Sam walked back out of the barn...

...and stopped dead in the doorway, staring into the twin holes of a double-barreled shotgun a few feet from his chest. Muzzle gleaming dully in the moonlight, it was held steady by a woman—no, girl, Sam corrected when she shifted every so slightly and her face was no longer shadowed.

He was suddenly very, very grateful for the clothes he'd found.

"Hold it right there, mister." Besides young, she also looked very determined.

The weapon was an antiquated model, but it'd be no less deadly at that distance, and Sam obeyed the order. He guessed she was maybe sixteen years old, certainly no more than seventeen, but the way she held the gun told him she knew how to handle it. She wore an old-fashioned dress that covered her from neck to ankle, with flaring skirts and long sleeves. In fact, he thought, she looked like an extra who'd stepped straight out of Little House On The Prairie.

Sam's hopes rose.

"Look..." he began, using the same tone that always helped put victims at ease while questioning them, "I didn't mean to scare you—"

"Scare me?" she interrupted. "You don' scare me." A faint tremor in her voice put the lie to her words and Sam made a mental note to proceed with care. People pointing shotguns were even more dangerous if they were frightened. He needed to get her to lower the gun, or otherwise find a way to take it from her. But for that, he needed to get closer.

"I'm lost," he said gently, scuffing one foot forward a couple of inches before transferring his weight onto it. "I'm looking for help." He moved the other foot. "I don't mean you any harm." Another few inches. She was almost within reach. "Is your father home? Or your mother?" He tensed, ready to close the last few feet.

Something came at him; he felt it more than he saw. Before he could react, however, a heavy object connected with the side of his head. Sharp agony lanced through his skull and sparks burst into a cloud behind his eyes.

Then there was nothing.

o0o

Sam's head pounded in a rhythm in time with the beating of his heart. As he slowly regained consciousness, he found himself slumped awkwardly in a hard-backed chair, a fire crackling somewhere behind him. He could feel its heat through the borrowed shirt and coat.

He tried to sit up, and new pain shot through his arms from his shoulders down. A small sound escaped him before he could stop it. It took him a moment to figure out why he couldn't move his arms: they were pulled back and his wrists were tied together tightly. He attempted to move again, more cautious now, and managed to sit up a little straighter. He tested the ropes.

"Don't bother. Bess tied you up good."

He squinted as someone shifted in the shadows, coming closer, but Sam couldn't make out more than a vague shape in the gloom. Light flared as an oil lamp was turned up high. Sam blinked at the sudden brightness, his eyes watering.

The owner of the voice walked into the circle of light, and Sam recognized the girl from the yard, the one with the shotgun. But...? He drew his brow down in confusion. He was certain she'd been wearing a rose-patterned dress. But the dress she wore now was made of blue-checkered cloth. He couldn't have been out for that long, could he?

Understanding dawned when he caught another moving shadow from the corner of his eye and he twisted his head around.

Twins.

"You hit me," he complained, a little chagrined to find a couple of teenaged girls had gotten the better of him. Dean would never let him live that down.

Dean...

The girl in the rose dress—Bess?—nodded. "Ginny did. With a shovel." She smirked triumphantly.

"Why? I didn't do—" Before Sam could finish, Ginny threw a mug full of water into his face.

"Shut your pan! We don' wanna hear yer humbug."

"What the...!" Sam spluttered at the water in his nose and mouth. It tasted stale. For a moment, the room was silent. Neither of the girls moved, but they looked at him, first with expectancy, then with growing confusion. Blinking water from his eyes, Sam glanced around, noticing lines of salt around the door and on the sill of the single, small window.

Bess broke the silence first, her voice hesitant. "Christo?"

Suddenly Sam understood. "You think I'm possessed?"

Ginny dropped the mug and pulled an amulet from beneath her bodice. She clutched it in her fist as she stared at him. Sam tried for his best innocent look.

"I'm not a demon," he said calmly. "And I'm not possessed by one." He tugged on the ropes. "Would you mind...?"

The girls ignored him. Instead, they exchanged a look in a silent communication that he couldn't decipher. They turned back to him.

"We gotta be sure."

Bess started rattling off the first words of the exorcism ritual that Sam was so very familiar with, and Ginny mumbled along with her. He sighed, waited for the girls to finish the first few lines, then picked up the recitation himself. The girls had fallen silent, their eyes wide, by the time he reached the end.

"See?" he said, flashing them a small smile. "Not a demon."

They still didn't untie him, though. Instead, they kept goggling at him like he was some rare bug specimen caught in a jar. Sam glared back at them, growing more and more annoyed and anxious. He was on the clock; he didn't have time for this crap. He tested the ropes again, feeling how they'd been tied together. He realized Ginny'd spoken the truth: Bess knew how to lay a knot.

