Chapter Two

-o0o-

Says she talks to angels.

They call her out by her name.

"She Talks to Angels," The Black Crowes

But for its two-night, End of the World Gala reopening, the Elysian Fields hotel (formerly known as the Muncie Value Inn) has been closed since the late 1990s, left to weather the elements and crumble to dust on a little-used exit off I-69, Southwest of Muncie, Indiana.

From the inside of the yellow cab, with the rain sliding in sheets down the windows, it's hard to see anything but the hulking outline of the building.

"You sure this is the place?" says the cab driver over the sound of The Black Crowes singing about angels. "Don't look like anyone's been here in years."

"Yes," She says, pulling a handful of bills from Her inner coat pocket and handing them over the seat. "I might be a little while. Please wait." If things go according to plan, She'll need the cab to ferry Her back to the hotel room She's rented. She won't have the energy to transport herself. It is novel, living like a mortal, even for a short time.

"Sure," the driver says, brows rising at the sight of the hundreds. "Not a problem. You be careful. Whole thing looks like it could collapse."

His concern is genuine and She spares him an easy smile before pulling Her umbrella from the foot well and opening the door.

The wind rips around Her, the rain sweeps under Her umbrella, wets Her hair, the length of Her skirt. Lightning cuts across the sky, lights up the whole building; She doesn't need it to see the faint wisps of magic that had very recently beautified doorways and brightened the lights. They melt around the edges of door frames and windows, slowly fading away like someone's dream.

The interior is back to its most recent look—broken chairs, torn wallpaper, dust-covered desk and the moldering ruin of a silver bell—but with the added motif of eviscerated gods. Corpses lie in Her path. She toes gingerly at one of them. The drying tissues drift apart like onion skin, the bones crumble to dust.

The vessels of gods don't last long once those gods are dead.

Stepping over a thick dark pool of something more viscous than blood, She passes the ruin of a body She once recognized as Vishnu, passes another She knew to be Hermes. How many were here to wage war against a power they had so little hope of defeating?

She closes Her eyes, breathes deep, searching and finds familiar scents beneath the rich, meaty odor of blood. The first is full of contrast, scorching heat and bitter cold; it makes something deep in Her chest ache. The other, the one She's looking for, is fainter, sweet and rich like warm caramel, sharp as the air during an electrical storm. She follows the scent to a large room that was probably once the jewel of the hotel.

Gabriel's vessel lies in an alcove created by beams that have rotted through and fallen. His eyes are closed, his mouth coated with blood, his skin turned an ashen grey. The shadows of wings are burned into the floor.

She closes Her eyes. She remembers his wings. Six of them, arching across the sky, a torrent of sun-shaded lightning, interspersed with the blackness of space, celestial and sea blues and the liquid mercury sheen of stars.

And She remembers this vessel. Not of his own making, but he's kept it well. She saw it once, a long time ago by mortal reckoning, in the streets of Marrakesh, blending effortlessly into the market crowd as he followed a drunk and stinking man through the press of bodies. That man was the rapist of several young women. Later that evening, the man was found on an old tree, hanging by his intestines, his penis inside his mouth.

Those were early days, before he became more poetic, more artistic, more familiar with human irony.

Her Trickster.

Her Gabriel.

There's another wrench in Her chest, a nova flair of pain. If She were human, She might have sat down on the floor and cried. But She isn't human. And She has a job to do. There's at least one thing She can make right tonight.

Reaching out, She lays a palm flat in the center of the vessel's chest, feels the cold, the stillness, and the residue of an archangel's power. It sings against Her own in harmony.

Gabriel is hers. The connection is still there, no matter how many millennia separate them. And She can find him.

But…

She reaches once more into the inner pocket of Her rain coat, withdraws a small vial of blood.

She won't take unnecessary chances. Not for this.

Unfastening the first few buttons of the vessel's shirt, She holds the vial over the center of his chest, above the heart, and snaps it in Her fingers. Shards of glass cut Her own skin and their blood mingles; She presses Her bloody palm to his chest, fingers spread like the limbs of a starfish, closes Her eyes and reaches into his body.

Blood flows beneath his skin, flesh warms, loses its ashen shade. The thick muscle of the heart shifts, sluggish, beats once, twice and falls into a steady rhythm. The sucking wound beneath his sternum grows smaller and seals. The vessel is whole and ready.

