Liz knew her mother would be angry with her when she returned to Bobby's. So as she made her way up to the front porch with Balthazar trailing lazily behind her she prepared herself for the onslaught on questions. She was not disappointed.
"Where the hell have you been?" The door was barely open completely before her mother was there, two feet in front of her, demanding answers. Liz sighed.
"Let's all get to the kitchen; I've got a lot of stuff to tell everyone." Her mother was still bristling with anger, but she obeyed her daughter's request. As everyone shuffled into the kitchen Liz turned to Balthazar. "This could get ugly. You can 'zap' out for a while if you want. I'll call you if I need you." He simply nodded his head and left in silence. Liz sighed and turned to the kitchen. Technically, she was the bringing of could news, but she couldn't help but feel like she was going to face the firing squad. "Okay, so I found some stuff out, some really crazy but also really helpful stuff." She started.
"Where were you?" Her mother was firm in her inquisition.
"That doesn't really matter. I had to go and do something on my own. I couldn't tell you guys where I was." The line sounded lame even to her own ears.
"Why not?"
"Mom, there's really more important stuff we should be discussing right now."
"Elizabeth Tine Harvelle, you listen to me right now! You forced us to leave you for a dead a few days ago, with no explanation, then we find out that you've been hanging out with an angel for who knows how long and he saved you from the explosion I was certain had killed you. Then you run in here a few nights ago saying you figured out why fate said you couldn't exist, but that you can't tell us, only that feather brained idiot you've been spending your time with! Then you take off for nearly a week with no explanation to anyone of where you are or what you're doing. I want some answers damn it!" Guilt flooded Liz's body. She hadn't really thought about just how much she'd been putting her mother through the last two weeks.
"Mom, I know it's been a crazy few weeks. I know, and I'm sorry. But there are a lot of things that I can't explain right now. I wish I could, but I just can't. We're getting help. I can't tell you from where; all I can tell you is that someone is communicating with me to help us. I can't question the instructions; I just have to follow them. I wish I could tell you more, I really do. You have no idea how bad it sucks dealing with something like this and not being able to tell your family, but it could save the damn world so I have to suck it up and deal." Liz took a deep breath after her rant. "Now if we're done with the questions I can't answer, why don't we move on to the ones I can."
"What question is that?" Bobby asked from his wheelchair, which was parked to her left.
"How to stop the devil." She felt the atmosphere grow heavy as soon as the words passed her lips.
"You know how to stop him?" Sam didn't seem angry, his voice was hopeful.
"Sorta yeah." Liz smiled at him. At least someone seemed to be on her side. Well, two someones. The look on Jo's face made her feel like maybe she was on her team too.
"So you just, took off in the middle of the night and found a way to ice the devil? And didn't think to call and let anyone know what you were doing?" Dean, on the other hand, seemed to be siding with her mother on team 'angry pants'.
"I just found out a few hours ago. I spent the last week searching for someone. I didn't know what he was supposed to tell me; just that I had to find him. When I did, with a little 'convincing' on my part, he told me how we can stop Lucifer. It's not a way to kill him. Just a way to get him back in his magic box in hell." A pregnant pause filled the air.
"Well, how do we do it?" Sam's curiosity broke the icy staring contest that was going on around him.
"Well when Lucifer broke out the four horsemen rose with him."
"From Revelations?" Liz turned to Bobby and nodded.
"Each horseman has a ring. If we get all four rings together and toss them on the ground, a portal to the pit opens up. We've just gotta get Lucifer inside."
"Oh, and don't forget the part where we have to get the rings from the freakin' horse men of the apocalypse." Dean put in roughly.
"Yes, well I didn't say it was easy sailing. But it's better than anything we had a week ago." Jo stood.
"Alright, well I'll go find a bible, there's gotta be one around here somewhere and we can try to see what exactly we're gonna be up against." Liz smiled at her little sister and nodded.
