SEVENTEEN

Sam didn’t want to dream. He cherished the opportunity to sleep—it was the dreams that were the problem. After what he’d seen and experienced as a hunter, any therapist would expect his slumbering visions to be horrific—monsters, demons, death and dismemberment—but any of those things would be welcome in place of what he did dream about. Family. His brother, his father, even his mother, who had died before he could walk. They were the figures that filled his dreams, living happy lives, untouched by the dark plans of Azazel, Lilith, and Lucifer.

Untouched by Sam’s own actions. Breaking the Final Seal. The Apocalypse. The End of Everything. For months on end, the dreams were the same. The Winchester family sitting around a dinner table telling mundane stories about their small problems. Normal problems. Dean was younger, maybe seventeen years old, not yet the independent adult man he was in 2010. John was a mechanic, working long hours, but relishing every moment of it. Mary was... alive. What else mattered? Almost everything was exactly how Sam had imagined it as a child, while sitting alone in dank motel rooms waiting for John to come back from a hunt.

The only difference? Sam wasn’t there. Their perfect life was only possible because he didn’t exist. No Sam meant no yellow-eyed demon coming in the night, no fire destroying the house, no death sentence for Mary. No need for John’s twenty-year path to revenge. No meeting Jessica, no reason for her to become Azazel’s next victim. Sam couldn’t close his eyes without seeing it. Somewhere out there, Jessica could have been happy and alive without him.

Sam didn’t want to dream. Simple unconsciousness suited him much better.

In the morning, Sam and Dean gathered what little stuff they had with them and headed out. They decided that Sam would try to get back into the American Bible Society to see if he could find any information in Walter’s office. Meanwhile Dean was going to try to track down James the demon security guard. If he really was a ‘guard dog,’ he might lead them straight to the scrolls.

Sneaking into the American Bible Society was relatively straightforward. The rear entrance was locked, but Sam used one of his credit cards and picked it with ease. That’s an advantage of working in 1954, Sam thought. They’re not as paranoid about security. He briefly considered the possibility that the police hadn’t yet been to Walter’s workplace, but that was unlikely. Mr. Feldman knew Walter’s real name— indeed it was probably his distinction in the field that had convinced Mr. Feldman to let him bid in the first place.

Entering the busy maze of small passageways at the back of the building, it was nearly impossible to avoid encountering people. Luckily, every scholar he passed had their nose in a book.

Still, got to move fast.

Reaching Walter’s office, Sam found the place in chaos. Books littered the floor, a massive shelf was upended and resting at an angle across Walter’s desk, and his typewriter had been smashed to pieces.

Sam swung the door closed, hoping that no one would be curious enough to come looking through the ransacked room.

From behind a bookcase, he heard a voice.

“Don’t come any closer!”

Walter peeked over the edge of the fallen furniture.

“Sam?”

“What are you doing here?” Sam asked.

“It’s my office,” Walter said, emerging and looking around. “Or at least it was my office.”

Sam noticed that he had clean pants on but was still struggling to put weight on his right leg particularly.

“Who did this?” Sam asked. “Cops?”

Walter shook his head. “The police came and went yesterday afternoon, according to one of my colleagues. This must have happened during the night.”

“So you made some friends yesterday,” Sam said.

“It would seem so.” Walter opened the notebook that he was holding. “Anyway, I couldn’t sleep last night. I’ve been here since four. I keep seeing that... thing.”

“James—the security guard?”

“That thing wasn’t a person. Doesn’t deserve to be called a person’s name. What about you? What are you doing here?”

Sam perched on the edge of the ruined desk.

“What do you know about demonology, Walter?”

The scholar swallowed, grimacing.

“It’s part of the Christian faith.”

“And?”

“And I’ve read the Bible. I’ve read all the apocryphal texts. I know what they say about demons, I just—”

“Didn’t think you’d ever see one?” Sam offered.

Walter avoided Sam’s gaze. “My colleagues call this sort of talk ‘occult’—‘hidden,’ out of the ordinary man’s view. How is it that you know so much about it, Sam?”

“You could say I’m a bit of a scholar, like you. I just go about my research a little differently. More ‘hands on.’”

“So how does one kill a demon?” Walter asked.

Sam remembered Ruby’s knife, which was the quickest way of dispatching a demon. Has Julia got it? he wondered again. If Sam told Walter the knife’s purpose, it was possible he and Julia would go after James without Sam and Dean’s help. It seemed sensible to keep some information hidden.

Don’t give Walter too much rope. Or he could strangle you with it.

“There are ways,” Sam finally replied.

Nodding, Walter flipped his sketch over so Sam could see it. In broad gray strokes, Walter had laid out the basic shape of a hellish-looking canine creature, its snarling teeth dripping with blood. It uncannily resembled the mental picture Sam had of a Hellhound.

“Not drawing a kids’ book, huh?”

“For a second, while it was attacking me, I could swear it...” Walter stopped, collecting his thoughts. “I could swear it changed. Became something else.” He tapped the drawing with the pencil. “This.”

Now it was Sam who was confused.

