THEN:
"Are you all right?"
Dean rolled his throbbing head enough to see Cas sitting in the bedside chair, the angel's gaze fixed more on the ceiling than on him. Dean turned his face away, swallowed against the burning rawness in his throat. "No thanks to you."
Cas shifted in the chair. "You need to be more careful."
Dean cut his eyes towards the angel. "You need to learn how to manage a damn devil's trap."
Cas still did not quite meet his eyes. "That's not what I mean. Uriel is dead."
"Was it the demons?"
"It was disobedience," Cas answered, almost on the heels of his question. The angel's neutral expression altered subtly. He licked his lips and for the first time, turned to look fully into Dean's face. "He was working against us."
Cas's gaze drifted away once more, as if he were watching or listening to something far beyond this hospital room.
Dean swallowed again, this time trying to ease a pain worse than the irritation in his throat. He drew a deep breath, and another one, to force the question out. "Is it true?"
Cas turned to look at him again, his placid expression altered by lines of tension between his brows.
"Did I break the first seal? Did I start all this?"
The lines between Cas's brows deepened, and he gave the slightest of nods. "Yes."
The last shred of hope he had crumbled to dust and Dean looked away, almost unable to breathe through the pain.
"When we discovered Lilith's plan for you," Cas's deep voice coarsened with a savage edge. "We laid siege to Hell and we fought our way to get to you before you—"
"Jump-started the Apocalypse," Dean choked out.
Cas glanced at him then, not with blame, but a deep resigned sadness. He turned his gaze up towards the ceiling. "But we were too late."
"Why didn't you just leave me there, then?" The words came out rushed, forced past nausea and loathing.
"It's not blame that falls on you, Dean," Cas's voice was gentle, and slow, as if he were choosing his words with great care.
Dean felt his lip begin to tremble, and he couldn't stop it. He didn't have the strength to resist the sting of kindness, the blow of empathy.
"It's fate." Cas looked down at his hands, loosely clasped in his lap. "The righteous man who begins it is the only one who can finish it."
He turned his gaze to Dean, and he felt the crushing weight of Cas's urgency. "You have to stop it."
"Lucifer?" Dean whispered, helpless to hold back the tear that rolled down his cheek. "The Apocalypse? What does that mean?" he pleaded.
Cas's gaze turned almost fearful, and he looked away again. His shoulders rounded.
"Hey! Don't you go disappearing on me, you son of a bitch." Anger almost pushed out despair. "What does that mean!"
"I don't know." Cas's answer was soft, quick.
"BULL!"
"I don't," Cas stated, his voice firm and flat. He looked at him again, the muted light picking out the eerie blue of his eyes.
"Dean, they don't tell me much." Cas's expression and his voice took on urgency again, and import, as if he were trying to load his words with more meaning than they could carry. "I know our fate rests with you."
"Well, then you guys are screwed," Dean choked out in a whisper. "I can't do it, Cas. It's too big."
Cas looked away again, a flicker of grief crossing his face before it settled back into its normal somber lines.
"Alastair was right. I'm not all here." Dean's voice broke on a little gasp for breath against a rising sob. "I'm not str-strong enough."
Cas turned to look at him again, and for the first time, Dean saw accusation in those glowing eyes. He couldn't bear it.
"Well, I guess I'm not the man either of our dads wanted me to be," he confessed, forcing the words out.
Cas looked away.
"Find someone else." He was so tired. So damned tired and soul-deep sick of all of it. "It's not me."
There was no way to stop the tears. He didn't have enough strength left for that, either. Dean closed his eyes and didn't open them until the rustling of massive wings had long faded away.
NOW:
"Man, I'll be glad to get out of here," Dean said. "This place gives me the creeps."
Sam peered out at the slice of isolated Louisiana countryside revealed by the headlights. "It's not so bad. Lots of trees and water. It's warm. Spanish moss. Wildlife."
