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The hounds come. Some arsehole in a suit comes with them.
"Hello, darling," he says. The talcum powder Bela's scattered on the floor is being enthusiastically churned into uselessness by the feet of--can he have brought six hounds? Why? She can't have six hounds worth of meat on her. "--Mother of Whores, this is getting all over my shoes."
"An improvement," Bela says, and tries blowing a few holes in him, then in the dogs. No noticeable reaction, despite the fact Bela takes pride in being able to shoot straight even while crying with terror. The man rolls his eyes like the goth teenager he takes his style cues from. "Where's Lilith? Am I not worth the real thing?"
"No," he says. The stench of the dogs grows thicker; the churning and scratching in the powder moves closer to her. The demon smiles down at them. "You're worth very little right now, Abby."
If she were less scared, that name might hurt. He looks like he knows it. "I'm worth six hellhounds and an imported meatsuit," Bela says. "Trying to make me feel at home?"
"It makes Americans think I'm smart," the demon says. "Saves time. Speaking of time--" He raises his hand.
"Please, you can showboat a little longer, it's really fine," Bela says, scrambling more bullets into her gun, stupidly, uselessly, like it will help at all, why didn't she check her devil's shoestring, why didn't she--
The windows breaking startle her so badly she almost drops her gun. The showy little prick does something that makes the lightbulbs start spraying sparks, too, and Bela jerks her arm up, ready to make this experience as painful as possible for everyone--everything--involved, and the demon isn't even looking at her.
He's looking at the woman next to her, who hadn't been there before. She so close Bela can smell her, something cleanly astringent, when she hadn't even heard her walk up. She looks at Bela with a sort of vague concern, the expression of someone who isn't sure if they've oversalted the soup, before she turns and looks at the demon.
"Crowley," the strange woman says.
"No," he says. He's turning red. "No, no, no, she is ours, she made a deal, fair and square--"
"One you rewrote," she says. "One you can default on." Bela's left leg drifts backwards, and the demon snarls and the lash of his power freezes her, sticks her feet to the floor.
"No," the woman says, and flicks her fingers, and Bela can move again.
"Who the hell are you?" she blurts out.
She looks back at Bela. Dyed hair, thin frame, clothes hovering between childlike and fashionable. Delicate features, with the detached expression of the insane or inhuman. Probably very pretty, in some other room that wasn't filled with her impending death. A thoroughly unprepossessing figure, though Bela knows how little appearances count for.
"I am the one who failed you," the woman says, and the hounds leap.
Bela is not--even here at the end of her life, she is who she is, there's no secret cache of matyrdom nestled inside somewhere behind avarice and fear, she doesn't try to push this insane woman behind her.
This insane woman who reaches around without looking and hooks a hellhound out of the air and slams it to the ground with a sickening meaty thunk. Light is pouring into her skin like water filling a glass. Something hits Bela in the gut and she goes down hard, instinctively shoving her gun up into the center mass of the hound--Bela sees its shadow on the walls for a heartbeat, and then everything goes white.
When she can see again, the powder on the floor is all blown away, and the room is silent. The weight is no longer on top of her. Bela can't hear the dogs anywhere, or smell anything but that clean bitterness. The room is wrecked. The demon--Crowley, is lying in a heap of splinters that used to be a table. The walls are scorched.
"Are you alright?" the woman says. She's standing in the center of the wreckage, unharmed, unmussed.
"Who are you?" Bela can't help saying again, even as she takes the woman's hand with her free one, lets herself be drawn up.
"Anael," she says, and touches Bela's forehead before she can react. Bela clutches her gun like the useless toy it is right now, but the touch doesn't bring pain. Scratches on her arms smooth together and disappear, bruises from her fall sink into her skin, her never-quite-right ankle clicks and steadies underneath her. The sticky burning coating her insomniac eyes washes away in a blink.
She feels great.
"She's an interfering bitch," Crowley is spluttering out, through burned and bloody lips.
Without thinking, Bela lifts her gun and shoots Crowley in a place several seams come together.
"What are you, then? Not that I don't appreciate you taking care of Rover and Spot--"
"I am an angel of the Lord," the woman says.
"...Bollocks."
She raises her eyebrows.
"Bollocks," Bela spits out. "There is no God."
Anael opens her mouth, hesitates, visibly changes what she was going to say. "There are, nevertheless, angels," she says.
