Chapter 14 Angelus Reditus
Highway 93, Montana
The highway was empty, and the Impala sped along between the towering walls of forest to either side with a soft rumble, music filling the interior as Dean drove back to the cabin. Empty road, richly tantalising scent of hot food, good tunes filling his ears … what more could a man want? The thought brought a slight curve to his lips.
They'd been holed up in the cabin for a week, looking for Kevin, looking for anything really, to kickstart them on their way again. The days had been drifting by, nothing to show for them, but a familiar easing of the tensions that had been between them, that weird yet comforting unspoken acknowledgement that had characterised their past when it had been just the three of them, and no one had ever apologised or admitted to anything, but all had extended their olive branches little by little until they could be in the same room again, talk again, and eventually, laugh together again.
He glanced down at the packet on the seat beside him, reaching over and grabbing it. Opening the bag awkwardly against the wheel, he pulled out a handful of chips. Junk food wasn't ever going to taste quite as good as his memories of it, he thought. And reacquiring the habit hadn't been as easy as he'd thought it would be, the almost obscene variety of choice still frying his brain if he looked at it too long.
His attention sharpened as he saw the man walking on the verge, a hundred yards ahead, a tattered beige trenchcoat flapping around his legs as he approached a full-sized wood carving of a bear holding a carved and painted sign. The car caught up and passed and Dean turned his head to look at him as he went by, every other thought wiped out by the sight of the man's face, the scrubby beard barely covering familiar features, the filthy clothes under the coat bringing a whirlwind of memories.
Cas.
His foot hit the brake automatically and the car stopped on the empty road. Adjusting the rearview mirror, he shifted into reverse and went back, stopping and staring around as he reached the spot he thought he'd seen the man. On the side of the road, the roughly-carved upright bear held up a sign for a local resort, but there was no one there.
I know what I saw, he thought as he put the car in neutral and got out, staring at the bear and the sign. The man had been walking toward it. Wearing a filthy trenchcoat. He'd been there, right there. He looked up and down the road and into the trees, feeling his pulse pounding uncomfortably at the base of his throat. It was him. He'd seen the angel. He had.
The engine's deep idle and the stereo still playing quietly in the car were the only sounds he could hear. All right, he thought uneasily. Either you saw him and he angel-vaporated. Or you … thought you saw him but he wasn't there at all. He touched the car lightly, fingertips registering the smooth metal door handle. Neither option was exactly reassuring.
He opened the door and slid in behind the wheel, still looking around as he put the car into car and started to move slowly down the road again. He'd done his best – he thought he'd done his best to get the angel out. Maybe … maybe he hadn't tried hard enough. Maybe this was some kind of weird guilt trip. There'd been no way down there to save Cas. There hadn't. He had nothing to feel guilty about. He'd tried.
But he'd left him behind. The bottom line, where the buck stopped, where there were no more excuses … he'd left Cas behind and gotten out.
Whitefish, Montana
Dean stopped the car in front of the porch and turned off the engine. The cabin sat at the end of its own road, a little under a mile from the highway, surrounded by the forest and to the north, the rising mountain ranges. Other than the occasional big rig, even the light highway traffic wasn't really audible. Silence surrounded him like a blanket, his thoughts a loud mess in his head.
He still wasn't sure if he wanted to believe that he'd seen … what he'd seen. The alternative was worse, but at the same time, a lot less confusing. It couldn't have been the angel … had to have been a memory … a-a-a leftover … something his mind had thrown up because he hadn't let go, hadn't been dealing. Something like that. There was just no way it could've been Cas. Dean rubbed a hand slowly along the side of his face, the angel's face, that fixed stare as he'd walked, vividly clear in his mind's eye. But there'd been no one there. Opening the car door, he got out, absently reaching back into the car for the six-pack of beers and sack of food.
Sam was sitting at the table, reading through something on the computer as he walked into the cabin and closed the door behind him.
"Hey," Sam said, glancing over his shoulder at his brother.
"Hey," Dean's response was automatic. He took a couple of steps into the room and stopped, the memory of the angel's face returning. It wasn't possible. Was it?
Sam turned back to him, taking in the pensive expression on Dean's face as he stood staring straight ahead.
"You look like you've s– well, I was gonna say, 'You look like you've seen a ghost,' but you'd probably be thrilled," he commented dryly. The words filtered through and Dean blinked, turning to look at him. Sam's brow creased up.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, I'm cool," Dean said slowly as he walked to the kitchen and put the beer and bag on the counter. It could not have been Cas. It was that simple. It couldn't have been him. He was dead.
"What's up?"
Sam looked back at the laptop. It was a tacit but ironclad rule that they both knew down to the marrow of their bones. Dean could've walked in spouting blood with an axe buried in his skull, but if he said he was fine and changed the subject then the axe was off the conversational agenda. Whatever had happened was, Sam thought, still being processed. Until his brother had figured it out one way or another, he'd never hear about it.
He focussed on the news reports on the screen. "Well, this kid went missing from a preschool."
"That sucks. And?" Dean pulled off his jacket, tossing it onto a chair as he turned around to look at Sam. A job would be good. A job would drown out the questions and the lack of answers and let him forget it. Let him bury it. Try to bury it. Try to ignore it.
"And at the same time he vanished, a surprise tornado hit, lasted maybe 20 seconds," Sam said, looking at the report. "Then, uh ... shazam! Back to perfect weather."
"Hmm." Dean walked back to the kitchen, and pulled the bottles out of the carrier.
"Yeah."
