Disclaimer: No Sam and Dean for me...

Warning: Language and violence.

Chapter Four: Up in Smoke

"Sam, are you well enough to walk?"

"Yeah," the younger Winchester replied. There was still a little residual headache, but some things were more important.

"Good, 'cause we gotta' move and I can't carry your giant ass," Dean said, helping his brother to his feet.

"What happened? Is he okay?" a rather plump young woman asked, not looking very concerned at all. More like she was just looking for the latest piece of gossip.

"He's fine," Dean told her, "Just piss drunk. Conked his head on a table."

Dean turned to leave but quickly realized that Sam wasn't following him. He turned to see that the guy who had been holding Sam before had pulled him aside. Anger invaded Dean's senses as he stalked over towards them, "Hey! Come on, Sam, move your ass. We gotta' go!"

"Listen, Sam," Danny said, making a point of ignoring Dean's outburst, "If you don't want to tell me what's going on, that's fine, but I want to hear it from you." He shot Dean a glaring look.

"It's fine, Dan," Sam said, trying to ease the growing tension. He knew that his brother was just itching to pop Danny one and only holding back because of the urgency of their current situation. But that wouldn't hold him for long. Danny had a mouth on him and often got into fights at college. Danny was a good fighter, but Sam thought that Dean would probably put him in the hospital if provoked.

"Just calm down. Both of you," Sam said, looking from one to the other, "Dean, chill. This is a friend of mine from college. His name is Daniel Burrows. Danny, everything's fine. I just was a little lightheaded for a second there. Dean's right, I probably had too much to drink. We're in a bit of a hurry right now." Sam flashed him the puppy dog eyes, asking Danny to just except his excuse and let him leave with Dean.

Danny hadn't seen Sam touch a drop of alcohol, but he let him go, still watching Dean with a wary eye.

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Sam was already heading up the driveway towards the house when he heard Dean call him.

"What? We don't have time for this, Dean!"

Dean just handed him a gun filled with rock salt, "Which is exactly why you shouldn't just run in there unprepared."

"Rock salt? Dean, we don't even know what we're dealing with!"

The older hunter stared at him, exasperated, "If it's a ghost, rock salt should make it go poof long enough for us to get that family out of there. If it's a demon, salt repels it. If it's just some crazy ass, psychopath person...it won't kill them but it'll hurt like hell. But you are not going in there to face who-knows-what without some form of protection." Dean gave Sam his big-brother-knows-best look and then turned towards the house.

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"Hey!" Jennifer yelled.

The man didn't turn, but, suddenly, the room became unnaturally hot. Too hot. It was becoming hard to breathe. The young woman screamed in pain. It felt like her blood was boiling inside of her veins. The fine hairs of her body became singed and then disappeared as they were burnt to nothing. Her baby and the stranger shimmered like a mirage in front of her.

Suddenly, a gunshot rang out from behind her. The man ducked, nearly dropping her baby. She would have screamed had she not been so close to passing out. She turned to see the man who had been flirting with her earlier and another, taller man entering the room, guns drawn.

Shape of a man, can't see any physical features...sounds like the demon to me, Dean thought as he bent to help Jennifer to her feet, That means the whole rock salt idea was useless. I'll never hear the end of this. Suddenly Dean felt pain explode all through him as his blood began to boil. He let out a scream (very much against his will), alerting Sam to his situation.

Sam looked at Dean, seeing that he was clearly in pain. He expected to be hit with it too, but nothing happened. Then, a question invaded his head, as clearly as if he had thought it himself.

Why doesn't it affect you?

"Don't know," Sam told the thing that looked like a man, sure that that was where the question was coming from, "Just lucky I guess." Sam took steady, even strides towards the creature. From the way it was moving, it looked like it was beginning to panic. It put the baby in the cradle and then backed away, hands up.

Take the woman. Take the child. Just let me go.

"I don't think so," Sam said but then heard an agonized yell from behind him. He turned to look at his older brother. Dean was trying to put up the old front, trying to tell him to take the bastard down and not worry about him, but Sam could see something different in his eyes. While Dean was telling Sam to go ahead, his eyes were saying "Help me Sam! It's killing me slow and I don't know how much more I can take".

Sam went with his instincts. Not his instincts as hunter (which were screaming at him to finish it), but his instincts as a human being. And a brother.

He threw his gun to the side and raised his own hands, "Go then."

In one fluid motion, the creature leapt out the window.

Sam and Dean locked eyes as the older brother gulped in mouthfuls of air. Dean felt grateful towards his younger brother, but angry as well. Now this thing was still out there and could hurt more people.

Sam looked in the crib to see the little baby goggling up at him with big, green eyes. He smiled down at him and impulsively tucked the toddler in. As he did, he saw something catch the moonlight on the floor. He bent down to pick it up. It was a key.

A/N: Don't worry, this is about the extent of Jennifer's role in the story. I just needed her so that the boys could come face to featureless face with what they're dealing with.

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