Chapter 23

More Than I Can Bear

Sound.

Leaves rustled with the breeze. Animals chittered and squeaked and cawed and tittered. Where the ground was firm, grass made soft thuds beneath his paws. Two pairs of feet trekked into his forest.

Light.

It poured through the trees' branches. It reflected off of the metal things they carried with them. It allowed for the shadows in which he hid.

Scent.

He could smell them. A man and… an angel? They smelled funny.

He pounced on the man. A warning. He left when he was sure they would leave. They needed to leave.

But there were more. Another pair. Different this time.

He warned them off too.

One from the first pair came back a couple days later with two others.

Instinct.

He let out a soft growl of frustration. How stupid were this people? Surely he had given them enough chances. They needed to leave. He'll kill them if they don't.

~o-O-o~

"It's not here anymore."

Gabriel frowned, turning to give Dean a questioning look. The hunter pointed down at the ground. Gabriel's gaze followed to where Dean indicated, but he didn't see anything— Oh.

"What was there before then?" he asked just barely taking out most of the sass in his voice.

"Signs of the scuffle," Dean answered.

"You mean from when you got tackled by a dog?" Sam cut in. He didn't quite believe Dean's descriptions of the 'ginormous wolf that had weighed a ton'. To be fair, Lucifer had made it seem much smaller.

Dean glared at his brother. "Yes, Sam. The dog."

"So we can add above average intelligence to our list of huge, golden-yellow fur, hides in shadows, bone-chilling howl and bright blue eyes," Sam went on with his light teasing, dodging as Dean made a swipe at his head. "Anything else?"

"Nope. Just the above average intelligence," Dean replied in a similar tone.

Gabriel felt his eyebrow twitch. Because Dean couldn't have just said that earlier instead of leading them through a series of questions? The archangel ruthlessly squashed the feeling of disdain. Something was setting him off, edging him the wrong way and giving him a bad feeling.

He needed to ask Lucifer if he had felt the same way before when he'd been out here with Dean, though he might not have noticed. Gabriel would have to ask Castiel later too then. But for now Gabriel made himself take a deep breath and push on even as his mind raced.

There was clearly something else here besides the member of a draconic subspecies they were here to find. Of course, there was always the possibility that the two were related somehow, but there was also the chance that they weren't. If the latter was true, then they might need to deal with the 'wolf' sooner rather than later.

But what could it be? Though both Dean and Lucifer had given details about their encounter with the creature, Gabriel couldn't say what it was. He had multiple guesses, but until he saw it with this own eyes, he wasn't able to be sure.

His thoughts turned to the other group. He'd rather they all stayed together with such an unknown variable out there, but the Winchesters had insisted it would be more time efficient to split up. And so Castiel, Mary and Lucifer were essentially on the other side of the mountain while Gabriel was here with Sam and Dean.

Not that he was complaining. He just couldn't shake the worry pawing at the edges of his consciousness… Pawing. Heh.

Gabriel's smile dropped as quickly as it had formed when he felt something's gaze on him. He tried to identify his watcher without actually looking, but when all he came up with was that it wasn't Sam or Dean, Gabriel slowly turned. He froze.

He knew exactly who the wolf was. Shit.

"Sam, Dean, you both need to be very, very still," he said just loud enough for them to hear.

The wolf – and it really was a wolf, or at least it used to be – let out a low growl. It wasn't quite a warning, but it wasn't anything friendly either. Gabriel could hear the neutral greeting for what it was.

"I didn't think I'd see you out here, Lobo," Gabriel returned, lowering his head while still meeting the wolf's sharp eyes.

"Lobo?" Gabriel heard Dean quietly ask Sam, who shook his head.

The wolf barked once, his tail swishing behind him.

Gabriel held back a cringe. "They're just a family of hunters investigating the mountain on behalf—"

Another bark – louder this time, impatient and demanding.

"I understand you don't want us here," Gabriel started before Lobo cut him off again.

The wolf stalked forward, size seeming to grow as he stepped out of the shadows. Sunlight bounced off of his golden pelt, and Gabriel frowned as he remembered Lobo's fur being almost as black as night nearly a century ago. It didn't really matter anyway. It was the wolf's eyes that identified him as Lobo.

Gabriel didn't move as Lobo slowly move around him in tight calculating circles. The wolf's ears flicked twice, and Lobo let out a snort.

"That would have been Lucifer, and the two with him right now are Castiel and Mary. I don't know who the other pair is though," Gabriel answered carefully.

