In the Lethe Series 2

by teaandchess

Three years have past after the events of In the Lethe, when Castiel made his choice to save a demon and the Winchesters made theirs to save one other. All that Dean, Sam and Castiel have fought for to save friends, lovers and family has started to fall apart. Old enemies begin to stalk those that they love and so it comes down to a choice. It will always come down to a choice.

17. Levee (When Angels War)

Summary: With Dean's plan in action, the hunters work together to destroy Eve's Nest. But Dean's plans go slowly awry as it becomes clear that Eve's instability is tearing her and her monstrous children apart. Castiel and Meg continue their fight alongside the hunters, with Meg's inability to work with the new hunters forcing them to change tactics. At Chuck's house, the most unusual moment in the writer's existence arrives.

---

Part 13: Levee (When Angels War)

Sam wasn't sure how things could get much worse. Dean wasn't picking up his phone, Nyx was complaining about feeling sick, and Kevin was looking more sullen than before. Still, Sam was trying to have some sort of hope that once he left them there, and rejoined Dean, things would fix themselves back to some form of normal.

Or whatever was normal for them.

Even when he heard Chuck's startled yelp in the kitchen, he didn't worry too much about what was happening in there. Part of the reason they had come to this old house was because almost no one knew of Chuck's existence anymore, let alone where he lived, and Nyx and Kevin would be safe because of that.

Taking his time, Sam looked over the study, with its nearly bare shelves and solitary laptop on the old desk. There was a stack of pages there, all neatly typed and in order, and he knew he should go and see what Chuck had written this time. But Chuck yelped and swore loudly, and he gave up on checking the possible new story. It could probably wait.

When he came into the kitchen to see Chuck staring wide-eyed in his direction, Sam frowned and propped the door open with a chair. "What's wrong? Find a rat in your coffee or something?" he asked. The horror on Chuck's face worried him enough that he tried to smile to calm him down.

"Not quite." It wasn't the prophet who answered him. The voice, dry and bored, came from behind him and he stopped moving when he recognized it. No one forgot that voice. Sam whirled to face the thin, pasty white man with black eyes.

"Sam Winchester. Always a pleasure but unfortunately, you're not needed at this moment. Only a select few can be privy to what is to happen," Death apologized, almost sincere this time. Sam saw the flash of a ghastly smile but didn't move fast enough to dodge the hand that suddenly touched between his eyes. Without a sound, he dropped into the chair, sagging into an ungainly tangle of limbs.

From the hall, Nyx cried out and ran for him, little feet catching in the carpet and sending her spiralling to the ground at his feet. Immediately, a bony hand caught her by her hand and hauled her up roughly. Nyx struggled and Death held on, patiently waiting for her to stop.

"Now, now. Don't make a fuss." Death watched her little face scrunch up with the threat of tears. "And no crying."

He let her go and turned to face Kevin, who was already wielding a book like a weapon at him. Behind him, Chuck's eyes were wide and when he gulped the sound was loud. "Hello, brother."

"Oh hell, not again," Chuck whispered and his eyes rolled up as he dropped down into another chair in a faint. Sighing, Death looked down at Nyx and she looked up at him, still holding his hand. He covered his surprise with the closest thing he had to a friendly smile. It still came out cold and cruel, but it didn't seem to frighten her.

"Wake him up, will you?"

"How?"

"You know how." He nudged her towards Chuck and she began to poke at his side angrily, causing him to grunt and groan. Behind her, Kevin lowered his book and Death gestured for him to come in. "You might as well stay, prophet. Things like this happen very rarely."

"What does?"

"When a Creator meets his creation and finds something more than he expected." Death jabbed his cane hard into the semi-conscious Chuck's thigh and it made the scruffy man howl, launching upwards at the pain. Nyx narrowly dodged his flailing arms and hid behind Kevin as Chuck got to his feet. Blindly he swung the closest object, a frying pan, at Death. The entity parried it with his cane before he began to smack Chuck repeatedly on the forehead until he backed away, holding the frying pan out as if it could magically keep him safe.

"You stay the hell away from me!"

"You can't honestly tell me you've forgotten everything, Chuck. I won't believe you this time."

Eyes darting nervously to the side, Chuck wiggled the pan at Death. "I am certifiable."

"Likely." Death flicked the pan out of his way. "And if you don't behave yourself, I will serve to remind you fully who you are. I'm sure you remember how that felt last time. It will hurt and this time I won't be so pleasant about it." Side-eyeing Chuck, as if expecting him to run, Death turned to look around the room as if deciding whether it was suitable or not. Behind them all, Nyx was poking Sam in the side, trying to wake him up as she murmured his name over and over again. Death gave his cane a hard tap on the floor and she jumped, leaving the big man alone.

"Chuck, do something useful with that frying pan and make her something to eat."

The writer looked ruffled but he nodded in a distracted way. "Right, yeah. Food."

Kevin stared, puzzled by the interaction, but Death gave him a look that meant business. Nervously, he turned around to face Nyx. "Come on, Sam will be fine. You need to rest."

"My tummy hurts," she whispered.

"You need to eat so we'll get food into you. If Chuck is any good with the frying pan," he tried. She looked about to argue but he lifted her up and set her on the chair beside him, almost possessively keeping her away from Death. But the thin man merely smiled and moved to sit close to Nyx as well.

He patted Nyx's head as she stared up at him, as if intrigued by what she saw under the surface. "The reason why she is feeling so ill is because the state of this world now affects her. Her parents, her friends, her families. All of it." His eyes turned directly on Chuck. "The way it should have affected you."

Chuck made a simpering sound as he cracked eggs in the pan. "You don't even realize what you're suggesting about me. About her."

"I don't think you remember why you did what you did."

"It was just to screw Sheol over. Worked too." His look turned cagey, as if he was afraid of saying too much. "I'm good at that."

"A little too good, if you ask me."

"I don't get it though," Kevin said and both of them turned to face him. "Everything that has happened in the past three years. The world nearly fell apart. The demons getting control, the angels falling, Metatron, Sam and Dean's injuries, even my mom. Where were you?"

Chuck turned away and out of the corner of his eye, he looked at Nyx. She seemed curious enough, but there was something tired about her. As if just keeping her little body upright was an effort that was taking everything out of her. Flipping the eggs in the pan and scrambling them around, Chuck glanced over at Kevin.

"Here's the deal. You eat then maybe we can talk."

"Eat?" Kevin's mouth tightened. "You want me to eat in a time like this?"

Death crossed his legs. "I quite like this plan."

Chuck spun and shook a spatula at him. "Nothing for you. You don't even need food."

"No, but I quite enjoy it. It is all in textures on the tongue, really." Death looked down at Nyx. "You see, girl, once you reach my age very little surprises or interests you."

Nyx frowned at him in confusion and then looked back up at Kevin. Death watched the way the prophet moved his chair closer to her, as if to protect her from Chuck's irritability. Kevin even tried to make her smile by handing her the stuffed unicorn, whispering to her a joke that finally made her relax, and Death glanced back at Chuck to see him watching as well. The man who had been God went back to work to avoid the look in those dark pitiless eyes.

---

The abandoned section of town, with several empty buildings long since emptied out by a contamination quarantine, had been the perfect place for Eve's slow construction of a massive nest. A place to protect her renewed attempts at far more perfect creatures. What remained of anyone squatting in the buildings surrounding the centre of town had been caught and made into food or new carriers. The crawl of fever that had been spread by Eve and her chosen few was now acting as a call to her children, so that all monsters in the nearest vicinity were slowly and steadily crawling towards the town like animals migrating. Their blood changed the closer they came, sung to them that they needed to find the mother, and those who came closer to her felt the change wrench on their insides furiously. It continued to build in them, a compulsion leading them back to defend the Mother, and few were even trying to resist it.

It had made the monsters surrounding the countryside easy to track and pen in, the change in them making them almost timid. No hunter had figured out the numbers but the infection had spread only so far, and the further away from the town and Eve's pathway the monsters were, the fewer that were affected. The infected were on the move but the others simply laid low to avoid it all. Focussing on the monsters who showed the signs of disease, the hunters Dean had set up on the South merely formed a perimeter and began to push them back.

It was a slow process. As they neared the town, the monsters broke into wild runs to try to get away, some already half-crazed by the disease that went through them, and the hunters kept close, using just the threat of their presence to push on them. Monsters of every kind ran together, losing their identity as they seemed to meld into the mindset of a pack; all of them ran from the hunters as if they were the most terrifying things they had seen in their strange existence.

---

In the eastern group, Meg had kept back further to watch, and she knew that something was wrong by how easy this seemed.

When she texted that to Dean, he stared at the message for a long time. Agreeing with the demon was enough to convince him that he maybe had lost his mind. Stepping out from the Impala, he killed the engine and turned to look around the roadway. Monsters were coming from every direction, barely seeming to notice the hunters just at their heels. It was too easy, he thought to himself and he turned around when he heard a gun shot.

One hunter was getting too close to a changed werewolf and she kept shooting at the monster's feet to get him moving. The plan was to cage them near the middle, where lines of salt and oil and explosives would be made ready to set ablaze. They'd burn the Mother out, get the numbers of infected down and hopefully weaken Eve enough she'd have to go into hiding. Dean had ordered everyone to just push on the monsters and not get any closer than they had to. This hunter, apparently, wasn't taking his orders seriously as she closed in on the werewolf that was wriggling on the ground. She threatened it with another close shot and had to stop to reload again.

When the werewolf suddenly stopped writhing, stopped whimpering like a caged pathetic thing, it turned on her. Leaping to its feet, it roared and charged at her. The hunter screamed and dropped her own gun, scrambling as she was sent sprawling onto her back by the swipe of a massive paw. Its head bent down in an arch and flashing fangs buried in her arm until the muscle was torn. Her scream became more desperate as its teeth burrowed deep into her flesh and began to pull her arm, gouges appearing as it tried to tear it from the socket.

Running up from behind, Dean dropped his shotgun and unholstered his pistol as he went to a knee to aim. Another hunter raced forward to help but Dean paid him no attention, the first bullet striking the werewolf in the shoulder. The monster didn't let go, instead tearing at the woman's arm with its paws while it sank its teeth into her other arm. The hunter running for the woman slid under the heaving bodies and grabbed her by the leg, yanking her out of the way as the werewolf turned on Dean. Mid-roar, it went down with another well-aimed shot, screaming as the silver bullet struck its heart. Howling in harmony to the death sound, the pack that had been following it took off at a run for the distant buildings without it.

Dean tried hard to get his heart back under control as he crawled on hands and knees over to the injured woman. The big man who had grabbed her free was trying to put a gauze wrap around her shoulder, and when he turned the arm up to look, Dean saw that the ruined limb was hanging by only pieces of muscle and broken bone.

"You might have to lose the arm," the hunter told the woman and she nodded shakily, whimpering as he tried to stop the bleeding. But when he and Dean saw the massive bite mark in her other forearm, they paused at the sight of the black veins standing up, rising through the skin and already pulsing.

"Cas!" he shouted. Instantly, he felt his presence beside him and he pointed at the bite mark, though the angel's first glance was at her ruined arm. "She's been bit."

Castiel ignored the way the woman flinched back from him and grasped her by the bitten arm. The heat of her skin was already incredible and he wrenched hard to expose her veins, not noticing how she cried out.

"Can the fever spread to humans?" Dean asked and Castiel hushed the woman as she cried out.

"It never has before. But Eve's mostly been trying to infect demons. There's no reason why it couldn't hurt humans as well." He let her go but all of them could see it flushing up her body, turning her light brown skin almost grey. Only Castiel could see the internal change that was happening now.

"Cut it off, please cut it off. Cut them both off if you have to. I don't want to be one of those things. Please!" the woman begged and Dean hesitated, looking up at Castiel. The angel looked at the wound before he reached out to touch her forehead. The flicker that went through her sent her to the ground in a heap and they watched the blackness in her skin slowly retreat to leave the skin around the wounds brown again.

"Did it work?" the hunter asked.

"I don't know," Castiel answered honestly. "I've never had to heal an infected human before. There are infected demons here as well, following the monsters. It's making them dangerous to cage. It won't help if they start infecting your hunters."

"Get the word out to the other hunters," Dean ordered Castiel and the hunter. "Make sure no one is bit. If they do, Cas, you need to get to them. Quarantine the sick, take care of it any way people can. If we have to, we'll start bulking up on clothing to prevent the bites."

"You have nearly one hundred hunters and one of me," the angel said as the other hunter sprinted off to try to get the message out using the CB. "I can't be everywhere, Dean, and I'm not sure my power will truly heal them. That woman could still change."

