Author's Note: I've been really, really chronically ill, for ages. Half dead. Here is an extra-long, action-juicy chapter because I feel shitty about not updating in what equates to virtual millennia. It's like dog years, on the internet. Or being sick, either way.

I know my timelines aren't perfect. I do some fudging because I am a timeline-altering god and this is an AU and that's what makes it fun. To nail down the time-scenery for SPN, I guess this is a bit after I Know What You Did Last Summer, before The Monster at the End of This Book.

The spell, here, is actually a line pulled from the second Hundingsbane portion of the Poetic Edda, a banishment actually spoken by our pal, the Valkyrie Sigrún: Vengeance were mine [for Helgi's murder]/Wert thou a wolf in the woods without/Possessing nought and knowing no joy/Having no food save corpses to feed on.

(The story of the Valkyrie Sigrún is actually pretty interesting. She's reincarnated at least twice.)

And much like the theme of TDF and Supernatural in general: In this Chapter Someone Tries to Do a Good Thing (and Majorly Fucks it Up Down the Line).

Set circa Ghost Story.

Black glass fell from the ceiling in a glittering rain.

He breathed a sigh of relief; if the skylights above had been made of plate instead of tempered glass, the bullets would have punched uselessly through, or worse, huge, heavy pieces would have crashed down like guillotine blades from above and no amount of armor would have helped. A few of the skylights shattered as they had predicted and neat little pieces fell to the floor. Exhaust, motor oil and burning rubber, the smell of old blood and older death all whorled upward into the open sky.

In Dean's ear, the Bluetooth-thingy crackled.

"Does your brother know he's humming Dio?"

"It calms him."

"It calms me."

There might have been a smile in Murphy's voice. "Sam, more movement above us, fourth floor, nine o'clock. Shotguns."

"Got it."

At the edge of his vision, he saw the bike rush by again and his brother, shifting to point the rifle at the Renfields; vampire thralls hanging over the balconies with riot guns. A burst of automatic fire brought down two.

"Dean," came the calm voice in his ear again, "behind you."

He pivoted, hurling the pair of holy water balloons he had drawn from the bag. They hit the vampire in the chest, exploding in silver flame. Dean raised his shotgun and blew out its legs with an incendiary round. Fire roared from the barrel in a white-hot cone, uncomfortably close to his hands. Dragon's breath, she had called it.

The tiny woman had the hookup.

The flames leapt toward him as the vampire flailed. Dean took off its head with the machete dangling from his wrist, he booted it away. He turned again and dropped the one that approached in his peripheral vision. There's always some dummy who thinks he can sneak up on you.

Fast. Methodical. It was nice to work with professionals every once in a while.

They had been right about the anthropomancy; a disemboweled body lay on the concierge desk. Sigils were painted in blood on the woodwork. His stomach turned.

It had been a decent hotel once, before this part of the suburbs had fallen into disrepair and the shadows had moved in. Now it was littered with trash, grass had grown up through the floor. Chipped pillars and upturned furniture filled the hallways beneath the balconies that outlined the atrium.

The bike roared by again as he turned. Rinse, repeat with another handful of vamps that melted out of the darkness toward him. It was weird to find an entire class of mutant vamp that went by The Buffy Rules, but hey. Decapitation is decapitation.

The double doors to the hotel kitchen slammed open and a figure dressed in medieval black stepped out.

"Ladies," Dean whispered, rolling his back to the nearest pillar. "We've got company."

He ventured a glance around the corner. Not the worst thing he'd ever seen, but pretty high on the list; dead, white eyes and a sunken face, the flaking, peeling skin of a long-dead corpse. It wore something raided from a production of Macbeth, in shades of goth.

It paused on a wide, shallow staircase next to a fountain of stagnant water, and raised a hand. Purple-black...not light, but an absence of it gathered around its fingers. It pitched the weird orb at the Harley with an absent wave.

Murphy swore.

There was a blast of screeching feedback in his ear and he flung the Bluetooth device away.

She dodged the sphere, but there wasn't enough room to recover. The orb of un-light floated past Dean and left a perfect, crumbling hole in a desk a few feet away. The motorcycle skidded in its trajectory toward the hotel restaurant and hit the rail separating the two with a shriek of steel on steel.

Murphy ditched the bike and tumbled along the floor. Sam didn't let go in time.

Dean ran for his brother.

Something tackled him from above, one of the men in dirty suits. He hit the floor, his head met the concrete and his vision went dark, his breath knocked from his lungs. A pair of cold, crushing hands wrapped around his throat. Dean rolled. He got a boot against it and shoved but the damned thing wouldn't budge. Vision dimmed around the edges as he fought for a better hold on his machete. A flash of metal took the arm off at the shoulder, a shot barked close to his ears, and everything was gore and noise.

Leather-gloved hands dragged him around a pillar as hail of buckshot hit the floor where they had been. He heard a dull ricochet whine. Karrin pulled off her helmet and leaned close to him to point up at shadowy figures on the balcony. Her voice was distant, underwater.

"Three more Renfields. Cover me."

"Got it." Dean shoved the machete back into his bag and drew his pistol and followed.

