Rite of Passage E-Book

John Passarella

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 439

Beschreibung

After Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a mysterious supernatural force as young children, their father taught them how to hunt and destroy the paranormal evil that exists in the dark corners of America. Following their father's demonic death, they discovered that they are descended from a long line of hunters and chose to continue their mission. Lauren Hill, New Jersey, is beginning to look like one of the unluckiest places on Earth when an escalating series of accidents and outbreaks hit the town. But Sam and Dean suspect it's more than just bad luck. Along with Bobby Singer, the brothers soon realize that a mysterious figure is at the center of the chaos. When they uncover a connection between the stranger and three teenage boys at the local high school who are experiencing some unusual growing pains, they know they will need far more than good luck to prevent an all-out disaster. A brand new Supernatural novel, set during season 7, that reveals a previously unseen adventure for the Winchester brothers from the hit CW series!

Leseprobe

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SUPERNATURAL

RITE OF PASSAGE

JOHN PASSARELLA

SUPERNATURAL created by Eric Kripke

TITAN BOOKS

Supernatural: Rite of Passage

Print edition ISBN: 9781781161111

E-book edition ISBN: 9781781161142

Published by Titan Books A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd 144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: August 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Supernatural ™ & © 2012 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Cover imagery: Front cover image courtesy of Warner Bros.

Visit our website: www.titanbooks.com

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States.

For Andrea, who quietly took care of everything I neglected or forgot while I wrote this one.

HISTORIAN’S NOTE

This novel takes place during season seven, between “Season 7, Time for a Wedding!” and “How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters.”

Contents

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Prologue

With the dying gusts of a damaging series of thunderstorms, Tora entered Laurel Hill, New Jersey—not as a consequence of the meteorological destruction; rather, the storms served to herald his arrival and the devastation that would follow Yet nothing about his appearance would alarm the citizens of the bustling suburban town. That was by design. Contrary to his nature, he had purposefully chosen a civilized appearance and calm demeanor for what amounted to a brief period of reconnaissance. A study in black, he wore a bowler hat low over his deeply furrowed brow, a double-breasted suit and black shoes. The exposed narrow wedge of a white dress shirt provided the only relief from this cloak of darkness, his ruddy complexion the only touch of color.

Though he walked with a stout wooden cane, its handle and pointed tip bound in iron, nothing in his gait suggested the cane’s purpose was supportive in nature, so that a casual observer might conclude the cane and bowler were sartorial affectations. For now, it served his purpose to foster these misconceptions. Only later would they realize that affectation had been disguise; as Biblical idiom would have it, he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He needed some uncontested time to take his measure of Laurel Hill, so he would endure an uncharacteristic bout of patience.

Ahead, on Bedford Drive, something intriguing caught his eye. The perfect opportunity to indulge his natural tendencies. As a sadistic smile spread across his face, he acknowledged to himself that patience was easier in small doses.

Joe Sedenko finished securing the last ridge cap on the Sloney roof and stood with the nail gun held loosely in his right hand, trailing the air hose which snaked across the roof, over the edge and down to the rumbling compressor two stories below. On one knee next to a vent pipe, Greg Beechum applied sealant to the nail heads around the flashing for extra leak protection. Near the edge of the roof, tossing the last bits of trash over the side in the general direction of the roll-off Dumpster in the driveway below, stood Mike Mackiewicz.

After two full days, they were nearly done on the roofing job. They’d spent the first day removing the old, damaged asphalt composite shingles, removing and replacing sections of rotted sheeting, and then laying down new tarpaper before calling it a day. That was the messy and dangerous part of the process, with all the debris and tripping hazards. The second day was more methodical and cosmetic, shooting all the new shingles, staggering the seams, cutting a few around vent pipes. So, naturally, Joe frowned when he spotted the gleaming titanium flat bar on the eave of the roof beside Mike. The tool was invaluable for extracting nails on day one, but not so much on day two, which involved the roofing coiler firing nail after nail through the new shingles and tarpaper into the sheeting. Joe assumed Mike had taken it out of his tool belt during clean up, but he should have known better than to leave a hefty metal object so close to the edge of the roof. That was all Sedenko Roofing needed, for the flat bar to fall off the roof and crack open Mrs. Sloney’s skull when she came out to check on their progress or brought a pitcher of iced tea to the base of the ladder.

At that moment, Mike took a sideways step toward the flat bar, seemingly oblivious to its presence.

“Yo, Mike!” Joe called. “Watch out.”

“What?” Mike glanced down, left and right, then located the flat bar. “How’d that get there?”

He took another step, bending over from the waist to pick up the tool. Joe nodded and started to look away, but froze when one of the starter shingles slid out from under Mike’s planted foot. Mike fell sideways, hit the roof hard and rolled off the edge, his hand haplessly flailing at the gutter before he vanished from sight. At the sound of the heavy thud below, Joe stood frozen in shock. The nail gun slipped from his numb fingers, struck the shingles below the ridge cap line with a much softer impact, and skittered down the sloped roof as if pulled by the air hose.

“What the hell, Joe?” Greg said, looking from Joe to the retreating nail gun. “Where’s Mike?”

“He …”

Greg placed the blue metal caulking gun, loaded with a tube of black tar, above the vent pipe and scrambled down the roof to catch the roofing coiler before it fell over the edge. The air hose whipped back and forth, flicking the roofing gun away from Greg’s grasping hand time after time, leading him all the way down to the eave.

