((Takes place almost immediately after Healing the Breach.))

A quiet, undisturbed place was not very hard to come by in the arse-end of America, though Nat doubted Rhys or Adam would have appreciated her description of Iowa as that. Nevertheless, while Rhys was out and about, clearing his head, she had roped Adam into clearing the furniture in his bedroom out of her way, opening a wide space on the floor in which to work the spell that would, hopefully, show them exactly where Rachel was being held. Kneeling within a circle of salt, four blue candles lit all around her, sandalwood oil burning to cloud her conscious mind, she concentrated on the bowl of water before her, stirring it with the moonstone Rachel had given to Rhys. "Let the water reveal to me the location I seek," she murmured, over and over again. "Let the water show me where she is."

The door to the hotel room opened briefly and then slammed shut, a familiar voice followed shouting, "Honey, I'm home! And I've got a friend with me!" How was he supposed to know she'd chosen that very moment to do her spellwork" Trailing behind him was a pretty blond woman that Rhys might have at one time picked up in a bar, but that was not the case this time.

Adam winced when he heard the shout and tried to intercede before his friend disrupted Nat's concentration. "Rhys, she's busy..." he said, blocking the way to the bedroom.

"Busy doing what?" Rhys tried to glance past Adam to see what Nat was up to. It didn't cross his mind that there might be some hanky-panky going on between his wife and his best friend. He knew them better than that.

Meanwhile, Adam's attention was drawn to the blond behind his friend. He was far too astute to think she was just some random female Rhys had picked up on the street. "Lailah?" he guessed, correctly.

As her concentration broke, startled by the sudden intrusion, the bowl in front of Nat exploded, scattering miniscule pieces of glass through the air. The water surged upward and soaked her through, and for a moment, she turned the air blue with curses, the nicest of which was directed at her husband. "Vy glupyy syn obez'yana!" Shocked out of the spell, Nat curled her fingers around the moonstone and turned a less than impressed look on Rhys.

Behind him, Lailah - for all that an angel wasn't supposed to be able to feel emotion - was attempting to conceal a smirk as she looked to Adam. That smirk became a smile in recognition of the other man. "Adam."

"Eeep," Rhys squeaked upon hearing the glass shatter, followed by a string of curses in Nat's native Russian. He didn't have to speak the language to know she was cussing him out. "Um, sorry, Nat!" he apologized, glancing to Adam and whispering, "Why didn't you tell me she was working a spell?"

"You didn't ask!" was his reply, exchanging a smirk with Lailah and a snicker at Nat's cursing. Adam leaned toward Rhys, dropping his voice to helpfully translate. "She just called you a monkey....Well, actually a son of a monkey." Rhys narrowed his eyes in his wife's direction. "What?"

"A stupid son of a monkey, to be precise," Nat corrected mildly, rising to her feet. She met Rhys' narrowed gaze head on, unapologetic for insulting him in her shock. "I told you we would be doing this while you were gone," she reminded him with a quiet sigh of resignation, looking past him to the woman he had brought with him. A faint frown of curious suspicion crossed her face as she glanced first at Rhys, then at Adam.

Lailah, for her part, did not seem to acknowledge any of them for a moment, her own concentration turning inward and then outward. The explosion of glass and water reversed itself, returning to its former state by Nat's feet, urged on by the angelic power she wielded. "Waste not, want not."

"Um, Nat, honey, baby..." Rhys started, looking sheepishly apologetic, but before he was able to say much more, Nat was joining them and Lailah seemed to be repairing the damage he'd caused with his regrettable outburst. His eyes widened a little as he watched the shattered bowl repairing itself in reverse. It was like watching a movie backwards. Of course, he'd seen greater wonders than this, but to a man who was very much in touch with his inner child, it was sight to behold. "Wow, that's awesome. Can you do that again?"

Adam snorted, shaking his head at his friend. "What are you, like six?"

