Supernatural 10 - Rite of Passage (36 page)

Bobby nodded and then reached into the bag for the holly. “Have your men carry these. Could stop the bad luck hoodoo. Maybe improve radio reception.”

“Got any rabbit’s feet in there? Four leaf clovers? Horseshoes?”

“Can’t hurt,” Dean said. “We’re packing.”

“If nothing else,” Sam added, “it might give us time to find a weakness.”

“Maybe the weakness,” McClary suggested, “is his three sons.”

As the sergeant quickly passed out the holly, brooking no complaints, Dean looked at Sam, who nodded and said, “He’s got a point.”

“Roy, you’re with me,” Dean said, moving to the right door. “Agent Willis, go with S—Tom.”

The Winchesters had discussed their deployment in the car. Bobby continued to walk with a limp, grimacing with each step. Roy had one arm and had retired from hunting with good reason. Both men were too stubborn to sit out the battle, but too much of a liability to each other to team up.

McClary checked his watch. “Go!”

The K-9 units went through the doors first, followed by the other officers and McClary, with the Winchesters, Bobby and Roy bringing up the rear.

* * *

Sumiko had stayed hidden below the window of her mother’s Odyssey when the police cars arrived and blocked the intersection. She kept hoping and praying that Ryan would come out of the theater unharmed. But nobody who went inside the theater came out and she feared a robbery had turned into a hostage situation. She heard occasional gunshots and screaming when the outer doors opened and tried not to let her imagination run wild.

She could picture Ryan holed up with hostages, along with the criminal who had assaulted his mother, and the two juvenile delinquents. A horrible family of outlaws, and Ryan had let himself get pulled into their orbit. There was nothing she could do now. Ryan was in too deep.

When she saw the other men arrive, the ones not wearing police uniforms, she wondered absently if one of them was the investigator who had contacted her.

She blamed herself for driving Ryan away with a stupid argument right when he needed her most. Finding out his father had lied to him all his life had been too much for him to handle alone. Despair overwhelmed her.

Knuckles rapped on the window.

Sumiko nearly jumped out of her skin.

A flashlight shone in her face. “You can’t stay here, miss! Move along!”

Heart racing, she started the Odyssey and drove along the shoulder until she could swing into the street. She couldn’t leave Ryan, but she had to move the car. She turned left down the nearest side street, made a U-turn and parked near the curb where she could see the police cars but not the traffic
cop or the front of the theater. She left the car and walked to the corner, looking toward the intersection. That’s when she saw the speeding car, weaving back and forth across two lanes of traffic.

The car never slowed. The traffic cop bolted out of the way just in time and rolled across the hood of a cruiser. The speeding car smashed through the angled cop cars in a rapid series of destructive impacts before veering into and splitting a utility pole. EMTs rushed from the parked ambulance to the driver.

Sumiko hugged herself, wondering what else could go wrong.

Everything went to hell five seconds after Dean walked through the doorway into the theater. He allowed himself a frozen moment to take in the extreme level of carnage before him, dozens of broken bodies, severed limbs everywhere he looked, blood running down every surface. Walls, chair backs, support columns, and wall sconces dripped with gore. Survivors huddled together, small islands of life in an ocean of death. In the left aisle, the oni sported a wild head of red hair around the two bone-colored horns. His arms spread, a cleaver in one hand and his cane in the other, he stalked more victims. Farther down the left aisle, near the fire exit that had been rammed open by McClary’s men, Dean spotted Ryan, one of the three teenagers pictured on the blog page. Ryan fought the cops with a knife, screaming “No!” every time he lashed out at someone. In the right aisle, the largest son, Jesse, ripped out an old man’s throat with his dark fingernails. Jesse had horns now, half the size of the oni’s.

The K-9 officers released the German shepherds on entry and both dogs bounded toward the oni with rumbling growls and hackles raised.

