4. Who Knew Angels Could Smile? (4.01)

Later that night at the Astoria Motel, Dean is dozing on the couch with a large book open on his lap. The girls are curled up on the bed, Felix finally able to calm Andy down enough to get her to sleep. Sam grabs the Impala's keys, checking to make sure none of them had woken up before he slips out the door.

Minutes later the television flicks on to the now-familiar static, the radio starting to whine as well.

The sounds wake Dean, who rubs sleep out of his eyes and quickly rolls to grab a shotgun lying by the bed. Andy and Felix snap awake seconds later, the silver blade in the brunette's hands and a loaded Smith and Wesson in the redhead's. Dean looks around cautiously, noticing that the chair Sam had occupied earlier was now empty, and grimaces.

"Where the fuck is Sam?" Andy murmurs, getting to her feet.

The painfully high-pitched noise begins again before either Felix or Dean could answer and they clutched their ears, trying to keep their weapons up.

"Castiel," Andy moans. "You gotta stop. Dean can't hear you like this."

A mirror on the ceiling shatters and broken glass rains down on them. They crumple to the ground, Dean clutching both ears and Felix curls into a ball as Andy sinks to her knees, clutching her head in pain. All the glass in the room shatters explosively and they scream.

Bobby bursts into the room as more glass shatters.

"Dean! Girls!" he shouts.

Twenty minutes later they're back on the road with Bobby behind the wheel of his car and the girls following in the Pacer. Dean sits in Bobby's passenger seat, wiping blood from his face.

"How ya doin', kid?"

"Aside from the church bells ringing in my head, peachy," Dean grumbles, pulling his phone from his pocket to dial a number.

Hey," Sam's voice says on the other line.

"What are you doing?"

"Couldn't sleep, went to get a burger."

"In my car?"

"Force of habit," Sam tells him. "Sorry. What are you doing up?"

"Well, uh, Bobby's back. We're going to grab a beer." Dean holds up a hand at Bobby's shocked expression.

"All right, well, uh, spill some for me, huh?"

"Done. Catch ya later."

"Why the hell didn't you tell him?" Bobby snaps as soon as Dean hangs up.

"Because he'd just tried to stop us."

"From what?"

"Summoning this thing." Bobby stares at him in shock. Again. "It's time we faced this thing head-on."

"You can't be serious!"

"As a heart attack. It's high noon, baby."

"Well, we don't know what it is. It could be a Demon, it could be anything."

"That's why we've got to be read for anything," Dean tells him, pulling out Ruby's Demon-killing knife. "We've got the big-time magic knife, you've got an arsenal in the trunk . . ."

"Yeah, and an off-her-rocker Hunter and her lesbian girlfriend, too." Bobby shakes his head. "This is a bad idea."

"Yeah, I couldn't agree more, but what other choice do we have?"

"We could choose life."

"Bobby, look, whatever this is, whatever it wants, it's after me. That much we know, right? I've got no place to hide. I can either get caught with my pants down again, or we can make our stand."

"Dean, we could use Sam on this."

"We've got Andy and Felix. We're fine."

"Again. Off her rocker."

"Nah, Sam's better off where he is."

Back at Johnny Mac's diner, Sam quietly slips into the darkened diner after picking the lock. A song's playing on the jukebox, and as Sam enters, he notices the cook from earlier face-down on the floor, hands bloody. Crouching next to the man, Sam turns him over to see that he's dead, eyes burned out and dry blood caked onto his cheeks. As Sam gets to his feet, a figure tackles him from behind, and it's the Demon waitress. They trade blows until Sam finally pushes her away, startled to see that her eye sockets were burned-out and blood was trickling down her face. She looked simultaneously terrifying and terrified.

"Your eyes," Sam breathes.

"I can still smell your soul a mile away," she growls.

"It was here. You saw it."

The she-Demon begins to sob. "I saw it."

"What was it?"

"It's the end. We're dead. We're all dead. You and your Nephilim friend."

