Author's Note: Hooray – Mass confusion! I know that doesn't seem like a good thing, but I really wanted everyone to be confused for a while. Don't worry; I'm sorting everything out. Thanks for your fantastic reviews! You made my day! Here's a long one to make up for it!
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She grinned. "I finally have you, Samuel Winchester," she said with a sneer. "And nothing can stop me now."
"Who are you?" he asked, gun raised to point at her head.
"Who I am does not matter," she replied. "What is more important is that the trap I created was successful."
"Why now?" he spat out angrily. "Why not when I was trapped on the couch, alone?"
She laughed a bit before looking back at him. "Oh, my dear boy, the trap wasn't for you."
Sam cocked his head in utter confusion at her statement. "What?"
She tossed her head behind her in the general direction of where Dean lay, unmoving.
"It's for him."
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Sam took a step back, at a complete loss. "What?" he asked.
"The trap," the ghostly woman replied. "It wasn't for you. It was for your brother."
"But I was the one stuck inside the devil's trap. I was the one being hunted down by this demon. How could this trap have possibly been for him?"
"You are his greatest weakness, Samuel. Where you are in trouble, he is sure to save you, even at risk to himself. He would never abandon you."
"Surely there were other times you could have taken him," Sam insisted. "You're either the dumbest spirit I've ever come across – and I've met a few in my time – or I'm missing something."
"Dean's not very careful when you're in trouble, Sam," came Jo's voice from the doorway.
Sam flinched, having completely forgotten about her. He refused to turn his head away from his foe. "So?"
"If you're in trouble, and he's not very careful, it's easier to get both of you at once."
The youngest Winchester let his gaze wander to his brother's limp form on the ground. He pondered everything that was told to him, trying to work it out. Not a bit of it was making sense to him. "Meg?" he asked finally.
"Not even close, Sam. You're not as perceptive as I thought you were," the woman said, smiling scornfully.
Sam took a deep breath and tried again, but nothing came to him. "Then who are you?"
"We discussed this already. Who I am does not matter."
"It matters to me!"
"I made a deal, Samuel. You for your brother. I trapped you and discovered that you are in high demand among my peers."
"And Dean?"
"In high demand with me. I am regenerating, and needed a strong life force."
Sam noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and knew it was beneficial to him, so he kept up a distraction.
"I don't have a strong enough life force for you?"
She smiled. "You are quite strong. All three of the Winchesters were. But you are uncontrollable."
"I'm no puppet, lady," Dean snapped from behind her. As she turned in surprise, Dean dropped to the ground and Sam shot her. She dissipated immediately.
"You okay?" Sam asked.
"Yeah, great," the elder hunter replied. "I just found out I'm 'special' like you, Geek Boy. My day couldn't possibly get any worse."
"Famous last words," Sam muttered. "Now, hurry up. We're both in trouble here."
"You think?"
The two turned to leave, finding Jo still standing in the doorway. She looked very troubled, but hadn't moved the entire time they had been in the room.
"Jo," Dean grumbled. "Move."
"I can't," she said, her voice shaking.
"What?" Sam asked, looking around for a trap or some kind of sign that she was possessed. He found nothing.
"I can't move," she said, her eyes filling with tears.
"Why not?"
"She made a deal, and I can't let you break it."
They looked at her in uncertain awe for a few seconds. "What do you have to do with this?" Sam asked.
"I made a deal, too. I can have my dad back, and all I have to do is make sure you don't leave."
"You shouldn't mess around with this stuff, Jo," Dean warned. "What's dead should stay dead."
"I can't help it," she returned. "I can't let you go."
Dean almost snorted. "Let's say you have some sort of evil power stopping you from moving. What makes you think you can stop both of us?"
"I don't have to," she said as a lone tear rolled down her cheek. "I just have to slow you down."
"This is ridiculous," Sam mumbled as his brother stepped forward to shove her out of the way.
"They're surrounding you," she whispered.
Dean stopped, the hair on the back of his neck rising. "Who is?"
"All of them. They want Sam because he's special, but they want you for another reason."
"Which is what?" the younger Winchester snapped.
Jo's eyes locked with his. "Revenge."
