Summary: A demonic possession in San Francisco introduces Dean to the ins-and-outs of exorcisms. Pre-series, no pairings.

Another crazy supernatural story of the Dean and Sara variety! Sara Lucian is a character from several of my other Supernatural stories (which are listed in my profile for anyone who's interested). Reading those stories probably isn't strictly necessary, but might help. Sara is a friend (and nothing more) of Dean's who is also a young Hunter. She specialises in exorcisms and was trained by her mother, just as Dean was trained by John.

xxx
Black Earth, Wisconsin,
June 2003,

"How'd it go last night?" Will Atwood asked when his older brother came stumbling into the kitchen.

Adrian grunted, shrugged and stole Will's bacon sandwich. "Ghost's toasted," he said around a mouthful of food. "Figure out that cursed object thing yet? You've been working on it for near a month now."

Will scowled. "Nope. And neither can Maxwell, so don't start."

"Chill. You're still the best tracker I know."

"I'm the only tracker you know."

"True enough. Oh, ran into Sara and Dean," Adrian said. "They're heading to Cali, drop in on Dean's kid brother, renew the wards on his place."

"How were they?"

"I don't know. I think Sara's still kinda worked up about that witch in April, but they seemed okay."

"Yeah, she's good at that."

"Still bitter, bro?"

"Born bitter, Adrian. Just like you."

xxx
Stanford University, Palo Alto

Sara stepped out of the Impala and turned to look at Dean again. "Okay, so I go burn sage and make some nice, shiny wards for Sasquatch, just like we agreed when the kid wandered off. What are you going to be doing?"

"Keeping a look out," Dean replied.

"Needn't bother. Sasquatch does know I do this, you know, and, besides, he's in a lecture."

"How do you know that?"

"Will hacked into the admin files, found me his timetable. He's in philosophy, by the way. Stevenson Hall. Oh, and you might want this."

"What is it?"

"A map of campus. If you're going to be stalking your brother, you have to know where he is first, after all."

"Sara..."

"No comments, no advice, no interfering. But the wards will take me a good thirty minutes, so go check on Sasquatch before you get arrested for loitering."

Dean grinned and nodded before driving off. Sara shook her head. Dean was so easy sometimes, if stupidly stubborn. But that was a problem that would most likely never be solved, so instead she turned her thoughts to the matter at hand. Namely, breaking and entering Sam's room. Good thing he hadn't moved since the beginning of the year and she could still climb up the fire escape and get through the window.

The room hadn't changed much since she'd last seen it, although Sam had invested in some posters and a hell of a lot of books, but that was about it. The signs and symbols were still clearly visible where she had scratched them into the wooden furniture before, but she redid them and anointed them again. The first time she had done this particular ritual, she'd had to repeat it several times, but it only required one run through to renew it.

Finally, she pulled out the tin bowl from her backpack, as well as a packet of sage and a lighter. Burning sage, the final stage. The stink would let Sam know she'd been here, but as they'd made their peace over this months ago, that really didn't matter. Placing the bowl on the desk, Sara flopped into the chair and set the herbs alight.

Hm, looked like Sasquatch was tackling Aquinas. The Cosmological Arguments, judging by the draft he'd left on his desk. Well, that would drive him up the wall and serve him right. Hunters never tended to have much time for philosophy. Figured Sam would take it up the moment he was able, although she'd love to see his reaction tot the Problem Of Evil. Sara put the draft down again and blew out the sage, flicking the ashes around the room. Voila, one protected room.

She was just packing the bowl up again when her phone rang. "Yep?" she said, answering it. "Will? Yeah, all's good. What?" She nearly dropped the bowl. "You're sure? Yeah, I can handle it. Any leads? Well, you're only human. Call you later."

Ending the call, she immediately dialled another.

xxx

Across the quad, Sam threw back his head and laughed. Tall, skinny blonde to his left, way shorter guy with glasses on his right. And even though it was highly unlikely, it almost looked like Sammy had grown another inch or two. Looked better than ever, in fact. If... you know...

Dean was almost relieved when his phone rang.

"Yeah?"

"Dean, it's me," came Sara's voice. "Uh, we have a slight... um, issue."

"What, you got caught breaking into the room?"

"No, Will called. It's all kind of complicated, but there's a demon."

"Possession?"

"Yeah, somewhere in the USA. I need to narrow it down."

"How?"

"Uh, complicated. Come pick me up, okay?"

"Yeah, sure. Be right there."

xxx

Winchesters were Hunters, Lucians were exorcists. Until Dean and Sara had met, the two families had had little in common. Amelia had once or twice asked John for help, John had occasionally returned the favour. But Dean and Sara had met as teenagers and, once John and Sam had gone their own ways and Amelia had died, had started to work together. In sixth months, they'd been on a dozen hunts or more, but they had yet to deal with a possession together.

