A/N: Just a heads up, I added a violence tag for this fic. There's nothing more graphic than the most violent scenes in either Supernatural or Smallville—in fact, there are fairly similar canonical scenes in each show—but I figure it's a little more potentially upsetting when the characters are kids. There's one scene that's definitely more violent than anything in "Summer in Smallville," though, and I'll make an author's note when it comes up.

Chapter 4 - Confession

The part of Sam's brain that still demanded logic, even in the face of everything he'd seen in his life, was completely convinced that Clark had to be joking. But when those wide, innocent green eyes kept staring up at Sam intently, waiting for his reaction with fear and trembling, he knew Clark wasn't trying to pull a prank.

Still, there had to be some kind of mistake. Minutes ago, Clark had believed a gust of wind would be a compelling cover story for whatever had knocked out Sam and Dean and Lex. Clark was a confused ten-year-old, blaming himself for something that couldn't possibly be his fault. That was all this was.

Sam shook his head. "No, Clark. You didn't make that trail."

"I did!"

"I know you were there, but—"

"I didn't kill anyone, but I did make the trail. I have . . . powers. You have to believe me."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "Powers? What kind of powers?"

"Speed and strength. And . . . something my dad calls invulnerability, but I think that's part of the strength."

"Clark—"

"Look." Clark sped from one side of the loft to the other, then back again.

Real gusts of wind hit Sam each time Clark passed him, but it felt more like he'd had the wind knocked out of him. Sam had seen a lot of strange things in his life, but this was something else entirely. When Clark stopped running, Sam almost couldn't believe what he had just seen. Clark looked so normal.

"And look!" Clark went over to the hay bales, stacked up three on top of each other, and held the entire stack of his head. His arms didn't even shake with the exertion—it was as though they weighed nothing. He gently placed the hay bales back down. "Now do you believe me?"

"I—yes, of course I . . ." Sam took a step back, adrenaline pumping through his veins.

Clark frowned. "Are you—are you scared of me?"

"No, no, I just . . ." Sam swallowed. All his life, it had been drilled into him that anything supernatural was to be feared. To be killed, even. Sam was going to have to change those instincts, but it wouldn't be easy. Sam didn't want to make Clark feel rejected, but Clark had been honest with him—he owed Clark the same. "A little. But you're my friend. You're, like, the little brother I never had. I know you wouldn't hurt me."

"I've never hurt anyone. I left the trail, but I didn't kill those people!"

"I believe you," Sam said. Looking at the wide innocence of Clark's eyes, it was impossible not to.

Clark cringed. "Are you going to tell Dean about my powers?"

Sam took a deep breath. Dean would kill him if he ever found out that Sam was keeping this secret from him, but Sam wasn't worried for himself—he really had no idea what Dean would say about Clark. Worst case, he'd think they needed to find a way to kill Clark. Even in the best case, Dean would almost definitely insist they needed to tell Dad, and their dad would be a lot less understanding than they were. Even if Dad didn't try to hurt Clark, he'd still probably come here and drill Clark and his parents with questions and threats.

Sam didn't want to have to try to deal with this himself. He thought about trying to convince Clark to tell Lex. Lex was closer to Clark, and Sam was absolutely certain he wouldn't want to hurt him, but Sam also just didn't know Lex very well. Sam also didn't like the idea of Dean being the odd one out while the other three all kept secrets from him.

It didn't matter what Sam thought was best, though. He had sworn not to tell anyone, and he was going to keep that promise whether it was a good idea or not. Clark had just entrusted him with something enormous. Sam didn't have the heart to break that trust. He didn't have the right.

"I'm not going to tell anyone," Sam said. "But . . . they're already suspicious of you. That gust of wind story made no sense."

"I know." Clark's cheeks turned pink.

"Can you tell me what really happened? How did you leave the trail?"

Clark swallowed and rubbed at his face. "A few days ago, I was taking a walk after doing some chores, and I found a dead body. I got scared and ran back to the house—I'm not usually supposed to run at full speed outside of our property, and if I do, I'm supposed to be careful to be light on my feet. But after seeing the body, I got scared and forgot."

"And that's how you left the trail."

"Yeah."

"So whatever killed those people . . ." Sam shook his head. "It didn't leave a trail at all."

Clark shrugged. "Maybe it did, but my trail was more distracting."

Sam let his breath out. This was going to be a tough one to explain to Dean. "Okay. That was the other day. So what happened just now, while we were doing recon?"

"Um . . ." Clark winced. "I don't want you to be upset."

