Here it is, Chapter 2. a little shorter, i hope you like it.

I still own nothing

A/N: for anyone who lives in washington state, i am sorry i have never been there, so the geography may be a bit off. Also, i dont remember hearing Sam's cell number on the show, so i made one up. if there is an official one please let me know :)

SHADOW STALKER

Chapter 2

John Winchester was many things, but a patient man was not one of them. He had sent his boys the coordinates days ago and in his mind, there was no reason why they wouldn't have made it there by now. He himself had been in Seattle for two days, researching the mysterious deaths of the tenants of a recently remodeled apartment complex. It seemed that at least a dozen angry spirits throughout the eight story building and been wreaking havoc among the residents, and they had now begun taking lives. It was a big job, but if worse came to worse, he could handle it on his own. He didn't really need his boys to be there, but he wanted them to be. Ever since the night with the demon John had found himself wishing for the company of his boys. He liked having them around, and he liked hunting with them. Hell, he just loved having his family back. And now that the demon seemed to be back in hiding it was once again safe for the Winchester family to be together. Well, as safe as it would ever be for them. Many things, both human and supernatural knew of the Winchesters, and therefor, there would always be something stalking their paths, hiding in their shadows.

However, not even the desire for family could stomp the marine our of John, and if their was one thing he hated, it was being made to wait. He knew the boys had finished their last job successfully a few days before he sent the coordinates. Unknown to either of his sons John had been having the boys tailed, and not just recently. He had been using his spider web of contacts to help keep track of his sons since Dean had left New Orleans to get Sam. It wasn't that he didn't have faith in his boys abilities, quite the opposite, it was just that he felt more at ease knowing what they were doing. If he couldn't watch their backs then by god someone else would, and it had been that way since they were children. Because, even though he didn't often show it, John's sons meant everything in the world to him. And he would march to hell and back, if that is what it took to keep them safe.

So, the fact that Sam and Dean had seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth sometime the previous night had John on edge. He had been calling them all day, but was unable to get through, and it had been almost fifteen hours since his contact last spotted them driving into the forests of southwestern Washington. Needless to say he was starting to get worried.

John pulled into the garage of the apartment complex and killed the engine. He pulled the phone from his pocket and decided to try each of his sons' cells again. He sighed heavily as he scrolled down through the list of names, stopping momentarily on the name 'Caleb' knowing that it needed to be erased, but he still couldn't do it. Reaching 'Dean' he hit send.

"... You've reached Dean Winchester, please leave a message. If this is about 11/2/83 text me." John disconnected without leaving a message and continued down the list, passing by 'Jim Murphy' on his way to 'Sam'.

"... Hello, you've reached 866.907.4763. Please leave a message."

John knew that Dean's cell phone was only given to possible clients, and they were more often the not referred to his number directly by John. While Sam's number was often given to possible witnesses or contacts, and given the number of different aliases the boys used it was unwise for Sam to leave his name on the voice mail prompt. John was careful with his boys, and while Sam was hidden away at school he had decided to hid Dean behind himself. Dean was his soldier, but he was by no means on the front lines. No, you always had to go through John to get to Dean. Because he knew far to well, that it wasn't only the supernatural that was after his boys, there were just as many human threats as well. And humans didn't follow patterns, which, in many ways, made them far more dangerous then the supernatural.

Without leaving Sam a message either, John shut the phone and climbed out of his truck, the beast looking strangely out of place among the expensive cars in the upscale residence. He had decided to quite the waiting game and go it alone, more waiting could mean more lives. He pinned the maintenance badge to his shirt before going to his hidden weapons locker to find what he would need. He placed a pistol loaded with iron rounds into the waistband of his jeans, and then selected a rock salt loaded shot gun, along with some salt, protection charms, and some of Missouri's poltergeist packs as Dean had started calling them. He then concealed his weapons in an old tool box and headed for the basement of the building, bracing for a long night of work.

