"SAAAAAAAAAAAAM!"

Sam woke with a garbled cry, raising his hands to clutch at his head. The psychic scream echoed through his mind, bouncing off the insides of his skull like a rubber ball launched inside a small room. Alarm bells of pain began shrieking in protest. His battered body teetered on the edge of going into a seizure that would without a doubt, kill him.

But he held on, and held out, until the ringing in his ears began to subside and the darkness before his eyes receded. For a moment all he could do was stare dumbfounded at the empty driver's seat. Whatever just happened had not only thoroughly cleaned his clock, but busted down a few walls as well. A burst of anger made him growl softly to himself. It was, however, short-lived. At the moment, getting back at his brother for jerking him around with angelic mind-games was not a priority.

I swear though, that if by some chance I do make it through this alive, I'm going to kick his ass.

"Dean?" he said roughly. He turned his head, looking the back seat, and through the windows into the darkness outside. There was no sign of anyone, anywhere. The most likely place, however, for Dean to have gone was inside the house after Ruby, and unless Sam had dreamed it, the cry for help indicated he was in trouble.

"Sam."

Sam nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the low voice coming from right on top of him. He turned back around to see a dark-haired man now occupying the driver's seat. Recognition was immediate. This was the form of Castiel's original vessel- Jimmy Novak. This was Castiel.

The impulse to throttle him warred with Sam's common sense. A million and one questions boiled up inside him, the least of which was to ask why the angels abandoned the battle with Lucifer at the last hour. Castiel had called them friend, and yet had still thrown Sam and Dean to the greatest alpha wolf of them all without a second thought.

"Castiel," Sam replied through clenched teeth.

"Dean is in trouble."

No shit Sherlock.

"And so of course you're in here. Why don't you go in there and save his ass?"

"I have orders. I am forbidden to interfere."

"He lied to me."

"He has his orders too."

Sam curled a lip in derision, his disgust making him nauseas. "You know what, Cas. Fuck your orders, and fuck you." He shoved open the door and got out of the car. Naturally Castiel followed suit. "You sent my brother down here to kill my son. How jacked up is that, huh? What is wrong with you people? Do you enjoy screwing around with human lives? Do you get your rocks off on betraying your friends?"

"Sam…"

"Look at me, Cas! I've been friggin' rotting from the inside out for the past five years because I did you a favor. I believed in angels, God, all that 'for the good of mankind' crap, and what did I get in return? I got dumped on the side of the road like garbage! Now I find out you've stolen my brother, and you've put a hit out on the kid nobody bothered to tell me I had!"

"We didn't know, Sam, and that's the truth."

"And when you found out you immediately decided a five-year-old child is a threat?"

Castiel looked anxiously toward the house. "Sam. He cannot be saved."

"Not by your definition." When the angel shot him a startled look, Sam continued, his expression and his voice devoid of any warmth. "You give me one good reason why I should side with you and not him."

"You have every right to be angry." The angel replied softly, but his body language, and the energy coming off of him, spoke of a warning. Sam might have gone up against Lucifer and won, but Lucifer was one of the Fallen. Castiel had all the power of Heaven backing him up. "But you listen to me, Sam Winchester. The threat posed by Lucifer is nothing compared to what might happen if that thing in there is set loose on the world."

"He's just a kid!"

"He's an abomination, and the more we discover about it, the more we realize how dangerous it is." Castiel thrust out an arm to point at the house. "It has no power of its own. It's a leech. It won't free Lucifer, it will suck him dry, and that is why I can't go in there!"

Sam stared at him. "What?" He thought a moment. If what Castiel said was true, no angel could go into the house, for the same reasons why Sam was hesitant to take on Castiel himself in an all-out psychic battle. They all had ties to Heaven. "Because through you…"

"It can get to God." Cas took a step toward him. "It can steal the power of God." The angel's blue eyes practically burned with intensity, but deep within them Sam saw something unnerving.

Castiel was frightened.

"But Dean is in there!"

"Dean just tipped us off to what is happening. He's holding his own for now, but he cannot last." Castiel took yet another step closer. "Sam, if you don't go in there that child is going to destroy your brother, and if Dean fails to protect his connection with Heaven, we will only wish Lucifer had won!"

"I…" Sam looked back at the house, his fury abating as he realized Castiel was telling him the truth. "I don't know if I can." He shook his head. "Cas, I'm not what I was."

"Regardless, you are the only one who even has a chance!" Castiel insisted. "Think of the battle with Lucifer, Sam. Think of the sacrifice Dean made to allow your victory. You can meet this thing on its own terms!"

"Suck him dry before he does the same to me," Sam nodded. "I understand." He turned back toward the house, his anger slaked to a slow burn deep in his chest. His anger was not directed at his fellow man, but at the arrogance of Heaven. He would assess the situation himself, and if it warranted action, he would take action – even if that meant sacrificing his own son.

