3.
By the time the Winchesters woke up, a lot had happened. Their abductors had taken them away from the church, to another abandoned building, far too similar to where Lailah had been killed. The main difference, though, was that where they'd found Lailah's body hadn't been on fire.
The brothers were tied to chairs, facing a pair of flaming circles on the ground. Lying within each circle was an angel; Cas was being guarded by a number of sinister looking men, and Zoe was screaming.
Sam and Dean struggled to see what was going on, then the flames surrounding Zoe dipped a little, allowing them to see the other figure kneeling over her. It was another woman, taller, also dressed in dark clothes with dyed hair, but longer, pitch black, more like the frontwoman of a rock band; Dean thought she looked kind of like Alison Mosshart.
The light in the warehouse was poor, but they couldn't fail to see the spark of a fragment of Zoe's Grace lift from the cut in her throat, drawn upward by an unseen force toward the other woman. To their utter bewilderment, she inhaled it, breathing it in like vapour and when she opened her eyes again, they flared an unearthly Blue.
Seeing her captives were awake, she got to her feet, leaving poor Zoe forgotten on the ground.
"About time, sleeping beauties."
She stepped over the Holy Fire effortlessly - it didn't even seem to scorch her boots - and came closer. Her heavies moved to stand between the two flaming circles, guarding the angels.
"Well, I really got myself a haul and a half this time, didn't I? Not just double your pleasure on the Heavenly Host front, but their hunter friends too. And you two didn't exactly fall out of the ugly tree, did you?"
She stroked a hand down Dean's face, pushing the fingers on her other hand through Sam's hair.
"Who knows how useful you'll be? I bet you got a stash of lore in those pretty heads about our feathered friends, yes?"
The boys recoiled, trying to pull away from her caressing hands. The strange woman shivered, her eyes closing again as for a moment her face became a picture of ecstasy.
She stepped back, shuddering again.
"Wow, that's good stuff. Mmm. Really hits the spot."
She turned back to Zoe, who was whimpering on the ground, trying and failing to free herself from her bonds.
"You are absolutely delicious. You know that?"
The Winchesters stared at her, realisation beginning to dawn.
"Is she... high?" Sam muttered, glancing over at his brother.
"On angel Grace? That's new."
"And disturbing," Sam agreed. They looked over to Castiel, who appeared to be unconscious. Which was no less disturbing.
The woman span around again, taking in the matching looks of disgust on their faces.
"Oh, come on." She rolled her eyes. "Like this is any different to what you do."
"Lady, I don't know what it is you think we do, but it ain't that." Dean nodded at the little angel she'd been torturing.
"Really? You never enjoyed killing something you hunted? Cos not only are you two every walking cliché I ever heard about hunters, it couldn't be any clearer you're hopeless adrenaline junkies if you had it tattooed on your foreheads."
Dean opened his mouth to protest, but Sam cut in.
"And what are you, then? If you got our number, what's yours?"
She grinned, reaching out to stroke his hair again. This time, he didn't flinch, meeting her eyes. A faint hint of glowing Blue remained.
"I'm Cat. And I think you'll find, my lovelies, that what I am, is unique."
When they didn't react, she seemed disappointed.
"Really? Guess you've been in the game a long time, if that doesn't impress."
The brothers stared back at her, trying to keep up poker faces as they assessed the situation. Which was bad.
"You want my life story? Fine. I'm a half-breed. That part you know, right? Your God Squad friends told you I'm some kind of abomination that shouldn't be allowed to walk the earth? Cos I get that a lot. But no-one's ever managed to work out what I am."
"Boring?" Dean snapped, losing patience.
He'd faced a lot of monsters, but generally they weren't high as kites. Though a lot of them did like to talk about themselves, and sometimes they let something slip, something important.
Cat seemed amused.
"Me, boring? Sweetheart, I could really blow your mind if I wanted to. And with that pretty face of yours, I just might give it a try."
Sam, working along much the same lines as Dean, intervened.
"We were thinking demon. About you, I mean. Close?"
Cat smiled, pleased.
"Half right. Daddy was a demon. I mean, I never met him, but Mom said he was. High up too. I got all kinds of fun stuff from him."
"And the other half?" Sam prompted. He was a little surprised to discover he was genuinely curious; they'd killed a lot of monsters in their time, and sometimes it was almost good to come across something new. Something different. As long as they could kill it, of course.
