Sam raised his head.
“Yeah.”
“You all right? Anything broken?”
“I don’t think so.” He looked around. The tent smelled like scorched wool and had the coppery stink of freshly spilled blood. There was the sickeningly sweet smell of cauterized flesh, too. The man lying to his immediate right had had all his hair burned away, leaving his scalp a boiled globe of fresh scars and blisters. One of his ears was almost burned off. He was weeping and throwing up at the same time, trying to breathe and calling out to someone named Megan.
“This thing doesn’t work for crap,” the Rebel re-enactor said, finally tossing the cell phone down in disgust. “Can you see the parking lot?”
“They’ve got it blocked off.”
“Sheriff’s out there somewhere,” the Yank said. “I saw her car. Plus the Staties.”
“What about ambulances?”
“They—”
A blast of musketfire tore through the tent wall, opening a hole the size of a dinner plate in the fabric. Through it, Sam saw the grinning faces of demons in blue and gray approaching from fifty yards away. From what he could see, they had formed a barricade around the encampment, blocking off the parking lot and encircling the remaining tents on all sides.
“They’re closing in,” the Rebel said. “Who are these guys?”
The Yankee didn’t look back.
“Their eyes are all black,” he said. “And the weapons they’re using are replicas. How is that even possible?”
“Long story.” For an instant Sam considered trying to clarify, then decided against it. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“There’s no other place. Those things have the parking lot blocked off. We’re surrounded.”
“Doesn’t matter—we can’t stay here.” Levering himself up, Sam counted the other men in the tent and came up with eleven. “Who else is out there on the battlefield?”
The Confederate shrugged, a jerky, panicky move, like a hostage under interrogation, and when his Adam’s apple jerked up and down, Sam realized that he’d met the man before.
“You’re...” He hesitated, grasping for the name. “Ashcroft, right?”
“Ashgrove.”
“You’re part of the 32nd. I talked to you before.” Sam cast his eyes back out through the hole in the tent. “Is there anybody else left alive out there?”
“Not many,” Ashgrove admitted. “Most of them took off for town before they sealed off the camp, or...” His voice broke off, and he looked abruptly as if he were going to burst into tears. “My God. What’s happening?”
“We have to get these wounded men to safety,” Sam said. “Now.” He found a boot that would replace the one he had lost, and pulled it on. He had a feeling its owner wasn’t around any longer to miss it.
Ashgrove shook his head.
“We’re staying here.”
“In a tent?”
“It’s shelter. Maybe if we leave ‘em alone, those things will pass us by.”
Sam flicked his eyes back. He saw a pile of canvas stretchers, the old-fashioned kind with wooden poles on either side.
“If we stack the wounded by twos, we can get them out of here while there’s still a chance. Otherwise...” He swallowed, tasting something sour in his throat and belly, “we’re all going to die.”
The Union boy looked Sam straight in the eye. He looked tired and frightened but, like Ashgrove, determined to deal with the practicalities of survival.
“Say we can get out,” he said, “Ash is right. We’re surrounded. Where are we going to go?”
Sam opened his mouth and realized he didn’t have an answer.
“I know a place.”
The three of them looked over at the entrance of the tent. Standing there, clutching the canvas flap in one hand, was Sarah Rafferty. Her face was strained, and the bruises under her eyes made her look like the victim of a particularly inept undertaker, but it was definitely Sarah, upright and breathing. Sam felt a small gust of relief, a sense that something might actually go right this early-morning.
“Sarah,” he said, “are you...?”
“I’m alive.”
“Sarah?” Ashgrove asked, staring at her. “Wait, Tanner—? You’re a girl?”
Sarah waved him off.
“There’s a place we can get to,” she said.
THIRTY
Judas Iscariot strolled along the hillside.
He’d considered making his entrance on a pale horse, but that seemed too pretentious, even for him. Simply appearing here tempted fate in a way that wasn’t entirely comfortable with. Time and experience had made him circumspect.
