The Sky is No Man's Land: Part V
This was not war as adventure, nor war for a solemn cause, it was war at its purest, a mindless mass rage severed from any cause, ideal, or moral principle. It was as if God had decreed this characterless entanglement of brainless forces as his answer to the human presumption.
-E.L. Doctorow, The March
CHICAGO, IL
2006-09-04 06:03 PM
There are dogs watching them from empty doorways.
It’s that kind of neighborhood: burned-out houses and gaping windows, glass hanging like jagged teeth from the fire-scarred frames. The problem is the ash and soot is fresh. Some of the dogs, Dean sees, are still wearing collars. But they all pelt off into the dark as soon as any of them look their way. They’ve learned to bug off. Dean thinks it’s a lesson they could use. Because this town? This town is a bad, bad idea.
The first gates might have opened in Palo Alto, Tulsa, Portland - but if the gate hasn’t popped in Chicago yet, all the signs are pointing towards ‘the end is nigh’. Bobby stopped sending anyone this way as far back as June. Too many hunters dying. Good ones.
Smoke curls towards the afternoon sky, and there aren’t even any sirens. EMS isn’t a thing. Chicago is the newest third-world country.
Cas calls it an ‘instability’, but these towns are as close to Hell on earth as Dean’s ever seen.
Sam is on point, following the John Winchester Bible of urban travel - moving in military precision, hand within easy reach of the gun on his belt - but Cas is just strolling right along, all purpose and long strides. He’s got good reason: they’ve hit two demons so far, and Cas has put them down with ease. The first was a woman who’d given them a ‘come hither’ wag from the dark of a crumbling doorway. But as they moved to pass her by, her eyes had inked black; Cas had turned, pressed a hand to her mouth hard enough to bleach his knuckles white, and worked whatever kind of voodoo magic he’s got, because she’d burned out like a Roman candle. Seems lesser demons are a little more on Cas’s level than things like that Sytry bitch.
The host didn’t survive. Her eyes were bloodied craters.
He’s picking up these kinds of tricks, Dean’s noticed; or maybe just recovering them, as his angelic batteries recharge from the North Platte nuclear blast. After sixteen stitches and a day and a half the hole in his shoulder already looks three months’ healed, and he’s started to static up the Impala’s radio something awful.
The second demon was much the same; a guy in homeless drag who’d jerked up as they passed, eyes flooding dark like some kind of involuntary twitch. Dean’s beginning to think it’s Cas, dragging the demon out of them like some kind of gag reflex. Cas dusted him, too, barely even broke stride doing it. Since Sytry - since Zachariah - he’s a man on a mission.
The only stop they’ve made was a twenty-minute detour into an alleyway to wait out the passage of some of Cas’s not-so-good angel buddies, sitting between a dumpster full of roaches and a couple bags of what smelled like either six-day-old Chinese food or a whole lot of corpses. Given the area, Dean would call either. They’ve already seen a few hands, feet, bones poking out from under the trash and debris.
As he was hunkered down, shoulder-to-shoulder with Sam, he watched a rat the size of a house cat squirm its way under the weight of a trash bag bursting with rot and tries not to think about what a feast they’re getting, all these humans ripe for the picking. All these street girls and homeless guys with garbage bag shoes, raw meat eye sockets turned up towards the sun.
They had a system: isolate the demon, exorcise it, save the host. If you’re outnumbered, and only if you’re outnumbered, then come the bullets and the knives - make the host too uncomfortable to occupy. Winchester law held that Above all, keep your own ass alive. But when you’ve got a guy with holy wrath in the palm of his hand, hell-it’s too easy. Even the knife tucked into Dean’s belt can’t kill demons without a fatal blow to the host.
But isn’t he gonna feel like shit the first time the host outlives the demon, and dies screaming in his hands.
The fucking choices you make. He thinks of Sam in a no-name Nevada diner, hands folded on sticky formica. Cas had asked why Sam left for Stanford, before it all; why he’d only chosen hunting second, when the Palo Alto fires came sweeping ‘round his doorstep. Sam had folded his hands on the tabletop and said, You spend enough time staring down those types of-people, and you start to see parts of them in yourself. You start to make decisions that really blur the lines. Then he’d hesitated, eyes on everything but Dean. I didn’t want to make those kinds of decisions anymore.
