Chapter 4

The decision to walk back to the hotel wasn't something they needed to discuss. It wasn't that far, a few blocks south and east. The city was still hot and airless, and Ellie had left her jacket bundled up in her backpack, strolling along the street, seemingly relaxed. He followed, all the things stirred up with the evening's randomly rolling conversation still filling his head. He couldn't remember the last time he'd just … lived … he thought. Just talked to someone, without lying or leaving things out, talking about the people they both knew, the hunts they'd done, things that had happened in their lives without the need to hide anything. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a meal with someone, no expectations, no agenda, no hassle.

"You're lucky to have a brother," Ellie said as they walked down Lexington.

He glanced sideways at her. Her parents had been killed when she'd been ten. Both of them, he thought, taken by an evil they hadn't brought on themselves or even known about. He'd spent his life hating the evil that'd come into his life, taken his mother, driven his father to a state of revenge that had eventually killed him as well, poisoned his brother, but, he considered, he could've been left completely alone.

"Yeah," he said, ducking his head. Sam'd always had his back. Except for when he hadn't. The thought and its attached memories scoured him and he shoved them aside, wondering how the hell he was going to get to a point where it didn't feel like a fresh knife wound, each and every time.

He'd hunted alone, not often, not really, and not for long stretches of time. Just when his father had gone off on his own and left him with coordinates or a news clipping, or he'd spotted something suspicious on his own. Those hunts, that time, between Sam's leaving for Stanford, and his father's disappearance, had been oddly enjoyable. His own man. His own wheels. His own destiny, to take the jobs he wanted, to go where he wanted. He'd felt a curious freedom in those times. No responsibilities except to himself and to the job he'd loved, back then.

"You like hunting alone?" he asked the woman walking beside him.

She looked up at him. "Uh, mostly, yeah. I'd rather not have someone else to worry about."

He nodded. He'd felt the same way, on those hunts. He'd felt the same way the last few weeks, even when he'd worked with Rufus, and now, with Ellie. They were collaborating but he wasn't trying to protect them, to keep them safe, he realised slowly. No hunt was entirely a cake-walk, he knew, but he'd enjoyed the jobs a helluva lot more with Rufus, and with the woman beside him, in the last few weeks, than he had for the last four years with his brother.

"Don't get me wrong," Ellie continued, looking down the street. "There're times when I need backup and I don't take unnecessary risks, or take a shot just because it's there, but mostly, you know, the job's a lot of look-up time and not much action."

Out of the narrow gap between two buildings, a man appeared in front of them, the streetlight further up glinting off the narrow knife he held.

"Gimme your cash!"

Dean stopped and looked at him. Small, skinny, pocked skin and a straggle of slow-growing, slightly curly beard patchy over his jawline, the guy was jonesing, he thought. Not bad yet, but getting there.

"You gotta be kidding me," he said, frowning at the dude.

"You want to get cut up?" the guy snarled at him, jabbing the knife tip toward him. "You want me to cut up your bitch?"

"Take it easy," he said, his gaze cutting right to see Ellie taking a sideways step away from him. He took a small step to his left, increasing the gap between them and forcing the man into having to turn his head from one to the other to keep both of them in sight.

"You think this asshole knows what a mistake he's making?" he asked Ellie, keeping his gaze on the man as the knife blade twitched, first in his direction, then in hers.

"No, I don't think he has a clue," Ellie replied, taking another step toward the other side of the tight alley.

"Shut up! Stop moving!" the guy snapped, and Dean shook his head a little at the erratic movements of the man's knife hand. No idea what he was doing, he decided, taking another step sideways and a little closer to him.

The mugger stood indecisively between them, belatedly realising that he'd been forced into completely losing sight of one in order to keep the other in view. Dean smiled inwardly as he saw the man make a snap decision as to which of them was likely to be more trouble.

Wrong, he thought as the guy swung toward him belligerently and behind him, Ellie walked unhurriedly to the three metal trashcans standing just within the alley's mouth.

"Do we leave him standing, or take him out?" he asked, looking past the mugger and sliding his hand into his pocket.

"I'll fucking kill you if you don't shut the fuck up and gimme your money!"

"Well, I don't want to think about who else he might mug after we're gone," she replied, her tone reproving.

"Bitch!"

The man swung back to Ellie as she yanked the lid of one of the trashcans free, holding it vertical by the handle, a shield against the knife. He lunged toward her, the knife dropping low, and the lid dropped to meet it, a high-pitched screech of metal on metal as she took a stride forward and thrust the lid at him, pushing him back.

