Castiel slammed on the brakes, and happily the other driver had good reflexes, or the Lexus would have been T-boned on Dean's side by the oncoming 1967 Impala. As it was, Dean was able to open his door, banging it against the driver's side corner of the Impala's bumper. He crouched behind the door and brandished a gun around its edge. "Put down your weapon! Open the window and show your hands now! Or I'll shoot you right through the windshield!"

The window rolled down and a male voice said, "Bull, Dean. You're not gonna shoot this car."

Dean shot straight up, then wobbled on his injured leg. "Sam?"

.

The first priority was moving the Lexus so that it didn't block the driveway. As Castiel did that, parking in a double row of hotel guests' cars, Sam backed away from the drive and parked by a lamppost, which meant he had a well lighted view of Dean's bicolored jeans as Dean limped the few steps toward him.

He jumped out of the car. "Dean, what happened to your leg?"

Dean looked down. "Something happened to my leg?"

"I appreciate your sense of humor more at some times than at others."

"We had some excitement. Go help Cas with those sheets, would you? We were trying to keep our DNA out of the car, it's stolen."

Sam smiled. "Don't think they'll do DNA testing for a crime like car theft."

"They might if it's linked to a triple murder in Bel Air."

Sam swore, which was rare. "We've gotta get moving."

"Yes we do."

Cas had carefully folded the sheets inward on the car seats. He and Sam put them on the asphalt, put the bundle of first-aid items and the plastic tumbler Dean had used on top of them, and folded it into one big bundle.

At that point, Castiel dropped to his knees and went still, hardly breathing.

"Cas?" Sam asked. He looked over at Dean, who was leaning on the Impala, pressing his hand against his leg, and wasn't looking at them at the moment.

"Give me – a few seconds."

And after a few seconds, he went from almost not breathing to breathing heavily. With Sam's help, he got to his feet. "Man," Sam said, "you guys really went through something."

"We did. Dean must not drive. I believe he has stopped bleeding, but he lost a lot of blood previously, and had a drink to help the pain."

"Got it. Here we go."

Sam put the bundled sheets into the Impala's trunk and shook his head as Dean beckoned for the keys. "You've got shotgun. Cas told me you lost a lot of blood."

Dean looked disgruntled, but limped toward the passenger side. "Cas is a rat bastard."

"Little harsh, Dean."

"I promised him – " as he dropped into the passenger seat and Castiel climbed into the back – "I wouldn't say anything nice to him until he finishes becoming human."

Sam got in the car, closed the door, looked back at Castiel. "Is that what's going on with you?"

Castiel nodded, his eyes closed. "I keep reminding myself that it's not as bad as Hell."

Sam started the car and went down the driveway, glancing at Dean. "So it sounds like we're headed out of town."

"We are. Did you finish packing?"

"I had it finished before you called me from near LAX."

"I thought we agreed you'd stay in the apartment."

"You agreed I'd stay in the apartment. I looked at the prospect of sitting on my hands for two or three hours while you and Cas dodged a demonic sorcerer, and said the hell with it. I took a cab to Embassy Suites."

"What was the plan? I know you had one."

"Well, I knew by the time I got here, you and Cas would have had more than enough time to transfer the weapons and say your goodbyes. The plan was to find the car and see if you and maybe Cas were with it. If so, I'd join you in whatever you were doing." Dean made a slight choking sound, and Sam gave him a bitchface. "If you weren't with the car, I'd call you and tell you where I was. You gave me the car's spare key, so if any demonic sorcerer tried to give me any trouble, I'd run over him and get out."

"You and no weapon against the Capitol. See, this is why no one lets you make the plans."

"Very funny, Dean. Anyway, I found where you hid the car, started to get in, and realized that the keys were in the ignition. You would never leave the keys in that car willingly. I called you, no answer, didn't leave a message in case the phone was in the wrong hands."

"Devin had it. Damn, I forgot to get it back. So you knew we'd been taken away, you couldn't get hold of me – where were you going when we pulled in?"

