#sgbb

   Monsters never had dæmons.

  It was one of the first things Sam remembered their dad telling them after the reality-shattering realisation that he wasn’t really a pest controller. John had sat them down, his face grim, with Michela curled up imposing around his feet and her sad mountain lion face looking up at them. Sam had been perched cross-legged on the motel bed, Carmen a soft mink in his lap, twisting between his fingers a little in their nervousness.

  John had leant towards them, calloused hands clasped in front of him, his eyes dark and serious.

  “Son. You can always tell a real monster, ‘cos it won’t have a dæmon.”

  They had both gasped in instinctive horror, because even thinking of someone without a daemon was terrifying. It was unnatural; anathema. Carmen’s shape flicked to a mouse, small and brown, and she darted into his shirt to hide as they contemplated the horror of not having a soul.

  Their dad nodded grimly at the reaction.

  “Yes, Sammy. That’s why we do what we do; kill those sons of bitches before they can get to anyone else. I know it’s frightening, but that’s our job. The family business. You’ve gotta be tough. You’ve gotta be strong, you hear me boy?” Sam nodded, though his eyes were watering and his chin wavered. John nodded approvingly, clapping a big hand on his shoulder. “Dean! Come over here and show your brother how to hold a gun.”

  That was where it started, the hours of training and practicing, Dean’s hands (only slightly larger than his own) guiding him through the motions while their father scowled at newspapers or pored over crumbling books late into the night. Dean tutored him through his reluctance and taught him the tricks to fighting dirty.

  “Gotta protect your dæmon, Sammy.  Carmen, you hide in his clothes, you hear me? Cos if they get you, you’re both a goner! I can’t wait ‘till Diana settles, she’s gonna be something big an’ strong, and Carmen will be too, then we’ll show ‘em!”

  Sam’s daemon settled on his first hunt. It was too soon, he realised later, much too soon for a child’s dæmon to settle, even earlier than Dean. But when he met the werewolf’s eyes something deep inside him froze, locked up in instinctive terror just for a second.

  Then it released. Sam sighted down the barrel, his hand perfectly steady. He calculating the shot as it snarled at him, then pulled the trigger.

  When it was done, he turned and looked at Carmen, perched on a nearby branch, and he knew.

  “This is it, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I think it is.”

  Their dad and Dean had caught up with them then, Michela padding behind them silent as a shadow, Diana’s flickering form peeking out from the collar of Dean’s shirt. John stared for a second, glancing between them, and Sam almost saw the uneasy expression flash across his face but it was gone a moment later.

  “Let’s get you home. Good job, son.”

  John grunted and clapped him on the shoulder when they got back to the motel before going straight for the whiskey bottle, but Dean had taken him out for a burger to celebrate. Diana quizzed Carmen on how it felt to be settled while Dean polished off his apple pie, gawping openly and almost indecently at Carmen the whole time.

  It was nice to get back to the quiet of the motel room. John had vanished somewhere before they got back, probably the local bar. Sam sat quietly for an hour after Dean had gone to bed, stroking reverently over the ebony feathers in the moonlight coming through the tissue-thin curtains. Carmen’s eyes sparkled black and sharp as she watched him back. Her bill was as thick and practical as a bowie knife, her claws sharp and so strong where they gripped his leg. The thick ruff of feathers around her neck and throat shimmered with oily iridescence. She turned her head to observe him from the other side, and Sam smiled when he noticed that there was a tiny white feather, in among all the black ones, just above her eye. Maybe she wasn’t as big and strong as Dean had been hoping, but she was perfect. Perfect for him. She was enormous, even for a raven, and she was the most beautiful thing that Sam had ever seen.

  The shine had lasted until the next morning. He stepped out of the room, going to collect something from the car, then jumped out of his skin when he heard a scream. Carmen cawed and flapped on his shoulder as he whipped around.

  The room service lady who had smiled at him as they checked in the night before was clutching her apron, her Siamese cat daemon hissing from behind her legs. Her eyes were fixed on Carmen, terrified and angry. Her cat yowled at them, spitting.

  “You keep that damn nasty thing away from me! You hear me, boy? You should go, you and that unnatural dæmon of yours! An unkindness, that’s what you are!”

  Her voice rose hysterically. Sam backed away, eyes wide with confusion, before bolting back into the room and slamming the door behind him. Dean looked up curiously, but he crossed the room and had the little bathroom door locked before his brother could even open his mouth.

  Sam sat on the toilet seat, Carmen perched on his knees, still reeling. What was that? What had it been about? He tried to muffle a small sob against his hand, but the noise leaked out.

  “It’s not about you,” Carmen murmured to him as he swiped angrily at the tears, “She’s ignorant. People just don’t like some kinds of dæmons. But she won’t hurt you. I won’t let her!” Her feathers ruffled. Sam was shocked at the vehemence in her voice, but she let him stroke along her back and down her wings until her hackles lay flat again. It was still quite some time before they left the bathroom.

  After that, he noticed how people glanced away or scowled now when they saw Carmen on his shoulder, how mothers guided their children to the other side of the street and whispered behind their hands. Ravens were bad luck; they meant that death was following. At school, he had to learn how to defend himself early, because even an overprotective brother wasn’t enough to keep the bullies off the boy with the raven dæmon. And when people found out that the raven could fly a little further from its human than was natural? That was when he was really shunned. They had even been run out of one particularly suspicious backwater.

  Eventually, he had gotten used to the strange looks and averted eyes. It was a relief when he grew tall, because being avoided was better than having to run whenever people started glaring or cracking their knuckles.

  Diana settled, as Sam had suspected she might, into a gigantic timber wolf, all brindled fur and loyalty, never pacing far from Dean’s side. The night Sam left, he had her heartbroken howls ringing in his ears for miles as he walked away.

  People were marginally more accepting at Stanford; the odd glances and edging away continued, but no one outright said anything. People only flinched a little when Carmen hopped up onto his shoulder or walked across the desk with a pen, claws clacking.

  But still, after the years of suspicious glances, they couldn’t help wondering sometimes if there was something wrong with them, deep inside. Wherever they went, they were different, outcast. Maybe there’s a reason, said the voice at the back of their heads. Maybe it’s you.

  So when Jess died, her swan disintegrating into gold dust as he screamed, it was just a confirmation of what everyone had been saying. No good could ever come of anyone with a raven for a dæmon.

.o0o.

  Monsters never have dæmons.

  But if you’re a monster trying to lure people in, or put humans at ease, it’s better to have something close enough. Demons possess the dæmon as well as the person, and things like succubae and incubae wouldn’t get much custom if there wasn’t a fake dæmon along with them.

  So obviously, when Sam and Dean meet the trickster in the foyer of Crawford Hall, he has a small black-and-white terrier trotting at his heels. The dog looks up at them while they check the room for EMF, bright-eyed, head cocked, and lets her tongue loll out in Carmen’s direction.

The guy says his name is Rich, and unlike most of the people they interview he doesn’t draw back and his smile doesn’t falter when he sees the raven dæmon. Sam is counting that as a point in his favour. His hand is firm and warm when they shake, the corners of his eyes crinkling into laugh lines. Sam can’t help the way his gaze is drawn almost magnetically to the man’s trim waist and strong arms as he walks in front of them up the stairs.

 Sam can feel Carmen observing the energetic little dog from her perch on his shoulder while he watches the man. Which is a little unusual, because usually she would be locked onto Diana, who true to form is doing her own thing and poking her damp nose into all the corners of the room while Dean stuffs his face with sweets.

  Carmen usually just watches everyone. Years of comments have made her quiet, but her sharp eyes are always sweeping the room, coolly analysing everybody from her perch. She doesn’t often pay specific attention to other dæmons, and even more rarely in a good way.

  “Take it easy,” Sam says sideways out of the corner of his mouth as he runs the EMF detector up the wall. Carmen shoots him a look that suggests she hadn’t been thinking of doing anything. But it wouldn’t have been the first time that she’d taken offense against his better judgement with someone else’s dæmon, and he wasn’t prepared to scrape Dust out of this carpet if she decided she wanted to lay into the terrier with her talons.

  But it turns out that for once they’re both interested in the same person in the same way. By the time they’ve finished with the room, the little dog has managed to tempt Carmen down onto the desk and is practically rolling on its back for belly rubs, stubby tail vibrating on the floor with happiness. Sam would happily stay and talk to Rich all afternoon, but Diana’s looking restless, and that never means anything good for Dean’s attention span.

  “Carmen,” Sam murmurs under his breath, and she shoots him a look that would be a scowl if she had eyebrows. She jumps up from the table and flaps heavily across the room to his shoulder, resentfully digging in her claws as though it’s his fault they have to leave.

  “Well thanks for showing us around.” Sam sends the janitor his most winning smile when they reach the front doors.

  “Anytime,” The man throws him back a mischievous wink. Carmen turns on Sam’s shoulder as they leave so that she can watch the little dog until the two of them are out of sight.

They see the janitor again, unexpectedly, in the bar that night. Dean wanders off with a rather unappealing girl on his arm, Diana wobbling unsteadily after him, and Sam leaves them to it. For some reason, Dean has been even more unbearable than usual for the past few days, and it’s just a relief to get some time to himself.

  The bar isn’t his usual sort of haunt. The music’s slightly too loud and the air is humid and greasy, sharp with the tang of fermented sweat and spilt alcohol. Sam sighs, hovering in the crowd, and wonders for a second if he shouldn’t just go back to the motel and call it a night. But then he realises that Dean will probably bring that girl back there and grimaces. He doesn’t want to walk in on that any more times than he already has.

  So it’s an unexpected treat to see a familiar profile sitting at one of the tables. A spark of hope blooms in Sam’s chest; at least he won’t have to while away the hours alone, and thinking back to that cheeky wink, who knows? If he plays his cards right, maybe Mr Sexy Janitor will take him back to his place instead.

  Sam picks up a beer from the overworked barmaid and walks over, elbowing his way through the crowd to where the man (Rich, wasn’t it?) is sitting at the back, a look of extreme concentration on his face as he tries to fish a cherry out of the bottom of his glass.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Rich glances up at him, surprised, then grins and gestures expansively to the other seat as though to say ‘be my guest.’

  “Didn’t expect to find you here! What’s a nice guy like you doing in a hole in the wall like this?” His terrier thumps her tail in welcome from her perch on the man’s knees. He’s out of his work overalls and in a shirt that looks maroon (although that might just be the poor lighting), which Sam notices highlights his forearms nicely.

  “Trying to keep away from my brother mostly,” Sam sighs as Carmen hops off his shoulder onto the table and ruffles her feathers, claws skittering over the greasy wood.

  Rich gives him an assessing glance. “Your brother that partner of yours?” Sam nods. The janitor nods back sagely and raises his vibrantly pink cocktail in a toast. “In that case, I know exactly what you mean. To escaping annoying brothers!”

  Sam’s mouth curves into a smile for the first time that evening as their glasses clink. I like him, Carmen comments with quiet amusement through their connection.

  “So, what was your name again? I didn’t catch it the first time.”

  “Sam,” he says before he can think about it, then curses internally. This is the problem with fake identities. He might as well just give both of their names now. “This is Carmen.” She nods politely at them.

  “Pleasure to meet you. I’m Rich, as I’m sure you remember, but Gabriel’s my middle name and I like it better. Call me Gabe. This here’s Ra. She’s a little shit, don’t listen to anything she says about me.”

  “Hey!” Ra barks from his lap, but her tail is still thumping against the chair. Sam grins as she pretends to tear a hole in Gabe’s shirt with her teeth and he tussles with her, rubbing her ears.

  They chat for a while, and Sam marvels a little at how easy this random man is to talk to. It’s been years since he’s felt this kind of instant connection to someone. He hasn’t been able to open up like this in a long time, not since Jess really, but before he knows it he’s talking about Stanford, his course and life on the road. He’s not really sure why he’s spilling his life story to a man he just met, but it feels good to let it out. They’re probably never going to meet again, and he’s not giving away anything specific. What harm could it do?

  “So, after your mom died your dad really yanked you around the country, huh?”

  Sam shrugs, a little uncomfortable, but Carmen grumbles, “Yeah, all over. We barely stayed put for more than a month most places.”

  Gabe nods. “Damn. That’s rough kid. Sorry to hear that. I know a thing or two about fucked up families and deadbeat dads myself. I ran away from home as soon as I could, travelled a lot when I was younger. All over Northern Europe, really. Those were a wild couple of years.” Gabe chuckles and slumps further into the embrace of his seat, toying with his paper umbrella. “That reminds me of something that happened when I was up in Sweden. We were halfway up this hill, then the fog came down…”

  Gabe seems to have an endless supply of anecdotes from his travels. By the sound of it, he had been more than a little wild in his youth. Sam relaxes again as he’s regaled with tales of pranks Gabe pulled on his travel companions and ill-advised hook-ups. After a story about a drunk priest, a pair of strippers and a particularly large frog which has Sam in tears of laughter, the topic somehow moves naturally on to Sam’s law studies.

  “I didn’t ever really attend college before I came to this place. Too much like hard work.” Gabe picks at the little bowl of peanuts in the middle of the table, flicking them into the air and grinning as his dæmon snaps them up. “Although, I did take a course once. Dæmonology. Well, I say I took it, I was repairing the roof above that lecture theatre for the whole semester and I kind of listened in. Same thing.”

  Sam snorts into his drink, grinning. Dæmonology is a cheap trick on par with palm reading and horoscopes as far as he’s concerned, but Gabe wags his finger at his amused expression.

  “No, not that shit you’re thinking of, like ‘oh, he has a doe and she has a stag, they’re meant to be together’. Nothing like that. Well, kind of like that. It was all about trying to guess people’s primary characteristics by their daemon’s species.”

  Sam grins and takes another gulp. “Sorry, still sounds like bullshit to me,” he says teasingly.

  “You say that now, mister sceptical. Mind if I try it on you?” he asks them both, his eyes flicking between Sam and where Carmen is standing.

  Sam tenses minutely, and feels Carmen go still where she had been preening herself on the table. Gabe hasn’t made any comment about the raven thing yet, but Sam can suddenly feel that boot hanging over them again, poised to drop.

  “Go on then,” he says warily. Carmen flicks a glance at him, then nods.

  Gabe narrows his eyes at Carmen for a moment, brows drawing down in thought. Carmen’s head turns to inspect him sideways on, her eye glittering, and Sam shifts uncomfortably. Staring directly at someone else’s daemon is considered rude, and Gabe’s piercing golden eyes are almost too sharp on Carmen. It’s as though he’s staring at something too private, vulnerable. Like Sam’s insides are spread out over the table being pondered over.

  “Ravens. Kind of unusual dæmons. You’re probably very intelligent. Focused. Analytical. You hold grudges, but you’re loyal once you know someone. Working in a small group or going it alone doesn’t bother you. You probably work well with that guy with the wolf daemon because they have a symbiotic relationship in the wild, did you know that? You feel the need to clean up after other people’s messes, like ravens clean up carrion, but you’re a hunter too.” Sam feels a tingle of unease at being referred to as a hunter, but Gabe keeps going, noticing nothing. “Like most flying dæmons you need your own space, your freedom.”

  “So, nothing in there about being an evil omen of death, then?” Sam forces out casually.

  Gabe snorts and leans back, the spell broken. “That’s not the animal, that’s people’s preconceived notions. Different thing altogether. Carmen’s a bit of an ironic name for her, though.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, Carmen means song, doesn’t it? Ravens don’t really strike me as joining the morning chorus, if you get me.”

  Sam shrugs as Carmen hops up onto his shoulder with a rustle. “I know what you mean, but ravens are technically songbirds. They’re passerines. They can still sing, it’s just people don’t tend to like it when they do.” Carmen scoffs insult in his ear, a rough sound between a cough and a bark, and Sam smiles as he runs a finger over her wing.

  Gabriel is startled into laughter, the soft light of the bar catching in the golden highlights of his hair as he throws his head back. “I’ll give you that one, kiddo. To singing ravens!” They clink their glasses again and Carmen gives a throaty caw then chuckles, Gabe’s dæmon joining in from his lap.

  Sam grins at her. “So, what does it mean that you’re a terrier?”

  Gabe puts his hand down to his lap to stroke over her white-and-black fur. “Hmm. Well, I’m always getting into things I shouldn’t. I’m energetic. Sometimes I chew the furniture.” He winks and it’s Sam’s turn to laugh.

  “Sometimes he sniffs butts and eats dog treats too,” Ra comments to Carmen, who bursts into cackles. Sam grins.

  “You’re a lying bitch,” Gabriel tells his dæmon fondly, and she lets her tongue dangle out of her mouth cheekily. He ruffles her ears, then gets to his feet and sticks out a hand, still smirking like he’s sure he’s going to get his way.

  “Anyway, how about we blow this joint, sasquatch? My place is two blocks away. What do you say?”

  It’s an obvious invitation, going by the sudden heat in Gabe’s eyes. Sam hesitates for half a second, then grins and grabs his hand and allows himself to be pulled up, Carmen wobbling on his shoulder. Gabe keeps his hand, tugging him along with vulpine smiles until they’re out the door and into the cool embrace of the night air. Then he lets go and races ahead, Ra at his heels. Sam pauses in surprise then races after him, laughing, Carmen taking flight from his shoulder to glide beside them as they chase each other through the streets.

  Gabe is unexpectedly fast on his feet, and Sam is breathing hard when he finally catches up with him trying to get the key into the lock of his door, his tongue between his teeth in concentration and his dæmon yapping their impatience as she dances around their feet.

  Gabe makes a sound of success and gives a fist pump as he manages to get the door open, then grabs Sam by the front of the shirt and drags him inside. They barely pause as they make straight for the bedroom, shedding layers as they go.

  From then on, it’s all just flashes; Gabe complaining teasingly as he peels off Sam’s many undershirts, his mouth hot as a brand on his neck, sucking hickies that Sam knows Dean will complain about tomorrow. Gabriel’s eyes sparkling gold in amusement as Sam gets himself stuck half out of his jeans, the white gleam of teeth as he laughs. His hand planted firmly on Sam’s chest above his frantic heartbeat as he rides him, mouth dropping open loosely but somehow still smirking and eyes narrowed caramel slits locked onto his.

  Afterwards, Gabe slumps over him as they both catch their breath, a warm sated weight against his chest, his fingers idly tracing random patterns on Sam’s stomach.

  “Woah,” Sam huffs, a little dazed, not that he wants to admit it. He’s never been one to pick up one night stands, not like Dean. Unless he actually knows the person it isn’t usually worth it to him, but that was the best sex he’s had in years.

  “I aim to please,” Gabe smirks as he rolls over momentarily to grab an abandoned shirt from the floor, then cleans them both up before he flops back with a satisfied sigh.

  Sam thinks that this is probably the point where Gabe will throw him out. He’s a nice guy, but that’s the deal, right? You pick someone up, you have a good time, you leave. Dean’s been tutoring him on the etiquette of one night stands for years. He might as well get going, no need to make this awkward.

  Sam sighs, then levers himself up and stands, looking around for his clothes. Carmen stirs from where she’s using Ra as a pillow, glaring at him balefully.

  “Woah there, kiddo! Where do you think you’re going?”

 “Uh…” Sam pauses, bent to grab his boxers. But Gabe raises one sardonic eyebrow from the bed and lifts the edge of the blanket in invitation.

  “You’re welcome to stay. Unless you want to go back and interrupt your brother, of course.”

  No competition there. Evidently, Dean’s rules for one night stands don’t apply in this case, and Sam can’t help the little burst of relief and gratefulness. He slips back under the covers with a grin, and with a warm body snug against his side, he falls asleep quickly.

.o0o.

  It doesn’t last, of course. The very next night the trickster reveals himself, and the little dog evaporates into a mirage-blue shimmer, gone. The thing that he had slept next to all night long doesn’t even look at him as they face him down with stakes, sly golden eyes tracking Dean until he manages to ram a stake into its heart.

  Later, a hundred miles away in the next fleabag motel, Sam scrubs himself in the shower until his skin is raw and pink, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. It makes him shudder to think how close he’d gotten- shouldn’t he have felt something? Known something was wrong?

  But he hadn’t. Carmen croons to him softly, preening the hair behind his ear and wordlessly trying to comfort him. She’d spent a night next to that little terrier that didn’t exist and she hadn’t felt anything wrong either.

  Why hadn’t it killed them? It had known they were there, it had obviously known that they were hunters too. Sam had given it a thousand good opportunities to kill him. It could have slit his throat in his sleep as easy as breathing. But he hadn’t. Which could only mean, with Sam’s knowledge of monsters and their motivations, that the trickster needed him for something.

  He’s just glad that he’ll never have to find out.

.o0o.

  They nearly make it out of Cold Oak. Dean is in sight, Diana running ahead of him, when they hear him shout a warning. But it’s too late.

  Sam feels the knife sink into his spine like a red hot poker being jammed into his back. Which means that Carmen feels it too.

  She’s in mid-air when the pain hits. She feels herself scream as she falls, air rushing past her. She knows immediately that they’re going to die; the pain is too much, too all-consuming. Everything starts to fade in and out, like a badly tuned radio; Diana shouting from somewhere high above her, hot breath on her feathers. She can feel Sam’s panic, Sam reaching out for her, Sam-

  And then he’s gone.

  Alone.

  She is alone.

  I can’t feel my body, she realises with a shock. There was that same unstable feeling she remembered vaguely from the blink-and-miss-it switches between forms, back when she had still been able to shift. Where was she? Was she a pile of Dust back on the outskirts of Cold Oak? Was she nothing? Wasn’t there meant to be something after? They knew there was hell, the demons were proof enough of that. What about heaven? Dean and Diana were skeptics, but she and Sam had believed for so long. There had to be something else, something more.

  But there wasn’t. Just hazy non-being, stretching out to infinity on either side.

  Please, I pray to the archangel Gabriel, anybody, please somebody save me, she prays out of desperation. But no one comes.

  It could be an hour or a century before something changes. Suddenly the void shifts, warping as something inches into the space next to her. She can only watch, dumb and immobile, as it moves towards her.

  It’s enormous. There’s no sight here, no sound, so all she can glimpse are impressions, of heat and energy and eyes, so many eyes, all watching. Carmen recoils, or she tries to, but there’s nowhere to run, not here.

  The thing reaches out, and then Carmen stops struggling, because whatever this thing is, it’s warm. Not the grey neutrality of their surroundings, but actual living warmth. It wraps itself around her, holding almost hesitantly. Carmen should really be worried, but for some reason, she isn’t. This being doesn’t mean her any harm.

  Then there’s a tug, which turns into an uncomfortable yank, and the warmth melts away as she flows like magnetic sand back towards her other half. They are opposing magnets, drawing each other in faster and faster, and suddenly the momentum stops. Carmen draws a breath, and then another, feeling the air cycling through her lungs and air sacks more keenly than she ever has in their lives.

  Sam heaves in a huge gasp and sits up, already groping for her with one hand and his back where the knife went in with the other. She hops onto his chest as he coughs, spluttering. He lays a warm hand over her wings, trembling so hard that she can feel her whole body being shaken with it.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “I think we just died.”

  For a minute they just sit, clutched tightly to one another, not yet ready to process exactly what that means or the consequences. They intentionally don’t think about the possibility that Dean might have sold Diana to hell for them. They definitely don’t think about the amount of time that Dean might have gotten. Sam half manages to convince himself that they might not have died at all (Carmen knows they did but she can’t bring herself to tell him that), but all of that falls away when Dean walks in.

  They have one glimpse of Dean’s face- haggard, sallow, bags too deep under his eyes- before he’s wrapping Sam up in a fierce hug. Carmen is bowled over a half second later and then she’s being groomed and nuzzled by Diana.

  “Don’t you dare do that again. We were so fuckin’ worried,” she mutters.

  Carmen gets back to her feet in a ruffle of feathers. “Come on, Di. Tell me you didn’t. Tell me you didn’t sell yourself for us.”

  Diana just looks at her, eyes solemn, and that’s all Carmen needs to know.

 .o0o.

Extract from Carter’s Guide to Mythological Dæmon Demographics, page 121

Another god from the Norse pantheon was Loki, a popular trickster figure in literature. He is often depicted as an outsider and a troublemaker among both the other gods and mortals, and like other gods which are depicted with dæmons, there is a large amount of variation in opinion on what form the god’s dæmon would take, made more confusing by the conflicting sources on Loki himself.

Some historians argue that the beings that are often classed as Loki’s children, such as Hel, Jormungandr the serpent and Fenrir the great wolf were, in fact, his dæmon. Myths surrounding Loki tend to be convoluted however, so it is not clear whether this was the belief at the time.

One of the more commonly accepted representations is a raven, and many have argued that this is what has caused the stigma against those with raven dæmons in the present era (see ‘The Raven People; Omens or Victims’)-

  Sam slams the book shut with a curse, then coughs as a plume of dust rises up from it.

  “Nothing?” Carmen asks him quietly from the dæmon perch next to the library table.

  “Nothing,” Sam grumbles, ignoring the scowls of the other people in the silent section.

  It’s been five months since the last Tuesday. Since he’d caught the trickster out. Since the last time they’d seen Dean and Diana alive.

  Sam knows that this obsession is unhealthy. It’s slowly destroying him, but he can’t stop. He can’t control it. Carmen is getting quieter and quieter, talking less and  hardly moving from his side. He can tell that this hard, cold side of himself scares her. Usually she’s the colder, more analytical part of him, but not now. It would probably scare him too, and he wants to care, but he can’t. Not while Loki’s still out there.

  He keeps catching glimpses of Loki in what he reads. It’s nothing more than flashes, a crumb trail in words and woodcuts, but it’s there. He can follow it. He’s attached to the trickster, whether he likes it or not, drawn inexorably forwards like he’s on a string. Sometimes he thinks that he’s so close that he can taste it, but the bastard always slips away again.

  Most of the time it’s the rage that drives him, cold and congealed in his heart. But sometimes, sometimes he’ll see a blurred photograph of a profile, a hint of a sly mouth or the curl of hair, and catch the hate morphing into something else. He can’t seem to block out the memories of those strong hands on him, golden eyes heated with lust rather than anger.

  Those times he has to snarl at himself and turn the shower to cold until the problem and self-hatred go away.

           Sam sees it sometimes when he looks into the dark of Carmen’s eyes; that part of himself that he tries to bury so deeply. The thrill of the chase, the bloody anticipation of the capture. As much as he has tried to deny it to himself in the past, he is a hunter. The trickster, Loki, seems to bring out the ugly truths in him, and it makes Sam hate him more.

           But there’s still something that Sam and Carmen can’t figure out about him. They’ve dealt with pagan gods before, although they were admittedly only minor ones. But Loki’s set of powers make no sense, even in the lore. Manipulating reality? That’s rare. And then there’s the time travel; Loki had kept him trapped in a time loop for a year. It must have taken an enormous amount of energy and effort, even for a god.

  So why was Loki doing this? There had to be a reason; the more they looked at his previous victims, the more they saw that Loki never killed without a purpose. He taught lessons, often to the death.

  So what is he trying to teach me? Sam shakes his head. What was the purpose of killing Dean over and over, then killing him permanently? It makes no sense.

