Chapter Text
Toni Bevell put the phone down with a sigh. Apparently, there had been word of strong wards being erected in the US. There wasn’t a Men of Letters chapter there anymore, which meant that stupid hunters were playing with things they couldn’t possibly understand. It looked like she was going to have to go teach them a lesson they wouldn’t soon forget. She tucked her son into bed and walked out the door. Destination- Kansas. She would start at the old Men of Letters bunker. If they had gotten into something they shouldn’t have that would be the first place to look.
Toni creeped slowly up to the door of the bunker and put the key in the door, sliding it open slowly, not noticing the silent alarm it sent up. She had just reached the bottom of the stairs when two men entered the room. “Dean Winchester,” she said distastefully. She should have known those disgraces had something to do with this. “And I don’t know you,” she said to the other one.
“And you’re not going to. Who are you and how did you get in here?” Gabriel asked narrowing his eyes at her. She was human at least. It meant that no monsters had found a way around their wards. They had too many hunters coming by from time to time for help to block humans from the wards completely, but even they couldn’t just walk in the door. The only people who should have been able to were the ones who lived here.
“I think I’ll be the one to ask the questions here,” she said raising her gun. She couldn’t believe they had come to face an intruder unarmed, but she would definitely take advantage of it.
Gabriel raised an amused eyebrow and resisted the urge to chuckle. She actually thought she had the upper hand. They had no need for weapons in their own stronghold and she had no idea what he was. He resisted the urge to cut his eyes up to Sam who had just walked in the still open door. “Go ahead then. Shoot if you’re going to,” he taunted.
She didn’t need to be told twice. The sound of the shot echoed through the room, but the bullet stopped about four feet in front of her and fell to the floor. She looked at it in shock for a moment. “What is this?”
Sam slipped behind her and grabbed her arms, pulling them behind her back and wrenching the gun from her grip in the same motion. “Basic containment ward. Nothing in. Nothing out,” he said smugly as he nodded to Dean who dropped the ward and lifted his hand to catch the manacles Gabriel tossed him.
“Are you going to answer our questions now? Dean asked.
“Not on your life,” she said frustrated as she struggled in Sam’s grip.
“Suit yourself. Go ahead and put her in the dungeon for now,” Dean told his brother.
“We’ve already got a vamp in there,” Sam pointed out.
“She’s human. She doesn’t need warding. Put her in the tertiary dungeon. In restraints, of course. Just in case,” Gabriel suggested.
Sam nodded and headed out to do so. Once he had returned, he asked Gabriel, “Any ideas?”
“Well she’s British,” Gabriel said with a shrug.
“Yeah, that’s helpful,” Dean said rolling his eyes with a snort.
“She also has pretty strong mental shields. I mean, I could bust my way in, but who knows what state her mind would be in afterwards,” Gabriel added.
“That’s something. So, she does have at least some level of knowledge about magic,” Sam said thoughtfully.
“I say we give her a day or two to sweat it out and then see if we can’t get some answers,” Gabriel proposed. “She was able to get in here and apparently has a key to the place that shouldn’t even exist, and obviously intended us harm, so if I HAVE to bust my way through her mental shields and risk turning her brain to mush, I will, but it would be easier…on my conscience at least…if we didn’t have to go that far.”
“Yeah. We’ll keep that as a last resort,” Dean said with a nod. He didn’t much like the idea of destroying a human’s mind either, no matter the circumstances. He knew it might come to that though. They did need to know if some organization was moving against them, and the fact that she could just waltz in like she owned the place made him nervous. “I think the three of us, Bobby, and Henry should all stick close. I’ll call Lisa and have her, Ben, John, and Mary stay with her sister for the time being.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable with them here behind the wards?” Sam asked.
“The wards we put on her sister’s house may not be as strong as the wards here, but there no one will know where they are. We know that at least one hostile has access to this place now, and she could have an army behind her. For all we know this place could turn into a battleground. If it were just Lisa and Ben I could see giving them a choice. They can both hold their own in a fight by now, but John and Mary are only three and four. I can’t have them here if something happens,” Dean told him.
Sam nodded. It was Dean’s choice and he could see his point. Neither option was a good one though. “Just remember. This woman apparently knew who you were. She likely knows who you are married to and it wouldn’t take much searching for her to find Lisa’s family too,” he had to point out.
