Thanks for the encouragement! :-)
Chapter title is from song by Zac Brown Band.
40
Heavy is the Head – Zac Brown Band
"What's it like?"
"What's what like?"
"Being able to find people."
Out of the corner of his eye Dean glanced at Sam, checking to see how pissy Sam was going to be about this new power, but Sam was surprisingly calm.
Huh.
"Loud."
It was better when Sam was around. He could focus on Sam, and shut the other stuff out.
"And you need a new hex bag."
"What?"
"I can see through that one."
Sam blinked. "Seriously? I thought this was the strongest one we knew how to make."
"Better check the Letters library, then. Cuz it leaks."
"Huh."
Sam went back to looking in the side mirror for lights and sirens. They were doing 80 on a 45 road, following the Durango ahead doing the same. He kept a lead foot on the gas and a death grip on the steering wheel. The brief flare that was an angel showing himself had disappeared, and Cas was somehow invisible, so he had to assume Zee had demon warding on her hideout in addition to the angel warding Cas would have put up.
Swell.
The SUV turned off sharply into the dark up ahead. Dean squinted. There was a track, of sorts. He took Baby off road carefully, relieved when her wheels hit gravel and not scrubby brush. He'd been on some of the things Zee considered road, and they were not road. They were goat tracks.
"It's well hidden." Sam offered.
Dean grunted, keeping his eyes on the narrow path cut into the side of a cliff as the Durango moved confidently ahead, not slowing enough for the blind turns, winding around the edge of the lake, kicking up gravel the whole way. He dropped back a little to avoid the spray, and focused on not driving off into the lake on his left.
At last a faint glow showed in the night ahead. The track widened out into a ledge, gold light spilling out from the small house perched on one edge. The SUV pulled to a stop next to a Vespa parked crookedly on the gravel. Dean slammed out of the Impala even as Zee popped out of the SUV, one hand up to stop him, twenty feet away from the house. What the hell? There was nothing here but open sky and empty ground, and he could see in the dark just as well as the day, and he didn't see any trap. He took a step forward and she got in his way again, warning in her eyes.
The front door of the house opened, lighting up the night. A vaguely familiar blue suit stepped out, three days scruffy and sorely in need of a shave, with Cas right behind him, saying "Wait, Dean. Wait. It's okay. It's just Inias."
"In…who?"
"Inias." Cas repeated. "From my old garrison."
"I thought they were all dead."
"How'd he find you?"
Zee's question overlapped his words, glancing sharply at the still intact sigils decorating the house. Inias darted a guilty look at Zee before Cas spoke firmly.
"Inias found me, and I asked the others to come."
"Others? What others?"
"Cas, are you sure that's a good idea?"
"Dammit, Cas!"
The three of them spoke all over each other. Zee pivoted around, scanning the darkness around the house, and Sam kept talking. Dean kept swearing, because he should have known better than to leave Cas alone, even for a few minutes, because Cas would jump straight from I-must-do-my-penance to I-must-save-the-world with some cockamamie, half thought out scheme that was bound to end in a tangled mess of backfired good intentions and tears.
Cas stared right back at him, chin thrust out at a stubborn angle.
"I can hear them, Dean. The others. They need help."
Angels. Stuck on the earth, heaven a mess, and why did Cas even keep giving a damn, considering how every one of those douchebags had treated him?
A sudden gust of wind blew through the trees, trembling the bare branches. Zee tensed, looking at him, then up at the relative safety of the house. Her lips compressed into a thin line, coming to a decision.
"We need to get inside. Cas, can you?"
Cas' eyebrows rose, before Cas nodded. Cas looked at Inias and gestured towards the ground. Scruffy looked at him, suspicious, like he wasn't at all sure whatever Cas was asking him to do was a good idea, but he raised his hand anyway and made a twisting gesture at the ground between them and the house.
What the…?
Without warning, the earth shuddered under their feet. The ground cracked open, dirt spitting up out of a short trench maybe a foot wide and a foot deep right in front of him. Dean hopped back, an equally startled Sam moving with him, as the sod continued to crumble. There was something in the hole, a dull gleam that was not dirt, something solid and metal that ran along the bottom of the trench. Dean squinted and Sam inhaled when they finally made out what it was—an iron bar, as thick as his wrist, with a faint arc to it like it was part of a very large circle.
Devil's trap.
Not some piddly-wink devil's trap painted under the front runner or scratched into wood beneath a welcome mat, but a freakin' huge, damned near unbreakable, forged-from-iron devil's trap, buried a foot under the house, the outer circle running completely around the small structure.
