Supernatural: Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting (4 page)

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Salt.
Kinda like iron, salt drives demons crazy. They can’t cross a line of the stuff, which is more important than you’d think. Of all this crap, salt is the most likely to be stocked in the average house / office / demon-infested riverboat casino (hey, it happened once). Draw a line around yourself or whatever bystanders you’re trying to protect, the demon can’t get to ’em. Of course, that won’t stop a demon from dropping a piano on someone inside a salt line, or, you know, just
shooting
them, but it’s a start. Another tool of the trade—rock salt shotgun shells. They’re just regular shells with the buckshot traded out for salt. Does the trick.

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Palo santo
.
Holy wood. Don’t snicker, this is serious.
Bursura graveolens
is the Latin name. It’s a special type of wood that, if you sharpen it up right, can be used as a stake to pin down a demon. It won’t kill ’em, but it’ll sure rile ’em up good. It’s not common in the States, so you’ll have to go out of your way to find any. But if you find yourself in South America, keep an eye out for it. Also, watch out for a broad named Lucinda Los Diablos, a lady who runs a, uh . . . massage house in Lima.
Pretty
sure that ain’t her real name, but it sure as hell describes her personality.

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Ruby’s knife.
Now this is a long damn story, and I don’t think it’ll do any of us good for me to repeat the whole thing, so here’s the CliffsNotes version—Sam Winchester is an idiot. Okay, I take it back. He may be the smartest guy I know, it’s just . . . his taste in women leaves something to be desired. He’s got too much heart for his own good. There was this demon named Ruby that Sam took to when she promised to help him keep Dean from getting sent to hell. “But she was a
demon
,” you’re saying. Yeah, I was saying the same thing. Sam trusted her, and for one big reason—she was just as likely to gank a demon as Sam and Dean were. Turns out there’s infighting even in hell, and for a long time it seemed like Ruby was on our team. She carried a special knife that had the same effect as the Colt on demons. A fatal strike with the knife would kill the demon—not sending them back to hell—
killing
them. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred quatloos. Dean saw through the demon bullcrap and used the knife on its owner, killing Ruby with it when she turned out to be (of course) playing Sam. Nowadays, Sam usually carries the knife, but he and Dean switch off as need be. I recently sussed out that Samuel Colt may have been responsible for the knife’s construction—wonder how many other monster-killing weapons are out there made by his hand. If I die, somebody better go through my junk and find Colt’s journal, then read it cover to cover.

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The word of God.
Demons don’t like God, not one little bit. I know, very surprising. Any of His names will cause a demon to flinch and involuntarily flash their black eyes. It’s painful to them, but nothing like iron, salt, or any of these other things. Won’t send them running, but it’ll get them off your back for a bit.

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Hex bags.
Usually the tool of a witch or warlock, hex bags can also be used to shield a person from demon radar. Demons will use location spells to track down people they’re after, and often enough they’re after hunters, so this is an important one. Here’s the recipe:

Two bones from a chicken’s foot.

An unbroken spider’s egg.

Lavender and hemp
(
Cannabis sativa
—and no funny business, people) in equal amounts. Don’t matter how much, just as long as they’re equal.

Something to do with goofer dust.
Right? No. Goofer dust keeps hellhounds at bay, and is also used in . . . I can’t remember. Damn. Guess you’ll have to find somebody with a working thinker to tell you the rest of the recipe.

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Sam Winchester.
The most powerful weapon I’ve ever seen used against a demon? The mind of Sam Winchester. Let this be a cautionary tale. Sam has abilities like you wouldn’t believe, but they’re like a car engine—they require a lot of fuel. The fuel that drove his engine? Demon blood. Drinking it gave him sway over demons, let him fling them around in the same way they usually fling
us
around, but he could do way more than that—he could drain the life out of them just by lookin’ at ’em. But like I said, there was a price. You can’t drink that kind of demon blood without becoming a little bit demon yourself. Sam’s clean now, but he went through hell to get that way—twice. Trust me, you do not want to go through demon detox. And don’t think you can just go drink a little demon blood yourself and get those same powers, don’t work that way. At least I don’t think it does. Never been dumb enough to try myself.

