A/N: Thanks everyone who reviewed the previous chapter! I do apologize for the mean cliffhanger, and I should probably say the same thing in advance for this chapter... :)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

He would never admit it to Sam, but Dean definitely needed a night on his own to nurse the post-birthday hangover he had earned. Sam claimed to have spent his time at Stanford studying, but based on the alcohol tolerance the kid had built up, that wasn't all he had done.

Anyway, Dean having the motel room to himself for the night was a good thing, and if Sam had any sort of game he would get his own room for tonight. Dean was expecting to be left blissfully alone until morning. Which was why Dean was surprised when Jess' name popped up on his caller ID.

"Congratulations," he answered. "Sammy already told me he was planning on proposing. Now hang up the phone and go back to doing inappropriate things to my brother in public."

"Dean." Jess' voice came through loud and panicked. "You need to come here."

Dean sat up straight and gripped the phone tighter. "Where are you, Jess?"

A heavy breath hit the phone. "By the Impala. Parked behind the restaurant. Dean, something's happened to Sam. You need to get over here to help. He was supposed to bring the car and he didn't come back and now he's not here, and I don't know what to do, Dean!"

The sound of the TV, the ache in his head, and his encroaching lethargy all snapped away, replaced with singular focus on what Jess was saying. Sam couldn't be missing. He was smart and strong and he just couldn't be missing. Dean would shoot whatever was responsible in its freaking face for doing this.

He stomped his feet into his boots and threw on a jacket. "Okay, Jess, take a deep breath," he ordered.

She sobbed into the phone. "Dean, you have to help me!"

He would shoot the thing another time just for making Jess cry. "I will," he promised. "I'll get over there as soon as I can. Listen to me, Jess: can you get into the car?"

She took a deep, shaky breath. "Door was ajar," she replied quietly.

"Okay. So, Jess, what you need to do is get into the car and lock all the doors. There should be a gun and holy water in the glove box. Take those out; keep them on your lap. I have to hang up now—"

"Dean!"

"I need to call a cab!" Dean snapped, sharper than he intended. "I'll get there as soon as I can, okay? Just wait for me."

"Okay," Jess agreed. "Okay."

The cab company promised a ten minute wait, which sure as hell wasn't going to cut it for Dean. Instead, he jogged over to the motel parking lot and stole the first car he saw. Getting caught and having his credibility shot in the town wasn't enough of a deterrent right now. He got across town within minutes, and found the Impala parked behind the restaurant Sam had planned on taking Jess to.

Jess scrambled out of the car as he approached.

"Dean!" She flung her arms around him, and he held her tightly, if a little uncomfortably. Jess didn't usually demand this type of reassurance, but he had never seen her in this situation before.

"What happened?" Dean demanded, pulling back a little so he could see her face.

"It was sleeting, so Sam went to get the car," Jess explained, wiping the corner of her eye with her jacket sleeve. "I was waiting at the restaurant and I felt something attack him. It… it knocked him unconscious and brought me down too. When I woke up, I came out here and couldn't find Sam anywhere.

"Nothing on the ground to indicate where they went?" Dean bent down to take a look himself.

"The snow's covered everything up," she lamented.

"Anyone at the restaurant know what happened?"

"I didn't ask," she confessed. "I had a hard enough time convincing them to not call the police."

The cops would just draw additional attention to them, ask all sorts of awkward questions, and try to make them stay in town, three things that Dean really didn't need right now.

"What if it was the demon, Dean? It wants to kill Sam. We have to find him; we have to make sure he's safe!"

"We'll find him, Jess, I promise." He blocked out her unsteady breath, forcing himself to focus. They needed to approach this properly instead of running around and shooting at everything that moved. He was sure as hell going to get Sam back, which meant he had to work as a hunter here. "Look, Jess, you'll feel if Sam's hurt any more than he is, right?"

Jess nodded. "I think he's still unconscious. I'm trying to stay connected to him as much as I can."

"Good. Look, we're going to head back to the motel room now. We need to research the weather patterns of the area, check out reports for cattle mutilations and see if there's been enough activity to even point to the demon. We can't just assume that's what it was."

