Chapter Text
It was an old airplane hangar thirty miles west of Shelbyville, Indiana. The exterior was rusted, the corrugated metal of the doors corroded to a dusty peach. The fuel sign hanging off the side of the building advertised 68 cents a gallon.
Dean shut the driver’s side door and leaned up against the Impala, squinting out across the overgrown runways that crisscrossed through the summer-burnt grass. “You sure this is it? Place looks like it ain't seen a plane since Nixon was calling the shots.”
Another door slammed shut, and Dad stepped out from behind his monster of a truck with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
“It’s a lead, Dean. Roy says this kid’s been having dreams about a yellow-eyed demon for years. It’s the real thing.”
Dean had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. This was the fourth “real thing” they’d looked into over the last eight months. First it was the witch’s coven up in Maine, then the cult out in Tucson, then the fire spirit down in Tampa. That last one had been a real fucking ordeal. Dean could laugh about it now, but only because his eyebrows had finally grown back. Almost a year since Dad had gotten his big break putting the squeeze on that demon in Michigan, and so far all they had to show for it were first degree burns and a great big pile of squat.
Some of his thoughts must have shown on his face, because Dad gave him a sharp look as he rounded the front of the Impala.
“Lose the attitude before we walk in there.”
Dean spread his arms innocently. “What?”
Dad’s eyes hardened to granite, and Dean sighed, pushing off the car. “I don’t know what you’re so worried about. I’m charming.”
“We’re dealing with a fifty-year-old ex-cop, not a co-ed in a mini-skirt,” Dad warned him. “Roy’s an old friend, but he’s a bit of a hard-ass. The last thing I need is your smart mouth pissing him off before we get what we came for, you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said Dean, ducking his head.
“You got the recording equipment?”
Dean hefted up his rucksack, where he’d stuffed the tape recorder they’d scored at a pawn shop two states back. “Yeah, I got it.”
“Good,” said Dad. “Let’s get moving.”
Dean hitched up his bag and followed his father across the cracked tarmac. The closer they got to the rusted-out hangar, the more depressing it looked. Blue paint peeled off the sides of the building in long swathes like animal scratches, and the rounded roof was starting to sag in places.
“So what are we dealing with here?” Dean asked. “All you said before we left was that this guy Roy got his hands on an esper.”
“Turns out he’s got about a dozen. I guess he keeps them here, some sort of a compound.”
Dean wrinkled his forehead. “Wait, he keeps them? Like an old lady with a cat collection? What the hell for?”
“Damned if I know,” said Dad grimly.
Dean stared up at the blank face of the building. He couldn’t stand espers. Psychics, mediums, telekinetics—sure they weren’t as messy as witches, but it still gave him the creeps the way something like that could screw with your head.
A shiver prickled up his spine as he thought about all the sick kinds of monsters that could be holed up in there--things that could send you flying across the room, steal the thoughts right out of your mind, electrocute you with the twitch of a pinky finger. It had him looking back almost fondly on the spirit that had had him literally roasting on a spit before Dad had busted in with a consecrated fire hose.
A door on the side of the building creaked open, and a man with a green trucker hat and a bad sunburn stepped out onto the ramp. Dean thought he recognized him from a group of hunter buddies his dad used to run with, vaguely recalling a stringy red-headed man letting him sip from his beer when Dad wasn’t looking.
Roy was about twenty pounds heavier than Dean remembered, his hair the same faded ginger as the rust on the hangar. He jogged out to meet them, an old plaid shirt flapping in the breeze.
“John Winchester, you son of a bitch!” he said, shaking Dad by the hand. “Good to see you still alive and kicking.”
“You too, Roy, you too,” Dad grinned, reaching out to thump him on the back. “You remember Dean, don’t you?”
Roy glanced over and did a double-take, his eyebrows shooting up as he realized he had to tilt his chin back to look Dean in the eye. “This can’t be your boy!”
Dad nodded, his grin widening. “Yep. That’s Dean.”
“Well!” said Roy, looking him over. “You got big! Last time I saw you, you were practically sucking on a nipple.”
Dad smirked.
“Not much has changed,” he said, clapping Dean on the back.
Dean bit back a groan. He knew exactly which town and which waitress Dad was remembering, and he still couldn't believe he’d forgotten to lock the door.
Roy looked quizzically between the two of them, but before Dad could launch into the story of how he’d walked in on Dean with a mouth full of Sandra, Dean forced a grin and shook the man’s hand. “Nice to see you again, sir.”
Roy nodded approvingly. “He’s got a firm handshake, John. Just like his old man. I just hope he’s not as much of a cry-baby when he gets the pants beat off of him at poker.”
