10 - None Shall Pass

Sam wasn't sure he heard Bobby right when he got out of the truck, and said, "We hafta cure your brother."

Cure? From what? Being an asshole? That was pretty much baked in already.

But Sam figured it was serious when Bobby carried Dean in. He couldn't move? Also, Dean was bleeding from the neck, which was never good. Although, if it was really serious, he'd already be dead.

Bobby left Dean on the couch in a side room while he went to his office, and Sam followed him there. "It started as a Greek myth, right?" Bobby said, scanning his shelves. He had some of Dean's blood on him, but he didn't seem to notice. "Lamias?"

"Uh, yeah. Why? What's going on?"

"The reason Dean's still alive is 'cause they were trying to turn him."

That stopped Sam cold. "What? Lamias can do that?"

Bobby shrugged, taking a book off the shelf. "Since we're writing the book on them, I guess it's up to us to find out" Bobby abandoned the book he had, toss it on his desk, and found a second tome.

"What are you looking for? I can help."

"Thanks, kid, but I think I finally found it." Bobby checked the index before turning to a page. It was one of his thick, old, dusty books that the title had worn off of long ago. How Bobby knew what it was proved he did have some kind of system in here, even if Sam couldn't follow it for the life of him. "There's this weird purification spell that dates back to ancient Greece, but the records on what it actually purified are long lost to time. I'm wonderin' if it's connected to the lamias somehow."

"That's a reach," Sam said.

Bobby looked up and scowled at him. "I know that. You got any better ideas?"

Now it was Sam's turn to cede the point. No, he didn't. He shook his head. "What I need you to do is lock everything down, and keep watch. I bet the lamias aren't done with us yet."

"Or the snakes."

"Let me know if we're about to get hit. I'm gonna see if I can cure your brother."

Bobby walked past, book tucked under his arm, and Sam hated to say it. But the horror of the possibility had entered his mind, and he felt he had to say it, or it would kill him. "But if you can't ..."

"I'm gonna," Bobby insisted. "I'll find a way. Dean wouldn't quit on us, so I'm not quitting on him. Got it?"

Sam nodded, even though dread sat in his stomach now, turning their triumphant rescue to ash. Was this it? Did they save him, only to have to kill him themselves? But they couldn't. For one, he and Dad would probably kill each other if Dean wasn't there. For two, he didn't want to actually have to kill his own goddamn brother.

As usual, when the despair almost got overwhelming, his thoughts turned to his absent Dad, and quickly became rage. Where the fuck was he? If by some miracle, Sam could get him on the phone, would he even give a shit? Sam knew what was happening here - he couldn't deal with grief, so he was shoving it over into anger, which he could handle more easily. Did he stop it from happening, though? Nope. Rage was just easier, and he knew what terrible things that said about him. But a lot of people were guilty of emotional displacement, right? He was simply another.

He heard Bobby searching for something in another room, and wanted to offer to help, but knew if he needed help, he would ask. Sam had a job to do, and he might as well fucking do it.

He checked every door and made sure they were locked, for all the good that would do, and put down lines of salt, which would only keep demons out, not lamias, but what the hell. Sam also went into Bobby's weapon cache, to see what he could find.

Bobby's shotgun seemed to work extremely well on the lamias. It didn't keep them down or injured, but it knocked them down for a few seconds, which is the very least you could expect from a shotgun blast. Bobby had a sawed off that would be even more devastating, with the caveat that it lessened its range. But if a lamia got in here, stopping power was more important than how far away he was from it.

He grabbed the sawed off and checked for ammo. Right now, it had buckshot in it. Sam swapped it out for hollow points.

He could hear Bobby saying something, but it had the feeling of a chant, so he tuned out and focused on looking out the window that gave him the best view of the front of the lot, holding on to the shotgun so hard his fingers hurt.

Sam tried not to think about what he'd do if he had to shoot Dean. And it was funny how not wanting to think about something made you think of it all the more.

The spell was one of the weirder ones he'd ever read. Bobby was pretty sure he didn't know how to properly pronounce half these words. But he was going ahead with it, because it was all he had.

Bobby really wasn't happy that it called for lighting some myrrh resin in a bowl. Not because he didn't have it - he had enough he could probably barter with some Magi - but because he hated the smell. Still, he did it, and cut his finger so he could draw a chi symbol - which was basically an x - in "clean" blood on Dean's forehead. Once his sinuses started to hurt from the myrrh, and he had Dean's body outlined in salt, he got under way.

Bobby was soon glad he had to concentrate on how to pronounce every word, because six words in, Dean started screaming.