Dean watched him try to get the blade under, around and over the lid, getting more frustrated as the improvised shield met the knife's tip each time. Ellie was slamming it at him, pushing him backwards toward Dean in a clumsy, uncoordinated scuffle of feet, punctuated by vicious swearing as each hit jarred the guy's hand and arm through the blade.

Taking a step into the alleyway toward them, he saw the mugger's head swing around to him, wincing in anticipation as Ellie slammed the edge of the lid up, a brutal hit to the mugger's exposed jaw, the impact clanging and echoing in the confined space.

Dean shook his head. "That looked like it hurt."

Pulling his gun out casually, he told himself he was just taking precautions. Ellie swung the lid in a diagonal slash that met the man's wrist precisely on the nerve centre near the base of the thumb. The knife dropped and skidded across the cracked concrete and the man's grunt of pain was clearly audible, turning into a flow of curses at her that ceased abruptly when he saw the automatic pointed at him.

"Who the fuck are you people?" the mugger said, his eyes wide as he backed away from them.

"Anti-violence Brigade," Ellie said, stepping close to him, her hand gripping his numbed arm. "Sit down."

She was surprisingly strong for her size, Dean knew, but it wasn't strength that forced the mugger to collapse on the ground at her feet. He stepped forward, reversing the gun and hitting him sharply behind the ear with the butt as Ellie's grip on the nerve centre in the mugger's shoulder held him motionless. The man's eyes rolled up and he fell over backwards, his pain and humiliation forgotten as consciousness disappeared.

"What do we do with him?" Dean asked, looking down at the guy. "We kind of got other plans for tonight."

Kneeling beside him, Ellie rummaged in her backpack, pulling out a Ziploc plastic bag filled with long cable ties and extracting two. She handed them to him.

"Hands and ankles, not too tight."

Dean looked at the big leather bag, brows rising. "Is there anything you don't have in that bag?" he asked, taking them from her and crouching beside the unconscious man. He dragged the mugger's wrists together and cinched the tie in place.

"I like to be prepared," she told him absently as she drew out her notebook and a marker. Dean threaded the second tie around the man's ankles and pulled it tight then walked around to look over her shoulder as she wrote on a page and tore it out, tucking it into the mugger's waistband. He snorted at the message and held out his hand, pulling her to her feet as she shoved the marker back into the bag.

"Where's his knife?" she asked, her gaze flicking over the ground toward the street.

"Here," Dean said, picking up a piece of newspaper from the open trash can and wrapping it around the knife's haft to lift it. Dropping it onto the guy's chest, he dumped the newssheet and looked around. "Phone it in?"

"Yep."

Dean pulled out his cell and dialled 911, giving the operator the nature of the attack and the address and hanging up as he walked to the mouth of the alley.

"Really didn't know what hit him, huh?" he said to Ellie with a wide grin as he glanced back over his shoulder at the guy propped up against the trashcans.

"I wish they were all that easy," Ellie said, lifting her hair from her neck and wiping at the perspiration that sheened her skin from the few minutes of action.

She'd made it look ridiculously easy, he thought, knowing it hadn't been. His gaze involuntarily followed the path of her hand, and he jerked it away, looking ahead down the street.

"What time do you want to hit the park?" he asked. They were only a couple of blocks from the hotel.

"After midnight, I think," she said, a small crease appearing between her brows as she thought about it. "When did you get the last one?"

"Around eleven," he told her, thinking back. "Or maybe it was closer to midnight. We wait too long and we'll miss them."

A deep rumble of thunder, distant across the river, echoed softly between the tall buildings and they both looked in that direction. He should've felt the build up, he thought, watching as sheet lightning lit up the sky over New Jersey.

"Maybe not."

The hotel was less than a hundred yards ahead when the outriding gusts of the storm blew into the city, adding a hundred percent humidity to the oven-like heat. Running along the sidewalk, Ellie was tempted to slow down, tip her head back and let the rain soak her, it was only the thought of the expensive flashlight and her all-too-vulnerable laptop and notes in her bag that kept her pelting along behind Dean as the rain poured down, lashed this way and that by the wind funnelled through the narrow gaps between the buildings. Across the city, blue-white light strobed as lightning struck down, not one or two bolts but dozens, thunder rumbling and crashing in a continuous cacophony.

There was no way anything would be out there tonight, she thought as they raced up the steps of the hotel and stopped, dripping, in the lobby. No victim would go out into the tempest willingly and the monsters would know it.

Both looked up as the lights in the hotel's lobby flickered, flared and died on the heels of that thought. She heard Dean swear softly, then a click and his flashlight beam swung around the pitch-black room, stopping on the stairs.