Not that Dean was bothered by that. He'd never been anywhere near a possession, but Sara had been dealing with them since she hit eighteen and been working solo for the last two years.

Admittedly, he'd be a bit more not-bothered if Sara would just explain what the hell was going on.

Currently, she had a stack of newspapers on the table next to the laptop and a map of America spread out across the remaining space. Good thing they'd rented a motel room the night before; Dean hated to think what kind of attention this would've attracted in a public area.

"Okay," Dean said slowly. "So we know there's a possession... how?"

"Crystals." She circled one article, turned the page.

"You what?"

"In Black Earth, I set up these crystals my mum left me. They react to demonic presences. When all seven light up like a Christmas tree, we got a demon."

"And we find it in the national news?"

"Yeah."

"How?" And Dean really gets, maybe for the first time, how much this work means to Sara, how much it takes over her life. Because he's never had to ask her such simple questions before, not about a hunt.

"When a demon takes a host, omens pop up. It's the only way Mum ever found to track them efficiently. The omens point to where the demon took control of the host, but the things often migrate, you know, so I have to pick up the trail before it goes cold."

"Hang on a minute. What happened to 'we', 'us', teamwork?"

Sara looked up, confused. "What?"

"You said 'I'."

"Sorry, I... I haven't done this work with anyone for years. Automatic, you know. Uh, help me out?"

Dean took the paper she offered. They got enough of their jobs from papers to make him a veritable expert in skimming the daily news for supernatural occurrences. Not everything he found was useful, but some stories Sara took eagerly from him. That was when Dean learnt what the map was for. Each omen was marked down, Sara muttering under her breath and measuring angles and distances. There were always omens around, that was just part of life, but the omens for a possession fit a very specific pattern.

"How'd you learn to do that?"

"Practice. Lucians record all the omens that point towards a possession, so Mum would give me lists of them and leave me to figure out where the demon had been. When I was older, I did it all myself. Mum hadn't touched a possession in two years when she died." Sara missed the look of regret on Dean's face as she marked in more omens. Not that the regret was for Sara's expertise, just the almost-bitter way she spoke about her mother. "And I think we have a destination. San Fran, California."

"That's only an hour away. But the city's got about three-quarters of a million people living in it. How the hell do we figure out which one has a demonic squatter?"

"When we're closer, there's something else I can try to narrow it further. But we gotta go, now."

Dean didn't argue. This was Sara's area of expertise, after all.

xxx

San Francisco, California,

One hour later, in one of the cheaper motels on the outskirts of the city, Dean watched as Sara spread the map out across another table.

"Now this," she said, rummaging through her backpack. "This, you'll enjoy."

"What?"

"The omens we spotted earlier pointed to this city. Now we should be close enough for this trick my mum taught me to work." Out of the black bag, she brought a small box and opened it, drawing out an iron nail dangling on a thin thread. "This is one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my short but varied career."

Dean looked at the nail closely, he really does. But it's just a nail and he can tell from the way Sara's mouth is twitching that she's finding his confusion very amusing. "Okay, I give up. What the hell is it?"

"Just watch."

Sara allowed the nail to hang from the thread, keeping the other end of it to wrap around her right fingers, and positioned the nail above San Francisco. With her left hand, she twisted the pointed end and let it spin.

"My gran used to say this was one of the nails used to crucify Christ, but Mum told me her father picked it up in a hardware store and got it enchanted by a guy in Africa," Sara said conversationally. And let the nail drop.

It thudded into the map, going just far enough into the table to stay in place.

"That's where the demon took control of its host?"

"Yep. One magic bit of metal and we've cut it down from a whole city to a single block at most." Sara tugged the nail out of the table and threw it at Dean, but not in a I-want-to-impale-you-with-this sort of way.

He looked at the nail again. Didn't look or feel any different to any other nail he'd ever seen or held. But then, Sara was the one with highly-attuned magic senses, not him. "Okay, so let's go."

xxx

"Sara, surely when a demon turns up, people notice something? I mean, they're not normally known for subtlety."

"Not normally, but there's a tricky one every now and again," Sara said, rubbing the back of her neck.

"No offence meant, but we've been walking round these city-blocks for three hours now, and there's nothing. You haven't picked anything up, there's nothing in the newspaper, no gossip about Mr Smith blowing his wife's brains out. Are you sure that nail works?"

"Yes, Dean, I'm sure. This is my life, remember, in all it's fucked up glory," Sara snapped. "Look, a possession leaves echoes. I should be able to sense those echoes. I don't get it."

