Thanks for reviewing, Spooky Claire and angel679. Sorry about that warning at the end of the last chapter – I think it's made it obvious what's going to happen! Still, I wouldn't want to spring it on you unprepared!

Chapter 8

Nearly nine hours later, on the road, Sam still looked pleased with himself, even now that he was asleep. Dean was ready to admit that his little brother had put in an impressive and effective performance, but he wasn't sure that it merited eight hours of smug smiles and gloating.

The road was empty; it was nearly 2am, and Dean had his music turned down lower than usual to avoid waking Sam. The result was that Dean was left alone with his thoughts, and he didn't like it.

He had been less disturbed by the return to the crash site than he had expected to be. The surroundings had been familiar only in the vaguest way, like something half-remembered from a dream. He had been fairly dazed throughout the experience, when he hadn't been unconscious, so he hadn't been aware of the area in any vivid way. The proximity of death was something he dealt with on a regular basis, so for him, that particular event had not been as traumatic as he suspected it had been for Sam. Even when his own father had pointed a gun at him and fired, all he had had to face was death. It was Sam who had been threatened with the terrible fate of having to pick up the pieces and live on. All things considered, the events at the crash site hadn't been too bad for Dean. The cabin, however, was a different story.

He wasn't prone to nightmares like his brother, but the memory of what had happened in that damn cabin wouldn't leave him alone. Every night, in one way or another, it came back to him. Sometimes it was just the demon's words, echoing in his head as he lay in the silent motel room trying to fall asleep. Other times he would relive the whole scene from beginning to end, as real as it had been the first time.

Also echoing in his head was the voice of his father, panicking down the phone as if the demon were coming for him that very moment. Dean shifted nervously, wondering, too, exactly what they would find in this little Georgian town.

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They arrived early in the morning, relieved to see that there were no houses in blackened ruins so far. The town was still and peaceful, in the 5am lull between the irresponsible citizens going to bed, and the responsible hardworking ones waking up. Luckily, even at such a time in a fairly small town, there was a gas station willing to fill up the Impala and sell coffee.

Running on caffeine, Dean woke up Sam and thrust the ugly antique into his hands.

'You're gonna have to melt this down and… bless it, or whatever you do. As many bullets as you can get out of it.'

Sam blinked, struggling to compute this amount of information so soon after waking up. After a few seconds, he caught up, and nodded.

'Find somewhere out of the way, so you don't get awkward questions.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Same thing as we did in Salvation. Find a baby who's six months old in the next few days.'

Sam nodded. 'Okay. Call me if you find anything.'

'Mmhm,' Dean muttered, then left, walking confidently up to the door of the small local hospital.

Sam stored the gold statuette in an inner pocket of his jacket; when he stood up he could feel the heavy, uneven lump weighing down one side of the coat so that it hung oddly against him. He walked out of the town, searching for a secluded spot even though there was nobody around at this time of the morning. At the edge of the town, he found an area of common land, sparsely furnished with dying trees and dry fallen branches.

He built a small but fierce fire, and carefully balanced a crucible over it. It had been a long while since he had moulded silver bullets. According to John, it was a precise art: every twig should be strategically placed to make the fire as hot as possible. Sam scoured his memory for the long ago lessons, cursing whatever fact of chemistry caused gold to have a higher melting point than silver. It was the first time he had ever heard of gold being used as a weapon, and he still harboured some doubts as to whether it would be effective. However, he thought, it had to be worth a try.

The ornament was glowing brightly after several minutes, and then, finally, the contorted shapes of the angel and horses began to distort and blur, the details crumbling away until it became no more than a blob of bright metal, and eventually sank down into a pool of liquid. Sam took out the wrought iron mould that they had used before with molten silver and gradually dripped the bright liquid into the holes.

The sculpture produced seven bullets, and Sam was left with a speck of cooling gold the size of a pea, which he left on the sandy ground. One day some homeless man can find it and buy himself a room for the night…he fantasised.

It took nearly an hour for the bullets to cool enough for Sam to pick up, but when he returned to the Impala, Dean was still missing, and he had the keys. Realising that his brother's task could take a while yet, Sam wandered off and checked them into the nearest motel. He doubted that they would get much sleep that night, but it could be helpful to have somewhere to crash when they were finished. And, in any case, there might not be any child turning six months old for several days.

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It was nearly six and almost dusk by the time Dean called, and Sam wasn't best pleased to have been kept waiting all day long.

'You couldn't have called and said… I don't know, that it was taking longer than you expected, or something?'

'Alright, I'm sorry. The records are a mess, it took me ages to persuade them to show me, and longer to sort through them.' And I kept pausing so I could call dad and listen to that damned voicemail over and over again…

'Did you find anything?'

'A couple possibilities. But if the kid wasn't born at that particular hospital…' he trailed off. It was all too likely that the targeted baby was not in the records he had searched. 'Couldn't you have a vision or something?' he asked hopefully.

