"I can't believe it. We just exorcised a demon!" Sam whispered excitedly. "Azazel's daughter. In a bar full of people. And nobody even noticed." Sam looked around the bar, where unsuspecting people were having a perfectly normal Friday evening.

Dean took a swig of beer, chuckling. He had let his brother do most of the job himself to get a taste of hunting demons. Sam had done really well – and Dean couldn't help feeling proud, because, after all, it was him who had taught his brother everything he knew about demons – and after hunting them on daily basis for three years, he knew a lot.

"You think we should go back and wash off the devil trap from the ceiling in the WC?" Sam asked, grinning.

"Nah. The worst thing that can happen – another son of a bitch will get caught. Don't see the problem," Dean snorted.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Of course, how could I forget everyone knows what to do with a demon stuck in a devil trap."

"Go back and paint your number near the trap, if you're so worried. In case of emergency, call Demon Control Service," Dean tried to joke. He still felt uneasy about exorcising Meg so early, even though it seemed the right thing to do.

Sam picked up on his mood. "Speaking of worried. You don't look relieved. Still thinking about the ripple effect?"

"Yeah, but not only that. I'm starting to think we've screwed up here," Dean admitted, scrutinizing the wood patterns of the table.

Sam looked at him, perplexed. "How? Everything went smoothly. She didn't even have a chance to fight back."

"Exactly," Dean held up his index finger. "Now imagine how it all must've looked for her. We just walked in a bar, caught and exorcized her. As if we knew she was there and we knew what she looked like. And the devil trap was obviously painted in advance."

Sam was thoughtful for some time. Dean took another gulp of beer.

"So you think she might suspect something?"

"Not the truth anyway. Time travel isn't the first thing that comes to people's – demon's – mind."

"Whatever. She's in Hell now," Sam shrugged.

"And demons talk a lot in Hell. She'll probably tell others we're better trackers than she thought. And they'll be more careful, which means we must be even more careful," Dean took a deep breath, trying to control his mounting panic. "Damnit. Can't wait till Lilith is dead."

"She's in Hell, too. And to kill her we need – "

" – the Colt, yeah," Dean sighed.

He was almost sure it was Elkins who had it. But how could they get it without causing suspicion? There was no way they could pretend to have tracked the whereabouts of the Colt on their own – Sam had done the research. Stealing was out of the question – Elkins would look for it and they wouldn't be able to explain to Dad how they had got it. But letting things take their course knowing that the vampires would kill the guy wasn't an option either. So, right now they were at a dead end.

"You said Meg busted out from Hell," Sam frowned.

"Um. Yeah, why?" Dean wasn't sure he'd mentioned that Meg had killed a hunter and attacked Jo and Bobby while possessing Sam. But since his brother already had his anti-possession tattoo, it was irrelevant now.

"So the Gates aren't the only way out for demons. Maybe there are other ways to drag them to the surface, then? Like summoning?"

"No. No summonings. The bitch is too dangerous."

"So you suggest that we do what? Set her and other demons free and try to ambush her?" Sam asked skeptically.

"We tried to do this in my past but failed every time. I don't have a foolproof plan on killing her, okay? I don't have a plan at all." He put the empty glass on the table with a loud bang. "I have an idea that might work, but I don't like it. And anyway, the bitch is in Hell, we can worry about her later."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Later? You mean in two weeks when we'll have the Colt, righteous souls and all demons on our asses?"

"Bite me. Let's get out of there. Who knows, maybe Meg had friends who'll come looking for her."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"So, coordinates again? Huh," Sam opened his laptop and started typing.

"Yeah. And no, I don't remember. Can you check them?"

"Yeah, already. It's a town. By the way, shouldn't we tell Dad about Meg?"

Dean considered this. Theoretically, that couldn't hurt. Dad should know how the balance of power stood. And he would probably take them more seriously this time, which would be useful.

"Yeah. I'll leave him a message." He dialed Dad's number, waiting for his call to go to voicemail.

This is John Winchester. I can't be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son Dean 866-907-3235. He can help.

