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As the summer went on, they began to slip into routines. Early on Peter Stone brought Jesse, his adopted daughter with Sonny Carisi, to Buckwheat Hollow Lodge to play with Willy as he first helped John Winchester and his sons fix the roof of the Winchester Homestead, then helped Fox Mulder and John Doggett lay out the foundations of the expansion of the Lodge. He even spent a couple of days at Frohike’s farm helping the Lone Gunmen finish their roof. In return they all descended on Sheriff Scott Shoup’s place, the Sheriff’s Station, to help build raised garden beds after Ernie Volk finished putting up a woven wire fence—and an enclosed chicken yard next to the gate in the back of the fence.
Peter just shook his head as they unloaded lumber from the back of one truck to build a henhouse in the spacious yard. “I like coming up to the Lodge to get eggs,” he protested as the two Johns began laying out the frame Walter Skinner cut out for them.
“And we like having you,” Fox Mulder told him. “But two dozen eggs aren’t even lasting you five days—and I have nearly forty hens. Now where do you want your first bed and how big do you want it?”
Peter threw up his hands and showed Fox the diagram of the garden he had drawn up, indicating the exact placement and dimensions of every bed. He already had ten potato towers up, five on each side, starting in the back corners, and sunchokes in their permanent beds on the outside of the fence, flanking the front gates. The matching raised beds on the inside of the woven wire fence held onions.
In a few minutes Fox and Blair Sandberg had cut out the first raised bed box and Peter and Jim Ellison screwed it together. Next, Dean Winchester and Castiel cut up the brush they had collected and threw it into the bottom of the bed with some of the weeds they had taken off the Winchester access road. Old, soiled bedding from the Lodge’s manure pile went on top with a couple of shovelfuls of sifted compost. Phillip and Alex sifted the first bin of compost with Jesse and Willy, dumping the worms and debris left over in the third bin to break down the weeds, paper and kitchen garbage.
All afternoon they worked, John Winchester and his son Sam using their height to put chicken wire over the top of the chicken run, then spreading a tarp over it to give the chickens some shade. A new feeder and waterer went in after they were done, then they turned loose the eight hens with their rooster. And one by one the garden beds took shape, building a backyard oasis and food supply.
“You didn’t have to do this,” Peter told Fox and Walter Skinner as he got a drink of water. “I could have done this myself.”
“How long would it take you? A month?” Fox answered mildly. “You’re getting your garden in late as it is. Another month on some of this and you won’t have any crop, let alone enough to get through the winter.”
“Valid point,” Peter conceded. “Hey, can we dig up a bed on the other side of the chicken coop? Something real shallow where I can plant grain and a few peas and beans for the chickens to peck at?”
“Smart idea,” Fox approved. “I never got around to doing that for my girls. Just never had the time.”
“You were running a homestead by yourself until we showed up,” Walter reminded him. “You can’t think of everything. I’m impressed by how much you did get done.”
“Comes from being an anal-retentive asshole,” Fox shot back, smiling at Jesse and Willy scooping worms into a bucket as they ‘helped’ Phillip and Alex.
Walter laughed. “Only in the Bureau rumor mill. By the way, Peter, where did you get that rocking horse?” and he gestured towards the deck.
“Scott brought it home from his mother’s,” Peter answered. “His grandfather made it.” He swallowed hard. “Makes me wish I knew my grandparents.” Peter had no living family, having lost his mother very young, then his only sibling to mental illness when he was in his teens, and most recently his father to cancer. The only family he could claim was Jesse, Sonny and now Scott Shoup.
“Hey, guys, Cas and I are going after another load of used bedding and some of brush from logging,” Dean called. “We’re out of both.”
Fox waved at them and set his glass down. “Well, at least we’re halfway done.”
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Stringfellow Hawke and Caitlin O’Shaughnessy found it easy to slip into Mansfield on the sturdy trailbikes they had brought with them. The college town was busy with no sign of the Alien invasion going on in other parts of the world—until you noticed the obvious police presence and all the store signs encouraging barter. Currency was accepted everywhere but it seemed like barter was preferred for the locals. Caitlin and String stopped at a local diner for handmade pastries and coffee and String nearly spit out his first sip. “God, what is this stuff?” he demanded, eying his cup dubiously.
Caitlin set her cup down and shoved it away. “It tastes like roasted chicory root. It used to be ground with coffee beans all over Texas to make the coffee go farther.”
“No wonder older Texans are ornery cusses.”
“Mama wouldn’t have it in the house.” She stirred sugar and cream into her cup, then took a sip. “At least now I can drink it.” And she stirred in more sugar.
“Problems?” the pretty black waitress asked, checking on them.
“We didn’t expect the chicory,” Hawke admitted.
“Coffee’s been in short supply, so we’ve been mixing it fifty/fifty with chicory,” she told them.
Hawke shoved his cup towards her. “This tastes like there’s no coffee in it.”
She sniffed it, then took a cautious sip. “You’re right. Just let me take these and I’ll fix it.” And she headed back to the kitchen with their cups.
“Don’t you find it strange that this place seems almost untouched?” Caitlin asked. “They even have internet connections.”
Hawke had noticed the students working on laptops when they first came in but was more interested in the very visible sheriff’s deputies that came and went from the Municipal Building across the street. One of them in a well pressed uniform and a greying blond mustache looked very familiar… He took off his sunglasses to look at some papers an equally blond plainclothes deputy showed him and Hawke knew he was right; his old Army buddy, Scott Shoup was the county sheriff. Now if Scott was still as honest as he had been in the service… Hawke tucked a folded up fifty-dollar bill under the edge of his plate as he got up, Caitlin following.
They crossed the street (no one seemed to mind jaywalkers) and entered the Municipal Building through the door everyone used, finding a waiting area with a receptionist in uniform behind bulletproof glass. Three closed doors led away from the reception area, marked County Sheriff and Municipal Court, Town Offices and Public Comfort Stations.
Hawke hung back his dark amber shooting glasses firmly in place as Caitlin slapped down her Federal Marshal’s badge as she addressed the receptionist. “Deputy Marshal Caitlin O’Shaughnessy and partner to see Sheriff Scott Shoup.”
The receptionist barely glanced at Caitlin’s badge as he handed her the sign in log. “If you’ll just sign here, please.” Then he hit a switch under his desk and the door to the County Sheriff’s Office clicked open. Caitlin signed the logbook ‘DM Caitlin O’Shaughnessy and partner’ as Hawke pulled the door all the way open, then followed Caitlin through it. On the other side was a large room with several partner desks populated by uniformed deputies. Two doors at the back of the room led to Interrogation/Holding and the Municipal Court. Between them were two glass fronted offices, one holding the busy plainclothes deputy, the other Scott Shoup.