It wasn't angry screaming, it was hideous pain screaming, and Bobby glanced up from the book to make sure snakes hadn't crawled in and started chomping on his face or something. But it looked like nothing had changed. Did that mean it was working, or had he fucked up in some unknown, catastrophic way? Bobby couldn't tell, and at this point, he was committed. So he kept on reading, and Dean kept on screaming. It made him want to bite his own tongue in half. He didn't want to hurt him any more than he was already hurt, but if this was what it took to cure him, fine. It was better than having to kill him.

He was about half way done when Sam shouted, over the din, "We have company!"

Of course they did. Because god forbid they could win one simple battle and have it stay won.

Bobby sped up, hoping speed didn't matter one way or another, and he heard a loud boom from the front, that told him Sam had gotten his sawed off shotgun. That thing was noisy as hell, and kicked like a mule, but could put a hole in something as big as your head. It was a good choice if you wanted something dead, or something for a monster to remember you by.

Dean stopped screaming and fell ominously silent as Bobby read the last few words. Bobby felt something odd, a catch in his breath, that might have been due to the spell, or due to all the myrrh smoke. Dean looked unconscious, and Bobby stepped closer, because he was afraid he wasn't breathing. Holy shit - had he killed him? What if the death omen was due to him fucking up a spell so badly he killed Dean when he meant to save him?

It was then he heard a huge noise in the neighboring room. It was something hitting one of his larger bookcases and taking it down. Shit. "Sam!" he shouted, pulling out the pistol he brought with him, just in case. (It was not for Dean. Bobby told himself this, and made himself believe it.)

Bobby entered the living room to discover he'd been correct. A large bookcase was toppled over, partially balanced on the back of a chair, and books had been vomited all over the place. There was a lump behind the chair and beneath the bookcase that Bobby took to be Sam, as his sawed off was somewhere in the pile. He was at the very least unconscious. If he was more, this bitch wasn't leaving alive.

And there was just the one lamia. Leah, the pretty girl Dean met, who wasn't a girl, and ... no, Bobby couldn't deny it. She was extremely pretty. Too bad she was a monster. Bobby knew it was pointless, but he raised his pistol, so he had a nice clear shot at her face.

Sam had shot her dead center in the chest, an instant kill shot on just about any mortal thing, but not the lamia. The hole was still healing as Bobby watched, growing back like her flesh was some kind of sentient putty. What passed for internal organs and veins reached out for one another, knitting together like they'd never been apart. It was equally fascinating and disgusting. In other strange news, she wasn't bleeding - nothing fell out of her that wasn't immediately absorbed back into her sponge like body. "Do we really need to do this?" Leah said. "You can't stop me, you can't hurt me, and you never really had a plan, did you?"

"You can't have him."

She gave him a smug smirk. "I already have him." She raised her voice, and shouted, "Come on, Dean, let's go!"

Bobby's stomach sunk. It didn't work? It was a long shot. Still, he'd been hoping the universe owed him one by now. It was his own fault. He should have known the universe never pays anything back. It could only take. "Where are the snakes?"

She rolled her eyes. For a brief moment, she had slit shaped pupils. "Oh, mother had a snit fit about you burning down half her property. She stormed off in a huff. But that works out, 'cause Dean and I can start over together somewhere a little less hunter infested." She then craned her neck to see around Bobby. "Dean, come on! Time's wasting."

It was then that Bobby heard a familiar floorboard creak, and his stomach turned to stone. Dean was here.

Blood was smeared on his forehead, where he apparently wiped the x off, and he was standing there blank faced, like an android awaiting programming in a science fiction film. Bobby hoped to see a glimpse of recognition, rage, something, but he seemed perfectly empty. Shit.

Bobby knew what to come would be bad, but he almost didn't care. He'd rather be dead then have to hunt Dean down.

"I bet you're hungry," Leah said, approaching him. "You can have the old guy or the kid. Or both, if you're in a piggy mood. Frankly, I'm pretty full. It's been good hunting lately."

Dean stared at her like he didn't recognize her, or anyone. Bobby was still trying to figure out if there was a way he could save Sam, when Dean said, "Emotional repression one, lamia zero."

Bobby looked back in time to see shock register on Leah's face as Dean pulled out the machete he had hidden behind his back, and she had time to take one step back before Dean brought the blade across her neck viciously and cut her head off.

It fell from her shoulders and did a couple of wonky half rolls across the room, and her body collapsed to the floor. Still bloodless, but not moving.

Bobby couldn't help it. He grabbed Dean in a bear hug, and said, "Goddamn it, boy, you almost gave me a heart attack."

