I won't make you wait any longer :)

A/N- in this story Natalie is 20. Please see profile page for disclaimers. Warnings for graphic depiction of violence.

Part 3

"No, no, no, no, no…" Natalie whispered, spinning around and around, looking for something, anything, to tell her that her assessment was wrong. But there was nothing- because she wasn't wrong. Sam and Dean were gone.

She felt her lungs tighten as she started to hyperventilate again. "No," she growled to herself, balling her hands into tight fists, squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth. She forced the muscles in her chest to relax and regulate her breathing, stuffing down the rising panic with everything she had in her. Her brain wildly fought against her, trying to seize her muscles up and send them all into overdrive. She didn't know if she could do this. For a moment, she wasn't sure which one was going to win- her brain or her stubbornness. She demanded that her brain focus on the sound of the air going in and out of her lungs, fighting her own mind with everything she had in her. She couldn't lose it now. Not fucking now.

Once her breathing regulated, her eyes snapped open. She had to find them. Had to find her dad and her uncle. Her teeth were grinding so hard together she thought they might shatter. Where was that calm, cool murder machine she had been a moment ago now? When she really needed it? Where the hell had that come from anyways? As her brain tried to spin out again, distracting her from the horror of the situation, she reached up and slapped herself hard across the cheek.

"C'MON Winchester, get your head out of your ass," she hissed to herself. "Get it together!" She slapped her stinging cheek again- even though it hurt, it was helping her to focus. "C'mon, c'mon," she growled, and followed it with one more slap. Her brain submitted enough to focus on the fact that she had a job to do. And that job was to get her dad and uncle back. Alright. Back on track. What did a hunter do in this situation?

Her head snapped side to side, looking for clues. The toppled boxes were about ten yards from a set of double doors. It was the most convenient exit from the room based off the last place she knew her father and uncle had been. Reloading as she went, she burst through the doors, ready to kill.

Even though the windows of the warehouse were beyond filthy, it was still around ten in the morning. Enough light pushed through the grime that she could see the empty hallway clearly. Her head whipped side to side, looking to the left and the right, trying to determine which way they had gone. There was only a jumble of footprints in the thick dust on the ground. The monsters had all been barefoot, and their humanoid forms were close enough to resemble regular footprints. No boot prints. No discarded boots. There were no dragging marks either. Which meant Sam and Dean had been carried out by the monsters.

Natalie bit her tongue as she thought hard. It would take a hell of a lot of strength to carry one of the Winchester brothers, especially if they were conscious. These things- what were they, anyway?- were superhumanly strong. What else could she figure out about them? How many were there? She started counting. She had dropped eleven creatures back in the room, and she knew Sam and Dean had dropped about four or five between them earlier. That accounted for all of the beasts that had attacked them initially. More had to have appeared from somewhere- which also meant there were even more in the warehouse than they previously thought. Son of a BITCH, Natalie thought to herself, not wanting to make any noise and potentially alert the creatures to her presence when she was the only hope of saving Sam and Dean.

Forcing herself to focus again, Natalie carefully scanned every inch of the hallway. If Dean was conscious, even for a moment, he would have left her something, some indicator about which way they were being taken. Just as she had that thought, a tiny glint of something caught her eye down the hallway to her left. Keeping her back to the wall and moving as silently as she could, she narrowed in on the object. She almost laughed out loud in relief, but stifled the sound at the last nanosecond. It was one of Dean's throwing stars. He had wanted to use them in the last vamp hunt, but Sam said no. He must have tucked them into a pocket- just in case. And he dropped and left one for her.

Shaking her head and unable to stop the ridiculous grin from spreading across her face, she stooped to pick it up. No sense in leaving a perfectly good weapon for these bastards to find. She tucked it away, her resolve growing that she would hand it back to Dean herself. She felt so much better- he was alive, he was conscious enough to leave her a sign. That meant that he wasn't to be counted out just yet. Just as this comforting thought settled, she saw something else that completely obliterated it.

Blood. It was a small pool of blood, about ten feet from where the throwing star had been. Her heart dropped into her shoes as she took in the ruby red color. Definitely human blood, not the blackish, reeking blood of these monsters. There was another throwing star tossed next to the puddle- this one tinted in red. The monsters had used it to cut one of the brothers and tossed it to the side. There was a slight trail of blood droplets continuing down the hallway. After about fifteen feet, another small pool of blood and a second trail was added. So they had cut both Sam and Dean. Small comfort that it was obvious the monsters had both of them together; they were still captured and bleeding.