"Well, maybe it's not you. Maybe it's the damn nail."

"Come on, Dean. You know an inanimate object is always more reliable than a person. I just don't..." She looked around. "Oh, no..."

"What?" Dean also turned. "A... A church?"

"Oh, somebody up there really doesn't like me. Nor you, for some reason."

"Why, what have I done?"

"Stayed. Agreed to help me. Lousy taste in music."

"Hey, you love my music."

"Shared insanity doesn't make your taste in music any better."

"Sara, what's the problem?"

"If the possession took place on hallowed ground, that would explain why I couldn't sense it. But... that means a demon has been on hallowed ground."

Dean gaped for a moment. "Demons can't do that. They just... They can't. That's why me and Sammy spent so much time at Pastor Jim's over the years, it was the safest place Dad could think of."

"Hey, I spent five school holidays with Jim for the same reason, more or less, but there are some demons, nasty demons, that can manage to walk on holy ground. They used to be way more common, back when the Lucians first started out. They almost destroyed England. All that crap about the Black Death? More than half those deaths were caused by demons that could go anywhere, even into Cathedrals."

"Sara, I flunked history. Just tell me you can deal with it and I'm cool."

She shrugged. "It's just... this kind of demon turns up maybe every two years and Mum dealt with it last time, she said I wasn't ready."

It was Dean's turn to shrug. "Well, you are now."

"Dean, do you encourage me like this because you actually believe in me or because you have no idea what it takes to do this successfully?"

"Bit of both."

Sara smiled slightly. "Figures. I should call Bobby."

"Bobby? Why?"

"He was an exorcist. Gave it up when my mother came to America, said she was too good, made him look like a bumbling amateur. He might have some advice for me."

"You mean your mom didn't tell everything?"

"She hated me doing this, remember?" Sara said over her shoulder as she walked back towards the car. "She only told me what I needed to know and... I guess she figured I didn't need to know this."

Dean followed her. "Your family is crazy."

"Preaching to the choir, mate."

xxx

Back in the motel room, Dean watched as Sara paced, listening with rapt attention to whatever the hell Bobby was telling her. He, for his part, was going over every weapon he had, every consecrated bullet, every grain of salt and drop of holy water. It was what he did when facing a new enemy for the first time. Made him feel better, for some bizarre reason.

"No, I'm not trying to do this alone, Bobby, although I'm insulted by the implication I can't deal with my own business. It's just another demon. What? Oh, I'm with Dean. Yes, still. It's part of the whole working together thing we've got going here, I realise the concept may not be familiar."

Yeah, Sara wasn't happy. She was always more snarky when she was upset.

"Yeah, I know that ritual. It'll work? Awesome. Thanks. Oh, just to check, holy water-? Brilliant. Yeah, I'll call when we're done. Thanks, Bobby."

"So?" Dean asked when she hung up.

"Turns out I already know the right ritual."

"How can you already know it and not know that you know it?"

"Need to know basis, remember? Believe me, if Amelia Lucian told you to memorise something, you'd remember it first and ask questions never."

"Okay, chill. So we... what? Find the demon, you chant at it, we're all good?"

"More or less. Holy water and Devil's Traps will still work against a level eight, so we just need to track down the host."

Dean frowned. "Level eight?"

"You ever read Dante's Inferno?"

Dean gave her a look.

Sara grinned. "Right, stupid question. Guy called Dante wrote a book about a man who takes a trip through Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. He described Hell as being made up of nine different levels, with the demons and the sinners getting worse the further down you went, till you reached Lucifer and Judas Iscariot in the very centre. The Lucians' ran with the metaphor, dividing demons into nine categories depending on strength. Levels one to seven can't walk on holy ground."

"So how do you know this demon isn't a level nine?"

"There's only ever been one level nine demon, Dean. The omens were off the scale, not the tiny ones we found. No, this is a level eight and that is quite enough for us to getting on with, don't you think?"

xxx

"You know," Dean said as they approached the church again. "It's a damn good thing the demon didn't come here on a Sunday. Tracking down an entire congregation would take forever."

"Last year, the omens pointed to a retail centre," Sara replied flatly. "Believe me, this is simple."

Dean shut up at that point. Sara had never said it, and Dean had firmly resolved never to ask, but he knew that normally the only way to track a possessed host was by the trail of bodies it left behind. The longer Sara took to find the demon and get rid of it, the more people died.

"Do you have a plan?" he asked softly, just before they entered the church.

"Yep. Find the demon, exorcise it, move on," Sara said. "More specifically? Find out who was here two days ago."

"Hence the badges?"

Sara nodded, then frowned. "Since when do you say 'hence'?"

Dean shrugged. In all truth, he didn't. But Sara did on occasion and he was more than willing to parrot her for some badly needed distraction.

