A/N: Thanks for reading and for all of the reviews. Here's the next part:

Part II

Dean quickly went from being irritated that Sam had taken off without telling him to outright furious when his brother still hadn't come home by midnight. Multitudes of scenarios flooded through Dean's head, though he wasn't to the point of panicking. Sam was a big boy.

But Dean could admit to himself that he was concerned.

Had Sam gone to a bar?

Unlikely … that was more Dean's thing than Sam's.

Had he found a girl to hook up with? That was laughable.

Maybe he had just needed some time away. Dean had flashes of Sam helping him to bed last night and recalled saying things … Things he couldn't clearly remember, but which he knew had been pretty shitty. Who could blame Sam for leaving when Dean had been such a dickhead?

But Sam just taking off like this reminded him way too much of all of the times his little brother ran away, trying to escape the Winchester way of life.

Dean emotions were ping-ponging between guilt and fury when he heard the back door open and shut.

That had to be Sam finally coming in.

" 'Bout damned time you got back Sa- …" Dean raised his voice as he hurried into the kitchen to lay into his brother, but his words died on his lips the moment he saw Bobby standing in the doorway.

"Bobby? Thought you wouldn't be back for a few more days."

"Well, hello to you too, Dean," Bobby replied dryly with more than a little bit of tired irritation, dumping his bag on the floor. "What's with the shouting?"

"Sorry … I thought you were Sam. He took off this morning and didn't bother to tell me where he went."

Bobby sighed heavily. "You guys have a fight or something?"

"Why do you always assume we've been fighting?" Dean asked, a little put-off.

"Because you knuckleheads are always fighting."

Dean shrugged. "No … at least I don't think we did."

"What do ya mean you don't think you did?"

Dean had the good sense to at least look a little ashamed. "Well … I may have had a few too many drinks … and I don't remember much of last night …"

"So you're getting shit-faced until you black out now?" Bobby turned a mean eye on Dean, half out of anger and half out of concern.

"No … I mean … it was just …" Dean babbled, feeling about two inches tall under Bobby's reproachful glare.

Bobby grumbled under his breath. "Damned idjit …" He then pulled out his cell phone and started dialing.

"I already tried calling Sam. It went straight to …"

"Voicemail," Bobby finished for him when his call to Sam didn't go through. "Well, shit. He didn't leave a note?"

"Yeah, but he didn't give me much to go on, only that he was going somewhere. He wrote that he wanted me to call him, but he won't answer his damn phone. I don't know where he could have gone, but that old truck you left us is missing too, so he must have taken it."

"Maybe he just needed to blow off some steam. Just give him some time … He'll be back."

"Yeah …" Dean half-heartedly agreed, hoping that Bobby was right even though the acid churning in his gut was telling him otherwise.

OOOOOO

It was quiet this early in the morning and she loved running at this time of day the most. The cool air tickled her skin as she made her way through the park, her breath coming out in steamy puffs like a locomotive chugging along.

She didn't feel apprehensive about being in the dark or being alone, she loved it. With the sun just beginning to lighten the sky and the absence of other people, it was just perfect, in her opinion.

The path in front of her was clear, no other joggers, bikers, or pedestrians to get in her way. Feeling loose, she picked up the pace, putting extra effort into turning her feet over faster and faster.

The wind was at her back and it was all downhill from here. She figured she might be making her best time ever as she reached the final mile of her morning route. Everything was perfect until she suddenly stumbled. Something had tripped her and she was falling to the ground before she could stop her momentum, her hands flying out before her as she fell to the hard pavement.

Stunned, wrists and knees throbbing, her heart beating frantically, she turned to see just what it was that she had tripped on, but she didn't expect to see a man.

He had come from nowhere. Blue eyes burned at her from under a hood and then a flash of silver extended from his hand. She never had the chance to cry out before he was thrusting the knife over and over and over again, piercing the wall of her diaphragm, making it impossible for her make a sound as blood filled her lungs. Her eyes wide with terror, the last image she saw was the name-tag embroidered on his coat.

