Chapter Text
Arizona. Wickenburg. A week ago.
Denis always tried to be a good boy. To make his mom proud. He even tried to study harder at his new school.
But here was the problem: he had three sisters. No matter how hard he tried to love them, he just couldn't. Denis simply couldn't accept them. And he didn't understand why himself. So they lived like that: in constant arguments and fights.
His sisters never liked him, because Denis was the reason they couldn't have sleepovers with their friends. According to their mom, friends had a bad influence on Denis. Because of this, they'd always find ways to needle him.
Denis put up with it all. Or at least he tried to. It's not like his mom would thank him later if he was rude to his sisters.
After moving from Russia to America, an even bigger conflict suddenly emerged. Denis and his sisters only became sharper with each other. And no one knew why.
Today, his patience snapped. Another joke from his younger sister about his table manners. He snapped at her, went through every one of her insecurities, and just walked off to his room.
God, how they pissed him off. Three little harpies with no sense of guilt or conscience. He hoped their heads would just fall off.
The silence from behind the door brought him back to his senses. For some reason, his mom wasn't yelling at the sisters for being so careless with their brother.
Denis thought about going to check what happened, but his pride wouldn't let him. Usually, his mom would come and apologize for the sisters, but he knew she only did it because his dad made her. But even after half an hour of tense waiting, no one knocked on his door.
He went to check, wondering why no one had started yelling at the table.
Something crashed downstairs, and he walked faster.
The first thing he saw when he came down from the second floor was blood. A lot of blood. All of them… All of them were without their heads. All the heads were neatly arranged on the floor. And they were all looking toward the stairs. At him. And underneath them, an inscription, scratched right into the floor:
Be careful what you wish for
Be afraid of your wishes? No. Now he'd be afraid of his own reflection in the mirror. He had killed them.
Or was it that white figure, disappearing into a blue portal?
***
Arizona. Near Wickenburg. Present day.
"So, what's the case?" Dean was watching the road while Sam dug through newspapers surrounding his laptop.
"Murder of five people." Sam was looking at an online article about it. "All five victims were decapitated. Only a 13-year-old kid, who was in his room, was left untouched. He's the one who found the bodies." In the newspaper clipping, a close-up of a tear-streaked kid's face in front of a house stared back at them.
"Any other details?" Sam turned the laptop, and Dean glanced at the headlines and text.
"Well, nothing much besides the interrogation. We'll have to question the kid ourselves later. He's in juvie now, under investigation. The prime suspect." Sam turned the screen back to himself. After a short silence, he continued. "You know, it's like this Wickenburg place was under some kind of protection. This is the first non-natural-disaster death here in two centuries. Like all this time it was… under some kind of lock and key?" The car stopped. "Something wrong?"
"I don't know." Dean tried to restart the engine. Nothing. "It died. Won't start." He leaned back in his seat. "Well, crap…"
They sat in silence for a minute or two, then Dean jumped out of the car like he was on fire.
"What's with you?" Sam looked up from the article. Dean was just staring at the Impala, stunned.
"I don't know." He kept staring for a second. "I just… I felt this wave of danger. Like something was right behind me, breathing down my neck."
From behind Sam, the EMF reader started shrieking loudly. The brothers exchanged a look. Finding it wasn't hard; it was going crazy in Sam's hands. He turned it in different directions and realized it only spiked when pointed toward the forest. They looked at each other again.
"I'll go check it out," Sam volunteered suddenly.
"Yeah, right now," Dean cut him off, opening the trunk. "We're both going."
The forest greeted them with silence, darkness, and a sticky feeling of being watched. Like something was staring at them nonstop.
"I don't like this," Dean hissed, stepping over a freshly fallen tree. He shone his flashlight on the trunk and noticed some kind of symbol, smeared with blood and scratched into the bark with a knife. "Sam," he called. Sam had already wandered a fair distance away. "Get over here."
"What is it?" Dean walked around the trunk. He'd seen this symbol somewhere before… It looked familiar to Sam, too.
"A familiar symbol." Sam stared at it for a second, then remembered. "There was a similar one in Dad's journal." Dean took a picture.
"We'll figure it out later." They looked around.
The EMF reader was shrieking louder and louder, all pointing in one direction. Like something was leading them. But to what — it wasn't clear.
They both noticed something white among the green trees. Exchanging a glance, they checked their revolver chambers. Full.
Getting closer, their hopes were dashed when they saw it was just a young girl with long white hair, tied to a tree. She was wearing a partly red dress. The EMF reader, the moment they got close, went completely silent.