While Joe had been helpless to stop his longtime friend from plummeting to the driveway below, something about the wriggling air hose galvanized his legs. He scampered down the roof, intent on catching up to Greg before he suffered Mike’s fate. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a blue object jarred into motion, but his mind failed to register what was happening as the object slid away from the silver flashing at the base of the vent pipe. He was too intent on catching Greg, already dangerously close to the edge of the roof.

With one last swipe, Greg snatched the roofing gun as it flipped over the gutter.

“That was close!”

The air hose pulled taut, overbalancing him.

Greg pitched forward as Joe lunged to catch the back of his belt.

Joe missed by a hair’s breadth, then fought for balance— swaying forward far enough to witness Greg’s head slam against the edge of the roll-off with a sickening crunch, before he reared back to avert his own fall. The “easy day” had turned doubly fatal in a heartbeat. Trembling, he took a careful step away from the brink.

His foot came down on something hard and mobile, his weight shifting as the blue caulking gun shot out from beneath the rubber sole of his work boot. Falling forward, his legs swept out behind him over the eave of the roof and his momentum carried him the rest of the way. He caught the gutter in one hand and swung wildly toward the side of the house. But his momentary relief transformed into a fresh spike of fear as the flimsy metal creaked and rusted screws popped loose. An instant later he was spinning backward, his view flashing from sky to tree to lawn to cracked sidewalk before everything went dark.

Washing dishes after her stop-at-home lunch, Michelle Sloney glimpsed something dark sail past the kitchen window and wondered absently if it was a large bird, maybe one of those god-awful turkey vultures that perched atop homes near the woods as if lamenting the infrequency of road kill. But when it landed in the yard, she saw it was one of the new roofing shingles. Probably damaged, meant for the long construction Dumpster occupying her driveway, maybe it had glided away, across the lawn.

Though the quick movement in front of the window had startled her, pulling her attention from the task at hand, she could have sworn she had heard a thud near the Dumpster and couldn’t imagine what Sedenko’s crew might have tossed off the nearly restored roof. She stood there for a few moments, soapy water dripping from her hands, as a grim possibility dawned on her. But, no, she would have heard yelling, sounds of alarm, when all she heard was—

Another impact made her flinch.

The second impact seemed impossibly loud, perhaps because she had been listening for a reaction from the roofers after the first. She wiped her sopping hands with a dishtowel as she hurried to the front door. Stepping outside, she called, “Mr. Sedenko, I thought I heard …”

She froze under the small portico, not believing her eyes.

Sedenko appeared to be performing an awkward backflip off the roof.

His face swept beneath his body and slammed into the sidewalk that ran along the side of the house to the driveway. Under the full weight of his falling body, his neck snapped and Michelle knew without a moment’s doubt that he’d died instantly. The damaged gutter creaked in the slight breeze and a section of the downspout clanked to the ground.

“Oh, my God!” she whispered.

Hands to her mouth, Michelle stumbled forward as if trapped in a horrible dream, her gaze traveling past Sedenko’s body, to a second broken body beside the long Dumpster— Greg something—with blood pooling around a disfigured skull, and a third body a few feet from Greg’s. Mike. She remembered his name was Mike. It looked like another broken neck. She looked to her new roof, almost expecting a murderous fourth workman to return her gaze. What else could cause three experienced roofers to fall to their deaths, one after the other? Somebody must have shoved them from the roof. But nobody was there, and she had only ever seen three of them working together on the roof.

She backed away from the bodies, retreating to her door, her breathing shallow, on the verge of panic. She glanced distractedly toward the curb where the Sedenko Roofing van was parked. Beyond the red maple that overhung her driveway was a tall, broad-chested man in a bowler hat and black suit walking as if he hadn’t a care in the world, practically twirling his cane. He must have seen something.

“Call 911!” Michelle shouted. “These men are dead!”

He glanced at her with an inquisitive smile and cupped a hand behind his ear, as if he couldn’t hear her.

She looked from him to the three dead men sprawled across her property in plain sight.

“Oh, never mind!”

Hurrying, she grabbed her front door and flung it open. The edge of the door struck her in the face, below her right eye. Only when she pressed her hand to her face did she realize she had been crying, probably since the moment Sedenko fell. She glanced at her palm, wondering if she would find blood there, and experienced a measure of relief that she hadn’t lacerated her face, immediately followed by guilt for fretting over a possible flesh wound when three men had just died.

She ran across the kitchen to grab the wall phone— quicker than locating her cell phone in her voluminous pocketbook—but the heel of her shoe skidded across a patch of wet tile and she fell hard on her rear, belatedly cursing her clumsiness. As she grabbed the counter to pull herself upright, her hand closed over the knife she had used to slice carrots for her salad but had neglected to wash afterward. The sharp blade bit into her fingers, drawing blood.

After another string of muttered curses, Michelle took several deep breaths to calm herself before climbing gingerly to her feet and carefully lifting the cordless receiver off the base with her uninjured hand. She dialed 911 with exaggerated care, wrapping the damp towel around her bleeding fingers to slow the flow of blood as she waited for the emergency operator to pick up

She looked out of the kitchen window, scanning right to left and back again, but saw no sign of the tall man in the black suit.

Tora hadn’t intended for the homeowner to notice him. When not actively engaged in wielding his destructive power, he could fade from human perception—a shadow at the periphery of their vision, a sound too muffled to identify— but this cloaking ability required conscious effort on his part and he hadn’t bothered. Nevertheless, he was surprised she called to him for assistance as, clearly, all three men were beyond the need for medical intervention. But he knew shock and fear made people irrational, which often worked to his advantage.

