A/N: It's been a while. I'm sorry. My excuse: Netflix had all four seasons of Battlestar Galactica. It had to be conquered. Also, say Battlestar Galactica ten times fast. It's not a tongue twister or anything, but it's FUN!

Information: Beignets (pronounced ben-yays) are pastries made from deep-fried dough and sprinkled with powder sugar, served in New Orleans. [Children and Christians please skip this next sentence] They taste like giving Jesus a blowjob, a.k.a. delicious.

Note: If anyone is confused by the last scene, just consult the season 5 episode "The Song Remains the Same".

Another Note: I fully encourage you to Google Madame Lalaurie, but in case you don't want to bother, just know that I've told a very exaggerated version of the story, albeit the traditional one. Except for the one about the little girl getting pushed off of the roof, that one's got documented evidence. Fun fact: Up until a few days ago, the property belonged to Nicolas Cage.

Another Note That Is Probably Not Necessary: Around my third proofreading (although I was tired, so there will still be errors galore), I realized that Dean's behavior could be interpreted as romatic interest in Kristen. So let me just assure you: Hells no.

Chapter 12: Slaying Implies Superpowers. Slaying is Cheating.

Through a haze of sleep and confusion, Kristen became aware of her body again. She'd been so deep in sleep that it was almost surprising to realize she had bones, muscle, tissue… she kept her eyes squeezed shut as she began to stretch. She thrust her arms out as if they were a wing span, clenched her toes straight, thrust her torso up off of the bed. That was when she felt a burly, callused hand slipping beneath her shirt and glide deftly between her breasts.

It still took her a minute to open her eyes. In that minute, the hand began to circle each breast, teasing and rubbing until her nipples until they stood up like top hats. Two hard lips brushed her cheek, hot breath blowing over her neck.

Her eyes fluttered open to see the man's jet black hair disappearing from her vision as he bowed his head to plant a kiss at the base of her throat. She moaned and lifted her fingers to entangle them in his hair, guiding his hand lower until his thumb grazed her navel. He lifted his head and kissed her, his mouth demanding and Kristen all too happy to obey.

"Oh God…" she breathed when he turned his attention back to her breasts. With lazy strength he tore away the buttons and used his tongue to trace a path of searing heat all over her chest.

"Call me Dean," he instructed as she gasped in delight. Kristen surged against him, pressing desperately to his heat, her body already slick with Louisiana humidity and torrid yearning. As Dean took her breast in his mouth, tracing a number of different geometrical shapes with his tongue, Kristen felt a second hand slide to the clasp of her jeans. The fingers were more slender than Dean's, just as callused and worn. She reached behind her wildly and her fingers grasped Sam's bicep. He was curled against her, brushing her hair away to leave gentle kisses at the base of her neck. His erection pressed against her with insatiable longing and she could feel the vibrations in his chest as he groaned.

"What… what about Adam?" Kristen managed to ask as Sam's experienced fingers dove beneath her jeans to stroke her far too gently.

"He'll be fine," Sam chuckled and he captured Kristen's mouth in a passionate kiss, drawing her away from Dean. Dean greedily wrapped his arms around her and sucked at her neck, almost biting.

"You taste so good," his voice rumbled against her skin.

The door flew open. It took Kristen a moment to even notice and when she looked up, she didn't even bother to push the four pleasuring hands away from her. Adam stood in the doorway, frowning in disappointment.

"You guys started without me," he lamented before shrugging off his jacket and lifting his shirt up over his head in one fluid motion. The sunlight shimmered over his body, caressing his rippling abs and broad shoulders. He knelt at the end of the bed and grabbed a hold of Kristen's jeans, tearing them off. As Dean continued to suckle her breasts and Sam delved his tongue into her mouth, Adam took her knee and hooked it over his shoulder, kissing and licking her inner thigh, working slowly upward…

And then Kristen woke up, for real. She reached across the bed to find Adam was gone. It took her the better part of two hours to find the courage to get up.

"Where's Adam?"

"I thought he was in there with you. You were making… sounds…"

Kristen frowned at Dean and took the seat opposite him at the dining table. A box of beignets sat open between them with eight of the initial dozen gone. Dean turned his gaze back to the New Orleans Gazette he was scanning, unaware of the fact that the lower half of his face was coated in powdered sugar. Kristen neglected to mention it and poured herself a glass of orange juice.

"Oya brought all this stuff," Dean informed her. "She wants you in her apartment in like ten minutes." He nodded to the cuckoo clock mounted on the wall behind her, which read ten minutes until eight o'clock.

"Is Adam with Sam?" Kristen guessed.

"Probably," Dean said. "Sam's off doing research with a colleague of ours. Maybe he took the kid with."

"So Adam's out there slaying? Or whatever it is you guys do…"

It was Dean's turn to frown.

