A/N: Thanks again to Merisha and Scotia for the beta work. Any remaining errors, if I have not said this recently, are all my fault.

Dean drove north through Kitty Hawk and into Kill Devil Hills. He pulled off the Beach Road and cruised the network of roads in the blocks between the ocean and 158. Ernie said that this area was where most of the eastern European and Russian kids boarded. Almost all the houses on the islands were up on stilts, usually six or seven feet off the ground, with a car port and storage below. In this area, the houses were older and more eccentric, some more rundown, and in some areas almost ramshackle.

He found a complex of houses whose joint backyards were blocked from view by partial fences, some plywood, even a surfboard or two. He watched and listened as kids Sam's age or a little younger moved in and out between the houses. He picked a house and began walking to it, and could feel the eyes on him, just like any hunter would. He glanced around the front of the house, noting movement in all the windows.

He climbed the steps to the front door and knocked, stepping back from the door so that all the people checking him through the peephole, five at least from the noise and whispering, could see him. After a few minutes, he knocked again, and the door opened a few inches. He smiled and approached the door.

"Hi. I'm trying to find someone who knew Gornyi Khiebnikov." He did his best imitation of Sam, and if he didn't quite radiate the sincerity that just baked off his brother, he could still raise the temperature a little bit.

"I understood he might have lived near here?" The door didn't move. "Is there someone here I could speak to?"

He smiled again and ran his hand through his hair. "I'd really appreciate a few minutes of your time." He looked down at his feet then back up at the door through his eyelashes. There were a few words spoken inside, then finally the door opened a bit wider. That move never failed … and it was a guy opening the door. Damn, he was good – it even worked on gay guys. Which was going to be another thing on his list of a million and one things he'd never ever tell Sam.

After giving him a long look, the guy said, "No one here knew this man." He started to close the door.

Dean reached for his wallet, and pulled out a ten dollar bill, and held it up between two fingers. "Are you sure?" He held the guy's eyes. He added another ten. "Just a few questions. It's not official. I'm not the police or the INS." He added a twenty. When that failed, he started to pull out a second twenty but, changing his mind, folded the bills in his hand, and took a step back towards the steps. He put his wallet back in his pocket. "No problem, I'll check another house."

The door swung open. The guy stepped forward, hand out. "Give me the money and I'll find someone who knew Gornyi."

Dean shook his head. "Like I said, not a problem. I'll check another house." He turned away, but turned back almost immediately when he heard a feminine voice. A young woman stepped out of the house, holding up her hands.

"Everyone here knew Gornyi. He lived in the house behind us." She plucked the bills from his hand, and motioned him inside.

The house itself was dark and had an overpowering smell of onions. There were mattresses pushed up all along the walls, and a few tables and chairs. He took a long look at the girl as she walked in front of him. She was almost painfully thin, and so tense her shoulders and neck were stretched taut. Her dark hair was pulled back into a messy pigtail. He figured she was nineteen or twenty, tops.

She led him through to the backyard where beach chairs and umbrellas had been set up near a charcoal grill and several coolers. There were about fifteen people in the backyard and they all shared the same look – skittish and cold eyed. They reminded him of the beach cats he'd seen slinking around – skinny, hyperaware, and suspicious - as they prowled around the edges of the yard, eyes locked on the stranger.

He looked back at the girl. "What can you tell me about Gornyi?"

"He came here for work like all of us." She offered him a beer.

Thinking of African dream root, he waved it off. "Do you work in a restaurant?"

She nodded, "Yes, the one on the Pier." She sniffed. "We are treated like cattle, mostly, by our handlers, shoved into jobs, houses. The businesses pay our handlers, who then pay us. We have group houses, like these, to save money. Most of us will go home, richer than we were, and get good jobs, knowing English well, and familiar with Americans." She opened her beer and took a long swallow. "Gornyi – he wanted to stay, like some of us. He got his own job at the fish farm, is that the word?"

He nodded. "Yeah, or fishery, but farm's as good as anything I guess."

"Fish fishery." She moved the words around in her mouth like she was tasting them. "He paid our handler his fee, and kept the rest. He was saving for a deposit on an apartment." She looked down. "The storm came. Nothing but the fish fishery was touched. Gornyi only person to die."

"Do you notice anything unusual about Gornyi before he died? Unusual behavior? Did he talk about anyone after him? Did he keep apart?"

