Seven Hells, Part 8 of ?
Jan. 20th, 2013 11:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tikificTitle: Seven Hells, Part 8 of ?
Fandom: Supernatural
Author: tikific
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dean/Castiel, Sam, Garth, Kevin, Linda Tran, Benny, Crowley, Meg, Inias, Naomi, Metatron, Odin, Kali
Warnings: Cursing. Sexual situations. Spoilers up to 8.08, and then we veer off into an AU and never return. There are OCs here: some I’ve invented, some I’ve ripped off from various religious mythologies, and some I’ve rebooted from the SPN canon. Also, no beta, so if you freak over that, you should probably go take a nice warm bubble bath and read something else.
Word Count: 90,000 (individual chapters are around 5,000)
Summary: Sam, Dean and Cas, along with an alliance of pagan lords of the underworld, battle with Crowley over the Word of God. But the boys soon discover there is another, more malignant threat looming in the shadows.
Notes: This is an AU storyline, which fundamentally diverges from what they’re currently doing on the show. And thank Zeus for that.
“Dean!”
Dean extracted his upper body from the guts of the Impala at the entreaty of the oddly familiar voice. “Namtar,” he said to the dark-haired, dark-eyed teenager who stood before him. “Oh, and, hey, Ninazu!” Dean added, greeting the boy's baby brother, who was clinging tightly to his hand. He looked Namtar up and down. “Uh, is that a school uniform?”
“Yeah, I go to Bronx Science!” said Namtar proudly, as Ninazu beamed up at him. “I don’t show the wings when I’m in public,” he whispered. “Ninazu can’t put them away yet,” he added, causing his small brother to flap his own little dark wings. Even Dean had to admit, it was pretty cute. “Cool car, by the way. That's a classic!”
“Thanks,” said Dean, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. He leaned a hip on the Impjala's fender. “So, you guys stop by just to chat?”
“Uh, I need a favor?” said Namtar. Dean smiled. Even though the teen was a god with unearthly powers, his voice still broke in a charming way.
“Yeah, what is it?”
Namtar favored him with a lopsided grin. “So, I was gonna stop by Hell on the way home, and I had planned to snoop around to see what Crowley's up to....”
“How is our favorite King of Hell these days?” asked Dean.
“I gave him shingles!” Namtar said proudly. Ninazu grinned up at his big brother, flapping his little wings. “So, he's not great. Which is cool. But, anyway, Uncle Odin asked me to keep a watch on him....”
Dean frowned. “Anything going on? And you're being careful, right?”
“Oh, yeah, I'm totally being careful. But then Mom asked if I could watch Ninazu for a little while, which is also cool, but I don't wanna take him over there, 'cause, you know, he's a kid....
“I think I know what you want,” smiled Dean.
“Cas,” said Dean a few minutes later as he bustled into Rufus's cabin, where Cas was watching the Discovery Channel on television. “Hey, I just talked to Namtar.”
“Namtar?” asked Cas, not looking up from the program.
“Yeah, Odin has him spying on Crowley.”
Cas scowled at the view from space on the television screen. “What have they found, Dean?”
“Not quite sure. Anyway, Namtar asked us for a favor.”
“What was that?” asked Cas, finally turning his head. He stared in horror as little Ninazu cheerily barreled forth into the cabin, clambered up on the couch next to him and then without so much as a how-do-you-do, squirmed into the angel's lap.
Cas went stiff.
“Oh, so maybe this won't be so hard after all,” Dean cheerily told Cas. “Namtar just wants us to watch his little brother for the afternoon. He obviously can't really take his little brother along on a spy mission.”
“Watch … him?” asked Cas, who was regarding the small figure in his lap as one might stare at an unexploded IED.
“Yeah. What I figured is, give me ten minutes, I'll put the car back together, and then I'll hop into town and maybe pick up some lunch and a couple things to keep him busy. But since you guys are buddies, maybe you can watch cartoons together for a few minutes? Or Sesame Street or some educational crap?”
“Where is Sesame Street, Dean? I don’t remember that address in Whitefish.” Cas was answered by the bang of the front door slamming shut. He looked down again to a pair of dark eyes staring up at him. Ninazu pointed at the TV screen, a solemn look on his face.
“Yes, that's the television,” Cas told him. He cast his eyes to the side, and picked up the clicker, which was sitting beside him on the couch. “This is the remote control.”
Gleeful little grabby hands enveloped the remote.
“Sammy! Hey, I was hoping to find you here. Well, either here or the golf course.”
Sam had commandeered a table at the local library under a big “I read banned books” banner, and was surrounded by stacks of ancient-looking tomes. “Some of my inter-library loan requests came in from the university,” he explained.
“I thought we’d grab some lunch and bring it back. I left Cas back at the cabin with Ninazu.”
“With-? Wait. What?”
“Long story. His brother brought him by.”
Sam goggled. “We are now … doing child care services for the lords of hell?”
“Like I said, long story. Anyway, the kid has totally bonded with Cas, so I think they’ll be okay for a while, but, you know, I don’t wanna go back to the cabin and find a smoking crater in the ground.” Dean looked at Sam, his features creasing into a frown. “Cas had one of those … spells, earlier today.”
Sam shut the book he had been reading and folded his hands. Dean didn't need to tell him what he meant. Since Cas had so mysteriously crawled back from Purgatory it seemed at least that he had snapped back to sanity. But he had been plagued by troubles with his angelic powers and, perhaps more worrying, seemed to get occasional petit mal-like seizures, where his eyes would briefly go out of focus, and then he would snap awake, somewhat confused and disoriented. It was subtle, but Dean had picked up on it pretty quickly, and once he had explained it to Sam, it was quite clear to him as well that something was not right.
Dean had been worried enough to threaten Cas with a doctor, but the angel claimed there was absolutely nothing wrong with his vessel. And so the matter stood.
“Is he all right now?”
“Same as always, he claims nothing's wrong.”
Sam nodded. “Dean, while we're here, can I talk to you about something?”
“Can this wait?” asked Dean, who was growing a trifle impatient.
Sam pressed on. “A couple weeks back, you wanted to gank Bibi. Who I should point out had never done anything to us. And now we’ve got a … baby Babylonian god of some kind, bunking at the cabin?”
Dean looked around. There was a noisy group of children doing crafts at a table in the next room, but no one in earshot of Sam. He sat down and took a breath. “OK. What?”
“Look. Dean. I know you have an investment in this scheme because your angel boyfriend is pushing for it…”
Dean's face flashed through a dizzying array of expressions. “He’s not- Cas is- Well, I mean, he’s sort of-“
Sam leaned over and whispered, “Dean, an angel you just so happen to be sleeping with is planning this whole Rumble in the Seven Hells cage match. So I’m wondering if maybe – maybe – you are lacking in some objectivity here.”
Dean opened one of Sam’s old, dusty books and thumbed through it. He glanced up to catch Sam’s eye. “Look, I know you were … cautious, before we went up to Valhalla. But you gotta admit Odin – this new Odin – seems like a reasonable guy.”
Sam's expression was icy. “He gave you beer and a horsie ride.”
Dean suddenly looked over the hills and far away. “Horses. Yeah, Sammy. I wonder why we hadn't ever thought of riding down demons that way?”
“Uh. Maybe because this isn't the fourteenth century? Dean, have you looked at the other gods? The ones on his list?” Sam held up the piece of paper Odin had given them.
“I suppose you’ll give me the rundown?”
“Unpredictable is not the word.”
“Sometimes to take down Hitler, you gotta hold your nose and make a deal with Stalin.”
“This isn’t Hitler versus Stalin! Hades, and Hel, and some Mayan apocalypse dude? This is … Frankenstein versus Godzilla.”
“Well, then, we just make sure we’re on Godzilla’s side. And maybe get some sharks with laser beams.”
Sams eyes grew full of murderous rage. “Dean. Okay, Dean, not funny. I’ve already had my ass dumped in the middle of an endless desert this month. I don’t have much motivation to reenact Orpheus and Eurydice as an encore!” He sighed.
“Orpheus and … who? Wait, were they those guys in Fleetwood Mac?” asked Dean.
Sam sighed. “I know we have our issues with Crowley-“
“Issues, Sammy? The guy is 100 percent pure USDA Prime Grade A evil.”
“… but it sounds like these guys have resentments that go back centuries, or millennia! I feel like we’re jumping in the middle of something that doesn’t concern us. I mean, don’t you get the feeling we’re poking a hornet’s nest with a stick?”
Dean leaned back and studied his brother. “Hornet’s nest, huh? You remember Murray Reynolds?”
“No. Should I?”
“Maybe you were too little. One of Dad’s old friends. Dad dumped us with Murray for a while one summer. And, I hated it. Guy lived in a small, crappy house, but if you went outside to play, he had hornets everywhere. I couldn’t go in the yard without getting stung. And the old bastard was too cheap to call an exterminator. Anyway, this went on, and one night, as I was going in my room – it wasn’t really my room, I think it was where he kept his booze and porn or something, but anyway – I go inside and there’s fucking hornets in there!”
Sam's eyes rolled heavenwards. “Is this story actually going somewhere, Dean?”
“So I finally tell him, Murray, I don’t care, I’m not going in there with the fucking hornets. You get rid of them. Well, he goes out and gets a bottle of some kind of spray poison – like I’m gonna sleep in a room that’s full of bug poison – and I think pulls a nylon stocking over his hat and goes on in. Well, a little while later, he comes running out, and the room is filled – filled, Sammy – completely filled with fucking hornets! He’s cursing, and he’s stung all over. Turns out, they’d made a nest in the wall. They had literally eaten out all the insulation, and part of the fucking wall ended up collapsing! Anyway, Dad had to come pick us up because the dude’s house was a disaster.”
“That’s … quite a memory,” said Sam.
“Sammy. That’s the thing about hornets. Yeah, you poke ‘em, you risk getting stung. But you can’t ignore them either. Because they’re eating away.”
Sam was chewing thoughtfully on his pencil. “So, is Crowley a hornet, or is he Godzilla?”
Dean sat back in his chair, regarding his brother. “Sam, what did you wanna do with your life? I mean, if you weren’t a hunter?”
“You know damn well. Before the thing with Jess, I was headed to law school.”
