Losing Lives / Book Six / The Life Series / Supernatural

Reading Is Fundamental

Sam, Dean and I were in an abandoned building after dark.

Sam was unwrapping the piece of clay in the case, taking it out, putting it on the table in front of me.

Dean walked closer with a tool box. "That's a lot of fuss over a caveman Lego."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "Well, whatever Dick wants is bricked up inside that."

I took a mallet out of the tool box, handing Sam and Dean a pair of safety glasses, putting some on myself. "All right."

I hit the clay once.

Thunder rumbled from outside.

I hit the clay again.

Lightning flashed. Thunder clapped.

I looked from Sam to Dean. "That sound like somebody saying, 'No, wait, stop', to you?"

"Uh..." Sam trailed off. "Yeah. Yeah."

"Yeah," Dean agreed.

I nodded. "Yeah." I shrugged. "Oh, well."

I hit the clay several more times, hitting it until it broke, lifting an inscribed stone tablet out of the broken clay casing, turning it over in confusion, looking at Sam and Dean.

~~~~~~  

The next day, I was waking up on the ground to the sound of the news playing on a laptop. "At a lost to explain the continent-wide storm system that appeared seemingly out of nowhere, blanketing a good part of the nation in freak lightning displays." I stood, turning to see Sam and Dean were listening to it at the table. "Here with Dr. Marlon Price of the U.S. Meteorological Survey at a press conference earlier today."

"Baffled?" Dr. Marlon Price asked. "No, I'm not baffled." I washed my face at the sink. "Frankly, I'm offended. This is not the way weather behaves."

"Power outages and related damages to electronic equipment have been reported from as far east as Cape Cod..."

I let the voices trail off when I saw a metal cup nearby move. "Dad? Dad, that you?"

"Think so," Sam told us, holding up a flashing EMF. "But that whole adventure at Roman's seems to have drained his batteries."

"So, what?" I asked. "We start the storm heard 'round the world?"

"When we broke this thing..." Sam trailed off, touching the stone tablet. "Open last night, every maternity ward within a hundred-mile radius got slammed. Looks like any woman in the last month of her pregnancy went into labor."

"Hmm," Dean hummed, picking up the tablet. "This one goes out to all the ladies. So, heavyweight signs, omens... What do we got?"

"I assume it's writing," I told them.. "But I've never seen anything like it, ever. And it doesn't match anything in any book or online."

"All right, so big daddy chomper lands here, he grabs himself some Dick... and then he starts secretly underwriting university departments, pouring money into digs, all for this," Dean told us. "Why?"

"No clue," I told them. "We do know that he will be tearing new ones until he gets it back, though. Look, we got to take a minute, hole up somewhere safe, find out what we've got."

"Rufus' cabin, then?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," I answered. "This time, I'm doing the shopping."

Dean's phone rang. He looked at the Caller ID. "It's Meg." He reluctantly answered. "What?"