Disclaimer: I don't own SPN.

I know that last night was my scheduled update but, as I explained in my latest chapter of '100 Cheesy Destiel Love Situations', the site spazzed out and wouldn't let me do ANYTHING. I apologise for this late update!

Thanks to FTA92 and masterjediratgrl31 for your reviews :)

Chapter 4. Light 'Em Up

"No! Hell, no!" Dean snapped.

"Why not?" Louise said, hands on her hips.

"Because it's a crappy idea!"

"Teaching Adam to protect himself is a crappy idea?" Sam said incredulously.

"We're not teachin' the kid to fire a shotgun, okay? And we're not teachin' him how to hack and cut things up and do all the crap that we do!"

"Dean, he's hanging out with us now!" Louise said. "He's going to Hell in a year unless we can ice this Lilith bitch and to do that, we need all hands on deck! We can't just keep Adam hidden behind a tonne of protections like some delicate little flower!"

"Why do you think Dad never told us about this kid? Why do you think he ripped out those pages? He was protecting him!"

"Well, Dad's dead!" Sam said. Dean's face darkened.

"That doesn't matter! He didn't want Adam to have our lives, so we're gonna respect his wishes!"

Adam was standing awkwardly nearby, staring out the window and pretending that he couldn't hear them.

"I'm sure he'd disagree if he knew the shit that Adam was in!" Louise said. "The kid saw his mom die twice and he's going to Hell in a year and he had to rely on a demon to get him here! I'm pretty fucking sure that he's in the life now! If we don't teach him then what'll happen?"

"Doesn't matter if we can't kill Lilith because he'll be dead in a year!"

"So if we can train him, that's one extra pair of hands to help us! I'm the most powerful one of us and even I'm fucking weak, so Lilith will eat us for breakfast!"

"Wow. Y'know, I see what Envy meant about that pride of yours."

"Fuck you, Dean!" Louise shoved Dean but her rage fuelled her strength and he went flying into the opposite wall. Her eyes widened in horror but Dean seemed to be largely unaffected.

"Thanks, sis. Really."

Sam had sidled over to Adam, trying to stay out of the fight that had developed.

"Don't think that I don't know what's going on, Dean!"

"Oh? Enlighten me, Dr Phil!"

"You're jealous! You're jealous of Adam 'cause Dad did normal dad stuff with him!"

"No I'm not!"

"You are! I'm jealous too, Dean! I'd have killed for Dad to take us to a baseball game or just hang out and do normal, apple pie stuff! But he's dead and it's in the past and Adam doesn't deserve to suffer just because Dad didn't tell him about all this crap! You know what happens if we don't help him? He roasts downstairs! And you heard Cas! All demons used to be human! You really want Adam coming back up with black eyes 'cause you didn't want to help him?"

The siblings glared at each other, breathing heavily, their eyes glinting. Finally, Dean grabbed his leather jacket and yanked it on.

"I'm going out! So why don't you babysit our baby brother since you're so keen to take him under your wing?"

The motel door slammed behind him. Louise sighed, the tension draining out of her, and she sank onto the bed wearily.

"Is he always like that?" Adam said hesitantly. Sam laughed.

"Welcome to the family."

"You'll get used to it," Louise added, her shoulders slumped. "Dean's not usually that…hostile. I think he's just getting used to this."

"I don't blame him," Adam muttered. "I'd have done the same if I was in your shoes."

Louise smiled at him. Sam met her eyes, crossed over to sit on the other bed and gestured Adam over.

"Here." Sam took out his gun and ejected the clips. "We'll teach you a few things."

"Dean said –"

"Forget what Dean said," Louise said. "He votes nay, Sam and I vote yay, majority rules. Now shut up and listen to Sam."

-LW-

Sam and Louise spent the whole day showing Adam the workings of a gun and basic knife fighting and in the evening, Cas dropped in from Bobby's via Ruby Express.

"Delivery," the demon announced, appearing outside the door just in front of the salt line and igniting Louise's typical nausea (though it had been getting better over the past year). Sam, Louise and Adam jumped and Cas hurried to escape from Ruby, who smiled at Adam when she saw him. "Hey, kiddo. They treating you alright?"

"Sam and Louise are teaching me how to fight," Adam said. Ruby nodded approvingly.

"Good. When we do find Lilith, we need all hands on deck. And hey, if anything, it'll make sure that you don't take a trip downstairs early."

