They made their way back inside the house, slipping quietly (or so they thought) through the back door and clicking it shut softly behind them. But neither Sam's paranormal abilities nor Dean's hunting skills could successfully hide them from the brown-haired woman standing with her arms crossed awaiting their entrance.
Dean fairly jumped as he nearly bumped smack into Lisa.
"Whoa."
"You two better have a damn good explanation as to what Meg was doing in my yard."
"It's our yard." Dean pointed out pettily, but an eyebrow-raise from Lisa squelched any further protests.
"You promised me that nothing could get inside."
"Nothing can!" Dean protested, "Alright? Meg had an in."
"A what?" Lisa demanded incredulously, and here Sam interjected.
"In order for a demon to cross boundaries like the ones Dean's set up, they need to have a connection with something or someone inside of the circle."
"So what, you mean someone helped Meg get inside?" Lisa didn't seem ready to buy into that theory just yet, "One of us?"
Dean flashed Sam a petty look of mock-questioning, "Sam, really?"
Sam rolled his eyes at his brother and focused on responding to Lisa, "Not intentionally."
"We hope." Dean added with another knowing eye-brow raise at his sibling.
Sam gave Dean a long, baleful stare.
The older Winchester cleared his throat and refrained from further jibing as Sam continued.
"We think Meg is connected to an object on this property. She mentioned a book."
"You think one of us has it?" Lisa squinted at her husband, and Dean deferred to Sam with a nod in his direction.
Lisa turned back to the tall man, "Sam? What's going on?"
He sighed, opening and closing his mouth a few times before settling on spitting it on, "Nate has the book Meg's after. We have until midnight to return it or else…"
"Or else," Dean intoned heavily as he cut Sam off mid-sentence, "Meg threatened to turn Sammy here into a red-tailed fox. Now personally, I would pay to see that happen…"
"But since it won't," Lisa stopped Dean in his tracks, "how do we get the book to Meg?"
"It's simple, really." It was Nate, and she looked calmer then anybody had ever seen her. It was bordering on creepy. Sam, Dean and Lisa eyed each other with suspicion on their faces – faces that morphed into shock as the girl actually handed Sam a thick, foul-looking book.
"Here. Merry Christmas."
Sam's eyes were wide as he looked down at the spell book, and his mouth opened and closed more than once before he finally eyed Nate with scrutiny.
"Really? That's it? No 'now you have to let me kill my liver'?"
"You seriously think I'd let Lisa take the flack for all of this?" Nate had the audacity to look injured at the apparent lack of trust, "Thanks for the vested faith."
"What?" Lisa turned to her husband, "Dean, what is she saying?"
"Nothing, okay? Meg dishes out threats like they're Halloween candy. It's nothing to worry about." He nudged his brother, who was still blinking in disbelief, "Right, so we got, what, two hours to nail this thing? How do you want to do this?"
Sam snapped back into hunter mode, "We should probably call Bobby."
"What about Crowley?"
"What about him?"
"Are we trusting him now or what?"
"Wait. What?" Nate was suddenly a little less flowery as she interjected with a finger in the air, "What the hell do Bobby and Crowley have to do with giving the book to Meg?"
"Nobody's giving Meg the book. Are you insane?" Dean eyed his niece as though she had just grown a third head, and Nate responded in a similar fashion.
"I thought that was the plan."
"Uh huh? Tell you what – why don't you go pour yourself some eggnog and let us worry about 'the plan', alright sweetheart?"
Sam pulled a 'that was so not constructive' scowl at his brother, "Dean."
Nate scowled heavily at her estranged uncle, "Giving Meg the book isn't going to kill you."
"No, just make us stronger, right, like uh…paralysis?"
"I have had it up to here with your bullshit." The young woman snarled, advancing on Dean, "Just give her the damn book and I promise the only thing it'll earn you is some time."
"Right, you promise, and we're just supposed to buy that?" He responded, and Nate folded her arms with a roll of her eyes before looking away and clamping her mouth shut.
