*Note: The Ravener demons mentioned in this chapter are not my invention, they come from The Mortal Instruments series, specifically first mentioned in "City of Bones." And those are written by Cassandra Claire. They're really good and if you like Supernatural, you'd probably like them too. Oh, and by the way, I didn't come up with Supernatural either, but I think we…all knew that…Good, we're on the same page.

Dean and Sam trecked back to the Impala in silence, covered in blood and icor, or as Dean liked to refer to it, 'demon juice.' Nasty sons of bitches, what they'd just fought. That's why he and Sam were so quiet, what they'd seen that night pretty much scared the hell out of them.

Up until now, they'd only ever seen, thought or heard of one kind of demon. The smoky, black, sulfur stinking, possessing people kind. But this week, they'd gotten a call from some chick in Wyoming claiming that something supernatural had bitten her in the night and the doctors couldn't fix her. She swore it was because the wound was demonice. By the time they'd gotten there, she was dead. And that bite had been one nasty sucker to look at. After that, Sam had went through hell and back getting right down to hard copies of diaries and journals until he found a name for what they were up against. They were called Ravener demons, and they sure as hell weren't smoke, and they weren't possessing people. They didn't need a meat suit to cause problems. They were like huge black scorpions, and the sons of bitches didn't die until you hacked off their poisonous stinger and their heads. And they bled this black sticky stuff the journal called 'icor.'

It wasn't so much that the new way of combat or the demons themselves bothered them, it was just that there were obviously things (maybe lots of things) they didn't know about, and that they hadn't fought. And neither had their dad. There was no mention of anything like these creatures in his journal.

They did that thing where they slid into the car and shut their doors at exactly the same time, looked at each other for a minute, then moved on. Dean cranked the Impala and haded for the nearest Interstate.

"Do you even know where we're going?" Sam asked somberly.

"I just need to drive." Dean answered huskily. "We only managed to kill two of those things and we can't let them get too far ahead. Start tracking."

Sam leaned over with a wince and pulled out his laptop. He'd saved the omen path from the eight hours of research he'd already done. Luckily, that aspect of these demons was the same. He didn't even want to think about what they would have done if there were no way to track the Raveners.

"Looks like…" he opened a few files and calculated quickly in his head, "they're headed for Ohio."

Dean shifted his eyes a bit, a barely noticeable reaction to Sam's words. "Where in Ohio?"

Sam squinted at his screen. "Trinity."

Again, Dean tried to pass off the sudden vicegrip inside his chest. So solemnly, he said, "Hell yes," and pointed the car to the nearest Interstate.

Luckily, Sam was too tired to notice Dean's little twitches. "Want me to drive?"

"Nah, get some rest, Sammy."

He looked at Dean for a few seconds, then conceded an "Okay" and leaned his head back. Sleeping in the car was so routine now, their necks only hurt for three or four damned hours afterward…

Pretty soon, Dean could hear Sam's light snores and he allowed his hands to grip the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Of course, the Demon scum would head for Trinity, especially now, when his past and everything that had happened there was weighing so heavy on his mind. Lately, with the whole 'Hell' situation hanging over his head, he'd realized he had a lot to think about as far as how he'd spent his life. Somehow, for all these long years, they'd managed to skirt around the little town where he'd attended high school for three months and met Vanessa Kelly. Why now?

He relaxed his fingers as he felt a cramp coming on. There wasn't really much to worry about. If he knew Nessa at all, he knew that she would have found a way out of that place. She'd always been cramped there. This fiery, amazing presence that just didn't fit in with the mediocre gray of a small town. In so many ways, she'd been just like him. That was why he'd thought…

He shook his head a bit, refocusing on the white lines of the Interstate. Maybe he should have taken Sam up on his offer…nah.

Anyway…

All 16-year-olds thought they knew friggin' everything. He'd been no different. But still, it couldn't be normal for a school boy crush to have hung around this long. There'd been only one or two times since then that he'd actually let himself think he loved a woman. Sure he slept with plenty of them, but it was never them that he wanted. In all the brown, gray, green eyes of a million blondes, brunettes and redheads, he couldn't find star blue gazes or silky brown curls.

He gritted his teeth and pressed the gas down harder. He had no reason to be afraid to go back there. If she was even still there, and that was a big 'if,' he'd done nothing wrong. And she should be the guilty one.

Man, it was no fun feeling sixteen again.