The choices you make.
At the end of their break Cas stands up abruptly, scopes the street from the end of the alleyway, and walks briskly on. Dean and Sam check their safeties and follow.
The next demon, a scrawny kid, gets enough of a heads up to drop back a step and try to bolt; Cas grabs him by the collar and slams him into the pavement. The demon’s already trying to smoke out before Cas clamps a hand over his mouth.
Dean grabs his arm. “Wait. Wait.”
Cas turns an impatient look his way.
“Can you do that without-“ he waves a hand towards his eyes.
“Better to kill the demon,” Cas answers. The edge to his voice is sharp and cold.
“He’s wearing a human,” Dean says; he keeps his tone steady, calm. “Me and Sam, we’re in this for the humans. C’mon, let’s just exorcise him.”
Whatever involuntary effect Cas has on demons, Chicago seems to have its own effect on him. In his vague descriptions, the lead-up to a Hell gate is a temporary collapse between the two planes: Hell leeching up, however briefly, for a little Earthside vacation. Dean can still remember the sound of Cas sizzling where Sytry had dug her nails into him. It’s gotta be unpleasant, walking around in a place that burns against his very nature.
There’s a moment of hesitation where Cas bears down all the harder, watching the demon writhe under him with a look of disgust. Then he lets up, shifts his grip to a chokehold.
The demon spills up over the kid’s lips, flowing down his face in silky black streams before sinking slowly into the concrete in a puddle edged in hellfire. Going, going, gone.
Cas gets back to his feet, attention already ticking back towards the road ahead. “It’ll be back,” he mutters. “Judging by the state of this city, in a matter of hours.”
Dean gives him a slap on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Cas.” The irony is intended. Cas doesn’t look impressed.
Turns out, the host was already dead anyway.
They follow a one-lane road clogged with burned-out cars for six, seven blocks before Cas comes to an abrupt stop, turning his head back the way they’ve come.
Abruptly, he drags Dean by the collar through the shattered door of an empty storefront. Sam ducks in behind them.
Cas is in a kneel, watching a patch of space two stories up; as Dean follows the stare, he sees something like a heat shimmer, distorting the brickwork in a loose shape that resolves, slowly, to the shambling walk of something impossibly massive. It comes to a stop, lifts the silhouette of an ugly head like a dog testing the air.
They all hold very, very still.
After a pause, it starts to ramble ponderously on.
In the stillness afterwards, Dean asks, “The fuck was that?”
“Something big,” Cas answers. Dean scoffs. “No shit.”
“It’s testing the veil,” Cas says. “Best not to give it a reason to come through.”
“Man. I have got to bag me one of those.” Dean elbows Sam. “What’s tastier to that thing, Cas? Him or you?”
He gets disapproving glares from them both.
“We’re very close,” Cas announces.
Sam watches as Cas’s attention flickers from the window towards the wall of broken shelves. “How’re you tracking this guy, anyway?”
“Through his flight,” Cas answers, turning his ADD attention span towards the back of the store. “It requires entering and exiting on certain planes. It’s traceable, within some degree of accuracy, if you know what frequency to listen for.”
Dean can see ten or twelve questions get backed up in Sam’s head at that, but Cas is moving on towards the backroom before he can ask them. The little trooper just holds them all in, god bless him. It looks uncomfortable.
Sam moves to follow Cas, and Dean takes up the rear. He’s still sneaking glances out the storefront, and trying to figure out how he’d take down a Hellbeast the size of a house, and god damn would that be awesome.
“No way,” Sam whispers.
“What?”
“No way,” Sam continues confidently, “you could go ten seconds with that thing. It’d crush you like an ant.”
“Not if I had a tank.”
“Where the hell are you going to get a tank? Army surplus store?”
“No,” Dean scoffs, even if that’d been the first answer to come to mind. He reconsiders. “Steal one, I guess.”
Cas tears through the chain securing the back door with a casual hand and presses it open. Sam takes point into the alleyway, signals the all-clear. Cas moves past him at an impatient pace. “That close, huh?”
Cas holds up a hand to silence him, and walks on.
After a few steps, he breaks into a run.
There’s a burst of light - angelic flashbang - that reflects off the brickwork at the end of the narrow alley. Dean throws up an arm instinctively as a transformer overhead goes with a burst of sparks, raining down onto the cracked pavement.
