Supernatural - Mythmaker E-Book

Tim Waggoner

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 403

Beschreibung

Teenager Renee Mendez is a talented artist living in a small Illinois town. She loves drawing the strange gods that feature in her dreams, without realizing that when she does, they come to life in the real world. Sam and Dean Winchester arrive to investigate the "miracles" these new gods perform, and soon a battle for supremacy breaks out. As their war for followers rages, the gods will destroy the town and each other until only the strongest remains.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also Available from Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Historian’s Note

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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Supernatural: MythmakerPrint edition ISBN: 9781783298549E-book edition ISBN: 9781783298556

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

First edition: July 201610 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © 2016 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.SUPERNATURAL and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.WB SHIELD: ™ & © WBEI. (s16)TIBO37931

Cover imagery: Cover photograph © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and © Dreamstime.

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With the exception of the characters from the Supernatural series, this publication, including any of its contents or references, has not been prepared, approved, endorsed or licensed by any third party, corporation or product referenced herein.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

HISTORIAN’S NOTE

This novel takes place during season ten, between“Hibbing 911” and “The Things We Left Behind.”

ONE

Beads of sweat dotted Renee Mendez’s forehead as she worked. She’d been holding the brush for so long—several hours at least—that the muscles in her right hand burned like fire. Her back and shoulders ached, as did her feet, and her stomach gurgled painfully. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate. This morning? Yesterday? She wasn’t even sure what day it was.

She stood in front of a canvas on a wooden easel, to her right a small bench upon which rested a collection of brushes and tubes of paint. She used a piece of old plywood as a makeshift palette, and it was covered with small globs of paint squeezed from the tubes and mixed as needed. Her studio, such as it was, occupied a corner of her parents’ garage. Her father had cleared the space for her when she started taking art classes at Eldridge Community College after graduating from high school. It was cramped—if she backed up too far while she was working, she’d bump into her mom’s car. If she stepped too far to the right, her elbow would hit the garage wall, too far to the left, and her foot would touch a leaf blower propped against the wall. But she appreciated her parents allowing her to work here. It saved her from having to drive to the college and use one of the equally cramped studio spaces reserved for students. Here, she could work whenever she wanted, day or night, and she could do so without distractions. Both of her parents were good about leaving her alone when she was painting. They might occasionally sneak a peek over her shoulder if they were in the garage, but they never tried to engage her in conversation, never asked her what she was working on or how it was going. She deeply appreciated that.

Her mother worried about her sometimes, though, especially lately. Are you getting enough sleep? You look so tired, and you barely touched your dinner. Renee was nineteen, and while her mother’s concern irritated her—she wasn’t a child anymore—she also knew it meant she cared. And on some level she knew her mother’s worries weren’t without justification. Renee had loved art since she was old enough to hold a crayon, and she’d rather draw or paint than do anything else. But the last several days she’d been especially prolific, completing one painting after another in a white-hot frenzy of inspiration. She’d never experienced anything like this before. It was like she was caught up in a tidal wave of artistic energy, unable to do anything but hold on tight and let it carry her wherever it would. The experience was equal parts amazing and frightening, but she couldn’t stop if she wanted to. She had to keep painting.

She wore her long black hair tied back in a ponytail to keep it from brushing against the canvas, and she had on an old T-shirt and ratty jeans, both of which were covered with paint splotches. She positioned her face close to the canvas as she worked, not because she had poor eyesight but so she could better focus on the small details. She was almost finished with this painting, and it was now just a matter of adding a few final touches. Normally, she liked to draw and paint images based on real life—flowers, birds, trees, people… But lately her mind had been filled with fantastic characters: men and women with strange, unearthly appearances and abilities, like creatures out of fantasy novels or comic books. This current painting was of a cruel-faced woman whose waist-length hair, flawless skin, and sleeveless floor-length gown all appeared to be made of the same silvery metal. An oversized metallic gauntlet covered her right hand, the fingers tapering to sharp claw-like points. There was something missing, though, and Renee couldn’t put her finger on what it was. But then it came to her. She dabbed her brush in white, then blue, and with a couple of quick strokes the woman’s eyes now appeared to be crackling with electric energy. Perfect.

She lowered her brush and stepped back to admire her work. But as she did so, the colors that comprised the silver woman began to fade, and within seconds she was gone, the canvas blank once again.

This should have struck Renee as strange, but it didn’t. After all, the same thing had happened to the last dozen or so paintings she’d produced. Why should this one be any different? She sighed, selected an image at random from the dozens swirling in her mind—a man wearing a white lab coat and holding a strange object: a golden rod with snakes intertwined around it—and lifted her brush.

