Chapter 15

Seventeen hours later, I-80 Rock Springs, Wyoming

Dean replaced the nozzle into the slot of the pump, turned back and screwed the gas cap back on, then walked into the store to pay.

He'd caught two hours sleep outside of Boise, and while it hadn't done much, it had stopped the buzzing in his brain so that he could concentrate on driving for a bit longer. The nightmare that had woken him had been more vivid than usual, and he washed the dried sweat from his face and neck in the restroom of the fill up he'd been parked in.

On the radio, he'd caught two news reports of a black car emerging from the smoke wall barricading Kansas, and the way it had taken off, heading north, the sighting fuelling an unreasonable amount of speculation on what was going on inside the state, from Mafia involvement to Colombian drug lords taking over to alien invasion, and this time he decided he'd stay on the 80 until Nebraska, going into Kansas on SR 283. There were no towns near the border where the highway crossed over. Perhaps it would be obscure enough to avoid the press entirely.

He was a day and a half behind Adam. The news reports had mentioned the kidnapping and the involvement of the FBI, a manhunt and roadblocks across the mountains, but there had been no triumphant recording of the kidnapper being stopped anywhere. He wasn't sure if the demons would leave Adam alone once his half brother drove into Kansas. He didn't know how quickly the ritual could be enacted. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, realising he didn't know enough about any of it. He was stuck between trying to second guess the purposes of the archdemons and trying to keep those thoughts bottled up and suppressed, where they couldn't take his strength and purpose.

From the station's fridge, he grabbed a six pack of high caffeine sodas, and at the coffee pots, another hot coffee. The attendant was taciturn and thin-lipped and Dean paid with cash, glad to not have to speak at all. On the way out, he misjudged the doorway slightly and knocked his shoulder against it. The blow, stupid and needless, made him straighten up and focus on what he was doing and he made it to the car without another misstep. Pulling the top on one of the sodas, he chugged half of it down and turned on the engine, glancing at the seat beside him. The Colt lay there, fully loaded. He'd pulled it out of the trunk when he'd stopped, figuring if he couldn't save her, he could at least take down five archdemons before the bullets and his luck ran out and he went down himself.

He pulled out of the gas station's driveway and turned onto the black top that would take him into sparsely occupied prairie. The road was lit up by the headlights and in the far distance a set of red taillights gave him something to focus on. He shut out the exhaustion grinding at his bones, and the fear gnawing on his nerves, and put his foot down again, the black car accelerating through the darkness along the smooth, wide road.

Hutchinson, Kansas

Ellie braced herself, arms and legs akimbo, her hands and feet spread against the lid and sides of the trunk as the car seemed to repeatedly drop into holes or bump over things. The trunk was dark again, lit only by the red of the taillights back-shining in on her.

She thought she'd been in the trunk around twenty-seven hours now, and dehydration was becoming an issue. She'd frozen as they'd driven through the night, up and over the mountains, then the temperature in the trunk had climbed, reaching close to unbearable as they drove through the high plains. Sweat poured from her, her hair sticky with salt and her eyes stinging when the perspiration ran down her forehead and dripped into them. Her circulation was slowing in her limbs and hands and feet, despite her efforts to keep them moving at least part of the time. She'd realised a while ago that her condition on arrival was of no importance at all—provided the child lived, she supposed.

The car swerved violently, and she tucked her head down as she slid into the side, hitting the flat panel with her shoulders. They should be almost there. It couldn't be that much further. Her sense of time and direction were good, and apart from stopping twice to fill the car with gas, Adam had been driving south and west at the speed limit the whole time, the steady beat of the concrete seams under the tyres telling her they had been primarily travelling on the interstates. The most direct route.

Less than an hour later, she could feel the car slowing down, and she let out a long breath of relief. When it stopped, she lifted her head slightly. The smell of ash and brimstone came to her, and she grimaced.

The trunk lid opened, and she closed her eyes against the glare of the metallic daylight. Adam's hands closed around her arms, lifting her upward, the trunk's rim scraped the back of her legs as he dragged her out. Her legs buckled when her feet touched the ground, pain rippling upward as the blood forced back into them. He caught her before she dropped, his fingers digging painfully into the muscle of her arm.