Cas is hissing, “No, no,” and then they’re bursting onto an open street.
Dean and Sam take flanking positions, guns up and adrenaline singing; but the street’s empty, a two-block affair hemmed in by rundown tenant housing. Empty except for the man lying in the street, legs tangled and arms sprawled. Sightless eyes are turned up towards the cloudless sky.
“Dean-“ Sam starts.
“Yeah, I see ‘em.”
Charcoal wings, spread wide across the pavement. It gets Dean thinking of the shadows burnt into the concrete after Hiroshima.
Cas kneels by the body, curls a fist in the fabric of his lapel. There’s blood pooling just under his sternum, a stab wound. Dean hazards a guess: “Sabachiel?”
Cas doesn’t answer, but his motions are answer enough. He drops back on his heels, dragging a hand slowly through his hair. It’s a human gesture. A hopeless one. This was his last lead.
“You’ve still got evidence, right? Guy disappears a few days, turns traitor, busts your wing, and right when you’re about to bust him he shows up conveniently dead.”
“It’s circumstantial. This-“ Castiel begins, and stops, falling into a grim silence.
“We’ll find more,” Sam says.
“They’re sloppy,” Dean adds. “You found the orders, you found this guy. You’re close, they know you’re close. Hell, we already knifed their Queen Bitch.”
Castiel rises slowly to his feet. “I’ve dragged you through enough.”
Dean grins. “Ah, shit. We’re invested, now. This is the most fun we’ve had in years.”
Cas gives them a measuring stare. It’d be insulting, if it didn’t end in a small smile - which on the subtle scale of Cas emotions, is pretty close to ecstasy.
The smile’s just as soon slipping off. Cas turns on his heel, peering into the growing shadows of the alley across the street. Dean raises the Glock. “What’re you seeing?”
“Something big,” Cas says.
The shadows shift, rolling like the heave of something’s massive shoulders. Something getting a lot more solid than some heat shimmer against brickwork. Sam breathes a sigh. “Great.”
Cas glances back at them and says, “Run.”
♤ ♤ ♤
Yeah, they run. They run like there’s a goddamn thing the size of a Chrysler building thundering after them, because well, there is.
It seems to be getting more corporeal as they go; where it’d first charged whole hog down the narrow alleyways Dean’s been leading them down, now the buildings groan and shake as it presses through after them, like reality is starting to lay down constraints. Pretty soon they duck down an alleyway and the thing can’t follow. It hits the building face with a force that crumples brick and shatters windows, howling at their backs in a sound like metal scraping on glass.
They keep running.
Dean’s got them on a roundabout route to get them back to the car, which - after Cas’s long, blind pursuit - is a good twenty blocks southeast of where they’d started this death sprint. The late summer heat has Sam’s shirt plastered to him by the sixth block, and he’s swiping a stream of sweat out of his eyes by the eighth.
But by the ninth, the air’s stopped shivering with that thing’s unseen howls. By the tenth, they’re slowing to a jog, and a walk. They stop in the sticky shade of a derelict warehouse to catch a few breaths. Dean scopes out the area around the corner - an empty lot, piled with trashbags - and signals the move forward.
The loud snap of a single gunshot ricochets off the brick and concrete.
Time snags on that sound, that moment: the pull of Dean’s hand at his shoulder, dragging him back; the feel of Dean’s shirt under Sam’s fingers, the weight of his own gun in his hand; and the man crouching in the shadow of a dumpster, slouch-shouldered and dishevelled, eyes wide and clear over the pistol held in his shaking hands.
He lowers the gun, turns on a fraying sneaker and runs.
There’s another stunned second where Sam’s taking that quick, adrenaline-sharpened self-inventory of no, not hit - then he’s pushing away from Dean and running. Dean and Cas are twin footfalls at his back, but Sam’s got the extra leg to close the distance.
Sam grabs a fistful of the man’s shirt, jams a foot into the back of his knee and follows him down to the pavement with his own weight. The man sprawls inexpertly - gun hand flung out, letting the pistol clunk hard against the concrete. Sam reaches forward to grab it, his own gun a heavy reminder on the back of the man’s neck.
“Christo,” Sam spits. The man’s eyes roll with fear, but they stay white, and he isn’t surprised. Just a spooked civilian shooting at shadows.
