10. Ash

I was never one for long car rides. Ironic, I know, since I spend about fifty or so hours a month driving all around the country. But honestly, I hate being cramped in a van for long periods of time, especially if Lily is driving, since she likes to go the equivalent of turtle speed so we get nowhere fast.

"Mind hurrying up a bit?" Mira asked with a slight edge to her voice. I knew she was anxious about finding Sam, and quick. "We don't need to make this a road-trip."

Lily shot her a dirty look "Are you the one driving?"

"No, but-"

"Then shut up."

Car rides did different things to the each of us; I got dizzy, Mira got fidgety, and Lily got annoyed. She didn't like driving as much as we didn't like her to, but she was the one Dean had given the direction to, so she was the one who drove. Twelve times on the highway, I asked her if I could take a turn, just to see to it that we got to South Dakota before we all turned seventy, but she was stern on her being the one to handle the wheel. And when Lily wants to do something, she doesn't listen to reasoning.

We were on our second day of driving when Lily suddenly took an exit off of the highway, rumbling onto a road filled with potholes and pebbles. "Are we there?" Mira asked, gripping onto the dashboard as the van's left front right tire sank into a hole and popped back out again, rattling all of us inside.

Lily didn't reply; when I looked at her, her eyes were darting between the houses on either side of the road, murmuring quietly to herself. I didn't have to know the number of the house to figure out which we were pulling into. When she turned, I was already taking off my seat belt, ready to get out. The biggest hint was the black impala sitting in the driveway. This was where we were supposed to be.

The house was cluttered with old cars, trucks, and vans, all rusted and collecting dust around it. Getting out of our own van, I stretched my legs and started at the collection, wondering just where the hell we were. Some sort of impound, maybe? "Hey Lily?"

"Yeah?" she closed the driver side door and began a brisk paced-walk towards the porch.

"Where are we?"

When she said nothing, I exchanged annoyed looks with Mira (it seemed Lily was keeping a lot of secrets from us, lately) and then we followed her up the steps of the porch. She rapped her knuckles against the wooden door, seeming to be in a rush. "Jeez, Lil, would you calm down?" I muttered. "If they're in here, they aren't going anywhere."

It was Sam who answered the door.

"Well, looks like Dean found you." I said when I saw him, giving an exaggerated sigh and an eye roll.

He looked from me, to Mira, who was standing off to the side of the porch looking relieved to see him. "Hi." He said, and she opened her mouth to reply when he was roughly pushed aside. An older man with a dark, rough looked beard, dressed in a plaid shirt and a faded green vest, as well as a worn out baseball cap. He narrowed his eyes at the three of us, obviously not being one to trust strangers very well.

Lily stepped forward cautiously. "I'm Lily, and this is Mira, and Ash. We're hunters."

"You three? Aren't you girls a little young to be hunters?"

It could have been from the long ride, and the fact that we showed up all of this way to find that Sam was there, but something inside of me snapped, and I stepped in front of Lily with a dark glower. "Hey, I did not just drive two days straight to have some old guy with a stick up his ass tell me who I can and can't be. We are hunters, and I bet we've been hunting longer than you think. Now if you would please bring Sam back so we could talk to him, because up until five minutes ago, he was supposedly missing, and that's making me want to ask him some things."

The man blinked at me, clearly faltering at how quick I'd been to defend myself.

"She's right." Sam said, squeezing in between him and the doorframe to give me a small smile. "They took care of a demon a while back, and we worked together on a pagan god together before. They know their stuff, Bobby. Let them in."

I appreciated him saying "together" rather than something about how we'd called, begging for them to come help us, especially after Lily played "damsel in distress".

"Bobby" looked at each of our faces carefully before stepping back and opening up the door more, letting us inside. His house was a mess, and not the sort of mess like clothes on the floor and dishes in the sink. No, this mess was the sort I'm sure we would have if we stuck around in one place for long enough. There were papers (lots of papers) tacked onto every inch of the walls, some being maps while others looked like notes he had scribbled down and put up. Thick, brown covered books were stacked high on desks and the floors, each looking as worn as the last like they'd had their fair sure of reading.

And then the weapons! He must have had weapons everywhere!

