Chapter 15: Winchester is Your Last Name, Slaying Demons is Your Destiny! (Two chapters in one)
Muttering the name Franklin had just given him, Rango made his way through the well-organized historical figures exhibition on the second floor, flashlight in hand, scanning display case after display case.
"Gab... Gabriel Amos. Gabriel Amos..."
He stopped in front of a case and squinted at the label, comparing the name carefully.
Behind the glass stood a round-faced old man in a black robe with deep purple vestments draped over his shoulders. His face was a map of wrinkles — deep creases carved by decades of hard living — but his eyes were something else entirely. Bright, sharp, alive. Like two embers still glowing in the dark.
This time, having already had the experience with Franklin, Rango took a moment to read the bronze plaque mounted beneath the case before saying a word.
"Vatican Chief Exorcist. Served for over sixty years. Personally presided over more than 160,000 exorcism rituals."
Rango stared at the number. Then read it again.
160,000. Over sixty years, that was more than a dozen exorcisms every single day.
What kind of demon magnet is this guy?
Father Amos, meanwhile, had already noticed the young man standing in front of his case — flashlight in one hand, staring at the plaque like it had personally offended him. He watched him for a long moment. Then, patience fully exhausted, he spoke up.
"You got something to say, kid? Say it. Otherwise, get out of here. You're killing my meditation."
Rango glanced up, cleared his throat, and offered a polite nod. "Evening, Father Amos. I'm the night security guard here. Name's Rango Winchester. I'm looking for you because—"
"Wait."
The old man's tone shifted instantly. His eyes locked onto Rango with a sudden, piercing intensity — the kind of look that felt less like curiosity and more like recognition.
"What did you just say your last name was? Winchester?"
Rango blinked. "Uh... yeah. Problem?"
"No." Amos shook his head quickly, but his expression had changed. There was something hungry in it now — eager. "Go on. Keep going."
Rango narrowed his eyes slightly, then continued. "Like I was saying — I just bought a new place. Moved in recently. Turns out the house is haunted. I've personally seen at least three ghosts with my own eyes. I was hoping you might have some advice on how to deal with them."
Amos stroked the silver cross hanging around his neck — once, twice — then asked in a slow, measured tone, "Are we talking evil spirits? Demons? Is anyone in the house possessed? Have they displayed any serious supernatural abilities? Controlling fire, telekinesis, levitation, anything like that?"
"No, no," Rango said quickly. "Nothing like that. So far they've only pulled off some basic illusion stuff. Bloody water in the shower, that kind of thing. They're residual spirits at most. Earthbound ghosts."
Amos's entire demeanor flipped. He waved a hand dismissively, as if Rango had just told him his shoe was untied.
"Earthbound spirits? That's what you came to me about? Little scraps of leftover souls that can barely move a curtain? Go home, kid. You're wasting my time."
Rango's jaw tightened. He hadn't come here to get brushed off.
"You think I wanted to come find you?" he shot back, his voice flat and sharp. "If those things didn't disappear every time I got close, I'd have already put them down. Permanently."
He turned on his heel, already heading for the door. If this old man wouldn't help, he'd go track down Zhong Kui in the painting Franklin had pointed him toward. Someone in this museum had to be useful.
"Wait."
Amos's voice stopped him mid-step.
"You said they hide when they see you. You can't find them when they disappear?"
Rango turned back, arms crossed. "What do you think? I don't have X-ray vision, Father. If they go invisible, I can't track them."
The moment those words left his mouth, something shifted in the old man's expression. The dismissiveness melted away, replaced by a slow, knowing grin — the kind that made Rango immediately suspicious.
"Well, well," Amos said, almost to himself. "A Winchester who can't even find a few earthbound spirits. I have to wonder — did your grandfather Anderson forget to bless your eyes when you were born?"
The flashlight in Rango's hand went very still.
He turned back slowly, and when he spoke, his voice had dropped to something quiet and dangerous. "You know my grandfather?"
Amos's smile widened, just slightly. "It seems like you don't know much about your family at all."
Rango said nothing. But his mind was already moving fast.
Because the truth was — he had always suspected.
Ever since he'd been old enough to notice things, something about his family had felt off. It wasn't anything dramatic. It was the small stuff that added up.
The name, for one. Winchester. In all his years growing up in America, Rango had never once met another person with the same last name. Not a single one. For a country as big and diverse as the US, that was statistically weird.