Natalie took one step in the direction of the trail, determined to follow it till she found them, but her gut instincts suddenly screamed at her to stop. She froze in place, unsure of what her mind was trying to tell her. Dean had pounded it into her since day one- always trust your gut instincts. A thousand warning bells had gone off in her head, but for the life of her, she couldn't figure out why. She hadn't heard anything, she hadn't seen anything except the new blood splatters, and nothing different or unusual was permeating the stench. There was nothing except this trail.

That's what it was. It was too obvious.

Natalie's mind started piecing things together. The way Tyler disappeared last night. The monsters attempts to stitch and fix their own clothing. The fact that they pointed at her as if they knew her, as if they knew the family connection between her and the brothers. A deliberate trail for her to follow.

These monsters were a lot smarter than she originally thought. They were calculating. They were strategizing. They knew what they were doing. This was a ploy to get to her. To take the whole family. And these creatures were cannibalistic. They apparently liked to play with their food before they ate it.

That made her blood run cold. Then turn to fire. Not today, motherfuckers, she thought with a snarl as she rapidly came up with her game plan. Not today.

*SPN SPN SPN*

Dean aggressively bit down on the gag again as best he could, trying to loosen it. These fuckers had shoved it so far back in between his lips it was making the corners of his mouth hurt. The knot tied at the back of his skull to keep the gag in place was crude, but effective. At least, if it was as sloppily done as Sam's, it was crude- he obviously couldn't see behind his own freaking head, but he had watched them tie Sam's. Their motor skills left something to be desired, but it was clear these…whatever the fuck they were…were smarter than they thought. And holy fuck were they strong. No matter how hard he struggled, they hadn't loosened their grip an inch.

One of the bastards that had been carrying Dean heard the Chinese star drop to the ground from where he had managed to shimmy it out of his pocket, trying to leave something, anything, for Natalie to follow. The monster had shrieked to the group leader, who spun around and lumbered his way back to them, picking up the star and deliberately slashing Dean's arm with it. He had only let out the tiniest grunt of pain at the cut. He wasn't going to show any weakness to these bastards. Then the two monsters that were carrying him like a field deer suddenly flipped him so he was dripping blood down the hallway as they continued walking.

It had suddenly occurred to him that the monsters had deliberately blooded him. They cut him to leave a trail. This was confirmed in another second by them doing the same to Sam, and moving so they were next to each other, leaving side by side crimson trails. After about five minutes, they pushed into a wide open room, filled with hundreds upon hundreds of large cardboard boxes. Dean wildly wondered to himself if these monsters hadn't overrun an Amazon warehouse or something.

One of the monsters tossed him into a chair behind a table. From the furniture in the room, Dean guessed it had been some sort of meeting room or something, but the dilapidated state of everything made him surprised the chair even held him. The other chairs in the room had been turned over, seat padding slashed, and there was dried blood everywhere. Dean felt himself getting enraged as he realized that Tyler and Mitch had never made it this far into the warehouse. This blood was from other victims.

The monsters tied his wrists down to the arms of the chair. Dean certainly wasn't going to give any indication to them in the moment, but these knots weren't nearly as tight as the one keeping his gag in place. They were also using the same strips of tough cloth as the gag, but not rope. In fact, the moment the bastards walked away, he could slip out of them in no time.

Dean turned his head to the right, watching Sam get the same treatment. He saw the moment Sam came to the same conclusion about their confinement. However, once the creatures moved behind the stack of boxes, Dean began to twist his right hand free. Sam had just given a grunt of warning when Dean suddenly felt claw marks rake down his left cheek. The blood flowed from the three cuts, down his neck. The surprise of it made him roar in pain this time, and he whipped his head around to give the monster The Eye. The monster bared his rotting black fangs and snapped them once, just close enough to make Dean lean back a fraction of an inch, as another monster retied his restraints.

Dean and Sam locked eyes, having one of their silent conversations. Sam made a hand gesture, indicating that there were at least seven in the room with them, before another monster saw and roared in rage, swiping its claws down the back of Sam's hand. Sam balled his bleeding fist up, fixing them with his best bitch face, before the monsters stalked away to hide again.

