4.
After Cat had gone, the remaining two demons went back over to the still unconscious Castiel, checking the sigils and burning Holy Fire surrounding him.
"Alright, one way or another, we are ending this chick," Dean muttered, looking grimmer than Sam had seen him in a long time.
"That'd be enough-" he nodded at the sad little corpse on the floor. "But all this... How come we never come across monsters who just kill people anymore? How come it's always gotta be-" He pulled a face.
"Sick and twisted?"Sam finished for him, looking no less grim.
Dean shook his head like a dog shaking off water, as if he could shake off the disgust he felt at the situation.
"Enough. How we gonna do this?"
"With help?" Sam hazarded. "She said her mom's boss'd destroy her - that's Death right? Could we summon him?"
"He wouldn't help us again. And by the sound of it, she's been out in the world a while. He doesn't care about her. Not enough for what we need anyhow."
"How 'bout Crowley?"
Dean stared at his brother.
"You high too?"
"I don't mean we summon him. But what d'you think he'd say if he knew what she was doing? Maybe if we could get the word out, he'd set something on her."
Dean shook his head again.
"No. Plan B, maybe, if we can't stop her now. No, I think we need to work on getting Cas out. He can call for backup on the angel radio."
"More angels?" It was Sam's turn to be sceptical. "You hoping if enough of them get near her, she'll just explode ?"
Dean rolled his eyes.
"Sam, come on! Look, maybe we don't need anyone else. She's not all that powerful. Can't be if she has to have back-up."
He nodded at the demons, who were conscientiously re-painting the sigils.
"She just got lucky."
"We got stupid," Sam replied. "We knew what we were doing was stupid, and we did it anyway."
"What's new? Come on, work with me."
Sam looked over the pair of demons once more.
"You know, maybe she's not the only way who got lucky."
"What?"
"You see what he's got in his belt?"
Dean looked.
"Sonofabitch."
The demons were carrying the Winchesters' knives, including the one they'd gotten from Ruby, all those years ago.
"Think it'll work on her?"
"Maybe. Know it'll work on them."
The brothers exchanged glances, both thinking the same thing.
"Okay."
The demons stood up, examining their handiwork.
"What's the matter?" Dean called out. "Worried Teacher won't give you that 'A' if you don't get it right?"
The two possessed bodies turned in response. Dean smirked.
"Cos I think she's a little too busy with 'extra-curricular activities' right now to give you that gold star for effort you so desperately want."
"She's our boss," one of the demons replied, frowning.
"And why is that?" Sam asked, following Dean's lead. "How come you ended up working for a half-breed junkie?"
The other demon drew his knife, leaving Castiel and advancing on the brothers.
"Hey, you watch you mouth, hunter. She told me not to kill you. She didn't say nothin' about not cuttin' you up a little."
"Oh, so you're hoping if you hang around long enough, she'll get tired of the other guy and you get to take his place? That it?"
Sam hid the fury within under a façade of antagonism, hoping to provoke a fatal attack of stupidity. Hell, it'd worked on demons before.
"I said, watch your mouth."
The demons were right in front of them now, weapons drawn.
"All the folks I worked for before? Compared to them, she's a lady," the first demon spoke up.
"Sure, she's got her kinks and her vices, but we're hardly the type to judge someone for that. As for you... we all know about you two, and your feathered friend over there. All the things you've done? We're practically saints."
"I think the people you're wearing right now would disagree," Dean threw back.
The first demon looked back at Cas.
"And what about his? You judge us for taking a body, but not his?"
"Angels have to have permission," Dean replied, trying to keep a lid on his own anger. "They don't joyride like you assclowns."
"Neither does the boss," the demon replied, the lascivious smile back on his borrowed face. "She was born into that body; it's all hers. Every sweet inch of it."
"And that makes up for everything?"
Sam nodded over at Zoe's body, lying forgotten on the floor.
"You think I'm gonna cry over an angel and her meatsuit?" The demon sneered.
"Her name was Zophiel."
Everyone turned their heads to stare.
Slowly, Castiel got to his feet; without Cat there to keep the spell going, he had woken, though the sigils and Holy Fire kept him trapped.
"Long before your demon kind had begun to walk this earth, she was tasked by God with the expulsion of humans from Paradise. She obeyed because we knew no other way then, but it has weighed heavily on her. All she wanted to do since then was help humans. And you murdered her."
"Wasn't me, pal. That was the boss."
Castiel stared back at him; he may have been spellbound, but he could still scare the bejeebus out of two low-level demons like these two.
"That will not stop me from blasting you into non-existence."
The demons tried to keep up their swagger.
"You... you don't scare me. I know you can't get out of there. You can't do nothin'."
Cas' expression didn't flicker.
"I believe the correct response is, 'come in here and say that'."