"Spanish moss is spooky. They use that stuff in horror movies for a reason, dude. And the water stinks and it's full of snakes and alligators and mosquitoes the size of Huey choppers. And my eyes are still watering from the wildlife that we ran ov-"
"STOP!"
"SHIT!" Dean slammed the brakes the same instant Sam shouted, a white flash of something human shaped darting out in front of them.
Tires squalled. THUMP.
The sickening sound of a body landing on sheet metal.
But this body impacted on the hood on all fours and stared in at them through tangled hair and beat a frantic pattern on the windshield. "Drive! DRIVE! HE'LL EAT YOU!"
She looked back over her shoulder, back the way she came, and sprang off with a wild wordless screech. Back towards whatever terrified her.
No time to ask questions. No need to. They knew what was chasing her as soon as it burst through the tangled brush of the roadside, fangs bared, claws wide. It was too damn close to miss.
"DOWN!" Sam bellowed and the girl flung herself onto the dirt. She clapped her hands over her ears as they fired, but she didn't hide her face.
Silver rounds from a .45 will change most anything's mind. The werewolf's body jerked and twisted from the impacts and its own momentum. It fell, and neither Dean nor Sam had a doubt it was dead.
The girl needed more convincing, apparently. She rose and eased closer to the twitching corpse, her body tense.
"Don't touch it," Dean warned her. "It's a werewolf—it could still be contagious."
"Maybe," she murmured, and sank into a fetal crouch. She raked her hair away from her face and jerked all over. It was only then that Dean realized she bore four long, shallow, bleeding lacerations across her back, and that she was naked.
"I'll take care of her," Sam murmured.
Dean nodded with an expression of relieved gratitude. Sam was better with hysterical females. He'd much rather salt and burn than wipe snot and pat and try to think of something reasonably sympathetic to say.
Sam took the first-aid kit out of the trunk, along with a blanket and bottle of water. Bottled spring water replaced with the sanctified variety. Dean paused, hand on pistol grip, as Sam went back to the girl and opened the bottle.
Nothing happened when Sam poured it over her bleeding back, except that she looked back at Sam over her shoulder with a shaky smile and a soft "Thank you."
Crap. She looked about seventeen. Their night was shot. The girl bowed her head again as Sam wiped away the blood from her wounds. She didn't flinch even when Sam pulled his silver knife and used it to flick a couple of pieces of debris from her raw flesh.
Satisfied now that his brother could handle anything she could dish out, Dean hefted the rock salt and gas can.
The girl's head snapped up and she sprang to her feet. "Wait!"
She put herself between him and the dead werewolf. "There's something I need to do first!"
"What?"
Sam mouthed ~What the?~ behind her back, his pistol aimed between her shoulder blades.
"It won't take long—it's for his soul." She moved over to the corpse with her back straight and no more sign of fear. She knelt and laid her hands over the blood-spattered face, closing the corpse's eyes and smoothing away its grotesque snarl.
"Sad, you look human again now, you poor bastard," she told it, her voice low and kind. "You were probably a really nice guy before this. I hope for your sake you didn't eat your family or something."
She dipped a finger into a bullet hole and drew a cross on his forehead. "Réquiem æternam dona ei, Dómine. Et lux perpétua lúceat ei. Requiéscat in pace. Amen."
A touch of her bloodied fingertip to her lips and then she rose and nodded. "Now you can immolate him."
Dean shuddered. He could see Sam out of the side of his vision, with an equally revolted expression, keeping the girl covered.
"Are you sure you're done?" Dean asked, as he began to pour the salt over the corpse.
"I certainly can't help you out with a light." She stepped back and put her hand over her nose when he opened the gas can and began to pour. She moved to put the slight breeze at her back.
Dean glanced at Sam again.
Sam nodded. He'd noticed too, and holstered his pistol. "Come here," he called to her.
Dean drew his, but kept it at his side as she turned. Sam wrapped the blanket around the girl's shoulders. Dean lit the gas. Through the roar, he heard the girl speak.
