Jim's somber advice was running through Caleb's brain while he made the trek across town to the county morgue to do a professional examination of the victim's body. It was the least glamorous part of the hunting life that he could think of, and it also made him partially sick to his stomach to look at the more gruesome corpses that were mutilated by the supernatural. But it had to be done. Especially with the latest victims of the spirit who seemed bound and determined to punish men for hurting their children. Over the years, Caleb had learned that spirits operated either by a blind rage, or through a sense of justice, or a combination of the two.

This spirit, for whatever reason she had, was operating from a sense of moral justice to her children. The brutal nature in which their children had left them, had rendered them unable to move on to whatever life was waiting. It was these kinds of cases, in which the moral ground was not so clear, that gave Caleb pause to consider his actions in sending this spirit back to wherever she belonged. It was in these areas that his heart could not help but have the slightest bit of compassion for them. He supposed, with a chuckle, that other hunters would call him "soft" for having compassion on a spirit, a supernatural being, but he knew the line wasn't always so blurred.

The spirit, in her living days, had lost her children. The most precious part of her. The very beings that she carried in her womb for nine whole months. Then, to lose them unexpectedly, to the man that she thought she could trust with her life and theirs. The grief had then driven them insane, prompting them to lash out at the men responsible for the heinous crime. Unable to move on, they lingered in the same spot in which they had killed their partners in revenge, always staying in the same area for however long they were trapped.

It was a vicious cycle that needed to be broken. The theory wasn't the best one that Caleb supposed he could have come up with, but it was the only one that made the slightest bit of sense to him. The spirit was not moving on because she could not. Something tangible was keeping her there, something physical and pressing was keeping her from moving on to wherever spirits went. While Caleb could appreciate the sense of justice the spirit possessed, he also knew that it was not an option to keep her in the same loop that she had stayed in for so long. The spirit needed to move on.

Stopping at a stop light that conveniently sneaked up on him while he was lost in his morbid way of thinking, he ran a hand across his face, and tried to reconcile the unforgivable task he had of beginning the process of calling the county morgues to begin the next phase of his search for John. It was the last place he wanted to look for him. The last place his brain was assuming he was. John was new to the life, but he was also proving to be a very skilled hunter, who excelled at the life because of his drive to avenge the death of his wife. To think that he had been lost to the world when he was so new at it, was devastating.

Even more devastating was having to face the expectant gaze of his two sons, and inform them that they had lost their only remaining parent. The idea was ludicrous to him to John was dead. It was even more unreal to assume that he would have to do the thankless job of starting a search for a body. Sam and Dean were too young to know a life without both of their parents, and too young to understand why their parents would go. Tearing his focus from that brutal mind-grab, he revved the engine when the light changed, and made the sharp turn to a small plaza that held one too many shops.

Beyond the plaza, tucked neatly into a little corner so it would be unseen by the many shoppers out for the day, was the county morgue. It's building placement was smart, and also annoying, when Caleb nearly drove right past it. Pulling into a parking spot, his heart thundering in his chest, he reached over and grabbed the tin box that stored his fake ID cards. Scanning through all of them, he selected the one that would most likely get him through the door. Normally, the people working there, did not bat an eye when he presented them with his card.

Stepping out into the misty mid-afternoon air, Caleb tried to control the panic that was rising within him. The deeper he got into the investigation John himself was investigating, the bigger his panic became. The hunt was dangerous (and complicated), and the possibility of things going wrong, was proving to be larger than anticipated. One thing that Caleb was certain of, was that John would have benefited from a partner on the hunt.

Inside, the front office was uncomfortable chilly. The young hunter wondered why so many of these places had that undeniable chill to it when the back portion of the office was the only place that really needed the cold. Shaking his head slightly to rid himself of his pointless thinking, he ignored the other people sitting in the waiting area, and presented his badge to the friendly-enough receptionist, who examined the badge with a critical eye, before signaling for him to wait. Leaning against the desk, Caleb tried to breathe evenly.

Gazing out at the assembled crowd of people who were waiting for something he wasn't sure he wanted to know, he could see mingled looks of confusion and devastation written all over their grief-stricken faces. It was not so long ago that he had found himself in a similar position when his wife and unborn child were killed by the supernatural. Caleb could remember wearing the same look of shock and hurt that he saw on the faces of the people he was now studying.