"And I'll search for anything I can find on the horseman in other sources." With that Sam was gone too. She was left with Dean, her mother, and Bobby; none of them seemed pleased with her.
"So where exactly is this information coming from?" Bobby asked in his gruff voice. He seemed more annoyed than angry.
"I can't tell you."
"Then how can we trust it?" Dean asked her.
"Look, I know we can trust the information we're being given. You're gonna have to take my word for it."
"You've been keeping an awful lot of secrets for someone who expects us to 'take her word' for anything." Liz frowned at him.
"Look Dean, drop the asshole routine. It's old. I'm sorry I'm keeping secrets, really I am. But I think, given our history, you can trust me by this point. We've damn near been family for years. I don't like it any more than you do. And I realize how much I'm asking here, but you're gonna have to trust me. A lot. If keeping secrets and only telling you guys what I'm told you need to know is what I have to do then damn it I'll do it, your scorn be damned!" She finished loudly. Her mother seemed to have finally calmed down and turned to Dean.
"Look, I know this all seems insane, but we're in the middle of the biblical apocalypse. If we have any chance of stopping it, I'm gonna take it. Now you know damned good and well that you can trust me, Liz and Jo just as much as you trust Sam and Bobby. So stop being pissed that you're out the loop and get you act together. We've got a lot of work to do." Ellen stood to leave the room and smiled at her daughter as she walked past her.
"Whelp, if it's good enough for her, it's good enough for me." Bobby commented as he rolled into the living room to join in the research.
"Dean?" Liz's eyes were pleading with him and Dean was torn. Liz had saved his ass more times than he could count, but he hated being lied to. And he hated secrets. He sighed.
"Look, I don't like the idea of following wild goose chases that you get from some source that we don't even know. The rings though, this sounds like a solid lead. And it's more than we had, so I'll go with it." Liz smiled a little. This was the best she was going to get out of him and she knew it.
"Alright, well then, let's get to searching!"
"Okay, so from what I've got here, what you guys saw Lucifer doing over all those dead bodies was a ceremony. Most of the horse men rose on their own, but there's one that takes quite a bit of power to rope." Jo had taken it upon herself to take the information everyone had gathered and make a compiled list of everything that seemed useful.
"And which one would that be?" Jo grimaced at the elder Winchester.
"Death."
"Okay, so Death is out in the world now? Like the death?" Sam pinched his nose between his fingers as he spoke. Liz could practically see the guilt oozing out of his pours.
"Well, my vote is to wait on him." Liz slid off of her perch on Bobby's desk. "I say we track and retrieve the rings from our other three 'big bads' before we go after the king himself." Bobby was nodding before the girl had finished her sentence.
"It makes the most sense. Gives us a little more time to figure out how we actually plan to take down Death anyway. So how do we go about tracking these horsemen anyway?" A familiar flutter of wings filled the room.
"Well, we split up." Balthazar leaned casually against the wall as he spoke, Castiel standing stiffly at his side.
"Why should we be splitting up exactly?"
"It's a good plan Dean." Castiel spoke up as the elder Winchester approached the pair of angels. "I believe I have found multiple situations that need to be dealt with swiftly." Dean seemed to relax a little as Castiel spoke.
"Well, what do we got?" Ellen asked from her seat on Bobby's couch.
And with that they sat and the discussed how they would divide and concur. Liz looked around the room at the faces of her family. For the first time in a long time she felt a warm bubble of hope fill her chest. Maybe they could stop this after all.
Sorry about the long wait guys. I tried to write this a new way, the first 8 chapters showed you that style, and . . . I hated it. So I'm going back to my old writing style now. Which will hopefully mean faster updates and longer chapters. I'm thinking of adding slight Destiel to this, but I'm not too sure. Depends on where the muse takes me. Don't worry from here on out the plot will quicken and start getting serious. Next chapter we meet a horseman! You'll recognize who, cause I'm borrowing general set up from the show, but it will in no way work out the way we've seen. I hope you enjoyed the update, let me know what you think.