Knives, revolvers, shotguns, crossbows; every weapon imaginable was in this guy's house. I felt so oddly comfortable that I actually smiled at the man I snapped at moments before. A real, genuine smile, too. "You've got a great knife collection."

He nodded gruffly, and got three beers from a fridge in a room off of the foyer. When he handed us each one, Lily shook her head politely.

"That's right." A voice came from what I guessed to be the den, just a few feet away from us. "I forgot you didn't drink."

Dean appeared from the darken room, grinning from ear to ear. When Lily saw him, her eyes lowered onto the ground and her cheeks coloured. I made a mental note to give her some confidence pointers later on, but for the time being, there were other things that needed my attention.

"Why did you call us here if you found Sam already?"

Dean dragged his gaze from Lily onto me, his smile faltering slightly. "Well we didn't think it'd take you so long to get here."

"It was a two day drive, Dean. Bite my ass. So why didn't you call once you found him to tell us our services we no longer needed?"

His smile now fully gone, Dean swallowed and made a face, like he'd tasted something disgusting. "Well, we need your help. Sam was kidnapped by the yellow eyed demon, because..." he trailed off, looking between us and his brother with a helpless shrug. "It's kind of a long story."

We sat down in the den as Dean and Sam filled us in. In the span of a little less than an hour, we were left to digest a brief explanation on their past, as well as what happened with Sam in the few days he'd been gone. When they had finished, I felt full to the brim of information. All they'd told us…it was a lot to take in, especially the part about the previous day's events.

"Wow." Mira said quietly, looking very sympathetic toward the Winchesters and their pasts.

Sam was looking at the floor, probably remember all he'd told us. "Tell me about it."

"So, this colt. Do we have it?" I asked, trying to stay on target.

"No." Dean's jaw locked. "The demons do."

A knock on the door interrupted us. Bobby stood up slowly from the couch and crossed the room, opening it to reveal a drained looking Ellen. Seeing her made me remember a certain dark point in the story we'd just heard, about her bar being burned to the ground with hunters, as well as Ash the second inside.

Without saying anything to any of us, Ellen fell into the chair across from the couch we sat one, looking ten years older than she was. I noticed that she was carrying with her a light brown folder, stuffed with papers, but I didn't dare ask about them. Not until she looked ready.

After Bobby gave her a drink, she showed us the data Ash the second was working on before he was...killed. I could hardly believe it. He was dead, just like that.

This yellow eyed bastard needed to die.

Dean spread out the map Ash the second had been tracking, and both he and Lily fell over top of it, trying to follow the man's train of thought. After a moment's observations, Lily straightened up to look over at Mira and I. "A 100 mile devil's trap."

I snorted. "Yeah right. That's impossible, Lil."

"No, it's not. Look." She pointed to the map, her finger trailing across the surface slowly so I could keep up. "When Samuel Colt built his churches in Wyoming, he connected them all with railways. See the pattern, Ash?" When her finger stopped, I did. The tracks made the shape of a pentagram, each point being a different church on the map.

"Holy crap." I breathed, because it actually was a hundred mile devil's trap.

"And there." Dean poked the middle of the paper. "Is a cemetery."

I was still staring at the map as he spoke, and then I lifted my head sharply, having remembered a certain point of the story we had been told. ""If there's something so big it needs that huge of a devil's trap and the colt is the key, why does the yellow eyed demon need that psychic kid?"

"That's it; he can't do it himself. He needs to send in Jake." Sam explained, eyes focused on the map. After a moment's thought, he looked up at us again, wearing the look of someone who ha just realized something huge. "And If we can intercept him before he gets there-"

"We get the colt." Dean finished for him, already on his feet. "Let's go."

The cemetery was one of those that made your skin crawl as you walked through it, especially at night time. It had tall, black gates right at the back of it, and was hidden deep inside a gloomy forest, where the owls hooted and the grass was tall; perfect for a cemetery location. What shocked me the most, though, was learning that the gates to hell itself were in this very cemetery. Such a settling thought…

"Well, we've been here for quite some time now." I said quietly, fiddling with my shot gun. I'd needed a long range weapon, and my knife wouldn't cut it. I didn't care for guns, but hey, it was better than nothing.

