To say the warehouse type place they were held in is abandoned would be a massive understatement. The place is just gone. Like they burned it to the ground and then cleared out the ashes and then planted a meadow over where it used to be gone.

"Sure this is the place?" Dean asks, frowning at the flowers and grass and weeds.

Sam nods. "One hundred percent."

"Swell." Dean shifts his stance a little. "One hundred percent?" he asks, doubtful.

"Yeah." Sam nods again. "It is, err, was here."

Dean takes a few steps forward, kicking through the dirt and weeds, almost like he expects to find a secret opening in the ground where the building rises up. He almost thinks he might. "There was a parking lot here, Sam."

"I know, Dean." Sam starts wandering around just like Dean, staring at the ground and surrounding countryside.

Dean kicks at the dirt. "What, were we hallucinating?"

Sam cants his head. It reminds Dean of Cas so Dean jerks his head down to stare at the dirt again.

"Might've been," Sam says. He takes a few more steps, sighing as he glares around. "Or maybe they found a witch or something, had her undo all this somehow, cover their tracks."

Dean rubs at his forehead. "What the hell are we supposed to do now?"

"One of Bobby's old hunting buddies said they have another base, remember?"

Dean kicks the dirt. "Sam, that's seven states away," he growls.

"I know, Dean."

"Cas doesn't have that kind of time."

Sam hesitates, but he meet's Dean's gaze. "He might if we take a plane."

Dean's head tilts back to find heaven as he runs a hand over his mouth. He nods after only half a moment. "Yeah. Yeah, let's get it done. We'll have to borrow some supplies when we get there. Book us a flight, Sammy, let's go."

Massachusetts is just as crappy as Dean is expecting it to be, not that he notices much of it.

It's a house. Just a normal suburban type house, green grass and a bike leaning against the garage and a minivan parked out front. "One hundred percent, Sammy?"

Sam nods just once. "One hundred percent."

Dean checks his gun again. "You good?" he asks, flicking a glance sideways.

"Yeah." Sam has a face of determination. One hundred percent.

Dean turns back to look at the house. "We know how many we're up against?"

"No more than a dozen, they don't think."

"Who was that contact again?"

Sam's eyebrows pinch. "Bobby wouldn't say."

Dean nods. Cas doesn't have time for them to sit and linger. Dean can't bear to wait any longer. He shoves the car door open. "They're probably watching us right now. Let's just get this done."

Dean can't lose Cas again. He just can't. He's so sick of losing people. So tired of it. There's a hole in his gut and it's filled with something toxic at the idea of Cas dying in pain because of some screwed up high and mighty hunters that skew the line between monster and not monster into a circle that only has room for humans. Sons of bitches, the lot of them. Dean is tired of it.

"Dean?" Sam is staring at him, something akin to concern on his face. It's hard to find with all that grief masking it.

Dean's face is set in stone. "Yeah, Sammy, let's go. You think R and D will be up or down?"

"Down, I think."

"Ten minutes to scope it out, then we go in. And I don't wanna lose you in there, Sam, so no splitting up. Stay close."

Sam just nods.

It doesn't fit. This stupid suburbia house. There should patches of dead grass and ant piles and rotting wood and something that indicates there are monsters living inside, that even the earth is unsettled by their presence. The only thing unsettled is Dean.

There are no window wells down to a basement, no patches of dirt to signal where they were covered up. All the neighboring houses have window wells. Speaking of which, they might need to be concerned about somebody calling the police. Dean makes an effort to conceal his gun in his jacket a little more, not quite willing to let go of it. "Nothing, Sam. We gotta go in blind and they'll see us coming a mile away."

Entering the house is straightforward. There are barriers of salt and iron and modern locks but that crap can't hold their wrath at bay.

The first thing they do is run around breaking every window they can find. Two reasons—to draw the bastards out and to plant a minefield of glass that'll place where people are in the house.

Then they simply crawl through one.

Not one soul has appeared. No pounding footsteps on the stairs, no alarms sounding, no guns aimed at their hearts. Not a single person, not a single sound.

Dean's not sure this is the place. He'll rip it apart anyway. Basement first.

There is no basement.

"Dean," Sam says, not for the first time, "It's not here."

Dean kicks the wall, then runs his fingers back along it, looking for hidden passages, for levers, for something. "One hundred percent, Sam. You said one hundred percent. And I believe you, it's here. It is here. It has to be." They don't have time for it not to be.

"Dean—"

"Shut up." Dean pounds across the floor again, listening for trap doors and feeling for hollow spaces.

Sam shuts up. And then he leaves. He frickin' leaves.

Dean falls to his knees.

Sam comes back with an axe and Dean hurriedly moves his hands out to feel along the floor. He can tell from Sam's sidelong look that he's not buying it.

Dean ignores the look, blinking a few times because his vision is blurring. He keeps inching out across the floor, searching. "Tear it up, Sammy. We'll find them. One hundred percent, I guarantee it. We'll find and gank those mother-" Pain slams into Dean's skull and jolts its way down his spine. He groans as he goes down.

