Sam hadn't been sleeping well. I'd done my best, but the nightmares were haunting him, it was getting to the point where he was avoiding sleep. So it was that I was curled up, with my head tucked under Dean's chin and his arm wrapped around my waist, when the sound of the motel room door being opened filtered through the veil of sleep. Dean's breathing pattern changed and the arm around my waist shifted up to my shoulder, his hand going under the pillow to grasp the knife he kept there.

"Morning, sunshine." Sam, awake, dressed, holding coffee and doughnuts.

"Oh, geez, Sam. What time is it?" Too damn early, if you ask me, though the smell of coffee was nice.

"Uh, it's about 5.45."

"In the morning?" Questioned Dean.

"Yep." Please don't sound so happy about that, Sam.

"Where does the day go?" Dean sat up, patting my shoulder and giving it a small shake to encourage me to resign myself to being awake. "Did you get any sleep last night?"

"Yeah, I grabbed a couple of hours."

"Liar. 'Cause I was up at three, and you were watching a George Foreman infomercial."

"Hey, what can I say? It's riveting TV."

"No, it isn't, Sam." My voice was hoarse, my mouth dry.

"When was the last time you got a good night's sleep?"

"I don't know, a little while, I guess. It's not a big deal."

"Yeah, it is." I chimed in.

"Look, I appreciate your concern—"

"Oh, I'm not concerned about you. It's your job to keep my ass alive, so I need you sharp." Dean's ability to empathise is just astounding. "Seriously, are you still having nightmares about Jess?"

Sam crossed the room, sat down on his bed, and handed a coffee to Dean. "Yeah. But it's not just her. It's everything. I just forgot, you know? This job. Man, it gets to you."

"You can't let it. You can't bring it home like that."

"So, what? All this it...never keeps you up at night?"

Dean shook his head. Lying come so naturally in this family.

"Never?" Sam pressed, "You're never afraid?"

"No, not really."

Sam reached under Dean's pillow to pull out the large hunting knife and held it up as evidence.

Dean reached to take it back, "That's not fear. That is precaution."

"All right, whatever. I'm too tired to argue."

I got up then, running my hand over Sam's shoulder, helping what little I could on my way to the bathroom to get dressed. Dean's phone rang as I shut the door behind me.

When I came back out the boys were packing their bags.

"Hey, Sam? Where's my hot chocolate?"

He didn't even have the decency to look up from the bag he was shoving clothes into. "They'd run out."


"Thanks for making the trip so quick. I ought to be doing you guys a favour, not the other way around. Ali, Dean and your dad really helped me out." Jerry addressed this last to Sam.

"Yeah, they told me. It was a poltergeist?"

"Poltergeist? Man, I loved that movie." Some random worker in the hanger commented as we passed.

"Hey, nobody's talking to you. Keep walking." Jerry called after the man before lowering his voice slightly, "Damn right it was a poltergeist, practically tore our house apart. Tell you something, if it wasn't for you two and your dad, I probably wouldn't be alive."

Dean turned to Sam, a proud little grin on his face. This is why we do the job.

"Your dad said you were off at college. Is that right?"

"Yeah, I was. I'm—taking some time off."

"Well, he was real proud of you. I could tell. He talked about you all the time."

"He did?" Poor Sam sounded surprised; he genuinely thought that Dad had never forgiven him. Dean and I gave him, 'told you so' looks, neither of which he seemed to notice.

"Yeah, you bet he did. Oh, hey, you know I tried to get a hold of him, but I couldn't. How's he doing, anyway?"

"He's, um, wrapped up in a job right now." Dean offered as an explanation, though in truth we had no idea how, or even where he was.

"Well, we're missing the old man, but we get Sam. Even trade, huh?"

Dean laughed and I smiled sadly, he was kind of right.

"No, not by a long shot." Sam put himself down and my smile faded away.

"I got something I want you guys to hear." Jerry announced as he led us into his office. "I listened to this. And, well, it sounded like it was up your alley."

He sat his desk, inserting a CD into a drive and clicking play. "Normally I wouldn't have access to this. It's the cockpit voice recorder for United Britannia flight 2485. It was one of ours."

Thee recording was crackly, the voices barely discernible, "Mayday! Mayday! Repeat! This is United Britania 2485—immediate instruction… help! United Britania 2485, I copy your message—May be experiencing some mechanical failure..."

The crackling of the recording stopped a loud… sound replacing it. A sort of weirdly, warped roaring.

The recording ended and Jerry removed it from the drive, "Took off from here, crashed about two hundred miles south. Now, they're saying mechanical failure. Cabin depressurized somehow. Nobody knows why. Over a hundred people on board. Only seven got out alive. Pilot was one. His name is Chuck Lambert. He's a good friend of mine. Chuck is, uh...well, he's pretty broken up about it. Like it was his fault."

"You don't think it was?" Sam questioned.

"No, I don't."