"Well, try. We need to get Eve penned in and we need the infected monsters kept down. That's your job and Meg's."

The look in those blue eyes was wary but agreeable. "I'll do my best."

"Yeah, sure." Dean whirled and shot off a round, catching a monster that had been sneaking up on him in its chest. It was sent to its knees howling, back arched to the point of breaking, and as one the pack it had run with turned on it. The hunters following backed off, looking at Dean nervously, and he waved his hand as they watched the monsters tear into the injured creature, ignoring its shrieks of pain as the flesh and entrails were ripped out.

Dean hadn't seen anything like it in years. Beside him, Castiel watched in fascination as they devoured their own with a hunger of starving wolves. Whatever the monsters and demons had transformed into, it had driven them to the point that few of them would come back from. An actual insanity and wildness seemed to be implanted in them now. Reaching out, he lifted his hand as if to burn them but Dean put a restraining palm on his wrist.

"Leave it. We can push them back as we go. We get them in the way we talked about, burn them out and take care of this problem." At Castiel's glance, he shrugged. "If they can kill each other, makes less work for us."

"I suppose," Castiel said but he sounded unconvinced by Dean's logic.

"We'll need to regroup," said the hunter with the CB. "Make sure everyone knows the plan and what's happening."

"Yeah," Dean muttered and he shook himself. "Yeah, right. Start the fire chain in the south, burn them out and keep it going to the north in a circle around the town. Get Garth and his guys to meet us closer to the edge of town. We'll shack up in one of those empty houses and figure out what to do."

The burly old man nodded and spoke in the CB, but Dean was already moving back to the angel. Castiel was staring at the cannibalizing monsters again. "Cas, what do you think?"

"We'll be closed in. If Eve is ready for us, we'll be surrounded at the outskirts. The number of monsters she has in there, that I've counted, are well over five hundred infected. It will be dangerous." His blue eyes went to Dean's. "Is this going to be worth it?"

"She won't see this coming. Not a direct attack anyway." Castiel's eyes flicked over his head and he squinted when he spotted something. "Where's Meg?"

"Eastern group, like I told her to."

"Then why is there a flare going up asking for help?" Castiel asked, his voice calm but when he looked at Dean his agitation was clear. Dean went to protest but the angel's hand grasped him by the shoulder and moved them faster than he could utter a word. Ironically, they landed in the middle of fight and Dean ducked to avoid a vetala throwing a punch. It screeched, reaching for him again, but Castiel caught it by its throat and threw it back.

"About time someone came to help!" Jan, a young hunter whose voice shook with fear, was fighting off another vetala, this one soaked in black venom and shrieking. He slammed a silver knife into its chest and twisted hard, while a hunter on the other side chopped off the vetala's head. Jan heaved for breath as he watched the body fall. "Some help that woman you sent us with was."

"Where is she? I told her to stay with you!" Dean snapped as he jabbed his own silver-tipped knife in a vetala's stomach and sliced up, until he heard the tearing tissue and the shrieking stop. Castiel was looking around, nonchalantly fighting when the others were still struggling. As he threw another vetala back, he shook his head, appearing more perplexed than angry.

Another young hunter turned and shot his friend a sarcastic look. "Yeah, Jan, where is she?"

The boy flushed. "I told her I could teach her a thing or two about hunting. She got all pissy, called me a kid and we fought."

"She kicked his ass without him landing a punch," said the other hunter helpfully."

"Shut the hell up!" Jan shouted and the boys all started chuckling. "I nearly thought she was gonna kill me! Then she stormed off muttering about stupid hunters and those vetalas appeared."

Castiel's eyes went to Dean and the older hunter went flushed because he could read the 'I told you so' in his smirk. The angel had warned him that Meg wouldn't like hanging around the youngest hunters. "Yeah, yeah, don't look so smug, Cas."

They heard more shrieking nearby and the hunters fell into arguing once again about who was the bigger idiot. Ignoring them, Castiel took in a deep breath and then disappeared.

---

Finally free of the hunters she'd come so close to killing, Meg walked behind the buildings along the main strip. The hunters were further back, chasing the monsters into the town to trap them from the southern and eastern sides of the town, but the demon ignored the sounds of the penning. Getting into town was easy to do once she was on her own and it gave Meg time to try to form some idea of a battle plan.

Except the town itself could be used as a trap by the monsters and she didn't like going in so blind. Meg savagely kicked an abandoned trashcan to the side and looked around, extending her power to try to see if she could feel something else. Nothing she saw made much sense. Unless the monsters were already all holed up inside, there was no signs of actual life within the streets. Whatever squatters that had been in the nearly abandoned town were likely monster food now, and even stretching out what senses she had around here found nothing. The monsters should have been streaming in, crowding the streets and buildings, but she only saw one or two.

Where were they hiding?

The closer she came to the centre of town, the more aware Meg became that something was blocking her, keeping her from even teleporting around like she could have before, and she knew what it was. Eve knew that they were coming and she was gathering her power.

Meg slid her hand down her side and palmed the weapon tucked in her belt. Castiel had given her another angel sword, out of his seemingly endless supply, and the warm weight of it felt good in her hand, reassuring her that she could handle what she needed to do.

But the closer she drew to the end of the building, the louder the noises became and the slower she began to walk. Growls, whimpers, whispers, all of it melding and overlapping so she wasn't sure what it was she was hearing. It could be a spell for all she knew.

Meg clicked her tongue and slowed down more, so that each footfall no longer carried a sound and even her clothing was only a whisper of movement. Something darted across the street, dragging a broken leg behind itself. It hit a front window hard as it staggered and tried to find its balance. Meg watched the way the strange monster ran towards the centre before she sighed and walked a few more steps. Something ran across the street again and she stopped in the shadows before she could be seen.

Pressing back against the wall, Meg let her one hand rest on her belly while the other lifted the angel sword up, ready to do damage as she considered her options. Getting away from the hunters had been easy — most weren't too bright in her opinion —and getting into town was simpler still with the way the monsters were distracted and running for safety. What the hunters were good at, in this sort of mass group, was causing confusion, causing chaos. It let her slip in unnoticed, little more than a little dark shadow plying a knife.

The growling and shouting was getting louder from the centre of town and Meg leaned out a little to try to see what was there. A hand suddenly gripped her shoulder and yanked her around, so suddenly that she raised the sword on instinct and had her wrist shoved back into the wall. She caught a glimpse of tan and opened her mouth to curse but the hand went over her mouth quickly.

Castiel didn't speak, just gave her a look that warned her to keep her voice down. As the noise in the centre grew louder, he let her go, his hand going down her neck while the rest of him kept her pressed into the wall.

"You weren't where you were supposed to be," he said, so low she had to strain to hear him under the noise. Meg grinned, her teeth flashing in a savage expression, and he finally looked down at her.

"Oh, Clarence, worried about little old me?" When he didn't say anything, she tilted her head back and gave him a coy flutter of her eyelashes. "What? You wanted to kiss me for luck?"

Ignoring her flirting, Castiel rolled his eyes and leaned out to look. "There's at least two hundred of them there."

Annoyed at his cluelessness, Meg sighed and leaned out with him to see for herself. "Maybe more." She started to count and gave up quickly. "Some might be in the buildings."

Pulling his head back, he looked at her profile for a long few seconds before speaking, "I asked you to help the hunters."

"Well, I didn't kill them when they pissed me off and I figured that was A plus for me, Castiel," she drawled in a bored voice, trying to count again. She noticed a few standing on the roofs, acting as sentries. "You know me, I work better on my own."

"I know." He heard a snarl of something moving close by and chanced looking out. "It doesn't mean I have to like it." When he pulled back to look at her again, Meg was staring at him. "Don't look at me like that," he muttered uncomfortably.

"Oh, feathers, sometimes I wonder about you," Meg muttered but for once there was no sense of distaste or sarcasm in her voice. It unnerved Castiel enough that she was giving him a look similar to one he had seen on Sam or Dean when he had first met them, a look that seemed as if she had never seen him like this before. Which was absurd; Meg knew him, had known him maybe better than most ever would.

He was so caught up in staring back at her that the way the monsters began to howl startled him. He felt her fingers dig into his coat sleeve as he drew closer against her to look around the corner. The first thing that struck him was the heat that was pulsing from the massive group, driving against him so his hair lifted and he felt the scalding blaze of it, as if standing too close to a fire.

Eve stood in the centre of her children, touching them gently. The ground looked to be heaving; twisting bodies and blood formed a living carpet of flesh and bone. Vetala, Arachne, Wendigo, Rugarus, and more all crouched below her. Monsters that ordinarily would have fought amongst each other now grovelled at her feet. It would have been goddess-like if it hadn't been for the way her decaying vessel could barely contain her now. She looked like nothing more than rotting corpse. Whatever she was bound to was falling apart so quickly that her power could no longer repair the damage. Castiel watched a creature move, black-eyed and monstrous. It bowed, massive arms offering a vampire to her, and the Mother crouched towards the injured vampire. She crooned to it and her fingers slid deep into the gaping wound on its throat.

Suddenly aware of Meg's breathing against his collarbone, Castiel slid his hand down her side to where the angel sword rested limply in her hand. The demon murmured something and he turned his head from her, not sure why the energy throbbing in the centre ring was affecting them so his pulsing heartbeat echoed Meg's own rhythm. Fingers wrapping around hers, he kept his eyes on Eve as the Mother's arm turned bright orange and charred black, as if she was smouldering from the inside out. A wave of heat struck out, and the monsters flattened to the ground in whimpering piles as Eve stood again, her white dress swirling around her.

"They cannot get to me. That is your mission, to prove your devotion to me. I still have some children to protect, until they can move. Kill them all," Eve was ordering. Castiel felt Meg lean into him to look, her arm slipping up around his shoulders to balance, and the tight coils of tension between them seemed to throb warmer. Neither of them was sure what it was but he managed with some effort to focus on Eve again.

It was hard when suddenly he had the urge to touch Meg's skin to see if it was as warm as his.

"She's radiating natural power," the demon muttered and he lifted his head to stare at her curiously, feeling her lips brush against his cheek. "Like what the fairies use, Cas. Don't worry your pretty face about what it is bothering you. Remember what we're here for."

Right. Death and mayhem. They were here to kill.

He tore his eyes away from Meg and realized that all of the monsters had stopped their strange grumbling and growling. Even those who still remained more human than beast had turned, looking very alert. That they were all looking at where the angel and demon were sunk in slowly to both of them.

"Damn. Get us out of here," Meg whispered. Castiel reached for her hand, intent on flying off, but nothing came to him. She looked up at him. "Uh, Clarence, we're still here."

"It's Eve's power. I can't fly us out." He nearly groaned in defeat. Meg's fingers tightened into a death grip and she started to back away slowly.

"Come on. Slow and quiet." He followed her lead, backing away, and his fingers tightened around hers. They were past a trashcan when they heard the sound of scuttling movement and Meg looked up to see something that looked like an Arachne crossed with a bow-legged dog crawling up the walls of the pharmacy. Castiel followed her gaze and his hand went to her elbow. Meg looked up at him and she turned the blade in her hand.

"Run."

Moving together, they jumped into a sprint, Meg close on Castiel's heels as they ran down the back of the buildings. Behind them, something began to bay. Not quite as bone-chilling as a hellhound but more guttural and feral. The heavy thud-thud of something chasing them made them run faster and harder, depending on demonic and angelic reserves of strength to run so fast for so long. Stymied by Eve's overwhelming power, Castiel concentrated on getting to the relative protection of the outskirts where he could see the line of cars.

When Meg turned mid-stride and stuttered to a stop, it forced him to stop as well.

The line of monsters that had been chasing them were fanning outward, and Meg pushed Castiel backwards, over black lines in the earth that smelled like oil. Castiel's eyes darted left and then right, trying to see where it began and where it was going. The monsters that had been running them down continued to charge forward but with Meg not moving, Castiel wasn't about to leave her.

"Get down!" Dean shouted from the distance and instinctively Castiel ducked, dragging Meg down with him. Something hot shot by him and a hunter's crossbow bolt struck the black line. The fire roared and hissed, travelling fast to strike a line of barrels camouflaged under an abandoned truck. The monsters who had come closer shrieked and fell back as a wall of flame from the planted dynamite exploded and the angel turned, using his coat to shield Meg as the barrels exploded within the truck, sending glass shards and silver beads into the air with a snarl. They embedded in his hands and he felt the heat singing the hem of his coat.

