The television show "Supernatural" is copyrighted by Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc.
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Sam grabbed one of the strips of tape as he threw Ken to the ground and sat on his chest. He covered Ken's eyes with the tape, pressing the sides of Ken's head as hard and fast as he could, then grabbed the second strip of tape and used the heel of his palm to force Ken's mouth closed, slapping down the tape and securing it with both hands. A soul had flown out of Castiel's eye earlier, so Sam assumed that was the preferred entrance and exit for Purgatory creatures, but if they could use the mouth as well, like demons, he'd make sure Ken's creature was well penned in.
At first stunned, Ken tried to yell and then began thrashing. Whatever the creature had been on Earth, it had enough power now to turn Ken's hands into claws. Since Sam was sitting on Ken's chest, his legs pinning Ken's arms to the ground behind him, he didn't see the transformation. But he felt the talons sink into his thighs.
Sam muffled his yell, reached for the handcuffs dangling over his waistband under his jacket, then gave up. The claws had gone through denim and skin and he didn't want them in muscle. He leaped forward off of Ken, swearing as the claws slashed, and Ken staggered to his feet, running as he tried to pull the duct tape off his eyes.
Sam brought him down with a flying tackle, sat on his back and re-sealed the duct tape. He grabbed the waving clawed right hand and, as the left one predictably went for the duct tape again, slammed a cuff on the right wrist. It was harder than hell to drag the empty cuff across Ken's back while he grabbed Ken's left wrist, yanking the claw away from Ken's face and wrenching it behind his back, but Sam managed it, and now the Purgatory creature was handcuffed, yelling incomprehensibly through duct tape, and trapped.
Sam took in a long breath and looked around for witnesses. So far, so good. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a roll of duct tape and the demon-killing knife. He wrapped the tape around Ken's head several times, avoiding his nose. Then he shifted to sitting on the ground, grabbed one of Ken's kicking feet, and cut him sharply on the outside of his ankle.
Ken's higher-pitched yell showed that he'd felt it. "OK," Sam said breathlessly, "you're trapped in that body and I've got to immobilize it. I can either tape your feet together or cut one of 'em off. Your decision."
Ken moved his feet together and stopped kicking. "Good choice," Sam said. It was a good choice for him, actually; he had no intention of actually cutting the guy's foot off, but he really didn't want to go through another fight with the ankles. He used more duct tape to bind the feet.
"Stop struggling," he said. "Those cuffs'll tighten up and cut off the circulation to your hands. It hurts like hell and doesn't get you loose."
He looked around again for witnesses. He had his U.S. Marshal's badge on his belt, if there were any, but there weren't.
Still half-bent over, taking advantage of such cover as the Impala gave, he dragged the Ken creature to Bobby's car and, with swearing and pushing, managed to get him onto the floor of the front seat. He grabbed a sleeping bag from the back seat and, as he was about to throw it over Ken, paused.
Two hot spots of yellow glowed behind the duct tape over Ken's eyes.
"I'll be damned," Sam said. "That stuff will hold anything."
He threw the blanket over the Ken creature, shut the door and got to the driver's seat fast. He sucked in a pained breath when he sat down and his jeans stretched over his legs, looked down and saw blood seeping through the slashes in the fabric.
"Stay still," he told the Ken creature. "I'll see you if you don't."
He started the car and drove, as quickly as possible without attracting attention, away from the empty lot and out of town.
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"Bobby. As always, your taste is exquisite."
Crowley was standing in the front door of the abandoned farmhouse, looking at the floor, ceiling, and one of the walls. Bobby was sitting on a stepladder by another wall, a spray paint can in one hand. The white air-filtering mask over his nose and mouth was covered with a coat of minuscule colored particles.
Crowley, still standing in the doorway, waved his hand at the mask. "Is that adequate protection?"
Bobby pulled the mask off and got off the stepladder. "Prob'ly not. But you can see I've got the doors and windows open, and I'm takin' a lot of breaks. Plus I'm not planning on doin' this the rest of my life. Thanks for caring, though. Makes me feel all warm inside. Is this the lady?"