The smirk slipped off Dad’s face. “You had that ace in your pocket, and the whole damn table knew it!”
“It’s been ten years, John—you still gonna whine about it?”
Dean fell into step behind the two old hunters as they traded a decade’s worth of back slaps and bullshit. It was nice seeing his father joke around and act friendly, even if he knew it wouldn’t last; sooner or later, all of Dad’s friendships ended with someone on the wrong side of a sawed-off.
Roy ushered them into a small wooden building tacked onto the side of the hangar. It looked like it might have been used for file storage once upon a time, but now it was more like a cross between an office and an army camp. Most of the front room was taken up by a massive oak desk, and the bookshelves above it were stacked with canned food and a handful choice grimoires. There was a smaller room in back, barely larger than a coat closet, where someone had managed to cram a couple of hard cots spread with thermal sleeping bags.
Home sweet home, Dean thought, relieved that Dad hadn’t taken Roy up on his offer to let them stay.
“Come on in,” said Roy, waving them over to a beat-up old couch shoved up against the wall. “Take a load off.”
He tugged open a mini-fridge and pulled out a six-pack of beer. “You mind, John?” he asked, looking at Dean.
Dad shrugged. “Boy’s almost twenty."
Roy handed out the beer, some cheap as hell brand, but Dean wasn’t complaining. Dad wasn’t either, apparently. He downed the whole thing almost as soon as it touched his hand, and Roy passed him another one. Dean popped the tab on his and sat back in the lumpy couch, a loose spring digging into his ass.
“So,” said Roy, settling into a raggedy office chair that creaked when he moved. “I hear you boys are looking for a yellow-eyed demon.”
All the good humor of the past few minutes was sucked out of the room, leaving behind a tense silence broken only by the hum of the air-conditioning unit in the window.
Dad set his beer down on the table next to him. “That’s right.”
“Where’d you get the intel?” Roy asked, raising his eyebrows over the top of his can.
“Another demon, up near Grand Rapids,” said Dad. His tone was flat and brittle. “Found it possessing a local circuit judge. Low-rank, wasn’t much of a player, but it knew enough. Managed to get it to talk before I sent it packing. Wouldn’t give a name, but it let slip about the yellow eyes.”
Dean swilled his beer, clenching his jaw as he remembered the night Dad had gotten hold of the demon in Michigan. Dad made it sound like a trip to the supermarket, but the whole thing had been a bloody, fucked-up mess.
They’d been working a case—jury members from a recent murder trial getting picked off one by one. The murder had been an ugly one, some nice old grandma blown away in her own living room. To make things worse, the defendant had been her grandson, who’d ended up getting stabbed to death in prison just a few months after his conviction.
Vengeful spirit had seemed like a safe assumption, and Dean had been off interviewing a long-legged court stenographer to try to narrow the options. He and Dad had started off favoring the grandson, but the deeper they dug, the more obvious it had become that the guy had been falsely convicted. After the interview, Dean had driven back to their cabin with his money on killer granny—revenge, obviously, for the trumped-up charges that had ended with her grandson taking a sharpened spoon to the eyeball. He’d been sure it was her right up until the moment he walked into the kitchen to find the black-eyed judge tied to a chair, Dad’s knife buried in his thigh.
Turned out all of the killings, even the original murder, had just been a demon screwing with people for kicks. But Dad wasn’t interested in the case anymore. The thing had fucked up, trying to taunt him with Mom’s death. But instead of breaking down like the demon had hoped, Dad had switched from exorcism to interrogation. Dean had never seen his dad like that, red-faced and wild-eyed, so far from the stone-cold hunter he usually was that for a horrible moment Dean had stood frozen in the doorway, staring between the judge and his father wondering which one to douse with holy water.
The judge had survived. Or at least he’d been breathing when they left. Once the demon had been wrung dry, Dad had sent it screaming back to hell in a roar of black smoke. They hauled ass out of Grand Rapids, dialing an ambulance as soon as they were on the freeway. The next time Dean had driven the Impala, there were bloody fingerprints on the steering wheel.
The chair let out a squeal as Roy leaned forward. “John, is it—?”
Dad nodded, the stiffest bend of his neck. “It’s the one.”
Roy let out a long breath, swiping the hat off his head to scratch at his thinning hair. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“So this esper of yours,” said Dad, fixing Roy with a grim stare. “You said it's been seeing this thing in its dreams?”
Roy nodded, tilting back his beer. He smacked his lips and dragged the back of his hand across his whiskers.