When the oni whirled to face the new threat, Dean hoped to see fear in his inhuman eyes, but nothing registered. He swept out his foot and kicked the first dog in the chest, sweeping it aside so hard it flailed through the air and struck a blood-wet wall with a whine of pain. He drove the cleaver blade into the second dog’s head. It dropped to the floor, unmoving.

“So much for that theory,” Dean said grimly.

McClary yelled, “Agent Willis and I have armor-piercing rounds. Get the sons!”

Sam and a couple of McClary’s men angled toward the left aisle, closing on Ryan. Bobby stood near McClary to get a bead on the oni. That left Dean and Roy, along with the remaining cops, to tackle Jesse in the right aisle—

Wait! Where’s the third son?
Dean wondered.

The disemboweled body of a man in his sixties dropped in front of him with a heavy wet splat. From above, a woman screamed, “Dalton! Stop!”

“Shut up, you worthless bitch!”

“Balcony!” Dean said to Roy.

They scrambled up the stairs and found Dalton by the balcony railing, covered in blood, with one arm wrapped around an old woman’s neck, his sharp-toothed mouth close to her throat, a blood-drenched knife in his other hand pressed to her abdomen. Twin horns had erupted from his
head, protruding more than an inch, and the center of his forehead was unusually lumpy. Something squirmed under the skin.

“He killed my husband right in front of me and laughed,” the woman said, “after killing all these people. My evil grandson—”

“I told you to shut your mouth!”

Dalton’s dark nails bit into her fleshy neck, drawing blood.

Roy stepped forward, the gun in his right hand lowered, nonthreatening. “Dalton, listen to me,” he said. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Why the hell not?” Dalton said. “The way this bitch treated me my whole life.”

“I had a boy. He was a few years older than you when he died,” Roy said, taking another tentative step forward.

“What the hell, Roy?” Dean whispered fiercely.

Roy ignored him. “It’s hard raising a boy, son. Sometimes parents are strict, maybe too strict. Doesn’t mean they don’t—”

A rapid series of car crashes erupted from outside.

Dean half expected a cement truck to plow through the wall of the theater.

Dalton raked his claws across his grandmother’s neck, ripping her throat apart, and hurled her body sideways over the edge of the balcony, trailing an arterial spray of blood.

“Oh, no…” Roy said, raising his gun.

Before he could get off a shot, Dalton lunged toward him, knife raised.

Dean fired twice as the blade came down. Both bullets
hit Dalton square in the chest, but neither penetrated his skin. He merely twitched from the twin impacts as his dagger plunged into Roy’s chest.

Roy dropped to his knees, the knife handle protruding from his torso.

Dalton raised his blood-soaked hands, smiling. “Bullets can’t hurt me,” he boasted, “and I don’t even need a knife to slice your throat open.”

The lumpy flesh on Dalton’s forehead parted and—as Dean had suspected—revealed a milky-white third eye just as he lunged toward Dean, flashing his dark claws. Dean reacted instinctively, shooting the third eye. Blood burst from the gaping hole and white fluid spilled over Dalton’s nose. His human eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed face first.

“Aim for the third eye! Weak spot!” Dean shouted down from the balcony.

A moan escaped Roy’s lips. He pitched sideways, caught himself briefly on his right arm, then tipped over. A moment before his face could strike the floor, Dean caught him.

“Roy,” Dean said. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“No… I’m not,” Roy said, gasping for air. “Thought I could get her clear.”

“I know,” Dean said. “Hold on.”

Roy shook his head. “Finish this.”

“I will.”

“Tell Singer… Tell Bobby he’s too damn old for this work,” Roy said. “And… don’t ever un-retire.” He coughed up blood and closed his eyes. “Never… ends well.”

Dean could say the same for most hunters’ lives.

He felt the moment Roy died, and laid him gently on the floor.

Now that he had discovered the chink in the oni armor, Dean had to hope he could keep that promise to Roy, and end the reign of terror. He hurried down the curved staircase to join the fight below.

