By the top of the stairs, Beckett was well and truly in cop mode. She held up her had for everyone to stop. If they barged straight in like her the Winchesters clearly wanted to, well they might have the element of surprise, but on the other hand they could be running straight into a trap. She peered cautiously around the door. At first glance, the room appeared empty. On the other side of the expanse of bare, worn carpet, the front door was open, still swinging slightly from a hurried exit. The carefully poured salt lines were scattered, as though a wind had struck up inside the house and disrupted them. Two windows were broken and the vomit-green wallpaper had new tears in it, where rock salt been embedded in the wall by a shotgun blast. There was no-one in the room. She stepped around the door, signalling that it was safe.

                There was a smear of blood on the wall beside the door into the kitchen. Her breath caught and she steeled herself. Please don’t be Ryan or Esposito. Please don’t be Ryan or Esposito.

                “Stay here,” Sam Winchester instructed, blocking off her path with an arm before she could bring herself to step through the door.

                Being ordered to stay where she was by someone, particularly if it was in order to protect her feminine sensibilities would usually annoy Beckett, making her automatically want to take charge of the situation, but this time she knew she was less capable of taking care of the situation if there was a demon in there. It was better to let the professional go first. But if Ryan and Esposito were in there, hurt, she wasn’t going to wait outside and let Sam deal with it.

                Sam stepped through the door into the kitchen. Beckett forced herself to stand still and wait for him to give the okay.

                A second later, there was an almighty crash, followed by a thumping. Beckett readied her shotgun, peering around the door. The kitchen was empty of furniture, just a bare room decorated in orange and brown, with spaces between the cupboards where the fridge and oven would be. A plastic-topped breakfast bar divided the room into two. The thumping had been Sam being thrown over it, hitting the stools that were built into the floor on the way down and finally landing heavily on the unconscious body of a well-dressed Asian man. Beckett breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t Ryan or Esposito, and then mentally berated herself for being so insensitive. Even if he wasn’t her friend, he was still a person. At least he was breathing.

                “Sorry,” Sam whispered to the unresponsive figure as he rolled off him, reaching for the knife that had tumbled from his hand in the fall.

                The demon who had thrown Sam across the room rounded the end of the bench to finish Sam off and was taken by surprise when Sam suddenly threw himself forward, knife in hand. The two tumbled away into the far section of the kitchen. Beckett dashed forward as quietly and inconspicuously as she could and began to check on the unconscious man. She used her police first aid training to ensure he wasn’t going to choke on his tongue before checking his spine for damage. The only injury she could find was a large bump on his head, so she dragged him out of the room, out of the way of Sam and the demon.

                When she had him in the living room she could hear the sounds of the recorded exorcism playing in the first bedroom, interrupted by shouting and taunts from Dean and a woman with a somewhat shrill voice. Still further crashing was coming from the next room. Beckett made a judgement call and decided she would be of more use helping Sam in the kitchen. She picked up her salt gun and marched back into the kitchen. It was just as well she did, too. Sam had clearly been holding his own. The demon was bleeding heavily from a cut on its leg, blood staining its torn jeans red. Its black eyes were stark against a pale face marred by bruising, and its right arm was bent at an unnatural angle.  But Sam had lost the knife. It was halfway across the room, its tip embedded in brown linoleum and probably the floor beneath. Sam was against the wall, grabbing at his throat, held there by some kind of invisible force. He gasped for breath, his face turning red.

                The demon was in the middle of one of those acid, evil-mastermind speeches they seemed so fond of, its attention fully on Sam. “You can make this stop,” it was saying, “All you have to do it say yes.”

                “No,” Sam gasped out, subtly catching Beckett’s eye and glancing over at the knife.

                Beckett checked that the demon was concentrating on Sam and snuck over to the knife. She pulled it out with one hard yank, as Sam did his best to distract the demon with any insults he could get out. The knife was lighter than she had expected, worn down by use. It felt big and clumsy in her hand, made for someone much bigger than her. She stood up, saw the demon catch sight of her out of the corner of its eye, and leapt forward, stabbing it in the back with one quick, sharp thrust. It went in shockingly easily, and the demon burnt out with a red-white light and a crackle. The body it had been wearing collapsed to the floor, dead, the knife still in its back. Beckett stood still, trembling, as Sam pushed himself away from the wall, coughing as he recovered the ability to breathe. The room smelled of sulfur.

                “He was already dead,” Sam assured her as he pulled the knife from the dead man’s back.

                It didn’t make her feel better. It was a sickening thing, stabbing someone, even if it was to save a life. Much worse than shooting someone. It was somehow more personal. Her mind kept replaying the squelch of the knife entering his body and her stomach churned. There was fresh blood on her hands.

                Sam casually wiped the bloody knife on his shirt and examined it for damage. Beckett hoped she never got that used to killing things. She followed him out of the room to see if the others needed help.

                They found them in the second bedroom. There was a dead man on the floor in front of the doorway. They had to step around him to go in. Inside, two women were lying in the corner, torn up and unconscious. Someone had carefully put them in the recovery position. A young man was stirring on the other side of the room.

                In the corner beside the closet, Dean Winchester was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, clutching his stomach. He was even more covered in blood than he had been after they had exploded the demon in the basement. Castiel was crouched beside him, trench coat ruffled and hair even messier than usual, but otherwise clean and unharmed.

                “Dean!” Sam exclaimed, crossing the room in three long strides.

                “Fireworks,” Dean said clearly.

                Castle came across from where he had been examining the closet door to stand beside Beckett. He took her in his arms and hugged her briefly. Beckett hugged him back, ignoring the stickiness of drying blood on their clothing, choosing to concentrate on the comforting warmth of Castle’s body.

                “Any sign of Ryan and Esposito?” She asked, half dreading the answer.

                “We… uh… found a gun and a crushed IPod,” Castle told her, “No other sign though. They’re probably hiding somewhere.”

                Beckett nodded. Well, at least they hadn’t found their bodies.

                “There are no fireworks, Dean,” Castiel was informing his friend, “I must examine your wound.”

                “Want to check out my body, huh?” Dean sounded tired, but managed a grin.

                “Dean! Let us look, you could be hurt really bad,” his brother demanded, almost shoving Castiel out of the way.

                “What happened?” Beckett asked.

                Castle grimaced. “I was facing the other way, shooting this demon with rock salt, only I had to use my left hand,” he waved his cast, “And when I finally got it and turned back around, another one had slit open his belly. It was so deep…” Castle trailed off, a look of faint horror on his face as he remembered. “I finally got them into the devil’s trap, but I swear he stopped breathing. I thought he was dead.  By the time Castiel got here and disposed of the demons, Dean was okay again.”

Beckett followed his gaze over to where Sam and Castiel were examining Dean’s abdomen. Sam was prodding at a cut. Dean groaned. “This is going to need stitches,” Sam said, removing his shirt to rip into bandages.

“Well, less dead, anyway,” Castle amended.

“If I ever die in your company, I want someone else to check that I’m dead before they put me in the coffin.”

“I will take him back to Detective Beckett’s apartment,” Cas told Sam.

“Wait,” Dean held up a hand, “What about Ryan and Esposito? I like those guys.”

There was a muffled banging from the closet.

“I knew there was something in there,” Castle said.

Beckett followed him over to it, ready with her gun in case it wasn’t Ryan or Esposito. Castle flung the door open.

“Are you holding hands?” He asked amusedly.

“No,” Ryan and Esposito denied in unison, dropping hands.

Esposito stepped over the line of salt he and his partner had laid on the inside of the door first. His shirt was torn and he had the beginnings of a black eye, but otherwise he seemed fine. He carried a small, half empty bag of salt.

“There were too many of them. We lost all of our weapons,” he said. “Sorry we couldn’t hold them off longer.”

“You did well for beginners. We probably put a bit much on your plates,” Sam said, throwing them a quick once over before turning back to his brother. “See, they’re fine. Now will you let Cas take you?”

Ryan followed Esposito out of the closet. A line trail of blood ran down his face from a cut on his forehead. He was limping slightly. “What kind of house doesn’t put doorknobs on the inside of closets? We could have been stuck in there for years.”

XXX

An hour later, they were back in Beckett’s apartment. They stopped and called emergency services anonymously from a public telephone on the way, and followed it up with a quick pause in the backyard of an unoccupied house to hose themselves off. There was no way they could walk up to Beckett’s house covered in that much blood without being noticed. Anyway, Beckett wanted nothing more than to get the gunk off her as soon as possible. She felt a little sick every time she thought about being covered in person.

Dean was in her bed again, scrubbed clean and thankfully not naked this time. Beckett thought Castle might be frowning a little jealously at when he saw where Dean was, and realised that no matter how gorgeous Dean might be, it gave her way more of a thrill to think of Castle being jealous than it did to think of doing anything with Dean. She kind of thought she’d have some serious competition if she’d tried anything with Dean anyway, what with the way Cas was looking at him.

“Is anyone else hungry?” Castle asked. Beckett looked out the window. The sun was coming up.

They took turns in the shower before ordering food. Beckett had never felt anything as good as the warm water as it ran over her, and the feeling of clean, non-matted hair. By the time she got out, Dean was out of bed, sitting on the sofa. A thick white bandage was wound around his middle, and a red scar in the shape of a handprint stood out vividly on his left shoulder. Cas was gone, checking out the demon situation and getting food. Beckett sat next to Dean. Castle pulled up a chair to talk to Dean.

“So what do we do now that we know about these things?” Castle asked, “I mean we can’t just go back to how we were.”

“Yes you can,” Dean said firmly, “Someone needs to deal with the humans. They’re not going to stop killing each other just because it’s the apocalypse. In fact it’s probably going to get worse. And you,” he turned to Castle, “Keep writing. It makes people happy. Distracts them from reality.” A faraway, unhappy look appeared in his eyes for a moment. Something told Beckett that sometimes Dean needed distracting. Then it was gone and Dean was grinning at them. “And I want to know what happens to Nikki Heat.”

XXX

They sat around eating and napping and generally recovering for most of the morning. Castiel popped out periodically to check on the situation, and finally gave them the all clear just before noon.

It was kind of awkward saying good-bye. What do you say to people who you just fought demons with and will probably never see again? Don’t worry, you got this? You can totally stop the world ending? In the end, Beckett just went for “Goodbye,” and promised to call Bobby Singer if she ever comes across a case that might be supernatural, rather than taking it on herself.

Ryan and Esposito disappeared shortly after the Winchesters, promising to check in later. Castle made a phone call to Alexis and Martha. Beckett could almost hear the relief and anger coming through the phone, even though she’d gone into the next room to give him some privacy.

“Come to my place for lunch,” Castle insisted when he came back into the room. “They were worried about you too.”

He wouldn’t let her decline, but in the end she was glad she didn’t. When Alexis greeted her with a hug almost as long as the one she gave her father, Beckett suddenly remembered how good it felt to know people cared about her.

XXX

“So,” Castle said after lunch, when Martha and Alexis had left the room not-so-subtly to give them some time alone together. “Demons are real. I bet you fifty bucks that the next time I suggest the CIA it’s true.”

“A hundred.”

Beckett smiled, moving in a bit closer on the couch.

THE END

previous

Witchcraft was real! Castle accidently let out a slight whoop of excitement when the blue flames shot up from the bowl and the witches were suddenly tied up. He almost couldn’t believe his eyes, but if there was anything he’d learnt over the past few days, it was that if something looked impossible, it probably wasn’t. He was getting more optimistic about this plan all the time. And, okay, the witches were a little disappointing in appearance, but you couldn’t have everything. He looked over at Beckett to see if she shared his excitement. She looked back at him, faintly disapproving, but suppressing a smile, they same way she looked at him when he got excited over particularly interesting crime scenes. He contained himself and went back to standing quietly against the wall.

 Sam was talking earnestly to the witches; his hands open in front of him to show he had no weapons. His eyes were big and his voice soft, his face serious but not angry. He was suddenly much less intimidating and more likeable than Castle had ever seen him. He wondered if it was a conscious act, or just Sam’s basic self finally peeking through the hunter-exterior. Either way, it seemed to be working. The witches were struggling less and even seemed to be listening.

“Why did you become witches?” Sam asked the three women. “To be at one with nature? To get back at someone who hurt you? Because you felt like you were getting nowhere in life and you just needed a little something to help you along? I get it, I do. But the thing about using magic to help you do things you shouldn’t be able to do is that it doesn’t matter why you’re using it. You come to rely on it more and more, and it gets darker and darker. Before you realise it, you’re doing things that would have horrified you a year ago.”

Castle was becoming more aware of the gaping gaps in the explanations the Winchesters had given them. It wasn’t that he blamed them for leaving stuff out, exactly. He was pretty sure that the Winchesters had thought that they were saving him and his friends pain by only giving them the bare essentials, but it would be nice to know everything. Sam sounded like he was speaking from experience, and it made Castle think that maybe there was a good reason they couldn’t bring in other hunters to fight the demons.

The witches’ expressions were hard to read behind the gags that prevented them from speaking words of power, but the one on the left was beginning to look a little shamefaced. Her pale blue eyes were fixed on a spot in the middle of the concrete floor, and her frizzy hair fell across her face as she hung her head slightly, refusing to look at anyone.

“Think about what you’re doing,” Sam continued. Behind him, Dean checked the clip of his gun and slid it back into place with a clip. He was leaning casually against the wall, but still managed to look like he was willing to shoot them. The contrast was effective. Very good-cop/bad-cop. Castle wondered if they’d staged it like that deliberately, with Sam unarmed and innocent eyes presenting logical arguments and mercy, and Dean visible behind him providing a silent threat. Castle made a note to keep it in mind for his next book.  “Do you really want to kill Dean? Is joining Lucifer something you could live with?”

The witch on the left was looking more and more unsure. She glanced nervously across to her leader. The witch with the glasses was resolving herself. She straightened her shoulders, tossed her hair so the grey waves were out of her face, and looked Sam directly in the eye. She nodded.

“In that case,” said Dean, pushing himself away from the wall, “We’re going to blow up your magic shop.”

“Dean! Not helping.” Sam glared at his brother briefly before turning pleading eyes back on the witches. “We’re not blowing anything up.”

Castle stamped down the unexpected jolt of disappointment that ran through him and thought hard. His optimism about the plan was fading by the minute. They needed something that would really convince the witches that it would be better for them to help out the Winchesters. Convincing people that fantasy was reality, or at least possible, was his job. Nobody would read fiction if they couldn’t suspend their disbelief and accept the impossible as truth. That was all he needed to do now: make three women imagine the consequences of a decision. If they could vividly imagine what would happen and see that it wouldn’t end well for anyone, maybe they would accept Sam’s proposition. He could do this.

Of course, when he was writing a book, the consequence of not convincing the audience was not as dramatic. Less like hell-on-earth, more like declining sales. But anyway, it couldn’t hurt to give it a try. He caught Beckett’s eye. She frowned and shook her head slightly. He took that as sign to go for it.