Jess nodded tightly again. Dean guided her to the passenger seat, and slipped into the car after her. He made a note to himself to pick up the stolen car later on and drove them back to the motel in the Impala.

"You go on in and start pulling up some weather maps," Dean instructed when they reached their room. "I'll be right there." Jess entered the room. As soon as the door shut, Dean pulled out his cell phone.

He hit the speed dial and waited impatiently as the phone rang. Predictably, it reached voicemail, and Dean jiggled his leg through the familiar message until finally the beep sounded.

"Hi, Dad? Look, you need to call me back. It's Sam. He's gone missing."

Dean forced himself to wait an hour before he took a cab back to the restaurant. Jess was still poring over satellite images of surrounding areas, trying to determine a pattern. She had punched Dean in the eye when he told her she couldn't come with him, but he needed to go as police, and it wouldn't make any sense to bring the missing person's girlfriend, or fiancé, rather, with him to the crime scene. Anyway, he could tell she was taking things hard, and he didn't want to put her through any more stress.

Like he was holding up any better. What had he been thinking in calling his dad like a scared child needing reassurance? Part of him was holding onto the hope that his father would come swinging into town and fix everything with that magical ability six-year-old Dean had thought the man possessed. But the last few months had taught Dean that his father didn't do that anymore, and he was already starting to regret the panicked phone call. The only thing that kept him from calling again and saying "no, thanks, we can work it out ourselves after all" was that he wasn't going to shut out any opportunity that might help get Sammy back, no matter how slim it might be.

He gave the cabby a bundle that was probably the handful of fifties he had won a couple nights ago and waved off the offers for change. Taking a cab had set him more on edge, but he needed to pick up the stolen car and take it back before someone noticed it missing. Dean couldn't afford them having to run out of town on a stolen car charge. They had to be able to move around freely if they wanted to find Sam.

"Detective Simmons," Dean announced himself when he entered the restaurant. "I need to speak with someone about an incident that occurred here earlier tonight."

"Are you talking about that guy with his girlfriend?" the skinny hostess asked, eyeliner coated eyes open wide. "That was crazy!"

"It wasn't crazy, it was a crime!" Dean barked.

The girl blinked. "Sorry," she spoke meekly.

Dean sighed. "Look, I just need to know if any staff saw something."

"The parking lot's out back," she shrugged. "And no one in the kitchen was out there when that guy went missing. Trust me, someone would have said if they were."

People were heartless gossips, Dean accepted. If one of the kitchen staff had seen something, and lived to tell the tale, it would have spread to the rest of the staff by now. But the restaurant was still his best lead, and he couldn't abandon it. He would have to canvas the staff anyway, just to be sure. Maybe they hadn't thought they saw something, but actually did. People dismissed the supernatural all the time.

"Did you want to see the tapes?" The hostess interrupted Dean's planning.

"What tapes?" Dean frowned.

"The security tapes," she supplied. "We set up cameras in that parking lot cause people's cars were always getting vandalized. I can give you the tapes of when that guy went missing. You won't even need to get a warrant or anything!"

In a very short time, Dean found himself sitting in a cramped office filled with bottles of steak sauce while skipping through images on a monitor. He knew what time they left the motel, so he was able to find the spot in the tape where Sam and Jess drove into the lot and parked the car. Dean fast-forwarded from that spot, watching others come into the parking lot, or some people exit the restaurant and drive away. Cars drove by on the side streets, and a large trucker rig parked on the road behind the parking lot. Finally, Dean found Sam coming around the corner of the restaurant, digging in his pocket for keys while hunching his head down in protection against the snow. Sam unlocked the car door and was just opening it when two large men jumped out from seemingly nowhere and attacked. On a good day, Sam would have a hard time fighting those two off by himself. These guys were clearly other than human, one holding Sam back with ease while the other landed blows to Sam's abdomen and head.

Dean clenched his jaw painfully tight as Sam, hanging limply, was loaded into the back of the semi-truck that had been parked on the street. He took note of the timestamp, and searched through the other camera feeds to get a better angle.

Each time, he saw the attack on Sam from a different perspective. Each time, Dean kept himself from shoving the monitor onto the floor.

