(I don't own this series yet The Winchesters and Cas (the actual Cas, not Cassandra Cas) will be in the story, just not yet, but I can confirm they will be in this story.)
One of them disappeared the minute it saw me; the one still present sniffed the air again, ears perked, alert for any change or chance to attack. If I could, I probably would have peed my hands by now at the idea of facing a hellhound like this moose of a dog before me. A werewolf probably would have been helpful, but the resident teen wolf (or just man wolf, since he was middle aged?) was busy cowering behind me. The hellhound seemed to sense my fear, maybe it knew I how reluctant I was to hurt it, and it took a cautious step forward, watching me carefully.
I soon learned why the hellhound had disappeared, because suddenly there were more of them, four more showing up. The second one was the same huge one from before, but the two new ones were smaller, the size of Saint Bernards, which was still pretty big.
"Nice doggies," I said soothingly, hoping my talent with animals had followed me into this form.
Either it hadn't or hellhounds were an exception, or maybe they were well trained or were just very determined to get to the jerk behind me, because the big ones bared their teeth and lowered their ears as they slowly stalked towards me, a ridge of fur sticking up on their backs.
They were splitting, trying to flank me, and I flapped one of my wing pairs, "halt! Back off!" I really miss my dog... and now that I'm thinking of home, I really miss my cat too, and my family, though I knew Gordon the dog and Dean the cat would be more glad to see me than my family, except maybe my brother, Ryan, who was my best friend and my other best friends.
The two small ones darted forward and I raised my arms to protect my face.
It was a distraction.
The two large ones leaped to my wings, teeth tearing through feathers and skin and muscle, reaching the bone beneath in seconds.
Since becoming an Archangel, I haven't felt pain, but this was the worst pain I have ever felt in my entire life. I screamed, two working pairs flapping futily as they took my inexperienced, lightweight ass down to the ground.
I hit one, sending it flying into a wall with a yelp. The other growled angrily and bit down on my wing, rewarding itself with a scream even as its claws tore through my suit and left gouges in my chest.
The man was screaming and pleading, the smaller hounds ripping out feathers of my wings, the large limbs the only thing in their way. They finally managed to duck under them and tore into their prey, who screamed bloodcurdling screams of agony and terror.
Golden feathers still hanging from their bloody jowls, the two larger ones backing off the second their target's soul was dragged off to hell.
My mission had failed, the man dead, and my wings in tatters. I was surprised that none of them had been ripped off, though I was pretty sure there was nothing even close to flying in my future, since I lacked multiple flight feathers on several of them. My chest was already healing, but it seemed that my wings did not work the same way as my vessel did.
The hounds had disappeared, their mission accomplished where mine had failed, leaving me alone in the bloody room. Blood and feathers everywhere and a bloody corpse in the corner.
It seemed the longer the warm feeling stayed in my wings, the more uncomfortable they got. I wanted it to stop and was surprised when it did.
I glanced over at the body and a sour taste filled my mouth right before I puked.
What I now knew was that an angry Cassandra and her lectures were to be feared at all costs. One lecture on 'splitting off like you're in a shitty horror movie' and a couple weeks of bed rest later we were back on the road towards a new case, two stir-crazy girls and one practically useless Archangel.
Even though I was the only one who could see my wings without having to look through a camera -and Sera was currently missing her camera for some odd reason (why are you guys looking at me? I have absolutely no idea where your precious little videotaper of death went, Sera.)- I was still self-conscious on my messy wings. No amount of of preening and praying could get them to look any less crappy. Even worse, the new feathers coming in absolutely hurt and I had already went through the painful process of ridding myself of the broken and snapped feathers and, surprisingly, new feathers were already growing in the bare spots. I was surprised they were already growing back in, since what I read about from google during my bedrest said a bird's damaged feathers take twelve months to grow out.
According to Cas, what I needed was fighting skills and to get over my whole peacemaker 'let's all be friends' thing.
"A vamp's not gonna let you live just because you were nice and asked politely not to die," she had put it.
"They would need my blade to kill me," I had said, forgetting that I should not have known that information.
"And where's that? As long as you don't have it in your possession, you should always assume your enemy has it, so then if the time comes when they do you won't be taken off guard," she had replied. She'd had a point.
As it was, apparently I was supposed to continue to take it easy, since I got stuck with research while they went out to investigate.
"See this number?" Cas said, sliding a piece of paper over to me where I sat at the table in front of a laptop, sulking.
I huffed, glancing at it.
"If your research pulls up anything you don't know about or you don't know what you're facing it or how to kill it, you call this guy. His name is Garth, and he's the new Bobby Singer, now that he's back after his months of absence. I hear he settled down, but he's back to helping put his fellow Hunters this way. And if you find anything, call us, no more going off on your own."
"Okie-dokie," I perked up and nodded, struggling to resist the urge to pick up the phone and dial it now, "and if I figure anything about the case I'll call you guys."
Cas gave me and encouraging nod, grabbing her keys and checking to make sure she had her fake badge, "coming, Agent Hotch?"
"Coming, Agent Reid," Sera all but sang, waving to me as she followed Cas out the door, "see ya, Gabriel!"
I waved, but she reopened the door a second later.
"And I swear to your Father that if you squirrel any more stuff away I will find them and burn them."
"Including your camera?"
She gasped, "I knew you were the one who-"
"Agent Hotch!"
"I'll talk to you later," she pointed at my smug face before disappearing out the door, slamming it shut.
The second she was gone I pulled up YouTube and letting 'I've Got The Magic in Me' blast from it as I opened up a google tab and then a facebook tab; time for something I never really had the patience to do before... facebook stalking.
One hour of in depth facebook stalking of the victims later, I was bored out of my mind and knew way too much about how many vacations to Disneyland and Disneyworld the rich one goes on -which I have never, myself, gone to unlike little Miss selfie- and how much they all complained about being single and alone aside from the third, who was proudly aromantic.
Wait...
I took a glance at the notepad beside me, eyes scanning the connections, struggling to recall the episodes of Supernatural that I have seen. Something like this... and if they've all been single...
My hand moved, but I left it hovering over the call button instead of calling Cas.
This was my chance to prove I was useful. If I single handedly took care of this case myself, then maybe Cas could see that I can be useful.
I took a deep breath and dialed Garth.