Disclaimer: I do not own the concept or characters from the show "Supernatural." Any other characters not related to the show, The Vampire Diaries or Nightwold series, however, are mine and are not to be used in any other fan fiction. Some concepts were also borrowed or loosely adapted from L.J. Smith's "Nightworld" and "The Vampire Diaries" series. The original stories were developed using SPN episode content up until 02/11/10 and this one may include anything up through 2019. I will not include any spoilers for future episodes of Season 15, though my story took its turn after SPN Season 4. This is the start of a new trilogy. The first trilogy is: "Possession," "Broken," and "Sacrifice," followed with a new trilogy, "Mission," "Prelude," and "Bound." This story takes place where Prelude left off and has the same characters from the first trilogy. I do not own any quotes used in the actual episodes. Any lyrics mentioned in this story do not belong to me are the property of their original writers.

Dean sat at the kitchen table, head in his hands, trying to block out the anguished screams from an adjoining bedroom. It was times like that he wished he had a good connection to angel radio. Their healing mojo would sure come in handy right about now, and his ex-angel buddy sure needed some help right now.

"Shhh, it's ok, Cas," Gwen's soft voice consoled, her voice trying to steady the emotion for her mate. "It's almost over, babe, Sam's almost got it set, just one more…"

"AHHHH!"

Dean took a chug from his metal flask.

"It's over, it's over, babe. Bobby, ya got any pain meds," Gwen asked soberly, coming out of the room. Bobby rummaged through his medical kit still on the kitchen counter and tossed her a yellow pill bottle. "Thanks."

With a weary sigh, Bobby took a seat next to Dean at the table. He grabbed Dean's flask and took a drink before politely handing it back.

Sam eventually emerged from the side bedroom looking utterly spent. He gently closed the door behind him, leaving Gwen and Cas to some privacy. He secured his chosen place at the oak table, grabbing Dean's flask and taking a shot.

"How is he," Dean asked his brother.

"It's not broken, so that's good. His leg dislocated when yanked. I popped it back, but it's going to be tender for a while. Luckily, it looks like we were wrong about him having a concussion. Gwen is not happy with us right now," Sam admitted, taking another swig.

"Yeah well, if it's any consolation, I'm not happy with us either, Sammy." He took back his flask.

"You boys did what ya could," Bobby reassured the boys. "I just wish you could have gotten Abs and April home."

Dean stiffened at her name and Sam tried to meet his gaze. They had driven back to the cabin in relative silence, only chatting about their wounds and trying to keep Cas alert. If he had a concussion, they would have to keep him awake. Dean knew Sam had been chomping at the bit to get more info on what had happened between Abby and himself. He avoided the questioning eyes, instead of focusing on the wood pattern of the table, shutting them out. At that point, he was doing anything to try to show some restraint but he was too damn tired and bitter now.

"We're not going back for...her...we're only going for April," he solemnly announced to his surrogate father. "We go in, get her out, and go."

"Have you gone mental, boy? Ya just aren't going to leave her behind-"

"She can handle herself, Bobby."

"Why wouldn't you go after your wife?!"

"Because she did this, okay," Dean said, lowering his shirt collar to reveal the fresh wounds on his neck. "Turns out," he snickered, on the verge of angry tears. "She had this master plan with Lilitu, whatever the Hell that is, to make vamp kids with the most well-known hunter lines. Us." He pointed to Sam and back to himself. "They just want new members for their vampire Manson family. That was all I was to her, just a donor. A baby daddy-"

"Hold up," Bobby interrupted harshly. "You can't possibly believe that cock and bull story, can ya? After all these years? How many times has she held the line for us, worked with us to get rid of the bad? Look, Dean, what she did was a bitch move. I'm not going to sit here and make excuses for her, but I don't believe for one second that she did it with having a reason-"

"Bobby, we had one thing that we held each other to; somethin' she promised to never, ever do. She promised never to vamp out on me; she promised never to use me as her blood bag, and dammit she kept her word for what, twelve...thirteen years? Tonight...tonight she sat there with this smug look on her face and literally jumped and attacked me and just walked away with a freakin' smile on her face. She took what she wanted, and she liked it. I can't abide by that, Bobby. I can't. She showed her true colors today and I'm just-I'm done. She's one of them and I gotta tell ya when I first got with her, it's what I always was afraid was gonna happen. Dad was right, there's us and monsters and no in-between."

Sam cleared his throat to interrupt Dean's venting session. It seemed his son had stealthily entered the room. Shit, had Dylan heard what he had just said? If he did, he wasn't showing it. Dylan was paler than usual, his wounded arm wrapped up and supported with a sling. A stain of pale pink was noticeably against the white gauze. He was assisting his partner from the nest and was propping her up as she hobbled in on crutches. She was small compared to his son, but he didn't let that fool him. Her back muscles were visible under her white tank as Dylan gently helped her sit down at the table, before playfully messing up her short black hair with his hand.

