Supernatural Heart of the Dragon

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Dean grinned.

  “Yeah. At least we got in some shots of our own.” Dean looked down at the dead body. “So while I’m gone, can you take care of this guy?”

  Sam nodded, then winced.

  “I’m on it. I’ll need you to help me get him into the car, though.”

  “Yeah, I can do that.” Dean tossed the keys to Sam, who pocketed them, then put the ice-laden towel down so he could start wrapping the body up in the bedspread.

  Dean, meanwhile, started to change into his suit.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Albert was checking over the accounts on his computer, making sure all his enterprises—legitimate or not—were running smoothly. He knew that if he didn’t check regularly, one of his accountants would start skimming off the top.

  It had happened once before, and Tiny had taken care of it.

  Since then, he hadn’t had any problems. Indeed, that had probably been the tipping point for him. That was when he’d finally realized he didn’t need the Heart of the Dragon to do his dirty work for him.

  He sat back and thought about it.

  Why not turn Doragon Kokoro over to the demon, then?

  Yet this was family. Nakadai was of his own flesh and blood. Didn’t that count for something?

  Gary interrupted his train of thought by sprinting into the office.

  “Boss!”

  “What is it?”

  “Tiny’s back. He got hurt!”

  Albert got up.

  “Where is he?” he demanded.

  Gary led Albert downstairs into the back of the kitchen area. The cooks were all preparing for the lunch-hour rush, but there was a small area where Zhong kept an office.

  Tiny sat in there. Ronnie was putting a bandage on his forehead, and Tiny himself was using his right hand to clutch a large bloody towel to his left shoulder.

  “What happened?”

  Quickly, Tiny filled Albert in.

  “Those two guys got ahold of Jake’s gun. They killed him and shot me,” Tiny said. “I was lucky to get outta there alive.”

  Albert felt anger rising up in him—after all, Jake had been a decent leg-breaker—but he was more concerned about the two men.

  “Did you get either of their names?”

  “The shorter one was called Dean.” Tiny nodded toward a corner of the office, and Albert turned. “I got the sword, though.”

  “Excellent!” Albert had always hoped to meet up with John Winchester again, and prayed fervently that these two—one of whom he now knew was named Dean—might be the accursed gaijin’s offspring. It was the one loose end he most wanted to tie up.

  Winchester himself might be gone by now, but Albert could destroy the man’s sons. Family counted for everything.

  But that was for later. No doubt the boys would come looking for the sword, but right now he was more concerned with his new bargaining chip. This changed everything when it came to dealing with the demon.

  “Here are the bodies, Agent Seeger.”

  Dean watched as the wizened old medical examiner strained to pull a drawer out from the wall. He came close to taking pity on the guy after the third time he yanked on the handle, but then he got it.

  Of course, there were two bodies, so he had to go through it all over again. This time Dean did intervene.

  “Lemme give you a hand.”

  The M.E., whose name was Friedrich, let out a long breath.

  “Yeah, thanks. Sorry, guess I ain’t as young as I used to be.”

  “Yeah, well, none of us are,” Dean said gravely, remembering intimately what it had felt like to be that old. His knees still occasionally cracked, scaring the living crap out of him....

  Dean pulled open the drawer and was immediately hit by the smell of burnt flesh.

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah. And this is after it’s been in the frigidaire all this time.” Friedrich shook his head. “Can’t believe this is happening again.”

  Dean shot the M.E. a look.

  “Again?”

  Friedrich tossed a look right back at Dean.

  “Yeah, again, isn’t that why you’re here?”

  With the ease of long practice, Dean tap-danced.

  “Well, yeah, but we’ve been, uh, keepin’ it quiet, y’know?”

  “Oh, so you guys knew the score. Figures.” The M.E. turned to peer at the charred corpse. “See, when the first burned body hit a couple of weeks ago, I told the cops it had happened before. Jerks didn’t listen to a word I said, like usual. Forty-five years I’ve been doing this job, and I still can’t get anybody to take me seriously.”