Sam was fending off a wave of encroaching vamps with the tiny rifle, hair sweat-plastered to his eyes from the helmet he had ditched. He was trying to wiggle his gangly form from between 600 pounds of wrecked bike and steel rails. The suppressed Belgian space-gun's high-velocity rounds would have rendered living flesh into red mist. It did nothing to slow the dead.

She stood from a crouch and stalked silently toward his brother.

Dean had thought, for a long time, that they had turned hunting into an art.

He aimed carefully at the human thralls, nothing more than shadows against the hotel room doors on the higher floors. He squeezed the trigger, turning to aim again. He flanked her, bringing down the third; it toppled over the broken rail of the fourth floor and landed with a thud.

What they did was science, reflex.

Her silent tread turned into a sprint and the woman dropped to her knees and slid, hamstringing the nearest vampire with a flick of the sword that would have seemed lazy if it hadn't been so goddamned accurate. She popped back to her feet and roundhouse kicked it into a beam of sunlight cutting down through the ruined roof.

It screamed as it burned, unable to move. One leg dangled by mere tendons as it tried to drag itself away. Dean paused to shoot it in the head, silencing the shrieks as the rest turned toward them.

Karrin raised her sword above her head. Her voice echoed as she called out over the rasping breaths. "You do realize I don't have to reload this, right?"

They turned and began to circle her, at least a dozen of them, slowly moving in.

Sam let the rifle fall on the sling and shoved the bike away with a groan of effort and a crash of metal. He rolled his shoulders and jogged toward his brother.

Dean drew a few holy water balloons from the gear bag and lobbed them at the vampires who followed him with enough force to knock one of them back as it burst into silver-white, smoking flame.

"Bowling for vamps, Sammy!" He threw another. "You alright?"

"I'll live." He caught the machete Dean tossed him, tested the weight of the blade approvingly and strode into the fray without pause. "Next time you're going on the bike!"

"Don't tempt me with a good time!"

Sam was incredibly quick for his size, absolutely brutal in hand-to-hand, deadly with any weapon, but Karrin…made him look like a lumbering Sasquatch. Not that he didn't already, a little bit. It was the hair.

She ducked beneath his strikes and swings as if it were a dance, brought the vampires down, cold, moving with lethal grace. Every flash of steel took a limb, blocked a hit, every kick snapped bone. Ichor flew, arcing ribbons of gore, and Dean stayed out of their way. He had seen the look on her face often enough on others – the kind of grim focus that wouldn't be broken if he accidentally stepped in front of her blade.

Some people mistake it for madness.

Dean went after the stragglers at edges of the brawl and drove them toward the center, hacking. There wasn't anything graceful about it, it was just killing. That's the thing about the fight, though - whether you're a lifetime martial artist or brawler, if you're not careful, you can lose yourself in it. Sometimes it's easier than thinking, sometimes you lose track of where you are, sometimes who you are...until you're ankle-deep in body parts.

Dry, wheezing laughter seemed to come from everywhere at once.

"Well, that's not fucking creepy. At all."

"Alright, Tony Snark, Incredible Sulk. Don't look at her eyes," Murphy whispered as she grabbed their sleeves and pulled them backward, into the light, "and don't let her touch you."

"I must say, Lieutenant, you do know how to make an entrance." Mavra ascended the stairs and seemed to bring the cold, the darkness along as it strode toward them. "Only it isn't Lieutenant anymore, is it?"

"I'm no longer limited by the constraints of the badge." Murphy flicked goo from her blade with a bored twitch of her wrist. Dimples showed in her cheeks, but the smile never touched her eyes. "If that's what you mean."

"Question." Dean shoved a shotgun into Sam's hands, a belt of ammo. "Why are these assholes such huge drama queens? It's like every single time, I swear."

"I think they resent the success of Twilight," Sam muttered in a voice barely louder than the rattle of shells he raked into the gun.

"Don't we all," someone sighed. "Don't we all."

Glass crunched. Dean peered over his shoulder at the figure who darkened the door

It might have been the man from the photo in Murphy's house – her partner, the dead wizard guy. Almost. This guy was tallish, with cheekbones that could split atoms, long black hair pulled into a loose tail. Gray eyes scanned the room as he walked in.

This guy was primetime drama-handsome instead of postapocalyptic and scruffy, though. Just embarrassingly good-looking; this was the guy you lose to trying to pick up girls at bar. A classy bar that you can't afford. He wore expensive boots, jeans and a Walking Dead t-shirt, there was a nickel-plated Desert Eagle on one hip, a razor-honed Gurkha sword on the other.

"Thomas." Murphy didn't turn to see who it was. "You're late."

"So these are the hobbits?" He smiled, wide and white and dangerous. "Does that make me Legolas again?"

"You've always looked more like Liv Tyler to me." She frowned at the gunk still stuck to her sword.

"I'll take it."

"Raith." Mavra spat, the word they finally let it get in seethed with hate. "Your sister let you out to play?"

"You know Lara," Thomas drawled. He didn't break stride as he stepped over a twitching vampire. He drew his own sword and pistol with a flourish as he stopped next to Murphy. "She just wants the best-looking species on top—"

Karrin's humorless laugh echoed in the atrium.

