Chapter 10 What Lies In Between

January 28, 2014. Litteris Hominae, Kansas

In the close confines of Jerome's office, the press of people was uncomfortable, and Dean sucked in a breath, staring at the man in the centre of the room, wondering how long the explanations were going to take. He could feel the archdemon, even at this distance, pacing and hissing around the cage she was trapped in.

"He must be here," Henry Winchester was saying earnestly to Jerome. "The blood spell could only call to my closest kin!"

"That would be your grandsons," Jerome said, shooting a glance at the desk where all three Winchesters had been jammed together, shoulder to shoulder. "Henry, can you go through exactly what you did – something must've been left out, or you would've turned up in 2006, before John died."

Watching the colour drain from the man's face, Dean thought that had to be a crappy way to find out your kid is dead, but he couldn't find any particular sympathy for the man – a stranger who'd managed to burst through all the wards and sigils and guards covering the order's stronghold and drag along an archdemon with him.

"No – it – I –" Henry stammered, looking from Jerome at the faces surrounding him. "The – I –"

"Doesn't matter," Dean cut in. "What matters is that we've got an archdemon in our situation room, no way of killing it and Hell's closed so we can't even lock it away with the rest of the hellspawn."

"That about sums it up," Bobby agreed sourly, glancing around at the others. "Took Lucifer's sword to kill the last one, din' it?"

Sam nodded. "That's gone now."

"So?" Ellen asked, looking at the library's researchers. "That trap is strong but it's damned inconvenient and we don't have the time to waste on this."

"The psychopomp … Kopaki," Sam said and Dean looked around at him. "He said there were a lot ways into Hell, right?"

Dean's brows drew together as he tried to remember any details of what they'd done to get in through the borderlands. His memories of getting there were okay, getting back were a lot fuzzier. "We still needed the gates."

"Yeah, we did, because we needed to kill Cerberus," Sam pointed out. "But he was talking about ways in that didn't go through the borders, that bypassed the gates completely."

"That –" Jerome said, his eyes narrowing a little. "– should be impossible."

Sam shrugged, his gaze remaining on his brother. "We could summon him."

"Make another deal?" Dean asked, his tone sharpening. "When we haven't found out what the first one is gonna cost yet?"

Sam's brow furrowed. "Or we could leave the archdemon in a cage in the middle of the order?"

"Are you legacies?" Henry asked, looking from Sam to Dean.

Dean turned to look at him, and shook his head. "We're hunters," he told the young man, sending a sideways glance at Adam. "He's training to be one."

Henry blinked at him. "Hunters?"

It wasn't that the guy didn't seem to get the term, Dean thought, looking at him impatiently. More like he was having trouble processing it.

"But John – John was supposed to –"

"Henry," Jerome cut in. "We know Abaddon killed everyone at the club in Benoit the night you disappeared – what happened?"

"It was the night of our initiation. All the Elders were there, at the club. Twelve years, you know. Studying. Learning. Doing field work. Josie had started the training much earlier than me, but she was – she'd been –" Henry muttered disjointedly, turning around and looking at the floor. "We didn't know. Of all of us, Josie should've been the safest! She'd hunted her whole life, had been trained … but … no one knew. She was – she was – it passed the tests. Holy water. The signs of the Church."

Jerome nodded. "Those things had no power over the Fallen," he said, glancing at Dean.

You think something like that works on something like me? The demon had been talking with his father's voice, those words coming out of his father's mouth and Dean remembered the look of shock on Sam's face.

"She started killing as soon as they called her in – there were screams and I ran into the room and it was – there was blood – Ted – I'm sure it was Ted Bowen – thrust this at me and told me to run," he said, drawing a simple wooden box from his jacket pocket. "I ran. The blood spell – the blood spell was supposed to take me to my son, but I didn't finish the Limitations, there was no time, she was right behind me."

"And you led her right here," Dean commented without inflexion.

"I had no idea – I thought –"

"Forget it," Sam told him, shooting a look at his brother. "What do you know about this demon?"

Henry looked at him helplessly. "Uh, not much."

"Perfect," Dean said, turning away. "C'mon, there's gotta be a way to fry this bitch's ass – what do we have from the demon tablet?"

"No," Alex said suddenly, her eyes widening as she leaned forward in the chair by the fire. "Dean - The archdemons are nine in number. Each one rules a level of the accursed plane. No weapon save the divine will wound or kill them. They are the Fallen. I remember that!"

Sam nodded. "I remember it too, from Chuck's transcripts."

"What's it mean?"

"No weapon but those of Heaven can kill a Fallen," Jerome said.

"We got angel swords – a couple at least –"

"Not good enough," Chuck said, standing in the doorway and leaning up against the frame. Mitch stood beside him, the young man's face worried.

"Why not?" Dean looked at the prophet, brows drawing together.

"In Hell, you could kill it that way," Chuck told him. "Up here, it won't work. Don't ask me why, I haven't gotten that far yet. But Hell's got its myths and legends too, Dean and this is one of them."

He held up a thin sheaf of papers, his hand trembling. Dean crossed the room and took them, his face screwing up as he tried to read Chuck's birdtrack handwriting. He looked up.

"Can you give me the short version?"

"There were nine Fallen," Mitch interjected. "Originally, I mean, that Fell with Lucifer –"

"Yeah, got that," Dean said impatiently.

"Three were killed by the Host when Heaven stormed Hell to save the soul of the Righteous Man," Jerome cut in, one brow rising slightly as he looked at Dean. "Pythius, Mammon and Moloch. Three were killed when the Grigori opened the gates. Sam killed Asmodeus and Baal. Belial was sucked back to Hell and locked away. Abaddon had already disappeared by that time. And sometime before that, two of the others were killed – in Hell, by a demon who'd been made more than thirty thousand years ago."

"This fact or a good demon bedtime story?" Dean asked sceptically.

"You could ask Abaddon," Jerome suggested with a cool smile.

"Alright, who killed the others?"

"Cain," Chuck said. "With something called the First Blade."

"An' where's he at now?" Bobby butted in. "'Cause if he's in Hell too, that's not much help."

"I don't know," Chuck told him with a shrug.

Dean turned to look at Jerome. The legacy shrugged as well.

"The account, which is not verified or confirmed, is in the Order's files on Cain," he said. "That's all I know."

Letting out a gusty exhale, Dean turned to look at Sam. "We got everything we need to summon that Crow?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah, in the apothecary."

"Then let's do it."

Heaven

In the centre of a billion circling galaxies, the Power waited. His construct glowed with light and sang with the frequencies passing through it, arms stretched out and wings spreading behind them, the feathers ruffling in the winds of energy that eddied and moved in the vast reaches of space between the stars.

It wasn't vision and it wasn't real, at least not in the material sense of the word, the things he studied. The three entities were not constructed from the same energy waves as the angels, and in his mind's eye, he saw them as spiders, scuttling this way and that way on a web that was too big to imagine for a single creature. To his eyes, each strand of the web scintillated with different colours and individual notes, some harmonious, some not. Close to the centre, the largest of the spiders, black as the space that surrounded them, with the same ancient, dusty feel as the entity the humans called Death, sat spinning. Running along the strands, the second spider, blue and grey and lavender, took her sister's diaphanous threads and wove the lines, back and forth across the enormous spans of raw elements and energy. The third, smallest spider was a coruscating nimbus of reds and golds, keeping out of the way of her sisters, cutting the threads here and then there, the fine lines dissolving into the matter from which they'd been created and vanishing.

As his gaze drifted across the web, he envisioned the lives they represented. Millions of them. Playing out from birth to death, entwining and intersecting, woven together and pulled apart, past, present and future undifferentiated, all one to the creative force. He skimmed along the sections until he found what he was looking for, the perfectly symmetrical angelic features distorting as he searched first one line and then another, seeing all the possible futures as well as those in progress, the conjunctions and the way those lines – no matter how disrupted temporarily – returned, again and again, to the single, unchangeable ending.