Heaving a huge sigh, he flipped lazily through an informational pamphlet that promised the utmost privacy and discretion when handling matters of life and death. Caleb snorted. The places he went to, including this one, did not value privacy as much as they valued getting the bodies to their location, and out of there as fast as they could manage. Some places, like this one, did place a higher emphasis on security, which was something, but he always thought it was funny when a morgue tried to be cheerful.

Turning his head when the swinging doors off to the left side opened, he was greeted by a stern-looking woman and the same receptionist who greeted him when he first walked in. Adapting a persona to talk to people like the one he was talking to, had taken practice, but with time he had gotten more comfortable in it.

"Mr. Walker?" The woman said, glancing down at her chart. "I'm Dr. Paige. You made an appointment to see a deceased individual we have here?"

Caleb offered her a tight smile. "No, ma'am. I had to come here on short notice." He winced to put on a show of annoyance. "Boss has me on a tight schedule."

Dr. Paige rolled her eyes, shaking her head. "I know the feeling." She examined his badge again. "FBI?"

Caleb nodded. "Yes. In cases like this, where there's been repeated incidents that have similar traits, we're often called in to assist the state police."

Dr. Paige nodded, and Caleb could swear she was trying to flirt with him. "It must be a dangerous job. Interesting, but dangerous."

"It certainly is."

Caleb was no stranger to small-talk, but he was eager to get the ball rolling, and get the hardest part of his job over with. Examining the bodies was always difficult, even under the best circumstances. There were too many things he was trained to look for that the examiners simply had no clue of, and when they came in contact with something unusual, they often had no idea what to make of it.

Relieved when she led him back to the exam room, he looked around at the bare walls that were devoid of any personal family pictures, or even simple artwork. It was details like this that he had come to notice on the jobs he had done all over the world. Some offices were sentimental, and others lacked that familiarity. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he walked behind the woman, and waited with bated breath to reach the room.

"Surprised there isn't any artwork?" Dr. Paige asked, turning to look back at him.

"Caught me red-handed," Caleb replied with a smirk.

Dr. Paige shook her head, a small smile playing across the corners of her mouth. "We're not a dental office, sweetie."

Turning her words over in his head while she led him down yet another hallway that was nearly identical to the one they had started out walking down, he wondered if they kept the exam room tucked away so as to discourage curiosity seekers from finding it. It certainly would have tempted him while he was growing up. His father was a police officer, and would often regale his family with exaggerated tales of his exploits. One of those "exploits" was dealing with dead bodies.

Caleb smiled at the memory it produced. He and his brother would always be on the edge of their seats as they listened to these stories. They were always better than any bedtime story their mother could give them. Caleb supposed he was lucky to have grown up with memories that now made it easier for him to endure the long hours he spent working these cases that always took a toll on his heart.

Gratefully stopping when Dr. Paige stopped outside an exam room labeled 'Room 20', he mentally prepared himself to see the mangled corpse of the man who had been stupid enough to hurt his own child. It was these kinds of cases that always made his blood boil, and his hands clench into fists. These cases always had an impact on him for obvious reasons, and it was in these moments that made it hard for him to keep a professional distance from his own feelings.

"Here we are," Dr. Paige said, flipping on the bright overhead lights.

"When was he brought in?"

"Just Wednesday. About three in the afternoon."

Caleb nodded, jotting down notes in his journal. "Can you describe the condition of the body?"

Dr. Paige raised an eyebrow. "You mean what was left of it?" The doctor strode over to the sealed compartment where they stored the bodies. "It was…it was in pieces."

"In pieces?"

Caleb knew that only a seriously pissed off spirit was capable of mutilating a body so severely that it ended up in pieces. He supposed, once he mulled it over, that it made sense for a mother spirit to wreak that kind of havoc on a man she knew murdered her child. It was yet one more piece of evidence into what kind of spirit he was dealing with, and the brutality in which this murder had been executed.

Stepping up to the tray that housed the body, he looked away for one second to mentally prepare, before forcing himself to look at the man lying before him. The person's arms and legs, had indeed, been torn from his body. From looking closely at the torn flesh and the stumps that were left, he suspected the spirit had torn the limbs clean from his body with her bare hands. It wasn't impact with a chainsaw, but a vengeful spirit who wanted his head.

