Lucky Two-Fourteen

by CrystalAlchemist

In a tiny, remote town buried deep in the northern Minnesota woods, just over two-hundred people vanish into thin air. When Sam and Dean travel to the Midwest to investigate, they discover something they've never faced before is lurking among the trees-something powerful and vicious that turns a straightforward hunt into a desperate fight for survival.

"It should only be a few miles from here. We're getting close."

There was no answer from over Dean's shoulder. He glanced back at his brother, a crackle of worry arcing down his spine. Sam's gait was steady, but his shoulders were hunched and he was gripping his arm tighter than before, cradling it against his chest. His face was more pale and drawn than Dean would have liked.

Dean fell back a step so they were walking alongside each other. Their footsteps crunched in the snow, clinging to their boots as if there wasn't already enough of it crusting their clothes and hair. They'd been out here in the middle of the wilderness, trudging through the cold, for what felt like years but was really only coming up on thirty-six hours.

"What if it's not there?" a voice said from behind them, and Dean glanced back at their four companions who were bringing up the rear. Liam's arm was curled around Kate, his girlfriend, supporting her as they walked. His gaze met Dean's and his eyes were hard, jaw clenched tight and mouth pressed into a flat line. "What if the place doesn't exist at all and this whole thing has been for nothing?"

Dean fought the urge to snap in response. Liam had been a pain in the ass since they'd stepped foot in these woods, but Dean also knew why he was on edge. Dean was on edge too—all of them were. They had plenty of reasons to be.

Dean glanced over at Sam briefly, and his stomach twisted at the memory of the horrible last few hours. Dean still felt raw, his insides torn to shreds like the ice and wind had gotten inside his lungs somehow and ripped him apart.

"It'll be there, all right?" Dean said, with confidence he didn't really feel. "Sam triple-checked before we left. Cross-referenced with all the reports we had available. Unless the whole town grew legs and walked away, it'll be there."

Liam just narrowed his eyes and tightened his arm around Kate. "If they don't have medical supplies there—or water, or food—"

"I know, okay?" Dean said, his irritation cracking through as his voice sharpened. He ran a hand through his hair. "I know. We'll get there, and we'll find what we can. Just…" He paused, his voice in danger of wavering, and he refused to let that happen in front of all these people. "Just keep moving for now. We'll get there."

Sam looked over at him, exhaustion in the circles under his eyes, his gaze begging Dean not to get into it again with Liam. He gave a tiny shake of his head and Dean huffed a breath, rolled his eyes. But he acquiesced, facing forward again and turning his back on their companions.

"How's she doing?" another voice mumbled. Matt, Kate's brother. "Katie, you still hanging in there?"

"I'm fine, Matt, quit asking me that," Kate said. Dean couldn't help smiling to himself at the strength in her voice, even after going through all the shit that she had. "I just want to get some rest, we've been walking for miles."

"Yeah," Matt said quietly, and left it at that. His voice was heavy.

Matt reminded Dean of Sam, a little, though he couldn't exactly pinpoint why. Matt and Sam had apparently been pretty close during college, closer than Sam had been to either Kate or Liam, even though the three of them had been there at the same time. Hazel, Matt's girlfriend, was with them too, but she hadn't been in the picture at all until after Sam left school.

Dean hadn't expected this hunt to turn into a whole college reunion. The last thing they'd needed was other people—non-hunters, and even worse, ones that Sam was attached to—dragging behind them. It had gone about as well as Dean had expected it to, which was to say, very badly. At this point his only goal was to get out of this godforsaken place alive.

Sam grunted with pain, and Dean's eyes snapped over to him, automatic. His hands twitched, itching to reach out and steady him, but Sam righted himself and gave a tiny shake of his head. Dean's jaw flexed. Sam had tightened his grip on his arm, blood soaking through the fabric between his fingers now. The makeshift first aid Dean had performed, hours ago, wasn't going to hold. Sam needed stitches, and something to sterilize the wound.

"Simple hunt, right?" Sam muttered, glaring out into the snow, which was starting up again. "No big deal. Probably some government conspiracy."

"Could still be a government conspiracy," Dean pointed out. "We don't know yet." We don't really know anything yet, he wanted to add, but that seemed a little bleak, and besides, they really were closing in. Once they reached the town they'd come here for in the first place, Dean figured they'd at least find something. Something more than the bleak, empty winter nothingness they'd been stuck with this entire time.

"It's getting dark," Hazel whispered. "We've only got twenty minutes until sundown, maybe less."

Hazel was the only real outdoorsy person out of the six of them. Even she was a little out of her depth, however, especially after they'd been forced to leave behind half of their stuff when they'd run for their lives.

"We have flashlights," Liam said. "And extra batteries. We'll be fine."

That wasn't the problem, but Dean couldn't tell if Liam said it because he was still in denial about what was happening or because he really was just that dense. For someone who talked so much about his 4.0 GPA and the score he'd gotten on the LSATs, Liam could really be an idiot.

But Dean didn't correct him on it, unwilling to speak the truth out loud and make it any more real than it already was. They all knew what was coming. They already knew it attacked at night. They'd already experienced it twice.

"Do you still have bullets left?" Sam asked, voice quiet. Probably hoping the others wouldn't overhear. Sam had been uneasy around his friends since the first attack on their campsite, and Dean could understand why. As frustrated as Dean was with these circumstances, he figured that Sam was having it a million times worse. He wasn't talking about it, of course, but Dean could see the tension in his shoulders and the tight lines around his mouth. It had been there since they'd run across Sam's friends in that restaurant parking lot.

"A few," Dean answered. "Enough, hopefully. You?"

"Same here." Sam grimaced and his hand flexed against his arm. "Lost a bunch during that last attack. Not that it made a damn difference."

Whatever they were hunting—and Dean couldn't be sure of it, yet—didn't really respond to anything they'd tried to throw at it. Which, admittedly, hadn't been much, considering they'd gone into the wilderness expecting a wendigo. Whatever was lurking out here was decidedly not a wendigo, because of course it wasn't, because nothing in their lives was ever fucking easy.

"I fucking hate the Midwest, man," Dean said.

Sam glanced over at him with raised eyebrows. His gaze was amused. "Maybe you'd like it better if you dressed warmer."

"Fuck you," Dean said, a knee-jerk reaction. Sam had purchased the two of them some thick, unflattering coats to wear into the woods. Dean complained, but he had to admit, the things were warm as hell. His fingers and toes were going numb, but everything else, at least, was nice and toasty. He was never admitting that to Sam, of course. "The leather jacket would've been fine."

"You would have gotten hypothermia on night one and you know it." Sam caught his breath, then, and staggered again. Dean actually did reach over this time, and his hand gripped Sam's arm, stopping him from collapsing.

"Sam?" he said, voice low and tense. "Hey, come on, man."

Sam's eyes had gone wide, as though in pain or shock or something. He reached up unexpectedly for his head, groaning as he gripped at it with both hands, as if the wound in his arm was completely forgotten. He dropped heavily to his knees, and Dean lurched forward under the sudden weight, nearly going down with him. "Sam?" he said again, alarmed now. For a brief, bewildered second he wondered if this was another of Sam's visions. "Sam, what is it?"

There was a sharp gasp from behind him, followed by a pained cry. "Kate!" Liam's voice said in a panic, and Dean whipped his head around, staring. Kate had collapsed like Sam and had her hands pressed over her ears. Liam looked at Dean, bewildered. "Hey," he snapped, like this was Dean's fault. "What's wrong with them?"

Dean looked back over at Sam, who was still staring out at nothing, gaze unfocused, his hand pressed against his temple. "Sam, talk to me, man," Dean said. He tightened his grip on Sam's arm, shook him lightly. "Sam!"

"They're coming," Kate whispered, her voice thin and terrified. Dean glanced over at her again and her gaze was unfocused like Sam's, but her eyes were darting from place to place as though searching for something. "Can't you hear them? They're coming back." She curled over, squeezing her eyes shut, hands shoved tighter against her ears. "They're so loud."

Fully panicked now, Dean reached for his brother, hefting him upright. "We need to hurry," he said. "We need to go now."

"They're telling us to turn back," Sam grunted. His voice was strained, but clear. "Telling us not to go any further."

"They're saying…actual words?" Dean said.

He could hear them now, too—the voices. But they weren't really voices, just whispers. Dozens of them, hundreds maybe, too quiet and garbled for Dean to make out what they were saying. When he'd first heard them, two nights ago, he thought they were birds, or some other kind of animals, chittering at one another.

"Dean, we need to move, now," Sam said, a little more cognizant than before. His voice was loud, as though speaking over whatever voices he was hearing. "We can't stay here."

"Okay, okay." Dean yanked again, heaving Sam to his feet. Sam staggered, but stayed upright. "There was a cave or something a half mile back, we'll have to go there for now."

"We can't stay in a cave all night, we'll be too vulnerable," Liam protested, even as he helped Kate back to her feet, arms tight around her waist. "I thought we were close to the town, can't we make it there?"

"We can't," Sam snapped, harsh for him, his voice going even louder, sharper. "We need to go now, we can't—" His eyes flew towards something over Dean's shoulder, widened comically. "Dean!" he shouted, reaching for his waistband, where his gun was tucked into his jeans.

Dean turned a moment too late. He drew his own gun out, pointed it towards the coming threat. He didn't even have time to really see anything—just a vague enormous black shape, faceless and writhing, before something hard and cold slammed into the center of his chest, throwing him backwards.

---

The thing is, neither of them were ever convinced that this was a wendigo hunt.

Sam was the one to find the hunt in the first place, but what he found wasn't even a hunt, technically. He found it on a conspiracy fan site and suggested they take a look, since they were only a few hours out. "I mean, what," Dean said, as he gassed up the car several hours from Duluth, "a wendigo took down an entire town of people? An entire town of people didn't think to wise up and get the hell out of dodge when bodies started dropping?"

"Maybe that is what happened," Sam said. He was leaning against the side of the car, phone in hand, snowflakes catching on the strands of his shaggy hair. "That's what we're trying to find out."

They didn't have much to go on, except for two-hundred-and-thirteen missing people and nothing left behind. An entire remote town full of residents in the middle of nowhere, and they'd just dropped off the face of the earth. No bodies, no witnesses. The investigation had come to a grinding halt, and conspiracy theories ran rampant on the internet from ghosts to disease to human trafficking.

"A whole collection of wendigos, maybe?" Sam suggested. "I don't think one wendigo could take down two hundred people. Don't even think it would need to. I mean, how many people can a single wendigo even eat?"

Dean squinted at the steadily falling snow, pure disgust in the twist of his mouth. The gas pump shut off with a low thunk and Dean withdrew the nozzle from the car. "It's practically a two-day hike," Dean said. "And even if we make it there without getting frostbite, how do we know we'll even find anything there?

"We don't," Sam said. "We never do. Come on, Dean, aren't you the least bit curious was happened?"

Dean pursed his lips. He shut the gas tank. "Not really," he said, but it sounded unconvincing even to him. Sam didn't even really have to wheedle to get him to agree, but he turned on the pleading eyes anyway, probably so that Dean would feel like it was Sam's idea.

"Hikers are going to start going out there to explore the area," Sam said, as the two of them climbed into the car. "And if there's still something there, it'll eat them alive. You wanna let that happen?"

Dean rubbed a hand through his hair in a show of aggravation. "Fine," he said, putting the car into drive and pulling out of the station. "We'll check it out. But I'm telling you, there's not going to be anything there."

"Great." Sam nudged his brother's arm. "But you're going the wrong way."

"I'm going west. You said the trailhead is west of here."

"It is. You're going south, not west."

Dean opened his mouth to argue and then blinked and closed it again. He made a u-turn in the middle of the street and sped in the other direction.

They reached Duluth in the late evening and elected to head for the trailhead in the morning. Dean had been complaining about being starving for a solid hour, so they pulled into a restaurant and sat at a booth together. It was an eclectic kind of place, the slats dark wood and the walls covered in weird old pictures.

"Maybe some of the locals will know something," Sam said as they waited for their food. "What if some of them even lived there?"

"I doubt it," Dean said. "It sounds like they were pretty isolated. Hard to imagine someone leaving here and going to live there."

"Yeah, but there could have been a good reason for it." Sam smirked. "What if it really was a secret government conspiracy? Human testing and stuff, that kind of thing."

"You've been reading too many conspiracy theory websites, man." Dean leaned back in his seat, lifting his beer to his mouth. "You've been nothing but go, go, go lately. Since when are you so jazzed about a simple wendigo hunt?"

"I doubt it's really gonna be that simple, Dean." Sam arched an eyebrow. "Besides, last time we hunted a wendigo it nearly killed you. Forget about that?"

Dean narrowed his eyes across the table. "You're never gonna let me forget that, are you?" he said, and Sam grinned.

The food was amazing. Dean groaned theatrically as he chowed down on his burger, and Sam threw a crouton at him from across the table, which Dean deftly deflected with his elbow. He grinned in triumph, mouth stuffed with bread and cheese, and Sam pretended to gag into his bowl.

"When this hunt turns out to be nothing," Dean said as he settled into his third beer, "I'm going to pick the next one, and we're going somewhere warm. Florida, maybe."

"You'd hate Florida," Sam said. "Bugs, dude. Bugs and humidity."

"Oh, yeah, fair." Dean gave him an amused look. "Your hair would go absolutely insane. Nobody wants to see that."

Sam threw another crouton across the table. Dean caught it in his mouth this time.

It was even colder outside when they left the restaurant, and Dean shivered as they made their way back to the Impala. Sam nearly slipped on the ice and Dean had to reach over to grab him. "Dude," Dean said. "You spacing out on me, geek-boy? Too many light beers for you to handle?"

Sam didn't respond. His eyes were fixed over Dean's shoulder at a car across the parking lot, and the group of four people crowded around it. One of the four people, a young woman with long curls of blonde hair, turned and looked at him, meeting his eyes. The recognition in her expression was unmistakable.

"Sam?" Dean said. "What is it?"

Sam opened his mouth to answer, but a voice called from across the parking lot before he could say anything. The blonde woman. "Sam! Hey, Sam!"

Three more pairs of eyes turned towards them, and three more smiles flashed in Sam's direction. Dean glanced over, surprised to find a look of apprehension on Sam's face. Sam's throat jumped as he swallowed and he gave a weak smile back at the four approaching figures, raising his hand to wave back.

"You know them?" Dean muttered.

"Yeah," Sam replied, and his voice was heavy with resignation, like he was dreading what was about to happen. "They're friends. From, uh…from Stanford."

---

There was a moment, in between being slammed against the surface of an enormous boulder and opening his eyes several moments later, where Dean was pretty sure that fucking entity had split his head in half.

He was lying in the snow, now, and it was wet and cold soaking into the back of his stupid puffy Midwestern coat. Voices were shouting nearby but the sound was muffled, and more pressing than the voices was the enormous black entity that was looming over him, pressing down on his chest. Pain blossomed through his ribcage, singing in harmony with his splitting headache.

Three shots rang out in quick succession. There was a horrible screeching noise, echoing through Dean's throbbing head and pounding against his temples. The pain deepened in Dean's chest, like claws were digging into his organs, trying to rip them out of his skin. The weight on top of him wouldn't allow him to move, even if he'd been cognizant enough to do so.

Another shot rang out. This time, a flare crashed headfirst into the black figure, and another shriek of rage pierced Dean's eardrums. This time, the light cut straight through the entity and it dissipated, the weight lifting from Dean's chest. The pain evaporated, leaving him feeling weak and shaken and panting for breath like his insides had been liquified.