"It is. She'll come in when I come in, and I'll come in when I'm certain there aren't any devil's traps around." Crowley was still looking over the room carefully, and as his glance went up to the ceiling he smiled. "Oh. Nice, Bobby."
"It better be nice. We're only gonna have one shot at it." He looked at the woman whose eyes he could see over Crowley's shoulder. "Come on in, ma'am. You got nothin' to fear from devil's traps."
"She's my contribution to this little project, you can have her when I say you can." Crowley finished his scanning. "It's not in here. Where is it, Bobby?"
"Like you said, right now we got bigger worries than the likes of you."
Bobby let out a patient sigh as Crowley, with one last look around, stepped into the room and then waved at the woman.
"Will I track up the paint?" she asked, looking at the floor.
"Naw, I did that first. It's all dry."
She stepped in, not looking at Crowley. She was about forty, fat, and angry. It took Bobby a moment to realize that the anger wasn't situational – this was her habitual expression. Her jaw was clenched, her eyes slightly narrowed, and there was a line carved deep between her eyebrows.
It was hard to tell why she was angry. She didn't look sick, she wasn't maimed or ugly. Bobby was no expert on women's clothing, but being a hunter requires you to know a little of everything; he knew that the clothes she was wearing and the small leather purse with a wrist strap were the kind of thing rich ladies wear to outdoor events, and that the tennis bracelet on her wrist was made of real gold and diamonds.
But her fingernails were bitten to the quick.
"'Scuse me, I need to take a look at your veins," he said, taking one of her arms. Presumably in preparation for having her arm cut, she'd worn a blouse whose sleeves were rolled to just below the elbow. Pretending to eye her veins professionally, Bobby pushed the sleeves up above the elbow and found what he was looking for on her left arm – the mark of a damned soul.
"Damn it, Crowley, I said she gets released."
"When she gives blood. She hasn't given it yet."
"We need to bleed her right before the big event. You and Castiel might've been able to keep blood from clotting while you argued about things, but Sam and me aren't magical."
Crowley spread his hands. "I'm right here."
"Yeah, and I'm sure you'll stay right here. You think I don't know what you're planning, Crowley? You're figuring some way to swallow those souls as fast as they come out of Castiel. God knows where you're gonna be or what you're gonna be doing ten minutes before we reopen Purgatory. If Cas blows us all up and she still has that mark on her arm, you get her soul anyway, and that wasn't the deal. Take it off."
Crowley shrugged slightly, and the mark disappeared.
The woman gasped.
"Pleasure doin' business with you," Bobby said dryly to Crowley, then to the woman, "Come on in the kitchen, let's get you outta these fumes."
She was still staring at her arm. Bobby could have been leading her over a cliff.
"What's your name?" he asked as he brought her to the kitchen window over the sink.
"Rose."
"Pretty name."
She gave a short sharp laugh. "Right."
"You know what's goin' on here, Rose?"
"You need to cast some kind of spell, and you need some of my blood for it."
"It's nothin' evil. Even though Crowley's involved. Somethin' real bad has happened, bad enough to scare Crowley and humans too. Your blood is gonna help us set it right."
She gave a little shuddering sigh. "OK."
Bobby shifted on his feet. "So. Um. It's really important – I mean, I wouldn't normally, but I gotta ask – "
"Spit it out, Bobby," Crowley said from the doorway. "'Are you really a virgin?'"
Bobby looked at him. "Aren't you busy lookin' for devil's traps?"
"Finished in there. Looking in here now." Indeed, Crowley's gaze was searching everything from the old brown water-leak spots on the ceiling to the pattern of the dirty linoleum. "Why don't you just ask me, Bobby? I've owned Rosie's soul for almost ten years now. I know everything about her."
"I am," Rose said, fast and flat. "Not just a technical virgin. Actual honest-to-God. Furthest I ever got was heavy petting and that was so long ago I hardly remember it. If anything goes wrong it won't be my fault."