Hawke rapped on the frame of the open door as he escorted Caitlin into the office, then closed the door behind them. Scott laughed as he came around the desk, engulfing Hawke in a heartfelt hug.
“God, but it’s good to see you again, String,” he said as he took his seat behind the desk. “I thought…things…had you tied to California.”
“Things change,” Hawke answered quietly as he took one of the two visitor’s chairs. “What’s the situation with Uncle David’s place?”
“David Brenner was three years behind on his taxes when he died but former FBI agent Fox Mulder paid them off ahead of the tax auction which made him the owner though he insisted on keeping it in your uncle’s name. Because of that a lot of people think he’s the estranged nephew Stringfellow Hawke.”
“Is there a least some resemblance?” Caitlin wanted to know.
“Enough to fit a basic description,” Scott admitted. “Fox is tall and slender though he’s put on muscle these last two years, but he’s dark haired with hazel eyes.” He pulled a flyer out of a drawer. “Thing is Mulder’s in hiding from both the Alien Greys and the Military. We think the Greys want him as one of their first successful hybrids—they’re also after two other chimeras that are staying with him—while the Military is also after UNCLE agent Alexi Krychek. They want both Fox and Sasha for their knowledge of the Alien Greys and their interactions with a group known as the Consortium. Sasha was working undercover in the Consortium while Fox was investigating it from the outside. The big irony is that Fox sent a complete report on his findings to the Military weeks ago.”
Hawke studied the flyer that simply stated that they were wanted for questioning. Fox Mulder was a handsome man with an impressive deadpan face in the picture that had to be from his FBI id; Alexi Krychek was visibly younger with features that slanted towards pretty that would make most Intelligence agencies assign him ‘honeypot’ missions. Hawke passed the flyer to Caitlin as he studied his old friend. “And why isn’t Krychek with UNCLE? I know they have a base in the area.”
“That’s Sasha’s story to tell,” Scott answered as he wrote a quick note. “Look, the Buckwheat Hollow Lodge enclave is at my place helping Peter Stone set up our garden. I can be a lot more candid there. It’s the first place on Rural Route 15, the Buckwheat Hollow Road that ends at your uncle’s place. I’ve got a hundred acres at the bottom of the canyon, the rest was your uncle’s,” and he handed Hawke the folded note. “Sonny and I will be there in about an hour.”
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They found Scott’s place fairly quickly, noting the radio tower, the helicopter and the large number of vehicles, all trucks, parked around them as they shut off the bikes.
“Must be the entire enclave,” Hawke guessed as they walked to the right-hand side gate to the back yard.
Caitlin shook her head. “No female voices,” she answered, and Hawke’s keen hearing agreed with her. A subtle tension filled him as they closed the gate behind them and a tall man across the yard straightened up, staring at them. A much shorter man with long dark curly hair touched his elbow and the tall stranger broke his stare to talk to him.
“String,” Caitlin touched his arm.
“Remember how Whitby bothered me with how wrong he felt? Well, I’m looking at a man who feels a lot like Whitby—only he doesn’t feel wrong.”
More men were noticing them, and a tall blond spoke quietly to the little boy and girl before he joined Fox Mulder. But the tall man who had stared at Hawke so intently was now in front of them, his tone a challenge as he demanded: “Who are you?”
“Stringfellow Hawke,” both Hawke and Mulder answered, enjoying the double takes they were getting.
Mulder continued: “From the way Jim’s acting, I think Stringfellow might be a Sentinel. Do you have extremely acute sight and hearing?” he asked Hawke.
“Michael always teases me that I have better hearing than a snooper mike,” Hawke smiled back. “And the Army ranked my sight at 20/200 only because that’s as high as the scale goes.” He frowned for a minute. “I don’t know if this counts, but I can smell if you’ve handled C-4 in the last five days even if you’ve showered, taste different chemicals in the air, and anything but natural fabrics and absolutely pure cleaners make me itch ‘til I scratch myself raw.” Caitlin nodded; Hawke couldn’t even use a laundromat because of the cleaner residue in the machines.
“Why don’t you feel like Alex Barnes?” the big man demanded, aggravated. “Obviously you’re an active Sentinel but I don’t want to drive you away; I want you near.”
“Jim, if I may point out a few things Blair and I have discussed,” Mulder said, drawing the big man’s attention. “Alex Barnes was a mentally ill, female Sentinel; she would not feel the same as a mentally stable male Sentinel. From what Blair described to me of her behavior, Alex Barnes seemed to be a sociopath afflicted with early onset dementia that may have come from physical trauma and possibly borderline schizophrenic.”
“But I was attracted to her even when I knew something was wrong with her!”
“Pheromones,” Hawke told him calmly. “I don’t know if you’re that sensitive, but I can smell just where a woman is in her cycle by the pheromones she’s giving off. If this Alex Barnes was near or in the most fertile part of her cycle her pheromones would have been high, making you as a male Sentinel extremely attracted to her.”
“And both Inspector Connor and Simon’s secretary Rhonda had abnormal pheromone profiles,” Blair added. “Megan was taking artificial hormones because she was born without ovaries, and Rhonda had a complete hysterectomy in her twenties.” He reached up to squeeze Jim’s shoulder. “Alex’s normal pheromone profile hit you hard, big guy.”
“Well, at least now I know why I reacted the way that I did,” Jim ran one hand through his dark hair. “And, Hawke, I’m sorry.”
“De nada,” Hawke answered, extending his hand. “The only other person I’ve run into that’s felt like you was a mercenary named Keenan Whitby. The man was a borderline psychopath; I stayed away from him as much as I could. And it’s definitely WAS; Whitby was on the wrong side of a war in Africa and ended up roasted alive. There’s a video of what happened to him; I’ve seen it.”
“None of which explains what you’re doing here,” the tall blond put in from where he stood beside Mulder.
“Scott Shoup sent me here,” Hawke told him, taking Scott’s note out of his pocket and handing it to Mulder. “He said we could be candid here.”
Mulder read the note, then pocketed it. “Scott says it’s time to tell all the secrets and he’ll be here soon with Sonny.”
“Sonny’s still riding that motorcycle,” the tall blond said as he led them up on the deck, “so he’s going to be home ahead of Scott. I’m Peter Stone and this little lady is my adopted daughter, Jesse. Before the Alien Greys turned me and Sonny into chimeras, I was an ADA in New York City and Sonny was a detective with the NYPD.”
“I’m Fox Mulder, the legal owner of David Brenner’s property and former head of the FBI’s X-files division. Right now, I’m hiding from both the Alien Greys and the US military. Apparently, the Greys want me because I’m one of their first successful hybrid breeders and the military or parties in the government who are using the military want me for what I know about the aliens and the consortium of humans who were working with them.”
