Sam was on his laptop for the majority of an hour, taking notes and marking new internet bookmarks, organizing all of the sites in his computer's favorites web. While he worked on that, Serenity had changed into more comfortable clothes – loose but appropriate elastic-banded sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt. I had crashed tiredly on the bed, toeing my shoes off of my heels and then rolling over on top of the comforter.

Instead of trying to sleep, I just stretched out my long limbs, working out the kinks and stress from the long day in the car. If Dean wanted on the bed, he'd have had to deal with my arms and legs over and under him until I was feeling a little less cramped.

Sam leaned back and he stretched his legs out under the table, crossing his legs at the ankles and wiggling his toes through plain white socks. "Well, you were right." He chuckled and he pushed one of his hands through his hair, knocking his strands off of his forehead. "Heh. It wasn't very easy to find, but you were right."

The TV hummed when it was turned off as the screen went black, and the springs of my siblings' mattress squeaked slightly under Serenity's shifting weight when she rolled onto her side to listen to Sam. I rolled my head to the side on the pillow, and Dean looked over me, still sitting up on the bed.

Though Sam would probably refuse to admit it, sometimes I suspected he liked having an audience that actually wanted to listen to what he had to say, because sometimes his back would straighten and he'd talk a little bit louder. This was one of those times. "A shtriga is a kind of witch. They're Albanian, but legends about them trace back to Ancient Rome. They feed off of spiritus vitae."

Dean pushed himself all the way up to sit with his hands and then dragged his fingertips across his jeans, scratching an itch on his leg. "Spiri-what?" He repeated, doing a horrible job at it.

"Spiritus vitae," Serenity responded in answer to him. Our Latin class was coming back to haunt us all over again. "The individual words mean 'spirit' and 'life' but together they mean 'the breath of life.' It's Latin."

"So – operating on the assumption that life force can be stolen away – then that's what the shtriga is feeding on." I felt like I was in a movie again. A monster eating people or a ghost drowning them was a lot more straightforward and reasonable than a monster leeching off of their life force.

Then again… if people could go to Hell, while their bodies stayed here, then… were souls a thought? I'd always written off peoples' identity and emotions as another part of the electrical processes in the brain, as unromantic as that sounds. Philosophy was never a topic I liked. If souls were actually the real embodiment of a person's core, then physics would suggest they are a form of energy, just like any other living thing. It was possible to sap energy from a battery, or a circuit, so why not a soul?

Serenity sat up and pulled her knees up, bending her legs to sit crisscross. Then she pushed herself further back on the bed so that she could talk while at a better position to keep an eye on both Dean and myself and Sam on the other side of her. "Usually when vitae is being taken, the victims are supposed to age. That's how it works in TV programs, but in actuality, that would be stealing youth, or time, not vitae. Someone's life energy, their will to live, that doesn't usually go away with age, so the two actually probably aren't so strongly related. Life force… maybe it's not so spiritual as it is that it's taking away their energy."

Energy was physics, and that was something I could eagerly get on board with. "That… actually fits…!" I started to get excited and I threw my legs over the edge of the bed, sitting up animatedly. "Your body needs energy to function," I started to say, going on another explanation. I seemed to give those a lot when it came to making parallels and explanations between natural phenomena and the supernatural. I was still shocked that so many could even be made! "When your energy's lowered, your immune system is brought down; the shtriga opens the window and feeds on their strength. They're left extremely susceptible to the bacteria that are virtually everywhere. Normally, even children aren't vulnerable enough to contract serious diseases from household germs, but if their immune system was shot, it's entirely possible they have your average case of pneumonia, just not the strength to fight it off."

"You're right," Sam bobbed his head in strong agreement, looking pleasantly surprised at the logic. "It fits. Anyway, the shtrigas can feed off of anyone, but they prefer-"

"Children," Dean interrupted, his tone just slightly flat, enough to sound off and to start to worry me. But Serenity's eyes had fallen to the bedspread, and I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't been about to guess the same thing.

Sam swallowed. The reminder, the shift in mood, served as a wake up call that this wasn't just a fun discussion about a fascinating behavior. There were people being hurt, children that could die if they weren't able to start fighting back against the pneumonia trashing their lungs. "Yeah. Probably because they have stronger life force." He cleared his throat. "And get this – shtrigas are "invulnerable to all weapons devised by God and man."" He was reading off of his computer screen.

"Great. So do we whine or do we ask God to test that?" I asked snarkily, not appreciating the claim. Anything with an ego so great they thought they were invulnerable to what was supposed to be an all-powerful, omniscient being with no limitations was something that needed to be knocked down a few pegs, preferably in an ironic way to both prove a point and give everyone they'd hurt something to laugh about.

"Anything you'd like to say to make this a less depressing situation, Sam?" Serenity asked, not really hopefully. "Because if that's next on your 'get this' list, then I'm all ears." She held out her arms in invitation, leaning forwards.

Sam's face fell.

Dean stood up from the bed abruptly and I looked up after him, mourning the warmth. "No, that's not right," he declared, stony face not giving anything away while his voice was stubborn. "She's vulnerable when she feeds."

Sam did a double-take from his computer. "What?" Said like he couldn't hear quite right.

"If you catch her when she's eating, you can blast her with consecrated wrought iron." Dean flipped the collar of his jacket up his neck. I knew what that meant. If he were sitting down here, I'd have reached for him to settle my hand on the back of his neck protectively, but as it was, he'd stood up and moved away, so he probably wanted his space. "Buckshot or rounds, I think."

Sam turned his body away from the table, crossing his arms in front of his chest and his expression becoming mulish. "How do you know that?"

"Dad told me." Dean looked towards the window in a cursory glance and then back to Sam, almost daring his little brother to press. "I remember."

"Oh." Sam didn't quite buy it, but at least he didn't stand up and make it a challenge. Though he looked skeptical, he hadn't evolved to suspicion, for which I was grateful. The Winchesters' tendency for an unusual supply of blind trust helped keep the peace sometimes. "So… uh… anything else Dad might have mentioned?"

"Nope, that's it," was said with so much finality that it was obvious Dean both didn't actually think about it and didn't want to talk about it.

Sam didn't look away from Dean. Clearly he was having a mental battle, debating with himself whether or not it was important to know what wasn't being said. It was a traumatic memory for Dean, so the older brother didn't want to talk about it, but Sam had no sure way of knowing without being told that it wasn't anything Sam particularly needed to know. While I was of the opinion that Sam had a right to know – as it had been his life and health endangered, after all – I was also of the opinion that they should argue as little as possible, and I tried to change the focus to something else without it being glaringly obvious.

"Well, the kids wouldn't still be alive if they weren't replenishing energy," I pointed out. If the kids were totally energy-free, then the pneumonia would have taken them out by now. "I don't know why they haven't totally recovered yet. Maybe the shtriga has a hold on them for as long as it's alive. If we kill the shtriga, the children can recover normally."

I know Serenity could tell that I was changing the subject. She knows me too well not to get it when I interrupt just as tension begins to raise. Thankfully, she went with it rather than calling me on it. "Are you sure that'll work?"

I shrugged. So much for being optimistic. "No, but do you have a better idea?" Serenity gave me her you know I don't look and I shrugged. "I'm all for killing the monster, but my priority lies with the children."

Sam let it go and he got on board with the discussion again. I picked the map of Fitchburg from where I'd set it on the table between the beds and snatched up the motel pen with the notepad, opening up the map and spreading it out on my thighs.

"I'm definitely with you there," he agreed wholeheartedly about the kids. "So, assuming we can kill it when it eats," he glanced at Dean here when he said 'assume.' "We've still got to find the thing first, which isn't going to be a cakewalk. Shtrigas take on a human disguise when they're not hunting."

Damn. The shapeshifter had taken on human disguises, too, and that had gone so well.

"What kind of human disguise?" Dean asked suspiciously. I narrowed my eyes at the map, trying to pick out Emerson on the rows of streets, and hummed quietly when I found it, marking about halfway up the block.

