Chapter 4
Help Me If You Can

Paris and Dana were among twenty young, single adults who arrived Friday afternoon to join the Order. After a welcome speech from Carl, initiation started with having a picture taken, being given a light blue uniform to distinguish the initiates from the full members of the cult, and being instructed in the Order's theology and basic mantras. There were rituals every few hours that mostly consisted of drinking peyote-laced wine and chanting mantras, although morning meditation didn't include the wine. But Paris and Dana were immune to narcotics still and were able to sneak out to the surveillance van after lights out the first two nights. And according to Sam and Dean, everything but the ring was a bunch of hokum. Dana did her best those first two days to find coping mechanisms that would help her keep control whenever that odd longing she felt started up, and they worked pretty well. She could handle this. It was tough, but she could. Paris was doing fine, after all, and she wasn't going to let him show her up when everyone else had been so worried about him for reasons she still couldn't fathom. And besides, everyone else was in the surveillance van, watching. They'd pull her out if things got bad.

So she didn't really worry much when Carl called the initiates outside for another "ritual," which he called a discernment ceremony, on Sunday evening. He brought everyone to a part of the garden she hadn't explored yet, a small circular courtyard that was surrounded by flowering bushes and oddly-patterned stones and had a fountain in the center, and instructed them to sit down in the lotus pose around the edge of the circle for this part of the ceremony. It took Dana a moment to get her feet tucked up under her properly, and she was too busy thinking about dead mice to bother about the position of her hands as she rested the backs of her wrists against the tops of her knees. She knew she was supposed to pretend to be taking it seriously, and she did succeed in not giggling when Carl pulled out some Japanese-looking instrument and started plinking away on it, but really, the whole thing was so silly...

And then Carl started to chant.

All of a sudden, the smell of the flowers grew really strong, like being at Middleton Place in Charleston in mid-summer. The air felt heavy and sticky, though only comfortably warm, and she could hear the bees droning under Carl's chanting. Her head started to swim, and she felt drowsier and drowsier until she couldn't keep her eyes open anymore. But she wasn't really asleep, she thought, because she was still aware of her surroundings.

Yet slowly all sounds, all smells, all sense of touch faded away. She was floating alone in the dark, and she couldn't feel anything, not even fear. She just was.

"Purity of heart," Carl intoned, "is to will one thing."

Dana wasn't sure if she was supposed to repeat that like all the other mantras. She didn't have a voice, anyway. She didn't even know how she could hear him and nothing else... not that it mattered.

"Everyone hungers for something," Carl continued. "What you hunger for reveals much about who you are. It is essential to your nature."

Drops of pure power fell onto her—the pulse points of her wrists, maybe, and the center of her forehead. She wasn't sure. She barely remembered that she even had a body.

"You must discern your hunger. You must embrace your hunger. You must shut out all other desires and follow only your hunger. Only when you will this one thing can you be pure."

The power crept over her slowly, spreading and searching, up her arms, across her head, through her mind. It was an odd sensation, not least because it was the only sensation. She couldn't have resisted if she wanted to, but she didn't want to. All she wanted was to follow that lazy slow spread and learn what it might find.

It had just reached her heart—and how strange that was, to be aware of her own heart beating again—when her mouth was opened and three more drops were placed on her tongue. They didn't taste of anything but light. Her mouth was closed, and she must have swallowed, because this power ran down her throat faster and caught up with the other, and the whole shebang spread down her chest faster. It went down and down... and then partway down her belly, something caught, and suddenly she was on fire. She knew, she knew, she'd found her hunger, and it was burning her alive. She gasped for breath and couldn't hold back a groan.

"Good, Stacy, good," Carl whispered and took her hand. "Come. While the others search, I will show you what comes next."

Still blind, still deaf to anything but his voice, still unaware of anything but this blaze of desire, she let him pull her to her feet and lead her she knew not where. After a moment, they stopped.

"So, Stacy. You have found your hunger."

"Yes," she breathed.