Over every instance and every convergence, a man stood, his face shadowed.

Zephon scowled at the figure and turned to the smallest spider. "Atropos."

"Zephon." There were no words, no voice, just the lilting notes of a harmony that both understood.

"Why is there no other ending for these lines?"

The spider followed his gaze. "You would have to ask my sister," she told him. "Clothos spins the destinies according to the Will."

The angel looked across the vast web to the centre, a shudder sliding through him at the thought of speaking to the creature that crouched there.

"Can those destinies be changed? Unspun? Rewoven?" he asked the youngest Fate. "Lucifer bound Death, you had a part in that – by what means can the Moirae be influenced?"

There was no sense of movement or of disturbance, but the other two spiders were suddenly there, in front of him, and he couldn't take his eyes from the chilling, featureless regard of the eldest.

"Nothing save the Will can influence our work, Power."

The darkest chords of that melody reached into him, pinching and stabbing at him with a restrained power. Unrestrained, let loose, it could pull him apart, he thought, stepping back.

"Lucifer changed the lines," he said.

"The Will so instructed," Lachesis told him. "We followed our orders."

Zephon wondered how the Fallen One could've mimicked his Father so perfectly as to fool them. What one angel could do, he decided, so could another.

Nodding to the entities, he cast his mind forward, to the room without doors in the divine plane that held his life's work.

On the web, the spiders returned to their work, spinning and weaving and cutting.

January 29, 2014. Litteris Hominae, Kansas

"I don't know how long this is gonna take," Dean murmured to Alex, standing beside her as the smoke from the beaten brass bowl curled up to the shadowed ceiling and the fresh heart gleamed red on the table next to it.

"I don't think you have a choice," she said, turning a little to look up at him. "Even if this – um – guide shows up, how are you going to be able to transport the, uh, demon?"

"Good question," he told her, an edge to his tone. Jerome had said something about iron manacles, somewhere in the levels of the library, but he wasn't sure how they'd even get them on her without having to enter the cage itself. The legacy said the cage cut her off from all power sources, but he'd admitted he'd never seen it working and no one had yet volunteered to get in there with her and find out if that was true.

"You going to be alright?" he asked softly, wishing they could've done this bit at home.

Alex looked over at Jerome, shrugging slightly as she said, "I'm going to be buried in files by the sounds of it. I can get a lift home with Rufus. You don't have to worry about me."

"Can't give it up now," he said, his voice pitched very low.

In the centre of the room, the smoke thickened suddenly then swirled aside and Dean looked at the stocky construct of the Crow, dark eyes flashing as Kopaki took in those surrounding him.

"Winchester."

"Crow of crows," Dean responded, his expression sardonic as he remembered the guide's self introduction. "Gotta proposition for you –"

Without looking around, the Crow sniffed at him. "Transporting the archdemon trapped in your do-it-yourself cage? I'll pass."

"Can you do it?" Sam asked, stepping closer to the psychopomp. "Hell's closed."

"Not to me," the Crow returned, his lip curling up.

Dean repressed the urge to smile. "So you can get us in there?"

"You haven't paid for the last job I did," Kopaki looked back at the older Winchester.

"You didn't ask for anything."

"I'm asking now – leave me out of this."

Dean grinned. "You're gonna give up that IOU that easy?"

The Crow scowled at him. "When I come calling for what you owe me, it's gonna be fucking huge!"

Sam looked at him, eyes widening and he felt the half-suppressed snort of rage from Bobby, standing to the other side. Nodding slowly, Dean held out his hand. "That's fair enough."

"You're a psychopomp?" Henry's voice rose high as he stepped past Bobby and looked at the Crow.

"Not at your service."

"Can you – the guides are supposed to be able force demons out of the victims they possess," Henry said, and Dean turned to look at Jerome, one brow raised.

Kopaki glanced over his shoulder at the library's steps and the shadow moving around the cage in the room below.

"Yes, if the hellspawn has taken over," the Crow said. "But not in this case."

"Why!?" Henry strode forward, hand reaching out to grasp the psychopomp's arm. "You have to free her!"

"That one is no hellspawn," Kopaki told him, shaking the hand free. "That one is Fallen and consent had to be given freely, knowingly." He turned to look consideringly at Sam. "Ask him."

Dean's expression tightened as Sam looked away from the Crow and his grandfather.

"No," Henry said, his face paling again. "No, I don't believe it. She wouldn't've –"

He turned to look at Jerome. "She wouldn't have consented to a demon!"

"Henry, calm down," the legacy said, his voice sharpening. "We don't know what happened to Josie –"

"And at this point, we don't care," Dean interjected. "What we need to do is get the hell outta here and get her fallen ass back to Hell."

He looked at Sam. "You coming with?"

Sam nodded. Henry looked from one to the other.

"I'm coming too!"

"No." Dean turned away from him, walking back to Alex.

"You can't stop me –"

Glancing back over his shoulder, Dean said, "Yeah? Watch me."

"I have to be there!" Henry said, striding after him. "I have to make sure –"

"What?" Dean wheeled around to face him. "That she gets back to Hell? Or that your girlfriend gets released?"

"I –"

"'Cause odds are real bad that she will be released," Dean continued, staring at him. "She consented to that demon. That means she can't just change her mind and chuck it out. She's been locked down tight and she's got no way of getting free. You come with us all you're gunna see is her falling into Hell."

"I don't care –"

"No, you don't care," Dean cut him off. "I care. I care that we get this done, by the numbers and without any fuck ups 'cause I got a shitload of other stuff I gotta get done."

"Please –"

Shaking his head, Dean turned away, leaving Henry standing alone.

"You know this is a bad idea, right?" Bobby said to him when he reached Alex.

"Yeah, I know." He let out a soft exhale and looked at the older hunter. "You, Rufus and Ellen have got the ball, right?"

"Right."

Bobby glanced at Alex and turned away and Dean rubbed a hand along his jaw as he looked down at her.

"I can't ask anyone else to do this," he said, too deeply aware that he'd told her – told himself – he wouldn't be leaving until the tablets and the Grigori were gone.

"I know."

That simple acceptance made it harder, he thought, leaning toward her. The kiss, as light as he could make it while still trying to tell her without words that he'd be back, seared through him.

"Dean, we're ready." Sam's voice intruded from the other side of the room.

He straightened up and turned away, following his brother and the psychopomp down the stairs and forcing himself to not look back.

"A little trip?" Abaddon purred at them, walking to the edge of the cage, though Dean noticed she was careful not to touch it. "Do fill me in on you're going to get me out of here without being torn into tiny pieces?"

The Crow walked to the cage and smiled. "TABAORD, IXOMAXIP," he said in a conversational tone, spreading his arms wide. Dean blinked as Abaddon fell back, her hands clutching at her throat, fingers scrabbling there. Under them, lines appeared on her skin, red and then white, blazing out with light.

"No! Stop it! You're hurting her!" Henry ran down the steps and Sam and Dean swung around, each grabbing one of their grandfather's arms and holding him back.

The woman was shaking, hands fallen to her sides as the lines burned deeply into her skin, the edges curling and blackening and a wafting smell of cooking meat filling the situation room.

"Please–!" Henry tugged against his oldest grandson's grip, staring at the impassive expression on Dean's face, then swinging around to look at Sam. "You can't torture her like this!"

Tendrils of smoke were rising from Josie's throat, from her chest and her arms and legs. Her eyes had rolled back, showing only the whites.

"BOLP ALLARS CNILA, GIGIPAH, SAANIR, MADZILODARP."

The burning light faded away, leaving a thick black design around her neck, over her wrists, stretching up to the elbows, from her knees down to the heels of her feet.

"Once an angel," Kopaki said, looking at her coolly. "Then a demon. Now you bound, in your blood and your breath and your living parts, bound to God's name and powerless."

He looked over his shoulder at the hunters. "You can open it up now."

"What was that?" Sam asked.