“In the end there shall be One,” she murmured, and began a new painting.

* * *

“I can’t believe this.”

Geoffrey Ramsey walked along the sidewalk of downtown Corinth, Illinois, his friend Jimmy Reid at his side. Well, maybe friend was too strong a word. Temporary companion was closer to the truth. Geoffrey had been homeless for almost three years now, and he found it easier not to get too close to anyone. You had to look out for Number One on the streets, even if those streets were located in a small Midwestern town instead of some big city. In a lot of ways, being homeless in a small town was worse, Geoffrey thought. At least in a city there would be more places to hole up for the night where the cops would leave you alone, and more places where you could find an odd job or two to score some cash to buy food. Not in Corinth, though. He and Jimmy had been going from business to business all morning, and so far they hadn’t found a single bit of work. No trash to take out, no floors to sweep, no heavy boxes to carry… Usually they could find something. But not today.

“It’s just the way it goes sometimes,” Jimmy said.

Jimmy always had a good attitude, regardless of the situation. It was a quality that irritated Geoffrey to no end.

“Yeah? Well if it keeps on going like this, you and I will go to sleep with empty bellies tonight.”

Jimmy shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Geoffrey sighed. “True enough.”

The two men continued walking, and Geoffrey tried to think of other places they could look for work. It was the second week of December, and there were several inches of snow on the ground. Despite this, the sun was warm, the sky cloudless, and the air still. But Geoffrey knew the weather would be taking a turn for the worse soon. He wore a thin brown jacket over a flannel shirt and two T-shirts. It was all about layers when you were homeless. This jacket wouldn’t see him though another Illinois winter, though, but right now it was the heaviest coat he had. His sneakers were shot, too. He could feel cool air filtering through the numerous holes, and when it rained it didn’t matter how many pairs of socks he wore, his feet got soaked.

The state of Jimmy’s wardrobe wasn’t much better. His blue windbreaker was even thinner than Geoffrey’s jacket, his jeans had holes in both knees, and his old, broken-down work boots had been repaired with duct tape so many times that almost none of the original material remained. Both of them were going to need to get hold of better clothes, and soon. But that was a worry which could be postponed a little while yet. The first thing they needed to do was eat.

Clothing aside, the two men were a study in contrasts. Geoffrey was black, Jimmy was white. Geoffrey was a stocky man of medium height, Jimmy was thin and six-and-a-half feet tall. Geoffrey was in his fifties and had a beard that held more salt than pepper, while Jimmy was in his thirties, with a thin patchy beard and shoulder-length blond hair. And of course, Geoffrey tended to look at the negative side of things while Jimmy preferred to focus on the positive. And right now, Geoffrey was definitely in a negative frame of mind.

Downtown Corinth was a collection of two- and three-story buildings that had been erected in the forties and fifties, narrow structures of red brick and gray stone. Businesses came and went as the years passed, and right now the buildings housed coffee shops, restaurants, antique stores, secondhand clothing stores, funky art galleries, used bookstores, and the like. The old-fashioned architecture should’ve clashed with the bohemian vibe of the businesses, but somehow they complemented each other. The small business owners that struggled to make a living downtown were normally sympathetic to the town’s homeless population, but during the holiday season they became more focused on their own needs. Geoffrey couldn’t blame them. If they didn’t make good money this time of year, more than a few of them might end up having to close their doors for good. And the last thing customers wanted to see was two homeless guys hanging around, trying to pick up a couple bucks. Geoffrey had hoped they’d have a week or so before Jimmy and he became personae non gratae downtown, but from the response they’d gotten in their quest for work today—or rather lack thereof—it seemed the holiday season had already kicked into high gear in Corinth. He and Jimmy probably wouldn’t be able to find odd jobs to do until after New Year’s.

Peace on Earth, goodwill to men, Geoffrey thought bitterly.

It wasn’t noon yet, but there was a steady stream of traffic, and most of the parking spaces in front of the businesses were taken. There weren’t many pedestrians, though. People in Corinth tended to drive straight to their destination, take care of whatever business they had there, and then leave. They didn’t window-shop much.

Geoffrey had worked as a machinist for twenty years before the factory laid off all its workers and closed down. He drew unemployment while he looked for work, but one night—after he and Ellen were coming back from a late movie—a drunk driver ran an intersection and hit the passenger side of the car head-on. Ellen was killed instantly. Geoffrey wasn’t so lucky. He sustained numerous injuries which required multiple surgeries. He had so many pins and rods in him that he’d set off an airport metal detector if he came within fifty feet of it. His medical insurance had lapsed when the factory closed, and he’d used what savings he had to pay for Ellen’s burial. He couldn’t pay his astronomical medical bills, and because of this he lost their house. He and Ellen had never married or had children, and what little family he had left lived in the Chicago area. So once his house was gone, instead of looking for a new place to live, he hit the streets and he’d been on them ever since.