Sam hesitated at the sudden halt in argument from his daughter. Apparently Nate had given up attempting to convince them of her validity. He turned to Dean and found scepticism staring him in the face.
Sam tightened his lips and shrugged helplessly. Dean's eyes grew sharper, but it was evident he was giving his brother the reins on this particular issue.
When Sam turned back to Nate, she found acceptance in his face.
"Alright. We'll give Meg the book."
Deans stiffened in disapproval but made no further remark on his little brother's decision.
Nate smothered her shock in a casual nod. "I'll set up a meet."
"No need."
Faces hardened all around as Meg Master showed up, sporting a smug grin that nearly everybody present felt compelled to wipe right off her face.
"Well," The demon stopped an inch short of Nate's mouth and gave the girl a long, appraising once-over which neither Sam nor Dean appreciated whatsoever, "I see you and Daddy Dearest are on better terms then when I left. Trusting women again, are we, Sammy?" Here she cast Sam a coy grin, and he glared back as he tossed the heavy book onto the snow-covered ground.
"Just take it and leave before we change our minds."
Meg pouted at him mockingly, "Someone needs a hug."
"Don't you have anything better to do than antagonize my family?" Lisa demanded with a caustic raise of her eyebrows, and the demon let out a guffaw of disbelief.
"Your family," Meg shook the book briefly in Sam and Dean's direction while her eyes remained focused on Lisa, "killed my father. They've butchered my kind like cattle for years – you don't think a little payback is in order?"
"You're demons." Lisa snapped curtly.
"You're racists." Meg replied with a tight eyebrow raise.
"We're humans." Lisa corrected her, "And this is our planet. You don't like the way we do things, then stay off our turf."
"Oh this is nuts." Dean turned to his wife, "Seriously, reasoning with a demon? This isn't PTA."
Lisa bristled at the verbal lash and looked ready to dish out one of her own, but unfortunately for her, Dean had some back up this time.
"Trust me, Lisa, she's not worth your breath." Sam was half-glaring, half-smirking at Meg in a way that anybody who was acquainted with the hunter would identify as lethal. Dean recognized the look instantly – it was the patented Sam Winchester 'I am officially going to rip out your insides' expression.
Meg Masters, however, appeared to be riding the crest of her triumph for the moment, and acknowledged Sam's wordless promise with a saucy wink as she sauntered away.
"Great doing business with you boys. Winters," She nodded with a wry smile at Nate as she backed towards the allegedly impregnable picket fence, "I'll be seeing you."
Nate's lips twitched in readied response, but the girl seemed to sense the heat of Sam's eyes on her, and she swallowed her secrets with a benign smile and flutter of her fingers at Meg's retreating figure.
"I don't even wanna know what Meg is gonna do with that thing." Dean spoke the words without a hint of sarcasm in his voice – only a grimness that matched the expression on his face as he took hold of Lisa's wrist while keeping his eyes on the swirl of light snow into which Meg had vanished, "Come on. Let's go inside."
Lisa complied, though she did flash a glance askance at Sam and Nate as Dean led her towards the door.
"Sam, you two coming?"
"Sure." Sam's eyes were glued rigidly to the spot where Meg had disappeared from sight, the slight clench to his jaw and the tilt in his shoulders suggesting that a plot was forming in his mind even as he spoke.
Nate's glance flickered from casual to worried – frightened, almost – as she hazarded a look up at her father.
"Don't." The word was quiet and without emphasis, yet it carried enough weight to sink a verbal Titanic.
Sam peeled his gaze away from the street – and his mind away from scheming – to fix both on his daughter.
"She's not worth your breath, Sam." Nate's eyebrows rose and a half smile played at her lips, but other than said teller, the girl appeared genuine as she headed after Dean and Lisa, "Coming, Pops?"
Sam felt his frown lines deepen in frustration as his hodgepodge of a family made their way back inside the proverbial Fort Winchester (nobody knew exactly where the nickname had originated from, but it had Ben's trademark stamped to its forehead). Nate's muted grin and knowing brow arch tugged at Sam's nerve endings and the hunter narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
He knew that look. He'd seen it in the mirror on more than one occasion.