Lunging forward, Lobo suddenly bit his left hand, drawing blood, and Dean had to stop Sam from rushing to Gabriel. The archangel met the wolf's blue stare until Lobo unhinged his jaw, releasing Gabriel's hand, and licked his chops clean. Gabriel brought his injured hand closer to inspect the wound, consciously keeping his grace from healing it. He then turned an unimpressed look on Lobo.

"Satisfied?"

Lobo's tail wagged, and the wolf let out a yip. Lobo then moved over to Sam – whose hand he licked – and Dean, who got a face full of fur and sputtered at the indignity. A stiff breeze passed through the area, causing the humans to turn away. The wolf was gone when they looked back.

"What the hell was that?" Dean asked, a fair bit more than just a little dumbstruck.

Gabriel sighed, flexing the fingers of his injured hand and frowning when he couldn't fully close it into a fist. "That was Lobo. Think hellhound plus Reynard with a heavy dose of spite and sense of duty mixed in for good measure."

Dean stared at him. "What the hell?" he repeated as Sam moved towards Gabriel and took his hand to get a better look at it.

"Lobo," Gabriel emphasized the name, ignoring how Sam was prodding the bite marks. "He was a normal wolf that some hunters mistook for a demon back in the 1890s. When they couldn't catch him, they killed his wife – Blanca – and used her corpse to lure him into a trap.

"The idiots decided that he was a better prize alive than dead and brought him back with them to their outpost. He died four days later out of grief, and that would have been that, except Coyote liked Lobo. They were almost friends, so Coyote put a half-blessing half-curse on Lobo to reincarnate the wolf whenever he dies. And before you ask, you can tell it's Lobo by his eyes. No full-blooded wolf naturally has blue eyes."

While Dean took this all in, Sam wrapped Gabriel's hand with a loose bandage he'd pulled from out of his backpack. "It looks like he bit through a couple tendons." He paused. "You're not healing. Are you going to be okay?"

Gabriel waved his other hand in dismissal. "It's fine. Lobo's just a bit of a sadistic bastard, 's all. I could heal it, but that would also mean removing his permission to be here."

"Permission?" Sam repeated, glancing down at his own hand, where Lobo had licked him. "He scented us?"

"Basically, yes. So try not to wash your hand until we're done here. It's how he'll recognize and keep an eye on us while we're in his territory," Gabriel explained.

"Did he tell you anything about what's in the mountain?" Dean huffed, clearly irritated about the entire ordeal.

Gabriel refrained from letting out a weary sigh. It was going to be a long day, after all. "No, but I know how to get in now. We should meet up with the others or call them before—"

"Yeah, yeah, let's go," Dean cut in.

~o-O-o~

The next day – because by the time the whole gang had finally met back up with one another, it was almost four in the afternoon, and Dean hadn't wanted to risk going into the mountain only for it to be dark when they got out even with the modicum of protection from Lobo – Gabriel, Lucifer, Castiel and the three Winchesters found themselves standing in front of a rather large yet innocuous cave entrance. The humans all had backpacks flashlights, and while Lucifer had one too, he wasn't actively using it, pointing the beam of light a couple feet in front of him rather than deeper into the darkness of the cave. Gabriel and Castiel were the only ones without anything extra with them, though one could say that they had their angel blades close at hand.

"Well, I'd say this is definitely it, folks," Gabriel spoke up when it was starting to look like no one else was going to say anything. "So, who's going first?"

Almost in sync, the others all turned to stare at him, and he squinted back.

"What're you all looking at me like that for?" he huffed.

Dean opened his mouth to retort something, but Castiel cut in first. "Wouldn't it make sense for you to go first, Dean next, Lucifer and Mary behind him, then Sam with me in the very back?"

Gabriel ran the formation through his head, nodding his head side to side. "Okay, yeah, that works, I guess," he admitted after a moment.

"Can I just say that this is a horrible idea?" Lucifer inputted suddenly.

"No, really? What gave you that impression? The psycho wolf or the giant reptilian we're hunting?" Dean got in before Sam smacked him.

Mary let out a soft sigh, looking over her shoulder in the general direction of their vehicles. "Honestly, I just want to get this over with."

Not wanting to keep the good lady waiting (so that wasn't exactly how you were supposed to use the expression – whatever, sue him), Gabriel entered the cave, sensing rather than seeing Dean and the others follow him. The darkness quickly swallowed them, and soon enough it was pitch black save for the steady beams from the four flashlights. Even though Gabriel could see just fine, it was still slow going, and none of them sought conversation in order to fill the echoing silence.

