A/N1: mag1c0, this one is for you. You'll see why.

Reviewer Thanks! allurasgrace (GIRL YOU ARE AMAZING), Darwin, and happyperson42.

Floodlights, mounted in the scaffold canopy above a small stage, stabbed through the stormy gloom. Douglas-fir trees and hawthorn shrubs quaked in the strong winds, throwing crazy shadows up the rugged sides of the towering rocks. Rows of wooden bench seats rose in shallow steps from the foot of the stage. They gently curved to fit the wedge of sloping land between the monoliths, fading into the darkness beyond the reach of the stark white floodlights. An enormous pentagram marked with runes and sigils ran from the stage at one end to the huge rock walls on either side, and then vanished in the darkness near the highest seats.

Lightning flashed, a long, drawn-out dance across the low-hanging clouds. An answering flash of light rippled inside the pentagram's outer circle. With each twin flash, blue-white above and red below, the seats and the rock beneath them went transparent, like a skin of shellack.

Beneath the skin, something languidly stirred. Something darkly, putridly green. Something enormous. Something that probed the underside of the ground with long, skinny, pallid limbs.

Not yet. The gate wasn't open yet.

But it was so hungry.

And it could smell them. Souls. So many. Gathering. Approaching.

The thunder rolled. In eerie harmony, a growl, sounding like a pained groan from the Earth itself, rumbled through the amphitheater.

..::~*~::..

The range rider, who had introduced himself to Julia as Marshal Whitley, stepped to the edge of Red Rocks' small stage. Standing next to him, Julia hugged her elbows.

She used to love coming here, both for concerts or just to spend a sunny morning participating in an outdoor yoga or step class. Now . . .

She looked down on the house from the stage, past the red-painted railing, numbly watching the thing roll around underneath the seats like a bloated, whale-sized cockroach in murky water.

Marshal shook his head. "I been around a long time. I like my privacy. A lot of us do. If I hadn't heard about you talking to that young lady who helps people like us, I wouldn't have answered you. But this . . ." He gestured with his empty shot glass at the surreal light show taking place beneath the rows of bench seats. "Ain't never seen nothin' like this. This feels downright evil to me. I don't like it one bit."

"Will you help?" Julia asked. "Can you explain this to the others trapped here?"

Even though spirits were usually tied to places or things, according to Marshal, they'd been called to the park from all their various haunts by an outside force. And now they couldn't leave.

"I will. To those who still retain their senses of self, anyway. Plenty are too far gone to understand." Marshal caught her confused look. "Death echoes. The kind of ghosts responsible for most of the hauntings in the world. They replay the moment of their deaths over and over, forever. May God have mercy on their souls."

That could have been me, Julia thought, feeling a little sick as she remembered that moment on Aya's bedroom floor. It would have been, if not for Aya.

The dual lightning flashed again.

"Folks ain't too happy about the situation," he said. "Especially since that girl has been brought into it. Not many can do what she does. Reapers open the ways between the dimensions, but that girl, she takes care of the dead and the living left behind. Me, I ain't got a pony in this show. I got no one left. But she's needed. They'll help. What exactly do you want us to do?"

Julia tore her eyes away from the spectacle. "Come with me."

..::~*~::..

"This would be so much easier if we could see what we were doing." Dean, sweating through his layers despite the cold, leaned on the handle of the sledgehammer he'd filched from the Tahoe's breach kit. He needed to catch his breath.

"I think we have to be spirits to see the sigils. Like last time," Sam said.

The hammer wasn't even chipping the bark on any of the trees. Neither had a fire ax, nor Sam's pistol. Worse, the one weapon that Castiel had tried to use – the deputy's rifle – had misfired. Dean had heard the breech-fired bullet hurtle between his head and Sam's, barely a foot apart at the time, with a lethal zzzzzz! Which had, obviously, put a quick end to that.

"Dean," said the angel in his gravelly voice. "Go without me."

Dean straightened. Castiel's tired eyes followed him up, the only part of him that moved. He stood well back from the wards, his shoulders hunched, as though hoping distance would prevent any further near-death accidents.

Dean said, "Not a chance. If we're not allowed to kill demons, you have to come with us. Jedi mind tricks, remember?"

"But –"

"End of discussion, Cass." Dean turned back to the stupid tree, trying to find a hint of the wards to strike. No matter how he positioned himself, the bark remained stubbornly unmarked in the stormy gloom.

Sam glanced at Castiel, who was now regarding his shoes with a rather dark look. "I've never seen him this upset," he said under his breath.

"I know." Dean nodded his brother out of the way and hefted the sledgehammer. "We've gotta get him to her."

Sam's cheeks dimpled and smoothed out several times as he fought a smile. "Really?" he whispered. "You think that's it?"

