Supernatural: War of the Sons (16 page)

This would be a good time to interrupt, Dean.

With Julia’s attention on the entrance lounge, Sam crouched and began to pick through the clay shards. As he flipped one over in his hands, he found a rough pattern engraved on what must have been the jar’s interior surface.
A sigil
, he realized. Angelic magic.
And now it’s broken
. Whatever had been contained by it was now free.

The scraping stopped, the sudden and profound silence perhaps even more disturbing than the grating noise of claws on wood. Sam’s foot brushed away clay fragments, freeing a path between him and the entrance. Before he could move, Eli’s hand gripped his shoulder. The man’s eyes were as wide as saucers, betraying his desperation. He didn’t want Sam to leave them.

Then the world seemed to fracture. Wind exploded into the room, swirling the curtains and kicking up dust from the splintered jar. A cluster of glass slivers blew past Sam’s head, others lodged painfully in his back and neck. Knocked forward by the blast, it was impossible to keep his balance. Sam landed with a thud in the pile of parchment and clay, immediately rolling off to protect what was left of the scrolls.

As he sat up, he saw the oddest sight—Dean, hanging by a thread outside the suite’s now-empty window frame, a rock salt shotgun hefted offensively through the opening. He had come through on his part of the plan, although he was a little behind schedule.

“Sorry ’bout that. Windows are mirrored.” Despite the needling pain from the glass and rock salt, Sam was incredibly grateful his brother had shown up when he had. But the sense of relief was short-lived.

In the entrance lounge, the door pounded off its hinges, catching Julia off-guard and smashing her against the wall. Walter, briefcase in hand, spun and ran back into the main room, but he couldn’t outrun the beast outside, which quickly overtook him. Claws dug into his leg, pulling him backwards.

From the main room, all Sam could see was Walter’s face as he disappeared out the door.

“Little help here?” Dean called out, still hanging outside the window. Sam moved to the hole, but instead of dragging Dean in, he pulled the shotgun out of his brother’s hand and rushed after Walter.

When he reached the entrance lounge, Sam stopped in his tracks. Walter was pinned to the ground not by a Hellhound, but by the ill-kempt security guard, James. His unnaturally long nails were digging like claws into the biblical scholar’s leg, leaving jagged gashes behind.

Sam leveled the shotgun and let loose a rock salt shell. The spread hit James square in the chest, hammering him into the far wall. But before Walter could move, the security guard was back on him, his eyes pitch black. Sam’s finger pulled back on the trigger once more, but nothing happened.

Damn it. Out of shells
.

“Help me!” Walter cried as James took another swipe at him, gouging at his face. The demon then used his grip to lift Walter and slam him into the nearby sofa. Blood splattered across the cream wallpaper and a portrait of Harry Truman that hung nearby.

James then dived at the metal briefcase that had been hidden under Walter’s body. As he scratched at the lock, Julia scrambled up behind him, her pistol raised.

The shot nearly deafened Sam, who was mere feet from the business end of the handgun as it fired. The bullet tore into James’s back, exiting through his right shoulder and leaving a trail of gore across the couch. His limp body slumped over the briefcase, but Sam knew it wouldn’t stay down for long.

It took a lot more than that to kill a demon.

“Hey. Ass-hat.”

Sam turned to see his brother clambering over the jagged glass left in the window frame. Dean lobbed a set of shells toward Sam, who caught them deftly and began loading.

“Drop your weapons!” a voice shouted forcefully from the hallway. Sam looked up to see a brace of rifles pointed at him, a pair of burly police officers holding them. They were addressing both Sam and Julia, who was still holding her pistol as she tended to her father.

Sam was faced with about a dozen choices. Surrender, run, fight, try to talk... but he chose none of them. Instead he froze in place, fearfully eyeing James’s now-stirring body. Julia, on the other hand, spun around immediately and put the policemen in her sights. Like it or not, they were going to assume that Sam was working with her. That left him no option—he had to run.

As the officers opened fire, he dived for cover. Thankfully, their aim was wide, shattering the wood frame of the archway between the lounge and the main room instead of Sam’s head.

“Sam!” Dean yelled, his voice worried. He was struggling to unhook himself from his harness. He had his switchblade out and was sawing roughly at the fraying straps.

The sound of gunfire had pushed the rest of the room’s occupants further into the corner—except one. Shochat cinched the wrappings on his hand tight and moved toward the broken jar at the chamber’s center. Scooping as many of the fragments as he could into his good hand, he deposited them gently in his jacket pocket. Behind him, Eli was squealing helplessly.

Sam heard the sound of Julia’s pistol firing several times, then she stumbled into the main room. Walter’s briefcase was firmly in her grasp as she headed for the window—and Dean.

“Will that hold two?” she demanded.

“What the eff, lady?” Dean snapped back, stepping away from her.

Seconds later, James barreled into the room, his face twisted into a canine snarl.

Behind him, the police officers stared in awe at the mortally wounded man bounding across the room. Their rifles dropped to their sides as James hurled himself into Julia, who in turn fell into Dean. The trio stumbled, off-balance, then toppled out of the open window.

Friggin’ demons!
Dean’s thoughts screamed as the cold New York breeze rushed through his hair. With Julia gripped tightly to his side, he swung nearly fifteen feet out of the window before gravity whipped them back against the Waldorf s stone façade.

Under the combined weight of two people, Dean’s harness was near its breaking point. That he had started to saw through it a minute earlier certainly wasn’t helping. As they impacted the granite wall, Dean could feel Julia’s grip loosen.
Given the circumstances, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if she fell,
he reflected. Non-crazy ladies don’t bum-rush you next to an open window on the thirty-fifth floor.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean spotted James clinging to a small outcropping.
Guy must be built,
he thought.
I sure as hell couldn’t hold on to that tiny ledge.
That thought was short-lived, however, as James spun toward the suspended couple and flung himself at them. He was risking a long drop if he missed,which was a good possibility considering the strong winds.