"Enochian binding. Very powerful," the psychopomp told him. He turned to look at the smooth stone wall of the situation room, where the stairs ended and nodded, flinging out a hand. "Give me a pen."

As his grandsons let him go, Henry stepped forward, his face blank with shock, pulling out a black pen almost automatically from his suit pocket. The Crow walked to the wall and drew a doorway roughly over the stone. By the cage, Dean turned to look at Jerome.

"How do we shut this thing down?"

"Give me a minute," Jerome said, wheeling himself down the ramp to the console. "The reset should be somewhere here."

"Dean – the cuffs," Oliver called out, standing at the library steps and tossing them.

He caught them one-handed, arm sagging as he absorbed the weight. They were iron, he realised, turning them over, the etched sigils slightly brighter in the cast of the light. Not powerful enough to hold a demon like Abaddon without anything else, but definitely strong enough to stop the woman the demon was riding from trying anything. He looked up and nodded to Oliver, noting with a fleeting amusement that both Oliver and Mitch were bent over notebooks, pens moving fast, glancing up at the Crow's bindings over the demon every few seconds. Looking at the complex designs, he wished them luck.

"Okay – yes, there it is –" Jerome muttered, hitting a lit button on the long console.

The gold and iron bars retracted into ceiling and floor in the blink of an eye and Dean walked warily to the archdemon. Josie stood there, head hanging down, not moving.

"Josie?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Henry," Abaddon said, lifting her head and turning to watch Dean walk around with narrowed cat-green eyes. "Josie isn't here."

"Wh-what did you do to her – how did you force her consent?!"

"Didn't you hear the guide, little man?" she asked him sweetly as Dean fastened one manacle around her wrist and dragged her other arm behind her. "I didn't force anything. She begged me to take her."

"You're lying!" Henry snapped, his face turning red. "Demons lie!"

"Not this time."

"Get a move on," Dean said, pushing her in front of him.

"Wait a minute – how long's this gonna take?" Bobby asked the Crow.

"Forty-eight hours," Kopaki answered distractedly, staring at the doorway. "Gather 'round, children, take each other's hands."

Sam moved closer as Dean pushed the demon beside the psychopomp, resting a hand on the woman's arm. The Crow gripped Abaddon's arm at the elbow, stretching out his hand to Dean as the doorway began to flicker and glow, the rough pen outline pulsing with a silvery light.

Dean felt himself being pulled, tightening his grip on the Crow and the demon, fighting against his instincts to let go and step away from that weird sensation that seemed to be affecting every cell. In front of him, the wall of the situation room began to smear and distort, dissolving in a glare-filled burst of light. He caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of his eye, and swore inwardly as the order's safehold disappeared entirely, colour-filled blackness blanketing him and the knowledge that just before they'd gone, Henry had grabbed hold of his brother.

January 29, 2014. Novaya Zemlya, Barents Sea

The clanging echo of their bootsteps on the metal skin of the hull was unnerving, Jack decided, trying to make himself step more lightly. Ahead of him, Kelly's light bobbed unevenly, lighting up parts of the ship's interior, leaving most of it in darkness. More unnerving was the slick glaze of moisture that gleamed in the flashlight's beam.

Condensation mostly, Kelly'd said as they'd made their way through, deeper into the bowels of the vessel. Temperature differential between the warmer air, drawn through from the island's internal caves, and the ice-cold sea outside. Catching a flicker of the light on a scattering of crystals adhering to the metal wall he was passing, Jack wanted very much to believe it but was having trouble.

"How much further?" Marc asked from behind him.

"'Nuther two decks, then we head forward," Kelly said quietly. "Maybe fifteen minutes, if we're lucky and nothing's broken loose."

They descended the narrow iron steps, more like a ladder than stairs, Jack thought, turning around to go down backwards. Lower down it seemed warmer but he figured that had to be his imagination.

"What were you doing here – before?" he asked Kelly as they walked single file through the tight hallway.

"Company wanted to know what the Russians were doing here," Kelly answered, slowing down as he came to a closed hatch. "How their tests were going, where they were dumping the waste – just routine."

Routine, Jack considered, watching him take hold of the circular hatch handle and turn it, the seized metal groaning and sending a slight shudder through the bulkheads. Not one of the hunters he'd met at the keeps had had anything he thought of as close to a normal life, before the virus had wiped the entire notion of normal from existence.

The Winchesters, he'd heard, had grown up as hunters, their father dragging them all over the country in pursuit of a demon. Rufus had started when he was twenty, after a couple of tours overseas had opened his eyes to what was out there. Ellen had shot a werewolf at sixteen. Even Bobby – well, he was the only one who'd been minding his own business, a mechanic, he thought Rufus had said one time – the old man had seen a demon jump into his wife and take her over. Vince had been killing skinwalkers near a reservation in Utah with his uncle from the age of fifteen. Franklin had seen his buddies drunk dry by djinn in Iraq.

He shook his head slightly, feeling a gust of warmer air brush against his face and ruffle his hair as Kelly got the hatch open and stepped through. He and Danielle and Chris and Lee had all seen the world change with their own eyes, neighbours, friends, even family becoming violent, turning on each other and they'd struggled to find reasons for the transformation of their easy lives into blood and death and things that their parents had told them weren't real.

He'd been at college, twenty seven years old, doing an engineering degree on Uncle Sam's dime. Dan said she'd been debating between starting college and travelling. Joseph had told him about the hospitals, boxes of vaccines that had turned everyone into monsters in seconds of administration. He'd grabbed an ambulance and his partner and gone as fast as he could out of Pittsburgh. None of them had thought it was real, not at first. Even the sight of the bodies and the slowly growing stink in the cities hadn't made it seem real enough.

"Alright, one more deck and we're through," Kelly said, interrupting his thoughts.

"What's here?" Christophe asked, coming up beside them in the slightly wider section of corridor.

"Engine rooms and boilers."

"Why were they testing here? It's so close to the mainland?" Marc asked, pulling a slender metal flask from his coat and swallowing a mouthful of water, then passing it around.

"Truly? Arrogance, I guess. Or ignorance," Kelly told him. "Hard to say. It was a different world. People had different ideas of what was important."

To either side the massive engines filled almost all the space, moisture trickling down curving metal sides and dropping intermittently to the hard floor, the soft plinks unaccountably irritating. It was like a tomb, Jack thought as he followed the older man through the twists and turns of the machines. A tomb for a world he didn't think he'd see again, not in his life.

He realised with a frown that he could hardly remember his life before. The memories were hazy, golden-toned, like some story he'd read a long time ago and half-forgotten. He remembered going out with his girl, Melanie, just before the virus had hit the city but he couldn't remember what they'd done or the colour of her eyes. What had been important to him, back then, he wondered? Getting good grades? Finding another part-time job to help with his tuition costs? He'd wanted a new cell, he remembered, the thought almost surreal to him now. The last time he'd seen Mel had been when the Army had marched into Atlanta and had begun moving people into quarantine camps. She'd been with her parents and he'd turned away, dodging trucks and units of cold-faced soldiers until he'd made out past the city limits and into the country.

"Michel thinks the world might be heading into another period of glaciation," Christophe said.

Kelly slowed a little. "He might be right."

"Why do you say that?" Marc asked. "It's been cold, yes, but there've been winters as cold, even within my lifetime."

"And in mine," Kelly agreed noncommittally. "But not a string of winters like we've seen in the last five years. We walked across the Bering Strait. All the way. And here, the Barents Sea has never frozen hard - hard enough to walk to this island. The water is warmed here, by the North Atlantic Drift, by the undersea movements of the plates, and still we came on foot."

"Why're we working our asses off to save a world that's gonna be covered in ice?" Jack asked.

"We got no chance of saving the world, Jack, but luckily the world isn't in danger," Kelly said, turning and giving him a grin. "Only us people."

Purgatory

The difference in the ground height between the dimensions was only a matter of inches, but the three men and demon stumbled as they passed through the void from one to the other, teeth snapping together and grunts of lost air filling the silent, colourless world.

