18. Chapter 18

Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Erik Kripke, Warner Brothers and quite possibly others who are not mentioned here. No money will be made from this fan fiction.

Author's note: Do not panic. Original characters are only passing through.

Summary: When Dean goes to sell his soul at the crossroads to bring Sam back, someone else steps in to negotiate the deal. Cas did get a sign and it sent him off into the past to change things. AU from The Man Who Would be King and All Hell Breaks Loose.

It's All in the Details

By Colleen

Chapter 18

SA Dawson stopped long enough at the front desk of his hotel to pick up his mail and messages, before heading up to his room. Too tired to look them over, he dropped them on the little table in the room before stripping down and heading into the bathroom.

One quick shower later, he came out into the main part of the room in a towel and fished his cell phone out of his pant's pocket. He scrolled through the numbers, hitting the one for his partner as he sat down at the table. Tucking the phone up to his ear, he started to go through the mail he had ignored earlier.

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Victor paused in mid-word as his phone went off. "Sorry." He pulled it out, rolled his eyes up towards the ceiling as he saw who it was and answered it. "Henricksen."

"Hey partner, just got back. Thought we should compare notes." Dawson said.

Victor glanced at Bobby. "Sure, when?"

"Well, it's four o'clock. I'm just cleaning up…" Dawson slid the contents of a large envelope out onto the table. "Holy shit."

"Dawson?"

"I mean…shit. You will not believe what I just got in the mail."

"I don't know, Publisher's Clearing House?"

"Ha, funny, ha. No. Money, a lot of it." Henricksen heard the sound of a large piece of paper crinkling. "I didn't check who it was for. It was in care of the FBI at this address, but it was for your old partner, Groves."

"You just got a large envelope of money, which was addressed to my ex-partner?" Henricksen looked wide-eyed at Bobby. The hunter had a similar expression on his face. Both men stood up.

"Tell him to get out of there."

"What?" Henricksen asked.

"All of the deaths took place just after four o'clock. Tell him to get out of there."

"Dawson, get out of there, get out of there now." They started to head for the door.

He heard his partner snort. "I'm not even dressed. Tell you what, meet me at my room in twenty."

"Dawson! Crap, he hung up."

"Where's his room?"

"One floor up."

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Dawson was just setting his phone down when one of the paper bands on one of the stacks of money let go with a snap. Then another one broke, then another, then… all of them.

Dawson gave one of the stacks a poke. "Must be cheap glue."

One of the bills caught an eddy of air, from somewhere and blew up into the air, startling the agent. As he watched, another one caught the same bit of a breeze, then five more, then ten… Dawson reached out and tried to grab some of the bills.

"Ow." He jerked his hand away from them and looked at the cut that ran across his palm. Like piranha scenting blood in the water, the rest of the bills exploded into a boiling mass of flying paper. Dawson backed away from it, but it was too late. Cuts appeared on his shoulders, his chest, and his face. Yelling, he clawed some of the paper out of the air and started to stumble his way to the door. Cuts to his legs made him falter and the towel that had been around his waist fell to the floor in front of him, tripping him.

And once he was down, he didn't stand a chance.

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Bobby and Victor pelted up the stairs. As they hit the next floor, Henricksen yelled out the room number, but it wasn't necessary. It was easy to tell where they were supposed to go by the screaming.

Not bothering with finesse, Victor kicked the door open. He froze for a moment as he took in the sight of his partner being attacked by an apparently sentient mass of flying money. Bobby pushed him aside and using a knife throw, threw something through the crazed whirlwind of counterfeit bills.

The money suddenly froze in midair and then dropped, pelting the bloody and moaning man on the floor.

"Grab him." Bobby yelled.

The two of them dragged agent Dawson out of the room, Bobby picking and throwing bloody bills off him as they did. The man made choking sounds and attempted to scream as they laid him down on the floor in the hall, making sure to place him more on his side and his front, rather than his back. Henricksen would have put him in the proper recovery position, to make sure he wouldn't continue to choke, but was afraid to hurt him further by moving him around that much.

While Bobby endeavoured to secure the door, despite the broken lock, Henricksen used his cell phone to call 911.

"How's he holding up?" Bobby asked from where he was guarding the door.

Henricksen checked Dawson's pulse, also worried as the man had gone silent. "He's alive. Hopefully he's just unconscious." Given the damaged he'd taken, oblivion was currently his best choice. By falling, Dawson had actually protected a lot of the front of his body, but his back from head to heels… Raw hamburger meat was the first comparison that came to mind.

Bobby kept his eye on the door. "Looks like it didn't have enough time to stuff itself down his throat."

Alerted to the 911 call, hotel staff came rushing off the elevator. They froze at the sight of the two men standing and kneeling over a very bloody third man. Henricksen flashed them his FBI badge. The staff relaxed enough to bring over the first aid kit and blanket they had brought with them.

