It took a lot to prison-break a soul from the pit. That, Sam had said, was because it was simply not supposed to happen. As if that explained everything. He glanced at his brother where he slept on the bed closest to him. He seemed okay - but checking out on him without explanation earlier set Dean's hair on end. If something was going on, if he was suffering through some effect of taking the trials and keeping it from Dean … well, he'd slug him for a start. Here he was, yet again, back in this position - Sam was in danger, and there was nothing he could do about it. It had been a hell of a long and rough road, but his first order still applied nonetheless, and he'd meant every word he said. He needed Sammy to be safe. He needed to look after Sam, to protect him. But it seemed no matter what he did something was always gunning for the guy, and Dean was left consistently failing to save him. He was irrelevant - his job was to protect Sam. And here he was letting him step right into the line of fire. He contemplated, certainly not for the first or last time, going out to find one of those sons of bitches and slicing himself up some dog meat. It should have been him in the hotseat. Then, if anything went south, Sam would fare no worse than grieving him. Maybe he'd even get that normal life he had always wanted so bad, if Dean were dead, but with no need for rescue. And now, with this case probably involving some guy trying to spring a soul from Hell - it felt like too much coincidence and it was making him edgy.

He dropped the tomb he had been reading, pulled in a breath and looked at Sam's scrawled notes. The guy really did have abysmal handwriting. They hadn't got far, but with little more to go on, that was unsurprising. Sam had pieced together a few ideas, as Dean squinted at his notes.

Raising human soul from Hell. Blood - blood sacrifice. Grave desecration - taboo/forbidden act, using human remains in ritual. Electrical interference, possibly lights at night - ritual power raising. Fire - elemental connection to Hell, ashes used in black arts -

Before Dean could read any further, Sam suddenly jack-knifed awake in the dimness and blurted "The grave!"

"What?"

"The grave desecration, whose grave was it?"

"Uhh …"

Sam wrestled himself out of the blanket and clicked the laptop out of hibernation.

"There - Charles Mason Brandt. Of course."

"That makes sense how?"

"Magic has connections. And there was one big connection that we didn't have - who this soul was. And why that particular grave? Nothing is random Dean. You always quoted Bobby and said you didn't believe in coincidence."

Dean tried to ignore the shiver as Sam's words echoed his thoughts.

"So you think the soul he wants to rescue is this guy Brandt? And he's using some of his remains as a connection … shit, that makes sense."

So much sense he had to wonder why it hadn't been obvious before. It was hunting 101. Burn the remains to destroy the spirit. Or, in this case, use the remains to resurrect the soul. He thought of Benny, and resisted actually smacking himself in the head. He had done similarly with the vampire's soul, reconnecting it with his remains.

"How did he die?" Dean asked slowly, hit by another possibility.

Sam pulled up Brandt's obituary.

"Oh, man."

"What? No one likes suspense, Hitchcock."

"Sorry - it's just that Charles Mason Brandt died of an animal attack. Inside his locked house. In the middle of the night."

"Time of death being around midnight, I'm guessing. A goddamn demon deal."

Again, the connections were crossing, intersecting … if they found whoever this was, and there was already a hellhound involved, it was possible it would come back to reclaim its kill. He could still get Sam off the hook …

"Sam, look for a next of kin."

Sam looked up at him and smiled down to the dimples, before he bent over the computer, and spun it to face Dean. Only living relative - Jeremiah Thomas Brandt. Their ritual worker.

Jeremiah Brandt lived in a crumbling, low-rate apartment building on the outskirts of town. Both Winchesters eyed it warily as an old woman, filthy and wearing several layers of tattered clothing, shuffled past them dragging a vinyl trolley.

Dean cast Sam a look, to which his brother nodded. Despite everything that had happened between them, they had come back to that synchronicity, and Dean feared losing that all over again - losing Sam - through the trials. He dragged his thoughts away as his eyes adjusted to the dim hallway - the lighting wasn't working. They edged along the cramped corridor until they found their suspect's number. Dean pounded on the door.

There was no response, and no sound of movement from inside. Dean pounded harder.

"What're you doing?" demanded a voice from behind, spinning both brothers.

