Through his haze of anger, Sam watched with horror as his brother collapsed in a way that he had never seen him do before. The pain was so sudden and so intense that it played fully through his features as he crumped in a heap.

"Dean!" he yelled, rushing to his side. He dropped to his knees, feeling Dean's neck for a pulse. His brother was stiff, as if unconsciousness wasn't enough to get him out of the pain he was in. His pulse was frantic and Sam knew there wasn't much time before his brother was dead.

He did the only thing he knew to do. "Cas!" he screamed. "Cas, please! Dean's dying, I need your help!"

Cas came in so quickly and zapped them out so fast, Sam didn't have much time to process what was going on. When he looked up, he was back in the motel room. Cas had Dean in his arms, carrying him to the bed.

It wasn't until Castiel put him down that Sam saw Thea laying there, body stiff and eyes wide open with tears leaking out of them. She looked like she was gasping for air and nothing was coming from her.

As soon as Cas put Dean on the bed, he pushed Thea and Dean together, wrapping Dean's arm around Thea. Almost immediately, Thea gasped for air, sobs tearing their way out of her chest. It wasn't even seconds before she lost consciousness, her body going limp against Dean. Sam saw that his brother had also gone limp against the girl in his arms, his face much less tense, but a frown still wrinkling his brow.

Sam spun towards Castiel, who was looking at the pair with concern. "Cas, what the hell was that?"

"I assume it is the curse," Cas replied grimly. "It's getting worse for the both of them. Why were they separated in the first place?"

Guilt started to sink into Sam's body. "He came to see me, said they had a plan if it got bad. He didn't even act like anything was wrong…"

But maybe he had been, but because they were too busy fighting with each other, he had shoved it aside to deal with his brother.

"Cas, why was it so bad this time? Yesterday it was chest pain and now its full body lock up. What's causing this?"

"I'm not sure, Sam. I don't understand why it would be so much worse only twenty four hours later." Cas looked at Thea. "She called me only moments before you did." He looked back to Sam. "I tried to put her to sleep again, but my power didn't work. This is very bad, Sam."

Sam looked at the two lying on the bed. Their faces looked peaceful now, and his gut clenched.

"We have to go to North Dakota," he said quietly.

The angel looked at him curiously. "North Dakota?"

Sam explained what had happened in the last day since he had seen him, including the anger and lust that Sam was feeling. When he was finished, he noticed that Cas was looking at him with a weird look.

He shifted. "What?"

"You're not usually so forward." Cas said. "It usually takes months to get one word of honest emotion out of either of you."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Cas, we have a bigger problem here. I wanted to hurt Dean less than an hour ago. I wanted to take Thea from him and make her be with me. We need to find out how to get to Aphrodite and stop her before anything worse happens!"

"I do not disagree," Castiel said. "There is some sort of information that we don't have and at this point the best idea is to go to where the demi god directed her."

"Will you come with us?"

"Yes. If you come upon ancient writings you may need me to translate."

Sam nodded, suddenly very tired. He wanted to curl up beside Thea, bury his face in her hair and go to sleep. "Cas, she wanted to send you in the first place, but Dean didn't want you to go by yourself." He looked at the angel. "If Aphrodite and her gang had showed up, do you think you could've fought them off?"

"It depends. One is easily destroyed, if there is more than one and I am all alone, then it gets much more difficult. If I had a garrison behind me it would be different, but just being me, well, it would depend on how strong they are."

Sam stood up and began to pace. "When should we wake them up to leave? I don't want to wait too much longer because our emotions are getting stronger."

Castiel examined the two again. They were completely relaxed now, as if they had just dozed off together. "They need an hour or two to recover and we'll take them then."

"Can you take all of us?"

Cas considered it for a moment. "I should be able to without any trouble. We shall wait for them to wake up, tell them our plan, and then go before it gets any worse."

For the next few hours, Sam paced nervously around the room while Castiel sat in a chair and watched. Sam tried to distract himself by reading and watching TV, but nothing was helping him much. He plopped down at the chair where Thea must've been sitting previously. When he looked closer, he saw notes that she had scribbled.

