Coyote wasn't next to me when I woke up, which confused the crap out of me for a second. There were no weapons on the walls even though I was in my room in the Bunker, my heart started racing because I'd had nightmares that had scenes like this in them more than once.

The door opened, "Babe? You up?" She had two cups of coffee with her, she was about to set them down on the desk when she noticed I was having a mild heart attack. "Dean? Everything all right?"

"Yeah, just woke up weird."

"Oh," she set her hand on my arm for a second then handed me a mug. "This will help. Sam said he made it old school style."

"Have you tasted it yet?"

"No. Why?"

"Did you put your usual sugar amounts in it?" She liked her coffee sweet.

"Yeah, is there a reason I shouldn't have?"

"If you want to be up for the next seventy two hours straight, go for it. If not, you may want to just dump it down the drain. The pipes could probably use a good cleaning anyway."

She gave me that "It can't be that bad,"look, then she took a sip, "Dear Lord! You guys used to drink this?"

"Unfortunately," I took a sip, I may as well have just eaten grounds as strong as it was. I decided I didn't need to be so amped on caffeine that I felt like I had to run a marathon before breakfast and set the cup back down. "He should have warned you."

"He was face down in some books, I was lucky he said hi much less anything about how he'd made the coffee. I've got to get back to making breakfast. I'll make the food run, Sam's in full research mode."

"I wonder if he even slept." There were times in those first few months after I'd moved out that I was more worried about him becoming a complete hermit and I'd have to rescue him from the archives more than I did about him getting hurt or killed on a hunt. It was the first time he'd ever had undisturbed research time since we'd found the Bunker and I wasn't quite sure how he'd handle that.

She gave me a quick kiss and headed back to the kitchen, I notice she'd left her cup. I dumped hers down the drain, then cleaned up and went out to see if Sam had found anything.

"Any luck?"

"Kind of, I ran a search on the digitized stuff, just in case and came up with some images of blades used in Mesoamerican rituals."

"Really? Under what letter?" I asked as I sat down across from him at the kitchen table. He looked a bit embarrassed.

"Uh, Felicity organized some photos of the stash of items we have here without me there to help. She labeled them a bit generically and I hadn't gone back and sorted through them."

"Sam?"

"C for cursed objects, assorted. I'd forgotten about the file till this morning."

Coyote didn't say a word.

"C comes before D right?" I asked.

"Yes. Dean I..."

"So does A, in case it was under assorted. At least last time I checked."

He just gave up, "I'm sorry. I screwed up, get over it . Here, look."

He turned the laptop towards me and I flipped through the pictures and the few links to other documents that they had set up in the system. I felt like I was using a supernatural Wikipedia and it dawned on me just how much faster research would go once they were done. "This is damn impressive Sam. You and Felicity are really going all out on this aren't you?" He hadn't talked to me too much about the project, I think it was in part because he knew I wanted to stay clear of anything hunting related but now I kind of wish he had. His face lit up at the compliment.

"Yeah, we're going to build in a whole search algorithm to that separates out results by category, most likely result and suggested options like you see on the net already. The idea is to get it to the point where we type in something like type of death and things we find on scene and it will narrow it down for us, then list all the references that exist in the archives so we can click through them and find what it is we're after. That's a very basic explanation but that's kind of what we're going for."

"I get it." The sheer number of hours that this would free up for a hunter doing research blew my mind. I started getting excited about it and I wasn't even in the life anymore. "Wow, okay." I refocused on the task at hand, Jacob. The Zapotec people still existed but were mostly Catholic now, they'd been pretty advanced back in the day but I got the feeling that the Men of Letters hadn't been too interested in them. We'd found stuff online about the Zapotecs but no real information on their rituals. Still though you never know what can help out in the end. "Well we can't get too far into this without seeing the blade. Hear from Krissy or Clive yet?"

"Yeah, I'm meeting Clive over by the bridge about two hours from now and Krissy headed this way late yesterday, her and Jacob crashed about halfway here. She should be here around around noon or one."

"Well, it's nine now. Let's get going with the food and prepping a room for Jacob and maybe Krissy if she wants to spend the night. Jacob may not be all that thrilled getting left with a couple of strangers after what he's been through."

"Yeah, good idea."