Feigning ignorance or incompetence or some combination thereof, he continued on his way, assuming he would be forgotten by the middle-aged woman as she suffered an inevitable series of painful accidents—though none as devastating as the trifecta experienced by the roofers. Subtlety was not in his nature and while the roofers’ deaths were not a grand gesture, they were a definitive statement declaring his arrival.

Less than two blocks away, he noticed a man standing on a ladder propped against a thick tree branch wielding a chains aw to cut away a damaged fork of the branch that overhung the roof of his garage. Spinning the ironbound handle of his cane in his palm, he smiled and watched as the man leaned away from the ladder, shifting his center of gravity. Another possibility

With an efficient slicing motion, the man on the ladder severed the damaged section. As it fell, the healthy part of the branch sprang upward, depriving the top of the ladder of its support. The ladder pitched forward and the man’s engaged arms swept down, driving the saw’s chain through his jeans and grinding into the meat of his thigh before he could release it.

Roaring in pain, he fell across the aluminum ladder, splitting his nose against one of the rungs. He rolled onto his back, both hands clutching at the raw wound in his leg. Blood gushed out, squirting between the man’s fingers, dying his jeans and his lawn crimson. The chainsaw had sliced into the femoral artery. If the blow to his head hadn’t already made him woozy, the rapid loss of blood would have done the job.

In his final moments, the dying man saw a dark figure through the mask of blood from his mashed nose and reached out with a trembling hand, his mouth working but his voice no more than a fading whisper. Then, without so much as a last gasp, his arm fell back, his unblinking eyes staring at nothing.

Tapping the handle of his cane against his palm, Tora looked across the lawn at the blood-spattered and idle chainsaw, silent now thanks to the safety feature known as a dead man’s switch.

Sometimes, he thought, they make it too easy.

Dark energy had begun to buzz inside him, like a fire he would stoke as his plans developed.

He strode toward the heart of the town.

One

Dean Winchester parked their latest beater—a rust-speckled blue and white Plymouth Duster from the mid-seventies that shimmied whenever the speedometer topped sixty miles per hour—a hundred yards downwind from the isolated Victorian house in upstate New York, then he and his younger brother, Sam, climbed out of the old car and eased the doors shut. Side by side, they strode up the deserted two-lane country road toward the dilapidated home. Dean cast anxious glances in all directions, careful to check the late-afternoon sky directly overhead. Sam looked from the scrap of paper in his hand to the sprawling home, pausing by a battered green mailbox atop a leaning wooden post with the three-digit house number painted in black on its side.

“Is this the place?” Dean asked.

“636 High Hill Road.” Sam nodded toward the paper in his hand. “That’s what the mailman gave us.”

“It looks abandoned,” Dean commented. A gross understatement.

Twenty years ago, maybe ten, the beige Victorian, with bold green trim on the posts and railings of the wraparound first- and second-story porches, backed by a three-story octagonal tower topped by a widow’s walk, had probably been an impressive residence. But the intervening years had not been kind. Paint had faded and cracked, and wooden posts were split or missing, as if carted off by giant termites from a lost Roger Corman film. Gaps between wispy, moth-eaten curtains behind fly-specked windows revealed uninviting darkness within.

“I guess they don’t entertain much,” Sam said quietly as they approached the front door.

Before Dean climbed the porch steps, Sam caught his arm and pointed downward.

A greasy gray feather lay on one warped step.

“Right place,” Dean whispered.

As they crossed the porch, the wooden planks creaked under their weight. So much for the element of surprise, Dean thought. He knocked, waited in vain for an answer, and knocked again, louder. He shot a glance at his brother. Sam shrugged. For a silent moment, Dean debated picking the lock versus kicking in the door or putting an elbow through a window, but was spared the decision when an irritated voice shouted, “Go away!”

“Animal control,” Dean yelled. “We’re investigating reports of illegally imported birds.”

Sam and Dean had spent a week investigating multiple disappearances in the Adirondacks. The victims had been young and old; several solitary joggers, a night shift worker on a smoking break, a woman walking her Pomeranian, a camper who wandered off to answer a call of nature, an insomniac who stepped out on his balcony for some fresh air, and a hiker who had left his group for a more challenging ascent. All the victims had been out alone after dark. Otherwise, no similarities, no pattern an FBI profiler would ever unravel. Families received no ransom calls or notes. No bodies were found. There were no witnesses. No fresh tire tracks or suspicious vehicles lurking in the area of the disappearances. It was as if the victims had vanished off the face of the earth.

That had the Winchesters—who often found answers outside the box—wondering if someone or, more likely, something had, literally, lifted them off the earth. Sam had made the suggestion first. Dean wondered if they were dealing with dragon abductions again, but fellow hunter Bobby Singer noticed a dark, grimy feather on the side of the road near where the police had found the cowering Pomeranian. Return trips to several of the crime scenes turned up a few more feathers.

After reviewing the timeline, they determined that the first disappearance—a jogger—occurred shortly after the arrival in town of three odd women, the Yerakidis sisters. Their behavior bordered on reclusive, but on rare occasions they would appear in town for supplies, always together, wearing bulky, hooded cloaks, no matter the weather. They talked to one another, heads bobbing together in brief intimate exchanges, but rarely spoke to anyone else. According to clerks in stores they patronized, they seemed to lack social skills, resisting attempts by anyone to engage them in casual conversation.

