Supernatural: One Year Gone (19 page)

Constance turned back around and stared coldly at Nathaniel.

“Let’s get one thing straight, Mr Campbell: I could kill you, it would be as easy as this.” She clicked her fingers. “If you cross me again, your children will be orphans. I’ll make sure of that.” She raised her hand up, hovering near Nathaniel face. “And next time, I will not be so merciful.”

Three large deep scratches appeared across Nathaniel’s cheek, sending blood dribbling down his chin onto his coat.

“I can control many things,” she hissed. “Nowhere in Salem is safe. Girls, show the Campbells the way out.”

The five girls gathered in a circle, raised up their hands, and with a flick of their wrists Nathaniel, Thomas, and Caleb blew through the glass-paned glass windows and landed on the snow outside. The gale wrapped around them. Thomas was still unconscious as Nathaniel lifted him onto the horse and they limped away.

Rose Mary opened the door as Nathaniel, Thomas, and Caleb approached the house.

“What on earth?” she cried. “Hannah, go get the herbs and oils.”

Nathaniel gently laid Thomas on the table. Caleb tugged off his brother’s boots, and Hannah pressed a warm compress of medicinal plants against Thomas’s temple.

“What happened?” Rose Mary asked, leaning over her son.

“Constance Ball attacked us,” Caleb replied.

“She’s a full-fledged witch, she
and
her daughters,” Nathaniel explained. “As Salem sends innocent old women to the gallows, the real witches are left alone.”

“But why did they attack you?” Rose Mary asked.

“Because I asked her about Abigail Faulkner. Constance killed her. I just don’t know why.” Nathaniel sat down in a chair near the fire and kicked off his boots.

Thomas stirred and opened his eyes then sat up with a moan holding his head.

“I’m sure that woman is up to no good,” Nathaniel continued. “She has a Latin spell book. I think it’s a
Necronomicon.”

“What would she be doing with that?” Hannah asked.

“I’ve only seen one once. It’s filled with all sorts of ways for binding demons.” Nathaniel indicated his cheek. “The book has many powerful spells. All of them dangerous and all of them evil.”

“Like what?” Caleb said.

“Unless I can read it, I have no way of knowing,” Nathaniel said. “But take great care in everything you do now, in town or wherever someone can see you. Constance is up to something and the atmosphere in town is like a dam about to break.”

“What about the graves?” Caleb asked. “What do those have to do with it?”

Nathaniel shook his head with frustration. He wasn’t sure what Constance’s plan was, but he knew that it must tie in with Abigail Faulkner’s death, and the unearthed graves.

Dean closed Nathaniel’s journal. He was slowly putting it together. Connie and Constance, the old house off Ipswich Road. Could they be one and the same? Could she still be alive, hundreds of years later?

From the back of the car, he pulled out one of the machetes hidden in the spare tire wheel well and cut down some of the low hanging branches from nearby trees. He piled those on top of the car for cover and then walked back toward the heavily padlocked gate.

In the distance behind the gate a large brick house loomed tall, surrounded by empty expanses of field on both sides. A high stone wall extended all around the property.

“Guess I’m not going to be invited in,” Dean said to himself as he hoisted himself onto the flat part of the wall.

Dean felt something give under his hand. He looked down. Stuck into a crevice in the rock and mortar was a weathered-looking hex bag wrapped in red string—a protection gris-gris bag. He was in the right place.

Dean jumped down the other side of the wall, feeling the soft earth sink under his shoes. It was going to be difficult to sneak up on the house with all that open space around it. Dean surveyed the area and decided to enter from the back. He snuck around the perimeter of the fields, keeping hidden in the tree line.

Once he was behind the house, he made his way up the slope and hid behind a barn. From what he could see, five young girls were working on the farm. One was pulling weeds in a what looked like a kitchen garden, another was leading a cow across a pasture. It looked idyllic, if not really old-fashioned.

Dean heard the titter of voices coming from within the barn and peeked in through the wavy glass panes to see two women grooming a horse.

This is either going to turn into the hottest Puritan porn I’ve ever seen, or these bitches are witches,
he thought.

He turned his head and—

WHACKKK!

He was twisted round and thrown up against the solid wooden surface of the barn. A heavy weight pressed up against his chest, but the brawny field hand in front of him wasn’t even touching him.

“Hey, sorry, man. Lost my way? Do you give pony rides here?” Dean said.

The man didn’t answer. Instead, he flicked his wrist and Dean dropped to the ground. Silently, he gestured that Dean should walk toward the house.

Once inside, Dean was pushed into a chair next to a large stone fireplace. Heavy curtains were drawn across floor-to-ceiling windows; so it was impossible to see outside.

Moments later a middle-aged woman walked into the room. Dean immediately recognized the woman who had been staring at him in the parking lot. Closer up, Dean could see she had a high-browed forehead and a face set with a wide mouth.

“Do you often trespass on private property?” she asked in a crackling, accented voice with a slight European lilt to it.

“Angela Lansbury. Wow, I’m a big fan,” Dean said sarcastically, springing from his seat.

The big guy in the corner flicked his wrist again and Dean was thrown back into his chair.

“Don’t worry big guy, I’m not going anywhere. You and I can go out back and milk a cow together. Would you like that?” Dean grinned.

“What do you want?” the woman asked. She lowered herself into a seat opposite Dean and stared coldly into his eyes.