"Of the food chain," Thomas rolled his eyes.

Mavra flickered into darkness and appeared again, less than a foot away. The creep liked to play with its food first, which wasn't an opportunity you gave Dean if you actually wanted to eat. He finished reloading his pistol and racked the slide with a smile. "Hello, beautiful."

"And Dean Winchester." It arched a spiderwebby eyebrow at him. The thing had an eerily expressive face, for something crunchy-dead. "How was Hell? Warm?"

…And it knew him. Yay.

"Well. It wasn't Chicago." Dean flicked a piece of smoking vamp debris off the sleeve of his jacket. "So the pizza wasn't as good, but nobody tried to mug me."

Murphy's eyes snapped toward him, burning.

"Oh." Thomas snorted. "For fuck's sake, Murph, you brought in these guys? That's why you didn't introduce me."

So this guy knew about them, too. Jesus Christ.

"Empty night, the Winchesters," Thomas continued, undaunted. "I thought you guys would be… older. More redneck, maybe? Look at this one, he has great hair."

The vampire paused in its circle around them and stared up at his brother. "And that would make you Sam, no? The boy with demon blood?"

Sam made a face and stared down, down at the vampire. He could have crushed it with one boot if it wasn't a whackjob sorceress.

It tried to smile again. "Although I doubt that would bother you, Karrin."

Murphy made strangled, furious noise and it was Dean's turn to stare at her.

Mavra waved a dismissive hand. "I don't know who to thank for bringing me whom. Did you know she holds one of the Swords of the Cross? A holy blade, blessed by the White God. You should have brought it with you, after how well it served you against the Lords of Outer Night."

"Swords of the...Lord of the what?" The image of the katana on her mantel flickered into his mind's eye, unassuming, with its bamboo sheath and rust-flecked iron handguard...

After seeing what she could do, he had an inkling it probably wasn't rust.

Thomas leaned in between the brothers to fake-whisper. "So these other vampire douchebags set themselves up as Mayan gods at this temple in Mexico. And we had to go kill them."

"All of them," Karrin murmured, death in her voice as cold and implacable as the steel in her hands.

"Oh, yeah," Sam bumped him with an elbow, eyes wide. "We watched that on TV, remember, Dean? That vamp massacre at Chichen Itza? The reporters couldn't figure it out, they thought it was some sort of cartel thing gone wrong."

"That was you guys?" Dean asked interestedly, pretending to ignore the dead thing pacing around them in a hungry circle.

"The ones sliced up like sushi, I'm betting?" asked Sam, eying their swords.

"Can we keep them? I want to keep them. I'll feed them and walk them and everything, Karrin, honest."

Dean grinned. "And the other ones? The uh…'Temple of Doom-ed,' ones?"

"A bloodline curse," Mavra rasped. "Word gets around, darling."

Thomas went still – garden statue still, which was weird. Murphy's faced paled.

"Oh, but big, bad Dresden isn't here to protect you now. Took a bullet to the chest, or so they say. We could smell his blood for miles." Dry, cracked lips peeled back from broken teeth. "I could find him. Bring him back for you. Although I doubt he would look much like himself after so long at the bottom of the lake—"

"Bitch—"

Dean caught the woman by the shoulder of her leather jacket, gently. Thomas's lips had curled into a silent snarl.

The vampire rambled on. "I heard Dresden's shade lingered on for a while. Tragic."

Ugh. Dean had spent time in the Veil, himself. Un-fucking-pleasant; nearly impossible to contact anyone or do anything, just close enough to the people you care about to see and hear them but not close enough to make a difference. No wonder spirits go insane.

"…And your friend, the Hellhound? He had some skill with a rifle, if I remember. Rumor has it your mercenary associate doesn't visit our fine city anymore. I wonder why that is. But I must say, your new playmates look rather...edible. First things first, though."

"Most likely, Mavra will come after her, now that her partner's out of the picture. I know you guys probably did the same background on us check we did on you, so I don't have to explain—"

Butters went through the medical bag on the tailgate of his truck a second time, checking supplies. Dean nodded. Sam winced.

"Her partner's death was rough on everyone, but Karrin took it the hardest of all. He kind of...came back for a little while. The wrong, um… Swayze way. Then there was a throwdown with a necromancer, and he was gone again. We tried to find him, a few séances and whatnot. I don't think she's convinced that he's actually..." Butters frowned at the bag of medical gear he was checking. "But now, with all those bodies, the anthropomancy, we think the Black Court has been looking for him, too. Dresden had dirt on every monster and half the mobsters in this city, he knew things, and from what I've heard of Mavra, she wouldn't think twice about trying to bring him back from wherever he is to use what he knows" The mortician had looked sick, saying it. "Karrin won't let that happen. She'll go to any lengths."

Dean didn't have time to seize the hand that slipped into the duffel bag over his shoulder, or stop Murphy's elbow before it slammed into his solar plexus. He doubled over, gasping. Sam made a grab for her but she dodged his hand, whirling out of reach with the stake she had nabbed from the gear bag in one hand and her short sword in the other.