  His phone starts to buzz in his pocket and Sam startles out of his thoughts, getting up and leaving the silent part of the library swiftly, holding out an arm for Carmen. He closes the door behind them and reaches into his pocket for the phone.

  “Sam speaking.”

  “Sam, boy is it good to hear your voice.”

  “Hey Bobby. You got something for me?”

 “You bet I do. Finally got a lead on the bastard.” There is a rustling of papers in the background. “Got my hands on that book of Asgardian myths, had to translate it out of Old Norse. There’s a summoning that looks like the real deal, none of the usual bullshit. You’ll need to come to this address,” Bobby starts rattling off the place he has to go and a list of ingredients.

  “Thanks Bobby, I’ll be there.”

  “You’d better be.” There’s a click as the line hangs up. Sam turns and strides out of the library, not bothering to put his books away. Their frustration from earlier has evaporated, and in its place there is steely purpose. Finally, he has a lead. Finally.

.o0o.

  Sam walks into the abandoned house slowly, on edge, his senses tingling. He recognised Bobby’s beaten up truck outside, but there was no sign of him, and no lights on in the windows. This could still be a trap, there are no guarantees in their world. A board creaks under his foot and he winces, Carmen swivelling her head to watch his back.

  He strains to hear, and catches a few muffled thumps and a quiet curse from in the back room. He smiles; they know that voice. More confident now, Sam reaches out for the door handle and walks in quietly.

  Bobby is kneeling on the floor. The yellowed pages of an ancient book are spread out in front of him. The only illumination is coming from the thick tapered candles already burning around the complicated chalk circle. As he enters Rumsfeld lifts his shaggy head, ears pricked up under the dense tangles of his grey coat. Bobby turns, his face creasing into a smile when he sees Sam and Carmen in the doorway. He levers himself stiffly to his feet and drags Sam into a tight hug, Rumsfeld’s tail thumping steadily against the floor.

  Eventually Bobby lets go, holding Sam at arm’s length and inspecting him.

  “Damn, it’s good to see you boy.”

  “It’s good to see you too, Bobby. We missed you,” Carmen says warmly from his shoulder.

  Sam nods, stilted. It’s good to see Bobby again, but his mind is consumed with the fact that this might be his only chance to catch the trickster. He can’t let him slip away.

  “You said you had a lead?”

  Bobby nods and beckons him closer, getting down to business. “Well, it ain’t a pretty ritual. You got the herbs?” Sam nods, bending to pull them out of his backpack. Carmen flutters to perch on the top of the door. “Good, because I looked back at my translations, and I might have… uh…got a bit wrong,” Bobby admits gruffly, scratching the back of his neck.

  “What?!”

  “I thought it just meant a little blood. On second reading, looks like it means a whole person’s worth. And it’s gotta be done tonight. Goddamn pagan rituals,” he mutters, his disgust evident in his words, scowling down at the book.

  Sam wavers for half a second, then steels himself. “Okay. I’ll go get it.”

  Bobby and Rumsfeld whip around to stare at him, and he hears Carmen hiss lowly.

  Bobby sighs, wiping a hand over his face. “You break my heart, kid. I’m not gonna let you slit the throat of some innocent person.”

  “Well then, why bring me here?”

  “Because I thought you had a little sense in you! Because I thought you’d back down from killing a man!”

  Sam feels a flicker of regret but squashes it, hardening himself. For Dean.

  “Yeah, well, you were wrong. Give me the knife.”

  Bobby scowls thunderously at him. “No. not gonna happen. Look,” Bobby seems to deflate a little, looking away, the muscles in his jaw clenching. “Look, Sam. I’m old. I’m at the end of my rope. Better me than a civilian. And my hands ain’t exactly clean, either. The world won’t miss me much.” Bobby looks up at him. “I’m tired, son. We’re both tired.” Rumsfeld leans into his legs, looking up at him with liquid canine eyes.

  “Bobby?” For the first time, Sam feels uncertain about all of this.

  Bobby holds out the knife, his hand steady as he meets Sam’s eyes. “Let us give him back to you. You boys, you can keep fighting. Please. Let us give you back your family.”

  Bobby turns and kneels in front of him, his head bowed. Rumsfeld curls up on Bobby’s lap, and one of his hands buries itself in his grizzled fur. The lump at the back of Sam’s throat grows. He looks sideways at Carmen, sending her a flash of thought. Something isn’t right here.

  “Are you sure?” He asks.

  “Make it quick, son. Do it.”

  Sam feels assured, certain that he’s made the right decision. Carmen nods to him, out of Rumsfeld’s sight. They agree.

  “Okay.”

  He steps forwards, ramming the stake into Bobby’s back in one smooth motion. He leans forwards to hiss in his ear as the thing that looks like Bobby chokes.

  “You know why? Because you’re not Bobby.”

  He lets go, and with one last gurgle, the body collapses forwards, Rumsfeld’s form exploding into a cloud of golden Dust. Blood seeps out, pooling on the bare boards and soaking into Bobby’s clothes.

  Sam waits. There’s no response. The body lies there, still as death. The Dust starts to settle, a sinister shimmering gleam sticking to everything.

  “Bobby?!” He can’t help it, the word slips out. He can’t have been wrong. He can’t. The panic starts to rise, thick and choking, Carmen shuffling nervously on top of the door.

  Then the very edge of the pool of blood starts to flicker. Relief crashes over Sam like a wave as Bobby’s body vanishes into the mirage-blue haze. The stake flies backwards and Sam turns just in time to see it slap into Loki’s palm. He meets those tawny eyes.

  The god looks exactly the same, and it throws him off. Sam’s memories of Loki are blurring into one large mess. He’s the thing that killed Dean, but he’s also the man who wrapped Sam up in his arms and demanded cuddles after sex. The two conflicting images are so closely woven together that Sam can’t unwind them. He can’t think around them. Sam wonders bitterly if Loki even remembers the night they spent together back at Crawford Hall, or if he was just one in a long line of marks. The only thing that’s different is the yawning empty space next to him where his dæmon should be.

  “Always too damn smart for your own good, aren’t you kid?” Loki twirls the stake in his hands, tapping the sharpened tip against his sleeve. There’s that familiar smirk on his face, but his eyes are swirling, a storm hiding just behind his expression. Dangerous. “Tell me. What gave it away?”

  “Bobby would never have given up like that. And even if he had, Rumsfeld would have chewed him out as soon as he suggested it,” Sam tells him, numb.

  Loki cocks his head to the side and nods with a grin, as though he’s taking on constructive criticism. “Told you. Smart. Knew it from the first time I saw that dæmon of yours.”

  And, oh, that stings, the reminder of that warm evening when Sam had let the trickster stare right at his soul. So desperate to be accepted that he’d trusted the monster within the first five minutes, Sam thought to himself bitterly.

  “And let me tell you, whoever said Dean was the dysfunctional one has clearly never seen you with a sharp object in your hands.” Loki’s still watching him, sharp and assessing, despite the joking words.

  Sam has been waiting for the anger to appear at the sight of him, the anger that’s been driving him forward all these months, but there’s… nothing. He’s just empty. There’s no room for anything else but grief. He can hear Carmen breathing heavily on her perch, feathers fluffed out with distress.

  “Bring him back,” he manages to choke out, “Please. Bring him back. I know you can.”

  The trickster god stares at Sam for a second, eyes unreadable. Then he laughs, light and mocking, “True. I can. But why should I?” He leans forwards, suddenly intense. “Sam. Listen to me. There’s a lesson I’m trying to teach here, and it isn’t penetrating past those impressive brow ridges of yours.”

  “Lesson?” Sam nearly sobs the word out. It’s as though he can’t hear what the trickster’s saying anymore, it’s all just white noise. Nothing makes sense.

  “This obsession, trying to save Dean? It’s gonna kill you, Sam. But not before it kills your friends, your family, everyone you care about.”

  No. Sam can’t believe that, won’t believe that. Carmen takes flight in a flurry of feathers to land on Sam’s arm and he pulls her in close. He knows how insecure he looks, how weak, but he can’t help it. It’s all he can do not to fall into floods of tears and beg at the trickster’s feet for his brother back.

  But the trickster’s gaze drifts down to where Carmen is watching him, and he seems to soften just a little, deflating almost imperceptibly.

  “Look, kid. Sometimes, you’ve just gotta let people go.” He sighs.

  Suddenly, Sam’s anger bubbles to the surface again like rising magma. “Why?” he spits, tears still in his eyes. “Why are you doing this? Haven’t you ever had a family before?”

  Instantly, the trickster’s face goes dark, this eyes turning blank and cold.

  But Sam can’t stop. “Would you have abandoned them when they needed you?”

  “Shut up,” Loki growls, and the air around him starts to shimmer like a heat wave. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “I bet you did, didn’t you? You left them! And now all you do is manipulate and kill, because that’s all that’s left!” Sam can feel the tears trickling down his cheeks, anger and frustration overwhelming him. He’s vicious. He wants to wound this trickster, hurt him like he hurt Sam.

  “Shut up! Just…shut up!” The trickster flinches back, recoiling like Sam has struck him, his voice louder than it should be and resonating around the room.

  “Take us back!” Carmen yells at the top of her voice, both of them long past the point of caring any more about riling up a pagan god. “Give us back our family!”

  The trickster gives an anguished scream, and for a split second, the room is lit with a sharp, bright light. They get a glimpse of something, dark and spread across the walls, before everything falls away into blackness.

.o0o.

  When they wake, the radio isn’t playing Asia. Dean’s in the next bathroom, Diana twining around his ankles as he brushes his teeth.

  Sam gets through the morning in something like a daze, terrified that he’ll look away for one second and they’ll vanish, the rug snatched from under him, and he’ll be back in those endless six months again. And Dean will still be gone.

  Dean doesn’t ask why Sam keeps clinging to him, although it looks like the questions are on the tip of his tongue when Sam nearly has a panic attack when he tries to go to the toilet. But they manage to get through the day without breaking down once, which Sam congratulates himself on.

  Lying in bed that night, awake long after Dean dropped off to sleep, Sam can still smell something bitter and acrid lingering heavy in his nostrils, like hot metal and burnt hair. The afterimages of what he’d seen seem like they’re seared into the back of his eyeballs.

  After the shock of getting Dean back, he hadn’t really had time to think. Hadn’t had a reason to think about anything but his brother, and the fact that he was alive again. But now? Now he has time to ponder. And the more he thinks about what they had seen, the more it doesn’t make sense.

  “What was that? What happened back there?” Carmen whispers to him in the dark.

  “I don’t know,” Sam whispers back. He had wondered before about exactly how powerful Loki was before. And that outburst at the end, that hadn’t looked like pagan powers at all.

  If he hadn’t know better he’d have said that those huge shadows had been…

  Wings.

  All of a sudden all of those doubts and suspicions that have been crowding at the back of Sam’s head for months come to the fore. The reality manipulation, the sheer amount of energy involved, and Loki had already lied about his identity once, hadn’t he? What’s to say he wouldn’t do it again?

  But no, it was impossible. They didn’t exist. There was no way he could be an…

  “Angel,” Carmen breathes.

  But no. He couldn’t be. Angels didn’t exist. And if they did, they certainly wouldn’t waste their time on Sam.

.o0o.

  A creature that looks deceptively like a human child touches down in the middle of a thunderstorm in the Himalayas.

  Lightning crackles off the peaks all around, rain driven horizontal by wind that would have blown any normal human over the sheer drop and smashed them into a million pieces on the skree slope below her, but she isn’t bothered by the weather. She’s not human, and for once she’s not pretending either.

  A flash illuminates what she has come to find, the silhouette of a figure crouched on the precipice.

  She picks her way up, feet nimble and uncut by the sharp shards of rock, until she’s standing just behind him.

  “If you’re gonna sulk, there are better places. With alcohol. And double choc-chip ice cream.”

  The god doesn’t do anything to show that he can hear her, doesn’t even acknowledge her presence, but she knows better. He can’t not hear her, even under the storm.

  “I mean, you’ve really fucked it up this time. What did you think he was going to do? Give up? Just let you kill Dean and leave it at that? I know you’re attached to the kid Loki, but you’re not usually this blind. Or this stupid. He’s even more stubborn than you are! Of course he’s not going to abandon his brother!”

  That gets a reaction out of the god and he whirls, eyes flashing as lightning skitters across the sky again.

  “Fuck off,” the god growls through his teeth, “The stupid asshole can do what he likes, I’m done trying to clue him in. I don’t care anymore!” His voice rises to a shout.

  She puts her hands on her bony hips and nods her head sagely, her voice dripping sarcasm. “Oh I’m sorry, of course you’re right. You don’t care. That’s why you slept with him, despite the fact that he’s a harbinger of the apocalypse, then sent me after his dæmon when he died, then spent the last year trying to change pre-ordained destiny for him. Obviously you don’t give a damn.” She stabs a finger towards him accusingly. “Do you even know what you’re feeling? Do you even recognise it anymore? I’ve felt it when you look at him. You have to know what that means. ”

  The god snarls, “It doesn’t mean anything!”

  The girl snorts, unimpressed. “You know, I thought you said that humans were the stubborn ones. Just tell him you love him. Come clean. Help him out a little. Why not?”

  Lightning strikes a peak intimidatingly close, crackling down from the sky to illuminate the planes of the god’s face for a split second in hard, unforgiving light. The shadows under his brows deepen and twist in the flash before they’re both plunged back into darkness and the driving rain. The girl isn’t intimidated by his little temper tantrum, and he knows it.

  “You know why not. I won’t involve myself! I can’t!”

  “You don’t even have to! All you need to do is tell him the truth or knock him onto the right path and he’ll do it himself! Or, hell, just take out the major players. Lilith would do the trick, she’s always been a nasty bitch.”

  “Then what? Because nobody’s meant to know what’s going on. That’s how this works. If I tell them or I kill Lilith, alter The Plan in any way, the entire host and most of hell are going to be out for my hide. They’ll hunt me down, and then they’ll find out what I really am, and Raphael will come and cart me off to heaven like a misbehaving toddler. I’m not sure why you think this is a good idea anyway. If they come for me, you’ll be killed, you know you will. Is Sam Winchester really worth it?”

  The child shrugs. “You tell me. You’re the one who gets the warm fuzzies every time you see the kid, even if he’s brandishing a stake at you.”

  The god seems to deflate in front of her, all the anger leaking out of him like a popped balloon. The wind drops like the sky ran out of breath. “He really does hate me, doesn’t he?”

  Oh, now it looks like he’s going to cry. She rolls her eyes. How pathetic. “That tends to happen when you torture them. Are you gonna do anything about it?”

  But the god is already gone. She sighs, put-upon.  

  “Fine. Looks like it’s up to me then.”

  She has to do everything herself around here.

.o0o.

  It’s the end. Sam can see the terror in his brother’s eyes, in the way Diana’s ears are flattened to her skull as they hug for the last time, Dean’s fingers hooking desperately into his jacket. Sam swears silently to Carmen and Dean that they will fix this. They will get Dean out.

  But then Dean freezes. Diana whines and trembles as they both stare in wide-eyed horror at an apparently empty space on the other side of the room. A snarling growl starts rumbling from mid-air.

  “Is it there?” Sam asks, hushed.

  “Yeah,” Dean breathes. Diana’s tail tucks between her legs.

  A gust that could have been a breath stirs the tablecloth.

  The tension breaks like a dam bursting and they’re off, Dean jolting into action as they run into the other room. Sam slams the door behind them.

  Ruby’s in there with them, stalking impatiently. While she and Dean start snapping at each other, Carmen snatches up a packet of goofer dust, ripping into a corner of it with the sharp tip of her bill, and half-drags, half-flies it along the windowsill while Sam spreads a shaky line under the door. They’re so focused on making the room safe, making sure that nothing can get in, that it doesn’t occur to them that the danger might already be inside.

  Of course, it isn’t Ruby. It’s Lilith, and she has him and Carmen pinned against a wall before he can so much as reach for his knife. The door flies open, the rumbling growls getting louder as the sound of enormous paws padding on the floor crosses the threshold.

  “Sic ‘em, boy!”

  “No! Dean!” But it’s too late, and Lilith’s terrible girlish laughter is almost drowned out by the horrifying unearthly scream Diana gives as great rents appear in Dean’s chest, blood spilling out scarlet onto the floor. Diana writhes, staggers, then disintegrates into a final dreaded glittering explosion.

  Carmen shrieks as the Dust begins to settle over everything, their pain and rage screaming through both of them. Lilith turns towards them, a satisfied smug smile on her face. Their grief is overshadowed by a terrible, impotent rage. They’re going to kill her. They’ll kill her for what she’s done to Dean.

  Lilith raises her hand and Sam knows it’s the end, that there won’t be time for vengeance because Carmen’s going to join Diana as Dust on the floor in a second. He takes one last desperate glance at his soul before he closes his eyes. This is it. Their luck has run out.

  But the expected blow never comes.

  Sam opens his eyes, still half squinting, and sees an unexpected sight. Lilith isn’t laughing any more. She isn’t smiling. Instead, she’s looking towards the doorway with an expression that Sam can only call abject terror.

  In the doorway, there’s a small child, maybe about eight or ten years old. Sam would guess that she’s a girl, because her features are fine boned, thin nose and sharp chin. Her white-blonde hair is short and sticks out in fluffy clumps, as though she dried it with a towel after coming out of the bath and hasn’t bothered to comb it, and she’s dressed strangely in a plain old-fashioned shift. Her arms are skinny, her eyes comparatively huge and dark in her thin face, the irises almost black, striking against her pale skin.

  She’s looking up at Lilith with a small, innocent looking smile, but to Sam’s surprise Lilith starts to back away, almost tripping over Dean’s leg. The girl follows her into the room, bare feet padding on the boards, and half a second later Sam feels it. It’s like a cold draught has come into the room with the girl, making the hairs on the back of his neck rise and prickle. There’s no dæmon fluttering around the child or running underfoot. But Sam doesn’t need that to tell that whatever it is, it isn’t human.

  Lilith’s cobwebbed eyes are wide, darting around for escape. She throws back her head and a trickle of black smoke starts to leak out.

  The girl’s smile widens and she raises her hands. Sam notices that the tips of her dainty fingers are black, the darkness curling up over her nails and knuckles and spreading in smoky tendrils up to her wrists. The smoke stops leaking and Lilith chokes, trapped into her vessel. Her body twitches in an obvious effort to escape, but she’s not going anywhere.

  “No,” Lilith moans, terrified, and the cold builds in the room. “What are you? You can’t be real!”

  The girl nods and smiles like a feral animal, baring sharp little teeth. The hair stands up on the back of Sam’s neck. If Lilith’s afraid of it, whatever it is, then he’ll probably be next.

  But the thing that looks like a little girl doesn’t even glance his way. She steps forward, past him, until Lilith can’t back away any more.

  “Oh I’m real, honey. And you’d better believe it.”

 There’s a twist of motion that Sam’s mind can’t quite catch, then the little girl’s gone. Vanished. In her place there’s a great mound of scales blocking the doorway, a triangular head taking up most of the room. Slitted pupils focus on Lilith’s quivering form. A thin tongue flickers out to taste the air.

  Another lunge and a scream, and Sam catches sight of the gigantic snake’s jaws clamping around Lilith’s waist. There’s another flash of demonic light as she aims her palms at the thing’s head, but her struggles don’t seem to have any effect on the giant serpent. Sam screws his eyes shut, turning his head away from the cut off screams and the crunching of bones. There’s a quick slither of scales and then the room falls silent again.

  Sam feels the unnatural force holding him and Carmen against the wall suddenly drop and he lands on his feet, his knees shaking so much he staggers and almost falls. He scoops Carmen up where she was dropped next to him and turns, a small part of his brain declaring that he doesn’t care if this thing eats him. Dean’s gone. It doesn’t matter anymore.

  But the false bravado can’t stop him from flinching when he turns to find the girl right in front of him.

  Instinctively, he cradles Carmen close, his other hand groping for his knife, but it’s gone, lost in the fight. He shouldn’t be so frightened of her, she barely comes up to his waist and must only be a quarter of his weight, but something in her dark eyes terrifies him, ancient and merciless.

  “What are you?” he asks, his voice shaking with less terror than he feels.

  She cocks her head again and grins. Her teeth are sharper than they should be. “On your side.”

  Her voice is melodious and deep, an adult’s voice coming from a child’s mouth, and the effect is unnerving. Sam pauses, but his brain is already working through the cryptic answer.

  “Are you going to try and kill me?”

  “Why would I want that? I only just saved you!” Her voice changes, suddenly high and childish like her appearance suggests it should be, as if she’s slowly acclimatising to her new form. Sam blinks, whiplashed by the sudden change.

  “Uh…d-do you have a name?”

  “I have lots of names.” She brushes her flyaway hair out of her face and smiles, but Sam just stares at her, wary. She rolls her eyes. “A thank you would be nice.”

  “You’re not human.” Sam says bluntly. “You don’t have a dæmon.” He can feel himself starting to drift out of focus now that the immediate threat is over, the muted screaming that had been in the back of his head coming to the fore.

  The girl stares at him for a second, her dark eyes pinning him. Then she grins and rolls her eyes like he’s being deliberately stupid. “Thanks for that, Einstein. Someone get the man a PhD in observation! Now, that’s your brother over there, right? We should take care of that.”

  The creature won’t leave. Sam tries half-heartedly to get her to go away, tries to argue, but she stubbornly refuses, evading his demands and ignoring his anger. He can’t stay afraid of her for long or really do anything about it. He’s too tired, the hollow burnt-out exhaustion that comes after adrenaline. He’s drained, absent.

  He won’t let her carry Dean, though. He comes to when he sees the girl heft Dean’s limp body into her tiny arms in a way that shouldn’t be possible, tiny as she is. He jumps back into action, pulling Dean away from her and snarling, Carmen shrieking abuse at the girl as she flaps round their heads. The girl lets him take the limp body from her without a fight, but Sam brushes against her bare arm as he pulls Dean away. Her skin is electric, too-hot and somehow wrong. He shivers, snatching his arm back quickly.

  Sam walks out of the house, steps slow, and lays Dean out gently on the backseat of the impala. Looking down at his brother’s face, so pale and still, his legs nearly buckle. He props himself up on the door. The world swims, his ears filling with crackling static, and he cradles Carmen against his chest. He gasps, but there’s not enough air.

  “Breathe, you idiot!”

  The girl’s right in front of them, scowling, her pale hair and gown making her look ghostly in the gloom. Sam cringes back against the door, still choking.

  “Sam! Come on, breathe! Slow, like this.” She starts taking deep, measured inhales. Sam tries to copy, lungs seizing, then they suddenly unlock. He takes a huge shuddering breath, then another, sliding down the car door until he’s hunkered on the ground.

  It takes a while for his breathing to slow, his eyes swimming, but Sam tries to pull himself together enough to drive. He’s going to need to bury Dean. One thing at a time.

  He hauls himself back upright, legs wobbling and hands trembling.

  But the girl, who’d stepped daintily away while he was recovering, is suddenly at his side again and prods him towards the passenger side, already twirling the keys around her tiny finger with a smirk. He notes disconnectedly that her white shift has a long smear of blood down the front of it now from picking up Dean’s body. For a moment it isn’t her standing there, it’s Jess, blood on her nightgown, and it’s his mother and they’re burning. Sam staggers to the other side of the car, trying to keep his breathing even and blink the afterimages out of his eyelids.

  Sam doesn’t really remember the car journey. However long it takes, they don’t get pulled over for the child behind the wheel. By the time he notices where he is again she has his door open and is snapping her fingers in front of his face.

  “Come on, I’m not digging this grave by myself!”

  He digs. He doesn’t ask how she knows that he won’t burn Dean (he will find a way to bring him back, he will,) but before he’s even registered time passing he’s piling the last spadefull of dirt onto the grave and the sun is just peeking over the horizon.

  The dawn is washed-out and cold, chilling the tear tracks running down his numb cheeks. Carmen hunches on the handle of the spade, looking thin and bedraggled. The girl just stands watching him from the other side of the grave, unnaturally still, spectral in the pale light.

  Eventually, she sighs and picks her way around the mound, herding Sam back into the car. Before long they’re pulling into a motel, and there’s a bed in front of him, and she’s looking at him expectantly. When he doesn’t move she rolls her eyes and starts tugging at his jacket and overshirt until he takes them off. He sits and undoes his boots himself, then slides under the covers, not bothering to undress any more.

  The girl turns, but before she can go, Sam catches her thin wrist. She goes still.

  “Thank you,” He mutters under his breath, ignoring the prickling of her too-hot flesh. He doesn’t know who she is, doesn’t know what she is, but without her, he knows that probably wouldn’t have survived the night.

  She laughs quietly, but it’s not as sharp as it was before, and he doesn’t see the surprise on her face.

  “Get some rest, you idiot.”

  The last thing he feels before succumbing to the darkness is the gentle brush of soft, cool lips against his forehead.

  “You can call me Aurale.”

.o0o.

  After every crossroads demon he summoned had laughed at him, and he had ruled out every psychic and spellbook, Sam decided to keep hunting.

  What else could he do? He was charged with murder and hunted by the police, so it wasn’t as though he could just go back to Stanford and pick up his degree where he left off. Sure, he could fake some papers and go somewhere else, but he was tired.

  Besides, this is what Dean would have wanted. The family business.

  He’s expecting to see Ruby again. The demon hadn’t seemed like the kind to give up, so when she appears on his next hunt he isn’t exactly surprised. She had been helpful before, and while Sam didn’t trust her, she could be useful. She had inside information.

  Ruby arrives right in the middle of Sam slaughtering a coven of witches. Her blade flashes as she cuts down the last one just before they can cast a spell on Sam. She turns to face him with a brilliant, blood-spattered smile on her face. She opens her mouth, no doubt to deliver a witty quip, but she pauses, brow furrowing.

  An instant later, Sam feels the cold breeze. It was the same chill that he’d felt right before Aurale had turned up to devour Lilith.

  “Wait! Stop!”

  But it’s too late. There’s a sharp crack behind Ruby as Aurale appears, dressed in a dark hoodie and jeans this time instead of the shift. Before Ruby can even turn the girl vanishes. In her place a great maw opens up from nowhere, revealing rows of serrated teeth which close on Ruby’s vessel like a trap. The demon gets out one shriek of terror and confusion before she vanishes with a slurp and a series of meaty, squishy crunching noises. Sam jumps back in revulsion but before he even gets a foot away the monster swallows, then twists again. The girl is left standing in it’s place, hands behind her back and an innocent expression on her face.

  Sam grimaces with disgust at the blood splatters on the carpet. Carmen voices her agreement from his shoulder. “You had to do that? Seriously?” she yells.

  “Yup,” Aurale says, popping her lips on the p. “Easiest way to get rid of the bodies.”

  Carmen’s feathers are still bristling. “We could have used her! She could have been useful!”

  Aurale snorts as she inspects the witches’ lair with vague interest, her eyes flicking over the prone bodies. “Yeah, useful for screwing you over. Skanky would have had you at her beck and call before you could say ‘demon blood’. Well, at least she made a tasty snack!”