Around me, everyone had settled into their positions, watching for this "Jake" person to show up with the colt. I was slightly nervous about Ellen joining us at first. She was still pretty shaken up from losing Ash the second, as well as her bar and the people in it. But I knew that was fuelling her fire, and we could count on her to be part of the battle (if needed) against this yellow eyed son of a bitch.

Bobby pressed his finger to his lips as we heard a car door shut.

Showtime.

The gates of the cemetery were pushed open, letting out their moans from the movement as Jake stepped through, his head swivelling around to examine his new surroundings. He walked forwards with the stride of a man with a purpose, one hand stuck inside his jacket pocket while the other hung limp at his side, holding the colt.

Jake walked right by the headstone Dean was hidden behind, and I watched as Dean slowly manoeuvred himself out of sight with Jake's path until he was on the opposite side of the stone. I held my breath, fingers twitching on the barrel of my gun as I watched Jake approach the tomb, or rather, the gates to hell. I looked to Sam to see if he was ready to reveal himself yet, only to find that he had stepped away from the stone he was hiding behind, and held up his gun in front of his face.

"Howdy, Jake."

Taking this as our cue, Mira, Lily, myself, Bobby, Ellen and Dean all revealed ourselves as well, all of us pointing our guns directly at him. The funny thing was, that despite all of these hunters prepared to shoot him, Jake was only looking at one person; Sam.

"I…I killed you!"

Killed? I glanced at Dean out of the corner of my eye. That hadn't been part of the story; he said Sam had been wounded.

"You almost did." Dean said quickly, too quickly, I noted.

Jake was shaking his head, looking absolutely stunned. "I sliced through the spinal cord! There's no way-"

Okay, now I wasn't the only one looking at Dean. Sam looked suspicious too.

Bobby cleared his throat gruffly and stepped forward, motioning at the gun in Jake's hand and ordering him to drop the gun, or else we would all shoot. Nice and simple; good man. Seeming to have collected himself slightly, Jake looked from Sam, to Bobby, smirking slightly.

"Threatening me? Well, I've learned a few new tricks." Without warning, Jake's eyes focused right on me. "You; put your gun to your head."

I didn't even hesitate. "Okay."

As soon as I felt the cool metal of my gun's barrel pressed against my temple, I realized what he had made me do and felt my breath hitch. I had to keep calm, though. One sign of weakness and he might make me shoot. "Oh you piece of shit." I cussed darkly, and then looked to the rest of our group wildly. "Don't you guys dare lower your guns!" I tried to lower my gun, but it was like my arm had turned to stone; I couldn't move it at all.

"Now," Jake said, turning away from me with a satisfied smile, "If you don't want this pretty little lady to blow out her brains, put down your guns on the ground in front of you."

I fidgeted on the spot, feeling a slight sweat start in the middle of my back. "Don't do it! Let him shoot me, goddammit, and you kill that yellow eyed-son of a bitch!" Despite my protests, each and every one of them dropped their guns onto the ground, and then held up their hands defensively, showing them they had done what he'd said. Okay, so maybe I was a bit relieved that they did.

Jake turned away from us and headed up the steps to the gates, raising the hand that held the colt. He stuck the barrel into the mausoleum door, just as I felt my finger moving toward the trigger of the gun. Oh crap… Dean lunged and brought the palm of his hand underneath my elbow, forcing my arm upwards so rather than shooting my brains out, I shot into the night sky.

Jake turned at the gun shot, and received several of his own in the shoulder from Sam, who'd picked up his gun and aimed it at him once the colt started rotating in the door. Jake crumpled to the ground just as the gates opened up wide like the cover of a book, and a dark cloud of souls crawled out of the pit, their tortured demonic voices ringing out in the night.

Mira and Lily rushed up instantly, side-stepping Jake's lifeless body to brace their hands on either doors, and tried to push them closed again. Bobby, Ellen and I came to help them, but Dean and Sam hung back. As I pushed, I looked over my shoulder and saw that there was a third figure standing amongst the graves.

My fingers slipped from the door slightly as I realized it was the man with the yellow eyes.