A second gesture from Inias fractured the thick iron bar.
Sam moved wordlessly closer. As if Sam needed to be reminded of who they were dealing with here—a hunter—and more than that, someone who'd tangled with enough demons to build a trap like that under her safe house.
Shit.
Zee stepped calmly away from his side and over the newly opened trench, disregarding his suspicious study of her back, trying to suss out why she had demon Defcon I going. She headed over to the car for Toby, who had been sitting with his nose pressed to the window of the SUV. The kid got out at her curt gesture and she nudged him towards Cas, who had stopped in the doorway to wait.
Sam fidgeted behind him.
"Dean." Sam said in a low voice, looking at the jagged edges of iron in the ground.
"I know."
The house up ahead was going to be a minefield. He caught the ninja's eye across the distance of the yard, trying to gauge if she was going to change her mind halfway through and stick his ass in a trap anyway. She hadn't so far, but. Her expression didn't change, calm and cool again, waiting to see what he'd do.
He took a deep breath and stepped forward.
She had to break two more traps to let him in, one on each side of the front door. Sam bumped up against him as he came to a stop just inside the threshold. Reflexively they both glanced at the ceiling, just in case. She followed their head movements, looking at the exposed rafters high above. Her eyebrow quirked up—a wordless obvious, much? suggesting she had traps set someplace else.
Shit.
What the hell had he gotten himself into?
He jumped a little when Inias closed the door behind them, keeping his eyes on Zee. This was not your run-of-the-mill setup, even by hunter standards. Warily he looked around at the brightly lit living area, taking care to stay exactly where he was.
The feeling of openness and light in the house surprised him. He was expecting a fortress, more wall and less glass, more iron and less wood. But instead the whole side of the house facing the lake was glass, lamp light tumbling out onto a wide deck that extended out over the dark water below. Skylights punctured the roof, and enormous, indefensible picture windows looked out the landward side of the house, so that come the day, the place would flood with sunlight. Sigils had been painted over everything now, streaks of red and white curling around and over the demon wards etched into the woodwork.
Cas followed Inias to where he stood by one of those wards, speaking in a low voice.
"We should tell them. They can help."
Inias glanced at him suspiciously. "Castiel. He's a demon."
"It's Dean Winchester, Inias. He's a friend."
Inias flicked him another glance. Bright, this time, the heat of grace behind it, and searching, like Inias was seeing him. He fidgeted under the scrutiny, his horns and his scales, the things beneath his skin, the blood on his hands.
"Well?" He demanded. "Are we doing this, or not?"
Inias' gaze dropped to his arm, where the Mark lay branded into his skin. Scruffy Angel turned back to Cas with reluctance. "He might be useful."
Dean scowled.
"What do you mean, useful?" Sam demanded belligerently from behind him. "I remember the last time we were 'useful'."
"That's not what he means, Sam." Cas said slowly, looking both thoughtful and disturbed. "What Inias is trying to say, is that as far as we know, Dean's the only one who has been able to take down one of the Two Hundred. The Original Fallen. Arkas." Cas explained, to their questioning looks. "We were powerless against them. Hannah, Noah, all of us. When the Fallen took Heaven, it was like the power of Heaven was no longer in our hands. It was in theirs."
"Metatron made a mistake," Inias added, "when he opened the Book. He should have known better."
"The Book?" Sam asked.
"The Book of Life. It's how Metatron closed the gates of Heaven. When the Book of Life is opened, he set off the Day of Judgment. The gates of heaven are closed, and the dead rise from their graves. It is written that Hope shall shepherd the dead unto judgment, and cause a new Heaven to be created on earth." Inias stopped in his recital and crossed the room to stare out a window. "If Metatron still had the angel tablet, maybe he could have dealt with Ramiel, but without it…" Inias shook his head. "Ramiel is free to do what he wants."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, back it up. Heaven's raising the dead?"
"Ramiel is." Inias said slowly, as if he were late to the party and slow on the uptake. "He's the archangel of Hope. What did you think you've been dealing with? The Fallen have been preparing the ground for their new Heaven. They're…" Inias paused, as if it pained him to say the next words, "taking the souls from the Veil and out of Heaven and returning them here."
Alfie.
Dad.
Only they hadn't been returned to their bodies.
"They're making the zombies." Dean said. "They're taking souls out of Heaven, but they're stuffing them in the wrong meatsuits."
"Yes." Inias bowed his head.
"It's the ultimate identity theft." Dean whispered, the memory of Alfie's confusion batting at him. "He wants to drive them mad."
