Okay, real life has been a bit more lenient on me, so I could get this one out faster than the last. Especially since I'm in a great mood right now, Germany beat Turkey 3:2 in the European Football Championship just a few minutes ago and reached the final. So here's my celebratory gift to you all.

Enjoy!

Chapter 13 – Backtracking

"Would you finally shut up?" Ruby snapped as she unlocked the door to the motel room. Sam was following behind her, a bag with his clothes slung over his shoulder, and ready to do anything but follow the demon's harsh demand.

"No, I won't shut up." He angrily slammed the door shut behind him, nearly throwing it into Bobby's face. "Not until you've finally told me what this is all about. I'm sick of following you around just because you say so."

"Sam, I've explained it all to you."

Sam threw the bag down on the nearest bed and stepped up to Ruby, hands on his hips, towering above the smaller woman. To Ruby's credit, she didn't seem fazed in the least by the angry young hunter building himself up in front of her. But Sam didn't care.

"You've explained shit. You said Lilith is in Sioux City."

Ruby nodded. "She is."

Sam wanted to throw his hands up in frustration about the fact that Ruby didn't seem to get it.

"If she's in Sioux City, it's a safe bet that she's at Bobby's."

Again, Ruby nodded. "That's be my guess, yes."

"Then why the hell aren't we going there? I left Dean at Bobby's place, for crying out loud! He's there, with minimal protection around, and now you're telling me that Lilith is holing up right where my brother is. Does it really surprise you that I want to go there before she gets it into her mind to do something to him?"

Because the mere thought was making Sam feel nauseous. Lilith was at Bobby's. She was where Dean was. That information had been enough to send Sam into a flurry of activity, despite the still open wound on his chest. With Bobby's and Ruby's help, they had packed their things and gotten into the Crown Vic. Truth be told, Bobby and Ruby had carried most of their things while Sam had been busy enough getting dressed without keeling over. His wound might be healing thanks to whatever stuff Ruby had smeared on his wound, but his legs still felt weak and as soon as he had stood up his head had started spinning. It had been hard enough to get dressed and get into the car without falling flat on his face.

The fact that his right wrist was swollen and hurt like bitch from where that demon had knocked the knife out of his hand wasn't helping any, either.

But all that hadn't mattered upon Ruby's words that Lilith was in Sioux City. It meant that Sam had to get there as quickly as possible, before she broke through the meagre defences Sam had been able to set up upon their hurried departure.

Ruby had climbed into the passenger seat of the Crown Vic, leaving Sam to stretch out on the backseat. And then she had started directing Bobby where to go. Sam had still been somewhat dazed during the first few minutes of the drive, but it had not taken him long to realize that they were not driving towards Sioux City.

On the contrary, they seemed to be driving away from it.

Ruby had offered no explanation as to why she had directed them another fifty miles away from Sioux City, away from Lilith and Dean. All she had said was for Sam to get some rest and for Bobby to keep driving, and that they were going to Sioux City soon enough. If Sam had had the strength, he might have considered strangling her from behind. Not that it would have done any good, but it might have made Sam feel better. They didn't have any time to lose, and now Lilith was taking them on a road trop away from where they urgently needed to be. Sam couldn't believe it.

And now they had checked into a motel.

Sam wasn't going to take any more lies or diversions from the demon, that much was for sure. Every minute they wasted was a minute in which Lilith could easily break the protection around Dean's body and do God knows what to him.

"I told you we are going to Sioux City."

Sam shook his head. "Stop lying to me, Ruby. I'm not stupid, I know how to read a road sign. I know the area, and I know that we've driven away from Sioux City. So what is this all about?"

Ruby rolled her eyes and picked up the duffel bag Sam had brought in. She opened the zipper and started spreading clothes on the bed and over the back of the two chairs in the rooms.

"Help me here."

"No."

Ruby rolled her eyes and proceeded to turn down the beds and do everything to make the room look lived in. Sam watched her for maybe half a minute, but when there was still no explanation forthcoming he made a few angry steps towards her and roughly grabbed her wrist. Ruby looked up and struggled against his hold.

"Stop that."

"What are you doing?"
Ruby breathed a deep sigh, as if disappointed that Sam hadn't figured it out on his own.

"We're going to Sioux City. But in case you hadn't noticed, there's demons on our trail. It didn't take them too long to find us the last time, and the last thing we need when we go confront Lilith is even more demons showing up. We'll have our hands full with her, believe me."

"I'm pretty sure Lilith won't have holed up at Bobby's on her own."