Sam turned his right hand over before he relaxed his arm, and his palm fell back onto his jeans. "Historically, something innocuous. Could be anything, but it's usually a feeble old woman." That sounds familiar, I thought, penning the location of the third house that had been hit by the shtriga. "It might be how the 'witches as old crones' legend got started."

"Well, I think we're all familiar with that," Serenity scoffed. It was less of a legend now and more like a trope or a cliché. "The Wizard of Oz."

"Fablehaven," I mumbled, looking up and following my sister's example, listing examples.

"Rosemary's Baby," Serenity offered. Sam looked disturbed, Dean puzzled, and I shuddered. The ideas behind that movie were seriously distressing.

"Suspiria." Still kind of regretted that one. I pressed my pen into the hospital's mark on the local map and stopped the list of examples. "Huh…"

"Huh?" Dean looked over at me and walked around the side of the bed to see what I was doing. "What huh?" He saw the map, but I still felt it best to explain – especially for Serenity and Sam, who couldn't see it from where they were.

"Look, this is what I got the map for." I tossed the pen onto the table and picked up the map, turning it around and holding it in front of my chest. "It's called a geographical profile, we use it with serial killers. The red marks are the addresses of the kids that have been attacked. It kind of cordons off a neighborhood. This neighborhood is the comfort zone, because that's where the shtriga is attacking – feels the most comfortable and confident there. And, right in the middle of the comfort zone…"

Serenity leaned forward. "That's the hospital all of the kids are at." She declared for Sam, who was further away, leaning back in both surprise and annoyance. It was frustratingly obvious; the hospital was the ground zero, but that was where the children were now. Hundreds of people were in that hospital as staff and patients, and narrowing that down would take a while. Even then, while it was a starting point, there wasn't a guarantee. Geographical profiles are tools, not one hundred percent accurate formulas.

I nodded grimly. At least we knew the comfort zone, though, and that was something for as long as the shtriga stayed in the area. "Bingo."

"So, what… they work or live at the hospital?" Serenity looked over to Sam and gave him a nod, like she was saying he should look for the employee and patient records online. They would be kept a bit more secure than most he'd tried getting before.

"It's… pretty close to the kids." I swallowed uneasily, stomach flipping. I'd somehow assumed that, in a hospital, the sick children wouldn't be in any more danger. "It could still be draining them every night. And that's why they can't get back enough energy to heal."

Dean looked down to me, and when I felt his eyes on me, I looked up. "When we were there, I saw a patient… an old woman," Dean clarified.

"An old person, huh?" Sam asked, raising his eyebrows with amusement and lying in wait for Dean to walk into the trap. Cynicism was obvious in his voice, but for some reason it went over his brother's head.

"Yeah," Dean confirmed again, nodding his head.

Sam chuffed. "In a hospital? Phew…" he snickered loudly. "Better call the Coast Guard!"

Serenity and I both laughed, giving Sam his props.

Dean scowled and threw an imitation of Sam's bitch face at his brother. "Well, listen, smartass, she had an inverted cross hanging on her wall."

Sam, Serenity, and I all stopped laughing immediately, Sam turning grave. Dean looked about ready to crow 'I told you so' or something smug now that Sam wasn't mocking him.

Meanwhile, my sister rolled her eyes and let her neck loll, her head dropping to her shoulder. "Remember when we used to see a person with a sort of cross and think something like, 'oh, they're religious?'" She asked me. I nodded solemnly. I did remember that. "Why is it that now, whenever we see a cross, our first thought is 'oh, they're probably the monster we should be hunting?'"


Had we just been going into the hospital normal-style, it would have been a lot easier. But nope – we had to take in our guns so that we could kill the woman Dean had seen if she turned out to be the shtriga. This made what should have been a simple matter of walking through the doors into a frustrating ordeal where we had to sneak inside without getting caught by any guards or metal detectors. It was a process.

Although hospitals are open twenty-four hours (they have to be; illnesses and injuries don't appear on a schedule), they're usually a lot quieter at night. Most people who have come in for injuries have been transferred to wards where they can be cared for if they need to stay overnight; the majority have been sent home with casts, splints, wraps, gauze, medications, et cetera. The outpatients have mostly gone home; the inpatients are no longer walking up and down the halls for their exercise, and most of the patients have had their lights turned out so that they can go to bed. There are also fewer doctors and nurses around working the night shift. There are enough to be sure everyone can be taken care of, but there's a ratio at work to some extent.

Serenity grumbled. "I hate sneaking around hospitals at night." While I was walking like a normal person, Dean, Sam, and Serenity were trying to step lighter and keep their heads down, trying to go unnoticed by the few people we passed in the halls. Aside from one nurse, who asked if we were here to see someone, we hadn't been stopped. Their jackets were large enough to cover small firearms, but not large enough to really be suspicious. Then again, if I was stopped, I had a permit for my gun. "I just hate hospitals at night, period."

"I dunno," I disagreed mildly. Hospitals had always been calming. I never like being hospitalized because of the restrictions placed on me – being forced to eat or sleep at certain times rubs me the wrong way. However, even the smell doesn't really bother me after the initial blast of chemicals and sterility, and then I feel pretty good about it. "I like hospitals no matter what time it is. They're just kind of calming."

Dean looked at me and shook his head, muttering under his breath. "God, you're weird," he complained, evidently feeling the same as Serenity where hospitals were concerned.

But you love me anyway, I bit back, pressing my tongue down before I said it out loud. It would be funny, except for that it was extra accurate given our relationship. "Well, think about it!" I argued, defending myself instead of teasing. "Attempted murder? I'm in a hospital. Heart attack? In a hospital. Bad accident? In a hospital!"

Serenity shook her head, laughing quietly. "You've been in hospitals for way too long." Her step adopted a small little bounce, and her tone was lifted, brighter and upbeat.

"All of you, shush!" Sam scolded. Dean stuck his tongue out at Sam. His brother turned his nose up and deigned not to respond in kind.

Dean was the one who had noticed the woman the first time that we were here, but I remembered the route we'd taken through the hospital, so I led, looking into the rooms as we passed, expecting for Dean to point it out if there was a closed door in front of our target. It felt weird to refer to another person as a target, but, ah… what could I do? It's not like it was wrong.

It turned out to be a room not far from the pediatrics, and the door had been left open just a couple of inches. It was dark inside, the lights turned off, but lights from the moon and the street were filtering in through the thick blinds and bounced off the silhouette of long, light hair from a form in a wheelchair facing the window.

We moved as if we'd rehearsed it, Sam staying to the side, pressing his hand against the door, and easing it open without letting it squeak. I slid in through the gap the second it was wide enough and Dean followed at my flank as the gap increased, becoming large enough for us both to fit through without difficulty. Serenity waved Sam in and leaned against the doorframe to keep guard, and the boys drew their guns, Dean going up around the wheelchair's occupant from the left while I moved around to the right.

I could see why she'd stood out to Dean earlier. She looked unusually pale, her long hair was almost white, and her bones were visible. She looked frail, like half of the witches on television, and there was a brown wooden cross on the wall, hung upside down.

Dean held his firearm out in front of him and nodded to me. I gave the okay sign and looked to Serenity. She was still calm, not giving any warnings or indications of incoming people, and Dean treaded carefully, being especially slow so that his boots wouldn't rub and squeak against the tile on the floor. He leaned in closer, looking at her face – her eyes were wide open, glassy, reflecting light but not really seeing, and Dean looked just as inquisitive as cautious.

The white-haired woman turned her head towards Dean and croaked loudly, "Who the hell are you?"

I bit hard on my lower lip to stop from making any noise, and Dean scrambled backwards, his eyes wide and face stunned. He totally freaked! He raised his gun up towards her head and stared like a terrified animal. Sam looked aghast, but he hadn't gotten the full effect of the jump scare.

Although there was a gun aimed directly at her, she didn't seem to notice. "Who's there? You trying to steal my stuff?" She demanded crankily. I frowned and looked back up to Sam's shadow, making an 'up' motion with my hand like I was hitting a switch. He pressed his hand to the wall and felt for the lights until they blinked on overhead.

