THIRTY-ONE

Dean fired a round of bullets at the surrounding demons, creating a haze of smoke and salt. Bodies keeled over. Sam slashed a couple with Ruby’s knife. The demons’ wounds flashed a hellfire orange as they were dispatched into nothingness.

While Eisheth was distracted, Dean ran to Walter’s body. Figuring the old man would not have let go of those precious last pages of the scroll, he patted him down and sure enough found them in his breast pocket.

“Sorry old man. I hope it was worth it,” he said, carefully pulling out the papers and pocketing them.

The fight raged around him, the air filled with shotgun blasts and the screams of hunters as the demons overcame them. The hunters were fighting back but there were just too many demons. It’s a massacre, Dean thought, and there’s nothing we can do to save them.

Through the chaos he spied Julia. In a rage of grief she was drop-kicking, stabbing and shooting at demons from all sides, but they were closing in. Fighting his way through the maelstrom, Dean grabbed hold of her. She struggled against him as he pulled her down the steel staircase to the room underneath the engine work floor.

Sam stood at the bottom of the staircase and shot rounds of salt over their heads.

Eisheth turned back around and saw Dean disappear down the staircase.

“Come on Winchesters,” she cried, standing tall and bloody amongst the dead and dying hunters, surrounded by her horde. “I just want to talk.”

They barricaded themselves in an ante-room which led off the basement.

“So now what?” Sam asked.

“Is there another way out of here?” Dean asked Julia, who stood immobile, staring at the floor.

He grasped her by the shoulders.

“Julia! Is there another way out of here?”

She looked up. “I killed him.”

“No, you didn’t. Walter died for what he believed in. No one was going to convince him otherwise, not even you. Now we have to find a way out of here.”

Dean looked around the room. “What is this place?”

Crates and sacks were stacked up against every wall of the rectangular room. A distinct pungent odor hung in the air. The only fresh ventilation was coming through a large grate in the ceiling.

Dean pried open a crate and looked inside. Dynamite.

“That explains the reinforced steel door,” Sam said, looking over his shoulder. “I bet this was used as some sort of hub when they built the Atlantic Pacific Railroad. They’d need explosives to grade earth and create suitable terrain for the rail lines.”

“Now I feel bad about taking away your Thomas the Train toy.” Dean glanced witheringly at his brother. “This stuff must be like seventy years old. Do you think it still works?”

There was a loud bang at the door, then another. The demons were trying to get in. Each impact dented the steel a bit more. It was only a matter of time.

“We’re not going to have time to find out,” Sam said, guarding the door. “Let’s get these things unpacked.”

Minutes later the trio were hard at work. Julia was stringing detonation wire between the crates of dynamite, and Sam and Dean were ripping open all the various sacks of chemicals and gunpowder. By the time they were done they were knee deep in explosives.

The demons continued to work on the steel door, it was beginning to tear like tin foil.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dean said, unscrewing the bolts on the ventilation shaft.

A faint scratching sound could be heard coming from above.

“Did they get inside there? That’s our only way out,” Julia said nervously, looking up into the darkness between the metal slats.

“We’ve got no choice now. I’ll go first. Julia second. Sam, you cover the back and lay the wire as we go.”

Dean stood on a chair and lifted himself into the vent. He pulled Julia up behind him. Sam managed to bury the denotation wire in the explosives below. The demons were almost all the way through the door when Sam lifted himself up into the shaft and hastily put the grid back on it.

They crawled through the ventilation shaft on their hands and knees. It ran underneath the engine work floor and every twenty feet or so it changed direction. They soon felt like they were going in circles.

“Are you sure you know where this is going?” Julia asked.

“It has to lead somewhere,” Dean said. The enclosed box shape of the duct-work made Dean uneasy, it reminded him of being stuck in a coffin after his death. “This is so not good for my claustrophobia.”

Sam was bringing up the rear, sliding his shotgun in front of him and then crawling up to meet it. The action made a lulling swish-swish sound. But then he heard the distinct screech of metal scraping against metal.

“Dean, I think you need to speed it up a bit,” Sam called ahead.

“I’m going as fast as I can.”

“I think they just got into the vent.”

“Damn it.”

“Hurry!” Sam called. He could hear the demons getting closer.

Sam took the right turn behind Julia, but his leg wouldn’t move. He looked back. A demon, a man in overalls, smiled a toothless grin at him.

“Where you goin’ pretty boy?”

Sam flipped onto his back and shot the man between the eyes in one motion. The salt pellet burned into the demon’s head. Smoke escaped from his mouth, sped across the top of the ventilation shaft and disappeared out of the grate.

“Dean, we need to get out of here!”

Dean slid underneath the grating that led to the outside. He crouched down then pushed it with his back. It wouldn’t budge.

“It’s stuck!”