She was fast – shreds of black cloth fell in the wake of her blade as she ducked and rolled out of the way of the spheres of un-light the vampire flung at her, slashing at the air where it had been.

Mavra waved a hand. The kitchen doors burst from their hinges. Dogs, huge black and bloody dogs howled out in a slavering pack.

"Darkhounds!" Thomas called as he sprinted after her, a blur too fast to be mortal. He caught up in a matter of steps. "Get out of here!"

The dogs came after Sam and Dean. His brother shoved him forward and they sprinted toward the mass of upturned tables and chairs beneath the balconies, weaving and climbing. Sam turned to shoot, caught his foot under a chunk of broken concrete and fell. A dog leaped, sank its teeth into the muscle of Sam's calf. His brother screamed and Dean froze.

Memories of Hell, red and infra-black and razor-edged clawed against the back of his eyes, trying to break through again. The screams.

Dean shook his head.

Someone darted out of the darkness and shot the dog. With a Supersoaker. It steamed and yelped, let go of Sam and fled.

"It's me, don't shoot!" Butters got an arm under Sam's shoulders and helped him to one foot. "Okay, can you move? Let's get behind this desk. Jesus, this is a mess...Dean, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm…" He knelt next to them to keep the dogs at bay, and watched as the other three circled each other in the very center of the room, whirling.

Thomas's kukri flashed, in to attack Mavra, gun out to defend himself from the darkhounds – Dean had never seen anyone move that fast. And Murphy was almost as quick. She jabbed a stake into nothing, flung it away as it burst into flame in her hand, spun out of the way of one sphere of deadly magic, then flattened nearly to floor to dodge the next.

They weren't fast enough.

With a shout, she heaved her sword at Mavra as the sorceress raised her hand again, purple-black light swirling in a sphere around shriveled fingertips. The blade snicked through the air, through the orb of not-light as it collapsed in on itself. Nothing but needles of metal and shredded polymer shattered against the pillar behind it.

The vampire sorceress had vanished.

Murphy breathed, quick and winded, still as prey. Only her eyes moved.

"Run, Sarge," Dean whispered. "What are you doing?"

She had to know that Mavra would appear right behind her…and did, a heartbeat later. The woman sprinted a few yards, tripped and as she rolled, drew her pistol. She shot until the slide locked open, a hail of spent brass rang on the marble floor. The rounds tore through Mavra as if she was nothing and the vampire was on Karrin in an instant, hauling the woman to her knees by her throat. Her empty gun clattered to the floor as she futilely tried to pull at the dead hands.

"Do you want to start another war?" Thomas's voice thundered in the huge atrium as he marched toward them, his deathly-sharp sword raised, the same mirror-color as his eyes, snarling dogs on his heels. "You know how the last one ended."

"Another inch, Raith."

His hands fell to his sides as a pair of darkhounds drove him back.

The vampire pressed its cheek against Murphy's, dead fingers digging into pale skin. "He never told you, did he? Dresden bought your life from me with the Darkhallow rites. He gave up Kemmler's book to save you. Die in the truth."

"No!" she gasped as Mavra's hand tightened on her neck. Something snapped. Crimson beads and a crucifix bounced across the floor. The vampire seized her by the collar of her jacket and bashed her face into the floor. Mavra let her slip to the floor in a shuddering heap.

"Oh, Jesus," swore Butters.

"Stay here," Dean warned. He leaned around the corner of the desk, gun in hand, ready, waiting to charge.

With one hand, Karrin wiped blood from her nose and mouth, then scrambled for purchase on the floor, the other fumbled at her throat.

"More fragile than she seems." Mavra stroked her short hair with one yellow-nailed hand and caught the back of her neck in an iron grip. The vampire stared at Thomas, beckoned him to come closer. "Though I see why Vadderung wants her so badly. He's going to be disappointed."

Murphy twitched away from the vampire's touch. Her breath was a ragged sob, the too-familiar choke of someone trying not to inhale their own blood. She wiped a hand across her nose and mouth again, her bloody hands scrabbled weakly, trying to get away.

"Now that the wizard himself is out of the picture, I can rid myself of Dresden's plaguing little cadre, and the Winchesters as well. A banner day for the Black Court..."

With one side of her face to the floor, Karrin caught Dean's gaze.

She tapped her index finger on the floor once. Twice.

He stared at her bloodied hands.

"Son of a bitch."

If this had been his job, something so personal, he would have been working the angle for months, waiting for the right place and time to draw the vampire out. He sure as hell wouldn't have planned a frontal-assault with some strangers in a fucking diner. No, she had been prepared for this and when the opportunity finally struck, she struck back, used everything and everyone at her disposal. Ruthlessly.

Herself, first and foremost.

Murphy wasn't trying to pull away or push herself up. She was drawing on the floor in her own blood, crooked lines and half-circles, hidden beneath her body, he could barely see. A banishment? A binding, maybe.

She slowly inched the top of a rune-carved wooden stake out of the calf of her motorcycle boot – it looked more like a broken sliver of a mop handle, really.

She met his eyes again. Dean winked.