“Look,” Sam was saying, as his brother paced impatiently behind him, “Do you really think Lucifer will reward you? He’s the devil.”

Castle stepped away from the wall and went to stand beside Sam. He chose to pretend he couldn’t hear Beckett groaning quietly. He winked at her before addressing the witches. “When Lucifer inherits the earth he turns it into hell,” he began, imagining himself at home, tapping away at laptop keys as he began his newest book. “New York burns, but it’s cold, colder than you can imagine. All the food is gone, and the people turn on each other as they try to stave off the hunger that stabs at them…” He drifted away into the zone he sometimes fell into when he was writing, when the words came easily and conjured up pictures that ran like a film in his head. They other people in the room faded into the background as his imagination ran wild.

“Okay, okay, stop!” Someone interrupted, breaking his flow. He blinked, and the images of post-apocalyptic New York disappeared, replaced by the whitewashed basement. The three witches still sat before him, but now they were all staring at him, looking slightly shell-shocked, and they one on the left was no longer gagged. It was she who had spoken. “We don’t want that. We’ll help. Just stop describing it!”

“Finally,” Dean said, but before he could say more his phone let out a burst of Smoke on the Water, and he reached into his pocket to answer it, motioning for his brother to continue.

Castle left Sam to it and went to join Beckett in the corner where she was packing salt rounds. “Did you see that?” He asked. “It’s totally worked. I just convinced them not to help Satan take over the world! I can see the headlines now: ‘Handsome, bestselling author saves New York’…”

“Well it may have worked this time, Castle, but don’t get any ideas about trying it on any of our cases. Someone might shoot you just to stop you talking.”

“Oh come on, what murderer would fail to see the error of his ways in the face of such brilliant and evocative writing?” Castle grinned roguishly at her.

“Who said it would be the murderer?” Beckett flashed him a cheeky smile and let her eyes linger on his. Castle’s pulse jumped. Maybe now would be a good time to tell her how he felt?

“Yeah, you can hang up now, Cas,” Castle heard Dean say from behind him. “Yeah, no, okay, I’ll try. Bye.”

Castle turned to look at Dean as the hunter snapped his phone shut and slid it back into his pocket. “You guys ready?” Dean asked.  “Cas says there’s a group of demons on their way. He couldn’t hold them off any longer. This is your last chance to leave.”

“We’re ready,” Castle and Beckett said in unison. Castle took Beckett’s hand. Not because he was worried or anything. Just as a gesture of solidarity.

“Good. Now remember, we’re not Dean and Sam Winchester. We need to convince the demons that the bounty on me is a trick by the angels to gather the demons together and distract them from something else. Powerful angels can make others see what they want them to, so we have to convince them that we are angels pretending to be us. Do you get it?”

“Kind of?” said Castle.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Beckett questioned.

Dean grinned falsely. “Nope, but it’s the best hope we’ve got. Those sigils should be dry by now,” he handed Castle a bucket of whitewash and a brush. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, just cover them up.” He clapped Castle on the back and walked back over to where his brother was talking to the witches.

                Castle and Beckett slapped whitewash on the walls, messily covering up the red symbols. Some of the sigils weren’t quite dry and the paint smudged as they brushed over it, but there was no time to worry about that now.

                A faint thumping sounded upstairs, followed by the blast of a shotgun. The first demons had found Ryan and Esposito. Castle told himself they were fine, that they could take care of themselves, but all the same, he held his breath until he heard a second shot and then muffled shouts from both men. They were fine. He sloshed whitewash over the last sigil and got out of the way. This was one time he was happy to figuratively stay in the car, armed with holy water and salt. He backed into the corner, bucket of holy water at the ready. Beckett stood beside him with an open can of salt, ready to rush up the stairs and pour a salt line across the doorway after the first demons came in.

                The first demon entered the room, and Castle couldn’t quite control the shudder that went through him. The delicate features of the man who had tortured Dean seemed more sinister now he knew what lurked behind them. Castle could see him more clearly now that he wasn’t looking through a haze of panic and concussion (although the panic was creeping back up on him), and the man’s bones seemed sharp rather than breakable, his pale skin stretched tightly across them.

                “Oh Dean,” said Joe, “A welcoming committee? You shouldn’t have.” He smiled, and the harsh light from the bare bulb made twisted shadows on his face, hiding his eyes in black holes. He walked down the steps, followed by three more demons, two of them large men and one in the body of an extremely attractive woman.

                Upstairs, there was more thumping and a series of shotgun blasts.

                Castle took slow, deep breaths, glad of Beckett’s hand on his arm. He looked across at Dean.

                Dean seemed frozen, an expression of absolute terror on his face, but then he shook himself off, shaping his face into a smile. “Glad you could join us, Joe. Come on in.”

                “Coming back from the dead,” the demon commented, approaching Dean. He carefully stepped around the devil’s trap. “That’s a neat trick. Aren’t you a special boy?”

                The last of the demons stepped off the stairs, and Castle covered Beckett’s back as she dashed up the stairs to make the salt line. Deep Purple blasted out of Dean’s pocket again, but he ignored it. There must be more demons on the way.

                “I can see how you would think that,” Dean said, a smarmy smile on his face, “But the thing is… I’m not Dean.”

                Joe snorted. “Nice try, Winchester.”

                In the corner, partially hidden from view by Sam’s body and the now empty bench, the witches worked.

                “It is not wise to laugh at angels, boy.” Sam spoke up. That was the code phrase. Castle got ready to toss his bucket of holy water if it went wrong.

                “Oh, you want proof?” Dean asked, drawing attention back to himself before the demons could register the presence of people behind Sam. He snapped his fingers. Joe exploded. A fountain of red splatter coated the walls, hiding the sudden flash of flame in the corner of the room.

                Castle shuddered, wiping his face on his sleeve, and threw up a little in his mouth. Even Beckett, who had a stomach of iron was gagging and looked green.

                “Well, that’s going to lower the price of the house,” he whispered.

                The three remaining demons looked terrified, on the verge of turning and running. “Michael?” The woman whispered tremulously.

                “No, but I can see how you might think that,” Dean did a credible job of looking smug rather than revolted. “Try again. I’ll give you a clue: I believe in just desserts.” He raised his fingers to snap them again.

                “G-Gabriel?” The largest man stuttered. “But you refused to take part…”

                “Maybe, maybe not,” Dean sing-songed. He waved his hand and Beckett stepped forward with a bucket of holy water, soaking the demons until they smoked like they were on fire. Sam dashed forward and jammed his knife into the ribs of the nearest demon. A strange red light leaked momentarily from the wound before the demon fell, lifeless, to the ground.

                The third demon had recovered from the holy water and was charging straight at Dean, a look of pure venom on her face. Beckett shot her in the back with the salt gun. She flinched and spun around in annoyance. Castle threw himself, tackling Beckett out of the way as Dean snapped his fingers again and the witches sent the bench hurtling across the room, pinning the demon against the wall. A wind blew up disturbing the salt line, and when Castle next looked up, the fourth demon was gone, running away to warn his comrades that the angel Gabriel was in town.

                Castle pressed play on his IPod and an exorcism came through the speakers. Black smoke vomited from the pinned woman, streaming through the floor and disappearing. Sam laid two fingers on her neck to check her pulse and shook his head. She was dead.

`               Dean broke the silence. “I can’t believe they fell for that.”

                “They won’t believe it for long if we have to prove it to anyone else,” Sam said.

                Upstairs, something thudded hard against a wall. “Ryan and Esposito!” Beckett exclaimed, leading the charge up the stairs.

previous next

Beckett glanced across at Castle. She didn’t like this plan, but they had no time to think of a better one. At least it was more practical than most of the ideas Castle had suggested, which had ranged from blessing the clouds so it would rain holy water to putting out an announcement that the Winchesters would be in an empty building and then having all the demons that turned up battle it out in an organised fight club. Not much more practical, though.

                The signal sounded. That was their cue. Beckett raised the salt gun in readiness to fire if it was necessary, covering Castle’s back as he carefully spray-painted a devil’s trap on the ground beside the basement window. His hand shook slightly, but the finished symbol was a perfect replica of what they had been taught. Beckett knew that his arms were hurting, and it didn’t help that he had to spray with his left hand because of the cast on his right. She wanted to take the can from him and do it herself, but she knew his injured shoulders couldn’t take the kick of a shotgun. They needed someone able-bodied ready to fire if a demon found them.

                They couldn't take on a hundred demons. That had been obvious from the beginning. Beckett had seen the fight between Sam and Cas and the two demons, and the demons had put up a serious fight. And Cas was an angel. In a fight with an inexperienced hunter like Beckett or Ryan or Esposito, there would be no question about who would win. It wouldn't even be worth turning up. Not to mention the fact that Castle was injured, and would have even less of a chance, but they need him there just to make up numbers.

Dean had said it when he was having his strategy meeting with Sam and Castiel. "There are seven of us, four of us aren't hunters, and one of us is injured. We can't fight."

"Two, Dean, two of us are injured," Sam had said.

Dean had steadied himself on the back of the sofa and ignored his brother. "We need to somehow get them to leave."

"I could," Cas had started, but Dean had cut him off.

"No one is throwing themselves in front of a bus today, Cas."

Castle had attracted Beckett's attention then, waving a piece of pizza in front of her face, and she had let herself be drawn back into the conversation. Castle was getting his colour back, the twinkle coming back into his eye despite the pain in his shoulders and the situation waiting outside, and Beckett found she was reassured despite herself. She listened patiently to his crazy plans for staving off impending doom, and even contributed some points herself. She knew that the Winchesters wouldn't actually take up any of the plans, but the crazier the plan was, the easier it was to pretend that it wasn't really happening.

Now, as she watched Castle's back in the dark, she kind of wished they had gone for one of those plans. Cas had caused a thunderstorm before; surely it wouldn't be that hard for him to make it rain holy water. From the sounds of things, there would be a lot less blood involved in that plan.

It was hard to see the devil's trap on the ground. The dark red spray paint blended in with the rough dirt between the houses, and everything looked grey in the dark. It was darker than usual for New York. Maybe it was because they were out of the central city, in a part of town where the majority of the streetlights were broken. Maybe it was just the weather, the moon covered by thick clouds. But it felt like more than that. Beckett fingered the anti-possession charm around her neck and told herself she was imagining things. The sky did not get darker when something bad was about to happen. It was ridiculous.

Beckett and Castle moved around to the next window, around the back of the house. Castle painted the sign on the concrete pavers in the tiny, dirty yard, and Beckett shone her penlight over it to check it was intact before moving on to the next possible exit from the house. Check and repeat, check and repeat, for every door and window.

They left the front door free of traps. The demons needed a way in. She could hear nothing inside, and wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. She watched as Castle hid the spray can in a bunch of weeds beside the house. It was nearly empty. So there was a good use for spray paint. She knew what she was going to do with the next can of spray paint she confiscated from a troubled teenager trying to make his mark on the world.

Beckett and Castle moved out of sight, around the corner. They sat in the single overgrown bush that they had been hiding in before the first signal, and waited.

"Hey, Castle," Beckett said quietly. She wasn't really sure how to start this conversation. Talking about feelings was not something she was good at. She brushed aside a branch that was jabbing into her side. "I just wanted to say..." she paused, trying to find the right words. If the plan didn't work and New York really did turning into a battleground of demon warfare, she wanted Castle to know what he meant to her. "You're a really good friend. Probably my best friend, and I want you to know..."

"Why, Beckett, are you giving me the last night on earth speech?" Castle quirked an eyebrow at her, wearing that cheeky little grin that always made her heart - no, wait, did nothing for her, nothing at all.

Beckett spluttered, whacking him softly in the head. "Hey, I'm just taking pity on you here."

Castle reached across and took her right hand in his left. She'd never noticed how big it was before. It practically swallowed hers. She squeezed his hand gently, careful to avoid his scraped knuckles.

Castle looked at her, his face suddenly serious. "Beckett," he said, "Kate. When this is over, we should - “And then the second signal sounded, cutting off the end of his sentence.

Beckett squeezed Castle's hand a final time, and felt his answering squeeze. Together, they crawled forward, peering out of the bush.

 She stood up, helping Castle up after her, and walked towards the door they had left unprotected. Suddenly, the implications of what they were about to do hit her. It started to sink in that there was a very real possibility that people would die tonight, and if the plan didn’t work –well, she didn’t even want to think about it. Her chest constricted as she remembered she hadn’t said a proper good-bye to Ryan and Esposito. She’d never even told them how much she valued them as both team-members and friends. It was just something she never spoke out loud. And now they were off enticing witches to follow them to the house. Bait. That’s what they were. What if they never came back, and she’d never let them know?

Castle looked down at her. “Ryan and Esposito will be fine. They’re good cops,” he told her, almost like he was reading her mind. He took her hand once more. “Beckett, tonight we are going to kick some supernatural ass. Try to look a little excited.” They walked inside, hand in hand.  

The inside of the house was brightly lit and surprisingly clean. For some reason it seemed wrong. Beckett had been kind of expecting darkness and dirt, ripped wallpaper and suspicious stains. Instead, she found an old but well cared-for building that had clearly once been someone's home, and it didn't match with her expectations of the site of a demonic battleground. Until she was inside, peering around at the pleasant, unfurnished living-room with the horrendously ugly carpet, she hadn't been aware she had expectations of what a demonic battleground looked like. She hadn't even believed in demons until two days ago, why would she? She peered around. It looked exactly as though it was waiting for a real estate agent to show potential buyers around, except for the thick line of salt across the window sills.

"Oh good, you're here," Sam poked his head around a door. "Come on down."

Beckett followed him down a steep set of stairs into a basement that was edging closer to what she'd been expecting. The floor was concrete; the walls whitewashed brick, and the air damp. A bright, bare bulb hung glowing in the centre of the ceiling. The room was empty, except for a bench in the corner covered in things that Beckett wasn't sure she even wanted to know about. A devil's trap was spray painted on the floor in front of the bench, and red symbols stood out starkly on the white of the walls. The paint looked disturbingly like blood.

"Is that an altar?" Castle didn't stop to peer around, making a beeline for the bench in the corner. He prodded at a bowl, which wobbled where it was perched precariously on a stand over a black candle. Beckett could hear liquid sloshing in it, and really didn't want to know what it was. Sam and Dean both made sudden movements towards him, in useless attempts to stop anything being spilled. "I used one of these in Devil's Storm. The Satanic cult that had captured Derek Storm was trying to summon the devil. Wait - that's not what this is for, is it? Because I don't think that's a good idea."

"Trust me, dude, summoning Luci is the last thing we want to do. He's the one behind all this bounty crap." Dean sounded casual, but Beckett knew body language, and Dean was not a relaxed man.

"Wait, Satan is real? I mean really real? How do you know?" Castle absently picked up a piece of something green and herby, but wasn't really looking at it as he turned back to face the Winchesters.

