Supernatural - Chapter 41: Bela's Contract (Patreon)

“April 10. Midnight.”

After giving them the date, Bela immediately went over the details of the ritual array again.

She had spent months researching it herself. She had never imagined that something which had hung over her for ten years might actually have a solution.

Murphy made no promises that it would work.

They could carry out every step described in the old texts, and they knew where to obtain the required materials. What they couldn't find was a single record of anyone succeeding.

Whether the array could truly sever a crossroads contract was something they would only discover by trying it.

Bela's contract would expire roughly three weeks before Dean's, which was why Murphy had planned from the beginning to test the method on her. Now that they finally had a workable plan, Bela was more determined than ever to pin down every detail.

She asked about almost every possibility she could think of. Why did the last step have to begin after midnight? What happened if it failed? How long could their defenses hold once the hellhounds appeared? And if something went wrong midway through the ritual, did they have another plan?

Murphy answered the questions she could and admitted when she didn't know.

Silence settled over the other end of the phone for a moment.

“So what do you need me to do?”

“First, stay alive until April 9.” Murphy picked up her pen and wrote down the date. “Come a day early. We'll prepare the location. I'll send you a list of the hardest materials to find.”

For once, Bela didn't even have the energy to make a sarcastic remark. She told Murphy to send the list as soon as possible and hung up.

Murphy had barely put down the phone when Sam pulled the paper over and wrote May 2 beneath April 10.

He did the arithmetic in a heartbeat.

“Twenty-two days.”

Dean nodded. “Got it.”

They spent almost all of the following month working on the ritual.

Drawing an actual array on the floor was far more troublesome than reading about one in a few paragraphs of an old book.

The person bound by the contract had to rewrite the original bargain under their birth name. The parchment could never have been used in another ritual, and the blood seal had to be placed precisely.

The steel knife meant to cut the contract required separate preparation. Iron nails fixed the array's four cardinal points, while its inner circle had to be laid out again in hematite.

Bela obtained the most difficult materials. Her efficiency was astonishing. Murphy gave her the specifications one morning, and someone delivered the supplies to Bobby's house the very next day.

The others gathered what remained, piece by piece.

Before long, books, parchment, and bottles covered the dining table. Murphy and Bobby repeatedly worked out the diagram at full scale. Whenever Sam was home, he helped check the Latin. Dean made it his personal mission to find things that could go wrong.

What if a candle went out halfway through? Could they repair a line someone stepped on? What if the person under contract was in too much pain to stand? If a hellhound broke through the defenses, who would keep the ritual going?

The old books answered some questions. For everything else, they had to devise their own contingencies.

During this time, Murphy also looked ahead to the next two cases she remembered the brothers taking.

She needed to stay in Sioux Falls to prepare the array, so she spent several days organizing the locations, abilities, and approximate dates she could recall, then handed her notes to the brothers.

Dean read both sets of notes first.

“Which one's more urgent?”

“The one involving the phone.”

“Okay.”

He folded the papers and put them away. This time, he didn't suggest that Murphy come with them. He and Sam left the following morning.

The first case didn't take long.

The creature that used telephone calls to impersonate dead people and their loved ones was cornered by two hunters who knew what to expect, before it could claim any more victims.

Murphy heard only a rough account afterward. Dean spent less than two minutes explaining what had happened and the rest of the call complaining that Sam had wanted to use himself as bait again to locate the thing.

The second case, however, had the brothers arguing all the way back to Bobby's.

The doctor who had kept himself alive for more than a century ended up buried underground again, but Sam hadn't wanted to put him away so quickly.

Murphy understood why. Bela's ritual still hadn't been tested, and May 2 was only three weeks away.

When Sam discovered that Benton sustained his life by repeatedly replacing his organs, his first instinct was to preserve the details of the method.

As revolting as it was, he wanted to find out whether any part of it could be adapted. If the ritual failed, at least they would have another possibility to consider.

Dean refused outright.

Both brothers were still furious when they came through the door. Murphy was working on fresh parchment at the table, but she needed to hear only a few words to understand the argument.

“I just wanted to understand how it works,” Sam insisted. He still thought it deserved investigation. “I never said we'd have to use it.”

“You know how he stayed alive.” Dean shrugged off his jacket and threw it over a chair. “A new heart today, a new liver in a few years, and then what? You gonna assemble a whole new set of organs for me?”

“There are healthy organs available,” Sam replied quickly. “From people who die in accidents or from illnesses that leave some organs intact.”

