Chapter 2 The Beat of Black Wings


A week later. Bear River, Utah.

The small fire was almost invisible against the bright sunshine filling the wide river valley, and Ellie added another handful of dry, brittle twigs, watching them blacken and curl under the beaten silver bowl that rested over the coals. She watched the contents of the bowl through the heat shimmer above it, seconds ticking away in her mind.

"When you get in there, you won't be able to see the demons, unless they're also in a meatsuit."

The exorcist's voice, low and serious as a heart attack, intruded into her thoughts.

"You only want the first level," he'd told her. "Once you get past the gates, there's a mountain. It's hollow, filled with caves, and that's where it'll be."

She closed her eyes, letting a shiver run through her without trying to stop it. It wasn't her first rodeo, she reminded herself. Her chest was itching, where the blood sigil had dried and crusted and she resisted the impulse to scratch it. There wasn't much that would truly hide her from view but it would help.

The contents of the bowl erupted with a flash of light, a cool mauve that strobed the cliffside and faded away, leaving a thin, twisting ribbon of blue smoke, curling up from the bowl. The incantation was black Latin, and she spoke it clearly, trying to hold herself apart from the way the words seemed to fill her mind with images she'd rather not have seen.

Magic isn't inherently good or bad, she'd told Dean once, the two of them sitting on a river bank with the mountains rearing up behind them. It's a tool, a key to the subconscious, and that's all. She'd revised that opinion in the last two years. There were some magics that could corrupt. And some, she thought, that could redeem.

The grinding of the rockface pushed thought and memory aside, and she looked up as the recessed slab moved outward, spilling a painful dark red light onto the ground. Don't think about it, she told herself, slitting her eyes as she got to her feet. She watched the gate open, the weight of the stone crushing the gravel scree at its base to powder, then reached down and threw several handfuls of coal onto the fire. She'd need a few hours and the door would only remain open while the mix in the bowl was heated. A lesson learned from painful experience.

Stepping into the pulsing not-quite-light, Ellie dragged in a deep breath. From the gate, there was a plain to cross, then she had to get through the inner gates. Then she could search the inside of the mountain.


Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

"You got any bright ideas yet?" Bobby asked, leaning on the side of the car and looking down at the pair of legs protruding from under it.

"Yeah, I got a million," Dean's voice was muffled with his proximity to the oil pan. "What about you?"

"Nada," Bobby admitted, moving aside as the creeper edged out from under the chassis. "Here."

Dean slid out, taking the proffered beer and sitting up. "Any more reports?"

"Yeah, tv's all over it," Bobby said with a grimace. "Tulsa, Austin, Birmingham … Cas' gettin' around."

His gaze shifting to the house, Dean asked, "How's Sam doing?"

"Seems okay," Bobby said cautiously. "All things considered."

"Yeah."

All things considered, Dean thought, lifting the bottle. Twelve hundred years, in Hell's peculiar time, of being chewed over and spat out by the devil and an archangel with a helluva grudge, along with a year and a half's worth of memories of hunting as a cold-blooded machine, soulless, conscienceless and savagely successful. All things considered, it was a fucking miracle Sam was on his feet and not curled into a foetal ball in the corner of a room.

He stood up, nudging the creeper halfway back under the car and took a step back, looking over her. The frame was straight and most of the panels were more or less smooth. Black gloss showed every single wrinkle and divot, he knew from past experience. He still had some work to do to make sure there were none to be seen before he could run her into the paint shed.

"There's just one thing that has a hope of holding Cas down," he said to the older man, feeling Bobby's gaze turn to him.

"That is?"

"Death."

The entity – the Horseman – had helped before, Dean thought, staring at the car. Had given him his ring to open the cage. Had gone down to the pit to pull out Sam's soul. The current situation probably qualified as something he might be willing to help out with again.

"An' how do you think you're gonna get Death to come out and play?" Bobby's voice held an astringent tone.

Dean shrugged. He had no idea. The last time he'd gone looking, he'd had to die. He had a feeling that wouldn't work a second time.