"Nephilim?" Sam says, confused. "Wait. What did you see?"

"Go to hell."

"Funny. I was going to say the same thing to you." Sam steps back and closes his eyes in concentration, extending his right hand toward the Demon. She heaves and begins to vomit black smoke into her hand, and in seconds, the waitress collapses to the floor as the Demon is sucked down into the Pit. Sam's eyes snap open after a moment and he instantly crosses over to the woman, heaving a sigh of disappointment after checking her pulse. "Damn it," he grumbles.

The kitchen door opens and a woman steps out. Sam looks up, not at all surprised to see the girl from the Astoria Motel coming towards him.

"Getting pretty slick there, Sam. Better all the time."

Sam gets to his feet and they share a smoldering look, his face falling when he glances down at the corpse at his feet.

"What the hell is going on here, Ruby?" he asks, raking a hand through his hair.

"I wish I knew," the she-Demon says with a shrug.

"We were thinking some high level Demon pulled Dean out."

"No way," she says with a shake of her head. "Sam, human souls don't just walk out of Hell and back into their bodies easy-peasey. The sky bleeds, the ground quakes. It's cosmic. No Demon can swing that. Not Lilith, not anybody."

"Then what can?"

"Nothing I've ever seen before."

As they sit down across from each other at one of the booths, Ruby says: "So. Million dollar question, are you going to tell Dean about what we're doing?"

"Yeah, I just gotta figure out the right way to say it," he replies, and she glares at him. "Look, I just need time, okay? That's all."

"Sam, he's going to find out, and if it's not from you he's going to be pissed."

"He's going to be pissed anyway.I mean, he's so hardheaded about this psychic stuff he'll just try and stop me."

"Look," she said. "Maybe I'll just take a step back back for a while."

"Ruby," Sam sighs.

"I mean, I'm not exactly in your brother's fanclub. But he is your brother, and I'm going to come between you."

"I don't know if what I'm doing is right. Hell, I don't even know if I trust you."

"Thanks," Ruby says flatly.

"But what I do know is that I'm saving people. And stopping Demons. And that feels good. I want to keep going."

Andy stands nervously in front of the door of the warehouse, watching as Bobby draws a symbol with white spray paint on the cement floor. She glances around to see Felix finishing up her side of the empty rectangular warehouse, the entire floor, walls, and ceiling covered in similar images.

"That's a hell of an art project you and Felix got goin' on there, Bobby," Dean says as Andy approaches the table he's setting equipment on.

"Traps and talismans from every faith on the globe. How you doin'?"

"Stakes, iron, silver, salt, knife," Dean counts off. "I mean, we're pretty much set to catch and kill whatever this bastard is."

"This is still a bad idea," Bobby tells him.

"I agree," Andy says, examining the things on the table. "You can't stop Castiel with any of this." The two men stare at her. "What?"

"Andy, do you know something about this Castiel we don't?" Bobby asks.

"Just enough to know that none of this stuff will catch or kill him."

Dean eyes her for a moment before motioning to Bobby. "Ring the dinner bell, wouldja?"

The older man nods reluctantly, crossing over to a desk where he takes a pinch of some powder from a bowl and sprinkles it into a larger bowl, which begins to smoke. He starts to chant in Latin.

A half-an-hour later, however, Dean and Bobby are seated on the tables, swinging their legs and looking quite bored. Felix sits at Dean's feet, braiding strands of her hair, while Andy paces back-and-forth in front of the warehouse doors.

"He knows what you guys were planning to do to him if he showed up," she tells the boys angrily. "Now he's not coming."

Dean glances over at Bobby. "You sure you did the ritual right?" he asks, and Bobby gives him the did-you-really-just-ask-me-that look. "Sorry. Touchy, touchy, huh?"

As if on cue, a loud rattling shakes the roof and Andy stumbles away from the door with a shriek. Dean and Bobby arm themselves with shotguns as they take positions at the far end of the warehouse. Felix pulls a Smith and Wesson from her boot and moves closer to Andy, dragging her girlfriend back toward the boys.