  Sam shakes his head, frustrated and angry, and turns to start cleaning his knife on the curtains. He doesn’t understand half of what Aurale’s saying, but there’s no denying that Ruby probably would have used him. Sam had expected that, been prepared for it. It wouldn’t have mattered. “I don’t understand you. Why are you doing this? Why are you ‘helping’ me?”

  Aurale turns and pins him with her dark gaze, head cocking to one side. “Maybe I just like you. Did you think of that?” Her thin mouth quirks into a sudden grin, deliberately ignoring his sceptical tone. “Also, you’re very entertaining. I love watching your dæmon fly around in circles.”

  Carmen puffs up with a hiss and Sam feels his blood starting to boil. Aurale still doesn’t make sense, and it’s infuriating. Supernatural creatures don’t do things because they like people; they do things because they want something. At least he had understood Ruby.

  He takes a deep breath and tries to get his anger under control. “Her name is Carmen. What are you doing here?”

  “Well I was going to save your life then hop on the fastest train out of here, but now I think I’ll hang around for a bit. Nothing to cure a depressive slump like chopping off some heads, yeah? Let’s go find something else to hunt!”

  For the second time, Aurale won’t leave. She laughs when he tries to lock her in the coven’s house, simply appearing in the front seat of the impala. Even as a hunter, Sam feels a little bad about hurting something that looks like a child, and she’s obviously using that. He resolves to look up what she is and how to trap her as soon as he gets the time.

  Carmen spends the entire car ride glaring holes in her from her perch on the back of the seat, and Aurale watches her back, unblinking. From the outside Carmen looks nothing but aggressive with her back hunched and head jutting forward like she’s about to lunge and take someone’s eye out with her beak. But Sam can feel a thread of curiosity in her as well. She’s intrigued by Aurale, though she won’t admit it. He sends her a warning glance and she clacks her beak in his ear irritably.

  Aurale refuses to go as they salt and burn a particularly vicious ghost. Then she hangs around as they track down a small coven of vampires eating hikers in the middle of a national park. She’s the strangest hunt companion Sam’s ever worked alongside. She doesn’t exactly help, preferring to sit on the gravestone and make scathing remarks. But Sam notices that the ghost isn’t nearly as powerful as the gruesome deaths had made it appear, and one of the vampires collapses as it was about to sneak up on him from behind.

  Her company is irritating in the extreme, but even Carmen has to grudgingly admit that it helps. The haze that had been hanging around since Dean’s death seems to lift whenever she’s around, and he feels less like he’s going through the motions, more human. It doesn’t dampen the tight ball of grief in his heart, but Aurale keeps him from being consumed by it. It’s hard to wallow when you’re too busy being annoyed.

  Aurale does leave in the evenings, or occasionally for a few days, but after a month or two of her irritating presence they start to fall into a rhythm, and Sam finds himself (absurdly) almost missing her when she leaves. Which is ridiculous; he still doesn’t know what she is, or what her plans are for him (and there has to be something). To his frustration, none of the mythology books or the lore have anything that matches her description, and by this point he doesn’t feel like killing her anyway. She might be a monster, but she’s a monster that he has a feeling has saved his life now on more than one occasion.

  Carmen, after being so hostile at first, starts to relax more around her, even talking to her directly once or twice. Every time it happens Aurale beams, childishly happy, which makes Carmen grumble and sidle back towards Sam, but he can feel her involuntary bashfulness. It’s rare enough that someone doesn’t flinch when they see Carmen, let alone be pleased when she talks to them.

  Their new normal is strange, but it’s working. They’re keeping their heads above water. They’re nowhere near better, but they’re coping.

  Of course, just to be difficult, that’s when Dean comes back from hell.

.o0o.

  The first time that Sam sees Dean after he returns from the dead, he almost kills him. It isn’t because he knows intellectually that his brother is already dead and buried (although that would have been a good enough reason on its own in their line of work). No, it’s that instinct-deep reaction to seeing someone without a dæmon by their side.

  So when he opens the door and sees Dean looking haggard and grim and without Diana’s familiar silhouette loping by his side, he freezes. His sight narrows down to Dean, just Dean, standing there in front of him. Really there.

  Violent, all-consuming rage boils through him. How dare some thing steal Dean’s face? Because without Diana, it’s obviously not his brother standing there. Sam leaps forward, his hand reaching for his knife without even thinking about it, his vision blurring red as he snarls.

  Before he can reach Dean something hits him from the side and Bobby slams him against the wall. He feels a second collision, Rumsfeld snarling and pinning a flapping Carmen to the floor with his enormous paws as she snaps at him.

  “Stop, ya idjit! It’s him, I checked!”

  Carmen stops struggling first. Rumsfeld lets her go and she flips herself upright in a flutter of ruffled feathers, still puffed up as she inspects Dean with a beady eye. Sam looks too, and notices the dark circles under his brother’s eyes, the dirt caught under his fingernails.

  “Dean?” He asks, hushed. “Where is she? Where’s Diana?”

  Dean looks up, his gaze steady although Carmen notes his hands trembling minutely.

  “Out in the car,” he says, voice low and rough, as though he has spent the four months of his death (four long, long months) in silence. Or screaming.

  In the car? But that’s… too far. Much too far.

  Sam and Carmen themselves have always been capable of separating a worrying distance before their bond begins to stretch, but that would be too far even for them. Carmen flutters up onto Sam’s arm, disturbed by the implications. Why was Diana in the car? Why wasn’t she here? How was it possible for her to be so far from Dean?

  “Show us,” she says. Dean gives a curt nod, turning to lead them back down the dingy corridor. Sam glances down, his eyes meeting Carmen’s as he follows.

  Dean leads them out of a fire exit to avoid civilians, and takes them to where Bobby’s battered pickup is waiting at the back of the motel. He opens the door to the backseat.

  Sam flinches back at what he sees inside. Carmen looses a hoarse cry from his shoulder, feathers ruffled in shock, then flies down onto the seat.

  Diana’s sandy-auburn fur is matted and darkened with the thick golden ichor that acts as dæmons’ blood. Long lacerations run down her sides, great chunks of her fur are missing and what remains is thin and mangy. There are burns, and brands, and long-healed scars that cut through what little unmarked fur is left.

  Sam’s hands flutter over her prone body, helpless, but he knows that there’s nothing he can do. No physical bandages or stitches are ever going to heal what hell has done to Diana.

  “Shit, Dean,” Sam whispers, voice hushed, horrified in a way that turns his stomach. There’s something about seeing a dæmon, Dean’s soul, looking so flayed and raw that makes him feel physically ill. He swallows, tries to change tack. “How did you get so far away?”

  “I don’t know,” Dean’s jaw is clenched tight and he sets a hand in Diana’s ruff. She stirs, licking him feebly, then turns to where Carmen is crouching cautiously by her head. Dean turns stiffly, like he can barely stand to look at his own soul, and Sam helplessly follows. Behind him Carmen and Diana talk quietly, Sam only catching emotions and wisps of their conversation.

  “… missed you…”

  “… so afraid…”

  “… so glad you’re back, you’re home…”

  Sam and Dean have never been particularly vocal about their feelings, but they don’t need to be. Carmen and Diana tell each other everything they would have said anyway.

  Sam looks at his brother and it hits him that it’s really Dean, he’s really here. Maybe battered by hell, but on earth. Alive.

  Without thinking he reaches out and pulls his brother into a hug. Dean pats him on the back and wheezes a little into Sam’s ear, and Sam realises that he might be holding on a little too tightly. He lets go, vision blurring, and gives a shaky laugh as he wipes his face on the back of his sleeve.

  “I missed you, man.”

  Dean clears his throat, blinking fast.

  “Me too, Sammy,” he says gruffly. “So, what have you been up to for the past four months? Hunting?”

  “Yeah, mostly,” Sam allows the change of subject. He pauses, then decides not to mention Aurale just yet. His brother might not react too well to coming back from hell to find that Sam’s been getting pally with non-humans. There’s still a shadow in his heart, the disbelief that Dean is here, and Sam can’t make himself do anything yet that might risk driving Dean away.

  “You looked after my baby, yeah?”

  Sam rolls his eyes, but a glance into Bobby’s truck shows Carmen grooming Diana’s ears, so he doesn’t tease.

  “Of course I did.”

.o0o.

  Sam hears from Dean and Bobby about the angels.

  He doesn’t believe it at first. In the end, it’s actually Dean’s expression of deep mistrust whenever the subject of angels gets brought up that finally convinces Sam that they aren’t pulling his leg. There is so much lore, Sam wonders why they’d never thought of it before. If hell and demons were real, then why not heaven and angels?

  “Maybe because nothing good ever happens in our depressing lives?” Carmen comments snarkily from her perch as Sam leafs through yet another tome.

  “It stands to reason that they exist,” Sam argues back, “and anyway, I’m not expecting naked babies playing harps and sitting on clouds. I’ve done my homework.” He holds up a book with a graphic illustration of Lucifer getting skewered.

  He knows that angels won’t be all sweetness and light. Of course he does. Every graphic detail of Pamela’s eyes melting into her skull has been seared into his memory forever. But a few weeks of research isn’t enough to banish a lifetime’s worth of belief and idealism. So se still isn’t quite prepared when he meets Castiel face to face for the first time.

  “Sam, this is Cas,” Dean introduces them awkwardly.

  Castiel stands there, head cocked to one side, gaze disconcertingly intense. Sam shivers, and Carmen surreptitiously presses herself against his neck.

  Castiel might have put on a human skin to meet them, but it isn’t a disguise. He isn’t pretending to be human at all. The body he’s wearing is more like a protective suit, not for him but for them; A barrier of flesh to protect their fragile mortal minds. The space by his side where his daemon should be is gapingly empty. There is something nakedly inhuman behind those blue eyes, something vast and restless, and it makes the hair on Sam’s arms stand on end.

  “Sam Winchester.” The voice is unexpectedly deep, not matched to the body. Castiel’s eyes are calculating as the angel reaches out and grasps Sam’s hand, as though he’s just finished skimming his how-to-act-human manual. “The boy with the demon blood.” Sam feels something inside him freeze to ice at the words.

  “And Carmen, the Last Song.” Carmen bristles on his shoulder when Castiel turns his search beam gaze onto her, letting out a low hiss, her feathers fluffing out. Castiel cocks his head on one side, his brow furrowing the smallest amount in what could be confusion. “You appear less tainted than I had been lead to believe.”

  Dean chooses that moment to break them up, stepping between Castiel and Carmen’s glare, and Sam is relieved when those too-full eyes snap onto Dean instead. He’s glad for the distraction before Carmen tries to take the angel’s eyes out with her beak. “Okay, break up the party. Cas, what did you say this seal was again? We can take on one witch.”

  Dean seems to find the angel easier to deal with so Sam leaves him to argue, hashing out the preparations for killing a witch before Samhain rises.

  “Told you,” Dean grumbles after Castiel takes off in a flutter of invisible wings, “Angels are dicks.” Although, for all Dean keeps arguing with him, he seems to like Castiel well enough by the way Diana’s tail starts wagging whenever she sees him.

  Most supernatural beings seem keen to avoid the angels. Sam is guiltily relieved that Aurale doesn’t seem fond of Cas. She never sticks around for hunts anymore, always arriving at night. This way he never has to tell Dean, but he’s become attached to Aurale. He slips out to meet her when he can. She’s the only thing that seems genuinely pleased to see him, and life with this new post-hell Dean is tense.

  If Dean ever notices his empty bed, he doesn’t say anything. Dean has been quiet and grim ever since he came back, and Diana is almost mute. Her wounds are slowly healing into silvery scars but the marks are still there, reminders of the terrible things that hell has done to them.

  Dean himself has only one scar from hell, and that’s the raised red handprint burnt into his shoulder like a brand. Diana has a matching one on her sternum, as though someone had scooped her up around her middle. Sam catches Dean a few times inspecting it with a frown in the bathroom mirror, prodding gently at the edges while Diana winces, as though he isn’t quite sure what it means. Sam has a good idea though, given how the print matches Castiel’s vessel’s hands exactly and how close they stand whenever they’re in a room together.

  Castiel makes everyone uncomfortable, and it isn’t just the obvious lack of soul. Castiel talks directly to people’s dæmons, often without acknowledging their humans. Bobby and Rumsfeld don’t trust him at all. Rumsfeld growls and paces whenever the angel’s in the room. Bobby, one of the most tolerant and accepting people Sam knows, watches him warily out of the corner of his eye. (“You think a raven’s the strangest dæmon I’ve ever seen, boy? You should meet Garth and Fiz. Never even heard of a giant anteater dæmon before”).

  Cas seems inclined to turn up whenever Dean so much as sneezes, and infuriatingly absent whenever Sam or anyone else tries to pray to him, which quickly becomes annoying as they race desperately to stop more seals from breaking.

  Sam gets the impression that, as much as the angel confuses them, Cas is just as bewildered and frustrated by them. He constantly has the look of someone who has been given an assignment, but has discovered that he has been given the wrong materials, and instructions which no longer quite make sense.

  It isn’t until the angels manage to capture Alistair that things come to a head.

.o0o.

  Much to Dean’s disgust, Castiel doesn’t let them drive to where they’re keeping the demon, zapping them straight there instead. The abandoned factory is dank and cold, the air chilled like a tomb. Water drips down from the ceiling and makes dark puddles on the concrete. It splashes under their boots as Cas leads them through the dark corridors.

  The room where Alistair is being kept is colder, but dry. At the creak of the door opening Alistair’s head bobs up from where it was resting against his chest, his eyes gleaming milky pale through the gloom. He grins wide and toothy, his tongue flicking out to dab at the blood trickling down from his nose.

  “Brought me some playthings, Castiel? I thought angels didn’t bother themselves with broken toys, especially now that the agenda’s off.” His nasal voice is thick with blood, and he bares his teeth in a rictus smile, eyes on Dean.

  Diana is silent as he stands stock still in front of the demon who tortured him for forty years, frozen in place. Carmen bristles at the demon’s nerve, but before she can do anything Castiel steps forwards into the protective circle and his fist connects solidly with the side of Alistair’s face with a sharp crack. Alistair’s head snaps around, but Cas grabs the ragged lapels of his shirt, full of righteous wrath. His temper fills the room, looming and electric.

  “What are your plans? You will tell me, or I will make this infinitely more unpleasant than it has to be.” His blade slides into his palm, gleaming silver in the gloom.

  Alistair just laughs drunkenly, his head lolling on his shoulders as he spits a glob of blood onto the floor. “Typical angel, so unoriginal! I suppose that’s why you brought in everyone’s favourite meat sacks, to do your dirty work for you. I wouldn’t bother. Didn’t you get the memo, wings? It’s over! Decades worth of Lilith’s scheming, all of Azazel’s work, just gone in a heartbeat. There’s no plan any more. No Lucifer. But we might as well raise a little hell while we’re up here!”

  “What are you talking about?” Cas growls, pressing his blade in deeper.

  Alistair just looks at him for a second, then bursts out laughing. High unhinged giggles echo around the room even as blood starts trickling down his neck, the tip of the blade digging in. The demon doesn’t seem to notice.

  Dean flinches back and Carmen sees Diana start to tremble, so Sam steps between him and the rest of the room in a way he hopes is subtle. Diana glances up at Carmen gratefully. Cas waits in stony silence until eventually the insane laughter dies down, totally focused on the demon.

  Alistair breaks off into a few weak coughs, a trickle of blood running from one corner of his mouth. “They really didn’t tell you, did they? Well, that’s angelic middle management for you. You’re only a little baby seraph, I suppose. Lilith’s dead, she has been for months. They never found a trace of her, but she’s definitely gone. So now the last seal’s off! That cage might as well be welded shut.”

  He turns his leer onto Sam over Cas’ shoulder, and Sam feels Carmen seethe with hatred, the strongest he’s ever felt from her. “Even if the deal’s gone rotten, at least we’ll get our boy king out of it. And I get to meet my delightful little apprentice again! How are you, Dean? I hope your knife work isn’t getting… sloppy.” He smiles, crooked tombstone teeth jutting in a parody of humour. Diana’s trembling again, her tail tucked between her legs. “Well, I’ll probably be seeing you both soon anyway, hunter’s lifespans and all that. It’s only a matter of time before you boys get sent back where you belong. Especially you, D-”

  Something in Sam snaps. There’s a dark blur of motion and a rush of wind next to his head as Carmen dives forwards, and then her powerful wings are beating around Alistair’s head and the demon is screaming, blood spattering down onto the floor. Sam’s only a half second behind her, His vision blurred red, but before can reach her Alistair’s head slams forwards and Sam cries out. Pain blooms across his chest and right arm. Carmen is knocked aside in the chaos, falling to the floor. Castiel reaches for her, maybe to try and help, but they both shudder as his hands brush her feathers, alien and wrong, and she wriggles out of his grip, hopping over to Sam with her wing trailing.

  He runs to her and scoops her up, the pain still running through his own body as a constant reminder that she is injured, and turns.

  But by the time he looks around, it’s over. Alistair hangs limp in his chains, obviously dead. Blood is still trickling down his shirt from his ruined eyes, the sockets torn and gaping from Carmen’s cruel beak, his cheeks checkered with scratch marks from sharp claws. The bone handle of the knife is protruding from his chest.

  Dean is kneeling on the floor in front of the corpse, his body curled around Diana. He’s not making a sound, but Sam can see him shaking. Sam turns to find Cas but the angel is already gone. Swearing under his breath, Sam turns back to his brother. Gently, slowly, he puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder. He still flinches, and Sam backs off.

  “Come on, man, let’s get out of here.”

.o0o.

  Castiel is not stupid. This is a fact.

  Demons lie, regularly. This is another fact. However, Castiel also knows that if painful truths are available, they prefer to use those instead. They tend to be much more effective.

  Which is why what Alistair’s last words worry Castiel. There had been a lot of truth in what he had been saying, Castiel knows that much. And Alistair had seemed particularly gleeful when he had mentioned Zachariah’s plans for the apocalypse.

  Plans that Castiel had not known about. Plans that did not seem to concern keeping Dean Winchester safe at all. Plans crafted by heaven to bring on the Apocalypse. To release the Adversary. To destroy the Earth.

  The whole idea is absurd, but it snags uncomfortably in his mind. He needs to report this back to his commander immediately. So as soon as he knows that the demon is dead and that Dean is safely with his brother, he takes flight. He calls out over the song of his siblings, searching for Zachariah.

  He finds him in a strange setting, in one of the tall buildings that the humans built in their population centres. Castiel alights in Zachariah’s office, giving a short nod in deference to the higher ranking seraph and respectfully lowering his wings.

  “Zachariah.”

  Zachariah turns, the eyebrows of his vessel rising to his receding hairline. His wings shuffle irritably behind him, and his primary and tertiary heads look away in disinterest. That leaves Castiel under only the unblinking gaze of the shark. Even for a commanding seraph, the gesture is rude, and more than a little unnerving.

  “Yes? Do you have anything actually useful to report, Castiel?”

  “Alistair is dead. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get any information regarding the deaths of the garrison.”

  Zachariah waves him off. “Disappointing but not unexpected. You can go, Castiel.”

  Castiel steels himself. This isn’t going to go down well. “I also have reason to believe that certain pieces of information pertinent to this quest have been kept from me.”

  Zachariah doesn’t blink, but he pauses. “Go on.”

  “I was aware of the role that Sam Winchester would play, however he does not appear as I was warned; his soul looks clean, healthy even.” Castiel has tried to follow his orders to the letter, but the intel that he has received seems to be all wrong. There is no demonic stain on Sam beyond that which was given to him as an infant, and that is faint and faded. It is nothing like what he had been told to expect.  Surely, if the has done nothing wrong, heaven would not seek to harm the younger brother?

  Zachariah fixes him with a beady gaze and a falsely sweet smile. “Are you doubting, Castiel? Because you know what happens to those who doubt.”

  “No, of course not. I have faith in heaven’s plan.” He shudders a little internally at the thought of getting pulled back to heaven for reeducation.

  “Good.” Zachariah nods smugly and gestures to him to continue.

  “Also, I was informed that killing Lilith was the last seal.”

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  Castiel hesitates for a second, calculating. He needs to know- if his suspicions about heaven are not correct, it could change everything. “Then I have good news. That will no longer be possible- Lilith is already dead. She was killed before the first seal broke. Therefore the last seal is no longer viable.”

  There is a half beat of silence, in which Zachariah’s eyes seem to bug out of his skull. His mouth falls open.

  “What?!?”

  Zachariah roars, his true voice breaking free. The sound rips violently through the aether to shatter all the street bulbs for half a mile. The large windows of the skyscraper they are standing in hum warningly. It is just as well that there are no humans in the vicinity, because the sound that Zachariah is emitting could easily shatter ear drums. He looks utterly shocked, then angry, his heads rearing back and his wings spreading wide.

  Castiel blinks; obviously heaven has not heard about the death of Lilith. Castiel is not surprised. If not for Alistair, he wouldn’t have known either. But Zachariah’s reaction answers his question about heaven’s intentions.

  Lilith’s death should mean the end of this now-pointless quest to prevent the seals from breaking. Lucifer will not rise! And yet, instead of filling the heavens with rejoicing, Zachariah looks angry and desperate. In his head, Castiel hears a voice that sounds remarkably like Dean. It snorts, whispering, ‘awesome, looks like the ass fell out of his plan’.

  “How did this happen!? How was I not made aware?” Zachariah screeches.

  ‘Woah, dude, inside voices!’ Castiel’s new annoying inner commentator chooses that moment to speak up again. He shushes it.

  “Those little insects! I bet they killed her! They seek to derail our righteous plans! I’m going to crush them! I’m going to pulverise them!”

  Castiel frowns. This is not how Zachariah should talk about the righteous man- not the one who has suffered so much on heaven’s behalf. And which ‘righteous plan’ is he talking about?

  “Castiel! You have failed me. You will bring the humans, so that we may be rid of the little apes once and for all! They are of no use to us now. Centuries of planning, of careful management, all for nothing!”

  To Castiel, the world seems to freeze. There is so much hatred, hissing and spitting through Zachariah’s Grace, more than he has seen in any angel since Lucifer fell. It spreads like a poison through him, and Castiel wonders how he didn’t see it sooner. How can a being that is essentially made of love contain so much hate?

  His thought goes faster, hopping at the speed of light from one conclusion to the next;  Alistair was telling the truth. Heaven is trying to start the apocalypse. He sees again the faces of all those who died in his garrison, his brothers and sisters slaughtered, and he feels sick. Surely not.

  Zachariah is his superior. Castiel has been made to follow his orders, the threat of being ‘re-educated’ again constantly hanging over him. For a second, he wavers between the compulsion to follow orders and doing what he knows is right. If Zachariah is willing to start the apocalypse, then he must be stopped. 

  Besides, Castiel will not turn on his charge. He will protect Dean, as he was commanded by heaven. That is what is right.  He squares his shoulders, and the world seems to rearrange itself and slot back into place around him, new and sharp and terrifyingly clear.

  “No. I refuse.”

  “You refuse the orders of heaven?!”

  Cas feels his vessel’s jaw clench, but he has made up his mind. “These are not the orders of heaven. You have failed in starting the apocalypse. You will not harm the righteous man. And you will not kill his brother.”

  “You will not stop me, Castiel!” Zachariah’s true eyes are rolling, mad with anger and shocked by his disobedience.

  Castiel finds his blade in his hand, though he doesn’t remember summoning it. He feels his vessel’s heart beating fast, adrenaline rushing through his veins as fear and anticipation overwhelm him. He drops into a defensive crouch.

  Zachariah shrieks with fury, his own blade emerging as his wings bristle, and Castiel feels him call for backup. He has to leave, now.

  He darts forward inside Zachariah’s guard before he can let himself feel regret, his blade leaving a long gash across Zachariah’s flank, not enough to kill him but definitely enough to slow him down. He never wanted to hurt his brother, but this is the only way. Zachariah screams, shrill and discordant, his tail thrashing. Drops of opalescent blood fly everywhere.

  Hands grab at his wings and Castiel panics, lashing out wildly with his claws. There’s an even louder scream and warmth splatters across his side. A line of pain rakes across his ribs, grazing him as he wriggles free. Every breath stings and his Grace is leaking, but he cannot down.

  He doesn’t even look to see what damage he inflicted in his panic- he just turns and flees. Wings beating hard, he propels himself away from the city. Away from heaven.

  Castiel’s heart breaks as Zachariah’s voice rings in his ears, “You will pay for this, Castiel! You have abandoned heaven, you are a traitor to us all! I banish you! You are fallen! Fallen!”

.o0o.

  “Castiel, I pray for you to get your ass down here right now and fix Dean. I swear, man, this is your fault. You dragged us into this mess, you set him up in there with Alistair, you have to help-” he’s interrupted by the sound of wings, and Sam cuts off his increasingly angry prayer. He turns, scowling and ready to lash out because Dean hasn’t spoken since the warehouse and it’s been five hours and Castiel just abandoned them there, he didn’t even-

  Then he sees that Cas is swaying where he stands. His suit is rumpled and his face is flushed like he’s just run a marathon, and he’s frowning down at a line of red seeping slowly across the white material of his shirt.

  Sam’s anger drains away, replaced by concern. “Shit, what happened to you?”

  “Cas?” Sam jumps and turns. Dean’s voice is rough from disuse as he appears in the door to the bedroom, Diana limping by his ankles. Sam’s relief at hearing him speak overwhelms the mild annoyance that it only happened when Cas appeared.

  Cas reaches up to touch the blood, staring at it staining his fingertips, then sways as though he’s going to fall. It’s so unexpected to see any sort of weakness in the angel that Sam just stands there. Dean’s the one who jumps forwards to prop him up. Half a second too late, Sam catches on and rushes in as well to help, and together they manage to drag Cas over to one of the beds before he falls.

  As soon as he’s sat down, Dean starts methodically tugging off his layers. “Someone go get the kit.” His voice is still rough, but he’s business-like as he starts to undo the buttons on Cas’ shirt. Cas just stares in bewilderment as though he’d never suspected that his vessel’s clothing came off.

  Sam glances at Carmen and she nods, launching off the bedside dæmon perch towards the bathroom to get the first aid kit. She hops out with it in her beak and Diana runs to take it from her, fetching it back to Dean just as he manages to peel off Castiel’s blood soaked shirt.

  The fabric had been hiding a nasty gash. The sparse hair of Cas’ chest is matted with blood, more oozing out of the cut, and Sam goes to get the antiseptic as Dean tuts over him like a mother hen.

  Castiel doesn’t speak as the gash is sewn up with a long row of Dean’s neat, clean stitches. They’re both silent as he works, Dean’s eyes fixed firmly on his job and Cas staring dazedly off into space. Carmen hovers around them, concerned but still wary after being touched in the factory. Cas doesn’t seem to notice.

  “You want to tell us what got you?” Dean asks, glancing up as he wipes the wound site down with iodine. Cas doesn’t even flinch.

  “Heaven is not on your side. They never were. Alistair was telling the truth. Zachariah’s plot to start the apocalypse has been averted by Lilith’s early death. It is over- against heaven’s wishes.”

  They both gape at him, Dean’s hand still suspended, clutching the iodine soaked wipe.

  “What?” Diana asks, deceptively quiet.