“Go! Away!” the shrill voice repeated.

Sam shrugged, unsurprised by the hostile reception.

Dean raised his fist to knock on the door, but paused when it was yanked open.

The hooded head of a woman with a pinched face darted forward through the foot-wide gap in the doorway, as if she meant to bite Dean. She had black marble eyes over a hooked nose and a wide, almost lipless mouth.

“Last warning,” she squawked, her words punctuated with a blast of foul breath.

Before Dean could utter a reply, she slammed the door in his face.

They heard the deadbolt click, followed by an eerie silence.

Dean nodded and took a step back. “On my count,” he said to Sam, who moved beside him. “One, two … three!”

The combined force of their kicks smashed the deadbolt free of the weathered doorjamb and the door burst open, rattling on rusty hinges. Pulling their automatics, they entered the house, backs to each other as they sighted along the muzzles of their pistols.

A mixed bag of threadbare and damaged furniture cluttered the first floor. Boxes lined the walls, stacked high enough in places to block several windows and cast the rooms into unnatural gloom. Everything looked as if it had been abandoned by the prior tenants.

A sudden movement caught Dean’s attention.

A cloaked figure pitched toward him.

He held his fire at the last moment, recognizing an empty cloak draped over a coat rack. But who had—

Behind him, Sam’s gun roared.

There was another blur of movement as something swooped toward him from the stairwell landing. His own shot missed as it crashed into him, knocking him over the back of a grimy sofa onto an oval coffee table that collapsed under his weight, taking Dean’s breath away.

In the fall, Dean had lost his gun. Expecting an immediate follow-up attack, he rolled to the side and grabbed a detached table leg to wield as a makeshift club. Instead, the wooden leg became a crude shield as one of the sisters hurled a crumbling cardboard box filled with hardbound books at him.

Across the room, Sam ducked and leaned away from a flurry of claw swipes by a second sister. He got off another wild shot before she caught him off balance and hurled him against an empty hutch. As he staggered away, she dumped the hutch on top of him, then whirled on her heel and bolted up the stairs.

From above, the first one shouted, “Hurry, Te!”

“Coming!” shrilled the second.

Before Te turned the corner of the first landing, Dean caught a glimpse of long wings, folded behind her back, extending from her shoulders to her calves. He hurled the table leg at her—but a moment too late. It gouged a divot out of the drywall and rebounded down the stairs while Dean recovered his gun.

“Sam?”

“Go!”

Dean bounded up the stairs, two at a time. Behind him, he heard the hutch crash as Sam climbed out from under it. Though the second floor was darker than the first, Dean’s eyes had adjusted to the interior gloom. He dodged a padded bench in a hallway, following a rush of clicking footfalls on hardwood. As Sam thundered up the staircase behind him, Dean ducked through a doorway into the tower section of the house, and glimpsed a flutter of movement as one of the sisters rushed up a wrought-iron spiral staircase.

By the time he burst through a trapdoor onto the widow’s walk, enclosed by a chest-high wrought-iron railing, he stood alone. He checked the sky, turning in a slow circle, gun raised, as Sam joined him. A moment later, they heard the unmistakable sound of a car engine starting. A green Chevy Suburban pulled away from the back of the house, spewing gravel until it fishtailed onto the country road and roared back the way the Winchesters had come.

Dean stared down at the three-story drop and rattled the wrought-iron railing in frustration.

“Friggin’ harpies!”

By the time they descended two flights of stairs and sprinted the hundred yards to the Plymouth, the harpies were long gone. To add insult to injury, one of the car’s worn tires was flat. Sam volunteered to replace it while Dean checked the house for any clues to the sisters’ destination. Other than the abandoned cloaks they had worn to hide their wings and scattered feathers littering the premises, he found nothing of interest. Until he opened the refrigerator. On the top shelf sat several translucent plastic containers dappled with dried blood and carefully labeled with strips of masking tape to identify the contents: liver, kidneys, lungs, brains. Off to the side, a mason jar held a selection of human eyeballs, shriveled optic nerves still attached. With a pained expression, Dean shoved the door closed. He would never look at pickled eggs the same way again.

As he hurried back to the Plymouth, he called Bobby on his burner cell. “It was them, Bobby,” Dean said. “The Yerakidis sisters are harpies.”

“Noticing the present tense,” Bobby said.

“Yeah,” Dean said, frowning. “They flew the coop.”

“You see them fly?”

“Not exactly,” Dean said. “They lit out of here in their green Suburban.”

“All three?”

“Two,” Dean replied. “No sign of the third.”

“Aw hell,” Bobby said. “Another jogger’s gone missing.”

They guessed the third harpy would join the other two, but had no idea where they might meet. To cover more ground, they searched separately, with Dean and Sam in the Plymouth and Bobby on the other side of the small town searching for the Suburban in his Chevelle.

Shortly after nightfall, Bobby spotted the SUV and tailed it to a foreclosed house, waiting at a discreet distance until the Winchesters could provide backup. They joined him by a sign planted in the corner of the front lawn that read “Foreclosure. Price Reduced.”

“Any sign of the third one?” Dean asked.

“Or the jogger?” Sam wondered.

“Not a damn peep,” Bobby said, nodding toward the house. “Waiting in the dark.”

“Like maybe they know we’re here?” Sam asked.

“To hell with bumbling in the dark again,” Dean said. “Let’s torch the place.”

“What if the third one brought the jogger here before the other two arrived?”

