Marian knew about angels. She learned about them in Sunday school, and in church, where her parents brought her every week. She learned about them in the Christian school she went to. Her parents were very religious.

They called Marian a gift from God. Desperately wanting a child of their own but told they'd never be able to conceive one, Mom and Dad had tried anyway for years, and they'd prayed, prayed harder than most people had about anything. They'd prayed so hard that they'd actually managed to annoy the angels, who usually dismissed human prayer as nothing more than background noise in their fight against Hell and evil and all that nonsense. But of course, Mom and Dad didn't know that part.

They also didn't know that Marian had been an angel once. She'd been a particularly difficult one to deal with, because for some unfathomable reason God had given her a mind of her own. She was an excellent soldier as far as fighting went, but she wasn't always so great at following orders. Her tendency to question authority got her into so much trouble that the other angels were at a loss as to what to do with her: She hadn't committed a crime that would merit her death or even prison, but she couldn't be trusted on her own.

Solving two headaches at once, the angels took Marian's grace away and gave her new life as a human. While there certainly was no 'immaculate' conception, her sudden appearance in Mom's womb had nothing to do with either human's fertility and everything to do with her being an annoying little snot upstairs. Marian was human in every way that counted, including her memory, which was wiped clean the instant she became a little zygote.

Sending an angel to earth as a human was a ridiculous decision, one that had never been made before and would never be made again. There were bigger forces at work than the angels, though—forces like Fate and Destiny, which people tend to scoff at these days. An angel that is mostly human will always be mostly human, which means that they are also just a little bit angelic, and the tiniest bit of grace is all Fate needs to make our story possible. The angels knew the story, but it was so implausible as to seem impossible, and therefore not worth their concern when there were so many other things to concern themselves with. They kept half an eye on Marian, of course, just to be sure she wasn't going to be a problem on Earth; but she turned out to be perfectly normal, and they quickly lost interest. They had no eyes whatsoever on a young man in 17th century Scotland, a man whose mother was a tough-as-nails witch with her eye on immortality. Plenty of people in those days were dabbling in the occult, and people were always making deals with demons; one or two more were of no concern. If someone had been paying attention, they might have taken an interest in Fergus McLeod and smote him before he could find a crossroads. But that would have made our story very short, and far less interesting.

When she was 14 years old, Marian's class was on a whale watch trip based out of Boston, MA. It wasn't a great day to see whales: The sky was dark and the seas were choppy, and half the class was either in the toilets or leaned over the railings being sick. Even some of the crew were feeling nauseous, which was likely why someone forgot to latch the side rail where passengers normally disembarked. This just so happened to be the same railing that Marian grabbed when a wave sent her pitching off balance; half a dozen classmates watched as she caught the rail, then the whole railing swung outward, and Marian followed. She caught the back of her shoe on the deck and seemed to pull herself forward for a moment, but a second bump and a large spray of seawater caused her to lose her grip on the rail, and she fell into the open ocean.

Halfway down the boat, she struck her head against the hull.

It took the crew seven minutes to pull her back onto the deck. Given the size of the waves, the fact that she was unconscious, and the fact that these were marine biologists and not Coast Guard, seven minutes wasn't bad, but it also meant she was probably going to be dead. Normal humans cannot breathe saltwater for seven minutes and come out unharmed.

Marian came back to the land of the living with someone pounding on her chest hard enough to crack her sternum, and immediately vomited more sea water than should have been able to fit in her body. While she'd been out, the teeny little dot of grace inside her had activated, not only saving her life but opening a door in her mind that should have remained shut. She could remember being an angel: Heaven, wars, her friends and…Not-friends.

It really put puberty into perspective.

Despite the overly religious nature of her parents, Marian decided it best not to inform them of her previous life. She didn't need to spend the rest of her days in an asylum.

