Sam gave his brother a moment to curse and yell. It wasn't what their Dad would have called professional, but Sam knew his brother and sometimes he needed to get things out of his system. Losing a lead like this was enough to have Sam wanting to say a few choice words. He kept focused, however, watching both the backyard and the doorway leading back into the restaurant. They were still on the job and couldn't afford to assume a space was safe. Not until they had secured it.

It didn't take Dean long to get his head out of his ass. He lumbered back up the steps, still muttering, but heading back inside to the two agents they left huddling on the floor.

"At least we've found our source," Sam pointed out calmly. There was something about having Dean throw a fit that had him cool as a cucumber in response. He could argue that it was from the logical need for one of them to maintain control, but it really had more to do with wanting to outdo his brother at something.

"Doesn't tell us how many people they've infected. Or why."

Sam shrugged. "It's more than we had yesterday."

"Yeah, about that," Dean grumbled just as they walked back into the main dining room. "What the ever livin' fuck did you think you were doin'?" he yelled at the Feds. "Jesus H. Christ on a cracker. We tell ya shit's going down and you think that's a good time to go all lone gunman about shit you don't even have the foggiest clue about? This! This is why you don't involve law enforcement. Christ, you people have to be the dumbest sad sacks of shit I ever met."

"Dean," Sam warned. He could understand why his brother was angry, but it was just weird hearing him chew someone out in the same tone of voice Bobby used when one of them did something particularly stupid.

"No, no, no," Dean answered, just warming up. The Feds had moved to a more defendable position but they were both staring at the brothers wide eyed and probably not a little bit freaked out. That happened after your first demon. "These idiots," Dean continued as if he were actually talking to his brother. "These ones, they got the brilliant idea to go sniffing around without telling the professionals. I mean, gee wiz, when we say there's some big bad evil in town threatening half the freaking population on this mountain, the smart response is not to go blundering into the first decent lead we've had."

"In our defense," Agent Mulder finally interrupted, his voice waved a little but he managed a pretty good impersonation of someone calm and confident. "Following up on a lead is what we're trained to do."

"Yeah, well, you're training sucks."

Sam had to snort at that. These weren't local cops, these were the FBI. And sure, they might know nothing about the supernatural, but they were still the FBI. Dean might try to act like he didn't care, but Sam could remember a time when Dean was obsessed with crime dramas and action flicks where the FBI had to catch the bad guy and save the day. Dean had always wanted to be the hero, and as much as he might act like he thought he was better than them, Sam at least knew better.

Dena shot him a look that suggested he wasn't as oblivious to the irony here as he'd like to be, but that he was damn well going to ignore it. "You guys alright?" he finally asked gruffly.

"A bit banged up, but we should be fine," Mulder answered. Agent Scully was still rubbing gently at her throat and Sam could sympathize. Getting choked like that was brutal on the vocal chords.

She still managed to cough out a question. "The woman?"

"Dead," Dead answered bluntly. "Probably been dead for a while," he added. "So no use cryin' over spilt milk. The couple of rounds you put in her wouldn't have made a difference." It was actually the kind thing to say, even if Dean's tone made it sound as if it wasn't. In all honesty, they couldn't say for sure if the demon's host had been fatally damaged or not. Not without some kind of medical exam. But they had both learned to just assume that was the case in situations like these. They couldn't afford to hesitate when it came to killing the demon.

"Right," Mulder answered. "Sure. No difference at all. Christ." He didn't look so good. Surely he'd had to fire his side arm in the line of duty before, but he kept looking, then not looking, at the body.

Sam wasn't expecting his brother to take pity on the guy. "It's fucked up," he announced. "But you learn to deal."

Which, really, about summed up their life.

Mulder's attention shifted suddenly to the two of them, the dead body seemingly forgot as he studied both of the brothers. "So this is the explanation. The method to the madness."

"Surprise. Monsters are real. Bet they didn't cover that in your fancy super secret FBI training." And sure, Dean wasn't jealous at all… Sam kind of wanted to smirk – except it was too easy to picture Dean in another life working his way earnestly through the FBI ranks, out there hunting a different kind of monster. Possibilities like that had never been an option for either of them, Sam knew that now.

