Chapter 11

July 13, 1988. Wayne, Nebraska

Panting.

Hunger.

The light outlined the man in front of him and he could see a steady pulsing in that outline. Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. Not breath but blood. His eyes narrowed, the pupils expanding and he saw the pulse against the base of the man's throat. Da-dum. Da-dum. Speeding up a little as the man's eyes lifted to look at him. Da-dum-da-dum.

For a moment, as his muscles contracted and they looked at each other, he saw anguish in the dark green eyes on the other side of the narrow trail. For a moment, he remembered that he knew this man. It was too late. He had changed. He had become. Something else. Something savage. Something … not human.

He leapt and his eyes rolled back as the fangs tore through the man's throat, and that bright pulse shot the blood into his mouth, the taste filling him –

Dean jerked to wakefulness, his teeth slamming together against the scream that throbbed in his chest, his hands clutching at the air. The dim quiet of the room gradually filtered through the flickering images and sounds that crashed and clanged in his mind, and he sucked in a deep breath, forcing it out and pulling in another as his heart beat slowed down, the twitch and jump of his nervous system eased.

Turned.

He rolled onto one shoulder, shunting aside that thought as he winced at the ache of his body, a deep soreness that seemed to radiate from his bones outward to a pervasive and all-encompassing pain through his skin. He could hardly see, and sounds seemed muffled, as if his ears were stuffed with cotton-wool. The broth the house-keeper had brought up earlier had been hot, but that had been all he could tell about it. It'd tasted of nothing in particular and had smelled bland. From his father's expression, that was a reaction that'd been limited to him.

Gil said that in the follow-up notes of the Campbells', the victims had spoken of the disorientation of the return to the normal range of their senses, of feeling blind and deaf, unable to taste or feel or smell. The disease, or curse, that a vampire's blood inflicted heightened everything as it invaded the body. It would take days for him to get used to the difference.

He hadn't had any control over the fierce and savage sensations and needs that had filled him at all. The nightmare had only shown the truth. If his father hadn't been fast enough, he would have killed him there, torn out his throat and drained his blood and then nothing could've saved him.

Monster.

The conscious memories were fragmented and disjointed, a kaleidoscope of colour and shape and sound patched together, lacking cohesion and meaning. He remembered his little brother's face, remembered vividly Sammy's blue-turning-to-hazel eyes widening as he'd backed away. He remembered the weight of the creature on his chest, the violet glitter of its eyes, cold blood filling his mouth. The pressure on his chest vanishing and taking a breath … and feeling the viscous liquid trickle down his throat. He remembered the thrum of the car's tyres beneath him and the crunch and popping of gravel as his father had slowed and pulled over. He remembered the agonising burn of the pain, remembered he couldn't get away from it.

Lifting a hand close to his face he could just make out that it looked normal. Nicks and healed over cuts from practising with the heavy Bowie knife his father had brought home for him, practise with machete and the long, split bamboo swords. Nails cut short, clean under the edges. It hurt to make a fist, and he forced his fingers tighter, seeing the bones shine through the thinned out skin over them.

Everything hurt.

The door opened and he glimpsed a shadow against the wall, lifting his head and looking that way, eyes squinting almost shut as he tried to make out who it was.

"Just me, Dean," Jim said softly, walking to the bed and sitting in the chair beside it.

Dean felt his hand lifted, fingers uncurling as a big, warm hand enclosed it. His eyes closed as he felt a warm rush of relief, flooding through from that hand, fluxing over him. Behind it, he felt something else, complex and tangled.

"Your dad'll be up in a bit," Jim said, leaning close. "Get some sleep. I won't leave you."

The feelings blurred and dissipated, leaving him as Jim released his hand and brushed his fingers over his hair. He wanted to tell Jim that he was afraid to sleep, afraid of what came in his dreams, of what he saw and felt. The words wouldn't come out.

But something lingered of the warming comfort the priest had passed to him. Letting his eyelids fall, he wasn't aware when he slipped below consciousness, his breathing slowing to a light and steady rhythm.

John looked at the man – mentor, partner, friend – sitting opposite in the overstuffed armchair. Abely was leaning back, his head tilted slightly, the overhead light shadowing his eyes as he regarded the half-full glass of whiskey in his hands.

"Really wound yourself into a twist over this, didn't you, John?" he said quietly, one side of his mouth curling up as he lifted his gaze.