Hawke nodded. “Obviously I’m Stringfellow Hawke, trained combat pilot, stunt pilot and ariel photographer for Santini Air out of Van Nyes Airfield. And I’ve done contract work for the Federal Intelligence and Reconnaissance Mandate.”
“I’m Deputy Federal Marshal Caitlin O’Shaughnessy, on indefinite unpaid leave from the Federal Marshal’s Service. I work with String at Santini Air and as his copilot on FIRM missions.” Her hand went up to her right ear, and she gave Hawke an exasperated look. “Does Michael always get this discombobulated when you talk to people?”
“Only when it involves operational security,” Hawke told her laconically. “I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet that he’s all that’s left of the FIRM’s command level; that Zeus kept him from going to Washington DC for a reason. That Zeus wanted the one left in charge to be a compassionate pragmatist, not a hardliner.”
Caitlin smiled at him. “That’s our Michael.”
Hawke smiled back at her, then his attention shifted to the voice in his ear. “I meant for you to hear that!” He shook his head in exasperation. “People, be prepared to be invaded by one upset FIRM deputy director accompanied by his calm assistant, an exuberant Italian American and my Amerasian nephew who’s trying to get them calmed down and won’t let anyone but Marella near the controls. And they’re flying in.”
It wasn’t long before the HC-130 transport landed beside Scott’s helicopter and four distinct individuals came to meet them followed by a young redbone coon hound. The tall greying blond with a limp greeted Hawke with a kiss and a scolding for revealing government secrets. The older Italian American (he just couldn’t be called elderly) enveloped Caitlin in an exuberant hug then introduced himself to everyone. Hawke pulled the younger exotically Asian man into a firm hug as Caitlin and the apparently quadroon woman greeted each other. The two women reminded them of Dana Scully and Monica Reyes: women with a strong friendship that turned sexual whenever they needed it. Like the Buckwheat Hollow Lodge enclave, like the Sheriff’s Station crew, there was a strong base of unconditional love.
By the time Sonny and Scott arrived all the introductions were done, and Jesse and Willy were showing ‘Grandpa Dom’ around the garden and introducing him to the chickens.
“I just hope they don’t expect him to sit in a corner and tell Stories,” Hawke confessed from where he sat on the arm of the recliner they had dragged out on the deck so Michael could put up his bad leg. “Dom’s just too active.”
“So’s Grandma Maggie, William’s maternal grandmother,” Mulder told him. “They’re used to active grandparents.” He grinned wickedly. “Our Wee Willy is asking his mother and me if she’s going to marry ‘Big John’.”
“I’ll marry Maggie in a heartbeat if that’s what she wants,” John Winchester confessed, blushing. “I…She…she makes me feel like I did when Mary was alive.”
“I like to think that Margaret Scully must have been a lot like Mom,” Sam confessed. “With one big difference: according to Dad and Dean, Mom couldn’t cook.”
“She made the best cookies and pasties but that was it,” John added. “We ate a lot of takeout.”
“Margaret’s a great cook,” Dean agreed eagerly. “I learn something new from her every day.”
“Which doesn’t explain why the six of you traveled across the country to get here,” Scott interjected and Michael sighed heavily.
“For all intents and purposes, I’m all that’s left of the senior FIRM hierarchy,” he confessed. ‘There are a lot of field agents worldwide assisting local authorities but I’m the only one left to run it. Everyone else was on the Hill when the aliens glassed Washington. I’m getting reports from our field agents through our hidden, dedicated Web ring when I can get an internet connection, but I’d really like to contact the UNCLE through secure channels.”
The young Ukrainian called Sasha stepped back into the group as he collapsed down his silver pen communicator. “You have an appointment tomorrow morning at ten with Mr. Alexander Waverly, the head of UNCLE North America, Archangel.”
Michael exchanged glances with Hawke. He hadn’t told them his codename but the young UNCLE agent’s use of it meant that someone in UNCLE recognized his name. “Thank you, Agent?”
“Alexi Krychek,” he answered as he perched on the arm of Walter Skinner’s Adirondak chair. “My friends call me Sasha.”
“But working with UNCLE is only part of the reason we came this far.” He gripped Hawke’s hand hard as Caitlin and LeVan flanked the younger man and Marella moved to Michael’s other side. “Roughly three months ago, String was kidnapped from his remote cabin near the Sequoya National Forest and handed off to the Alien Greys for their breeding program. Now I might have dismissed this as coincidence, EXCEPT for String being the only pilot of record still alive for the AirWolf project.”
“To put it bluntly,” Hawke began, “AirWolf is a Mach 1+ attack helicopter that can kick butt. Think of the best fighter jet you’ve ever heard of with the ability to maneuver like a helicopter in near ground level terrain and you get the idea.”
“There’s only one and, for a variety of reasons, String had physical custody of her. He’s been flying her for the FIRM on missions of nation concern for about ten years now.” Michael drew in a deep breath. “When he was kidnapped, Caitlin and Dom moved her to a new location String knew nothing about. After we rescued him and the Alien Greys went public, we decided to move her permanently to a highly secure location and String suggested his uncle’s property. We hope we can find a remote cave to hide her, but we’ll probably have to do a lot of blasting to make it big enough.”
“Or you could join us at the Lodge and use the big cave we found as a hanger,” Mulder told them. “When we opened up a new cave to expand our pantry storage, we actually found three caves that were connected to each other. The only one with an opening to the outside may be big enough to use as a hanger.” And he looked at Jim Ellison.
“Blair and I measured it last week,” Ellison added. “It’s fifty feet wide at the narrowest point and the ceiling’s between thirty-five and forty-five feet high in most places. The center goes up at least fifty feet though it goes down to twenty-five along the back wall. Open up the rock face and you should have a decent hanger.”
“The next cave can be turned into four decent sized rooms,” John Winchester added. “It’s where my family stayed while we fixed the roof of the Homestead so there’s already four queen size beds in there.”
Michael and Hawke looked at each other. “Only drawback I can see is where do we get hanger doors,” Hawke said quietly. “I want doors I can lock.”
“If there’s a local airport, we might be able to salvage some there,” Caitlin pointed out.
“Get out of here ya mangy mutts!” Dom yelled as the chickens squawked and raced for their coop, the rooster herding his girls to safety. Willy and Jesse were running hand in hand for the adults as Dom faced down a ragged group of feral dogs, a small cougar and the redbone bracketing him. Instantly, the chimeras shifted, moving to back Dom.
But the dog pack didn’t back down. The pitbull in front went for Dominic Santini only for an Apache wolf dog to go for its throat. Sonny and Peter attacked from the left, Castiel and Dean attacked from the right while Mulder and Hawke went straight down the middle and Sasha and Phillip flanked Dom, protecting the gate. John and Sam Winchester ran for John’s truck but by the time they got back with shotguns it was all over.