But in the end he’d donned a general’s uniform, strapped on a cutlass and strode out from the copse of live oak along the battlefield’s southernmost perimeter to watch the action unfold from above. Not because he intended to alter the flow of events—such things were better left to others—but simply to observe the endlessly amusing spectacle of human suffering.
Like crucifixions and pornography, it never got old.
He’d arrived before dawn, already hearing the sound of cannons and the cries of demonic jubilation down below. It didn’t do much to lighten his mood. News of what had happened to his Collector in the basement of the Pentecostal Church had, of course, already reached him and left him feeling sour, plunging him into the restlessness and depression that had plagued him on and off for the last two thousand years.
He’d always been the moodiest of the Twelve, and becoming a demon hadn’t changed that.
And then there was the loss of a noose.
There were other nooses, of course, a half-dozen of them, scattered throughout the world from Bangkok to Burbank, most in the hands of private collectors or occultists with no real sense of what they had. And there would be more, as humanity in its endless resourcefulness decoded the secret of the seventh knot and wove their fates like the obedient little sheep they were.
But now there was one less.
And losing a noose and a Collector in one night—to a minor demon like McClane—was an aggravation to Iscariot. At least the battle that the idiot had unleashed here would—
“Judas?”
He stopped, brought up short by the unexpected sound of his name spoken aloud. He turned to look at the man standing a few yards away, wearing a rumpled suit and trench coat, looking as if he too had been up half the night. Recognizing him at last, Judas smiled.
“Castiel,” he said, with genuine pleasure. “How are you, my friend?”
Castiel stared at him.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
Judas turned his attention again to the battle below.
“Always a treat to watch the ants swarm the anthill, isn’t it?” When Castiel didn’t respond, Judas turned and scowled a little. “Surely you don’t hold me accountable for this.”
“It was your noose.”
“Stolen from me!” Judas protested, more petulant than angry. “McClane and his minions ambushed one of my Collectors and took it from him. Worse, he had your friends do it for him.”
“Yet it was your noose, so it becomes your responsibility.”
Judas shook his head, holding up both hands.
“I didn’t survive as long as I have by getting involved in every petty skirmish that comes along.”
“This isn’t just another petty skirmish,” Castiel said. “With everything that’s been happening, you must know what’s at stake.”
“Again, it’s not my problem.”
“You’re not worried?”
Judas frowned at him.
“Of course I am. You know me. I always worry.” He paused to watch a squadron of demons on horseback set fire to a tent. Several human re-enactors came scurrying out and the demons shot them in the back with muskets. He could hear their laughter, brittle and barbed. “But honestly, when you look at the grand tapestry, what’s to be done?” Then he turned again.
“Why are you here?�
�� Realization, of a sort, began to sink into Judas’s face. “What is it you want from me, Castiel?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Don’t try to be tactful. It was never your gift.”
Castiel sighed.
“I’m looking for Him.”
“Still?”
“Still.”
“I don’t see why—” Judas broke off. “Wait. You don’t think... that I...?” He gaped at Castiel, eyes agog, mouth slightly open. The sense of incredulity swelled into full-blown disbelief, straining all color from his cheeks. For a moment he felt as if he was going to explode with anger.
Instead he burst out laughing.
“Oh. Oh my.” The laughter doubled him over, and he held his stomach, roaring until tears sparkled in his eyes. “Oh, my dear Castiel, I’m sorry, I... I saw you here and I just assumed that you were... but you... Oh my—”
And he was off again on a flight of giggles.
“You should see the look on your face. Priceless.” When he finally caught his breath, he clapped Castiel on the shoulder. “Thank you,” wiping his eyes, sniffling, “I needed that. I honestly did.”
Castiel stood stiffly, unmoved.
“Did you not break bread with His son?”
