The battlefield stilled, not with silence, but with fear.
Every creature on it still stood. Hybrid, shapeshifter, and even some vengeful spirits that had hung on, all stared at me like prey recognizing a new predator. Violet flames crackled around me, surrounding me with demonic energy. But there was something older about this. Something wrong. It shimmered like a heat mirage and bled shadows into the dirt several feet below me now.
I didn't float back down so much as I fell back into Earth's gravity. I landed lightly on my heels, arms spread out at my sides. The first hybrids who dared to charge at me didn't make it more than a few steps forward.
I hadn't even lifted a finger.
They just ignited mid-air.
Their grace and corruption screamed as they were forcibly torn apart like the divine power inside of them recognized the darkness in me and wanted to flee. They burst into ash like overripe fruit, the air suddenly filling with the sickening stench of infected blood.
"Alex?" Kore's voice found my ears. Uncertain. I turned to them slowly. Their eyes were wide, their stance braced, blade still in hand. They weren't afraid of me, but they weren't calm anymore either.
"I've got it," I said, but the voice wasn't mine. There was some distortion to it like someone else speaking just underneath my own words.
Kore didn't lower their weapon.
Neither did Cael, who landed next to them now, his eyes burning with blue angelic grace. "You accepted the thing…" It wasn't a question.
"Didn't have much of a choice," I answered anyway.
The hybrids surged again, spurred on by something deeper, more desperate. Maybe they knew they were losing now. Maybe they were being pushed finally. They came at me like animals that had been backed into a corner: teeth bared, claws flashing, bodies lit with blue veins of unnatural grace.
And I moved.
Not with any plan.
With instinct.
Shadows of violet energy spilled from me, black and purple fire devouring the hybrids before they could touch anyone else. The ground cracked beneath my feet as the dark power swelled, and I started to feel a shift with each second I held onto it.
It started in my hands, the skin tightening, scaling subtly along the backs of my knuckles. Black scales pushed up, barely visible beneath the blood and dirt that covered me. Then along my jaw, sharp lines of texture began to rise like something had slithered under my skin. And my teeth ached and lengthened. I felt my pupils shift and thin in my eyes, vertical and cold before I could gain control again and force them back.
I clenched my fists.
Not all the way. Not yet.
"You cannot wield a god halfway." The voice hissed through my mind like a fog. "But I admire your effort."
"Shut up." I hissed at it.
I launched into the fray again.
I caught Dean and Sam's stares as I passed them. Dean was holding his machete like it suddenly wasn't the sharpest thing on the battlefield anymore. Sam's mouth hung agape as his hazel eyes studied me in disbelief. I didn't blame them. I probably didn't look like myself anymore. Not with this power. Not with the scales. Not with whatever godlike wrongness I was giving off in waves.
"Cas," I said sternly as I approached him, Cael at my side again. "Use me as cover, and don't hold back."
Cas' expression was hard to read, grief, awe, a little bit of terror, but he nodded. He stepped into my shadow as I cut through five more hybrids in the space of two breaths. It was like the tampered grace in their veins exploded upon contact with me. This power was raw, chaotic, and unrefined.
Cael charged ahead, a blade in his hands flashing with holy light, and Kore flanked him now, angelic blade still glowing with their own power. The three of us formed a circle, covering each other's blind spots.
And for the first time today, our plan was working.
We started winning.
I tore through the next wave like a blade through water.
The hybrids started to come faster now, snarling, desperate, afraid. I didn't care. Every time one got within striking distance, my power flared, and its grace ignited from the inside out, like their own stolen divinity couldn't stand to exist beside mine. They fell in bursts of violet and cobalt, limbs scorched black, eyes hollow.
Kore fought like a storm beside me, their blade weaving a dance of ruin around every creature that dared to breach my side. Cael glided behind them, angel blade whistling through air and bone alike.
I heard Dean curse and reload a gun as he and Sam rejoined the fight, no longer stunned.
"Someone remind me why we don't just napalm the place," Dean shouted, firing another salt round into a spirit.
