InsaneJournal

Current mood:	exhausted
Current music:	Metallica - Of Wolf And Man

For PurpleAlicorn, supernatural, gen *disturbing imagery* (S5 plot point spoiler)



title: The Sword of St. Michael the Archangel
author: lisa roquin
fandom: supernatural
character: John
spoilers: S5 Ep01
word count: 840




John swallowed as he stared at the passage. He struggled to keep his breathing even, Marine training kicking in and keeping him this side of hyperventilating. Just barely.

The language burned into the hide carefully laid on the table was ancient. A precurser to Aramaic, though not entirely. Some of the runes mixed in weren't human. Supposedly they were Angelic.

Angelic Runes were more terrifying than demonic.

Angelic Runes written, no branded on human skin, before it was peeled from the back of some innocent child, virgin skin. The size of the piece, the kid couldn't have been more than ten. and there were seventy-six more roughly the same size with more prophecies all carefully wrapped in leather--animal hide, bull calves, less than a year old, hide cured and worked into leather by virgin slaves, colored with the blood of the calves, hopefully the blood of the calves. John wasn't sure he wanted to know if it was anything else.

The leather "envelopes" or whatever the hell they were supposed to be called radiated as much power and magic as the skins.

The magic that went into the skins and their "envelopes" still being in such perfect condition at least three thousand, maybe more years later was terrifying. That kind of magic was unstopable.

He looked over at the other skin. A prophecy of sorts, in the form of an astrological birth chart. The way it was done, Sumerian or Assyrian magician had cast that chart. Hell, only knew why. Why a Sumerian or Assyrian magician. Hell, or God, only knew the rhyme or reason for the languages mixed with the runes on the skins.

Bobby would probably know which--Sumerian or Assyrian--if he studied it a bit. Bobby wasn't seeing these. Jim wasn't seeing these. Hell, Daniel wasn't seeing these and it was Daniel's cabin he was holed up in until the worst of the bruises and cuts faded. The battered and half dead shape he was in now would get too many questions and draw too much attention, even if nothing was broken and only a few stitches he'd managed to put in himself necessary. Maybe a few more stitches could have been stood, but he'd run out of whiskey and he couldn't reach to put them in himself. The Wendigo had been one vicious bastard, even for a wendigo.

The boys were okay. He'd called Dean that morning. It had taken every bit of willpower to sound normal. The boys were okay. Dean was sixteen. Sam was twelve. They were too well taught, too well trained not to be okay on their own for a little while.

Dean hadn't argued when he'd told him to pack up and clear out, to go to Bobby's. He'd meet the boys there in a couple weeks. Easier now with Dean having a driver's liscence. The thought of Dean driving from Georgia to South Dakota a little unsettling but Dean was a good driver, and an experienced one. John taught him when he was eleven, as soon as he was big enough to reach the pedals and see over the wheel easily.

Sam was the scary one. Stubborn little shit listened to nothing. So damned hellbent on proving he could do something he was dangerous. Dean offered to teach Sam to drive. John just might let him. Sam listened to Dean yet, at least more than he listened to John.

He should have shot the crazed old man that showed up in a battered mostly rust and primer maybe once blue and white 1950s pickup. Should have shot the crazy old bastard and burned the crate he'd left and insisted was to be John's to keep now.

If it could burn.

He shuddered. The old man had been driven crazy by the skins. John didn't doubt it.

The most terrifying thing was that he could read the skins.

Read them as easily as if they were written in English. He fought to steady his ragged, terrified breathing. Deep breaths through his nose.

He was meant to read them.

He looked from the runes to the astrological chart. It made perfect sense, every bit of it even if it should look like a bunch of nonsense and chicken scratching to John. He hadn't bothered much with Astrology and he sure as hell didn't read the miniscule lettering branded onto the skin was.

To the minute. The birth chart was detailed to the goddamned minute. Longitude and latitude, that even if he hadn't checked it yet--and he would, repeatedly, just to try to prove it wrong--obviously corresponded with... with...

He wasn't going to think it until there was proof that was exactly where the longitude and lattitude crossed.

He sucked a heavy harsh breath in through his nose, an exhale that was pained, almost animalistic in sound. Tears burned at his eyes and obscured the sight of the first of the seventy seven prophecies on the skin laid out on the table before him.

The prophecies of The Sword of St. Michael the Archangel.