"Wishful thinking, but maybe that's just the wind," Dean exclaims.

The door bursts open and an incredibly handsome man in a business suit and trenchcoat stalks in. Dean's breath catches, realizing that this guy must be Castiel. The light-bulbs over Castiel's head shatter in a shower of sparks as he passes under them and as he approaches, Dean and Bobby open fire, but the shots don't even slow him down. Dean grabs the magic knife as Castiel gets close.

"Who are you?" Dean growls.

"I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition."

"Yeah. Thanks for that."

Andy lets out a shriek as Dean rears back and plunges the magic knife into Castiel's chest. Castiel looks down at his chest, unconcerned, and pulls out the knife, dropping it to the floor. Behind him Bobby attacks, and without looking, Castiel grabs Bobby's weapon and uses it to swing him around. He touches his fingertips to Bobby's forehead and Bobby crumples to the ground. With a growl Felix charges forward, but he grabs her arm too, touching his fingertips to the redhead's forehead and she crumples to the ground.

"Felix!" Andy cries, and suddenly she is in front of Dean, silver blade in hand and pointing at Castiel's neck. "What have you done to her? Tell me!"

Castiel glances over the blade at Dean. "We need to talk, Dean. Alone."

"Not without me, you aren't," Andy snaps. Dean crouches over Bobby and Felix to check their pulse. "Who are you?"

"Where did you get this blade?" Castiel asks, adding at Dean's glare, "Your friends are alive."

"Answer the question," Dean says. "Who are you?"

"Castiel."

"Yeah, I figured that much, I mean what are you?"

"I am an Angel of the Lord."

Andy's blade slips from her fingers to clatter to the ground; Dean glancing over at her to see her mouth open in shock. "Get the hell out of here," he says. "There's no such thing."

"This is your problem, Dean," Castiel tells him. "You have no faith."

Lightning flashes, and on Castiel's back great shadowy wings appear, stretching off into the distance. The light goes out and the image disappears.

"Finally," Andy breathes, eyes wide. "An Angel."

"Some Angel you are," Dean snaps, glaring at Castiel. "You burned out that poor woman's eyes."

"I warned her not to spy on my true form. It can be . . ." -Castiel hesitates, as if he's searching for the right word- "overwhelming to humans, and so can my real voice. But you already knew that."

"You mean the gas station and the motel. That was you talking?" Castiel nods. "Buddy, next time lower the volume."

"That was my mistake," the Angel says. "Certain people, special people, can perceive my true visage. I thought you would be one of them. I was wrong."

"But I could," Andy tells him, and Castiel glances over at her, curious. "I could hear your true voice. I hear the Angels voices all the time, in my head."

"True, you can. You are very interesting indeed."

Andy squeals, grabbing Dean's arm. "An Angel called me interesting!"

"Alright, alright, but seriously, what visage are you in right now, huh?" Dean asks. "Some kind of holy tax accountant?"

Castiel looks down at himself, almost as if he is just now realizing he had clothes on. "This? This is . . . a vessel."

Dean's eyes widen. "You're possessing some poor bastard?"

"Duh," Andy snorts. "Angels can only possess someone willing and devout. Don't you read?"

"It's true," Castiel replies. "He's a devout man, he actually prayed for this."

"Well, I'm not buying what you're selling, so who are you really?"

Castiel frowns. "I told you."

"Right. And why would an Angel rescue me from Hell?"

"Good things do happen, Dean," the Angel says, and his gravelly voice sent a shiver down Dean's spine.

"Not in my experience."

"What's the matter? You don't think you deserve to be saved?" He looks into Dean's eyes for a moment, a slight grin quirking the Angel's lips, and all Dean can think is: I didn't know Angels could smile.

"Then why'd you do it?" Andy asked. "Why'd you pull Dean from Hell?"

"Because God commanded it," Castiel tells them, bright blue eyes locking on Dean. "Because we have work for you."