In the reflection from the beam, she caught his slightly sour smile, as he headed for them.

Dean'd taken down one of the six she'd thought were in the city, and they'd killed another three today, she thought, climbing the stairs after him. That left two, at least. They could check the remaining hotels in the morning. She wondered if the creatures communicated with each other. Or followed the news reports. The damned lore was thin on them, most of it had been compiled before the Industrial Revolution and warned about the dangers of forests and marshes. New York City might be considered a jungle but it was a long way from the boreal forests of India and Russia.

On the fourth floor, the heat was worse, and she wiped ineffectually at the perspiration dripping down her neck, waiting for Dean to unlock the room door. It wasn't going to be any better in there, and with no power, she couldn't even get relief with a cold shower.

As they stepped in, Ellie grimaced, feeling the wall of unmoving warmth in the room. "Oh good," she said. "Our own personal sauna."

He snorted and walked to the small table, tipping the flashlight on end and setting it there, the beam pointing straight up at the ceiling. In the very dim and diffused reflection, they could see the shapes of the furniture, enough to avoid it. Ellie reluctantly closed the door, telling herself it was just her imagination that the room seemed to gain a couple of extras degrees heat.

She glanced at Dean as he walked to the windows and started wrestling with the frames, fighting decades-old layers of paint and pulling out his knife to cut through. Opening her backpack, she felt around until she found the small bundle of candles she carried with her, pulling them out and going to the kitchen counter for a couple of saucers.

Dean looked around as the candle-light brightened the room, watching Ellie light another couple and move the saucers to strategic areas.

"You're kidding?"

"What?" She turned to look at him. "You don't have candles in the trunk of the Impala?"

He turned back to the window without answering. There were a bunch of big, fat pillar candles in one of the bags in the trunk, he knew. He just hadn't thought of them.

"You gotta deck of cards in that bag?" he asked, running his knife deeper under the frame.

She laughed. "Poker? With you? I think I'm gonna have to pass."

"Huh, do I smell fear?"

"Prudence."

He grunted as the knife blade finally cleared out the thick paint and the window frame shifted a little. Changing his grip, he pushed up again and was rewarded by the frame opening a couple of inches, a – not cool, he thought, but definitely moving and cool-er – breeze gusting through the narrow opening along with splashes of rain.

The candle flames shivered in unison with the air movement and Ellie moved them around, shielding them from the draught.

Dean walked to the other window and pulled out his knife again, working along the edge. When both were open wide enough for a minimum for fresh air without letting in too much water, he turned to the table, looking at the woman sitting there, bent over her notebook and writing, her hair drying, the shades in it slowly lightening from mahogany to copper, lit up by the bright gold of the candlelight.

"Nothing's moving in this," he said, gesturing to the windows.

"No," Ellie agreed, looking up. "There's no definitive lore on it, but I can't think of a single creature, other than rawheads, that try and find victims in storms."

He saw her lean on the table and wince, the expression flickering almost too fast to notice.

"What's wrong?"

Rolling her shoulder cautiously and looking at it, she said, "I hit the front door of the last hotel with it to get out. It's just a bit tender, it'll be fine."

He remembered the thick, heavy glass doors of the Pierre A Taj and turned toward his bag. Pamela had given him a bottle of stuff, after he'd dislocated his shoulder jumping out of the church window. It'd worked well, he recalled, enough to let him use the arm the next day. He'd used it again after Chicago. There should be some left.

"I got some stuff for that," he told her, his fingers digging through his bag and pulling out the almost-empty bottle. "Not much left but it didn't take a lot."

He looked down at the beaded top, frowning. "Uh, you want to …?"

Nodding, she got to her feet, grabbing her pack and one of the candles and walking to the bathroom to change.

Rain spattered against the windows and he looked around, wondering how long it would last. Beyond the dark glass, lightning was continuing to strobe the city, the continuous roar of thunder drowning out the distant sirens and alarms.

Think how that limits them, she'd said earlier. The trouble was he couldn't think of anything he could do that was going to stop Armageddon. The angels were too powerful.

Let's see how … Sam does without his lungs?

How was he supposed to fight that? How was he supposed to change anything?

Every second they'd been in River Pass, he'd been aware that he'd been watching his brother, looking for signs that God's magical cleansing hadn't took, that Sam was going to go back to drinking blood. The conversation at the rest stop had only confirmed that Sam was afraid of the same thing, despite his little brother's vehement protests when they'd been hunting War.

I'm in no shape to be hunting. I need to step back, 'cause I'm dangerous. Maybe it's best we just ... go our separate ways.

