Episode Six
"The Little Fish"
Chapter Four

Fifteen minutes out of the cabin, Sam still had no idea how to kill the thing, nevermind how he was going to find it. He figured it had dragged Dean back to its home base, and either way, his first goal was to find Dean, save Dean-

-the arc of red into the air as Dean flies back into the clearing from the underbrush, onto his back, and he's turning toward Sam to tell him he's fine, just get to the cabin, Sam who is trying to sort what is real from what is something Lucifer is showing him-

Sam moved through the brush along an animal trail, back toward where he'd first encountered the creature one on one. Dean's trail would pick up at the bottom of that ravine, and Sam would just have to find him. They could work out how to hunt the thing once Dean was found. But Sam remembered the red of Dean's blood, in the air and on the rock where he disappeared - if he was alive (he was alive, Sam would know somehow if he wasn't), Dean was still injured.

What a fucking failure of a hunt. Way to go, Sammy.

By the time he found the ravine, he'd collected together his mental notes about the goatman into a tidy list. The thing he'd come face to face with wasn't like anything in the Letters archives or the witness accounts. They mostly said it looked like a person, maybe with a strange unmoving face, sometimes with awkward movements - because it wasn't a person, it just looked like one. Sam broke into the clearing at the ravine. There was the dead tree where the thing had pinned him, busted his shoulder up again, choked him into black, and then it dragged Dean off-

Leaves, spattered white with the creature's blood, more of it near the tree where it bled while Sam struggled futilely. Sam catalogued again - white blood, dusty dark grey skin, backward hinged legs, clusters of little white eyes on either side of its head Sam had mistaken for vine flowers. He'd never seen anything quite like it. It didn't seem to match the lore, but then, sightings were rare, and it hunted by taking on human form and blending in. Maybe he'd been the first hunter to set eyes on the thing and live - so far - to talk about it.

Sam sighed, shook his head. He'd have to track it with the blood.

The smell wasn't so intense. They had the cabin windows open because it had gotten stuffy with everyone so worried, working, breathing. They needed fresh air. But that meant the residual scent of the goatman lingered. Of course, the rumbling in the distance meant the rainy ozone smell would only intensify. It made her nervous.

Charlie counted. Sixteen people in red, six people in blue, not counting herself. Sam said to count them, and she couldn't not count them once he'd said that. Because he was gone, and this was on her, all these people and their lives, on her, oh crappity crap.

She could do it. Sam said she could, so she could. Also, she was a badass. She hefted the gun, slid it down the back of her hiking shorts the way Sam and Dean did, and counted again. There were supposed to be sixteen people in red. There were fifteen. It meant someone was out checking the perimeter, logically. If the goatman showed up, there'd be seventeen. But the numbers not matching up still made her nervous.

Everything made her nervous.

Bridget came up to her. "Okay. We did some sorting. We got food for all of us for probably three days, altogether. We can stretch to probably five or six if people do just one meal a day, but we got a few with blood sugar issues, so not everyone can do that. I confiscated the chocolate bars for emergencies and only the blood sugar kids know where they are. Perimeter's getting checked as we speak."

Charlie blew out a breath. That was confirmation of that. Okay. "Okay, good. That's good."

"So what else should we do?"

Charlie chewed on her lip. Food, protective sigils, totems outside giving them a perimeter. She didn't know what else there was to do. "I-" She swallowed. All these people depended on her. "I'm not. Um."

"Hey," Bridget said. "Aren't you the Queen of Moondor?"

Charlie blinked. "Um. Yeah."

"I saw you on youtube."

"You're into- I mean, not that you couldn't be. I just." Charlie went pink.

Bridget rolled her eyes, lifted her shortened left arm. "Because of my arm, right? I can't hold a sword or something?"

"No, I mean, that's not what I'm saying-"

"Chill out, Red. I'm just playin'. I'd probably be a wizard or something anyway. I'm not into it-" she said when Charlie was about to launch into her recruitment spiel. "But if I was, I'm just saying, I'd be a kickass wizard. My point was, you're a queen, dude. So step up."

"Well if I'm queen, you're my second in command."

Bridget winked. "Like your consort?"

