Chapter 21 A Tangled Web Woven


Great Bend, Kansas. March 5.

Adrienne's wails echoed through the bare, empty rooms, bouncing off the concrete floors. Maluch closed his eyes and swung around.

"Chasina, stop the child from crying!"

Chasina looked up from the map she was studying, her eyes narrowing as she stared back at the tall nephilim. "You wanted to bring her, you stop her from crying!"

"She's the key, without her we will not be able to break through, of course I had to bring her," he snapped back.

"My father said we would be able to enter by repenting and asking for forgiveness." She looked away from Maluch's baleful glare.

"Will you go on bended knee, Chas? Or walk in like an equal?"

She looked at the group of children, huddled together on the far side of the long, wide room, the baby in their midst. "Do you think we'll be treated as equals with the blood of a child on our hands, Maluch?"

His jaw muscles tightened. "The texts haven't been wrong yet, Chas."

He turned away from her and strode across the room to the children. "Make her stop."

John looked up at him. "She's hungry and cold. We all are."

"And she needs changing," Laura said, lifting her chin defiantly as she stared up at the tall man. "She's wet."

"Wet." Maluch considered that for a moment, then turned back to Chasina. "Take this one." He gestured to John, sitting in front of him. "Get everything he tells you they need. We've got another three weeks to wait and too much to do to be distracted right now."

Chasina sighed, and nodded, walking to the children and holding out her hand to John. "Come on, we'll go shopping."

He got up reluctantly, staring at her hand and folding his arms tightly across his chest. The rejection was plain and Chasina smiled slightly, dropping her hand to her side. His father's son, she thought, turning away. She heard his light footsteps behind her and walked to the wide freight elevator that would take them down to the car. They should have killed everyone in that house. Killed them and taken the heart from those who'd survived at Lovelock. Leaving them alive had been a bad decision, no matter what the angel said.


Forest Edge, Oregon. March 6.

Dean woke abruptly, the indrawn whoop of his breath resounding in the room, his heart pounding. He rubbed his hand over his face, wiping the sweat from it, feeling the dampness in his hair, and pushed the covers aside, moving to the edge of the bed and sitting hunched over, his head in his hands.

He knew without looking that the other side of the bed would be smooth and unused. The nightmares weren't as horrifying when she was lying next to him. For either of them. But the last two nights, she hadn't been there and the dreams were bad, and getting worse, he thought tiredly.

He kept telling himself Maluch and the others needed them...John and Rosie, and Marc and Laura and Adrienne. Needed them alive to complete the Circle. It didn't help. In the nightmares, he saw their faces, terrified and streaked with tears, in pain and alone and needing him, needing him to get them back, to protect them and save them, and he woke with his chest aching.

The bedside clock showed three-thirteen.

He could hardly remember the events of the last three days. Sam, Adam, Baraquiel and Chazaquiel had returned, with Sariel and Shamsiel, Rudy and Carl and Charlie. Amaros and Araquiel had healed them as well as they could but, unlike the angels who could draw upon the power of Heaven, the Watchers couldn't heal completely. His brothers would take weeks to recover from their wounds. He'd watched Trish struggling to hold it together when she'd seen Sam, her face pale and drawn as she'd followed the Watchers carrying him into the house.

They'd had to tell Laney's girls their mother was dead. Sara and Leah would stay with them, until this was over and someone could be spared to look for other relatives, or find out if Laney had had other arrangements in place for them. He'd watched Ellie hugging them, her fear and pain over John and Rosie still filling her, and the two little girls sensing it, clinging to her tightly. Standing beside them, he hadn't known how to comfort any of them, his anger pushed down and bottled up by will.

After the first night, Ellie had been harder, more on edge, her pain and fear and anger buried somewhere deep, somewhere hidden. He'd felt a flutter of unease at the coldness in her eyes, at the way she'd turned away from him, walled up in a cage of ice he knew well enough.

He'd gone to check on Sam and Trish and Adam late the next day.

"How you doing?" He'd looked at Sam. The bone had been reset and the healing had begun but it was a long way from being useful. His brother had tried to sit up, wincing as the incautious movement set off a stabbing pain in his side.

"'Bout what you'd expect." Sam'd grimaced, easing back down. "I haven't seen Adam; Trish says he's okay?"

"He's still pretty weak, but the hole in his leg is shrinking," Dean said, rubbing his forehead. "Is Trish holding up okay?"

Sam looked away. "She's terrified, Dean. She lost her parents, now this…I don't know." He exhaled softly. "She'd be better if I wasn't stuck here, I think. Have you tried Cas?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, a half a dozen times. No response."

"He banished them, didn't he?" Sam's brow creased up.

"Yeah, pretty sure Michael's pissed at him, maybe got him locked down or something." He'd shrugged. "I'll keep trying."

"How's Ellie doing?" Sam's reluctance to ask was clear in his brother's face.

He'd shaken his head. "She's shut down. Withdrawn."

To his surprise, his brother had nodded in understanding. "She did the same thing when that witch took you, and, uh, when you were under the influence of the cursed bracelet."

He hadn't realised that. Hadn't even thought of it. Belatedly, he remembered how'd she been when she'd thought Frances had been killed by the demons, when Rosie had been in the hands of the changeling mother. She'd shut down then as well, focussing on the job, on what they had to do, refusing to admit to her fear, or ask for help. Perhaps it wasn't the walls of ice he remembered.

Leaving Sam's house, he'd thought about that on the walk back. She hadn't slept in the last two days, spending the long hours of the night down in the basement, scouring the database and the texts they had in the library for any clue of the ritual of the Circle, calling Monserrat to search the vaults of the monastery for anything he might have seen, calling contacts across the world to find out what they could. If what he was seeing was turbo drive, rather than rejection, he could talk to her about it.

He stood up and pulled on a pair of jeans, opening the bedroom door and walking down the stairs. The basement door was closed, but when he opened it, the whirr of printers going, a beep from the fax machine and the soft flicker of the computer monitors told him she was still down here, still looking.

Ellie glanced up as he walked down the steps and across the room, looking back at the screen in front of her almost immediately.

"I know it's late," she said when he came up beside her chair. "I can't sleep anyway."

He sat down beside her, looking at the screen and then back to her face. "Found anything?"

She flicked a sideways look at him. "No. Nothing yet."

"I'm not going to tell you how to deal with this, Ellie," he said, lifting a hand and laying it against the back of her neck. "Let me help, okay? Don't shut me out. You might be able to handle it on your own…but I can't."

Ellie looked at him and he saw her eyes widening in understanding, the cold wall surrounding her dissolving. "I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "Not talking about falling apart, just…can we do this together?"

She nodded, closing her eyes. "I want them back, right now."

"I know," he said. "Me too."

"What they did, the firstborn, that sound, or pressure wave, or whatever it was, it didn't affect the children," Ellie rubbed her eyes with her fingertips, leaning over the keyboard on her elbows. "Before I blacked out, or on the way down to the floor anyway, I have an image, in my head, of Rosie. She was all right, no bleeding, just frightened."

His chest constricted and he nodded. "We'll get them back."

For a moment, he thought she was going to turn away. He could see her making the decision, her shoulders straightening under his hand. Then she turned toward him instead, her arms circling his neck, her cheek against his. He closed his eyes, putting his arms around her, relief filling him.


March 9.

Frank shot in through the door, his long, dark coat whipping out behind him, shedding raindrops against the walls and over the floor.

"Ellie! Dean! Got it!"

The shout echoed through the house, bringing Twist and Steve and Red out from the kitchen and living room, Dean and Ellie and Garth up from the basement.