And that will be it then. Our name, our bloodline, it will be gone forever.

Sam got out of the car.

Yeah, and maybe that's a good thing.

The closer he came to the door, the more cloying the atmosphere began to feel. Nausea made his stomach churn and despite the chill in the air he began to sweat. He resisted the temptation to pull Ruby's knife from his belt. He had no true idea of what he was facing, nor what he would find when he opened the door.

It was slightly ajar, the door. Sam slipped through, following a foot-worn path down the center of the hallway carpet. He could smell the blood long before saw it. The memories it brought with it were a jumble of conflicting emotions – elation and guilt, satisfaction and revulsion. Azazel had set the triggers when Sam was a baby, but it had been Ruby who woke them – a wake-up call in the guise of a little bit of rough sex. Ruby's blood was the key to unlocking the door to Sam's demon-borne abilities. It gave him the power to destroy Lilith, and Lilith's blood had been the key to Lucifer's prison.

Once again, demon blood had been the key to a door that should never have been unlocked - only this time it had not been willingly given.

Sam stopped at the edge of a sofa turned slightly askew. His shoulders slumped.

"Dammit, Ruby."

She sat with her back against a chair, her legs stretched out before her on a white rug literally saturated with blood. It spread out from her body in a nearly perfect crimson circle, like that at the center of a Japanese flag. Her eyes were wide open, staring blindly back at Sam. One hand lay limp at her side. The other was curled upon her chest in a gesture Sam found familiar. In one last attempt to save herself Ruby had abandoned her demon powers and gone back to her human magic. The warding spell she cast had done nothing to save her. There was a tear in her gut big enough for Sam to put both fists through.

It wasn't just Ruby's human host that had been killed. It wasn't human blood Sam smelled, that he could practically taste in the air, it was demon blood. Ruby herself, the demonic soul living like a parasite inside the human woman, was dead.

She had made him love her. It was love created by loss, of grief, and more than a little bit of stupidity, a bond forged of lies, magic and blood, but Sam couldn't deny that they'd had something together. Even betrayal and death couldn't change that fact.

So, for a moment, Sam grieved, and he almost wished he'd known her then – before she sold her soul, before Hell became her master, when the little glimpses of humanity he sometimes saw in her had been all encompassing. It all could have been different for her. It all could have been different for Sam too.

"But it wasn't your fault," Sam whispered, moving past her silent form. "You were almost as much a pawn as I was, and I'm sorry for that."

From Ruby he felt nothing, but there was life left in the house, the closest was in the kitchen. Sam followed its thread, keeping his senses on high alert, checking his back as he made his way across the living room, avoiding the bloodstained carpet. Someone else hadn't. There was a smear of blood on the linoleum just past the kitchen threshold, one clear footprint, and a series of smudges leading off further into the room. Sam went where it led him.

"Dean!"

Like Ruby, he was sitting on the floor, propped up in a corner with blood liberally soaking one arm of his shirt. He had his good hand clamped down tight over his arm, but blood still pulsed through his fingers with every beat of his heart. Unlike Ruby, he was still alive.

Sam dropped down on his knees and pulled his belt from around his waist. "We've got to stop this bleeding." He wrapped the leather strap around his brother's upper arm, trying his best not to hurt him. The bicep had been cut open nearly all the way to the bone. "Where is the kid?"

"Gone for now, and I'm not Dean."

At first Sam thought it was, that Dean was just trying to continue with his subterfuge, but when he took a good "look" at the youth sitting in front of him, he realized how wrong he was. This was no angel- this was a human vessel, the real Evan.

"Where is he?"

Evan attempted a wry smile, but it came off rather sickly. He was obviously afraid and trying desperately not to show it. "Still here, but gone real deep. He said he couldn't fight and keep me alive at the same time, and he said – he said the kid would kill us both if he didn't back off." His voice took on a slight tremor. "I believe him."

"I do too," Sam replied softly. "Castiel is outside, he'll help you. Can you walk?"

"I don't know," Evan whispered. His face was deathly pale. "I feel sick..."

Sam cursed. He stood up, looking around the room for anything he could possibly use as a crutch – a broom handle, a mop, anything. There was a door just opposite the sink. Was it a closet, or an access to the basement? Sam started to make his way toward it, but a soft scuffling sound made him stop and turn around.

There, standing in the kitchen entrance, was a little boy. He was small and thin, with pale skin and light brown hair that fell down over one eye. His hands were in the pockets of a blue and gold hoodie with the Michigan State University logo. The hoodie, his jeans, and the Keds sneakers he wore were all stained with blood, incongruous with his casual stance. From the semi-clean appearance of his face, and the streaks of blood one arm, it appeared as if he'd wiped his face off with his sleeve.