Sam leaned back in his seat, "Jerry, we're gonna need passenger manifests, um, a list of survivors."

"Right and, uh, any way we can take a look at the wreckage?"

"The other stuff is no problem. But the wreckage...fellas, the NTSB has it locked down in an evidence warehouse. No way I've got that kind of clearance."

Dean nodded, frowning, before dismissing it. "No problem."

Sammy and I were sat in the Impala outside the 'Copy Jack', looking through the information we'd got from Jerry while Dean was inside making the fake IDs the boys would be using on this case.

"Sam, you need to talk about it."

He sighed, running his hand over his face, "I don't really want to talk about it, Ali."

I paused, twisting in my seat to examine my baby brother, who was looking straight forwards, looking exhausted and slightly defeated. "I didn't say want, Sam, I said need. It's eating you up inside, and you don't have to talk to me, but you do need to talk to someone!"

He looked at me, bitch face in place, "Yeah? Who? Who the hell do I talk to about how some supernatural thing killed the girl I love and how all I can think about is finding it and killing it, and how I know that it won't bring her back, it won't make the pain go away, but I still have to do it? Who do I talk to apart from you and Dean? Huh?"

The pain he'd been holding inside quivered, boiling and venting as the pressure climbed too high, spiking into acute awareness and pooling tears in his eyes.

"The same thing killed Mum, but you never felt the… need, the drive to hunt it down before, Sam. How come it's getting to you now?" I kept my voice quiet, controlled, trying not to allow the hunger to slip into my voice; it wouldn't do for Sam to think that I was goading him for my own satisfaction, that's not what this was about.

"I don't know, Ali. I don't know." His voice was small, the tears overflowing and trickling slowly down his cheeks. "Maybe it'll fade in time."

"It hasn't faded for Dad, or for Dean." He glanced at me from where he'd been gazing sightlessly out the window behind me, his eyes asking silently for comfort. "They still hurt so much because the need for revenge has prevented them from mourning. I'm not saying we shouldn't hunt this thing down and roast it alive, just that you should mourn too, accept that she's gone, Sammy, she's not coming back any more than Mum is."

The tears were leaking from my eyes too at this point. It didn't matter that I'd never met the woman who'd given birth to my brothers, only ever seen pictures and heard stories, I wished for her to be returned alive to us just as much as Sam did.

"How do I mourn her, Ali? When all I can feel is rage and pain?" Those hazel eyes were so expressive, begging for comfort, for direction.

"Start by letting it out, by crying, by acknowledging that it hurts." I reached out, placing a hand on his arm, carefully avoiding skin contact and denying the urge to feed.

He slumped forward, head bowed and shoulders rounded, tears falling freely. He somehow looked so small, my 6'3" brother, surrendering to the sadness.

I don't know how long we sat there in silence, Sam crying for the loss of Jessica, me crying for Jessica, for the sister I'd never get to form a friendship with and for my broken brother. Eventually the driver's door opened and I slid across the bench seat into Sammy's side, leaving room for Dean to enter the car. I looked at him as he sat down, a frown flickering across his features before he wordlessly started the car and we headed back to the motel.

After Sam cried, he slept, and I sat by his side, ensuring that his pain didn't intrude on his dreams. And that was how we spent the rest of the day, holed up in our motel room, Sammy passed out and Dean and I sitting in silence on either side of him, each resting a hand on our little brother, offering him whatever comfort we could.

Around dinner time Dean left and returned shortly after with cheeseburgers. We ate as Sammy slept on, then Dean settled himself at the table to look through the same documents Sam and I had been examining in the car earlier and I allowed myself to drift slowly into unconsciousness, curled into Sammy's side, my hand resting where I had been stroking his hair, like I used to whenever he had a bad dream as a child.

The next morning, a groggy and rather dehydrated Sam woke and dragged himself into the shower as Dean and I prepared for the day ahead and procured breakfast from the café down the street. Once everyone was washed, dressed and fed, we gathered around the table to discuss the hunt.

Dean slapped two fake IDs down on the table top.

"Homeland Security?" Sam questioned, picking his up, "That's pretty illegal, even for us."

"Yeah, well, it's something new. You know? People haven't seen it a thousand times." Dean rolled his eyes.

"What were you working on last night?" I asked.

"Well, there's definitely EVP on the cockpit voice recorder. Listen."

He pulled Sam's laptop towards him, yanking the headphones out of the jack and clicking play. A barely discernible scratchy voice hissed from the speakers.

"No survivors!"

"'No survivors'? What's that supposed to mean? There were seven survivors."

"Ya got me."

Sam leant back, nursing his coffee, "So, what are you thinking? A haunted flight? There's a long history of spirits and death omens on planes and ships, like phantom travellers. Or remember flight 401?"

Dean frowned slightly, "Right. The one that crashed, the airline salvaged some of its parts, put it in other planes, then the spirit of the pilot and co-pilot haunted those flights."

Sam nodded, "Maybe we got a similar deal."