Dean chewed furiously on the gag, but whatever cloth they were using was thick and tough. No way to chew through it. He focused on the situation as he was always barking at his daughter to do. He pulled up Natalie's steely, determined gaze in his mind and focused on that. She would see it. She had to see that this was a trap. She was smart and she knew what to do. She wouldn't run headlong into danger. Mitch had been so blinded by his grief and anger that he hadn't realized he was playing exactly into the monsters' clawed hands by avenging Tyler's death. When Natalie had been younger, she would often let her anger get the best of her, just as Mitch had. Dean knew she was better now. She could get past it. He deliberately pushed the memory of her heartbreak and illness at seeing Tyler just a couple hours ago out of his mind. He had looked into her eyes and knew that she knew what was at stake. She could do this. She would survive. And that was all that mattered.

Dean forced himself to take a deep breath, shoving his panic about his daughter down. She could definitely take these bastards on. In fact, he'd never seen her so laser focused before. That moment when the horde turned on her still made his lungs turn to ice just thinking about it, but then…what the hell had happened? He knew she was good- she was a Winchester and he had trained her himself, for fuck's sake- but it was like his baby angel had been replaced by a freaking Terminator. He'd seen her in action and she was always solid, but this time was different. It was like she had finally become her favorite Avenger, Black Widow, and was just a calm and cool- and absolutely ruthless- assassin.

It was in that melee when she was effortlessly dispatching monsters that the fuckers had gotten the jump on him and Sam. He hadn't even seen them coming. They were just suddenly there, three on each brother, getting their arms around them and wrestling them towards that door. Sam managed to get free for a second and blast one of them in the chest, causing him to topple backwards onto a pile of boxes before two more came out to take its place and recapture him. Where had they all come from? How many were actually here?

Dean could hear them grunting and growling at each other. He wondered if it wasn't some primitive communication or language, because they certainly seemed to understand each other. What the fuck WERE these things?!

His eyes kept inadvertently darting over to the door they'd been drug through, praying that Natalie wouldn't take the bait and follow them directly into the trap. He watched as the monsters deliberately positioned themselves around the main door, hiding behind the boxes and waiting, watching for that door to swing wide open. He took a quick inventory of what he still had on him. The monsters had taken his other throwing stars- dammit- and his pearl handled .45 in the process. He still had a knife tucked into his boot, but there was no way that he could get to it right now without attracting the monsters' attention in enough time for them to come over and take it. He had a lighter, a couple full clips, his lock pick kit…and that was it. He could almost hear his dad's voice in his head, berating him for not carrying more, but how the hell was he supposed to carry an entire arsenal when he'd been thrust into a battle he'd tried to stay away from? Dammit, Mitch, he thought angrily to himself. He shook his head and tried to think of another tactic.

Just then Sam let out a small cough. One monster turned his head to look, but seeing nothing out of the ordinary, turned his attention once again to the door. When Sam deliberately coughed again, Dean knew something was up, but didn't want to give the bastards any other indication of that. After another moment, Dean heard Sam slightly shift in his chair, then felt a gentle tug on the bond securing his right wrist to the chair. Still hearing his father's voice inside his head telling him to stay perfectly still and not attract any attention, he couldn't help but lean the slightest bit to his right. As quietly as he could with the gag still in, he mumbled, "Trap."

He almost jumped as a soft snicker hit his left ear. "Duh," Natalie hissed nearly silently back. He could hear the grin in her voice, knowing she was smugly proud of herself for him not realizing she had slipped over to his left. The wild grin broke out on his own face.

He felt her cut the other bond, and silently slip one of her bulls-eyes into his hand. She didn't know he had a knife on him, so he'd have to watch to make sure she didn't run out of bullets and leave herself short handed. Once free, he turned his head silently to make sure Sam was okay. Upon receiving his brother's short nod, he turned back to Natalie, pointing and gesturing as quietly as possible. Knowing those hand signals practically since birth, she slipped away, unheard and unseen, behind another tower of boxes. The brothers looked at each other again silently, and as one, unleashed hell.