"Nathan,"Sam mumbled incoherently, his head pounding murderously while bile bubbled up from his stomach. He groaned, feeling something hard underneath his forehead. Moving sent electric currents of pain racing through his growing consciousness.

He tried to force his body to react to the commands of his brain, but everything was a jumbled mess of hurt and confusion.

Where was he? What had happened?

Just as he thought those questions, Sam felt a hand on his shoulder. "Hey … Buddy … You okay?"

He was unable to stifle the moan that issued from deep within his throat as he forced stubborn eyelids to open and attempted to lift his head. Something wet and sticky made it near impossible for him to open his eyes completely, but turning his sight to the direction of the voice, he was able to make out the fuzzy image of a man beside him.

"Hey … Try not to move."

"Wha'?" He tried to ask, but speaking only made the pain in his head ratchet up another notch.

"Oh my God … He's bleeding all over the place." A woman's voice cut in.

"Marie …" The man spoke to another blurry figure by his side, trying to calm the woman with a soothing, yet urgent tone. "Call an ambulance."

"Is he going to be okay?" she asked, voice shaking.

"Just call 911, Marie. I'll stay with him." The man gently took hold of Sam's shoulder and eased him backwards until his head was resting against what he now recognized as the headrest. He was still in the truck, he realized. He must have crashed, but his disoriented mind couldn't recall how that had happened … only the images of the man with the hooded coat and the knife coming at the woman jogger came to mind.

"Nathan." Sam wasn't even aware that he had spoken aloud until the man by his side asked him about it.

"Nathan? Is that your name?"

Sam tried to shake his head and was punished with a stab of pain for his efforts. "No … S-Sam …"

"Okay, Sam. Try to keep still. We're getting help for you."

"Wha ... What 'appened?"

"We saw your truck go off the road. You must have hydroplaned and hit a tree. Looks like your head hit the steering wheel pretty hard."
A feeling of urgency overcame him. He needed to be somewhere, but where had he been going? He tried to sort it all out in his mind, fighting both the relentless pain in his head and his stomach's desire to retch its contents up. Slowly images of a woman, a train, a man with a hood and knife … The woman running in the park and the terror in her eyes … He'd been going to Chicago! - There was no time to waste, he had to keep going, had to save them!

The man in the hood, he must be connected somehow to Sam … to the demon.

Sam wasn't going to make it in time if he didn't get his ass moving right now.

"Whoa – whoa – what are you doing?" The good Samaritan asked as Sam tried to push his way out of the truck.

"Can't … stay … g-gotta … gotta keep going …" Sam managed to half-slide, half-fall out onto the gravel of the road's shoulder, landing on his hands and knees. Rain pelted his head, cascaded down his collar while blood and water mixed to blind him. He fought valiantly against the nausea that assailed him, but the effort was in vain and he started heaving violently.

Hands found their way around his shoulders and he was vaguely aware of flashing lights and sirens, but it was all buzzing background noise against the pounding in his temples and the involuntary contractions of his abdomen.

Sam's stomach finally finished its reversal. Someone was talking to him but the words weren't making any sense. He attempted to right himself, sitting back on his heels while trying not to hyperventilate, but the world was tilting on its axis, blurring in and out. He could feel his body swaying and the only thing holding him upright were the hands under his armpits, but even those were not enough to keep the darkness at bay and everything went blissfully silent and black again.

OOOOOO

Dean chewed his lip and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying unsuccessfully to distract himself from his headache. It was well past midnight and Sam still wasn't back.

Bobby had started making calls to his contacts in town, but no one had seen or heard from his brother. Calls to Sam's cell still were going straight to voicemail, and after his last attempt to contact Sam Dean had nearly hurled his phone into the wall out of anger and anxiety.
Bobby walked over to Dean where he sat at the kitchen table and poured another cup of coffee into his empty mug.

