The turbulence lasted only a second. Dean slammed into the ground so hard it felt like his shins telescoped right down into his boots. He buckled, confused by the sudden cacophony and the reappearance of gravity. His knees hit the ground next. Then his hands. He did manage to keep from kissing reddish cement, but barely. His dropped crowbar rang like a bell, quickly silenced.

"Sonofabitch," he wheezed, shaking. There was a reason he refused to fly the friendly skies. Planes crashed!

Nauseated, he pushed himself into a crouch on stinging palms. There would be blood, but it didn't feel like he'd broken anything. Then, he realized what had happened. It had happened a few times before, just never that violently. "Cass! I thought you said you couldn't fly. You gotta warn a guy before you do something like that, buddy. Okay? Cass?"

No answer. He looked around and spotted his friend a few feet away. Facedown and unmoving.

"Dean!" Sam hollered.

Dean shot to his feet. A pair of arms clamped his elbows to his sides.

The arms constricted. He grunted involuntarily as his boots left the ground. Held there for fleeting seconds, he had an excellent view of Red Rocks. Castiel had brought them right to the stage, a flat expanse of sandstone and red cement. And below –

The dream grips him in the talons of a devil.

Strobing light. Flashes of tortured sight, longer stretches of absolute darkness.

Dean gasped, reeling from the Hell flashback. Whatever was down there, it was bad. Really, really bad. Sort of oozing out like a slug, kind of see-through, all manner of bulging slimy convulsing horrible. Weird, high-pitched moans and deep howls reverberated off the rocks. The wind whipped past, ghosts projected upon it like the creepy tunnel scene from the original Willy Wonka. They screamed as they disappeared into the slug's giant flapping mouth. The thing heaved its misshapen bulk a few more feet out of the pit. Though transparent like a ghost itself, wood cracked and splintered under its weight.

Sam had somehow ended up down there, right at the rim of the pit, and he'd lost his crowbar. Thank God he hadn't gone in. He dashed down the rows of seats, hair flying, long legs carrying him over the gaps effortlessly. He reached the railing that separated the house from the stage and vaulted over it.

Dean did not feel like being rescued by his baby brother.

"Let go of me, you assclown!" he ground out, kicking. He felt his heels bash into somebody's kneecaps.

The arms flipped him to the side. He spun all the way around before he landed and skidded over in a messy sprawl. He rocked on his back, momentarily stunned. Strength like that, it had to be a demon.

He scrambled to his feet and rushed to meet it, a stringy-looking biker. He got his arms around the guy's middle and shoved, trying to tackle him, but an elbow drove into the back of his head. A knee came up to meet his face. He staggered back. Dodged a punch. Threw one of his own. Felt his knuckles connect.

Dean and the demon traded blows for a few seconds. Dean scooped up his crowbar and swung. It couldn't hurt a demon – much. Biker-dude hissed as the iron made contact with the bare skin of his hand and began to sizzle, but he pulled it closer and hugged Dean's arm. He twisted. Dean yelped.

Castiel grabbed the demon by the mouth, hurled him onto his back, and squeezed. Fiery light, as bright as the thick ropes of lightning whipping across the sky, strobed from the demon's eyes, nose, and ears. When Castiel wove unsteadily to his feet, the demon lay still and smoking.

Then Castiel sagged, and Dean hurried to prop him up. It was difficult to get a good hold over the loose trench coat and slippery jacket beneath, and he didn't want to touch the torn-up mess that used to be the angel's shirt front, but he managed.

"You okay?" he bellowed over the wind and thunder and howls.

Blood trickled steadily from under Castiel's hair and the corner of his mouth, and he looked more than a little woozy, but he pulled away to stand on his own. He pointed. "Kammapa has come close enough to affect this dimension! It's very close to breaking the seal and materializing fully. We have to stop her!"

Her? Dean looked where Castiel was pointing. Oh. Her. A young girl, her hands smeared with blood to the wrist so that it looked as though she were wearing a pair of red leather gloves. She chanted unintelligibly over a pentagram, her face lit from below, hands palms-down, fingers splayed.

A gunshot cracked through the wind. Sam, panting, had arrived.

Kittney choked on her spell, one of her bloody hands flying to her shoulder. The pentagram flared like a firecracker, and then went dark.