The beer went into the fridge, along with the random groceries, as he tried to focus on what his brother was saying. The image of the angel's face, as he'd walked along the side of the road, kept coming back. The way he'd stared ahead, not acknowledging the car, or … not seeing it …
"Well, similar wackiness has happened over the past few weeks in other places – uh, Tulsa, a bus driver vanishes and a river gets overrun with frogs. New Mexico – a mailman disappears, the earth splits open."
Dean tossed the cardboard carrier into the trash can and walked to the table, looking down at the screen, hunching up slightly as he forced the recurring image away, forced himself to concentrate on the articles that filled it.
"All right. So, uh, you thinking demons?"
"Yeah, possibly, but ... I mean, this stuff was major," Sam said, his face screwing up as he clicked through the reports. "These folks have nothing in common – no religious affiliations, different hometowns, all ages. Why would demons want them?"
"Why do demons want anything?" Dean asked absently, reading the missing child report, the vision of the angel finally dissolving as his concentration sharpened. He turned away, slapping Sam's shoulder lightly as he went back to the paper sack holding their lunch. "So, we on this?"
Sam looked at the screen, brow still creased. He wasn't even sure what he was looking at, but getting out of the cabin couldn't hurt. The anger – the rage – that had filled him in Missouri had gone. He wasn't exactly sure why. Or where it had come from. Or if it would come back. He wasn't – he couldn't – really – look at it too closely. It had felt entirely too close to the old anger.
He'd spent the last week trying to work out what it was that had been driving him, driving the escalating feeling of fury since he'd met the vampire and reluctantly acceded to his brother's unspoken request to let him go. Some of it rose from his shame, he knew. A mixed venom of knowing that he should have looked for Kevin harder. Should've kept himself in the loop. Had run when he should've stayed. That was being fuelled by his brother's refusal to let him forget that. Some of it was the disappointment he could feel in Dean. Disappointment in him. Disappointment in what he'd done, what he'd chosen to do.
Some of it was the realisation that he might never get what he wanted. And there was nothing he could do about that. And some of it was coming from a very slowly growing fear that what he'd thought was gone, burned out of his veins and his heart and his soul by what he'd been through, what he'd suffered, hadn't really gone at all. Had been lying dormant, waiting for the right combination of emotion to feed it and bring it back to life.
He pushed the thoughts away, staring at the screen for a moment longer then closing it with a sharp snap.
"Yep."
He turned around in the chair, taking the take-out container Dean passed him.
"Where do you want to start?"
Dean sat down in the chair opposite. "With the kid."
Atlantic, Iowa
Crowley walked slowly around the dome-shaped room, marvelling absently at the way things changed over the past few years. In the chair in the centre, under the apex of the dome, a full blood seraph was bound and held, his vessel bloodied and twitching in agony. In his mind, it wasn't the right angel, but he had no doubts that that day would come too, by and by.
This was his time, he knew. He'd held a prophet and no archangel had come down from Heaven to destroy him. In fact, he wasn't sure if any of the archs had even survived Castiel's great purging. It didn't seem likely. My time, he thought delightedly, to consolidate and expand, to get what I need. Heaven in such disarray that it didn't matter what he did down here, he would get away with it, and further his own plans without interference.
There was something about torture. Watching the blood and sweat and tears flowing. The almost-sexual charge of inflicting pain and the way that the victim would scream, face twisting in agony. It was an art, to get so close to overloading the physical limits of the victim, yet not, not give them release in unconsciousness. He was too impatient for the full refinements, he knew. He was nowhere near the calibre of the demons who'd perfected every possible technique to draw suffering from every nerve, every thought and feeling until mind and body and soul were sucked dry. But he was expert enough to get what he needed. Jack of all trades, he thought with some self-satisfaction, even if master of none.
He pushed the tip of the cruciform sword into the shoulder of the angel, watching the brilliant white light spill out along with the vessel's blood, the scream tearing out of Samandiriel's throat as he moved the tip around a little in the open wound.
"What do you want?!" the angel shrieked at him. "I've given you all the names."
"No." Crowley looked at him reprovingly. "No. No. And no." He spun the short sword in his hand. "That's not what I want to hear."
The tip drove into the seraph under the ribs and Samandiriel screamed again. Crowley pulled the blade out, wondering if he should be thinking about the decibels in the room and his hearing.
"This hurts you more than it hurts me, so I can go on forever," he told the angel. He did miss the rack. He really needed one up here. "Which, in your case, forever means ... well, forever."
Samandiriel sucked in mouthfuls of air, trying to let the pain wash through the nervous system of his vessel, let it dissipate, dissolve. The vessel was in a bad way. "When the angels find out what you're doing –"
"They'll be … what? Put out?" Crowley cut him off mockingly. "I'm quaking, really."
He looked down at the seraph. "The power grid is so whacked out in Heaven, they don't even know you're not there." He shifted the sword in his hand again, a low-grade charge lighting up his nerves as he saw Samandiriel's involuntary flinch backwards. "So, on the count of three. One. Two."
He pushed the sword into the meatsuit's abdomen, twisting it as it drove through the organs and he felt the tip hit the wooden back of the chair. The angel's hands clenched on the arms of the chair, muscle and tendon becoming rigid as his scream echoed off the hard, curving walls. Crowley slid the sword free, a small smile playing around his mouth as he watched the angel's head drop forward, heard the desperation in his raw breathing.
"What happened to three?" Samandiriel asked shakily.
"I lied. I do that," Crowley said, his patience evaporating. "Just give me the other names."
Samandiriel looked up into his face, his chest heaving, every inhale another stab of agony, every exhale sending the acid pain of torn flesh and ruptured organs flooding through his nervous system.
"There are no other names!" he ground out. "The next generation isn't born yet."