He kissed the back of one hand. Her breath shuddered. Then he kissed again, higher up her hand, her wrist, her arm, each kiss trailing fire. He stopped below the shoulder and switched to the other arm, with the same result. Then he stopped completely, and she couldn't hold back a whimper.

"You're a virgin."

"Yes." And it was true. For all the flirtation in the line of duty, she'd never gone all the way.

"You want to marry me?"

"Yes." And that had to be true, didn't it, as fast as it came out?

He put his arms around her, and she could feel the ring burning into her back. "You know I can't marry anyone who's not a full member of the Order. Will you continue with the initiation?"

"Yes."

"Good girl." He pulled her closer and whispered in her ear, "There will be tests. You must prove that you have shut out all desires but your hunger. I must know that you are pure of heart. Only then will I be able to give you what you hunger for."

"Yes. I'll do anything."

"Then here's a promise, a taste of what you can look forward to." And he kissed her.

Now, she'd been kissed in the line of duty before with all levels of passion. She'd been wined and dined and mooned over and supposedly seduced. She'd also been ogled, groped, and threatened with worse a couple of times. This kiss wasn't like any of those. Carl kept his mouth closed and didn't do anything untoward with his hands, but it was still a long, slow, passionate kiss, and the fire in Dana's gut exploded all over again.

"No more now," he said when it was finished. "You'll have to earn the rest." He backed away, leaving her alone and adrift and whimpering, crying, reaching...

... and then with a snap and a gasp, she woke up.

She looked around wildly and found that she was standing in a different part of the garden than she remembered. And she had no clue how she'd gotten there. Everything since the ceremony started was a total blank; she didn't even remember falling asleep. And she felt cold and empty somehow, like she was missing something important.

"Stacy!"

Dana looked up to see Carl coming around a bend in the path a few feet away. Her cheeks flushed, and her gut twisted.

"You all right? You look a little lost."

She shook her head and plastered on a bright smile. "Guess I dozed off on my feet for a minute."

He smiled back, and her heart started pounding. "All right. Well, we're done out here, and if you're that tired, maybe you'd better head on back to the house."

She nodded. "Good idea. Thanks, Carl."

He nodded and went back the way he came, and only the fact that she was still too stunned to move kept her from chasing after him. She couldn't even remember why she wasn't supposed to do that or what she'd done in the past to stop herself. All she could think, as she finally dragged herself back to the house, was that she was cold and empty, and he had something that promised to answer her need.

In the surveillance truck, the other men on the team watched as Medlin began his latest ritual, but no sooner had he started crooning than Barney snapped the sound off with such ferocity that Dean expected the knob to break off. The image distortion around the ring was growing stronger, but the main reason for Barney's refusal to listen became apparent as Sam read Medlin's lips.

"That's not a mantra," Sam said after a minute or so. "That's a spell."

"What kind of spell?" Jim asked.

Sam shook his head. "Not one I've seen before. But it looks like he's got some real mojo that's not tied to the ring."

"Then let's get Paris and Dana out of there. Shut it down now."

"No, no, wait. They're already under, all but Paris, though he's doing a good job of faking. His breathing's not quite deep enough, is all. Guess—" Sam caught himself before he could give Paris away to the one person present who couldn't afford to know that Paris wasn't human. "Guess he's got better defenses than we thought," he finished instead.

"Yeah," Dean agreed, "and if we don't know what the spell is, we don't know how to break it. But it's a cinch Medlin won't leave 'em in the trance. The other vics weren't obviously under the influence of anything but the ring."

So they watched, still with the sound off, as Medlin finished his spell, started pontificating, and then put some kind of something on each initiate's wrists and forehead. When he came back around to dose Dana again, though, Jim was practically shaking with the need to get her to safety.

"Jim," Barney said quietly. "Why don't you go see what you can see from outside?"

Jim sighed and ran a hand over his mouth. "Yeah. All right. I'll stay close." And he stepped out of the truck.

So he wasn't present to see when Medlin led Dana off by herself, at which point Paris broke character, looked straight at the camera, and got up to go back to the house. The retinal flare rendered it impossible for the others to read any emotion from his eyes, but given his practice of keeping his eyes hidden from the cameras under normal circumstances, that was probably the best distress signal he could send.