"All right," I put my empty mug down on the table, "so, survivors, which one do we want to talk to first?"

"Third on the list: Max Jaffey." Sam said with confidence.

I glanced up at him. "Why him?"

"Well, for one," Sam replied, "he's from around here. And two, if anyone saw anything weird, he did."

"What makes you say that?" Dean asked.

"Well, I spoke to his mother." Sam replied darkly, "And she told me where to find him."

The boys headed to Riverfront Psychiatric Hospital to speak to the witness and dropped me off at Jerry's office. I'd spent enough hours holed up alone in motel rooms that if there was another option available, I took it.

Jerry seemed pleased to see me, nattering away, commenting that I wasn't any more talkative than the last time we'd met and that I really ought to outgrow my shyness, that I was a pretty girl, but boys would never take notice of me if I didn't gain a bit of confidence.

"Given how I can imagine my brothers responding if I were to ever bring home a date," I responded dryly, "I'd better stay quiet!"

The man laughed and left me to my own devices. I don't stay quiet because I'm shy though, I simply prefer to observe rather than influence events unfolding before me. My brothers, and more than a few others, could've assured Jerry that being shy certainly wasn't my problem. I shook my head and turned my attention back to the matter at hand.

I used the time to listen back to the recording again, and the EVP distortion, racking my brains to think what might leave EVP (anything non-corporeal) and what might have motivation to kill a plane load of people. Also, the phrase 'no survivors' was rattling uncomfortably around my mind. People had survived, so the creature's intent had failed. But would it attempt to correct that failure? What had the juice for that?

It wasn't long before I got a call from the boys, saying that the witness had seen a man with black eyes open the escape door. Apparently this man had been the passenger seated in front of the witness; I quickly looked up the passenger and gave the boys his address.

A man, a passenger, perhaps some sort of monster, but the EVP suggested not, so maybe the man was possessed. I used Jerry's computer to access the internet and pull up "Search the Web" looking for possessions that might make the hosts eyes turn black, not to mention give them enough strength to open the emergency door on a plane in the middle of a flight. Around about lunch time I took a break, letting Jerry know where I was going, I headed into the passenger side of the airport to find a decent restaurant, anything that served something other than burger or pizza.

After lunch, a very long lunch, as it had taken nearly an hour for my spaghetti and meatballs to arrive (seriously? How do they expect their customers not to miss their flights when they spend that long preparing food?) I returned to Jerry's office.

I'd had plenty of time to think, and I'd pretty much ruled out ghost possession, I'd never heard of it causing black eyes. Very occasionally there might be a visible symptom of the possession, but it was always something of the possessor, and no ghost I'd ever heard of had black eyes; black goo, sure, if it was a very powerful ghost, (which it would need to be if it was possessing people) but not black eyes.

Which narrowed our non-corporeal suspects down to spirits or demons, there's really too many types of spirit out there, and too little known about them, to say if any of them have black eyes, but demons? I really hope we're not tangling with something that nasty.

I'd been hard at work searching for any references to black-eyed spirits when Jerry came bustling in followed by my brothers, in suits.

I gave a whistle, "Looking mighty fine there boys! Going to the school dance?"

Sam snickered and Dean glared at me, apparently I'd touched a nerve, or, given Sam's laughter, maybe I wasn't the first to make that joke.

Jerry set up a professional looking microscope on his desk; I stepped back out of his way, drifting over to the boys. "So?"

"The guy was a perfectly normal dentist. So we went to check out the plane, hence the monkey suits." Dean was pulling at his collar and grimacing.

I reached up to undo the button Dean was struggling with; it did look like the shirt wasn't a good fit on him, the collar uncomfortably tight. "And what did you find?"

"Got an EMF reading off the emergency door handle, and this," Sam held up a small plastic bag of yellow powder. "Jerry's gonna take a look at it for us, see if we can figure out what it is."

He handed the bag over to Jerry who tapped a little of the substance onto a slide and adjusted the microscope. He peered at it for a moment before passing judgement, "Huh. This stuff is covered in sulphur."

"You're sure?"

"Take a look for yourself." He stepped away from the microscope as a banging sound came from outside the office.

"You effin' piece of crap..." I glanced over my shoulder, watching as a frustrated employee banged his fist against some piece of electrical equipment.

"If you fellows will excuse me, I have an idiot to fire." Jerry left to further ruin the poor guy's day "Hey. Einstein. Yeah, you. What the heck you doing? Put the wrench down—"

Dean stepped around the desk and peered into the microscope, "Hmm. You know; there's not too many things that leave behind a sulphuric residue."

Please don't say- "Demonic possession?"

Dean shrugged, "It would explain how a mortal man would have the strength to open up an emergency hatch."

"If the guy was possessed, it's possible." Sam glanced at me, clearly asking for my input, I scowled.

"I was really hoping it wasn't demons." I muttered.

"This goes way beyond floating over a bed or barfing pea soup. I mean it's one thing to possess a person, but to use them to take down an entire airplane?"