"I won't be upset if you tell me the truth. I promise."

"That's what my dad always says," Clark grumbled.

Sam knew the feeling—his dad never kept the promise not to get angry, either. "Hey," Sam said softly. "I'm not your dad. I'm just trying to help you. I promise I won't get upset with you."

Clark squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then he looked back up at Sam. "You three were all talking and laughing, and I heard something coming. I ran after it while you weren't looking, and I saw this monster coming toward you."

"That's what knocked us out?"

"Uh . . . no . . ." Clark started wringing his hands.

"Then what?"

"I didn't want you guys to get hurt. I'm a lot stronger than any of you, and you didn't have any weapons, but I couldn't use my powers in front of you, or you'd know my secret. So . . . I kind of . . . maybe . . ."

"You knocked us out?" Sam yelled.

Clark cringed. "You said you wouldn't be mad if I told the truth!"

He had promised. Sam forced himself to take deep breaths, thinking everything over carefully. Clark was just a kid. Faced with the choice of letting his friends get killed by a monster, or revealing a secret that his parents had forbidden him to reveal, he'd made a snap decision. If he was guilty of anything, it was being too young to think of a better way to handle things. "What happened to the monster, Clark?"

"It came and tried to get you. I fought it off, then I woke you up."

Sam's eyes widened. "Well, are you okay? Are you hurt?"

"I'm okay. Its teeth and claws broke through my skin, but I just kept healing every time it scratched me."

"Is it . . ." Sam winced. "Is it dead?"

"No. I punched it until it ran away."

Sam nodded. He could work with this. "Well, what did it look like?"

"Like a person. He was a little shorter than my dad. He had green, glowing eyes, and claws and fangs, but other than that, it mostly just looked human." Clark frowned. "It didn't sound human, though. It was growling, like a wolf or something."

Strength, speed, claws, fangs, wolf-like growling, eating hearts . . . that sounded exactly like a werewolf to Sam. The time of the month was all wrong, and Sam had never heard of a werewolf being active during the day, or one with glowing green eyes. But the year before, when they'd encountered that Djinn, it was a little bit different from a regular Djinn because of the meteor rocks in Smallville. Green eyes might be a clue that they weren't dealing with regular werewolves, but with mutant werewolves.

The worst part about mutant monsters was that they were almost impossible to kill. They'd gotten lucky with the Djinn, but Sam didn't know if they'd have any such luck this time, especially if they didn't even know where it was.

"Did you see which way it went?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. I went to clean myself up by the creek, and I saw it going into an abandoned cabin."

Chills ran up Sam's spine. "See anyone else at the cabin?"

"Um . . ." Clark squinted. "I don't think so, but . . . it was a big cabin."

Dread pooled in the pit of Sam's stomach—there was almost definitely a whole pack of them there. "Think you could give me directions to the cabin?"

"I could, but why?"

Sam grimaced—Clark wasn't going to like this next part. "Clark, I have to tell Dean what you saw."

"What? No! Y-you promised!"

"I know, and I'm going to keep my promise. I'm going to tell the whole story without revealing your secret."

"How?"

"I have a lot of practice with this kind of thing."

Clark shifted his weight on the couch. "Are you sure?"

"You had to trust me a lot just to tell me your secret, right?"

"I guess."

"Can you trust me now?"

Clark's eyes grew shiny, and he blinked a few times. Then he looked up at Sam and nodded.

Lex had developed a begrudging respect for Dean the summer before, but right now he just wanted to pound some sense into him. No one talked to his little brother like that, even if Clark was lying through his teeth.

Which, admittedly, he clearly was, but who could blame him, with the way Dean was accusing him? Lex had wanted nothing more than to run after Clark and comfort him, but Sam had insisted that he be the first one to talk to him. Lex and Sam had gone back and forth a few times and finally compromised: if Clark was hiding out in his room, Lex would talk to him. If he was in the loft, Sam would.

Lex almost went back on his word when he was greeted by an empty bedroom, but he made himself let it go. It was probably for the best—Lex needed some time to cool off, and it was better if Clark wasn't overwhelmed by two people. He finished unpacking his suitcases, then he settled down on the bed, reading a book.

He'd read the same sentence about fifty times when a soft knock came at his door. He raced over to find Sam and Clark standing in the hallway.

"Meeting in our room," Sam said, and Lex followed them over to meet Dean, who was sitting up on his bed. Lex pulled up a chair to sit beside him. Clark and Sam remained standing.

