Never Let It Rest (fifth book to Never Be Over You)

Chapter 15: Repo Man

Four Years Ago

We were in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho.
Ms. Havelock pulled up in her car behind the impala.
"Ms. Havelock, you shouldn't have come." Sam said. She walked past us into the abandoned building. Sam and I follow after her, closing the door.
"I needed to see it for myself, after all the tracking, all those hours we spent. I mean, it's one thing to study them in books. It's..." I walked into the next room where Dean was sharpening a knife, there was a woman's body on the table behind him. The demon we caught, that literally had blood on his hands, arms and face was tied to a chair with leather cuffs, underneath the chair is a devil's trap.
"Do I smell menopause?" The demon asked. Sam and Ms. Havelock stood in the doorway. "Well, if it isn't the Wiccan bitch of the west. Ms. Havelock, I know you're the one that helped them find me."
"My god..."
"Not in time to save our big girl parts here, but still, you get a merit badge." Ms. Havelock walked close to the demon.
"They caught you, you son of a bitch! No more murders! And you're going back to hell."
"Oh, Nora, Nora... I'm gonna scoop you out like a pumpkin. You know that?" The man's eyes turned black and he growled. Ms. Havelock jumped back and left the room with a shriek, making the demon laugh.
"Yeah, your, uh, scooping days are over Gomer. All you got to worry about now...is us." I said. Sam was looking out the window as Ms. Havelock drove away. "You're not the first demon we've tracked down on this safari."
"That's right. As a matter of fact, I think you put us over half a dozen." Sam said.
"Looking for Lilith in all the wrong places." The demon said.
"Well, you're gonna help us with that." Dean said.
"If things are about to get messy, maybe you should meet the owner of this fleshy temple. A puppy of a man. You'll like him." The demon said then looked down, groaned and then looked up.
"Jeffrey? Jeffrey, is that you?" Sam asked, crouched in front of him.
"Oh god. No. You have to stop him." Jeffrey says.
"We will. We're going to, okay? We're gonna send that demon back to hell." I said.
"Okay. Please don't hurt me."
"Jeffrey, before we can let him go... Look, the demon knows where we can find more of his kind, okay?"
"See, we're hunting them, all of them. He's not gonna give up his Rolodex easy. Jeffrey, we're gonna have to cut into him. That means you." Dean explained.
"Oh, the things he made me to do those women. Whatever you have to do... You have to do it. Please just stop this evil piece of..." Jeffrey started choking and his eyes turned black again, "And on and on and on." Sam stood up. "Frankly, he can get tedious with this whole 'good and evil' thing."
"You know, you were right. I like Jeffrey. He's a decent guy. In fact, he just signed off on his temple." Dean said as he poured holy water on the knife.
"Uh..." Dean stabbed Jeffrey, making him cry out and sizzle. I threw more holy water at the demon, the he got punched by the boys, and I then emptied the flask of holy water onto his head.
"She's got other lieutenants. We already know that." I said.
"We want names." Sam continued. The boys punched him again. I grabbed another bottle of holy water and poured that into his head. The demons screamed. Dean held up a branding iron.
"Alright! Alright! His name is Merrick! I swear! You'll find him in New Orleans!"
"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis!"
And then the demon went back to hell. When we were sure the demon was gone, we carefully carried Jeffrey into the impala. Jeffrey was lying in the impala, while Dean and I sat in the front. He ended up passing out. I heard him making some noises after a while.
"Jeffrey? Jeffrey, you awake?" I asked. He starts coughing. "Hey, you passed out. You're in shock."
"He's gone?" Jeffrey asked.
"We exorcised him. Try not to move, okay? We're almost to the hospital." Dean said.
"Your...your brother?"
"My brother stayed back to clean us out of that crime scene. There's no reason to go down for a demon's murders, you know what I mean?" We pulled up outside the Regional Hospital emergency entrance and helped Jeffrey out of the car.
"Alright. Alright, take it easy. Alright, you're good to make it from here, right?" I asked. Jeffrey nodded.
"Okay, Jeffrey, no demon talk in the E.R., you understand me? You were mugged?" Dean told him.
"Okay. Alright, um, thank you." Jeffrey said then stumbled forward into the hospital.