The man breathes in rasps. Sam feels a small turn of disgust.
Sam digs the muzzle down into vertebrae and then lets up, getting back to his feet. The man stays where he is a second - skinned palms hovering uncertainly over the concrete - then slowly rises, eyes on the pistols in Sam’s hands. Sam works the clip free and pockets it, takes the round out of the chamber, and hands the emptied pistol back to him. “Get to where you need to go and stay there,” he snaps. “Don’t let me see you again.”
The guy accepts the pistol with shaking hands. He takes off at a lopsided run, doesn’t even look back. “Idiot,” Sam spits under his breath.
The adrenaline rush is peeling back, leaving raw nerves and a dry throat behind. He checks the safety on his own gun and glances back towards Dean. He’s still tracking the guy’s shambling attempt at a 500 meter record with the barrel of his own gun.
Once the man rounds the corner, Dean loosens up and waves his Glock. “Couple days’ wait and anybody can have one.” He gives a sideways grin, and his teeth shine red.
Cold blooms in Sam’s stomach.
Cas - the silent observer - is already pressing a cautious hand to Dean’s back. “Dean--”
Dean takes an absent swipe at his mouth, then plucks at his shirt to look at the neat circle of blood blooming between his ribs. “Ah, shit-- it’s not that bad.”
“Yeah?” Sam says, casual, numb, and pulls at his shirt to get a better look. The exit wound is larger, the pooling blood brighter, a rich crimson. It’s in the right territory for heart, lung. Sam pulls off his overshirt, tears it in two. Cas holds against the front and Sam bears the other half into the growing flood of (bright) red on Dean’s back. “Damn, that burns,” Dean’s saying through a clenched-teeth grin, and Sam’s saying - tone flat - “Yeah, not that bad.” They work the belt off Cas’s trenchcoat around both, cinch it tight.
Sam reaches to get an arm under his shoulders. Dean shoves him off. “Get the hell off me, I’m fine. Go on, take point. Let’s get out of here. This town sucks.”
It’s the same thing on any hunt. You just focus on the exit strategy; you just move until you’re out. The city is a silent, looming thing around them, and they just have to move.
One block; five blocks more.
Two blocks. Four blocks more.
Three.
Two.
“Fuck,” Dean says between wet, wheezing gasps. Castiel says, “Sam.”
It’s a side street, too open. There’s a corrugated roll-top door to the right, half up. Sam ducks under. It’s an abandoned warehouse, peeled paint and sprung rebar hanging in mildewed curtains from a ruined ceiling. The sun filters in streams through shattered windows onto the broken pallets and metal drums scattered across the floor.
He ducks his head back out. “Here.”
Cas helps Dean through the door. Dean’s fingers are white-knuckled in the tan of Cas’s coat.
Sam drags the door closed behind them with a screech of abused metal and a fine shower of rust.
He brushes Cas aside and pulls with numb fingers at the belt, working it loose, tugging at the wet heavy red compress to see the spill of blood rising up to meet his fingers. He drives the heel of his hand into the flow, bears his other palm into Dean’s shoulder. “We’re not far, alright? Two blocks, man, I promise, and it’s not--” There’s warm blood flowing between his fingers, down his wrist, bright red, arterial, but he says, “It’s not that bad.” Doesn’t matter. Dean’s not really tracking him, anymore, lost in the fight for air.
Dean’s breaths are shallow and rasping and the cool, calm certainty that he’s not going to get back up threads slowly through Sam’s mind.
He shoves up, moves towards Cas, who’s standing tall and silent and still among the trash-strewn floor. “Cas, there’s gotta be something, anything--”
“I can’t heal him,” Cas is saying in that damnably matter-of-fact voice. “Healing requires mandate, my mandate was rescinded.”
“Then fucking-- unrescind it! He needs a hospital now, Cas--”
Cas is just silent.
Sam wraps bloodied hands in the lapels of his trenchcoat and shoves him back a step, but whatever words there are are caught up in the panic and disbelief crushing his own throat. The only thing he can rasp is, “Please.”
if there’s anything you stand for, god, please, anything
Cas just stares back. A small guy in an ill-fitted trenchcoat. Sam’s hands leave smears of red across the fabric.
