As promised, Sam Winchester sent them a detailed list from an address that was more numbers than letters. There were 22 names total, including Haymond, Howard and both Nelsons. The boys had made notes next to most of the names. There were the ones they had confirmed were missing time. Others were marked as uncooperative – and Mulder had no trouble imagining why. Dean at least was not very patient and probably had the people skills of a frat boy. A few had question marks next to them and no other information, but something about them had caught the boys' attention and gotten those names added to the list. Three were labeled as missing.

That last part was what worried Mulder the most. He managed to ask the Sheriff about it, trying to make it sound like they thought those people might have seen Mr. Nelson shortly before his death. It had been a thin excuse, made only worse when the Sheriff informed them that all three were what was euphemistically called footloose. Each of them had been pulled in for either drugs or drunk and disorderly at one point, but the Sheriff insisted they were harmless and probably off somewhere sleeping off the booze from the night before. But he promised to check.

Mulder figured there was little point this late in the game.

He and Scully spent the evening calling in every contact they had for information and a thorough trend analysis. Which didn't add up to much. Residents of Malone and the surrounding area didn't exactly leave a large digital or legal footprint. There were some basic records (useless), internet activity (Amazon, Amazon, porn and more Amazon) and credit cards. Cash was still common in this part of the world but there were times when people preferred the convenience of a credit card.

Like when paying for a nice steak dinner at a place called Riverside.

It wasn't actually on the side of a river, but some enterprising soul had put in a little pond that wrapped around the front entrance and generously labeled it a river. There was even a tiny foot bridge that crossed it at the narrow point. Other than that, the building was respectable. The roof was pitched and angled with an eye towards aesthetics and there was a small wrap around porch that probably saw good use in fair weather. Right now it still had ice and snow on it and the drive was overdue for a shoveling.

Mulder guided the car carefully up near the front. It was still midmorning and the place was likely closed. He and Scully stared out at it from the warmth and safety of the car.

"Doesn't look like the source of supernatural drugging, does it? Not unless we're talking about some bad food poisoning."

"Nine of the people on the list were here for dinner February 28th."

"Madri Gras," Mulder added. When she gave him a look, he smirked back. "Google." Because it was always good to check these things. You never knew when a day was the anniversary of something significant or the one night in the next however-many-hundreds-of-years that the moon turned green or something.

"Let's go take a look," he added before shutting off the car and getting out.

"I'm surprised at you, Mulder," Scully told him as they picked their way over the unkempt parking area. "I would have thought you would have jumped at the chance at meeting with the Winchesters first. This is a legitimately good lead. You likely could have convinced them to meet with us."

"And lose our advantage? Come on, Scully. This is exactly what we need to prove once and for all whether the Winchesters are a threat or not."

"I noticed you aren't trying to prove their sanity," she pointed out dryly. "You also seem to think we're going to find our smoking gun here."

"That would be nice," Mulder agreed, nearly slipping off the front step. "But I'd settle for information the Winchesters don't have before us. Then we can set up a meet and get a better understanding of exactly what we're dealing with."

"Confronting their delusions might be dangerous, Mulder. Even if they are honestly trying to help other people. We're talking about an all-encompassing, isolating world view that they have literally grown up with and lived every day of their lives. No one wants to have their very existence questioned."

Mulder shrugged. He waited until the two of them were standing shoulder to shoulder before knocking loudly on the front door. There were two cars parked along the side, so someone from the staff must be here already. "Then we don't try to poke holes in their world view. But it would be nice to have a better understanding of it ourselves. Then we can figure out what's causing it."

"If something's causing it," she muttered, but kept it mostly to herself as they heard footsteps coming.

The door opened a crack and a young woman peered out as if it were the middle of the night and a questionable neighborhood. Mulder did his best to smile charmingly, but it always felt sort of plastic and ridiculous on him. He held up his badge. "Agent Fox Mulder. Can we come in?"

