"I'm guessing that you're Castiel's pet hit man," Hex said, approaching him. "We need to talk about the deaths of Mr. Vincent and Malazir."

"Who?" Dean gasped.

Then his eyes went wide, and he cried out in pain.

"You don't necessarily have to die. I may have a place in my organization for someone with your abilities."

Dean tried not to yell again, but couldn't help it. His fists clutched spasmodically; it was the only movement he could make.

"But I insist that my employees tell me the truth. Castiel hired you to kill Mr. Vincent and Malazir." He pulled the angel blade that Dean was wearing on his right hip and pointed it at Dean's eye. "You got these weapons from somewhere. And don't tell me it was some demon in Texas. Tell me – "

"Hex!" Axel was running toward them, shouting. "I saw Guerin running away from something! I can't see Castiel!" He stopped a few feet from Hex. "I think he's – "

He stopped with an astonished look. Orange light flashed in his eyes and out of the slit in his gut where the point of an angel blade was protruding. Then he slid down the sword, revealing Castiel behind him, and hit the ground hard.

"I'm here," Castiel said.

Hex released Dean, turning to Castiel, but the other demon had vanished. And in that moment Dean, crumpled at the base of the tree, reached for the back of his waistband, pulled a gun, and shot.

Hex reacted the way all demons did to the devil's trap bullets: a moment of triumph, then a moment of confusion, then a moment of realization. In those moments Dean shot his hand, and Hex gave a startled cry as the angel blade dropped.

Dean dove for the blade as Hex looked around, grinned, opened his mouth.

"No," Dean said ferociously, and leaped to Hex, throwing his elbow around the demon's throat in a chokehold. They struggled; Dean had to drop the blade and use his right hand to jam Hex's neck further into the chokehold. He might have broken the body's neck, he wasn't sure, Hex was still fighting as they fell to the ground. Dean reached over, grabbed the blade, and shoved it into Hex's gut.

Like Malazir, Hex simply stared in astonishment for a moment. "I won't," he said hoarsely, his head tilted at a bizarre angle. "I won't."

Then his eyes and head and wound flashed so intensely that Dean had to pull back, turning his head, squeezing his eyes hut. Hex managed a grating yell before he went silent and limp.

"Yeah, you will, you son of a bitch," Dean whispered.

He saw the devil's trap gun on the other side of Hex, where he'd dropped it when he'd jumped for the angel blade that would be fatal. He got to his feet, it was harder than he'd thought, and sagged as he bent to pick up the gun.

Crunching sound behind him, twigs cracking as someone ran toward him yelling in desperate horror, "Hex!"

Dean spun, but Cas reappeared right beside Guerin and stabbed him to death.

Castiel let out a breath and faced Dean, who lowered the gun and gave a shuddering sigh of his own. "Anyone else?"

Cas shook his head. "Axel killed all of Revard's other guards. He'd gone over to Hex."

"Glad you didn't tell anyone I'd be here."

"I, too."

"I heard a gunshot and saw the guy running and yelling, but Hex got there too fast and then sat on that damn bench next to you with all his guys around him. Couldn't line up a good shot." Dean grinned, stretching, putting the gun back in his waistband. "Told you I should've been closer to the bench."

Castiel winced, clutching his right arm with his left hand. "Perhaps you were right."

"What the hell?"

"I was injured."

"No, really?" Dean went to him and pushed up the sliced coat and jacket sleeves, tried to unbutton the shirt sleeve but it was too sticky and clogged. He ripped open the shirt where Hex's blade had gone into it, and hissed as the open wound was fully revealed.

"I've lost quite a lot of blood, but thanks to rapid demonic healing, it won't be fatal."

"Even so." Dean was using his shirttail to gently blot blood. "We need to get to the car and get this bound up."

"We need to go to the car and drive someplace where we can be alone."

His hands still on Castiel's arm, Dean looked up and met his gaze. "Yes."

"Should we dispose of the bodies?"

Dean looked around. "No. It'd be too long, I'm already paranoid that something got caught on some hiker's cell phone. And the surgeon's family should get some closure, even if it's lousy closure."