"Walk."

She turned her head, still squinting and made out the gate, a dark opening in the ground a few yards from the car. She could hear the whisper of the demons in the surrounding air, the shrieks from the staircase in front of her. Hoping her legs would hold her up, she walked to the stairs and took the first step down, her skin drying with the rush of heat that hit her from below.

The horn sounded, a clear pure note that seemed to hang in the air, cutting through every other noise in the camp. Sam turned to Tricia, his feelings mirroring her expression.

"Time to go." He picked up the Spear and unwound the wrappings, slotting the iron haft into the wooden length and twisting them, the click of their joining loud in the silence that filled the tent.

On the other cot, Tricia watched him, her hands clasped together. Sam thought they'd said all the important things, the things that couldn't be left unsaid. What happened next was going to be in the hands of fate or destiny or god—or in his skills and the strength of Michael's angels—he couldn't be sure which.

He ducked out of the doorway of the tent and walked down the field, his boots leaving puffs of grey dust and ash rising behind him. Baraquiel came up beside him on his left, and a moment later, Sariel was walking on his right. He looked at them, the corner of his mouth lifting in a questioning half-smile.

"Michael has assigned us to you, to ensure that you can do the job you came for." Baraquiel inclined his head slightly.

"I thought the Spear protected the bearer?" Sam said lightly.

"It does. It will." Sariel smiled. "Michael is just being cautious."

Cautious? Sam wondered uneasily. That I don't disappear with the Spear?

They walked down to the edge of the protected zone, standing and waiting as angels and Watchers and nephilim came from all sides, forming ranks, their weapons drawn, their gathered radiance far outshining the dim, flat daylight. Michael walked across the field, gesturing, his gaze on Sam.

"You will be behind the first ranks. The Princes have returned and we can no longer see far into the gate, but the chamber is only a single level below."

Sam nodded, tightening his grip on the slim wooden shaft of the spear. When he and Tricia had driven in, there had been maybe a few hundred angels. Now the numbers had swelled, ranks stretching out behind him to the left and right further than he could see, thousands upon thousands of them, their massed effulgence too bright to look at.

A single horn note sounded again, this time in a different key and the restless movement ceased.

"Is that Gabriel's Horn?" he whispered to Baraquiel. The Watcher nodded.

"Who's blowing it?"

"Iophiel. He was given the Horn on Gabriel's death."

Michael's voice rang out across the company, the power of it setting up an ache in Sam's teeth, that strange vibration of an angel's voice that could, unmodulated, kill any living creature on the earth.

"The Princes have returned, and it is time to put an end to the abomination of their existence, my brothers."

The sword he lifted suddenly into the air was coruscant in white flame, and Sam stared at it helplessly, memories crowding in at him at the sight. He struggled to clamp down on them, feeling them bleeding into his will, sapping the strength of the part of him that remained him. He would not go in there like a berserker, at the command of someone else, he thought tightly.

"CHRISTEOS MICALOZ RAASI ORS!"

Sam shut his eyes tightly, throwing his forearm to cover his face as the Host's light flared into a ferocious bright corona, casting the field and the surrounding area into a featureless glare. The argentine light pierced him somehow and the Spear in his hand was ringing like a struck crystal with the vibrations of it. To either side of him, the Watchers closed up, shielding him with their bodies from the angels' massed response to their leader.

"Was that Enochian? What did he say?" Sam gasped, when the light faded and the field reverberated with the step of the angel's march.

Baraquiel nodded. "Basically, let us bring light into darkness."

Shawnee, Kansas

The convoy of black four-wheel-drives, led by the limousine, pulled over a few miles into the shifting, coiling smoke, and all the occupants got out of the vehicles, looking around the blackened and deserted street.

"I thought they were attacking anyone who entered?" Ryan complained.

"Apparently not," Roman replied, his tone caustic. He waved a hand at the rest and listened, neck stretched out giving the curious impression of a bird of prey. After a moment he waved and they returned to the cars, pulling out and heading further west.

