Every step was a pierce of pain in her side but Molly kept running. Or rather limping at a fast pace. Blood had already seeped through her shirt and jeans where she'd snagged herself on the broken window at the motel. But it was a small price to pay to get away from the cult leaders playing FBI dress-up. Whoever they were they were into some serious stuff and she just could not handle that right now.

The road was a hundred feet away, cutting through the woods like a scar. There was enough moonlight to see the break and she was close enough to see headlights approaching without anyone else seeing her. Just Molly and dark, quiet, shadow-filled trees. A thin branch whipped her arm and she gasped at the pain. She stumbled and dropped to a knee but she picked herself back up just as quickly, kept moving as best she could despite the mounting pain.

A stich bloomed in her ribs and Molly grunted and clutched her side. No, she couldn't stop. She was the epitome of weird but those guys were weirder and they were most certainly not the answer. Not after the incident at the restaurant. No. She just killed people with light coming out of her. She didn't ruin windows. How absurd.

The pain in her side was not going away and Molly slowed to a brisk walk, feeling every piece of torn and bruised skin as she started second-guessing crawling out of that motel window. Her bearings were blown. She had no idea where she was and there hadn't been a car on the road for ten minutes. What the hell was she doing?

Weighing one level of crazy against another, that's what. Tears stung her eyes and blurred the world in front of her. Moonlight and darkness swirled together in a kaleidoscope of night and it pretty damn well represented the hot mess of her life. She swiped her wrist across her eyes and brought the forest back into focus. Brought her stupid decision back into focus.

She should go back. Those crazy guys at least knew what they were talking about. They had answers and they at least tried to keep her safe. Agents or not the feeling of being a dumbass was starting to become overwhelming.

So was the suffocating silence around her.

The word 'stupid' died on her tongue as silence rang in Molly's ears. She looked to her left, where the road should have been, but it was covered in shadow. It might have been there but a cloud moved over the moon and it was too dark to tell. She looked up and the leaves were still against the stars. The air was heavy with the stillness, almost a pressure on her skin. And not so much as an owl's hoot or a flap of wings or anything scuttling across the forest floor to break the quiet. As if the world was frozen around her.

A ring, separate from the thrum of silence, started around her, a subtle buzz, before it exploded in a cacophony of sound that dropped Molly to her knees in a shout of pain. She clamped her hands to her ears but it did nothing for the sound. It vibrated through her skin and bones, shook her blood into a froth. Her screams tore at her throat but she couldn't hear herself make a sound. The ring was consuming her. It'd turned her world from night into a blinding white haze of pain. Sticky wetness ran between her fingers and her nose ran with something far thicker than mucus.

This was it. She was going to die.

The skin on her back cracked and tore, ripping fissures down her spine. Molly screamed again, a noise to rival the supersonic ring around her, and it must have listened. Her voice rose above the noise and she could hear her own pain. Her fingers pulled at her shoulder, desperate to get behind her, do something, anything, about that pain, but her nails only tore at her shirt and her fingers slicked with blood. It was indescribable, the hurt. It choked her as she collapsed into the dirt and leaves under her, careful in her delirium to fall to her side and not her back.

The only world Molly knew right then was pain. No forest, no motel, no fake FBI agents. Pain and a god-forsaken ringing in her ears. Except now it wasn't so much an ice pick to her ears but the murmuring of voices, alien with their language but at the same time familiar.

If she didn't move then her world wouldn't shatter in hurt, her back wouldn't tear apart. If she didn't move she could almost make out what the voices were saying.

Dead leaves and pine needles crunched under her head as she moved it just a little. That same sound came from away from her, at a distance, in the rhythm of footsteps. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

There was no moving but there was seeing. In her line of sight was a pair of brown leather boots to the knee with heels that shouldn't be worn in the woods. The murmuring voices were getting frantic and Molly could almost grasp what they were saying. So close.

"Well look what the archangels dragged in."

Knees cracked as the woman squatted down and tilted her head to get her eyes in line with Molly's hazy sight. Thick black hair tumbled over narrow shoulders, emerald eyes flashed black in the night and blood red lips curled into a sinister smile.

"We've been looking for you, princess."

Before Molly could get her hand under her to push herself up, or even make a groan of acknowledgment, a pain so sharp it sucked the air from her lungs and made the world go black raced through her. Weak under layers of pain and slicked with more blood than she thought she could bleed, Molly finally realized what the voices were saying.

Run, they said. Run.

xXx

"You've lost her."

Dean flinched and wobbled the wheel of the Impala, sending it swerving in the lane before be righted it and himself. With a tenses jaw he looked in the rearview mirror and saw Castiel's placid face staring out the window at the dark nothing on the other side.

"What'd I say about that?" Dean said.

He nearly bristled. Damn, how he hated when Castiel just popped up out of nowhere. They'd been doing this with him long enough that he knew better. Did that change anything? Not a chance.

Sam turned to face the angel in the backseat. "We'll find her. She kind of freaked when she found out about us after the diner and she booked. She couldn't have gotten far."

"Does she know?" Castiel asked. "What she is?"

"Didn't even get that far," Dean said as he kept his eyes on the road, occasionally scanning the roadside for any movement. There was nothing. "We should get out and look."