Moving upward in his exam, he noted the condition of the man's arms and fingernails. They were pale, but they were also imbedded with dirt and other debris. Reaching for a tool, he gently scraped some of the dirt from underneath a fingernail, and watched as it disintegrated before him to the ground. The man obviously did not make contact with the highway underneath the bridge, but most likely the ground.

"He was found by Route 99," Dr. Paige filled in, breaking the long silence that had fallen.

Caleb nodded absently, before lifting his head to look at her. "Off the record?"

"Off the record."

"If you didn't know any better, what do you think might have done this to him?"

Dr. Paige sighed. "If I didn't know any better…I'd say a pretty angry wild animal did this."

Her assumption was not far off at all. A wild animal of sorts, had murdered the man, but for a very different reason than the medical examiner probably suspected. Tearing his gaze from the man's arms and legs, and the copious amounts of dirt that he had collected from the fingernails, he reached for the medical chart the woman handed to him. There was nothing immediately off-putting in the chart, only the bare minimum details around his death. It was more difficult to conduct an investigation when the details on the death in question were frustratingly bare.

"Did you know about the other murders on the same route?"

Dr. Paige nodded. "Over the last several decades, several men were murdered on Route 99. Police were never able to identify a pattern…or the killer."

Caleb sucked in a lungful of air. "That's the problem. Too many deaths, too many women killing the men."

Dr. Paige nodded slowly. "After the men capped their kids."

"That seems to be the primary motive."

Not that Caleb could blame any of the spirits for murdering these men, but he wisely kept his observations to himself.

"There's something else." Dr. Paige bit her lip. "Something that was kept out of the official medical report."

Caleb raised an eyebrow. "Oh? And what's that?"

In his line of work, he had come to expect almost anything when something of import was kept out of the "official" report. Glancing at Dr. Paige, he saw a strange look of confusion and even fear in her face. That was not something he routinely saw from medical examiners, and it caused him to reassess everything he thought he knew about the case he was working. He watched as Dr. Paige sifted through her files related to the death of the man, before producing a thin sheet of paper.

"Toxicology report. Blood work. The works." Dr. Paige pointed with her pen at the blood report. "Look at the blood report."

Narrowing his eyes at the tiny writing on the official blood work report, Caleb could feel his heart pound when he looked at the 'comments' section of the report that was at the very bottom. There was nothing in the report itself that caught his eye, but the comments made his heart skip a beat. It was obvious to Caleb that the examiner did not know what to put in the comments section to explain what he found, so he settled for putting it as bluntly as he could.

"Traces of a yellow substance, similar in smell and texture to sulfur, was found in the bloodstream of the male victim."

That was the last piece of information Caleb expected to read when he looked over the autopsy report. In his few short years of working on cases by himself, he had come across a variety of autopsy reports that had boggled his mind, but this one had most definitely taken the breath right out of him. Sulfur was a regular thing when he was hunting demons, but having it implanted in the bloodstream of the victim, was another thing altogether.

"The victim was possessed," Caleb murmured.

"Excuse me?" Dr. Paige demanded, interrupting the silent detective work he was doing.

"The victim was-" Caleb stopped himself, realizing (almost too late) who he was talking to. "Never mind."

There was nothing more for him to do in that uncomfortably chilly exam room. Muttering a quick goodbye to the overtly friendly medical examiner, he showed himself out of the room. Even with his mind swimming with the possible implications of what he had just found, he was able to memorize the complicated maze that loomed before him to get out of the building. Navigating the halls was not hard, but muddling through the long web of thought that was being spun in his brain, was.

There had only been one or two instances in the entirety of his career in the supernatural, where he had found something like sulfur in the bloodstream of his victim. The usual spot to locate sulfur was at the home of the family who had been murdered. To have that substance physically in the body of the person who was being used as a meat puppet, was very uncommon and it made the hunter who was tasked to figure out what happened, very uncomfortable. There were plenty of resources devoted to decoding something of that size, but he had none of it at his disposal.

Stepping out into the cold afternoon air once he had freed himself from the building, he walked as fast as he could across the parking lot, and slipped into his truck. The tight space gave him room to breathe since he first stepped out of it the hour before. Leaning his head back against the rough seat, he switched the station to a classic rock one, and tried to focus on breathing while he pulled out of the cramped parking space, and made his way back to his motel room. It was in these instances he wished he was able to call people from his car. It would make sussing the situation that much faster, and that much easier.