When the demons descended, less than a mile further along the road, Roman's mouth extended in a wide smile, and kept extending as he got out of the limo. He reached out and snatched the barely visible hellspawn from the air and bit down deeply, crunching through the wings and limbs with relish.

The company of Leviathans scrambled out of the cars to grab their own, and the demons were devoured in minutes, their shrieking cut short as long teeth bit through throats and chests, their limbs torn from their bodies. The grisly remains that fell to the ground were clearly visible.

"That's more like it." Susan wiped her mouth delicately.

"They don't taste as good as people."

"They're not people." Roman stared. "From here, we're splitting up. One car to each road, try to take in as much ground as possible. Susan, Ryan, we'll take the gate. Remember, no survivors. Get going, it's a big state."

SR 283, Wakeeney, Kansas

Dean made the turn onto the I-70 slowly, speeding up when he saw the signs for Hutchinson. The drive had been an endless nightmare: highway, gas stations, coffee, little food, exhaustion, fear, and for a while, somewhere in Nebraska he thought, he'd been convinced that it was going to go on and on, that he'd never actually reach his destination, that this was the latest trick in the powers arsenal, a state of mind of constant peak emotion.

He chugged the last can of soda and rubbed his eyes as he drove east, his attention on the road, forcing his thoughts to the incipient problems of finding the gate, getting inside, finding Ellie and not getting them both killed in the process.

When the light appeared, slightly south and east of him, a pillar of white against the dull, leaden sky, too bright to look at directly, he took his foot off the accelerator, the car slowing. It took a few moments to register what he was looking at; the Host of Heaven, gathered together and ready to march on Hell. With the realisation, he slammed his foot on the pedal and the car rocketed forward. If he was there in time, he'd be able to follow them in.

In the stretch of desolation, only the wind's voice crossing the prairie, he heard the car before he saw it: a black four-wheel-drive hurtling toward him, engine revs screaming as the wagon bounced over the broken concrete and off the guardrail that divided the two sides of the road, back into his lane. His fingers closed tightly around the wheel as it came on, the grill growing larger, and he could feel his muscles contracting as he braced to meet it or swing the car wide. Then it swerved left to the lane next to him and he caught a second's glimpse of a monstrous mouth, filled with teeth, as the two vehicles passed each other.

Leviathan? Here?

He watched the car in the rearview mirror as it dwindled into the distance, still swerving and bouncing all over the road. The HELL? Had it been a hallucination?

The pillar of light was dissipating, and he shook off the disorienting speculation about Dick's species, speeding up and trying to remember where the really fucked up bits of road had been on the way to the angels' encampment.

Fifth Level, Hell

Ellie stumbled down the last steps and looked up as her feet touched the smoothly polished floor of a wide and long hall. Incongruously, after the rough cut stone staircase and tunnel they'd just come down, the room had been carved from the original cavern with unearthly craftsmanship, the walls smooth and polished like the floor, columns rising gracefully to a very high carved and vaulted ceiling, the flickering torchlight gleaming on the mirror-smooth surfaces of the black stone.

"Move." Adam pushed her again, and she shuffled forward, walking between two of the columns. To her right, she could see a raised dais with a stone table on it. The table was of the same black basalt as the hall, but it had been hacked roughly into shape, the only smooth surface on it was the top. She turned her eyes away from it, knowing what it was, what it was used for. Somehow the gate was a portal to the Fifth level. Lucifer's level.

"Eleanor."

Meg walked slowly toward them from the darkness of a doorway to the left, her face and body pouched and grey and ulcerated now as the effort of holding the devil inside took its toll on the vessel. She looked…corroded, Ellie thought, a sacrificial anode to the more powerful metal inside of her.

"I knew there was a reason I didn't kill you when I had the chance." The demon's voice was modulated and deepened by the angel. "Come."

Adam pushed her again and she followed Meg deeper into the room. As she stepped beyond the next set of columns, she saw Castiel. The angel had been suspended by his arms from chains set into two of the columns, his feet barely reaching the ground, his weight resting entirely on the shoulder joints. His head hung against his shoulder, and she could see the livid cuts and gashes and bruising over his bare chest and stomach. Around his neck something had been welded, a collar of some sort. She narrowed her eyes as she tried to make out the details of it, but he was too far away. A binding collar for angels? As she passed by, his movement caught her peripheral vision; the slight lift of his head, the dark blue eyes opening.