"No, probably not. But she'll have sent the most dangerous of her associates out to find you. Lilith doesn't think we're going to come after her, especially not with you hurt. By now she should know what happened at the motel. We can't trap Lilith like we initially planned, not if the other demons are just a few hours behind us. We simply don't have the time. So we need to go seek her out. And the only chance we have to get to confront her on our terms is if we keep as many demons away from Sioux City as possible. That's why we're here."

Sam frowned and looked around the room. "What, you want to make them think that we're here?"

Ruby shrugged. "It won't work for long. But it might buy us enough time to take out Lilith. We didn't hide our trail coming here. We're going to leave the car in the parking lot, and with a few clothes strewn around they might think that we just went down the street for dinner. I'm not saying it works, but maybe we get lucky and they set a trap and wait for us to come back. Demons aren't stupid, but like with humans, there are some thugs amongst them that aren't exactly the brightest of the bunch. It's a chance. We're going to take the hex-bags and the weapons with us and leave for Sioux City. If we're careful, Lilith won't notice that we're coming. There, now you've got your explanation. Happy now?"

Sam was anything but happy. "That's your big plan? A little backtracking and then we hope and pray that the demons following us are dumb enough to fall for it?"

Ruby dropped the near-empty duffle bag and shrugged. "I leave the praying to you, Sam. If there is a higher force above that actually listens to the prayers, I got a feeling that I'm not on the list of people it listens to."

"You're not on any list of people, period."

Ruby placed a hand over her heart and smiled a fake smile. "Ouch. That hurt. We're so lucky that you haven't lost your sense of humour. Otherwise this whole situation would be practically unbearable. And now we need to leave. The old man needs to fill us in on as many details about his place as possible on the way."

Bobby, who had been lurking beside the door during the entire exchange, grunted in a non-too friendly way at the way Lilith referred to him. There was no love lost between them, that much was obvious, and Sam knew Bobby well enough to know that it was going against every fibre of his existence to listen to what a demon was telling them to do. It was a comforting thought, actually. Sam knew that he was single-minded in this whole thing. He was relying on Bobby to pull him back should he get too close to doing something he might regret later.

But Ruby didn't even react to the old hunter's grumbling. Having deposited the clothes and the duffle bag in the room, the demon strode over towards the door again, signalling that they were about to leave. Sam followed, strangely hesitant to leave everything Ruby had spread behind just like that.

Of course it didn't matter in the greater picture. They could always buy new clothes. During the four years at Stanford, Sam had never once spent any thoughts on the question of how many clothes were hanging in his closet. But that was an entirely different thing when you were living on the road. Sam didn't own many things, he didn't need many things, but that made it somewhat harder to leave half of his clothes behind as a distraction.

But it were only things. They were replaceable, and it was no use worrying about them.

Right now Sam needed to worry about the one thing in his life that wasn't replaceable. Dean.

They left the motel room and went over towards the Crown Victoria to clear all their bags out of it. Sam felt well enough to stand and walk around by now, but over the past hour the gash on his chest had begun itching and throbbing in time with his heartbeat, a not exactly comfortable sensation. His wrist was still smarting, and while Sam could move his right hand he was starting to get worried that the demon might have cracked a bone with his attack.

So considering his physical condition, Sam was kind of glad when Bobby immediately grabbed the two heavy duffle bags with their weapons and another bag with clothes, leaving a relatively light backpack for Sam to take. Once the car was cleared out and they had shouldered all their stuff, Sam turned towards Ruby again.

"So what now?"

"Now we need to get a new car, genius. And you two need to keep those hex-bags on you at all times. We don't have much of an advantage over Lilith as it is, we need to make the most of it."

Without waiting for their reaction, the demon strode off towards the parking lot of a small mall down the block. Sam cast a sideward look at Bobby. The older hunter was looking back, a vertical line of worry between his eyebrows.

"I don't like this."

Sam sighed. "Me neither. But it's our only chance."

Bobby held Sam's gaze for a moment longer, and it seemed that he wanted to say something, but then he shrugged and picked up the bags.

"Yeah, that's what worries me."

Sam followed the older man down the sidewalk, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach which definitely had nothing to do with his healing wound.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Bobby's junkyard lay in complete darkness as they approached it. They had hotwired a station wagon on the mall parking lot, an average family car of which there were thousands on the road. The last thing they needed right now was to be arrested for Grand Theft Auto. They had even exchanged the license plates with plates from another car in the parking lot, just in case that the theft of the car would be discovered quickly. But their three and a half hour drive to Sioux City had passed without any incident. They had left the car further down the dirt road that ran along the back of Bobby's property and had walked the rest of the way to the fence.