"Where?" Ellie strode to him, gesturing sharply to the living room. Frank turned in, walking past the hunters.

"Not where, not yet," Frank said, dropping the files on the coffee table and turning to face her. "When, and why."

Dean watched her mouth compress tightly, her eyes narrowing as she stared at Frank. If looks could kill, he thought, Frank would have dropped dead on the spot. He walked to her, putting his arm around her and feeling her pull in a deep breath and let it out again as Frank gestured impatiently at the files.

"They need a need a solar eclipse to pull off this circle—"

"That's March 30," Ellie interrupted him, looking at Steve. "Can you get Trish? She needs to know, and she can tell the others."

Steve nodded, turning and walking quickly from the room.

"All right, Frank, let's hear it. Why?" Ellie asked, her gaze on the files.

"Normally, the doorways between the planes are opened by a creature of those planes—in Heaven's case, Gabriel's trumpet can open a doorway anywhere, anytime."

"Why the hell didn't the firstborn just steal that, then?" Red scowled at Frank.

"Take an archangel to blow that horn," Garth said, shaking his head. "You try it without permission, it'll blow your head off."

"Anyway," Frank raised his voice, glancing at them in irritation. "The Circle was designed to raise the power from the original Fallen angels, through their bloodlines—the strongest of their bloodlines—and channel some kind of celestial power as well. As a for instance, an eclipse works, the power of the Sun and Moon in a direct line with Earth, but it needs the power of the earth as well."

"What power?" Dean's eyes narrowed.

"The ley lines," Ellie said, looking at Frank for confirmation. He nodded.

"Which node and line will correspond exactly with the eclipse?" She sat down beside him on the sofa, flipping through the pages of data in the file.

"That's what I haven't worked out yet," he said apologetically. "There are dozens of calculations needed to work it out."

"What are you still doing here, Frank?" Dean asked.

Frank looked up at him and frowned. "I've narrowed it down to the continental United States, which is fortunate for us, but the leys were mapped more completely in the UK and Europe, not so much interest in them over here."

Ellie nodded. "Okay. We need some help."

"My folks are still mapping in the eastern states," Tamsin said, glancing at Garth. "But they're in touch with other groups…there's, uh Felix in Utah, and I think Mather is still working in California."

"That'll be a big help," Ellie said. "Can you find what they have? Frank'll give you the co-ordinates for the track of eclipse over the entire time it's in line with the country."

She nodded and got up and Garth left with her. Dean watched them go, then turned back to Ellie.

"Mapping what?"

"The shifting vortices and nodes of the lines," she told him absently, staring fixedly at the table in front of her. "Red, get on the phone to any contacts you have in the south that might be following this stuff."

Frank looked at Dean's bemused expression and took pity on him. "The ley lines follow the lines of electromagnetic energy in the planet. They're connected to the matrix of energy that lies in the crust and also the matrix that lies over the planet's surface. So the foci sometimes shift around. Most of the old sites of power, the ancient ones, are built close to or over a node that is almost permanently stable, but even those have small shifts, a mile this way or that, depending on what the electromagnetic fields are doing at the time. We have a date, and a number of geographical possibilities for a match, based on the where the conjunction of the Moon and Sun will hit the earth over the twelve hours it will be visible in this country. It will cross over only one node in that time, but without a fixed map to check that against, we can't find the exact location."

"Huh."

"Frank, has Ray got all this stuff?" Ellie got up, her eyes focused and her voice sharp.

Frank nodded. "He's already on it, Ellie. As soon as he has the location, he'll call."

She turned to Dean, her face pinched and white. "Three weeks."

"It's enough time to get everyone together, if we've got a location," he said, standing up and going to her, knowing what she meant. Their children, Sam's kids, alone and afraid for that length of time was a chilling thought. He shunted the knowledge aside, pushing it down. He couldn't get them back if he thought about it. He looked at Frank briefly and turned for the hall. "Come on."

"Where is everyone?" Ellie followed him down to the kitchen, sitting at the table as he went to the counter to pour them fresh coffees from the pot.

"Rudy and Charlie went back to Maine. He said he's got five hunters there," he said, carrying the cups to the table and sitting next to her.

Ellie nodded, her hands curling around the cup for warmth. "Guillaume, Carmen, Marguerite, Vincent and Michael are still with him."

"Trent called yesterday. Callie's set for an operation on Friday, and it'll be another two weeks if that goes okay, so they're going to be out of it," he continued, frowning as he pulled together the memories and details he'd absorbed and filed away in the last couple of days. "Ah, Jeremy's on his own now. He said he was going to talk to Rudy about packing up the Michigan compound. Jim and Ginny and Achina are still more or less operational but they're not sure what's going to happen when Soleil gets back."

They'd lost a lot of people in this war, he realised. And it hadn't even been their war. He drew in a breath.

"Sam and Adam are out of action, for a few weeks, anyway. The same goes for Baraquiel and Chaz. I can't reach Cas." He hesitated, that worry rising again. The angel could've healed everyone, but there was just nothing when he'd prayed to him. Cas had been locked down in Heaven before, he guessed Michael had probably reached a new level of fury, banished from the chance to kill the firstborn when he'd wanted to.

"Sariel and Shamsiel are looking for the firstborn but so far, nada." He looked at her, and after a moment, she looked up.

"Where's Twist? And Carl?"

"Running light training ops with Idan, Oran and Tagi, I think," he said. "Twist thought he'd take Idan down to help out Jim. I told him it'd be a good idea."

"Oran and Tagi should go and help Jeremy," she suggested, leaning her head against her hand. "There won't be time for him to close up that compound before we take out the firstborn, and afterwards, well, we'll see."

See who's left, she meant, Dean thought, looking at her. See who's still alive.

"Get some sleep," he said to her, seeing the shadows around her eyes. "Just a couple of hours. I'll wake you if anything comes up."

She looked at him for a long moment and he could see her resistance to the idea.

"Didn't you tell me if there's nothing you can do in the moment, then you should let it go and rest, save your energy for when it's needed?"

"Wow, didn't see that one biting me in the ass," she said, wrinkling her nose half-heartedly at him. He leaned forward, smiling.

"Yeah, well, take your own advice."

She stood up and he got up with her, pulling her close, feeling her tiredness as she leaned against him.

"This isn't a sprint, Ellie and you know it," he murmured against her temple. "We gotta pace ourselves this time."

"I know."

Looking down at her, he gently lifted her face to his, searching her eyes. "We're together, right?"

He felt her ribs rise under his arms as she pulled in a deep breath. "We're together."


March 12.

Ellie held the cup of coffee between her hands, trying to get some warmth into her fingers.

"Trish? Do you want anything else done?" Talya said, wringing out the cloth and draping it over the rail. The nephilim had been quick to come over and help, though she was nursing her husband as well.

"No, thanks, Talya," Tricia looked up, wiping under her eyes with her fingertips and smiling tiredly.

"Tamsin will be here later, to check on Adam's leg. I'll see you both tomorrow then," Talya said, turning for the door. Ellie and Tricia nodded, watching her leave.

"Is there any news on where they are?" Trish asked Ellie, looking down at her cup.

"Not yet." Ellie sipped her coffee. "Ray's running the existing mapping against the geophysical data and the electromagnetic data he's got. It's a matter of elimination at the moment. He's set up the program to do the actual mapping himself if there aren't any known vortices already present along the eclipse track."

