ELEVEN

John Winchester pulled into the yard, the smell of incense still stinging his nostrils. It had been a difficult fight, but the spell he’d cast had gotten rid of the poltergeist once and for all.

Part of him had been tempted to stay behind in Henderson and get a good night’s sleep, but he’d been away from the boys for far too long. He had enrolled them in a school in South Dakota, giving the Singer Salvage Yard as their address, and the fall semester was almost over. Once it ended, he’d stop abusing Bobby Singer’s hospitality.

John wasn’t comfortable making use of it this much, but he also understood the need to give the boys as much continuity in their schooling as possible—especially six year-old Sammy.

He’d see where the work took them from here on in.

There was another reason he felt the need to see them. That poltergeist had targeted two young girls, and the danger they’d been in hit too close to home. John knew his boys would need to be able to defend themselves against whatever was out there—he’d already started that process with Dean, Sammy’s ten year-old brother. Dean was a crack shot with John’s M1911, and could load the shotgun with iron rounds and fire them off in one smooth motion.

Eventually he’d need to train Sammy, too.

But not yet.

He’d been driving all night, and the Impala’s engine was starting to make an odd clunking noise. He’d need to borrow Bobby’s tools and check it out, once he got a good night’s— or day’s—sleep.

The sun was rising in the east when he pulled in, shining haphazardly through the assorted cars, trucks, and wrecks that surrounded Bobby’s house. Squinting as he clambered out of the Impala, he walked stiffly toward the porch.

Sam ran out before he could even reach the front door.

“Dad!” the boy cried as he wrapped his arms around John’s legs.

Unable to help himself, John grinned.

“Hey there, Sammy.”

“I’m so glad you’re home!” the boy said, peering up at his father with an angry expression. “Dean’s being a creep.”

Looking up, John saw Bobby and Dean standing in the doorway. The former had on his usual: flannel shirt, ball cap, and jeans, and a look of irritation. The latter was sulking.

“I’m not a creep,” Dean protested. “I just ate the last donut. It’s no big deal!”

“But Bobby said I could have it!” Sam wailed from his position still wrapped around John’s legs.

“I said you could both have two each,” Bobby said in a long-suffering tone. He’d told John several times that he didn’t mind watching Dean and Sam, because he’d never had kids of his own. Right now, though, it looked as if he was coming to understand that there were benefits to being childless.

John started to walk toward the house, but as Sam still clung to one of his legs, it was more of an awkward shuffle. Before he got five feet they were both giggling at the ridiculousness of it. After a second, Bobby and Dean started laughing, too, and minutes later they were all sitting around Bobby’s kitchen table, back in a good mood.

Dean and Sam told him all about their adventures while he was gone. On the weekends they played games of hide-and-seek amidst the cars in the yard—a paradise for two young boys. During the week they went to school, though only Sam seemed interested in talking about that. Then again, he was in the first grade, so the course load was easier than Dean’s.

“Miss Roach said I could do third-grade work!” he said proudly.

John was surprised.

“That’s ‘cause you’re a dexter,” Dean said.

“No, it means he’s smart, Dean,” John said. “And that’s good. I’m proud of you, Sammy.”

Sam stuck out his tongue at his brother.

“Dean’s doing third-grade work, too!”

“Screw you, Sammy!” Dean said, who was now in the fifth grade.

John put on the voice that his drill sergeant had always used in the Corps.

“Hey! Enough of that!” he said sternly. “I hear any more, and you won’t like what happens.”

Both boys clammed right up, looking down at their laps abashedly.

“Sorry, sir,” Dean said.

“Sorry, Dad,” Sammy echoed.

“That’s better.”

After a while, the boys went off to play, and John followed Bobby into the living room. They sat on the couch, each holding a bottle of Budweiser, and John filled him in on the poltergeist.

“Sounds like you handled it okay,” Bobby drawled.

John chuckled at Bobby’s talent for understatement.

“Yeah. The Impala’s engine’s acting up again, by the way. I need to sleep off the drive, but I wanna put it up on the blocks later on.”

“No problem.” Bobby had been part of the community of hunters for a few years longer than John, and he’d already gained a reputation as the go-to guy for car repair. But John was a fine mechanic in his own right, and he knew the Impala’s engine better than anyone.

John rubbed his eyes, an action that cleared his vision but only served to increase his fatigue. The post-hunt adrenaline had kept him going on the road, but now that he was back with the boys, exhaustion was starting to cover him like a flannel blanket.

“Anything cooking?” he asked.

Bobby had his finger on the pulse of the hunting community better than anyone outside of Harvelle’s Roadhouse. What John really wanted to know was if he’d received any information that would lead them to Mary’s killer.

“Actually, yeah.” Bobby got to his feet and started rummaging through some of the many papers that were strewn about the desk in front of the fireplace. “Doragon Kokoro’s back.”

The name didn’t ring any bells.

“What’s that?”