This is hard for you, Dean. You throw away your life because you've come to assume that it'll bounce right back into your lap.

The measured, timeless voice came back to him. He hadn't argued with the Horseman at the time, though he'd never thought that no matter what he did, he'd keep living. That'd come as a total fucking surprise, time after time.

"Lucifer bound him," he said to Bobby, turning to put his beer down on the workbench behind them. "There has to be a way."


I-35N Iowa

Ellie felt her fingers tightening again on the wheel, and looked down at them, willing them to relax. She had another six hours driving and she could already feel the knot of tension at the base of her skull as the long drive forced out more and more memories, doubts and anxieties. She wanted to see him. But, she admitted to herself, she was afraid as well. She could, in the most hidden part of herself, keep a tiny flame of hope alive, so long as she didn't know for sure.

When Raphael had appeared in the hotel room, she'd known exactly what he wanted, even before he'd spoken. She'd made it too easy for Heaven. She'd been known to the angels and she'd led them straight to the Winchesters, not thinking she'd be followed or tracked. She'd been thinking of herself, she admitted readily. Wanting to see him. It was a decision that she still felt ambivalent about. They'd had something, the two of them, together. But her being there also driven them apart and had kept them apart for a lot longer than she'd thought.

It was only supposed to have been six to eight months. Just laying low, staying away from them, letting them get on with it. Then one thing after another had gone wrong.

She'd heard things over those first few months, while she'd gone about her business, her time divided between research, hunting and trying to remain hidden from the angels she'd sensed following her, from time to time. Had heard things from hunters. From the demons she'd trapped and questioned. Dean had almost given himself to Michael. Bobby'd told her that, telling her worriedly that she needed to find a way to see him, talk to him, get his head back in the game. It'd been the intervention of Cas that'd stopped Michael from acquiring his chosen vessel, and it hadn't been all that long after, she remembered, that the Watcher had contacted her. Penemue had asked her to get a message to Michael.

The sight of blue and red flashing lights in the rearview mirror dragged her attention back to the interstate. A glance at the speedometer showed her well within the limit and she watched the two patrol cars move up and past her, heading elsewhere. Reaching for the console, she pushed a CD into the stereo, turning the volume down until she could just hear it. A delicate combination of acoustic and electric guitar filled the cab, Metallica's Unforgiven bringing back memories so potently she felt her throat close suddenly, tears pricking behind her eyes.

With Patrick's less-than-willing help, she'd managed to find the archangel, tricking him into meeting with her and she'd delivered the Watcher's message. Michael had tried to bargain with her, demanding Dean's whereabouts for his help. He'd put two angels on her tail when she'd refused and from then on, she spent almost all of her time trying to lose them, cutting herself off from anyone she knew who might also know the brothers.

She still wasn't sure if it was bad luck or manipulation that had kept her in almost total isolation when Sam had held Lucifer and taken him back to the cage. Luck came in waves, and hers had been bad for a lot longer than usual.

She'd been in Oregon. Ray had given her three locations to try, sites of massacres, lit up with signs over the previous few months. It'd been the first time she'd used the ritual, but it'd worked. The gate had opened, and she'd crossed between the planes. She hadn't found what she'd been looking for and when she'd come out more than a hundred demons had been in the clearing, dropping on them without warning. At the time, with two angels with her every moment, she'd known she should've been invisible to them, but someone – or something – had known exactly where to find her. Iskmael had died fighting the demons. The other seraphim, Iophiel, had thrown some kind of deflection spell over them both, her proximity to the angel hiding whatever it was that kept her shining like a damned lighthouse, but it had still taken nearly a week to work their way slowly clear of the area, through nearly empty mountain country.

They'd been sixty miles from Burns to the north, a little further to Lakeview to the east when Iophiel had told her that the Cage had closed, Lucifer and Michael both trapped inside it, their vessels with them. He'd blamed her for the death of his brother and had left, leaving the Enochian spell intact around her. By the time she'd made it to Burns, found someone willing to sell her a clapped-out secondhand car and driven to Bobby's, four weeks had passed.