"I keep telling myself we wouldn't have been any safer, if we'd just gone," Tricia said abruptly, looking across the table at Ellie. "I asked Sam if he wanted to quit, just go and do something normal, something out of the hunting life. I thought that's what he wanted, but he said that we were as safe here as we would be out of the life. And they would've found us anyway, wouldn't they? Even if we'd been totally anonymous in some other place, they needed him and the children and they would've found us?"

Ellie looked down at the table for a moment. "Yeah, I think so, Trish. Without the protection we had on the houses, they might have found you months ago."

Tricia nodded. "I keep telling myself that."

"Trish, they won't harm them. They need them. They'll keep them safe and we'll get them back and it'll be over," Ellie said, leaning across the table and taking her hand. "We have to remember that."

"I can't believe I wanted this life, or any part of it, Ellie," Tricia said in a whisper. "Sam told me, you know. He told me everything and I kept thinking, how did he survive? How did either of them survive a childhood like that? How did they turn out the way they did? And everything that happened to them, since their father died…it's not a life. They were hunted down from before they were born…but I didn't think, it didn't occur to me our children would have the same thing happen to them."

She looked down and Ellie saw her shoulders shaking helplessly, her tears splashing on the smooth table surface. She slipped from her chair and moved around the table to put her arms around Tricia, holding her tightly. She couldn't say anything that might have eased her friend's pain or fear. She felt it too deeply herself. Ray was working on the location. They knew the time and date. They were doing everything they could do to get them back. Even so, it felt like it wasn't enough. John and Rosie had already been through too much. Children were resilient, she knew that from her own loveless upbringing, but they were also vulnerable, impressionable and easily frightened. How much would be too much?


March 15.

Dean lifted the steaks from the pan onto the plates and carried them to the table, sitting down as Ellie passed him a bowl of salad.

"We'll need to take them out pretty much all together, and without any warning," he said, shifting tomatoes and cheese to his plate and leaving the lettuce in the bowl.

Ellie nodded, passing him the potatoes. "A lot is going to depend on the location. What kind of building, what kind of access. I was thinking about the tranq projectors or, failing that, maybe using a knock-out gas, if there's a central delivery system."

"Like at Lovelock?" He looked at her as he put the bowl on the table. "An anaesthetic?"

"Yeah. It worked quickly in that house; it was fairly open-plan though."

"What about the kids? Won't it be too strong for them?" he asked, brows drawn together with concern.

"We'll have to go in fast, with oxygen and gas masks to get them out, but again, it depends on the setup," Ellie said. "If they're keeping the children separately, it can work. If not, then the projectors are probably our best shot."

Dean nodded. "Well, we'll take both. Will the tranqs work on them?"

"They're half-human, they have the same physiology as we do, we'll up the dosage because it would be better if they were really out, but yeah, it should work."

"You, me, Carl and Red, and uh, Twist on the projectors?" he asked. Ellie nodded.

"Or if Rudy's crew get there in time, Guillaume and Marguerite. Both are good shooters and they've both handled projectors before."

"Why didn't you get in touch with Rudy earlier?" He raised a brow as he looked at her. "I mean, years ago?"

Ellie's gaze dropped to her cup, her expression diffident. "I thought they'd been killed. Marcus told me nearly twenty hunters were taken down by a group of Arachne, preying over the north-eastern states, in '11-12, and when I tried to contact Rudy, his phone and half of the others were dead accounts."

"Arachne?" Dean stopped chewing. "Did anyone get them all?"

"Yeah, Laney spent three months tracking them down, said there were four of them. They got the last one just before the Leviathan problem started." She looked at his expression. "What's wrong?"

"That was…" He stopped, wondering if there was any point to raising old history. "Sam's soul was AWOL when he and Samuel took a case in Rhode Island. It was an Arachne. He shot and burned the offspring of the female he killed there, but he never checked if that would kill them. They all came from there, except for one."

Ellie looked at him for a long moment. "I asked Laney about it. And Rudy, when he got here. She said the hunters who'd been killed hadn't been that experienced."

He pushed his plate away, nodding. "Doesn't matter, does it?"

"No," she said firmly. "Nobody gets it right every time, and it probably could've happened to anyone."

He looked up at her tone. "I know…just, uh, don't tell Sam."

Ellie shook her head. "Of course not."


March 18.

The dining room was bright with sunshine, merciless to the tired faces of the people sitting around the table, showing up hollows and shadows like bruises.

"The Circle will be formed at the precise conjunction of the Moon and Sun over the node. We don't know where or when that is yet, but if we're even a minute late, then we'll have to wait until after the ritual is finished, and the doorway's been opened," Sariel said, looking around.

"Why?" Twist turned with a frown to the tall, dark-skinned Watcher.

"It was a failsafe," Shamsiel said from the other end of the table. "If the ritual was interrupted, the energy being called will stop flowing through the Nine, and the build up will kill them. It was supposed to prevent the Circle from being ambushed by Lucifer or any of his followers as a way back."

Dean stiffened at the words, and felt Ellie tense beside him. Across the table, he saw Tricia's hands clench into fists on the table top.

"So Michael could kill them all by opening the door as they are trying to do the same thing?" Ellie asked, her voice tight and hard.

"No," Sariel said quickly, shaking his head. "Iophiel cannot open the doorway in the same location as the Circle, only one doorway can exist in the one place at the one time. He can open a doorway nearby, however."

That was hardly reassuring, Dean thought sourly. "All right, timing's critical. We need to be there before the Circle opens, before they start."

"Yes, that would be best," Sariel agreed, looking at him. "If we have to wait until after, we also face the possibility that Michael and the Host will be waiting at the doorway when it opens."

"Has Ray made any progress on the location?" Tricia looked from Frank to Ellie. Ellie glanced at Frank and shook her head.

"Not yet. He has the track of the eclipse; the mapping of the lines hasn't been all that well-organised. He's eliminated a few possibilities but there are still several states to check," she said.

"It's been two weeks, Ellie!" Tricia snapped suddenly, her eyes filling with tears and her throat working. "Two weeks those monsters have had our children."

"He's working on it twenty-four-seven, Trish." Ellie kept her gaze steady, although Dean felt her tension where his arm rested against hers. "We'll find them."

Tricia stared at her for a long moment, then her shoulders slumped and her gaze dropped. She was thin, Dean realised, a lot thinner now, and he wondered if she was burning everything off through her nerves or just not eating.

He saw Ellie turn her head, glancing at Tamsin. Garth's wife gave a nod.

"Alright," Red cleared his throat and looked around the table. "We get the location and we get there early. How're we gonna take them out?"

"Knock out gas," Frank answered, looking from Red to Dean. Dean held up a hand.

"That's gonna depend on the setup they have, but yeah, either we hit them with tranq darts or do it the same way they took out us out in Lovelock," he said. "Sevuflurane anaesthetic and nitrous oxide piped into wherever they're hiding, and we'll go in with gas masks, and get the kids out, then deal with them."

"And if they spot us coming?" Twist looked at him worriedly.

"They won't, not this time," Ellie said. "Dean and I will go in the Impala. That was warded by Michael, so it really is invisible to them, and I think we're the ones they'll be looking for. Everyone else; Sariel and Shamsiel will ward the cars. We'll meet up with Rudy and the others and go only in the warded cars to wherever they are."

"How many we taking?" Red asked.

"Everyone," Dean said. "Everyone who can get there in time."


March 22.

Ellie sat in the garden, down past the pond, well away from the house, waiting. Amaros had told her how to contact him when he and Araquiel had brought the hunters back and she needed answers now.

Across the wide valley that stretched out to the north and east in front of her, the shadows lengthened over the farmland and vineyards, over the forests and fields and she could make out the distant twinkles of the town lights as dusk continued to darken.

