Chapter 2

He slept restlessly, twisting and turning in the narrow cot in Ellen's back room. It wasn't a nightmare, not really. Just a memory, from a long time ago.

"It's too late, we're too late," he said to his father, looking around the wreckage of the cabin's interior.

"Double check, Dean. We'll go right through. Take the lower floor, I'll check the upstairs. Sam? Go with your brother."

"Yessir."

Dean stepped over the remains of the furniture cautiously; he wanted his footing secure if the elemental, or anything else, was still there. He glanced back at his little brother, noting with approval that Sam was taking the same care with where he put his feet.

Skirting the big sofa, he kept his imagination held down tightly as he saw that it'd been ripped to shreds, the floor covered with stuffing, like a fall of snow. He saw the dark red pool first, staining the floor and soaking into the tufts of stuffing and torn cloth, and stopped, holding his hand up to warn his brother. He took another cautious step forward and stopped again as he saw them.

A man and a woman, barely recognisable as human. Their bodies had been ripped apart, the flesh torn from the bones, the bones snapped into pieces. This was the first time he'd seen the work of an elemental, sometimes called a fetch; a creature created from the mind of a powerful psychic or witch. His father had explained a bit about them, but looking down at the bodies, he realised that nothing could have prepared him for this. He swallowed hard as his stomach roiled.

"No, Sam. You don't want to see this." Dean kept himself between the bodies and his brother. "No one should have to see this," he muttered, half to himself.

There was a soft noise to his left, and he spun around, his head snapping back to Sam. He lifted a finger to his lips, and Sam nodded, wide-eyed. Dean moved silently around the sofa, gesturing for Sam to take the other side, around what remained of the solid pine table.

The noise came again, and Dean realised that it was coming from under a bookshelf, fallen from its position against the wall. Whatever was under there was not likely to be able to put up much of a fight, he decided, looking at the thin gap between the heavy shelving and the floor. He crouched at the edge, and put his hand under one side, testing the weight. It was heavy, too heavy to lift one handed. He'd have to put his gun down. He looked around for his brother. Sam stood on the other side of the shelf, gun held self-consciously in front of him.

"I'll lift it – cover me," Dean whispered. Sam nodded and shifted his grip on the shotgun, lowering the barrel and easing his finger over the trigger.

Dean laid his gun silently on the floor. He looked at the shelf, judging the central balance point. Then he slid his hands under the edge and, taking the weight with his legs, started to lift.

"Ahhhhhhhhhh …"

He saw Sam's eyes widen dramatically, his brother's gaze flying to meet his, and he heaved, throwing the shelf back against the wall, catching it and stabilising it, then turning to look at what had been lying beneath its crushing weight.

Half buried under books, broken glass, papers and shattered china, a girl was lying on the floor, awkwardly twisted to one side. Dean dropped to his knees, picking up and throwing aside the contents of the shelf, trying to clear the debris from around and on top of the small figure.

As he pulled a smashed picture frame away, he could see her face; one eye blackened and swollen shut, blood from a cut on her forehead sticking the long lashes together. The other eye was half-open, unfocussed, the bright jade of the iris flecked with gold, and ringed by dark blue, the pupil contracting suddenly in the strong beam of Sam's flashlight. The light picked up the gleam of glass in her skin and he took a breath, easing the slivers of glass from her forehead and cheek gently.

"She dead?" Sam whispered.

Dean shook his head, lifting the girl's head gently, his fingers lying lightly against the carotid artery at the side of her throat. A pulse beat strongly against his fingertips. He heard his father coming down the stairs.

"Dad! There's a survivor."

John Winchester ran down the stairs, stopping when he saw the girl, her head cradled in his son's lap.

"She's alive?" He moved forward carefully, kneeling when he reached them. "Turn her over, Dean."

As Dean very gently moved her shoulders, his father lifted the long tangle of hair, copper-coloured, dulled with blood, sweat and dust now. Dean saw the claw marks as his father drew away the remnants of the cotton nightshift. Four of them, wide and filled with dirt, they ran from the spine of the scapula diagonally across her back to just above the kidneys. He shivered. They were deep high on the back, but shallowed as they descended. The elemental had missed ripping out her spine by only millimetres. He looked at his father.