Crowley leaned close to him, searching the angel's eyes for the tells of a lie. "Truth?"
"Truth," Samandiriel admitted wearily. It didn't matter, one way or the other, that piece of information. He let his head fall forward. The names that he'd given the demon were another matter. He didn't know how he would atone for that. If he could ever atone for that. But if Crowley was right, and Heaven didn't know what had happened, what was happening down here, then perhaps that wouldn't matter either.
"Well, I suppose there's no reason to keep torturing you, then," Crowley said softly as he straightened up. He looked down at the bowed head of the angel, and shoved the sword into him again, smiling as the scream filled the room.
"Sorry. Once you get going, it's really hard to stop." He pulled the sword out and tossed it onto the cart nearby. He had the names. All of them. One of them would be his key. And what a key it would be.
He turned away, pulling off the blood-soaked apron and handing it to the demon who stood guard at the door.
"Keep him on ice," he said, glancing back at the seraph as he opened the door. "We've only just scratched the surface with this one."
US-87 S, Wyoming
Dean rubbed a hand tiredly over his face. He'd been driving for thirteen hours and Cheyenne was a few miles ahead, it was definitely time to stop for the night. He couldn't even remember what the hell lunch had been, four-hundred-and-fifty miles and six hours ago. He needed food. And something that would let him sleep, for a few hours, at least.
"You had enough?" Sam asked him quietly.
"Yeah, we'll stop as soon as we find a place," he said, tipping his head back a little to get the tension out of his neck.
The all-night strip had a fast food outlet and a liquor store in the same brightly lit stretch and he pulled in, stopping the car between the two and giving Sam his order. He got out as his brother went into the burger joint, and walked the other way, going into the small, dimly lit liquor store and grabbing a fifth of whiskey and a six pack of beer, paying for them on the new credit card. He glanced down at the name absently, one brow rising as it registered. Jeffrey Lebowski. Had he filled that in?
The clerk either hadn't seen the film or just wasn't interested and handed him the charge slip without a murmur. He tucked the card and slip into his pocket and carried the alcohol back to the car. It was one of those little things that could fuck up everything, he thought uneasily, wondering if he'd been as careless with other stuff lately.
He could see Sam, through the plate-glass window of the outlet, still waiting for their food and he cracked the lid on the whiskey, tipping up the bottle and taking a shot from the neck, feeling the liquid roar down his throat and settle in his stomach.
Nightmares and his endless churning thoughts were taking his sleep again. Benny. Sam. Garth. The poison of truth and the fear of it. Not knowing what was coming and knowing it all too well. A thousand shades of grey that were making things murky, hard to see, hard to define. And the nagging sense of familiarity, that he'd been here before, him and Sam, lies filling up the spaces between them, his brother filled with self-righteous anger and a conviction that he was the one. The only one who could see how it was. Convinced that he was the stronger. Ignoring the facts.
He let his head tip back and closed his eyes. That … anger … was quiescent now. But that wouldn't last. And the next time it would be worse. And he couldn't think, couldn't imagine what was driving it. He hadn't helped, he knew. His disappointment in Sam had driven its own wedge between them, and he'd hammered it hard, not seeing what he was doing, only comparing his brother to his friend and finding Sam lacking. It hadn't been fair, that comparison. Hadn't been apples with apples.
A part of him wanted to tell Sam to go. To live a normal life. To figure out what he wanted and be free of all this. Another part refused to do it. He wasn't sure why. Loss? Being alone? Needing help and not knowing where else to look for it? He couldn't make sense of that stone-hard refusal to even raise the subject with Sam. He'd lost everyone else, was he really going to force his brother to stay so that he wouldn't have to feel those losses so deeply?
The passenger door opened and the scent of burgers and fries filled the interior as Sam put the bag on the seat between them. Dean caught his glance dipping to the bottle and flicking away, and sighed inwardly. He twisted around, dropping the bottle on to his duffle and shifting the six-pack closer to his brother, and dug into the paper sack, fingers closing around what was unmistakably a burger.
Fulton, Missouri
The diner hadn't been in use for the last five years. The long glass windows along the front had been soaped when they'd broken in. They'd painted them thickly with black paint on the inside, and over that, the wards and guards, the sigils and designs had been painted in blood.
Kevin opened the door and stepped into the trap without thinking about it, turning and locking the door behind him. The big room was completely silent and he glanced down at the broad circle he stood in, then up at the mirrored image of it painted on the ceiling directly above him. It wasn't that hard to keep themselves safe, although finding the abattoirs or butchers who were willing to sell the quantities of blood they needed was chancy, from town to town.
He walked to the long formica-covered counter, and set down the plastic bag of groceries, turning his head as his mother rose from behind it, the brilliantly-coloured water rifle in her hands lowering as she looked at him.
"Everything go okay?" she asked him, setting the plastic gun on the counter, within reach of her hand.
"Yeah, not a sign of anything," he replied morosely. "So long as we keep moving and stay off the grid, we'll be fine."
Linda Tran looked at her son, recognising his weariness. "No, it's not fine. We're not fine. Living in rat-infested hovels and running from cursed creatures? This is no life, Kevin."
Kevin shook his head. "It's my life. I'm the one dragging the prophet load. I'm sorry I pulled you into it."
"Don't be sorry. Be ready," Linda said firmly, taking the bag and unpacking the groceries into a cupboard below the counter. "We've got to stop running and start taking a stand."
He looked at her in disbelief. "Okay, you know that's crazy."
"No, it's not," Linda said, straightening up and looking at him. "Not if we have the bomb you used on Crowley's demons."
Kevin rolled his eyes. He'd known at the time that he never should've told her about that, or anything about his escape from Crowley.