"How can this matter? A storm is a storm."

"The storms here recently have been unusual, don't you think? Hurricane season is months away. And the Weather Service didn't predict that storm. If they had advance notice of the storm, the farm would have taken precautions. According to the article in the paper, the sky was a clear blue until just minutes before the storm hit."

She looked away, brows furrowed. "Gornyi wanted to stay here. He said so, many times. His family was unhappy with him. They were old country and very superstitious. That made him nervous, perhaps." The wind picked up suddenly, carrying the smell of the ocean but also something unidentifiable. She looked up over his shoulder and he saw her eyes widen.

He stood and spun around, hand reaching automatically for his gun, when he realized she was looking at the sky. Towering cumulonimbus clouds were rising in the east, black and almost greasy looking. He heard thunder.

The back yard exploded into activity as anything that could be carried inside was dragged away. She stood up. "You should go now. Please, go to your car." She almost stalked back through the house, Dean on her heels.

As they came on to the porch, his guide was pulled into a heated discussion with the young guy from earlier. Dean's eyes were drawn to a small table placed by the door, set with a loaf of bread, a dish of salt, a couple of other odds and ends, and an axe, balanced on its butt, blade pointing up. Trying not to unbalance it, he gently touched the axe blade with his thumb. He was surprised when it cut him. Just as he brought his thumb to his mouth to suck it, she was back.

"You must go", she pointed at the sky, "the storm is coming."

He pointed at the table. "Is this to welcome people or to keep them away?" She didn't reply, just pulled him toward the steps back to the street. As he turned toward the ocean, he got another good look at the sky. He'd forgotten how fast storms came up here. The clouds were impossibly tall, covering half the sky, visibly roiling and twisting. He could see lightening illuminating the clouds from within. He glanced behind him to see a clear cerulean blue sky.

The wind picked up, blowing sand and litter toward them. Thunder pealed and the sky opened - they were soaked through in seconds. She was practically pushing him down the steps.

"I'm going, I'm going!" He yelled over the storm. He grabbed her arm. "I'm Dean. What's your name?"

She cut her eyes frantically toward the front door and tried to tug herself away, shaking her head.

"What's your name?" He was practically screaming in her ear. She leaned in, lips to the shell of his ear, and shouted back,

"Milanka. Milanka Djordjević."

He grinned, released her arm, and dashed for the car.

The library was not great. Sam found more lore and history of the area using his laptop than the shelves, but between the high speed wifi and the newspaper archives, he could make due. A string of localized storms was not a repeating phenomenon, which allowed him to rule out a couple of suspects immediately.

Which, he thought as he rubbed his eyes, should have been more help. Like most of the east coast, this strip of land had layers upon layers of history, centuries to accumulate murders, shipwrecks, ghosts, demons, and vengeful spirits.

He started with the oldest Cherokee legends and sacred lands, moving steadily through the lore of the 17th century English settlers to those of the slaves, through pirate stories, shipwrecks, swimming accidents, hurricanes, and even plane crashes. Nothing on storms, sand storms, wind storms, or destruction of land immediately came to the surface. One name kept coming up, though, but he was consciously avoiding it. Croatoan. There was no way in hell this thing could be related to Croatoan. There was no demonic virus here, but Roanoke Island and the tree where the word was carved were less than ten miles from where he was sitting.

He was rooting through the national meteorological service records for similar weather patterns up and down the east coast when Dean squished in, leaving damp footprints behind him.

"You went swimming?"

He shook his head. "You're the beach bunny, Samantha." He pulled out a chair and sat opposite Sam, before shaking his head, hard, sending water droplets onto the table near Sam's books. He snagged them back to safety.

Dean looked hurt. "I toweled off before I came in. Big storm north of here. You can still see it if you look across the dunes." He reached for one of the books, stopped, looked at his hand, went to dry it on his jeans, and reconsidered. "Be right back." He emerged from the men's room almost twenty minutes later. He reached for the book again, but Sam got to it first. "Come on. I used the hand dryer. Even my shirt is dry." He pulled it away from his chest to demonstrate.

"And it's a sauna in the bathroom? Remind me not to go in."