"Eleanor," Amaros said, walking up behind her.

Ellie turned to look at him. The Watcher's long hair was the same as her own, coppery and fine. His eyes were the same as hers as well. She wondered how those purely genetic traits could have been passed down the years without any genetic material passing from angel to human. The angels themselves didn't know how it happened, what was passed along from them to their children or why their descendants could be stronger or weaker over centuries.

"I need to know about the key to Heaven," she said, without preamble as he sat beside her on the small stone bench, stretching out his legs in front of him. "Specifically, what it does and how."

He nodded, looking over the shadowed valley. "A part of the key is locked in every angel."

"Yes, that I know," she said impatiently. "Why did Maluch take Adrienne but not me? If the two halves have to be together to open the doorway? He can't get in with just Adrienne?"

He was silent for a moment. "He can. A single part of the key will open the doorway with a sacrifice."

"What?" She turned to him in shock. "He's going to kill the baby?"

"I would imagine that is his plan," Amaros said. "She would've been easier to take than you and the protocol was written down in the oldest manuscripts."

Ellie stared into the darkness. It changed everything, distorted everything they'd thought. Don't think about that now, she told herself, get the information you need.

"What happens when the two halves of the key are brought together?"

Amaros turned his head. "That depends on the holders of the key. The power to open the doorway is…enormous, Eleanor. I'm not sure I can even describe it to you in a conceptual structure you can comprehend. You understand that everything is energy? Opening the door…it is a forcing together of the planes, along their boundaries, and one must alter the fabric and nature of the universe to achieve it. The flux of energy, of power, that has to pass through the bearers…flesh and blood is not usually capable of withstanding it."

And Adrienne was only a little over a year old, she thought, her stomach fluttering. She looked at him. "You need to tell me everything, Amaros. If we're even a minute late and can't stop the Circle from forming, I won't let Maluch kill Adrienne to open that door. But there has to be a way to protect her, even if it all has to go through me."

He sighed softly. "If the Circle is formed then both you and the child will be…attuned…to each other. Touching her will join you. And the doorway will open."

"And Michael and the Host will slaughter everyone they find."

"Perhaps," the Watcher shrugged. "Michael is not as strong as he thinks, and his disobedience will have consequences, even though he thinks there won't be."

"Michael has a problem with seeing consequences," she told him, her voice bitter as she recalled the archangel's wilful pride on the occasions she'd crossed swords with him.

"Yes, he does." Amaros smiled. "If the key is joined, the power it holds can not only open the doorway, it can control the energy that flows from each plane and between them. The bearer could, if they were strong enough, stop time, hold those in mortal form in stasis…" He lifted a shoulder, letting the words trail off.

"So there would be a way to prevent Michael and the firstborn from doing anything…rash…in that moment?" Ellie looked at him.

He turned to face her, his hand lifting lightly to her hair, cupping her face. "You…and the child, you are human. You couldn't contain the energy that would be forced through you. The key does what the key does, and without control, it would burn through you both and open the doorway and let in the Host."

She closed her eyes. "You could help."

He let his hand drop, resting his arm along the back of the bench. "You drew off my power once before, at need."

"Would it be enough? To do that again?" She opened her eyes and stared into his, a small crease appearing between her brows. "I don't know how I did that."

"I don't know if it would be enough," he said. "I don't know if it would be enough to protect both of you, to give you some control over it."

He looked away, letting his breath out in a deep exhale. "Getting there before the ritual can commence is the safest way."

She nodded. "Of course it is, but even the best laid plans sometimes get screwed. I need more than that; I need to know there's something else I can do if that doesn't go the way we want it to."

"There is a sigil, a kind of a key in itself," he said, his expression pensive. "It would create a bond between us you could use."

She looked at him hopefully. He saw her expression and shook his head.

"The method is very painful, Eleanor."

Ellie shook her head impatiently. "Do you think I'm worried about that—now?"

"Give me your arm," the Watcher said with a sigh, holding out his hand.

"No. Somewhere it won't be seen readily," she countered, turning away from him and pulling off her jacket, her fingers unbuttoning her shirt quickly. "Where it can't be seen by accident."

Amaros looked at the smooth flesh of her back and nodded, lifting his hand.

Ellie tensed as the Watcher's long nail cut through her skin and deep into the muscle beneath, her breath whistling through her teeth at the pain that grew deeper and sharper as the lines were cut into her, blood trickling down her back. It would be worth it if she could call on the Watcher's power, could know she could still do something to protect her children and Tricia's if their careful planning failed.


Dean walked through the house, looking for Ellie.

"Frank?" He leaned through the basement door, looking down the stairs. "Ellie there?"

"No," Frank grunted. "Haven't seen her since late afternoon."

"Thanks," he said, closing the door again and turning for the deck. He checked the ground floor rooms, and the garden, garage and workshop, then headed up the stairs. She wasn't in their bedroom or the guest room. He opened the door to Rosie's room and saw her, sitting on the edge of the bed with Rosie's pillow in her arms.

"Hey," he said, walking over to the bed and sitting beside her. "You okay?"

"No," she said, her voice muffled against the pillow. She drew in a deep breath, her eyes closing as Rosie's scent filled her nostrils and turned her head slowly to look at him. "Yeah, I'm okay. The waiting…I feel like there must be something else I can do."

"Yeah, well, right now, there's just not," he said, putting his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. "Ray called. He said that there're four states left to run."

She nodded, closing her eyes. "I should see Trish, let her know."

"Tomorrow," he said, gesturing to the window. "They'll be asleep."

Ellie glanced down at her watch, sighing as she saw the time. Two-thirty.

"Are you okay?" She looked up at him, seeing the deeper lines around his eyes, bracketing his mouth, the dark shadows. "Are you sleeping?"

"I'll be okay when they're home," he said, his arms tightening around her. "And I sleep better if you're with me."

She nodded, turning to set the pillow back on the bed. "We can get three or four hours."


March 25.

Dean looked at Trish uneasily as she opened the door. She flicked a glance at him, pushing back a strand of lank dark hair, standing back to let them in.

"Did Frank find the location?"

"Not yet," Ellie said, turning to look at her as Trish walked past them, gesturing vaguely toward the kitchen.

"Ray's narrowed down the search area to four states, for the length of the eclipse," Dean added, following Ellie and Tricia down the hall.

"Four? Which four?" Trish asked. She dropped into a chair, her body slumped as she stared up at them.

"South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma."

"God, we're not going to make it." Trish laughed, the sound brittle and without humour. "We're not going to get there in time."

"We've still got a week, Trish," Ellie said. Dean saw the small crease appear between Ellie's brows as she studied the other woman. "There's enough time."

"Twist and Idan have left for Texas," Dean said, his gaze flicking between Tricia's hands, twisting helplessly around themselves, and her face, the morning light coming through the wide windows unforgiving on the taut skin and deep shadows that ringed her eyes. "They'll get Jim and Ginny and Achina. Rudy and his crew are already on their way, and Carl's gone to pick up Jeremy, he'll meet us in Lincoln."

Ellie sat down close to her sister-in-law. Trish hadn't been this agitated and afraid the last time they'd talked.

"Trish, what's wrong? What happened?" she asked.

"I went to see Sariel and Shamsiel," Trish admitted in a low voice. Her hands stopped moving, her gaze on the tabletop. She lifted her head and her eyes were wide and dark, her expression accusing. "I needed to know. Needed to know more than you've been telling me."

"Trish, we haven't kept anything back," Dean said. "You know everything we do."

"Sariel said that they took Adrienne to kill her," she blurted out suddenly and Ellie felt her stomach drop. She'd hoped no one would find out about that.

