Thanks for reading...bambers:)

Chapter Thirteen

Sam called Bobby while Dean raced along a deserted back road, eating up the miles at a dizzying speed. As he waited for the older hunter to answer the phone, he noticed Dean shifting uncomfortably in his seat, and weaving slightly in and out of his land. Reaching over to him, he pushed him forward, and touched his fingers to his brother's back, pulling them away slick with blood. He sucked in a breath, the color draining from his face as he realized for the first time that Dean had been injured. He'd been so focused on Jake's injuries and the encounter with his parents that he'd failed to notice Dean was hurt.

"Pull over," he ordered in a tone meant to brook no argument, and at the same time he heard Bobby's voice on the other end of the line. "Just a sec, Bobby," he said into the phone, and gave Dean a hard look. "I said pull the damn car over and let me check your wounds."

"It's nothing," Dean said, always willing to downplay his own injuries while looking after everyone else. "We have to get to Bobby and get that damn journal."

"We won't make it to Bobby if you pass out due to blood loss. Maybe you don't care about yourself, but you love your car." Sam lifted a brow. "Do you really want to lose consciousness and crash into a tree?"

Grumbling under his breath, Dean pulled off to the side of the road, and handing the phone to him Sam got out of the car and went to the trunk to get their first aid kit. It wasn't the best place to stitch a wound, definitely not with Charlie and Yellow-Eyes still out there somewhere hunting them, but from the dampness of Dean's shirt he knew he needed to act quickly.

"Yeah, we'll meet you there," Dean was saying as Sam pulled open the driver's side door, and motioned for him to get out of the car. "Uh huh," he added, and stepping out of the Impala, he grimaced as his weight came down on his sprained ankle. "Yeah, I'll give it to him…have you looked at the journal?" He held up a finger for Sam to wait until he was finished to start tending to his injuries. "Sam says the answers we need to stop Charlie for good are in there…yeah, you're never gonna believe how he got the information…." He winced again, and leaned his hip against the car to take the weight off his swollen ankle. Sam circled his hand impatiently for Dean to finish up the conversation so he could get started on cleaning and stitching his wounds. "All right, we'll meet you in two hours…thanks, Bobby."

"What the hell were you thinking?" Sam snapped the moment Dean hung up and threw the cell phone on the front seat of the car. Gently lifting the back of Dean's shirt, he set to work on cleaning the dirt out of the long gash. "We were at the hospital, you should've – I'm so sorry, I was so focused on what Dad said and making sure Jake didn't die, I didn't notice you were hurt. You always put me first, and I –"

"M'okay, Sammy," he cut in, letting Sam off the hook like he always did. "How bad is it?"

"Thankfully, it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be." He let out a heavy sigh of relief. "Most of the cut is superficial, but I'll need to stitch two spots that are deeper."

"Make it quick," he said as he peered into the trees lining the road, certain Charlie or Yellow-Eyes was watching them and waiting for them to get comfortable to strike again. "Bobby's going to look over Dad's journal once he gets to the cabin." He hissed through his teeth as the needle poke through his skin on both side of the cut then pulled together. "Apparently, Missouri wrapped it up and sent it along with a note saying that it was imperative that he give it to us the next time he saw us." He wanted to be angry with her and Bobby for keeping everything they knew about Charlie and their father a secret, but all he could muster was a strange sort of feeling of relief. Their father had known Charlie might return someday, and had planned for it. And it felt not good but right to know that they would get rid of him permanently with his own weapon of choice. With that thought in mind, he pulled off his amulet, and handed it over his shoulder to Sam. "Bobby says if you believe this amulet will protect you from Charlie, his power won't work against you."

"I have to kill him on my own, Dean," he said quietly as he stitched through Dean's skin. "You can be there, you can keep Yellow-Eyes distracted, but when it comes to killing him, it has to be me."

"I'm not gonna lie to you, Sammy. I hate that you went behind my back to make a wager with the demon. You saw what happened to dad." He glanced over his shoulder at his brother as a car passed by, the driver gawking at them as if they were criminals, which technically could be seen as the truth. "You almost done? If not work faster. It doesn't have to look pretty."

"I'm almost done, and I did what I did to try to save that girl," he said, the pain and heartache in his tone unmistakable. "If we had known about the journal before, we could have been prepared to deal with him this time around."

"I would do anything – give everything to change what happened to all of them," Dean whispered, swallowing hard against the painful lump forming in his throat. If it weren't for the sting and pull of the needle and thread through his skin, he could have easily been swallowed up whole by memories of everything they'd been through with Charlie. "But we can't focus on anything other than stopping Charlie right now. If we do, he'll win. We can't let that happen, Sammy. For now we need to bury the pain we feel for the lives that were lost because of us, and beat the sonuvabitch."

