Author's Note: Well, here we are at the final chapter. I'm sorry, again, that it's taken so long to get done! Thanks to everyone who's reviewed, favorited, and followed this story! I hope you all like the ending. It kind of took a weird turn on me.

I have to disappear again for a while while I take care of other writing obligations. I do hope to someday come back to this universe and when I do I hope to see you all again. :)

Death Cab for Cutie

#*#*#*#*

Chapter Seven: Take Me To The Mardi Gras

"I seem to recall someone telling me once that he could burn anything, because he knew how to make napalm."

The chain on the winch groaned in protest as the old cab breached the surface of the bayou. Water poured from every crack and crevice and ran out the busted back window. It carried with it the stench of rank mud and rotting vegetation, of fish and salt water and human decay.

Sam made a face. He was standing halfway between the tow truck and where his brother sat on an upturned crate, reluctantly letting Loretta Wade treat the cuts on his hands and arms.

"You told them about that? I'm guessing you didn't go into details. You do remember how lucky we were that Dad and Bobby didn't find out?"

"I'm sorry." Gibbs strolled over to stand between the brothers. "Did you say napalm?"

Dean shifted nervously under the older man's glare. "Just a little bit. It was only the one time."

"I don't think it was actually napalm," Sam hedged.

Gibbs smacked both of them on the back of the head, hard.

"Hey!" Dean protested. "You sure you want to do that? You know, I was a demon not that long ago."

"And your point is?"

Dean visibly deflated. "I might have been bullshittin' DiNozzo," he mumbled.

"Uh huh. That's what I thought."

Dr. Wade finished dressing his arms. "We'll need to keep an eye on these cuts, Sam," she said. "And I want all three of these men to take a course of antibiotics. That water had to be foul. I'd prefer to get ahead of the pneumonia before it has a chance to take hold."

One of the technicians operating the winch called over. "Dr, Wade? We've got more than one body in here."

She looked to where a group of NCIS personnel were standing around, peering into the sodden cab and pulled herself to her feet with a sigh. "Of course we have. We expected that, didn't we? I'm just very glad that there aren't three more."

"Not half as glad as we are," Christopher observed.

Dean glanced up to where a news helicopter circled. "So how are you going to explain this particular bout of crazy to the public?"

"We already got that covered," Pride told him. "Once we've confirmed that this is Seaman Albright, we'll release a statement to the effect that we traced him to Pointe a la Hache. Since we had reason to believe he was highly intoxicated, we speculated that he fell in the bayou and drowned. Following the pattern of the currents, we discovered this old cab, left over from Katrina, that had been acting as a sieve for drowning victims."

"Just for the record," Christopher said, "I plan to tell the truth." They all turned to look at him and he grinned engagingly. "But only to drunks at Mardi Gras."

"So, do you think this is it, then?" McGee asked. "Is finding the cab and pulling it up going to get rid of the ghost?"

"I doubt that," Sam said. "It will undoubtedly change her method of operations, but I don't expect it will stop her at all."

"So what are we going to do?" Brody asked.

Sam and Dean exchanged one of their speaking looks, an entire conversation carried on with a tilt of the head and a twist of the mouth.

"She's going after the guy who killed her," Dean said. "I think we ought to just give him to her."

DiNozzo gave them a long, level look. "But he's dead."

"Yeah," Dean grinned. "That does simplify things."

NCIS*SPN*NCIS*SPN*NCIS*SPN*NCIS*SPN

"It's acting like a cancer," Ducky said somberly. He was on the plasma in Pride's office, speaking to Gibbs and Pride from his morgue in D.C.. "It's a poor analogy, I suppose, but the best we can come up with under the circumstances. It's causing changes throughout Dean's body on a cellular level. The biggest visible effect the Mark is having is on his glands, ramping up his body's production of adrenaline and testosterone. That's what's causing the bouts of rage and the surges of abnormal strength that leave him shaky and wrung out afterward."

"Is there anything you can do to treat it?" Gibbs asked.

"At this point, no. We will keep looking."

"Did you already discuss this with Dean?" Pride asked.

Ducky nodded. "Loretta Wade did, and with Sam. They were disappointed, but unsurprised."

SPN*NCIS*SPN*NCIS*SPN*NCIS*SPN*NCIS

"Seriously, Dean?"

"What? You wanna talk to the dead guy, he's going to need a meatsuit to occupy. And it's not like the possum's using it anymore. He's in possum heaven. And, judging by the looks of this, he has been for at least three days."

"What do you reckon possum heaven is like?" LaSalle wondered.