Relief. It'd been relief he'd felt when Sam had said it first. He couldn't find a way to forgive and forget. He couldn't keep going, not being able to trust, not being able to able to do his job – or even think of how he was going to keep under Zachariah's radar.

This was better, he thought. His head was clearer than it'd been for a long time. He could figure things out better on his own. The bathroom door opened, and he glanced around, watching Ellie come out, the black pants and top replaced by a pair of men's dark blue cotton boxers and a loose white singlet.

As she sat down at the table, he walked over to her, moving the candle to illuminate her right shoulder. She swivelled a little in the chair, pulling the singlet strap down to her elbow, giving him a better view of the reddened and slightly swollen point of the shoulder. The bruising was already coming up, hard to see in the warm tones of the light but lying like a shadow under her skin.

"Man, you must've hit that hard."

Ellie snorted. "I was in a rush. You should've seen the doorman's face."

His mouth quirked up and he pulled out a chair behind her, sitting down as he poured a little of thick white liquid from the bottle onto her skin.

The jolt that ran through him as his fingertip touched her skin made him start slightly, as if he'd accidentally touched a low-voltage electrical current. He saw her jaw muscle clench at the same time. The hell was that, he wondered, dropping his gaze to her shoulder and spreading the lotion over the skin, aware that his pulse had increased, and he was having some trouble getting enough breath. Under his fingers, the muscles of her shoulder and neck were hard and rigid.

"Uh …" He didn't know what to say, or if he should say anything. They were hunting. She was a friend. He didn't have that many left, and he needed to be able to trust someone. Ducking his head as he felt her take in a deep breath and release it, he tried to get his focus back on the tense shoulder in front of him.

You know, you could just ask her out. She probably wouldn't say no.

The voice was his brother's. The memory was from 2007. Denton, Michigan. His brows drew together, jaw tightening in the same reaction he'd had back then to Sam's suggestion, sitting in the bar, watching her dance with the sheriff.

"What?" she asked, and he shook his head, pouring a little more of the creamy liquid onto her shoulder, Under his fingertips, her skin was warm and smooth and he was suddenly aware that the small circles his hand was making over her shoulder and down the shoulder blade had slowed, as she seemed to relax all at once, the sound of a long exhale audible even over the thunder, the stiffness of her muscles dissolving gradually under his touch.

"Nothing," he managed to get out, a little breathlessly as he looked at her profile, seeing her eyes half-closed, the shadow of her lashes trembling over her cheek.

For a moment, the world shrank, spiralling right down to the pool of light of the candles on the table, even the outside noises, of thunder and beeps, hoots and sirens, muted down and disappearing. The pads of his fingers were warm and he stretched his hand out, smoothing the lotion up the slight curve to her neck and down the hard plane of her shoulder blade, a slow heat that had nothing to do with the accumulated warmth of the room seeping through him. Glancing again at her profile, he saw her eyes had closed, her mouth was slightly open and her breathing wasn't any more even than his own.

Fuck.

The lotion had disappeared into her skin and he realised he was still rubbing. Lifting his hand away, he swallowed as Ellie turned her head to look at her shoulder, drawing the singlet strap back up over it.

"Thanks."

"Uh … Ellie." His voice sounded weird, and he cleared his throat, no idea what he was going to say, not quite able to just let it go.

"Might as well catch up on the sleep missed," Ellie said. She didn't look at him as she got to her feet and walked to the window, half-crouching in front of the open gap. "This looks like it's settled in."

Looking down at the bottle on the table, Dean nodded uncomfortably, reaching for the cap and screwing it back on. He got up and dropped the bottle into his bag, shifting it back to the floor.

Aside from the reflections of the candle flames in the black glass, the outside world was in complete darkness, the wind calming, the air cooler as it gusted fitfully between the buildings, carrying a load of fine rain into the room with it.

Ellie looked past her reflection to that of the man behind her, watching him move around the room. Through the narrow gap of the window, the capricious breeze played over her skin, taking the heat and as another fine spray of droplets blew in, cooling her down enough for sleep to be a possibility.

The creamy stuff he'd used had done the job, she thought, straightening up. The ache had receded. The sensations his touch had generated, however, were still fluttering along her nervous system, a jittering memory in her skin and she turned from the window, keeping her back to him and her gaze on the floor, not sure how much of what she felt was showing.

She dropped onto the lumpy sofa, noting that it was well out of the breezeway and shrugging to herself. Four nights of not more than a couple of hours of sleep would take care of that, she decided, lying down and flipping the sheet over her.

It wasn't the heat that was going to prevent her from getting the rest she needed, she acknowledged irritably several minutes later, as she changed position again.

