memento vivere - supernatural & criminal minds

chapter 34

Chapter 34
Pandora's Box

For the second time in a few days, Jude was talking to someone she thought was dead. Ellen Harvelle sat at Bobby's tiny kitchen table downing a shot of holy water she was given as a precaution. She pushed the empty glass toward Bobby. "Whiskey, now, if you don't mind." The woman turned her eyes to Jude, who was leaning against the counter with Sam. "They really did drag you back in, huh?"

"There was some kicking and screaming at first, but I don't hold it against them anymore. They can be idiots," she cast a pointed look at Dean, "but they're worth it. So what happened? How'd you get out?"

"I wasn't supposed to. I should've been there with everybody else. We ran out of pretzels, of all things. It was just dumb luck," Ellen scoffed, cradling her glass of whiskey. "Ash called me, all panicked. He told me to look in the safe before the call cut out. By the time I got back, the flames were sky-high. Everybody was dead. I couldn't have been gone more than fifteen minutes. A lot of good people died in there, and I got to live." She threw back her whiskey in one go. "Lucky me."

"I'm sorry, Ellen," Dean slid into the seat across from her. "You mentioned a safe?"

"We keep it in the basement. The demons didn't get what was in it." She fished something from her pocket and unfolded it on the table. Jude and Sam moved closer to see that it was a map of Wyoming. Five X's were marked on it, seemingly without a pattern - to everyone but Bobby, that is. 

He hastened to his desk and returned with a giant book that he slammed on the table. He flipped through it for a minute and breathed, "I can't believe it. Each of these X's is an abandoned frontier church. All mid-nineteenth century, all built by Samuel Colt."

Dean's eyebrows jumped. "Demon-killing, gun-making Samuel Colt?" He was the inventor of the fatal Colt gun that was said to kill most supernatural creatures. They had lost it to Yellow Eyes. John traded it and his own life to save Dean after the crash.

"That's the only Samuel Colt I know," Bobby shrugged. He grabbed a black marker to trace the lines connecting the five churches. "And these are private railway lines he built between them. They just happen to connect like this."

Sam leaned over the table. "It's a Devil's Trap. A 100-square mile Devil's Trap."

"That's brilliant," Dean grinned. "Giant iron lines that demons can't cross. And after all these years, they haven't broken? The trap still works?"

"It seems that way," Jude grabbed Bobby's original map where he had marked the omen spikes. "All the omens Bobby found are surrounding it, which probably means the demons can't get inside."

"Not for lack of trying," Bobby scoffed. "There's gotta be something inside they want, except there's nothing but an old cowboy cemetery right in the middle."

"Wait, what if Colt wasn't trying to keep the demons out?" Dean posed. "What if he was trying to keep something in?"

"Oh, that's comforting," Jude grumbled.

"Could they do it?" Sam asked Bobby. "Could they get inside?"

"This thing's so powerful, you'd practically need an A-bomb to destroy it. No way a full-blooded demon gets across."

"Maybe not," Sam whispered. In a movement that looked involuntary, he laid a hand on his lower back. "But I know who could."

***

The cemetery felt like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe short story. Most of the graves were crumbling from lack of care. The names of long-dead cowboys had eroded to a smattering of letters. Any stones that remained legible were covered with overgrown grass. Crouching behind these graves, the hunters watched a young man enter the cemetery. His muscles bulged even beneath his coat and his head was shaved in a military cut.