I looked at the woman's eyes. They were milky and clouded over… which explained why she couldn't really see us. I looked at the threshold to Serenity and mouthed 'help!' My sister was no assistance in the situation whatsoever, shaking her head and staying put where she was, on guard duty to make sure no one was coming.

Sam was the first to answer anything she'd said. "Ah, ma'am, we're maintenance," he lied through his surprise. I looked at Dean, glared, and gestured at his gun before drawing a line across my throat. He nodded before he processed and then hurriedly shoved it back under his jacket. I stepped lightly, moving away soundlessly. "We're sorry, we thought you were sleeping."

"Nonsense," she puffed. "I was sleeping with my peepers open." Dean went from looking startled to looking disapproving. I shook my head and rubbed my forehead while she laughed, loud and raspy with her dry throat. She apparently thought that this was hilarious. I thought it was something bad waiting to happen. Dean pulled himself up indignantly, embarrassed at being so scared. "Ah, and fix that crucifix, would you? I've asked four damn times already!"

Still edgy, Dean stepped back to the wall. He held up a hand and flicked the top of the upside-down cross, and it unbalanced, swinging around and catching right-side up. It was just a normal cross mounted on the wall that had been turned around, probably by some staff member with a sense of humor. Dean rolled his eyes irately, as if he was thinking, of course.


We went back to the motel as daylight broke, laughing our asses off at Dean's expense. After a quick breakfast at an all-night restaurant, Serenity had mentioned the definitely human woman yet again and Sam positively giggled. Aside from Dean, the rest of us collapsed into peals of laughs.

Poor Dean was never going to be able to live down how terrified he'd been by the woman he'd nearly shot for shock. The teasing was starting to get old, wearing at him, but he knew better than to take it personally. He also knew that it would be rude of him to get pissed for teasing him when he teased the rest of us, too, and rude he was but hypocritical he did not like to be.

""I was sleeping with my peepers open?"" Sam breathlessly recited, slapping his hands on his thighs and bending over, his laughter ringing loudly in the parking lot. Serenity leaned into the car when she got out, now shoving her fist in her mouth to try to stop laughing. After she shoved the back door to swing shut, she covered her side like she had a stitch.

Dean wasn't blushing, but he was certainly embarrassed at how flustered he'd been. He wasn't as unflappable as he liked to think. "I almost smoked that old girl, I swear," he complained, physically pained at the word-for-word reminder. Sam laughed harder. Dean glared. "It's not funny!" He finally snapped.

I was mostly calming down. The woman had spooked me, too, and I hadn't been imagining Serenity jumping or Sam's expression of complete 'oh fuck' when she'd spoken the first time. Though still smiling about it, the humor was fading for the moment. It would come back with fervor some other time.

Serenity pointed at Dean across the car. "You looked like a normal person who just saw a ghost!" She gloated.

"Oh, man," Sam snickered, trying to bite his tongue but giving up again. "You should've seen your face!"

Dean crossed his arms, rolled his eyes, and then uncrossed his arms again to yank up the back of his jacket collar. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it off," he grumbled.

"Oh, don't worry!" All too brightly, Serenity beamed at Dean like he'd given her permission. "We will!" A double-thumbs up supported the cheery air she had taken on since the trip to the hospital.

My hunter decided to let our siblings have some fun. "Now we're back to square one," he murmured to me, leaving them out of it while they kept having the time of their lives. I hummed. That had occurred to me a while ago; we knew what it was, but where do you find an Albanian witch that preys on children?

I had been hoping the old woman would be the shtriga. One simple job – easy to locate, easy to hunt – and then we'd just be done, because all of the information had been quick to find and Dean had already had the knowledge from the hunt his Dad had been on when he was nine. Now, since the hospital was still implicated, we had an excuse to keep visiting and checking on the kids while seeing who else was there… but we still couldn't know for sure unless we caught them feeding on a child, could we?

I rubbed the back of my neck and felt some tension melt away from my spine as I carried myself a little looser. We've done tougher hunts before and come out on top; this will be no different, aside from the pressure of protecting innocent kids too young to even get the dirty jokes snuck into kids' movies.

I looked up to the front office, wondering if I'd have to go confirm that we'd be here for another night, when I saw that there was a small body on the front bench. We hadn't been paying attention when we'd gotten out of the Impala, but a lone kid with blonde hair was sulking a few feet away from the doors, his feet not quite touching the ground, leaning forward over his knees with his arms helplessly to either side of him.

The manager's older son, I recognized after a second. "Guys, hang on," I said, a bit louder so Serenity and Sam would hear as they wound down. Serenity said something to Sam and he nodded, his smile not quite so large while they said something about the break-in.

Dean just nodded at me, already knowing that I was going to go do something. I could never just ignore a kid who looked troubled, and the blonde boy was more than just sulking – he looked sad. I smiled thankfully to him and slipped past, heading away from the car and over towards the office and the bench in front of it.

After reaching to my side and pulling down the hem of my blazer, being sure that it covered up my pistol, I cleared my throat. The kid didn't look up, so I stepped a little closer to stand at the end of the bench. "Hey," I said softly to get his attention. Blank hazel eyes looked up at me with a hint of confusion before he realized who I was and he looked down again. "What's going on?"

The child looked up at me again, his expression just as blank as his eyes. There was a difference between blank and shielded, of course, but to me he looked like he was in shock. The emotions would come when he was ready to feel them. I did a once-over quickly. He looked healthy and uninjured.

"My brother's sick," spilled out of his mouth so quickly the words were almost slurred together. His little voice drew my eyes to his face again. Now, instead of shocked, he looked surprised that the words had even made it past his lips.

His brother. "The little kid?" I asked, surprised, with a growing pit in my stomach that felt too much like dread. Oh, God, please don't say he's got-

"Pneumonia," the boy confirmed, his eyes going downcast again. He bowed his head, leaving his neck bare to me, strands of short yellow hair lying softly on his throat. "He's in the hospital." Great. Had the kid been in the hospital when we'd been there? Had his mother panicked and rushed him in while I was leaning to Sam, stealing away bites of his eggs while Dean and Serenity tried to play footsie without being noticed? "It's my fault."

Well… if anyone's to blame here, it's the shtriga. Rationally I knew that, but it didn't make the unpleasant, twisting guilt in my stomach ease up any. I regretted eating breakfast at all. If this was how it felt for me, how bad had it been for the kid's brother, who seemed to look after him along with their mother?

I hadn't been invited down next to him, but since the blonde didn't seem afraid or nervous because of me, I lowered myself down onto the bench. My heart was going out to him. Trying to decide which issues to tackle in what order was a challenge, but one I went through quickly; chances were extremely low that this was just a coincidental case of pneumonia. The shtriga had come by, probably soon after we'd left or before we'd even gone, and hurt children within hearing distance. If one of them had just woken up and screamed…

The shtriga was supernatural, and as far as the child knew, his brother had a totally natural, if a bit frightening, sickness. Keep the shtriga out of it. I couldn't tell him any magical remedy to heal his brother, and ethically I couldn't offer consolations I knew were false, so I couldn't just say, 'he'll get better, trust me.' I could imply it, but I wouldn't be able to force myself to give a faux promise.

Why does he think it's his fault?

"Did you give him pneumonia?" I asked gently, knowing full well that the child probably wasn't even entirely sure what pneumonia was, besides a serious and scary disease in the lungs. What he knew was fairly limited; it was with most children. The blonde shook his head silently, kicking his legs sullenly. I continued on softly. "Because things like this just happen sometimes, kid, and it sucks, but it's not like he's got the plague. It's not fair to say that it's your fault."

"But it is though!" A little temper to match the little body exploded, his head snapping back up to look at me. I wasn't startled – I had almost expected a response like that – and just blinked at him for explanation. He shouldn't have been blaming himself. Mentally he seemed older than ten, but he still had the childish, prepubescent figure and the anxiety in his expression that made the shoved-away desire to protect rise in me. "I should've made sure the window was latched." The fire died and he looked down again, his legs stilling. "He wouldn't've got pneumonia if the window was latched…"

"Oh, so you're a doctor now, are you?" I replied smartly. Kid thought he knew everything there was to know about the situation. Inside I was raging, railing against the monster, but externally I just wanted to be collected and reassuring to put the boy's fears to rest as much as I could.