Working together the chimeras dragged the ten dogs out into the field, lining them up before they switched back.
“That is not normal behavior for feral dogs,” Hawke said flatly as Mulder shuddered.
“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “Either they were starving or they were infected with something.”
Krychek was on his communicator, arranging for a medical team to collect the bodies for testing. One way or another, they would soon know what was wrong.
“Personally, I think they were starving; they’re nothing but skin and bones,” Sonny told them as he held Peter close. They had already checked, and the kids were safe in the house with Caitlin and LeVan with Michael and Marella on the deck.
“Umm, guys, I think these escaped from a lab somewhere,” Blair said, showing them the silver-colored port for a computer interface in the back of the pit bull’s skull. “They all have these.”
“Lab animals that never learned to hunt,” John Doggett guessed, holding Mulder close. “No wonder they’re starving.”
Meanwhile the little cougar had jumped the gate, then headed for the deck, plopping down in front of where LeVan stood on the other side of the French doors to begin licking her feet.
“That is not a puma,” John Winchester stated flatly.
“No, she’s a Guardian,” Castiel answered absently as Pretty and Sparkle joined her on the deck, Sparkle curling around her neck as Pretty began licking her battered paws. “I think she might be your nephew’s,” he added, looking at Hawke. “And I think she’s your Guardian,” as a golden eagle landed on the edge of the chicken run.
Hawke muttered something in Apache as he walked up to the eagle who had listened to his cello for years. She cawed softly as he ruffled her plumage, then began preening his hair.
By the time UNCLE Medical arrived in Level One haz-mat suits to pick up the bodies everyone who had contact with the bodies had taken a shower and changed their clothes. Sonny threw the possibly contaminated clothing in the washer so everyone could take their own clothes home.
Meanwhile the garden building went on with Mulder and Blair cutting the hardwood lumber and Jim Ellison and Stringfellow Hawke building the framework for the beds as they discussed their lives as sentinels. The Winchesters and Castiel cut up the brush from the treetops, gathering firewood for the wood rack by the deck as they went. Skinner and Doggett layered used bedding over the brush in the bottom of the beds as Sasha and Phillip sifted compost, adding shovelfuls to the nearly full beds. Sonny finished the beds with bags of topsoil from the Agway that Scott had picked up that afternoon before coming home. Dom kept the kids occupied as Marella, Caitlin and LeVan ferried the seedlings to Peter to plant. They finished the beds just as Yves’s truck and Margaret’s minivan arrived.
“We’ve got chicken!” Langley yelled as they pulled coolers of barbequed chicken quarters they had found frozen on their last salvage run out of the back of the truck along with a long folding table that was soon covered with cold salads and other barbeque dishes. By combining three households they had plates, silverware and glasses for everyone.
Michael apologized to the Lone Gunmen and the ladies for not rising when Mulder brought them over to be introduced, gesturing to the cougar Guardian on his lap and the eagle Guardian on the back of his chair. Every time he moved to get up one of them would take a swipe at him. Langley quickly hurried off trying to keep the giggles inside as Michael sighed. “Might as well laugh,” he said philosophically. “They’re not going anywhere.”
“Just how bad is your knee?” Dana asked, examining his injured leg as much as his jeans and the brace he wore over the denim would allow.
“Very bad; I almost lost it,” Michael remembered. “Moffit sent a barrage of Sidewinder and Hellfire missiles into our testing facility at Redd Star One then shot up the rubble just for the hell of it. We lost a third of our people outright and two of the three Senators attending the test.”
“I thought the plane accident that killed John Davis and Connor Quinlan was suspicious,” Byers admitted. “But we couldn’t find anything that pointed to an assassination—and David McKensie lived.”
“He’s spent his life in a wheelchair because I ignored my instincts,” Michael answered grimly. “I never made that mistake again. And my Hawke made sure Moffett never left Libya.”
LeVan and his uncle set plates of deboned chicken on the deck behind Michael’s chair, and the two Guardians abandoned their posts for the food.
“Thank God!” Michael wasted no time getting out of the recliner and heading inside. “They wouldn’t let me have a potty break!” And Hawke and his nephew burst out laughing.
“They may be our Guardians—but they’re going to mother hen Uncle Michael to death!” LeVan leaned his head against his taller uncle’s shoulder, still laughing.
“Michael would let them too,” Hawke agreed, holding his only remaining blood kin close. For the first time since his kidnapping, everything felt right.
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Peter sighed contentedly as he lay back on the bed. It had been a good day, the garden beds were built, most of them planted, with a good picnic supper to round everything off. Hell, he’d even found two eggs when he shut the chickens in the coop when he hadn’t expected any for a few days.
Sonny and Scott had a long rambling talk with Caitlin O’Shaughassy about law enforcement, including how a Deputy Marshal stationed in Texas met a California based fighter pilot in the first place. Caitlin brought up the lax security in the waiting room in the Municipal Building, specifically that the guard hadn’t checked her credentials or Hawke’s ID at all and let her sign him in without identifying him. Scott agreed that this deputy needed to come off the front desk rotation; the problem was where did they put him? He refused to work as cell security and couldn’t seem to retain enough procedure and law to ride patrol by himself.
“Didn’t you tell me Joe Escobar’s been shaky since he got shot just after Christmas?” Sonny looked at Scott earnestly. “Well, make him Jimmy Reardan’s senior partner and put them on long patrol. That gives Joe the backup he needs and Jimmy’s good at following another officer’s lead.”
“And Joe’s the only other experienced deputy I have that’s ever worked with a partner,” Scott agreed with a grin. “Jimmy has got himself a training officer.”
Now Sonny closed the door of Jesse’s room behind him and lay down on his side of the bed, closer to the hall door. “She fell asleep halfway through telling me what she and Willy will be doing the next time he comes over. Seems they plan on helping you put up trellises?”
“For cucumbers and peas,” Peter answered, rolling to face him. “Seems we have both Sugar Snap and Snow edible pod peas, so I planted both. And plenty of heirloom pickling cucumbers, lemon cucumbers and Early Whites. I didn’t bother with slicing cucumbers this year though I may plant a tub of them to grow over this winter.”
“With all the miniature fruit trees, we may not have room.”
“Well, first off everything but the citrus, fig and olive trees are dwarfs adapted to this climate; I plan on planting them outside the fence to form a windbreak about four to five feet out. I thought about putting in grapes but none of us really eat them, so…” Peter shrugged. “I think I saw wild grape vines in those trees up the road; they should be enough for us unless they’re incredibly sour.”
