Free Supernatural: War of the Sons by Rebecca Dessertine, David Reed

stable.
    “I didn’t mean to do it,” the man said, his voice full of quiet desperation. “You know I would never...”
    Leaning forward as he listened for a reply, Dean nearly slipped off the crumbling concrete step, and pieces of the slab skittered downward. The voice stopped and moments later Dean heard feet pounding away from him. Crap , he swore under his breath, the noise had clearly spooked the man enough to send him running.
    Dean slammed his shoulder through the doorway into the sub-basement hallway, sending a radiating pain through his arm that probably wouldn’t go away for a week. The man hadn’t gotten far, having slipped to the ground less than ten feet from the stairwell.
    “Whaddaya doin’, trying to... ugh,” the man said, gulping down air. “Trying to give me a coronary?”
    “Slow your roll, dude,” Dean answered as he approached. The man’s face was flush and covered in sweat, and Dean recognized him immediately as the guard who had brought the War Scroll crate into the Waldorf earlier. He also recognized the bottle of Wild Turkey that was upended and dripping onto the cement floor. “Hard day, I take it,” he said, leaning in to read the man’s ID badge. “Mr. McMannon?”
    The man shuddered back a sob and lifted the bottle to his lips to swill down what hadn’t spilled.
    Dean inclined his head at the sorry sight. “Been there.”
    Was it possible that this mess of a guy was responsible for guarding the vault? If so, it was just a matter of keeping him acquainted with that bottle. Dean had no qualms about robbing a passed-out drunk.
    “Hasn’t been a great few days for me, either. Hell, hasn’t been a great decade,” he said.
    Lumbering to his feet, McMannon gave Dean a wary look.
    “Decade just—” he began, then hiccupped, “started.” Clearly, the guard wasn’t ready for a heart-to-heart with an intrusive bellhop.
    Dean gave him his best car salesman grin.
    “How ‘bout I get us another bottle?”
    James McMannon was in control of himself for the time being. He couldn’t exactly recall how he had come to be in the sub-basement, or even what day it was, but at least he felt in control.
    He watched the bellhop scurry back up the stairs to get another bottle. Something about the man—was it his smell?—was unsettling. James briefly considered killing him when he returned, but quickly banished the thought. Why would I do that? Why would I even think it? It was then that the image popped back into his mind: his nephew, Barney, head hanging like a rag doll’s, his eyes totally lifeless.
    Where had he seen that? Was it a terrible dream? Deep down, a part of James knew that he had done an unspeakable thing—but that part of his brain was currently drowning in Bourbon. At any rate, it wasn’t James that had killed Barney; it was the strange animal living inside him, and that animal seemed to be, for the moment, asleep.
    He shook his head to banish the strange thoughts. Now where was that kid with the new bottle of whiskey?
    Paranoia was deeply ingrained in the hunter lifestyle, and Sam Winchester had been checking for tails since he was five years old. Walking through the maelstrom of mid-town Manhattan was proving to be unimaginably difficult for him, especially with the knowledge that he’d been followed once that day already.
    Double back, wait a few minutes, then keep moving , Sam repeated to himself over and over. It was his father’s mantra, and it was clearly designed for small town America, not the overflowing streets of New York City.
    The towering brick building that housed the American Bible Society was located at 57 th Street and Park Avenue, a few blocks north of the Waldorf. Sam had resisted the temptation to check in on his brother while walking past, but he was still feeling the frustration of living without a cell phone. He imagined Dean had already made another attempt to get near the scroll, but it would be a few hours before his shift was over and Sam