White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia - 11:55am

It was an ironic name, considering. In a blur of exhaustion and mounting anxiety when he had rolled into the town in the small hours of the previous morning, Sam had wondered if the Ordog had thought so too. He supposed it didn't matter what it thought, so long as it was long banished back to its cauldron deep in Hell by Danny Ellis.

Sam had absolutely no desire to face something like the Ordog right now. Something that wore the very face of Hell.

It had been a frenzied drive, somehow feeling like hellhounds were on his tail. He didn't know if it was the awareness that Dean was still unconscious and by now had to be hooked up to an IV back in Lincoln, while Mills and Frank sifted through Bobby's library probably in vain, and Pete dropped in when he could to monitor Dean. Or that he had travelled more in the past few days than even he was used to. Or the possible presence of concentrated hellspawn at large in this town. Or that he was getting nowhere - if he couldn't find Danny in West Virginia, he had no idea where the hunter could have gone, or what had happened to him. If he wasn't in West Virginia, it was likely Danny couldn't be found. It wasn't just because Dean's last instruction had been to find Danny and the hunter was his only clue as to how to help his brother, either, Sam realized. He had been following Danny's hunts, learning at least something about what he had faced, the people he had met, and found he was worried about Danny himself. In a way, Danny Ellis reminded Sam of he and Dean years ago, when they just hunted, before Hell for both of them and the damage that had caused. Mom and Dad were gone, sure, but Bobby and Cas were still there. Ellen, Ash and Jo, Rufus, Travis. They still carried on the family business - hunting things, saving people. Back when the world was black and white, and their biggest problems were hunting down monsters, their reward saving innocent people.

He had no desire to find Danny torn to pieces by the Ordog or something else like it that crept through the night. He didn't want the awareness of another dead hunter on his mind. But if the trail proved cold, he had only the last resorts. He could hack the DMV and possibly trace Danny's truck, or pretext as a federal cop claiming one Daniel Ellis was wanted for questioning, put out an APB. But he knew Danny still retained his ties to the civilian world. The guy still had a home and a job, friends and neighbours who worried about him. Sam was reluctant to involve him with the wrong side of the law any sooner than was inevitable for a hunter.

Sam's dreams were uniformly dominated by one thing - he drowned in flames. It was fading, but never far away. It was the Hell his soul carried with him, that could never be completely cooled again.

He had jerked into wakefulness, his skin screaming. He sat up as much as he could, rubbing at his face. The unfamiliar motel room looked back at him. It was unusual to risk a motel these days, but Sam was aware he was in bad need of a shower, and he was far too tired to be vigilant alone in a squat. He needed to shower, and as much as he hated it, sleep for a few hours before tracking down Danny's final hunt - the Ordog.

Sam rolled off the bed and sloped into the bathroom. His reflection looked like hell, and he remembered the red haired tenement resident's description of Danny the last time he saw the hunter - Looked kind of drained, like something had been taken out of him maybe. The Slender Man drained life force, and right now, that seemed to describe how Sam felt pretty well.

He stepped under the stringing spray of the shower, thinking.

According to Danny's file, the Ordog had been possessing a young Spanish woman, using her to dupe its victims into deadly bets, ensnaring their souls for the Ordog's cauldron in the depths of Hell, bodies torn from life. Sam felt like simply showing up at the house in question, knocking on the door and hoping Danny had dispatched the Ordog.

He intended to scan the area for any continued demon activity, anything pointing to the continued inhabitation of the Ordog, police and news reports. But he was less ready to delay than he thought - something was coming. He felt inexplicably as if he was running out of time.

Washed and dressed, Sam sat outside the local café reading a newspaper. The stories ranged from local developments threatening the park to a proposed widening of the interstate 64. No eviscerated bodies, it seemed. There was nothing in local news to alert Sam, and nothing on the police blotter save road accidents, domestic disputes and a few people-on-premises. No demonic creatures bent on condemning human souls to the very depths of Hell.

Sam scratched at his jaw, thinking recklessly. So far, he had been several steps behind Danny, following up his hunts long after the man himself had taken care of the problem and moved on. It stood to reason the Ordog had met a similar fate. He doubted Danny had anything on hand to actually kill such a thing, but exorcism was almost as good - banishment, at least for a time, cessation of killings and liberation for the host.

Sam folded the paper, checking Ruby's knife was well secured beneath his jacket. He was reasonably assured the knife would work on the Ordog, if they met.

Consulting Danny's file, Sam drove the beaten Bronx hatchback to the possessed woman's address. He stopped outside, eyeing the property warily.

Several chimes sounded in the faint wind that passed by the house, and a clothing line of whites flapped slowly by the porch. The house was quiet. Sam tossed Danny's file - bearing a classical drawing of the Ordog in its hideous black-faun shape - onto the passenger seat and, taking a deep breath, got out of the car.

On the porch of the white weatherboard house, a grey cat watched Sam through lazily slitted green eyes. He looked back at it, on edge.

The door swung open, and a stunningly beautiful, slender young woman with long, soft dark hair and dusky skin stood on the stoop, gazing up at Sam with the dark, soft eyes of a doe. "Yes?"

"Hi, uh, I'm looking for someone, he may have called here about three weeks ago, Danny Ellis?"

The woman cast her large eyes around the yard, before taking Sam by the hand and drawing him gently into the dim interior of the house. She closed the door, turning back to Sam.