It wasn't the reaction he'd been expecting and he shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. "I –"

Leaning forward, Abely set the glass down on the small side table beside him, waving his hand dismissively at the attempt at an explanation. "Didn't Millie tell you the situation?"

"She – uh – she said that you two weren't – uh –"

"Huh, so no," Abely said, his smile widening a little as he watched John's gaze falter and slide away. "Not many of the fair sex who'll give it to you straight without tweaking the mystery. The ladies do like their drama."

He exhaled, picking up his glass and swirling the amber liquid around the bottom. "When I was a kid, we had a sweep of mumps through our region," he said. "Most everyone got through it without thinking anything of it. I was one of the lucky ones who got it bad, got it at the wrong age, and it left its mark."

John frowned, not sure where Abely was going with this seemingly unrelated recollection. Abely's mouth twisted down as he saw it.

"After puberty, in boys, sometimes the disease causes sterility," he told him bluntly. "Doc said it was it rare, but it happens. Millie knew, when we got together. Told me it didn't matter."

He swallowed the last mouthful in the glass and put it down. "It did matter, a'course. More and more as time went by. She wasn't happy and I couldn't do anything about it, and I told her she should find someone else."

"But she didn't," John guessed, looking down at the floor as he tried not to imagine the pain between the two of them.

Abely smiled, a little derisively. "No, she didn't. Told me she loved me and she couldn't see herself feeling the same way about anyone else. So, we figured out a compromise," he said, one shoulder lifting in a slight shrug. "I was on the road a lot, hunting to the south-west and gone for weeks at a time."

"That's what happened with Oran Belthorpe?"

The sharp snort was loud, slightly bitter. "Oh yeah, Oran rolled into Blue Earth a couple of years earlier, pretty much as full of himself as a young rooster," Abely told him, rubbing a hand over his brow. "Just about got himself eaten on a hunt we were on for a rugaru that popped into a population of a town over the border. He figured he'd gotten one up on me, got bent out of shape something proper when I got back to town and Millie didn't give him another glance."

He looked at John's face, seeing the transparent emotions crossing it. "With you, I think, it's different," he said slowly.

"That doesn't worry you?"

"Hell, no," Abely said. "I told you, I don't question her loyalty, John. Some women, they got more than enough love in them to go around."

John looked down at the almost-untouched glass beside him. "And if there is a child, Abely?"

Abely shrugged. "We'll figure that out when it happens."

Climbing the stairs back up to the guest room, John thought about it. With Mary, it'd been everything – heart, body and soul, given completely. They hadn't started out that way, he remembered with a slightly rueful grin as he opened the door to the room and silently slipped inside, closing it behind him, but it'd been less than three months after meeting her that he'd known for sure that she was the one he wanted to spend his life with. Raise a family with. Grow old with.

Jim nodded to him and rose from the chair as John walked to the bed.

"He's been sleeping," the priest whispered as he passed him and John sat down.

He looked at his son's face, peaceful and soft, the long dark blond lashes lying against cheeks that still held the slight roundness of childhood. The door clicked quietly as Jim left, and he leaned an elbow on the mattress, propping his head against his hand and resisting the impulse to wake Dean, just to see the green eyes clear and his boy looking out of them without anything else there.

Heat trembled along his nerves as he let himself remember the garden and Millie's skin, sliding over his. He had two children already hostage to the demon's threats, he thought, and no way of knowing what that might bring to them. He didn't know if he could cope with the idea of creating another who might be placed into that same danger.

At the same time and to be fair, Millie had given his family nothing but her steadfast love and care, and if she asked it of him, he wasn't self-deceitful enough to pretend that he wouldn't give her whatever he could, a feeling reinforced by the purely male atavistic drive to spread his genes. A child would be protected by Abely, protected and cherished and loved by all three.

I want a big family, Mary had said to him, the memory stealing in suddenly. She'd been curled against his side in the warm dark of their bedroom, her voice a little defiant against the fear she'd had. He'd wanted a big family as well. Neither of them had had siblings and he'd thought there would be time, time for them to have the family they'd planned.

The fear had been there because it'd taken a while for Mary to get pregnant with Dean, and a long time for Sammy. Mary hadn't said anything to him, anymore than he'd said anything to her about the months, then years that'd rolled by, punctuated by the wrapped bundles, seeping blood, in the bathroom trash every month. He'd thought later – a lot later – that maybe they'd wanted it too much, that after a while there'd been too much pressure about that unspoken fear. He didn't know. Mary had been over the moon when she'd quickened with Dean. And that had been the end of even discussing it. And he'd still thought they'd had time. And then they hadn't.