"Can't sleep?" Dean's voice was low as it drifted across the room.

"Too hot," she admitted, without turning over.

"You could sleep here," he suggested, and she heard him roll over on the bed, the mattress creaking a little. "There's enough room for two."

For a wild second, she was sorely tempted to agree. Let the cards fall where they might, she thought, at the very least, she'd get some sleep, free from the arousal that filled her and the still heat that seemed to surround the damned sofa.

He'd break her heart one day. She'd known that for a long time now, from the moment she'd admitted to herself that her past had tangled with her present and something about him had taken a hold. There'd been no real reasons, back then. Just the feeling. Now, there were reasons. Now, she knew him, not everything but enough to know that the hold would never fade away.

Not today, she told herself forcefully, shunting temptation aside.

"I'm fine," she told him, digging her shoulder deeper against the pillow. She heard his exhale from across the room and closed her eyes tightly, dragging up an image, visualising it strongly, her feelings and thoughts slipping away as it sharpened in her mind's eye.

On the bed, Dean huffed out an exhale and rolled onto his back, brows drawn together. The hell he'd been thinking, he wondered, staring at the ceiling. The offer had been bonafide, it was cooler on the bed, in the light breeze from the windows, and there was enough room for two – it'd only occurred to him that it could've been construed as a clumsy pass after the words had exited his mouth.

He turned his head, looking at the sofa and the ghostly white figure there, half-shrouded beneath the light sheet, feeling again the frisson along his nerves as memory threw up the sensations that'd twisted through him when his fingertips had touched her skin. The hell had that been anyway?

Rolling over onto his shoulder, he pushed the feeling aside, aggravated when it refused to go entirely. She hadn't left him in any doubt that it was strictly a working arrangement. Nothing had changed to make him think any different.

It was just the heat, he decided, just the heat and working a bit too closely. He realised he was still in his clothes as the breeze died, leaving him too warm. Sitting up, he pulled off his shirt, loosening the laces of his boots and toeing them off one by one, the clunks as they fell to the thin carpet inordinately loud in the silence. He looked down at his jeans, the denim suddenly hot in the airless room, and unbuttoned the fly, the bed creaking and groaning as he shifted his weight to drag them off and lie down again.

Get your head back in the game, he told himself, twisting around. Not like any of your problems have disappeared. They hadn't. The mess was still there, still unsolvable, and the one person he thought he might be able to talk it out with was, judging by the steady, soft sounds and lack of movement from the sofa, sound asleep.

I killed two angels this week. My brothers. I'm hunted. I rebelled and I did it – all of it – for you. And you failed. You and your brother destroyed the world. And I lost everything – for nothing. So keep your opinions to yourself.

He flinched a little at the memory of the angel's words. It wasn't fair, but it was the truth, he thought, eyes screwing shut. He'd asked the angel to do what was right and it'd all gone to hell anyway.

The angels have something good in store for you. A second chance. Really? 'Cause I'm pretty sure, deep down, you know something nasty's coming down the road. Trust your instincts, Dean. There's no such thing as miracles.

The reaper had told him, straight out confirming what Ellie'd had said all along, and he hadn't wanted to believe her either. His instincts had told him to trust in the angels. They'd also told him to trust in the woman lying not ten feet from him. The first had been a cluster-fuck of a mistake. The second … he hadn't believed, not enough.

No second chance for him. No second chance for his little brother. All of it, all the things he'd been told by the angels and the demons had been lies. Even Sam had lied to him. And Sam was his weakness, he knew it well enough. Sam was the only leverage anyone needed that would make him back down, make him give up. He wondered bleakly if just staying apart was going to be enough.

Cas was off hunting for God. Sam was in the wind, on his own, fighting his demons. And he was … lost, he thought. The day-to-day was fine. Better than fine. It was clear. The big picture was still out of view. The Devil and Heaven's most powerful archangel were walking the earth, looking for him and Sam and he couldn't come up with a way to make it stop.

He yawned, the brittle restlessness finally breaking down, exhaustion sucking at him. Tessa had warned him against hope, against wanting something that was impossible. The more fatalistic side of his nature was inclined to agree with her. He opened his eyes, turning to look at the still figure on the couch. Ellie had told him that he was changing things. He didn't understand why, but he didn't feel that despair when she was around. He felt like he could do anything, he just needed to figure it out, the right way to do it. His eyes closed again, the blackness behind the lids filled with an image.

Her skin had been so soft.

The thought followed him down as the image faded and sleep filled him up.