The rushing roar of fire slowly died and Castiel felt her fingers digging into his arms. He inhaled deeply, Meg's scent of sulphur and soap overwhelming the stench of oil and burning flesh. Warily, he looked down at her and saw the cuts already healing on her face. When he managed to pull himself up, the infected monsters had backed away and were retreating into the depths of the town once again.

Propping herself up on an elbow, Meg pushed her hair out of her eyes and realized that the willowy brunette, more than a mile away, was staring at her and Castiel. It sent an icy feeling up her spine for some reason and then Eve was gone, leaving Meg with Castiel hovering over her, one leg raised and caging her beneath him.

"I thought the kids would be a problem but no. Leave it to you two to not follow orders," Dean said as he closed in on them at a fast but limping walk. Castiel said nothing, shaking glass out of his hair, and Meg sighed, putting her head back on the ground as she picked a shard of metal out of her shoulder. Dean watched for a moment before he shook his head and gave them both another scolding look. "Come on. That'll keep them back for a while."

---

With dirty plates and pans all around, Chuck's kitchen looked more domestic than the usual, and that surliness the writer had was almost gone. Once he was satisfied that he was safe, that no one was about to attack him with questions he didn't want to answer, things had taken a strange turn for the friendly. With Death doing little more than watching them, Kevin found Chuck's awkward fumbling at being sociable somehow more disturbing than if he had been rude. Food was food though and it was easier to focus once he downed strong coffee and the eggs. There was little else to do but talk to Chuck; Nyx mostly picked at her food and Sam remained unconscious on a chair, barely breathing.

While swallowing the last of his coffee, Kevin eyed the way the big man was so awkwardly posed. Sam's neck was cricked to a bad angle and he was slowly sliding out of his chair now.

"Is he going to be okay?"

Death turned his attention from watching Nyx and Chuck to the Winchester. "Oh yes. Eventually. Maybe not how you all originally planned but he will be better."

Right. Trust Death to give an answer that wasn't really an answer.

"He's gonna get cramped like that and hurt himself. We should move him," Kevin said, setting the cup down and standing. When Chuck remained sitting, he cleared his throat and impatiently stared down at the other man. "We."

"Oh sure, right." Still acting like a pleasant host, Chuck wiped his hands on his bathrobe and picked up one of Sam's arm. Kevin wasn't sure if his apparent struggles were for show or not as they tried to pick Sam up between them. Chuck grunted and groaned as if this was the most work he had done in months.

"Couldn't have brought the smaller Winchester, huh?"

Kevin didn't say a word as he picked up Sam's legs and they began to walk together, carrying Sam in an awkward sling-hold to the living room. Death watched them go and heard a faint hiccup that drew his attention to the little girl sitting next to him. With egg on her chin and ketchup staining her hands, Nyx looked like a simple human child, merely pleased to be alive and fed. She hardly looked like the sort to inspire any ideas about what she was. But underneath the surface, that was what the entity needed to see. And what he saw made him smile.

"You are growing up."

She frowned. "I know you."

"Yes, you do." He reached out and tapped her nose. "Because when you were born, as all things are, I was there to decide if you lived or died."

Her eyes widened in understanding. "I wanna go home."

"Not yet. We're going to find out exactly what Chuck has planned. Because I think he went in over his head this time." Death tapped his cane on the ground. Like Castiel and Meg, he spoke to her as an adult and had no doubt she understood him perfectly when she put her mind to it. When Nyx nodded, he smiled with satisfaction. "It is so interesting to meet you again, Nyx."

Kevin heard him as he came back into the room and asked, "Why?"

"Because seeing this manifestation of new creation, seeing it in its rawest form… is incredible. Something I've not seen in eons. It would be like you seeing a tablet in human form, I suppose, considering your own interest."

Nyx's blue eyes blinked twice, as if absorbing what he said, and Kevin looked equally as bewildered. Giving them a patronizingly kind smile, knowing Kevin maybe didn't understand quite what he meant, Death stood up and held out his hand for Nyx. Without the hesitation of before, she slipped her tiny hand into his, holding a sticky Clarence in the other hand. He led them to the study where Chuck was fumbling with notes now. Kevin slid the door shut behind him before he took a seat, and Nyx climbed onto the worn old armchair across from him. She pressed into the deep flannel, cuddling her unicorn and watching them all curiously.

Chuck glanced at Death when he set his black bag down. "Why did you bring that?"

The look Death shot the bag was assessing. "I'll need it."

"Suit yourself. Scare the kids for all I care," Chuck said as he began tapping into his laptop, muttering about how things could fall apart so fast without him.

"So. Answer young Tran's questions about the hows and whys. I'm only here for how entertaining this story should be; I can't wait to see what you make up. " Death took a seat on the windowsill. "It should be a classic for the ages."

"You let people die," Kevin interrupted before Chuck could snap back at his 'brother'.

"I did what I had to do. The story has to go on and sometimes there is… well, there is collateral."

"Collateral!" Kevin swore under his breath, mindful of Nyx.

"You want another way of putting it? They were part of something bigger than they realized!"

"These are people! Living, breathing people!"

"And I created them!"

Nyx was staring at them, her eyes darting back and forth as she tried to keep up while they shouted.

"Perhaps you need to be less obtuse," Death began.

"It's how it was meant to be, remember?" Chuck slammed the laptop shut with a bang, causing Kevin to jump though Death's expression never changed as he took several threatening strides towards them. "You were in charge of death, I was in charge of life. That's my duty, isn't?" Chuck sneered at him and threw a thick pile of notes about Supernatural on his desk. "To create."

"So it was," Death allowed. Obviously furious, Chuck reached into his cabinet and grabbed a bottle. Muttering to himself, he poured half a glass of Scotch and then lifted it in mock salute.

"That's what I do. Create. Even you and Sheol didn't have the ability to wield the power I held. Who knows what she is even doing when locked up in her proverbial tower. I don't really care. I did my job." Gulping down the liquor, he gestured around the room. "Hell, I'm great at creating." He hiccuped and pointed at Nyx. "Created her didn't I?"

For such a small child, the anger in her glare was surprising.

"I think you can't take all the credit for that, Chuck." Death leaned back. "Not in the end."

"I created ways of challenging my creations, of making them better than what they were. Of…"

Kevin drew his own conclusions fast. "Wait, you also helped Eve in the beginning before you locked her away." He paused, seeing Chuck's eyes dart away. "Did you… you…" The horror on Kevin's face turned to fury. "You helped Purgatory 'resurrect' her, let her get out, and you didn't stop any of this. You helped her create these monster demons, or at least you helped her find a way of doing it. Why would you do that?"

"Why not?" Chuck countered. "It's my job. Creating." His eyes were bleak as he stared at Death instead of the prophet. "So my brother keeps reminding me. So my sister enjoyed telling me how I failed three years ago, when she nearly won that little game between us."

"So what, you're punishing everyone else just because…?" Kevin was astonished by that cruelty.

"If it wasn't abundantly clear before, it is now." Death tapped his cane again. "He doesn't want to be the only one to wallow in misery and loneliness."

Chuck glared at him.

"When there is no where else to turn, to bring about something to keep him interested, he made something up. So he sets loose some new form of creature, some new beast capable of something devastating, just to see what happens." Death looked at Nyx who was staring up at him wide-eyed. "No, no. Not you, my dear. I mean the Mother and her monsters."

"I could have done a lot worse. Could've given them no chance of an 'out' or surviving if they don't win." With a wave of his hand, Chuck moved back to the bottle on his desk. "At least I gave them that."

There was no mistaking that the sarcasm in Death had slowly turned to loathing. "Oh yes. You are the sheer epitome of mercy."

"I thought God loved all his creations," Kevin said.

There was a shattering sound as Chuck's grip destroyed the glass in his hand. Nyx was staring at the back of his head with rapt attention, more than she had even paid Death at any point. His head bowed as he looked at his bloody hand and the glass pieces littering his floor, his shoulders shaking as he took in a deep breath.

"I do," he whispered. "But none of you make it very easy to have hope in you sometimes."

When Chuck turned around, his eyes were bleak with frustration and grief. His eyes went to Nyx. "I had hoped that when there was time…" He stopped himself, stuttering to a halt as if he realized what he was about to say. "Nevermind."

Death adjusted his seat and leaned over to Nyx. "Trust me, my dear, this is not the worst it gets."

She nodded. "Might be bad."

"It might be, yes." Death eyed Chuck. "Perhaps it is almost time you admit your folly."

"Admit what? That I should have said I was sorry, that I should have offered my life to Sheol because of what I created? Because of how one little mis-" He glanced at the little girl again and thought twice about calling her a mistake. "How one new life managed to do more than Sheol thought possible to her own existence? To the angels and demons themselves?"

"Would have been a start. You know she would have never killed you. Just made you suffer a little for it." Death looked agitated for once. "Our sister loved all her family but it was not easy to do when she became angry with us."

Kevin caught Chuck looking at Nyx. "What does that have to do with Nyx?"

"Everything. She was a new creation and our kind have laws about new creation. And what it means."

Chuck gave Death a disgusted look. "And you call me cryptic."

The look he was given in return was smug. "I'm telling them everything he needs to know. It is not my fault he won't be able to catch up."

"Whatever you did, whatever you let happen," Kevin said, standing up and approaching Chuck, "people still died, the monsters escaped…"

"People die everyday, Kevin," Chuck snapped. "Try not to get hung up on the concept. It happens."

"My mother died!" With no warning, the smaller man lashed out and punched his fist into Chuck's jaw, sending him down with a crack. Chuck fell against the table and behind Kevin, Nyx put her hands over her mouth in shock. Death, on the other hand, smirked and looked up at the ceiling. "You walked away from so much and just because…. because…. Just because!"

Cradling his jaw with one hand, Chuck pushed up against the sofa beside Nyx. "I had my reasons, my plans. And most have turned out the way they should."

"You played with lives." Kevin turned to Death with an equally furious eye. "And you? This is funny to you!"

"Exceedingly."

Kevin could only stare at the entity, knowing he should be afraid of him but suddenly not caring. Throwing his hands in the air, he stalked down the hall and out the back door, slamming it hard behind himself.

"Well, that was interesting." Crossing his ankles, Death leaned forward on his cane. As insulted as he could be, his attention was for Chuck. "Do you see what happens, brother?"

Still nursing his jaw, Chuck glared at him.

"What happens when you let your children run wild? They lose faith in you." Standing up slowly, Death wandered over to Nyx and patted her head. "I shall see you again, my dear."

"Bye bye," Nyx said, wiggling her fingers at him. Death took another glance at Chuck and the massive bruise already forming on his cheek, and he knelt beside the couch, leaning in towards Nyx.

"If you don't mind, he will be unhappy if his face hurts." Death gave a pointed look at Chuck and Nyx frowned.

"Do I have to?" she asked in a soft voice.

"No. But it would be nice." He patted her on her head again and with a tap of his cane on the hardwood he was gone.

Nyx huffed and turned over to face Chuck, who was struggling to work his jaw properly. "Kid packs a mean hook," he said to himself and when Nyx knelt beside him on the couch he turned, surprised. "What're you doing?"

With none of the gentleness she would have shown Sam or her parents, Nyx slapped her hand on his cheek and held it there. Chuck could only stare up at her, aware of a sparkling heat that went through his stomach and settled in his head. The heat suddenly gave way to ice, dousing every nerve into awareness, and the effect was like being woken up from a drugged state.

"Thank you," he whispered, snared by the almost old look in her large eyes. As if she was seeing him clearly for the first time and he was finally seeing her for the first time. Finally, Nyx shrugged and hopped down, leaving him by himself as she went to see where Sam was still sprawled in the living room across the hall. Chuck stared after her and reached up to touch his face, aware of a phantom sensation lingering on his skin that was more familiar than he had thought possible.

---

The massive group of hunters laid out what stock and weaponry they had. The Southerners had brought up what explosives they had pilfered from army bases, those from the East had mass amounts of gunshot, and more than a few had silver bullets specifically made for the occasion. Dean hadn't seen a gathering like this in a long time. Some of these people he was sure had never really seen a monster like Eve before; werewolves and vampires were normal for them but give them djinns or arachne and most would be on the run.

The only thing Dean could hope for was that these hunters were good enough to hold it together. The monsters most affected by Eve's fever were corralled in the town for now and it would take inch by inch to destroy them totally.

Dean only hoped that Benny wasn't among them. He wasn't afraid to do what he had to do but that was something he didn't want to even think on again. There were few enough people, human or not, he considered a friend. Out of the corner of his eye, he looked to where Meg and Castiel were murmuring to one another. Both unhurt, which had caused some looks and was making people whisper that maybe she wasn't human. No one was badly hurt, except for the young woman had her ruined arm barely hanging by a thread of flesh.