  “Excuse me.” Cas stands, mechanical and stiff, obviously ready for takeoff.

  Dean leaps up and grabs his shoulder, preventing him from leaving. “Woah, man, you can’t just dump that on us and leave us here without telling us anything! What’s happening? That should be good, right? Why are you all cut to shreds?”

  Cas turns to him, and just for a second Sam sees his blank façade crack like a thin shell. Underneath, his expression is one of total, devastating hopelessness. “I have rebelled,” Cas tells them hollowly. “I have been cast out from heaven. Without access to the heavenly plane, my Grace will eventually fade. I will Fall. And what was my… my home has been corrupted. I can never go back. Zachariah was not alone, and though their plans are thwarted for now, they will regroup.  Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to find a liquor store.”

  “Cas, wait!”

  There’s the fluttering of wings and Dean swears loudly as Castiel’s shoulder vanishes from under his hand. From where she’s standing next to Dean, Diana starts to howl.

.o0o.

  Sam can’t sleep that night. His brain’s whirring too fast. He’s been lying in bed for two hours, staring at the strange corn-shaped wall dividers in the motel room and trying not to think of anything.

  The apocalypse has apparently been brought to a stumbling halt, but no one is celebrating. Heaven and hell have both been working against them. Angels and demons, sharing the same world-ending goals. How could they all have been so blind? The people they had trusted- that Cas had trusted- had almost manipulated them right over the edge of a cliff. It’s only dumb luck and a loose-lipped demon that’s saved them.

  Of course, it may not be dumb luck. Sam hasn’t told Dean yet that he knows exactly who killed Lilith, or that he’s been hunting with her and meeting with her in secret for more than six months now. He has so many questions for Aurale. Why did she do it? Did she know what she was doing? Is this finally the truth about why she’s been protecting him all this time? What are her motives?

  He frowns and picks at a piece of fuzz on the rough sheets. It’s times like this that he misses Aurale the most, her acerbic wit always just sharp enough to pull him out of a slump. It’s been weeks since he’s been able to get out from under Dean and Castiel’s collective thumbs to get some breathing space. But he can’t sneak out to summon her, even though he desperately wants to. He can tell from the sound of Dean’s breathing and the absence of Diana’s quiet, whuffing snores that he’s still awake. Just like Sam.

  Sam sighs silently again, trying to relax his stiff muscles.

  Then he jumps at the sudden sound of wings in the silence of the motel room, his fingers tightening reflexively on the knife under his pillow. There’s rustling from the other bed as Dean sits up.

  “Cas?” Dean whispers loudly, “What the hell, man? Where have you been?”

  “On a bender,” Cas grumbles petulantly. There’s the sound of stumbling, then the springs of the other bed creak as Cas presumably sits on it. “They threw me out when I had consumed all of their alcohol. I don’t understand. I paid for it. I thought that was the point of those establishments.”

  “Yeah, well they don’t expect you to drink all their liquor you crazy bastard,” Diana hisses, still trying to keep their voices down as though there was any chance that Sam was still asleep. “They probably wanted you out before you keeled over from alcohol poisoning. And keep your voice down, Sammy’s sleeping.”

  If only.

  “I apologise for coming here like this. I didn’t know where else to go.” Cas pauses. “I think I might be about to fall over.”

  “Jesus, Cas,” Sam feels Dean glance over at him and tries to keep his breathing deep and even. “Okay, fine, lie down.”

  Carmen cracks open an eyelid from where she’s perched next to the bed so they can see what’s going on. Her eyesight isn’t as good as Diana’s in the dark, but she can still see silhouettes. Sam watches through her eyes as Dean fusses over the intoxicated angel, tugging on his trenchcoat and jacket until Cas takes them off with bemused hesitance. Cas watches as Dean slips off his shoes for him and flips the covers over him before getting back into the other side of the bed, his back to Cas. Diana climbs up to lie over both of their feet in a surprisingly intimate gesture.

  “Thank you, Dean.” Cas sounds confused and a little wondering, as though he had never thought that Dean’s caretaker instincts might be directed at him.

  “Shut up. We never mention this again ever, got it?”

  Silence settles back over the room

  “Dean.”

  “Fuckin’ hell, what now?”

  “When your father gave you orders. How could you tell? Whether you’d done the right thing?”

  “Come on, man, I need to sleep.”

  “Please, Dean.”

  Dean sighs and props himself up a little. “First off, dad’s orders would usually make sense. Like, if he told me to shoot the werewolf chewing on people’s hearts? Sure thing. Taking orders is easy. It’s making your own decisions that’s the hard part. Then you’ve gotta rely on your gut, your soul. That’s what tells you what’s right or not.”

  “I would have thought it was fairly obvious that I don’t have a soul, Dean.”

  There’s an awkward silence for a second.

  “Cas… if it’s really over, if the apocalypse is done, why did you rebel? Why did they kick you out?”

  “Dean. My superiors tried to start the apocalypse. That is not something I can overlook, and I do not believe that all of… this, the beginning of the apocalypse was part of my father’s plans either. I started to… doubt. And once I began doubting this plan, how could I trust that my other orders were my father’s will? How could I trust anything that heaven told me?” There was a pause. “Besides, Zachariah wanted to kill you to take out his frustrations, and we do have a rather profound bond.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Cas. Not for me.”

  Sam can practically hear Cas’ stare and head tilt from across the room. “You do not believe that you are worth my support.”

  There’s another awkward silence, and Sam really wishes he was asleep because there’s enough tension in the room to kill an elephant.

  “Believe me, Dean, you are. You are the brightest soul that I have ever seen. You opened my eyes to what heaven was doing, and for that I am in your debt. I rebelled for you, Dean Winchester.”

  There’s a long silence, then Diana speaks up very quietly from the foot of the bed. “Thanks, Cas.”

  “You are welcome, Diana.”

  Dean coughs. “Yeah, well, whatever happens you’ve got us, okay? Those dicks in heaven aren’t your only family.”

  “Thank you Dean.”

  “Go to sleep, Cas.”

.o0o.

  Neither Sam nor Dean want to quiz Cas too much after the first night. Cas makes it obvious to them that there’s nothing that they can do about his dwindling Grace, so Sam generally leaves it up to Dean to deal with the bewildered angel. They seem to get along much better.

  Cas is undeniably becoming more human by the day, and Sam feels a little sorry for him. It can’t be easy to go from smiting cities to being unable to heal a paper cut. There are constant bags under his eyes, and although he seems to take Dean’s nagging to eat in his stride, Sam suspects that the other, less exciting aspects of having an active digestive system won’t be far behind. Not at the rate he was munching his way through burgers and fries and the other trappings of their roadside diet.

  They’re just getting used to having him trailing around in the back of the impala with them when another symptom of Cas’ emerging humanity literally manifests itself.

  They’ve been hunting to blow off steam, and Sam is very carefully not watching Cas stare longingly at Dean while they research what looks like an infestation of kelpies. He toys with the edge of a page, his concentration drifting. He still hasn’t managed to sneak out to see Aurale, what with Cas creepily watching Dean sleep most nights. He needs to see her again, to ask her about Lilith. Maybe he can fake a food run and go in daylight instead…

  All of a sudden, Dean lets out the kind of scream that Sam had previously assumed that only ten year old girls could make. Sam jumps at the sudden sound of Diana barking her head off. Carmen caws and beats her wings in panic. Sam whips the pistol from his waistband even as he jerks around, and freezes when he sees-

  An enormous black panther sitting in the middle of the threadbare motel carpet.

  It’s sat with its head cocked to one side, mirroring Castiel who is leaning forwards on the bed and staring back at it with fascination. The end of its tail flicks, back and forth, and it slowly gets up, padding towards Cas on silent feet until they are staring into each other’s eyes from no more than a foot apart. It emphasises how large it really is, bigger than what Sam knows is natural; the cat would probably struggle to fit on the backseat of the impala. Its head is the size of Carmen’s entire body. It’s no normal animal.

  “Is that…” Dean chokes out into the sudden silence, “Cas, is that a dæmon? Is that your dæmon?”

  And yes, there is something familiar about the it, now that Sam looks; there’s none of Cas’ awkwardness that Sam has since put down to his inexperience with his human vessel, but the intensity is still there, that unflinching gaze.

  Cas nods. “Yes, I believe it is. Hello,” he addresses the dæmon in front of him, “what’s your name?”

  The panther’s ear flicks and its head tilts even further. “I don’t know.” Its voice is low and melodious, not obviously male or female.

  “Well, that’s not freaky,” Dean says, his eyes flicking, obviously still uncomfortable given the way that Diana’s hackles are bristling, her lips pulled back on the edge of a snarl. The panther turns, fixing its unblinking eyes on them, and Diana freezes like she’s caught in the headlights of an oncoming eighteen wheeler.

  The she does something that Sam’s never seen her do, not when faced with nests of vampires, or rugarus, or even hellhounds.

  Diana’s hackles drop, deflating, and her tail tucks between her hind legs. She slinks behind Dean’s legs, peeking out at the strange dæmon, not taking her eyes off it. Dean is staring at her too in shock. Diana is never shy.

  The panther turns and pads slowly towards them, whiskers twitching and muscles gleaming under a sleek black pelt. It stops just short of Dean’s legs, peering curiously around them.

  Ever so slowly, Diana’s wet nose emerges from behind Dean’s jeans, her scarred muzzle low to the ground as she practically crawls on her belly towards the panther. Her ears are flattened against her skull, and Sam is shocked to see her trembling. It’s as though she expects Cas’ dæmon to attack, to take those final steps and lay into her with claws and fangs. Diana flinches as the great cat steps closer, bending down towards her, but the next second a low rumble fills the room as the panther runs a rough tongue over the top of her head.

  Diana’s eyes spring open again in amazement and Cas’ dæmon does it again. Sam looks up to find Dean blushing so hard that Sam’s surprised his face hasn’t caught fire yet. Cas just looks a little bemused, head tilted on one side as he watches his dæmon grooming Dean’s as though it’s a particularly interesting wildlife documentary.

  Sam clears his throat and quickly vacates to the kitchen, trying to give them a little space, but the resonating purr tells him that Diana’s still being groomed. The thin screen also doesn’t do anything to muffle the voices coming from the bedroom.

  “I thought that dæmons only did this when their human counterparts were intimate?”

  “Cas, shut up!”

.o0o.

  After that, the number of hunts they take starts to drop off, because it’s harder to travel long distances in a car with three relatively large dæmons. They discover that a pissy black panther is not something that anyone wants to be stuck in a car with for ten hours, so they’re stuck with small excursions.

  The apocalyptic omens start to fizzle out. Although they’re still getting more demon cases than usual, there’s no rhyme or reason to them, no controlling force, so they’re easily dealt with. Demons on the whole turn out to be pretty stupid without anyone pulling the strings.

  After three weeks of dodging around the country Cas is nearly fully human, his still nameless dæmon padding silently at his side. Dean is oddly jumpy around them, forever doing a double take when he walks into the room and sees the giant panther lounging on the bed. But Sam and Carmen doesn’t miss the way that Diana and the great cat sleep together at night when they think that no one is watching, their eyes refracting gold and green in the dim light.

  Now that Cas is out of Grace, it gets harder to hide from the angels. Castiel looks progressively more nervous, and when Sam corners him about it, he tells him that Zachariah might come after them.

  “Why would he? It’s over, his little circus show got derailed.” Dean reasons from where he’s cleaning his guns at the table.

  Cas shakes his head. “You didn’t hear him, Dean. He was so angry.”

  “He was… unhinged.” Castiel’s dæmon comments from where it’s curled up around his feet, unbothered by the thin motel carpet. “We should be hiding ourselves. I don’t think that he will listen to sense if he is on a vengeance quest.”

  Cas also points out that while Sam and Dean might have sigils on their ribs, he doesn’t (although he tells Sam that he thinks that the dregs of his Grace might protect him).

  “Those bastards better not try and track my baby,” Dean mutters as he cleans out the old wrappers from the footwell, but somehow Sam doubts they will. In general, angels don’t seem that inventive, or connected to the modern era and all its appliances. Demons might try it, but not the angels.

  They take precautions though, hex bags for the Impala and one that Dean tucks gruffly into the inside pocket of Cas’ trench coat. Cas looks utterly confused and Sam has to hide his smile behind his hand.

  “There you go,” Dean pats the folds of Cas’ coat straight again, and shoots Carmen a dirty look when her chest feathers puff up with the effort not to laugh. But Diana doesn’t bother trying to hide her gigantic wolfy grin as he turns away.

  They jump from case to case, tracking across the country, guided by Bobby’s irritable directions and the urge to keep moving to stay undetected. Sam thinks that even Dean looks tired of the constant driving, but they don’t dare stop.

  Trouble finds them anyway, despite all their precautions.

  Dean glances up as the lights in the latest seedy motel begin to flicker erratically. Diana’s on her feet with a growl, already alert. Sam stands, looking around and Cas comes walking in from the kitchenette. His blue eyes dart around the room as Carmen jumps to Sam’s shoulder from the table he’d been working at.

 “There’s someone coming.”

  “No shit, Cas!” Dean barks, his hands reaching for the angel blade in his jacket.

  Thunder rolls outside before he can get to the blade, and the room is illuminated in a flash of light. They all flinch as the bulbs over their heads break, showering them in splinters of glass. Sam covers his head and Carmen flings a wing over him, but the shards still sting as they patter off his skin like needles.

  When he looks up, a figure has appeared in front of the window. The one remaining light blinks back on and Sam hears Carmen suck in a whistling breath next to his ear as the room is illuminated in flickering light. Sam grips the knife harder.

  Zachariah stands between the curtains, menace in every line of his vessel. Sam feels Carmen recoil as the light reveals him. His face is a wreck, one cheek cut away like a gory anatomical diagram, the open muscle and jaw bone and teeth all on display, his tongue visible and glistening through the gaping hole. He’s still wearing the same stiff business suit that he had worn before, but now the shirt gapes open in  bloody tatters. Blood is caked on the collar, cracking into dark brown flakes on the clammy skin of his vessel’s neck.

  It’s his eyes that scare Sam, though. He’s always struck Sam as ruthless, but this is so much worse. With that cold, dead stare and his body twisted past the point of normal human endurance, Zachariah looks insane.

  He’s not looking at Sam, though. His roving eyes lock onto Castiel and stick there.

  “Well well, if it isn’t the traitor,” Zachariah’s voice comes out a little slurred, another trickle of blood dribbling from the raw flesh as his jaw moves. Sam feels his stomach churn. Zachariah’s eyes widen as his gaze drifts downwards, landing on the panther dæmon. “And what is that? Have you really fallen that far already?”

  The panther steps forwards, looking as calm and immoveable as ever. The only thing that gives her away is the end of her tail, twitching erratically. “I am Castiel’s dæmon,” she says over the deep rumble of Diana’s growls.

  Zachariah hisses with choked laughter. “No you’re not! You think you have a soul? Try as hard as you want, Castiel, but you’ll never be human, not properly. Just some strange, Frankenstein hybrid. A freak. An abomination!”

  Dean steps forwards, bristling in Cas’ defence, knife held high. “Okay chuckles, can it.” Diana stalks at his side, hackles raised, looking even bigger than normal.

  Zachariah’s dead eyes focus on Dean and he starts to laugh, a terrible grating sound that bubbles up out of his chest. “What are you going to do with that, boy? Tickle me?” Droplets of pink foamy spittle fly from his ruined cheek. Sam can feel the tension in the room like a physical thing, electric in the air as the adrenaline streaming through him makes his heart beat faster.

  Castiel interrupts their stare-off. “Why are you here Zachariah?”

  Zachariah looks at him, twirling his blade almost absent-mindedly. “I have some revenge to collect. You did this to me, Castiel.” He gestures to his ruined vessel. “Defeated by a seraph and two humans. Do you know how much effort it took to organise this little operation? And I’m not even talking about convincing other angels to jump ship! You seraphs are just a bunch of apathetic blunt weapons. But still, all that preparation, all that… fieldwork,” he says the word as if it’s something dirty. “I spent time on earth for this. Took a filthy little vessel, and for what? They told me I was unfit to lead. Do you know how some of them think of me now? As a joke! A joke! I was laughed out of heaven- The angel who couldn’t even control two pathetic humans. Not even the abomination.” He lets out a shrill laugh, eyes bugging as he turns away from Castiel to point his blade at Sam. His laughter turns to a growl. “They won’t laugh at me again. Not anymore. Let them try to survive the chaos up there with no one to lead. I still have my most loyal followers. In the meantime, I’ll show them just how funny I can be!”

  Zachariah lunges forwards supernaturally fast, his blade aimed straight at Sam’s heart. For a split second, he thinks this is it. This is the end.

  Suddenly there’s a blur of movement in the corner of his eye, and something enormous hits Zachariah in mid-air, just before he reaches Sam. They fly through the window with a crash, sending glass spraying outwards. Sam blinks, exchanging a shocked look with Carmen. They all rush to the window to look out into the parking lot.

  They expect to see fighting, or at the very least Zachariah finishing off whatever tackled him. But to their surprise the seraph is staggering away across the blacktop, casting fearful glances behind him. A half second later he vanishes with a clap of wings.

  The other figure turns, her shock of white hair sticking out around her head, and Sam recognises her in an instant. Carmen gives a quiet sigh of relief. Aurale grins at them, then vanishes with a muted pop, leaving the parking lot empty.

  Diana snorts harshly. “What the fuck was that thing?”

  Sam stares at the spot where she had been standing. “Whatever it was, I think it just saved us.” He’s surprised that Aurale chose to appear like that. Before this she’s always chosen to stay as far from the action as possible. He rubs his arm, recalling Zachariah’s blade arching towards his chest. He owes her one.

  “Exactly, what manages to scare off an insane angel? It looked like a little girl!”

  A young voice piped up from across the room. “And that makes me any less likely to kick your ass, how?”

  Dean whips around, Diana snarling again, his gun already pointed steadily at where Aurale is standing. She’s smirking, her skinny arms crossed over her chest, daring him to make a move. Dean’s finger twitches on the trigger.

  Sam’s heart leaps into his throat and he’s about to shout at him to stop when he feels Carmen fly past him in a rush of wings. For one moment, Sam thinks that she’s going to try and land on Aurale’s head, but at the last second Aurale holds out an arm that should be too thin to support Carmen’s weight. Carmen alights on her gently. Sam cringes, anticipating the horrible crawling sensation of someone else touching his dæmon, but there’s... nothing. Just a dim warmth. Huh.

  Dean looks horrified and betrayed, unable to shoot while Carmen’s in the way. “Carmen, what the hell are you doing? Get away from there!”

  “Don’t shoot her, Dean,” Carmen says calmly, shuffling her wings to make herself more comfortable. Dean gapes at her, glancing at Sam as though they’ve gone insane. Sam clears his throat.

  “Okay… Dean, Diana, Cas- this is Aurale.”

  “Wait, you know this thing?”

  Sam feels himself bristling a little at the disgust in Dean’s voice. “Hey, she’s not bad, okay? Put the gun down. She helped me when you were, you know… gone.”

  “What the hell, Sammy? What do you mean, helping you?” Dean’s not backing down at all, in fact he looks even twitchier now. Aurale’s watching him with amusement, and Carmen has her sharp eyes fixed on the gun that he keeps gesturing with.

  Diana relaxes a little though, glancing up at her other half. “Dean, maybe we should-”

  “No!” Dean almost shouts. “We can’t trust it! It’s not human!”

  Sam opens his mouth to retort, but Cas beats him to the punch, grabbing Dean’s elbow. “Not being human is no reason to dismiss her as an ally. She saved us from Zachariah. We just saw her throw a fully powered seraph through a window and come out of it without a single injury. Think, Dean.” He leans in closer, speaking quietly, “I can’t tell you what that creature is without my Grace, but anything that could do that to an angel like Zachariah would be able to obliterate us in a second. Be careful.”

  Cas draws back slowly, his hand still on Dean’s arm. Dean reluctantly lowers his weapon.

  Aurale grins at him cheekily. “Are you done?”

  Dean ignores her, directing his words at Sam. “What is it?”

  Sam shrugs. “I don’t really know, she won’t tell me. And her name’s Aurale.”

  “And what, you never thought to look it up? It just showed up one day and you decided to trust the damn thing?”

  Carmen scoffs. “Of course we didn’t! We looked, but there’s nothing in the lore. And she was helpful.” She flicks her wings to resettle them.

  Aurale butts in. “What she’s trying to say is that Tall, Dark and Moose-like over there was trying to get himself killed hunting while you were doing the hellfire tango down below. I was just there to make sure he didn’t throw himself into the hairy arms of the latest monster.”

  “Aurale!” Sam scowls at her and looks at Carmen for backup, but she shrugs. He needs to know.

  Now Dean’s gonna be all paranoid! I wasn’t trying to die!

  You kind of were, though.

  Dean and Diana are still gaping at them, and Sam turns away, uncomfortable. “Look, she’s helped me, okay? She’s on our side. Just… trust me on this one.”

  Dean hesitates, glancing between them. Sam widens his eyes at him, imploring. Dean reluctantly deflates a little.

  “Fine. But one wrong move?” He glares at Aurale and mimes shooting. Sam grimaces, but Aurale just winks at him.

  “Sure thing, Deano. Not that it would hurt me, but whatever lets you sleep at night. Now, you chuckleheads must have a bolthole somewhere, right? We’d better get undercover before the god squad comes a-knocking again. You’re like baby ducks in front of a firing squad out here.”

  “What makes you think you’re coming?” Dean growls at her.

  Aurale turns to him, smile as sweet and sharp as a sugar razer. “I’m sorry, did you miss the part where I threw the middle manager from not-quite-hell across the parking lot? Even if he doesn’t come after me personally, he’s still got plenty of mindless cronies who’ll hunt me down for him. Pardon me for not fancying being an angel pincushion this week. I stuck my foot in this pile of shit for you guys, so yeah, I figure I’ve earned my place in whatever dank little hole you Winchesters hide in when you’re being chased by monsters. Sound fair, sweet cheeks?”

  Sam can practically hear Dean’s teeth cracking in his clenched jaw. Cas places a calming hand on Dean’s arm again. Sam sighs, rubbing at the budding headache in his temple. This is going to be a long week.

  Aurale turns away with a satisfied smirk and starts walking towards the impala. Carmen takes off from her arm and returns to Sam, perching on his shoulders and digging her claws reassuringly into the flannel. Sam turns away from Aurale’s retreating back to look at her. “I thought you two didn’t like each other?”

  Carmen shrugs, starting to preen a wing. “I don’t know. She’s… grown on me.”

  Sam raises an eyebrow. “Grown on you enough to throw yourself in front of a bullet for her?” It wasn’t often that Carmen warmed up to people. She’s usually the prickly part of him- the cautious one, ruthless and untrusting.

  Carmen puffs up defensively. “Fine, yes, I like her okay? Let’s go before Dean and Aurale try to kill each other.”

  Sam grins, but doesn’t comment as he jogs to catch up with the others.

.o0o.

  They retreat to Bobby’s house after their run in with Zachariah. Bobby is less than impressed when they turn up bedraggled and trailing an unidentified creature. But after greeting them with a loaded shotgun and much growling on Rumsfeld’s part, he finally decides to let them in.

  When they first arrive, Aurale confirms that Bobby’s wards are strong, then cheerfully daubs a few new ones on the walls in her own blood. Bobby gives her the stink eye as he leafs through the lore books to find out what they do before grudgingly admitting that she could be useful.

  Everyone is on edge, especially Dean. Diana slinks around the corners with her back to the wall for the first few days, on the alert all the time, and Carmen takes to perching on high places, on the lookout. Bobby’s house is too small for them all to live together happily, and seems even more battered and cluttered than ever with five people.

  Having so many people also makes it hard to avoid the latest member of the team. Apart from Sam (and possibly Castiel), everyone makes it blindingly clear that Aurale isn’t welcome. But despite the glares, Rumsfeld’s constant growling and Dean’s passive-aggressive comments, Aurale stays. She hides behind a tight grin and snark, snapping back at Dean, but Sam knows her well enough to recognise the tension slowly building. It’s longer than she’s ever stuck around before, and Sam catches her looking unsettled, restless.

  Despite the tense atmosphere, Sam is glad that Aurale’s there. It’s the first time since Dean came back from hell that she’s been around him for any length of time, and he’s missed her. Now that she’s here though he can’t quite bring himself to ask about Lilith. He tries telling himself that it’s because what’s done is done, but really he knows that he’s afraid of what she’ll say. Afraid of learning what her motives are. He has so few allies that he doesn’t think he could take losing another one.

  “Where does it go at night?” Dean mutters to him at breakfast on the second morning of their confinement to the house.

  “I don’t know what she does at night Dean,” Sam snaps, irritated at Dean for continuously  treating Aurale like a thing that might need to be hunted at any second.

  “Actually Sam, ‘it’ works just fine,” Aurale appears behind them, breezing past them into the kitchen, and Diana tries to hide her flinch. “I’m not actually female. But I‘ll take ‘she’ as well. ‘She’ is good. Anyway, what were you two morons planning for today? Staring at Cassie? Erotically polishing your car?”

  Dean’s eyes sharpen. “Why? Got some newborns to slaughter?”

  Aurale smiles at him sweetly and Dean’s shirt spontaneously morphs into pink and purple plaid with the Hello Kitty logo emblazoned across the front.

  Sam sighs as Dean inflates with rage and quickly grabs his cup of coffee. He leaves them to it, going to the study to help pore over the old books to find anything that might help them ward off Zachariah and his minions. The shouting echoes out of the kitchen behind him.

.o0o.

  That night, Sam wakes up with the unnerving knowledge that someone is in his room. Maybe a tiny sound woke him (being a hunter he has never really had restful sleep). It’s probably an owl.

  But maybe it isn’t.

  He lies perfectly still, Carmen’s eyes opening on top of the bedpost, but the room is pitch black. It’s the kind of complete darkness you only get in the very early hours of the morning. They can’t see a thing.

  There’s a shift, and Sam feels Carmen tense minutely above him. His heart accelerates, adrenaline building in his veins and pulling him to full wakefulness. It’s not just his hunter paranoia- there’s definitely someone there. He grips the knife tightly under his pillow, estimates where the sound came from, then springs up, prepared for the resistance of the blade sinking into flesh-

  There’s a flash of movement and a high yelp as he misses, and he’s surprised enough that he pauses.

  Aurale’s voice comes out of the darkness. “Calm down, Rambo! Jesus, do you gut everyone who comes into your room?”

  Sam sighs and lowers the knife. “Most people knock first!” He growls at her, his heart still thumping against his ribs. He reaches out and flips on the lamp, Carmen hissing and turning away from the sudden painful brightness. “What the hell are you doing in here in the middle of the night?”

  Aurale shrugs. “Nothing better to do.” Sam snorts, about to tell her to go and do nothing somewhere else when she continues. “Besides, your mind is interesting when you sleep.”

  Sam looks at her sharply. “Stop reading my mind!”

  “I don’t really have control over it. It’s a part of me. Can you stop your heart beating, Winchester?”

  “No, but I can close my eyes.”

