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“Who are you? What are you?” the hunter demanded as the human-looking thing passed through all of the wardings he and Michael had drawn. Holes were torn through the thing’s flannel shirt by shotgun shells full of salt, by silver bullets, iron bullets, but it wasn’t even bleeding.
“My name is Samuel. And I am an Angel of the Lord,” the thing said. Lucifer barked a laugh. It stared at him for a moment. “I was the one who gripped you tight and pulled you from perdition, and yet you mock me?” Lucifer stopped smiling, subconsciously covering his upper arm, where the burn mark was still sensitive. The shadows of wings slowly unfurled on the wall behind the thing. Lucifer sucked in a sharp breath; six wings and Lucifer could feel a sort of charge in the air, like heavy air before a big storm.
“So, you’re an angel?” Michael asked slowly, staring at the shadows before they folded up and disappeared. It—Samuel—looked to him. “Are there more of you?” Is there a Heaven? Michael couldn’t bring himself to ask.
“Yes,” Samuel nodded. Michael had an odd feeling Samuel was replying to more than just the spoken questions.
“So, where the fuck have you been? Should you flying monkeys be down here, you know, helping?” Lucifer snapped. Samuel frowned.
“I’d’ve liked that to be the case, but Heaven is … complicated,” the angel sighed. “Sadly, politics take up so much time …”
“Then why are you here now?” Michael asked before Lucifer could snap again.
“Because the seals are breaking too fast for us to ignore. Discussing what to do takes so much time that, by the time the decision had been made, the demons would’ve forced our hand to make another. The democracy was temporarily moved to me and two or my brothers being in charge, since we are the eldest three,” Samuel replied. “One of my brothers is currently working on tracking Lilith so we can remove her from the table before this gets too far out of hand. The other is searching for what our Father intends we do. ”
“Wait, so that’s what’s been going on? Seals are breaking?” Lucifer stared at his brother, who actually looked scared. Michael rarely ever looked scared.
“Yes. Eighteen out of sixty-six are broken.”
“What happens when all of them break?” Lucifer inquired.
“Then Adam is released from Hell and Eve is brought forth from Purgatory.”
It took Lucifer a moment, before he understood. Adam and Eve. The original sinners, the first to ever be corrupted by evil. Michael obviously knew what this meant, and the fear Lucifer saw in Michael’s eyes put him on edge.
“And then what happens?” Lucifer swallowed, not wanting to know the answer.
“‘And so, when the first man and woman walk the world again in sin, they will leave mountains of fire and valleys of blood in their wake. They will tempt the masses, and there will be much destruction. The Host will be forced to intercede, and a great many will perish. And this time will be known as the end of days,’” Samuel recited.
“Oh,” Lucifer breathed. “Well, we’re fucked.”
“Eloquently put, Lucifer,” Michael shook his head.
***
“How many seals have we lost now?” Lucifer asked with trepidation, flopping down onto the crappy motel bed, covered in some sort of substance he didn’t want to think about.
“Thirty-six,” Samuel sighed.
“That’s over half,” Michael stated, wiping the same kind of substance from his skin carefully. Gabriel groaned.
“At this rate, we’re gonna be dead within the next six months,” Gabriel complained. “I haven’t completed my bucket list yet. I still need to meet an alien, and paint the Statue of Liberty pink, and dying Lucifer’s hair an obnoxious purple, and getting Michael and Dean to stop eye-fucking from across the room, preferably by just getting them to fuck in a motel down the street, and—”
“Okay, we get it, Gabriel, you don’t want to die,” Raphael cut in, cleaning their gunk-covered weapons.
“You aren’t dying my hair purple,” Lucifer snapped.
“And I do not ‘eye-fuck’ the archangel Dean from across the room,” Michael put in. Everyone stared blankly at him. “What?”
“Michael, stop lying to yourself,” Lucifer said.
“I’m not!”
“I believe that Lucifer is telling the truth, Michael. It is also true that my brother has taken a certain interest in you, as well,” Samuel sided with Lucifer.
“But—I don’t—we don’t have time for this,” Michael finally said. “We’re dealing with the apocalypse, aren’t we?” Gabriel and Lucifer hummed with a grin. The corners of Raphael’s lips curled upwards slightly, which is as close to a smile as Raphael gets.
Samuel shrugged knowingly.
***
“Fifty-seven seals broken,” Dean moaned, spreading himself out on a motel bed. His shirt rode up slightly; Gabriel and Lucifer shared a look before laughing as Michael looked away, trying not to turn red. Samuel rolled his eyes.
“This was a losing battle to begin with; how many possible seals were there?” Raphael pointed out. Dean shrugged.
“Six thousand four hundred seventeen,” Samuel answered.
“Precisely. And only fifty-seven have been broken. We’ve been preventing the inevitable.”
“I guess so,” Dean grumbled.
***
“Sixty-one seals have been broken,” Adam said, appearing in the motel room with his brothers. “The last five will be broken in quick succession. The end of days is nigh.”
“Well, thank you, mister Everything-Is-Hopeless,” Gabriel snarked. Adam gave Gabriel a Samuel-worthy bitchface.
“So, I guess we grab and hold on like there’s no tomorrow,” Lucifer tried to grin. Dean snorted.
“The seals won’t break tonight. There’ll be a tomorrow. Just, by this time next week, we might be dealing with a full-blown apocalypse,” Dean corrected. Samuel smacked his shoulder lightly. Lucifer smiled. The three angels had become so strangely human over the past year. Lucifer glanced away, purposefully not thinking about Samuel.
“We’re still fucked,” Samuel said. Dean nodded.
***
The final seal broke silently as the last sacrifices died, their blood cooling on the floor. Adam and Eve met for the first time in six thousand years with blood-soaked feet.