"Come in, please. You are looking for Danny?"

"He's missing," Sam replied, looking around the room.

The lamps were draped, and everywhere around him Spanish-inspired religious art cluttered the space. A graceful Madonna surrounded by dried red roses sat behind a candle at the door. The woman herself wore a light black scarf, a red and black rosary around her neck.

"Sit, please," the woman gestured to the couch, laden with fringed rugs. "I will make some tea."

She disappeared from the room, leaving Sam to look around him. Something about the place spoke of peace and faith, a combination that he found comforting. The breathtaking beauty of the woman who lived here made sense in regard to the Ordog, and Sam wondered how she came to be possessed by the demonic monster.

The woman returned, handing Sam a china teacup and saucer.

"I'm Mireia," she said. "And yes, Danny was here two or three weeks or so ago. Why are you looking for him?"

"I need his help," Sam replied, surprised at his own honesty, even though he had been uncharacteristically open throughout the whole hunt for Danny, lacking the time or energy to be coy. "He was supposed to be home weeks ago, and no one's seen him since."

Mireia cradled the teacup in graceful hands.

"How can I help you?"

Sam edged forward on the couch.

"I need some information," Sam said gently. "I've been trying to track him down by following his trail."

Sam took a breath. "You were possessed?" He asked gently. "The Ordog?"

Mireia nodded.

"Yes, Danny said that was the devil's name. I never knew what it called itself."

"What happened to the Ordog?" Sam asked, muscles tense.

"I don't know. Danny came, he called the devil out and I don't know what happened to it after that. When I woke up as myself again, it was Danny holding me and telling me everything was going to be alright, that the devil was gone."

A faint smile curved her lips, remembering her saviour.

Sam nodded. "So, Danny performed an exorcism on you?"

"Yes, he called the devil out."

"And then?"

"When I woke up everything was confused. I had seen only flashes, bits and pieces of the terrible things the devil had done wearing my face. I could feel its black soul inside me, but I couldn't escape it or force it out. I don't know how Danny did it, and maybe I shouldn't know, but he made everything alright again. He gave me this."

Mireia reached under her shawl, and resting against her fingers was the pentagram anti-possession charm tattooed into his own chest, given to him and Dean first by Bobby in a very similar tiny silver charm years before. Unexpectedly, his throat abruptly closed. Horrified, Sam swallowed hard and blinked at the floor. Mireia smiled at him.

"Danny said I would be safe, that the devil was gone and couldn't take me again. I hugged him and thanked him over and over for saving my life, my soul. Then he left, and I have not seen him since then."

A strange sensation was settling over Sam. He was worried as hell, everything was turned around. He had barely slept for days, chasing Danny's trail across seven states, fearing more and more that he would either never find the hunter, or find him dead. All the while Dean lay so still, with only Frank and Mills - as well as they meant - to watch over him. He needed help. Help Sam couldn't seem to find. And now here he was in Virginia, end of the road, and all he had was a grateful and liberated woman. No Danny. At least minus one Ordog, he thought miserably.

"Do you know where he went?" Asked Sam hopelessly.

"He said he heard rumours of people being injured in a logging mill. He said maybe another dark thing was there, hunting people as he hunted them."

Sam's head snapped up.

"When was this?"

"Just before he left here, maybe two, three weeks ago. He did say he intended to return to his home, but someone needed to look into the mill. Someone like him, someone who sent devils back to the dark."

"Did he say where this mill was, or what was going on there?"

Mireia frowned, thinking back. "Colorado," she said slowly. "He said it was somewhere in Colorado, because it was a long way from his home."

Heat flashed through Sam - the trail wasn't cold. But Colorado? Even as the crow flies it was five states away. He had already established Dean needed help, but maybe so did he. Who was there left to call anymore? Sam sighed heavily, raking his hands over his face, through his hair. Mireia watched him sympathetically.

"You said you need his help. Do you know of devils, too?"

Sam shook his head. "It's my brother. He's in trouble, the medic doesn't know what's wrong with him. Danny's a friend. That was the last thing he said to me, find Danny."

Mireia nodded. "You will find him. He can help you."

"I hope so," Sam replied brittlely.

Mireia edged forward and to Sam's surprise, wrapped her soft, gentle hands around his.

"Don't lose faith," she said. "Find Danny, and he can help your brother the same way he helped me. If he is missing as you say, maybe he needs your help as much as you need his."

Sam nodded, not trusting himself to anything else.

"A mill in Colorado," Mireia said, somehow sensing his need to focus on the task, a raft he was holding onto to keep himself afloat. "I think he said there had been strange accidents, and people disappearing. He left here about two weeks ago, and he was driving an old truck. If you are like him, you will find him. It will be alright."

The moment Sam stepped out of the hatchback in the motel parking lot, his cellphone buzzed. Sam answered the unfamiliar number.

"Sam, it's Pete, Jodi's friend."

"What's wrong? Is it Dean? Is he okay?"

"Slow down, it's okay, Dean's still okay. I just thought I better call. Sam, his temperature is down even more than it was. We're packing him up with blankets and heat packs, but it's not a good sign. His body is shutting down. We've had him on IV fluids, but there's only so long he can stay this way without some more aggressive intervention. I don't think it's a good idea to keep him here if this gets any worse - you're going to have to have him admitted. I don't want to scare you, he's not on death's door here, and the decline seems to be slow, but I thought I better let you know there's been a change in his condition."

