Past 5

After his brief career as a test subject was over, Howard the guinea pig became a permanent fixture on the war room table.

"But what are we going to do when we go on our next hunt?" Sam asked. "It's not like we can just ask the neighbors kid to pop in and feed him once a day."

"Won't be a problem" Dean reminded him, "we can just teleport back and feed him ourselves. In fact, we'll probably never need to stay in another crappy motel ever again."

That next hunt came sooner rather than later when Sam dug up a report on the internet about a fourteen-year-old murder victim who had been found with multiple gruesome injuries suggesting she had been tortured before her death.

"It could definitely still have been a human" Sam qualified after telling Dean about the potential case. "I figure I'll do a bit more digging into it online before we make the drive all the way out there."

"You got a name?" Dean asked. "Or a picture?"

"Yeah" Sam answered, turning his laptop so Dean could see. "This is her school picture from this year."

Dean barely glanced at it before nodding confidently. "Yep, that was a demon killing alright."

"You can tell that easily?" Sam asked. "You couldn't on our last hunt."

Dean shrugged. "I guess I'm getting better. Come on, we should be able to wrap this up pretty quickly."

Sam felt his brother's hand on his shoulder and the next thing he knew he was trying not to stumble as he found himself transported halfway across the country. "Where are we?" Sam asked, looking around at the linoleum flooring and high sterilized tables.

"Brockville County morgue" Dean answered him. Dean strode up to the wall of metal drawers housing the facility's dead and drew one open without stopping to read the name printed on the outside. Sure enough, the drawer pulled out to reveal the corpse of the young teenager whose picture Sam had been looking at less than a minute ago. Sam tried not to look at the gruesome injuries that now covered her body, evidence that she did not die quickly.

Dean placed his hand on her forehead and closed his eyes. "Dean, what are you doing?" Sam asked, suddenly nervous. His brother ignored him and kept his attention focused on the girl. The girl whose eyes suddenly flew open with a scream.

Sam started back, suddenly wishing that he had his gun with him. "Shh, calm down" Dean tried to quiet the girl. "You're fine, calm down."

It only partially worked; the girls stopped screaming but continued to sob. "Where am I? Please, it hurts, please" she moaned.

"Dean" Sam said, speaking loudly to be heard over the newly resurrected victim. "do something!"

"Like what?" Dean asked looking just as freaked out as Sam felt.

"I don't know. Can't you heal her or something?"

"I don't know how to do that" Dean said with a hint of panic.

"Kill her" a voice suddenly spoke from across the room and Sam and Dean turned to find Tessa, freshly appeared and looking harried.

"I'm not going to kill her" Dean argued. "She's fourteen and I just brought her back. She can go home as soon as she calms down."

"Dean, you just pulled a soul out of heaven, a soul that had been tortured for days, and stuck her back in her injured body inside a morgue. She's traumatized and she doesn't belong here anymore. You have to kill her."

Dean looked at Tessa with a mixture of shock and desperation. "No" he said, "I can't do that." The girl chose that moment to go back to screaming and Sam wondered how long they had before some kind of security showed up. Dean hesitated a moment more before giving in. "Fine" he said and in that moment the girl's screaming died off and her soul slipped back out of her body.

Dean turned and faced the wall and Sam stepped forward to try to comfort him, but Tessa beat him to it. "You're not just a hunter anymore, Dean" she told him, "your job isn't to save everyone."

When Dean turned back around, his eyes were red and watery, but mostly he looked angry. "Sam, I'll drop you back off at the bunker."

"What? Where are you going?"

"I'm going after the demons."

"Alone? Do you even know how many there were?" Sam asked, trying to reason with his brother.

"You misunderstand me. I'm not just going after the demons that did this, I'm going after all of them."

Sam didn't even know how to begin to respond to that.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Tessa asked, not for a second questioning whether or not Dean could do it. "Demons are one of the few predators that humans have left. You need predators to maintain balance in the ecosystem."

"I don't give a fuck" Dean answered. "They're not predators. Lions don't go out of their way to bring pain to the animals they kill. Demons cause nothing but misery and I'm not putting up with them anymore, not now that I can finally do something about it."

Sam opened his mouth but Dean didn't give him any more time to protest. He clapped him on the shoulder and sent him back to the bunker. Then he got to work. He went after the demons that killed the girl, Stephanie, first. There were three of them and they were only a couple of towns over. When he teleported into the room they were staying in, all three of them jumped to their feet in surprise.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked them.

"Winchester" one of them hissed, flashing black eyes at him.

"Wrong" he said, "I am Death."

The three demons blinked out of existence.