But now, she knew things she hadn't before. And not just things about angels (like how most of them were Grade A assholes, *cough* Raphael), but things about Earth and Hell and monsters—so many monsters! God had created them, little experiments that he'd then discarded as failures, but he hadn't done anything with them, just stopped trying to fix them. They roamed the human world, hunting people and killing them, and the angels were too busy being self-important and fretting about what dear-old-Dad was up to for them to worry about actual humans and the things that were killing them. So Marian watched, and learned, and she started to hunt. She convinced her parents to send her to an out-of-state boarding high school (Christian, of course) so that she could hunt more and worry less about her family. The part of her that remembered Heaven was also extremely good at school—it seemed to know everything, in fact—and she excelled in her studies despite never actually studying. Her one downfall was history, because apparently humans had got quite a bit wrong, and she had to read the materials in order to learn their version of past events.

In college, she majored in religious studies, which simultaneously pleased the crap out of her parents while providing an endless fount of hunting knowledge. She continued to attend church, mostly out of habit, but she didn't dare pray.

She was afraid someone might hear her.

The first few years out of college were spent on mission trips. Marian built houses in El Salvador and worked on irrigation systems in Senegal; she translated for Doctors Without Borders in Uganda and the Congo. She liked helping people; it was, she felt, what she was meant to do as an angel, anyway. And when she wasn't mixing concrete or explaining tapeworms in French, she was learning about Chupacabra (indigenous to Central and South America) and the Adze and Impundulu (scattered throughout remote areas of the African continent). She learned to listen to the locals talk about their legends, which nine times out of ten were at least partially true.

By her 25th birthday, Marian seemed to have the whole 'hunter' lifestyle figured out. Back home in America (Massachusetts, because she did still love her family), she had a network of hunter friends spread across the country. Her old but sensible Honda Accord was full of iron, silver, salt, holy water, knives, guns, and wooden stakes cut from various trees (those mostly took out the Pagan gods), and continued to run despite having once been possessed by a poltergeist, and twice possessed by squirrels that wanted to live under the hood. She could recite exorcisms in her sleep and rattle off the top twenty most common monsters in the US and how to kill them.

It should come as no surprise, then, that she was familiar with the demon Crowley. He was king of the crossroads, a cocky bastard who loved to hear the sound of his own voice and always seemed to have the upper hand. She'd met him a few times, never getting a chance to trap him or exorcise him. He held more souls than other demons, so he was stronger, which made him more annoying, but usually it was the less successful crossroads demons that caught her attention.

Then December 3 happened.

She was in town visiting her parents. They lived in northern Mass in a town called Rowley, far from the chaos of Boston. Some of her hunter friends were with her, celebrating after they'd taken out a pack of werewolves in Vermont. Things were going well for Marian: She could see her parents, who were healthy and blissfully ignorant of her real occupation; she could relax with her friends, instead of running for her life; and her car was running, which was itself a small miracle. Everything she loved was right there with her.

Everything she loved. Was right there.

Her parents' house wasn't warded. Marian had tried, at first, to hang pictures up with symbols, telling them it was artwork inspired by her religion classes. But they'd felt the images were un-Christian and unsettling, and took them down. Still, she was completely surprised to come home and find Crowley sitting in her living room and her parents possessed by demons. And it wasn't just her parents, come to find out, but every person in the entire town, all 6000+ of them, men, women, and children. Marian and her friends were quickly subdued by a veritable army of demons.

Marian stopped struggling, aware that the demon holding her had easily twice her strength. If the demons had wanted to kill her, they would have done so already: This was looking more like a hostage situation, with her family and 6000 acquaintances and strangers on the line.

"What do you want, Crowley?" fellow hunter Erica growled. Each of the hunters was being held by a single demon, arms hooked behind their backs, stripped of any weapons.

"I want to make a deal," the demon replied, his voice smooth with just a hint of malice.

Someone scoffed. Marian turned, trying to see the cause of the outburst: David, an athletic hunter in his mid-30's. He was currently being held in place by a demon possessing a girl half his size.

"You went to all this trouble—got over six thousand demons to possess an entire town—just for a handful of hunters? It's flattering, but really, we're not worth it."

Crowley cocked his head, smiling faintly, and studied David like he was an annoying insect that had gotten inside the house. "Oh, I agree. I wouldn't send six demons after you, let alone six thousand." He gestured toward the captives as a whole, but then his attention fixed on Marian. "You, however…"

Marian's heart dropped into her stomach and the blood drained from her face. He can't know. How could he possibly know? She'd never told anyone, on the grounds that anyone who knew could then be tortured for information on her.