Meg walked to a low chest set against the polished wall. When she turned back, she had another collar in her hand, similar to the one that Cas had been wearing.

"I don't think we'll risk seeing if you have inherited any of the gifts of your ancestors, Eleanor. Amaros was one of the most powerful angels of the Eighth before he fell; some thought he was more powerful than Michael…at least at one time."

The demon approached her, and Adam took a handful of her hair from behind, yanking her head back, leaving her throat exposed to Meg. The collar was cool but not cold, the metal very heavy. Lead, she thought, wondering why that metal had been chosen. The demon touched it where the two halves joined and the soft metal sealed together with a faint puff of acrid smoke. She closed her eyes. She'd need a hacksaw to get it off now.

"Were there others? Like me?" she asked, swallowing against the press of the collar. It felt heavier, lying on her collarbones.

"No." Lucifer nodded to Adam and her hair was released, allowing her to lower her head. "I thought there'd be at least two or three, over the years, over time…but there was only you. Of course, there wasn't another family like the Winchesters either. It took a long time to bring those plans to fruition."

Adam cut the wire from her wrists and ankles and Ellie tried to move her hand discreetly to her jacket. Adrenalin filled her when she realised she couldn't move.

Lucifer saw the tiny expression and laughed. He gestured to Adam, who pulled her jacket from her shoulders and tossed it to the fallen angel. Meg felt the seams and pulled the slim stiletto blade out.

"Were you looking for this?" Lucifer asked. "Sorry. As amusing as it would be to have you in Hell at my disposal, we just can't allow early departures today." He threw the knife across the hall and turned back to her. "The collar gives me the power over your central nervous system. It controls your muscles, your tendons and all those connections that make movement possible."

That's why lead, Ellie thought, trying to hide her reaction. She could feel the devil's gaze on her face, prying at her emotions. He would enjoy her despair, would drink it up.

"Well, there's a lot to do, and the Princes don't like to be kept waiting, so let's get started." He nodded at Adam.

In the corner of her eye, she saw the flash of a blade, her mind screaming to move, to turn, her muscles locked in paralysis. The cold touch of the knife slid along her skin as he sliced through the seams of her shirt and jeans, the straps of her bra and sides of her underwear, and the pieces fell around her.

"Walk to the table, Eleanor." Meg's sagging face smiled encouragingly at her, and her foot lifted, slid forward and set down, controlled by the angel, against her will. She walked stiffly across the room, as rigidly as a puppet, her bare feet slapping on the polished floor. At the steps she climbed to the dais, then stopped next to the table. She couldn't even turn her head of her own volition, but in her periphery she saw the top of the table, stained in some parts, crusted over with dried fluids whose origins she did not want to think about.

"Upsy-daisy, Eleanor. On the table and lie down."

Turning and backing up, she put her hands behind her, feeling for the edge, then lifted herself until she was sitting on the top. She swung her legs up and eased herself across and down. Like a bad film actress, she was lying naked on her back, in the centre of the ritual table, and the idea was so corny she wanted to cry.

"Very good." Lucifer came to the edge of the table and looked down at her, impatient greed filling his eyes. "That wasn't so hard, now was it?"

Panic pressed at her mental walls. She was trapped within a body that was beyond her control. There must be a way to fight this, she thought, as her will, trained for years in self-discipline, held down the fear, damped out her desperation. Think. Think of a way to get free.

Meg looked over her shoulder at Adam. "Bleed the angel."

Adam nodded and turned away, walking to the open chest and taking a large silver bowl from it, then to the angel between the pillars. The blood of a Song…in some of the apocryphal texts, the angels had called themselves Songs or Melodies.

Inside her unresponsive body, Ellie flinched as she heard Cas' scream of pain. She couldn't see what Adam had done. She didn't want to see. She turned her mind back to her own problem. If the collar was depressing or dampening the nervous system, how could she short-circuit it?

