TWENTY-SIX

Exactly twelve hours later, there was a knock on the motel room door. Julia and Walter stood in the doorway, wearing what looked like fishing gear.

“Were you fishing?” Dean asked.

“Trying not to draw attention to ourselves,” Julia said tersely as she pulled a large shotgun out of one leg of the rubber waders she had on. “Plus, it’s a good way to carry around firepower.”

Dean nodded.

Walter walked into the room and sat on the bed.

“So, you ditch us and now you need our help?” He stared pointedly at Dean.

Dean gulped. Had Julia told her father they slept together? Dean met Julia’s eyes. She looked away. That was an affirmative. Crap.

“So you can’t translate the scroll on your own. Just like you couldn’t have gotten it on your own. And now you need our assistance. Again,” Walter said.

“Yes,” Sam said. “It would take months. Can you help?”

“You’ve ditched us twice now. There is a hoard of demons looking for us because of you. I’m not quite sure what’s in it for Julia and me.”

“I don’t think that’s because of us—” Dean interrupted.

Walter held out his hand to stop him.

“Regardless, now you come begging for our help.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say begging,” Dean said.

“Boy, let me finish.”

Dean was about to tell Walter he reminded him a lot of their friend Bobby, but he decided to keep his mouth shut.

“Let’s get started,” Walter said.

Walter laid a large suitcase out on the bed. It was filled with loads of dusty texts—most looked even older than the ones he’d had in his office in New York.

“From my own private collection,” he said.

“Where did you get all of these?” Sam asked. He was amazed at the array of books. There were sixteenth-century Bibles, dozens of books in ancient Greek, even some old parchment scrolls.

“I’ve collected them since I was a boy, in anticipation of this very moment. We have a safe house south of here, and I locked them up in a bomb shelter there. I always knew they would be important.” Walter grew somber. “I’ve known about the existence of the scroll since I could talk. I knew I would one day hold it in my hands. It was my destiny. I’m part of the link in the chain to ultimately defeat evil. And that destiny is coming true.”

Sam and Dean exchanged a look but said nothing.

Walter pulled out the bedside table in between the twin beds, so it stood halfway down the beds. He then took the round side table and put that next to the bed on one side, and took a chair and put that on the other side of the other bed.

“Can I have the scroll?”

Sam reached into his bag and pulled out the steel flour can. Walter reached for it gingerly. He took out the scroll and gently laid it on the round side table. He spread the scroll out, end to end. The last couple of pages came to a rest on the chair.

“Walter, can we start from here?” Sam indicated. He knew exactly where the translation of the scroll in modern times had left off.

“Why? It’s a twelve-foot scroll.”

Sam looked at Dean. This time, a whole unspoken discussion passed between them. They couldn’t explain that they already knew what the first ten feet of the scroll said. Sam looked back at Walter.

“Legend has it that it’s a battle plan, right? So let’s start from the end. Eisheth is already on our tail. Let’s just cut to the chase. We can always go back.”

“You have a point. Okay. Let’s get started.”

Walter opened up each and every one of the books that he had brought. Leaning over the parchment, he traced a symbol with his finger then started paging through a book looking for its match.

“Grab one, this is how it’s done.”

Sam sat down on the floor, grabbed a book and started thumbing through it.

“I’m going to go get some air,” Dean said.

“Me too,” Julia agreed. “Dad, you okay?”

Walter waved her away.

Dean and Julia stepped outside. There was an awkward silence.

Julia broke first. “I bet you don’t call a lot of women after you spend the night with them.”

“Not usually. No.”

“So this is good, you can use my father just like you used me.”

Dean looked her in the eyes. “I didn’t use you. And as far as your father is concerned, he’s a grown man. He knows the deal. You’re hunters, right? Sometimes you use people for information—just like you used Sam and me back in New York.”

“That was different, I needed to find out who you were.”

“Well, now you know.”

“I’m not sure that I like you, now that I know the real you.”

Dean walked away from Julia across the parking lot.

“I wasn’t untruthful.” Julia followed him.

“You weren’t exactly forthcoming either.” He spun around. “All that bullshit about your father being a scholar, and then you show up here with an arsenal taped to your back. What else are you hiding? I mean, I like a girl with a hint of danger, but you’re far and away the most dangerous piece of ass I’ve ever had.”