"Do you two always go around prepared for convenient corpse disposal?" she asked Sam.
"Yes, actually." Sam gave her that charming smile that made women want to pat him on the head. Right before they tied him to a bed and fed him chocolates.
"Hmm..." She mused, her attention on the fire, gazing past Sam. She looked up at Sam then. The flare of illumination revealed that she smiled back at him, which was unnerving, considering. "That begs all kinds of questions. Most of which I probably shouldn't be asking two big burly guys equipped for convenient corpse disposal by the side of a deserted road in the middle of the night."
"Fair enough. I'll ask one. Do you often wander naked in the woods at night?" Sam said.
"Well, I wasn't naked when I started," she sighed. "Tall, blond and ablaze over there tried to use my dress as a handle."
"How did you keep him from getting his claws into more than your dress?" Sam's tone was still bantering. The tension in his back said otherwise.
"How do mothers lift mini-vans off their babies? When something like that is chasing you, you find your inner Olympian."
"You're taking this awfully calmly now." Sam tilted his head. Dean couldn't agree more. Too damn calmly, in his estimation.
"I could say the same about you," she answered, and wrapped her hands into the edges of the blanket. "Look, I'm not really a cold-hearted bitch. I've had a lot of crisis training. True, I forgot most of it when something with big teeth and really bad breath wanted to do the nasty, which I'll be hazed for from now till amen… but still…"
"Training kicks in." Sam had a resigned tone to his voice and his broad shoulders seemed to curve just a fraction of a degree.
"Sure does." She seemed to get even smaller, huddling into that blanket.
"Ok, before Dean starts in on you—what's your name?" Sam's voice oozed sympathy and camaraderie.
So, here goes another round of Good cop/Bad cop. Juvenile Edition. Cool. He wouldn't have to make nice with this bizarre kid.
"June Reed. What do I call you?"
"Sam." His brows pulled together and he reached out to turn her chin towards the corpse-glow. "You're not really sixteen or so, I hope?"
"Ay no! Add ten years to that, honey."
A grown woman, running naked through the woods on a cloud-obscured full moon night, chased by a werewolf. Mark another one up on the WTF scoreboard. Dean reluctantly holstered and picked up the gas can.
"That's one break this evening," he commented. They wouldn't have to deal with frantic parents. He tossed the empty can back into the trunk and walked up to them, wiping his hands on a mechanic's rag. "I don't suppose I have to tell you that you're going to need a cover story?"
"Why? A sex-crazed maniac chased me through the woods. I got away by the skin of my teeth thanks to a couple of passing good Samaritans. Sadly, no, I didn't catch their names. I was too shaken and it was too dark to get a good look at them, or at the perv. He ran off when they stopped."
"That story's not going to hold water long when they start grilling you about him," Sam chided, with a jerk of his chin towards the burning corpse. "How good are you at lying?"
"Lousy. Like, world-class terrible, at least to my family. To everyone else? I could convince the cops I'm Anastasia Romanov. Unfortunately, it's my family I'll need to lie to tonight."
Shit. Maybe they would have to deal with frantic parents. Senior edition.
She glanced up at the clouded black sky. Her nostrils flared for a breath. "Guys?" she said, looking between them both with an expression that made her seem like the poster child for pitiful lost waifs. "It's going to start pouring any second. If y'all could give me a lift to somewhere I could crash for the night? I'd be grateful all over again. I'm tired and my back hurts. I really do not want to go home and have to get into all that b.s. tonight."
Her lower lip trembled and tears welled up in her eyes and wobbled on the edges of her lower lashes. Dean stuck his hands into his pockets to keep from applauding her performance.
"You can crash for the night with us," Sam said.
Dean gave him a 'what the hell?' scowl when June focused her attention up on Sam with an expression of soft adoration.
When she turned that limpid gaze around onto him, Sam tried to signal something behind her back, but the message was too complex for eyebrow charades.
"Thank you," she breathed, with what looked like genuine deep relief. "Really, guys, you have no idea what you're getting me out of here. Stars above, I owe you both huge for this."