"Bobby, Bobby, enough with the hug, I feel like I've been trampled by a thousand horses," Dean said, his voice raspy from the prolonged screaming. He did give him a pat on the back, though.

He let him go, and Dean stumbled, stopping when he could lean against the wall, almost dropping the machete. But he had the strap looped around his wrist, so it stayed with him. "Is Sammy okay?"

Bobby quickly went to check, almost tripping over Leah's body. Her head was still detached. Was it too far away to reattach to her body? In that case, Bobby was going to throw it in his car crusher. If she thought it was bad now, wait until it was the width of a doily.

He had to shove some books off Sam and pull him out from under the bookcase - which he could see now had a Sam sized hole in it - but before Bobby could check for a pulse, he groaned in pain. "Alive. " Bobby stood up, and hoped no one else heard the firewood like crack of his knees. Damn, he was too old for this shit.

Bobby looked down at Leah's still body, and had to repress the urge to kick it. "How did you know cutting off her head would work?"

Dean, still looking ashen with pain, shook his head. "I didn't. But it's how you kill snakes, right? Cut off the head."

It was how you killed just about everything, but Bobby wasn't about to nitpick. He should have thought of it himself.

Holy shit. They were all still alive. Bobby wondered how long that would last.

They squished Leah's head and body in the car compacter - Bobby had not been fucking kidding about that - at separate times, as all they needed to do was reunite her in the crusher and have her come out whole and angry. After that, they scraped up what was left, which wasn't a whole lot, and burned it in the burn barrel. They then poured those remains in an iron box they filled with salt, locked, and drove seventy five miles to the first Greek orthodox church Bobby had found, and buried her on their sacred land. Being Greek Orthodox might mean absolutely nothing, but it was better safe than sorry.

But they were aware that this might not be the end of her. She might still reform, and come back for revenge. But, the same thing would happen to her if she did, so Bobby hoped she kept that in mind. And of course the mother was still out there. But if they had any luck left, she was out of state, and had no idea what had happened to her wayward daughter.

As for Dean, Bobby had to get a couple of beers in him, and a Tylenol codeine, before he was able to function. He had no idea if what the lamias did to him, the purification spell, or both, left him in so much pain, but something sure had. Until the booze kicked in, Bobby was sure he was going to pass out again. He remained inordinately pale for the rest of the day. But he helped with everything, because Dean wasn't going to let a "small" thing like his own constant physical agony keep him from doing his job.

Sam was okay. He had a black eye, and a couple of bruises, but somehow came out of being knocked across the room and through furniture relatively unscathed. Oh, to be sixteen again.

Bobby told some hunters he knew about the lamias, and to keep an eye out for the Mom. Mainly the only way they had to track her was the bodies she would leave behind, but that would be enough. Bobby hoped he got the chance to plant her before anyone else did.

There was no chance Bobby was sleeping that night. When he came downstairs to the kitchen around two in the morning, he discovered he wasn't alone.

He found Dean sitting at the kitchen table facing the door, the machete on the table, and a bottle of beer in front of him. He'd had the light off, so it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. "Warn someone before you do that, huh?" Dean said.

Bobby almost asked him if he couldn't sleep, but that was obvious, so he didn't. Bobby got a beer of his own and joined him at the table. "You feeling any better?" Bobby asked instead. He couldn't imagine what number of beer Dean was working on, but he looked distressingly sober in spite of it.

He shook his head. "I feel like some giant chewed me to a paste like consistency, then spit me out. But maybe that's what happens when you stop a transformation before it can really take root."

Bobby almost didn't want to know this. But he felt he had to. "You could feel it?"

Dean was still so pale, it made his eyes look ten times greener, and the black circles beneath them look like bruises. "It was like I was being torn apart at the cellular level. It was ... I figured I was done. Thanks for not giving up on me."

"I would never."

"And I'm sorry."

That confused him. "Sorry for what?"

"I almost got us all killed."

Bobby almost choked on his beer. He managed to swallow it down and coughed, and while struggling to breathe, he gave Dean a backhanded slap on the shoulder. "Shut the fuck up" he said, when he was finally able to. "You did no such thing."

"I did. I brought Leah into our lives -"

"Which she woulda been anyways, 'cause we were looking for her. If anything, you speeded up the process. And no one else died while she was with you. Don't forget that."

"That we know of."

"Don't make me hit you again, son."

That at least got a brittle smile from Dean. "I can't believe I fucked up this badly."

"You didn't. A monster stupidly thought you were easy prey. She was wrong."

"Was she?"

Bobby scowled at him. "You keep talking like that, and I'm taking your beer."

Dean held up his hands in mock surrender. "Fine. I'll shut up."