"You're special, darling," Crowley purred, stepping closer. "Special enough that the devil himself showed an interest in you."

Well, that didn't sound good. She didn't remember much about Lucifer from before the Fall—she'd never had much to do with the archangels anyway—but she knew he had a nasty temper. But she was human now, or human enough, so why show an interest in her?

"I know what you're thinking, Marian: 'I'm ninety-nine percent human, the Big Bad can't possibly have a use for me.' But it's not the ninety-nine percent he wants—it's just the one."

Her companions bristled. "The Hell are you talking abou—" someone began.

Faster than she could process, Crowley had an angel blade pressed to her collarbone. Marian stopped breathing and held perfectly still.

"Do they not know? Really?" Crowley sounded genuinely surprised. "Shall we show them?"

She hissed through her teeth as the blade bit into her skin. It hurt far more than it should have—more than an ordinary knife would have, at least. Her ears rang, and the cut glowed faintly, so faint that she only saw it because she knew it was there. But her friends, who had better views, saw it.

"That's not possible," Erica whispered.

"An angel?" David breathed. "But…Why…"

The angel blade disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and Crowley took a step back, looking smug and satisfied. Marian couldn't stand to look right at him, but she didn't trust him enough to look away, so she settled for staring at a point just to the right of his head.

"'M not an angel," she grumbled. "I was. A long time ago. A lifetime ago. I was…Cast out. For not behaving myself."

"But—You could smite them—"

"No! I can't smite anything! I have no wings, no power. I'm…I'm just a human who remembers what it's like to be an angel."

"An angel with its wings clipped is still an angel," Crowley said. "You have none of the mojo, yet you still have potential."

Her eyes narrowed. "Potential? What's Lucifer want from me that he doesn't already have? There's nothing I can do that he can't—"

Marian cut herself off as a thought occurred to her. There was a witch, ages ago—17th century, if she remembered correctly—who'd been extremely psychic. And though she wasn't a prophet of the Lord, she'd written a book of prophecy: Things she'd seen that would happen, or could happen, depending on what paths were taken. But the angels had gotten pissed, they thought only a prophet should write prophecy: It was neater, the instructions would be clear, and they would come directly from Heaven and not the mind of a crazy old bat whose mind was constantly flicking between 'fast forward' and 'pause.' So they whispered to the devout Puritans and started the witch hunts, and the woman was killed. The book vanished, supposedly it was burned with her cottage, but no one could ever prove it. The angels knew what she'd written, though, and it was only natural that, during some skirmish between angel and demon, Hell would have learned of the 'fake prophecies' as well.

One of the prophecies said that a fallen angel and a demon would produce an Abomination, the angel's fancy term for a Nephilim that was half angel and half demon. This creature would be immensely powerful and become Lucifer's to command, and he would use it to rewrite the universe to his own liking. The text didn't go so far as to name any names, but it was clear that the fallen angel was in a female vessel and would bear the child, and the demon was in a male one. Hence, something Lucifer couldn't do on his own.

Marian shook her head. "No. Lucifer's wrong. It's not me—"

Crowley laughed. "Lucifer's wrong? Want to tell him that yourself? He gets lonely down in the Cage."

"Mare," Erica hissed, "I don't understand…"

Marian swallowed hard. She wished she could call up that feeling of being powerful and divine, but right now she felt so small and human. "You want to make a deal," she said, her voice wavering.

"Yes." Crowley clapped his hands together. "I will let these people go—all 6325 of them—completely unharmed, in exchange for you. I leave here, you come with me; and I own you, mind, body, and soul, forever."

There was a flurry of protests from the other hunters; it certainly seemed like a ridiculous request.

"And if I don't?"

"6325 people die, and I drag all their souls down to Hell. I've got the manpower—well, demon-power—on my side. And that includes dear old Mum and Dad—and your little friends there," he said, nodding to the hunters, who were now shouting all sorts of unhelpful things. Crowley took a step toward her. "Can you live with that, angel?"

