The car Dean had thought he'd seen somewhere before was a midnight black Dodge Charger police vehicle with a 5.7-liter HEMI V-8 engine that went from zero to insane in six seconds. Inside, along with all the firepower and high tech goodies one could imagine, was the requisite cage but this particular one was crafted of reinforced steel and plated in sterling silver. As he came to and sat up, Dean noticed teeth marks gouged into the cage bars in spots, a devil's trap burned into the leather headliner and silver eye bolts jutting out of the door frames for restraints.

The engine was already running and the bounty hunter turned on the sound system and Breaking Benjamin blasted out over the speakers. Scrunching up his face Dean called from the back seat, "Don't you have any classic rock there, Evil Angel?"

"Do I look like I'm into retro?" she shouted back.

"Did I ever tell you I spent some time with the inspiration for this song?"

"So?" the hunter asked not really giving a rat's ass.

"She's gone," he told her and he could see her roll her eyes in the rear view mirror as she drove through the grass around the parish cottage, spinning out when she reached the gravel driveway. Swearing to himself that he would kill her if any rocks hit the Impala, he sighed and leaned back against the seat and lifted up his feet to push on the cage wall.

"It's strong enough to hold a Wendigo so save yourself the trouble," she shouted and ended their quality time by turning up the volume even more.

They drove for miles, the music so loud that it was impossible for them to converse or for him to bait her but it wasn't loud enough to keep him awake. He eventually dropped off only to be awakened some time later by the kiss of a cold nickel barrel to his temple. The sun was just breaking the horizon and the pink neon motel sign still blinked "Paradise Motel" and "Vacancy" over and over again as the bounty hunter leaned in and snapped a pair of handcuffs around his wrists. She pulled him to the edge of the seat and snapped shackles to his ankles while the motel manager and his wife looked on.

"I gave you the end unit in case there's any trouble, Agent Scully," the portly, balding manager said. He then turned to his wife and added, "See, I told you that show was based on real folks."

The wife piped up and said, "But he looks like such a nice young man," and Dean smiled cheesily.

"Thanks again, folks," the bounty hunter said with a smile, "If I have any trouble I'll try to shoot him against the outside wall so no one gets hurt when the bullet goes through his head."

The owners of the motel looked startled and backed away to give them a wide berth as the woman dragged Dean out of the car and pushed him roughly toward the door marked with the number ten. Once they were inside she shoved him toward one of the beds and pushed him down on it.

"I just love it when a woman takes charge," he told her then yelped when she yanked on his arm.

Releasing one of his wrists she cuffed him to the bed frame and walked over to the window. She pulled the heavy drapes closed and stood, white knuckled, holding onto the small table.

"Listen…" Dean began.

She whirled on him and in a menacing voice told him, "You don't need to shut up Winchester, you need to shut the fuck up."

Sheesh, he thought and looked closely at her haggard features, the deep purple shadows under her eyes, the creases and the thin white lines around her mouth as she pressed her lips together and wondered what in the hell was wrong with her. He continued to watch as she removed the bandana and the band holding her hair back with hands now visibly trembling. She ran them roughly through her hair, each breath hitching badly and he half-assed wondered if she was going to drop dead right in front of him and leave him to starve to death chained to the bed.

The bounty hunter glanced at his concerned face and wondered if she had made a mistake. Knowing that the small town in which they'd stopped was a vortex where hellhounds thrived and flourished all around them, should she have driven on? Maybe so, she conceded, but the need to stop had arisen…as much for herself as for Sam Winchester. She needed a nice hot shower and a fix and Sam needed time to catch up.

Turning her back to him Dean watched wide-eyed as she pulled her t-shirt over her head and tossed it onto the floor. Her muscles rippled enticingly as she lifted her arms, the wings on her back undulating. "Oh, wow," he said softly because, tattooed in black on her back was a pair of wings. Not the baby cherub wings found on some goth girls but a full-on set of 'Michael the Archangel' wings, sweeping from her shoulder blades up to her shoulders and back down again to her ass. Inside the mirrored sweep of wings, something had been scribed but he couldn't make it out.

"God damn, you really are an evil angel," he said staring at the elaborate ink work, "Or at least a masochistic one. That must have hurt like hell."

More than you'll ever know, numb nuts, she thought to herself, amazed sometimes at how little it hurt to think about it anymore. She'd been told that time heals all wounds but for her, the lack of psychological pain probably only meant that she was that much closer to insanity, a path she'd been traveling as swiftly and as surely as far back as she could remember.

Receiving no answer Dean sniped, "From the looks of your arms I'd say you're pretty used to needles," and when he got no reaction he scooted closer to the end of the bed to goad her more. "What's the tat say Angel? Some angsty emo bullshit?"

"Fuck you, Winchester," she said over her shoulder.

"I would have preferred 'I heart Dean'."

"What an absolute dick," she said under her breath and turned to face him, her breasts swaying gently.

"Fuck me," he said huskily in appreciation, his mouth suddenly gone dry.

They were real all right and she smiled at the look of pure lust that shown on his face and stepped closer to him. She was pleasantly surprised when he didn't give an inch. She hated weakness of any kind. "I'd like to fuck you, baby," she purred and for a moment Dean Winchester felt like a condemned man who was about to get a last meal made entirely of ass, tits and fantastic sex but, as with every other aspect of this hunt, his last meal turned to shit when she added, "But I'd rather fuck you up."

The force of her backhand took him by surprise and snapped his head back viciously. He cursed at her and lifted his arm to wiped his mouth. He then smiled at her showing bloodied teeth. "Seriously Angel, what are you anyway? Some kind of Amazonian man-eater?" he asked and as an afterthought added, "You don't mind if I call you Angel, do you?"

