Finally got it done. The update is late, sadly. The switch of viewpoint kind of threw me for a while. I was also blindsided by a half dozen other story random story ideas that kind of usurped control for a while.

Additional Disclaimer: The song Devil's Dance belongs to Metallica. Further, certain opinions expressed by Dean in the ending line of the chapter do not reflect those of the author. Enjoy. (Here's hoping, anyway.)

Dean didn't wake up the next morning, exactly. More he was yanked brutally out of blissful slumber by what he thought at first had to be some kind of demon hitting him in the head with a hammer. They had demons like that, he knew. Nasty ones who partied with topless goddesses and liked to practice their blast beat on the skulls of the wicked. And once he let himself remain alert—as opposed to fighting consciousness tooth and nail—it came to him that he probably was getting no less than he deserved.

The taste in his mouth was something he decided at once to ignore and he looked around to get his bearings. Blinding light poured through cracked eyelids that seemed unwilling to open all the way. And that was fine with him, for now. From the blurred geometry he could see, he knew he was in a motel room. It had that motel room shape, feel, smell... Yup. And that was a good start, usually. Or a good end, since he'd had some pretty bad ones as well. As long as it wasn't a ditch. Or a park bench. Or a lake...

"So. There was something you said once about a pork sandwich?" The bed lurched, and for a moment Dean thought it was a wave of nausea. But no, he realized after a moment. That voice, the superior tone. That was just Sammy sitting on the bed. On second thought, same thing...

"Dude, shut up." Or at least that's what he tried to say. It came out as sort of an 'Ugh.' noise. An articulate groan more than any kind of verbal response. He curled away from the weight on the bed. Oh, yeah. That special way his hair hurt? That was definitely self-inflicted.

Eventually, Dean forced himself to leave the bed and make an attempt at redeeming himself. Twenty minutes in the hottest shower he could manage helped to reduce the pain in most of his body, though his head still throbbed dully. Looking in the mirror it wasn't difficult to discover why. A dark strip of a bruise had formed across his forehead, at least an inch wide. Confused, Dean stuck his head out the bathroom door.

"Dude, Sammy, did you hit me?"

Sam was sitting on his bed with his laptop doing Sam things. He looked up, his eyebrows knit for a second in that puzzled way of his. Seeing the bruise, his sympathetic wince spoke volumes about his guilt.

"No, when I was driving last night—" He stopped suddenly, getting that scared look animals do when they see the car coming. His mouth worked silently for a bit. "Er... Yeah. I hit you."

"Seriously, Sam, you better not have wrecked my car!"

"No, it's...fine." Sam's mouth pulled as he stifled a grin. Dean found himself almost wanting to punch him for that. He dismissed it reluctantly, blaming it on the pain in his skull. "The car's fine."

"But, what? I hear a 'but' coming."

"I saw something last night and I had to stop."

"Really fucking fast to give me a knock like this." He mumbled, returning to the mirror when something in Sam's words halted him. "Saw something? What like a vision?"

"No."

"Well, then...?"

"Do you remember seeing a woman at the bar?"

"I see lots of women in bars." He returned, grinning. Sam gave him a disgusted look, rolling his eyes. He'd apparently expected a comment of that character, and so plowed on through to the point in typical Sammy fashion.

"Last night, about the time I came in, there was a woman. I think she was watching you."

"Well, who wouldn't, Sammy?" He'd fallen into the same evasive habit as always, he realized. And before he'd even remembered why he didn't want to talk about this...

"She kind of looked like Cassie."

"Yeah." He acknowledged mildly, crossing the room to begin pawing through his duffle bag for his clothes. He kept his face was mostly impassive, but his voice dipped low "I remember her."

"What did you two talk about?"

He'd thought it really was Cassie for a while. She'd caught him staring. "We didn't talk."

"Then how did she know you were waiting for me?"

"Maybe she heard me talking on the phone?" Jesus, Sam, get to the point. "What does this have to do with why my head feels like its splitting open?"

"Actually, I think the beer had a lot to do with—"

"Just answer the question, smart ass."

"I saw her while driving last night. In the car."

"Following us?"

"As in I saw her in the car. For a second she was sitting in the passenger seat while you were knocked out."

Damn it. Nothing was ever simple. "Think we have something following us?

"Maybe. Could be I was just tired last night." Dean made a skeptical noise, turning back toward the bathroom to dress. "We can't afford to pick up another hunt so close to the last. Not with the Feds out looking for us. We can check from the road. If it's a ghost, it might have records. A death on the highway near here, something. If we find anything legit we can swing back."