Then there was his grandfather — a quiet, serious man who'd passed away when Rango was still a kid. After he died, strange men in clerical clothing started showing up at the house every year on the anniversary. They never stayed long. They never explained why they came. They just showed up, paid their respects, and left.
And his parents. That was the biggest piece of the puzzle — the one that had never quite fit.
Rango knew almost nothing about what they did. All he knew was that they disappeared constantly. Business trips, they called them. Sometimes for weeks at a time. When he was younger, he'd asked his mother about it — where they were going, what they were doing.
She'd brush his hair back gently and smile. "We're going to places where we're needed, sweetheart."
That answer, combined with the religious items that seemed to rotate through their house like props on a stage, had given Rango a theory he'd been sitting on for years.
He'd suspected his family were exorcists. He just never had proof.
He also had an uncle and two cousins. They'd been close when they were kids — birthdays, holidays, the occasional weekend visit. But after his aunt passed away, those visits had dried up completely. Rango hadn't seen them in years.
He looked back at Father Amos, who was watching him with that same calm, knowing expression.
"I hate people who talk in riddles," Rango said flatly. He reached into his jacket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it with a slow, deliberate flick of his lighter. He took a long drag, exhaled, and fixed Amos with a stare. "Tell me everything you know about my family. All of it."
"Or what?" Amos asked, a glint of amusement in his eye.
Rango held the cigarette loosely between his fingers and looked at the old man without blinking. "Or I grind you down to dust and flush you down the women's restroom toilet."
A beat of silence.
"Walter—" Amos started, visibly struggling to keep his composure. His face went through several shades of indignation. "Do you have any idea who I am?! I am the Chief Exorcist of the Vatican! I have sent countless demons screaming back to Hell! You have no—"
"With all due respect," Rango interrupted, his tone perfectly calm, "right now you're a plastic model sitting in a museum display case. You've got the memories of Gabriel Amos, but none of his actual power. If I snap you in half, the worst that happens to me is a fine. But you..." He let the sentence hang. "You spend the rest of eternity in a septic tank."
The silence that followed was thick enough to cut.
Amos stared at him. His expression cycled through outrage, calculation, and finally — grudging, reluctant acceptance.
Then Rango's tone shifted. The edge dropped out of it, replaced by something almost friendly. "But hey — you don't have to worry. You help me out, and not only do I leave you in one piece, I'll let you out of this case for some fresh air on a regular basis. Real deal. Rare offer."
Amos studied him for a long moment. Then he let out a breath — long, slow, resigned.
"You serious about that? Letting me out?"
"Why not?" Rango shrugged, then reached over and popped open the locked display case with an easy flick. He stepped aside and gestured toward the open door. "We've got the whole night. Come on."
Amos looked at the open case. Then at Rango. Then, with the air of a man who had just made a very questionable life decision, he stepped out.
"...You got another cigarette?" he asked quietly. "Give me one."
Rango handed him one without comment, and lit it for him.
A few minutes later, the two of them were sitting on the museum floor — Rango cross-legged against the wall, Amos perched on a bench nearby, both smoking in comfortable silence — when Rango finally broke it.
"So. My grandfather. He was your assistant?"
Amos exhaled a thin stream of smoke and shook his head gently. "I prefer the word partner. That's what we were." A flicker of something — nostalgia, maybe — crossed his weathered face. "The way we worked together — Anderson would take control of whatever we were dealing with first. Restrain it, hold it down. Then I'd do the prayers, the rites, the scripture. Without him, I never could've pulled off the numbers I did. Not even close."
Rango nodded, turning this over. "So after my grandfather left the Church, got married, had kids — that's when you two split?"
"Left the Church?" Amos's tone sharpened. He looked almost offended. "Nobody leaves the position of Father, son. That's not how it works." He pointed his cigarette at Rango for emphasis. "Your grandfather didn't quit. He was taken. A demon got to him. Twisted him. Pulled him out."
Rango didn't press on that. Not yet. Instead he shifted to the question that had been sitting in his chest like a stone for years.
"What about my parents? Does the Vatican know where they are?"
Amos shook his head. "How would I? I was dead long before they vanished." He paused, then frowned thoughtfully, cigarette hovering near his lips. "But... based on what you described earlier — the burn marks on the walls, the sulfur smell — that's not the work of some low-level spirit."
He looked at Rango, and for the first time, there was no humor in his expression.