"I just don't get it, Bobby. Why won't he answer his phone when he told me to call him?"

"Got me … maybe he ran out of juice on his phone …" Bobby sat down in the chair opposite Dean, looking contemplative, as if he had an idea, but was unwilling to voice it out loud.

"What?" Dean demanded to know what Bobby was thinking.

"It's just a guess … but … what if Sam saw something? You know … like a … a vision?" Bobby had only recently been brought into the secret about Sam's psychic abilities, and he hedged around the issue, as though voicing it aloud would send Dean over the edge.

Yeah, Dean hated to admit it, but his brother's psychic crap still scared the shit out of him. Save Sam, Dean … or you might have to kill him.

Dean shoved that memory violently aside in order to focus on the present. "He would have told me, Bobby."

"Unless …" Bobby started.

Dean glared. "Unless, what?"

"Well … you did say you had been pretty drunk … enough to have little recall of what you did. Perhaps he couldn't tell you … or he tried and you just don't remember."

Dean closed his eyes, feeling like a total turd for getting so wasted last night. Bobby might have a point about his drinking and it certainly didn't make him feel any better, or less worried about his brother.

Dean was still contemplating his own worthlessness when the phone rang.

OOOOOO

The only thing worse than waking with a screaming headache was waking to a fuzzy image of his big brother wearing a 'I'm gonna kick your ass for making me worry about you' face looming over him.

"You with me, Sam?" Dean asked. Sam pried his eyes open as far as they would allow and tried to focus.

"Dean?" Sam croaked, his voice cracking under the strain that even that small effort caused him.

" 'Bout time." Dean leaned back with a sigh.

"What … Where am I?" Sam's words slurred as he strained to recall what had happened.

"You're in a hospital in frickin' Wisconsin, Sam."

"Wisconsin? What am I … oh …" Memory slammed into his brain like a Mac truck.

He was overcome yet again with a sense of urgency, but he was so tired and everything hurt and he didn't think he had to strength to even push himself up. "Gotta get to Chicago."

"Why? What's going on with you? You just take off and then Bobby gets a call from the Wisconsin State Police saying that they had a wrecked truck that belonged to him and oh, by the way, the driver's in the hospital with a cracked skull."

"Cracked skull?"

"Yeah, Sam … a fractured skull … You've been in and out of it for the last two days."

Sam's heart dropped to his stomach and he felt nauseous. "Two days?" He was too late. Those two girls … He hadn't saved them … And the man with the hood was still out there.

"We gotta go to Chicago, Dean. We gotta stop him …" Sam plaintively began to explain.

"What are you talking about? Who's in Chicago?"

"I saw him, Dean," Sam gulped, pushing the bile that had risen from his stomach back down his throat.

"A vision?" Dean asked, lowering his voice, making sure no one could overhear their conversation.

"Yeah …" Sam closed his eyes, seeing the events play back in his mind. "There was a guy … but he had a hood on and I couldn't see his face. He had a name-tag stitched onto his coat, like someone that worked in a garage or a shop. He attacked two women, Dean, the first one I saw while I was at Bobby's … He pushed her front of a train at a subway platform in Chicago. The other one was jogging and he just came out of nowhere and stabbed her. I don't know … each time … they never saw him coming. It was like he appeared out of thin air."

"So … you think he's got some kind of psychic thing?"

"Maybe … I don't know, but we must be connected somehow. Maybe he's like me and Max …"

"No, Sam. He's killing people and we've gone over this before … You're not like Max."

Sam closed his eyes again. His head hurt too much for him to really dwell on the possible ramifications of finding another psychic like himself and how they all might be involved with the demon that killed their mother and maybe even their father. It was all too much and it made his head feel even worse.

One thing was for certain though, they had to find the hooded man and they had to stop him one way or another. "We gotta go to Chicago. If he got away with murdering those women, he's going to try again."

"Whoa now … You're not going anywhere, Sam!"

