AN: So, this is case-fic-ish, and the story moves along. Ends on a bit of a cliffhanger (I'm working on the next bit). Thanks to Lomer on livejournal for the beta. Of course, I messed with it a bit after that, and all mistakes are solely my fault.

Disclaimer: It's not mine, but I guess the mess I made putting the universes together is, so...sorry about that. ;-)

They went on a hunt in Nebraska. A teenage couple had gone missing now strange things were happening in their neighborhood. Pets were turning up dead, lights were flickering, and someone had become hysterical enough to start asking for professionals in their line of work. They got the job through Pastor Jim, since they were the closest to it, and Alec had it on the tip of his tongue to ask who Pastor Jim was but he let it go. Probably a weird code name or something.

Lights flickering in a post-Pulse world weren't that strange, and the power lines around Ravenna were a patch job at best. The dead pets were a couple of fish and a few unfortunate cats who had a tendency to get out at night. Any predator could have left it in the state it was found. But they went anyway and checked it out, talked to all the right people.

Well, John did the talking. Sam sat in the truck with Alec and they discussed the shifting socio-economic system, or at least Sam did. Alec watched the people on the streets. They walked around like they had all the time in the world, none of the rushing he'd become accustomed to in Seattle, no bip bip bip, no strange glint in their eyes like the world was coming to an end. No, here in the heartland, in Ravenna and in Lawrence, there was little indication that some places were experiencing such upheaval. It had been ten years since the EMP. They had moved on here, learned to adapt, learned to put life back the way they wanted it. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and fingered the buttons that would connect him to Terminal City.

Stop calling Terminal City. You're making it easier for them.

He put the phone away.

"So are you going to study sociology or something?" he asked.

"I don't know." Sam was looking down at the course catalog they'd given him on his visit. "There's a lot of things I'd like to learn."

"Besides Latin and demon lore and all that?"

"Well, the Latin will be very helpful for some things, like biology, or law. Latin is still used in many fields for naming and official terminology."

"Right. Dead languages just never die." Alec drummed his fingers against his leg and stared out the windshield as a pretty girl came into view.

"That's really a misnomer anyway. Many modern languages are derived from Latin. What would you study?"

"Anatomy. Hey, look at that chick. Pretty cute, huh?"

Sam finally lifted his head and followed Alec's gaze out the window, where a leggy blond had stopped to window shop.

"Real subtle, Alec."

"I'm going to go see if I can get her number. And maybe a hot dog and a coke or something. You want anything?"

"I'll take an orange juice."

Alec paused with his hand on the door handle. "You want me to put that in a sippy cup?"

John made it back to the truck before Alec did, although Sam had seen him fail with the leggy blond.

"Where's your brother?" he said as he reached to turn the keys in the ignition.

"He went on a snack run. What did the clerk say?"

"That his cat was dead and there was no way anything natural had done it."

"Can we check it out?"

"He already burned the thing."

Sam nodded. "So really there's no case here."

John shot him a stern look. "Sam."

"Seriously dad. There are a couple teenagers missing. That's all. Caitlin Andrews and Scott Mullins probably ran off together. The cops should handle this."

"The other cats belonged to an old woman over on the north side. We'll go interview her next."

Sam frowned at John's outright dismissal of his arguments. "Even the parents don't think anything is going on here. They were in love, they ran off. It's like Romeo and Juliet or something. Can we please get out of here?"

John started up the truck. "I think you should interview her. Tell her your cat is missing. She'll buy right into that."

"Dad. Come on. Cats? Isn't this a little beneath us."

Alec's arm came through the window just then, an orange soda dropped into Sam's lab. "I don't know, Sam. I was always kind of fond of cats."

The old lady smelled funny, and couldn't really see or hear anything, so while Sam talked quite loudly and quite convincingly about the poor missing Fluffy, Alec wandered around the single story home. She had knickknacks stacked on top of knickknacks and an entire room devoted to a stuffed animal collection. Alec wound up one cat that opened its mouth and batted at a ball of string glued to its paw with the jerky movements of toys that run on rusty gears and love alone. The fur was matted down and it was old enough that she probably got it as a child.