All four men in the truck cursed.

Barney stood first. "Will, stay here, keep an eye on Dana and Jim. Sam, Dean, you're with me."

"You got silver?" Dean asked as he and Sam stood.

Barney nodded once and pulled out his gun and a spare clip. "Always," he said and switched ammo. "Just hope we don't have to use it."

Dean nodded, and he and Sam followed Barney out of the truck. He didn't pay much attention to what Barney told Jim as they passed or how he convinced Jim not to come with them, but it probably had something to do with helping Willy watch Dana. Dean's main concern was getting Paris the help he needed... even if it did turn out to be a silver bullet to the head.

Getting into the house was easy enough, and they already knew where Paris' room was. Barney used the back of his knuckle to rap one long knock and two short on the closed door. Paris opened, looking wretched—and he'd clearly just ripped the skin from his forehead and wrists, though new skin was forming rapidly to fill the gaps.

"C'min," he breathed and motioned them inside. Once they were past him, he shut the door as quietly as he could, locked it, and slumped against it.

"Dude," Dean began, pointing to the strips of skin that Paris had laid out on the table. "What—"

Paris sighed heavily and pushed himself away from the door, the missing skin already replaced. "It's some kind of potion that strengthens the effects of the ring. I saved those in case you need to analyze the liquid; I don't think it soaked all the way in."

"You all right?" Barney asked.

And Paris, to his credit, didn't bother to lie. "No," he confessed quietly. "No, I'm not. I couldn't stop him from putting the potion in my mouth. And he's wielding the ring actively, so the power's much stronger than usual. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to keep control." He took a deep breath and looked at the Winchesters. "If... if you wouldn't mind..."

The brothers and Barney stepped back in front of the door, blocking it.

But Paris was shaking with the effort of holding himself together as he lay down on the bed. "I've... I've never lost control before. So p-promise you'll shoot if I go nuts."

All three men checked their guns and held them relaxed but ready.

Then Sam nodded. "Okay. You can let go."

Paris took a deep breath, shifted into a nondescript form, and let the breath out again. He held that form for a few moments, and Dean thought that might be all. But then, with a grunt, Paris shifted again. A few moments later, he shifted again.

And again.

And again.

The changes started coming faster. Paris started breathing harder, making more pained noises. The humans were ready to shoot if he went wild, but he was debilitated by the shifts. Sometimes he turned female, only to switch back a few forms later. Soon Paris had barely two heartbeats between changes; not long after that, he could barely take one form long enough for Dean to recognize that he'd stopped before another shift hit. He started screaming, and Dean was half tempted to shoot him just to put him out of his misery.

Finally, Paris settled into Jim's form for the space of one harsh pant. Then Barney. Then Willy. Then Dean. Then Sam. Dean thought maybe that would be the end of it.

But then he shifted into Dana—and froze in that form for a moment, hugging his stomach and letting out a low but primal moan. It took a visible effort for him to shift back into his usual form. Yet as he lay there panting, relaxing somewhat and clearly spent, he didn't move his arms. And Dean could think of only one reason why.

"Guys?" he said quietly. "Under no circumstances are Paris and Dana to be alone in the same room. Not for ten minutes, not for ten seconds, you got me?"

Sam nodded, but Barney frowned. "Why not?"

Dean looked back at Paris sadly. "Because he knows her hunger... and it's triggering one of his. And the bad news is, he can give her exactly what she wants, how she wants it, who she wants it from."

"Dana probably doesn't know that," Sam added. "But no matter what the desire is, it's easier to keep control when you're not alone. And in this case, I'd say Paris needs that protection as much as Dana does, maybe more."

Still holding his stomach, Paris shifted one last time into the form of an older woman—his mother, maybe, given a few similarities between her features and his—and fell asleep with a miserable sigh.

"He said he takes precautions," Dean recalled. "Guess that's one of 'em."

Sam nodded. "But he can't stay like that, not while the mission's on."

