I claim what's mine and disclaim the rest. If you're reading this you can probably tell the one from the other.

Sorry about the wait. Chapter 6 gave me no end of trouble.

Thanks to all of my reviewers. If you sent a signed review, I think you got a reply. If you didn't, it was an omission that I will endeavor to rectify.

Ophelia has returned as my beta, and all is right with the universe. You people don't know how good you have it that I'm not posting my first drafts, and that so talented a hand is sculpting, Michelangelo-like, a presentable work from the rough-hewn blocks of text I send her. Ophelia, you rock so hard it is measurable on the Richter scale.

Chapter 6: Of Hunters and Killers

The boy didn't understand, Ansius realized as he worked his way through Dean's mind. As much as he knew of the evils of the world, he lacked insight about his brother's place in it.

There was an order to the material world. Relativity defined the movements of the stars and galaxies, the orbits of planets and moons. Quantum mechanics governed the interactions of infinitesimal particles. Chemistry explained fire and water and stone and metal and biology explained life itself. The universe and everything in it was measurable in four dimensions; length, depth, width, and time. It was knowable, real, and solid.

A gap existed that separated the material universe of Einstein and Hawking from the other universe, in which resided potentiality in its purest form, the undiluted quanta of existence undefined by natural law.

That gap was the in-between place, from which all demons came and to which all paranormal things were in some way attached. It was an infinite span of various planes of existence. If reality was fluid like water in the beyond, it was frozen like polar ice in the material world. The in-between place was then the ring of broken glaciers and ice-floes that separated the ocean from the pole.

In most places, the curtains that separated the in-between place from materiality were drawn tight and could not be traversed, but there existed weaknesses. Sometimes these weaknesses were tied to a material place, perhaps because of some flaw in the fabric of existence. Sometimes humans themselves imprinted their subconscious fears, hopes, and dreams on the nature of a place or time or thing, weakening reality around those loci.

Some sentient beings were born with a psychic gift to see beyond reality. They did not possess this power, Ansius believed, because they could see through the curtains separating the worlds. Rather, they possessed this power because around them the curtains simply did not exist, or were at least threadbare and thin. They did not merely attract demons and the paranormal: their very presence allowed these unnatural things entrance to the material realm.

Only certain creatures could pierce the veil even where the curtain was weak and frayed. Those that could were almost universally evil, for to exist in the material world required sentient acceptance of that existence. That acceptance did not need to be conscious, and it usually wasn't. In the subconscious, where humans suppressed their evil drives and inner fears, demons found their ingress.

Of all the beings of this halfway world, Ansius knew of only a few who had once been human. As the ineffable potential of his consciousness (his soul) departed the material world for the beyond at his mortal death, it had become trapped in the in-between place. There it had taken new form in his old shape, and he had discovered his powers.

His plane was a bleak eternity of smoldering churches and basalt mountains lit by dying fires that never quite went out. He had spent hundreds of years here, battling armies of his own creation, for simulated killing let him taste simulated revenge. He was warped and twisted into the creature he was now in those early years after his death. Every once in a while he summoned up the strength to burst through a weak spot in the veil and enact his revenge upon the monsters and human psychics living in the material world. He sometimes killed even non-psychic humans for sport on these ethereal jaunts, so much had he learned to crave real violence.

One day he had felt his power ebbing, being drawn away from him somehow. He investigated, and was enraged by what he found. Veneration of his mortal remains had imbued a relic with the ability to transfer small portions of his power into willing human supplicants. It took him quite a long time to gather the strength to jump across to the material world, but when he did, he took no chances. First he recovered all of the rest of his bones, easily found in the catacombs where they had been placed after his absurd beatification, so that no other relic could be made. Then he went after the monks hiding the relic.

The monks divulged nothing, refusing to lead him to the relic, so he killed them all and burned down their monastery. As he did, he reclaimed the power each monk had taken. His failure to obtain the relic had haunted him until the present day, when it had been rediscovered and he had felt his power draining away again. This time, though, the relic was put on display, and he had recovered it easily.

That brought him back to the hunters, who were his way out of an undying existence beyond the veil. Using the relic, he was gaining control of Dean's mind. The boy was resisting, but it would not be long before he gave in. He would be made to understand, Ansius promised himself.

Soon Dean Winchester would recognize that his brother had to die.

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Sam didn't tell the monks what he now knew: that the Saint they worshipped was the very demon they feared. Instead he told them all to leave Boston, to flee to their respective homes, so that they would be harder to track if Sam and Dean failed to kill the demon. It was a futile gesture, Sam knew, but there was nothing else to do.

Just like there was nothing else to do right now. Sam absently sharpened a dagger (because, well, Dean wasn't there to do it) as he waited for the inevitable vision that would lead him to his brother. He would not find Ansius until the demon wanted to be found. What's more, Sam knew what he would probably have to do. He tried very hard not to think about it.

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Hours passed as the demon explored Dean's mind. Like a tactician, Ansius needed to know the battlefield. This boy would not be easily turned.

He took stock of every memory that might be of use to him, every repressed feeling, every forgotten slight, every bit of ill-intent Dean harbored for his brother. The demon quickly realized that it was not nearly enough. He could not overwhelm Dean's love for Sam with something so simple as anger or hatred. Unlike many demons, it was not in his power to magnify emotions: only to make them felt by tearing down the walls that suppressed them.

Thus, he would have to subvert Dean's emotions. Somehow, he would have to convince Dean that his brother needed to die for his own sake. It would be a challenge, but then, it would also fit Ansius' needs far better as well. The greater the similarity between Dean's sin and his own, the easier the boy would be to possess.

First, he would have to make Dean believe that Sam was responsible for their mother's death. This was far easier than it seemed like it would be. Dean had simply refused to think about the possibility, and so had little defense against the release of his own subconscious suspicions. As Ansius had already shut off the boy's rationality, or at least impaired it, when Dean awoke, he would find it hard to come to any other conclusion.

Next, Ansius summoned up every memory Dean had of Sam in pain, physical, psychological, or otherwise. In particular, he wanted Dean to see the pain that Sam's visions and nightmares caused him. He wanted Dean to feel all the guilt that he had neglected to deal with, to acknowledge all the pain he knew his brother was in. Ansius wanted Dean to think that Sam's pain was virtually unbearable; that death would be a release.

Finally, the coup de grace. It was not difficult at all to twist Dean's memory of every guilty look he'd ever seen on Sam's face, every attempt at accepting responsibility for their mother's death, for Jess's, into a coherent picture of a person irredeemably broken but unable to let go. Ansius showed Dean a Sam that wanted to die, but lived only for fear of the effects of his death on his brother. Dean would feel guilty that Sam was alive at all.

Motivation developed and players determined, now it was only a matter of setting. A church, Ansius thought, would be appropriate. There was one in Boston where the veils were particularly weak due to several exorcisms and at least one haunting. In a blink they were there, Ansius standing at the altar over Dean's unconscious body.

Now to summon the brother. Ansius reached out with his mind and found the young psychic alone in his hotel room. It was a simple matter to show him enough to lead him to the church.

All that remained was to wait.

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Dean awoke in an oak-walled church with vaulted ceilings and square pillars. He felt surprisingly fresh, despite his recent unconsciousness. He sat up just as a voice called to him from the narthex.

"Dean? Dean are you okay?" Sam's voice was nervous, as though he suspected what was coming. Dean stood to face his brother.

"Yes Sam, I'm okay. But you aren't. And you haven't been for a long time."

End Chapter 6