Sam cleared his throat. "So . . . Clark gave me permission to tell you what he really saw out there."

Lex sat up a little straighter. Part of him couldn't help but feel a bit hurt that Clark had opened up to Sam rather than to him, but he couldn't really blame Clark. Lex had probably scared him by trying to fight with Dean.

"He knows what made the trail?" Dean asked.

"Yes," Sam said.

"Great," Dean said. "How do we kill it?"

Clark flinched. Lex made a mental note to talk to Dean about casually talking about killing in front of a ten-year-old.

"Well, I'm not sure about this one. Based on what Clark described, it sounds like a werewolf."

Lex blinked a couple of times. "A werewolf."

"No." Dean shook his head. "Can't be. It's not full moon. And it's daytime."

"Werewolves exist?" Lex had told himself that he wouldn't be surprised, no matter what they said, but it was hard to hold back his natural reactions. Werewolves!

"Everything exists," Dean said. "But werewolves don't turn this time of month, and definitely not during the day."

"It's been infected by meteor rocks," Sam said. "Who knows when it can transform? But Clark described what he saw to me. It's definitely a werewolf of some kind."

Lex's heart thudded hard against his chest. His last experience with a mutated monster had been terrifying—he had almost been killed. Sam had ended up killing it with a knife soaked in Lex's blood. Worse, that whole encounter had only proved that Lex himself was infected by the meteor rocks, and he kept thinking that must make him some kind of monster. But he employed years of training as a Luthor and kept a straight face. It wasn't the time for panicking over that.

"Okay." Dean gave Clark a pointed look. "So it's a werewolf. Doesn't explain how the three of us got knocked out without a scratch on us, and Clark wasn't touched at all."

"Would you lay off?" Lex snapped at him.

"Or why his clothes and shoelace were in the fence," Dean said.

Sam nodded. "He's been out to the site of the trail a few times, and his clothes caught in the broken pieces of fence. And then today, the werewolf was going to knock out all four of us to make it easier to kill us, but it got called away before it could get to Clark. Maybe a female?"

Dean swore under his breath. "So there's a whole pack of these things."

"It sounds like it," Sam said.

Aunt Martha's voice came from downstairs: "Clark, time to set the table!"

"Um . . . we can talk more about this later, but I have to go." Clark looked up at Sam

"I'll help you," Sam said, and he and Clark both left the room.

Lex took a deep breath. "So what do we do?"

Dean turned to Lex. "Under no circumstances are they to be allowed to come with us."

"We're going to kill the pack?" Lex asked.

"Once a werewolf catches your scent, it'll be back."

Warm chills ran down Lex's spine. "You think it'll come back for us?"

"Only way to keep ourselves safe is to take out the pack. You ready for a hunt, Luthor?"

"That's why I'm here. So how do you kill a werewolf?"

"Usually, with a silver bullet to the heart. But werewolves infected with meteor rock?" Dean sighed. "I dunno."

Lex thought back to the mutant Djinn. A normal Djinn could be killed by a silver knife dipped in lamb's blood; a meteor-infected Djinn had needed to be stabbed with a knife dipped in the blood of a meteor-infected lamb. For a meteor-infected werewolf, then . . . "Maybe silver and meteor rock?"

"Could be."

"You got silver bullets?" Lex asked.

Dean nodded. "Yeah."

"Think we can find some meteor rock?"

"Sure, it's all over this town," Dean said. "But we don't have any way to melt down silver and meteor rock and make bullets out of both."

"Got silver shotgun shells?"

"No, but I've got regular shells. Thinking two bullets for each of the werewolves, one silver and one meteor rock?"

Aunt Martha's voice again: "Dean, Lex! Dinner!"

"We'll make plans later," Dean told Lex, and they both headed down the stairs.

As they walked, a cold sense of dread overtook Lex. He wasn't ready for a fight like this. He could shoot a gun, his aim was good, and his reflexes were fast, but Dean was a real hunter. Lex felt like he was more likely to get in the way. And regardless of his father's training, it was hard not to be afraid. Despite believing he had deserved death ever since he killed Julian, he didn't really want to die. Not like this.

Down at the dining room table, Lex sat beside Clark, across from Sam and Dean. Clark still looked miserable, staring down at his plate. Lex swallowed, his chest feeling tight. He reached over and put a hand on Clark's shoulder, gently stroking with his thumb. Clark looked up at him and smiled.

Lex felt like his heart was rising into his throat. He would protect his little brother. Whatever it took.