Without thinking, Dean glanced at where she was lying in a bed, one hand shaking and her body going a pallid grey. Castiel had healed her the best he could, but the aftereffects of the fever still seemed to be coursing through her. The same way it had with Meg but the demon had been able to fight it. Dean wasn't so sure about a human fighting it off.

"I made some calls," Garth announced as he came into the room, gesturing at the ringleaders of their group. "I'm going to send you all a text message with the location of the safe-houses, in latitude longitude co-ordinates."

"Hell, Garth," said one big man, who spat as he talked. "You couldn't just tell us?"

"Easier this way, Bruce."

Dean said nothing, but began drawing quick lines on the map of the town. "We set up explosives here, here and here, along old sewer lines and where the cement has some deep cracks forming. If we can blow a large hole in the centre of town, we have a chance of running them in there. Lace the barrels in salt and liquified silver. Do some damage."

One woman — Sheila, Dean remembered — cleared her throat. "We're running into trouble. How do we know they are all here?"

Castiel moved a step around Meg. "Garth had the patterns right. She's been calling them to her. Whatever she is infecting them with; she wants all of them to feel it. Maybe getting closer to the source strengthens the change."

Meg muttered something behind him and he nodded. "You can all feel it, can't you? The way you felt the closer you came to the town?" he asked and Dean watched an uncomfortable expression cross most of the hunters' faces. Even he remembered how he had felt when they had pushed them all back towards the town. Hot and flushed, as if the air itself was squeezing around him. "That is her call to them. It is heat and power and blood. It is affecting you too."

"What about you?" Shelia asked curiously and he shook his head.

"At my core, I'm not human enough to fall prey to it. I can feel it but that is all; it won't distract me." On anyone else it would have sounded like boasting but Castiel said it was simple fact. Meg raised her eyebrow at the angel and he pretended not to notice.

"So what do we do about that?"

"We kill them," Dean said, not wanting to get distracted. "If we can get rid of the monsters out there, then we can maybe get her on the run, maybe even powerless if we do this right, and we can have a chance at ending this. Most of those monsters have lost what made them even close to human. We can't let this infection spread out to the coasts. We set the fires, set the explosions, and get in there. We do what we do best. First waves, second waves. It's a blitz attack. It won't be pretty."

An eager group of younger men in the back hooted and began to boisterously shove each other around, as if to hide how they really felt, and Dean noticed how Meg rolled her eyes. Castiel met his gaze next and he nodded to him, watching as Castiel disappeared to layout the start of the explosives. Garth began to talk lowly to the men and women who had assumed some form of control for all the hunters, including the ones in the southern part of the town, and Dean stood silently, staring down at the map.

Meg's appearance beside him wasn't a surprise. Neither was the way she glared at him.

"You'd better know what you're doing, Dean," she threatened and he smirked.

"You can still run away, Meg." Ignoring the looks of the hunters, most who still didn't know what Meg was, he leaned on the table and looked down at her. "Are you a bit more tame than usual and feeling like you won't cut it like you used to?"

"It wasn't an empty threat," Meg said, choosing not to answer the insult. "It was a warning. This plan, this entire thing? Isn't foolproof."

"I know." He propped his leg up on the table and strapped a machete to his calf. "But like I said before, I'd rather go out making a huge dent in Eve's plans than sitting waiting for her to catch me."

Meg's eyes narrowed in speculation. "You think you're going to die, don't you?"

"I think that I'm going to give her a run for her money, Meg. Don't read too much into it."

She sneered. "What? You're saying that you're a deeper well than I thought?"

"Try not to seem shocked that I can plan things. After all," he jostled her with his shoulder, "you didn't win once against us when we were on opposite sides of the fence."

That irked the demon enough. "Maybe you just got lucky."

"Luck has nothing to do with how I work." To signal an end to their conversation, he turned his back on her. "Go get your weapons ready and go to the spot I told you to stay at."

He heard her cursing as she went out of the house, slamming doors as she went, and Dean ran his fingers over his stubbled jaw thoughtfully. Beside him, Garth cleared his throat before speaking lowly, "After all that's happened, all she and her kind did, you trust her?"

Dean didn't speak, just nodded, and when Garth looked at him he knew that Dean hadn't heard a word he said.

---

All the planning in the world hadn't prepared the hunters for what they were about to do. But any shock, any hesitation, had to be buried down when faced with the horror of it.

It was guerrilla warfare, the only kind any of them could afford, and it was effective. Knowing that the town was empty, its polluted state making it unusable, had only helped Dean give orders to set each of the buildings on fire. Their fastest members, little more than teenagers with a death wish, ran in with blowtorches and oil cans. In charge of them and struggling to keep them focussed, Castiel kept close and helped the hunters find the exposed wires as others painted the walls until they were oil-slick. He paused at a wall of the first outbuilding, listening for any signs of life and never heard more than the soft scuttle of movement.

When the building grew too hot to touch even from the outside, the screams began.

"Finally," he muttered and he dropped the set of lines he'd been holding.

"What… what do we do?" asked a boy just behind him and Castiel turned to see him staring wide-eyed at the monsters trying to claw their way out of the windows. He was ashen and wide-eyed, torch hanging uselessly at his side.

Grabbing the boy by his shoulder, Castiel launched himself across the distance and calculated it perfectly. Any closer and Eve's power would stop him. Any further then there was a chance he wouldn't get to the others in time. The doorways of the second building burst open and, like rats escaping a nest, the monster changelings began to pour out, screeching at the pain. Castiel narrowly dodged one flaming creature and grabbed the next hunter, who was frozen in fear as well. Taking the two boys back, he dropped them beside Garth and then winged off again.

Running faster than the hunters and little more than a slip of a shadow at the corner of their vision, Meg moved in between the chaotic masses of bodies pouring out and into the town. Her focus was totally on what she had to do and she kept her eyes on the ground as she searched for the key lines that had been left by Castiel earlier. Snagging two wires, she ripped the rubber casing apart and bit into the wire to mould them together. Satisfied that the knots would hold, she then sprinted for the next set, still dragging the longest line behind herself. The lines wove around the buildings at the centre of town and needed to be connected to the explosive line about to be driven in.

---

Not for the first time, Meg was glad she wasn't on the receiving end of Winchester planning.

Crouching over a set of wire, she bit into the two and twisted the clamps, one leg braced up with the trigger line still wrapped around her ankle. The low snarl behind her didn't phase her. Meg simply continued to twist the clamps, humming low in her throat as she worked. She felt the hair at her nape move just a little, signalling a coming blow, and she leaned dramatically to the side, causing the rugaru behind her to fall face first on the ground before it scrambled up to its knees. Brushing her hair out of her eyes, Meg stared as it crouched across from her. Caught somewhere between beast and man, its body had contorted horribly so its face was an open maw that reminded her eerily of a Leviathan.

"She couldn't make you pretty, huh?" Meg drawled. The angel sword was still tucked into her belt but she went for the gun strapped to her leg instead. The bullets were useless but there was the gun powder she could use. She clicked one shell out, rolling it in her palm.

Unsurprisingly, the rugaru sprang for her throat and Meg spun it beneath her. Straddling it, she slammed her hand into its chest and the force of her blow shoved the bullet deep into its heart. The brass embedded deep, and Meg, with the sense of aim a trained torturer had, twisted her fingers just so and the tiny shard metal tore into the heart. Eyes up on the approaching monsters, most charred now, Meg leaned down on its chest, heard its chortling breath as she used her power to ignite the bullet inside of the rugaru, setting its heart on fire from the inside. With a twist of her other hand, she snapped its neck and stood back as the body burned up.

Her grin was wild and joyful as she raced off to finish her job.

---

Dean crouched behind the pick up truck slowly rolling its way, barely noticed, up the roadway. The other hunters were leading attacks in, using the smoke and small explosions as cover as they pushed the monsters further back. When the air beside Dean fluttered, he shook his head.

"Your girlfriend does to cause hell, huh?" he asked and he looked over his shoulder at Castiel. The angel was crouched beside him but he looked over the bed of the truck at where Meg was taunting the monsters, leading them in massive circles while the hunters picked them off like snipers.

"She does. To her credit." Castiel paused as Meg spun under a changed female vampire and drove the angel sword deep into her heart. The female went down howling and the demon was off again, hooking up the cords and wires. Castiel looked more impressed than an angel should have at the destruction she was causing. "She is good at it."

"Yeah, I guess." Dean continued to crab walk beside the truck as inside the cab, Garth kept the truck moving slowly, ever so slowly, towards the centre of town, where Eve and most of the monsters were. "You ready to catch her if you have to?"

"Always," Castiel said and Dean groaned.

"You and your sappiness, Cas."

The angel looked confused. "That was 'sappy'? I meant it literally."

Dean rolled his eyes and gestured. "Go help the other hunters. Garth and I got this. Remember. This baby gets in the centre, you get Meg and you blow it up."

Castiel fixed him with a look. "And you?"

"I'll be good. Guaranteed." Dean went to give him a shove when they both heard something crawling on the roof of the pickup. A pair of vetala were clambering on the hood, trying to peer into the darkened windows at Garth. Dean growled and cocked his shot gun. "Shit."

Rising quickly, he let a round explode out that caught the female in her arm. She went flying off and her mate raced for him, fingers digging into the metal so deeply that it crunched. The force of it hitting his chest sent the hunter down to his knees and he covered his head as its fangs extended towards his head. Dean ducked and Castiel rose behind him, slicing his angel sword out. It caught the Vetala on the neck and it crumpled apart before its corpse even hit the ground.

Dean raised his gun in mock salute. "Thanks, Cas." He gestured in the air when he heard the shouting in the distant south of the town. "Go. Garth and I got this."

With a nod, Castiel disappeared to help the other hunters. Dean touched his chest, aware of his banging heart and the pain there from how erratically his heart was skipping now. Every other beat was more painful than the next. His heart felt like it was struggling to establish a rhythm and he leaned against the rolling truck, closing his eyes.

The door popped open and Garth grabbed him by his collar, pulling him onto the floor of the truck cab. Driving using only the mirror downcast and the feel of the road, there wasn't much room beside him. Dean squeezed in but kept his eyes shut, taking in deeper and deeper breaths.

"What's wrong with you?" Garth asked as he slowly let the truck roll a bit further forward.

"Hea-heart." Dean took in a deep, sucking breath and let it out slowly. "My heart's gone bad since the last time I was in the Hundred Mile."

"Jesus." Garth wiped his mouth. "You picked a fine time to lie about your medical conditions, Dean. I didn't even know Winchesters got sick."

"We're just human, Garth," Dean said, finally opening his eyes. Garth went to say something but he glared him into silence before leaning up to look outside the window. He sagged back down with a grunt. "You realize that if we get stuck in there, we might have no other choice than to blow it sky high… us included?"

"Yep." Garth gave him a broad but completely shaky grin. "Livin' the dream, I guess."

"Easy there, Louise, we're not topplin over a cliff yet."

The skinny hunter almost whined aloud. "Ah come on, Dean, why I got to be Susan Sarandon?"

"Because I said so." Dean ducked down as something heavy thumped into the side of the pick-up and set it on a skid. Garth overcorrected and inside the pickup the two men bumped around until the truck righted itself.

"You think we're winning?" Garth asked as Dean kicked the door open and watched the buildings slowly rolling by.

"Garth, you do this as long as I've hunting, you start to realize you don't win." Dean grabbed his shotgun and began to pick off the monsters stupid enough to come close to the window. "You just learn that surviving is all you can hope for."

---

Castiel walked amongst the hunters, invisible to them now. They were fighting well, though with the sort of scrappiness that maybe made the trained soldier in him cringe, but they were doing their jobs. It was all Dean had wanted. The slow push back on all sides to get them in one spot, the firefights going on that rivalled any battle scene Castiel had seen before between humans in recent years. It was sloppy and it was bloody, but it was working.

So stuck in awe of their capability for violence, Castiel could only watch. What help he could give them was nothing in comparison to what humans could do when allowed freedom to kill and destroy as freely as the monsters they were fighting.

There was a brush of something passing him, followed by a hint of sulphur in the air, and he reached out blindly, falling out of the illusion as he did so. He spun Meg around in his arms, holding onto the ripped leather jacket, and she gasped before she realized who was holding onto her. Though there was bullets spraying around them and explosions as flames engulfed gas lines and generators, he held her still in the middle of the street. His hair ruffled in the hot blast of an explosion and he watched her dark hair fly before her eyes as her head turned toward him.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, his voice low, one hand searching down her back for any marks or tears.