"You ever heard of something like this before?" Sam was still watching me, the resident bookworm.

"Planes? No."

"Never." Dean added.


"So, every religion in every world culture has the concept of demons and demonic possession, right? I mean Christian, Native American, Hindu, you name it." Sam was on his laptop at the table, I stood behind him, re-reading the articles we'd posted up on the wall of the motel room

"Yeah, but none of them describe anything like this." Dean was sitting on one of the beds, a pile of books open in front of his on the other bed.

"Well, that's not exactly true." I explained, "You see according to Japanese beliefs, certain demons are behind certain disasters, both natural and man-made. One causes earthquakes, another causes disease."

"And this one causes plane crashes?" Dean looked pretty incredulous, he rose from the bed and walked towards us "All right, so, what? We have a demon that's evolved with the times and found a way to ratchet up the body count?"

"Yeah. You know, who knows how many planes it's brought down before this one?" Sam reached back and grabbed my hand, placing it on his shoulder. I frowned slightly, but reached out for his pain anyway. It wasn't good for him to continue using my abilities like this, and I had thought we'd made some progress the day before.

Dean snorted, turning away.

"What?" Sam sounded ever so slightly defensive, like he knew better than to ask me to take it away, and was choosing to ask anyway. Dean, however, chose not to address that issue.

"I don't know, man. This isn't our normal gig. I mean, demons, they don't want anything, just death and destruction for its own sake. This is big. And I wish Dad was here."

"Yeah. Me too."

"Me three."

The sombre mood was broken by the ringing of Dean's phone, he pulled it from his pocket, flipping it open and answering, "Hello?"

"Oh, hey, Jerry."

"Wha—Jerry, I'm sorry. What happened?"

"Where'd this happen?"

"I'll try to ignore the irony in that."

"Nothing. Jerry, hang in there, all right? We'll catch up with you soon." he hung up.

"Another crash?" Sam enquired.

"Yeah. Let's go." We moved to grab jackets and I let my hand fall from Sam's shoulder.

"Where?"

Dean stopped and looked at us, "Nazareth."

The plane had hit the ground a few miles outside of Nazareth, and it was pouring a column of black smoke into the sky when we arrived. We'd arrived quickly, but not before the local police had cordoned off the area, the boys grabbed fake IDs and headed out, while I lay down on the back seat out of sight. I didn't envy the boys this part of the job; the smoke smelled heavily of burning fuel and oil, hot metal and burned meat. I could sense no pain from the wreckage, and therefore knew that there were no survivors, but I suspect that the corpses were still in the wreckage. The smell was making me gag.


"Sulphur?" Dean asked as Jerry straightened from looking into the microscope. He nodded; the boys had returned from the wreck with another bag of yellow powder, their clothes reeking of the smoke that coiled its way into the sky.

"Well, that's great. All right, that's two plane crashes involving Chuck Lambert. This demon sounds like it was after him."

I straightened from where I'd been peering at the computer screen over Sam's shoulder, rubbing slightly at my lower back. "With all due respect to Chuck, if that's the case; that would be the good news."

"What's the bad news?"

"Chuck's plane went down exactly forty minutes into flight. And get this, so did flight 2485." Sam explained.

"Forty minutes? What does that mean?" Jerry questioned, looking around at us.

"It's biblical numerology. For example, Noah's ark, it rained for forty days, Jesus fasted for forty days, Moses spent forty years in the desert before being selected to lead the slaves from Egypt. It is the number of the waiting, the preparation, the test or the punishment." I explained, though by the look on the man's face, it didn't really become any clearer to him.

"I went back," Sam clicked through a couple of pages on the screen in front of him, "and there have been six plane crashes over the last decade that all went down exactly forty minutes in."

"Any survivors?" Dean asked.

"No, or not until now, at least, not until flight 2485, for some reason. On the cockpit voice recorder, remember what the EVP Said?"

"'No survivors'." Dean paused, realisation dawning on his face," It's going after all the survivors. It's trying to finish the job."


"Really? Well, thank you for taking our survey, and if you do plan to fly, please don't forget your friends at United Britannia Airlines. Thanks." I hung up, sighing in relief, I hate talking to strangers on the phone. Okay, so maybe I'm a little shy. "All right. That takes care of Blaine Sanderson and Dennis Holloway. They're not flying anytime soon."

"So our only wildcard is the flight attendant Amanda Walker." Sam was ticking the names off a list as Dean drove.

"Right. Her sister Karen said her flight leaves Indianapolis at eight pm. It's her first night back on the job."

"That sounds like just our luck." Dean muttered.

"Dean, this is a five-hour drive, man, even with you behind the wheel." Sam was looking at Dean with wide eyes.

"Call Amanda's mobile again, see if we can't head her off at the pass." Dean commanded.

"I already left her three voice messages." I replied, "She must have turned her mobile off."

