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Here we gooooooooo!

"Sounds like you have some problems," Crowley answered once Balthazar told him what had happened back when he and Catherine first met. The angel only grimaced at him, but the demon shrugged. "I'm not sure what you want me to tell you. There's a ton of beautiful spells that call for an angel's grace. Just ask Tweedledee and Tweedledum here. They know all about that."

Instead of glaring at the brothers like Cat was doing, Bal only rolled his eyes. "Yes, I'm not a moron, but this was important. Abbadon was desperate and I have it on very high authority that this wasn't for your everyday recipe."

"On who's authority, I wonder," Crowley returned, furrowing his eyes, but receiving no response. "Honestly, unless you give me something to work with, even I can't tell you what she's up to. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly her biggest fan."

Balthazar glanced to Catherine for any extra information she could think of and, after a beat of silence, something did occur to her. "She wanted him to hand it over," she finally spoke up, gaining the demon's attention. "Abbadon was willing to take his grace by force, but she was trying to convince him to hand it over on his own. She said that the grace was supposed to be stronger that way."

Crowley stayed silent for a moment, watching Cat closely, until he finally summed up her words. "An angel's... willing grace. Is that what you're telling me?" She only glanced back to Balthazar, who looked as lost as she was, while Crowley glanced between the two of them. Eventually, he took a deep breath. "Well, I can see why your very high authority might be a bit perturbed about the situation now... Tell you what," he smirked, "Let loose some of these chains, let me stretch the old sea legs a bit, and I might be able to be of some use to you. I don't do things for free, I'm sure you've heard."

Bal was just happy to know that Crowley wasn't completely useless, but he didn't have the chance to stop Catherine, who was already edging her angel blade along the demon's neck. Right... She was probably still angry from earlier...

"This sword kills angels," she told him with a smile, "as I'm sure you know, O' Mighty King. I'm still a little new to most of this stuff, but I would really love to see what this thing would do to you."

Crowley, who was at first surprised, only smiled back. "I'm the King of Hell, sweetheart. Whatever you plan to do to me, I'm excited."

Now it was Bal's turn to frown, but Catherine didn't seem very off put. If anything, she was more annoyed. "And I can't help but notice that you seem to be all in one piece, more or less. You worked the crossroads, right? How 'bout a deal?" Crowley's eyes flashed dangerously from her sarcasm and even more so from the fact that she didn't care. "Tell us what we want to know and I'll let you keep your appendages. I might even not kick your balls in for calling me sweetheart."

He just stared back at her for a moment before glancing at Balthazar, then looked her up and down. "I like her. Where on Earth did you find this doll?" Before any answers could be had, he had already turned his full attention back to Cat. "Have you considered a retirement plan yet?" She pushed back against him, nearly cutting his throat, but before she had the chance to scream more threats at him, Crowley was already backing down. "Okay! Okay."

Her head barely twisted in confusion at how easy that was. Catherine wasn't that scary and she knew it. She was about to make sure he wasn't going to deal them a trick, when Balthazar's hand fell on her shoulder. He seemed to think Crowley was going to tell the truth, for whatever reason, so she backed off.

The demon huffed and shifted until he was comfortable again. "But only because I have a feeling I'm going to like her plans much less than you lot."

The angel continued to frown at the rate this was going as he took back his hand from the hunter. "What is she planning?" he asked again.

Crowley glared up to him and then around to everyone else in the room. "Abbadon," he said loudly, "is a whore. She always has been and she always will be, along with being a prickling splinter in my side, but that's another topic. The point is... as scary and self-sufficient she may be, she will always remain a whore."

Catherine rolled her eyes. "And the moral of this story is?"

He glanced over to her, but the playful smirk was long gone. "Every whore needs her pimp... Beyond all else, she is loyal." Cat wasn't the only one to furrow her brow in confusion, so he looked out among them again. "All of the angels are on the ground. Some, if not all of them, are back to life again. Heaven is completely defenseless and, even better, no longer militant." He looked back to Sam and Dean. "I imagine in all of the confusion, no one bothered to notice if some more of those little seals were being broken, did they?"

The younger brother was the first to come forward. "What?"