  Stifling a yawn he knew wouldn’t buy him any favors, Dean reached for the sheet that covered the female victim.

  “Yeah, well, let’s see what we—”

  He pulled it back and saw the blackened, charred flesh.

  “—got.”

  “See, it’s the same thing from forty years back. It was 1969—I remember, ‘cause it got lost in all that Zodiac killer crap. You remember, right? No, you’re too young—you woulda been a baby.”

  Dean was tempted to point out that a blind man could see that he was too young by a full decade. But he refrained.

  “I assume the COD is burning?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but that’s not what makes it interesting. Look at this.” The examiner pointed at the torso. While the skin was uneven, pocked and charred, there were also several straight slashes.

  “This is just what happened forty years ago. There was a Fed back then, too. Bald guy—don’t remember his name. He said he’d be looking into it, but I didn’t hear bupkiss.”

  This time it was a smile Dean had to conceal. A bald man claiming to be a Fed? That had to be his grandfather. Obviously these things ran in the family....

  “Didn’t solve it in ’89, either,” Friedrich continued, “’Course we got better toys nowadays. This time I can tell you for sure that there’s metal trace in these wounds. And it had to be antemortem.”

  That surprised Dean, especially since the Heart of the Dragon’s MO was to burn and slash at the same time.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “Body’s too fragile. If I took a blade to this spot on the body right now, the poor girl’d fall to pieces.”

  Dean nodded.

  “Then there are other problems,” Friedrich added, pointing at the sword wounds. “Cuts like that should bleed like crazy, right? But according to the crime-scene geniuses, there was no blood at the scene, except for what was comin’ outta that guy’s nose.” He pointed at the other corpse. “And that makes no sense.”

  “Maybe they both happened at the same time,” Dean offered, pointing to the burned body. “If the woman was being burned while she was being cut, it might’ve boiled the blood away.”

  Friedrich squinted at Dean.

  “Huh. That’s not a bad theory, actually. Well, okay, it’s not a theory, it’s a hypothesis—always bugs me, the way people call theories hypotheses, then they say, ‘Oh, it’s only a theory,’ as if it’s meaningless, but theories have data behind ‘em, and...” Friedrich drifted off. “Where was I?”

  “Boiling the blood away,” Dean prompted helpfully.

  “Right, yeah, okay, maybe. But that still doesn’t answer how. I mean, this kind of flash-fire could only happen if she was, I don’t know, standing on some magnesium strips or somethin’. But those same geniuses checked for that and all kindsa other incendiaries. Bupkiss. What does that tell you?”

  It told Dean a great deal, but it wasn’t anything he was willing to share with a cranky old dude.

  “Not sure yet,” he said. “But it is an ongoing investigation.”

  “Yeah, well—first time, everyone had their heads all messed up with that Zodiac thing. And last time—hell, that was the year of the earthquake. Probably kept everybody distracted or something. I don’t know, that wasn’t actually my beat back then. But there’s somethin’ screwy here.”

  “Won’t get any argument
from me.” Dean pulled back the sheet on the other corpse.

  “That’s another weird one,” Friedrich said, pointing at the corners of the man’s lips. “Look at that. Know what it is?”

  “Sulfur,” Dean said with a sigh.

  “Yeah, sulfur,” the M.E. confirmed, looking impressed. “There was some on the other body, too—almost missed it among all the burns. I mean, crazy, right?”

  Dean just nodded. Suddenly, this second corpse made a lot more sense.

  “Weirdest damn brain hemorrhage I ever saw, too. Usually it’s just a blood vessel. This guy burst half the ones he had in his brain. It’s like someone set off a detonator or something, yet there was no other damage.”

  Yeah, it meant this poor bastard had been possessed by a demon—and whatever the demon did to him made his brain explode. Dean thought back to Castiel’s words: “A spirit is returning to this plane—one the demon hordes will be able to use in their war with the angels.” So maybe a demon was sticking its nose into things.

