Part II
Castiel crouched down at the ridge of the crater where the Devil's Gate was located. The rift in dimensional space simmered with fulvous edges at the bottom, pulsing every time a denizen of Hell passed between the planes. Which was quite frequent, as the bowl of the crater was crawling with low-level demon scavengers, hideous creatures no bigger than a small house pet, but with leather-hard hides and razor teeth like broken glass, and a bloodlust nothing could slake. They were also skittish, though, too afraid to venture far from their natural environment; thus their congregation near the portal.
"Ah," Balthazar said on Castiel's left, the nuclear device in his arms. "How exactly did you slip past them the first time?"
Castiel's jaw tightened. "There weren't so many then," he begrudgingly admitted. Perhaps this plan was not a good idea after all…
"We'll need a diversion," Anna said, ducked down on Castiel's other side.
"A diversion could draw the attention of larger demons," he pointed out.
The grass rustled as Gabriel drew back from the edge and stood. "I'll handle that part." He paused to give the three of them one last look. "Good luck." Then he vanished.
They waited, nothing but the cacophonous gurgle and munching of the creatures below to fill the silence. Then, several minutes later, Castiel saw something thin and dark zing through the air. One of the creatures squealed and plopped flat on the ground. The others around it whipped their attention toward the sound. The demon was already dead, a metal bolt protruding from its center. Castiel marveled at the crude use of a crossbow, but it was effective in its silence, unlike the automatic weapons humans favored.
The other demons erupted in a frenzy and swarmed over the carcass of their fellow demon to devour its flesh. Another bolt zipped through the air and struck a scavenger several yards away from the first, drawing the attention of the demons surrounding it. Soon most of the vulturine creatures were distracted by the blood of their dying brethren, and a narrow but clear path to the Gate was open.
Castiel rose swiftly and started down the slope, Balthazar and Anna hurrying behind him. They made straight for the portal, and Castiel braced himself for what unknown horrors might be just on the other side.
Passing through the rift sent sizzling prickles across his skin for a brief instant, and then Castiel was buffeted by a gust of sweltering heat and sulfur. The atmosphere of Hell was cloying with it, yellow-green and sickly chartreuse fumes broiling in the sky above, occasionally tinged with electric green lightning. The portal came out in a valley, sharp crags on either side rising darkly into the brume. In the far distance was a black tower, one of Hell's torture chambers for damned souls. In the opposite direction, great lava pits burped molten fire into the air, splattering prisoners tied to stakes. There was a constant chorus of wailing that echoed throughout every corner of the region. It was enough to almost suffocate an angel.
There was a small 'zzp' as Anna and Balthazar appeared behind him, both of them whipping their gazes around frantically. Fortunately, the immediate vicinity was clear. Traffic of demons out of Hell had slowed after the initial onslaught when the Gate first opened, and this side of the portal wasn't guarded, as no one expected anyone to make an incursion into Hell.
Castiel turned toward the jagged rocks and quickly motioned for the others to follow. They darted inside a cleft that was close to the Gate but concealed from sight. Balthazar set the nuclear device on the ground and began punching buttons on the keypad to set the timer.
"One minute should be plenty of time," he said. He then reached into his pocket for the cell phone battery to power the timer.
"What is that sound?" Anna suddenly asked.
Castiel's eyes widened just as the high-pitched chitters reached his ears, but before he could give a warning, a swarm of winged lizards spilled over the edge of the cliff above and descended on them. He whipped his angel blade out and swiped at the first creature that zoomed past his face. Another swooped in from behind, raking razor sharp talons across his head. Castiel ducked with a wince and slashed his blade again. They were too fast and too many to be able to target, and thus he had to resort to haphazard strikes. Sometimes his blade met the resistance of flesh as it tore through sinew and one of the monsters would shriek in pain; other times he hit only air.
Anna and Balthazar were striking out more or less blindly as well as the reptilians flapped and swan dived around them. Tiny claws on stubby hands protruded from the wing joints, as well as talons on their hind feet. But their wide salamander mouths possessed three rows of teeth that snapped at anything and everything, even the angel blades striking at them. Castiel felt the vibration of choppers clamp around his blade as a lizard tried to wrench it out of his grip. He swung hard, smashing the creature into another one midair, and they both fell with a squawk.
But the three angels were overwhelmed by the swarm. Castiel's instincts flared with the urge to unleash his grace, but he held back. That would definitely draw attention, and they couldn't afford that, not before the weapon was even set to go off.
Yet just when it seemed they'd have no choice but to do that or retreat, the horde suddenly banked away, back through the fissure and up the cliffside, disappearing into the sulfurous brume. Castiel's chest heaved as he watched the sky for signs of their return, but it looked as though they were gone.
"What the bloody hell was that?" Balthazar spat.