Dean recalled the plastic containers in the fridge. “The poor bastard might thank us,” he muttered.

“Look,” Sam whispered urgently.

Dean followed his gaze to the peak of the gable roof. At first he saw nothing in the darkness. Then two hunched shapes resolved, silhouettes darting with eerie grace toward the edge of the roof. First one, then the other launched from the roof, broad wings spread and pounding against the air. In seconds they soared over the road and higher, over the treetops of the forest on the other side, and vanished.

“Come on!” Bobby said. “We’ll need rifles.”

Dean braced the deer rifle across his chest as he stumbled through the underbrush of the unnaturally quiet forest. Sam followed behind him, sweeping the dark ground ahead with a powerful Maglite, his other hand on the hilt of a hunting knife. Bringing up the rear, Bobby—the best shot of the three of them—like Dean, carried a Browning A-Bolt 30- 06. Sam had wanted a rifle for this hunt too, but Dean had vetoed the idea.

“Dude, no,” he’d said, before they followed a deer trail across the tree line. “It’ll be bad enough with two of us bumbling around in the dark with rifles. We’re in the middle of this, what happens if Lucifer decides to put on a puppet show in your head? I get a bull’s-eye on my back? Or Bobby?”

“I’m fine, Dean. I was fine in the house.”

“Yeah, you’re fine until you’re not fine. A pistol in daylight, okay. But a rifle in the dark? Baby steps, Sammy.”

Sam wanted Dean to believe he was okay, but he had admitted that he sometimes had trouble separating reality from his visions of Lucifer. They weren’t memories of the pit either, released when the wall inside Sam’s head collapsed, but actual psychotic breaks. That freaked the hell out of Dean, he wasn’t afraid to admit. And though Dean had helped Sam distinguish between reality and his Lucifer-vision, Sam was far from acing that test on a regular basis. Sam tried to hide it, but now and then Dean caught his brother squeezing the scar on his left hand, prompting real-world pain to push reality back to the surface of his mind.

Sam turned to Bobby, looking for support. “Bobby? Back me up here?”

The older man, the Winchester brothers’ honorary uncle, averted his gaze momentarily. “I’m with Dean on this one, Sam.”

Bobby reached into the trunk of the Chevelle. “Near as I can tell, bullets won’t kill ’em, just slow ’em down long enough to use this.” He handed Sam a sheathed hunting knife.

“Got two more of those?” Dean asked.

“That I do.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were wandering through the forest in the general direction the two sisters had flown.

The toe of Dean’s boot caught on an exposed tree root, causing him to trip. He released the stock of his rifle and caught himself against a tree trunk. For the third time in fifteen minutes, he patted the hilt of the knife in the sheath looped around his belt. Right then, he would gladly trade the rifle for a pair of night-vision goggles.

“You okay, Dean?” Sam asked.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “I tripped over a tree root.”

Bobby flicked on his rifle-mounted flashlight and focused the beam on the ground near Dean’s feet.

“That ain’t no tree root.” Bobby nodded toward the spot. “Had to guess, I’d say that’s a human femur.”

Sam used his flashlight to scan the area in question. He kicked aside some dead leaves and dirt, exposing more bones. “One victim.”

“Picked clean,” Bobby observed.

“We’re on their turf now,” Dean said.

“Thought crossed my mind,” Bobby said. “Maybe that’s what they intended from the jump.”

“So we’re walking into a trap,” Sam said.

“Awesome,” Dean replied.

“Gonna pretend that’s not in the job description?” Bobby asked. “Maybe toast a few marshmallows? Or do something useful?”

“Right.” Dean sighed.

He flicked on his rifle light and they moved deeper into the forest.

They found a fire pit and Bobby spotted a charred fragment of red sweater and what looked like the corner of a brown leather wallet. The harpies had burned their victims’ possessions, leaving nothing behind but bones buried in shallow graves.

Now that they knew what to look for, they discovered more graves, at irregular intervals and then with more frequency.

“Aw, hell …” Bobby said.

Dean followed the beam of his rifle light to a low branch and the partially eaten body hanging over it with a broken back. A man in his twenties, eyes plucked out, half his face and throat eaten, glistening loops of intestine hanging low enough to touch the forest floor. They stood in silence.

Plop! Plop …

Blood dripped from the man’s throat wound to the dead leaves below.

“Fresh meat,” Bobby said. “The missing jogger. Means we inter—”

Dean glanced up as a shadow momentarily blotted out the waning crescent moon. There was a rustle of leaves behind them, a gliding shape swooping down.

“Bobby, look out!”

Dean swung the barrel of his rifle up to take a shot, but the harpy was behind Bobby, coming in fast. Bobby ducked, but not fast enough. Hooked claws on her feet dug into the shoulders of his vest, took hold and lifted him off the ground. The sudden impact dislodged the rifle from Bobby’s hands. His legs cycled back and forth in a pantomime of running as he rose several feet in the air.

As Dean jumped back to avoid a collision between Bobby’s knee and his face, Sam grabbed Bobby’s rifle from the ground, tracked the creature with the mounted light, aimed and fired. The harpy cried out and flinched, losing a couple of feathers before pounding her wings furiously to lift her prey out of reach.

Dean looked up at Bobby, almost directly overhead. The angle was too narrow for him to risk a shot. He could try for the arms, but they were a blur of movement. Instead, he decided to change the physics and hoped Sam would keep his head about him.

