The next corner brought them to the one place that Dean had dreaded being anywhere near all day; the 'It's a small world' ride. The tune sucked and worse it stuck itself in a person's head until it drove that person insane. That torture was bad enough, but the ride itself was full of dolls, very pretty, very girly girl dolls. The kind one of Dean's ex-girlfriends used to collect. The one that had dumped him because he was a Hunter.
He leaned over towards Sam, "I am not going to be responsible for my actions if anyone has enough stupidity to drag me in there."
"Me too," Sam agreed and shuddered.
"Wusses!" Prue muttered at them. Amber was squealing with delight and dragging her and Andy towards the line. Prue had her hand locked around Andy's wrist. When he threw them a pleading look, Dean and Sam just gave him matching smiles as they waved. John shook his head as he found a place to wait. Some things never changed and really he wouldn't want them to. His boys were able to find ways to have fun in even the most dire of circumstances. This might not be that bad, but only because no one was forcing them onto the ride.
They found an out of the way spot to wait for the three on the ride. Sam and Dean spread out a blanket for the twins and set them down on it between the adults. Johnny had managed to learn to scoot/crawl with one leg tucked up underneath him. He spent the time they were waiting moving from one family member to the next. Everyone could tell that Mary was very put out with this situation. As far as she was concerned it was not fair that Johnny could get around and she couldn't.
She managed to get onto her hands and knees and wobbled back and forth determinedly. "Come on sweetheart, you can do it," Dean said as he got down in front of her. She gurgled at him and inch by inch rocked her way towards him. "Yeah! That's my girl!" Dean crowed. He scooped her up and swung her around. He didn't care that he was being laughed at. His daughter had a troubled start to her life and she was finally making the sort of progress that should have happened months ago.
After they all had made much of the baby girl, the shell shocked Prue and Andy rejoined the group with Amber. While Amber chattered away about the dolls with her mother, the rest of the gang gathered up their stuff in preparation for continuing on. That was they were until Sam hurriedly passed Johnny to his father and fell to his knees grabbing onto his head. It had been a while since his last vision but his family knew the signs.
"Crap," John muttered as he put Johnny in the carriage. Jess had Sam cradled in her arms on the ground and the rest of them made sure that when Sam had recovered they would be able to move.
"Oh great, this is just what we need," Sam muttered and forced himself to his feet. "We need to find Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse together in a meet and greet for the kids. Donald's going to try and kidnap a toddler and we need to do it now."
Phoebe grabbed a picture of Donald Duck and concentrated on finding the location. Most of the time she didn't try to activate her power but she had practiced often enough that she could now do it when needed. With a gasp she was there, the vision filling not only her mind but her heart as well. "They're at Mickey's house in Toontown, right over there," she pointed.
"Stay and watch the kids," John ordered the white lighters before taking off running. Sam, Dean, Hannah, Jordan, Prue, Piper and Phoebe followed. Xander grabbed Willow and Jess and shook his head at them. It might be a trap or a distraction. They couldn't leave five helpless, well almost helpless children alone with just two white lighters to look out for them. White lighters couldn't kill, not even to protect themselves or other people. With Willow there for magic and Xander and Jess to take care of physical protection, the kids were safe.
With all of the families between them and Mickey's house it was nearly impossible to run. That didn't stop them from trying. Every second that they were delayed the vision reran through Sam's mind. He saw a little girl, no more than eighteen months old, wearing one of those little dresses that showed off the frilly diaper cover and white sandals. She was looking up at Donald Duck with a face full of pure innocence and curiosity. He (or she, who knew who or what was actually wearing the costume?) had the leash end of the toddler harness that the little girl was wearing. The Duck was leading the baby away from the crowd. If he got a few more steps Sam knew that they would be too late. The parents were distracted for those vital few moments watching an older child play with Mickey. And of course, no one else was watching her at all.
Sam refused to believe that they would be too late. The horrors that awaited the small child were too horrible to contemplate failure. They reached the attraction with Sam in the lead. His long legs and father's relentless training had given him the edge over the others. He was also tall enough to see over the heads of the people in line that the girl's mother had just handed over the leash to the Duck so that she could take a picture.
They rudely pushed people out of their way trying to get to the child in time. Just as in the vision, the child's mother turned her attention away as an older child called to her. Immediately the costumed character turned and led the child away. The Duck took three steps and then, to everyone's surprise, tripped and fell. Half a second later the Winchesters were on him, Dean and Sam forcefully picking him up and John taking the baby away from him.
Trying to keep panic from breaking out, Sam called out, "It's ok, he just tripped." He turned to the Duck and said, "Let's get you to the doctor to check out your ankle."
