I.
God, Chuck, "the author", whatever the fuck he wants to be called, disappears leaving the boys in darkness to fight off the rising dead. Cass wields his angel blade as Sam and Dean grip tightly onto rusted iron bars. Blood from Sam's shoulder wound flows freely down his arm and Dean worries how much the injury will hinder his brother's ability to fight. The angry mob of undead descend upon the three when a piercing whistle cuts through the air.
Pushed by an invisible wave, bodies fly in almost every direction away from the guys.
"Do you three wanna get out of here, or what?" A woman's voice calls to them.
The two hunters and their angel make a mad dash for the impala where the stranger waits for them. She climbs into the backseat with Cass, who can't help blurting out, "You are DISGUSTING! What are you?!"
"Thanks." She replies flatly.
"That's a pretty rude thing to say to someone who just saved our asses!" Dean hammers the gas and peels out of the cemetery.
"I apologize." But Cass's face still conveys disgust.
"Okay, let's start over. Who are you?" Sam asks while wincing in pain trying to look over his shoulder at her.
"Name's Eddie," she answers, her voice hinting at a southern drawl. "And I understand y'all are the legendary Winchesters. But which is whom?"
"I'm Sam and this is Dean." Sam grimaces again, blood oozing from his bullet hole.
"Here, let me get that for you." Eddie touches Sam's shoulder, healing it with an angelic beam of light.
"You are not an angel of the Lord, so how did you do that?" Cass asks in disbelief.
"You're right. I'm not. But I'm willing to bet you are." Eddie struggles to hold back an eye roll. "Let me guess, you're the Winchester's famous heavenly pet, Castiel?"
"I am, but you're still avoiding answering WHAT you are." Cass says pointedly.
"That's a pretty complicated question. Let's get to a safe haven first, then I'll explain." Eddie replies.
"Explain why you know our names!?" Cass sneers, dissatisfied with her responses.
"Are you serious right now?" Eddie can't believe he's acting like this. "Everybody who's anybody in the supe world knows exactly who y'all are. I'm pretty sure the world is ending right now, and lo 'n behold, there y'all were right in the thick of it!"
"Fair enough." Sam rolls his shoulder forward and back, satisfied with her work.
"Will you tell us why you helped us back there?" Dean glances at her in the rear-view mirror.
"Ah. I know y'all were the last folks in my Papa's presence and I'm looking for answers." Eddie says matter of factly.
"And who is your Papa?" Cass's brow furrows. Her 'Papa' could be a monster they've killed, so his misgivings for her run deep.
"His name was Gabriel." Eddie glances down, sadly. "I feel his existence is gone... I can sense you were exposed to his grace, so that's why I sought y'all out."
"There is no way you are a nephilim!" Cass is shocked. "You are the most vile looking beast I've ever seen!" He spits out.
"Oh, please don't spare my feelings!" Eddie snaps back with heavy sarcasm. "Look, firstly I'm not a nephilim and secondly I told you it's complicated. Let's just hurry up and get to a safe zone, okay?" She crosses her arms over her chest and fixes her gaze out the window, clearly annoyed.
"Fine by me." Dean says, punching the gas, urging the impala to roar down the highway.
Back at the bunker, Dean parks the impala in the garage. The Winchesters lead the way up the stairs followed by Eddie while Cass brings up the rear, still wary of their latest acquaintance.
Up in the war room, Sam turns to Eddie. "Do you mind waiting here for us while we talk a moment?"
"No problem." Eddie answers.
"Here, please have a seat." Sam pulls out a chair for their guest.
"Thanks." The old wood creaks as Eddie pulls the chair closer to the table. She idles her time examining the giant backlit map as the men step away.
Heading into the observatory, the trio keep Eddie in sight as they speak in hushed voices.
"Holy mother of busty asian beauties, Batman!" Dean lets out a small whistle, while rubbing the back of his head.
"Do not let her vessel confuse you!" Cass sternly warns. "She has three heads in her true form!"
"Hey, the one I can see looks great! But, I digress. So our old pal Chuck decided to pull the plug on this world and throw us into the apocalypse, hell is literally breaking loose, and we have very few friends left, does that sound about right to you two?" Dean asks.
"I would say that about sums it up." Cass says, casting a steely glance to their company.
Sam scratches his jaw before gesturing at her. "Well, this girl, Eddie, whatever she is seems to be on our side at least."