"That's the signature of the Yellow-Eyed Demon."
The words hit the air like a match striking.
Rango, who'd been sitting relaxed against the wall, went perfectly still. Something dark moved behind his eyes.
"The Yellow-Eyed Demon," he repeated. Quiet. Flat. "How do I find it?"
Amos shook his head slowly. "Demons don't show themselves unless they want to. You can't track one down — not with what you've got. And kid, let's be real here." He gestured with his cigarette. "You can't even locate a handful of earthbound spirits right now. You think you're ready to go up against a demon from the pit?"
Rango didn't answer. But he didn't argue, either.
Because the old man was right, and he knew it. He had the ability to hurt spiritual entities. What he didn't have was the ability to find them. And against something as powerful as what Amos was describing, that gap wasn't a minor inconvenience. It was a fatal one.
Amos watched him sit in silence, turning it all over in his head. The old man didn't offer false comfort — just smoked his cigarette and let the quiet do its work.
But privately, he was impressed. Most people — hell, most exorcists — would have gone pale the moment he dropped the name of a demon like that. This kid had gone quiet and started thinking. Planning. Not flinching.
Combined with that last name...
Amos stubbed out his cigarette and leaned forward, his expression settling into something serious and almost gentle.
"Don't worry, son. For your grandfather's sake — I owe him that much — I'm going to give you something for free. No strings attached."
He lowered his voice and leaned closer.
"Back when your grandfather and I were working together, before everything went sideways, we left some things buried across the country. Good things. The kind of things you need for what's coming."
He tapped the side of his nose.
"I know exactly where one of them is."
The next day.
Boston. South End.
Rango had been driving for over four hours, and by the time the city skyline finally materialized through the windshield, he was running on gas station coffee and stubbornness.
He pulled into a parking spot a block away from the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, killed the engine, and turned to Ted and M3GAN in the back seat.
"You two stay here. Do not get out of the car."
Ted raised a paw. "Uh, why not?"
"Because this is a Catholic cathedral," Rango said, his tone leaving zero room for debate. "And if some overzealous priest spots a talking teddy bear walking through the front doors, the next thing that happens is someone tries to douse you in holy water and pray the devil out of you. So. You. Stay."
Ted considered this for approximately one second. "Yeah, okay. That tracks."
M3GAN tilted her head. "Understood. I will monitor the vehicle and maintain a low profile."
"Great." Rango grabbed his jacket, pulled on a baseball cap, and stepped out into the Boston morning.
The Cathedral of the Holy Cross rose in front of him — dark stone, Gothic arches, stained glass catching the gray New England light. It was one of the oldest Catholic churches on the East Coast, and even from the outside, it carried a weight to it. A heaviness that had nothing to do with the architecture.
Rango had done his homework on the drive over. Like most historic churches in America, the cathedral had become as much a tourist destination as a place of worship. Free admission, open to the public, no reservations needed. Which meant he could walk right in without raising a single eyebrow.
He joined the loose stream of tourists flowing through the front entrance, nodded casually at the two volunteers standing near the door, and stepped inside.
The interior opened up around him — vaulted ceilings stretching high overhead, massive octagonal columns rising from the stone floor, and long double-pointed Gothic arches sweeping between them in wide, dramatic spans. Stained glass windows threw colored light across the pews in broken, shifting patterns.
Rango moved through the main nave like any other tourist, hands in his pockets, eyes drifting over the artwork on the walls. But his peripheral vision was already locked onto the side chapel entrance — a narrow doorway off to the left, partially obscured by a wooden partition.
No one guarding it.
He picked up a visitor's brochure from a rack near the wall, flipped it open casually, and drifted toward the side chapel with the kind of unhurried calm that didn't attract attention.
Inside, the chapel was quiet. Rows of wooden pews, a few confessional booths tucked into the corners — the kind he'd seen a hundred times in movies — and not much else. Rango moved through it quickly, mentally running through the directions Amos had given him the night before.
He exited the chapel on the far side and stepped out into the church courtyard.
And there it was.
A poplar tree. Tall — easily forty feet — standing alone in the center of the courtyard like a sentinel. And its trunk was covered. Every inch of bark, from the base to as high as Rango could see, was layered with scripture. Passages hand-carved and painted directly into the wood, layer upon layer, some old and faded, some newer. The words wrapped around the trunk in dense, overlapping spirals.
Rango stared at it for a moment. Then a slow, quiet smile crossed his face.
