Two mornings later, just over a week since Jimmy had died, Claire packed Castiel off with Dean for some training exercise or other – Claire didn't know, and she suspected that Dean was making it up as he went along just to give Cas some kind of purpose and prevent him from being alone. She headed over to the library that was Bobby's cabin.

"Hey, kid," Bobby greeted her, glancing up from the dusty tome he was reading. "Good to see you out and about. Dean tells me you're starting a project of your own?"

They had been trying to piece together enough spells and lore to try and recreate Samuel Colt's masterpiece in case Dean couldn't find the original, but Dean had told her last night that he had already talked to Bobby, that the older hunter was on board with them trying to find a powerful new ally if possible.

"Hunting an archangel," she said, pulling every edition of the Bible, Torah and Qu'ran she could find from the bookshelves, just to start out with. "Should be easy, right?"

Bobby gave an amused snort. "Yeah, sounds it. You got any idea where to start?"

She hefted her stack over to the table. "Scripture," she said. "I thought I'd see if I can identify any patterns in Gabriel's behaviour from what we know about him. Or, what we think we know, anyway."

"Sounds good."

With that, Bobby turned back to his own tome. Claire had gotten used to his crotchety mannerisms over the last few months, and was actually smiling slightly at the praise (he hadn't called her an idjit, anyway, which was something). She also liked the way he was trusting her, giving her her own space to work this project, but she knew she would be able to rely on his help if she wanted it.

Days later, though, she was frustrated, wishing she could consult with their best source of information, and something was nagging at her.

"What if this is all just bullshit?" she asked, running her thumb over the array of post-its protruding from the King James.

Bobby looked up at her. "I ain't one to question anyone's beliefs, but I know for a fact there's things wrong in the Bible; Cas told me that ages ago. Meant to ask him to correct it one day, but it never seems like the right time any more."

She growled in frustration and ran her hands through her hair. "Cas said that Gabriel left about two thousand years after Lucifer was cast out," she said, thinking it through. "We've always assumed that was about ten, twelve thousand years ago?"

"Near as Cas could figure it," Bobby agreed. "I'm not sure he remembers exactly how long."

"But that still means that Gabriel left Heaven eight thousand years ago, at the very least!" she groaned. "So, who spoke to Zechariah, and Mary and Joseph two thousand years ago? Who spoke to Muhammad fifteen hundred years ago? Was it Gabriel, or a different angel borrowing a famous name?"

Bobby's eyes met hers slowly. "Well. That puts a whole new twist on things, don't it?"

"What if Jesus wasn't so much the son of God as the grandson?"

"Nephilim? I suppose it's possible. If Gabriel ran away from Heaven, he's not necessarily going to be too worried about God having banned them. That's a bit public for someone in hiding, mind: Jesus got a lot of attention."

Claire grinned suddenly. "That's just one guy, though, and maybe Gabriel thought Heaven wasn't looking any more after so long. But there's stories about nephilim all through the dark and middle ages. Castiel was the first angel of Heaven to set foot on Earth in two thousand years, so where did the nephilim come from?"

"You think Gabriel?"

Claire's eyes danced. "It's possible, isn't it? I'm sure a lot of them will have been hoaxes, but isn't it possible that there were some genuine angel babies we can track?"

Bobby shrugged. "Maybe, but not with the books we've got here, and I've pretty much run into a dead end too." He rubbed his hands together. "We've been sat on our asses too long, kid: what do you say to a field trip?"

Claire froze. "Is it safe?"

Bobby gave her an odd, contemplative look. "About as safe as it'll ever be," he said. "It's been long enough since Lucifer breezed through Sioux Falls that the Croats will have moved on. The biggest problem would be if he's stationed any demons at my place, but I'm planning on using your angel-eyes for that. Assuming they still work, of course."

That was something that hadn't even occurred to her: she had stopped seeing Castiel's grace, but she had assumed that was because it was gone, not because her unique ability might have disappeared too.

"Only one way to find out, I suppose."

.oOo.

Dean was not happy about the plan: he would much rather Bobby and Claire stayed nice and safe in the camp, but Bobby talked him around after promising to take a couple of Dean's best soldiers with him, and the demon blade. Bobby spent some time compiling a list of books he wanted, and things he could think of that might help Claire, grumbling under his breath that it would be a hell of a lot easier with the internet, since a lot of it would be parish records and so forth, from Europe, mostly. Bobby didn't think he had many books that would cover that kind of thing, so he made plans to swing by some other libraries he knew of, including someone he called 'Pastor Jim' who, it transpired, had also played a part in raising the Winchester boys, and kept a superb record of biblically-related paranormal phenomena going back about a thousand years.