“That's how we found it in the first place. Few years back, this thing had some vision about a car accident. Knew things it couldn’t possibly have known—the angle of the crash, the way the woman inside had been sliced up. Kept saying that it wasn’t an accident, that a demon had killed her. A demon with yellow eyes, just like you’re looking for. Couple of my old buddies on the force clued me in, so Walt and I picked it up before it could cause any more damage.”
“Is it dangerous?” Dad asked.
“That one?” Roy pulled a face as he considered, the corners of his mouth tugging down. “Nah. Not really. Not compared to some of the other things we’ve had rattling around out there. Got a bit of an attitude problem, but I wouldn’t say dangerous.”
Dean’s skin crawled at the thought of what all Roy might have “rattling around” to make this thing seem like small potatoes, but Dad’s face was like stone.
“We’ll need to talk to it.”
“Not a problem. Thing won’t shut up most days. Always mouthing off about something. Shouldn’t be much of a trick getting it to talk. And if it’s feeling stubborn, well, sounds like you’re an old hand at loosening tongues.”
The wink Roy gave Dad set the judge from Michigan screaming in Dean’s head. He slammed his beer down on the side table and started talking just to drown out the noise.
“So what the hell do you do with these things, Roy?”
“Dean,” Dad said sharply, but Roy waved him off.
“It’s fine, John. Don’t act like you haven’t been wondering the same thing since the moment you pulled up.” Roy turned to Dean. “We’re training ‘em.”
Dean couldn’t help a snort of laughter. “For what, the ballet?”
“I see he’s inherited the sarcasm,” said Roy, sending Dad a dry look. “No, smart-ass, we’re getting them ready for hunts.”
Dad’s head whipped around from where he’d been glaring at Dean. “Wait, you're sending these things out on hunts?”
Roy’s chair let out a heavy groan as he sprawled back in it, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Don’t give yourself a hernia, John, we’re not stupid. We don’t send them out alone—we rent ‘em to hunters who want an edge on a job. Not unlike yourself.”
Dad’s mouth tightened. “You mean you’ve got people paying for these things?”
“Oh, yeah. We got espers that get energy signatures off of objects, some that talk to the dead—even a few with healing powers. And that’s not even counting precogs like the one you’re here for. They’re scary sons of bitches, but when you keep ‘em under control, they can be damn useful. We make a better than decent profit doing it, too, I’ll tell you what. Walt’s family owns this place, so overhead’s practically nothing.”
He raised his eyebrow significantly, clearly expecting them to congratulate him on his business model.
“Yeah,” Dean sniggered, “that sounds like a pretty sweet deal. What’s next on the agenda? Sending underprivileged vampires to dental school?”
“Dean.” Dad’s voice cracked over him like a whip, and Dean knew that if he’d been a couple years younger, he’d have gotten slapped around the back of the head. “What did I tell you right before we walked in here?”
Dean clamped his mouth shut, dropping his eyes to the water-stained floorboards. “Sorry, sir. Just a joke.”
Dad frowned at him, annoyed. “Yeah, well, keep a lid on it, we’re trying to have a serious conversation.”
“Oh, don’t be so hard on the boy, John,” said Roy, gathering up the empty beer cans and tossing them in the trash. “Poor kid’s probably bored out of his skull, stuck in here listening to us old bastards go on and on. Here.” He patted his pockets and tossed Dean a set of keys. “Why don’t you go take a look around the place? Check out my little ballet troupe for yourself.”
Dean caught the keys, rolling the cold metal in his hand.
“You sure that’s safe?” Dad asked, raising his eyebrows.
Roy shrugged. “Boy can take care of himself, can’t he? Besides, we keep ‘em on a short leash. Walt’s out there, Dean, just ask him to show you around.”
Dean closed his hand around the key ring. “That alright with you, Dad?”
Dad grunted, popping open a third beer and taking a long pull. Dean took that as a yes and heaved himself up off the couch.
Roy pointed him towards a door opposite the one they’d come in through. This one was heavy duty, solid iron as far as Dean could tell, with two bolts and an enormous padlock.
“Gold opens the padlock, and that rounded silver one unlocks the knob,” said Roy as Dean fumbled with the keys. “There’s a gate on the other side, combo’s 4024. Oh, and ask Walt to check in on Number 8, would you? It’s due for red in a couple of days.”
The words didn’t make much sense, but Dean repeated them back with the military precision his father had drilled into him. “Number 8 due for red. Got it.”
“Keep your eyes open, Dean,” Dad said from the couch. Dean jerked his chin, unhooking the padlock and pulling open the door.
Behind him, Roy cracked open another beer and started quizzing Dad on the finer points of his interrogation technique. Gritting his teeth, Dean stepped out of the air conditioning and into the smothering heat of the hangar, letting the enormous slab of iron fall shut on the sounds of the judge’s screams.