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— Day 152, continued —
From the expressions on the members of both Ichabod’s and Chitaqua’s patrols—with the sole exception of Anthi, running the entrance point and perimeter while Manuel and Teresa work on the getting the relay up—not one of them expected the perpetually busy, vaguely harassed mayor of Ichabod best known for her ability to look disapproving and annoyed over the rim of her glasses to transform from Executive Secretary of the Apocalypse to—well, this. With a pencil still holding up her hair, and as of this moment doing a shitty job of it.
Dean never made the mistake of underestimating her, but even he’s vaguely surprised as she raps out crisp orders with the unthinking authority of someone who literally can’t imagine anyone would even think to disobey. It works, too (a couple of his team leaders emerge from their daze as Alison finishes to look at him, but he cocks his head and they meekly concede with a nod).
“Manuel said they just passed the first feeder but one of the snowplows is down, no idea why,” Alison says as they start to the infirmary while patrol prepares for breaking the perimeter line, members going among the waiting crowd to shout instruction on where to go and what to do and hope everyone listens.
“Gas?” he asks, trying not to look like he’s struggling to keep up, but Jesus she can set a pace.
“If it were gas,” she says, not at all patiently, “they’d know why it stopped.” Her eyes narrow thoughtfully. “They think maybe the second feeder before midnight, but the other two—”
“Who do I have out there right now?” he asks.
“Kamal and Sean.”
Awesome. “Tell Kamal to send Sean to the third and fourth feeders, have him set two team members at each one, and tell anyone coming in about the relay. Help the people get there if they can,” he adds, remembering Alicia talking about adhoc sleds for those not walking through fuck knows how high drifts. Including kids.
“They’re loading up everyone on the first buses while setting up the roadblock and stopping point. Uh—” Her eyes narrow. “Kamal says Sean’s on his way to the other roads, and he’s got his own team in position at Point A.”
“Tell him good job,” Dean says. “And if he—somehow—loses Kyle in the snow, don’t worry about it.”
Alison’s mouth twitches. “He said thanks,” she says. “Though not for which part of that.”
“Hopefully both.”
Once they reach the infirmary—a set of two square buildings now, three floors each—they walk into controlled bedlam; to his startled eyes, patients are everywhere, everyone is in motion, and no one seems to have a goal other than keep moving. Even Alison comes to a stop, forehead creasing, and Dean subtly extends an arm if she needs the support.
“Fine,” she says shortly, squeezing her eyes closed before taking a deep breath. “Selective filtering,” she explains. “Not as easy as it sounds.”
“I don’t even know what that is,” Dean assures her. “And I know it’s not easy.”
“Alison!” Dolores emerges from the chaos with a smile, which Dean assumes means either a.) this is normal or b.) she’s crazy. “I got four people unplugging all unnecessary equipment now to take pressure off the generators when we switch.”
“You need both buildings?” Alison asks, falling into step with her as Dean trails behind, looking at the sheets draped by various methods to give at least the illusion of privacy, injuries ranging from cut fingers to something requiring a lot of gauze, a supine patient, and an unsettlingly large needle.
“I could use another one,” Dolores admits as they go through a door into much more controlled and therefore dangerous chaos; a glance around tells him they’re in the ER. “We’re okay for water, but I’d like some more blankets sent over. Hold up,” she says, already jogging toward one of the beds, where a too-still woman is holding the hand of a little girl, barely five at Dean’s guess, Karl holding a clipboard that he hands to Dolores with relief. Searching the room, every bed is full, and on a guess, they need more beds.
“Alison, tell Vera—no, tell Amanda to tell Vera to get over here,” he says, not sure how Vera might react to Alison taking the direct approach. “Joe can listen to them debating whatever the fuck they’re doing. Can you find out where Alicia—”
A roar to their right gets both their attention, and Dean shoves Alison behind him as a beefy guy with a hastily bandaged head wound lurches to his feet, blood seeping through the gauze and down his cheek, face sickly pale and obviously delirious. He has just enough time to work out his strategy—seriously, the guy’s fucking huge, almost as wide as he is tall—before Alicia casually wanders by him with a needle and an expectant expression, stopping a couple of feet away from the guy and tipping her head back to look up at the enraged face.
“You really shouldn’t be up,” she says clearly, and Dean has no time to even shout a warning before one massive fist shoots out. It would have been pointless even if he had; Alicia is crouching on the floor, unruffled as she takes a moment to decide on her target before shoving the needle directly into his thigh. “Anyone bigger than me want to help catch him?” she calls out, dodging one half-hearted kick as his eyes roll back in his head and catching him under the arms with a grunt. Over the guy’s head, she sees Dean and grins. “Hey, Dean. What’s up?”
It occurs to him he is, actually, bigger than her, or at least he’s here, and hastily crosses the room to help. Between the two of them, they manage to get the groggy guy onto a gurney, where Alicia frowns as he starts to struggle, weaker, yeah, but also a lot less coordinated. “Maimouna’s still getting—dammit. Dean, give me your hand?”
Blinking, he does, and belatedly braces himself when she uses it to guide her momentum on a quick jump onto the gurney, straddling his chest without putting any pressure on his ribs, knees pinning his arms just above the elbow. Placing one hand on his forehead, she firmly eases it back onto the thin mattress and frowns down at the man severely.
“You need to stop doing that,” she states. “You’re delirious. Terrible for thinking: don’t do that. Or move, for that matter. No way to stitch you up otherwise, am I right?”
The man groans, though whether that’s in agreement or just on principle, no idea. Dean feels Alison come up behind him. “So she’s—always like this?”
“Yep.” He feels like he should do something, but what, no idea. Dolores appears on the other side of the bed, taking out a penlight to check the man’s pupils, mouth tightening grimly at whatever’s going on.
“Go ahead,” Dolores says finally.
“Awesome. I need the next room or vaguely clear space,” Alicia says, then brightens. “Here’s fine, actually; this works. Matt!”
Dean and Alison both turn to see Matt, wearing a bright pink scrub top (oh God, don’t laugh), appear with a stainless steel medical tray and looking worried. “Got everything you wanted. I think.”
“I really don’t think we—need to be here,” Alison says queasily when Matt comes close enough to see the holy shit that’s a big goddamn needle. “Dolores,” she says hopefully. “Send someone to Lanak; you requisition anything you need, and I do mean anything. Generators should be here in the next forty minutes; tell them what you want is my order, if they argue, yell for me, I’ll be listening. I’ll just—” She cuts off, and Dean turns around to see her staring at nothing before she abruptly starts to go back the way they came. Nodding at a concerned Dolores, Dean has to jog to keep up, catching her just as she emerges onto the street and turning toward the west end of the street.
The not-distant-enough churning darkness of the coming storm seems to consume the entire western sky, but that’s not what Alison’s looking at it: it’s people crowding the end of the street, a mass of barely controlled chaos, held on the fragile leash of the patrol members guiding them to Volunteer Services for those waiting with the list of safe buildings.
“Perimeter’s dissolved,” Alison says. “That was—different.”
“What did that feel like?”
“Happy,” she says softly, starting to smile. “That they’re going to survive tonight.” Straightening, she shakes herself. “And my job is to make sure they do.”
Dean grins. “Lead the way.”
Crowley stiffens. “Say again?”
“We are in Ichabod, first person plural, please pay attention,” he answers impatiently. “Dean called in everyone remaining in Chitaqua this morning in the very distant hope they can somehow get to us.” Crowley’s blank expression doesn’t change. “An entire state showing up for a New Year’s party is somewhat noticeable and we assumed the worst. We aren’t leaving Ichabod. We wouldn’t even if we could, not now.”