“It’s kind of weird, huh?” Jimmy said.

The question pulled Geoffrey out of his glum thoughts and he turned to look at Jimmy.

“What?”

“The decorations.”

Geoffrey turned away from his friend and examined their surroundings. At first, he didn’t know what Jimmy was referring to. The downtown businesses always decorated for the holidays—normally well before Thanksgiving—and this season was no exception. Wreaths hung on doors; cardboard figures of snowmen, Santa, Jack Frost, and even a few dreidels hung in windows. But the longer Geoffrey looked, the more he understood what Jimmy was talking about. The usual holiday decorations were out in abundance, yes, but there were other decorations too, all of them strange and unfamiliar. A music store across the street called Tune Town had a black spiral pattern painted on the inside of its display window. A couple buildings down, a pawn shop called Cash Bonanza had a straw figure hanging on its front door. The figure was roughly human-shaped, but it had two heads and four arms. And on their side of the street, only a few doors down from where they stood, an antique store called Treasures and Trinkets had a small sign out front on the sidewalk, red letters painted on a wooden board. But instead of advertising the business, it read ALL HAIL ARACHNUS! complete with thin strands of webbing drawn between the letters.

Geoffrey frowned. “What the hell?”

“Pay no heed to the signs of false gods,” said a steely voice behind them.

Geoffrey and Jimmy spun around to see a woman standing on the sidewalk. Geoffrey hadn’t heard her approach, and his first thought was that she’d somehow appeared out of thin air. He knew it was a crazy idea, but he couldn’t shake it. The woman was silver from head to toe, both her skin and her gown, and Geoffrey wondered if she was some sort of street performer one of the businesses had hired to attract customers. But her skin didn’t look as if it were covered with makeup or body paint. Her hair resembled finely wrought strands of metal and her eyes shimmered with unearthly blue-white light. The fabric of her gown appeared to be made from some combination of metal and cloth. It hung on her stiffly when she remained still, as if it were some sort of armor, but when she moved, it shifted with her, suddenly soft and pliant. She wore a large metal glove over her right hand that stretched halfway up her forearm. No, not a glove, Geoffrey thought. There was a better word for it. A… gauntlet, yeah, that was it. The gauntlet was the same silvery color as the rest of her and so highly polished that it gleamed in the sunlight. The gauntlet’s fingers ended in wicked-looking claws, the sight of which made him shiver. He imagined those claws slicing into flesh, needle tips parting skin and muscle with the ease of a hot knife cutting through warm butter. The image nauseated him, but at the same time it gave him a thrill to think of the damage the gauntlet could do.

What the hell’s wrong with me? he thought. He wasn’t a violent man, had never raised a hand against anyone in his life. But he couldn’t take his gaze from the gauntlet and its deadly fingers.

The woman’s height added to her otherworldly appearance. She stood over seven feet tall, taller than Jimmy by at least six inches, giving her a commanding presence. But beyond her size, she exuded an aura of strength, of power. It radiated from her in waves that Geoffrey could almost feel physically, and he thought he could hear a slight hum in the air, as if he were standing close to a powerful machine that had just been activated.

“I am Adamantine,” she said. Her voice was cold and unemotional, with a hollow, echoing quality that made the hair on the back of Geoffrey’s neck stand up. “I have Manifested.”

Geoffrey exchanged glances with Jimmy, but Jimmy only shrugged. Geoffrey faced Adamantine once more, but he didn’t look directly into her eyes. He couldn’t bring himself to gaze into the light that shone from them. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He swallowed once then tried again.

“We don’t understand,” he said. His voice was hushed, almost reverent, and he felt a near overwhelming urge to kneel before this strange woman. It took an effort of will, but he remained standing.

Adamantine ignored his comment. She took a moment to look around at her surroundings, and Geoffrey had the impression she was taking everything in, as if it was all new to her. Traffic continued at a steady pace, and while most drivers were too intent on where they were going to notice Adamantine, those who did see the tall silver woman gaped at her as they drove by.

“It’s a modest place,” she said at last. “But I suppose it will have to do.” She turned to look at Geoffrey and Jimmy once more, her silver lips stretching into a smile. “What are your names?”

Neither man answered at first, but then Jimmy told her his name, as did Geoffrey.

Adamantine inclined her head, as if giving them some sort of official acknowledgement.

