Supernatural: War of the Sons (21 page)

In unison, Sam and Dean loosened their ties and pulled at their collars, revealing their protection tattoos. Julia blushed as she looked at Dean’s.

“Oh. I see. Okay then. So what’s our next step?” she asked.

The boys formulated the plan. First they would need to get Eli into a safe place. Then they would have to set it up so that as James followed Eli, they could trap him in a Devil’s Trap. The unfortunate thing was James, the real James, was probably toast. The guard dog was having a field day, probably pissing all over everything. There was no way the man’s body was going to come out unscathed, especially after the gunshots and that fall he took. After that they were going to have to relieve Eli of the scrolls. And they had to do that carefully, because no one knew what else was lurking in the jars. Then there was Eli. They didn’t know anything about him. The safest thing now was to just assume he was human, he would bleed like everyone else.

“So what do we do first?” Julia asked.

“I think dinner,” Dean said with a smile.

“Really?” Sam asked.

“I reckon the dining car is going to be our best bet for the showdown—set up salt and Devil’s Traps. Later tonight, when it’s closed down, we draw Eli in there. James stays out, we rough up Eli, take his milk money and run.”

“I’ll stay here. There are still a hundred questions I have. I’ll order in.” Walter made himself comfortable.

“I’ll go.” Sam said.

“Why don’t you stay here with Walter. Or start marking up the other end of the train, away from us?” Dean motioned with his eyes toward Julia, who was paying no attention to him.

Sam shook his head. “Fine.”

Dean grinned at Julia. “I guess it’s just you and me.”

She looked at him. “I think you need to wash your face first.” She motioned toward the small bathroom.

Dean opened the door and, looking in the mirror, noticed a large smudge of soot on his cheek. He rubbed it off with some spit and his fingers.

“Good as new. Let’s go sweetheart.” Dean opened up the cabin door. “Food’s on you, money bags.”

Sam handed Dean a half-dozen red wax pencils out of the duffel bag. “Mark as you go.”

Posing as a young couple in love, Julia took Dean’s arm as they negotiated the narrow hallways to the dining car. At each door leading to a new car, Julia would keep look out while Dean pulled up the carpet. On the bare floor he drew a Devil’s Trap, and then laid the carpet back over it.

“What about the windows?” Julia asked.

“Hopefully we’re only dealing with one. But if there are more demons coming, we’ll have to salt the windows and any other way they could get in.”

The dining car was functionally opulent, with white linen tablecloths, plush springy red-velvet seats and flowers in crystal bud vases on each table. A maîtred’ led them to a table. Dean pulled out Julia’s chair for her.

“I didn’t know you could be such a gentleman.”

“It’s a working dinner, sugar nips, don’t get any ideas.” Dean squinted at her. “Plus, there’s our guy now.”

Eli Thurman was reading a newspaper while shoveling beef bourguignon into his mouth. The case—presumably containing the scrolls—was placed firmly between his knees. Dean looked around, and noticed that on the other side of the door, at the far end of the car, James was pacing past the window, glancing in frequently to check on Eli.

“Wow, that guy is hardcore.”

“Hard what?”

“Never mind.”

“So can I ask you a question?” Julia smiled at Dean.

“Sure.”

“Who are you guys, really?”

Dean looked into Julia’s eyes. He instinctively knew better than to trust her. But something pulled at him from inside, he felt some sort of connection to her. He resisted.

“I’ll lay it out straight. We are exterminators of a sort. And I am in the family business. But what I do and how I do it, it’s best if you don’t know.”

“But you know about demons, inscriptions within ancient pre-biblical urns. You mentioned a knife that can kill demons. And it’s not the first time you’ve run into whatever almost killed my father,” Julia said carefully. “It seems to me that there is much more to you than meets the eye.”

“There’s always much more than meets the eye—but we haven’t known each other for that long,” Dean said with a wink.

“So, my life is in your hands and I’m just going to have to trust you?”

“Basically.” Dean looked down at the menu. “No burger?”