Crowley’s mouth works silently for several long, deeply appreciated moments. “You need to leave.” Something in his voice makes Castiel still. “Immediately if not sooner—”
“Why?” He searches Crowley’s face. “What’s waiting so eagerly to get inside the barrier?”
Crowley shakes his head sharply, focusing on him in what seems to be utter horror. “Dean is there? Now? You let him out of Chitaqua? Why would you do that?”
“And half of Chitaqua’s hunters, at least until the rest arrive.”
“How could this happen?”
“Yes, you seem to have planned for every contingency except Dean being himself.” Crowley looks at him incredulously. “Dean Winchester, sold his soul to Hell for his brother, very dramatic, but considering his career up to then, not what one might call unprecedented behavior. The barrier is going to fall, Ichabod is filling with desperate people, and he’s a hunter; he’s going to try and save them. All of them.”
“You’re letting him?” Crowley begins to flush with rage. “You have to get him—get both of you out of there! He’s our last, our only chance—”
“What exactly do you think I can do?”
“Knock him out and carry him back to Chitaqua if you have to!” Crowley snarls. “Just get out of there—”
“I thought I’d help him instead.” Crowley’s mouth snaps closed. “Save the world one overrun town a time. Apparently, we’re starting here.”
“What are you doing, Castiel?” Crowley asks softly, looking at him as if he’s never seen him before. “Or I suppose the question is, what’s he done to you?”
“His orders are that we fight. I obey my leader.”
“You….” Crowley closes his eyes briefly, smoothing his expression, a smirk curving up one corner of his mouth when he looks at him again. “Look at you. Castiel of the Host, angel of the Lord, the little rebel who Fell rather than kneel in obedience once you discovered how to stand on your own pathetic excuse for feet. The Host, Lucifer, God himself, Dean bloody Winchester Mark One….not even a dent. This Dean must be something else; five months with him, you’re on your knees like you never left.”
Castiel tilts his head, waiting in silence until Crowley’s smirk fades. “We don’t have time for this. Tell me how long it will take the barrier to fall. Minutes, seconds, weeks, perhaps—”
“It began at dusk yesterday. How long, I can’t be sure, but certainly no more than a week.” Dropping back in his chair, Crowley glares at him. “Don’t get too excited. As it weakens, more will be able to cross the border and survive, at least for a little while.”
It’s far better than the worst case scenario, but that doesn’t make it good. “So we have at least a few days before they survive long enough to do any damage?”
“Possibly more, now that I think about it.” Crowley’s eyes film over briefly, fingers tapping on the arm of his chair in thought. “You say all of the state is coming to Ichabod now? Since that’s where they’re coming as well, that will slow them down quite a bit. Instant gratification is always preferable.”
Castiel swallows.
“Whoever made terms certainly did think of everything.” His expression clears briefly, reluctant amusement chasing itself across his face. “Surely you see it. Survival of the fittest, as it were; those that arrive in time are protected by the lives of those that fail. Or, if you like, the more people that arrive, the fewer remain to distract attention from Ichabod. Elegant, really. I’m impressed.”
“You would be.”
Crowley flashes him a brief smile. “I’m looking forward to meeting them, whoever they are. That kind of potential is certainly worth the price I’ll pay to get them.” His expression darkens, and Castiel files that information away for worry at a more opportune time. “Won’t help, though. Castiel, I don’t think you understand—”
“That the barrier didn’t just keep Kansas safe from what’s usually here, but attracted the attention of everything else?” he asks rhetorically, and Crowley scowls. “A mystical barrier around an entire state: yes, that does tend to get everyone’s attention. How my Brother missed it—”
“Please,” Crowley says, rolling his eyes. “He can’t see it. And yes, before you ask: same very ancient and very forgotten sigils used in the protections. He wouldn’t even know it was there unless he tried to cross it.”
Castiel stares at him for a moment. “The creator of the circle also created the barrier?”
“Again,” Crowley starts.
“You don’t know.” He makes himself focus. “Do you know if they’re still alive?”
“I don’t,” Crowley concedes. “However, if it’s any consolation, I doubt it. Someone with that kind of talent either gains power enough to protect themselves very quickly or is used and eliminated.”
He tilts his head, startled. “You disapprove?”
“If they belonged to someone other than me, not at all,” Crowley answers, raising his eyebrows. “Fear is powerful, Castiel, but it grows stale with time and Hell has that in excess; to depend on that alone is foolish. I didn’t become King of the Crossroads by being a fool.”
“You gained it in Lilith’s bed.”
Crowley smiles, a flash, here and gone. “As I said, fear grows stale. A demon who rose from the rack with that kind of potential still within them isn’t a resource to be discarded with impunity. If they were mine, the carrot is as important as the stick when the goal is to assure loyalty.”
He starts to mention what just happened at the crossroads and then stops, staring at Crowley’s slow smile in belated understanding. “Just so,” Crowley says, pleased. “I do like you, Castiel.”
“The barrier,” Castiel says, setting that revelation aside. “Other than its properties in repelling almost anything not human—or brownie—what else was it designed to do?”
“What do you mean?”
He’s not actually sure. He doesn’t think anyone at the meeting earlier understood the implications of that lost time in the mess: at least, not entirely. Even a brief search of his memory has yielded little, he’d need decades to find the break, but—for a moment, he sees a woman dressed as a hunter, a sevenday per year on the earth…. “Do the Misborn still hunt the Five Rivers in my Brother’s name?”
Crowley seems not to understand before he’s treated to the first and only time he’s ever seen a demon pale. “Why would you ask—”
“You don’t know,” he interrupts. “That’s what’s waiting outside the barrier.”
Crowley stares at him. “There are no gods on earth for them to hunt.”
“They may prefer the flavor of gods, but in their absence, anything would be preferable to their sheer lack of other fare, and terrorizing the dead is no substitute,” he answers, thinking of Alison, then Teresa and Wendy and any other practitioners who may be in Ichabod. Not their preferred fare, no, but better than nothing and far more attractive than mere mortal lives.
Crowley doesn’t argue the point, sitting back in his chair without any effort to conceal his discomfort. “Their attention span is capricious at best. You have a reason to think something may have elicited their interest here?”
“Other than the barrier itself?” He thinks of Nate for a moment; with their attention fixed here due to Alison, there’s no possible way they’ll miss him, and if he’s right about what happened at Winchester House…. Teresa’s wards might help, but in their current position and form, that might not be enough. “How long until the barrier is restored?”
“Oh, now you’re wondering what’s taking so long to get that sacrifice finished? Interesting.” Crowley smiles at him. “Mortal body, but those angelic sensibilities are still in working order, I see. Expedience in the name of purpose; since that’s Dean Winchester for you, I wouldn’t be surprised if you offered to slaughter them yourself if they take too long about it. Even a demon can’t hope to match how much practice you’ve had attaining a high body count with nothing but your sword.”
“I’ve done it before,” he answers evenly. “But it was always clean.”
“Ah, got you.” Crowley takes a sip of his wine, smacking his lips obnoxiously. “Well, no worries there; no time for fun, they’re on the clock. It took weeks to build the first one, and all they have is the time before the barrier collapses entirely to raise the power. When the old one finally breaks, they use the backlash to hold it up, but that won’t last long; they have to power it by the next dawn or it’s gone for good.”