Dean stared at him. “You've already started looking for donors for me?”

“I'm saying we wouldn't necessarily have to kill anyone.”

“Dead people are still people.” Dean wasn't having it. “Come back when you've figured out how to do it without cutting somebody else open.”

Sam looked miserable. He knew Benton's method wouldn't undo the deal, but he couldn't bear to throw away any chance, however remote, of keeping Dean alive.

Murphy sided with Dean. “And the contract would still exist.”

“I know,” Sam said quietly. “I just want more options.”

In the end, he handed the material they'd recovered from Benton to Bobby. Bobby filed it with the hunters' records. The next day, he contacted several hunters in the area to make sure someone kept watch over the immortal doctor's grave.

No one raised the question of immortality again.

All the while, April slipped past amid their preparations.

Bobby eventually found a site some distance from Sioux Falls. It was a detached house that had stood empty for years. Its owners had moved away long ago, it was already scheduled for demolition, and there were few people living on the surrounding land.

On the morning of April 9, Bela arrived half an hour early.

She was still impeccably dressed, her hair carefully styled, as though she would never dream of looking anything less than her best in public. But once she removed her sunglasses, there was no hiding the shadows beneath her eyes.

She had barely managed a full night's sleep over the previous two days.

At first, she'd only had nightmares. Then she began seeing things while awake. Dead people sometimes stood at the end of a hallway. An impossible face appeared in a mirror. At night, she heard someone pacing outside her door.

Bela knew perfectly well they were hallucinations. Knowing that in the daylight was one thing. Opening her eyes at midnight to find someone standing beside her bed was another.

The ordeal had clearly shaken her. Her trunk was packed with extra defenses she'd gathered herself: guns, salt, Goofer dust, and an enormous bag of devil's shoestring. She seemed determined to bring everything that might keep a hellhound away.

Dean picked up the bag of grass and was just about to ask whether she intended to open a shop when Bela gave him a freezing look. “Shut your mouth.”

That took the fun out of teasing her. He quietly carried her supplies inside.

They worked until afternoon preparing the rest of the house. Fresh Goofer dust surrounded the perimeter, devil's shoestring filled the major entrances, and they reinforced every section of the doors and windows that would take another nail or board.

The living room was already empty. The array covered most of the floor, its outer circle anchored by four iron nails and its inner ring laid in hematite. They left the final salt line unfinished so they wouldn't ruin it by walking in and out.

None of those defenses would last long. But they weren't expecting a derelict house to withstand hellhounds all night. If it could buy the array a few minutes after midnight, that would be enough.

It was the parchment that finally made Bela go quiet.

When Murphy set it before her, Bela stared at the name written at the top.

Abby.

Her birth name. The name the old texts required to connect the new document to her original deal.

Seeing it plainly unsettled Bela, but she said nothing. She pricked her finger with a steel needle and pressed the blood where it belonged. Murphy collected the parchment without asking what was going through her mind.

Afterward, Bela could barely sit still.

She asked again about steps they'd already reviewed that morning. The moment Dean and Sam returned from the back entrance, she went to inspect it herself. When Bobby crouched to adjust an iron nail, she hurried over to ask whether something had gone wrong with the array.

She couldn't seem to stop. Usually, Bela excelled at reading a situation and taking control of it. Today, however much she prepared and however many times she checked, the final step remained beyond her reach until midnight.

A little after three, a hallucination frightened her badly enough to draw her gun in front of everyone.

Murphy was sorting supplies for the night when she heard a holster being jerked open behind her. Bela was on her feet, aiming at the staircase.

There was nobody there. But Bela's expression suggested she could see someone all too clearly. More than ten seconds passed before she slowly lowered the weapon.

Sam asked what she'd seen.

“A dead man.”

Bela refused to elaborate. She sat down again without touching her coffee and shoved her faintly trembling hands into her pockets.

The visions became less predictable as the hours passed. Sometimes she lost her train of thought halfway through speaking. Sometimes she walked past a room only to stare suddenly into an empty corner. She knew the things she saw couldn't be trusted, and that knowledge made her frustration worse.

That evening, Murphy told her they'd checked the entire array. Bela immediately demanded, “How many times?”

The sharpness of her own voice seemed to surprise her.

“How do you know you haven't missed something?”

For a moment, no one spoke.

Murphy couldn't give her that certainty. They had spent the last month checking everything it was possible to check.

Nor did she offer empty comfort. “We've verified everything we can.”

