Allison floored it for an hour until she felt like she was far enough from Arroyo Grande and the Winchesters to finally slow down. She stopped at a rest area as darkness fell around her. The deep violet sky hung low over her head as she rooted through a bag, pulling out all the ingredients she would need for a tracking spell. They were simple, clean. She needed topaz, myhrr, a compass, and something to help her find her sister. She disassembled the compass, carefully removing the needle. She plucked one of her hairs, intricately wrapping it around the needle, tying it down securely, then replacing the needle in the compass. She sprinkled a pinch of the spice into the compass and resealed it. Finally, she super glued the small stone to the bottom of the compass and carved a few runes into the plastic around it for good measure.
It was cheap, it was ugly, but it would do the job.
"Vincula sanguinis," Allison chanted. "Ostende mihi viam ad illud, quod perdidi."
The topaz began to glow softly as she repeated the incantation. A hum filled the car as the needle began to wobble away from true north. Allison held her breath, not daring to pray that the spell would work. It was something Ruby had tried from time to time back when she and Alice were hunting each other. Back in those days, Alice kept herself well-warded against witchcraft, and the compass needle never stopped spinning. Now, it swung wildly for a moment, then settled just east of true north.
"Alice," Allison breathed with a smile, hardly daring to believe it. "I'm coming to get you, 'lil sis!"
She threw the car into gear and took off, leaving the setting sun behind her as she raced to the side of her long lost sister.
Greta held her position for what felt like an eternity after warning her kin what they were up against. She watched and waited, wondering if she had tipped their hand over the radio. Was the thing attacking them smart enough to change strategies? Only time would tell.
The minutes passed and silence reigned.
"All positions, report," Greta ordered over the radio.
As squads started checking in, gunfire broke out in sector H, to Greta's back. She swung around to check her rear, eyes narrowing as she called for Squad H to report. Instead, she heard from the squad leader of the position beside H.
"Squad F requesting permission to assist position H," came a man's voice.
"Permission denied, hold your position," Greta replied emphatically.
"Greta, I'm going in!"
"Arthur, don't move!" Greta warned him. "Hold your position! Do you copy? Hold your position!"
She cursed her hot-headed cousin and turned her binoculars to his position in time to see his squad moving out. By the time they moved, it would be too late.
"Everyone else hold your positions! Do you understand?!" Greta shouted into her radio, her discipline breaking ever so slightly as her anger peaked.
One by one, the remaining squads copied. Meanwhile, sector H looked and sounded like the warzone it had become. Greta watched helplessly while her family members killed one another.
This couldn't go on.
Greta ran downstairs, re-arming herself to deal with a spook. When she was finished, she took a deep breath, quelling her emotions and returning to rationality. She stood still for a moment. Outside, a single gunshot sounded, closer than ever. An echo from Greta's past surfaced, her sister's parting words to her when they split so long ago.
"This path you're choosing... it's going to tear this family apart someday. I hope you're ready for the reckoning when it comes."
Grace's words visited her often, as unwanted as they were unavoidable. Greta had always feared they were prophetic. Along the way, she had always assured and reassured herself that she was only doing the best she could. She was only carrying on the legacy of the Smith family, keeping them strong, keeping them effective. So what if they used witchcraft to kill a witch? So what if they had a werewolf or vampire or changeling mixed in among their ranks? One in exchange for many. They were only weapons. What made them so much different from any other weapon?
Grace had words to counter that point as well.
It's different because it's over the line, Greta! You know where the line is! You KNOW why we don't cross it!
Greta dismissed those remembered arguments as she'd done a thousand times before. She made peace with her decision a long time ago, even if Grace never had.
Perhaps after all this time, she considered, Grace's reckoning was finally upon her. If Greta was right about who was out there killing Smiths, it was a terrible irony. For Grace's granddaughter to close the circle, fulfill her words, end the supremacy of the Smiths, would only be fitting. Horribly, awfully, ironically, impossibly fitting.
Greta activated her radio.
"Alice, I know you're out there," she said, voice level and devoid of emotion. "I know why you're here. I understand. I'd be angry in your shoes too. But this is between you and me. Let's settle this now. Just you and me. Leave the other Smiths out of it. You've been in their heads. You know they're just soldiers. They've never done anything to you. I'm the one you want. So come get me. I'll be at the front gate. I'll be waiting."
Greta left her house and jogged to her destination. She passed squad E, still holding their position, still carrying out their orders. They watched her pass silently, their eyes following her as she made her way to what remained of their front gate. Greta wondered who Alice would force her to face. Would she come as 'herself', in the skin of the shapeshifter she'd been wearing when last their paths had crossed? Or would she be cruel? Had she spent enough time in the right heads during her attack to know who it would hurt Greta the most to fight?