"There are more than sixty-six seals, Moose," Crowley replied. "It only takes sixty-six to open the door."

Catherine was confused, but whatever he was saying made some sort of sense to the Winchesters and Balthazar... By the looks on all of them, she didn't like whatever the hell was going on, but she didn't voice it. Instead, Dean intervened. "But there are some seals that have to be broken. Those can't be done again."

"That's right," the demon chuckled. "You broke the first one, but the magic part about that is it's the first one. All they have to do is back track."

Sam spoke up again, "But Lilith-"

"Lilith was the oldest that was still alive! She wasn't a Knight," Crowley told them, his rising voice finally gaining their silence for a minute.

The eldest Winchester opened his mouth a few times before a sound finally tumbled out. "That's impossible. It was all on, like, this big grand schedule thing. She can't open anything-"

"The apocalypse was on schedule," Crowley interrupted, "All she needs to open the door is to get the spell right." He then glanced past Dean to the newcomer.

"What's the spell?" Castiel had finally walked forward, drawing everyone's attention, especially Balthazar's. Catherine, while she didn't know exactly what was going on, still recognized the gravity of the situation and looked between the both of them until Bal looked back to Crowley expectantly.

The demon huffed again. "Sixty-five seals and a worm moon. She'll need the help of five angels, since Moose here isn't going to be of any use, plus her own sacrificed life... So, that's some good news, at least."

"You mean their graces," Cas continued, looking worried.

Crowley only tilted his head in thought. "The graces that they've handed over willingly, yes, so I wouldn't worry about your own. There's more than enough angels out there now who are either idiots or loyal to both Michael and the cause, as represented in our resurrected fellow right here."

"Worm moon," Dean mumbled, tapping both Castiel and Sam on their shoulders as he ran out of the room. His brother followed closely behind him while Cas hesitated a moment before following.

Kevin watched them run away before looking back to the group who remained. "What the hell is going on?"

Catherine looked over to Balthazar, who took a minute to look back to her without glancing to the actual speaker of the question. "She's raising Michael and Lucifer."

She only gave him a blank look, while Kevin approached closer and looked between him and Crowley. After a second, he dashed out of the room, too, following after the Winchesters. She watched him run away as she glanced around, completely lost and feeling way too rushed about this. How did this happen so quickly? More importantly, how did she manage to land in the middle of it?

Cat was just about to follow after everyone else when Balthazar grabbed hold of her arm to stop her. "Wait." He was looking to Crowley instead of her when she glanced back to him, but she obeyed and didn't run after the others just yet. Bal only looked back to Crowley and she couldn't quite tell what to read upon his face in the moment when he finally asked, "How did the angels fall?"

It took a second, but Crowley smirked again.

Dean and Sam made it back to the library and scrambled to the books. The eldest was the first to dump as many of them about Heaven and Hell he could find on to the table while Sam took out his laptop to find any strange, recent news around the world.

"He's gotta be lying," Dean mumbled to himself, throwing a few more books on to the table. "That's impossible. We would have known. Something would have happened and we would have figured it out by now."

Before Sam could type in the first thing, his eyes flashed and Ezekiel stood up straight. "Dean." The other stopped in mid-sentence to look over to his brother, realizing immediately it wasn't actually Sam, but the angel crossed to the other side of the table before he could say anything. "I cannot stay here."

Already flustered, Dean blinked back at him. "What? No. No, what?"

"Another angel is here, one that's been dead for years, and now Michael and Lucifer are going to walk the Earth again," Ezekiel said, terribly scared and taking a deep breath. "They will search out you and your brother. If I stay here, Lucifer will take his true vessel and I cannot fathom what he will do to me."

"To you?" Dean almost screamed in shock. "What about to Sam?"

Setting his jaw, he repeated himself slowly. "I cannot stay."

"You need to stay," the hunter replied desperately, "Sam needs you to stay. I need you to stay, dammit! Please! We need you now more than ever." Ezekiel only looked to Dean and didn't respond for a long moment, in which the other let out another short plea. "Please."

He glanced away and nodded before retreating away inside of Sam's mind again. Back in reality, Sam looked around to his new position in the room, but was distracted when Castiel walked in with a large open book.