  “My senses don’t work like that.” She glances around the room and raises a thin eyebrow when she sees the enormous books on the nightstand. “Why were you looking up Norse mythology? Bit of light bedtime reading?”

  “Oh, that,” Sam huffs as he picks up the top book and leafs through it. The pages are soft from years of handling. “I got trapped by what I thought was a trickster god, a while back, before Dean went to hell. Always kind of suspected something was off about him. Then the angels showed up, and I was too busy to do any research. But now though… free time and all, being trapped in here. I had a thought. Hah, I’d almost forgotten about him…”

  That’s a lie. As if he could ever forget about the trickster.

  “You thought?” Aurale’s dark eyes sharpen, unusually focused as she gazes at him.

   Her intensity surprises him a little, leaving him feeling wrong-footed. “Yeah, I thought he was a pagan god at first. But I managed to catch him in the end and he kind of… lost control. Now I’m not so sure about what he was.”

  “What do you think?” She’s entirely focused on him, waiting for his answer.

  Carmen raises her head and Aurale’s gaze snaps to her. He swallows. “We think he might be an angel. Especially once we met Cas. Before it seemed too… out there, too crazy. But we know now that heaven’s real. Why he was hiding as a trickster we don’t know. He hasn’t seemed like any of the other angels we’ve met.”

  Aurale relaxes a little, hopping up to sit on the bed next to Sam. “Yeah, you could say that. I’m pretty sure I know the guy you’re talking about.”

  “You do?” Carmen perked up a little.

  “Yeah, we move in the same circles.” She glanced between them, biting her lip a little. “You’re the one he trapped in a time-loop for a year and a half, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Sam replied darkly.

  She tilts her head and nods. “We talk from time to time. He mentioned you. He really regretted what that did to you, you know.”

  Sam blinks at her, surprised. “What?”

  “Yeah. The gist of the drunken muttering seemed to be that he’d tried to make you let go of your brother and it didn’t work.”

  “You can say that again,” Sam mutters.

  “I think he realised that towards the end.”

  “Well why didn’t he stop when he realised it wasn’t going to work?” Sam growls down at his hands.

  Aurale shrugs. “He’s a stubborn bastard. He has more pride than he knows what to do with, but he obviously cares about you.”

  Sam raises one incredulous eyebrow at her. “Really? What gave you that impression?”

  “Well, the way he was blubbering into his drink made it pretty obvious.” She’s quiet for a second. “You really made an impression on him, you know? The first time you two met.”

  “You mean when he slept with us to manipulate us,” Carmen says coldly.

  Sam shoots her a look, but Carmen shrugs. She’s a mind reader, she knows already.

  Aurale shakes her head. “I don’t think he was trying to manipulate you back then. I don’t know if he was thinking that far ahead at that point. But then Deano made that deal, and of course he knew about heaven’s plans for the apocalypse. He is an angel, after all.”

  Sam knows he shouldn’t just take her word for it, but it doesn’t seem like she’s lying about the angel thing. After all, this is just the confirmation. “I knew it!”

  Aurale grins. “Told you. Too smart for your own good, Sam.”

  Carmen hops down onto the bed and walks over the blankets towards them. “So who is he, really?”

  Aurale glances between them, lips pursed. Sam tries not to look too interested but she can probably feel his mind buzzing with curiosity. After all those days and weeks of fruitless research, the answer was here, right in front of him. He can put a name to those memories, good and bad, and then maybe, just maybe he’ll be able to forget about them and the strange mix of feelings that they always stir up.

  “Well, I suppose you deserve a bone after being so good about my name. I mean, he’ll be pissed if he ever finds out I told you, but whatever. He was a moody asshat the last time I talked to him. So…” She grins at them, mischievous. “His name is Gabriel.”

  It doesn’t quite sink in for a second. “Gabriel?”

  “Yup.”

  “Gabriel, as in the archangel Gabriel?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “But that’s… that’s…” impossible. He had met Gabriel- the angel he had prayed to since he was a child. Sam blanches. He’d had sex with him.

Aurale giggles. “Don’t worry too much about that. He’s spent the last few millennia as a pagan god- he doesn’t mind a bit of the horizontal tango. Besides, wasn’t it him that propositioned you?”

  Sam feels himself blush wildly and thinks very loudly and pointedly about staying out of his head.

  Aurale snickers, but then her face turns serious again and she sighs. “So yeah, being the Messenger, of course he knew about the apocalypse. He was trying to stop you before it was too late. He was trying to save you, in his own messed up way.”

  “By killing Dean?” Sam asks incredulously.

  She shrugs. “Yeah, like I said, he got it wrong. He can be a bit thick sometimes, but he usually gets there in the end. Sometimes even without me pushing him into it.”

  Sam sits quietly for a second, turning over all his memories of Gabriel in light of this new information. “So you’re saying he was actually on our side?”

  Aurale hums. “Sort of. He wasn’t at first- he wanted to stay right out of it. Let’s just say that his massive crush on you turned him around.”

  “What?” Sam snorts.

  “Oh yeah. Like a lovesick puppy.”

  Sam scoffs, but for once Aurale seems completely serious. He flounders for a second, not really sure what to do with that. An archangel couldn’t be interested in them. Sam had demon blood, for fuck’s sake. Then he realises something else and frowns. If Aurale knew Gabriel, then it would certainly make sense for her to know about the apocalypse. Maybe it was time to ask Aurale about her part.

  “What about you? Did you know about the apocalypse? Was that why you killed Lilith?”

  Aurale just winks at him, all light and mischief. “Wouldn’t you like to know, big boy.”

  Sam scowls, frustrated. “I’m serious!”

  “What, don’t trust me?” Her eyes turn on him, suddenly heavy and dark, and it sends a shiver down Sam’s spine, because right now Aurale looks old beyond imagination, despite the youth of her chosen form. Something ancient is looking out from behind that face. Something that sought him out. She’s letting him see her, for what she truly is. Does he trust her? Does he really?

  Carmen hops forwards, leaping up to sit in Aurale’s lap with her wings half spread. She digs her claws into Aurale’s jeans to balence. Aurale blinks in surprise and smiles at her, the weight and age dropping from her face. She briefly glances up at Sam, hesitating, then raises a hand and strokes down one long wing.

  Sam knows that it should be horrible, agonising. Monsters have touched Carmen before. But there’s just a warm tingle as Aurale scratches the back of Carmen’s head, fingers scritching in the ruff until Carmen just melts into a pile of feathers on her lap. It doesn’t feel anything like another human touching her, but it’s not wrong.

  Sam watches with round eyes, the irrefutable proof that he does trust Aurale. Whatever she is, he trusts her right down to his soul.

  “Guess that settles that then,” Aurale says, pleased.

  “I still want to know,” Sam mutters, but he’s warm inside, no fight in him.

  “Go to sleep Sam. I’ll be watching over you.”

  “And that’s meant to make me feel better?” he jokes.

  Aurale snorts. “Shut up before I have to knock you out, Winchester.”

  Sam grins and closes his eyes, drifting off into sleep faster that he should be able to with someone watching him. He doesn’t dream.

………

  She’s gone when he wakes in the morning. But when he looks over to the other side of bed where she had been sitting, there’s a thick book lying on top of the covers. Curious, he picks it up.

  The title is Chronicles and Artworks of Gabriel the Archangel. There’s a small pink post it stuck to the heavy leather cover. Page 63 is my favourite, he reads in a looping scrawl.

  Sam flips through, then laughs out loud when he reaches page sixty three. It’s an illustration of an immensely fat cherub with tiny fuzzy wings, gazing down benevolently down at a sea of happy couples. Carmen chuckles with him.

  “Can you imagine their faces if they found out what he really looks like?”

  With a grin, Sam flicks back to the first page and begins to read.

.o0o.

  Sam gets through the entire book in a day. He closets himself in the draughty bedroom at the back of the house and by the time he’s done his eyes are aching.

  He closes the thick cover carefully, thoughtful. He turns to Carmen, who’s pretending to preen the underside of a wing, but he can tell she’s listening in.

  I sort of understand now, he tells her, what he did to us.

  “That doesn’t mean we have to forgive him,” Carmen replies out loud. “If he was actually trying to stop the apocalypse, why didn’t he do more to help? Why not just tell us? That would have avoided a whole thing.”

  Sam smiles. “Not everyone’s as direct as you are. Plus, we’d never have believed him back then. We didn’t even know heaven existed.”

  She sniffs. “Yeah, you’re probably right. He still should have tried, though.”

  “Yeah.”

  Sam runs a finger thoughtfully over the cover of the book, the worn leather smooth under his fingers. He thought back to the first time that they had met Gabriel, back at Crawford hall.

  I pray to the archangel Gabriel, he starts awkwardly, stilted. He pauses, then sighs. Gabe. It’s been a while since I prayed, and not since I um… found out who you are. He chuckles a little to himself.

  I guess I just wanted to let you know that I know. Who you are, that is. I don’t think I blame you any more, for what you did. I get it. You didn’t want to have to fight your family. If anyone can understand that it’s us.

  Anyway, I can’t really come out of the wards to talk to you at the minute, we kind of have another angel situation going on. Zachariah and his cohort are after us because we somehow managed to avoid the apocalypse with the help of a few friends. You should know that your relatives are dicks. Apart from Cas. He’s okay.

  I just wanted to say… if you ever want to come and talk, or explain in person, I’m ready to listen. I’ll even stop Dean from trying to stake you. So that’s all, I guess?

  Sam waits for a minute, but there’s no answer. Just the sound of the rain beating against the windows. Carmen turns to him and shrugs. He’s probably ignoring prayers, she tells him, but there’s a trace of sympathy through their bond.

  Sam sighs and turns off the light. It wasn’t like he had expected an answer instantly, anyway. He can wait.

.o0o.

  He awakes the next morning to the sound of a muffled crash from the kitchen, followed by shouting. It looks like the arguments are starting early today.

  Groaning, Sam rubs his eyes and stumbles down the stairs, meandering towards the sound of breaking crockery.

  He stops in the door to the kitchen. He blinks.

  But no, his eyes aren’t playing tricks on him; literally everything has become leopard print. Everything- the fridge, the floor tiles, the table, the walls, the ceiling. Dean’s shirt has the honour of being both leopard print and rainbow coloured. Cas is curiously inspecting his altered trench coat. Dean’s fist is furiously clenched on the handle of a leopard patterned stake, and he looks about half a second from leaping across the kitchen towards Aurale, who is grooming herself in the form of- predictably- an enormous leopard, almost perfectly coloured against the backdrop.

  “You put it back! Put it back right now!”

  Sam sighs and shoulders past Dean to grab an animal patterned coffee mug. “Relax, Dean, it’s only a bit of leopard print. You’ll live.” This obviously wasn’t the first prank that Aurale had pulled this morning if Dean was this riled up already, but Sam is sick of the constant fighting. He is tired, grumpy, and all out of patience.

  Aurale, obviously not in a helpful mood, speaks up spitefully from across the kitchen. “I don’t know, Sammy. I was thinking of doing the car next. ”

  “You little-!”

  Forgetting about the stake, Dean launches himself across the kitchen, dodging Cas and Sam who try to grab him, and seizes hold of Aurale’s front leg.

  “Dean, no!”

  There’s a horrible snarl and Dean yelps with pain, and before Sam knows it Dean’s staggering backwards, cradling his arm. Aurale’s backed against the corner, a child again, small teeth bared viciously. Sam notes warily that she looks more like an animal now than she did in leopard form.

  Dean inspects his arm, gingerly touching the parallel red lines now scoring his flesh. Sam sighs and gives up on coffee, making for the door.

  “You see that? It scratched me! Sam, you need to control your pagan.”

  Sam whirls on him. “She’s not mine! And don’t you think that maybe if you stopped being an aggressive posturing ass for five seconds that she might stop screwing with you?”

  “Here, Dean, let me heal it.”

  “No, Cas! You’re low enough on Grace already.”

  Bobby’s irritated voice precedes him into the room. “Will you idjits calm down? We have to work together here, or Zachariah’s gonna turn us into mincemeat!” He steps in and Rumsfeld blinks. “Hey, what the hell happened to my damn kitchen?”

  Aurale uses the chaos to vanish with a quiet snap. Presumably, she’s gone to find somewhere to hide until this has blown over. Sam wishes he had that ability.

  Dean points to the empty space triumphantly. “See? I don’t trust that thing, no matter what it says. It’s gonna screw us over, and then where will we be?”

  Sam shakes his head and clenches his fists, turning and shoving past Bobby. There’s no point trying to argue with Dean when he’s like this; he won’t listen, because he’s convinced he’s right. And Sam’s the little brother, so obviously Dean knows better. Sam pulls his coat on, letting the screen door slam behind him as he goes, trotting down the porch steps and striding quickly through the maze of cars towards the road.

  “Hey! Sam, wait up!” Sam hears Dean behind him and walks quicker. Dean catches him, out of breath, just before he gets to the boundary that marks the edges of Bobby’s protection. “Come on, man. Where are you going?”

  “Out,” Sam says curtly.

  Dean looks at him like he’s stupid. “Where Zachariah can get to you? I don’t think so. We’re safer in here, even with little miss shifty hanging around.”

  Carmen turns sharply to face him, her beak jutting aggressively. “This is why we’re going out- to get away from your attitude! Aurale protected me while you were gone, beat Zachariah for us, put herself in danger for our safety, and you’re gonna tell me you don’t trust her enough to let her share a hiding place while we figure out how to get rid of Zachariah? We’ve had it.”

  “Carmen… Sammy-”

  Sam glares at him too. “No! I don’t care! I’m done with breaking up your schoolyard fights, Dean. I’m going out.”

  Sam shrugs out of his grasp and steps quickly over the line of runes protecting them from the supernatural. He ignores Dean’s shouting behind him, quickly striding away. He won’t be gone long. Hopefully, when he gets back, everyone will have calmed down a little. And maybe he’ll be able to resist the urge to punch Dean until they can sort out their angel problem.

  His steps start to slow when he reaches the road.

  Everything’s quiet. Blissfully quiet.

  Too quiet.

  The road leading to Bobby’s might be small, but there’s usually at least a bit of traffic on it at this time of the morning. Sam looks around, frowning, but there isn’t a car in sight. He can’t hear one either. Even the birds have stopped singing. Sam slowly slips a hand into the back of his jeans where his gun is hidden.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, Carmen comments quietly, her head turning this way and that to look for threats.

  “Yeah, I don’t like this,” Sam mutters. “We need to go back.”

  He turns, but before he can even take two steps, there’s a dull thud, then a blinding pain at the back of his head, and everything fades out.

.o0o.

    Sam knows that he’s tied down before he’s fully awake.

  He’s woken up in similar situations so many times that he doesn’t even need to register more than the roughness of rope at his wrists and ankles before he’s lying still, his breathing deliberately regulated to try and fool whatever had him that he was still unconscious. He can feel Carmen lying limp on his chest. With his eyes still carefully closed, he thought back over his memories.

  He had been… angry? Angry at Dean, and having to get out of the tiny, crowded house… And then a stunning pain in the back of his skull, and nothing else.

  He had gone less than two miles. Aurale hadn’t been kidding about the people after them then. They were good, whoever they were- he hadn’t even heard them sneaking up behind him. Maybe witches? Demons?

  He listens, his ears straining, but there’s nothing there, just the steady dripping of water somewhere off in the distance.

  He peeks through his lashes, then opens his eyes fully and squints as the bright light causes the throbbing pain in the back of his skull magnifying. After a few blinks the blinding whiteness resolves itself into a large room, well-lit and spotlessly clean. Unusual, compared to most of his kidnapping experiences. He’s strapped to the floor of a cage, and there’s no give to the knots when he wriggles around to test them. It’s always unfortunate when his captors show signs of competance.

  Carmen is lying on top of him, wings folded neatly as she looks around cautiously, cataloguing everything, searching for potential weapons and exit strategies. The cage he’s in is solid, built with three walls of sturdy metal bars. The fourth wall, strangely, is just made of a piece of flimsy wire mesh. Directly on the other side of that, there’s another cage, a mirror image of the one he’s in.

  Everything about the room is sparklingly sterile, all concrete and aluminium. The walls are titanium white, inlaid with large black sigils that Sam recognises as angel warding. The steel door is equipped with an impressive number of locks and reinforcements.

  Sam sees movement and sees a group of people in white lab coats. They’re all bending over a control panel on the other side of the room, muttering quietly to one another. There’s no sign of any dæmons around them, and Sam feels his heart sink. Demons, probably. The entire place gives him more of an uneasy feeling than any abandoned warehouse ever has. It’s too clean, as though there’s nothing else living in the entire room except for them and the demons.

  He glances at Carmen and she nods at him. There’s no way that they’re getting out of this on their own, and no way of knowing if Dean can even find them. Time for plan B. They turn towards the coated figures.

  “Hey!” Sam shouts.

  “Hey! Over here!” Carmen joins in.

  One of the demons turns to glance at them, but they quickly turn back to their work. After a few more tries Sam gives up, his head sinking back against the hard surface with a huff. Carmen gets to her feet and hops from one end of her half of the cage to the other, trying to find a weak spot. As flimsy as it looks, the wire mesh is surprisingly durable.

  There’s the quiet shuff of the door opening, and Sam turns to see a new figure step in. The sharp profile of a man in a suit stands out against the blankness of the walls. The demons at the control panels look up immediately, glancing nervously at him. But the new man ignores them entirely when he spots Sam and the cages in the middle of the room. A wide smile breaks out across his face as he comes striding closer.

  Impossibly, Sam recognises him. “B…Brady?!”

  Brady gives a jaunty wave. “Hi, Sam! Long time no see.”

  There’s something horribly displacing about seeing one of his friends from Stanford here in this colourless torture chamber. The juxtaposition is jarring, memories of college parties warring with the ingrained hunter reflex to stay in the moment, analyse the threat.

  Brady steps closer, grinning down at Sam in satisfaction, and Sam knows with a sinking feeling even before he sees the lack of dæmon that this isn’t Brady. He grits his teeth, futile anger rising up.

  “Get out of him, you asshole!”

  The demon tuts, eyes flicking to black even as the cruel smirk grows wider. “Now now, Sam, is that any way to talk to an old friend? Besides, I haven’t seen you since you left town in a hurry after poor little Jess did her best charcoal briquette impression. Great balls of fire!”

  Sam seethes.

  Brady gives a grating laugh and grabs a chair from the side of the room, spinning it so that it faces away from where Sam is being held. He straddles it, folding his arms over the backrest so that he can prop his chin on top of the back of the seat and still smirk down at Sam where he’s strapped down to the floor of the strange cage.

  “Oh, Sam. You made it so easy. We were worried, you know. We didn’t know what to do to get you back on the road, to kick off the main event. And then?” He sighs, as though reminiscing. “You got attached. Rookie error, Sam. And I was there, right by your side! Don’t you remember? Lovely, sweet little Jessica. You wouldn’t have even gone over to say hi if it wasn’t for me. I gave you that first push. And I will be rewarded, when the time comes.” A greedy look twists his handsome features.

  Sam does his best to sneer, trying to play for time. He knows that his only hope now will be if Dean makes it. This is no stunt demon. It knows him. “Oh yeah? Rewarded by who? Because we know that Lilith was meant to be your play. I was meant to kill her, only that plan’s over. Lucifer’s never getting out. And I’ll never be your boy king.”

  Brady breaks into a wide grin and laughs, his eyes sparkling, as though Sam was a keen student who had asked just the right question. “Isn’t he? You know, there’s a thing that everyone forgets about boxes with locks. Sure, you can use the key to get in. That’s the easy way. But you can also go at it with a bolt cutter and get the same result. You just have to find the right leverage!”

  He gets up from his chair and starts pacing, hands behind his back. Sam watches him, one eye on the other demons in the corner, muttering over the switches.

  “Those angels are so rigid when it comes to their thinking. So… inflexible. And if one part of their plan gets screwed, they just give up! I mean, come on. No imagination. Even Alistair was… limited. You’re right! You’ll never be the boy king, not now. But my imagination, on the other hand?” Brady turns back to Sam, leaning down so that he’s speaking from close by, conspiratorial. Sam feels his skin crawl. Carmen hisses at him, her hackles bristling.

  “Are you getting it yet, Sam? You see, everything will open if you apply enough force. In this case, the force being the energy that makes up souls. You’re a walking, talking nuclear reactor Sam. The cage is very resistant to Grace, to any angelic energy at all, but human energy?” He gestures to Sam with a grin. “A whole hell of a lot easier, pun intended. Even so, we need a huge amount of energy to pop that baby open. Now, usually, souls, even crazy powerful souls like yours, only give off a little trickle of energy- nowhere near enough to pop the top off the lockbox. But we found a way around that! And the best part? We didn’t even have to think it up ourselves! You humans got there first. Just handed it to us on a plate.”

  He stands and walks up to the corner of the cage that Sam is being held in, patting it fondly like a prize horse. The metal gleams innocuously under the sterile lights. “Impressive piece of equipment, isn’t it? We found this nifty little gadget in one of your wonderful government research facilities, can you believe that? They call it an intercission device. Do you know what it does?”

  Sam doesn’t answer.

  Brady groans in mock frustration. “Come on, Sam, audience participation! You used to be so eager in lectures, too. Okay, I’ll give you this one. Here’s how it works. You go in this side, your dæmon goes in the other. Then we power it up, and snip!” he mimed cutting something with his fingers. “One soul down. We cut you off from your dæmon, and your soul releases its energy all at once, like popping a balloon. There are runes embedded under this table that will channel that energy down, all the way down. It’ll be more than enough to open the cage, with a soul as bright and shiny as yours!”

  Sam tugs subtly at the ropes again. “But if you destroy my soul, won’t that kind of ruin me as Lucifer’s vessel?”

“Hmm… sorry, no. Lucifer doesn’t need your soul, you see. Only your living body. And this process won’t technically kill you, or rather, all it’ll kill is, well. You. I’d say it won’t hurt, but yeah, it probably will.” Brady flashes Sam a savage grin, then straightens and claps his hands. “Any questions? No? Right, let’s get started then!”

  Shit, they’re out of time. Sam struggles harder, but the ropes are thick and tied tight. The door of the cage opens and rough hands grab for Carmen’s body. “No! Don’t you touch her!”

  She shrieks as he yells, flapping and clawing and stabbing with her beak, but Brady just laughs and then Sam feels hands clamp down on her. They both wail in horror. It feels so wrong, like something filthy is smearing itself onto the most private part of his being, digging in with tainted fingers. Nausea rises in his stomach as Carmen struggles against the grip pinning her wings. They’re pulling her away now, Carmen screaming and him yelling, begging, pleading, all the things that hunters never do, big boys don’t cry Sam, but they have their hands on his dæmon and he can’t stand it, can’t stand it for a second longer-

  But then they let go and he’s gasping, his eyes watering. Carmen limps back towards Sam, one wing dragging, hissing at Brady with her feathers ruffled and bristling. He scowls at her with black eyes, rubbing his bleeding hands. But then he seems to compose his face back into a smirk, straightening and turning to the table where the other demons are still working.

  As soon as Brady is far enough away, Sam turns his head sideways to check on Carmen. With horror he realises that she’s in the other cage now, on the other side of the wire. There’s a dull ache in his arm from her damaged wing, but not enough for it to be broken. She turns to look at him as well, then visibly pulls herself upright and starts looking around desperately for an exit. Her claws skitter on the metal while Sam starts pulling on his bindings again.

  It can’t end here. This isn’t just their lives at stake, it’s the world. They have to get out.

  The reprieve doesn’t last long. Brady turns to one of the demons and Sam sees him nod and say, “Do it.”

  “No! Stop!”

  But it’s too late. The demon standing at the control panels yanks on a lever with a satisfied smirk, and then Sam looks up in horror to see electricity spark across the wires at the top of the cage, a blinding line of blue fire. Then it starts descending, with all the deadly potential of a guillotine.

 Carmen is frantic in the other cage, flapping and screaming and sobbing. Sam feels tears running down his face, and he isn’t sure any more which one of them it is making these terrified noises. He feels a sickening pressure at the back of his mind as the fizzing light moves lower, like a pinching burn on his soul. He feels the rope cutting through his wrists as he struggles mindlessly. No! they can’t cut them, they can’t they can’t they-

  Then there is a scream that isn’t his or Carmen’s, then an enraged shriek and frantic movements at the edge of his vision. Something so fast it blurs shoots through the room, and then there’s a sharp crack and a flare of light. The pinching in his mind fades but Sam’s already sinking down, down down into darkness.

.o0o.

  Sam feels the pain before he’s even fully awake.

  His chest is aching as though his ribs have been prised open with a crowbar, his heart and lungs ripped out and then stuffed back in. Every breath tastes like iron and stings the back of his throat.

  As the fog covering his thoughts slowly lifts, he realises that his head is resting on something warm and soft. The rest of his cramping body is curled into a loose foetal position on the hard ground, the cold seeping slowly through his jeans.

  But all of that is secondary; the thing that occupies most of his attention is the quivering pile of feathers on his chest, and the warm awareness still there in the back of his mind. He gasps in relief and coils close around Carmen, even though his muscles scream protest at the movement, his shaking hands stroking over her feathers, her talons clutching at his shirt. They don’t need words now as they share the relief that they are together, and whole, and horror at the thought of being separated. Oh god, he could have lost her…

  Sam feels a hand comb through his hair and jolts, his muscles going stiff as he freezes. His eyes snap open.

  Initially, all he can see is the dark blur of too-close fabric. But between the warmth, the hand in his hair, and the chuckle above him, he realises belatedly that he’s lying with his head in someone’s lap.

  He yanks himself upright, swaying slightly as the blood rushes to his head, Carmen still tucked against his chest. He tries to whip around to face whoever it is, but he wobbles and falls backwards. A hand darts out and grabs his shoulder with disproportionate strength, propping him up until he has enough control over his own muscles to scrabble away.

  It’s only then that he really registers who it is who’s sitting there with him on the hard concrete floor. For a second his eyes don’t connect with his brain and he can’t make sense of the figure in front of him, but then his words come back to him.

  “Gabriel?”

  Sam swears he sees a flash of nervousness cross his face before Gabriel smirks, his hands raised in a peace gesture. “Guilty.”

  But Sam has finally come around enough to notice the rest of the room, and his focus is yanked abruptly away from the archangel in front of him.

  They’re still in the same room that he had been in before he had fallen unconscious. The intercission chambers are just a few feet away and Sam feels Carmen flinch involuntarily when she notices them. They’re barely recognisable, reduced to a mess of ripped mesh and broken bars. The whole thing is twisted and buckled like it’s been clawed open. The metal around the gaping holes is still glowing cherry red, as though someone had gone at it with a flame thrower. Even in its mangled state, the ruined contraption sends shivers down Sam’s spine and he quickly looks away.

  Half of the strip lights are blown, but the remaining ones still illuminate the scene in a flickering gloom. The previously spotless floor and walls are a mess of gore, bloody smears painted in red over the shining white and chrome. Sam’s used to blood and mutilated corpses, but the smell in the room makes him want to vomit. It’s the stench of raw meat and ripped-open bowels. If Sam didn’t know better he would have said that a hundred people had been massacred in here, but there had only been about five demons.