“Where?”
“Please.” Crowley rolls his eyes. “No idea at all. Feel better? Now you can be honest when you say that there was no way for you to save them. No one will think to ask if you really wanted to.”
He takes a deep breath. “After it’s over. Can you find out where?”
“Possibly. Why?”
“The bodies.” Crowley blinks at him in confusion. “They need to be identified, if possible, then burned with salt. Ichabod will doubtless be our priority when this is over, but—”
“You’re still going to try and fight?” Crowley slowly rises to his feet. “None of you will survive this, much less win.”
“Then we’ll save as many as we can until then.”
“If Dean dies—and you, in case it hasn’t occurred to you how fucked he’ll be without you here—it won’t matter. We’re all dead anyway.”
“It will matter,” he says, “to those who would have died and won’t, because we stayed.”
Crowley stares at him, eyes unreadable.
“You’d make a terrible angel and a worse human,” he says deliberately. “He’s my charge, and mortality does encourage making contingency plans to protect him in the event of my death. He will survive. All of Chitaqua will follow him—even if all of them don’t survive, I contacted people who can help them. If he doesn’t go there within a certain period, one of them knows to come here to find him.”
“And not a one of them know who he really is,” Crowley says softly, and Castiel just controls the flinch. “World he doesn’t know, war he’s being forced to fight, people who think he’s someone else—not to mention what will happen the first time he sees Lucifer riding his brother; that reunion will be something to see. Right before Lucifer kills him. Second verse, same as the first: Castiel walks away and Dean Winchester dies, tell me if you’ve heard this one before.”
Castiel bites down on his tongue hard enough to taste blood. “I didn’t bring him here—”
“True,” Crowley agrees, stepping closer. “You’re just condemning him to survive here—if he even can—all on his own. You can do better than that.”
“Do you think there’s anything I wouldn’t do….” He doesn’t have time for this. “I need to return.”
“Yes, so you can try surviving despite the certainty of failure.” Crowley studies him intently. “How are you feeling, Castiel?”
“Impatient to return,” he answers warily as Crowley takes another step closer. “If you would—”
“You liked the coffee?” Crowley shrugs at his blank expression. “It’s very good coffee. My own special blend.”
“I thought it was Kona.”
“That pathetic little hamlet soon to be filled with dead bodies from the sacrifice—I can get the name for you. Problem is, I can’t get through the barrier once it goes up.”
Surprised, he wonders why he didn’t think of that. “I could….” He eyes Crowley, watching him only inches away. “What are the terms?”
“Easy ones: we’ll get to that. I can’t get into Kansas, but I can bring you to me.” He smiles faintly at Castiel’s expression. “Here and back again, no strings attached. One month from today, first crossroad outside Chitaqua. Draw your true name in your own blood on the box before you bury it; I’ll find you.”
“How?”
“Easy as anything,” he murmurs, and suddenly, long fingers are trailing down the side of his face, thumb stroking at the corner of his mouth. “Terms are you let me do this so I can. Human bodies have their advantages; from what I’ve heard, this is your favorite thing about them.”
This isn’t what Castiel expected when it came to propositioning. “You want to fuck me for the name of a town?” he asks incredulously.
“No time, though lovely thought. We’ll come back to that at a more convenient time.” Castiel feels a wall against his back without any clear memory of having moved and Crowley smiles up at him. “It seems in some way your body works just fine, Castiel.”
“My sheets can elicit the same reaction,” he answers when Crowley’s thigh presses against his cock, aware of something wrong when he can’t make himself shove him away. “Sexual organs respond to stimulus with neither judgment nor taste, and generally lack standards.”
Crowley wrinkles his nose with a moue of manufactured hurt. “You wound me.”
“You bore me,” he says, painfully aware of the spreading lethargy, a faint prickle beneath his skin that feels vaguely familiar. “Either name the terms, or—”
“Just close your eyes,” he says, breath brushing across Castiel’s skin, “and remember you’d do anything for Dean Winchester.”
Crowley’s lips touch his, a brief moment of dry warmth, the feather light touch against his cheek trailing to his jaw. “Human bodies are very nice,” he breathes against his mouth. “Humans, though, they’re fragile: break so easily, so limited in what you can do with them. Have to be careful, don’t you? Not to hurt them.” Crowley’s tongue flickers across his lower lip in a flare of wet heat before abruptly, his wrists are pinned against the wall. Startled, he sucks in a breath at the unforgiving grip, the fingers biting into his skin, grinding flesh and bone together, and as if from a distance, he hears the sound of his own quickened breathing, but he can’t gather his thoughts enough to decide how to react. “Not to scare them to death when they realize what they’re really taking to bed.”
Everything seems to be slowing down too much, the prickle becomes firmer, almost painful. “What are you doing?”
“Believe it or not,” Crowley murmurs, “I’m trying to help.” The distracting brush of lips shatters his attention and Crowley’s wet tongue slides eagerly into his mouth.
Hell is purpose incarnate; death and destruction, war without end, bloodshed without limit, all for pleasure in pain; Crowley tastes like every death he dealt in Hell, pleasure and satisfaction, the endless hunger for more, starving for it and knowing it will never be enough, either time or prey.
“That’s it,” Crowley whispers cryptically, fingers curving possessively around the back of his neck, short nails digging furrows into his skin. “Human bodies, yes please, but better without the human in them. Can’t hurt me—unless you want to, of course.” Sharp teeth rake brutally across his lower lip, bruising the tender skin; when Crowley draws back, he smiles with blood flecked lips before he slowly licks them clean. “I like that sort of thing.”
Crowley groans, low and pleased, as Castiel wraps a hand around his throat, feeling him swallow hard against his palm. Coaxing, he draws back, forcing Crowley to follow, slick tongue frantically sliding along the seam of his lips before Castiel bites down brutally in a welter of fresh blood.
Crowley growls, throat vibrating against his palm, and Castiel jerks back, almost staggering. “What…” Tightening his hold on Crowley’s throat, he focuses at the sight of his own hand: the invisible branded lines on the back meant to capture Grace pulse sluggishly in throbs of dull pain. Swallowing, he has time to see Crowley’s anticipatory smile before a white hot spark flashes through him, nerves screaming awake that he didn’t even realize his body had.
Jerking back, he staggers helplessly against the back of the chair he was sitting in earlier, dazed, trying to catch his breath as another throb of pain shoots through him: those aren’t nerves and that’s not his body. Not his human one, anyway.
“Now that’s impressive.”
Head snapping up, he sees Crowley inexplicably on the other side of the room, surrounded by crumbling plaster as he reaches up to absently wipe at the fresh blood drying on his mouth and smeared across his cheeks, eyes entirely red. Licking his lips, he strokes his fingers down his throat, and Castiel sees in horror the faint red of a light sunburn in the shape of his hand, already fading to nothing. “What….” Another flash of pain crashes through him, and dropping to the floor, he abruptly recognizes this: Jeffrey, the blood-smeared bullet.
“It’s all there,” Crowley says hoarsely, sounding satisfied as he pushes off the wall in a rain of broken plaster. “Wasn’t sure how much was left after the Host clipped your wings. They did an excellent job so far as that goes: cut the wires, took the gas away, made a bit of a mess there, really. Engine, though, that’s just fine. Short-sighted of them, wasn’t it?”