They hadn't put up a pretence, there was no point pretexting as feds when they intended to call out Jeremiah on his spellwork and force him to stop. Dean hadn't let his mind wander too far over how exactly they intended to do that when they caught up with him. Dean regarded the beady-eyed man leaning out the door of the adjacent apartment critically.

"Looking for the guy who lives here, Jeremiah Brandt. Seen him lately?"

"Well he's pissed off, hasn't he."

"When'd he leave?" Sam asked.

The man shrugged. "I dunno, maybe two weeks ago."

"D'you know where he went?" Sam fished.

"I don't care."

"Wow, thanks for your help man," Dean told him sarcastically, which earned him the door shut in his face. Sam shot him an irritated look.

"What? He wasn't going to tell us anything anyway."

"Well he certainly isn't going to now."

Dean shrugged. "He told us Jeremiah's taken off at least."

Dean cast a cursory look up and down the cramped hall before pulling out his lock pick. He tilted his head at the inquisitive neighbour's door.

"Keep an eye on Jerry's biggest fan, maybe his room will be more helpful."

Inside was more or less what he expected. There was hardly any furniture in the one room apartment, only a bed, a small rectangular table and a single chair, and a large sea chest squatting under the only window. Dean made a beeline for it as behind him, Sam locked the door from the inside and looked around.

The chest was padlocked - piece of cake. The hardware-store lock clicked open easily.

"Sammy." He held up a dried, twisted bunch of belladonna.

The drop in Sam's expression mirrored his own thoughts. They'd both had little doubt that Jeremiah was their man, but there had to be other people in Charles Brandt's life who wanted him out of Hell - girlfriend, wife, best friend, son - but the herb was a dead giveaway. Devil's herb, they used to call it. Jerry was trying to catch a great white by the tail. Everything else had been cleaned out. Apart from the nightshade, the only other objects in the chest were a broken crystal ball, and a few pages of a book Dean actually recognized as the same Sam had scoured hundreds of times looking for a way to break Dean out of his own deal. He felt the first stabs of sympathy for Jeremiah Brandt, and knew Sam had to be feeling it sharper. Jeremiah had gone through many of the same steps his brother had, trying anything and everything, desperate to save Dean. He shook the thought out of his head.

"This might be a lead," Sam's voice drew his eyes, to find his brother standing by the table. He flipped the crumpled flier over for Dean to see. It was for a garage conjure shop, supplies and services.

"Oh that is definitely worth a look."

The sandy-haired, thirty-something guy who ran the operation narrowed pale eyes at the Winchesters on his doorstep.

"Where'd you even get that, anyway?" He gestured to the flier Dean had held up.

"Jeremiah Brandt."

"Oh no way, get out of here with that, I'm not having anything to do with that crazy bastard, or you."

He moved to swing the door shut. Dean slapped a palm hard against it.

"We're not helping him, we're trying to stop him."

The supplier narrowed his eyes again, frowning calculatingly.

"Who the hell are you guys?"

"Doesn't matter who we are."

"Ah yeah it does, if you know what he's doing and think you can stop it. Anyone who comes around asking questions like that of someone like me can only be one of a handful of things. So which one you are determines whether or not I tell you shit."

Dean felt the involuntary twitch of a smile. Had to give him that. He cast Sam a look, who nodded. Roll the dice.

"Hunters," Dean answered shortly.

The guy in front of him cast them a sidewards look, suspicious and wary, but he didn't slam the door, run or throw some mojo at them, which was a plus.

"Okay," he said carefully, "Jeremiah may be a lot of things, but he's human. Not exactly your area. And if you're thinking damage control after the fact, forget it. That kind of mess … no one could clean that up."

"So he told you what he planned?" Sam interjected.

"Some of it. The parts where he thought he could use me. When I started catching on to what he was planning, I asked all the questions, but he wouldn't spill. I had to find out if he was just some random nutjob who watched too many movies or if he was legit enough to actually be a threat. And I'm sorry to say he's the latter."

"What did he want from you?" Sam asked.

