Interlude VI:

Bobby felt like an idiot.

The talking board resting on the table in front of him was a last resort. He always felt like a teenaged girl at a sleepover when he tried to use the damn thing, but it had been a week since Balthazar had been able to offer him any new research leads. With the angel off doing God knows what and Crowley's dirty fingers still clinging to his soul, Bobby was desperate for any kind of answers.

He gazed around the cabin again, hoping something might jump out at him or inspire him with a better idea, but nothing did. The place looked a lot more lived in now, since Balthazar brought a few books and belongings from the house in Sioux Falls but it wasn't a large change. The angel had complained about being treated like a pack-horse, but after a few growled reminders that he was welcome to do his own research, the complaints had subsided into resentful glares and snide comments.

Ever since Crowley's visit, Bobby had remained in the small cabin in Montana; neither he nor Balthazar saw any use in carting him off again, not when Crowley could find him anywhere with a mere thought and with the hunter community still lurking around his home in Sioux Falls. The time was better spent on trying to figure out what their respective next moves were.

For his part, Bobby had been trying to come up with a plan to deal with Meg. The demonic bitch unfortunately had the same kind of fortune as the Winchesters – which just went to show that even the bad guys could luck out sometimes – and that called for more than summoning her directly into a Devil's Trap.

As it was, Bobby had other reasons for not pursuing that avenue. He knew that he was supposed to be focussed on trapping her and sending her back to Hell for a talking to by Crowley, but experience taught him that he needed a back-up plan. Something more final. He and the boys had been caught unawares by Meg more times than he liked, and he didn't want it happening again.

'And offing her might be a test for getting rid of Crowley,' Bobby thought with a scowl; as long as the former King of the Crossroads Demons held his contract, Bobby wouldn't be able to relax, tentative truce or not. 'I want a way to end him if he tries to stiff me again.'

With his only angelic ally cut off from Heaven and unable to smite demons, Bobby had busied himself with figuring out a non-angelic means of pulling the feat off. He focussed his investigation on demonology and its related lore, but nothing offered any very specific or effective way to completely destroy a demon.

Some of his research mentioned the Colt, of course, but Bobby knew that was a dead end right now. The boys had lost it the day Ellen and Jo died – he closed his eyes to the wave of grief that memory brought up – and even though Bobby had taken the thing apart and built it back up again, he still didn't have the know-how to make himself one.

As for the demon-killing knife, Bobby had a sick feeling that it would be as effective against Crowley as Dean had said it had been against Lucifer. Especially since Balthazar had suggested that Crowley was more than a demon these days.

'Bastard didn't even have the decency to explain himself about that before flying off,' Bobby thought sourly.

That had been a week ago. It was the longest stretch of time that Bobby had gone without seeing the snarky angel, and as much as he didn't want to admit it, he was beginning to wonder if Balthazar might have run into some trouble of the fatal sort.

'Another thing to ask the spirit world,' he thought, glowering at the board again with unconcealed contempt.

Luckily – or not – he was momentarily saved from doing anything with it when the air behind him rippled. The scent of burnt ozone and the suffocating aftershave that the aforementioned angel seemed to favor filled the air.

"I despise children," he announced loudly, not bothering with a greeting. "Noisy, messy, smelly little bastards without control over their own pharyngeal reflexes." He mimed a shudder and then adopted a more conversational tone, "You should be glad you never procreated."

"I thought you were supposed to love humanity or somethin' to that effect?" Bobby inquired, raising an eyebrow. "Last I checked, kids were part of that."

"As far as I'm concerned, the whole definition of 'human' needs to be reworked," Balthazar grumbled, striding across the room and seizing a dusty tumbler from the ramshackle kitchenette cupboard.

Bobby took a seat at the table and peered over at the angel. "I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say your sudden hatred for kids's one of the reason's you been gone so long?"

"Why, Robert, you noticed my absence? I'm touched," Balthazar said, reaching for the bottle of aged whiskey Bobby had found in the cupboard two days before and pouring himself a generous portion. He tossed it back in one shot and then glanced over at Bobby. "And the answer is yes. Gabriel's back in the game.

"Gabriel?" Bobby repeated, confused; he had a feeling the statement wasn't as much of a non sequitur as it seemed. Quickly, his mind flipped through everything he knew about the archangel, the most useful of which came from what the boys had told him and not his own biblical research. "Wasn't he – ?"

"Dead? Only mostly," Balthazar replied blithely. "Right now he's going around as a snot-nosed teenager. And while he's slutting about with a pagan to find the remnants of his grace, I've been asked to play bloody Harriet Tubman to his vessel's kin."

Bobby paused to parse that and raised an eyebrow. "I didn't take Gabriel for the nostalgic type."

"Well, he's not exactly Gabriel per se," Balthazar replied, pouring himself another generous tumbler full of whiskey. "Not yet, anyhow. But there's enough of the pretentious prick in him that he thinks he can order me about like some kind of angelic shuttle service. And then the ponce's brat sister has the gall to vomit on my shoes. How's that for gratitude?"