“John Winchester’s planting grapes later this summer and he’s looking into how to build a still,” Sonny held one of Peter’s hands in his. “He plans on experimenting with making wine, beer and distilled spirits over the winter. Dean wants to help him while Castiel and Jessica are looking into beekeeping. I guess Sam just wants to go through the Mansfield University Archives. They still haven’t found Professor Brenner’s still.”
“The professor may have dismantled it,” Peter pointed out.
“So far they haven’t found anything that looks like part of a still,” Sonny answered. “My money’s on it being hidden somewhere.” He yawned and settled more firmly into the mattress. “Love you. Let’s go to sleep.”
“Love you too,” Peter admitted, resting his head on Sonny’s shoulder as he closed his eyes.
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“Well, it’s certainly big enough,” Dominic Santini commented as he looked around the cave by the light of a Coleman lantern.
“You’re putting in a windmill, you said,” Caitlin O’Shaughnessy asked Mulder as she studied the ceiling.
“Yeah, the power cables are already laid and a temporary converter room set up,” Mulder explained. “As soon as we get the shell of the expansion up, we’re making it a permanent room off the greenhouse, between the Lodge and the outdoor kitchen. We’re just waiting on the concrete to cure thoroughly so the base can take the vibration of the working windmill.” He grinned at Caitlin. “UNCLE already has their satellite dish up on the other half of the base so soon.”
“Nine days according to Jim Ellison,” Stringfellow Hawke told them as he slipped between the sheet of metal roofing blocking the cave’s outside entrance and the rock face. “He’s walking back to the Lodge instead of trying to squeeze back through here. We’re about a quarter mile out from the Lodge with a big clearing right in front of this entrance. Looks like it might have been cleared off by burning sometime in the past, taking off any trees. Only reason the trees haven’t taken it back is the soil’s shallow; you hit bedrock about six inches down. A little judicious trimming and we can land the Lady there easily.”
“Put up a couple of high intensity lights and some task lighting near the walls and we’re in business,” Dom agreed as he joined them and William came toddling in carrying a tote bag of water bottles Bell right behind him. “Hey, little man, what ya got there?”
“Mommy sent,” he answered, pulling out bottles of water.
“You have a very smart Mommy,” Hawke told him, accepting one of the bottles. “Air in these caves is dry, almost desert dry.”
“I’m getting a tabletop fountain,” Caitlin declared.
“That would help,” Hawke conceded. “A full bath would help more.”
“We’ll see how much we can tweak the plans.” Mulder herded them ahead of him, closing and locking the steel-cored door the Winchesters had put in between the big ‘hanger’ cavern and the rest of the cave complex. Hawke grabbed his cello case and folding stool on his way through. He hadn’t played since leaving California; now he needed to.
Michael was in one of the chairs by the fireplace, his bad leg resting on a footstool, LeVan’s Guardian cougar on his lap. LeVan was sitting on a pillow by Michael’s knees, keeping an eye on the drowsy Archangel. Marella was in the kitchen, helping Magaret Scully fill jars with rhubarb jam. Dom sat down in the rocking chair with William on his lap and started telling the little boy stories while Caitlin joined the discussion at the kitchen table.
Hawke went outside, nodding to Sasha and Phillip who were talking quietly, a box of tissues between them on the porch swing. Using the wooden walkway over the just poured concrete, he walked out into the graveled turn around, sat down, and took out his cello. After checking the tuning, he began playing scales, then simple pieces, losing himself in the music.
“All I’m saying is that I agree with Dana,” John Doggett said as they poured over the initial floor plan. “Phillip doesn’t need to be climbing steps, especially with twins. If we move this wall another eight feet towards the front, that gives Phillip a decent sized room for him and the twins, while still keeping the master bedroom big enough for the four of us and William.”
“William doesn’t need a room for a least a year yet,” Dana agreed and Doggett used a pink highlighter to mark the new wall. “Also, can we add a shower to that half bath? It’ll make getting cleaned up easier for everyone.”
“String thinks having a full bath near our rooms in the caves will help with the dry air,” Caitlin told them and Skinner pulled out the diagram of the cave system.
“I don’t see how we can,” Skinner muttered peering at the diagram. “There’s just no room.”
“Assuming we divide this cave in half with a straight corridor between the two doors, we end up with a rough half-moon on one side and a longer almost teardrop on the other,” Mulder pointed out, drawing in the corridor with a pink highlighter. “It’s almost enough for three decent sized rooms.” He divided the teardrop into thirds, marking a line back from the corridor to the cave wall every 18 feet, giving them two good sized rooms and a space that was almost triangular. “We’ll have to ask Sasha if some judicious blasting can make this more rectangular, but it looks like we might be able to squeeze in three rooms. IF Sasha can blast this space bigger.”
“We really do need three bathrooms,” Monica agreed and started digging for the pantry cave diagram. “Now, we have room along this wall for six freezers—five uprights and the chest freezer we already have. We just need three more uprights. We’ve put shelving units along all the other walls and a lot of them have tall bottom shelves. I think we should reserve those bottom shelves for bins of potatoes, onions, winter squash and any other produce we can store as is.”
“We already have totes of flour, oil, sugar, rice, other staples on some of those bottom shelves, Mon,” Doggett told her.
‘And we can store produce in plastic crates under the mushroom beds,” Mulder added. “That’s what I did.”
Monica hung her head. “I forgot about the mushroom cave.”
“That’s good that you got it cause String doesn’t eat red meat, pork or poultry,” Caitlin told them. “When I asked, the only thing he said was that the smell put him off.”
“Burning human flesh smells a lot like cooking meat or poultry,” Skinner said quietly. “If Hawke served in the Indochine Wars, he’s been exposed to villages and military units hit by napalm. In fact, he probably had more exposure than I did. Some of the guys in my squad wondered if they were inhuman because that smell made their mouths water.”
“I’ve had that reaction at fire scenes when there’s bodies,” Caitlin told him. “Puts me off meat for about a week. I just never connected it to String being semi vegetarian. He does eat fish and other seafood and processed meats like salami and pepperoni.”
“Explains why there wasn’t chicken on his plate at the picnic,” Dana said quietly. “From what I saw of what he does eat, he has protein in his diet so I’m not worried about him.”
@@@@@@@@@@
Derek Rayne poured Rachel Corrigan a mug of mint tea, wondering just how to ask his colleague a possibly sensitive question. Earlier, Rachel’s daughter Katherine had asked Nick Boyle to cut her hair short. Now it was nearly as short as Nick’s and shorter than Derek’s. And then there were her clothing choices for the past year…
“You never told me why you moved Kat to St. Katherine’s instead of keeping her at Immaculate Heart?” he finally said.