Charlie raised a brow, grinned, smug, then shut it down with some regret. "I have a girlfriend."

"Sure."

Charlie blinked long. "Did I magic myself into the gayest hunting job ever or what?"

"What, because of Chris and Ellie?" They glanced over at the couple, holding hands near the fireplace, shell-shocked and talking quietly with a couple of other people. "No. You and me, Chris and Ellie, and Robbie and your friend Sam, that's it on this trip I think."

"Sam's not gay."

Bridget looked surprised, raised her brows. "Somebody oughta tell Robbie that. Poor kid."

Charlie frowned. "I mean I think he's not gay. He's had girlfriends but I mean, who hasn't dipped in the wrong end of the pool, know what I'm sayin'?"

"No, I have no idea what you're saying."

"-Or he could be bi..."

"Whatever. It doesn't matter. Robbie's completely freaked out by this whole monster thing. I think he's lost his thirst for climbing that particular tree."

Charlie stared for a moment. "Gross. I mean don't get me wrong. Sam definitely needs to get laid. But gross."

"What. Robbie's not good enough-?"

"No. No, it's just - Sam's like my brother. I don't wanna hear about - no, gross. Anyway. I think everything's taken care of for now. I mean, food, shelter. Sam says these marks and the ones outside will keep practically anything of an evil monstery nature out of here. We just have to wait for him to give the signal saying the thing is dead."

"So... you're saying we can just what. Sit around and play board games or talk about who's gay or whatever?"

Charlie shrugged. "I guess."

Charlie did not play board games or chat about who was gay or whatever. Bridget got some help pulling down the board games and made sure people were doing things rather than brooding. She was pretty good at it. So Charlie sat and counted people instead. Six people in blue. Fifteen people in red. Six in blue. Fifteen in red.

The door opened, fine, someone was checking the perimeter-

"That's insane-"

"No it's not. The beauty of the film is-"

Charlie stared at the two people walking in the door, one in red, one in blue.

Seven people. Seven people on the blue team. She looked through the room, trying to make notes, trying to find - she pulled Sam's gun from the back of her shorts, pointed it at a dark-haired girl from her team, someone she knew was named Melanie. Someone she was sure went down bloody next to Beth, her sister. Someone she'd been relieved to know was alive after all. But.

"You're dead," Charlie said. Ellie and Chris had been chatting with "Melanie." They turned to her with wide eyes. "I saw you die. I didn't remember. I thought it was just Beth. But you both died. You both died."

Melanie stood, hands up. "This is crazy." She edged toward the door and people let her, unsure. "You're crazy."

"You're the goatman we're hunting."

Melanie frowned, took off for the door, and Charlie took her shot. Red splattered onto the wall, but the goatman kept running, was gone. With it, the scent of ozone she'd thought was coming rain, she'd thought was residual. It'd been here all along, waiting for a window to slice them up, or trying to ... to what, spy on them?

She turned to Chris and Ellie, heart pounding. "Did it say anything to you?"

Chris put a comforting arm around Ellie's shoulder. "She- it was asking about Sam," she said. Ellie nodded.

"Yeah," Hadley said from the corner. "She asked me if I knew where Sam went."

It was hunting down Sam. It had held off killing them all to find out where Sam was. Shit. Shit. "What'd you tell it?"

Ellie shrugged helplessly. "That he was going to hunt down the creature. She wasn't on our team, didn't know Sam, so I was - I was trying to reassure her. I said Sam was a hunter, that he was a good tracker. I said he was probably already tracking the thing down. Oh God. It's going to kill him. Oh God."

"It's not your fault," Charlie said. "Sam's gonna be fine. He does this for a living." She turned away. It was totally their fault, of course. She eyeballed Bridget and tilted her head for a private conference, and when Bridget came over, she said, "I gotta go warn Sam. I got my blessed knife, and I'm taking this gun. No one leaves this room. Close the windows."

"Charlie, this is stupid."

Charlie grinned. "I know. I'm so dead." She leaned forward and gave Bridget a kiss right on the lips.

Bridget stood there, stunned, and Charlie winked. She grabbed her backpack on her way out the door, and heard Bridget yell after her: "You have a girlfriend!"