"Dean, I'll be fine. I've had worse."

"No, you haven't," Dean pointedly told him. "You have a fucking skull fracture. God, do you have any idea how worried sick I was?"

Sam scoffed sarcastically, "Yeah right …"

"Just what is that supposed to mean?" Dean drew in closer, a hard edge to his voice, "And what were you thinking just taking off like that on your own to go chase this guy down?"

Sam suddenly found a little reserve of energy to fight Dean back on this point, raising his head up off the pillow despite the surge of pain that coursed through his temples. "I had to, Dean. I knew what was going to happen to that girl and I had to stop it in time and you were too drunk and passed out for me to even wake you. I'm sorry I was in a hurry to leave, but I didn't have a choice." And just like that, the wind went out of Sam's sails and he deflated, wearily flopping back onto the pillow, breathing heavily as a wave of dizziness sent his senses swirling into a new round of nausea. "I wanted you to come … I did … but you were in no shape for it and I figured … well… that you wouldn't care if I was gone anyway."

"What would make you think that?"

"Because I'm a pain in your ass and you don't need me, remember? You told me as much."

"I don't remember that, Sam. And you know it's not true … I was drunk, I didn't know what I was saying."

Sam actually forgot the pain coursing in his head for a split second and propped himself back on his elbows, raising his voice. "Alcohol doesn't make you lie, Dean. I know how you react to it … It loosens your tongue and lets the things you won't say when you're sober come out."

Dean swallowed visibly, his face wavering between shame and still-simmering anger. However, the moment Sam reacted as acids in his stomach start to church, it changed.

"Gonna be sick …" Sam informed his stricken brother who quickly flip-flopped from contrite to concern. Dean grabbed a basin from the other side of the hospital room and was just able to help Sam sit up before he started to hurl.

Dean reached out and tentatively gave Sam's back a pat when the vomiting eased. It wasn't an apology for Dean's inebriation nor was it forgiveness for Sam taking off for Chicago on his own without any kind of back-up, but it was a peace offering nonetheless, and Sam shared a brief glance with Dean that said 'thanks'.

"So … you gonna rescue me from this place?" Sam asked.

"Not tonight. You need rest."

"But, Dean …"

"No 'buts,' Sam. You want me to help you catch this guy, then you got to get at least one more night's rest."

Sam felt a little relief, at least Dean was willing to entertain the thought of getting him out of the hospital tomorrow so they could track the man in his visions down.

"I've been out for two days, Dean," Sam yawned, "Don't see why I need more sleep." Even as he said that, Sam felt a tug of weariness come over him, then he saw why – there was a morphine pump connected to the IV sticking out of his arm and Dean must have pressed the button that released the next dose for him.

"Deeeean? Did you just drug me?" Sam tried to give his brother a pissed-off face, but the pain was lessening rapidly, a cottony ease filling his mind that made being angry at his brother for doping him up impossible. His eyelids were pulled shut by heavy anchors and it felt so good to be free of the pain and anxiousness that plagued him.

Dean's sly grin was the last thing he saw before he was pulled under once again.

OOOOOOO

It was a tight squeeze, but somehow all three men managed to fit into Bobby's front seat. Dean took the middle while Bobby drove his truck, and Sam pressed himself up against the passenger-side door, his head resting against the window as they pulled out of the hospital parking lot.

"You doing okay there, Sam?" Dean asked, seeing the pained expression on his brother's face whenever the vehicle hit a bump in the road.

"I'm fine," Sam obviously lied. Dean knew all of Sam's evasive expressions, but his brother was doggedly determined that they should get to Chicago and find the man in his visions.

Dean still wasn't comfortable with all of this, with his brother's emerging abilities and what they meant, but so far, his visions hadn't been wrong, even if they still freaked the hell out of Dean.

But what worried Dean more was the fact that Sam still had a concussion with a crack in his head and shouldn't have left the hospital so early. Sure, the doctor assured him that the injury wasn't life-threatening, only a small, linear fracture that would heal on its own, still, Sam had finally succeeded in breaking his hard head and going on a hunt only a day after Sam woke up didn't sit well with Dean.