Cat's smile got bigger, the Blue in her eyes sparking.
"No idea? Not a one?"
Silence greeted her.
"Alright, I'll tell you."
She paused for dramatic effect, clearly enjoying the moment.
"Reaper."
The brothers stared at her, disbelief written across their faces.
"What? How is that possible?"
Behind her, they could hear Zoe weeping, but Cat ignored her victim, too caught up in showing off.
"You know there's two ways Reapers manifest, right? There's the usual way, kind of a spiritual thing, when they collect souls. But that's just in the Veil; they can possess humans too, when they go rogue, and that's just what Mommy Dearest did. See, she'd gotten bored and when the boss wasn't looking, she hopped into a meatsuit and took it for a joyride. She fell in with a bad crowd, started consorting with demons, and one of them knocked her up."
"Can demons do that?" Sam asked, directing the question to Dean, who shrugged.
Cat leaned over Sam, hands on his shoulders, her face very close to his.
"Would you like me to draw you a diagram? Or perhaps a demonstration?"
"Uh, no thanks. I just meant.. . if they were both possessing host bodies, how could... you... happen?"
Cat giggled like a schoolgirl.
"Am I making you blush, hunter?"
She planted a big wet kiss on his forehead, then spun away again, going back to Zoe.
"What other answer could there be? Magic."
She stood over the stricken angel, looking down at her the way a chef might look at a cut of meat. She knelt, straddling her victim's body as she drew the angel sword again, making a new incision in Zoe's throat. Zoe made a weak cry.
"You shouldn't be," she panted. "Creatures like you are nothing but mistakes."
"Of course I am, sweetheart," Cat replied, patting Zoe's cheek. "Mom told me that a lot when I was growing up. Which was in Hell, by the way, so you shouldn't really be surprised I'm not all things sugar and spice. Now hold still, this is the tricky part."
Zoe refused, struggling harder but it was pointless. Cat drew the blade up, away from the skin of the angel's vessel, pulling a thin sparkling thread of Grace with it.
She looked back over at Sam and Dean.
"You see this? You have no idea how tempting this is to the Reaper part of me. Guess that's part of the skills I inherited from Mom; the way she can detach a soul from a human, I can take Grace from an angel."
"But why?" Sam asked, thoroughly confused.
"Why d'you think?" Dean grunted. "Because she's crazier than a bag of cats."
"You're not far wrong," Cat agreed. She yanked on the thread, separating it from Zoe and inhaling it. She shivered again, violently, leaping to her feet.
"I mean, I didn't set out to get hooked on angel juice. But the first real angel I ever met tried to kill me, so I tried to kill him right back. He was so mad, calling me every name he could think of, saying how I was an abomination in the eyes of God and all that."
She glanced down at the weeping angel at her feet.
"Seems that's a pretty common opinion. But anyway, he got so mad, he let his guard down and I got this from him."
She waved the angel sword.
"Stabbed him with it a few times and there was all this lovely sparkly stuff. And like I said, the Reaper part of me couldn't help but pull it out."
"And you thought, hey, why not snort it?" Dean's patience, thin on the ground to begin with, was long gone. He'd been testing the ropes that held him over and over and couldn't feel any give. And with Cas still not waking up, he was struggling to think of another way to stop this crazy whatever-the-hell-she-was from killing Zoe, and probably them too.
"Why not?"
Cat stepped out of the circle again - the flames were burning much lower now, as if the oil was running out. Where had she got if from in the first place?
She glided over to Dean, swinging a long, denim-clad leg over his so she could park herself in his lap.
"I'll let you in on a little secret," she stage-whispered in his ear. "I'm something of a hedonist."
"No, really?" Dean had never sounded more sarcastic, but that only served to please Cat.
"Uh huh. I mean, how else was I gonna turn out? You boys have been to Hell, right? How easy d'you think it is to spend your childhood there? Having to hide from Mom's boss so he didn't destroy us both, hated by everyone who knew I existed. Soon as I got out and came upstairs, I started exploring and you guys have all the fun stuff, don't you?"
Dean steeled himself to meet her eyes, wide and bright and glittering.
"Is that supposed to make us feel sorry for you? You had a rough time growing up, so that makes it okay to torture people to death so you can get high?"