That kid (in Nate's case, Sam used the term liberally and yet oh-so-pointedly) is up to something major.
Christmas Day came cold and grey over Cicero. Carollers roamed the snow-covered streets and hovered outside residences, their singing boisterous and compelling.
It was driving Ben out of his mind.
He glared menacingly at the group of neighbours carolling outside the picket fence of his house and gripped the lace curtain tightly in his fingers.
God, when were they going to shut the hell up?
Ben recognized Mr Murphy, his history professor, clad in a brightly stripped green and red scarf, his plump face rosy from the brisk winter air and his mouth somehow managing a beaming smile between verses of 'Joy to the World'.
Mr Murphy almost didn't appear the sadistic dispenser of impossible homework that he was, Ben thought with a tightening of his lips.
One of the carollers caught his eye then, and Ben quickly dropped the curtain and stepped away from the window. Lisa and Dean were still asleep, and Kelly was passed out on the sofa, her meticulous appearance a wreck complete with laddered tights stretched over legs that sprawled out from under the blanket Lisa had thrown over her in the night.
Sam had taken off pretty quickly after Meg had shown up, and Dean and Lisa had put on a very strained show of enthusiasm as Ben opened his presents before heading upstairs to engage in a lengthy midnight conversation that had dragged into the bitter watches of the night.
Ben could still the raised voices – they never yelled, not with him in the next room, anyway. The walls of his house were solid but not thick enough to drown out the occasional strongly-worded statement.
Ben shrugged on his jacket, took one last look at his aunt's unconscious frame draped over the cough, and ducked out the back door.
The cold hit him like a slap in the face, flushing Ben's cheeks accordingly. He tugged at the checked scarf wrapped messily around his neck and pulled the door closed quietly behind him. Ben rounded the corner to the thin alley alongside the garage that led to the front of the house, kicking at a discarded beer bottle as he dug his hands into his pockets for warmth.
"You runnin'?"
Ben fairly leapt in his skin as he came upon Nate Winters. The girl was leaning casually against the garage wall, legs crossed at the ankles and arms folded at the elbows. Her faded leather jacket looked threadbare and seemed to provide her little protection from the chill, though the unaffected, almost bored expression on Nate's features suggested otherwise.
"What are you doing here? I thought you were at Sam's." Ben was no mood for a double dose of surliness, having his own to deal with at that particular moment, and the bite to his voice implied as much.
Nate ignored the remark, "Look, I'll cut straight to the chase. I know you're not overly-fond of me."
"That's a mild way to put it." Ben inched by her and continued walking in the direction of the front yard. Nate followed him.
"I'm also assuming that by now Dean's either told you who I am or you've figured it out for yourself." Her brown hair seemed even darker than usual under the drab cover of the winter sky, and the light bouncing off her grey eyes was more a of a glint than a shine.
"Is this the part where we hug?" Ben could see the picket fence now, but stopped short of leaving the cover of the alley due to the carollers still occupying the pavement outside their property. Ben could clearly make out Scotty DuVall's mother amongst the annoying group and was cursed by the unfortunate luck of her, as the mother of his friend, being fully aware that Ben was grounded till the cows came home.
Not to mention that Mrs DuVall was the neighbourhood gossip and had by now surely informed at least ten of the mothers in her circle of Ben's grounding. Ten of whom considered Dean to be God's gift to the female species and would coo out 'how high, stud?' if he told them to jump.
"You want in on the action?" Nate's matter-of-fact query compelled Ben to turn and face her.
Nate raised her eyebrows, "Got an in-road for you if you're interested."
"I'm not."
"Sure you are. What you're not is stupid." She flashed him a tight smile, "You know Dean would have a fit if he found out you were doing anything with me. What you don't seem to get is that I'm not stupid either, Ben. I want to help you."