"I still don't trust her." Cass refuses to let her out of his sight.
"I don't either per se, but she did save our bacon. And she said Gabriel is her 'Papa' so she's probably friendly." Dean shrugs.
"And you said she's not a nephilim?" Sam asks Cass.
"She most certainly is not! In fact, I'm not sure what she even is! I feel a strange mixture of auras from her and it's very disconcerting." Cass looks troubled.
"Well, maybe now's the time to ask her." Sam says leaving the observatory, Dean and Cass follow.
Eddie sits at the war room table, her fingers tracing the initials the Winchesters carved into the wood. Without looking up at the guys, she speaks aloud.
"Papa was here. There are very faint traces of him... This room was the last place he was at on this earth before he ceased to exist."
Sam takes a seat to be less intimidating. "That's right. In here we opened up a portal to another dimension and Gabriel joined our fight. There he sacrificed himself so we could get away."
"But Papa was an archangel! The only thing that could have killed him was another archangel or God himself!" Eddie is exasperated.
Dean sits now too. "He was killed by another archangel. The parallel world we went to had its own Michael, and that's who murdered Gabriel."
A tear falls from Eddie's face and begins burning a hole through the table. She wipes it with her hand then quickly brushes away another tear rolling down her cheek.
"Now tell us what you are, hideous monster! And how do you know about archangels!?" Cass demands. He glares at her with his arms folded over his chest, refusing to sit.
"Hey, I'm ugly but I'm not stupid, okay? Of course I know about archangels, Papa was one!" Eddie cocks her head to the side and glares right back at him.
Comfortingly, Sam says to her, "You're not ugly." Turning his head to Cass, Sam says sternly, "Stop it, that's enough." Returning his attention to Eddie, he softens his voice again. "We're just surprised you know what he really was because we understood he spent a really long time disguised as Loki. Would you mind sharing your story with us?"
"I don't mind." Rubbing one more tear off her face, Eddie begins. "A long time ago, Papa had a father and three brothers. Papa's two oldest brothers had a fight and one was kicked out of the house. Papa couldn't stand the fighting, so he left and decided to check out Earth."
"Yes, yes, we already know all that! Get to what we don't know already!" Cass snaps impatiently.
Eddie gives Cass a dirty look before resuming. "During his journeys, he found a human woman, and he fell deeply in love with her. It didn't take long before there was a little baby brewing inside of her."
"You said you weren't a nephilim!" Cass interjects.
"Shh! Let her finish!" Sam says. "Sorry, please continue!"
Eddie sneers at Cass. "Papa could feel that little baby was powerful and eating away at her mother's life force. Even with all his angelic grace, he found there was nothing he could do to prevent mother's life from ebbing away. He would do anything to save her. So he decided to make a deal."
"No! He didn't!" Dean says incredulously, understanding where this story is already headed.
"Yes, he did." Eddie nods. "At that point, Uncle Luci had already been locked up, so Papa turned to uncle's first creation; the original crossroads demon."
"Lillith." Cass growls. He never imagined he'd ever have to think about her again, much less say her name.
"Lillith said she could possess mother's body so that she would survive childbirth but the cost of that service was my powers. Papa happily agreed. He remembered what had happened to another nephilim, the Queen of Sheba. He figured stripping me of my powers would keep me off heaven's nephilim kill list. What he didn't anticipate was that by being born of a mother possessed by Lillith, I would become a cambion."
"Half demon, half human offspring… but you are half archangel. Unless I'm doing my math wrong, three halves don't make a whole." Dean says puzzled, holding up three fingers.
"That's correct." Eddie continues. "Power literally seeped from my body the moment I was born. Lillith saved my mother both from the childbirth and my oozing power burning through everything, but it left the demon weakened. In retribution, the queen of hell was more than happy to take away my abilities, both nephilim and cambion."
"So you're nephion? Or is it a cambilim?" Sam toys with the portmanteau.
"She's an abomination! No wonder she decided to take this attractive vessel! Too bad I can still see that one of her heads looks like an eagle's except when the beak opens, tentacles covered in throbbing suction cups pour out!" Cass stabs a hand in Eddie's direction.
If looks could kill, Cass would be back in The Empty right now. But Eddie moves on to answer Sam's query. "Neither name sounds that appealing. And this isn't a vessel. It's the human body I was born with. Papa always says… well, said I look just like Mama."