"I don't know," Brody said, "but I'm guessing there aren't any cars." She made a face at the mangled roadkill Dean had carried in and dropped in the middle of the concrete floor. They were in an unused Quonset hut in a Naval facility down by the docks.

Dean came over to where Loretta and Sebastian had joined the two NCIS teams at the side of the building. "You sure you wanna be here? You know, the occult isn't really a spectator sport. This could get hairy."

Behind him, Sam was still drawing a devil's trap that formed part of an intricate design in the center of the floor. DiNozzo watched, one eyebrow raised and the other lowered as he considered the dynamics at work. He'd noticed it before. Dean was the guardian, looking after Sam first and everyone else second. If Dean was down, Sam stepped into the role, but with Dean up and able Sam took care of business and the only person he bothered to worry about was Dean.

"I'll take my chances," Loretta said. "I have perfect faith in you two and I'd never forgive myself if I missed the opportunity to see this first-hand."

"I'm just here for the aliens," Sebastian said.

"Aliens," Dean said. "Right." He rolled his eyes and turned away.

"I will admit," Pride said in his soft drawl, "I'd feel a mite better about this if I had some idea what we're doing here."

"Be careful what you wish for," Gibbs told him sardonically. "Knowing the Winchesters, you're apt to feel worse about it if you know what we're doing."

Sam snickered but let Dean answer.

"We know who our ghost is and we know who killed her. We're basically just going to summon them both and let them fight it out between them."

"Have you ever done this before?" McGee asked warily.

"Ah, sort of? There was a case up on the east coast once. A ghost ship. We figured out it was tied to the ghost of a sailor who'd been hanged for treason by his own brother. They'd kept his hand and made this thing called a Hand of Glory out of it. A really, really gruesome candelabra with occult powers. We got hold of the hand, but those things are worth a lot of money on a certain market and the person who was supposed to be helping us stole it and sold it before we could burn the damned thing. Rather than waste time trying to track it down, we summoned the two brothers and they basically annihilated each other."

Sam finished his artwork and came over to stand next to his own brother. "This case is, potentially, a little different, though."

"Different how?" Gibbs demanded.

The Winchesters glanced at one another again. Dean canted one eyebrow and shrugged slightly and Sam continued.

"We can't explain, exactly, how a person's final destination is determined. Intent seems to play a part, and what a given society will allow. For whatever reason, when we summoned the ship's captain, he was a regular ghost. He'd either remained earthbound or gone to heaven."

"Kyle Halsey was a serial killer," DiNozzo said. "So...?"

"Depends," Dean said. "If he was smart enough not to go with his reaper, then he's still hanging around as a ghost. Otherwise, he had an express ticket on the down escalator. One month in hell equals ten years topside and Kyle's been downstairs for right at fifteen years. Chances are he's a low-level demon by now."

"We have sigils drawn out to contain him either way," Sam said. "If he's a ghost, he'll materialize looking more or less human. If he's a demon, he'll appear in the form of black smoke, unless he's already been out of hell long enough to possess a meatsuit."

"What does that mean?" Brody asked. "Possess a meatsuit?"

"Demonic possession. They prefer live humans, taken-usually-against their will. We've seen countless occasions, though, where a demon kept a body and kept it moving after it had sustained lethal injuries."

"What happens to the human who was in the body when it was possessed?"

"While the body is alive, their soul is hostage. When they die and while the demon is still in control...we don't really know. Whenever we come across someone who's possessed, we try to save them if we can. We do what we have to in order to kill the demon, though." Sam looked from one to the other of the law enforcement officers, meeting their eyes. "I've been possessed myself. Believe me when I tell you that, unless you've got a ticket to hell yourself, you really are better off dead."

There was a long silence while they all reflected on this. It was McGee who spoke up first.

"So, if demons prefer living human hosts, why do you think Halsey will possess a dead-"

"Very dead," DiNozzo interjected.

"Very dead possum?"

"I don't know that he will," Dean said. "But wouldn't it be cool if he did?"

"My brother has a strange idea of cool."

"So how is this going to work?" LaSalle asked.

Dean turned to point out various bits of the design Sam had drawn on the floor. "We've got separate circles for our two guests. For Marie, we have a trap that designed to contain a spirit. We're also going to put a salt circle around it, for good measure. We'll have to leave the salt line broken until she's inside."

"Why didn't you draw that to protect LaSalle?" Brody asked.

"This trap will keep a ghost in, not out. Before we knew who she was, we had no way to summon her. We'd have had to guess exactly where she was going to appear in order to trap her."