"We never shoulda brought him, Sam. G-Loki warned me..."

"Now, hold on," Barney interrupted. "You did warn Jim things could get bad. You were straight with all of us. This wasn't your call. If anything, I'd say Paris overestimated his own ability to keep his nature under wraps."

Sam shook his head. "You don't understand. This isn't just about Paris being a shapeshifter. He told us shifters have two irresistible urges: to shift and to mate."

"And Dana wants kids," he and Dean chorused.

Barney sighed heavily and shot Paris a look of deep sympathy.

"Shoulda seen this comin' somehow," Dean repeated. "Shoulda found some way to keep him on the bench, out of harm's way. Silver cuffs, silver cage, something."

"Dean," Barney said firmly. "This is not your fault. It was his choice to take the mission. What he does from here on is his own responsibility. Ours is to get that ring before anything bad happens to anyone else, including Paris and Dana." When Dean shook his head, Barney grabbed him by the shoulders. "Listen to me, will you? Stop being so hard on yourself—it's unjust!"

Wait, what?!

Sam's mouth fell open for a second before he snapped his fingers. "That's it. That's why the ring doesn't seem to affect the rest of you. 'Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.' Your hunger is justice, and that's something Famine can't provide."

Startled, Dean stared at Barney, who stared right back at him. Yeah, he could see that being true of Barney, Willy, and Jim; if anything, they'd become more determined to take down Medlin once they were in range of the ring. But Dean couldn't help remembering being face to face with Famine himself—that's one deep, dark nothing you've got there, Dean...

"I'm not a psychic," Barney said, still holding on to Dean's shoulders. "I'm not a psychotherapist. I don't know the first thing about what you two have been through, except what you've told us. But what I see in you is a man who'd rather assume the worst of himself and the best of his friends, and in the process you take the blame for things you cannot possibly be guilty of. And that kills me, because whatever your faults, you're a good man."

Dean sighed. "Barney..."

"You heard Paris out after Effingham. You didn't even have to hear Rollin out; you just let him walk because he was straight with you and never killed anyone except in the line of duty. Even now, you're more worried about protecting Paris and Dana from the ring's effects than you are about the fact that you're working with a monster. That does not make you a terrible person. It makes you the opposite. And I wish like anything that I could make you see that."

"You don't know what I've done," Dean said quietly.

"No. But I know it wouldn't haunt you if you weren't a good man at heart."

Dean wanted that to be true. He really did. He just didn't know, even now, if he could accept it. But Barney always did call it like he saw it, so... maybe... well. He didn't know where to go from that thought.

And Sam wasn't about to let him stew over it, not in the middle of a hunt. "Look, if we're going to make sure Paris and Dana don't end up alone together, we need to take Medlin down soon. Like, tonight if we can swing it. They're okay for now, but depending on how things go after breakfast..."

Dean pulled himself together and nodded. "Yeah, you're right. We need to bust his lab first, probably, make sure he can't pull off any more stunts like this one."

"Right," Barney agreed. "You two take care of that, signal Jim to bust the office. I'll stay with Paris, and Willy can watch Dana from the truck."

"And Loki's on standby if we need him."

"What's the signal?"

"Just call for him."

"Right."

So agreed, the brothers quietly unlocked the door and left, pausing long enough to hear Barney lock it again behind them. Then they started cautiously making their way toward Medlin's lab.

But Dean couldn't suppress a sigh and a muttered, "I hate this, Sam."

Sam squeezed his shoulder. "Me, too."

They were just about to the end of the hall leading to the back foyer, however, when Dana walked in, looking dazed and moving slowly and hugging herself as if she were cold.

"Dana!" Dean stage-whispered. "Psst! Hey! Dana!"

But Dana didn't react at all and kept walking.

Concerned, Dean started to go after her, but Sam grabbed his shoulder. "Dude. The potion hasn't worn off yet."

"And it won't," Gabriel added, appearing on the other side of Sam. "Not fully. Not while Medlin still has the ring."

Dean's heart sank further. "Dammit."

"Hey, you tried to talk her out of this. And you can still get her out alive, like Ada and all the rest."

