Gabriel was half asleep when Loki showed up. He was the only one who was keyed into Gabriel's rather extensive wards.
"Hwa... hey Lo'. What time is it?"
"Five in the evening. Haven't you been sleeping properly?"
"Damn wizards keep tracking me. Crowley's at least decent enough to give me a head's up, but somehow they're finding my signature past the wards," yawned Gabriel.
"I may have an idea. Where's your wand?" asked Loki.
Gabriel handed it over.
"Tracking charms all over this thing. Mind if I have someone get you a new one?"
"So long as it works, no," said Gabriel.
Loki grinned.
"I'll be back in a few hours. Move your tent and get some sleep...I'll throw off any pursuers you have for a while," said Loki.
"Thanks Lo'."
Gabriel put his tent up moved to the next town and went to sleep in the first hotel he came across. Loki put enough wards to throw off any magicals or outside forces and waiting until Gabriel was well and truly asleep before leaving.
He had someone he needed to talk to.
God, more often called Chuck in his human form and known as Carver Edmund to everyone else, looked up when he felt Loki arrive.
"What's wrong?"
"Magicals are trying to track him. Mind helping me fashion a new wand for him?"
Chuck had an idea of what Loki had in mind.
"Come with me. We'll need to work fast if we're going to slip this past Micheal and the others," said Chuck.
He knew that they were still looking for him, but he didn't want to be found. It was why he hid as a prophet.
They went outside.
"First we're going to need a good chunk of your Grace," said Chuck.
"So this is going to be your way of turning him into an angel indirectly?" asked Loki.
"A way the demons won't be able to track. Even Crowley won't be able to notice until it's too late. And if we add a good portion of your soul into that hole in his, then it would be extremely difficult for Lucifer to kill you later," said Chuck.
"Wait, what?"
"A year after the first seal is broken, Lucifer ends up killing you while you protect the Winchesters and Kali. And I would prefer not to lose my favorite son to the one who screwed up," said Chuck.
"So how much Grace did you say you needed?" asked Loki.
Gabriel woke up the next morning feeling infinitely better than he had going to sleep. At the cheap coffee table with food was Loki.
"Morning Lo'," said Gabriel yawning.
"Got you a new wand."
"Really?" said Gabriel, a little more awake now.
"A rare, one-of-a-kind wand. Probably on par with the Elder wand," said Loki.
"Elder wand?" asked Gabriel.
"Some piece of wood that obtained belief the more owners it had. An angel played a prank on three brothers with three items. One overpowered spells like crazy and amplified natural magics, one brought a hallucination of those who've died so long as you knew the person you were summoning, and the third was an invisibility cloak that never unraveled no matter how old it got."
"Wait a damn minute..." said Gabriel, fully awake now.
He grabbed his dad's invisibility cloak out of his bag. It was for sentimental reasons mostly.
"That's the cloak!" said Loki.
"Son of a bitch. So this was a joke by an angel?"
"Still useful tho'," said Loki grinning.
"True. Disillusion and silencers work better in my opinion," said Gabriel.
"So you interested what your wand is made of?"
"Sure," said Gabriel.
"Do you know what happens when an angel's grace touches the earth?"
"Not a clue."
"Unlike other energies, when an angel looses or throws away their grace, when it touches the earth something is created. Usually trees for some odd reason."
"So the wood is..."
"The result of my Dad taking a chunk of my Grace and putting it into the earth."
"And the core?"
"One of my feathers and some metal thing he had lying around and had no use for," said Loki.
It was really his arch angel sword, but he wasn't going to tell Gabriel that.
"Wait, won't this mean you can track me anywhere you want?" asked Gabriel.
"Pretty much."
"Meh. Not like you can't find me anyway," said Gabriel shrugging.
Loki grinned.
"By the way, did you know that when Crowley removed Voldemort's soul fragment he left you wide open to possession?"
"Figures he didn't tell me what removing the piece would do," said Gabriel.
"But...I can leave a part of my grace in the spot and fill in the hole. Again, it would make finding you a snap, but with your new wand that's not much of an issue anyway," said Loki.
"Uh-huh. What's the real reason Lo'?" asked Gabriel, not buying it.
"Dad doesn't want you to turn demon, so he's trying to turn you into an angel slowly to avoid alerting Crowley. By using this wand you'll pretty much be a rogue under my command once the conversion is complete and by putting a piece of my soul in the place of Voldemort it would insure that even if something happens I won't be killed permanently until the fragment is destroyed. Though if something did happen, like an angel blade piercing me, then I would be incredibly weak and only you would be able to keep me anchored," shrugged Loki.