"How you feelin', son," Bobby inquired. The way he emphasized son was unlost on Dean. He sure as hell hoped Dyl hadn't overheard what he spoke. It wasn't' meant for his kids. They weren't monsters. They were just victims of circumstance.

"Hangin' in there, thanks," Dylan mumbled. He had managed a smile before he grimaced. From the sounds of his slurring, he was pretty drugged up. Seems he hadn't picked up on his comment earlier, but from the look, Sonora was shooting at Dean across the table, she did.

"Did you get the bullet out," Dean asked his son. The fact that he even had to ask that question regarding his son was killing him. After all that time they-he-kept the kids out of everything, it nevertheless drove them straight into the same path as their father. The family business, the family curse.

"Don't worry, Dean. I patched 'em up," Bobby reassured with a short retort. "But I think ya need to get some rest, Dyl. You too Sonora."

"No, I want to help. Besides it's like morning now, right?" Dylan yawned sleepily, his dark eyes looking a little loopy through his fallen brown strands. Sonora rolled her eyes at his response.

"I keep telling this stubborn boy he needs to rest to help," Sonora said, playing with his hair. Dyl looked over to her with a smirk. "But it's firmly been established that he doesn't listen to his commanding officer apparently, so he needs to hear it from his Dad." The dark-haired vamp emphasized the last word and looked Dean in the eyes. He could read her disappointment in him. Yep, she had heard what he had said previously for sure.

"Go to bed, Dyl. We'll talk later," Dean reluctantly ordered his son, motioning to a nearby room. Dean moved to get up to assist his son over to his room, but Sonora stood up and helped him up instead.

"I got it," Sonora said with an air of authority. She escorted Dylan to the back bedroom. Good. his son genuinely needed to get some sleep and elevate that arm.

"So, boys, back to how we are going to get the girls tomorrow." Bobby began, propping his elbows on the table, looking back and forth at the boys.

"Bobby, don't push." Dean was starting getting pissed off.

"Look, it's not just up to you," Sam finally interjected. "She's their mom, Dean. She's Jamie's mom and I can't-"

And there it was. He knew that Sam had just let that slip out from worry but man, did it hit a nerve.

"How can I forget," Dean raised an eyebrow. "Every time I look at that kid; I see him grow more and more into you. His hair, his eyes, man, even his dorky hobbies, but who do you think he calls Dad? So what, so now you think-"

"Dammit, Dean, she's his mom! I would think you would understand what losing a mom would do to a kid, especially at his age. We owe it to the kids to-"

"Don't bring Mom into this. Mom was Mom. Abby lied to us…"

"Oh, because Mom never lied about being a hunter to Dad? To us? She was so perfect? People screw up and make mistakes, Dean! Look at me, look at what I became, what I did and you forgave me! She forgave me!"

Was he digging up that old shit, Dean questioned. He couldn't believe it, and he was too amped up to stop himself.

"I forgave you because I knew Yellow-Eyes was walkin' in your skin when that shit went down. I'll be honest, I have no idea how she ever got over what happened to her. I'm guessin' it was for Jamie's sake. You're my brother, Sammy. I know you to your core. Hell, I practically raised you. I know who you are. She came into our lives because of a case. That shoulda been my first warning. Look, if you want to take a stab at getting her, you're more than welcome. But I'm out. She's dangerous, guys, like lethal...and I will take her out if she comes at us, and that's a promise. I have one goal tonight, and that's to get my baby girl," Dean said as he pushed away from the table. "So when you're done planning whatever the hell you want for her, and you want to talk about getting April, give me a call."

He stomped over to the kitchen counter and snatched the keys to the Impala.

"Where in the Hell are you goin', boy," Bobby hollered after him.

"A drive."

"Look, I get his feels betrayed and his feelin's are hurt. What she did was a dick move, but-look I've lived a lot longer than you two idjits, and I know evil when I see it. Regardless of what I thought in the beginning and believe me when Dean said he was shackin' up with a vamp, I thought he'd lost his damn mind. But she stood by our side time and again. I've seen dark. She ain't it. And after all the shit I've seen over the years, it's hard for this old hunter to admit that she's good. There has to be a reason for her to go full vamp on him, right?"

Sam's mind was full of conflict. He was leaning towards what Bobby was suggesting, but he couldn't just dispute what Dean felt about the situation. After all, his brother had been there, he heard and saw her, and he was the one person who knew her best. Although he had also been a witness to Abby after Dean died, and saw first hand how the intense grief and rage turned her into something else. That was an Abigail Stuart Winchester he knew very well.