'Apparently not.'

'Alright, meet me… Elbark Avenue. We're gonna have to talk to the families, see which is most likely. See if any of these kids are showing signs of being… special.

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Dean had found three babies who would be six months old, one that night, two the following night. They visited all three families, but in the gathering dark, the young parents were reluctant to talk much with two uninvited strangers on their doorstep. By the time they moved on to the third house, the first two babies having shown no sign of special abilities (either gurgling amiably up at them or wailing incessantly from a back room); it was full dark, and nearly eight o'clock. This family lived in a different part of town, and it took them some time to find the right road. As a result, by the time they arrived, it was long past the hour when respectable visitors would have decided to leave it for tomorrow.

The tall, blonde-pony tailed woman who answered the door eyed them suspiciously with narrow dark eyes.

'What do you want?' she inquired sharply.

'Sorry to bother you so late, ma'am, but we're doing a survey of children born in the last six months…' Sam began smoothly, smiling at her politely. The 'survey' excuse was lame, but Sam hadn't succeeded in thinking of anything better, and, so far, nobody had challenged it. Considering the time, it seemed better to irritate the families by posing as harmless students rather than intimidate them by using a more official-looking ID.

'I'm studying child psychology…' he continued, by way of apology for the bizarre questions he needed to ask. 'Do you feel you can communicate with your child at this early stage? Do you ever feel like… he or she… knows what you're thinking? Has anything ever happened around him or her' -('him,' whispered Dean)- 'that you couldn't explain?'

The woman looked bemused, and she answered his questions in impatient monosyllables. Sam stopped talking abruptly when her expression changed to a confused frown, looking past him.

'What…? That's weird…' she murmured. Dean turned to see where she pointed, an icy fist contracting in his stomach. In the house opposite, lights were flickering on and off, though the rest of the houses on the street seemed to have no such problem. Dean seized his brother's arm with cold stiff fingers, his throat suddenly dry.

'Sam…' he croaked.

Sam spun round, his eyes opening wider than Dean had ever seen them. He swallowed hard, then turned urgently back to the confused housewife in the brightly lit doorway.

'Ma'am – quickly –please – does that family have a child the same age as your son?'

'Sam we don't have time…'

'Yes, the same age to within a few days, I think. But my Aaron always cries when he's near her…'

Dean gave up waiting and sprinted across the manicured lawn and the street, narrowly avoiding an estate car, followed closely by Sam, leaving the woman standing, gaping in the doorway.

Dean pulled his gun from the back of his jeans as he ran; the gun he had loaded with Sam's special bullets. Okay, he reminded himself shakily, hit it in the eye…

The door was locked, and he slammed into it heavily. He swore silently and tried to force it with his shoulder, but succeeded only in making pain explode in his upper arm as Sam skidded to a halt behind him. He stepped back, cursing, and kicked the door, feeling it give slightly. He kicked it again, and the thick wood splintered at the top, weakening it. One more and it'll go down. He heard Sam's muffled cry before he saw flames burst out of an upstairs window.

'Oh, no…'

He stood numbly for an instant before he heard the wailing of a man, somewhere in the house. The fire was spreading quickly. Dean kicked the door again anyway. As predicted, it collapsed this time, and he hurtled into the carefully furnished house.

Upstairs, the flames were taking a strong hold. A man in his thirties was cowering in the doorway of a room, his hands held up in front of his face, moaning in disbelief. Beyond him, Dean thought he saw a grey man-shape, but the next second it was just more smoke.

'Come on!' he yelled at the man, but he got no response. Clearly the guy was lost in shock, grief and horror, as oblivious to Dean as he was to the flames that surrounded him.

Dean's eyes stung and watered, his still-fragile chest burning as smoke choked his lungs, and the heat was overpowering. He reached forward and grasped the other man by his upper arm, pulling him down the stairs firmly, not hearing his protests or seeing his stumbles. Sam met them at the foot of the stairs, and together they supported the man out onto the immaculate lawn which was all that remained of his perfect family life.

'Did you see it?' Sam asked breathlessly.

Dean coughed, shaking his head, dropping down onto the grass. 'I don't know,' he croaked. 'I thought I saw it, but it was gone before I saw it properly. We were too late… we missed it… that poor guy's lost his whole family.'

'The baby?' Sam asked, horrified.

'I don't know,' Dean replied brokenly. 'There was no way to get into the room.'

Sam sat down next to him, staring into the flames, feeling the weight of failure settle onto his shoulders. He glanced over at the man from the house, who was slumped on the grass, almost catatonic. Another broken family to join the ranks. Compared to him, even we were lucky.

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Seems like a good place to stop. There will either be one long chapter to go or two shorter ones, plus an epilogue. We're coming towards the end. Please review.