"The thing I made had ingredients from all over the world," he said patiently, looking at her. "Demons had to get the stuff."
"That's why I went to an expert." Linda glanced at him. "Someone who can get those things for us."
"What?" He stared at her. "Who?"
"I hired a witch," she said.
He wasn't sure he'd heard that right. "A witch?"
Her eyes narrowed slightly at the tone of his voice. "Don't say it as if your mother doesn't know what she's doing, Kevin."
"How'd you even find a witch?" Assuming that it was a real witch, he added to himself.
"I found an esoteric store when we were going through Illinois last week. You were getting food, I think … anyway, there was a card there and I took it," she said, seeing the disbelief on his face. "She's the real thing, I tested her first."
"How? Exactly?"
"She did a reading over the phone. Got everything right, down to what you were wearing that day," she said smugly.
"What makes you think you can trust her?" Kevin sighed.
"I don't trust her, at all," Linda turned away. "That's why I didn't give her the exact quantities or tell her how to blend them."
He felt his brows shooting up. "You told her we were making demon bombs?"
"Of course not! I told her we needed ingredients for a spell," she snapped back at him. "No other details."
"And how's she supposed to contact us when she has them?"
"She doesn't. I'll call her and when she has what we need, we'll arrange a meeting." She shook her head at him. "What we're doing now, we're safe enough, yes. But we're not getting anywhere. We can't find the other half of the tablet, and we can't do anything with the half we have. We need to do something, Kevin, something proactive. We can't just keep running."
"I know, Mom," he said quietly. She was right about that. They had to make some kind of a move. Perhaps the witch would give them what they needed without it being a trap. Perhaps Crowley would get hit by a bus. All things were possible. Most were highly unlikely.
Salina, Kansas
Sam looked down at the address in his notebook as the car pulled up in front of the house, then glanced at his watch. It was only a little after six. He got out and walked across the quiet, dark street to the brightly lit porch of 442.
Knocking at the door, he saw the woman appear hesitantly through the glass panes in the top half of the door. He held up his FBI identification and forced a smile as she came into the hallway. Small and slender, her face was hollowed out, as if she hadn't been sleeping … or eating, he thought.
Lauren Hagar opened the door slowly, leaving the chain on as she looked at them.
"Ms. Hagar? Agents Roth and Malloy. We want to speak to you about Aaron Webber's abduction," Dean said, putting his badge back into his jacket pocket.
She looked at him nervously. "Like I told the police, one minute I was taking Aaron to get cleaned up, and the next minute ... I woke up in a park three blocks away."
"And you have no memory of what happened?" Sam asked, brow creasing as he injected a slight note of incredulity into his voice.
"No," she said, her voice shaking slightly. "He was just gone."
Sam pulled out his phone, turning away from her as Dean watched her face carefully. "Can you think any reason why somebody would want to harm him? Um, any enemies?"
"Enemies?" She stared at him. "He's five."
Sam had turned to the street, speaking softly into his phone. "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus ..."
Lauren Hagar looked at him, frowning. "Excuse me?"
"It's, uh, code for your own safety so that you can't reveal anything under enhanced interrogation," Dean said quickly, mentally rolling his eyes as the words came out. He used to be so much better at lying. "Now, when you woke up on the floor, were there any signs of struggle?"
She looked back at him, shaking her head. "No."
Sam tucked the phone back into his jacket, looking at her. "Smell like sulphur?"
Both men straightened slightly as she stilled in the doorway, blinking rapidly as her expression changed to uneasiness. "How did you know that?"
Sam looked away, his smile humourless. "Lucky guess. Thanks for your time."
She nodded uncertainly and closed the door as they turned away and started down the steps.
"No reaction to the exorcism," Dean said as they hit the sidewalk.
Sam nodded. "Yeah, not possessed – at the moment." He glanced sideways as they crossed the street. "But there's no doubt a demon got a hold of Aaron Webber."
Dean glanced at his brother, hearing the blunt edge of anger in his tone. He nodded slowly as they looked at each over the roof of the Impala. "Question is … why?"
They drove with the windows open, the air heavy and oppressive and the mutter of thunder in the distance, the horizon flickering and strobing as the thunderheads built. Dean glanced at Sam, who sat staring silently through the windshield. His brother was still humming slightly with an inborn tension, visible in the slightly thinned lips, the occasional jump of the muscle at the point of his jaw. He wasn't sure what had sparked it, exactly. It could've been as simple as the child in the case. Neither of them handled that all that well. Or it could've been something deeper. He couldn't tell.
The motel was so similar to the last one, he felt a moment's disorientation when he opened the door and walked in, shaking his head and dropping his duffel on the floor by the bed, the gear bag beside it. Pulling out the salt, he ran the lines without thinking about it, most of his attention on Sam as his brother put the take-out on the table and dropped his bags by the other bed. The tension was still there, not the rage, just frustration, he thought.
Inside the room, the glass in the window frames oscillated a little as the storm drew closer. They changed out of the suits and ate their take-out in silence, listening to the rumbling, lost in their own thoughts of who or what had been collecting these people. Crowley had to be at the bottom of it, Dean thought as he picked up the trash from the meal and tossed it into the trash can, veering to the fridge and getting out two bottles of beer. He passed one to Sam and sat down again. The question was why? What possible use could a five-year-old child be to the King of Hell?
Sam finished his beer in three long swallows and looked at Dean. "This is making me nuts, I can't think of any reason for these people to be taken."
Dean nodded. He had the same problem. Sam looked at his watch and shook his head.
"I'm going to crash. Do something useful." He got up and walked to the bed, pulling off his clothes and dumping them on the floor.
