying, going to hell, escaping, and then being drafted by one of the least personable angels in existence, complete with threat of smiting.
And on top of all that, he'd been sitting on top of some metal grate with a gun on his lap, making sure that no virgins came anywhere near it. In some ways it felt like Vietnam all over again, only instead of plodding through a muddy delta he was waiting for Charlie to come, demonic Charlie with enough power to make a hand grenade look like a pineapple. And the only napalm he had was in the form of a six-shooter with a pentagram on the handle.
---
Dean wondered sometimes if it was luck that all the seals they'd tackled so far were in the continental forty-eight states, or if Castiel was just using him and Sam as Team America and had another patsy over in Europe.
…and he was tuning out again.
"So this place is where again? Caves?"
"It's an old mine," Sam explained. "Big national park, people hike there all the time, and so far, the only problem is a shitload of poison oak and a bad rash. Except lately, a lot of hikers have gone missing for a few hours, only show up later covered in a fine yellow dust, and no memory of what they've been doing. And one person had such a reaction to the poison oak that she died from it, but not before saying she'd seen her boyfriend's eyes turn white."
Dean pondered. "So there's obviously something in that park they're looking for. Do we know what?"
"Not specifically, no. There's a history of Native Americans on the land, but if they were moved or purged, it was done in relative peace," Sam reported. "The first real mention of the area in question pops up about 1938 or so when a rancher by the name of John Vlahos used the Homesteaders Act to grab the land for his ranching. He and his family sold it, and by the early ‘80s, all of the land was sold to the closest school, the University of California at Davis. UC Davis features the Homestead, as it's called, on a hiking tour of the area, Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve."
"I'm not seeing anything," Dean pointed out.
"Well, here's where it gets interesting," Sam reassured. "Apparently there was some kind of mining shaft or underground catacomb of tunnels that Vlahos built on top of because there's a legend or rumor going around the university that once you hike back into the reserve and find the homestead, you go through a clearing in the woods and there's nothing there except for an old metal grate that covers a shaft that's sunk deep into the earth."
"So there's something in those underground caves that the demons want?"
"Looks that way," Sam agreed.
"Well, pack up and let's hit the road." Dean pushed himself up from the coffee shop table and stretched. "Looks like we're gonna get back to nature."
- - -
John shut the battery-operated television back off with a click. He'd turned it on, just to have noise to distract from his own thoughts, but he knew he'd heard footsteps. No voices, no speaking, just footsteps. He moved the chair he'd been sitting in out of the way and cracked his neck as he picked up the gun. The hammer cocked back with a soft click, as though it knew for a fact that it was being watched.
He didn't speak and knew that if he did, he'd spook whoever was coming and he couldn't afford that. Let them come and he could see for himself that they had finally discovered the Gateway, let them come and he could finally put the Colt back to good use again.
Two of them appeared in the entrance to the room, and John's arm barely wavered. The grate was draped in shadow, and for the moment, he was hidden by them as he examined them. One a child, no more than ten, with long brown hair and a white dress smudged with dirt, the other a teenager, anywhere from fourteen up was John's best estimate. The teenager was holding tightly to the child's hand, but it was obvious the child was in the lead.
But before John could challenge them, the child's mouth opened and spewed out a thick column of black smoke. The child burst into tears, sobbing and screaming for her mother. The teenager merely looked bewildered until the child started to cry, then picked it up. "C'mon, sis. Mom'll find us, don't worry. Let's try and get out of here, okay?"
"No, no, she'll come back, the evil lady will come back and make me go away again!" the kid screamed, clinging to the teenager.
"No, she won't," the teenager promised, her eyes flashing black. "She won't, I promise."
The teenager kept the girl in her arms as they wandered back out of the room, and John didn't speak until they were gone.
"Well, shit."
- - -
Three bodies made a small circle around the Gate. "You are certain of what you saw?"
John glared. "I don't make mistakes. Black smoke and black eyes are demons, and there were two of them. One in the kid that left immediately, and then one in the teenager. No adults."