Slinging the rifle over his shoulder, Dean jumped and wrapped his arms around Bobby’s calves. His toes skittered along the forest floor for a few seconds before he felt himself being lifted up. Trying to keep their combined weight airborne was definitely putting a strain on the harpy. Dean looked at Sam.

“Do it! Take the shot!”

Sam had worked the bolt after his first shot, expelling the spent cartridge, and took aim for a second shot. Since the rushed first round may have caused a flesh wound, he took an extra moment to target the torso—and fired.

The dark wings faltered once, twice, and stopped beating. She plummeted to the ground, causing an explosion of dead leaves and twigs, and dropped Bobby and Dean in her wake.

Dean scrambled to his feet, brushed himself off and looked back at Sam.

“Good shot.”

Sam shrugged. “I had a one in three chance of hitting the right target.”

“You’re hilarious.”

Before Bobby flipped the creature over, Dean spotted the entry wound, central-mass. If they were lucky, Sam had hit the heart. That would keep her docile long enough to finish the kill.

“Hold her down,” Bobby instructed.

Dean pinned the harpy’s shoulders to the ground as Bobby pulled out his knife.

Her unclothed flesh was covered with a soft down, medium to dark gray, but she was a messy eater. Human blood and bits of gore streaked her wild, stringy hair, face, torso, arms, and fingers—remnants of her interrupted meal. Black marble eyes stared sightlessly toward the clear night sky

With his knife held in a double-handed grip, Bobby drove the tip down through the exposed chest, into the harpy’s heart. For a brief moment, her body arched and a mournful shriek burst through her pointed teeth and cracked lips. Then her body sagged.

“Should keep her down and out,” Bobby said. “Least till we burn her.”

“How are your shoulders?”

Bobby rolled them, winced slightly. “They’ll keep.”

An answering screech sounded from high in the treetops.

“Incoming!” Dean said.

In a blur of motion, a second harpy zipped through the clearing, caught Sam’s wrist and dragged him past Dean and Bobby, before hurling him bodily into the base of a tree trunk. Sam grunted with the impact and rolled away dazed, but still clutched the stock of Bobby’s rifle.

“You killed Podarge!” she shrieked. “They killed Po!” The second comment was directed skyward.

As she beat her wings and rose away from them, Dean took aim and fired. The bullet breezed through a wing, dislodging a dozen feathers, but failed to slow her down, let alone wound her. She dropped onto a sturdy branch and glared at him with glassy black eyes.

“Hold that thought,” Dean whispered, and worked the bolt as he sighted along the rifle.

From behind him came a whistling sound, rising in volume.

“Oh, crap!”

The third harpy drilled him like a middle linebacker.

Dean rolled with the impact, executing an awkward somersault and losing his grip on the rifle, but snagging the shoulder strap as he sprawled across a bed of broken twigs and what looked and smelled like harpy droppings.

“That’s just nasty!”

After knocking Dean over, the third harpy lost momentum and dropped to the ground, stumbling forward a few steps as she spread her wings to brake.

“Rip his throat out, Lo!” the second harpy shouted from her perch.

Lo strode forward, clawed fingers raised before Dean. “I’ll carve out his liver, Te. Eat it while he watches!”

“What? No Chianti?”

Dean glanced at Sam and saw his brother was still groggy, shaking off the cobwebs.

Dean returned his attention to the approaching harpy, curling his fingers around the rifle’s shoulder strap. He still had a round in the chamber, ready to fire, but he would need a second or two to bring the rifle to bear, aim and shoot.

Lo saw the rifle near his right knee and wagged a taloned finger at him. “Naughty boy,” she chided, flashing a horrific smile filled with rows of pointed teeth. “I’ll pluck your eyes out before you pick it up.”

Okay, Dean thought. Forget about aiming. Just grab and shoot.

He was about to chance it when Bobby said, “Like hell!”

Three shots rang out in quick succession.

The first shot caught Lo in the ribs, the second in her sinewy left arm, and the third ricocheted off her jaw line, taking a chunk of flesh with it. Fright-wig hair whipped around her face. Dean wasted no time. He had the bolt-action rifle in his hands, sighted and drilled a round through her chest. Lo staggered backward, spraying blood from her mouth as she shrieked in fury. With a practiced motion, Dean worked the bolt and fired a second shot into her chest, close to the first.

Alternately gurgling and gasping, the harpy toppled over backward.

“Don’t just stand there, ya idjit,” Bobby called, waving the automatic he’d had holstered in the back of his belt. “Put a fork in her ticker.”

“Aello!” Te shrieked and launched herself from her perch.

She dropped toward Dean like a hawk with a rabbit in its sights.

Bobby followed her trajectory with his arm extended, firing until his magazine ran out. A few of his shots burst through feathers, one or two scored the creature’s flesh. Nothing slowed it down.

Dean whirled away from the supine Aello to face Te, raised his rifle and tried to aim, but she came in too fast and he only managed one wild shot, which gouged a furrow across her cheek. She extended her legs, clawed feet reaching for him.

Dean threw himself sideways. The harpy’s left foot struck his upper arm, spinning him. As he struggled to rise, he did a quick damage assessment. Fortunately, she hadn’t broken his arm. A little higher and he would have dislocated his shoulder. But he had lost the rifle.

She rushed him with long strides, wings beating to increase her momentum, her clawed fingers raking toward his face. He raised his forearm defensively and felt claws slice through the denim sleeve of his jacket. Te’s other arm slashed downward and he blocked with his other forearm.