Dean shifted, brows drawing together and John looked down at him, watching the rapid movement of the boy's eyes beneath his lids, the peace gone from his face as he sucked in a deep breath and rolled sharply onto his back.

"Dean," he said, resting his hand lightly over the boy's shoulder.

He tightened the grip when Dean moaned, his legs thrashing against the covers, head turning from side to side.

"Dean, wake up."

The boy's eyes snapped open on a sharp, indrawn breath and John saw his jaw clench, his face harden as he struggled to keep it all inside. He's only nine, he thought helplessly. He shouldn't be having nightmares like this, not at nine. You brought this onto them, his dead wife's accusation wailed inside his head. Monsters and demons and teaching them what was out there.

He bowed his head as his hand stroked over Dean's forehead, a soft murmur of unintelligible reassurances spilling out without thought. Deep down, he knew she was right. He felt the guilt of raising them this way every moment of every day. I can't leave them unprotected, he told himself. I can't leave them not knowing, able to be taken by surprise.

But Dean had been taken by surprise. Less than a mile from his home.

"Dad?"

The hoarse croak broke through his thoughts and he looked at his son, nodding to him.

"Just a nightmare, chief," he said, swallowing against the lie of that. It was all a nightmare, and there was no just about any of it. "You okay?"

Wriggling up against the pillows, Dean nodded. "Yeah."

He looked around the room, brow creasing again. "Where are we?"

For a long second, John couldn't draw a breath in, fear stabbing through him at his son's expression. He forced his lungs to expand, feeling the muscles loosen reluctantly. He told himself that the disorientation meant nothing.

"We're at Gil's," he said slowly. "In Nebraska."

"Oh," Dean said, looking back at him.

"You remember what happened, Dean?" John asked carefully, watching the expressions flicker over Dean's face.

"Uh, there was a vampire," Dean said, frowning as he tried to retrieve the memories. It was hard. They were confused, out of order, too bright, too full of wrongness. "At home."

"That's right," John said. "Do you remember what happened with the vampire?"

"It, um …" he started to say, then flinched violently out of his father's grip as that memory returned. Pain. Cold liquid reeking of copper and iron and salt. The taste in his mouth, over his tongue. The burning that had gone on and on.

John watched him worriedly, uncertain if he should be pushing at those memories or letting Dean bury them, forget them.

"It turned me," the boy said finally, his eyes bright when he raised them to his father's. "I'm sorry."

"Oh god, Dean," John said, his voice thickening as he leaned forward and gathered the boy in his arms, holding him tightly. "It wasn't your fault! Don't think that, not ever. You didn't do anything wrong, boy."

Through the warmth of the comforting embrace, Dean felt his father's fear and pain, swallowing hard against the tumultuous emotions he couldn't separate from his own. He should've been alert, he thought, should've been on top of things, not messed up in his worry. He remembered the storm, rumbling in the distance, the heat on the fields, the airlessness in the shadows of the woods. Remembered not looking around or listening, just trudging down the trail, wrestling with conflicting thoughts, all edged in emotion he didn't understand.

"Dean," John said, his grip easing as he looked down at his son. "None of this, nothing that's happened, has been your fault, you understand me?"

His father's eyes were shining in the gloom of the bedroom, his expression almost pleading for him to believe it. Dean ducked his head and nodded, unaccountably relieved when his father pulled him close again, drowning him in a fierce surge of protectioncaresorrowdefiance that pushed aside his fear and uncertainty. He felt the emotions raise walls around him. He felt safe.

July 14, 1988. Wayne, Nebraska

Bill looked up as the clump of boots stopped outside his office door and Trenton knocked briefly as he opened the door.

"Elkins' gone," the dour hunter said without preamble. "Belthorpe and Morton scarpered too."

"Gone up to Gil's?" Bill asked, half-rising from the chair behind the desk, his gaze skipping around the room for his shotgun.

"Nah," Trenton said, dismissively shaking his head. "Elkins' took off west. The other two were heading back for Blue Earth. Corn followed them to be sure."

