Chapter 2

Dean pulled the Impala up along the curb outside the police line that'd been erected around the perimeter of the burned down warehouse. The news had reported it was a massive blaze, but seeing the destruction hit home just how much so. No wonder it had taken hours for firefighters to put it out.

Sam was looking at his phone. "Okay, so, the fire chief just reported that there were no casualties."

"Maybe because there was nothing left to find."

Sam shot him a bitch-face. "There's no evidence this is related to a phoenix."

Dean just shrugged. He didn't believe in coincidences.

"How would we know for sure?" Amy spoke up from the backseat. She'd refused to stay behind once Dean had decided to join Cas and Ryn on their hunt. Or, 'search,' whatever.

He didn't have an answer for that, and so simply turned the engine off and got out of the car. Sam and Amy followed. Dean scanned the area for Cas and Ryn, and spotted them down near an alley that was out of the way. He made his way over, Sam and Amy right behind him.

"Hey," he greeted. "Anything?"

Ryn exchanged a hesitant look with Cas. "Maybe," she said. "I sense…something. I think- I think a phoenix was here. But other than that, it's nothing to go on."

Dean arched a questioning brow at Cas, who just gave a subtle head cant in response. So, another dead end. Maybe they should look into other major fires across the country over the years. Two within a few weeks suggested an underlying pattern. Maybe if they could retrace this dude's steps, they could predict where he'd go next.

Dean's mouth pressed into a thin line as he looked back at Ryn. He knew this wasn't the news she wanted to hear. But in regards to the whole 'not every supernatural being is a monster' thing, she really was one of the rare exceptions. There were plenty of 'monsters' out there that were real bad guys.

Sam's gaze drifted over their shoulders, and he started to nudge past them. Dean turned as his brother headed down the alley toward where a homeless man was huddled near some dumpsters.

"Excuse me," Sam called. "Mind if we ask you a few questions?"

The man gave Sam an unimpressed once-over. "You ain't cops."

"FBI," Dean said, coming over with his badge. "And we just wanna know if you saw anything before the fire broke out. This is your turf, right?"

The man narrowed his eyes. "I didn't see nothin'."

Cas came up behind Dean and held out two twenty-dollar bills. "You keep to your own business, I understand. But you also have to be aware of your surroundings in order to protect yourself. We think this fire may have been set intentionally. Please, anything you can tell us could be of help."

The guy regarded the money with both wariness and yearning. He took it from Cas's hand swiftly and held it close to his chest like it was manna from Heaven. "The warehouse is usually empty," he said in a low voice. "But sometimes addicts use it. Weird druggies hopped up on stuff that changes their eye color."

Dean straightened. "To black?"

He nodded nervously, and cast a glance up and down the alley. "I steer clear."

"Were there black-eyed people when the fire started?" Sam asked.

He bobbed his head. "Two. And a third guy I'd never seen before."

Ryn stepped forward then, pulling out the photo Sam had printed for her earlier. "This him?"

The guy squinted at the dark and somewhat blurry image for a long moment. "Yeah. Yeah, that's him. He went in a few minutes after the first two." He flicked his gaze toward the warehouse. "None of 'em came back out."

That he'd seen. Chances were Mr. Combustion Dude had walked out with a brand new skin.

"Thanks," Dean said, and their group headed back out to the street. "So, sounds like this phoenix decided to blow up another building."

"A building with demons," Amy pointed out. "Isn't that technically a good thing?"

"Not if innocent people get caught in the crossfire," Sam put in. "Destroying an entire building to take out two demons is overkill."

"Do you think the people in the restaurant could have been demons?" she asked.

"No way to know, really," Dean replied. But he doubted it. And he didn't know how to explain the presence of demons here, but it was probably more luck that this fire hadn't killed anyone else. And, again, that they knew of. There was no telling if there'd been any homeless people squatting in that building who'd been vaporized, never to be identified.

He shook his head in mounting frustration. "We can't go around chasing fires trying to find this guy. We need to get ahead of him."

"How?" Sam asked.

"What about a tracking spell?" Cas spoke up. "If he truly is a phoenix, then Ryn is his Alpha. Perhaps we could use her blood to cast a locator spell."

Ryn perked up at the suggestion. "We can try that."

Dean shrugged. "Alright, then. Let's go."

Because of the growing sense of urgency over the situation, they ended up calling Rowena for such a tracking spell. At some point over the years, she'd stopped charging them for that kind of thing, as long as they didn't go advertising it to anyone else. And the witch had once said something to Ryn about reds needing to stick together.