  Gabriel obviously catches that thought, because he shrugs. “People go a lot further than you expect them to when they explode,” he says, casually. As though they’re discussing the weather, rather than reducing living beings to chunks of bloody meat. “I got your little voicemail by the way. How did you figure out what I was?” His eyes are glowing slightly, swirling golden in the gloom as he cocks his head in curiosity, a vivid reminder of his inhumanity.

  Sam swallows thickly, throat sticking. “Did a little reading. Put two and two together. How the hell did you get in here?” He asks, his voice rough, “There were wards. I saw them. Angel wards.”

  “Well, you have her to thank for that,” Gabriel’s forced expression falters for a second. His voice has an odd tone in it, a deliberate neutrality that’s hiding something. He nods towards a shadowed corner of the room where the gore is thickest, and Sam turns to look.

  Something in the shadows moves. It pads out of the darkness, pacing across the floor with silent steps. It’s so matted with blood that Sam doesn’t realise that it’s the familiar shape of a coyote before it gets within ten feet of them. Its jaw hangs open, revealing teeth painted pink. Burning eyes fix on Sam as it stops a few paces away. Blood drips slowly from the reddened fur of its lower jaw. Carmen stirs weakly, and Sam shifts so that she can perch on his arm. The beast’s eyes refocus sharply on her.

  “Aurale?” Sam asks cautiously.

  The coyote inspects him for a second, unnaturally still until suddenly her form shifts and she’s a child sitting there in the midst of the filth. Her shift  is still pristine white among all the red. When she smiles, though, her sharp teeth are still pink with blood.

  “Hey, dumbshit. Good job with the running off, really helped to draw out all the bad guys. How was the latest near death experience? Or, well, soul death. Close enough.” Despite her flippant words, she looks genuinely concerned. She peers at him without getting any closer to Gabriel.

  “Not great.” Sam glances warily between Aurale and Gabriel, two of the most powerful beings he had ever met together in one room. “Thanks for getting us out, anyway,” He carefully directs the comment at both of them, not sure exactly who he’s thanking here. He knows that they know each other, but it pays to be cautious, and the last thing he needs is to get in the middle of a supernatural punch up. “So, how exactly do you two know each other?”

  Aurale grins, her sharp canines flashing. “I think I’ll let you field that one, Gabriel. Why don’t you tell the kid who I am?”

  Gabriel shoots her a glare. “Ra, not now!”

  Wait, Ra?

  Sam can feel his memory ticking over as the two of them start bickering. Something stirs in the back of his mind. He remembers that from somewhere, where has he heard it before...?

  The memory clicks into place.

  No. Surely not.

  Hadn’t Ra been the name the trickster had used for the little terrier dæmon, back in Crawford Hall? Sam glances between them, but Gabriel looks uncomfortable, almost angry, and he’s glaring with venom at Aurale (Ra?) who grins back, fox-sharp.

  “She… she’s yours? She’s a dæmon?”

  “Yep. Unfortunately.”

  Aurele sends Gabe a condescending glare that would have reduced him to the final stages of decomposition if looks could kill.

  “Of course I’m his dæmon,” Aurale snaps. “I’m amazed it took you this long to work it out.” She turns, and there’s suddenly a fox where she had been standing, ears pricked and fur a vivid orange-red. Snap, and she’s a magpie, taking off with a harsh cackle and a blur of black and white-tipped wings, alighting on the battered top of the intercission chambers, long tail flicking.

  “Didn’t you notice that it didn’t hurt when I touched Carmen? How wrong it felt to touch me? Come on, Sam. You’re smarter than that.”

  “But… you change form still…”

  She snorts. “And?” She changes again, an enormous gold-ruffed bird with a cruel hooked beak and red-rimmed eyes, and hops down to stalk towards them.

  “I’m an archangel’s dæmon. There’s nothing normal about me. Yes, I shift. We could be across the world from each other and it wouldn’t make a difference. I can get through angel wards, holy fire can’t hold me.”

  “Ra!” Gabriel barks sharply, his eyes darting from Sam to Aurale and back again.

  “What? I trust him. You should too, because technically you know all about him, or you would if you opened our damn bond every once in a while!”

  Gabriel’s jaw clenches and the glow in his eyes increases. Sam looks between them, mouth slightly open. His mind is spinning as he tries to make sense of the new information. All the clues about who Aurale might be are suddenly clicking into place. This was why there was no mythology about Aurale; it makes sense. She’s Ra, and Fenrir, and Hel, and Jormungandr. The shape changing, how touching her felt strange. But none of the angels had dæmons, apart from Castiel. So why did Gabriel have one?

  Aurale shifts again, and Sam still jumps a little as an enormous tiger appears in front of him. Her head swivels back towards the door, listening.

  “Look, I know you have questions, but can we talk later? I had to light a few fireworks to bust my way through the warding, and Mr Loud-and-Obvious over here put up a massive flare when he realised exactly what was going down, so we need to shift our asses before anyone else shows up to investigate. Nothing says ‘come and find me’ like a panicked archangel.”

  “Oh.” Sam mulls that over for a second. Aurale had said it mockingly, but it sounded as though they had both genuinely panicked when they realised that he was in danger.

  Gabriel doesn’t seem as impressed. “Yes, you got rid of the angel wards. Yipee!” He says sarcastically, squinting into Sam’s face for signs of concussion. “Now all my dickbag brothers can get in here as well! And like you said, we weren’t exactly being subtle. I wouldn’t be surprised if every angel in the northern hemisphere isn’t headed here right now. We’ve got to go. Come on, up you get.”

  Gabriel offers his hand to Sam, pulling him to his feet, Carmen swaying drunkenly on his shoulder. Sam’s legs don’t seem to want to want to support him once he’s up, and he wobbles until he grasps the side of the table with one hand. Gabriel and Aurale both take an aborted step forwards as if to help him, then stop and glare at each other.

  Aurale’s ears prick, her head swivelling back towards the door. “We’re too late, someone’s here.”

  The silence turns tense, all of them straining to catch the sounds of footsteps. Sam tries to make it look like he’s not propping himself up against the side of the table.

  There’s a slight shuffle behind the door. Then an ominous quiet tapping sound, as though something’s rapping its fingers against the metal. Aurale looks as though she’ll snap if she gets any tenser, and Sam almost wishes that whatever it is would just get it over with already.

  Then there’s a sudden bang, and a grinding crunch, and then the reinforced metal door falls out of its frame into the room with its hinges twisted clean off. It lands with an ear-splitting crash and a cloud of dust.

  Sam feels his heart sink as he sees a familiar silhouette in the fog. Zachariah saunters out into plain sight as the dust settles behind him, teeth bared in a rictus grin as he looks around at them. Not again.

  “Well, if this isn’t an unusual team-up! I just come over here to have a look at the energy surge, and what do I find? Surprise surprise, a Winchester. And his backup dancers, a pagan and a freak!”

  “Hey, give us a little more credit here!” Gabriel swaggers forwards, stepping between Sam and Zachariah. He gestures around at the gore on the floor and walls. “Sam might have started this playground fight, but take it from me, we finished it.”

  “Oh, then you won’t mind me starting it again then? Tell you what,” Zachariah points a stubby finger at Sam, “Give me him and I’ll leave you to it.”

  Gabriel actually growls. “No! He’s mine.” The words reverberate around the room, leaving the metal bench under Sam’s hand humming.

  Zachariah shrugs and looks away. He glances around the room, seemingly unconcerned by the display of power. “Your choice. Now, what do we have here? This is a fancy piece of kit!” He picks something up from the table where the demons had been working, a long, thin silver rod that gleams with malicious purpose.

  Aurale bristles, her form switching to a prowling coyote. Gabriel tenses too. “Put that down, you feather brained moron! You don’t have a clue what you’re dealing with!”

  He’s hesitating, as though he wants to advance on Zachariah like Aurale’s doing but is reluctant to move too far from Sam. Sam tries not to look as weak as he feels, propping himself up more against the table and trying to stop his hands from shaking.

  Zachariah sneers down his nose at him. “As if I’d listen to you, you piece of pagan filth. And you!” He points the rod like a rapier straight at Aurale, “You managed to catch me by surprise before, but it won’t happen again, I can assure you. What are you?” He squints at her, head cocked to one side as she snarls. “Obviously not a pagan, seeing as you got straight through those wards. Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter, does it? You’re right, I don’t know what this thing is. Time for a little… trial and error!”

  Zachariah twists something on the rod in his grip and it lights up with harsh blue crackling electricity, arcing along its length like lightning, illuminating the mutilated side of Zachariah’s face. He grins, eyes wide and crazed, like a serial killer with a new favourite weapon. Sam flinches backwards and Carmen squawks, their eyes going wide at the sight of that same blue light, and Sam staggers against the table, reflexively terrified, still remembering the terrible ripping sensation-

  Aurale tenses, leaning back on her haunches. Gabriel shouts “No!” and jumps forwards, but he’s too late. There’s a blur of motion as Aurale’s tightly coiled body leaps towards Zachariah and the rod sweeps down to meet her, leaving a crackling trail across Sam’s vision.

  It’s almost too fast to watch. Zachariah swings, he misses, Aurale whips around with a snarl to try and attack him from behind-

  There’s a terrible crack and a high yelp. For half a second Sam catches the scene frozen in midair, the lightning of the rod just grazing Aurale’s fur. She’s outlined in white, every strand of fur picked out in a cornea of burning electricity.

  Then the moment breaks with a flash of light and a deafening explosion. Sam ducks behind the table, cradling Carmen to his chest as chunks of concrete and razor-sharp shards of metal go flying, stinging against his skin. A dust storm of heat and pressure violently billows around them, roaring like an enraged creature, breathing hot breath down their necks.

  When it finally stops, Sam coughs on the dust in his throat, tasting plaster on his tongue. He blinks and swallows to try to get rid of the ringing in his ears, but then he realises that it’s not his eardrums protesting. It’s someone screaming.

  He straightens and staggers out from behind the table, trying to breathe through his sleeve. Carmen perches unsteadily on his wrist and peers around, her better eyesight piercing the dust more easily. They walk forwards carefully, cautious in the gloom. The screaming continues, high and painful as they stumble through the rubble.

  “Gabriel?” Sam calls, then breaks down into another coughing fit, the dust burning into his lungs. The screaming falters then cuts off, and that’s somehow worse. They blunder on, faster now, ignoring the fingers of soot lacing the floor, still-ringing ears straining to hear any traces of life.

  They still only just avoid stumbling over them when they reach them. Gabriel’s kneeling on the floor, head bowed, his body crouched protectively over Aurale. She’s curled in his arms, back in the terrier form that Sam had first seen her in. Still tense, Sam glances around, but he can’t see Zachariah anywhere. He crouches down next to them.

  “Are you two alright?”

  Gabriel doesn’t even seem to notice him, fingers stroking reflexively over the short black and white fur, and Sam notices tears streaming silently down his face. Alarmed, Sam turns his attention to Aurale and feels his stomach drop.

  There’s an angry looking burn along her flank where the rod had caught her. But what’s more worrying is the way that she’s bleeding golden ichor, trickles of golden Dust leaking out with every laboured breath. Her whole body is shuddering, muscles spasming, but her eyes roll up to meet Sam’s and her gold-stained lips twitch into a smile.

  “No,” Carmen whispers as Sam drops to his knees next to them. He’s in shock. Aurale’s dying. She can’t be dying. It doesn’t seem possible.

  Gabriel’s silent and still as Carmen takes a wobbling flutter off Sam’s arm, wings still half spread as she totters into Gabriel’s lap, half collapsing on top of Aurale, as big as she is in her terrier form. Aurale turns her head just slightly with a wince, but shifts so that they can look at each other, Aurale’s breath quietly slowing as more Dust leaks out.

  “I… We’re sorry,” she manages.

  “What for?”

  “Mystery spot,” Aurale coughs on a choking cloud of dust, and Sam feels his heart clench.

  “We forgive you,” Carmen answers for him. “Now we know why you did it, we forgive you.”

  Gabriel finally moves, taking a shuddering breath and looking up to meet Sam’s eyes. His irises are almost burning, tears leaving clear lines through the grime on his face. “Really?”

  Sam feels his throat tighten. “Yeah,” he manages, “Yeah, maybe we shouldn’t, but we do.”

  Aurale’s mouth turns into a smile that’s mostly a grimace and she rolls her eyes to look up at Gabriel. “Should have told him earlier, you idiot.” Before it was too late goes unsaid under the words.

  Gabriel opens his mouth to reply but Aurale’s body suddenly spasms, her face twisting. Gabriel cries out, doubling over. Sam reaches forwards, half in panic and half resigned because he can’t do anything, no one can do anything for a dying dæmon-

  But Carmen, still in Gabriel’s lap, suddenly drags herself forwards, spreading her wings over Aurale’s shaking form. Sam freezes, his eyes wide when he feels a sharp twist behind his sternum, then a tug, then a pull like the tide is going out. It hurts. Distantly he can hear himself gasping, feel himself shaking, but he can’t stop, can’t do anything but keep his eyes fixed on Carmen’s form, glowing with amber light as though her feathers are on fire.

  He can’t tell how long it lasts, but eventually the fire dies out. The world is swimming in front of Sam’s eyes, wavering with his sudden overwhelming exhaustion. His thoughts slip away, leaving just a distant confusion. There’s pressure on his shoulder, and his eyes focus for long enough to see Gabriel propping him up The archangel’s hands are shaking almost as hard as Sam’s own. Gabriel’s eyes are fixed on him, darting over his face in concern, and his mouth is moving. There’s noise behind the dull ringing in Sam’s ears but he can’t make out the words.

  Sam ignores Gabriel and reaches forwards sluggishly, and Carmen’s suddenly there, her relief tumbling into his. He exhales a shaky sigh. The link is still there, bruised but not broken.

  He looks up and sees Aurale, back in her child form She looks in confusion at Gabriel’s shocked-white face. Sam’s confused too, but he doesn’t have the brainpower just now to figure out what just happened.

  The hand on Sam’s shoulder grasps tighter, and there’s a soft snap. The world bends, warps, rushing past in a second. Then Bobby’s scrap yard materialises around them and Sam wobbles again. He has just enough time to see shadowed figures sprinting towards them before the darkness at the edges of his vision closes in, and he’s gone.

.o0o.

  There’s something soft under Sam’s head, and cosy warmth surrounding him. He can smell the musky, slightly sweet smell of feathers. And something is tickling his face.

  He wrinkles his nose and inhales, then sneezes suddenly as a piece of down goes up his nose. The sneeze makes his chest ache as though someone just punched him in the sternum and he groans, opening his eyes.

  He blinks.

  He’s lying on a narrow bed in a cramped room that he recognises by the terrible wall paper as the spare bedroom at Bobby’s, but that’s not what holds his attention. Lying on his chest is an enormous white bird. It shifts, tilting its head to look up at him, and to his shock he feels his bond stir as he looks into dark, glittering eyes.

  “… Carmen?” He croaks.

  She nods. He gapes at her for a second. Slowly, painfully, Sam manages to extract one hand from under the blankets and gently pulls her closer with shaking fingers. The dark sheen is gone from her feathers, leaving her pale and ghostly in the darkened room. It’s as though all the colour has been leached out of her. Sam pets her hesitantly, and the feathers are still smooth and strong under his fingers. A change in anyone’s dæmon rarely signifies anything good. It should feel different somehow, something should be wrong. But Carmen feels just the same as she ever did.

  “You’re awake.”

  Both of their heads snap up, looking for the owner of the voice. Gabriel rises from a chair in the corner of the room where Sam hadn’t seen him sitting in the shadows, walking slowly towards the bed. Sam tenses minutely, but Carmen relaxes back against his chest.

  “What happened?” The words grate up Sam’s throat and he grimaces. It sounds as though he’s been swallowing razor blades. Breathing takes more effort than normal, exhaustion sitting heavy on his chest. “Aurale, she was-”

  “Everyone’s safe. For now.” Gabriel lowers himself to sit on the edge of the bed, causing a dip in the mattress. His eyes are fixed on Carmen’s pale form. Sam squints at his face, tries to determine what Gabriel’s thinking, but there’s a stoic mask in the place of his normal smirk. It’s a little disturbing.

  Gabriel reaches down almost absently towards Carmen’s soft ivory feathers. Sam sucks in a breath and his hand jerks out in reflex to pull Carmen away, prepared for the terrible feeling of violation that comes with having your dæmon touched. Gabriel blinks and seems to realise what he’s doing. He stops at the last minute, pulling his hand back and folding it in his lap. He turns away again, but not before Sam sees his face pinch, his expression slowly fracturing

  “I damaged you,” he murmurs, “I hurt your soul.”

  Sam doesn’t know what to say. He opens his mouth, then shuts it again. “I tried to fix it, I did, but I can’t, I just can’t, I hurt you…” Gabriel’s rambling, hunching forwards a little. To Sam’s surprise he sounds almost anguished, his voice cracking on the syllables.

  Sam reaches out abortively, wanting to comfort Gabriel but at the same time battling his own confusion and mixed feelings. How bad was the situation? He had seen Carmen, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her other than the loss of pigment. He felt a surge of worry. Maybe something else was wrong. Were they dying? What happened to Aurale? Gabriel doesn’t seem to be soulless, and he’s definitely alive, but there are still so many questions chasing each other around Sam’s head.

  He raises his arm and awkwardly pats the archangel on the shoulder. Gabriel takes a deep, shuddering breath and pulls himself together a little. He sits supernaturally still on the edge of the bed with his head still in his hands. The room is filled with just the sound of their breathing. Sam feels his eyelids slowly closing and tries to fight his rising exhaustion. After a few minutes Gabriel raises his head and looks down at Sam and Carmen on the bed. His eyes glow dim gold in the darkness. “I suppose I owe you some sort of explanation for all this.”

  “I’d say you do,” Carmen murmurs from Sam’s chest, and he nods hesitantly in agreement.

  Gabriel nods and turns, looking back into the shadows at the corners of the room.

  “So you’re an archangel?” She asks.

  “Guilty,” One corner of Gabriel’s mouth turns up in a bitter smirk. “Little bro to the biggest bags of dicks in all of creation. Apart from Dad, of course.” He leans back on his hands, relaxing just a little. “It was just us for longer than your mind could comprehend. Then, Dad decided to get creative. First, it was the other angels. They weren’t too bad, kind of like us in miniature. Then, dear old Dad decided it was time for a more inventive project. So he got out his modelling clay, fired up the furnace and out popped humans. Beings with souls.” Gabriel glances sideways at Sam for half a second, his expression unreadable, before turning back. “For the most part, we were amazed. Some of us, not so much.”

  “Lucifer.”

  Gabriel nods. “Got it in one. Luci had the guts to disagree with Dad, which didn’t sit well with Mike. Then there was fighting, and more fighting, until it all came to a head and our loving Father,” Gabriel snorted derisively, “decided that Luci was more trouble than he was worth. He tried to convince Michael to kill him.” The lines on Gabriel’s face look like they’re carved in stone, the ancient grief plain on his features even though he’s obviously trying to hide it. “I think that’s the most defiant I ever saw Michael. Instead of outright killing our brother, he deliberately misinterpreted Dad’s instructions and built a celestial time-out box instead. The day he was cast down was the day Dad left. And…” Gabriel looks down at his lap. “Ra. Aurale. She appeared the day that Lucifer was cast down. The day I began to doubt, she was just… there. She was me, but at the same time, she wasn’t me at all. I knew exactly what she was as soon as I saw her, obviously. I knew then that I would have to go, that the others would see it on me. Even if I hadn’t fallen like Lucifer had, I was still… divided. I was terrified. The rest of my brothers, Michael? They wouldn’t have understood. They would have killed her. Dæmons were a part of the free will granted to humans, they were never meant for angels.

  “So we ran. I hid. I spent centauries as a trickster, burying my Grace as far down as it would go. And then, along comes a pair of humans who are destined to end the world, wandering right into my path.” Gabriel’s mouth quirks bitterly. “Almost as if Dad himself designed it. The one human, in all of history, that there was no chance in hell that I could never interact with, and that’s the one I had to fall for.”

  Gabriel laughs, but there’s no humour in it. Sam feels his breath catch in his throat a little, but the archangel keeps going.

  “So I ran again. Because I knew what was coming. Heaven was going to force you into becoming their pawn, and I couldn’t fight them. They were my brothers, Sam,” He glances at Sam almost beseechingly. “But I should have been watching Ra. She went after Lilith.” Gabriel gets up abruptly, silhouetted in the dark room. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. There’s no plan any more, but I’m done trying to follow daddy’s hare-brained schemes. So. I’m with you, if that counts for anything.”

  Carmen gets to her feet, and Sam notices vaguely that her leg scales and talons are still black, startling against the snowy white of her feathers. “It does count,” she tells Gabriel. “You’re on our side now.”

  “Not soon enough.” Gabriel says it so quietly that Sam has to strain to catch it.

  Sam bites his lip. He wants to tell Gabriel that he understands the need to escape, to get away, the reluctance to fight your brothers. But he can’t seem to find the words, his head is slowly filling with cotton and he’s tired. Still so tired.

  Gabriel glances back down at him. “Get some more rest. You lost a lot of energy back there and you need to regain your strength. Sleep.”

  Sam feels fingers softly brush the hair back from his forehead, and he doesn’t fight it as he sinks down, down, down into deep slumber.

.o0o.

  When Sam wakes up again, there’s thin daylight seeping through the threadbare curtains. He blinks away sleep and raises his head to look around. The chair in the corner is empty. Gabriel’s not there. He’s alone.

  Sam groans and rubs his face, blinking blearily. He doesn’t feel quite so shatteringly tired now, but there’s still a fuzzy throbbing at the back of his head that’s threatening to become a headache. Carmen ruffles her wings on the bed next to him. In the yellowed light the feathers look cream, pale and fragile.

  It doesn’t seem real.

  Sam’s felt that often, whenever they survive another world-shattering event. How can they still be standing? How can something so normal as the mellow light of morning still exist after everything has changed so dramatically?

  Carmen must catch his thoughts because she looks at him sternly. “Sam, don’t think about it too much. You’re here. This is real, I promise.”

  The sound of boots on the stairs makes them both look up, drawing Sam out of his introspection. The sound of voices comes from the direction of the kitchen, Dean’s gruff tones muffled through the walls.

  Sam flicks off the covers and pushes himself upright, sitting on the edge of the bed for a second as the blood flows back to his fingers and toes. He can feel the bruises on his side and arms from being thrown around the day before, but apart from that he feels surprisingly alright.

  Carmen sighs and flaps up to perch on his shoulder. “Time to face the music, I guess.”

  Sam nods and grimaces, then slowly gets to his feet. Pushing the door open, he makes his way down the short corridor towards the kitchen and the sound of Dean’s worried voice.

  “Bobby, he’s been asleep for two days. What if there’s something wrong with him? You saw Carmen, I don’t trust that fucking trickster further than I can throw him…” Dean trails off, eyes widening when he spots Sam shambling into the room. “Sammy!”

  Dean’s moving forwards faster than Sam’s ever seen him move when he isn’t being chased by monsters, and the next moment Sam is wrapped in strong arms, crushed against Dean’s chest. Carmen caws in irritation as she’s disturbed from Sam’s shoulder, but Sam laughs in pure relief as he grasps Dean back, fingers digging into the back of his leather jacket.

  Bobby smiles fondly through his beard at him over Dean’s shoulder. “I’m glad you’re alright, boy.”

  Sam smiles back. “Thanks, Bobby.”

  Eventually, Dean must feel as though he can’t cling any longer because he lets go reluctantly, holding Sam at arm’s length, eyes searching his face.

  “What the hell happened to you? Are you alright? You just vanished, then your pet shapeshifter went batshit crazy and disappeared too! We had no idea where you’d gone! Then, right when Bobby and Cas were about to try and do a location spell, that trickster from the mystery spot shows up, carrying you into the house like some kind of swooning damsel!” Sam snorts, but Dean’s still serious, angry almost. “Seriously, Sam, what the hell is going on? What happened to Carmen? The damn trickster won’t tell us anything! The angels were bad enough- now you have to invite in pagans?”

  Dean looks distressed enough to start pulling out the guns, so Sam tries to head him off. “It’s not as though I had any choice about it, Dean! I got kidnapped by demons! Anyway, the trickster, he’s… not so bad. I’ve got reasons to trust him. Please tell me you haven’t tried to stake him yet.” Dean’s eyes darted around shiftily. “Dean!”

  “What? He shows up dragging your unconscious ass and you expect me to just take it lying down? Besides,” he mutters mutinously, “It’s not like it worked anyway. He’s too damn fast.”

  Diana stalks up to Carmen where she’s standing on the floor, her teeth bared. Carmen skitters back a step nervously on the tiles as Diana looks her up and down. “You never pull that stunt again, you hear me? We were so worried!”

  “Us too,” Carmen whispers, her wings drooping. “But we’re alright. We’re okay.”

  Diana sighs, all the fight going out of her, and flops down limp on the kitchen floor, one paw reaching out to pull Carmen against her bony, scarred chest. Sam feels the warmth of their contact tingling through his body all the way to his toes. He glances across and sees Dean’s face twisting strangely, refusing to look at him. Sam turns back to hide his smile. It’s just as well that they have their dæmons to talk out the important stuff for them, or they’d never get anywhere.

  “Well, this is very touching.”

  Sam turns, unsurprised to see Gabriel leaning against the counter, smug look firmly in place. Dean bristles, Diana tugging Carmen even closer. Sam cautiously steps between them.

  Gabriel’s expression softens a fraction as he looks up at him. “Well, someone’s looking better.”

  Sam smiles back, he can’t help it.

  “No thanks to you,” Dean breaks in harshly. He turns to sam, still watching Gabriel out of the corner of his eye. “Aren’t you gonna introduce us?”

  Sam takes a deep breath, trying to subdue the annoyance already starting to build. “Dean, this is… Loki.”

  Gabriel rolls his eyes goodnaturedly. “As thoughtful as it is of you to keep my cover, Sammy, the cat’s out the bag already. The cat’s half way across the planet. Might as well go the whole way, since the angels know already.” He turns to Dean and gives a short, mocking bow. “Hi! They call me Gabriel.”

  Dean gawps. “As in… the archangel?”

  Gabriel sighs in frustration. “Why do they always ask that? Yes, the archangel!”

  “Gabriel!”

  They all turn to see Cas in the doorway, staring wide-eyed, his eyes focused on Gabriel as though the rest of them have ceased to exist. His mouth is gaping open, and his face has blanched even paler than normal in shock. By his legs, his dæmon is standing stock still, as though frozen.

  Gabriel freezes as well, then recovers enough to give a lopsided smirk, his eyes lingering on the panther. “Hey, little bro. Long time, no see.”

  “You left us.” There’s something horribly raw in Castiel’s gaze, an age-old ache, an open wound. Dean shifts uncomfortably. Gabriel meets Castiel’s eyes, the jokes falling away for once.

  “Heaven wasn’t home any more. I couldn’t stay.” he shakes his head, eyes fixed unblinkingly on the panther dæmon. “How far you’ve fallen, little brother.”

  The tip of the black tail flicks in annoyance as the panther pins Gabriel with a luminous glare. “You’re one to talk.”