It’s like she’s royalty or something, Geoffrey thought.

“Today the two of you have the great honor of becoming the first of my worshippers. Kneel before me, accept me into your hearts, and I will lead you to glory.”

As Adamantine spoke these words her presence, already far stronger than anything Geoffrey had ever experienced, intensified. He felt her power reach out and envelop him, call to him, tell him that he could be part of something larger than himself, that he would no longer have to live on the streets and seek out the most menial jobs just so he could put a few crumbs in his belly. If he went with her, he would eat and eat well.

He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, Jimmy shook his head back and forth rapidly, as if trying to clear his mind. Then he looked at Adamantine and laughed.

“I don’t know what you’re on, lady, but whatever it is, it’s got to be pretty damn strong. Do you want us to take you to the free clinic? It’s only a few blocks away. Or we could stay with you until you come down, make sure you’re okay.”

Adamantine’s smile had remained in place as she made her offer, but now it fell away, and her brow furrowed in anger. The humming noise that seemed to emanate from the air around her grew louder. She turned to look at Jimmy, the light in her eyes glowing with increased intensity.

“Do you mock me?” Her voice was soft, but the anger in her tone was unmistakable, at least to Geoffrey. He tried to catch Jimmy’s attention, wanted to signal to him to cool it before he got hurt. But Jimmy ignored him.

“Maybe just a little,” Jimmy said. “But you have to admit, that’s one wild costume you’re wearing. You do know that Halloween was like, two months ago, right?”

Adamantine regarded Jimmy for a moment, and then she stepped toward him. She didn’t run, didn’t seem to move fast in any way. But within an instant she stood directly in front of Jimmy, a hair’s breadth between them. Before Jimmy could react, she grabbed hold of his throat with her gauntlet, and the humming noise grew so loud it hurt Geoffrey’s ears. A crackling sound filled the air as thin bolts of electricity coruscated across the gauntlet’s metal surface. Jimmy’s eyes flew wide and he screamed, his body jerking all over, as if some invisible force was shaking him. No, Geoffrey thought. As if he were being electrocuted.

Jimmy reached up to grab hold of the gauntlet and tried to pull it off him, but either he was too weak or Adamantine was too strong, and he couldn’t budge it. Wisps of smoke began curling upward from both his hands and his neck, and the skin that was in contact with the metal began to blacken. Jimmy no longer screamed. Instead, he was making uh-uh-uh sounds, his voice pulsing in time to the electric current running through him. Sparks began to shoot off his body, and tendrils of smoke rose from his head, arms, torso, and legs. Geoffrey feared that his friend would burst into flames, but then his body stiffened all over, and then his head lolled to the side and he fell limp.

The humming diminished, and while Jimmy’s body—his dead body, Geoffrey thought—was still smoking, it no longer emitted sparks. Adamantine continued to hold onto him for a moment longer, looking at him with a detached curiosity, before finally releasing her grip. Jimmy’s body fell to the sidewalk and lay still, smoke continuing to curl upward from his form, the skin on his neck and palms charred black.

Adamantine then turned her attention to Geoffrey.

“And how do you feel about my more than generous offer?” she asked.

Geoffrey glanced sideways at his friend’s smoldering corpse. He was horrified by what had happened to Jimmy. He was a good guy and hadn’t deserved to die like that. But… he had mocked Adamantine. Hadn’t he been able to feel the power radiating from the woman? You didn’t make fun of that kind of power. It demanded respect. And if you respected it, maybe you could share in it, even if only a little.

Geoffrey got down on one knee and bowed his head.

“My lady,” he said.

The gauntlet was still warm when Adamantine placed it gently on his head. He felt that warmth spread through his body, and he trembled with the joy of it. He’d never experienced anything so wonderful.

* * *

“I’m sorry.”

Lena Nguyen finished speaking and clasped her hands in front of her on the top of her desk. She always did this whenever she delivered bad news to a patient, although she wasn’t sure why. A self-comforting gesture, perhaps. Oncology wasn’t the easiest field to work in, especially when you cared for your patients as deeply as she did. She was used to delivering bad news—too used to it—but that didn’t make it any easier.

A couple sat on the other side of the desk, two men in their forties. They both had short hair flecked with gray and neatly trimmed goatees that looked the same. One of the men was thinner than the other, and Lena knew his appearance wasn’t down to choice. The men held hands, and while the heavier of the two had tears in his eyes, his husband’s expression remained stoic. Lena had seen that look on patients’ faces many times before. He was stunned by the news he’d just received, and it hadn’t fully hit him yet. But it would, sooner rather than later.