This was just supposed to be a fun visit home after a good hunt, she thought forlornly. Now she was facing down either a life of slavery to a demon, which would also include lots of non-consensual sex to produce the aforementioned Abomination and lead to the end of the world, or she could be responsible for the deaths of her family, friends, and over six thousand strangers. The thing was, Crowley had worked very hard to put all this together. Demons weren't the greatest at working together, and to get over six thousand to orchestrate this thing flawlessly…Well, it couldn't have been easy. If he wanted to get to her that badly, he wouldn't just stop with this town. He'd move on to the next, and the next, until she was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, all to stop the creation of the thing that would wipe out all life on the planet—shit, she was screwed no matter what she did.

"Why make a deal?" she found herself asking. "Why not just…Abduct me, or whatever?"

"For the small print, love. We make a deal, I get to add a clause that says, 'if you or any of your little friends try to kill me, every human life here is immediately forfeit.' And, of course, 'if you kill yourself, they'll all die, too.' Saves a lot of trouble in the long run."

Marian's jaw dropped. I'm just a hunter, she wanted to say. I'm not an angel, and I'm definitely not the angel you're looking for, so there's really no need to go to all this trouble for little ol' me. But she'd felt the sting of the angel blade, saw the remnants of grace when she was cut…She could remember a time when she could have smote every demon in the room without breaking a sweat, and now she couldn't even get one lousy goon to let go of her. Whatever grace had been left to her was useless, though apparently Crowley and Lucifer thought otherwise. She looked around at her friends and her possessed family, and the possessed townspeople that were working security detail. She couldn't let them all die.

In a brief rush of either courage or stupidity, she met Crowley's gaze. "If I can't hurt you, you can't hurt them. You and any demon under your command has to leave my friends and family alone."

The small, predatory smile on the demon's face broadened. "Are you…Negotiating?" He knew he'd won.

She tried to take a step backward, but the demon holding her didn't budge. Now she just felt stupid. "Um," she said, her voice much softer than before, "Yes."

Marian ignored the protests of her friends and kept her focus on Crowley as he drew closer.

"Alright. I will not interfere with or harm your friends and family, nor will I send agents to harm them; and your friends and family will not interfere with or harm me or my agents. A direct act of aggression against any of the aforementioned parties will void the contract, ergo, if I am attacked, everyone who was in this town at this time dies, and if I attack them, you are released." He snapped his fingers and a piece of paper appeared in his hand. He held it out to her and motioned for his goon to release her.

Marian shook herself off, quickly stepping away from her captor. Trouble was, stepping away from that demon meant stepping toward Crowley. She could feel her pulse pounding in her ears as she reached her hand out to take the paper.

It was written in cursive, elegant yet tidy.

"Marian," Erica said sternly.

The paper shook as she tried to steady her hand. The words were blurring together.

"Let me see it." Erica had been a lawyer for two years, before one of her own cases got her into the supernatural world.

Marian glanced up at Crowley, as if asking permission, and took a step back toward her friend.

Crowley waved a hand dismissively. "By all means." He gave Erica a look that said, you may have studied modern law, but I've been sealing deals for centuries. You really think you'll come out on top?

Erica's demon released her, and she took the paper from Marian. For a moment, it looked like she was going to try and fight her way out; Marian shook her head, no. The demons had taken all their weapons, and they possessed every body for miles around. There was no fighting their way out of this one. Erica huffed angrily, knowing she was right, and read through the deal.

The room was uncomfortably silent as Marian read over her shoulder. It looked straight-forward to her: She would become Crowley's property/slave/thing, and she had to do whatever he said—

"Hang on. You're not allowed to make me hurt my friends or family," Marian interjected, just a little too loudly next to Erica's ear.

Crowley chuckled. "Fair enough." He gestured, and the words wrote themselves into the contract.

"Nice catch," Erica whispered.

Marian wasn't allowed to harm or attempt to harm Crowley or another demon acting under his orders, nor were her friends, and Crowley couldn't harm them. He could, however, harm Marian, though he couldn't kill her. Right, Marian thought darkly, It'd be hard to incubate the Abomination if I was dead.

Erica argued a few more minor points, then Marian spoke up again. "I want to say goodbye to my parents," she said. "Un-possessed."

Crowley considered this, then the words wrote themselves. "After you agree."

Erica bristled. "Wh—"

"Can't have her pulling a miraculous escape with dear old Mom and Dad. But if I already own her…" He shrugged. "Doesn't really matter, then. Knock yourself out."