"They're like the scavengers," Castiel replied, wincing at the sting of half a dozen scratches. "But the hive mentality makes them prone to abrupt changes when they swarm like that. The good news is they aren't intelligent enough to alert any higher demons to our presence. The bad news is they could come back at any time."
Anna ran a hand over her frazzled hair. "Let's finish this before they come back," she said to Balthazar.
He grumbled his agreement and started patting his jacket, then sweeping his gaze around. "Where did…ah." Balthazar started toward the battery, which had ended up on the ground during the fight.
Yet before he reached it, one of those lizards skittered out from behind a rock, wings folded down its back. It cocked beady eyes at the black box in front of it, and then lunged forward to snatch it up.
"No!" Balthazar dove for the creature, but it launched itself into the air, the battery between its claws.
Castiel and Anna made a leap to catch it, but the reptile veered sharply away from their grasps and began to ascend, trailing after the direction its flock had gone. Castiel flipped his angel blade around in his hand so he was holding the tip of the blade. Arching his arm back, he watched the creature climb higher, calculating his aim. Then he threw.
The blade whipped end over end through the air and landed tip first right in the lizard's gut, skewering it to the rock face. With a strained squeal, the body shuddered and then folded inward to hang limply…the battery still tucked securely between its curved claws.
Balthazar crossed his arms with a huff. "Nice shot. But now who's going to climb up there and get it?"
Anna rolled her eyes and strode to the scarp where she dug her fingers into a crevice and began to scale the cliffside.
"Always was an over-achiever," Balthazar uttered.
"I heard that."
He donned a cavalier grin and called more loudly, "It's quite becoming!"
"Shut up before you attract more of those things," Anna snapped back as she climbed higher, mindful of each place she set her feet.
"I doubt they find Balthazar all that attractive," Castiel said wryly.
Said angel pressed a hand over his heart. "Now that hurts my feelings. I've been told I have a rather charming personality."
Castiel snorted. "By what, a chipmunk?"
He arched a surprised brow. "Did you learn a sense of humor from your humans?"
Castiel clamped his mouth shut. Perhaps something of Sam and Dean's brotherly banter had rubbed off on him…
Balthazar smirked. "I might approve of your friends after all."
Castiel had to resist the urge to roll his eyes; like he needed his brother's approval on that matter.
The dead lizard suddenly plopped on the ground at their feet.
"Heads up," Anna called, and Castiel looked up just as she tossed his angel blade down to him. He caught it deftly.
She then carefully turned herself around so her back was to the cliff face, and with intense concentration, jumped off. She landed on her feet like a cat, and stood up to hand Balthazar the battery.
"Now, can we please finish and get the hell out of Hell?"
Balthazar took the component with a grin. "As you wish."
"We've got three portable generators," Sam was saying as he gave Ellen a tour of the camp the following morning. "But we only keep one going 24/7 for the freezer. Other than that, we rely on LED lanterns at night and sun during the day."
Ellen stopped to lean an arm on a fence post. "I gotta say I'm impressed. But where the heck did you get all these supplies? Jo and I were barely scraping by when we passed through towns, and it's too dangerous trying to go far into the cities."
Sam couldn't help but grin. "We have a lot of help. From angels, actually."
Ellen shot him an incredulous look. "Angels? You mean those glowy bastards?"
"So you've met some."
Ellen shook her head. "Met, no. Jo and I watched them vaporize some demons in a small town. Of course, they vaporized the town, too." She looked away, haunted memory flickering through her eyes. "There were a lot of people there," she added softly.
Sam grimaced. "Uh, yeah. From what we've learned, most of the angels are really big on this whole Apocalypse battle, and they don't care who gets caught in the crossfire. But there's a small group who believe in protecting humanity. They bring us supplies, and even helped us fortify this place with warding to keep us hidden."
He knelt down to push aside some reeds by the fence post, revealing etchings carved into the wood in various symbols. "It's all over, some really powerful stuff, too."
Ellen made a thoughtful noise in the back of her throat. "Almost sounds too good to be true, if you ask me."
Sam could understand her trepidation, especially from a hunter's perspective, which was that anything not human was something to be hunted. But he knew they could change her mind. "We'll introduce you to Cas," he said. "You'll like him."
Sam hesitated, remembering their angel friend was currently on a dangerous mission. To think that any minute now, Cas could show up and tell them the Apocalypse was over. It wouldn't instantly fix everything, but it would be a start.
Sam just hoped he was okay.
Ellen was studying the warding again, and didn't bother commenting on his offer to introduce her to an angel. Instead, she moved past him to the next fence post and squatted down to look at the sigils carved there.
"Uh, Sam, are these supposed to look like this?"
Frowning, he walked closer and peered over her shoulder. What the…there were several gouges in one of the wards. At first Sam wondered if it was just regular wear from the elements, but the exposed wood in the post was fresh. It didn't look to be from an animal, as the numerous scratches criss-crossed every which way, completely cutting through the spell work and neutralizing the ward.