Dean grinned and ran his fingers through his short hair. "I went to see the Russian kids. Talked to this chick – Milanka. She works on the Pier. They've got this kind of student hostel living arrangement. Milanka knew 'Gorrrrnnnyeee'", he said, rolling out the name. "Just eliding." He cut his eyes to Sam, and smiled again when Sam scowled. "Gornyi was part of her summer crew but decided to try to stay in the US. That's about it. Then the storm came up and they all scattered. Not Milanka though – she almost dragged me to the car."

He scratched his head, then pulled his right hand in front of his face to inspect his thumb, rubbing it against his first finger.

"Why don't you join me researching? Unless you want bruising inflicted on your ass, then go on back to the motel."

"No, I'm good." He pushed the book back and reached for the laptop. "I need a computer…?"

Sam pointed back toward the door. "Not mine. Go to the front desk."

A few hours later, the librarian pointed him to the carrels with computers. He spotted Dean, walked over, and looked at the monitor screen. "Hey." He stopped for a moment. "You're looking up the buried golf course? What happened to the storms?"

His brother looked a little sheepish. "I love that little castle." He shut down the computer and picked up his notes. "I just can't get over how the sand just swallowed it." As they walked to the car, he waved at the dune visible in the distance. "That dune is an unstoppable force – gotta like that." He was quiet for a moment, and then added, "Although drive through beer is better."

They were interviewing victim's family members the next morning. Sam took the lead, going all dewy eyed as he talked, and once, trod on Dean's foot when he tried to ask a question. Dean knew he hadn't been so good, well less good, interviewing this last year. It was just that he felt so impatient waiting for them to finally tell him what he wanted to know.

By the time they reached the fifth person, Dean's toes were practically crushed, and he was reduced to smiling and nodding as Sam questioned the widow of one of the victims. He kept one ear on the conversation as he looked out a window onto the back yard. It was a shambles. There were demarcations for plantings and some raised beds, but the plants themselves were gone. When Mrs. Cole, Coleman, Coleslaw, something C, answered Sam's latest question, he asked one of his own.

"Ma'am, I can't help notice that something happened to your backyard. There must have been a storm through here?"

"Yes, a few weeks before my husband died. The garden was my pride and joy. My neighbors and I even have a contest every year." She wiped her nose with a tissue and walked to the window. "I'm sure I'll never get it back to what it was." She pointed, "See through there? The storm got those two yards, and another three on the next street over. They found Mrs. Perkins' reflecting ball on the roof of one of the condo developments", she said, pointing in a different direction. "Over there. Unfortunately in perfect condition."

As they left the house, Sam asked Dean what his plans were for the rest of the day. He scratched his head. "Is there anyone left to interview?"

Sam checked his list and notes. "Not unless you think we'll get much further with the Russians. We could go to a few more of the storm sites, but the ones we have checked haven't caused a blip on the EMF."

Dean pulled off his tie and tossed it and his jacket in the back seat. He rested his arms on the roof of the car, and looked over at Sam. "If the storms are deliberate, they had to have been where they were for a reason. But somebody's prize flowers … it doesn't make sense. And we can't make a connection to an event either."

Sam thought for a minute. "So far, the only thing in common is the agriculture. Or fish."

Dean smiled, "Maybe the storm is hungry?"

"No, Dean, that's you. But if we don't have anywhere to be for a few hours, I was thinking we could, um, go to the beach? And I brought my swim trunks." He smiled winningly. "Please?"

Dean shrugged. "I want to go check out the dune later tonight, but we have a couple of hours. Let's find a place to release you back into the wild, Willie."

Dean pulled up near the Nag's Head Pier, refusing during the entire drive to give in to Sam's requests to join him on the beach.

"You won't go in the water because it was the same ocean that touches Florida, right?"

"Yes, Sam, that's exactly why I won't get in the water. And I'm warning you right now that if some Florida thing tries to take you, you'll be on your own."

"A Florida thing?" Sam snorted.

"Like a rabid manatee, or something."

Sam laughed but finally acquiesced to a solitary journey to the beach. He made Dean guard the car as he twisted himself into giraffe sized pretzels changing his clothes in the backseat.

When he emerged, Dean's eyes widened. "You think for a minute that I would go with you when you are wearing those?"

Sam grinned and looked down at his neon green trunks and matching green flip flops. He pulled the fabric of one of the legs out to display the pattern. "What? The pink smiley faces?" Dean winced. "If you didn't want me wearing these, you shouldn't have bought them for me."