"Cas' house. It was the only place I could think of to start a search."

"Smart, Sam, but it could've got you killed. There's at least three pissed-off demons there, maybe more. "

"What did you do to piss 'em off?"

"I'll tell you, but first let's pull into a parking lot and destroy your phone. We'll get others when we're away from here."

"Trying to think if there's anything I need badly on there. No. OK."

They turned into a parking lot, ground the hapless phone under the Impala's tires, buried it in a trash can, and continued toward the 10 freeway. Dean told Sam what had happened, with Castiel filling in from time to time.

Sam's eyes were wide by the end of the recital, but he kept his tone businesslike. "So three of them are dead. Parcell and Hannah and the guy who took your phone, they're alive, along with the guard who came in while you were trying to get out."

"Ricardo," Castiel said. "And there were two other cars that pulled up to the house right behind him. Apparently Hannah had told the other staff members to stay out for the rest of the night. It doesn't surprise me that Ricardo returned early, he's very protective, and so new that he might not realize that, in the past, an order from Hannah was an order from me. But I can't figure out who else would have defied Hannah's order."

After a moment, Dean said, "So where are we headed after San Bernardino?"

"I was thinking about this back at the apartment," Sam said. "We want to start by moving as far as fast as possible, so I was thinking we plow straight through to Phoenix. We'll get there about dawn, get some sleep. Then we start doing big zig-zags, just in the hopes of throwing off anyone else who might be tracking us. I was thinking maybe Rapid City, South Dakota, then Lincoln, Nebraska."

"Tracking my ass," Dean said, laughing. "You just want to see Mount Rushmore."

"Everyone in America has seen Mount Rushmore except me. I don't think it's irrational to want to go there. Big tourist attraction, lots of people – "

"In late March? It'll be freezing up there."

"There'll still be enough people that we can blend in to a crowd."

"We'll discuss it," Dean said in the tone of a stern father. "But the big question is, where do we end up?"

Sam glanced in the rear-view mirror. "I found out something yesterday, while you were romping around in the forest, that might affect this. There's been so much else going on, it never seemed the right time to bring it up. But I've been working on hacking into police databases for a few days, and yesterday I found out something that might be relevant to where we go. There's no warrant for your arrest, in Austin or anywhere in Texas."

"Are you kidding me?"

"No. A report was filed, and then the owner of the company called the cops and said it was a misunderstanding, he'd loaned out the items to a prospective client."

Dean tipped his head back against the window and laughed. "Jeff."

"Who's Jeff?"

"The owner. He's hyper-vigilant about public appearance, and you can kinda see his point. You don't want homeowners to think you hire shady people when they're deciding whether to trust you with home security. But he was fanatical about it. I can just imagine him making that call to the cops. 'Nope, no theft, no one crooked ever worked here, nothing for you guys to work on!'"

"Well, thanks to Jeff, there's no legal reason for us to avoid going back to
Texas. If you want to."

"Do you?"

Sam was silent for a moment, just driving. "I feel like I'm a new person, I'd kind of like to make a new start. But if you want to, in a different city, that's fine."

"No, I'm up for a different state too. Cas? Anywhere you think would be best for us to go?"

"No." Castiel's voice was quiet, almost inaudible in the moving car. "I would suggest avoiding the coasts. As with humans, demons tend to congregate on the coasts, and those in the large cities are in better communication with each other."

"Middle of the country, small or mid-size town. Still leaves us a lot of options," Dean said. He tipped his head back again, and, glancing at him quickly, Sam could almost see tension and adrenaline draining out of him. He was asleep in a few moments.

He didn't even wake up when Sam closed the car door after parking outside the apartment. Cas helped as best he could, moving laboriously, but Sam did most of the loading, transferring bags and boxes from the apartment to the trunk and the floor of the back seat.

Only when the trunk was closed did Dean wake up a little, blinking at Sam as he got back behind the wheel. "Are we here?"

"We're here, we're loaded. Say goodbye to the L.A. area."