More than a little creeped out by it all, he left the toy with its futile struggle and went out the backdoor into the yard. There are little grave markers put up for her four cats. Someone must have dug the holes and helped her. He crouched in front of them and traced his fingers over the letters. Whiskers, Poppy, Kitty and Mittens.

"Quaint," he muttered. He was glad Max hadn't paid homage to shared DNA when she named him.

"Hey, Alec?" Sam called from within the house.

"Out here."

Sam closed the screen door softly behind him, so different from Alec's careless slam.

He said, "Well, she says they weren't killed by any predators she knows of."

"She can't even see."

"Yeah, I know. Dad still out scouting the neighborhood?" Sam crouched down next to him and looked at the markers.

Alec nodded and stood up to move to the end of the yard. Her house bordered a grove of trees, a small forest really, and beyond that doubtless somewhere was farm land.

Alec strained his senses and tried to get a feel for anything that might live in the woods.

"She offered to bury Fluffy here, when we find her."

"Oh good, a nice home for your imaginary pet."

"Dad's going to make us dig these up, you know."

Alec turned around to look at Sam. "Well, best get it over with now."

Sam looked up at him sharply. "The old lady's still awake inside. We can't do this now."

"Sam. She's deaf. And blind. Besides, they can be more than a foot down. Use a spade. It's just like gardening."

Sam grumbled, but found the gardening tools and cut easily through the earth, still soft from the burial. "Aren't you going to help?"

"Nah. I think you've got it covered." Alec turned back to the woods, and couldn't help but think that something was different.

"Did you see anything out there?" he asked.

"You're the one with the genetic enhancements. You tell me."

Sam grunted as the spade hit pay dirt in the form of a shoebox.

"Get over here. It was probably just a bird or something."

"What do you think? Coyote?" Alec watched as Sam poked at Mittens with the spade.

"Not with that sort of blunt trauma. Looks like whatever it was had hooves."

"Killer cows? That'd be kind of cool." Alec pulled his shirt up over his nose to block the smell.

Sam gave him a look.

"I'm still not used to the whole grave robbery thing," he defended. "Besides, genetic enhancements, remember?"

"Alright well, let's take a picture and bury it again."

"Don't you want to, like, salt and burn it or something? Isn't that what we do?"

Sam closed the box and put it back in the shallow grave. "I don't think a ghost cat kidnapped those teenagers."

"Just seems kind of like a let down, you know? Dig up a body, but no fire?"

"There's something wrong with you, man."

John was waiting for them at the truck, still parked outside the old woman's house. They cut through the yard to get there, jumping over the low fence boxing in the back yard and slipping between the houses instead of returning through the house and having to deal with the old lady again. Even Alec's sweet tooth couldn't handle more stale candy and sugary lemonade.

"Did you get anything?" John asked.

"Yeah," Sam said and held out the cell phone so John could look at the image there. "Looks like it's not your natural predator after all."

John raised an eyebrow at the concession but didn't say anything.

"Hey, can we get something to eat?" Alec asked, reaching in the truck to grab his half eaten bag of Funyuns.

"Yeah," John said, and handed the phone back to Sam. "And a room. Looks like we'll be staying a while."

"Why?" Sam asked. "What did you find?"

"Hoof prints. Out in the woods."

"What's so special about that?"

"It's walking upright."

They ordered some burgers and camped out in the hotel room. The walls were painted salmon pink and there was a picture of a teepee hung between the beds. Alec sat cross legged on one of the beds and stared at it while he ate, giving only half an ear to John and Sam.

"Really, dad, a satyr?" Sam was saying.

"Yes."

"Like half goat, half man, right out of Greek mythology? That's a little unlikely for Ravenna, Nebraska, isn't it?"

"Maybe, but a Goatman isn't."