Dean shook his head, thinking over his brother's words. He hated leaving something like this alone, but Sam's right. The idea of turning tail in the face of anything resembling a hunt seriously blows, but they've got more human threats to worry about now. And damned if those weren't the more serious ones in their own way.

"Alright. We pass this one. But Sam?" His brother turned to look as Dean snatched the keys off the table with a grin. "You don't drive."

They checked out some time after ten, stopping an hour later at the same nameless service station they do in every town. Sam went in to pay for gas and something vaguely imitating breakfast, and Dean was left wishing—not for the first time—that he really had filled the tank the day before. Now the ruse was costing them time in addition to the security it already had.

He wished he knew why he'd listened in the first place. The knowledge that Sam and Bobby had some secret that they weren't sharing had burned him, like a fever in his brain. It had been an almost instinctual reaction to try and find out what.

He'd come to trust his gut pretty well. It had saved his ass more times than he could count when honestly nothing else could have gotten him out of it. He'd never had cause to doubt. And he regretted that most of all. He'd never questioned his ability against the creatures, the monsters...it all came so naturally. But what if it wasn't natural? Maybe it takes one to know one. The idea scared the hell out of him.

And Dean didn't know why he'd run. Running implied guilt.

It was the talk of familiarity that had scared him the most. He'd felt it. The more time they had spent investigating Crawford Hall, the stronger it had become. It began with certainty. Even with evidence to the contrary—or lack of evidence—he'd known they were dealing with something up their alley. He'd assumed it was his gut, just like with that zombie chick. There was an almost tangible feeling of its presence. Patterns where there shouldn't have been patterns. And once they'd known for sure what they were dealing with, it was in less than an eye blink that he knew who. Like recognition.

And the guilty fact was that, in spite of its crimes, God help him but he'd almost felt bad killing the thing. He'd hesitated, and he never did that. Talked with the thing. He never did that either. That glint in the creature's eye, the smile on its face. What if that had been recognition, too?

"Hurry the hell up, Sammy." Sitting in the car alone, his impatient breath was too loud even over the car's idling engine. Between that and the noise of his own thoughts, Dean couldn't hear the silence he would much prefer to have echoing through his ears in this particular moment.

Turning on the radio didn't help. As the dying strains of the previous track faded, he heard the beginning. Devil's Dance. He hated this song. Ever since dad's bombshell about Sam. It made him dwell once or twice on the idea of what Sam could become. In fact, if asked, he would have been sure he'd thrown the damned cassette out. But it was playing now. Only now he was forced to think of himself when he was trying as hard as he ever had not to think.

"I feel you too

Feel those things you do

In your eyes I see a fire that burns

To free the you

That's wanting through"

The more he looked at it, the more it seemed it was easier for him to lie than to tell the truth these days. Especially the lies he told Sam. The lies he told Sam for his own good. About Susan Thompson and her daughter. He'd gambled with both their lives, making sure he was there just late enough for Sam to save them both. Save the day, because on that hunt he'd needed it so fucking badly.

And then... Even wagering those lives didn't compare to that night.

This he solidly refused to think about. His hands tightened around the wheel, squeezing the blood from his knuckles. Teeth clenched, for a moment he felt like his head was going to explode. The bruise on his forehead throbbed. Intensely angry, violent thoughts matching the tempo of the music...he wanted more than anything to tear the damned thing out.

God, he just wanted it to stop.

The cassette screeched in the deck, ejecting violently from the radio against the back of the seat to rest in a pile of unraveled tape. The interior of the car was filled with the soft hiss of dead air then quiet as the knob turned, shutting off. And this silence was complete. Dean didn't dare breathe.

He nearly jumped when Sam opened the door, and Dean chucked the damned thing, sending the chewed tape sailing past his brother's head.

"The deck ate it." He gave in answer to Sam's startled and questioning look. He even managed a casual shrug. "ReLoad sucked anyway."

When the majority of your life is spent confined within a narrow space with another human being, it becomes impossible for certain things to escape notice. Though it was difficult for even Sam to read Dean's moods with certainty most of the time, there were signs, nonetheless, that would occasionally give a hint into what was going on inside his brother's stubborn block head. It wasn't in itself unusual for Dean to lapse into a guarded silence, but without his music to noisily fill the space between them bright warning lights were set off in the back of Sam's head. The kind that usually came with sirens. Something had happened, something Sam had missed though he couldn't tell where it had been missed or when. And this ugly silence, a guilty silence, had fallen between them that would follow them into the next night.

And that night it was Dean who had nightmares.