Present Day

We get to a hotel room in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. Right as we walk in Dean's phone rings.
"'Classified server'? Got to be Devereaux, right?" Dean says. "Hello?... Thank god... Frank..." Dean continues with his conversation.
"It's nice." I hear Lucifer say as he appears beside me. "Kind of like a men's room with beds. Hmm, avocado grime." I take a folder out of the bag I was carrying that has a picture of an autopsy report. I place that on top of another folder that's on the bed. "Takes years to build up a patina like this." I push into my hand where the wound was. Lucifer disappears.
I keep laying out folders on the bed.
"I don't care that they've infiltrated the luxury boat industry, Frank... Great. Call Kanye." Dean says into his phone then hangs up.
"Frank's still stumped on Roman?" Sam asks.
"Yeah. Alright, let's do this."
"Okay, um, look at the victim profiles." I say, "Sam age, same hair color, body type. The ritual mutilations line up exactly."
"Who down there would've let our demon of the can? He squealed on his superiors. We made sure of that. I mean, he should be down under until, uh, trumpet day."
"But two women killed in the last two weeks, same parts missing. I mean, same old hunting grounds, even." Sam says.
"Alright, well, we can take a swing at it. But you know it's all about the Leviathans now, okay? They're the ones we need to be hunting."
"Yeah, but no, I mean, not right now. This one's ours, Dean. It's unfinished business, apparently." I say.
"Alright." Dean says. Because it's late right now, we decide to go to bed and start in the morning, but we get woken up by the police radio.

"This is unit 32. Repeat, unit 32. We've got another one. That's a 187. Female. Caucasian, maybe late 30s, at the Henley Auto-Wash."
"Unit 32, assistance is en route." A woman's voice comes through.
"We got a real mess here, dispatch."

We head to the crime scene. When we get there, there's a body that's mostly covered with a bloodstained sheet lying on the ground with a police team working around it. We hold up our FBI badges as we walk up. An officer lets us through the 'Do Not Cross' line.
"Thanks." Sam says.
"You know, every time we do this, I wonder if today's the day. We walk up, flash our tin to a bunch of chompers pretending to policemen." Dean says.
"I hear you." I say. I feel someone grab my shoulder, I turn to face who it is. A detective. And Lucifer is leaning against the coroner's vehicle.
"Thought you guys might show up. It's the drummers, Agents, uh Bonham, Watts and Allen, right?"
"Yeah." Sam says as we recognize this guy from last time we were.
"Yeah, absolutely."
"Uh, it's a pleasure to see you again, Detective."
"Sutton." Lucifer says.
"You know what? Pardon me. Uh, what was it, Detective..."
"Sutton." Lucifer repeats, with enunciation.
"Oh, no problemo. Detective Sutton." The guy says.
"Sutton." I repeat.
"Sad to say, case looks to be open again."
"Are you sure?" Dean asks. We walk towards the body.
"Same tools. Same cuts. Same crazy." I can see the victim's face is cut and her little finger and part of her palm are missing. I walk around to the front of the vehicle. "Makes sense. I mean, we didn't catch the critter last time, did we?"
"And no suspects?" Sam asks.
"Same as before, Very thorough." I look into the driver's seat window.
"Thank you, Detective." I hear Dean say, then the detective walks away.
"Hey." I say as the brother walk up to me. I touch my finger to yellow powder. "Sulfur."
"Damn it. Better go check on Havelock." Dean says. We head to Nora Havelock's Wiccan shop.


"This is it." Nora says to us as she opens the door for us to walk in.
"Wiccansweb dot com." Sam says.
"Internet mail order. White magic only, herbs and talismans." We follow her through the shop into another room. A devil's trap is painted on the floor in the doorway. Nora walks around it.
"You sure about that?" I ask.
"Careful, it's still drying. I have a friend at the sheriff's office. I know about all the new murders. I'm doing what I can to protect myself." The three of us walk around the trap.  Nora goes behind a desk and hands me some pieces of paper. "I'm also translating some very old banishments." I look over them.
"Wow, uh, these are...these are good."
"Thanks. I've got an affinity. But back then, that night in that farmhouse, I was in over my head. I know that now, believe me. I will leave all that to the pros."
"Well, you helped track it down. I mean, it was some solid legwork." Dean says.
"When it came down to it, all I really knew was somebody who knew somebody who knew the right number to call. And your number is not working, by the way."
"Right, we, uh, we've had some technical difficulties, phone issues." Sam says.
"It's a monster problem, really." Dean says, earning a look from Sam and me.
"So, uh, you haven't had any contact?" I ask.
"With the demon? No, thank god. I have one or two things to finish in town, and then I'm leaving."
"Good choice." Dean says.
"Have you found Jeffrey yet?"
"Who?"
"The man who the demon possessed. The one you almost beat to death." Nora says.
"Yeah, Jeffrey. That poor bastard." I say.
"Some demons tend to be sentimental, don't they? Always go back to the same host if they can."
"It's a start." Sam says.