"Because we're standing in the middle of it!" Sam barked back, driving an angel blade we'd kept around as a spare into a hybrid's neck.
"Semantics!" Dean responded.
Cas dropped beside me again, shoulder grazed and splashed with blood, but no longer bleeding, grace flickered in his eyes. "The grace inside them is fracturing. Whatever your presence is, it's destabilizing it."
"Then let's keep pushing forward," I growled. "Harder."
I threw my hands forward, and the ground obeyed.
A shockwave of violet energy erupted like a tidal surge, slamming through a pack of hybrids trying to charge from our right side. The blast lifted them from their feet and dropped them into smoking heaps. Some twitched. Others just stopped.
I heard Lucifer behind me suddenly, his voice rasping out in guttural Latin phrases. Golden red flames danced in front of me suddenly as he carved through the force there. Elly was beside him when I turned, blade in one hand, pistol in the other as she dragged Ally to the safety of the garage.
"She's holding!" Elly shouted, meeting my gaze. "Barely!"
I nodded. "Just a little longer. We're almost done."
Except we weren't.
The horde wasn't breaking.
It continued to fold on itself, falling back just to regroup and try again and again. Hybrids clawed over their own dead, tearing dirt and flesh, eyes still glowing with desperation and something almost programmed. It wasn't instinct or hunger that forced them forward.
They were being given orders.
"They're not running," Cas muttered. "They're not mindless beasts. They should sense that they're losing and run."
I hesitated in the fight.
"They're not fighting to win," I said, my stomach sinking. "They're being forced to fight."
Cael cursed under his breath as he flung a dagger across the field, pinning a shapeshifter to a tree. "Which means what? There's a leader?"
Kore looked at me, panting. "They had to come from somewhere. Right."
I didn't have an answer I could give them. Not a good one anyway.
The scales on my neck were spreading with each minute now.
I could feel it, tingling beneath my skin like a second layer trying to come forward. Every time I drew deeper into the power, more of that dark voice surfaced with it. My fingers cracked and shifted into claws. My voice still warping in my ears.
"You don't need them." The voice crept in again. "Soon they will all kneel…or burn."
"No." I shook my head violently. "We are going to finish this my way."
"You accepted me, child. This is our way now."
The hybrids surged again, bodies lit with grace, eyes wild.
And we met them with everything we had to give.
Cas shifted to Ally as she began to glow again, grace surging violently from her, uncontrolled and dangerous. Lucifer stood in front of them, stance wide and braced, fire dancing along his arms like war paint.
Dean shouted from across the battlefield. "Alex! We've still got more coming!"
"We need to end this or we'll have nothing left when Jack gets back!" Sam added.
"Then push harder!" I commanded.
The earth beneath my feet crumbled as I drove another pulse of corrupted energy forward. Wiolet light arched between corpses, igniting the pockets of grace still in their bodies. Cael and Kore flanked me with hammers beside an anvil, and together we struck down the charging force.
It was working. The monsters were faltering. I felt like I could see the end, for the first time in years. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. And the air seemed to shift one last time. But not like before. Not magically.
There was something familiar about this cold, lovely wind.
And the nit died like the stillness before a strike. Controlled. Like something had reached through the battlefield and pressed its hand against the world's throat.
I turned towards the new approaching energy before he stepped through the growing clouds of ash. And I knew.
He moved with a purpose, boots crunching softly over scorched earth and bodies that had not yet cooled. He stood tall, broad, and exact in every stride. The tailored black button-up was rolled up at the sleeves, and stained with blood. His nice slacks were covered in dark patches of it, too. His hair, once neatly slicked back, hung loose in his eyes.
Those eyes…
That wonderful shark grey I had come to love.
Those mercury pools I had fallen victim to over and over again.
Ketch' eyes.
But they weren't his anymore.
They shifted to black onyx, like oil-slicked over silver.
"Hello, Alex." His voice was smooth like silk pulled tight over broken glass. "It's been a while."
I didn't answer. Couldn't.
Ketch.