"Dean." There were hands at the front of his jacket, gripping, the weight firm and grounding and welcome this time. Sam's panicked face came into focus above him. "Dean, you all right? Talk to me, man."

Dean groaned. It took him a moment to locate his arm, and then another moment to remember how to move it. He thumped his palm against his brother's chest. "I'm good," he mumbled. "Flare gun?"

"Yeah. Not sure how long it'll last, though." Sam rested his hands briefly against Dean's ribs, as though doing an automatic search for injury, the movement drilled into them through years of practice. Not that he'd be able to feel anything through the entire foot of Dean's thick coat. Instead he gripped Dean's arm, heaving him upright. "Come on, we need to get out of here before that thing comes back."

Dean groaned again as his head protested the sudden change in altitude. Sam froze, expression tightening with worry, but Dean just shook his head, waving him off. He gripped Sam's shoulder and managed to get his legs underneath himself with some effort. Once he was standing he noticed, with a bit of embarrassment, that the others were crowded close by, hovering as though unsure whether or not to try and help. They eyed him and Sam anxiously, like they were waiting for Dean to collapse or something. Dean withdrew from Sam's grip, not eager to look any weaker than he already did.

"What is that thing?" Hazel whispered. "It's like it came out of thin air."

"I don't know," Dean said. "But I'm not waiting around to find out." He and Sam grabbed their discarded weapons. "Come on. We need to find that town."

---

"You look different, Sam," Matt said. "I mean, not in a bad way. But definitely different."

Sam gave a half-chuckle in response, his thumbnail tapping at the edge of his beer bottle. It wasn't an uneasy laugh, exactly, but it was the kind of laugh he made when the conversation was edging on something uncomfortable, one that meant he was probably about to change the subject.

"This place is awesome," Sam said, sure enough, glancing vaguely around the living room that the six of them were situated in. After running into Sam's friends in the parking lot an hour earlier, Kate—Matt's sister—insisted they come back to the lodge they were staying at and have a drink. Dean had been anticipating the great water pressure and cable at their hotel-with-an-h, where he didn't have to hang out with Sam's Stanford bros, but he had to admit, Sam was right. This place was incredible. Two stories tall and made of sleek, glossy wood, the living room decked out with an enormous flat-screen TV and a fully stocked minibar.

It almost made up for the bizarre introductions from an hour earlier—the hugs and the exclamations of delight and the it's been so long, Sam, where on earth have you been? While excited to see him, they'd been bewildered by his very presence, like he'd risen from the dead. Sam had given them the standard excuse for being in middle-of-nowhere Midwest, a road trip with his brother and a quick stop to take in the sights, do some hiking, whatever.

Dean was unable to fade into the background, at that point, and resigned himself to being introduced to Sam's friends one by one. Bewildered expressions turned on him, then, scrutinizing him like he was the key into the inner workings of Sam's mind. Like he was a walking vessel for all the secrets Sam had kept from them throughout college.

"This is my older brother, Dean," Sam had said, and he'd sounded resigned, too. He'd probably dreaded this moment, his family and the life he'd tried to escape finally colliding with the life he'd always wanted. Sam had fought so hard to keep them separate all those years.

"Dean?" Kate had said in amazement. "Like, Dean Dean? This is your brother?"

A smile tugged at Dean's mouth—he couldn't help it. As much as it left a bitter taste in his mouth, thinking of how Sam had utterly cut him out of his life during college, refusing to even talk about him beyond giving a name, it was almost entertaining being an anomaly, a creature of legend and myth. He wondered what Sam's friends had expected—some weirdo, probably, with greasy hair and Doritos in his beard, the kind of guy who lived out of his mom's basement.

"Guilty as charged," Dean said, giving a brief salute. "I'm sure Sam here has told you all about me."

He said it mostly because he knew it wasn't true, and he wanted to see the way Sam bristled beside him, shoulders tensing, eyes flickering down and away. Sam's friends all gave brief, breathy laughs in response. "Yeah, loads," Liam was the first to speak up, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Dude, we were starting to think you didn't even exist. Sam didn't even have any photos of you on his phone, it was like he'd made you up for the drama. Wouldn't even tell us what you did for a living."

Sam cleared his throat loudly, and had pointedly changed the subject, asking his friends what had brought them to Minnesota. That was when Matt explained the lodge, and their plans to hike the Allancian trail and explore the unnamed town of the vanished two-hundred-and-thirteen people. "Hazel was a student of anthropology and folklore," Matt explained, squeezing his girlfriend around the waist. "She's been obsessed with those two-hundred people for years. This is her Grand Canyon."

Sam and Dean had exchanged looks. Fucking civilians, Dean's expression had said, and then Sam's quirked eyebrows had responded, We have to go with them, Dean, and, well, that was pretty much the end of it. Sam was right. His idiot college friends would probably get themselves killed if they went alone.

"How long did you say your parents have owned this place?" Sam asked now, looking over at Liam.

"It's been a few years now," Liam said. "They wanted a vacation home, somewhere they could hole up in the winter and be by the lake in the summer." Matt snorted, and Liam glared over at him. "What?" he snapped. "Lots of people have vacation homes."

"Sure," Matt said. "Rich trust fund babies, you mean."

Liam gave a roll of his eyes, but it seemed like it was mostly for show. This was clearly an old discussion, and the motion didn't have any real bite to it. Dean could have pegged Liam as a trust fund baby without him saying anything—the guy radiated privilege, from his swoopy blonde hair and his khaki-and-polo combo and his pretentious choice of beer. Not that Dean was complaining—beer was beer—but he didn't really need to listen to a five-minute lecture about the benefits of an IPA or whatever the fuck just to have a drink.

"So, the hike on the Allancian trial," Sam said, clearly trying to bring it up casually. The others probably wouldn't notice the forced topic change. "When were you planning on going? I mean, it's a two-day hike to get to the ghost town, right?"

"We were gonna leave in the morning," Matt said. "Drive up to the trailhead around nine." He reached over to rub Hazel's shoulder. "Haze has tons of camping supplies. We're fully stocked—tents, sleeping bags, food, water, warm clothes, flint for fire. Lanterns. The works."

"Still," Sam said, with that forced sense of nonchalance again, "it's gotta be a rough couple of days, right? Cold temperatures, wind chill…"

"It shouldn't be too bad this time of year," Hazel said. "I haven't done this exact hike before but I've done similar trails in the area."

"You guys should come with us," Kate said. Her hair was drawn up in a high ponytail and she was curled up at Liam's side on one of the loveseats, sock-covered feet tucked beneath her. "You said you wanted to see the sights, right? What better way to do that than a good hike?"

"Yeah," Matt said dryly, "no more authentic way to experience the Midwest than being at the edge of hypothermia for two days straight."

Sam chuckled. "We'd love to go," he said. "We don't really have any gear, though."

That was a lie. They weren't idiots. Mr. George Henderson had paid for their camping supplies last week, and they were secured into the trunk of the Impala.

"No problem," Liam said. "We have plenty of extra gear, you can borrow whatever you need. Long as you don't mind sharing a tent."

Sam glanced over at Dean and raised his eyebrows. "Dean?" he said. "What do you think?"

Dean pretended to consider it for a moment. He wished he could just tell these idiots not to go, insist they stay at this fancy-ass lodge all week, but there was no way he'd be able to convince them without also explaining about monsters, and that wasn't happening. Not until it was necessary, anyway. They'd probably get bored after a day or so anyway and head back. Delicate California college students weren't cut out for extreme wilderness, especially in the northern Minnesota woods.

"Sure," Dean said. "Sounds like fun."

Liam grinned. "Awesome," he said. He leaned back on the couch, throwing an arm around Kate's shoulders. "Can't wait to hear what you've been up to all this time, Sam. You'd better have some good campfire tales for us."

---

The town was buried in so much snow that, at first, Dean didn't recognize it for what it was.

It just looked like mounds of snow at first, gentle piles of them glowing vibrant white under the last dregs of sunlight. The six of them approached silently, footsteps heavy, shoulders hunched with exhaustion. Dean's head was throbbing with every footstep and he could feel himself listing to one side, dizzy and fighting the urge to collapse. Sam kept glancing over at him, as though he was preparing for it to happen.

Once they drew a little closer, Dean could make out wooden support beams, roof shingles, a road made of dirt and gravel. It was completely, eerily silent, the snow muffling all sound except for the howl of the wind. Dean had been plenty of creepy places before, and this one easily gave off worse energy than all the rest of them. It wasn't even haunted, as far as they knew, but it was like all two-hundred-and-thirteen people had left handprints all over the walls of the houses.

"Let's find somewhere safe to hole up for the night," Dean said. His voice felt loud in the silence, like it was breaking through some kind of spell that had settled around them. "Somewhere with a fireplace. Running water, maybe, if we're lucky."

They searched around, breaking into houses to look for supplies and a decent place to settle for the night. Most of the doors were unlocked, some were even left open. There were scattered supplies inside most of them, and Dean gathered as much gauze and bandages and iodine as he could carry. The whole town gave the impression like everyone had left in the middle of whatever they'd been doing at the time. No signs of struggle or of a fight with something monstrous.

The strangest thing they managed to find were symbols carved and painted onto the outside walls of the houses, creating a perfect ring around the outside of the village. Some of them were familiar—warding, Dean assumed—but a lot of them made no sense to him. He drew quick sketches of all of them anyway, in case they became important later.

The town felt new, in spite of the wind and snow weathering it down. There were canned goods that wouldn't expire for the next five years, ashes left in fireplaces, books and toys scattered in kids' rooms.

"When did you say everyone disappeared?" Dean said to Sam as they joined the others in one of the larger houses. Hazel had gotten a fire started in the fireplace and the warmth was more than welcome after hours of nothing but snow and windchill. Dean's fingers had long lost feeling.

"It's hard to know for sure," Sam explained in a low voice. He and Dean set down all the supplies they'd managed to scrounge on the kitchen counter. "The last time someone saw everyone alive was in December, five years ago. A few months later, everyone was gone. It happened somewhere in those few months." He glanced over briefly. "You see anything suspicious around town? Sufur, EMF…?"

"No, nothing. You?"

Sam shook his head. "We can look around more in the morning," he said. "I don't want to step foot out there until the sun is out."

"Yeah, tell me about it." Dean reached for a roll of gauze. "All right, let's get this over with. Lemme see the arm."

Sam sighed. "Dean—"

"Don't argue with me, man. Your arm has been bleeding all day. If it gets infected and falls off, that's on you."

Sam rolled his eyes but unzipped his coat, tugging it off. He shrugged out of his flannel and tossed both onto the nearby splintered dining room table. Underneath the layers, his t-shirt was stained with blood and his arm was a straight-up murder scene, a deep gash tearing at the skin from his elbow nearly to his shoulder. The blood was drying but still sticky and the skin underneath was black and blue.

"Fuck, Sam," Dean breathed, eyes widening. "That's gonna need stitches, man."

Sam grimaced. "It's not that bad," he muttered, but he wouldn't look in Dean's direction as he said it.

"Not that bad, my ass." Dean stepped around Sam to get at the kitchen sink. "We're gonna need to clean that before we do anything." He tried the spouts, but nothing came out—not that he'd really expected anything to. He sighed. "Okay. Snow it is." He pointed an imperious finger at Sam as he left the kitchen. "Go park your ass in front of the fire, geek boy."

Sam gave him a smile, weak with pain but still fond. Dean headed for the front door, grabbing one of their water canteens along the way.

It was dark outside now, the last bit of light long gone. Dean trudged over to the side of the house and scooped some snow into the canteen with still-numb fingers. He'd need to find a way to warm his hands up before he tried giving Sam stiches, he realized errantly. Wouldn't help anyone if he did it incorrectly and had to fix it later when they were supposed to be running from monsters.

Dean straightened, canteen filled with melting snow, and his limbs froze in place. Dark figures stood in a row in front of him, dozens of them.

They were humanoid, kind of. They were elongated, stretched out too-tall, arms dangling just above the ground, heads twisted into oblong ovals. They surrounded the town in a perfect circle, not moving, standing shoulder-to-shoulder. They had eyes, or something resembling eyes, two huge glowing points at the center of their misshapen heads. They were being watched.

Dean heard them, then, the whispers, the same sounds from before. They were louder, this time, clearer. He still couldn't quite understand what they were saying, but whatever it was, they were saying it intensely and insistently and they were repeating it, again and again and again.

The door creaked open behind him. "Dean?" Sam's voice said. "What's going on?"

The sound of his brother's voice finally forced Dean's limbs to unfreeze. He turned, finding Sam standing on the porch with all the others, lit from behind. "Get inside," Dean said sharply, turning his back reluctantly on the black figures to hurry back to the house. "Hurry. Everyone inside, lock the doors. Now."

---

"They're gonna get themselves killed, dude."

"We don't know that." Sam eyed him sideways from his bed, arms folded behind his head, aged quilts obscuring his lower body. Liam had graciously offered to let them stay in one of the six thousand empty rooms for the night so they didn't have to find a hotel. "Maybe there really isn't anything out there."

"And maybe there is, and your idiot friends are walking into a whole horde of wendigos."

Sam's brow puckered. "They're not idiots," he said.

"Yeah, well, Liam sure doesn't seem to think so," Dean muttered. He tossed his bag onto the floor by the window and flopped down on the other twin bed. "He somehow managed to work his 4.0 into every single conversation."

Sam chuckled. "Yeah, he hasn't changed," he said. He tilted his head to the side, meeting Dean's gaze. "I'm just saying, they don't know about monsters. If you wanna be the one to tell them, be my guest. But it's easier to just go with them and keep them safe."

"We don't need the extra baggage," Dean said. "We can barely keep ourselves alive, let alone four twenty-year-olds."

"Most of them are older than me."

"Sammy…" Dean groaned and rolled onto his side, fixing his brother with a hard stare. "Can you please not get caught up with semantics for once? I'm trying to make a point here."

Sam humphed. "It'll be fine, Dean," he said. "We'll get to this town and there will be nothing there." He dragged the covers up to his chin. "Also, if you ever call me Sammy in front of my friends, I swear I'll murder you in your sleep."

They left at eight in the goddamn morning the following day. Dean drank from a thermos of coffee as he drove himself and Sam to the trailhead, and glared at the sun through the windshield. It was warmer than yesterday, but the air was dry as shit and Dean's skin was already flaking. Two hours into the hike and his hands would probably start to crack and bleed.

The others were obnoxiously peppy. They took stock of their items with excitement and went over the map to make sure they knew the route backwards and forwards, while Dean tried not to look to obviously like he was sulking.

"You much of an outdoorsman, Dean?" Liam asked as they were getting ready to leave.

It was a friendly question on the surface, but it was obvious that Liam didn't actually care about Dean's answer—he was just looking for an excuse to talk about himself and how much experience he had himself, how fast he could start a fire or how many fish he caught last month or some shit.

"I'm not bad," Dean said anyway. "My dad taught me a few things."

"My dad has been taking my brothers and I camping since we were kids," Liam said immediately, even faster than Dean had expected. "We'd go on week-long hikes together, taking only as much as we needed. Learned all kinds of things. How to hunt, how to fish, how to navigate with just a compass—"

"Yeah, great," Dean said. "You have siblings? How many?"

"Three," Liam said. "All brothers. You and Sam ever go on camping trips together? With your dad, maybe?"