Dean woke abruptly, the room filled with sunshine, a tell-tale stickiness in his shorts making him groan slightly under his breath. He opened an eye, relieved to see that the room was empty.

Didn't mean she hadn't been around to see it, he told himself acerbically, levering himself up on one elbow. Or smell it. The scent rose thickly as he swung his legs off the bed and got to his feet. On the nightstand, the small digital clock was flashing mindlessly and he padded barefoot to the bathroom. He couldn't remember what dreams he'd had, but they hadn't been of darkness and pain and Hell, and the familiar looseness in his muscles, not to mention the quantity of liquid now drying inside his shorts, seemed to indicate that his orgasm had been a pretty satisfying one.

In the bathroom, he peeled off the shorts and tossed them into the bottom of the tub, turning on the taps and getting in without waiting for the water to heat. It'd been a while, he thought, just a little defensively. No time to play when the apocalypse was nipping at your heels.

Twenty minutes later, he was sitting at the table, trying to drink a second cup of the hotel's execrable coffee when the door opened and Ellie walked in.

He glanced up at her, trying to gauge from her expression what, if anything, she'd been witness to earlier in the morning.

"You get the second flashlight?" he asked as she looked at him, her nose wrinkling up at the acrid smell of the coffee.

"Yep," she answered, looking around the room. She looked distracted, he thought. "You want to get some real coffee?"

"Yeah." He pushed the half-drunk cup aside and got to his feet. "Storm gone?"

"Completely," she said. "It's a lot cooler."

It was, he found, as they exited on to the street, walking across to the diner.

"How many hotels do we need to check?"

"Four big ones," Ellie told him, following the waitress to a table by the window and sitting down. "I thought we could split up this time, take two each."

He frowned. "Worked pretty good yesterday, me chasing and you intercepting?"

She didn't answer, taking a rolled up newspaper from her bag and tossing it onto the table in front of him. The paper unrolled and the headline stood out starkly, the photograph underneath it grainy but recognisable. The guy she'd been with in the nightclub.

Billionaire City Developer Missing.

Underneath the inch-high bold, the report was thin on facts. The guy's car had been found a block from Central Park, next to the Carlyle, a hotel on East 76th Street. He was missing, presumed dead, but no body had been found.

He looked up at her. "This isn't your fault. I thought the storm'd keep everyone inside too."

Shaking her head at him, Ellie's face screwed up. "Don't. I just – we'll go faster if we split up."

"No, we won't," he said, his gut twisting a little as he recognised the ploy. He'd used it enough times on his little brother. "We'll get them, Ellie, but we'll do it together, alright?"

She looked away, her mouth set mulishly and he looked up as the waitress appeared beside him.

"Two specials, two black," he barked out, watching the woman impatiently as she took the order and turned away.

"Look, the Carlyle, that's a place to start, right?" he said, as soon as she was out of earshot. "He must've gone there, the car was there."

"Yeah."

"Okay, so that's what I'm talking about," he said, making a silent resolution not to do this to his brother, if he ever saw Sam again. The thought of Ellie, hunting recklessly for revenge through the big hotels was making his palms sweat.

Their coffees arrived, the waitress thumping the cups onto the table and filling them, and he made another mental note to leave a bigger tip.

"Why didn't the angels just kill Sam if they wanted to beat Lucifer," he asked, shooting a glance across the surface of his coffee. "Zachariah threatened him."

"They won't," she said, and he saw make an effort to push the headline out of her thoughts. "They want their big showdown, they want their paradise."

"So, they wouldn't kill Sam, even to try to get me to consent?"

"I guess they might try it," she said, looking into her cup. "But they won't go through with it. I don't think Michael would even let them."

She glanced up at him, rubbing the heel of her hand against her temple. "They want things to follow the blueprint, Dean," she said slowly. "They want it just like they're expecting it. Every time you screw it up, it makes them more nervous."

"What if, Sam and me, we just stay hidden?"

"I guess they'll pick their substitutes and go from there," she told him, leaning back as the food arrived. "That will get their panties in a twist, but what effect it would have on the final outcome? I don't know."

She picked up her cutlery. "What does your angel friend say about this?"

"He doesn't seem to know much about it," he said. "He's looking for God."

"Uh huh."

"Yeah."

At street level, the Carlyle looked like some swank restaurant, he thought, following Ellie inside as the doorman held the doors for them. Inside, the plush interior was darker than the others, smaller and more intimate. They made it through the lobby and headed down a hall, his flashlight hidden under a coat over his arm as he ran it over the staff they came across.

They worked their way through the service areas, and headed up in the elevator.

"How much do these rooms run to, anyway?" he asked as they came out into a long hall.