"Couldn't you have drawn it around Chris?"

"That might have caught her, but he'd have been in there with her."

"But she couldn't have taken him back to the bayou to try to drown him that way."

Dean gave her a faint, sad smile. "No, but, darlin', that don't mean that he'd have been safe."

"And the devil's trap is for Kyle," DiNozzo said. "With another spirit trap drawn around it, just in case."

"And another devil's trap and salt ring around the whole thing. We're going to stand outside the outer ring. Seriously. Everyone but Sam and I needs to stay the hell out of the circle."

Sam walked over to the side of the building and collected a small bundle, a rubber mat rolled around a few candles, some herbs, and a small bowl. Stepping carefully over the outer salt line, he set up just outside the spirit trap. "I guess it's showtime, if everyone's ready."

"Spongebob?" DiNozzo asked, with a wry smile.

Sam glanced over at him and flipped a corner of the mat up to reveal a pattern of primary colors. "Map of the fifty states. Something happened to Spongebob at some point and we had to replace our altar."

"We were deeply grieved," Dean said with mock solemnity, "and waked him with beer." He had his own paraphernalia and was setting it up beside the devil's trap. His looked more sinister, with black candles and dark herbs and a scorched copper bowl. He drew a penknife from the front pocket of his jeans.

"Young man," Loretta said, "if you're planning to draw blood with that thing, it better be sterile."

"Absolutely," he worked as he spoke, crumbling the dried plants into the bowl and lighting the candles. "I always carry a sterile knife in my pants."

Her eyes narrowed. "I will be disinfecting your arm later."

He waved one arm dismissively at her. "Bah. Mother hen." She opened her mouth to respond, but he held up a single finger, his demeanor growing suddenly serious, and the onlookers fell silent. He and Sam exchanged a look. Nodded once.

Working independent of one another, the brothers began their rituals. They were murmuring softly in Latin, different enchantments, both clearly ancient and bound by purpose. Sam spoke the name Marie LeMans and a wind ghosted through the building. Dust motes, flickering in the candlelight, gathered and swirled and coalesced in the center of the spirit trap, pulsed and glowed and flickered into the form of a beautiful woman whose youth and charm had been stolen by a hard life and an unjust death.

She fixed her attention immediately on Christopher LaSalle and her pretty features twisted with rage. "You killed me! Why? I never did anything to you!"

LaSalle stepped forward, dangerously close to the outer salt circle, and Pride and Brody both grabbed him. "Darlin', it wasn't me," he said. "I know that you're angry, and you've got the right. But it wasn't me."

Sam quickly completed the salt circle around Marie while DiNozzo filled in the break in the outer circle. Their ghost was trapped and her prison complete.

Dean's muttering had taken on a darker note. He used his penknife to slice his forearm and bled on the dried herbs in his bowl. "Citatus daemonium Kyle Halsey! Veniat ad me in vinctum!" He dropped a match into the bowl and the herbs flared up. The flames on the candles rose and narrowed. They burned blue. Black smoke spiraled up from the concrete in the middle of the devil's trap. It swirled in an angry column within the confines of the trap, like a maelstrom caught in a jar.

"See?" Dean said. "If he'd had a meatsuit already he'd have brought it with him. I bet this his first trip topside since he went downstairs." He turned back to the demon, muttering under his breath. "Possess the dead possum. Possess the dead possum!"

Sam half turned away from Marie's ghost. "Dude! Seriously? You sound like you're at a ballgame or something."

"I just think a demonic dead possum would be cool. Is that so weird?"

"A demonic dead possum?"

The new voice came from the shadows at the edge of the Quonset hut. Everyone turned as a small, dapper man strolled into the candlelight, carefully avoiding the edge of the devil's trap.

"Moose. Squirrel. What on earth are you Winchesters doing now?"

Dean and Sam stood and turned to face him, moving together to stand shoulder-to-shoulder.

"Nothing to interest the king of hell," Dean said.

"Nonsense. Everything you two do interests me. That's how I've managed to stay alive so long."

DiNozzo raised one finger and opened his mouth to speak. A look from Dean silenced him but he'd caught the newcomer's attention.

"Crowley," he said. "My name is Crowley. I'll just introduce myself, since the Hardy Boys here lack the manners to do so. And, yes, I'm the king of hell. And you're Anthony DiNozzo and that's a very nice suit you're wearing."

"Ah...thanks? You too."