Tracking the thing by its blood was easier than he thought it'd be, but still pretty damned difficult. The white ichor was chalkie and it stuck to the leaves and underbrush like milkweed sap, but he'd only winged it and the drops and smudges were few and far between. Luckily, he happened to be a decent tracker - an injured animal takes easier paths, is clumsier. Broken branches, overturned stones. The thing's stride was huge, but it apparently ran four-legged, splayed handprints in the mud here and there.

And then the sense came to him, the quiet of the forest in the presence of a predator. According to the trail, the thing had veered to the left, just slightly, then took a sharp turn back toward the cabin, maybe to double back, or maybe, he thought as the smell came up in a swift cloud of metal bite, the swell of copper - maybe it was just circling him. Toying with him.

Sam let it, led it off of its own path, off the easier path the injured thing had been taking, toward a stand of skinny trees that grew close together a bit of a hike off. Cover for Sam, hindrance for the thing that stood two full feet taller than him. He plotted a course toward it, over a ridge and across a ravine over which some dead tree had become a bridge. He pretended to see signs, pretended to track it, pretended to be a hopeless victim. For twenty minutes, he pretended.

And then as soon as he'd gotten across the ravine, it came out of the brush like a wild dog, three times as big, a sleek grey shadow made of muscle and cleverness. Sam went down and they rolled. Sam struck upward with his blessed knife, the blade bit into something and it backed off. Stood grasping at its arm, white blood seeping from between its long, clawed fingers, flares on the either side of its head thrown open at the injury, curling back like the horns that must have given it the name goatman, blinking those clusters of eyes at him, mouth open like a snake preparing to strike-

Sam turned and ran for the trees, slipping among them seconds before they bent toward him with the weight of the thing chasing him. The trunks creaked, but held, and Sam spun to face the thing, lunged forward to slash with his blessed knife and it howled at the contact, threw a long limb forward toward Sam. The claws caught him across the chest but barely broke skin, just shoved him sideways into a tree trunk and he saw stars, slumped momentarily as his body lost contact with his brain, but the thing was caught for the moment, long enough to get his breath back, long enough for his vision to resolve. He held his knife up as a warning, buying time-

But a crack rang out, the snap-echo of a gunshot, and the thing reared up, shrieking, those horns flaring, backwards-jointed legs folding in pain and it took off.

Sam sank against the tree. His shoulder was burning, his head -

"Sam! Are you okay? Oh my god-"

"Charlie? What are you doing here?"

She helped him sit, winced in sympathy at the way he favored his shoulder. "I was coming to warn you. Guess I was too late."

"Warn me?"

"That thing showed up at the cabin looking like one of our dead friends. It was asking where you went before anyone noticed. I'm sorry. It got past me. It must be really fast though. It took off the opposite direction you went and still beat me to you - I mean if anyone had seen the direction you left in, I'd have never made it before it - before you-"

Sam looked up at her as she babbled, obviously keyed up, in shock maybe, she resolved into one image, and she was crying, shaking. "Shh," he said, pulled her into his chest and smoothed her hair. "You made it. I'm okay. I'm okay."

She nodded without pulling away. Sam gave her some time to get herself together, rubbed her back and she folded into him gratefully, this tiny little sister with the fruity shampoo. Why why why did she have to come out here? "How'd you find me, anyway?" he asked.

She laughed, short and loud and embarrassed. Sat back up and away from him, drying her cheeks with her palms and sniffing and grinning the giddy grin of someone who had survived something. "Check your pocket."

Sam patted himself down, felt the GPS device she'd given him. When he pulled it out, he saw the tracker was turned on. He faced it toward her, accusing. "Charlie. Not cool. You could have been killed."

She shrugged. "You're welcome. So, okay. I brought this." She produced a blood-stained piece of cloth.

Sam took the piece of fabric. "You shot it?"

"Oh my god yeah, I did. I'm a badass!" She looked surprised at herself. "I thought you could like, track the thing with it or something. It tore off her sleeve when she was running away."

"What am I supposed to do, get its scent? I'm not a bloodhound, Charlie."