Bobby's lip twitched, because the imagined look of Balthazar's absolute scandalized expression of outrage was too amusing not to enjoy.

The angel noticed the gesture and rolled his eyes. "Yes, ha-ha, very droll. I tell you, if I had known that this is what Castiel's promise would entail, it's a different answer he would have gotten."

"So Gabriel's human family is in hiding now too?" Bobby asked.

"So to speak – unfortunately they're not as adept at surviving on their own as you are, old man," Balthazar said, inclining his head to the fridge that Bobby had stocked with game when it became apparent the angel would be a while. "Considering their lack of resourcefulness, I had to stick them with your woman for the time being."

"My what?" That brought Bobby up short, and he stared for a full fifteen seconds trying to suss out who Balthazar was talking about before it hit him. "Are you talkin' about Sherriff Mills?"

"Who else would I be talking about?" Balthazar snorted. "The bint is nothing if not determined to make sure you're alright. She seemed itching to mother someone, so I set Gabriel's human pets up with her. It'll keep her busy." He rummaged in the pocket of his slacks for a moment, and then held several sheets of rumpled paper out to Bobby. "Oh, and she asked me to give you these. She was also going on about something to do with phones."

Bobby reached for the sheet wordlessly and turned away from Balthazar to read them.

"Honestly, it's like passing notes in school," the angel scoffed behind him, emptying the last of the alcohol into his glass. "What have I been reduced to?"

The papers, as it turned out, seemed to be a list of messages from hunters that Bobby still trusted, or contacts that he had been dealing with before being kidnapped by the bossy blond angel. It also detailed the expenses for having his house put to right, which Jody had apparently taken upon herself to do.

Bobby had stared blankly at the account, not quite sure what to say. For someone who had arrested him more times than he could count for drunk and disorderly conduct in town, it seemed a real stretch for her.

"I hope you intend to make an honest woman out of her," Balthazar remarked snidely. "She's already cleaned your entire hovel from top to bottom and keeps running the little kiddies off your property. To be honest, I'm not sure which the more tiresome job is."

Bobby scowled, having no intention to get into a discussion about that particular topic with Balthazar. He'd kiss Crowley again before he did. Instead, he pointed out, "Puttin' Gabriel's people up with someone who's connected to me ain't a great idea. They'll be like sittin' ducks for anyone lookin' for 'em."

"Our pool of allies is rather small, in case you forgot, so there are really no other options," Balthazar reminded him, the sentiment sounding indifferent in his accented drawl. "I don't know if you realize this, old man, but I'm stretched a mite thin these days. What, with avoiding Raphael, trying to save everyone's collective arse and attempting to sniff out any information on archemons – which, I should tell you, isn't as fun or as easy as it sounds –"

"Archdemons?" Bobby interrupted, not completely familiar with the term.

"Caught that, did you?"

"And those are, what, demonic equivalent of archangels?"

"If only," Balthazar elucidated wistfully. "Some rather erroneous mistranslations and a long game of broken telephone over the past millennia led to your so-called scholars confusing archdemons with the first Fallen."

"The first Fallen," Bobby repeated. "You mean, like angels that became human?"

"No. Angels who fall to become human cease to exist when their mortal life ends," Balthazar corrected. At Bobby's strained expression, he added, "A rather bleak finale, I know. It wasn't always that way, either. It used to be that angels who fell to experience mortality went to Hell when their human lives ended. And then upper management realized that they were just handing over super-powered beings like Lilith and Alistair and the like to Lucifer's lot – after that, Death was called in to personally deal with the apostates..."

Bobby startled. "I thought Lilith was human. The first soul that Lucifer…?"

"She was human. She just happened to have been an angel before that," Balthazar informed him. "It's why she became what she did when Lucifer corrupted her human soul. All the angels who followed in her stead were corrupted just the same."

"And those are the first Fallen?"

"Yes and no," Balthazar explained. "They became human first, yeah? But the first Fallen are those members of the Host that sided with Lucifer after he was cast out of Heaven. They fought on his side in the war, and for that were imprisoned in Hell, where they were warped. Most are still in their prisons, but some have escaped over time. Azazel was one of them. Him and his ilk are what humans think of when they hear the term 'archdemon'."

"But they're not…actually archdemons," Bobby said slowly, making sure he was caught up to speed.

"No. At most those of the first Fallen who have escaped their prisons lead the demonic host," Balthazar clarified. "An archdemon is something far worse – more profane even than a cambion or a nephilim."

"In plain English," Bobby requested tartly.

"An archdemon is created through the union of an angel and a demon," Balthazar stated grimly. "They were considered so unholy that the truth of their nature was not even written into your scriptures so as not to offend delicate mortal sensibilities."

A sinking feeling formed in the pit of Bobby's stomach. "And you're interested in these sons-of-bitches because…?"

"Because I believe our favorite demonic extortionist has become one," Balthazar revealed.

Now it felt as though there was a lead weight in Bobby's guts. "How?"

