Sam stopped short of picking on me too much while I'd been grabbing what I needed for what I was making for Death. I made sure to pick the high end shit, the extra expensive ground bison, extra sharp cheddar cheese, red potatoes and pickles that I had no idea why they were that pricey. I also picked up some of that salad mix that had every type of green thing in it out there. Coyote and I had perfected a bison burger recipe over the last year and I threw a bit of the $200 bourbon I'd bought into the sauce too. Sam almost cried when I did that. I blamed the onions for me tearing up, Sam knew better. Hey if you're cooking for Death, you go all the way.

"Go set up a table and all that in the dungeon," I told Sam while I was prepping. "Set up a table for Crowley too, just with one of those classy glasses for the bourbon. I may as well give him a shot of it, he'll get all pissy if he finds out I cooked a meal for Death and didn't get him anything."

"We're giving Crowley a shot of bourbon? Are you sure we should summon both of them at the same time?

"We're not, but in case Death doesn't have any info and we need to call Crowley may as well plan ahead. Just go with it. I'll explain when you get back."

He just rolled his eyes and wandered off. Cas had been watching us prep but he'd been staying pretty quiet. At least until Sam left, "This isn't how you usually treat Crowley."

"Yeah, I know. I have a theory. Had a lot of time to think things over. I'll go into it more when Sam gets back."

"I'm intrigued."

Sam came back a few minutes later and sat at the kitchen table while I worked. "Here's the thing," I started out, "As much as it makes my skin crawl to do I spent a decent amount of time over the last year trying to figure out why Crowley wanted to make me a Knight of Hell. He went way out of his way to do everything he could to keep me happy and sane after I went demon, not to mention the whole twisted road trip we did to get the First Blade. What I came up with is this, and it sounds stupid but here it is. In the entirety of Hell, or for all I know, his entire life, Crowley's never found someone that challenged him, kept him on his toes, like we do. He can't let anyone that clever get too high up in the ranks in Hell or they could take him out. It's obvious he sees demons, all of them, as expendable and useless. Who knows if he ever had a decent friendship with anyone over the years. Then we come along, we don't cower, don't back down and I show him a sort of grudging respect, or at least that's how he sees it, because we need him. He sees us as equals, especially me for some reason, I mean he wanted me to help him fix Hell, be a sort of right hand man to him. So I think we should use that when we talk to him. He craves attention, needs someone to talk to, needs a twisted sort of validation so we give him what he wants and see where it gets us."

"Interesting theory," Cas said.

Sam, on the other hand, wasn't too thrilled.

"Are you fucking kidding? You want to kiss ass and play nice?"

"No, what I want is to solve this without ending up having to go to Purgatory to do it ourselves or be worried about demons on our ass again. It'd be nice if once, just once, we get a solution for something without ending up hip deep in shit again. This isn't my life anymore Sam, I don't want it to be. I won't back down, you know that, but I don't think it could hurt to try a different approach. After all that's what you and Coyote have been hammering me with since we got rid of the Mark, doing things differently. Aside from being werewolves now doing things differently this time around seems to be working pretty well for us, and it's really been working well for you and Roy. I mean we wiped out a whole slew of monsters with minimal clusterfuckage, you and Roy went a year without anything major blowing up in your faces, I say let's keep going with it."

I could tell he wanted to argue with me, but there wasn't much he could say. We all knew how much better hunters had been doing lately, "I'm not going to sit there and play waiter for the bastard."

"No one said you had to. I'll handle it." I'd seen Coyote grit her teeth and be nice to people she hated a lot over the past year to get things accomplished. Hopefully I'd learned a thing or two from her.

We got everything set up, Sam and I had some burgers, then I made a plate for Death and Sam summoned him.

He appeared a few feet from the table we'd set up in the dungeon, took one long look at us and one of his thin eyebrows shot up on his bony face, "I see. That explains it then." He sniffed and looked towards the table, "Is that bison? I've been meaning to try that."