Sam straightened in alarm. This looked deliberate. "We need to tell Dean."
Ellen's eyes widened at his tone, and she quickly stood up to follow him back to the cabins. Dean was with Jo on Bobby's porch, the young woman sitting on the stoop with a mug of coffee in her hands while Dean leaned against the railing of the ramp he'd built, body loose in a casually flirtatious manner. Sam refrained from shouting for his brother and alerting the rest of the camp to something being amiss.
Dean immediately straightened at his and Ellen's approach. "Done with the tour already?" he said with a shade of disappointment.
"You need to see something," Sam replied in a low voice, shooting Dean a meaningful look.
Dean quirked a questioning brow, but didn't voice his query. "Alright."
Jo looked at them in confusion as well, but also stood up to follow them back out to the fence line.
Sam wordlessly pointed to the vandalized sigil, and Dean crouched down to examine it.
After a long moment, he lifted a dark gaze to Sam's. "Any others?"
"I haven't checked." There was a lot of warding, and it would take a while to go over it all.
"What's going on?" Jo asked.
Dean stood up, expression hard.
"Those are protective sigils," Sam explained when his brother didn't answer. "And it's been damaged."
Jo's mouth turned down further. "What does that mean?"
"It means we've got a problem," Dean said. "You two go tell Bobby. Sam and I are gonna check the other wards."
As Ellen and Jo made their way back to the cabins, Sam and Dean split up, each taking a direction along the fence and checking the wards as they went. To Sam's relief, the rest of the fence posts were intact. Maybe he was making a big deal out of nothing.
But then he came upon a stump where one of the heavier duty sigils had been scorched into the flat top, and found that it had been systematically gouged out, too.
Sam's heart dropped into his stomach. There were layers upon layers of protection erected around the campgrounds, but it still worried him how much losing a few sigils might weaken the whole infrastructure. And they couldn't call Cas to come help them fix it, either.
A knot of dread was starting to form in Sam's gut, and after he completed his circuit, he hurried back to Bobby's cabin where the others were waiting.
"Well?" Bobby demanded as Sam and Dean entered at the same time.
"I found another one," Sam reported. "On the stump, the big sigil I think was for repelling the more powerful demons."
Dean let out a low growl and started to pace. "That makes three. The one behind the shed was also sabotaged. And it had to have been done from the inside," he added darkly.
"I can't believe someone in camp would betray us," Sam argued. "They know what the world out there is like; why would they destroy the only sanctuary we have?"
"Could it be demonic possession?" Ellen put in. "We've seen that before."
"The wards are supposed to prevent anything from crossing the perimeter," Dean replied a tad sharply. Sam knew it was only because his brother was upset and feeling threatened that their refuge may not be as safe as they'd thought.
"You have guards posted round the clock, right?" Jo asked. "Maybe they saw something."
"Unless it was one of them who's compromised," Dean rejoined.
Bobby heaved a sigh. "We'll have to call everyone in, one by one, do the proper tests. And then we're gonna have to start dishing out anti-possession tattoos, prison style."
Sam frowned in deep contemplation as Dean's and Bobby's muffled voices continued to discuss how they'd go about this.
"Actually," he spoke up. "If the warding that the angels installed wasn't foolproof against whatever this is, our tattoos might not be, either. We should test ourselves first."
Each of them visibly stiffened at the implications of that.
Dean ran a hand down his face. "Shit. Of all the times for Cas to be on a deadly mission."
Bobby wheeled over to his desk and pulled out a flask from the drawer. "Sam's right, better to be safe." He uncapped the container and knocked back a swig, then passed it to Sam.
Holy water had an odd taste to it, like there was a little extra oxygen infused into the H2O to give it an ozone tang. Sam wondered if that was the science behind it burning demons, even though it didn't have an effect on humans. He took a sip and handed the flask to Ellen, who took a drink next.
Sam was just starting to feel relieved that their paranoia had been unfounded when Jo took the container. But instead of immediately knocking back a drag, she froze, staring at the flask.
"Jo?" Dean prompted.
Her head whipped up, eyes suddenly blazing with fury, and she chucked the bottle at Dean's head. He yelped as it clipped him, holy water splattering across the floor.
"Jo!" Ellen shouted.
Jo lunged for a gun sitting on the nightstand, and Sam's heart seized. Both he and Dean leaped toward her at the same time, each one grabbing an arm to restrain her. She struggled for a split second before going limp and collapsing to the floor. Sam almost lost his balance at the abrupt change, but managed to catch himself. He stared in horror as a small black worm went slithering out of Jo's ear and escaped between the floorboards.
Ellen was nearly in tears as she dropped down beside her daughter. A trail of black goo was leaking from Jo's ear.
Sam and Dean exchanged a stupefied look. What the hell were they dealing with?