It doesn't take long for us to find Jeffrey. He's picking up a dog from an animal shelter, which just so happens to have an alleyway beside it. Once we spot Jeffrey walking past the alleyway, we make a little noise to get his attention. We walks in our direction, still hasn't seen us. Dean comes up behind him and holds a knife to his throat, while Sam holds a flask of holy water in front of him.
"Jeffrey?" I ask as he struggles in Dean's hold.
"Jeffrey?" Dean repeats then lets go.
"Okay, look, it's okay. You're okay, you're okay." Sam says.
"Sorry. Just had to make sure." Dean puts his knife away.
"Make sure of what, that I peed my pants today?" Jeffrey asks. His dog whimpers. "Aw, you scared my dog." He crouches down and pets the dog.
"Uh, we did not want to do that." I say.
"Listen, Jeff, we got to, uh, we gotta talk." Dean says.
We walk with him to his apartment building and he offers us a seat. Jeffrey sits on a sofa as Sam and I sit on two chairs across from him. Lucifer appears, sitting on the arm of the sofa.
"Well, this is, uh..." I start saying looking around the rundown apartment suite. Dean sits beside Jeffrey.
"I know what it is."
"Look, I know it must've been, um, hard."
"Do you even listen to yourself?" Lucifer says. I press into my palm. "Oh, don't bother." He disappears.
"What do you guys wants from me?" Jeffrey asks.
"Well, um, we're pretty sure the demon that possessed you...is back." Dean says.
"What? What do you mean? You exorcised him, right? He's supposed to be in hell." Jeffrey says the last part as he stands up, Sam does the same.
"Jeffrey, look, please just calm down. Just have a seat, please." Sam says. They both sit down again.
"I don't understand."
"Three more women have been murdered over the past two weeks." I say.
"No, no."
"Same vic profiles, same forensics, crime scene dusted with sulfur. We've got to assume that it's him." Dean explains.
"But we're here now, okay? So if he comes after you, we'll nail him just like we did last time." Sam says reassuringly.
"What was her name?" Jeffery asks.
"What?" Dean and I say in unison.
"The last one he killed."
"Uh, Anna." I answer.
"Anna Paxton." Sam finishes.
"Marjorie Willis. She's the next on the list." Jeffrey tells us.
"List? What list?"
"The demons used to recite it all the time, like a grocery list. He burned it in my head, the names of all the women he was gonna kill."
"He already had his victims chosen?" I ask.
"And put in a line in an order."
"Wait. Why? Demons aren't usually into the obsessive serial-killer crap. You know, they're more just kind of all-around evil. Why would he do this?" Dean asks. Sam and I shrug our shoulders.
"He said it was his job." We hear a knock at the door. Jeffrey holds a finger to his lips and gets up to open the door.
"Jeffrey, did your, uh, guests sign in?" A guy asks, must be the landlord or something.
"I'm really sorry, Alan. They're friends of mine from my days back at the post office. I didn't know they were coming."
"So, what do you think?" I ask the boys quietly.
"I think we really helped mess this poor son of a bitch up. Look at him. He's got a state-assigned dad." Dean says. Jeffrey closes the door as we stand up.
"Uh Jeffrey, look, I'm gonna go find Marjorie Willis, keep her on watch, okay?" I say.
"Don't worry. We're gonna stay here just in case." Dean says referring to him and Sam.
I've was told before I left that she works at the library so that's where I head. I walk in as a woman is pushing a trolley books.
"Excuse me." The woman smiles.