"We'll have to clean this mess out. Sam, call 911, get an ambulance and the police."

The girl was no more than ten, younger than Sam, Dean thought, her body light and fragile in his hands. Dean eased her forward a little more, lifting her hair completely clear of the mess of her back, as his father pulled a small first aid kit from the satchel over his shoulder.

"They're coming," Sam said quietly. John nodded.

"Sammy, see if you can find clean water in the kitchen, and salt, and any alcohol." John turned to Dean as Sam turned and ran to the kitchen. "Is she conscious?"

Dean looked down. The side of her face that he could see was swollen, the eye forced shut. He couldn't tell if she was awake or not. "I think so."

John's face hardened. "You'll have to hold onto her, Dean, hold her tight, this is going to hurt."

Sam returned with a pan of water and a bottle of cooking brandy, stepping carefully through the detritus on the floor to hand them to his father. John tipped the bag of salt into the water, waiting for it dissolve and pulled out several thick gauze pads from the kit. Dipping the gauze into the saline solution, he soaked it and squeezed it out over the long cuts, irrigating the wounds, sluicing as much of the dirt from their interiors as he could.

The girl gasped, and began to shake. Dean gripped her shoulders tightly, wishing suddenly he could take the pain, somehow, into himself. He felt as if they were torturing her.

John glanced at him. "I know," he said heavily. "I feel the same way."

He turned back to the wounds, working fast to clean them out. "Sammy, get the dressings ready. As soon as I've finished this they have to go straight on."

Dean watched his father unscrew the cap on the bottle of brandy, and felt his stomach lurch. The salt solution was mild compared to the way the alcohol would bite into her. He swallowed, hoping she would pass out, it would be more merciful.

When the first trickle of the brandy hit the open wounds, she arched back against his grip, her high-pitched childish scream shockingly loud in the silence of the wrecked cabin. Sam flinched, almost dropping the clean dressings, earning a dark look from his father. Dean closed his eyes, holding her still, her ten-year's old strength helpless against him; he was sixteen, his muscles trained and strengthened since childhood in the skills of their life. He felt tears forcing their way under his tightly closed lashes, felt his own body shaking with horror. He was relieved when her body suddenly fell limp, and he knew that she'd slipped from consciousness.

He opened his eyes as his hands relaxed, watching his father as he cleaned the remaining alcohol from her back, and applied the dressings, taping them down. Despite the hardness of the expression on his father's face, he saw that his hands were gentle as he finished dressing the wounds.

His father packed away the kit and slowly got to his feet. "Dean, can you lift her?"

Dean looked up and nodded. He was careful not to touch the wounds, and lifted her in a half-sitting position, her head rolling over his shoulder.

"Here, on her side." John righted the armchair, spilling the debris from it, setting it down so that it faced the doorway. "Sammy, get a blanket from upstairs."

Dean leaned the girl against the side of the armchair, checking that she wasn't leaning on her injuries. The thin cotton nightshift had fallen away at the neck, and he could see a strawberry-coloured birthmark under her collarbone, in the shape of a crescent moon. Next to it was a small silver locket, the chain broken, the locket snagged on the nightgown's lace edging. He lifted it free, looking at the chain carefully. It wouldn't take more than a minute to fix it.

"Give it to me," John said as Sam returned with a thick quilt. He laid the covering over the girl, tucking it against her sides.

"Alright, let's go," he said, his gaze moving swiftly around the cabin and stopping on his oldest son. "We've got to get this thing before it can kill anyone else."

"Shouldn't we wait for the ambulance?" Dean looked at the girl, his brows drawing together as he realised his father meant to leave her there. "What if it comes back before they get here?"

"It won't," his father told him certainly. "But if we're here when the police get here, we're going to be questioned and detained and we'll lose the trail."

His expression was deadly serious as he continued, "This thing is only just getting started. We can't risk losing it now, or there'll be more families like this one." He glanced at the girl. "She'll be alright. It won't return here."

Dean saw Sam about to raise an objection, and shook his head quickly at his brother. Sam glared at Dean, but held his peace. They followed their father, picking their way carefully out through the mess. Dean turned back at the doorway. The police and the paramedics would see her as soon as they opened the door. He hoped his dad was right about the elemental. She was a sitting target if it did return.

With the locket still in his hand, forgotten, he turned away, shutting the door and striding after his family.

Dean woke abruptly, fighting the tangle of bed linen to sit up, wiping the sweat from his face as he remembered. He didn't know how he'd forgotten about that hunt. About the girl. They'd found the psychic who'd raised the elementals, sending them out to kill, and killed her. That had taken them another week, travelling to a different state. After, Dean had gone back to the local hospital, wanting to know for himself that she'd survived. He'd fixed the chain, and he'd thought he'd be able to return the locket to her. But the hospital told him she'd been transferred to another city, taken away by an aunt who lived elsewhere. And ... life had gone on, different towns, different schools, new hunts … and he'd forgotten her.

Pushing aside the covers, he swung his legs out, feeling the thin carpet under his feet as he reached out in the semi-darkness for his duffle. He lifted it onto the bed, and searched by feel until he found the small leather pouch. It contained a few things that were sentimental or meaningful to him. His mother's charm bracelet. A couple of .22 casings from his first shooting lesson. A smooth flat stone with the delicately carbonised fossil of an ancient plant in it, picked up in the high desert when he'd learned to walk like a ghost. And the locket.

His fingertips found the smooth metal surface and he drew it out, closing the pouch and dropping it onto the bed beside him. In the next cot, Sam was sleeping, a faint whistling breath just audible under the heap of covers hiding him from view. Dean got up, walking out into the empty barroom and along to the bathroom and closing the door before he hit the light switch. Under the cool, harsh fluorescent light, he lifted the locket and turned it over, looking at the cursive engraving on the back.

Finis vitae sed non Amoris.

He even knew what it said now; his brother had translated the Latin for him a couple of years ago.

The end of life, but not of love.

It reminded him, in a way he wasn't sure he really got, of his mother, making him feel both sad and a little hopeful. Turning it back over to the smooth, unadorned front, he pressed the tiny clasp that lay along the rim with his nail. The two halves sprang open. Recessed in each side, a small photograph, of a man and a woman. The girl's parents, he'd guessed, the first time he'd seen the pictures. He lifted the locket closer to his face, angling it to the light. The woman in the photo had very similar features to the woman he'd met the previous night – the same oval face, high, wide cheekbones. The same wide, full mouth. The same large eyes, light-coloured irises framed in long, dark lashes. And long copper-red hair, drawn back from her face.

She'd lived, he thought. Gone to family, somewhere else. Safe, he'd thought. Out of it for good. Was it really likely that she'd turned into a hunter, drawn into a world of darkness that he and his father and his brother had tried to save her from?

Closing the locket, he looked down at it, lying in his palm. All he had to do was find her again. If it was even her.

A banging on the door of the small back room woke him the next morning, Ellen's voice muffled through the solid wood.

"Get your lazy butts up, boys."

Rubbing a hand over his face, Dean looked at his watch and swore. He turned his head to look over at his brother. Sam was lying on his back, eyes closed and mouth open, snoring softly and oblivious to the summons.

"Sam," he said, closing his eyes again and wondering why he'd thought it would be better to stay here than in some anonymous motel where check out was at least another four hours.

A soft and whistling snore answered him and he rolled onto his side, pushing himself upright on one arm.

"Sam," he tried again, a bit louder this time. He could hardly keep his eyes open, gazing blearily around the floor by the cot for his clothes. He saw his jeans, lying on the end of the bed and reached for them, glancing back at his brother.

"SAM!"

"Wha-!?" Sam sat up abruptly, eyes wide and hair sticking out in all directions as he looked wildly around. "What?!"|

"Time to get up," Dean told him unsympathetically, dragged his jeans on, standing to button the fly. "Ellen's got something on her mind."

The smell of coffee almost overlaid the deeply infused scents of alcohol, cigarettes and gun oil. They sat down at the bar, while Ellen poured them a couple of cups.

"You boys looking for a new job?" She set the coffee pot back on the warmer and turned around, leaning on the bar as she looked from one to the other.

"What kind of job?" Dean asked, looking warily at her over the rim of his cup. He wasn't sure that he did want a new case right now. What he wanted was to find the redhead and give her the locket back. Since he had no idea where she might've gone, or how to find her, it seemed like a futile idea.

"Demons, Ash says." Ellen leaned on the bar. "In Black Springs. He got wind of it last night."

"Demons?" Sam exchanged a look with his brother. "Plural?"

"That's what he says," Ellen said dryly, her gaze moved past them. "Ask him yourself."

"Demons, Ash?" Dean asked sceptically, turning to look over his shoulder at the roadhouse's resident genius. Ash looked like he'd spent the night sleeping on the pool table. Which, he reconsidered, he probably had.

"Dean. Sam." He leaned between the brothers to pick up the cup of coffee Ellen had poured for him. "That's what I heard. Town up north, there's a lot going on there."

"I checked it out," he continued, sucking down a mouthful of the strong, black brew and letting out a sigh of pleasure. Walking around the el of the bar, he sat down, both hands cradling the cup. "There're signs, omens around that place. Not like the ones that precede your dad's demon; they're not as powerful as that. I think they're trying to open something. No idea what. No records of a gate there, or anything else, least not that I can find. Doesn't mean there isn't one there, you understand," he added as an afterthought, picking up his cup again.

Sam felt a shiver run up his spine. "You ever heard of something like this before, Ash?"

"Nope." Ash drained his coffee and set the cup back on the bar. "No one has."

Dean looked over at him, wondering how much was on the level, how much was Ash's particular and peculiar sense of the dramatic. "What kind of signs, Ash?"

"Localised weather, storms forming outside of the weather patterns for the region. Some earth movements there, as well. Out of the ordinary, like, has the geology guys all het up. There've been a few disappearances in the county as well, not enough to flag the attention of the feds, but enough, with the rest, to confirm that what's going on up there, it ain't good."

Sam raked his fingers through his hair, pushing the forelock back off his face. "What kind of gate are you talking about, Ash?"

Ash looked at him steadily. "Gate to Hell, Sam. Gate to another plane."

"A gate to Hell?" Dean's eyebrows lifted. He definitely did not like the sound of that. "Are you talking about an actual doorway to a place?"

"Yeah, there're a few around." Ash scratched his cheek, the stubble along it of varying lengths. "How do you think the demons get here in the first place? Most of them are tiny, just cracks between the planes, really. But some are bigger. And a few are big enough to let the really powerful hellspawn through, as well as a sizeable chunk of the horde."

He looked from one to the other, seeing the disbelief in their expressions. "You boys not payin' attention to what's going on?"

Dean looked uneasily at his brother. "What the hell is the 'horde'?"

"Horde of Hell," Ellen supplied. "I keep forgettin' you boys got left out when John isolated himself from everyone."

She walked down the length of the bar, ducking to get under the hatch. "C'mon, you better see Bill's study."

Sam's brow wrinkled up as he slid from the stool and turned to follow her. Dean looked at Ash, who gave him a weary shrug and reached out for the coffee pot to pour himself another cup.

Through the door beside the bar, a short hall led past the kitchen to another corridor, this one longer, several doors in one wall. Ellen walked past the first and opened the second, stepping aside as the brothers walked in past her and looked around.

"Jim took a lot of Bill's books," she said, her gaze moving around the room. "Bobby Singer has a few as well, but the rest are here. He collected every bit of lore he could find on Hell and demonkind."

Sam moved to the shelves and tilted his head, reading through the titles. Most of the books were old, a few ancient, their bindings cracked and crumbling, the leather deteriorated by the passage of time and poor care.

Dean thought of what Jo'd said to them, the last time they'd been here. About her father. About his. He looked at Ellen and saw a warning in her eyes, not to speak of that, not to her. He looked back at the shelves and waved a hand at them.

"S'alright if we take a look?"

"That's why you're here," she said, nodding to him. "Take your time, I'll get some more coffee going."

It was almost dark when he looked up, hearing his brother slam the book he'd been reading closed.

"Think Dad knew about all this?" Sam asked, his tone bitter.

Dean sighed inwardly, closing the book in front of him and picking up the cold cup of coffee beside it.

