"He's got the town surrounded in some sort of containment chamber for now, but things aren't looking good. We've got a day, two tops, before this bubble bursts and the demons get out. We're trying to get Rowena in on this -"

"You could use another witch," Grace suggested.

Dean shot down the idea immediately. "You're not coming anywhere near this thing." She could hear him walking around outside, patrolling the perimeter while Sam kept an eye on the residents they had moved to the local high school. "I need you at the bunker getting ready for an all-out war. Chuck's got more than this coming, I can feel it. Who knows what he's going to bring back, but right now, we need someone making sure we're ready for it. We might have a new Apocalypse World on our hands, and we need to be prepared. Besides," he lowered his voice as he walked past a couple of other hunters, "if something happens, we need someone out there who knows just about as much as we do. You're our designated survivor."

"Don't talk like that," she answered curtly. Grace had been pacing around the bunker, but she stopped, sitting down on a desk as she talked. "Listen, Dean, you're going to make it home. What happened to the Dean Winchester who isn't afraid of anything, who could take down a vampire nest without blinking?"

"I'm afraid of a lot of stuff," he contradicted. "Planes and - Hell, I almost threw up the first time I kissed you. And this… this is as big as the apocalypse, but there are a billion more moving parts to it. Three billion."

"Well I'm glad you didn't throw up," Grace said, trying to get him to smile, even if it was just for a second. "I'm getting the word out and assembling an army. I told them to be ready for anything. I'm trying to buy up all the bullets I can get, and I've got salt on backorder. Maybe I'll swing by a pool store or something and buy the giant bags of it. I've got demon trap bullets and witch-killing bullets and everything stocked up. This place looks more like an armory than it ever has before. I'm also going to stock up on food and supplies, just in case we end up barricading ourselves in here."

"Did you repaint all the warding sigils?"

"Yeah, and I've got a couple more layers of magic added on. I have no idea where to look for what you're supposed to do if all of Hell shows up on Earth, but I'm trying," she sighed, getting up to start pacing again. "I think I'm up to five cups of coffee today."

"I've got to get going, but maybe you should slow down. At least back off the coffee a bit, drink some water. I'll try to be home soon."

"I love you, Dean."

"Love you too, Gracie."

Grace put her phone in her pocket, thinking about how they never said goodbye if they could help it. Not after the last time Dean had left. That had been their last real goodbye, and they had an unspoken agreement that it would stay that way. Instead they always ended their phone calls the same way, just in case something happened to one or both of them. In their line of work, you never knew if you would make it home alive.

Dean's words echoed in her head as she made her way to the kitchen. Back off the coffee. Inspecting the contents of the fridge, she made a mental note to get more beer, but to stash it in one of the storage rooms. I'm afraid of a lot of stuff. The words rattled around in her brain, Grace pouring herself some water before going back to her research.

Malabar, Florida - 2001

"I don't see why we had to come down here now. That thing's headed right towards us." Dean kept his eyes on the road as another band of rain lashed at their windows. "At least I can still see the road now. I have no idea how we made it off of I-75."

"Relax, Dean, it's not that bad. We grew up with tornadoes. This is a bigger storm, but it's slower. It hasn't even hit land yet. It's not going to run us off the road or anything."

"Everyone is headed in the opposite direction," he observed, watching the headlights on the other side of the highway. "How far are we?"

Grace set her map up on the dashboard, trying to see in the faint light. "We got through Orlando what, fifteen minutes ago? I'd say another sixty miles or so. We stay on this road for a while."

Dean frowned, saying, "We're going to need to stop for gas soon, probably after this rain band is over. That's what they're called, aren't they?"

"You've never been in a hurricane before, have you?"

"No. You haven't either. Why aren't you worried?"

Grace pursed her lips, telling him that, "I was in a ton of them. My grandparents lived a few hours south of here, and we'd visit almost every summer up until I was in high school. You were usually gone with your dad. You guys would take off for the summers, even back then. You'd be hunting for a few months, and he'd try to get you back in time for school, but sometimes Sam would walk in the third week and everyone would ask him where the hell he'd been. You missed a lot, Dean."

When they stopped for gas, they were the only ones at the station aside from a family in an RV. "You folks headed north?" the man pumping gas asked as his wife came back from the convenience store attached to the station. "Thanks, honey. Can you make sure the kids aren't tearing the place apart in there? Thanks."