Adam returned to the table some time later, the bowl filled with blood. He set it down beside Meg, on the table, and the angel dipped his fingers into it, drawing the Enochian sigils for the ritual over her body with the warm blood. Her flesh crawled at the touch of the demon's fingers on her, each dragged impression filling her with a greater fear that she wouldn't be able to stop this, that she wouldn't be able to do anything at all.

"The collar also prevents me from being drawn into you, at the critical moment, you see," Meg said conversationally as more and more of the circles, sigils and connections, over her shoulders, down her breastbone and around her breasts, her ribcage and stomach were completed, lines following the curves of her hips and thighs and down the lengths of her arms and legs. The reek filled the air. As the liquid cooled against her skin, Ellie visualised the patterns she could feel. They followed her major blood paths, in and out of the chakras, from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet.

"The child's mind has no defences to trap me, nor power to hold me out, unlike yours, I daresay," Meg added, smiling. She finished the design and dipped her fingers into the almost emptied bowl once more, her finger moving to Ellie's lips, smearing the blood over them, and pushing through them to leave some on her tongue. Her mind gagged, her body could not.

"Once I've taken over the child's mind, we can cut it out. Then with the first taste of your blood, I will finally be bonded to its soul. And…after that…well, you should consider yourself lucky that you'll be dead and won't have worry about it."

She put the bowl under the table, and leaned on the edge, looking down into Ellie's face. "Pretty simple, considering the enormous affront to the natural order. The real trick has always been getting all the parts of the puzzle together at the one time. Poor old Krivejko never realised that it would work. He was a thousand years too early when he tried. I blame myself. I was looking for someone naturally skilled in magical design. I didn't tell him that the keys to this particular prison had to be bred slowly."

She straightened, turning her gaze to a doorway in the wall opposite the table.

"Here they come." Meg glanced down at her again, lifting one hand to stroke her hair. "And we're all ready. Don't look so worried. It'll be over soon."

Ellie could already feel the approaching cold, the pulling sensation of the archdemons as they drained the energy from her, lassitude increasing as they got closer. Her eyes closed as fatigue and despair fell on her together, taking her hope and her warmth at the same time.

"The Host is attacking. Is everything ready?" Pythius stopped beside Meg, invisible within the black hooded robe he wore.

"Yes."

"Begin." The sepulchral whisper to her left could only be the oldest, Baal. Even the thought was exhausting. She couldn't turn her head or raise her eyelids to look.

Bony fingers curled around her wrist, the cold penetrating through the layers of her body, through skin and fat, muscle and sinew and bone, to her core. Pythius stood at the foot of the table, Baal to her left, Lucifer to her right and another archdemon behind her, hands settling against her skull.

She couldn't breathe, couldn't think, and panic broke through, thrashing frantically inside the confines of her mind.

Hell, Lawrence Gate

Sam watched in amazement as the demons fell back before him, before the Spear held in his hand. Baraquiel and Sariel, to his left and right, were slashing at the horde with their swords, keeping pace as he strode through the fighting.

"Where is Lucifer?" he yelled at Baraquiel, who pointed to the staircase to one side of the first cavern.

"Not far. We have to hurry. They could have started it already."

As he spoke, Sam felt a vibration in his skull. His gaze flashed back to Baraquiel. The Watcher's eyes widened as the vibration increased.

"SAM!"

Over the noise of the battle, Michael's cry reached them. Sam spun around, finding the archangel at the foot of the stairway to the next level, Michael's sword slicing through a dozen demons.

The angel gave a broad wave. "They've started! To me! Move!"

Swinging the Spear around and clearing a path for all of them, Sam bolted through the battalion of demons to Michael's side. The demons leapt back out of the way of the slender lance. One was not quite fast enough, and its foot was brushed by the iron shaft as Sam moved it. It dropped dead instantly, turning to smoke then ash on the floor.

Through Sam's bones, through his teeth and in the spaces in his skull, the vibration strengthened, and he could almost hear it as a sound now, far down in the lowest registers. A trickle of liquid made itself felt down his neck, and he touched his fingers to it, looking at the blood on them in disbelief. Another trickle slid down from his nostril over his lip.