“School uniforms, believe it or not,” Rachel answered, blowing on her tea. “Immaculate Heart is Dominican run and very strict about how its students dress and behave. Kat wanted to wear the pants version of the school uniform, so I bought her a couple but every time she wore pants, the principal called me to come pick her up because she was ‘inappropriately dressed’.” She drank a bit of tea. “The second time I picked her up I asked how she was inappropriately dressed since she was wearing the school uniform and he started ranting about women aping men and usurping a man’s God given place. The gist of it was that she—and I—were wearing pants while ‘decent, God-fearing’ women didn’t. St Katherine’s has three versions of their school uniform: one with a black skirt, one with a plaid kilt, and one with khaki pants and they don’t care which version you wear as long as you wear one.” Her smile turned bittersweet. “I’ve seen girls wearing all three versions and wearing leggings with the skirts and kilts during the winter. And plenty of boys wear the kilt.”
“Still, her fashion choices seem a bit…butch.”
“I know, Derek, but it’s Kat’s body and her choices,” Rachel accepted more tea. “She’s not sure if she wants to be a boy or if she just wants to feel more powerful. I wouldn’t agree to hormone blockers for her, not until she’s eighteen and is certain. And she agreed to that. She has time now to explore her options.”
“And hormone replacement therapy may never be an option for her,” Derek warned. “It all depends on how well we recover as a country.” He squeezed her hand hard. “I just pray we can live with our coming brave new world—if there is one.”
The thunderstorm blew out of the West with no warning, the ice-edged rain driven through their tents forcing them to take shelter in the Land Rovers. Alexandra Moreau wondered how the rest of them were doing as she curled up in her husband’s embrace. That in turn made her wonder if this storm was natural or if preternatural forces were making it worse…
Which in turn reminded her of something young Kat had asked her after they stopped for the night.
“Derek, Kat asked me a question that I told her to ask her mother, but she said she didn’t dare because Rachel would pitch a fit.” She looked up at her husband. “Kat wanted to know if there was any way to stop her from having a period.”
“Rachel and I were discussing Kat’s turn towards butch clothing. Rachel has no objections to the way Kat dresses but she’s forbidden hormone blockers until she’s eighteen and sure she wants to go that route. The only other ways I know of are removal of the ovaries, which is permanent, and Depo Provera shots which would give her a light period every three months.”
“I think Kat can live with a light period every three months,” Alex smiled. “And I agree with not putting her on hormone therapy until she’s older. At this age hormone blockers or HRT can permanently mess up your body. Rachel has had parents come to her for gender transition therapy, complete with hormones for kids as young as SIX, they were that sure their child was born in the wrong body. She won’t give hormone therapy to minors for that reason and it’s cost her clients.”
“I remember Danny,” Derek answered quietly, remembering the fragile looking teenager Rachel had briefly housed at Angel Island during a custody dispute between his parents. Danny had died suddenly of HRT induced heart failure and Danny’s mother sued Rachel for taking her child off HRT. The woman lost and was now being investigated for child abuse. Or had been until the aliens invaded. “Rachel will make sure Kat’s safe until Kat’s sure.”
@@@@@@
Azrael screamed as he spiraled up through the air, leaving his latest meat suit behind. Thrice damn those blighted aliens! He had only gathered half of his ‘special kids’, the babies he had tainted with his blood at six months of age when the Alien Greys staged their invasion and now, he couldn’t find the rest of them! Even his personal favorite, Sammy Winchester, usually so easy to spot, had disappeared to his senses.
He screamed again, dropping tainted cattle from Montana to Texas, his rage strengthening the brutal storm front moving across the country. Lucifer, but he wanted to rend some of the Greys limb from limb! And there was a nice little pocket of them in and around what humans called the Twin Tiers, the area where North Central Pennsylvania met New York state. Yeah, a little Zen mutilation was just what he needed…
@@@@@@@
The brutal storm had blown up overnight, the driving sleet making it impossible to do anything outdoors. Mulder, Skinner and Doggett had braved the storm to take care of the animals, giving them hay in place of the grass and clover they had been eating. And moved the chicken feeders into the coop with the waterers, leaving the coop shut up. The eggs were nestled in tea towels in a covered bucket for the trip to the house. Even with rain suits, all three men were soaked before they reached the barn. And frozen by the time they got back to the house. Fortunately, Sasha had a fire going in the fireplace and the cookstove by the time they got back, driving away the damp chill in the air.
Michael was grateful that Hawke had thought to move AirWolf to a nearby grove anchoring her to the ground with long cable tie anchors screwed in tight and deep while also tying her to several of the sturdy maples in the grove. If the winds got much higher, she would have flipped over where she had sat in the shade of a group of hemlocks. Now she was better protected from both the ravages of nature and accidental discovery. Michael didn’t even think of how right it felt that she was close by; he just knew that when she was safe, when all of them were, he felt content and settled.
At the moment, he was using Sasha's communicator to talk to Alexander Waverly who accepted his apology for being unable to make his appointment. “Bad weather can derail even the most flexible plans,” he told Michael. “What exactly do you wish to discuss with me?”
“I’d like to form a mutual assistance pact,” Michael admitted. “A sharing of intelligence, FIRM agents assisting UNCLE agents and vice versa, AirWolf being deployed on matters of mutual concern. Though global in operations, the FIRM’s always been American oriented. We can’t be now; our planet is at stake. And working as an adjunct to UNCLE is the best way to save our world.”
“Normally I wouldn’t consider this,” Mr. Waverly admitted quietly. “However, FIRM operations have always slanted globally from releasing information worldwide on developing bioweapons to assisting at risk villages on the local level. The FIRM only fields ethical agents who consider things outside mission parameters. Men and women who would make excellent UNCLE agents. You head one of the world’s most ethical intelligence services and your personal integrity is above reproach. As soon as this storm front passes, I’ll send an agent to you with the passcodes you will need to access our system. Have you spoken to the Lone Gunmen?”
“Only in a social setting,” Archangel admitted. “They mentioned something about a dedicated WAN or LAN network…”
“Yes, Ringo Langley is working on a local intranet linking together The Frohike Farm, Buckwheat Hollow Lodge, the Winchester Homestead, the Sheriff’s Station and UNCLE North America. It will have access to conventional internet but with heavy firewalls to limit access from outside our intranet.”
“This sounds exactly like what I need,” Michael admitted. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for adding to our resources,” and Alexander Waverly signed off.