"Yeah, it is. Cooked it myself, there's some $200 bourbon in the sauce too." That first instant I see him still makes me jumpy, Sam too judging by that second of instant fear he'd felt when Death appeared. I think everything just knows on a instinctive level who and what Death is, even our wolf side went super quiet. It felt like it was trying to hide somehow.

"Really?" He said as he sat down at the table, "Well, that is quite the sacrifice for you Dean, thank you."

Sam, Cas and I kept our mouths shut until he had a bite or two of the burger, wiped his mouth with a napkin then looked back up at us. "I don't know how to turn you back to human if that is why you summoned me."

"It's not but thanks for the heads up," I said. "What were you referring to when you said that explains it?"

He took another bite, "Mmm, this is rather delicious. You and Sam jumped to the head of my list for a brief moment, then fell off it. I assumed Castiel had saved you again at first but your names simply vanished, which made no sense. Now that I see you're no longer human that clears up the mystery."

"Can you explain that a bit more?" Sam asked. I was pretty damn confused too.

"Yes, non-human beings don't require Reapers when they die, they go straight to Purgatory. There is no other option. As a result it's not in my purview to assign a Reaper to oversee your death personally now." He fixed us with a somewhat cold stare, "I may make an exception though since you insist on mucking up my schedule."

"Well, we're working on mucking fewer things up," I said. "Which brings us to why we summoned you. Here's the situation." I laid everything out for him, refilled his drink once and got him some extra pickle chips after he'd finished his first helping. "So, any ideas?"

For a second there I wanted to join the wolf side and go hide somewhere too. No one does a death glare like Death. Sam and I both had to stop ourselves from taking a step back, Cas even twitched a bit.

"You are sure that Reapers are involved with this." He enunciated each word in that slow empty way of his that freezes you in place.

"That's what we were told, "Sam said.

"Well, let us find out for sure shall we?" He closed his eyes and I'm not sure how or why I knew but I'm pretty sure time stopped. The temperature of the air in the room dropped and it felt like we were getting stretched out. Not physically but inside, the wolf side started panicking.

-Death! Run!-

Sam and I whimpered, not by choice and found ourselves fighting to stay on two legs.

Cas put a hand on each of our shoulders. "I'm here."

That divine calming presence hit me and the wolf got confused.

-Not pack. How?-

-Dig around my brain.- I told it, -It's all there. Stay calm, Death isn't after us. -

-But it's right there! Can't you feel it?-

Couldn't fault it's logic. -Trust me. It's fine.-

That would probably have worked if three Reapers hadn't picked that second to pop in less than five feet away from Sam and I. The wolves overpowered us since they were spooked already. I lunged backwards as I tried to hold on and help Sam but I couldn't. Coyote's energy hit us too late, we'd already started shifting.

"Cas!" As soon as I said it the world went black.

"Dean, Sam wake up." Cas' voice.

"That was unexpected," Death added.

I opened my eyes, Sam and I were on the ground but still human. "What happened?"

"I did as you asked. Your wolves reacted to the presence of the Reapers and started to assert control. I made you sleep. It's only been a few minutes."

"Babe! Are you okay?" Coyote's voice slammed into my brain.

"Yeah, we're fine. Wolves freaked out. Cas handled it. Will explain later. Everyone good there?"

"Barely. That hit fast."

"There was a reason. Don't worry we got a handle on it."

It was getting harder to hear her. Distance must be kicking in. I texted her that I'd call later and looked up at Death.

"You are remarkably calm about your new status Dean, even for you," Death said.

"Yeah I keep hearing that. I took a vacation, maybe that helped. Sam? You good?" He nodded and sat up. I focused back on Death and the Reapers. The Reapers were scared, actually beyond scared. They were standing in a corner, grouped together, eyes wide and reeking of fear, I could smell it. Their bodies were tense, like they were straining against some sort of force. "All right, so these guys know anything?"

"Indeed,"" Death replied, "I must apologize first, I wasn't aware that my searching for the rogues would upset you."

Sam spoke up first, "Neither did we. Don't worry about it."

Wasn't all that often that Death apologized.