Marian was shaking. This whole thing had 'bad dream' written all over it, but between the sulfur and the too-hot stuffiness of all the demons in the room, it was very, very real. This is what you get for arguing with Heaven, she thought dejectedly. Becoming human wasn't the punishment; it was only the beginning…

"Seriously, though, you can't do this," another hunter, Jade, said. "Let them kill us."

"What?!" multiple humans snapped at once.

"Look, whatever he wants you for, it's bad, right? He's a demon. He's doing this for Lucifer. So you can't do it! Who cares about 6000 people when there are 6 billion out there? This is bad."

Crowley looked at her like a bug had just flown in front of his face. It was the kind of look that said, if I just swat it now, that'll be one less annoying thing to deal with later…

"I know," Marian said, stepping between the hunter and demon. "And I know what he wants. But this is right now, and that's the future, and I can't…" She sighed. "The demons aren't going to stop. But I can stop them by doing this."

"Wh—you know? What is it?" Erica hissed.

Marian hesitated. She didn't want to frighten her friends more than they already were. She also didn't want to look like more of a fool in front of Crowley if she was wrong.

"Well," said another hunter, "If she was—is?—an angel, they could probably cross-breed some kind of super demon-angel, like a Nephilim but stronger."

She felt her face flush, and she bit down hard on her bottom lip. Keep your fucking mouth shut, Angela.

Crowley blinked once, slowly. He still looked like a cat that had cornered all the mice and was waiting for them to stop squeaking before eating them.

The demon that had been holding Erica snickered. "You have no idea how powerful it'll be."

"She's right?" Erica snapped back. She grabbed Marian's arm, fingers digging uncomfortably tight into her flesh. "Marian. Spending the rest of your life doing God-knows-what and being tortured is one thing, but we're talking about basically being a—a—"

"Sex slave to a demon," Angela piped up helpfully. There was a smattering of demonic chuckles across the room.

Marian felt like her legs were going to give out underneath her. She couldn't control her breathing, and she was starting to lose feeling in her extremeties. "Not. Helping," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. She shook her head, trying to regain her composure. "He's going to kill you," she reminded her friends. "We can't fight our way out of this one. Not this time."

They stared back at her, knowing she was right but unwilling to admit defeat.

"I love you guys," she said, taking a step away from them and toward Crowley. "You can't try to come after me. You can't come after him."

"But—"

"Please. Promise me you won't go after him."

There was a tense moment of silence, and the only thing Marian could hear was her own teeth chattering together. Then, finally:

"Okay."

She moved like she was in a dream, like she was watching herself from far away. Clutching the contract in one sweaty hand, she walked until she was standing right in front of Crowley and forced herself to make eye contact with him. And for a moment she could see him, not the meat-suit but the demon, and she froze completely, not breathing, not moving, not even blinking.

Crowley's smug expression faltered. He was used to hate-filled looks, disgusted looks, looks that said 'please take this burning poker out of my intestinal tract,' and deadly looks; but this was just…Fear. Lots of people should fear him, in his opinion, but no one ever did. But this girl was terrified. Was she angel enough to see him?

"Angel?" he prompted.

Marian blinked and shivered. Crowley looked human again; his predatory grin returned.

"Do we have a deal?"

She could hear the hunters groaning behind her. In a voice so small she could barely hear herself, she said: "Yes."

He took the paper from her and slipped it into a suit pocket smoothly. "Then seal it."

She froze again, eyes sliding back to look at the hunters.

"Don't be shy, kid," said the demon possessing her father. "You'll be doing a lot more than kissing him." The leer he gave her was so unfatherly it made her skin crawl. I should have told Heaven to just kill me, she thought. Better than spending the rest of my life being raped by a demon. And then: Get out of my dad, you cockroach.

She had to do this. She had to save her parents, and her friends, and the town, and all the other towns that would follow if she didn't do this now. Maybe she deserved it for disobeying Heaven. They were big on penance up there; was this meant to be hers? God, she hated angels.

Crowley waited. He was going to wait, Marian realized, until she came to him; she had to do this of her own free will, more or less, otherwise it could be argued that the deal was forced. And it was extremely forced, in the sense of over 6000 demons forcing her to take the deal, but she would always have to take that final step, to say she would rather give up her own life than have six thousand people, including her friends and family, die.