Sam had been at Bobby's numerous times over the past couple of years, but most of that had been shorter stays, a day or two of research, or regrouping. It hadn't been the time or opportunity to explore the yard. Back when Sam had been younger, twelve or thirteen, he had known the yard like the back of his hand. There had been a time when they had stayed at Bobby's for longer stretches of time, when Bobby and their father had been researching and preparing for some really big hunts. Dean had just recently been recently licensed and had explored the yard for hours on end in hopes of finding a car that was worth salvaging. Not that their father would have ever let Dean have a car of his own at that age. Allowing Dean an own car would have meant giving him far more liberties than John Winchester was ever willing to grant either of his sons at that age. Especially Dean. But those endless hours in the yard looking at the old rusty wrecks had kept the brothers occupied while John and Bobby had researched their hunt. Especially Dean had appeared to be in teenage heaven spending hours on end between the bent and rusted pieces of metal, looking for salvageable parts and trying to repair things.

But that had been years ago. The yard looked different now, and approaching the property from the back Sam had absolutely no sense of orientation. He only hoped that Bobby had.

When they reached the chain-link fence that marked the back of Bobby's property, Ruby stopped and turned towards Sam and Bobby. Contrary to the two hunters, she was only armed with her knife which was sheathed in her belt once more. Sam and Bobby were both armed with bottles of holy water, shotguns filled with rock salt and pistols that were loaded with consecrated iron rounds. Not that either of the firearms would help much against a demon. Nothing but an exorcism did, and demons who lined up to get exorcised were few and far in between. But there was always the hope that the consecrated projectiles would slow an attacking demon down. And the demons were depending on their human bodies. A shotgun load of rock salt at short range was bound to leave a physical impact and slow an attacker down, demon, human or raging bull. All Sam hoped for was that it might buy them a few precious seconds if it came to the crunch.

Bobby pulled a pair of wire cutters our of the inner pocket of his coat and started cutting through the mesh-wire fence.

"Only renewed the damn fence about a month ago." The old man grumbled as the sharp blades cut through the wire, creating a hole big enough for them to slip through. Once he was done, Bobby held back the wire and with a quick look up and down the dirt road to make sure that nobody else was around, motioned for Ruby and Sam to slip through the gap.

They emerged on the back of Bobby's property. In the darkness, Sam could make out the shapes of a number of car wrecks standing around, with the occasional odd-sized shape in between that could have been a refrigerator or an old industrial fryer. There were countless of strange things Bobby had standing around in his yard. It was difficult enough to tell those things apart by daylight, at night it was just a number of black shades against and even blacker background.

"All right, let's do this."

Sam nodded at Bobby's words and they started making their way across the dark and silent yard. In the distance, Sam could see Bobby's house. Like the rest of the property it was lying in darkness, not a single beam of light shining through one of the windows. It looked dark and deserted, exactly the way a house was supposed to look like when nobody was home.

Only that the house wasn't deserted.

Somebody was there, only that those lurking inside definitely didn't call this place their home.

The yard was silent, except for the occasional sound of rodent feed scurrying away as they passed a metal frame or something else that served as shelter for the rats. Sam didn't like this just one bit. If Ruby was right and Lilith was hiding out here, it was a damn clever choice. It was the place Sam and Bobby would not come back to while they were on the run. It was too obvious for them to stay here. But he would have thought that if the demon was here, she'd have taken more precaution. As far as Sam could tell, there was nobody standing guard, nobody around who was keeping an eye out on the grounds. Did Lilith really not expect them to find her here?

Sam was sure that Lilith wasn't alone, but where were the other demons?

When they had nearly reached the house, Sam felt a touch to his upper arm. He turned to find Bobby looking at him, wordlessly gesturing at himself, then towards the left, signalling that he was going to go around the house. Sam nodded, and the older hunter silently crept around yet another car wreck and vanished from sight.

That was their plan. Bobby was going to circle the house, get in through the second story bathroom window as soon as he was done at the cistern. Sam was going to go into the house through the root cellar. It was the most inconspicuous route of the three, or at least so they hoped. The cellar was locked and secured from the outside, and there was a Devil's Trap on the basement ceiling which would make sure that there was no unpleasant surprise waiting for Sam once he got in. The Devil's Trap was also the reason why Ruby was going to get into the house through the back door to meet up with Sam inside.