"What?" Dean sat down in a chair next to Tricia. "Why?"

"Because one half of the key can still be used if it's done with blood!" Trish snapped at him, her voice shrill as she looked at Ellie. "Did you know that?"

Ellie shook her head. Trish staggered to her feet, her chair crashing over behind her as she pointed at Ellie, her hand unsteady. "Why didn't they take you? If they had to kill someone, why not you?"

Neither Dean nor Ellie could answer her, the answer was obvious and both knew that Tricia knew it as well.

Tricia dragged in a deep breath, backing away from the table. "Why couldn't you have just fucking well died with your parents, Ellie? Why couldn't you have died then and then none of this would've happened, no Circle, no key, no Lucifer rising or anything else that's happened since Dad died—why?"

"Trish," Dean snapped, getting to his feet. There was a noise at the door and Talya stood there, with Sam, ashen-faced, leaning against the wall behind her.

"Trish?"

"This is all her fault, Sam," Trish said, turning to him and stumbling across the kitchen. "If she'd just died when she was supposed to, it would be all right."

Talya caught her, looking past her to Ellie and Dean. "She hasn't been eating or sleeping, this is just…"

"It's alright, Talya, Sam," Ellie said. Trish collapsed against Sam, her sobs muffled against his chest. "It's understandable."

Dean glanced at Ellie. Her face was smooth and expressionless. He looked back at his brother, forcing his feelings down as he caught Sam's apologetic look, his brother's arms wrapped around Trish.

"I'll get Tamsin," Talya said briskly. "She just needs to rest."

Sam looked down at the woman he held. "Come on, Trish, let's get upstairs."

Dean moved forward when he saw the spasm of pain cross Sam's face as he straightened, and realised how weak Sam still was. He slid his shoulder under Tricia's arm, and bent, sliding his arm under her knees and lifting her. "Sam, go ahead, get the room ready."

As he carried Trish to the stairs, he glimpsed Ellie leaving, the front door closing softly behind. Pain could make a monster of anyone, he knew. He couldn't look down at the face of the woman he held, but he couldn't condemn her entirely.


A few minutes later, Dean came out, closing the door quietly behind him. He saw the rigidity in her back, the tension radiating from her.

"She's wro—" he began, and Ellie shook her head.

"I know," she cut him off. "It's okay."

He looked at her, wondering if she was telling him the truth. The accusations had been unfounded, holding the bare minimum of truth to make them painful. He thought Trish could've levelled them at him with the same justification, and the same amount of truth in them.

He walked toward her and Ellie started down the steps, a pace or two ahead of him, lengthening her stride as she hit the paved path, her jacket drawn tightly around her and her arms crossed over her chest. The wind was cold and thin, but he didn't think that was the reason for the way she was hunched up. He caught up to her as she turned out of the driveway and headed up the road.

"Ellie."

She glanced at him, nodding slightly at the concern in his voice. "I know she's on the edge, Dean."

"It wouldn't have made any difference to the firstborn or Lucifer," he pressed. "Only to me."

She smiled thinly. "Not entirely true."

"If I'd died when I was supposed to, none of it would've happened either," he insisted, slowing down, forcing her to slow down as well and look at him.

For a moment, she looked at him, her mouth twisting slightly as she took in the worry in his eyes. Then she turned away and started walking again.

"You're not the last in the line of Araquiel, Dean."

He caught up, frowning at her. "And you are, in Amaros' line?"

She nodded and turned into their gate. "If I'd died, none of it would've happened. There wasn't anyone else."

"How do you know that?" he demanded, reaching out to catch her arm and stop her.

"Amaros told me," she said, glancing at the house. "I asked him."

"It doesn't matter," he said, wrapping his arm around her, his fingers closing tight on her shoulder when he felt her flinch at the contact. "We've never had a choice in how this crap has gone down."

"I know," she said in a mild tone, walking more slowly beside him. "Dean, I know Trish is freaking and strung out with fear. I know that."

"Then don't let it tear you apart," he said, a thread of disbelief in his voice. She looked up at him.

"It's not. It won't."

She might've been trying to reassure him, he thought, following her across the turnaround and up the steps, or she might've been trying to hide her feelings from him. He couldn't be sure. There was the faintest prickle on the back of his neck as he watched her go inside, shedding jacket and scarf and hanging them up on the coat rack in the hall, her voice light and even as she greeted Red.


"You're on speaker, Ray," Ellie said, sitting on the sofa with Dean, Frank and Red in the armchairs on the other side of the low table, Twist and Carl and Idan sitting on the second sofa.

"I've looked at all the existing mapping, and they're not quite right," Ray said, the frown clearly audible in his voice. "Frank, you said the DOD were tracing weapons signatures with that K54 satellite?"

"Yep."

"Well, I had look through their input yesterday and they're also tracking EM paths."

Frank leaned forward in his chair, glancing up at Ellie. "Are they following the lines?"

"Looks like," Ray confirmed. "I've got another few samples to get through, but I should have a location by tomorrow afternoon, latest."

"That's good news, Ray," Ellie said, her eyes closing in relief. They would have enough time to get across the country and reconnoitre the site properly if they could leave tomorrow night, no matter which state the node was in.

"Yeah, there's a problem though," Ray said.

"What problem?" Frank snapped.

"The DOD have this bird scheduled for a pickup and check tonight, just found out the shuttle timetable in the last hour."

"Can you abort it?" Frank looked at Ellie.

"Probably, but I need some help hitting their security at the same time," Ray said.

Ellie's eyes narrowed. "We can do that, Ray."

"Good. Just thought I'd check."

"How long do you need?" Frank asked.

"Oh, 'bout an hour or so, might put our timetable back a couple, I guess."

"Hammer it, Ray. We need that location fix as soon as possible," Ellie said. "I mean it."

"Okey dokey," Ray agreed cheerfully. "I'll need to you to hit them at…twenty-two hundred. Is that alright with you?"

"Yes, we'll be there," Frank confirmed. He leaned across the table and cut the call, turning to Ellie.

"All those worms we set up for Roman…?" Ellie raised a brow at him. He nodded.

"I'll get my network set up for routing now, if you can load up the discs and have the main servers ready to fire."

Dean looked from Frank to Ellie. "What's going on?"

"Ray needs us to overwhelm the DOD's security while he sneaks in and changes the space shuttle's schedule so that we can use the satellite to map the lines," Frank explained tersely.

"We've got a load of clutter ready to go," Ellie added, leaning back and looking at Dean. "Just need to make sure no one can trace any of it to us while it's running."

"Being as how our timetable is too tight to fit in a chat with the Secret Service right this minute." Frank got up and headed for the door.

"Anything the rest of us can do to help?" Twist looked at Ellie as she got up as well.

"No, it's not a big thing, Twist," she said, heading for the basement.

Dean watched her go. Something in her had changed. She'd made a decision, of some kind, he thought, resolved something that had been nagging at her. The underlying fear and tension that he'd felt in her since the firstborn had been here had gone, either pushed down or sublimated in a plan of action. And she hadn't told him what that plan was.

He turned back to the others. "Alright, we get a location tomorrow afternoon, we need to be ready to head out the second it comes in, so time to get what we're taking with us packed up." He looked at Idan. "Can you let Sam know, and call Rudy, Jeremy and Trent, tell them they need to be available to move tomorrow?"

Idan nodded, and the men rose from their seats and went into the hall, unspeaking as they went out the front door. There would be four vehicles needing full warding and Dean walked after them, going down the porch steps and across the gravel to the Impala to get the Watchers.