“I’m serious. I want to know who you are.”

Dean closed his menu in a huff.

“Okay, listen lady, I know you’ve been playing it pretty cool up till now, but I don’t trust you or your dad. I don’t know what your bag is and I don’t want to know. But in my experience a gun-toting pretty face only leads to one thing. Trouble. So I’m steering clear of you. We’re here to get the scroll and get back home. We can pretend this is all for one and one for all musketeers crap, but when the time comes I’m going to do my job, just make sure you do yours.”

Julia didn’t blink, she didn’t even blush.

“You think I’m pretty?”

Sam took a couple of wax pencils and decided to start from the back of the train. As people slept in their seats in the economy cars, Sam quietly moved through, marking all the doors with Devil’s Traps. He had to move quickly, Devil’s Traps took a while to draw and it was a long train.

Sam finally reached the storage cars, and made his way to the caboose. On the ceiling as well as on the floor, he carefully drew a Devil’s Trap. His back was to the door when a man in a uniform opened it and stepped in.

“Hey, what are you doing in here?”

Sam spun around. “Oh sorry, I was trying to find my bag. I forgot to bring my shaving kit to my cabin.”

“Well, let me help. You take that side, I’ll look on this side,” the guy said as he waddled toward Sam. “What’s the name on the suitcase?”

“Ahh, George. George Michael.”

“What do you do George?”

Sam tried to seem anxious about finding his suitcase.

“Oh, you know.” Sam was drawing a blank. “I’m a song and dance man.”

“Really? Because I would have said you were a liar!”

The uniformed man dived at Sam just as he ducked and rolled out of his way, knocking a pile of steamer trunks over. The man’s eyes flashed black as he flung himself over the trunks. Sam didn’t have a weapon—he had stupidly left the salt-packed shotguns in Walter and Julia’s cabin—and he doubted that there was any salt hanging around the storage car. Sam kicked the demon in the face, then swung at him with a heavy-handled suitcase. The large man fell face first, giving Sam an opportunity to move toward the door, past the Devil’s Traps.

The guy leapt to his feet with surprising grace, and threw himself at Sam, landing rather nicely in the middle of the hastily drawn symbol on the floor.

“Get me out of here,” he growled.

“Sorry, guy. You need to answer some questions first.”

“Go to Hell.”

“Really, that’s all you got? How many more of you are there?”

“You’ll never possess the scroll. It doesn’t belong to you.”

“What do you know about it?”

With that the demon took out a pistol.

“Don’t!”

Sam lunged at him, but the demon put the barrel to his head and pulled the trigger. Sam lay on top of the brain and blood spattered corpse. Black smoke screamed out of his mouth, and gathered as a dark cloud on the ceiling. With a whoosh it flew out an air vent.

Crushed and frustrated, Sam pulled himself up and retreated back to the cabin.

Walter was finishing a ham sandwich.

“Good lord, what happened to you?”

“Guy, or demon rather, just blew a man’s brains out. Where’s Dean and Julia?”

“Still eating.”

“We have to tell them. Let’s go. Grab your books too.”

Walter hurriedly picked up his jacket. Sam grabbed his duffle bag and handed Walter a shotgun.

“Do you know how to use one of these things?”

“Of course. I fought in both wars.”

Sam had forgotten that this was an era where generations of people had lived through two world wars. It seemed strange to think that the third war would be Armageddon itself.

Sam and Walter made their way to the dining car.

Eli dabbed at the corners of his mouth and set the napkin onto his plate. He then grabbed for the case that housed the scrolls.

Dean looked at Julia. “You’re on.”

Julia glanced at Eli, and drained her martini glass. She approached Eli’s table.

“May I join you?”

Eli didn’t look up as he pushed out his chair. “I’m sorry, I’m leav—” His eyes met Julia’s large baby blues.

“Oh please, do have one drink with me. It’s so dull traveling alone. Don’t you think?”