"You didn't spend the whole morning with him. That's definitely it," Dean muttered from the corner of his mouth.

"Huh," Sam said. He got kind of a faraway look in his eye.

Dean rolled his. He swung. The hammer struck the tree. Which may as well have been made of rubber for all the damage it didn't take.

"This isn't working," Sam said.

"You think?" Dean threw the hammer to the ground in disgust. "Got any other bright ideas?"

The Tahoe's headlights, which had been going strong up until then, winked and buzzed and ticked and blinked. All three of them snapped to attention.

"Can we help?"

Dean turned toward the voice. There, untouched by the unstable light, stood a thin, redheaded woman, dressed for a night of clubbing. She wore a white paper bracelet around her wrist.

"Oh. Hey, Julia," Sam said.

She responded with a shy smile. "Hey, Sam. Dean. You were right. They want to help."

A cowboy – a genuine rough rider, Dean thought giddily – stepped out of nowhere next to her.

"Doc Holliday," Sam muttered.

"Really?" Dean hissed, starting to feel starstruck. A real Old West gunslinger, here!

Sam popped that balloon without remorse. "Aya said no."

Dean scowled up at him. "Shut up, Sam. Just. Stop talking."

Obediently silent, Sam grinned a non-apology.

An anxious-eyed, middle-aged woman in mom jeans appeared next. A boy, maybe twelve, his teddy-patterned hospital gown too big and the skin of his head too shiny. A grizzled biker in a bandana and sunglasses, the entire right side of her body raw with road rash. A tiny elderly man, mumbling Buddhist prayers over his clasped, gnarled hands.

Dean watched, eyes wide, as a whole crowd of dead people materialized on the road, flickering like an old newsreel. There had to be around sixty of them, some clearly showing how they'd died, others as solid and real as Sam or Castiel, diverse in appearance but all similarly solemn.

Their ghost posse.

"Julia, I could kiss you," Dean announced.

"I'll pass, thanks," she said, but her smile widened.

"Wait. How come we can see you now?" Sam asked.

Castiel lifted his head, peering into the dark toward the monoliths just visible above the trees. "The locks keeping the Void from entering this dimension are failing. That was what this ritual was designed to do. It appears that it has a side effect. The souls here must be able to tap into its energy discharge."

"That's a good thing for us, right?" Dean waved at the trees. "Think your Supergirl spirit mojo can do something about these wards? Nothing we do touches them."

Julia examined the trees. "Wards? You mean those glowing things?"

"Yes," Castiel told her. "The drawings you see form a chain on the astral plane, and the chain forms a barrier. If you can break the chain, you can break the barrier."

Julia nodded. "I think I understand. Will something like this work?"

She cast around. Then she spotted the sledgehammer lying on the ground. She laid her fingers on the wooden handle. After a moment, the handle began to hiss. A wisp of smoke rose as her fingers sank in.

She withdrew her hand, leaving four finger-shaped holes that glowed like coals. "I think I'm getting the hang of this being dead thing."

"That should work, yes, but you must be careful," Castiel said, serious as usual. "You will not be able to do it alone."

"Then let us assist," said the cowboy.

He and several other spirits separated themselves from the crowd. They approached the trees, the rocks, and even the asphalt of the road, and then laid their hands upon them. Their expressions ranged from fierce to hollow.

Sparks flew. The smell of burning saturated the wind. All at once, a solid line of energy detonated to the left and the right, straight and tall as a fence of light. When the ghosts finished and the afterimages faded, Dean could finally see the sigils as blackened doodles, glowing like embers under smoking handprints of all sizes.

"That is seriously awesome," he said appreciatively.

"Did that do it?" Sam asked. "Can you get through now, Cass?"

"Yes. Thank you. All of you," Castiel said, looking around at the crowd of spirits. Some of them showed signs of life, a sort of rapturous light taking over their faces as though they recognized him for what he was.

"Okay, guys, this is it. Get in there and do what you can," Julia said. One by one, the ghosts winked out.

Dean and Sam looked at Castiel. He looked back at them.

Several seconds passed.

"Um, Cass?"

"Yes, Dean."

"The wards are down, right? Why aren't you, you know, flapping off like you always do?"

Castiel actually looked embarrassed as he said, "I can't. The locks holding the Void in its dimension are how I fly in this dimension. They're breaking down."

"So, you can't –" Then Dean's brain caught up to the times. "Wait, fly?"

"I am an angel," Castiel reminded him with a touch of asperity.

"Right – but – so . . ." And there, Dean stalled. He exchanged a glance with Sam, who looked as though his main operating system were in the midst of a reboot, too.

"Are you really an angel?" Julia asked softly, her face full of hope. That was when Dean noticed that she wore a tiny gold cross on a thin gold chain around her neck.

Castiel answered just as softly. "Yes."

