January 22nd, - January 24th, 2014
I walked out of the hangout room, and Nate was putting his coat on.
"Where you off to?" I asked.
Nate turned towards me. "I'm going into town to get an anti-possession tattoo and maybe a few other things. Wanna come?"
I chuckled. "Yeah. It's probably time I got one of those as well. Give me just a second."
I ran into our bedroom quickly and changed out of my lounging clothes. I came out, and Nate was gone.
"Looking for Nate?" Garth was sitting down and eating a sandwich.
"Uh, huh," I said.
"I think he left. Said something about going into town." Garth took a bite of his sandwich.
"Ugh. Seriously? I told him I'd only be a minute. He better not have left." I walked across the dining room and opened the door.
Nate was walking up the path towards me. He looked up.
"Jeez. Took ya long enough." He smiled.
"Maybe you're just impatient." I smirked.
Nate looked at his wrist and gestured towards it like he had a watch. "Gotta be to the shop in like twenty minutes."
"That's my fault you waited this long to leave?" I asked.
Nate laughed. "You were the one who challenged us to that last Mortal Kombat tournament that took literally two hours to finish."
I shrugged. "Neither of you hesitated to play. So... not my fault."
He just gave me a blank stare. "No time to argue about it. We gotta go." He turned and started walking towards the car.
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Nate parked a block or so away from the tattoo parlor. We walked in, and everything seemed pretty normal.
A man was standing at the counter. "May I help you?"
Nate cleared his throat. "I'm here to see Inkzilla. I have an appointment."
The man looked down at the book in front of him. "Nate Harvelle?"
"Yup." Nate nodded.
"Stay here. I'll go get him." The man turned and walked into the back room of the parlor.
I laughed. "You booked an appointment with a guy named Inkzilla? Really?"
"He's supposed to be really good. I've been waiting six months for this appointment. I heard he does very exclusive work," Nate said.
"Why would you wait six months for an anti-possession tattoo? Give me ink and a needle, and I'll have it done in five minutes," I said.
"Sorry to interrupt, couldn't help but overhear," a man with slicked-back hair said from behind the counter." "I'll have you know that tattooing is a delicate art. Not just anyone off the street can pick up a gun and 'have it done.'"
"Oh." I chuckled awkwardly. "I wasn't saying anyone could do it. I'm just saying for what he needs done, he didn't have to wait six months."
The man nodded. "Oh, right, right. I'm not seeing the contradistinction. My clients wait months to see me, and if you think you can even come close to my artistry just by walking in off the streets, then quite frankly, you can just get out."
"Okay, I wasn't trying to offend anyone. He just needs a simple tattoo for a practical reason. I'm not saying I can just stroll in here and throw a masterpiece on him. I'm talking simple lines and circles. That's it," I said, trying to defend myself while feeling like I was just digging a deeper hole.
"Your perception of reality is humorlessly misguided. You think it's easy to pull smooth lines and perfect circles?" he asked angrily.
Nate stepped between us and put his hands up. "Okay, everyone. Let's get along now." He turned to Inkzilla. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Inkzilla. My name is Nate, and I have an appointment with you."
Inkzilla gave me a bit of a stink eye. "Follow me."
He turned and walked into the backroom, and Nate followed.
We followed him into a small room. Hanging on the walls were pictures of the most simplistic tattoos I had ever seen. Very simple stick figures, shapes, and smiley faces. No shading or fill. Sometimes a little color, but mostly just singular lines.
I looked at Inkzilla. "So this is your art?"
"Some call it that. To me, they're my expression of soul," he said.
I nodded, unimpressed. "Oh, wow." I turned to Nate. "I'm gonna go see if someone can do mine."
Inkzilla laughed. "A walk-in? How trite."
"If anything here is 'trite,' it's definitely the 'expression of soul' plastered on these walls," I said.
"I need you to leave, please. You're negatively affecting my chi. I need to be balanced for my work, and you being here is making that paradoxical," Inkzilla massaged his temples.
I chuckled. "I don't think you know what that word means."
"I can't think straight. Please, go." Inkzilla gestured to the door.
I turned to Nate. "Good luck."
Then I kissed him and left the room to find someone normal to work with.
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Nate and I got into his car about two hours later.
"You really waited six months to get that from a pretentious douchebag whose prized masterpieces are literal stick figures?" I asked.
Nate shrugged. "I mean, he got it done, right?"
I nodded. "Yeah, the woman who worked on me did it in the quarter of the time it took your guy, and it looks the same if not better."
Nate sighed and started to pull away from the shop. "Yeah. The bright side is, I now have a killer lasagna recipe."
I frowned and furrowed my brow at him. "What?"