Victor did what he could for Dawson, until the paramedics got there. Then he turned the responsibility over to them. Bobby told him to go with his partner. Implicit in that order, was the fact that Bobby would stay behind to finish dealing with whatever it was that had attacked Dawson.

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A careful look into the room showed that the blood covered, fake money was still lying quietly, if scattered, across the carpet. Bobby moved to the far wall and pulled out the iron dirk he'd thrown through the whirlwind. His knelt down and started collecting the money, impaling each bill on the blade as he did. When that one was full, he pulled another dirk out from his jacket and continued. He was interrupted once, by some uniformed police officers. He chased them away with his FBI badge. Thankfully, he managed to finish up before any detectives arrived on the scene.

A container of salt from the kitchens and a trip into the bowels of the hotel to borrow one of the boilers, and that little bit of deadly paper was gone. The question was, was there more of it, and where was it?

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Gabriel looked around at the crypt he was standing in and sighed.

"I'm bored."

The other three men in the mausoleum, two of whom were using flashlights to get a better look at things, froze.

Looking far more uncomfortable than an outsider could have understood, Dean caught one of the other men's' attention.

"Cas, I don't want to chase you away, but I think you need to find something for him to do, before he comes up with his own entertainment, again."

Shortly before they had left the motel room, Loki had also uttered that same statement. Dean hadn't minded the sudden appearance of the dancing girls and the all you can eat buffet. However, he had minded the gold lamé loincloths that had replaced all of their clothing at the same time.

Thankfully, Cas had a disapproving glare that was almost as good as a mother's would have been. Loki had put everything back, albeit, grudgingly.

The angel nodded. "Actually, I know Henricksen plans to look into it, but I would like to check up on the group that summoned me a while back."

Gabriel's face scrunched up in annoyance. "Alright, I guess we could go do that." He blinked, and it was as if a light bulb had just gone off in his head. "Hey, if you're going to keep showing up as Kaseva, then you're going to need a disguise."

Cas' face was the one that scrunched up this time. Sighing, he nodded. "Yes, you are probably right." He looked at Sam and Dean. "We'll catch up with sometime later."

And with that, he and Loki were gone.

"Oh, we are so going to owe him." Dean said.

Sam could only nod.

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The brothers looked around for a few minutes longer before Dean more or less threw his hands up into the air. "We've got nothing. If there are ghouls coming, then they aren't here yet."

"Yeah, gotta agree with you there." Sam turned off his flashlight and gave the matter some thought. "If they are heading here, they may be hitting other graveyards on the way. I'll see if I can use that to track them."

Dean nodded. "Sounds good." He waved his flashlight towards the door. "Let's get out of here."

"Mmm."

Once they were back at the motel, Sam started on his graveyard search and Dean got roped into tracking what their Dad must have done when he came through town the first time, in case there was a connection.

"Hey, look at this." Dean passed Sam an old newspaper photo. "See anyone we know?"

Sam snorted as he saw his father's face poking around the edge of a tree, watching as the police recovered what was left of the bodies that the ghouls had taken.

Dean took the article back and looked it over. "I'd say it was definitely ghouls back then too. Get the feeling Dad might have missed one or more. I mean, seventeen bodies is a lot of food to store for the winter.

Sam grimaced at him, but nodded in agreement. "So, do you think it's a coincidence that they're going after Dad's girl and son here, or just dumb luck?"

"When it comes to us and beasties, when is it ever dumb luck?"

Sam sighed. "Pretty much never."

"Yep." Dean read the article over again. "Hey, think that maybe Dad had someone in the police helping him on this? I mean, they seemed to have had a little more information than the average sheriff's office would. That, and the line of cover up bull is a lot better than what most places use."

"Yeah, I still remember the town that tried to blame vampire attacks as accidental barbeque fork impalement." Sam shook his head. "It made no sense at all, the marks are nothing alike."

Dean nodded, grimacing. That place been weird. Personally, he blamed too much Buffy in their television diet. "Anyway, I think I'm going to track down the deputy of the time. I'm betting that if anyone that got involved with this, it was him. Even if it wasn't, he might know stuff he doesn't know… If you know what I mean."

Sam nodded, only mildly disturbed that he did indeed know what his brother meant.

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Dean stopped at the police station first, trying to track Joe Barton down. He passed himself off as a friend of the family through his dad. Turned out the guy had left the sheriffs office some years ago and was now running a bar with his wife. That, of course, was Dean's kind of investigating.

The bartender, a middle-aged man, put a beer in front of him without Dean asking. "First beer's free for police officers. Although, I'm guessing that you're an out of state one, or a Fed."

Dean blinked at him, a little surprised. If he'd been wearing his Fed suit, he could have at least partially understood the mix up. However, since he was passing as someone trying to look up an old friend of his fathers, he had dressed in his usual casual style.