"How do we do that, Dean?" He finished the last stitch, cleaned off the needle, dried it and put it back in the first aid kit before he put a wide bandage across the wound. "I know I should be thinking about a way to stop him, but then my mind starts to reel with thoughts about Jake and Margaret and a number of other people he might go after, and it's like I'm almost paralyzed with that fear."

"We stop answering the phone." Dean gave a curt nod and turned to face his little brother. "He enjoys listening to us beg and threaten him while he tortures and kills people. Maybe it won't save any lives if we don't answer his calls, but it's the one thing we haven't tried and it's the only way to get him out of our heads while we come up with a plan to get rid of him for good."

"But if we don't answer the phone we won't know who he's going after," Sam said as he tucked the first aid kit back into the trunk and shut the lid. "I don't know about this, Dean. It'll make him angry, and he could take his anger out on his victims."

"How much worse could it be, Sammy? He's a brutal, vicious killer. We've seen that with our own eyes." Lips pursed, he shook his head. "Not listening to him murder someone isn't going to make him any more brutal or vicious. That's not even possible. What I do know is that it all started with a phone call that I answered, and that has gotten us nowhere. I'm done listening to his taunts and chasing after him. Next time we face off against him, he's coming to us."

"All right." Sam's lips pressed into a grin line as he moved past Dean to take the driver's seat. "If we're going to do this, you need to rest your ankle." He paused to study the cast on Dean's arm then his gaze trailed downward to the swollen ankle Dean had crammed inside his boot. Up until that moment Dean had blocked out the throbbing pain of putting pressure on it while running through the woods, but the more Sam studied it, the more it seem to ache. "I know you're not going to want to hear this, but you're not in any sort of shape to face both a demon and Charlie."

"You're right. I don't want to hear it." Without waiting for Sam to elaborate on all the reasons why he shouldn't fight the good fight against the demon who'd killed their mother and the deranged serial killer who'd ruined their lives, Dean limped to the other side of the Impala, slid onto the seat, and slammed the door shut.

Their phones started ringing a half hour into the drive to meet Bobby, and it was harder than they imagined it would be not to jab the button to answer the call. Bobby's name came up on the screen more than once, and that set both boys on edge. If Charlie had gotten to him – Dean couldn't think about it, wouldn't go down that road of what ifs. They'd made a plan, and they needed to see it through. At some point during the two hour drive, Dean turned off both of their phones, something neither of the brothers had ever done before. Missed calls meant lives lost in the world of a hunter, but to answer would open them up to Charlie's sick brand of mental torture, and Dean felt almost relieved not to hear the sound of his phone ringing. Yet that was nothing compared to the sight of Bobby standing at the door of the cabin he'd rented. Charlie hadn't gotten to him, and in his mind that was a win for their side.

Bobby met them halfway through the overgrown grass of the log cabin's front yard, and caught Dean in a tight bear hug, and Sam saw his brother wince before he, himself was locked in the same embrace from the older hunter.

"You boys scared the hell outta me not answerin' yer phones," he said, taking a step back and discreetly rubbed away the moisture gathering in his eyes. He looked Sam over first and then his eyes shifted to Dean, taking in the cast on his arm and the way he rested heavily on one foot. "You've looked worse," he added, and while might have been true, concern still furrowed at his brow. "Dinner's on the stove. We can talk after you've eaten."

Sam and Dean followed the older hunter into the log cabin, Sam taking note of the rock salt lining the front door, having no doubt he would find more salt stretched along every windowsill and the backdoor. The cabin had a comfortable lived-in feel to it. A leather couch with an assortment of decorative pillows and two recliners tilted to face the large stone fireplace and if he looked beneath the oval area rug, he knew he'd find a Devil's Trap as the older hunter never left anything to chance. A large window at the back of the cabin looked out over a lake with a small fishing boat tied to the dock. Beneath the window sat a table, four chairs and three place settings, Bobby's attempt to put some normalcy into their lives when everything was rapidly spinning out of control.

"Where's the journal, Bobby?" Sam said, stomach churning so badly if he ate he'd throw up. From the kitchen Bobby nudged his head toward the wooden coffee table set between the chairs and couch then motioned for Dean to take a seat and brought him an ice pack to put on his ankle. Sam snatched it up off the table, and slumping onto the couch, he sat staring at the old leather bound book stained with what he assumed to be blood.