"I'm fine, Castiel." Her skin was flushed with exertion and excitement, and Castiel watched her head turn to watch as two hunters plunged sabres into a changed werewolf. Her lips were full and half-parted, and there were bruises lining the pale skin up her cheek with a cut under one eye. Even a sleeve was ripped to shreds to her shoulder, revealing a gouge that was already half-healed. Castiel had never thought to see such ruin as beautiful.

"This is fun." Her eyes were like glittering onyx when she looked up at him, the orange glow of an explosion casting a warm glow of light on her skin. "Haven't had a good fight like this in decades."

He knew that the hunters were casting furtive looks over at him but Castiel didn't care as he sucked in a deep breath. The undercurrents of smoke, sulphur, and blood were so strong that he could taste them on his tongue and he studied Meg as she spoke. She pointed out the weakest spots, where hunters and monsters were tangling in heaps of mangled flesh. They were gaining ground but losing fighters, she was saying, but it was the cost of fighting with mortals.

Castiel heard it all as if through white noise.

Reaching out, he touched her face, a glimmer of his hand over her skin setting a fission of heat between them. Meg stammered to a stop, staring up at him as his Grace healed the bruises. It set her darkness on edge, like a hissing beast on its own, but he didn't push. He still hadn't spoken since his first sentence, and he let his thumb drag over the smear of blood high on her cheekbone.

When he caught her questioning look, he gave her a small smile and then disappeared.

Meg was bewildered but not so lost that she didn't block the coming blow of a vampire with just a casual twist of her wrist, sending the angel sword into the female's eye and twisting deep into the brain. Still, she knew in that instant he had muddled her better than anyone else had managed in the past few hours.

The fact that Castiel trusted her not to turn on the hunters, who before she would have slaughtered without a second thought, weighed heavily. He knew what she was capable of, knew just how fragile the idea of a truce was between her and the Winchesters, and still he left her here as if she was to be trusted. Sometimes the weight of trust puzzled Meg far more than it still should.

She was aware of the fire starting to spread, as it climbed over gasoline lines and struck the smaller amounts of explosives staggered from building to building. The sprays outwards were liquid silver, so hot that it scalded most of the monsters on touch. The hunters had abandoned the guns for heavy machetes and axes, careful to avoid being bitten by venomous fangs.

The changed monsters always attacked the same. They were calculated, dangerous because they ran as a pack now, but it was a constant barrage of attack. As if they expected to wear down the hunters before they could finish their attack. Her walk speeding up, so that each strutting stride lengthened, Meg walked and saw the attacks coming long before they came close. The hunters on either side of her were leaping onto the monsters, spinning about and cutting deep into the flesh. Her own fingers tightened around the angel sword and Meg tossed her head back as out of the corner of her eye a hand came towards her throat. Without missing a beat, she sliced, felt the spray of black blood on her hands, and kept moving.

She only had a few more wires to connect together and then Dean could do whatever it was he thought would work.

It sounded too easy, really.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Castiel crouching over two hunters who had fallen. He lifted his hands off of them and the one moved but the other was dead, his left side completely shredded from shoulder to knee. The angel ran his palm over the torn face to close the dead man's eyes, and then moved on.

If Meg moved like a shadow, Castiel was like a beacon of light that pulsed with power. She watched him fight, the movements all quick and abrupt in comparison to her own more brutal style. When he held his palm out, the demon threw an arm over her eyes as he blasted a set of monsters about to charge into a young group of hunters. It seared their flesh and Meg felt the heat from the Grace join the explosions.

"We need to keep moving." His voice was in her ear and Meg removed her hand from her eyes to see him staring at her. "Come on."

He took her arm and pulled her up. That he didn't release his grip was something she didn't care about. His hand was as bloody and sticky as hers, his fingers hot from the use of grace and fire, but like her he was almost inexhaustible compared to the humans. Still holding her wrist, Castiel started off for where the fighting was densest, where the screams had taken on new tones of desperation.

Meg let her angel sword go to her free hand, rolling the hilt between her fingers so it laid blade flat against her wrist. The metal was warm against her cooler skin and she took comfort from the way the sharp edge dug into her flesh, just bordering on penetrating. Castiel turned to walk backwards a bit, analyzing the way that the burning buildings had collapsed to form walls of debris in a charred circle around the outskirts. The town was being reduced to rubble. Made frantic by the fire and by the attack, the monsters were fanning out into wide circles to try to find room to escape.

The traps, buried under rubble and sand, began to snap around vulnerable legs. The hunters leapt out the way, shouting to one another to move it, and Castiel turned to see Meg slicing through the chest of a werewolf. It went down immediately and before it could get its fangs into her knee she slammed her fist into its face, sending it spiralling out of the way.

Meg wiped the blood from her mouth and gestured at the lines that had been dragged out, still attached to her ankle. "I'll get this, you run and tie it off the ends to the truck."

He nodded, but made no move to run off like she ordered. Meg pursed her lips in frustration as he followed her instead. "I'm fine, Cas! Go!" she snapped, shoving at his shoulder. He caught her wrist in his and held on, pulling her forward.

"Don't do anything reckless," he warned and Meg gave him a smirk.

"Come on, angel, would I do anything like that?"

"That is precisely why I said it." His hand went down her cheek and then he was gone. Still feeling his hand on her skin, Meg shook her head and turned to where the last of the wire lines had to be tied off. The other part was starting to go taut as the rolling truck and trailer went deeper into the town with enough dynamite and explosives to put a small hole in Oklahoma.

As if sensing her attention, four of the changed monsters turned, spindly limbs warping into more heavily muscled, ropey arms and taloned legs. WIth the hunters distracted, some already falling under the force of the monsters regrouping, she was on her own. These monsters now stood between her and finishing tying the wire.

Meg flashed a grin and started forward.

---

The pickup rolled to a slow stop, its almost lazy procession mostly ignored. No monsters turned to watch it.

But hovering over the last of her brood, Eve noticed.

Head tilting on the side, she stared at the truck and the trailer as she drew a circle in the dirt with her bare toe. One of the last captured demons was in the throes of a change, strengthened by the force of her power so focussed on him. Given the chance, this one would be her best work, she knew that. She hoped it for all of her brood.

Except the appearance of the truck, with no apparent driver, made her wonder what exactly Dean Winchester was up to. All she could do was continue to throw monsters against them, until the bullets ran out, until the knives dulled. She could wait eternity for that. Her children would not fail her.

All around, her children were dying for her and Eve felt a morbid pride in them for that.

The last of Azazel's demon beneath her feet began to arch and scream as the venom changed the DNA in its host body, the monster soul overwhelming the rest of it. The two souls changed and began to break apart to remould into something new, and Eve watched with maternal love. Perfect. Since Azazel had brought her more willing victims, her power had felt renewed by their suffering. By the strength in demon's blood and darkness.

She was nearly ready. The venom was changing her other terrible children into something more powerful, more infectious, and it spread so easily to the demons. So easily to other monsters and to humans.

One way or another, she was going to get her revenge.

The truck continued to putter and she stepped over her newest child to face it, trailing her fingers through the air so the windshield shattered. To reveal an empty cab with the interior light still on. Eve stared, twitching her fingers to kill the engine but it kept purring away like a sick cat.

Behind her, her monster child sat up, almost mewing in pain from the transfer.

She turned her head and smiled benevolently. "New life. So perfect."

"Guess that's maternal blindness. He's one ugly fucker." Dean Winchester's voice was like a shock and she turned to see him ducked under the door. He took quick aim and the bullet from his shot gun slammed into the monster's forehead, so hard that it fell back. Eve screamed in fury as the still vulnerable monster collapsed, dead, and she turned on the truck, raising her hands.

The truck ripped itself apart and Dean took cover behind the wreckage of a building. Eve whipped her hand through the air and the truck moved to the side by her force of will. Not enough to spill its contents but far enough that Dean knew he'd have to run for it. On the other side, he could see where Garth was huddled up beside a dumpster.

"Come on, Dean Winchester," Eve spun a slow circle. "You can't be that much of a coward."

"You'd be surprised." A second female voice, gravelly but calm, made Eve spin to stare at the dirt-smudged brunette standing across the lane. She read her in an instant, knew who she was by the smell of her.

"You… you're the demon. The one I was told about."

The woman was crouched, tying something to the ground. She tossed her hair out of her eyes and then straightened up. She dusted her jeans off as if she had all the time in the world. "That's me."

Eve eyed her up and down. "There's something strange about you."

"Trust me," Meg said with a cunning grin as she stepped towards her. "That's nothing I haven't heard before."

"Meg, what the hell are you doing?" Dean shouted as he reloaded his weapon.

"Something risky." The demon circled around the mother. "You wanted me, here I am."

"Not just you. Your blood and whatever it is that you hold that you were given."

"A great rack and brains?" Meg offered and heard Dean's rude snort even through the noise and distance. Eve lifted a hand, ready to draw Meg close, and the demon stopped her with a jaunty lift of her eyebrow.

"Ah ah. Careful." Meg's eyes went black and she gestured around. "You could set something off."

"You think that any of this frightens me? Your petty fighting, your fire? I can only be killed by one thing and there's no more of that, is there?"

Meg made a face, walking a slow circle in time with Eve's movements. "Maybe not. But things change and you're probably different than you were before," she said but at her side, unseen to Eve, she swivelled her fingers. Further away from Dean, Garth crab-walked towards the wires that led down from the trailer and tried to light the matches he carried. Having narrowly escaped the truck, his fingers were bloody and a few were broken, so his hands shook as he fumbled with the matches.

Ignoring the shouting around them, Dean shot Eve in the arm and watched her twist in the air as the bullet tore the decaying arm off. With a grunt, she grabbed the twitching limb from the ground and refastened it to her shoulder, the skin slowly wrapping around the joint again. She ignored him though, as she came closer and closer to Meg and the demon didn't move.

"You're not afraid of me?" Eve asked. "Are you really that stupid?"

"I've seen the afterlife. Whatever you do to me is nothing," Meg said. Eve stopped moving and the demon backed up a step, trying to lead her where she wanted. Directly in the line of fire of the truck. All she need was her to get her back to it. Behind Eve, the hunters were pushing the monsters towards the centre of town, right in the blast radius. The group was swelling all around them.

If only Eve would move.

"You think I want to kill you so quickly?" Eve darted forward so she stood in front of Meg. Reaching out, she gently touched her cheek, tracing down her body to rest on her stomach. Meg didn't flinch though the heat from that hand was incredible. "When you've created life when you weren't supposed to?" Her fingers tapped a trail lower, hovering over Meg's pelvis. "Oh no, demon. I find you interesting."

The demon couldn't hide the shudder of revulsion that went through her at Eve's touch. "That's nice."

"You can bear your own type of monsters too. Creatures Heaven and Hell would kill to control. That is just… unexpected." Eve leaned forward, the glow from her orange eyes hypnotic while her hand went to Meg's shoulder. "I want to taste what it is that makes your blood sing with creation."

"I'm not one for poetry," Meg said as the grip tightened and she was forced to a knee.

"She's not lying. She hates poetry," Castiel said suddenly from behind Eve. Growling, she turned and reached for him but Castiel ducked, sinking his angel sword in her stomach. He twisted deep, listening to her screams, and thought for a moment she would collapse under the force of the blow. The angel leaned into the pressure, forcing the sword to slide up towards her heart. As if sensing what he was going to try, the Mother lashed out to grab him by the throat. Castiel felt the pressure on his wind pipe and he hung onto the angel sword for his life.

"What did you think would happen?" Eve whispered. "That killing me would be as easy as when you killed my Adam? That you could save them just because you are an angel?"

Castiel tried to twist the blade deeper, mouth moving to utter the exorcism he remembered the Metatron using. But Eve's fingers pinched and he could get the words out.

"You'll watch them die, Castiel, long before I let my children eat you."

Her wheezing breath deepened as she looked into his blue eyes, seeing the glow of Grace within him. With a disgusted grunt, she threw her hand into his chest and sent him flying backwards into the group of approaching monsters. They set upon him, snarling as he was buried underneath their heaving bodies and Castiel twisted as he struggled against them. Their hands, some taloned and others massive paws, tore at him and dragged him down until only one of his arms was visible under the weight of monsters crushing him.