Looking at him, Bill felt a spurt of relief, tempered slightly by the sour knowledge that by the time John and Jim returned to Blue Earth, there'd be a whole lot more rumours flying around the small town. "You tell Millie?"

The wraith-hunter nodded. "Lorena's taking her and the boy up to Gil's."

"Good. They can look after John's boys. Tell Lorena to bring John, Jim and Abely back with her, we need to talk about what happened in Lincoln."

"Yeah, will do," he said, looking at the big, blond man facing him a little hesitantly. "Bill, I got family down in Mississippi, should I be goin' down there and doin' something to … protect them? Lotta talk here after what happened to Lucius, folks are nervous and … seems like it's not just here neither."

Bill's gaze dropped to the desk for a moment, then he nodded. "You know if COG has reached down that far south, Trent?"

"No, don't think so," Trenton replied, his brow furrowed as he thought of the factions in the cities to the south. "My daughter tells me it's mostly the tent preachers they're seeing down there."

"Good," Bill said. "Doesn't change the situation, but that's good. Yeah, go on down and make sure they're protected, make sure they know not to trust their eyes or their friends and neighbours more'n they have to." He looked up, dark brown eyes narrowed a little. "You tell anyone who's worried about their families to do the same. Better prepared than sorry."

"Right."

Bill watched the man pull the door closed behind him and sat down again, his eyes drawn back to the map on the wall. It showed the centre of the country, and there were six cities that were now surrounded by red pins, glaring against the pale pastel rendering of the surrounding regions.

Kansas City had been an eye-opener, he thought. Under strict curfew, even the city's normal citizens were beginning to question the rule of the party they'd voted in, muttering over civil rights and people disappearing. Sometimes, he and Lorena had heard, the missing came back. Different. Not themselves. Sometimes, people had said in low, frightened voices, they didn't.

Crime – assault, murder, robbery and rape – had gone down, so far that it was virtually non-existent in the tightly controlled city. Vice had gone up, and areas that had previously been industrial, manufacturing and refining and providing employment to the citizens of the city, now filled with black-painted windows and neon signs advertising not-so-discreetly the services that could be found within. Not one book-store remained in the city limits, though they'd found an old couple running a swap-meet surreptitiously near the border. Hospitals had been closed. Schools were shut and locked.

He let out his breath tiredly. The traps of Solomon had worked.

He'd spent the better part of his life reading the mythology, the demonologies and the stories Gil or Emerson had been able to find for him. None of it had prepared him for what they'd seen. Most of the men they'd found possessed, had exorcised and sent the hellspawn back to Hell, had been dying, their bodies ridden too hard, corpulent, diseased and rotting. Those who survived couldn't speak of the experience, withdrawn into whatever recesses of their minds they'd found to hide behind and either catatonic or hysterical when the smoke had been pulled out and sent on.

And to the last one, the demons had been gleefully confident – of their indestructibility, of their return to the earthly plane. A war was coming, they'd said, jerking and dancing in the traps. A war to end all wars and Hell would be the victor.

A shiver ran up him, shaking his hand and almost spilling the whiskey in the glass he held.

He was beginning to think that his wife was right, and the Keeper had to be informed. That thought was no more pleasant than any of the others he'd entertained. And it begged the question, he thought uneasily, of why she'd been so silent with all this going on.

John watched Millie lead Sammy up the steep porch stairs, the little boy climbing quickly and running to him when he reached the top. Looking over his son's tousled head, he watched Millie lift her face to Abely, arms winding around the hunter's neck and drawing him down to kiss him. He felt a slight pang at the sight, closing his eyes and pressing his cheek against the little boy's in his arms. She'd had the right of it, he realised gradually. They both loved Abely, and the stab he felt was not for himself, but for the man standing beside him.

He opened his eyes as Lorena reached the porch, her deep voice cutting across his thoughts.

"Abely, Bill asked if you'd come back to the roadhouse, you and Jim and John," she said, glancing at him briefly before turning back. "Debrief on KC and Lincoln."

"Are the others back yet?" John asked, setting Sammy down gently.

"No." She looked past Abely to the open door as Jim came out. "A few more days."

"Where's Dean?" Sammy asked, tilting his head back to look up at his father.

"Upstairs, resting, Sammy," John answered distractedly.

"I'll take him up," Millie said quickly, reaching for Sam's hand. Her eyes met his and she stepped close to him, slipping an arm around him and pressing a soft kiss against his cheek. Desire flickered in him, distantly, and he damped it down, nodding as she moved away, leading Sammy into the house.