“Well, Constance—I’m assuming you’re Constance Hennrick, Connie of Connie’s Curios. Can I call you Connie? Under normal circumstances, Connie, I would cut your throat with a silver knife, chant a little bit then make sure you were buried well and good in four different places. Considering you tried to kill my girlfriend and drown me and her kid, I think that would be letting you off easy,” Dean said. “Though I might have spared a couple of those hotties you have outside if they behaved themselves. It’s hard to find good help these days.”

“Effective salutation,” Connie said. “Sadly, I’ve lost patience.”

She got up and gestured to the heavy in the corner.

“Wait,” Dean said. “About this afternoon, you don’t deny it, so I assume it was you. You have to be pretty powerful to resurrect an entire ship’s worth of pirates.”

Constance simply shrugged.

“Then you are exactly the person I’ve been searching for,” Dean said.

“And why is that?” she said.

“Because I need your help.”

“I really don’t have time for little piglets like you.” She gestured again, and the heavy strode over and pulled Dean from his chair.

“Wait, wait. Listen,” Dean said, “I need a
Necronomicon.
I need to raise someone who is caught in a very powerful cage.”

“You wouldn’t know what to do with a
Necronomicon
if you had one,” she said.

“No, you’re right. That’s why I need you,” Dean said.

“It’s an impossibility. A book like that has powers beyond your paltry imagination. I am quite sure you don’t have the stomach for it.”

“So you have one?” Dean persisted.

“If I did, I wouldn’t let you anywhere near it. Besides, what on earth makes you think I would help you?” she asked.

“Not a thing. Only that I am pleading with someone that under normal circumstances I would gank in an instant,” Dean replied.

“Sorry, I don’t work for peasants, much less the likes of
you
and
your kind,”
Connie said.

With that she left the room and the brawny guy dragged Dean out of the chair by his collar, pulled him through the house, out of the front door and down the driveway.

“Hey, Paul Bunyan, lay off the jacket!” Dean said, gasping for breath.

The guy opened the gate and threw Dean out into the road. He landed on a double yellow line, some twenty feet away from the driveway entrance. It was quite a throw.

Dean got up and dusted himself off. Things were not going well.

He limped back to his car, bruised and battered and still a bit damp from his pirate adventure.

On the passenger seat the case files he had taken from Chief Wiggum had been jostled by the drive, fanning out all the pictures. Dean picked up a particularly brutal photo of a girl in a BU sweatshirt. He was torn. There was a case here.

All the gris-gris bags in the victims’ cars were certainly the work of witches, probably that of Connie and her girls.

Dean shook his head at his bad luck. He was just kidding himself. There was no other explanation—Connie had to be the Constance from Nathaniel’s journal. And to make matters worse she was up to something very, very bad. Again.

It figures that the one person I need help from could have killed ten people.
Dean shook it off and decided to go back to the hotel. He should make sure Lisa and Ben were okay.

Just then two large black Escalades slid out of Connie’s driveway and turned south. Dean’s car was still camouflaged by tree branches so he was pretty sure they didn’t see him. Dean waited until they had disappeared from view, then he turned his car around and followed.

Sam and his grandfather sat in the parked van on the side of the road hidden around a curve.

“We’re going to lose them,” Sam said.

“Just wait,” Samuel responded sternly. They sat silently for a few moments. “Okay, now go. Just hang back a little bit.”

“Not my first rodeo, gramps,” Sam muttered as he started the vehicle.

As they made their way into the glowing suburban traffic outside Salem, they watched the two Escalades ahead of them pull into a shopping mall parking lot with Dean’s CRV not far behind. It was about nine p.m. and there were very few cars left in the lot, only a few stragglers, laden with shopping bags, were making their way out of the mall. A large megalith sign, ‘Books ’n’ Novels,’ clung to the stucco side of the mall. Inside Sam could make out the employees shutting off the lights and locking the doors. The Escalades were parked in the two spaces closest to the bookstore doors.

Dean parked on the outskirts of the lot, away from the lights. He reached for his flask. The Jack Daniels went down easy and took the edge off the crazy day. Dean wasn’t quite sure why Connie and the girls would need to make a bookstore run at nine at night. Chances were it wasn’t because they were after the next
Twilight
novel.

Sam and Samuel waited in the white van on the other side of the lot, far away from the store.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Sam asked.

“No idea, but I don’t think it’s to pick up Ad Hoc,” his grandfather replied.

Sam raised an eyebrow.

“Thomas Keller’s new... Forget it. I’m a fan is all,” Samuel said.

“You’re a fan of celebrity chefs?” Sam asked.

“Do you know how hard it is to get a restaurant up and running?” Samuel asked with sincerity. “He’s a genius.”

The last bank of lights in the store was shut off. Dean watched as a mousy-looking girl emerged from the double glass doors holding a large key ring. She shoved the key in the lock and fiddled with it, twisting and turning it in an increasingly desperate attempt to lock up the store.

A figure slipped out of the back door of one of the Escalades and approached her. Dean perked up as he clocked the gorgeous blonde girl in boots and a short jean skirt.

“Need some help?” she asked the mouse, who was beginning to visibly panic. The parking lot was silent as a grave. When he wound down his window, Dean was just about able to hear the exchange.

“No, thanks,” the other girl replied, without looking up. “It’s just these stupid keys. My manager needed to leave early and—”