  Gabriel’s surprise at being sassed by Cas’ dæmon shows on his face, and Dean gives a snort of laughter. Gabriel’s face cracks into a genuine smile “Who knew, Cassie? You were hiding some attitude under all that stoicism after all!”

  Dean looks back and forth between them, then to Sam’s surprise, shrugs. “Well, guess he’s telling the truth if you say so, Cas. What’s one more helping of crazy around here? I’ll buy it.”

  Before Gabriel can reply with a scathing remark, Aurale appears sitting on the table in the already crowded kitchen with a loud pop. Bobby and Dean both jump, hands reaching for their weapons, and Rumsfeld snarls until he realises who it is and slumps back to the floor with a huff.

 Aurale swings her short legs and grins around at them all, picking up the conversation as though she’s been listening in. “So you don’t trust me after I save your asses and help you get into hiding, but Mr Suspicious comes along and you suddenly believe that he’s an archangel? Deano, I’m offended. ”

  Dean frowns at her, still jumpy after her abrupt appearance. “Well, Cas knows him, and at least he was straight with us about who he is. You haven’t even told us that yet!”

  Gabriel shifts uncomfortably and Aurale smiles. “Excellent point! Since we’re doing our little show and tell here, might as well ‘go all the way’! What do you think, Gabriel, hmm?” Gabriel’s silent, but his eyes are dark and there’s an ominous pressure in the air, like an approaching storm. Any hope that Sam had that Gabriel and Ra might get along better now after their near-death experience fades. Aurale ignores them, turning back to Dean. “I’m his dæmon.”

  There’s silence while everybody but Sam glances incredulously between the two of them. Then Dean laughs.

  “Is she serious?”

  Aurale beams, flashing her eyes in Gabriel’s direction, deliberately taunting. “Better believe it, buddy!”

  Cas turns to Dean, still watching Gabriel and Aurale out of the corner of his eye. “I believe she’s telling the truth.”

  Sam sees a muscle in Gabriel’s jaw twitch.

  Dean squints at Aurale as though he’s still waiting for the punchline, then his eyes widen with a realisation and he turns to Gabriel. “Wait, so you were behind the scenes this whole time? Messing with us through your dæmon?”

  “What? You think she does what I tell her to? Please.” Gabriel snaps, glaring at Aurale.

  “Yeah, well, you’re an idiot,” she fires back. “Why would I listen to shit-for-brains when I can look after my own damn self?”

  Gabriel doesn’t reply, but Sam suspects that it’s because he’s so incandescent with rage he can no longer speak. His eyes are dark and his jaw is locked. The air has grown heavy and hot, like something huge is looming over them, breathing down their necks. Rumsfeld whines, ears flat and belly low to the ground. Even Diana’s looking uneasy.

  Aurele morphs into a magpie and starts to preen a wing, pointedly ignoring them all. “Anyway, I only dropped by to tell you that we’ve got visitors.”

  Gabriel straightens, anger replaced instantly with concern. The pressure in the air vanishes abruptly. “How many?”

  Aurale shrugs her wings. “I saw five patrolling the barrier, could be more.”

  Gabriel curses, then disappears with a ruffle of feathers.

  Dean blinks at the space he vanished from. “Gotta say, I did not see that coming. An archangel?” He turns to Sam. “You attract the weirdest shit.”

  “Unbelievable, I know.” Aurale comments dryly. “It’s like he’s a magnet for trouble.”

  “And you can shut up too, you never told us you were a dæmon!” Dean snaps back.

  Sam interrupts them as Aurale opens her beak to retort. “What were you all talking about? What barrier? What’s happening?” He’s starting to feel a little annoyed at being left out of the loop.

  Aurale hops off the table, becoming a human again mid-flight. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

.o0o.

  Aurale leads him outside. The morning sun is brighter now, glinting off the metal of the cars and already starting to shimmer in the heat haze rising from the ground. Sam raises his eyes to the edge of the driveway and hears Carmen gasp on his shoulder. He doesn’t blame her.

  The road leading to the highway looks much the same as ever, a boring length of dusty blacktop leading past the far off gates. But between Sam and the edge of Bobby’s property there’s a great, shimmering, opalescent barrier. It arches up over them like a huge dome, or a gargantuan soap bubble, translucent in the bright light. Directly on the other side of the dome, there’s the shapes of two people, distorted slightly by the wall between them.

  “They can’t see us.” Aurale speaks up from beside him. Her eyes are fixed grimly on the figures. “Gabriel put up the barrier as soon as we flew here. We knew we’d been followed, that the angels were still chasing you once they discovered you’d escaped that hell hole. We were both a bit burnt out here when we got here, but it’ll still hold against a hopped-up seraph like Zachariah. He’s tried to get through it twice so far, and when he couldn’t he posted his cronies out there. They can’t hear us or see us, and if they try to push through it with force it’ll roast them nice and crispy. Won’t do much good against Michael if he ever decides to get off his cloud, though.”

  Sam can hear the brash derision on the surface of Aurale’s words about the other archangel, but under that she sounded almost sorrowful. It made sense; after all, Michael was Gabriel’s older brother, and by extension Aurale’s too. It must hurt to think that he had abandoned them.

  “Where is he in all of this? I mean, for one of the major players in the apocalypse, I would have thought he’d be more involved. So far all we’ve seen is Zachariah doing his dirty work.”

  Aurale makes a non-committal noise. “Michael never was very fond of the idea of the apocalypse. He hated fighting Lucifer the first time, I can’t imagine that it’s any different now. He’s probably hiding his face in his toga and hoping that it’ll all blow over.” She frowns to herself. “Although, gotta admit- I thought he’d be here by now if he knew what was going on. He always did like to be the centre of attention.”

  She sounds almost wistful as she turns, and Sam’s stomach drops when he notices a thick streak of black hair among the pale strands of her hair. As black as Carmen’s wings had been. He must make some sort of noise, because she turns to him, eyebrow raised.

  He isn’t sure how to phrase what he’s thinking at first, and it takes a few tries to get the question out. “When I… we… brought you back, we didn’t… hurt you, did we? We didn’t… contaminate you?” He gestures vaguely to her hair.

  She blinks, her face squinting. Then her eyes open wide with realisation and she laughs, her face lighting with humour, and Sam relaxes a little. “What, this?” she says teasingly, grabbing at her bangs.

  Sam shrugs. “So I haven’t… I dunno, infected you with my demon blood or anything?” The look she gives him is so condescending that it immediately erases any worries he might have had about the whole thing and turns them into annoyance. “Look, I don’t know, okay? Darkness seems like my kind of thing, and then you come back and…”

  “Trust me, Sam, you definitely didn’t hurt me when you pulled that little stunt. It has nothing to do with any demonic force. As a matter of fact, this is a little souvenir from your soul.” Aurale’s expression darkens and her face twists guiltily.

  Carmen sits up straighter on Sam’s shoulder, watching her with bright eyes. “That wasn’t your decision. I chose to do it, I chose to save you.”

  “You gave a part of yourself for me. You shouldn’t have done that, it wasn’t worth it.” Aurale says lowly.

  Carmen’s eyes narrow, her feathers fluffing indignantly. “It was. And we’d do it again.”

  For a few long seconds, Aurale’s silent. Then she looks up at them, and one corner of her mouth turns up in a crooked smile as she looks at Sam. “See? You almost killed yourself to save me. Your dæmon carved a chunk out of your soul, and used it to patch me up. Does that sound like something an inherently evil person would do? So yeah, I’ll happily carry a piece of your soul.”

  Sam blinks. He hadn’t quite fully realised exactly what had happened back in that room. Everything had happened so fast. “That’s a piece of my soul?”

  “Anyway,” Aurale goes on as if he hadn’t spoken, “Your soul might be black to your eyes, but that doesn’t exactly make you a force of evil. Your soul isn’t ‘filled with darkness’ or whatever, and that tiny bit of demon blood hasn’t even touched it. You wanna know what colour your soul is, Sam? It’s ultraviolet. It’s the brightest thing I’ve ever seen. If other people can’t see it, then that’s their loss.”

  Sam pauses for a moment, surprised. “Really?”

  Aurale sighs in exasperation. “Yes, really. Sam, you’re beautiful.” Her eyes soften. “Gabriel was entranced from the moment he saw you, you idiot. The only difference with humans is that people can’t see it. Just like they can’t see past the fact that your dæmon is a raven to actually get to know either of you.”

  Sam feels his lips curve into an involuntary smile. It strikes him then how strange their situation is- he’s talking to an archangel’s dæmon. Speaking of which…

  “Aurale…” Sam licks his lips, trying to figure out how to broach the subject. “Why do you hardly ever seem to talk to Gabriel? It’s just that, you two don’t seem to get on, and you’re his… soul. How…?

  Aurale stands stock still for a second, and Sam worries that he’s gone too far. But then she looks up at him, her eyes dark with sadness. “He abandoned me. The day that I was born, he took one look at me, and left. Slammed the bond and ran until we were pulled apart. I know where I’m not wanted.”

  “He was afraid,” Sam starts, but falters at her stony expression. It looks wrong on her too-young face.

  Leave it, Carmen recommends gently. Not right now.

  Later then, Sam reluctantly agrees. He can’t understand. Why would anyone even try and deny that their dæmon was a part of them…

  Carmen turns to face him, pinning him with her beady gaze. Sam, let it go. Seriously.

  But what if I can help?

  Sometimes you can help, and then other times, you just have to leave people to sort out their own problems. You can’t always help. I think this is one of those times.

  Sam wavers for a second, then takes her advice. He casts around for another topic, glancing back at the barrier, rainbows at the edges. “So this barrier keeps out angels, yeah?”

  Aurale shrugs, shaking off the weight of the conversation from her shoulders. “Yup, it’ll stop pretty much everything unless Satan himself comes a-knocking.”

  Sam has a less-than pleasant thought and frowns. “So, does that mean that we’re trapped in here?”

  Aurale doesn’t reply, but Sam sees her narrow jaw clench. “Yes,” She replies flatly. Sam opens his mouth and reaches out, but before he can tell her to wait, she disappears with a quiet pop.

  Carmen turns to face him. “Well, that went well,” she comments sarcastically from his shoulder. “Out of the conversational frying pan, into the fire.”

  Sam sighs and runs the fingers of one hand through his hair. “I was trying, okay? Anyway, we need to know what we’re dealing with. It’s the only way we’re gonna get out of this mess alive.”

  She sighs, turning to inspect the silhouettes of the angels patrolling the outside of the barrier. “Well, I suppose you’re right. There aren’t really any more safe topics anymore. And I’d rather be trapped in here than out there with them.”

  She takes flight from Sam’s shoulder, and Sam watches her as she flies back towards the house on pale wings, as strong as they ever were for all that they’ve lost their colour. With a glance back, he follows her. Somewhere in Bobby’s library there must be a piece of obscure knowledge to help them get heaven and hell off their tails. They’ve got work to do.

.o0o.

  Sam had thought it wasn’t possible for the atmosphere in Bobby’s house to get any more tense than when it had been just them and Aurale confined there, but the universe has yet again decided to prove him wrong.

  For starters, the stakes are much higher now. The enemy are here, literally camped out on their doorstep. They’re all crammed into Bobby’s study, the only real place in the house to hold a council of war despite the piles of research taking up every available surface. Gabriel claims the couch, which means that Sam sits next to him seeing as no one else wants to go near the archangel, not that he’s complaining. Bobby is sitting behind his desk, Dean has perched himself on a rickety stool and Cas is standing in the corner, stock-still like an ancient sentinel.

  Bobby hangs up the phone with a sigh as he grumbles under his breath to Rumsfeld. “Garth just got back to me. More omens, like some kinda ring sent straight from hell. And it’s all centred on my house!”

  He glares at each of them in turn, which is fair enough. Sam does feel guilty about bringing this all down on Bobby, even if they had nowhere else to go. Castiel manages to fold his face into something that looks at least a little ashamed. Gabriel just grins cheekily back at him, the hardness behind his eyes never softening for a moment.

  “And you’re sure you can’t just zap us all outta here?” Bobby furrows his brows at Gabriel.

  “’Fraid not, pops. That lovely little circle of omens means that they’ve got us locked down tight. They’ll know if one of us so much as spits over the boundary line.” There’s a trace of bitterness behind Gabriel’s tone, and Sam can tell how much it rankles him that he can’t just mojo his way out of trouble.

  “So let’s go over this again, what do they want?”

  Gabriel sighs and flops his head onto the back of the couch like it’s incredibly draining to have to explain this to them. “Mostly, they want Sam. Zachariah has some fucked-up plan to open the cage that involves using Carmen as a metaphorical stick of dynamite. On top of that, there’s demons out there too, trying to do the same thing because they want their daddy back. As for the rest of us? They think Ra is dead. As far as they know, I’m a pagan god, so if that barrier goes down, me and pops over here are going to be put in front of the firing squad.” He jerks his thumb at Bobby.

  “On the other hand, Deano gets the dubious privilege of playing angel condom to my big brother, because no matter how insane old Zachy is, he wouldn’t take out Michael’s vessel. No clue what they’ll do to you, Cas, but I doubt it’s gonna be fun. Any questions?” Gabriel tries to put his feet up on Cas’ dæmon’s back, then carefully withdraws them when she gives a ferocious snarl, exposing canines the length of a finger. “Bad kitty.”

  The panther snarls at him again and stalks over to Cas’ side.

  Dean scowls at Gabriel darkly over a sheaf of papers. “Got anything useful to add about how you plan to get us out of this, wise-ass? Seeing as you’re so ancient and all?”

  Gabriel gives him a tight smile. “Oh trust me, big boy, I’ve got plenty of ideas. Just nothing yet that doesn’t end with the earth being turned into the universe’s largest charcoal briquette. I’ll let you know when my genius strikes.”

  “Unlikely, seeing as we haven’t thought of anything so far.” Aurale comments. Gabriel’s eyes flick restlessly over to where she’s staring at him in the form of a giant wolf, stretched out on Bobby’s threadbare rug. His eyes quickly flick away again, his lips pursed, but he doesn’t comment.

  Gabriel is even worse about the confinement than Aurale was the first time they were stuck at Bobby’s. Sam eyes him under the disguise of turning a page. Gabriel has his trickster mask in place, leaning casually draped over Bobby’s battered furniture like he owns the place. But his fingers are drumming against his leg too rapidly, and Sam can see by the crinkles at the corners of his eyes that under the façade he’s tense. Hunted. Which makes sense given that it’s his family gathering outside their little sanctuary, waiting to slaughter them if they dare to come out.

  Having Aurale around Gabriel somehow makes it worse. Sam had hoped that maybe having them both in the same space would encourage them to get along a little better, or at least to calm them both down a little. Surely having your soul there and present would be comforting? But unfortunately it seems to have the opposite effect. The two can’t be in the same room as each other for more than five minutes.

  And Dean isn’t helping at all.

  By the afternoon, Gabriel and Aurale have been sniping at each other for hours, and the insults have been getting progressively more heated. Even Cas and his dæmon have elected to find an opposite corner of the house.

  Sam feels obliged to stay and break up any arguments, since he’s the only one either of them seem to actually listen to. Bobby is watching warily from behind a stack of books as though he’s just waiting for the explosions to start. Sam doesn’t blame him. Dean, however, is watching the fight avidly, looking as though he’s thinking that he should have brought popcorn.

  Gabriel and Ra are glaring at each other with enough venom to set the place on fire. The air buzzes and there’s heat coming from where Gabriel sits, making Sam feel as though he’s next to a bonfire. Carmen shifts restlessly on the dæmon perch. The situation is going to escalate into an all-out fight if anything else happens, Sam just knows it. They don’t have time for this- they need to find a solution for dealing with Zachariah!

  Dean’s mouth opens to talk, and Sam just knows despairingly that he’s going to say something stupid and inflammatory. Please don’t, he thinks, but it’s a useless prayer.

  “Wow, you two really don’t get along, do you?”

  Gabriel and Aurale stop glaring at each other to turn their glares on Dean instead. Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. “Dean.”

  “How is that even possible?” Dean is either blind to the two sets of burning eyes on him or is ignoring them completely. “I mean, she literally is you! She’s your soul! Hating her is like saying you hate yourself.”

  There’s a tense silence filled only by static steadily building in the air, and for a second Sam is convinced that Dean is going to get smote. He reaches out abortively to put a hand on Gabriel’s arm.

  But then there’s a sharp crack and both Gabriel and Aurale vanish with a low rumble of thunder.

  Sam lets out a stuttered breath. “Jesus!

  “Don’t you ever know when to shut up, boy?” Bobby growls at Dean, Rumsfeld snarling under his breath with his hackles still up.

  “What?” Dean shrugs, but then his expression turns surprised when Diana snarls at him too.

  “Don’t say that to them,” she snaps. “If anyone should know what it feels like to hate yourself, it would be you. You should have a little empathy.” She stalks away to the very edge of their bond and curls into an angry ball of bristling fur and scars. Dean gawps after her.

  Carmen gives a wounded little noise on his shoulder and Sam turns his head to see her staring at Diana’s curled form.

  It must have been after hell, she whispers to him. We should have seen that they were hurting. We should have helped them.

  I’m not sure that Dean would have let us, Sam replies.

  “Come on,” is all he says out loud after a long and awkward pause, opening another book. “We need to keep searching.”

.o0o.

  The next few days are a blur of research. Sam can’t believe that Bobby hasn’t run out of books by now, but he seems to have an endless supply. The man keeps pulling them out of obscure corners of the house, like under the stairs and the kitchen sink. Gabriel snaps them up food at regular intervals, and they only stop to sleep when their eyes are drooping. Even then Sam sleeps fewer hours than the others. He keeps waking up shaking from nightmares filled with the cutting blue light and Zachariah’s gruesome face leering over him.

  The packed schedule, along with the number of people in the house, doesn’t leave a lot of time or room for Sam to talk to Gabriel. He really wants to have a conversation, maybe just to figure out if anything is happening with them. What does Gabriel want? The way that Aurale was talking had made it sound like Gabriel wants more than a little stress relief, but Sam can’t quite get himself to believe it. He doesn’t think he’ll really believe that Gabriel cares about him until he hears the words from the archangel’s mouth.

  By the third night of their research marathon, everyone is crabby and exhausted. Bobby grimly sets down the last book on the table. “This is it. I’m all out of lore. If there’s nothing in this one, we’ll just have to make a plan with what we’ve got.”

  Dean starts debating with Cas what they should try next, but Sam feels himself zoning out of the conversation. He feels a firm tug on his sleeve and sees Gabriel standing behind him, gesturing for him to follow.

  Curious, Sam follows him out the front door into the quiet night. He’s surprised when Gabriel drops down to sit on the steps of Bobby’s porch. Gabriel turns, looking up at him, and pats the spot next to him. Sam hesitantly joins him. “What is it? Why did you wanna come out here?”

  Gabriel puffs out a breath. “Nothing really. But they’re not going to find anything in that book, and I couldn’t sit in the old man’s living room for another second before going clinically insane.”

  Sam huffs a laugh. “I know what you mean. There’s nothing in that book, then?”

  “Come on Sammy, you’ve known that for days.”

  Sam grudgingly lets himself admit it. “Yeah, maybe. What will we do now?”

  “Oh, I’ll think of something,” Gabriel says vaguely. “Don’t forget, I’m still an archangel. And a trickster. I’m not out of cards yet, we just have to figure out a plan of action.” He absently puts an arm around Sam’s waist. Sam looks down in surprise, then leans gratefully into the warm contact. He slings his own arm around Gabriel’s shoulders and sees the archangel’s mouth turn up into a crinkling smile. They sit for a while and watch the glowing dots of fireflies meander across Bobby’s yard.

  “Did you mean it?” Gabriel says suddenly.

  “Hmm? What?”

  “What you said. About forgiving me.” Gabriel doesn’t look at him, his eyes fixed on the distance.

  “Oh, that. Of course I did.” Sam withdraws a little, and Gabriel twists to frown up at him, not moving away from his side.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Sam turns away slightly, shame and regret bitter under his tongue. “I forgive people too often. I trust them too easily. It’s been a problem.”

  Gabriel’s eyes flash. “No. Your ability to trust? Your empathy? That’s not a disadvantage, Sam. You have the kindest soul I’ve ever seen. That’s one of the reasons why I like you. That’s why… that’s why I slept with you at the Mystery Spot. Not because you were destined to change the world, or any of that bull. No, I’m attracted to your soul because it’s the brightest thing I’ve seen since I left heaven. No one else has even a chance of fighting against a destiny like yours, Sam. Nobody else would have forgiven me. You’re an amazing man, Sam Winchester.”

  Sam is frozen, staring at Gabriel as he finishes his speech, one finger prodding Sam’s chest to emphasise his point. His brain feels like it’s stopped working, unable to process Gabriel’s words.

  “You mean that?” He croaks.

  Gabriel’s face softens, his palm flattening to rest against Sam’s chest. “Of course I do. I don’t lie, Sam.”

  That makes Sam crack half a smile. “Yes you do.”

  Gabriel waves him off. “Not for things like this.”

  And Sam supposes that’s true; back at Crawford Hall Gabriel might have faked his name and job, but apart from that? It was the most honest that he’d ever seen Gabriel- their emotional connection had been real. The stubborn spark of hope in his chest, one that he’d been trying to squash for so long, shines a little brighter.

  Gabriel leans up, brushing a small, chaste kiss on the side of Sam’s mouth. Sam feels his face flush, and Gabriel chuckles before Sam can lean down to kiss him properly.

  By the time they separate a little Gabriel’s practically in Sam’s lap, his hands on his shoulders. “So, waddaya say? Might as well go out with a bang?” Gabriel waggles his eyebrows on the last word. Sam tries to keep his amusement in, but a snicker slips out.

  “That was terrible.”

  Gabriel reaches around to the back of Sam’s neck to play with the over-long strands. “Come on, you know you love it.”

  Sam snorts, but lets himself be drawn back down into the kiss anyway.

  Despite Gabriel’s crude flirting, it’s slow and sensual- nothing like the heated desperation of their time together so long ago at Crawford Hall. When their lips part, Sam finds Gabriel staring up at him, uncharacteristically quiet. He stills as Sam brings his hands up to cradle his face, eyes dark and unblinking and fixed on his, but for once they’re completely unshielded.

  “Come on,” Gabriel bursts into fluid movement, grabbing his hand and pulling him up. Carmen perks up from where she’s been fondly watching them from the hand rail, spreading her wings and taking off.

  Sam sways a little and laughs as Gabriel drags him down the steps, past the moths fluttering around the porch lamps and deeper into the soft velvet night. Gabriel grins at him over his shoulder, and Sam flashes back to their first night together, running through the streets when Gabriel was just a janitor and life was so much simpler.

  They go deep into the labyrinth of cars, Carmen’s wings whispering as she glides above them like a pale ghost. Gabriel ducks unexpectedly around a corner, Sam trips and they both tumble into a patch of lush grass in the shade of a tree. They end up lying next to one another, chuckling breathlessly.

  Carmen sidles close, bright eyes glinting in the moonlight. Then, with a flutter of wings, she hops even closer. Close enough that Gabriel pauses, starting to back away in case he touches her.

  “No.” Carmen says, “We want you to touch me.”

  Sam feels a deep flush spread over his cheeks at the words. Gabriel glances at him wide-eyed in shock, but Sam can’t deny her. even though he only just realised what that feeling was himself. He trusts Gabriel. He knows Gabriel’s soul, even if Gabriel doesn’t know it himself. Sam nods jerkily, eyes fixed on the space between Gabriel’s hands and Carmen’s white feathers.

  Stunned, Gabriel hesitantly reaches out, as though he’s still not sure whether he’s allowed. Carmen’s feathers ruffle as soon as the pads of his fingers brush against her. Sam feels the hair on the back of his neck rise in sympathy. He can’t help bracing for the feeling that usually happens when someone else touches his dæmon, but it’s nothing like the horrible crawling sensation. Warmth spreads slowly and steadily, pouring like syrup from their point of contact. It grows even warmer as Carmen leans into Gabriel’s touch.

  Is this it? Is this what love feels like?

  Soon Gabriel has his fingers buried in her feathers, and her wings splay out over the ground to give him better access. Sam’s slumped against Gabriel, barely able to sit upright. They both shudder as the archangel brushes gently through the down, lines of liquid warmth spreading down Sam’s chest. Carmen’s making a noise he’s never heard before, a soft crooning sound. Or is that him?

  The warmth slowly withdraws and Sam frowns, opening his eyes to demand why Gabriel is stopping. Amused golden eyes crinkle above him, glowing softly. “Enjoying yourself down there?”

  Instead of replying, Sam reaches up and hooks an arm around his neck, dragging him down to muffle his laughter with a burning kiss. They don’t talk much after that, speaking with their mouths and hands and bodies until they are sated and breathless, panting up at the stars.

.o0o.

  Sam wakes with a start when the ground shakes under him. There’s a concussive bang, then the sound of shouting.

  What now? Carmen mumbles groggily to him as he sits up. Groaning, he blinks, then quickly yanks himself to his feet when he sees what’s happening twenty meters away.

  Gabriel and Aurale are fighting.

  A rusting car flies towards Gabriel, propelled through the air by telekinetic powers, and bounces off him without even leaving a dent. “You should have just told him! You stayed away, and it nearly got him killed!” Ra screams.

  “You know why I did it! Don’t you dare call me a coward!” Gabriel bellows, red in the face, and retaliates with a crackling bolt of electricity.

  “I love him too, you idiot! He’s mine as well!”

  Wait, are they fighting over us!? Carmen asks incredulously as they both duck for cover. Something explodes, and Sam peeks out over the barrier of cars

  Sam had never appreciated until now exactly what they meant when they said that archangels were heaven’s most terrifying weapon. The earth shakes under him, the pressure warping the air. The grass is blackened at their feet as the earth cracking with the heat. The air around them shimmers with things just out of sight of mortal eyes. Electricity crackles around them, never touching, and Sam’s breath catches in his throat as a pair of enormous wings are outlined against the sky. His brain is screaming at him to run, to hide, but he stands his ground. He has to stay, he has to somehow get them to stop fighting.

  A high whine builds and Sam’s hair rises in a wave of static electricity. There’s a sudden flash and Sam watches on in horror as both Gabriel and Aurale are thrown away from one another. Ra skids, tumbling end over end, but Gabriel slams into the side of a derelict truck, leaving a massive dent. The wind dies, leaving deathly silence in its wake.

  “Gabriel!” Sam shouts at the same time as Carmen yells “Ra!” and they both jump forwards, unable to hold themselves back any longer. Sam hesitates, torn between them. Gabriel limps back towards him, breathing heavily.

  Aurale is crouched in the dirt, head between her knees and her arms wrapped around herself. She looks even younger than usual. She glances up as Gabriel approaches, sniffling. “I just want to be with you,” she whispers. “Please. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

  Gabriel stands stock still, his face carved into a mask of agony. “Me too,” he chokes. He looks old, and incredibly tired. Slowly, he walks forwards and falls to his knees in front of her, wrapping his arms wrapping around her shaking form. Sam watches in amazement as Ra’s skinny arms wind around his shoulders, burying her face against his neck.