Hitting the stop button on the stereo as the sweet chorus began, she flexed her hands and rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the tension that felt like it was eating her. Four weeks too late had been enough.

Bobby had tried to explain. He'd told her that Dean had waited, first hopefully, then impatiently, and finally had come to believe that she wasn't going to return. He'd told her that Cas had been there, had told them he couldn't see her, couldn't find her. She'd listened to the old man and seen, vividly in her imagination, what Dean might've told himself as the days went by and she never showed.

Turning onto the 90, she barely registered the signs, her hands and feet and eyes driving the truck, finding the route, while her mind looked backward, agitating again over the things that delayed her return to Sioux Falls. If she hadn't tried to find the spell that could release Death from his bond to Lucifer … if she hadn't been followed by angels … if she'd had more luck in the long trek out of the wilderness … if … if … if …

She didn't notice passing into Minnesota, and the straight, fast runs demanded too little from her to keep her mind occupied with the truck or the road.

"Sam made him promise," Bobby'd said, his face screwing up under the shadow of his cap. "To – uh – go find Lisa, go an' live a normal life."

She'd stared at him, feeling her pulse throbbing at the base of her throat, feeling her mouth dry, her chest tight.

"When did he leave?" she'd asked him.

"Nearly five weeks ago, Ellie," Bobby'd told her, his voice dropping. "It was the only thing he was hanging onto, by the time –"

"He wanted a family, Bobby," she'd cut him off, looking away. "A home."

"Yeah," he'd said. "He needs one."

At the back of her mind, somewhere, someone had been screaming but she'd damped that down, forced it aside. It seemed obvious that neither Sam nor Bobby had believed she'd be coming back, any more than Dean had.

"He's in Cicero?"

"Yeah," Bobby said, nodding. "But Ellie, he's –"

She'd been on her feet, walking for the door, already calculating time and distance.

"Ellie."

The muted plea in his voice had stopped her at the porch and she'd turned around to look back at him, seeing the worry on his face clearly.

"If he's settled, I won't butt in, Bobby," she'd told him, swallowing against that thought. "I won't confuse the situation."

He'd nodded slowly, apparently satisfied. It told her more than anything he'd said that he believed that Dean was adjusting to the new life.

Driving through the night from South Dakota to Indiana, she'd thought, if she could get there in time, he might feel differently. Halfway there, she'd stopped, trying to work out what it was she was going to do when she got there. She'd promised Bobby she wouldn't just show up at his door. Wouldn't disrupt what he was doing if he looked alright. But, she'd thought at the time, if she didn't see him, how would ever know that it hadn't been her choice?

In the end, she'd hired a van when she'd gotten into Indianapolis, and positioned it well enough to be able to watch discreetly without being noticeable to the inhabitants of the small house. Just to watch. To make sure he was alright, to see if he'd found what he'd been looking for. She'd left that first time after two days, telling herself that she was happy that he looked contented, that he had what he'd wanted. She couldn't remember the drive back to Richmond, but she'd packed light and taken the first flight out of the country she'd been able to get a seat on.


The Welcome sign of Sioux Falls took her by surprise, and she made the lefts and rights automatically, heading out along the county road to Singer's Auto Yard.

Parking the truck a half mile from Bobby's place, she sat there, listening to the hot metal of the engine tick in the silence. She didn't want to see anyone other than Dean. Raphael was dead, and Lucifer and Michael were locked away, but she still had a residual uneasiness about being too close to the Winchesters, a feeling that it was too easy for someone to track them through her.

She opened the pickup's door and got out, closing it quietly behind her, turning and leaning against the side for a moment. Was she really going to walk in there, she wondered nervously? See him? Try to explain … now?

It'd been November when she'd returned to Cicero, finding that they'd moved. It wasn't hard to locate the new house. A few houses up the street, an empty house with a For Sale sign out the front had given her all the cover she'd needed.