Greta prepared herself for the fact that she was probably going to have to kill one of her own. One more to save the lives of the rest. She didn't have a choice.
Alice initially scoffed at Greta's challenge. She heard the order for 'action 22' go out over the airwaves, watched the Smiths holster their weapons and switch to metal canisters that no doubt contained salt. Despite this development, Alice took out one more squad, possessing a man and using him to shower his comrades with bullets. In the fray, someone managed to hit him with a piece of iron, knocking Alice clean out of his skin. He was already dead and the confusion she left behind was fatal for the remaining squad members.
She let herself float away from the fight, waiting patiently to regain enough strength to take another body. While she waited, she couldn't stop her mind from drifting back to Greta.
"You're not here for her," she reminded herself. "You're here on a job. Just get it done, get out, and hold Loki to his end of the deal. Don't be stupid."
Still, she couldn't help but remember Greta's betrayal of her. Her rage resurfaced, the pain of the dreams that had been killed that night coming back to haunt her. She remembered what it had felt like to flee from her own family, how hard it had been to leave her grand aunt behind unscathed. The anger that was only human festered in her and became something more. Ghostly vengeance, cold as ice pulled her toward the woman who had lied to her, forced her to open up, revisit her painful past, only to throw her away afterwards. Despite knowing that it was a bad idea, knowing that she was probably walking into a trap, Alice found herself wandering toward the front gate.
Is this how it happens? she wondered absently, feeling like a passenger without a vehicle, yet still with no control over where she was heading. Is this how ghosts go vengeful? How they forget about being human?
It was the hardest thing Alice ever did in her entire life, but somehow, she stopped herself from moving forward. She was in sight of the front gate now. Through the flames left behind in the wake of her explosive entrance, she saw Greta standing, tense and ready. Alice closed her eyes and counted to ten. She battled with herself, the worst kind of battle one could fight. She grasped and grappled, struggling to find something to hold onto as she felt her mind slipping away. She could feel herself losing her rationality, could feel raw emotion and untrained, base instinct taking its place. She'd been hunting her whole life. She knew what was happening to her.
Alice was on the brink of losing all sense of self and plunging into the darkness that eventually consumed all angry spirits.
Desperately, Alice searched for something, anything to moor her to humanity. Even when she'd actually been human, she'd always felt detached from it. Like it was something she didn't have the luxury of sharing in. Now, she fell to her knees, moved nearly to tears with terror at the prospect that she might lose all connection with it forever. She needed an anchor. She needed something to keep her from losing herself. She needed...
In her darkest hour, Alice found something simple. Emerging from the back of her mind, something she hadn't given much thought at the time. Just a conversation. Not an especially long one. Not especially meaningful until now.
She remembered sitting at Bobby Singer's kitchen table, sharing a body with Dean Winchester. She remembered the words they traded while she was too busy fearing for herself to appreciate what they meant.
"I know Alice. She's a damn good hunter, Bobby. She deserved a second chance at life."
"Spoken like someone who wants a second chance of their own."
"She's still the same Alice!"
"Yeah, for now. She's also a restless spirit. You've been hunting your whole life Dean, you know what that means just as well as I do. So does Alice if she's as good as you keep saying she is."
"Alice is different!"
"Boy, that's bull and you know it!"
Dean didn't have the words to keep arguing with Bobby, but he had something that went deeper than words. A sentiment that Alice felt at the time, but didn't realize was so important until now; Dean believed what he'd told Bobby. He believed, deeply, firmly, that Alice was different. That she was better, better than Bobby, or even she gave herself credit for.
"Alice is running death a merry little chase. But we all know it only ends one way, and it ain't pretty."
This was it, Alice realized. This was moment when she would prove either Dean or Bobby right. Was she really better? Was she deserving of Dean's faith?
You're not, a nasty voice in the back of her head sneered.
She knew deep in her soul, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the nasty voice was right. But there was something else she knew too, something that fended off the despair that threatened to destroy her. She knew that even though she wasn't deserving of the faith Dean Winchester had in her, she wanted to be. She wanted to be worthy of him. She wanted to deserve his faith. Even if she never managed to live up to his belief in her, she knew that at the very least, she needed to try.
Alice opened her eyes, staring at the flames that had crept slowly to surround her. She was incorporeal, untouchable. The heat couldn't hurt her, but it still made her shudder. It reminded her of where she'd been. Suddenly, maybe for the first time in her life, she realized where she wanted to go.