"God, we're never gonna make it." Sam stared out of the windscreen, his voice filled with horror.

"We'll make it." Dean pressed down harder on the accelerator and the Impala's engine gave a throaty roar as we sped through the twilight.

The car tyres squealed as Dean threw her around the corners of the parking garage looking for a space, we finally found one and parked, spilling out of the car, Dean raced towards the entrance of the airport.

"Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa!" Sam called, causing Dean to halt and look back at us. "Dean. We're about to walk into an airport?"

Dean looked back, shaking his head, there followed one of the boys' silent conversations before Dean sighed, exasperated and stalked back to the car, opening the boot and divesting himself of his weapons.

"I feel naked."

Sam and I followed Dean's example, smirking slightly at our older brother before locking the car and taking off at high speed towards the airport. We raced through the door marked 'departures', dodging other travellers as we made for the overhead display boards which showed the flight information for all the flights which would be departing soon.

"Right there." Sam pointed up at one of the boards, "They're boarding in thirty minutes."

"Okay. We still have some cards to play. We need to find a phone."

I followed my tall brothers, who could presumably see a phone from up there, because they moved straight towards a pillar, which as we got closer I was able to see had a telephone at eye-level. Dean picked it up.

"Hi. Gate thirteen."

"I'm trying to contact an Amanda Walker. She's a flight attendant on flight, um...flight 4-2-4."

There was a pause as we waited for Amanda to pick up, "Come on."

"Miss Walker. Hi, this is Dr. James Hetfield from St. Francis Memorial Hospital. We have a Karen Walker here."

"Nothing serious, just a minor car accident, but she was injured, so—"

Dean paused. "You what?"

"Uh, well...there must be some mistake."

Sam stepped close to Dean's shoulder, trying to hear what's going on.

"Guilty as charged." Dean was clearly moving to the part where he just wings it and hopes.

"He's really sorry."

"Yes, but...he really needs to see you tonight, so—"

"Don't be like that. Come on. The guy's a mess. Really. It's pathetic." The 'I have no idea what I'm doing' look on Dean's face would have been funny any other time."Oh, yeah."

"No, no. Wait, Amanda. Amanda! Damn it! So close." He hung up the phone and turned to face us.

"All right," said Sam, "it's time for plan B. We're getting on that plane."

Dean's eye's flew wide open and he held out a hand in a 'slow down' motion, "Whoa, whoa, now just hold on a second."

"Dean, that plane is leaving with over a hundred passengers on board, and if we're right," Sam leant in and lowered his voice, trying not to alarm anyone, "that plane is gonna crash."

"I know!" Dean seemed to be seeing the same problem that I'd spotted.

"Okay. So we're getting on the plane, we need to find that demon and exorcise it. I'll get the tickets. You get whatever you can out of the trunk. Whatever that will make it through the security. Meet me back here in five minutes."

Sam moved to leave, but Dean stood frozen, and I stayed with him, concerned by the waves of… so-not-okay-with-this coming off him. It wasn't fear or discomfort, more of a 'nope'. "Are you okay?"

"No, not really." He confessed.

"What? What's wrong?" Sam asked.

"Well, I kind of have this problem with, uh..."

"Flying?"

"It's never really been an issue until now." Dean defended himself.

"You're joking, right?"

"Do I look like I'm joking? Why do you think I drive everywhere, Sam?"

"It's fine," I interjected. "We'll go."

"What?" A flash of alarm crossed Dean's features.

"We'll get this one, you wait here, or come meet us, where's this flight going anyway?"

"What are you, nuts? You said it yourself, the plane's gonna crash." Dean really wasn't calming down any.

"Dean, we can do it together, or we can do this one by ourselves. I'm not seeing a third option, here."

"Come on! Really? Man..."

Half an hour later we were all sat on the plane as it taxied out to the runway. Dean was anxiously reading the flight safety card.

"Just try to relax." Sam murmured from Dean's other side.

"Just try to shut up." Came the terse reply.

The plane accelerated along the runway and with a little swoop in my stomach, we were airborne, Dean gripping the armrests and emitting waves of discomfort, jumping at every little bump and sound. He seemed particularly disturbed by the sound of the wheels being lifted up into the plane. Sam was turning his face away to hide his smirk, and I was having a little trouble hiding my amusement myself; this wasn't funny and Dean wouldn't appreciate us laughing about it. There'd be plenty of time to tease him once we were all safely back on the ground.

We'd been in the air a few minutes Dean had his eyes shut, he was gripping my hand tightly and he was humming to himself. I'd been doing what I could do draw out his distress and calm him down and Sam had pretty much been leaving us to it.

"You're humming Metallica?" Sam asked suddenly

"Calms me down." Wasn't really working, to be honest.

"Look, man, I get you're nervous, all right? But you got to stay focused."

Dean nodded, "Okay."

"I mean," continued Sam, "we got thirty-two minutes and counting to track this thing down, or whoever it's possessing, anyway, and perform a full-on exorcism."