This time she clamped onto his right arm and yanked him skyward—five, ten, fifteen feet.

Fumbling at his belt with his left hand, Dean pulled out his hunting knife. In flight, the harpy’s body was almost parallel to the ground and he was dangling from her extended arm. She was out of reach of the knife, except for the hand that clutched his forearm. Stretching, he reached up and, in a backhanded right to left motion, swept the blade across her wrist. The knife sliced through flesh and ground into bone.

With a pained shriek, the harpy released her grip and Dean plummeted toward the ground. Flailing, he managed to hook his elbow momentarily over a branch on his way down, breaking his fall, but he landed awkwardly and had the wind knocked out of him.

He struggled to suck air into his lungs. Feeling helpless as a kitten, he watched the night sky as the bird-like silhouette looped around and descended toward him. He reached out with splayed arms, brushing aside dried leaves, brittle twigs, small pebbles and clumps of soil.

The knife was gone.

Sam hadn’t broken any ribs when the harpy hurled him into the tree trunk, but it was a near thing. The impact stunned him and briefly doubled the number of visible stars. A nasty lump was forming on his scalp and a killer headache had already begun to percolate in his skull.

As he struggled to rise, he saw Bobby and Dean take down Lo, the second harpy. Then the third, and biggest, harpy attacked Dean before he could stab Lo in the heart. Dean lost his rifle in the initial attack, but managed to slash Te’s arm before she could carry him off and make a meal out of him.

Te rose above the treetops and began to circle, coming around for another diving attack.

A bit woozy, Sam took a step forward, lifting Bobby’s rifle by the strap, trying to get a proper grip on it.

Lucifer stood beside him. He gave Sam a disappointed shake of his head.

“In a spot of trouble, Bunk Buddy? Bet you wish you were back in the cage with me. Oh, wait, you never left.”

Sam grimaced. “Shut up.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Sam knew Lucifer wasn’t really with him in the woods. It was just a side effect of having his head metaphorically shoved in a blender after Castiel removed the wall. But Lucifer looked and sounded as real as, well, reality. No drop off on the believability scale. Sam’s only defense was to remind himself that Lucifer was a delusion, a bizarre construct of his damaged mind, and then ignore him. Not always a simple task. In addition to appearing as himself, the Lucifer conjured up by Sam’s mind sometimes took the magic lantern show to the next level, appearing as Dean or Bobby or any damn thing from Sam’s head. Knowing you have a disease doesn’t give you the ability to cure yourself of it. But you do learn to recognize the symptoms.

“You have a rifle,” Lucifer observed gleefully, moving forward with Sam. “Hearing the siren song of a clock tower?”

“Go away!” Sam whispered fiercely.

“Careful where you aim that thing, Sam,” Lucifer said. “Sometimes up is down, down is up.”

Te circled and swooped low, dropping next to Dean, who was sprawled on his back, dazed and weaponless.

Sam jabbed his thumbnail into the scar on his left hand. Real pain helped keep the delusions at bay. At least long enough to do what he had to. He staggered toward his brother’s position, willing his cobwebs away.

The harpy lifted one of her feet over Dean’s midsection, flashing a nasty set of claws, clearly intent on eviscerating him.

In his peripheral vision, Sam could see Bobby reloading his automatic, but knew he was too far away for much accuracy with a handgun. Sam had a clear shot with the rifle, though. Lucifer was gone, and he had to believe the harpy was standing over Dean and not the other way around.

As Sam’s finger closed on the trigger, Bobby fired his automatic. The bullet ripped through a row of feathers. Sam smiled and fired.

The rifle bullet struck the third harpy in the upper back, just left of the spine.

Dean rolled out from under the hovering talons.

The harpy staggered, fell to one knee, wings spread wide, and coughed up blood.

Working the bolt, Sam fired again.

Te collapsed face down, her right leg twitching for a second or two.

“Knife!” Dean called.

Sam pulled out his knife and executed an underhand throw, hilt out.

Dean snatched the knife out of the air, rolled the harpy over with one hand, and drove the tip of the blade into her chest with the other.

“We’re a knife short,” Bobby yelled. “And Lo here is getting fidgety.”

Dean cast about then reached down. “Found it.”

He looked at Sam and nodded appreciatively. “Again, nice shot.”

Sam flashed a brief smile.

Dean spread his arms as he backed away. “Okay, I was wrong.”

“No arguments here.”

Sam followed Dean, feeling his smile fade away. He knew it would be hard to win back Dean’s trust if he couldn’t trust himself. On that front, he was a work in progress. But he was relieved Lucifer didn’t reappear to rub it in.

With the harpies’ hearts skewered, they remained catatonic. The hunters grabbed them by the ankles and dragged them to a nearby fire pit, lined up the trio side by side, sprayed them head to toe with lighter fluid, and torched them.

They stood upwind, in silence, watching as the sisters burned.

Dean glanced at Bobby. “Are we done here?”

“Kind of jackass leaves a fire burning unattended?”

“Right,” Dean said, and pulled his flask from a jacket pocket, “I wouldn’t want to miss out on the merit badge.” He took a swig from the flask and walked a few steps away from the funeral pyre.

Lucifer had taken Dean’s place beside Sam, and was warming his hands over the fire.

“Feels like home!”

Sam closed his eyes, pressed the scar hard, counted to three, and opened his eyes again. Lucifer was gone, but Dean was back.

“These birds look extra crispy, colonel,” he said.