"Well I don't know! Do... huntery stuff with it! Can't you do like magic on it or something?"

Sam shook his head, amused, then- "Wait. Wait. When did this all happen?"

"Like just now? I took off right after it did." She looked at her phone. "Maybe fifteen minutes it took me to find you?"

Sam frowned. "Charlie. That thing has been following me for at least half an hour."

"What?"

"And this blood is red."

"So?"

He looked down at his own shirt, at the bright white ichor staining it from his first run in with the thing. "So the thing we're hunting bleeds white." He pushed up from the ground and inspected the slender trunks of the trees the thing had pressed against trying to get him. Swiped his fingers through more white smudges and showed them to Charlie in evidence.

"Wait, are you saying I shot Melanie, like for real?"

"No, she wouldn't have run. You wouldn't have come up with an extra person."

"Well then... it had a human body when I shot it, and it didn't either time you fought it."

Sam frowned. "I don't think that's it." He looked at her. "It walked right past the wards?"

Charlie nodded, shrugged. "Maybe they just don't work on this thing."

Sam looked down at the knife in his hand, stained with the thing's blood. "Or maybe there's another thing hunting in these woods."

They hid behind a fallen log after a forty-five minute hike through uneven terrain.

"Are you sure about this?"

Sam shook his head. "Not even a little." They crouched behind the fallen log, looking down from a ridge onto the mouth of a cave. Sam turned and slid down the log to sit in the dirt, closing his eyes briefly. His shoulder ached. His chest was on fire with the thing's claws. His head was starting to ache, his lungs rattled - adrenaline could only get him so far before the Trials started waging war in him again. He felt Charlie's fingers probe his temple and hissed.

"Are we resting?" she whispered.

"Just for a minute."

"Then let me look at your owie."

She taped a folded piece of gauze over what was apparently a cut on his temple. If it didn't need stitches, if it didn't even bother him, Sam didn't see the point in covering it, but it made Charlie feel better. He understood the value of that. He did plenty of pointless things just to try to feel better.

"Okay," he said after he'd caught his breath. "You just stay here. I'm going down."

She nodded, but crouched, looking down into the dip in the landscape over the log.

"Charlie, stay."

"I know, god."

Sam put his hand on her shoulder. "You're my backup. I need to know where you are for my own safety. It won't be heroics if you follow me and I don't know about it, got it?"

Her shoulders slumped. "Okay, got it."

"Everything's gonna be okay."

"I know. Oh, here-" She tried to hand him back his Taurus and he pushed it back toward her.

"I need you to cover me."

Her grin lit up her face. "Oh my god, I always wanted someone to tell me that."

Sam winked. "Wait for my signal."

He crept down the embankment as quietly as he could, picking through the fall of debris carefully. There were rocks embedded throughout, and he managed to find solid ground under every step. There was no activity around the mouth of the cave; he didn't have much other choice than just going in and hoping for the best. But he had a flashlight, and the knife, whatever good that did him. And Dean. Dean was in this cave, he was sure of it.

The forest around him was quiet, but he noted there were sounds, nothing like the absolute silence of an area that had been cleared by a predator. No sounds of something else stalking him the way he was stalking the cave mouth, no suspect shadows among the trees surrounding the little clearing-

But then the burning metal scent of ozone descended like a blanket, and Sam's heart pounded and he whirled, hand out even though he was pretty sure the knife would do nothing to this creature.

It came out of the trees like a wendigo, bowled him over and sat on his chest, light grey skin, too long neck, long-fingered hands. Clusters of eyes blinked pale blue at him, two horns with tufts of white inside them flared out and up into an arc over its head, a fall of fluttery fur inside the fleshy light grey folds. The thing raised a large clawed hand to strike. "I'm not here to hurt you-!" Sam managed. There was a shriek from Charlie's cover and then she was sliding down the ridge to come to his aid-

"Wait, stop!"

Dean swayed at the mouth of the cave, leaning against the stone heavily, panting. The creature over Sam turned to look at him.

Dean held out his hands, one to Charlie and one to the creature, like listen, pal, and said, "If Sammy wanted to kill you, you'd be dead. Let him up."