"What happened with Elkins and the others?" he asked Lorena, not wanting to leave the house unprotected.

"They left," she told the men shortly. "Your boys'll be safe here."

John refrained from retorting that Dean hadn't been safe within a half-mile of his own home, nodding tiredly. The house was warded, Gil and Millie were here. He and Abely would be back before dark.

"I need – I'll be back in a minute," he said, turning and walking into the house, hurrying for the stairs. He couldn't leave without checking on his son.

In the bedroom, Millie sat in the chair beside the bed; Sammy was curled up next to his brother. Dean looked up as he came in, pushing himself a little higher against the pillows, hampered by the arms wrapped around his ribs. John saw his quickly-hidden wince, Dean's head turning away.

"I'm going down to the roadhouse," he said, looking from his sons to Millie. She nodded and he caught the gleam of faint alarm in Dean's eyes and adding quickly, "Not for long."

Millie slid her hand across the covers, squeezing Dean's lightly. "Sammy and me'll be here with Dean."

John saw his son's uneasiness fade a little at her touch, and smiled, stepping closer and ruffling Sam's hair as he directed the pointed instruction to his eldest. "You get some rest."

"Yes, sir," Dean murmured automatically, his gaze slipping from his father to Millie and back. The tension that had been between them, that had been so inexplicable, so worrying, had gone.

He watched his father turn and leave, feeling only a comfortable certainty of love through his little brother's deadweight on his chest, through Millie's fingers, closed around his hand and warming it.

"You're too peaked, Dean," Millie said as the door clicked behind his father. "Abely and your father will have some jawin' to do with the others for a couple of days, and we need to get you back to normal so's we can get home as soon as they're done."

"Aw," Sammy said sleepily. "I like it here."

Dean looked at her gratefully as she peeled his brother away, contradicting Sammy gently. "It's a good place to visit, Sammy, but it's not home. Come on, let's go see Mae about getting your brother some real food."

"We found the same thing in Lincoln, not so entrenched yet … but yeah, there were a lot of folks disappearing," Abely said, looking at Bill.

"Would the Keeper know?" Ellen asked, looking from Bill to Jim. "If a Gate had been opened?"

"A Gate's been opened alright," Jim said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Question now is – how many more has it opened?"

"Gates need blood," Bill said abruptly. "A lot of blood."

"And folks are disappearing," Darby said softly, leaning back in his chair. He looked at Ellen. "Keeper should've told us these things, been setting us to work, a long time before it got this bad."

John looked at the faces surrounding the table. "Is that true?"

"That's her job," Ellen said, turning to look at Bill. "If something happened to her, why didn't a new Keeper rise? I thought it happened automatically?"

"Maybe she's not dead," Jim suggested, leaning on his elbow.

"Not dead and not doin' her job doesn't help us one way or t'other," Darby argued unhappily. "Someone's going to have to take a look."

Abely nodded, glancing at John. "Soon as Bobby and the rest are back, and we know what's happening south, we'll go. We'll need the consensus of the Council."

"They'll be here," Lorena promised, lifting her chin and leaving no doubt in the others watching her that they would be, even if she had to drag them all here herself. "Can we afford to wait for the rest?"

"We can't afford not to," Jim said firmly. "At the moment, it's clear that we're going to have strategise a lot more effectively. The demons are talking of war, here. And Darby's right. People are disappearing and there are a lot of demons walking around now, which begs the logical supposition that at least one Gate has been opened. We can't afford to lose our people by going in half-cocked."

"But we don't think these COG cells are actually opening the way, do we?" Ellen asked, the overhead light shadowing her eyes. "I mean, the demons took advantage of them being around, the party didn't open the way?"

"Seems that way," Abely said slowly. "The first demon might've let the others through but it wasn't until the organisation started to get into power on its own that we saw more of them."

"Consent must be given, the laws are clear about that," Bill added. John looked at him.

"I thought the law said that the demons couldn't come onto this plane of existence?" he questioned truculently, feeling as if nothing that he'd learned so far was strong enough to hold on to.

Bill ducked his head. "True enough."

"Will this … Keeper … know why that law was able to be broken?" John asked, looking from Bill to Jim. "If it was supposed to be unbreakable?"

"Maybe," Jim hedged uneasily.

July 15, 1988.

