Thank you so much Jenjoremy for the fabulous beta job and Gredelina1 for all your help and support.
Chapter Twenty-One
Charlie hit one last command on her laptop and leaned back in her chair. She rolled her neck, feeling the satisfying pops of tension leaving her after being bent over the computer for far too long. She glanced across the table at Kevin and saw that he was still absorbed in his work on the tablet. Beside him was a legal pad covered in small symbols and jotted notes and his cell phone. She glanced at the cell phone and saw that there was still around an hour left on the countdown timer.
She sighed. That was way too long to be sitting around doing nothing but watching Kevin work, and all her tasks were running themselves for the foreseeable future. She needed her partner in crime free to play. She knew he would never stop before his time was up without an actual emergency though, so she needed to improvise. Her hand edged across the table to the phone and she began to inch it towards her. If Kevin was as involved in what he was doing as she thought, she could trim down his work time a little and they could kick back and...
"Leave it alone, Charlie," Kevin said without looking up.
Her hand pulled back to her side and she affected an innocent expression. "I'm not doing anything."
"You are," Kevin argued. "And you can't." He glanced at his phone and then her and said, "I still have fifty eight minutes before I can take a break."
Charlie raised an eyebrow. "Fifty eight minutes? There is such a thing as being too committed, Kev, and too anal."
Kevin frowned at her and said, "Okay, first of all, I'm not anal, I'm organized, and second, when you're saving the world, there is no such thing as too committed. This might hold the key for reopening Heaven. It might give us a way to track Gadreel. It might even have some kind of heavenly uber-weapon for Abaddon."
Charlie heaved a sigh. He was partially right, it could hold all of those things, but it was still possible to be too committed. "You need to take breaks," she said. "This is a marathon, not a sprint."
Kevin frowned. "You sound like Sam."
"That's because Sam is wise."
"He is, but he doesn't take his own advice. He's gunning harder than any of us right now. I'm just doing my part."
"You are, and your part is awesome, but taking a night off won't hurt you."
Kevin seemed to consider for a moment. Charlie waited, breath bated, for him to see the logic in her words.
"Thirty minutes," he said eventually. "Give me another thirty minutes with the tablet and I'll spend the rest of the evening doing whatever."
Knowing it was the best deal she was going to get, Charlie nodded happily. "Okay. You do what you've got to do and I will get the snacks ready."
Kevin reached for the phone and reset it for thirty minutes while Charlie wandered towards the kitchen. She was passing though the war room when a humming noise started. It was like the sound of an old and abused computer coming to life.
"Charlie?" Kevin called. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," she called back. "I didn't touch anything."
Just then, the bulbs of the map table began to light one by one and the control panel against the wall came to life. The buttons lit up and a large red light, like a cop car bulb, began to flash and click.
Kevin skidded into the war room, his face pale and his features strained. "Not again!"
"What's happening?" Charlie asked.
"This is what happened when the angels fell," Kevin replied, his voice stressed.
"Well they can't fall again."
"No," Kevin said darkly. "But demons can rise."
"You think?"
"I don't know," he snapped. "I don't know what's happening other than it's got to be big and bad."
Charlie pushed her hair back and took a deep breath. "Okay. We're safe in here as long as we don't leave."
"Yeah, but how safe are the others?" Kevin asked. "Sam and Dean and Castiel. They're out there still."
Charlie ran back to the table and picked up her phone from where it sat beside the laptop. She dialed Sam's number and waited for him to answer with her heart in her throat.
"Charlie?" Sam said.
"Oh, thank God," Charlie breathed, filling with relief at the sound of his voice. "Are you guys okay?"
"We're fine," he said. "What's wrong?"
"The panels are going nuts," Charlie said. "They're all lit up and there's this noise, and Kevin said it's like last time, when the angels fell, and—"
"Slow down," Sam said forcefully. "Where are you?"
"We're in the bunker still."
"Good," Sam said. "Stay in there. Don't open the door to anyone but us. We'll be there as soon as we can."
"Okay," she said. "Be careful though, Sam. I think something really big is happening."
"We'll be okay," Sam said, his stressed tone designed to reassure no one. "See you real soon, Charlie."
There was the sound of a disconnected call and Charlie slid her phone back into her pocket.
"What did they say?" Kevin asked.
"They're coming," she said. "We've got to stay in here."
"Like we'd go anywhere else," Kevin said with a strained laugh.
Charlie took a deep breath and tried to calm herself so she could think clearly. "Right. Okay. We're not going anywhere, obviously, so we need to make sure we're as protected as we can be in here."
"Dungeon," Kevin said. "It's concealed. No one knows it's there."
"No one but us, Gadreel and the King of Hell. If it's demons causing trouble, it could be Crowley, and if it's angels, Gadreel. They could have told anyone what's in here. No, we need to be more protected than just hiding."
"What are you thinking?" he asked.
"Traps and sigils," Charlie said. "You lay devil's traps anywhere you can think of. I'll set up angel banishing sigils."
"You really think they'll get in?" Kevin asked, his eyes wide.
"No. Of course not," she said reassuringly.
"You're a terrible liar, Charlie."
She smiled sadly. "Maybe. So we need to be prepared, and doing something will help us not freak out."