“That’s where I come in. If they get in trouble they will pray and I’ll bring them back here and lock them down in the safe room if it comes to that. If trouble comes to our door while they are here, they might just end up first in the line of fire. Dean’s right. It’s better if they aren’t here until we get this figured out.”
That decided, Dean went to make his phone call. He caught Lisa just in time. She was on her way home already. It took a little talking to keep Ben from coming back to help, but Dean convinced him that he could be needed to keep the rest of the family safe long enough for Gabriel to get to them if the worst happened. He managed to keep from telling Ben that he needed him safe too. The seventeen-year-old didn’t much like the idea of his father coddling him. It was bad enough that they wouldn’t let him hunt without his father or one of his uncles with him, but since he accepted the fact that it wasn’t a good idea to hunt alone anyway, he dealt with it.
It had been a day and half since their visitor had arrived, and Sam was tapped to be the first to attempt to speak with her. “Why me?” he groaned. He felt like he was so close on the vamp cure and hated being pulled away from his books when he was actively working on something.
“Because you’re better with people than Dean is and you’re more physically intimidating than I am,” Gabriel said pointedly. Sam couldn’t exactly argue with that so he just sighed and made a few more notes before he marked his place and headed down to the dungeons. He did grab a plate of food and a gallon of water though. She was probably hungry and thirsty by now and they could serve as incentives for her to speak.
When he arrived in the dungeon, and the door open she turned to look at him. Her lips were chapped and she had dark circles under her eyes, but her mind seemed as sharp as ever and she glared at him from where she was chained against the wall. “Okay, so let’s start with something simple,” Sam said before she could say anything. “You tell me who you are and why you’re here and you get some water. You keep answering questions and you get some food. You refuse to answer and I walk out that door and come back tomorrow. By then you’ll be well on your way to death by dehydration and I hear that’s a pretty nasty way to go, so I’d advise being cooperative.” He had no intention of letting her die of thirst, but she didn’t need to know that.
“Toni Bevell. Men of Letters. London chapter house. I’m here to stop you brainless American hunters from messing with things you couldn’t possibly understand,” she said imperiously. The effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that she hadn’t taken her eyes off the jug of water, but Sam gave her credit for trying.
He sneered and handed over the jug of water despite his anger at her presumption that he and all other hunters were stupid. “Fuck you, bitch. I went to Stanford,” he snapped. “And I have the best magical education in the universe, so you have nothing on me.”
“Magical education? Hah,” she scoffed after she finished drinking. “There is only one magical school in the world and I can guarantee you never went there.”
“You mean your silly little Kendrick’s Academy? The place where you learn such a ridiculous hodge podge of hedge magic that barely works and takes far more effort than it should because of complete lack of knowledge on any of the subjects?” Sam asked condescendingly.
“The men of letters has a long tradition of intellectual excellence…”
“You wish. Just because your small brains can’t fathom the things we are doing here doesn’t mean that we don’t understand it. We understand far more than you could ever dream.”
“Impossible,” she spat angrily. How dare he insult the men of letters.
The door creaked open behind Sam again and Dean walked in. “Sorry Sammy. My turn to take over. Bobby just got a call from Joe. His crew is running low on werewolf cure so we need you to whip up a new batch.” Any of them could make it really, but Sam was the best at it, and he really wanted his shot at this bitch and to rub her nose in the idea that they actually had a werewolf cure.
“There’s no such thing as a werewolf cure,” she said as if speaking to small children.
“Course there is sweetheart. We invented it years ago. Haven’t had a chance to test it on purebloods yet, but it works on the rest,” Dean sneered.
“You couldn’t possibly have…”
“You’re forgetting the way this works. We ask. You answer. You’re the one who barged into our home and tried to shoot us. You don’t have any rights here,” Dean said picking up a fry from the plate that Sam had brought down and put it in his mouth. “And the more you dissemble the more of this food that I eat and the less there is for you if you actually get around to answering our questions,” he added with a smirk as Sam left the room to go work on the werewolf cure.
Toni was done answering questions though. She had answered the one that got her water and she could go longer without food than these inbred idiots thought. She just had to stall for a little while longer. When she didn’t check in, someone would be coming for her. She wouldn’t be here much longer. She wasn’t stupid enough to buy their lies.