Sam looked around as he regained his balance. They were in a thin wood, the light pale and flat-looking, a dull pewter tint to the sky visible beyond the bare, leafless branches of the sparse canopy. Under their feet, the ground was carpeted in needles and leaves, densely spread and sodden with moisture, seeming to muffle not only their footsteps but everything, making the sound as muted as the lack of colour.

"Sonofabitch! I told you to stay!" Dean snapped and he looked around, seeing Henry standing a little behind him, dark hair mussed and face pale.

"I can't –" Henry made a gesture toward the demon. "That is an innocent woman –"

"A matter we could discuss whilst moving," Kopaki interrupted as he walked away. "This is not our final destination, gentlemen, and we don't want to alert the natives."

"Where are we?" Sam asked the Crow, following him along a barely-there path through the trees.

"Purgatory."

Sam's brow wrinkled up. "This is where souls go to be judged?"

"Not quite," Kopaki answered, looking around the wood. "This is where the souls of those who chose to damn themselves in life spend eternity."

"This is where the children of the Dark Mother spend their eternal rest," Abaddon said from behind them, her chains rattling as Dean pushed her forward. "Thinking about the choices they made."

"Why here?"

"These souls are not fit for Heaven or Hell," the psychopomp answered, his tone sharpening as he accelerated a little more.

Abaddon laughed softly. "Oh, we'd take them," she said. "But a different punishment was set for them."

"What?" Dean asked, glancing over his shoulder as Henry stumbled behind him.

"They get to kill each other, over and over, till the life force is finally extinguished and they become nothing."

Sam felt the shiver slip through him at the demon's casual words, a vivid image of his brother, ragged teeth descending and a blood tint clouding green eyes, filling his mind's eye.

"Some of the creatures here didn't make that choice willingly," he protested, and another face slipped in from his memories, dark eyes and long, dark hair, a crooked smile and tears slipping down her cheeks.

"Oh, well, they do have the choice to let the others kill them, if they find it all too much," Abaddon told him. "If you're here long enough, you'll see."

"How far to this back door?" Dean asked, his voice slightly rough. Sam wondered if he was remembering the monsters they'd found, all the ones who'd tried not to be monsters.

"Not far, perhaps a day's walk," the Crow said. "But we will find it easier if everyone shuts up."

The countryside varied little, the demon noted, steep hillsides with rivers running between them, the dull light never changing, the trees and bushes in a state of perpetual winter, leafless and dark.

One thing was changing, she thought. The pain that had razored through her as the bindings had burned through the vessel's skin and down into its meat was dissipating, along with the constant ache from the iron around her wrists. She glanced down, fleetingly as if to check her footing. The lines seemed slightly paler against the redhead's creamy skin.

As if they were … fading.

"So what's here?"

"Everything you've ever hunted."

She smiled as she heard the distaste in the psychopomp's tone. Everything with teeth and claws and a thirst for human blood, she amended his comment silently. All the monsters you sent on their way, all of them dreaming of fresh blood. Fresh meat. Fresh bones.

In the way of angels, there were memories of her Father's decree still in her mind of this place. Memories of this prison for the rapacious monsters He'd Created and the souls that had chosen immortality over life. Some hadn't, she thought, knowing that the hunters had been right in that assertion. Some had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had been turned instead of fed upon. Some had even resisted the call of the blood or the heart or the soul, had tried to live without killing at all. It didn't matter. They were here, because that original creation had been altered.

They were being tracked, she knew. The smell of the men was too strong. Life and breath couldn't be hidden in a world that had neither. She thought the man behind her knew it as well. The Crow was certainly aware of their followers.

The realm of Purgatory, like Hell and in some respects, Heaven, operated on completely physical laws to that of the earthly plane. Time moved, but at a different rate. Hunger and thirst, even for those in their bones, were not a consideration in worlds that could provide no sustenance for flesh. Sleep was not possible. Death was, but only if the body was torn apart too badly to heal with twenty-four hours. Each of the dimensions that clung to the fabric of her Father's universe followed that oddity of regeneration on the energy held within them.

It would be night fall here soon, she thought. Twelve hours for the wan, silvery light that counted as day. Twelve hours for the stygian blackness, unrelieved by moon or starlight, when the monsters of this plane truly hunted.

When the light brightened again, she thought the binding would be gone. Every creature that was torn apart by its fellow inhabitants here was remade. To face another hunt. Another enemy. Another death. Every wound was healed. Every scar removed.

All she had to do was delay them a little. Not long. Just long enough for the day's walk to turn into a day and a night. She started to hum, softly, stretching out her senses through the murky twilit world.

Dean slowed a little, waiting for Henry to catch up. They'd been walking for hours now, although he couldn't determine how long exactly since his watch had stopped the second they'd crossed into the plane. The young man claiming to be his grandfather had been slowing gradually for the last couple of hours, his breath audible, whistling as he climbed the slippery, needle-covered slopes, grunting as he scrambled down over the rocks and deadfall littering the banks of the numerous small streams and rivers that criss-crossed the land. Somewhere, at the back of his mind, Dean wondered what his father would've made of the pale-faced man whose hands showed a life lived without physical labour.

"Henry, keep up, we got –"

He had a half-second's warning, the branch to one side of the trail snapping as the creature burst through and he was dropping, hitting the soft, humus-covered ground on one knee as his hand snapped to the knife on his belt, Sam's yelled warning coming a second after that.

Covered in tangled, oily fur that rippled over hulked-up and massive muscle mass, unlike any werewolf he'd ever seen topside, Dean got a brief impression of wide, back-lit eyes and a mouthful of over-sized canine teeth before it was on him, its weight knocking him to one side, a splat of dog-scented drool hitting him in the cheek. The knife was Ruby's, not made of silver, and he stabbed it through the exposed side as the werewolf lunged for his neck. Silver or not, it didn't like being skewered, he decided, rolling onto his feet when it flung itself back, a rising howl drilling into his ears. A glance over his shoulder showed Henry standing to one side of the path, his back against a tree, and Abaddon a few steps from the almost-legacy, her eyes following the action, an avid glitter in them.

There were three, hunting together as a pack. Sam threw the angel blade to him as he finished the first, and he thrust it through the monster's back, one arm wrapped hard around its throat as it tried to throw him off, then collapsing under him when the sword found its heart. He swung around, seeing his brother drawing the last toward him and sprinted past demon and psychopomp, calling out as he launched himself at it.

"Hey! Dog-breath!"

The werewolf turned, faster than he'd anticipated, but he still had height and momentum and the angel sword punctured the creature's held-up hand, pinning it to its chest without slowing him down at all. Behind it, Sam grabbed the thing's shoulders and they both felt the deep shudder as the sword's tip went deep into the heart, the fire and light dying out of its eyes as it fell backwards into Sam and crumpled to the path.

"Thanks," he said, wiping the blade on the tattered shreds of clothing the werewolf was somewhat covered with and passing it back to his brother. "They don't turn back?"

"Watch," Kopaki said, gesturing between the three monsters. In moments, their forms began to pale, then become translucent. In less than a minute, all three bodies had vanished.

"Where'd they go?" Dean asked, looking at the woods to either side of them.

"Somewhere else," the guide said with a disinterested shrug. "They are remade with the next day."

The explanation slid into Dean unexpectedly, finding memories that were old but not forgotten. Every day. Remade.

He ducked his head, and picked up Ruby's knife, wiping the blade and re-sheathing it behind his hip.

"That was quite something to see," Henry said, stepping back onto the path and walking a little unsteadily toward them. "John must have been – a very skilled hunter to have taught you both so well."

"He was," Dean said shortly. "Let's go."

"So this plane, it works like Hell?" Sam pressed the Crow, moving along the trail. "Everything's healed?"

"Yes," Kopaki told him. "And like Heaven, and Hell, where it joins with the earthly plane, there are – portals, doorways. Some just cracks that only whispers can be heard through. Others are – larger."

"There's a doorway back to earth here?" Sam asked.

