Chapter 16 Moonlight


Forest Edge, Oregon

Ellie studied John's knees, the top few layers of skin ripped off and gravel and dirt embedded in the raw flesh beneath.

"Again, how'd you do this?" she asked, lifting her gaze to her son's face. His eyes met hers, dry and clear.

"Turned the corner too fast just before the gate," he said.

The gravel patch, she thought. Icy at the moment, the mass of cold air from the north had snap frozen pretty much everything when it had come through last night.

"What happened?" Dean came into the kitchen, walking around the counter and stopping behind them.

"War wounds," Ellie said. John grinned up at his father.

"Came off the bike on the corner," he said.

Ellie sighed, hearing the hint of pride in his high voice. He was going to grow up exactly like Dean. "John, climb onto the table and sit down."

She got to her feet and retrieved the first aid kit from the cupboard next to the sink, then filled a bowl with warm, salted water, carrying both to the table.

"Pretty bad stack," Dean crouched and watched Ellie as she soaked John's knees, gravel and dirt coming off on the soft gauze with each application. "Who were you trying to impress?"

Ellie swallowed a snort. Takes one to know one, she thought.

John looked away with a one-shouldered shrug. "No one."

"Right." Dean stood, and grinned down at his son.

On the wall of the kitchen, the phone rang, and he turned to pick it up.

"Yeah?"

He walked back to the table and sat down next to John, frowning as he listened. "Yeah, slow down, Soleil…"

Ellie glanced up, one brow raised quizzically. He met her gaze and nodded.

The Parisian-born, Louisiana-raised hunter had a tendency to sprinkle her conversation with French and talk at a million words per minute when she was excited. He'd understood about one word in three of the last few minutes of the conversation.

"Hang on, Ellie's here," he said, holding out the handset. "Soleil…something about a pack and needing help."

Ellie reached up and took the phone, tucking it between her shoulder and ear as she dipped another wad of clean gauze into the saline solution. "Ça va, Soleil?"

"Mm-hmm … oui, il peut être là, on, uh Friday?" She looked closely at her son's knees, satisfied that she'd gotten all the dirt out. Patting them dry, she looked around for the antibiotic powder. Dean passed the tube to her. "How many? And how many victims now?"

The yellow powder filled the divots and cuts and tears in the flesh, and Ellie put a clean pad of gauze over each knee, taping them firmly. She nodded to John, gathering the debris of dirty gauze, water and wrappings, as the boy wandered over to the fridge.

"What do you mean, random? Uh, aléatoire?"

Dean looked a question at her as she walked past him to deposit the bowl in the sink and the wrappings and pads in the trash can. She shook her head.

"Friday. How many have you got with you now?" she asked, leaning against the counter. "No, it's fine. Eh, très bien, really. Yeah, okay. Au'voir."

Dean watched her cross the kitchen and hang up the phone. "What was that about?"

"Werewolves." She glanced down at John and back to Dean, and he nodded.

"Where's Rosie, John?" Ellie asked, opening the fridge and taking out hamburger patties, lettuce, tomato and cheese.

"Playing with Laura," John looked up. "We having burgers for lunch?"

"Yep, go and find your sister," Dean said, and watched him race out the door, scraped and gouged knees forgotten. He turned and looked at Ellie.

"Okay. Werewolves…plural?"

"Apparently," Ellie said, turning on the stove and getting out a flat-bottomed pan. "Five, they think, working together."

"Where?"

"Jasper, Texas." She put the patties onto the pan and turned back to the counter, slicing tomatoes and onions. "They're not sticking to one territory…or the territory is much bigger than usual. They've had kills up to twenty five miles in every direction and she needs some help to bring them down."

"So we need to be there by Friday?" He flipped the patties as they browned.

"You need to be there by Friday," Ellie corrected him. "And Sam."

"No. Uh-uh." He turned slowly to look at her. "Sam can go, and Twist."

Ellie sighed. "She needs at least one good shooter, Dean."

"Then Carl." He looked back at the pan, flipping the burgers again as he saw smoke rising. "He's alright and he needs the practice."

"Carl's in Maine," she reminded him, setting out the bread rolls and spreading butter over them. "Twist, Trent and Katherine have gone to Iowa."

She laid lettuce and slices of tomato and cheese over one side of the rolls, stepping back as he lifted the cooked burgers from the pan to the rolls. "It'll be fine, nothing will happen."

Dean scowled at the pan. "That's what we always say, and something always does."

John and Rosie came into the kitchen and Ellie squirted ketchup over their burgers and handed them the plates, watching as they carried them to the table and sat down to eat. She picked up her own plate as Dean turned off the stove and moved the pan.

"We'll talk about it later, okay? Can you check if Sam is free to go anyway?"

"Yeah," he said, taking his plate and following her to the table. "I'm not going to change my mind about this."


"Sam can take off tomorrow," Dean told Ellie as he stripped off his clothes, leaving them in a pile beside the bed. She was lying on the other side of the bed, her gaze on the file in her hand and he watched her as she nodded absently, her mind clearly on something else.

"Bezaliel's been training Sima and Tagi on the M40. Says they're pretty good, about eighty percent, both of them," he added, casually.

Ellie's attention sharpened on him. "Eighty percent isn't enough, not for this job, and you know that."

He peeled the covers back, and sat on the bed, pulling them over himself.

"It doesn't matter anyway," she continued, turning away to set the file on the nightstand and turn off the lamp. "Because that's not really what's needed."

"And that would be?"

"Leadership," she said, wriggling down against the pillows. He rolled onto his side to look at her.

"Soleil's been running that crew since…ever since you've known her," he said. "She's good."

"Yeah, no argument, she is," Ellie agreed. "But for this, and for what's coming, she needs someone to help too."

"I'm not—that's not—I'm not a leader, Ellie," he stumbled over the words, in increasing discomfort with the idea.

She smiled. "Of course you are, you always have been."

He shook his head. "I'm more of a…contractor…I do my bit, that's all."

Ellie burst out laughing. "No, Dean. You listen to what everyone else thinks and you come to a decision and that's the way it goes. You're not a contractor."

"I don't do that." He frowned at her. "You're the one who's usually making the decisions."

"Really? Which major decisions have I made for all of us, Dean?" she asked, a slight smile still curving her mouth.

"Uh…most of them," he hedged, trying to remember the last few things they'd organised. "Like, uh, moving up here, all of us…"

"Hmm…as I recall, I found the development, and we came up and looked around and you said, let's do it."

He looked away. That did sound familiar. But there had to be other times…he hadn't decided…he thought about the last couple of years…had he?

Watching the doubtful expressions flicker over his face, Ellie shifted over closer to him and laid her hand against his chest. "Generally speaking, we get the information, Dean…and you make the call."


He hadn't seen it like that. It hadn't felt like he was leading anyone, calling the shots and taking the responsibility for it all. Possibly because he didn't feel like he was alone in it.

"You and Sam, you didn't get to see much of what happened with the other hunters over '09-'11, Dean," she said, tilting her head back to look at him. "The rumours and the way they'd shifted, aligning with you or against you both."

He hadn't. He'd heard a couple of things, from Bobby, or Rufus. From Ellie too, before she'd left them. From hunters who'd tried to kill Sam or him or both of them. They'd seen the 'against' hunters more than the others.

"For those of us who knew what'd happened, it was like…watching the way a legend is made," Ellie continued. "I'm not sure who put around the first of the rumours about you and Sam, but they spread like wildfire: that you'd been chosen from the beginning to save the world from the devil, stop the Second War in Heaven, close the door of Purgatory and kill God's first beasts—"

"That's what people thought we were doin'?" Dean sat up. "Who was our publicity manager?"