"If you look just like your mom, no wonder Gabriel couldn't keep his hands off her!" Dean raises his eyebrows.
"I think that's a compliment, so thanks?" Eddie looks nonplussed. "Anyways, we got to have a long happy life with Mama but eventually time took her from us, then all we had left was time. Papa and I went on our own adventures, but we still made sure to visit each other on occasion."
Eddie opens up a large, heavy, silver locket she has been wearing and shares it for the brothers to view.
"A black and white picture of you and Gabe wearing old timey costumes?" Dean says, unimpressed.
Sam surveys the image. Eddie and Gabriel stand together wearing mid-nineteenth century attire, a caption at the bottom reads
Grand International Exhibition
London
May 1851
"Dean, I don't think those are costumes. And I'm pretty sure this is a tintype, not a photograph." Sam says returning the trinket to Eddie.
Dean mutters sarcastically. "It's a tintype not a picture. Oh excuse me! My mistake! Nerds." He finishes with an eye roll.
"You are correct on both accounts, Sam." Eddie smiles, ignoring Dean and taking back the locket. "I wish I had a photo of Mama but she was long gone before even oil painted portraits were a thing."
"Wait, if you're this mega powerful human-angel-demon hybrid thing, why didn't you just go back in time to visit your mom? Even angels can time travel." Dean asks, scratching his head.
"Now that I've lived for so many eons, I'm not even sure when to go back in time to visit her. That and Lillith took my powers at birth, remember?" Eddie answers with a hint of sass.
"Your story isn't adding up. You said Lillith took your power ages ago but you clearly healed Sam back there." Cass's skepticism grows as he throws doubt over Eddie's story.
"I didn't have any supernatural abilities aside from my longevity until ten years ago. I was living in Samoa when I was suddenly flooded by intense power. I was so overwhelmed I felt I was going to burst. I thought to myself, if I'm going to explode maybe I can get myself deep in the ocean where I won't hurt anyone. But I made a grave mistake. When I erupted, I caused an earthquake. That earthquake triggered a lethal tidal wave…" Her voice trails, filling with sorrow. "I killed over one hundred people." Eddie is remorseful, recounting the tale.
"A-ha! I knew we couldn't trust her! She just admitted to being a murderer!" Cass shouts, pointing a finger at Eddie.
"Cool it, Cass. Can't you see she feels terrible about it?" Sam says before redirecting to Eddie again. "Now that you mention it, I remember reading about the 2009 tsunami that hit Samoa. So that was you?"
"Yes, unfortunately." Eddie says, eyes fixed on the ground, still unable to bear her shame. Her voice trembles now as she continues her story. "Papa came and found me after the incident. He said Lillith had been killed which explained why my powers came rushing back to me." Eddie glances at Cass, hoping to have assuaged his doubts. His face is stoic, but she carries on. "Papa said with the apocalypse starting, hopefully heaven will be too busy to notice a nephilim on their radar. He gave me some advice on how to manage my new abilities before leaving to handle the apocalypse. Then he disappeared. I could sense he was still alive, but I couldn't find him anywhere."
Satisfied with her story for now, Cass fills in more of the gaps for Eddie.
"A prince of hell named Asmodeus, captured Gabriel sometime during the apocalypse. Gabriel was so deeply hidden, even heaven thought he was dead. But in reality, Asmodeus spent years drinking Gabriel's grace to gain power."
Eddie's expression changes from sadness and longing to instant rage. Her hands ball into fists and her knuckles crack. "And where is this Asmodeus now? I'll kill him!"
"Easy there, tiger!" Dean chimes in. "Gabriel already beat you to it. But destroying Asmodeus used up a lot of his power which left him weak against the alternate world Michael."
"Oh." Eddie relaxes and leans back into her seat. "So that's why Papa was defeated. He wasn't at full strength." She glances around the table at the three men. "He must have cared about y'all tremendously to have gone into a fight he knew he couldn't win."
"His time with Asmodeus changed him. He realized he couldn't run forever so he finally decided to stand and fight." Sam says.
Eddie clutches the locket at her chest and looks pensive but before she can share her thoughts, the lights flicker, then dim.
Sam and Dean jump to their feet while Cass reaches in his coat for an angel blade. A tall, beautiful, woman dressed all in black suddenly appears before them.