“Nasty-ass spirit. Twenty years ago, it showed up in San Francisco killin’ folks. Now it’s back, and I got the only thing that’ll stop it.”

Suddenly alert, John immediately started calculating the mileage in his head.

“San Francisco’s a long way off—especially with the Impala’s engine acting up. But I can probably get out there—”

Bobby held up a hand.

“Whoa, there, John. You just said yourself that you’re wiped out. And you ain’t spent time with the kids in a dog’s age.”

John agreed with him, but at the mere mention of another hunt, another killer to destroy, another chance at maybe—maybe—finding out who killed Mary, his exhaustion fell away like autumn leaves.

“You got someone else who can do it?”

Bobby hesitated, and that was all John needed.

“You said people are dyin’, Bobby. That’s all that matters.” And revenge, but he didn’t need to mention that. “What do I need to do?”

Reaching behind his desk, Bobby pulled up a sword from the floor. John was confused as to why it wasn’t in a scabbard, then he saw that it was a hook sword, of the sort that came from Asia. Those things didn’t really holster well....

He also saw the kanji characters etched onto the blade.

“Magic sword?”

Bobby shook his head.

“Nah, just a fancy label. The characters just mean ‘Pierce the heart of the dragon.’”

“How do you know?” John asked.

In response, Bobby reeled off several phrases in what sounded like Japanese.

“Oh,” John said lamely. He should have known better than to assume that there was something Bobby didn’t know. “I’m guessin’ you just told me to screw off and die,” he added.

“Somethin’ like that,” Bobby replied, grinning. “And that’s all you got to do—run this through the heart of the dragon. End of story—at least for now.” Then the grin fell. “Look, I’ll take a gander at the Impala’s engine, get her good as new while you’re gone.”

“How’m I supposed to get there? Especially with that.” He gestured at the sword.

“Take a plane,” Bobby said. “I’ll ship the sword, and it’ll be there waiting when you arrive in San Francisco.”

“Okay, that could work.” John hadn’t thought of that. But then again, Bobby had a legitimate and regular source of income. Just buying a plane ticket and shipping stuff you couldn’t get through airline security tended to be outside of John’s budget. He was struggling enough just to keep the Impala going, especially with gas over a dollar a gallon.

Bobby explained that Doragon Kokoro was the spirit of a ronin that had been brought back by a half-Chinese, half-Japanese man named Albert Chao. A spell had been cast by a hunter—from what Bobby heard, it was a man named Jack Bartow—that banished the spirit for twenty years. And that was exactly two decades back.

“What happened to the hunter who cast the spell?”

“Bartow? He died later on, savin’ a couple from a vengeance spirit that was hauntin’ ‘em. I met him right after I started in the business, and he left me a bunch of his stuff—including this.”

With that he hefted the sword.

“Where’d he find it?” John asked.

“Got it from a fella at Berkeley, in the Oriental Studies Department. Guy helped Bartow out twenty years ago, along with a couple of other hunters, then came across this and figured Bartow would know what to do with it when Doragon Kokoro came back. Now we got us some dead folks in Chinatown, burned to a crisp and cut to ribbons.”

“Chinatown?” John rubbed his stubble-covered chin. “I thought this was a Japanese spirit.”

“It is—like I said, Chao’s a half-breed. Don’t know much beyond that.” Then he peered intently at his friend. “You sure you wanna do this? I can probably head on down to Harvelle’s, find someone who could handle it. Couple days won’t make that much difference.”

John didn’t answer at first. Instead, he looked over at Dean and Sam in the dining room, playing that oh-so-common game of “I touched you last.”

Christmas was coming up, and he did want to spend it with the boys....

But if all that was needed was for this sword to penetrate the Heart of the Dragon—like it said on the blade—then the job would only take a couple of days. He’d be back in plenty of time.

“Burned to a crisp, you said.”

Then the image came back into his head.

His wife Mary, pinned to the ceiling, blood pooling outward from her stomach, fire surrounding and consuming her.

He’d dedicated his life to finding out who or what did that. True, he had other reasons for hunting—people were dying at the hands of monsters that most refused to believe really existed.

At the age of eighteen, John Winchester had been drafted by the U.S. Marine Corps, but had gone willingly, because he believed what his superiors in the Corps taught him: that being a Marine would save lives. A year in Vietnam had cured him of that notion, but the urge was still there.

Yet the saving of lives was like a side benefit. Because when he did return from ‘Nam, he did so with but a single thought: I want to spend the rest of my life with Mary Campbell. And for ten years he did, until that thing—demon, monster, whatever it was—took her away from him.

No, his true reason for hunting—the reason that drove him, day in and day out—was to find out what had killed his wife and destroy it once and for all.

Perhaps the Heart of the Dragon would provide another clue to where he could find it, and finally achieve the vengeance for which his heart had cried out for the past six years.

John turned to Bobby with renewed resolve.

“So what time’s my flight?”