"So basically you would be on-hand as it were to give me prank ideas without actually being in the room? And what this about me turning a demon? I thought I was already doomed for the pit when I signed off on all those souls to Crowley," asked Gabriel.
"When Crowley took the fragment from your head, he fulfilled your end of the contract automatically. You would have to make a second deal in order to fall into the pit that way, and with those favors it would have to be something really, really big to use those up first," said Loki.
"So aside from relative immortality and a get-out-of-death free card, what exactly would putting your soul in the spot do?" asked Gabriel.
"It would speed up the conversion to angel. And make it easier to use the wand."
"So basically I have the choice to become an angel later or the chance of being a demon. Screw Crowley, I would rather fly!" said Gabriel smirking.
"That's the spirit! Plus I could probably convince dad to let me give you some trickster powers later," said Loki grinning.
Gabriel was laying on his stomach after his shower, mostly to fully wake up. Loki had something in his hand and he felt it was a better idea not to ask what it was.
When he felt the needles on his skin, he realized Loki was giving him a new tattoo. From the pattern, he could tell it was a pair of wings...at least at first. Looking at a mirror later he realized Loki had given him a pair that shimmered under his skin. From the way they moved, it almost looked like he had put his invisibility cloak into the colors. In the right lighting the wings almost looked like crow feathers.
(He did. He took the magic that held the cloak together to make the ink.)
"How long will this take until it settles?"
"Just avoid hunting with your magic for a week. That should be enough time for this to settle," said Loki.
"Right. Time to visit Bobby's house and see if he knows of any normal Hunts," said Gabriel. He liked the wing pattern on his back.
Gabriel had a simple classification for his hunting patterns.
Level 1- Work (I/E hunting normal fugitives for the FBI)
Level 2- Info (picking up Bobby's orders for him in other states)
Level 3- Hunts (what Sam, Bobby and Dean did on a regular basis)
Level 4- Demon (any job that involves a demon contract)
Level 5- Angel (Loki sends him on a hunt)
Gabriel was hunting with Sam and Dean, mostly dealing with some vampires that popped up.
However the second he came face-to-face with a hunter who specialized in the breed, Gabriel had to fight the urge to grab his gun and zip ties.
Gordon was on the FBI's wanted list. And Gabriel had four of them on his laptop and PDA.
Level 1- Normals
Level 2- Magicals
Level 3- Hunters
Level 4- Demons
Gordon was a level 3 on his bounty list...a hunter who took things too far and got the attention of the average person with his methods.
Gabriel acted like he got a text while he was drinking his beer, leveled the camera roughly at Gordon, then read what the site came up with. He kept Dean and Sam from going near the guy.
"What's up?"
"Psychotic hunter with a bounty. He's decent, but he's also a psychopath," said Gabriel.
"How bad?"
"He kills innocents if he even remotely believes they're vampires. And he goes after the covens who are known to avoid human areas and drink donated blood only."
"There are vampire covens who avoid humans?"
"The hippie vampires. They're considered a joke and are avid Twilight fans. They're also the ones who generally get picked up by idiots like him," said Gabriel, nodding towards Gordon.
"How can we tell which type we're dealing with?"
"Give me five minutes. I can generally sniff out which kind of coven we're dealing with. I'm a known neutral to the mystical side because while I do hunt, I only go after genuine threats to exposing the other side of life. Things like Wendigos and the like."
Gabriel made some calls among the vampire covens he had contact with (he supplied them with blood when they were being watched and they supplied him with information) and asked around.
Finally he closed his phone and went to find his brothers.
"Bunch of Twilight hippies. Relatively harmless, but a bunch of idealistic idiots."
"Great. Gordon said he plans to wipe them out, and if he learns you have connections..." said Dean.
"Shit. Why did Loki have to pick now to mess around with my damn core... hang on while I get some back up. There was a werewolf pack ten miles from here, and they can occasionally tolerate the hippies," said Gabriel.
Gabriel found Dean working with Gordon to keep him off the trail, and Sam not trusting either of them.
"Shit. We need to get Dean out of there before he gets dragged in with Gordon..."
"How bad is his bounty?" asked Sam.
He had become acquainted with the FBI's bounty policy when he pretended to be Gabriel to take down what he affectionately called 'Level 1' targets. The higher the bounty, the more extensive their rap sheet. Gabriel slid his PDA to his twin.
