It was like the power went out. It was as simple as that.

When Sam Winchester dove head first into the pit, it was like everything in the supernatural world stopped. And I have to admit it was a tad frustrating.

I'm one of the things that the Winchesters hunt. One would think that I would be pleased that one of the infamous Winchester boys was gone, dead, soul trapped for eternity with two warring angels who had nothing better to do than torture the soul of the empathetic Winchester, the one who gave the team its heart, and the other Winchester, the one who was all danger and bravado, effectively gone, disappeared somewhere where none of us could quite pin point.

We all should be grateful for that. But truly, without the Winchesters, or someone to step up and take their places, there is no real battle, no reason for my kind to scheme, to plot, to plan, to try and take the little minds of the humans inhabiting the planet. Without a true hero, I'm nothing more than a bully with magic.

SNSNSN

The word got around slowly, that Sam Winchester was back from the dead, that he was on the loose again, and destroying all things supernatural in his path. But none of us felt it. Some of us had seen the doe eyed Winchester, and barely lived to tell the tale, and the tale that was told was a scary one. Sam Winchester was a body, there was no soul behind his eyes, no empathy, no compassion, it was simply a killing machine, and the machine fought with no integrity and no principles.

But fighting against this new foe was like fighting in the dark. We didn't get the chance to do battle, true battle, the way the Winchesters did it, with cunning and intelligence and practice. We were being slaughtered. There is no honor in a slaughter.

The killing machine found the other Winchester, and he too was changed. His soul waged a personal war, and that personal war outshined the war he had always fought….the war of good and evil.

All of monster kind had said at one point or another 'if I could just get the Winchesters pitted against one another…if I could just get Sam away from Dean, I could destroy them.' And they were right. It took angels who didn't play by the rules to break them apart right when they had grown their strongest.

But one day, when the world was quiet, and those of us still determined to plot and plan and wait for the next champions to enter the arena, it was like the switch had been flipped, like the light had been turned on, the circuit reconnected.

Sam Winchester's soul was returned, and when that soul awakened, it sought out what would make it complete and it found it. Sam's soul reached out and looked for his power source, and he found it in Dean, who had been the proverbial battery for the Winchesters family for the last 30 years, and Sam's soul connected with it's power source, it completed its circuit and the lights went on with a blinding intensity that all of monster kind shielded their eyes as it came back online; the heroes were returned to us.

I met Sam and Dean Winchester on the battle field, the circuit between them strong and pulsing visibly around them. I smiled. This would be a battle, this would not be a slaughter. Contentment coiled itself in my belly.

I am a monster.

And a monster is not a monster without heroes.