Chuck, hearing about the excursion, insisted on coming too, to forage for supplies. This, Dean deemed to be reasonable, and allowed them to take a couple of trucks, since none of the cities they were hitting were all that far away: they might even be done with the whole round trip within a day, provided they set off early enough to make use of the light, and there were no problems. Dean allowed them two, but they were to check in on the CB radio regularly while they were in range.

Castiel clung extra-tight that night, tension radiating from him wordlessly. Claire wasn't sure what was bothering him more; the thought of her being in danger out there, or him potentially spending a night alone in their bed if things took longer than they anticipated. There wasn't much she could say to reassure him: leaving camp was never risk-free, even if they were going to places long-abandoned. She couldn't promise that she would be safe, but she resolved to work as quickly as possible, to try and get it all done in one day. With seven hours of travel planned, it would be difficult, but not completely impossible. She also, with a small smile, planned to speak to Dean, ask if he might keep Cas company if they did end up camping overnight. If he agreed, she might not even push that hard to get back.

Blue Earth was just over two hours' travel from the camp: one hundred and thirty miles of empty road, ending at a ghost town. This, Claire was grateful for: she wasn't looking forward to encountering any Croats, and was hoping that Sioux Falls and Vermillion, their other planned stops, were just as simple. The trucks split: Chuck's crew hit Walmart and Walgreens, while Bobby, Claire, Chuck and their assigned guard, Mike, hit Pastor Jim's abandoned church. Bobby grumbled at Jim's lack of foresight in not having a ramp down to the crypt, meaning that Claire and Chuck ventured into the gloomy depths alone.

"So, what are we really doing here?" Chuck whispered once they were at the bottom of the stairs. "It's not books for Bobby's gun, is it?"

Chuck was pretty much the only other person who she might be able to confide in, but even so, Dean had expressly asked her to keep what she was doing a secret from everyone, even Castiel. So, instead of answering him, she shrugged; a gesture lost to the darkness as she set up the portable lantern.

"Bobby said we were grabbing the library here," she said. "It's supposed to be stuff about Biblical lore mostly, so maybe he's looking for a way to track Lucifer. I mean, an archangel's got to leave a trail, right? They're not subtle, are they?"

Chuck swallowed. Hard. "No. They're not. So, start filling boxes?"

In an hour, the two of them completely dismantled the crypt, finding and boxing up every book, file, folder, even the hunting journal that Jim kept even though he wasn't a hunter himself as such. They swept through the rest of the place, checking the vestry and even the bathroom before they crossed the road to Jim's house and emptied that of lore books too. Claire paused when she reached an upstairs room with a set of bunk beds in it. A faded Led Zeppelin poster adorned one wall, and in the wardrobe, she found a nude calendar from 1995 pinned to the inside. Miss May's dark hair and bright blue eyes were certainly striking, but she felt certain that wasn't exactly what Dean (because the calendar had to be Dean's) was looking at.

With a smile, she carefully removed the calendar and tucked it into the box she was carrying. Maybe Miss May's particular colouring would get Dean thinking, if he wasn't already. Because, mourning or not, Claire had seen how much Dean had doted on Castiel, how much he had worried while Cas was unconscious, how he had held the angel tight and tried to soothe him when he cried.

.oOo.

Another two hour trip, straight down the I-90, landed them in Sioux Falls. Once again, the teams split, reasoning that the more provisions they could grab from these untapped towns, the better. The warehouse crew once again hit the marts, and Chuck steered them to Singer's Scrapyard.

Here, at least, Bobby had the freedom to move properly: before everything had gone to hell, Dean had helped Bobby convert the first floor, making sure that everything was somewhere he could get at it. Every single book that was left was either in his library or the den.

"We didn't have time to grab everything on the last trip," Bobby said as he emptied a bookshelf into the box on his lap. "Not that we knew it was the last trip, of course: we thought we'd have longer to set up the camp before Lucifer unleashed his endgame. We figured he'd wait for Dean to say yes, so we had pretty much all the time in the world. Except it seems the Devil's got a short attention span, or maybe he picked Sam's brain and realised that Dean wasn't going to give up the goods. Sam saying yes pretty much guaranteed that Dean wouldn't."