"Well, I was a big fat help."

"I want you to get as much sleep as possible," Sam said. "Just in case Hannah or someone comes after us, I want you to be as recovered as you can be from that wound."

"I do feel a little better."

"Good. Get some more sleep. You too, Cas, if you can. I'm going to fill the tank down the street, get Dean a bottle of water, and we'll move."

"Let me know when I can assist with driving," Castiel said. Dean was already asleep.

.

Once the streetlights and businesses of civilization faded, the Impala's headlights were the only hint in the desert as to the road ahead. There were a few other vehicles out there – not many, and mostly semis. Twice a car fell in behind them; Sam gradually slowed to 55 miles an hour, and both times the other car passed them.

At about 3 in the morning, they pulled into a truck stop with a restaurant and a big convenience store in Ehrenberg, Arizona, just the other side of the state line. Dean pulled on a pair of non-bloody jeans in the Impala, then took the first aid kit to the men's room to change his dressing. Sam filled the tank, Castiel bought three cell phones in the store and had them activated. They loaded up on jerky, Snickers, and caffeine.

Dean noticed some chunks of concrete that were lying where one too many trucks had ground over the curb next to a driveway, and put them in the DNA bundle. Castiel drove back west a few miles to the Colorado River, and Sam threw the weighted bundle over the bridge railing.

Then they started east again. Castiel only had about one and a half hours of the pitch-black, lonely highway Sam had driven. Billboards began popping up, then traffic increased, and well before they passed the "Welcome to Phoenix" sign it was clear that they were in a major metropolitan area.

At about 6 a.m., they found a motel that had a room with two queen beds. Sam offered to get a separate room, but then agreed with Dean and Cas that all three of them should stay together until they were certain that scrying demons wouldn't descend on them. All that they took into the room were two bags of clothing, one bag of toiletries, the laptop, and the four guns.

They didn't even need to discuss arrangements; Dean and Castiel sat on one bed, Sam dropped down on the other. Castiel immediately began punching buttons on his phone.

"Do I want to know who you're calling?" Dean asked.

"My Terrestrial contact. Since our phones were taken, I don't know if he tried to respond to my call. They probably don't know about the battle at my house, or whether I'm alive." He lifted the phone to his ear and waited a moment. "Is this Lilith? If I've reached the wrong number, I'm sorry," and disconnected.

"Code," Dean said, pulling off his shoes.

"Yes."

"Oh, this is great." Dean was pulling off a sticky sock, revealing a foot smeared with blood that had run down his leg. "OK. I'm gonna wash off these feet."

"I'm going to take off this coat," Cas said. "It's quite warm in here."

Dean and Sam exchanged a look as Dean headed into the bathroom. Castiel had never complained about his coat being warm indoors before.

Moving his joints gingerly, Cas hung up both his coat and suit jacket, loosened his tie, sat on the bed and took off his shoes. Sam took off his shoes too, moved over to a little table near the door, and opened the laptop. "While we're waiting for your guy to call back, I'm going to read something to Dean, OK?"

Cas lay down, closing his eyes. "Certainly."

"What've you got?" tossing a pink-stained washcloth onto the floor, Dean limped out of the bathroom.

"I've been working on this," Sam said. "Tell me what you think."

He looked at the laptop screen. "Dear Sarah: I don't even know how to explain what happened six months ago. It was like something possessed me, and all I knew was, I had to get out. It wasn't you, it was everything, but mostly it was me.

"Dean tracked me down and he's been getting me different kinds of help. I gave him all kinds of crap, but maybe he was right. Anyway, I feel like I've come through on the other side of something, but I've come through different, and I'm just not the guy you knew before.

"A girl like you wouldn't have any trouble finding someone in six months, so I hope you've done that. If you haven't, you should. I won't be coming back to Austin, and even if I did, things would be awkward and weird. You deserve a guy who doesn't freak out and abandon you for half a year.

"Anyway, I'm passing through Phoenix, so I'm going to mail this here. Don't know where I'll end up, but don't worry, I'm not crazy anymore, just different.

