Under a blood red sky

Mary had found and rescued her mother, but she was still stuck in the past with no sign of Ellen. Having her parents and her uncle around should have made her feel less alone, but somehow it just made the loneliness that much worse to know her mother was so close and not be able to seek out the comfort of her mom's arms. Or having her dad at her side while she went hunting. Or even having the listening ear of her Uncle Sam. Instead, she was simply trying to figure out how to navigate her relationships with the people she'd cared about most back home.

It was worse not knowing how long she'd be stuck here or even having some sort of lead on Ellen. Right now they had a whole lot of nothing and Mary was getting frustrated and restless.

She'd taken a room at the Phoenix, of course. She was closer to her parents and it was just the type of place that she was used to for when she was hunting.

She was currently at a loss for what else to do, which meant getting ice to go with the bottle of Jack that she had back in her room.

It had been a few days since Jo had lost control of her mind again. Those in the driver's seat had used her body to spirit several people away. It was easy to use her trustworthy face to escort potential victims to their doom.

Everything was in place now for the ritual to open the gate. There was just one key component needed. The other sacrifice.

The blood of one ripped out of Heaven by demons and one rescued from Hell by angels would serve as perfect counterbalances to each other and would rip that gate wide open, unleashing Hell on the town of York and the world.

The cell phone that had been turned off for the last few days was now turned on. Jo's fingers dialed the number that would get exactly what they needed and waited for an answer.

He'd tried for a long time to get Cas to show. But when the normal screaming and talking to himself didn't work, Dean didn't get the feeling it was because the angel was giving him the cold shoulder.

He thought it was because Cas was gone, too.

Dean tried to call Harry, bout something in that file Phaedra'd given him. He knew about how phones tended to up and fry around the wizard, but he still tried. Eventually, on the 65th try or so, Phaedra answered.

And she told him that Harry... Harry was gone. What was worse? She said she couldn't *feel* him anywhere. Creepy as it was, Dean knew she could hear people's thoughts. And that not feeling Harry meant he was pretty much gone. He didn't ask the vampire about the range of her ability. He wanted to, but something in her voice sounded wrong. He could handle her sounding hard, or scary, or even outright nice at this point.

She sounded broken.

He hung up and called Sam, left a message, and restrained himself from calling his brother 65 times, just barely.

Then he called Bobby. Bobby had no answers, hadn't even heard of anything new going on in York. But he'd look into it.

He was headed back to the Phoenix when he left Jo a message, and with a dull thud in his stomach, Dean realized that he hadn't seen Ellen in a while, either. He knocked on her door, and when there was no answer, he picked the lock. Her stuff was all still there. The bed was unmade. She wasn't there. Looked like she'd been there, recently. He looked around the room, not touching anything, then closed and locked the door.

He couldn't handle this. Harry was gone, and Ellen? What the hell?

He made a second, half-hysterical call to Bobby before ducking into the motel office to talk to somebody about where the pretty blond who was staying in that room might've gone to.

God help the clerk.