The creature looked back down at Sam, tilted its head, then pulled back and Sam scrambled out from under it until his back found a tree trunk and he rested his head back.

The creature fell back as well swiping its long-fingers hand down over its face. "Oh thank god," it said.

"So this isn't the goatman we're looking for," Charlie said, swiping a Jedi mind trick through the air. She glanced at the creature who'd attacked Sam, the thing she'd almost put a bullet into before Dean had stopped the whole thing. It had taken on a more human form, a dark-haired girl Dean thought he recognized from the blue team. Melanie, he thought. Yeah. They were all seated in the room Dean had first snapped awake in, now he knew it was the main living area of the goatman, properly warded and pretty homey, actually.

"No," Dean said, and Sam said, "Not anymore," without looking up from where he was sewing the gash in Dean's leg up.

"Thank god you figured it out," Dean said. "My cell phone is busted. I couldn't call you-"

"No signal out here anyway," Sam said. He tied off a stitch.

Dean frowned at him. Well wasn't he all-business.

"How'd you know?" the goatman said.

Sam nodded at the wound on the goatman's arm. "Charlie came to find me after you came to the cabin looking for me. She had a piece of the shirt you left behind, red with blood. But I-" he said, pulling on the collar of his shirt to display the stain, "took a piece out of the one stalking me. White blood. Then I remembered the Australian stories, how the goatman was a kind of helper creature who guided lost wanderers back to civilization, and it struck me how sometimes we'd only smell blood or ozone, not both. Then I remembered the survivor of the bloodbath that led us here had no memory of getting herself to the ranger's station, she must have been taken there by someone, or something. Then, of course. The fact that this blessed blade took a hell of a chunk out of the thing I was fighting, but you could just waltz through the wards at the cabin-"

"Which ones did you use?" Dean asked.

"Those leyline-local Polish ones from the-"

"Right, right," Dean nodded. "Good call-"

"Uhm," Charlie said. "English please?"

Sam sat back from Dean's freshly stitched leg and closed his eyes, hissing as he massaged his shoulder, so Dean said, "The blessed knives and the wards are from the same lore. If this guy-" Dean gestured at "Melanie" - "could walk right through the wards, but Sam's knife affected the thing he was fighting, they had to be two different things. I'm guessing," he said to the goatman, "Sam's blade wouldn't affect you much. Right?"

The goatman who looked like Melanie shrugged. "No more than any other blade."

"So you're saying the stuff we did to protect against him," Charlie said, jerking her thumb at the creature, "really protects against the other thing."

Sam nodded.

"But you said the stuff you used was just basic protection stuff-"

Sam shrugged, one-shouldered, and Dean frowned. "We don't have any more specific lore-"

"So we're basically just lucky it works on the bad guy, and the guy it doesn't work on turned out to be a good guy."

Sam sighed, looked off. "Yeah."

"Holy crap, how have you guys stayed alive all this time?"

Dean frowned hard at Charlie. "Badassness, mostly," he said. "We're not stupid. Those wards Sam put up protect against evil. They don't work on something that isn't dangerous. This isn't luck, Charlie. It's skill. Genius, if I do say so myself-"

Sam chuckled. "If you do say so yourself," he muttered.

"What. I did teach you everything you know."

"I'm pretty sure the Men of Letters archives taught me some stuff. And you know college. And a lifetime of being dumped at the library. But sure. You can have this one."

"Look who's a big man," Dean laughed. Sam's brief descent into self-pity at Charlie's needling faded a bit. Sam smiled, coughed, frowned. Awesome, more good news. "Well, whatever. You found me. You figured out there were two things in the woods."

"I didn't know you'd be here," Sam admitted. "I hoped - but there was just as good a chance the other thing had taken you. I came here hoping to at least find an ally."

"You did," the goatman said, bowing its head. "My name is Ionecsa," the goatman said, in Melanie's bubbly voice.

"Sam," Sam said, nodding. "And this is Charlie. Ionesca, that other thing out there. It's a goatman too, isn't it. There aren't two different things in this woods, are there."

Dean raised his brows. "Tell him what you told me, Nessie."