"This is grave news. We knew the demons would find the Gateway, true. But that they would use the blood of a virgin child--that we did not anticipate, even from them."
Black wings rustled in the shadows, stirring up a small breeze and making dust motes dance. "This child should be killed."
"No," John said. "One, we don't kill children. Two, they'll just find another one. What are you going to do, smite every child and every virgin on the face of the Earth?"
"It has been done before, and it can be done again should we lose a few more seals. Lucifer must not rise."
"No, he is right. We are no longer angels of vengeance but of protection."
"You might be. I still have a job to do." Black wings rustled again, angrily this time.
"Over my dead body, so to speak," John pointed out. "Isn't that why you gave me this?" he continued, brandishing the gun.
"Just like his sons. Stubborn. Determined."
"Uriel."
"All right." Bitter, angry concession.
"What is the deal with this place, anyway? What's so damned important that this seal, this one out of six hundred others, can't be broken?" John demanded.
Neither angel answered until Uriel broke the silence. "You are not here to ask questions. You are here to do what you are told. For now. But we will be watching, and if we must move, we will."
"You won't have to," John said confidently.
- - -
"You know, it's a good thing we're not claustrophobic," Dean pointed out as his booted feet hit the hard-packed cave floor.
"Speak." A grunt. "For." Another grunt and a muffled curse. "Yourself!" It had been a tight scrape for Dean, and Sam was carefully worming and squirming his way down the tunnel. The mouth finally widened at the bottom and Sam fell out with a thud.
Dean tried unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh at that, and he got it choked back to a grin until he caught Sam's disgruntled look, with grass in his hair and dirt on his cheek. That brought the laughter.
At the bottom of the next shaft, John's head snapped up. The TV had been done away with, there was salt along every entrance he could have salted, and he was standing physically on the grate with a shotgun on his shoulder. The sound of laughing filtered through the tunnels, and though he couldn't place the originator, he knew it meant trouble. His eyes drifted to the devil's trap on the cave ceiling, and then down to a second one chalked on the floor.
He was prepared.
- - -
Dean slammed an arm across Sam's chest. "Hey. You hear that?"
"Hear what?" Sam asked, stopping as soon as he felt Dean's arm. "I don't hear--" But as he spoke, he heard it. Two other voices in the maze of cave shafts, both girls.
"But we've been here before."
"No, we haven't. I'd recognize it if we had. Just through here… see? There's another room here, we'll just go in and sit down and get our bearings."
"I don't want to!"
"I know you're scared, it's okay. Mommy will find us soon, I promise."
"But how can she find us if we keep moving?"
"Because Mom's smart like that, come on."
Dean elbowed Sam. "Coupla lost kids?"
"Sounds like it, but how'd they get lost? I mean, we had to hunt this place down; how likely is it someone just wandered in?"
"Yeah, that's what I was thinkin'." Dean pulled out his gun and thumbed the safety off, then listened to the click as Sam did the same thing. "Let's find 'em and ask."
- - -
Of all the gin joints in all the world, my kids have to wander into mine! John lifted the shotgun off his shoulder, and pointed it at the doorway. He had heard the other conversation as well, but this time he'd recognized it as the same pair that had come in earlier, and he could tell from the directions of the voices that his boys would converge on the Gate about the same time the two demons did.
Three on two, I'll buy those odds, John nodded to himself.
- - -
"We're goin' down, aren't we?" Dean asked.
"Yeah, we are; all these tunnels are going down, like a giant funnel, and I have a feeling that these shafts all meet up down there," he said, using the muzzle of his gun to gesture into the blackness.
"Great. Do we know what's down there?"
"Not a clue."
- - -
I misjudged it! John stayed in the middle of the room, standing over the Gate as the teenager and the child stopped at the salt line. "Don't even think about it."
The child's eyes turned white, and she giggled. "Too late!" The girl's little white shoes kicked dirt over the salt line, breaking it, and stepped across it. The teenager followed, eyes black and holding the girl by the hand. "We're gonna get you!"