Dean rose as well, flipping off the lights and getting out the laptop. He couldn't sleep, not yet. He wanted to look the news articles again, see if he'd missed anything. He carried the computer to his bed and piled the pillows in a heap. Leaning back against them, he opened the laptop, glancing up at the crash of thunder overhead, lightning close by lighting up the room and fading away. Much closer and it'd probably fry the laptop.
There was nothing in the articles, he thought morosely as he read through them. Spread out all over the country. Nothing to tie any of it together. No connections between the people taken. No connections between the disasters that had occurred at the same time. None of them had been exactly normal, but none had been completely inexplicable either.
Lightning filled the room again and he glanced at the window. He froze as he saw the man – the angel – standing outside, Cas' face clearly visible through the glass, lit up by the bolt. He could hear his heartbeat, loud in his ears, was distantly aware that his chest was aching and he released the breath he held as the light died.
Shutting the laptop and dropping it on the bed, Dean walked fast to the window, slowing as he got closer and saw that there was nothing there. No one stood outside. Lightning flashed again, lighting up the grassed area vividly. The angel had vanished. Again.
If you really saw him, he thought, a trickle of ice spreading down his spine. If he was ever there to begin with. If you aren't going crazy.
He heard his brother roll over in the bed behind him.
"Dean? What's going on? Are you all right?" Sam's voice was soft, worried.
"I don't know." Dean stared at his reflection in the glass as another bolt of lightning lit up the night. Was he alright? Or was something going on, something worse than how he'd felt when he got out. Something wrong. With him. "I just saw something."
Sam threw the covers aside. "Uh, you saw what?"
"Cas," Dean said, a little reluctantly. He wasn't sure why he'd said it. Sam already figured him to have a few loose. But he couldn't lie. Not now. His heart was sledging inside his ribs. He needed someone to talk to about this.
"Cas?" Sam got up and walked to his brother's side, looking out the window. "Where?"
"Right there," Dean looked at the spot he'd seen the angel standing, dragging in a deep breath. "And–and–and earlier … on the road. I feel like I'm seeing him," he added, a grimace flashing over his face as he heard the tremble in his voice. Goddamned angel. They'd been so close.
Sam looked at him. "That's ... not possible. I mean, you said it yourself. You made it out and he didn't … right?"
He watched Dean's jaw tighten, saw the tension hunch his brother's shoulders. Was seeing the dead angel another symptom of the combat fatigue Dean was trying to suppress? Or was it that whatever had happened down there was slowly starting to come out, breaking past his brother's control finally?
For a moment, Dean was lost in Purgatory again, following Benny through the thick undergrowth, hearing Cas' footsteps behind him. Trying to climb. Nobody gets left behind. He slowly came back, aware of his brother standing beside him, watching him worriedly.
"I tried so damn hard to get us the hell out of there," he said, glancing at Sam and turning away. Didn't I? He walked away from the window, not knowing where he was going, driven to movement by the emotions churning inside. Were his memories accurate? Everything had happened fast …
"I know you did."
Dean closed his eyes, hearing that despairing cry in his head. He would keep hearing it, he knew, for as long as he was breathing, see the light swallowed on the hill. He'd saved Benny. But he hadn't been able to save Cas. "There was nothing I could do."
"Dean," Sam said. Dean turned a little, looking past him to the window, the rain pouring down outside. "You did everything you could."
He looked up at his brother for a moment, hearing the genuine sympathy in Sam's voice. That understanding hit him hard. That understanding came from his little brother – his little brother he hadn't seen in a while. Hadn't felt in a while. "Yeah, but why do I feel like crap?"
Sam looked away. There were a lot of answers to that. He couldn't suggest any of them. Dean wouldn't accept them, not now, not with everything else going. He shrugged slightly. "Survivor's guilt?"
"Hmm."
It wasn't survivor's guilt, he knew. Just guilt. Nobody gets left behind. But somebody had. And it wasn't the first time.
Sam looked at him, seeing the muscles twitching under his brother's skin. He knew suddenly what Dean was thinking about. Ellen and Jo. Adam. His brother's personal torture chamber. "Dean, if you let it, this is gonna keep messing with you. You got to walk past it."
Dean nodded slightly as Sam walked past him to the bathroom. He knew that it was going to keep messing with him. He couldn't keep pretending to himself.
You don't give in, you don't give up, no matter what it costs, no matter what happens! His father's voice filled his mind and he stared at the window, the walls that held everything behind them thinning to tissue for a moment, his throat closing up tightly as he fought to keep it all back. Had he given up? He couldn't remember. Had he left Cas to die, when trying harder would've saved the angel? He couldn't remember that either. He was here. Alive. Breathing. Cas was not. What did that tell him?
Atlantic, Iowa
The room was in the basement of the main part of the factory, lined partly in over-sized soundproofing blocks and lit haphazardly with vertical fluorescent lighting at eye-level. Crowley had no idea who'd handled the design or what the functionality was supposed to be, but it was the least dungeon-like of all the rooms at his disposal. The octagonal table had been a surprise, perhaps used at one time to control the electronic systems within the factory, it now resembled an eighties nightclub bar more than anything else, eight under-lit perspex panels slanted slightly to the centre. He walked up to it, looking at the group who sat around the edges.
"Are we on a spaceship?"
Crowley looked at the man sitting across the table from him. Justin Hurst. Sixty-two. Wire-rimmed glasses not helping with what was clearly an over-active thyroid problem.
"Sorry?" The demon looked around the room blankly. The table might've contributed to the suggestion, he supposed. It was a tad Trekkish.
