Disclaimer: Refer to Chapter 1.

A/N: Story and review alerts seem to still be down at this point, so I want to extend my sincere appreciation to those of you that have been so faithful to this story that you've gone digging around the site to see if there have been any recent updates instead of waiting for the alerts. Also…as always…this story is completely UN-beta'd so any mistakes you find are all mine. Now…on with the show!

From the previous chapter:

The spontaneous healing that had occurred with Sam's wounds had significantly reduced the depth of Sam's thigh wound and Bobby held his breath as he slowly loosened the ligature. Renewed bleeding sprung from the smaller veins and capillaries but no arterial bleeding was evident and Bobby relaxed with a relieved sigh.

Despite the inexplicable reduction in the size of the wound, there had been too significant a loss of tissue to be able to safely pull the wound together with sutures. Had they tried, even a small amount of swelling or slight movement would have been enough to tear the sutures from the wound and possibly renew the arterial hemorrhaging.

Instead, the hunter firmly packed the deep crater with moistened gauze that they held in place with multiple wraps from a roll of Kling gauze. Having done what they could do, Dean and Bobby retreated to a huddled review of the day's events, the serious injuries and unanswered questions a maddening and mocking condemnation that Sekhmet had managed to stay at least one step ahead of them.

Seems to me, little brother…you and me have a thing or two to talk about when you wake up.

One Jump Ahead of the Storm

Chapter 26: Welcome to My Nightmare

It had been almost an hour since Sam had awoken, groaning pitifully, and still he hadn't spoken. Dean had hovered nervously, each passing minute of silence only adding to his certainty that something significant was wrong with Sam.

"Can we talk?" Dean thought this must have been the hundredth time he'd asked Sam that question since he'd awakened. In fact, he'd asked it so much, he was beginning to feel as though he was channeling Joan Rivers.

"Look," Dean said, "I understood the silence yesterday after you got hurt. But now…you're really starting to freak me out. Usually I can't get you to shut the hell up…and now…well…now, you're starting to scare me. This isn't like you, Sammy. I know it must be hard…but I need to know what happened out there. I mean…you were dead, Sammy. Coming back from the dead isn't normal."

"And what part of our lives is, Dean? I can't even remember what 'normal' is any more!"

The anger in Sam's voice had caught Dean off guard and he sat silently studying the frayed hole in the knee of his jeans.

Minutes passed in a palpably tense silence before either hunter spoke again. This time Sam's voice was softly apologetic. "I'm sorry, Dean. I didn't mean to yell at you. It's just that, ever since yesterday, I've been trying to figure it out for myself. How was I supposed to explain everything to anyone else when I wasn't even sure that I understood it?"

Dean gazed guiltily at Sam. "I shouldn't have pushed you like that. I never thought…It's just that this whole damned thing hasn't made sense from the beginning. And yesterday…Sekhmet attacking you…and seeing you…It was just too much. Why didn't destroying Sekhmet's altar spay the bitch?"

Bobby appeared at the doorway and Sam motioned him in.

"I'm glad you're here, Bobby. I've been thinking about…you know, everything…and I think I've finally worked some of it out in my head."

"Glad you have, kiddo, 'cause I've been turning it all over in my head, too, and I'm not any closer now to piecing it together than I was yesterday," Bobby confessed. "The only thing I know is that I watched you die out there and then…"

Sam glanced away, took a deep breath and sighed. He knew trying to explain this wasn't going to be easy. "That wasn't me that died out there in that wildlife park…it was Dean."

Confused glances shot back and forth rapidly between Bobby and Dean, but neither one said anything. Dean was perched on the edge of Sam's bed and he leaned forward and placed his hand on Sam's forehead, thinking he must be delirious from fever.

Sam batted his hand away in irritation. "Knock it off, jerk. I don't have a fever. Remember the first vision I had…the one in the kitchen? And remember how it was especially vivid? How I physically felt what went on in the vision? It took me a while to figure this out, but I wasn't really attacked by Sekhmet."

Dean gestured wildly at Sam's multitude of injuries and angrily proclaimed, "You could have fooled me! Where the hell do you think those came from?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you. When I was attacked, did either of you see Sekhmet, in any of her forms…lion or otherwise?"

"No," Dean admitted.

"Me, neither," Bobby confessed.

"That's because it didn't happen. Sekhmet wasn't there." Sam was peering wide-eyed at his companions. "I had started down the path ahead of you when I felt a headache coming on. It struck so hard and so fast I didn't have time to let you know what was going on. My so-called 'return from the dead' happened when I was released from the vision."

"Ok, fine," Dean acquiesced. "Let's say I believe that Sekhmet didn't attack you…that it was all just another vision. Why are your visions suddenly causing you physical injuries? Each one leaves you worse off than the last one. Any more and…"

"Because these aren't my normal visions, that's why," Sam cut in. Sam almost had to laugh at how strange their lives had become that he would actual put "normal" and "vision" in the same sentence. "I couldn't figure it out before, but that first vision just felt 'different'. I can't really describe it, but I just sensed that it didn't emanate from the same source, or whatever, as usual. It wasn't until I had this second vision and I realized it felt just as 'different' that I made the connections. I think these visions are being supplied courtesy of Ptah."

Sam glanced from Bobby to Dean. Neither hunter moved and Dean was giving Sam an "I-think-you've-lost-more-blood-than-we-originally-thought" look, so Sam continued on.