The woman didn't even look at the badge. "Not open yet," she replied sharply and started to shut the door.

Mulder stopped it with one hand. "Yeah, we figured," he answered, hoping he didn't sound as exasperated as he felt. "We're FBI Agents," he clarified as if that shouldn't have been painfully obvious. "We need to talk to someone here. Maybe the manager?" he tried, hoping this was just a surly waitress.

"Why?"

Mulder glanced over at this partner, looking for some back up here. Because he was going to start saying sarcastic things back if the girl kept up the disgruntled employee routine.

Scully's own jaw looked a bit tight. "Because we're investigating the two recent murders in this town and we have good reason to need to speak to someone at this facility. It should only take a moment. Talking with us now will certainly be significantly faster and less public than if we have to come back in a much more thorough and official manner."

That message seemed to sink through, despite its formality. The young woman glared at them for a moment longer before jerking the door open silently. The room beyond was still dark, thin light coming from the windows making the tables and chairs beyond barely visible. The woman was out of sight as well, and Mulder step in carefully to find her hovering more behind the door than beside it. But she let both of them in and muttered something about waiting before disappearing through a side door.

Waiting wasn't something Mulder did well, so he started walking around the room. There wasn't much to look at. Solid wood tables were evenly spaced across the room, each with its own small glass gas lantern. A stone fireplace filled the back wall, the mantle covered with old pictures and dust. The floor over by the bar was a bit sticky when he walked over it, and he saw bits of glass when he looked down. Even a couple of whole chunks tucked negligently against the bottom of the bar.

"Nice place," he muttered. "Could use a decent cleaning though."

Scully hadn't moved from her spot, but her eyes were slowly tracking over the room. "Quiet for this time of day. I guess they don't serve lunch."

"Sign out front said they did."

"Not open yet!" the young woman snapped as she walked back into the room.

Mulder held up his hands in what was supposed to be placating manner but probably came off a bit more sarcastic. Talk about surly. And she had the glare to go along with it. "Is the manager in?" he asked.

"No."

Scully raised an eyebrow, her own temper coming out quietly in the sharpness of her voice. "Supervisor, then?"

"No."

"How about anyone other than you?" Mulder replied.

There was a pause, then "No." She didn't even bother trying to make it sound believable. She just glared at them from her spot by the door, arms crossed.

Mulder and Scully shared a look. They didn't have a search warrant, not yet. They hadn't thought they'd need one. The plan had been to speak quietly with the restaurant before they opened for business. They had hoped to find the staff much more accommodating of having the necessary conversation without having to make a public production out of it. This obstinacy was as unexpected as it was stymying.

"Mr. Joseph Jacobson is listed as the owner of this establishment," Scully said, switching methods seamlessly. "Where is he?"

The woman said nothing. There was no twitch, no frown of confusion. Just stony silence.

"Two murder victims are linked to this restaurant," Scully warned her. "They dined here the same night. That's a strong argument for a direction connection between this place and an active murder investigation. Do you understand the seriousness of this situation?"

"Do you?" the woman snapped back. She shifted and Mulder found himself moving to mimic her – arms dropping to his sides, feet moving shoulder width apart. The woman sneered at them, a face that would have been plain and common twisting as she all but snarled at them. "I think you ought to leave. Now."

Scully held her ground, bless her. Her eyes didn't even twitch towards Mulder as he side stepped to put himself closer to the other side of the suddenly aggressive waitress. "We're in the middle of a murder investigation. A multiple murder investigation. We're not going to just walk away from that and it would be in your best interest to-"

"Fine!" the woman barked out. "What do I care?'

And then the woman lunged towards Scully.

It caught both of them off guard. A physical confrontation had been the last thing either of them had expected, despite the woman's clear hostility. The woman was even shorter than Scully, at most 25 years old and had the slight soft roundness that Mulder associated with middle America and shopping malls. Not with brawling.