"Gabe... tell us the truth. How'd it go before? When—without us. Would the team put a stop to this?"

Gabriel sighed. "The cult would shut down, yeah. But they wouldn't save Dana."

"What about the Campbells? They get the ring as well as the skinwalker?"

"No. They wouldn't get the chance. Without you here to help, Jim would try to pull Dana out now, while Medlin's alive. But with that potion in her..."

"She wouldn't agree to leave," Sam breathed. "Hell, she'd insist on finishing the initiation right away. She'd break herself."

"And Medlin would give her some assurances that she's in for good, send her to pack—and order an immediate feast."

Dean swore. "They'd go Jonestown?" he asked before remembering that the Jonestown mass murder/suicide hadn't happened yet.

But Gabriel, being an angel, got the reference anyway. "Close. Ketamine, not cyanide. And once they were stoned, the priests would finally come down from the Temple."

Dean felt sick.

"Paris would get out in the confusion, but the authorities would arrive too late. Meanwhile, Medlin grabs Dana and the tapes and splits for a 'mission trip' to the South Pacific, where he can't be traced, starts over with a cargo cult and uses Dana's 'confessions' to keep the EPR goodies flowing so the locals keep feeding his power trip. Ten years later, Famine shows up to collect, and Dana's left disavowed, widowed, and stranded, with fifteen kids and no clue how to pick up the pieces."

Dean shook his head. "No curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men..."

Sam squeezed his shoulder again. "Hey. We're here this time. We can change all of that."

"And you can start making changes right now," Gabriel added. "I'll meet you guys in the lab." And he took off.

Seconds later, Jim slipped in through the back door and joined the brothers. "How's Paris?"

Dean sighed. "Hit kind of a rough patch, but he's asleep now. Think he'll be okay. Barn's stayin' with him."

"Good, good. Have you seen Dana?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah. She's still under."

Jim looked anguished. "This wasn't supposed to happen."

"Jim, we're not talking about normal drugs here. The treatment Doug gave her works; we've seen that already. Paris says this was a potion that makes people more sensitive to the ring's power. If she's in Medlin's thrall, and if we try to pull her out now, she'll run right back to him and blow the whole operation. The only way to help her is to get him—and fast."

"I still don't... well. You're right. The reason doesn't matter. The sooner we get Medlin, the sooner we can all rest easy."

The brothers nodded in unison. "We'll take the lab," Dean said. "You get the safe. We'll probably have to wait to hit the confessionals until it's over."

Jim nodded back and turned to go to Medlin's office. But then he paused and looked back at Sam. "Sam... thanks."

Sam blinked. "For what?"

"Not saying 'I told you so.'"

Sam smiled sadly, and Jim left.

Picking the lock on the lab door was almost too easy for Sam. Inside, the Winchesters found cabinets full of legal and illegal drugs, shelves stocked with all manner of herbs and occult paraphernalia, and Gabriel, who was holding an eyedropper of some colorful liquid with a familiar glint in his eye.

"Hey, Dean," Gabriel whispered immediately. "Taste this."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "No, thanks."

"Aw, c'mon. Trust me."

Stifling his qualms because it wouldn't make sense for Gabriel's Trickster streak to turn malicious at this particular moment, Dean rolled his eyes and opened his mouth. Gabriel squirted the liquid onto Dean's tongue, and his eyes widening in shock, Dean swallowed quickly and coughed.

"Dude," he wheezed. "What is that, hummingbird juice?!"

Gabriel's smirk and eyebrow waggle were all the answer Dean needed.

"You okay?" Sam asked.

Dean nodded. "Yeah, if I don't go into a diabetic coma."

"—You're not diabetic."

"Think I might be after that. Damn."

Gabriel snickered. "I've replaced all the potions with sugar water. Don't sweat the mundane stuff; if Medlin survives, the cops can bust him for possession."

"If?" Sam and Dean chorused.

Gabriel ignored them. "You mooks can handle switching the labels on these spell ingredients. Main thing is to not let anyone figure out that anything's been moved. Have fun!" And he disappeared again.