Hawke’s hand gripped his shoulder, comforting and warm at the same time. “Let’s get you to the recliner.” Carefully, he supported his mate to the recliner, then stepped back as Michael put his feet up. As soon as the chair stopped moving Pretty was on top of Michael’s bad knee, curling up around the joint as Hawke’s Guardian, Gabrielle landed on the back of the chair. As soon as her wings were mantled, Gabielle started preening Michael’s hair. LeVan was on the front porch, wrapped around his own Guardian, Ishki, just enjoying the storm. Like Hawke himself, Half Pint was a storm watcher and more inclined to actually get out in the storm. Even as he thought about checking on his nephew, LeVan came in the front door, shedding his rain poncho to hang it on the coat rack as he heeled off his rubber brogues. Jim Ellison appeared with some towels, dropping one over Ishki as he handed another to LeVan. LeVan briskly toweled dry his Guardian and then spread the other towel over Michael’s lap. Ishki jumped up on Michael’s lap, curling up in a ball as she started to warm up. Gently he stroked her ears as she began to purr.
Dominic and Caitin were at the kitchen table with Margaret Scully, cutting up tomatoes for sauce, while Walter Skinner and John Doggett discussed the pending renovations with Dana Scully.
Mulder was on the radio to John Winchester, confirming that they had enough food and firewood to last through the storm. The Winchesters usually ate at the Lodge since they didn’t spend much time at the Homestead right now. After hearing that they were okay and Dean had a pot of stew going while they wired the house, Mulder contacted the Sheriff’s Station.
Peter and Jesse were fine while Scott and Sonny had gone to work early to deal with the effects of the storm. They had the fireplace going with plenty of dry wood stacked in the wood rack and Peter intended to do some baking. “Just some quick breads, coffee cake and cookies,” Peter explained. “This is no day to do any yeast breads. Besides, I promised Jesse she could decorate the sugar cookies.”
Mulder laughed as he signed off, remembering decorating Christmas cookies with his son. He was sure Willy got more frosting on himself than he did the cookies! But Mulder quickly sobered when no one answered at the Lone Gunmen’s place. He waited five minutes just in case they were all upstairs, then called again with no answer.
“Maybe they’re all out in the barn,” Sasha suggested but Skinner shook his head.
“They don’t have any projects big enough to need all of them.”
Hawke and Ellison looked at each other, a single nod confirming that they would soon head out to check on the Gunmen if they didn’t get an answer soon.
The fourth time Mulder tried, Frohike answered out of breath and excited.
“Fox, you won’t believe what we found!”
@@@@@@@
“At least we’re catching up on the canning,” Byers said philosophically as he put jars of baby parsnips in one canner. They had produce everywhere in the kitchen that they needed to take care of, having let the canning slip while they worked on the upstairs. Frohike started timing his canner as he put the weight on the valve stem while Yves and Jimmy had commandeered the coffee table to process zucchini. Jimmy was grating the squash Yves was measuring into marked bags for the freezer. And Langley was headed down to the basement with a crate of jars they had filled yesterday.
Three steps from the shelves of canned goods Langley started stepping into water, making him curse. Frohike had told them the basement never got wet! “Melvin! We’ve got water!”
“How in hell?” Frohike muttered, hurrying down the stairs, the others at his heels. “Uncle told me this basement stayed dry!”
“Well, it’s not now,” Langley told him, standing back from the water seeping out from under the shelves.
“It seems to be seeping through the wall,” Bryers told them quietly. “Maybe we can use cement to seal the leak.”
“Let’s see if we can move this without unloading it,” Frohike said, grabbing one side of the middle shelving unit as Jimmy reached for the other side. Wood shifted under Frohike’s hand, something gave a click and he could swing out an entire section like it was on hinges. Behind the shelves was a door that had been hidden by the solid back of the shelves. When Frohike tried it, the door was locked.
“Let me try.” Yves bent her head to study the lock, a bobby pin in her hand. After a few minutes working on the lock, she opened the door, taken aback when the lights came on. The hidden room looked like a library with stuffed bookshelves circling the room and a large table with four wooden chairs in the middle of the remaining space. Two inches of water covered the floor in spite of the floor drain they could barely see.
“It should be draining faster,” Langley remarked, grabbing one end of the table and moving it towards the wall, exposing the drain to their hands. Jimmy moved the drain grate counterclockwise then pulled it loose, pulling up a sealed plastic bag on a short piece of chain that had blocked a lot of the drainpipe. Once the plastic bag was removed, the water drained from the room swiftly, leaving the floor bare except for the water that kept seeping out from under the bookshelves.
Frohike cut the bag loose, letting Jimmy put the grate back, then opened the bag, exposing a roll of knives sheathed in leather. The plain hand forged weapons were just over eighteen inches long with a slender, triangular blade none of them had ever seen before.
“Melvin, I thought you said your uncle wasn’t religious,” Bryers called from one of the bookcases near the door.
“He wasn’t.”
“Then why does he have so many copies of the Bible?”
Frohike came over. There were over twelve different Bible texts on one of the shelves ranging from a complete copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls to last year’s New Living Bible, including a copy of the Ethiopian Bible and the Latin Vulgate used by the Catholic Church. The shelf below it held several copies of both the Jewish Torah and the Muslim Quaran. There were several books of holy scripture for other faiths and a number of translation dictionaries in the bookcase as well.
“What’s the Malleus Maleficarum?” Jimmy asked, holding a thick tome from another bookcase.
Byers and Frohike didn’t recognize the title, but Langley answered: “That’s The Hammer of the Witches, a thesis on witchcraft and identifying witches from the late 1400s, I think. It’s the first complete text on identifying and dealing with European witches.”
“And here’s several atlases of supernatural beings,” Yves added from yet another bookcase. “Just what was your uncle involved in?”
“I have no idea.”
“I bet Phillip or one of the Winchesters could tell us,” Byers said and Langley agreed.
“Let’s find out.” Frohike herded the others out of the room, closing the door behind them, then swinging the set of shelves back into place. Idly he wondered if the key to that door was on his uncle’s keychain; he should dig it out and check.
Jimmy headed back into the basement with an armload of dirty towels as Yves threw a load of clothes in the washer. Byers checked the timer on one canner, then put the weight on the second one and started its timer. Langley was already running tomatoes through the food mill for another batch of sauce while Frohike turned on the shortwave radio. Mulder was calling them and starting to sound frantic.
“Fox, you won’t believe what we’ve found!”
“Fro, why didn’t you answer me?”
“I just turned the shortwave on,” Frohike told him.
“Well, in bad weather leave it on or you might miss a call for help,” Mulder ordered. “What did you find?”
“My uncle had a hidden library in the basement behind his canning shelves,” Frohike told him. “We found about a dozen different printings of the Bible, including one in Latin and a copy of the Ethiopian Bible, copies of the Torah and the Quaran, several translation dictionaries, a book called The Hammer of the Witches, and several atlases of supernatural beings.”
“It sounds to me like he had a supernatural or preternatural reference library,” Phillip put in. “The library at Legacy House, San Francisco had all of that and more.”
“Sounds a bit like Bobby’s library,” John Winchester put in from the Homestead. “These last ten years or so Bobby was more of a researcher for Hunters than an actual Hunter.” He paused for a moment. “I wonder what happened to all of Bobby’s books.”