"Best of luck in your future. I know you'll do great. Sam."

He looked up.

Dean, by his expression, wasn't impressed. "Well, it's good to give her an explanation, but I don't know – seems like you're usually more eloquent."

"My first draft was a lot more emotional. But I read over it and, you know, I don't want her thinking, 'The poor thing needs me, how can I help?' I want her to think, 'Glad to get closure, but wow, did I dodge a bullet.'"

"Oh." Dean nodded. "Well, yeah, I'd say you've hit it on the nose, then."

Sam shook his head. "I made it sound kind of like a blow-off, but she really is great, and I really hope she does find someone who deserves her. I can't help wondering – "

There was a pause, and Dean said, "If you'll find someone? Of course you will. You're still honest, a good – a kind guy, smarter than hell, pretty good-looking if you don't stand next to me. We'll settle down somewhere, you'll find a gal who likes all that and doesn't mind that you're a little more paranoid, a little tougher, maybe a little less focused on having the perfectly xeriscaped lawn."

Sam grinned. "You have to admit, I did some damn fine xeriscaping."

"No question."

Castiel's phone rang, and he sat up to take the call. "Speak."

After a moment, "Where I am isn't relevant, at the moment. Things happened after I phoned with the extraction code last night, and – "

He broke off. "You are?"

Then there was a long silence. His head jerked back and he sat up straighter.

Sam and Dean exchanged another look.

Then, "Well done. Congratulations. – No, I think it's best that I absent myself from Southern California for a while. Give everyone – " his voice broke a little – "my heartiest congratulations, though. You deserve this victory."

He disconnected, staring at the floor.

After a moment Dean asked, "What happened?"

Cas looked up. "After I phoned the Terrestrials with the extraction code last night, our Council decided that, since I had supplied them with a great deal of information about the Loyalists and couldn't supply them with any more, they would put an invasion plan into effect." He looked at Dean, his expression hard to read. "You will recall that, after we saw two cars pulling up to the security gate last night, I couldn't understand why staff members were returning before Hannah had told them to return."

Dean's lips parted. "It wasn't your staff members. It was the Terrestrials, invading."

"Yes."

"You're telling me that instead of ducking back inside and hiking that tunnel and committing a couple of felonies to get back to the Impala, we could've just said, 'Hi, guys! Can someone give us a lift to the Embassy Suites?'"

"Well. They would have needed to complete their takeover of the house first, and would have wanted us to assist. I'm not sure either of us would have been much help in a battle at that point."

"True."

"Of course they had both the home and gate security codes for my house. I had given them those codes for Mr. Vincent's house also. Some months ago I even managed to slip a Terrestrial into the house and added his thumbprint to the armory's unlocking procedures. I never did find out exactly where the main Loyalist armory was, but they decided to strike with the information they did have, and it paid off. Mr. Sanchez – " Castiel shrugged – "was our fourth head of weaponry in two months. He had neither experience nor much training in preventing or fighting such an attack. He and several guards were killed, and the armory is under the control of the Terrestrials.

"Mrs. Vincent will doubtless remain in Tahiti. Parcell's home has been surrounded, although – not surprisingly – he can't be found. Tomorrow a representative of the Terrestrials will submit an offer to Sucro's acting CEO for purchase of the controlling shares of Sucro."

"An offer he can't refuse."

"Exactly."

"Then – " Dean stood. "Oh my God, Cas, you've done it. Everything you wanted to do when you hired me. The Loyalist leadership is smashed, the Terrestrials are in control, and Loyalists in other parts of the country are gonna be saying, 'You know what, never mind,' and backing off on the whole raise-Lucifer-and-scorch-the-Earth plan. Oh my God. You did it."

"Only with your assistance. This would never have happened without you." He looked over. "And Sam."

His voice was flat, and Dean seemed to be trying to figure out why. He sat back down on the bed next to Castiel and said, "Of course there'll still be Loyalist soldiers out there, maybe even an insurgency. And Parcell's around somewhere."