Crap. He couldn't leave the woman standing barefoot and wrapped in a blanket by the side of a deserted road in the middle of the night. On a full moon. Where the last cremains of a werewolf still blazed.
Then again, he'd done worse. But he kept walking towards the car anyway, and opened the rear passenger door for her. His stomach growled.
"If you want, I can pay you back by fixing something to eat tonight and make breakfast for y'all in the morning," June offered.
"We'll settle for breakfast tonight," Sam grinned. "It'll be morning by the time we get back. Technically, anyway."
"Sure, as long as you don't expect anything too fancy. Or your gravy to be any color but white," she said as she slid into the back seat.
"White gravy?" Sam grinned, a wide flash of teeth in the dome light. "No red-eye?"
"Ugh, no. Not by my hand, anyway. Whoever thought coffee belongs in gravy should be taken out and flogged." She pulled a disgusted face.
"Told you," Sam said.
"Shut it." Dean turned the car around. "It's food. White gravy on the other hand, is a disgusting slurry. You know how they used to make wallpaper paste, June?" He grinned into the rearview.
She was curled up in the corner of the seat, only a spill of long red tangles visible from under the blanket.
"Huh. Guess she was tired." Or faking it. He looked at Sam and jerked his head back towards their passenger with a questioning look.
Sam shrugged, circled his finger by his temple, cocked an eyebrow then shook his head. ~Nothing yet~ he mouthed.
Great, just great. An 'I don't know' and a 'probably not crazy' and an enigma. Just what everyone wants in a houseguest. She could, however, if not faking, sleep through the Black Album at high volume. That was a point in her credit.
Dean focused past the slap of the windshield wipers. Sam watched the rain sluicing down with that glazed, distracted expression that meant he was culling through the encyclopedia of weirdness he carried around between his ears. Nothing was said until they pulled up in front of the cabin.
Sam reached back and tapped a random lump in the blanket. "June? We're here."
Her head emerged from under the blanket and she blinked in the glow from the dome light. Then she opened the door and stepped out into the driving rain, leaving the blanket behind on the seat. She tipped her face up, eyes closed like someone in a shower, for just a heartbeat.
It was all within a few scant seconds' time, but Dean would swear he could tell the instant the penny dropped for her. She twitched like she'd been pinched and dove for the blanket, swaddling herself head to foot in it again and ran with them for the shelter of the sagging porch.
Another round of eyebrow charades. The question of identity on this woman had definitely moved from the 'who' to the 'what' side of the ledger.
Sam unlocked the door and swung it open. "Go on in," he offered.
She smiled thanks and stepped over the threshold, through the thick band of rock salt. Her only reaction was a slight frown as she picked up her feet to brush the clinging chunks off her soles. As Sam moved past to turn on the lights, Dean caught her giving his brother much the same sort of "what are you?" look they had been giving her.
Dean poured a couple of glasses from the carafe near the door. "Have some water," he offered her one.
"Thanks," she murmured as she took it without hesitation.
"Laudetur Christos," he said, lifting his own as if in a toast.
"In aeternum!" No wince, no hiss. She even sounded sincere. Holy water taken internally had no more effect than it had poured across open wounds. Whatever she was, she wasn't a demoniac. She looked around the room as she sipped, openly curious but with an odd affect, as if focused intently on some input other than sight.
Her eyes slid over the chalked wards without hesitation, which bothered Dean far more than 'Yikes! I'm amongst Satanists!' hysteria would have.
"Guys, forgive me for being forward," she smiled, sharing it between him and Sam. "But would it be ok if I take a shower? I feel like I've got half the woods and two-thirds of a roasted were-wolf on me."
She needed one, Dean had to admit. From what he'd seen she had leaves and twigs in her hair and blood, mud and scratches from one end to the other.
"Bathroom's this way," Sam said and led her across the room and down the short, narrow hall that separated the bedroom and bathroom from the rest of the little cabin.