Sam had sunk back against the hatchback, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut. Dean's body shutting down. No.

"Okay, thanks Pete. For letting me know. Can you stay with him a little longer?"

"Yeah, I don't want to leave him without some kind of medical help with his temperature down like this. I'll call you if anything changes. You had any luck?"

"I'm in West Virginia, the last place I knew Danny went. There's a woman here who said Danny was heading out to Colorado about two weeks ago. I gotta give it a shot, it's the only lead I got."

"Well I hope this guy knows something we don't, for Dean's sake. Good luck, Sam."

"Yeah, me too. Thanks Pete, for everything."

Sam clicked the phone off and drew a deep breath. Dean was dying in Nebraska, without him. Pete had been diplomatic, but the eventuality was clear. Unless they found something to stop this, Dean's body was going to continue to shut down until it stopped completely. And Sam had no idea where his brother's soul was heading from there. The very thought of Dean going back to Hell sent fire through Sam's veins, forcing him into action. He may well have no choice but to live with Hell every day, but there was no way he was letting Dean do the same.

He threw his bag and Danny's files into the hatchback and drove like hell itself was on his tail for the airport.

Grand Scheme lumber mill - Wilderness outside Bailey, Colorado. 9:40am.

In a workplace like the old lumber mill, accidents were simply an occupational hazard. Sometimes it was a machinery malfunction, but more often than not human error - stupid oversights taken by logging crews. Thus, mill foreman Thom Henley wasn't too surprised with the first couple of accidents on site. First, some Einstein dogger not watching what he was doing gave the ok to the crane operator to swing a load directly into his work-mate's head. The latter wasn't seriously injured - seeing stars and talking nonsense maybe (kept asking what the hell he'd had to drink) but other than being the butt of every joke on site that day, the idiot was sent home via the ER to check out a mild concussion and sentenced to nothing more than rest and a distinct absence of alcohol. All the guys who worked on the project were local, and thus it was noticed quickly when the abstaining dogger never turned up for work. He'd been missing ever since. The second guy lost two fingertips to a trim saw, reportedly startled by the knockoff horn. Again, he was patched up and given a few weeks paid leave due to workplace injury. He was never seen again. Then there was the truck driver who inexplicably managed to leave the manual brake off, causing the truck to roll downhill and crash into a tree, sending the windscreen shattering into his face. He'd been cut up some, but again, the injuries were relatively minor, and apart from the incident meriting investigation by on-site occupational health and safety, the driver wasn't badly hurt. He never showed up for work the next day, and his wife and four kids had no idea what had happened to him. He was still missing. Then only recently, there had been two surveyors who had been scouting, and had somehow ended up under a load - the grappling hook gave way, dumping a load of chip wood onto the pair. They were both a bit banged up, some cuts and bruises, but nothing life-threatening - until they went missing, too. It was beginning to get ridiculous, Henley thought to himself. Not like he believed in that sort of thing, but it was like a curse of bad luck or something.

Thus, he was even less surprised when he saw the suit, and one of the floor staff pointing him out. The guy was tall, young, with a serious sort of expression. Henley was getting a headache.

"I know what this is about," Henley informed him before the corporate monkey could open his mouth. "One too many screw ups, I get it. But the on-site safety guys have already looked into it, and the driver swore he didn't leave that brake off. What can I say."

The suit stared at him a moment, as if not quite sure what he was talking about.

"Right," he said, before Henley could devote much more thought to the pause. "But you know how it is, we got to look into these things. People have been hurt, there's got to be a review. Plus several of your staff are now missing, foreman."

"What's that got to do with workplace safety?" Asked Henley.

"You don't think it's related?" challenged the suit.

"I … well okay, it's kind of weird that the guys involved in the accidents are missing, but that could be for all kinds of reasons. The driver especially could be facing some heat for endangering people, leaving that brake off."

"But he maintains he didn't?"

"So he says, but come on. He's just trying to avoid taking the blame for the accident. It wouldn't surprise me if he'd taken off, afraid it was going to get legal."

The suit frowned at him, pushing his hands into his pockets.

"Most of the people who work here are local, right?"

"Yeah."

"Don't you think it's odd that local workers would just up and take off without a word to their families or friends, right after a series of freak accidents, on the suspicion that maybe they might be facing some heat over the incidents?"

Henley clenched his jaw, puckering his mouth into a tight spot that he knew the floor staff laughed at behind his back. He was nothing if not forthright.

"What are you getting at?"

A quick half-smile tugged at one corner of the suit's mouth, green eyes travelling over the sedately moving floor.

"It could be sabotage."

"Sabotage?" Henley yelped, genuinely surprised. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"The mill is responsible for land clearing, correct? Felling the forests? Ever wonder why people chain themselves to trees, foreman?"

"Come on," Henley said sceptically. "We're not a huge industrial company here. It's not like we're threatening natural resources on the scale that attracts nut jobs and greenies. Grand Scheme is a comparatively small operation - we provide local jobs, invest in local economy. We've done the PR. I hardly think this is the sort of operation attractive to extremists."

"It still has to be considered, given the disappearances."

Henley crossed his arms.

The suit's eyes snagged on the floor a moment, before he asked "seen anyone unfamiliar around here recently? Asking questions?"

