THREE

“Shut it, pal. We know what you are, and we know just how to kill you.”

It was a less than accurate assessment, but Dean made sure his words overflowed with confidence. No sense letting on that this particular brand of freak had them stumped. Has to be a freak, Dean thought. Only the freaks recognize us. The pretense was betrayed by Sam’s stifled cough. Dean shot him a look—Shut the hell up. There was a reason Dean did the poker hustling in the family.

“Well, we sort of know what you are. You’re a douche, you’re causing problems here, and for us violence is usually the best solution.”

“Listen guys, I’ve been waiting more than a while... in a bar... for you to get here,” Don said with a bit of edge. “I’m not sure a human bladder can take much more pressure. Can this wait till after I hit the pisser?” He shifted his weight awkwardly back and forth between his legs.

Dean shoved the man roughly into a tattered booth tucked into the furthest gloomy back corner of the bar, far from the prying eyes of the watering hole’s patrons. Don’t need any of them sticking up for this guy if things go pear-shaped.

“Not likely, Hawaii Five-Oh. We’ve got to sort some things out first.” Dean cast a sideways glance at his brother. “Sam?”

With a nod, Sam reached into his jacket pocket for the bag of rock salt, but his hand came out empty.

“Damn left it in the car,” he muttered. Leaving Dean holding Don hostage in the booth, Sam headed back toward the throng of confused folks at the bar, all no doubt wondering what was happening to their free-drinks ticket. He returned with a handful of salt shakers, which he quickly began to twist open.

Should have brought the rock salt shotguns, Dean thought. Then we wouldn’t have to resort to these cheap tricks. If Don Black was possessed by a demon, he’d be vulnerable to salt, but it’d take more than a sprinkle. Things would have to get messy.

“If you really were expecting us, you know that we’ve taken down more than our fair share of your kind.” Dean’s bravado was reaching fever pitch. “Truth is, baby bro here doesn’t even need the salt. He uses his kung-fu grip, your ass is smote back to the pit.”

It was clear that all three of them knew he was bluffing. Anyone with a passing familiarity with the Apocalypse knew about Sam’s demon-blood addiction and where that dark road had led him.

Don chuckled softly.

“You think... you think I’m a demon?” With a bemused look, he lifted one of the salt shakers from the table and upended it, spilling its contents into his mouth. After a moment, he nonchalantly spat the salt onto the table. “Bam.”

Well, since he’s not choking to death on his own boiling entrails, I guess he’s not a demon. Dean considered the situation, but didn’t see any other alternative. Might as well ask the bastard.

“Fine then. I give. What the hell are you?”

“Hell? That’s your problem, Dean. Always looking in the wrong direction.” Don reached out and grabbed Dean’s chin, and before he could object, tilted it upward.

“Whoa, buddy,” Dean snapped, “bad touch!”

In an instant, Sam was holding the blade of Ruby’s demon-killing knife to Don’s throat.

“You guys aren’t great listeners. What is a cursed knife gonna do to an angel?”

Sam and Dean shared a stunned look. If Don was telling the truth, he had a point. Without an angelic blade, they might as well be throwing peanuts at him.

“An angel?” Sam asked, slowly pulling the knife away from Don’s jugular. “What kind of angel goes around boiling little old ladies and setting off apocalyptic omens?”

A jackass angel, Dean thought, which doesn’t exactly narrow it down.

“I really did think you’d be here a week ago,” Don said sheepishly. “I left plenty of harmless clues. I didn’t get to the frogs and the boiling and whatnot until I realized you weren’t catching on. Isn’t one of you supposed to be smart? A doctor or something?” Sam looked away, a little embarrassed.

“Lawyer, actually. Ain’t that right, Sammy?” Dean said, slapping his brother on the back with a smirk.

Don seemed to struggle to hold back his laughter.

“Lucifer’s vessel on Earth is a lawyer? How perfect is that?”

“I dropped out of law school,” Sam interjected pointedly. “And I’m nobody’s vessel.”

“That’s the spirit, Sam. Not to mention exactly what I brought you here to talk about,” Don said a little too excitedly.

“Next time you want to talk, try calling before you hurt any kids,” Sam said.