This had been her plan all along; he knew because he would have done the same damn thing. Getting close enough to take the bitch out meant getting taken down herself, playing into the sorceress's drama, something her friends would never have allowed. He and Sam had been the adventitious arrivals, they had stumbled in at just the right time. She had actually said it to his face, more than once.

Hobbits. Goddammit.

"Who knows? Some of you might even be useful to me. You should be praying, little girl." Mavra raved. "Shall I help you? 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for—'"

"OH," he jumped up and bellowed, out of tune, "WE'RE HALFWAY THERE, OH, LIVIN' ON A PRAYER! TAKE MY HAND AND WE'LL MAKE IT I SWEAR—"

Time fractured – hilariously. The vampire sorceress's head snapped toward him with such force it would have killed a living being. Thomas stared, laughed – it rang sharp like knives in the steel and cultured marble of the hotel atrium. From the corner of his eye, Dean could see Butters and his brother reaching to pull him down behind their cover.

No one noticed Murphy, crouched, with that carved stake in her hand, fury burning in her narrowed eyes.

Mavra raised a hand towards Dean and—

Nothing.

Curious, the vampire blinked at its empty hand.

Karrin blurred into motion. She drove the wooden splinter into the vamp's chest with the kind of strength that only comes from blind rage. Shock registered on its eroded features as the woman dragged it over the symbol she had drawn in her blood on the floor, snarling:

"Þá væri þér hefnt, ef þú værir vargr á viðum úti auðs andvani ok alls gamans, hefðir eigi mat nema á hræjum spryngir."

With her other hand Murphy reached into the collar of her jacket and pulled until something snapped. A silver charm dangled from a strand of black leather. She threw it down on the bloodrune.

It landed with a high, ringing chime too loud for the action – at the same time earthquake-deep and resonant. He could feel in his chest, through the soles of his feet and the plan crystallized, slow and brilliant: the entire point of the endeavor, bringing in the Harley, guns blazing, to shoot down the roof hadn't been to make light, that had never mattered. It had been a maneuver to lure the sorceress into the center of the room.

It was a ruse so large that he had never seen what was happening right in front of him.

The circle.

Another woman knelt across from him, her fingertips pressed to the outside of the huge, nearly-perfect, looping circle of black tread left by the motorcycle, her head bent, eyes half-closed and trancelike between a curtain of dark blonde hair. Her hippie skirt pooled on the floor around her beneath a fireman's jacket.

The circle had been cleared of debris, when? Dean hadn't noticed. He hadn't noticed the other woman arriving, either – he felt an echo of a headache when he looked at her.

Mavra's control over the darkhounds unraveled and they attacked Thomas. The man tried to lead them away from the young woman holding the makeshift circle, cutting down one, then another.

"Holy…" Butters glanced over their cover. "What's Molly doing here?"

"What's a Molly?" Sam leaned around the edge to look. "Oh. Look at the circle—"

"I think it's a binding." Dean leaned over the edge of the table, resting his arms as he tracked the last darkhound in his pistol's sights. He fired and it dropped a few feet short of Thomas. "I can't see the sigil, but I think they've trapped the bitch in her meatsuit."

Blue static lit along the crooked lines Murphy had drawn in blood, jumping and crackling into a storm. It whirled around the two in the circle in a vengeful blue vortex, tearing shreds of black from the vampire. The air was rich with ozone. The sound began to build, the flashes turned to flickering silver, to blinding, twenty-foot high flares of white fire and thunder that rushed out and snapped against the edge of the tire tread circle as if trying to escape.

Dean had seen it somewhere before, could hear the echo of a woman's voice, an angel's voice – close your eyes, close your eyes.

Grace, Soulfire. The fuel of creation.

"Don't look!" He pulled his brother and the ME down behind their cover as the light flashed by, tactile, heated, burning behind his eyelids. It lasted only moments but he had no idea what would be left, if anything or anyone at all.

The atmosphere in the room seemed to return to normal, cleaner, maybe. Dean and Butters helped Sam to his feet, looking around.

Thomas stood a few yards from the circle, one arm over his face and still holding his sword, white-knuckled. The young woman named Molly had her eyes closed, her left hand stretched in front of her. A band of beads around her wrist glowed faintly.

Karrin knelt alone in the center of the room, her hands in her lap. The rune she had drawn had been scorched black in the center of a circle of perfectly clean marble almost thirty feet across, empty except for the red glint of rosary beads, bits of chain and a broken silver crucifix. For a few inches outside of the circle, the black glass had been reduced to gritty sand. The vampires, pieces of vampire inside it were just…gone.

"What the fuck was that?" Thomas demanded. He didn't bleed right from the gashes the darkhounds had left, he looked paler than before, if it was possible. The anger and worry in his voice rippled through the huge room, everyone felt it. Molly's face jerked to one side as if she'd been slapped. He took a step backward and bowed his head for a moment, breathing. When he looked up again, his eyes were a normal, mortal gray, not the mirror-color they had been before. "Karrin. I promised. I promised I'd make sure you'd be okay—"

"And we are." She stood with a shaking breath and faced him, squaring her shoulders and drawing herself as tall as possible. "Everybody's okay. Right?"

"Sam got bit by a dog," Dean yelled.

Sam punched him in the ribs. "Shut up."