"There are dozens," the psychopomp said, his voice dry. "But there is one that was built for humans. Nothing else can pass through it."

"Not even you?"

"Not even me."

January 29, 2014. Novaya Zemlya, Barents Sea

Kelly looked around as they crawled through the hole in the forecastle, his headlamp showing him curving stone and loose gravel, the water of the underground sinkhole clear and glassy green where the ship's bow protruded onto the rock ledge. Nothing had changed, he was relieved to see, picking out the shadowed crevice across the cavern that would lead them deeper under the island. Given the delicacy of the situation here, and the panic that must have hit even this far north with the spread of the virus, he'd thought there'd been a good possibility that the Russians would've just sealed it all.

But, he considered, getting to his feet and holding out a hand to Marc as the French hunter climbed out, bureaucracy moved slowly anyway and here slower than most.

The Geiger counter on his belt was clicking softly, but only a little about normal range. Hanging around in here for too long wouldn't be a good idea in any case.

"Holy bat cave," Jack murmured as he got to his feet and looked around.

"No butler," Kelly told him with a grin. "Self-service only."

"How far into the caves is the tablet?" Christophe asked, adjusting his headlamp.

"Not far," Kelly said, turning for the crevice. "A couple of hundred yards."

"And you were just here – looking around on spec?" Jack hurried after him.

"Just following orders," the older hunter said. "Watch your step, there's a lot of moisture here and the rock'll be slippery. Not luggin' your asses back through that ship if you break somethin' down here."

The crevice opened a little to reveal a slit, narrow enough to force the men to crab their way sideways between the slabs of rock, feeling the pinch occasionally and having to let their breath out to slip past. Distantly, they could hear a deep grinding noise, sometimes feeling it through the stone under their feet. The icepack was pushed against the shoreline with the relentless force of the currents.

Kelly eased himself out of the squeeze and looked at his watch. They'd been down for nearly an hour. Two more caverns to get through, he thought, remembering the layout. Then they'd see the small cave that'd held the artefacts.

Under his feet, he could feel a faint warmth, and he crouched down, pulling a glove off with his teeth and laying his hand on the rock. It was warm. Getting back to his feet, he pulled the glove back on and gestured to the rounded opening in the far wall.

"Come on, should be off the next cavern."

They were halfway across the bowl-shaped cave when the rock around them seemed to ripple, dropping a little and rising again, the grinding of pack drowned out by a lower groan, in the deepest of registers and an odd conjunction of scent filling the air briefly.

Salt, Kelly identified a second later, and sulphur. A few fragments of rock fell from the cave's roof, pattering down the walls and rolling to a stop on the floor.

"With the weight of the ice, this region may not be completely geologically stable now," Christophe said, looking around the cave uneasily.

You think, professor? Kelly ducked his head to hide his involuntary grin. It wasn't that funny.

"We need to get out of here," he said aloud. The ripple had been a warning. More would come. He started to walk faster, ducking as he passed through the low passage from one cavern to the next. From the crunch of the footsteps behind him, he thought everyone was in agreement.

The second cave was smaller and he turned right, seeing the crawl where he'd remembered. "Got a bit of wriggling to do here," he said as he dropped to his knees in front of it. "About ten feet, then we'll be able to stand again."

In the headlamp's glow, the fissure looked smaller than it had in his memories. He squashed the spurt of nervousness that was circling in his stomach and lowered himself to lie flat on the ground, moving into the cut on his elbows and toes. Ten feet was barely a couple of strides, upright. Belly-crawling, in an unstable, irradiated subterranean cave, it felt like a hundred miles.

Jack watched the older man's boots disappear into the black hole and clenched his teeth together. Ten feet, Kelly'd said. He could do ten feet. In front of him, Marc crouched on the floor and stretched out, wriggling after Kelly. A glance to his right showed him that the younger French hunter seemed to be having the same doubts he was. Before he could think too much more about it, he dropped to his knees and crawled to the opening, easing himself flat. He looked up, seeing the outline of Marc's head in the backwash of the headlamp's light. From the look of it, he was nearly out.

Pulling in a deep breath and letting it out again almost immediately, Jack lifted himself onto his elbows and toes and started forward, telling himself not to rush, to just get through steadily and without panicking. He wasn't claustrophobic and the however-many-tons of rock above him were not going to drop now and squash him flat. He could hear a whistling noise and belatedly realised it was coming from his throat, forcing himself to swallow and take a slightly deeper breath.

"Tests you, doesn't it?" Kelly said, the beam of his headlamp spilling a pool of reassuring gold over the rock as Jack's head emerged. "Come on, get out of the way."

Scurrying forward on hands and toes, Jack rocked onto his feet and stood up, looking around. This cave was much smaller. And the stench of sulphur was stronger here too, he realised. To one side, a pile of clay tablets, dozens of them, he thought, were stacked against the rough stone of the wall. Marc knelt beside the pile, picking one of the tablets up and turning it over in his hands. Jack walked over to him and crouched down, looking from the featureless tablet in the hunter's hand to the pile. They were all blank, he thought, stretching out a hand tentatively to turn one over. Smooth, unmarked, blank.

"The tablet's here?" he asked, swivelling on one foot and looking back at Kelly.

"Clay was used to protect the most important writings," Christophe grunted, rolling himself out of the tunnel and walking over to them. "Especially if they were written on something less durable."

"One of them holds the Monster tablet," Kelly agreed, stopping beside Marc. "The others are just decoys."

"How do we tell which one is the real one?"

"Open them up," Marc said, putting the clay tablet down and pulling a thick-bladed knife from his belt. He drove the tip into the centre of the clay and it split open, crumbling at the edges. Underneath, there was a smooth piece of stone, shale, Jack thought, looking at the slightly oily gleam of the stone. As Marc levered the pieces off it, it became obvious that the stone was unmarked as the clay'd been.

"One down, another hundred or so to go," Kelly murmured, kneeling beside the French hunter and grabbing a tablet. "Start breaking them open."

Picking up a tablet, Jack looked at the clay covering for a moment, then pulled the heavily-weight hunting knife from the inside of his coat. He had a bad feeling about breaking them open, a formless anxiety that was churning in his stomach as he swung the blade and the brittle clay cracked from side to side. He tried to shove it aside as the pieces fell from another smooth piece of stone.

Purgatory

Sam lifted his hand and stared hard at the place he knew it had to be. He couldn't see it, couldn't see anything.

"Can we light a fire?" Henry asked, from somewhere to his left.

"If you would enjoy fighting for your life by its light through the hours of darkness, be my guest," Kopaki said, the edge of amusement sharp in his voice.

Night, as he supposed it was here, had dropped suddenly. No waning of the thin, grey light had given them any warning. One minute it'd been possible to see. The next, it hadn't. They'd stopped where they were and the psychopomp had advised them to make themselves comfortable for the next twelve hours.

No matter how dark the deepest night was on earth, there was always a little light, even just that faintest of glows from the distant stars. Here, there was none. No moon. No stars. No sun. It wasn't especially cold, despite the wintry appearance of the woods, but it wasn't warm either. He hadn't felt hunger or thirst since they'd stepped into the place and he didn't feel tired now, just the slight ache of muscles used all day, walking up and down the endless ridges and valleys.

Whatever the field was that'd stopped his watch when they'd arrived, it was also working on the batteries powering his flashlight, he realised, flicking the on-off switch a few times before giving up. It didn't affect matches, or his brother's lighter, but the Crow was right. A fire would guide everything in here to them, without giving them the slightest advantage in return. It was going to be a long night, he decided, wriggling backward against the tree trunk at his back and shifting slightly to one side to avoid a protruding root.

"This place, why is there a doorway just for people?" he asked the guide, his voice pitched low.

"Why ask me?" Kopaki replied irritably. "The reasons for the Creator's decisions are not shared with my kind."

"Perhaps our Father knew that sooner or later, some bright example of humanity would allow their curiosity to overcome their good sense," Abaddon said, her voice deep from the darkness.