"Revenge?" Dean repeated. "You have got to be joking."
"I'm not."
"Well, who wants revenge?"
It was Jo's turn to snort in disbelief. "Who? There's a list so long you wouldn't believe me if I tried to tell you. It turns out that they discovered they have a common enemy and it's you."
"What about Sam?"
"He's one of their common enemies, as well, but someone else dealt for him. All they really wanted was the Winchesters, and since they know where Sam's going, they don't need to get revenge on him."
Sam took an involuntary step back. "What is this, some kind of supernatural showdown?"
Jo smiled as a penetrating cold suddenly filled the room. "You took them down one by one," she said as she finally moved back from the doorway. "But can you do it if they all come at you at once?" Her eyes glinted black, then yellow, then normal again as she turned to leave. "Good luck, boys."
There was a stunned silence as the Winchesters took in the situation, both moving to relative safety in the open center of the room.
"What are we up against, Sammy?" Dean asked.
"It's Sam," the younger hunter ground out. "And I'm pretty sure it's a bunch of stuff you killed."
"I got that, but what is it? I've killed a lot of stuff in my time."
"That's the point, Dean." The two stepped closer together. "But it's only spirits and demons. Things like the bugs and the wendigo and shtriga and the werewolves and shapeshifters are just creatures you can kill. But all we really do is banish spirits. Hopefully we set them free, but sometimes they aren't really happy about it and they look for ways to come back."
"So we don't need any silver bullets, then?"
"Not likely."
There was another pause, which Dean broke again.
"I need your gun, Sam," Dean said as the two took each other's backs in the small room, instincts flaring that something was definitely wrong.
"What? Why?"
"I can't fire the shotgun," he admitted unhappily. "But you can."
"Well, go get your gun and then we'll trade."
Dean almost looked back at his brother, but settled on staring at his surroundings. "Why me?"
"I can barely stand, Sherlock. Go get the gun."
Dean rolled his eyes and went for the shotgun. And that was when all hell broke loose. A heavy gust of wind burst through the room, shattering the glass in the window and tossing Sam to the floor. Dean called out, but his voice was lost on the loud gush of air. It turned out that it was a good thing the wind had thrown Sam down, because a knife had sailed toward him and sliced cleanly through where his neck was before he fell. Then other things started to be thrown around the room. The blanket on the bed floated up, and then the lamp, the table, the shelf, the books – everything in the room was now a weapon. Gulping, Sam rolled over and dodged the chair as Dean snatched up the shotgun and involuntarily flew through the room, dropping the gun just before he crashed into the wall on the other side. Sam reached for it, tossing his own weapon toward where his brother was trying to crawl to his feet. The wind hadn't stopped or even slowed down yet, so it was almost impossible for them to communicate with each other. But Sam managed to drag himself to Dean.
Sam's biggest concern was protecting his brother. As scary as it was to be involved in this situation, he knew he wouldn't be killed because of the deal the yellow-eyed demon had made. So, without thought for his own life, he used himself as a shield over Dean's body.
"What are you doing?" the elder Winchester shouted over the howling wind.
"Saving you," Sam snapped back, noticing that it was a lot harder to grouse when yelling at the top of his lungs. "They won't hurt me, remember?"
They moved together toward the door, hoping uselessly to escape the tirade by leaving the cabin. Before they got there, however, the wind stopped, and all of the objects in the air crashed to the ground, lifeless. Sam still stood in front of Dean, both of them panting from the exertion of fighting the strong wind.
"Not good," Dean muttered. "What's going on?"
"I don't know."
"Did you do something?"
"No!"
They were interrupted by a familiar blond ethereal woman, walking in the door that they were so close to. Sam's breath hitched in his chest as he saw her.
"Sam," she said, smiling.
"Jess?"
Dean had come around Sam's side at that point, and his eyes widened at the sight of his brother's dead girlfriend. He looked from one to the other, unable to say anything.
"You were wrong about one thing, Sam," she said, still smiling as she walked toward the two of them.
"Huh?" he asked, cocking his head to one side in his characteristic Sam-confusion expression. Jess's face darkened.
"No one said we couldn't hurt you."
