Summary: Just months after their last encounter, Dean receives a call from a distressed agent. A dead body in Quantico brings Dean to the home of the FBI to investigate what may be a case of demonic possession. The problem takes on a life of its own, leaving Dean to wonder whether he's in over his head.

A/N: Happiness, Fearless Readers! I'm back! Yay! Wooooo! Okay... maybe not... Anyway, here's the promised fic. It's a sequel to Bloodline, and it's set a couple of months later (taking place during s4e17 of CM: Demonology), so it doesn't necessarily follow canon timeline in the CM sense. Hope you like :)

1. Fight the Fairies

Stupid, stupid Winchester. What the hell were you thinking? Dean ran through the brush, trying his damnedest to outrun them. He was just happy he'd thought to train that morning despite the Hunt, so he was quick and limber as he ran, only slightly winded after the first half-mile. He could keep going, he knew. He could run for all he was worth, straight through the fifteen mile dense-as-hell forest, without a pause as he'd done countless times before, but with them following, he wouldn't make to the end of the first mile.

It was his own fault that Sammy wouldn't know what happened to him, Hunting in the forest without all the facts. Damn disappearances pointed straight to a windego attack—he'd taken out a half dozen with Bill already—but of course, as he'd been told not to, he'd made the evidence fit, overlooking anything that would have pointed to the fucking fanged fairy freaks that were trying to kill him. It was obvious now that thinking it was a windego was the stupidest thing he'd ever thought. First solo Hunt in six months and he had to go and screw it all up.

Goddamn it!

Dean narrowly avoided tripping over a fallen tree trunk, but by the time he righted himself, they were too close to avoid. Claws scraped across his back, digging in enough just to draw blood, but not enough to completely incapacitate him. He ran harder and faster than he had before, pushing himself to the limit even as the distance between them lessened. One pounced on his back, bringing him down with its tackle.

What the hell ever happened to the winged bitches from fairy tales? These things are huge!

And they were. They came up to his waist, these scaly pink creatures with forked tongues and fangs. If Dean hadn't already been familiar with demons, he would have thought they resembled the ones he'd seen in Bobby's books. They were light and boney, but they were strong he soon found. The one on his back twisted him down to the muddy forest floor, not loosening its grip any, even when Dean fell on it. Then a half dozen of the creatures were on him, biting, clawing, tearing.

Dean held in his cries of pain, knowing that showing any weakness to these predators would be a mistake. Instead, he fought. He got one square in the face, knocking it unconscious before it could bite him. He broke another's arm. He flipped two others off of him, clearing his line of sight, then gasped at what he saw. They were everywhere. It wasn't just the dozen he'd seen when he stumbled into their clearing or even the half-dozen that tackled him. It was a hundred of the things, at least.

Dean despaired.

There had to be something he could do. Bobby'd spent who knows now long teaching him every piece of myth and lore he could learn. He could exorcise demons in ten seconds flat, cut a vampire's head off in only three cuts of his Hunting knife—through the spine and everything—and all it had taken to kill that damn mermaid he and Bill took on was a swift kick to the jaw and a hex bag to bind it, three minutes in total; it had been a bit of a disappointment. But fairies? They weren't supposed to exist. Sure, he knew they were real, but they were in a separate plane, detached from the human world, different even from the spiritual plane that ghosts and demons existed on. Their planes weren't supposed to connect, ever. This was big. This was huge.

Then despair hit him again that he wouldn't be able to tell Bill or Ellen or Bobby what he'd seen because he was losing too much blood now and there were still so many fairies to fight, each wanting a piece of him. There had to be something. Salt wouldn't work, obviously. They were probably the most pure creatures in existence according to the lore, so it wouldn't stop them. Iron could have worked to sap the creatures' power—it was like a magical lightening rod—but he didn't have any on him, so that was out. Silver was out for the same reason as the salt, and so was holy water.

Fire.