"Then leave." Ben finally lost his temper, and the bottled-up turmoil he'd been staving off since Dean and Lisa's fight the previous night spilled out as he spoke, "Ever since you showed up here, there's been nothing but trouble. You want to do me a favour? Take the next train south."
Ben stormed past Nate, determined to head back inside and wait it out. This time, however, Nate was in his face.
"Sam got a phone call this morning. Turns out the Cohen family two blocks down just lost their oldest daughter to the shower stall last night. He and Dean are going down there this morning to see if your water demon's made a move. You want in?"
"Why ask me?"
"Just thought you wanted to hunt."
"Not with you."
Nate gave him a long, appraising stare, "You seem like a smart kid, Ben." Here he rolled his eyes, which she ignored, "I know what it feels like to be sidelined. You want off the bench or not?"
"Look," Ben stamped his tennis shoe against the snow in frustration, "just because you're Sam and Dean's little sister doesn't make us family all of a sudden! You can't just show up here and…"
"Sister?" Nate's eyebrows crinkled, "Is that what they said?"
Ben swallowed awkwardly, "Well…aren't you?"
Nate smiled, "Not exactly."
The betrayal hurt like a knife in the gut. Ben did his best to clamp down on the sting in his eyes, but he found himself turning away to hide the distress on his face from Nate's view. Half of him wanted to slug the annoying girl in the face for the trouble she was causing in his otherwise imperfect but happy life.
The other half wanted answers – and Ben had a pretty good idea of where he wasn't going to get them.
"Hurts, don't it? When they lie." Nate was still behind Ben, waiting for him to regain control of his adolescent emotions – emotions which she had intentionally bent to her own purposes. Not necessarily selfish ones, she reminded herself as she brushed off a whisper of guilt. Ben would be gaining from the experience as well in the form of vital knowledge that Dean and Sam evidently saw fit to shelter him from.
"I'm not here to lie to you, Ben. You want answers? I've got some up my sleeve. But I need your help."
Ben sniffed and squared his shoulders, turning back to face the girl with bleary eyes, "What kind of help?"
Dean sighed and tugged at the tie around his neck. Years and years of donning suits still hadn't fully immunized the man who by nature preferred jeans and a well-worn t-shirt.
"Dude, quit playing with that."
Beside Dean stood Sam, who had, since escaping his awkward, lanky years, always owned every suit or tuxedo he had ever worn as though it had been tailored to his frame. Dean would have appreciated that fact a little more if his kid brother hadn't also mastered the snooty airs and graces of the white collar crowd to a T.
"It's choking me." Dean informed Sam in a mutter, "I swear it shrunk in the dryer or somethin', I dunno. Lisa's using this weird-smelling softener…"
"Or you're just getting fat."
Oh right. For some reason completely unknown to Dean, Nate Winters was also along for the ride – thus presenting the final factor to ruining Dean's already less-than-ideal Christmas Day.
"I can't believe you're making me do this." Nate pre-empted the cutting response Dean had lined up as she glared across the sea of merry makers while directing the cold acid burn of her voice at Sam, "I can't believe you're making me wear this."
To make matters worse, Sammy had decided to poke a chained bear by not only forcing his daughter to accompany them on an info run, but insisting that she wear 'presentable clothing'…
Dean had suffered the entire car ride in silence, but the demon on his shoulder was beginning to sell him the idea that assigning Sam and Nate to separate corners and putting a silence restriction in order might actually alleviate matters.
For once, Dean disagreed with the demon.
"Just be glad you're along for the ride." Sam was wearing a token rich-and-bored expression, and – to the irritation of both his brother and daughter – his tone was fit to match, "It was this or helping Lisa nurse Kelly back to consciousness."
"At least the second option didn't include Martha Stewart's reject pile." Nate was wearing an off-white cashmere sweater, and her normally bustled hair was pulled back in a neat, official-looking bun. The outfit did its job of adding a few token years to her real age, and the stony expression Nate was sporting lent a finishing touch to the effect.
"Oh great." Nate's usual inner surliness was spilling out in bucket-loads apparently, "Who invited Starsky and Hutch?"