Bela pressed her lips together and eventually forced down her anger.

After dark, she could barely manage to eat. She held a sandwich for more than ten minutes, took only a few bites, and at one point snapped “Shut up!” at the empty kitchen.

The others were getting used to her talking to people who weren't there. Bela wasn't. She dropped the sandwich onto her plate and checked the time.

“Four hours.”

It was the first time all day she'd said the countdown aloud without being asked.

Murphy sat beside her and went through the final procedure again. Bela had heard it countless times, but at least listening gave her something to focus on.

Before midnight, they could align the parchment, blood seal, ritual array, and original contract. The severing itself could begin only once collection on the debt officially started. Bela would then cut through the blood seal herself with the steel knife and throw the parchment into the flames.

It wasn't a lengthy ritual. Unfortunately, the last few minutes were also when the hellhounds would arrive.

Bela asked yet again how long it would take.

Murphy's answer hadn't changed. A few minutes, provided everything went right. By now, however, a few minutes sounded like a very long time. Bela immediately asked what they would do if the defenses failed to hold even that long.

Rather than repeat her calculations for every barrier, Murphy simply said, “That's why we spent so much time preparing.”

No question Bela asked after that would produce a more reassuring answer.

After eleven, the house gradually fell quiet.

They had begun the preliminary ritual. Charcoal burned brightly, and the scent of incense masked the musty smell of the old house. Bela sat in the middle of the array, the steel knife never leaving her hand. She had long since lost the energy to pretend she was calm. Visions kept intruding, and she struggled to keep her breathing even.

At one point, she seized Murphy's wrist and said someone was standing by the window.

Murphy followed her gaze. Beyond the sealed window, there was only the wooden boarding they'd nailed up that afternoon.

“I can't see anyone,” Murphy told her.

Bela knew that.

Still, she held on until the figure she saw finally faded and her fingers gradually relaxed. After that, she kept her eyes down as much as possible, looking only at the array and the people she knew were real. Even then, imagined sounds sometimes broke her concentration.

By 11:59, they'd finished everything that could be done ahead of time.

Sam and Murphy took positions on either side of the array. Bobby watched its critical points, while Dean monitored the defenses around the house. No one could perform the last step for Bela before the appointed hour. After a month of work, all they could do was endure one final minute.

Bela's fingers tightened around the knife.

She had been watching the blood seal on the floor. Then she raised her head. “Murphy.”

Murphy turned toward her.

Bela had asked endless questions about the array that day. Now she asked the only one that really mattered. “Is it going to work?”

Her eyes were already reddening.

“I don't know.” Murphy knew Bela didn't want a comforting lie. “We've checked the materials and every step. We won't know anything else until we've tried.”

It plainly wasn't what Bela wanted to hear. But it was the only answer anyone could give her.

She drew several steadying breaths and took a firm grip on the knife.

The second hand of the clock completed its final movement.

A growl erupted outside almost immediately.

Bela went rigid. Murphy instinctively looked toward the window, then froze in astonishment.

Three enormous hounds stood in the yard.

She had never expected to be able to see them.

As Murphy remembered it, hellhounds were invisible to almost everyone. She'd assumed she would have to locate them by sound or trust Bela to tell her where they were. Yet she could see all three clearly. Their dark coats blended into the night, their bodies dwarfed ordinary dogs, and every one of them was staring at Bela in the center of the array.

A question flashed through Murphy's mind. Why could she see them?

Before she could consider it, the leading hellhound lunged at a window.

The glass and wooden frame shuddered together.

Murphy pushed the question aside at once. “Three. Two at the front, one on the right.”

Sam looked startled. “You can see them?”

“Believe me, I'm just finding that out myself.”

Midnight had passed. Murphy and Sam immediately began the final passage of the incantation.

They continued chanting as Bobby monitored the array's critical points and Dean checked the outer barriers in the directions Murphy called out. The hounds scattered quickly. One circled toward the back door while the other two threw themselves repeatedly against the front doors and windows. For the moment, the Goofer dust and devil's shoestring kept them outside.

The old house, however, couldn't endure that punishment forever.

Every crash made Bela turn toward the noise. As the array began pulling at her contract, the hallucinations that had plagued her all day grew worse. Real hellhounds and imaginary figures mingled together until she could scarcely tell which threats she was supposed to avoid.

The first time Murphy called her name, Bela didn't seem to hear.