"No, uh, we're headed towards Malabar," Dean answered, trying to remember the pin number for the fake card he was using.

The man shook his head. "I still can't believe she picked up this fast. Started as a one this morning, and they're saying she'll be a four or five when she hits tonight."

"Sorry, what?"

"The storm's gotten much bigger over the last couple hours. That's why we're headed out. We can handle a one, but a five, well, we're safer up in Georgia, if we can make it that far before this thing hits. Hopefully we can outrun it. You two better be careful. Good luck now."

Dean got back into the car, turning to Grace. "How high does the hurricane scale go?"

"It maxes out at five, but there's no real limit on how fast the wind can go other than what the laws of nature say. Why?'

His face paled a little as he told her, "It was a one this morning. We're driving into a category five hurricane now. Gracie, are you sure this is a good idea?"

She pulled the file out of her backpack, showing him the folder of newspaper clippings she'd collected. "They've had random lightning strikes, way more than normal. They fried an entire field of cattle one by one. That's not a thing that happens. Even your dad agreed, it's Tezcatlipoca. If we don't stop him now, we don't know when we'll have another chance, and all of these lightning strikes and summer storms will just keep getting worse."

"Not sure how I feel about going up against an ancient hurricane god." He turned on the radio, tuning in to the National Hurricane Center's hourly broadcast.

Their motel had been abandoned, even the staff fleeing town. Luckily Dean knew how to pick locks. As Grace unpacked and kept researching the hurricane god, he ran out for dinner, coming back completely soaked. She jumped out of bed, grabbing a couple of towels. "Here, dry yourself off before you get water all over the place. How long were you outside?"

"Not even five minutes. Hopefully this place is good. It was the only thing still open." He shed his jacket and wrapped himself in a towel, Grace still marveling at how he managed to keep their food dry. "The wind's picking up. When's the storm supposed to hit?"

"Not until the morning. We can't summon him until we're in the eye of the storm, though, so we've got until noon at least."

A few hours later Dean sat on the bed, trying to flip through channels. "We don't have any signal on anything but the Weather Channel," he complained, getting up to look outside for the twentieth time. Grace was buried in a book at the table, only looking up when he drew the curtains back again. "If anything happens to my car -"

"Your car will be fine," she assured him, drinking tea out of one of the paper cups that was meant for coffee. "You drove up and parked it in the delivery bay again, right? She'll be fine. Now I don't know how we're going to do with that giant window, but there's also nowhere else we can really go. Not like this place has a basement."

"Do we have everything?" he frowned, rummaging through his bag.

"We had everything ten minutes ago, so unless you poured half of the ingredients down the sink since then, yes, we still have everything." She closed her book, taking another sip of her tea as Dean paced to the window again. "Are you afraid?"

"I'm not afraid of anything," he told her confidently, crossing his arms.

"Hmm, except for flying," she reminded him. "And I'd hazard a guess that you're afraid of fires too. And massive storms, apparently."

"Am not."

"Then why are you obsessively checking the window?" she asked as the power flashed. "I know you've never been through a hurricane, but we're going to be okay. Yes, this is a bad one, and yes, we've got to go out in it, but we're going to be okay." Grace got up, coming to stand next to him at the window. The palm trees in front of their hotel were swaying, the streetlights starting to flicker.

Dean instinctively wrapped his arms around her, both of them watching as the next band of storm clouds rolled in. "Okay so maybe I'm a bit worried about this one," he confessed as a strong gust of wind sent a garbage can rolling down the street. "Most of the monsters we fight aren't much bigger than us. Even demons aren't this powerful."

"Want to gather up all the blankets and pillows and sleep in the bathtub? We'll at least be in a room without any windows, even if it doesn't make a big difference." Grace offered, both of them jumping back as a branch flew into the window, bouncing off and falling into the parking lot below.

"Could we?"

Half an hour later they were settled in, Grace lining the bathtub with pillows and blankets as Dean pushed the mattress in front of the window. If the glass shattered, it wouldn't stop all of it, but it would hopefully do something. She turned on the battery-operated radio, setting it on the edge of the bathtub. "We're not getting much sleep tonight, are we?" she asked, fetching a book before climbing in next to Dean.

"Probably not. Why don't you start reading to me about this hurricane god?"