Building architecture sugg. that worshipers of old held meet.

More bitch signs

Big on love and punishment

Survive without cronies?

"Hey Cas, I think that Thea was investigating the library we have to go to while Dean was gone." Sam turned the computer to Cas. "Take a look."

Castiel went over the notes and looked at the pictures. "I cannot distinguish too much from only the pictures. The Greek pantheon has been very influential to humanity for thousands of years so it is difficult to tell whether or not they actually worshipped there or not."

They both heard a groan from the bed. Thea was waking up, rubbing her forehead.

"What happened…where?" She sat up slowly and looked around. She saw Castiel first, then Sam. "You saved me, didn't you?"

"Perhaps," replied Cas. "You called me and I got here as you collapsed. You were in great amounts of pain."

She hugged her knees to her chest. "Yeah, I remember now. It's all coming back."

Dean moved beside her. She looked back to the two men standing at the end of the bed. "What about Dean?"

"Same thing happened to him from what Cas says," replied Sam. "We were in the parking lot of the diner and he just…collapsed."

She looked at Dean and reached out to him, smoothing his brow with her fingertips. "Thank you for bringing him back." She turned back to Sam and Cas. "I don't know why it was so bad, it shouldn't have ever been like that. I didn't even feel it coming."

Dean started to stir beside her and opened his eyes. He groaned and rolled over onto his back, rubbing his eyes. When he sat up, he looked at the end of the bed with squinted eyes. "Did one of you hit me in the head with a bat?"

"You passed out, Dean," Sam said.

"Huh?"

"You collapsed in pain and Cas brought us back, when we were at the diner." Sam paused. "You had to be put back with Thea."

At the mention of Thea, Dean looked around for her and once he spotted her by his side, he relaxed. "It must've hit us quick, huh?"

She nodded, laying her head on her arms. "I was just working over at the table and it just…felt like fire was going through me. Like someone was stabbing me with a thousand knives."

Dean nodded. "I know the feeling." When he looked at his brother, Sam knew that he was remembering the conversation that they had been having before all of this had happened. "Did you bring me back here?"

Sam stiffened slightly. "Yeah. I called Cas and he came for us. If I had driven it would've taken too long."

Cas stepped forward. "We've decided that now is the time to go to this library. We do not understand why the pain has gotten worse or why emotions are running higher than they should be. We must leave immediately."

"How are we getting there?" Thea asked as she stood up, stretching her muscles and wincing slightly.

Sam pushed down the hot desire that welled up inside of him by that innocent act. "Cas will take us."

Dean, who had also been stretching, snapped his head up. "We can't just go in with no plan-"

"What else are we supposed to do, Dean! This just about killed you!"

Dean opened his mouth to reply, but Thea put a hand on his arm. "Dean, he's right. We have a general idea about what we could be dealing with, and now we just have to go in with guns blazing."

"But before we go," she said, addressing the others. "I want us to take some precautionary measures." She went over to the table and picked up a book with multiple symbols in it. "I found this a few years ago. It has warding symbols for pretty much everything and anything you need it to hold off. It has a few things that could protect us temporarily from anything Aphrodite could throw at us, so I suggest we draw this on us before we go."

She saw the questioning stares from the boys. "I tried to use them a while back but they wouldn't stick to me since I was already cursed. They might work for me now, but they should definitely work for you guys."

They held still while she put the sigil on them, drawing it on with a permanent marker.

"Uh, Thea," said Dean as she bent over his bicep, "I don't really think that marker works with these things."

"Why wouldn't they?" she asked absent mindedly.

"Well, usually it's supposed to-"

"Yours it tattooed on you, which is just a more extreme form of drawing." She stepped back and peered at her work. "This should work."

The men exchanged nervous glances over her head but didn't argue. She drew hers carefully and once it didn't burn her, she looked up to them. "Ready?"

"Not really," mumbled Dean, but he put his hand on Castiel's shoulder nonetheless.

In a split second, they were standing out in front of the old library.