Guns were put back in the trunk, and the girl was wrapped in Dean's jacket on the back seat. What the EMF reader was reacting to, they never figured out.
Dean searched the area around the tree. Sam stayed in the car with the girl, digging into the case files. After half an hour, he only managed to find the video and audio of the kid's interrogation. That's when his brother came back.
According to Dean, he'd only found more fallen trees with symbols. They still didn't understand the symbols, or why the EMF reader was going crazy. The car, by the way, started working again. First try. They didn't discuss it, both understanding that something (or someone) had deliberately stopped them.
Sam checked the girl over, not finding any injuries except for numerous scars on her arms and legs, which Dean also noticed. But the scars were old, so whose blood was she covered in?
"Sam," Dean broke the silence in the car.
"Hm?" Sam was flipping through the journal pages, trying to find that symbol.
"You feel it too, right?" The elder brother gripped the wheel tighter.
"Yeah." Sam's calm shattered instantly. Lying behind them was something way more dangerous than any wendigo or poltergeist. This girl radiated an unease stronger than the fear of not finding their father.
"Shouldn't have picked her up."
"Conscience would've eaten us alive if we left her there."
"Oh, sure, professor." Dean rolled his eyes sarcastically. "She's an angel in the flesh!"
"Dean, I'm serious." Sam looked at the back seat through the windshield. At the girl in the white dress. She seemed strangely familiar. Like he'd seen her somewhere before. Dean sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He didn't like this one bit.
"Whose blood is that? There was nothing around her. She was tied up there for a while, the blood on her dress is old and dry."
"Maybe it's hers?" Sam turned to face the girl, worriedly feeling her wrist. Her pulse was there, but weak. The last thing they needed was her dying in the Impala.
"I don't know, man," Dean drawled. "How long do you think she was out there?"
"About an hour, I think." He turned back, convinced the girl was alive and, at first glance, healthy. "She was warm when we found her."
"You sound like a creep," the elder brother smirked. "'She was warm,'" he mimicked. "If you'd smiled when you said that, they could put you in a horror movie. As a pedophile killer."
"Real funny."
A pause hung in the car, broken only by the girl's raspy breathing.
"Maybe it is her blood after all?" Sam suggested. At first glance, she seemed perfectly healthy, but if you looked closer, her ribcage looked strange. Too compressed. And she was breathing funny, wincing every now and then.
"Maybe." Dean shrugged. "But there are no wounds on her. And she looks clean. So where'd the blood come from?"
"Exactly!" It hit Sam. He started typing on his laptop again. After a few seconds, he continued. "While you were wandering around the woods, I dug into the kid's interrogation file. At the very end, when he was coming down the stairs, he noticed something white disappearing into a blue portal. That's right before he saw the five heads!"
"So what does that give us?"
"The girl is all white! And the blood on her dress!" he turned to Dean enthusiastically. "It all fits!"
"I see where you're going with this." A thought occurred to him. "The murder was two days ago. If she was tied up recently, it could match up." A new worry popped into his head. "But then why isn't she reacting to holy water? And how did she open that blue portal? I don't remember possessed people being able to open weird portals." Sam didn't have an answer. He closed the laptop and went back to flipping through their dad's journal.
That day, he'd only skimmed through it, not really paying attention because of the time crunch, but now they had plenty. On one page, a family photo was glued in. Underneath, in John's handwriting:
«Deus. Thought he was a myth. The Kalashnikovs are looking for his demonic weapon. Call Silena +7 *** *** ** ** J.W.»
"Dean, did Dad ever mention a demon named Deus's family?" Sam started running a trace on the mysterious Silena's number.
"No, first I'm hearing of it." Dean turned into the town. "Why?"
"Mention in Dad's journal." He scanned the long text. "Long story short: some demon named Deus, but he's pro-human. Wife, two twin kids… Hypnos and Thanatos. Almost all of them are dead except Hypnos… Bunch of demonic weapons he made… Also, he's asking to pass these swords on to some Kalashnikovs," he stumbled over the long last name. "There's some number for Silena here, too." Running the number, he got a missing person article from 11 years ago, followed by an obituary for a Silena Kirillovna, who died around the same time. "So she went missing 11 years ago."
"She's actually alive and well."
"Dean, she vanished without a trace back in '93, how would you know?" Sam turned to his brother, annoyed.
