So, not quite by the end of last week…I have to stop saying things like 'if nothing else comes up.' Because it always does, even if it's just another story that won't get out of my head. Oh well. Enjoy, and thanks to everyone who read and reviewed.

It was Sam's turn to swear as Dean took off after the skinwalker. And his stolen jacket. This whole setup was just wrong. Well, dead cats were wrong in general, but between the less-than-powerful herbs, the meaningless symbols, the plastic crystals…. He wanted to spend a little more time examining the altar, but splitting up around a skinwalker was just asking for trouble, so he pocketed a small book that had the look of a grimoire—at least as much as anything here did—leapt down off the altar, and headed after Dean.

Dean was swearing as he ran, which made him easy enough to follow, and presumably he was following either the skinwalker or some sort of trail so Sam didn't bother to spend much time looking around until he broke back out into the sunlight after his brother. At which point, he nearly ran into Dean, who'd stopped just outside the door. "What? Where did he go?" Had Dean lost him?

"I don't—there!"

The man's own faded brown jacket blended into the brush better than Sam would have believed, but the darker, shinier patch that was Dean's jacket stood out. Dean took a shot, but the distance was too great for it to be accurate, and when the man took off running again, the two of them went after him. Directly into the deepest brush on the far side of town.

"We need to get him somewhere where we can cut him off!" Dean called as they went deeper into the scrub—considerably farther than they'd gone on their last trip—and still made no headway in catching up to him. "Or at least pin him down against something!"

"Oh, great, if you've got any suggestions for where, I'm all ears!" Sam jumped over a log, narrowly avoiding turning an ankle in a hole on the other side, and swore again. They were out in the middle of freaking nowhere…where Dean thought they might be able to carry out either of those plans he had no idea. He was fairly sure that he and Dean would be faster in an outright footrace, but as the ground became rockier, they were having to slow and check their footing more often, and unfortunately, the skinwalker didn't seem to be have the same limitation.

"I—hey, where'd he go?" Dean asked suddenly, slowing his pace as they approached a rocky hillside.

"What do you mea—" Sam frowned, coming to a halt. "He was right there." He'd expected the man to pull far enough ahead to lose them eventually, but…. "Maybe there's a ravine that he's hiding in? None of the tree trunks were wide enough to hide anyone, at least…a couple of the boulders were, but the man had to realize that they weren't going to just give up."

"Maybe." Dean turned slowly. "I don't like this."

"Join the crowd." Sam checked his gun as well, shifting so he was at Dean's back as they began to make their way up the rocky slope. The skinwalker had to have gone somewhere. Unless, of course, an angel had decided to give him a—

"Oh, shit."

Sam twisted to see what he was looking at. "What?"

"Cave." Dean waved at a dark hole in between two boulders that seemed to lead directly into the hillside and sighed. "I hate caves. Things eat you in caves."

And they didn't even have flashlights with them, either, Sam realized; after all, they'd expected to be above ground today. "Guess we could get a GPS reading and come back tomorrow." Assuming one of their phones worked out here, anyway…maybe they could get reception up on top of the hill.

"Oh, after we hike back to the motel? My keys are in that jacket, and we are not hotwiring my car."

"What? Ah, shit." It was Sam's turn to sigh as he considered the rough hole leading into the rock. "Guess we should be glad he ran this way, then…he could have just stolen the car."

"Hey, don't say that!" Dean objected. "Don't you ever say that! Steal my car…." He shook his head.

"Well, we're going to have to either get that jacket back or hotwire it, because otherwise I'd put money on him taking it tonight."

Dean sighed and reached up to break a couple green branches out of the nearest tree. "So. Torches, then. Give me your shirt."

"What? No." Sam glared. "Use your own shirt."

"Dude, this is weird."

"You're noticing this now?"

"Oh, come on, Samantha, don't be like that."

Dean shoved him lightly, and if they hadn't been in the middle of a hunt, Sam would have been tempted to drop his torch on Dean's foot. His torch made with his shirt, since according to Dean, he'd already lost enough clothes today and it was Sam's turn to donate. Sam had tried to point out that it was Dean's own fault that he'd lost his jacket, but....

"Aren't we like halfway through the hill by now?" Dean asked.

"I'd say at least, but the path has been sloping down, so it's hard to say." No matter how far they'd gone, the skinwalker could have gone a lot farther; between the time they'd had to spend making the torches and their slow pace down the tunnel, the skinwalker could have gained a lot of ground on them by now. And although it was hard to say for sure, Sam didn't think he'd seen any blood spatters in the tunnel, which meant that whatever wound Dean had dealt the skinwalker might not be an issue for him anymore. Something flickered ahead, and Sam jerked his head. "Check it out; I think it opens up down there."