He didn't respond. I sighed, looked up and squinted into the cloudless baby blue sky, and rotated my shoulder back, setting my arm along the back of the bench. It would have been a flirtation, had he been an adult. As a child, it was just a less invasive way of offering a hug or protection.

"Look at me, kiddo," I urged, leaning down to catch green-speckled brown eyes. "There are a lot of ways to get sick. I know it's cold at night, but I'll let you in on a secret – it's pretty unlikely your brother got sick from one short night with the window open." Especially if he'd been there only a few hours before he was taken to the hospital, I added to myself silently.

"But I thought it was," he protested, bemused. I didn't want to say he looked cute, but damn. I was hard pressed to say his puzzled face, like he wasn't sure whether to be relieved or objectionable, wasn't freaking sweet. "That's what Dr. Heidacker said it was."

Of course he had. Doctors don't scare children – they dumb things down for them and try to make it seem like there are less variables, and that there are far more controlled than there are wild. Good doctors don't lie, but they don't frighten patients too young to handle or understand what's going on. Heidacker hadn't lied, exactly; for all he knew, it was the truth. It sure beat the other outlandish, stretching explanations for what was going on.

"Between you and me," I said, looking away from him and towards the door of the office. There was another car in the parking lot – a black minivan – so I assumed that their mother hadn't just left him here alone, and I was wondering how long it would take her to come collect her older offspring. "Doctors like to pretend they know everything that happened so that they can be more confident when they tell people not to worry. I promise, your brother getting sick isn't your fault. Okay?" He sniffed quietly. I don't think I was supposed to hear. "For a little while he'll be sick, and your mom will be worried, but then he'll make a recovery." The children were going to be released from the shtriga if it killed me. "You'll be back to making him dinner in no time."

He didn't hug me or move to lean in or anything, but I could see when he really listened to me because the atmosphere clinging around him changed. He didn't look happier, but he seemed less angry, less aggravated with himself. I counted that as a success, all things considered.

"It's my job to look after him," he whispered, kicking powerfully through the air. That sounded a bit too much like what I'd heard Dean say a hundred times over for me to think I could comment without confusing the contexts between my boyfriend with an emotionally (probably unintentionally) abusive father and a kid who wanted to look after his baby brother and was trying to grow up too fast and place responsibility on himself that he wasn't ready for, so I pursed my lips and stayed silent, but I didn't get up to leave.

Cool. Rapport established. … What do I do now? I couldn't sit out here with him for much longer, but leaving him alone without being able to explain why seemed pretty heartless.

The mother and the hotel manager came shoving her way out of the front office to the left, inadvertently coming to the rescue. She was pushing the door open with her back against the glass, leaning back and stepping out, trying to carry so much at once that she didn't have a hand free – a purse was hooked with the straps over her right forearm, a bottle of prescription meds in one hand, a small Jansport backpack in her arms, stuffed full with probably clothes and toiletries so that she could stay with her younger son as much as she could in case he needed her.

I couldn't even be bothered at the unfairness of leaving her older kid here at the hotel – not knowing that it was just better if he didn't have to stay at the hospital twenty-four seven, and knowing she'd be less stressed if she just had her sick child to contend with. If she was away overnight and the backpack was for her instead of the mini-her, then I'd check on the little one next to me a couple times just to be sure he was taken care of.

"Michael-" she grunted and lunged forward, rebalancing the backpack before it could fall out of her grasp. I winced, watching her trying to carry everything, and I stood up from the bench to help her. "I want you to turn on the 'no vacancy' sign while I'm gone. I've got Denise covering room service, so don't bother with any of the rooms."

I offered her a sympathetic smile and took the backpack away. It wasn't very heavy, but it was bulky. "Let me help you get this to the car," I implored, with enough politeness to seem like an offer and the charisma telling her not to bother trying to dissuade me.

"Oh, thanks," she said, with a bright but forced smile. She had dimples in her cheeks, like Sam's but a bit more pronounced. Her hair looked like it had been combed through with her hands, so while it didn't look bad, it was a different style than she'd worn last night. "Really, thank you."

"No trouble," I said with a winning grin. Michael – because that must have been his name – jumped off of the bench and started to run towards the front of the car, beating both of us there.

"I'm going with you," he declared, puffing his chest up stubbornly and holding his breath. He expected to be told no, but was valiantly putting forth effort anyway.

His mother sighed. "Not now, Michael."

"But I gotta see Asher!"

I was surprised that Serenity, Sam, and Dean hadn't ventured into our room by now, but instead came closer when it seemed like Michael was going to start a problem. Instead of giving his mother the chance to react to Michael's defiance, Dean took care of it, stepping in admirably with kinder, empathetic behavior than I was used to. Then again, he was great with children, even if he didn't particularly ever opt to be around them.

"Hey, Michael, I know how you feel – I'm a big brother, too – but you've got to go easy on your mom right now, okay?" He stayed a few feet away, respecting any boundaries in case she didn't want her guests interfering in her personal business more than we already had.

While she was trying to turn her keys around, she unthinkingly lowered her right arm to see the car keys in the sunlight. Her handbag slipped off her arm and over her hand, crashing to the ground. "Damn it!" She stepped back on impulse at the noise.

Serenity ducked forward. "I've got it," she said, picking it up by the straps and handing it back to the woman helpfully. Instead of being amused at her clumsiness, Serenity looked concerned in a way that I have yet to see her falsify. We don't have children, but we understand – as much as we can, anyway – the fear, concern, and anxiety that comes when they're ill. Even though childrearing isn't a lifestyle choice we lean towards, we still appreciate the rewards and hardships that come with it. The only times I've ever seen Serenity be rude or disrespectful to a parent struggling with their child was when the parent was being mean to their kid.

The older woman sighed, switching her keys with a rattle to her other hand, and took her purse again as my sister offered it. "Thank you," she said, relieved, still stressed but with some of that aggravation soothed.

Dean surveyed her again, his brow pinched thoughtfully, and then he held out a hand. "Listen, you're in no condition to drive. Why don't you let me give you a lift to the hospital?" He asked generously. If his protectiveness over Serenity and Sam hadn't already done a good job winning me over, his care for the civilian would have. I don't think any of us have been this good at Samaritanism in months.

"No, I couldn't possibly…" she started to object, but there was a spark of frustration in her eyes when she turned down the offer, so Dean cut her off.

"No, it's no trouble," he assured, reaching out again and gesturing for her car keys. "I insist." She ducked her head down, a little embarrassed about getting help from her customers, but she handed the keys over without any more modest fuss.

"Let me go with you," I offered with an earnest half-smile. I beckoned for Michael to step away from the car subtly at an angle where his mom couldn't see. Michael defiantly held his ground, but he looked between Dean, his mother, and I, and realized that with so many adults, there was really nothing his mother could need a child's help with to warrant him going, as well. "I can make sure you get in to see your son and get an update right away. I want to see Dr. Heidacker again, anyway."

The last part was a lie, mostly; I doubted the doctor would have anything new to say, but while I was curious if there had been a new development, I mostly just added it on so that I seemed like I gained more from the proposed situation than I really did. I figured if she thought I was winning from it, she'd feel less like she was imposing.

"We'll make sure Michael stays safe and healthy, okay?" I continued, with a softer voice. I knew Sam and Serenity wouldn't just leave a kid running a hotel, especially not when the shtriga had already hit the place up looking for victims once, without looking in on him. Still, while Sam could have said it, women trust other women more intuitively than they trust other men, especially with their children, considering the maternal imperative. "We'll have him call you before too late."

Now only carrying her purse, she looked like a load had been taken off of her shoulders. I shifted the backpack I was holding to my left hand. "Thanks," she said, sounding almost reverent. That tone made me worry a bit about exactly how exhausted she was. "Thank you so much." She opened the passenger's door to put her purse inside, shoved under the seat, knowing Dean intended to drive. Then she leaned back out before she got in and pointed at Michael, sternly saying, "Be good. Don't do anything you know you're not allowed, and be respectful."