He drops back next to Dean, presses his hand into the well of bright arterial red and tries to get his head back and aside, clear the airway a little, tries to hear for the whistle of breath under the desperate choking gasps and someone’s muttering a nonsense mantra of it’s okay it’s okay you’ll be okay and Dean’s got a hand gripped tight around his wrist that’s slackening, slackening.
Castiel stares. His mouth moves in a small, unspoken prayer.
A pair of Converse sneakers move hesitantly in on the edge of Sam’s vision. They belong to a shaggy-haired college kid, who drops into a kneel and presses a gentle hand against Sam’s wrist. Sam doesn’t - won’t - let go of the fabric clenched in his fist, but Nanael carefully moves his hand aside, just enough to press too-clean fingers against his bloody wreck of a brother.
Dean breathes in a ragged gasp of air. He writhes aside and chokes it up as black blood, coughing and hacking across the pavement. Sam watches numbly as Nanael gives him a few swats on the back. One, two, and the wet patch of blood covering Dean’s back is gone. Three and so is the neat little hole in the fabric.
Dean wheezes one last cough into the pavement and slowly rolls back onto his elbows. He gives Nanael a long stare. “Thanks. I guess.”
Nanael smiles lopsidedly. “Sure.”
Castiel watches in silence as Sam drags Dean - whole - upright.
He drops a hand on Nanael’s shoulder. It’s thanks enough before he bears his thumb down, propelling Nanael backwards in a gentle shove. “Nanael-go.”
Nanael ducks behind his hair. “Yeah.” He doesn’t; he starts rummaging through his pockets, comes up with his phone. “But listen, I-“
“Nanael--” Castiel begins, impatient.
“Wait, listen, about North Platte, I know who it was, I know who--”
Another voice interrupts: “Found you at last.”
His first motion is to push Nanael behind him, the weight of his shortsword falling against his fingertips within his sleeve; his second, upon recognizing the grace before him, is to drop back in an open-shouldered surprise. “Uriel.”
Uriel spreads open hands. “Brother. This is where you’ve been hiding?”
But Nanael is crowding close behind him and murmuring a single word: “Him.” They exchange one sidelong glance. Nanael’s eyes are wide, and certain. He digs a shaking hand into Castiel’s shoulder and moves past, towards the Winchesters. Uriel follows Nanael’s path with a cool stare and raises surprised eyebrows. “I’d heard the rumors, but really - hiding among the humans?”
“Dean, nice to meet you,” Dean drawls. Uriel ignores him, and continues: “Nanael sneaking his way out of a war zone, you’re fortunate I’m the only one who noticed. There’s many eyes on the garrison because of you, Castiel. Are you finished with this foolishness?”
“Not yet.”
Uriel inclines his head. “So you have proof, then?”
“I will.”
Someone with access to Nanael’s phone had sent the message. Had sent him to Sabachiel, and Sytry.
Disbelief pools heavy in his stomach.
“Enough of this, little brother,” Uriel says. “Our sister was a loss to us all, but this is insane. Nanael told me of all your - theories. Zachariah? At best he will have you punished, a few centuries in the cistern. At worst you will be court-martialed, tried for treason.”
Uriel is forcing an expression of uncharacteristic sympathy, and Castiel is testing the edge of the shortsword resting in his sleeve.
“Zachariah,” Castiel repeats. “Zachariah is short-minded, and petty. He hates the garrison. But he would never do something that wasn’t to his political benefit. Losses don’t carry well on the reports.”
“So who will you point the blame at next, brother? The seraphim? The archangels?”
“Someone that knew the garrison. Knew to use Nanael to send me to North Platte. Knew to misdirect me towards Zachariah. To set Sytry waiting there.” Uriel says nothing. Castiel inclines his head. “How many times have you been demoted, Uriel? For disobedience, and pride. You should be second only to Sandalphon, and yet I outrank you.”
His good humor fades. “Castiel, this has gone on long enough. Come home, let us clear your name.”
“So you can give the seraphim their traitor?”
Silence hangs heavy between them. At last, Uriel breaks into a small smile. “Not if you see reason. And I think you’re beginning to. You could be of great benefit to us, Castiel.” Uriel looks past Castiel, towards the Winchesters - towards Nanael. “The both of you.”
Certainty washes through him, cold and sharp. “You killed Israfiel.”
“We asked her the same question I’ll ask you, Castiel. Will you join us?”