"We must take the weapons with us, though." Castiel vanished and reappeared by the bench.

Dean sighed, pulled his phone, and – to his astonishment – had coverage.

"Dean?" Sam's voice was unnerved.

"Yeah. Sorry I – "

"Where the hell have you been?"

"Angeles National Forest. Cas and Revard set a trap for Hex, and it worked – sort of. Hex is dead, I killed him. Revard's dead too, and a bunch of other demons. Cas is injured." Dean was walking among the trees, finding the three guards Axel had killed and collecting their weapons, as well as Axel's and Guerin's. "I'm fine, well, I've got some aches and pains but I'm not bleeding."

Sam's voice was dangerously quiet. "And you didn't tell me about this because – "

"Because I knew it was gonna get ugly and you're a little more than two weeks out from being possessed by a demon and I didn't want to put you through it, OK?"

"Dean." Sam was still quiet. "If you ever, I mean ever, do anything like that without me again, I will deliberately get drunk and throw up all over the Impala's interior."

A moment of shocked silence. "OK, Sam, I mean, I get your anger, but some things – "

"You will never do something life-threatening without me again. Got it?"

"Got it. OK." Dean dropped a few of the collected weapons in one spot.

"OK." Then, relenting, "So – you killed Hex, huh?"

"I did." Castiel reappeared. He'd taken off his coat and was carrying weapons in it. He put it on the ground and Dean went to him, carrying an angel blade in one hand, dangling a gun from one finger, and with two guns besides his own stuck in his waistband. With a smile, Castiel began pulling the guns, touching Dean as he did it . "I'll tell – oh – uh, no, that one's mine – I'll tell you about. OK – I'll tell you about it later. Right now I'm, I'm, we're gonna have a drink or two. So I might not be back for, you know, a few hours, but I'm all right."

There was a three-second silence. "Be careful, Dean."

"Fighting's all over. I'm fine."

"Be careful, Dean."

Dean focused on what Sam was saying. "I understand. But it's all right. We're all right."

"Call me when you get started back."

"Roger that." Dean disconnected as Castiel dropped an angel blade on the pile of weaponry with a resonant musical shrung. He began pulling the corners of the coat around the weapons as a makeshift knapsack.

Dean looked at Castiel's bloody arm and said, "You should let me carry that. It's going to be – "

Castiel pulled up the bulging coat with his left hand, easily.

Dean had to smile. "Smartass demon. I wish the first-aid kit in the car was closer, though."

"I wish the car were closer for other reasons." Castiel gazed at him. "Perhaps here."

"Here among the demon corpses? Uh, no."

Cas sighed a little. "You're right."

"Know a good place?"

Castiel nodded. "I will direct you."

.

When they got back to the Impala, parked at the scenic overlook, it was the only time they encountered humans: A couple with Nebraska plates was looking out over the forest's ridges and ravines with cameras as they arrived, but they got the weapons knapsack into the trunk and the first-aid kit out of it before the Midwesterners looked around. Fortunately, they were a couple of spaces over from Dean, on the driver's side, so they never saw Cas' arm as he got in on the passenger side and Dean gave them a cheerful wave.

Dean rested the first-aid kit on the bench seat between them. "I wish those folks would go away, plenty of other scenic places on this – "

Castiel took the back of Dean's neck with his left hand and kissed him.

Dean lost all sense of anything else, grabbing Cas, sliding his hands under the ruined shirt, grunting as their tongues caressed each other.

Cas' head pulled back and Dean heard an engine roar at the same moment. He looked out the window. The Midwesterners had leaped back into their car, the husband starting to pull out of the parking space even before the wife had her door fully shut.

"You wanted them to leave?" Castiel asked.

Dean laughed shakily. "You are so keyed into humans it's scary. No. It's not scary." He seized the back of Castiel's neck in turn. "It's great."

It was a few minutes before Dean got Cas' wound, still gaping horribly although not bleeding, cleaned and bound with gauze. He was moving in an erotic haze now, driving where Cas told him to go, swimming through the aisles of a store on the way for beer and other necessities, pulling into the canopied circle drive of a quiet hotel a few blocks off Rodeo Drive that had valet parking, but also self-parking in a garage for maximum privacy.

