Supernatural: The Unholy Cause (20 page)

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” she said flatly.

“My name is Castiel.”

“I don’t care what you call yourself.” Walking back to the desk, she reached around for her handcuffs and felt a sharp sting of pain fork up the back of her neck, the result of the car accident earlier. “You think you can just waltz in here, into my office, and start ordering me around?”

“This is bigger than you.”

“Nothing in this town is bigger than me.” She brought the cuffs forward, but Castiel caught her wrist and held it tightly. With a quick, effortless flick, he turned it over to reveal the tattoo imprinted on her skin. He touched it lightly.

“This sigil won’t protect you.”

A flicker of doubt wavered over Daniels’ face, and then was gone.

“You like that?” she said. “I got it at Mardi Gras, spring break twelve years ago. Dumb kid stuff, I know, but...”

“You’re lying to me.”

“What if I am? Why should I care what you think?”

“Time is short,” Castiel said. “I need the Witness. Judas. Where is he?”

Daniels shook her head.

“I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

“You know about the noose. It disappeared twice while it was under your care.” His eyes flicked down at the sigil again. “I know that mark.”

She said nothing.

“Direct me to my Witness,” he demanded. “I won’t ask again.”

The sheriff didn’t move, allowing Castiel to hold onto her hand for another moment, the Santeria tattoo hovering between them like some small but vital lie that had been found out.

Then, unexpectedly, she smiled, and drew her hand back from him.

“Ask all you want, Castiel... or whatever your name is. Poke around my head. Make yourself comfortable. Stay all night.” The smile disappeared. “I don’t know anything.”

Castiel’s entire face tightened. Although he didn’t actually move forward, he seemed to get both larger and somehow more imposing until his presence filled her entire field of view. His voice trembled with barely suppressed rage.

“I am an Angel of the Lord,” he said. “Simply being here has cost me valuable time. Time that I will never get back.
This is important.
”

Daniels stepped back, her eyes widening, feeling her autonomic nervous system respond—sweat prickled under her arms and her pulse quickened in her throat, where she could feel it pumping in her neck. Then she forced herself to calm down again.

“If you really were an angel,” she said, like a stern mother facing an errant child, “you wouldn’t need me to point you in the right direction, would you?” She shook her head. “Sorry. This is my town. My people have been here since long before you arrived, and we’ll be here taking care of things long after you leave.” She blew back a wisp of hair that had fallen over her eyes. “Now if you’re done with the questions, I’m going home to take some aspirin. Some douche bag wrecked my car today, and I’ve got one hell of a headache.”

Castiel reached out, his fingers brushing her forehead, almost casually.

“It’s about to get much worse.”

Sheriff Daniels opened her mouth to answer, and then clapped it shut again. Her mind was flooded with images and sensations—blinding light and threatening darkness, righteous anger, walking the battlefields of history, and grace, divine grace.

“I won’t ask again,” Castiel said. “Where is the noose?”

This time Daniels didn’t hesitate. Although she didn’t realize it, she had fallen to her knees, and her voice—not ballsy, not anymore, not at all—was spewing out the words without so much as a qualm.

“The church. It’s in the basement of the church,” she said.

By the time the overwhelming sensations had finally faded, leaving behind the mother of all migraines, Castiel was gone.

Making her way slowly to her feet, Sheriff Jacqueline Daniels staggered the rest of the way to her desk chair and collapsed into it, cradling her face in her hands.

She could scarcely bear to think of what she’d done.

Sam and Dean left the church the way they had come in. Father and son followed the Winchesters out of the door without comment. Tommy’s pickup was parked behind the rear entrance, Sam climbed into the front seat, sitting in the middle and still holding the noose.

A footstep scraped in the shadows behind them, and Dean turned to see Castiel stepping out of the alleyway.

“Whoa.” Tommy raised his flashlight. “Who the hell are you?”

“Easy,” Dean said. “He’s okay.”

“Where is he?” Castiel’s eyes were locked on the noose in Sam’s hand. His voice was tight with urgency. “Did you see him?”

“The Witness?” Dean shook his head. “Sorry, Cass—he sent his stunt-double. A Collector. Guy didn’t know squat.”

“We’ll see what he tells me,” Castiel said, brushing past them on his way down the stairs, toward the back entrance of the church.

“Ah, Cass...? I don’t think that’s gonna happen either.”

The angel stopped and looked back. “What?”

“Sam kind of... killed him.”

“
What
?” Castiel glared at him, appalled. “What were you thinking?”

“It was him or me,” Sam said from the cab of the truck.

“I don’t think you realize what this is going to cost us,” Castiel said. “Neither of you do. Your selfishness might have cost us our last chance.”

“His selfishness kept him
alive
,” Dean countered.

Castiel’s expression of thinly veiled outrage didn’t change. He seemed to be on the verge of saying something—perhaps a great many things. In the end he simply turned and descended the back steps.

Tommy exhaled.

“Should I ask?”

“No,” Dean said. With a shrug that was more tired than resigned, Tommy crossed the alley to where the pickup was parked and opened the passenger door for Dean.

“It’s okay,” Dean said, “let the kid ride up front. It’s the middle of the night.”

“You’re in worse shape than he is,” Tommy said. “Besides, he’s got something back there to keep him occupied.”

“You mean, like a game?”

Tommy gave a distracted nod.