Thirty-Two

When Dalton died, the severing of the blood-bond staggered Tora, as if he had been dealt a physical blow. For long moments he had trouble breathing. His rampaging bloodlust, shared with his transforming sons, had clouded his better judgment. Because of the nature of his abilities, he often had to soak up the fear and grief he caused from a distance. The completion of the oni rite of passage into adulthood had, however, allowed him to sink his claws into the gloriously violent celebration. But they had stayed too long.

The last group of police officers had come with the two infernal hunters, and they must have discovered that holly leaves neutralized his direct influence over human behavior and actions. He noticed the difference immediately—it was as if they were invisible to his third eye. And while he
could withstand the force of the armor-piercing bullets, those rounds could injure his sons, though not mortally. He should have signaled a retreat earlier. Because he waited, his nascent family had suffered an irreparable loss. Moreover, the hunters had discovered the one fatal weakness in his sons. Dalton and Jesse had developed their third eye already and Dalton had died because of it. Ryan’s hadn’t formed yet, but could at any moment, placing him at risk.

“We
leave now!”
he ordered through the blood-bond.
“Out the back!”

Sam and the other police officers fighting Ryan and Jesse discovered that, in addition to being impervious to bullets, the oni’s sons were endowed with inhuman strength. When Sam’s group got a clear shot at Ryan, they took it, but direct hits produced nothing more than a grunt, a flinch or the occasional stumble. Though scores of theatergoers had been killed, with twice as many wounded and slowly bleeding to death, Sam estimated one to two hundred survivors. Some cowered on the floor between rows of seats, others lay prostrate under seats or feigned death to escape the attention of their attackers. Small groups huddled together, inaccessible for the moment because of a veritable barricade of corpses. The survivors, uniformly too terrified to flee, were also potential victims of stray bullets. Even when Sam urged them to run for the exits, they wouldn’t budge. They had seen one horrific outcome after another for anyone who ventured into the aisles.

So far, neither the police nor the hunters had done
anything to instill hope in the survivors. They waged a war of attrition in which only one side suffered losses. With the exception of Winemiller, the half-dozen officers who had rammed open the rear door of the theater had already fallen, victims of physical battery or knife wounds from Ryan or friendly fire. One had slipped in blood and split his head open on an armrest.

With their armor-piercing rounds, Bobby and McClary had interrupted the oni’s killing spree, but they would run out of special ammo soon and they had to dodge his attacks with the cleaver and cane.

In the right aisle, three officers had fallen, victims of Jesse’s knife or claws. The remaining police officers were retreating, taking shots when they had a clear line of fire, but their bullets could have been made of modeling clay for all the damage they inflicted.

Sam took a shot at Ryan and hit him in the throat without opening a wound. Undeterred, Ryan stepped over the body of a dead policewoman toward Winemiller, slashing his knife back and forth. Winemiller jumped back, almost fell, but regained his balance.

We can’t stop them
, Sam thought grimly.
They’ll kill everyone here.

They were only a few minutes into the battle, but a dire outcome seemed inevitable.

Then Sam heard his brother shouting. “Aim for the third eye! Weak spot!”

Sam immediately drew a bead on Ryan’s head, but Ryan’s third eye wasn’t open yet.

Behind him, Sam heard a commotion. As he whirled, he
saw the oni backhand McClary with the flat of the cleaver. The force of the blow hurled the sergeant across a half dozen theater seats.

Jesse stabbed a cop in the chest, pulled the gun from the man’s weak fingers and shot the other two cops near him. Then he loped across the seat backs in the middle seating section toward the oni in the left aisle. Bobby tracked him and fired a shot that whipped back Jesse’s head. He crashed between two rows of seats.

Bobby spun, sighted on the oni’s head and got off one shot. The oni’s head jerked back, but he recovered quickly. With his cane, he clubbed Bobby, who managed to turn away from the brunt of the blow, but fell in a heap. A moment later Jesse was up again, a line of blood along his temple, his blossoming third eye intact.