Castiel wipes shaking fingers across his mouth, not surprised to see them stained with blood before he doubles over, another shock of pain rippling through him as his stomach empties itself on the floor. Squeezing his eyes open, he stares at it in horror, trying to concentrate enough to calculate the difference—by an order of magnitude—between blood smeared on a single bullet and ingestion of at least a quarter cup and expelling not nearly enough of it.
“They shoved you in a new model, whole and entire,” he hears over the roar in his ears. “Suppose they thought that would do the trick.” Through watering eyes, Castiel looks up to see Crowley watching him with clinical interest. “They were wrong about that. Just needed to hook up the new connectors and fuel up.”
“This will.” He spits, but it doesn’t disperse the sour taste growing on his tongue. How long did it take him to be affected by Jeffrey? Longer, he would have thought, but at the moment, he can’t be sure. “Kill me.” Or worse, it won’t; if last time was any indication of the progress, it could be weeks intensifying before it starts to ease off. Maybe months, depending on how much he retained in his system. That’s a very long time to be without full control of himself, and Alicia held his hand as if….
“Doubtful,” Crowley says thoughtfully. “I would give you more, but I’m not sure how much you can contain these days.”
“I can’t.” The black spots dancing on his peripheral vision threaten to consume it entirely. Taking a shuddering breath, Castiel forces himself to focus and abruptly, his full range of sight snaps on, everything slamming into him at once before he desperately shoves it closed. Panting into the stiff brocade, he fights down panic; there’s no way to know what will happen if he loses control now. “I’m not Sam Winchester,” he grates out. “I can’t contain this.” His true form is repulsed, pain rippling through him like being gutted alive, over and over and over without hope of end; his human body, unlike Sam’s, wasn’t exposed in early childhood; between the two….
“Not for long, no,” Crowley agrees critically. “But ‘long’ is relative; it will take a very long time for your body to burn it out, Castiel. Far simpler—and less agonizing—to simply use it for its intended purpose.”
Castiel shakes his head, trying to make sense of the words, but the flare of pain almost knocks him unconscious. And Crowley won’t stop talking.
“Obviously you haven’t considered the benefits,” Crowley continues in a gruesomely cheerful voice. “Let me explain while you finish up. Unlike Sam Winchester, you can use it the way a human—or even a demon—can’t. Same engine: just different type of fuel.”
Castiel clings to consciousness until the agony lessens enough to remember how to speak. “Why….”
“That town won’t survive when the barrier breaks, Castiel.”
Castiel stares up at him, uncomprehending, feeling razors slice into every nerve at once, forcing them alight, and the pain vanishes all at once. Gasping, he shuts his eyes, aware of a pulsing that seems to squirm beneath every inch of skin, darkly eager, impatience for release.
“Better?” Crowley asks as Castiel shakily pushes himself back on his heels, unbalanced by the endless pulsing. “Now, Castiel, it’s time to face reality. It generally has little to do with faith or hope in the face of impossible odds. Miracles went the way of the dodo bird, and I was never fond of them anyway.” His voice softens unexpectedly. “We’ve got to make this work, all of it; it won’t happen otherwise. He’s our last chance, the only one we have left. Everyone must do their part, and that includes you. Like wealth, there are few problems that can’t be solved with the application of sufficient power. You have it; now use it to get you both out of this mess.
“For what it’s worth,” Crowley says soberly, “if there were another way, I would have taken it. I do like you, Castiel. Always have.”
Castiel opens his eyes. “Do you?”
Dean instructs a group of volunteers who are running Plug Duty (Jesus, seriously), Laura among them, reciting Alison’s instructions exactly and adding firm looks every so often, which seems to help.
“…anything goes wrong,” he finishes sternly to his audience. “We blow up.”
“Oh God,” a voice says in horror.
“Whole town. So get it right,” he continues. “Any questions? Dismissed.”
Turning around, he sees Alison behind him, the group she was talking to already gone, and trying to look disapproving. “Blow up? Really?”
“Like you weren’t heavily implying it,” he scoffs, eyes flickering to the west and the disappearing bus as another group of people makes for the entrance point, volunteers now given the job of herding rather than stopping with promises of shelter, blankets, and food. “Anything from the other towns?”
“Three so far,” she says, eyes unfocusing for a minute. “Lanak is having the time of her life organizing everyone, and Mercedes just reported they’re bringing in what they culled while she finishes securing shelter for the animals.”
“They’ll be okay?”
“We got three people staying out there with them,” she says, looking amused at Dean’s horror. “Dean, gonna tell you now, we could all die, but whoever gets stable duty is gonna be fine; they probably fought for it. Those barns may smell, but a stable of horses and barn of dairy cows is a lot of body heat.”
“And the rest?”
“Pigs and poultry are fine, they’re always protected. Predators,” she says, mouth turning down. “Sheep and cows in the winter fields—I’m told they’ll be okay by people who deal with them daily, so gonna trust they know what they’re talking about.” She looks at him. “Did you know a single cow can make a thousand burgers?”
Huh. “That’s a lot of burgers.”
“I know.” Shaking her head, she starts toward Admin then turns around. “Dean?”
Dean opens his mouth to answer but the words won’t form, so he gives up, shaking his head before starting down the road to the eastern side of the ward line.
“Dean?” he hears Alison say, and feels those ripples pass him again before she’s beside him. “Dean, where are you going?”
“Something’s wrong,” he hears himself say and would be unbelievably glad he can still talk but— “I gotta get to him.”
“Cas, got it,” she says, and he realizes that he’s jogging when she huffs a breath. “Thank God you agreed running from danger should be my priority. Anytime you’re ready, by the way.”
Dean wants to ask who she’s talking to—it’s definitely not him—when Amanda’s in front of him, and the only reason he doesn’t knock her out of the way is she shoves him right on his ass. Now he knows why he didn’t see who was following him since he left headquarters.
“Dean, what’s going on with Cas?” Amanda says, and then stops short, eyes wide when he pulls his knife.
“I’m going to the ward line,” he says, climbing to his feet, buoyed by the flood of unfocused anger; he can use that. “Over your dead body or not, it’s all the same to me. So what’s it gonna be?”
It’s not even a thought; the flash of violent rage coalesces abruptly into intent before he realizes what he’s doing. The release is as shocking as it is satisfying; Crowley slams back into the wall and through two inches of plaster before hitting the solid stone behind it with a breathless gasp and the sound of cracking bones.
“Castiel—”
“Don’t talk.” Crowley’s head slams back into the stone with a thick, muffled sound and Castiel wraps an invisible hand around his throat. “Are you fully aware of how much damage can be done to that body before it’s unusable, even by you?” He tightens his hold and feels cartilage breaking. “I am.”
Climbing to his feet, an icy clarity sweeps through him as he watches Crowley’s pathetic struggles. Possibilities fill his mind, impossible to stop and impossible to even remember to want to try. He observed the work of the most expert master of the rack ever to walk the Pit, and there’s so much now he wants to try.
He’s watched her with Cas, knows every weakness and the fact she doesn’t have many and most are related to dealing with someone faster and stronger than a human.
“I gotta get to him before…” Something, but that anger running under his skin tells him something’s very wrong, and standing around here won’t fix it. Getting there and killing whatever caused it: that’ll fix it. “Well?”
“I get it,” she says, arms out at her sides, deceptively helpless; he’s not stupid enough to believe it. “I’m going with you.”
“Fine,” he says, watching her carefully as he passes before breaking into a dead run. Cas, he thinks as hard as he can: stop. Come here. Now. “Try to keep up.”