Studying the quiet town once he was stopped at a stop light, he wondered what it felt like to be a normal person with normal cares and concerns. The people dressed for the colder weather had no clue what was out in the world. They had no idea that as they went to work or went out for lunch, that so much evil was living in and around them. It had not been that long ago that Caleb had been ignorant to the truth. He almost forgot what it felt like to be normal, and have concerns about his mortgage, or his new baby.

Pulling up in front of his motel room, he quickly exited his truck, and entered the small room. It was a relief to be able to escape to the privacy of that small room, and make the calls he needed to make, and conduct the research he needed to conduct. Collapsing onto the unmade bed, he washed his face with his hands, and tried to think of a logical explanation for why sulfur would be found in the body of the victim. Each time he tried to come up with a tentative explanation, he quickly dismissed it because it was simply too ridiculous.

Picking up the phone, feeling as though he had exhausted all other possibilities, he dialed the one number of the person he knew would most likely be able to assist him on this mind-boggling case. Sucking in a breath, he could feel frustration swirl inside of him. He wanted to solve the case so he could (hopefully) find John, and give the boys their father back. As much as he tried to push it down, he also could not help but feel a plethora of anger at John for abandoning his sons when they needed him the most.

"Hello?"

Caleb sighed in relief. "Hey, Bobby."

He could hear the kitchen chair legs scrape against the rough floor. "What's going on?" Bobby paused. "Did you track down that idiot?"

Caleb smiled at Bobby's tone of voice. As much as Bobby would deny it, he cared as much as he and Jim did about John, and especially what happened to his two sons. "No. No, I haven't."

! #$%^&* it. Well, what are the specs of the case?"

"That's what I need your intel with."

"I kinda assumed that my job as a hunter was really just to prepare me for sharing my mind with those who call at all hours of the freakin' night."

Caleb shook his head. "You're impossible, old man. Anyone ever tell you?"

He heard Bobby slam a shot glass down on the table. "Anyone just did. Now tell me what the hell you found."

The only problem was that Caleb was not entirely sure what he had found with the stiff he had examined. The sulfur was still running through his mind on a constant loop. Pushing himself off the bed while he tried to arrange his thoughts into a coherent sentence, he swiped a soda from the small fridge in the motel room. Bobby was a go-to for the supernatural, and a guru when it came to providing imperative information.

"Men. All guilty as sin of murdering their own children." Caleb took a sip of the searing cold liquid. "The mothers then turned the tables, and killed the men responsible. Now, it's been a consistent pattern over the last few decades."

"Did John eyeball that pattern?"

Caleb nodded, running his tongue over his lips to swipe off the remaining soda remains. He supposed his drinking habits could be a little healthier than they were. Moving over to the wall across from the bathroom, he studied the areas of John's research. It was a blessing in disguise to have stumbled upon John's extensive research when he broke into his room.

"I think so. It's detailed. Like really detailed. I haven't seen something like this except for seasoned hunters."

"Well, we always knew, didn't we? What John lacked in experience, he made up for in skill."

Caleb nodded, before returning to his bed. His tired muscles needed rest after the walking, and his own spirit needed to rest. The search for John was dominating every square thought of his, and he knew he needed to mentally recharge for awhile.

"So what do you make of the spirit issue?"

Bobby sighed, as though he thought Caleb was an idiot. "Gravare"

Caleb swallowed a too-large-gulp of his soda. "I beg your pardon?"

In the background, Caleb could hear a dog barking from somewhere outside. He knew Bobby had been thinking about getting a dog to guard his junkyard, and also have a little extra layer of warning for when demons decided to pay a visit.

"A gravare. It literally means grief in Latin. A gravare is a spirit. One who's lost her children. One who's so driven by devastation, that she lashes out at the person responsible for it."

Caleb nodded to himself. "It fit's the pattern. So, um, small question: Why would the spirit target John?"

"The gravare usually only targets the men responsible for the killing of their child, but if someone interferes in that, the gravare will, in a lot of ways, act like a mother bear, and defend herself."

"So if John got in her way-"

"What would a mother bear do?"

AN:
So I wanted to put this chapter out waaaaaaaaaaaay sooner, but Writers Block decided to pay me another visit. Rather than get totally discouraged and delete the entire thing, which would not have been out of the question not too long ago, I decided to just take a step back and try again. Today, the words flowed and I wrote this chapter in one day.