  Dean and Sam needed to stay on their toes.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The angel Ramiel knew that Tyler Magowan had spent much of his adult life believing three things.

  That God loved him.

  That angels watched over him

  That some day the Pittsburgh Pirates would stop sucking.

  As with most examples of faith, they were things Tyler never expected to see or experience. He would have settled for a winning season from the Bucs, though—something that hadn’t happened in his memory.

  Therefore, when Ramiel came to Tyler and asked the young man to be the angel’s vessel on Earth, it surprised him—to say the least.

  But not as much as it might have. Unlike most humans, who lived in blissful and willful ignorance, Tyler had noticed the signs that the Apocalypse was nigh. He’d seen such things before, and thought them to be genuine omens, but they had turned out to be random incidents.

  The past six months, though, he’d seen a pattern emerging.

  Ramiel came to Tyler in a dream, and spoke to him.

  “The Lord needs you to give of yourself in the battle for righteousness.”

  Tyler was, of course, skeptical. But Ramiel was very convincing.

  “This is the wish of the Lord,” Ramiel said coaxingly. “The battle is coming, and Raphael has joined us. So, too, will Michael, whose sword will be found.”

  Until the Michael sword was located, however, the angels had to hold the line against the demons. And that meant sacrifices.

  Tyler was perfect. He was young, faithful, and single. He was also unemployed, another casualty of the Earth’s inevitable slide into the oblivion of Revelation. Given the opportunity to contribute in the coming battle, he would likely do so with great fire and conviction.

  Ramiel had been told that there were demons gathering in San Francisco, at the same time as an interfaith conference was being held at the Moscone Convention Center. This confluence was too good for the demons to pass up—their intent was to possess many of the participants, and slaughter the rest.

  The faith of the devout was one of the angels’ primary weapons, and the demoralizing effect of such an attack would be devastating on many levels. Thus Ramiel was ordered to join a contingent of angels led by Uzziel to stop the demons.

  Ironically, before Ramiel had revealed himself, Tyler had been planning to attend this conference with several other members of his church. Without hesitation, he agreed.

  The vast complex of Moscone Center took up an entire city block, with streets on all four sides. When Tyler/Ramiel first arrived, led by Uzziel and accompanied by a dozen other followers, they sensed no demonic presence—disappointing, but not unexpected. Demons were always finding ways to hide themselves. And he had been told from the outset that it was possible that their intelligence was faulty.

  Nevertheless, the angels easily infiltrated the conference, pretending to be attendees. For all that it called itself “interfaith,” Ramiel realized quickly that it was truly a Judeo-Christian gathering. Still, the two religions—fractured though they were in this modern age—maintained considerable common ground, as well as a desire to exercise greater influence over humanity. They longed to wield the sort of influence their ancestors had enjoyed.

  Ramiel thought it was a waste of time. True, everyone in medieval Europe had believed in God, and worshipped and swore fealty to the church, but they had done so because they knew no other way. It was faith by habit. Far fewer people in the modern day’s so-called “Western Civilization” considered themselves religious.

  Yet in modern America, those who did believe truly believed—not because they had to, but because they wanted to. That was true faith, Ramiel thought. Tyler Magowan didn’t consider himself a Christian out of family tradition or fear that he’d be ostracized from his community if he wasn’t. He simply considered himself a Christian, and conducted himself as one.

  Better to have one devout follower than a hundred rote ones, Ramiel decided.

  Not everyone agreed, however. He had made the mistake of mentioning this preference to Uriel, which had led to a lengthy diatribe on the subject of human ingratitude. Uriel described the rampant lack of faith as “the mud monkeys abusing their own free will.”

  But Ramiel held his tongue. He had always felt that the whole point of being an angel was to see the best in things. And when Uriel turned out to be a traitor, it had reinforced this conviction.