"Varies by season, but around now, between seven and eight hundred per night," Ellie told him, walking fast down the corridor.

"What?" He looked around. "What jackass pays that much for a bed for a night?"

She snorted, turning to look at him, one brow arched.

"Seriously?!"

"Hey, occasionally it's nice to be pampered," Ellie said, turning back as the soft rattle of a housekeeping cart caught her attention.

The cart came around the corner of the hallway and the old man pushing it looked at them. Dean lifted his light, and the beam must've touched the guy's hand because he snatched it to his chest, spinning around and disappearing back behind the corner in a flash.

"Got a winner," Dean said, racing down the hall after him, hearing the thud of Ellie's feet following him.

"The service elevators are two lefts down this hall," Ellie called out, as she fell behind.

Throwing a glance back, he saw her stop and swing around, heading back the way they'd come.

He kept the old geezer's coat-tails in sight until they hit the bottom of the service stairs, then he lost him, coming out of the stairwell into a maze of corridors, open storage rooms and the big, steam-filled laundries. Dean half-ran through them, checking for movement, swinging the flashlight around and almost ran head-on into Ellie as he rounded a corner leading to the hotel's loading bay.

"Where is it?" she asked, braking suddenly in front of him, her gaze flashing around the wide bay.

"It didn't come through here?"

"I didn't see it," she said, taking a step back and turning around. "Must have doubled back somewhere deeper."

They spent the next two hours searching the Carlyle's ground floor for the creature and came up empty. Dean shook his head as he saw Ellie emerge from the kitchens.

"Nothing," he said, turning and falling into step with her.

"Dammit."

"Fucking thing ran like Michael Johnson," he said, a note of apology in his voice as he steered her out toward the lobby. "We'll get it on the flip side, in the park tonight."

She nodded, following him out through the doors and onto the street.

"What next?" he asked when they were walking away from the hotel.

"Trump, I think," Ellie said, a crease appearing between her brows. "The others are smaller."

"Smaller wouldn't be bad," Dean said, wincing a little as he felt his legs stiffening from the miles of walking and bouts of fast action.

"Did you get the impression that it knew we were trouble, even before you flashed the light over it?" Ellie asked, ignoring the remark.

He thought back, remembering the old dude's startled look at them. "Maybe."

"I think the others know about us," Ellie said, shaking her head.

"How?"

"I don't know," she admitted with a shrug. "But I get the feeling that they're in the biggest hotels, not the smaller ones."

The Trump International Hotel proved to be a loser as well, something Dean found suspicious, given its proximity to the park. They traipsed up and down the floors, corridors, through the service areas and bars and restaurants for almost three hours before Ellie was ready to admit defeat.

Walking back out through the gleaming gold and glass and black marble lobby, Dean rubbed his hand over his face, wondering if the lore was wrong – or at least, incomplete – on the crocottas, and they did share information, or maybe warn each other. They weren't common monsters – he'd only run into one, and from his father's journal, he knew John had only found one in the more than twenty years of hunting his father has clocked up. Bobby and Rufus had said much the same thing.

The city was an ideal hunting ground for them, he thought, looking around as they walked down the street. Millions of people lived here, worked here, visited here. Even so, he realised slowly, they'd been cautious. Taking out-of-towners mostly. Luring the vics to the park, usually the bodies left without a mark on them. Heart failure, the coroner's reports had said, one after the other. Nothing for anyone to go on.

He glanced sideways at the woman walking beside him, recognising the inwardly directed concentration, but unable to get a feel for what she was thinking. The heat was returning to the city, after the morning's freshness, and the standing water from the storm had increased the humidity again. He tugged at the collar of his shirt, feeling the dampness around his neck and decided he'd get a six-pack on the way back to the hotel.

Hotel, he thought derisively. After the last two days spent wandering through the city's best hotels, he wasn't sure he could apply the term to the fleapit he was staying in.

"So, uh, when you said you could get a room, when you found me, you meant in one of these places?" he asked, knowing what the answer would be.

Ellie looked around at him and nodded. "Yeah, they usually have something free," she said, her gaze flicking along the street.

Something, he thought. Like a suite, kept on hold for some visiting gazillionaire? How much would that've cost? A grand? Two? He ducked his head, his gaze on the pavement. It was another reminder of how much there was that he didn't know about her. Sliding another sideways glance at her, he wondered a little at the fact that it didn't seem raise his alarms, not the way not knowing other people did, at any rate.