"What?" Dean grimaced in question at the remark, but his face quickly morphed to match his niece's as he followed the stab of her finger to none other than Ed and Harry.
"Those two idiots just can't take a hint, can they?" He turned to Sam, "You wanna gank'em or should I?"
"You think they're here to question the Cohens?" His brother was regarding the pair with genuine bewilderment that suggested in no way gave them that much credit.
"Either that or Ed's arranging his Bar Mitzvah." Dean watched the two in contempt, "What is that, a skull cap?"
"Better than a full-length knee skirt!"
"It's a pencil skirt, and it would look a lot better if you left it where it supposed to sit instead of pulling at it every five seconds…"
"Alright, enough!" Dean nipped Sam and Nate's irritating father-daughter bickering in the bud as he turned to his brother, "I'll go see what I can find out from the parents. You take care of the nerd herd before they get us all killed."
Sam's expression bordered on injured, "How come I get stuck with Aykroyd and Ramis?"
"Because," Dean drew himself, green eyes half-lidded and eyebrows rising slightly in what was undoubtedly a haughty manner, "I…"
"If you say 'I'm the oldest'…" Sam warned with a vicious stab of his finger and an eyebrow-raise of his own.
"Oh for crying out loud!" Nate finally broke the icy silence she'd retreated into, shoving Dean and Sam aside (with notable difficulty) and stomping between them towards Ed and Harry, "I'll take the frigging Ghost Busters!"
Before either Winchester could muster a suitable response, the girl was shuffling through the crowd of mourners en route to Ed and Harry.
Dean raised an eyebrow as Nate nearly tripped in the modest black heels she was wearing and turned to Sam, "Well she definitely takes after you in the footwear department."
Sam watched his issue's less-than-graceful stomping across the room with a look of despair, "Yeah. Geri practically floated in stilettos."
"One less thing to worry about, eh?" Dean clapped his brother on the flat of his broad shoulders with that same pretentious grin and then grew serious, "You sure leavin' her alone with those two douchebags is a good idea?"
This time it was Sam's turn to sport the smirk, "A great idea." He corrected before turning to find the Cohens amid the throng of black-clad gatherers.
Mr Cohen was a tall, thin man with orderly silver hair and thick black eyebrows. His wife was short, plump and pleasant-looking, although the woman's face was all but shrouded behind the meshed hat she was wearing atop her greying swirl of hair.
Dean cleared his throat as the couple spotted him. They were neighbours by location, nothing more. The Cohens were pillars in the community and had been highly upset to discover one of their three, pristinely beautiful daughters at the local park with Ben after her curfew. Dean and Lisa (who were both aware of the fact that Ben was not only a virgin but also painfully shy when it came to females his own age) had done their best to smooth over the crisis but to little avail. The Cohens had shunned them from that day onward.
Mr Cohen nodded politely at Dean, "Good of you to come, Dean. Has your wife accompanied you?"
Dean noted that Ben was pointedly excluded from mention.
"Lisa's at home with Ben, but she asked us to convey her sympathies. Tabitha was a friend of hers."
Mrs Cohen's eyes, red and puffy even through the black sea of mesh, twinkled upon receiving the condolences, "Please thank her for me, Dean. Tabitha spoke very highly of Lisa and always considered her a very close friend – especially after everything that happened with Skandar…"
"Abi." Her husband shot her a pointed look, and Sam raised his eyebrows.
"Frank?"
Mr Cohen had already taken his wife's arm, "It was good of you both to come. Please excuse us – we should move on to the other guests."
Dean barely had time to register the words before Mr Cohen led his wife away from the crowd and into a corner of the room. Sam and Dean watched silently as the couple proceeded to have a quiet spat.
"Looks like we got ourselves a lead."
Sam glanced over at his brother in affirmation, "You think Abizethibou's wearing Skandar's meat?"
"One way to find out." Dean patted his brother on the shoulder, "See if you can get Abigail alone. I'll check upstairs."