  One thing Ramiel couldn’t reconcile was all the death. Too many of his brothers and sisters weren’t here now because they’d died—whether in service of the Lord, as victims of the betrayal by Uriel and his allies, or at the hands of demons.

  He hoped this day wouldn’t add to the ranks of the fallen.

  With Uzziel, Jophiel, and Selaphiel alongside him, Ramiel went to a session that was being held in Room 105, which was one of the conference rooms just outside the exhibit hall on the convention center’s lower level. The hall itself was currently empty—unlike many who used Moscone’s services, the conference boasted no exhibitors peddling their wares or promoting their services. The sole purpose of this conference was for people of faith to talk to one another.

  Room 105 revealed a dozen people gathered in a circle. Most of them were well dressed. One was a Lubavitcher, and he had on a black-and-white suit and sported a full beard and a full head of curly hair sticking out from under his hat. Another was dressed in the black shirt and collar of a Catholic priest.

  The rest were in suits.

  As with every other room they’d entered in the Moscone Center, this one was bereft of any demonic presence.

  In the seat that faced the door sat a woman in a lime green pantsuit. She wore a brooch that was oddly familiar.

  “Hello,” she said, “have you come to join our colloquy?”

  Uzziel smiled and spoke in a deep, resonant voice. His host was a pediatrician named Pierce—a large, powerfully built African American who had used that voice to convince his patients that it would only hurt for a minute.

  “No, thank you,” he replied. “We’d just like to observe, if that’s all right.”

  “By all means,” the woman said.

  Suddenly, Ramiel recognized the brooch—or, more specifically, recognized the stone in the brooch’s center.

  There were only four in existence, and three of them were safely hidden in a church in Cordoba. Ramiel had put them there himself in the fourth century, and if the wards he’d placed around them had been penetrated any time in the subsequent 1700 years, he’d have known.

  They had been created by Bishop Hyginus of Cordoba in A.D. 381, the year after the bishop had conspired to have an ascetic named Priscillian executed for heresy. Priscillian had learned that Hyginus was consorting with demons, and Hyginus had used his demonic allies to help convince Pope Damascus I to have Priscillian condemned.

  Hyginus had created the four stones to hide a demon’s essence within a possessed body, even from an angel. Ramiel had been
sent to confiscate the stones. He had succeeded in retrieving three of them and casting out the demon who had lured Hyginus away from the Lord. Ironically, history would remember Hyginus as a devout Christian who had rid the church of a heretic, and Priscillian as one of the first such heretics.

  And Ramiel had never been able to locate the fourth stone.

  Now, standing in Room 105 of the Moscone Center, Ramiel didn’t hesitate, didn’t give the demons a chance to tip their hands. Nor did he let them know they’d been discovered.

  Instead, without a word, he struck.

  With but a gesture, he knocked the woman in the pantsuit to the ground.

  The angels all turned to stare at him as if he were mad, and only then did he speak.

  “She wears the missing Stone of Hyginus!”

  The priest jumped up.

  “What on Earth are you people doing?”

  Next to him, a man in a charcoal suit and a Liberty of London tie backhanded the priest.

  “Shut up, already, will you?” he snarled.

  Several chairs started to leap into the air and ricochet off of the walls. Ramiel ducked the one that had been aimed at his head, and it careened away.

  “Figures,” the demon with the stone said as its vessel got to her feet. “We get stuck with the one halo who knows what an ancient stone looks like.”

  Ramiel leapt across at that demon, catching her squarely in the chest and kicking her across the room. He let his momentum carry him, and then stood over her, shaking his head.

  “Only a demon would think of a mere 1700 years as ‘ancient.’” His look reflected his contempt. “You’re pathetic little creatures.”

  “Blah blah blah,” the demon said, rising slowly as her eyes went pitch black. “Put it in your wings and rub it, halo.”

  Suddenly she let loose with a kick of her own that sent the angel crashing into the table with what might have been a bone-jarring impact. It was Ramiel’s turn to scramble upright, and as he prepared for the demon to follow through, he glanced quickly around the room.