Dean heard the comment and had less than a second to shove his brother out of the way before a black cloud full of demon slammed past them, burning across his back as the Winchesters once again landed on the floor.
"We just can't kill you," Jess's voice continued.
"No," Sam whispered, seemingly ignorant of his danger. "Not Jess."
"Come on, Sammy," Dean said quickly, unwilling to let the emotion on his brother's face deter him. "We have to get out of here, now."
"But Jess –"
"That's not her," came the response as Dean hauled his larger sibling to his feet. "It's not her."
"But I saw her face . . ."
Dean glanced around him, wondering why they seemed to have a reprieve, but wanting to take advantage of it either way. "Snap out of it," he ordered. "Stay with me here."
Somehow, Sam kept his balance and stumbled with Dean out of the room. The whole cabin had been shredded in the gust of wind. Bits of wood, cloth, and plastic were strewn everywhere. Everything was a mess. The only bright side was that when they were going for the door, Dean glanced over at the front room and saw movement inside of the devil's trap. At least Sam's hastily-drawn trap was still doing its job.
"Where are we going to go?" Sam mumbled, finally acting coherent and logical again.
"The car," Dean answered without a thought.
"They can possess a car, Dean –"
"We can bless it, salt it, protect it – do whatever we have to to hole up in there for weeks. It's the only safe place."
Sam nodded and they ran together, narrowly avoiding a massive tree branch that flew out of nowhere at them. They reached the car and dove in, locking the doors out of their irrational human fear and setting to work immediately on salting the windows, door frames, air vents . . . every entrance they could find.
"We have charms in here that should help," Dean commented while they worked. "They should slow down whatever is trying to get us."
"Don't tell me I'm going to sit in this Impala for weeks while you try to figure out how to get us out of this mess," Sam griped.
"No, Sammy, you won't. We're driving straight to Bobby's. He can help us."
"That idea is –"
"No, Sam," Dean interrupted, not really caring what the younger hunter had to say. "That's what we're doing." A ghost of a grin crossed Sam's features and Dean stopped what he was doing to look. "What?"
"I was just going to say that I thought it was a good idea," came the answer. "I wasn't going to argue with you."
"Oh," Dean said, finishing his salting. He patted his hand gently on the dashboard. "Sorry, baby," he cooed. "We'll clean all this up as soon as we can; I promise."
Sam rolled his eyes as Dean continued to caress the metal of the Impala. Finally, he reached down, shoved the keys in, and started the car.
"I, for one, feel safer already," he announced as they started to pull away. A sickening crunch followed by the jerk of the car to one side stopped him there.
"Tell me that wasn't the tire," Sam said hopefully from the passenger's seat.
Dean swallowed. "It wasn't the tire."
Looking over, Sam caught his brother's expression and could tell in a second that he wasn't telling the truth. "Don't lie to me, Dean!"
"You told me to tell you it wasn't the tire!" Dean growled back. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. "I have to change it."
"You can't go out there," Sam said. "They're out to get you. I'll go."
"No way in hell I'm letting you out there, Sammy boy."
"Dean, that demon may have plans for me, but it's more likely that you'll die from the revenge of a bunch of poltergeists and demons and whatever than that that thing wants to simply kill me. If we both want to survive this, then you know I'm the one that has to go."
Dean didn't like situations like this. He had sworn his whole life to protect his brother and kill supernatural things. In fact, he didn't do anything else, except maybe go after the occasional hot girl. But this was undoubtedly the most horrible thing he would ever have to do. He would try to argue with Sam, but deep down in his heart, he knew his brother was right.
"We'll go together," he said finally.
"We can't, Dean. I don't have a problem doing this, but you have to promise that you won't get out of the car."
The two stared at each other for a few seconds, each noting the fierce loyalty in the other's eyes. They would never abandon each other. Never.
"Only if you promise you'll get back in."
Sam grinned. "You know I will."
Dean did not permit himself a grin. He was too terrified. "Just hurry up, Sam," he whispered.
The younger Winchester nodded once and reached for the door handle. He knew he'd have to get out as soon as possible in order to prevent anything from getting in at Dean. That was okay. In spite of his large size, speed was something he could handle, especially if it meant protecting his brother. He risked one more glance at Dean, then threw the door open.