Alec thought about reruns he'd seen of Saturday Night Live and chuckled around a mouth full of fries. They ignored him.

"A Goatman."

"They've been spotted all over the country. More often before the Pulse, and usually in Maryland, but also Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas. Young lovers go missing, pets turn up dead. The signs match."

"Except for the lights flickering."

"I went out to the power station. I think it's pretty clear why the lights are flickering. And it didn't start after Caitlin and Scott disappeared. It's been going on since the EMP shorted everything out. The townspeople have just been jumping at shadows."

"So this is a mythical creature? That turns up and eats cats and hunts for kids making out?"

John cleared his throat, and Alec turned to watch him while he slurped some soda up his straw. John had a shifty look in his eyes, and Alec could feel the elephant in the room.

"Not exactly mythical," he said. He cleared his throat again. "All you need to know is that normal shot gun rounds will kill it. We'll run surveillance on the woods, see if we can track it and find those kids. After we take it down, we'll do a salt and burn, just to be safe. Then we'll head back home."

Alec and John were still staring at each other. Alec felt like he was back in that hotel room after Stanford, being told to leave all over again. Dean could stay, but the rest of the package would have to go.

John cleaned his shotgun and packed a bag with shells and extra guns and holy water and salt and exorcism books just in case. He felt he could never be too prepared. This seemed like a Goatman, but if there was a spirit or a demon, or hell, elves or some shit, he needed to be prepared.

Alec was still watching him from across the room. He'd moved from the bed to the window, and was sitting on the radiator. Sam was packing his own bag and reading John's literature on Goatmen. When had he gotten his hands on that? John opened his mouth to demand his papers back, but Sam beat him to it.

Sam said, "It says here that Goatmen were the product of some government experiment gone wrong."

Alec said, "Oh really. Government experiments gone wrong. Tell me where I've heard that one before." His tone was dry and brittle. John didn't like it.

John said, "Dean," putting all the paternal air of admonishment into his tone that he could.

Alec said, "X5-494, government experiment, at your service."

John struggled with his frustration. "Don't do this, son."

"Do what?" Sam asked. "He's got a point. Besides, we don't even know if it did it. Maybe those kids did just run off, and the Goatman happens to be here."

"This isn't a coincidence, Sam," John reached over and grabbed the papers away. "And we're not doing this. Get out to the truck."

Alec volunteered to put his altered genetics to use and stake out the area on foot while Sam and John waited in the truck and kept an eye on the street.

Sam said, "You're trying to make him something he's not. You won't even acknowledge what he is."

John said, "You don't know what you're talking about."

Sam turned away and spoke to the window. "I'm glad I'm going to college."

John shook his head ruefully. He didn't want to poke that bee's nest with a ten foot pole. "Get your focus back on the job."

Alec went back to the woods where he had thought he'd seen movement before and climbed a tree to give himself a good vantage point. He figured anything with hooves probably wasn't camping out in the trees anyway. He felt a little bit like bait on the ground, what with all the cats dead. And even if this was just a Nomalie like he thought, he'd had encounters with those that weren't too favorable either. He thought briefly about another cat, a woman black as night and missing a white barcode, left dead in a sewer, and pried his thoughts back to the present.

It was hours before anything moved besides a squirrel or a bird. And when it did he roused himself from his perch to peer into the darkness. It moved awkwardly through the brush, like the bone structure for its bottom half didn't quite match the top. It had a squirrel clutched in one hand and Alec thought again about the woman in the sewer, about eating rats to survive. It moved away from his position and he slipped to the ground silently and crouched down so he could follow it without being seen.

He followed far enough that he caught the scent of decaying flesh and knew that he could find his way back again easily. He turned to head back to the truck. John would be expecting a report.

"I want you to go to college," John said, after hours of no life outside their truck and no conversation in it.

Sam said, "I thought I was focusing on the job."

John sighed, and they were both glad when the tap on the window came. Sam rolled it down so Alec could reach inside and grab some coffee.

"I found him," he said. "He's got a collection."