You saved my life. I wanted to clear that debt. She'd told him that after Chicago, and he realised it was bullshit. If she hadn't been there in Black Springs … he didn't think Sam could've pulled that off on his own. The debt was squared, had been for a long time. So why'd she tried to save him from Hell? Tried to help him and Sam against the combined forces of Heaven and Hell.

It was her planet too, he reasoned, slowing a little. Didn't have to be all about him, after all. Lucifer loose was everyone's problem.

He looked up in surprise as she turned in front of him, walking up the steps and pushing the squeaking door to the hotel open.

"Uh, you want something to eat?" he asked, hesitating at the foot of the steps.

Ellie turned around and looked down at him. "Sure, sandwich would be fine."

"Same as last time?"

"Yeah, and something cold to drink," she added, lifting her head to look at the sky.

"Got it, I'll be about ten," he said, turning away and heading for the delicatessen down the street as she continued inside.

There would be two to take care of tonight, he thought as he increased the length of his stride. He felt a faint prickle along the back of his neck at the thought.

Opening the door to the room, he grimaced at the warmth he could already feel, wrapping around him as he stepped inside. Ellie sat by the window, hair loose and damp, in the long, loose tee shirt she'd worn the first night. She looked about fifteen, he thought absently as he dropped the paper sack of food onto the table, extracting two beers from the six pack and handing her one and carrying the rest to the grumbling bar fridge under the narrow counter. Not that he could really imagine her ever being fifteen, he thought disparagingly. When he'd met her, she'd seemed older than her years, closer to his age, her experience worn like armour.

"Four down, not bad for a couple of days' work," he said, opening his beer and taking a mouthful.

"No," she agreed absently, her gaze drifting to the window. "Nothing on the news except they found Henry's body. Not a mark."

His eyes narrowed as he tried to gauge her reaction from the comment. He couldn't see anything that suggested the tight recklessness that'd filled her that morning.

"We're not going to get both tonight," she continued, taking another bite from the dripping concoction in her hands and licking her fingers when she'd chewed and swallowed. "The one that took Henry won't need to feed for a few days."

He'd thought the same thing, walking back with their food, going back over his memories of the way the crocotta had behaved with him and Sam. "Might not need to but that probably won't stop it from killing someone anyway."

She looked around at him.

"The one we found, in Ohio, it wasn't just killing to feed," he said, sorting through the memories of that hunt. They were painful. He'd wanted to believe that his father was free of Hell, that somehow he could still talk to him. "It sent me after some other guy, just to get a chance at Sam. And it tried to kill a kid, even though it couldn't've fed from it."

Frowning, Ellie looked down at her sandwich. "You think that might be typical?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "But it saw us, Ellie, both of us. If we go out there tonight, it might figure it's a good opportunity to get rid of us?"

Wadding up the wrapping paper from her food, Ellie nodded agreement, getting to her feet and tossing the wrappings in the trash can.

"You got the last one somewhere near the Ramble, didn't you?" she asked him, stretching the kinks out of her neck and shoulders.

"Yeah, that little wooded section."

"Two bodies were found in the Bird Sanctuary, we should probably stake that out too," she said, going to the sofa and dropping onto it.

"How's the shoulder?" he asked, finishing his sub and getting up from the table.

"Good," Ellie said, letting herself topple onto her side. "I'm going to crash for a while, you should too."

He nodded, opening the fridge and getting out another beer. It was just past noon, they could sleep until after dark. The room was heating up again, not a breath coming in through the gap in the windows and he yawned, carrying his beer to the bed and putting it onto the nightstand, then pulling off his boots.

She hadn't mentioned anything about the tension that he'd felt, that he'd thought they'd both felt, when he'd used Pamela's cream on her shoulder. The thought zipped through his mind as he lay back on the bed, pushing the pillows up against the bedhead. He'd thought he'd seen a reaction, but maybe he hadn't, maybe he'd just imagined it. Picking up the beer, he turned his head to look at the sofa.

You don't need anyone.

He tried not to need anyone, he admitted to himself. Everyone he'd needed had died … or left. He'd tried not to need anyone or want anyone because it was easier than waiting for them to see the missing parts, to notice the stains he could feel on his soul, to put them into danger just being around. He tried not to need or want anyone because he couldn't keep losing people. Every one had torn a piece from him when they'd gone and sooner or later, he thought, there wouldn't be anything left but the corrupted parts, the parts he was afraid to look at.

I guess I'm not the man either of our dads wanted me to be.

Tessa was right, the thought cutting through him. There were no second chances and nothing good was coming to him. He was never going to be the man he'd wanted to be.

On the sofa, Ellie shifted a little, half-turning and he turned away, putting the bottle back on the nightstand and closing his eyes.