The room turned into the chaos of battle, just as it had in the other room- only this time, The Winchester family had the upper hand. And they knew what to do with it. Getting the jump on those closest to them, Sam and Dean quickly dispatched four before the others even realized there was a battle happening. The splatter of rancid blood filled the room as the monsters screamed into battle.

Natalie scrambled onto what looked like an old filing drawer, giving her a great vantage point to take the bastards out from up high with her gun. Taking a page out of his daughter's book, Dean pulled his other knife out and went to work, hacking and slashing at vital organs and quick kill points. He could hear Sam's grunts as he too killed as quickly as he could, knowing they needed to drop their enemies speedily to conserve their own strength. Hit 'em quick, get out fast, just like John had taught them.

Four more monsters burst into the room, drawn by the dying screams of their brethern. Taking in the sight of their fallen brethren, they hollered in an unintelligible manner, until one suddenly saw Natalie on top of the filing cabinet. It pointed at her, just as the other one back in the first room had. But this time, there was a notable difference.

"YOU!" it screamed.

All three Winchesters froze for a spilt second. They hadn't heard these creatures utter a single word other than their own weird guttural language. So now they could speak English? What the actual fuck?

All that was overshadowed by the monsters swinging to attack Natalie again. This time, however, the brothers were ready for this tactic. "Got your six!" Sam yelled to Dean, whipping around and going back to back with his brother, watching out for any monsters that would try to get the jump on them from behind. With a roar of rage, Dean lunged forward, driving both daggers into the back of the closest monster bent on attacking his baby.

Natalie fired, dropping another one. She pulled the trigger again, only to be rewarded with a click this time. "Fuck!" she screamed, diving off the filing cabinets and into the tower of boxes to her right as a monster lunged towards her, barely missing her leg with its razor sharp claws. The box tower collapsed and crashed, scattering everywhere as she hit it. Natalie scrambled up, but collapsed back to one knee when her right ankle gave out underneath her. She must have hurt it in the fall, dammit.

She silently willed the door to swing open again inside her, but it resolutely stayed shut. Gritting her teeth in frustration, she forced herself to remain upright on one knee.

She saw Dean dispatch the closest monster to himself with a deep killing slash into its side. She reached her hand out toward her father. "DAD!" she yelled as the monster who had tried to swipe her off the filing cabinet closed in, ready to rip her head off. Dean knew what she wanted. With that flawless hand-eye coordination that father and daughter had had since birth, Dean tossed her the bulls-eye back. From her low vantage point, she caught it just in time to slash the monster right across the gut. She was rewarded with a face full of black splattered monster blood as the creature gasped in shock, then fell over dead. One more suddenly rushed Sam from some secret hiding place, but with a fast, elegant, and deadly uppercut of the knife, Sam took it out, dropping it at his feet.

All three Winchesters were still on high alert, searching and scanning for any monster that might be lurking behind a box or a table, but found nothing. Either they had dispatched all the creatures or they weren't actively engaging. Sam and Dean spun around, looking at all possible entry points. They were all listening so hard they nearly sprained their eardrums. But there was nothing. No one was left. It was time to clear out. Now.

Sam quickly checked out Natalie's ankle as they all learned to breathe again. Even though she told him she had just rolled it, not sprained or broken it, he still wouldn't let her put any weight on it until he could examine it fully himself, and he wasn't going to do that when they could be attacked at any minute again. Dean, being slightly shorter than Sam, threw Natalie's arm around his shoulder, trying to be a crutch for her. But since she was so short to begin with, he was practically bent in half trying to help her. Finally, he stopped and simply stepped in front of her.

"Get on," he said, hunching his back and holding his arms out to his side. He looked behind himself to see his daughter giving him the biggest bitch face of her life.

"Dad. I am not getting on you piggyback," she said stubbornly, crossing her arms. The return of some sense of normalcy in her reaction helped Dean breath just a bit easier, but he still wasn't dealing with her stubbornness right now.

"Natalie, just suck it up and do it."

"I can walk fine!"

"Bug, you're not walking. Not in here. Mind your father and get on. Now."

"What am I, five?" she grumbled loudly, but reluctantly slung her arms over Dean's shoulders. He hefted her onto his back, holding her arms while she locked her legs around his waist. He shifted his hands to her thighs once she had a good grip up top, and carried her out of the room on his back. There was no sound from anywhere in the warehouse, no indication that there was anything else in there. Sam kept his eyes open as they made their way out, but there was nothing left to follow them.