"Slaying implies superpowers. Slaying is cheating," he replied curtly. "We're hunters." He vindictively grabbed another beignet and stuffed it in his mouth, brushing another coat of sugar over his face.

"That's really mature coming from someone with a powdered sugar beard," Kristen said, rolling her eyes. She stood up and grabbed a little green apple from the platter at the center of the table and stalked off toward the door. When she opened it, a gust of hot wind blew into the room and she paused. "I don't mean to be hostile. I just like having a live boyfriend."

Kristen's comment weighed heavily on Dean for the next few days. Mostly on the night that the Lalaurie mansion was schedule to be salted and burned.

The Lalaurie mansion was a sinister looking gray building on the corner of Royal and Governor Nicholls Streets, originally constructed to be the abode of visiting French royalty. However, in the late 1800's, a society woman named Delphine Lalaurie had taken up residence in the house. On the third floor, she had kept a secret torture chamber for slaves. She'd break bones and set them at odd angles, chop off arms and sew them on to legs, drill holes in skulls, mutilate genitals, and tie their own intestines around their owner's waists. As he reviewed the case notes, Dean considered the likelihood that Madame Lalaurie had taken over Hell upon Alastair's death.

It was a sordid and shocking tale that the locals told to jazz up and scare tourists. Among hunters, it was almost legendary. Many had dedicated themselves to ridding the Lalaurie mansion of the its ghosts and died at the hands of the slaves who had suffered so long under Madame Lalaurie's sadistic rule. Kyle Lafitte had finally gotten permission from the home's owner to burn the sucker down (apparently the owner was in great need of insurance money).

Sam and Adam were to salt and fuel the ground floor. Stana and Kyle would do the same on the second floor. Dean had volunteered himself for the third floor.

It was close to eleven when the team began their work. Everyone in town would be at the bars, tipsy but not drunk enough to commit inebriated mischief. Dean kept himself on a mild alert level, spreading salt across the carpets before dumping half a tank of gas all over, splashing some on the walls and over the bedroom furniture for good effect.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a puff of smoke drifting toward him. He whirled around to see a dandy gentleman in a green vest and black trousers lighting up an old school tobacco pipe, leaning against the frame of the walk-in closet.

"Relax," the man drawled, flicking the match down into a puddle of gasoline where it dissolved. "Intangible, remember?"

"Then what's the point of the pipe?" Dean said carefully, flicking the safety off his gun and aiming it squarely at the spirit's chest.

"Habit," the spirit shrugged. "You develop them when you've been sentenced as long as I have. Pardon me; I seem to have forgotten my manners completely." He extended his hand for an incorporeal hand shake. "Doctor Louis Lalaurie."

"The guy who actually married that crazy bitch?" Dean identified, raising an eyebrow.

"Ah, it is ma chére Delphine of whom you speak," Lalaurie said wistfully, his eyes glazing over as he smiled. "Such a lovely creature."

Dean pulled the trigger. Louis Lalaurie disappeared in a burst and Dean hurried out of the bedroom, toward the stairs.

"She was born without a soul," came Lalaurie's voice from behind him. Dean growled and turned around to see that Lalaurie had reappeared in the doorway of another bedroom. "Otherwise she'd be the one keeping vigil over those Negro spirits. And they do make such savage spirits, don't you agree? Barbarism is in their nature."

"You're gonna burn you sick son of a bitch," Dean said and he shot at Lalaurie again, several times, each shot yielding warm shells that pinged to the ground dangerously close to the gasoline puddles. He blinked a few times. The fumes had to be getting to him; Lalaurie shouldn't have been able to re-form that fast.

He started toward the stairs again, only to see Lalaurie pop up right in front of him.

"Delphine never had a chance," he said, the pipe gone. He had his hands in his pockets and he was staring sadly at the floor. "I loved her madly, but… Women have so many secrets. Even they don't know half of their own." Dean cocked his gun one more time as Lalaurie looked up to meet his eyes. "Perhaps you ought to tell your brother that."

"Dean!" Sam's voice shot up the stairs and Dean took aim one last time.

"Quit yakking," Dean scoffed and with that last shot, Louis Lalaurie was finally gone.

Adam would die (again) before admitting it, but being alone in a haunted house scared the shit out of him, family business be damned. Sam was supposed to be up here with him, but after he heard a couple of rounds go off upstairs, he'd rushed to check on Dean. Leaving Adam alone. Awesome.

It didn't seem like your typical haunted mansion. The foyer, where Adam stood clutching a sawed-off and trying not to tremble, was narrow and had a gleaming black and white checkerboard pattern. He could see into the other rooms from his position, each large with a gray and yellow marble fireplace and tall windows. The creepiest thing about them was décor, a strange mix of chunky, velvet-and-leather furniture, marble busts and useless mahogany pedestals, and cheap looking motel scenery art.