Ionesca made itself comfortable, sitting cross-legged on the ground. "You are correct. But it is a rogue, I swear it. We are a peaceful people-"

"Something had to have changed that rogue goatman. If the wards work-"

"Something did. The goatman who hunted you is called Ryelka, and it is one of the oldest among us. The legend goes that Ryelka was the first of the dark ones. Clan murdered, Ryelka sought revenge and grew to lust for killing. It made its choice, and its soul was twisted. It is more powerful than any other goatman, save Lya, Ryelka's sibling. Lya made a different choice, to come to the aid of those who are lost. The two of them are like gods to us, devil and deity, progenitors of our kind to this day. We are born in the likeness of Lya, and remain so unless we fall to Ryelka's call. It is a choice we make every day, to be like Lya and shun Ryelka."

Sam frowned. "This isn't a metaphor, is it. You're saying, the thing that I fought is your people's version of... of ultimate evil? Ryelka is here?"

Ionesca nodded. "It is real, and very old. It hunts very well, but its best trick is stringing goatmen who have not fallen to Ryelka's call up for hunters to kill."

"So you thought I was coming to kill you."

Ionesca looked embarrassed. "I am sorry-"

"You couldn't have known I wasn't like the other hunters. So," he said, changing the subject, "you're hunting Ryelka, it frames you for its killings, hunters come in and kill you. Ryelka moves on and the hunting community calls the job done. No one suspects there's something else out there."

"That is right."

"And you're what, trying to take it down?"

The creature looked at Sam with big eyes. "How can one hunt the devil?"

"You'd be surprised how often it comes up," Dean muttered, and from the corner of his eye, he saw Sam's mouth twitch in something that could have been a smile or fledgling reprimand.

Ionesca leaned forward, earnest. "We do not hunt Ryelka so much as attempt to save those it tries to slaughter. For this transgression, it uses you hunters to kill us. It has killed most of my clan this way. The last was a decade or more ago. Close call. It's been quiet until now, but I think we have no choice. Our numbers are few. I'm going to kill it this time. Our kind has a tradition of helping those who are lost in the wilderness. We'd like to get back to our job."

Sam shifted. "Why'd you go after Dean? Why not just ask us for help?"

Ionesca shook its head. "I didn't know you were hunters until you and I locked eyes on the hike. I sensed Ryelka's presence-"

"And you took off for the blue team," Sam said, nodding at Dean, "in order to try to save them."

"I knew you were a hunter in that moment, and I knew you were hunting me. But." It shrugged.

"Lives were at risk," Sam said. "I get it."

"I didn't injure your brother, nor did I drag him off into the forest. I chased down Ryelka, who dropped your brother down in that ravine. While you were engaging Ryelka, I was getting your brother here to safety."

"You called out in Dean's voice to warn me in that fight," Sam guessed.

It nodded.

"Why not just bring him back to the cabin?"

"Too dangerous. This cave is hidden from Ryelka's sight, secure, and closer, and your brother cannot move quickly. I thought it would be better to bring you to him, and then we would plan a hunt."

"Without endangering the other hikers."

The thing nodded.

Dean clapped his hands together. "Well as fascinating as it is watching you two finish each others-"

"Sandwiches?" Charlie popped in.

"-sen...tences..." Dean finished, cocking a brow at her.

"Do you watch anything made after 1997?"

Dean wrinkled his nose at her and turned back to Sam and Ionesca. "So?"

Sam was still putting all the pieces together. If it took him a little longer than usual to let the parts make sense, Dean told himself to allow for Satan whispering sweet nothings into Sam's ear and hell's pneumonia even now putting bright fever spots on Sam's cheeks, and he practiced patience. He'd already heard all this, he'd had time to put it together. He shrugged at Sam, waiting for his verdict.

Sam shifted. "I have an idea. But I'll have to go back to the cabin for the herbs and stuff." He looked at Dean apologetically. "You should stay here-"

"The herbs for the blessed knives and stuff?" Charlie asked. Sam nodded. "Oh, I might have kinda maybe brought them with me."

Sam raised his brows. Nodded. "Alright then. I guess... we better kill ourselves the devil." He looked at Dean with a little grin. "Again."