"Dude's not okay," Dean whispered as he got an arm under his brother's shoulders.

"Obviously." Sam ground out between his teeth as he limped toward the middle of the atrium.

"Thomas," Butters called. "Let's get a look at those scratches, man."

"I'm fine."

Molly was picking up the scattered beads of the rosary. Dean handed her an evidence envelope from his gear bag. She thanked him as he helped her up – the piercings in her eyebrows and nose could have set off a metal detector and a tattoo spiraled up her neck above the collar of her coat.

"Molly, right?"

"Yeah." Her look was calculating – she had been warned about him.

"Nice work."

He stared at the floor for a moment, trying to place the crooked, bisecting lines – very powerful, very old spellwork, typically used for rituals and long-term warding. He had never seen it used on-the-fly before. He leaned in toward his brother and said in a voice only Sam could hear, "Those tatted-up bikers? Not Neo-Nazis. Vikings."

"You mean the actual…wait, you think she's a— I mean, it would explain a lot." He nodded and then said, louder, "Old Norse? Uh, a bindrune?"

Karrin agreed with a nod as Butters checked her eyes with a tiny flashlight. "I'm fine, Waldo. It's just my nose, we can fix it later."

"What did you use to power it up? A charm or something?" Dean asked. Something that had been juiced for years by someone backed by angelic forces? "That wasn't you, was it?"

"No. Ritual magic is like a…" she looked at the younger woman, brow furrowed. Her voice was thick. "Cosmic phone booth?"

"You punch in the right numbers, you pay," Molly explained, "and hello, operator."

"So you had the number," said Dean

"And the metaphysical currency?" Sam asked.

"I was supposed to use my rosary, as an object of faith. But then…well." She held out her hand. It had been clutched so tightly it had left an imprint on her palm – a silver kite-style shield about the size of his thumb, handmade, a little pentacle was etched onto the front and a rune carved onto the back. The amulet was smooth from years of wear, very much like the one around his own neck, though the edges were blackened from the ritual. "You guys saw."

"It's all burnt," Dean said.

She shook her head. "It was like that before."

Butters looked it over. "I didn't think those ward-bypass amulets had enough stored energy for anything like that. Mine was a little dinosaur thingy from the Field Museum."

"Mine was a Rainbo Brite keychain." The young woman with the piercings nodded as she dusted her hands. She handed Sam the envelope full of rosary beads. "Ours wouldn't have worked like that, though—"

"Because that's not a ward amulet." Thomas reached out, then pulled his hand away gingerly. "This is part of the shield focus Harry used to wear. He must have given you this from the one that was ruined the day you guys saved those kids…the first time you fought Mavra. That was the same day you guys came to rescue me, remember? It feels like ages ago."

So it had belonged to her partner – a shield focus, charged by someone who was immensely powerful, with friends in high places. He could see Sam all but working out the spell, it would have worked in place of a faith object to key a ritual only if she had worn it for…years. No wonder Thomas wouldn't handle it; Dean thought he had already figured him out but this nailed it down; there were certain things that succubi couldn't touch, gifts between lovers and soulmates were said to top the list.

"I remember."

"Where did you guys banish her?" Sam asked quietly.

"Chicagotory. It's a demesne, not a nice one from what I've heard," said Molly, smiling wickedly. "If she wants to stay in our town, she can stay in the very worst part."

"It's only temporary. A year and a day," Karrin reminded her, "so don't get cocky, kid."

"Right," Molly smacked her fist into her palm. "But maybe something worse than her will eat her while we work on how to take her down for good."

"Either that or she'll be just…super-pissed when she gets back. Phase Two," said Murphy. The younger woman saluted, and with a ripple of her fingers, disappeared.

Sam stared at the place Molly had vanished. "Where'd she go?"

"Phase Two?" asked Dean. "What's Phase Two?"

Murphy ignored them, turning toward her friends. "What it said about Kemmler's book – you were there. You both were. Harry never told me that…thing was blackmailing him into finding it. When I started asking, Mort wouldn't tell. Carlos didn't know."

Thomas said nothing and looked away.

Butters bit his lip. "I helped him find it. I had to, we had to use a GPS locator. But I didn't know what he did with it, Karrin. It could have been destroyed. Mavra could have been lying."

She nodded once, then turned and walked toward the ruin of her bike. She kicked one of the discarded motorcycle helmets across the room so hard that a crack spidered across the visor when it hit a pillar, and silently pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead.

Sam frowned after her. "Should someone—"

"Definitely not," Butters said in a tone of warning.

Dean watched her from the corner of his eye. "Kemmler. Guy was a necromancer back in World War Two...ish, right? Like a Red Skull thing?"

Sam nodded. "And before that, and after that. Went around reanimating mass graves and killing fields."

"We fought his disciples. Um. Her partner and I. Well, he did most of the fighting. It was insane." Butters pulled his bloodied gloves off, tucked them in a bag and continued in a low voice. "That book had instructions for a ritual to make the reader into kind of a god using human souls. Really dark, really dangerous stuff. I didn't know he was being blackmailed into it, either."

Thomas's jaw tightened and he said nothing.