Obvious probing into Sam's background. Dean refused to take the bait this time. "Sometimes," he said shortly, and then immediately turned away, towards the others. Sam was engaged in conversation with Matt, both of them shouldering their backpacks. "Sam, we ready to head out?" Dean called.

Sam looked over, nodded. He shut the trunk of the Impala. "Yeah," he said. "Let's get moving."

---

"Ow, Dean, easy."

"Yeah, yeah. Get over it, princess." But Dean gentled his grip a little as he moved the needle in for the next stitch. The wound had been deeper than expected, and it had required a lot of careful work to clean and sterilize. Sam had mostly been ignoring the pain, or pretending to, but his forehead was beaded with sweat despite the cold and his face had gone unnervingly pale.

Dean knew he didn't look much better, himself. They were all on edge, especially after those fucking shadow things had appeared at the edge of town. They were still there—Dean could see them out the window—but they didn't seem to be moving or coming any closer. If they did, the locks on the doors probably wouldn't deter them.

Matt shifted to toss a couple more logs onto the fire, and then sat on the floor with his back against the couch at Kate's feet. He reached up with a clawing motion, and Kate handed over a bag of pretzels. Dean should have been starving after an entire day without food, but he found himself nauseous instead. Food wasn't remotely appealing.

"What do we do if those things come for us?" Matt said as he munched on a pretzel. "I mean, what are they?"

Four pairs of eyes turned expectantly towards Dean and Sam. Dean wanted to groan in exasperation. If he had all the answers, then that would have been great. "Don't know," Dean said, keeping his attention on Sam's arm. Sam hissed through his teeth as Dean pulled the next stitch through his skin. "They could be a lot of things. Spirits, maybe. Who knows if they're even connected to whatever that fucking…entity was."

Sam was eyeing him, worry in his gaze again. "That entity, when it attacked you," he said slowly. "What did it…feel like?"

Dean frowned up at him. "What do you mean, what did it feel like?"

"I mean, did it…hurt you?"

"It hurt when my head cracked itself against that fucking rock," Dean said dryly. "If that's what you mean."

"It felt like it was clawing its way inside of you," Kate spoke up unexpectedly, before Sam could respond. Her voice was thin and her gaze, when Dean looked over at her, was unfocused. "It was so…cold. Like ice. Like every breath hurt to draw in. I thought it was going to kill me."

"Is that what happened when you and Sam disappeared?" Liam said with alarm, eyes widening in Kate's direction.

"How'd you get away?" Hazel said, bewildered.

"We didn't," Kate murmured. "It just disappeared. Neither of us knew why. It's like it let us go."

Dean closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. He snipped off the end of Sam's stitches and then reached for a roll of gauze. "Man, what the fuck is going on out here?" he muttered as he rolled the gauze into place.

Matt was watching Dean work with interest. "You're not bad at that," he said. "Did you do pre-med or something?"

Dean scoffed. He cut away the rest of the gauze. "No way," he said. He clapped his brother on the shoulder, smirked when Sam hissed in pain. "College was more Sam's thing than mine."

---

"We should've brought marshmallows or something," Matt said.

They'd made it a good few miles until there wasn't enough light left over, and they'd finally been forced to stop. They'd made camp in a relatively secluded clearing among the trees, and were sitting around a fire now, eating from their rations. After so much hiking it was tempting to just curl up in the snow and go to sleep without bothering to set up tents.

Dean had spent most of the hike trying to avoid Liam, and somehow still being forced to listen to him talk about himself the entire time. It wasn't like Liam was outwardly hostile towards him or anything, but he gave off the kind of ivy league, my-parents-bought-me-a-new-car-at-sixteen energy that Dean absolutely can't stand.

Matt was cool, at least. He'd talked to Dean about growing up with Kate and about how they'd argued for months about which one of them would go to Stanford. "She didn't want to go to the same school as me," Matt explained. "She tried to convince me to go to Dartmouth instead."

"You got into Stanford and Dartmouth?" Dean had said. "Jesus."

Matt laughed. "The Dartmouth one was pretty unexpected," he said. "Wasn't my first choice, so I eventually convinced Katie to go to Stanford with me. Told her we'd keep our circles separate." He rolled his eyes. "Then she decided to date one of my closest friends. Hard to avoid each other after that."

It was a foreign concept to Dean, who'd had to actively keep himself from calling up his brother while Sam was at school. Separating themselves intentionally from one another was never part of their family's dynamic.

"I brought Oreos," Hazel offered now, reaching into her bag and pulling a full pack of them out. She handed them to Matt, who grinned and accepted them. "Anyone know any ghost stories?"

"We're living in a ghost story," Kate said. "And you want to tempt fate by telling more ghost stories?"

"You scared, Kate?" Liam said, nudging her in the ribs with his elbow. "Worried the ghosts of all those people are going to come after us?"

Dean glanced over at Sam and found Sam looking at him too. They exchanged brief looks, and Dean turned away before anyone else could notice. They were prepared for that, actually, if there were still souls in the village that hadn't been put to rest yet. It might explain all the disappearances that had been happening, although Dean figured there was probably something else going on.

"You guys know about the legends?" Matt said, turning his gaze towards Sam and Dean. "The town we're heading for, I mean, where all those people vanished?"

"Vanished?" Sam said. Dean had to hand it to him, Sam played dumb pretty perfectly, eyes going wide with innocent curiosity, head tilted just slightly like a confused puppy. "How many people?"

"Around two-hundred," Matt said. He leaned forward, animated, eyes simmering under the firelight. "Nobody can explain it. They all disappeared in the space of a month, and nobody knows what happened to them. Some people think they all got caught in a huge snowstorm or something and they all froze to death, buried in snow."

"God, Matt, you're so dramatic," Kate said, rolling her eyes. "They probably all just moved somewhere else, since they were in the middle of fucking nowhere."

"So how come nobody else ever found them again?" Matt said. "Nobody ever heard anything from them? It was like they fell off the face of the planet."

"Maybe they did," Matt said, soft and dramatic. "Maybe they were sucked into the earth, swallowed by some unseen force—"

"Matt, stop it, will you?" Hazel said, throwing an Oreo at his head. "Honestly, you're so annoying. I want to at least get some sleep tonight."

Matt grinned at her and popped another Oreo into his mouth, chewing loudly.

"How long has the town been abandoned for?" Sam asked, still innocently curious.

Kate groaned. "Please don't encourage him."

"Only a few years," Matt said, and then he lowered his voice and added, "for all we know, they could still be there, waiting for someone to walk in."

Hazel threw another Oreo at him. Matt caught it this time in one hand.

"You were never into this kind of stuff before, Sam," Kate said, looking over at him curiously. "I mean, you refused to go to horror movies with us back at school, even midnight showings of Rocky Horror. Since when do you like ghost stories?"

Sam shrugged. "Maybe I've broadened my horizons since leaving school," he suggested.

"Oh, is that what you were doing these past fourteen months?" Liam said, his voice immediately derisive. "Broadening your horizons?"

Sam's eyes shuttered, the way they did when Stanford came up. It was odd, seeing that expression directed towards someone else.

Kate nudged her boyfriend in the arm. "Liam," she said.

"No, it's okay," Sam said. "I know it feels like I cut all of you off. I didn't mean to go completely silent like that. I just needed…some time. To deal with everything that happened."

"Of course," Kate said, with a pointed look in Liam's direction. "We all took it hard when Jess died, of course you needed some time to come to terms with it—"

"So what were you guys up to the last few months?" Liam cut in. "You said you were road-tripping or something, right? Anywhere in particular?"

Sam glanced quickly at Dean again, not quite brief enough that it would evade notice. "All over, kind of," Dean offered, because Sam's shoulders had tensed and his hands were clenched together between his knees, knuckles white. "Went to all those shitty tourist attractions that nobody likes." He gave a half-smile and nudged Sam's knee with his own. "Giant ball of twine, man. Not to be missed. Ain't that right, Sammy?"

Sam whipped his head around to stare at Dean with wide, accusatory eyes, and Dean realized a split second later that the nickname had slipped out. Sam's friends exchanged looks and giggles, and Sam lowered his head to rub his fingertips between his eyes in exasperation, already prepared for the onslaught.

"Dude, you nearly decked me for calling you that once," Liam said, a look of unsuppressed glee on his face. "Glared at me like I'd insulted your grandmother. Are we allowed to call you that now?"

"What?" Sam said. "No—"

"Aw come on," Liam continued. "It suits you."

Sam turned to glare in Dean's direction again. Dean grinned back unabashedly. "What?" Dean said. "For once Liam and I can agree on something."

"You're all dead to me," Sam said, reaching over to snag a bag of chips right out of Dean's hands. Dean smacked him in the arm out of pure habit, but didn't protest otherwise. They were terrible anyway, some gross salt-and-vinegar flavor that Dean couldn't stand.

In spite of Sam's annoyance, he seemed relieved that the subject had changed, so he endured the teasing from his friends with a petulant look on his face.

"Is this why you never introduced your brother to any of us?" Liam said, immediately ruining the atmosphere. "You just didn't want him to embarrass you or something?"

Sam's shoulders tensed again. "Something like that," Dean said lightly, when Sam didn't answer. "Besides, California isn't really my scene. Too many palm trees and hipsters."

---

"You and Sam...who taught you all of this?"

Dean rolled his head against the wall, finding Matt staring at him from the other corner. Dean hadn't been asleep, exactly—he was too wound up, too on edge, and he couldn't stop glancing over at Sam, who was sprawled out on a couple of blankets nearby. Sam had been one of the last people to fall asleep, after Kate and Liam and Hazel.

Sam seemed fine. But Dean couldn't shake that there was something wrong, something Sam wasn't talking about. It frustrated him, that Sam was keeping things from him, frustrated him that he couldn't figure out why. Sam might have just been trying to keep him from worrying, or it might have been something about Sam's friends being there.

"All what?" Dean said, keeping his voice low. He knew what, obviously. But he was tired of the others trying to dance around it.

"The..." Matt waved his hands with a brief grimace. "You know. All of it. I didn't even know Sam knew how to use a gun, and definitely not like it was second nature. Freaked me the fuck out, man."

His voice grew a little more frayed as he spoke, carefully-tamped-down panic rising up to claw at his voice as the world he was used to turned itself inside out. Dean sighed, thumped his head back against the wall again. His gun was resting on the floor next to his thigh, a precaution even though things had been quiet. It was still an uneasy kind of quiet, a quiet that convinced him something was still out there.

"Our dad taught us," Dean said. "He hunted things. Taught me and Sam how to hunt like him."

"Hunted...what things?"

"Evil things. Monsters, ghosts." Dean gave a half-smile at the sheet-white look on Matt's face. "Don't worry. You'll get used to it."

Matt licked his lips. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish. "That shit isn't real," he said, but it was a weak protest.

"You can keep telling yourself that if you want," Dean said. "But you saw that thing out there. It look human to you?"

Matt stared at the floor for a few moment. Dean watched as the gears turned in Matt's head, cycling him through the initial denial and disbelief. Normally Dean would hurry people through this particular phase, shove them forcibly through the seven stages of grief all the way to acceptance, just so they could move forward and kill whatever they were there to kill.

They had nothing but time here, however, so Dean wasn't really in a hurry.

"What was it?" Matt said, his voice barely a whisper, his eyes huge and horrified. "That thing out there that attacked us?"

Dean shook his head. "Man, I wish I knew," he said. "Me and Sam, we've never seen anything like it."

Matt rubbed his forehead. He shook his head a little. "I always knew there was something he was hiding in college," he said. "Some part of himself or his past or whatever that he didn't want anyone to know about. I just figured his family was a little crazy, and that's why he clammed up whenever anyone asked. I never thought it would be...this."

"Well, we're a little crazy too," Dean said. His voice sounded bitter, even to him. "Can't blame Sam for cutting me—cutting us out of his cushy Stanford life."

Matt stared at him. His expression had softened a little. "I don't think he wanted to," he said, quieter now. "He got this hard look when he mentioned his dad, but with you he kind of...he just looked...sad." Matt scuffed the toe of his boot against the wooden floor. "Whenever he mentioned you he'd kind of catch himself and clear his throat, like there was something stopping him from talking. I never saw that kind of expression on him from anything else."

Dean didn't answer. He fixed his eyes on the wall across the room so he wouldn't have to look at Sam. Sam, who hadn't called in three years because he'd wanted so badly to escape his family, and couldn't even talk about them. Guilt, or homesickness, or lingering anger—whatever it was, Dean didn't want to think about it anymore. It was supposed to be in the past. They weren't supposed to be here, Sam's past entangling itself with whatever they had now, and all Dean wanted to do was get through this hunt and leave this shitty feeling far behind him in the dust of his car.

Dean pushed himself off the wall, taking his gun with him and tucking it into his waistband. "I need something to drink," he muttered.

"Hey, man, sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"It's cool."

"I just think he missed you, even if he didn't admit it. He talked like there was something missing, and I...I don't know. I figured he probably hasn't told you that."

Dean grunted. He made for the kitchen, boots thumping loudly against the rotting wooden floor.

There was still a little water sitting on the kitchen counter—snow, melted and boiled to sterilize—so Dean poured some into a cup, wishing desperately as he sipped that it was whiskey. It was freezing cold from sitting out and it hurt his teeth. He tossed the rest of it back like a shot.

When he lowered the glass, a figure outside caught him by surprise.

Kate was standing out on the porch, her blonde hair glowing by the light of one of their oil lamps. She was barefoot and not even wearing a jacket, standing perfectly still as the freezing air gusted past her.

Dean set aside his glass. He headed back into the front hall and tugged open the door, stepping out onto the porch. "Kate?" he said. "Kate, what are you doing?"

Kate didn't respond. She didn't move.

"Kate," Dean said more insistently, moving closer. "It's freezing out here, and it's dangerous, okay? Seriously, come back in."

He reached out for her shoulder, but she moved away before he could make contact. She walked down the stairs and into the snow, her steps slow and almost graceful, like she was floating. Dean watched for a few moments, dumbfounded, and then snapped out of it and followed her. He planted himself in front of her in the snow and gripped her shoulders, getting a good look at her face for the first time.

Her eyes were blank, staring. She didn't even seem to see him. "Kate," Dean said, shaking her lightly. "Snap out of it, will you? What are you doing?"

Kate withdrew from his grip. She pushed past him and kept walking, heading with purpose towards the other end of the town and the trees that were nestled there.

"Dean?" Matt's voice came from the porch. "What's going on? Is that Kate?"

"We've got a situation," Dean called back. "Get Sam."

Kate was nearly at the edge of town. Dean ran after her again and seized her arms, prepared to lift her over his shoulder if necessary and lug her all the way back to the house. He didn't expect her to fight back so fiercely.

At first she just ducked out of his grip like some kind of acrobat or contortionist, evading his hands and continuing intently for the woods as though dragged by an invisible string. Dean sighed and gave up on propriety for the time being, gripping her around the waist with both arms, preparing to lift her over his shoulder.

She struggled at that for the first time. No longer able to wriggle out of his grip, she shoved an elbow, hard, into his gut, and then another into his face.

"Ow, fuck—" Dean blinked away the pain and once he could see again he reached for Kate one more time. She was nearly at the line of trees.

The door slammed open behind him again and several pairs of footsteps thudded against the wooden porch. "Dean!" Sam's voice called.

Kate didn't fight back the same way again, like Dean had been expecting. Instead, she reached around him to the small of his back. Bewildered, Dean didn't realize what she was doing until she'd twisted away from him again, his own gun in her hands and pointed towards his chest.