"There were a lot of hunters who didn't believe it. They'd heard from demons that you and Sam broke the seals, released Lucifer and were to blame for everything that followed. But they were always in the minority."

"They were mostly right," he remarked, a hint of bitterness tingeing his voice.

"No, they weren't, and anyone who'd met you two knew that anyway. Everyone who'd met your father knew it."

"Sam and me…" He drew in a deep breath. "We did break the first and last seals, Ellie. You can't get around that."

She rested her cheek against his shoulder and he felt it lift as she smiled. "Leaving out Heaven's machinations again?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I do," she said. "It didn't matter. By the time Cas had gotten over his God-complex, nearly every hunter still alive had run into the Levis and knew what you were up against. They all thought you and Sam would be the ones to take them down. And they were right."

He laughed uneasily. "Had some help with that."

She lifted herself onto her elbow, her expression sobering. "Almost everyone who's left looks to you, Dean. To call on if they need help. To figure out what to do next."

"How the hell did that happen?" He scowled at the ceiling. "Why didn't I get a vote?"

"You stepped up."

"I was tricked," he muttered. "And no pressure, right?"

She grinned at him. "None at all."

"I don't want to leave you." He slid his arm around her and pulled her closer, closing his eyes. "You and John and Rosie, it kills me to leave you."

"I know. It's not fair and it's not right, and I don't think we can just quit or retire or run, this time." She inched closer to him, sliding one thigh over his. "I can't leave them alone, not now."

"No."

Both children were having nightmares, the changeling and the nephilim and even the mountain lion had left their scars. The bad dreams were easing, slowly, but John and Rosie needed their mother, close by, reassuring them they were safe, and home, and loved. They needed him too, he knew, but they could cope with him gone, just not both of them. It was beyond his ability to let her go down to Texas without him. No gain and a lot of pain.

She'd done it again, he realised, without rancour. Changed his perspective, changed his mind and he knew he'd be leaving tomorrow, driving south with his brother to help Soleil with hunting a werewolf pack. He rubbed a hand over his face, letting out his breath.

"We hunted three once, in Cincinnati. Dad, Caleb, Jim and me," he said, the memory returning with sharp clarity. "They were territorial, stayed where they'd worked."

"Soleil said these are moving around." She nodded in agreement. "But that's not like werewolves—or any other canine for that matter. They choose their territory and stay."

"Yeah. Five of them together…how'd they all get bit?" He was already turning over the problems in his mind and he recognised the transition with rueful humour. When it came time to leave, he would feel the same reluctance, the same desire to stay as he always did. But he'd go anyway.

"You win." He leaned back against the pillows to look down at her. The expression in her eyes wasn't triumph or smugness or elation. It was…sorrow, he thought. She'd convinced him to go when she didn't want him to, convinced him because it was needed, not because she wanted it.

Between them that knowledge lay, open and exposed. He longed for a time out, a time when things weren't going to fall to them. A period like they'd had in Last Chance; for themselves, their children, each other.

Ellie's hand curled around his neck and drew him closer. The touch of her lips against his sent a charge through his nerves, starting low and racing out until his skin was hypersensitised, and every touch reignited desire, escalating detonations that kept building but never seemed to be too much, only not quite enough.

Slow tonight, the thought crossed his mind vaguely, slow and deliberate and drawing every sensation out to the furthest they could bear. It wasn't something that needed discussion; it was something he knew. When they were together, his sexual radar, that peculiar combination of observation and intuition that had always been highly tuned to the opposite sex, was at its most sensitive and he could tell, from the way she exhaled, or how much pressure was exerted when her fingertips pressed against him, or some other tiny and insignificant change in her he didn't even know how to describe, what she wanted, and how and where and for how long. It was the only time he really knew, really felt, inside his own skin, what she was feeling. What made it miraculous was she had the same ability to feel him, all the parts he usually kept hidden, all the things that he usually didn't acknowledge…she could do that anytime, not just when they were wrapped around each other.

He heard her indrawn breath as his mouth trailed over her skin, heard his own whistle softly between his teeth as her fingers slid along the edge of a muscle and smiled, breathing in her fragrance, looking into her half-closed eyes, tasting, touching, every sense involved and all of them feeding back to desire, to the growing, aching arousal that inevitably dictated how long either of them could last.

He'd wondered, once, if he would find being with one woman boring, in time. If familiarity would take the desire away, leaving only perfunctory intimacy and habit. He'd had a wide range of experiences, of partners, and it had seemed like a valid concern at the time. He'd been surprised to discover it was never the same, he couldn't seem to get over how she looked and felt and tasted and smelled and sounded, no one else could come close. He hadn't even looked at another woman since Lydia, not in the same way, hadn't seen them as women in some bizarro alchemy of the mind, or the heart. They undoubtedly were, but he saw people now, not blonde or brunette or redhead, not tall or short or stacked or curvy or pretty or beautiful or any of the other labels he'd been accustomed to using over the years to file away his experiences. They were people he talked to, interacted with, made decisions about…and just one woman in his life who was beautiful and arousing and perfect and…his.

Muscles contracted, and he dragged in a deep breath, hearing the groan on the tail end distantly, a wash of pleasure flooding through him, her shaky, ragged breaths turning him inside out. He slowed down as much as he could, feeling the exquisite drag, his pulse throbbing everywhere, hers a little faster, making a double beat in their tightly joined, blood-engorged flesh.

Slow is smooth, smooth is … fucking unbelievable, the thought rebounded against her moan, deep inside, her hips lifting high to meet him, and a temblor somewhere around eight point nine hitting him, shaking him, rocking him where he was, rippling and squeezing, wrapped up in heat and pressure and silence, not hearing his own cry, his brain shutting everything non-related down and focussing on the white lightning that sizzled right the way through him.

It was impossible to feel this every time. Impossible to not die of it. Tremors shook them and he felt her shudder again, head thrown back as she arched up under him, the softness gently lapping him and that sensation forcing him deeper, forehead pressed against her shoulder as his arm tightened around her, his breath hot on her skin, hers huffing against his hair. Boring? Uh … no.


I-40 E, New Mexico. 2 days later

"How much further?" Sam twisted around in the increasingly uncomfortable passenger seat to look at Dean's profile, outlined against the flat desert landscape, and blue cloudless sky that stretched out forever.

"Another fifteen hours, maybe a little less," Dean said, staring straight ahead. "We'll stop at Amarillo, get something to eat."

Sam nodded, stretching out his legs. He could take over the driving there, get them down to Dallas.

They'd kept their conversations over the last couple of days lightweight and personal, no speculation about the pack or the hunters, not even a discussion on the over-arching problems of the firstborn and the increase in the monsters right across the country, right across the world according to Ellie and Frank, just keeping everything low-key. Dean had learned the trick from Ellie and had passed it onto him, to not waste time or energy or chew up the nerves thinking about things that had no answers yet.

"You remember much about the hunt we did with Dad, Caleb and Jim, in Cincinnati?" Dean flicked a sideways glance at him.

Sam grimaced. "I remember Dad being in a god-awful mood for two days and reaming you out for something," he replied.

His brother smiled. "It wasn't that bad, Sam."

There'd been a lot of bad feeling around that time, Sam recalled. "You took down two of them, didn't you? With Dad's long-range rifle?"


Dean nodded. "One behind Caleb, up on the roof; the other one as it was going for Dad."

It had been a fantastic moment, looking through the scope and seeing the big silver bullet punch through the creature's chest, stopping it cold before it'd reached his father. It had also been the first time he'd realised that his instincts were somehow sharper, more tuned in some unfathomable way, than his father's or Jim's or Caleb's. He'd known the creatures had been closer than they'd thought. He just hadn't trusted that sense.