"Thirty-four actually. I'm in my prime," Rhys shot back before turning back to Nat. "Sorry, Nat. I got a little carried away, I guess."

Having the incident that had soaked her reversed improved Nat's mood, certainly, though she was still suspicious of the woman who had entered with Rhys. "It is fine," she assured her husband. "I can begin again, now." Making a guess at who had been responsible for unsoaking her, she looked to the woman standing behind Rhys. "Thank you."

Lailah inclined her head to the Russian woman, acknowledging her thanks, but she did not speak. Rhys had seemed a little wary of allowing her contact with his wife, and she was not about to cross a line in the sand too soon.

He attempted to appease his wife with a kiss, albeit on the cheek, as he reached for her arm to draw her closer to the blond woman. "Natalya Pimen- Bristol, may I introduce Lailah..." Rhys paused a moment, realizing the angel had no last name. "My Guardian Angel." He chuckled a little. "Geez, that sounds silly to say out loud, doesn't it?"

Adam rolled his eyes, exhaled a sigh, and retreated to the bedroom to check on the contents of the bowl and to make sure the candles hadn't gone out.

"They're human. They bleed. That's good enough for me," Rhys remarked, in a voice that betrayed his hatred for the coven. As much as he hated demons, witches were not much farther down on the list. "If you're right about your brother, I have to wonder how they managed to subdue him." He turned his gaze back to Nat, watching as she and Adam fussed over the bowl.

"Power." It was as simple as that. "Enough power, enough voices, to cast spells from all sides ....we are not invincible, Rhys. He may have taken many of them with him, but still they were strong enough to wear him down and make him a captive to their will. I fear they will plan something terrible to make use of the angel in their midst."

A crackle from the spell circle broke through the quiet in the room as Nat sat back, staring at the bowl before her. The moonstone swirled of its own volition within the water, forming a vortex of liquid that rose like a waterspout from the small vessel. And within the spinning mass of water there flickered an image ....a woman and a man, face to face, talking quietly in a room made bright by no natural means.

Suddenly, Lailah cried out, dropping down onto her knees as her brother's pain washed over her, dulling her mind, confusing her senses. She could feel nothing but Zachariel's injury. His certainty of inevitable death.

Rhys felt something, too, but it seemed far less intense than whatever it was Lailah was feeling. What he was feeling was not pain exactly, but sadness and worry and fear. He was astute enough to know these feelings did not belong to himself, but to someone else, that he was only sensing or sharing someone else's anxiety, as though it was somehow mirrored within himself or connected to him somehow though some bond he could not fathom and was not aware of. He knew that bond could only belong to that of his sister, and like his sister, he was suddenly acutely aware of his Guardian's pain, dropping to a knee beside her and reaching for her in alarm. "Lailah, are you all right?" he asked, concerned.

"Rhys..." Adam's voice called from the other room. "You better come see this."

"Zachariel ..." It was a single gasped word, barely coherent through lips pulled tight with terrible pain. Lailah was not even aware of Rhys reaching for her, too caught in the sudden connection with her twin. Somehow, Nat had opened the veil that held Rachel and Zachariel from everyone's sight, and in doing so, had reconnected him with the angelic host from whom he had fallen.

Rhys ignored Adam for a moment, needing to make sure Lailah was all right, but it seemed she was caught up in her brother's pain to even acknowledge Rhys' concern. "Adam!" Rhys called, concerned for the angel who had always been there for him. Adam was at his side in an instant, though he felt he could have been put to better use elsewhere. "Help her," Rhys instructed, though Adam had no idea how to do that. He wasn't even sure what was going on. Who was Zachariel and why was Rhys' Guardian in pain suddenly' "I'll explain later," Rhys said, or maybe Lailah would. He exchanged places with Adam and joined Nat, crouching down beside her to see what she saw.