"I don't know," Sam answered, glancing up at Bobby.

Gwen emerged from the room, gently closing the door behind her. She was wiping away emotional tears from her aflame cheeks.

"Hey guys," she greeted, taking a seat at the table with the men. Sam earnestly asked her if Cas was finally asleep."Yeah, he's finally out thanks to those meds. For once I wish he was an angel again," she chuckled. "So what are we doing on this plotting? And why in the Hell did Dean leave in such a huff?"

"Guys, who slammed the goddamn door," Sonora hobbled into the main room clad in a pair of April's pajamas and a robe. "Dyl just fell asleep!" Gwen promptly pulled out a chair and encouraged her to take a seat with the group.

Sam instantly brought them up to speed with what they had discussed with Dean before he disappeared, and all the info they had on the current predicament involving the girls. One, they had discovered it was invariably happening that night, and they had only about 12 hours to figure out the possible rescue. He also revealed what Abby had done to Dean while they were captive and who she was supposedly working with; Lilitu.

"Wait-wait, so Abby attacked Dean? And he foolishly thinks she's been actively working with this Lilitu," Gwen pondered. "No, not possible. There's no way in-"

"But is it," Sonora challenged, turning to look at Gwen. "After all, didn't she just go balls-out crazy on the human juice not too long ago and Dean had to run to help her...again? Not to mention you and I have been looking into weird shit at the nest for months."

"What? What's been going on at the nest," Sam pressed. That was news to him.

They carefully explained how there had been whispers about what happened up at Red Lodge years ago. They had uncovered credible evidence that it had either been an inside job, perpetrated by people who needed to get rid of key witnesses. Witnesses to what though, they had no idea. They had positively linked several members of the nest to keep up with Caleb after he 'died.' They were Donovan, Declan, and Lenore. All of them happen to also be close associates with Abby in the nest. Someone at the nest had funneled specific information out to Caleb that Abby was in Chicago thirteen or so years before. Gwen and Sonora had narrowed it down to those top three as being the mole.

"Lenore has been doing some suspicious crap all year," Sonora disclosed. "And tonight when Donovan ambushed me and Dyl, that's all the confirmation I need. They have to have been working with this Lilitu group to harass Abby. I have no idea in regards to the length or depth of Lenore's alleged involvement, though."

"It is uncanny all the stuff that happened this year. The car accident. That skank Hannah-wait wasn't what happened with Dean and Hannah, the used catalyst for Abby to go off on her own," Gwen hypothesized. "Do you think forcing her out on her own was deliberate? Would they want it easier to get to her if she was away from Dean and Sam? It would be less suspicious for her to merely leave on her own accord?"

"You might have somethin' there, Gwen," Bobby added. "She ran off drinking human from what I gathered. Then Dean went after her and forced her back not too long ago. Everything seemed copacetic since then."

"Granted, I haven't known Abs for as long as y'all, but she's been on edge for a long time. I just thought it was the stress from the kids finding out what they were and the accident. I confronted her about her secrets after the explosion. I noticed her talking to someone suspicious at the dance and it was weird. It was right before all hell broke loose that night, so I didn't have time to dig in. After that, she had confided in me about all the letters and ordered me to be on the lookout for suspicious characters. She even had me contact Sonora to keep a closer eye on Dylan at the nest. If you combine all of that with everything else-"

"Was she talking about these," Sam said bitterly, depositing the letters Abby had received on the table. Gwen and Sonora gathered some of them, anxiously examining the envelopes and the contents. "She was blatantly lying to all of us about something after her. Why the hell didn't she just say something?" But he knew why; both the Stuarts and the Winchesters possessed family histories of concealing terrible secrets from the people they love.

Sonora was studying the pile of paper and then stopped. Her eyes grew large as she stared at the envelope in her hands. "Holy shit, that's the same symbol that was on the shackles in Iowa. The identical goddamn thing at Red Lodge too. It's the same one. They did it. At the minimum, we have a name to go on now. Lilitu," Sonora said.

Gwen blurred over to frantically grab her laptop and began diving into Lilitu's forgotten history on some dark web deep occult sites. "Well, first off, that symbol is a match and we didn't attain it because we were looking up a pentagram and half-moon and not pentacle and half-moon. There are similar ones with the Celtic knots, but the one for Lilitu is extremely specific. And you're not going to like this, Sam."

She turned the laptop around to display the main picture and the color drained from his face. The pure white pupils unwittingly gave it all away. Now he understood why they required the girls. They wanted them as vessels. "They're summoning Lilith tonight."

"Yeah, uh one bacon double cheeseburger," Dean shouted into the crackling voice box. "Make it three...with extra bacon. And an extra-large fry, extra salty."