With unexpected strength, Crowley escapes before he can decide, crumpling to the ground in a pile of plaster and dust. “I wouldn’t, Castiel,” Crowley says, smiling up at him with blood-stained teeth. “You have a job to do right now, don’t you? No time to waste.”
Like that, Castiel jerks himself under control, and the low throbbing turns sullen, pushing impatiently, testing; powdering every bone in his body—stop—every stray thought is a danger—stop—every emotion—stop—but something in his head is shouting, has been shouting, and he can’t understand what it is, why—
Cas! Stop!
Dean. He’ll never forgive him for this.
Come here.
“Castiel—”
He slams Crowley back into the wall again before he can stop himself. “I’ll strip your skin from your body by inches and hang your rotting carcass on the wall if you say another word.” Looking at Crowley, he realizes how badly he wants him to speak, so he can do it. He wants to do it anyway, if he doesn’t. Just because he can.
Now. The shouting abruptly becomes a headache, stabbing into the back of his mind.
When he opens his eyes, he’s crouching just outside Ichabod’s wards, watching as horrified confirmation flickers sluggishly to life in flashes of warning, buzzing gold inches from his fingertips. Looking down, he realizes he’s in a blackened crater still smoldering sullenly, surrounded in bags of coffee, and in the distance is a figure, running toward him. Dean.
“No,” he breathes, and vanishes.
A quarter of the street has been reduced to nearly uniform rubble when Castiel feels the shift in his mind of someone approaching, breaking his unyielding concentration in turning rock and wood and glass into uniform chunks of destruction and shaping them into miniature mountain ranges. A human shouldn’t be able to come this close—no one should want to—but only one person could break his focus, and he doesn’t need to turn his head to see Dean only a few feet away, searching the street.
“Come on, Cas,” Dean says with surreally normal irritation. “I know you’re here, so don’t make me walk on top of you to prove it.”
With a thought, Castiel alters perception of the street to include Dean. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“You didn’t want me here, you would have already done your vanishing act again,” Dean replies, careful to hug the wall of the former convenience store Castiel is sitting against and avoiding anything that might be in his line of sight. “Not like you haven’t been jumping all over this goddamn town. Alison’s pissed.”
Dean’s thoughts are a tempting jumble as he approaches, beckoning, but after hours of teaching himself to ignore him, it’s only a small effort to not read him now. It takes slightly longer to remember why he shouldn’t do that or even want to, and he’s glad he assumed there would eventually be a delay and planned accordingly. He turns his attention back to the rubble, closing his eyes again; he doesn’t have to use human sight to see what he’s doing anymore, and it’s almost stopped bothering him.
A warm body drops beside him, coat brushing his arm. “So. How’s it going?”
“How did you find me?”
Dean’s incredulity is almost soothing. “How do you think?”
Castiel doesn’t answer, aware of the faint, insistent (somewhat unhappy) throb in his arm finally fading. Compared to the very effective goad of physical agony if he stops his wholesale destruction of all within his line of sight, it’s almost nothing, but somehow, it penetrated even that, a constant reminder. He should have broken the binding the moment he realized—but he didn’t.
“Clearing out some of the condemned buildings for Tony?” Dean asks curiously, looking at the half-demolished street.
Castiel nods shortly, carefully piling the next mound of debris; he supposes this is an example of Dean easing into a subject. “Even destruction can be turned to useful purpose. It—accepts that, apparently.” Dealing with unending agony is far harder when it’s so easy to make it stop: use it. To block the pain, to destroy buildings, to kill vast numbers of humans by sheer accident, which it most certainly would like him to do.
Anthropomorphizing power is ridiculous, but it’s soothing to think of it frustrated with being limited to destroying inanimate objects rather than glorying in rending living human flesh from bone.
“Yeah, good idea,” Dean says, and he can only hope it wasn’t in response to that thought; protecting Dean from exposure to his thoughts is difficult when he’s this close.
Trying to ignore the too-quiet man beside him, he finishes shaping the rubble with care, aware of the warning spikes along his nerves, sullen in its displeasure. He can’t contain it, so there are only two methods of getting rid of it; let it slowly burn itself out of his system (and hope it doesn’t damage him in the process considering the quantity) with a great deal of pain, or use it. And it doesn’t approve of any use that isn’t destructive and would far prefer taking life.
There’s only so much to destroy, however, and it still shifts hungrily beneath his skin like maggots squirming, testing his control every moment. Grace was far more passive; it was content to wait for him to decide what to do with it. This tries to give him ideas in case he shouldn’t think of any himself. If only that were true.
It desperately wants to give him ideas of what could be done to the human body beside him, as it did when any human wandered within range of him. This time, however, his will is supplemented by something else: negation that precludes even considering the question in its entirety, unbreakable and unbendable, absolute. Gravity is less powerful than that; it stills in the face of that, slinking away like a dog with its tail between its legs, chastened and accepting the chastisement as just.
He sucks in a breath. The heir to the Pit brooked no rivals in his time there and dealt with them without delay, and Hell’s memory is very long; that would explain what happened with Crowley when he wanted to make a deal. “That was you.”
“So something went wrong,” Dean says conversationally, possibly genuinely oblivious. Even with his eyes closed, he can see Dean pulling his legs in, resting an arm over his knees. Glancing down at the bare, blackened ground below them, Dean measures the blast radius around them, eyebrows raised in curiosity. “Everything’s going great,” he says, and Castiel is (somewhat) unwillingly subjected to a rapid slide show of the afternoon and early evening’s events, for Dean learned a great deal while showing him all the kinds of pie he’d ever consumed that day. “Teresa’s a little freaked out to keep losing connection to the earth and couldn’t figure out where or how. I told her not to worry about it.”
“It doesn’t like me very much right now.” That’s an understatement, but it still obeyed him when he told it to be silent, however grudgingly; he’s not sure what to make of that other than there’s absolutely nothing about this that isn’t obscene.
“Huh.” Dean lets out a breath, noting the lack of frost with approval and taking off his jacket to tuck underneath him before sitting down again. “Nice report, by the way, on what Crowley told you about the timeline on the barrier; never got one like that. Lacking in detail, though, like any. That really all you talked about?”
Without meaning to, Castiel shatters the foundation of the building off-center too early; a surge of power holds it in place, an explosion that would greedily take out the entire street at once held in check just in time with a nauseating shock of pain. Demons did something similar with their host bodies, all and any damage suspended until they left them; it’s interesting to use an obscene method for practical purpose. Redirecting the force, it goes upward in an impressive arc of debris before settling back into a safe mound of debris.
“Dean.” He concentrates on the mechanics of shaping the debris into the correct shape. “I don’t expect forgiveness for this, but—”
“You can’t expect forgiveness when there’s nothing to forgive. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Castiel wouldn’t believe him, but the sense of negation changes into humming affirmation, colored in determination and bedrock certainty. “Except that you’ve been hiding from me since you got back and dude, we gotta work on our communication skills if reading my mind wasn’t enough… Christ.”
“Don’t be facetious.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Dean’s voice sharpens. “We’re in this together, and that means everything. Look at me.”
“No.” He’s not sure who he’s sparing; Dean seeing his eyes, or himself seeing Dean’s reaction when he does. “You should leave. You have responsibilities—”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?” Dean asks, a smile in his voice. “Got everything sorted out, and Chitaqua’s commander officially went off duty thirty minutes ago.”
The sheer inanity of that response gives him pause.