Alice stepped from the flames. She wasn't reborn, but she knew something now that she hadn't before. Something basic that for most of her life, she had accepted as an inevitable fate that would one day befall her. Now, she knew she didn't want it.
Alice didn't want to be the monster anymore.
Greta waited while fires burned around her. Her ears pricked at every little sound, sweat dripped down her neck from the heat of the blaze. Shadows danced in the firelight, each one threatening to be her enemy come to accept her challenge. Still, the minutes passed and no figure materialized from the falling darkness. No one came forward to meet her.
After a few minutes, her phone rang. She answered it without taking her eyes off her surroundings.
"Do you want backup?" a man asked. He was smart to keep the question off the radio channel, given that it was compromised.
"No. Have everyone hold their positions," Greta instructed him.
"Copy."
The call ended. Greta heard gunshots from somewhere in the distance, but having abandoned her vantage, she had no way of knowing who was under fire.
Enough time had passed that the outside world had noticed the explosion and mobilized in response. Sirens approached and Greta turned, only marginally relieved to see fire trucks rolling down the wooded path toward their compound. She pulled her phone out again and quickly dialed a number.
"Call the Sheriff. Get him on damage control," she ordered briefly. The thought crossed her mind that she might be wrong. Maybe it wasn't Alice attacking.
Just as she ended the call, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She whipped around, brandishing an iron rod as she looked for the quarry whose approach she sensed. Her eyes told her she was alone; decades of experience told her that her enemy was close.
"Show yourself, Alice!" she called.
"Why? So you can splash me with salt? Whack me with that rebar?"
Alice's voice seemed to come from her left. She hurled salt in that direction, only to hear Alice continue, this time at her right.
"You know, I keep thinking about what you said. That day I came here... I never got the chance to tell you I was here for your help, by the way. You stabbed me in the back too fast."
Greta tossed salt blindly, praying that she would hit her quarry.
"Anyway... you told Kaydie you thought I was 'really one of you'. Do you still think that's true?"
Greta stopped flinging salt and stood still, closing her eyes and smiling slightly. She wasn't going to land a hit on Alice. The child had come here purposefully disembodied. She was everywhere and nowhere. This fight was over before it had even begun.
At least, Greta comforted herself, she had the decency not to make me kill one of my own.
"Of course," Greta replied, opening her eyes to take one last look around at the destruction Alice had wrought upon her home. "Only a true Smith could have pulled off a stunt like this. If you were one of mine, I'd be proud."
Alice considered leaving Greta again. She considered walking away for the second time, letting the woman live. Was this the first choice that would determine whether or not she could ever truly control herself?
It couldn't be, Alice decided. She was present, sane, completely convicted in her decision. She didn't want to be the monster, she wanted to hunt monsters. She wanted to rid the world of them.
Greta Smith may have been human, but she was a monster. Alice put aside all her personal feelings on the matter. Her opinion couldn't be trusted. So she reverted back to a childhood trust that had never failed her.
Alice's opinion of Greta couldn't be trusted, but Grace Smith's could. And Grace's actions condemned her wayward sister.
"I could have been one of yours."
Alice's voice came from directly behind Greta, close, almost at her ear. Pain, sudden, piercing, swept through Greta. She cried out and fell to her knees, reaching behind her in a desperate attempt to dislodge whatever she'd been stabbed with.
"I wanted you to be the family I was looking for," Alice said, finally appearing to Greta. She crouched in front of the old woman, who finally managed to get a grip on the handle of the knife lodged in her back. She pulled it free with a strained shout, breath coming in short, stuttering gasps as she examined it. It was a hand-forged weapon. One of the Smiths own.
"I guess the truth is I'll never have a family again," Alice sighed. Greta grinned at her madly, blood staining her teeth in her final moments. The wound was mortal and she knew it.
"Everyone we lose, we lose because of our own actions," she said. The words were wise, born of life experience, profoundly true. Even so, they were just a cover. Greta reached into her pocket, fingers closing around a metal vial etched with symbols, cylindrical and roughly the size of a tic-tac box.
"Quit your moping and take responsibility for your mistakes!" Greta spat, tone full of contempt. If there was one thing she couldn't stand, it was a brat with a victim mentality. Alice blamed her for trying to turn her in to heaven, but Greta blamed Alice for leaving her no choice. It was Alice's actions in 1880 that had led to the fall of the Smith family from grace. It was all Alice could have done to sacrifice herself to rectify that mistake. Greta would go to her grave feeling justified in her decision.