Mulder moved forward. He trusted Scully to manager her own self-defense, but he had height and weight on his side and that gave him the leverage to make holding the other woman back an easy task. But she could move faster than he would have expected. Faster than Scully could. She had one hand wrapped around Scully's throat before either of them could do more than jerk into motion. Scully's body twisted, both arms coming up to break the hold, but the woman just lifted and held her one-handed by the throat. In a grip that tightened effortlessly despite Scully's best efforts.

Not good. And not normal. And Mulder was done playing around. He drew his gun, still moving so he had a clear shot that wouldn't risk hitting Scully and shouted at the woman to back off. The angle still wasn't' good, certainly nowhere near as safe as Mulder would want but Scully's face was already turning colors and the woman was showing absolutely no strain at holding someone her own weight off of the floor as negligently as a doll.

The woman didn't even flinch at the sight of his gun. Instead, she smiled slowly. "Oops. Poor little agent man. I think you've got this backwards. Why don't you drop it?" The woman jerked her free hand. It was empty and seemingly meaningless until the table in front of Mulder flew up onto its side and straight into him. The blow caught him across the arms and his knees, a sudden sharp pain that was enough on its own to knock him off his feet if the sheer force alone hadn't already sent him careening back into the table behind him. Mulder topped back over it, falling to the ground and banging more limbs on the way down. His gun had dropped somewhere in between. He rolled over immediately, looking for it and trying to see the next blow before it came.

He hadn't seen the first one coming, but that didn't stop him from trying.

The woman was laughing now, suddenly sounding as carefree and mild as she looked and not the sharp, hostile edge of before. Apparently, throwing people around made her less grumpy.

"I'd stay down if I were you," she commented. "Not that it will do you any good, but it might make things less painful. You should have left. We would have let you live a little longer if you had. But needs must and all that and we can't afford to have little ants like you running around calling attention to things you don't understand."

Mulder crawled forward, eyes still scanning for his gun while at the same time trying to keep his head down and behind the thin cover of the table and chairs. He could see Scully's feet kicking, occasionally landing a blow on the woman's legs. Blows that had to have been sharp and desperate but were as effective as a child's.

He finally spotted his gun and scrambled to get his feet under him and to propel himself the last few yards to snatch it up. He didn't hesitate twice. He lurched up from behind his cover and fired. The first one missed, too wide the direction thankfully away from Scully. The second one clipped the strange woman's head, shattering the outside edge of her skull and sending blood and bits flying as far as the bar.

It wasn't enough. The woman cursed and yelled but stayed on her feet. A chunk of her head was missing but she still had the strength to toss Scully against the wall and turn to face him.

"Goddamn it, that fucking hurt," the woman snarled. One hand came up to prod at the wound, making no attempt to stop the bleeding. In fact, it looked more like she was trying to straighten her hair than worry about the hole in her head.

She should have been dead. Or at least, close enough that it was only a metter of time. Instead she was walking towards Mulder, sneering and covered in her own blood. "You're going to regret that. I was going to just kill you, but now I seem to need a new body. An FBI agent should do nicely."

Mulder fired off another round, catching her in the chest. Even as he fired, he was retreating, backing up in stumbling steps, trying to put as much distance between himself and the thing in front of him. Dean's comments from earlier, about body snatchers, raced through his mind and brought with them a very real, visceral fear.

The woman's body jerked each time a bullet made impact, but she didn't stop walking toward him and she didn't stop smiling pleasantly. "That's not going to be enough," she cooed.

"How about this then?' someone yelled from Mulder's right and a larger caliber round sounded off. Shotgun, Mulder recognized. As an agent, he was expected to range test with shotguns in addition to his personal sidearm and he recognized the distict sound of buckshot. The load caught the woman full in the chest and this time she truly did scream as if she had been shot. Her body curled in protectively even though visually the damage did not look nearly as severe as he would have expected. Mulder fired once more, just in case, catching her in cap of her shoulder with a sickening crunch.

"Wait!"