"Yeah, you don't want to ignore a twisted ankle," Dean said, picking up the cover story and backing his little brother. Phoebe slipped out of Mickey's house and called security. Piper and Prue, following the feeling of strong magic that they could sense, went over to a point just to the left of where the Duck had fallen. They found two small crystals on the ground, both glowing faintly with magic. The sisters grimaced at each other. They knew a Portal spell when they saw one. They quickly broke the spell and picked up the crystals as soon as they stopped glowing.
The mother took the baby from John and whispered, "He tried to take her didn't he?"
John nodded, "If you could come with us to security it would really help."
"Of course, anything you need," she said. She gathered up her family and followed the Winchesters outside.
"Wish I had a little of Leo's memory dust," Piper muttered as the ladies brought up the rear. "It would be so much easier if they all believed that he just tripped." The child had been wanted for some reason and she and her family would be protected until they were sure she was out of danger.
Outside the attraction they were met by security officers and hustled to the nearest security office. "Alright somebody tell me what happened here!" Brent Watkins, the chief of security, demanded. He could see one of the characters was being brought in by two scowling men and from the looks on the other people's faces the situation wasn't good.
"He tried to kidnap my daughter," the woman said gesturing to Donald Duck. "And they stopped him," she said moving her hand to indicate the rest.
"You aren't going to disgrace Donald Duck any longer!" Watkins growled. He was personally proud of the Disney character's reputations and wasn't about to let this joker make a mockery of them. He reached over and removed the cartoon character's head; only to find nothing. There was no one in the costume.
"It's a golem," Phoebe broke into the yells of surprise. "A warlock enchanted one of your costumes and used it to do his or her dirty work."
"And he or she probably couldn't take a child without a parent's permission, either that or whatever the child was needed for needed the parent's permission," Prue said working her way through the clues. "Mystically speaking handing over a child for any reason would be enough as long as the parent didn't leave a hand on the child and the child was taken before the parent took the child back. It's a loophole but someone's exploiting it."
"All it would have needed was a single moment of distraction," Piper said, "to get the child through the Portal to its master."
"I think that you should add some anti-violence spells to your security," Hannah said. "Here's the card of a specialist." She handed over the card to Watkins. "Mostly they do demon bars and such but I don't see why they couldn't do something for you."
"It would really be a better idea than relying on Mr. Disney's ghost," Phoebe said to the shocked man. "I mean he did help us stop the golem by tripping it but if it had fallen two feet to the left it would have gone through that Portal."
"The ghost is Walt Disney?" Sam butted in.
Piper smiled, "I guess he's still too much of a workaholic to leave."
"Uh, Dad," Sam started but John raised his hand.
"We don't do benevolent spirits. If Mr. Disney wishes to protect his park to make it safe for families I'm not going to try and stop him." John noticed that Sam wasn't the only one who relaxed when he said that. He didn't know why they thought that he'd salt and burn Walt Disney. Purely aside from the hassle of getting the family to agree to the cremation and the fact that Disney wasn't hurting anyone; John wasn't eager to invite the media back into his family's life. They were having enough problems as it was. "Do you girls think that you and Willow can come up with something to tide them over until they can get that specialist out here?"
"We'd have to go back to the castle as its the best center point for the park," Phoebe mused as she pulled out the notebook she used as a working version of the Book of Shadows. She walked off with her older siblings looking over her shoulders and making suggestions.
"They'll have something in place for you soon," Dean promised. "In the meantime, I gotta get back to my kids." Before any of the security people could say anything the group had left.
"I wonder if Jess packed my pain pills?" Sam said he rubbed the side of his head. The adrenaline rush had pushed aside the headache that always accompanied a vision. Once the excitement had run out the headache returned with a vengeance. Hannah and Jordan gently guided him from either side, ready to catch him if he should stumble; every vision and prophetic dream that Sam had meant one less Slayer dream for them. For that reason alone they would have done their best to take care Sam through the aftermath of his visions. Slayer dreams were cryptic and unsettling in the extreme. Seer dreams and visions, while unsettling and painful, were not cryptic. A Seer saw exactly what was going to happen and usually had a good idea of when and where as well. That was the huge advantage of working with Seers, not that Seers saw everything. Seers, like Slayers, only saw what the PTB's wanted them to see.
Jess saw the small procession and pulled her backpack around so that she could rummage through it for the bottle of pain pills and the bottle of water that she always kept on her. As Hannah and Jordan settled Sam on a blanket in the shade and Dean checked out the twins, no one realized they were being watched.
Far away the warlock they had thwarted seethed in anger. These were the ones who had destroyed her plans. They would pay dearly for their interference.