"She is insufferable," Cas muttered to Louise, who snorted.

"But she's saying pretty much exactly what I told Dean," she replied. Ruby's eyebrows rose.

"Mind letting me in?" she said. "I've been on my feet all day avoiding demons. A girl needs to sit down."

Sam, Louise and Cas remained where they were but Adam jumped up and scratched out a gap in the salt line. Ruby stepped smartly over the threshold and Adam kneeled down to rejoin the salt.

"Thanks, kiddo." Ruby sank down onto a chair with a content sigh. "Outrunning demons all day really takes it out of you."

"What do you want?" Louise demanded. Adam was the only reason she wasn't killing this demon on sight but she sure as hell wasn't going to play nice.

"To keep Adam there alive. And I wanted to properly meet Sam. You got any chips? I've got a salt craving like you wouldn't believe."

Sam stared at her in shock. Louise, her eyes glued on the demon, went to fish a packet of potato chips out of her duffle bag and tossed it to Ruby. The blonde gleefully popped the packet and shoved a chip into her mouth.

"Mmm. You don't know how good these taste."

"They're salt and vinegar flavoured."

"Even better." Ruby licked her fingers. "I think my lips are tingling."

Adam's lips twitched.

"Why are you interested in me?" Sam said.

"You're tall. I love a tall man. And there's the whole antichrist thing."

"What?"

"Y'know, generation of psychic kids, Azazel rounds you up, celebrity death match ensues, you're the last one standing. Sounds like Azazel had some pretty big plans for you."

Louise was staring at Ruby, unable to speak. What did this demon want with Sam?

"'Had' being the key word," Sam said firmly.

"Oh, yeah. That's right. Ding dong, the demon's dead. Good job with that. It doesn't change the fact that you're special…in that Anthony Michael Hall ESP visions kind of way."

"That stuff hasn't been happening since Azazel died!"

Louise sagged in relief when Sam said that.

"What do you want with Sam, Ruby?" Cas snapped.

"To help. Like I'm helping Adam. Just 'cause Azazel's gone doesn't mean that it's all over. Lilith is out now and she's flattening anyone who gets in her way so that she can take over Hell. And Sammy, with his whole antichrist thing? He's pretty big competition."

Sam blanched. Louise growled. Nobody was laying a hand on her brother!

"I don't want to rule Hell!" Sam protested.

"Too bad, buddy. Because some demons think that you're the messiah and so long as you've got even one supporter, Lilith will see you as a threat."

Ruby patted Sam on the arm.

"But don't worry! You get stronger and by the time Lilith guns for you, you'll be able to take her down and save Adam."

She stood up and crossed over to the door.

"Well, I have places to go and demons to kill. You mind letting me out?"

Louise reluctantly stood up and went to let Ruby out.

"Why are you telling us all this?" she said. "You're a demon!"

"Don't be such a racist," Ruby said coolly. "I want protection from Hell, so I'm helping you. I'm different from the other demons. And originally, I was going to tell you little bit by little bit and eventually tell you the whole truth when I was sure that you trusted me. But I can see that that's not how you roll. And I want you to trust me because once you do, I've got your protection from Hell. So I'm telling you what I know and hoping that you can use that info and not just sit around with your thumbs up your asses."

Ruby looked straight at Sam.

"You want to know you can trust me?" she said. "Find out what happened to all your mom's pals. Someone went to great lengths to cover that up. Give me a call when you're done and we'll talk again."

She stepped outside.

"A number would be nice," Louise said frostily. Ruby raised her eyebrows.

"Already covered. I punched it into Adam's phone when he was sleeping before we found you."

"You what?" Adam exclaimed. Ruby smirked and wiggled her eyebrows.

"See you around, kiddo. Call if you need anything."

Ruby turned and walked off. Louise felt her presence vanish when she was out of sight and she returned to her bed and dropped down onto it.

"Consorting with demons," she muttered. "Look at our life. Look at our choices."

Her phone rang suddenly. Groaning, she fished it out of her pocket and flipped it open.

"Wassup, big bro?" she said.

"First off, never say that again. Second, I've found a case. Cicero, Indiana. I'm coming to grab you lot."

"Cool. Cas is here, by the way."

"Awesome."

Louise grinned at the sudden change in Dean's tone but didn't say anything.