The Mother turned away from the sight, lips parted in a pained snarl as she reached into her stomach. The angel sword slipped from her gut, leaving burning trails of pain, and she dropped the weapon to the ground. Licking her bloody lips, she turned to face the rest of them, hearing the monsters shrieking as they clawed at Castiel. Eve jerked to a stop as Meg drove her own angel sword into her heart.

Ducking Eve's outstretched hand, the demon grabbed the blade Castiel had stabbed Eve with and slammed it into the top of her foot, pinning her to the ground.

With a crunching kick to the demon's stomach using her only foot left, Eve sent Meg flying through the air as well, through the broken window of an old building. But she didn't bother to stretch her power out to see if the demon was still alive. Instinct warned her she was in danger and she struggled to remove the angel sword from her chest, her foot still pinned to the ground. Hissing in pain, she felt a part of her coil up to try to heal the simultaneous wounds but the agony was too sharp.

Without the other side to her power, the side that Adam had taken from her when her soul had split in two, healing would take so much longer. She needed to escape the pain for just a moment, a second, and the agony of the heavenly blades burned hotter and hotter the more she tried to fight it.

"Try to run now," Dean said from somewhere close by. Garth took off at a run as the wires were lit. Dean shot at the ground, the spark of bullet meeting concrete igniting another set. Momentarily struck quiet, Eve watched in fascination as the flames ran in a circle around her, before she looked up. The remaining mass group of monsters milled around her for protection, the protective circle thirty deep, and she smirked at Dean as he and the hunters backed off.

"That's the best you can do?" she asked, her tongue slathering out of her mouth as blood continued to bubble up from her throat. Dean glanced behind her and saw the monsters struggling to stop Castiel as the angel regained his footing and pulled himself from under them. He ran for the cover of a dumpster and, confused, the monsters wavered on following him. Eyes darting back to Eve, Dean grinned back at her with a look nearly as manic as her own.

"No."

He didn't bother to aim to the left, just squeezed the trigger and the bullet embedded in an oil drum in the trailer. The dynamite set in the buildings by Castiel began to explode, igniting one by one in a chain reaction that snarled and roared. The sound was followed by waves of heat as the pick-up truck where Eve was standing exploded and the flames raced up the hem of her dress. Distracted by the heat and pain, she lashed out and her power ricocheted through the air, igniting everything around her as she lost control.

The result was cataclysmic as the connected explosives and cheap pipe bombs exploded together, travelling along wires to strike generators and electrical units. The line explosives at the centre of town, where Meg had been backing Eve into, ignited at the same time. Under the violent force, the cement caved in and bodies were thrown in every direction.

The hunters caught too close screamed as they were burned by the blast, but the monsters in the centre were incinerated by the heat. Even though they were ducking behind the cement wall of a ruined building, a third blast wave threw Dean and Garth through the air as Eve's power and the explosions created a tunnel wind. Dean twisted through the air and managed to shoot his gun one more time at Eve, catching her in the shoulder so she fell back into the fire. Standing further back, the other hunters quickly lifted their weapons and stood, ready to start picking off the monsters that tried to escape the fire roaring through the town centre.

Eve's scream as she was engulfed in flames was deafening but for every attempt she made to escape, the explosions would capture her into the fire again. As the flames licked at her skin, she turned her head to call to her children to protect her. The monsters, so set on protecting her that they had all gathered in the centre to be close to her, were destroyed before her eyes before she could utter a word to them.

---

Further north, Azazel lit a cigarette and ignored the angry complaints of the angel inside of him about hurting the body they shared. He watched the massive snarls of flame and explosions go hundreds of feet in the air, debris and old buildings. Gnawing on the tip of the cigarette, he smirked and sucked down a deep lungful of poisonous air. "Not bad." He eyed the sky thoughtful. "Now I just have to wait."

---

His ears wouldn't stop ringing. His skin wouldn't stop prickling and his heart…

His heart hurt so much.

Dean came to in the shattered brick remains of a wrecked church, several hundred feet away from the site of the explosion. The blast had thrown him hard enough to cause him to be disoriented and he could barely remember what had happened in those final moments. He could feel his heart pounding, skipping beats now and then as he sucked in lungfuls of soot-heavy air, and the hot agony racing up and down his body caused every muscle in his body to scream and almost beg him not to breathe so deeply. His ears continued to ring and he nearly fell back to unconsciousness just to escape the pain.

Until he heard the loud moans of pain all around him.

The hunters. You were supposed to lead them, Dean. Not let them die, his father's voice whispered in his head, chastising him gently.

He shifted his weight against the beam he was lying on and slid down to his buttocks. His gun slid from his numb fingers and he leaned his head back, trying to bring the room into focus. His eyes closed and he forced his breathing to slow down, focussing on relaxing until his body seemed to finally come back to his control.

As the minutes ticked by, the pain throbbing in his side became so unbearable that he reached up to see if the heat there was just from a burn. It was worse, he realized, as his fingers dipped into something sticky, blood pumping steadily beneath his touch. The blast had scorched his side but his leather coat had protected him. It was the debris that had done the damage: a jagged end of a two by four was caught in between his ribs. Every breath hurt to take and he groaned, forcing himself to stay awake.

Where was Cas? Meg? Garth?… Eve?

As if answering his call, something in grey appeared in the corner of his vision and he knew, with a creeping fear, that it was Eve. Weak and disorientated from the force of the throw, Dean tried to reach for his gun and screamed when the movement wrenched his arm. His shoulder was already dislocated with the flesh just under his collarbone torn up, crippling his one arm.

Something shifted between his ribs and he screamed as the wood wedged there began to burrow deeper with each shudder that went through him. Grasping the jagged two by four in his hand, he grit his teeth and stared at the smoke in the sky before he yanked hard on the wood. It slid out with a slippery pop and he threw his head back and screamed louder, ending it on a growl as he dropped the wood and slumped down.

"Son of a bitch," he mumbled, unable to lift his head as he slid further down until he was almost lying flat. He tried to wriggle his leg and realized, biting back a scream when he did, that his leg was twisted all the way around, so the bone was splintered through his jeans. His body was just in a state of shock, unable to process the all the pain hitting him at once.

The mortar crumbled down around him and through a foggy haze he tried to focus his eyes on the hunters lying around him. They were moaning loudly, clawing at their faces as if to dig under the skin. With his chin wedged dropped into his chest and his eyes half-closed, Dean could make no effort to get to them. Even though every fibre in him screamed to move, to try to help, he simply lay sprawled out and listless.

Reaching into his coat, he touched the gaping edges split open in his ribs and chest. The blood was coming out in a slow, pumping ooze and the pain was still making him ill but he could focus again. I have to get up, Dean thought, have…have to get up. Shakily he stuffed his fist into the wound to try to stem the bleeding and managed to get himself sitting upright again.

Something brushed his boots and he refused to look up.

"You. You always like to ruin everything," Eve's voice was furious but taunting. "And you never learn."

Suddenly she was there in front of him. Her skin was melted off half of her face and her orange eyes glowed with strange light. Every move she made was jerky and erratic as broken bones fought to reset themselves under her skin. Dean couldn't bring himself to look her in the eye.

It had been made to slow her down, to give Castiel the opportunity to try his newfound exorcism. She'd been damaged but even now he could feel the power vibrating off of her. They'd made her angry.

Reaching down to his broken leg, Dean felt the strap of his machete, still there, still ready.

"Well, I like to be predictable sometimes," he groaned.

"Oh, you are. Did you think you could stop me? You're nothing but a human." Eve slid onto his lap, her teeth extending into fangs. She ran her nose over his skin and her tongue darted out to taste the drying blood. "You're weak, Dean. I can smell it on you."

"Why don't you just bite me and get it over with?" he challenged though his voice was still a slur. Her hot hands left char marks on his skin.

"Bite you? You, with your heart so ready to break?" Her hand slid down his chest, plucking open his soaked shirt and then gently stroking over his pectoral. She drew a heart on his skin with the blood weeping down from his ear before she pinched him cruelly. "Like I said, you're weak, Dean. And I can't have such weakness continue in my kind."

He jutted his "So kill me. It's me you wanted to kill."

Eve chuckled and leaned close, arms looping around his neck. She sat so close that he could feel her hot breath on his mouth. "Poor Dean Winchester. So ready to make up for decades of his life, so eager to die to save these hunters."

He managed to open his swollen eyes a little more and Eve tapped her other fingers on his bloody lips, tracing a moist trail. "I'm not going to kill you, Dean. You don't deserve that sort of mercy from me."

Shifting on his lap, she made sure her knee bumped his gaping cuts and caused him to grit his teeth to hide a scream.

"You're going to watch, Dean, as I make all of them mine."

"So much for the Mother, huh?" he asked, knowing what she meant

"I will be the Mother you all were sorely lacking." Suddenly her fingers went tight around his throat and forced his head back. "Do you think I'm stupid enough to infect only the demons? They are stronger than your kind, torture and Hell makes it that way, but humans spread infections faster. My gifts will go to the humans, until there is nothing left for the hunters to hunt. Until the difference between man and monster is nothing but words whispered in the night of how it used to be."

Dean fought to find the words to curse her and Eve lifted her other hand to lick the blood from her fingers.

"I'm sorry, Sam," he whispered but Eve didn't seem to hear him.

"You just made me mad enough to doom all of you. I would have settled for the demon bitch and her child at first, until you. It is always you, Dean." She gave a little snarl and leaned close. "The world as you know it is going to end, Dean Winchester. Everyone, from your friends to your precious brother, will burn with it. I'm going to tie you up to watch these first ones being turned. You can see the change in them and know how much you failed your only chance of family."

Her fingers pressed on his windpipe. "You will watch and scream when I turn your brother in front of you."

"Yeah?" He tightened his fingers on the machete and then swung. It buried into her neck and Eve choked in surprise as it sliced clean halfway through the column of her throat. "I think I'll pass."

She backhanded him and he held on for his life as she twisted him around, trying to dislodge the machete. Her screaming was guttural and loud, and she struck at him again and again to try to get free, her mind still distorted by what the explosion had done to her. She raised her fist, fingers opening and Dean felt her power swarm into him, pressing hard on his heart.

Something flashed by them and Dean managed to look up through the blood dripping from his cut forehead. A hand went into Eve's hair and grabbed the knife for Dean, pulling hard. The machete sawed nearly into her neck the complete way, and Castiel stabbed through the back of her neck with an angel sword. But like a desperate animal, she tossed her attacker off like a rag doll and her open palm cracked as it struck his face. Castiel collapsed to his knees, spitting out blood as Eve shrieked and tried to dislodge the blades but the effect only drove them deeper.

Keening like a wild creature, she suddenly flickered out of sight and left behind only the stench of burnt flesh and dirt behind.

"Je…Je…Jesus, that was something," Dean said weakly. Castiel scrambled on his hands and knees over to him, parting his shirt to get to the wound. The sight of the blood and torn wound in the hunter's side was enough to make him tear Dean's sleeve off and press the wad of material over the hole.

"You're hurt. Badly." Castiel winced as he felt the blood oozing over his hands. "I'll be okay. The hunters…"

Castiel glanced at them and saw that they were about to be lost to something worse than death. "You're hurt, Dean."

"Gotta help them, Cas," Dean said feverishly, grabbing him by his collar and hauling him close. "We've gotta help them!"

"You need healing. And I can't do it for you." Castiel reached down and put his hand over Dean's chest. From the centre of his chest to his shoulder, the skin was torn and dirty and when Castiel pressed his hand down, he felt how erratically Dean's heart was beating. "I'm needed here. There are still some I can save. But I need to save you first. Your wounds are deep but if I get you to safety, you can be helped."

Castiel pressed his palm over Dean's side. His fingers flexed over the wound and his Grace poured out in a hot flash that made Dean hiss and grit his teeth, biting his tongue to control his scream. The wound cauterized just enough to stem the blood flow but Castiel, looking at it, knew how much worse it was going to get. Especially if Eve recovered and decided to try to kill Dean again.

"Where's Garth?" Dean asked through wheezing breaths. Watching him so closely, Castiel could hear that his heartbeat was getting worse and worse as his body went into shock.

"I don't know. The blast destroyed nearly everything close to Eve. There are almost no monsters left."

"Gotta find him. Owe him one," Dean said with a weak chuckle. "How about Meg? Lying low?"

"She's…" Castiel wasn't sure what he could feel, he had searched for her earlier, but he knew she wasn't dead. He'd know if that happened, he was sure. "Likely handling the stragglers. A few of hunters had stayed back and I think she is picking off the monsters that made it out of the fire."

"Good… good." Dean's head sagged towards his chest. "Just need some sleep and I'll help you."