The oppressive feeling, the feeling of dread that had made Sam nauseas upon approaching the house, now increased ten-fold. It came from the child. Sam stared back at him in horror. He had never felt anything like it before, not even when he'd been possessed by the Devil himself. Whatever this boy was, it was dark, darker than anything Sam had ever encountered, as if all the evil in the world were concentrated inside him. Standing in the same room with him was like being in the same room with a black hole.

Sam realized the dangers of a confrontation immediately. Anything he threw at the boy would simply make him stronger. Comparing him to a leech was frighteningly accurate.

But he's just a little boy! There has to be another way…

"Hey," Sam turned around. He saw the boy flinch, and quickly held out his hands. "Wait, I'm not going to hurt you." He drew closer, watching the boy's eyes widen and roll as if he were a frightened animal. "I just want to talk a little, okay?"

The boy did not move, but he did not shed the tension in his shoulders, or the wide-eyed look he gave Sam. A table stood between them. Sam moved around it until nothing separated him from the child. At this distance Sam could see his features more clearly, and recognizing himself in them made his heart ache. Reaching behind his back, Sam pulled a chair out from the table, turned it around, and sat down. He was now face to face with the boy – his son.

"I'm Sam. What's your name?"

There was no response, not at first, but after a moment of waiting quietly, Sam saw the boy's eyes regain a bit of focus. The slightest bit of tension left his shoulders. His mouth relaxed. But instead of telling Sam his name, he said:

"You need to go away."

"I'd like to, but I don't think I should leave you here alone."

"Yes you should." The boy said, his eyes, hazel like Sam's, flashed a mixture of anger and fear. "You should go now and stay away. Everyone should just stay away."

Sam regarded him sadly. "Because you might hurt them?"

A snarl twisted the child's face back into that of a wild animal. "Because I will hurt them."

"You haven't hurt me."

This reminder seemed to give the boy pause. He blinked, and cocked his head slightly. "But I will," he said. "I will hurt you." He paused again, cocking his head the opposite direction and narrowing his eyes. "You feel…different."

"I do?"

"You're one of them, I know, but you feel different."

Much to Sam's surprise the boy took a step forward. A mental probe, sharp and burning, jabbed him between the eyes enough to make him gasp out loud. It was only a probe, a curious peek inside Sam's head. It wasn't an attack, but Sam realized that even without a conscious attempt, the boy was draining him. All it took was a touch, and Sam didn't dare try to protect himself. Any reaction on his part could trigger a legitimate attack. Sam felt that too, very clearly. The boy had already tasted blood and was still riding high on his first kill. The taint in him was obvious; Sam picked up on it immediately and it made him feel ill. This small child was Ruby's killer. He had murdered his own mother.

The boy had no control over what he was, nor any desire to change that fact. He was very much like an animal. His prey drive was as high as the most dangerous of predators, and his survival instinct was as strong as that of the prey itself. He knew only two things – fight or flight, and now that he had killed, the more likely of the two was the former. He didn't tell Sam his name because he couldn't. All memory of being human had been burned from his mind.

He's dead. The boy that grew up human, the part of him that was my son, is dead.

Sam had no time to grieve. The boy withdrew his mind from Sam's own. He'd seen enough.

"You're sick," was the conclusion. Just like an animal he had no use for the sick or infirm, and in a split second he had deemed Sam a waste of space.

Sam launched himself sideways out of the chair. He heard something whip past his shoulder, but saw out of the corner of his eye what it was - the boy had finally taken his hands out of his pockets, and clenched in one bloody fist was a six inch piece of broken glass, a makeshift dagger. Sam scrambled to his feet as the boy recalibrated his trajectory and kept coming. His arm slashed back and forth, forcing Sam to retreat with every step. When this attempt to draw blood failed for a second time, Sam braced himself for the inevitable psychic attack. It still knocked him off his feet when it came.

A red-hot javelin of pain skewered him through the back of the skull. He went down hard, crashing to his knees on the floor. The pain was so bad he couldn't even scream. A second attack came immediately after the first, but this time Sam managed to get his defenses up in time. It accomplished very little. Everything Sam put into keeping the boy out of his head was devoured immediately. It seemed as if the more energy the boy siphoned off of Sam, the hungrier he grew.

Sam gasped. It felt as if his hair was being pulled out by the roots, and those roots reached deep inside his brain like thousands of tiny straws sucking his life away bit by bit. His vision began pulsing in and out like a strobe. He could hear nothing but the roar of his own blood rushing through his veins. He reached out a hand and grabbed the boy by the wrist, stopping the glass shard only inches away from his jugular. The child was much stronger than a five-year-old human should have been – but then, he wasn't human.