"Did Dad ever find out why there were three?" Sam asked.

"They went through the building, Dad and Caleb, after we got Jim to the hospital," Dean said, brows drawing together as he dragged the details out of the memory. "The one that went for Dad was the son of the company's owner, I think. He was turned on a camping trip or something, and ended up turning two of his friends who worked there." He shook his head slightly. "Dad figured that's why they used the company's buildings as the hunting—or at least, the killing—grounds, because they were familiar with it."


Sam nodded. It might be the same for the pack they were driving toward now. Friends…or work mates? He pushed the thought away, recognising that the questions wouldn't have answers until they got there.

The memory of the drive out of the city, after the werewolf hunt with Caleb returned, and he ran his hand through his hair. "You did a great job in Cincinnati, Dean. Dad should've said something."

Dean looked over at him, mouth lifted on one side. "You never got that, Sam. Not even once."

"What?"

"I did my job. That's it," Dean said, flexing his fingers around the wheel. "That was the prize—that I could do it, what I wanted to do. I didn't want it to be something special, like it was a surprise that I could do it. Don't you remember how Caleb was?"

"Mmm…but I thought that was just him," Sam said, thinking back through his memories of the quiet, competent soldier who'd become a hunter and a contact for his father with the military, acquiring all sorts of things that John had wanted or needed. "He never said much about anything."

Dean laughed. "Oh, he did, when it wasn't about the job. But when it came to the job, he just did it and he'd get insulted if you tried to make something of it."

Sam looked at him. Dean had known their father's friends a lot better than he had. His brother had been older; Dean'd been out of school and hunting with them all the time. He'd never seen his brother grieve for Jim or Caleb, after Meg had killed them. Hadn't really seen his father grieve either. They must have, he thought. Just kept it to themselves. The Winchester way.

"You still miss them?" The question came out on its own. He hadn't realised he wanted to know.

"Yeah. Every day." Dean nodded slowly. "I miss everyone we lost, Sam. Don't you?"

"I tried not to think about it, for a long time. That didn't work so well." He shrugged. "Trish knew them too, and it helped that we went through a lot of stuff while you and Ellie were in Last Chance. I don't know if I miss them or if I'm glad they're out of it. I kept thinking…if things were different, if it hadn't played out the way it had, and then I realised that if it hadn't happened just the way it did, I wouldn't have what I have now."

He looked out the window, brow wrinkling up as he tried to think of how to explain that strange juxtaposition of relief and his feelings of guilt about it. "It doesn't sit all that well to think that."

He felt his brother's gaze on him and looked around. Dean's smile was twisted up to one side, understanding in his eyes.

"Yeah, know the feeling, Sam," he said quietly, looking back at the road in front of him. "There are parts that I'd change, if I could do it without screwing up everything that came after, but even if I could go back and change it all, I wouldn't. Not now."

Sam leaned against the glass and sighed. That was the big difference in Dean, he thought. His survivor guilt had gone.


Jasper, Texas

Dean pulled into the small town after eleven, following the instructions Soleil had left on his voicemail, and driving through the centre, taking the second gravel road after they'd passed out of the limits, bumping along in the darkness, the headlights throwing the thick forest surrounding them into two-dimensional flatness.

The compound was only a mile and a half down the road, and he saw the gates ahead, slowing down and pulling over next to the intercom, wired to a post by the side of the road.

"Anyone up? We're here," he said, releasing the button. There was a sharp squeal from the box then a voice, male, scratchy, also tired-sounding, came from the speaker. Sam glanced up and saw the small camera pan and stop on them.

"'Okay, we got you. Drive through." A crackle of static. "Take the left when you come to the barn. House is behind it."

The iron bar and mesh gate rolled slowly to one side, and Dean drove forward, hearing it rumble close up behind him. The road went a little further, tightly lined on both side by trees, then opening into fields as he headed for the cluster of buildings visible now in his headlights.

He took the left past the barn and pulled up in front of a huge antebellum mansion, turning off the engine and shaking Sam's shoulder when he saw a couple of figures coming down the broad, stone steps toward them.

Getting out of the car, he recognised the man on the left, had met him a couple of months ago when Soleil had come up to Oregon. Red O'Riley, a big man in his early fifties, thick, flaming red hair heavily threaded with silver now, bright blue eyes crinkled up in humour, fair skin reddened and peeling over his nose and cheeks. He didn't recognise the young woman on the right.

"Good to see you, Dean," Red extended his hand and clapped Dean on the shoulder. "This is Ginny Connelly," he said gesturing to the woman beside him. Dean nodded to her, looking back at Red.

"Where's Soleil?" he asked, hearing Sam's boots clumping up the steps behind him.

"She's inside, still up, waiting for you boys." Red grinned past him. "How you doin', Sam?"

"Hey, Red. You still look old, man," Sam smiled impudently as he stopped behind his brother.

"And you're still too tall, kiddo," Red retorted.

They followed him in through the wide front door, their glances around the rooms part curiosity, part standard operating procedure on entry of any unknown building. The rooms were big, sparsely furnished, with clear lines of sight between doors and windows, Dean noted.

Ellie had related Soleil's story to some extent when she'd reconnected with the hunter and her group. The house, and the land it sat on, had been cheap a few years back, and Soleil had bought it when the combination of the global financial crisis and Lucifer's rising had driven them to find an affordable base they could fortify. It had fourteen bedrooms in two wings, an additional servant's wing at the rear, enough room for the team of hunters she'd found and kept with her, and the gracious dimensions of the downstairs rooms were more than adequate to accommodate the group's research library and network rooms, living and eating areas and even provided a gun-cleaning room and the conversion of the old ballroom into a training space. It was one of three places the Louisiana-raised hunter and her partner, Eddie, had bought and renovated in the south over the last ten years.

"Where's Ellie?" Red looked at Dean as they walked past the dimly lit rooms, heading for the kitchen.

When they'd first realised that the monster populations were being affected, Ellie had come down with Frank and Katherine. Frank had set up a secure network. Adina, the tall, slender daughter of Shamsiel, had stayed on. Adam had been down here for months now, learning to handle all different kinds of weaponry, tactical planning, security and computer skills.

"Home," Dean replied, feeling the other man's curious gaze on him.

"Heard about what happened," Red said, nodding. "All right now, though, yeah?"

"Yeah."

The kitchen was enormous, bigger than most commercial kitchens; a vista of cream wall tiles, polished stainless steel countertops, black and white octagonal and diamond tiled floor, scrubbed pine tables and freestanding dressers and cupboards. At the largest table, Soleil sat with a man in his forties, the bright white overhead lights gleaming on dark skin and white teeth as he looked up and grinned at them.

Soleil Couchard was thirty-eight, a tall woman, as lean as a cheetah. She got up and walked to Dean, holding out her hands and dropping a kiss on each cheek in greeting, her short dark brown hair showing a hint of the curl that would have been there if it had been longer.

"Thank you for coming, cher," she said quietly, gesturing to the table and chairs for everyone to sit. "Frank sent us the update from the federal databases an hour ago, but we don't think it has a bearing on what we're seeing here."

She turned to Sam with a smile. "Ça va, Sam, you know Eddie, yes?"

"Met in Oklahoma," Sam nodded, leaning over the table to shake Eddie's hand. "Lucky for me."

"Oh, those boys, they were the least of it, Sam." Eddie gave a soft laugh.

"Yeah, took me a while to figure that out," Sam acknowledged, taking a seat opposite the hunter.

"Still alive, Dean?" Eddie said.

Dean made a see-saw motion with his hand. "Some days more than others."

"Ha, heard that."

Dean turned to Soleil, pulling out the chair at the head of the table. "What've you got so far?"