Half an hour in, Gabriel's hearing picked up someone's breathing behind him getting heavier, barely noticeable even with his supernaturally enhanced senses. Taking a moment to look back, he noticed it was Lucifer. Gabriel frowned but otherwise kept his eyes ahead. If his brother needed them to stop, he would say so. Gabriel could trust him to do that.

Fifteen minutes later, Lucifer asked in a low voice, "Is it just me, or is it getting hard to breathe?"

The question brought everyone to a halt, and Gabriel paused to figure out what exactly Lucifer meant since Gabriel was breathing but he wasn't breathing. Meanwhile, Mary had put a hand on Lucifer's arm as he tried to catch his breath, looking like he was about to kneel over. Gabriel was just going to ask what Lucifer meant when it clicked.

Turning to the where the "heart" of the mountain would be located, Gabriel allowed a quiet scoff escape his lips. "Oh, that is damn clever."

"Share with the rest of the class, Gabriel. I thought we were working on this," Mary scolded lightly.

Picking up on Gabriel's line of thought, Castiel spoke up from the back. "It would appear that this draconic creature can disguise just how far its presence can reach as well as how concentrated the presence is within certain areas. Lucifer must be reacting to it negatively, possibly because of his grace."

"But this beastie is smart, very smart," Gabriel continued, borrowing the term from Reynard. "It's masking its presence so easily because it's been here for so long. It's nearly indistinguishable from the mountain itself. Of course, the closer we get, the more Luci's grace is picking up on it, masked or not, and something is making his grace act up."

Suddenly Gabriel knew why he'd been so on edge ever since entering the area. He marveled at the fact that he hadn't even noticed his own grace churning at the foreign presence blanketed over the entire mountain and the vast majority of the forest surrounding it. But now that he had identified the source, he easily settled his grace.

Gabriel also briefly wondered how the draconic presence had been affecting Castiel, or if it had at all. Though the angel was very in tune with his own grace, he had probably barely gave a passing thought to such slight adjustments to his grace resonance even as they were being done at an almost constant rate.

Actually, what Gabriel really needed to do was check on Lucifer—

"I need to sit down," Lucifer mumbled before he collapsed against the wall of the cave and slid down to the ground as his knees gave out.

Mary – whose hand never left Lucifer's arm – went down with him, and the concerned expression quickly changed to worry. Frowning, she placed a hand on Lucifer's forehead. "He's burning up," she announced.

"It's Lucifer's grace," Castiel told her, coming up to the two while Gabriel kept an eye out. "Without proper access to it, he's unable to regulate the effects caused by its actions."

"And neither of you can do anything?" Sam asked.

"It would be a temporary solution at best," Castiel answered after a moment.

Dean glanced amongst them, settling his gaze on Mary and Lucifer. "I take it the flipside would be making it worse."

Considering that the worst possible scenario involved an explosion and the sudden absence of a certain planet, Dean's conclusion was putting it very lightly. But Gabriel wasn't about to tell them that because, well, details. Of course, Castiel and Lucifer would have also known this, and it wasn't like they were bringing it up.

"So, we need to get to the heart of the mountain and deal with this creature to calm Lucifer's grace," Sam prompted.

Gabriel gave Sam a look – not that the Winchester could see it. While he appreciated Sam's concern for Lucifer's wellbeing, 'dealing' with a draconic subspecies wasn't as easy as he was implying. "We only need to get answers and get out. We can deal with it properly later."

"Fallin' out before anyone else? How lame," Lucifer muttered, voice strained.

"Save your breath," Mary chastised him before turning back to the others. "I'll stay here with him. You guys go on."

Gabriel was about to agree when he gave it another thought. Moving forward quickly, he gently tapped Lucifer's forehead before he could protest, and his unconscious brother slumped over further into Mary's arms, breathing slowly evening out. Sharing a look with Castiel, Gabriel nodded and pulled at Sam and Dean to get them moving.

"What–?"

"Come on. Cassie will get them both out of here while we face Smaug," Gabriel interrupted, not bothering to identify which brother was protesting. Probably Dean.

They were moving along much faster now – determination and desperation driving their pace. It didn't take more than an hour to reach the heart of the mountain. Gabriel heard an unsubtle intake of breath from Sam at the sheer size of the cavern, which was easily two college football stadiums in area. And Gabriel hadn't been completely wrong about calling the creature Smaug.