"How?"

The second bartender, a woman, about the same age of the first gave him a smile. "We know all the local badges." She shrugged. "You've just got that law and order vibe to you."

Dean gave an almost inaudible huff of laughter. Obviously he spent too much time pretending to be FBI agents and Federal Marshalls if he could pass for them when he wasn't trying. He took a sip of his beer and then set the glass down on the counter. "You wouldn't happen to be Joe Barton, would you?" Dean asked the male bartender.

"I would." The man frowned at him. "Might I ask why you're asking?"

Dean held out his hand and hoped that Dad hadn't had a falling out with this man, as if he had with so many hunters that they knew. "Names Dean Winchester. I'm trying to track down anyone who might have known my Dad, John. It would have been about nineteen or so years ago, back in 1990."

The guys jaw dropped open, but he shook Dean's hand. "Yeah, yeah I definitely knew your Dad." He paused and looked Dean over. "Guess you're in the same line of work as he was."

Dean nodded. "Yeah. Actually, I'm trying to find someone who might know something about the job he worked back then."

Joe hesitated. "You can't ask him yourself?"

Dean shook his head. "No, I'm afraid he died two years ago. Car accident."

"Damn, I'm sorry to hear that." He looked at the female bartender. "Hon, I'm just going to go the back with Dean here for a bit, can you cover?"

She nodded. "I'll buzz for you if I need you."

"Thanks." With a tilt of his head, he indicated that Dean should follow him. They moved into a small office in the back where the bar obviously did most of its paperwork.

Barton went around the desk and sat down. Dean took the only other chair in the room.

"So, I've go to ask. Was it really a car accident?"

"Yeah." Dean was only about seventy-five percent sure that the guy was in the know, which he figured was good enough to risk some of the truth. "However, if I said the driver of the other vehicle wasn't exactly human, would that comes as much of a surprise to you?"

The guy shook his head. "No, can't say that it does. Have to say, I'd always hoped that that one brush I had with… that sort of thing, would be my only one." He sighed. "So, what do you need to know?"

"Dad's notes from then are missing, but from what we do know, you guys had a ghoul problem back in 1990. I just need you to tell what you remember about it."

"It was a real mess. If it hadn't been for your Dad, it or something worse would probably still be going on." He leaned back in his chair and over the next half an hour, told Dean everything that happened almost nineteen years ago.

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Gabriel had been enthusiastic about coming up with Cas' disguise, but when it actually came time to track down Kaseva's worshipers, he begged off, citing a hundred and one things he needed to do in the next five minutes.

Given the list, Cas was certain that it wouldn't take the archangel any more than four minutes to complete, tops.

"I have a few irons in the fire, Cas. Things that I need to check on, people I need to talk to." He gave a slight shrug. "A few I need to avoid."

Cas frowned at him.

"Hey, it takes longer to get around them, than doing everything else does."

"Ah."

"Anyway, go check up on your, whatever's they are. Oh yeah, don't scare them too much with the new look."

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Cas started with the park where the ritual had been held. From there, he was able to track the caster back to a quiet home in a suburban neighbourhood. He hoped from her he would be able to trace the petitioner.

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Delores Douglas, AKA Ravenlight, place a cup of tea on the coffee table in front of Rakel, deciding against handing her the cup as she was still shaking too much to hold it. She sat down across from her and took a sip of her own tea, suspecting she'd need the fortification for what the girl had to tell her.

"I thought it was over, you know? Once he was dead, I thought I was free." Rakel said, staring down at her tea. "I did it. I made a deal." She winced at Ravenlight's shocked expression. "And now, I think I was actually better off with the stalker." She picked up her cup of tea and down the contents in one go. Delores winced at the sight. The beverage was still very hot.

"We actually did summon something that day, didn't we? If it hadn't been for those men, he might have helped and I wouldn't have…"

"Rakel, what did you bargain with?"

Tears started to drip down her face. "My soul." She wiped at her eyes. "I… Is there anyway to fix this?"

Ravenlight honestly didn't know and was about to tell her as much when something appeared before them. The shape was human, but the details were lost in darkness. He was like a shadow, brought to life. However, he was so devoid of light, Ravenlight was certain that if she touched him, she would be pulled into him, to find herself lost in the furthest reaches of outer space where no stars shined.

Mouth dry, she stood, feeling vulnerable sitting. If this was what Rakel sold her soul to, then she was screwed. At the moment, Ravenlight didn't hold out much hope for herself either. As it turned to look at her, she realized that he did have one human feature that she could see. His eyes. Blue orbs shone from the darkness where a face ought to be, the only light in a vastness of night.

"Who are you?"

"I am Kaseva. I have come to speak with you about the summoning."

Back on the couch, Rakel started to scream.