Ellie walked into the dark bedroom, hearing the rustle of the covers as Dean turned over in the bed.

"All done?" he asked, invisible in the darkness.

"Yep, they won't know what hit them for the next four hours," she said, walking around to her side and pulling off her clothes, wincing slightly at the stinging of the cuts on her back.

She slipped into the bed, moving closer to him. "Did you get everything else sorted out?"

"Yeah," he said, rolling onto his side to face her, his hand finding her hip. "Cars are ready, we've got the projectors, canisters and gas bottles, hollow-points in every gun…we're ready to go as soon as Ray has the location."

Ellie stretched out. "Good. Did anyone go and see Sam and Trish?"

"Red saw them, brought them up to speed. Just Sam and Talya."

"Is Trish alright?"

"Tamsin pretty much sedated her, according to Red."

She was silent and he wished he could see her expression but the scant light there was in the room barely outlined her shape. He had the strong sense of a fine tension in her, crackling off her.

"Ellie?"

"Mmm."

"You're not thinking about what—what she said, are you?" he asked. He felt her move closer to him, her hand hooking around his ribs, pulling him over to lie on her.

"No," she said, and he felt her breath on his mouth. "But I could use a distraction anyway."

He shifted his weight to his arms and kissed her, his worry eroded then swamped by desire as her hands slid down his body.


Ellie woke, aware that something was wrong. She slipped out of the bed without disturbing Dean, pulling on jeans and a jumper and walked out of the bedroom, closing the door silently behind her.

At the top of the stairs, she stopped, looking down to the hall below, listening to the small noises of the house, of the night. The porch boards creaked by the front door and she walked down, keeping close to the wall, her eyes narrowed as she saw the shape moving outside the door dimly through the etched glass panels.

The man turned around as she opened the door, and she recognised him immediately. Vellos. Jofranka's son.

"I have come for my mother's locket. The favour," he said in a low voice. She nodded, opening the door and standing aside to let him in.

"I'll get it," she told him, turning to walk down the hall to the door that led to the basement. The locket, in its silk bag, had been sitting in the safe since they'd returned from Georgia and she'd forgotten about it completely.

She opened the safe and pulled it out, closing the door and hearing the lock catch. Walking back up to the hall, she thought the bag felt warmer in her hand. It could have been an illusion.

"Here," she said, handing it to him. To her surprise, he didn't turn to leave, just stood there staring at her. "What?"

"My mother said to give you this," he said, holding out his hand. Ellie looked down at the pendant he held. The silvery setting held a dark, smoky-coloured crystal. "She said you would know what it is, what it does, when you must use it."

She took it, her fingers closing around it. "Did she say anything else?"

Vellos nodded. "She said even the greatest storm cannot destroy the willow, if the willow bows before it."

He nodded and turned to leave and Ellie shut the door behind him, turning the locks as she leaned against it. Nice and cryptic, she thought.

She looked down at the crystal in her hand. Well, she had no idea what it was, what it would do or when to use it.

She would look at it in the morning, check it through with Frank, she thought, climbing the stairs again.


March 26.

The lake was familiar and peaceful. He'd been here in 2004, living with his father in the house that was nestled on the shoreline behind him, the jetty he sat on a part of the property. The fishing line stretched out into the deeper water and he watched it, watched the changing colours on the smooth, mirrored surface as the clouds went by overhead, listened to the deep silence that surrounded him.

"I'm dreaming, aren't I?" he said, hearing the angel's wings behind him. Cas had used the lake before to talk to him in a dream.

"Yes," Castiel said, walking to the edge of the jetty, where he sat with his legs hanging over the edge.

"Where are you, Cas?" Dean looked around at the angel. "We need you, Sam and Adam and the Watchers need healing and we have to have to find where the eclipse will hit a node in the ley lines."

"I can't help you, Dean, I'm sorry." Castiel leaned against the painted timber bollard.

"Why not?"

"I'm in – well, you'd call it prison, I suppose."

"In Heaven?"

"Yes," Castiel said, looking across the lake. "For disobedience."

"Another hanging sentence?"

"No. I don't think he'll try that again," The angel shrugged. "But I can't leave here. And I haven't seen anyone for some time."

"He's going to kill them all, isn't he?" Dean looked back at the line.

"Yes," Cas said, crouching down. "He's already convinced himself that the Blessing wasn't really God's Will."

"Can we stop him?"

"I don't know." Castiel looked at him worriedly. "Dean, there's something you need to know, about the key—"

The alarm went off, beeping insistently and he flung his arm out, hand hitting the top of the clock hard, trying to get back to the lake, to the angel. After a moment, he opened his eyes, resigned to the fact that they were gone.

Twisting around, he looked at the other side of the bed. It was empty, naturally. Through the windows the eastern sky beyond the mountains was a pale mauve, but Ellie would've been up for a while anyway. A dark spot on the sheets caught his eye and he shifted to his elbow, looking down at the dark red stains. Blood. Not much. A cut that hadn't healed up quite, he thought, brows drawing together as he stared at it. Neither of them had anything like that.

He rolled off the bed and got dressed, hurrying downstairs. The faint prickle of his nerves was slightly stronger, warning him of something. What had the angel wanted to tell him about the key, he wondered uneasily. Cas had sounded and looked worried, and that couldn't be good.

Ellie sat at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee cooling beside her as she looked at the screen of the laptop. She lifted her gaze as he came through the door.

"Didn't I turn the alarm off?"

He shook his head, going to the coffeepot. "Cas turned up in a dream this morning."

"He did? What did he say?" Ellie swivelled around in the chair to watch him as he walked to the table and sat down.

"Michael's got him locked up somehow, for disobedience," he said, sipping the black coffee. "He tried to tell me something about the key but I woke up."

He was watching her face and saw her eyes cut away as he said it. "Something you know about the key that I should, Ellie?"

"I spoke to Amaros. Asked him about the key and how it could open the door, what we could do to stop Michael and the angels from just killing everyone, if we couldn't get there in time to stop the Circle before the ritual," she said, looking at the screen.

"And?"

"He said that the energy flow was incredibly powerful and it took a lot of juice to control it once the door was opened," she added, and he had the sense she was reluctant to expand much more.

Dean looked at her, his eyes narrowed. "But he had a solution, I take it."

"He said that if I could draw on his power, it might be enough," she admitted. "I can't remember how I did that…before, in Hell. Just instinctively, I think, trying to save the baby."

He nodded, thinking of the blood drops on the bed. "What did he do to you, to make that connection permanent?"

Her gaze flicked up to him, the surprise in her eyes quickly hidden. "There's a sigil, like a conduit, that can help."

"And he carved it into you, somewhere?" He gestured vaguely toward the ceiling. "There's some blood, in our bed. You weren't going to tell me about it, were you?"

"I was hoping that I'd never have to use it," she said, sighing. "I wanted something, a plan B, I guess, in case it all went to hell."

"What I'm really curious about is what it needs, Ellie, that you're too afraid to tell me," he said, leaning across the table to her. "Because I'm getting the impression that I'm not going to like it."

"It's not that dramatic," she said, picking up her cup and swallowing the rest of the tepid coffee.

"Then why not tell me?" He looked at her warily. "Why not tell me you knew what Maluch was going to do with Adrienne?"

"Would it've helped to know that?" she asked, putting her cup down and looking at him. "It didn't help me. It hasn't helped Tricia."

"Tell me the truth, goddammit." He reached out for her hand, holding it tightly.

"The truth is what we're doing, what we're planning on doing, we could all die, any one of us, at any point. I'm just trying to mitigate that, alright? Just trying to make sure we survive," she said, her face hard as she stared into his eyes. "That's all, I promise, that's all."