Bobby patted her arm, though nothing in her attitude seemed to request comfort. "That's mark's gone now. Even if something goes wrong, he can't put it back on you unless you make another deal with him."
"Not to mention the fact that if anything goes wrong we probably won't be around to apportion blame," Crowley said.
"Not to mention that." There were several dozen bottles of water on the counter, along with salt canisters, several rolls of toilet paper and paper towels, a first-aid kit, and a lifetime supply of candles, among other items. Bobby handed a water bottle to Rose. "Drink a lot of that between now and then, get your blood vessels good and plumped up. I'm gonna want you to take some aspirin too. Unfortunately the plumbing doesn't work, so we're gonna have to be pretty primitive today. But everything'll be back to normal and we'll all be outta here by midnight, God willing."
"Who willing?" Crowley asked in amusement.
"Hey, can anyone help me out here?" Sam's voice called from the front room.
"Don't bother the lady," Bobby said brusquely to Crowley, and went to stand in the doorway. Crowley grinned at Rose and moved to stand next to her. "Have you got the Purgatory creature?" Bobby asked from the doorway.
"Got him," Sam's voice replied, "but he's all tied up. Can anyone help me bring him in?"
Bobby turned to Crowley. "I've gotta get back to painting. Want to help Sam bring in the guy?"
Crowley raised his eyebrows. "And the last time you heard of a king lifting and toting was – when?"
"You know, Crowley, I've had about enough of your attitude," Bobby said, walking directly over to him and getting in his face. "Yeah, I know you've helped us out a lot here. But you've got as much at stake here as we do, maybe more, so it's not like we're charity cases, and I'm sick of – "
Crowley's eyes glowed red, and Rose shriveled a little where she stood, as if she were too frightened to move. He strode forward, backing Bobby into the front room. "Don't tempt me, Bobby, to blot you out. Usually you're quite amusing, but I'm not going to – "
"Whoa! Whoa!" Sam got between them, pushing Bobby toward the corner near the stepladder and Crowley in the opposite direction. "We have way too much to do before moonrise. Crowley, stop aggravating Bobby. For a guy who goes on and on about being kingly, you're an awful lot like a three-year-old."
"You – " Crowley stalked toward Sam now, and Bobby moved out of the corner before he was squashed by the moose and a pissed-off demon – "and your semi-literate junk dealer will both stop treating me with contempt. You are not the bosses here. Got it?"
"Got it," Bobby said, and both of the others looked over at him. "Didn't mean to start a war here, either of you. I just haven't had any sleep."
Crowley stared at him for a moment before his eyes returned to normal. "Well, you should get some. You're bloody presumptuous without it."
Sam slipped out of the corner and Crowley leaned against the wall, arms folded. "OK. Now. Can someone help me drag in this poor guy with the Purgatory creature in him?"
"Don't think I can, Sam," Bobby said regretfully. "I gotta stay in here and make sure Crowley doesn't try anything cute with the devil's trap."
Crowley stared at Bobby, took a step forward, stopped, swore, looked up at the ceiling and back at Bobby. "Well. Aren't you clever."
Both Bobby and Sam instantly launched into an aw-shucks schtick, toeing the ground and pointing at each other. "Naw, he's really the clever – " "Actually, he's the one who was –"
"How long did it take you to plan this?"
"Not too long," Sam said. "We knew you'd look for devil's traps, so Bobby painted a lot of circles on the ceiling in all four corners with symbols in them. This particular one was an incomplete devil's trap. Then we figured, one of us will get you in another room while the other one finishes it, and then provoke you into backing us into this room and this corner, like trying to keep you out of that corner was our whole goal. Hopefully you'd be mad enough not to notice the slight change on the ceiling. When I came in just now I heard you guys in the kitchen and I figured, well, let's go for it."
"He could have killed you," came a shocked female voice from the kitchen door.