"I don't want you to shut up. I want you to stop blaming yourself. Do you blame Amy, for getting taken in by Leah?"

That genuinely surprised him. "No, of course not. She was a kid."

"Then you don't get to victim blame when you're the victim. Monsters fucking suck, and they can target anyone at any time. You can't blame yourself for getting abused. You think you're better than everyone else?"

"No, but -"

"There's no but. Just because you hunt monsters doesn't mean you always see them coming. Thoughts like that will get you killed quick. You're human. Shit happens. It's no more your fault than Amy's, or any other victim. You were targeted. Blame the monster, never you. You get me? Or are you really gonna make me beat your ass in my own goddamn kitchen?"

That teased a smile out of Dean, which was what he'd been hoping for. Bobby had been through a lot of research on abused kids, and adult children of abusive parents, and it was something he had to get over too. It was always easy to blame yourself, but it was never true. The abuser made the decision to hurt you. You didn't bring it on, you didn't make them; the choice had always been theirs, and to insinuate you had anything to do with it was just another form of abuse. He hated to see Dean mimicking any part of it. "I feel so stupid."

"Don't. They've been under the radar for centuries. Think of how much work it must have been to never have been identified by any hunter. Or at least any hunter who lived to talk about it."

Dean grimaced, peeling the label on his beer bottle. "I hafta admit, I did wonder how they managed that."

"Because they're good at what they do. Hear me? Real good."

He nodded, but he was still looking at his beer bottle like it was fascinating. "Can't complain about being beaten by the best, huh?"

"Exactly. And when it counted, we beat their ass. So who's the best now, huh?"

Dean almost smiled, but not quite. "Have there been a lot of ... demon omens or something lately?"

Bobby hadn't expected the conversation to go in that direction, but if he wasn't blaming himself, that had to be a positive. "Not that I know of. Why?"

"When Leah was trying to change me, she and her mother had a weird conversation ... they seemed to think something bad was on the way, or was going to happen in the near future."

"Like what?"

He shrugged. "They didn't elaborate. Leah also called me a vessel. Someone's vessel."

Bobby sat forward, not liking the sound of that at all. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I know, right? I have no idea. She also said my blood tasted divine. Not as in great, as in divine divine. What the fuck does that mean?"

It felt like Dean had thrown a cup of water in his face. Divine - that word again! First from Teri, and now from these things. Well, they were monsters, so you had to take whatever they said with a grain of salt. But what a coincidence.

Bobby suddenly wondered if he had it all wrong. He just assumed - if there was a single iota of sense in Teri's prediction - that Dean would be the demonic one, since he was a hellraiser, and Sam would be the angelic one, since he was as sweet as you could hope. But what if personality wasn't the tell? What if it was something deeper or stranger?

Yeah, Dean did like to carouse, and live like life was one big green room after party, but he was also willing to die to save his family, or a stranger who wouldn't give him the time of day. Was that not, by definition, divine? As for Sam, yes, the same was true of him. But what was also true of him was he had his secrets, and his plans. Sam really should have cleared the browser history after looking up colleges on Bobby's computer. Would scheming be considered at all demonic? What if Bobby had it wrong from day one? Dean was the one touched by the divine, and Sam was the one touched by the demonic. But what did that mean exactly?

Bobby still had no proof anything divine existed. And Teri's prediction was horseshit, and he knew it. Not one of these boys was touched by anything demonic. To even think about this twice was a waste of his time and energy. Dean was waiting - hoping - for an answer, and Bobby wanted to comfort him. What could he say? "They were monsters who wanted to make you one of them. Who gives a fuck what they said? The only thing that matters is, someone took a spin in the car crusher tonight, and it wasn't you. You're still human, and one of them is a pancake. You won. Take the victory."

"No, we won. Thanks, Bobby."

He shook his head. "No evil bitch is getting my nephew."

Dean smiled, and sat back in his chair, wiping tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. They sat for a few moments in companionable silence, until Dean said, "Sam's gonna be insufferable now that he's discovered a mythical monster that actually exists, right?"

Bobby shrugged. "Maybe, but you can rub it in his face you were the one who figured out how to temporarily kill them. Sounds like a stalemate to me."

"Oh good. I get to be insufferable?"

"Don't act like you've never been. I know you, kid."

Dean snickered at that before taking a swig from his beer, and Bobby felt like this was a step in the right direction.

They were all alive, and they got one of the child killers. It was only a matter of time before they got the other. Things were ugly there for a while, but they made it through.

Like he'd just said to Dean, Bobby decided to take the victory. They could be few and far between. But he had both his boys, and they were safe and intact.

You could hardly ask for more, could you?

The End