"You boys gonna tell me what happened?" Bobby said to break the silence as he set two bowls of stew on the coffee table and returned to the kitchen to fill his bowl. It was Dean who explained everything Charlie had done, blinking back the tears that threatened to fall whenever a new death was mentioned, and Sam filled in the gaps about what transpired in the underground bunker, and Bobby listened without interruption. When they'd finished, Bobby cleared his throat, and looked down at his untouched dinner. "I know you boys don't wanna here this, but it ain't yer fault." He looked to Dean, holding his gaze. "You didn't kill those people, Dean. It was Charlie, and I refuse to let you take on the guilt for his actions."

"I should have known," Dean said, unwilling to lay the blame on anyone other than himself. "If I had –"

"No," Sam interrupted, shaking the journal at him, "Dad is to blame for this. Instead of warning us about Charlie a long time ago, he wrote it down in a journal and then forgot about it. We weren't prepared for Charlie because he didn't feel the need to prepare us for a human threat."

"I don't think that's the case, Sam," Bobby said. "I skimmed through the journal and from what I got from it, your father made a deal with the witch, Rowena, to forget who she was and what she'd done for him, and apparently that included forgetting Charlie as well. Those memories of her and Charlie were all tangled up together, and to lose the memories of her, he gave up the knowledge of the threat Charlie represented. He didn't realize it until it was too late. The two of you had already forgotten every bad thing that happened thanks to the witch and he could feel the memories slipping away from him as well. He wanted you to know about Charlie so he quickly wrote everything down and gave the journal to Missouri before the spell took hold and he forgot everything."

"What did he give her in exchange for her help?" Dean asked, knowing a witch would never willingly offer her services for free. "The spell she cast to bring him and mom back when Sam needed them – that would have had to have been damn powerful magic."

"There was mention of a book of spells," Bobby pointed to the journal, "it's all in there. All his fears, everything he tried to do to find you both, and scattered details of the witch. She wanted the book and he had it, but to get it from him she had to do everything he asked to save you boys and keep you safe from Charlie."

"Does it say how we can find her, Bobby?" Dean said as he removed the ice pack from his ankle and set it on the edge of the coffee table. "Dad made a deal with her and she didn't keep her end of the bargain. In my book that means she owes us, and right about now we could really use a powerful witch in our corner."

"There was a phone number written down next to her name, but I doubt it'll still work," Bobby supplied, scratching at his stubbled jaw. "I don't know if it's such a good idea to use a witch against Yellow-Eyes and Charlie."

"Dad did say everything we needed to stop Charlie was in the journal," Sam said, flipping through the yellowed pages of the journal until he found the phone number. "He wouldn't have put the number in here if he didn't think she could help us." As he spoke a thick book bound in weathered black leather appeared on the table, and none of them needed to open the book to know it was the book of spells his father had traded for their lives. "It would seem as if Dad stayed true to form and didn't trust the witch to keep her end of the bargain."

"Give me your phone, Bobby," Dean said, holding out his hand and shaking it impatiently when the older hunter hesitated. "If I turn mine on Charlie will call again…don't force me to turn my phone on."

"I have a bad feeling about this," Bobby grumbled as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Dean.

"Give me the number, Sammy," he said, and as Sam recited the numbers, he punched them into Bobby's phone. "It's ringing," he said, surprised that the number was still in service after so many years, and so intent on waiting for the witch to answer, he jumped startled when a knock came at the front door.

Sam, on his feet in a shot, raced to the window and peered out the curtains, Bobby close behind with a gun in hand. "It's a woman," he whispered to Dean whose hand had tightened around the edges of the phone. "Is it possible…." His voice trailed off as he nudged his head toward the phone.

"Boys," the woman called out in a lilting Scottish accent, "I know you've got my book, I want it back."

Sam went to the door, pulled it open and filled up the empty space with his body. "Rowena?" he said, taking in the petite woman with fiery red hair.

"Hello, boys," she said, tilting her head to the side to look beyond Sam to Dean, and smiled as if she knew exactly what Charlie had been up to over the past few years. "Well, are you going to let me in, Samuel? We have much to talk about and not enough time to say everything that needs to be said."

Author's note - so here's the deal, I lost everyone of these unfinished stories when my computer crashed a long time ago and had only a small bit of this story written on my laptop to use as a guide as to where I had intended to take this story to its conclusion. With that said, it gave me the opportunity to add a character I came to adore in later seasons and I kinda like the idea of Rowena being involved in their lives before the canon entrance of her character. truthfully, I promised myself I would finish these stories, but it's going to be a lot harder than I thought and I guess I really kinda like the challenge. Thanks again for reading...bambers:)