Thomas Rosenman and his husband, David, had first come to her three years ago. Thomas had been having trouble breathing, and his doctor scheduled a battery of tests for him. The result: several suspicious masses were found in his right lung, and they proved to be Stage Three cancer. Ironic, considering the man had never smoked a cigarette in his life. But cancer was like that. Sometimes it had a clear cause, but all too often it was random, like being struck by lightning. It just happened.

Lena had been brought onto his medical team after that. She prescribed surgery followed by aggressive chemotherapy. The surgery went well, and while the chemo was rough, Thomas endured and made it through. Thomas had gone through more tests afterward, and it looked like he was free of cancer. Of course, when it came to cancer, “free” really meant “free for now.” There was always a chance it could come back, and that’s what had happened to Thomas. Two years without a sign of recurrence, and now his latest CT scan revealed his lung had several tumors, all of which had grown so rapidly that Lena knew Thomas had little chance of survival this time. She hadn’t put it that way to him, of course. She’d talked about immediate surgery, followed by more chemo. She’d tried to sound positive, even upbeat about his chances, but neither Thomas nor David seemed to buy her sales pitch. Maybe she hadn’t been as convincing as she’d hoped. Or maybe they’d simply been through so much already that they didn’t have the strength for another fight.

Neither Thomas nor David spoke for several minutes, and Lena sat silently as well, hands still clasped on her desk. It was difficult to sit and observe their pain without doing something—anything—to relieve it, but she knew from experience that there was nothing she could do right now, other than give them more time to absorb the news they’d received.

Lena’s office was small, but since she used it primarily as a consulting room, its size didn’t matter much. What did matter to her was that it didn’t look like just another cold, sterile examining room. She wanted it to be warm and comfortable, a place where her patients could relax—at least as much as possible, given their reason for coming to see her. To that end, she had the walls covered with wood paneling, and she’d installed cream-colored carpet. The chairs were plush leather and extremely comfortable to sit in. There was a wooden bookcase behind her filled with medical texts, and paintings of soothing landscapes—a mountain range, a forest, an ocean beach—hung on the walls, along with her framed diplomas, honors, and awards. She’d brought plants into the office too—a Boston fern, a peace lily, and a philodendron. Not only did they scrub the air, they helped create a calmer environment. Or so she hoped. Aside from a phone and a laptop that usually remained closed, there was nothing to clutter the surface of her desk. There were fluorescent lights on the ceiling, but she left them off, preferring to use a floor lamp whenever possible, or the softer, natural light provided by the room’s lone window. But no matter how hard she worked at making her office comforting, in the end she knew it only helped a little, if at all.

Lena was a short woman, barely over five feet, with a round face, shoulder-length black hair, and glasses. She thought the latter gave her an air of seriousness that helped counter her height. When people first met her—especially if they didn’t know she was a doctor—they tended to treat her like… not a child, exactly, but not like a full adult either. It was for this reason that she kept her glasses instead of switching to contacts. She wasn’t sure if it really helped, though.

Thomas stared at the wall the entire time the three of them were silent, but at last he turned to meet Lena’s gaze and spoke.

“If I don’t do anything—no surgery, no chemo—how long will I have?”

She wasn’t surprised by the question. She’d gotten it from patients before, but it was one she never liked answering. She didn’t believe in giving up.

“Six months,” she said. “Maybe as long as a year. But you’ll be in a great deal of pain for much of that time, and toward the end you’ll be hospitalized.” She paused. “Or in a hospice, depending on your choice.”

“Whatever you’re thinking about, Tom, you can stop it right now,” David said. Lena could hear the fear in his voice, but his manner was firm. “We’re going to fight this just like we did last time, and we’re going to beat it.”

Thomas gave his husband a sad but loving smile.

“The odds—” he began.

“I don’t care about the odds,” David snapped. “I only care about you.”

Lena found the man’s love touching. Her own marriage had ended in divorce several years ago. It had been amicable enough, but they’d had no children, and while she’d dated on and off since, she’d never gotten close to anyone, let alone fallen in love.

Conversations like this were the worst part of her job. She’d become a doctor and specialized in oncology after losing her mother to breast cancer when she was in high school. And while she wasn’t foolish or arrogant enough to believe she could single-handedly cure cancer, she’d dedicated her life to fighting it and, more importantly, giving people hope. But she had no hope to give Thomas and David, and she hated it.

She was about to make another pitch for treatment, even if the chances of success were low, but before she spoke, the office door opened, and a man in a white lab coat entered.