He heard something echo through the halls. It wasn't Sam's sasquatch steps or the clinking of Stana's iron jewelry. It sounded like a child's weeping.

Adam forced himself to take a few steps forward. He leaned toward the doorway and peered out. The mansion wrapped around a brick courtyard, much like the one behind Mama Oya's apartments. Beyond a few wretched looking trees and plants in broken pots, it was empty. Adam squinted and his eyes made out what it was in the darkness: a little girl in a coarse red dress crouched next to the wall. Poor little thing…

"Hey," he said softly, kneeling down next to her. "You got get out of here."

The girl kept weeping; one of her hands came away from her face and brushed a patch of brown curls behind her ear. She looked at him warily.

"C'mon," Adam urged, shifting the sawed-off under one arm and offering her his other. Her sobs tapered off and she took hand. Her entire hand could fit in his palm. He closed his fingers and stood up, pulling her with him.

That was when he saw what he should have seen all along. When she drew herself to full height, it became readily apparent that the entire other side of her body was mangled. Her other arm and both her legs were broken and the goddamn bones were sticking out from her skin. The other half of her face was flat, as though it had been crushed by a fall. Her dress wasn't red; it was white and completely saturated with blood.

"Jesus," Adam snapped under his breath and he yanked his hand away. It was covered in a sticky black substance. Ectoplasm.

The half of the little girl's face that was un-crushed smiled. Adam fumbled with the sawed-off and aimed it at her, but a sharp blast of air snapped across his hands and knocked it away. He felt it again against his stomach and he yelled when he felt it again across his left cheek, leaving a deep cut that bled freely down his neck. The little girl stepped toward him, extending her hand.

Adam reached into his back pocket and whipped out an iron chain. He whipped it across the little girl's form and she dissipated. Breathing hard, Adam wiped the ectoplasm onto his jeans and picked up his gun, stuffing the chain into his pocket.

"You okay?"

He looked up to see Stana Lafitte on the balcony.

"Ready to light a match," he replied, cocking his gun.

"We're almost done," she assured him. When she started toward the stairs, Adam saw the little girl's form behind her.

"Look out!" he shouted, taking aim. The little girl shrieked and Stana crouched into a ball, all but somersaulting down the steps. Adam's shot was wildly misfired and pinged off the railing. His next few shots were accurate and the girl was gone again.

He rushed over to Stana, who was splayed over the ground, and helped her up.

"You okay?" he asked and she lifted herself up by the banister.

"That bitch is getting toasted," she ground out. They rushed back into the narrow foyer and found Sam and Dean already there.

"What happened?" Sam started, but Stana was already heading toward the door.

"Let's just get out," she called over her shoulder.

"What about the flaming inferno?" Sam said, though he and the other guys still followed her as she shoved the doors open. Kyle was sorting through something in the back of his jeep and Stana joined him, elbowing her little brother out of the way. "I mean, I thought that was the whole point of this little jaunt."

Stana pulled out what she later identified as an anti-tank rocket launcher out of the trunk and set it on her shoulders, aiming it toward the house, which had begun to rumble with spirits aware of the hunters' intrusion.

"You guys might want to back up."

The New Orleans Fire Department had no idea how it happened, but the phone lines near the intersection of Royal and Governor Nicholls Streets had been compromised for nearly an hour that April night. By the time someone alerted them, there was very little left to save of the historic Lalaurie Mansion.

The brothers Winchester and Lafitte were at a bar very late into the night celebrating their victory.

"I thought that little girl was long gone," Kyle said, nursing his third beer.

"What was her deal?" Adam asked, resisting the urge to check out the gash on his face in the reflection of his glass. Sam opened his mouth, presumably to give a long winded explanation, but Stana clapped her hand over his mouth. "I didn't think that torture lady smooshed people to death."

"I got this," she slurred, a bit wasted, leaning in close to Adam. "So Madame Lalaurie is gettin' herself dolled up for a party and the slave girl is brushin' her hair. She catches one tangle after the other and so Lalaurie just goes fucking nuts. She takes a whip and goes crazy, chasing the little girl everywhere, yelling, screaming. All the neighbors can hear her, but what no one sees is Madame Lalaurie chase the girl up to the roof and shove her off." Stana downed the rest of her whiskey and slammed it on the table. "Pays a fine and everythin's hunky-dory."

"You can see why this case may be a little close to us," Kyle added, gesturing to his face, presumably referring to the deep black skin color he and his sister shared.

"So, your white whale's caught," Sam said. "What's next?"

"The apocalypse isn't enough for you?" Dean grumbled. He needed to call Bobby; the elder hunter had not yet checked back in on the status of Pestilence.