All three of them looked over at Rose. "He coulda," Bobby admitted, "but we both figured he'd have more fun scaring us and puttin' us in our place than killin' us."
"I wouldn't count on that again," Crowley said coldly.
Sam turned to face Crowley again, and suddenly the demon-killing knife was in his hand. "On your orders, demons kidnapped our friend Lisa and her young son," Sam said evenly. "They murdered her boyfriend. One of them possessed her and tried to kill her. And just because we sometimes have to kill some poor bastard possessed by a demon, that doesn't give you a pass on what you did to Eleanor Visyak. We're not going to try to kill you, but we don't have to treat you like an honored guest."
Crowley just looked at him. Sam handed the knife to Bobby and said, "I'll be back in a moment."
"I can help," Rose said.
Sam gave her a brilliant smile. "Hi. Didn't mean to ignore you. I'm Sam. You must be th— "
His tongue stopped in between his teeth while "the virgin" hovered in the air.
"Rose," she said quietly.
"Rose. Pleased to meet you. Yeah, I can handle the guy's weight, but if you'll keep his feet off the ground we can get him in faster."
Sam and Rose went to the front door. Bobby stuck the knife in his belt and picked up a spray-paint can.
"So you're generously allowing me to live," Crowley said. "And what great favor are you going to grant the creature that actually killed Eleanor?"
"You know as well as we do, Crowley," Bobby said. "Castiel probably isn't gonna survive this thing."
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Sheryl was still sound asleep when Castiel waved his hand to put her nightgown back on her and waved again to send her home.
"She'll wake up in her own bed," he said, a marked melancholy in his tone.
Dean studied him for a moment, patted the empty half of the mattress. "Well, get on back to your own bed, then."
"I have so much to do, Dean," Castiel said. "I must remake Heaven and Earth. I can't spend the rest of eternity enjoying myself with you."
Dean put a pillow upright behind his back and sat up. "Yeah, I see your point. But sit with me while you plan it out. You know, get your tactics arranged in advance."
Castiel gave Dean a very slight smile. "You just don't want me to leave."
"No," Dean said earnestly. "I don't want you to leave."
Castiel put a pillow against the headboard and got into bed like Dean, sitting up. "The first consideration is Raphael's followers. I can give humans faith in my divinity, and I'm sure I could do the same with angels, but it might require an exhausting expenditure of power, and I'm not sure it would be worth it. In addition, I am surrounded by subversives in my own ranks. You're right, Dean, I should think this through first. The primary consideration is the treason within my own forces, then the hatred of Raphael's forces. It will be difficult to sort out those genuinely loyal from those with weak traitorous spirits." He sighed. "It may be more efficient to kill them all and begin over."
"Kill – all the angels? But, Lord Castiel, isn't, isn't that kind of a – poor reward for the ones who were loyal to you?"
Castiel gave him a placid smile. "Those who have faith in my divinity will understand. Those without faith must die anyway. I will – "
His forehead wrinkled, and he looked troubled.
"I will create new angels. I admit, Dean, I'm not sure how. Creation – "
Dean watched him as he thought.
"Creation is far more difficult than destruction. My Father was endlessly creative, but without Him – "
He fell into a brooding silence. Dean stroked Castiel's arm, watching his eyes carefully.
.
While Bobby and Sam finished painting the front room, Rose sat on one of two dirty dining room chairs and kept an eye on Ken, making sure he didn't try to get away, or suffocate. Actually, after a certain amount of struggling and, presumably, swearing, he fell asleep.
A couple of times she joined either Sam or Bobby during their frequent breathers on the front porch. As night approached, they lit the front and dining rooms with a combination of pillar candles and blackout lanterns. Bobby went out for burgers at the Dairy Queen Brazier in Bootback. They ate on the front porch, Bobby and Rose sitting on the chairs and Sam leaning against the porch railing where he could keep an eye on Crowley through the open door.
"Very rude to eat in front of others, you know," Crowley called.
