I do not own most of the characters nor any of the ideas in the below text. Sam, Dean, Cas, demons, angels, and other elements of Supernatural are the sole property of Supernatural and the CW, including the almighty Eric Kriepke, may his name be praised.

Dean stuffed more of his hamburger into his mouth. "Are you absolutely positive they're here, Sam?"

Sam rolled his eyes. Dean had asked three different variants of that stupid question in the past two hours. Sam did all the research, all the legwork. The only place in this Podunk town large enough to hide a demon army of that size was the local fishery, where a large warehouse and escape route via boat were readily available. Before Sam could say anything, Cas piped up from the backseat, "Four."

"Four what?" Dean asked, finishing off his meal with gusto.

"Four times you've asked him that. I counted."

"We can see that, Cas." said Sam. Dean rolled his eyes and chewed like a cow. Sam continued, "We'll need to get this spell just right- creating a trap around a building gets complicated. It'll be a lot of zapping around for you," Sam looked at the angel- or Seraph, rather- sitting in the backseat of the Impala and raised his eyebrows, "Is that all right?"

"I've got wings, don't I?" Castiel replied, his trademark gravel voice displaying amusement "Won't be a problem."

"Good."

Sam pulled the Impala up to a safe distance away from the warehouse and locked the parking brake into place. The sun was just going down. Almost as soon as the car had stopped moving, everyone was out and assembling all their gear, including, for this particular caper, several massive bags of rock salt. Cas easily lifted six, three cradled in each arm, while Dean and Sam both struggled mightily with two apiece. Soon, the work was underway. Castiel zipped around, creating a salt circle around the perimeter of the entire building thick and deep enough not to let any demons loose should a wind spring up from the river. Sam and Dean slowly worked their way through the building, ignoring the stench of sulfur, dodging the echoes of demonic voices when they heard them coming and trying to draw in all the symbols necessary to destroy every wretched agent of hell in there. The demons weren't going in to the rooms around the perimeter of the building, making it infinitely easy to finish the work.

Too easy.

An hour and a half later, they stood in the room at the northernmost corner of the building, about to finish the job, when Dean spoke up, "Have you noticed how easy this was?"

"Yeah, we must be good." Sam replied.

"Not that good. No one can be that good at hunting thirty demons. Something is up, here." Dean said.

"Dude, relax. Just accept the blessing of an easy job for once- it hasn't come in years."

"Exactly what I'm worried about, Sam. Why now, after all this time, do we catch a break?"

"I said relax, Dean. Nothing to it."

"I'm afraid you're wrong." Cas, appearing out of nowhere as usual, strode toward them with a worried look on his face, "And you need to come with me. Now."

"Hold up. What's wrong?"

"Just come on!"

Cas grabbed the arm of each Winchester brother and guided them through the hallways, down the stairs, and into one of the first hallways they had been in upon entering the warehouse. A light flickered, swinging drunkenly back and forth at the end of the way. With that periodic, beam-like illumination, it took the Winchesters a few seconds to realize what Castiel was so worried about.

The hall was littered with bodies. Upon closer examination, every single corpse had had its eyes burned out, "We were just here an hour and a half ago!" Dean hissed, "What the hell happened?"

"By the looks of it, they were smitten. "

"What?" Sam gasped.

"My thoughts, exactly." Cas continued, "Somewhere in this building, an angel is afoot."

"How many?" Dean asked.

"Angels or bodies?"

"Either?"

"Bodies, eighteen. Angels... probably just one. "

"Friendly? The angel, I mean."

"Maybe, considering these are the demonic vessels we encountered earlier at the tavern. But I don't see why we couldn't still exercise caution."

"And when the hell did this happen, exactly? Sam and I walked this hallway not even ninety minutes ago, and you, Cas..."

"I left this particular area only an hour after you did."

"And it wasn't like this the first time you saw it?" Dean asked.

"It was not."

"So whatever did this had only half an hour to gather up eighteen demons, smite them all at once, and skedaddle. And we're not exactly sure of their overall intentions." Dean finished.

There was a long, pregnant pause in the conversation, broken by Sam, "We're screwed aren't we?"