Dean grumbled under his breath and started toward one set of shelves.

"Dude," Sam said, "how do you even know what hummingbird juice tastes like?"

"I was at Lisa's. Look, it was red, okay? I thought it was Kool-Aid."

Sam's eyebrows shot up in amusement.

"Shut up." Dean picked up a bottle of asafetida and started looking for something to swap it with.

As Paris slid deeper into sleep and back into his own form, Barney sat down at the table and wondered what kind of night he was in for. Nothing about this mission was going right, so he supposed it was too much to hope that he'd have a wholly uneventful time and Paris would sleep peacefully. The worst case scenario was probably Paris freaking out and trying to kill someone, but Barney could definitely hope he wouldn't have to put his friend down for that reason. That left a whole range of less-bad scenarios, but Barney knew he didn't know enough to even begin to guess what they might be.

After a moment, he got up and threw away the strips of skin that were still sitting on the table. Even if they were analyzed, there was no guarantee that the results would tell the team anything, that anyone would believe the explanation, or that the nature of the skin wouldn't raise too many questions. Barney couldn't help feeling a little uncomfortable about touching the skin, despite the texture being closer to that of a latex mask than that of human skin, but at least he knew where it had come from. And he really didn't want to open Paris up to questions that couldn't afford straight answers.

Paris started to twitch a little as he dreamed, then to shift in and out of Dana's form. He began breathing harder and letting out small whimpers and other pained noises. He seemed to be fighting whatever was troubling him, but Barney couldn't tell if Paris was winning that fight or whether or not he ought to wake Paris.

Then, with what looked like a major effort, Paris shifted into Dean's form, flopped over onto his back with his arms spread, and relaxed. Barney hoped that would be a good thing, since Dean wasn't affected by the ring the same way Dana was. But given what little Barney knew about Dean's past, there might be a ton of nightmare material waiting in Dean's memories to ambush Paris.

"Sammy," Paris croaked suddenly, and his Dean-face shifted to look about five years younger. "No... S-Saaaaam..."

Blood began to well up from a cut that followed a phantom knife's trail snaking lazily across his face.

"No—no—no—Sa—" Paris' voice cut out as another cut flashed across his throat.

Barney watched in frozen horror for several seconds more as Paris' borrowed nightmare played out across his borrowed skin and his mouth opened mutely to scream while he thrashed in agony that only Dean or Sam could understand. But as the number of cuts grew, Barney found his own voice long enough to get out an urgent whisper of "Loki... Loki, help!"

And suddenly Loki was beside him. "What? What's—" Then he caught sight of Paris, swore, and ran to the bed. "Forget everything you're about to see," he cautioned Barney, then put his hand on Paris' head.

The cuts and the blood vanished, but Paris still seemed to be locked in both Dean's form and Dean's nightmares. The thrashing slowly subsided into mere twitches until he finally lay still—

—and then slid into Sam's form.

Loki cursed again. "Barney, leave the room."

"But—" Barney started to object.

"Now."

Barney gulped and ducked out into the hall, closing the door behind him a split second before blinding light blazed around its edges. He thought he caught Paris-as-Sam calling for Dean once or twice, but a high-pitched whine drowned out all other noise for a moment. When the whine and the light faded, Barney's ears were ringing, and he had to shake spots out of his eyes.

Loki came out and blew the air out of his cheeks. "Well, that was fun."

"What happened?"

"Evidently, Paris' subconscious found it easier to hold off the torture of the ring by latching onto what Sam and Dean went through in Hell. Which is a distraction, fair enough, but it's like cutting off your hand to distract yourself from a toothache. I had to recreate the Great Wall of Sam just to get him back to himself, and then I had to erase the boys' memories so he couldn't dig his way back to them and end up even more scarred for life than he already is. Took out Dana's while I was at it, but no telling how long that patch will hold."

Barney blinked slowly as he tried to process that statement. "Loki," he whispered, "who are you?"

Loki smiled wryly. "Sorry, kid. That's classified." And he vanished.