"I asked you if you wanted anything," Bobby said. "You said – now what was it, Sam – "
"'Bugger off,'" Sam supplied.
"Yeah. Figured that meant no."
By the time the moon was high, they'd finished the painting and it had all dried. Ken had been moved to the kitchen and Rose was sitting in the dining room when Bobby came in with a lantern, a first-aid kit, a knife, and a Mason jar. "'Bout that time, Rose. You want us to take Ken first, or – "
"No. Let's get it over with." She stuck out her arm, and averted her gaze as Bobby bound her upper arm tightly and then used the knife. She let out a yelp, then immediately said, "Sorry."
"Naw, you're doin' good." He rested the Mason jar on her lap and her elbow on the lip of the jar, sitting opposite her and holding the jar with both hands. "Squeeze your fist – yeah, like that. Good. We'll be there in no time."
She nodded, her jaw set.
"I got a question," he said, "but it's kinda personal."
"More personal than the virgin thing?" she asked dryly. Not looking directly ahead at where the red rivulet was spilling into the jar meant that she also didn't meet Bobby's gaze.
"Yeah – Well, I needed to know that. This is just – you can tell me to eat dirt, if you want. But I'd kinda like to know why you sold your soul."
The line between her eyebrows deepened, and she shook her head a little.
"You're right. It's none o' my – "
"It was my fiance," she said. "Can you believe I still call him that? After everything? It's like I've got to make sure everyone knows I was engaged once. Pathetic."
"Don't forget to squeeze your fist."
"I just – People always try to make it sound like sex is so great, you know? And to me, all it ever sounded like was painful. And humiliating. If – if I – if I was going to do that, I wanted it to be with someone I could trust, a husband, someone who – "
Her voice choked off. It was harder when she resumed. "I wanted someone to love me. Me. Believe that?"
"Course I do."
"I don't. Stupid. Well, Tommy came along. And we had such a good time. He proposed, and I thought, see, I'm not that unlovable after all. Got the dress and everything. Then I heard him on the phone – " only now did her voice begin shaking – "with his girlfriend. Discussing what time he'd be over that night. After he got back from the play Moneybags wanted to go to."
Bobby shook his head.
"I knew then, no one would ever love me. I hurt. All the time. I wanted him to feel like I did. My friends at church all kept telling me, stop nursing that hate, let it go, let something positive come out of it. So I stopped going to church. And then when I saw the announcement in the paper that Tommy and his girlfriend got married, I started thinking about getting help from – other quarters."
"And Crowley showed up."
"He told me there were technicalities. Told me how to make a box and bury it at a crossroads. Told me to think carefully about what I wanted, but I already knew." Her voice was harsh. "I wanted his marriage destroyed and I wanted him never to find love, like I never will."
Bobby stared at her in disbelief. "You sold your soul into eternal torture to break up someone's marriage?"
"You know, Crowley didn't really emphasize the eternal torture part. And I figured I was suffering the tortures of the damned anyway. Why not?"
"It worked, I suppose."
"Oh yeah. Tommy's marriage broke up. And he never found love. He bounces around from woman to woman. From what I hear, it doesn't seem to bother him much."
"So – you're not gonna do anything that stupid again, right? 'Cause if you need someone to emphasize the eternal torture part, I know a couple of guys who can tell you about it in detail."
"No. No, I won't." She looked directly at Bobby. "So it's really true? I'm really not going to Hell?"
"Not because of the deal, anyway. It's all between you and God now. Crowley's got no say in it."
She nodded. Then a little choked sound came out of her, then another. Her tense angry expression dissolved as tears spilled suddenly out of her eyes.
Awkwardly, he patted her shoulder, and she recoiled from the touch. "It's OK. I don't need – I just feel – I feel like I've been holding this in for ten years."
Then she made a little sound in her throat and started falling off the chair.
Bobby's hand shot out and braced her while he gripped the jar with his other hand. "Whoa, OK, just a minute." He put the jar down carefully to one side, then stood to grab her shoulders and guide her down to the floor.