Dean froze. It had been six years since he could last speak to the man. The realization that he could actually communicate, not only by doing the job and going where he sent them, but actually talk to Dad – even though only via voicemail – hit him like a train.

"Dad…"

He suddenly forgot what he wanted to tell. The pause stretched. He hit 'cancel' button and dialed again.

"Dad, it's me. Dean. Dean Winchester," he swore and pressed 'cancel' again. Dad surely remembered his first and last name.

"Hey Dad, we're fine, and just so that you know – " he pressed 'cancel' again. He was supposed to sound more like giving a report than talking to a friend, right? He stared at the screen, trying to figure out what and how to say.

"Dad, we exorcized a demon a couple of days ago. She called herself Meg. Thought you might want to know," he finally said after taking a couple of moments to choose his words.

"Dean, I've read the town news and there's – "

"I don't know what to do when Dad shows up," he blurted out. Sam gave him a quizzical look.

"You hid the truth from me for months. You'll manage."

"It's not that. I mean, it's been six years." Dean tossed his phone on the bed and ran his hand through his hair. "So much shit has happened – well, now you have the idea. So, now I meet Dad and do what? Act like I'm twenty-seven, like I'm his good son? Like I've never been through all the crap I'd been through? Like he always knows better?"

Sam smirked, not looking away from the screen. "Welcome to the club."

Dean sighed heavily, shaking his head. "I still think Dad was – is – right about a lot of things. He just doesn't know the future. But I do."

"Are you sure you don't want to tell him?"

"Yeah. If I tell him, he'll either insist that his life is an acceptable price for Azazel's death or he'll take charge of changing the future. And I can't let him. He hasn't been through it. He won't know what to do."

"Dean, we'll figure it out somehow. And we'll need to go over everything again since we won't have much opportunity to discuss this stuff in Dad's presence."

"Sure, nerd. So, what about the town?" He looked at the laptop screen from behind Sam's shoulder.

"No murders, no strange disappearances. A lot of kids have gone down with pneumonia, though," Sam pointed at the picture of a local hospital.

"Now we're talking," Dean smiled with grim satisfaction. "Shtriga, I remember that one. I don't see what we can improve here, though. It's gonna be complicated."

"There's nothing about shtrigas in Dad's journal," Sam noticed, already googling the word.

"Yeah, but I know how to kill it. That's not a problem."

"But Dad doesn't know you know, and he sends us there anyway?"

"He knows I know because I know it from the past. I mean, from our past, not from my future-past. You got it."

Sam looked puzzled. "I don't remember hunting shtrigas. Or I've left for Stanford already?"

Dean sighed and started packing the duffel. "Not that it matters now, but past me told past you, so – " he trailed off. "A shtriga almost killed you when we were kids. Dad was hunting and we were cooped up in a motel alone for three days, I got bored and went out. When I returned it was looming over you, so I cocked the gun but didn't shoot. It was close, I could miss and hurt you. Luckily, Dad came back just in time. So I messed up his hunt and nearly got you killed. I take it it's a hint to fix the mess."

"Dad never told me about that," Sam said quietly after a short silence.

"Well, he never mentioned it to me again either," Dean shrugged.

"Don't tell me you're blaming yourself," Sam stared at him in disbelief. "Dean, it wasn't not your - "

"Sam, you could be dead just because I decided to play a game on that damn arcade machine," Dean snapped. That incident had been his first serious fuck-up, the first time he had seen disappointment in his father's eyes and he still felt ashamed of his stupidity every time he thought about it.

"And I still don't blame you. If anyone screwed up, it's Dad. You don't leave your kids like that. And you don't give kids a gun to protect themselves. That's ridiculous."

Dean sighed, shaking his head. Sometimes he got the impression that Sam didn't understand that knowing about all kinds of monsters automatically shifts all the criteria of normal life.

"Dad knew what he was doing. If I didn't break his order – "

"For god's sake, Dean, you're thirty two and you still think like that?"

"Dad was mostly right about things."