Caleb looked around the room with undisguised interest.

"Paint a picture, lasts longer," Dean told him disparagingly.

The older boy turned back and grinned at him. "Never been past the front hall in this house, Winchester, cut me some slack."

The grin faded as he studied the younger boy. "You really got turned, huh?"

Dean looked away. He didn't get a sense from Caleb that it'd changed the way he thought about him, other than an overwhelming curiosity to know what it'd been like. But it raised the spectre that'd begun to haunt him about the other kids, the other people in the town.

"I got cured," he said, almost curtly. "Doesn't that count?"

Caleb shook his head. "It's not like that, man. Most of the folks don't know about Elkins, hell, I wouldn't know if Moses hadn't been here, back then. They heard all that crap that Belthorpe and Morton were spouting, most of it misquoted from Elkins anyway and just swallowed it, not even thinking about the truth. Miz Harvelle's going through a process of re-education. She says it just takes time for the rumour mills to process it all."

Dean chewed on the corner of his lip uncertainly. By the time he got home, he'd be more of a pariah in the small town than he already was. It didn't matter, he figured Hum and Mick would ignore most of what they heard. The rest didn't count.

"What's going on out there?"

Caleb shrugged, relieved to let go of that topic. He didn't know how to describe the paranoia of most of the hunters in town, closed-minded in a fear that didn't need a basis. "Most of the hunters are back. They're closeted in Bill's office, breakfast to supper time. No one knows what they're talking about for sure, but I overhead Moses tell Lorena that Abely and your dad are going to find the Keeper."

Dean frowned. "The who?"

"The Keeper," Caleb repeated, brows rising at Dean's non-comprehending expression. "Dude, you are seriously uneducated."

The frown deepened to a scowl. "Then freakin'-well educate me!"

"The Keeper's the Chosen One," Caleb said, leaning closer. "The one who keeps watch on all the planes and tells the hunters if things are going to hell."

Dean felt his brows rise. "Things are going to hell, why hasn't this Keeper said anything about it?"

"Apparently, there's something wrong," Caleb said, his face screwing up. "They're not talking it about much but we should've been told about the demons when the first one showed up, and they're worried."

Dean turned that over and filed it away. He might be able to find out more from his father, or Abely or even Jim. "So, this Keeper – who is he? What does he do?"

Caleb's gaze cut away uncomfortably. "It's Council stuff. I know that none of the hunters know who the Keeper is going to be, until it happens. The Keepers live for hundreds of years, usually. A new one is Chosen when they die."

"They're not human?"

"Yeah, they are, born human and become hunters, like everyone else, but when they're Chosen they change, stop ageing, start having visions …" he said, trailing away as he reached the end of what he knew for sure. "I don't know that much about it."

"Huh."

"Yeah."

The silence stretched out between the two boys for a few minutes, Dean lost in his thoughts and how he could possibly find out more when he got home, Caleb sneaking glances at the younger boy's face, still slightly hollowed out, cheekbones and jawline and temples sharper-edged, more prominent.

"Dean," he ventured, unable to contain the need to know any longer. "What'd it feel like?"

Dark green eyes focussed on him. "It hurt."

Caleb laughed uncomfortably. "That it?"

The long exhale was loud in the silence of the room as Dean studied his friend. "It was confusing," he said after a moment. "Everything was too bright, too loud, the colours were all wrong –" He stopped, a sudden vivid memory of the sun flashing into his mind's eye. It'd been violet. He shook his head. "It burned – all the time – and it wasn't me, deciding what to do. It was something else."

The hunger, he thought. Almost a separate entity, it'd driven everything.

"What about the cure?" Caleb asked diffidently, his head tilting as he looked sideways at the younger boy.

"I don't remember much about that," Dean lied smoothly. "Dad said I was out of it when we got here, then the-the, uh, process, knocked me out again." He rubbed his throat reflexively. "It hurt too, when I woke up."

"Moses said Elkins was twisted up because the cure didn't work on his wife. She didn't feed but she wasn't, um, sane, afterwards and he had to kill her."

Dean blinked at him. It explained Gil's daily questions, he thought, the pieces dropping into place. His father's sudden worry, when he'd woken and couldn't remember what'd happened. Mae's wariness when she brought him food. They were waiting for him to lose his mind. He looked at Caleb.

"You think I'm going nuts?" he asked him bluntly.