Dean froze. "Kate," he said, raising his hands.

There was no reasoning with her when she was this far gone. There was no hesitation, no hint of cognizance or awareness. Kate squeezed the trigger.

"Dean!"

---

Dean wasn't sure what woke him up. It probably wasn't anything specific, just the general feeling of unease that hadn't left him alone since entering these woods.

The wind had picked up overnight and it was howling against the walls of the tent, the fabric fluttering violently underneath it. Sam had somehow managed to pass out immediately and was still fast-asleep on the other side of the tent, curled up with his back to Dean. The tent was barely big enough for the two of them, and Dean had half-expected to wake up with a knee to the stomach or something. Sam was all limbs, after all.

Dean sat up in his sleeping bag, rubbing a hand over his jaw. His fingers were numb from the cold. His stupid sleeping bag was garbage.

There was a sound from outside then and Dean jolted, whipping his head around towards the noise as though he could see through the fabric of his tent. The noises sounded like humming, like soft voices speaking over each other. Dozens of them. As Dean watched, something dark passed by the tent, an enormous black shape that Dean couldn't make out.

It was too slow to be a wendigo. Dean reached under his pillow for his gun.

"Sam," he muttered, reaching over to shake his brother's arm. "Sam, wake up."

Sam groaned and stirred. "Dean?" he said, turning over groggily. "S'going on?"

"Something outside. Come on."

Sam was alert immediately. He sat up, his hair a wild mess around his head, and reached for his weapon.

There was nothing outside once they'd struggled into their boots and their coats and traipsed out into the snow. They stood shoulder to shoulder by the fire, now just a pile of ash and half-burned sticks, and held their guns close at their sides as they waited for that huge black shape to return.

"Did you see what it was?" Sam asked, voice barely above a whisper.

"Not really," Dean said. He scanned the trees, eyes darting from trunk to trunk. It was pitch black, the moonlight hardly giving enough light to see anything. "But it didn't look like a wendigo. Moved too slowly."

"Then what? Wild animal?"

"No, no, it was way bigger than that." Dean tensed, eyes fixed just beyond the line of trees, his hair standing on end as the whispering, humming sound trickled across his eardrums again. It felt like those voice were speaking right against the back of his neck, breath cold on his skin. "Sam," Dean muttered, pointing at the trees, where several over-long black shapes had emerged, standing in a perfect semicircle, glowing orbs where their faces should be, fingertips hovering just above the snow.

Before Sam could respond, there was a rush of wind and something huge and dark whooshed past Dean's shoulder. Sam shouted in pain behind him.

Dean whirled, raising his gun, but there was nothing to point at. Sam was a good few yards away from him, crouched in the snow with his hand clutched at his upper arm and his gun buried somewhere nearby in the snow. Blood was already oozing between Sam's fingers to trickle down his arm and drip of his fingers. The red of it stood out, stark and unsettling, against the white of the snow.

"Sam, you good?" Dean said tersely.

Sam nodded. He reached for his gun and stood unsteadily. "I'm fine."

"Did you see what it was?"

"No, it was too fast."

There was a zipping sound, and Dean's stomach dropped out. He turned reluctantly away from his brother, tucking his gun back at his side, just in time to watch Kate and Liam emerge, bleary-eyed but alert, from their tent. "Sam?" Kate said. "What's going on? Is everything okay?"

"Get back in your tent, you two," Dean said, before Sam could respond. "I'm serious, just get back in and don't move, okay?"

He should have known better than to try and tell Liam to do something. Liam set his jaw and unzipped the tent the rest of the way, reaching over to pull on his shoes. "What's going on?" he demanded. Matt and Hazel were emerging from their tent now, too, to see what the commotion was. Dean wanted to pull his hair out.

Kate followed Liam out of the tent. Her eyes went wide as she got a better look at Sam. "Sam, you're bleeding," she said.

"I'm okay," Sam said, going for that earnest, reassuring voice of his, but it was a little unconvincing when his voice was tight with pain and his hand was clutching again at his upper arm, which was bleeding pretty badly now. Dean swallowed the instinct to grab Sam and get them both the hell out of here.

"Listen," Sam continued, his arm carefully angled so that the wound and his gun were both out of sight of his friends. "There's something dangerous out here. You guys will be safer inside the tents."

"Something dangerous?" Matt said in alarm. "What is it? A wild animal or something?"

"We're not sure," Dean said, his voice a little sharper with his growing frustration. "But Sam and I have some—some hunting experience, so we're keeping an eye out. The rest of you need to—"

"I have hunting experience," Liam cut in, because of course he fucking did. "I can help too, I brought a rifle with me—"

"You what?" Kate said furiously. "Liam, you brought a gun on our camping trip? I can't believe you."

Dean raked an exasperated hand through his hair and looked over at Sam pointedly. Sam sighed and gave him a tiny nod in response. "Okay, look," Sam said. "Let's move somewhere a little safer, away from...from whatever's out there. And we'll keep an eye out for anything on the way."

It wasn't much of a plan, but it felt better than just standing around here and waiting for that thing to come after them again. They packed up their supplies, pulled on their gear, and checked the map with their flashlights before heading back out into the woods. They crested a small hill, footsteps slowed by the heavy snow and the lingering exhaustion. Sam's face had gone pretty pale, but Dean didn't have time to bother him about it. Once they'd found somewhere a little better to set up camp—

"Dean." Sam's voice was tense and low as he reached over to grip Dean's arm. Dean was on alert immediately, following Sam's gaze. He heard the whisper-humming before he even saw the long, humanoid shapes again.

It was barely a warning. Hazel screamed, and the black shape came rushing at them, knocking them all in different directions. Dean slammed onto his back in the snow, breath rushing out of him in a huff, his gun slipping out of his numb fingers. It took him a second too long to get his bearings, his hand scrabbling in the thick snow until he felt smooth metal underneath his fingers.

By the time he was sitting up with his gun in hand, the black shape had reappeared and it was looming over him, huge and dark and making the worst inhuman growling, groaning sounds Dean had ever heard.

Dean raised his gun, but he was too slow again. The creature made a sound that was even worse—like a shrill ringing, shrieking sound that split straight through Dean's head and into his brain. It was painful enough to distract him, shocking enough that his gun was out of his hands again and there was something digging into his ribs, like poison but cold, ice water injected into his veins.

Someone, Sam, called his name. Three shots rang out and the pain was suddenly gone. The creature rose, turned away from him. Towards Sam.

Dean's chest heaved for breath. Sam's eyes went wide in terror as the creature swept towards him and Dean reached in desperation for his bag, fumbling with the zipper and digging inside until he got his hand around a flare gun. Bullets didn't have any effect on this motherfucker, whatever it was. Maybe it was more like a wendigo than Dean had originally suspected.

He pointed the flare at the enormous black shape and fired. There was another shrill screaming sound and everything was too bright to see; Dean covered his face with his elbow and blinked rapidly as the light faded, trying to clear the spots of white that disrupted his vision.

The black shape was gone. Dean scrambled to his feet, panting. "Sam?" he called, tucking the flare away and then slipping his gun into his waistband. Dean stared for several moments, frozen, at the spot where Sam had just been, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him. Sam wasn't there anymore, like the snow had just swallowed him. Dean looked around, bewildered, panic clawing at his back. "Sam!"

"Oh, god," Hazel whispered. She and Matt were clutching at each other, trembling, still on their knees in the snow. "What was that? What was that thing?"

"It took her." Liam's voice was spitting with fury, but his face was blank with shock. "It took Kate. I couldn't...I didn't know how to..."

Dean struggled to his feet. He turned in a full circle, the claws of panic turning cold, icicles filling him with their shards, digging into his muscles. "Sam!" he yelled, as though Sam would miraculously appear if he called loud enough. "Sam!"

---

The taste of blood was unpleasant and metallic, but staggeringly familiar on Dean's tongue. For a few moments it was the only thing he was able to focus on, not the pain or the wet snow against his back or the cold stinging his face.

There was something else wet at his stomach, a warm wetness that wasn't snow soaking into his clothes. It was at his stomach, blossoming pain along his abdomen, a growing awareness of something very, very wrong. Dean pawed at his stomach and words came back to him as the pain spiraled wider, bigger, harsher. Kate. Gun. Bullet. Shot.

He was shot.

"Dean." Sam's voice was somewhere nearby, right next to him and miles away at the same time. His voice was filled with panic, panic that was only just beginning to dawn in Dean himself. "Hey, hey, okay. It's okay. I've got you, you're fine. Dean? Can you hear me?"

Dean tried to answer. He lifted his head a little, finally remembering Kate and her slow, deliberate walk towards the woods. For a moment he squinted and all he could see was blackness, undulating and swirling with his dizzied brain. And then he realized that the dizziness wasn't just him, and that all he could see was darkness.

The black shape from before was huge and monstrous at the very edge of town. Dean watched, waiting for it to come towards them, but it just hovered there at the woods, like it couldn't come any closer.

Sam wasn't paying attention. His gaze was fixed on the blood at Dean's stomach, knife already in hand and cutting at the shirt to expose the bullet wound. His movements were sure and practiced but his hands were trembling. Dean tore his eyes away from the woods to glance at Sam's face and was startled by how white he was.

"She was just going to walk towards that thing," Liam's voice said and Dean was suddenly aware of all the figures around him aside from Sam, Hazel and Matt and Liam all crouched nearby with expressions of terror. Liam had his arms around Kate, who had stopped struggling and was unconscious. Dean's gun was in the snow nearby. Someone must have wrested it away from her.

"Matt, go get the first aid kit from my bag," Sam said tightly, speaking through his teeth. "And hurry."

"Y-yeah. On it. Liam, keep an eye on Katie—"

Something pressed against Dean's abdomen, applying firm pressure, and the pain ratcheted up about a thousand degrees. A groan forced its way through Dean's clenched teeth.

"Do you have something for stitches?" Hazel's voice said from Dean's other side.

"We should." Sam's voice was shaking almost as badly as his hands. "But we need to get him inside, sterilize the needle first."

"Sammy," Dean managed, his voice barely audible through the pain, but he knew his brother would hear him. "Exit wound. Straight through."

Sam let out a huff of breath. A sound of relief. "Okay. Let's get the bleeding under control, and then we'll get you back to the house—"

"Sam." Matt had reappeared. He handed Sam their med kit. "We can help. What do you need?"

"We need to get back inside," Sam said. "Before that thing figures out a way to get to us."

"Warded," Dean grunted, grimacing in pain when a piece of thick gauze pressed against his abdomen. "Must be."

"Yeah." Sam took an unsteady breath. "Okay. Dean, I'm going to help you up—Matt, give me a hand—"

"I'm fine, I'm fine, Sam." But Dean let his arm be hefted over Sam's shoulders, gripped him to steady himself. His legs felt numb and he struggled just to get them underneath his body, pain tearing through his abdomen as the abused skin protested movement. When he nearly collapsed, Matt shouldered in on his other side, and the two of them half-dragged, half-carried Dean back towards the house.

---

"That thing. It wasn't human."

Liam's voice was a low, furious background noise that Dean was trying not to listen to. But it was Liam, and he wasn't used to being ignored, so he was trying to force the others to pay attention to what he was saying, even if it wasn't the least bit helpful.

"What the hell was it?" Liam continued. "What did it do with Kate? With Sam? Where the fuck did they go?"

"I don't know," Dean said tersely, for the millionth time. On some level, Dean understood Liam's frustration—all they'd been able to do, for the past several hours, was walk through the dark, slowly but surely continuing towards the town that was their original objective. Dean had no idea where Kate was, where his brother was, and the only lead they had was this stupid town. There had to be answers there, something, or Dean was going to lose his mind.

Matt was walking silently next to him, white-faced, eyes staring straight ahead. Kate's disappearance had thrown him into a blank, stony silence that Dean understood a lot better than Liam's inability to shut the fuck up.

"It might come back," Hazel said. She didn't seem as unsettled as the rest of them, even though she'd been just as close to Kate as the rest of them, if not closer. "We need to be ready for it if it does."

"Yeah, and what would you suggest?" Dean said. He knew his voice was coming out harsher than it needed to be, but he was tired of it, feeling helpless. He was supposed to be able to handle this. This was what he did. This was not what was supposed to happen.

He was supposed to keep Sam safe.

"We don't know anything about this damn thing," Dean continued. "Nothing seems to hurt it, even the flare gun barely made a dent. Just scared it away. Maybe."

"It didn't look solid," Hazel said. "I could almost see through it."

Dean glanced over at her, curiosity winning out against the blind fear. "You're taking this whole thing in stride," he said. "It's kind of freaking me out a little, actually."

Hazel just looked at him, her gaze even. "My dad was killed when I was little," she said, matter-of-fact. "I was the only one who saw it happen. We were out in the woods, camping. The thing that killed him, I was young, but I know what I saw." She shrugged. "I never took anything for granted after that, you know what I mean?"

"I'm sorry," Dean said. He cleared his throat. "I get it."

The longer the night stretched, the more difficult it grew for Dean to tamp down his panic. They couldn't call out in fear they'd alert something dangerous, so Dean called Sam's cell phone just because he could, and didn't receive an answer. Not surprising, but frustrating all the same.

"We need to stop soon," Matt said eventually, his voice quiet, reluctant. "We can't keep walking in the dark like this, it's dangerous…"

Nobody answered him. Dean knew he was right, but if they stopped moving he was pretty sure he'd go insane. The only thing that was keeping the panic at bay was the steady forward motion, and even that was barely enough. They had no leads, no evidence, nothing to work towards except an empty ghost town.

"We can make camp up ahead," Hazel suggested finally, nearly an hour later. They'd been walking for hours and Dean had to admit it was getting dangerously cold. If they didn't stop and set a fire, they'd get hypothermia or frostbite or lost. Hazel was pointing at a clearing up ahead, a break in the trees. "It's as good as anything else, right?"

They settled reluctantly in the clearing, putting up their tents and starting a fire. They tried to eat, bags crinkling in silence, flames flickering over panic-whitened skin. They didn't look at each other or speak, really, just got up to head to their respective tents once they'd all eaten.

A noise from the edge of their makeshift campsite caught Dean's attention, however, before he could go inside. He immediately had his gun drawn and pointed at the trees, ice freezing in his limbs at the sight of dark shapes, emerging from the woods. Matt tensed nearby and reached for Hazel, his hand curling around her arm.

"All right," Dean muttered. He stepped forward. "Come on, you fucker, get on with it! Quit screwing around with us and actually do something!" He clenched his hands around the weapon. "Come on! What are you waiting for?"

The dark shape came closer, and morphed, splitting into two shapes. Dean blinked, confused.

Matt clicked a flashlight on beside him, pointing it towards the figures. Dean flinched, expecting more of those long-fingered things they kept seeing, but instead two familiar faces greeted him.

Sam and Kate were leaning on one another as though struggling to walk properly. Their clothes were a little torn, their expressions exhausted and haggard, and Sam was holding his left arm close to his side, the sleeve of his coat sticky with dried blood. But they were both alive, and didn't seem seriously hurt, and everything inside Dean seemed to unwind all at once.

Sam squinted at the sudden light of the flashlight, but the relief on his face was clear when he managed to look past it. He gave a wry smile, and then he and Kate both staggered, nearly falling. Kate slumped, and Sam struggled to lower her to the ground.