"Snapping us up from our homes, our families, teleporting us to this m-mother ship," the woman to his left added her thoughts to the conversation. Crowley looked at her. Krista Morrison. Thirty-nine. Single. Four cats.
"Mother ship?"
"You're aliens, right?" Hurst looked at him expectantly. Crowley looked down at the tablet lying on the table.
"Possibly a long shot," he murmured to himself as he picked it up. "Does this mean anything to you?"
Hurst leaned forward, adjusting his glasses slightly as he squinted at the tablet. "I don't read Chinese."
"Talk about the dumbing down of America," Crowley muttered to himself, sighing inwardly. He looked around the table. "Anyone? Come on. It's fun. Give it a go."
The people sitting around the octagonal table stared at him blankly. "You hapless toads are utterly clueless, aren't you?"
Had the angel been lying to him the whole time? Were these representatives of middle America prophets or just names Samandiriel had fished out of the air? He was going to have his guts for garters if he had been, he thought coldly.
The man to his right threw down the serviette he'd been holding and got to his feet. "I-I-I got a wife and kids. I-I got bills. I can't miss work."
Crowley looked at him. Dennis Adams. Forty-one. Not part of the spaceship brigade but definitely going to cause problems. He closed his eyes and spoke softly. "Sir."
"I got rights!" Adams stared at him, emboldened by the mild reaction.
Crowley's eyes snapped open. Rights?
"Where's my one phone call?"
The King of Hell lifted his hand, twisting it sharply, the gesture reminiscent of turning on a tap. Adams' mouth snapped shut as his ribcage shattered inside, the ends of the broken bones stabbing simultaneously into his lungs, stomach and heart. Blood filled his throat and mouth as he staggered sideways, hitting the wall of the room and sliding down it. He stopped moving as he hit the floor.
Crowley lifted his gaze from the lit panel of the table top. "Anyone else want to complain?" He looked around at the people facing him. Their faces were no longer blank. Now they were in varying states of shock and terror. "Hmm?"
Beside him, Karen stood, and took a step closer.
"Um ..." She picked up the tablet and started to speak, glancing at Crowley's face nervously. "We hold this ... um, maybe, these ..." She stopped as Crowley turned the tablet in her hands ninety degrees. "Truths to be ... oh." She smiled down at the tablet. "Oh, right. That's – that's better, yeah."
Crowley turned away from her, leaning on the table and looking around it. Either the angel had lied outright to him. Or there was something else missing. Something he didn't know about the way this worked. Because he was pretty bloody sure that these people had no idea of what they were – or were supposed to be.
Fulton, Missouri
Kevin watched his mother as she ducked behind the booth seat to the right of the door.
"Why is she coming here? I thought you said you didn't trust her?"
"I don't," Linda Tran agreed readily. "But we can leave as soon as she does, and be out of reach by morning, so it doesn't really matter where we meet her. And everything is all set up here – the traps, our equipment. It's more efficient this way."
"Fine."
He exhaled gustily, looking away. His mother might bitch about the way they were living, but he could see that it was giving her more energy and reason to get up in the morning than she'd had since he'd started high school.
The knock made him start and he took a deep breath, glancing over his shoulder at the booth behind him before he reached for the locks.
The woman who stood outside was in her mid-thirties, he thought, brows rising slightly as he took in her appearance. She was very slender, dressed in black jeans and a short, close-fitting black jacket, long blonde hair loose down her back. Dark brown eyes, heavily lined in kohl, looked back at him and he stepped aside, watching her glance down at the floor, her mouth curving into a small smile as she stepped into the trap.
"I see you know what you're doing," she said, stepping out again on the other side. She glanced right and one brow rose delicately. "You can come out now, Mrs Tran, I've made it through the trap with no problems."
Linda rose from her hiding spot and looked at the woman. "Did you bring everything?"
"Of course." She lifted a wide-mouthed canvas bag from her shoulder and handed it to the older woman, glancing at Kevin. "It was an interesting list."
Linda opened the bag, looking inside, her hand pushing through the small plastic bags of ingredients. "What is this?"
She looked at the witch, eyes dark with anger. "I was clear. The quantities I gave you were not negotiable."
The blonde tilted her head slightly, smiling. "Oh, relax. The rest is waiting. This is just a sample of what you'll get when I get paid for what these ingredients are really worth."
"That was not the agreement!" Linda snapped.
"It is now." The witch smiled coolly at her. "We're not talking about some little love spell or banishing ritual here, Mrs Tran. What you've requested, that took a lot of trouble to get. A lot of trouble. I had to call in some favours that I'd been saving. Some of it is … remarkably esoteric, one might say, even I hadn't heard of them before."
She looked at Linda's tight expression. "So you will be paying the market price for the rest, or I'll keep it and you'll have to make do with what I've brought." She looked around the long room, lifting a shoulder in a careless shrug. "It's your choice. I'll be back in the morning to finalise our transaction."
She turned back to the door, stopping and raising a dark blonde brow at Kevin. He stared at her for a moment then moved forward, opening it. She smiled and walked out and he closed it behind her, turning back to his mother when the locks were secured.
"Still think this was a good idea?" he asked her tiredly.
Salina, Kansas
Sam watched Dean as he polished and reassembled the last of the guns, putting it back in the gear bag and zipping it up. He hadn't said much all day, withdrawn, his eyes often distant, lost in some memory or another, Sam thought.
He wasn't sure how to help him. In fact, it'd come as something of a surprise that he'd wanted to help him. It'd been the first time in a while that he'd felt that old pull, to get his brother to open up, to talk about what was hurting him, to share the pain instead of burying it – or attempting to bury it. He ran his hand through his hair distractedly. He didn't know why that feeling had come back but it was reassuring. It was familiar. It made working together easier.