“Nobody got hurt. It was a bunch of frogs. And it’s kind of hard to get in touch with you two, what with the mojo carved into your ribs.” Don said, referring to the Enochian Sigil, an ancient and complex pattern that the angel Castiel had burned into Sam and Dean’s ribcages as protection against both sides in the Apocalypse: the angels and the demons. Without it, Michael and Lucifer would be on them faster than Dean on a bacon cheeseburger.

“Fair enough,” Dean relented. “So what now? You stick the rest of the angels on us, we bolt, and we start this dance all over again tomorrow?” Even as the words came out of his mouth, Dean knew the ‘bolting’ part wouldn’t work. If it came to blows, the odds were in the angel’s favor. They weren’t leaving the bar unless Don wanted them to.

Don sat up straight.

“Not at all. This has nothing to do with them, and everything to do with helping you.”

“Only help we need is keeping off angel radar,” Dean growled.

Sam’s eyes darted over to meet his. Dean knew that meant only one thing: he was about to cause trouble.

“You said you wanted to talk about me... about being Lucifer’s vessel.” Sam began, and then paused, as though trying to find the words. “Everyone we’ve talked to, on both sides, acts like it’s inevitable. That the battle is between Dean and me.”

Don nodded gravely.

“But there has to be another way,” Sam said. “There always is.”

“You’re right. Becoming Lucifer’s vessel isn’t the only way to end the war; it’s just the fastest. I can’t guarantee you’ll love the alternatives, but they are out there.”

“Sam, don’t let this guy get inside your head,” Dean said, worried. “We don’t know for sure who he is, and even if he is an angel... well, their track record ain’t so great.”

“Look who’s talking,” Don responded. “At least I didn’t bring on the End Times. And Dean, let’s not forget about your part in this little dance.”

This guy’s just as much of an asshole as the rest of the angels, Dean thought. Despite their common reputation as agents of God’s will, forces of good, and the gold standard for morality, all the angels Dean had met over the last year had been shifty, manipulative dicks. Except Cass, of course. Castiel had rebelled against the rest of the Heavenly Host when the angels conspired to bring about the Apocalypse.

“Why would you help us?” Sam asked. “Why break from the party line?”

“Fellas, I have a vested interest here,” Don said in a low whisper. “I’ve been cooped up for thousands of years, couldn’t even get a weekend off to visit your lovely little corner of the world. Now everything’s changed. It’s all hands on deck for the Apocalypse, and here I am. In the paradise God made for you.” He gestured at the bar. “I love it here.”

Dean stared the angel down.

“So, what? You want us to keep running? Keep the Apocalypse raging until you’ve filled up on piña coladas?”

“Not in the slightest. I can show you how to defeat Lucifer without becoming the Michael Sword.” Don’s gaze drifted to Sam. “And without Lucifer playing house inside of Sam. It just so happens that I’d get to stay on Earth as well. Win, win, win.”

Dean saw Sam’s Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed hard. He could see the wheels spinning in his brother’s head, trying to work out the possibilities here. All told, Sam was in a much worse spot than Dean. Win or lose, Sam had flicked the switch on Judgment Day, and if the battle between the Winchester brothers did come to pass... Well, either the Devil would win, or Sam would be dead.

“We’re gonna need more than that,” Dean said. “We’ve got no reason to believe any of this crap.”

“Then let me give you the full picture,” Don said, anger brimming in his voice. “I’ve spent the last few thousand years as a warden with a very high-profile prisoner—until the day you boys let him spring the coop.” Don leaned in close, his breath washing over Dean’s face. Dean flinched. Guy should lay off the onion rings.

“I was stuck in Hell,” Don continued, “guarding the gates like a good soldier while you were off drinking demon blood and betraying your race. I had to watch souls screaming with no reprieve while Satan and his pals tortured them.” With that, he gave Dean a knowing look.

Dean felt his blood boil.

“That’s enough,” he growled, struggling to control himself. He had spent some quality time in Hell, and after experiencing the equivalent of thirty years of torture, he had accepted a bargain... Dean had tortured other souls in exchange for being taken off the rack himself. That moment of weakness had broken the first of the sixty-six Seals that had freed Lucifer.

Don looked over at Sam.

“And you just opened the back door for him,” he spat.

Sam’s fist clenched around the demon-killing knife. The blade pushed into the table’s wooden surface, carving out a deep gouge.

“I suffered for my work. For my creator. But now that Lucifer’s free, there’s nothing for me to guard. I get called up here, and what do I find out? God’s gone. MIA.”