Cas looked at him sharply. "Dean?"
"Alfie," He said. "When they, put him in my head. Cas…he went—insane."
It was more than that. The edge of Alfie's hunger, eternally ravenous and indiscriminate, gnawing relentlessly at the edges of his consciousness. Stalked by a hunger that couldn't be sated, ever, confused and angry, carving its way into his very being. Across the room Zee met his eyes gravely, knowing what he was remembering. She put an arm around Toby and drew the kid closer to her.
"When they come back, these souls, they're not right. They're all…" He made a frustrated gesture with one hand. "Pet Sematary."
Inias and Cas exchanged a quick look.
"Each soul is unique." Cas murmured. "If it were put back wrong, it would become restless. Empty. It would try to fill the void inside by eating, but it could never get enough. It would consume not just the flesh of its victims, but also…" Cas paused, looking pale, "… their essences. Like Crowley said-" Cas stared at him, "—bite into the power of the demon."
"Not just demons." Inias paced away from the window. "Human, monster, angel, it won't matter. Nothing will be immune. They will eat up everything they can get their hands on, and absorb them. Until light becomes shadow, and everything blends to gray. "
"And they'll get stronger with each kill." Cas finished. "They won't ever stop, until they are the only kind on earth."
"So." Dean pursed his lips. "Zombie Apocalypse."
Cas met his eyes gravely. "Zombie Apocalypse." Cas agreed.
Great. Dean scowled.
"They're sniffing around Hell, you know."
Cas already knew this, but Inias blanched. Scruffy Angel went a paler shade of pale, and went back to worrying a rut around the room, fingers twitching nervously behind his back. Dean got that. It wasn't a reach to see the Fallen would do to Hell what they were doing to Heaven, and it wasn't going to be pretty. A soul from Hell was twisted enough to begin with—however it reacted to being back topside—it didn't bear thinking about. He looked at the grim-eyed kid standing by the couch, following the conversation not well enough but too well anyway, and took a step forward.
"So? What are we going to do about it?"
Inias stopped in his tracks, and looked at him with surprise.
"We?" Inias said.
Dean resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
"You just said I was useful. Unless you've changed your mind. So, what's the plan?"
Inias turned fully around and considered him. Dean glared, because, now was not the time for half-disclosures, but angels. It was their m.o.
Inias relented.
"We need to find the Book."
"The Book? This Book of Life?"
"Yes." Inias said, eyes darting back and forth between him and Cas, his mind clearly elsewhere. "The time of judgment ends—Ramiel's time of power ends—if we can close the Book. We're just not sure where Metatron stashed it."
"And?" Sam prompted, because friggin' angels. Even Dean could hear the half of the sentence Inias was leaving out, a buttload of buts and gotchas that always got buried in the fine print.
Inias bit his lips, troubled. "The Book shouldn't have stayed open. Only God can open the Book of Life and keep it open. We think Metatron must have found a way." And here he darted a guilty look in Cas' direction. "We think…"
Cas straightened, as if he were bracing for an axe to fall.
Inias winced at the pained expression on Cas' face. "We think." Inias continued apologetically, "…the only thing that can hold the Book open like this—it's has to be something of God's Will." Inias swallowed. "That's why we've been looking for you, Castiel. Because what better symbol of God's will is there, than the grace of an angel that has died then come back to life? The thing that's holding the Book open? It's you, Cas. It's your grace. We need you, alive, because you're the only one who can take your grace back."
The rest of Cas' angels turned up an hour later in a minivan. A minivan, of all things.
"Soccer mom." The blond Johanna said apologetically. "She was the best I could do, with all of us circling around, looking for vessels."
Dean stared skeptically as Inias righted the Vespa and disengaged the brake. He held out a hand, blocking Cas at the door as the motley crew prepared to depart.
"Cas, you sure about this? They don't look like they could outrun a school bus, let alone the Fallen."
"Inias is a good soldier, Dean. Loyal. Eliam will be able to counteract the negative effects of Theo's grace burning out for a while. I'll be okay."
There was that. They could only feed Cas so much pie and burger before something else popped loose.
"Just…be careful, okay?"
"You too." Cas paused, hesitating. "Dean, about Hell."
"Yeah, Cas. I know. I'll make sure they don't get that far."
Cas frowned.
"I don't think that's all, Dean. There's something more."
"Isn't there always?"
Cas grimaced. "True. Just…"
"I'll be fine, Cas. Just find that damned book. We'll figure the rest out from there."