Great, he thought, my brain is fucking well melting. He pushed the thought away and ran ahead of Michael, taking the stairs down to the next level in twos and threes. If it had started, Ellie must be down there. His brother's face flashed into his mind's eye, and inside there was an internal howl. He couldn't fail Dean this time. The archangel and Watchers followed, but Sam was barely aware of them. The fury Adam had rekindled was building into a fire of its own.

Let's get it on.

Hell's time had taken over, Sam realised as he swung around the next landing, the staircase leading down and down, seemingly without end. Ahead, somewhere in the reddish black, the sounds of the archdemons' chanting was growing stronger, and the stronger the sound became, the more blood pulsed from his ears and nose, even slipping down his cheeks like tears.

The stairs vanished, the space opening up without warning, the light ruby and pulsing in the same dissonant rhythm as the chanting. Sam skidded on the smooth floor when he hit the hall, his gaze sweeping around the room, a flash of disgust as he saw the table, saw the shadowy, robed figures surrounding it, then locking onto Meg. He didn't hesitate, raising the Spear and running for the demon, wiping impatiently at the blood on his face, leaving a thin spatter of drops behind him on the black stone.

Ellie lay on the table, her eyes fixed open, her blood trickling down her cheeks, over her mouth and down the side of her neck. She couldn't hear anything except the deep buzzing vibration of their chanting. Inside, her mind was gibbering and clamouring at her to do something, to save herself, her child, to kill those who were trying to harm them. Her body remained frozen and immobile.

Meg's fingers gripped her arm suddenly, nails biting in, and red fire flashed in the demon's eyes, lighting up the blood vessels in her face as the fallen angel tried to begin the transfer.

No, no! Ellie screamed inside her head. Fear and fury broke through the sucking deadness of the archdemon's power. The collar got heavier, and her mind bulged against it, irresistible force against immovable object. She had never once accepted defeat. Her soul bared its teeth and fought back.

Above her, and within her range of vision, the sweep of a flaming sword was met with a ringing clang by a heavy black metal blade as Michael attacked Baal. The archdemon blocked the thrust and parried the white-flamed blade aside without releasing the grip he had on her wrist. But Michael's next attack could not be met one-handed.

Lucifer had also released her, backing down the table as Sam entered her peripheral vision, holding the Spear.

The sight gave her fresh strength, and she struggled against the hold of the collar furiously as Pythius and Asmodeus moved to the sides of the table, hands curling around her wrists and continuing the chanting.

She was aware of the spell they wrought, creeping through her body through the sigils and circles, disrupting the flow of blood and oxygen and nutrients to her child. Fear and hope awoke a new determination in her, and she fought to get deeper inside herself, to block the effects of the spell somehow. She reached outward blindly, begging for help. There was nothing left to lose.

In the cavern above, Amaros sagged, his sword falling to his side as his strength vanished for a long moment, then returned. More demons were coming up from the lower levels and he swung around to face them, stumbling almost immediately at a fresh internal assault. Beside him, Araquiel gripped his elbow, hauling him to his feet.

"What is it?"

"I don't know!" Amaros staggered to one side, shaking his head. "Something…something is drawing on me…on my potentiis angelus."

The energy came like an electrical current, fresh and sharp and filled with crackling power. Ellie didn't question it, just fed it to the effort of keeping her body functioning for the child inside of her, to her struggle against the power of the ritual. In her mind's eye, she visualised the design Meg had painted over her, finding the flow lines and directing the flow of energy to forcing the spell back along the channels it was using to invade her body.

Sam advanced on Meg, seeing the crackle of fire in the vessel's eyes and under her skin. Dean said it had to be through the heart, first and only time. Through the ribs and into the heart sounded easy. It wasn't. He stalked up the low steps, following her across the dais and down the steps. Meg's gaze swung from side to side as the fallen angel looked for an escape route.

He couldn't help think of Lilith, in the moment the demon had realised her power couldn't touch him. Perhaps this was finally full circle. Lucifer couldn't smoke out of Meg, as Lilith had left Ruby. The devil might cut and run, but Meg's body wasn't in good enough shape to get him far. Shifting his grip on the spear, Sam looked past Meg. The cavern was huge, but the only exit seemed to be behind him. All he had to do was make sure Lucifer couldn't get past.