"This is ridiculous," Natalie mumbled into Dean's back after a few minutes. Dean just gave a tired snort of laughter.

"Kid, you've had a hell of a day. Take the free ride and shut up. It's over."

*SPN SPN SPN*

They made it back to Baby in one piece; no more attacks, and no signs of any other life either. Being back outside, seeing the dead and windblown grass, reminded Natalie of why they'd been there in the first place. She could still see a thin column of smoke rising from where Tyler's pyre was. For two seconds, she buried her face in Dean's back, begrudgingly grateful that being carried piggyback was allowing her to hide her face while she pulled it back together.

Putting her down on the hood of the Impala, Dean made his way towards the trunk to get the first aid kit. Natalie pulled her boot off, clenching her back teeth against the pain in her ankle to save face with her uncle. Peeling her sock down, Sam gently felt her heel and foot, slowly rotating it to make sure nothing was broken.

"See? I just rolled it," she said softly, wanting to get going and away from this place, her eyes darting continuously around the area. Sam nodded, standing up.

"You should still wrap it for the rest of the day. We'll get some ice on it once we get back to the motel."

"Yes, sir," she said, knowing that would keep him mollified for the moment. As Dean opened the kit and handed her the ace bandage, she looked both of them over, unwrapping it. "Where did they cut you two?"

In tandem, the boys held up their arms. Sure enough, their sleeves had been slashed and there was still blood dripping from their wounds, as they'd both been using their arms so much. "C'mere," Dean said to Sam. Sam crossed over to his brother and let him begin tending the cut.

"Anyone wanna take a guess as to what the hell those things were?" Sam asked dryly as Dean patched him up. This time, father and daughter shook their heads in tandem.

"Man, I don't know," Dean said, his eyes never leaving his work. "But they were nasty sons of bitches."

"Tell me about it," Natalie agreed. "They had some wendigo-like traits, but it was pretty obvious they were more evolved."

"I'm glad you caught that too," Sam said. "They clearly had pre-planned strategies in place. They had communicated about that. But they weren't using any language that I recognized, or even heard before. Except-"

"Except when that one fucker pointed at you-" Dean interrupted, his eyes swinging to Natalie. "And spoke. You guys caught that?" he asked before turning back to the bandage. He finished up, then Sam moved to take care of Dean's arm. "I'm fine," Dean said, shrugging it off. Sam gave him a bitch face.

"Dean, shut up. Just let me do it."

"Fine, whatever."

Sam rolled his eyes and got to work on Dean's cut. Natalie finished wrapping her ankle up and slid her boot back on. "Yeah, I definitely caught that," she said, answering Dean's previous question. "It was the only word they said that I could understand. Any guesses as to why they kept pointing at me and singling me out?"

"No idea," Dean said, chewing on his lower lip while thinking. "I mean, maybe they knew somehow that you were going to turn into some freaking ninja assassin." He cocked one eyebrow at her, inviting her to explain.

"Yeah, about that," she said, her own eyebrows going up. "I… don't know what the hell that was."

"You were in the zone, kid. You went into full blown hunter mode. God, Sammy, did you see her? She was like a freaking war machine," Dean said. He only allowed the pride to come out in his voice-not the worry.

"Yeah, yeah, I definitely saw that," Sam said, his eyes searching his niece's face. His gaze narrowed as he watched her, looking for something- he wasn't sure what. But she looked just as perplexed as he felt.

"What's weird is that I didn't get tired. You know? Like yesterday, with those vampires, my arm was killing me. But this time it's like…I dunno…like I just had maybe come back from a light jog."

"'Light jog'?" Dean teased her as Sam finished bandaging his arm. "God you are such a dork."

"Yeah, a dork that kicked your ass in body counts today."

"Hey- show your elder some respect, Missy."

Sam interrupted the banter with a loud throat clearing. "Speaking of bodies…" he said, eying them both as he shut the first aid kit. Both father and daughter nodded back soberly, the grins sliding off their faces. They had one more body to collect.

Sam made Natalie stay at the car to stay off her ankle. The only reason she let them go was because there was clearly nothing left to attack them. Ignoring her loud, deliberate sighs of protest, Sam and Dean made their way back into the warehouse to collect Mitch.