"Try to follow this…Sekhmet killed Ptah. He sorta gets a posthumous revenge because she's buried alive with him and her spirit's been held captive by him all these years. Then suddenly, her spirit is released and now Ptah's pissed. The only way for him to reclaim his revenge is to reach out from the grave with information that might help to rein her in again. Only problem is…"

"Only problem is…" Dean broke in, "…is that he's a god and doing the 'Psychic Friends Network' thing with you pushes everything into overdrive."

"Right," Sam agreed. "So not only do I see what goes on in my visions, I end up with the side-effect of feeling what's going on. The release from the vision can clear up some of the physical effects, but it can't clear all of them up."

"Alright," Bobby began, "but since we destroyed Sekhmet's altar and beer jars, that should have ended it. Why would Ptah be showing you a vision of Dean being attacked by the lion form of Sekhmet?"

Sam let out a small chuckle. "I think that was Ptah's less than subtle way of telling me that my hunch at the lion's den was right. We destroyed the altar and the jars, but not Sekhmet. She's a spirit, yes, but like Ptah, she's also a god…well, in her case, a goddess. But, anyway, that imbues her with hocus-pocus 'regular' spirits don't have. Just destroying her stuff isn't gonna do her in…we have to destroy her."

"Kinda hard, don't you think," Bobby challenged, "…since she's been able to flick back and forth between human, spirit and lion forms?"

"Yeah, that's the sticky part I haven't figured out yet," Sam acknowledged.

"What," Dean argued contemptuously, "Ptah's more than happy to beat the shit out of you all in the name of being 'helpful', but can't see it in his mummified heart to tell you how to exterminate 'Miss Hell Cat'?"

Sam shrugged his shoulders, drawing in a sudden breath through his clenched teeth when pain shot along his left side. He reached over, cradling his left flank with his right hand and scrooched around in bed until he could once again regain a comfortable position.

Dean left Sam's bedside and rummaged around in the bathroom. When he returned to his younger brother, he was holding out the two remaining Percocet and a small glass of water.

Sam had briefly considered allowing himself to be seduced by the respite from pain those two small, white tablets would afford him. At the moment he was almost ready to give in, he noticed something that brought him up short and completely changed his mind.

As Dean stood with the pills perched on his outstretched left palm and the glass of water gripped in his right hand, Sam noted Dean's hands were trembling.

Dean had felt the now familiar trembling returning as they had desperately tried to get Sam out of the wildlife sanctuary. Initially, Dean had thought the adrenalin rush from his nervousness over Sam's condition was getting the best of him. But when they had gotten Sam back to the Hoover's and the tremors hadn't abated, Dean knew things had just gone from 'uh-oh' to 'oh, shit'.

In the several hours since they'd gotten back to the farmhouse and gotten Sam patched up, Dean had ingested more cups of Bobby's tea than he would have liked to have remembered. Still, the tremors had not improved. With his injuries plaguing him, Sam certainly wasn't going to be in any shape to go after Sekhmet again and now his symptoms were returning despite Bobby's tea. This couldn't have come again at a worse time, Dean mused.

The longer Sam stared at Dean's hands, the more self-conscious Dean had become about it until he was shaking so badly that he was sloshing small amounts of water out of the glass he'd poured for Sam. In desperation, he slammed the glass and the pills down on the small bedside table.

"Fine," Dean said defensively, "If you want to be a jerk and not take 'em, that's alright by me."

"How long Dean?" Sam's facial expression was painted with a mixture of fear, hurt, sympathy and anger. "You weren't going to tell us about this, were you? You were going to try to hide it again. How long have the symptoms been back?"

"Look, Sam," Dean protested, "With you being hurt and everything else that was going on I just didn't think it was…"

"That's right," Sam yelled, "…you didn't think! How long Dean?"

"I noticed it after you got hurt," Dean whispered softly. "I've been drinking Bobby's tea, but it doesn't seem to be helping this time."

"Grab some clean clothes for me. We're going back to Los Barba," Sam commanded.

"Whoa, there, cowboy," Bobby cautioned. "You're in no shape to go after Sekhmet."

"Bobby's right," Dean affirmed.

"And neither is Dean. Hell, he hasn't been in any shape to hunt on half the gigs we've done, but he hunts anyway…and so will I," Sam snapped. "In my vision she goes after Dean at the park. That's where we'll find her…and where I'm gonna end this once and for all."

Sam swung his legs off the bed and sat there hunched over, breathing hard and bracing his hands on the edge of the mattress. Pain rippled through just about every inch of his body, sweat beaded at his hairline and across his upper lip, and his left leg throbbed mercilessly.

Dean had reached for him as he made an attempt to rise to his feet, but Sam only batted him away. Limping heavily on his left leg, he crossed the room to the bureau and pulled out a clean shirt and jeans and then painfully returned to sit on the edge of the bed.

Sam gingerly leaned forward, guiding the leg of his jeans onto his right foot and pulled up slightly. Things didn't go so smoothly with his injured left leg and he was left panting in pain as he struggled with it.

"So," Dean chimed in smugly, "is Superman ready to let someone give him some help?"

Sam sat upright, breathing heavily, his expression one of resigned determination. "Only if Superman's irritating older brother can manage to keep his cakehole shut while he's doing it, 'cause I'm hunting whether he likes it, or not."

To be continued…

About the chapter title: "Welcome to My Nightmare" was the title track to the popular 1975 Alice Cooper concept album of the same name.