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" Crowley preened, tugging at the hem of his jacket. "There are two ways to have the finer things in the afterlife. You can be very, very good while you're alive and be given them as your just reward, or you can be very, very bad and take them because you can." He turned back to the Winchesters. "So, seriously, what on earth do you want with this pissant little nobody of a demon?"

"What?" Dean asked. "You care about your minions all of a sudden?"

"I care if you're planning to somehow use them against me."

"Well, we're not."

"How did you even know?" Sam asked. "Are you monitoring every single demon now, in case we summon one?"

"I would if it were feasible, believe me. But in this case, you pulled him right off the rack. Much like you do your clothing, incidentally. And in hell, that sort of thing tends to get noticed. The demon who was disemboweling him raised the alarm."

"Maaaaasssttteerrr!"

They looked down. The dead possum was now standing in the middle of the devil's trap. He moved his long, rat-like tail from side to side in agitation and as he grovelled before Crowley he clacked his broken jaw and hissed out his words. He lurched nervously around in his confined area, too weak a demon to even straighten the twisted corpse so that he could stand straight.

"Master! I am demon now! I will serve you well! Tell me anything. I will do anything! Just don't send me back with the knives and the hooks and the burny things!"

"He was still on the rack?" Dean asked. He looked ill at the thought. "He lasted all this time?"

"He broke years ago," Crowley said dismissively. "No one ever needed him for anything. There was never any reason to let him off the rack."

Sam nudged his brother's shoulder. "I hate to say it, but you were right. A demonic possum is kind of cool."

"So, what?" the king of hell said. "You wanted a pet and you couldn't find a budgerigar?"

Dean sighed. "Our furry little friend here was a serial killer. One of his victims has been hanging around looking for revenge. We thought we'd show her that he got what was coming to him and maybe then she'd be ready to move on."

Together they turned to look at Marie, standing largely forgotten inside her own circle. She was standing perfectly still, staring at the demonic possum that had been Kyle Halsey with a look of horror and revulsion.

"You think she recognizes him?" Dean asked.

"I dunno," Sam said. "Maybe?" He walked over closer to her circle. "Look at him," he told her. "Do you see him? That's the man who killed you. He died a few years after you did, and he went to hell to get tortured and now, look at him. That's all that's left of him. He's been punished. He's being punished. You don't need to do anything. It's time now for you to move on. Do you understand me?"

Marie glanced from the demon to Sam and back again.

Down on the floor, trapped in his own circle, the demon possum spoke.

"Marrriiieeee!" it said. "I remember Maaarrrriiieee!"

As if a spell holding her had been broken, the ghost started to scream. She screamed hysterically, as if she would never stop. Flapping her hands in front of her face, she backed as far as the circle would allow, bounced up and down in terror and shrieked like a banshee.

Sam and Dean were both in front of her now, blocking her view of Halsey in his mangled meatsuit.

"Marie!" Sam said, confident and gentle, "it's okay. He can't hurt you anymore. I know you're afraid of him, but I promise you, you're safe."

"Seriously!" Dean was less patient, more commanding. "Stop screaming already. You're already dead. There's nothing to scream about."

She finally quit shrieking, looking at Dean as if he were crazy. "The possum is talking!" she babbled. "It's a possum and it's dead and it's talking and it's a dead possum and it's talking and it's all dead and it's looking at me!"

Crowley strolled around nearer the NCIS agents, an interested observer. "Congratulations. You've managed to transform your vengeful spirit into a terrified spirit."

"This sort of thing happen often on their cases, you think?" Pride asked.

"More often than they'd like you to know," Crowley said conversationally.

Sebastian sidled up to him. "So, um, tell me something? What planet are you really from?"

Crowley looked him up and down. "It's too far away to be on your star charts," he said, "but we have a secret base on the dark side of the moon where we build our magnetic weapons and the black helicopters your government uses to seed the clouds with mind control drugs."

Sebastian did a triumphant little fist pump. "Ha! I knew it!" He pranced away in an awkward victory dance, talking to himself all the while.

Crowley turned to find Loretta Wade glaring at him. He gave her a charming smile.

"I'm the king of hell, love. I'm supposed to be naughty."

Back in the middle of the room, Sam and Dean were still trying to calm down the hysterical spirit.

"Marie," Sam said, getting right in front of her and making eye contact, "I need for you to calm down now and listen to me."

She fell silent now, though she was still visibly trembling and flickering in and out like a video on a poor connection.

"You're dead, do you understand that?"

She nodded.