“Oh, yes,” Judas said, gazing skyward, apparently lost in reverie. “Yes indeed. We broke bread and I knelt at his feet. And we talked of many things.” His head snapped around, voice sharp, eyes hard and black. There wasn’t a trace of laughter remaining in his face. “But I serve a different master now.”
Castiel took a step back, cringing away.
“Sorry. Painful memory.” Judas stepped forward and reached out to brush an imaginary bit of lint from Castiel’s shoulder. “Go. Go down. Be among your people.”
Your people.
Castiel turned to look reluctantly back down the hill at the ruined battlefield, thick with smoke. What he saw there was Hieronymus Bosch by way of Ken Burns. Demons on horseback and on foot had surrounded the last of the re-enactors’ tents and were spreading across the parking lot. They had fallen on the police cars and were smashing their windows, rocking the vehicles back and forth, setting fire to them.
A dozen additional state police cruisers arrived, and troopers began firing back at the attackers from behind their vehicles. One of the demons jumped his horse over a police car, swinging his saber down in a wild Pete Townshend-style swoop to lop the arm off the trooper below him. The horse’s hooves smashed the cruiser’s roof-lights, throwing showers of sparks across the pavement. Below him, the maimed trooper stood gaping at the jetting stump where his arm had once been.
“I came to speak to you,” Castiel said.
Judas affected a tone of sympathy.
“Then I’m sorry for your wasted trip.”
“It’s not wasted if I can help,” Castiel said, “and I will. But first I have to know if you’ve told me everything you can. You must tell me what you know.”
“I know this is difficult to hear,” Judas said, “but knowing what I do know about Him, I can honestly say that you should be grateful for your ignorance. It truly is bliss.”
Castiel looked at him. It was impossible to tell whether the demon was joking or not. Whatever the case, Judas was right. And he needed to get down there, and now, while there was still something left to save.
“Castiel?” Judas called out behind him as he resumed his patrol. “It was good to catch up. Don’t be a stranger.”
THIRTY-ONE
Dean wasn’t exactly sure when they started losing the battle, or if they’d ever been winning. But when he saw the first wave of demons in uniforms spilling over the parking lot, picking off cops and re-enactors with lethal accuracy, he realized that the outcome was no longer even in doubt.
In front of him, still on the pavement, McClane was laughing.
“You like that?” Sheriff Daniels asked the demon, staring straight down into its ruined face. “You want some more, you soulless prick?”
McClane couldn’t speak, but just lay cackling with a big hysterical-looking grin twisting up the corners of his bloody, ruined mouth. Most of his teeth were gone, and those that remained stuck up every which way like tombstones in tornado country. His bright, black eyes were flashing everywhere at once... everywhere, that was, except for at Sheriff Daniels, who leaned over him again, holding up the inside of her wrist, this time toward his face.
Dean looked at the Santeria tattoo on the Sheriff’s wrist, the loop of numbers with the smaller circle within it. It wasn’t exactly glowing, but there was a peculiar luminescence to it, as if the lines themselves were heating up from inside. It reminded him of the glowing dial on one of those old-time radium wristwatches, the kind that was rumored to give you cancer.
“Hey, Sheriff, what—?” Dean started.
“Quiet,” the sheriff snapped, never taking her attention away from McClane. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Where’s the noose?”
McClane grinned harder, the remains of his teeth gnashing together. Tendons bulged in his jaw.
“I cut it up. Chopped it to pieces. Cast it to the four winds.”
“You’re lying.” Bending down, she peeled back McClane’s left eyelid so that the black sclera was completely exposed. “Hold him,” she said to Dean. “Pin him down.”
“What?” Dean said. “So now we’re BFFs?”
“If your definition of a friend is someone who’s saving your ass,” Daniels said, “then yes. I still don’t understand who the hell you are, but right now I’m your only hope.”
“And dozens of other golden hits,” Dean retorted. “Sorry, Sheriff. I’ll take my chances.”
“You don’t have to trust me. Just do as I say. I’ll explain later. All right?”