Lena’s breath caught in her throat when she saw him. He wasn’t just handsome, he was beautiful, in the same way that an ancient Greek statue was. He had curly black hair, high cheekbones, a strong chin, full lips, and the most startling blue eyes she’d ever seen. They were so bright they seemed to gleam with internal light. The effect was so powerful that she could only look at his eyes for a few seconds before experiencing a strong urge to turn away. His lab coat was so white it practically glowed, and a name was stitched onto the left breast in blue thread the same color as his eyes, one word: Paeon. The name struck her as familiar, but she couldn’t place it. He wore a white shirt under his coat, along with a red tie that had a design made from a collection of medical instruments—stethoscopes, hypodermics, tongue depressors, thermometers, and blood pressure cuffs. Black pants and shoes completed his outfit, so dark they seemed to draw in and swallow the light around them.

He was tall, but more than that, his entire body, facial features included, was larger than an average man. It was almost as if he belonged to a different species entirely, or was a more highly evolved form of human. A word came to her mind then: god. His appearance was only part of what created the impression of otherworldliness, though. The man—Paeon—exuded an aura of strength and power which filled the room, a raw energy like the way the air feels before the arrival of a massive thunderstorm. The sensation didn’t provoke fear, but rather a feeling of vitality. Lena felt alert, bursting with energy, as if she could go outside and run a mile—no, five miles—at top speed without getting winded or becoming tired.

She’d never seen this man before. She definitely would’ve remembered if she had.

It took her a moment to find her voice, but when she did, she said, “I’m in a private consultation with a patient at the moment. If you’ll go back to the reception area, I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

It took an effort of will for her to get the words out. The last thing she wanted to do was send him away, but she had to think of Thomas first.

Paeon gave her a warm, caring smile.

“That is why I am here.”

His rich tenor was like honey in her ears. He held her gaze for a moment before turning to Thomas. He lowered his gaze to the man’s chest, eyes narrowing, as if he were peering inside his body.

“You are ill,” he said to Thomas. “Gravely so.” He lifted his gaze and smiled. “It is most fortunate for you that I Manifested in this place.”

Paeon reached inside his lab coat and withdrew an object from an inner pocket. It was ten inches long, too large to conceivably fit inside the pocket, and it appeared to be made from gold. It was a rod with a pair of intertwined serpents wrapped around it and two small wings protruding from the top. Lena recognized the object, although she’d never seen a three-dimensional version of it. It was a caduceus, an ancient symbol that the medical profession had adopted as its emblem. And when she saw it, she remembered where she’d heard the name Paeon before. In mythology, Paeon was the physician of the Greek gods.

Paeon held the rod in his right hand and extended it toward Thomas.

“I can banish the foul corruption from your body. Is this something you desire?”

Thomas looked up at Paeon, doubt and confusion in his eyes. But there was also a glimmer of hope.

“Yes,” he said.

Paeon smiled. “Good. And in return for this gift, you must swear allegiance to me and come to me when I summon you. Are you willing to do this?”

David put a hand on Thomas’s shoulder.

“I don’t think this is a good—”

“I am,” Thomas said.

Lena could sense there was more behind Thomas’s answer than a dying man’s desperation. She felt power emanating from Paeon. It was as if he had willed Thomas to agree. She wanted to tell him to stop it, that no patient should ever be coerced into treatment, but she couldn’t make herself speak. Despite her objection, part of her was glad that Thomas had agreed to Paeon’s terms.

Paeon nodded, clearly pleased, and then he stepped forward and touched the tip of the caduceus to Thomas’s chest. The rod glowed with golden light, and Thomas drew in a gasping breath, his eyes widening.

Lena rose to her feet, afraid that the caduceus was hurting Thomas somehow, although she knew instinctively that it wasn’t.

This can’t be real, she told herself, but she knew it was. More, she hoped it was, for Thomas’s sake.

Paeon held the caduceus to Thomas’s chest for several seconds before pulling it away. The instant the rod was no longer in contact with Thomas’s body, its glow began to diminish and quickly faded to nothing.

“How do you feel?” Paeon asked.

Thomas drew in a deep breath, held it, and then blew it out in a burst of air.

“I feel…”

Lena and David leaned toward him.

“Great!” Thomas finished and grinned.

* * *

Both Thomas and David thanked Paeon profusely, and David also accepted the caduceus’s touch in exchange for his “allegiance.” The couple then left, all smiles and laughter, pledging to go forth and tell everyone they met about Paeon’s miracle cure. Paeon seemed satisfied by their promise, as if he wanted them to go out and drum up more business for him.

“Do you really expect me to believe that you can cure lung cancer with a touch from your magic wand?” But even as Lena spoke these words, she knew she did believe, such was the man’s strange power over her.

Paeon gave her a tolerant smile and sat in one of the leather chairs. “You are a physician, Lena. Skepticism is one of your most important tools. But I assure you that man is free of his illness.”

“Next you’ll tell me that he’ll live forever.”

Paeon grew thoughtful. “I’m not certain how long my servants will live.” He smiled. “I’m still very new at this, you know.”

She didn’t know. She had a dozen questions for him. Two dozen. But right now, she could only think of one that was important.

“Can you heal any illness with that?”

He still held the caduceus, and Lena nodded toward it.

“Yes.”

There was no ego or arrogance in his answer. He spoke the word as if it were a simple statement of fact.

“Then I’ve got patients for you to see,” Lena said. “A lot of them. Are you willing to help them?”

She didn’t know exactly who or what this man was—or if he was even human, as crazy as that sounded. But if he could heal people—especially people like Thomas, who had been given a death sentence by their bodies—then that was all that mattered.

“Of course,” Paeon said. “That is, after all, why I’m here. But I will require payment for my services. They will have to give me their allegiance.”

“Why?” Lena asked. “What could they possibly have that someone like you—with all your power—might need?”

Paeon’s smile fell away and his too-blue eyes literally darkened, as if thick shadows fell over them.

“There’s a war coming to your town, Lena. A war in which there can be but a single victor. I intend to win this war, and to do so, I’m going to need all the… allies I can get, as quickly as I can get them. I’ve already got Thomas and David.” His eyes brightened and his smile returned. “Would you like to join them?”

He’d first referred to those his caduceus touched as servants, but then—as if realizing how that might sound to her—he’d instead used the word allies. There was a world of distinction between the two words, and she knew which she preferred.

He held the caduceus out over her desk, and its golden surface began to glow. She could feel warmth emanating from the metal, and in response she experienced a sensation of well-being and contentment. The caduceus was so close she could reach out and touch it. And she wanted to, needed to.

He’s making you feel this way, she told herself. She wasn’t certain, but she thought maybe the caduceus was doing it. Perhaps the object could perform other wonders besides healing. However it was being accomplished, she knew that Paeon was manipulating her. But the healing power of the caduceus was amazing, and she had to be a part of it, even if only as one of Paeon’s allies. And if she ended up being a servant, what of it? Hadn’t she dedicated her life to serving her patients? How much better could she help them by serving a being like Paeon?

Despite her misgiving, she reached out and slowly, almost timidly, wrapped her fingers around the caduceus. When it was finished and she let go of the object, Paeon smiled.

“Now let’s get to work,” he said.

And Lena smiled back.

TWO

Dean would’ve preferred to wait for nightfall, but Sam had argued it would be better to approach the farm in daylight.

“Ghouls aren’t nocturnal,” Dean had argued back. “They eat whenever they get the chance, day or night.”

“Yeah, but they tend to do their dirty work after the sun goes down, right? Easier not to get caught that way. There’s a good chance they’re resting now. They won’t expect anyone to come after them in broad daylight.” Sam had grinned then. “Who’d be crazy enough to do that?”

“Us, apparently,” Dean had said.

In the end, Dean had agreed, and now here they were, on a farm outside McCormick, Missouri, sneaking through a cornfield that had long ago been harvested. The empty stalks were dry and most were bent over or broken. They made rustling, rattling noises if you brushed against them; crunching noises if you stepped on one. The few stalks that remained fully upright weren’t all that high—four feet, five at the most—and they didn’t provide much cover. The sky was overcast, so at least they weren’t walking around in bright sunshine, but even though they walked hunched over to decrease their visibility, Dean felt awfully exposed.

Sam sighed. “All right, I admit it. This wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.”

“Hey, I’m not the kind of guy to tell you I told you so.”

“But?”

Dean smiled. “Told you so.”

The brothers continued making their way slowly through the cornfield. Neither suggested turning back or trying a different approach to the farmhouse, or waiting until dark, as Dean had originally suggested. They’d committed to this strategy, and Dean judged they were more than halfway across the field by now. Besides, the brothers knew from long experience that it was usually better to keep moving forward and adapt for any mistakes than to abort a hunt and start again. There was always a chance that despite their precautions, their target knew they were coming.

The creatures that inhabited the dark corners of the world and preyed on humans were experts at remaining hidden. If they were discovered, they were just as likely to abandon their lairs, get the hell out of Dodge, and set up shop somewhere else as they were to lay in wait and attack anyone who came after them. Maybe it would be safer if Dean and Sam tried a different approach, but it could mean losing their chance to clean out this nest of ghouls. And while ghouls fed on the corpses of the dead, they weren’t always picky about where their meals came from. Sometimes they waited for people to die a natural death before grabbing their knives and forks. But all too often they would kill people and devour them afterward, after they’d aged a bit. And once or twice the brothers had encountered ghouls that preferred to chow down on the living. Regardless of what type these were, the brothers couldn’t afford to risk them escaping. Not because they were eager to spill the monsters’ blood—though Dean had to admit that was one of the job’s perks—but because they wanted to prevent the ghouls claiming any more victims. That’s what it was all about when you were a hunter: protecting others.

Dean felt—or thought he felt—warmth on the inside of his right arm, precisely where the Mark of Cain was. He figured the sensation was due to his imagination, and not because the Mark was eager for the battle to come. He told himself this, and he believed it. Mostly.

The early December air was chilly, and without any direct sunlight to warm them, it felt even colder. The brothers both wore light jackets, flannel shirts, jeans, and boots. No gloves. Gloves made it more difficult to maintain a grip on weapons, and the last thing any hunter wanted to do was risk losing a weapon in the middle of a fight with some fanged and clawed nasty looking to gut you and feast on your innards. Speaking of weapons, both brothers carried guns as well as machetes, cutting edges honed to razor sharpness. Decapitation was the best way to slay a ghoul, although a hard enough blow to the head would do the job too. Right now the machetes rode in leather sheaths on their belts, and their guns were tucked into their pants against the small of their backs.

They had a good view of the farmhouse from the cornfield: white, two-story, black roof, black shutters. It looked to be in good condition, at least based on its outward appearance. The lawn was neatly kept, and there were two vehicles parked in the gravel driveway—a pick-up and an SUV, both of them not more than a couple years old. There was a barn on the property too, not far from the house and painted a stereotypical red. It could use a fresh coat of paint, but otherwise it appeared to be in decent condition as well. Some monsters liked to make their homes in dark, dank, decayed places such as forgotten cemeteries, abandoned factories, deserted houses… the gloomier and more rundown the better.

But other monsters—too many—preferred to hide in plain sight among the humans they preyed upon. These monsters worked hard to remain below radar and not draw attention to themselves. The more normal they came across, the better. It was this second type of monster, which Dean thought of as passers—as in passing for human—that was the most dangerous. Not only were they harder to track down, they were used to being sneaky. Sneaky equaled unpredictable, and Dean hated unpredictable. He liked it best when monsters behaved exactly like they were supposed to. It made everything easier and kept things neat and tidy. Unpredictable meant messy. And when it came to hunting, Dean hated messy more than anything else. Messy got people killed. The brothers had saved many people over the years—the whole damn planet, really—but it was the ones they couldn’t save which haunted Dean.

It’s just a nest of ghouls, he told himself. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Sam and Dean had first gotten wind that there might be ghouls living in McCormick when reports of missing townspeople began surfacing on the Net. There were two main types of news stories the brothers searched for: strange phenomena and missing persons. Sam had set up accounts for several search engines to email him links to any such stories, and he received dozens each day. He and Dean spent hours going through them, searching for any hint of supernatural activity. Most of the time they didn’t find anything, but every once in a while they got lucky. The reports from McCormick had caught their attention because there had been a spate of missing person reports combined with a number of funeral home break-ins. And when the brothers broadened their search, they discovered a number of additional incidences of both within a thirty-mile radius of McCormick.

They might’ve thought they’d stumbled across an ordinary human serial killer at work, except the victims varied in age, race, and gender. The only common quality they shared was that none of them were over fifty, and most were in their twenties and thirties. So the brothers hopped in the Impala and took a trip to Missouri. Once in town, they did their usual poking around, posing as FBI agents, asking questions of local law enforcement and relatives of the missing people. They’d learned nothing useful until, by chance, one of the local cops mentioned an employee who’d been killed during a break-in at one of the funeral homes in town. No money or equipment had been stolen, but whoever had broken into the building had cut open the corpses stored there and taken their organs. And while different monsters—not to mention warlocks and witches—would have use for the organs, when it came to dead flesh, ghouls were always the primary suspects. Once the Winchesters began looking into the murder and organ theft, it didn’t take them long to become suspicious of one of the funeral home’s recently hired employees, a young man named Phillip Carson who lived with his parents Darrell and Kate on a farm outside town—the very farm they were currently heading toward.

Dean heard a sound then, a muffled mmmpf, off to their left, and the brothers froze.

“You hear that?” Sam asked softly.

“Yeah,” Dean acknowledged, keeping his voice low. “Sounded like someone trying to talk through a gag.”

“That’s what I thought.”