"Okay, and you've stayed behind because you wanted revenge. But you don't need to do that anymore. Your killer has been punished. He's being punished. And all you're doing, Marie, is hurting innocent people who had nothing to do with you. So it's time to end it. You need to move on now. Look for the light. Do you see the light? That's your way out. You need to go into the light and move on."

"But I can't," she moaned. "I was a bad girl. I did bad things. I'm scared of the light."

"More scared than you are of the talking dead possum?" Dean asked.

She looked to him and he stepped aside to give her an unobstructed view of Halsey.

Screaming once more, she turned and ran into the side of the spirit trap. There was a bright flash, like a sun flare off a car windshield, and Marie was gone.

Sam looked at his brother askance. "Nice going there, Mr. Sensitivity."

"What? It worked. And now Boris," he turned back to Crowley, "can have his pissant little demon back and we can all get on with our lives. So, you wanna exorcise the dead possum or shall I?"

"Now, now," Crowley said. "Not so fast." He walked around the outside of the outer demon trap, examining Halsey. "You know, I think I rather like him like this. He has potential. If you don't mind, I'll just take him like he is."

"What are you going to do with a demonic dead possum?" Sam demanded.

"I should think the possibilities are endless," Crowley said. "Popping him backstage at the Miss America pageant comes to mind." He turned to Dean. "You could come with me, you know. I know you think it sounds like fun. One more howl at the moon for old times' sake?"

"Lonely?" Dean asked. He sounded amused and not entirely unsympathetic.

"My brother isn't going anywhere with you," Sam said flatly.

Crowley scowled at him. "Greedy beggar. You're the one who did this to me. It wouldn't kill you to share." Deliberately scuffing the salt ring and the lines of the devil's traps, Crowley approached his possum minion. With a snap of his fingers, a cage appeared around the possum and he picked it up and turned back to them. "What?" he asked. "Did you think I was going to cuddle it?"

Before anyone could answer he and the cage and the possum were simply not there.

NCIS*SPN*NCIS*SPN*NCIS*SPN*NCIS*SPN

The kitchen table and NCIS-New Orleans headquarters was laden with all manner of food. Dean examined a bowl of greens suspiciously.

"Man, this looks more like something to hunt than something to eat!"

"Greens are good for you," Sam told his brother, with a faint smile.

Dean sighed. "Yeah, I was afraid of that."

"So, where do you think she went?" Brody asked. "Marie, I mean? She didn't do anything bad in life, so far as we know, but then she killed a bunch of men after she became a vengeful spirit."

"Marie made it into heaven," Sam reassured her. "Cas called last night. You remember our friend Cas?" he asked Gibbs and McGee and DiNozzo.

"The angel," DiNozzo said. "Of course. Abby was hoping that he'd show up here to help."

"He would have, maybe, but he's been pretty busy. He's searching for his grace and for a cure for," he nodded at his brother, who had dropped a glop of greens on his plate with the air of a martyr.

"Have a beignet," LaSalle said, offering the elder Winchester a pastry.

He hesitated. "Are they good for you?"

"They're good for the soul."

"Hey, I'm all about that."

"And the angel told you that Marie got into heaven?" Brody persisted.

"Uh, yeah," Sam said. "This other angel, Hannah, contacted him. Apparently Marie showed up still screaming. Hannah wanted Cas to ask us to please not frighten the dearly departed into hysterics any more."

"So what happens now?" LaSalle asked.

"First thing tomorrow, Dean and I head back to Kansas and get back to searching for a way to remove that mark from his arm."

"You're taking Sebastian with you," Loretta Wade said. The forensic tech was still babbling happily about aliens to anyone he could corner long enough. "He can ride in the trunk."

"We're heading back to Washington in the morning, too," Gibbs said. "High time we all got back to business as usual."

"Then tomorrow will be time for goodbyes," Pride said. "But this is tonight. Tonight we're all together, with good food, good wine, good music, and good friends." He raised his glass and toasted each of them in turn. "Tonight," he said, "laissez les bon temps roulez!"

THE END

*#*#*#*#

Final Author's Note: Well, here we are at the end of the journey. Thank you, everyone who has joined me for this story! I love playing in this universe, but it wouldn't be any fun at all without all of you to share it with. :) As I said at the top of the chapter, it will be some considerable time before I'm free to return. In the meantime, I wish you all happiness and prosperity. As Pride said, laissez les bon temps roulez! (Let the good times roll!)

P.S.: If anyone is in the Kansas City area, I have a book signing Saturday, June 6, 2015, at the Crown Center Barnes and Noble. I'd love a chance to meet you in person and put faces with some of the names I've gotten familiar with! :)