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...
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Uneasy darkness swathed the clearing.
It pressed in from all sides, the air thick and heavy with foreboding. Everything was in place. Everyone prepared. It was hard to believe that anyone could prepare for the end, but the hunters, angel, and demon had done their best to plan for all eventualities.
Perhaps it was dramatic to call it the end.
That implied that the world was about to crash down around them. That the fate of everything hung in the balance. It didn't. At least, not yet. What stood before them was just a moment. A single moment in which the course of their lives might change. The outcome of the looming battle would decide in which direction.
Still, there was a chance.
A flicker of hope.
A faltering, sputtering spark that wavered like a candle flame in a storm. At any moment, it might be extinguished. It might succumb to the shadows and cast its holder into a pit of nothingness that they couldn't escape.
But maybe, just maybe, it would endure.
Maybe a spark was enough.
I stood alone in the clearing. The others weren't as close as I'd have liked. I mean, I wanted to be surrounded by them. To go in guns blazing like always and pray for the best. Plans had never been my forte. They made me nervous. There was no way to account for every possibility. All those variables and what-ifs.
At least if I flew by the seat of my pants, I only had two things to consider; live or die.
This felt different. Final. I'd have gone so far as to say mournful if I was honest. It felt like I was saying goodbye. I believed that no matter what happened, Lee would be destroyed. That needed to be the outcome of this fight. Whether I went with him didn't matter. I didn't matter.
The fate of the world was far bigger than me.
With my arms stretched above my head and my palms turned to the sky, I sent pulse after pulse of shadows to call Lee back. It was a smoke signal. A beacon. I couldn't waste my angelic power, not after Castiel had sacrificed a portion of his grace to power it up, but the demonic energy could be spared. Darkness couldn't defeat darkness, but it could summon it forth.
Draining though it was to use any of my powers for prolonged periods, I continued. The spell Ellen and the others had located played on repeat in my head. I couldn't afford to forget it. Not when so much counted on waking up those trapped souls to distract Lee. Sweat beaded across my brow and my arms shook with the effort of keeping them aloft, but my dedication paid off as I knew it would.
Lured by the promise of power he craved like a man deprived of oxygen; Lee appeared across the clearing. The air rippled with his rage. It rolled from him in waves. An unnatural, vengeful force that made me take a step back as he approached as though it could be escaped. I knew better. There was no escape for me now. The moment we'd put the plan into action, we'd passed the point of no return. All that was left was to see it through to the bitter end, no matter what.