Mulder's head snapped around to find Sam Winchester standing by the front door, shotgun still pointed at the woman but his attention focused on Mulder. 'Wait for what?' Mulder wanted to demand. He'd already shot her in the head and that still didn't put her down. Whatever she was, whatever was going on, shooting it seemed like a very good idea.

But when he looked back, he realized it wasn't her Sam didn't want him shooting. Mulder had just enough time to see Dean come slinking out from behind the bar before the man shoved some kind of hunting knife through the woman's back and up into her ribcage. There was a sudden glow from the point of impact, like a light had been turned on underneath her skin. Her body spasmed, head snapping up and mouth opening in a scream. Her eyes were pure black. No iris, no white, just a complete black void. Then she slumped over, falling to the ground at Dean Winchester's feet.

His face was grim. "Believe me know?" he said, but there was nothing proud or pleased about his voice. Just resigned.

Mulder didn't bother to answer. Instead he moved immediately to his partner. Scully hadn't said anything since she went down, but he thought he saw her moving since she was thrown. She had managed to push herself up against a wall, her face still red and blotchy and her neck vividly striped with marks, but she had her gun out in one hand, laying limply in her lap as she struggled to breathe normally.

Mulder hadn't put his gun away yet either, but he figured the brothers weren't likely to shoot him in the back.

"You okay?" he asked. He crouched down beside her, giving her an arm to lean on so she could bend over and suck in great deep breaths.

"I'll live," she replied, sounding awful.

"Sam!" Dean barked out. "Stay with them. I'll clear the rest."

Sam moved into view, still holding the shotgun at the ready. He was scowling at his brother as the other man darted towards the door to the back, but he didn't move from standing over the two of them.

The woman had been lying about no one else being there. Mulder was sure of it. "Go!" he ordered, catching Sam's eye. "We're fine."

It wasn't much of an argument and Mulder wasn't even sure if it was true, but Sam didn't need much to convince him. He turned sharply and hurried after his brother, priorities clear.

Mulder split his attention between supporting Scully and monitoring the room. He could hear the thundering of the brothers' boots on wooden floors and the shotgun firing again. Scully's grip on her weapon tightened. She looked up enough to make it clear she could manage.

Mulder gave her a strained grin back. "Guess they're not completely crazy." It was a reassuring thought, though he could have lived without finding out the hard way.

Dean all but threw himself around the corner and down the hallway. He had Ruby's knife in one hand and a gun still in its hostler. The latter wasn't going to do him much good, and not just because of the tight quarters. They had finally found their demons and he was willing to bet the Impala that that bitch out front wasn't the only one. Not for a job this big. It seemed like half the fucking town had somehow ingested demon blood. For what purpose, he had no clue, but if it was anything like what the Yellow-Eyed Demon had done to Sammy, then it wasn't fuckin' good.

And just maybe there was a chance to help these people if they could catch the bastards responsible.

The first demon had been a wash. There was no way they were taking her alive, certainly not if it meant sacrificing the two FBI agents. They might be idiots, but they were trying.

Dean cleared the bathrooms quickly before continuing his relentless move forward. The first demon had been a small fry, at most up to dealing with some stubborn locals. Not nearly experienced enough to hold her own against him and Sam. Which meant someone else was pulling the strings and Dean suspected he wouldn't find that demon hiding in the men's room, but he had to check.

There was the clear sharp sound of someone coming up behind him and Sam's voice rang out before he had time to spook. "On your six."

Which, damn it, was not what he had told his brother to do, but now wasn't the time to quibble over it. He nodded curtly to make it clear he had heard before advance on the kitchen. Kitchens were sucky places for a fight. All kinds of sharp things and Dean was a squish human who didn't have the advantages a demon had of not caring what happened to his body.

They both slipped through the door quickly, separating immediately so as not to bottleneck and provide an easy target. The kitchen wasn't fancy, but it was big. A few work tables in the middle, a row of appliances on one wall and a number of blocky metal things hanging from the ceiling.

