Free Supernatural: The Unholy Cause by Joe Schreiber Page B

Two figures were sitting there, gazing back down at them, lit only by lamp light. He could smell the rich mossy odor of the swamp somewhere nearby.
    “Mr. McClane?” Sam called up.
    “Sam,” Tommy said. “Glad you decided to take me up on the invitation.”
    They walked up the creaking front steps to where Tommy and Nate were sitting on cane-backed chairs. Both had been reading, Sam saw. Tommy held Tony Hurwitz’s Confederates in the Attic , while Nate was gazing raptly down at what Sam realized was an electronic reader. It cast a ghostly light on his features.
    “Kid’s a reader, what can I say?” Tommy asked, by way of explanation. “When I was his age I was reading Batman comics. But he asked for a reader for his birthday, and now I can’t get him to put it down.”
    “Tommy, this is my brother Dean,” Sam said.
    “Pleased to meet you,” Tommy said, holding out a hand.
    “Quite a place you’ve got here,” Dean said, accepting the handshake.
    “Been in my family for five generations. We were gonna sell, but then the bottom dropped out of the real estate market, so I guess we’re stuck here.”
    “What are you reading there?” Dean asked the boy.
    Nate grinned a little sheepishly, held up the reader so Dean could see. Hammer of the Gods .
    Dean’s eyebrows went up.
    “You like Zeppelin?”
    “I tried to get the kid to listen to Allmans, Skynyrd...” Tommy shook his head. “Lost cause.”
    “Zeppelin’s the best,” the boy said. “I’m reading the part where they’re partying in the Riot House in L.A., throwing furniture down into the pool.”
    Dean nodded.
    “You know half the stuff in that book is bullcrap.”
    “Yeah, but it’s still pretty good.”
    “Yeah.” Dean grinned. “It is.”
    “You want a glass of iced tea?” Tommy asked, nodding to the Mason jars sitting on the table beside them. “Or something stronger? I got beer in the fridge.”
    “Wouldn’t say no,” Dean said.
    “Help yourself. It’s straight back through the door, last room on the right.”
    Dean opened the screen door. Stepping inside, he was immediately struck by the sheer size of the house around him, an ancient and somehow majestic shipwreck of a mansion that was much too large for the man and his son. The rooms he could see were lavishly appointed with worn furnishings, tables and lamps and Georgian antiques that looked like they could’ve sold at auction for thousands.
    He wondered if anything significant had changed since the McClanes’ ancestors had lived there.
    Passing through the arched kitchen doorway, he opened the fridge and took out a bottle of Beck’s. Turning, he glanced up and noticed the broom above the door.
    And froze.
    What the hell...?
    There was a small cloth bag mounted over the doorway he’d just stepped through. And another, nailed up over the window to his immediate right. In fact, from where he stood, he could see that every point of entry was marked with some small, easily overlooked item—a bundle of chicken bones tied together with hair, a scrap of rawhide wrapped around a bunch of feathers and animal teeth.
    You idiot. You walked right into this. Without so much as a knife to protect yourself—
    Slowly, without making a sound, Dean set the unopened beer on the counter. He felt wide-awake, absolutely alert. Walking silently back in the direction he’d come, he automatically started evaluating all possible exits and weapons.
    By the time he got to the screen door and heard Tommy McClane laughing, his heart was beating fast.
    What happened next would depend on how hard McClane wanted things to be for him.
    “What people don’t realize about a battle like Bull Run,” Tommy was saying, “was how much the original eyewitness reports of what happened—”
    He stopped, as Dean stepped up from behind.
    “Don’t move,” Dean muttered over his shoulder, and he tossed the Impala keys to Sam. “Get the car and bring it around. Knife’s in the usual place. Get