Read Supernatural 10 - Rite of Passage Online
Authors: John Passarella
Supernatural 10 - Rite of Passage
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ITAN
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OOKS:
Supernatural: Heart of the Dragon
by Keith R.A. DeCandido
Supernatural: The Unholy Cause
by Joe Schreiber
Supernatural: War of the Sons
by Rebecca Dessertine & David Reed
Supernatural: One Year Gone
by Rebecca Dessertine
Supernatural: Coyote’s Kiss
by Christa Faust
Supernatural: Night Terror
by John Passarella
SUPERNATURAL
RITE OF PASSAGE
JOHN PASSARELLA
SUPERNATURAL created by Eric Kripke
TITAN BOOKS
Supernatural: Rite of Passage
Print edition ISBN: 9781781161111
E-book edition ISBN: 9781781161142
Published by Titan Books A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd 144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: August 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Supernatural ™ & © 2012 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Cover imagery: Front cover image courtesy of Warner Bros.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in the United States.
For Andrea, who quietly took care of everything I neglected or forgot while I wrote this one.
HISTORIAN’S NOTE
This novel takes place during season seven, between “Season 7, Time for a Wedding!” and “How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters.”
Contents
Prologue
With the dying gusts of a damaging series of thunderstorms, Tora entered Laurel Hill, New Jersey—not as a consequence of the meteorological destruction; rather, the storms served to herald his arrival and the devastation that would follow Yet nothing about his appearance would alarm the citizens of the bustling suburban town. That was by design. Contrary to his nature, he had purposefully chosen a civilized appearance and calm demeanor for what amounted to a brief period of reconnaissance. A study in black, he wore a bowler hat low over his deeply furrowed brow, a double-breasted suit and black shoes. The exposed narrow wedge of a white dress shirt provided the only relief from this cloak of darkness, his ruddy complexion the only touch of color.
Though he walked with a stout wooden cane, its handle and pointed tip bound in iron, nothing in his gait suggested
the cane’s purpose was supportive in nature, so that a casual observer might conclude the cane and bowler were sartorial affectations. For now, it served his purpose to foster these misconceptions. Only later would they realize that affectation had been disguise; as Biblical idiom would have it, he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He needed some uncontested time to take his measure of Laurel Hill, so he would endure an uncharacteristic bout of patience.
Ahead, on Bedford Drive, something intriguing caught his eye. The perfect opportunity to indulge his natural tendencies. As a sadistic smile spread across his face, he acknowledged to himself that patience was easier in small doses.
Joe Sedenko finished securing the last ridge cap on the Sloney roof and stood with the nail gun held loosely in his right hand, trailing the air hose which snaked across the roof, over the edge and down to the rumbling compressor two stories below. On one knee next to a vent pipe, Greg Beechum applied sealant to the nail heads around the flashing for extra leak protection. Near the edge of the roof, tossing the last bits of trash over the side in the general direction of the roll-off Dumpster in the driveway below, stood Mike Mackiewicz.
After two full days, they were nearly done on the roofing job. They’d spent the first day removing the old, damaged asphalt composite shingles, removing and replacing sections of rotted sheeting, and then laying down new tarpaper before calling it a day. That was the messy and dangerous part of the process, with all the debris and tripping hazards. The
second day was more methodical and cosmetic, shooting all the new shingles, staggering the seams, cutting a few around vent pipes. So, naturally, Joe frowned when he spotted the gleaming titanium flat bar on the eave of the roof beside Mike. The tool was invaluable for extracting nails on day one, but not so much on day two, which involved the roofing coiler firing nail after nail through the new shingles and tarpaper into the sheeting. Joe assumed Mike had taken it out of his tool belt during clean up, but he should have known better than to leave a hefty metal object so close to the edge of the roof. That was all Sedenko Roofing needed, for the flat bar to fall off the roof and crack open Mrs. Sloney’s skull when she came out to check on their progress or brought a pitcher of iced tea to the base of the ladder.
At that moment, Mike took a sideways step toward the flat bar, seemingly oblivious to its presence.
“Yo, Mike!” Joe called. “Watch out.”
“What?” Mike glanced down, left and right, then located the flat bar. “How’d that get there?”
He took another step, bending over from the waist to pick up the tool. Joe nodded and started to look away, but froze when one of the starter shingles slid out from under Mike’s planted foot. Mike fell sideways, hit the roof hard and rolled off the edge, his hand haplessly flailing at the gutter before he vanished from sight. At the sound of the heavy thud below, Joe stood frozen in shock. The nail gun slipped from his numb fingers, struck the shingles below the ridge cap line with a much softer impact, and skittered down the sloped roof as if pulled by the air hose.
“What the hell, Joe?” Greg said, looking from Joe to the retreating nail gun. “Where’s Mike?”
“He …”
Greg placed the blue metal caulking gun, loaded with a tube of black tar, above the vent pipe and scrambled down the roof to catch the roofing coiler before it fell over the edge. The air hose whipped back and forth, flicking the roofing gun away from Greg’s grasping hand time after time, leading him all the way down to the eave.
While Joe had been helpless to stop his longtime friend from plummeting to the driveway below, something about the wriggling air hose galvanized his legs. He scampered down the roof, intent on catching up to Greg before he suffered Mike’s fate. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a blue object jarred into motion, but his mind failed to register what was happening as the object slid away from the silver flashing at the base of the vent pipe. He was too intent on catching Greg, already dangerously close to the edge of the roof.
With one last swipe, Greg snatched the roofing gun as it flipped over the gutter.
“That was close!”
The air hose pulled taut, overbalancing him.
Greg pitched forward as Joe lunged to catch the back of his belt.
Joe missed by a hair’s breadth, then fought for balance— swaying forward far enough to witness Greg’s head slam against the edge of the roll-off with a sickening crunch, before he reared back to avert his own fall. The “easy day” had turned doubly fatal in a heartbeat. Trembling, he took a
careful step away from the brink.
His foot came down on something hard and mobile, his weight shifting as the blue caulking gun shot out from beneath the rubber sole of his work boot. Falling forward, his legs swept out behind him over the eave of the roof and his momentum carried him the rest of the way. He caught the gutter in one hand and swung wildly toward the side of the house. But his momentary relief transformed into a fresh spike of fear as the flimsy metal creaked and rusted screws popped loose. An instant later he was spinning backward, his view flashing from sky to tree to lawn to cracked sidewalk before everything went dark.
Washing dishes after her stop-at-home lunch, Michelle Sloney glimpsed something dark sail past the kitchen window and wondered absently if it was a large bird, maybe one of those god-awful turkey vultures that perched atop homes near the woods as if lamenting the infrequency of road kill. But when it landed in the yard, she saw it was one of the new roofing shingles. Probably damaged, meant for the long construction Dumpster occupying her driveway, maybe it had glided away, across the lawn.