While she said goodbye to a sullen and pouting Michael, Dean stepped back to me and met my eyes, his voice dangerously low with an edge that would probably frighten the single mother if she'd heard. "We're gonna kill this thing," he declared in a hiss. His eyes burned with fury he'd managed to conceal. The shtriga he felt responsible for was tearing apart families and harming children – this felt personal, because we'd been so close when it had hurt Asher. "I want it dead, you hear me?"

At that point, I realized I had two options; I could redundantly state my one hundred percent approval of that plan and applaud his conviction, or I could try to calm him from that edge he was at. Knowing which would be better for everyone involved, I smirked at him.

"Ooh, Dean," I purred, teasing, almost whispering because we were trying to have a private exchange in public, my face bright even though I would happily unload a magazine into anything that so much as tried to touch Michael while he was in our care. "It's so sexy when you get all vengeful." Word-for-word verbatim, I quoted exactly what the Winchester had told me when I'd gotten so upset in the hospital.

Dean rolled his eyes, calming down, and he nudged my shoulder with his when he moved away, going around to the other side of the car to get in and start the engine.


Asher was a little kid compared to Michael, but smothered in crisp hotel sheets, his skin pale, eyes sunken, and hair oily, he looked tiny. I could have picked him up and held him to me with one arm. Considering I think he's only three or four years younger than Michael, that's a bit concerning, even when taking into account that hunting and training have made me stronger than the typical person.

His mother – whose name I had learned on the ride here was Johanna – sank down into the seat to the left of his hospital bed in the pediatrics ward, in his own room separate from the other sick kids. It took more resources to room the kids separately, but this way if one of them could get better, they wouldn't just get ill again from the exposure to the other carriers. Bacterial infections spread faster when people aren't at complete health to begin with.

I stood on the other side of Asher's bed, resisting the urge to smooth his hair away from his face. Since hunting and taking time off from the FBI, even I had begun to notice that my personality was coming far forwards without repressing for the sake of professionalism or the bureau's reputation. I'm louder, I don't feel the need to bite my tongue as much, I'm much more possessive of my family and protective of children than I had allowed myself to be before. I eat what I want, when I want, I don't have to keep to a regular schedule, and I down coffee like it's sustenance.

"He's alright, he's just worried about Asher." We were talking about Michael while standing guard over the littlest of the family. I bit my lip before adding, "And a bit about you, too, I think." I looked down again to the small, ashen-faced kid in the bed and blinked, and looked away to gesture over towards the clipboard chart hanging on the side of the bed. "Do you mind?"

She looked to see what I was talking about, but then focused her attention on her son again, eyes finding his sleeping face. "No, not at all."

I picked it up with my right hand and held it about at my chest. All of the symptoms he was marked down for were consistent with an average case of pneumonia. The only medicine he was on at this point was a strong antibiotic. It wasn't the strongest. If he was already on something like the older kids were on, I'd tell the mother to demand the doctor lowered it to something more manageable for such a small child. His only allergy was to hazelnuts.

Asher was so small and weak. To think something could be knowingly taking advantage of his state was repulsive.

"Holls!" Dean leaned in through the open door of the room, his phone open and held to the side of his face. He caught my eyes when I looked up and nodded out to the hallway before he stepped out again.

"Excuse me," I said quietly to Johanna, resting the clipboard on the side rail of the bed. I'm not entirely sure that she heard me, but I went out to join Dean in the hall anyway. Choosing to give the mother and son some privacy, I pulled the heavy door behind me shut slowly and it closed with a soft snick. Dean was waiting across the hall, leaning on the wall with his phone in front of him, evidently on speaker. "What's going on?"

"I've got them on the phone." Them didn't tell me exactly who it was, but he was relaxed, so I guessed that it would be Serenity and Sam rather than someone we were lying to.

"How's the kid's brother?" Serenity asked, her voice floating up through the phone. There was almost no background noise from her end of the line. They were somewhere quiet.

Dean looked questioning, too. I shook my head gravely to him. If Asher had contracted the illness this strongly on his own, I wouldn't believe he stood a very good chance of safely recovering. One of the youngest kids to get it, it hit him particularly hard. If his fever went up much more, they'd have to start lowering the temperature around him rather than letting him sweat it out.

"Very not good," I said, suddenly feeling emotionally exhausted. I thudded against the wall as I gave my weight to the architecture. My head tipped forward and my forehead landed on Dean's shoulder. His hand not holding the phone snuck up to my hair, gently winding his fingers into the locks. "And the other kids? Also very not good." I sighed. "Please tell me you've been doing something fruitful."

"We're at the library," Sam informed. Apparently he and Serenity were using speakerphone, too. And that explained why it was so quiet. "We're trying to find out everything we can about this shtriga thing."

Embarrassment made my face heat up. I touched my palm to my cheek and felt the warmth, so I turned away so Dean didn't see. We probably should have done that before we attempted to kill who we thought was the shtriga. Even if the woman with the cross was the witch, we still would have been shamefully ill-prepared.

"Yeah? And what have you got?" Dean asked, noticing that I was looking away and up to the ceiling and choosing instead to focus on his brother.

"Well, bad news. I started with Fort Douglas around the time you said Dad was there."

"Yeah?"

"Same deal. Before that, there was, uh, Ogdenville. Before that, North Haverbrook, and Brockway." Oh, lord… I tried to mentally figure out where all of the cities were. Weren't they connected by a monorail system? "Every fifteen to twenty years it hits a new town. This thing is just getting started in Fitchburg. In all these other places, it goes on for months. Dozens of kids before the shtriga finally moves on. The kids just… languish in comas until they die."

"Oh, fuck," I whispered, my eyes darting back to the door to Asher's room. The shtriga stayed long enough to leech all of their energy, the children died, and the shtriga went back into hiding until it needed to feed again.

Dean's jaw tightened. Instead of blushing, my face was paling in horror. I grabbed onto his shoulder with one hand and tightened the grip before he lost his calm. Knowing him, he was blaming himself for all of the fatalities since Fort Douglas.

"How far back does the trail go?" He sounded tense and even a little angry, but he didn't sound guilty or self-loathing. Then again, he was frustratingly good at covering those emotions up from everyone.

"Oh, I'm not sure." Across the hall, Heidacker smiled and gave us a polite nod as he pushed Asher's door ajar and stepped inside. He closed it behind him. I'd have jumped and gone inside again if he hadn't just been respecting the privacy of the closed door beforehand. "I mean, the earliest mention I could find is this place called Black River Falls back in the eighteen nineties." He scoffed derisively. "Talk about a horror show."

"Sam!" Serenity's voice sounded further away from the phone.

"Hmm?"

"You really need to look at this," Serenity urged, sounding stunned and uncomfortable. I worried about her even without knowing what she'd found. "I found a microfiche."

Microfiches were flat sheets of film that operated like film reels, but were kept in sheets rather than larger circles. They were smaller and less popular overall, and an old form of photographic storage.

"…Whoa."

"Sam?" I asked, perking up attentively. "What kind of 'whoa' is that?" Because, with him, there's the 'whoa, that's cool' along with the 'whoa, I didn't see that coming' and the 'whoa, this thing is totally going to ship our asses to us in a FedEx box.' I sincerely hoped it wasn't the last one. Meg had kicked my ass in Chicago enough to last me the rest of the year.

"Hold on…" Sam shuffled things around, and something clattered. The next time he talked, the phone was further away and he was moving. He must have set it down to move the stuff around him. "We're looking at a photograph right now of a bunch of doctors standing around a kid's bed. One of the doctors in Heidacker."

"… I thought you were looking at a microfiche?" I clarified uncertainly. People didn't use microfiches anymore. They used computers and digital cameras to store their photographs. And if it was accessible to the library, then why was it something that had happened relatively recently?

"We are."

"Heidacker is in a picture taken from eighteen ninety-three." Serenity confirmed, getting over the surprise and sounding more like herself. "I know that the life expectancy has been raising with medical knowledge, but that seems a little ridiculous."