"I'm up for more," Adam shrugged.

"Yeah, the kid who gets roped in by the most cliché spirit trick in the book," Dean scoffed, "ready to get torn up some more."

"Kid saved my ass," Stana said, looping an arm around Adam. "Give him to me, I'll train him."

"I made a mistake," Adam said, glaring at Dean. "I learned. I won't make it again."

"Believe me, you'll make a whole lot more," Dean snapped, rising from the table. He grabbed his jacket off of his chair and stuffed on his arms.

"What's your problem?" Sam interjected, shifting back in his chair.

"My problem?" Dean turned, unable to figure out which brother to project his anger at. Sam was so insistent on Adam becoming a hunter; Adam was starting to get the hang of it. "My problem is a kid with half a college education and the cutest piece of tail in New Orleans waiting for him at home, is here, intent on joining one of the most miserable professions in existence."

"You hate it so much, stop doing it," Adam retorted.

"Dean, he's one of us," Sam said. "There's nothing he can do about it."

"My condolences," Dean growled, storming out the entrance into the night.

Sam thought about following him, but the threat of him finding a Jehovah's Witness in the Big Easy at this time of night was slim. It would just lead to more argument. He took one look at Adam's troubled face and hailed the waitress, the same perky blonde who had served them their first night there.

"Another round please," he requested, "on me."

"You kidding?" she laughed. "It's on me. Y'all look like you had a hell of a night." Her hand slid to the rungs of Adam's chair and she leaned in next to him. "My name's Lena Mae, you want anything else, you just let me know."

She winked at Adam and returned to the bar.

"No offense to your girlfriend," giggled Stana, "but that is the cutest piece of tail in New Orleans."

John and Mary Winchester had stopped running. For a little while anyway.

The memory they had stepped into was snowy. It was unnerving to feel the crunch of fresh snow under their feet but not feel the biting cold in the air. Most of Heaven was unnerving. The sun was glowing ethereally from a spot right above them and there was a group of elementary schoolchildren shoveling snow all around a jungle gym to create a fort. A car nearby was blasting "Deck the Halls"at full volume.

John took Mary's hand and pulled her next to him on the park bench. He put his arm around her; she laid her head on his shoulder.

"I don't think Michael will catch us here," he whispered. "Not yet anyway."

"Will Jo and her dad be okay?" she wondered.

John couldn't answer. The last time they'd seen their travel companions, Castiel had decided to try the risky move of taking Bill and Jo with him on the run, to lead Michael off of John's scent. There was no way of contacting him. Their only hope of movement was Ash and he was… iffy, to say the least.

"This is a really boring Heaven," their mulleted companion complained, shuffling next to the bench to take a seat on the other side of John. "No chicks, no beer…" His eyes landed on the children's chaperone, who had an enormous thermos of hot chocolate she was using to stay warm. "Then again…"

"… I wish we'd gone with Pamela," Mary said. She closed her eyes and nudged her head to the spot above John's heart; she knew there wouldn't be a heartbeat, but she wanted to hear it more than anything else. "John… I want to talk about… how you raised our boys…"

"You want to spend eternity arguing about this?" he sighed.

"We may not even have eternity," she replied. She closed her eyes and no tears came. It was strange to function in this place, awake and aware, to go through the motions of life in death. "I just can't believe that you forced them to become hunters."

"I didn't force them!" John insisted, but he calmed himself. "I mean, I… I don't know how to be without you. You should've just left me for dead, that night we left town."

Mary shivered, unwillingly remembering John's snapped neck and her father's glowing yellow eyes.

"We both made mistakes."

John would've gone on to apologize anyway, to beg Mary's forgiveness, to pick her up from the bench and push her into the snow and kiss her and tell her he loved her and hell, maybe they would have climbed into one of the nearby cars to make love. He would have.

But Mary heard a ringing in her ears before he could do any of that.

"John…"

And then they both saw him. Michael, glowing in his angelic glory, stepped out from behind a tree. Mary felt a rush of anger when she recognized the face he was wearing; he'd chosen the form of John, just after he'd gotten out of the Marines.

"Mary, get out of here," John ordered, springing up from the bench and standing in front of her protectively.

"I'm staying beside you," she said steadily, standing up next to him.

Neither of them paid attention to Ash, who'd leapt into a snowdrift to conceal himself.

"John, please," Michael pleaded, moving toward them. "Do not resist me. This is my duty."

"You can torture me, bring me back and kill me as many times as you want," John declared, never shrinking from Michael. "I will never say yes."

Mary could've sworn that Michael's eyes flickered to her, however briefly.

"I don't need to do any of that to you," Michael told them. "You agreed to this many years ago."

Before Mary could even grasp at her husband, he and Michael were gone, leaving her alone in the snow.