He picked up their duffels from the floor as she stepped inside. "I'll hang a shirt on the doorknob for you."
"Thanks, Sam. I promise I won't hog the hot water."
Sam smiled and stepped out, but paused outside the bathroom door, listening. He didn't hear anything but the normal noises of a female preparing to get into a shower. The toilet flushed and shortly thereafter the shower curtain rings rattled and the water ran.
Sam tossed their duffels onto the beds, hung a shirt on the bathroom door and rejoined Dean in the sparse living room. His brother already had the laptop fired up, studying it as he clicked through screens.
"My weirdometer's pegged out. How 'bout yours?" Dean asked.
Sam sprawled into a chair. "Yellow zone. I don't get any of the usual signals, but she's definitely giving off some sort of static. Nothing about her adds up to anything I've heard of."
Dean frowned. "Why'd you offer to bring her back here?"
"I dunno, honestly," Sam spread his hands. "I'm drawn to her. I feel responsible for her, and that we can trust her, somehow."
"Which means she's screwing with your head," Dean snapped.
"I don't think so. It feels more like a strong hunch. She doesn't seem like she's against us, but she is sizing us up just as carefully as we are her." Sam said.
Dean nodded. "I noticed that. What the heck was that little ritual with the werewolf? She prayed that benediction on his soul right before she licked his blood off her lips. I think you missed that last little detail."
Sam's nose wrinkled. "She's not a vampire, or her teeth would have dropped for that. And why did she think that thing would rape her but eat us?"
"Who knows? I don't have a clue. She's..." Dean shook his head. "She's too aware. She watches us both, and not just our faces. She's a predator, but I don't know what type."
"She said she'd had a lot of 'crisis training,' and that she'd get hazed for what happened," Sam said, with a lift of one shoulder. "So she's not a loner, whatever she is. And they're organized."
"That'd be a heck of a paramilitary group to see, wouldn't it?" Dean's slight grin faded into a scowl. "Still, I almost wonder who was chasing who out there."
"As scared as she was at first? He was chasing her."
"Hello officer, my name is Anastasia Romanov." Dean's voice slid out of a breathy falsetto. "We're being played."
"Yeah, so June Reed's probably not her real name. I can't blame her for not being totally upfront with two guys she met on the side of the road. We didn't break out our ID either. Look, whatever she is, she's not shown a single sign of being anything dangerous."
Dean's eyebrows rose. "Why are you brushing this off? How many times have we got to have it drummed into our heads that little, pretty and harmless is usually any friggin' thing but?"
"I'm not brush—"
"Ok, next- and I tried to be stingy with the hot water," June announced from the doorway. Both men jerked and turned.
She looked about as hazardous as somebody's kid sister, short and candle-pale and freckle-spangled. Her unruly mess of red, waist-length hair was turned to sleek mahogany ringlets from water and a comb and Sam's shirt swallowed her almost to the knees.
She padded into the living room and settled in near Sam as if she had been in this room a hundred times before. "Mmm... love the water heater here, almost scalds your skin off." She smiled at Dean then. "If you're hungry, I don't have to wait till morning to start paying my debt in hot food."
"Help yourself. Not sure how much is in the kitchen," Dean answered, watching Sam almost as closely as her. Something was off… with both of them.
June turned and made her way unerringly towards the kitchen door. That seemed weird, until he considered that given the size of the cabin, it wouldn't take occult powers to figure out which way the kitchen had to be. "I say we load up her perky little ass and drop her off in town with enough cash for a cab, which is what we should have done an hour ago, and didn't which means she's probably messing with my head too."
Sam's face flashed with familiar, stubborn reluctance, but whatever he was going to say was interrupted by a meaty thud from the kitchen.
"Behold thy handmaiden, Messenger of the Father!" they heard her gasp.
They skidded through the doorway almost shoulder to shoulder, to see June lying prostrate on the kitchen floor, face against the worn linoleum, at Cas's feet.