“That’s not true,” Sam said softly, his eyes on Ruby’s knife. He had always had more faith than Dean, but that faith was being sorely tested these days. The archangel Raphael had claimed that God was gone, but how were they really to know? How was anyone—even the angels? If God didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t be found. That didn’t stop Cass from searching for him (or her, Dean thought) across the whole damn planet.

“All that time spent in the pit, you hear things,” Don continued, ignoring Sam’s quiet riposte. “A lot of truly awful things, but every now and then... a secret. Something Lucifer didn’t want me to hear. A tiny clue as to how he can be defeated, earned by years of my suffering.”

“Can’t be true,” Dean said with a gravelly edge. “You’d have told the rest of the angel gang and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“You don’t understand,” Don scolded. “Do you think, when all is said and done, that Michael will just kill Lucifer?”

“Yes,” Sam said grimly. For Sam, that was the central dilemma.

“Then you don’t know how Michael’s mind works. He’s going to defeat Lucifer, and then humiliate him. He’ll invent a new level of suffering even worse than Hell and stick Lucifer in it to wallow, and who do you think he’ll get to guard it?” Don was seething now, almost spitting as he spoke. “I’m not going back to Hell. Not after living up here.”

“And you know how to—”

“Kill Lucifer entirely? Remove the need for there to even be a Hell? Yes.” Don was suddenly icy calm, which was somehow creepier than his anger. “I’m gonna give you boys a minute to wrap your brains around all this,” he added with a broad smile as he stood up. “Even angels have to pee.”

* * *

Sam watched Don disappear into the back hallway of the bar, uncertain if he should try to stop him. At this point, it didn’t seem like he was going to run off.

“What the hell was that?” Dean asked, his hands at his temples. He didn’t handle information dumps well.

“If it’s true—”

“Of course it’s not true,” Dean interrupted. “You think something like that would slip Cass’s mind? That Michael isn’t even going to off Lucifer?”

“He’s our friend, but he’s still an angel. He hasn’t always been honest with us before.” Sam knew that was hard for his brother to hear—Dean had been growing closer and closer to Cass since the angel had rebelled against Heaven.

Dean squinted at Sam, stupefied. “You’re not considering this, are you? Some crazy comes up from Hell and has an offer that’s too good to be true? This sounding familiar?”

“Is this about Ruby?” Sam asked pointedly. After all of the work the brothers had done to fix things between them, Sam’s relationship with Ruby was still a delicate subject. It would be off limits completely, if anything was off limits to Dean.

“This is about us wanting to get off the hook, to throw the yoke off our backs and let somebody else pull the load.”

Dean wasn’t entirely wrong, but that didn’t change the fact that they needed options. Before they met Don, their choices were either to accept Michael and Lucifer, or to let the world fall apart while they looked on.

“It’s not just our Apocalypse,” Sam said. “If Bobby came to us with another way to end the war, you’d listen.”

“Bobby’s different. Bobby’s human.”

“Who’s Bobby?” a voice asked from behind them. It was Don, back from the bathroom. Looking refreshed, he held up his hand to the bartender. “A round for me and my two new friends.”

The bartender threw a hardened, distrustful glance at Sam and Dean, then started to pour their beers.

“Bobby ain’t on your radar, and he’s not gonna be,” Dean replied.

Sam leaned toward Don cautiously, trying to extend an olive branch.

“Say we believe you. Say we’re even willing to help you. What happens next? Why do you need a couple of humans?”

“Because the book was written for humans,” Don responded, as if it was obvious.

“The book?” Sam asked, confused. “I thought you heard this from Lucifer directly?”

“That’s right. I heard about the book from Lucifer.”

“And?” Dean asked, annoyed.

“And what?”

“And what is it?” Dean spat out, the words almost falling on top of each other.

“A manual. A book of strategy, if you like, a... a war guide... A cheat sheet for the Apocalypse.”

“Written by?” Dean demanded.

Don grabbed a beer from the bartender’s outstretched hand.

“God,” he answered.

“And you walked away?! I knew y’all were idjits, I just didn’t know the extent.” Dean was always relieved to hear Bobby Singer’s voice, no matter how annoyed he sounded. He may not be blood, but he was the only family the boys had left.

“Told him we needed some time to think it over,” Dean said, shifting his cell phone away from his ear to protect his hearing from the auditory onslaught. Dean was alone in the fish-scented motel room while Sam had gone out for food. Dean found it hard to think on an empty stomach, and there was no way he was gonna share a meal with Don the d-bag angel.