"Don't do the thing," Crowley says, fighting his way up from the pile of wreckage. "You already killed my dogs, I hate the thing-"
The light fixtures start spitting sparks, start shuddering in their sockets and flickering. The glass around Bela's feet breaks smaller and smaller, like it's trying to hide. All of this is irrelevant and she only really notices it later, because whatever lives inside the woman's skin has shifted, and is looking out at her. There is a shuddering in the air like a rung bell, and in the light gone sunshine gold around them a shadow spreads across the burned walls. Wings, vast and rustling and almost there to touch--
The woman blinks. The light turns fluorescent again. The wings are gone. Crowley is swearing copiously and has been for some time, she realizes, though all Bela can manage right now is a weak, "Fuck me."
"Angels seldom experience lust," Anael says blankly. "Some other time. Crowley, you won't take this one."
"Like fuck I won't! She had her ten years--"
Anael turns from Bela finally, something long and silvery slipping through her fingers. "You will lie to Lilith or you will die here," she says.
"--On the other hand, ten years seems like such a short time, really," Crowley says. "What's an extension, hey, everybody? You do a little something for me--"
Bela gets her tongue unstuck. It's her life, and everything that might come after. "What sort of something?"
"No," Anael says. "You will do nothing for him. Crowley, will you fight an angel for her charge?"
Crowley gets to his feet, finally, shaking his clothes out with irritable snaps. "You have no grounds!"
"Abomination," Anael says calmly. "Leave or I will make you leave."
"This is not over--"
Anael raises her blade. Crowley disappears.
Bela wants badly to sit down, but there's no furniture left. Anael turns to her. The knife has disappeared again. "We'll need to move. He can't be trusted--"
"What the hell is going on? Why did you save me? Did you save me? Is some kind of trick?" Bela's hands clench convulsively. "What do you mean, failed me?"
"You prayed," Anael says, and there are... cracks in her dispassion. Bela sees this, catalogs them, watching people is what thieves and abused children do, even as what Anael goes on to say is, with a nod towards where Crowley fell: "I heard you. So did they."
Bela can't speak for long minutes.
"Some fucking angel."
Anael flinches.
"So I wasn't good enough to save then," Bela says. "When I was ten, when I was--what makes me worth it now?" Bela's crossing the blasted floor in two steps, gun falling away, to fist her hands in the angel's jacket, to haul her late, late, too late savior up to her face like she's a dumber woman than she is. "You know what I am, right? I'm a thief. I'm a liar and a grifter and I hurt people. What does God--" The word is foul in her mouth and she spits it out quickly. "Want with someone like me?"
"You're more than that," Anael says.
"Give me something that will cut an angel," Bela says. "I'll show you what I am."
Anael's hands on Bela's wrists use just enough force to let Bela know she is unnaturally strong, but not enough to hurt. She takes Bela's hands off her, and keeps hold of them.
"You are human," Anael says, with such a weight of emotion in her voice it almost makes it through the rage and adrenaline swimming in Bela's head. "And there is work for you." Having been suitably portentous, she releases Bela.
Bela laughs helplessly. "And will I get another ten years for this one? I warn you, you won't like what I do with them."
"You'll get eternity," Anael says. "And you'll help me stop the end of days."
"Oh, well, that sounds completely reasonable. Let me just get my coat--"
"Abigail," Anael says, and Bela punches her. It feels like hitting a tree. "--Bela." Which is a faster learning curve than some people have had, and Anael touches her hand again, drawing the throb out of her knuckles. "We really must go."
"Where are--"
The room disappears. Going from standing to sitting without moving her own body is an incredibly nasty feeling. So is realizing they're on a bus, pressed together on a regular seat, not even the wider back bench. It's greyer outside than it should be, if they're in the same timezone.
"--we going," Bela finishes.
"Baltimore."
"I hate Baltimore."
"That isn't relevant," Anael says. "Sam Winchester will be in Baltimore, and he must be destroyed."
She appears to be serious. Bela stares at her a while to make sure.
"Any particular reason?" Bela asks.
"To avert the rising of Lucifer and the end of your world." Anael closes her eyes and leans her head back against the bench.
"We're writing a play," Bela explains, to the man sitting opposite them with eyes as big as plates.
It takes two days for Bela to circle back around to that "some other time." It's a long ride to Baltimore, after all, and Anael doesn't know nearly as much about humanity or about lust as she thinks, and Bela has always been too curious.
("I won't punch you," her angel says, at some point. "But you should probably call me Anna. I am no longer my father's joy, either.")