"Fear not, little one," he pronounced and crouched to touch her head. "Rise up. I bring glad tidings."
"Glad tidings, huh? Then I'm really in trouble," she groaned as she rose to her knees and looked up into his face. Her expression was an uneasy mingling of awe, dread and adoration.
"Don't worry," Cas said. "Immaculate conceptions aren't my department."
"What about the other kind?" June's voice was wary but her expression was still edging towards beatific.
"Perhaps after we've been properly introduced," he said, his voice deadpan. He straightened and looked over her head at Sam and Dean. "Were you aware there is a Canis in your kitchen?"
As he spoke, his fingers carded through June's hair. Not as a man caresses a woman, but as distracted owner will idly fondle a pet.
For her part, June knelt at his feet, her cheek against Cas's thigh, eyes half-closed and her face radiating utter bliss. Somewhat drugged bliss, perhaps, but bliss none the less.
"A what?"
"What's up with her?"
"A Canis Caelorum. And she can speak for herself on the other."
"Hound of Heaven?" Dean blurted, looking down at June with renewed suspicion. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"He smells soooo good," June crooned, rubbing her cheek against the angel's trouser leg. "Like roses, and raspberry leaves, and…" She giggled a tad drunkenly. "Heaven."
"We tend to have a euphoric effect on them, once the initial fear abates," Cas elaborated with a shrug. He looked down at June and snapped his fingers.
Her drowsy, sensual ecstasy disappeared instantly, replaced by an almost rigid attention.
"Off," he said softly.
She crawled backwards with inhuman grace for three strides, then rose to her feet. June blinked, her expression returning to a normal state of alert wariness. Her nose, though, wiggled like a rabbit's.
"We almost ran over her out on the 315," Sam said, looking from the angel to June as if he hadn't seen her before, and wasn't sure he wanted to now. "A werewolf was chasing her."
June dropped her head as Cas turned his attention back to her with divine intensity. "Who is your Pack Leader?"
"Barnabas Elkins, Messenger. But it's not his fault!"
"No, June, I'm sure it's yours," he said with a gentleness that was more chilling than cheering. "I know of Barnabas. Sending one small bitch out after a werewolf isn't a mistake he would make. Why haven't you told them what you are?"
June flicked her eyes towards them both then she edged back towards the angel as the lesser danger. "Because I figured out who they are!"
"So, you're accounting the acts of their father to his children?" Cas lifted an eyebrow. "Our Father does frown on that."
June's chin lifted and her shoulders straightened from their submissive curve. "Our Father also says, as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. I'm not a Messenger, I'm only a mortal instrument. How could I know they wouldn't destroy me the instant I revealed myself as nonhuman, as John Winchester would have?"
"Do you value your life so highly, Canis?" Cas asked.
"Yes, I do!"
"Then why did you stick around?" Dean snapped.
"Because my life has no value if I trade it for the lives of my family, Hunter," she countered just as curtly, looking away from the angel to challenge the gazes of Dean and Sam over her shoulder. "I thought if you knew what I am, you might track me back to them."
"Show them what you fully are, June," Cas said, his voice soft but implacable. "I'll protect you."
June turned her back to the angel then, her entire focus on Sam's eyes.
Dean's mind started making connections. Sam was the one who had bathed her wounds with holy water, bandaged her and wrapped her in a blanket. Invited her home, and opened the door to let her in. He had given her his shirt. The dots didn't quite add up to a picture yet, but there was definitely a pattern there.
She unbuttoned the shirt and twitched her shoulders.
The garment dropped to the floor and as it pooled, she transformed in the same instant. There was a soft whump as air rushed in to fill the space her altered body had left behind. It ruffled her russet fur.
Before the breeze died out, he and Sam had their weapons in their hands and trained on center mass.