He didn’t miss. Julia’s grip slackened even further as James impacted her. The two of them flailed desperately, further straining the integrity of Dean’s harness.

“Pull me up!” Dean shouted at the open window above them. A second later, a policeman’s head popped out, but he didn’t grab the rope. Instead, twelve stories above him, Dean clocked Marco watching in shock from the roof. “Marco! Pull!”

Then Dean’s attention was drawn to the demon clawing its way upward, toward the object Julia was still clutching in one hand—the metal briefcase.

“He’s after the case! Drop it!” Dean urged, but Julia ignored him. Instead, she kicked at James, trying to dislodge him. The frayed rope connected to Dean’s harness began to twist apart, the strands snapping one by one.

“Drop it or we all die!” he yelled. Julia locked eyes with Dean, and he could see how torn she was.
Guess that scroll’s just as important to them as it is to us
.

“You can’t read it if you’re a corpse!” Dean asserted desperately.

Reluctantly, she held the case away from her body, as if she was about to let it drop. James dug his fingers into Dean’s legs, using them to push off toward the briefcase.

That guy’s suicidal
, Dean thought.
Oh wait—demon
.

James thrashed through the air, grabbing the case tight and wrenching it out of Julia’s hand.

Both demon and briefcase plummeted toward the city street below.

Dean looked down at Julia, who was still barely clinging to his harness. Even with both hands free, she wouldn’t last much longer.

“You’re a crazy bitch, you know that?” he declared.

No one had noticed Eli’s exit. As the big guy’s partner dangled out of the window with the lady and the briefcase, Eli had taken the opportunity to leave the premises. He prided himself on recognizing opportunities as they presented themselves, and the opportunity to survive was an enticing one.

Upon exiting the Waldorf Astoria, Eli was thrust into a large crowd that had gathered around the security guard’s fallen body. The taxi cab the guy had landed on was totaled, its engine compartment several inches shorter than it had been a minute earlier. The sight of his body was sickening. It was as if he’d been hit by a freight train—every part of him smashed into an unrecognizable mess. Fully half of the assembled people couldn’t take their eyes off the gruesome display, while the other half gawked at the theatrics taking place 300 feet above, where the two idiots still swung perilously.

What no one seemed to notice was the steel briefcase that had landed a dozen yards from the demolished taxi.

What a day the Lord has made
, Eli mused, as he casually picked up the briefcase and disappeared into the bustle of New York City.

Inside the Presidential Suite, chaos reigned. Sam had nearly jumped out of the window after his brother, but was quickly restrained by the two policemen. The room was in shambles, with broken clay, glass and furniture littering the floor. Mr. Feldman tried to relate what had happened to the officers as they cleared the adjacent rooms, but none of them could explain how the security guard had come back to life after apparently being fatally shot. It was nearly a minute before anyone else realized that Dean and Julia were still hanging outside the window.

“Everyone get back,” the older policeman ordered. “We have this under control.” The officer leaned his head out of the window and tried half-heartedly to grab the taut rope that they were dangling from.

I have to get to the roof
, Sam realized.
If they pull him in here, we’re going to be stuck in prison until the Apocalypse.

As the other policeman was occupied with trying to radio a dispatcher, Sam’s opportunity to escape had arrived. Leaving the main room, Sam saw Walter crawling toward the exit. He considered what Walter had said about the War Scroll:
If the wrong people get their hands on it... Well, that would be bad.
What were the chances that Sam and Walter were on the same side? Despite strong impulses to the contrary, Sam decided not to abandon the guy. Slinging a hand under the injured man’s arm, Sam quickly had him out of the suite and to the bank of elevators.

“Thank you...” Walter managed to gasp, his breath ragged.

“Don’t.” Sam didn’t want gratitude from the man until he had decided what to do with him. Entering the elevator, he pressed the button for the forty-seventh floor.

“Down,” Walter wheezed. “We need to get to the street.”

“Your daughter is hanging by a thread, Walter. You’re just going to abandon her?”

“She is? She’s alive?”

“Not if we don’t pull her up to the roof quick.”

They exited the elevator and worked their way up the service stairwell as fast as Walter’s damaged legs allowed. On the roof, they found a stocky, swarthy man already trying to reel in Dean and Julia.

“What in God’s creation is going on down there?” the man asked, nodding at Walter’s torn-up legs.

Sam searched for the words to explain what had just happened. As usual, the exploits of the Winchester brothers were beyond rationalization.

“Communists,” he said decisively. It was the best he could do.

“Help me lift them up.”

By that point, the rest of the window washers strapped to the side of the Waldorf Astoria had stopped working and directed their full attention to Dean and Julia. Dean had started to wall-walk horizontally away from the open window of the Presidential Suite. Sam noted at least three sets of uniformed arms reaching out of the window, indicating that backup had arrived.
Won’t be long before they think to come up here
, he surmised.

The mechanism for raising the suspended window washers was little more than a hand crank attached to the system of pulleys and levers. The man leaned into the crank with all his weight, but couldn’t get it to turn. Sam moved to help him, adding his strength to the guy’s considerable heft. Between the two of them, they got the crank to turn, but very slowly. It would take at least ten minutes to pull Dean and Julia up at that rate.

“Little help Walter?” Sam asked, but he could see Walter was in no shape to exert himself. His skin was pale from the blood loss. All of his energy was dedicated just to remaining upright.