Bobby ignored the jibe and nodded, satisfied. They kicked dirt over the dying flames. The harpies’ remains crumbled, with no more substance than burnt leaves.

Once they were on the road and miles away from the harpies’ feeding grounds, they would place an anonymous call to the police to expedite the recovery and identification of the victims’ remains. For now, Sam hurried along the deer trail leading back to the roadside to catch up to Dean, who seemed in an unusual hurry. Mindful of the uncertain footing, Bobby brought up the rear at a measured pace.

Drawing level with his brother, Sam asked, “You okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

Sam sniffed twice and wrinkled his nose. “What’s that smell?”

“You really don’t wanna know,” Dean grumbled.

Two

Tora sat at the back of the South Jersey Transit bus with the bowler tilted low over his deeply creased brow, his cane upright between his knees, both hands gripping the ironbound handle. Had he planned to crash the bus, he would not have boarded it. His interest lay in its route. For the same reason, he ignored opportunities to tamper with the lives of the passengers—early shift workers, probably food service or manual laborers by the look of them. Most wore casual shirts and jeans or shapeless polyester uniforms. A handful sported business attire. With his bowler, black suit and cane, he looked the most out of place on the bus, hence his decision to sit behind the other passengers, where he could observe without attracting undue attention. Of course, he could use his power to fade from their awareness, but saw no reason to expend the effort.

Of all the humans present, the obese bus driver, with his florid face and labored breathing, his girth straining the seams of his black vest and white dress shirt, offered the easiest possibility. But a medical emergency would probably prevent the completion of the bus’s route. Better to forego a small reward in favor of a bigger prize. Another test of his patience.

When the bus approached the intersection of Route 38 and Kressen Boulevard, he sat up straighter, attentively glancing left and right to observe the volume of rapid rush-hour traffic. A broad smile spread across his ruddy face. As the bus slowed, several passengers stood to disembark. After a mischievous look in the bus driver’s direction, he followed the other passengers to the back door, ducking his head and turning sideways to step out. When the door hissed closed behind him, he tapped it with the pointed tip of his cane, an action unnoticed by the passengers who remained behind or those who left the bus before him. While they crossed the intersection or turned down Route 38 with clear purpose, he stood next to the traffic light as if undecided about which way to proceed.

Someone had taped multiple copies of a colorful flyer to the traffic light pole, as if worried they would succumb to attrition and at least one must last until the upcoming Sunday at 10 a.m. The chamber of commerce was sponsoring the Laurel Hill 50th Anniversary Parade to commence at Broad and Main in something designated the Classic Business District. That the town had planned a celebration he found amusing. He chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound.

The heavy flow of traffic along Kressen Boulevard and Route 38 dutifully obeyed the mechanical commands of the traffic lights dangling overhead. Predictably, the drivers pushed their luck, running yellow lights, jamming their brakes at the last second, and yielding reluctantly. Conditions were ripe. But he would need a few moments to expand his awareness.

First things first. He stared down Kressen Boulevard until he spotted, several intersections distant, the receding form of the bus he had recently vacated. With the index and middle finger of his right hand pressed to his temple, he recalled the image of the bus driver. After a moment or two, the recalled image transformed and became the present. He saw inside the bus, heard the driver’s labored breathing and watched as his heavy foot pressed the accelerator pedal. Ahead of the bus, a T-intersection loomed. The driver would have to turn left or right or—

The third option held the most promise.

Tora rubbed his thumb over the head of the cane in concentration.

The bus driver gasped, clutching his right palm against his chest. Sweating profusely, he tried to speak but merely moaned in excruciating pain. His foot floored the accelerator and the bus shot through the T-intersection and jumped the far curb. Realizing the bus was out of control, several passengers screamed.

Directly in front of the runaway bus, on the far side of a narrow parking lot, the floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows of an athletic club revealed an impressive row of treadmills, stationary bicycles, elliptical machines and stair climbers— all facing away from the parking lot. The club members toiled away with no forward progress, either staring at the mounted row of flat-screen television sets provided for their entertainment or listening to private music through their earbuds.

The bus shot across the parking lot unimpeded, still gathering speed as it raced between two narrow bollards in front of recently vacated parking spaces, jumped the sidewalk and crashed through the plate glass windows. Two club members died instantly as the bus bowled over their cardio machines. Flying debris and smashed flat-screen TVs injured several others. Several bus passengers broke limbs or suffered concussions. One died from a broken neck. Fractured, the Laurel Hill Fitness Zone sign above the plate glass windows fell on either side of the bus. Within three minutes, the bus driver would die.

Tora frowned, slightly disappointed now that it was over. Aside from the delightful shock value, the accident had produced negligible results. No matter. He would accept it as an extemporaneous warm-up act and proceed to the main event.

Again, he focused on the alternating flow of traffic, the give and take of racing and braking vehicles on Route 38 and Kressen Boulevard. Those on time wanted to arrive early; those running late needed to make up time. Either way, the commute became a daily ritual of gamesmanship, fueled by equal parts anger, resentment, distraction and carelessness. A perfect storm … with a little help.

Facing the intersection at a forty-five degree angle, he stood with both hands clasped over the iron handle of his cane and focused his attention on the flow of traffic, in one direction after another. With each passing second, his awareness spread farther from the intersection along each traffic artery. He filtered out the cars, SUVs and trucks as they exited the intersection, removing them from the organic equation of coincidence forming in his head. And yet that was insufficient for what he planned. He needed to see more.