“I’d think the Hunters who came to Sioux Falls divided the books between them,” Phillip told him.
“I hope that’s what happened,” John admitted. “A lot of Bobby’s reference works he hand copied from books in private collections or restricted Church and university archives. Books so old they had to be kept under controlled conditions.”
“And Bobby wasn’t after the books themselves, just what was written in them,” Phillip agreed. “That’s why the Luna Foundation made an online library of every book in our archives so the information in them was always available. The Vatican was doing the same with their own archives.”
As the debate began over just how much of the Vatican archives would actually be online, Hawke cocked his head to one side, then joined Jim Ellison by the front door. “You’re hearing it too?”
“Something’s trying to get in the barn. Come on!” and Ellison opened the front door. A grey figure clung to the barn doors, a smear of fluorescent green staining the figure’s side. Grabbing their handguns, the two Sentinels ran for the barn as Bell guarded the door.
The Alien Grey was gasping for air, his skin dull and faded. “Must warn you,” he gasped as they holstered their weapons, then lifted him in a chair carry.
Sasha had laid down a heavy tarp, covering it with two blankets. Gently, they laid the alien down on the blankets, then stepped back to let Dana and LeVan work. The two medical professionals went to work, drawing on LeVan’s study of what the FIRM had learned about the Alien Greys and what Dana had learned from her talks with Susan Nutt, Head of UNCLE Medical. Which wasn’t much. They couldn’t use a saline drip or most of the pharmaceuticals in their arsenal. They didn’t even dare use soap to clean the long tear in the alien’s side for fear of poisoning him. In the end, they cleaned it well with plain hot water and bandaged the wound.
“Need to warn you,” he murmured, struggling to use English. “New species of parasite alien. Looks like black smoke. Took over Galdfax. Started hurting us. Cut off hands…cut off feet…cut us open. Could bind us… in invisible ways. Left Galdfax…as cloud of black smoke…after cutting his throat.” He coughed, fluorescent green spilling out of his mouth. “Must tell… Command.” He coughed again, the flood getting stronger, then collapsed into a slick of fluorescent green body fluids.
“Get him outside,” Mulder ordered and Hawke and Ellison grabbed the tarp, folding it quickly over the alien remains, and carried it out into the graveled turn around. Still coughing from the fumes given off by the dead Alien Grey, they headed in to share a hot shower, well aware of the dangers of hypothermia. Michael was surrounded by a menagerie of spirit guides and Guardians, all glaring at them until they went in the bathroom. Blair soon followed, placing two stacks of clothes on the counter, then eyed the two now naked Sentinels as they showered, his mouth watering.
Jim always aroused him with his naturally broad-shouldered physique, but Hawke’s whippet thin leanness was a surprise. Everyone had assumed Hawke’s thinness was due to near starvation at the hands of the Alien Greys. It wasn’t. Hawke was all long lean muscle that looked fragile next to Jim when they were dressed but was anything but in the nude. Hawke had the muscled build of a long-distance runner instead of Jim’s explosive power and Blair found it very appealing. Almost too appealing. He fled the bathroom without speaking, Jim’s laughter filling his mind.
Michael’s understanding eyes met his as he shut the door behind him. “The Zebra Squad got taught a lesson once on just what true strength is,” he said quietly as his one-eyed raven preened his hair from his spot between Hawke’s golden eagle Guardian and his peregrine falcon guide. “Hawke put fifteen men built like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime on the floor in under fifteen minutes. Skill and flexibility won there—and the fact String didn’t have a partner to worry about, just targets.”
Blair smiled back, understanding. “Competence is sexy.”
“Very sexy,” Caitlin agreed as she joined them, arm around Marella’s waist. She jerked her thumb towards the group that had clustered around the radio. “Father Phillip doesn’t think we’re dealing with another species of alien. He thinks it’s a demon and the Winchester’s agree with him.”
“Hmm,” Blair looked at the group arguing around the radio. “I’ll be right back.” Soon he was back with an oblong water polished piece of granite with a round hole worn through the middle of it.
“Is that a hag stone?” Michael asked as Blair raised it to his left eye looking through it at where the Alien Grey had died.
“Yep,” Blair popped as he turned his head slightly. “Because they’re formed by nature, some practitioners believe they can protect you from evil. I’ve found that when I look through it, I can see things that aren’t immediately apparent. And right now, I’m seeing black smoke lingering where he died.”
Phillip cursed in Gaelic and headed for the kitchen, drawing a pitcher of water, then blessing it before pouring it in a clean spray bottle. He sprayed where the alien had laid, murmuring in Latin as Blair watched through the hag stone.
“It’s gone,” Blair finally said, dropping the hag stone in his pocket and Phillip sighed deeply, drained by his efforts.
“That was one powerful demon,” he admitted as Sasha took the spray bottle of holy water from him. “The residue did not want to disburse.”
“The residue, not the demon itself,” Fox Mulder questioned sharply.
“The residue of what the demon did, not a part of the demon itself,” Phillip clarified. “The demon couldn’t use it to find us even without the shields. Still, to think it was this close…” He shuddered, wrapping his arms around his belly.
“Could you tell which demon it was?” John Winchester asked, a trace of fear in his voice.
“No,” Phillip admitted, “only that it was powerful.”
“And no telling how far the Grey traveled to get here,” Jim Ellison added. “My big question is why did he come to us?”
“Confused us with his superiors?” Blair raised his hands in a ‘who knows’ gesture.
Hawke’s eyes met Archangel’s. Archangel’s, not Michael’s for neither man believed in coincidence. The dead Alien Grey was allowed to escape, for whatever reason. Father Phillip Callahan had destroyed the trace of preternatural influence, making it impossible to track where it had been from either end. For now, they just had to be watchful.
@@@@@@@
Azrael spiraled up and away from the isolated cabin near Mansfield. Torturing the Alien Greys hadn’t refreshed him as he thought it would; the Greys just died so easily! Following the pathetic alien foot soldier who had gotten away was an exercise in futility; there was no one the least bit interesting here, let alone one of his special children. Maybe if he went up in New England…
@@@@@@@
“They’re all gone,” Commander Lorthax repeated, startled by the Sub Altern’s report. How can all of them be gone?”
“We don’t know, sir. Their biosignals ceased over the course of two mrilss. Medical thinks they were exposed to something poisonous to our species’ given the time frame.”
Lorthax sighed. “Send in another squad of infiltrators. We need to secure the Emperor’s breeders before we launch our attack.”
“Thy will be done.” The Sub Altern saluted and moved to one of the substations to implement his orders while Lorthax glared at the image of this subtly dangerous world called Earth. He was really starting to hate this world…