"And you were right, Lou. Adam deserves a chance. Bring him with us and we'll see if he can shoot or if he's just a useless tagalong."

Louise rolled her eyes, though she was still smiling.

"I'll tell him you said that. Later, asshole."

-LW-

"Are you sure he's not yours?" Louise smirked, watching little Ben Braeden gesturing in a very Dean-like fashion.

"I dunno," Dean shrugged uncomfortably. "Lisa's sure he's not mine but…"

Nine years ago, Dean had hooked up with Lisa Braeden here in Cicero and now Lisa had an eight year old son called Ben, who she was positive wasn't Dean's. But Louise wasn't so sure. The kid was like a mini-Dean, inside and out!

"Would it bother you?" she asked. "Being a father?"

"What? No! I mean, I'd prefer not to be but…" Dean scoffed. "What about you? Would you be happy being Auntie Lou?"

"Honestly?" Louise looked at Ben. "I wouldn't mind. I've always wanted a kid of my own, even if I don't like…that. But I'm not about to go and have one with a random guy."

"Good. I'd kill you if you did. Still gotta protect my baby sister's virtue and all."

Louise rolled her eyes and punched Dean on the arm. Her virtue was very secure due to her lack of interest in anything of the sort and she knew that Dean was choosing to ignore that small detail in favour of butchering any boy who even so much as looked at her. Big brother duties and all that, as he claimed.

-LW-

"Yes! You got it!" Louise beamed at Adam when he smoothly disassembled a shotgun. The teenager grinned toothily back in response.

"Not so hard once you get the hang of it," he commented.

"Well, that's the easy part," Sam said. "Now you learn to shoot."

Sam raised his gun, aimed it at the makeshift targets set up and fired three times in succession. He easily hit each target dead centre and Adam was gaping when Sam lowered the gun.

"Whoa," the teenager commented.

"Just feel the recoil and time the trigger pulls," Sam instructed. "Three taps, okay?"

Adam eagerly reassembled his gun, aimed and fired. He hit one target in the centre, barely grazed one and completely missed the third. He lowered his gun, looking disappointed.

"It took me a while to improve," Cas offered helpfully.

"It's true," Louise said. "Took Cas a week to hit every target near the centre and he's an angel. Trust me, it just takes time and practice."

"Go again," Sam said.

By the end of the session, Adam could hit most of the targets – though hitting them near the centre was something that needed a lot of work.

"Not bad, kid," Dean grudgingly admitted, looking as though it pained him to say this. Adam beamed and flicked the safety on his gun before stowing it away.

-LW-

"Aww, look." Louise pointed at a sad-looking Ben on a park bench. "The poor kid's upset. Go comfort your son, Dean – first rule of being a parent, ya know."

Adam snickered.

"He's not my kid," Dean glared balefully but went to talk to the kid. Louise leaned against the tree nearby, staring around. Her eyes swept over the children playing on the jungle gym and she did a double take and stared when she noticed something…off about them.

"What the…?" she mumbled, slowly approaching them to take a closer look.

"What's up?" Adam asked, following her, but she didn't answer. When they reached the playground, all of the kids turned and stared at them in unison. Okay, that was fucking creepy. And now that she was closer, she could sense that they were not ordinary children – in fact, they looked like horrifying monsters with huge, gaping mouths!

"Uh…hi?" Louise said lamely. No response. "You guys look like you're having fun."

"What are you doing?" Adam whispered.

"Mommy says that we can't talk to strangers," a girl said in a monotone.

"And you're a stranger," a boy chimed in.

"Leave us alone," a third child said. Her hands up, Louise quickly backed away and pulled Adam with her.

"I'd bet my jacket that they're the monsters we're after," she muttered.

"How can you tell?"

"I can see and sense this stuff. Trust me, kid. How do you think I knew Ruby was a demon? I can see her true face and it is not pretty."

-LW-

"What do you know about changelings?" Sam said to Dean, Louise and Adam as soon as they got back.

"What?" Louise blinked. "Does this have anything to do with the creepy ass kids in this town? 'Cause those things are not human."

"They are changelings," Cas said. "And there is one at the house of every person in this town who has died recently. The only way to kill them is by setting them on fire."

"Oooh, fun," Louise said sarcastically. "Let's go toast some sons of bitches."

She and Dean went to collect a few things from the trunk of the Impala and then began to make up kerosene torches while Adam and Castiel watched and Sam read out information.