"Focus, Ash!" Bobby barked, his face growing red with the exertion. "Close the damn door!"

I wanted to see what was going on behind us, but this was far more important. Using everything I had in me (every muscle, every bone, every single ounce of strength I could summon) I pushed all of my weight against the door. Slowly, oh-so-slowly, it nudged forwards, and eventually closed, sealing off the gates to hell once again.

Lily looked exhausted, leaning against the doors as she fought to catch her breath. "Dean!" She reached out a limp arm and snatched the colt from its place in the door, tossing it to where he stood in the middle of the cemetery. He caught it, but a soon as he did, the yellow eyed man snatched it away without even reaching for it.

"Boys shouldn't play with daddy's guns." He sneered, and then sent Dean flying backwards into a headstone, as well as Sam into a tree.

"Dean!" Lily cried out, as he lay limp on the ground, unmoving.

The yellow eyed man looked at her, and gave a small shake of his head. "This guy, I swear he's got a bigger fan club than any rock star in the world." Turning his head away again, he flicked his wrist, and Lily was pressed up against the mausoleum. She grunted in pain.

"You stay away from her!" Dean roared, struggling to his feet and wiping at the blood that was dripping from a cut on his forehead, into his eyes.

"Oh you didn't like that? How about this?"

Beside me, Mira flew backwards with a shriek, landing against the wall next to Lily. My eyes darkened and I saw red. Slowly, I began to walk down the steps, unsure what I was going to do but knowing damn-well I wasn't going to just stand around while-

"Or maybe this?"

It was as if a hand had grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, yanking me off my feet and pinning me onto the wall. I grunted, feeling an insane amount of pressure in my chest. I struggled against the invisible force holding me there, but I couldn't move. "Damn it!"

Head stones were obscuring my vision. I couldn't see what was going on. But I could hear, and there was a loud scuffle occurring, in which at one point, a bright white light was the only thing I could see. I closed my eyes at the force of it, and then when I opened them again, a shot rang out through the cemetery. Slowly, I slid down the wall, as well as Lily and Mira. We were free. And the yellow eyed man was dead.

"What was that?" Mira asked breathlessly, blinking at the spot where the bright light had been.

Bobby looked like he had seen a ghost. "That was John Winchester."

Guess I was right.

Sam and Dean were staring at the body of the yellow eyed man, lying on the ground with a bullet wound blossoming on his chest, right over his heart. "I can't believe it." Sam breathed, raising his head to look at where the five of us remained standing, watching them. "It's finally over."

"Over?" Bobby repeated with a stunned, shake of his head. "Boy, it's just begun."

We spent the next few days at Bobby's with Sam and Dean. It took him those days to summon the courage, but Dean finally admitted to us that he hadn't healed Sam; he'd made a deal and brought him back from the dead. Lily, pale faced, asked how much time he was given.

"One year." Dean whispered, looking down at his hands. "I've got one year before I'm sent to hell."

Sam vowed that he was going to find a way to get him out of the deal, but Dean just shakily smiled and said nothing. I knew it as much as he did; these deals were seal-tight. Nothing could break them. Later, as we packed up to go our separate ways, I cornered Dean in the front yard when we were alone.

"You know, what you did for Sam was-"

"Dumb." He interjected with a tired sigh. "So what now? Are you going to call me an idiot, or scold me?"

I watched him load his bags into the trunk of the impala for a moment, and when he pulled back, waiting for me to answer, I just shook my head. "No. It wasn't dumb, and you aren't an idiot. I would have done the exact same thing for Mira, or Lily."

He squinted at me through the sun, and then held out one of his hands. We shook quietly, a silent understand passing between us before he let go again.

"You're not such a bad hunter, you know. Even if you are unusually short."

I rolled my eyes. "Did you have to ruin the good moment?"

"It was getting too serious for my taste; had to spice things up again."

"Bitch."

He was already started towards the house again, and turned around to flash me a wide grin. "That's what I say." He disappeared inside to find Lily, leaving me outside alone, smiling to myself. As much as I hated him sometimes, Lily was lucky to have found someone like him. My smile faltered slightly. Now if only I could do the same…