Castiel's alarm grew as Dean's breathing went shallow and he gripped his shoulder, hauling him up so the hunter's arm slung across his shoulders. "Come on, I'm taking you to Sam."

"Good… good," the hunter repeated. "He's gonna kill me."

Castiel nodded. "It is very likely."

---

Sam woke with a start, aware of a deep pain in his side that throbbed and ached fiercely. It startled him enough that he could only stare at the ceiling for a second before he knew why it hurt so much. There was only reason why he would be in such pain when he'd been asleep before.

"Dean… Dean!" he whispered. It came in rolling visions to him, of fire and Eve's eyes on him, her power wrapping around him and the pain becoming so blinding he wanted to vomit in reaction.

"I'm sorry, Sam." His brother's voice echoed in his head as if he was standing right over him.

"Oh, no you don't, Dean," Sam growled and he closed his eyes, feeling his brother's pain. "You're not dying without me."

I'm going to kill him if he left me behind, Sam thought as he rolled over onto his stomach and pushed himself up on the cushions. He abruptly came face to face with Nyx, sitting on the arm of the sofa by his head. She had her unicorn pulled up to her chin, her wide blue eyes taking him in.

"Nyx? You're still up?" She nodded and he looked around. "We're still at Chuck's?" Another nod and he moved to put his head in his hands. He trembled as the throbbing pain in his temples became like a drum. "My head is killing me."

"Sorry." Nyx mumbled aloud and Sam turned.

"For what?"

"Bad dreams." She sighed and crawled over to sit against him. Her tiny hands went out and touched his head. Bewildered by the coolness of her hands, Sam let her fingers sift through his hair and felt the pain leave slowly. Nyx stopped touching him and looked back down at her bare feet. "I want to go home."

Sam wondered at how frightened she was now.

"Me too but you have to stay here. It's safe here. But I'm gonna go to Dean and we're gonna fight those monsters, okay? Then we can go home but you have to be good," he said, trying to get a smile. Nyx nodded but there was something irrevocably sad in her blue eyes. Sam wasn't sure what else to do with her and was about to ask her where Kevin was when her head lifted quickly and she looked at the door. Sam followed her gaze. "What?"

"He's here!" Nyx whispered excitedly, struggling to hop down off the couch.

Sam heard Kevin's loud shout outside by the time Nyx's feet touched the hardwood. "Sam! I need you!"

Ignoring Nyx running behind him, he went to the rear yard and saw Kevin and Castiel supporting a barely conscious Dean. Sam forgot all about Nyx and her fear, and reached for his brother.

"Dean!" Taking over for Kevin, he shouldered most of Dean's weight as he helped Castiel haul him through the back door. Sitting on the stairs, Chuck watched them drag the eldest Winchester in but made no move to help them. Nyx followed with Kevin, her tiny hand tucked into his bloodstained one, and her eyes were wide as the men deposited Dean onto the sofa.

Sam brushed Castiel out of his way and looked in horror at the damage done to his brother. "What the hell happened?"

Castiel barely hesitated to mutter, "Eve."

Staring only at Dean, Sam's expression was bleak and hurt. "He went without me."

"To protect you," was the only answer he was given and as he ripped Dean's shirt apart to get the wounds, Sam laughed at Castiel. The sound was void of any humour.

"Protect me? Damn it, Cas, you…" He looked up and finally really noticed the angel. His face was battered, his own clothing torn by what looked like claw swipes, and the blood that stained his hands was still fresh. Sam swallowed his anger and looked down at Dean. "Thank you for getting him back here. Mostly alive."

"You can start to help him here. I have to get back and finish what we started."

"That's it?" Kevin asked, staring wide-eyed at Dean's open wounds. "You're not going to tell us everything?"

"We don't have time for that," Castiel snapped, getting to his feet. "I'll be back by morning."

He was almost at the back door when he felt something pulling on his coat. Agitated and angry at himself for not protecting Dean the way he promised he would, Castiel spun and expected Sam to be behind him. But it was Nyx, standing just below him and looking lost and afraid.

Castiel didn't even register Chuck watching them with avid interest.

"Nyx," he murmured, dropping to a knee and resting his arms on her shoulders. "Are you being good?"

She nodded and her eyes darted to Chuck. Cupping her hand around her mouth, she leaned into Castiel. "I kicked him."

Castiel smiled. "That wasn't nice."

"He was mean," she stage-whispered and Castiel ran his hand over her dark wavy hair.

"Then it's okay."

"I wanna go home," Nyx whispered. "Wanna go with you and Mommy."

"Soon. I need to go help your mother." He patted her head gently. "I'll be back in the morning."

She nodded and before he could stand she threw her arms around his neck and buried her face against his neck. Castiel was startled but held her in return, aware of the clean smell of her and the warmth she radiated. The aches he felt, the drain on his Grace, suddenly no longer felt as terrible. Instead he felt revived. He closed his eyes and absorbed what he felt from her. Love and dependence; she needed him.

The feeling that they were being watched made him open his eyes to see Chuck still watching them. Kissing her absently on the forehead, he set Nyx back. "Stay with Sam and Dean, okay?"

She nodded and twisted her tiny fingers in knots as she watched Castiel disappear out the door. Trying to be like the adults, she closed the door and stretched up to lock it before she ran for the living room. Chuck watched her race back to be with Kevin and the Winchesters, and then turned thoughtfully to stare at the spot Castiel had just been in.

---

The town was now little more than a pile of charred rubble and corpses. The explosion had blown a burning pit in the centre of town, ringed by further charred marks that smelt of ash and blood. Castiel stood on the cusp of it and sighed, feeling the death all around him. Once he had left Nyx, his body began to ache again. He could still feel Eve's power in this town, permeating it like a disease and his Grace prickled in irritation. The remaining hunters, the few that had survived, staggered out against each other through the smoke and fire, the dead monsters no longer worrying them. Most looked as exhausted as he felt. It had only lasted a matter of hours but Castiel felt as tired as he had after saving Dean from Hell, when going into Hell to reclaim other souls.

He wanted to stand in one place but he resolutely put one foot in front of the other and circled the square.

The hunters gave him searching looks, as if waiting for him to give them some order of what to do. Of the number Garth had brought in from all sides of the Midwest, only twenty-five remained.

But Castiel noticed none of them. He searched the smoke with eyes that saw everything and discarded it just as quickly when he didn't find what he wanted. The air was running hot as the fires continued to snarl and crawl across the ground, the smell of burnt hair and flesh so strong that finally some were bending over to gag.

One hunter, an older woman who was dirt marked and tired, approached him. She held out an angel sword to him. "We found this near the wreckage."

Castiel blinked and rolled it between his palms. This was Meg's. His own was in Eve's throat. Immediately he looked up and around, even as the hunter began to ask if he could heal the others, where Dean was, what they were going to do. How the bitten hunters were being kept in the ruins of the old variety store. She rambled out her questions and Castiel never answered. It was nearly all white noise to him, thoughts filed away until he found what he wanted.

He wasn't sure what he felt when he saw Meg staggering through the smoke beside a burly hunter, clutching her side. If it was fear, anger, love or gratefulness, they all moulded into one lump that settled in his throat. Meg was nearly dragging an injured leg, her ragged clothing torn and bloody. She looked exhausted and battle worn.

But she was alive.

The hunter was still saying something but Castiel apparated to reappear beside the demon. "Meg. How badly are you hurt?"

She hadn't jumped at his sudden appearance or the way he blurted out the question, but looked up at him with a slow grin. "Shut up, Clarence."

He smiled, understanding that slice of nostalgia, and lifted her hand from her side. There were deep gashes from claws and teeth up her arm and he slid his hand gently down to try to help her heal. Meg's eyes stayed on his face, watching the way he tilted his head, the way he stared at the wounds as he touched them.

"You look like hell." She reached up and touched the deep scratches on the side of his face. Ones that would have scarred his face if he was mortal. He hissed as her fingers grazed the ruined flesh but before she could pull her hand away he leaned his head into the hurting touch, feeling as if it grounded him. Meg's darker power was slipping along her skin now, healing her in patches, and Castiel watched the deep cut under her eye still weep blood though slowly it was closing over.

"You look terrible," he said and she grinned in amusement at his weak attempt at joking.

"I've been better." She turned around and he gripped her elbow to help her balance. "Took care of the stragglers but can't say if any got loose."

"Eve?" he asked, watching her face. Meg nodded to the distant woods.

"No one could catch her but she went alone. Screaming with her head half-chopped off. You and Dean, I bet?"

He nodded. "Dean was badly hurt. I took him to Chuck's. To Sam."

"Well, that should piss Sam off. At least we took care of the infection problem."

"Hopefully." Castiel walked around her. Content that he had her safe again, he squinted and tried to see through the fire. "Have you seen Garth?"

Her silence made him turn to see her staring at the temporary triage the hunters had set up. She looked over her shoulder at him and then meaningfully nodded to the group at the edge of the rubble. Hovering behind her, Castiel saw that in the pile of people, Garth was struggling to move. Even through the heat and haze, they could both see that his neck was ripped open and Shelia, the older hunter, was pressing gauze to it. As they approached, the sight of how deep the wound was became more and more obvious, and Meg looked over her shoulder at Castiel again. They both could see the damage.

Castiel refused to meet her eyes and knelt beside Shelia, brushing her hands aside.

"H-hey," Garth said, giving them a weak grin. Whenever he spoke, blood bubbled up between his lips. "We g-get her?"

Castiel shook his head and pressed his palm flat on his neck. What he felt throbbing there made him close his eyes. "You've been infected."

"Ye-yeah. Big bastard jumped me during the blast. Th-the others?" Garth tried to turn his head and screamed as the action caused the wound to open wider. Castiel cursed, resting his hand on the wound and trying to force his Grace to heal him. But unlike the woman before, unlike Meg, Garth's body was already adapting to the infection.

"Meg, the others?" the angel snapped, trying to stem the blood flow. He heard her feet scuffing on the burnt ground as she surveyed the people moaning and struggling.

"They're changing. I can… smell it." She crouched down next to one man and tilted his head away. The black vines were travelling from his ears down to his chest and she exposed his skin to see the bite wound. The fangs were precise and she had the suspicion that this was Eve's bite, not a werewolf or vampire.

"C-can't let them change," Garth said with a nod.

"I can heal you."

"Yeah?" Garth managed to roll his head on his shoulders to look up at Castiel. "Why haven't you then?"

Castiel pursed his lips, caught in the lie.

"Shel.." He looked up at the woman cradling his head. "Get the others to the safe houses up the Midwest. Organize something and wait for Dean."

She nodded and let his head go gently to the cement. Castiel was aware of Meg pressing close behind him as the hunter ran off to speak to the others. Garth's attention though was for Castiel.

"G-gotta tell Dean Bobby would've been proud," Garth said, smiling up at him. His eyes had taken on the diseased euphoria Castiel remembered seeing in Meg. "I know it."

"Yes, he would."

Garth grasped his wrist. "I'm ready."

Nodding, Castiel put his hand over Garth's eyes and murmured. He felt that slight frisson of power coursing through Garth, the infection already starting to change the body, and he forced his power to still Garth's heart completely so the soul would be released. Garth's breathing stuttered out in a slow exhale and the hand clenched around Castiel's wrist fell away.

Castiel stared down at Garth's peaceful face before he lifted his eyes to see a Reaper standing beside him. The dark haired woman stared at Garth's body and then at him. A soul stood beside her, looking confused but happy by the change.

"Tell Dean," she began but then stopped herself with a wistful smile. "That this was for the best."

"I will," Castiel agreed and the Reaper turned to Garth.

"Who're you?" the hunter asked eagerly.

"I'm Tessa. I like to collect hunters sometimes." Reaching out, she touched his cheek. "Let's take you home."

They were gone before Castiel could say another word and he watched the light climb the sky. He hadn't known Garth well, but he enjoyed the way the likeable young man had been in and out of his life. But grief was always a strange thing to feel for an angel and he wasn't sure if he was feeling it as deeply as he should.

Standing up, he looked at Garth's body and frowned, puzzled by how unhappy it made him to have to act that way. He was used to acting with a bizarre form of mercy but to someone close to him, to Dean and Sam? It actually ached.

Slim fingers, sticky with blood and ash, slipped into his grip and held until he looked over at Meg. Her eyes were dark, the orange glow on her skin almost sparkling, and he forgot his misgivings when he remembered why he had come back. His fingers squeezed hers and then Meg dropped her eyes to look at the rest of the hunters still beginning to change.

"Come on. Better us do this than the hunters."