Finally, on the last camera, Dean found a lead. The license plate for the truck.

It wasn't much, but it was something at least. Dean couldn't punch an image on a screen or a story Jess had told, but this, at least, was something he could hunt.

When Sam regained consciousness, he didn't try to get up right away.

Instead, he took stock of as much as he could. Physically, he could tell he was in bad shape. His head still ached from where he had been hit by his attackers, and his mouth tasted stale and worrisomely dry. A dull ache spread upwards from his side.

He was lying down on something that offered thin padding but smelled terrible, reminiscent of so many old motel cots that he had slept on in the past. But Sam could tell that he wasn't in a motel room. The vibrations that traveled through the cot and tickled his bruised side were familiar. He could recognize the sensation of highway rushing away under wheels even if he wasn't half-concussed. The sounds of vehicles passing by was a constant presence.

"You're not fooling anyone into thinking you're still asleep, Sammy. You might as well open your eyes."

Sam complied, blinking in the dim light. A quick trial proved that he was fastened firmly to the cot by scratchy ropes at his ankles and wrists. He was lying in the corner of a large rectangular room, the walls made of metal.

"We're in the back of a truck?" Sam guessed.

"Give the kid a gold star," the voice replied, male and heavily sarcastic. "This here's a mobile lab, boy."

Sam craned his neck around, but didn't see anyone. Steeling himself against the inevitable ache, he squirmed and pushed himself up until he was in a sitting position on the bed, wrists still firmly tied down at his sides and head throbbing. A bulky man stood in the opposite corner by an electric lantern. It was the only source of light in the trailer which was completely windowless.

"Who are you?" Sam demanded, blinking away the last of his grogginess.

"I would have thought you'd have figured it out by now," the man chided. "You're supposed to be the smart one."

"As far as I know, the only thing that would kidnap me wants me dead, not coming on joyrides with it."

"Oh, Sam, you're too narrow minded," the man lectured. He stepped forward a few paces, and Sam frowned as his eyes flicked yellow. "Just because I'm going to kill you doesn't mean I'm not going to have a little fun first."

"I've never seen a demon with yellow eyes before," Sam remarked, trying dig some sort of information out of the thing.

"I'm a special one," it smirked, confirming that it was, in fact, a demon. Could it be the demon? The one they were hunting? It had to be. "Speaking of which, it's time to get you hooked up," it grinned.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked warily.

The demon picked up a plastic package from the floor and strolled over to Sam. "I had my guys set you up already," it told Sam, pointing a finger at Sam's left elbow.

Sam glanced down and saw that a needle and tube were already sticking out of his arm, a sickly purple bruise blooming around the site. The demon unraveled the package in its hand, uncoiling the thin plastic tube and rolling the bag of blood in its hand. It didn't take much to guess what that was.

"No!" Sam shouted. "You can't—"

"I know, Sammy, it's not how I did it the first time. But the blodd's the fastest way to get results, and it takes time to build up enough of the good stuff in your system by drinking alone. This way's more direct. I've got a partner who's very interested to see what my children are capable of. You get to be my show pony. The one-trick wonder who pulls out all the stops before it heads off to the glue factory."

Sam jerked out of the way as the demon advanced. It frowned slightly and then, with a tilt of its head, Sam found himself slammed against the mattress, completely motionless.

"Please, Sam. As if you could even attempt to fight back." Calmly, it connected the bag up to Sam's IV, hooking it on the high headboard above Sam. "There. We'll leave you with that for now. It'll still take a bit to soak in."

Sam watched silently as the blood shot down the tube and disappeared into his arm. Yes, he knew objectively that demon blood was already inside him. But actually seeing it happen made him want to tear the veins out of his arms. The demon still held him immobilized, though, his head tilted so it was in perfect view of what was happening. So Sam closed his eyes, vowing to just ignore it. The small bit of demon blood he had been exposed to when he was a baby hadn't turned him into anything other than human. This would be the same. He wouldn't change, wouldn't play into the demon's plan.

Sam's eyes remained closed, but it was impossible to forget the smug smile on that demon's face.