However Sam's head injury hadn't changed his stubbornness and he had insisted on checking out AMA. Dean had tried to sell Sam on Dean and Bobby going to Chicago in his stead and looking into the whole affair, leaving Sam in the hospital to recover, but that idea was quickly vetoed by Sam and it was just as well … His brother more than likely would have simply snuck out behind them, stolen a car and found his way to Chicago anyway, and the last thing Dean wanted was Sam behind the wheel of any vehicle after what had just happened. At least this way Dean could at keep an eye on his brother before he did anything stupid … again.

Sam slept for most of the ride to Chicago, only waking when Bobby parked the truck in front of a motel room. He was extra slow in getting out of the truck and swayed slightly on his feet, causing Dean to instinctively grasp Sam's elbow to steady him before he fell over completely.

"You okay?" Dean asked once more, not expecting an honest answer.

Sam shrugged off Dean's help with his usual irritation, trying to prove that he would be physically capable of doing his part on this hunt.
Sam and Bobby started researching once they were inside the room. "His name might be Nathan – it was on the name tag of his coat. It looked like a uniform coat that a mechanic or service worker might wear."

"Well, this should be easy, " Dean grumbled sarcastically, "All we have to do is find a guy named Nathan that wears a coat with a hood to work – piece of cake considering it's a city with over 2 million people in it."

"I know it's vague and I couldn't see the guy's face ..." Sam spoke while rubbing his forehead. Dean took this as a sign that his brother needed some more painkillers, so he reached into his duffel and pulled out a bottle of ibuprofen then tossed it to Sam who tried to catch it, but missed ungracefully. Normally, Sam wouldn't have had any problem catching something and that worried Dean even more.

"Smooth, Sam …" he teased, "You know, Bobby and I can handle this. Maybe you should just sit this one out. We'll find him."

Sam popped two of the pills into his mouth and swallowed before speaking. "He might be one of the children like me that the demon talked about. I need to know … I need to talk to him, find out why he's doing this."

"And what? Talk him out of killing any more women? We tried talking to Max and look where that got us."

"So, you're saying we should kill him?" Sam's question hung heavy in the air, striking Dean to the core. Dad's last words rattled through his skull again and he had to shake his head to clear them out.

"No … I'm just saying that reasoning with him is most likely not going to work."

"Dean might be right for once here, Sam," Bobby interjected.

"For once?" Dean scoffed.

"Then what do we do with him if we find him?" Sam asked

"We turn him over to the police." Bobby suggested. Dean and Sam both looked at the older man as if he had grown a second head. "What? He's a human, we're not going to kill him, but we can't just let him go, so we let the police take care of him, at least then he'll be in jail and won't be able to hurt anyone else."

"But like you said," Bobby continued, "we got to find him first."

There was a pregnant pause that fell over the men in the room until Sam spoke. "Maybe we can narrow the search down."

"How?" Dean asked warily.

"Well … Max was the same age as me and his mother died in a fire just like ours. Maybe we should start there, look up any Nathans that were born 23 years ago with a mother that died in a fire and who might work a blue-collar job in the city. We should also look into finding out the identities of the women in my visions."

The three of them got to work after that and six empty coffee cups, a stack of discarded burger bags, and two hours later, Sam looked up from his laptop .

"Well … I haven't had much luck tracking this Nathan down, there's just too many that fit our search parameters, but I've made some headway finding out who the women were."

"What you got?" Bobby asked, tossing away another coffee cup.

"I looked through the Chicago Tribune," Sam winced, his head still giving him grief, "The woman I saw in the subway was Amy Shannon, a nurse that worked at the hospital a couple of blocks away. The police ruled her death an accident and haven't connected it in any way to the murder of Bridget VanHouten, the woman in the park. I dug a little further and found something interesting though. Both of them grew up in the same neighborhood and both graduated from the same high school in 2001."