"Fuck," Dean hissed. He shoved his gun back into the waistband of his jeans. He bolted towards his brother, almost faceplanting when his boots slipped on the snow and ice.

The others were right behind him, reaching for Kate while Dean gripped Sam by the shoulders and steadied him. He gave Sam a brief, critical stare up and down before trying to speak, assessing for obvious injury or anything life-threatening or something else obviously wrong. Sam just kept looking at him with relief, like he'd been the one slowly unraveling thread by thread these past few hours.

"Are y—" Dean's voice came out like a croak. He swallowed, his throat dry and crusted with raw emotion and leftover fear, and thumped his hand against Sam's good shoulder. "Damn it, Sam," he growled, because that was an easier emotion to deal with, and it cast a small, fond smile of understanding across Sam's face.

"Sorry," Sam said. "What, did we scare you guys or something?"

Dean tried to roll his eyes, but it felt weak and disingenuous, even more than usual.

"Are you okay?" Matt asked. He was still at Kate's side—she was awake, still, her eyes dark and exhausted, her body limp against Liam's chest. "Are either of you hurt?"

Sam shook his head, and another wave of relief pounded against Dean's temples. "We're okay," Sam said. "We're fine."

Dean gave a brief, incredulous shake of his head. "Sam, what happened?" he said.

Sam's throat leapt and something trembled over his expression, confusion maybe, or fear, or both. "I don't know," Sam said eventually, and frustration teetered in between the words. "I can barely remember."

---

What had previously been a quiet, almost relaxing night had descended quickly into chaos.

Dean grunted in pain as Sam lowered him onto the living room carpet, hand pressed hard against the gunshot wound in his abdomen in a vain attempt to get the bleeding under control. Sam stammered out apologies and grabbed a pillow off the couch, shoving it under Dean's head to prop him up. "Hang in there, Dean, just hang on," Sam was saying, useless words of comfort probably meant more for himself than for Dean.

Matt was starting a fire in the fireplace. Sam fumbled with the first aid kit, hands still-trembling and covered in Dean's blood. He was talking, still, telling Matt to boil some water and Kate to find some clean cloths in one of their bags. Meanwhile, Sam sterilized a needle for stitches, running it through the flame on his lighter.

Dean drew his hand away briefly from his abdomen, looking at his bloodstained skin in a daze. The gauze that Sam had applied earlier was soaked and useless now, but Dean kept it there. Better than to see the hole in his stomach—he could already feel that shit in every part of his bone marrow, he didn't need the visual, too.

"Okay," Sam was muttering. "Okay, okay—"

He was holding the needle and thread in his hands but he'd paused, as though hesitating. Dean craned his neck to catch Sam's expression, was surprised to find a look of utter panic in Sam's face. They'd been drilled for so many years to be calm in a crisis, and there were very few things that set Sam completely off the edge like this.

"Sam." Dean reached over with his free hand, gripped his brother's forearm. Sam's eyes snapped to his. "You've got this, man."

Sam swallowed. His trembling eased a little and he gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod of his head.

It hurt like a bitch, getting the wound cleaned and stitched and disinfected. Dean had been through the process plenty of times, had even done the whole thing himself on a couple of memorable occasions, but it never got any easier. Dean wondered vaguely, as the needle pierced his skin for the millionth time, if there would ever come a point where he'd get accustomed to pain like this. John always seemed to take pain in stride, shook it off like an annoying fly instead of a near-death experience, and it was one of the many things Dean had tried and failed to emulate.

Sam was talking while he worked, addressing the others who were hovering, watching. Telling Matt to grab more bandages or Hazel to get the alcohol. Dean didn't have it in him to be self-conscious, just clenched his teeth and fought to stay awake, watching Sam's hands work. Earlier he hadn't wanted to see the wound at all but it actually made him feel calmer, watching the practiced, determined movements of Sam's fingers. It actually put a swell of pride in his gut, the feeling almost—but not quite—overshadowed by the pain.

"Almost done, almost got it," Sam said, when Dean groaned, low and harsh through his teeth. "Dean, you still with me, man?"

"I'm gonna punch you in the face, Sammy," Dean answered, and Sam huffed a laugh of disbelief.

"I'd like to see you try with all this blood loss, jerk," Sam said. His voice still shook, but the humor in it relaxed Dean slightly. If Sam had it in him to joke, that probably meant the wound wasn't all that bad.

Actually, Dean figured, it probably could have been a lot worse. The bullet had hit somewhere almost certainly non-lethal—at least for now, until the blood loss inevitably killed him or something—and had gone straight through him, and hadn't even seemed to hit anything vital. Kate could have aimed for the chest, or for the head, which almost certainly would have killed him. Instead, she'd tried to keep him alive.

Dean didn't have the energy to ponder that very hard right now. He clenched his teeth against a scream when alcohol burned his skin, sterilizing the wound. Sam's hand gripped his shoulder, holding on, grounding him.

"There," Sam said finally. He taped fresh gauze into place, squeezed his hand at Dean's shoulder again. "That should hold. Dean, you good?" When Dean didn't answer right away, "Dean?"

Dean exhaled and forced his eyes open. He wanted to sleep for a year. "Yeah, Sammy, I'm good," he said, reaching over blindly to rap his knuckles against his brother's arm. He didn't realize it was Sam's bad arm until Sam hissed in pain and jerked away from him, relinquishing the steadying grip on Dean's shoulder. Dean actually sort of missed the pressure.

"Ow, Dean, geez," Sam said, but he sounded relieved, instead of annoyed.

"Serves you right," Dean said. He pushed himself into sitting position, one hand pressed against the newly-dressed wound on his stomach. "After the torture you put me through."

"Careful," Matt said, holding out his hands, face a mask of worry. "Dude, you're gonna tear your stitches."

"Don't bother," Sam said. "He doesn't listen."

Once he was sitting up, Dean glanced over at the other end of the room, where Liam was sitting with Kate. Kate was still unconscious, but she was beginning to stir now, the growing light from outside filtering in to drip across her face. "Guys," Liam said, and the others followed Dean's gaze, looking over.

They all tensed when Kate opened her eyes, but she seemed much more aware than before, looking from face to face in confusion instead of staring blankly ahead. When she realized everyone was staring at her, she frowned, reaching up to rub the back of her head. "S'going on?" she said. "Why are you all looking at me like that?"

Sam relaxed in relief at Dean's side, and Dean silently echoed the sentiment. "You don't remember anything? Sam asked.

Kate frowned deeper, kept rubbing her head. "I fell asleep and I don't remember anything after that," she said. "Why?" Her eyes widened at the sight of blood and the medical kit and the scattered gauze. "Oh my god—what—what happened?"

"He was shot," Matt explained, nodding towards Dean.

"How?" Kate breathed. "Who?"

Dean raised an eyebrow. "You," he said. "So you'd better be prepared to pay my medical bills for the next five years."

---

"The last thing I remember was that thing looming over me, and it felt really…cold." Sam's voice was rough with exhaustion and tight with lingering pain, the light from the fire casting shadows across his haggard expression. He was cradling his injured arm close to his side and Dean was starting to wonder if it was infected, but he knew now wasn't the time to ask. "And there was this pain, in my chest—"

Kate was nodding along with him. She had both arms curled around her waist and she'd been very quiet since she and Sam had reappeared. There was a troubling look in her eyes, something Dean could only call haunted. Even if she and Sam could hardly remember what happened, it had clearly taken a toll on both of them.

Sam paused, his brow furrowed in frustration. "Everything sort of went black but the pain didn't go away, it felt like I was drowning kind of. Like the pain was seeping into my ribs. And then I woke up in the snow and I felt fine. I went looking for Kate and she'd woken up nearby a little earlier."

"God, we thought you guys had been eaten or something," Matt said, his eyes wide and terrified. "I mean, we were starting to think you were dead."

Sam glanced over at Dean briefly, expression surprised. "You did?"

"We had no idea what happened, man," Dean said. His voice had grown steadier, but he felt like the lingering fear was badly-disguised. "That thing that took you two—I have no idea what it is. I don't know how to find it or how to fight it."

Sam gave a jerky nod of his head. "We've never dealt with anything like this," he muttered. "Dad never—"

He broke off, fell quiet. They looked at each other, silent, the fire crackling loudly between them.

"Sam, what the hell is going on here?" Liam said, and the sound of his voice was utterly unwelcome, harsh and demanding. Entitled jackass. "Earlier, you and your brother—the guns, the flares, and what you've been talking about this whole time—I mean, it's like you've done this before."

Sam looked over at Dean again, trepidation in his gaze this time. This was probably what he'd been dreading the entire time they'd been out in the woods. Dean tipped his head in resignation—might as well get it over with—and Sam sighed heavily. "I have," Sam said. "Dean and I, we grew up hunting things like this. Our dad taught us how."

Four pairs of eyes stared blankly in Sam's direction. Matt even smiled slightly, uncertainly, like he was waiting Sam to tell them he was joking. When Sam didn't burst out laughing, Matt's face fell and the blank stares turned blatantly disbelieving. "Dude," Matt said, "Sam, come on."

"After everything you've seen tonight, you really think he's lying?" Dean said, a little impatiently. Sam shot him a brief, sharp look, but Dean was tired of it, holding everyone's hand as they came to terms with all the evil things that existed in the world. Dean had spent every single moment of his life deeply, inescapably aware of the evil that lurked around every corner, and sure, it had fucked him up, but it was still better than not knowing.

"Fine, maybe, but—" Matt's eyes were comically wide, still looking at Sam as though waiting for the punchline to drop. "Is this why you never talked about your family? Why you evaded us every time we asked what they did for a living and stuff?" His mouth dropped open. "When you left, Jess said that your dad was on a hunting trip. I thought she meant—but you were talking about—"

"Look," Sam cut in, the strain evident in his voice, "this doesn't change anything. I'm still the same person I was before."

"We always knew you were keeping something from us," Liam said. His voice was just as harsh as it had been before. "But, fuck, man—"

"Liam, look—"

"What else is out there?" Liam demanded. "Aside from this thing that's been fucking with us out here?"

"Trust me, man, you don't want to know," Dean cut in. "Look, the point is that Sam and I, we know how to hunt, we can try and keep all of you safe out here—"

"Like you kept Kate safe?" Liam snapped. "Like you kept your brother safe? You don't even know what's out here with us."

Dean tensed. Sam's hand clenched over his arm before he could even move an inch, as though anticipating the movement. "Lay off, Liam," Sam said, and his voice had hardened. "We're going to figure this out. That entity, the people who disappeared, all of it. If you really want me to I can explain all of it—hunting, and stuff—but for now I'm just asking you to trust me a little."

Matt and Liam and Kate all exchanged more glances. Hazel was the only one who kept her eyes on Sam and Dean, steady, remarkably unruffled.

"You guys know me," Sam said. "We spent four years together in college. We had mental breakdowns over the LSATs together. You know me as well as anyone else. I kept all of this from you because I had to, because it was something I'd left behind when I went to college."

It made Dean's stomach drop, hearing that, but it shouldn't have, after everything. He already knew why Sam left. He already knew what Sam had been trying to leave behind.

"Okay," Matt said finally, after a tense, drawn-out silence. The others all looked over in his direction. "Look, all I care about right now is getting out of here alive. If that means putting a little trust in Sam and his brother, I'm willing to do that." He gave a dry smile. "Anyone who's watched me dry-heave tequila at four in the morning on a Tuesday night is someone I can rely on."

Liam's mouth pressed into a hard line. He squeezed his arm around Katie. "Fine," he said tersely. "So, what do we do next?"

Sam relaxed a little. He was about to answer, when he froze, mouth hanging open. Dean heard it a moment later—the humming, whispering voices.

Dean was on his feet a split second after Sam. They both drew their weapons, facing different directions, searching for the entity. The others jerked upright in response, eyes going wide in horror.

"Is it coming back?" Kate whispered.

"Shh," Dean said. "Maybe it's like a Wendigo, maybe it can't see us if—"

He didn't even have the opportunity to finish his sentence. A black shape exploded past them, throwing him violently off his feet. He rolled, caught himself on his elbow, pushed himself back onto one knee. "Sam!" he called. His brother had been thrown nearby and was coughing, getting to his feet. "Get the flares, hurry!" It wasn't ideal but it might give them enough time to get away, stun the thing maybe, before it could kidnap another one of them.

Sam nodded. He was closest to the duffels so he leapt for them while Dean reached for the others. "Come on, hurry, get up," he said. "We need to get out of here."

The entity appeared before he was even finished talking. It threw Sam off his feet, away from the duffels, slamming him onto his back. Dean used one of his remaining flares and shot it towards the entity, which screamed and dissipated. "Sam," he said, running at his brother and getting him up. "We gotta go. Come on."

"Our stuff—the tents—"

"Doesn't matter. We need to reach that village." Dean nodded towards the forest, and Sam acquiesced, following after him to rejoin the others. "Go, go," Dean said, pushing them towards the trees. "Before that thing comes back."

---

Kate didn't remember anything after falling asleep.

They described it to her—the slow, intent walk towards the woods, the way she'd fought back against anyone who'd tried to grab her, the gun gripped in her hand. She only stared at them like they were speaking in Mandarin.

"It's like she was under a trance," Dean said. It was light out; Sam had just come back from an EMF sweep of the ghost town and had returned with nothing to report. He'd refused to let Dean come along with his still-healing injury, so he'd returned alone a few minutes ago and immediately slumped onto the couch at Dean's side, a petulant look on his face. "Like she was sleepwalking, man, I've never seen anything like it. All she could think about was walking towards her death."

"Ghost possession?" Sam suggested. He kept his voice low, even though the others were out gathering supplies or in the other room where they couldn't hear. "Maybe those spirits we keep seeing took over."

"Yeah, maybe," Dean said, unconvinced. Those spirits hadn't behaved like normal spirits for even a second since they'd first appeared. He didn't have the energy to argue, though—his abdomen was absolutely killing him, and he'd barely gotten any sleep all night on top of that. He shifted his arm against his side and barely caught a groan between his teeth.

Sam's eyes flickered over to him anyway, because he had super sonar hearing or something, the freak. "Dean?"

"M'fine." Dean readjusted, settled back against the couch, blew out a long, slow breath. He hated being sidelined so badly like this. "Better than last night."

Sam's mouth turned down at the corners at the obvious lie. "We have painkillers," he said.

"Already took six." Dean sighed and rocked his head back against the couch. "We gotta figure out what happened here. It's our only chance to figure out what the hell that thing is and how to kill it."

Sam nodded. Seeming eager to have something to focus on, he reached down for something he'd dropped on the floor. "I found something while I was doing an EMF sweep, actually. Might not be anything helpful, but…"

He handed over what looked like a sheriff badge. The surface was rusted, but the words were still visible. "Chambers," Dean muttered. "Why does that sound familiar?"

"Last of the two-hundred-and-thirteen to vanish," Sam said. "He wasn't one of the villagers, but he went to investigate when people started disappearing."

"Right," Dean said. "And he came back to report the ghost town. Then he disappeared a day later."

"A witness saw him," Sam said. He arched an eyebrow. "Said something about the sheriff walking into the woods wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, right? Not even any shoes, in some kind of trance."

"Like Kate." Dean sighed and set aside the badge. "Okay. So something about this town is pulling people back to it, like it has some kind of hold on them."

"I don't think it's the town, actually. I bet it has something to do with that entity, like it's controlling people. It must be responsible for the two-hundred-and-thirteen, right? Maybe it was…feeding off of them, luring them to their deaths so it could consume them."