Which was why it was all the more surprising when he felt the rope shift a little beneath his fingers, one strand sliding against another until the first knot became undone. What the hell...?

"You know about demons?" Bess asked at last, pulling his attention away from the ropes.

"How?" her sister added. "Pa always says folk don' believe."

"Because I hunt them," Sam said. He gave a small shrug, and another knot fell away. He cocked his head. "As do you." It was a guess, but an educated one. He didn't think that exorcism rituals formed a regular part of girls' educations in the nineteenth century .

Ginny giggled, and Bess grumbled beneath her breath, "If Pa'd let us."

Louder, she said to Sam, "I don' believe you. Where's yer horse? An' yer guns?"

Before Sam could reply, Ginny's' eyes grew round and she nudged her sister with her elbow. "He's wearing Luke's shirt..." She giggled again behind her hand.

The other girl squinted, and started to grin as well. "The one the cat peed on."

Sam's nose wrinkled. So, that was that smell. Well, beggars couldn't exactly be choosers, could they? He ignored the girls' snickering and instead concentrated on the sensation of the ropes slipping and sliding, untangling themselves as if guided by unseen hands. Behind him, the fire crackled louder as the desert wind picked up in force, whistling through the hole in the roof and wailing around the cabin. The wooden walls groaned, and somewhere, a tree branch started knocking rhythmically against the house. Sam was down to the final knot.

Bess cocked her head to listen to the wind for a moment. "Luke's not gonna like you tryin' ta steal his shirt."

"It's a long story," Sam said. "And I don't have the time." The ropes fell away from his wrists completely. He pushed to his feet, towering over the twins.

Ginny squeaked in fright and Bess gaped at him. They both stumbled backwards, chairs falling to the ground in a clatter.

"Look," Sam said, holding his hands out sideways. "I told you, I don't mean you harm. I don't mean anyone any harm. I just want to save my brother. I'm looking for—"

At that moment the door burst open and two men rushed in, wielding handguns that looked as outdated as Bess's shotgun had. Sam finally recognized the sound he'd heard hidden in the howl of the wind but hadn't paid attention to: it had been the clop of horse hooves approaching. He also realized it'd been a mistake not paying more heed to the noise.

"Ginny, Bess, stay back," the elder of the two men said over his shoulder to the twins, his gaze never leaving Sam. Too many hours of squinting into the sun had carved deep lines around his eyes and there were gray streaks in his beard. He looked like a man who'd take no crap from anyone. The other man was much younger, and resembled the girls so much that Sam instantly knew he was their brother. Might it be Luke of the cat-soiled shirt?

"How'd you get in?" the first man asked. "Salt lines ain't broke."

Sam stayed motionless, thinking fast. He figured that living on the frontier would make people cautious. And if he'd calculated right, there was a gateway to hell not far away, so they were probably wise to assume the worst. But this was getting ridiculous.

"Sir," he said, "as your daughters already discovered, I'm not a demon. Nor possessed by one." The older man cast a quick glance in Ginny and Bess's direction. They nodded as one.

"That's so," Bess said. "Ginny threw holy water. And I said the words."

"Hm." The guns never wavered. "May be that's the truth. Or maybe yer just very powerful."

Sam sighed. He was getting real sick of the delays. "Well, in that case," he said, "those pea shooters wouldn't really do you much good, would they?" He glared angrily at the antiquated weapons still pointed in his direction. Unbidden, that strange sensation welled up from deep within him again.

The next instant, both men cried out and their weapons clattered to the ground, spitting bullets, which rolled harmlessly into a corner. They shook their hands in pain, as if burned. One of the girls—Sam thought it was Ginny—whimpered.

Everyone stared at Sam, their eyes filled with shock and more than a little fear. Sam stared back, feeling as stunned as they looked.

"How did...?" Luke said. He cradled his right hand with his left.

Sam shook his head, glancing at the guns lying on the floor. "I don't know," he said softly. It was the truth; he'd just wanted to get those guns out of the way... He sent out another tentative thought, consciously this time but not really expecting anything to happen—it never had before, when he tried—but the guns slid over to him until he could pick them up and put them on the table behind him.

Huh.

It seemed Ava had been right. Jake too. It really was easy, once you gave in to it. He just wished he'd learned that before the hellhounds had dragged Dean off. But he'd been so afraid that... A small voice in the back of his head reminded him that it was also really easy to get corrupted by such power—as Ava and Jake had shown him too. Dad had given Dean that warning about him for a reason.

In fact, the only one of Azazel's special children that Sam could remember who had remained sane was crazy little Andy, whose worst misdeed had been to shove gay porn into a guy's head.

Sam swallowed, and pushed the thoughts of what he apparently could do to the back of his mind. Plenty of time to examine them later; he had more pressing concerns at the moment.

"Now," he said. "Can we talk?"

TBC