The demons hesitated and, while they were distracted, Dean took the opportunity to hurl himself, and the chair he was tied to, sideways into the demon next to him. They both crashed to the ground, wood shattering, and Sam immediately followed suit. The fight that followed was hard and bloody, but the Winchesters had been fighting demons a long time now, and they were sufficiently pissed off that their anger lent enough adrenaline for them to free themselves and take the demons down. The first they stabbed with the knife, and at the sight of his colleague sparking out of existence, the other decided Cat wasn't worth dying for and promptly smoked out of his meatsuit. With bigger fish to fry, they let him go, barely noticing the body he'd been possessing immediately drop dead.
"What now?"
The brothers hurried over to Cas, starting to erase the sigils until a thought struck Sam.
"Wait! We need to build a trap for Cat, when she comes back."
"How?" Dean asked. "What would work on her?"
"What is she?" Cas cut in.
"Uh, turns out she's half-demon, half-Reaper," Sam explained, unsure what the angel's reaction would be.
Cas' brow furrowed.
"That's not possible."
"It's what she told us. That's how she can extract the Grace - the Reaper part of her lets her do it the way they take human souls."
"What does she want it for? It won't turn her into an angel."
"Look, we don't have time for this," Dean interrupted, also concerned about how his friend would react to what Cat had been doing. "There's such a thing as a Reaper trap, right? Maybe if we put one of those over this, we could trap her in it."
"What about her demon side?" Sam asked.
"So we put a devil's trap down too. And we do it before we put the fire out, so she won't see it?"
"Then what?"
"I'll take care of her," Castiel promised, not a hint of emotion in his voice, keeping all thought hidden on his borrowed face.
"Maybe you won't have to."
Sam handed the demon-killing knife to Dean and went over to where Zoe's body lay, picking up the fallen angel blade from beside her. He hesitated for a second, then leaned down to cut her ropes away.
"It doesn't seem right to leave her like that."
"Okay, let's do this."
Dean picked up a spray can and, tossing another to Cas, inside the circle, they got to work.
Cat came back down the stairs, stretching and yawning. The high from the Grace had worn down to a pleasant buzz and, coupled with all the sex, she was feeling pretty satisfied. And there was another whole angel waiting for her! Think of all the Grace she could get, not just from him but from the other angels he could lead her to. And if he wouldn't, maybe the Winchesters would. And if they couldn't, well she'd just torture them in front of the angel until he gave in. Everyone had heard about the Winchesters and their pet angel, knew how inseparable they were. This was turning out to be a pretty good day.
The surviving angel was lying in his still burning circle when she got there, the hunters sitting on the chairs she's had them tied to, half-hidden by shadows. She couldn't see her minions, but then that was the problem with hiring demons as muscle. Dumb as posts, most of them. Still, they had their uses.
"Hello there, beautifuls. Have you been having a nice time? I have."
The angel stirred at the sound of her voice and Cat sighed. Magic was such hard work. Nothing ever kept going unless you sat by it, concentrating the whole time. Thank fuck for the symbols she'd learned; wasn't it amazing what people put on the internet?
She went straight over to him, noticing with a frown he wasn't tied as Zoe had been.
"Huh. Did I forget to get my boys to pin you down? Guess I was a little... distracted. And you look so cute when you're sleeping, I didn't want to spoil it. That's gonna make this a little harder, but never mind."
She closed her eyes, beginning the spell again that would put him under, and was so caught up in her work that she didn't notice the hunters get up from their chairs, anymore than she'd noticed they weren't tied up, or that the chairs weren't the same ones that had been there earlier, now crushed to splinters and hidden in the corner.
It wasn't until they were right behind her that she sensed movement, whirling round and flinging out her hands, hurling the boys across the room telekinetically - had to have gotten something from Daddy, right? She could teleport too, if she chose to. Invisibility, that came from both sides and she had a few tricks from Mom too.
The young men slammed into the far wall, landing in untidy heaps on the ground, but the impetus had pushed her back a step, and Cat landed right on the edge of the circle, allowing Castiel to grab hold of her and pull her in.
He had one arm locked around her neck, the other hand landing flat on her forehead, but she felt his power spark and fizz, unable to gather together enough to destroy her until her magic was gone. Cat felt a thrill of victory that despite all their efforts, she was still going to win, when she realised that the magic in play here was not just her own. Her spell was crippling Castiel's power, but there were new symbols on the ground, ones that dampened her own and Cat felt her victory wither and die.
Unhampered by demons, angels or half-breeds, the Winchesters sprang back on their feet, too used to getting thrown into walls to let it slow them down. Powerless to stop them, Cat watched in horror as they had both leapt into the circle and stabbed her. One of them held an angel blade, the other one of the knives she'd had her boys confiscate from them earlier. She hadn't recognised its power then, but she couldn't miss it now; one blade for each half of her.