"I think you've always been nuts, Winchester," Caleb said with a slight grin. "Wouldn't be able to tell the difference."

"Whatta pal."

"At your service." The grin widened for a moment then fell away. "When do you get out of here?"

"Tomorrow, I think," Dean said, looking back at the window. The curtains were open, the late afternoon sunshine coming in obliquely, lighting up the armoire and the rich details of the painting on the wall. He could see without squinting. Could hear again, even the faintest noises registering, finally. He was still sore, a little. His father said that would work out with exercise. He was still sleeping a lot. Nine, sometimes ten hours a night.

They turned as the door opened and Millie came in, holding a tray and smiling at them. "Caleb, Moses is downstairs waiting for you, honey."

She set the tray on the side of the bed as Caleb leaned forward, hand extended. Dean took it, Caleb's longer fingers closing tightly around his. No trace of fear or uneasiness in the grip, Dean realised, feeling his chest loosen at the knowledge. He still had a friend.

"I'll catch you around, Winchester," Caleb told him lightly.

"Yeah, be good," Dean said, matching his tone.

"I'll be careful," Caleb tossed back at him in response, pivoting on the ball of his foot and walking out.

"How're you feeling?" Millie asked, moving the tray over him.

"Alright," Dean said, looking down at the plates hungrily, then back up at her as she straightened. "We leaving tomorrow?"

"Looks like," Millie said. "First thing."

"Good."

She smiled at him and gestured to the food. "Mae just about pitched a fit at the very thought of making those, threatened me with hellfire at the suggestion, so eat them before they get cold."

He lifted the domed silver lid and grinned down at the split round rolls, topped with salad and a thick round of charred ground meat, glistening with pale golden strips of fried onions and home-made tomato conserve.

July 17, 1988. Minnesota.

He stood in a field of marsh grass, the silver-green stalks hip-high and bending and bowing with a capricious and wandering breeze that stalked its way over the flat land. In front of him, the house had been built on stilts, seemingly propped up on one side by a huge beech that towered over it, the window panes reflecting the morning sun, mirrored eyes, showing nothing of what lay inside.

Walking closer, he frowned as the daylight dimmed, the bright blue of the sky above fading abruptly to a greyish mauve and the sunshine disappearing. The wind picked up and around him, the grass hissing as it bowed deeper, eddies gleaming silver against the dulled green.

On the high porch, his father was waving at him, and he waded through the grass, feeling the ground softening beneath his feet, the soil gleaming with moisture, sucking at his boots. He could see a path, wooden boards raised above the swampy ground and he headed for it, ducking his head as the wind blew harder against him, pushing at him now, plucking at his clothes and smearing them flat, backing and turning.

Reaching the boardwalk, he clambered up onto it and looked down at his boots. They were coated ankle-high in dark brown mud. It dripped and fell off onto the weathered, silvery boards as he walked toward the house, leaving a trail. Heavy drops of rain began to fall and he walked faster, pulling his coat collar up as they hit him, spotting the leather and his jeans, darkening the timber slats of the path to charcoal.

He glanced up at the house and started to run, the rain pelting down now, soaking him through, dripping from his hair and eyelashes and chin. His father was still standing on the porch, waving furiously at him. In a window on the second story, a face appeared, indistinct behind the water sheeting down the glass, pale and framed in fiery red, the features little more than dark shadows. He stopped, staring at the window and the face disappeared.

"Dean!" His father shouted above the noise of the rain hitting the fields, hammering the wooden boardwalk.

"Dean," Millie said, her arm around his shoulders, tightening slightly as he jerked awake. "You okay?"

The car was warm and dry. He could feel Sammy's head, heavy and unmoving on his leg, his cheek resting against Millie's side. The engine growled softly and the tyres were crunching over gravel, an occasional ping from rocks thrown up at the undercarriage adding an arrhythmic beat. In the front seat, his father was still, concentrating on the road. Beside John, head tipped back and a soft, whistling snore issuing from his nose, Gil was asleep, his golden hair spilling over the seat back.

"What?" He looked up at Millie, straightening as much as Sammy's weight would allow, aware that his leg was numb. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay," he said, replaying her question as he looked around. "Where are we?"

"Not far from home," she said quietly. "You were … moving around a little, did you have a bad dream?"

"No," he said, closing his eyes as the memory of the dream came back to him. "Not – not a bad dream." A weird dream, he thought.