It seemed to work. Sara shook her head, a gesture that was as affectionate as it was exasperated. "Just follow my lead, ok? To start with at the very least?"

He was okay with that, as well. Dean had a pretty good idea what Sara was going to do, anyway. They had the police detective badges and both were dressed sort-of respectfully. All he had to do was not look surprised at whatever details Sara came out with and all would be good.

The church was large, the stone walls and floor cool even in summer. By the door was a tiny alcove with a pool of holy water. Sara, in a previously-unseen act of faith, dipped her fingers in the water and crossed herself as a young priest looked up from the altar and saw them.

He could be very young, or be older than Dean, but the priest had the sort of clumsiness about his movements that pointed to gangly limbs under his sombre clothes and it made judging his age impossible for Dean. People like that always made Dean think of a teenage Sammy, banging into doorframes and knocking things over.

"Good morning," the priest said as he reached the two Hunters. "I'm Father Gabriel."

"Morning, Father," Sara replied, shaking his hand. Dean saw the last remaining drops of holy water which clung to her hand and grinned. "I'm Sara Burnett," Sara continued. "This is Dean Hulme."

Dean smiled and shook the priest's hand as Sara began to speak again.

"We're very sorry to disturb you, but we've had some reports of a disturbance nearby," Sara was saying politely, showing her fake badge. "Would you mind if we asked you some routine questions?"

"Of course not," Gabriel replied.

"Could you tell us who was in here two days ago?" Dean asked, bringing out a notebook.

"Between two and five in the afternoon," Sara added.

"Just myself, Father James and the Arnolds."

"The Arnolds?"

"Mr and Mrs Arnold, and their daughter. They were here to talk about the baptism, it's in two days so they wanted to finalise a few details."

"Do you have their address? It would be very helpful to speak with them," Dean said.

"Uh, yes, Father James would have." Gabriel gestured vaguely. "Just a moment." He hurried off again.

"Priests," Dean muttered.

Sara smiled slightly. "At least he's helpful."

"He's not..."

"Nope. Demon free, I promise. And only four other suspects, three if we don't count the kid."

"I guess demons aren't big fans of preschool, huh?"

"It's hard to do the work of Satan before you can walk and talk. Hey, Dean? Does the altar seem wrong to you?"

"You mean, apart from the huge crack in it?" Dean said, looking at it. "Think that has something to do with our problem?"

"Maybe. Altars are meant to be pretty holy, been consecrated and whatnot. Maybe the demon would want it broken."

"Assuming it needs a reason."

"True. Level eights are-" Sara cut herself off as Gabriel returned.

"Here's their address," he said, handing over a small slip of paper. "I asked Father James, and he said he didn't notice anything odd yesterday afternoon. Neither did I, for that matter. What sort of disturbance are you investigating?"

"Just rather sketchy reports of someone acting a little... unusually, causing some concern to those around him," Sara replied. "So no one came in to the Church, no one acted in a way that worried you?"

"Uh, Father James had a bit of headache, but that's fairly common," Father Gabriel said with a smile.

"What happened to the altar?" Dean asked.

"Terrible shame, isn't it? I think the wood wasn't properly treated or something. But we'll have to wait until the Bishop can consecrate a new one for us, and that looks set to take about a week."

"Won't that affect your work?"

"We've cancelled this week's mass, but I'll be holding the prayer services as normal, and Father James will still hold the baptism on Saturday."

Sra nodded thoughtfully. "Would it be possible to speak to Father James? Just for the sake of procedure."

Father Gabriel nodded and went back to the room when he'd gone to fetch the address. Dean moved position slightly so he was closer to the pool of holy water and started flicking the pen between his fingers, looking for all the world like he was bored out of his skull. What could he say, years of practise. Sara gave him a quick smile, but it did not so much fade as vanish when a second priest walked towards them.

"Gabriel tells me you wanted to ask me some questions," Father James said.

"If you don't mind, sir," Dean said, still fiddling with the pen.

"Of course not, but I really didn't notice anything out of the ordinary."

"Well, in that case, sir, we'll get out of your way," Sara said. "We just needed to hear it from you personally."

"Thank you for your time," Dean added. The pen flicked right out of his hands, flying into the pool of holy water, splashing the liquid across the floor and the group standing there.

Father James didn't flinch, his eyes didn't black. But he didn't flinch and his eyes didn't turn black only because he stepped promptly – too promptly – backwards, completely avoiding the spray of water. Dean retrieved the now-waterlogged pen, apologising profusely, and followed Sara out of the church.

xxx

The next chapter should be up in about a week. Reviews will be treasured, tucked in and have a story of their choice read to them. )