No wonder he was still alive and not in hell, she thought as she grabbed her backpack and dropped it on the table. With his verbal diarrhea he'd probably been booted out the first day. Opening up the small silver case she'd fished out of the pack, she laid out the drug paraphernalia inside it on the table. The bounty hunter picked up one of the vials and sank one of the needles in deep, filled it and then withdrew it. She thumped the syringe with he fingernail and squirted out the tiniest bit of the liquid to clear any air bubbles. At her pay grade she could afford the medical grade morphine, as much as she needed, but she still hated to waste any of it.

Wrapping the bright yellow elastic band around her upper arm she pulled it tight with her teeth and carefully stabbed the needle into a vain. She plunged the contents home and released the tourniquet then glanced at the knuckles on her hand where his teeth had split the skin and wondered if she'd need a tetanus shot or, looking at the murderous expression on her prisoner's face, a rabies shot.

Taking a deep cleansing breath she told him, "To answer your questions you can call me whatever you want. I've met plenty of people who have such piss poor opinions of themselves that they give everyone nicknames to devalue them and you seem to fill the bill, Skippy. And I like men just fine. I just can't stomach hunters." She leaned a butt cheek against the table as the drug began to work its wonders and closed her eyes. Taking another deep breath, his irritating voice broke through her moment of drug induced Zen. God, would he never shut up?

"You can't stomach them but you work for hunters. You're taking me to 'em."

"You can put away your fishing pole, Dean. You have no idea where I'm taking you or who I'm taking you to," she told him then suggested, "Anyway I might just save myself a ton grief and kill you in your sleep. Of course that'll invalidate my contract...and I won't be able to write off my mileage."

"So you do have to keep me alive, don't you Angel?" he deduced wrongly and she told him so.

"No...I...Don't. I'm sure some hunter would be willing to pay handsomely to display your fat head on the wall of some lair, say some shit hole like Harvelle's? Oh yeah, I forgot."

She smiled and he thought of Ash and the others and, glaring at her, spit out, "A lot of good people died that day."

"The only good hunter is a dead hunter I always say."

Dean pursed his lips; something in his memory gnawing at him and then heard the mental snap of fingers. "That's where I've seen you. Harvelle's. Ellen said you'd been hanging around."

"She alright?"

"Yeah, she made it out alive."

"Too bad." Angel moved away from the table and over to the bed. The soothing effects of the morphine masking her ever-present pain, making her feel halfway human again. Taking the key to the handcuffs, she broke open the cuff and pulled him to his feet. She then yanked him into the small bathroom, the leg shackles tripping him up as he shuffled his way to stand in front of the toilet. "Use it now if you have to otherwise I want you on your knees and hugging that shitter for all your worth."

He should have expected as much from her. "You're not gonna Boondock Saints me, are you?" he whined. The thought of wrapping his arms around an arguably clean toilet bowl nauseated him but he had to hand it to her. It was about the only anchor in the motel room he couldn't dismantle or break to get to her, given enough time.

"Yeah, I am," she said pushing him down on his knees.

You absolute mega bitch, he thought as he hunched over and she cuffed his hands together behind the bowl then wondered how much longer it would take his brother to find them and get him loose. The sound of the shower caught Dean's attention and he craned his neck to watch as Angel stripped off her pants and the tiny black thong she wore underneath. She didn't seem to care that he watched and left the shower curtain bundled against the wall so she could keep an eye on him. Evidently she'd seen the part where Conner McManus had ripped the toilet from its moorings.

When she was through, she stepped up over the tub's edge to grab one of the paper-thin towels and it was then that he saw the scars. They were old, silver and quite wicked looking and he knew of only one thing that could make scars like that…hellhounds. Tilting his head back he continued to ask her questions not only to gather information but also to see the look on her face. "You seem to know all about us, I mean about hunters and demons yet you work both ends against the middle. Are you that cold blooded and money grubbing that you don't even care if evil wins out in the end?"

"I don't give a flying fuck which side wins or loses. I figure it'll all get sorted out in the end and my killing a demon here or a hunter there won't make a bit of difference to anyone but me and my bank account."

"And you don't care where you end up spending eternity? You don't want to be with your family?"

"I won't ever see my family again," she hissed between clenched teeth leaning down next to him, "Now shut up before I punch your ticket."

And that's that, he figured and tried again to find a comfortable position. It was useless. His back muscles cramped, his biceps burned but he refused to lay his head down on the toilet seat.

She watched him squirm trying to find some relief and considered letting him stay there. Against her better judgment, she was going to cuff him back to the bed while she slept but first she wanted to get dressed and see just where in the world Carmen Winchester was.

"You're not gonna leave me here are you?" he complained loudly when she left the room and, again, she was sorely tempted.

Fully dressed, she rejoined him in the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bathtub. She opened her laptop and just as she'd hoped the red dot that was the Impala blinked on the GPS grid as Sam made his way toward Lordsburg. "Right on time, Sammy boy," she said closing up the Dell, "He should be here sometime tonight providing the battery on his phone doesn't go dead." But we'll have moved on, she thought to herself, dangling the Dean carrot in front of you.

Knowing that Sam was free and on his way Dean said smugly, "You see, I was right about the devil's trap."

"Just because your brother can get out of a devil's trap," she warned him, "doesn't mean he should be able to. Something maybe you should think about."

Getting her gist and taking her words to heart he told her, "I think about it all the time, Angel. All the time."