My head snapped back to stare at the door to Asher's room. Heidacker is the shtriga. Heidacker is with Asher. Johanna doesn't know he's dangerous. "Oh, hell," I groaned. I'd said it myself that the shtriga was probably a patient or staff of the hospital. Somehow thinking it was a pediatric doctor hadn't occurred to me. Damn. No amount of profanity could effectively demonstrate exactly how pissed I was. That monster went out and attacked kids, then had the balls to slowly kill the children under the guise of healing them?

"You sure?" Dean asked, terse. His other hand started to slowly move across his torso towards where he kept his gun at his side, but he thought better of it.

"Yeah." Sam sounded vaguely sick to his stomach. "Yeah, absolutely."

Dean didn't even say goodbye before he ended the call, pushing the phone closed against his thigh and severing the connection with our siblings. Something snapped into gear between 'the shtriga is with Asher' and 'the vile, repulsive jackass' and I took off like the roadrunner for the door, grabbing and twisting the handle with more force than necessary and suddenly shoving it open.

The scene inside looked so innocent I thought I might throw up. Heidacker was seated on Asher's bed, long legs touching the floor while he pressed his palm against the sleeping boy's sweating forehead, disgustingly affectionate to his food source. It was like comforting a pig as it was slaughtered.

"Don't worry," Heidacker reassured Johanna, that beach-boy haircut falling just into his eyes, charming and sociable and not at all off-putting or threatening. "Your son's in good hands. I'm going to take care of him."

By killing him, I internally snarled. I wished so badly I could just go at him right here, except the only thing it would do would be to reflect badly on me and frighten Johanna. Heidacker was invulnerable until he was trying to feed on another child.

Heidacker rose from the bed and readjusted his white coat. I looked at Dean, who stopped behind me and watched over my shoulder. He looked about ready to take a knife and slit the doctor's throat. He wasn't alone in the sentiment, but it would ruin my blazer if I got blood all over it.

I tried to look at the shtriga like a predator. Maybe it would unnerve him; maybe if I tried to look at him in a certain way, the way he looked at children, I could understand how he worked, why he behaved the way he did, what made it so easy for him to do so much heartless damage.

He smiled pleasantly, either not noticing or ignoring that Dean and I were both looking at him like he was a piece of meat. "So what's the CDC come up with so far?"

"Well, we're still working on a few theories." Dean forced words to come out of his mouth and his voice sounded quiet, relaxed, the opposite of his tension and fury that I could see roiling in his eyes, the tight, taut way he held himself upright. "You'll know something as soon as we do."

"One of those theories is that something's sapping their energy." Heidacker didn't react but I could have sworn something prickled at the back of my neck, so subconsciously I probably noticed a shift as I came dangerously close to saying exactly what had happened. My mouth was running away before my brain could remind me that I was poking a bear here. "You know… some sort of rare, old affliction. One that keeps going and doesn't know when to stop. If that is the case, I'm certain that it's about to run its course."

He tilted his head in confusion. "Meaning?" I wondered how he felt about being so blatantly threatened.

"That it'll die soon."

A shadow passed over his face so quickly I was almost convinced I had imagined it, before he was again the upbeat, lighthearted doctor perfectly suited for children. "Oh, do keep your voice down! We wouldn't want to scare the children with the "D" word, would we?"

Again, I couldn't bite my tongue. I just couldn't stop myself from letting the bastard know exactly what I thought. He was not going to rest well while I was gearing up to slaughter him.

"We wouldn't want to scare them with witches, either, but there's still a Sabrina book in here." It was such a thinly veiled threat I was almost ashamed of my lack of subtlety, but I was getting a perverse satisfaction out of telling it I knew what it was and that it was going to meet its demise.

Heidacker opted to play dumb. "I'm afraid you've lost me, agent," he said apologetically. I crossed my arms and this time scolded my lips to stay sewn shut. "I believe you misunderstood something. Nothing is more important to me than these kids." He gestured behind him to Asher. Johanna looked between the three of us uneasily. She knew something was strange, but she didn't know what.

"Oh, I bet," Dean sneered in response.

That's it, we're going to be slaughtered in our sleep by the shtriga that's pissed off at us for insulting him.

"Just let me know if I can help," the doctor cordially said, beginning to step to the side and slipping past Dean. I was amazed Dean didn't pull a Mean Girls and pounce on the bastard like Lindsay Lohan on Rachel McAdams.

"Of course." I shuffled and stood at the side, looking over at Asher quickly while Heidacker pulled open the door. "That's why we're here, Dr. Heidacker," I called after him authoritatively, a promise in my voice and a threat in my stance. "To protect them, from anything that would harm them."


"We should have thought of this before!" Sam wasn't exactly astounded, but he had gotten over his surprise. Now he was annoyed at himself and still just as irate with Heidacker – the shtriga – for his disgusting habit of taking advantage of the children who couldn't fight back. "A doctor's a perfect disguise. You're trusted, you can control the whole thing!"

Serenity pulled a strawberry milkshake out of the mini fridge that came with the hotel room. She turned around on Sam, pointing at him to emphasize that she wanted him to get a message. "Can we save the praise of his scheming for a time when he's not slowly killing half a dozen children?"

Dean ripped off the blazer he'd been wearing to play the part furiously and threw it aggressively at the bed. "That son of a bitch!" He growled, slamming his fist down on top of the map still on the bedside table.

Sam shook his head. "I'm surprised you didn't draw on him right there."

"It was a close call," I swore through grit teeth, ripping my pistol from the holster and turning it over in my hands. I hated that I couldn't have just stopped him right there before he got close to any more children.

"Yeah, well, first of all, I'm not going to open fire in a freaking pediatrics ward!" Dean glowered.

Sam nodded agreement. "Good call."

Dean paced. He wasn't settled, and he wasn't finished whining. "Second, it wouldn't have done any good, because the bastard's bulletproof unless he's chowing down on something. And, third, I wasn't packing, which is probably a really good thing, 'cause I probably would've burned a clip in him on principle alone."

"You're getting wise in your old age, Dean," Sam praised with a small smirk as he leaned back by the table.

Dean huffed. "Damn right."

I reached to my throat and rubbed the back of my neck tiredly, the fight seeping out of me. Dean was right – the psychopath was invincible at the moment. I lowered my eyes to the carpet. All I could do was act defensively, no matter how enraged that made me, and I just didn't have the energy to be enraged at the moment.

I sighed deeply. "Michael's staying with us tonight." I had an image of sleeping in bed with Dean, Michael in between us so we'd know if something came after him. Of course, that was being a little bit too familiar, and I realized the flaw in the situation immediately. "Or I can stay in his room with him." I could just stay awake, and that would be better and much more comfortable for everyone. "I don't care either way, but he's not going to be left alone."

Serenity was enjoying her milkshake. Strawberry was her favorite flavor, but a lot of restaurants didn't do it very well if they had it. Good for her, let her revel in a satisfactory milkshake. "Yeah, I'm with you there," she muttered. "It strikes siblings in order, so it'll try to hit Michael tonight."

"I can just… I can just stay up all night, right?" I could go get a few things of coffee, take a thermos, and stay up all night. "Guard the window, guard the kid. I don't think it'll attack me, I'm too old for its MO, and I might as well have told the bastard I'm hunting him!" It had felt great at the time, but now I regretted being so forward.

Serenity shook her head. "I still can't believe you did that. You know, normally you're more conscious of where you are. And potential repercussions."

"That bastard was touching Asher's forehead and spouting on about how the kids mean the world to him." I was horrified by what had been done. The hypocrisy alone made me sick, let alone the abhorrent gall of being so kind to a child he was responsible for slowly killing. I know I'm typically more cautious, but I just couldn't help myself. It was like that time I punched someone in the face for leering at me and making sexist comments. It was just unreasonable to expect me to control myself. "Do you know how pissed off I am that he's still alive right now?"

Sam gingerly pushed the lid of his laptop down and the screen went dark before it closed. "What's going on here? This is – this is bad, Holly, I know that, but your temper has never been this bad before." I softened slightly, forcing myself to try not to be quite so high-strung in light of Sam's concern.