Dean tucked his bloody shirttail into his jeans and checked in. Later on he thought that he probably cut a strange figure, grimy and sweaty, among the businessmen on their smartphones and white-haired ladies having tea in the lobby, but the well trained clerk didn't even raise an eyebrow.

Dean met Cas at a stairwell and ran up to the second floor. Castiel took his sweet time, smiling at Dean as he mounted the stairs like a human, and by the time Dean opened the room door his hand was shaking.

Dean tore down the bedcovers and ripped off his shirt as Cas folded his bloody suit jacket, put it over a chair, and loosened his tie. "We've gotta get you a new suit. And shirt, and coat."

"I have several more of each at home."

"Of course you do." They started taking off their shoes at the same time, but Dean threw them anywhere and pulled off his socks while Cas was still placing his carefully under the chair.

Dean got rid of the rest of his clothes and threw himself happily on the mattress. "Great bed. Come on over and try it."

Castiel, shirtless, looked Dean over as he unfastened his pants. "I rather like the view from where I am."

A thought struck Dean. "Maybe I should take a shower."

"Maybe you should stay right where you are." There was a slight, thrilling undertone of command in Cas' voice.

Dean grinned at him. "I'm gonna do you a favor." He grabbed the just-purchased lubricant from the nightstand, ripping at the packaging. "I'm gonna lube myself up and let you go at it first. This is something I do only for people who save my life twice in a demon battle royale."

He proceeded to do that. Castiel stood nude at the foot of the bed and watched, silent, his eyes intense.

"Come on over here. I've been wanting to get my hands on you for, what's it been, a month?"

Castiel moved over and lay next to Dean. They kissed, and Dean rubbed his neck delightedly over Cas' unexpectedly rough five o'clock shadow.

Then he stopped, tipping Cas' head to look at the back of his neck. "What the hell is that?"

"A brand. Hex put it on me back there. It seals me in this body so that I can't escape through the mouth."

Dean swore, caressing the injured skin lightly. "Kind of ironic, though. Hex and I both like you in this body."

"Not for quite the same purposes. He was planning to sell me at auction to raise funds for a new armorer."

"Good for him I didn't know that. I'd have done an amazing number on him with the angel blade." He kissed the brand gently. "Not that you would have been a prisoner for long, though. He really thought he was smarter than you, didn't he?"

"He certainly thought he was stronger."

"And wrong again. Does that hurt?"

"It's healing quickly. It will hurt to break the brand, though. It requires another brand to cut through the current markings, like breaking a devil's trap."

"Yeah, but why put yourself through that? Once you're human, you'll be staying in that meatsui – body anyway."

Castiel gave a little moan. Dean ran his hands all over Cas, stroking between his legs, and took the tension in Cas' muscles for excitement until Cas clutched his arm so hard it hurt.

"Sorry if I'm rough – little excited – " He caressed Cas gently and gave him a lingering kiss.

Cas clutched Dean's arm again and groaned with pain.

"Oh," Dean said with sudden realization. "It's the caring thing again, isn't it? It's hurting you."

Cas nodded, biting his lips.

For a moment Dean looked stumped, then he smiled. "Give me five minutes, I'll have you feeling so good you won't even notice any pain."

Cas smiled back, rubbing one leg luxuriantly along Dean's. "I believe that."

"Just relax." He ran his tongue down Cas' body, already smoothed where Dean's lube-slick fingers had caressed him. "You know what? Pretend we don't care about each other. Pretend we're strangers and we're just banging each other because we're so hot." He used his teeth, gently, on Cas' neck. "Because you are. First time I saw you, all those goons with guns around, all I could think – ah – " Cas was caressing and clutching him – "all I could think was, that Mafia guy is – "

He started talking dirty, expletives and anatomical specifics, trying to pretend that Castiel wasn't going rigid under him, and not in a good way.

"I'm sorry, Dean," he gasped.

Dean looked at his face. His eyes were doing that terrible thing where they flickered from human to demon and back.