"He got his hands on some grace."

Right about then, Bobby wished he hadn't let Balthazar drink all of his booze. Rather than dwell on that, though, he frowned in thought, pondering the troubling news. "Then why isn't he burned up?"

"If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it's because it was given to him. Negated the potency, so to speak," Balthazar suggested angrily. "I don't have any confirmation on it because the git won't admit to it, but I imagine my moron of a younger brother gave it to him in exchange for getting your not-son out of the Cage."

"Castiel," Bobby stated tonelessly around the lump forming in his throat at the implications of that.

"Who else do you know stupid and desperate enough?"

Balthazar did have a point; Bobby had never seen anyone other than himself or John as dedicated to Dean and Sam as the damned fool trench-coat-wearing angel was.

'But to do something so reckless? No – to tell the truth, I ain't even surprised,' he thought grimly. Out loud, he asked, "Did he know?"

"Know what?"

"That giving his grace to Crowley would…create an archdemon," Bobby clarified.

To his surprise, Balthazar's expression softened somewhat and he sighed.

"Likely not. He wouldn't have done it if that were the case. As far as any angel ever knew, the only archdemons in existence were born – physically – of a carnal union between angel and demon. Since the last one was gotten rid of, there's been a rather strict policy on either side about doing the dirty with one another." He made a face. "Not that any of us would ever consider that ever again, because…just, ugh." He shuddered. "It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it – me, not this vessel."

Bobby ignored Balthazar's theatrics. "Then how did Crowley go from being a regular demon to climbing the corporate ladder?"

"If I had to guess, it would seem carnal union is not needed. By accepting Castiel's grace, it was diffused and Crowley could take it into himself," Balthazar postulated. "It became a part of him, warped and twisted."

"But you still sensed it there in him. That's how you figured it out."

"Unfortunately."

There was a long, tense silence.

"Well, if that's really the case, we're gonna have a lot more trouble on our hands once the bastard finally finishes cleaning up the Pit," Bobby said decisively. "'Cause I doubt he'll be happy settling with just Hell under his control."

"Raphael's looking like Santa Clause right about now, isn't he?" Balthazar granted, sounding dejected. "So, you can see why I can't stick around. I've got to find out how the archdemons of old were dealt with. That way we can deal with Crowley before he becomes too aware of just what he can do."

The angel was already stepping away, flexing his shoulders in a way that Bobby had come to recognize as a sign he was about to fly off. He stood quickly, the legs of his chair scraping loudly against the floor. "Now hold on one damn minute! What am I supposed to do?"

"Absolutely nothing. You can't fly, darling."

Bobby bristled. "Not about that! In case you've forgotten, there's a demon of the regular sort that we're tryin' to find?"

"Keep trying. Of course, if you wanted to whistle a jaunty tune while you're doing it, I wouldn't be averse," Balthazar drawled, reaching into his breast pocket for something. "I'm sadly still cut off from the family, so my smiting days are behind me."

"Real load of help you are."

Balthazar ignored him. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm exceedingly helpful."

"In your mind, maybe."

"According to Gabriel, demons have a lot more in common with ghosts than you know – but that's all the little snot could remember," Balthazar went on, unconcernedly, finally taking hold of whatever he was looking for. He handed it over to Bobby. "Here, I hope your Phoenician is good."

Bobby took hold of the waxy, fragile roll of parchment. "What's this?"

"A scroll penned by the Witch of Endor," Balthazar told him. "Might help you with your demon-problem. Don't say I never give you anything."

The scholar in Bobby shuddered in appreciation, and he couldn't help the slightly impressed note in his voice when he asked, "Where did you get this?"

"I went back in time for it – why do you think it took so bloody long for me to come back here? I had to rest and recharge – and then, my idiot of an older brother comes along and dumps a couple of mudfish in my lap. Now if you excuse me, I've still got to check in with the Rebel Alliance before this ungodly day is done."

There was a violent, tearing flap and Bobby was once again alone in the cabin.

He stared at the spot where the angel had been, and then down at the scroll in his hands.

"Balls," Bobby grumbled to the empty space.

A huge 'thank you' goes out to those of you who have been reading along so far and who have taken the time to review, most especially: 222Raavens, aadarshinah, angelstryke, Anna, ashwingsmokefeather, Blasphemoos3, bleachcreep21, Busie, Crimson Vipera, darkburning, darkphoenix2345, DoctorKibbles, Effective Immediately, elenathehun, EricNorthmanIsMySoulMate767, Fallen Seraphim, girlnineteen, Isis the Sphinx, Jade Chase, jazzy, jdluvva, justine82, kaddabo, kai, Kirilin, Kiyomisa, lasersforeyes (Shane) Leoooo, Lendiscus, Lil Kitsune-chan, LonelyElf, Melacreature, mercurybard, Michele, mushimadarame, netherlady, Omri00, pinkskyline, PopsicleOfDeath, primarycolours123, romie, ruvy91, Sadie, shajs, sonofafluffymuffin, vastrea and xoxo.