"Five of them, moving around the county. I'll show you the detail in the morning; for now, they've been hunting every full moon, three months this month, we have three nights left. They are ombres, yes? Shadows, ghosts. They strike, two times, once three in a night, take people from their cars along the roads. Take the hearts, leave the rest. The local gendarmes, uh, police, are chaotic with it."

He looked at her. "You've tried decoys?"

"Oui, yes, of course." She made a face at the memory. "They knew, somehow."

Eddie leaned forward. "They don't take anyone local. Just visitors, most under thirty years of age."

Dean glanced at Sam who was frowning. "Werewolves aren't that picky."

"Not usually. These are not usual in any sense of the word," Soleil agreed, her light grey eyes shadowy as she looked at him. "They leave no hair, no fur, fibre, prints—either canine or human, hand or foot. They work four, five nights, before the moon has reached her pinnacle, both waxing and waning. They do not care how much noise they make: one attack was close by a farm, and they woke the owners with the screams of their victims, disappearing before the police could get there." She gestured abruptly toward the window. "Adam, Callie and Jim are out there tonight, looking, but fifty square miles have a lot of roads to cover. Jasper has many roads running through it."

She looked at the table and waved her hand. "Eat, and sleep. We will work this out in the morning. We have two more nights for this month."

Cold cuts, bread, cheese and salad covered one end of the table and Dean and Sam got up, helping themselves to plates and making sandwiches. The drive had been long and they were both hungry.

Soleil and Eddie picked up the files and left the room. Red turned to watch her go, then looked at Dean.

"Eddie said you're pretty good with a long-range rifle, Dean?"

Dean looked up from his sandwich and shrugged. "Not bad."

The older man's mouth twisted up to one side. "Not sure if we can pen these things into anywhere that'll come in use, but good to know."

Across the table, Ginny picked out an apple from the bowl of fruit and took a seat, watching them. "Caleb told me he taught Dean Winchester to shoot."

Dean looked at her in surprise. She wasn't old, he thought, looking more closely at her. Maybe thirty, but too young to have known Caleb, surely. Her hair was a dirty blonde, cut raggedly short around her face, as if it'd been done without a mirror. The light-green eyes were watchful, older than her years.

"You knew Caleb?" Sam asked around a mouthful of food.

She glanced at him and nodded. "Yeah, when I was a kid. He came to our town on a job, stayed at our place. Told me a lot of stories about hunting, and," she added, looking back at Dean, "about hunters by the name of Winchester."

Dean swallowed, exchanging a glance with Sam.

"Caleb was a good friend," Sam said, taking another bite.

Dean's gaze dropped to his plate. "And yeah, he taught me to shoot."

"Must be good then," she said, polishing the apple on her sleeve. "Caleb took out a nest of ghouls on his own."

Dean finished his sandwich, uncertain if he wanted to know anything more about these people or not. It sat uncomfortably, being known like this. Whatever reputation he'd accumulated over his life, it didn't mean jack to the monsters they hunted.

"You want to fill us in on the setup here, Red?" Dean wiped his mouth and pushed the plate aside, turning to Red. "You guys seem to have collected a lot more people since we were here last year?"

Red rubbed his knuckles over one cheek. "Yeah, we picked up a few here and there."

He sat down and helped himself to a roll, splitting it and filling it. "There's Ginny here. She came down with Jim Olsen…when was it?" He turned to her, one brow raised.

"Ten months ago," she supplied, biting into her apple. "We both lived in a little town in Tennessee, hard by the mountains, and one night it was…I don't even know what to call it…there was a pack of skinwalkers, they turned half the town. Jim and I were the only ones who made it out."

"Yeah, and Soleil, Eddie and me, and we got Adina and Adam. And there's Callie. She finished school last year, been hunting with us ever since."

Sam glanced from Dean to Red, his forehead creasing in a tacit question.

"Soleil's daughter," Ginny said, a faint edge to her voice. "Ward, really."

Dean thought of the numbers. There were enough, if they could track the creatures, maybe trap them somewhere. "There's state or national forest to the north, isn't there?"

Red nodded. "Yeah, miles of it on either side of the lakes."

Dean turned to his brother. "We'll take a little drive out there tomorrow."


Sunlight poured through the curtainless, east-facing windows and Dean rolled over in protest, throwing an arm over his face, squinting at his watch. Past seven. He rolled back and exhaled, wondering how well the hunters here were going to work together in the field.

Adam, Jim Olsen and Soleil's daughter, Callie, had returned as they'd finished eating. Between himself and Sam and Adam, there was still a residue of discomfort; their greetings polite but reserved. Adam, at twenty-seven, looked more like them, grown into the broad-shouldered frame John Winchester seemed to have passed to all his sons. The blue-green eyes were harder than they'd been, Dean thought, but that wasn't exactly surprising. Adam had grown a short, unkempt beard and his hair had darkened, making the resemblance to their father stronger.

Jim was a couple of years younger than Adam, light blond hair, vivid blue eyes, and a fair complexion that took a deep tan making him look younger still. He was six foot, lean, rather than broad, and when he'd come in, he'd gone to Ginny first, picking her up and kissing her before he'd turned to meet the Winchesters.

Callie Roberts had remained near the doorway, watching Jim and Ginny with undisguised interest. Tall and skinny, she was striking, with long, dark-brown curly hair, braided back from her face, olive skin and huge, dark-brown eyes. The ingenuous expression on her face hadn't quite reached them.

Dean had the feeling that Ginny's unspoken dislike of the girl probably had something to do with the way Callie's eyes followed Jim.

He sat up, rubbing his hands over his face slowly. He hadn't worked with any of them before, but he knew he could rely on Soleil, Eddie and Red. Ellie had worked with those three over the years and her respect was enough for him to trust them. Adam, and the younger hunters, were unknown quantities as yet.

The house, designed more to keep the inhabitants cool in the ferocious summers, was cold and he leaned over the edge of the bed to grab his tee shirt, looking up in surprise as the door opened and Callie walked in.

"Soleil asked me to come and wake you," she said, going to the end of the bed.

Dean looked at her, one brow raised. "Well, I'm up."

"So, Adam's your brother?" She sat down on the corner of the bed, looking at him.

"Uh, yeah. Half-brother," he replied, pulling the shirt over his head.

"He said he was dead, and an angel resurrected him?"

He looked at her curiously, unable to shake the sense the girl's artless questions were a front for something else. "Yeah, that's right."

"And he went to Hell and you rescued him."

"More or less," he said, mouth lifting on one side. "Didn't you believe him?"

"Oh, well…" She looked away, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. "Some people exaggerate their stories, you know, make 'em more interesting."

"Uh huh."

Looking back at him, she smiled, her cheeks dimpling. "Just wondered if what he was saying was all true."

Again, he was left with the impression the smile was a pretence, that it hadn't gotten anywhere near the girl's eyes. "Yeah, well, it is."

He hoped the conversation was over. She didn't seem inclined to leave.

"You guys don't look like you get on all that well," she continued, and he sighed inwardly.

"We've had our moments."

"Family's important." She leaned toward him. "You should try and make it up."

He blinked. "Yeah, well, we probably should."

"You gonna get dressed and come down?"

"Yeah, you can tell your mom I'll be down in a minute," he said, relieved as she stood and walked to the door, going through and closing it behind her.

Before-breakfast-lectures on the importance of family, he thought. Great way to start the day. He still had the impression she'd been in here for some other reason, but he couldn't imagine what it could've been. She hadn't really shown any interest in anyone or anything other than Adam.


Downstairs and in the dining room, Dean took the cup of coffee Sam handed him and looked at the large-scale map on the wall. The attacks were marked in red, and they were scattered out along the highways and county roads in every direction, the furthest about twenty-five miles from the town.