Alice opened her mouth to respond, but Greta acted before she could speak. She thrust her hand out and flipped the lid off the vial, shouting out an incantation with the last of her worldly strength. With a burst of light, Alice dissolved into gray mist, swirling angrily as she fought the spell. It didn't matter how hard she resisted. The vial consumed her, sucking her in and trapping her with as much inevitability as death. Greta watched with great satisfaction, noting the streaks of black that tainted Alice's spirit as it was shackled to the vial.
"So she was turning anyway," Greta observed, her voice low and faint. She snapped the lid back on the vial as the world started to turn gray around the edges. She was light-headed from blood loss and the pain of her wound was starting to fade.
"Greta!"
A man called her name, a voice she recognized, but she didn't have the strength to respond. She fell forward, dropping the vial as she drew her last, labored breaths. It rolled away, unnoticed by the Smiths rushing to the scene in a futile attempt to save their matriarch.
Greta Smith was dead.
Loki observed the fray from a distance. He was in a bar ten miles away, watching Alice's battles on a tv screen he'd commandeered.
"Boo!" a drunk man called out behind him. "Put the game back on!"
Scattered cheers from the smoky darkness supported the man's demand. Loki rolled his eyes and materialized a second television set on the opposite end of the bar. The new set's power cut on, immediately showing the game and satisfying the other patrons.
Truth be told, Alice was never going to be able to bring about enough destruction to throw a significant wrench in Heaven's plans. Loki knew this all along. His plan wasn't to destroy the Smiths completely. That was as unnecessary as it was impossible. All he wanted was to permanently derail the apocalypse, rip up the tracks and melt down the components as to make it eternally unsalvageable. To do that, he needed to take out a few of the major players. Not that many, just few on each side. The demons would consume themselves soon enough, Loki was sure of that. It wasn't in their nature to act as an army, not for any long-running campaign. The more time passed since Lilith amassed her troops, the more likely it became that they would end up violently revolting against their so-called queen. Even if demons could stand each other enough to cooperate for more than a few months, the species had a flaw that would lead them to eat their own young, if they could reproduce.
Nothing was more short-sighted, petty, or power hungry than a demon.
No, the real beings putting fuel on the fire of the end of the world would be those with a view from higher up. A colder view, one more impartial and driven not by desire for power or status, but blind devotion and righteous determination. Those were the beings Loki needed to get out of the picture if he was going keep this reality from being torn apart at the seams. Those were the ones who would pose the real challenge.
The first and greatest hurdle was, of course, finding them. You could look for angels all over the universe. You could look for a billion years, and unless they wanted you to find them, you could come up empty after all that searching. Loki needed to draw them out into the open. More importantly, he needed to draw them out without showing his hand. They needed to come without realizing they were being summoned.
Alice, with her pre-existing condition of harboring a grudge against her family and the unusual state of being nearly impossible to kill, was the perfect girl for the job. Even more so because she was desperate to stay out of hell and therefore easy to bribe. Loki surveyed the damage she had inflicted with approval, chugging his beer while he watched her face off briefly against Greta. It had been nearly an hour since she began her incursion. Something should be happening by now.
Right on cue, Loki felt a powerful presence materialize in the Smith compound. The big guns had arrived.
"That's what I'm talking about!" he whooped, tossing the beer bottle over his shoulder in celebration. He was gone by the time it hit the floor, teleporting into the Smith compound to meet the pair of angels who had appeared there. He approached them from behind, concealing his presence as they surveyed the damage. All three beings were invisible to the humans who swarmed the scene like so many ants. Water sprayed down from above, overshoot from the hoses trained on the fires Alice had started. Loki glanced around briefly, frowning when he realized that he could neither see nor sense Alice. He found it unlikely that she had fled. After all, she wanted his protection and the body he had promised to procure for her.
He put her from his mind. He could find her later. If nothing else, she was fun to mess with, and deep down, Loki actually did put some value on his word. Not a lot, but still. He liked to think that it wasn't completely worthless.
He turned his attention back to angels in front of him. He recognized these two. Naziel and Uriel. A lieutenant and a commander. They were exactly what he needed.
"What happened here?" Uriel asked, gravely astonished at what he saw.
Before Naziel could speak, Loki announced himself in a spectacular fashion. He thrust his blade through Uriel's chest, unleashing the light of grace as it flared with resistance, then extinguished forever. Loki was here to send a message. A short, brutal message would do the job.
Naziel turned to fight him and he dodged back a few times, leading the angel away from his fallen brother's dead host. Naziel was a great warrior and Loki knew it. He was outmatched in direct battle and that was plainly illustrated when Naziel thrust his dirk into Loki's gut.
"Pagan scum!" Naziel hissed vehemently.