Thanksgiving. Watching him with Lisa's family, smiling and laughing easily, his arm around the slender brunette as they'd stood on the porch and seen their guests out. She'd been tempted to leave after seeing that much, but some masochistic streak had kept her there, and she'd watched the lights in the living room come on at two in the morning, watched him move behind the concealing curtains and sit there until dawn. The nightmares, she'd thought then. There were things in his life that couldn't be resolved and let go so quickly. He must've felt the surveillance, though she'd been sure she hadn't done anything to give herself away. He'd come out the next morning, checking the cars and houses and it'd taken all her control to drive away, slowly and casually, and not looking back.

There wasn't a lot to be gained in standing out here and quaking in her boots, she decided, pushing off the truck and starting to walk up the hill toward the yard's lop-sided entrance. She walked slowly, her head down, admitting to her reluctance but unwilling to do anything about it. As she came level with Bobby's yard fence, corrugated iron and chainlink netting, barbed wire wound around the top, she could hear hammering, metal on metal.

She'd run into Gwen Campbell in January '11. Gwen and her cousin, Christian, the two staking out a nest in Lafayette, both jumpy at her appearance, relaxing a little when she'd told them she was passing through, on her way to a haunting close by the state line. Gwen had let slip that Sam had been raised; rescued from the cage only a short time after he'd gone in. The information had hit her like a sucker punch. Dean didn't know, she was sure of it. That night, Samuel Campbell had walked into the bar where they'd been comparing notes. It'd taken a little bit of finessing the cousins, but they'd finally admitted that Samuel had been resurrected at the same time. The juxtaposition of the two events had rung numerous warning bells for her, but she couldn't figure out what the purpose could have been. Only an angel could've pulled Sam's soul from Hell – and returned Samuel's to his original vessel. But which angel had? And for what purpose? And why hadn't that angel released Michael and his vessel, Adam?

When she'd left them, she'd seriously considered going to see Dean then. She hadn't given in to the impulse. Partly because Bobby had told her that Sam had forbidden anyone contact with him, and partly because she agreed with Sam – Dean seemed good. He looked happy. Dragging him back into the life would only have ruined his dreams, destroyed his chance for peace once again.

But, as it turned out, Dean was dragged back anyway.

The sun was hot, the scrubby trees throwing little shade on the powdery ground and she slowed down even more as she turned in under the welded archway. Stopping between the first rows of the heaped junkers, she rubbed a hand over her face, too many memories hitting her all at once.

Bobby'd known about Sam's return. He'd admitted as much when she'd called him, telling her that Dean knew as well now. He'd been targeted by djinn and Sam had intervened.

"We were wrong, Ellie. He wasn't happy. I didn't … I'm sorry, but I just couldn't tell him you'd come after he'd left. He was pissed at us for not telling him about Sam … I didn't know what he'd do." He'd sounded regretful, she remembered. A world of regrets in the tired, whiskey-roughened voice. None of it had been any help to her. "He and Lisa, they're not living together anymore. But he said he was trying to make it work, trying to still be a part of their lives."

She'd shaken her head. "Then there's no room for me, Bobby. I'm going out of the country for awhile anyway. I'll keep in touch."

That conversation had been ten months ago. She'd gone to Paris, then to Rome, working with a witch she'd met years ago on a case. Remy had been only too happy to help her forget her sorrows, and she'd thought, for a short while at least, that she would be able to forget, to put it all behind her. Let him go.

Wrong again.

In the afternoon heat, the yard seemed empty, although she could see Bobby's tow truck, parked alongside the side of the house. A rapid loud banging led her through the alleys of piled cars to the Impala, and Dean's boots, sticking out from underneath it.

She waited until the staccato hammering had stopped, forcing herself to breathe deeply, to loosen the tightness in her throat and around her chest.

"Dean?"

"Uh … hang on –" The deep voice, achingly familiar, grunted from under the car. Watching him emerge gradually as he pushed himself out, Ellie swallowed against the sudden dryness that filled her throat. When his head had cleared the chassis, he looked up. He didn't move, didn't speak.