Michael had pushed Baal back between the columns and circled him, his face lit and edged in the white light from the flames of his sword. He could not rush the archdemon; of all the Princes, Baal was the oldest, the most powerful and dangerous.

The once-angel had been his brother's chief supporter, his closest friend, the one who'd incited the proud and beautiful Lightbringer to disobey, to rebel against Heaven and his Father. Even then, Baal should have known that Lucifer's temper would turn on him if they failed. Michael had heard the archdemon's torture had been the longest. He looked into the blackness of the hooded cloak, feeling the evil that resided there, the cold mental touch of the mind that had been twisted through millennia of agony into an entirely different entity, and the leader of the Host prayed to his Father and to Heaven for strength.

Dean saw the Cutlass sitting in the middle of the field, and a group of black cars converging into a loose circle surrounding it. He hit the brakes. The three chunky vehicles and the long limousine stopped, and he watched, brows rising, as the doors were shoved open and Leviathans leapt from the vehicles, their suit coats flapping as they ran together and disappeared down a hole in the ground.

Alice in fucked-up land, he thought. Follow the bigmouths.

He turned the wheel; the Impala bumping off the road and onto the grass and drove slowly toward the cars, stopping a short distance from them. Shutting off the engine, he grabbed the Colt from the seat beside him and got out. In his coat pockets, the 1911, with four mags of explosive tip rounds weighed down his left side. In the right pocket, the speed loaders for the Colt held another ten rounds. He reached under the coat and drew the thick, heavy knife. In the flat silver light, the blade winked, the symbols etched along the edge of the blade as reddish black as light from the Accursed Plane.

He would be able to do a fair amount of damage.

At the edge of the hole, he looked down, seeing the pulsing red light he knew. The cries and shrieks and screams coming from the earth grated against his ears as he started down, Ruby's knife in one hand, the Colt in the other.

"What the—?"

Amaros stared at the eight or nine monsters that had joined the battle, their form changing from human as they hit the floor of the first cavern, mouths opening and covering the skulls which elongated as the bodies grew larger, clothing and skin disappearing under mottled black and green hides. They snatched at the demons, devouring them whole, one after another, running them down against the stone walls, chasing them through the narrow tunnels that led from the chamber, leaping to catch them as the demons wheeled and spiralled in the air above them.

"Reinforcements?" Araquiel raised a brow in bemusement.

"Timely, but not all that friendly looking." Amaros doubled over as he felt the pull against his power again.

Araquiel looked down at him. "It has to be the woman, Amaros."

"How's she doing it?" Amaros lifted his head, panting slightly. "With no consent? No spell?"

"Your consent is in her body, in her blood." Araquiel looked at the stairs to the lower caverns. "She's drawing on you instinctively, her emotions controlling?"

"Araquiel!" Dean staggered down the stairs, relieved to see someone familiar. A demon leapt for him from the side of the tunnel and his knife swung out, slashing through its throat, then plunging into the chest of another that collided with him when he jumped down the rest of the stairs and hit the floor.

"Lucifer—" Dean gasped, rolling to his feet. "—the ritual—where?"

He dropped again, ducking and rolling as Araquiel decapitated the demon that launched itself at him.

"Down the stairs," Araquiel said, leaning forward and offering his hand. "Michael and your brother are already down there."

Dean let himself be pulled up and nodded, his expression clouding as he noticed Amaros. "What's wrong with him?"

Araquiel glanced at his brother when Amaros rose unsteadily, leaning on his sword as more power was tapped from him. "We think your wife is drawing on his power."

"What?" Dean stopped in the tunnel. "Is that possible?"

"If she's strong," Araquiel said, gesturing to the stairs. "We need to go down to the Fifth level."

Dean flicked a glance back over his shoulder as he followed the Watcher down the uneven rock steps. "You invite the Leviathans?"

"No. Is that what they are? Ugly."

Araquiel threw an explosion of light ahead of them, flooding the stairs and the immediate area beyond and they hit the smooth floor of the cavern, each slowing as they took in the multiple situations confronting them.