Hi, all! I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacck. I've been sitting on this story for way too long. Here is the first chapter. Let me know what you think!

Chapter One

The beast was all blurring speed, calamity and poison.

And it was chasing Sam.

The forest was densely packed trees and jagged terrain that crumbled from days of rain. His large feet skidded in the mud, throwing off his momentum. A snarl of acrid breath painted his neck, and he embraced the change in direction and veered left. His bad knee popped in sharp complaint when he tripped over a rock or root protruding from the sodden earth; he recovered with a pinwheeling of arms and a surge pure adrenaline, darting around a fat evergreen's trunk to avoid the vicious swat of a tail.

An arm dashed over his face as shards of bark and chunks of tree went flying.

The spark of pain in his lungs bloomed into a fiery agony and there was a cramp high in his gut. Bile crept upward. He couldn't maintain this speed for much longer. A blur of neon orange made him purposefully slid on his heels, changing direction to pick up the path of marked trees. He could see the cluster of rocks head and the grayish haze just beyond. Dean was waiting, John Winchester's silver-tipped axe at the ready. Just fifty more strides and the basilisk would be dead. It was all the encouragment he needed.

These creatures had been seen by few hunters, lauded as simply large snakes thanks to "Harry Potter." But it was a harbinger of death and decay. It poisoned its victims, often killing not for food, but for fun.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood erect, adrenaline flooding his veins as he saw an ominous shadow just to his right, sailing through the trees like a nefarious cloud of black-green mist. Sam couldn't risk deviating from the path, he kept running, hurdling a down tree and ignoring the burn when thorny branches snagged his face and hands. It was too close now, the stench mixing the wind. It snapped at his outstretched arm, just missing his fingers. Determined, Sam extended his arms, letting his cumbersome jacket sail off. The shape disappeared and he smiled when he heard the shredding of cloth directly behind him.

He passed the rock running unflinchingly beneath Dean's plummeting axe. He slowed, chest heaving for air.

Behind him, he heard the familiar clang of axe hitting rock, not the meaty squick of flesh. He took off before Dean could yell a warning. Regulated fear mutated into new paralyzing terror as the basilisk continued to chase him. Sam could double-back, knowing Dean could pick up on his offensive or he could-

Something pierced his shoulder with stunning force, and the forest tumbled behind him, muddy detritus becoming sky and gray clouds becoming earth. There was mud in his eyes, blood in his mouth and pain everywhere. For a moment, everything stopped.

*71 Hours Earlier*

It was a sad truth that the Winchesters couldn't trust fellow hunters.

After their entanglement with Lucifer, hunters could be even more dangerous than monsters. Dean sat in the Impala, listening to the ticks of her engine as it settled, debating on even entering. Dean Winchester was many things, but a coward wasn't one of them. The bar wasn't as rustic as The Roadhouse. Instead of the boot-scarred floors and chipped bar glasses, there was pristine mahogany, red brick and generous pours. The bar was busy, hipsters and hotties outnumbering the hunters, but Dean saw them just the same. It was the awkward fullness of the chest that hitting at a gun or the subtle shift of eyes checking the exits, noting the surroundings.

Dean found Drex immediately. He slid into the booth and cracking his knuckles as he did. The long strawberry blonde hair was gone. The short pixie cut and auburn dye job made her look older and tougher. There was a heaviness to her eyes that hadn't been there before. He attributed it to the job.

"Where's your other half?" Dean asked with a grin.

"Salted and burned." Drex took a pull from her drink. "Gutted by a shadow demon 'bout eight months ago."

Dean winced. Molly Drexel was nothing more than type A co-ed when she'd fallen for Ian Baldwin, a self-proclaimed badass hunter with a Danny Zucko leather jacket and enough dumb luck not to get slaughtered his first year out. Love had driven her to leave Dartmouth for digging graves, and reverence made her stay. "I'm sorry, Molly...I didn't know."

She shrugged and finished her drink motioning for another. "I heard you were pretty far out of cell service."

His eye twitched. Hunters were worse than fifteen year-old girls. "If you ever wanna sharpen your skills, a quick trip to hunters' boot camp is on order."

Drex almost smiled, her brown eyes dangerous. "So tell me about your beast."

"We have a pile of dead bodies, campers, park rangers, tourists fishing. Some of them are half-eaten, some of them are stone-cold dead, bled out or crushed. All of them are found near the woods just outside Boulder. That's all we have, well that and this." Dean nudged a hand in his jacket, aware of the eyes watching him. He pulled out a plastic bag containing a thin reed and set it on the table. It was about five inches long with the diameter of a pen. "Wait, no don't..." He warned as Drex opened the bag. "That's poison."

"Duh," she said sharply. She stuck her nose in the bag, and grimaced at the odor. "It's a basilisk."

