Chapter 24: Faith — Part 1
[Nebraska Construction Site — November 15, 2005, Night]
The raw head hunt should have been simple.
Ethan's Sin Sense had located the creature in the construction site's basement—an old foundation being excavated for a new building, disturbing something that had been buried for over a century. Standard approach: identify the anchor, salt and burn the remains, send the spirit on its way.
Then Dean touched the wrong wire.
The raw head had wrapped itself around the site's electrical system, drawing power from exposed conduits and live wires that crisscrossed the basement like a spider's web. Dean had been reaching for what he thought was the creature's anchor when fifty thousand volts surged through his body.
Ethan heard the scream before he saw the flash. By the time he reached Dean, the older Winchester was on the ground, not breathing, heart stopped, body smoking slightly from the electricity that had passed through it.
"DEAN!" Sam was there a second later, starting CPR, counting compressions with desperate precision. "Come on, come on, don't you dare—"
Ethan called 911 while Sam worked. The raw head was forgotten—driven off by the chaos, probably, or just watching from the shadows. None of it mattered compared to Dean Winchester dying on a concrete floor.
The EMTs arrived in seven minutes. They shocked Dean's heart three times before it started beating again.
He was alive. Barely.
[Nebraska Hospital — November 16, 2005, Morning]
"Severe cardiac damage." The doctor's voice was clinical, detached—the tone of someone delivering bad news they'd delivered too many times before. "The electrical shock caused extensive trauma to the heart muscle. Without a transplant, he has maybe a few months. More likely weeks."
Sam stood by the window, staring at nothing. Ethan sat in a plastic chair that wasn't designed for comfort, feeling the Spirit's confusion at emotions it didn't understand.
Dean was in the bed, hooked to monitors, looking smaller than Ethan had ever seen him. His color was wrong—gray instead of healthy, the pallor of someone whose body was failing by degrees.
"There has to be something," Sam said. "Experimental treatments. Other options."
"I'm sorry. With damage this extensive..." The doctor shook his head. "I'd recommend getting his affairs in order. Spending time with family."
He left. The door closed. Sam's hands curled into fists.
"There's something else," Sam said quietly. "Something we haven't tried."
"Sam—"
"A faith healer. Roy Le Grange, in Nebraska. I've been researching—people with terminal conditions, incurable diseases. They go to his tent revivals and walk out healed. Complete recoveries that doctors can't explain."
Ethan's chest tightened. "Real miracles don't exist. Not without cost."
"You would know about that." Sam's voice carried an edge. "You carry something that burns demons and judges souls. Is that not a miracle?"
"It's a partnership. An exchange. Whatever power I have, it comes with obligations and consequences." Ethan stood, moving to stand beside Dean's bed. "If this faith healer is doing what you say he's doing—curing the incurable, healing the dying—something's paying the price for those healings. Something we can't see."
"Do you have a better option?"
Ethan didn't. Dean was dying. The doctors had no answers. And Sam was desperate enough to try anything, believe anything, if it meant saving his brother.
"We investigate," Ethan said finally. "We go to this faith healer, we watch what happens, and if something's wrong—if people are paying prices they don't understand—we find out who's responsible."
Sam nodded. "Good enough."
[Rural Nebraska — November 15, 2005, Afternoon]
Roy Le Grange's tent revival was everything Ethan expected from a small-town faith healing operation. A massive canvas tent erected in a field, surrounded by cars and RVs and people who'd driven hundreds of miles for a chance at miracles. Inside, folding chairs faced a makeshift stage where a blind man in a white suit gestured to the crowd.
"God has brought you here for a reason!" Roy's voice carried the practiced cadence of a lifetime preacher. "Whatever burdens you carry—whatever diseases, whatever afflictions—the Lord can heal them! All you need is faith!"
Dean sat in a wheelchair near the back, pushed by Sam, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else. "This is ridiculous. Faith doesn't cure heart damage."
"Just give it a chance," Sam said quietly.
Ethan wasn't listening to their argument. He was watching the crowd—feeling their desperation through his Sin Sense, the accumulated guilt and hope and fear of people who'd run out of options and come seeking something they couldn't find in hospitals.
And underneath it all, something else. Something wrong.
A presence that didn't belong. Cold where everything else was warm. Old where everything else was desperate.
REAPER.
Ethan's blood ran cold.
He could see it now—a figure at the edge of his perception, invisible to everyone else in the tent. Tall, thin, wearing robes that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. A Reaper—one of Death's servants, responsible for collecting souls when their time came.