No wonder Sarge had had to pull a fast one on her friends with Coachella Galadriel. Loose lips, etcetera, but apparently her pals took confidentiality very seriously and had effectively deep-sixed some information on her maybe-dead, maybe-not wizard partner…boyfriend? Dean still wasn't sure on the technicalities and at this point there was no way he was going to ask. And it was painfully obvious she wasn't the kind of person who wanted to get all Dr. Phil or whatever. He wasn't the hug-it-out kind of guy, either, but he shrugged, and followed her anyway.

Murphy stared down at the wreck of her bike, arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her friends might not have any idea what to say, but Dean did.

The vampire bitch had killed her baby.

He looked the bike over. It wasn't too bad, but a wrecked ride was just the cherry on top of the bullshit sundae.

"Hey." He waited until she glanced up at him to speak again. "I can fix that."

Black bruises were already starting to spread beneath her eyes. Her bottom lip was split and still welled bright blood. Her nose had already started to swell. Red-stained tears pattered the dusty floor and the toes of her boots as Dean knelt next to the Harley.

"This isn't so bad. You hit that rail pretty hard but it's salvageable. Looks like the dents need hammered out of the front fender, maybe rebuild the clutch, one of the carbs is leaking a little bit but that's no biggie, the handlebar's bent just a little, I can straighten that or put some new ones on for you, a new headlight and signals, and I can repaint the tank."

The little woman stared down at him. She hadn't expected to be followed, she was like him; she liked to cry behind a locked door and then pretend everything was apple pie.

He shrugged and nodded toward where they had parked. "Well, you saw my car."

"You did that?"

"Sure."

Murphy's non-question was classic cop, though her voice had dropped to words only he could hear. "Before or after you went to Hell."

"Heh. Few times each way, actually." He checked for damage on the brakelines. "How'd you know the vamp wasn't fucking with me?"

"No stable person makes that many jokes."

"Okay." He smiled, straightening a bent spoke. "But that isn't how you knew."

"No." The woman knelt next to him. "When it said that, your brother had this…look on his face, like he was going to kill everyone in the room with his bare hands."

He glanced at Sam, who was somehow making limping even more awkward than usual. If it had been demons instead of vampires, the entire shindig would have lasted about ten minutes, despite the fact he had begged him to stop using the psychic weirdness. For being as huge as he was, Sam could really be a little shit.

"You have no idea. Here." Dean dug around in his jacket pocket and handed her a mostly-clean handkerchief. There were only a few spots of motor oil on it. Murphy didn't seem to mind. "Teeth okay?"

"Yeah."

"Looked like it hurt."

She shrugged. She wasn't going to ask him about Hell. Dean was going to have to drag the question out, kicking and screaming. He knew something about stubborn pride, though; he'd been resisting the not-so-subtle direction of the literal angel on his shoulder for months, and here he was, having a conversation with a woman who supposedly kept a Holy Sword in her living room.

Well played, Castiel.

"You know, you're not the only one who can run a background check."

She shrugged again. "And you don't seem to mind walking in on the middle of a blood feud."

"I love a good feud. Your ME told me the vamps might be after your dead partner," Dean said bluntly, wiping his hands on his jeans. "He also told me you don't really think the guy is actually dead, which…" he shrugged. "I can dig it."

Murphy's expression flattened at his joke. She rolled the frayed end of the clutch cable between her thumb and fingers. "Molly and I got some info from one of my old sources who said he'd heard that my partner might still be around, but he wasn't sure what shape Harry would be in, metaphysically-speaking, even if— and he's the one who tipped us off that the Black Court was back in town, working on necromancy again."

"And you trust this source?"

"Trust? No." She dropped the cable. "But he won't lie to me."

Dean doubted many people did more than once.

"If he is gone, I have to…we have to make sure they don't get to him. Harry didn't get the rites he put in his will, Molly didn't have a chance to do the ritual. There was no body. If...if he's dead, I won't let those vamps bring him back, summon him up. He knew too much. They would try to use what he was." Her voice was hard, absolute. "He wouldn't want that. I won't allow it."

"And if he's not?"

"Then he'll come back." She turned toward Dean, her blue eyes too tired and solemn for her face; she wanted to ask how, badly, but knew how deeply personal it was; the woman had seen death and trauma, more than anyone should and she could see it on him, through the shield of lies and jokes and one-liners, and she would have let him keep that shield, knew what it meant to someone like him.

He didn't have to tell her, not about all of it. Not Alistair, not about the Seals or the capital 'A' Apocalypse. She had enough to worry about. Not about—

Dean sighed and rubbed a hand across the sweat and grime on his forehead. Damned angels.

"A while back, I made a deal with a crossroads demon to…help somebody who needed it. It's not all big dicks and dollar bills, y'know." Dean glanced toward the entrance. The ME was reworking Sam's hasty bandages. His brother was protesting, not enough to keep the earnest Butters at bay. "Those deals have expiration dates, and my number came up. The bitch sent a hellhound to collect."

"But you're here now," she reassured.

"Divine intervention. Literally. One of God's own accountants yanked my soul out of the lake of fire, and I woke up in the dirt."