“If you snap me back to headquarters and I have to walk all the way back here, I’ll kick your ass.” He can feel Dean looking at him. “Cas, whatever Crowley did to you—”
“I didn’t say no. That satisfied consent.”
“Demons have a lower standard than the Host,” Dean murmurs, bitterly amused. “That’s an actual surprise to know. Though since the Host likes torture as much as demons, might have just been perk to get to do the fun stuff to get the yes in the name of righteousness.” There’s another silence. “How long until that shit kills you?”
“It won’t.” To his relief, Dean understands immediately, sucking in a breath. “As long as I—use it—it’s not a problem.” The problem is, it’s not Grace; it’s angry and greedy and hungry; never more than now has the reality of the similarities between angels and demons been so clear. Purpose twisted, but still purpose, and its purpose is gleeful destruction, joy in death, everything the Host is and had been on earth without the leash of their Father’s will.
“How long will it take to get rid of it?”
“Longer than I can remain conscious without overdose if this is all that I do with it.” He takes a breath, forming more of the debris into the proper shape. “Once there is nothing else to destroy, I’m not sure what to do with it after that.”
“What’d he want you to do with it?”
“If I know demons, the most practical solution would be to clear all the roads from here to Chitaqua,” he answers flatly. “And possibly teleport everyone that could fit behind Chitaqua’s wards directly there. The remainder could be used to kill anything I might find if I took a drive around the state, since I doubt I could pass Chitaqua’s wards like this.”
“They’re your wards.”
“They’re my wards, and if I’m a danger, they will respond to that. I never assumed I couldn’t be used against Dean or Chitaqua.”
“Right.” Dean sets his jaw. “That why you’re keeping your distance from Teresa’s.”
He’s not sure he’d stay on this side of sanity if he actually felt them respond to him as a demon, and he’s far too close already to risk slipping here. Not when thought equals action, and he has the power to make almost anything happen. His thoughts unregulated are a danger to everyone around him, and it wants to obey them so badly.
“And what are you gonna do after?” Dean demands. “Scream in agony for a few weeks while I watch?”
Stung, he jerks around to look at Dean before he can stop himself. “You think that’s something I’m looking forward to? The other option is I lose control entirely and kill everyone….”
“You’re not,” Dean states, “gonna go on a rampage, come on.” Before he realizes Dean’s intent, he reaches out, thumb sliding down his temple and stopping at the corner of his eye, smile widening. “Blue, in case you’re curious. Not even a shadow. I figured that’s why you wouldn’t look at me, but since you’re not actually containing it now, didn’t make sense it would be affecting your body.”
“That’s the least of my worries.” Dean raises an eyebrow in polite refutation of the obvious. “It already affected—changed me. Or haven’t you been paying attention?”
“It’s putting you in a shitty mood,” Dean replies. “Don’t blame you, but you gotta stop worrying you’re going to become someone else entirely and start thinking about what we’re going to do about this.”
He swallows. “’We.’”
“We,” Dean confirms, voice softening. “Now you know when I said everything, I meant it. We’ll figure this out, okay?”
He nods, mostly because he’s not sure how to argue the point.
“So—you’re destroying some useless buildings to keep this in check until we get a plan together,” Dean says, ‘obviously’ unspoken but crystal clear. “Good call. Time for a plan.”
He’d like one of those, yes. “Do you happen to have one in mind?”
“Not sure,” Dean answers softly, thumb still pressed against his skin. That Dean is touching him at all now is a shock; letting him do it is unforgiveable, but stopping him is unthinkable. “Hey, question while I’m thinking—can you tell if anything’s plugged in? Nothing on generator power, though: just, uh, everywhere else?”
Castiel blinks, but Dean’s mind helpfully confirms he’s being literal, and obediently, he checks the town, and takes care of a few problems in that line.
“Thanks,” Dean says. “So the sacrifice—any way we can track it down, location, something?”
He thought of that, of course, and even tried to search the future, but the results had been—confusing and horrifying by turn. Possibility, he remembers; nothing is written yet, not anymore, so anything can happen.
“No, not yet. Assuming whoever is doing it has a modicum of intelligence—which I’m assuming they do—they’ve warded themselves against detection as well as the backlash from the barrier falling. Depending on how intelligent whoever doing this is, they’ll wait until the last minute to start killing those marked for sacrifice.”
“What does that have to do with the—oh, the wards can’t block anyone finding out what they’re doing?”
“Usually yes, but in this case, it’s a matter of scale. Crowley said it would take more than two thousand lives.” Considering Crowley’s regard for human life, ‘more’ probably means the number is at least double that. “A blood sacrifice isn’t easy to hide when working with far less; once they close the circle, they won’t be able to hide it for long. The moment it’s detectable, Ichabod wouldn’t be nearly as attractive to some of the creatures crossing the border as an active human sacrifice in progress,” he explains. “One horrific benefit of this is that the deaths will need to be accomplished as quickly as possible.”
“I don’t even know what to think of that.” Dean taps idly on one knee, like this is simply another problem to be dealt with and not an obscenity crawling inside someone he once considered a friend. “What about—”
“Why are you doing this?”
Dean pauses, tipping his head back against the building. “For some reason, I’m pretty sure that’s not the question you want to ask. No reason to think that, except I was almost to the wards on my way to the crossroads to kill Crowley before Amanda stopped me.”
“How would you have—”
“Found you? I would have,” Dean states, which he interprets as ‘no idea whatsoever.’ “Jesus, she’s good; I almost didn’t get her gun, but she had me on the ground fast enough that it didn’t matter. Remind me never to believe a goddamn word she says, by the way. Go with me, my ass.”
“I have to find out how you do that,” he says in surprise before forcing himself to return to the subject. “Dean—”
“Then again, when I told her the problem, she was pretty much onboard with the killing Crowley plan until I—you got back.” Dean rubs the heel of his boot into the ground thoughtfully. “Look, don’t be pissed, but—we made a deal, I had to or she would have probably locked me up in headquarters or something. Before you say anything—she’s one street away now, and I’m pretty sure she’s pissed enough right now at me for getting away from her this time without keeping us both invisible and she finds out later we were right in front of her.”
He looks away.
“And she’s gonna find out,” Dean adds honestly. “Come on, Cas.”
When she reaches the street, Castiel alters perception enough to include her but exclude all others, on the off-chance that more humans will for reasons unknown wander this direction. What’s wrong with them; it’s baffling.
Amanda stops short, and Castiel doesn’t have to look to be aware of her relief. “I’m going to fucking kill you,” she says to show her affection. “Both of you.”
Dean displays his suicidal tendencies. “What took you so long? Get lost or something?”
Castiel stiffens, but it’s too late to stop her, pointless to alter perception, and a truly terrible idea to snap her back to their headquarters. Oblivious, she jogs toward them, staying as close to the buildings behind them as Dean did. The crawling under his skin strengthens—humans are prey at the best of times—but he slams down on it before it accomplish more than a half-hostile snarl, waiting out the retaliatory pain grimly as he methodically destroys the foundation of a former bakery as slowly as possible.
Coming to a stop, she looks between them, expression worried and relieved at once. “Everything okay?”
“Awesome,” Dean tells her sunnily. “You know, except the existential shit. We’re gonna need more time. Make sure everyone stays inside the wards from Baltimore to Fifth; we don’t need civilians wandering around. Patrol stays south of Fifth period, but tell them to be ready to get themselves and anyone nearby behind the wards, too, fast. This can’t cross them, so that’s probably the safest place anyway. We may have to move fast, so be ready, okay?”
“For what?”
