Supernatural: Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting by David Reed Read Free Book Online Page B

were on our side. Since most of them aren’t, it’s just scary.
• Time travel. One of the many ways angels dick around with human civilization: messing with our history. Angels have the power to go back in time and change things, though they claim that history is already written and that we all have a destiny and blah blah blah whatever. Same angel that told Dean Winchester he couldn’t go back to save his mother from being killed sent another angel back in time to un-sink the Titanic . Time is flexible. Certain things will always be the same (the sky will always be blue, steak will always be delicious) but some things are up for grabs. Little things, like who’s alive and who never existed. Who lives happily ever after and who ends up alone with a bottle of whiskey at a piece of crap Wang PC, typing out the sum total of his life’s experiences in the hope that somebody will read it and . . . never mind. Angels can time travel. That’s all you really need to know.
• Omniscience. Don’t know how they do it, but angels have a way of keeping tabs on a lot of things at once. Like, say, every activity in an entire town, down to the smallest detail. There are limits, of course, and they can’t be everywhere at once, but it’s downright creepy how aware they are sometimes. Don’t think you can cross an angel and get away with it.
• Dream visitation. Say you’ve found a way to hide yourself from an angel (I’ll get to that in a bit)—but the angel still wants to have words with you. Likely they’ll just pop into your dreams and scare the pants off you just as you’re getting cozy with Tori Spelling.
• Healing powers. I have to say, this one I like. Angels have the power to raise the dead and heal any injury, though it requires a lot of celestial energy. That’s how Castiel brought Dean back from hell . . . and how Cass brought me back from the dead after Lucifer snapped my neck. Don’t expect them to be that benevolent for you. Most angels would sooner blast your corpse out of existence rather than help you out.
• Liquor tolerance. Cass can hold his liquor. ’Nuff said.
• Memory alteration. Like I said. Far as lore I’ve seen goes, angels are the only critters that can muck around with a man’s memory. ’Course, I’ve got hundreds of lore books I’ve never even opened, especially since I inherited the Campbell family hunting library a few months back. One thing did strike me, however—if an angel was really this gung-ho about line-item vetoing my memories, you’d think they woulda blacked out my memories of angels screwing with people’s memories, too. You know, so I wouldn’t even suspect ’em. Huh.
     
    One important thing to remember about angels—their power isn’t baked in, it’s . . . how do I explain this? An angel in a vacuum is no more powerful than a human. Their, uh, potency  . . . comes when they’re backed up by the full power of heaven. See, angels act as . . . sorta like channels for heavenly power. An angel is like a fire hose. If the spigot’s turned off and no water’s flowing, they can’t get anything done. But once the valve’s opened and water’s flowing . . . ya understand? And heaven, in this analogy, is the great big water tower in the sky, full of energy. That power comes from souls—human souls, which they harness like little nuclear reactors to light up heaven and wage their eternal war with hell. Wait. I thought the metaphor was about water, not electricity. Whatever. The more souls are in heaven, the more powerful they are. That’s what makes their apocalyptic plans so damn shortsighted—how are they supposed to replenish their power source if they kill off all of us low dwellers? Idjits.
    On that topic . . . for two thousand years they left us to our own devices. Then the rumblings of the Apocalypse started and they came back to earth to help push things along. They wanted the Apocalypse, so they could have a final battle with