She turned away from him and he willingly turned to follow her, glad to have the choice taken from him.

---

Dean howled as Sam poured the disinfectant directly on the wound. "Gah, fucking damn it!" he screamed as the liquid burned his skin. Holding onto his shoulders, Kevin dug his fingers in and grunted as Dean thrashed

"I thought he'd be knocked out by now, he drank enough!" Kevin snapped at Sam. Dean heaved up to kick at Sam.

"Get those things the fuck out!" he shouted and Sam shook his head, one big hand holding him in the middle of his chest. He continued to pull large splinters of wood out the wound and he ignored Dean's cursing and heaving. He barely even reacted when Dean swore at him. He felt the pain in his brother as acutely as if he was the one injured. Sweat poured down his face and he was grey skinned from the pain in his body.

"Wish Cas was here."

"Why, he-he can't heal me," Dean moaned and Sam looked up as he reached for the gauze. The wound was starting to ooze more blood.

"No, but he could knock you out better than any horse tranquilizer Chuck had in his medicine cabinet."

Behind them, Chuck nervously looked at the blood pooling on his kitchen floor. The table was dripping with it and most of his dishrags were soaked in blood. It was morbid enough that Nyx sat on a chair near the sink, cuddling her unicorn and watching Sam work as if it fascinated her.

"Shouldn't we get him to a hospital?" Chuck offered, going a little green.

"No!" All three men yelled at him and Nyx made a sound, clamping her hands over her ears. Kevin punched Sam hard in the shoulder and jerked his chin at her, but Sam only had eyes for his brother. The wound was clean now and draining.

"Why the hell would you do something so reckless, Dean?"

"Because you're my little brother and if one of us deserves to be saved this, it's you."

"That's stupid. You keep saying crap like that and I'm gonna put that two by four back in you, you got me?" Sam stuck a needle into his flesh and ignored Dean's grunting hiss of pain. He sewed up the cleaner part of the wound and Dean went quiet finally, slipping into a wakeful doze as the pain became too much. Sam bent over close and concentrated, aware that his eyes were stinging with tears that Dean would do this to himself still. All these years and Dean still doubted his own worth.

Maybe the damage from the past few years had been worse than they both knew. Dean just needed some relief.

He noticed Nyx staring at them and he wondered…

"Nyxie?" He wiggled his bloody fingers and to her credit Nyx didn't flinch, just stepped close to him by Dean's head. "Can you help Dean?"

She gave him a puzzled frown. "Dean?"

"Like how you helped me. Make him feel better," Sam asked gently, still focussed on Dean's wounds.

"Sam," Kevin murmured. "What are you doing?"

"Just let… let her try. If she wants." Sam finally looked at Nyx. "Can you?"

She nodded. "Want Dean better. He's hurt."

"Good girl."

Nyx went to Dean's head and began to stroke her hands through his blood and sweat soaked hair, pressing her own cheek against his. "Sorry. You did best."

He chortled, head twisting. "Nyx? You sound like someone I used to know."

Nyx ignored his choking and wrapped her arms gently around his head, cheek still touching his. "Want you better."

Sam continued to work on Dean but noticed his breathing wasn't as laboured. Smiling, he nodded to Nyx. "Good girl."

She beamed at him but her hands stayed on Dean's face. "Love you," she whispered. "You're my best friend."

Dean cracked an eye open. "What is with girls saying that when I'm dying?"

She gave him a puzzled frown. "Not gonna die."

"No?" Dean smiled and she hugged him tighter. "Maybe not."

Sam was close to finishing when there was a loud knock. Forgotten in the corner, Chuck pushed away from the counter and headed for the door. "I still think he needs to get to a hospital," he shouted as he unlocked the door and yanked it open, still speaking, "It's 4 am, what do you want?"

"Chuck Shurley?" The young man on his doorstep was dressed in the same heavy jacket and denim as the Winchesters. But something about him made Chuck try to block the sight of his kitchen from open view.

"Yeah?"

"Good. Wanted to be sure I came to the right house. Can I come in?"

"Who the hell are you?" Chuck asked, closing his bathrobe over his chest as if it was armour. The smile he was given was cool. "I don't let perfect strangers in my house."

"I'm sorry, there's been a miscommunication here." The man's eyes turned yellow and five large men appeared at his back. "You seemed to think I was giving you a choice."

---

In Heaven, despite the light all around them, every angel froze mid-step and felt as if they had been plummeted into darkness.

In Hell, despite the heat of fire and pain, every demon knew what it was to feel ice-cold again.

On Earth, the world continued to spin but many people, in every country, was aware that their hearts actually ached for a moment in time.

---

Meg was weary to the bone. For the first time in a long time, she had won something but was too tired to feel particularly like celebrating. The town had cleaned out; the hunters were gone, all still promising to hunt Eve when they recovered, but none wanting to stay behind. The last of the cars left quickly and Castiel and Meg were alone, surrounded by smouldering buildings and bodies burning on the pyres the hunters had built.

Watching the bodies burn, Meg was aware of something in the pit of her stomach, like a trickle of a warning that crawled through her blood. Her eyes dropped to the ground and she frowned at her bloody hands as if noticing them for the first time.

"What's wrong?" Castiel asked as he waved his hand, extinguishing the last pile. Meg shook herself.

"Just tired out, I guess. That was fun but all fun things come to an end." She made a shooting gesture at her head. "Adrenaline high, that sort of thing."

"Mm." His hand went to hers and he grasped it. "Let's go."

"You think any thing else got away?" Meg asked as she stepped into him, using his body as support.

"Unlikely. I'm just glad we survived this. Eve's creatures are gone, and she is on the run, injured."

Meg eyed him.

"Clarence, one thing you'd better learn about a mother like Eve is that you screw with her kids, she doesn't forget it."

"We have time, either way," he said soothingly.

The air around them shifted and Castiel actually let himself relish the movement, the serenity of flight when there was no one to stop him. Meg's body was solid against him as he crossed the time and space in mere tenths of a second, but to him it felt like minutes. The demon had her eyes closed and barely seemed to notice the lights around them. But Castiel saw the glow through her true self and wondered what she felt beneath the protective meatsuit, if she felt the light and the movement like he did.

Somehow he doubted that.

Affectionately, he squeezed her hand as they appeared on the sidewalk across from Chuck's house and waited for her eyes to open.

"You know," Meg said, clearing her throat and shakily swaying on her feet. "I'm still not used to that."

He simply smiled and looked around.

The smashed-in front door to Chuck's house made his hand tighten on hers. "Meg…"

She turned sidelong to him and he saw her profile harden. "Something's wrong."

He let her go and charged across the street, not caring that an early morning school bus just barely missed him. Meg was close behind and when Castiel paused at the gate she brushed past him.

"Meg?" She turned on the front step to face him and Castiel held up his hand to show her his blood soaked fingers.

"Whose is it?" she asked, her voice low and Castiel thought he heard fear there. He couldn't bring himself to answer what he smelt there and he lowered his hand, shaking his head. Meg spun and walked into the house, Castiel making sure he kept close.

Two men were beheaded at the front door. "Vampires," Meg murmured. "What are they doing here?"

Castiel moved into the front room and found it destroyed. Cushions were thrown apart and blood and smoke drenched the odours of it. Even the floor boards looked burnt and something had scratched them.

"Sam?" Castiel called out as he walked deeper into the house. "Kevin?"

"Cas?" Sam's voice was weak from the kitchen and he pushed open the door to find the kitchen a disaster. Cupboards were smashed, wood frames were half-torn off the wall, glass littered the ground, and there was even the heavy smell of gas in the air from the stove still on. Castiel quickly turned it off with a wave of his hand and looked around the wreckage.

He saw Meg in the living room close by through the open window between the rooms, sorting through furniture. Sam's voice, a little stronger now, made him look away to see the hunter crushed below the overturned fridge near the sink. Murmuring his name, Castiel lifted fridge off of him and crouched down.

"Sam? Sam, what happened?" he asked, smoothing his hand down his face.

Sam's eyelids fluttered weakly. "Chuck answered the door."

"Where's Chuck? Kevin?" Castiel leaned close and Sam tried to focus on him. His eyes were swollen up, the blood vessels ruptured, and he could barely focus on his friend. But he managed to point to the other side of the room, towards the basement door. Castiel turned, not wanting to look but knowing he had to.

Chuck's body was lying upright against the door, pinned there by an angel sword through his throat. He'd been lifted off the ground and the blood that dripped from the gaping wound had already slowed to a trickle. His eyes were staring lifelessly at the room and Castiel closed his own eyes, not sure why he felt such… such loss at the thought of him being dead.

That was strange. Chuck's apathy towards them had been something he'd never cared about but now? Suddenly he did now.

"Kev? Kevin… Cas, they took Kevin!" Sam shouted at him, grasping at him as his pain made him frantic. His words were heavily slurred and he had to spit out a gob of blood on the ground. Weakly he grabbed at Castiel's coat. "Said they needed someone to tell them how it all happened."

"Who did?" Castiel whispered.

"Something happened to him when Chuck died. Like his eyes… I couldn't see because of all that light. He was trying to protect Nyx. We all were. Dean tried. We were gonna… gonna be okay, I know it," Sam rambled. Castiel swallowed and clasped his face between his hands.

"Sam, where's Dean, where's Nyx?"

"Gone." Sam whimpered as his broken leg tried to twist on its own as his aching body jumped. "They attacked us."

"Who?" Meg's voice was from the living room, and was too quiet. It even lacked her usual sharp edge.

Sam's eyes finally focussed entirely on Castiel. "It- Cas, it was Azazel. And whatever is inside him. Had monsters with them. They looked like the ones who attacked us before. I tried, Cas, I swear. Dean and I… we tried. They did something to Kevin, killed Chuck."

Castiel swallowed. "I need to see what you saw," he whispered, reaching out, but he felt a hand on his shoulder. Meg knelt beside him.

"Don't," she warned. Her voice was frigid and her face blank, as if she was preparing herself. Castiel glanced down and saw she was holding the ripped remnants of a stuffed toy. The soft material was soaked in blood and the demon was twisting it between her fingers. Panic sweltered in the pit of his stomach and he looked up at her.

"Meg…"

"What happened to Dean?" Meg asked, not focussing on him.

"He… tried to save us." Sam's eyes were suddenly bright with tears of pain and he had to sniff hard to get rid of them. "We almost won when they grabbed me. Told Dean not to but that thing took him."

Castiel ran his eyes over the ground and noticed that lying on the floor near Chuck was a body double of Adam Milligan. "No… Dean wouldn't."

"He said he had to save us. He just forgot he was dealing with a demon. I don't know how he got in Dean but he did."

Meg's eyes shut for a long moment. "Azazel used us, used Eve. He knew we'd go to fight her and leave Nyx and Kevin unguarded."

"He said he wanted you to have reason to come and see him."

"So he took her," Meg whispered. Sam looked up at the ceiling and then slowly closed his eyes. Meg moved fast, grabbing his throat before Castiel could stop her. "Did he take her?" she asked, voice still not raising.

"He told the monsters to do whatever they wanted to her, to kill her if they wanted before he left." Sam finally looked at her. "Said it would be a lesson to you for turning away from what you'd been told to do. To Cas for disobeying Heaven."

Meg released him and looked down at the destroyed unicorn in her hands. Her fingers curled into fists and she looked at the toy's black eyes.

"I heard her screams, Cas. I heard the fighting when Kevin tried to protect her and I tried… I tried," Sam whispered, eyes on the angel again and he cursed his broken body when he saw his friend's shock. Castiel's face was stricken as he looked at Sam, his blue eyes large and almost innocent looking. "God, I tried. Dean… I lost Dean and then they took Kevin before they turned on Nyx. I…Cas…."

The angel let him go slowly, hands falling away. Mute, Castiel stood up and looked at Meg. The demon was frozen, staring at the remnants of the toy Nyx had loved, but no expression was on her face. But like her he knew whose blood was on the material, whose blood had been on the gate and the floor.

How could they have let this happen?

He disappeared out of the kitchen and only made it to the rear yard under the old arbour. Sinking to his knees, he stared up at the fading stars for a long moment before he then looked down at his hands. The blood staining his palms, evidence of the death he had caused, none of it registered as sharply as the deeper agony he felt now. It sliced through him and he suddenly wanted to destroy everything around him.

The scream boiled up in his chest and erupted outwards in his true voice, shattering glass and destroying the power lines. He screamed as he realized just what he had lost. Castiel didn't care if the entire world burned with the force of his grief and anger exploding out of him.

Let it.