White light shot out from her wounds, and Cat knew they were mortal.
"That's new," she gasped, and she died.
Castiel let go of her immediately, letting her body fall to the floor. The Winchesters stepped out of the Holy Fire, Dean picking up the extinguisher they'd found and releasing Cas from the circle, Sam erasing symbols.
Cas went straight over to the box housing Cat's collection of glass bottles, taking one out and then smashing the rest on the ground, releasing the trapped Grace.
His face showed no trace of the emotion the brothers knew he must be experiencing, angel or no angel, as he went over to Zoe's remains. Gently, he placed the bottle with her remaining Grace on her chest, and opened it. The light slipped out, slowly, hovering over the body for a moment, before it dissipated, leaving nothing behind.
There was silence, then Cas reached forward and closed the eyes of what had been her vessel.
"Goodbye, Zophiel."
Sam cleared his throat, awkwardly.
"Did she... really throw Adam and Eve out of Paradise?"
"Yes. It was more like escorted, but she was the one assigned that task."
Maybe they would have said more, but they were interrupted by the remaining demon, the one they'd forgotten about, coming down the stairs and seeing the body of his murdered boss/lover.
Bellowing with rage, he threw himself at the three men before him, but before he could get two steps, Castiel threw out a hand, and the demon was knocked over by an invisible force.
Pinned to the ground, the demon struggled like a trapped bug but Cas wasn't interested in prolonging his suffering. He just wanted him dead.
Kneeling over him, Cas pressed a hand to the demon's head, there was a flash, and the demon was gone.
Sam looked down at the body, frowning.
"You know, it took me awhile, but we saw him before. When Zoe was putting on that first show, he and a woman were watching."
Dean joined him.
"Really? Same guy? How'd we miss that?"
"We weren't looking for him. It wasn't Cat with him, either. You think there's another of her minions out there?"
Dean reached down and took the former demon's cellphone out from the jacket pocket, flicking through the stored pictures until he found the selfie taken in front of Zoe.
"Right, that's not her."
He passed it to Cas, who barely looked at it.
"Yes it is. She must have been stronger than I thought she was."
"Stronger at what?"
"Reapers have the ability to change their appearance, and also to hide themselves. Usually I can see them, but perhaps it was the combination of Reaper and demon that made it so difficult to recognise her chameleonic abilities."
"Well... if she was the only one, then it doesn't matter."
Dean looked around the room, littered with corpses and magical paraphernalia.
"Let's get out of here."
"You go on," Castiel dropped the cellphone down onto the body at his feet. "There's something I need to do."
The brothers looked at each other, deciding they didn't much want to know.
They'd just about made it across the street from the dilapidated warehouse when an enormous explosion blew out the remaining windows.
Sam and Dean ducked, but the explosion was strangely contained, the flames being sucked back into the building, which was already starting to collapse in on itself.
Castiel walked out of the burning structure, utterly unconcerned by the raging inferno.
"What was that?"
"The last of the Holy Oil. I don't know where she got it, but this seemed appropriate. You burn the bodies of your fallen comrades; I thought perhaps this time, I should do the same."
The three of them watched the warehouse burn.
"Remember when we used to let ourselves care about all the collateral damage?" Sam asked, half-rhetorically. "You know, the vessels and the meatsuits. Trying exorcism first, instead of just taking them out."
Dean shrugged.
"It'd be easier if it was just monsters, sure. But they started it; stealing bodies, forcing innocent people to do whatever the possessor wants. We can't be responsible for that anymore."
"I know. Just sayin'."
"They will no doubt be rewarded in Heaven," Cas added.
None of them sounded particularly convinced by what they were saying, but the events of the day had been too emotionally exhausting for them to try any harder.
Eventually, Dean broke the silence.
"Beer?"
"Sure," Sam replied, already turning away from the flaming wreckage.
Cas stared at the fire a moment longer.
"Why not."
The angel and the hunters walked away, leaving the remains of the only one of her kind to burn, along with the bodies of her cronies, and that of her victim.
Maybe they didn't notice, or maybe they just didn't care but outside the warehouse, Reapers had begun to gather.
The inspiration for this came from a single lyric, from 'Ten Tonne Skeleton' by Royal Blood - "Got high from a holy vein."
I started to wonder who (or what) could get high from something holy without it harming them, and this grew out of that thought. And as Reaper canon is so screwed up, I figured it didn't matter too much if this was plausible.
I'm still not sure if I like this or not, so please let me know what you think!
BTW, if anyone's read my "Winchester Sisters" stories, in which I re-imagine the series as having female leads, Cat and Zoe were names I considered for the sisters (Cat for Sam and Zoe for Dean) before deciding on Alex and Tara. (There's no real symbolism for me using the names here, I just thought they fitted).