But nothing has ever been this horrible before, not since you've known me. Nothing has ever preyed on children and slowly killed them. Nothing has ever attacked a helpless child in the same vicinity. Nothing has ever tried to kill you beforehand.

That was it, wasn't it? I almost surprised myself. When the tulpa in Texas had attacked Sam, I had become spitting mad, screaming that no one hurt my brother and got away with it. The shtriga not only attacked the children, making me hate it even just on principle; it had attacked Sammy, giving me a personal vendetta against it. Problem was, I couldn't tell Sam this, because even he didn't seem to know.

"Why are you so angry at the shtriga?" Sam continued, missing the moment where I had an oh-that's-what-I'm-feeling revelation. "You weren't this upset about the ghost after Lucas Barr." The sweet, formerly-mute little boy had been the first child victim of a ghost, and I had saved his life.

I swallowed. "Yeah, well, this case is different," I complained stressfully. "It's personal."

"How is it personal?!" Serenity almost started to laugh for what she perceived was me being overly emotional. "We don't know anyone here!"

"It got to Asher while we're in the same God damn building, Ser!" I shouted back, not angry at her, but furious with myself. It had happened right under our noses. "We're hunters and a kid was attacked while we were less than a hundred feet away. That feels pretty fucking personal to me!"

Serenity didn't reply. I was yelling at her with what felt like a good reason to me, but when she didn't rise to the challenge, I realized that it actually wasn't the best cause for a fight. I turned my hands over, pressed my thumbs to the front of my neck, and wrapped my fingers around my throat. Immediately, Sam looked alarmed, but Serenity didn't blink. The grip on my own throat was snug, but it didn't hurt or cut off air; it just put some light pressure around my neck. It freaked out some people when they saw it, which was why I learned to stop doing it, but it used to be the trick I'd use to calm down.

I let out a long breath through parted lips and then went back to planning how to best keep Michael safe. That was safer territory. "If I can spin it right, maybe he won't even realize something's up. I can just offer movies or something. What movies do kids his age like? Please don't say Spiderman."

"No." My shoulders slumped with relief while Dean kept shaking his head, finally stopping his pacing. Sam wasn't any more relaxed, so I took another breath in, feeling my ribs push out, and slid my hands off of my throat. "No, that would blow the whole deal," Dean continued.

Sam frowned, now worried about the other freaking out sibling. "What?"

"Yeah," Dean said, agreeing to what only he had in mind.

I paused before I spoke, reevaluating, and – no, I really only saw one person who lost in this scenario. "The only deal it would blow is Heidacker's, which is kind of the point here," I reminded.

Dean looked down to his boots over the carpet. "No, we need to keep him in his and Asher's room tonight for Heidacker to find."

Serenity rocked back on her heels. I expected her to retort, I really did, and for a moment there was a spark of indignant refusal, but then it faded as she considered. "If he doesn't have a kid to attack," she said slowly, "He won't start to feed. And he'll just keep on being Hitman Forty-Seven."

Sam scoffed, looking to Serenity as if wounded that she seemed to be thinking about the merit in a plan that put a child in danger. "You wanna use the kid as bait? Are you nuts?!"

"No!" So much for being calmed down. I balled my hands into fists by my thighs. "No freaking way! Out of the question!"

"It's not out of the question!" My boyfriend heatedly argued with me. I turned and dug my heels pointedly to the carpet, leaning forward to show I wasn't going anywhere. "It's the only way. If this thing disappears, it could be years before we get another chance!"

"Michael is a child, Dean! We can be hunters and actually track and hunt the monster, or we can endanger a child. I don't know about you, but to me, protecting the child seems like the better choice!"

"We can't just dangle a kid in front of that – that thing, like a worm on a hook!" Sam stood up, his palm on the table, his voice full of horror that his brother was even suggesting this ludicrous, stupid 'plan.' I was glad that at least we were tied rather than outnumbered. "Holly's right – the goal in hunting isn't just to kill the supernatural, it's to protect everyone else, and doing this goes against everything that feels right!"

"Dad did not sent me here to walk away," Dean stubbornly declared, poking himself in the chest to emphasize his debate.

"Send you here?" Sam repeated, offended. "He didn't send you here – he sent us here!"

"This isn't about you, Sam!"

The oldest sounded almost to his breaking point. I would be worried if there wasn't steam coming out of my ears from what he wanted to do. I knew this was emotional, and there was so much wrong with this situation; he wasn't always this reckless with civilians, never was, because there's no way morally I could date someone with little regard for other people, but that mental turmoil and emotional trauma didn't excuse something like this. It excused some beer and some time alone, but not what seemed in my mind to be like a ritual human sacrifice. Here, take my child, I've trussed him up in white and ropes and he is completely unaware of what is going on.

"I'm the one who screwed up, alright?! It's my fault! There's no telling how many kids have gotten hurt because of me!"

Although I still felt like we were offering Michael up to the shtriga like the townspeople had offered Dean and I to the Vanir for a healthy feast, that had the balloon of hot air popped and rapidly deflating. None of the children who have fallen victim have been Dean's fault. Blaming himself just makes him feel bad and impairs his judgment – as he is currently aptly demonstrating.

"Hurt – what?!" Serenity had been keeping out of the fight. She had put her opinion out there, and she wasn't going to start to disagree with Sam and I on a topic we were so passionate about that we were yelling, not when it was something that could be talked about rationally and in depth in the time we have to make a final decision. This, however, caught her by enough surprise that she blustered in confusion. "Dean, you're not a shtriga, you haven't hurt any kids. How is what Heidacker's doing your fault?"

Sam's shoulders fell from the defensive posture he'd raised them in without thinking. "Dean," he sighed, suddenly with a whole new supply of patience. "You've been hiding something from the get-go. Since when does Dad bail on a hunt? Since when does he let something get away?" Dean looked away from Sam stubbornly, unwilling to tell the story even though he'd accidentally backed himself into the corner about it. He looked out the window instead. Sam was persistent. "Talk to me, man. Tell me what's going on."

Dean let out a long, low breath, looked to his shoes, and then finally looked up again to Sam. He couldn't keep his brother's gaze, and he sat down heavily onto the side of one of the beds, elbows on his thighs.

"Fort Douglas, Wisconsin." He started. I caught Sam's eyes and then made a point of looking to his chair behind him. Sam got the hint and sat down again, while Serenity set her milkshake on the table and then boosted herself up to sit by Sam's laptop, swinging her legs over the side. "It was our third night in this cramped room and I was climbing the walls. Man, I needed to get some air. So I went out to the arcades in the room out by the front of the motel. I wasn't gone long, less than an hour, and this guy told me they were closing up. I went back to the room and…"

Something was wrong here. Dean trailed off for a second, and I sat down softly beside him, closer than usual, our weight sinking the bed. My thigh warmly pressed to his and I set a hand on his shoulder supportively. I had heard this story before, but that didn't mean it was easier for him to retell it, especially to Sam.

Dean swallowed and looked up to Sam, forcing himself to meet his brother's concerned eyes. "Well, the first thing I noticed was the draft. There was some cold coming from Sam's room. Then what sounded like a rattle, like… like breathing." Now Sam frowned, his brow creasing thoughtfully as he realized what was going on. "Picked up this shotgun that Dad had left by the door and I started to push it open, see inside, you know? The monster was leaning over your bed… pulling the blankets down from Sammy."

Sam leaned his head back knowingly, understanding at this point what had happened, and he inhaled too steadily, keeping his calm while Dean worked his way through the story. Serenity's breath audibly hitched and her eyes darted to Sam again, her body tensing in anticipation even though the guy was right there, safe and sound.

"Dean…" Sam said softly, not really to interrupt, but… more out of sympathy, like it slipped out of his mouth before he realized he was going to say anything to begin with.

Serenity looked to me, almost accusing. "You don't seem surprised," she said, her voice somehow elsewhere, her mind vacationing in another place, in a dark hotel room years and years ago where our best friend had been threatened and attacked.

She was right. I was sad, but I wasn't shocked by the story anymore, and now it was just another dozen strikes on the board for the shtriga. It was going to pay for what it had tried to do to Sammy regardless of the fact that it hadn't succeeded.