Dean's eyes shone. “So? Put that legal brain to use for us! You know these hell guys love contracts. And you’ve studied their histories, so you know what to expect. And go pick Cas’s brain as well. It’s all just a big celestial soap opera to him. If you have reservations about all this, go write some kind of treaty or something, and we won't go forward until we get all of them to sign in blood on the dotted line.”
Sam frowned, remembering Bobby’s deal with Crowley. “I won’t have to tattoo it all on my arm or anything?”
Dean, who was standing up, chuckled. “Hey, I thought you said you wanted a sleeve.”
Sam grunted in return.
“I’m off to get a Happy Meal. You coming?”
“I’ll be there later,” Sam told him. He frowned as he watched his brother depart. Godly babysitting service, he thought, hoping they were getting at least twenty-five cents an hour for this shit.
“How you guys doin'?” called Dean, bumping into the door while hefting an armload of packages. He dumped his bags on the kitchen table and then, looking across the living room, did a double-take. Cas and Ninazu were both sitting cross-legged, still as stones, on the floor in front of the television. They appeared to be fast-forwarding through a movie that featured some kind of elaborate production number: there were brightly-clothed dancers arrayed around a large ballroom, twirling though impossible gyrations at sonic speed.
“Hello, Dean,” said Cas. He hit the pause button and stood up.
“Is that … a Bollywood movie?” asked Dean. He squinted at the channel ID in the corner, which was in a script he didn't recognize: it sure as heck wasn’t English. “I don't remember getting this channel.”
“Ninazu fixed the satellite dish.”
“He … fixed it?” asked Dean.
“I guess his healing powers are more general than we had supposed. The television now gets every channel.”
“Every channel?”
“Every channel.”
“Well, that's good,” said Dean, hoping the child had also “fixed” the cable bill. “Maybe we can have him fix the wifi. It’s been running a little slow.”
“Is your Busty Asian Beauties site not loading quickly enough?”
“Not in front of the kid,” Dean muttered as Cas smirked a pretty goddam irritating angel smirk.
“We had a question about these films. Perhaps you can answer?” Dean noticed that Ninazu, standing and clutching at Cas's pantleg, was now regarding him solemnly.
“Probably not but you can ask. You wondered why everyone was dancing and singing like … a bunch of douche bags?”
“No, we found that to be pleasing.” Cas looked down at Ninazu, who grinned and nodded enthusiastically. “We watched one film. A young person had been assigned an unsatisfactory arranged marriage. After many colorful production numbers, this was worked out, and she was allowed to marry a boy she favored.”
Dean nervously scratched the back of his neck. “Uh, okay. I don't know much about arranged marriages. Or much of any marriages....”
“Then we watched the next film, and the romantic couple in question encountered the same difficulty with a faulty arranged marriage. And then another, and another.” Ninazu nodded until Dean feared his head would fall off.
“Uh, kinda repetitive, huh?” smiled Dean. “Boy, that's a lot of movies. I was only gone an hour or two....”
“Yes. We began watching on fast forward when we became aware of the cliched narrative devices.”
Dean began to question their logic, but then stopped. An angel and a god? OK, maybe that’s how they watched television. “Ninazu doesn't like tropes?” Dean looked down and the boy shook his head.
“So our question is, as this is obviously a deeply flawed practice, why is the tradition of arranged marriage simply not dropped?”
Dean scratched his head. He was used to getting kid questions from Sammy, when he was little, but they had never quite been like this. “Well, Ninazu,” he said, hunkering down so he was at eye level with the small god, “human traditions – they're really hard to change. You wanna be like your parents, do what they did, I guess. Like my brother Sammy and I are hunters because that's what our dad did. Okay? Now, you want something to eat?”
There was a very enthusiastic nod yes.
They gathered around the dining room table, which doubled as the kitchen table, the cabin having no dining room. Ninazu couldn't quite see over the table top, so they ended up sitting him up on a couple of couch cushions. Ninazu appeared to enjoy this, as he flapped his little wings in a manner Dean took for enthusiastic.
Cas was rustling around in the fast food bag. “There should be a kid's meal in there,” Dean told him.
Cas withdrew a colorful little cardboard box. “This is extraordinary,” he said, curiously opening it up. “It's a hamburger! Only … it’s very small.” He and Ninazu gaped in wonder at the marvel that was a miniature hamburger.
“Yeah, see, little fries, and little Coke?” said Dean as Cas dug them out.
Cas set the burger before Ninazu, peeking under the bun. “There is no bacon,” said Cas, a slightly accusatory expression clouding his face.
“Naw. Kids are usually fussy, so they get plain stuff. And you need to cut it up for him.” Dean rummaged around in the bag and pulled out a plastic knife and handed it over.
“He only eats pieces?” asked Cas. Ninazu, too, blinked in surprise.
Dean smiled indulgently. “Well, you'll see. It's a little less messy if you only give 'em a little piece at a time.” Dean was busy folding out a number of paper napkins around and under Ninazu's place, and then over Ninazu himself. “Wish we could do something to cover those wings,” he muttered.
“How could he possibly get food on his wings?” asked Castiel, who was putting a great deal of care into dividing Ninazu's cheeseburger into four perfect wedges. “They are a great distance form his mouth.”
Dean laughed. “If I remember Sammy at this age, you'll be lucky to get any food at all into the kid. You had a burger before, little guy?” he asked, stepping back to admire his napkin-draping handiwork.
Ninazu shook his head, sending one of the paper napkins fluttering off, and then grabbed a hamburger wedge, which he enthusiastically smooshed into his face, in the general vicinity of his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully on the tiny portion that had landed inside his oral cavity, while the rest settled down his front, in his lap, and on the floor. There actually appeared to be more hamburger residue spread around the cabin than existed on the plate.
Cas watched in silence. He turned to Dean. “That is impressive.”
Dean got a faraway look in his eyes. “Seems like yesterday Sammy was this age,” he said, ruffing Ninazu's hair. “You like burgers, kiddo?” he asked the child, who emitted a satisfied burp. “C'mon Cas. We better eat this stuff before it gets cold.” And so Cas and Dean ate their lunches while Ninazu occupied himself with covering his general vicinity in cheeseburger byproducts. They also dug the little plastic Transformers robot out of the bottom of the bag and Cas and Ninazu alternated watching it roll along the table.
“Do I need to get you a kids meal next time, Cas?” laughed Dean.
“It is unfortunate that the burger does not come with bacon,” mused Cas, once again sending Bumblebee scooting across the kitchen table. Cas reached over towards Ninazu and withdrew his hand. He looked with great curiosity at a cheese-covered black feather. “Ninazu has gotten food in his wings, Dean.”
Dean smiled triumphantly while Cas cast an accusing glance towards the little god, who simply smiled beatifically. “Well, I think it's bath time for you, kiddo,” laughed Dean, picking up the sticky kid. “Come on, Cas, I think this is gonna take us both.
In the end, they found that the best solution for cheesy wings was a mild dishwashing soap and a toothbrush.
Since he wasn't around, they used Sam's toothbrush.
And Cas figured out how to angel mojo everyone more or less dry. Cas and Ninazu had their head bowed over a Transformers coloring book Dean had bought when there came a knock a the door. Dean got up to answer it, but Namtar had already appeared inside the cabin. Ninazu squealed and ran towards his big brother.
“Oh my god you guys I am so sorry, that took forever,” the young god apologized. “Hey, how you doing, squirt?” he asked, hefting his brother.
“Hey, no problem, kiddo,” said Dean. “We had fun, right?” Ninazu wriggled out of Namtar's grasp and dropped to the floor and enthusiastically nodded. He ran over the coffee table, where Cas handed over the coloring book, and ran back to his big brother, proudly waving a successfully colored drawing at him. “See? Look?” said Dean proudly. “He colored inside the lines.”
“That's great, big guy,” said Namtar. “Uh, what's this?” he asked of the drawing on the opposite page that looked somewhat like Optimus Prime as painted by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in oil.
“Oh, that's mine,” Cas somewhat sheepishly admitted.
Namtar shrugged. “It's pretty good. You colored in the lines.”
“Thank you.”
“How's our friend, Crowley?” asked Dean.
Namtar smirked. “In bed with a migraine.”
“Ouch. That doesn't sound fun,” said Dean, wincing in sympathy.
“Two thirds of the eastern seaboard is blacked out. I guess the lights were bothering him.”
They shared a grin. “So, you’re being careful?” asked Dean. “I don’t want you taking any unnecessary risks. You got your brother to think of, right?”
“No, sir,” said Namtar, who suddenly grew more serious. “I’m not taking any risks.”
“Good. Well, we’ll keep the coloring books here in case Ninazu wants to visit again. You take care of your mom now, right?”
“I will!” Namtar promised. Ninazu suddenly bolted to the kitchen table and grabbed the Bumblebee toy, and then ran over to Cas, pressing the little toy into the angel's hands.
“I will take care of this for you,” Cas promised.
Ninazu ran over and grabbed Namtar's hand. And then with a gentle flap of wings the brothers took their leave, Cas fondly waving bye-bye to Ninazu.
“You like kids, Cas?” Dean asked as they settled on the couch for the latest episode of Dr. Sexy MD.
A frown and a head tilt. “As a general principle, Dean?”
“You seemed to get along with Ninazu.”
Cas’s face took on a contemplative look. “After an initial awkwardness, we were able to find common ground.”
They turned their attention to implausibly attractive doctors and nurses for a while. When they switched to a commercial for a male enhancement herbal remedy that had been clinically proven, although to do what it wasn’t clear, Dean asked, “You ever think about kids, Cas?”
“What about children, Dean?”
“I mean, having kids?” Cas looked utterly puzzled, so Dean pressed, “You know, a kid of your own.”
“Dean, as I am currently occupying a male vessel, I would be unable to procreate with you.”
Dean smiled. “Cas, thanks, I know biology. There are other ways to have kids. Ben wasn’t my son by blood. And Bobby wasn’t related to me and Sam, but in some ways he was more a father to us than our own dad.”
Castiel turned back towards the television, his thoughts racing. Like carving his initials into a tree, as Odin had suggested. Yes, this was how humans put a stake into eternity. He chided himself for not thinking along these lines prior to this moment, and struggled to fix in his mind a life that included himself, Dean, and a young human. He frowned. He had seen a few pictures of Dean as a child, and so he pictured a very young Dean occupying the place. A very small Dean, wriggling into his lap, coloring with crayons, turning to proudly show his work to Castiel. A very small Dean wrestling tiny hands around a giant bacon burger.