"No, not that I remember."

"No one on site that wasn't a member of your staff?"

Henley tipped his head to one side. There was something … the suit's green eyes were suddenly boring into him, and Henley had the strange impression that he wasn't getting the full story here.

"There was one guy," he said slowly. "PI, came around on behalf of one of the guys families, the machine operator who slipped his fingertips. Said he'd been hired to look into his disappearance."

"What did this guy look like?" Snapped the suit, eyes sharp on Henley, who frowned.

"I don't know, just some guy. Smaller than me, thirty-five maybe, dark hair. What difference does it make?"

"How long ago?"

"What?"

"How long ago did this man come to see you?"

There was steel in the suit's tone, impatience, urgency. Henley's frown deepened.

"Uh, maybe a week ago. Why?"

"Have there been any more accidents since this man spoke to you?"

Henley was silent a moment.

"Yeah," he said slowly. "The truck driver, he went missing a few days after the PI came poking around."

The suit went suddenly pale. Henley was just getting more and more confused.

"What the hell is going on?" He asked. When the suit was not forthcoming, green eyes flickering in thought, expression drawn in something that looked strangely like bridled panic, Henley pressed on. "Let me get this straight. You think that the run of bad luck and smalltime accidents around here recently have been due to some crackpot greenie posing as a civil investigator in order to gain access to my site and sabotage the mill? For some kind of environmental crusade?"

"We're not sure," replied the suit faintly.

"Yeah, well I am. No one was seen on site on any of the days the accidents happened. No one was seen interfering with the trim saw, or the trucks, or the cranes or any of the machinery that was involved. Not that investigator, not anybody. And for damn sure no one shoved that machine operator's fingers into anything. It was his own stupid fault. Now, I don't know why any of the guys involved have disappeared, or anything else about it. All I know is we have gone through all the proper channels through on-site safety, given everyone a workshop on safety procedures and threatened disciplinary action and ongoing investigation if there are any more screw-ups. So -"

Henley's words were cut off in a loud mechanical roar that startled both men. Voices called out from the corner of the floor, and wordlessly Henley made a dash for the site, the suit on his heels.

One of the machine operators was on the floor, hard-hat rolling away, grasping one leg.

"For fuck sake!" He yelled at the forklift driver, who stood dressed in a high-visibility vest and a stunned expression next to the lift.

"Oh man, I am so sorry," he said as his companion groaned and flopped back against the concrete. "For real, it wouldn't stop! Some kind of mechanical thing, I don't know, but I couldn't stop the damn thing. Shit, are you hurt?"

"Oh nah, I'm just fine, my fucking knee's dislocated!"

"Great, just great," snapped Henley. "You, go get the first aid guys. And you," he rounded on the forklift driver, who had gone white. "What the hell were you doing?"

"I tell you boss, for real, I couldn't control the lift. It went apeshit," the driver said, holding up his hands. "I saw him there but I couldn't stop it."

"What the hell is going on here?" Demanded Henley, at the end of his rope.

"That's a really good question," said the suit's voice softly from behind him.

Sam left the sprawling lumber mill at a quick stride, tugging the tie loose from around his neck. There was saw grit in his eyes and throat, and his shoulders and neck were tight with worry. He'd just seen it with his own eyes - the supernatural was still going strong at Grand Scheme mill. Too many freak accidents, all of them related to the mill and its employees. He was willing to bet the operator with the dislocated knee was about to be next in the long line of disappearances, unless he did something about it.

Worse, Danny Ellis had been seen, a week or so ago, and obviously on the hunt. Pretexting as a PI, hired by a victim's family to investigate the circumstances that led to his unexplained disappearance. Nice. It was a cover that was unlikely to be suspicious, and allowed Danny to ask all the questions he wanted. He had obviously got as far as Sam had - identifying the strange run of accidents, resulting in minor injuries to workers, who later disappeared without a trace. He'd questioned the foreman, and presumably the families of the missing loggers. What conclusion had he reached, Sam wondered. More the question, what had happened to him? If Danny had been here on a hunt and the accidents and disappearances were still ongoing, it could mean one of two things. One, Danny was on the hunt at that very moment, out there somewhere in the wilderness on the trail of the thing responsible, or two - something had gone very wrong. As much as he hated to admit it, the latter seemed more likely to Sam. Though he didn't know Danny as well as Dean did, the guy was a hunter, it was unlikely he would have gone after this thing alone if two more people had already been injured, one disappeared. Then there was his neighbour back in Hartford who said Danny had seemed rushed and stressed, and was several weeks overdue to return home. His phone had been ringing off the hook, and judging by the numbers on the pad beside Danny's phone, it was one or more of his jobs looking for him. Then there was the Slender Man. The red-haired man from the tenement had described Danny as supernaturally wounded, in a way. Some of his life-force had obviously been taken by the Slender Man in the monster's last effort to defend itself. Then there was the Ordog - what price had Danny paid to the demon to send it back to its cauldron?

The picture forming in his head wasn't good. For whatever reason, Danny had been on a relentless tour of hunt after hunt, taking the hits that came with the job, but pushing on. He knew from personal experience that kind of kamikaze run led right into trouble - sooner or later, Danny would slip up. From pain, injury, exhaustion or recklessness, he'd stumble, and when he did, the hunter became the hunted. It looked like his number was up. Funny, Sam thought with a grim smile as he headed out the mill's chain-link gates and back to the rented ford parked a discreet distance away - Danny was sounding more like Dean than ever.