"Ah, there were a few gaps in his spellwork. Some of it was just the staples, herbs, powdered sulphur and charcoal, ritual sigils, a standard summoning, nothing that rang any alarms, you know? But there were some questions he asked … look in my line of work, being stupid can get you killed. And I'm not stupid. It wasn't a leap to connect the kinds of practical application questions he was asking with the theft of the manuscripts a few weeks ago. He was actually trying to do it. A bastardized version of it, but essentially the same job, with the same end result. The text isn't like Raise Hell for Dummies, but it can be … twisted. Coupled with the kind of alterations Jeremiah already knew way too much about, I could see him actually patching together a ritual that might actually do it. Once I figured out where he was headed, I tried everything to convince him out of it. Told him what could happen, to him and everything else if he went through with it, but he wouldn't listen. Said he had to, that he had no choice. I don't know what that meant, but he refused to say. I could only hope that he snapped out of it, got cold feet, couldn't work the ritual, anything to stop him. Judging by the fact that it's not Apocalypse Now, I'm going with that."

"Hey, you could have worked a little magic of your own to slow him down," Dean said.

The guy gave him a crooked half-smile with too much knowledge behind it.

"That's professional entrapment, man. No dice, I'm not into that shit."

"Okay," Sam broke in, "did he tell you anything about the last steps in his ritual?"

"Uh, I don't know what he had already done, but … those fires that have been happening around town, I think - I think they were failed attempts. Kind of like fighting fire with fire. To poke a hole into Hell, it has to be done through fire."

"So what does that mean for his ritual? That it won't work, that he just needs to tweak it, what?" Sam asked, and Dean could hear the mounting frustration in his voice.

"I don't know everything he's planning okay, he shut down on me. But there's been lights at night … it's a sign, a harbinger of things to come. He's doing something right. Well, right by his standards. He's not going to stop, you know. Either he hasn't gathered all his elements, or his ritual just needs work, I don't know.

"If he hasn't gathered everything he needs, what are we looking for?"

To Dean's surprise, the man in front of him dropped his shaggy head and gave a humourless laugh.

"I thought I already told you I wasn't stupid. You think I haven't been all the way down this road? I don't want to die because one asshole stuffed up the esoteric version of Prison Break. If I couldn't talk him out of it and I'm not in the business of binding, cursing, hexing, washing his memory or otherwise screwing with him, then I'd go for the ritual, rather than the man. I would read the signs just like you're trying to, catch him in the act, destroy the things he needs for this to work. When I put the manuscript into the mix, I figured that was my best bet. Destroy the text he's basing this on, anything he's put down on paper independently, and whatever else that looks important that I can destroy, maybe I can stop him without having to hurt him."

"Okay, smart move, and you're a self-confessed smart guy. So?"

"Too many variables," Sam's voice lamented softly from his side, and Dean jerked him a look. Realization was settling over Sam's expression, and he looked as though he wasn't enjoying it.

"Bingo," agreed the guy in the doorway grimly. "It could be one of ten million things, and multiplying exponentially. I can't spend the rest of my life running around after every insignificant event because it might indicate some psycho knocking on the gates of Hell. And neither can you. And anyway, what are you going to do if by some miracle you catch up to him before he completes it? Put a bullet in his brain? You're hunters, and he's human."

"He is potentially ending the world," Sam snarled suddenly, the venom in his tone surprising Dean. "Letting demons loose on the world, potentially killing millions of people. He's going down, human or not."

Pale eyes went round, and for the first time since they had met him, the guy had nothing to say. Sadness settled over Dean - yeah, both he and Sam knew how it felt being the trigger man. The guy who pushed The Button. Sam's vehemence was as much regret and self-recrimination as validation. Sam claimed the guilt of everything that happened that year before Hell took him had been burned out in Lucifer's cage. He also said he was fine and whatever effects these trials were having wasn't happening. His brother, the open book.

"You can't just sit back and wait for the blast wave," Dean told the man before him, dragging his thoughts away from the past.

"I don't have any other choice. Neither do you, or anyone else, apparently including Jeremiah. You can't find him, you can't track his ritual with any kind of certainty."

"Yeah, well we're going to try," Dean insisted, aware of Sam's silence at his side.

"Knock yourselves out," replied the man before him dryly. "But you better hurry - there's been a three degree fluctuation in temperature in the area and that could mean it's now Hell on Earth."