Which was why Ryn made the call and request, and Castiel flew her to a meet-up with Rowena to perform the spell. A few hours after that, they were back with the others and driving into a town not too many miles from the warehouse fire. Ryn tried not to fidget in the backseat of the Impala. She had every faith in Rowena's tracking spell, but worried the phoenix would have moved on by the time they reached their destination.

She could feel Castiel's and Amy's eyes on her from the backseat too, and kept hers resolutely facing out the window. Part of her was glad, and touched, by her family's support, but another part of her—a part silenced in recent years yet still ingrained from ages of isolation—wanted to do this on her own.

Dean pulled the car to a stop in front of an old abandoned shoe factory, and the five of them wordlessly climbed out. Ryn narrowed her eyes as Dean and Sam automatically reached to check their guns.

"Could we not go in like hunters?" she said pointedly.

"We don't know what's in there," Dean argued.

Ryn snorted. "We rarely do. Just…let me take the lead on this, alright?"

Dean slipped his gun back into his jacket and held his hands up. "Okay."

Ryn could tell he wasn't thrilled, but she nevertheless headed for the building. Most of the windows were boarded up and there was graffiti on the walls. The shoe company's signage had faded lettering and some obscene tags spray painted across it. It was the kind of property…monsters, liked to hang out in.

Ryn found a door that wasn't locked and nudged it open. The rusted hinges squealed, basically announcing their presence. She grimaced. This wasn't a hunt, though, and she wasn't trying to catch their quarry off guard.

Taking a deep breath, she slipped inside the factory. Most of the main floor was empty, save for some broken conveyor belts and wooden palettes for boxed merchandise. Everything was silent. Ryn's heart was beating with anticipation as she scanned the area.

Castiel suddenly pulled up short, eyes narrowing on the stacked palettes. Ryn followed his gaze and caught a flash of movement before a figure was scrambling out and aiming a gun at them.

"Whoa, whoa." Dean instantly drew his and had it trained on the guy, as did Sam. "Easy, buddy."

Ryn was too stunned to react, and could only gape at the man standing before her. He was tall and scrawny, with mussed brown hair and scruffy facial growth. He looked half mad, but in those wide and harried eyes was also an unmistakeable spark.

"Back off," he snapped, waving the gun back and forth between each of them.

Ryn raised her palms. "We're not here to fight. My name is Aderyn. I'm…" She faltered, having never had to say it before in this capacity. "I'm a phoenix. The Alpha phoenix."

The man flicked a chaotic gaze at her, then away, then back. "What?" he sputtered.

"I'm like you," she said carefully.

He shifted his weight. "You're lying."

Ryn took a slow step forward and held her hand out, palm facing up. A ball of flame whooshed to life in her hand. She held it there for a long moment, then closed her fist to extinguish it.

He continued to regard her apprehensively, but also with confusion. "Another phoenix…"

"The first," Ryn put in.

"I- I never knew there were others…" His eyes suddenly hardened as he snapped his gaze to the Winchesters. "Those two are human. And the other two…they shine differently." He tightened his hold on his weapon.

"Whoa, hey," Ryn raised her voice. "We're not here to hurt you."

"Then why did you come with guns?" he spat.

"Maybe because you're holding one on us," Dean replied nonchalantly.

Ryn almost rolled her eyes. "Can we all agree to put them down?" She shot a pointed look over her shoulder.

A muscle in Sam's jaw ticked as he flicked an uncertain glance at Dean, who was staring down the other phoenix with cold intent. Ryn wanted to smack him.

Instead, she turned back to the phoenix. "What's your name?"

He eyed them guardedly, but started to slowly lower his gun. "Elijah."

"Elijah," she repeated. "That's Sam and Dean, and this is Castiel and Amy. They're angels."

"Half angel," Amy spoke up. "I'm half phoenix too," she added with a tentative smile.

Elijah furrowed his brow at her, then flicked a startled look at Ryn. "I see," he said, finally sounding and looking calmer. "And you're…Aderyn."

"Call me Ryn." She debated taking a step closer, but decided to hold off on that just yet. "It's nice to meet you."

His eyes narrowed a fraction in suspicion. "How did you just happen to find me?"

"We only recently became aware of your existence," Ryn explained. "I honestly thought there were no other phoenixes left, but when we learned about you, we used my blood in a tracking spell. You are descended from my line, after all."