"An angel," she said, in the dry, weary tone of someone who has actually spent some one-on-one with an angel.

"Yeah. Said good things happen. Said I wasn't done. Do you believe that?"

Murphy said nothing, ran a finger over the words Harley-Davidson.

"Yeah. If you don't believe me," he continued, "ask Sammy. He tried to straight-up stab me in the face when I came back. They said I was a zombie-revenant-demon-skinwalker. I've had gallons of holy water thrown at me. Gallons, I've basically been holy water-boarded. I've been salted and jabbed with silver knives. I'm more Thanksgiving turkey than man at this point."

The thin-pressed line of her lips trembled and she blinked a few times. Dean didn't know the woman well enough to tell whether she was about to laugh or cry, and he changed the subject.

"Anyway, let's get back to the part where you played us. That rune bullshit, that punk rock witch, the incubus dude, you didn't let us in on that part of the plan. Or really, any of the plan."

"Molly's not a witch. She's my partner's apprentice. We needed her help." The contrast of spreading bruises against blue eyes made her fierce expression even more frightening. "Thomas is family. He's a big boy and he can take care of himself, but so help me God, if I hear that any hunters have so much as breathed Molly's name, we will find you, and when I'm done with you, she'll make you spend the rest of your life convinced you guys are kitchen appliances or male strippers, or whatever makes her happy, are we clear?"

"…She can do that?"

"That's where she'll start." She rubbed at a scuff on the motorcycle's tank. "The provisional banishment was actually Molly's play, she said Mavra would expect us to go hard, wouldn't anticipate the brute squad to lay down magic without Harry here. And she was right. I was the only one with the connections to get the draugr bindrune, the only one who could get close enough to use it, even though I don't do…I mean, I had to memorize that and practice for weeks. It was awful."

"Oh my god. You'd never done a banishment before?" he interrupted, grinning, "You were a magic virgin."

"No, I…I'd never, oh for—" her eyes narrowed. "Dick."

"You're welcome for the awesome distraction, by the way."

"Butters and Thomas would never have let me get caught, but we needed them, too. I'm gonna hear about it. There were so many things that…it was so much simpler with Dresden. Half the nightmares we've fought in the past six months alone wouldn't have dared set foot in the city if he was here."

"I'm surprised they do now." He offered a hand as he stood and to his surprise, she took it. Together they rolled the wreck of her bike to the doors. "You know, I have seen some bizarro hunter shit in my time, but I have never seen anyone put down a sacred circle with a Harley. In my professional opinion, that was fucking hardcore."

"I can't believe that worked." Sam muttered, running both hands through his hair. He sat on a duffel bag. "That should not have worked."

"This from the guy who draws devil's traps in crayon."

"It was all I had."

"Purple crayon."

"Magic theory is all about intent," said Butters, thoughtful as he taped and gauzed Thomas's gashes, though they were already starting to heal. "So it shouldn't matter what you use. But really, crayon?"

"We were in a school." Sam made a face. "Creepy school."

Thomas crossed his arms over his chest, frowning. "I…"

"You're pissed, I know." Murphy shoulder-checked him gently. "Kind of impressed. And, admit it, a little jealous that you don't look as good as I do in leather."

"Jealousy is below me." Thomas said, beatific, as he got an arm under Sam's shoulders and headed for the ME's truck, parked outside and running. "At least now I can update my files; one-half of the dastardly Winchester brothers is actually a Clydesdale in disguise."

"I don't think he's going to fit in your Hot Wheels truck, Butters."

"It's Andi's truck and if you guys get it bloody, she'll kill me and then you won't have a group healer." With Thomas's help, they managed to get Sam in the passenger seat, loaded her bike into the back of the ME's truck, tied it down. Murphy sent the three off with directions to meet back at her place for pizza.

"Dean, bring your car around, keep it running. I'll meet you out here." Murphy hefted her suspiciously-heavier Nike gym bag onto her shoulder.

"Do you need help?" he called, but she had already disappeared into the building. He shrugged and walked down the alley.

Enough time passed for him to stow the heavy plate vest in the trunk and clean his guns before she got into the idling car. Murphy put her seatbelt on and motioned for him to do the same. Safety first for monster-slayers. They were halfway down the block when she pulled out a tiny phone and dialed.

"Gard. It's done. Yeah, worked just like you said. Beat up a little, nothing too bad. Payment's ready. We'll talk. Text the number I left with you."

She reached out the open window and adjusted the angle of the side mirror.

He bit back the reflexive comment – no one messes with the car, not nobody, not no how – and looked up at the rearview in time to see the windows in the lower levels of the hotel as they blew out in a brilliant rush of crystal and gold, smoke and flame, the mortar and stone in the upper stories began to crumble.

And then it wavered slightly, like a bad TV signal, then snapped out of the mirror like it had been photoshopped out of existence.

"Phase two." She glanced at him, gauging his expression. "You're not in Kansas anymore."

"Not for the longest time," Dean agreed.

Murphy sat back in the seat, silent. They were halfway across the city when she cleared her throat, the ghost of a smile haunting the corner of her lips.

"Bon Jovi—"

"Don't hate the player, hate the game."

stay tuned...