"You started out with one werewolf; four months ago?"

Soleil nodded. "We thought it came down from the north-east. When we killed it, it had several gunshot wounds, over the chest. Perhaps some other hunter had been chasing it? We don't know for sure. There was no sign that it had killed where we found it, and we didn't realise that it must have bitten others before they started killing on the next full moon."

Beside him Sam was studying the map as well. "Soleil, if these are all night attacks on visitors, how're they stopping the cars?"

She walked up to them, looking at the map. "The county has been upgrading a lot of the roads over the last year. On the last four attacks, the roads were at least partially closed, the asphalt ripped up and being replaced. It seems like they are using those sections for the, uh, ambush." She pointed out the attack locations.

Next to the map more than a dozen photographs of the victims had been pinned up, and Dean looked along the faces, noting that they were all part of a single demographic. He'd never heard of werewolves targeting a particular type of victim. He couldn't figure out a reason for it. Hearts were hearts. If they were operational, that was usually enough.

"What about the forests? Any attacks there?" He looked around at her. She shook her head.

"No. We thought, at first, that they might living there—that's where we took the first one—but we've been over all the tracks and camp grounds, right along the edges of the lake, and haven't seen a sign of them in there, no fires, scat, predation of wildlife, nothing."

"Five together," Sam said. "They might have all been bitten by the same werewolf, or they might have turned each other, but it's suggestive of them knowing each other before the attack? Being close enough to have either been all together, or to want to be together."

She nodded. "The fact that they are not taking the locals, this too seemed to pointing to a group of men who live here, but so far, we haven't found anyone matching that criteria in the town."

Eddie wandered over. "The victims are another factor; all the same type, the same age. We wondered why, 'cos it sure ain't a werewolf consideration for the most part. FBI say that serial killers tend to hunt within their own ethnic group, and young people do clump together more than older folk do."

Dean frowned, looking at the photographs. "Or it could be they're attacking people they think deserve it, somehow," he suggested.

Soleil considered that, nodding. "Or that give them a greater power, perhaps?"

Something about that idea snagged at Dean's mind. "Something they don't have?"

Sam raised a brow. "Like what?"

"If I knew that, we'd be done," Dean said. "We should take a drive around; see if we can see anything at the sites, see if we can a find a place we can use to trap them."

"It will be quicker if you take someone with you, so you don't have to check the maps," Soleil said, her gaze shifting to the other hunters, sitting around a long table, finishing their breakfasts.

"Yeah, we'll take Adam with us," Dean agreed, following her gaze and pretending not to see the look Sam gave him. "He knows the area well enough."

"Yes."


Forest Edge, Oregon

Frank knocked twice at the door and waited, stamping on the mat to shake the snow from his boots.

Ellie opened the door, stepping aside as he swept past her and strode down the hall, snow sprinkled over his head and shoulders and his laptop tucked under one arm.

"Ask me what I've found!" he said, swinging back to face her when he reached the kitchen.

Her brows shot up. "What did you find, Frank?"

"Ah…thought you'd never ask," he said, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the kitchen table. He opened the laptop. "Do you have coffee?"

She nodded and walked to the pot, filling two cups and carrying them back to the table.

"I've spent the last two weeks getting every cell phone that originated and/or terminated in the Oregon/Nevada border region and correlating them over the three-day period beginning when you passed through Winnemucca, to when Castiel pulled you out of the Trout Mountains, and creating a matrix for them. I then—" Ellie handed him a cup and sat down at the table. "—thank you."

"I then matched every number with an account and ran a trace on every single one of the cell owners and visually confirmed or denied the possibility of their involvement." He leaned over and sipped his coffee. "It wasn't enough, not on its own, but I'm not alive and a genius and a brilliant tactician for nothing, you know, so I checked the local use of the satellite phones—who patched what to where, you see—and I did it."

"You found the base of the firstborn?" She put her cup down carefully.

His eyes narrowed. "I enjoy telling these things to Dean more. He lets me drag it out longer."

"Firstborn, Frank?"

"Yeah," he said, waving a hand at her for patience. He swivelled the laptop around so that she could see the screen. The satellite photo had been zoomed down to street level, and four miles on the southern side of Winnemucca, past the airport and other side of the interstate from the railway line, a narrow secondary road led to a house, set amidst a thin group of trees, undoubtedly hidden from the roads at ground level.

Ellie studied the image. It was placed for defence; the entry easy to secure, the boundaries difficult to breach without losing the element of surprise.

"Any birds close enough to get real time surveillance on this place?" she asked.

He pursed his lips, looking at her. "There's a Chinese satellite over the west coast at the moment. Seems to be sending large streams of data back to the motherland. I might be able to tap into it."

Ellie raised a brow. "Military satellite?"

Frank grinned slyly at her. "Looks like."

"Good." She turned back to the screen. "I don't think all the firstborn are there, but Maluch, Reuma and maybe one or two others will be."

"There's no rush for this, is there? I'm mean, they'll be staying put."

"Yeah," she breathed, looking at the screen closely. "Yeah, no rush. I can take a run down there and have a look for myself, get to know their routine—"

"Oh, no. No, no, no." Frank interrupted, grabbing the laptop and slamming the lid shut. "No."

"No?" Ellie asked, with the air of someone sure they'd misheard.

"You're staying here," he said, his heart giving a peculiar double beat at the chill in her eyes.

"Am I?"

"I'll call Dean," he threatened. "The last time I didn't tell him something you should've, he gave me a half-a-fucking-hour lecture on telling him everything that happens, so don't think I bloody well won't."

It'd been after the vampire/stalker thing and Dean had spared no adjectives in his descriptions of what he would personally do if he didn't get the full story straight away if anything like that came near his family again. The man had a surprisingly broad vocabulary.

She laughed. "By the time he gets home, I'd have been there and back, Frank."

"They can see you, when you're not here," he reminded her, wiping a hand over his suddenly damp forehead. "You're good, I'm not saying they'd get you if you went down there, but if they did…you would've given them the perfect weapon against your family, and you know that."

Ellie turned her gaze back to the laptop. He was right.

"All right. How's your Cantonese?" she said.

Frank let out his breath, tucking his hands against his sides as relief made them tremble.

"Probably better than yours," he retorted.


Jasper, Texas

"Look at that," Dean murmured to his brother, lying full-length just under the crest of a low ridge, binoculars against his eyes as he studied the road.

Sam lifted his head and saw where Dean was looking, panning around slowly until he found the section of road. There were two new roadwork teams stripping back the asphalt of the highway; one here, the other working on the 96 to the south of the town. Beside him, Adam watched the road as well.

"The quarry, behind them?" Sam said.

"Uh huh." He looked across to the deep bowl cut into the opposite ridge, his thoughts on wind and temperature and distance.

"How're we going to make sure that some suitable victims come along?" Adam said, looking past Sam to Dean.

"Well, you and Sam and Callie are going into town tonight for some action," Dean said, lowering the glasses and giving Sam a grin.

"What?" Sam dropped his glasses. "I'm not in the demographic, Dean."

"You can pass for thirty, Sammy," Dean assured him. "Just flash the dimples."


Soleil's expression darkened as he laid out the bones of the plan, and she shook her head when he'd finished.

"Bringing civilians into this," she argued. "This is not a good idea."

"For whatever reason, these werewolves are after a certain type. You've tried to draw them out with just hunters. It didn't work," he countered. "They'll be with us, we'll protect them."

"It's too risky."

"It's a risk. But it's not a big one," Dean insisted. There was no other way to find these creatures. Whoever they were, they'd had enough time to get themselves hidden and organised.