"Did you find the teenagers?"

"I didn't check. I came here first."

"They could still be alive."

"Everything back there is dead. I'm sure of it."

John opened his door and stepped out, shotgun in hand.

He said, "Let's go take care of it, then."

This time, Alec wove a more careful path through the woods, one he was sure John and Sam would be able to follow easily and silently without his superior night vision. They reached the point where Alec had smelled the Goatman's lair and stopped. Alec waved a hand forward and John crept in the direction he pointed. Sam and Alec sat back under some heavier brush for cover and watched as he jumped into a gully. They listened for him once he'd gone out of sight.

It was only a few minutes before John reappeared.

"They're in there," he whispered after he'd joined them. "Dead for several days now. No sign of the Goatman."

"He'll be back," Alec said.

"But if he's gone hunting, shouldn't we go stop him?" Sam asked.

"It's almost morning," John said. "There's no one out right now. He's going to have to come home and wait out the day. Take the shot when you get one."

The sun was only a couple hours from breaching the horizon by the time it stumbled back into view. And this time Alec got a good look at it.

He broke cover and was standing in the open without even thinking.

"What series are you?" Alec said and moved towards it.

"Um, Alec, maybe you should back away." Sam was standing behind John, both of them having followed him out in a scrambled once they'd seen him move. He held his rifle cocked but pointed at the ground.

"I think I've seen one of these before," Alec said. "When Max staged her big break out. Some sort of Nomalie or something. Maybe a lower X-series."

"Dean," John barked and leveled his shot gun at the figure in the trees. "You're unarmed. Get back."

"No," he said. "It's just a Nomalie. Just like that time when you thought we were hunting a Wendigo."

"It killed those kids. It's not a Nomalie. It's a Goatman."

"Aren't those pretty much the same thing?" Alec snapped.

"Dean, fall back! Now!"

"No," he said, and turned just in time to see it lunge for him.

Later, Sam's head was reeling from Alec's blur and his father's quick finger on the trigger. The Goatman, or Nomalie, or whatever it was, lay dead in front of them. Alec stood a ways off in the woods and refused to look back at them.

John said, "Go get the salt, Sam," and knelt down beside it to turn it over.

Alec said, "I'll do it," and walked off.

Sam looked down at the twisted features, at the furry legs and hoofed feet, at the fingers curled into claws and stained with blood.

He said, "So? What is it?"

"It doesn't matter, Sam. It was killing. It had to be stopped."

Alec's hand came between them, holding the salt canister. "I've killed. Should I be stopped?"

John took the salt and started shaking it out over the body. "You're not a monster."

"Yeah? I'm not human either. I was made in a lab, just like him."

"You weren't made in a lab," John said.

"They messed around enough with my DNA that it doesn't make any difference." Alec's voice was quiet, but Sam could hear how angry he was.

"You're not like him," John said.

Alec struck a match and dropped it. They all stood back to watch it burn.

They went back to the hotel room to pack up and catch a little sleep before the sun made its appearance. Alec sat perched on the back gate of the truck and stared at the place where the sun would eventually rise. He heard the hotel door open and close and didn't have to turn to see John approaching him slowly.

"I've been a little hard on you lately," he said.

Alec kept silent.

"I saw you twice before," he said. "One time, you were a blip on an ultrasound, and the doctor had to tell me what I was looking at. The second time, they bundled you away before I could even get a good look at you, and they never let us hold your body. Now I know why."

"You don't even ask me what happened."

"Would you tell me? You told Sam some story that's got him scared to ask more. You've got your mother looking over her shoulder. I thought you would want normal."

"Normal's a little different for me."

"For all of us," John said.

They let the silence grow again, and eventually John walked away. Alec didn't know what to say to bring him back. He wasn't sure he should.

The sun was just peaking over the horizon when Alec's phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the screen but no number was listed. When he picked it up all he heard were the soft sounds of a piano. He disconnected the call and slid it back into his pocket.

Lydecker had been right. Someone had found him after all.