"Hey Dean," Sam said once they were out of earshot of the kid. He stopped, thinking. Dean just looked at his little brother inquisitively. Sam pinched his lips together as if he regretted speaking in the first place, but continued. "I think that…I think the monsters may have attacked Natalie because she was your offspring."

Dean wrinkled his brow for a moment. "How the hell would they have known that, Sam?" he asked, trying to figure out what Sam was saying. Sam shrugged as he tried to put the puzzle together.

"Maybe they didn't- maybe they thought she was mine, but that's not the point. I think they attacked her because she's clearly the youngest member of the family. In the same way that the monsters attacked and killed Tyler first. It was like they were drawn to the youngest in the group they were fighting."

"Could be," Dean said, running his hand over the back of his head while he thought. "But they were attacking you and me at first."

"Until they saw her. And once she proved to be the bigger threat, they set a trap for her, still trying to draw her out and capture her."

"Could be they just liked to play with their food before they ate it."

"True. But it's killing me that we don't know what the hell these things actually are, or why they function the way they do."

"You got any theories?"

"Not really. I mean, there's wendigo traits, zombie traits, rugaru traits, but it's clearly not just one of them. And there's something else I recognize, but for the freaking life of me I don't know what it is."

"You know what it is? They remind me of the croat zombies. From the Croatoan virus."

Sam snapped his fingers. "That's it! You're a genius," he said, smiling at his big brother.

Dean shrugged smugly. "Been telling you that for years, college boy."

"We gotta tell the others about this. The other hunters. In case they run into one. Which means we gotta get home fast."

"Yeah, Bobby's gonna have a field day with this one. Think we should take him a body to play with?"

Sam suddenly chuckled. "You know, out of context, our family has the weirdest conversations."

*SPN SPN SPN*

They had recovered Mitch and set him on the same pyre as his son, fulfilling his final wish. Having been allowed to hitch a ride over to the funeral site, Natalie sent up a final prayer that they were all united in Heaven, finally. Back at the car, Dean got the thrill of his life when Sam begrudgingly let him fire a couple grenades into the warehouse- from a safe distance of course- to make sure that they had fully eliminated the monster threat. The abandoned warehouse imploded, causing Dean to let out his loudest "Yippee Ki Aye, Mother Fucker!" Natalie laughed uproariously, and even Sam had to laugh at that one too, providing a desperately needed moment of levity for the exhausted hunters.

Back at the motel, having finally proved that she could walk without assistance, Natalie helped Sam and Dean clear out the Dakaris' room, leaving no trace of the supernatural behind them. Asking for a moment alone, Dean left her with a tousle of her hair, and Sam kissed her forehead again, shutting the door quietly behind them. Natalie sat on the edge of the bed, wishing she had a picture of Tyler to look at. Instead, she conjured him up in her mind, fixating on his smile, his beautiful eyes, and the thrill of the way she felt about her first crush. She sat there for a good fifteen minutes, just remembering the good times. "Goodbye, Tyler," she whispered, closing her eyes, one tear slipping down her cheek.

With a quick brush of her hand, she got rid of the evidence that she had cried and walked to the door without looking back. She slowly made her way back to the room she was sharing with Sam and Dean. The exhaustion of being up for nearly twenty four hours straight and fighting at least three major battles was getting to her, and it was all she could do to straggle back to her own door. She snorted a laugh to herself. Finally, after twenty years, she was going to go to bed on time without a fight.

She found Sam and Dean back in the room, sitting on the couch, waiting for her with beer and pizza. She plopped down gratefully between them, but before she could say anything, Sam snatched her leg with the bad ankle carefully and propped it up on a pillow on the coffee table in front of them. She chuckled and didn't fight as he pulled off her boot and plopped an ice pack on her still bandaged ankle.

Natalie accepted the beer that Dean handed her gratefully, taking a long pull while Dean did as well. Sam leaned back, looking at her with his eyebrow raised to make sure she was comfortable. The left corner of her mouth pulled up and she took his hand, giving it a squeeze. Sam squeezed back and didn't protest when she held on, still needing his solidity right now. She leaned her head against Dean's shoulder, and he immediately reciprocated by putting his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his chest.

The family just sat there, holding on, holding together, grateful for one more day. Not all families were so lucky.