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The icy water rushed past his ankles and Cain took in the little meadow, bathed in moonlight. He forced himself to notice the details, the way the grass twitched, the scent of leather and blood floating on the breeze, the way Dean drew breath, a habit he hadn’t quite outgrown. Cain kept his eyes open, ignoring the similarity between this place and a stream from long ago, back in the Fertile Crescent.
“Can you feel it?” Cain asked Dean.
“Thousands of them,” he answered.
“Yes, but we need only a few. Just the ones Lucifer laid hands upon. Can you feel the difference?”
In answer, Dean leaned closer to the grass. He began to move slowly, picking his way through the brush and pausing here and there. When he came to an appealing spot, Dean began to dig. It wasn’t the practiced grave digging that the man had done so much of in his life, it was a base instinct of a demon. Of something even older than a demon. Dean clawed at the ground, pulling up handfuls of dirt and stone, setting about his work and giving Cain no more heed.
Cain watched Dean work a while but soon the water began to whisper, it was his mother’s voice, urgent and quiet, “ Quickly, Cain, ” it called from across millennia. Cain gave into it and the memory took shape around him.
Eve squatted in the water and Cain crouched on the bank. He looked down at his hands, still slick with his brother’s blood. She let out a faint whimper as she held them tenderly then squeezed. She rubbed silt on his hands until the red of the clay and the blood of Abel were indiscernible. Eve dipped his hands in the water and left them there, the water running them over, making them clean.
“My boy, my boy,” she whispered as she brought his head to her breast, kissing the crown of his head, as she had thousands of times before. Cain wanted to cry, to sob, and keen, and beg his mother for forgiveness, but he wished to bring her no more pain.
“He’s cursed you, then?” she placed a cool finger under Cain’s chin and raised his eyes to meet hers.
Eve’s eyes were green, vivid as the Garden they had once looked upon, and just as remote and lost.
“Yes,” he answered, gripping the Mark.
“Not Lucifer, has God cursed you?”
“He-he’s taken my brother to a place of peace,” was all Cain could say.
They both heard the rustle of wings and felt the presence of Lucifer, but neither turned to the accursed.
Eve kissed him.
“You are the first born of woman,” she kissed him again, “you are the first creation outside of what God himself set to Earth. That is why Lucifer desired you, why God let him corrupt you.”
Lucifer placed a hand upon Cain’s shoulder and the Mark pulsed, waking in Cain the brutal, petty, wicked emotions and desires of Man. Yet his mother held tighter to his hand.
“My love for you is beyond what I feel for Adam, or God, the ones I was created to love and serve,” she said, her voice rising.
Lucifer dragged Cain from the river bank as Eve called after the fallen angel, “You should tremble, Lucifer, if your father does not yet fear our power, he will!!”
The fabric of space itself opened and hell swallowed them both. Cain’s last human memory was of his mother, hair blowing wildly in the wind, the blood of her son staining her skin.
In the present two sets of remains had already been piled beside him. Cain bent low and gathered silt from the bank. As the sun rose and Dean continued his grisly work, Cain looked upon his clay-stained hands and smiled.