"I can't help but care – I know you want me to be happy." He gasped. "It hurts, I don't think I can do this, the pain is – "

His nails were sinking into Dean as his eyes flickered.

"Do what'll make you feel good," Dean said.

"I don't want – "

"I can handle it. Do what you need to do to stop hurting, Cas."

Castiel's eyes went black and he snarled, "Don't pander to me."

With demonic strength he clawed Dean, pushed him into a position he wanted, invaded. Dean was really glad he'd lubricated himself, because there wasn't a chance that demon Cas would've done it. As it was, he found himself saying sharply, "Wait, dammit – take a moment – OK, just – Just – "

Cas came, pounding, laughing. Dean yelled in pain and, yes, excitement. Cas tore out of Dean, and the next thing Dean knew Cas was grinning under those inhuman eyes, his right hand clutching Dean's upper arm.

"It's OK," Dean gasped, because he thought in a moment Castiel would be regretting his assault, "it's OK, we'll – "

Then he yelled. Demonic strength or no, he threw Cas off of him and leaped out of bed, clutching his upper arm.

He took his hand away, looked, swore. A red, blistering second-degree burn in the shape of Cas' hand showed clearly on his bicep.

He gasped and looked over at Cas, but Cas wasn't in bed. Before Dean could draw a breath he heard water running in the bathroom, and as he turned Cas reappeared beside him with a cold, dripping wet washcloth, which he pressed gently on the burn. Dean looked at Cas' eyes; they were human.

Dean bit back his first couple of remarks, went over to the bed and sat down on it, wincing with that pain. Castiel followed him, ministering to the burn.

As Dean's breathing returned to normal, he looked at Cas and asked with objective curiosity, "Were you going to incinerate me?"

"No. I was branding you."

"Oh." For some reason, he found that kind of funny. "Well. Mission accomplished, I guess."

"This will heal," Cas said, and vanished. A moment later he was back with fresh cold water on the cloth, pressing it to Dean's arm.

With an exhausted sigh, Dean lay back on the bed. Castiel vanished and reappeared next to him, hovering over Dean, cooling the burn, the corners of his eyes tense.

"I should apologize."

"But you have a hard time apologizing for doing what comes naturally."

"Even now." Cas' voice ground to a halt, but he forced himself to keep talking. "Even now there is a part of me that is enjoying the memory of hurting you. It's why I can care for you without being in pain myself."

"Man." Dean shook his head. "This whole thing is going to be so much easier when you're human."

Castiel lifted and replaced the cloth, dabbing at the wound. He didn't say anything.

Dean's right arm bent across his chest and he covered Cas' hand. "Answer me something?"

Cas took a breath. "I owe you that, at least."

"I've been wondering about this, and for a while I didn't want to know, but now I do. How did you end up in Hell?"

Cas tipped his face away, closing his eyes, shook his head. For a moment Dean thought he wouldn't answer.

Then he said, "Weakness."

He gave a final press to the washcloth on Dean's arm, pulled his hand out from under Dean's hand, and lay on his back, telling his story to the ceiling.

"In 1999 I was deeply unhappy."

He laughed, a stoned-sounding bitter laugh that startled Dean.

"I was a twenty-eight-year-old failure. Or so I saw myself. I had no goals in life. I had never been able to sustain a relationship. I dropped out of college to learn computer programming, dropped out of that to hold a series of menial jobs. I went back and forth between blaming others for my failures and simply telling myself that I was a stupid person without gifts. My sister," he swallowed, "who loved me deeply, tried to convince me that my problem was self-hatred, that there were root causes for it, and that I should see a therapist. I dismissed the idea as self-indulgent, as whiny. In truth, I couldn't bear the thought of delving into the unhappy parts of my past, to understand why I chose to despise myself. It was easier to say, 'I'm strong enough to admit that I'm a failure.'"

He smiled, a brief dark smile.

"In 1996 I slipped on some water in the kitchen where I was working and wrenched my knee badly. I received a 30-day prescription for pain pills. How I loved that experience the first few times. I quickly started using them more often than I was supposed to. It's not like the pills made me happy or successful. I still felt myself to be an unhappy failure, but when I was high I didn't care.

