A/N: Sorry I'm late! I had a monster migraine yesterday.

Chapter 7: Reaching the Sea

Then as it was,
Then again it will be.
An' though the course
May change sometimes,
Rivers always reach the sea.
-Led Zeppelin

"Never heard of them." Sam pushed the Impala up to ninety. It felt strange to be the one driving on the way to a hunt. That was Dean's job. Sam was supposed to be in Mica's place, summarizing hours of research.

"They're rare. You remember Lilith? The other wife of Adam who steals children from their cradles?"

"Yeah. You telling me she's real too?"

"Don't know. But her Hebrew name is a cognate of lilim. They're Sumerian and they have the same MO. Only lilim are described as masculine, the spirits of young men who died before they could have children."

"Supernatural SIDS."

"Yeah."

"So how do you kill them?"

Mica sighed. "Well, last time we..." She paused at the reminder of Jim, but that small hitch was her only betrayal. "We tried some Akkadian rituals, some protective charms and symbols. Holy water had no effect. The salt kept it out, but they have ways of getting around that."

"What kind of ways?"

"They can get inside your head. Make you see things... The last time this happened we figured out the pattern and warned Agatha. She saved her daughter, but it cost her."

"But you got it eventually?"

"Yeah. Silver. Goddamn simple thing like silver." Mica looked out the window, watched the shadows racing by. "But it's back now, so it must not have killed it. Just slowed it down for a while."

There were a few quick seconds of silence before she spoke up again.

"The thing I don't get is...why's it after Lucy again? She's a toddler now. These things go after newborns."

Sam heard what she wasn't saying. The frustration, laced with just a little irrational guilt. The fear, the lack of control.

"Well, we'll just have to slow it down again. Do some more research. Here?"

"Yeah," Mica replied, her jaw set firmly. "This'll put us on 169. Head south."

The Impala's tires burned against the road as he took the turn and roared off down the highway.

Sam wasn't sure if it was his own impulse or a nudge from Dean, but he grabbed the amulet from the rearview mirror and slung it around his neck before he followed Mica into the house. It was comforting, in a painful sort of way.

There were Christmas lights draped over the bushes in front of the porch, icicles of light dangling from the gutters. A Christmas tree visible through the window. No indication of what was going on inside.

Hunting without Dean. Picking up a job in the middle of tracking down the bastard demon that killed his brother.

It was all a little surreal.

They slipped inside quietly, cautiously. It seemed a bit anticlimactic after the wild rush to get there in time, but Sam knew it was just good sense not to go charging in.

They moved through the hallway silently, weapons drawn and pointed to the floor. Mica took the lead, checking each dark, quiet room as they passed, until there was only a bedroom left. She nudged the door open with her foot.

Moonlight slanted in through the wispy curtains on the window, providing just enough illumination to distinguish indistinct shapes. A woman was kneeling in front of a crib, inside the line of salt she had poured around herself and her baby.

She was facing a shadow.

The creature looked vaguely human in the dim light, but it was too fluid to be flesh. It moved like the shadow it was, all silence and grace.

Sam and Mica entered the room and stopped a few feet from the tableau, guns still lowered.

"Agatha?" Mica called.

The woman didn't respond. She just stared straight ahead, features twisted in pain, jaw clenched like she was being set on fire but refused to move. She was trembling, and sweat trickled down her face.

"Agatha."

The woman gave a sort of sobbing moan, delivered through gritted teeth.

"I can't...not again...I know...I know, but I can't..."

"It's going to be okay, Agatha," Mica said. Then to Sam, "We have to break contact before we shoot it."

Sam nodded his understanding without looking away from the thing in the center of the room. It showed no signs of having noticed the two hunters, but Sam knew that didn't mean shit.

"As soon as she looks away," Mica instructed.

Sam nodded again.

No one and nothing moved as the nun crept up to the salt circle and, without disturbing it, turned Agatha's head from the shadow's gaze. The woman cried out in pain, in relief, and buried her face in Mica's shoulder.

Sam took the shot as soon as it was available, but the creature moved too quickly and the slug thudded into the opposite wall. He had a disturbing flashback to the night he had pulled the Colt's trigger in the nursery of a six-month-old child. The shadow flickered and dissipated. Then, like lightening, it was coming straight for him. He had no time to adjust his line of fire.