Whatever it was preying on the mill, it was still here, and Danny was nowhere to be found. Probably due to his own mounting desperation, Sam was ridiculously unprepared. He shuddered to think what his dad would have said. He shook the thought out of his mind the moment it formed - John Winchester was dead, and Sam was in no mood to struggle with his proverbial ghost right now. So he was unprepared, so he was tired and jetlagged and worried and alone. None of that mattered while Dean was back in Nebraska, slowly slipping away, his body getting colder with each passing day Sam spent zigzagging the country looking for one wayward hunter. He folded himself awkwardly into the car, leaned against the seats and drew a deep breath, gritty eyes closed. This was crazy. What was he supposed to do, dive headfirst into the wilderness as he suspected Danny had done, without due diligence done in research? With no idea what it was he faced, how to kill it, or how it was likely to hunt him in return? He was so close yet so far - he knew Danny had been here, but had never left Bailey. The weird accidents and disappearances at the mill continued. Sam was almost sure this had been Danny's final stop and he was still here, one way or the other. Dead or alive, whispered a voice in his head. Probably dead. Just like Dean. Sam's throat burned, choking him with ash and sulphur, flames licking against the surface of his soul, searing, agonizing. The walls of the cage reared up around him, blood-soaked iron and incomprehensible power of the original source of all life. All around him roared red and black, and something moved in the darkness toward his tiny presence, something huge, bristling with primeval power, eyes of living darkness fixed on him, hatred leeching into his soul like venom. Sam …

Sam gripped the steering wheel, feeling the pull of the old scar. Not real, he told himself. Get a grip, Sam. He remembered his shock and pain as Dean dug his thumb into the then fresh wound, grounding Sam in reality. Dean … he had to help Dean.

Sam snapped his eyes open to the cool light and green trees of Colorado. Two loggers in hard-hats and high visibility vests kicked through the dust outside the gate, talking to one another. He blinked. He was sweating, his whole body shaking.

Smooth, he thought. Not only was he exhausted, clueless, alone and in a rush, he was also completely losing his mind. Perfect way to enter the hunt.

He drove back to the motel, running what he knew over in his mind, building on it what he was going to do now. So. He had some pretty solid facts - Danny was still in Colorado, either on the hunt, or victim to it. Whatever it was he had been hunting was still praying on the mill. Sam almost smiled to himself, remembering Dad's advice - figure out what you're up against. It was hunter 101 after all. Presumably, Danny had at least some idea of what it was he was hunting before he went after it. He doubted anyone who had worked with Olivia Lowry, or any of the other hunters who knew of Danny, would have done less. So, it stood to reason that to save time on his own research, it was a better idea to find where Danny had been staying and pick up where the older hunter had left off. He pulled into the motel lot slowly, thinking. Whatever this was, it was connected to the mill. Either it was a vengeful spirit with some beef with its former workmates, or it was less connected to the mill than it was to the forest. The loggers were encroaching on the forest, felling the trees. Maybe something territorial in the woodlands was less than impressed with trespassers on its turf. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. It made no sense for a vengeful spirit to superficially injure its victims, pushing them away from the mill, then disappearing them without a trace. No, it seemed almost as if this was a hunting technique - wound the prey, separating it from its greater numbers but not alerting it to any significant danger, then stalk it until it was alone, wounded and unaware, then attack. Even the disappearances made sense in this theory. No bodies had ever been found, and the whole thing remained ambiguous. If there had been bodies, the mill would have been shut down, or worse for whatever hunted in the woods, it would have attracted greater numbers of trespassers who knew what they were up against. Probably more than it could defend against. No, by this technique, whatever this was, it could pick the loggers off one by one without ever tripping any alarms. Stopping the functioning of the mill eventually as well as punishing the trespassers at the same time.

With this in mind, Sam thought as he stabbed the motel key into the door, it was likely to be some kind of monster. Something connected to the local forest, something that hunted. Something intelligent. The forest … Sam tried to put himself in Danny's shoes as he washed the drying sweat off his face with bracingly cold water. If Danny had reached the same conclusion, he would likely keep close to the forest, hoping to catch sight of whatever it was entering or leaving the mill, keeping an eye on the loggers at risk as well as determining if this thing was corporeal - a vital piece of information on its dispatch. Plus, if he was planning on heading out to hunt it on its own turf in the wilderness, he would need a base. Somewhere close but relatively safe to marshal his weapons, and provide a fallback point if injured. Sam detoured to the reception desk, smiling in what he hoped was a relatively polite way at the clerk.

"Help you?" the thirty-something man enquired from behind a magazine.

"Thinking of doing some hiking," Sam replied. "Do you know of anywhere to hole up in the wilderness? Hunter's cabins, stuff like that?"

"Sure," answered the clerk, slapping the magazine on the desk and leaning over to snatch up a folded tourist map. "Out by the off-road to the mill, a few hundred yards into the woods, there's a bunch of hunting and fishing cabins for use by hikers, hunters and the like. They're usually quiet in the off-season though. Might be lucky."

He marked the little rectangles indicating the cabins and handed the map to Sam with a smile.

Luck, Sam thought. Just what he needed.