Dean rubbed his thumb against the surface of the sheriff's badge. "Maybe."

"It makes sense, right? These people couldn't stay inside the town forever. They eventually would have had to go out and hunt for food, or they would have searched for each other. The entity infects them, marks them, and later it calls them towards it so it can consume them. Maybe that's what happened to Kate."

As he considered it, something bitter rose at the back of Dean's throat to coat his mouth. "Sam," he said. "That entity took you at the same time it took Kate. If she was marked, then so are you."

Sam blinked, like he hadn't even considered that. "Yeah, but I wasn't all blanked out last night. Just Kate was."

"Maybe it didn't need both of you at once."

Sam shook his head. "Look, even if I was marked, it seems like the entity can't set foot inside the barrier of the town. I have the feeling they warded it or something. As long as I stay within the lines—"

"Sam, Kate shot me because she was so determined to leave. I'm not getting shot by you, too."

Sam huffed and rolled his eyes. "Look, then tie me to a post or something tonight. Use chains if you want. I'm not gonna shoot you."

Dean pressed his hand idly against his stomach wound. "I kept wondering why Kate didn't kill me," he said. "Maybe the entity wants me to stay alive so it can consume me after you two. Why else would she have aimed where she did?"

"Maybe she's just a bad shot."

"It wasn't even her shooting, man." Dean groaned, sitting up. "All right. Come on, we're going to need more than a sheriff's badge if we want to get out of here."

"Whoa, whoa, hey—" Sam gripped his arm, stopping him from getting up. "Man, you have a freaking hole in your stomach."

"Sam, I'm fine," Dean said impatiently, withdrawing his arm. "We're going to need to get out of here eventually."

"You've been shot, Dean." Sam's voice was so unsteady that Dean's eyes shot over to take in his expression, startled. Sam didn't look irritated, like Dean had been expecting. Instead Sam's face was full of raw emotion, a desperate kind of fear lingering at the corners of his mouth and in his gaze that Dean hadn't noticed before. "You could have died. You might have just survived due to dumb luck."

Dean blinked at him. "Sam—"

"Look, I know it's not easy for you to take a seat on the bench, but I'm not walking out of here without you. So humor me. Please."

Dean wanted to keep arguing, but Sam's expression was so earnest that he deflated. "Fine," Dean said. "Whatever."

Sam's shoulders relaxed. Dean's general irritation was soothed, somewhat, by the look of relief on his brother's face. "We need to make use of the daylight," Sam said. "I'm going to find the others, see what we can dig up."

"Yeah, I'll right. I'll put together everything we've found so far, maybe if we throw everything at the wall something'll stick."

The thing was, as much as Dean hated being benched, Sam was kind of right. The painkillers Dean had taken were barely taking the edge off his injuries and it was seriously starting to fuck him up. Going back over evidence, the idea of that was already making him feel exhausted.

---

"I think we might have hit paydirt."

Matt tossed something in Sam's direction. Sam looked up from what he was doing—inspecting his first aid work on Dean's gunshot wound, namely, but causing him pain first and foremost—and caught the object reflexively. It was a notebook, leather-bound, its cover worn with age and its pages crumbling.

"What is this?" Sam said, looking back up at Matt.

"A journal," Hazel said, stepping over to Matt's side. "Matt found it while we were searching the west side of the town. It was sitting on someone's bed. Read it."

Sam opened the journal, settling it in his lap. Dean leaned over to read by the low light—it was growing late, and they were running out of daylight. It looked like it was a child's diary, the writing blocky and hard to read. Sam skimmed, brow furrowed as he flipped through pages. The diary wasn't long, but it was revealing.

"Her parents were some of the first to disappear," Sam said in amazement as he skimmed. "Her mom first, and then her dad." He pointed halfway down one of the pages, where the child had scrawled mommy and daddy are coming back soon. I am going to stay with auntie Annie. She won't tell me where mommy and daddy went. Daddy gave me mommy's locket to keep safe. "She put dates on some of these entries. This one is two months before the sheriff went to investigate."

He flipped through some more pages. The child talked about the search groups who went searching for her parents, how they'd returned empty-handed, how they'd begun to vanish one by one. More search groups went looking, she said. More vanished. She didn't understand what was happening, but remained certain that they were all coming back eventually. It was genuinely kind of heartbreaking to read.

It's just me and auntie now, was one of the last entries. I'm hungry but auntie says there isn't any food. She sleeps and cries a lot now but when I ask why she just says everything is gonna be okay over and over and over. I miss my mommy reading me stories at bedtime.

"It didn't sound like people disappeared right away," Sam said, flipping back a couple of pages. He glanced over at Dean. "It's just like we were thinking. That…that thing, it's like it marks people and then calls to them when it wants them. If anyone left the town, they were fucked."

Dean's worry tripled, spiraling into his gut and threatening to turn him inside out. Sam was irritatingly calm about this, even though he was definitely the next to be eaten by that fucking entity. He fisted both hands on his knees and hoped Sam wouldn't notice. Eventually, Sam's calm would crack and then Dean would need to be the one to keep a clear head.

"So that just leaves the question," Dean said, "what the hell is this thing?"

Sam nodded. "And how do we kill it?" He closed the diary, setting it aside. "Did Dad ever talk about anything like this in his journal?"

"Not that I can remember," Dean said. "Whatever this thing is, it's more powerful than a spirit. It's more powerful than a lot of things we've come across."

The diary provided them with a little more information, but there were still plenty of empty, blank spots in the situation and it hadn't brought them any closer to figuring out how to kill the damn thing. They used their last bits of daylight to scour a few more houses, returning only with some cans of beans and no more information. Dean desperately wished they had internet access to search for lore.

"Maybe it's a Wechuge," Sam suggested, but his voice was weak. The sky was just barely clinging to daylight at this point, and the anxiety mounted among them as night grew closer and closer. "Or a really bizarre-looking Wendigo."

"Neither of those act like whatever this thing is," Dean said. He rubbed his forehead, glaring at the diary that was resting open in his lap. He hadn't been able to glean anything new from them, but it was all they really had to go on. "It doesn't behave like a regular spirit, though, either. What kind of spirit eats people?"

"Hungry ghosts?" Hazel said.

Her voice was so unexpected that all of their eyes snapped over to her at once, staring. Her expression didn't change.

"Haze, not helpful," Matt said.

"What?" Hazel said. "It's a thing. I remember reading about them when I was abroad in Japan."

Dean looked askance at Sam, his walking encyclopedia. Sam pursed his lips, thinking. "They're a Japanese myth," he said. "The lowest form of spirits, coming back to feed on corpses. It's not a perfect match, but this spirit might be similar. Maybe someone who did something bad during their lifetime, someone who died here."

"The first of the two-hundred-and-thirteen?" Dean said, wincing as he straightened, hand pressing against his abdomen on instinct.

"Or maybe someone we never found out about," Sam said. "Someone killed that the village tried to cover up."

"Lucky two-fourteen," Dean mumbled. He sighed. "Whatever this thing is, it almost seems like it's feeding off the souls it consumes, growing stronger with every one of them."

Sam was frowning at the diary again. "What was the date of the first missing persons report we found?" he said.

Dean furrowed his brow as he tried to remember. "September 31st, I think," he said.

"This first diary entry, where this girl's mom vanishes, it's a week before that. Maybe her mom was the first to disappear." Sam smiled. "Lucky two-fourteen."

"So, what happened to the mom?" Dean said, grimacing as he readjusted his hand against his abdomen. "And more importantly, if she is the ghost, where was she buried?"

"My bet is somewhere outside the town," Sam said, standing abruptly. "Probably in the surrounding woods. We need to go find her."

Before Dean could protest—and he absolutely was going to—Sam suddenly went rigid. Dean heard it a moment later, the whispering. The voices. His stomach dropped out. It was sooner than it was supposed to be, they were supposed to have another couple hours before—

Kate shot upright. Her eyes were blank again, unseeing, body swaying gently like she was listening to calming music. She and Sam, both, started towards the door of the cabin.

"Shit," Dean hissed. He lurched up to seize his brother's arms. "Liam, grab Kate!"

Liam immediately threw his arms around Kate's midsection, pinning her arms against her sides. Kate struggled violently, but didn't seem able to get free. Sam, on the other hand, was a strong fucker, and he wrenched easily out of Dean's grasp and opened the door.

"Matt," Dean said, looking over at a panic-stricken Matt and at Hazel beside him. "Find something we can tie them up with. Rope or something. Hurry."

Without waiting for a response, Dean darted outside after his brother. He reached for the gun at Sam's waistband, first, to disarm him, not keen on getting shot for a second time. Sam twisted around to try and stop him, catching Dean's wrist in an iron grip. Dean growled and elbowed Sam hard in the jaw to force him backwards, muttering an apology as he detached the clip from Sam's handgun.

Sam stared at him for a brief moment, unnervingly blank, no recognition in his expression. Then he turned and started towards the edge of the town again, where the enormous black shape—whoever it was—was waiting for him.

"Damn it, Sammy," Dean said, lurching for him again, "you asshole, snap the fuck out of it—"

Sam fought back again when Dean tried to grab him. His elbow connected unexpectedly with Dean's stomach, right above his bullet wound, when Dean attempted to seize him around the neck. When Dean doubled over in agony, the taste of blood on his tongue and his ribs threatening to split his entire midsection in half, Sam took the opportunity to punch him hard in the face, sending him sprawling in the snow.

Dean had to fight for consciousness for several seconds, head spinning from the connection of Sam's fist and his abdomen pulsing with steady pain. He wondered briefly if his wound had reopened.

Dean sat up with difficulty, squinted. Sam was nearly to the edge of the town.

"Sam," Dean rasped. He tried again to stand and nearly blacked out. "Sam-"

"Dean!" Matt's voice was behind him. Dean turned to look and Matt and Hazel were both running towards him, a coil of rope dangling from Matt's fingers. "Dean, what happened? Are you okay?"

Dean ignored the question, but he took Matt's proffered hand and staggered to his feet. "Sam's almost out of dodge," Dean said through his teeth. "You two need to help me grab him."

Matt and Hazel seemed just as terrified as before, but to their credit they didn't ask questions, just listened when Dean told them what they had to do. They seized Sam's arms, one each, just as Sam was hovering at the very edge of town. While they had him still, Dean locked his arms around Sam's neck from behind in a chokehold.

Sam flailed wildly, making a sound that almost seemed inhuman, choked and garbled. Dean closed his eyes and tightened his grip with determination, forcibly ignoring the way Sam's nails scratched desperately at Dean's skin in an attempt to free himself.

Eventually, Sam went limp as the lack of oxygen drew him unconscious. Matt helped lower him to the ground and Dean stayed there on his knees for several long moments, breathing heavily as the adrenaline wore down, hands still gripping at Sam's shoulders. Sam was fully out, resting limp against Dean's chest.

He rested his palm in Sam's hair, exhaled in relief, eyes sliding closed briefly. He could feel Sam's heart beating steadily, and it calmed him down a little.

"Shit," Matt was panting. "Holy shit. Is he—what did you—?"

"He's sleeping," Dean said. He winced as he shifted him and Sam both upright. "Come on, we need to get him inside before he wakes up again."

---

Sam stayed out long enough, mercifully, for them to tie his hands securely behind his back inside the house and securing them to the slats of an old radiator. Kate was still struggling, but Liam had gotten her tied down as well, enough that she hopefully wouldn't be able to wriggle out. When Sam awoke, his gaze had cleared and he looked around in blatant confusion, tugging on instinct at the ropes around his wrists.

Dean watched him warily for several seconds, waiting for Sam to try and punch him again or something, but that never happened. Sam just looked at each of them individually, and then frowned in Dean's direction, brow furrowing. "Dean?" he said. "What's—why am I—?"

"I hate to say I told you so," Dean said, "but I told you so."

Sam stared for a moment, and then his face crumpled as he realized what Dean was talking about. "Oh, fuck," he breathed. "I was—?"

"Out of your mind?" Dean said. He adjusted the grip he had on his abdomen and grimaced. "Yeah. Pretty much. Had to drag you back here forcibly, so you might have a few bruises."

When Dean mentioned bruising, Sam seemed to take in the darkening marks on Dean's jaw. "Oh, god." Sam's eyes widened. "Dean, fuck, I'm sorry—"

"Relax, Sammy, I've had worse." Dean glanced over at Kate, who was thrashing in an attempt to free herself and having no luck so far. Eventually she'd rub her wrists raw and bleeding. "We need to stop this thing. And we need to do it now."

"You…will…never…stop…me."

The voice was like gravel, hoarse and sharp. And it was coming from Kate. She'd gone eerily still, eyes still blank and empty.

"Katie?" Matt said. "What did you say?"

"They…took…everything…from me." Kate's voice echoed around the room. "They tried to destroy me. They kept my daughter from me. They tried to seal my spirit. They tried to protect their village from me. None of it was enough. Nothing will ever be enough."

"Kate, what the hell are you talking about?" Liam said, gripping Kate's shoulders. He shook her. "Kate!"

"That's not Kate," Dean said. He reached for his shotgun, slowly. "What are you? Who are you?"

Kate bared her teeth. "I am older than anything you know. I will be here long after I have consumed you and your friends."

"Yeah, all right, fine," Dean said impatiently. "I get it, you're old and powerful. But who are you? What's your name?"

Kate screeched a laugh, head thrown back, loud and wild. She didn't answer, just went limp, eyes sliding closed as she slumped against Liam's shoulder.

Matt leapt up, racing towards her. He checked for a pulse, looked for breathing. "She's okay," he said in relief. He looked over at Dean and Sam. "What the hell was that?"

"It was the ghost," Dean said, already getting to his feet and reaching for his and Sam's notes on the case. "It was possessing her." He flipped through the pages until he found the warding symbols they'd unearthed earlier. "She said they tried to seal her. Maybe killing her didn't work, maybe they had to try something else to stop her."

Sam's eyes widened. "You think—?"

"Yeah, I do." Dean flipped to the next page, full of symbols that had looked familiar, incredibly familiar, and he hadn't been able to place. He thought maybe he knew what they were now.

"You two wanna share with the class?" Liam said irritably. "Or do you just want to keep communicating psychically like that?"

Dean cast Liam a brief, frustrated look, and rolled his eyes. He glanced over at Sam, caught Sam's leave it expression, and sighed. "The symbols around the perimeter of the village—we thought they were to protect the villagers, keep them safe from the spirit. But I think it's more than that, I think they tried to seal her to the village, keep her trapped here. Instead they ended up trapping themselves. They became sort of…interconnected with one another."

"Okay, fine," Liam said. "So, how does that help us get the fuck out of here alive?"

Dean glanced again at Sam. He had an idea—it was kind of a stupid idea, but it was all they had and they weren't going to survive much longer out here if they didn't try something. Sam could clearly tell what he was thinking, and his face said he didn't like it one bit.

"If that thing is tied here anyway," Dean said, "and we can't destroy it out there, then we make it come to us." He set his jaw. "And we destroy it from the inside."

Dean was no expert in warding, by any means, but he figured he could finagle the existing warding enough to do what he needed to do. If he could break down the warding keeping the spirit out, without destroying the warding that sealed her to the village itself, he might be able to stop her.