If he saw her trotting down a street like that, he'd call her a dog. If he'd seen her out in the woods, he'd probably have called her a wolf. But there was something off, something different about her here-with her standing in front of the fridge while he studied her—that made him certain she wasn't either. She had a barrel chest and a broad head. Thick shoulders and haunches and jaws that could snap a femur like a pretzel stick. All in all, a critter that would make him think twice about hopping over the picket fence and strolling through its yard.
Especially with that body language. Her head was high, her ears were pricked up and forward and she carried her tail straight out and above the level of her spine. Definitely giving the impression she was certain she could handle anything they dished out. Thank you, Animal Planet….
And just because she was standing in what was, at least temporarily, their kitchen, there had to be that factor that kept them all square in the middle of Uncanny Valley. Her eyes were still blue and still fully human, with a lucid gaze she kept nailed to Sam's.
"See? I told you they were like John!" Her voice was now a bass rumble, the words distorted and guttural, but reasonably intelligible.
Dean felt the hair rise on his arms. Of all the freaking weird things he'd seen, it was weirder still that a talking dog even registered on his skin-crawl scale.
"They are not. You are still alive," Cas pointed out. "They have learned to be cautious and to trust no one."
"So, now what?" she asked, only her muzzle moving, not looking away from Sam.
Cas shrugged.
"I'm going to shift back," June said. "Please don't shoot me?"
"No promises," Dean answered.
"Well. Ok. Been nice knowin' ya." June stood back up. She either forgot about the shirt at her feet or just didn't care. His money was on the second.
"What is that, some sort of illusion?" he asked.
June opened her mouth but Cas beat her to the punch. "No. It is exactly what it appears to be."
"That's impossible! Where does the mass go?" Sam asked.
"Nowhere, Einstein," June blurted. "It just changes arrangement. Geez, you see a woman turn into a Canis in front of you and your first question is about physics? What's wrong with you people?"
He shot a look at Sam out of the corners of his eyes that asked the same question.
Sam shrugged slightly and then turned his attention back to June. "We're used to weird."
"Yeah, well guess what, so am I. But those perfectly normal pistols are making me break out in flop sweat. Either use em or put 'em away, ok guys?"
Sam put his away. "If she was gonna attack..."
"She'd have done it by now," he agreed, reluctantly, and tucked his .45 back into his waistband.
She glanced back at Cas. "Keeping them breathing has gotta be a 24/7 proposition for ya, huh?"
"We were the ones who saved your lily-white ass, remember?" Dean said.
Her nose wrinkled and she shoved a hank of hair behind an ear. "Yeah, about that. I am deeply and sincerely grateful to you both for saving my lily-white ass because I did badly underestimate that 'wolf's speed and agility. But I'm not quite as big a cloudlander as the whole scenario makes me seem. He intended to eat some teens out necking. I made myself seem like an easier catch."
"Looked like you did that way too well," Sam pointed out.
"True. I screwed up, ok. There wasn't time to think it through. It was me or those kids. But," she put her fists on her hips. "Guys, you and I both know those monsters are like cockroaches. There's never just one. There's that one, and the one that made him, and the ones he may have made. Our work is not done, Kemosabes."
Dean scrubbed a hand over his face. "Dude- too late for this. I need coffee."
"Sorry, I was going to make some but got sidetracked by the angelic visitation!"
"That's just Cas."
"Castiel," the angel corrected gently.
"Cas has a bad habit of poppin' in without callin' ahead," Dean shrugged and headed to the coffee maker. "Anybody else want coffee?"
"Sure."
"No, thank you." Sam and Cas spoke almost at once.
"Just Cas," she muttered, finally scooping up the shirt off the floor and buttoning it to the neck like it was body armor. "Oh, that's just good ol' Cas, my buddy, the angel..."
She shot a glance at said angel out of the corner of her eyes. June pulled out a chair and plunked down with zero grace.
"Glad tidings?" she blurted, to no one in particular.
"Yes," Cas said with his deadpan expression and tone. "That is traditionally what is said by an angel delivering a message to a young woman."
"Whoa, hold up Cas!" Sam blurted. "You're here for her?"