The moment she stopped her chanting, something small and white fell from where it had been suspended over the slug-monster. Kammapa squealed, bouncing, and opened its huge, fleshy mouth like a whale about to swallow a raft. It sucked at the air, making obscene slurping, gulping sounds.

Castiel's eyes widened in horror. He let out a wordless, strangled cry, thoroughly shocking Dean, who had never heard him vocalize like that, not even after being impaled on a hook. He watched, dumbfounded, as Castiel took off running and launched himself off the stage.

"CASS!" he roared. The strengthening wind pulled at him, forcing him to take an unwilling step in the monster's direction. Then another.

It was an incredible jump, but Dean still saw the moment that the tornado-like wind got hold of Castiel. He went soaring over the seats, his coat flapping like a sail. Then, what Dean was seeing finally made sense. The something small was Aya. She made no sound as she plunged into the pit like a penny tossed into a fountain. Castiel followed her a second later.

The petal-like mouth twisted closed. The monster shuddered as though swallowing. Then it opened all of its lips again, shrieking.

The angel and the girl were gone.

..::~*~::..

Sam could not believe what he had just seen. He stood staring at the spot where Aya and Castiel had vanished until he remembered Kittney, and noticed that he had let his gun droop. He brought it up again, aiming for the middle of her forehead.

Kittney lifted her hand experimentally, as though lifting the lid off a jar containing a large spider. She looked at the blood gushing from her shoulder.

Then she looked up at him.

"Ow," she said, the picture of bored annoyance. "You like to beat up girls, huh?"

"You're not a girl. You're a witch," Dean said coldly. He clicked the safety off his gun.

"Oh, go to hell," she said, pouting.

Dean's lip curled. "You first."

Even from twelve feet away, Sam could see him shaking; his brother was seconds from totally losing it. Not that Sam could blame him at this point.

Without needing to say a word to each other, they circled closer to the demon in unison, fingers ready on triggers. Silver bullets weren't going to hurt her, but they'd blow her legs off at the knee if they had to. Anything to stop her from completing this ritual.

"Hands up, bitch," Dean barked.

"Okay," Kittney said. She threw up her red-stained hands.

Hot demon-wind bowled Dean over; he went down cursing up a storm to rival the one overhead. Sam, too. He groaned, foolishly lying full-length on the ground, chin scraped up and bleeding. He thought of a few choice things to say, himself, like, Shoulda seen that one coming, but when he raised his head, he saw the girl running for the exit.

So, he said something else, bringing out a black-beaded rosary and brandishing it in his fist. "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus –"

Kittney jerked to a halt. She whirled, a snarl ripping out of her throat that sounded like she had swallowed a pit bull. She showed him her teeth and her palm, and a hot, heavy force shoved his face toward the cement. He grunted, pushing back but unable to talk.

"Omnis satanica potestas –" Dean shouted the next line hoarsely, having memorized the exorcism out of the little prayer book at Sam's insistence. He'd gotten to a crouch, his free hand propped on his right knee, which bled through a hole torn in his jeans. His pronunciation was clumsy, but it would get the job done. "Omnis incursio infernalis adversarii –"

Kittney switched her snarling face to him, blowing him over backward with a swipe of her arm. But there was fear in her expression. She tried again to run.

Sam had gotten one foot under himself. He held out his other hand, too, letting his power well up in the palm. As fast as he could, he cried, "Omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica, ergo draco maledict –"

The demon-witch howled. She didn't even let him finish. Apparently deciding that a dual exorcism was more than she could handle – or maybe she knew what was waiting for her in Hell – she threw back her head, and the demonic howls became the screams of a young girl. The black smoke belched from her mouth, swirling into a cloud above her.

It happened quickly, and she collapsed before Sam or Dean could get to her.

Sam grunted in frustration. The demon was out of the innocent girl's body. They'd succeeded. Yet, it wasn't enough. He wanted to stop it dead. To kill it. He howled, too, Ruby's blood burning through his veins, demanding release –

But even he couldn't touch a demon in its non-corporeal form. The black smoke tightened into a defensive spiral, high out of reach. Vision tinged red, Sam watched it, wondering why it hadn't yet fled. The wind dragged at his hair, his shirt, roaring between the rocks.

Dean barreled into him. He dragged him to his feet and shouted in his face. "Sam! Sam! We have to go! Come on, man, snap out of it!"