"So it's my fault you look like Forrest Gump? I'd've thought you would have burned those. They're from Florida." He pantomimed a shudder. Sam slapped him on the shoulder, grabbed the threadbare golf blanket and a towel from the trunk, and loped off for the beach.

"Just a couple of hours, Sam. And wear sunscreen. And don't go in the water for half an hour if you eat something…" he was grinning as he watched his brother disappear over a rise, casually giving him the finger behind his back.

Dean walked slowly to the end of the pier. He bought a couple of hot dogs, and ate them while leaning on the railing and looking out over the ocean. He was still in his fancy shirt and suit slacks, but he'd unbuttoned the shirt past his collar bones, and rolled up the sleeves. He looked back at Sam and rubbed his eyes. It was still eating at him that Sam said he was trying to remake himself into a version of Dean. Not that he didn't want Sam to hunt, but become like him? He'd spent his life trying to prevent that. He raised Sam differently than that, better than the way Dad raised him. And wasn't it a real pisser to find out the one person who knew him, who knew him best, thought working with a fucking demon would make him more like his big brother.

He sighed and walked back down the pier to collect Sam off the beach. No way was he going to let him stay in the water any later than this. Sharks attack at dawn and dusk and the sharks around here could have been snorting Floridian water.

They weren't far from Jockey's Ridge State Park, and Dean eased the Impala into a spot in the parking lot before Sam's hair stopped dripping. On the way in, Dean physically prevented him from going into the visitor's center, turning him toward the dunes and giving him a push. They walked out into the park on the raised wooden walkways wrapping around, over, and through the dunes.

Dean stopped at an observation point, idly looking through the provided telescope toward the sound. Sam walked further out, trying to find a walkway that would get him closer to the site where one of the bodies was found. He looked back toward the information center, did a 360 turn, and seeing no one but Dean, he swallowed, and stepped off the walkway and into, on top of, and across what every sign told him was a fragile, irreplaceable, ecology. He felt almost no twinge of conscience – maybe Dean had corrupted him. He'd probably even litter at this point – hell, he hadn't recycled for years.

He was about a hundred yards away from Dean, swinging the EMF meter back and forth like a metal detector. The meter stayed quiet and dark as he gingerly set his size fourteen sneakers on the plants he hoped would best stand up to them. Maybe he wasn't one hundred percent corrupted, maybe only ninety-eight percent.

He smiled to himself as he climbed a steep rise and had a clear view to the sound and the sun disappearing behind mainland North Carolina. He pivoted, still holding out the EMF meter, and swept in another circle. As he turned to face back toward the road and the ocean, he noticed a breeze coming their way. Plants were bending before it, and sand was swirled up into the air. He checked the angle as the wind swept silently forward, and realized it wasn't heading for him. It was heading to his right. Toward Dean.

Dean was in a drop between several small ridges, standing at the juncture of two walkways. To Sam looking down at his brother, the two walkways formed a perfect X – he couldn't help but get an image of Dean at the crossroads, making the deal. He was suddenly so terrified he thought his heart had stopped. He heaved in a breath and got his body moving.

He yelled, "Dean, move off the crosswalk." The sand was dragging his feet and legs in deeper with each step, like quicksand. He fought to move forward but was still dozens of yards from Dean.

The EMF squealed and lit up like a Christmas tree. "Dean! Move – get on the sand!"

Dean vaulted the railing and stood on a dune. "What? Why?"

He was close enough now to see Dean's frown. "Look!" He pointed toward the ocean. "See the wind? It's coming right at you."

"So what, Sam? It's wind." He turned to look toward the ocean, then looked back at Sam. "You see that too?"

Before Sam could reach him, the wind slammed into Dean, throwing him violently backwards and into the walkway. Sam heard him connect with the wood, and watched helplessly as Dean dropped. The wind tumbled him under the walkway, pushing him out the other side.

Sam was only a hundred feet away when the wind came out of nowhere to strike him, carrying sand that stung like needles. He pulled his shirt up to cover his face but it was already in his eyes, ears, mouth and nose. The wind was screaming in his ears, pushing him backwards and away from Dean.

He felt himself starting to sink into the sand, the gale wind was digging him in deeper with ever second. He crouched down as drifts swallowed his feet, his knees, and mounding up and around him, until the sand was at his shoulders, then over them and over his head. He lost what light he had, and curled his arms over his head, waiting, in the dark, for the wind to stop.