“What?” asked Dean.
Cas’s hand involuntarily flew up to his own face. He found to his shock he was wearing a rather large, rather goofy smile.
“I think I like children, as a general principle, Dean.”
Sam finally stumbled in well after dark, his backpack and his arms stuffed with books. “I’m so hungry … I could eat a bacon cheeseburger!” he declared.
“Wanna go out? We haven’t had dinner yet,” said Dean, who was lying on the couch, his stockinged feet comfortably propped up in Cas’s lap.
“Lazy!” laughed Sam, who seemed to be in a much improved mood since Dean had encountered him at the library. He set his books down on the kitchen table.
“There was a Dr. Sexy marathon! I have to get Cas caught up.”
“Cas, do you understand anything that’s going on in Dr. Sexy?” Sam asked.
“Dean is helping me,” Cas hedged. “The actors are all very … pleasant to look upon.”
“And before that, we were babysitting a god!” Dean told Sam.
Sam smiled. “And … no explosions.”
“Very few explosions.”
“Let me wash up a little,” said Sam. “I’ve been drowning in dusty books all afternoon.” He ducked into the bathroom. “Oh, hey, Cas!” he yelled out. “I got the books you asked for. They're on the table.”
“Thank you, Sam,” said Cas, pushing Dean's feet out of the way and strolling over to the table. He picked up one titled The Mask of Sanity and began to flip through it.
“Some light reading, Cas?” asked Dean.
“Research,” the angel told him, as he peered at another book titled, Without Conscience.
“How about you, Sammy? You making any progress?” Dean yawned and sat up, grabbing his shoes.
“You’ve gotta see this treaty I’m working on. Crowley would shit his pants.”
“I think he’s already doing that, Sam,” Cas put in. “Namtar gave him a case of irritable bowel syndrome.”
Dean laughed and had to pull out the knot he’d managed to tie in his shoe.
“Hey!” called Sam. He strode out of the bathroom, toothpaste dribbling at the corners of his mouth. “Is there a reason why I got feathers in my toothbrush?”
Dean and Cas exchanged a glance.
“There is no reason at all, Sam,” said Cas, his face the very picture of pure angelic innocence.
Dean was fairly sure he was going to choke with laughter.
Sam had carried the hope that Dean would be over his star struck attitude towards Odin and Valhalla, but if anything, it had only worsened. His brother now seemed to regard the Norse god as somewhere up there between Eliot Ness and Dr. Sexy.
“…And this enchanting young lady is Hel.” Odin was making introductions around the conference table. Sam silently gave thanks that it was not a round table: Dean probably would have died of sheer awesome. Instead, the room they occupied could have passed for one in a modern office building. Well, maybe except for the broadswords up mounted on the wall. And the view of Asgard out the window.
Oh, yeah, and the gods assembled herein.
Hel, for her part, looked anything but young and enchanting. She was spectral, dressed all in black, hooded eyes so deep in the sockets they were invisible. She pretty much gave Sam the creeps, and he had made sure to take a chair on the other side of the room.
As for Yamaraja, the head of Hindu Hell? He was blue. With red eyes. And he had brought along a couple of yappy dogs with him. The dogs had four eyes. Apiece. Oh, and Yama had four arms, though he had somehow retracted two of them before the meeting began.
Speaking of retracting body parts, Namtar was there, evidently standing in for his mother, Ereshkigal, the monarch of Irkalla, the Babylonian Hell. He had somehow gotten rid of his dark wings, which made it a lot easier to sit in his Aeron chair. Sam considered whether gods worked like Mr. Potato head, with maybe a box full of extra arms and wings lying around somewhere? He decided maybe this was not the best line of thought.
Rounding out this weird conference were Hades, who had named his realm after himself, and whose head was sort of enveloped in a blue flame; and Hun Came, a fierce-faced Mayan god of the dead, and, according to Odin’s introduction (which had taken rather a long time) a Lord of Xibalba, which sounded like something from the old Battlestar Galactica, even though it really meant he was a trickster as well as a death god. It wasn't a combination that made Sam cheery.
Sam stopped and considered this. Everyone here was Lord This and King That: he guessed there were no presidents in hell.
Dean was there as well, of course. He had been spending his time chatting amiably with Namtar. They were acting like old friends. Cas had been having a quiet conversation with Yamaraja, who had one of his weird dogs on his lap and was sitting there petting it.
There were rolls and coffee set up in the center of the table. And the room smelled a little like brimstone. Dean and Namtar had both helped themselves to bagels, and Dean now had a speck of cream cheese in the corner of his mouth. When Cas turned around to wipe it off for him, Sam took the opportunity to speak to Yamaraja.
“I guess we never got a chance to thank you for the help the other day.”
“For...” began the god, who scratched his weird little dog behind the ears and appeared baffled. “Oh, yes! Pish-posh. I simply let my nephew borrow a few of my pets. I am the one who should be thanking you. Crowley. Bit of a wanker, don't you think?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, maybe more than a bit.”
“But a powerful son of a bitch,” said Odin, pouring himself a cup of coffee. There were actual coffee mugs, not those cruddy little Styrofoam cups. And the cream cheese had little chives in it. Odin was one classy bastard. Odin stirred a dollop of cream into is cup. It was probably real cream, Sam reflected.
“I was not overly impressed by Mr. Crowley,” said Yamaraja, adjusting his eyeglasses. Leading Sam to wonder why a god would need eyeglasses. He looked more like Gandhi than a regent of Hell. Of course, Cas looked more like an accountant than an angel, so they you go.
“Nor I,” chimed in Hun Came. The Mayan god had grabbed an apple from the bowl of fruit in the middle of the table, and was peeling it with a small silver knife. The peel curled off, all in one lovely, delicate piece, and spooled down onto his china plate.
A shaky voice piped up. “I agree with Odin. We shouldn’t underestimate Crowley.” Everyone turned to look at Namtar, who suddenly looked as if he deeply regretted speaking.
“You have invited a child to this conclave,” sniffed Hades, turning up the flame.
“Namtar is sitting in for his mom,” supplied Odin.
“Let the boy speak, Hades,” chided Hel, her voice the whisper of a thousand lost souls. Sam shivered, and found himself wishing, weirdly enough, that he was sitting next to his big brother.
“Yeah, tell us what you've seen, Namtar,” Dean told him. “I know you've been going over there.”
Namtar gulped and straightened his shoulders. “I sometimes poke around while I’m over there. In the Judeo-Christian hell. I don’t take any risks, Dean,” he was quick to assure him. “They can’t sense me if I’m quick enough. Demons aren’t that bright.”
There was a chuckling around the table, although Hades stiffened a little, as if he were slightly offended.
“Anyway, he was holding some kind of captives, so I went to see. He’s got them in a really well guarded room, so it took me a while to figure a way in. He’s keeping…. He’s keeping Leviathan.”
The table went silent. Hun Came flicked the knife, and his perfect apple peel was ruined.
Cas looked ill. Sam saw that Dean had clasped a hand around the angel’s shoulder.
“Leviathan neutralize angels,” said Cas, his voice shaky.
“Yeah, and they’ve been talking about an angel tablet?” said Namtar.
“Then they know for certain that one exists?” asked Odin.
“I dunno,” Namtar confessed.
“According to what our prophet can tell, Metatron said there’s a compendium,” said Sam. “Leviathan, demons…. And, yeah, angels.”
“And one for those of our kind?” asked Hun Came. “Pagan gods? For that would be the logical conclusion.”
“This is serious,” said Hades.
“That’s why I thought we should talk about some sort of alliance,” said Odin. “I know we differ on many things. And we all have our own methods,” he added as Hades snorted. “But, you all remember the run up to the apocalypse?” The table fell silent. “We all underestimated the angels, much to our grief.”
“And now we find ourselves at the table with an angel,” grumbled Hades.
“Well, this one is sort of small. And fallen,” mused Hun Came.
“I am not fallen,” rasped Cas, a dark look coming over his eyes. Dean caught his shoulder and flashed a warning look, and Cas’s anger appeared to ramp down somewhat.
Odin gestured for quiet. “To be honest, I think we had all grown more than a little complacent, myself included. I don’t want to make the same mistake twice. We don’t have a good idea of what’s been happening in Heaven, but we’ve got a fairly powerful, very crafty demon at loose down here, and I know pretty damned well that Crowley is not inclined to share power.”
“You’re being paranoid, as usual, cousin,” sniffed Hades.
“It would do you well to listen to his entreaties, Plouton,” said Hel. “Crowley has already made a move against Irkalla.”
The ghostly flames that seemed to dance around Hades’s head fired up. “I should listen? I wasn’t the one who ended up as a carpet stain under Lucifer’s hoof.”
“There is always a next time, friend,” said Yamaraja, contentedly polishing his glasses.
“You can’t remain isolated forever, friend Hades,” said Hel, as Sam got goosebumps. “The world will not let you.”
“Yes, but maybe we have an ace up our sleeves this time,” Hades sniffed, looking at Odin.
“Hades, ace or not, as a wise man once said, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” said Odin.
“Oh, Jefferson!” said Yamaraja. “He is one of my favorite humans.”
Odin folded his hands. “I just thought it reasonable that we plan to work together. For the duration. You wanna show them that legal mumbo jumbo you cooked up, Sam?”
Trying not to blush, Sam grabbed his messenger bag and brought out some papers. “I, uh, have been working on a draft of a treaty. Just so we would have a basic, you know, memo of understanding, if we decide to work on this together.”
Hades snorted and tossed his copy on the table. “Contracts? I never bother.”
“I find it is advisable to have everything written down,” said Yamaraja, eagerly eyeing his own copy and gesturing with at least two arms for a pen, which suddenly appeared out of thin air. He immediately began marking up his copy in a blur of red pens.
“What is this about freedom of movement?” grumbled Hades. “Souls do not leave my realm.”
“Yes, but if any of us visits the underworld, we need a guarantee that was can return again,” Sam explained. “Like diplomatic immunity.”
“You sound like that crackpot, Orpheus,” Hades told him.
“And no foretelling of the apocalypse?” sputtered Hun Came.
“You must admit, dear friend, that last prophecy didn't work out terribly well for you,” said Yamaraja.
“It is the long awaited end of the fourth world!” Hun Came insisted.
“Wait, four worlds?” asked Dean. “I thought there were nine worlds?”