Eddie reached across the table and took her hand. "I think he's right, chère. Sam and Adam and Callie will be there with them. Dean will be there with the rifle and Red and myself will be close enough as well. It will be enough to protect them."

Dean waited. Was this leadership, he wondered? She was still the leader of this team; if she canned the plan, there wouldn't be anything else he could offer.

After a long moment, Soleil dropped her gaze, and nodded.

"All right."


Sam lifted the big black canvas bag onto the table and opened it. He extracted two boxes of ammunition, tossing them to his brother.

"Silver, for .45 calibre," Dean said, sliding the first box along the table to Red and the second to Jim. "Silver for 9mm."

"Silver shot, suspended," Sam said, threw the box of shotgun shells to Callie. She caught it one-handed, setting down her double-barrelled sawn-off.

"Sam, Callie and Adam will be in the pickup." Dean leaned over and extracted the box of .50 calibre bullets for the M40, tucking it into his coat pocket. "Eddie and Red, you're following them at a very discreet distance."

The two men nodded, loading their handguns and shotguns.

From the corner of his eye, Dean caught the sour look his brother shot him, but didn't acknowledge it. Soleil had already told Sam he looked ten years younger, clean-shaven and wearing clean jeans, sneakers and a brown leather jacket instead of his usual khaki. Twice.

Soleil would be with him, as spotter. Not essential but useful to have. Jim and Ginny would divert traffic from the southern roadworks, just in case the monsters had decided on that location for the night. It was unlikely, the northern road had the big machinery, and much better cover, but he couldn't risk the chance that he was wrong about it.

He let his gaze travel the room. At the far back of his mind, the knowledge there was no room for error here at all lurked. The bite was not reversible. If anyone was bitten, they would have to be killed. Despite the fact the monsters had a vulnerability, it made hunting the were-creatures risky. The men and women here were seasoned, experienced hunters, he reminded himself. They would be at safe distances, most of them, anyway. He didn't plan on letting a single werewolf near Sam or Jim or Callie, and he was confident he could keep that promise to himself.

Moonrise was at eight. Sam, Adam and Callie would leave in half an hour for The Jukebox, a bar and club in town. Eddie and Red as soon as they were ready. He and Soleil would aim to be in place on the rim of the quarry an hour before the moon began its ascent.

"Check comms," Sam said, clipping on the small mike to the inside lapel of his jacket and tucking the tiny wireless earpiece into his ear. "How much interference are we going to get from any other sources on these?"

Dean shook his head. "Frank said zero. We're using a frequency that the military use, and the nearest base is a hundred miles from here."

"What's the range?" Soleil tucked the small button-like device into her ear.

"Ten miles, line-of-sight," Dean told her. "Which, around here, should suit us fine."

The northern road work was a mile out of town. The southern one just under three miles. They should be able to hear each other without problems, but he and Soleil would have the best reception, at the top of the ridge. They could act as messengers if need be.

"Where'd Frank get these, anyway?" Red asked, chin tucked to his chest as he clipped on the mike.

Dean's mouth twisted up to one side humourlessly. "We don't ask."

Eddie snorted.


The Jukebox, Jasper

Sam scanned the crowd casually as he walked into the long, wide room. Polished timber floors, poster-covered walls and a long, old-fashioned, formica-covered bar gave the impression of an old drugstore, not so much a bar. It was also plain the establishment was deliberately catering to a certain age group, as he registered the music playing, nothing before last year and the dance floor at the end of the room already jammed up with young women.

Ducking his head, he retrieved and sorted through memories of college, especially the first year, trying to figure out how he should be acting as he headed for the bar.

He looked at the bartender disbelievingly when she asked to see his ID, her brows shooting up when he handed her his licence. He hadn't been carded since he was twenty-three, and he could see her trying to work out what he was doing in a place that was full of people ten years or more his junior.

"Meeting a friend here," he said, hoping his smile was convincing. She nodded doubtfully, getting a beer from the glass-doored fridge behind her and handing it to him.

"Right."

He sighed and sat down at the end of the long counter, swivelling on the bar stool as he searched the faces he could see for someone he could hit on.

He saw Callie come through the front door five minutes later, the girl's dark curls gathered up loosely, long legs revealed by the sheer black tights and short black skirt.

She wouldn't have too much trouble.

Adam came in a few minutes later, looking like a college senior and ordering a Coke from the bartender. All present and accounted for, Sam thought. They had a couple of hours here, then they'd head out.


Highway 95 N, Jasper

Dean assembled the rifle silently in the darkness, setting up and lying down on the pale dirt to take in his field of vision. Beside him, he could hear Soleil's soft breathing, but in the ghillie suit her outline was too broken for him to be able to differentiate her from the surrounding rough grass.

Both wore a simple paste of powdered herbs mixed with oil, to hide their scent. The slight night breeze was blowing toward them, and if it remained steady, it would prevent the pack from even noticing their scents on the hill.

He stared through the scope at the road below them, moving the gun slowly and silently around. Parked along the opposite side of the road, he could see a grader, bulldozer and roller. On this side, a water truck, cold planer and crusher were nose in to the quarry floor. Any of the machines would make a good place to hide, he thought, studying at the black shadows beneath them.

"You are still not comfortable with Adam," Soleil said, and he lifted his head, checking his mike was off.

"Whatever Michael did to him, it left scars. Holes," he responded, putting his eye back to the scope. He knew he should give his half-brother a better chance, but the memories surrounding Adam's possession hadn't yet lost all their power.

"He knows that, above everyone. He's lost everyone, Dean. He needs his brothers."

Dean exhaled. "Yeah."

"I am sorry," she said, sounding not sorry at all, an edge of determination to her voice. "He was excited that you and Sam were coming. He was hoping for reconciliation."

"Soleil…"

"I know," she said, lifting her scope and scanning over the ground in front of them. "It is not the time, nor the place."

"Yeah." He kept his attention on the road, through the gun's scope.

None of it had been Adam's fault. Poor kid had been dead, him and his mother, when he'd been dragged into the attempts of Heaven to release Lucifer and Armageddon on the world, and his brothers hadn't been able to save him.

You left him behind, you mean. The thought intruded, and he acknowledged it. He had. From that moment on, Adam had been at the mercy of angels and demons.

Behind them, the edge of the eastern horizon lightened imperceptibly, the dark outline of the land no longer indistinguishable from the night sky.


The Jukebox, Jasper

Sam forced a smile for the girl seated beside him and sighed. She was twenty-two, her name was either Sandy or Zandi, or possibly some other variation ending with the same sound. He wasn't sure. She was on a road-trip with her friends. These small pieces of information had been shouted into his ear between songs.

He was nervous about taking civilians along on a hunt, but Dean's argument had been compelling. The creatures they were after only hunted out-of-towners, and Sandy or Zanzi would be better off with them, than trying to make it out of Jasper on their own. He wondered if Tansy or Sandi had ever faced anything more frightening than a spider in her father's garage.

At the other end of the bar, Adam's arm was curled around a pretty co-ed, and on the dance floor, Callie was dancing with two young men; neither over twenty-one, he thought. He glanced at his watch. Another half-hour and they'd go.

Must be getting old, he decided as his gaze moved around the bar, watching the crowd. He didn't remember going out with the primary goal of getting plastered and getting numbers, although he thought he might've once or twice. Once he'd met Jess, though, he'd reverted back to his comfort zone quickly.

He couldn't see Eddie and Red anywhere, but that didn't mean they weren't around. They were still uncertain as to the identities of the creatures when they were in human form.

"What do you want to do tonight?" Sandy yelled next to his ear.

Kill werewolves. The thought shot into his mind and he had to clamp his teeth shut to stop from vocalising it.