“Something like that.”

They drove away from the church and down the empty, moonlit alleyway. Tommy steered easily through town, glancing at the noose that Sam still held on his lap, carefully protected by the swath of torn fabric. On the radio, the Marshall Tucker Band was playing ‘Can’t You See.’

“It’s funny,” he said thoughtfully, “you hear stories about something for your whole life and when you finally find it, it’s almost a let-down, you know?”

“We need to destroy it,” Sam said. “Sooner rather than later.”

“On the battleground,” Tommy said. “That’s where it’s got to happen.”

“Why there?”

“Because that’s where it was first tied. Aristede Percy put it together in a medical tent. Used the same knots that he used to stitch up the corpse of Jubal Beauchamp.”

Dean’s phone chimed. He pulled it out and looked at the screen.

“Huh, must have recovered from its dunking in the swamp,” he said, and hit TALK. “Hey, Bobby.”

Sam watched his brother peering at the blade in his hands while listening to what Bobby was saying.

“Bobby, what’s happening, man?” Bobby’s voice was a buzz, the words not clear enough to make out. “What? Yeah, we did.” He looked over at the noose on Sam’s lap, and then at the blade again. “We’re getting ready to do it now. Out on the battleground.” He raised an eyebrow at Tommy. “How much further is it?”

“We’re almost there,” Tommy replied. “See?”

Outside the window, the hillside loomed in the moonlight, though the first hints of pre-dawn light were appearing in the east. Sam could just make out the shapes of tents still spread out across it, between the craters. He remembered what Sarah had said about the re-enactors refusing to leave camp until somebody explained what had happened to their compatriots.

“So yeah, we’re...” Dean stopped. “
What
? Say that again?”

The pickup crunched across the parking lot and came to a halt. Before Sam could ask what was happening, he heard something thumping in the back of the truck. The tarp that had covered him and Dean on the way back from the swamp was shifting around. There was a clatter of commotion underneath it, like kicking feet or thudding fists. Sam peered over his shoulder, but it was too dark to see what was happening.

“Tommy? Is Nate okay back there?”

“Oh yeah,” Tommy said. “He can take care of himself.”

“Are you sure? He’s only what? Eleven? “

“Wait a second,” Dean cut in, his voice sharp with urgency, “Bobby says we’re
not
supposed to cut up the noose. He says if you do that—”

Something in the back of the truck screamed.

Dean jumped out and ran around the back.

He grabbed the tarp and ripped it back. What he saw beneath it took several seconds to understand. There were two figures struggling in the shadows, one pinning the other down, smashing its victim with a series of fast, brutal punches. The screams grew louder, more intense.

“Leave him alone!” Dean shouted and gripped the attacker around one arm, swinging him back. As the figure spun around, he realized that the arm he was holding onto belonged to Nate McClane.

“What...?”

The boy gave him a savage grin. Dean turned to stare at the half-conscious face of the victim looking back from the bottom of the truck. He realized that he was looking down at Sarah Rafferty.

“Sarah?”

She groaned, lips barely managing to shape the words.

“Help...”

“What did you do to her?” Dean asked, spinning back around to look at Nate.

The boy was still grinning, his lips peeled back to reveal every tooth in his mouth.

His eyes flicked black.

Up in front, both doors of the pickup flew open. Sam jumped down and a moment later Tommy McClane stepped out on his side, sidling unhurriedly toward the back of the truck.

McClane’s grin matched his son’s. The insides of his eyes seemed to have filled with thick black ink. A shroud of moonlight lay over him like an unearthly cowl.

“We took the girl to play with,” McClane said, “just for fun. Kind of a nice reward, don’t you think? Sure as hell beats an e-book.”

“You did all this just so you could get your hands on the noose?” Dean said.

“Let’s just say that Judas and his Collectors were a little too selfish when it came to letting everybody have a turn with it,” the McClane-demon sneered. “So me and my kin just started looking around for it ourselves.”

Dean thought of the demons they’d encountered on the hillside, and the ones out on the country highway.

“Your kin.”

“We’ve got plans,” McClane said. “Big plans.”

Dean shook his head.

“Dammit! I
knew
I had you pegged right the first time.”

“We could never have set foot inside that room.” McClane nodded. “But you did it for us.” He glanced at the Nate-demon. “Go ahead. Finish her off.”

Nate lunged toward Sarah Rafferty with a snarl. Sam grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed his face into the side of the truck. The demon’s head bounced off and slumped away.

He felt something ripped away from him and realized that the noose was gone—he’d lost it when he’d grabbed the demon.

McClane had it now. Almost faster than Sam’s eyes could process, the demon lashed out with it, looping the coil around Dean’s wrist and yanking the blade from his hand.

Sam started to charge toward McClane, and pain exploded through his head from behind, blasting his vision into a kaleidoscope of shattered rhinestone. When he staggered around, he saw Nate grinning at him again, rubbing his fist. And behind the demon, he glimpsed Sarah crawling away, inching slowly, painfully, away into the darkness.

Off to his left, McClane had Dean on his knees and was kicking him. Dean struggled to his feet and McClane kicked him again, harder. The cold clatter of his laugh was like someone spilling a bag of marbles across a museum floor. There was nothing human in it.

“You ready?” he asked, and Nate nodded. The look of unwholesome eagerness scrawled over the boy’s face was almost obscene.