Neither one of them gave ground. Sam tightened his hand, nearly crushing the bones in the boy's thin arm, but the boy still held tight to his knife. Blood dripped from his fist onto Sam's arm. Like acid, it burned. Sam bit back a scream and felt the smug reaction from his opponent. There was no acid in the blood, but he had managed to convince Sam's mind otherwise. Sam was shocked overall at the vitriol spewing out from the boy's psyche. Dark visions rivaling anything Lucifer had ever sent him flashed in rapid-fire succession through his head. He saw men torn apart, bloody, burning; Hell's basement. He saw Dean there. He saw himself.

The child laughed.

Sam lay on the floor, propped on one arm, with his other raised up to hold back the glass blade. His eyes watered, blurring his vision even more. He felt a thought suddenly enter the boy's mind, saw the physical blow coming before it was even put into action, but even with advanced warning he still wasn't fast enough to avoid it.

A small sneakered foot slammed into his ribs. The crack of bones breaking was followed up by a howl of pain. Sam instinctively let go of the boy's arm to clutch at his chest. He rolled, but again felt his response to be unnaturally sluggish and slow. When the glass shard punched through his back, withdrew, and went in a second time, Sam knew he could no longer avoid launching a psychic counter-attack. He had to protect himself by any means he could.

Despite the pain in his chest, Sam threw his hand back up, but this time did not try to block the physical attack. Instead he leveled a burst of telekinetic energy at his opponent, enough to knock an elephant through a cinder block wall. At the very least it should have thrown the boy across the room. Instead it barely moved him. He took a single step back, momentarily stunned, but not from the blow itself, but from the shock of absorbing so much power all at once. Sam had enough time to scramble away. The boy pursued. As Sam had predicted, the counter-attack had only made his opponent more powerful.

Pulling himself upright by holding onto the chair he'd knocked over, Sam dragged himself toward the far side of the kitchen. Blood was rising up his throat, choking him. He could hear the odd whistling sound in his breathing and knew he was in trouble. Seconds later he felt his feet leave the floor. His body twisted in mid-air and slammed into the upper cabinets. Glass and wood shattered all around him, and this stinging shrapnel followed him back to the floor. He hit it hard and felt air rush from the lung that still worked.

He could only lie there gasping painfully, spitting blood onto the floor, until the sound of broken glass crunching underfoot stirred him back into motion. The air seemed to thicken around him, and an overwhelming feeling of dread threatened to overwhelm his senses the closer the boy came.

Calling on everything he had left, both psychically and physically, Sam lunged up from the floor with a snarl. He knocked aside all his reservations, blanking his mind to the fact he was about to murder a child, refusing to believe this creature was in any way something he had helped create. Whatever else this thing was, it was still the size of a child and in that Sam had the advantage.

One hand snapped shut around the boy's throat like a bear-trap. Long, sinewy fingers wrapped nearly all the way around his neck, squeezing off his air supply. He came up off his feet, held aloft by Sam's grip, and still Sam felt no fear in him. Instead he returned Sam's snarl in kind, kicking his feet and clawing at the hand wrapped vice-like around his throat. The boy's mind was filled with nothing but bloodlust. His eyes held no shred of humanity. He met Sam's gaze with undisguised defiance – and that's when Sam finally had him.

Taking as deep a breath as he was able, Sam locked his mind onto the maelstrom of inhuman fury boiling inside the demon-child, forcing himself not to pull away from the darkness he found there - the sickening lust for blood, the gluttonous need for power, the obsessive drive to kill. Instead of trying to put out the fire, Sam prodded it into an inferno. He recognized all these dark emotions as reflections of his own. Over the years, and through countless errors in judgment, Sam had learned to control them. That was what had saved him from Lucifer. He had refused to let his own shortcomings be used against him.

Now he took a page from Lucifer's playbook. He fueled the flames, crippling his enemy with madness until, losing all its defenses, the boy's mind opened up to him completely. Sam back-pedaled. He gave up nothing. Instead of putting up walls and laying siege, Sam pulled them all down and opened the floodgates between himself and his opponent. He became the leech.

The rush of power hit him like a nuclear explosion, and he realized, belatedly, where the boy's darkness originated, how he'd been able to send Sam such accurate visions of Hell. Too late he realized he'd made a fatal mistake.

Sam had no chance to drain the boy enough to destroy him. It had been too late for that the moment he'd walked in the front door. Just as angels had a connection to Heaven, demons had their own connection. Try as they might to escape it, Hell would always be a part of their makeup – from the strongest to the weakest. Only hours ago the boy had killed a demon, a demon who had apprenticed under Lilith and Azazel, two of the most powerful of their kind to have ever walked the Earth. He had already made a connection with Hell.

And Sam had just thrown the doors wide open – inside his own head.