They ran through the halls to the storeroom. Charlie yanked open a cupboard and grabbed two spray cans of paint. She handed them to Kevin and said, "I know there's already some laid down, but we should have more by the door and at the bottom of the stairs." Her voice was calm and authoritative now, a stark contradiction to how she actually felt. "Do you remember what they look like?"
"I spent a year on the run, laying them every day," Kevin said. "I remember."
She jogged to her bedroom to the small weapons trove she kept there. Taking a silver flipknife she carried it back into the war room. The clicking of the light seemed to drill into her ears, making all other sounds foggy. Her heard was racing, too, agitating her, and when she cut across her palm to make the blood flow for the sigil, it seemed to flow too fast.
She could see Kevin at the top of the stairs, bent over as he painted in the trap, and she set to work drawing a sigil on the wall. Her hand stung, but in a muted way, as if the pain wasn't truly a part of her. The adrenaline was coursing through her veins.
When the first was done, she moved to the other side of the room and drew in another. Worried thoughts came to her as she worked—What were Sam and Dean doing? Were they close? Was Castiel okay? Was it angel or demons, or something new that they didn't know about yet?
That thought scared her. They were already facing so much. What else could be coming for them? Fear froze her.
"Charlie!"
She snapped back to herself to see Kevin leaning in close and clicking his fingers in her face. She drew a deep gasping breath and nodded.
"Yeah? I mean, I'm okay."
"Are you done?" he asked.
Charlie looked at the half-finished sigil and shook her head. "Nearly." She pumped her fist to make the blood flow and painted in the rest of the sigil. "I think that's enough."
"I think so, too," Kevin said. "I've done half a dozen traps." He hesitated. "What do we do now, Charlie?"
"I…" Charlie was about to admit that she didn't know, but at that moment there was the sound of someone hammering on the door and Sam's voice shouted, "It's us! Let us in!"
"Thank God," Kevin said, running for the door.
Charlie followed after him and was almost at the bottom of the stairs before Kevin yanked open the door.
Kevin was talking before it was all the way open, but he cut off quickly when he saw who was on the threshold. "Thank God you're back. We've laid—"
"Hello, Kevin," a squat man said.
Charlie guessed who he was before Kevin breathed his name, as he'd been described to her before.
"Metatron!"
Kevin turned and ran for the stairs, but the small man grabbed his arm and dragged him back with one hand. Kevin struggled, but the angel was too strong.
Then, as if the nightmare could get no worse, another angel appeared. Charlie knew who this one was, even though he was in his new vessel, as she'd spent hours searching for his face: Gadreel.
Metatron's greedy eyes roved the room and he said, "Get the tablets. We don't need the girl."
Gadreel nodded and started down the stairs toward Charlie.
She spun on her heel and ran straight for the closest sigil. Pumping her fist, she brought it up to the wall, but just before she could slam her hand down, banishing the angels, Metatron and Kevin disappeared.
"No!" she cried out, even as she slapped her bloody hand down on the sigil, ripping Gadreel away from her.
For a moment, she stayed with her hand on the sigil, panting hard and trying to make sense of what had happened and how it could have gone so wrong. Then sense caught up to her. Gadreel was blasted back to his corner, but Metatron could come back any moment. She raced up the stairs and out of the door. "Sam! Dean!" she shouted, but there was no response. She looked up and down the road but there was no sign of them. They were either not there at all or had been taken with Kevin. She thought the former. Metatron might have wings, but she had faith in Sam and Dean's abilities to kick his ass. One of the angels must have imitated Sam's voice.
She slammed the door closed. Pressing her back against it and swiping away the tears that were burning a path down her cheeks, she tried to make her mind work. What next? What did she have to do next?
The answer was quick to come—save Kevin. She didn't know how though. He had been snatched by an angel; the only angel in existence with wings still. They could be anywhere. Even if they weren't, she was no match for him. She had to do what she could.
The tablets!
She ran down the stairs and grabbed the angel tablet from the table. She'd never held it before. In fact she'd not seen anyone touch it other than Kevin, and she'd always felt that it would be a heady feeling to handle the actual Word of God. It felt like nothing, though, to pick up the cold stone and stuff it into the cloth bag Kevin kept it in with the demon tablet. She hugged them to her chest and tried to think. She needed somewhere safe for them. Somewhere the angels couldn't go. But where would that be? The bunker was supposed to be the safest place in the world, and the angels had penetrated it.
She wished she wasn't alone. She needed help, and her thoughts had always been easier to wrangle when she was able to vocalize them. She wished for Sam and Dean, Kevin or Castiel. Even Dorothy was better equipped to handle this situation than her.
"Dorothy!" she breathed.
Knowing where she had to go, she rushed to the drawer in the liquor cabinet and yanked it open. In its wooden box was the key that Dorothy had used to return to Oz. She grabbed it up and hurried to closest door—the one that led to the dungeon. Dorothy had exited though the main door, but Charlie wasn't risking that, and Dorothy had said the key would turn any door into an entrance to Oz. She pushed it into the lock, and though it looked far too large for the hole, it fit perfectly. Taking a deep breath, Charlie pushed it open and gasped as her eyes met the incredible sight of the yellow road and Emerald City.
She took a deep breath, and stepped though the door, the tablets clutched tightly against her chest.
So… Poor Kev's been kidnapped by the little squit Metatron, Charlie's off to Oz, and Gadreel's been blasted away. Fun times.
Until next time…
Clowns or Midgets xxx