His emotions were all over the road; confused, anxious, and depressed. The only cure was to drown his sorrows with some beer and burger, stat. He pulled up and snatched the bag of fast food. The smell alone was clogging his arteries.

He made it about three blocks before he couldn't take the aroma of grilled red meat any longer and pulled over at a forest preserve. The bag loudly crinkled as he reached for his first burger, shredding the wrapping before taking a huge bite. Why was it that gorging on fast food was the best medicine at times like these? It was weird, it always reminded him of good times with his family, going out to grab some grub after T-ball, but it also reminded him of when shit would hit the fan on hunts and his Dad would take them out for a treat afterward. They attempted to try to be a normal family. Old habits die-hard.

With his hands now covered in salted oil, he reached over to grab a napkin. Usually, it wouldn't be an issue, but not in Baby. He couldn't let her get all shiny with grease. Of course, in keeping with the theme of the day, when he went to reach into the bag, it fell over, spilling the contents on the floor.

"Shit. Well, isn't that just super." He leaned over to clean up the spilled mess, placing everything back into the bag. It was during the clean-up that he found her black leather jacket on the floor. She must have left it in there after the bar. God, that seemed like ages ago. Was that only just a few nights ago? Last night? He held it gently rubbing the worn leather between his fingers, reminiscing how it fit her incredible body perfectly. The coat smelled like sage and cinnamon; a little witchy, a little spicy, but felt like home. Small snippets of her dancing that night at the bar, her black hair in a ponytail swaying, the check me out glances she was giving over her shoulder. He remembered the night that had spent the night in the backseat of the car, rollin' around like a couple of teens. Even after all those years, they still had it. The burning sensation on his neck brought him back to reality; those happy images replaced with her slit eyes, her fingers tearing his shoulders, and her teeth ripping at his flesh. Now he knew those bedroom eyes of hers were all just to keep him in line. She used him. He rolled down his driver's side window and tossed her coat on the ground. He desperately needed a drink.

He picked up his delicious sandwich for another bite. It wasn't just the beef that had been burned.

The sweet-sounding tones of rock began streaming from his pocket. Who was interrupting his bingeing?

"Yeah, what," he snapped with a mouthful of food.

"Dean you gotta get back here. There's a connection to everything, the symbols on the letters, the incident in Iowa, and Lilitu."

"Yeah, okay spill." Speaking of a spill, the one side of his burger had slipped from the bun and on the wrapper on his lap. Son of a bitch. He tossed the burger on the wax paper and flung a hand up in frustration.

"Lilith."

He choked on his food. "Wait...you mean, Lilith, Lilith? White-eyed demon Lilith?"

"The one and only. And if you recall what she had mentioned after Stull-"

"She was after April," he realized. No, it couldn't happen. Not again. Not to his girl. "On my way." He snapped his cellphone shut and tossed it on the passenger seat.

He tossed his half-eaten burger into the bag and roared out of the parking lot, skidding where the dirt met the pavement and headed North.

The roads in the Northwoods seemed never-ending, even in daylight, with their curves and thick trees. He had to make it home as fast as possible without attracting the coppers. After about twenty agonizing minutes, he was about to round the last of two bends. Before he made it to the cabins when a blonde man suddenly appeared in the road in front of his car.

"Jesus," Dean yelled as he slammed the brakes. It took a minute for him to regain his senses. He got out of the car, slamming the door behind him. He didn't have time for that crap. "What the Hell, man? What are you doin' in the middle of the road?!"

"We need to talk, Dean." How the Hell did he know his name? He moved his hand to hover over his gun just in case. Couldn't be too careful. He looked over at the blonde man, and it took a minute but he realized who it was.

"Wait, April's prom date?" And a vamp, he reminded himself.

"It's Jesse, but yeah. I was on the way to your place when I ran into you."

"Technically, I ran into you, but what in the hell is goin' on?"

"It's April. I-I conveyed a message to her psychically in her dreams. She's ok. She's alive and seems ok. The place was warded, so it was challenging to get a direct connection but it was enough to deliver a message."

"And that was?"

"For her not to say yes to becoming Lilith's vessel."

"Wait a minute, how do you know about this? Are you connected to all of this? Were you just using her, because so help me-"

"I was involved early on but not anymore."

"So what, I'm just supposed to take your word that you're good now? I'm gonna need a little more than that, kid!"

"Look, I'm here to willingly offer up my powers and aid in the rescue. I'll let you in on all I know. I promise, sir, I just want April home safe. You have my word as a former soldier. I'll help you rescue your daughter or die tryin'."

Dean thought about it for a second. Could he believe this kid? But really, what choice did he have? He needed all the information on the cult; their movements, who the vamp in charge was. This was the only way they would be going into the rest of the place not completely blind. He turned and made his way back to the car.

"Get in."