What Is And What Should Never Be

Angel And The Badman

Johnny Cash crooned through the tiny speakers of an alarm clock sitting on a nightstand in a crudy motel room.

"...A man wild as the dust devil with no place to run livin' by his wits and by his gun..."

I rolled over and glared at the clock: 7:30 am. The previous occupant was clearly a person with things to do and no time to waste. I on the other hand had too much time on my hands. No way in hell would I every get up this early willing. I groaned as the sleep stung my eyes begging me to stay in bed but the emptiness in my stomach told me to get up.

"...but his old ways of thinking wouldn't die, couldn't forget the old creed he lived by..."

I sat up and roared out a yawn as I stretched my arms toward the water stained ceiling. I found my way to the bathroom through my grogginess and reached for my toothbrush. It had been a couple weeks since the warehouse incident and it scared the living shit out of me when I thought about it. I still couldn't explain it. I desperately tried to make sense of all the details that suddenly came pouring  into my head but I was overcome by queasiness and I nose dived toward the toilet, abandoning my toothbrush in the sink. My shoulders and back lurched forward as I dry heaved. I sat there with my face hanging over ripe toilet water before I came to the concolusion that nothing was going to come up despite the sour feeling in my stomach. Sharp stabbing pain shot thru my left temple as a stood up from the bathroom floor.

"...in his mind he saw an angels face so he burned all his bri-"

I walked over to the radio and clicked it off. I grabbed my throbbing head and waited for the pulsing to stop. I remembered being out numbered. One of those bastards breaking my arm almost in half and then that mind numbing light that seemed to emit from deep within my own body. When I'd come to I was lying on what was left of the vampire nest. Dust and debris was still settling around me as I pulled myself up off the ground. The place had been laid to waste. The roof was torn in two and the door I had originally gone through was nothing more than a pile of rubble on the floor. Not that the building was stable to begin with – a strong breeze could have probably done just as much damage. The moonlight was now able to illuminate the room and I could see I was alone. Not one vamp in sight. I got the hell outta of there as fast as could. I'd spent the next week scanning the headlines looking for any indication that the vampires were still around but all was quit in Nola. The only supernatural thing happening was how my motel bed wasn't infested with bed bugs. I tried to tell myself they fled but my gut told me they were all dead. I glanced at my fore arm and gently rubbed the area where the bone had ripped its way through my skin. The only evidence of the wound was a patch of pink raw skin. All healed in just a couple of weeks. I walked back into the bathroom to finishing brushing my teeth when the face in the mirror caught my attention. I looked like hell warmed over. My hair was a tangled mess of curls and the bags under my eyes seemed to stand out stronger against my sallowed face.  "Well, that's sobering."  I looked exactly how I felt.  It had been a rough week. Empty liquor bottles and fast food wrappers littered my room. That's usually my initial reaction to things that seem beyond my control. A binder. Honestly, it sounds worse than it is. I don't know any hunter who doesn't consume just a tad too much alcohol. What other option do we have? It's long lonely road and we've seen shit that would put anyone in a psychiatric ward. I guess that would be option two. But the thought of another night in a bottle has my stomach in knots. It's time to sack up. However, my hangover was making it particularly hard to get motivated and sleep seemed so inviting but than again, the only way I'd crawl back into those sheets was if was drunk again. I managed to pick up my crumpled pants off the floor and slid them over my legs.

Angels. Images flashed across my mind as I remembered seeing something in Sister Elizabeth's journal. I dove into my duffel bag pulling at a handfuls of dirty clothes until I found the journal nestled at the bottom. I flipped thru the book until I found the page with the scribbled passage about Angels. To my disappointment it was only half a page. It read:

March 12th, 1988
Angel: host of heaven. They have the power of God within them. Not many walk the earth but they should be regarded as fearsome beings. Angels can only be killed with an angel blade that themselves carry. They travel like demons but unlike demons they need permission to take over ones body.  I've only meet one angel in my lifetime but it's enough. Stay clear of them at all cost.  Nephilim:

Growing up Sister Elizabeth told me to never trust angels. Strange thing for a nun to say but then again the Sister also moon lighted as a hunter. She taught me everything she knew about hunting and had raised me like I was her own flesh and blood. As far as I knew my parents were dead but I didn't really know that for sure. Sister never brought up the subject and refused to talk about it when questioned. The only thing she ever said about it was "Your parents loved you dearly and that's all you need to need know". I always felt like that was her weak attempt to make me feel better about being an orphan. Like if she said it enough times I might actually believe. It had the opposite effect. I mean who abandons their child? How could they really love me? When she would tell me that I usually spent the next few days giving her the cold shoulder but grudges didn't really hold between us. After all we were the only family each other had. The only family I had ever known and loved. My heart still aches when I think about Elizabeth, my mother. She never let me call her mom though, just Elizabeth.  As she put it, "I'm not your mother. I didn't earn that right."  Whatever the hell that meant.  She had passed away quietly, surprisingly for hunter, a couple years back. She retired to the quite Nebraska farm, she raised me in. I'd been gone on a hunt for a couple of weeks and when I came back Elizabeth had died in her sleep. Most likely a heart attack. Of course I was completely unaware she had a bad ticker. I'm not entirely sure she knew her self but if she had there was no way in hell she would have told me.  Sister didn't like to trouble me with little details like that. I often wondered what other things she kept from me. That was Sister Elizabeth for you, a woman of few words. I reread her
journal entry studying every word hoping to get some new revelation out of it. Angels were above my pay grade, I've never even met an angel before and I really didn't want to from the things I heard about them but my dreams told a different story. They seemed almost like memories. Like my mind was trying to remind me of something forgotten. Flashes of angels at war with each other, voices arguing, demons, monsters and it always ended the same, with complete utter defeat and disappointment. Then the haze would lift just long enough to make out two human faces, brothers. Green and blue eyes loomed back at me calling out a name, "Castiel".  I didn't want to know this angel but at the same time I felt drawn to him. He didn't seem bad necessarily, just a grade A fuck up. My instincts were screaming at me to run from this but the dreams persisted. Even the booze couldn't drown them out anymore. He probably knew what was happening to me or maybe he was the one causing it. A terrifying thought entered my head:  is he looking for me? I quickly shoved the thought away. No point entertaining that. Not now at least. But where does one even begin to look for an angel? I stared at the unfinished thought left by Elizabeth in the journal: "Nephilim"', it was a good place to start as any.
I finished dressing and reached for my gun. Shoved it into its holster and tucked my phone into the back pocket of my jeans. I would start my research in the usual places, the library, call a few contacts to see if they knew anything. But first things first, I needed to cure this hangover and the diner up the street had pancakes that were calling my name.