Not Just the Family Business

Bat Outta Hell

"Oh my God, Ellen." I holstered my gun and moved toward her. Sam grabbed my bicep. "Let me go."

"We don't know it's her," Bobby said. 

"What are you talking about? It's her." I looked at the panicked look in Ellen's eyes as well as the soot scattered around her clothes and face.

Dean helped her inside as Bobby searched through the fridge. Sam still wouldn't let go of me. Bobby set a shot glass down in front of her with water in it.

"Drink it," Bobby said.

"Bobby, is this really necessary?" Ellen asked.

"Just a belt of Holy Water." Bobby shrugged. "Shouldn't hurt."

Ellen picked up the glass and downed it. "I'll take some of that Jim Beam now if you don't mind."

Sam released me and I raced over to her side. Dean sat across from her. "Ellen, what the hell happened? How'd you get out?"

"I wasn't supposed to. I was supposed to be in there with everyone else." Ellen scoffed. "But we ran out of pretzels, of all things. It was just dumb luck." She took the glass from Bobby and sipped. "Anyway, that's when Ash called. Panic in his voice. He told me to look in the safe. Then the call cut out. By the time I got back, the flames were sky-high. And everybody was dead. I couldn't have been gone more than fifteen minutes."

I took Ellen's hand. "I'm sorry."

"A lot of good people died in there. And I got to live." Ellen's eyes glistened as she took another drink. "Lucky me."

"Ellen, you mentioned a safe," Bobby said.

"A hidden safe we keep in the basement." Ellen waved her hand as if she had mentioned it before and we all forgot.

Bobby squinted at her as if willing her to say what he wanted. "Demons get what was in it?"

"No." Ellen fished around in her pocket. 

She pulled out old parchment and laid it flat on the kitchen table. Five Xs on it spanned hundreds of miles of each other. Something seemed familiar about it, but I couldn't remember what.

"Wyoming. What does that mean?" I traced from each of the Xs with my fingers.

"I don't know. Ash thought it was important, though," Ellen said. "I'm guessing it's something to do with our favorite demon."

"Yeah, it is." Sam looked at the map over my shoulder. "Bobby was just talking about demon omens in Wyoming."

"Hold on." I walked over to one of the bookshelves in the living room and searched for a specific book. I found it on the second shelf from the bottom of the third bookcase I checked. I flipped through the pages until I found what I was looking for. "I got it."

"What?" Sam was at my side in a second, reading over my shoulder.

"All of those Xs are churches built by Samuel Colt," I said.

Dean raised his brows. "Samuel Colt—the demon-killing, gun-making Samuel Colt?"

"The very same." I handed the book to Sam and rejoined the group in the kitchen. "Does anyone have a pen?" Bobby handed me one. "Colt built private railways to each church like this." I drew a star connected to each of the churches. "What do we all know shaped like that?"

"Devil's trap," Dean said.

"One hundred square miles of a Devil's trap," Sam said.

"Brilliant," Bobby said. "It's made of iron, so demons can't cross."