That's the easy part.

She keeps Her eyes closed, Her hand on his chest. To anyone looking on, She might just be a woman saying a prayer over the body of one fallen, if not for the subtle tremors of energy that spiral through the air, spark on Her skin. They raise the fine hairs on Her arms, make the finer hairs at Her temples crackle with static. Outside, the streetlamps flicker, grow dim.

In silence, She seeks. She needs no words for this. It's old magic. Guardian to guarded. Creator to created. Mother to child.

Letting Herself seep through the crevices of Her own vessel, She looks at the world with a different set of eyes, examines the filaments of energy running from Her, disappearing into the ether.

She sorts through them, fingertips brushing over the ones still bright and pulsing with energy, shying away from those that have grown cold and dark, until She comes to his, cooled but still sparking.

Grasping it, She watches light and life flow back into it, the color brightening from gunmetal grey to sterling silver shot through with gold.

She tugs, finds resistance. She tugs harder, only to have the filament jerk obstinately. He always was a stubborn one. Maybe a few words were in order.

-o0o-

He is everywhere and nowhere, in every time and apart from time itself. He can see the first fragments of lights, stars exploding and spreading their fertile insides across the galaxy before there were words for stars or galaxy or even time. He hears the chatter of billions of voices in thousands of languages and changing dialects, spanning centuries. He can smell the water and the rich muck of an Earth that's still new, hear the sound of that first strange fish heaving itself up on the shore. The cornerstone of his Father's creation. He can hear himself telling the little angels – the newest ones – to be careful of it. To watch over it.

Something tugs at him. Around where his navel would be…if he had a navel.

He ignores it in favor of watching a star in an unnamed galaxy go hypernova, of watching the first earthly bird, that would be called a bird, spread its wings and fly.

He thinks he's been here before, but before what? Before being given form or shape?

Then this might be non-existence, which, he supposes, could be worse.

But if it's non-existence then how, exactly, does he exist to think about the fact that he's non-existent?

And that's getting into philosophy, which he's never been much for. Plato was a dick. And he never did pay back that debt—

Gabriel.

He knows that voice.

Gabriel?

It's been thousands of years, give or take a century, since he heard it last, out in the White Desert. Before he took up the mantle of Loki. Before he really knew what the hell he was doing.

But it can't be. It's just a figment of his non-existent imagination.

Gabriel.

Sharper this time and he perks up a non-existent ear at the tone.

So help me, if you don't come to me right now— The voice puts thunder to shame, would make oaks bend in its wake, cause rivers to flood…

It's definitely Her.

He feels that navel-tug again and this time he follows it, lets it pull him toward a corona of light that looks like the electrical synapses inside a brain. For a moment, he wonders if that's all this really is. A place made up inside someone's head. A little human, perhaps, dreaming of him dreaming of her.

Then the electric web does something strange. Its tendrils shiver, flow, reach for him. He reaches back. The fibers wind around his non-existent arm and tug and then he's flying, as he's never flown before. All of space and time swirling around him, stars, moons, and planets spinning in a marvelous display, teeming with color. He catches a glimpse of a marble, small and beautiful and painted the deepest blues and greens.

Then the spinning stops. And his vision goes white.

When you've been a pagan god for over 5,000 years, you get used to a little blood, a little pain. Preferably all of it mixed with a little sex.

There's no sex.

And Gabriel has never felt pain quite like this.

He's on fire. Or maybe his vessel is. He's burning from the inside out like a billion heated kabobs tipped with tiny suns are piercing his skin. Inside his skull, his brain must be frying, celestial synapses charring and blackening tender curds of gray matter.

His fingertips gouge into the old Formica, the heels of his shoes squeak against the floor, his back arching, twisting. Opening his eyes, he can see nothing but white, the vague, black shape of someone kneeling next to him. He opens his mouth, tries to speak, to demand to know what is going on. In a week's time, he'll deny it all, but the only things that come out of his mouth now are non-verbal cries, strained whimpers.

"The rebirth is a painful process," She says, sounding breathless. "I'm sorry."

Holy fuck, Gabriel thinks. "Understatement," is what he finally gasps out, throat wrenching, sounding like a 12-pack-a-day smoker.