“You betrayed her. Dozens of us, for what?”
“I saved them from a false Mandate,” Uriel says. There’s no madness to him, not like Sytry; only unerring calm. A madness in its own right.
“Our Father’s mandate,” Castiel intones. “The one we all serve.”
Uriel barks a sharp laugh. “Our Father,” he drawls with disgust. “Our Father, who told us to bow to this filth--” A sharp gesture towards the Winchesters. “You serve an empty throne, and the whim of the corrupt. Vain sycophants and mindless bureaucracy. I’m offering you freedom, Castiel. Freedom from Michael’s blind subservience to an absurd game.”
“Instead I can serve Lucifer’s greed, and pride, and vanity,” Castiel spits.
“You think so little of him? Our brother? He wants this world to be the paradise it once was, before the plague of mankind. Restored to Father’s true image.”
Castiel looks away. “What did Israfiel say?”
Uriel smiles wanly. “Give me an answer, Castiel.”
It’s an answer that comes rapid and sure. “No.”
Uriel smiles towards the floor. The wan afternoon light flashes brightly on the edge of his sword.
He moves with brutal strength, but little speed. It’s enough. Castiel is too slow to understand this, to understand Uriel moving against him. His first blow slams Castiel into the concrete of a pillar and through. He lands amongst twisted rebar and sifting dust, and clarity settles on him as a cold rage.
Israfiel; and so many others. And Nanael - Nanael now here, endangered by his own failures--
He grips his own shortsword tight, pulls an arm close to his torso in a mimicry of injury and speaks in short breaths: “Uriel, don’t do this.” Uriel doesn’t falter, closing the distance in heavy steps. Castiel drops his shoulder and shoves up, catching him in the ribcage, throwing him off-step. He has to rise to his toes to wrap his fingers in Uriel’s collar and press the shortsword forward in a quick stab.
It’s a miss. Uriel pulls free, and Castiel’s senses bleach to white noise with the backhanded collision of the hilt of Uriel’s shortsword with the side of his skull.
The chaos resolves to Uriel on the floor: Nanael is on top of him, grappling for the sword. Uriel throws him free with ease, slamming him to the floor. Castiel lunges towards them, but Uriel meets his advance and overpowers him, throwing him flat in the dust.
Uriel reaches up and grips a piece of rusted rebar hanging from the ceiling, wrenching it free. When Nanael advances again, he puts him down with a lazy swing, and buries the rebar in his shoulder. Nanael grunts in discomfort.
Castiel lunges again. Uriel is quicker, and backhands him hard; wrapping a fist in his collar he follows the hit with a second, and a third.
“You’ve killed him, you know,” Uriel says casually, in the hazed space between blows. “Shouldn’tve brought him into this. But he’s always been your shadow, hasn’t he?”
“Your brother,” Castiel spits, even as fear curls tightly in his gut.
Uriel smiles thinly, looking over the red shine painting his knuckles. “Brothers stand together, Castiel. You - you’re nothing.”
He throws Castiel to the ground, and plants a heel against the back of his neck.
“Uriel,” Castiel exhales. Blood stains the dust below him.
It gives the Winchesters a clear line of sight. Gunfire rings out in unison: twinned holes bursting from the cloth of Uriel’s suit, striking shoulder, lung, neck. Uriel ignores them, until a bullet dislodges skull in a spray of blood and bone.
Uriel raises a hand. The gunfire ceases as the Winchesters collide hard with the concrete of the walls.
He’s stalking towards them when Castiel regains his feet, catching Uriel in a low tackle beneath the ribs. They hit the ground and fall into a roll that ends in a jarring collision with the metal of a support beam. Uriel draws his sword wide, and finds flesh.
The sword cuts a long furrow between Castiel’s ribs. The blade sears through his grace, setting the air resonating. In that boundless eternity of pain Uriel is shoving him down, driving his head into the concrete.
“You think yourself so clean, Castiel,” Uriel drawls, pressing a gritted toe harder into the side of his face. “You bow to the corrupt and the weak.”
Castiel gasps: “Coward.”
As Uriel raises the sword, gunfire snaps loud through the confines of the warehouse. The hand gripping the sword is obscured in a spray of blood and tissue. Tendon and bone shine white within the ruin. Dean stands with his shoulders against the wall, the gun steady in his hands.
