This is a preview of Episode 7. The story continues in a separately posted story entitled "Wayward Son".

THE ROAD SO FAR:

It's been six months since the yellow eyed demon killed Amanda Winchester and possessed John. Their son, Dean, is no longer the naive college student and wannabe musician he was back then. He learned all his new hunter friend Sam Campbell could teach him about the supernatural, but while they've been saving people and hunting things, it still seems like they're no closer to finding the demon and saving John. They've been desperate enough to follow clues left by a demon called Gemma (and that's not even her real name). She led them to Red Lodge, MT, where Dean learned that his old college buddy, Jim Masters, was really a vampire who's been after Yellow Eyes for over two hundred years. It seems the demon's been attacking familes for generations, and not just in the US, but all over the world. Oh, and Sam tried to kill Jim. Sam hates vampires because, turns out, on his last hunt with the Campbell family, a nest turned his cousin/girlfriend (Gwen) and Sam had to gank her . . . so that's a thing. But Jim's disappeared now, anyway. And Sam's just revealed that he and other children who survived Yellow Eyes' fires have, like, super powers. Sam gets prophetic dreams and crap. And others may be hunting them - him. Now, he brings this up. Now. After all these months of fighting together back to back and . . . and recently all the hot sex and . . . and where does that even leave them? What does it all mean?

Let me get back to you on that.

Cairo, Egypt – 1923

The sun was a small pale disc in the western sky but it yet illuminated the ancient city, turning the great dome of the heavens a burnished bronze feathered with scarlet, and the rippling waters of the Nile to molten gold. The dusty whitewashed walls of the city below bled pink with its dying light.

From his vantage point, perched near the edge of the rooftop of the Museum of Antiquities, he had a fine view of the city skyline with its tangle of palm trees and contrasting architecture. Cairo spread out before him like a scroll that told the story of millennia: of the rise and fall of civilizations and empires. Coptic crosses mingled with crenellated battlements, synagogues with white domes and minarets, and, to the north-east, a red granite obelisk rose as visible reminder that these lands were once the domain of Ra.

Despite the lateness of the hour, shimmering waves of heat rose from the streets and scorched his nostrils as he breathed the pervasive scent of camel dung, the odor of perfumes and spices from the souks, and the myriad reeks of humanity. Many among the bustling masses in the street were wilting under the evening heat but he thrived on it. Raising his gaze he stared unblinking into the setting sun and felt its rays filling his limbs with power and vitality he had not felt in ages.

From the streets below he could hear the familiar wail of song. The cacophony of musical instruments varied over time; the tone and timbre of the music changed; different themes wove back and forth, fading away to return again then fade once more; but the song itself remained, old as life.

It was time to descend. Making his way down to the lowest floor, he walked past the columns and the plaster Egyptian figures that stood as guards outside the doors of the old library. He found the curator among the stacks. The man was shouting at a lowly clerk for some trivial error, abusing and berating him, even going so far as to slap the boy about the head and shoulders, but he desisted when he saw the visitor approach and dismissed the clerk with a wave of his hand.

"Ah, you have returned! Good! Good!" the man greeted him.

"You have had time to study the item?"

"Yes! Indeed! A very curious artifact indeed. Please!" The curator directed him toward a large desk at the head of the room where he took out a set of keys and proceeded to unlock a heavy wooden box in which he'd stored the scroll. "It was found near the Temple of Re-Atum, you say?" he asked as he unfurled the document, lifted a monocle to his eye and perused the article anew. "It will take time and special study to date accurately, but it may be the oldest example of its kind that I have ever seen. It is likely Egyptian in origin but that is by no means certain. Although it employs Egyptian hieroglyphs and pictographs there is also extensive use of an early Phoenician script. And it appears to tell an unusual variant of the Grecian story of Europa – the Phoenician princess who was abducted by Zeus in the guise of a bull?" The curator looked up for confirmation that his visitor was familiar with the tale, and was granted a tight, enigmatic smile. "In this version Zeus appears as a trader and tries to bargain with her brother for her hand in marriage . . . or he may be her lover. The vocabulary is difficult and ambiguous, you understand . . . but, then, the morality of those times . . . Egyptian royalty, for example, often married their own siblings . . ."

The man did nothing to disguise his embarrassment and distaste. Such were the minions of this world's bickering gods; enslaved to his own brief span of time and the narrow confines of his particular culture, the curator was too swift to presume his visitor shared – or should share – its limited dogma and arbitrary codes of conduct.

"When the brother declines his offers, Zeus slays him and takes the girl anyway, carrying her back to Crete where she becomes his bride. Full of grief, Europa prays to the god Apollo and bargains with him for her brother's life, offering her own in exchange. The god appears to her in the form of a great bird and gives her a tail feather, telling her she must weave the tail into a shroud. Each night she labors in secret, working by the light of the feather itself, which is so bright that it glows even in darkness. After 280 nights her task is complete and she wraps herself in the shroud and is consumed by its fire, but the shroud is transformed into a likeness of her brother . . . or he is reborn from the ashes . . . but when he finds that his sister is dead he vows that he will not rest until he has avenged her."

"And was the brother now immortal that he presumed to avenge himself against a god?"

The curator smiled indulgently. "Well, it is just a story," he pointed out.

The visitor had remained tight lipped while he listened to the subjective and faulty interpretation of the scroll, but now he reached out and placed a hand on the curator's chest. "You are an ignorant man," he said, "and you know nothing."

The man's eyes widened in alarm and he tottered backward, clutching at his chest as smoldering flesh spread rapidly from the wound. Within moments the whole body was ablaze. The monocle cracked from the heat and dropped out of its socket, clattering onto the desk as the visitor folded up the scroll. The clerk, alerted by the screams, rushed into the room in time to witness his employer crumbling into ashes, and stare wide-eyed at the great bird as it unfurled its wings. Gathering up the scroll in its talons it swept out of the museum, rising high in the air and flying swiftly north-east toward what remained of his home, Iunu, and the Temple of Ra.

The story continues in a separately posted story entitled "Wayward Son".

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