Rossi sent six members of the SWAT team around to the back of the house. The other four members accompanied him in the front. It was a nice house—old, but well taken care of—with a wrap-around porch and two floors, not including the basement. From the blueprints Garcia had sent, it would be easy to clear. They all had their orders.

Rossi tested the doorknob and found it unlocked. He led his group in through the front, clearing room after room until both groups met in the middle. With a few hand signals, the unit split back up, this time into three groups. Rossi took two men upstairs with him, careful about checking around the corners before coming into view. The stairs were always his least favorite part about clearing a house. He was up them quickly though.

The stairs led directly into a long hallway. Two doors to their right, one to their left. One officer broke off to clear the single room while Rossi and the second officer took the two to the right.

"Clear."

"Clear."

"Put your hands in the air, slowly."

Rossi joined the officer closest to him to assist with the arrest. Carver Edlund, AKA Charles Shurley, was wanted for conspiracy to commit kidnapping and murder, aiding and abetting known fugitives, torture, and a myriad of other crimes—anything they could charge him with, really. Hotch had suspected that Edlund's son may also be in the house. When Rossi peered into the room, however, he knew something wasn't right.

A man sat in a chair facing away from the door. His head was tilted to the side and Rossi could just make out some liquid dripping from it. His first thought was that it was water, but when the drop hit the chair and fell slowly, leaving behind a thin trail of red, he knew what it was. The unit moved into the room slowly to surround the man, but they lowered their weapons at what they discovered.

It was Edlund alright. He had been in some sort of altercation. His left eye was swollen shut. His jaw hung at an awkward angle showing gaps of missing teeth. Blood dripped from the back of his head and a small trail of it came from his nose. His ears were, perhaps, the only parts of him intact. There were multiple stab wounds and lacerations covering the rest of his body. Edlund had died painfully, that was for sure. Now that he was really looking, Rossi could see that the wetness of the blood soaked into the plush carpet implied he'd died recently. When Rossi checked for a pulse, he noticed the body was still warm. Their new Unsub may still be in the house.

"The house has been cleared," one of the SWAT members informed him. "There's no one here but us."

Rossi amended his thought. Their new Unsub may still be in the general vicinity.

CM~SPN~CM~SPN

Hotch and Prentiss each led a unit through the church. Luckily, on Tuesday afternoon, there weren't many parishioners to move out of the line of fire. Two men and a woman sat in varying positions in the nave. Members of the team quickly removed them from the building, none of them even putting up a token protest. Civilians escorted from the building, they continued through the church, clearing rooms and pews as they went. Prentiss found Pastor James Morton in his office. It took only seconds to put him cuffs and read him his rights. She was unnecessarily rough with the pastor, but not enough to cause any problems down the line. She was just happy that they were finally catching the bastards.

Hotch led his team down to the basement. From Dean's accounts, he knew they'd been kept underground and the basement seemed like their best chance of finding him—assuming that Dean was even put back in his previous prison. Hotch cleared the stairwell quickly and took quick stock of his surroundings at the bottom of the stairs. There was a long row of shelves along the back wall, though the other three were bare. On the floor, in the center of the room, was a small, metal door that Hotch assumed served as a hatch between the basement and The Pit. There were traces of blood on the floor and Hotch informed the members of his unit to try not to step in them of they could avoid it. While the others finished clearing the small room, checking to be sure no one was hiding behind the boxes or shelves, Hotch gripped the metal handle and twisted. The latch gave and Hotch pulled the door upward toward himself to reveal Perdition. Two of the officers shined their lights down into the hole, looking for any sign of life. There was none.

It took some doing, but eventually two SWAT members were lowered into The Pit. The smell was horrible and, even with the glowing bulb above their heads, it was too dark to see by. They used their flashlights to look around. The place was empty but for a roomful of dead bodies and something they thought Hotch should see.

Hotch was also lowered into the hole. He had urge to plug his nose at the smell, but he adjusted to it after a minute or so. He looked around at the cages, at the decrepit state of the prison, and found a feeling he didn't feel often—pity. He tried to stifle it, but it was there in spades. How Dean had survived this place and come out largely intact, he didn't know. An officer waved him over to one of the rooms.

"I thought you might want to see this," he said.

Hotch pulled out his own flashlight and shined it into the room. The first things the light hit were the legs of a bed. He followed the frame until he came to what the officer had called him down for. Tied to the bed frame with cloth and leather straps, an Angel had been tortured thoroughly. There were scratch and bite marks all over his body. A few precise cuts shone through the large amounts of blood. It was tough to look at, but they had been right to call Hotch down to see it.

He climbed the ladder back up to the basement and met up with Prentiss outside. After being inside The Pit—which was an apt description for the place, Hotch realized—he needed to see the sun.

"Anything?" she asked.

"There are at least two dozen dead and an unidentified tortured Angel. It looks like the prisoners retaliated and pulled him into The Pit."

"Victims?"

"I don't know. There doesn't seem to be anyone alive down there, but the bodies in the room are ripe enough that it's safe to say they're pretty old—except for the Angel. Someone had to be there not too long ago."

Prentiss thought before she responded. "If they somehow got word that we were on our way, they could have disposed of the prisoners… either that or transferred them elsewhere."

"I don't know," Hotch said. "There's something about the Angel down there that makes me think they didn't transfer them and, according to Novak, they still need Dean for their apocalypse so I'm sure that he's still alive at the very least."

"I thought Reid said Dean was the only one who could stop them." She was confused. "Wouldn't they want him dead?"

Hotch shook his head. "They believe that, once they free Lucifer, Dean will become some sort of savior. He's supposed to be the one to fight the devil, which is what they want. They need him alive, but they want him out of the way until they've finished breaking the seals."

"So they'd most likely keep him in The Pit," Prentiss surmised. "Then where are they?"

Hotch didn't answer. He didn't have any idea where they could have gone.