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Red eyes.
Most folk call these crossroads demons, ’cause of their MO. They’re summoned by humans at a crossroads to act, basically, as genies. You make a wish, they grant it, but the price is steep. Most demon deals are for ten years, and at the end of that period they come back to collect what they’re owed: your soul. Now, I can’t say that only idiots would ever make a deal like that, because I’m guilty of it myself. There were extenuating circumstances, ya see. And I got the pink slip back for my soul, so no harm no foul, but it’s a slippery damn slope. In this line of work, you get into situations with no clear exit, and you’ll be tempted—especially since crossroads demons have power beyond what you’d think is possible. All the stuff that Aladdin’s genie couldn’t do, like bringing people back from the dead, making them fall in love with you, the whole deal, they can do it.

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Orange eyes.
Haven’t encountered one myself, but I’ve heard stories about an orange-eyed demon who raised hell back in the seventies. Her thing was to take over the bodies of newly married women and use ’em to murder their husbands. Couple of the guys lived, said their blushing brides flashed orange eyes then went
Psycho
on them. Similar enough to Karen’s case, but I know for a fact that demon had black eyes. Even in my current predicament, with the memories dripping right outta my skull, I could never forget that sight.

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Blue eyes.
A demon named Samhain had blue eyes, was the only one of that type I’ve ever heard of. The raising of Samhain broke one of the sixty-six seals—the seals that were keeping Lucifer chained up in his coop, so it should be plenty obvious that Samhain wasn’t a great guy to be around. If you’re an omen of Satan’s imminent arrival, you’re bad news, period. Sam and Dean took Samhain down, but not before witnessing his abilities—summoning revenants (zombies, more or less) and unleashing a blast of white energy. Luckily, Sam was hopped up on demon blood at the time, so he was able to resist the effects of that energy. It was awfully similar to the abilities of . . .

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White eyes.
Lilith and Alastair being the prime examples. Alastair was hell’s chief interrogator, and by that I mean torturer. When Dean Winchester was in the Pit, it was Alastair who put him on the rack every day. Lilith was, well, the demon bride of Satan, if that puts an image into your mind. She was the one pulling the strings on Lucifer’s jailbreak. Also, she ate babies. Not kidding. Both of those yahoos are dead now, so at least there’s that. They were far more powerful than any black-eyed demon I’ve ever seen, and had some special skills, like that white energy blast that Samhain could pull. Both Lilith and Alastair were impervious to devil’s traps, Ruby’s knife, salt, iron, the works. They both were resistant to Sam’s psychic power, at least until he really went overboard and drank a couple gallons of demon blood. Then he popped ’em like lightbulbs on concrete. If you encounter a white-eyed demon, your best bet is to call a Winchester or run like hell.
Do not
engage one by yourself.
Do not
try to exorcise them, that’ll just piss ’em off. Lilith was the very first demon ever created (by Lucifer himself), and as such was incredibly powerful. Lore says there are at least two more white-eyed demons out there, though they may well be shuttered up in hell at the moment. I hope for humanity that they are.

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Yellow eyes.
Saved the worst for last. A yellow-eyed demon named Azazel set in motion a lot of things for me, Sam, and Dean; for the whole world, really. He was part of the plot to raise Lucifer from his cage—his job was to make sure that Sam was in place to break the final seal (killing Lilith). He made demon deals with desperate women—gave them whatever they needed in exchange for the right, ten years later, to come to their homes and feed his own blood to their infant children. Sam Winchester was one of those kids. Azazel did more than just feed Sam demon blood, though—he killed Mary Winchester and started John on his path towards becoming a hunter. The other children Azazel visited also developed special abilities, and eventually were pitted against each other in a fight to the death. Long story short, Dean avenged his mom’s death, put a Colt bullet right in Azazel’s grapefruit. Luckily for us, Azazel’s the only yellow-eyed demon ever referenced in the lore books.