"Dean, this is the stupidest plan you've ever come up with," Sam said as Dean prepared. Sam's wrists were still locked behind his back and he was straining against them furiously, his face going red with the effort. "You let her in, she'll kill you. You won't have the chance to trap her, you won't be able to kill her—"

Dean ignored him. He handed a bag to Matt. "You and Hazel need to get to the edge of town with that," he said. "Set up those marks, just like I told you to. Liam, as soon as you get the signal, I need you to—"

"I know," Liam said. "I got it."

Dean nodded. He swallowed. "And if I don't give the signal in time—if I'm not there to get out with you—"

"I get it."

Liam's voice was unaffected, but Matt and Hazel were staring at him, pained. "Dean," Sam was saying from behind him. His voice had surpassed anger and he sounded like he was speaking through sand, words unsteady and hoarse. "Dean, don't do this by yourself. Let me come with you. I can't let you go out there alone."

Dean finally turned to look at him, reluctantly. Sam was giving him that pleading, damp-eyed look and Dean steeled himself, settled his resolve before that look could make him crumble.

"Please," Sam said. "Dean, please."

Dean gave him a wry smile. He knelt down at his brother's side, swinging his bag over his shoulder. "Sorry, Sam," he said. "I know it's not easy for you to take a seat on the bench."

Sam's expression shifted again, glaring now. "She'll fucking kill you."

"Yeah, well." Dean shrugged. "If I let you come with, she'll kill you too, and your blank-eyed ass will welcome it." He reached out, gripped Sam's shoulder. "It's okay, man. I'm going to get us out of here."

Sam clearly heard the way Dean stumbled over the word us, and his eyes widened. "Dean," he said, speaking through his teeth, struggling against the ropes as Dean stood. "Dean, don't do this! Dean!"

Dean headed for the door. Matt stopped him, his gaze full of concern. "Sam's right, you know," Matt said, his voice low. "We can figure something else out."

Dean shook his head. "I'm not letting all of you sit here and starve," he said. "It's cool, man." He gave a brief salute and tugged open the door. "Don't let me down."

---

The entity wasn't at the edge of the village anymore. Dean took that as a plus, and got to work marking off where all the warding symbols were. His hands went numb pretty fast as he pawed through the snow—it was definitely below zero, now that it was so late, and he could feel the cold in his bones.

He straightened and shook snow off his hands. There was a symbol of chipping paint in one of the nearby houses. He figured that was his best bet.

It was easy to take apart. He tugged one of the wood slats free, and the warding was broken. Dean turned to face the edge of the village again, his breath fogging out in front of him as he waited. There was nothing else left to do. "Come on," he muttered, searching the darkness. His heart was throbbing somewhere in the vicinity of his Adam's apple. "Come on, you bitch, get your ass out here."

At first he was worried that the entity would appear somewhere else in the village, somewhere he wasn't ready for it. But eventually, sure enough, the thing melted out of the darkness and made its way towards him.

He couldn't hear it speak this time, of course, but he could hear Kate's hissing, growling voice in his memory—I am older than anything you know—and it made his hair stand on end. He backed away as the entity came closer, his hand itching towards the flare gun in his back pocket. It was one of the only weapons he'd brought, and he only had one flare left.

The entity paused at the edge of the village, as though hesitating. But a moment later it breached the edge of the village, creeping closer.

"Yeah, that's it," Dean said through clenched teeth. "That's right. Come on in."

His flimsy plan was to guide the spirit back to the house where her daughter died. Since she'd spent so long being angry about it, maybe reuniting them would give him the upper hand, at least briefly. He had a brief flash of the woman in white, screaming as her children surrounded her, going up in flames as the guilt destroyed her.

The entity moved closer to him. It made a low sound, something like a growl, eerie and sinister. It sent a shudder up Dean's spine, but he just smirked. "Yeah, you want to eat me?" he said. "Give it your best shot, bitch." He turned, withdrawing his flare gun, and bolted for the other end of the village.

The entity was faster than him, obviously. Dean didn't expect to make it across the village unscathed for even a second. The entity followed him, knocked him to the ground, sending pain shooting through Dean's fucked-up stomach. He groaned and scrambled back to his feet before the entity could attack him, and skidded on the snow as he set out again at a run.

He slammed his shoulder into the door of the daughter's house, backed in with his flare gun in hand. The entity had vanished, and Dean paused in the middle of the front room, scanning the darkness. His breath was coming in short puffs of fog.

"Come on," Dean muttered. "Where'd you go?" He flexed his hand around his gun. "You want to find your daughter or not?"

The door was shoved back open, and Dean started. He expected the entity for a moment, although it hadn't shown any corporeal abilities up until this point. Instead of the entity, however, two figures were standing in the doorway, eyes blank and empty. Sam, and a few steps behind him, Kate.

"No," Dean muttered. "Fuck, no."

Sam and Kate stepped towards him. They spoke together, voices low and hoarse in harmony.

"You…cannot…trap…me…here. I am too powerful to contain. You are all at my mercy. You have doomed yourselves."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "You sound pretty pissed off for someone who definitely isn't trapped." He raised his flare gun. "Get out of them. Both of them. Let's settle this face-to-face, huh?"

"Your friends are gone. They are mine now. You will join them." Sam stepped closer, until he and Dean were nearly toe-to-toe "You will not harm your own kin."

She was right, but Dean just narrowed his eyes. "You want to bet?" he said.

They stared at each other. Sam's eyes were unnervingly empty and Dean almost believed, for a brief moment, that the spirit was telling the truth and Sam was gone. His mind shied away from the thought almost at once.

"Kate!" a voice yelled from outside the house. Liam's voice. "Kate!"

Dean only had a second to react. He leapt forward, seizing Sam around the neck the way he had once before. "Liam!" he yelled. "In here—grab Kate, hurry!"

Sam thrashed, but Dean just tightened his grip. Liam appeared in the doorway, panic-stricken. In his moment of hesitation, Kate tried to take a swing at him, and Liam staggered backwards, falling in the snow. "Kate?" he said.

"Liam!" Dean shouted, teeth gritted with the effort of keeping Sam still. "Get her out of here, now!"

Liam gave a jerky nod. For the first time since Dean met him, Liam did what Dean asked without question. He grabbed Kate and threw her, protesting and screaming, over his shoulder. "I set the fires," Liam said as he carried her to the door. "With all that accelerant, you've got about ten minutes."

Dean nodded. "Go!" he said, and it was the last thing he managed before Sam twisted out of his grip. Sam slammed his fist into Dean's head, throwing him backwards into the wall of the living room.

Dean's vision was still swimming when he managed to raise his head. Sam was looming over him, and the entity was an enormous black mass behind him. It swarmed like thick fog, like it was about to swallow Sam whole. "Sammy," Dean croaked.

Sam stepped towards him. The entity curled around his body, almost lovingly, until Dean could barely tell where the thing ended and his brother began. A thought pounded its way through Dean's throbbing head—I'm not going to lose Sam like this.

Dean's flare gun was resting by his elbow. His fingers were numb from the cold and from the pain, but he reached over, curled his fingers around it. He pointed his last flare at the entity over Sam's shoulder and prayed to whatever was listening that his swimming vision wouldn't affect his aim.

"Get the hell out of him," Dean said, and fired.

---

Dean awoke to the smell of smoke. Hands were shaking him, gripping his shoulders.

"Dean, man, come on, wake up. Wake the fuck up. Dean!"

The panic in Sam's voice yanked Dean into consciousness. He grunted and forced his eyes open, and Sam's face undulated in front of him, frightened and pale. Dean's immediate instinct was to find the source of Sam's terror and get rid of it, but then Dean realized that it was he, himself, that had scared Sam so badly.

"Sam, you good?" Dean said, once he could find his voice again.

"What the hell do you mean, am I good?" Sam said, voice shrill with disbelief. "You're beat to hell, man. We've got to get out of here, half the village is on fire."

"I know." Dean tried to sit up, groaned, gave up and slumped back against the wall. "Trapped the entity here. Burned down the thing that ties her here." He looked around briefly, realized how thick the smoke had gotten. "Sam, man, what the hell are you still doing here? This whole place is gonna burn down."

"You think I don't know that?" Sam snapped. He was trying to lift Dean's arm over his shoulders as he spoke. He gripped Dean around the waist and the pain that spiked in Dean's abdomen was nothing short of agonizing. He almost passed out again as Sam lifted him. "I'm not going to leave you here, Dean, so work with me. We're getting out of here."

"Sam," Dean groaned. He tried to walk forward with Sam's help, but man, everything hurt so fucking bad. "It's okay. You don't need to—"

"Shut up." Sam was glaring at him, but his voice trembled and his eyes were moist. "Shut the fuck up, Dean, I am not leaving you. We're getting out of this together."

Dean hadn't really had it in him to argue anyway, and he should have expected Sam's stubbornness to set in like it did in any other scenario. Sam's voice was so fierce, and Dean deflated beneath it. "Okay," Dean said. "Okay, Sammy." He jerked his chin to the west. "Over there. The others are outside the village."

Sam nodded shortly. He readjusted his grip on Dean and Dean readjusted his grip on his own abdomen, and together they staggered forward through the snow.

Dean couldn't even feel the cold on his skin anymore, really. His whole body had gone numb, both a relief and a really bad fucking sign. It should bother him more. It should bother him more that even the pain was starting to fade. He focused mostly on the grip Sam had on him, steady and grounding, and shoved everything else from his mind. One foot in front of the other. The village felt enormous, bigger than it ever did before, but there had to be an end to it eventually. There had to be a way out. This could not be the end of them.

The fire was growing, blinding red against the black sky. In any other situation, it might have been kind of beautiful.

"Shit!" Sam yelped. He yanked Dean backwards just in time to watch an entire wall of a nearby house collapse, wood and rubble and embers crashing down in front of them to block their way. Sam staggered and nearly fell, just barely keeping both of them on their feet. The smoke that belched up from the wreckage made Dean choke, stung his eyes.

Sam had gone frozen, like the wreckage had disrupted his brain activity and caused a jam. Dean winced and pressed his hand firmly against his gunshot wound. "We can go around it," he said tightly. Sam's eyes snapped over to him, like he'd been waiting for Dean to speak, waiting for him to have the solution, waiting for him to make all of this okay again.

Dean hated the fact that it made him happy, that Sam maybe still needed him too. He wasn't supposed to care about that.

"This way," Dean said, jerking his head, and Sam nodded harshly, following his lead past the wreckage. They made their way through one of the houses and emerged on the other side of the burning rubble, finally within sight of the end of the village. Dean thought he could even see the others waiting for them, tiny glowing figures in the midst of smoke and fire.

Just as Dean was beginning to feel relieved, Sam was yanked from his side.

"Sam!" Dean turned just in time to watch Sam shoved to the ground on his back several yards away. The entity was looming over him, pinning him there, and Sam was fucking screaming in pain. The sound sent shards of horror through Dean's torn chest, ripping him into even smaller pieces.

The entity almost looked human now. It had taken the shape of a woman, wild black hair, long-fingered hands. It didn't make her any less terrifying.

"Dean!" Sam yelled, and Dean was already moving, reaching for the flare gun he didn't have anymore, empty-handed and too injured to do jack shit anyway, his movements years of pure protective instinct devoid of rational thought. It wasn't surprising when the entity stopped him, throwing him backwards into the snow. It knocked the breath out of him, both the impact and the pain. Dean coughed into the snow, and bright red dots splattered across the blanket of pure white.

"Sam," he groaned, struggling to sit up, fighting his body's every urge to lie down and go to sleep and forget. "Sam—get away from him, you fucking—"

When he finally raised his head enough to look, Sam's screams had stopped. The entity was still crouched over him but it wasn't moving. Standing in front of it was the figure of a little girl.

"Mommy," the girl whispered. Her hair was in pigtail braids and a silver locket was dangling from her fingers. "Mommy, is that you?"

The entity shifted again, straightened. Dean watched in amazement as she slowly morphed, becoming more and more human by the second, hands and arms and legs and a head of long hair. She stared at the little girl, silent.

"Daphne," the entity said, and her voice wasn't rough and ragged anymore. It was light and warm, a peal of bells.

The little girl's spirit wasn't the only one with them anymore. The figures that had been lurking the entire time they'd been in these godforsaken woods, with their staring orbs of light and long-fingered hands, they were here too. But they looked human, now, like the entity, their proportions correct and their features detailed and their gazes piercing.

Dean didn't have the chance to count, but if he had to guess, he'd say there were probably two hundred and thirteen of them, all told.

"Daphne," the entity said again, and she crouched down in front of her daughter.

As they embraced, the fire soared behind them, roaring with a new fury. The flames overtook the entity and her daughter, consuming them, so bright and hot Dean had to cover his face to avoid being singed. The other ghosts began to fade with her, one by one, until they were all gone.

Dean spent a few seconds being awestruck, his brain struggling to function. Then, remembering Sam, he scrambled up as fast as he was able and half-ran, half-crawled over to his brother. "Sam?" he said. Sam's eyes were cracking open, bemused, looking around in confusion. Dean patted his hands against Sam's shoulders and chest, another instinct, double-checking for serious injury. "Sammy, talk to me, you all right?"

Sam blinked a few times, as though thinking about it. "Yeah," he said finally, catching Dean's wrist but not pushing him away, just gripping, holding tightly. "Fine. I'm okay."

Dean exhaled. "God, man, you scared the shit outta me."

Sam gave him a weak smile, tried to speak and instead coughed. "Fire," he rasped, eyes watering. "Getting worse." He looked around. "Is she gone?"

"I think so. I'm not waiting around to make sure." Dean was the one hefting Sam's arm over his shoulders this time, grimacing under his considerable weight, the giant. "Come on, we're getting the fuck out of here."

Kate and Matt and Liam and Hazel were all waiting for them at the edge of town. Their looks of anxiety melted into relief at the sight of Sam and Dean; Kate and Matt were the first to run forward, both of them catching Sam in a hug and giving him a pat on the back. "Man, we were starting to think you weren't going to make it out," Matt said, grinning as he pulled away. "You were taking so long, one of us was about to go in there and get you out ourselves."

"Hey, man, listen," Liam said, stepping forward. He looked uncharacteristically upset. "I'm sorry—I tried to stop you and Kate from getting out, but you were both like the fucking hulk and I couldn't do anything—"

"No, Liam, come on," Sam said. "It's all good. We're all fine. That's what matters."

They let the relief of that settle for a few moments, watching as the fire consumed the village, building higher and higher. They'd need to get out of there soon, given the smoke, but none of them wanted to move.

Actually, Dean was having a hard time even standing up. He considered the hike back to the trailhead and the thought of it made him physically ill.

"Dean?" Sam said. He sounded frightened again, and Dean realized that he was back on his knees, the snow soaking into his jeans. Something was holding him upright, preventing him from faceplanting. "Shit. He's bleeding again."

"We won't be able to get him all the way back to the trailhead," Liam's voice said. "If he can't walk…"

"Matt," Sam snapped, ignoring Liam completely. "In my bag—did you get it out when you left?"

"Yeah, it's right here. What do you need?"

"Flare gun. Should be one left."

"Better make it count."

There was a rustling sound as Matt went through Sam's bag. Sam was speaking, blabbering words of comfort again. "You're gonna be okay, Dean, we're going to get help. Just hang in there, just a little longer. Okay? Just a little longer."

Dean wanted to answer, but he hurt too much. The last thing he heard before he fell unconscious was the sound of a flare exploding into the sky.

---

There was too much noise. So much noise. Dean felt like it was all piercing directly into his brain.

The first thing he registered was a loud, steady thrum. Like helicopter blades. And then there were voices, a lot of them. Most of them were unfamiliar, clinical and brusque and emotionless.