“What do you mean, like a shifter?” He caught himself, remembering that Walter wouldn’t have a clue that shapeshifters existed. “I mean, did it physically change shape? Grow fur?”

“I’m not sure. I was distracted by all the scratching and biting.”

Sam took the notebook from Walter, squinting closely at the hellish image.

“I take it that’s not the typical demon’s M.O.?” Walter asked.

“No. Not at all.” What the hell kind of creature was this—could it be a Hellhound?

“You recognize it?”

Images of Lilith’s white eyes flitted through Sam’s memory.

“Kind of,” Sam said. “Do any of your books ever mention Hellhounds?”

Walter shook his head, no.

It wasn’t surprising, given the mythological nature of the beasts. Their connection to Christian theology was tenuous at best.

“You’ve run into one before?” Walter asked.

“We’ve run into a lot of things.”

As Sam pondered the possibilities, he realized a particularly dire one. In 1954, Lilith was still alive, probably roaming the earth, eating babies, as was her wont. Could she, or the yellow-eyed demon for that matter, be involved with this strange creature? Sam decided it was worth giving Walter a few more scraps of information.

“Hellhounds are brutal, fearless creatures. They’re Hell’s enforcers.”

“What, like, if you make a deal with the Devil?” Walter joked.

“Yes. Exactly.”

Walter blanched. “Oh.”

“The last time we saw one, it was obeying a very powerful demon named Lilith. She’s actually the reason we’re in this situation—” Sam stopped when he saw the strange look on Walter’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“Lilith?”

“Yeah.”

“The demon Lilith, the first demon, Lilith.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve met her?” Walter asked, his voice excited.

“I killed her,” Sam answered. Well, more or less.

For a second Walter was silent. Then he rubbed his hands over his notebook as he began to speak, half to himself, as though talking through a math problem.

“There’s lore about Lilith, you know. That she has a demonic dog as a companion.” Walter eyed Sam. “I may have never seen a demon, but I know my Bible, and it seems like that could be what nearly took my leg off yesterday.”

“It may have a dog’s bite, but it looked like a regular guy,” Sam said.

“Young man, we are talking about thousands of years of human history. Where Lucifer, demons and angels all inhabited the same dark universe. I would think those entities could think up whatever they damn well wanted to.”

Sam nodded, he knew that all too well.

“Do you know what it says? The War of the Sons?” Sam pressed.

“If I did, I wouldn’t need to steal it.”

“How do you know it’s important enough to steal without knowing what it says?” Sam persisted. “I mean, why were you after the War Scroll specifically, and not the rest of the set?”

“The rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls are phenomenally important, just not in the same way,” Walter said, bypassing Sam’s first question.

“Walter, you and I went through something yesterday that would send most people running for the hills, but here we both are. It seems as if we might be after the same thing. Either we can share information, or—”

“Live together, die alone?” Walter interrupted. “We don’t trust you. Julia nor me.”

“Well, no offense Walter, but we trust you two even less, and for better reasons,” Sam said. “So what do you know about the scrolls?”

Walter sighed. He seemed to contemplate his next sentence very carefully. “I know the War Scroll is important, because... because I’ve been waiting for it my entire life.”

“What, like you were destined to find it?”

“I don’t have a destiny,” Walter said. “All I had was a mother, who told me a story when I was little, the same one every night. A story about the day that good would finally triumph over evil, and how if I was lucky, I’d get to see that day.” Sam leaned forward, intrigued. “And if I was very, very lucky, I’d get to be a part of that battle.”

Sam’s jaw clenched. “Doesn’t sound that lucky to me.”

“The War Scroll is how good triumphs in that final battle. It’s a set of instructions, written thousands of years ago, by incredibly devout Jews during Roman rule in Judea. The Essenes spent their days in solitude, transcribing the Word of God. Some believe they were His prophets.”

“And you believe it?” Sam asked.

“I never knew my mother to lie to me.”

Sam knew all about destiny, and about the weight of a parent’s expectations. It seemed as if Walter had allowed himself to be pushed down the path his mother had planned for him.

“Walter, I think we can help each other,” Sam said softly. “Why don’t you gather your stuff and come with me?”

“Right, my things...” Walter absently drummed his fingers on the notebook with the sort of deep deliberation that Sam didn’t see very often. Not from Dean, anyway.

“Wait,” Walter said suddenly, his eyes wide. He hastily pushed aside a pile of dusty tomes, revealing a much larger work underneath. It was roughly ten inches by twelve, set in a thick leather cover. As Walter flipped the yellowed pages, Sam could see they were filled with Enochian, the language of the angels. “Pages are missing,” Walter said, in despair. “Without them, I won’t be able to translate the scroll.”

“If the pages are gone, we’ll just have to—”

“No,” Walter said, voice filled with new hope, “I don’t think they would have found it.”

He led Sam through a small door in the back of the office.

“It’s in the toilet?” Sam said, seeing the tiny private bathroom.

Walter smiled broadly as he fumbled through a rack of magazines. Hidden amongst them was another ancient volume, with the thickness of a dictionary. If its cover once held a title, it had long since faded.

“You keep that in the pisser?”