"Go for a drive? There's supposed to be a lake up the highway," he suggested with equal volume, his stomach sinking as her eyes lit up and she nodded enthusiastically. The song finished and Callie returned to the bar with her young men, Adam getting up and bringing his date toward them. Zandi or Tansy leaned closer to Callie, giving her the plan, and they finished their drinks.

The relative quiet of the parking lot was almost deafening. Sam walked to the pickup, and helped Callie into the tray, Adam and the co-ed getting in next and the two freshmen climbing in after them. It was empty and clean, except for the narrow lockbox behind the cab. They arranged themselves as he opened the passenger door for Sandy and went around to the driver's door. At the back of the lot he heard an engine starting up and paused for a moment to switch on his mike.

"Ready to go," he murmured, then opened the truck door and got in.

"We'll give you five minutes," Red's voice was quiet in his ear.

Sam started the engine and pulled out slowly, turning left and then right to get to the highway.


Highway 95-N, Jasper

"One o'clock."

Soleil's voice was only just audible in his ear and he followed the direction, seeing a shape slip across the road into the inky black shadow behind the planer. Yahtzee, he thought, lowering the barrel slightly and adjusting the light entry and focus of the gun's scope. Outlined in green, he saw the figure crouched beside the enormous metal wheel, its silhouette shaggy.

"Can you see the others?" he asked. The wind was still steady against his face, the night air cold, the moonlight silver over the still and silent stretch of torn-up road in front of them.

"Not yet," Soleil said, her scope moving incrementally over the area as she searched the shadows. "Wait, oui, I have another one, your nine."

The barrel swivelled smoothly and he saw the creature vanish under the chassis of the grader. Those two first, he thought, the two machines were the closest to where a car would stop at the beginning of the works section.

On cue, he heard the rumble in the distance of a car. He looked down the scope, finger resting against the front of the guard as he waited.


The headlights lit up the road-closed sign and Sam took his foot off the accelerator, changing down as they coasted toward it. The girl beside him shook her head.

"This whole place is doing road-work at the moment, just see if you can get by the sign, it's never as bad as they make it out to be," she said.

Sam brought the truck to a smooth stop in front of the sign. In the back, Callie laughed and called out.

"What the hell we stopping for?"

They came out of the shadows and Sam reached across the seat, grabbing the back of Sandy's neck and shoving her to the floor of the cab as he pulled out his Taurus. Through the back window, he saw Callie jump to her feet, shotgun swinging clear of the guard mesh as Adam pushed his date down to the tray floor and yanked one of Callie's freshmen back inside the bed.

Sam heard two flat cracks, one after the other and saw two of the werewolves drop to the ground, featureless black outlines against the pale gravel road bed. His window was down and he steadied his aim against the frame, the Taurus firing smoothly at the third creature running toward him, a rising, undulating howl rising in the night. The noise was cut short as it dropped to the road, its forward motion skidding it through the gravel for a few feet before it stopped completely.

Two more howls rang through the night, rising and falling and almost dying away before rising again. Two left, Sam thought, scanning the black and white chiaroscuro in front of the truck. Above and behind him, he could hear the low murmured talk between Adam and Callie.

On the rim of the quarry, Dean and Soleil were looking for any movement as well. One howl had been further back, Dean thought, the barrel pointing to the north, moving gradually over the shadowed road, in between the machines and piles of earth. The other had been closer to the truck.

Sam thought they'd come out together, try to take them by surprise and force, but it was a single creature that leapt out of the blackness behind the heaped piles of rubble, unkempt fur glistening in the silver light, eyes glowing in a misshapen face, the roar of rage abruptly cut short with the tripled blast of the double-barrel and pump action, Adam and Callie firing together, and the furred chest pulverised by the close-range of the silver shot that ripped and tore through hair and flesh and bone.

Where the hell was the other one? Sam opened the door and got out of the truck, the barrel of his gun swinging around as he strained to hear.


Soleil lowered the scope. "They got it."

Dean nodded, his attention on the dark hillside next to the northern end of the road. His neck was prickling.

Where the fuck was it? Held back, deep down, fear lurked. One bite. That was all it took.

When Twist had gone to help Laney with an explosion of the creatures in Michigan, he'd brought back the samples Frank had wanted: saliva and blood, hair and skin, flesh and bone. Reverted to human form, the samples had nevertheless proved that the condition was a kind of disease, transmitted by the changes in the saliva.

One bite.

Frank had sent the samples to a friend, some hush-hush ex-military scientist who worked on genetic and bacterial anomalies. The details, the design, the way it worked, all explained. A cure? No. Impossible, Frank had relayed back. The changes affected the cell walls right through the body, an incredibly fast-acting cancer that couldn't be reversed, couldn't be stopped, was complete on the next full moon that rose. One bite.

He lay on his stomach, keeping that knowledge buried, focussed on the darkness below him, senses stretched out through the darkness, looking for the last werewolf. The smell filled his nose suddenly, brought on a slight shift in the wind's direction, and he knew in that second they were trapped.

Soleil's head snapped around as the raw, rank stench hit her, hand closing around the grip of the .357 P239 in her belt. It stood over Dean's legs, and she watched as the man beside her rolled to one side, twisting around to see the creature reach out almost leisurely, swiping his side and dropping low over him.

Dean looked into the werewolf's face (sort-of-face), time telescoping out and slowing down, the hot, foetid breath blasting over him as the jaws opened and the deeply lambent amber eyes narrowed. He could feel blood running down his arm and chest, sticking his clothes to his skin where the claws had slashed across him, feel the burning pain of the wounds as the night air hit them. He looked past long, white fangs, roped in glistening translucent liquid (saliva), at the dark gullet, unable to make his hand close around the grip of the gun he knew was right there, his legs tangled with the creature's, the bulk of the ghillie suit trapping him as tightly as chain.

One bite.

The gunshot was deafening, and he closed his eyes, rolling hard to his right, a scream tear through his throat as he rolled over the open wounds, then the lip of the quarry was under his back and there was nothing else there. He fell through open air, the first hit on the ground below wiping out his nervous system with the enormity of the pain, his body limp and unconscious as gravity forced him down to the bottom.


Sam looked up at the shot, seeing the indistinct figures at the top of the quarry, then a shape falling and rolling down the long, rock-strewn slope to the road. He was running, heart sledging against his ribs, before he realised it.

"Dean!"

He dropped to his knees and slid the last couple of feet to the body in the shadow of the hillside, dropping his gun and yanking at the flashlight in his pocket, unable to see anything but a rounded shape, covered in the rough grass stalks that had camouflaged his brother at the top of the quarry.

The light was bright and joined by two others as Adam and Callie pelted up behind him, showing Dean on his side, the browns and greys and muted greens of the ghillie suit stained deeply with red underneath him. Sam rolled him over, breath hissing in as he took the fluttering edges of the suit, four long slashes, wet and red with blood. His fingers searched frantically through the material, pulling it back as he looked for puncture marks, down his brother's neck, dragging the cloth back from his shoulders, staring at the sleeves from shoulder to wrist. There were none.

Behind him, he heard another truck pulling up, Eddie and Red's boots crunching fast across to them.

"Adam, get up there and help Soleil with the gun and get the car. We'll go in with Eddie and Red, when you're done, you follow behind," Sam said sharply, head snapping around to look behind him.

"Callie, get those kids back to town, don't tell them anything, don't say anything, just drop them off at the bar."

Adam was scrambling up the steep, loose slope before he'd finished, shotgun reloaded and slung across his back as he used his hands to claw his way up faster. Callie nodded once and spun around, and Sam heard the truck start up a moment later, the tyres spitting out gravel as she wrenched the wheel around, headlights splashing over him and gone as she headed down the road.