Dean knocked another of the creatures off of him, noting that he couldn't keep conscious for long with the blood loss, and grabbed the flare gun he'd brought to kill the windego. Stupid Winchester. He took two out with one shot, reloaded, took out three more, clearing them off of him, but there weren't enough flares to kill the whole lot of them and they were converging fast.

Dean pushed himself up on his feet, ignoring the stabbing pains of his wounds. He didn't care that he was without shoes now, or that his wounds were most definitely going to be infected after this Hunt from the amount of dirt and gunk that was getting in them.

Dean ran.

He pushed himself forward again, doing his best to use the forest to his advantage. He pulled back branches to fling at his pursuers, used his long legs to propel him over obstacles. It wasn't enough. They were on him before he could make it a hundred paces.

Dean was pressed again into the ground, claws digging into him. He fought with a purpose now. If he was dying, he was going to die fighting. He reached into his pockets and pulled out his gun, surprised that he hadn't thought to use it before now. Stupid Winchester. That was the problem with having a partner. He'd gotten used to someone there backing him up. He'd gotten sloppy. He fired the entire clip and tossed the gun to the side. It wasn't any use to him without bullets and if he needed to run again, it would just weigh him down. He grabbed his knife next. It was silver, not that it seemed to be of much use—the things kept healing themselves and piling right back on him—but he used it anyway, looking for another opening to run.

It became a pattern—stab, dodge, block, stab—and after a while, he even thought he might win. Unlike the other things he'd Hunted, however, fairies were smart. They bided their time, waiting for their own opening. Dean knew it, just like he knew he wouldn't be able to keep from giving one. Then it happened. The adrenaline in his system wore off, the blood loss caught up with him, his arm tired, and his knife was gone, taken by a fairy as he tried to stab. He was weaponless.

Dean saw the glint of the knife coming toward him and moved to dodge even though it was useless to try. It was too quick for him to get far enough away, and he was too tired, too sore to block it. It got him in his arm the first time, his side the next, both just flesh wounds, but both painful, forcing his eyes closed as he bit back a scream. He prepared himself for a third swipe of the blade, flinched for it, but there was nothing.

Dean opened his eyes, shocked at what he saw. The frenzied fairies were completely still, all staring at him with wide eyes that held an overanxious expression Dean had only ever seen on underfed vampires that were too terrified to do the deed. But they weren't staring at him like he expected. They were staring next to him, where the fairy had cut him with the knife. Dean followed their line of sight to the small pile of salt collecting next to him from where it was spilling out from his now-torn jacket pocket.

What the hell?

With their attention on the salt, Dean shifted slowly to pull himself out from under the baffled fairies. They jumped collectively when his hand brushed the pile, scattering the grains of salt, and he cursed internally. Of course. Right when he had the opportunity to escape, he had to go and screw it all up by being careless. Way to go, Winchester. But the fairies didn't attack, didn't even move except that single shocked jump.

Then Dean was out of the way, looking at the fairies in wonder while he tried his hardest to keep his head from spinning. It was then that they pounced. All at once, the fairies attacked the salt with the same frenzied look in their eye as they'd attacked him with.

Dean stumbled back a few steps and grabbed hold of a tree trunk to steady himself . He looked down at his torn pocket. Salt? He didn't really care what the reason was, only that it worked. He grabbed a handful of salt from his pocket and threw it into the crowd. They didn't show any sign of knowing he was standing there, but the pace of their swarm increased over the grains of salt and Dean though it time to hightail it out of there.

He made it the ten miles to the road in just over four hours. It was too long in his opinion, but it couldn't be helped. His left leg was practically dead weight after being twisted under him not once, but twice, and the rest of him ached worse than after that poltergeist had decided to use his body to play fetch with the vengeful spirit he'd been trying to exorcise a few months back—good times. All he knew, as he opened the driver's side door to the Impala, was that he needed a hot bath and a week's worth of sleep.

Dean took a minute to feel relief pour over him at the fact that he was not, in fact, dead and could live to fight another day before he got down to business. He grabbed one of the cell phones from the glove box and hit speed dial number two.