"Dean!" Sam shouts.

Before Dean even has a chance to get up, something cracks against his skull and the world goes black.

He wakes to the ground shifting beneath him, the cold feel of metal up against his arm where he's laying on it. He opens his eyes, but there's fabric over his face and he can't see through it. "Sam?"

There's no response and Dean has to carefully maintain his breathing. His hands are bound behind him but he pushes up. "Sammy?"

His head is throbbing.

"Dean?" Sam asks.

Dean breathes out in relief. "You okay? You hurt?"

"I'm okay. You?"

"Peachy." Dean falls back over as the ground stops moving. A car. They're in a car. A truck. He pushes up again. "We screwed up." And Cas will die because of it. Dean swallows hard. "We screwed up."

"Dean—"

There's a pop and crack and then the car is skittering over the road, slamming Dean into the metal side of it before fishtailing to a stop.

Dean struggles to get his hands free. His legs are unbound but his boot knife is gone. "Sam?"

"What was that?"

A loud screech and whine tells them the door is being opened. "Sam, Dean, are you okay?"

Dean shakes his head to clear his ears because he's hearing things.

"Mom?" Sam asks.

Thumps and thuds of a form coming into the truck and approaching them. "I got there just a minute too late, I'm so sorry."

"Mom?" The doubt is clear in Dean's tone. The thuds approach him and he angles his head back until it hits the wall.

"Yeah, sweetheart, it's me."

"The hell are you doing here?"

Hands untie the mask around Dean's head and pull it off. Dean blinks to clear his vision.

Mary's eyes are a little too wary. "Helping," she says.

Dean frowns.

Mary eyes flick quickly away. She moves to unveil Sam.

"No, seriously."

Mary's throat bobs. "Bobby called me," she says. "Come on, we've gotta go before the rest catch up." She cuts through the binds around Sam's wrists and then hands him the knife. "Help your brother, I'll pull the car up."

Sam is almost frowning. He cuts Dean free and they head out of the car just as a Dodge Ram pulls up, Mary driving. "Get in."

Dean gets in the front, Sam in the back.

"Mom?" Dean asks, not entirely sure what he wants to be asking.

Mary doesn't say anything.

"How'd you find us?" Dean asks.

"Bobby told me the place you were going to. I got there just in time to see them drag you away, drove ahead, set up some spikes to blow their tires."

Dean hums, doubt coiling his insides for reasons he can't quite place.

Sam leans forward. "What are you even doing here?"

"I was in town," Mary says vaguely.

Dean is waking up more and more. He wonders how much time they lost. Wonders where Mary is headed. He twists around, looking behind them like can see the truck they were in even though they've taken three turns already. "What happened to whoever was driving us? Do you know where they were going? He's gotta know where the real facility is, maybe he even knows how to help Cas. Mom, you have to go back, we can-"

"Dean, sweetie, you don't have to worry about that anymore."

"Like hell," Dean starts, his fear bristling into anger. "Cas is—"

"Dean." Mary cuts him off, eyes on the road. "We got it, okay? I slipped into the real facility already."

Dean squints at her.

Sam frowns. "What?"

"I got it."

"How?" Dean asks, something burning in his gut. "How'd you know where it was? How'd you get in? Why didn't you call us?"

"I needed you at that house."

"Mom," Dean demands, voice dark.

Her shoulders lift just a little, fingers tapping. "You were the distraction," she says, straightforward and blunt.

Rage rolls through Dean. He's glad to be a distraction any goddamn day of the week, but not when it's blind, not when it's someone else's twisted game, using and manipulating him. And Sam. They could've been killed instead of captured. Red fills his vision. "And you couldn't tell us that?!"

Mary just shrugs. "They were watching you. Couldn't risk it."

Dean glares. "But you told Bobby."

Mary won't even look at him. Dean wishes he knew her well enough to read her. He doesn't. He hates that he doesn't. She's a stranger to him, this mother come back from the dead. She's not the one he remembers.

"I got the antidote," she says, eyes flicking over her shoulder as she switches lanes, "or the ingredient list, anyway. You're really gonna get mad about how?"

"Yes," Sam says. Firmly. "The how matters, mom. It matters a whole damn lot. Next time, bring us in on the plan."

Dean's twisting in his seat, tilting worriedly. "You got it to Bobby, right? He give it to Cas already? Do you know?"

Mary keeps her eyes on the road. "Called him the moment I got it."

"And?"

Mary shrugs a shoulder. "He has to get the ingredients first."

Dean hates that they're seven states away and can't do anything to help. Hates that mom and Bobby lied to them like idiots because there were a whole lot of ways that plan could've gone South and all of them end with people dead. People he can't bear to be see dead again.

"So," says Sam, calm somehow, trying not to make the tension in the car burst into flames. "We gonna drive this all the way back?"

"No," Dean says, face stone, staring out the front window. "We're taking a plane."