She lay with a dazed look while he slapped a cotton pad onto the knife cut and spun the lid onto the Mason jar. "Hang in there, Rose, don't get shocky on me. We got orange juice and cookies, just like at the Red Cross. Sound good?"
As he cut the binding above her elbow and began wrapping the knife wound with gauze, she asked, "Did you get all the blood you needed?"
"Yeah. Faster than the blood center, too. You did good. Just lie there for awhile."
Sam appeared in the doorway. "Is everything OK?"
"Yeah, it's OK." He stood and beckoned Sam into the front room, lowering his voice, as Crowley watched with interest.
"When we're ready to go, I'm gonna give Rose the keys to the car and have her drive away a few blocks."
Sam's mouth quirked. "There aren't really 'blocks' out here."
"You know what I mean."
"Yeah. Wish we could do the same for Ken."
"I do too, but he's gotta be here. Do you think a few blocks will be far enough away?"
"If it's not," Sam said, "no distance will be."
Bobby nodded.
"Oh! Almost forgot," and Sam dug two anti-possession charms out of his pocket. "One for Rose, one for Ken."
"Good. You get the juice and cookies for Rose, give her one o' those, then set up the ladder and paintbrush. I'll be back out soon."
Bobby sat on the kitchen floor beside the Ken creature, who was still blindfolded and gagged with duct tape. One of his wrists was duct-taped to pipes under the sink, one handcuffed to the handle of the oven door (which was opened, so that his wrist was only a few inches above the ground), and his feet were still duct-taped together.
Bobby stuck an anti-possession charm in the pocket of Ken's shirt, which had a flap that snapped. The double yellow glow where Ken's eyes would be showed again behind the duct tape.
Bobby took the lid off the Mason jar. "Ken, I know you're in there. This is gonna be a crappy end to a crappy day, but we're gonna get that thing out o' you real soon."
Muffled verbalization from the Ken creature. It didn't sound flattering.
"Yeah, same to you," Bobby said tiredly, and picked up the knife.
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"I first realized that I loved you after Raphael destroyed me," Castiel told Dean. "When I was alive again, my first thought was that I wanted to see you again, and then I realized that I wanted to hold you in my arms and kiss you. It took me some time to come to grips with the realization."
They were still sitting in bed, but there was an addition: a long tabletop that floated in the air, without moving, about six inches above their laps. The remainders of a sumptuous feast were scattered across the tabletop.
"Here," Dean said, "have some more of the blueberry."
He pushed a half-eaten pie down to a spot in front of Cas. A chunk of the pie disappeared, and Cas chewed it slowly, savoring it.
Then he said, "You're quite correct, Dean. All eating places must offer pie. That will definitely be part of the new world."
"And good rock through the speakers."
"I'm not sure of that. I'm fond of classical music myself. The way that its complexity and polyphony resolve to a harmonious whole."
"OK, OK. You're the deity." Dean grinned.
Castiel shot a look at him, then looked back at the pie with a little sigh. "When did you first realize that you loved me, Dean?"
"I – you know, I don't know if there was – a particular moment. I just – it kind of grew on me. One day – "
Castiel sat up straighter, his head back and his eyes bright.
"What is it?"
"Your brother is calling me," Castiel said with a smile. "He and Bobby have decorated a temple in my honor."
Dean's stomach roiled. It'll be great to see Sam and Bobby again, he deliberately thought, and made the thought drown out everything else in his head.
The table disappeared. "We should go."
"Sure. Ah – mind if I put some pants on first?"
"That's a good idea. I too should be appropriately clad."
Dean pulled on his jeans and looked at Castiel. He was wearing a long robe that swirled and flickered in yellow and black. It changed colors and patterns between the bursts of yellow and black, but didn't really settle until it became all white.
"I cannot think of an appropriate design," Castiel said a little helplessly.
"Well – all white's good. It looks religious."
Sacrificial – the word popped into his mind and he shouted it down. Great to see Sam and Bobby again.