According to Amos, this tree had a history.
Decades ago — long before Rango was born — there had been an incident at this very cathedral. A possession. A bad one. A priest in the congregation had gone dark, secretly constructed an altar, and summoned something. Something with a name and a pedigree.
Samigina. The fourth of the seventy-two demons of King Solomon. A spirit with power over resurrection itself.
The night the demon broke loose, people had died. A lot of them.
It was pure coincidence that Amos and Anderson Winchester had been attending an event at a nearby church — Trinity Church, just a few blocks away. When word reached them of what was happening at the Holy Cross, they'd rushed over immediately.
The fight had been brutal. Amos hadn't gone into details, but the way he'd talked about it — the careful choice of words, the way his expression had tightened — told Rango everything he needed to know about what it had cost them.
In the end, they'd sealed Samigina inside the tree. Covered the trunk with scripture from the Bible, layer after layer, and left it there — trusting that the weight of God's word would hold the thing down.
But Rango wasn't here for the demon.
He was here for what was buried next to it.
After sealing Samigina, Amos and Anderson had buried their exorcism tools at the base of the tree. Insurance, Amos called it. In case the seal ever broke. In case someone — a descendant, a future exorcist, anyone — needed the weapons to finish the job.
Rango looked around the courtyard. No fence around the tree. No warning signs. No plaques, no markers, nothing. It looked like the church had simply... forgotten.
A century of new bishops and clergy, and not one of them had thought to ask why there was a scripture-covered tree sitting in the middle of their courtyard.
He refocused. The courtyard was empty — no tourists, no staff, no one. The window was open. He just needed thirty seconds and the small folding shovel he'd packed in his jacket pocket.
He took one step toward the base of the tree.
And then a choir walked into the courtyard, singing at full volume.
"Son of a—"
Rango caught himself, swallowed the curse, and didn't so much as flinch. He pivoted smoothly, walked up to the poplar tree as if he'd been planning to examine it all along, crossed his arms, and stood there — studying the scripture on the trunk with what he hoped looked like genuine scholarly interest.
The choir filed in behind him, about two dozen members in black robes, carrying sheet music and looking thoroughly pleased with themselves. A few of them noticed him and waved cheerfully, one even calling out an invitation to join in.
Rango smiled back — a tight, polite, absolutely not kind of smile — and kept his eyes on the tree.
Come on. How long does a choir practice in a courtyard?
He waited. The singing continued. He waited some more.
Then — completely out of nowhere — a sharp, ugly sound cracked through the air from somewhere beyond the cathedral walls. Metal on metal. Glass shattering. The unmistakable, cascading crunch of a multi-car pileup happening on the street outside.
Every head in the courtyard snapped toward the sound. The singing cut off mid-note. The choir members looked at each other, put down their instruments, and — drawn by the commotion like everyone else in a two-block radius — filed out of the courtyard in a stream.
Within ten seconds, Rango was alone.
He didn't waste a heartbeat. He crossed the distance to the base of the tree in three quick strides, dropped to one knee, pulled the compact shovel from his jacket, and started digging.
The earth was soft — old and undisturbed, loosened by years of rain and frost. He worked fast and quiet, arms moving with a focused efficiency that came from a lifetime of doing things that needed to be done quickly and without witnesses.
His phone buzzed. He fished it out with one hand and answered, tucking it between his shoulder and ear without breaking stride on the digging.
"Ted?"
"Rango..." Ted's voice was tight. Nervous in a way that immediately put Rango on alert. "So, funny story. I know you said to stay in the car, and we did stay in the car, but then M3GAN and I figured we'd just pop over to the Burger King down the street to grab some food while we waited—"
"Ted."
"—and I may have, uh, caused a bit of a fender bender pulling out of the parking lot. A multi-fender bender. A chain reaction kind of situation. It was an accident. Completely. I swear. Also, there are a lot of angry people here right now and some of them are calling 911 so—"
Rango looked up from the hole he'd dug, a slow grin spreading across his face.
"Ted. You absolute genius. You beautiful, chaotic genius."
"...Huh?"
"Don't move. I'll be there in ten. And don't worry about the damage — I'll handle it."
He hung up before Ted could respond, and turned his attention back to the ground in front of him.
There, half-uncovered by the loose dirt, the edge of a wooden box was peeking out from the earth. About a foot wide, dark with age, and still very much intact.
Rango let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.
There you are.
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