Uriel roars, and turns upon him with sword upraised. Too many tendons are severed; the sword clatters against the concrete.
Castiel slams a foot into the back of Uriel’s knee, wrapping numb fingers into the hem of his suit jacket to ensure his fall with his own weight. He slams Uriel’s head into the concrete as he lunges past him, grappling for the discarded shortsword.
He seizes Uriel’s shoulder, throwing him to his back. His brother's hand skates down his sleeve, seizes at his forearm with brutal force. But only then - face to face - does Castiel bury the sword home.
There’s resistance as the blade forces through skin. Then it cuts smoothly between ribs and up, into lung, heart, and through. The blade grinds on the bone of vertebrae. Blood spills hot across Castiel’s fingers, spilling to the floor.
Uriel’s expression is one of surprise.
Castiel bears his hand into sternum and jerks hard to free the blade of bone and gristle.
For an eternity, Uriel writhes and chokes. For an eternity more his grace shivers apart, and at last catalyzes into a searing wash of white.
When it fades, wings of ash stretch the length of the abandoned garage.
The Winchesters are gathering themselves off the floor. Sam is holding an arm close; sprained or broken. Dean swipes blood from a laceration free of his eyes. They both take in the wings. They both look to Castiel, rising to his feet to stand tall and still.
As they watch, the shortsword slips between Castiel’s fingers and clatters against the concrete.
Nanael is pressing his hands against Castiel’s shoulders. “Brother--” But there aren’t words. Castiel is looking to him with the eyes of the lost, and the damned.
“Guy was a dick, Cas,” Dean starts.
“He was my brother,” Castiel shouts, sending the room crashing back into a startled silence. The wind through the half-open door tugs gently at the ashes scattered across the floor. Castiel continues, low and shaking: “He should’ve been brought before the Council. He should’ve been tried.”
Nanael shifts to press the heel of his palm into the blood blooming under Castiel’s arm. Blue grace shines in the shadowed folds of his trenchcoat.
Dean ducks his head low, speaking in a hush. “Sam, y’got the car?”
“Yeah, I’ll go-“ Sam stops, and drags his gun up - steadied only by one hand - to focus on the roll-top door.
With a casual grace, a man in a well-tailored suit ducks beneath the door. He brushes the rust from his shoulder, straightens his jacket, and takes in the room from behind wire-rimmed glasses. His attention tics down to Uriel, and his lips thin with displeasure.
“Who the hell are you?” Dean asks, taking an aggressive step forward, gun raised.
Sam is falling back, looking for a second exit; but there’s another man lounging in the lee of the back door, hands buried deep in a leather jacket.
Sam sights him down the barrel. He’s got six shots left in the clip, and he’ll have to make them count.
“Nanael,” Castiel says quietly. “Take them. Two blocks east. A black car.”
Sam can’t take his eyes off the mark. “Cas, wait-“
Nanael’s hand drops heavy on his shoulder, and the ground lurches beneath his feet. He’s splaying his hands across the Impala’s hood, squinting in the glare of the fading sunlight. By the time they turn Nanael is already falling back onto his heels. “Hey, wait-“
There’s just empty air.
Dean scrambles for the keys.
Words are short and sharp between them - “Fuck, what are these?” “Demons?” “Smelled like-“ - as the Impala roars to life. Dean tears it out of the parking spot and into the empty street.
“C’mon, c’mon-“ The Impala hops the curb, following a narrow alleyway - mirrors scraping brick - before bursting onto the trash-strewn causeway leading to the warehouse. So fucking close. Dean slams on the brakes, but Sam’s already out and running before the tires come to a stop.
He leaves the roll-top to Dean, follows the alley to the back of the warehouse in a low run. There’s a side door, partially ajar. He slips in and moves rapidly up the corridor. The back rooms are empty. Whatever these things are, they seem to be working alone.
Doesn’t seem like much of a problem, for them.
The big guy looks like he picked up his fighting style in a bar. He smashes an elbow into Cas’s face, grabs a handful of tie and follows it up with a headbutt for good measure. There’s no clear shot; not without hitting the angels. Sam tracks the motions, but he can’t pull the trigger.
Uriel’s sword is still on the floor. Sam keeps the gun up and moves towards it in a rapid side-step. Dean rushes through the roll-top, but the demon fighting Nanael throws him back with a lazy hand.