"Where the hell you been, ya ijit?" Bobby's voice rang loud and clear from the other end.

"Taking a nature hike with some fairies. Had a nice tour of the forest," he joked conversationally, wincing when his chuckle set off a pain in his chest. Yep, definitely had some cracked ribs. Damn, those fairies hit hard.

"Fairies?" Bobby sounded both intrigued and mystified at once. "That's impossible. Are you sure?"

"Well it sure as hell wasn't a windego," Dean said. "I wandered into this clearing—perfect circle, Bobby; you should've seen it—and these pink things just started running at me. Fangs, claws, the whole nine. Came about waist-high, looked like one of those creatures straight outta that one book you have, with the green-gold spine."

"The with the blank pages?"

"That's the one. They were vicious little fuckers, I'll tell you."

"You injured, boy?" Bobby asked, angry for some reason Dean couldn't place.

"Nothin' I can't handle," Dean said defensively, but it was the truth. Some antiseptic and a needle and he'd be a-okay in no time.

"How far are you?"

"About a state, give or take a city," Dean said, sighing in defeat. Bobby was no doubt going to make him drive the ten hours to Sioux Falls just to make sure he was alright. Ever since John was arrested, he'd stepped up big time, but it was a little annoying to still be treated like he was a kid.

"East? West?"

"Southeast," Dean said. "I'm in Illinois."

"Good. It's only about a two day drive from there. You're gonna wanna head east pretty quick."

"What?" Dean asked. It wasn't anything even close to what he thought Bobby was going to say. Another Hunt? Now? Normally, he would have been thrilled, but this time even he couldn't deny that his injuries were too extensive to be ignored. He wanted a little TLC, maybe take a detour to stop and see Sammy for a couple of days. He didn't need another Hunt. Besides, Ellen would kill him if he even thought about Hunting in his condition.

"Got a call from the FBI," Bobby said, and Dean could hear the smile in his voice. Ever since he'd gotten Penny back, his spirits soared whenever they ran into the FBI, even on the high-profile Hunts that would much sooner land them in prison than in the FBI's good graces. Penny was FBI, so the FBI was practically family to Bobby. Dean supposed it couldn't really be helped. Besides, it was good to have a few contacts, especially one who could match anyone but Ash in the computer department.

"What'd Penny say?"

"Wasn't Penny," Bobby said, surprising Dean. "You're gonna wanna hear this."

Dean heard some shuffling, a thunk, and curse, and some more shuffling before Bobby came back on the line.

"Alright," Bobby said. "Listen to this."

A woman's voice flooded the phone's speaker and Dean was surprised to discover that he recognized it.

"Dean? It's, uh, it's Emily. Prentiss. Emily Prentiss. From the FBI? I need your help. I think… Look, just call me back, please? It's important."

Then the line went dead and the hair on Dean's neck stood ramrod straight. He remembered the last time they'd met, when John was arrested and Azazel wanted to come out and play.

Brains can stick with brains, but the muscle's coming with me.

Since when am I the muscle?

Have you seen yourself in the mirror? I know the type. You could probably kick more ass than Ellen, and that's saying something.

She'd smiled then, even though they were going to face the stuff of everyone's worst nightmares. Something had to seriously be wrong to have her as scared as she was on that message. Her voice was shaky, sounded seconds away from crying and just that fact alone was wrong. Prentiss was the kind of chick who didn't let things bother her. Whatever was going down was big.

It's important, she'd said.

"You have her number?" Dean asked Bobby.

He rattled off a string of numbers that Dean wrote in the small notepad he kept in the car.

"I'll call you when I'm there," he said.

A/N: Sooo? Whatcha think? Good? Bad? Absolutely, horribly, unfixably atrocious? Let me know! And fav! Follow! Review! Updates will come every Sunday and Thursday, unless otherwise specified. So, I'll see you on Thursday, Readers. Until then, read on!