"Even when he told you to kill me if you can't save me?" Sam demanded, looking intently at him.

When Dean didn't say anything, he continued.

"Look, even if you had stayed indoors, that wouldn't have scared off the shtriga. So you would have had to shoot and it would have escaped anyway."

"Maybe you're right. It doesn't change the fact that I put your life at risk, though," he ignored Sam's attempts to protest and asked, "How do you think we should kill it now? Because I can't come up with a plan. I mean, we can't exactly ask parents to let us set an ambush in their house so that we can blast a monster with consecrated wrought iron after it starts sucking the life out of their kid."

"Yeah. Sounds complicated," Sam rubbed the back of his neck. "Did any of the parents work night shifts?"

"Not that I remember. Well, nobody died last time, so in any case, we can just do everything the way we did before."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Dean, why do I have the impression that you're faking amnesia now?" Sam narrowed his eyes. Dean had been evasive about the hunt ever since Sam read about a couple found dead with their throats slit and found a pattern of similar murders in Dad's journal.

"I've no idea what has gotten into you today. Are you still pissed off that your morning vanilla latte wasn't vanilla enough?"

"Dean. It's serious. We're approaching the major point in our future that we want to change. We could use some extra time, you know. Especially given that you don't remember the date Elkins was killed."

"Sam, this hunt won't take us too long. Relax." Well, Sam was right – they didn't have much time before Elkins' death, but he just couldn't deprive his brother the chance to meet Sarah.

"So you do remember," Sam gave him a bitchface.

"Oh, c'mon, you said yourself you wanted to have the same memories you from my universe had. So, that's what I'm doing," Dean grinned mischievously.

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

As Dean expected, the chemistry between his brother and Sarah was instant. Dean didn't forget to piss off Mr. Blake so that they had to leave before Sarah could agree to give them the documents. After all, Sam had to take her on a date and he was a good big brother. And he already knew what he would be doing do while Sam was busy.

"So, how did it go?" Dean pretended to be relaxed, although he had returned to the motel room only half an hour ago. Finding that creepy-ass family's mausoleum with the freaking doll turned out to be more difficult than he had expected. But right now the doll was in the trunk of his car. He would burn it just at the right time.

"I got the provenance," Sam replied, holding up the files.

"I asked how it went and not whether you got the provenance," he gave Sam a meaningful look.

Sam sighed and sank into the couch. Dean could see he was trying to hold back a smile.

"It didn't work out in your universe, did it?" It wasn't really a question.

"Well, Dad died about two weeks afterwards. And then a lot of crap happened. It doesn't have to be like that this time, Sam."

Sam winced. "Shit. Two weeks till Dad's death."

"Dad's death that isn't going to happen," Dean pointed out.

Sam was silent for some time, pretending to be looking through the papers.

"It was good, actually. The dinner, I mean. The waiter brought a wine card and she was like 'I don't know about Romeo here, but I'll have a beer'," he gave a short laugh, smiling at the memories.

"Sam, I said it before, and I'll say it again now – marry this girl. You have my blessing," Dean declared solemnly.

"That's why you brought me here in the first place, right?"

"Yep."

"We need to stop the Apocalypse first. And let's just face it – we don't know how to kill Azazel and Lilith yet."

"We can kill Azazel when he tries to create another psychic kid, remember? You'll have a vision about it. It's only two or three weeks from now."

"Um. I wouldn't be so sure, Dean. It's still bugging me – why on Earth did he need to create another psychic kid when he already got the whole generation ready?"

"No idea. Never tried to figure out how his brain worked."

"Did he try to create more psychics besides this one?"

"Don't know. You didn't have other visions about that kind of thing, though."

"And we already had the Colt at that time, right? And it happened on the same day Dad went to Meg with a fake one?"

"Yeah, why?"

Sam tossed the papers away and made a steeple of his fingers.

"I've been thinking. It wasn't necessarily Azazel who was there – I think any demon can set a room on fire and acquire human shape. And even if it was Azazel himself, he was waiting for us."