Going in through the root cellar was the way into the house Lilith might not suspect anyone to take. There was a strong chain securing the cellar door, and without the key Bobby had given him Sam would have been unable to remove that without causing a whole lot of noise. If Bobby and Ruby managed to get in undetected, they might just stand a chance to surprise Lilith.

And splitting up had the one single advantage that even if one of them was discovered, the other two still stood a chance to overwhelm Lilith. It was a flimsy hope, but it was the only thing about this plan that came even remotely close to a comforting thought, or somewhat of a backup plan.

The cover that the car wrecks provided them didn't reach the house. They had to cross quite a stretch of empty yard in the hope that nobody was looking out a window while they did. Sam didn't have such a good feeling about it, but they didn't have any other chance. Bobby was far too paranoid to provide somebody creeping up to his house with enough cover to get there.

Sam crouched down behind the rusted frame of a Ford, folding his 6'4'' body uncomfortably to hide it from sight, and watched the house over the hood of the old car. Ruby was taking cover beside him, but instead of watching the house she had her head tilted slightly to the side, just as if she was…listening for something. Listening wasn't the right word either. It seemed as if she was feeling around with senses that Sam wasn't aware of. It made him uncomfortable, to say the least. After a few seconds, as if knowing that his eyes were on her, she looked at him.

"I don't think anybody's watching."

Ruby kept her voice down, but still Sam flinched. One of the lessons his father had drilled into him from early childhood on was that you didn't speak when on a hunt. Not if you weren't sure that the enemy couldn't hear you. Even if you were sure that nobody was around to overhear, you only spoke when it was a question of life and death. Those were John Winchester's rules, and Sam had internalized them. There was a reason why he and Dean had learned to communicate without words, and that was it.

Sam nodded at the demon and gestured first towards her, then towards the side of the building where she'd have to turn around to get to the back door. Next Sam pointed towards himself and then at the door to the root cellar. Ruby rolled her eyes at the wordless attempt at communicating but then she nodded. They silently detached themselves from the cover of the car and hurried over towards Bobby's house.

Sam's heart was beating fast in his chest, and it was from the adrenaline and fear of being discovered far more than from the exertion of running. Any moment now he expected to hear steps on the porch, to hear somebody shout or to be attacked from behind by an unknown foe he had not seen before.

But nothing happened.

A few seconds later they reached the house and stopped below one of the windows. Ruby made sure that Sam was looking at her in the darkness before she spoke.

"Wait for me in front of the basement door."

Again, Sam had to suppress a physical reaction to hearing her speak. Especially since it was unnecessary. They had gone over this in the car when they had developed the plan. Sam would wait for Ruby in front of the basement door because he wasn't armed with any effective weapon except for his two bottles of holy water. Ruby had the knife, but she had refused to hand it over to Sam. So they had no choice but to go in together.

Truth be told, Sam didn't like the idea of Bobby going into the house armed with just some holy water either, but there hadn't been any other choice. Bobby needed to get to the cistern first, and besides, he knew the house and the grounds inside out. If anybody had a slight advantage over the demons in this situation, it was Bobby. Sam was sure that the older hunter had a trick or two up his sleeve, or rather hidden away in his house, that not even Sam knew of.

Ruby turned around and ran the length of the house in a low crouch, keeping below the windows so that she wouldn't be seen from inside. Sam watched her go, and only once she had rounded the corner did Sam turn around towards the door that led into the root cellar. He pulled the key from out of his pocket and put it into the padlock that was securing the thick chain over the door that led diagonally down into the cellar.

Getting the padlock open was one thing and easily done, dislodging the chain without causing one hell of a noise was something else entirely. The thick links were slick with oil and dew, and it took all of Sam's self restraint to remove the chain slowly and silently, and not to just tear it away and hope that nobody heard it. Sam had never been patient for things that required finesse and persistence in motor skills.

Finally, the chain slid free with only a minimal amount of metal clinking against metal. Sam put it down on the ground and wiped a hand over his forehead. It was the middle of the night and not exactly warm, but he was sweating as if the midday sun was shining straight down on him. If he had been extra careful with the chain only to find that the door to the root cellar creaked, he was going to shoot Bobby.

But the door opened easily and most importantly silently, the hinges well-oiled. Sam looked down into the darkness below for a second, then he pulled out a small flashlight and turned it on. There were no stairs leading down, just a narrow ramp suggesting that once upon a time this had served as a coal cellar. The ramp was flat enough to be scaled from the inside, but the fastest and probably most silent way to get in would be to slide.