"From there on my story is routine. I went through several doctors, started buying from dealers. I spent my income, got kicked out of my apartment. I lived with my parents until I finally stole from them once too often and they changed the locks. By this time I'd moved on to heroin. I went to my sister. She wouldn't give me cash, but she offered to dig into her retirement savings to pay for rehab." He closed his eyes. "I cursed her and left.

"I have since realized that mine was a universal story. I took drugs to deal with my problems, then the drugs became the problem."

"And the original problem was still there."

"Exactly. One night in 1999 I tried to rob my dealer. He gave me one hard slap, told me I'd need to find another supplier, and left me literally lying in the gutter."

He closed his eyes again. Dean rolled over to watch him better, the pain of his arm almost forgotten.

"When I sat up, a man was standing under a streetlamp where the alley met the main road."

"Crossroads demon," Dean whispered.

"I have learned that his name was Crowley, and he has become the King of the Crossroads Demons since then – though not because he brought in my pathetic soul. He said I looked like I could use a drink. He seemed – not really sympathetic, but understanding, and he looked rich. I thought I could talk him out of money."

"And he talked you out of your soul."

"He did a few magic tricks, convinced me that he was who he said he was. We talked about souls. I figured it was like an appendix – useless in life, and once you were dead it couldn't hurt you. He said – "

Cas smiled ruefully, shook his head.

"He told me that my soul wasn't valued on Earth, but that in Hell all human souls are valued exactly the same, no matter how successful their owners were on Earth. And of course, he was telling the exact truth. All human souls are hated and tortured equally in Hell.

"When he asked what I wanted more than anything, it crossed my mind to say – "

He hesitated, and Dean filled in, "All the drugs."

"Yes. But I surprised myself – surprised Crowley too, I think. I told him I wanted to be free of drugs. No withdrawal, no cravings, no desire for them, ever again. The easy way out. He said I could live like that for ten years before my soul was collected. I said it seemed like a short lifespan, and he asked how long I thought I had, the way I was going. It was actually a good point. So I made the deal.

"The relief was instant, immediate. I felt sure I'd made the right choice. I found another job – just another busboy job, but I was able to stay at work, keep the job. I thought – I felt so clever at having made this escape, I began to think that maybe I wasn't so stupid after all. I made peace with my family. It was a long time before they trusted me, but after a few years they began realizing that I was safe on my new course. It made them happy."

He swallowed spasmodically.

"As I – made new friends, discovered new interests, worked my way up in the restaurant industry, I grew increasingly haunted by the thought that – "

He looked directly at Dean. "I could have done it. I could have done it all without selling my soul.

"The night of the ten-year anniversary, I was driving across Wyoming at eighty miles an hour. Don't ask me why I thought I could escape death in a car. Humans in fear for their lives don't make rational decisions. At the stroke of midnight I heard dogs snarling – behind me and beside me, in the car. I couldn't see anything, but I felt my ear being bitten and severed.

"I went off the road and crashed. Somehow I survived that and tried to run. All these years of pain later, I still remember clearly the feeling of hellhounds tearing me apart."

"God," Dean whispered.

"I won't talk about the fifty years of torture that followed – it's only five months in Earth time, but believe me, it was every hour of fifty years down there. And even then, as I say, they probably released me too soon. I found myself very reluctant to possess an innocent person. It occurred to me to possess a drug dealer. I didn't want to, but I thought that would be justice on both sides."

Dean ran the backs of his fingers along Castiel's stubble-roughened cheek. "This was a drug dealer?" he asked in amused disbelief.

"No, actually, this was a cop. I happened on the scene just as a drug dealer shot him, having discovered that he was undercover. The shooter fled, and I occupied the body as the officer left it. It took me a couple of days to get back to full strength, and then I left Trenton for Olympia, then Portland, then Los Angeles. The officer's co-workers and loved ones believe that his body was dumped in the Delaware River or in a concrete pillar."

"So – you were a drug addict who occupied an undercover narc, and then you were a Terrestrial undercover as a Loyalist."

"The ironies have not escaped me."

Dean caressed him. "Thank you, Cas. That must've been hard to remember. Thanks for telling me about it."

"I owe you an explanation. And I owe you something else."

Cas rolled over and began using his tongue on Dean's neck, then shoulders and chest, working his way down. Regardless of the pain Cas had inflicted on him, Dean lay still, somehow utterly relaxed, until Cas' mouth enveloped and teased his cock. Then he felt compelled to say, "No biting."

Cas pressed his tongue against Dean as he pulled away, said gently, "No biting," and went back to work.

Dean went out of his mind, rippling and grunting, incapable of thought. At one moment he saw Castiel's hand gripping the covers until his knuckles were white and realized that it must be hurting him horribly to express love, to be thanked and praised for it, but then the whole thing was gone in a nova of sensation, no thought, all body all ecstasy.

He melted, a warm tide of relaxation and exhaustion engulfing him. He managed to say, "Love you – sorry if that hurts – but I do," before he fell asleep.

Why he woke up he didn't know. He'd have thought he'd be out for hours, after forest-walking, battle, injury, and an amazing orgasm. But something told him to come back, and when he did, Castiel was sliding his bloody shirt sleeve into his ripped jacket sleeve.

"Demon crisis?" he asked sleepily.

"I have to return."

Dean didn't like the tone of his voice, and sat up. "Not until we talk about what happens next. Hex is dead, that was my goal. You wanted to set the Loyalist biggies against each other, and it worked so well it damn near came around to bite you in the ass. Let's talk about an exit strategy."

Castiel nodded. "You and Sam should plan to leave immediately. You have killed four demons, and Sam is a walking target for any demon who resents Andrealphus' exorcism. If I can do anything to assist you in your move, tell me."

"Assist?" Dean shook his head and got out of bed. Fortunately he wasn't one of those who felt at a disadvantage when he was naked. "Don't do this, Cas. You're coming with us. You know that's the best thing."

Cas looked away from him, then looked directly into his eyes. "Have your brother look at your arm and see if he says it's the best thing."

"Sam has no problem with you being with us while you become human."

"I cannot do that."

"You can't not do it, Cas! Sam was right! This pain is going to keep hitting you and you're going to have to do something. If you're just surrounded by demons – "

"It will be easier for me to slip into a completely demonic state. Yes. Why do you think I told you the story of my pathetic human life? You have to understand. I am weak. I am not strong enough – "

"Bull, Cas! You go completely demonic, it's going to be your life story. You're going to realize that you could have had a good human life, with love and friendship and doing – doing something that doesn't involve killing people, and you threw it away because you wanted to take the easy way out. Don't do it, Cas. Don't. You're strong enough. I know you are."

"And if I'm not, I could hurt you even worse. I could even kill you."

"You wouldn't."

"You can't know that."

"But I do. Look – Just come with us, Cas. Please. Let us help you to become human. I won't let you kill me. Hell, Sam won't let you kill me."

Castiel sighed, looked up at Dean. "I cannot make the commitment."

Then he was at the door, opened it, and vanished.

Dean ran to the door, but Castiel was nowhere in sight in either direction down the hall.

He swore. The elevator dinged, and Dean ducked back into the room, slamming the door.

He could feel exhaustion fraying his nerves, but there was no way he was going to get back to sleep. He dressed, checked out – and again, the clerk didn't even blink when Dean checked out after less than two hours and clearly in a foul mood – and went to the parking garage.

The thing about parking garages is that, while they offer protection from prying eyes and inclement weather, they are accessible by birds.

Dean stood staring at the Impala's splattered door and windshield, and swore as bitterly as he'd ever sworn at a demon. It was lucky for the offender that it had flown away; Dean had put the devil's-trap gun back in his ankle holster.

He stopped at the first convenience store he saw, cleaned off the car, decided to put in some gas as well. Because he paid cash for everything, he headed into the store.

He was drawn by the odor of fresh popcorn, and got a small bag of it. The popper was right next to a magazine stand, and he looked them over.

It was unusual these days for a convenience store to carry soft-core porn, but this store did – Busty Asian Beauties and a couple of others. They weren't progressive enough to carry magazines featuring male models, but Dean wasn't in the mood anyway. And what would he get – Skinny Blue-Eyed Demons With Intimacy Issues?

