When she finds herself back in Sioux Falls on a job, a twist of fate puts Evelyn Marshall in the path of the Winchesters and Bobby Singer. With nowhere left to run, the dark secrets in her past and the creatures who've hunted her are about to catch...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
We stayed at the bar while we planned and plotted the specifics. Everything had to be perfect and, if it wasn't, it needed to be successful. I'd already accounted for the fact I might die in this confrontation. To be honest, I'd been counting what remained of my life in minutes and seconds for the past nine years.
Ever since the pack had decided that I needed to die, I'd been on borrowed time.
It looked like the debt was finally due.
I thought about what I should do to prepare. The things that normal people might do if they were in my position. There was no point in writing a will. Everything I had fit in a bag. Bobby would take the motorbike. I'd left it at his place, anyway. He'd probably break it down for scrap. The Winchesters could have my weapons. They'd get better use out of them than anyone else.
Castiel...
I had nothing for him. Nothing but the lingering feeling that might've been more someday. They might have been less, too. It would remain an uncertain future that we never got the chance to discover. One day, the angel would forget that I'd ever been a part of his life. That's just how it was when you were a hunter. You crossed paths with so many individuals. You couldn't keep them all in your heart. Remembering hurt, and there was no time for that. No room for it. It wasn't a life you could endure if you were melancholy and sentimental.
He needed to be stronger than that.
They all did.
Ellen's stock of books was nothing to Bobby's, but it didn't need to be. She had Ash. The guy was more of a computer wiz than Sam. There were spells on his laptop screen so old and dark in nature that even Mum wouldn't have touched them. She tried to be a white witch but, in a situation like this, she'd have allowed a little black magic to achieve a win for the good guys. The books the group did have were open on every table as they pored through them.
Crowley had disappeared for a time. I wondered if he would renege on our deal but he returned with the ingredients he'd need to cast a binding spell on Lee. A trap. From the way he behaved, I had to assume that it wasn't a permanent solution. Otherwise, he'd have simply taken my brother hostage and been done with it. I could only assume that he was afraid of what might happen if he elected to imprison his pet and it one day broke out of its cage.
Meanwhile, I sat in the corner of the bar with my hand outstretched and tried to force the angelic power to the surface. If I couldn't control it or call on it when the moment demanded, then all this would've been for nothing. The plan would only succeed if we all played our parts. I refused to be the weak link. The chink in our armour. The hunters would hold the line outside, casting incantations to bolster the trap that Crowley created. Castiel was there to obliterate his physical form. I needed to burn him out until there was nothing left. We were all relying on each other, and I knew that if I lost the battle, my friends would pay the price for it.