"That's a little bit too much of a coincidence." Dean pointed out.

Sam nodded. "Yeah … I don't think the guy in the hood chose these girls at random. He might have known them."

OOOOOOO

No matter how many times they did this, it never really got any easier for Sam. Flashing their fake police badges at the building super, Sam and Dean were taken to the apartment that used to belong to Amy Shannon, the young woman whose life had come to an abrupt end under the wheels of a subway train.

Sam tried to push the memory of that vision from his aching head, but it continued to replay with crystal clarity. He felt a gnawing guilt over her death, he should have been able to save her and he just might have if it hadn't been for that second vision and a very bad case of timing. His feelings of culpability were exacerbated as he took a look around her place, saw the pictures with her family, searched through her personal possessions.

Not only had he failed her, but now he was invading her privacy and the space she would be occupying if he had only been able to stop the hooded man in time.

Dean didn't appear to have any hang-ups about searching the place for clues and it was while Sam was standing in the middle of her bedroom, looking at a portrait of the woman as she had been as a little girl that his brother gave a shout from across the hall.

"Hey, Sam! Come take a look at this."

Sam tore his eyes away from the picture and headed back towards Dean who was sitting on the dead woman's couch and flipping through the pages of a blue and yellow hard-cover book.

"What's that?" Sam asked.

"It's what I like to call 'jackpot'" Dean grinned and held up the book, waggling it back and forth. Sam could read the cover and eyes widened.

"Lane Tech High School … her senior yearbook?"

"Yup … Here, have a look-see." Dean tossed the book at Sam and Sam managed to catch it, pleased with himself that his coordination was starting to come back, even if the miserable headache felt like it might stick with him forever.

He flipped through the book, finding Amy Shannon's picture among the senior portraits, and two pages after that he came across the portrait of Bridget VanHouten. Going back to the beginning of the senior pictures, he started a new search, this one for any boy named Nathan. There happened to be just two: Nathan Anderson, a geeky-looking kid with a poufy mess of curly, blond hair and thick glasses, and a Nathan Fulgam - not pictured.

Nathan Anderson didn't fit Sam's impression of the man they were looking for. Though he hadn't clearly seen the man in the hood's face, he remembered seeing his eyes – how dark and angry they were – and he hadn't worn glasses. Nathan Anderson looked as though he couldn't see two feet without those specs on.

"Nathan Fulgam … "Sam muttered, "that must be our guy."

"You sure?" Dean asked, getting up from the couch and peering over Sam's shoulder as he paged through the book.

"No, but he's worth checking out." Sam insisted just as Dean's phone rang.

"Yeah?" Dean answered quickly.

Sam could hear Bobby's muffled voice. Bobby had dropped Sam and Dean at this apartment while he had gone to Bridget VanHouten's to investigate. He apparently had found something as well.

"Really? Yeah, we found one too …" Dean replied over the phone, "What page? Okay, we'll look … Yeah, bye."

Dean hung up and raised his eyebrows while he looked at Sam. "Guess what?"

"Bobby found a yearbook at the other victim's apartment." Sam had already deduced.

"Good guess, Brainiac … He says to check out page 91."

Sam turned to the page and his eyes landed on a series of candid shots taken at the school. One photo in particular caught his attention right away for it was encircled with a heart drawn in pink pen. Captioned under it were the words: 'Best friends forever, Bridget, Amy, and Sara.'

"Best friends … there are two of the victims here … but there's one more." Sam mused aloud then leafed through more pages of photos finding several others that featured the same three girls. "They certainly were popular … And it looks like they did just about everything together, cheerleading, volleyball, honor society, choir …" Sam went back to the portrait pages and found the third girl in the pictures with the other victims. "Here … the last girl … her name's Sara Haven."

Dean met Sam's eyes and knew what Sam was already thinking. "And she's his next target."

More to come soon ...