  “I’ve missed you,” Sam hears her whisper.

  Sam stays a little way away, trying to give the two some space. Carmen lands on his shoulder, watching them happily. Finally, she murmurs to him, and Sam sends back his agreement.

  Gabriel stands, Ra now a long opalescent snake coiled around his neck, shimmering in shades of gold and green. They walk back towards Sam, Gabriel hesitating as he approaches them, obviously having an internal conversation. Emotions flash across his face. He reaches out to take Sam’s hands in his own, his golden eyes shining. “We’re sorry.”

  “What for?”

  Ra raises her angular head. “We’re sorry for all the fighting. If we had just talked to one another sooner, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  Gabriel nods agreement. “We’re gonna protect you. Both of us. Together,” he says thickly

  Sam feels the smile break across his face as he leans forwards to drag Gabriel into a crushing hug. Carmen takes flight, joined by Ra as a tiny, jewel-bright hummingbird, buzzing around them excitedly. “I knew you’d work it out,” Sam murmurs in Gabriel’s ear.

  Gabriel gives him a last squeeze before releasing him, trying to be casual as he wipes his eyes against his sleeve. “We got there in the end. Now come on, I figure we probably need a shower.”

  Sam grins. “Together?” He guesses.

  Gabriel puts an arm around his waist as he heads back towards the house. “Sammy, you read my mind!”

.o0o.

  It’s coming to the end of the first week of their confinement, and Sam’s surprised that they’re all still in one piece. The house has been a little quieter after Gabriel and Aurale’s blow out. Even the constant fear of Zachariah reaching them has dimmed as all his efforts prove ineffective. They’ll have time to come up with something before he reaches them, and in the meantime everyone’s settled down into what Sam could almost call domesticity.

  It’s evening, and Sam’s sitting at the kitchen table reading the book on angelic sigils for the fifth time, one eye on the words in front of him. The other half of his attention is focused on watching Gabriel through Carmen’s eyes as he discusses shapeshifter lore with Bobby. Their eyes track the way the movements of Gabriel’s hands, the way the corners of his eyes crease at Bobby’s dry sense of humour. Ra, curled up on his lap as a white cat with a black tufted ear, catches sight of them watching and winks at them. Sam feels a blush spread across his face, but Carmen doesn’t look away.

  Suddenly, Gabriel’s back goes rigid and his eyes snap up, sightless.

  Sam looks up in alarm, his book forgotten. “Gabriel? What is it?”

  “Outside.” He disappears with a sharp crack.

  Bobby and Sam glance at each other, then bustle towards the front door, Bobby shouting up the stairs for Dean and Cas. Outside, the sun is low, the clouds and light stained a deep, bloody red. Sam jogs down the steps and trots across the lot, slowing as he approaches Gabriel.

  Gabriel’s standing with his back to them in the dust of the lot, between the skeletons of the cars. He’s silhouetted against the boundary of the shield, shimmering even in the dimming light. Aurale is a coyote beside him and both of their eyes fixed unmovingly on something in the world outside the gleaming barrier. Sam squints to catch sight of what they’re looking at.

  Zachariah’s standing just outside the wards, hidden in the long evening shadows and warped by the barrier. He’s got hold of something small and moving while a larger figure lies on the ground next to him. For a second, Sam can’t see what he’s holding, but then it becomes horrifyingly clear exactly what it is. He’s got a child. A human child. And he’s holding their dæmon.

  “Surely not,” Cas mutters from behind him. His dæmon snarls, tail twitching as she paces in front of them.

  The kid’s crying, Sam can see his dæmon desperately squirming in Zachariah’s iron grip. It flicks frantically from form to form, but Zachariah isn’t letting go.

  “Hello boys!” Zachariah’s voice sounds warped through the barrier, but they can still make out his words. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  He pauses, as though waiting for a response.

  “I know you’re in there! That’s a clever little barrier you have here. I don’t know where your little pagan friend gets his ideas from, but it’s effective, I’ll give him that. I’ll make sure to find out how he made it before I rip his guts out with my bare hands.” Zachariah’s smile is terrifying when viewed through the energy shield. The ripped flesh of his face looks even worse now, almost diseased, pitted and oozing. Was it even possible for angels to get infections?

  The dæmon in Zachariah’s grasp lets out a pitiful wail as the child at his feet sobs, curling into a ball. Zachariah’s smile twist into a snarl as he aims a vicious kick. “Quiet! Now, where were we?”

  He reaches down to his side, and Sam’s stomach turns over as he pulls out the rod. It’s the same one that he had used on Aurale. Beside him, he hears Gabriel give a guttural snarl. Aurale’s silent, but Sam can practically feel the tension and fear bleeding off her.

  “Recognise it? I used this to kill your other little friend, remember?”

  Carmen hisses.

  “So here’s the deal. This little device is so much more useful than I initially thought. So, if you boys don’t come out and give yourselves over to me, the kid gets it. All the energy goes straight into your lovely little barrier, and let me tell you that your barrier pitted against a human soul? The soul’s gonna win the jackpot!”

  He sighs and cocks his head at the child crying quietly next to him in mock sympathy. “Such a pity to waste a perfectly good soul, but personally, I find that very often the ends justify the means!” Zachariah grins again, fresh blood dripping down from his vessel’s ruined face. “But feel free to stay where you are. I’m sure that the loss of one innocent life won’t bother you after years of indiscriminate slaughter.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Diana curses.

  Sam whips around to face Gabriel. “Take it down. He’s going to get in anyway, and we can’t let him sacrifice that kid.”

  Gabriel’s jaw clenches, his eyes locked on Zachariah. Ra replies for him. “We can’t. When we made it, we were too weak to do it properly. It’s like a skyscraper made out of jenga blocks. We’re still not at full power. It would take time to take it apart. If we try and take it down right now, the backlash will kill us and wipe out the state.”

  “I can send a message, see if we can stall him,” Gabriel says tersely, his hand stretching out in front of him. They all watch in tense silence as words appear on the dome, spreading like ink- WAIT.

  Zachariah looks up, his dead eyes tracking the letters, and laughs. “Wait? You think I’m going to let you little bacteria have time to come up with a plan of action? I don’t think so. Time’s up.” The rod lights up with that terrible blue fire as the dæmon in his grasp shrieks.

  “NO!” Sam and Carmen both yell, but it’s pointless. There’s a sharp crack. The boy slumps to the ground, limp and boneless. The world seems to slow to a crawl.

  For half a second, nothing happens. Then the dæmon in Zachariah’s grasp glows white-bright, like a fragment of the sun. Half a second later, a peristaltic shockwave shudders through the air and the earth, blasting their faces with heat and wind. There’s a boom so deep and powerful that it vibrates through their very bones. A bolt of jagged lightning arches through the air from the source of the explosion and hits the side of the dome, turning everything white. The silhouette of enormous wings protectively arch over them, scorching themselves onto Sam’s retinas just before he screws his eyes shut.

  There’s a high ringing sound and a sharp pressure in his eardrums before the world implodes again, throwing them into a sandstorm of chaos. Sam coughs, then coughs again, realising he can’t hear himself. He opens his eyes and blinks a few times, trying to get rid of the pink after-images. On his shoulder, Carmen shakes herself off, then they both sigh in relief as they spot Dean through the slowly settling dust.

  A hand lands on Sam’s shoulder and he nearly jumps out of his skin before realising that it’s just Gabriel. There’s a trickle of itching warmth, and he feels his eardrums knit back together. The dull rushing in his ears coalesces into the sound of coughing. Gabriel moves off to help the others, and Sam looks around, still jumpy. They’re out of time.

  Carmen takes flight from his shoulder in a rush of wings and ascends rapidly, rising above the dust to look for Zachariah. He won’t have left now, not when the prize that he’s been trying to crack open for a week is finally in his grasp. But he likes to play with his food. And if there’s a wasp in the room, then Sam wants to know where it is.

  He can see all of their party from his viewpoint. Bobby is staggering to his feet next to Dean, and Castiel’s dæmon is pacing around them all. Everyone’s safe. All except one. Carmen squints down, but she can’t see Aurale anywhere. Sam glances at Gabriel. He seems alright, so she can’t be hurt.

  She must be hiding somewhere, he tells Carmen. She’s probably got her own plans. Sam trusts her to take care of herself. It also occurs to him that Zachariah thinks she’s dead, so having her hidden could make her the ace up their sleeve.

  There, Carmen tells him. Sam looks back through her eyes.

  Zachariah’s standing exactly where he was before the explosion, self-satisfied smirk visible with Carmen’s eyesight even in the growing dark. Around them, she sees a circle of silent figures boxing them in.

  “Are you ready to play ball, boys?” Zachariah sounds so cocky that Sam would have wanted to punch him even if he hadn’t known that he’d just murdered an innocent child to get to them. Rage flares through him, hot and powerful, and he has to hold himself back from storming over. They have to play this carefully if they want to get out of here alive.

  “You didn’t have to do that, you asshole!” Dean shouts

  Zachariah cocks his head. “Well, no. But it was fun! Nothing like it for getting rid of tension. You should try it sometime. Anyway, enough standing around yacking! You’re cornered. I know that, you know that. Your little pagan pet isn’t going to let you give me the slip this time.”

  Sam glances sideways at Gabriel and feels his heart sink when he sees his grim expression. Looks like the really are cornered this time then.

  “Come on now, it’s not all that bad! I’ll make you a little deal. If you boys give yourselves up, I’ll let your traitorous seraph live. And just think, you get a chance to save the world! How about it?”

  Dean snorts, his eyebrows raising almost into his hairline with incredulous disbelief, and Sam doesn’t blame him. Like that would ever happen. This seems to be Zachariah’s final shot at trying to cajole them into being vessels, but they can all see the violence that’s threatening. He’s got to be insane if he thinks that this is going to change their minds. He must be desperate. As if Zachariah hadn’t already tried to kill them!

  Zachariah’s looking more impatient. “Come on, boys, it’s your destiny! Ordained by heaven! I-”

  “Hold on a sec.” Gabriel steps forwards, and Sam sees Zachariah’s eyes lock onto him and narrow. Be careful, he wants to tell Gabriel.

  But Gabriel’s eyes are bright and there’s a trickster grin curling the corners of his mouth, the infuriating expression that he wears when he’s two steps ahead of everyone else. As though he’s found a loophole. Sam feels his heart leap; they might actually survive this.

  “So, tell me… Zachariah, isn’t it?” Zachariah pauses, looking confused as to how Gabriel knows his name. “You’re not exactly the big kahuna up in heaven, are you?”

  Zachariah grimaces almost imperceptibly. “Of course not! I speak on behalf of our great leader, Michael. He will lead us in the coming war, and he shall have victory when we crack open the cage and destroy the Fallen One!”

  Gabriel waved his hand impatiently. “Yeah yeah, enough with the party line. You see, Zachy, I happen to know that that’s not the case. You’re lying.”

  Zachariah’s eyes bulge with anger. “You dare-?”

  Gabriel cuts him off. “So if we called Michael down right now, he’d take your side? Seeing as you’re such a loyal servant and all and you’re just carrying out his wishes? I’m not sure you and your boss are on the same page. What does he want out of this?”

  “The coming of heaven, of course!” Zachariah blusters, but there’s a hint of fear at the back of his eyes. “But if you think he’ll come to your beck and call, pagan, then you’re wrong!”

  “And you’re right!” Gabriel turns to Dean with a triumphant grin. “Mikey wouldn’t answer the door for me, what with me being pagan scum. His true vessel, on the other hand…” He turns with a smirk. “Deano, would you do the honours?”

  Dean’s eyes dart frantically backwards and forwards between Zachariah and Gabriel. Sam and Carmen glance at each other.

  “You want us to call Michael?” hisses Diana. “Are you fucking nuts?!”

  Castiel puts a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Do it, Dean. He has a plan.”

  Dean takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. A few seconds later he opens them again and looks up. Zachariah looks twitchy and nervous. They wait.

  And wait.

  Zachariah laughs, a horrible grating noise, but Sam can see the relief on his mangled face. “Well, looks like you don’t have a private line after all! Now…”

  There’s an ominous rumble from overhead. They all look back up to the night sky, where the stars are just starting to emerge. One grows larger, and larger, getting closer and closer. Sam glances next to him at Gabriel, who’s looking up with an expression somewhere between triumph and trepidation. Sam reaches out subtly and takes his hand, winding their fingers together.  

  As the light gets nearer it dims, but the rumble intensifies, settling into their bones and sinking into the earth. There’s a hard pressure in the air and pressing against their ears. The light spreads out, blanketing the sky overhead with a harsh brightness. Sam feels the incredible urge to run, and all of a sudden he understands why the first thing angels ever say is ‘do not be afraid’.

  There’s another rumble from overhead, and then Carmen stiffens as an enormous presence forces itself into their thoughts. They try and recoil from it, but there’s nowhere to go. A deep voice resonates through them, thrumming through their bones.

  “Why have I been summoned here? I sense my vessel.”

  “M-my lord Michael!” Zachariah manages to stammer out. “It wasn’t me! It is these… these traitors who have disturbed your rest. They wish to disrupt the great Plan!”

  The presence above them seems to pause, then swivels, and Sam gets the distinct impression that it’s squinting down at them. They all hold their breath.

  “Lilith is dead. The fact that the vessels are gathered is of no consequence. The End cannot commence without her at this time.”

  Zachariah sighs in relief. “Of course, my Lord! That’s why I have been attempting to open the Cage myself on your behalf, and gather the vessels for the final battle!”

  There’s a warning rumble from overhead as the presence whirls around to face him. For a split second Sam catches a glimpse of thousands of eyes, staring unblinkingly. He shudders. Zachariah cringes.

           “Zachariah, you would presume to speak for me?”

  Zachariah is stooped under the weight of the being looming above them, wringing his hands. “Uhh… No! Michael, these are traitors! They have delayed the coming of heaven!”

  There is a loud rumble that seems to shake their bones. “You have been attempting to open the Cage? Without my permission?”

  Gabriel’s smug expression is growing by the second.

  Zachariah seems to be frozen in terror, his mouth hanging open. He stares up at the glowing archangel in absolute dread. “But… but my Lord! Surely, you wish for the coming of paradise?”

  “Are you questioning me? I have no desire to fight my brother!” The voice roars like thunder, making them all cringe at the onslaught, then lowers itself to a more manageable grumble. “The Cage can remain closed, I see no problem with it. These plans were not made by me, and Our Father has obviously decreed that now is not the time. The fight shall be delayed. There is still much time until the End.”

  Gabriel grins. “Oh, Zachy, Zachy, I think someone’s made a corporate error. Well, that’s what you get for presuming things about the boss!”

  Zachariah hisses, turning away from Michael’s bulk to glare at him. “Stay out of this, pagan!”

  Gabriel pouted. “That’s not very nice, little cuz. Especially to someone who gets you as a chewtoy. Hey, Mikey, can I have him?”

  Zachariah turns towards Gabriel in his confusion, seemingly momentarily forgetting about the other archangel. He squints, head tilting sideways in that universal angelic gesture of confusion. Then he starts, eyes bugging wide as he stumbles backwards.

  “Gabriel?” He whispers hoarsely. What little blood was left in his mutilated face drains away, leaving him pasty pale. Sam recognises the expression of someone realising that they have made a terrible mistake.

  A grin spreads across Gabriel’s face like an oil slick- wide and dark and dangerous. “Oh yes. Zachy, I’m home!”

  Michael turns too, the entirety of his gigantic bulk wheeling in the sky to face the youngest archangel.

  “Gabriel?”

  Gabriel grins up at him with a mixture of happiness and resignation. Visually, there is no change, but Sam feels something shift in the air around him, like a pressure releasing, or gigantic wings unfurling from where they have been cramped up for far too long. Gabriel’s eyes shine with golden light as he spreads his arms. Suddenly, Sam can see where all the awe-filled portraits are coming from. Gabriel is glorious.

  “Little brother! You are alive?”

  “Yeah,” Gabriel looks up at his sibling, eyes shining in the light of the celestial being. “I’m still kicking.”

  “We thought you were dead!” A spool of light reaches down towards them and wraps itself around Gabriel’s body. Carmen shifts nervously, afraid for him, but Gabriel’s laughing is pure delight.

  “Mikey, I didn’t know you cared!”

  Michael rumbles above them. “Of course I care! I missed you. We all did.”

  Gabriel’s expression softens as the light withdraws.

  “It is time for you to come home, little brother. Come back to us.”

  Gabriel shakes his head. “Sorry Mikey, I don’t think I can do that. I’ve found a home here, see.” And he glances at Sam with such a warm look in his glowing eyes that Sam feels his heart swelling in his chest. He feels more than sees Michael glance at him dubiously. “I promise to come visit though!”

  “You better. And as soon as possible.”

  Michael seems to draw back a little. “I must return to heaven, seeing as my presence here was unneeded. If this poisonous attitude has become widespread then there is much I must do.” He shoots a thousand-eyed glare at Zachariah, who cowers.

  “So Mikey, seeing as you won’t be wanting this bag of snot, can I have him?” Gabriel asks.

  Even though the enormous presence hovering above them doesn’t have a face, Sam could swear that Michael rolls his eyes. Then, he turns his burning gaze to consider Zachariah, and nods dismissively.

  “Do whatever you want with him, Gabriel. As long as you don’t call me Mikey again.”

  Zachariah falls to his knees. “No! No! Michael, I’m one of your best lieutenants, I’m useful! I’m useful!!” He screams desperately at the sky.

  But Michael turns away, launching back into the night with a sound like a jet engine taking off. The humans all duck as the oppressive pressure slowly lifts. The sky is dark again when they raise their heads, and Sam blinks, adjusting to the sudden lack of light.

  Zachariah gapes after the departing archangel, a look of blank shock on his face. When the last of Michael’s trail vanishes into the sky, Gabriel walks over to the seraph and claps a hand on his arm with a grin. Zachariah flinches, trying to jerk away, but Gabriel has a tight hold. The seraph looks like he might be trying to take off, but he’s not getting anywhere.

  For the first time since they met him, Zachariah looks truly terrified. “W-what are you going to do to me?”

  There’s a savage gleam in Gabriel’s eyes. “Oh, little old me? Nothing,” Gabriel’s smile is full of teeth. “I won’t lay a single pinky on your scabby hide. However, there’s someone else I kow, and she definitely wants a word with you! Come on out dear!” He singsongs gleefully.

  Out of the darkness, a low snarl ripples. A pair of eyes appear in the gloom, glowing gold and green. The light reveals a long muzzle pulled back over sharp teeth and ears flattened against a thick wiry ruff. Aurale steps out of the shadows in a shape that Sam recognises from woodcuts and manuscripts, an enormous wolf as tall as Sam at her shoulders. Fenrir. She takes a slow, deliberate step forwards.

  The blood drains from Zachariah’s face. “No!” he gasps.

  “Oh yes,” Aurale laughs, whooping and threatening like a hyena as she prowls around him. Her teeth gleam in the low light where her mouth hangs open. “You were the one who almost got me, weren’t you? Almost, but not quite.”

  Zachariah is gaping, his head jerking back and forth between Gabriel and Aurale as he seems to come to a realisation. “You have a dæmon? An archangel has a dæmon?” He sputters. “Impossible!”

  Ra laughs, dark and rich. “Oh yes, impossible. But here I am! You really shouldn’t have spent all that time persecuting souls, should you? Or pagans.”

  Zachariah glances desperately at Gabriel, as though the archangel might offer him mercy, but Gabriel’s eyes are as hard as yellow diamonds. Zachariah whips his head around to watch Aurale, who is still moving restlessly, considering him.

  “You know,” she muses, grinning through her fangs, “We don’t agree on much, me and him. We have a lot of differences. But I think we agree on this one, don’t you?”

  She turns to Gabriel and he nods, grinning savagely. “Absolutely.”

  “Do you want to know what it is?” Aurale leans in close to Zachariah, eyes gleaming. “That revenge is a dish best served cold.”

  Zachariah shudders and tries to back away, but Aurale’s suddenly behind him, circling, stalking. Closing in for the kill.

  Aurale’s form flickers and morphs into something else, something that Sam’s pretty sure that humans shouldn’t be able to see. She’s terrifying, a being of light and darkness and too many limbs and teeth and eyes, all fixing their piercing gaze on the seraph pinned in front of them. He hears Diana shriek behind him and sees Dean shield his face out of the corner of his eye, but Sam and Carmen are staring, transfixed. This is it, Aurale’s truest form, and it’s beautifully mesmerising and horrifying in equal measure.

  Zachariah starts screaming, a horrible drawn out wail, and he breaks loose from Gabriel’s grip and tries to run. Gabriel lets him. Aurale’s alien form crouches, then springs. Zachariah’s scream abruptly turns into a shriek, then cuts off into sudden grisly silence as she pounces. With a snap, they both vanish.

  It seems too quiet suddenly, only the noise of crickets chirping disturbing the still night air and the pounding of Sam’s heart inside his ribcage. Gabriel looks entirely too calm standing quietly in the middle of the road, as though his soul didn’t just take down a seraph.

  “Where did they go?” Dean asks, uncurling himself from behind Cas.

  “Don’t you worry pal, she’s got him.” Gabriel smiles mirthlessly, his eyes slightly unfocused as though he’s watching something else from a different pair of eyes. “Oh, she’s going to make him pay.”

  “Good.” Sam says quietly. Gabriel raises an eyebrow at him in surprise, but Sam just stares challengingly back. Gabriel saw what he become after the mystery spot. He should know how far down Sam’s revenge streak runs.

  Gabriel slowly smiles, relaxing. “Well then. What now, gang?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Bobby’s gruff tones resound from the back of the group. They all spin to look at him and he scowls at them each in turn. “How about you come back to the house, get a good night’s sleep, then get the hell off my property?”

  “Bobby!”

  He turns to Sam and Dean’s shocked faces and grimaces. “I love you boys like my own sons, and I’m glad we’re all still alive. But there’s only so much excitement an old man can take, and I’ve reached my limit. You’ve got until tomorrow morning to clear off and give me some peace and quiet. And take your angels with you,” He turns his scowl on the Cas and Gabriel, then turns and walks off.

  “Thank God that’s over,” Sam hears Rumsfeld say to Bobby as they walk back towards the house.

  “He’s not my angel,” Sam hears Dean grumble under his breath.

  “Oh shut up,” Diana responds as they turn to follow Bobby, Cas glancing back at Sam and Gabriel before following them.

  As soon as Dean is out of earshot, Sam turns and wraps Gabriel tightly in his arms. He can still feel himself trembling, his heart thumping too fast from the leftover adrenaline.

  Gabriel chuckles, the sound muffled in his shirt. “Calm down, kiddo, I’m fine. Come on, let’s go back, you need to sleep. The ornery old git’s right, you need to get some rest.”

  “You were amazing,” Sam says, releasing Gabriel from his stranglehold a little, still running his hands over his shoulders to check that he was still there, still safe. He frowns as he sees the bags under Gabriel’s eyes. He must have expended a lot of energy again stopping the barrier from crushing them when it came down. “You need sleep as well.”

  “No.” Gabriel yawns widely then shakes his head, annoyed. “Yeah, okay. Me too.”

  Sam turns, then hesitates. “Hang on, should we wait for Ra?”

  Gabriel shakes his head, leading him back towards the house. “Nah, she’ll find us. Come on, let’s lie down before we fall down.”

.o0o.

  Sam unfolds himself from the car, stretching his legs after the long journey. Carmen takes off from his shoulder to do a few laps around the car park. A group of women stare at her warily, but for once Sam doesn’t care. It’s nice to be back on the road again, and if he’s being honest he’s quite glad that Bobby kicked them out. They had been stuck in that house for too long.

  Dean returns and tosses Sam a set of motel keys, whistling cheerfully to himself as he goes to get the bags from the trunk, Diana lazily waving her tail as she trots beside him. Sam shoulders the door of their room open, and isn’t too surprised to see Gabriel bouncing on one of the beds, testing the mattress. Ra’s stretched out beside him as a huge lizard, shoving at him in playful annoyance as she gets bounced up and down as well.

  “Tell Deano to get another room, this one’s ours.” Gabriel snaps his fingers and the twins morph into one king size bed, the hideous green and beige wallpaper exchanging itself for something much more tasteful. Gabriel makes a satisfied sound. “Much better.”

  Sam grins, shaking his head at their antics, and goes to get his bags from Dean.

  “Where the hell does he think we’re getting the money for another room?” Dean grouses when Sam tells him. He’s answered a second later when a wad of cash appears in his hand. They both stare at it for a second, then Dean’s face breaks into an enormous grin. “I’m gonna get the one with a jaccuzi!”

  Sam roars with laughter as Dean nearly sprints back towards the front desk. He’s still chuckling as he gets back to the room, dumps his bags on the floor and flops down onto the bed next to Gabriel. “So, what now?”

  Gabriel waggles his eyebrows suggestively and Sam snorts, rolling over so he can sit up and shoving at his shoulder. “Come on, apart from that.”

  Gabriel tuts and leans back farther against the pillows. “Such a mood killer, Sammy.” His expression turns a little more serious. “Well, first of all I’m waiting down here a bit until the shitstorm in heaven blows over. Raph won’t be happy now that Mikey’s pulled his head out of his ass. Big bro has a lot of spring cleaning to do if Zachariah’s any indication, and it ain’t gonna be pretty. Don’t want to be in the middle of that.”

  Sam absentmindedly starts stroking Gabriel’s arm, fiddling with the sleeve of his shirt. Aurale’s head pops up, her shape slipping smoothly into the same small, lithe dog form that she had taken the first time they had met. She climbs onto Gabriel’s lap and he smiles down at her, eyes crinkling as he reaches to stroke her back.

  Halfway through they both pause and look at him, and Sam knows they’re having a conversation. They glance forwards and back a few times. When Sam can’t contain his curiosity any more, he asks, “What is it?”

  Gabriel hums, his eyes darting from Sam to Ra and back. “So you know what I said, about Ra and me only agreeing on… certain subjects?”

  Sam turned his head to look at them curiously. “Yeah?”

  “You happen to be one of those certain subjects.”

  Ra hesitates for half a second, then hops smoothly up into Sam’s lap. He sucks in a deep breath, freezing. She turns to him, looking a little nervous. “Well? Go on then.”

  Sam glances wildly at Gabriel, who smiles back at him, nodding encouragingly. Sam swallows, turning back to Ra. Slowly, he reaches out his hand.

  He’s touched other people’s dæmons before, either on accident or in dire situations. He’s even touched Ra before, but it never felt like this. As soon as he brushes his palm over her short fur he can feel it- like the universe turning under his fingertips, glowing and golden and vast as a solar system. He gasps, stroking over her again and again, barely able to take his hands off her. This is Gabriel, and Ra, everything they are spread out for him in a palette or gold and amber and bright, startling brilliance. He loves Sam. They love him.

  Sam snatches his hands away, breathing hard, afraid that if he goes on that he won’t be able to stop. It’s addictive.

  As soon as his hands leave Ra’s short fur Gabriel seizes Sam’s mouth in a ferocious kiss, wrapping his body around him until Sam’s gasping for air, his head spinning.

  “You’re coming with us, right?” He manages to ask.