"That's not good enough—"

"Dean, Ellie…" Twist stood in the doorway to the kitchen, looking nervously from one to the other. "Frank's got the coordinates, we gotta go."

Ellie looked around, nodding and getting up. Dean let her go unwillingly as he got up as well.

"We're not done with this conversation," he warned her as he followed her and Twist up the hall.


I-84 E, Idaho. March 26.

Dean's fingers were tight on the wheel as he wove in and out of the traffic on the interstate, the sunlight flooding the car forcing him to squint to see the road.

"No, Trent, stay put. This'll all be over by the time Callie's all right to travel, just stay with them," Ellie said on the phone, tucked into the corner between the door and the back of the seat, her legs drawn up. She glanced at him and opened the glove box, pulling out a pair of sunglasses and passing them to him.

He took them and put them on. He didn't usually use them, even if the glare was bright, wanting all the details clear but driving straight into the rising sun was a good way to use up energy he would need.

Sariel and Oran were sitting silently in the backseat. Carl and Idan were heading for Lincoln, Carl's bright red pickup easily visible a few cars back. Behind him, Steve and Garth were in a deep green four wheel drive, going with Carl to Lincoln to help pick up Rudy's team. Twist and Shamsiel were in Twist's pale grey pickup, already peeled off and driving south to meet Jim, Ginny and Achina in Oklahoma City.

Ellie closed the phone and looked at the screen of the open laptop on the seat between them.

"There's no cover between this place and the road," she said, staring down at the warehouse that sat in the middle of a wide, open lot, at the junction of Washington Street and Dike Road near the river. "We can't get close enough to use the projectors, without getting inside."

He glanced down at the computer briefly. "What about from underneath?"

"No, power and phone come in overhead from the pole on the road."

"Smoke and mirrors?" he suggested lightly, seeing her gaze lift to him in the corner of his eye. "Take in the small projectors and go in as phone company or gas company or something like that, shoot when they answer the door?"

Ellie turned her head to look over the seat at Sariel. "What power do they have now?"

The Watcher shrugged. "To be honest, I don't know," he said. "They should not have been able to join together and escape the way they did in Lovelock—Reuma and Kitra were already dead. They never had power unless the seven of them were together, joined."

"Amaros said it was a blood bond." She looked at Dean. "We can take out one that way, no matter what power they have. But we'll never get the other four in time, and if the darts don't knock them out immediately, they can warn each other."

He chewed on the corner of his lip, staring at the traffic ahead. "Can we get close tonight?"

"With the sigils—" Ellie glanced back at Sariel who nodded. "—painted on us, it's possible. If the warehouse has a stand-alone security system, perhaps not." She looked back at the screen. "We'll know when we get there."

He nodded unhappily. They were going directly to Great Bend, but they'd only have a day at most to look over the situation before the others arrived, the drive from both Lincoln and Oklahoma City was only around four hours.


Burley, Idaho. March 27.

Ellie filled the tank and paid for the gas, buying another cup of coffee. In the car, Sariel and Oran were sleeping; Dean had shifted to the passenger seat, hunched into the corner, his eyes closed.

She pulled out and turned onto the interstate, settling herself as comfortably as possible for the next eight-hour stretch to Cheyenne.

"What do we do if there's no way in, Ellie?" Dean asked and she glanced over at him.

"There'll be a way in," she replied, keeping her voice low. "They can't start before the eclipse does, that helps."

He was silent, staring through the windshield at the taillights ahead of them. "They only have to hold us off until then."

"No. There'll be things that they need to be doing, up to the point of the main ritual, they won't be able to leave that stuff, it'll screw up their timing," she said. "We'll have a look from the river and from the road."

There was a huff beside her as he straightened up a little in the seat. "This isn't your fault, you know."

"I know," she agreed, watching the road. It wasn't her fault. But it wouldn't be happening if she hadn't been saved.

She'd done nothing but think about the ramifications of that single act since they'd passed into Idaho. Uriel and Lucifer had both called her a spoiler. The Winchesters were also spoilers, upsetting the paths of destiny with every action they took. This…this was different though. This should never have happened. The Watchers had looked down the lines and not seen this, had thought they'd solved the problem.


Dean watched her profile, outlined by the pale lights from the dash, her face expressionless. He couldn't work out what was going through her mind. For a long time, after they'd defeated Lucifer and Leviathan, they hadn't talked of what had happened to her, what Adam had done, and Lucifer, or about the prophecy and the ritual the devil and the arch-demons had wanted her and John for. She'd had nightmares about it and finally she'd told him about them, told him how it'd felt and the fear she'd had that her life was somehow wrong, that she shouldn't have been here, that there could have been no prophetic child if she'd died when she was supposed to. The conversation had scared the hell out of him.

He had the feeling the fear had come back, or maybe it'd never left, maybe she'd just told him it had. He didn't know what to do about it.


I-70 E, Kansas. March 27.

The flat farmland surrounded them, silos and occasional houses providing insubstantial relief from the huge skies and wide plains. The sun was bright, once again coming through the windshield into Dean's face.

He caught the movement in the corner of his eye and glanced at Ellie as she woke, stretching a little and rubbing the heels of her hands over her face.

"How much further?" she asked him, looking out the window.

"Half an hour," he said. "How do you want to approach it?"

"Get off the interstate at Hays. Come down the 96 and we'll bypass the city and get onto Railway Avenue. We need to get the sigils painted on us, before we get too close, but I think the first look should be on foot, cut across to Dike Road."

He nodded. "Just us?"

"Yeah," Ellie said, glancing back at Sariel. "Chasina might feel you, if you get too close too soon."

The Watcher inclined his head. "She might."

"We've got cover on the other side of the road, but no closer than a couple of hundred feet," she said to Dean. "It's too iffy with the projectors, even if they come outside, which they won't, not now."

"A diversion?"

"Maybe," she said thoughtfully. "Something that won't worry them over much—"

She stared at the windshield fixedly, thinking about what they could do to draw the attention of the firstborn in a way that wouldn't raise their suspicions.

"—yeah. Something ordinary, but chaotic, maybe."

"We've got people." Dean looked across at her. "We don't have to keep this a single action plan."

"No," Ellie agreed, turning to look at him. "You're right. We could do a couple of things. They've never seen Rudy's crew, or Jim and Ginny."

"What sort of things?" Sariel leaned over the back of the seat between them.

Ellie smiled at Dean. "Just your basic, everyday bad luck and then some perfectly understandable visits?"

Dean nodded. It was a start.


Great Bend, Kansas. March 27.

The mix of blood and herbs itched incessantly as they lay under the trees that crowded the riverbank, across the road from the warehouse. Dean shunted the awareness of the itch aside, looking through the binoculars at the flat side of the building, unrelieved by windows or doors. There was a large freight door on the eastern side of the building, and a small postern door next to it. Other than that, the walls were solid, a line of narrow clerestory windows up under the roofline, and four skylights in the roof itself, all on the southern side.

Beside him, Ellie scanned the area around the building. There were stacks of steel pipe, all sizes, to the left of the building but they were no closer than a hundred feet, within the projector's range, but not close enough to be a guaranteed shot, especially not with a tranquiliser dart. She focused her attention on the two roads, looking at the sides and shoulders.

Dean's light tap on her arm brought her attention back to where they were and she lowered the glasses, nodding very slightly as he started to ease himself back down the bank. She put the glasses in the small pack and followed him down toward the water's edge, moving soundlessly on hands and toes.

"Not a chance at that building, night or day, right?" He looked at her.