"Pulse is dropping."

"Saint Augustine's is closest, we can get there in just a few minutes."

"Wait, wait—let me come with you—please—"

Sam. That was Sam's voice. Dean nearly managed to open his eyes, just so he could make sure Sam was still okay, but his eyelids were so fucking heavy. Something cool and plastic covered his mouth.

"Sir, a helicopter for you and your friends is on its way—"

"He's my brother. Please. I'll stay out of your way, just let me come with."

There was a pause. Someone sighed. "All right," they said. "Get a move on."

Dean felt himself being lifted. The pain, somewhere at the back of his mind, was shoved to the forefront of his awareness and he groaned, sharply aware of every tiny movement of his body. Sam was saying something to him. Sam was saying his name.

"Dean? Hey, man, can you hear me?"

Dean finally managed to get his eyes open, somehow. Sam was next to him, looking at him. Sam was fine, he wasn't hurt. Dean couldn't speak, so he reached over with numb fingers and squeezed his brother's arm. That seemed to be enough of a reassurance, and Sam's expression relaxed minutely.

Sam said something else, he sounded panicked again, but Dean was already drifting, vision going black.

---

Dean's memory came in waves.

He was scattered, pieces of awareness hanging by threads at the edges of his consciousness. He tried to cling to them, but they kept slipping free and he would just fall under again, disappearing beneath something thick and heavy. It held him underwater, where he couldn't breathe or see or feel.

Darkness again.

When Dean woke up, really woke up, he could tell he'd been asleep for a long-ass time. His limbs were heavy and his muscles felt like they'd atrophied. Or like he'd run six hundred miles. One or the other. Something was beeping in an irritating way next to him. His eyes were crusty and he reached up to rub at them, but something caught his wrist.

He cracked his eyes open. There was a clear tube attached to the back of his hand.

The smell of antiseptic, the beeping of a heart monitor, the clean white sheets of the bed he was lying on—it only took his muddled brain a few seconds to put them together. He was in a hospital.

Someone mumbled something nearby. Dean rolled his head against the pillows and caught sight of his brother, splayed out on a couch like a starfish, out cold. He'd changed out of the clothes he'd worn in the woods, and he looked like he'd showered, too. He looked fine—a little bruised, but not injured at least.

The door to Dean's room opened, and a middle-aged nurse stepped inside. She smiled at him. "Well, now, look who's awake!" she said. She kept her voice a bit hushed, presumably so she wouldn't wake Sam. "You've been asleep for quite a while," she added as she crossed the room towards him. "What do you remember?"

Dean frowned, struggling to think. It felt like years ago, decades. "Forest," he said. Talking hurt—he could barely manage one word at a time. "Helicopter. That's it."

"You came here with some pretty severe injuries," the nurse said. She picked up his chart, scanning it briefly. "Gunshot wound to the abdomen, a concussion, some damage from smoke inhalation, various bruising…" She set aside the chart, smiled. "You won't be feeling much of it, of course. Pain meds."

That explained why Dean's head was so foggy. "When can I go off em?" he asked.

The nurse chuckled a little at that. "We'll give it a few days," she said. "You just woke up, so you'll have a better sense of your treatment plan once you've spoken to your doctor."

Dean swallowed. His throat was made of pure sandpaper. "How long was I asleep?" he asked, dreading the answer.

"About a week, give or take," the nurse said. That was a relief, actually. Part of Dean had expected to hear months, or worse, years. "Your friend over there, he's been keeping an eye on you nearly the entire time. Charmed most of us into letting him stay past visiting hours, the scoundrel."

Dean smiled at that. Typical.

"I can wake him for you, if you like," the nurse added. "He'll be thrilled to know you're finally awake."

Dean shook his head. "Let him sleep," he said. "He probably needs it."

The nurse brought him some food—lame food, mostly jello, but food nevertheless—and helped him sit upright in bed. She left him to it and Dean picked at the strawberry jello, watched Sam snore, wondered vaguely where all the others were. He assumed they'd been brought back with him and Sam, but there was an enormous chunk missing from Dean's memory and he assumed the others were somewhere in there.

Sam startled awake at some unreasonably early hour of the morning, while Dean was only halfway through his shitty breakfast. Sam looked around in confusion, bleary and disoriented, and Dean grinned. "Hey," Dean said, and Sam whipped his head around, eyes blowing wide at the sound of his voice. It still hurt a little to talk, but Dean's voice didn't sound completely like sandpaper anymore at least. He held up his unfinished jello. "The food here sucks, dude. Want the rest of my jello?"

"Dean, oh my god—" Sam staggered to his feet and approached the bed. He paused, hands hovering uncertainly, probably afraid to reach out and touch. "You're awake? When did you wake up?"

"Twenty-ish minutes ago?" Dean said. He eyed the absolute rat's nest of Sam's hair. "You look great. A real 80's vibe."

Sam ignored the jibe—he seemed too jubilant, too relieved. He sank onto the bed at Dean's hip. "Why didn't you wake me up?" he said.

Dean shrugged, and then winced. Fuck, everything fucking hurt. "I figured you haven't gotten much sleep the past few days," he said.

Sam glanced away, as though guilty. "They kept saying," he said, and broke off, cleared his throat. "The doctors, they weren't sure when you were going to wake up. Every time I asked, the answer was the same. I felt like I was going insane."

Dean narrowed his eyes. "Tell me you didn't do anything stupid, Sam."

Sam looked at him again. He shook his head, and Dean was pretty sure he was telling the truth. "I might have," Sam admitted. "If…"

He let the thought trail off. They were both silent for a moment, the relief passing sharp between them.

"Where are the others?" Dean asked, when the air had grown a little uncomfortably thick.

"Back at the cabin," Sam said. At Dean's look, he rolled his eyes and said, "Cabin-like mansion. Whatever."

"They're all good?"

"Yeah. Kate seems a little shaken by the whole thing, but overall everyone is okay. They got looked at in the hospital, no serious injuries or anything." Sam gave a wry smile. "We all came up with a pretty airtight story. Wolf attack, a stray bullet gone awry. We're not sure who's bullet."

"Nice. Avoid pinning the blame." Dean shifted and winced. "Ugh. I'm never going camping again, man. As soon as we get out of here, I'm burning all our camping supplies."

"Dean, take it easy," Sam said. "We aren't in any hurry to get out of here. Liam said we can stay at the cabin for a while, let you recover."

Dean scrutinized his face. Sam's expression was blank, but Dean felt a curl in his gut all the same. "Is that what you want to do?" Dean asked. He tried to choose his words carefully, but he probably wasn't being as subtle as he thought he was. "Stay here, with them?"

Sam blinked at him. Then, to Dean's surprise, he answered, "Not really, no."

Dean raised his eyebrows. Sam looked away, rubbing at his neck. "Things are too different now," he said. "And not just because they know I'm a hunter now. What they were all saying—Matt, and Liam, and Kate—that I wasn't myself with them, that I was keeping a huge part of myself from them, not being authentic—"

"Come on, Sam, they were only saying those things to be dicks."

"But they were right." Sam shook his head. "It was…exhausting, being normal. Trying to put that part of my life behind me. Every second I had to watch what I said, and I was just so tired of it. It was like I was a different person." He lowered his gaze to his hands. "I think if I'd spent a longer time there, I wouldn't have recognized myself in the mirror at all. And I'm not sure I would have liked who I saw there."

Dean stared at him, floored. He wanted to call Sam out for lying—lying for Dean's sake, maybe, to ease his guilt—but Sam's voice was achingly sincere. Dean didn't really know what to say for a long moment.

"They don't have to understand you to be your friends," Dean said finally. He felt the need to push the issue, just a little, but it wasn't really necessary. Sam knew what he wanted. He always had.

"I know." Sam looked over at him, smiled. It was a real smile, the relief still there behind it. "Maybe it would be a good idea to take Liam up on the offer—have somewhere nice where we can both recover. But after that—" He tipped his head. "We still have work to do. Right?"

"Yeah." Dean shifted and winced again, instantly regretting it. "But in the meantime I could use some cable TV and takeout."

Sam laughed. He reached for Dean's unfinished jello, digging a spoon into it.

---

They ended up staying at Liam's place for a good week.

As much as Dean didn't care for Liam himself, he had to admit that the place was fucking awesome, especially since he only had the energy to sit around and do nothing. They spent the week marathoning movies and reality TV, mostly, sprawled out on the enormous couches in Liam's living room. Sam complained about Dean's TV choices but didn't force him to choose something different, and Dean just grinned and tossed a beer in his direction and encouraged him to "embrace culture, Sammy."

They ordered a lot of takeout—pizza and tacos and barbecue—but they also cooked sometimes, given the cabin's incredible kitchen. Dean made burgers for everyone one night and Matt devoured three of them before announcing he was trading in Kate for Dean to be his sibling instead.

The others seemed to need the recovery time just as much as he and Sam did. Matt and Liam and Hazel got back to normal fairly quickly, but Kate was quiet. She hung around with them and drank beer with them, but didn't talk much, just smiled when someone addressed her. Dean figured it was a pretty normal response, the shock of discovering the supernatural and then becoming possessed by said supernatural being.

Later in the week, however, while he and Kate were doing the dishes from dinner—Sam had protested, but Dean was sick of feeling useless—Kate spoke up. "Why do you keep doing things like this?" she asked in a rush, her voice quiet so the others in the living room wouldn't hear.

"What?" Dean said, glancing over at her. Kate's gaze was fixed on the soapy water, and for a moment Dean wondered if she'd only been talking to herself.

"This…hunting…thing. What you and Sam do. Why do you keep doing it when it nearly gets you killed?" Kate looked over at him, and her eyes were huge, pained. "Sam, he barely spoke to any of us for a week while you were in that coma. He looked like the life had drained out of him. I've never seen him like that. But still, you—he says that you two are going to—you're not going to just give it up? After all of this?"

Dean stared at her. He glanced over her shoulder at the living room, where Matt and Sam were deep in a game of Mario Kart and Matt was losing spectacularly. Dean sighed, turned on the tap to rinse off the plate he'd been washing. Sometimes he forgot, that he wasn't the only one, that it was Sam, too, who was afraid of losing the same things.

"I keep trying to think of it, being afraid of losing Matt—or Liam—at every minute," Kate continued. "It kills me, just thinking about that. And you two, you're walking into that life willingly."

"Yeah," Dean said finally. "I know, it's kind of insane."

"It's incredibly insane," Kate hissed. "I half want to drag Sam downstairs and lock him in the basement, just so that he can't put himself into that kind of danger again. Liam, he says the same thing. He says—"

She broke off, looking uncomfortable. She didn't finish the thought, but Dean could guess. "He thinks I'm pulling Sam along into this life of blood and death, right?" Dean said.

Kate colored a little. "Well," she said, "I mean…"

"I'm not exactly disagreeing with you," Dean said. "Sometimes…" He looked over at Sam again. He was grinning triumphantly, while Matt, red-faced, demanded a rematch. "Sometimes I think you're right. That Sam would be better off away from this, away from me." Sometimes he felt guilty, that he'd showed up at Sam's door in the first place, dooming him and Jess, forcing him out of the life he'd always wanted.

Kate raised her eyebrows. "…But?" she prompted.

Dean cast her a wan smile. "But nothing," he said. "I don't think I'll ever stop wondering. But it's not up to me, it's up to Sam. And this is what he's decided he wants, at least for now." And Dean would enjoy the time, however long it was, that he was able to have Sam at his side. Maybe if he started to come to terms with it now, he'd be more prepared when Sam left again.

"Yeah," Kate said, "but—"

"You know Sam pretty well, too," Dean said. "Has he ever backed down from something once he sets his mind to it?"

Kate didn't answer, but Dean knew she was agreeing with him. He pulled the plug on the drain and grabbed a towel to dry his hands, heading back towards the living room. "You're going down, Sam," he said, grabbing a free controller. "Deal me in."

---

They left the following morning.

Sam was restless, Dean was restless. Liam and Kate were starting to drive both of them crazy, with their nervous, judgmental glances and their subtle attempts to encourage Sam to make a different choice. Dean didn't really expect any of it to work, but it was still a bit vindicating when Sam said, as they packed up alone in their room, "If Liam reminds me one more time about this firm in California he could get me an interview with, I swear I'm going to deck him."

"Aw, come on, Sammy, he's just trying to help." Dean zipped his duffel and rose. "I mean, it's annoying, but his heart is in the right place."

Sam stared at him in blatant disbelief. "You've had it out for Liam since day one," he said. "And all of a sudden you're on his side?"

"Look, I'm just saying—"

"Enough, Dean." Sam was glaring at him. "You really think after all of this, everything we did and everything we've been through, that I'm just going to hop on a plane to California and leave you behind? I wouldn't do that."

Dean wanted to point out that Sam had done it once before, but that felt like a low blow. "I know, Sam," he said. He headed for the door, patting Sam on the shoulder on the way out and feeling Sam deflate at his touch.

The others gave Sam hugs goodbye and a few of them gave Dean a firm handshake, not quite at hugging status even after a couple of near-death experiences. Kate, however, came in for a hug unexpectedly. She smelled nice up close, like cinnamon. "Listen," she said in his ear, "you and Sam—you keep each other safe, right? You'll watch out for each other?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "Always."

Kate drew back. She nodded, a decisive movement, and it seemed like an acceptance, if a reluctant one. She moved away, folding her arms against her chest.

"Don't be a stranger, Sam, okay?" Matt said. "You have my number, and Kate's, and Liam's. So, if you get into trouble—I mean, if you need anything—" He broke off, raked a hand through his hair. "Just call, okay?"

Sam nodded. "I will," he said, and he sounded like he meant it.

It felt good to be back behind the wheel of the car. Dean spent a moment running his hands along it before even turning the car on, just enjoying the feel. "You want a minute alone with her?" Sam said, an old joke that Dean didn't even bother rolling his eyes at.

Dean sighed, putting the keys in the ignition. "It's good to be back," he said, mostly to himself. He glanced over, and Sam was watching his friends in the rearview mirror as the four of them went back inside the house. Dean paused, fingers still on the keys, wondered if he should suggest staying longer. He was pretty sure neither of them wanted to, but part of him wanted to make the choice clear, one more time, just in case.

"You know I almost left one year?" Sam said, his voice quiet but still a little surprising in the silence. He wasn't looking at Dean, something faraway in his gaze instead. "Stanford, I mean. I almost dropped out and called you and asked you to come pick me up."

Dean blinked. "When?"

"Sophomore year. The first year was rough, man. I wasn't sure I could get through another."

"Too many tests for you, college boy?"

Sam shook his head. "That wasn't it," he said. "I missed it—this. You and me, saving people. Having each other's backs."

"Oh." Dean frowned. "Man, all you had to do was give me a call if you wanted to talk."

"I knew if I dialed your number, that would be it," Sam said. "I wouldn't be able to take it anymore, college, being away from you and Dad, all of it. It would have felt like giving up." He looked over, met Dean's gaze for the first time. "I'm trying to explain that I didn't go to Stanford to get away from you. That's all."

Dean gave a slight nod of his head, but it was a relief, actually, to hear it out loud, as embarrassing as that was. He'd always known it wasn't him that Sam was running from, wasn't even Dad, maybe wasn't even hunting itself.

"I know," he said anyway, and he turned the keys into the ignition, enjoying the warm hum beneath him as the car roared to life. "I know, Sammy."