"What? Why?"

"Maybe to see who had the real Colt? To make us waste the bullets?"

"It makes sense. Fuck."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"So, are we leaving tomorrow or what? The picture will magically restore itself?"

Dean suppressed a laugh. Sam was going to be very pissed at him, but that was worth it. Who knew, maybe he wouldn't screw up the whole preventing the Apocalypse mission and these two would end up together and have a normal life, just like Sam had always wanted?

"Of course, we are. But we'll stop by the auction house tomorrow."

"Why?"

"It's not polite to leave without saying goodbye, you know."

Sam eyed him suspiciously but said nothing.

Dean hesitated, deciding whether or not he should act like the adult he actually was. But he decided against it. He came to the conclusion that it would be unfair to deprive Sam of the memories he was supposed to have about younger Dean's stupid jokes. After all, embarrassing his little brother from time to time was his privilege. And Dean definitely had 20$ in his wallet.

Sam made an epic bitch face, and he looked so funny that for a second Dean felt like he really was twenty-seven, without this huge weight on shoulders and knowledge that the fate of the whole world quite literally depended on him.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

By the look of it, the poor woman had been killed very recently – her body was still bleeding a little. Dean mentally kicked himself. He should have remembered. He had got so carried away playing matchmaker that he hadn't even bothered to dig deeper in his memory and recall that there had been another victim.

However, his second thought was that this woman was a perfect source of dead man's blood. Yeah, Dean had definitely developed a professional quirk.

"Hold on a sec," Dean rushed to the kitchen and returned with two huge mugs. Ignoring Sam's disgusted heaves, he adjusted the position of the corpse so that the blood was dripping into the cup now.

"Dean, what the hell are you doing?" Sam was gaping at him in horror.

"Trust me, it's easier than breaking into a morgue."

"Dean!" Sam gestured at Sarah who, to her credit, was slightly green, but didn't look like she was going to faint. Sam must marry her.

"Sarah, I'm sorry you had to see this, but - well, me and Sam are going to hunt vampires soon, so we really need this," Dean smiled apologetically, putting full cups on the nearest coffee table.

"Oh. Vampires. Of course. If ghosts exist, so do vampires, right?" She let out a nervous laugh. "So, this blood, it's like a bait for them? You'll spike it with some kind of poison?"

Dean chuckled approvingly. The girl was smart.

"It's already a poison. Dead man's – well, woman's will do too, of course, – blood is like a tranquilizer for them. Usually, we would have to break into a morgue, but you know, when a person is dead for too long, drawing blood from the corpse is a pain in the ass."

"Thanks for the details, Dean," Sam gave him a 'shut-up-now' look.

"No, I'm fine, that's quite interesting, actually," Sarah reassured, trying not to look at the body. "Just don't forget to get rid of the cups. This blood – it'll kill them or what?"

"No, there's only one way to kill them," Dean grinned and made a slicing motion across his neck.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Dean, what the fuck you think you're doing?"

"Sam, relax. Everything is under control." And it was, Dean was holding the doll he had kept in the trunk until now, ready to light it up any moment.

"I hate you." He heard a loud bang in the background. "Shit. We're trapped in the living room now. Do something already."

"Oh, c'mon. Let Sarah see you in action."

"Dean!"

"Seven minutes, alright?"

It was half the time he used in the past to get to the mausoleum and burn the doll, so Dean figured they were pretty safe.

"I'll kill you."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"So, we're finally going to Elkins now?"

They had said goodbye to Sarah, left her a spare EMF and an anti-possession charm, and had given her a quick crash course on fighting evil sons of bitches. She'd come up with a clever idea to use fluorescent paint for devil traps. Invisible devil traps. The girl had brains.

"Yeah. It's a two-day ride. Hope your plan to tell about looking for Dad and the demon will work. Make sure you give him your best puppy eyes, okay?"

"I don't have puppy eyes," Sam huffed indignantly.

"You totally do. And it's good. He needs to feel heartbroken enough to give us the Colt he'd been keeping for ages."

