A/N: I hope you can forgive me for it being so long. I've had some real health challenges this year including time in the hospital. I've had to put all my energy toward healing and dealing with the new normal. Anyway, here's the next chapter, it's short, sorry about that. There will be two more chapters, and my goal is to finish by the end of the year. Thanks so much for sticking with me. :)

Chapter 14

When Sam was a kid, he'd had regular kid fears: something hideous in the closet, claws waiting to grab him from under the bed. His dread escalated when he confessed those fears to his dad, only to be handed a .45 and taken out to practice shooting it. That was when he started learning to control the fear, instead of it controlling him. And he certainly wasn't going to show fear in front of dad or Dean. Not when the answer was to teach him to shoot. Why? Were monsters real? He began to pay more attention to low voiced conversations between Dean and dad, trying to overhear something to help him understand. Anything. And on the rare occasions when he caught a word or two it was usually some variation of 'take care of your brother'. It wasn't until much later when Sam even realized the sort of pressure that Dean had been under.

Since they'd started hunting together again Sam was always conscious of being in a position to take care of his brother. Which was why the piece of the puzzle provided by the folklorist was so disconcerting. He had no way to contact Dean without driving back to Lizzie's place, but if he went back without Bobby in tow he was sure to piss Dean off. Sam needed to avoid that in their current state of uneasiness with each other, at just about any cost. Plus, they could definitely use the backup. The older hunter was often the one who knew the esoteric ways to combat the monsters they encountered.

Sam sighed deeply and returned to his keyboard. He wanted to try to find a few more answers so they were as prepared as possible.

Bobby pulled up next to the Impala in the motel parking lot. Good. The car was here. That meant so were the idjits. And he was looking forward to knocking their heads together. He cut the engine and slinging a duffle over his shoulder from the passenger seat he headed for the motel room door.

The door opened before he could knock.

"Hey, Bobby."

"Sam."

Sam swung the door wide and stepped back as Bobby entered and tossed his duffle on the nearest bed.

Bobby took a long look around the room. "Where's your brother?"

"Um, yeah, about that," Sam shut the door, turning to face the older hunter.

"Didja lose him again?"

"No, he's, uh, he stayed out at Lizzie's to wait for us." Sam made a mental grimace at how lame it sounded. As if he could have changed Dean's mind.

Bobby kicked one of the chairs out from under the rickety table and sat. He waited for Sam to settle across from him before he continued. "Who's Lizzie?"

"She's, ah, she lives out there and she helped Dean when he was lost. She's been helping us figure this thing out. It's skin walkers, Bobby, but different. She called them use magic as well as shape shift." Sam pulled his laptop around from the corner of the table and typed quickly. Then he turned it around for Bobby to see the email he'd received from the local folklorist. "And I was doing some research and I contacted a guy who runs a website with all the local ghost stories. He sent me this."

Bobby squinted slightly at the screen as he read through several paragraphs, his face darkening with a glower.

"And these." Sam slid the laptop back to him so he could pull up the files attached to the email then turned it back so Bobby could read the newspaper clippings and photographs. "So if the guy from the website is right, he's traced these disappearances back almost a hundred years. And it doesn't have anything to do with the highway at all."

"Yeah, I've heard about these things. There's a ranch north of here with a lot of stories." Bobby stood and went to dig in his duffle. He pulled out an old, worn book and resettled at the table, opening the book and flipping through the pages. "There is history between two of the tribes here before the settlers came. Navajo and Ute."

"Lizzie is Navajo," Sam interjected softly.

"The story is that they cursed each other and the land," Bobby continued. "So it's been going on for generations."

Sam mused over that for a moment. "Lizzie's grandmother told us a legend about the Hero Twins. You got anything about them in your book there? I was able to find a little about it online, pretty much what her grandmother told us. She said Dean and I were here to continue their work."

Bobby gave Sam a long look and finally said, "Well, I guess we better figure out how to kill these things then."

888

"Well, that's just fucking awesome. Dean thought bitterly. "You gotta stay quiet," and he didn't regret his low, menacing tone. The fucking hippie chick was going to get them all killed. Or worse.

"Rainbow didn't respond directly. He hadn't expected her to. But she did pull her face away from Tree's side to wipe it with her sleeve and squelched her sobs to deep whimpers that wracked her small frame.

"Look, we're dealing with some bad mo-fos here and we need to help each other if we're going to get out. Okay?" Lizzie's tone was more conciliatory, with a hint of cajoling.

Rainbow gulped a whimper down and nodded. Then she dropped her grip on Tree and only held his hand while straightening her shoulders and dashing a sleeve across her wet face again.

"We must be close to an exit," Dean said now that Rainbow was quieted. "Bats won't come too far into a cave."

He pulled his own lighter from a pocket, struck it and held the flame up watching to see if it flickered. He was hoping there would be a draft, a breeze, something to indicate where that exit might be. He watched it for a moment as it flickered back and forth occasionally, then started to head the way the flame indicated. "Let's roll."

"The cavern began to widen, the ground becoming more even and the walls showing evidence of being worked. They spread out a little, and Lizzie strode up to walk on Dean's left side. She pointed the flashlight ahead of them revealing that in a few yards a narrow track of cart railway stretched into the dark. A couple of decaying mine carts sat haphazardly across the rails, one upright, one on its side. Timber supports ran up along the walls of the tunnel, holding thick crossbeams aloft against the ceiling.