Sam drew a deep breath, then sat down on the edge of the ramp and with the flashlight held tightly in his left hand and one of the bottles of holy water in his right, leaned forward and slid down. His jeans rubbed over the rough cement ramp, and the small stones and pieces of dirt he dislodged bounced along in front of him. The slide down into the basement was far louder than Sam had hoped it would be, and when his feet finally made contact with the damp cement of the basement floor he immediately got down into a crouching position and simply listened into the stillness of the house.

The only sound he could hear was the thumping of his own heart and his breaths echoing back at him from the walls. After a few seconds Sam straightened up and shone the flashlight around the room. The Devil's Trap was on the ceiling above him, painted red on the rough cement so that it would immediately trap every demon trying to get in through the root cellar. Else, the room was pretty bare. There was a floor-to-ceiling shelf against one wall, each board filled with jars of pickled…somethings. Sam really didn't want to contemplate the contents of those jars any further. He knew Bobby's abilities around a kitchen, and he knew that if those things had come from a stove operated by the older hunter, he never wanted to be forced to eat them. But then again, maybe that was another way Bobby had found to deal with unwanted demon visitors – exorcism by bad pickles.

When Sam had convinced himself that the room was empty except for him, he silently made his way over towards the door. The time it had taken him to get into the cellar should have been enough time for Ruby to make her way into the house and down here. He had not heard any sounds from above that would have suggested she had run into trouble.

Sam extinguished the flashlight and with the bottle of holy water clutched tightly in his hand, opened the door that would lead him to the stairs.

The short and narrow corridor was empty.

Sam checked to the left, then to the right, and finally in the second basement room across from the one he had been in. But aside from age-old boxes filled with books, notebooks and other stuff, the basement was empty.

No demon standing guard.

No Ruby.

"Damn." Sam whispered into the silence, more of a thought than a word he actually said out loud. The stairs to the basement were not far from the back door. Ruby should have been able to make it down here a lot faster than Sam had. Which meant that something had not gone according to plan.

Damn.

They didn't have much of a plan to begin with, they couldn't afford for things to start getting out of hand so quickly.

There was next to no light, but Sam decided to keep the flashlight off for the time being and feel his way upstairs. With the bottle of holy water held at the ready, just in case he encountered anybody or anything to douse it in, Sam started towards the stairs. He kept to the side of the stairs to keep the creaks to a minimum and slowly climbed up, one step at a time.

But even as he climbed the last few steps and carefully peeked around the corner, all he found was another empty corridor. The back door was closed, but the kitchen door across from Sam was open. Just like every other room Sam had encountered so far, it was dark, and it was empty.

Sam would really prefer to run into a demon, to get a scare by a mouse running across the corridor or by hearing a sound. Something. Anything, but this dark silence. Anything that would tell him what they were up against here.

And where was Ruby?

Since she wasn't in the kitchen or the corridor, Sam turned towards the right and started walking towards the living room. Bobby should be on the upper floor by now in case he hadn't run into any trouble, and for now Sam was willing to declare the lack of sounds from above as a sign of no trouble for the older hunter. Which only left the question where their resident helper demon was hiding.

Sam took another few steps towards the dark living room when he suddenly a loud, metallic bang reverberated from somewhere inside the wall beside Sam's head. Adrenaline shot through Sam's veins as he spun around, bottle of holy water raised, trying to locate the source of the sound, trying to find the enemy and make a stand.

There was nothing and nobody in the corridor with him, and a moment after the loud banging sound there was a thudding, followed by a continuous rush that was muffled by the walls. Sam released his dead grip on the bottle of holy water and nearly laughed as the tension drained out of his body.

It was only water running through the old pipes of the house. Somebody had turned on the water upstairs, and that was good news. It meant that Bobby had made it into the house undetected. But just as Sam wanted to turn around continue towards the living room, there came another loud banging sound from above. And this time, it didn't come from within the walls.

The sound of a scuffle was clearly audible from the floor above Sam's head, and Sam immediately turned around and started to make his way over to the stairs. Bobby might have come into the house undetected, but judged by the sounds coming from the upper floor now, that had not lasted long.

Damn it, where was Ruby?

Sam retraced his steps towards the stairs, torn between making his way as fast as he could and trying to stay as silent as possible. He crossed the door to the kitchen without so much as a second thought when something hard struck him over the head from out of nowhere and everything went black.

Behold, the climax of the story is near. Hope you enjoyed, thanks for reading, and as usual please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot.