AUTHOR'S NOTES: So I'd meant to post this the other day but the site admins finally called me on my non-stories and suspended my account for a few days. No big, I'd forgotten about them anyway and they have since been removed.

Now as for updates-I'm putting together my notes for the next story in my 'Family Ties' series but I NEED A TITLE! Help me?

As for 'Seek, and Ye Shall Find', I'm planning an update by Monday. I'm also going through season 2 of SPN for possible chapter ideas for 'I'm Here For You'hopefully soon I'll be able to make an update on that story as well.

Chapter 8

As he watched from the observation room, Gibbs' expression was stony as he listened to Roberta 'Ruby' Dawes confess to smashing into Sam, Dean, Kelly, and Corey before further injuring Kelly and Sam. The nurse was calm, collected, and unemotional as she described the crash and following events.

He didn't like it. Not one bit. And for once Gibbs didn't need his gut to tell him that something was all wrong with the girl's motive. Ruby was claiming that she had some sort of perverted crush on Sam and when she saw him and Kelly together at the track meet, she snapped.

No, this was all wrong.

After a moment, Gibbs went to the interrogation room and once Jenny Sheppard had left, Gibbs stopped the voice recorder and unplugged the camera before sitting down. "Interesting little story you told my agent."

"What story?" Ruby said, innocently. "It's the truth."

"Not all of it," Gibbs countered, giving the nurse a look. "What are you?"

Ruby smiled wickedly and even though Gibbs didn't show it, she knew that she'd gotten to him. Blinking, she let her eyes go black for a second before letting them go back to normal. "You're smarter than the average fed," she noted, approvingly. She leaned back in her chair and studied Gibbs for a moment. "Make me a deal," she said, her tone somewhat seductive. "And I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

"No deals," Gibbs said, quickly. He didn't know a lot about demons but he knew enough not to make a deal with a demon. And his gut told him that this demon in particular was especially no good.

"Fine," Ruby snapped, annoyed that Gibbs wasn't rising to the bait. "You want the truth? Here it is—There's a big boss demon named Lilith who wants Sam Winchester to lead the forces of Hell. She's willing to kill anyone that gets in her way—including Sam's brother, girlfriend, and Dean's sweet little fiancée."

Gibbs was doing his best not to react to that news, but he didn't like the idea of a demon gunning for his daughter. "And this demon ordered you to try and the Winchester boys, Corey Adler and my daughter?" Gibbs guessed. But his gut told him that it was more than that.

"Lilith wanted them out of the way so she could start making plans," Ruby replied. "She told me to kill everyone except Sam. But I couldn't do it. So I made sure that your daughter and the others would have more to worry about than me." After a while, she added, "Here's my deal."

"No deals," Gibbs repeated, his gaze cold.

"You may want to hear what I have to say before you refuse," Ruby countered. Her tone made it clear that Gibbs should listen and the demon suppressed a smile when she saw that the NCIS agent was indeed giving her his full attention. "Here's my offer," she said, calmly. "You let me go. I say I was being forced to hurt Sam, Dean, Corey, and Kelly and I keep Lilith off everyone's tail."

"That's not a deal," Gibbs snapped.

But Ruby wasn't to be deterred. She couldn't start working on Sam if she was in prison which was where she knew Gibbs wanted to stick her. Deciding to take a risk and put all of her cards on the table, she explained. "Sam Winchester was infected with demon blood when he was a baby. Something that will eventually give him some very useful powers in the future. Lilith would be only to happy to just kidnap Sam and make sure he's on a steady demon blood diet until he's more monster than human. This puts him in the crosshairs of demons and hunters. You keep me out of jail and I keep Sam and company alive and safe. If you lock me up, I can't protect anyone."

Most demons like using adults as meat suits because it allowed for more access to people and places.

But innocent little girls were welcomed anywhere.

Thus the reason why Lilith loved possessing children. Once she took over, they were far too weak to fight back and she could make them do the most horrific things. And even more than taking over children, she loved possessing sick kids.

It was such delicious torture to watch the parents of some dying little girl praying uselessly over their child before taking over the small body. Lilith loved the way the parents wept with joy, and she sometimes laughed right out loud when the parents thanked God for the miracle.

And then Lilith would make the children hurt the ones they loved—their mommies and daddies and anyone else who got in her way. Sometimes she would show what she called 'mercy' and just free herself from the child and take in the parents' misery as they watched their formerly healthy kid die a slow, painful death. She saw the conflicting emotions on faces as they thought about the time with their daughters and the bloody murders those daughters committed.

It was torture of the most wonderful kind. You didn't always have to resort to physically hurting someone. Sometime mind games were far more effective and much more fun.

But as she hid within the body of a 13-year-old girl named Darcy, Lilith had other things on her mind.

Darcy was fun, though… The girl had been sick with incredibly aggressive cancer for almost her entire life and in the past 8 years, the disease had slowly taken away bits and pieces of her life.

When the young girl was 5, a tumor in her brain made her go blind.

Then she'd lost a fair portion of her liver and lung when the cancer metastasized.

Now because of additional tumors, Darcy was breathing through a tracheostomy tube and she had her meals through an IV bag since surgeons had had to remove part of her stomach.

The doctors had given Darcy a few weeks and her parents were just hoping the passing would be quick.

That had been a month and a half ago.

But once Lilith had possessed Darcy, she didn't use her typical demon powers to heal the girl—instead, Lilith just kept the child from dying, watching the anguish on the faces of Darcy's parents as their only little girl continued to live in pure misery.

"Please… just let me die," Darcy's voice begged inside Lilith's head. "I can't take this any more. Just let me go."

Inside, Lilith smiled. Once she knew the girl's mom and dad were down in the cafeteria, she quickly let go of Darcy, and went in search of a new body and Ruby.

Finding both in the room of Claire Maxwell, Lilith took over the girl before giving Ruby a smile. "I thought the police were holding you under arrest," Lilith said with a smile before letting her eyes roll over white for a moment.

Ruby sighed. The last thing she wanted right now was to deal with the Queen of All Demons, but she should have expected it. "It's amazing what parents will do to protect their kids," she replied, simply.

But that response only served to anger Lilith. "I don't want Sam protected by his friends! I want him under our control!" She couldn't believe that Ruby was risking the entire plan like this! "His brother… his girlfriend… They were meant to die."

"And what good does Dean do us dead?" Ruby countered. "The angels want him alive just as much as we want Sam alive."

That Lilith couldn't argue with. She knew Heaven's plan for the older Winchester and she knew that the angels would not let Dean die easily. "Do you have a plan?"

Ruby smiled and shrugged lightly. "We wait and try to nudge the Winchesters apart when we can."

It was a bad plan. There were too many variables and without Sam being a hunter—without the supernatural driving a wedge between him and his family—the odds of Ruby or any other demons pulling Sam down into the darkness were slim.

But it was a plan that would just have to work. There was no other option at this point.

"If you try and mess this plan up," Lilith promised. "—I will make sure you spend the rest of your life in the cage with Lucifer." When Ruby stiffened as that prospect sank in, she added, "And I will personally have Alastair invited to the party."

Ruby didn't say anything to that but she knew that her boss was dead serious.

In the basement of his house, Gibbs was methodically working away at the boat frame that took up most of the space. Normally the work was cathartic, but tonight, his mind and his gut kept nagging at him.

Ruby should never have gotten off for what she'd done and it had taken an entire rewriting of her confession to come up with something that would be believable at trial.

The Adlers were near furious that the person who'd severely injured their daughter had not been arrested but Gibbs and John had explained the situation as best they could—trying to keep the supernatural elements to a minimum, even though Corey already knew a little about the whole demons, monsters, and ghosts thing.

He'd just compromised NCIS—not to mention himself—and put John and Jenny at risk of losing their jobs and the whole mess made Gibbs' gut squirm.

Tossing his tools on the workbench, he sat down on one of the saw horses and after a few moments, he grabbed the bottle of bourbon on the table and opened it, pouring some into an empty mason jar.

The doctors were planning on releasing Sam Winchester from the hospital the following day and two days later, Kelly would be cleared to go home. But Sam was looking at a difficult road ahead even though he was already working with one of the occupational therapists at the hospital. Life would be hard for him now—even harder if Ruby was telling the truth about Sam's future.

And the more Gibbs thought about his daughter, the more he wanted to just crawl into the bottle of bourbon and never leave. He wasn't a serious drinker, but lately he'd thought about becoming one.

The image of Kelly's missing arm was burned into his mind and he knew that the scars on her face would never fully heal. His little girl had grown up with only one goal for her future—to become a Marine. The scars would never have been an obstacle but the missing arm was…

In her hospital room, Kelly had apologized for disappointing him and Gibbs had insisted that he was just happy she was alive.

But thinking of Kelly again drew Gibbs' thoughts to Ruby and the deal he'd made with her.

Assuming that the demon was able to keep her boss at bay, he still had no idea of what might happen to Kelly, Corey, Sam, and Dean in general. And what did Kelly have to do with the whole thing anyway?

That was the other part that was setting off Gibbs' gut. If there was some supernatural plot and Sam and Dean were involved then it made sense to hurt them. But Corey and Kelly had been innoscent bystanders. And more to the point, why did Ruby further attack Kelly and not Corey? And why would a demon injure Sam worse if he was so important to them?

There were too many questions and things to figure out and covering up the situation…

The 'official' story was that Ruby Dawes was an undercover private investigator who had received a tip that someone was trying to kill the kids and she'd tried to stop the assassin and had accidentally hit Corey's car.

Abby'd had a field day trying to make her evidence report fit the official one and it was only when Gibbs and John had divulged some of the more paranormal aspects of the whole mess that she had actually agreed to go along with it.

Finishing his drink, Gibbs wished he was tired enough to get some sleep but he knew as long as his mind and gut were keeping him away, sleep would be out of the question.

With that thought in mind, he refilled his glass and again picked up his tools before turning back to the boat, grateful that at least the wood always made sense to him.