Dean blows out a breath. “Let’s go with anything.”
“Got it.” Keeping her attention on Dean, she raises an eyebrow. “Alison is gonna want an explanation, by the way.”
He makes a face. “Tell Alison we’ll explain later.”
“From Cas,” she corrects him, and Castiel stiffens involuntarily. “Something about what will happen next time Cas deliberately goes outside her range to talk to demons alone, I didn’t get it all. Half of it wasn’t even verbal.”
“That,” Dean says, brightening, “is a good idea; tell her we’re making a list. Joe holding down the fort?”
She nods distractedly, eyes darting to Castiel and back to Dean before she takes a deep breath, and stepping sideways, drops into a crouch to stare at Castiel.
“Look at me.” She waits, easily indicating she’ll wait for as long as it takes, and sighing, he looks at her. “Next time you go deal with demons, you don’t go alone. I wouldn’t have let you past the wards if I’d known what the fuck you were planning to do. You even try….” She makes a face. “You told us the reason we trained in teams was because hunters always worked alone before and that wasn’t enough anymore, not to fight a war. That includes you.”
Castiel searches her face. “How on earth do you think you could have stopped me?”
“Break your ankle,” she answers in surprise, and from his side comes a suspicious huff of laughter. “Left, where you broke your foot and cracked the bone. It’d be a clean break, don’t worry: no mobility problems later, but healing will be a bitch.” Straightening, she glances at Dean. “Anything else?”
Dean shakes his head. “Tell Joe and Vera they’re in charge forever?” She makes a dissenting noise. “Fine, until morning. Check in at midnight with me at Alison’s, otherwise keep on keeping on.”
“Got it.” She grins with a playful salute before jogging back toward the end of the street. Castiel watches her a moment too long as she disappears from sight, and he feels himself lose control of the destruction, vicious satisfaction rushing through him as it anticipates the crater it will leave of Ichabod.
“No.” Dean’s left hand clamps down on his wrist, green eyes fixing on the imminent explosion before his right hand fists, and it compresses the moment before manifesting in something not unlike a nuclear explosion. For Dean, it’s effortless, exerting his will with the unthinking expectation of obedience, and that’s exactly what he gets; the debris, crumbled into fist-size rocks, the released energy contained and dissipated. “Don’t fight it, Cas. It doesn’t have the right to fight you, so stop giving it ideas.”
The massive pressure he’s been fighting eases as Dean methodically breaks the debris down further. “How—”
“Show it who’s boss.” He makes it look like nothing, shaping the chaotic power to his will. “You accept it—”
He swallows back nausea. “No.”
“—and then you own it. Like this.” The rocks crumble into pebbles before their eyes, arranging themselves neatly into a pile identical to those that Castiel created. All at once, the pressure vanishes, cowering away at the edges of his awareness, restless but passive. It still wants to be used, but it doesn’t fight; it can’t, obedient to Dean’s will on its limitations, its use only at his pleasure. “There we go. Better?”
Castiel nods, drawing in a breath, and beside him, he feels Dean lean back against the building with a sigh, but the hand wrapped around his wrist doesn’t loosen.
“I don’t even remember how that felt then,” Dean breathes into the silence, voice rough. “But I missed it anyway, all this time. How’s that work? Like not being able to fly?”
He doesn’t trust himself to answer, or pretend that Dean needs an answer at all.
“Deep breath, Cas,” he adds in a more normal voice, resting his right arm on his upraised knees. “We got a few minutes before we need to work out what we’re gonna do with this when we run out of Ichabod to destroy.”
We. “Dean—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Dean says conversationally. “And neither are you. You can do this.”
“You don’t understand—”
“I don’t care. You are gonna do this,” Dean corrects himself, fingers tightening brutally around his wrist. “Got it?”
He closes his eyes. “Every time I use it, the memories of how it was extracted are mine, everything that was done to a human’s eternal soul on the rack. As if I were the one who—”
“I know.”
Of course he does. “How am I supposed to live with that?”
“You’ll find out by doing it,” Dean answers bluntly. “Just like I did.”
He still doesn’t understand. “How do I—live with how you’ll…” He stops at the break in his voice and tries again. “How am I supposed to live with what you’ll see every time you look at me?”
Dean is silent, and a glance shows him surveying the destruction before them with the critical eye of someone who knows what it is and is evaluating the quality. Slowly, it dawns on him; Dean would have turned that same gaze on another demon administering punishment on the rack. Not would have: once upon a time, he did just that, Alistair’s most accomplished pupil instructing others in their craft, studying their work, searching for flaws in extracting every moment of pain in administration as well as the whole.
“It’ll be fine,” Dean tells him, a ripple of something unfamiliar in his voice. “Nowhere else I want to be.”
He doesn’t have time to interpret that as the pressure returns, increasing incrementally with every moment that passes, testing. Dean’s lack of response making it bolder, creeping closer to his consciousness
Dean’s hand tightens painfully on his wrist. “Control it, Cas. Now.”
Revulsion spirals through him, but he makes himself do it and has the horrified satisfaction of feeling it scramble backward, hovering watchfully. He focuses on a shopping center to the east and feels it leap eagerly to obey, taking it apart to the foundation and sewer system beneath it almost effortlessly (a screaming soul on the rack slowly dismembered by inches by his own hands).
“That’s it,” Dean murmurs approvingly. “Keep going, let me think; what else…” He pauses. “I meant to ask—why is it warm over here?”
“I was cold,” he answers flatly. “It responded by raising the temperature in my immediate vicinity before I realized what it was doing. Personal comfort seems to be a perfectly valid use.”
“And melted the snow,” Dean says, nodding. “So why isn’t the ground wet?”
“Because I didn’t want to sit in a puddle of water, why—”
“Kansas is cold, and you personally aren’t comfortable with it and would prefer it not be wet,” Dean interrupts. “That should work, right?”
Castiel freezes a dematerializing neighborhood block four miles from their current location. “What?”
“The storm,” he says. “Can you do anything about it?”
Startled, Castiel studies it, instinctively finding the natural formation of it and then the parts that have changed it from a pleasant snowy day—albeit very snowy indeed and for greater than one day—to a monster that still grows. “I can stop it.”
“Good, then—”
“But only for a day,” he continues, examining it carefully and finding nothing to improve his projection. “Maybe two, but I doubt it. Creation is out of balance, as I told you, or it couldn’t have formed this quickly even with the backlash feeding it. And the backlash from the barrier will only grow worse until it falls. Before you ask, I can’t dissolve it; even if I still had Grace, this would be beyond me.”
“Right, that part I guessed.” Dean is silent for a moment. “So what about a parlor trick?”
“A—” Castiel looks at Dean, who doesn’t bother to hide the smug grin. “Oh.”
“Don’t dam the river,” he says, grin widening. “Just make it go around one small part with a bubble whatever. The part with the people, by the way.”
“I assumed as much.” Castiel turns his attention back to the storm, thinking: a nice snowy series of days, as it was meant to be. “Like a strainer.”
“Okay,” Dean concedes after a moment. “So not as bad?”
“Yes, but only for six hours at most. That part is too far advanced, but after that—not bad at all, just very snowy. And cold, of course.” For some reason, his mind now turns its attention to the barrier itself. He can’t fix that, and while he can—perhaps—stop the things coming through with the power he has, not for long and not very much. And if he’s right about what waits outside the barrier….
“Misborn?” Dean says, and Castiel belatedly realizes Dean is getting very good at this. “The thing outside the barrier Alicia was talking about?”