Castiel’s attention is divided; when Nanael takes a particularly hard hit, he buries a forearm in the demon’s throat, holding him back long enough to grind out: “Marchosias. Please. He’s not involved.”
First name basis. Another Grigori, then. Which means swords work.
The skinny demon gets in a right hook that knocks Nanael back, and he wraps a hand around the angel’s wrist. Something goes wrong, there. There’s a flash fire of light beneath the demon’s hand, and Nanael goes abruptly limp, eyes hazed. Cas twists towards him, looking panicked.
The windowpanes shiver with a blast of angelic screech as Marchosias buries his nails in the open wound in Castiel’s side. The demon slams his skull into the tarmac, stuns him long enough to mimic the other demon’s grip, encompassing the back of his neck. Sickly red light blooms between his fingers. Castiel sags.
The air grows abruptly still, absent of that frenetic energy that’s been resonating in Sam’s bones for days.
Castiel keens low in the silence.
Marchosias drags him to his feet by the collar of his jacket. He gestures towards Nanael. “Take him.”
Castiel pulls away, throwing a blind arm back. Marchosias secures his grip, ignoring his struggles.
The demon holding Nanael gives Dean a disapproving glance. “The humans?”
Marchosias shakes his head. “Mine. Go.”
The demon gives a curt nod, and dusts off. Nanael, pale and shaking, disappears into the sulfurous cloud.
The cloud resolves to empty warehouse floor. In the silence, Marchosias tosses Castiel aside; he falls to his knees.
Dean shoves upright, free of the absent demon’s grip. “What the fuck did you do?”
Marchosias looks down on Castiel in disinterest. “Bound him.”
Castiel is curled low, forehead pressed to the dirt. But Sam can see his fingers moving in small tics beneath him. He eyes the sword, no more than three feet to his right.
“What are you going to do with them?” Sam asks.
“Curious humans, aren’t you.”
The demon’s attention ticks down towards Castiel. Sam swaps the gun to his bad hand and dives for the sword, and rises with it close by his side. It’s enough to draw Marchosias’s attention back. The thin line of his mouth upturns in distaste. “That weapon is not meant for your hands, boy.”
Sam raises it to a striking position.
“Please,” Marchosias says, all polite condescension. “Try.” Metal scrapes concrete; to the demon’s right, Dean draws Castiel’s discarded sword from the rubble, and stands at the ready.
Between them, Castiel buries his palm in the blood leaching from his side. Marchosias’s attention has just begun to tic back down when the angel shoves his bloodied hand to the floor.
The white light of an angel banishment shivers through the space, but it doesn’t have quite the same effect. Where that wavelength seemed to tear apart angels, shipping them off to god knows where - dissonant frequencies, Cas had said - Marchosias gets thrown hard into the nearest wall. A haze of shattered concrete sifts down to cover him.
Castiel falls back onto his heels, arm curled against his wounded side.
There’s enough left around the bloody handprint to make out an angel banishment sigil. “Thought you said that wouldn’t work on Gregs,” Dean says.
Sam kneels beside him, running a careful hand over the back of Castiel’s neck. There’s a symbol there, seared into the skin. He doesn’t recognize it. “It should’ve worked on you.”
“Bound,” Castiel pants. “Nothing to shift.”
Concrete skitters against the floor. With slow, measured Marchosias gathers his hands beneath him.
Castiel lunges forward in a drunken stumble. Sam grabs at his shoulder; he almost throws him down, startled by how pliant he is. “Cas-“
Cas shoves against him, eyes on the demon, tone feral. “Where did you take him?”
Marchosias presses upright and pauses, kneeling in the dirt, head canted aside to consider Castiel with a measured stare.
“Where?” Castiel’s shout breaks on the air.
The grigori dissolves to smoke, punching through the shattered windows.
In the silence, Castiel breathes in short, rasping gasps.
“C’mon, man. Let’s go,” Sam murmurs quietly. Castiel says nothing.
Dean takes the sword from Sam, keeping an uneasy eye on the door. “Yeah, screw this town.”
Sam swings Cas’s arm over his shoulders. Cas presses heavy against him.
“Where do we go?”
Dean just shakes his head. “The hell out of here.”
Part IV | Part V | Part VI