"I didn't say anything." Dean turned to face Sam. In silence, they both looked at the back seat. The girl was sitting up, unhappily staring right back at the Winchesters. From the look on both Dean's and Sam's faces, it was clear that the girl's sudden resurrection was very, very unexpected.
"And the missing person report was just for show," she added.
"And how would you know that?" Dean was the first to recover, studying her from a new angle. She was actually, really pretty. White eyelashes, murky blue eyes, soft features. She looked like she'd stepped off a Victoria's Secret cover.
"I just know," she answered, unfazed. Dean wasn't satisfied with that answer.
"How about the truth?"
"What's your name, anyway?" Sam interrupted his brother unceremoniously.
"Emmanuel Kalashnikova." Sam involuntarily glanced at his dad's notes. Silena Kalashnikova. Same last name. Relatives, or just a coincidence?
"How'd you end up alone in the woods, half-dressed, and covered in someone else's blood? Or whatever that is on your dress." Dean frowned. The moment they'd gotten distracted by this family talk, the bloodlust from the back seat had vanished. He didn't like it. The girl started looking at her own hands. They were all silent for a moment.
"Well, first I ran away from my sisters."
"Why'd you run away from them?"
"I got tired of the constant fighting." She paused, thinking whether to continue. "My sisters and I live in Alaska, and for the first four days or so I really did just hide out in Alaska and nearby regions of Canada."
"So how'd you end up in the woods?" Dean kept the conversation going, gripping the wheel tighter and tighter. Emma frowned, trying to grab onto something from the strange fog in her memory. No answer came, but when she almost caught the thread, a sharp pain shot through her temple. She winced.
"I don't know." She touched her right temple, trying to ease the pain. "And whose blood this is, I don't know either." Emmanuel fidgeted with the hem of her bloody dress, trying not to look forward, avoiding their gazes. She knew that wasn't an answer. And she knew she looked pathetic. Sam noticed her hands shaking. "You probably won't believe me, but the last thing I remember is a figure in a blue cloak stepping out of a blue portal." They were quiet again. Still clutching her dress, she asked quietly, "By the way, what's today's date?" It was obvious Emmanuel was a little nervous. If she was right about them being somewhere in Arizona (she knew Arizona woods pretty well — spent her whole childhood here, after all), then it was mid-April, which meant she'd been gone for about a month. But she wasn't sure.
"April 19th." Sam's suspicion that the white figure was Emmanuel was slowly being confirmed. He hadn't been sitting idle; he'd been running her name. And she really had disappeared. Almost a month ago. She'd definitely been hiding out in Canada and Alaska for a couple of days. From Alaska and nearby parts of Canada to Arizona, you could make it in about a week, and if she was being looked for, it could stretch to two weeks. Then the Lensky family murder, and a few more days to cover her tracks. All together, it came to almost a month. And the figure in the blue cloak was probably a lie. Sam wasn't sure about his guesses, or if she was even connected to their case at all. Like they say, coincidences aren't coincidental? He didn't believe this girl had nothing to do with the strange murder of five people.
Emmanuel, meanwhile, was trying to process the fact that she couldn't remember a whole month of her life. Plus the broken ribs scratching her lungs. How and when did she break them? Who was the figure in the blue cloak? Whose blood was she covered in? What was going on?
"Okay." Dean's voice was sharp. They were already pulling into a motel parking lot. "We'll figure out what to do with the kid on the run in the morning. Right now, I wanna eat and sleep." He got out of the car. "I'm getting a room with three beds. If you want, I can get two rooms with two…" He wiggled his eyebrows and walked toward the entrance. "Up to you!" Emmanuel and Sam both sighed in unison and got out of the car.
"Emmanuel, put on Dean's jacket, it's cold out." Sam opened the trunk to get their bags. Emmanuel obediently put on the jacket. It was way too big for her. "By the way, you mind if we call you Emma?"
"No, I don't mind." They walked silently toward the motel. Inside, the loud guy was already flirting with the girl at the front desk.
"Your little sister is a real cutie," the girl said, pulling out two keys from somewhere. The loud guy turned to look at the newcomers. "Here's the second key for room 40."
"Thanks." Dean smiled at her one last time. "What took you so long?" He tossed Emma the second key and nodded toward the elevator.
"Emma, are you sure you don't remember anything else?" Sam was wary of her. You never know. Maybe she was the killer of the Lensky family. The girl frowned and said:
"He asked me weird questions." The elevator opened, letting in its new temporary residents.
"Like what?"