Dean side-stepped around, trying to see through the clutter and trying to check all the nooks and corners at the same time. He was ducking down to see around a hood when a large kitchen knife sailed past his head.

"Fucking Winchesters!" a voice yelled. A man's voice, deep and a bit scratchy. Older maybe. It was coming from the far side of the room and Dean didn't hesitate to move forward. He did make sure to duck behind every solid survive he could kind as he ducked and bobbed his way forward like some kind of demented goffer.

"You should know your place, meatsacks!" the man yelled.

"Fuck you!" was Dean's witty response. Sam's was better. He fired another salt round in the demon's direction. Most of it missed based on the tinkling sound as rock salt met metal, but enough got through to have the demon yelping. It wouldn't maim the bastard any, but it would hurt like a bitch and hopefully keep him distracted and off his game enough for Dean to move in.

If the goddamn FBI hadn't jumped the gun on this one, they could have tried to take him alive. There was far more to this case then they knew yet, and questioning a demon was probably the only way they were going to figure it all out. But there wasn't time to set a trap and keeping everyone alive had just become the main priority. They'd just have to settle for taking out the source of this mess and not ask the whys and hows.

Cas might be a bit put out but his feather ass could suck it up. If he didn't like the way they did business, than he could try cleaning up these messes himself instead of outsourcing this shit to them.

"Gig's up, asshole!" Dean called out. "Cat's out of the bag and all that. Whatever you had planned for this town ain't happen."

"You don't even know what the 'gig' is!" the man snarled back, his voice much closer than the last time Dean had heard it. He had just enough time to scramble out from behind one work table and over to the next when the demon flipped the entire steel monstrosity like it was an empty carton and not something that probably weighed twice as much as Dean did.

Sam, bless him, had moved into the walkway and fired another round directed at the bastard. It had to hurt, but this wasn't some newbie demon up top for the first time and running around having fun. This bastard just grunted and stepped closer to Dean. His meatsuit had been an older man, pudgy in the middle and a bit thin up on top. He was surprisingly tan for someone this far north and was still wearing a chief's coat that was wrinkled and looked like it had seen a few rough days.

The man's face was blank, though. Nothing but the demon intent on wringing the life out of Dean.

But Dean had faced worse, and he didn't let it freak him out. He shoved himself forward, meeting the threat head on, demon killing knife in one hand. His first jab was sloppy, all brute force and little skill. But it gave him enough room to set up a second attempt that nearly gutted the man. Sam was moving somewhere behind him, shifting to his left to line up another shot that mostly cleared Dean. Bits of salt slammed into his leather jacket but only a few found skin. It hurt. Like a bitch. But it hurt the demon more and gave him the opening to lunge forward once more.

But demons were fast little fuckers when they wanted to be. And this one had apparently had enough of cat and mouse. It shoved backwards, hitting a table and rolling over it in one smooth move that the man he was wearing never could have managed on his own.

"Damn it!" Dean growled, scrambling to catch up. Sam was even farther back than him and both of them had the disadvantage of having to go around obstacles instead of over. The demon slammed out the back door and there was the immediate whooshing noise Dean was getting far too familiar with.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" he snarled, shoving through the door himself. The man's body was in the way and it knocked over down the back steps. The last of the black cloud escaped out of the man's mouth just as he hit the ground. Dean still fell forward on top of him, arm raised to shove the knife's blade right through the heart. But the body beneath him was already empty and dead. There would be no moral dilemma about killing the host to get the demon now. That monster had already jumped ship and left nothing behind but a corpse.

"Goddamn it!" Dean roared, useless and furious. Killing one demon wasn't enough. They hadn't stopped whatever was happening and now the demon knew they were here and gunning for his ass. It'd find another host quickly enough and continue on its merry way of poisoning and killing people. Except now it would know that its time was limited, that hunters were gunning for it and that there was nothing left to hide and no reason to try cleaning up after itself.

Which all meant one simple thing. There would be no more survivors.