"You knew she'd be here?" Dean burst out almost at the same instant.
"Yes, and no, to both questions." Cas looked between them both and for a crazy second Dean was reminded of a big bird. Like, say, a hawk sizing up a mouse.
"I was sent to seek her out, give her this message, and then present her to you if she consented," Cas elaborated. "I did not expect to find her in your kitchen."
"So, coming across her out on the road was just a coincidence, huh?" Sam's voice oozed suspicion.
"There is no such thing," Cas retorted. "Only incomplete revelation."
"That you're operating off of right now," Dean said.
Cas nodded. "As must we all, Dean."
"Then what's the message?" Sam asked.
Cas looked at June with a questioning tilt of his head.
"Yes, please," she whispered. "Tell me. I can't stand the suspense."
She wasn't being flip. She was so pale every freckle stood out like a fleck of gold leaf and Dean was pretty sure her knees were knocking. Truth be told, Cas was making him more than a little nervous, himself.
"You have purpose now," Cas told her.
"I thought I already did." She frowned, looking every bit as confused as she sounded.
"Yes. But now it has changed." He turned his gaze meaningfully towards him and Sam.
June sucked in a sharp breath, as if she'd been slapped. "Why would they need me? I'm nothing."
"They are Hunters. You are a Hound."
Yeah. Thanks Cas. That explains it all. Dean scowled, but Sam spoke first.
"Do we have a say in this?" Sam asked.
"Do you want one?" Cas asked him.
"Hell yeah I do! I'm not going into any kind of deal blind, not even on an angel's word."
"You're saying this is some celestial adopt-a-pet program you're pushing here?" Dean challenged. "Cas, we can barely take care of ourselves, and you're asking us to take on another person—dog—whatever she is?"
June's breath wheezed right back out. Sam looked over at her sharply then moved to grab her shoulders. "Hey, breathe! Don't pass out!"
She looked from Cas, to Dean and then to Sam. Her swallow was audible.
"What troubles you?" Cas asked her, his voice almost tender.
Dean noticed the angel didn't seem the least concerned about his and Sam's misgivings. Great. That boded well for their immediate future.
"We're taught that when Hounds return to Hunters-" she shook her head, her attention shifting from Cas to Sam.
That set off a whole new set of red lights and sirens for Dean.
"Your kind turned against ours so very long ago. It's taught that when a Hunter takes a Hound again, the first Seal will break."
"An apocalyptic seal?" Sam asked.
Her answer was a trickle of air more than sound. "Yes."
"What else is new?" Dean grimaced. "Signs of the Apocalypse have been croppin' up all over lately, sweetheart. Seals popping right and left."
June stiffened, shaking off Sam's hold. "How many have gone?"
"Thirty-four so far."
Her eyes went huge. "But there's only seven!"
"Sixty-six," Sam said.
"Out of a possible six hundred," Dean elaborated.
Her gaze jerked up to Cas's face.
The angel nodded once. "The Seven Seals are for the final Judgment, not the Apocalypse. I am afraid your holy writ has become somewhat adulterated over the centuries."
"Our holy writ?" Sam blurted.
"Yours is tailored to human understanding, as the Canes writ is tailored to theirs." Cas tilted his head, that distant look crossing his face for an instant before he focused on the three of them again.
"Theirs, however, was transmitted via oral tradition for far longer, so has been more prone to copyist error. In all versions, however, one might say that the bottom line remains the same."
June dropped her ashen face into her hands and Dean wondered if she was going to burst into hysterics or just quietly fall out on the floor.
When she lifted her head, her expression was grim, her voice as flat as Cas's. "I need a major intel dump. Obviously my eschatological education hasn't been worth squat."
"That's going to take some time, and a heck of a lot of coffee." Dean went to the burbling maker and poured himself a cup.
"And food," Sam added, "With white gravy."
He smiled at June. She returned a wobbly one of her own and moved to start a search mission in the cabinets.
********* Author's note: *********
The prayer June spoke over the werewolf:
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.