She was staring at an empty space behind Murphy, looking even more frightened than she had at the sight of the hounds. She shrank backward until her heel was nearly touching the inner circle.

“Bela. Look at me.”

Murphy raised her voice and called again.

At last, Bela reacted.

Murphy told her to concentrate on the people in front of her. Murphy, Sam, Bobby, Dean. Every one of them was real.

Bela's breathing gradually steadied.

“Keep your eyes on us,” Murphy said.

Bela nodded and returned to her place.

Meanwhile, Sam had reached the last portion of the spell.

Glass shattered somewhere outside. The hound on the right planted its paws on the windowsill and hurled its entire body inward, only to strike an unseen barrier as it crossed the threshold. The impact flung it back into the yard.

Murphy watched it tumble onto the grass. It scrambled back to its feet almost immediately and crouched to attack again.

Within the array, the blood seal had traveled along the markings to its final point. Murphy checked its position and told Bela to act.

Only when Bela looked down did she realize how violently her hands were shaking. The first stroke of the knife went wide, catching the edge of the parchment instead. Her breathing turned ragged as another blow shook the house.

“Follow the blood seal,” Murphy instructed.

Bela's mind was crowded with everything that might still go wrong. She opened her mouth, but Murphy stopped her. “Finish it first.”

This time, Bela held the blade steady.

The steel edge traveled cleanly along the blood seal, splitting the parchment down the middle. At that same moment, Sam finished the final words of the incantation. Bela thrust the parchment into the brazier, and flames climbed along the cut, consuming her name and the bloodstain.

As the parchment caught fire, Bela abruptly went still. She couldn't have put the sensation into words.

In ten years, she had never been able to tell where, exactly, the bargain had attached itself to her. She'd only known the deadline was approaching and that death would arrive today to collect its due.

Now something that had been wound deep around her soul suddenly loosened. For the first time, she could feel that something really had been there all along.

And now it was gone.

Almost simultaneously, Murphy watched the hound crouching outside the broken window vanish. She turned to find the other two, but the yard was empty.

All three hellhounds that had been circling and battering the house had disappeared. The growling, scratching, and heavy impacts stopped together.

Only trampled grass lay beyond the shattered window. The night breeze blew inside again, making the fragments of glass still clinging to the frame rattle softly.

“They're gone,” Murphy said.

Bela hadn't quite understood.

Murphy repeated herself more plainly. “All the hellhounds have disappeared.”

Bela touched her chest, then searched the room with her eyes. The hallucinations that had tormented her for two days were gone as well. At last, the only people she could see were the ones who were actually standing there.

She still hardly dared believe it. “All of them?”

“I watched them disappear.”

Bela stared at her for a long while.

Then the steel knife slipped from her fingers and struck the floor. It was as if she'd finally lost the last of the strength she'd been using to hold herself together. She sank down where she stood.

She sat with her head bowed for a long time before a small laugh escaped. The laugh dissolved into uneven, breathless gasps, and tears began to spill down her cheeks. Apparently surprised by her own reaction, Bela covered her face with one hand.

No one tried to make her get up.

Dean went to inspect the barriers that had taken the worst beating. The right-hand window was beyond repair, and the second layer of boarding on the front door had nearly come loose, although the devil's shoestring remained where they'd placed it.

When he returned and reported what he'd found, Sam already had a notebook out. He was writing down everything that had happened after midnight in the order it occurred.

Murphy supplied the details about the hellhounds.

“Three of them,” she said. “When the contract broke, they all vanished within a few seconds of each other.”

Sam recorded that carefully, then asked whether she'd known beforehand that she could see the creatures.

“No.” Murphy was still baffled. “I thought I'd have to rely on Bela to tell me where they were tonight.”

Bela had finally recovered enough to pull herself into a chair. Her eyes were red, and her voice remained hoarse. The sight of the others already turning her narrow escape into notes for Dean's upcoming deadline brought back some of her familiar temper.

“Could you at least let me enjoy being alive for ten minutes before you start talking about Dean's life?”

Dean was busy nailing the loosened window boards back into place. He didn't even turn around. “You enjoy being alive. Nobody's stopping you.”

Bela glared at him.

If she still had enough strength to glare, Murphy figured she was recovering nicely.

Sam hadn't lifted his pen from the page.

At the top he'd written April 10, midnight. Beside it, he'd noted when the array took effect, how many hellhounds had appeared, and the order in which the defenses had held them off.

At the bottom, Sam started a fresh line and wrote May 2.