"No you're not." He smirked. "Like to see you try it."
"Okay!" The little girl raised her hand, and when nothing happened, she saw the double traps. "Phooey!"
"Who are you?"
"Silly man," giggled the girl. "I'm Lilith!"
"So who's your friend?"
"You can call me Lamia."
John's gun rose a little higher. "Child thief."
Lamia tilted her head in acknowledgement. "Among other things."
Lilith stamped her little foot, and cracks appeared in the cave ceiling.
- - -
"Holy shit." Sam pulled Dean back just as a cascade of rocks and dirt fell from the collapsing shaft above them. "Dean, you hurt?"
"Uh, can I get back to you on that?" He was dusting himself off because the biggest rocks had fallen about three millimeters away from where he'd just been standing before Sam jerked him back. He still wasn't sure he was okay, but he nodded. "I'm not crushed, that's something."
Sam stepped forward, probing at the rocks and finding them all solidly in place. "Well, we're not getting through, but it's solid enough; we might be able to climb over it and slide down."
Dean nodded. "Sam, uh… did you…"
"Yeah. I heard it." He was studying the rocks and deliberately not looking at Dean. "That was Lilith. And another demon. Lamia. They're sometimes thought to be different names for the same demon, but most times Lamia is Lilith's handmaiden, her right hand."
"I heard. Child thief?"
Sam nodded. "Yeah. Chances are Lamia picks out the kids for Lilith to possess." He started climbing. "Come on, it's solid."
- - -
"One down, one to go!" crowed Lilith, rubbing her hands in glee.
"Not so fast," John said, keeping the gun up as he started to recite the Latin exorcism.
Lamia went first, down onto her knees as she gripped her throat, fighting to keep some kind of traction in the body she'd taken. She grabbed onto Lilith, choking on the black smoke that roiled out of her mouth until she was overwhelmed by the holy words. Lamia disappeared through the crack in the ceiling, and the teenager's body fell to the ground.
"One down, one to go," John answered.
- - -
"Okay, kick with me… on three. One… two… three!" Four feet kicked the last dirt bank out of the way. Dean slid through first, momentum from the kick carrying him down on his backside as he hit the ground butt-first. He grunted, getting up and dusting himself off as Sam skated down, landing just as gracelessly. "That was fun."
"Yeah, like a root canal," Sam agreed, dusting himself off just as Dean had before drawing his gun from the back of his pants. "Down that way?"
"Only way to go now." Dean led the way, pausing when he got to the first opening. "Dude, there's a line of salt here."
"What the hell?" Sam crouched down beside the line, taking a few grains off without disturbing it. He rubbed them between his fingertips and let it fall. "Rock salt, too."
"So… who put it down here? And why? And it's fresh."
Sam nodded his agreement, rubbing the clinging granules off on his jeans. "Looks like we're not the only ones down here."
"You're not thinking Satanic rituals, are you." It wasn't a question.
"No. I'm thinking there's another hunter down here; not very many ceremonies use lines of salt like that. None that I've ever heard of, anyway. They use candles, pentacles, sigils. Ritual salt is usually mixed in with brandy or wine and--"
Dean held up his hand. "I don't care. Let's go." He waved Sam forward with the gun.
- - -
John heard his boys talking in the hallway before they got there. He wanted to finish this quickly, but Lilith was holding on tenaciously and refusing to be exorcised. Her eyes were still white, but her control was failing. She couldn't step out of the second devil's trap, and it kept her from using her powers but it didn't mean she wasn't still strong.
"What in the hell?" Dean's voice overlapped the Latin as he came around the corner. His gun was up at the ready, pointed at the little girl instead of the speaker until he caught who was exorcising. "Dad?"
John didn't let Dean's appearance stop the exorcism. He was starting to sweat, gritting his teeth as he recited the Latin from memory.
"Dean, move it, I--Lilith!"
"Sam!" The voice was no longer little-girl-cute but an inhuman demonic roar. The second trap on the ground finally cracked, and the ground rolled like an ocean wave.