“I have a whole load of demons on my ass. Figure something out!”

Dean pushed again. The grate gave a bit, then a little more. He scrambled up and disappeared outside.

Another demon quickly crawled toward Sam. He spun and shot it in the heart.

Julia clambered out of the grate ahead of Sam.

Sam managed to follow her, squeezing through the opening just as more demonic black eyes appeared out of the darkness.

He found himself standing on a grassy patch about fifty yards away from the engine warehouse.

Dean started shooting salt rounds into the hole Sam had just vacated. He yelled at Julia over his shoulder.

“Get that car over here.” He pointed at a car parked on the street twenty feet away.

“Let’s get the grate back over it,” Sam said, indicating the hole.

They pulled the iron grate onto the hole just as three more demonic faces appeared below them.

“Suck it, bitches.” Dean smiled.

“I don’t think that’s going to hold,” Sam said.

An engine roared. From behind the wheel of the car, Julia motioned for them to get out of the way. She stopped directly over the grate. They could see the demons trying to push the grate open, but it would only move so far up against the undercarriage of the automobile.

Sam pulled the detonation wire about ten feet from the car.

“Find some cover,” Dean called to Julia.

Julia exited the car and took cover behind another car parked on the dark street.

Sam looked at Dean. “Let’s hope this works.”

Sam lit the detonation wire. It sparked, then fizzled out.

“Aww, come on! Let me try.” Dean took the Zippo from his younger brother and tried lighting the wire, but it refused to ignite.

“It’s too old,” Dean said. “Eisheth’s still in there. Let’s light that bitch up.”

“Someone has to go in and light it some other way. I’ll do it,” Sam said.

“Sam, no. No telling what Eisheth will do to you if she catches you.”

“Let me do it. I started this.”

“It’s a suicide mission.”

“It’s not like that. We need to kill Eisheth, she’s leading the charge in there. Those poor possessed people are already dead. We need to put them out of their misery.”

Dean nodded his head, his brother was right.

Sam took the Zippo from Dean.

“Wish me luck.”

He ran off toward the warehouse.

Sam peeked through a dusty window—the warehouse was crawling with demons. Eisheth had somehow recruited yet more. The bodies of the hunters were littered across the floor, not one of them was still standing. Poor people, Sam thought, all of them thought they were on their way to fulfilling some sort of destiny, and they all died today. Because of me.

Sam kicked open the window and climbed inside. He stealthily made his way to the steel staircase. The basement was full of demons all still fighting to get into the anteroom where they had been holed up. Sam looked around for something to light. He saw an old piece of rope and an empty beer bottle. Sam took some oil from a can and poured it into the beer bottle, then he dipped the rope into the oil and shoved that into the top of the bottle.

“I was hoping we would get a little one-on-one time,” a voice said.

Sam spun around to see Eisheth leaning suggestively against the dead body of a hunter splayed over a piece of machinery. She smiled and sauntered toward him.

“I have to say, Lucifer did well. He always had good taste. You’ll soon find that out.” Eisheth reached her hand up to touch Sam’s face. “We are going to have such fun together.”

Sam pulled away. “You disgust me. You should’ve stayed in your genie bottle.”

“Oh, come now, Sam. Aren’t you even a little bit happy to see me? I’m happy to see you. I was cooped up for so long in that jar. I had plenty of time to fantasize about what vessel Lucifer would pick for himself when he rose. And, my oh my, I am glad it’s someone so tall. You know... when Lilith wasn’t around,” Eisheth pressed up close to Sam, “Lucifer and I did some wonderful things together. Would you like me to show you?”

She trailed her fingers over Sam’s chest and down toward his belt buckle.

“Maybe in my next lifetime.”

Eisheth laughed. “You are a comedian, aren’t you? Don’t you understand? I’m your future wife. Maybe not in this body, but I’ll make sure she’s really nice and young. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? In fifty years, when Lucifer is out and inside you... Well, let’s just say I can’t wait to get back to playing our old games.”

Eisheth leaned in to kiss Sam. Sam took a step, spun around and simultaneously lit and threw the bottle into the basement and right at the ante-room door. A couple of demons were blown apart in the quick flare up. It would only be a matter of time before the entire room went up.

Eisheth grabbed Sam by the neck, and threw him up against a wall.

“You think I care about a hundred lesser demons? Burn them all. I just care about you, Samuel. I want you to be safe.”

Sam pushed himself up and lunged at Eisheth. With the demon knife, he slashed at her belly. She moved away with a quick step.

“Silly boy, you can’t kill me. I’m over 2,000 years old.”

Eisheth threw up her hand and Sam went flying fifty feet through the air, landing at the base of the steam engine. His head cracked against the iron.

“Now look what you made me do. I didn’t want to hurt this perfect specimen.”

Eisheth strode toward him.