"What my father's name was, how many hours I usually sleep, and if I'm allergic to alcohol." Sam thought that was crazy talk. Dean thought the exact same thing. Honestly, they couldn't have come up with questions like that on the spot. So their wariness of the girl subsided a little.
"And what did you tell him?" Dean looked interested in the conversation. Something told him this kid was a direct lead to finding their father.
"I couldn't answer him," Emma said just as easily.
"Why?"
"He taped my mouth shut." She said it with enviable calm. "Then he got mad that I wasn't answering him."
"Did he do anything else out of the ordinary?"
"Kidnapped me. That's logical."
"Besides that?"
"Did he talk to you in some strange language?" Sam jumped into the conversation quickly. "Did he draw anything around you with white chalk or salt?"
"He didn't talk to me anymore. Just mumbled something under his breath and messed around with stuff behind my back. Sounded like he was sorting through tools." The elevator dinged helpfully, reminding them they'd reached their floor. "Then he…" The girl paused, stepping suspiciously quietly on the polished floor in heavy boots. Even they, experienced hunters, couldn't walk that quietly in boots that looked that heavy. It was irrational. "He came up to me and drew something on my forehead. Then I passed out." She touched her forehead. The brothers exchanged a look. The girl probably wasn't lying.
"Can you draw what he drew on your forehead?" Dean opened the motel room door, letting his brother and the kid in.
"I can draw both him and the place he kept me," the girl said, lifting one boot to look at the sole. Right after, she took it off.
"What are you doing?" The long-haired guy walked further into the room, pulling someone's journal out of his bag (she could tell by its thickness and all the stuff stuck in it). Emma, just as silently, licked her finger and ran it over the boot. Dried blood came off on her finger. Her face showed almost nothing. Except for slightly furrowed brows, hidden by her white bangs. Sam came closer. As soon as he saw the blood, he reached out his hand, asking for the boot.
"Can I see?" The blonde girl obediently handed the boot to Sam. Sam, in turn, repeated the same actions. "De-ean!" Dean's head popped out of the bathroom. "Get over here." In three steps, he was beside his brother.
"What is it?"
"Blood on my boots." Emma's calm was enviable. She took the other boot off too. That one also had blood, mixed with dirt. She handed it to Dean for a closer look.
"Yeah…" Dean said thoughtfully. "Did not see that coming." He turned the boot over. "Emma, tell me, where exactly were you walking?" His fingers loosened a little, and he almost dropped the boot.
Sam could swear on the spot that Dean had only been this shocked twice in his life: the first time when thirteen-year-old Sammy first asked to go on a hunt with him, and when he, at 18, said he was leaving for college. And now. When some little girl, maybe 12 years old, was covered head to toe in blood. And it wasn't clear if it was hers or someone else's. Either way, it was bad.
"I don't remember," she said, looking at the floor. "Sorry…" she added, a little quieter. Sam thought it was a typical manipulation attempt. The tension in his head rose again. Dean, on the other hand, softened a little. He didn't even know why.
Sam silently watched his brother fall for this helplessness act. He was running a mental checklist himself: scars — old and numerous, even for a street kid; her posture in the car — defensive, but not rigid, her body clearly knew a different, combat stance. And her "helplessness." Usually, kids her age couldn't walk silently in combat boots, didn't have that many scars, and would freak out when they realized how serious things were. She was calm as a snake. It was too smooth a story to tug at the heartstrings of guys like them. Or to throw them off balance, then stab them in the back.
"Don't apologize." He sighed, meeting Sam's gaze, which seemed to say: 'How did we miss this in the woods?' "It's not your fault." Both Dean and Sam, for a second, entertained the thought that Emma wasn't lying. You just couldn't make up a lie this convincing on the spot. Unless she was a professional liar. "Take your boots off and come to the table. I'll get you a notebook and you can draw everything for us. The guy in blue, the room they kept you in, the symbol they drew on your forehead. Help us with the investigation, so to speak." Emmanuel took off the jacket she was starting to get hot in and settled into a chair. A notebook was put in front of her with a pen and pencil. "It's not much, but it's what we've got." She silently picked up the pencil.
The pencil glided smoothly over the paper, tracing neat lines that formed an intricate pattern of someone's hair. Line by line, a beautiful portrait appeared on the page, as if drawn by the hand of Picasso or Da Vinci.
The guy in the drawing was unusually handsome. Emma picked up the blue pen for the finishing touches. A dark blue collar, which she'd created by layering pencil and going over it with the pen, and clear blue eyes, drawn with a light touch. Sharp features, a strong jawline, sharp eyes, a straight nose. Dean silently noted the resemblance between Emma and this guy.