Sam's hand snapped up, held out straight in front of him and pinning Lilith in place just as strongly as the devil's trap had.
John's eyes widened, but his voice grew stronger even as he was pitched bodily off the gate. The girl's mouth opened, smoke pouring from it like a chimney.
The unattended Gate began to crack open, but froze in place before the metal lid could be removed. John stopped exorcising and dove for the child, pulling it into his arms. Lilith moved for the child at the same moment, shoving Dean and Sam against the wall. Sam's head cracked against the rock and left a smear of blood trailing from the open scrape on his scalp, and Dean leaped to catch him.
A loud, hideous roar came as Lilith's smoke swirled around John and the child, then dissipated suddenly as though being driven back by a great wind.
Dean held up his arm to shield his eyes from the wind, dirt, and smoke, and through the tears it brought to his eyes, he saw great shadows spring from John's shoulder blades. Black and monstrous they grew, shapeless at first before forming into vague shadow-wings that wrapped around the child like a protective shield.
The blackness grew until Dean was blinded by it, and the air in the shaft was nothing but smoke and wings, then nothingness that seemed to stretch forever.
- - -
When Dean opened his eyes, he was lying on his back, still cradling Sam's injured head. Sam was waking up, just as he was, and there was a form crouched over them both. "Dad?"
"No, Dean." Castiel held out his hand, pulling Dean to his feet, and then reached out to pull Sam up as well. "The threat is gone; you should go. We're going to destroy this Seal forever, so that it cannot be opened."
"Where's Dad?" Dean rubbed his eyes clear of tears and dirt. "I saw him, he was here."
Castiel paused, letting the silence stretch. "Your father," he finally said. "Was here. No longer. He, too, is working for us, in ways that you cannot fathom."
"You mean Dad's an angel?" Sam groaned, pulling himself to his feet, the heel of one hand pressed to the gaping cut in the back of his head.
Castiel didn't answer. "You should go now."
Dean glared. "No, I'm not gonna go until I get some answers. Is Dad an angel?"
Castiel sighed. "No, he isn't," came the answer, even as Sam was shaking his head negatively in agreement with Castiel's statement. "There are only a finite number of angels, Dean. And humans cannot and will not become angels after death. But there are nine choirs, and of those nine, the sixth choir is Potentates. They are the warriors, the true warriors on a cosmic scale, and there are both dark and light angels in that choir. For the moment, your father has been drafted, for lack of a better term, by the Potentates. He is not an angel; he merely works for them. And he has certain aspects of them."
"Like big black wings," Dean countered.
"For one. That is why he was here; he was protecting this Seal for the Potentates while they were fighting Lilith's forces on other Seals. He is expendable, where other Potentates are not, for they are true angels."
"Expendable?" Dean's voice rose in protest. "My father is not expendable!"
"Dean, no, that's not what he means," Sam said suddenly. "Expendable as in not an angel. He can be spared to go out, to be a point man, when other angels are forced to stay and fight. He has free will; he has the choice to stay and fight or call for help if he needs it."
Castiel nodded. "That is correct; free will is one of the gifts the Father gave to you that he did not give to the angels. That is why your father will never be a Potentate and why you, Dean, have been chosen to lead. You can choose, you can decide, you can make choices based on feelings, thoughts, and circumstances. All we can do is follow once the choice has been made."
"And what's so damn important about this Seal?"
"That is not your concern, Dean. We won. That is all that matters." Castiel lowered his head for a moment. "You should go. The others are coming, and it would be safer for your brother if he were not here when they arrive."
Dean looked the angel in the eye. "This conversation isn't over." He turned to leave them, pushing Sam out angrily in front of him.
- - -
John leaned his head against the tree trunk, his eyes turned towards the granite headstones in the cemetery. One less Seal had been lost; the world was safe for now. He ran his fingers over the lettering carved into the headstone: Mary Winchester, 1954--1983. In Loving Memory.
"I'll be home soon, Mary."
-- End