Claire decided not to tell Bobby about the night her dad had died, about why Dean was there, about the night he had spent praying to Michael not realising it was too late, that Heaven wasn't listening any more. Maybe couldn't listen any more, she still wasn't too clear on that.

Something about this place was making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Maybe it was Bobby's paranoia that Lucifer would anticipate their return and post a guard. They hadn't seen anyone at all when they had pulled up, and the amount of devil's traps in the house meant that they were pretty safe inside. Still…

"Why don't you go take a look around?" Bobby suggested, noting her restlessness. "Check the yard for any demons. Here, take this with you."

He handed her the knife. It wasn't quite right in her hand, but it would do nicely: aside from the supernatural X-ray vision that let her see a possessing entity, Castiel had left Claire with some awesome knife-fighting muscle memory. She had already bested several of Dean's men with a blade a few months back. He had grinned and said it would be interesting to see her fight Cas himself one day.

She circled slowly, checking the outbuildings that Bobby had used for his business until the apocalypse. The uneasy feeling didn't fade, even though she checked each building carefully, scouring for demons or Croats, although she wasn't sure what she would do if she found a Croat: she had a gun tucked into the back of her jeans, and she knew how to use it, but she wasn't a good shot by any means. It just felt unnatural in her hand and, believing she would never leave the camp, she had never bothered to practice beyond the minimum that Dean had asked of her.

She decided to trek through the abandoned cars, just to check that there were no lurking demons. But as she circled back and started to head back to the house, the feeling that her skin was trying to crawl off her body and hide somewhere intensified dramatically. Shuddering, she picked up her pace, her grip on the knife tightening. Every step seemed to take forever when all she wanted to do was get to the relative safety of Bobby's warded-to-the-rafters home, every shadow seeming sinister as she moved through the stacks of wrecked vehicles.

As she finally reached the edge of the junkyard, the loud crack of a gunshot echoed across the property. For a second, Claire felt every muscle in her body freeze in terror before she forced herself to duck down behind a gently-rusting SUV. Taking a breath, she peered around it and finally saw them: two demons, twisting and writhing inside their claimed skins, standing on Bobby's porch. A large, Mike-sized person was lying near the truck, worryingly still. From here, Claire couldn't see any injury, but she couldn't imagine that Mike would just lie there while everyone else was in danger. Chuck was being held by the male demon, a knife to his throat and blood on his right sleeve. Bobby was nowhere to be seen, and Claire assumed he was still inside the house.

Trembling, she assessed her options. She was currently safe, but did they know she was there? How long had the demons been watching them? Were there any others? The knife was a steady weight in her hand, but was all-but useless. There was a possibility of throwing it, a part of the skill Castiel had given her, but once thrown it was pretty much useless. She certainly didn't like the possibility of losing it to the second demon.

The only other thing she could feasibly do involved getting closer. Last time, demons had been a doddle: Castiel had used her hands to smite them, but there was something else helpful in her head: an Enochian exorcism that would send the demons back to Hell temporarily. She took a breath, steeled her nerves, and scurried from her hiding place over to the truck. She nearly lost her nerve when she saw the bullet hole through Mike's head and his dark, staring, blank eyes, but purposely looked away, over to the dark-haired woman who was responsible. Claire could now see the gun in her hand, pointed into the house. She was speaking, but Claire couldn't quite make out exactly what she was saying. Her tone was smug, taunting.

Without any further hesitation, Claire started to speak, the harsh syllables rolling easily from her tongue as if she had spoken the language her whole life. It gave her an immense feeling of satisfaction when the two demons stumbled and the man released Chuck, who scurried away, his eyes wide. Chuck had never been meant for this kind of life: the angels had screwed him over just as badly as anyone and more than most. Claire stood, held out a hand to the prophet as she continued uttering the exorcism. She allowed herself a brief flash of satisfaction when Chuck reached her, standing behind her and clinging to her hand in terror. She had saved him and, given that the demons were on their knees, crippled by the pain of the rite, Bobby was all-but safe too.

And then, in that moment when Claire had allowed herself to feel just a little proud of her quick-thinking actions, the woman lifted the gun in a trembling hand and squeezed off a shot.

Seconds later, twin streams of smoke poured from the two vessels and the demons disappeared rapidly into the ether. Claire rushed over, dragging Chuck behind her. Neither of the two were breathing, the man's head lolling at an unnatural angle, but it was the sight beyond the door that was the true horror. Bobby was slumped in his chair, a sawn-off clutched loosely in his hand and a dark stain blooming across the chest of his flannel shirt.