After everyone had withdrawn, they suddenly discovered that the screens in the command vehicle were going dark one after another.
First, the surveillance cameras in Grants Pass went out. Then the drone signals. Finally, even the real-time energy map generated by Internet Addiction through satellite thermal scans began losing data in huge swaths.
Bobby Singer slammed the console hard, but it was no use.
"She's cutting off the network." Sam stared at the last flickering screen, which showed signals from several surviving sensors at the edge of the city. "It's not physical destruction. She's using some kind of energy field to interfere with every electronic signal."
Dean stood outside the vehicle window, looking at the increasingly dense black mist hanging over the distant city. "She learns fast."
There were still eight hours until the angels' purification bombardment, and now they had lost all surveillance of the city's interior.
Wu Heng's voice came through the communicator, the signal choppy and mixed with the distinctive static of energy interference from the Hell front line: "...Confirmed. Eve is drawing on negative emotions to strengthen herself. Her energy readings have increased by three hundred percent over the past three hours. Do not engage her directly—"
"We weren't planning to go in," Dean said into the communicator. "But she's about to come out."
Dean was right.
In the center of Grants Pass, the former city hall had become the shell of a living nest. Eve stood at the edge of its roof, beneath her feet a layer of continuously pulsating flesh membrane.
She raised a hand, palm upward.
Three captured low-ranking angels were dragged before her by hybrids. Their light-wings had been torn to tatters, and black fleshy tendrils that suppressed holy light were wrapped all over their bodies.
Eve did not even look at