“Do as you say? That’s your pitch?” Dean stared at her in disbelief. “Screw you, lady.”
He crawled away, moving slowly, but definitely moving.
The ground was littered with broken glass, fallen branches and debris. He bumped into something and, before he knew what was happening, felt a hand taking him by the arm, lifting him gently but firmly back to his feet. He wobbled a little, but felt steadier when he saw who had helped him up.
“Cass,” Dean said. “Nice of you to get in the game.”
Castiel nodded.
“I found this for you,” he said, and Dean saw that he was holding the demon-killing knife.
Dean took the blade. Its familiar shape and heft felt good in his hand. He looked back to where the sheriff was still struggling to hold McClane down and felt the angel’s hand on his shoulder.
“She’s right, Dean.”
“What?”
“Sheriff Daniels. She and her family bear a sacred trust— they have been guardians of the noose for generations.”
“Look, Cass, I know you’re probably still a little creased about Sam capping your Witness and all, but...”
“That doesn’t matter now.” Castiel’s grip on Dean’s shoulder tightened considerably, almost painfully. “My priorities have changed.”
Then the angel disappeared abruptly.
Sighing, Dean tucked the blade into his belt and started back toward McClane and the sheriff. She glanced up at him in surprise.
“Changed your mind?”
“I don’t wanna talk about it.” Squatting down, he used his good arm to hold McClane’s upper torso and shoulders flat against the asphalt. In front of him, close enough that he could smell her shampoo, Sheriff Daniels leaned directly over McClane’s wide-open eye. Then she flexed her hand back and pressed the tattoo directly against his eyeball. Dean heard a faint hissing sound, like a red-hot brand burning into skin, and McClane shrieked and thrashed.
“Where is it?” Daniels asked, shouting above his screams. “Where’s the seventh coil?”
She held her wrist there for another moment, then drew it away. Underneath her, McClane gasped and fumed. When he looked up at them, Dean saw the faint imprint of her tattoo burned over the glassy black ei
ghtball of his left eye. It looked like a tiny, complicated blueprint. Reddish-black tears trickled from the corners.
“...lost it...” he managed. “...dropped it somewhere...” He manufactured another grin and somehow managed a weak, watery laugh. “Doesn’t matter... you’ve already lost... stupid bitch...” He sucked in his cheeks, and made a horking noise deep in his throat.
“Look out,” Dean said, “I think he’s gonna—”
The demon spat a thick gobbet of blood directly in the sheriff’s face. She didn’t even flinch, just reached up and wiped the spittle from her cheek. Throughout it all, her expression didn’t change. When she spoke again her voice was as cold as ice.
“That’s it,” she said. “I’m going to burn your eyes right out of your head.”
From nearby came a loud nickering scream, a clatter of hooves on metal, and Dean looked up to see two black-eyed Confederate demons on horseback riding hard across the roofs of parked police cars. One was carrying a flaming Confederate flag. Upon seeing Dean and the sheriff, the soldier drew back his arm and threw it, the pole whistling through the air like a javelin in the direction of Sheriff Daniels.
Dean sprang upward and grabbed Daniels, knocking her backward just as the pole slammed into the asphalt where she’d been less than a second earlier.
Daniels gazed up at him, startled and badly shaken. The demon’s blood was still streaked along the side of her nose.
“Idiot.”
“You’re welcome,” Dean said.
The sheriff pointed at the bloodstain where McClane had been lying.
“He’s gone.”
“You still owe me a big explanation.”
Daniels seethed.
“So do you. Get off me!”
Another clatter of hooves filled the air, and they both looked around to see the next wave of demons surging across the parking lot.
“There’s no time,” Dean said, hauling himself to his feet. He glanced at the cruiser nearest them. Its roof was partially smashed in, the lights and windshield demolished, but the loudspeakers on either side still looked operational.
He started toward the car, opened the door and got in the driver’s seat.
Supernatural The Unholy Cause Page 17