"Yeah, on a crowded plane; that's gonna be easy." Dean's voice was full of all the sarcasm that point deserved, but the panic was fading slightly.

"Just take it one step at a time, all right?" Sam kept his tone business-like, avoiding patronising at all costs, "Now, who is it possessing?"

"It's usually gonna be somebody with some sort of weakness, you know, a chink in the armour that the demon can worm through. Somebody with an addiction or some sort of emotional distress." I flicked my eye's towards Dean as I said it, his distress was so 'loud' I couldn't 'hear' anyone else, I didn't know if they were in distress or not.

"Well," reasoned Sam, "this is Amanda's first flight after the crash. If I were her, I'd be pretty messed up."

Dean hummed agreement, then turned to the flight attendant who was passing us. "Excuse me. Are you Amanda?"

"No, I'm not." The woman replied with a smile.

"Oh, my mistake." Dean still looked shaky and the woman just smiled at him and moved on, continuing with whatever job we'd interrupted her in.

I leant into the aisle, looking around for another flight attendant, there was a woman fussing with a refreshment trolley at the back of the plane, I sat back in my chair and nodded my head in her direction.

Dean nodded, "All right, so I'll go talk to her, and, uh, I'll get a read on her mental state."

"What if she's already possessed?" asked Sam.

"There's ways to test that." Dean replied, digging into his bag and retrieving a flattened plastic water bottle full of water. "I brought holy water."

"No." Sam grabbed the bottle from dean and tucked it into his hoodie pocket. "I think we can go more subtle. If she's possessed, she'll flinch at the name of God."

"Oh. Nice." Dean nodded and stood to go, I pulled my knees up, twisting slightly to get out of his way as he edged passed me.

"Hey." We both turned to look at Sam.

"What?"

"Say it in Latin."

"I know."

Dean edged a little further passed me.

"Okay. Hey!"

"What?!" This had better be important, Sammy. This twisted position was hardly something that could be described as comfortable.

"Uh, in Latin, it's 'Christo'." Seriously, Sam?

"Dude, I know! I'm not an idiot!" Dean made his way to the back of the plane, thumping the back of one of the seats after some mild turbulence makes the plane shudder.

Sam and started a whispered debate while he was gone, we'd each found the Rituale Romanum, the only exorcism endorsed by the Catholic church, in our research, but disagreed on how it ought to be used. I was fairly certain that most of it was flowery and overly verbose, that it could be cut down significantly to the active working parts, Sam preferred to use the whole pretentious thing.

"All right, well, she's got to be the most well-adjusted person on the planet." Dean dropped into the aisle seat, I'd moved over so he would have to climb over me again.

"You said 'Christo'?" Sam asked.

"Yeah."

"And?"

"There's no demon in her. There's no demon getting in her."

"So, if it's on the plane," Sam reasoned, "it can be anyone. Anywhere."

The plane shook uncomfortably, and I found myself reaching for Dean in alarm, not that he was any calmer than me. "Come on! That can't be normal!"

"Hey, hey, it's just a little turbulence." Little? Sammy? A little?

"Sam, this plane is going to crash, okay? So quit treating me like I'm friggin' four."

"You need to calm down." I suspect Sam might have been speaking to both of us, but I appreciate him not drawing attention to the fact that my heartbeat is currently much higher than is normal for a prangeni.

"Well, I'm sorry I can't."

Sam gave me a meaningful look as he spoke to Dean, "Yes, you can."

"Dude, stow the touchy-feely, self-help yoga crap, it's not helping." I focused on my breathing, then my heartrate. It might not be helping Dean, but the 'yoga crap' was working for me.

Sam leant over me, getting right in Dean's face and speaking urgently in a low but commanding tone, "Listen, if you're panicked, you're wide open to demonic possession, so you need to calm yourself down. Right now." Another meaningful look sent my way.

Now that I had a better grip on my own emotions I was able to focus on Dean's, I tugged on his panic and alarm, skimming from the top as the rather spicy forms of pain settled and faded as Dean took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Good. Now, I found an exorcism in here that I think is gonna work. The Rituale Romanum." I scowled at Sam, knowing that with Dean so jumpy we needed to have a solid plan, not an argument, and that Sam had just taken advantage of that to ensure that we would be using the whole exorcism.

"What do we have to do?"

"It's two parts." Sam explained, "The first part expels the demon from the victim's body. It makes it manifest, which actually makes it more powerful."

"More powerful?"

"Yeah." Which is one of the reasons why my edited exorcism would have been a better option…

"How?"

"Well, it doesn't need to possess someone anymore. It can just wreak havoc on its own."

"Oh. And why is that a good thing?" Yes, Sam, please explain…

"Well, because the second part sends the bastard back to hell once and for all." Which my version would have jumped straight to.

"First things first, we got to find it."