"Shit."
A hundred thousand dollar bounty. Gordon was considered a schizophrenic with paranoid delusions about vampires and was a serial murderer because he had been caught on tape multiple times. The only reason he hadn't been caught was because hunters knew he wasn't lying about the vampires, and such a close knit group tended to cover for it's own. For it to be so high meant that Gordon presented a much bigger risk factor to be around than the Winchesters had believed.
"I got word from the pack. They'll hide the vampires and relocate them to another state. I love being a neutral."
Gabriel waited for Gordon to come past before he slammed his elbow into his gut. Gabe didn't spend all his time bounty hunting or reading... he found new things to do in every state and city he visited. He knew more martial arts than he knew what to do with.
He never wanted to be as helpless as he was when he was captured and forced to watch the long drawn out deaths of those who still believed in him. Hagrid's death had been the worst.
Gabriel made sure to give him a concussion, then call in a specialist claiming Gordon had stumbled across the magical breed of vampire.
Considering he was saving the coven's lives, the vampires paid the obliviator personally. They decided to ignore the fact that the Winchesters were actually related to a known neutral towards the supernatural beings that inhabited the country.
So long as they didn't cause trouble, Gabriel would give them a warning and advise them to change locations. It didn't hurt his case that he openly worked for a demon and hunted at the same time.
"So how do you like the new upgrade?" asked Loki grinning.
Gabriel was flexing his new wings, which was what the tattoo was for. Angels had real wings that could be partially manifested, but since Gabe was still human he had to have a little help bringing out his new wings without slapping people with them.
"Any reason why they look like crow wings?"
"Long story short, I'm considered the patron of the messengers. Angel of Judgment and all that rot," said Loki shrugging.
"Wait, you mean that series called The Crow is real?"
"Series?"
"There's a set of movies based off of this comic and book series called The Crow. Basically some poor bastard is killed early, usually with a loved one, and shortly after a mythical crow appears and gives them a chance at retribution. At the end the crow is taken out and they're made mortal. According to the series the crow's power is fueled by the love of the ones they lost when they were killed, or the love of the ones who died with them," explained Gabriel. He walked over to his massive movie collection and rotated it to the 'C' files.
"I have the entire set," he said.
"Movie night!" cheered Loki.
"Better believe it! Anyway, about the crows?"
"Oh, that mythical crow thing? One of my favorite all time ways of getting out of work. See I got sick of seeing scumbags get away with too much crap like outright murder with no justice, so I decided to speed things up a bit. I made a crow because it was the first animal I came across and it was a known carrion bird. In exchange for ferrying the lost souls across to whatever afterlife they believe in, Dad got off my ass about doing that particular job. So long as the souls don't go on a rampage and kill the innocent, they're free to seek their revenge," said Loki.
"Huh."
After the third movie, Loki was gobsmacked.
"How in the hell did people find out about those incidents?"
"Word of mouth, or a prophet wrote this," said Gabe, popping in a few more caramelized kernels. He made a dynamite caramel popcorn.
"Probably word of mouth. Stuff like this tends to make a stink like you wouldn't believe."
"Oh, I can believe it. Should have seen the grapevine Hogwarts had about my adventures," said Gabe.
"Who knows, maybe that tattoo can give you the same powers. Not like I ever have a use for the things," said Loki.
"Fun. Do these powers come with a spell?"
"An aria, one I set for three very obscure languages."
"Which ones?"
"Norse, Enochian and Latin."
"Can you say it in English, or does it have to be those three?"
"Has to be in those three otherwise the magicals would be able invoke it any time some idiot found the aria."
"So what's the aria?"
"First is the Norse. 'I invoke thee Loki, patron of Chaos.'"
"Subtle," said Gabe, knocking back his beer.
"Next is the Enochian. 'I invoke thee Gabriel, he who judges in Courts most High.'"
"Who came up with that one?" asked Gabe.
"Dad. He thought it was funny," said Loki, "And of course there is the last, which is in Latin. 'I invoke the power of the Crow, the Redeemer of the Lost Souls that dwell upon mortal plains.'"
"Why is that one longer?"
"Dad said that if I was going to make worker bees to get out of dealing with these cases, then the invocation has to be very specific. In any event should you have to invoke the 'Crow' as you call it, then chances are I'll be feeding you the aria directly just to make sure you don't botch it. But since you're still alive it would only be a temporary invocation. Only the dead can use the power to it's full extent."
"Because the only times you can't feel pain is when you're already dead," said Gabe.