"You should have brought her right to us." It was a calm scold from the angel behind him and one that made his stomach clench. To holy rollers who made some crappy decisions. At least Dean was honest about his.

He shook his head. "She deserves to know. Make up her own mind."

"We could have helped her." Castiel was almost pleading.

"By punting her straight into heaven. That's only helping you."

"And this is your help?" Castiel asked.

"Cas, look," Sam said, not looking at him this time. "We'll find her. But she deserves to know what she's being thrown into."

Castiel licked his lips, a move that never seemed to actually wet them. The bags under his eyes were drawn and purple. He looked almost human in his worn out state. Even his suit look rumpled. The angel looked like he couldn't be bothered with something so trivial. At least not right now.

"Your methods are proving ineffective," Castiel said before blipping himself out of the car.

Dean slowed Baby onto the side of the moonlit road, cut the lights and killed the engine. The brothers sat in the dark for a minute, the only sounds the ticking of the engine as it cooled down and the occasional wheeze of wind as it whipped past the car, bleeding in through the windows.

Sam was the one to break the quiet, his voice soft and jagged, like it tripped before coming out. "He has a point, Dean."

Dean nodded and pursed his lips. His hands gripped the steering wheel and his knuckles blanched white. "Yeah, he does. That doesn't make him right." He looked at Sammy, his jaded brother. How'd they end up trading places like this? He was supposed to be the black and white one, the one who just followed orders because that's what you were supposed to do. Now Sammy was in his shoes and Dean was in Sam's and he wasn't digging this glimpse of himself. "The angels . . . they may have good intentions for her but it's their terms or their terms. You know that. They've been chasing us with that forever it feels like. It sucks and you know it."

Their eyes locked and Sam's face twitched. Dean watched as Sam tried to form his thought into something comprehensible but only silent half words came out. Sam turned away and stared out the windshield and into the night, down the dark road before them.

"For once I don't want it to be our problem. Just once have it be on someone else's shoulders."

Dean relaxed back into the seat. "I know. So do I. But I won't be able to sleep handing the sheep over to the wolves and letting them deal with it."

Sam's jaw clenched. "No."

Dean heard the Impala's door squeak before he saw it swing out and Sam step out of the car. Dean did the same, walked around to stand next to his brother, and stared with him into the too-dark woods.

"Think she's in there?" Sam asked.

"As good a shot as any."

They breeched the edge of the woods and all sounds of nature seemed to silence, like someone pressed mute. Dean noticed it first and stopped walking, his eyebrows pulled down into a frown and his head cocked just slightly, listening. Sam stopped and pawed, stilled as if he were frozen.

"You hear that?" Dean asked, his voice a raspy whisper.

"No," Sam replied.

"Exactly."

A scream, shrill and terrified, ripped through the night, destroying the vacuum of silence. Both brothers jumped, momentarily jerked out of their nerves. And then they ran. The scream rang through the woods again and the brothers corrected their direction, trying to follow the horrifying sound. Dean slid on some dead leaves but carried on quickly as Sam sprinted ahead. It couldn't be anyone else but the question was who had her?

Dean nearly slammed into Sam's back as he came to a sudden stop between a small cluster of trees. Their panting lent noise to the night but underneath their loud breathing a shuddering sob followed. Amplified but it was from an unseen howler. Shuddering, gasping heaves played on, making it sound like the forest itself was crying and at any minute tears would rain down on them.

Sam was looking at his feet and it took a moment for Dean to realize his brother was saying his same. Sammy didn't have to point; Dean just followed his gaze. On the ground, smeared along dead leaved and snapped twigs, was far too much blood. Sam had taken a step into it before reeling back. Splatter was on the toe of his boot. Christ, even the shape of the deadly smudge looked like Molly.

Dean felt the anger rise and clenched his jaw tight. It was Sam who spoke first.

"Are we too late?" It was barely a whisper but someone heard it to answer.

"Oh no. You're just in time."

Both of their heads snapped up and their eyes landed on the woman standing before them. Green eyes shone so bright they nearly glowed. With the red lipstick she almost looked like Christmas. From hell. Black hair, brown shirt, jeans, brown boots with heels that should have posted her to the ground where she stood. For a second her green eyes flashed black and Dean let the anger rise.

"Where the hell is she?" he growled.

"Don't get testy now. " She smiled and her teeth beamed in the moonlight. "It won't help her any."

Her hands caught Sam's eye and he focused on her fingers as they dripped thick, dark blood onto the forest floor. Her thumb and pointer of her right hand methodically rubbed together, as if she were enjoying the feel of Molly's life on her hands.

"What'd you do to her?" Sam grunted, his voice barely audible. But the demon heard him well enough.

"Oh don't you worry your pretty little Winchester faces about that. She's right where we want her." The demon smiled again, her full lips spreading open in what would be a seductive way if she wasn't pure evil.

Dean slid his hand to his back, underneath his jacket. The knife was right there. She was focused on Sam, her eyes taunting. Dean wrapped his fingers around the handle and slid the blade out to rest it just behind his leg.

"She's alive, if that's what you want to know." Her eyes widened in mock concern but her fingers kept playing with the blood. "For how much longer . . ." she pouted and shrugged, "that's up to her."

With a sneer Dean lunged as another pain-filled scream shattered the night.