"These three are the ones who were helping the non-humans back across the veil," Death was pissed, his right hand twitched as he spoke. I kind of got the impression he was keeping himself from obliterating the Reapers until we got what we needed. "I decided to wait until you were conscious again before allowing them to speak further." He lifted a finger and their bodies relaxed. He pointed at the blonde chick, there were two guys and one girl. "Clarissa, speak," He commanded.

She winced and started talking, it seemed like she didn't have much of a choice, "I was going through Purgatory to get to Hell, it's a short cut. Gordon stopped me, told me he had a deal for me. He'd seen Dean escape and all that followed and wanted out, wanted to get revenge on the Winchesters. I said yes. I was sick of seeing them destroying the natural order and causing chaos." She glared at us, we growled back and Cas immediately put his hand on our shoulders again, "He didn't even have to pay me. We worked out the details and I got him a human to get him out of the portal. The portal opens when humans end up in Purgatory, as long as there are humans there it won't close. It was slow going at first, at least until the demon came and helped."

Sam went from growling to cussing, "Told you!"

"Was it Crowley? Was the demon acting on orders?" I asked. I had to clarify, not to protect Crowley but to make sure I had a handle on the whole story.

Clarissa shrugged, "Don't know, don't care. It'd work deals with humans, promise them superpowers if they did this one little thing. They'd willingly go to Purgatory and try to carry out a monster. If they got killed early, extra soul for Hell. If not, Mairyn or the vamps tried to change them to keep up the deal. Some lived, some died."

There was a crack of something close to thunder when the bottom of Death's cane hit the concrete floor, "What?" His quiet voice hit us deep down, goosebumps rose on my skin. I was damn glad he wasn't pissed at us. "You worked with a demon to let non-humans escape Purgatory?"

"So? You helped Dean stop the Apocalypse.." She snapped back then realized just what she'd done and who she was talking to. Death narrowed his eyes and made a small gesture with his right hand. She screamed and exploded into a cloud of black smoke. The other two dropped to their knees.

"What did you two gentleman know?" Death asked. "Was there some rational explanation given as to why this would be allowable?"

"No sir." The brown haired one replied.

"Then why?"

"By the time she asked us the hunters had started becoming more effective, the balance was shifting. Monsters and Hell were getting more desperate, we thought this would minimize casualties if the monsters got reinforcements."

"It is not your job to get involved in such things," Death stated. "You have one job, that is to collect souls. The cosmic balance is not your concern."

They kept their eyes on the ground and spoke in unison, "Yes sir."

"Return to your rounds. I will be watching you, stray again and I will not be so lenient." Between one second and the next they were gone. Death looked back at us. "I will search out any others that may be thinking about independent action and strongly advise against it."

"Thanks," I said, "Any chance you can find out if there are humans still in Purgatory?"

"I can see if there are but I cannot get them out."

"Yeah we know." The whole Death can't touch people thing, sort of a problem in this case.

He took a longer look at us, considering something or other, "It would be best if I did that elsewhere and then informed you of what I find. Your other side would probably react strongly. I never expected Fenris to take a stand in anything again, or make more children."

Nice thing about Death, he knows everyone. "What do you mean?" Sam asked.

"The whole story will take far too long to explain," he said in between the last few bites of his meal, "I will say that he must have been gravely concerned to have stretched himself this far. I assume Oliver Queen, Roy Harper and Running Coyote are all part of this as well. Their names did the same thing as yours did."

Now that was just disturbing, "Yeah."

"Impressive and concerning. Fenris, unlike others, is honorable. If he chose to protect or help you he saw a pressing need, he won't betray you. I will return shortly. Thank you for the meal Dean." He set his napkin down and disappeared.

Sam, Cas and I stared at the empty table.

"Dean, we may have to go back," Sam stated.

"Not in the mood Sam, really not."

"As I stated earlier," Cas said, "I will go."

"By yourself? No. No way in hell. Sam and I would be a shit ton safer than you. We'd go furry and probably slip right by everything there."

"That works up until you're having to lead humans out." Cas countered.

I didn't want to think about it, "Let's see what Death says first, all right?"

They didn't say anything. They didn't have to really, I had no illusions that Death would come back and say there weren't people there. My luck never works that way.