It was bordering on dusk when Sam parked off the off-road to the mill and set off into the wilderness. It was less than ideal, but the sense of urgency, of running out of time, wouldn't let him wait. Besides, there had been no reports of any of the numerous hikers, hunters or fisherman that entered the wilderness every year going missing. It looked like whatever this was, it had no problem with the humans who entered for natural purposes. To a supernatural monster or spirit connected to the wilderness and the forests, Sam reasoned that hunting, hiking and fishing was viewed as simply the natural order of things. Felling the forests and feeding them into the lumber mill however, wasn't.

He had set off with some small provisions - food, water, their first aid kit and weapons, a blanket he had swiped from the motel, a heavier coat, cellphone, flashlights. Besides, he told himself, he wasn't setting out on the hunt. Not yet. If he was right, Danny had set up his own camp in one of the hunting cabins, disused according to the motel clerk during the off-season. If he could find Danny's base, it was likely he could find some clues left behind as to what Danny was hunting. Possibly also clues as to what had happened to Danny himself. Please, he incited the powers that be through the dappled canopy of the forest, painting Sam in shafts of late afternoon sun. Please don't let me walk in and find his body.

The woods around him were quiet, the bustle from the mill down the off-road not reaching this far. The assortment of pine, spruce and fir spotted with pale aspen stood still in the sun. Beneath his feet, the undergrowth was dry. He squinted at the map the clerk had marked, gauging the distance from the road to the first of the scattering of cabins. It wouldn't take him long, especially if he picked up the pace. Shifting the duffel bag of weapons against his palm, Sam quickened his pace, heading north. He spread his awareness out to the environment around him, but focused on the job at hand. He planned to check out the cabins, looking for any sign of Danny, and hole up there for the night. Depending on what happened, he was prepared to hunt by day or night depending on what he was up against. Or to return to the motel and figure out the next step if there was no evidence of Danny, to research further on his own. He pushed down the rushed feeling that always seemed to be skittering around his heart. Dean was fine - Frank and Mills were there, and Pete hadn't called with any bad news. Yes Dean was in danger, but Sam was doing his best to obey his brother's instruction and find Danny. Sam had to believe Mireia that Danny would know what to do.

Just over an hour's hike brought Sam to the first of the cabins. They were simple, log wood ironically enough, with tin roofing and sagging shelters. Not a camper-van or four-wheel-drive in sight. All the better. Still, Sam slowed his pace as he came up on the clearing, checking his Taurus was still tucked into his waistband.

He flicked his eyes around the small clearing, counting three huts. There was no sound but the repeated call of some bird off in the wilderness. Sam moved forward warily, pushing the door of the first hut. It swung open without resistance, offering nothing inside save a few pine-cones, a scattering of needles and a pen-knife stuck in the beam by the window above the engraving Louis and Margy, six years.

Circling the outside of the second, Sam peered in the back window. Someone had left the remains of what looked like a cleaned and gutted turkey skin. Not likely to be supernatural. The third cabin proved similarly empty.

Sam stood at the furthest border of the clearing, looking at the map. The second group of three cabins couldn't be far, judging by the placement. The last two were deeper into the woods. Sam looked up at the bared sky above the clearing - it was still light. He could make it before dusk. Stuffing the map back into his jacket, Sam plunged again into the forest.

The second grouping of cabins appeared much as the first had done, not a hunter in sight, mundane or supernaturally inclined. It wasn't so surprising, as the clerk had pointed out, in the off-season. Still, the silence was faintly unnerving.

Sam cast his eyes around the second needle-strewn clearing, looking for any signs. According to the map, the last group of two cabins lay north-west. Evening was closing in, but Sam was determined to at least check it out. It was the last possible place Danny could have set up camp, provided Sam was right about Danny's line of thinking. It was possible he had ventured further into the woods, perhaps setting up a traditional camp of tent and fire, but Sam doubted it. It was a vulnerable position, out in the open on the turf of a supernatural entity that had proven probably lethal to at least five loggers. At least the little cabins provided some shelter, and were minimally defensible, especially if Danny was alone, which Sam had assumed he was. None of the victims from Danny's previous hunts had indicated a partner, and he had been alone when he left Virginia. Unless he knew some hunters in Colorado, he was likely to be hunting solo. Sam wished he didn't know what that was like.

He pushed the thought away. The last of the cabins lured him with the last of the clues he had, and he pressed on.

Shadows were lengthening by the time Sam made the final camp. All around him, evening was settling fast over the wilderness, and he was starting to get cold despite the brisk pace he had kept up since the last camp. Some animal called from the trees, but it sounded distant. The two hunting cabins were dark shapes in the gathering twilight, and Sam stopped at the tree line, listening. Apart from the night birds that had begun to call as evening closed in, there was no other sound. The cabins were dark - no camp lights. If Danny was in there, he was there in complete blackness. Sam swallowed and tried not to think about what that meant. He tugged a flashlight free of the bag, but didn't click it on. Instead, he circled both cabins, looking for signs of life. Everything was bare, and still. Circling back, Sam pushed the door of the first cabin - and found it locked. The others had been open, for free use by whoever hunted there in the game seasons. Sam peered through the windows, but the gathering dusk made distinguishing anything difficult. Leaving it for the meantime, he approached the second cabin, and pushed at the door. It swung open to a lot of things inside.

Sam's heart rate doubled, and he clicked on the flashlight.