She couldn't feel her hands or feet. Her legs felt like rubber and lead. Somehow, one foot took a step forward, then the other, and now she was close enough to really feel the heat radiating from him. She was shorter than him, and she had to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact with him.

His eyes flashed red and he dipped his head to kiss her. Marian closed her eyes, afraid she'd scream if she opened them and saw the actual demon under his skin, though she still wanted to scream. Huge mistake, she thought, but it was too late to turn back now. Besides, she'd already told herself she wasn't going to let the others die.

Kissing a demon was like kissing a volcano. She knew they put off heat, but holy Hell, she could feel her lips cracking and burning. And Crowley wasn't content with a little peck, either: It was like he had a point to prove, not just to her but to her fellow hunters. He slid one hand around the back of her neck and the other around her waist, trapping her in place. She braced her hands against his chest to stop herself from being completely pressed up against him, but his demon strength prevented her from creating any more distance between them. The message was clear: Mine.

Her skin tingled, and she realized the words from the paper were being written onto her skin. It didn't hurt, exactly, but it burned a little and wasn't pleasant. She remembered something about demon power hurting angels more than it hurt humans, and wondered if the little speck of her that was still angel was going to make things worse. As if on cue, there was a sharp pain in the back of her neck, right below Crowley's hand, like something had stung her. She flinched and let out the tiniest whimper; Crowley released her, and she took a step back, rubbing the base of her neck. The demon gave her a puzzled look: It wouldn't have hurt if she was fully human, then.

Crowley turned to his demons. "Alright boys, head out."

The hunters braced themselves, ducking their heads as the other demons smoked out of their meatsuits and vacated the house. There was a sound like a jet engine passing overhead as six thousand demons vacated their bodies throughout the town.

"You have five minutes," he said to Marian, and vanished.

She went to her parents immediately while her friends made sure the other people, the ones that had just been their demon bodyguards, were alright. Marian's mom and dad had been kept awake, evidently, so there was less to catch them up on, but they were very shaken up. They didn't know about hunting or monsters, and Marian had been careful to keep up the illusion with them that she was a missionary, because the last thing she wanted her Christian parents to learn was that she was busy fighting demons. They would've thought she was crazy.

But this was proof, she supposed, that she wasn't crazy. Still, she didn't have time to recount her hunting history with them, or why she was kicked out of Heaven and sent to be their daughter.

"I love you so much," she told them. "I have to go now, and—and I can't come back. You'll be safe. Crowley won't—he can't hurt you. And if some other demon comes after you, my friends will protect you. This is what they do. It's what we all do."

She said goodbye to everyone in a whirlwind of hugs, kisses, and well-meant advice and wishes. There was a quick discussion about ways they could kill Crowley when he came back, and Marian had to remind them that, not only did they not have any weapons that could hurt him, they would also die the moment they went to attack him. She had to reiterate that no one was to come looking for her, and no one was to go after Crowley.

"But you told us how to summon him—we have your angel blade," Erica reminded her. "If we do it fast—"

"Then you'll die. Immediately." Marian sighed. She was shaking like a nudist in a blizzard, but she was determined not to cry in front of her friends. She needed them to believe that she was okay. "You read the contract. You can't hurt him."

"Then we'll find someone else to do it—another hunter that's—"

"It still counts! It's still your intention. Please, just…Don't do anything to get yourself killed. Not like this. You go and you die a hunter's death, but not because of me. Not because of this."

There was much grumbling, but everyone finally agreed to leave Crowley alone; Marian suspected they just wanted her to feel better about it, like she was trying to do with them.

Crowley reappeared, looking just as smug as before. The hunters bristled, and more than one of them stuck a hand in a pocket; Marian shook her head, silently pleading for them not to try anything stupid.

"Time to go, angel."

It didn't feel real. She was never going to see her family again. She was never going to see her friends. The phrase 'demon sex slave' kept repeating itself in her head until she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming. There wasn't anything else to say to everyone, and she didn't trust herself to open her mouth without screaming, puking, or both, so she just nodded in response to the demon and stepped beside him. He grabbed her shoulder, and they vanished.