Dean pulled out his home made EMF reader and walked to the back of the plane fiddling with it, when he passed us on his journey to the front he was pretty much waving it at people, which no doubt had garnered a few odd looks, but we didn't have time to worry about that now. When Dean had reached the front of the plane Sam and I joined him, Sam clapping a hand on his shoulder and making the poor guy jump.

"Ah! Don't do that." I gave Sammy one of my best scowls, but, as he was facing the other way, it was wasted. I'll have to speak to that boy later.

"Anything?"

"No, nothing. How much time we got?"

"Fifteen minutes. Maybe we missed somebody."

"Maybe the thing's just not on the plane." Dean commented, with hope in his tone.

"You believe that?"

"Well, I will if you will."

Suddenly the lights on the EMF meter lit up and the earbud hanging around Dean's neck start to squeal. A little way in front of us the toilet door swung open and the co-pilot emerged, closing the door behind him and turning to return to the cockpit.

"Christo."

The co-pilot turned slowly to face us, his eyes a pure black. Then he retreated into the cockpit, locking the door behind himself, as per standard procedure.

We looked at each other in alarm before having a furiously whispered debate.

"She's not gonna believe this." Sam groused as we headed to the back of the plane to ask Amanda for her help.

"Twelve minutes, dude." Was Dean's only reply, he was right, we were running out of time.

"Oh, hi." Amanda greeted as we stepped into the… ante-chamber, "Flight's not too bumpy for you, I hope."

"Actually," replied Dean, "that's kind of what we need to talk to you about."

Sam closed the curtain behind us, giving an illusion of privacy and hopefully deadening the sound of the conversation we were about to have.

Amanda looked a little uncertain, "Um, okay. What can I do for you?"

"All right, this is gonna sound nuts, but we just don't have time for the whole "the truth is out there" speech right now."

Sam interrupted, "All right, look, we know you were on flight 2485."

Amanda's smile disappeared, and she glanced between my brothers apprehensively. "Who are you guys?"

Sam ignored her question, "Now, we've spoken to some of the other survivors. We know something brought down that plane and it wasn't a mechanical failure."

"We need your help because we need to stop it from happening again. Here. Now."

"I'm sorry, I—I'm very busy. I have to go back—" She tried to brush past us, towards the seating area but I stepped forward, putting my hands on her shoulders to prevent her from leaving, hopefully I was less threatening than my brothers.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. We're not gonna hurt you, okay? But listen to me, uh..." How do I break this to her? Stuff it, there's no time; band-aid method it is. "The pilot in 2485, Chuck Lambert. He's dead."

"Wait. What?" Amanda asked, "What, Chuck is dead?"

"He died in a plane crash." Dean elaborated, "Now, that's two plane crashes in two months. That doesn't strike you as strange?"

"Look, there was something wrong with 2485." Sam jumped in, "Now maybe you sensed it, maybe you didn't. But there's something wrong with this flight, too."

"Amanda, you have to believe us." I looked at her with mild desperation, if she didn't believe us, if she thought we were crazy…

"On..." She started, hesitantly, "on 2485, there was this man. He...had these eyes."

"Yes!" Sam pounced, "That's exactly what we're talking about."

"I don't understand, what are you asking me to do?"

"Okay. The co-pilot, we need you to bring him back here." Dean stepped into the role of leader for the first time since we'd left the ground.

"Why? What does he have to do with anything?" The woman was clearly utterly baffled.

"Don't have time to explain. We just need to talk to him. Okay?" We would be talking, but the demon in him really wouldn't like what we had to say.

"How am I supposed to go in the cockpit and get the co-pilot—"

"Do whatever it takes." Sam interrupted, "Tell him there's something broken back here, whatever will get him out of that cockpit."

"Do you know that I could lose my job if you—"

"Okay, well you're gonna lose a lot more if you don't help us out." Dean pointed out.

She hesitated, and I held my breath, she might still decide that we were crazy. "Okay." I breathed again. She stepped through the curtain and we moved so that we could watch through the gaps at the edges as she knocked on the door of the cockpit. It opened and the co-pilot appeared, they spoke briefly, though even I couldn't hear what was said over the rest of the noise on the plane, then the co-pilot leant back through the door before closing it behind him and following Amanda back towards us.

Sam pulled out the holy water, Dean pulled out Dad's journal and handed it to me, I stepped into the far corner as I started leafing through the pages looking for the exorcism Sam had decided upon.

The co-pilot stepped through the curtain, "Yeah, what's the problem?" and was immediately punched in the face by Dean. He fell to the floor and Sam and Dean pinned him down, putting duct tape over his mouth.

"Wait!" Cried Amanda, "What are you doing? You said you were just gonna talk to him."

"We are gonna talk to him." Responded Dean, before Sam splashed the demon with holy water which sizzled and burned on his skin.

"Oh, my god. What's wrong with him?"

"Look." I told the flustered air hostess, "We need you calm. We need you outside the curtain."

"Well, I don't underst—I don't know—"

I gripped her shoulders to make her look at me, "Don't let anybody in, okay? Can you do that? Can you do that? Amanda?"