"Fine, but be careful. Whatever the deal is with Skandar, Abi's husband seems pretty keen on keeping it quiet." Sam cautioned, only to have Dean wave his concern away impatiently.
"I got it, I got it. Just keep an eye on Natey, will ya? I think she's up to somethin'."
"Yeah." Sam turned to scan the crowd for his daughter and found her in a head-on conflict with Ed, who was backed up against a table and brandishing a flask of holy water, with Harry signalling frantically at his associate from his position by the front door.
Sam allowed himself a brief smirk before he quickly refocused his attention on Mrs Cohen. She was nowhere to be seen. His height advantage graced Sam with the fortunate ability to peer over various heads (and off-looking hats) in the room and he managed to catch a glimpse of Abigail Cohen disappeared into the conservatory.
"Mrs Cohen?"
She was staring wistfully out of one of many window panes lining the glass-framed room. The drabness of the day had returned in full measure, and the Cohen's modest backyard was blanketed in grey, muddy sludge that had clearly been fresh snowfall the previous night.
Sam noticed that she didn't jump, only turned slowly to flash him a tired smile. She had pulled her veil back over her hat and the exhausted grief in her face was plainly visible.
"She was a good girl." Abigail Cohen's voice cracked as she spoke softly – Sam had a feeling it was more to herself than to him, "We wanted so much for her. She was too shy to ever reach out and take anything, but we were hoping that when she met Leonard…well…"
The sentence remained incomplete. Sam took a step closer to join her by the window as the older woman extended a hand to him.
"Leonard was her boyfriend?"
"Fiancé, actually." Abigail resumed her vacant stare out of the window as she continued, "They were engaged for four months until Skandar came along."
Sam seized the moment, his tone and expression a picture of the empathy he was genuinely feeling for the woman's loss. If anyone was familiar with the deep pain of a loved one's death, it was the Winchesters.
"Who was Skandar?"
Abigail sighed bitterly, "A few weeks back, Tabitha went to visit some friends in Austin. She was only planning on staying the weekend, but she ended up gone for ten days." A small tear streaked down her pale cheek, and she brushed it gallantly away, "When she came home, she was…so different. She refused to give any reasonable explanation for her behaviour. She seemed desperate to return to Austin as soon as possible, claimed she'd found the love of her life and that he was waiting for her to return so they could marry."
Sam nodded, "And that was Skandar?"
Abigail shrugged forlornly, "Who knows what his real name was? Tabby didn't say much about him. She was hardly thinking rationally at the time. My husband and I tried to reason with her, but she broke it off with Leonard and announced that she was moving to Austin to be with Skandar." Here she looked up at Sam, "I've never seen a woman so obsessively in love."
Sam's mind was assembling pieces as he spoke, "Did she go back to Austin?"
"No. She was planning on leaving this morning." Abigail's eyes, now heavy with tears, turned back to the window once again, "It all happened so fast." She whispered.
"Abigail?"
She and Sam both turned, caught off guard by Mr Cohen who stood in the doorway of the conservatory.
"Thank you for your concern, Sam." Abigail gave him a weary smile before joining her husband and returning to mingle with the guests once more.
Sam watched her leave with a face full of questions. He had a lead, thankfully. Skandar wasn't the most common of names, and a little digging around in Austin would likely reap results sooner rather than later.
It was the manner in which Abigail's husband seemed bent on shutting her down that had Sam Winchester's suspicions rousing from their dormant corner.
That and the sound of a loud crash coming from the front room of the Cohen's house followed by what sounded like a terrible attempt at a Latin exorcism.
Upstairs, Dean had made it into Tabitha's bedroom and was in the process of rifling through the top draw of her bedside dresser.
"Come on, I know you're here." He muttered under his breath, hands sweeping expertly through the hodgepodge of assorted womanly accessories to which Dean had long become accustomed after years of hunting missing girls.
Life with Lisa had done its part to keep his skills fresh, of course. Dean still had no idea what a clay pot and paintbrush had to do with hair removal, but he somehow felt wiser after stumbling upon Lisa's waxing collection nonetheless.