Julia slapped him hard across the face.

“My father was a scholar. He is a scholar. But we have another life.”

Julia looked up at Dean with tears in her eyes.

“I have no choice. Don’t you understand that? Look at every other girl my age. They’re married, have a house, a husband. Kids. Do you know that by the age of nine, I knew I would never have that? Ever. That is not a normal existence. So excuse me if you didn’t get all the information. I had other things to do.”

“Like saving the world?”

“We don’t know what’s on the scroll. Maybe there is a part for me to play. I hope so. I don’t know. But I don’t have a choice. Do I?”

“No, you don’t. Nobody does. I’m finding that out.”

Standing next to Julia, watching the grass swaying in the warm evening breeze, Dean felt a brief moment of happiness. Strange as that is, he thought.

“I didn’t mean to slap you.”

Dean lifted her chin gently in his hands. He gave her a slow, deep kiss.

“You’re forgiven,” Dean said.

“That wasn’t an apology,” Julia huffed.

“It’ll do. Let’s get some coffee.”

Sam and Walter worked diligently into the evening translating the text. Walter knew a lot of symbols that weren’t in the books. It would have taken Sam a lot longer if he had done it on his own. But still, the process was laborious.

* * *

Dean and Julia sat in the café across the street from the motel.

“So, no picket fence for you?” Dean said, stirring his coffee.

“Don’t think so,” Julia absent-mindedly scribbled on a napkin. “So what about Eisheth, what can we do about her?”

“I don’t know. She’s supposed to guard the scroll that essentially tells the secret of how to destroy her husband. She’s going to go after it with everything she’s got. That’s why it’s so important that we find out what it says. If she shows up again, I have a feeling that she’s going to have made a lot more friends.”

A few hours later Dean and Julia headed back to the motel room.

Sam and Walter were wide awake and still working hard, though Sam’s hair was wet, so he must have just taken a shower. Walter peered at his daughter and Dean as they stood in the doorway.

“Shut the door. The scroll shouldn’t be exposed to the elements,” he said.

Dean sat down.

“Have you found anything?” Julia asked.

“Yes, and no,” Walter replied as he peered through a magnifying glass at the scroll.

“What does that mean?” Dean said with a hint of sarcasm.

“Well, the text on top says that the battle lines are drawn with people’s faith. The believers versus the non-believers. In order to defeat Lucifer it says this, ‘The Adversary’s undoing lies in a trail of blood across the ages. All that become hosts must become ash.’”

Sam looked at Dean. They knew what hosts becoming ash meant.

Oblivious, Walter carried on. “But often the writers of ancient scrolls tried to hide something beneath the actual text. They would create a chemical reaction which would reveal the true text. Sam and I finished and the text seemed pretty cut and dry. But then, Sam took a shower.”

“He always makes a mess, doesn’t he?” Dean said.

“Yes, he does. But the steam coupled with the water droplets coming off his body as he reached for another towel... Well, it produced this.”

Walter gently held up the last pages of the scroll. Though Aramaic script could be seen plainly on the page, another page seemed to be underneath it.

“It looks like a list,” Julia said.

“Yeah, it does.” Dean looked closer at the parchment.

“Can you tell what it says?” Julia asked.

“They’re names,” Walter said.

“Names?” Dean said, alarmed—your name on a scroll that Satan was trying to protect. Well, it couldn’t be good.

“But that’s not the most peculiar thing,” Walter said. “Some of the names belong to angels.”

“That’s weird.” Dean looked at his brother. Was there something more? Sam was eyeing Dean. Dean knew that look. It was the We gotta talk look.

“I think I have something in the car that can help,” Sam said. “Give me a sec.”

Sam and Dean walked outside to the parking lot.

“So, what did you really find?” Dean asked as soon as they were out of earshot.

“Walter’s right, they’re names—paired up with the names of angels.”

“So what, that’s what Don wanted us to find? A list of angel names.”

“Don’t you see, Dean, if the angels don’t have vessels, there’s no war. Yes, our names are on the scroll. But there’s more. It’s basically a roster of all the soldiers in a battle. But we’re here for a different reason.”

“That was his plan? No vessels, no fight?” Dean punched a car hood. “That’s ridiculous. I’m going to kill him when I see him.”

Sam nodded. “The demons aren’t going to kill these people... Abaddon sent us to do it...”