"Parcell doesn't concern me. He'll find a way to ingratiate himself with the Terrestrial leadership. And as for us – " He looked back and forth between Sam and Dean. "We should still be on guard against a disgruntled Loyalist soldier tracking us, but realistically, I would say we're as safe as anyone who's taken part in a demon war could be."

Still in the same flat tone. Dean said, "But – "

"You recall the situation at the house when we left, when my comrades arrived."

And Dean understood. But he simply said, "Three of your staff dead. Parcell vanished. A guy searching for everyone upstairs. Hannah and a guard tied up and blindfolded in the hall outside the interrogation room."

"The invasion party searched and cleared the first and second floors. Ricardo was discovered and offered the chance to surrender. He chose to fight, and was killed. They then went downstairs and found Devin, still bound, very confused, still affected by the devil's trap bullet in his brain. They took him prisoner.

"I can only guess that Hannah, despite the devil's trap bullet in her leg, managed to roll as far as the inside of the interrogation room, found one of the angel blades on the floor, cut herself free, took off the blindfold, and dug the devil's trap bullet out of her leg with the blade." Dean's lips jerked back off of his teeth and he gave an empathetic grunt of pain. "About that time, I suppose, she heard the Terrestrials coming down the hall and hid behind the door. They came into the room, saw the bodies, and while that distracted them, she came out from behind the door. She killed two of them with the angel blade, before she was herself destroyed."

He lowered his head again. Dean and Sam simply listened.

"I don't understand. She wanted to kill you. As a Loyalist, she was my enemy. I shouldn't – and yet I can't help feeling – responsible for the destruction of someone who had been – "

He pressed his hands against his eyes briefly, continued. "Demons don't have friends, but she was a staunch ally, and that's very rare among us. If I could – "

He put his hands over his eyes again, groaned and bent double.

Dean was kneeling in front of him in a moment. "Cas? What's going on?"

"Pain. My eyes."

"Let me see." Dean was trying gently to pull Cas' hands from his face. "Are they doing that flickering thing?"

"I don't believe so." With some effort he opened his eyes and stared at Dean. "What do they look like?"

They looked like blue, human eyes. Brimming with tears.

Dean laid his hand along Cas' face. "How long has it been since you cried?"

"I can't remember." Cas blinked and tears rolled down his cheeks. He touched them and looked at his fingertips wonderingly.

Dean sat beside Castiel again, one hand on his back.

"Just so I understand," Sam's voice was quiet, "she was killed? Not exorcised?"

"Not exorcised. She was stabbed with an angel blade."

"So she's not being tortured in Hell."

"No."

After a moment Sam said, "I don't remember a lot about the exorcism, but I remember she got Andrealphus into that room with the devil's trap. He was so eager – I don't know if she had him thinking that he was gonna get rich or get lucky, but he followed her into that room like a lamb. I know she was an enemy of humans, especially you, Dean, but in a way, I owed her for that."

"She was an excellent aide," Castiel said quietly. "I could give her the most difficult assignments and know that they would be carried out."

"And I get the feeling that, if she'd known the big showdown was coming, she'd have wanted to go down fighting," Dean said.

"Yes." Castiel wiped away a couple of more tears.

"Cas? Do me a favor?" Dean asked quietly. "Do one of your magic jumps across the room to the door."

Castiel looked at him, puzzled.

Then he sat forward, his eyes wide, looking at Dean in astonishment. "I can't."

Sam gave a long low whistle.

"You made it," Dean said. "You made it, Cas."

"Happy human birthday, Cas," Sam said. "March twentieth. Wait, what?"

He double-checked the laptop screen, then turned to the window beside him, pulling back the curtain for a moment. "You're starting your human life at dawn. On the vernal equinox. Talk about rebirth – Hey. In Phoenix!" He gave an astonished laugh.

"We should drink to it," Dean said. "But we've got nothin' to drink."

"Water, what the heck," Sam said, standing.