The man I had loathed, and shot, and buried, and hated, and loved. The man I had fought so hard for. The man I had dreamed of saving and starting a life with, even when I knew Hell would have no mercy for either of us.
But this wasn't him now.
This was Orion.
The demon stepped closer, his expression calm, almost pleased. "I have to say. I'm impressed. You lasted far longer than I expected." He clicked his tongue. "And you almost did it. Almost won."
"Get out of him." My voice came out sharp, not my own. Gravel beneath the fire. "Now."
Orion cooed and tilted his head, Ketch' head, slightly. "You'll have to make me. And we both know you won't. Because you won't hurt him."
Every part of me itched to prove him wrong. Itched to burn him down where he stood.
But he was right.
That face, his voice, it still belonged to someone I loved. Someone who had made me love myself. Someone who had given me the life I had always dreamed of, even if it wasn't perfect. He had given me Kore and had made me believe I could be more than just fire and fury.
But now, the demon who had built these things, who had created these abominations, was staring at me through that same face. He taunted me with it.
Kore stepped forward, blade lowered. "Dad…?"
Orion's gaze shifted to them.
Softened.
But only for a second before becoming cruel again.
"You've grown up well." He said, a flash of something unreadable in his eyes. "Hard to know if I am or not huh? I've been in here a lot longer than you think." He smirked. "You're stronger than I anticipated. Not too much of a surprise though, not with a mother like yours."
Kore didn't respond.
They didn't need to.
The tension between us cracked like thunder.
"Why?" I asked, voice beginning to tremble. "Why him?"
Orion sighed like a man tired of explaining himself. "Because he wanted it. He so badly wanted to be immortal just like you. And I wanted nothing but to destroy him and be with you, so we made a deal."
"He would've never agreed to that."
"Woldn't he?" Orion chuckled, the sound made my skin crawl. "You don't know him as well as you think you do, Alex. Not really. He still wanted to destroy things. He just needed the permission to do it."
I took a step toward him. The fire inside of me pulsed. The dark power coiled beneath my ribs.
"Don't," Kore said suddenly, stepping between us.
I blinked. "What?"
Kore reached a trembling hand towards me. "Don't fight anymore. If you fight him now, if you let go of yourself…you won't stop."
They could see it.
Hell, they probably felt it.
The scales alone my hands, the heat curled just under my skin. The low, rhythmic whisper of this dark influences hunger in the back of my mind.
"This is our world now. Prove to them you're the monster they all think you already are."
I clenched my fists. My claws, no longer fingers, dug into my palms.
Orion smiled again, spreading his arms wide. "Come on, love. Let's finish what we started."
I stood there, between the man I loved and the monster who wore his skin.
The battlefield faded.
The fire. The screaming. The smell of scorched grace and blood. It all dimmed until there was only him.
Orion. Within Ketch.
My. Ketch.
The lines between them burred in the worst way. His voice. His shape. Even the way he stood, too confident and knowing. But every now and then, his expression would falter. A muscle jumped in his jaw, or his eyes flickered just grey enough before snapping black to black as if something inside of Orion was watching.
I didn't want to fight him. But there wasn't another choice. My foot shifted forward, and in that moment, the entire battlefield seemed to hold its breath.
"Get. Out. Of him." I growled low.
Orion tilted his head again and smiled. "Make me."
And then he moved.
Faster than I ever remember Ketch being. It was the demonic speed that fed him now. Burring towards me with a flicker of shadow at his back, drawing a blade from his side.
I blocked it with my forearm.
Steel meeting scales.
The sound rang like a bell through my bones.
I flung him back with a pulse of power, and he twisted midair, landing on his feet. Dirt exploded beneath him as he launched again, blade slashing in tight arcs, forcing me to backpedal across broken ground.
Every strike was precise. Calculated.
Orion knew my style.
He knew Ketch' style too.
And he fought the perfect parry to me.
"Is this how you wanted to save him?" Orion taunted, blade catching the edge of my shoulder. "You're hesitating. It's pathetic."
"I won't kill him just to get rid of you!" I roared, summoning fire into my palm and throwing it like a dagger.