"You're going to save them, right?" she asked, clasping her hands. "All of us. Right?"

After the slightest hesitation, he straightened like a soldier reminded of his orders. His chin came up. "Yes."

At that moment, Dean felt bad for teasing him. He always came off so confident, so knowledgeable, so tough. Weird to think that he could be so human, to doubt, to . . . fear?

"All right, Cass, let's go get your girl," he said. Because he remembered what Dad had been like after they lost Mom. Because he remembered what Sam had been like after he lost Jess. Because if he's this bad after meeting a girl, I'd hate to see him if she's dead.

..::~*~::..

"We'll get out of here," Lemara said, for what felt like the thirtieth time. Aya had curled into a ball, facing away from her, and she didn't respond. The only other noise in the room was that of her crying. The sound pierced Lemara's heart. Someone as compassionate and empathetic as Aya shouldn't be here. She wasn't the kind of girl who liked to get her hands dirty, so to speak. She hated conflict, and she hated violence. It just wasn't right.

Lemara knew that some of the cages held the other people she'd seen in that warehouse. They must still be drugged, as she had been, because she couldn't detect any signs of consciousness from them. She also couldn't tell if Desmond was one of them.

She clenched her teeth on a curse. None of them should be here. This BS was seriously messed up.

After a while, Lemara stopped trying to comfort her friend. It wasn't like she believed what she was saying, anyway. Julia hadn't made it. Why would they? She lay back down on her pad, her arms crossed so tightly over her face that they blocked the light completely.

She must have fallen asleep. She emerged from her self-imposed darkness as a tall biker approached, striding between the two rows of cages with the rapping and jingling of chained, heeled boots on the floorboards.

"Hey!" Lemara reached through the chain-link as far as her arm would go, trying to grab a fistful of his blue jeans or catch his wrist. "Let me out of here!"

He didn't even look at her. He strode right on by.

Aya scrubbed tears off her cheeks. She looked up at the biker warily as he came to a stop at her cage. "Your face," she said in a quiet but surprisingly steady voice. "You're one of them, aren't you? A demon."

Lemara forgot to breathe. Wait . . . What. What?

"Yeah, that's right," he said. "I'm a demon. And you're the little witch who's going to call every spirit out of the Veil to feed our pet."

"That thing you're summoning isn't a pet. It's a monster. If you let it out, it's going to eat you, too. And I'm not a witch," Aya said resentfully.

"No? Just a freak, then. The little girl who talks to ghosts." He laughed at her.

Talking to your dead kitty again? . . . That's creepy, Aya.

The laugh was an ugly, prolonged thing, and it obviously stung Aya. The way she shrank into her sweater, like a turtle into its shell, sent a jolt of rage through Lemara.

"Leave her alone!" she snapped. She attacked the chain-link, shaking it as hard as she could. "She's not the freak. You are!"

The chain-link rattled, loud in the room of drugged, sleeping people. The guy – the demon? – spared it about a quarter of a second of his attention, and then he proceeded to unlock Aya's cage.

Lemara snarled. She slapped the chain-link again. "Look at me, you black-eyed son of a bitch!"

That time, he did. He paused partway through unhooking the padlock. His eyes, so bug-like, seemed to bore right into her. Unnerved, she subsided.

He swung open the cage door. As though she weighed nothing, he hauled Aya, who kicked and struggled so that the sleeping pad came with her, out. For the first time, Lemara could see how disheveled she was. Her hair was matted and tangled, her face and sweater drenched in blood. She wasn't even wearing shoes.

Her little friend. Her best friend. Her sister.

I appreciate you looking out for me, girlfriend.

"Hey! You leave her alone!" she yelled. "Come get me, you fugly, pasty bastard. Leave her alone!"

He ignored her completely. Furious and frantic, Lemara lunged at the door to her cage.

The lock on hers must not have been engaged. She fell out.

She didn't waste time thinking about it, either. She fully intended on tackling the creep the way her three older brothers had taught her, way back when. "Get back here!"

Her hands passed through black leather and white jersey. Right into the man's back. All the way up to the elbow. He kept walking like he'd felt nothing.

Lemara froze, staring at her hands. They looked just the same as they always did.

Stunned, she glanced back at the cage. It looked exactly as she expected it to, empty, the sleeping pad rumpled . . . the door shut and locked.

Last summer, at Elitch's, it had felt like the safety harness on a roller coaster had come loose during the ride and she had started falling upward, out of the car. She felt like that again. Lightheaded. Dizzy.

What . . . was . . . happening . . .

"Aya?" she asked, not knowing what else to do; her brain seemed to have stopped working. Her voice came out small and scared.

But Aya couldn't help her. The demon dragged her out of the room, leaving Lemara behind.

A/N2: I'm . . . I'm so sorry.