"Okay. Okay." She left, still looking rather alarmed. I rifled through the journal, having lost my page.

"Hurry up, Ali. I don't know how much longer we can hold him."

At last! Here it is; "Regna terrae, cantate Deo, psallite Domino—"

Kingdoms of the earth, sing onto God, sing praises to the Lord… see? Flowery, verbose and excessive.

The demon got an arm free and smacked Dean in the side of the head, knocking him away from it, before ripping the tape from its mouth and turning to Sam and taunting him in a voice that sounded like many evil creatures were all speaking at once.

"I know what happened to your girlfriend! She must have died screaming! Even now, she's burning!"

Dean recovered and held the Demon down again, while Sam appeared stunned, he loosened his grip on the demon and it pulled an arm free, reaching for my ankle where I stood, still reading in the back corner. Before it could do anything more than grab at me, black smoke started pouring from the man's mouth. I paused my reading, watching, hypnotised as the smoke rose up and entered the vent.

"Where'd it go?" Asked Sam, dropping the man's arm

"It's in the plane." answered Dean, "Hurry up! We got to finish it."

I hurriedly looked back at the page I was reading from, but the plane gave a sudden heave upwards before seeming to slam down and then tilting alarmingly into a dive. I was thrown to the floor and the journal slipped from my hand and slid through the curtain and down the aisle beyond. Sam dived after it as the lights failed and Dean was thrown against the door, splaying his arms against it to brace himself in the corner and screaming.

The noise of it! The engines whining as they seemed to push us faster towards the ground, the passengers and Dean screaming, the fear and various small hurts buzzing in the air, and somewhere beyond the curtain Sam's voice shouting in Latin as he finished the exorcism. I lay where I had fallen, not attempting to stand, but simply to hold on and the plane bucked and plunged.

Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. Lightening seemed to crackle across and through the body of the plane, and then it simply levelled out. Dean and I picked ourselves up, reaching for each other in search of comfort to help to slow our racing hearts and the voices of the passengers changed from screams to sobs of relief and questions as to whether people where alright.

Dean and I stepped up to the curtain and opened it to see Sam rising to his feet, hazel eyes wide and clearly still a little high from the adrenaline.

We didn't return to our seats, we just sat ourselves down in the corner, Dean and I still hugging each other and quietly sang Metallica songs for the rest of the flight.

The plane made an emergency landing at the nearest airport; the pilot must have radioed ahead the situation, because paramedics, FBI and other officials were already waiting to greet the shaken passengers and crew.

Sam, Dean and I fended off the paramedic's questions asking if we were all okay, and fortunately the FBI were more interested in talking to the crew than any of the passengers. We stood for a while, watching all the hundred or so people whose lives we'd saved that night. Amanda was a short way off, talking to an FBI agent; she looked up and straight at us, 'thank you' she mouthed, before returning to her interview.

"Let's get out of here."

We turned to leave and I glanced up at Sam, the scent of mental torment was fairly pouring off him, "You okay?"

"It knew," he took a couple of longer paces before turning to face us, "it knew about Jessica."

"Sam, these things," Dean started in his comforting big brother voice, "they, they read minds. They lie. Okay? That's all it was."

Sam looked at the ground, nodding slightly, but still troubled, "Yeah."

"Come on." Dean led the way out of the airport and to the bus station; we were nearly 200 miles away from Baby.

The next day we'd picked up the Impala and where chatting with Jerry, letting him know that the problem was solved and the friendly skies were friendly once more.

"Nobody knows what you guys did, but I do. A lot of people could have been killed." Sam and Dean shook his hand, and I received a brief hug, "Your dad's gonna be real proud."

"We'll see you around, Jerry."

We headed to the car before Dean turned back, "You know, Jerry. I meant to ask you, how did you get my mobile number, anyway? I've only had it for like six months."

"Your dad gave it to me."

We stared at him and Sam was first to regain the power of speech, "What?"

"When did you talk to him?" Dean was a little more articulate.

"I mean, I didn't exactly talk to him, but I called his number." Jerry explained, "His voice message said to give you a call. Thanks again, guys."

Jerry lifted a hand in farewell and walked away, we all looked at each other before silently getting in the car and driving just outside the airport before Dean pulled over and we got out of the car, gathering to lean on the hood.

"This doesn't make any sense." I told them, "I've called Dad's number like fifty times. It's been out of service."

Dean dialled and pressed speaker phone, holding it so Sammy and I could hear too, it went straight to answering machine. "This is John Winchester. I can't be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son, Dean. 785-555-0179. He can help."

Sam took a deep breath through his nose before pursing his lips and stalking back to the car, Dean and I just looked at each other; a little lost. Why can't Dad just talk to us? What's so dangerous that we can't be allowed to know anything about it? Or even where he is?

Dean hangs up, returning the phone to his pocket as he returns to the car and I drift after him.

Is Dad still even alright?