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

much to steal. They had been whisked through time with only the clothes on their backs and the contents of their pockets. Who had done this? Were there angels here too? Sam wondered, a nervous chill running through him.
    He felt helpless. Lost in an unfamiliar time and place, with all his usual tools unavailable to him, and the end of the world in sight. Because of me, he remembered. I did this. My fear, my weakness, brought on the end for everybody. In these moments, when the guilt overwhelmed him, and images of the billions who would die filled his mind, Sam craved the blood. It didn’t make any sense. Demon blood had given him strength, but it had also clouded his judgment. It had made him turn his back on Dean, the only person who could ever truly understand Sam’s situation.
    It had made him start the Apocalypse.
    Despite all of that, Sam craved it for one simple reason: it made him feel powerful. The demon blood unlocked something deep within him, something that had been left there by Azazel, the yellow-eyed demon who had killed their mother, Mary Winchester, and marked Sam as part of his growing army of special, part-demonic children. Sam was the only one left alive. Was that why I was chosen to be Lucifer’s vessel? Because Azazel made me this way? Because I was the most special of the special? Or simply because I survived?
    Sam moved cautiously back to the main room, pushing those uncomfortable thoughts from his mind. The lock on the front door didn’t show any signs of being forced, though it had been difficult to open. Sam was definitely paranoid enough to have checked the locks in both the door’s handle and the deadbolt when he left a few hours earlier. He scanned the main room of the apartment for other entry points. There was a small, metal-barred window overlooking the street.
    Looking down, Sam saw the bustle of a New York street at midday. The window was high enough up that it would take a ladder and some patience to get to it, making it unlikely someone would be able to break in without attracting attention. Not that Sam was sure the good people of New York would bat an eyelash at broad-daylight larceny, but the window’s metal bars were still firmly in place.
    Attached to the main room was a small kitchenette, much like the ones in motels that the Winchesters had become intimately familiar with over the last few years. Scratch that , Sam thought, I’ve become familiar with . Dean never, ever cooked... unless you counted assembling bread and shoplifted deli meat as cooking. Even when they were kids and Dean was ostensibly the caretaker, Sam had had to fend for himself.
    Inside the kitchenette was a window, taller than the one in the living room, and covered by a garish red curtain. Pushing the curtain aside, Sam saw the rusted metal of a fire escape. Mystery solved.
    Put bars on the inaccessible window, but don’t even put a lock on the fire escape? Different time , Sam thought. The question now was the motivation for the break-in. Sam and Dean didn’t look rich, or important. Could someone already know about us? About our mission here?
    Sam briefly considered keeping the burglary to himself and avoiding Dean’s inevitable freak-out. The boys had spent a considerable portion of their time together on the run—from law enforcement, vampires, shapeshifters, demons, Hellhounds... and now the forces of Heaven. Knowing they were being followed after less than a day in 1954 wasn’t going to go over well.
    Sam reached for his BlackBerry, realizing again as he did so that it wouldn’t work. Living without technology is a bitch. How did Don Draper do it? But calling Dean wouldn’t have been an option anyway, since his BlackBerry wasn’t in his pocket.
    It was the one thing he had left in the rented apartment, knowing that it would be useless in 1954. Stupid , he berated himself. It was a rookie mistake, one his father would never have made. Sam checked his other pockets, finding his wallet intact