"There you are." Dean smiled in triumph as his fingers closed around the hardback diary as he removed it from the drawer and gave its flowered cover a knowing wink, "You're a hunter's best friend, baby. Care to take a ride?"
A sudden crash reached his ears, and Dean reacted as instinct dictated, blending into the shadows on the wall as he tugged the door open ever so slightly and peered out the hallway to assert clearance.
A second crash, a yell, a thump, the splinter of wood, and Dean noticed the sounds were coming from below Tabitha's window. He inched quickly towards the lace curtain and cautiously pulled it aside to peer into the Cohen's front yard…
Just in time to see Nate Winters fly across it in a hail of broken wood from the front door, Ed and Harry hot on her heels and blasting rock salt from their sawed-offs.
Dean's eyes narrowed, then widened in complete and utter shock.
"What the hell?"
"Exorcizamus te!" Harry was sputtering out Latin in such a strong accent that Sam would have thought him a full-blown redneck …if Sam's mind had been on Harry's horrendous pronunciation instead of the fact that he and Ed had just blown Sam's daughter through the Cohen's door with a chest full of rock salt for her trouble.
"Omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursion…" Harry's attempted excorcism was short-lived as Sam, the entire population of the Cohen's front room at his heels, stormed into the yard and sent Harry flying across the sludge-covered grass with one solid punch.
Nate was flat on her back amidst the rubble of broken wood, gasping for air against the pressure smashed into her chest from the rock salt shot. She painfully propped herself up on her elbows just in time to watch Sam – looking, she noted, unabashedly angry – throw Ed like a sack of potatoes against the Cohen's barren pear tree.
The stunned gasps of the onlookers were lost on Sam as he rushed to Nate's side.
"Hey," He bent down, gripped her arm and helped her to her feet, "You okay? Come on."
Nate wanted to wrench her arms out of his grip, but it would have cost her too much breath and been a futile effort. In all honesty, she was still severely winded from the buck salt round to her chest, and Sam's tree trunk of an arm under her own lent necessary but much begrudged support.
"What is going on here?" Mr Cohen had finally emerged from behind his veneer of polite indifference and was looking rather red-faced as he stormed onto his lawn, "There had better be a good explanation for this, Winchester!"
"Me?" Sam's mouth dropped open as he held Nate while she inhaled deep gulps of air, "Those idiots just shot her full of bucksalt!"
"He hit me!" Harry, nose broken and streaming with blood from under the hand clutching it, was slipping on his feet and aiming a finger at Sam, "Unprovoked!"
"Right, so shooting an innocent girl's no longer classed as provocation!" Sam had the sense to be more amused by the accusation than offended, though his anger was still apparent.
"Someone call the police!" A woman shrieked in the background, and Nate instantly gripped her father's arm.
"We gotta go."
"Sam!" Dean shoved his way through the crowd, "Whoa." He stopped at the carnage scattered throughout the Cohen's yard and his jaw tightened angrily in Nate's direction before his green eyes met his brother's.
"Why don't you get Nate to a hospital?" The words were loud enough for the crowd to receive the impression that Nate was badly injured – and loaded enough for Sam to receive the impression that if he didn't clear her out of Dean's reach, Nate was about to be.
"I don't need a hospital; I need an Ak-47!" The girl was still wheezing but the naked threat was like a whip through the air.
"Sammy," Dean ordered sharply, as his brother's eyes burned invisible holes in Ed's groaning figure sprawled on the snowy lawn, "Go. I'll take care of this."
Sam's mouth opened in protest, then slammed shut as Nate reeled dizzily in his grip. Dean silently thanked the little brat for finally aspiring to some form of usefulness. Sam's attention was successfully diverted from the notion of pummelling Ed and Harry into next Tuesday and focused on helping Nate across the Cohen's lawn and out to where his Focus was parked.
Dean allowed himself a moment of full-on scowling at the disappearing pair before turning to face the crowd of bewildered, angry grievers.
He spread his arms with a winsome, million-dollar smile, "Who spiked the punch, huh?"