“A matter of some metaphysical debate,” mused Odin.
“Dude,” Dean told Hun Came. “It must have occurred to you that the world, you know, didn’t end?”
“Our prediction algorithms were bullet-proof!” Hun Came insisted.
“But it didn’t happen,” said Dean.
“Oh, and I suppose your Judeo-Christian apocalypse is going swimmingly?” Hun Came taunted.
“We kind of threw a monkey wrench into that business,” Dean told him.
“This is what I’m talking about!” Hun Came sighed, throwing up his hands. “Do you have any idea how hard some people must have worked to shrink wrap your end time deliverables? I’m talking death march!”
“Well … yeah,” said Dean.
“Eschatology is a pretty fraught area,” Sam told Hun Came. “If you look at the wording of the treaty, it doesn't proscribe any of your beliefs, it simply says you can't hold them over each other. You're agreeing to disagree.”
“Disagreement? Unfortunately, we require no treaty for that,” said Hel dryly.
“You can all take these back to your lawyers or shaman or advisors and look 'em over,” said Odin.
“I don’t need any advice,” said Hades, who stood, sweeping a hand around the table. “Odin, really. Angels, humans, and a teenager? I cannot take this conclave seriously.”
“Sit down, Plouton,” rasped Hel.
“I’ve always despised that nickname,” grumbled Hades, who nevertheless sat.
“I’ll sign,” volunteered Namtar.
“You’re not old enough to purchase a six-pack of alcoholic beverages,” Hades told him.
Odin suddenly looked up from his copy, a frown crossing his features.
“What’s happening?” asked Cas, who had leapt his feet.
“Cas, don’t get jumpy,” said Dean. But Odin stood up, and Hades had risen again as well.
“Do you smell sulfur?” asked Sam, turning to look out the window as the sky suddenly darkened. An evil black smoke writhed towards them.
“They should not be here,” said Yamaraja. “Odin! What has happened?”
Odin ripped one of the broadswords down from the wall and bolted for the door. “Follow me!” he ordered. Dean grabbed his own sword and was on Odin’s heels. Some of the gods blinked out: Sam wasn’t certain whether they were fighting or fleeing. Pausing to grab a sword and a shield (because, well, why not?) he followed the others outside.
Some of Odin’s men were already out there, as were Cas and Hel. Hel seemed to be able to do Cas’s smiting thing, only she didn’t even need to touch the demon. And Hun Came would throw plagues at people: with a wave of his hand, his opponents would be covered in scorpions, or break out in pustules. Sam made sure to give a Mayan death god a wide berth.
Most everyone else, though, was using weaponry, including his brother, who was pretty damned deadly with a broadsword. (It seemed the weapon was magical as well, as the demons were fizzling and sparking as they fell.)
Sam turned and whacked a black-eyed interloper with his shield (it was a cool shield, it had a picture of a horse on it) and then finished the job with his own one-handed sword. He ducked out of the way just as another demon fell behind him, and turned to see Yamaraja waving a pair of rather awesome jewel-encrusted scimitars. “Thanks!” said Sam. The god nodded and pushed his glasses up his nose. Dude looked like Gandhi, but fought like a whirling dervish. The extra arms came in handy too.
The Valhallan forces fought bravely, but Sam couldn’t remember seeing so many demons since the run up to the apocalypse. “They should not be here!” Yamaraja declared. “This land is protected! There is no conceivable way they could pass the borders of the nine kingdoms!”
“Tell them that!” yelled Sam, whacking another demon. “And where did Odin go?” he asked, looking around for the god.
Sam turned to the roar of thundering hoofbeats: it sounded like the cavalry was on its way. He yelped and jumped aside as he was nearly trampled by…. Was it a giant spider? No, Odin was leading the charge astride the biggest horse Sam had ever seen, a monstrous thing with eight legs. He was followed by mounted soldiers, including soldiers from the group Sam and Dean had met in the dining hall the other day. Suddenly, O Fortuna from the Carmina Burana was playing unbidden in Sam's mind.
The Odin gave a battle cry and began slashing left and right, demons falling beneath the many hooves of his mount. His cavalry spread out and more and more demons fell, and yet more turned in terror and ran screaming, many abandoning their host bodies in the melee.
Dean had been right: horseback was the way to run down demons.
The tide was turned and finally, the hoard of black-eyed invaders began to beat a retreat. Stragglers turned to smoke and whisked away, Odin’s troops in hot pursuit.
Odin had dismounted from his monstrous horse. As attendants began to emerge from Valhalla to tend to the wounded (and stomp out any of Hun Came’s remaining scorpions), Odin was stalking back and forth, steaming mad. “They shouldn’t have breached our defenses! This is outrageous! I haven’t had a demon on my soil for a thousand years! This is inconceivable!”
Sam smiled and looked at Dean, but his brother, for once, didn’t seem to pick up on the reference. “I don’t think that word means what Odin thinks it means,” he said anyway.
“I think that was our message from Crowley that he doesn't appreciate this alliance,” said Yamaraja, wiping demon blood from his swords with a monogrammed handkerchief.
Hades strode over to Sam. “Where is that contract?”
“I left it on the table inside,” said Sam.
And suddenly it was in Hades's hand. The god tossed it to the ground and took out his sword, which he drew across his forearm, holding it over the contract so his blood would spill there. A drop hit the paper, blazed, and then there remained a signature-shaped scorch mark.
“Crowley can fuck me,” Hades declared. And then the other gods offered their signatures as well, though none were quite as dramatic.
Dean wiped some grime off his face with his sleeve. “Sam, are you thinking what I'm thinking?”
“The prophet,” said Sam, pulling out his cell phone. “I'll see if they're okay.”
“I don't think that works up here,” laughed Dean.
“I've got five bars, actually,” said Sam, hitting the speed dial.
“There's cell reception in Valhalla?” asked Dean.
“We just put in a tower!” bragged Odin.
“Garth! Yeah, what's happening?” asked Sam. He walked off, exchanging niceties with the other hunter.
Odin had been listening to a report from couple of his troops. “Someone or something destroyed our anti-demon warding in the south,” he told Dean. “A surprise attack.”
“Leviathan?” asked Cas. He looked deathly pale, as if all the smiting had drained him.
“How the hell would anybody control them though?” asked Dean. “You'd need a boat load of borax.”
Odin shook his head. “I’ve doubled my patrols.”
“Is Valhalla secure?” Hades asked Odin. Dean turned back to look at the great hall, wondering why Hades would think to ask as that question, as Valhalla clearly hadn’t taken any damage.
“That asshole isn’t getting into my hall,” said Odin.
Sam hung up the phone. “All clear at Casa de Garth.”
“Weird. We should probably get back anyway,” said Dean. “Cas, you OK to zap us?”
The angel looked haggard, but he nodded.
“Please let me know if there is anything I can do. We are allies, now,” said Odin, holding up the signed treaty.
“What's the best way for us to reach you?” asked Sam.
Odin reached for Sam's phone. He tapped a thumb on it, and returned it. “I'm on your speed dial now,” he grinned.
“Cool,” said Sam. “You ready Cas?”
“No wait!” Dean demanded, fishing out his own cell phone and handing it over to the god. “Me too!” He flashed the phone at Sam. “I have Odin on my speed dial!”
Sam rolled his eyes.
Some time later, the Impala pulled up at the repository, the church that held the Tablet of Nebuchadnezzar.
“I don't sense any demonic activity here, Dean,” said Cas wearily from the back seat.
“Ruth isn’t answering her cell phone.”
“You sure we’re up for this, Dean?” said Sam. Cas had been looking pale since fighting the demons up in Valhalla, and zapping them back had seemed to work like a sock to the gut.
“I’d just like to check it out,” said Dean. “Why don't you stay in the car Cas?” Dean was already opening the door. As if in answer, Cas blipped himself out of the back seat to stand front of Dean. “Okay,” said Dean. “Someone could have seen you do that.”
“I'm not being left behind,” Cas grumbled. They locked eyes for a time, and Dean was the one who blinked first. “All right, have it your way.” They rushed up the church steps and, after Dean and Sam had drawn weapons, entered the vestibule.
“That's new,” whispered Sam, indicating the salt line at the door.
“You don't think Ruth actually listened to us?” asked Dean.
“No,” said Sam.
They opened the door into the church proper. It appeared to be deserted. They walked cautiously up to the altar, Sam pointing out the many warding signs that were now drawn on the walls.
“There is something wrong,” said Cas.
“Demons?” asked Dean.
“No. Something else.”
“Well, that's helpful.”
Dean looked around, finally holstering his weapon. “That's the tablet. I guess all is well?”
Suddenly, a teenager jumped out in front of him. "I am Isaiah, Guardian of the Tablet of Nebuchadnezzar, three hundred twenty-third of the blood. What is your business here?" The sternness of his mien was somewhat undercut by his voice cracking on the last word.
“Uh, Isiah. Hi, I'm Dean, and this is Sam and Cas.”
The kid glared at them.
“Isaiah. What happened to Ruth?” asked Sam.
“Oh the acting Guardian?” Isaiah rolled his eyes.
“She isn't here any more, Dean,” said Cas.
Isaiah had his hands on his hips. “Yeah, yeah. She was only acting Guardian, so she stepped down when I ascended, the rightful guardian.”
“Where did she go?” asked Dean.
Isaiah shrugged. “I dunno. I think med school. Or … something.”
Sam and Dean spent – or wasted, really – a few more moments making certain everything was copacetic for now, and then Dean stalked off down the aisle, Sam and Cas behind him. “They're gonna make mincemeat of that kid. You know they will,” he told Sam, not taking much care to keep his voice low.
Sam sighed and shook his head. Cas trailed after them, his head down.
“Great, one more thing to worry about,” huffed Dean. He banged through the front door and started down the front steps. “Cas are you-”
“Dean!” Sam had Cas in his arms as the angel collapsed to the ground. There was a clang as his blood-stained angel sword suddenly clattered down the steps.
“Cas! What the hell?” asked Dean, who was instantly down on his knees beside the angel.
“Dean.” Cas seemed barely coherent, his pupils wide as dinner plates. Dean caught his hand as Cas flailed. It was bloody.
“Cas?” There was more blood on the stone steps. Dean gently propped Cas up to look for wounds. On the back of Cas's trench coat, two bloody red patches spread out like wings.
“The angels, Dean. It was the angels,” said Cas, gripping the front of Dean’s shirt. His eyes rolled back in his head. And then he was out.
Fandom: Supernatural
Author: tikific
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dean/Castiel, Sam, Garth, Kevin, Linda Tran, Benny, Crowley, Meg, Inias, Naomi, Metatron, Odin, Kali
Warnings: Cursing. Sexual situations. Spoilers up to 8.08, and then we veer off into an AU and never return. There are OCs here: some I’ve invented, some I’ve ripped off from various religious mythologies, and some I’ve rebooted from the SPN canon. Also, no beta, so if you freak over that, you should probably go take a nice warm bubble bath and read something else.
Word Count: 90,000 (individual chapters are around 5,000)
Summary: Sam, Dean and Cas, along with an alliance of pagan lords of the underworld, battle with Crowley over the Word of God. But the boys soon discover there is another, more malignant threat looming in the shadows.
Notes: This is an AU storyline, which fundamentally diverges from what they’re currently doing on the show. And thank Zeus for that.
“Dean!”
Dean extracted his upper body from the guts of the Impala at the entreaty of the oddly familiar voice. “Namtar,” he said to the dark-haired, dark-eyed teenager who stood before him. “Oh, and, hey, Ninazu!” Dean added, greeting the boy's baby brother, who was clinging tightly to his hand. He looked Namtar up and down. “Uh, is that a school uniform?”
“Yeah, I go to Bronx Science!” said Namtar proudly, as Ninazu beamed up at him. “I don’t show the wings when I’m in public,” he whispered. “Ninazu can’t put them away yet,” he added, causing his small brother to flap his own little dark wings. Even Dean had to admit, it was pretty cute. “Cool car, by the way. That's a classic!”
“Thanks,” said Dean, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. He leaned a hip on the Impjala's fender. “So, you guys stop by just to chat?”
“Uh, I need a favor?” said Namtar. Dean smiled. Even though the teen was a god with unearthly powers, his voice still broke in a charming way.
“Yeah, what is it?”
Namtar favored him with a lopsided grin. “So, I was gonna stop by Hell on the way home, and I had planned to snoop around to see what Crowley's up to....”
“How is our favorite King of Hell these days?” asked Dean.
“I gave him shingles!” Namtar said proudly. Ninazu grinned up at his big brother, flapping his little wings. “So, he's not great. Which is cool. But, anyway, Uncle Odin asked me to keep a watch on him....”
Dean frowned. “Anything going on? And you're being careful, right?”
“Oh, yeah, I'm totally being careful. But then Mom asked if I could watch Ninazu for a little while, which is also cool, but I don't wanna take him over there, 'cause, you know, he's a kid....
“I think I know what you want,” smiled Dean.
“Cas,” said Dean a few minutes later as he bustled into Rufus's cabin, where Cas was watching the Discovery Channel on television. “Hey, I just talked to Namtar.”
“Namtar?” asked Cas, not looking up from the program.
“Yeah, Odin has him spying on Crowley.”
Cas scowled at the view from space on the television screen. “What have they found, Dean?”
“Not quite sure. Anyway, Namtar asked us for a favor.”
“What was that?” asked Cas, finally turning his head. He stared in horror as little Ninazu cheerily barreled forth into the cabin, clambered up on the couch next to him and then without so much as a how-do-you-do, squirmed into the angel's lap.
Cas went stiff.
“Oh, so maybe this won't be so hard after all,” Dean cheerily told Cas. “Namtar just wants us to watch his little brother for the afternoon. He obviously can't really take his little brother along on a spy mission.”
“Watch … him?” asked Cas, who was regarding the small figure in his lap as one might stare at an unexploded IED.
“Yeah. What I figured is, give me ten minutes, I'll put the car back together, and then I'll hop into town and maybe pick up some lunch and a couple things to keep him busy. But since you guys are buddies, maybe you can watch cartoons together for a few minutes? Or Sesame Street or some educational crap?”
“Where is Sesame Street, Dean? I don’t remember that address in Whitefish.” Cas was answered by the bang of the front door slamming shut. He looked down again to a pair of dark eyes staring up at him. Ninazu pointed at the TV screen, a solemn look on his face.
“Yes, that's the television,” Cas told him. He cast his eyes to the side, and picked up the clicker, which was sitting beside him on the couch. “This is the remote control.”
Gleeful little grabby hands enveloped the remote.
“Sammy! Hey, I was hoping to find you here. Well, either here or the golf course.”
Sam had commandeered a table at the local library under a big “I read banned books” banner, and was surrounded by stacks of ancient-looking tomes. “Some of my inter-library loan requests came in from the university,” he explained.
“I thought we’d grab some lunch and bring it back. I left Cas back at the cabin with Ninazu.”
“With-? Wait. What?”
“Long story. His brother brought him by.”
Sam goggled. “We are now … doing child care services for the lords of hell?”
“Like I said, long story. Anyway, the kid has totally bonded with Cas, so I think they’ll be okay for a while, but, you know, I don’t wanna go back to the cabin and find a smoking crater in the ground.” Dean looked at Sam, his features creasing into a frown. “Cas had one of those … spells, earlier today.”
Sam shut the book he had been reading and folded his hands. Dean didn't need to tell him what he meant. Since Cas had so mysteriously crawled back from Purgatory it seemed at least that he had snapped back to sanity. But he had been plagued by troubles with his angelic powers and, perhaps more worrying, seemed to get occasional petit mal-like seizures, where his eyes would briefly go out of focus, and then he would snap awake, somewhat confused and disoriented. It was subtle, but Dean had picked up on it pretty quickly, and once he had explained it to Sam, it was quite clear to him as well that something was not right.
Dean had been worried enough to threaten Cas with a doctor, but the angel claimed there was absolutely nothing wrong with his vessel. And so the matter stood.
“Is he all right now?”
“Same as always, he claims nothing's wrong.”
Sam nodded. “Dean, while we're here, can I talk to you about something?”
“Can this wait?” asked Dean, who was growing a trifle impatient.
Sam pressed on. “A couple weeks back, you wanted to gank Bibi. Who I should point out had never done anything to us. And now we’ve got a … baby Babylonian god of some kind, bunking at the cabin?”
Dean looked around. There was a noisy group of children doing crafts at a table in the next room, but no one in earshot of Sam. He sat down and took a breath. “OK. What?”
“Look. Dean. I know you have an investment in this scheme because your angel boyfriend is pushing for it…”
Dean's face flashed through a dizzying array of expressions. “He’s not- Cas is- Well, I mean, he’s sort of-“
Sam leaned over and whispered, “Dean, an angel you just so happen to be sleeping with is planning this whole Rumble in the Seven Hells cage match. So I’m wondering if maybe – maybe – you are lacking in some objectivity here.”
Dean opened one of Sam’s old, dusty books and thumbed through it. He glanced up to catch Sam’s eye. “Look, I know you were … cautious, before we went up to Valhalla. But you gotta admit Odin – this new Odin – seems like a reasonable guy.”
Sam's expression was icy. “He gave you beer and a horsie ride.”
Dean suddenly looked over the hills and far away. “Horses. Yeah, Sammy. I wonder why we hadn't ever thought of riding down demons that way?”
“Uh. Maybe because this isn't the fourteenth century? Dean, have you looked at the other gods? The ones on his list?” Sam held up the piece of paper Odin had given them.
“I suppose you’ll give me the rundown?”
“Unpredictable is not the word.”
“Sometimes to take down Hitler, you gotta hold your nose and make a deal with Stalin.”
“This isn’t Hitler versus Stalin! Hades, and Hel, and some Mayan apocalypse dude? This is … Frankenstein versus Godzilla.”
“Well, then, we just make sure we’re on Godzilla’s side. And maybe get some sharks with laser beams.”
Sams eyes grew full of murderous rage. “Dean. Okay, Dean, not funny. I’ve already had my ass dumped in the middle of an endless desert this month. I don’t have much motivation to reenact Orpheus and Eurydice as an encore!” He sighed.
“Orpheus and … who? Wait, were they those guys in Fleetwood Mac?” asked Dean.
Sam sighed. “I know we have our issues with Crowley-“
“Issues, Sammy? The guy is 100 percent pure USDA Prime Grade A evil.”
“… but it sounds like these guys have resentments that go back centuries, or millennia! I feel like we’re jumping in the middle of something that doesn’t concern us. I mean, don’t you get the feeling we’re poking a hornet’s nest with a stick?”
Dean leaned back and studied his brother. “Hornet’s nest, huh? You remember Murray Reynolds?”
“No. Should I?”
“Maybe you were too little. One of Dad’s old friends. Dad dumped us with Murray for a while one summer. And, I hated it. Guy lived in a small, crappy house, but if you went outside to play, he had hornets everywhere. I couldn’t go in the yard without getting stung. And the old bastard was too cheap to call an exterminator. Anyway, this went on, and one night, as I was going in my room – it wasn’t really my room, I think it was where he kept his booze and porn or something, but anyway – I go inside and there’s fucking hornets in there!”
Sam's eyes rolled heavenwards. “Is this story actually going somewhere, Dean?”
“So I finally tell him, Murray, I don’t care, I’m not going in there with the fucking hornets. You get rid of them. Well, he goes out and gets a bottle of some kind of spray poison – like I’m gonna sleep in a room that’s full of bug poison – and I think pulls a nylon stocking over his hat and goes on in. Well, a little while later, he comes running out, and the room is filled – filled, Sammy – completely filled with fucking hornets! He’s cursing, and he’s stung all over. Turns out, they’d made a nest in the wall. They had literally eaten out all the insulation, and part of the fucking wall ended up collapsing! Anyway, Dad had to come pick us up because the dude’s house was a disaster.”
“That’s … quite a memory,” said Sam.
“Sammy. That’s the thing about hornets. Yeah, you poke ‘em, you risk getting stung. But you can’t ignore them either. Because they’re eating away.”
Sam was chewing thoughtfully on his pencil. “So, is Crowley a hornet, or is he Godzilla?”
Dean sat back in his chair, regarding his brother. “Sam, what did you wanna do with your life? I mean, if you weren’t a hunter?”
“You know damn well. Before the thing with Jess, I was headed to law school.”
Dean's eyes shone. “So? Put that legal brain to use for us! You know these hell guys love contracts. And you’ve studied their histories, so you know what to expect. And go pick Cas’s brain as well. It’s all just a big celestial soap opera to him. If you have reservations about all this, go write some kind of treaty or something, and we won't go forward until we get all of them to sign in blood on the dotted line.”
Sam frowned, remembering Bobby’s deal with Crowley. “I won’t have to tattoo it all on my arm or anything?”
Dean, who was standing up, chuckled. “Hey, I thought you said you wanted a sleeve.”
Sam grunted in return.
“I’m off to get a Happy Meal. You coming?”
“I’ll be there later,” Sam told him. He frowned as he watched his brother depart. Godly babysitting service, he thought, hoping they were getting at least twenty-five cents an hour for this shit.
“How you guys doin'?” called Dean, bumping into the door while hefting an armload of packages. He dumped his bags on the kitchen table and then, looking across the living room, did a double-take. Cas and Ninazu were both sitting cross-legged, still as stones, on the floor in front of the television. They appeared to be fast-forwarding through a movie that featured some kind of elaborate production number: there were brightly-clothed dancers arrayed around a large ballroom, twirling though impossible gyrations at sonic speed.
“Hello, Dean,” said Cas. He hit the pause button and stood up.
“Is that … a Bollywood movie?” asked Dean. He squinted at the channel ID in the corner, which was in a script he didn't recognize: it sure as heck wasn’t English. “I don't remember getting this channel.”
“Ninazu fixed the satellite dish.”
“He … fixed it?” asked Dean.
“I guess his healing powers are more general than we had supposed. The television now gets every channel.”
“Every channel?”
“Every channel.”
“Well, that's good,” said Dean, hoping the child had also “fixed” the cable bill. “Maybe we can have him fix the wifi. It’s been running a little slow.”
“Is your Busty Asian Beauties site not loading quickly enough?”
“Not in front of the kid,” Dean muttered as Cas smirked a pretty goddam irritating angel smirk.
“We had a question about these films. Perhaps you can answer?” Dean noticed that Ninazu, standing and clutching at Cas's pantleg, was now regarding him solemnly.
“Probably not but you can ask. You wondered why everyone was dancing and singing like … a bunch of douche bags?”
“No, we found that to be pleasing.” Cas looked down at Ninazu, who grinned and nodded enthusiastically. “We watched one film. A young person had been assigned an unsatisfactory arranged marriage. After many colorful production numbers, this was worked out, and she was allowed to marry a boy she favored.”
Dean nervously scratched the back of his neck. “Uh, okay. I don't know much about arranged marriages. Or much of any marriages....”
“Then we watched the next film, and the romantic couple in question encountered the same difficulty with a faulty arranged marriage. And then another, and another.” Ninazu nodded until Dean feared his head would fall off.
“Uh, kinda repetitive, huh?” smiled Dean. “Boy, that's a lot of movies. I was only gone an hour or two....”
“Yes. We began watching on fast forward when we became aware of the cliched narrative devices.”
Dean began to question their logic, but then stopped. An angel and a god? OK, maybe that’s how they watched television. “Ninazu doesn't like tropes?” Dean looked down and the boy shook his head.
“So our question is, as this is obviously a deeply flawed practice, why is the tradition of arranged marriage simply not dropped?”
Dean scratched his head. He was used to getting kid questions from Sammy, when he was little, but they had never quite been like this. “Well, Ninazu,” he said, hunkering down so he was at eye level with the small god, “human traditions – they're really hard to change. You wanna be like your parents, do what they did, I guess. Like my brother Sammy and I are hunters because that's what our dad did. Okay? Now, you want something to eat?”
There was a very enthusiastic nod yes.
They gathered around the dining room table, which doubled as the kitchen table, the cabin having no dining room. Ninazu couldn't quite see over the table top, so they ended up sitting him up on a couple of couch cushions. Ninazu appeared to enjoy this, as he flapped his little wings in a manner Dean took for enthusiastic.
Cas was rustling around in the fast food bag. “There should be a kid's meal in there,” Dean told him.
Cas withdrew a colorful little cardboard box. “This is extraordinary,” he said, curiously opening it up. “It's a hamburger! Only … it’s very small.” He and Ninazu gaped in wonder at the marvel that was a miniature hamburger.
“Yeah, see, little fries, and little Coke?” said Dean as Cas dug them out.
Cas set the burger before Ninazu, peeking under the bun. “There is no bacon,” said Cas, a slightly accusatory expression clouding his face.
“Naw. Kids are usually fussy, so they get plain stuff. And you need to cut it up for him.” Dean rummaged around in the bag and pulled out a plastic knife and handed it over.
“He only eats pieces?” asked Cas. Ninazu, too, blinked in surprise.
Dean smiled indulgently. “Well, you'll see. It's a little less messy if you only give 'em a little piece at a time.” Dean was busy folding out a number of paper napkins around and under Ninazu's place, and then over Ninazu himself. “Wish we could do something to cover those wings,” he muttered.
“How could he possibly get food on his wings?” asked Castiel, who was putting a great deal of care into dividing Ninazu's cheeseburger into four perfect wedges. “They are a great distance form his mouth.”
Dean laughed. “If I remember Sammy at this age, you'll be lucky to get any food at all into the kid. You had a burger before, little guy?” he asked, stepping back to admire his napkin-draping handiwork.
Ninazu shook his head, sending one of the paper napkins fluttering off, and then grabbed a hamburger wedge, which he enthusiastically smooshed into his face, in the general vicinity of his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully on the tiny portion that had landed inside his oral cavity, while the rest settled down his front, in his lap, and on the floor. There actually appeared to be more hamburger residue spread around the cabin than existed on the plate.
Cas watched in silence. He turned to Dean. “That is impressive.”
Dean got a faraway look in his eyes. “Seems like yesterday Sammy was this age,” he said, ruffing Ninazu's hair. “You like burgers, kiddo?” he asked the child, who emitted a satisfied burp. “C'mon Cas. We better eat this stuff before it gets cold.” And so Cas and Dean ate their lunches while Ninazu occupied himself with covering his general vicinity in cheeseburger byproducts. They also dug the little plastic Transformers robot out of the bottom of the bag and Cas and Ninazu alternated watching it roll along the table.
“Do I need to get you a kids meal next time, Cas?” laughed Dean.
“It is unfortunate that the burger does not come with bacon,” mused Cas, once again sending Bumblebee scooting across the kitchen table. Cas reached over towards Ninazu and withdrew his hand. He looked with great curiosity at a cheese-covered black feather. “Ninazu has gotten food in his wings, Dean.”
Dean smiled triumphantly while Cas cast an accusing glance towards the little god, who simply smiled beatifically. “Well, I think it's bath time for you, kiddo,” laughed Dean, picking up the sticky kid. “Come on, Cas, I think this is gonna take us both.
In the end, they found that the best solution for cheesy wings was a mild dishwashing soap and a toothbrush.
Since he wasn't around, they used Sam's toothbrush.
And Cas figured out how to angel mojo everyone more or less dry. Cas and Ninazu had their head bowed over a Transformers coloring book Dean had bought when there came a knock a the door. Dean got up to answer it, but Namtar had already appeared inside the cabin. Ninazu squealed and ran towards his big brother.
“Oh my god you guys I am so sorry, that took forever,” the young god apologized. “Hey, how you doing, squirt?” he asked, hefting his brother.
“Hey, no problem, kiddo,” said Dean. “We had fun, right?” Ninazu wriggled out of Namtar's grasp and dropped to the floor and enthusiastically nodded. He ran over the coffee table, where Cas handed over the coloring book, and ran back to his big brother, proudly waving a successfully colored drawing at him. “See? Look?” said Dean proudly. “He colored inside the lines.”
“That's great, big guy,” said Namtar. “Uh, what's this?” he asked of the drawing on the opposite page that looked somewhat like Optimus Prime as painted by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in oil.
“Oh, that's mine,” Cas somewhat sheepishly admitted.
Namtar shrugged. “It's pretty good. You colored in the lines.”
“Thank you.”
“How's our friend, Crowley?” asked Dean.
Namtar smirked. “In bed with a migraine.”
“Ouch. That doesn't sound fun,” said Dean, wincing in sympathy.
“Two thirds of the eastern seaboard is blacked out. I guess the lights were bothering him.”
They shared a grin. “So, you’re being careful?” asked Dean. “I don’t want you taking any unnecessary risks. You got your brother to think of, right?”
“No, sir,” said Namtar, who suddenly grew more serious. “I’m not taking any risks.”
“Good. Well, we’ll keep the coloring books here in case Ninazu wants to visit again. You take care of your mom now, right?”
“I will!” Namtar promised. Ninazu suddenly bolted to the kitchen table and grabbed the Bumblebee toy, and then ran over to Cas, pressing the little toy into the angel's hands.
“I will take care of this for you,” Cas promised.
Ninazu ran over and grabbed Namtar's hand. And then with a gentle flap of wings the brothers took their leave, Cas fondly waving bye-bye to Ninazu.
“You like kids, Cas?” Dean asked as they settled on the couch for the latest episode of Dr. Sexy MD.
A frown and a head tilt. “As a general principle, Dean?”
“You seemed to get along with Ninazu.”
Cas’s face took on a contemplative look. “After an initial awkwardness, we were able to find common ground.”
They turned their attention to implausibly attractive doctors and nurses for a while. When they switched to a commercial for a male enhancement herbal remedy that had been clinically proven, although to do what it wasn’t clear, Dean asked, “You ever think about kids, Cas?”
“What about children, Dean?”
“I mean, having kids?” Cas looked utterly puzzled, so Dean pressed, “You know, a kid of your own.”
“Dean, as I am currently occupying a male vessel, I would be unable to procreate with you.”
Dean smiled. “Cas, thanks, I know biology. There are other ways to have kids. Ben wasn’t my son by blood. And Bobby wasn’t related to me and Sam, but in some ways he was more a father to us than our own dad.”
Castiel turned back towards the television, his thoughts racing. Like carving his initials into a tree, as Odin had suggested. Yes, this was how humans put a stake into eternity. He chided himself for not thinking along these lines prior to this moment, and struggled to fix in his mind a life that included himself, Dean, and a young human. He frowned. He had seen a few pictures of Dean as a child, and so he pictured a very young Dean occupying the place. A very small Dean, wriggling into his lap, coloring with crayons, turning to proudly show his work to Castiel. A very small Dean wrestling tiny hands around a giant bacon burger.
“What?” asked Dean.
Cas’s hand involuntarily flew up to his own face. He found to his shock he was wearing a rather large, rather goofy smile.
“I think I like children, as a general principle, Dean.”
Sam finally stumbled in well after dark, his backpack and his arms stuffed with books. “I’m so hungry … I could eat a bacon cheeseburger!” he declared.
“Wanna go out? We haven’t had dinner yet,” said Dean, who was lying on the couch, his stockinged feet comfortably propped up in Cas’s lap.
“Lazy!” laughed Sam, who seemed to be in a much improved mood since Dean had encountered him at the library. He set his books down on the kitchen table.
“There was a Dr. Sexy marathon! I have to get Cas caught up.”
“Cas, do you understand anything that’s going on in Dr. Sexy?” Sam asked.
“Dean is helping me,” Cas hedged. “The actors are all very … pleasant to look upon.”
“And before that, we were babysitting a god!” Dean told Sam.
Sam smiled. “And … no explosions.”
“Very few explosions.”
“Let me wash up a little,” said Sam. “I’ve been drowning in dusty books all afternoon.” He ducked into the bathroom. “Oh, hey, Cas!” he yelled out. “I got the books you asked for. They're on the table.”
“Thank you, Sam,” said Cas, pushing Dean's feet out of the way and strolling over to the table. He picked up one titled The Mask of Sanity and began to flip through it.
“Some light reading, Cas?” asked Dean.
“Research,” the angel told him, as he peered at another book titled, Without Conscience.
“How about you, Sammy? You making any progress?” Dean yawned and sat up, grabbing his shoes.
“You’ve gotta see this treaty I’m working on. Crowley would shit his pants.”
“I think he’s already doing that, Sam,” Cas put in. “Namtar gave him a case of irritable bowel syndrome.”
Dean laughed and had to pull out the knot he’d managed to tie in his shoe.
“Hey!” called Sam. He strode out of the bathroom, toothpaste dribbling at the corners of his mouth. “Is there a reason why I got feathers in my toothbrush?”
Dean and Cas exchanged a glance.
“There is no reason at all, Sam,” said Cas, his face the very picture of pure angelic innocence.
Dean was fairly sure he was going to choke with laughter.
Sam had carried the hope that Dean would be over his star struck attitude towards Odin and Valhalla, but if anything, it had only worsened. His brother now seemed to regard the Norse god as somewhere up there between Eliot Ness and Dr. Sexy.
“…And this enchanting young lady is Hel.” Odin was making introductions around the conference table. Sam silently gave thanks that it was not a round table: Dean probably would have died of sheer awesome. Instead, the room they occupied could have passed for one in a modern office building. Well, maybe except for the broadswords up mounted on the wall. And the view of Asgard out the window.
Oh, yeah, and the gods assembled herein.
Hel, for her part, looked anything but young and enchanting. She was spectral, dressed all in black, hooded eyes so deep in the sockets they were invisible. She pretty much gave Sam the creeps, and he had made sure to take a chair on the other side of the room.
As for Yamaraja, the head of Hindu Hell? He was blue. With red eyes. And he had brought along a couple of yappy dogs with him. The dogs had four eyes. Apiece. Oh, and Yama had four arms, though he had somehow retracted two of them before the meeting began.
Speaking of retracting body parts, Namtar was there, evidently standing in for his mother, Ereshkigal, the monarch of Irkalla, the Babylonian Hell. He had somehow gotten rid of his dark wings, which made it a lot easier to sit in his Aeron chair. Sam considered whether gods worked like Mr. Potato head, with maybe a box full of extra arms and wings lying around somewhere? He decided maybe this was not the best line of thought.
Rounding out this weird conference were Hades, who had named his realm after himself, and whose head was sort of enveloped in a blue flame; and Hun Came, a fierce-faced Mayan god of the dead, and, according to Odin’s introduction (which had taken rather a long time) a Lord of Xibalba, which sounded like something from the old Battlestar Galactica, even though it really meant he was a trickster as well as a death god. It wasn't a combination that made Sam cheery.
Sam stopped and considered this. Everyone here was Lord This and King That: he guessed there were no presidents in hell.
Dean was there as well, of course. He had been spending his time chatting amiably with Namtar. They were acting like old friends. Cas had been having a quiet conversation with Yamaraja, who had one of his weird dogs on his lap and was sitting there petting it.
There were rolls and coffee set up in the center of the table. And the room smelled a little like brimstone. Dean and Namtar had both helped themselves to bagels, and Dean now had a speck of cream cheese in the corner of his mouth. When Cas turned around to wipe it off for him, Sam took the opportunity to speak to Yamaraja.
“I guess we never got a chance to thank you for the help the other day.”
“For...” began the god, who scratched his weird little dog behind the ears and appeared baffled. “Oh, yes! Pish-posh. I simply let my nephew borrow a few of my pets. I am the one who should be thanking you. Crowley. Bit of a wanker, don't you think?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, maybe more than a bit.”
“But a powerful son of a bitch,” said Odin, pouring himself a cup of coffee. There were actual coffee mugs, not those cruddy little Styrofoam cups. And the cream cheese had little chives in it. Odin was one classy bastard. Odin stirred a dollop of cream into is cup. It was probably real cream, Sam reflected.
“I was not overly impressed by Mr. Crowley,” said Yamaraja, adjusting his eyeglasses. Leading Sam to wonder why a god would need eyeglasses. He looked more like Gandhi than a regent of Hell. Of course, Cas looked more like an accountant than an angel, so they you go.
“Nor I,” chimed in Hun Came. The Mayan god had grabbed an apple from the bowl of fruit in the middle of the table, and was peeling it with a small silver knife. The peel curled off, all in one lovely, delicate piece, and spooled down onto his china plate.
A shaky voice piped up. “I agree with Odin. We shouldn’t underestimate Crowley.” Everyone turned to look at Namtar, who suddenly looked as if he deeply regretted speaking.
“You have invited a child to this conclave,” sniffed Hades, turning up the flame.
“Namtar is sitting in for his mom,” supplied Odin.
“Let the boy speak, Hades,” chided Hel, her voice the whisper of a thousand lost souls. Sam shivered, and found himself wishing, weirdly enough, that he was sitting next to his big brother.
“Yeah, tell us what you've seen, Namtar,” Dean told him. “I know you've been going over there.”
Namtar gulped and straightened his shoulders. “I sometimes poke around while I’m over there. In the Judeo-Christian hell. I don’t take any risks, Dean,” he was quick to assure him. “They can’t sense me if I’m quick enough. Demons aren’t that bright.”
There was a chuckling around the table, although Hades stiffened a little, as if he were slightly offended.
“Anyway, he was holding some kind of captives, so I went to see. He’s got them in a really well guarded room, so it took me a while to figure a way in. He’s keeping…. He’s keeping Leviathan.”
The table went silent. Hun Came flicked the knife, and his perfect apple peel was ruined.
Cas looked ill. Sam saw that Dean had clasped a hand around the angel’s shoulder.
“Leviathan neutralize angels,” said Cas, his voice shaky.
“Yeah, and they’ve been talking about an angel tablet?” said Namtar.
“Then they know for certain that one exists?” asked Odin.
“I dunno,” Namtar confessed.
“According to what our prophet can tell, Metatron said there’s a compendium,” said Sam. “Leviathan, demons…. And, yeah, angels.”
“And one for those of our kind?” asked Hun Came. “Pagan gods? For that would be the logical conclusion.”
“This is serious,” said Hades.
“That’s why I thought we should talk about some sort of alliance,” said Odin. “I know we differ on many things. And we all have our own methods,” he added as Hades snorted. “But, you all remember the run up to the apocalypse?” The table fell silent. “We all underestimated the angels, much to our grief.”
“And now we find ourselves at the table with an angel,” grumbled Hades.
“Well, this one is sort of small. And fallen,” mused Hun Came.
“I am not fallen,” rasped Cas, a dark look coming over his eyes. Dean caught his shoulder and flashed a warning look, and Cas’s anger appeared to ramp down somewhat.
Odin gestured for quiet. “To be honest, I think we had all grown more than a little complacent, myself included. I don’t want to make the same mistake twice. We don’t have a good idea of what’s been happening in Heaven, but we’ve got a fairly powerful, very crafty demon at loose down here, and I know pretty damned well that Crowley is not inclined to share power.”
“You’re being paranoid, as usual, cousin,” sniffed Hades.
“It would do you well to listen to his entreaties, Plouton,” said Hel. “Crowley has already made a move against Irkalla.”
The ghostly flames that seemed to dance around Hades’s head fired up. “I should listen? I wasn’t the one who ended up as a carpet stain under Lucifer’s hoof.”
“There is always a next time, friend,” said Yamaraja, contentedly polishing his glasses.
“You can’t remain isolated forever, friend Hades,” said Hel, as Sam got goosebumps. “The world will not let you.”
“Yes, but maybe we have an ace up our sleeves this time,” Hades sniffed, looking at Odin.
“Hades, ace or not, as a wise man once said, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” said Odin.
“Oh, Jefferson!” said Yamaraja. “He is one of my favorite humans.”
Odin folded his hands. “I just thought it reasonable that we plan to work together. For the duration. You wanna show them that legal mumbo jumbo you cooked up, Sam?”
Trying not to blush, Sam grabbed his messenger bag and brought out some papers. “I, uh, have been working on a draft of a treaty. Just so we would have a basic, you know, memo of understanding, if we decide to work on this together.”
Hades snorted and tossed his copy on the table. “Contracts? I never bother.”
“I find it is advisable to have everything written down,” said Yamaraja, eagerly eyeing his own copy and gesturing with at least two arms for a pen, which suddenly appeared out of thin air. He immediately began marking up his copy in a blur of red pens.
“What is this about freedom of movement?” grumbled Hades. “Souls do not leave my realm.”
“Yes, but if any of us visits the underworld, we need a guarantee that was can return again,” Sam explained. “Like diplomatic immunity.”
“You sound like that crackpot, Orpheus,” Hades told him.
“And no foretelling of the apocalypse?” sputtered Hun Came.
“You must admit, dear friend, that last prophecy didn't work out terribly well for you,” said Yamaraja.
“It is the long awaited end of the fourth world!” Hun Came insisted.
“Wait, four worlds?” asked Dean. “I thought there were nine worlds?”
“A matter of some metaphysical debate,” mused Odin.
“Dude,” Dean told Hun Came. “It must have occurred to you that the world, you know, didn’t end?”
“Our prediction algorithms were bullet-proof!” Hun Came insisted.
“But it didn’t happen,” said Dean.
“Oh, and I suppose your Judeo-Christian apocalypse is going swimmingly?” Hun Came taunted.
“We kind of threw a monkey wrench into that business,” Dean told him.
“This is what I’m talking about!” Hun Came sighed, throwing up his hands. “Do you have any idea how hard some people must have worked to shrink wrap your end time deliverables? I’m talking death march!”
“Well … yeah,” said Dean.
“Eschatology is a pretty fraught area,” Sam told Hun Came. “If you look at the wording of the treaty, it doesn't proscribe any of your beliefs, it simply says you can't hold them over each other. You're agreeing to disagree.”
“Disagreement? Unfortunately, we require no treaty for that,” said Hel dryly.
“You can all take these back to your lawyers or shaman or advisors and look 'em over,” said Odin.
“I don’t need any advice,” said Hades, who stood, sweeping a hand around the table. “Odin, really. Angels, humans, and a teenager? I cannot take this conclave seriously.”
“Sit down, Plouton,” rasped Hel.
“I’ve always despised that nickname,” grumbled Hades, who nevertheless sat.
“I’ll sign,” volunteered Namtar.
“You’re not old enough to purchase a six-pack of alcoholic beverages,” Hades told him.
Odin suddenly looked up from his copy, a frown crossing his features.
“What’s happening?” asked Cas, who had leapt his feet.
“Cas, don’t get jumpy,” said Dean. But Odin stood up, and Hades had risen again as well.
“Do you smell sulfur?” asked Sam, turning to look out the window as the sky suddenly darkened. An evil black smoke writhed towards them.
“They should not be here,” said Yamaraja. “Odin! What has happened?”
Odin ripped one of the broadswords down from the wall and bolted for the door. “Follow me!” he ordered. Dean grabbed his own sword and was on Odin’s heels. Some of the gods blinked out: Sam wasn’t certain whether they were fighting or fleeing. Pausing to grab a sword and a shield (because, well, why not?) he followed the others outside.
Some of Odin’s men were already out there, as were Cas and Hel. Hel seemed to be able to do Cas’s smiting thing, only she didn’t even need to touch the demon. And Hun Came would throw plagues at people: with a wave of his hand, his opponents would be covered in scorpions, or break out in pustules. Sam made sure to give a Mayan death god a wide berth.
Most everyone else, though, was using weaponry, including his brother, who was pretty damned deadly with a broadsword. (It seemed the weapon was magical as well, as the demons were fizzling and sparking as they fell.)
Sam turned and whacked a black-eyed interloper with his shield (it was a cool shield, it had a picture of a horse on it) and then finished the job with his own one-handed sword. He ducked out of the way just as another demon fell behind him, and turned to see Yamaraja waving a pair of rather awesome jewel-encrusted scimitars. “Thanks!” said Sam. The god nodded and pushed his glasses up his nose. Dude looked like Gandhi, but fought like a whirling dervish. The extra arms came in handy too.
The Valhallan forces fought bravely, but Sam couldn’t remember seeing so many demons since the run up to the apocalypse. “They should not be here!” Yamaraja declared. “This land is protected! There is no conceivable way they could pass the borders of the nine kingdoms!”
“Tell them that!” yelled Sam, whacking another demon. “And where did Odin go?” he asked, looking around for the god.
Sam turned to the roar of thundering hoofbeats: it sounded like the cavalry was on its way. He yelped and jumped aside as he was nearly trampled by…. Was it a giant spider? No, Odin was leading the charge astride the biggest horse Sam had ever seen, a monstrous thing with eight legs. He was followed by mounted soldiers, including soldiers from the group Sam and Dean had met in the dining hall the other day. Suddenly, O Fortuna from the Carmina Burana was playing unbidden in Sam's mind.
The Odin gave a battle cry and began slashing left and right, demons falling beneath the many hooves of his mount. His cavalry spread out and more and more demons fell, and yet more turned in terror and ran screaming, many abandoning their host bodies in the melee.
Dean had been right: horseback was the way to run down demons.
The tide was turned and finally, the hoard of black-eyed invaders began to beat a retreat. Stragglers turned to smoke and whisked away, Odin’s troops in hot pursuit.
Odin had dismounted from his monstrous horse. As attendants began to emerge from Valhalla to tend to the wounded (and stomp out any of Hun Came’s remaining scorpions), Odin was stalking back and forth, steaming mad. “They shouldn’t have breached our defenses! This is outrageous! I haven’t had a demon on my soil for a thousand years! This is inconceivable!”
Sam smiled and looked at Dean, but his brother, for once, didn’t seem to pick up on the reference. “I don’t think that word means what Odin thinks it means,” he said anyway.
“I think that was our message from Crowley that he doesn't appreciate this alliance,” said Yamaraja, wiping demon blood from his swords with a monogrammed handkerchief.
Hades strode over to Sam. “Where is that contract?”
“I left it on the table inside,” said Sam.
And suddenly it was in Hades's hand. The god tossed it to the ground and took out his sword, which he drew across his forearm, holding it over the contract so his blood would spill there. A drop hit the paper, blazed, and then there remained a signature-shaped scorch mark.
“Crowley can fuck me,” Hades declared. And then the other gods offered their signatures as well, though none were quite as dramatic.
Dean wiped some grime off his face with his sleeve. “Sam, are you thinking what I'm thinking?”
“The prophet,” said Sam, pulling out his cell phone. “I'll see if they're okay.”
“I don't think that works up here,” laughed Dean.
“I've got five bars, actually,” said Sam, hitting the speed dial.
“There's cell reception in Valhalla?” asked Dean.
“We just put in a tower!” bragged Odin.
“Garth! Yeah, what's happening?” asked Sam. He walked off, exchanging niceties with the other hunter.
Odin had been listening to a report from couple of his troops. “Someone or something destroyed our anti-demon warding in the south,” he told Dean. “A surprise attack.”
“Leviathan?” asked Cas. He looked deathly pale, as if all the smiting had drained him.
“How the hell would anybody control them though?” asked Dean. “You'd need a boat load of borax.”
Odin shook his head. “I’ve doubled my patrols.”
“Is Valhalla secure?” Hades asked Odin. Dean turned back to look at the great hall, wondering why Hades would think to ask as that question, as Valhalla clearly hadn’t taken any damage.
“That asshole isn’t getting into my hall,” said Odin.
Sam hung up the phone. “All clear at Casa de Garth.”
“Weird. We should probably get back anyway,” said Dean. “Cas, you OK to zap us?”
The angel looked haggard, but he nodded.
“Please let me know if there is anything I can do. We are allies, now,” said Odin, holding up the signed treaty.
“What's the best way for us to reach you?” asked Sam.
Odin reached for Sam's phone. He tapped a thumb on it, and returned it. “I'm on your speed dial now,” he grinned.
“Cool,” said Sam. “You ready Cas?”
“No wait!” Dean demanded, fishing out his own cell phone and handing it over to the god. “Me too!” He flashed the phone at Sam. “I have Odin on my speed dial!”
Sam rolled his eyes.
Some time later, the Impala pulled up at the repository, the church that held the Tablet of Nebuchadnezzar.
“I don't sense any demonic activity here, Dean,” said Cas wearily from the back seat.
“Ruth isn’t answering her cell phone.”
“You sure we’re up for this, Dean?” said Sam. Cas had been looking pale since fighting the demons up in Valhalla, and zapping them back had seemed to work like a sock to the gut.
“I’d just like to check it out,” said Dean. “Why don't you stay in the car Cas?” Dean was already opening the door. As if in answer, Cas blipped himself out of the back seat to stand front of Dean. “Okay,” said Dean. “Someone could have seen you do that.”
“I'm not being left behind,” Cas grumbled. They locked eyes for a time, and Dean was the one who blinked first. “All right, have it your way.” They rushed up the church steps and, after Dean and Sam had drawn weapons, entered the vestibule.
“That's new,” whispered Sam, indicating the salt line at the door.
“You don't think Ruth actually listened to us?” asked Dean.
“No,” said Sam.
They opened the door into the church proper. It appeared to be deserted. They walked cautiously up to the altar, Sam pointing out the many warding signs that were now drawn on the walls.
“There is something wrong,” said Cas.
“Demons?” asked Dean.
“No. Something else.”
“Well, that's helpful.”
Dean looked around, finally holstering his weapon. “That's the tablet. I guess all is well?”
Suddenly, a teenager jumped out in front of him. "I am Isaiah, Guardian of the Tablet of Nebuchadnezzar, three hundred twenty-third of the blood. What is your business here?" The sternness of his mien was somewhat undercut by his voice cracking on the last word.
“Uh, Isiah. Hi, I'm Dean, and this is Sam and Cas.”
The kid glared at them.
“Isaiah. What happened to Ruth?” asked Sam.
“Oh the acting Guardian?” Isaiah rolled his eyes.
“She isn't here any more, Dean,” said Cas.
Isaiah had his hands on his hips. “Yeah, yeah. She was only acting Guardian, so she stepped down when I ascended, the rightful guardian.”
“Where did she go?” asked Dean.
Isaiah shrugged. “I dunno. I think med school. Or … something.”
Sam and Dean spent – or wasted, really – a few more moments making certain everything was copacetic for now, and then Dean stalked off down the aisle, Sam and Cas behind him. “They're gonna make mincemeat of that kid. You know they will,” he told Sam, not taking much care to keep his voice low.
Sam sighed and shook his head. Cas trailed after them, his head down.
“Great, one more thing to worry about,” huffed Dean. He banged through the front door and started down the front steps. “Cas are you-”
“Dean!” Sam had Cas in his arms as the angel collapsed to the ground. There was a clang as his blood-stained angel sword suddenly clattered down the steps.
“Cas! What the hell?” asked Dean, who was instantly down on his knees beside the angel.
“Dean.” Cas seemed barely coherent, his pupils wide as dinner plates. Dean caught his hand as Cas flailed. It was bloody.
“Cas?” There was more blood on the stone steps. Dean gently propped Cas up to look for wounds. On the back of Cas's trench coat, two bloody red patches spread out like wings.
“The angels, Dean. It was the angels,” said Cas, gripping the front of Dean’s shirt. His eyes rolled back in his head. And then he was out.