"No," she said, nose wrinkling up. "No, they picked the right place this time."

"So, car crash?" He tilted his head back toward the road. "Up a little ways, maybe a head-on?"

"That would be the most believable, I think," she agreed, rolling to her feet and starting back along the river edge to where they'd left the car. "Sariel and Oran can do it. They'll make it look good."

"We'll have…what? Ambulance, fire brigade, cops…fire brigade most likely for a visit?"

"Yeah. We'll take a couple out with the short range darts and substitute: Guilliame and Vincent, I think."

"They won't freeze up?" He didn't like the idea of putting someone in that position he didn't know. The whole situation was too delicate already.

Ellie shook her head. "No, they'll take them out. We'll come in right behind them, drive up with Rudy and Carl and just hit them hard."

"Everyone else on back up, or coming in after us?"

Ellie rubbed her forehead. "Coming in after us, I think. I want to be able to search for the kids as fast as possible."

"Carl's pickup will be warded; it'll carry at least five."

"Yeah."

"When do you want to do it?" He looked up as they reached the bend in the river and started bearing to the right, to cross the road. "Not today."

"No," Ellie agreed, her face screwing up. "Not enough time to get the details right today. We'll set it up for tomorrow morning, not too early. We'll need a couple of anonymous phone calls as well."


Dean looked around the room, filled now with faces familiar and unfamiliar, every one of them looking at him. He leaned back against the counter, feeling the press of Ellie's arm against his, and cleared his throat.

"The building's hopeless. There's clear ground all around it, and a security system watching the approaches from all sides. We can't take it without risking the kids." He glanced at Sariel, standing to his right. "Sariel and Oran will provide a diversion, around nine-thirty tomorrow morning, a head-on collision in two cars. We'll advise emergency services, wait till they get there and then go in on the pretext of being a part of the accident scene."

"Guilliame and Vincent will take point," he continued, looking at the two men from Rudy's team. "They'll take out whoever answers the door. We'll follow them in and hit whoever we see next as hard as we can – hollow-points only, no darts, we can drug them once they're down."

Ellie had suggested that. The guns were easier to aim and had a better range, and they would work on the firstborn effectively, give them the time to inject the muscle relaxants at their leisure.

"Once they're incapacitated, we'll get the kids and go."

"What do we do with the nephilim?" Steve frowned at him. "Leave them there to try this again?"

Ellie shook her head. "Shamsiel, Idan and Tagi will keep them under sedation and in a holy oil circle until Amaros and Araquiel can be told. Amaros will have to deal with Heaven."

"Hold on a minute there. They killed a lot of our people, people who didn't deserve what they got," Jeremy said coldly. "You might be ready to turn the other cheek, Ellie, but I don't think I'm all that comfortable with just lettin' them get away with it."

There was a murmur of assent from the room, the hunters looking at each other as feelings rose.

"That's not our job," Dean said, raising his voice. "Everyone here came voluntarily. Everyone we've lost was there by choice, no one forced them to come along." He paused, looking around the faces staring at him. "I don't like it much either, but we're not in the revenge business. You want that, then it would be better if you left now."

He'd felt the same way as most of them, he thought, waiting to see who would argue, who would move. Ellie had pointed out the overall threat, the power of the seven to stir the factions in Heaven, had been negated. Once the children were removed, they couldn't open the circle again and their fate rested with whatever the Watchers and the angels negotiated. He'd realised that while killing them in a fight wouldn't have bothered him, cutting out their hearts while they were lying on the floor drugged and helpless would. He was a hunter, not a murderer.

He looked back at Jeremy when the room remained silent. "We're not executioners, Jeremy. We'll leave that to the angels, if it comes to that."

"I'm not cutting out their hearts while they're trussed and drugged and helpless," Rudy said loudly, looking around at the men and women. "Is that what you want to do?"

Jeremy looked away. The room stayed quiet.

"Alright. We need a couple of cars for our crash," Dean said, flicking an appreciative glance at Rudy. The red-haired hunter nodded.


March 28.

"I thought we were gonna have a riot on our hands," Dean said to Ellie as they lay in the bed together. The briefing had taken another hour and everyone had left to get whatever rest they could before morning. He'd been surprised no one had been talking of revenge when they'd left.

"So did I," she said tiredly, rolling against him. "I know you don't like it either."

He shook his head. "No, you're right. It's not up to us."

Listening to her breathing, feeling the steady rise and fall of her ribs under his arm, he remembered the sigil carved into her back and her reluctance to tell him about it.

"Ellie," he said.

"Mmm."

"Why don't you want to talk about the key?"

She shifted slightly against him, and he felt her lashes brush against his skin as she opened her eyes.

"Amaros told me that when two join to form the key, it's dangerous," she said, a little unwillingly. She'd done what she had because she hadn't known if they were going to be able to take the firstborn at all. "They become a conduit for the power flowing from one plane to the next and, sometimes, that power can overwhelm their physical form."

His heart skipped a beat and he pulled in a deep breath to steady himself against the sudden rush of fear. "You mean it can kill them."

"Yeah," she admitted, letting her breath out and lifting herself onto her elbow to look at him. "With access to his strength, I thought it was a calculated risk, better than letting Maluch kill Adrienne, anyway."

"Why are you telling me now?" he asked, brows drawn together. Ellie lifted her shoulder slightly.

"Tomorrow we have a good chance of just getting them isolated and bound without any need to worry about the Circle or the key," she said. "I didn't want you to feel I was lying to you, or keeping something from you when—"

"When the situation didn't look likely to happen?" He moved up the bed a little, straightening. "But it was okay to keep it from me when you thought you might have to do it?"

She looked at him steadily. "What would you have done?"

He looked away. "I would've told you."

"Would you? Knowing how scared I'd be for you?"

"I've never lied to you," he said, lifting his hand and running his fingertips over the arch of her temple, under her cheekbone and along her jaw. "I've never been able to."

She dropped her gaze. "I didn't want to put you through that fear, when there's nothing either of us could do about it."

"You didn't want me to be ready to stop you," he countered, his tone low and knowing.

Ellie looked up at him, acknowledging the truth of that. "That too."

Dean closed his eyes, trying to keep his imagination from feeding him all the previews it could come up with. "Why?"

She sighed. "John and Rosie need one of us, Dean. At least one of us."

"God, that's it?" He looked at her miserably. "You die, and I have to keep going, without you?"

"Hopefully neither of us dies," she said, trying to cut through what he was feeling, to short-circuit his imagination. He'd learned to discern his responsibilities, to mitigate his guilt, he'd learned he deserved happiness and how to accept it. But he hadn't dealt with the fear of being left, not really. "And it could happen, to either one of us, any time."

"That doesn't make me feel better, you know," he said, looking away.

"I know."

She leaned closer to him, brushing her lips over his. "Since we don't know how much time we've got or what's going to happen next, do we waste it worrying about what might happen, or do we just say 'to hell with it' and make every minute count?"

His mouth twisted slightly. "No bumper-sticker talk, okay?"

She snorted softly. "Right."

"I know we're—we're not safe, Ellie," he said, his voice thick. "I just—"

"We've done okay, haven't we?" She looked into his eyes. "Survived everything, made it okay?"

"Yeah," he agreed cautiously. "Close, some of those times."

"Close is still making it." She kissed him again. "And neither of us is wired for safety first."

He was silent, leaning toward her, trying to lose himself in a deepening kiss. He knew they weren't. He'd never thought about himself when it came to protecting others, putting his own life at risk to save someone else. He knew she hadn't either.

They had a plan. It would work. He held onto that.