He smiled a little at the thought, took a step over and picked up a car magazine, flipped through it, unseeing.

Sam was right. Dean had never had an easy relationship in his life. Of course all relationships required work, but his love life was a series of train wrecks interspersed with amicable partings. He didn't know if it was because of the kind of guy he attracted or the kind of guy he was attracted to. But he was beginning to have the feeling that he was going to end up alone.

An electronic chime sounded, meaning that the door had opened, and a guy said loudly to the clerk, "Who's the asshole with the gas-guzzler?"

Dean's breath sped up, and something clicked into place in his brain. Later, he realized that it was satisfaction.

"OK, sir, if you have a problem, talk to me," the clerk said, putting some authority into his voice. "What's the issue?"

"I don't wanna talk to you. I wanna talk to the jerk who parked his car so he blocked both pumps. He must be really damn important."

Dean turned, still holding the magazine, smiling. "Hey, I'm sorry. Didn't realize that the car blocked both pumps on the other side, too."

"You wanna try driving a normal car around that beached whale in that driveway? Maybe you're rich, but I can't afford a new fender. And I've got to get to work, so move it, ass."

"Sir," the clerk said, "I'm gonna suggest that you have a seat in our coffee alcove for just a moment, I'll get you a cup on the house. Don't worry, we'll get you to work. Sir," addressing Dean, "were you wrapping up here?"

That was the moment where the whole thing could have been resolved peacefully.

And it blew past as Dean smiled at the angry customer and said, "Well, I was. But now I think I'm gonna take my time."

The clerk started out from behind the counter, talking to Dean in a tone that implied, Hey, we're the rational ones here. "Why don't you just move the car up a few – "

The angry man moved over to Dean faster and shoved him toward the door. "Move it, ass! Move it!"

Dean turned, rolling the magazine, and smiled. The clerk was saying something about the cops and the angry man was swearing from a mouth that smelled like a distillery and Dean's whole focus went to the angry man's solar plexus.

He rammed the end of the magazine into his opponent's gut. The guy crashed back into the sky-blue table and chairs of the coffee alcove, not falling but half-sprawling across the table, gasping. The clerk banged a button under the counter and went to the front door to lock it.

Dean yelled, "You want more?" – rhetorically, because he figured the guy was finished, but the guy pulled himself off the table and came at Dean. Dean knocked him down, dropped to the floor and began whaling away on the guy with his left fist and the rolled magazine in his right hand, bloodying his nose, bruising his eye, while the clerk tried to yell at him to stop it, the cops were on their way.

That finally got through to Dean. He stood, went to the door, banged the handle, and left. He saw no police cars, and no one pursued him.

Moron human thinks he's tough, he thought in a rage. Let him try to take on a demon. Wouldn't last five seconds. Needed a lesson.

.

Castiel did the disappearing-jump thing as far as the stairwell door on the first floor, but didn't want to do it more publicly than that, so he went to the front door and asked the doorman to call a cab. He sat on a bench just outside the door to wait, and a few minutes later was aware of Dean's presence behind him, checking out. Dean took the side door that led to the parking garage and didn't see Castiel.

Castiel leaned his elbows on his knees and studied the concrete, flicked with glittering bits of mica. When the cab came he rode it to the parking lot of a shopping center in La Canada Flintridge, where he'd parked his Acura before joining Dean in the Impala at noon.

He pulled up to the security gate at home at the same time as a black Mercedes coming in the opposite direction. The window rolled down and Parcell outright gaped at him.

Castiel let them both in, and Parcell parked behind him in the drive. As Parcell emerged, Cas said, "You have a new car, I see."

"The previous one is being held as evidence in the bombing by police, who have no idea who I am and no record of its registration. Yes, Castiel, we should definitely discuss that, instead of the obvious wound shredding your jacket or the fact that no one has heard from Revard or you for hours or the fact that human police are finding bodies all over the Angeles National Forest. Hannah is frantic. She called me here to give me your hairbrush or something and scry for you."