"The worm moon," he announced, setting the book down on the table and pointing to a passage. "It's a phase of the moon that happens yearly. This year it's on March the sixteenth." He looked up to the brothers. "What's today?"

"The fourteenth," Catherine's voice carried from behind him as she approached the others. Cas had already moved far away from the table when Balthazar appeared along with her.

Before either could say anything more, Kevin ran in with a handful of books and papers, dumping them all at the other end of the table along with the angel tablet, which Balthazar quickly pointed to. "You idiots still have that thing?"

"I see you talked to Crowley," Dean grumbled while going back to sifting through books as Sam ran back over to his computer. "We were trying to fix it, FYI. Here," this he directed to Catherine, "You're a hunter. Come make yourself useful."

Balthazar rolled his eyes while Cat moved over to the books, but Kevin spoke up before the angel could. "There's nothing here in what I've already deciphered," he said, looking through the tablet and his notes. "Nothing about angels using their own graces for a spell, anyway. In... what's already been checked through."

Sam glanced to him while he clicked through different news websites. "How long will it take you to decipher any more of it?"

The younger kid just shook his head. "Way too long."

"Bal." Catherine reached over to the angel when she found something within the text she was going through. He was by her side in a second, finding what she was pointing to and frowning. "It's the same ones," she told him as he leaned against the table.

"Dammit," the angel muttered, but had already drawn Dean's attention.

"What?" he asked, getting more and more paranoid by the second. "What is it?"

"The sigils," Balthazar sighed without looking up to the other hunter, "It's the same ones the demons used to make those ghosts stronger... Why didn't I realize it?"

Catherine looked up to him, worried. "He did," she said, referring to Gabriel and he instantly caught it. Gabriel was suspecting exactly what they had gotten a lead on... It couldn't be a lie.

Sam's jaw locked as he looked through the news articles of the last month. "Dean, there's at least thirty of them and I'm only skimming the surface," he said quietly, gaining everyone's attention except for just his brother's. Still, he looked up to address him. "It's not a coincidence... What do we do?"

Everyone grew quiet and turned to look at Dean, who was still trying to blink out of the nightmare he had suddenly found himself swimming in. "We..." He licked his lips, trying to think back. "We know where the cage opens at... Abbadon will be there setting everything up. All we have to do is get over there and stop her before crazy shit happens." He was already moving around the group to find his jacket.

"What?" Sam asked, watching his brother. "You mean Maryland?"

Dean nodded. "We can be there by tomorrow if we hurry our asses up."

Catherine looked between the brothers as Sam hurried away from his laptop and into the back rooms. "Maryland, where?" she asked.

"Ilchester," Dean responded, checking his pockets for his keys before pointing to her. "You're not coming."

Immediately, she grew angry again. "What?"

The eldest Winchester turned back to the group and pointed to each of them. "Kevin and Cas aren't nearly as experienced as they should be, Balthazar's practically a walking bull's eye-" Dean ignored the comment he got in return and continued. "-and you're the only other hunter we've got and, right now, we really need someone who knows their stuff on ground control. I don't know you, but I'm desperate."

He turned back around before he could get any arguments in return, but Catherine didn't have any to give in that moment, knowing that his thinking was at least somewhat rational. Balthazar, on the other hand, looked around the room as if he had remembered something. "Where's Singer?"

Sam appeared again with his jacket on and a backpack in hand. "Dead," he answered, walking around his brother and already moving up the stairs.

Dean looked back to the group. "It's a long story. We'll tell you when it's over." With that, he started following after Sam. "Just hold the house down and keep in touch!" he called over his shoulder and then he was gone.

The others were silent for a long moment when Bal quietly muttered, "I suppose that's why I couldn't find him..."

Catherine glanced to him, then back to the rest of the room. Castiel had vanished, but Kevin stood still as a statue until he fell back into an empty seat. Lost again, she looked back up to Balthazar who only looked back down to her.

I did most of this chapter - aside from a few paragraphs at the beginning - in one day. School starts again tomorrow and I wanted it out in the wild before then. Oh, what a turn we have made, indeed.

New Supernatural this Tuesday!

Thanks for reading, guys.