“Possibly,” he prevaricates.
“What are they?” Dean persists. “I’ve never heard of anything—they have another name?”
“No—at least, I doubt it, but perhaps I simply don’t remember it yet—and at another time, I’ll explain why, but for now….”
“Can Teresa’s wards keep them out?”
“I don’t know.” He tries to concentrate on the storm, but once again, his mind returns to the barrier. He can’t possibly construct one of those around Ichabod—even if he knew how—so why….
“Cas?”
“Teresa can’t lock the wards around Ichabod,” he hears himself say. “That’s why she only did it to the daycare. Do you know why? It’s not because she didn’t want to.”
“Uh, no,” Dean answers slowly. “Now that we’ve established that obvious fact….”
“An enclosed space,” he says. “It has actual walls—or buildings, in any case—and wards with a permanently defined perimeter always work better…that might work. At least better than what she has to do now.”
Through his mind runs thousands of years of human architecture, the advances of defense and offense—and a bar in which all of the water was transmuted to the most ridiculously expensive and finest wine in all the world.
“Cas, catch me up,” Dean says. “What are you thinking?”
Hunters have been denied all but the most essential tools of their trade in their defense of humanity, left to discover what they could on their own. Like the sigils that defend them from gods and angels, however, the goal was never for humanity to learn all that they could, as was their right from the moment of their birth, to let them become whatever they could be by their own will; it was, is, was always supposed to be a way to limit them in their options, retard their progress, assure that when war came on earth and their Father’s plan came to completion—
“—we can’t defend ourselves,” Castiel breathes, seeing the pattern of history before him that as an angel he could have seen but never thought to look. “Not anymore.”
“Cas?”
Visualizing Ichabod as it is, he superimposes a dozen different possibilities, adjusting it to his exact specifications and slowly expanding it in the correct proportions: there. Fixing it into place in his mind, he takes in the whole and the individual parts for any flaw.
“We need something new,” he says, creating an invisible boundary around Ichabod from one street south of Baltimore to Seventh Street and another a quarter mile outside what was once this town’s original city limits, snapping everything living between those boundaries into the inner circle, and making it impermeable, leaving a wide space ranging from fifty feet to three miles between the inner and outer circles.
“Cas?” Dean starts. “What are you—”
“Alison,” he says, effortlessly finding her still-searching mind; doing it himself would be too dangerous even if he was still an angel. “I need you to do something: form in your mind the concept of ‘stop’.” Her acknowledgment is almost instantaneous. “You have it? On my word, think it to your entire current range.”
He takes a breath, making sure everything is ready. “Now.”
“Jesus,” Dean breathes, unaffected but startled by whatever he can sense through Castiel. “Did she just—”
“They’ll be fine, just very surprised,” he says dismissively, concentrating on the image in his mind; what he thinks he can make reality. The ground obligingly opens up in a neat ten foot deep trench he widens to fifteen feet within the space between the two barriers, vanishing the earth for later use. “I could very much use a rib right now. But needs must: it must be something new, then.”
Protecting all organic matter within the space between the two circles, Castiel shatters the quantum bonds of everything within into an undifferentiated mass, coalescing and holding it when it tries to escape: the structures he’s already destroyed, asphalt, concrete foundations, a plethora of vehicles, all the remaining buildings marked red, he disrupts the very structure of matter to the very beginning, when Creation first began and nothing became something. The release of destructive energy he harvests quickly; it will take more than what Crowley forced on him to do this, but if one is to imagine, it should be done right.
“Holy shit!” Dean exclaims, startled. “Can you see this?”
“I can see all things.” It’s been millennia since anyone, even an angel, released power like this on earth, and never of this origin or for this purpose. It’s appropriate, however; created of human suffering and human pain and human fear, it’s fit that its use will be to prevent just that. “Though the visual spectrum is low on my priority list at the moment. What does it look like?”
Dean’s voice is very soft. “Amazing.”
He examines the idea again, looking for flaws, before building the entirety of human progress in his mind in a timeline, removes interference by the Host and various human-created gaps in their development, and sets the limits of technological advancement as it is now; if they can’t reproduce it themselves, it’s of limited future use. That doesn’t narrow it down nearly as much as he worried it would, but abundance has its own disadvantages. Scrolling through the elements, he returns to the most basic.
“Graphene: let’s start there.” He builds the first possibility for the first test, then the next and the next, chaining and dissolving the bonds over and over, thousands of combinations tested in the blink of an eye until a stable form finally manifests, perfectly compliant with physics and human progress both. The properties are correct, verified in solid, liquid, plasmic, and gaseous forms, melting and boiling point: excellent.
Carefully holding all in check, he visualizes what this will create, assuring form and function are satisfied, then takes everything he dissolved and builds the compound atom by atom, shaping it and setting it in place at the bottom of the trench and rising above the earth around them.
“That should work,” he murmurs, aware of Dean’s shocked silence beside him. “Can you see it yet? How does it look?”
There’s the sound of sudden laughter, and belatedly, Castiel realizes that it’s Dean, as throughout Ichabod thousands of people abruptly emerge from the mental shock of a powerful psychic to look at it as well. He wishes it wasn’t so dangerous to read their minds; he would like to know what they think of it.
He’s not sure how long it takes (it’s forever in here), but Dean’s presence is constant; if he could, he’d shove him out and away, block him, make him leave. He doesn’t want to, or Dean doesn’t; he can’t quite tell the difference anymore, and he doesn’t actually care.
Weather is a problem, and not just because Castiel is no longer an angel. Creation is unbalanced, and the dramatic changes in weather and natural disasters are only symptoms of the fundamental problem; the Apocalypse set in motion chaos that Creation cannot entirely compensate for. The backlash strengthening it isn’t the only problem; any interference now will set in motion a chain of events that he couldn’t predict even if he could still see all that is and will be.
Setting Ichabod at center, he slowly builds not a dam but a bubble; instead of stopping it, it simply encourages it to slide past it. It won’t stop it all, of course, but enough to remove the greatest danger and a great deal of the lesser dangers involved in temperature, wind, and excessive snow.
He saved it for last, part of his mind carefully working out the logistics depending on how much power he’ll have at his disposal. The entire state no, but that was never a possibility, but there’s sufficient for a radius of thirty miles from Ichabod’s newly-created city limits, which will easily encompass the farthest checkpoint and most of the well-packed roads. A final check shows— “They haven’t reached the third road.”
“Yeah, engine went out or something,” Dean agrees, sounding startlingly normal. “Almost forgot—can you clear the rest?”
“I already did,” he answers, removing all the snow in a thirty mile radius as well; the coming days will replace it, of course, but for at least a little while it will be a much easier walk. Excellent idea: unnumbered people will more easily arrive at Ichabod and among them others who may be under some compulsion and on seeing him might desire his death.
Dean squeezes his wrist, which is grounding, but not enough.
Humans do this all the time; it may be the defining characteristic of the species. Right now, he doesn’t have to endure their fear and dislike as the price he pays for being allowed among them, that they don’t hesitate to betray even after payment’s rendered; they can’t find him now. It would be so easy right now, perhaps even kind: the barrier is falling, and they’ll be hunted soon, perhaps even now, but a thought and he could—
“Get this done,” Dean says softly.
Finish his work, yes: setting the thirty mile radius, he pours all that’s left into it, and abruptly emerges back into the street, aware of Dean’s hands on his shoulders and wondering what’s wrong.