Sam heard a rustle on the other side of the path and a low chuckle.

"Why, Dean, are you cosying up to give us something to do to while away the hours?"

There was a sharp crack and a grunt from the archdemon. Against the darkness that was all Sam could see, an image of his brother's fist flying out and hitting the woman formed and vanished.

"I'll take that as a 'no'," Abaddon said a moment later.

"Don't move. Don't talk," Dean growled. "We'll have you locked back in the pit as fast as we can."

"Damn you, you – you – ape!" Henry's voice rose shrilly, accompanied by the sounds of him moving blindly in the dark. "Don't hurt her! That's –"

"Henry –" Sam started to say, his advice drowned out.

"She's dead, Henry," Dean snapped. "She was dead from the moment she said 'yes'."

"He's right," the Crow interjected. "Your friend cannot be saved."

"I don't believe that!" Henry fumed, his startled cry stifled as he hit something he couldn't see. "I don't –"

"That's your choice," Dean cut him off, reaching out and grabbing the initiate and pulling him down to the track. "But we're here to shove her ass back into Hell and that's all."

"No, we have to –"

"Quiet," the Crow said. "If you are going to make a racket like this, we might as well light a fire. I, for one, would prefer to survive this night."

Henry subsided, and Sam listened to the man's rapid, shallow breathing. He couldn't hear anything from Dean or the archdemon, or the Crow beside him. Further away, there were rustles and an occasional snap of a branch, deep in the forest. He closed his eyes and thought of the quiet rooms of the order, of Marla and Jean and what they would be doing right now. Cooking, he decided after a moment's thought. Marla had been slow-cooking vegetables and meat over the winter months, the resulting stews and casseroles filled with rich flavours but soft enough for Jean to manage. He tried not to dwell on how the rooms would look, how the meal would smell, feeling an ache somewhere in his chest as the memories intruded anyway.

It was a home he'd never known before, not even in the year of living with Jess, when the whole world had been filled with a promise of a future without hunting or monsters or family secrets. The small apartment they'd shared had been just that – a promise and nothing more. He'd told himself he'd felt safe there, far from his past, but he'd been kidding himself and when the dreams had started, he'd tried to hide from that knowledge.

This was – different, he thought. Not better, exactly, although it was because it was no longer a promise, it was real and even the memories filled him with a peace he hadn't thought he'd ever get. Marla knew him and maybe that was the real difference. Jess had known some things, had known some of his life, his childhood years and the impacts they'd had. But she'd died before the nightmare had really started. And if he were honest with himself, he didn't think he could've ever told her what he'd done and what had been done to him in the years after. She'd seen him – had loved him – before all of that.

When he'd watched his brother with Alex, he hadn't really understood the changes he'd seen. Dean had been calmer and more relaxed than he'd ever remembered seeing him, in spite of the pressures surrounding him. Still struggling with the aftermath of his own guilt and memories of Lucifer's possession and all that the archangel had done, he hadn't been able to talk to his brother about those changes and what it was that'd brought them about but he'd watched the two of them and seen the difference.

He remembered the harvest and the kind of odd feeling of belonging, knowing what he was doing, being able to do it. He remembered seeing his brother at ease with all those people, hunters and farmers and civilians, the first time he could recall his brother being comfortable with a lot of people around. There'd been a lot of good-natured teasing and a lot of hard work and somehow everyone had seemed to be a good fit there.

It was a home he couldn't bear the thought of losing. A home he recognised his brother had had – and had lost – and was trying to find again. A place where they could be who they were, with all that had happened, all that they'd done, a place where forgiveness was possible.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Sam felt some of the tension slipping from him.

Leaning back against the trunk of a tree by the path's edge, his shoulder just touching the woman beside him, Dean listened to the night. He could hear the unsteady breathing of the man who claimed to be his grandfather, Henry still struggling with whatever guilt and memories he'd brought along with him. Could hear the light, even breaths of the demon, not asleep or close to it, but steady and even. Not wasting energy on thought or emotion, he thought. On the other side of the path, he could just hear Sam's breathing, also steady and even, his brother resting even though sleep was impossible.

He was gratingly aware that, like so many other times, he wasn't where he wanted to be. Baby-sitting the return of an archdemon to Hell, an idealistic and hopelessly naïve scholar, making yet another deal with the Crow, dragging his brother along because he had to be here and he couldn't think of anyone else who'd be as good at backing him up as Sam.

None of it should've been his problem, but it all was anyway.

Eyes open and staring into the unrelieved black, he tried to not to think about where he wanted to be or what he wanted to be doing. Those thoughts, lit up with memories, older and newer, were a kind of drug, one that he could get lost in too easily sometimes.

He made stupid fucking promises to stay, to not leave and then he did and she never said 'don't go', just looked at him, knowing that he didn't have a choice, knowing that arguing would only make it harder, but sometimes wishing she'd argue anyway, sometimes wishing she would make him choose, make him stay. He didn't know why he wanted that, only that she made it too easy for him and invariably that made his guilt worse.

Just a milk-run, he told himself, knowing it was bull, knowing that anything could wrong at any time and usually did. He ignored that, thinking instead he'd be back home and she'd be there and he could worry about something else, the missing tablets, the Grigori gathering on the other side of the world, the goddamned angels meddling in their lives and trying to get their father's attention in what had to be the tantrum to end all tantrums.

I do, you know.

Dean's face screwed up involuntarily as memory slid in. He had all his memories, things he held close and down deep, memories she wanted back, memories she'd risk everything for. He wanted it all back too, but he couldn't take that risk, couldn't think near that risk.

In the same way darkness had fallen, the light returned, suddenly and without warning. He looked up, seeing the trunks of the trees on the other side of the path, the leafless branches like an ink drawing against a flat, pewter-coloured sky.

Pushing back against the tree behind him, he got to his feet and stretched, feeling the stiffness of the night spent in one position reluctantly leave his muscles. Henry was sitting, head bowed in the middle of the path, and Dean tapped his leg with the side of his boot.

"Daylight," he said, turning to look at the demon. Her eyes were closed, head tipped back against the tree behind her. "C'mon, get moving."

Sam was struggling to his feet, the Crow rising beside him and Henry had rolled onto his hands and knees when Dean saw the demon open her eyes. She smiled up at him and he registered that something was different about her, something was missing.

He didn't get a chance to see what it was before she was on her feet and past him.

"Sam! Look out!"

Sam swung around, eyes widening as the archdemon leapt across the path. She slammed both hands into his face, the iron 'cuffs hitting him in the jaw and knocking him backward into the psychopomp.

Dean saw Kopaki fall backward, one hand braced on his brother's shoulder then there was a soft popping noise and both disappeared.

"SAM!" He took a step forward, stopping as Abaddon swore and spun around to face him, her face distorted in a rictus of determination as the chain holding the two shackles together began to stretch and creak.

"I thought they were supposed to hold her!" he yelled at Henry, flicking a glance over his shoulder at the initiate.

"They're warded against angels and the lesser hierarchies," Henry shouted back. "Not against what she is!"

Pulling out the knife, Dean sprang across the path, hitting the woman with an arm across the throat and toppling both of them back into the trees. He swung the knife at her as she lifted her hands, the blade held between her palms as the last link broke.

"AMMA ORS!" she screamed at him, and he flinched back a little, pressing harder when nothing seemed to happen.

Releasing her grip on the blade, Abaddon shoved the knife to one side with one hand, the edge of her other flashing up to strike his throat. He jerked back, riding the kill blow as much as he could. He rolled off her and scrambled to his feet, the knife held out as she sprang to her feet to face him.

"TELOAH!"

He could see from the frustration on her face that whatever it was she was yelling at him, it wasn't working. Archdemon curses? Spells? Didn't seem to matter, he decided. In this place, they weren't working. And weight for weight, she might've been a little faster without those demonic powers, but he was a lot stronger.

"C'mon," he rasped, swallowing against the roughness in his throat. "Let's see what you got."