"Hey." She smiled nervously at him, feeling her heart start to race as she cut her gaze away to the car.

For all her attempts to forget him, to bury her feelings, not one thing had changed. With the bright sunshine on his face, his eyes were a vivid green, the faint smattering of freckles over his nose and cheeks apparent even under the coating of dirt and grease.

"Hey." He sat up slowly, shading his eyes with his hand as he looked up at her. There was no answering smile.

She dropped her gaze as her stomach knotted. "Do you have a minute?"

"Sure." He rolled off the creeper and got to his feet.

"Bobby around?" She looked toward the house. "Or Sam?"

"No, Bobby went to town. Sam …" he hesitated for a moment, and Ellie knew that he didn't want to talk about his brother, or go into whatever had happened to him.

"Uh, Sam's in the house, sleeping." He frowned. "Why?"

"I just wanted to talk to you alone." She shrugged, letting her gaze drift around the yard, struggling to keep her feelings out of her face, out of her voice. "Any place with a bit of shade we can go?"

He turned away and walked to the shed. She followed him slowly.


"Why are you here, Ellie?" Dean asked, his voice clipped as they crossed the threshold and the temperature dropped in the dim shadowy interior.

"I saw Castiel." She leaned against a work bench, looking down. "He looks terrible. His vessel is going to explode."

"Yeah. Well, he won't listen to reason."

Looking at her face, he found himself studying it, remembering each curve, every scar, fighting to keep his breathing even as memories surged through him, good ones and bad ones. He looked away as she lifted her head.

"He gave me a message for you, and Sam. And Bobby too, I guess. Don't rise against him, or he'll destroy you."

"That's more or less what he told us when he left," Dean said, shrugging. "I don't know what he thinks we're going to do, it's not like we have any weapon at all that can touch him."

"No weapon. No."


She looked out of the partially open door to the sunlit yard beyond it. It'd been a mistake to come, she realised, hearing the antagonism in his voice. She could have waited until Bobby had been here alone and given him the message, the things she'd found for them.

"But there're still those with enough power to hold him, until the door to Purgatory can be opened again."


"Yeah? Who?" Dean asked derisively, watching her profile against the brightness of the light from the yard. He was greedy for the sight of her, he could admit that to himself. He wanted to drink in every detail. He was angry as well. And hurt. No, hurt was too fucking tame a word for it. Devastated fitted better. How the hell could she be just standing in front of him, talking to him as if everything was normal? When he'd been waiting for two years to see her again? When he'd told himself he'd never see her again?

"Death," Ellie said, her voice flat as she flicked a glance at him. "The Horseman can hold Castiel."

Dean gave a shaky laugh, dragging his attention back to the conversation. "Sure. Right. You think I didn't think of that? You think I haven't been trying to find a way to get a hold of the sonofabitch for the last two weeks?"

"You need a binding spell," she told him, her expression smoothing out as she turned to look at him. "Crowley had one."

"Crowley? And how're we supposed to get hold of him?" Dean's brow furrowed, his desire to ask her where the hell she'd been getting all this information warring with the million questions he'd wanted the answers to when she'd been gone. "He's been AWOL since Castiel turned into this ... God thing."

He watched her turn away to lift her backpack onto the bench behind her, opening it and pulling out a slender, silk-wrapped cylinder, his concentration involuntarily sharp on everything she did. There was a part of him still standing in open-mouthed disbelief that she was here at all. He'd known she wasn't dead. Had known the only reason she hadn't come back had been from her choice. She'd left him.

"Summoning spell for the ruler of Hell, it's, uh, f-fixed on that parameter, not an individual demon," she said, stumbling a little on the words, her gaze locked on the fabric-covered scroll as she spoke and already turning away when he took it. "I don't know how he managed that, but it seems like it's only in title. All the real power appears to belong to Cas."