He looked back at the screen as Dean walked into the bathroom, turning on the tap to wash the oil and solvent from his hands. He'd expanded the search out of curiosity, and the results were surprising.
"Hey, so it's not just Americans who are vanishing," he called out, reading the translated article from Italy. "Uh, this guy, Luigi Ponzi disappeared walking between two subway cars in Rome. And right above ground, there was a freak hail storm."
Dean rinsed his hands and splashed water over his face, the cold water shaking him free of his thoughts for a restful moment.
"So, we going to Rome?" he asked, looking at himself in the mirror, seeing the doubts that still filled his eyes. He frowned slightly and looked down again. "Can we get there without flying?"
He reached for the towel, hanging beside the basin and dried his face, straightening up and looking into the mirror again. Behind him, the angel stood, his skin lit up by the cool, white bathroom light. Dean turned around fast, half-expecting to see nothing, the shock when Castiel remained standing there catching at his breath.
"Hello, Dean," the angel said quietly.
"Cas?" The word was barely audible as he stepped forward, reaching out to touch Castiel's shoulder tentatively. Here. Real. Alive. Memory bombarded him again. Flat light. Grey dust. Black shapes crowding out the light. Pain. Blood. Anger and shame intertwined so tightly he couldn't see past them.
"I'm here. Real," Castiel said, turning to look at Sam through the open door. "Hello, Sam."
Sam looked past the angel to his brother's face. He looked like … he looked like someone had taken what he'd known of the world and turned it upside down, Sam thought uneasily. He'd seen the same expression on Dean when their father had come out of the gate in Wyoming. A mixture of disbelief, of hope and pain and fear and anger, none of them dominant, warring in his eyes.
Sam got up and gestured to the other chair, looking at Castiel. The angel looked back at Dean and turned, walking through the room to the table. Dean followed slowly, leaning up against the small dividing counter between the kitchenette and the main room, his gaze still locked on Cas, arms folded across his chest.
"Unbelievable, man. I-I cannot believe it," Sam said, staring across the table. "You're actually here!"
In the other chair, Cas leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as he looked between them. "Yes, I've been trying to reach out, but for whatever reason, I wasn't at full power. So I couldn't connect with you.
Sam looked up at Dean. "That must have been why you kept seeing him. I mean, you think?"
"Yeah," Dean agreed almost absently and Sam's attention sharpened on him as he watched Dean straighten, his brother's face screwing up as he looked down at the angel. Dean didn't look exactly happy to see the angel. He looked as if he was having a hard time believing that Cas was there.
"Yeah, uh, I got to be honest. I-I-I'm thinking, how the hell did you make it out? I mean, I – I was there. I know that place," he said, his brows drawing together as memory thickened his voice.
"I know how we had to scratch and claw … and kill … and bleed … to find that portal and make it through it, and it almost finished me," he said slowly. There was no way. No way at all that Cas had gotten out on his own. And he'd left him behind. Left him alone. "So, uh... so how exactly are you sitting here with us right now?"
Castiel let out his breath and leaned back. He didn't know how to explain what had happened. He didn't understand it himself.
"Dean, everything you just said is completely true. And that's the strange part. I ... have no idea." He looked away as some memories came back, his voice deepening a little.
"I remember endlessly running and hiding from Leviathan." Night. Blackness in Purgatory. Day. And night again. And on and on. He had no idea how long for. He'd been weary. "I remember the hill. There was light and then it was gone … and then I was on the side of the road in Illinois." He looked up at Dean. "And ... that was it."
"And that – that was it?" Dean asked, unable to hide his scepticism. He looked down at the angel, suspicion curling up through him like the tendril of a poisonous vine, hating the feel of it, but unwilling to let it go. Something had helped the angel. Something had pulled him out.
"Yes," Castiel said, a thread of defensiveness in his tone. He looked at Sam, noting that he didn't look disbelieving, didn't seem suspicious. Looking down at his hands, folded in his lap, he wondered at Dean's disbelief. He didn't know how he'd gotten out. He hadn't thought of it, really. Perhaps he should've. His gaze sharpened on his clothing, the grey dirt ground into his hands, into his clothing, slowly becoming aware of the mix of scents rising from him. "Oh. I'm dirty."
Dean pushed aside the churning questions, focussing on him with a slight shrug. "Yeah, well, Purgatory will do that to you. You can wash up …" He gestured vaguely behind him at the bathroom.
Moving aside as the angel got to his feet and walked to the bathroom and turning to watch him go, his uneasiness deepened. He should've been feeling glad that Cas was out, he thought, glad that he'd survived. He couldn't find that. Only confusion and the uncomfortable prickling sensation in his nerves that there were too many parts missing, too many things unexplained. There wasn't a moment that he didn't remember, in agonising detail. He'd been convinced that the angel had been dead (you didn't try hard enough to save him). Convinced that nothing could have saved him (you could've but you left, left him behind). He had tried. It hadn't been enough.
"Dean?" Sam sat in the chair, looking at his brother's back, wondering what was going through Dean's head. He'd thought that Dean would be overjoyed that Cas was here, alive, back. The disbelief – the suspicion – had come as a surprise.
Sam's voice filtered in through Dean's thoughts slowly. "Huh?"
"You all right?"
He turned around and walked to the table, looking at Sam. "You do see something ... severely wrong here, right?"
Sitting down opposite his brother, his voice was low as he leaned forward. "Sammy, I remember every second of leaving that place. I mean, I remember the – the heat, the stink, the pain, the fear. I have that whole ugly mess right here, and he says he has no idea how he got out?" He looked at Sam, not sure what he was trying to get across to him, not sure he knew himself what was driving the uneasiness he felt. "I – I'm just not buying it."