He realized that, without Dean to anchor him, he would probably be sliding toward the drop at the edge of the stage, the wind was that strong. Smoky streamers began to trail off the hovering, quivering cloud of demon-smoke.

Dean shook him, his rough voice stretching like a guitar string about to snap. "Sammy!"

Sam blinked, feeling drunk and numb at the same time. All that power inside him, and nowhere for it to go. "Don't call me that," he slurred. "I'm not a kid anymore."

"Then wake up, you frickin' idiot!" Dean cried. "This is not the time to go all beautiful mind on me. We have to go!"

Sam took a shuddering breath. Kammapa had risen out of its pit, its stringy, wiry limbs braced against the rocks and the wooden seats, its toothy mouth pointed right at them. Its claws left shallow scratches on the towering rock faces.

The demon-smoke couldn't escape, like a bird flying backward in a gale. It thinned into a streamer that swirled faster and faster toward Kammapa. And then in it went, the monster slurping noisily.

It grew before their eyes. It raised its front end above the twin rocks, squealing. Then it lurched toward the stage, lips flapping like tongues. It gave another, questioning squeal. It seemed confused by the fact that there weren't any more spirits, even though it could obviously smell Sam and Dean. One chicken-footed leg descended toward them.

"Eat this!" Dean yelled. He emptied the Beretta's magazine into it. Then he pulled out Deputy Girard's Glock and emptied that one, too.

The leg, however, did not hesitate. It came down on the scaffolding, clawed toes exploring, grabbing, crushing. Sam pulled his brother away before a mangled floodlight crashed to the stage right where they had been standing.

"It's not manifest," he gasped. "It hasn't come through to this dimension yet!"

"Then how is it eating everyone?" Dean pitched the Glock at the leg. It passed through harmlessly.

The leg turned in their direction. It started patting its way toward them, rather like a cat paw in a mouse hole. An enormous, skinny cat paw, moving in slow motion.

"I think Kammapa is the dimensional gate," Sam said. He'd been thinking about this ever since Castiel had almost dropped him into it. "It's pulling matter and energy from this dimension into the one it inhabits. I don't think that what we see is what's really there."

"That doesn't make any sense!"

No, it didn't, not really, but Sam knew he was right. He considered what they had left. A couple of flasks of holy water. Some rock salt. Useless, in this wind, against something that size. They'd never dealt with anything quite like this, and they weren't prepared to deal with it now. Then, to his horror, he saw Kittney, unconscious and bleeding, begin to slide across the stage.

Dean had seen her, too. They sprinted toward her and dove for her arms, grabbing her and pulling her back to safety. They maneuvered her behind a curved brick wall to one side of the stage, out of the monster's sight. It seemed to forget about them, shrieking up at the sky. Dean produced a stained white handkerchief from an inner pocket, pressing it over the gunshot wound in her shoulder.

"So, are they gone?" He asked, their heads pressed close together. "Are they dead? Dead for good, I mean."

Sam knew what he meant. Castiel. Aya. Julia. All those souls. "I don't think they're dead, not yet. According to the myth, it takes time for Kammapa to digest its meals. People lived inside it for days, eating the animals and plants it swallowed, until Ditaolane rescued them."

"Eugh," Dean commented. He checked the wound, seeming grimly satisfied that the bullet had passed through cleanly.

Sam hurried on. "It also said that it could be hurt – from the inside. Cass had to know what he was doing when he jumped in."

"Then what are we supposed to do?"

"Get out of here, like you said." Sam shifted his hold on Kittney, managed to lift her. "There's nothing we can do from this side."

Dean frowned at the pale-faced girl. "Maybe there is," he said.

A/N: If I could get real for a sec . . . I've lost two friends and a cat this year. Every time, each death, feels like the breath gets knocked right out of me. I do apologize for slowing down so much on the updates . . . it's just . . . maybe writing about death, no matter how innocently I do it, starts to not be so much fun when I'm staring dumbfounded at a friend's obituary, wondering why - how - is this real? This can't be real. Sigh. Another light has gone out in my sky. I'll just have to light a candle instead, and remember.

Reviewer Thanks! Darwin, Momochan77, IHeartSPN, Moonlight Willows, MiMiMargot, allurasgrace, and St4r Hunter. Really. Thanks, guys. So much.

If I don't get the next chapter done before the holidays, season's greetings to you, whatever you celebrate! Stay safe.

With love,

~ Anne