As Lailah reached out to grip Adam's arm painfully tight, Nat shuddered, the strength of the connection with this strange other-place growing a little too much for her handle safely. Within the vortex vision, Rachel was clear, her attention on the man with her, a man who had to be Zachariel. As Rhys crouched down beside his wife, Rachel lifted her head sharply, her eyes turning to focus seemingly through the intangible barrier that kept her from her brother. Her lips formed a single word. Rhys.

Rhys' arms went around Nat to keep her safe and offer some strength, but when he looked into the bowl, what he saw made even him gasp in shocked recognition. There was his sister, just as he'd seen her the previous day, but there was someone else - someone he didn't recognize, at least, not consciously. The man was pale - too pale - and obviously in pain. Zachariel, Rhys assumed, but he didn't linger on the man long, his gaze shifting to that of his sister as she seemed to sense his presence, turning to face him, her eyes meeting his. "Rachel," he replied back, extending a hand and almost reaching out to touch her before drawing back. It wasn't only a vision, but some sort of connection, like a window opening between them. "Where are you?" he asked, unsure if she could hear him. He couldn't hear her, but he could read her lips.

But it wasn't his sister who answered the question, the fallen angel beside her somehow hearing the question or perhaps sensing their presence. He lifted his head and turned toward those who were watching, his face a mask of pain. "Mystic," he told them, not really needing to hear the question, knowing instinctively what they needed to know. "The house where you were born," the angel informed him.

"Jesus Christ," Rhys muttered with a gasp. "Right under our noses, all this time?"

But there was no chance for either of those in that strangely real vision to answer. A burst of power flashed across the vortex of water, hooded shapes seemed to appear as though from nowhere within the prison where the pair were being kept. Rachel screamed, fear resonating from her to her brother as the vision wavered.

Rhys shuddered as a tremor of fear passed through him from sister to brother, feeling her terror and flinching backwards as there was some sort of blast that seemed to shake the fragile connection between them. Rhys watched as that burst of power was met with a surge of light that came from somewhere near his sister and the angel. It seemed the fallen one was not as weak or as defenseless as he might seem, though Rhys wasn't sure what source of power he was drawing on just yet. He watched as the angel moved to his feet and placed himself between Rachel and the cloaked figures Rhys instinctively knew were witches. The fallen angel stretched out an arm to summon a sword Rhys recognized as an angel blade. He didn't wait to see any more, but pushed to his feet and started toward the door. "We gotta go."

Almost in the moment the blade reached Zachariel's outstretched hand, the vision broke entirely, the water falling back to splash out of the bowl and soak the carpet beneath, Nat gasped, breathless from the effort of holding that connection even for that long, for once not arguing as Rhys pushed to his feet. "Rhys!" She twisted, pulling the moonstone from the bottom of the bowl and pressing it into his hand. "You'll need this. I don't know how, but you'll need it."

Beyond her husband, she could see Lailah rising to her feet, shrugging off Adam's helpful hands. The angel was pale but composed once again, her own hand outstretched to call her own angel-blade to her. She fixed Rhys and Adam with an urgent gaze. "Hurry." And in a deafening flutter of wings, she was gone.

Rhys turned back a moment, for only as long as it took him to snatch the stone from his wife's hand and press a quick kiss to her lips. "Don't worry. We're not losing this one!" he assured her, confident that between two hunters, two angels, and a legion of knights, they'd have no trouble defeating a handful of witches and their minions.

Adam didn't wait for instructions. He was already starting toward the door. He had no magical blade to aid him, but witches were only human; they bled, like everyone else did. His standard issue Glock would serve him just fine.

Rhys scowled, slightly annoyed that Lailah had presumably gone on ahead of them, almost wishing he still had wings. He tossed Adam the car keys. "You're driving." Though Rhys knew the way from Centerville to Mystic, he hadn't been there in years and it had only been a day or so for Adam. He'd know the way better than anyone else. Time was running out, for all of them.

((All aboard for the chaos of a fight scene, coming soon! Huge thanks to Rhys' player!))