"Her concern is not misplaced. I am the only survivor."

Parcell's head snapped up, his eyes wide. "Revard?"

"Gone. We set a trap for Hex. Revard told only four of his guards. Unfortunately, one of them was Axel."

"I thought he was – oh no, he defected to Revard the night of the bombing, didn't he?"

"And then promptly defected to Hex. He killed Revard's other three guards in the forest, silently, using an angel blade. He then ran down to Revard to 'report' the deaths of the other guards and shot Revard before we had grasped the situation. I killed the others."

"Including Hex?"

"Yes."

"I'm impressed, Castiel. No insult intended, but you've never struck me as – as a war movie hero."

"I was desperate."

"Yes." Parcell started moving toward the house. "Let's get you inside, maybe a poultice to help that arm."

"It's mostly healed. That's why I took so long coming back. I didn't want to present myself in a weakened state, or tell anyone that I was weakened."

It was a logical demonic explanation, and Parcell had no problem with it. He smiled a little. "I'm going to tell Hannah that I not only scried for you, I conjured you. See if I can make her believe it. She will be – quite pleased to see you."

Ahead of them, Hannah flung the door open and stared at Castiel. Her expression wasn't purely pleased, however – there was a sharp concern, verging on suspicion, mixed with her astonishment. "Were you at the neutral zone? Where they're finding the bodies?"

"Yes." Castiel explained to her as they moved into the front hallway with the front door guard, and Lina, one of the housekeepers, came out of a front room to listen. He kept it brief, wrapping up with, "The police will be identifying Revard soon as a known associate of organized crime, which means we can be expecting another visit from Detective Edwards. I need to be clean and in undamaged clothing before they arrive."

"You need to look at something in the monitor room first."

Castiel looked at her, startled. She never spoke to him as if she were giving an order. "Was the fight captured on someone's video camera?"

"Not that fight," she said, and turned her back on him, starting up the stairs.

Parcell, looking curious, followed her. Castiel disappeared and reappeared at the top of the steps.

The monitor room – formerly a bedroom and sitting room with the wall between them knocked down – was large and dim, with five monitors in a row showing the grainy black-and-white feed from security cameras in the five L.A.-area SavorStops. These were the cameras aimed at the refreshment areas meant to lure Terrestrials, and the video – and audio – feed came to this room only. One technician was watching all five cameras. He looked up and around as Hannah, Castiel, and Parcell entered. His gaze stopped for a moment on Castiel, then moved away.

"Run it, pause it, and then take a break," Hannah told him.

The technician didn't need to be told details. He stopped the live feed on one monitor and backed up the video about forty minutes.

"This happened at the SavorStop in Beverly Hills," Hannah said. Her tone was cold. "The clerk reported it to police and was about to call the company when we called him. The clerk is human, so he can't tell the difference between humans and demons. But from his description it appears to be simply a confrontation between two humans, one of them drunk, one of them violent. Play it."

The technician, who'd cued up the video and waited for Hannah's explanation, played it. A man yelled at a slightly taller man and pushed him. The other man shoved the fight provoker into the coffee alcove, and their images, which had previously just been in a corner of the screen, moved fully into the range of the alcove cameras. The first man pulled himself off of a table and started for the taller man. The taller man knocked him to the floor and beat him with his fist and a rolled magazine. The beaten man was out of sight of the camera, and he didn't stand up when his attacker did. The taller man glanced around as he began to walk away, letting the magazine unroll in his hand, and the technician paused the video as the taller man's face was revealed fully.

The technician stood, said, "I'll be in the kitchen," and – casting a quick glance at Castiel's expression – left.

"Well?" Hannah said to Castiel.

Castiel raised his gaze from the screen. "Well? As you said, a fight between two humans."

Hannah swallowed. "Don't, Castiel. Please. Don't be deceptive."

Castiel looked at the monitor for a moment more, his face tense. Then he said, "Hannah, I'm very tired. Just tell me what you want to say."

"That's the burglar. The one you arranged to trap for Mr. Sanchez, before his possession. The one you supposedly destroyed so completely that he was only a scorch mark in the interrogation room. He's alive and obviously free."