Coyote headed out for food, Sam and I made up two rooms as best we could. We had never really planned for guests but we managed to wrangle up enough clean sheets to make it work. I sent a text to Coyote to grab some more towels and bathroom stuff in case Krissy didn't bring stuff for Jacob. Coyote got back right before Sam left to meet Clive. Her and I unloaded the car and washed the new linen stuff she'd bought. Sam showed back up about ten minutes before Krissy texted us that she was pulling up.

"Stash the blade in the vaults," I told Sam, "Between the wards on the vaults and the curse box he shouldn't be able to pick up on it, hopefully."

"If that's even an issue," Coyote pointed out.

"Better safe than sorry."

Sam took off down the halls and Coyote and I went upstairs to meet them. She pulled up in a blue Toyota hatchback parked and got out. I could just barely make out Jacob through the windshield, the sun was at a bad angle to see him clearly. He had sandy blonde hair, glasses and didn't look at Krissy or us when she walked up to us. His eyes were empty and totally lost.

"Hey Dean," Krissy said with a quick hug. She'd cut her hair short, almost in a bob cut and those natural leader traits she'd had when she'd been younger had settled into a very definite don't screw with me, tough love kind of vibe. She cared about the kids she helped but she didn't take any crap from them either. "You must be Coyote, I'm Krissy."

Coyote reached her hand out, "Nice to meet you."

Krissy shook it and gave her a quick once over, "You too."

"Is that how he always is?" I asked, "That blank look?"

"Mostly. Sometimes he comes out of it and panics or cries. I can calm him down, he'll stay with me for an hour or two tops, then fades back into the blank stare again. It's like he keeps cycling through coming out of being influenced by the blade."

"He's trapped in that moment," Coyote said.

"I think so."

"Any ideas sweetheart?"

"Let's get him inside and I'll take a look," she answered "I don't want to subject him to anything too intense yet. He may not be strong enough to handle it."

"All right."

"You go with Krissy, I'll hang back."

"Sounds good," Krissy and I went to the passenger side, she opened the door. Jacob didn't turn his head or move.

"Jacob? We're here. This is Dean and that's Coyote. You'll be staying here a few days."

I crouched down so I was eye level with him, "Hey there Jacob, nice to meet you." He was wearing a denim jacket, jeans and an Iron Man shirt. "Oh man, I love Iron Man! He's got the best stuff! That suit is frigging awesome right?"

He didn't look at me but something flickered across his face, "My brother's got all the movies inside." Sam had gotten hooked on Marvel movies, it was Roy's fault. He was all into comic books and had apparently taken advantage of all the hours on the road to catch Sam up on comics. Roy was more into DC stuff than Sam though for some reason. "We can watch them if you want." His hand moved a bit but that was it. "Well come on, let's get inside, you guys are probably hungry."

That got a slight nod, I expected him to get out of the car but he just sat there. I wasn't too sure if he'd freak out if I picked him up. Krissy reached past me and gently took hold of his hand, "Jacob, follow me."

He finally turned his head but he looked more like a robot than a kid. There was no sense of life or anything in how he moved, he was simply responding to a command, nothing else. He looked as dead as I'd felt after getting rid of the Mark. I got out of their way and looked over at Coyote who was entirely focused on Jacob. Her eyes followed he and Krissy until they reached the top of the stairs.

Once they started down the stairs she looked away from them and back to me. I really didn't like how she looked. "Well?"

"It's not just what he did, it's what took hold of him. It was too powerful and it ripped through him, destroyed his Spirit. He's basically just a shell. I'm sorry Dean, I don't know if we can help him."

"Not a good answer." I was going to help him, no matter what.

Her jaw tightened, "Careful."

"Are you writing him off already?" There was an answer, had to be.

"Didn't say that, did I?"

Sam appeared at the top of the stairs, "Dean calm down, she's telling you what she sees, not giving up."

"Good, because we aren't going to..." I stopped myself mid rant, hadn't even been at the Bunker a full day and already I was morphing back into the stubborn idiot I'd always been. Talk about ingrained patterns. "Sorry."

She relaxed, "It's fine. Let's get some food in him and see what we can figure out."

"All right." Helping, not hunting. Helping, not hunting. Remember the limits. Remember why I agreed to them. Maybe if I repeated it enough times I'd finally get it.