"I don't know his name. I only know that, one, he was worried about my safety, treated me like glass, and two, we might be related." She handed the drawing to Sam, who was sitting closer, for a better look. The younger Winchester compared her to the drawing. They really were like two peas in a pod. Something didn't add up. The thought that formed in a split second he quickly voiced.
"Wait, how do you know that? You said you don't remember anything." Dean frowned. He'd also realized she'd told them more than she should have.
"I don't remember anything. He put me in some kind of trance. But he forgot one thing." She raised her hand with a simple bracelet on it that the guys hadn't noticed before. "He didn't think to take my bracelet off."
"What's the connection?"
"I saw his memories." Two clueless stares met her. "Well," she hesitated, searching for the right words. "It's like… short-term or long-term memory attached to an object. I can see every memory connected to it."
"Didn't get a word of that," Dean summed it up for both of them.
"Fair enough." She snorted. "Easier to show." Dean didn't even realize how he suddenly fell out of reality, watching the memories of the bracelet one after another: how this stranger disappeared into a blue portal with an unconscious Emma, how he changed her clothes, how he tied her to a chair, how he drew something weird on her forehead. The memories stopped there, and he was back in the room. Sam, it seemed, was just finishing up his own viewing. Emma silently watched Sam, apparently waiting for him to come to. As soon as he blinked back to reality, she asked only one question. "Nauseous?" Sam didn't get the point of the question at first. "Are you nauseous?" He shook his head no.
"What was that?" Dean looked back and forth between Emmanuel and Sam, stunned.
"The bracelet's memories," she breathed out. "Basically, it's what happened directly to me, and therefore to the bracelet too."
"I got that." Dean frowned, trying to shake off the dizziness. "How'd you do that?" A heavy, unspoken question hung in the air. The girl chose not to answer. Sam made a mental note to find out more about this girl later. Maybe she was… like him. The girl went back to the drawing.
On the same page, she traced more neat lines, but this time they were sharper, more merciless than before. The drawing showed a strange symbol. An eye with a psi symbol instead of a pupil. And a circle around the eye.
"They drew this on my forehead." She put the pencil down. Dean looked closer.
"Do you know what they used?"
"By the smell, it was blood mixed with milk. A weird combination," she answered thoughtfully.
Emma was trying to remember details. Was there anything on the ceiling in that room, did they feed her, how long was she there? The memories were fragmented; all she could clearly recall was the cold of the forest and the jarring voice of the guy in blue. She couldn't remember exactly what he said, but she remembered one word clearly. "Kill." And she didn't even know when that was. Or if it even happened. She didn't know if she should tell them about this memory.
Sam reached for his laptop, intending to find something.
"Blood and milk, you say…" he muttered, typing animatedly.
Emmanuel was sent to sleep. Dean said he'd tell her what they found in the morning, but for now, she needed to rest. Because, according to Sam, this was going to be long and tedious, and she'd definitely get bored. And she obediently went to sleep. Even though in any other situation she wouldn't have closed an eye, now it didn't matter.
First, she didn't have a choice. She had to sleep to, at the very least, let her bones heal properly. Second, Sam and Dean (she'd finally learned their names) seemed trustworthy. They weren't like the guys who'd given her rides before. Those guys had tried to touch her. She didn't give them what they wanted. Pointing a gun at them was usually enough to scare them. They never took her all the way; they'd just drop her off near the nearest town.
But not these two. They'd tried to help her. Given her a roof, fed her. Sam said they'd go get her some clothes tomorrow. It wasn't right to walk around in bloody clothes. She was very grateful. And she knew how she'd pay them back. The main thing was to find a phone and call Hypnos. Hypnos could definitely pick up her stuff and was probably already looking for her.
And finally, third, they were Winchesters. And her mom, Silena Kalashnikova, knew their dad — John Winchester. And since her mom had given her his number with the words: "This is John Winchester, only call in emergencies, and only twice," that meant they could be trusted. Her mom trusted their dad. It was logical.
---
"So, back to the case while we're alone. Find anything?" Dean, after making sure the kid was asleep, sat down next to Sam, who was opening a video file.
"The interrogation. Video and audio."
"Play it."
The first thing that struck them was the weird camera angle. It was set up directly in front of the kid.
The boy glanced briefly at the camera, looking exhausted. The dark circles under his eyes screamed sleep deprivation, and his hollow cheeks, malnourishment. You could tell the shock of his family's death was suffocating him. He just stared, unblinking, at a piece of paper in front of him. Maybe it had his personal notes.
"Well, let's get acquainted. My name is Emma Stone. You can call me Dr. Stone, or just Doctor. We're just going to talk, you're completely safe," a gentle female voice came from off-camera. Maybe a detective, maybe a child psychologist. Sam made a note to check out this Emma Stone.
The camera was focused on the boy. "And what's your name?"
"Denis Lensky." His voice was lifeless. A dry tone, more like he was reading from the paper in front of him. Denis wasn't interested in talking. He knew this lady would ask pretty much the same things the cops already had.
"Nice to meet you, Denis. I know you've been asked a lot of questions without me, and you're probably tired of it, but we need to do this." The sympathetic tone came from off-camera again. "Let's make a deal: if you don't want to answer something, you can just say 'not now' or something like that, okay?" The boy nodded. "Great. Tell me a little about yourself. What do you like: what kind of movies do you prefer, do you have any pets, what's your favorite weather?" Denis was silent for a few seconds, thinking. He stared at the tabletop, trying to formulate an answer.
"I don't have any specific favorite movies, but… I like detective stories and stuff with mysticism. Sherlock Holmes, Scooby-Doo…" he frowned, his gaze shifting from the table to the floor and walls. "Before we moved, I had a cat. But she died right before we left." The boy's eyes got sad. "I… can't pick one specific weather. But I like the sound of rain drumming on the car on a long trip. And the smell after the rain." The silence stretched. The Doctor hurried to continue.
"Great, Denis. Do you remember who brought you here? What did they say? What did they look like?"
"An officer in uniform. I don't remember his face. He just said no one was mad at me and I should go with him to the car."
"He's right, no one's mad at you and you're completely safe. Can you tell me about your family? About your sis—"
"I didn't love them." He paused slightly. "I didn't hate them. But I didn't love them. They always pissed me off. Especially Dasha." He frowned, trying to push away the nagging thoughts of their death. "But I never wished them dead." The woman gently stopped him.
"Denis." He blinked. Tried to pull himself together. "I understand. I know you realize all the suspicion is on you right now. But for us to have the full picture, we need your exact account." Hands from off-camera pushed a glass of water toward him. "We don't think it was you. Tell us what you remember. What did you talk about, how—"
"'Little basket-boy put his elbows on the table again! Like a pig!'" The boy mimicked his sister's words perfectly. "Then they laughed." He almost spat poison. "Mom tried to calm them down, but they wouldn't stop laughing."
"Then you snapped at them and went to your room, right?" He nodded. "And then what happened? After dinner?" Denis thought.
"Silence." The boy rubbed his forehead. "I don't remember right after dinner. I just remember the pounding of my pulse in my ears. And I didn't even notice the silence right away. I only went to check what happened after about an hour…"
"Denis, you mentioned you heard something when you were walking down the hall and stairs. You said something fell. Can you describe the sound?"
"Like something heavy falling. Like… a stack of books falling off a chair."
"And what did you feel?"
"Nothing. Just a… a desire."
"What kind of desire?"
"For them to shut up. Forever." Denis said it with enviable calm.
"What did you feel then?"
"Emptiness. Silence. And an… itch. An itch in my bones. And out of that itch came this desire. It lasted a long time. Stretched like rubber. I only snapped out of it when I realized I hadn't blinked for half an hour."
"And what were you doing in your room?"
"Staring out the window. At a pine tree. There was a raven on it. A big, black raven with one eye. I thought then…" His voice dropped an octave, with a distinct German accent. "'He's seen too much. He needs to be dealt with.'"
"Denis… Were those your thoughts?"
The recording glitched — not static, but a sharp, rumbling hum at a frequency that caused panic, and the screen filled with digital noise, like running vertical lines. For three seconds, there was silence. When the image returned, Denis was leaning back in his chair. His head was tilted slightly, his face wet with tears streaming from his eyes, his mouth half-open. From his mouth came a laugh. A laugh, like it was recorded on a tape recorder. And then, he uttered one word into the airless room: "Töte."
"'Töte.' That's 'kill' in German," Sam whispered. Dean was already staring at the frozen frame.
"And look at the shadow, Sammy. On the wall behind him. It… doesn't match his posture." Sam looked. He was right. The shadow behind him was in a mirrored position. Both guys tried to process it all and find the right words.
"Sam, run a check on this Stone. If she's got issues too, I'm trying to call Dad." Sam clicked a few times on the keyboard and pulled up her file.
"Clean. Working in the States since 2003." Dean felt a little relieved. He glanced carelessly at the laptop with Stone's image. The interrogation video was still on. He suddenly leaned closer to the monitor.
"Sam, zoom in on his eyes…" The image enlarged, and you could see his eyes clearly. In them was the same symbol they'd seen on the trees and in Emma's drawing of the eye.
"You're a genius…" They both leaned back. The tension was building.
Dean spoke again.
"Okay, so what do we have? A kid with a murdered family, the white-haired wonder next door, a weird ritual with blood and milk, and then German and a one-eyed black raven." Dean thought about the strange ritual. He'd never seen anything like it, not in Dad's journal or anywhere.
"What if the kid is a…" Sam started theorizing. "An antenna. Like a puppet. And they used his desire to perform some kind of ritual. And the raven."
"A nod to Odin?" Dean suggested.
"Makes sense. The blind observer." Sam tapped his fingers on his knee, trying to complete the picture. "And the mirrored shadow and that weird laugh might mean the one controlling the body doesn't really understand human physiology."
"Okay, it's a good theory, I'm not arguing, but you, Mr. Skeptic, believe her about the blue guy?" Dean twirled a pen, listening to the sounds from the slightly open window.
"What choice do we have?" Sam winced, knowing his theory sounded crazy. "The only thing connecting them is that they both have blue portals." The silence stretched. That's when Dean remembered the Deus family.
"What about this Deus's weapons? Were they described in Dad's journal?" Sam reached for the journal, trying to remember if there was anything like that.
"I think there was something…" He flipped to the right page. "Three swords: Deus's sword, a greatsword called Benedicta, and a katana called Mor."
"Since they're demonic…"
"They have special abilities," Sam continued. "All three swords contain a part of Deus's power. Not much is known about Deus's sword; it's a blank page for notes. Next…" Sam read intently. "The greatsword 'Benedicta' can unite the human and demonic parts of half-demons, and also… 'restore severed matter.' What does that mean? It can 'put to sleep' and 'control' at the wielder's will."
"A powerful artifact." Dean thought about what he'd do if he got his hands on a weapon like that. Mostly inappropriate stuff, apparently. "If we assume the guy in blue had this sword, then Emma's not lying."
"Doesn't say anything about amnesia here."
"True." Sam thought about the sword's use. What would he do if he had a weapon like that and an unknown goal involving their blonde find? "First thing I'd do is take control of her…" he said quietly, looking at the sword's drawing.
"What'd you say?"
"I said, if I were him, I'd have put her to sleep too. Judging by how she was handled, she's way too feisty. And he probably knew it."
"What makes you say that?"
"The scars."
"Great. Just because of them?"
"A couple of those scars she couldn't have given herself."
"Like what?"
"You might not have seen it, but on the back of her neck, there's a word in Russian." Dean raised an eyebrow, telling him to continue. "'Romashka.' A daisy. The flower of love and fidelity."
"And who, in your opinion, is she faithful to? Those twins? Herself? Her family?"
"Even God, I don't know," Sam muttered, annoyed. "One thing I know for sure — you can't give yourself a scar like that." Dean sighed, dropping the subject.
"And the third sword, what does it do?"
"The katana 'Mor'. It can separate the human and demonic parts of a person. Cuts through matter, and…" Sam re-read the same word, not understanding it. "'Kills' at the wielder's will. What does that mean?"
"Well… literally. Chop-chop, no head." Dean took the question literally.
"No. The word 'kills' is highlighted. Just like 'puts to sleep' and 'subjugates' are." The brothers stared, trying to process their father's scribbles. "Maybe it kills spiritually?"
"You mean, the body stays, but the soul goes to heaven?"
"Maybe." He scanned the rest of the text. "Dad writes that only someone with Deus's blood can use these swords. He also writes that Mor is already with the Kalashnikovs."
"So, if the theory about Benedicta is true, then the guy in blue is Hypnos." Dean remembered what Sam had said a few hours ago. "Or someone came back from the dead and used Benedicta."
"What if Emma is a direct descendant of this Deus?"
"What?"
"Mor is with the Kalashnikovs, right?"
"Yeah."
"What if Emma used Mor? 'Killed' the kid's soul, planted some pissed-off Djinn in him to 'break' the seal over Wickenburg, and then played dumb with amnesia."
"And what does that get her? A perfect 'vessel' for something bigger?"
"Could be, Dean. Anything's possible."
***
In the morning, Dean, as promised, took her first to breakfast, then to the store. He was really surprised when they walked out after only half an hour with minimal clothes for the kid. She explained it by saying that some mysterious Hypnos should be coming soon to give her back her stuff. He didn't ask who this Hypnos was. He just forgot. From exhaustion, he almost fell asleep at the wheel.
He and Sam hadn't slept for a long time. First, the long drive, then the woods and this girl. He was dead tired. Emma, with a sympathetic look, kept nudging him every time the light turned green. He was immensely grateful when, in the elevator, she said she'd wait with explanations until they'd both gotten some sleep.
Dean noted that he almost fell asleep in the elevator and the girl somehow magically peeled him off the wall and led him by the hand to the room. He woke up, by the way, already in bed, a little rumpled but okay. Sam, meanwhile, was finishing his conversation with Emma.
"Mmm, what time is it?" he asked sleepily.
"4 o'clock," Sam answered quickly. "Emma, are you sure you don't know anything else about that ritual?"
"Well, I think I told you everything I remembered." She watched Dean try to wake up. Sam looked over his notes in his notebook. He'd learned quite a bit in the half-hour conversation with a twelve-year-old. And she hadn't even finished school… Dean walked over to the table and grabbed a cup of cold coffee.
"By the way, how old are you?" Sam decided to finally ask the nagging question.
"14, 15 in December." Dean choked. She did not look 14!
"And you're definitely not lying?" Sam was in cultural shock too. Okay, he might have believed 13. With some effort.
"Logically, it makes sense you wouldn't believe me…" she muttered, looking at her watch. She kept glancing at it. "Well, you know, looking at you, you wouldn't guess one is 22 and the other is 26. You both look 20 and 22." They were both thrown by that answer. Okay, they knew they looked young, but that young? "If you shaved Dean and put glasses on him, he'd easily pass for someone's college buddy." She turned to the window, like she was waiting for someone.
In the passing cars, the girl spotted a familiar red 1969 Dodge Charger, parking at the motel. A tall, white-haired guy, the spitting image of Emma, got out. He walked around the car, opened the trunk, and pulled out two bags: a black one and a slightly smaller blue one. With both bags, he walked into the motel.
Both brothers silently watched as the girl, without a word, left the room and headed for the reception desk.
"What was that?"
"You're asking me like I know."
The Winchesters walked over to the girl, waiting for the elevator. They didn't dare ask where or why she was going. They just followed silently. The elevator, the first floor, the guy by the red Dodge, the nice girl at reception.
The guy didn't even notice the kid stopping next to him at first. Dean and Sam stood slightly behind her, unsure if they should follow Emma.
"Hm?" He looked at the white-haired girl. "Emma?" The guy took the blue bag off his shoulder and handed it to her. "Just like you asked. Safe and sound." As soon as the bag was in her hands, she opened it and started going through her things. "Don't worry, fifteen-year-old brats don't do it for me." He walked around Emma, patting her on the shoulder. Without looking up from her fascinating rummaging, she tripped him. "Ow!" The trip was Hypnos's undoing. He almost fell. Dean and Sam snickered quietly.
"Don't worry, Hyp, I never doubted that I'm not your type." She added something else, a little quieter, so only the four of them could hear. "Just like I never doubted your… unconventional orientation." The guy turned the color of a boiled lobster in seconds. The girl giggled.
Hypnos rolled his eyes, but his ears were still burning crimson.
"You're too young to be worrying about orientations…" he muttered, annoyed, turning away to hide his smile, silently acknowledging it was a damn good joke.
They continued their bickering in the room. The brothers summed up the day.
"Well, professor, puzzle pieces fitting?" Dean stared at the red Dodge outside their window. "The demonic twin shows up, probably the one who kidnapped the kid, pretending to be an idiot who sees nothing, our 'antenna' is covered in blood, and it's probably not his, and down the street is a juvenile hall with the puppet they apparently used to take revenge or perform the ritual."
"It's not a puzzle," Sam was also staring at the same red Dodge. "It's a mine, and we just stepped right on it."
Dean and Sam exchanged a glance. In that silent look was everything: the exhaustion from a sleepless night, the accumulated tension of the day, and now — this new player, arguing in the next room with the teenage girl they'd found in the woods under very absurd circumstances. 'Well, of course it couldn't just be a simple ghost hunt,' Dean's annoyed grimace clearly said. Sam barely shrugged in response: 'When has it ever been?' 'Since Dad left' was the silent reply in the elder's eyes.