"Finally."

Dean had been playing rearguard with the angel-killing sword—the skinwalker was probably down here somewhere, but just in case Zachariah was in the mood to drop in and give the bastard a hand, neither Sam nor Dean had wanted to get hit from behind. Privately, Sam suspected that Dean almost wanted Zachariah to drop in, just so Dean could have a chance at him, but….

"Hey, do you smell that?" Dean asked.

Sam frowned. Mostly he smelled the smoke from his torch—smoke that wasn't making it's way back up the tunnel anywhere near fast enough for his liking—but…. "Ew. Yeah, actually." He hated skinwalkers.

"I hate skinwalkers," Dean echoed his thought.

They approached the opening slowly, and Sam turned to look back at his brother. "Ready?"

Dean swapped the angel-killing sword for his gun. "On three?"

"Three." They moved through the opening in unison, Sam covering the right side of a reasonably large cavern while Dean covered the left.

Something bright white flashed on the wall, and Sam fired instinctively, but he didn't hit anything but stone. He crossed the cavern quickly, but there was no lantern, no mirror, nothing that looked like it would have produced that flash. "What was that?"

"I don't know, but that's old skinwalker parts." Dean waved at a pile of slimy…something…off in a corner and then returned to scanning the cavern.

"Gross."

"Yeah. No skinwalker, though; there must be another way out."

"Maybe." It was hard to say for sure; the cavern walls weren't smooth by any stretch of the imagination, and their torches were casting odd shadows that didn't help matters at all. Sam stepped forward to look more closely at the wall where the flash had been—maybe there was a quartz deposit or something like that that had somehow caught the light?—when he stumbled over something soft. And, fortunately for his peace of mind, non-squishy. He reached down cautiously and encountered a familiar object. "Hey, here's your jacket."

"Dude, he dropped it?" Dean crossed the cavern and snatched it back, brushing the dust off hurriedly before slipping it back on. "No respect, I swear."

"I'm sure that was his first con…." Sam frowned, trailing off as he reached out to touch the paint on the cavern wall.

"His first what?" Dean asked.

"Never mind, check out these symbols." He put the torch closer to the wall, trying to make out the full shapes.

"More peace signs?" Dean asked.

Dean seemed to be concentrating on the rest of the cavern, which Sam decided was a good thing since he didn't really want the skinwalker to hit him from behind, but if he was right…. "No. Lean your torch this way a little."

"Sam, I don't think—"

"Dean, I think these are Enochian. Like, for-real Enochian." He touched the paint lightly again and then took a step back from the wall.

Judging by Dean's expression, he wanted very much to draw the angel-killing sword, but he was equally obviously unwilling to put down his gun, and they couldn't afford to lose the torches. "Well, what do they say?" Dean asked.

"I don't know." Sam pulled out his phone. "Watch your eyes." Even looking away, the flash was nearly blinding, and Sam blinked and squinted down at the screen. "I don't know what it says, Dean, but I'd swear this was real Enochian."

"Then you think that white flash was an angel?"

"I guess it could have been, although I don't know why he wouldn't have stuck around. We haven't exactly had a lot of luck against them yet."

"Maybe he sensed the angel-killing sword."

"Yeah, maybe." Sam shook his head. "Okay, so we've got a guy does some half-assed cat-killing ritual—one that's obviously not going to work—to get somebody named Morris to visit, but then he decides to come down here, throw up some Enochian, and have an angel come visit instead? That doesn't even make sense."

"Sam, none of this makes sense. Let's just find the skinwalker, kill the skinwalker, and get on with our lives. If we can gank Zachariah on the way; it's a bonus."

"Well, I guess that's a plan." Sam turned to start scanning the rest of the walls with the torch, gun ready, hoping that they'd just find the skinwalker crouched behind something rather than having to chase him down another tunnel, when another thought occurred to him. "Hey, Dean, you do have your keys, right? I mean, if the skinwalker does have another way out, he can't double back and take the Impala?"

Dean patted his pocket. "Yeah, I already checked. The keys are right here."

"Good. I'll start working this way if—Dean? What's wrong?"

Even in the torchlight, it was easy to see the sudden flash of alarm in Dean's eyes. "Sam, there was a key to the motel room in my pocket too."

"What—oh, crap. If that was an angel…."

"Then they know where Cas is."