Mary Singer pressed her palm to the bunker's steel door and felt it shudder. She was Bobby's niece, and this warded sanctuary was hers to protect now. Dean's family had come to her for safety, and she had promised it. But the marks she'd painted along the walls flickered like dying coals. Something outside was clawing at her wards, and they were losing. Dean stepped up beside her, jaw tight, a knife already in his fist. "That's a hellhound," he said. "Maybe three. They followed the dagger here." He didn't look at her like she was a witch. He looked at her like she was a kid guarding a door. Mary adjusted her gold-rimmed glasses. Her hands were shaking. "My wards weren't built for this. Whatever your family dragged in woke something old." She could hear it now through the metal, a low triple growl, three throats snarling as one. Claws scraped stone. A seam of light near the ceiling split and went dark. "Then we run," Dean said. "No." She pulled a bundle of moonlight flowers from her coat. The blossoms glowed silver in her palm. "These bloom under a witch's own moon. My uncle taught me the old summoning." She crushed the petals and smeared the paste across the floor in a wide circle. The glow spread outward, feeding the failing marks on the walls. The growling stopped. Then the door boomed. A dent punched inward, steel folding like paper. Mary knelt inside her circle and spoke words she'd only practiced in secret. Her voice cracked. If this failed, the hellhound came through, and Dean's family died behind her. The silver light rose off the floor and gathered. Shadow poured into shape. A sleek black cat stepped out of the dark, tall as a wolf, her eyes burning cold blue. She turned her luminous head toward the buckling door and hissed. "Go," Mary whispered. The shadow cat sprang through the widening gap. Outside, the triple snarl became a shriek. Mary heard tearing, a thud, then silence. Her familiar padded back through the ruined door, blood black on her claws. The wards on the walls flared bright and held. Dean lowered his knife. He looked at Mary, then at the cat curling beside her. "Okay," he said slowly. "You're the real thing." Mary let out a breath. Her wards were whole again, and for one moment she felt worthy of the name Bobby left her. Then the shadow cat stiffened. Her ears flattened. She stared past the broken door into the dark, tail lashing. Mary followed her gaze. The dented steel door would never seal now. The hellhound was dead, but her only defense against whatever came next was a hole where a door used to be. And somewhere out in the night, something bigger had heard the fight end. She closed her eyes and whistle a high pitch note, summoning the very first hellhound, Cerberus himself. “Hey, cerby…. We kind of have a problem….” She said to him and the hellhound growl softly.

By morning the bunker was quiet. Cerberus lay across the broken doorway, his three heads watching the dark. Mary sat with her empty pouch turned inside out. Not one moonlight flower remained. The battle had burned through everything. She looked at the flickering wards and knew the truth. If the larger threat came now, she had nothing left to cast. "I can't fight what's coming," she told Dean. "I'm out." Dean crouched beside her, jaw tight. He was the hunter she'd taken in, the man whose family she'd sworn to protect. He'd seen her summon a shadow cat and drop three hellhounds. Now he saw her hands empty. "Then we get you restocked," he said. "Where does a witch buy her ammo?" "There's a market," Mary said. "My uncle traded there. It doesn't stay in one place. I can find it." They left the shadow cat guarding the family and took Cerberus. Mary followed the pull she'd felt since childhood. A crooked market house waited at the end of it, candlelit, its striped awnings sagging with hanging herbs. Colored vials glowed in the windows. The doorway was too small for a three-headed hound, so Cerberus lay outside like a growling wall. Shoppers gave him a wide berth. Inside, the air smelled of smoke and dried lavender. Mary went straight to a stall stacked with bundled herbs and corked vials. She named what she needed. Moonlight flowers first. The old woman behind the counter shook her head. "Sold out," she said. "Moon's wrong. Won't bloom for a week." Mary's stomach dropped. Without those flowers, the summoning spell was useless. She pressed her palms flat on the counter. "I have people who die in a week." Dean leaned in beside her. He unclipped his knife and set a fistful of cash on the wood. "What else you got that stops a hellhound?" The old woman studied Mary's gold-rimmed glasses, then her shaking hands. She reached under the stall. She pulled up a leather vest covered in painted runes, worn soft at the seams. "Your uncle left this on account," she said. "Runework. Turns a beast's teeth. Won't summon a thing, but it keeps you breathing long enough to summon it." Mary took the vest. The runes warmed under her fingers. It wasn't the spell she wanted. It was armor, not a weapon. But it was something. She bought the vest and every herb the woman had that mattered, filling her pouch with vials and dried bundles. Outside, she pulled the vest on over her coat. Cerberus sniffed it and huffed. Dean watched her lace it tight. "Better than empty hands," he said. "It's not enough," Mary answered. She had defense now, and herbs. But the one thing that could beat what was coming wouldn't bloom for seven days. And she didn't think the threat would wait that long.

Mary laced the runework vest tight and waited for the threat to come. It came at dusk. The wards flared, then split down the middle. Cerberus rose from the doorway, all three heads snarling at the dark beyond the steps. The shadow cat pressed against Mary's leg, tail low. Whatever approached made even the hellhound uneasy. "It's here," Mary said. She felt it push against the bunker's fortified walls. The vest warmed. The runes on the leather glowed faint blue. It would turn teeth. It would keep her breathing. But it could not strike back, and she had nothing that could. Dean came up beside her, knife drawn, jaw set. He was the hunter she'd sworn to protect, the man who'd watched her drop three hellhounds and called her a real witch. Now he saw her empty pouch again. "Tell me you've got a plan," he said. "The vest only guards," Mary said. "I can't summon without the flowers. I can't hurt it." "Then we're a wall with no fist." Dean's eyes cut to her. "Bobby never left you a wall without a fist. Think." Bobby. Her uncle. Mary turned and ran deep into the bunker. She pulled open the heavy metal door of his old workroom. Dust hung in the air. Along the far wall stood a rack of his things. There, propped in the corner, was a length of dark wood taller than she was. Runes ran up its face in green and pink and blue light. She'd seen it as a child and been told never to touch it. She touched it now. The staff woke. Heat ran up her arm. The runes brightened, then pulsed in time with her heartbeat. This was not armor. This was the fist. Something slammed the bunker door. The metal buckled inward. Cerberus roared. Mary ran back, staff in both hands. The thing forced its shape through the broken frame, too large for the space, all shadow and weight. Mary planted the staff and shouted the old word carved at its base. Light poured from the runes. It struck the shape in the chest and threw it back down the steps. The blast cracked the concrete. The creature shrieked and did not rise at once. "That's the fist," Dean said. Mary's arms shook. The staff had spent something in her, some reserve she didn't know she had. The runes dimmed to embers. The creature stirred on the broken ground, wounded, not dead. And on the wood, one rune had gone dark and cold. Cracked. "It's hurt," Mary said. "But so is this." She held up the staff. The dead rune stared back. She'd found her weapon. Now she had to learn what it cost her each time she swung it, before the thing on the steps got up again.