"I read something like this in John's book," I replied, voice barely more than a whisper for respect of the somber atmosphere. I didn't lie, but I didn't explain that Dean had told me himself. He wants to protect me, but it hasn't been his primary imperative for over twenty years. His relationship with me is much different than that of his brother, obviously, and I couldn't help but think Sam and Serenity might be hurt if they knew he'd gone to the trouble of telling me a formerly secret story without understanding the depth of our relationship.

"Damn." Dean whispered, shaking his head, his shoulders tensing. I could feel the tightening of his muscles under my hand, even through his jacket. "It scared me so bad, Sam. I couldn't even shoot the gun because my hands were shaking. I was afraid I'd hit you. I was afraid the shots wouldn't kill the thing."

I wanted to say I vaguely remembered an entry from before the shtriga incident in John's journal, but I recalled it far too clearly for comfort. Dean had only been five or six when he'd seen his father shoot a shapeshifter. Obviously the shapeshifter wasn't exactly innocent, because John had been hunting it for killing people, but what must it have looked like to Dean? He'd seen his own father do the killing, but at that point he had never been involved in a hunt. Watching someone else do something is a lot different when you switch roles and don't have their support or advice.

It so wasn't fair. Very little about the Winchesters' lives was. I was beginning to hate the extent to which the statement rang true.

"You were sound asleep the whole time, with this cloaked nightmare just leaning over like it was tucking you in." I flashed back to the times I used to wake up to Sam's nightmares, or be present as he dozed off and started whimpering or calling out for Jess. I had woken him up if it was bad, tucked him into his blankets and smoothed back his hair if the bad dreams were only just starting, and most of the time the comfort dispelled them before they really began. It was one of the few things that we all did for Sam, and none of us ever even thought to mock it. I'm sure he realized eventually that we were taking care of him when it happened.

Sam always seemed the most at peace when he was asleep, before he started having dreams about his mother or Jessica or the dying people we'd seen in visions or any other number of reasons for us to have nightmares. It took years of forced maturity out of his countenance. Same applied to all of us, I think; maybe to almost everyone. Having seen him sleeping as an adult made it even worse to imagine him obliviously resting as a child.

"Dad came storming in around then, the door slamming, and he saw through the doorway what was happening. Started yelling, and immediately he got this gun from his side and started just blasting rounds off, emptying clips and ruining the walls." I trusted John to be a good shot, at least. For once I couldn't be bitter about it when he had been firing to protect his son. "The shtriga – I know that's what it was now – ran away, left you alone. Dad went and woke you up with the shots and he was holding onto you so tight you started to get scared something had happened."

Thank God he didn't remember it. Sam had only been five, I think.

Dean chuckled. Sam looked like there was a light in his eyes, maybe dimly finding a faded memory of being woken up by gunfire and surrounded by his father and his brother, while Serenity looked violent, ready to do even more damage, her temper being added to and beginning to rival mine before the scene became about the past. Now that we all knew what had very nearly happened to Sam, we might actually have to take turns shooting the shtriga.

"He was so pissed about that," Dean reminisced, then looked down, almost ashamed, with a sigh. "Still is, I bet." Discretely, I pushed my hand from his jacket and to the back of his neck. There's no way our siblings wouldn't have seen if they had looked, but I was probably the most tactile, so they wouldn't read too far into it. Dean leaned back slightly, silently appreciative. "Dad just… grabbed us and booked. Dropped us off at Pastor Jim's about three hours away, and by the time he got back to Fort Douglas, the shtriga had disappeared. It was just gone. It never resurfaced until now.

"You know, Dad never spoke about it again. … I didn't ask." Serenity caught my eyes pointedly. I wasn't imagining the irritation she kept silently to herself regarding John's allergy to communication, which I sometimes swore Dean must have genetically inherited. Thank God the gene skipped Sam, or I'd have to hit their heads together. "But he… ah… he looked at me different, you know?" Dean looked up to Sam, wry. "Which was worse." Of course it was. You idolize him. "Not that I blame him," he quickly added, and I sank down, rolling my eyes. "He gave me an order and I didn't listen. I almost got you killed."

"Yeah," I agreed sarcastically and scoffed loudly, scoffing. "At nine years old, you were afraid of a monster. Well, damn, that's just unimaginable, isn't it?"

I could still feel the bubbling anger, the lividity that made me feel breathless when I'd read in John's journal exactly how he felt; calling Dean weak for being unable to take the shot. Then I realized it wasn't a clarity of remembrance. It was the feeling resurging, boiling in my stomach and preparing to overflow again, breath catching and heavy.

"You were just a kid," Sam whispered. I shouldn't even be surprised, but strangely enough, he was more upset about how Dean was taking it now than the information about what had nearly happened to him.

And, just like that, the conversation had drawn a full circle and come back to the conflict we'd begun at: using Michael as bait to lure in a monster that already wanted to drain his life force torturously slowly.

"But using Michael – I don't know, Dean." Sam wrung his hands in front of him over his lap, his skepticism and reluctance clear on his face. "I mean, how about one of us hides under the covers? You know, we'll be the bait. One of the girls, at least, because they're smaller."

Serenity looked mildly affronted at first, but then she realized it wasn't anything but a comment on our physical size. Where Dean was muscled and aggressive and Sam was tall and strong, the two of us looked much different. Part of it was due to growing up in less rough environments, having not been pitted in fights with the supernatural since we were teenagers, but it also had to do with not going overtime in training and also spending time studying, reading, writing, and being kids. Our sex didn't help too much in the size department, either. We could more than pull our own weight in physical fighting, but we were smaller and narrower.

The hunter was already shaking his head to disagree. "No, it won't work," he adamantly refused. "It's gotta get close enough to feed. It'll see us." He looked to his side at me. If I didn't know better I'd think he was pleading with me to understand what he was saying. "Believe me, I don't like it, but it's got to be the kid."

I don't like it, either! I can't condone it! Everything in me – morals, vows to protect and serve, ethics, conscience, it all screamed not to let this happen. I knew where Dean was coming up with this from strategically, but that didn't excuse what he was asking to do.

Or that he was so hell-bent on doing it because of the personal importance it has on him. Unfinished business, right. John should never have pushed Dean to come here to take care of this out of some sick sense of vengeance, of even further enforcing his principles onto his son. For that matter, how could he have possibly known it was the same one unless he'd been here himself, solved the case himself already?!

So, knowing what it was, and the human disguise it was wearing, and where it worked, and that it was currently on its feeding cycle… he still took off and kicked it to us, letting children fall prey to wither and slowly die in the meantime.

I ripped my hand away from Dean and stood up abruptly, blinking furiously and taking loud, deep breaths, because if I didn't I'd say something rude. I wouldn't regret it, not in a million years, because as it occurred to me I realized just how fucked up the situation was, and where I'd been blaming myself for Asher being attacked, the only person I really had to blame was John. My sister and I have been hunting less than a year. Sam and Dean last encountered this thing when they were kids, and it traumatized them. We couldn't have known Asher would be a victim, and it was only Dean's memory that even gave us the answer of how to kill it.

Meanwhile, John had had all this information anyway and he'd still decided to just skip town. All of the kids who had fallen sick, Asher included, and all of the ones who had gotten worse, gone into comas, after he'd known something was up, it was all on him. His shoulders. His weight to carry, and I would make absolutely certain he was well-fucking-aware of that next time I saw him. He was going to get one hell of a reproach for this.

Sammy wouldn't appreciate it, though, even if he might privately agree with it once it was said; and if it hasn't occurred to him yet, then why would I tell him when he's already got enough issues with his father's approaches? God knew trying to convince Dean of his father's manipulation and wrongdoing was about as effective as politely asking a brick wall if it would please move.

So instead of just trying to keep it all inside and lock it away and appear calm and collected – because I just knew I couldn't keep doing that, not at this point, not with this revelation fresh in my mind – I took off for the door, making a beeline out to the hall with the intention of going out to the Impala to clear my head, maybe lock myself in the car and scream into my jacket until I felt like I could be in the same room with someone who would actually defend the inhumane choices John had made.