The walls were tacked with papers over the plank braced against the wall that served as a bench. On the wooden bunk, a blue bedroll lay empty, next to a kerosene lamp. Two packs squatted under the window. Eyes skittering around the room, Sam shut the door behind him and made a grab for the lamp, striking a match from the book lying beside it to bring the wick to life. Shadows danced around the cabin. Sam sat the lamp on the bench, and clicked off the flashlight. He picked up a sheaf of papers, and froze. Beneath them was a black buckled notebook with a rosary threaded through it - a hunter's journal. Danny's. He was here. Setting it and the wash of feelings and memories that came with such an object aside for the moment, Sam began sorting through Danny's paperwork. It all dealt with one subject - Arisae. Sam's shoulders sank. It was crazy rare, but it made sense. It was half spirit half shape-shifter, capable of taking both corporeal and non-corporeal forms. In lore, it was said to protect the forests, tempting or tricking trespassing woodsmen or lumberjacks off the path to wander lost in the wilderness, making them easy prey for the Arisae. Looks like this one had changed its tactics a little, causing mischief in its spirit form that led to the accidents at the mill, separating the loggers from their numbers and following them home, where they were wounded, unaware and vulnerable, as Sam had already reasoned. It also made sense why none of the hikers or hunters had gone missing in these woods. Arisae were nature spirits. Hunting and migrating were natural behaviours that didn't harm the forest, over-all. The aggressive industrial felling of the forests by human kind was exactly the sort of target Sam would have expected from an Arisae. It was so obvious he was starting to wonder why it hadn't occurred to him already. He blamed the rushed way he had been forced to come at this whole hunt, his own distraction, and the fact that Arisae were rare. They were generally not aggressive in this way, but he supposed the mill and its activities had pushed this Arisae into some unorthodox action. Still, the basic nature of the creature gave Sam some insight. Arisae generally kept to non-corporeal forms during the day to avoid detection, and hunted in corporeal form at night. They tricked and tempted in the spirit form, leading the intruders off the paths often appearing innocuously as lights, mist glimpsed through the trees, or a voice calling, often mimicking other members of the intruder's tribe or band. Once the target had been lost in the woods, the Arisae waited for the fall of darkness, when its physical form would be harder for the daylight-dwelling creatures to see and defend against. Then it attacked, killing and generally devouring the bodies of its victims, so they simply disappeared, never to be seen again. It served as a warning - don't threaten the woods. Often what you didn't see was more terrifying than what you did. It certainly matched the descriptions of what had happened to the loggers.

If this was an Arisae - and to give Danny due credit as Sam sifted through his research, it was extremely likely that it was - that would mean Danny had to have gone after it at night. An Arisae could not be killed in its spirit form. The physical beast had to be killed. Which was dangerous in itself, as a corporeal Arisae was on a hunt of its own.

But Arisae hunted in the woods. Sam thought it unlikely that it took the loggers in their own homes, risking the outnumbering humans and operating away from its familiar hunting grounds. He could only imagine that this rouge Arisae either lured the loggers into the woods all the way from their homes in Bailey, or it captured them in spirit form, returning to the woods to set them loose and shift into physical form for the hunt. The weird behaviour of the spirit gave him pause. Generally, all things supernatural stuck to a specific pattern. Still, as they knew from the Okami and the Lamia, the apocalypse had shaken the monster can, and now with Leviathan in the mix, anything was possible. Sam sighed, his eyes skittering over Danny's paperwork. A map on the wall at his eye-level marked the location of the missing loggers' homes in Bailey. Much of Danny's research dealt with the lore of the Arisae, and traditional methods of dispatch - which made Sam's eyes stray to the packs under the window. He knelt, feeling oddly awkward about going through Danny's belongings, but he had to know if the appropriate weapons were missing. If so, he could take a guess that Danny had gone on the hunt - and never returned. One of the packs was dedicated to Danny himself. Clothing, camp and food provisions, washing gear, numbers, a cellphone with a dead battery, a photo of a small brunette woman with a heart-shaped face he could guess as being Mavis Wells. The other dealt with the hunt - it was crammed with weapons. Sam smiled sadly. No doubt Danny had taken this particular system from Dean, the first hunter he met. Focusing on the job, Sam set Danny's weapons out on the floor, and confirmed his theory - there was no shotgun, only half a box of iron buckshot, and no brass knife. Danny had known what to hunt Arisae with, Sam had made sure of that from his research. Sam cursed, rubbing his face. Arisae were a rare thing, he hadn't exactly thought to bring a brass dagger with him, and Danny had obviously taken his. Still … Sam set his own duffel of weapons down beside Danny's and rifled through for some improvisation. Arisae were both spirit and monster, so hard metals were disliked by both. He had copper - that might work. It was a sheath of an old and ornate silver deer's heart dagger, but Sam could work with that. Taking the dagger, he held the metal of the sheath over the lamp's flame until it heated enough to be slightly pliable. Casting around for something to mould it with, Sam's eyes caught on a steel water bottle - it'd have to do. Alternatively heating the copper and pounding at it with the water bottle, Sam slowly moulded the sheath to the silver blade inside. His running joke with Dean's sense of first aid being restricted to duct tape and bar rags wasn't entirely a joke - his brother tended to keep both rags and tape on hand. At the moment, Sam was grateful for the latter, as he wound it around the hilt of the dagger and down onto the blade. It would hold. He had a sawed-off with him, and considering Danny's half-box of buckshot … he had no real way of knowing how long Danny had been missing. He had been seen at the mill maybe a week, week and a half ago. If he had set out even the next day … unlike wendigo, Arisae were not known to store prey. If Danny had been missing that long, his chances of survival were sinking.