She was faster, he realised as she launched herself at him, her nails catching his cheek and jaw as he dropped and twisted aside, going down on one knee and spinning upright again. But not that much. He feinted to the right and saw her register the movement, turning slightly before she realised the ploy, and his fist hit the side of her ribcage, sending her staggering into a tree. Lifting the knife, he accelerated after her, and she dropped under his tight swing, scrabbling in the soft needle-covered earth for a foothold.

"Not such hot shit without that good Hell power?" he bit out, driving the knife down and out and the tip catching the back of her shoulder, the vessel's red blood coating the metal.

"You're as stuck here as I am!" she snapped back, rolling backwards under his advance and springing back to her feet. "There's no way out for any of us!"

She turned and ran, disappearing down the path and into the woods in seconds and Dean looked after her, the last few minutes of action replaying in his head.

Kopaki had vanished and taken his brother with him. Back to the order, he hoped. Letting the knife tip drop, he turned around slowly and looked at Henry, still standing by the side of the path, his mouth slightly open.

"What'd the Crow say about a human-only way out?" he asked.

Novaya Zemlya, Barents Sea

"Got it," Christophe said, his voice hushed.

Dropping their tablets, Kelly, Marc and Jack moved around him as he split the seal apart and brushed the fragments from the stone concealed inside. Both Kelly and Jack recognised the oily-looking stone and its indecipherable writings.

"Here," Kelly said, pulling a square silk bag from the small pouch hanging at his belt. "Wrap it in that first."

Christophe slid the stone into the bag, drawing the ties close.

"My thanks to you, but I will take that now."

There was a swirl of wind in the chamber, and the overwhelming scents of feathers and flowers filled the air for a moment. At the entrance to the cave, the angel stood, wings drawing back to fold behind his shoulders, long, golden-blond hair framing a face of unearthly symmetry and cold beauty.

"One's not going to do you any good," Kelly said, rising to his feet and taking a step between the angel and the hunters.

"But I have more than one and soon I'll have all five," Camael said, tilting his head as he looked at the men. "And with the five, I will have the power of the Heavens and Spheres. I will have the power of my Father."

"To do what?" the hunter asked. "Bring down everything God created? That'll help?"

"Before you came into being, we were contented. We were at peace with the music of the Spheres and the love of our Father," Camael said, his voice sharpening as he stepped toward them. "Humanity was our downfall. You corrupt what you touch. You foul the planes with your feelings and thoughts, as chaotic and rapacious as the most virulent virus and with no purpose at all."

"Funny how you managed to forget that it was Lucifer who started all this," Kelly pointed out.

The archangel's face lost its beauty abruptly as his expression tightened, lips thinning out. "Give me the tablet!"

"Come and get it," Marc said, taking the bag from Christophe and tossing it into the air. "Will it work for you if it's in a few pieces, I wonder?"

"Do not –!"

"Too late," Kelly said, catching the bag, spinning around and throwing it at the cave wall. Even within the bag, the impact was visible, the single piece shattering as stone hit stone.

The archangel lifted his hand and light filled the cave, accompanied by a noise that rose rapidly in pitch, passing out of human hearing and drilling into the spaces between the bones of the skulls of the men who dropped to the floor, arms wrapped over their heads. At the centre of the light, Kelly stood, frozen and rising from the cave's stone floor, his mouth and eyes open, his face twisted up in agony as the angel held him.

Jack looked up and lurched to his feet, ignoring the blood that was running freely from his nose, from his eyes and ears as the angel's power intensified and oscillated in the cells of his bones. Behind him, Marc reached out, hand clamping around the younger man's arm and dragging him back to the floor.

The angel closed his hand abruptly into a fist and Kelly's body exploded outwards, a fine spray of blood, bone, flesh and clothing filling the air and coating the hunters, walls, ceiling and floor. The light and the sound disappeared and the archangel walked to the silk bag, picking it up and turning back to the men.

"You will go no further," he said, wings spreading out behind him, brushing the walls of the cave.

The air popped softly as it closed behind where he'd been, a wafting scent of feathers and flowers overwhelming the raw copper reek of blood for a second, then vanishing as the air chilled.

"The door!" Marc said, rolling to his feet and dragging Jack up with him. "Quick!"

The sudden dryness in the air was explained, along with the icy cold, as they reached the cave's entrance. Every particle of moisture had been drawn there, frozen solid in a thick wall of ice.

"Merde!" Marc let go of Jack and swung back to the interior of the cave, his gaze searching the walls.

"We can break through, can't we?" Jack asked, pulling his knife out and hammering at the ice. A few chips broke off, the reverberations of the blade humming back through his hand and up to his elbow.

"I doubt it," Christophe said, peering more closely at the ice. "It seems to be feet thick."

"Fire?" Jack asked, turning to look at Marc. "I've got a lighter –"

"What is there to burn?" Marc answered distractedly, moving to the walls and holding his hand up to feel along them. "Aside from us?"

"We have to do something!"

"Absolutely," Christophe agreed.

"There's a draught here," Marc told them, moving closer to the wall, both hands raised now, fingers splayed. "Look for where it's coming from."

January 30, 2014. Litteris Hominae, Kansas

Sam floundered as he was released, turning awkwardly in the deep snowdrift he found himself standing in, his arm swinging out to grab the psychopomp but far too late.

"Damn you!" he shouted at the clear morning sky, brow furrowed deeply as he looked around. It took him a few moments to realise that Kopaki had dumped him on the outskirts of the keep town and gone without leaving even a footprint in the drift.

"Not happening," he muttered, turning again and clambering out of the snow onto the pitted road surface. The ploughs hadn't been along yet, but he knew this road and he stamped through the six inches of snow covering it, heading north and east toward the order, shivering a little in the sub-zero still air.

Dean and Henry were back there, he thought, his speed increasing involuntarily. With Abaddon. In a place filled with the souls of monsters, some of whom, at least, Dean had personally sent there. His brother was a good hunter. An extraordinary one when push came to shove, but how long could he last in a place like that? How long could anyone last?

By the time Sam reached the illusion-filled laneway, he was almost running, and he pounded on the order's door, charging inside and past Oliver as the alchemist stepped back hurriedly.

"Bobby still here?" Sam barked out, barely waiting for an answer.

"Yeah, in the –" Oliver closed the door and turned to find Sam gone. He followed the clanging bootsteps down the staircase, looking over the balustrade at the tall hunter as he crossed the situation room and bounded up the steps to the library.

"What the –" Bobby looked at Sam and closed his mouth, flicking a sideways glance at Ellen. "Where's Dean?"

"Trapped," Sam said, his voice thick and tight. "We need everything the order has on Purgatory, absolutely everything."

Jerome looked from Sam to Felix and Katherine and nodded slowly. "What happened?"

"I don't know – not exactly," Sam told him, dropping into a chair and running an impatient hand through his hair. "Abaddon – the demon – she got free somehow, and she went for the guide. I got tangled up with him and ended up back here when he bugged out."

Katherine walked to the table, her arms full of books, and dumped on the surface, pulling out a chair behind the stack.

"Purgatory is where the souls of the monsters go, when they're killed up here," Sam continued, reaching across the table for the topmost book. "Kopaki said they were damned to spend eternity killing and being killed."

"So Dean and your grandpop are surrounded by monsters as well as an archdemon down there?" Bobby asked, reached out for the next book.

Nodding, Sam looking over his shoulder as Oliver walked up the steps. "We can use another summoning for a psychopomp – I don't think Kopaki will answer but maybe one of the others will," he said. "Try and get back in there. Or find something else – he said there was a doorway out of there, a door only humans could use."

"Did Dean hear that?" Ellen asked, sitting down next to Bobby.

"Yeah, I think so," Sam said. "But we didn't find out where it was – and the whole place, it looks the same, everywhere you go."

"And we're on the clock anyway," Jerome added. "Nothing here is going to give us the time to go searching."