"Inkzilla spent most of the time going into excruciating detail about his mom's lasagna recipe," Nate said.
"Ugh, that guy was awful. Never go back to him again," I said.
Nate cringed. "I booked an appointment for three months from now."
"What? Why?" I asked, shocked.
He shrugged. "I just really connected with his art, ya know?"
I shook my head. "No, I really don't know."
"Not to mention, a second appointment might earn me his mom's pot roast recipe. He started talking about it but finished the tattoo before I could find out what specialty farm his mom orders the beef from," Nate said.
"Are you joking?" I asked. "I seriously can't tell."
"Yes." He chuckled. "Of course, I'm joking. That guy was the absolute worst."
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Before leaving town, we stopped for lunch at a diner. While we were eating, Nate caught a news broadcast out of the corner of his eye. He said that the news anchor was talking about the death of a child in a local town. Apparently, it had been the third death of a child in that town within less than a month.
"This definitely sounds like our sort of thing," I said.
Nate nodded. "Yeah. I'll call Garth and have him do some research before we get back."
He stood up and walked away to a quiet spot to call Garth.
About a minute or two later, he came back, and we paid for the bill.
"Garth said that he'll get on it and see what he can find out," Nate said as we left the diner.
We both got into the car and started to drive out of town.
"Did the broadcast say anything else?" I asked.
Nate shook his head. "Not really. Just that it was the third death, and they all seemed to be fairly strange occurrences."
"I guess we'll just have to see what Garth can figure out and go from there," I said.
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We walked into the cabin, and Nate tossed his coat onto the table.
"Find anything?" he called out to Garth.
Garth came around the corner with a stack of papers in his hand. "Not really. All I could find were the names of the kids who died recently. Not much other than that."
Nate and I looked at each other.
"I guess we better pack a bag and head out soon," Nate said.
I nodded and started to walk towards our room to gather my things.
"Whoa, hang on," Garth said, "Sam called."
I turned. "Okay..." I shook my head and shrugged. "What did he say?"
Garth sighed. "Well, he seemed pretty upset. He was just checking to see if I had seen or heard from you. He said that he's going to just let you do your thing, and you'll know where to find him if you need to."
I shrugged and nodded. "Okay."
Garth looked at me seriously. "Look, Maddi, I don't feel right about lying to him anymore."
"Well, it sounds like you don't really have to now," I said.
"D, you're not gonna call and just let him know you're okay?" Nate asked.
I nodded. "I will, but right now, we've got a case to work on."
"I don't know, Maddison." Garth shook his head. "It kinda sounded like he was saying goodbye without actually saying it."
"I know where to find him, and I've got his number," I said, "I'll give him a call after we've worked the job."
They both looked at me, unsure.
"I promise I will," I said.
Garth nodded. "Oh, one other thing. I haven't been able to find anything on Kevin. Not one little breadcrumb or piece of evidence. The only thing I can think to do is to summon a demon and try to find out what they know."
"If we're gonna do that, we might as well go for the big fish. We know Crowley took him. So, why don't we just cut out the middle and go right to the source?" I asked.
"Hold on. That seems like a huge risk. I'm not really sure we're up to something like that," Nate said.
I shrugged. "Well, if Kevin is still alive, he's been with Crowley for months. I don't want to begin to think about the stuff he is putting Kevin through to get the tablet translated. We can't waste our time talking to random demons who might not have a clue what Crowley is doing."
"If we're gonna do this, we need to make sure we are prepared," Garth said.
I nodded. "I agree. I think we need to get this done sooner rather than later. Kevin could be dead for all we know. And that would be my fault."
Nate sat down. "We've never done anything like this without Sam, Dean, or Bobby."
"So what? We've dealt with demons before. We've been trained by the best hunters any of us know. At some point, we have to step out of our comfort zone and face things we've never faced before," I said.
"Crowley's different, though. He's not just another demon. He's the King of Hell," Garth said.
I shrugged. "Well, I'm not afraid of him, and you guys shouldn't be either. But, if you don't feel comfortable dealing with him, I'll just do it by myself."
"I mean, yeah, we're uncomfortable, but that is the job." Nate looked at Garth and then back at me. "Obviously, we're not gonna let you deal with Crowley on your own. We just want to be cautious."
"We can talk about this more when you guys get back. In the meantime, I'll get things prepared and make sure we have what we need to bring Crowley here and get the answers we need," Garth said.
"Yeah, that's fine. Let's get our things and head out." I turned and walked into the room ahead of Nate.
We threw our things in a bag and walked back into the kitchen.
"Anything else?" Nate asked Garth.
Garth smirked. "You probably need to know where you're going. South Fork, Colorado. Small town about thirty minutes from here." He handed me a piece of paper with instructions on how to get there from Creede.
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