It was definitely of the subspecies that liked to hoard things, though it wasn't all precious metals and gems. There were trinkets and artifacts in the piles of treasure, and thick fur coats and polished wooden figures were scattered throughout.

And lying atop it all, staring them down with its reptilian gaze, was a wyvern.

Well… that explained the static steadily building in the air – the static electricity which was because the wyvern was not happy. Shit. He needed to get Sam and Dean out of here—

"Defilers… Why do you come here?"

Behind Gabriel, Sam and Dean stiffened at the quiet hiss that was voiced directly into their minds. Meanwhile, Gabriel's own mind was racing. Defilers? Sure, he could get trespassers, but defilers? Something wasn't adding up.

"Did those wretched thieves send you when they could not come back to avenge their fallen comrade themselves?"

Gabriel placed the tone of the voice. Taking in a deep breath, he closed his eyes for a moment to center himself before opening them again, slowly exhaling. Right. Mount Storm King, more like Storm Queen.

Those morons had stolen one of her eggs?! The one who hadn't managed to escape from the wyvern had been lucky he was just killed. Gabriel was sorely tempted to just snap the idiots who stole an egg from a wyvern here along with the egg if only so that they could learn a thing or two about why you don't do that sort of thing.

Now, it was a bit of a risk to tell any sort of dragon – subspecies or not – one's name, but he didn't want to give her the wrong impression.

"No, I'm Gabriel, and these two are just some concerned hunters. We actually came here because someone said you knew about the grace that fell nearby a couple weeks ago."

Okay, so that was a bit of a stretch, but things were relative for most draconic subspecies. They spent most of their lives sleeping and rarely – if ever – ventured from their territory. 'Nearby' would encompass all of Washington State and then some, and a couple weeks could be the equivalent of a couple years given how old the wyvern was.

Lightning crackled around the wyvern's eyes, a cloud of steam releasing from her mouth as her tongue swiped through the air before retreating back. "The many-lived canine that stalks my woods, he showed you the path to me…"

Gabriel's hand twitched at his side. "Yes, I'd met him once or twice before—" he started.

"You seek answers, archangel," she interrupted, tail rising and waving lazily back and forth behind her. "And yet, they are answers that you already know, no?"

"What does it mean, you already know?" Dean whispered harshly.

"If I knew, we wouldn't be here," Gabriel snapped back. Then, to the wyvern, he said, "We don't seem to be on the same page…"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Your lupine friend sent you here, not for me but for another," her voice hissed after a long minute.

"Not for you..?" Gabriel repeated, quickly thinking back to what Reynard had told him.

"There are two others besides you and yours that have travelled here," she said even as a piece of the puzzle fell into place in Gabriel's mind. "Foreigners from across the eastern cold ocean that I sense are not what they seem."

That was all he needed. "Thank you for your insight. We'll be on our way with our companions—"

The wyvern suddenly picked herself up, head nearly touching the top of the cavern while her wings stretched out to either side. Using her two legs to control her slide forward, she stopped a mere ten feet away from them. Gabriel hoped he was subtle with how he placed himself between her and the Winchesters, who were looking a little wide-eyed at just how big she was up close.

"See that those little thieves make their way back to me, archangel," she hissed, though it was more of a request than a warning. "It was rude of them to leave without even introducing themselves."

"I'm sure they'll be able to stop by sometime over the weekend," Gabriel replied, barely keeping himself from tensing as she dropped her head to be eye-level with him.

A rush a steam washed over him when she breathed a huffing chuckle. "Farewell, precious."

And with that, Gabriel was dragging Sam and Dean back down the long and twisting tunnel that lead outside. The Winchesters seemed to be a little too stunned from the whole experience to say anything, and Gabriel really didn't blame them. Dragons were powerful, but looked human. The subspecies – which really gave the wrong idea – were in a different league.

Around where they had left Lucifer, Mary and Castiel, Dean finally said, "It called you precious."

"It's because of my grace— It can look more gold than regular grace," Gabriel told him, with no small amount of amusement at the expression that took over Dean's face. "I also won her favor by promising to deliver the dumbasses who stole one of her eggs to her before next week. But until then, we have some British Men of Letters to catch."

"Wait— what?!"

Sam sighed. "You didn't understand half of what they were talking about, did you?"

"And that thing was a girl?!"

Sam just sighed again while Gabriel let out a laugh.

A/N: Things are looking up, aren't they? I hope it stays that way.