It was dusk and the poor quiet town in which the library was located was settling down to sleep. The library itself looked completely out of place on the street. It was large and brick all around except the front was made of marble. The overhanging roof was supported by Grecian style columns and the details up around the roof portrayed various pictures of Greek mythology.

It wasn't in good shape. It looked like no one had used the library in years. The windows were boarded up and the big front door was padlocked. However, a couple boarded windows and a padlock had never stopped the Winchesters in their life.

They walked around the building a couple times, surveying possible exits and entry ways that they could use if necessary. They decided to use a side door instead of the front door for the sake of discresion.

Sam picked the lock with quick efficiency and the four entered the building, guns drawn and on the defensive for anything to come out at them.

It was dark and smelled of stale, wet paper. The library must've been recently abandoned because there wasn't as much trash on the ground as would be expected. Cob webs filled the spaces and Thea had to push down a mounting panic that was threatening to consume her.

"Okay guys," she whispered hoarsely, "The old blue prints said that the basement was accessible through the fiction section on the west side. There should be staircase that heads down, and my best bet is that anything we really want to find will be down there or even in a separate room off of it."

They grunted and made their way to the fiction section and to the door that marked their destination.

Dean stood at the door tensely for a moment and looked back at the three people right on his heels.

Why did he always have to go first?

He rolled his eyes and opened the door quickly, shining the flashlight down the stairs. There was nothing to be seen at the moment, so he descended down cautiously, Sam, Cas and Thea right on his heels.

Thea turned her head slightly to Castiel as they went down the stairs. "Sense anything, Castiel?"

He shook his head. "Not yet."

She exhaled and nodded. "I guess that's not a bad thing…"

Their feet touched the solid ground and they looked around slowly. There was nothing to really warrant any concern yet. There were shelves and bins full of old books and papers. Files that had never been taken away were scattered about the place haphazardly and the place smelled like mold and shit.

"We're looking for something old, something written in Greek," said Thea. "It'll probably be along the walls."

Dean looked back to them. "Me and you can split off together Thea and Sam and Cas can go the other way. We'll cover more ground and find stuff faster."

Before he had even finished she was shaking her head. "Hell no. We are staying with the angel at all times."

"Thea-"

"Guys!"

Everyone looked at Sam, who was staring at the corner. "Do you see that?"

Over in the corner, caught in the aura of the flashlight, was a small statue on a shelf. It was a cherub holding its bow and arrow. They went over to it quickly and looked around, trying to find any sort of sign that might show them what to do.

"Look," said Sam. "There's something here…"

A series of ancient letters were carved into the side of the shelf, the arrow pointing at them directly. They turned to the angel beside them.

He peered at the inscription, frowning as he did so.

"Well?" said Dean. "What's it say?"

"Passion opens what once was closed." Cas looked confused. "It doesn't make much sense."

"Passion?" Thea 's face was thoughtful. "A kiss maybe?"

The boys gaped at her. "What?" she asked defensively. "Goddess of love and all that bullshit, we'll be lucky we don't have to fuck to get in."

"So…" Dean hesitated. "Should we kiss and see if it works?"

"No, Dean, I think you and Castiel should try it," she replied, completely stone faced.

Even the angel's eyebrows were up to his hair line in surprise at what she had just said and even in such a tense place, she had to laugh. "I'm just kidding, you idiots. Yes, we should probably…uh, try that, I guess."

Just as they stepped closely to each other, Thea noticed something she hadn't before. "Wait!"

She went over and looked harder at the inscription. Directly below it was what looked like a lock. A lock that looked quite a bit like the necklace she had worn for years.

Her mouth was dry as she took the necklace from her pocket and with shaking hands inserted it into the hole. She turned it and for a moment, nothing happened.

And then, all of a sudden, the shelf heaved and moved back, swinging out of the way, revealing a long dark tunnel.

"Typical," muttered Dean. "What's wrong with brightly lit passages above ground? The sun would do these sons a bitches good every once in a while..."

They all nodded in agreement and with baited breath proceeded down to whatever awaited them at the end.