“I bet you did. Did you also tell him to come and bring me some new damn legs?” Bobby responded with his usual rancor. Dean had forgotten momentarily about Bobby’s disability. Bobby had been stabbed by Ruby’s knife a few months back and become paralyzed, left to live out the Apocalypse in a wheelchair. It was the worst possible fate for a man who prided himself on being self-sufficient.

“I kept you out of it. The less the angels know about you, the better. For all of us,” Dean said.

“What, because I’m a slow-moving target now? I can take care of my damned self, Dean.” Bobby’s voice cracked slightly, betraying the hardship his impairment had caused.

“I know you can, Bobby,” Dean said, and then tried to reroute the conversation back into productive territory. “Do you know anything about this book? It’s called The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness.”

“Everybody’s heard of it,” Bobby replied, sounding more like his usual self. “It’s a segment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and one of the most widely read apocryphal texts in Christendom. Trouble is, nobody’s read the ending.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it don’t exist. When the scrolls went up for sale in ’54 there was a big to-do. Somebody broke into the Waldorf Astoria, where they were being auctioned, and the next day they couldn’t find the last page, what they called the ‘War Scroll.’ Lore says it was destroyed... That the Devil didn’t like what it had to say.”

So much for an easy answer, Dean thought. But at least Don’s story checks out.

“And the bit he said about it being a field guide to the End Times?”

“More like a field guide to gutting the Devil,” Bobby said grimly. “It gets pretty specific. Battle formations, a timeline, you name it. But that last page... how to defeat Satan himself? That could change everything.”

“Thanks for keeping expectations low, Bobby. So if it’s been destroyed, how does Don the angel lead us to it?”

“Should of asked him instead of storming off, dimwit.” There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Could be it wasn’t destroyed, just hidden. Put someplace safe where Lucifer knew no one would find it.”

“So all we have to do is find something hidden by the Devil himself. Easy peasy.”

Dean heard the door open behind him, letting a gust of cold air rush in, rustling the drapes and sending a chill down his spine. He turned to see Sam enter the room, a guilty look on his face.

“Bobby, I’ve gotta go...”

And then Dean saw him. Don the angel, striding in right after Sam.

“Sam, what the hell’s going on?” Dean dropped the cell phone to his side, but could still hear Bobby’s tinny voice calling out from the speaker.

“Dean, I’m sorry. Really, I am. But you’re not the one that’s facing an angel firing squad no matter what he does.” Sam tried to hold eye contact with Dean, but the older Winchester looked away. He stared instead at Don, who was still wearing that damn Hawaiian shirt.

“What did you say to him?” Dean asked the angel harshly.

“I told him the truth. That you’ll understand it all in time.” Don’s words were the last thing Dean heard before the sudden, precipitous drop.

Sam awoke to the sound of screaming, terrifyingly close. It was accompanied by the thrashing wails of some sort of otherworldly creature. The noise rattled the air around him, and then gave way to a man’s shouting. And was that... music? What the hell happened? He was totally alone in a dark, curving hallway, both ends of which were obscured by turns. Coming from one direction was the sound of screaming. From the other, silence. This is how a hunter’s instincts can get you in trouble, Sam thought as he slowly stood, his legs faltering, and walked carefully toward the maelstrom. Most people would run away from screaming. Thanks for the death wish, Dad.

As he rounded the corner, he started at the sight before him. His brother, clearly in a similar state of shock, stood in the flickering light of an old-fashioned movie theater. On the silver screen, a massive squid attacked a submarine while sailors threw harpoons at its colossal eye. Sam reached way back into his childhood memories. The Nautilus? Is that 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? Sam was stupefied. What did Don do to us?

He saw an exit sign and pushed his stupefied older brother toward it. They stumbled outside and squinted as the afternoon sun temporarily blinded them. Blinking, Sam looked up at the impossibly bright sky and saw the silhouette of a massive building. The Empire State Building, he thought. A classic cherry-colored car motored past them, in pristine condition. Happy families strode down the sidewalk, wearing outfits straight out of Back to the Future. Sam stared at them. Something’s gone really wrong.

He looked over at Dean, who looked back at him, an I-told-you-so look on his face.

“Dude. I think that dick sent us back to 1954.”