The building had a sorted past, and John knew that cleansing the place would be no easy task. The building had once been an old paper mill and it had its share of deaths before it was redeveloped three years prior. Four deaths had been reported while the paper mill had still been in operation, but those were not the spirits that had John worried. About fifteen years after it had been closed a serial killer had decided to take up residence and the building had seen fourteen people tortured and murdered within its walls before the killer died in a hail of bullets, bringing the number of dead to an even twenty. John only hoped that all twenty weren't waiting for him inside.

As he crept quietly through the building he couldn't help thinking of his boys, and he hoped they had a damn good excuse for being late. 'They are going to be fine.' He told himself. 'There is a perfectly good reason why they are not here.' He quickly shook his head to clear the thoughts, he was on a hunt, and therefor, he couldn't fill his mind with what ifs. There would be time for all that later.

The longer he searched the more he came to realize that all twenty spirits were not present. He guessed now, and from witness reports, that there were only about seven. From eyewitness accounts he knew that there were two children, a young man in his twenties, and two young women, who, John knew, while they were all victims of the serial killer, they were held there only by fear, and were not the ones responsible for the deaths. The other two were a different story. One was the killer himself, Jacob Creylor, whom it seemed was responsible for many of the injuries the tenants had been suffering, while the other was not a spirit at all but a poltergeist, drawn there by the evil housed within.

The plan was simple, place the poltergeist packs around the building, then salt and burn Creylor's bones. As John set about the task at hand his mind again went to his boys, and he couldn't help thinking that this job would go a lot faster with all three of them there.

Five hours later John limped across the cemetery, his tall silhouette lost in the darkness. The poltergeist had figured about what John was doing by the time he reached the fourth floor. From there on it was a race against time, and flying objects, as he ran through the stairwells which stood conveniently in the north, south, east and west corners of the building, shooting blindly at the spirit over is shoulder while the poltergeist tried to stop his upward progress. By sheer will he somehow managed to make it to the four corners of all eight floors, effectively killing one half of the annoying supernatural tag team. However, it seemed that Jacob was not too happy about loosing his partner, and demonstrated this by throwing three large dressers and a piano at John from a nearby apartment. A quick banishing spell had stunned the spirit for a short time, giving John time to get out in one piece, more or less. Now he stood over serials killer's grave and if he wasn't made before, he was pissed now. "Time to burn in hell, bastard." John spoke to the earth beneath as he began to dig up the grave.

It had taken him a mere hour to salt and burn the bones effectively stopping the spiritual killing spree. John sat in the small motel room he had acquired, staring absently at the floor. It was now nearly ten thirty at night and there was still no word of his boys. Almost twenty four hours and still nothing. The small amount of worry in the back of John's mind had now sprouted into full panic, something was wrong, something was very wrong. John stood and began pacing the room, ever since the encounter with the demon he had been battling the real fear that he would loose not one, but both of his sons. He has misjudged the demon, he had let his pride get the better of him and it had almost cost him his boys. And ever since then John Winchester had been very careful, sending his sons on smaller jobs, keeping them below the ceiling demon's radar. But now this, how was he supposed to keep his boys safe from this. They were driving, nothing else, just going from one job to another, and now they were no where to be found. It was like a bullet to his soul. They weren't even hunting and something got them.

John's cell rang, breaking him from his trance. He looked quickly at the caller ID, hoping it would be one of his boys, but his breath caught when the name read 'Joshua'. That was who John had tailing the boys before they disappeared, "Joshua, did you find them."

There was a pause on the other end. "No, John. They stopped outside Ellensburg at ten for gas, I followed the route would have taken and got to Seattle about two hours later. I didn't see any sign of the them. No one remembers seeing them after they left Ellensburg. I even took some of the short cuts Dean would have tried and still nothing. I'm sorry, John, I don't know what's happened to them. I called the local police and park services, they are starting aerial searches. John, are you still there?"

"Yeah... I'm here."

"What do you want to do?"

"I'm gonna find my boys."

TBC

Hope to have chapters three and four up in the next few days.