Orion ducked, rolled, and vanished behind a shimmer of air.
I turned…
Too late.
His blade cut across my ribs.
I gasped at the sudden pain, one hand clamping over the wound even as it instantly healed. But the blood that had trickled out of it still shimmered along my claws, nearly black with the dark energy that pulsed in it.
He circled me slowly now, breathing deeply.
"You've become something to be feared by everyone," Orion said. "And yet…you're still the one most afraid."
"I'm not afraid of myself." I spat.
He grinned. "Good. That means I'm winning."
I lunged at him.
This time I didn't hold back as much.
My claws tore through the air, faster than my blades ever could. I struck low and then high, forcing him onto the defensive. The heat around us ignited patches of earth, violet flames licking the dead and casting long shadows. We moved like two storms colliding, energy sparking, blades clashing, fists meeting flesh and bone.
I drove my knee into his side, and he caught it with his elbow and twisted, throwing me backward into a pike of scorched rubble. I hit hard, vision sparking, but I was already rising again.
There was no time to stay down. He was on me again in a flash, dragging his blade through the space I'd just vacated. I grabbed his arm. Felt the heat of Ketch' skin. A pulse.
Still there. He was still alive.
But there was something that still pressed beneath it, a second rhythm that coiled like a snake beneath his skin.
"You're still in there," I whispered through gritted teeth, looking past Orion's smug expression as I held him at bay. I looked right into the flicker of something human behind his eyes. "I know you are."
And for a heartbeat, just one, I saw it.
Ketch.
His jaw clenched. His body shuddered.
"Don't" He rasped. And it wasn't Orion.
Then he was gone.
Orion headbutted me, hard, sending me crashing into the dirt again. Stars exploded behind my eyes. The world tilted again. I coughed, breath ragged for a second as I fought for control, dragging myself upright as Orion stalked towards me.
"You're weaker for loving him." He said. "And his love for you. Fuck it. My love for you." He laughed, "It's the only reason I haven't gutted you yet."
"I won't kill him."
"You'll have to."
He raised the blade again, over his shoulder.
"Let me out!" The dark voice hissed. "Let me strike for you! Let me strip him away!"
I squeezed my eyes shut.
"No."
The blade came down…And I caught it.
Scaled fully bloomed now across my hand, up my forearm. They shimmered with unnatural power. I tried to keep my eyes from shifting again, but my vision narrowed anyway. My mouth began to taste like fire and ash.
And I held him.
Orion stared at me, surprised, angry. A flicker of frustration broke through the smug exterior.
A shriek cut across the field behind us. Another hybrid, a massive brute of a monster had cut through the rest and was charging toward Elly and Ally. The others were busy, too far away in their own battles. Lucifer was trapped between many, Cas was too far, and Dean was shouting.
I had to choose.
The hybrid roared at them as it tore towards them, a behemoth of muscle and cobalt blue grace. Where had the thing come from? Its claws scraped across the ground as it stalked toward its prey. Elly stood in front of her daughter, a shield of love even as terror flashed in her eyes. Lucifer shouted something I couldn't quite make out.
I shifted my attention to them, a heartbeat away from leaping toward them.
But Orion stabbed his blade into my shoulder again, trapping me against him. He was smiling, laughing, as the violet light flared beneath the scales of my skin.
"You can't save them and him" He whispered, close enough now that I could feel the heat of his breath on my cheek. "What's it going to be, Alex?"
I growled low, struggling against the blade, against my heart, against everything.
He leaned closer, his voice like venom sliding into a wound. "You're going to lose something either way."
My rage surged. The dark voice roared in my skull, demanding freedom, demanding blood. I almost gave in to it. I almost let go.
That was when he knew.
Orion stepped back, dragging the blade with him.
And he smiled wider. Calm. Cold.
Triumphant.
"Why don't I choose for you," Orion said, his tone almost tender.
And…
With no fanfare…
No scream…
No warning…
Orion reached back.
Grabbed Ketch' neck.
And snapped it.