"How is he?" Eddie crouched beside him. Sam shook his head.

"No bite. Pretty badly mauled," he said. "He's out cold, but I think his system overloaded, I can't feel a head injury anywhere."

Sam pulled the hood back and opened the front, his eyes narrowing as he took in the bruising lying like an ink stain under the skin of his brother's face. He pulled at the velcro fastening, hearing the sharp rip as it opened and slid his fingers alongside Dean's neck, feeling for a pulse. There was one, faint and a little erratic. Dragging the suit's opening further, he looked at the wide cuts that ran across the upper arm and over the chest, filling with blood in the shallow flesh and muscle over the rib cage, punched deeper where they crossed his brother's diaphragm and continued halfway across his abdomen.

Christ. He looked down at the wounds. He could cut the suit free here, wash out the dirt and crud from the claws and do a rough dressing, or leave him and let the local hospital do it. Infection was an ever-present danger with any monster with claws, invariably filled with dirt and old blood and a host of microscopic dangers. In the distance, he heard the distinctive rumble of the Impala's engine and breathed a small sigh of relief, pulling his knife from the sheath at the back of his belt, and starting to slice through the thick, padded and wadded suit.

No bite, the thought looped in his head. No bite. Everything else would heal. There was no bite.


Sam leaned on his elbow, propping his head against his hand as he dozed beside the bed. In the background machines beeped and hummed, and the noise was soothing, familiar to him, so many nights in his life spent exactly like this.

He opened his eyes and looked around as he heard the squeak of a boot sole over the polished linoleum. Adam stood by the end of the bed, hands shoved into his pockets, staring at Dean who was half-buried in the tubes and wires that connected him to the machines.

"He's going to be all right?" Adam said in a whisper.

"Yeah, he'll be fine. Just lost a lot of blood," Sam said, gesturing to the bags that hung beside the bed. "You don't know him that well, but Dean…he doesn't die all that easily."

An odd expression, somewhere between needed hope and pained resignation, slipped across Adam's features and disappeared.

The memories Sam held of his half-brother were a tangle of the ghoul's impersonation, the cold and pragmatic rage of the archangel, the sometimes vacant, sometimes sly expressions of the archdemon. When Adam had woken, back in Oregon, after Castiel's last attempt to heal him, he'd had no memories of anything he'd done since getting out of Hell. It'd been Trish and Garth and Twist who had brought him back, explained his history and John Winchester's life. Neither he nor Dean had been able to face their half-brother.

He rubbed a hand over his face, wondering if wounds and scars like that ever healed fully. The kid'd had it worse than either Dean or himself. A father who'd appeared once or twice a year, never giving anything of himself, not even the truth. Murdered with his mother in an act of revenge against that father, not knowing why, not knowing how to protect his mother or himself from the monsters that'd hunted them. Then dragged back into service after death, with the admission of being the second-best vessel for an archangel, and left in the Cage. Even his rescue had been a failure; Michael had left holes in him that could be used by any power strong enough.

Of course, they had been.

Leaving him here, to work with Soleil's team, had seemed to be a solution, but it hadn't been, not really, he thought.

"When we go home…" Sam said, "you should come back with us."

The blue-green eyes turned toward him uncertainly. "Really?"

Sam nodded. He would figure out a way to convince Dean that it was necessary.

"Yeah."

Adam ducked his head, and the gesture provoked an involuntary smile. He'd seen that same characteristic duck of the head a million times before. Sam turned his head, his gaze resting on his older brother. Family had to be earned, in Dean's eyes. Blood wasn't enough, but Adam couldn't earn their love and respect unless he was there, with them, a part of their lives.

"Did Soleil recognise the werewolves?" he asked.

"Not personally, but they were part of the road work crews. Illegal workers, she thinks, all of them related. The county said that they didn't show up for work on Saturday." He looked at Sam. "We took the bodies up the forest and burned them."

"Good," Sam nodded. At least that was out of the way. "Adam?"

"Yeah?"

"When Dean's awake, when he's back to himself—" He hesitated, not sure how to word what he needed to say. "If he seems…if he's not all that understanding, you need to remember that it's not you he's seeing, okay? He, uh, might be seeing someone who took—" He stopped again. "When Baal had control of you—"

"Sam, Trish told me what happened," Adam said. "I know what I did to Ellie. And to you."

"Okay." Sam exhaled. "It's okay. He doesn't hold it against you, you understand? Just might take awhile for him to stop seeing you in that context."

Adam nodded. "Better than not seeing me at all, right?"

Sam wasn't so sure about that, but they had a three day drive to get used to it, he guessed.


Forest Edge, Oregon

Dean stretched out on the bed, his gaze on Ellie as she examined the scars that twisted over his chest and stomach, across his bicep.

They'd arrived home yesterday. Sam and Adam had done the driving on the way back; he'd spent most of the trip lying on the back seat, sleeping or thinking or vagueing out on the painkillers the hospital had given him, trying not to move much, mostly. The worst pain had been his left shoulder. The massive bruising over the shoulder blade and up to the point of the shoulder indicated he'd landed on it when he'd fallen from the edge of the quarry. It hurt worse than the deep slashes, the other bruises or the various aches and pains from rolling down over the rocks.

Ellie had checked every inch of his skin last night, looking for the smallest sign of a bite. Sam had looked him over, not quite as thoroughly, or as enjoyably, when he'd woken up in the hospital. This morning she'd taken off the dressings, cut the stitches out and cleaned the wounds.

"Bloody butchers down there," she commented mildly, straightening and glancing at him. The scars were clean, but they weren't particularly neat, the stitching cobbled rather than sewn. She took the fresh gauze dressings and applied them, frowning at him to stay still. When she was finished, he gave her a grin and pushed himself upright.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Ellie asked, "How are you feeling about Adam?"

He reached for the button through shirt and eased it over his right arm, pushing the left through more impatiently. "Okay. I thought it'd be harder, but the drive up—"

It had been okay. Adam wasn't someone he knew, really. He and Sam had started to get to know him over the three days' on the road. He was a Winchester, he thought dryly, there'd been no doubt of that. The conversations, the stubbornness, the somewhat sneaky and dry sense of humour. Dean thought there would be more of his mother in him, and perhaps there was, but he'd seen his father in the younger man as well, and those glimpses had been…strangely good. Better than good. They'd been a little reminder of his father, had given him a sense of connection, of liking.

"—we kind of got him know just as he is. No past, no sense that he'd been involved before."

He glanced at her, making a face as he realised he wasn't sure if he could explain it clearly.

She raised a brow, leaning forward to do up the buttons on the shirt. "Fresh start?"

"Yeah, but with a connection," he said, relieved she'd understood. "I could see Dad, sometimes, in a look or a gesture, or what he said…it can be weird."

"But good too?"

"Yeah."

"Frank tell you he found the base?" she asked him, and he kept his expression neutral at the question.

Frank had been very forthcoming about the discovery and Ellie's reactions. He wanted to get this straight between them.

"Yeah, he did. Told me he practically had to tie you to a chair."

Ellie glanced away with a snort. "What a lie!"

"So you didn't tell him you'd go out there by yourself to recce the location?"

Her gaze dropped. "It crossed my mind I could save us all some time that way."

"Ellie…"

"I didn't go, Dean," she said, her voice hardening with defensiveness. "Frank pointed out that it would be high-risk and I didn't do it."

"High-risk doesn't begin to describe it," he pointed out. A rush of fear filled his veins with icewater as his imagination conjured up what could have been. "We'll take them down together, all right?"

"Yes, we will," she agreed, meeting his eyes. Her gaze searched his face. "Is there anyplace I can kiss you where it won't hurt?"

He smiled and lifted a finger to his lips. "The usual place feels okay."