Elijah visibly tensed. "You were tracking me? Why?"

Ryn hesitated at the accusing tone. "Because you're not alone."

"And there's a little matter of the warehouse you blew up today," Dean spoke up. "And the Japanese restaurant that burned down and killed seven people. Care to explain what happened there?"

Ryn's jaw tightened. Dean.

Elijah's eyes flashed briefly. "I didn't do it on purpose," he ground out.

Ryn's heart sank, her suspicions now confirmed. She'd known, deep down, though, from the start.

"What happened?" Castiel asked, more kindly than Dean had.

Elijah looked him up and down appraisingly, and then a haunted look filled his eyes. "I was…held captive and experimented on for decades. My very being torn apart and dissected, every death, every resurrection, a reset for my captors to start all over." His throat bobbed and he looked away, voice dropping. "You can't imagine anything so excruciating."

Ryn's breath caught in her throat. She'd experienced her own death only a handful of times, and they had been far from pleasant. To die over and over again, to be tortured to the brink and brought back for more…she was horrified that anyone had to go through that.

"So, what?" Sam spoke up. "Those fires were revenge?"

Elijah shot him a sharp look. "No. The ones who did this to me are far away. But their…" He rolled his shoulder. "Their experiments left me…changed. Now, even the smallest injury triggers an explosive rebirth. I can't control it, and I can't stop it. Those fires were an unintentional byproduct of that."

Dean's expression was still hard. "So, at the restaurant, what'd you do, get a splinter from some chopsticks?"

Ryn turned around to shoot a scowl at him. Would you knock it off?

Dean just shrugged his eyebrows unapologetically.

Elijah's eyes turned flinty. "Is that the real reason you tracked me down? To put me on trial and condemn me for actions that were beyond my control? You know nothing about me." His voice rose an octave with each syllable, and Ryn quickly raised her hands in a gesture of peace.

"No, no. That is not the reason I—we—tracked you down." She grimaced. "But the restaurant fire was how we found out about you. There was security video of you emerging from the fire and regenerating."

Elijah's eyes widened in alarm.

"The authorities didn't see it," she quickly assured him. "They hadn't even looked there, and once we had it, Sam deleted the original from the server." She nodded to Sam.

"Look," Ryn went on, "I'm sorry for what happened to you. I can't even imagine what all you went through. But you escaped, and you're here. And we found each other. I swear I'll do everything I can to help fix this."

"We all will," Amy chimed in.

Elijah held himself stiffly, guarded gaze flicking between each of them. He cleared his throat. "I- I'm already on the trail of something that can help me. That's why I went to Tanaka's restaurant. He was a dealer in supernatural artifacts."

Ryn blinked. Guess that explained the accounting discrepancies from their background search.

Elijah let out a frustrated sound. "But he couldn't acquire the item for me because a demon has it. A demon who apparently isn't willing to part with anything in his collection." He shot a sharp look at Dean and said pointedly, "When I tried to insist Tanaka at least give me the demon's location so I could approach him, the man refused and attacked me with a letter opener. That was how the fire started."

Dean just gazed at him blandly like he wasn't buying it.

"And the warehouse?" Castiel spoke up.

Elijah lifted his chin. "I was trying to get information from some demons in the area. And I did, but they tried to double cross me." His eyes darkened. "Joke's on them now, isn't it?"

Ryn's mouth turned down at that, but the flash of darkness was gone just as quickly as she'd glimpsed it. And, really, could she blame the guy for some PTSD?

"Do you know where this demon is now?" she asked.

Elijah nodded. "I was regrouping before I make my way to Burkin County."

That wasn't far from here.

Ryn cast a look at the others, not sure how they would feel about this. Well, she had a good guess, but that wasn't going to stop her.

"We'll help you," she said.

Elijah looked taken aback, then skeptical, then unsure. "You…will?"

"Yes." She glanced over her shoulder at Dean and Sam, who were exchanging their own silent looks. They didn't have to come if they didn't want to.

"Yeah, sure," Dean said blithely.

Of course his overprotective tendencies wouldn't let him sit this one out.

"Hunting demons is kinda our thing."

Ryn was suddenly glad in a horrible way that Elijah had been imprisoned long enough to not have heard of the Winchester brothers. That would have made gaining his trust nigh impossible.

Elijah continued to flick nervous looks between them. "Al-alright." He still looked on Dean with suspicion, and Dean's expression was still hard like granite.

Ryn let out a tense breath. This was going to be fun.