She rolled her eyes at Dean's incredulity. "You came to me for a reason. I know a lot of things, but I'm an expert in lore. This a basilisk, and not the 'Harry Potter' kind. Think the full on monster-with-poisoned-quills kind. The venom is nasty stuff so steer clear of the tail. One barb won't kill a human, but it slows them down enough for King Cobra to finish it off. More than one and...well, the forecast is bloody with a chance of misery."

"How do you kill it?"

"Take its head off," Drex said with a shrug. "We killed a few two years ago. It's not tough to pin down...best way to do it is the ole bait and sword."

Dean nodded, thankful for the help and the visit with an old friend. Even if she had seem haunted, wore too much eyeliner and was completely immune to his charms. Still, there was something amiss. Maybe it would be the grief twisting her up and putting down roots, but Drex was different. It hit him as the waitress brought him a double whisky. Drex and Dean were colleagues, but Drex and Sam were friends. The two were both out and proud nerds and always yammered about lore and Latin and literature when they were together. She was also one of the only people Sam actively reached out too on the road and confided in. "You haven't asked about Sam."

Drex's face didn't change, but her eyes narrowed sharply. It was a subtle flicker of an emotion, but Dean, the trained hunter, saw it. "I haven't."

"Any reason?"

Drex drained her glass, and slid it into the other four that were on the table. "A lot can happen in a year," she said and slipped out of the booth.

The check was left unpaid as Drex slid into Ian's jacket as she left.

*NOW*

Sam crawled, trying to control his gangly limbs. He groped for the gun at his waist. Muddy hands slipped on the metal, but he cocked just the same.

Blearily, he made it to his feet and even launched into a loping, albeit pathetic trot. Over the thunderous thump of his heart, he heard a hissing rumble of an attack. An instant later, he was airborne. Sam arched the gun over his shoulder and fired blindly. Muzzlefire scorched his neck. The first gunshot probably ruptured his eardrum, too, but its wails reverberated through his chest, his ribs humming like a tuning fork.

He collided to the half-frozen ground with a deafening crack. Then there was great pain, undecipherable and overwhelming. Unconsciousness was a very near thing. His arms wouldn't move and his eyes wouldn't focus, but the thing was still there, circling him in the mist. The silver bullets had no chance of killing it, but the basilisk had retreated, sizing up its prey with a bit more caution. Sam was finally able to lift his good arm to wipe the mud from his eyes. If he squinted, he could see eyes that were gold and reptilian, blackish-green scales and it had a cobra-esque cowl of knobby bone.

When it advanced with a wary curiosity, it moved, not with a serpentine slither, but with the rocking gait of a crocodile. The basilisk had legs.

It shot up a tree. Sam exhaled, wet and painful. He coughed a bit and glanced down at his shoulder and the limp arm. It was numb, a light cold cycling pleasantly from shoulder to fingertip and back again. A barb stuck obscenely from the knob of his shoulder, encircled in blood. There was another inches away just beneath his collarbone. Sam stared at them numbly. Sam bit his lip, letting go on the gun long enough to tug them out with more speed than mercy.

A ferocious chuff sounded mere inches away. Sam's eyes flicked straight ahead and he froze. Out of his peripheral vision, he could see its evil face, and strangely hexagonal scales. It vocalized again, evil and foreboding. The leaves beneath it curled up and wilted, deflating in size and color as if its very presence was poison. The scales around its head melted and slid back and opening like a blooming artichoke, exposing the soft, raw skin beneath. And it made sense why the axe didn't work. The scales were armor.

The beast's tongue flickered out to taste the air, probably catching a sampling of Sam's blood and stupefied fear.

A glint of silver was all the warning he got before its eyes went dark and its head fell and rolled a few feet, black blood sizzling on the ground below. Its body wobbled, tail still flicking, before it keeled over like a moldering tree.

Dean's face filled his vision, all sweaty upper lip and wide, fearful eyes. His mouth moved soundlessly. Sam didn't understand. But he was reassured by his presence and thrilled the thing was finally dead, that Dean still had his back.

Dean's hands wiped at his face, scrubbing it clean of mud. The shrill done in his ears ended with a pop. "—ammy, answer me, dude? Y'all right?"

"...no," Sam answered honestly.

"So you and Nagini didn't make friends? You're bleeding."

"Yeah." His shoulder awakened too, alive with fiery pain, it seared down, ensnaring his chest, too. "Think it had a gun."

Dean's eyebrows lifted and narrowed in concern. He began patting Sam down, heedless of the blood. "Shit, man, it got you." He knew that already and had taken care of it. But Dean's fingers probed the tender skin just below the slight swell of his right pectoral, tracing yet another barb. "Drex said the poison from one wouldn't kill ya, but we're gonna get you help, okay?"

The realization overrode the relief. Sam met Dean's eyes, setting his jaw defiantly, as he lifted a shaking hand, revealing two more barbs.