"They're not people," Cat replied, dismissively, her hands squeezing his shoulders.
"And as for high... human drugs didn't do much for me, but I got hit with some Holy Water once, and the way it burned?"
Her whole manner suddenly shifted, her body tensing as her breath drew in sharply. She grabbed a handful of his hair, tilting his head as she dug the nails of her other hand into his shoulder. She leaned in close, her lips barely an inch from his and he thought about trying to head-butt her but the intensity in her face made him doubt she'd even react.
"I liked it. A lot. Nothing else had ever given me a hit like that. So I did it again. And again. But that wasn't enough, so I started mainlining it. Oh, man!"
She released him, springing to her feet again and pacing around the room, the memory of past highs mingling with her current one.
"You cannot imagine. You really can't."
"You - injected Holy Water?" Sam asked, utterly incredulous.
She whipped back around, suddenly defensive, almost angry.
"Oh, like you can talk. Even I know about your little blood habit, Junior."
Sam flinched, frowning.
"What, you thought everyone'd forgotten? Or are you still jonesing for a taste?"
She pressed her wrist to his mouth, forcing him to twist his head away, lips pressed tightly closed, fury rising.
"No? Not even a little? Bet you never tried angel and demon at once. What would that do to you?"
Sam wrenched back, yanking on the ropes that held him to the chair, close to hyperventilating in anger.
Cat smiled and let him go.
"Not even a little demon left in you, then. The demon part of me is what makes the Holy Water burn, but it can't hurt me too bad, can't kill me. The Reaper half protects me. And I like it when it hurts."
"Kinky," Dean muttered, not at all enjoying the experience. "A masochistic half-demon, half-Reaper with a smack habit. That tops everything, I think."
Either Cat didn't hear him or didn't care.
"And when I came across Grace... that was it. I was hooked. But it's not that easy to come by, so that reminds me."
She gestured to one of her henchmen - and the Winchesters could see now that they were demons, every one - who brought her a box filled with glass bottles, the old-fashioned kind with stoppers.
"Gotta save some for a rainy day."
At least three of the bottles were filled with tiny slivers of glowing Grace. Cat took out an empty one and stepped back into the flaming circle that trapped Zoe, picking up the angel sword again. The look on her face was intense, and her smile as inhuman as her soul - or whatever it was that she possessed.
"No!" Sam bellowed, struggling harder. He looked over to Dean, who was testing his own ropes again, to no avail.
"Tell me they missed a knife when they searched you. Something. Anything."
Dean shook his head tersely.
"Nothin'. Looks like we gotta do this the hard way. What'd she do to Cas?"
"I don't know. But she's gonna kill Zoe if we don't get out now."
"It's too late."
Sam looked back over at the demon/Reaper half-breed. Having extracted all but the last drop of Zoe's Grace, sealing it into the bottle she handed back to her demon attendant, she was stroking Zoe's face, the blade held to the angel's throat.
"Shh, little mouse. Don't cry. You lived a good life, I can see that. All your past troubles, all those weights that lay heavy on your shoulders... All gone. Time to sleep."
Switching her hold on the blade, she raised it high in the air, stabbing it down straight into Zoe's heart.
Zoe screamed, her body arching on the ground as the remains of her Grace, slight though they were, streamed out of her in a flash so bright Sam and Dean were forced to close their eyes.
When they opened them again, the ring of Holy Fire was extinguished, and the ground was scarred with the scorchmarks of Zophiel's wings.
Cat leapt to her feet, the blade clattering to the ground as the new high hit her; the Winchesters hadn't seen, but once the Grace had flashed out of Zoe at the moment of her death, Cat had absorbed it directly in through her skin, lending it a faint glow.
"Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck, that is the best, the best!"
She launched herself at one of her demon consorts, leaping up into his arms and wrapping her legs around his waist, kissing him passionately. He grabbed hold of her and kissed her back, the other demons looking on with lascivious smiles of approval.
"Come on, hot stuff. I want to make the most of this while it lasts, and the disapproval of our current audience bores me."
She cast a dismissive glance back at the brothers, who were still staring at the empty corpse of Zoe's host, lying within the painted sigils.
"You two. Keep an eye on our guests. I'll have need of them all later."
Her minions nodded their assent, and her demon lover carried her away.