"Yeah, I'd say so," he said, carefully neutral. "You think it would've helped us, any of this, with what we had to do?"

His brother scowled at him, looking away. "Maybe not with Yellow-Eyes," he allowed unwillingly. "But the background, Dean, we should know all of this, the gates and the omens – and – and all of it!"

"No argument," Dean told him. There was a lot, he'd come to realise, that their father had kept from them. Old buddies. Vampires. Mistakes. It made him uncomfortable to think of all that information that his father had been withholding. He'd thought … he'd thought his father had trusted him, and the only conclusion he could come to in light of the things that John hadn't shared with him, with them, was that he hadn't.

"I'm starving," he said, shunting his feelings aside. "We'll see what Ash has to say about the demons up north."

Sam nodded, pushing the books into a pile and getting to his feet. "If they're trying to open a gate, Dean," he said as he walked to the door, stopping and turning back to wait for his brother. "How the hell are we supposed to do anything about that?"

Dean shrugged. Ash'd said that they were trying. Sending them back to Hell would put a stop to it, at least.

Ash lowered his voice, looking around at the small crowd that had gradually filled the bar after dark. "Some of the hunters have been hearing things. They say that the demons are talking about a war, here, on our plane. I don't know if this job has anything to do with that, but the more gates that are opened, the more likely that gets."

Dean swallowed the last of his burger, wiping his mouth and pushing his plate aside. "A demon war?"

Ash lifted his beer, shrugging as he looked at the hunter. "Or a take-over?"

"A take-over?" Sam asked.

"What d'you think'll happen if enough demons get out?" Ash asked him in return. "Think they'll just head home once their own fight's over?"

He turned his head to look at Dean. "Your dad had a lotta notes on what a demon called Azazel was doing," he said. "You read 'em?"

Dean frowned. "Yeah, most of it," he said, glancing at Sam. "He'd been tracking it since '73, checking the towns."

"That demon was coming up every ten years or there 'bouts," Ash corrected him. "Looking for something."

"What?" Sam asked, his voice tense.

"Don't know," Ash said. "There wasn't a lot about that, just where it'd been – and how to figure out where it was goin' to be next."

"And?" Dean asked impatiently.

"And demons aren't exactly known for their planning ability," Ash told them. "More of a smash-an'-grab mentality."

Sam stiffened slightly. "That's what it said in one of Bill's books. So why the change?"

Ash shrugged again. "A power struggle? Sick of the status quo? I dunno. There's a lot more I haven't been through," he added. "I'll keep going through it, along with the records of the other special kids, whatever I can find on 'em."

"You do that," Dean said, hiding his frustration. "We'll be checking out the demon problem in Black Springs."

Ash nodded and Dean remembered what he'd wanted to ask him, before the demon war business had come up.

"You know a hunter called Ellie? Redhead?"

"Sure," Ash said. "She comes in here occasionally, but she's not, like, regular. Why?"

Sam was looking at him, he could feel his brother's curiosity beating softly at him. "Got a number for her?"

Ash shook his head. "Ask Ellen."

"Right."

He turned back to his beer as Ash walked back to the kitchen. Sam shifted on the seat beside him.

"And that was?"

"Nothing," Dean said. "You want to get going now or wait till morning?"

"Tomorrow," Sam decided. "I want to keep looking through those books. How long's the drive?"

Dean thought about it for a moment, tipping his bottle up and finishing his beer.

"Five-six hours," he said, thinking about the route. It would be quicker and easier to go the county roads.

Sam nodded. He could get a lot more covered by mid-morning tomorrow, and they could be in the town before dark, give them time to look around. He picked up his beer and finished it, getting up.

"You staying here?"

Dean looked around the bar and nodded, getting to his feet as he said, "Yeah, I want to check something out with Ellen."

Sam looked at him quizzically. "What, about that hunter?"

"About what she's heard the other hunters saying about demons," Dean said easily. He jerked his head toward the rear door leading to the back rooms. "Don't burn out your brain."

"Huh."

Not waiting for his brother to formulate another line of questioning, Dean walked around the corner of the bar, heading for the table that Ellen was wiping over.