"We can summon crows, sparrows, reapers, foxes – there are a dozen rituals for calling the guides of the dead," Oliver said, walking around the tables toward the hall. "If the crow won't respond, what do you want to try next?"

"Get the spells for the native American guides, Oliver," Jerome said, looking at Sam. "This is their land; they might have information on something local – like the exit to this place."

Oliver nodded and walked out of the room, and Sam let out his breath, feeling the tension in his shoulders unwinding slightly as the burden of finding a way to get Dean out was in part, at least, taken on by the legacy.

"Is Alex still here?" he asked Bobby.

"She took the files and Rufus took her back to the keep," Bobby replied. "You look like three kinds of hell, Sam. Ellen can go tell her –"

Sam shook his head. "No, I'll go."

"Then go and get something to eat first," Ellen said firmly. "We can get the summoning ready."

He nodded, getting to his feet as the last couple of days began its slow motion crash onto him. His legs were aching from the constant walking, he was starving hungry and thirsty and tired. Food and a shower and change of clothes would help, he thought as he walked out of the library, heading for the stairs. Maybe the fox would have a solution before he had to go tell Alex anything.

An hour later.

Sam looked up as Marla ladled the thick stew into the bowl in front of him, placing a wedge of hot, fresh bread beside it. The shower had taken the ache from his body and clean clothes and the smell of the food had receded his panic slightly.

"Katherine called up while you were in the shower," Marla said, sitting down beside him. "They've found a ritual, Oliver's putting the ingredients together now."

He nodded, trying to stop himself from cramming more food into his mouth. He couldn't ever remember being this hungry, not even under the influence of the blood, although it hadn't been food that his body had craved then.

"Sam, each of the Word of God tablets describes a realm in Creation," Marla continued, more slowly. "Kelly and his trainees were almost there when we last had radio contact from them, perhaps they have found the tablet that describes this realm, where Dean is trapped. Even if the psychopomps will not help, Chuck may find the answers on the tablet –"

Sam swallowed the mouthful hard, his heart beat accelerating. "It'll take them months to get back here, Marla, even if they've got it –"

"I was thinking that perhaps you could call Castiel," she interrupted, looking at him. "He is loyal to your brother, you said, yes? He could bring back the hunters and the tablet quickly?"

Loading his fork again, Sam looked down at the food and nodded. "Yeah. He could." He looked up at her. "You're right, that'd be the fastest way if the guides won't play."

Taking a deeper breath, as he thought through what they could do, he chewed and swallowed automatically. With Cas' help, they could have the tablet in a day, at most. There had to be details of Purgatory on the tablet that covered the children of Nintu. If, he backtracked abruptly, the angel responded to his prayer. If he was able to, he amended, remembering the last time Cas had gone AWOL, locked into Heaven's halls while the Grigori had been attacking.

It was still a better solution that hoping to find a fast answer within the hundred of thousands of texts in the order, or even in the other chapters, he decided, mopping up the last of the sauce from his bowl with the final crust of bread.

East Keep, Kansas

Sitting in the warm and comfortable living room, Sam studied the woman opposite him. He'd barely gotten to know her before she'd been taken by the Grigori. Some of his knowledge of her had come from the slowly returning memories of his possession, seeing her see him, when Lucifer had been otherwise occupied. The rest had been from working with her at the order, working on the transcriptions that Chuck had been pouring out, her ability to decipher the prophet's atrocious scrawl and pick up the patterns in what she'd been reading of them giving them information he thought they might otherwise have missed. He'd liked her quiet manner then, the organised, pragmatic streak that had allowed her to run the keeps supplies and requirements almost behind the scenes, and still find the time to help wherever she'd been able. He'd been able to see why Dean had liked that as well.

She looked the same, a little thinner maybe, her hair cut short and growing out again, the soft maple curls brushing her neck. The needle-marks from the Grigori's machine had gone, healed up completely. If it hadn't been for the shadows that seemed to fill her eyes sometimes, she would have seemed just as she'd been, before the attack.

Playing on the floor between them, his niece and nephew were quiet, fully immersed in exploring the simple objects she'd set out for them. The firelight and soft lamps lit their tufts of hair to rose and gold respectively. Dean's son and daughter. Internally, he shook his head, still hardly able to believe that.

Watching his brother with them was even more disorienting. There was a gentleness in him that he remembered, from his own childhood memories, but that was hard to reconcile with the things he'd seen Dean do in the last few years. There was a patience to him as well, something that most people didn't really notice, focussing on the electric energy that buzzed when Dean was hunting or impatient for something to do, to start, to finish. That patience was a hidden well, appearing and disappearing. Like his brother's compassion, and the empathy that he revealed as little as possible. Like, Sam realised gradually, the emotions that lay well beneath the surface and were only forced up under the most extreme stressors.

"We've tried several summonings so far," he said, lifting his gaze back to Alex. "There is a doorway out of Purgatory, but, uh, most of the guides already know that there's an archdemon there and they're, uh, baulking at the idea of going back."

"There was something about the powers of Hell in the other planes, Sam," she said to him, frowning a little as she seemed to try to force the memory. "I can't remember the details but it was on the tablet, in the first translations that Chuck made, I think. We might have misfiled it, put it with the histories."

He blinked, leaning forward in his chair. "You're remembering more?"

"Some things," she said, waving a hand dismissively. "Some things that seem to just be there. I don't know what they are until I hear something that makes sense of them. Like this."

James looked up at her and lifted his arms, and she leaned toward him, catching him under the arms and lifting him onto her lap, the baby cuddling into her as she ducked her head over his. Sam felt his throat close suddenly as he looked at them.

"Alex, I'm sorry about this –"

She lifted her head, her eyes wide as she cut him off, "Sam, it wasn't your fault, don't apologise."

"I'm gonna do everything to get him back, you know that, right?"

"Of course," she told him. "Sam … he was – he was worried about leaving, about not being here," she added, resting her cheek against her son's head as she looked at him. "It will make it harder for him, to be trapped there."

Nodding, Sam said, "We're going to call Cas, get him to find the team up in the Arctic and bring them back. The tablet should have more on it."

She seemed about to say something, ducking her head and stopping herself at the last minute, and he wondered if her reticence was about what she'd wanted to say or ask, or if it was about not knowing him.

"What?"

"It's –" Alex pressed her lips together, her uncertainty transparent on her face. He watched her as she seemed to make a decision. "I dreamed about Dean last night," she told him, her voice dropping a little. "Dreamed about him fighting something that looked like a cross between a wolf and a man. In a place where the light was flat."

They had fought the werewolf attack, maybe somewhere around the time it would've been night here. Jerome's voice came back to him, the memory clear.

She dreamed about Dean, at first, about him meeting with you – or rather Lucifer – in your body. We think the devil was sending those dreams, trying to get Dean to give his location away.

"Alex, do you dream of him when he's away?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Not really. This was the first time it was so clear," she said. "Sometimes, there're fragments, you know, like a fast slide-show or something, but they're memories, I think. Not really dreams."

"Did Jerome – or Katherine – tell you how you found a connection to me, uh, when I was – possessed?"

She nodded. "He tried to explain it. I didn't really understand what he meant."

"Uh, okay," Sam hedged, looking down at Evelyn. "Uh, it's not really a very common thing, what you did."

"Yeah, I got that when he asked me to work for the order," she said, her tone a little dry. "You don't have to dance around it, Sam. Jerome said it was because I'd loved Dean, had reached out and intercepted the dreams that the devil had been trying to use to lure him out."

"Right." He let out a small exhale. "This might be the same thing, you reaching out to him."

"I know." Her arms closed around her son. "I don't know how it can help."

"Neither do I," he admitted. "But maybe that'll get clearer."

"Sam," Alex said, her brow creasing. "Jerome told me that before – when I dreamed of you – I went there, not just in my head, but all of me." She looked down at James and Evelyn. "I don't think I can risk doing that – what would happen to them if I died where he is?"

Sam looked at her. "I think you better come and stay at the order, for a little while. Until we get this figured out."