Unwrapping the silk covering from parchment scroll carefully, he unrolled it, skimming over the contents.

The summoning was in Latin, the delicate, wrinkled parchment old and fragile, and smelling faintly of brimstone. It looked like the real deal. Glancing back up at her, he wasn't sure how he'd forgotten that she did this kind of thing. Pulled rabbits out of hats. Or how he'd failed to remember that she'd always seemed to know more about any given situation than they had.

"How long you known about this?" he asked, wondering distractedly what Bobby was gonna make of it.

"A couple of weeks."


Rubbing her forehead and pushing a loose strand of hair aside with the inside of her wrist, Ellie kept her gaze on the interior of the shed. Crowley's sudden ascension to the numero uno position in the underworld was a feat she'd found strange, but it was more than obvious she couldn't raise it with Dean now. She couldn't blame him for the anger she could see, seething under the surface. She shouldn't have been surprised at it, given all that had happened. But she was. Somewhere inside, she'd hoped … she'd kept hoping … well, now she knew. For sure. What they'd had, very briefly, had gone, and they weren't even friends any longer.

She resettled her bag over her shoulder, feeling tired suddenly. She'd done what she'd come for. Given him what was needed. And she'd seen what she'd needed to see. She wanted to go.


Dean looked over at her as he rolled the scroll back up, tucking it into the pocket of his shirt. There were shadows around her eyes, he noticed suddenly, and she looked thin, tired, her gaze on something to his right, behind him, as if she couldn't look at him any longer. Somewhere, down deep, he felt a rolling lurch in his gut, a sense of walking over the abyss with nothing underneath him but an endless fall.

"Look, uh … thanks for this," he said, the edge gone from his voice. "We'll get on it."

She nodded noncommittally, picking up her backpack and shrugging it over one shoulder. "That was all I could find anyway."

Straightening up, she turned and headed for the door to the yard. "Good luck."

He watched her walking away, and for a long, endlessly drawn-out moment, he couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't breathe. Everyone leaves you, Dean.

Two years, and he was going to let her go, without an explanation, without the answers she owed him? His heart slammed against his ribs, adrenalin exploding through muscle. Was he really going to let her leave … again … without another word?

The FUCK he was.

He was moving before he'd made a conscious decision, striding across the concrete floor, his fingers closing tightly around her arm as she reached the doorway, swinging her around to face him.

"Wait a - wait a goddamned minute."

He didn't know what the feelings were, boiling up inside of him, anger or fear or grief, it'd been a long time since he'd been able to tell them apart. They were filling him up and he wanted some damned answers. He needed some answers.

"You're just going to walk away … again," he ground out, hustling her backward a few steps and pressing her against the rough timber wall beside the shed door, his face inches from hers. She looked up at him, eyes wide, lips parted in shock.

"What are you talking about? I didn't 'just walk away', I told Cas to tell you –"

"Yeah, he told me," he cut her off sharply, vaguely aware that she wasn't making an attempt to get out of his hold and loosening his grip slightly. He could feel her breath, rapid huffs against his jaw as he looked down at her, could see her pulse, beating furiously in the hollow of her throat.

"He told me that you lived through Raphael's Power Ranger act, but he didn't know how." He dragged in a breath, shunting aside those memories when they pressed close. "I thought he was lying at first, some bullshit story to make me keep going, because you weren't coming back."

The old farmhouse, the angel's appearance, despair swinging wildly into hope. His eyes narrowed as he saw her expression change, some emotion filling her face then vanishing. "Then I believed him, and I begged him to find you. I begged and I pleaded with him, Ellie. He said you'd told him not to. Not to find you, not to take me to you."

He felt a shiver tremble through her, reverberating faintly against his fingers, and she ducked her head, twisting a little to one side. The fucking angel hadn't budged an inch, no matter what he'd said or done and had finally left, telling him it was her decision and the only way to keep them safe. Safe, he remembered bitterly. They'd never been safe in their lives.

"How come I didn't get a say in that? How could you make a decision like that?"