"You're right," Castiel said with a smile. "White is good."
Then there was the queasiness Dean felt flying Angel Airlines, and then there was something horribly wrong with his vision.
It took him a moment to realize: It wasn't his vision, it was the room.
The first time he and Bobby had met Castiel they'd prepared by spray-painting the inside of a huge shed with every evil-resistant symbol from every culture they knew – and between them, they knew a lot. The resulting wall wildness had nothing on this. The room was considerably smaller – living room of a house, it looked like – but there weren't four square inches of any surface that didn't bear part of a spray-painted line or arc. Loops met whorls met lines that cut through spirals that spun around dots, all over the walls, ceiling, floors, the old-fashioned wide-slatted blinds that hung over the windows, the doors, and a sheet hung presumably where an arch led into another room.
Not only did the chaos of shapes obliterate any chance of seeing a pattern, or anything even aesthetic, but it was difficult even to see individual shapes, because each was in two or three different colors. There were at least seven or eight colors overall, entirely obliterating any hope of seeing pattern or consistency. It looked insane.
"It's beautiful," Castiel breathed.
"It's very small," Sam said humbly, "but it was what we could do quickly. Later we'll create something greater."
Dean wrenched his gaze from the décor and discovered a bunch of stuff. Crowley was standing in one corner – looking royally pissed – under the only discernible pattern in the room, a devil's trap. Some poor handcuffed guy, blindfolded and gagged with duct tape, lay along the wall next to Crowley. By the opposite wall, Bobby knelt with a butane candle lighter, lighting what looked like seventy or eighty tealight candles on what seemed to be a low altar. Those candles and a couple of lanterns in the corners gave off the only light in the room.
"This would be the beginning of an altar," Sam said, standing back and beckoning Castiel closer to the candles. They spelled out two words, "LORD CAST," and Bobby was beginning to light the candles that made up the I. "You'll have to tell us what other symbols would be appropriate."
"And these – " Castiel turned and indicated Crowley and the bound man – "these are sacrifices?"
Dean noticed a flicker on the floor. The candlelight was reflecting off of a thin shiny semicircle on the floor, something wetter and narrower than spray paint, that arced around the space where Sam had led Castiel before fading into the darkness.
"Well, offerings," Sam said. "I know you said that you had plans for Crowley. We thought you might want to begin them now."
"It is, as you say, humble. But I appreciate the offerings of humble people."
"Lord Castiel – " Sam extended his hand – "may I – "
Castiel stretched out his hand in return. Sam took it and knelt before him to kiss it. Then he looked up at Castiel and moved their palms together, interlinking their fingers.
Could preventing Cas from snapping his fingers – the way he'd destroyed Raphael – keep him from committing any other kind of mayhem? Well, it couldn't hurt. Dean stepped into the thin half-visible circle on the floor and, standing behind Castiel, took his other hand and interlaced their fingers.
"Rise, Sam," Castiel said.
Sam stood. Over Castiel's shoulder he gave Dean a look which might not have said much to anyone else, but which Dean correctly interpreted as, Thanks for being so quick to catch on.
Standing between them, Castiel pulled Dean's hand around him and held Sam's and Dean's hands together against his chest, closed his eyes and sighed.
Then he said, "You may – "
"Aperta tandem," Bobby said, and touched the lighter to the floor.
Flame leaped around the circle of holy oil in an instant. Castiel's eyes flew open. He glanced at the circle of fire and then flung Sam across the room. Sam crashed into the wall by the bound man and slid to the floor.
Castiel looked incredulous and raised his free hand, not even seeming to notice Dean grabbing desperately for it. "You cannot –"
Then he gasped and looked upward.
On the ceiling, the lines and loops of the Purgatory-opening sigil – and, obviously, only those lines and loops – must have been painted over with blood. Because the sigil was coming to life, emitting fierce yellow light that looked as if the sigil were splitting the ceiling along its lines and the sun was directly on the other side.
Castiel's free hand shot upward. "Stop!"