“I thought you were with that fellow over there?” Eli looked up, but Dean was nowhere to be found.

“Oh that plebian, not at all. He invited himself to sit with me. All the while, I was hoping to join
you
for dinner.”

“Me?”

It was clear that Eli did not remember Julia. The refined woman wearing a blouse and a nice-fitting red suit looked quite different from the gun-toting, jeans-wearing, 1950s Lara Croft who had stormed the Waldorf’s Presidential Suite.

As Julia continued to chat up Eli, Dean met Sam and Walter in the hallway in the next car.

“Another demon,” Sam reported.

“Damnit. From where?”

“I don’t know. The one in the caboose was a security guard. Strange thing was his uniform said he was from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

“Let’s get everyone out of the dining car and get this freaking scroll from Howdy Doody. ’Cause I want to get back home,” Dean said.

Julia was still talking to Eli when the boys and Walter walked into the dining car. Even though Eli was only giving one-word answers to Julia’s questions, he was clearly enthralled. Walter sat at the table right behind Eli.

Sam quietly ushered the other diners out of the car. After flashing a police badge, he said he was train security and there had been a series of thefts. Everyone was asked to go back to their cabins and seats and check all their belongings.

Dean asked all the waiters, most of whom were African-American, to go back to the kitchen car. This was official train business, he explained, and they needed to use the dining car.

None of them moved. “What kind of official train business? We weren’t told of anything,” a lithe black guy said to Dean, “and they always tell us if it has to do with service.”

Dean noticed that James had disappeared from the doorway.
That’s not good
, he thought. He turned to the waiter.

“Can you get me all the salt you have in the kitchen?”

“Salt? Sir, I’m truly sorry, but I can’t—”

“Listen, dude, I get it, you’re just trying to keep your job. But right now there is a distinct possibility that a whole host of very ancient and pissed off demons are on this train. And I need that salt.”

“Demons? Why didn’t you say?” The guy pulled a small green cloth bag out from the collar of his shirt. “Chicken bones, feather, little dust. Demons don’t scare me none.”

“Hoodoo?” Dean asked.

“Born and raised and taught by my momma.”

“Great. Then please get me all the salt you have, and start making lines at the doors and windows.”

“You got it. Name’s Ray.”

“Nice to meet you. Dean.” Dean shook Ray’s outstretched hand. A couple of other guys followed Ray out of the dining car to the kitchen.

Julia looked down at her watch. “Well, look at the time. We really do need to retire. We reach Chicago quite early tomorrow, don’t we?”

Eli noticed the car was now empty of diners, save for two big guys and the old man seated behind him. Finally, he took a good look at Sam. Recognition dawned on his face. Eli got up and moved to pick up his case.

“I’ll take that,” Walter said, pulling the case from underneath Eli’s chair.

“That’s mine. You can’t have it. I remember you—you were at the auction too.” Eli looked around the room. “You all were.”

Dean trained a shotgun on Eli.

“Yes, and you took something that we need.”

Walter backed up behind Sam and Dean as Julia stepped away. Eli visibly started to panic.

“You don’t understand—I need those.”

“Yeah, buddy, so do we. Sort of like the entire planet hangs in the balance.”

An enormous crash echoed from the dining car ceiling.

“What was that?” Eli shrieked. Small flakes of paint floated down from the gilded ceiling.

“They’re on the roof,” Sam cried. “Walter, Julia, make these signs everywhere!” Sam threw them wax pencils.

“You,” Dean indicated Eli. “Stay where you are.”

Eli shuddered as he watched Walter attempt to open the locked case. A series of bumps and thumps emanated from above.

“What’s going on?” Eli demanded, sounding scared.

“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” Dean snapped. “The contents of your little suitcase there comes with a whole mess of angry demons that are bound to protect it. During your
Thomas Crown
moment they were released, and now they’re after whomever has the scrolls. So bite it, buddy. Right now we’re saving your sorry ass.”

Dean hastily drew a Devil’s Trap on the ceiling, then another right next to it.