Sam leaned back. "So … what? You think he's lying?"
"I'm saying something else happened," Dean said, the conviction that something was wrong strengthening as he thought about it. "There was no way he was fighting his ass out alone. No way."
"All right. So, who ... or what … got him out?" Sam asked. He could see that Dean was building a case. He wasn't convinced it was justified, but he could see his brother was.
"Exactly."
They both turned to look as the bathroom door opened and the angel walked back out into the room, drying his hands on the hand-towel. In new clothes, hair trimmed, beard gone, skin smooth and clean again, Cas looked as he had when they'd first met him. An angel of the Lord. In a trenchcoat.
He looked at them. "Better?"
Sam smiled slightly, exchanging a glance with his brother. Dean nodded, his attempt at a smile falling apart before it was begun as he looked at his friend mistrustfully.
Fulton, Missouri
The rap on the door was sharp and loud. Kevin looked at his watch with a sigh.
"Well, at least she's punctual," he said to his mother over his shoulder as he went to open it. Linda Tran scowled at him, pulling her purse out and setting it on the counter.
The witch walked through the devil's trap and stopped in front of her, glancing at the purse. "I see you've decided to be reasonable."
"This is extortion," Linda hissed at her.
"No, not really," she smiled. "Just a normal transaction in today's cut-throat world."
"How much?"
"Twelve thousand dollars."
"What?!" Linda stared at her.
"That's with the discount, Mrs Tran," the witch said comfortably. "If you were going to try and find those ingredients yourself, it would've cost you twenty, assuming you knew where to start."
Linda struggled to get her shock under control. She had the cash, barely. It would mean that they would have to think of some way to get more out of the accounts, somewhere they couldn't be tracked. She could feel Kevin's eyes on her and saw the witch glance at him, eyes narrowing slightly as she took in his expression.
"Take it or leave it, I don't mind either way," the blonde turned back to her, one brow lifted.
"Where is the rest?"
"Outside. Safe. Do we have a deal or not?"
Linda picked up her purse, staring down at it for a moment. The witch chuckled softly.
"Do you have a restroom in here?" she asked. "I could freshen up while you make up your mind?"
"Down the hall," Kevin said, gesturing to the end of the room. She nodded and turned away, black high heels clicking over the filthy linoleum floor.
"That wipe us out?" Kevin looked at his mother. Linda shook her head, setting her jaw as she heard the doubts in his voice.
"No, not quite," she answered, opening the purse and pulling out a wad of cash. She put the purse down and started counting. "We'll have to figure out a way to get the accounts unfrozen, enough to get more but we'll be able to live on what's left here for a short time."
He nodded, looking up as the witch's heels announced her return.
"Charming little place you have here," she said as she came back into the room. "Very prophet-in-exile."
"What did you say?" Kevin looked at her narrowly.
"You really should use the devil's traps on every entrance, Kevin."
Kevin and Linda turned slowly to look behind the witch. Crowley stood at the door, smiling humourlessly at them Beside him, a tall man in a suit had eyes that were black, from corner to corner.
"Salt alone is easy to shift," he added, gesturing to the witch. "I have to say I'm surprised that you trusted a witch, Kev, they're not exactly renowned for their trustworthiness, and as a general rule, they are rather loyal to the entities that give them their power," Crowley continued conversationally, walking into the room. "Or was that your mother's idea?"
He glanced at the witch. "Off you go, dear. I have no further need of your services."
She looked at the money still in Mrs Tran's hand. "There's the small matter of my remuneration."
"Greedy and disloyal?" He looked at her thoughtfully. "My, my, you will be busy when you get down to our place. I've had a shocker of a day, I would advise against pushing too hard. Or at all."
Kevin watched her eyes widen. She turned on her heel and walked out through the door immediately, and a moment later they heard a motorbike start up, and roar away.
Crowley looked back at Kevin. "Now, where was I?"
Linda stared at him, moving to stand in front of Kevin. "Please. Take me. Leave my son alone."
"You? What would I do with you?" Crowley looked at her in astonishment. He turned to the demon beside him. "Kill her. Destroy the makings for the spell."
"No!" Kevin shouted helplessly, staring at him.
"Yes," the demon said decisively. "Say goodbye to Mommy."
He snapped his fingers and Linda watched them disappear, fear spreading an icy chill through her. It was the movement of the demon to her left that broke through the fear and galvanised her into action. She dove behind the glass-topped counter, rolling out the other side, the water rifle in her hands.
Get him into the trap, she thought, pumping the holy water in long, hard streams over him, her teeth gritting as his screams rose above the sound of sizzling flesh. The demon's eyes were closed, his arms raised over his face, and he backed away as she moved forward, not seeing the circle on the floor, or the one on the ceiling until he'd stepped into it.
She lowered the water gun, staring at the demon. This was an opportunity, she thought firmly, shutting away her fear, and her doubts. But it wasn't one she could handle on her own. Kevin had been wrong to run. Dean had tried to kill her, and she could understand her son's difficulty with that. And by no means had she wanted to die. But she knew without a flicker of a doubt that had she been in the man's position, she would have done exactly the same thing. She'd been prepared to give up her soul for her son. Why had he thought that her life was worth any more?
Crowley was going down, and she wanted to be around when it happened. Wanted it so much she could taste it. She needed allies. Strong ones. And there were only two that she knew of whom she trusted enough to call on. She turned away from the devil's trap and went to her purse. Pulling out the small white card that Sam had given her, she picked up her phone. They could help. They were probably the only ones who could.