"So, they can perfectly mimic children. According to lore, they climb in the window and snatch the kid. There were marks on the windowsill at one of the kid's houses – looked like blood to me. They feed on synovial fluid from the mom – that's why the moms had these weird bruises on the back of their necks. The mom can last for weeks before croaking."

"That explains the dad and the babysitter," Louise realised. "They gank anyone who gets between them and their food."

"What about the real kids?" Adam said, looking sick. "Are they still alive?"

"According to the lore, they stash them somewhere underground," Sam said. "So the real kids might still be out there."

"We must find the children, save them and kill the mother," Cas said. "Once the mother is dead, the changelings will follow."

Dean insisted on taking a quick detour to Lisa's to try and convince her to leave town. When they reached her house, Dean got out of the car and went to knock on the door. But Lisa angrily turned him away after a moment of conversation and Dean cursed when he got back into the car.

"They took Ben," he said furiously. "I checked the windowsill and everything."

"Blood?" Sam said.

"I don't think it's blood. And I think I know where the kids are."

-LW-

They found the terrified but alive children, alright – under a semi-finished home with mounds of red dirt, same as on the windowsills of the victims' houses. But this discovery also brought with it the changeling mother, who turned out to be disguised as a local real estate agent. And she was pissed.

"Hurry up and torch the bitch!" Louise yelled at Sam, Cas and Adam as she and Dean worked to free all of the children from their cages.

"How 'bout you get in here and do it?" Sam hollered back.

"It's okay," Ben said soothingly to the other children as they were freed. "You're gonna get out of here!"

Louise was struck by how similar this kid was to Dean.

"Lou, break the window!" Dean snapped. Louise nodded, turned to the window and held out her hand. Concentrating, she managed to cause cracks to web through the glass and then, with a wave of her hand, the glass shattered into tiny pieces. She knew that she had to work on limiting her hand gestures, as Cas had told her last year, but hey, she wasn't restrained at the moment and they had to get the kids out!

"Whoa!" one of the boys said. "You're Jean Grey!"

Louise smiled tightly.

"I don't think I got all the glass off the sill," she said. Ben appeared next to her, holding out his jacket.

"Use this," he said. Louise nodded, laid the jacket down over the sill and began to help kids up through it. Meanwhile, Dean freed the petrified real estate agent from her cage.

"Little help in here!" Adam shouted. Dean groaned and sprinted into the next room.

"There are three of you!" Louise replied, helping a little girl out of the window. "Torch the bitch already!"

As she and Ben helped the last kids out and then she gave Ben a leg-up, she heard a horrible screeching noise and turned to see an orange glow coming from the next room.

"Finally!" Dean snapped.

-LW-

"They're dead!" Sam said in shock. Nearby, Dean and Louise were reeling, Adam looked confused and Cas was impassive. "All of Mom's friends – everyone who ever knew her, wiped off the map one after the other." He laughed. "Someone made damn sure to cover their tracks."

"That's Azazel for ya," Ruby said. "And I want to help you find out what he was hiding."

"We already know what," Dean snapped. "He gave Sam demon blood. And we know that Sam's s'posed to be Lucifer's vessel in the Apocalypse that'll never happen."

Ruby's eyebrows rose.

"Someone's well-informed," she said. "But Azazel was hiding something else. It's no secret that he infected Sam here. All of Hell knows about his special children. So that's not what he was covering up. No, I'm sure he was hiding something else and I'm just that damn curious that I want to help you find out what."

"What's in it for you?" Dean said. Ruby rolled her eyes.

"Did you bozos not tell him about our conversation earlier?" she said. "I want safety. There are a lot of bitches out there who want your heads on platters. You Winchesters are infamous, after all. But somehow, you always seem to pull through and win. And that's why I'm throwing my lot in with you. Why else would I have brought Adam to you? Something's going down and he got dragged into it."

"Like what?" Adam said nervously.

"I don't know yet. But look, kiddo. Most demon deals are for ten years, then the hounds come calling. Witches get longer, though they belong completely to the demon. Yet they offered Dean one year to bring back Sam and then did the same with you and your mom. Someone wants a Winchester in Hell quick smart and they won't rest until they've got what they want."

Adam gulped and exchanged a wide-eyed look with Sam, Dean and Louise.

"So what do they want?" Cas said. "You seem to be very well-informed, Ruby."

"That's what I want to help you find out, Feathers."