But he didn't need to. The shadow veered away from him as if stung, and headed for Mica instead. Shadow arms and legs gripped limbs of flesh, ripping her from Agatha and pinning her to the wall. Sam half-raised his Beretta, but couldn't get a clear shot.

He didn't see where Mica pulled the knife from. It flashed silver in the moonlight and slipped soundlessly into the creature's flesh. The shadow screeched and dropped her to the floor. With a smooth movement which continued that momentum, Mica flattened herself against the carpet.

Sam didn't hesitate. Gunfire cracked through the room and this time the shadow didn't fade quickly enough. Another angry, painful cry and it was moving again, wounded but not dead.

When it rematerialized, it was already inside the reach of Sam's arms. He had barely started to move back and try to get a shot when the dark figure was again diverted, hissing like a dying man's breath as it shied away from his neck. It abandoned its semi-solid state and flickered back out of sight.

In that split second, Sam realized two things. The first was that the lilu had flinched when it came near him. The second was that the salt circle had been disturbed by the attack on Mica.

He didn't need to see the creature reforming out of the corner of his eye to realize that it was going straight for the kid. There was no way for anyone to make it there in time. So, Sam did the only thing he could think of (although, to be truthful, his spinal cord was doing most of the thinking).

He tore Dean's amulet from his chest and tossed it into the crib.

The creature recoiled and shrieked in frustration, its unearthly voice so high-pitched that Agatha had to drop the salt and cover her ears. Mica had regained her feet, but couldn't get a shot on the thing because both the baby and the mother were too close.

Sam now had only his reflexes to protect him from the creature when it turned on him.

It was nowhere near enough to save his life.

This time, it was Sam who found himself pinned to the wall, while Mica raised her gun uselessly. The shadow limbs were like ice against his flesh, digging deep into his bones with death-like cold. He had managed to hold on to his Beretta, but it wasn't going to do him much good pointed at the ceiling. The thing was lowering its faceless head to his and it felt a lot like the time he'd almost had his soul sucked out by a shtriga, except this time Dean wouldn't be there to save him.

And who's fault is that? the survivor's guilt whispered in that timeless moment before death. He was tired, so tired of everyone around him dying. He had lost everyone he'd ever cared about. There was nothing left except revenge, and that really wasn't much. Not enough keep him from feeling relieved as the strength left his body.

It's another memory, except this time Sam's seeing it for the first time. There's a girl, the hospital, Dean's voice..

"No offense, but...that's crap. You always have a choice. Now, you can either lie down and die, or..."

Sam felt it coming before he saw it, like the static prickle before a lightening strike. Then an enormous streak of black slammed past him and flattened the lilu like a freight train. Sam gasped as the spikes of grave-cold were torn from his body. It took him no more than a fraction of a second to steady himself and raise his gun, but when he did, there was nothing to shoot at. Mica, on the other side of the room, had come to the same conclusion and was simply staring.

The lilu was struggling with another shadowy spirit-creature. It was trying to dissipate and flee, but its attacker held it fast, all claws and teeth and luminescent eyes. The sound of its throaty snarls filled the room like ten Rottweilers fighting over the same bone, while the lilu shrieked in pain. It was a short, brutal fight.

As the lilu lost its strength, things slowed down enough for the newcomer to be clearly visible. It was a gigantic black dog, at least as long as a man, with a head that was almost as wide as Sam's chest. It had locked its enormous jaws on the lilu's throat and was squeezing hard, still snarling like a hellhound.

The lilu dissipated for the final time, melting and corporealizing into a pile of brownish-yellow bones. The dog's teeth clicked shut on empty air as they tumbled to the floor. It stopped its snarling and poked its nose around in them, as if to ensure that they were no longer a threat. Then it raised its head and sniffed derisively.

"Jesus Christ," Mica breathed, and it could have been a curse or a prayer.

The huge head swiveled towards Sam and the golden eyes bored into his. Recognition drove away the fear and suddenly it was all Sam could do to stay on his feet.

He knew that look. It was the one they always shared when things got hairy but turned their way in the end. It was lingering adrenaline and fierce pride. It was the Winchesters' way of screaming fuck you at the dark.

It meant that Dean still had Sam's back, on the hunt or not.

Sam swore one of the golden eyes winked before the apparition flickered away.