TWENTY-THREE

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

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

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

He sat back and thought about it.

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

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

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

“Boss!”

“What is it?”

“Tiny’s back. He got hurt!”

Albert got up.

“Where is he?” he demanded.

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

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

“What happened?”

Quickly, Tiny filled Albert in.

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

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

“Did you get either of their names?”

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

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

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

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

“Here are the bodies, Agent Seeger.”

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

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

“Lemme give you a hand.”

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

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

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

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

“Whoa.”

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

Dean shot the M.E. a look.

“Again?”

Friedrich tossed a look right back at Dean.

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah, well, let’s see what we—”

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

“—got.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

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

Dean nodded.

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

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

Friedrich squinted at Dean.

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

“Boiling the blood away,” Dean prompted helpfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sulfur,” Dean said with a sigh.

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

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

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

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

Dean and Sam needed to stay on their toes.