Sam's hands slowed. He was getting ahead of himself, allowing Dean's need to drive him into action without thinking. Danny was a hunter, rookie or not. Sam knew, and had seen from his research, that Danny had known what this thing was, its method of hunting, its hunting grounds, its prey and motivation, and how to kill it. He had prepared for this - Sam and Dean had gone into hunts with less. And he had gone into the woods hunting after it alone, and never come back. Sam couldn't afford to end up the same way, not now. Sam sat back on his haunches, his mind straying to something beyond find Danny, save Dean for the first time since his brother had hit the floor back at the holiday house in Nebraska. What had been Danny's mistake? Was he about to make the same one? What would happen to Dean if both Danny and Sam disappeared courtesy of the Arisae? Ironically, Sam found himself acting like Dean - running on need, not thought. He should do more reconnaissance, maybe call in some markers owed and get a few more hunters in on the job, outnumber the Arisae, which did not cope well with stacked odds. Research more, find out more than Danny had known, perhaps then being able to pinpoint the hunter's mistake. But if Danny had been missing a week …

Sam's cellphone buzzed in his hip pocket, startling him sharply to his feet. Clenching his teeth, heart pounding at the sudden shock, Sam clicked the receive.

"Sam."

"Frank? That you?"

"Yeah - where are you at?"

"I found the cabin, it's got to be the last place Danny stopped before he went in for the hunt. I found his journal and supplies here, it's got to be the end of the line."

Sam closed his eyes, trying very hard not to think about the poetic implications of his choice of words. "I was about to go in after it, but … Frank, I think maybe I should call in some other guys on this. Danny knew what he was talking about, and it still got the jump on him."

There was silence on the line.

"Frank?"

"Yeah. You gotta do what you think best, Sam."

Sam went cold. "What do you mean?"

"Dean's … well, Pete's back and pushing to take him up to the ER."

Sam broke out in cold sweat, every nerve in his body rachetting up his panic. His heart was hammering in a way that had nothing to do with being stupidly startled by a ringing cellphone and his mouth was dry.

"What happened, Frank? Tell me!"

"Take it easy, he's not dead. He's taken a turn for the worse. We've had him on the IV, keeping him hydrated and tried to warm him up, but he's cold, Sam. His blood pressure's low and Pete says his body is shutting down. He's had Dean on oxygen for the past few hours and there's only so much in the way of medical supplies he can steal."

Sam felt the panic spread through his body, adrenaline flooding his veins, whiting out his mind. This was it. Dean was dying - for real this time, just like Bobby. No Cas to zap him back to life, no deals to be made, no hope in God, and a lot of doubt about the destination of Dean's soul if his body fulfilled Pete's prediction.

"- am? Sam, you still there?"

"I'm -" Sam's voice was a croak - he cleared his throat and tried again. He tried to keep a lid on this, keep the panic from breaking through his control and spilling into his voice. He tried to stay calm and focused - and failed.

"What the hell am I even doing here?" He yelled into the phone, pacing a tight circle, left hand fisted in his hair. "What the hell were we thinking? Dean's dying and I'm states away, chasing down a missing hunter! Dean was out of his mind, how do we even know he was making any sense? That Danny knows any more than we do? We have no idea what this is, and we've done jack about fixing it!"

"Slow down, Sam! Think. Dean may have been affected by whatever this is, but your brother is a hunter. He pointed you in the right direction, trusted you'd figure it out. Gave you what you needed to save him. I didn't want to say anything but we've got nothing, Sam. Nothing in Singer's scribbles explains this. I wouldn't even know what else to do, and Pete's doing all he can medically without dumping Dean at an ER. And we don't even know if they'd be able to help him any more than we can. This is a supernatural problem. This is our turf. And you're going after the guy Dean knew could fix this. You're doing exactly what you should be. Dean needs Danny - and Danny needs you. You can still pull both of them out of the fire here."

Sam had stopped pacing, floored. It was probably the most he had ever heard Frank say, and there was too much truth in it to ignore. He remembered clarity snapping back into Dean's eyes when they fell on Sam - Find Danny. Frank was right on both counts.

All his deliberations of only a few minutes ago seemed not worthy of contemplation, not when it was clear even through Frank's skeletal description that Dean's body was slowly dying fast enough that his brother could no longer breathe properly. If Sam doubled back, researched, picked up the proper weapons, or even stayed where he was in the cabin and called in any hunters he even knew who would give a crap about him and Dean enough to help, how long would that take? A day, two days? Sooner rather than later, they were going to have to hook a feeding tube into Dean - if his lungs even lasted that long. It would be too late. And as if that wasn't enough, what would become of Danny if Sam never found him? The hunter would die out here, alone at the hands of the Arisae, and no one in his life would ever be able to be told why.

"Sam, you listening to me?"

"What?"

"You do what you gotta do, kid. Just don't get yourself killed doing it."

"I gotta go."

And he did. Sam clicked off his phone, his focus narrowing into a pinpoint. He grabbed the weapons he did have, and plunged into the woods.