"Or he would be killed by vampires. What are we going to do with them, by the way?"

"Kill, of course."

"Yeah, I mean, how? It's the whole nest we're talking about"

"I have an idea. Think about ultrasound. Like they use in these ultrasonic pest repellers. I'm pretty sure it can disorient bloodsuckers."

When Dean was a vampire, he had suffered from a splitting headache because everything was way too loud. So, he guessed there was a good chance several ultrasound repellers would win them enough time to poison all of them with dead man's blood.

"That's brilliant, actually."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Elkins looked very sympathetic when Sam finished talking. Dean stayed silent most of the time, but he dropped a few hints that, if not killed now, the demon could turn into a threat for everyone.

"I think I might have what you need, boys," he said, apparently hesitating. "There's a way to kill a demon – to kill anything."

"But?" Dean asked apprehensively. Whatever conditions Elkins had, Dean hoped they were feasible.

"I've come across another vampire nest recently. And I think they have noticed me. And you know what it means," he looked at them meaningfully.

Sam frowned. "But you just cut their heads off, right?"

Elkins laughed humorlessly.

"Do I look like I can take several bloodsuckers with a machete, son? I only track them and pass information to other hunters."

"Oh. Yeah, I see. Sorry."

Dean cleared his throat. "Say this nest no longer exists – would you be able to help us?"

"No longer exists?"

"We're hunters. We killed vampires before." Well, Dean had killed them, but Sam was a fast learner.

"No, no. It's a big nest – there are eight of them at least, and they're old and familiar with hunters. You'd better leave them for others."

"Yeah, but if the nest is no longer a problem," Dean pressed, "would you help us?"

"Boys, your Dad will skin me alive if you two die there."

"Mr. Elkins. Please."

"Okay, okay. I'll help you. But I'm strongly against this idea."

"Great. See you around."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"A nest with at least eight vampires. Elkins's right, it's a dangerous gig. "

"Uh-huh."

"Dean, I get it, you prevented the Apocalypse, beat Horsemen and made a deal with Death himself, but let's not underestimate – "

"I don't underestimate them," he really didn't, not after he had been turned into one of them. "To the contrary, I am very aware of how dangerous they are. But we have two pints of dead man's blood, ultrasound and several machetes. If we're careful, everything is gonna be fine."

"We don't know for sure ultrasound will work."

"I'm sure it will. Fill the syringes with blood and sharpen the machetes. I'll go buy us new clothes."

"New clothes?"

"Trust me, these stink so strongly that the smell alone might wake them up."

The most difficult part was finding the nest. Dean vaguely remembered it was some kind of barn on the outskirts of Manning, but he had to go through police records on missing cars and people to establish a pattern and find the place.

They managed to poison three bloodsuckers before the others started to stir. But ultrasonic pest repellers worked wonders – the vampires were disoriented quickly, and they swiftly poisoned the others. Cutting off heads from barely conscious monsters was just mildly disgusting.

"Burn the bodies, I'll put their heads in a bag in case Elkins will need some solid proof."

Elkins was shocked. He muttered something about their Dad's child-rearing methods and disappeared inside the house. Dean waited nervously, praying that everything would be that simple – the nest in exchange for the Colt. He didn't know what to do if Elkins gave them a fake – and Dean was sure the guy probably had one, just in case, he wasn't an idiot. But they weren't supposed to know what the real Colt looked like. And what if he gave them just one bullet – shit, they should've agreed on the bullets beforehand.

But Elkins returned with the real Colt and all five bullets.

"Sam, salt lines, everywhere," was the first thing Dean said when they got back to the motel. He started to paint devil traps on the floor – and he couldn't care less if they got a fine for this. When he was done, he brought the Colt inside and dialed Dad.

"We have a very important update on the demon we are hunting. We're in Manning, Colorado. Get here as soon as you can."

Thank you so much for all your support 3

Comments make me very happy, so let me know what you think about the story. How do you think the boys will deal with Azazel and Lilith? :)

Take care and stay safe :)