"Featherhead," Loki shot back, cocky for a dead man. Naziel's confusion turned to realization as he felt cold metal pressed tight to his vessel's neck. The image in front of him flickered and disappeared as the real Loki materialized behind him. Naziel shifted his grip on his dirk, preparing to flip it and skewer the norsling at his back.
"Drop it," Loki instructed. "Or I'll kill you and find a different messenger."
Naziel considered him critically, still holding his blade.
"Should I fear death from one so lowly?" he spat.
"Look a little closer before you decide to do something stupid," Loki instructed. Naziel did as he was told, turning his head ever so slightly to peer over his shoulder. Just in case he couldn't figure it out on his own, Loki let a little of his light shine through his eyes. It was just a flash, pale blue and bright as a star, but it left Naziel agape like a fish.
"You-"
"Shh," Loki said. "Just do as you're told."
Naziel's expression returned to one of stoicism, but Loki could see the fear in his eyes. His dirk fell to the ground as he complied with Loki's previous command. He offered no resistance now that he knew who he was dealing with.
"I'm going to let you fly away in a minute," Loki told him. "You're gonna go back, you're gonna gather up the troops, and you're all gonna abandon ship. I know all your plans. I know what you plan to do to this world, and I gotta say, it really rains on my parade."
"Even you cannot stop what fate has ordained," Naziel began. "This world-"
"Is one of many," Loki interrupted him. "They don't tell you that at your pay grade, but take it from me. It's true. So here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna fly back home, and tell your superiors that the apocalypse is a no-go on this world."
"You know as well as I-"
"That they won't care? Well, sure, that would be true," Loki admitted. "Except that I happen to know that they don't want to pick a fight with me over this world when there's another one two realities over where I'm a two-eighths more of a douchebag, and I care two-eighths less about keeping my party going. So go. Deliver the message. And don't let me see your ugly face on this plane of existence again. You got it?"
Naziel wasn't breathing. Loki's blade was too tight against his vessels throat. It broke his skin ever so slightly, light leaking from the wound as a drop of blood escaped along with it.
"I got it."
"Good. That's what I like to hear."
Loki released him, clapping him on the back and sending him on his way.
"Sayonara," he said cheerily.
Naziel regarded him one last time with fear and just a trace of anger, before he disappeared, leaving his blade behind in his haste. Loki picked it up and tucked both blades safely up his sleeves.
"Alice?" he called. "Alice?"
He scanned the crowd that had formed in the area, oblivious to the battling celestial forces in their midst. She was nowhere to be seen.
"Aaaaaliiiiice," he called, singsong as he strolled the area, glancing around as he walked unseen among Smiths and first responders. "Alice! Here girl!"
He whistled for her as a joke, but she didn't make an appearance.
"Did she ditch me?" he frowned. "Nobody ever ditches me. I'm hurt. Alice! Come on, we gotta get moving! I've got a rave to be at in Fresno! Alice!"
To his left, a gaggle of Smiths was forming. They caught Loki's attention and he strolled over with his hands in his pockets to see what all the fuss was about.
"...best of us all," a man was saying. He held up a small metal cylinder, etched with markings, showing it to the other Smiths. "She sacrificed herself to save the rest of us."
"Hm."
Loki watched the cylinder suspiciously. He focused his sight on it, imbuing it with just enough power to sense a familiar presence around the object.
"Someone needs to call Kaydie," a woman said as Loki pushed his way past her. He put his hand on the shoulder of the man holding the vial, allowing himself to seen only by the man.
"Hey, lemme see that," he said. The man looked him over suspiciously.
"Who the hell are are you?" the man asked.
"Me? The tooth fairy, obviously," Loki snarked. "Is there a ghost in that little thing you've got there? 'Cause from where I'm standing, it kinda feels like there's a ghost in there."
The man moved to tuck the vial into his pocket, and Loki sighed heavily. He snapped and the scene froze except for him.
"I'd fight you fair and square for it, I really would," Loki said, even though the man couldn't hear him anymore. "It's just that I'm already as late for my party as can be considered fashionable. If I leave it any longer, I'm just gonna look like a shmuck."
He plucked the vial from the man's fingers and examined it.
"Huh. Cool little gizmo," he commented. "Egyptian charms... not bad, not bad. It's a shame I had to have you guys blown up to keep the world from ending."
He tucked the vial into his shirt pocket.
"You're a pretty clever bunch, really. Next time I need an overpowered OC for a job, I'll know where to look."
Loki unfroze the scene just to watch the man spin around a few times in confusion. He chuckled, pleased with his work, and teleported to the rave in Fresno. He would worry about figuring out how to release Alice from the vial after he was done partying.
After all, he'd earned the right to enjoy himself. He'd just single-handedly saved the world.