When the fire beneath his skin dwindles to tingling warmth and the white light fades from his eyes, he can finally see the woman kneeling next to him.

She's sleek and dark, dressed in a shimmering white tank top and colorful skirt. She sits with Her legs kicked around to one side, a Siren on a rock. On Her feet are gold sandals, on Her long arms, matching gold bangles. Her black hair is longer than when he'd last seen it and frames Her face, makes the deep red of Her lipstick more pronounced. Her large, dark eyes gleam. The after effects of power or the remnants of tears, Gabriel isn't sure.

"My Gabriel. It's good to see you."

"You brought me back?" It's a stupid question. And yet it seems important to ask.

They had not parted well the last time they'd been together. She'd been moving fully into Her role as Aset, benevolent mother, teacher, succor of the Egyptian people. And he? He had been not too long out of Heaven. 1,000 years by human count? 2,000? Petulant and pissed and not at all interested in motherly advice, occasionally taking on the role of spirit or avenging god, but generally keeping away from humanity.

"Of course I brought you back," She says, as if the question doesn't even warrant thought.

"How? Why?"

"Don't think it was easy. Your former lover," Isis pushes the word off Her tongue as if it tastes bad, "was helpful in supplying the catalyst." She holds out Her palm; in it are shards of broken glass, traces of blood gone goopy around the edges. "And, well, "witness protection" or not, there's still enough of me in you to find you when I need to."

"Great. Celestial Lo-Jack."

Isis doesn't look impressed. "As to the rest...let's call it what it is: an act of love, wide-reaching and not only for you. It has to stop, Gabriel. You have to ensure it stops."

He snorts. "Yeah. Already tried that and wound up as a kabob. On my own skewer. Being the Trickster doesn't mean I don't learn from my mistakes." And after that little showdown, he'd like to crawl away and lick his wounds in private, thank you. Well, maybe have someone else lick his wounds. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Though he does know some nymphs who are into blood play….

He's driven from his reverie by Isis standing, gauzy skirt swinging around Her ankles, brushing against him. She smells like juniper and fresh wind, sweet grasses, clear water. Things that make his traitorous little heart lurch, thinking of the past, of home.

"You're too much like your father," She says, shaking Her head. The charms dangling from Her ears jingle. She takes a deep breath, full mouth pressing tight. Gabriel can see the wear in Her, the fatigue in Her stance.

"What would you know about it?" He tries and fails to get his feet under him.

"If you hadn't run from the beginning. If you had taken Sam into your charge as you were supposed to—"

"So it's my fault?" He's on his feet. Was he always this short?

"It's everyone's fault!" The timbre of Her voice flares on the second word. Somewhere, drywall crumbles to the floor, a light fixture crashes to the ground. "None of us are blameless. Not even me." She seems to shrink, eyes falling shut.

There's a tug in his belly and Gabriel's torn between wanting to hug Her and wanting to scream.

"I left you all too much alone, even before your father left, too busy with my own adherents, the faith raised in my name." She smiles sadly. "My errant children. I'd hoped my influence might be enough to give you independence, guide you…maybe it was. Just in the wrong direction. Even now, your brothers work to usher in the apocalypse."

"Hard to argue with fate and prophecy."

"This is not fate, Gabriel. It's middle management running interference."

Gabriel snorts a laugh, groans as it pulls something in his sternum. Tender tissue and wounded grace where Lucifer had split him open.

Remember, you learned all your tricks from me, little brother.

Not all of them.

Isis is there, hand brushing over the phantom wound.

Gabriel meets Her eyes. "What can I do?" It's a plea.

"Help make it right."

"How?"

She shakes Her head, reaches into the pocket of Her skirt, and pulls out two more glass vials of blood, hands them over. "Go to Sam Winchester. It all revolves around the Winchesters. You'll figure it out.

"And you'll be…where? Box seats to the End of the World?

She smiles, a spread of lips, a clenching of teeth. "Cleaning up my own messes. Looking after my children. The ones on Earth and in Heaven. I won't leave you all alone again."

And with that, She slips out the door, footsteps soft on the hotel parquet, leaving nothing but a lingering trace of juniper and a discombobulated archangel holding vials of blood from the people who were destined to end the world…or save it.