Chapter 8

Beneath the two men, the stairs groaned at them. Sam was the first to mount the landing and made his way to the room identified as John's by Kathleen. Dean stepped in behind Sam and cast his eyes around the room. It was a typical college boy's room, hardly used and unchanged from high school. The only items that looked semi-new were the laptop sitting on the desk, and a glossy photo in a frame that sat next to it.

Dean watched Sam go to the desk and gather the photo in his hands. The frame was black plastic with smoothed edges and corners. The two people in the photo smiled back at the Winchester brothers. One was John, the other was about the same age with grey eyes and dark hair.

"Kacey." Sam whispered.

"Who?" Dean questioned.

"Kacey. He's the one that the demon was disguised as." Sam replied.

"Him?" Dean questioned, pointing to the dark-haired man in the picture for confirmation.

"Yeah."

Sam replaced the photo and led the way out of the room and down the hall to where the study stood nestled in the far corner away from the main bedrooms. The crime scene had been cleared up and everything was more or less back in order. Sam stepped beyond the door and made his way directly to the bookcase that was against the wall behind the desk. He pulled the chair up and stepped onto the seat so he could easily reach the fourth shelf.

Halfway down it, he began fingering the underside of the shelving for something that Dean wasn't sure about. Apparently he found it though, because there was a satisfied smile that sprung to the younger man's lips as he gently pulled the bottom of the shelf half off to allow a thin notebook to fall gracefully into his hands. He grabbed the coiled binding tightly, replaced the drawer and hopped off of the chair, dusting away his footprints when he landed.

"What's that?" Dean asked, eyeing the book suspiciously.

"I think it's the answer to identifying this demon." Sam replied and sat the book down on the desktop. He pulled back the front cover, and quickly scribbled handwriting greeted them, along with crude diagrams of the demon that Sam had been seeing.

"How come he has all this information on this demon thing?" Dean questioned.

"He'd been communicating with it in his dreams. He was trying to find out everything about it because the communication felt suspicious. It was like the demon was plotting against him, which apparently it was." Sam answered without looking up.

"Your psychic instincts tell ya that too?" Dean asked curiously.

"No. Well, yes, but its here in the book. Take a look." Sam smiled and slid the book to Dean.

Dean shot Sam a teasing glance, and then turned his attention to the pages. Sure enough, as Sam had said, there were statistics about the demon and the abilities that it possessed. The diagrams semi-depicted what Dean had seen the previous night in the window of the motel, right down to the green pinpoint in the centre of the pale eyes.

No name was given, but the demon was described as being Saenu-like because of the possession of psychic abilities and control over those whom it wished. Other than that, however, the species wasn't named. The book described it as 'new,' possibly a 'hybrid' of two or more demons. How that would work, Dean hadn't the foggiest idea, but at the moment it was a possibility that he wasn't willing to discard.

Dean thumbed through the rest of the book and found nothing else, besides a few blank pages, so he tore the pages with the writing on them out, folded them, and settled them in his jacket pocket. Sam didn't object. He merely re-closed the book, making sure that all loose papers were removed and replaced the notebook in the drawer, which he closed soundlessly and stepped down onto the floor again.

"Ready?" Dean asked.

Sam nodded and followed the older man out of the study and into the upstairs hallway. From there, they crossed the hardwood floor to the stairwell and quietly made their way back to the main floor where Kathleen was waiting for them. She smiled softly and held up two mugs of coffee. The brother's accepted them with sincere thanks.

"Come into the kitchen. Another of John's friends is in there and I'm sure you'd like to meet him." Kathleen replied and made her way into the mentioned room. Sam and Dean followed, holding the steaming mugs in their hands.

The atmosphere in the kitchen was decidedly less depressing than that of the upstairs rooms or the living room. Groups of people were gathered in different sections of the large room laughing and joking, yet the pain still showed in their eyes. They were merely pushing it aside for the sake of the family. Dean's tense mood was slightly lifted by the positive emotions in the air and he sipped at his coffee in a satisfied manner.

Near the centre island, Kaylee was laughing at something a young, dark-haired man had said. The man took her glass, went to the water tap, refilled it and came back to her. He was turned back-to the Winchesters. They could not see his face.

"Kacey!" Kathleen replied with a smile. The faces of the brothers blanked and they cast each other a silent glance.

The dark-haired man turned at his name and his grey eyes swept the kitchen for the voice.

"Mrs. Dayton, what can I do for ya?" The man questioned. His voice was silkily smooth, yet it sounded as though it hid a secret so vast that it had the potential to change the world, and he was the only one who knew that secret.

"Come meet a couple of John's friends. Well, maybe you've already met, I wouldn't know. This is Michael and Jacob." Kathleen replied with a gentle smile.

The young man, identified as Kacey, came over to them with a sly smile resting on his lips. He locked eyes with Sam, then Dean, and held his hand out in greeting, first to Dean.

"Kacey Hunt. I think I may have seen you two around with John a couple of times at school." The young man replied with that unpredictable tone.

"Likely, yeah." Dean replied and shook hands with Kacey. The older brother's face switched from calm to tense as the handshake continued. Dean was the first to break it off with a startled glint in his eyes.

From next to Dean, Sam wavered a bit and winced. The coffee cup in the younger man's hand trembled. Kacey took Sam's hand into his own and shook it kindly, but harshly. The youngest brother's face paled to almost a shade darker than crisp white and lines of discomfort etched their way into his forehead and around his eyes.

The mug fell from Sam's hand and shattered on the floor, sending the coffee spilling across the white linoleum. Sam brought the now empty hand up to paw at his forehead as groundbreaking pain exploded from within it. He yelled out a bit and hit the floor on his knees. Dean's eyes widened and he grabbed the younger man with protective hands.

A smile rested on Kacey's lips as he locked eyes with Sam, but the smile was soon replaced by a look of disguising shock, when guests began to gather around the fallen man. Still, Kacey's eyes glittered threateningly.

"Michael? Are you okay?" Kacey questioned to cover for himself. He reached out and laid a hand on Sam's shoulder before Dean could stop it and Sam yelled out again.

Dean shoved Kacey's hand away and held Sam tightly as the man began to convulse. The man who was supposed to have been John's friend's eyes paled, and a green speck shone in them, but the only person that seemed to notice was Dean. Kacey's eyes almost immediately returned to their natural grey and his face still looked shocked.

There were noises around them, but Dean wasn't paying attention to what they were saying. He held his shaking brother close against him as much to protect him from the demon as to protect him from harming himself as he trembled violently. Sam's face was clouded with a look of clear pain and his eyes watered with unshed tears.

Kacey cast a glance to Dean.

"North Serenity nature park." Then Kacey glanced back at Sam, glared and got to his feet.

"I don't know what's wrong with him." Kacey replied to those in the area.

A man pushed his way through the crowd and dropped next to Sam. Dean attempted to push him away, afraid for his little brother's safety, but the man held up his hands.

"Let me help, I'm a doctor." The man replied. Dean reluctantly nodded, but refused to leave Sam's side.

"Is he epileptic?" The doctor asked Dean.

"No." Dean answered quickly.

"Kacey, call an ambulance." The man replied, calmly.

Kacey nodded and accepted a phone that was being offered to him. He quickly dialed the number and went about the call as though he were truly a concerned by-stander. Dean didn't miss the glint in Kacey's eyes though, a glint that was clearly not human. Sam went limp in Dean's protective hold and the man that had identified himself as a doctor, checked for a pulse.