But this Reaper wasn't moving naturally. It was bound, controlled, dragged along invisible chains toward targets that weren't chosen by fate.
Roy was calling someone forward. A woman with cancer, stage four, no hope according to her doctors. She walked to the stage on trembling legs, and Roy laid his hands on her head.
"In the name of the Lord, I HEAL you!"
The Reaper moved.
It drifted through the crowd—invisible, unstoppable—toward a man near the back of the tent. A healthy man, middle-aged, no visible illness. The Reaper's hand touched his shoulder, and the man gasped, clutched his chest, and collapsed.
At the same moment, the woman on stage began to cry. "I can feel it! The pain is gone! It's gone!"
Trade. One life for another. The Reaper taking a soul that shouldn't be taken, paying for a healing that violated natural law.
"Ethan." Sam's voice was sharp. "What is it? You look like you've seen—"
"We need to talk. Now."
They gathered outside the tent, away from the crowds. Dean looked better—they'd brought him forward for healing, and Roy had laid hands on him with the same practiced certainty he'd shown everyone else. The Reaper had moved again, taking another life, buying Dean's recovery with blood that shouldn't have been spilled.
"Someone died," Ethan said bluntly. "I watched it happen. A Reaper—one of Death's servants—is bound to this operation. When Roy heals someone, the Reaper takes a life in exchange."
Dean's face went pale. Whatever color he'd gained from the healing drained away in an instant. "Someone died for me?"
"A man in the crowd. Healthy, maybe fifty years old. He collapsed the moment your heart was fixed."
"I didn't... I didn't ask for that."
"I know. That's why we stop it."
Sam was processing, researcher's mind already sorting through implications and possibilities. "A bound Reaper. That's black magic—seriously dark stuff. Someone would need to know exactly how to trap something like that, how to control it."
"Roy's blind," Dean said quietly. "He can't see who the Reaper is taking. Someone else has to be choosing the targets."
"His wife." Ethan had been watching Sue Ann Le Grange throughout the revival—the way she positioned herself near the crowd, the way her eyes tracked specific individuals, the way she whispered to Roy before each healing. "She's the one with the knowledge. Roy believes he's doing God's work, but she's the one pulling strings."
"You're sure?"
"I can find out."
[Le Grange Residence — November 15, 2005, Night]
Breaking into the farmhouse was easy. The Le Granges were still at the tent, handling the aftermath of the revival, and their home security was nonexistent—the naïve trust of people who believed God protected them from earthly threats.
Ethan found what he was looking for in Sue Ann's sewing room.
Occult books hidden behind fabric bolts. Handwritten notes in Latin and Aramaic, languages that dealt with binding and summoning and control. And in a locked drawer, a collection of photographs—each one marked with a date and a name.
The targets. The people the Reaper had taken.
"She's been doing this for months," Sam said, examining the photographs. "Maybe longer. Every time Roy heals someone, she picks who dies."
"The question is why." Ethan flipped through Sue Ann's notes, his limited Latin struggling with terminology that predated most modern translations. "This binding ritual is specific—it requires maintenance, sacrifice, constant attention. She's not doing this for power or money."
"She's doing it for Roy." Dean's voice was quiet. "Look at this."
He held up an older photograph—Roy Le Grange, decades younger, clearly sighted, standing next to his wife with a smile that suggested genuine happiness. The photo was dated five years ago.
"Roy went blind about four years back," Dean continued. "Some kind of degenerative condition. Around the same time, his 'healing gift' manifested." He set down the photograph. "She bound the Reaper to save him. Everything since then has been about keeping him alive, maintaining the facade of miracles."
"Love made her a murderer," Ethan said.
"Love makes people do terrible things."
They heard a car pulling into the driveway. Headlights swept across the windows, illuminating the sewing room's contents with harsh clarity.
"She's back." Sam moved toward the door. "We need to go."
"No." Ethan's voice was hard. "We need to end this. Tonight, before the next revival, before more people die for miracles they didn't ask for."
Dean loaded his gun—silver rounds, not that they'd work on a Reaper, but habit was habit. "Then let's have a conversation."
The front door opened. Sue Ann Le Grange stepped inside, humming softly to herself, completely unaware that three hunters waited in the darkness of her home.
Ethan stepped forward, allowing his eyes to glow orange—just enough to announce what he was, what he carried, what he was capable of doing.
"Mrs. Le Grange," he said. "We need to talk about your husband's gift."
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