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. They didn't answer the question. "Can you put that down?" Sam asked. "It's really important that everything is in exactly the right place."

"How important? If this is in the wrong place, will it make everyone sprout extra limbs or go blind or something? Because I never saw anything in my research about positioning ingredients." Castle laid the herb back on the bench, distracted for the time being.

"You ready?" Dean came over to stand beside Beckett. "You don't need to do this, you know. It's not your job. You can still back out. Take Jessica Fletcher over there and leave."

Beckett stood up a little straighter and checked her shotgun. "It's my job to protect the people of New York, even if it's from something they don't believe in," she told him. "Besides, why is it your job? Why should you be fighting these things?"

Dean chuckled wryly. "No one else will. Plus, it might not seem like it sometimes, but the world's not a bad place. Beats the alternative. Someone should fight for it."

A car door slammed outside followed by a second slam exactly ten seconds later.

"That's our signal," Dean said. "Get ready with the salt."

Upstairs, the door opened and closed. Footsteps sounded overhead, and the quiet sound of Ryan and Esposito's voices grew louder as they came down the stairs to the basement. Beckett breathed a sigh of relief as they came into view, safe and unharmed.

"How'd it go?" Dean asked as they entered.

"Everything went according to plan," Ryan informed him. He was holding a paper bag, which he handed to Sam before walking across to stand by Beckett.

"The store was a coven alright. We let them ‘overhear’ that we have the Winchesters captured and tied up. We've got three witches on our tail, maybe two minutes out." Esposito reported. "Castiel is distracting the nearest nest of demons, so that should give us a while with the witches before the demons start turning up."

Dean nodded. "You two stay upstairs. Make sure your guns are loaded and you've got iron chains and holy water ready. If everything works right, you shouldn't need to use them, but you should be prepared. If any demons get in, salt the front door, and don't attack unless they see you."

Ryan and Esposito checked they had everything, and came over to give Beckett the cop-gesture of solidarity, a double pat on the shoulder. They repeated the gesture with Castle, apologising when he flinched.

"Wait,” said Dean, just as they were about to go through the door. “Was Cas… okay?”

“Oh yeah,” Esposito said. “Last we saw, he was handing this demon its ass.”

Dean smirked proudly. “Good. You guys better get upstairs.”

Beckett fought off the feeling of foreboding that was invading her gut, worsened by Dean muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, "I hate this plan."

They didn't have long to wait after that. Beckett flattened herself against the wall, trying to keep out of the way until she was needed. Castle did the same on the opposite wall, offering her a smile that wasn't quite up to his usual confidence level, but helped all the same.

The witches entered as a group. Beckett was somewhat disappointed by their appearance. She'd been raised on The Wizard of Oz, and was kind of hoping that powerful witches would have the consideration to be obvious about it. Maybe not green skin and pointy hats, but a wart or two would help with identification, and she'd thought they would be old and, well, evil-looking. Castle's expression was comically disappointed. Beckett suspected it was not for the same reason as her, though. A few weeks ago, when they'd had a case involving a pagan who practiced 'witchcraft', he had espoused for some time about how witches were always young and hot, because they used their powers to take years off themselves. He’d probably been hoping for Willow and Tara from Buffy, not a trio of decidedly average looking aging hippies. These witches were middle-aged and plump. All of them had wavy hair flowing over their shoulders and wore long floating dresses. One wore glasses.

“Dean Winchester,” began the glasses-wearing witch as they reached the base of the steps. “Isn’t he handsome?” It wasn’t really directed at anyone. Beckett couldn’t really blame her, though. It was what she’d thought the first time she’d seen him without blood all over him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sam roll his eyes.

The witch with the glasses made a gesture with one hand. One of the sidekick witches (Beckett could tell she was a sidekick because she was standing a little behind the witch with the glasses) began to drone in a language Beckett didn’t recognise. A slight wind began to pick up inside the basement. Beckett shivered in the sudden cold.

“Wait,” Sam interrupted.

The woman kept talking. A thin chain appeared from nowhere and shot towards Dean, snaking its way around his neck.

“I said wait,” Sam repeated angrily, and flicked his lighter, dropping it into a bowl of herbs on the bench. A jet of blue flame shot up a foot above the bowl and immediately died back down to a faint glow.

Beckett looked back at the witches. All three were suddenly sitting bound and gagged at the base of the steps.

Dean unwound the chain from his neck. “Ladies,” he said, “We have a proposition for you.”

XXX previous next

“So you exorcised them, right? Problem solved?” Castle asked hopefully. He knew it wouldn’t be that simple, things never were. Usually, he liked it that way. Simple was boring. What kind of book finished with ‘and then they saved him and sent all the demons back to hell’? But this was one time when Castle really, really wanted the simple answer to be right.

                It wasn’t. The angel, who was still sitting stiffly beside Dean on Beckett’s sofa, turned his head to look at him. His blue eyes were serious. Actually, his whole body was serious. And not even a little bit soft and cuddly. Castle prided himself on his imagination, but he had to admit that if he was writing a book with angels in it, this was not what he would have gone for. The angel said, “The news of Dean’s whereabouts has travelled. Demons are converging on New York in the hundreds. The problem is not solved.”

                “Can’t you just transport him away?” Beckett suggested sensibly. Castle felt a glow of pride about how well she was rising to the challenge.

                Sam leaned forward, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “Not exactly. The thing is, once the demons are here, it doesn’t really matter where Dean is. It’ll be chaos. There’s a reward for him, see. A big one. Once the demons realise they’re wasting their time, they’ll take it out on each other. We’re gonna have full on warring factions, and people will get caught in the crossfire. Not to mention what demons do for fun when they aren’t working.”

                “If the word gets out far enough, there will be others looking for the Winchesters. It will not be safe for anyone who has witnessed their presence,” Cas added, looking away from Castle and down at Dean. Dean had refused to lie down on the couch and was now listing towards Cas, apparently fast asleep. Cas gazed at him curiously and sat awkwardly as his friend slumped against him.

                “Dean?” Sam jumped up and rushed to check on his brother.

                “What do you mean, others?” Castle asked.

                Before anyone could answer his question, there was a knock on the door. It followed the same pattern that Beckett had used when they had arrived. Sam quickly repositioned his brother so Dean was lying on the couch and went to answer the door, making a detour to the table to fill up two shot glasses from a hipflask full of holy water.

                Ryan and Esposito were admitted a moment later, having passed all the tests.

                “Well, they let us go,” Ryan said.

                Both detectives looked tired and rumpled, like they hadn’t had much sleep, and were somewhat bruised.

                “I’m not totally sure they bought our story, but they couldn’t prove anything against us, so they let us go,” Esposito added, pulling up a chair.

                Ryan looked around for an empty seat. There wasn’t one. “Wow, your apartment’s really small, Beckett.”

                “It’s just a place to sleep,” Beckett replied. “Coffee, anyone?”

                Beckett made coffee for everyone except Dean, who was asleep (presumably it took a lot of energy to recover from being dead), and Cas, who apparently didn’t eat or drink. Ever. And okay, maybe Castle’s reaction to that revelation was a little disproportionate, in view of the rest of the information he’d just received, but there’s only so much a guy can take. There’s a tipping point, after which he starts gibbering like a fool.

                “Never? But how? Why? But food is so tasty,” Castle stammered.

                “Not if it’s been in the cupboard for three months,” Esposito put in from where was peering into a cupboard in search of coffee cups. “What is this? I don’t even want to touch it.”

                “Not the point, guys,” Beckett spluttered, “Demon war, remember?”

                “You should probably dispose of that. It appears unsafe,” Cas had wandered over to peer into the cupboard, leaving Dean under the watchful eye of his brother.

                “Can’t you just smite it or something?” Castle suggested.

                The angel looked at him humourlessly. Castle resisted the urge to hide behind Beckett.

                “Cas,” Sam said, urgently. Everyone turned to look at him. Dean was still asleep, but it no longer looked peaceful. His eyes rolled under fluttering eyelids, his breath coming in short, fast gasps. Cas was across the room so fast Castle didn’t even see him move. He placed two fingers to Dean’s forehead, and the sleeping man relaxed, his tension slipping away and his breathing returning to normal.

                Castle didn’t even want to contemplate trying to sleep. He knew what Dean had suffered had been a thousand times worse than what he had felt. He could imagine what Dean’s dreams were like.

                “Is there a plan?” Castle broke the silence that had grown as everyone remembered what had happened. They needed to move on before he thought about it too much.

                “Right, a plan,” said Sam, looking up from his brother. “We’re working on it. But while we do, you guys need to learn the basics of hunting. You’re all in this now. You all know where we are, and there are… people… who will stop at nothing to find out that information. You’ve all got targets on your backs, and you need to know how to protect yourselves. There’s no going back now.” He didn’t sound sorry. Mostly he just sounded businesslike and matter-of-fact.

                They went over the basics of defence against demons. The weapons training of the three detectives made it a relatively quick task, and even Castle could already shoot a gun (and was an excellent shot, if he did say so himself). Sadly, he probably wouldn’t need to use his fencing skills.

                Then came the scary part. Castle was just borrowing Beckett’s phone to call his mother and warn her to take Alexis out of town, when an enormous hand covered his own. “Sorry,” Sam said, pulling the phone away before he could dial. “You can’t call anyone. You might give our position away. Or worse, theirs’.” Sam replaced the phone on its bracket, but pulled the line out of the wall. His voice was sympathetic, but his eyes weren’t. Castle wondered when he’d changed from the pleasant, hardworking boy he’d read about in quotes from his Stanford friends, into this angry hulk of a man. Maybe he hadn’t changed. Maybe he just didn’t hide it as well as he once had. Or maybe he had changed. Maybe this was what hunting did to people. Hardened them.

 Castle glanced over at Beckett, where she was disassembling her weapon. Beckett’s shell was hard enough already. She might not come back from this.

Castle protested the ban on phone calls vehemently. It went against everything in him to not get his family out of harm’s way.

He stopped protesting when Sam described the time an archangel had removed his lungs. “Angels like having leverage,” he told them, “They’ve been playing me and Dean off each other for months. If Zachariah finds your family, he’ll use them to get the information he wants from you. You cannot call them. Not until we’ve finished this.”

“But they’re angels,” Esposito exclaimed, “They should be…” He trailed off, horrified.

“They are… misinterpreting God’s will in his absence,” Cas said shortly, not looking up from the symbol he was watching Ryan draw.

Ryan stopped drawing. “God’s what?”

Castiel’s expression darkened. “I will find him,” he said.

Dean mumbled something, his eyes blinking slowly. Sam and Cas were both at his side in an instant. Dean batted Cas’ fingers away from his head and sat up, stretching. Castle pointedly ignored the way Beckett’s eyes widened as Dean raised his arms over his head, his shirt riding up to show a thin strip of skin. “Any food?” He asked. “What did I miss?” He looked around the room. A frown grew on his face as he took in the weapons on the table and the symbols everyone was working on reproducing. He stood up, grim and surprisingly steady. “Sam, I need to talk to you.” He motioned towards the next room with his head.

The Winchesters didn’t seem to understand that in an apartment like Beckett’s, going into the next room to argue might seem like it’s more private, but it’s really not. It started out as a quiet hiss of annoyed voices, and everyone tried to pretend they were still concentrating on the symbols they were practicing. But then the voices got louder, and the social discomfort that accompanies witnessing an argument began to spread throughout the room. One by one, they stopped drawing and tried not to listen.

“Did you even ask them what they wanted, Sam? They shouldn’t have to deal with this. This is our problem. They should just stay somewhere safe, and we’ll deal with it.” Castle hadn’t heard Dean get angry before. Mostly Dean had been asleep, or joking, or tiredly protesting that he didn’t need help. Or screaming, by Castle didn’t want to think about that. Now he sounded fierce and determined, and just a little frightening.

“We can’t do this on our own, Dean, and if we just hide them away somewhere, they’ll be found. They need to be able to fight.” Sam sounded every bit as stubborn as his brother.

“You know what hunting does to people,” Dean argued. “These people will never feel safe again. And they’ll probably get killed, and if they do, that’s on us.”

“There are hundreds of demons coming, Dean. Not to mention the angels. What do you suggest we do?”

“Call some hunters! We’re practically throwing these people to the wolves! We’ve been doing this our whole lives and we can’t handle it properly. We shouldn’t be doing this to them!”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, Dean, we’re not exactly popular right now. Particularly me. Do you know what’s gonna happen if we start calling hunters? They’re gonna tell us to go to hell, or they’re going to come and finish me off themselves. And then what’s going to happen to New York?”

“Those demons are after me, Sam. Me. There is no reason for these people to get dragged in. Haven’t we already got enough people killed?”

Castle focussed as hard as he could on his symbol. Hearing people fight always made him tense. He usually tried to break the tension with a joke of some kind, which either would make everyone laugh and distract them from the fight or make them both turn around and yell at Castle. This time, though, Castle was too busy thinking about what he’d heard. It was becoming more and more obvious that Sam had left something out of his explanation. Why would other hunters want to kill Sam?

The noise from the next room stopped. Everyone quickly returned to their tasks, trying to look like they hadn’t just been listening to an argument that was supposed to be private.

When Sam stepped back into the room, he looked angry. Castle was struck by a sudden desire not to do anything to piss him off. Dean came in behind him, looking equally tense. He’d finally agreed to go along with what Sam wanted, but only because there was no real alternative. He was not happy about it, and it showed.

Dean came and took over from Cas, peering over Castle’s shoulder to inspect the sigil he was practicing. All traces of good humour were gone. Castle felt a sudden surge of sympathy for him. He had a feeling Dean wouldn’t respond well to an outpouring of what he would surely see as pity, so he didn’t say anything, but that didn’t stop him feeling it. Dean, for some reason that wasn’t quite clear to Castle, seemed to feel that he was solely responsible for protecting every single person in the whole world.

Cas reappeared in front of them, bearing food. Castle hadn’t even noticed he was gone.  He placed boxes of pizza on the table.

“Eat up,” Sam instructed them. “Big night, tonight.”

Castle suddenly realised he was starving. Also, his arms hurt like crazy. He dug his painkillers out of his pocket, washing one down with water and following it up with a slice of pizza or four.

Sam, Dean and Cas were having a meeting as they ate. They huddled on the other side of the room, this time remembering to keep their voices down. Castle could only catch snatches of what they were saying. Words like ‘demons’ and ‘angels’ and ‘trap’. Castle was pretty sure he heard his own name.  He talked to Ryan and Esposito about what they had told the feds to explain the mess and multiple bodies at the house where Castle and Dean had been held, and tried to ignore the gnawing apprehension growing in his belly. He really wanted to go home and hug Alexis. Or possibly wake up and discover that he’d dreamed the whole thing and Frank Walter had been killed by his next-door neighbour in a fight over noise levels.

Sam and Dean came back over just as Ryan and Esposito were having a tug-of-war over the last piece of pizza. Sam shifted the pizza boxes and placed a sheet of paper on the table. “Okay,” he said, “Here’s the plan.”

XXX

An hour later, Castle was lurking in the bushes outside a house very similar to the one he’d been kept in, armed with a can of spray paint, a bottle of holy water, and a small knife. He’d got the easy job because of the cast on his hand and the pain in his wrenched shoulders. Beckett’s comforting presence was beside him. She looked beautiful despite the bruising on her face. Fierce and strong, like a warrior woman. Her hair was tied back, and she carried a salt gun, holy water, and a recorded exorcism. They looked at each other and nodded as they heard the signal. It was time.

Castle did not like this plan at all.

previous next

Beckett could feel for Castle. She might be better at hiding her dazed expression, but the feelings of confusion and disbelief were still there. And that was knowing what had happened the day before. Castle had been unconscious and in an ambulance on the way to the hospital by the time any of the action had taken place, and now here was Dean, who he’d thought was dead, walking around and talking to him. And here was Cas, appearing out of thin air right in front of him. She thought she might actually be getting more freaked out every time he did that.

                She would have offered Castle a drink, but she didn’t think it would mix well with his painkillers. Also, Sam Winchester had used up all her vodka cleaning out a knife wound on his upper arm, which he’d then sewed up. Himself. Using her dental floss.

                The situation was devolving. The same argument had happened several times over the course of the last 24 hours. Dean would get out of bed, insist he was fine and hit on her to prove it. Sam would try to help him walk, sit him down somewhere and check his injuries, and then try to make him go back to bed. This would end in a fierce argument, but Dean would eventually go back to bed. Sometimes Cas would step in and simply touch Dean’s forehead with two fingers. The first time Cas had done it Dean had been standing up and had suddenly collapsed forward into Castiel’s arms. Beckett had thought something was seriously wrong, and was whipping out her phone to call an ambulance before Sam stopped her. She decided to step in now, before the argument got to that point.

                “Being filled in sounds really good right about now,” Castle said, his usual verve somewhat dampened by pain and shock.

                Beckett sat next to him at the table and patted him reassuringly on the head, because it was the least injured part of his body.

                “Dean, stay on the couch. Cas, don’t move,” Beckett ordered. Dean, no matter how much he insisted he was fine, probably wouldn’t make it across to the table, and Cas had a disturbing tendency to disappear and reappear in the middle of conversations. “Sam, give Castle the speech you gave me yesterday.”

                Surprisingly, all three complied. Dean looked mutinous and refused to lie down, but nevertheless stayed where he was, while Sam came over to the table and sat down to give the demons are real speech.

                Castle was uncharacteristically quiet while Sam explained about the apocalypse and how he and Dean were hunters, and the demons had a hit out on Dean.

                “The apocalypse?” Castle took it surprisingly calmly. Much better than she had. Maybe it was the painkillers softening the blow. “Should I be moving to the country and buying a bunker?”

                “Actually most of the really bad stuff seems to be happening in small towns. You’re probably better off in the city,” Dean spoke up from the couch. “Cas, can you blink or something? You’re creeping me out.”

                Beckett looked across at them. Apparently Castiel had taken her at her word and was standing perfectly still, staring unblinkingly at Dean. Dean reached over and tugged his trench coat. “Just sit down, dude.”

                “You’re an angel?” Castle asked Cas. Beckett could see the excited spark in his eye that he got when he talked about superheroes and the CIA. She snorted under her breath. Only Castle would react to the revelation that angels and demons existed by planning his next book.

                Cas nodded. “Yes.”

                “Wow, you’re really not what I was expecting.”

                “I am a soldier of God,” Cas informed him severely, from where he perched straight-backed on the edge of the couch.

                “Angels are dicks,” Dean contributed. Cas looked sideways at him. “Except Cas.”

                “What’s it like being an angel?” Castle asked.

                “Sam should finish his explanation. Dean is tired and needs to go back to bed,” Cas did not answer the question. Beckett didn’t know quite what had happened, but she got the feeling that Castiel wasn’t really welcome with the other angels. They hadn’t actually said anything, but she knew he wasn’t at full power. He’d been very upset that he was unable to heal Dean.

                “Not tired,” Dean insisted, forcing himself to sit up straighter.

                “Anyway,” said Sam, “Yesterday when we found the house where the demons were keeping you and Dean…”

XXX

Yesterday

                Beckett watched the paramedics load Castle into the ambulance. She’d surreptitiously splashed them with holy water and thrown in a “Christo,” just to be on the safe side, but neither had reacted and she’d judged it safe to trust Castle to them for the trip to the hospital. As they closed the doors, she felt her heart sinking. She would have to tell Sam and Cas that Dean was dead. Actual physical danger aside, she knew from what Sam had told her (which she was inclined to believe on the evidence of the fight she had witnessed) that Dean was a good man, and that both Sam and Cas cared deeply about him. It was the worst part of the job, delivering bad news, and it was made worse by her knowledge of what it felt like to be on the receiving end.

                The ambulance bore Castle away to the hospital, and Beckett turned to look for Sam. She caught sight of him beside the car they had arrived in. She could just see him, hidden behind the rear end of the car, kneeling over something on the ground. Beckett made her way over to them, instructing Ryan and Esposito to fend off the feds if they tried to approach.

                The sight that greeted her when she made her way around the car shocked her. Sam was kneeling over something – someone – on the ground. Cas was kneeling at the man’s head. The man was covered in blood from head to foot, but there wasn’t a visible wound on him.

                Beckett stayed back, not wanting to intrude on their grief.

                Sam was shaking his brother. “Wake up, Dean! Wake up, man. Please!” His voice rose in anguish. Beckett took a step back. Usually she would offer to help, but this time she was in the unfamiliar position of being the amateur, and there was probably nothing she could do. She didn’t think Sam would appreciate her any offers of help at the moment. As she watched, Sam begged his brother to wake up. He looked fiercely at Castiel. “Do something,” he ordered.

                Cas didn’t look much happier than Sam. “I can’t, Sam. I cannot heal people anymore.” A low roll of thunder sounded. Beckett looked up at the sky, where the clouds hung dark and heavy. “He is not dead.”

Beckett looked back at the three men, to see if she’d heard right. That amount of blood meant someone was definitely dead.

“I know he’s not dead,” Sam snapped at Cas, “I felt his pulse. But he’s just… Dean’s never still. Something’s wrong.”

“We need to get him somewhere safe,” Castiel replied, reaching down to wipe some of the blood from Dean’s face with the sleeve of his coat. “He needs to rest.”

Beckett decided it the time had come to make her presence known. She walked over to them and crouched to look at Dean. It took all of her professionalism not to shudder at the sheer amount of blood that covered him. It stained his face, dried on thickly around his closed eyes and his mouth, and running down his neck from his ears. His shirts were ragged and ripped open, wet and dyed with so much blood it was hard to tell what colour they had been.  But when she looked closer, there were no wounds. Not even a scratch. It must have been his blood, but there was nowhere for it to come from. He lay completely still, except for the slight rise and fall of his chest that showed he was still alive. “You can take him to my apartment,” she offered. “But are you sure you shouldn’t take him to the hospital?”

“Doctors can do nothing for him,” Cas told her. “What is your address?”

Beckett opened her mouth to tell him, but was interrupted. “Smmeee?” The bloody figure on the ground groaned.

Sam leaned over his brother. “I’m here, Dean. You’re alright. You’re gonna be fine.” He pulled Dean’s body up and wrapped his arms tightly around him. Beckett looked away from the tears in his eyes.

“Hello, Dean. I need to take him now, Sam,” Cas said awkwardly.

“Cas,” Dean said clearly, following it up with a serious of incoherent mumbling, and then, “Joe.”

“Jo?” Sam looked sadly down Dean. “Jo’s… not here, Dean.”

“No. Joe. Demon,” The frustration was clear in his voice. “Oww.” He groaned once more and fell back into unconsciousness.

“What is your address?” Castiel asked Beckett again.

She told him.

“Sam, let him go,” Cas ordered. Sam gave his brother one last squeeze and laid him back on the concrete. Cas placed two fingers on the unconscious man’s forehead and then they were both gone.

The place where Dean had been lying was stained with blood, and Beckett didn’t understand how someone could lose that much blood and survive. Slowly she became aware of a commotion coming from the house where Dean and Castle had been kept. The FBI agents outside were rushing into action, and the sounds of shouting and gunfire were emitting from the building, and then a scream.

“Crap,” said Sam, “Idiots.” He got up and ran across to the house, Beckett following with her gun drawn.

Ryan hurried over as they reached the house. “There’s a ton of them,” he reported, “at least six in the house, and we’re pretty sure a couple of the feds are possessed as well.”

“Are the possessed feds with the other demons?” Sam asked, pulling a small knife out of an ankle sheath and handing it to Beckett. “It won’t kill them, but it’s consecrated iron coated in salt, so it’ll hurt like hell, and maybe distract on until you can exorcise it.”

“The demon feds – I can’t believe I just said that – the demon feds are definitely not with the other ones,” Ryan said. “Two of them are engaged in hand-to-hand combat with two of the occupants of the house. Esposito and Connie have one in a devil’s trap at the back door. They’re exorcising it now. “

“Who’s Connie?” Sam asked in confusion.

“Connie Walter,” Ryan said, “She showed us how to get here, remember. So what do we do now? The rest of the feds are getting their asses handed to them.”

  Sam was immediately all business. “Go in and do whatever you have to, to pull the feds out. I want salt on the windows and doors. Where have you put devil’s traps?”

“Outside every door.”

“Okay, so pull the feds out. If you can without putting yourselves in too much danger, try to get a demon into a devil’s trap, but don’t play the exorcism until I say,” Sam instructed, pulling out his knife. Up close, Beckett could see that the edge was razor sharp and slightly stained with blood. There were strange engravings along the flat of the blade. It gave her the creeps.

“What are you going to do?” She asked.

“I’m going to find the demon who tortured my brother,” Sam replied. He didn’t say ‘and kill him’, but his face was hard and furious, and Beckett knew it was what he meant.

Another blast of gunfire came from inside the house and the three of them took off running.

The inside of the house was in chaos. They entered cautiously, trying to avoid being seen. Beckett turned to the left and Ryan to the right, both of them sidling along with their backs to the wall. Sam barrelled straight through the centre, all pretence of caution gone. Beckett’s foot hit something, and she looked down. A SWAT member in full combat gear was lying there, his neck at a horribly unnatural angle. She reached down to check his pulse. Nothing. She flipped the visor on his helmet up and closed his eyes. Someone stumbled backwards into her as she stood up. It was an FBI agent, this one with just a bulletproof vest on over his regular clothes. He regained his balance quickly, levelling his weapon at the figure that had shoved him across the room. He looked at Beckett, wild eyes taking in her police vest.

“They’re not human,” he told her, a hysterical note in his voice, “They’re too strong. They keep getting up!”

“Withdraw,” she told him, “Your boss sent me in with the message. Radios are down.”

She left him giving the order to pull out to all of his men that he could find, and made her way over to the window to lay salt lines, dodging fighting bodies and avoiding stray bullets through sheer luck. Her luck ran out as she stood at the window, carton of salt ready to pour on the sill. A hand closed around her arm and yanked her away hard enough to send her tumbling to the ground. Beckett was a cop and knew how to defend herself, though, so she rolled to her feet, taking up a defensive stance.  The person who had grabbed her was a thickset, short man with curly brown hair. He had no weapon, and was bleeding from a bullet wound to the abdomen, but it didn’t seem to be slowing him down at all. In fact, it didn’t look like he could even feel it. “Christo,” she said, and his eyes flickered black. He aimed a punch at her but she dodged, rolling across the floor to where the container of salt lay on its side, white crystals spilling out. The demon kicked her in the stomach, knocking the wind from her, and wound up for a second shot, but she rolled away again. Broken glass dug into her back as she rolled across the floor. She got back to her feet and threw the salt hard at the demon, directly in its eyes. It flailed, clutching at its face, smoke rising from its head. Beckett reached for her handcuffs, intending to handcuff him and drag him into the nearest devil’s trap, but the demon was recovering. It flung out a hand, backhanding her across the face and sending her reeling backwards, right into the middle of the melee.

Three demons were fighting each other. It didn’t seem to matter who was who. They punched and kicked and twisted body parts and sent each other flying across the room with a flick of the hand, growling things that Beckett could only catch a few words of over the rest of the noise. They all stopped when she stumbled into their midst, and stood for a second, looking at her with malevolent ink-black eyes. She tried to scramble out of the way, at the same time reaching for the little knife Sam had given her, but they had seen her.

“Well, well,” one of them said, reaching out to grab her by the collar. She was a slender, busty woman in a low cut top, but she had no trouble at all lifting Beckett from her feet. The other demons closed in. Beckett’s lungs closed up, her whole body going cold with fear. She could almost hear the wild beat of her heart. She caught a flash of trench coat to her left and thought of calling out for help, but it was like something was tightening around her throat, cutting off her voice.

And then words began to boom through the house. The woman released her hold on Beckett’s shirt, letting Beckett drop to the floor. The demons shuddered, faces warping as the Latin poured over them, and finally black smoke rushed out of their mouths, disappearing through the floor. Beckett sagged with relief, and smiled weakly across the room at Ryan, who was standing defensively over the IPod and speakers.

They did all the first aid they could, and made sure ambulances were on their way for the rest. Esposito and Connie Walter made their way over from the next room. Esposito was unhurt, but Connie was in bad shape. She’d been hit in the leg by a bullet from the gun of a panicking SWAT member who had just seen a demon take four bullets to the chest and get up. Esposito had done what he could, making a tourniquet out of his belt, but it was clear that if she didn’t get an ambulance soon, she wouldn’t make it. He sat beside her to wait for the paramedics.

Sam came up the stairs from the basement, the look of intense fury still on his face. He wasn’t happy with Ryan for not waiting for his order to play the exorcism. “Now we’re never going to know who sent them,” he growled, but Beckett thought he was probably angry because he hadn’t got the chance to kill the demon that had hurt his brother so badly.

Ryan and Esposito insisted that Beckett and Sam leave, then. Sam Winchester was still wanted by the police, and Beckett and her team weren’t meant to be part of the bust. Their presence would take a lot of explaining, and someone needed to be free to check on Castle. Also to break them out of prison if their explanation wasn’t believed.

Beckett and Sam left via the back door, and she drove him back to her place. He was stonily silent the whole way, the dark expression never leaving his face, and Beckett found she was almost as afraid of him as she had been of the demons. If she hadn’t seen the way he had looked at his brother, she doubted she would have let him in the car.

Sam’s mood lifted when they entered her apartment. He went straight through to the bedroom as Beckett paused to stare at the symbols painted on to the walls and ceiling. Her landlord was not going to be happy. She followed Sam into her bedroom, and there was Dean, perfectly clean and lying in her bed. He was slightly propped up, duvet covering all of him except his face and one bare arm and shoulder. A vivid red scar decorated it, but otherwise he showed no sign of injury.

“Hey, Sammy,” Dean said sleepily, “Would you be able to get me some clothes?”

XXX

Today

                “He was naked in your bed?” Castle asked. Beckett thought she could hear a little possessiveness coming through, but tried not to read too much into it.  

                “Really, Castle? We’re telling you about a demon war and that’s what you pick out?”

                “Nakedness is distracting,” Castle protested.

                Beckett grinned. At least some things would never change.

XXX
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Blurriness gave way to a white ceiling. Castle shifted slightly in the hospital bed, his whole body protesting every movement. For a moment, confusion swirled in his head, and then he was hit with the sudden, joyful realisation that he was alive. He’d got out. He’d survived. The image of Kate’s concerned face looking down at him, slightly blurry, passed before his eyes. He’d known she would come.

                “He’s moving!” That was Alexis. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so happy to hear her voice.

                “Richard!” His mother’s face hovered above him, quickly joined by his daughter’s.

                “Hi,” he croaked.

                It didn’t take long after the hugs and tears of relief stopped for the telling off to begin. Castle agreed never to investigate on his own again, and this time he meant it. He was just a writer. Dean had died and Castle hadn’t been able to help, because he was just a writer who liked to play cop, and shouldn’t have been investigating at all.

“I’m sorry,” he told his family, his voice cracking on the words. If he hadn’t made it back, if Alexis had been left without her father, he would never have forgiven himself. Or possibly he wouldn’t be able to do that, because his brain would have stopped working. He wasn’t sure what happened after death, but he decided not to think about that right now.

“Detective Beckett wants to talk to you,” Alexis informed him.

Castle pressed the button to raise his bed until he was almost sitting up. His body was starting to feel better, all just slightly achy except for his head which throbbed painfully and his arms which felt liked they’d been ripped into several pieces and re-assembled by a sadistic five-year-old. There was a drip in his arm, re-hydrating him and supplying him with some kind of painkiller that made him feel groggy.

Beckett came in, and Castle’s mother not-very-subtly ushered Alexis out to give them some time alone. Beckett looked different to usual. Castle couldn’t quite put his finger on what the difference was. Her hair was a little messy, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t the slight bruising that was starting to show on her face, or the redness of her knuckles, although those were obviously worrying. No, it was the look in her eye.

He tried to formulate what he was going to say to her in his head. He would apologise and thank her and then set to work convincing her that the demons were real. Beckett would be sceptical, of course, but if he just put it in exactly the right words he was sure he could convince her.

The painkillers must have done something to his brain, because what came out was: “Beckett! Demons!”

Nice one. Way to make her think you’re crazy. He waited for the inevitable soothing voice offering to call the doctor and reminding him that he’d just undergone a serious trauma so it was understandable he was imagining things.

To his astonishment, Beckett didn’t react that way at all. As he waited for her to reply, he saw a familiar smirk (Should it be called a smirk? The word didn’t seem to convey the beauty of it.) appearing on her face. The one that said I know something you don’t know. And then she said: “Way ahead of you, Castle.”

“What?” Castle shook his head to clear it. He must be hearing things.

“We can’t talk about this here.”

“You know about the…”

“The doctor says you should be able to go home today,” Beckett told him. “We can talk about it later.”

“But,” Castle began.

Beckett drew a chair across to sit beside his bed. “It’s taken care of for now,” she stated firmly.

Beckett refused to talk to him about the previous night after that, but it was just as well because Alexis and Martha wouldn’t be kept out of the hospital long enough for them to really discuss it with the amount of freaking out it deserved. His family crowded around him, watching re-runs of Temptation Lane on the television that hung over the foot of his bed. Castle just couldn’t seem to concentrate on it, now that there were so much bigger problems to think about. He tried to keep his eyes on the screen, but every now and then he would have to sneak a peek at Beckett. She still had that strange look in her eye, a mixture of excitement and terror that she was trying her hardest to bury. Even a marathon of Temptation Lane, which would usually shake even the worst mood off Beckett wasn’t working.

 Angela Cannon’s ex-husband’s stalker was just setting her dogs on Angela when Castle’s lunch was delivered.

“Ooh, pudding!” Castle exclaimed, reaching for it and wincing as he moved his wrenched arm too fast. He looked at Beckett hopefully.

“I’m not feeding you, Castle,” Beckett said, but the spark of humour was back in her eyes for a second.      

The doctor came to check him out after lunch, removing the drip from his arm and checking his arms, as well as the cuts on his body from hauling himself through the broken window and the bruising on his hands and knees from falling on the concrete floor. There was a cast on his hand. Apparently his inexpert attempt at dislocating his thumb had actually resulted in a broken hand. Despite all that, his doctor, an efficient man with a strong Indian accent gave him permission to leave the hospital that afternoon on the condition that he took it easy and did okay without the painkilling drip for the next few hours.

Martha eventually left for a rehearsal and Beckett left to return to work, assuring him that she would return to pick him up at five O’clock. They would go back to her place to discuss in more detail what had happened.

“We’ll get this guy,” Beckett assured Alexis as she left.

“I know you will,” Alexis replied, and Castle made up his mind right then that his daughter was never going to find out what had really happened.

Castle and Alexis sat together, watching Temptation Lane and eating hospital pudding. He put his arm around her as they watched Alfonso shoot his stalker to save Angela and get arrested for attempted murder. He thought about how much he loved his daughter and how glad he was to be back with her, and tried really hard not to see the image of Dean Winchester, who knew The Princess Bride and probably wasn’t a serial killer, hanging mutilated in chains beside him.

XXX

Alexis gave him a last hug and left for home when Beckett came to collect him. The doctor discharged him with a prescription for heavy duty painkillers, instructions for caring for his cuts, and a suggestion to seek trauma counselling. Beckett wouldn’t be persuaded to help him dress, but did wheel him out of the hospital in a surprisingly comfortable wheelchair that kept attempting to veer to the right.

The sky was heavy with cloud when they made their way into the parking lot. There was a strange, eerie quality to the light where the sun’s rays leeched through the blanket of grey, shafts of yellow and orange spreading out in the sky. The air was damp and muggy. They left the wheelchair with an orderly in the reception area and walked slowly across the lot to Beckett’s car. The ground was wet, but warm, and steam rose from the tarmac as they approached the car.

“Strange weather,” Castle commented as Beckett helped him get into the car without using his arms.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Beckett replied, closing his door and walking around to climb in the driver’s side. “You won’t believe everything that’s happened.”

Beckett’s new apartment building thankfully had an elevator. Castle thought walking up five flights of stairs probably didn’t count as taking it easy.

                Beckett began acting strangely as they approached her apartment. She seemed to tense up, nodding to the few neighbours they passed in the corridor. It was quite a nice building, although not as nice as Castle’s. He smiled at the neighbours. It was good to be on good terms with the neighbours. Not that they would be living here when they finally got together, but there would probably be some period of dating…

                Beckett knocked on her own door. Castle was sure it was her apartment. He’d been there before. Not often, but a few times. He checked the number. Yep, definitely Beckett’s apartment. The door was solid wood, with heavy duty locks on it. Beckett wasn’t taking any chances with this one. No-one was getting in to blow it up. Beckett knocked on her door again, three hard knocks. She waited a few seconds and knocked twice and then three times quickly.

                “Who is it?” A male voice asked through the door.

                Castle couldn’t help feeling an unbecoming twinge of displeasure at the fact that there was a man in Beckett’s apartment.

                “Detective Beckett and Richard Castle,” Beckett replied.

                The door opened a crack, the chain still in place. A large hand snaked through, holding out two shot glasses filled with a clear liquid. “Drink this.”

                Beckett took them, handing one to Castle. Castle stared at her. “You’re doing this?”

                “I’ll explain later.” Beckett tossed hers back without even a grimace.

                Castle shrugged. “Okay,” he said, lifting the glass and tipping the… water… down his throat. He looked quizzically at the glass. “Huh.”

                There was a quiet clinking as the man behind the door removed the chain and opened the door, stepping back to let them in. As soon as they were inside the apartment, the man closed the door behind them, securing all the locks and double-checking them.  Castle pulled out a chair and sat at Beckett’s kitchen table, looking around him.

                Whoever the man who had taken over Beckett’s apartment was, he had certainly started up an interesting decorating scheme since taking up residence. There were patterns painted on the ceiling, walls and floor in red spray paint. Castle recognised some from the research he had done for Devil’s Storm – devil’s traps on the ceiling above the door and windows – but some were completely unfamiliar. A thick layer of rock salt coated the windowsills, and laid out on the table was a collection of weapons very similar to the one they had found in the wall at Probably Frank’s apartment.

                The man who had opened the door stood up from where he had been restoring the salt line in front of the door. He was tall, broad shouldered and made of solid muscle. It made Castle feel like a somewhat inferior physical specimen, despite the fact that he was in pretty good shape for a writer. His face was familiar. It took a second for Castle to place it, but then he remembered. His research for Devil’s Storm had brought up mug shots for both Dean Winchester and his brother Sam. Sam was older and heavier now, but it was undoubtedly him.

                “Sorry about the holy water,” Sam Winchester said. “We just have to be careful, given the situation. Sam Winchester.” He held out his hand to shake Castle’s.

                Castle looked at him. All the reports he’d studied about the Winchester’s had described them as dangerously close and protective of each other. So why was he just holing up in Beckett’s apartment, calmly telling Castle there was a situation? From all the stories about them, Castle would have thought he’d be out seeking revenge for his brother’s death.

                Castle shook Sam’s hand. “Richard Castle.”

                “Richard Castle?” A voice drifted through from Beckett’s bedroom. It was tired and hoarse, but even through that Castle could hear the note of excitement that ran through it. He’d heard that note from hundreds of people at hundreds of book signings and chance meetings with fans on the street, and he never got tired of hearing it. “Dude, why didn’t you say something?”

                Slow footsteps sounded and then a man appeared in the doorway from Beckett’s bedroom. Castle turned to look, and there was Dean Winchester, grinning at him like he’d never been dead at all.

                “I love your stuff, man.” Dean said, smacking his brother’s hands away as Sam tried to help him cross the room to the couch.

                Castle blinked dumbly. He was vaguely aware that he should probably say something, but he was too busy fighting off the wooziness that threatened to overcome him. Passing out twice in three days was understandable under the circumstances, but three times would just be ridiculous.

                As his shock passed, his vision cleared and he became aware of Sam eyeing his brother curiously.

                “What?” Dean asked irritably from his new position lying prone on the couch.

                “Do you secretly read while I’m asleep or something?”

                “Just because I don’t spend my spare time reading ancient Latin texts it doesn’t mean I can’t read, Sammy. And Nikki Heat’s hot. Ooh…” He sat up, looking at Beckett speculatively with big green eyes that Castle vividly remembered being gouged out. “That makes you Nikki Heat.”

                Beckett came out with her stock answer for every time that particular detail was mentioned. “Kate Beckett. I’m just the Detective she’s based on.”

                Castle finally found his voice. “You were dead,” he said dazedly. Dean looked exhausted and behind the excitement on his face was a pinched looked of pain, but he didn’t have a mark on him.

                “Dean was only mostly dead,” the messy-haired man in the trench coat informed him mildly. Castle’s brain exploded. That man definitely hadn’t been in the room two seconds ago. Castle had thoroughly observed the changes to Beckett’s apartment. There had definitely been only four people in it and nobody had come through the door from the bedroom or the bathroom. Yet now there was definitely a fifth person in the room. He was standing beside the couch, staring down at Dean.

                Dean tore his eyes away from Beckett to look at the man. If Castle hadn’t still been recovering from Dean’s sudden return from the dead and the appearance of a man out of thin air, he probably would have been annoyed at how long his eyes had lingered, but he just couldn’t find the mental capacity to register it right now.

                “Maybe you should start zapping into the next room, Cas,” Dean suggested, a fond smirk on his face.

                “Are you recovered?” Cas asked.

                “No, no he’s not,” Sam broke in. Castle could hear the protective younger brother he’d read about coming through. “He nearly died. He needs to go back to bed while we take care of this.”

                The smile fell away from Dean’s face and he suddenly looked tired but determined. “I’m not going back to bed, Sam.”

                “Well, okay then,” Beckett diverted the conversation away from the impending argument. “We need to fill Castle in on what’s going on and then formulate a plan.”

Castle breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe being filled in on what was going on would do something to reassure him of his own sanity.

XXX
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Beckett pushed the window up with gloved hands. It opened easily, despite the age of the building and the creaking of the frame. Someone had opened it recently and, strangely, taken the time to close it behind them. She bent down and climbed through it carefully, trying not to disturb the smudge of dried blood on the sill.

                “Call CSU,” she instructed her colleagues. “This is dry. Whoever climbed out here is long gone, but this might show us where they’ve taken Castle.”

                She followed the trail down the rickety, twisting steps. More of the rock salt from the apartment was scattered erratically over the fire escape, on the landings, steps and railings, like someone had been covered in the stuff and running. A series of small blood droplets ran down the left side of the steps, some smudging on the railings. Probably the person who had been injured inside.  It was an interesting pattern, almost like the person had been carried. Except running down this fire escape carrying a person with only a mild cut who didn’t want to go seemed almost impossible. Three floors from the ground, where the stairs turned in on themselves, the railings were bent out impossibly. There were new scratches in the paint job that had been applied in hopes of hiding the rust. One of the thick metal bars was broken across the middle. Beckett crouched to examine it. It was the strangest thing. She could hardly imagine how much strength it would take to break the bar like that. It was a new bar, presumably replaced when the paint job was carried out. Solid metal, broken. Not cut. Not torn off at a join. Twisted, shoved out and broken.  From the turn in the stairs, a much thicker trail of blood led down the steps beside the droplets. Beckett breathed deeply and tried to ignore the possibility that it was Castle’s.

                Beckett jumped from the ladder at the bottom of the fire escape, landing lightly in a clear spot amongst the trash and broken glass that littered the ground. Ryan and Esposito were waiting for her beside a trio of dented and knocked over trash cans. They had gone down the stairs to avoid further disruption to the evidence.

                “CSU are on their way,” Esposito informed her. “Any sign of him?”

                “There’s been a struggle,” Beckett told them. She described the scene three floors up. “It almost looks like it’s not humanly possible.”

                Ryan and Esposito exchanged a glance at that.

“What?” she asked.

Ryan hesitated.

“Do you know how someone can rip a solid iron bar in half?”

“There’s this book series… hey, what’s that?” Ryan frowned, stepping forward to examine the wall. “Does this look deliberate to you?”

Beckett and Esposito crowded in to look. The blood smear on the wall formed a definite circle with a strange design inside it. Underneath it was written: 3+ D 1C.

Ryan and Esposito exchanged another look.

Beckett looked pointedly at them. “Any idea what this means?”

Esposito cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t know about the numbers, but I’m pretty sure that’s a devil’s trap.”

“A devil’s trap?”

Ryan picked up the story. “Those books I mentioned? They describe this design in detail. It’s for capturing demons. If a demon steps inside one, it can’t get out, basically, so it can’t kill you while you exorcise it. Although this one’s kind of small and on a wall, so I don’t know what kind of demons they were trying to catch…”

“So you think this could be someone suffering from some kind of delusion that the books are real?” Beckett asked. Sometimes you had to move Ryan along before he lost track of what he was talking about and started turning into Castle.

Esposito answered for his partner. “The books are about brothers called Dean and Sam, who fight evil. Demons have super strength. There are plenty of descriptions of scenes like the one on the fire escape.”

“So you’re saying someone’s decided that Dean and Sam Winchester are the Dean and Sam in the books and have kidnapped Dean to… what? Help him out? And Castle just got in the way so they took him too?”

“Or Dean and Sam Winchester are Dean and Sam,” Ryan blurted, before looking away and pretending he hadn’t said anything.

“Okay… moving on. If someone is having delusions based on the books, where would they take Dean and Castle?” Beckett snapped a picture of the symbol and the letters beneath it with her phone, before waving over a CSU tech who had just ventured around the side of the building after arriving out front.

“That depends,” Esposito told her as they moved out of the way of the tech. “If they think they’re helping, they probably live in a place a lot like Frank Walter’s apartment. Maybe even have a wall full of weapons and a series of fake IDs. If they’re demons they could be anyone. They look just like ordinary people, but their eyes turn black when they’re being especially demonic.”

“Or yellow,” Ryan interjected.

“Or red if they’re a crossroads demon. Yeah, this black smoke takes over the person’s body and the demon steals their life and goes around doing evil…stuff. So it could be anyone.”

“Only they usually seem to do stuff at night, and they would probably want somewhere where no-one can hear screaming or no-one cares.”

“Wow,” said Beckett, “You guys are never giving me crap about liking Castle’s books again.” She examined the ground closely. No tread marks. “No sign of a car, but at least one of them was bleeding badly. He wouldn’t get far. The blood trail runs out here, but there’s no way they could have got a car down here without leaving some kind of sign.” She pointed to a small pool of blood in the centre of the alleyway.  

“Detective Beckett?” The CSU tech spoke up. She’d moved away from the blood drawing and was crouching beside the chain link fence at the dead end of the alley. “Come and look at this.”

Beckett approached, Ryan and Esposito following her. The tech pointed at something with her tweezers. It was a piece of red and grey plaid flannel, perfectly ripped to form an isosceles triangle that pointed in the direction of the fence. Beckett’s heart lifted. That seemed like something Castle would do. Leave them an arrow. And he did wear plaid shirts sometimes. She didn’t recognise this particular one, but still, it gave her hope. Even if it wasn’t Castle’s, it meant that at least one prisoner was still in good enough condition after the fight to leave clues for them.

Beckett climbed the somewhat shaky fence. It was bent a little at the top, but not so much it was obvious anyone had climbed it recently. The alleyway was narrow and dirty, old buildings rising six floors up on either side, blocking what little light was making it through the heavy cloud. Whoever had been leaking the tiny drops of blood had either stopped bleeding by the time they were over the fence, or the filth in the alley hid it. Beckett was beginning to think they had read too much into the small piece of cloth by the time they reached the exit. They came out onto a wider street. Shopkeepers were just pushing up metal roller-doors to open for business, and few other people were about. Old cars, some broken down or abandoned, others cared for but wearing out sat parked at intervals along the street. There were no tread marks, no blood trail, no salt.

Then Ryan spotted it: a few yards down the street, on the hood of an early eighties Ford, a red and grey triangle pointed to the right.

Beckett was just calling it in to CSU when the commotion started. A crashing and thumping came from a building across the street. It was empty and dark, the windows boarded up, but padlock on the metal roller swung haphazardly from its broken loop and the door bounced slightly up and down. Beckett shivered as a sudden shower of cold rain came down, and tied her hair up as the wind whipped it into her face. She signalled to Ryan and Esposito, her hand moving to her weapon, and approached the door.

“NYPD! Open up,” she called.

There was no reply, but the thumping and crashing continued, an indistinct yelling accompanying it.

Esposito edged the roller-door up slowly and Beckett nudged the main door open slightly, checking inside.

It was dark, but four figures were clearly visible in the dark. A woman and three men, fighting tooth and nail. The biggest one had a second man against the wall. Beckett could just make out the silhouette of Sam Winchester’s knife as they struggled with it. They were yelling at each other, threatening words that Beckett couldn’t make out over the rain on the metal of the door.

But it was the other ones who scared her. The strange man who’d showed up behind her in Frank Walter’s apartment was in motion, his coat floating behind him like wings as he ducked out of the woman’s grasp and threw her hard against the wall. Thunder boomed just as she hit it, making the room seem to shudder.

“Where is he?” Cas growled. It was low and quiet, but strangely seemed to penetrate all the surrounding noise.

Beckett was just raising her weapon to try to stop the fighting when the woman stood up, wiping blood from the corner of her mouth and smiling.

“Lost your boyfriend, Angel?” The woman mocked.

Cas seemed to fly across the room by himself. He hit the floor with a thud three feet away from Beckett and rolled to his feet immediately, coming up with a long knife, seemingly out of nowhere. Actually, it was more like a short sword, silver-white and flashing in the dark room.

Heavy raindrops battered the roof. Beckett edged into the room, gun held ready. “Everybody stop!” She yelled, but her voice was drowned in another roll of thunder.

Cas lifted the woman up with his free hand and tossed her against the wall again. “What have you done with Dean?”

A flash of lightning illuminated the room. Beckett’s eyes widened in shock. The woman slowly climbing to her feet was the spitting image of the sketch she and Castle had been showing around the previous afternoon. She was Frank Walter’s wife.   

Behind her, Ryan and Esposito were trying in vain to separate Sam Winchester from the man he was fighting. There was a lot of yelling and thumping, but Beckett didn’t turn to look, too intrigued by the scene in front of her. Frank Walter’s wife was dark-haired and athletic-looking, and in the second the lightning had lit the room, her eyes had looked like pools of black. She was smirking wickedly and didn’t seem badly hurt, despite having been thrown forcefully against a wall.

And that was another thing – how could Cas throw her like that? He looked like an ordinary man (current psychotic expression notwithstanding). He wasn’t enormous or heavily muscled. Ryan was right. Something about this guy was not normal.

Frank Walter’s wife was on her feet, now, breathing hard. “Aww, it’s so cute, your little crush on the human. Why do you care so much about that pathetic ball of stupidity and self-loathing? You should join us, Castiel. We could do with a few more falling angels.”

Castiel stalked towards the woman, raising his knife.

Beckett fired in the air. “Everybody stop!” she ordered.

Surprisingly, they did, but just for a second. Then another gust of wind battered the building and Castiel continued his path towards the woman.

“Wait, Cas,” a panting Sam Winchester said from where he had his man pinned to the floor. “They don’t have them. Someone else got there first. Tell him what you told me.” He dug the tip of his knife lightly into the man’s back.

“Okay, okay. We followed them to their hideout and came back to plan.” The pinned man panted out.

“Tell us where,” Castiel demanded.

The man just laughed. “You know what? Kill me, Sammy. All this anger is a step in the right direction for you.”

Sam began to speak, reciting the same words he’d used earlier that day when Beckett had confronted him in the Walters’ apartment. The room was suddenly filled with black smoke.

When the smoke cleared, the room was still dim and there was a dead man on the floor. The smile was gone from Frank Walter’s wife’s face and she was swaying on her feet, threatening collapse.

Beckett aimed her gun at Castiel. “Sir, put down your weapon.”

Esposito already had Sam Winchester on his knees with his hands on his head, while Ryan was crossing the room to check on the injured woman.

Castiel’s sword disappeared into thin air. She actually saw it disappear. Ryan was right. He definitely wasn’t human. But she didn’t have time to freak out just then. Every moment that passed was a reminder that Castle was still missing.

“Tell us what’s going on,” she said.

XXX

“Demons?” Beckett asked disbelievingly.

“Demons,” Sam Winchester confirmed.

They were in Beckett’s car, lights and sirens on, following the directions of Frank Walter’s wife. She couldn’t remember exactly where the demon had been while in her body, but she remembered the turns and told them where to go. She sat in the front passenger seat next to Beckett, while Sam and a glowering Castiel sat in the back seat.

The sudden storm had abated, replaced by a dry wind and heavy cloud. She took it as a sign of good luck, because she couldn’t think about it coming from Castiel. That was too much.

“Dean left us a message at the bottom of the fire escape. There are at least three demons and there was a live civilian with him there,” Sam informed her.

Ryan and Esposito were following in their car with cans of spray paint, sacks of freshly bought rock salt and an IPod with speakers and a recorded exorcism on it.

After they rescued Castle, she was going to go home and have the biggest freak out ever.

“There,” Frank Walter’s wife, pointing to a brick house that stood alone in a tiny yard of bare dirt.

Beckett groaned. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve been a hunter for seven years. Getting possessed was a rookie mistake, but I knew what to watch for while I was possessed. That’s the place. Go get the bastards.”

A crowd of black SUVs took up the curb in front of the house, and the door of the house bore the telltale signs of recent battering. Several men and woman in suits and bulletproof vests waited outside.

“Crap! Feds!” Sam hit the back of the seat in frustration. “Cas?” But Cas wasn’t sitting next to him anymore.

“Okay, change of plans,” Sam said, as Beckett pulled her car over to the curb. “Cas gets Dean and Castle, then we go in and save the dumbass feds from the…”

Beckett didn’t hear the rest because she was flinging open her door and dashing into the gap between the brick house and the one next door.

“Castle!” She cried running over to where her friend was slowly crawling out from between the houses.

“Kate,” he mumbled, looking up as she knelt beside him. “I told him you were coming.”

“The ambulance is on its way,” she told him, sitting beside him in the dirt and letting him rest his head in her lap.

“Dean’s dead,” he whispered sadly.

She stroked his hair as he passed out.

XXX

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                Castle came around chained to a wall in a dungeon. Well, okay, a basement, but it would be a dungeon when he told the story. He blinked groggily in the dim light, lifting his thudding head to look around. Everything was in shades of grey. The floor was rough concrete with dark unidentifiable stains creeping across it. There was a bench with blurry shapes on it against one brick wall. A tiny window was high up in the wall opposite Castle, showing the dull light of very early morning. The crick in his neck protested painfully as he turned his head to investigate the third wall. A flight of stairs waited in the corner, a torturously long way away. And speaking of torture – he tugged experimentally with one aching arm, but all that happened was the clank of chains and the bite of cold metal into his wrist. He kicked out with his foot, realising he was dangling above the floor, his whole weight on his arms, which now that he was waking up were starting to really hurt. His foot would only move a couple of inches. He wrenched down with his arm again, harder. Still nothing happened.

                Castle was just starting to panic when a voice spoke from immediately to his left, and he realised that he was not just chained to a wall in a basement. He was chained to a wall in a basement with Dean Winchester, a delusional serial killer with a bounty on his head and some seriously scary people after him.

                Dean had let him go when the other guy had turned up with his cronies. Castle had tried to escape, but it was dark and Dean had bashed in the wall and come up with the rock salt. He’d flung it all over the place, and it was slippery and hurt like a bitch when you got a handful in the eyes. But still, Castle had felt like he was doing a decent job of escaping, dodging blind punches and rolling out of the way of Dean and a bad guy smashing into the wall, locked in combat. He’d even dived out of the way of a flung knife, and he kind of wished Beckett had been there to see that. It was the armchair that got him. It hadn’t landed on him, luckily, because it looked heavy enough to kill, but he’d seen it coming and dashed straight out of its path into the tackle of a guy that was going to be a lot bigger when he told the story. He’d come down hard, bashing his head on the wall and passing out.

                “You okay, man?” Dean Winchester was asking.

                Castle would have liked to come up with a witty and cutting remark to the effect that he obviously wasn’t alright, being chained to a wall in a basement, but his brain wasn’t working right. “No,” he said.

                Dean’s chains rattled. Castle turned his head to look at his fellow prisoner, ignoring the shooting pain that ran through him. He could practically hear his shoulders creaking under the strain of holding his bodyweight off the floor. He had to crane his neck forward to see around his arm, but there Dean was. Dean’s features weren’t clear through the darkness and the fog of concussion, but he looked in fairly good shape, considering the circumstances.

                “Grab the chains with your hands, it’ll ease the strain on your wrists,” Dean advised him.

                Castle straightened his arms, wrapping his fingers around the thick chains that dangled above the manacles on his wrists. Huh. Dean was right. That was better. It didn’t feel as much like all his joints were threatening to come apart. “Do this often?” he asked.

                “You’d be surprised,” Dean said dryly.

                Castle was torn between morbid curiosity about what would cause someone to be chained up multiple times, and really not wanting to know.

                Dean continued. “I am so sorry about this. I don’t know why they took you too, but I will get us out of here, I promise.”

Maybe it was the concussion talking, but Dean was really not seeming like such a bad guy right now. It seemed being chained up in a basement together could forge unusual friendships.

Footsteps sounded on the floor above. Castle’s panic returned with vigour. He struggled against his chains with all his might, but they remained stubbornly anchored in the wall. “Who are they? What are they going to do to us?”

Dean evaded the question, tugging sharply and repeatedly at his own chains. “Did they leave you your phone? Wallet? Paper clip? Anything?”

Castle wriggled, feeling the pockets of his clothes flap against his body. The familiar weight of his phone was gone, and his wallet didn’t slap against his leg, but his notebook remained in the inside pocket of his jacket, the spiral binding comfortingly familiar against him, pencil still safely tucked into it. “I’ve got a notebook,” he offered.

“What kind of notebook?”

Castle described it. It was small and discreet, with a thin wire spiral binding it at the top and crisp white pages with blue lines, perfect for note-taking.

“Awesome,” Dean said, and surprisingly, didn’t sound sarcastic. The footsteps crossed the floor above them. They were heavier this time, almost like they were mocking him. “Which pocket?”

“Inside left.”

“Okay, I’m not groping you; I’m going for the notebook. We can use the wire to unlock the chains.”

“You’ve got a hand free?” Castle asked in surprise and annoyance. Why hadn’t he mentioned the before?

“Well, no. I’ll have to dislocate my thumb to get my hand out of the cuff.” Dean said it casually. Castle shuddered. He knew it could be done. Derek Storm had done it regularly, and no-one could say Richard Castle didn’t do his research. He’d even tried it himself, just to get the sensations genuine, but he’d pulled out long before he’d had any shot at actually slipping the cuffs. It was seriously painful, and anyway, a writer needed his hands.

Dean did it without so much as a squawk of pain, and soon his right arm was stretched out towards Castle, fingers groping for the pocket with the notebook. Castle did his best to swing his body closer, ignoring his aching limbs.

“Beckett will find us soon,” he said, more to himself than Dean. He supposed the police was more of a reassurance to him than to someone who’d spent five years on the run from the cops anyway. “She’s the best detective on the force, and she’s definitely looking for me.” He ignored the little voice in his head that reminded him he hadn’t told anyone where he was going.

Dean didn’t reply, concentrating on running his injured hand up Castle’s side in search of the pocket that held the notebook. He’d just slipped his fingers into the pocket when the lights came on.

Castle blinked and turned his head against the sudden harsh white light. The pressure of Dean’s fingers left his side as Dean pulled his hand away.

As Castle’s eyes adjusted to the light, he made out a figure crossing the room from the stairwell. It was one of the three from the night before, the first that had spoken to Dean. He was average height, with a slight build, delicate features, mousy hair and eyebrows that disappeared in bright light. He looked unassuming, or he would have, were it not for the straight razor he carried closed in his hand and the crazy smile stretched unnaturally across his face.

Castle let out an involuntary squeak of fear, but the man ignored him, looking only at Dean. The crazy smile widened.

“Dean, Dean, Dean,” the man said, his voice silky and quiet, “You have been a naughty boy, haven’t you. Slipping your chains like that. That wasn’t smart, Dean. You know what happens when you try to escape.”

Dean looked worse in the light, his plaid shirt ripped and spotted with blood from a cut on his chest. A bruise discoloured the skin of his jaw, under a shadow of stubble, and there was a cut over his eye with a trail of dried blood running from it. He was glaring at the man with the razor.

“Oh, skip the speech and get on with it,” he growled, suddenly sounding very dangerous.

“But the speech is the fun bit.” The man flicked the razor open, running the pad of his thumb along the sharp edge. Drops of bright red blood rolled across the shiny surface of the blade. “I’ll tell you what: I’ll do the speech and the torture at the same time. How’s that for efficiency?” He licked the blood off his thumb.

Castle did his best to shrink back into the wall, and saw Dean doing the same, trying to get as far away from the razor as possible, all the while glaring fiercely at the mousy-haired man.

The mousy man stepped toward Dean, razor at the ready. His eyes seemed to flash black as he rested the edge of the blade gently on Dean’s abdomen. It was time for a little reckless bravery, just to buy time for Beckett to find them. “The police are on their way,” Castle said. His heart thumped hard and fast in his chest as the man turned to look at him. He couldn’t take his eyes off the razor, now pulled away from Dean’s skin and moving towards him. “If you stop now they might be willing to make a deal, but if you cut someone with that you’ll go down for a long time.”

The man stepped away from Dean, towards Castle. The razor glinted as he raised it to Castle’s face. Castle couldn’t breathe, the sharp edge resting on his cheek, just barely touching him.

Dean’s chains jangled. “Hey, over here! Let him go. You’ve got me, you don’t need him, just let him go.”

The razor moved lightly down Castle’s cheek, removing a line of five O’clock shadow. Castle did his best to follow it with his eyes as it neared his throat. Then, thankfully, the razor was pulled away. “Well, no, Dean,” he said, eyes fixed on Winchester, “I’m not going to let him go. We might need him for… leverage.” Castle tensed. He really didn’t want to know what that meant. “But you’re right. I shouldn’t be wasting my time on him when I have a celebrity to work with.”

Castle couldn’t help feeling a tinge of relief as the man stepped back towards Dean, and immediately felt horribly guilty for it. It wasn’t that he wanted Dean to get hurt, but it was human nature to be relieved when the immediate threat of torture was removed.

Dean struck out with his free hand, landing a blow on the man’s cheek. “Who are you?” he demanded.

The man’s eyes narrowed and he grabbed Dean’s arm, slamming the swollen hand against the wall and slapping the cuff back on. “You can call me Joe. Now, Dean, what are we going to do first?” He ripped open Dean’s shirt at the front, sending buttons popping to the floor, and pressed the tip of the razor to the bare skin of the chained man’s impressively muscular abdomen. “No angels to save you now, are there?”

Castle watched in horror as the razor drew a thin line of blood down Dean’s belly. Dean barely flinched and didn’t make a sound.

“What a superbly high pain threshold you have,” Joe commented, “I’m going to have to put some effort into this.” He made another shallow cut next to the first, and another beside it.”

“Weren’t you supposed to be introducing me to your boss?” Dean asked through gritted teeth.   

“Oh, he’s on his way,” Joe said, “But we’re allowed to have fun first.” He dug the corner of the blade into one of the cuts and twisted. Dean screwed up his face, but still didn’t make a noise. Castle could see his breath coming faster and his muscles trembling, though. It must hurt like hell.  He wanted to make it stop, but couldn’t really see how.

Hurry, Beckett. He sent out telepathic messages, and closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to watch.

“Where was I?” Joe asked in his velvet voice. “Oh, that’s right, the speech. No one’s coming for you, Dean. Sam doesn’t need you anymore. He just can’t wait you be free from your controlling, needy presence so he can say yes. Really, when you think about it, this is a good thing.” He paused, doing something that caused Dean to let out low groan. “You know you can’t win. You’re exhausted. You can’t save the world. You’re pathetic. But now we’ve got you and you can finally die. You won’t have to fight anymore. It’ll be painful, of course…”

Dean groaned again. Castle tentatively opened an eye, and wished he hadn’t. Blood covered Dean’s torso, running down over his jeans on pooling on the floor beneath him. But then Dean started to speak in a surprisingly strong voice, so maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked. It sounded a lot like the exorcism Castle had found on the internet when he was researching Devil’s Storm.

The man laughed. “Trying to exorcise me, Dean? You’re going to have to do a lot better than that. Now, what should I do next? I know, I’ll gouge one of those pretty green eyes out.”

Footsteps sounded across the room. Castle opened his eyes again.

“Hey, man.” It took Castle a second to realise he was being spoken to. “Are you okay?” Castle let out a hysterical giggle. The guy being tortured was asking him if he was all right. He nodded.

“Okay good. I’ll distract him; you slip your chains and get away. Find my brother Sam. Yell ‘Christo’ at anyone upstairs.”

“I’m not leaving you here!” Castle protested. “Look, Beckett will be here soon, I promise.”

Across the room, Joe was doing something at the bench with a blowtorch.

“Dude, cut the ‘my Westley will come for me’ crap. Even if she did make it in time, your girlfriend won’t be able to help. She doesn’t know how to deal with demons. We have to save ourselves, and that means you have to escape and leave me here.”

Demons? Now that Dean mentioned it, it kind of made sense, especially with the black eyes and all the talk of world saving. Crap. This was one time when Castle would have been really, really glad to have his theories debunked, and it turned out it was even worse than he’d suggested.

Joe was coming back, holding a spoon with a glowing red bowl. Castle shut his eyes and worked at dislocating his thumb. Dean was swearing violently and thrashing in his chains. Castle tried not to listen. He concentrated on his thumb, and tried very hard not to think about the man next to him having his eyes gouged out with a spoon.

It took him longer than he’d have liked, but finally his thumb popped out and he twisted his hand through the metal loop, slicked with blood from his struggles. His chains clanked and his joints creaked as his other arm took all of his weight. He reached into his pocket to pull out the notebook, untwisting the wire. It was surprisingly difficult without the use of his thumb, but finally he got it straight enough to use. As he was lifting it to the cuff around his wrist, Dean began to scream in earnest. The cuff took him a long time. Even with lock-picks, he wasn’t all that good at picking locks. When he had only a thin piece of wire and couldn’t see what he was doing, he was much worse, especially with only four fingers.

When the cuff came undone, Castle tumbled forward, landing heavily on his injured hand. He let out an involuntary yelp of pain and glanced up at the torturer to see if he’d heard. He hadn’t. He had a blowtorch now. Dean’s screams were getting weaker.

Castle worked at the manacles on his ankle. He freed his right foot, then his left.

Dean stopped screaming. Joe swore, setting the blowtorch down and marching straight past Castle and up the stairs.

Castle looked at Dean Winchester and vomited violently on the concrete floor. He gathered his courage, forcing himself to stand up, pausing for a moment as his legs threatened to buckle beneath him, and making his way over to Dean. He placed his fingers on the bloody throat. No pulse.

Castle took a deep breath and looked around the room. He forced his trembling body to cross the room to the bench and drag it, shove it, and otherwise force it across the room so it was under the window. He stood unsteadily on it, reaching up to smash the glass with a slightly bloodstained hammer. He tossed his jacket up to protect himself from broken glass, and examined the contents of the bench for something to pull himself up on. He tied a meat hook onto a heavy leather whip and cast the end up like an anchor. It took four tries, but it caught in the earth outside. He tugged at it to make sure it would hold, and then used it to help heave his exhausted body, panting and shaking, up through the window. He was running mostly on adrenalin, nearly collapsing in a heap after squeezing out through the window, but knowing he had to get away. Get home to his daughter and mother and friends, and find Sam Winchester to save his brother’s body.

He began to crawl along the dirt strip between the house where he’d been imprisoned and the one next door, going towards the street and people. The bare soil was hard, digging into his grazed hands.

There was a violent smashing from inside the house, followed by shouting and gunfire. The police had arrived.
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Beckett had just finished breakfast and was heading out the door on the way to the precinct when her cell phone rang. She picked up. “Beckett,” she said, as she locked her front door.

                “Is Richard with you?” the voice of Castle’s mother came anxiously through the earpiece.

                “No, why?”

                “He went out last night, and isn’t back yet. He’s not answering his phone, not even for Alexis.”

                Beckett didn’t waste time wondering why Castle’s mother would assume her son would be with her if he was out all night. For all of Martha’s dramatic tendencies, she had a strong grounding in sense, and was very fond of her son. If she was worried, there was usually a reason. And Castle always picked up his phone for Alexis.

                “When did he leave? Did he give any indication of where he was going?” she asked, walking to the stairwell as she spoke.

                “Alexis said he left a little after ten, and didn’t say where he was going. We’re worried he might have had an idea about your case and gone to investigate.”

                Beckett groaned to herself. Of course he had. That was what Castle did. Why hadn’t he called her? She’d have kept him out of trouble, or at least gone with him. They had been working together long enough that she was surprisingly open to some of his crazier theories by now, even if she made it look like she was just humouring him.

                She arranged for Martha and Alexis to wait at the precinct while she, Ryan and Esposito headed out to search the most likely places for him. “Try not to worry,” she told Martha, “I’m sure he’s just lost his phone or something.” She hung up, trying to ignore the gnawing worry in her belly.

                Beckett headed straight out to the apartment where the murder had taken place, calling Ryan from the car with instructions to track Castle’s phone. He and Esposito could head out to start searching afterwards.

                The traffic was infuriating, all red lights and people cutting each other off as they hurried to get to work on time, painfully oblivious to her hurry. Finally, she made it to Frank Walter’s (if that was even really his name) building, and stepped out of the car into a light rain and ran inside.

                The crime scene tape had been ripped from the door, which hung open, half off its hinges. Beckett pulled her gun from its holster, holding it ready as she inspected the door. There were marks around the lock from an amateur lock-picker. Probably Castle. It seemed strangely incongruous with the rest of the damage. Her chest tightened. It was looking less and less like Castle had just lost his phone. She nudged the door open, and entered, leading with her gun. The room was empty, but ransacked, like there had been a struggle. The couch was knocked over, and one of the armchairs rested, broken, against the wall on the other side of the room. Almost as though it had been thrown. Beckett could hardly imagine the kind of strength it would take to hurl a chair like that across a room. There were shards of crockery on the floor, and the television was mangled. On closer inspection, Beckett found it had been shot. She cleared the room, moving on to the bedroom.

                The hollow wall in the bedroom was open. Whoever had opened it hadn’t taken the time to find the secret lever, but had simply kicked it in and ripped the wall out. The weapons had all been seized as evidence the day before, but some of the salt had been left. Now the sack was empty and the floor was white with rock salt, the swirls in it showing signs of a struggle. A silver knife was embedded in the wall beside the door, at shoulder height. Most worrying of all, though, were the drops of blood speckled across the floor, like someone had got a minor cut and not stopped to clean it up, and a flashlight, still turned on, shining out from beneath the bed. And there, right in the centre of the floor, crushed beyond repair, sat Castle’s cell phone. The night vision setting was still blinking on and off.

                Castle, where are you? Beckett pulled out her phone to dial the precinct, the tightness and gnawing worry inside her increasing. Just as she went to hit the button, the apartment door creaked on its one working hinge. She pulled out her gun again, crossing the room to stand against the wall by the door.

                The man who entered the apartment was huge; too big for Beckett to take in hand-to-hand. She would have to surprise him, get her gun pointed at him.

                “Dean?” The man said, peering around the room. Beckett caught a glimpse of a knife in his right hand. It was large and serrated, designed as a weapon rather than a tool. From the hard expression on his face, he was more than capable of using it. “Dean? Are you here?” he asked again, turning to investigate the remains of the television.

                Beckett took her chance while he was looking the other way, coming out of her hiding place quickly and quietly and aiming her gun squarely at his back. “Don’t move. NYPD. Put your hands in the air.”

                The man raised his hands slowly, the knife still clasped in the right one. From closer, she could see strange symbols carved into the metal and a faint stain of blood down its side. “What have you done with Dean?” he growled.

                “Drop the knife and keep your hands where I can see them,” Beckett ordered, keeping her gun trained steadily on him.

                The man didn’t move, but he didn’t drop the knife either. From the corner of her eye, Beckett could see the outline of a gun tucked into the back of his jeans. He murmured something.

                “Drop the knife, or I’ll shoot.”

                The man’s murmurings grew louder, some kind of recitation in a foreign language.

                Beckett took a cautious step forward. Suddenly, the man spun, faster than she’d ever seen, and then her gun was on the floor across the room, and his knife was against her throat.

                “Tell me what you’ve done with my brother,” he ground out, “If you think for one second I believe you’re a cop…” he trailed off. “Christo?” he said, sounding almost hopeful.

                Beckett stood absolutely still. She could feel the serrated edge of the knife making shallow cuts on her skin. “Please put the knife down,” she said calmly.

                To her surprise, the man began to back away slowly, hands raised apologetically. Beckett would have preferred it if he’d dropped the knife, but it was a start. “Christo?” he tried again.

                “My name is Kate Beckett. I’m an NYPD Detective. Why don’t you put the knife down and we can discuss this calmly?” Beckett did her best to speak soothingly.

                “I’m sorry,” the man said, and that was definitely an apology in his eyes, “I don’t want to hurt you, but I need you to leave. It’s not safe for you here.”

                Beckett kept her eyes on the knife and opened her mouth to continue the negotiation, but was interrupted.

                “NYPD! Put the knife down!”

                “NYPD! Put down your weapon!”

 “New York Police Department, hands in the air!”

Ryan and Esposito burst through the broken door, guns ready, making a lot of noise. Beckett breathed a sigh of relief as the big man finally dropped his knife. She pulled out her handcuffs, kicking the knife across the floor as she reached to cuff him.

As she was tightening the second cuff, there was a strange movement of air behind her, as if someone had opened a window without warning.

“What the- “ Beckett heard Esposito exclaim.

There was a clatter as Ryan dropped his gun.

From behind Beckett a man’s voice spoke deeply and slowly. “What do you want, Sam? I am busy.”

Beckett froze, and then turned, keeping a firm hold on the handcuffed man.

Sam was apparently the handcuffed man’s name, because he replied, relief evident in his voice. “Hey Cas. Uh, thanks for coming.”

“What do you want?” The new man repeated. He was standing very still, hands at his sides like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. His sharp blue eyes focussed unblinkingly on Sam, as though there was nobody else in the room. “Where is Dean?”

“That’s kind of what I called you about… he’s kind of missing.” Sam wasn’t exactly backing down, but he seemed uncomfortable, almost hesitant. The man in the dirty trench coat and askew tie was obviously more than he seemed, if he was powerful enough to invite respect from someone as clearly dangerous as Sam.

“You have lost your brother?” The statement was not quite accusing, but the he sounded annoyed.

Ryan regained his voice. “How did you do that?”

The blue-eyed man ignored him, speaking directly to Sam again. “You should be more careful. I cannot find him anymore.”

“I thought maybe he’d called you?”

“He has not,” the reply was short, “We must find him immediately. Hell has a bounty out on him. If they get their hands on him, his deaths will not be pleasant.”

“Deaths?” Esposito mumbled wonderingly.

The man – Cas? – turned his head to look at Esposito briefly before returning his attention to Sam. “Dean cannot give his consent if he is dead. Every time is soul enters heaven, they will return it to his body. We must endeavour to find him before the torture begins.” He began to walk towards Sam.

“Don’t move and put your hands in the air,” Beckett ordered, as authoritatively as she could manage given the circumstances. She wished her gun was not on the other side of the room.

Cas turned to look at her. His gaze was enquiring and not at all intimidated. “Do you know where Dean is?” he asked.

“I said, put your hands in the air!”

“Why?” The man tilted his head to the side, examining her. She fought the urge to step back.

Sam turned to look at her as well. “Why are you here?”

Beckett fought for a way to regain control over the situation, but was interrupted by Ryan. “Our friend’s been taken, too. He was looking into the connection between the murder victim and your brother.”

Beckett glared at him, but he kept looking at Sam. “You are Sam Winchester, right?”

Sam Winchester nodded. Beckett was silently adding a whole lot more to the list of things he was under arrest for when he spoke. “Look,” he said, “I appreciate that you’re worried about your friend, and you think you’re doing your jobs, but you need to back off. You don’t know what you’re dealing with, and you’re going to get yourselves killed. Let us handle it. We’ll bring him back.”

Beckett worked to keep her cool, recalling the delusions Castle had told her the Winchesters suffered from. “Because of the monsters? I’m sorry, Sam. Monsters don’t exist, and you are under arrest. Leave the investigation to the police.”

The man in the trench coat spoke again, impatiently: “We don’t have time for this, Sam.” He stretched his hand out towards Beckett’s forehead, and everything went black.

XXX

When Beckett came around, she felt surprisingly well rested, and the thumping pain in her head which would usually follow being knocked out was conspicuously absent. She opened her eyes, feeling only slightly groggy, to see Ryan and Esposito staring down at her as she lay on the floor.

“What happened?” She asked.

Ryan helped her sit up. “I don’t care if monsters don’t exist, that guy was not human.” He and Esposito looked at each other.

“Dude, that made no sense,” Esposito remarked.

“Well, it’s true,” Ryan insisted.

“Oh, come on,” Beckett groaned, blinking around the room. The apartment was exactly as it had been, except Sam Winchester and Cas were gone. “You let them get away?”

“He knocked you out by touching your forehead, and then disappeared into thin air!” Ryan continued.

“Oh, really?” Beckett looked at him sceptically.

“Tell me you saw that, too!” Ryan looked at his partner.

“I dunno, man. Maybe it was just a… trick of the light or something.” Esposito sounded strangely unsure of himself. It made Beckett nervous. Esposito was nearly always sure of himself.

“So they got away.”

“Well, yes,” Ryan admitted, “But we did find something.”

Beckett refused Esposito’s offer of a hand up, and struggled to her feet, no mean feat in 3-inch heels. She followed the others across to the window and looked out at the fire escape. A thin trail of salt and an occasional drop of blood wound down the stairs.

“We’ve got our lead on Castle,” she said.

XXX        

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When Castle and Beckett got back to the precinct, Esposito had his chair pulled up at Ryan’s desk. They were both bent over a book lying open in front of them.

                “…such a Dean-girl,” Ryan was saying.

                Castle would have loved to hear the beginning of that conversation. “What’s a Dean-girl?” he asked.

                Ryan shoved the book under a pile of papers. “Nothing. We ran down the sketch. It’s definitely Dean Winchester. According to his file, he’s legally dead, but according to the internet there’ve been numerous sightings of him and his brother since his supposed death. There are whole sites devoted to tracking him. It’s like he’s some kind of underground folk hero. Most of the people on them don’t even believe he committed the crimes he was wanted for. Although some of them are just sickos who follow serial killers.”

                “And none of these people who supposedly saw him went to the FBI?” Beckett asked.

                “They got a couple of calls, but no proof. They thought he was dead, so didn’t follow it up. There have been sightings of his brother, too, but again, no proof. “

                “And nothing to indicate why, if Dean is alive, someone would be looking for him? And willing to kill to get to him?”

                “Nothing.”

                Castle’s brain whirred. “So Dean Winchester, with a keen sense of right and wrong, and a harsh military upbringing, becomes a vigilante. He has a strong, unique set of morals, and because of that believes himself to be above the law, capable of punishing the wicked when the law can’t reach them. He fakes his own death to escape the FBI, and now finds himself in a worse position. The very monsters he was waging a war against – killers, rapists, child molesters, Satanists, every evil person imaginable – are fighting back. There’s a bounty on his head, and everyone he’s ever crossed is after him. He has to run, always looking over his shoulder, never able to relax…”

                Beckett broke in. “Nice story, Castle. Too bad that’s all it is. Now if you don’t mind, some of us are going to solve this case using the facts.”

                “But there aren’t any facts,” Castle pouted, “And that’s how I would write it.”

                Beckett turned to Esposito. “Any luck running down the wife?”

                Esposito shook his head. “Nada. Her sketch doesn’t match any recent missing persons or murder victims, and we still don’t have a name or prints, so we can’t find an arrest history or employment checks. I showed the sketch to the neighbours, and a few people said they’d stopped seeing her around about four months ago, but no-one could confirm that she was our vic’s wife or that she entered the apartment before his death. No-one had ever spoken to her or knew her name.”

                “When I go home tonight, I’m going to talk to my neighbours,” Castle said. “It seems unbelievable that someone can get killed in their apartment and no one can even tell you his name, but it’s really not.”

                “Even if the neighbours had spoken to them, judging by the false I.D.s, they wouldn’t give their real name anyway,” Beckett reminded him.

                Esposito continued: “The apartment was rented by Bruce Springsteen. We’re calling his guys to check, but we’re pretty sure it’s a false name.”

                “Wouldn’t that be cool, though? If Bruce Springsteen was involved?” Castle couldn’t help saying.

                The others ignored him. Beckett filled Ryan and Esposito in on the interview with Locke, and Lainey’s report.  “The cause of death was blood loss at the result of an attack with a weapon that had five sharp, curved blades that were stabbed into the chest around the heart and squeezed with enormous strength. Lainey hasn’t found a match yet, but her best guess is a… er… robotic hand.”

                “A robotic hand?” Ryan asked incredulously.

                “Or something similar. Possibly part of a piece of machinery used in the manufacture of heavy machinery. He also suffered severe internal bleeding due to ruptured organs, and was mutilated post-mortem, probably in an attempt to disguise the weapon used. He also had several broken ribs, and a large number of healed fractures and scars from everything ranging from knife wounds to bullets.”

                “So he probably had a dangerous job,” Esposito suggested.

                “Like being a vigilante,” Castle expanded.

                “A vigilante who shoots things with rock salt?”

                Beckett called them back to attention, instructing Ryan and Esposito to follow up the weapon, and beckoning Castle over to go with her to show pictures of the victim, his wife, and Dean Winchester around businesses in the area he had lived. He followed her. God, she was hot when she was masterful.

XXX

                The owners of the first business they visited, a cheap, dirty Chinese takeaway, spoke no English but shook their heads blankly at all three pictures. They had no luck at the Laundromat next door either, but at the third place they got a hit. It was a rundown liquor store, the kind where the cracks in the windows are repaired with duct tape, and the owner keeps a gun under the counter. The owner was in his late fifties and solidly built, with big shoulders and a square jaw.  He didn’t recognise the wife, but at the picture of the victim, he nodded immediately.

                “Comes in a lot,” he said, “Drinks Jack. Buys a bottle maybe once a week, sometimes a couple at a time. Sometimes he doesn’t show up for a couple of weeks. Been coming in for maybe 10 months.”

                “When was the last time you saw him?” Beckett asked.

                “Maybe two days ago.”

                “Did he seem upset at all? Worried? Was anything unusual?”

                “He was never that friendly, especially in the last few months, but he did seem tenser than usual. He was definitely packing, and he gave me a message for someone.”

                “What was the message?’

                The liquor store owner thought for a moment, tapping his fingers on the counter. “Can I see your ID again? He was pretty clear I shouldn’t tell the wrong people.”

                Beckett held out her badge again. The guy took it and examined it closely, then looked at Castle expectantly.

                Castle shrugged apologetically. “I’m just a writer, I don’t have a badge.” Maybe he should have one made to match his bullet proof vest. He did his best not to look dangerous. It wasn’t hard.

                The man handed Beckett’s badge back to her, saying, “He said a guy would probably come asking questions about him. He’d be a big guy, with an even bigger guy, and would be using a classic rock alias. I had to say: Frank Walter has paid his debt. Hell has a bounty on you, get out now.”

                Castle stared at him. “Did he say what he meant by hell?”

                The man shook his head. “Nope. That was it. But he kept looking over his shoulder, and he told me to run if I saw anyone with black eyes.”

                Beckett was writing it down. “Did you give the message to anyone?”

                “Yeah,” he said, “That guy.” He pointed to the sketch of Dean Winchester.

XXX

                After the interview with the liquor store owner, Castle went directly home to make sure Alexis’ bedroom window was securely locked.  It was looking more and more like Dean Winchester wasn’t dead and was in New York, and if that was the case, Castle was taking no chances. Even if Alexis wasn’t what Dean usually went after, he’d changed his tactics to escape law enforcement before. If he felt them closing in, there was no telling what he might do.

                He invited Beckett over for dinner, but she declined in favour of heading back to the murder board. He didn’t read too much into it. He’d wear her down eventually.

                When he arrived home, dinner was already on the table, freshly made by his mother. It was extremely salty and slightly burnt, but there was lots of it. The three of them ate together, discussing Martha’s new play and the fencing competition Alexis was participating in the following weekend. Castle allowed himself to be dragged into a slight re-enactment of the swordfight between Inigo Montoya and Count Rugen for a little while before starting to write his next chapter. Or, if he was honest, was not so much dragged into it as suggested it.

                He was just thrusting his foil up the stairs at Count Rugen, shouting, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!” when it struck him. Maybe the connection between the victim and Dean Winchester was through Dean’s father.  Justin Locke had said the victim had carried himself like a soldier. John Winchester had been a marine. The victim had a wall full of weapons, and silver bullets. Silver bullets killed werewolves and vampires. John Winchester had thought of himself as a monster hunter.  Maybe the victim had been another of John Winchester’s students. Maybe, just like with his sons, John Winchester had convinced this man that monsters existed, and that was why he had all the weapons.

                While he was distracted, Alexis took the opportunity to gravely wound him. He spent five minutes dying painfully at the base of the stairs, then resurrected himself, reminded Alexis to lock her windows, and went to have a shower and think before sitting down to write.

                The problem was, he thought as he washed off the sweat from the swordfight, that he couldn’t go to Beckett with his theory yet.  He really didn’t have anything to back it up, which was all very well when he was talking about zombies, but not so good when he actually wanted Beckett to take him seriously. He didn’t actually believe in monsters himself, which put a damper on the multiple monster hunters theory. What he needed was something other than silver bullets to connect John Winchester to the victim.

                He was still thinking about it when he got his laptop out to write. He was still thinking about it half an hour later when his mother sailed out on her way to a night at the theatre with friends. The cursor blinked rudely at him from a blank page. He shut his laptop. There was nothing for it. He was going to have to go back to the apartment.

                He stuck his head around his daughter’s door, checked her window, and told her he was going out. Alexis kissed him on the cheek and said goodnight, promising to put herself to bed at 10:30. She was already back to concentrating on her physics homework when he glanced back at her. He smiled to himself. He really did have the best daughter in the world.

                He armed himself with a flashlight, his phone with the night-vision app, and the lock picks he had bought at the spy shop the previous Thursday. Letting himself out of the apartment, he made sure the alarm beeped before he left.

                XXX

                The door to the victim’s (now known to Castle as ‘Probably Frank’ – interestingly, the same name as his favourite Teddy bear until the age of seven) apartment was locked, yellow plastic crime scene tape criss-crossing in front of it. He picked the lock, a difficult feat in gloves, even with special spy-shop lock picks. Ducking under the tape, he pushed the door open and entered, flashlight in hand.

                The apartment looked different in the dark. Somehow more frightening, despite the fact that last time there had been a body in it and now there wasn’t.  The furniture cast shadows in the light of his flashlight that seemed to move. He stepped gingerly around the blood-soaked patch of carpet, heading into the bedroom to look for clues to link Probably Frank to John Winchester. He was just running his fingers around the walls, looking for secret levers, when he heard the door creak open in the next room. He froze. Please be Beckett. Please be Beckett.

                It wasn’t Beckett. He found that out when he was slammed against the wall hard enough to knock his breath out. He’d forgotten how much it hurt to be winded. His flashlight dropped from his hand and rolled across the room, making the shadows rock.

                “I surrender,” he squeaked.

                “What?” The guy holding him said in surprise. He was about the same size as Castle, maybe a little shorter. It was hard to tell with all the aggression.  He was very strong.

                “I surrender.”

                “You surrender?” The guy’s deep voice rose a little incredulously. Then he seemed to recover, shoving Castle harder into the wall. “Tell your boss to stop killing people to get to me. I’m here now; he can take his best shot.”

                A silhouette filled the doorway. “Nice to know, Dean. If you and your little friend will just come with us, we’ll call him immediately.”

XXX  
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