Lizzie stepped ahead to squeeze around the carts, but Dean grabbed her arm, stopping them both. "You hear that?"

They both listened intently, heads moving to better catch the sound.

"Oh shit." Lizzie whispered. "For real? Little kids?"

"A couple disappeared with their parents about a week ago." Dean told her and started forward, squeezing past the downed carts, lighter ahead of him, checking the walls on either side for an opening.

"What's up?" Tree came up behind them, Rainbow still clutching his arm.

Lizzie turned and pointed toward Dean who was already yards ahead of them, "sounds like some kids."

The muffled crying sound was louder now to the left. Up ahead it seemed, not exactly lighter, just not as dark. Dean took it as a good sign, since he could make out shapes and a reddish glow coming from a doorway. He stood at the thresh hold looking for the source of the light. It was an emergency light , set low on the wall. He extinguished his lighter and pocketed it.

"Over here." he called back softly over his shoulder to Lizzie and the others.

He entered the small room, observing lockers set against the back wall and some loose tools piled at one end. And cowering against the wall at the other end, a small boy and girl. Maybe six and eight years old. He swallowed hard at the anger and resolve rising from his gut. Anybody who messed with kids...well, only his most righteous anger was reserved for them. They were tightly tied with coarse thick rope wrapped several times around their torsos and their tiny wrists and ankles. Growling under his breath Dean grabbed the lock back knife from back pocket and hurried to kneel before them, saying gently, "hey, lets get you guys out of here, okay?"

He made short work of the ropes at their wrists, but Lizzie's arrival with the flashlight allowed him to work more quickly to get them free.

"Oh my god..." Lizzie whispered behind him.
"Yeah," he said, voice hard. "We gotta get them out of here. Where're the others?"

"Right here," Tree came up beside him and scooped up the newly freed girl handing her off to Rainbow who shifted the little girl to her hip. Then he lifted up the boy, stroking his hair saying, "it's all right, buddy, we're gonna get you outta here."

Following Rainbow and tree back toward the tunnel Dean stopped when he saw Lizzie picking through the pile of tools. She finally selected a heavy, long handled pipe wrench with a missing jaw and hefted it experimentally. Seeing him watching her, she grinned, "I shoulda been a boy scout."

"I think you have the right idea." Dean replied and began sifting through the tools for a weapon as well. He quickly found axe handle with the head broken off.

His lighter in one hand and the axe handle in the other Dean led Lizzie back into the main tunnel. He stepped ahead of Tree and Rainbow, glad that they were taking care of the kids and keeping them calm. Lizzie was a half stride behind him holding his flashlight on the somewhat uneven ground ahead of them. But illuminating their path didn't matter as they reached an intersection of two tunnels and the one on the left was full of light.

Dean held an arm out to stop his companions and moved to hug the wall at the corner. He silently surveyed the tunnel ahead, ready to swing his head back behind the corner at any sign of movement.

Campfire up ahead. The tunnel widens out, and looks like the entrance to the mine." he whispered to Lizzie who was tucked against the wall behind him. He saw her turn and whisper to Tree who nodded and bent to whisper into Rainbow's ear.

Lizzie turned back and whispered to him. "So what do you want to do?"

He rolled his lower lip over his teeth and thought for a moment, peering back around the corner. "Can't tell if anyone is..." His whisper faded out as he caught a whiff of something. Something horrible. Something telling. A scent he was all to familiar with: death.

Lizzie grabbed his arm, pulling him back from the corner. "You smell that?"

"Yeah."

"Stay here. I'm gonna recon."

He shook his head 'no' but she'd already turned off the light and hit the deck, quickly turning the corner on elbows and knees. He tried to grab her but had to close and pocket his lighter and in that second she was already a few feet from the corner in the shadow of a mine cart.

Dean tried to kneel but his left leg wasn't having any of it, so he bent as low as he could and peered around the corner to keep an eye on Lizzie. She was even further up the tunnel crouching behind the lump of a section of fallen ceiling. She was half turned to him and gave him hand signals that meant she could see two people. But even as she conveyed that, a dark figure walked into the other end of the tunnel, silhouetted by the fire.

"What are you doing here?" The deep voice boomed out of the darkness.

Dean ducked back behind the corner, turning to put his back against the wall. He gripped the axe handle so tightly his right hand began to cramp and he purposefully tried to relax it. Turning to look at Tree and Rainbow he raised a finger to his lips then motioned for them to back up. One of the children whimpered but it was quickly stifled by what he knew was an adult hand. The couple moved back along the wall, silent except for the occasional soft scrape of a shoe against rock.

The silence thickened, freezing them all for a moment. Then there were some scraping noises and knowing it was Lizzie giving them away Dean turned the corner and began to walk up behind where she now stood. After a few steps he stopped, stunned at what he was seeing at the mouth of the tunnel.

The dark figure developed a red glow stitched with crackling blue static electricity. It stretched then hunched over going down on all fours. It stretched and grew and writhed with the reddish glow, and the sound of bones cracking and flesh tearing reached their ears. Dean recognized the sounds and hurried to join Lizzie, grabbing her arm and trying to pull her back. But she stood still and resisted being moved, her eyes locked on the strange, morphing figure.

A grunting, barking sound rose over the sound of a body reconfiguring and a huge black dog with glowing red eyes threw its head back and screamed a blood-curdling howl.