There was a stack of Styrofoam cups beside a coffee maker. Sam ran some water into three of them and distributed them. "Here's to Cas."

They drank. "And you focus on the future from now on," Dean said. "Not what you did when you were human before, not what you did as a demon. From now on you focus on the good you're going to do this time around."

"I never thought," Castiel said quietly. "I never believed it would be possible. It wouldn't have been, without your insistence." He raised his cup. "To Dean and Sam."

They drank again. "Problem is," Dean said, "we're going to have to get you a new name. It's not just the turning human with the chance of demons after us, it's the cops. They'll probably just think you got killed in a mob war, but if a credit-card charge for something turns up for Castiel De Santis, even halfway across the country, they'll be ringin' the doorbell."

Castiel looked at him with a little amusement. "Dean, I've been undercover with particularly ruthless demons for years. I've always known the day might come when I'd have to abandon my former life quickly."

He got up and pulled the new wallet out of his suit jacket, handing it to Dean. "I have a bank account, credit cards, and a driver's license under a new name."

"Castiel Novak," Dean read.

"It's derived from a Serbian word meaning 'new,' so it seemed appropriate."

"You think you should keep the same first name?" Sam asked. "It's unusual."

"True. It's a risk, but a small one. And the name may have been given to me by a demon, but I feel I've made it my own."

He sat back down beside Dean. "Would you mind moving over? I'm going to lie down."

"Still hurting?" Dean asked, standing.

Cas lay down, closing his eyes. "Yes, although not quite as much. Mainly I'm exhausted. I haven't felt so exhausted in – I don't know how long."

Sam nodded. "I think we should take the rest of the day to sleep and heal up. One of us should be on guard duty, in shifts. Just to be on the safe side. Tomorrow morning, if you guys feel like it, we'll get moving again after I mail my letter to Sarah."

"And after I pack up the stuff I stole from Jeff and mail it back to him," Dean said. "And we need to get Cas some things. He literally left town with just the clothes on his back."

"Good. Then tomorrow afternoon, we'll start for Rapid City."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Rapid City again."

"As long as we're traveling around, we may as well see Mount Rushmore."

Cas' eyes popped open. "I want to see Mount Rushmore too."

Dean burst out laughing. "OK, kiddies, I'll take you to Mount Rushmore. If you're good boys, I'll buy you T-shirts."

Castiel began making sounds, choked snorts with the intermittent bray of a tiny donkey. Dean flinched, then said, "First time you've laughed in a while too, huh?"

Castiel nodded, calming down. "Well," Dean said, "you'll get better at it." He patted Cas' arm, while shooting a wide-eyed I-hope-to-God look at Sam.

Then he said, "After Rapid City, I want to go across the state and visit Bobby in Sioux Falls. I want to give him half of our angel-blade bullets, if it's OK with you guys. He needs them, and I'm hoping we won't."

"And then?" Sam said. Cas had apparently drifted off to sleep.

"After that my ill-gotten gains are going to be running low. We'll have to settle down somewhere and get jobs."

"Actually sounds damn good," Sam said, returning to the table and stretching his legs out under it.

"It does, doesn't it." Dean yawned.

"Get some sleep."

"Are you sure you want the first watch? You did a lot of driving last night."

"Yeah, but I wasn't fighting or bleeding or turning human. I'll be fine."

Dean got one of the guns and put it on the table near Sam's hand. "You wake me up in four hours sharp."

"Got it."

Burying another gun under his pillow, Dean stretched out next to Castiel and closed his eyes.

After a moment, he reached over and rested his hand on Cas' chest. Cas made a little sound – of pleasure, not pain – and covered Dean's hand with his own, apparently in his sleep.

Sam smiled, looking over at them. He pulled back the curtain for a moment again, surveyed the dawn-lit parking lot carefully.

Then he let the curtain drop back. He put his earphones on, cocking them so that one ear was uncovered, and started working the laptop's keyboard. As he began plotting their route to Rapid City, he listened to a Zayde Wolf song.

.

.

THE END