"You're right. We just don't read anymore." I hear Lucifer behind me. I start walking further in as he follows me. He points to the woman. "Marjorie Willis. Librarian, indoor gardening enthusiast, our demon's next organ donor." Marjorie sits at a desk as I sit at a table, Lucifer sits across from me, blocking my view of her. I shift my position to see around him. Lucifer just crosses his arms and stares at me. "Come on, Ash, talk to me. It's been months." He grabs a book. "'Average annual rainfall, Hackberry, Texas'." He rolls his eyes and tosses the book onto the table. I ignore him by going through autopsy files.
I hear a loud noise from somewhere making me jump. I look up, a man and woman at the next table start banging their heads against it, their bodies looking as if they're being controlled against their will. Other people around at tables start doing the same thing and their faces start running with blood. I press my palm. Lucifer disappears. I look back at the first table and the man and woman are back to normal. And Lucifer reappears.
"Come on, Ash, pay attention to me. I'm bored." I watch Marjorie Willis walk past with her trolley, shortly after a man in a black jacket that looks kinda suspicious walks in the same direction. "Civil war buff?" I get up and follow. I quietly walk along the book shelves and look through them when I hear a woman.
"Oh! Oh!" I look around the bookshelf. Marjorie Willis is there with the man, they are pressed against each other kissing. I head back to my table.
When Marjorie comes back, she sits at her desk. The man follows, leans over to give her a quick kiss.
"I'm pretty sure this guy's the boring sort of chubby chaser." Lucifer says standing behind me. I pull my phone out of my pocket and try to call Dean.
"Leave your name, number and nightmare at the tone." Damn it, voicemail.
"Dean, where are you? I'm scoping out zero here." I say then hang up.
"Not a good sign." Lucifer says. I look over the autopsy reports again. "Hmm. Surprised you haven't picked up on that yet. It's right... there in the coroner's report." He sits opposite of me again. I look over the file, there's drug test results. "Yeah, uh-huh. In this latest round of killings, our big girls had heavy traces of tranquilizers in their blood. Yeah? But our demon's strong enough to make fat Betty do whatever he wants to, right? So, why does he need the tranqs? Think he's got a bad back? Yeah, whatever is going on here, you know that demon's not coming back to kill anybody." I dial Sam's FBI number hoping his will work.
"This is Special Agent Smith. Please leave your name, number and a detailed-" I hang up.
"Oh, no. That's all the cellphones they've got. One of them should've picked up, right? Big husband and big brother are probably dead."
"Shut up." I say then grab the reports and leave. I head back to Jeffrey's apartment. This time I have to pick the lock.
"This is what I'm talking about, Ash, real interaction again. I miss that. That rapier wit, the wittier rape. Come on. I'll be good." Lucifer says. I look around Jeffrey's room. First, I check under his mattress. "I'll even help you solve your little Nancy Drew mystery or whatever." Then I go to his desk and look through the things on it. "No note." I pick the lock on the top drawer and find a cell phone signal scrambler. "Hmm. A cell phone scrambler. But Luci, those are illegal. Think, Ash. Maybe this has something to do with Sam and Dean's telephone blackout." I look through the other desk drawers. Then head to the dresser. I tap the bottom of the top dresser drawer, take it out and turn it over and find a metal box strapped underneath. I open the box and take out several pieces of paper. "Hmm. Latin. Not suspicious at all." I walk outside with the papers.

"I've never seen this spell before." I say.
"No. But you've seen this type."
"A demon summoning, why?" I ask.
"Why? To summon a demon, dumbass. Start looking at who." Lucifer says.
"Okay, what do you mean?"
"Look at the page."
"I know this handwriting." I say. And I know where I'm going next.

Once I get to my destination, I have to pick this lock too. I get inside with my gun drawn and open the door to Nora's office. Lucifer is seated at the desk when I get in there and shakes his head. I look around and put my gun away then get hit over the head from behind making me fall to the floor.
"Ay caramba! Mi Cabeza!" Lucifer says. I get up, Nora swings at me, but I'm able to catch her object this time and throw it away from her. I may be small, but don't underestimate me.
"Nora, stop it! Calm down!" I hold up the papers from Jeffrey's. "What is this? What is this? Why did Jeffrey have a demon summoning in your handwriting?" I ask.
"Everything's happening the way he said, the way he planned it." Nora asks.
"What plan?!"
"You can't help. You can't change it."
"Hit her." Lucifer says. Nora sits on a sofa.
"Nora, tell me what is going on."
"Ash, shake her up. She knows what happened to Sam and Dean. Get this stupid cow to focus, will you?" Lucifer says. I crouch down to get to Nora's level.
"Nora, listen to me! Whatever it is, you should be a lot more scared of me right now because I'm two inches away from you, and I can make you talk. Do you understand me?" Nora starts to cry.
"It's my son. He has my son!"
"What were you thinking? I mean, why would you even help bring back a demon in the first place?" I ask.
"Not the demon. Jeffrey!"
"Jeffrey?" What the hell is going on? I lean back against her desk, with a hand to my head where she hit me and trying to process this.
"I kept tabs on Jeffrey after the exorcism. I even sent him care packages to the hospital, but he never responded. And then not long ago, he came to me. He seemed healthy, put together, except he wanted to know if there was a way to summon the demon back. He said he'd been doing some research. It was mostly nonsense, but he was convinced it was possible."
"You really knocked the cork out of her piehole." I hear Lucifer.
"I sent him away. I told him to get some more help. The next day he called me. He put my son on the phone. He had taken him from his dorm room." Nora gets up and goes to her desk, "I gave him everything, the ritual, the sigils. But he kept my boy." She takes a wooden box out of the drawer of her desk, "And then he sent me this." She hands me the box, I open it and inside is a human ear, "My baby's ear. He cut it off because the ritual didn't work."
"Well...that demon gave up some serious state secrets, would've gone into a big lockdown in hell. Not so easy to bring him back up." I tell her.
"Jeffrey didn't care. He told me to find out what went wrong or else. Finally, I found a summoning spell that would work for sure." She grabs a book and hands it to me, "And that's when he said I had another job to do."
"Which was what?"
"When you came, I was supposed to send you to Jeffrey. He left a trail of bodies to make sure of it."
"'Blood of the exorcist'." I read the title of the book.
"Strongest summoning I've ever seen. Requires the blood of the exorcist who banished him, your boyfriend. You see? It's all part of Jeffrey's plan."
"Yeah. Well... New plan." I slam the book down in front of Nora, "Tracking spell, Bavarian, Egyptian. I don't care, dealer's choice. Use the flesh of the body to find the body and Sam and Dean. Do you want the ear or the kid?" I ask.
"You're giving me the chills." Lucifer says. I glance at him quickly then look away.
I watch as Nora hurriedly gets everything together for a summoning ritual. After we figure out where they are, Nora and I drive there to an abandoned building.
We sneak in, I look at Nora and put a finger to my lips indicating to be quiet.
"He had all the raw material...just bubbling in there. All I had to do was loosen the lid on his jar, show him some practical know-how." I hear an unfamiliar voice. Must be the demon.
"Yeah, what about the kid?" I hear Dean ask. The demon is possessing her kid...?
"This one? I don't think. Not much to work with. No natural gift. I'll probably burn this meat off on my way to Vegas." The demon says.
I walk up behind the demon, ready to hit him. He turns and sees me at the last minute, I'm still able to pack a hit though. The demon eventually send me flying backwards across the room. I get to my feet as the demon starts towards me, only he gets stopped. You looks up, there's a devil's trap painted on the ceiling.
"You've got to be kidding me!" He yells. Nora walks up to me.
"You let go of my son!" She yells. I notice Sam and Dean have untied themselves from the chairs. The demon laughs as the brother come to stand by us.
"Where do you keep coming from?" I watch as Jeffrey gets up from where he was lying on the ground, he picks up a knife and walks towards the demon. Dean shoots Jeffrey twice and he drops to the floor. The demon growls, but still can't move.
"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus." Nora starts.
"He'll be back, you know. Back in black." The demon laughs.
"Go to hell." Sam says. The demon starts groaning as Nora continues.
"Omnis congregatio et secta diabolica, ergo, draco maledicte, ecclesiam tuam, secura tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos!" The demon drops to his knees and black smoke pours from his mouth. Nora's son falls backwards and she rushes to support him.
"Mom?" The kid says weakly.
"I got you. I got you, baby."
We clean out the crime scene, make sure that Nora and her son get to a hospital so he can get something on his cut off ear and then we head to a motel to crash for the night.
"God. Oh." Dean says as he runs a hand over his face. He lies face down beside me on the bed.
"So, Jeffrey was just pretending to be the victim. Way back in the farmhouse during the exorcism, he was just...acting." Sam says as he lies down on the other bed.
"He was a psychopath. That's what they do all the time, is act. Act like they're normal, act like they're not balls-to-the-wall crazy." I say. "You two going to sleep?"
"Damn straight. Screw consciousness that's what I say." Dean says. And then Lucifer appears. Sam and Dean fall asleep right away
"No, no, Ash. No nap for you, Ashlee." Lucifer says.  I press my palm. He doesn't leave. "Oh come on, don't do that. Let's talk, Ash. I always enjoyed our special little chats. Don't you want to talk?" I press harder into my palm. "Yeah, look at that. Something's definitely different now, isn't it? You let me in. You wanted me, partner. So you think you can use your little tricks to banish me again," He snaps his fingers, "Like that? No, I do believe I've got you, bunk buddy. Got my finger wiggling around in your brainpan." And suddenly I'm surrounded by flames on the bed, "Come on, Ashlee! Say it with me now. Good morning, Vietnam!"