But Mulder grinned back, the response suddenly chipper. "You'd be surprised. I have a whole filing cabinet of unexplained and bizarre things like this. We are, actually, the officially designated weird stuff investigators. We should compare notes."

And Sam couldn't help himself this time, he laughed. Loudly. The poleaxed look on Dean's face was priceless. His stupid brother had resigned himself to a lifetime of being on the fringe. You could practically smell the smoke as Dean's poor brain tried to shift gears.

"Huh?"

"I believe the colloquial term would be zombie, yes?" Mulder asked. "We've had a couple of cases that presented as something along those lines. The last one was a bug parasite, however. Nasty thing, about this big," he happily explained, gesturing widely. "It attached itself to the nervous system. It didn't immediately kill its subjects, but the interference with the body's natural chemical and nerve reactions would shut down major organs. Scully found a brilliant way to remove one of them by cutting open the patient's-"

"Nope!" Dean yelped, holding both hands up. "I don't wanna know."

Sam smirked. "Medical drama squicks Dean out," he explained. "He'll do his own stitches, but once you start talking about doctors and hospitals, he's like a little girl. I'd be happy to hear more, however."

"Bitch."

"Jerk."

"Boys," Scully croaked. She was probably aiming for firm and professional, but it came out sounding more tortured and like a dying cat. They both flinched guiltily. "Explanations. Please," she demanded politely.

"Right. Demon, not a zombie," Dean jumped in. "Another one out back, but it smoked before we could kill it."

"Smoked?"

"Jumped ship. Bugged out. Flew the coup. It's what a demon does when they're done with one host. They smoke out and go find themselves a new one. Which means it can be anyone in this town now, and we won't know until it's probably too late. Oh, and Christo."

Nothing happened except for both agents once more looking at them like they had lost their minds.

Dean grinned back unrepentedly. "Just checking. Demons have to play by certain rules. One, they flinch when you say the lords name. And by flinch, I mean their eyes turn completely black." Judging by the look on Mulder's face, he had already had the privilege of seeing that. Dean nodded in response before continuing. "Two, they can't cross salt lines."

"Hah!" Mulder exclaimed, giving Scully a quick look. She didn't bother trying to answer verbally. She just rolled her eyes and ignored him. Mulder grinned proudly. "We had a debate going on that. After Howard's place. I knew it had to be something like that. A chemical reaction or something. Scully just thought you were nuts and latched onto the idea as a mental coping mechanism. A sort of off switch to the constant paranoia specifically manufactured by your broken subconscious to give you a 'safe' place."

Scully smacked him. "We. Discussed. This."

Mulder smiled back at her, looking pleased with himself and with getting a reaction out of her. "Yes, yes. Don't challenge their world beliefs. Scully. That just happened," he stressed, pointing at the body. "Maybe you missed some parts of it while the petite woman was holding you up over her head with only one hand, but she threw a table at me. With her mind. And her eyes turned black. Oh, and I shot her in the head and she shrugged it off like it tickled. Really. Please explain to me the science because I'm dying to know."

She opened her mouth to say something, but couldn't seem to find the words. She even turned to look at them like they would know what to say.

Sam tried. "Technically, the salt isn't a chemical reaction. At least not with salt lines. They can't cross them because they have to stop to count each grain. But shooting them with rock salt does cause them pain." He winced at his own inconsistencies. "I don't know what to tell you. It just works."

The idea of counting salt seemed to throw the man off. He gapped at them for a moment, clearly having more trouble wrapping his head around that notion than the explaination that it was some kind of zombie having a negative medical reaction to sodium.

"You can't kill them," Dean suddenly interrupted. He held up one hand when they looked like they wanted to argue. "Even we've only found a couple of ways to do it, and it's very specific. And not something you can recreate. Trust me on this. We've paid dearly for it. You can keep a demon out, you can trap a demon, and you can exorcist one – but you aren't going to kill one. Not without serious help. So just forget that idea right now. You run into one, you buckle down and cover your ass."

Now they both looked like they wanted to argue the point but Dean was serious and his glare was enough to get them to leave that topic alone. "Are they what killed Mr. Haymond and Mr. Nelson?" Mulder asked instead.

"We don't know why they killed them and not the others," Sam explained. "That list we sent you, everyone on it at some point ingested demon blood, we think without knowing it."

"Blood drinking?"

"Don't ask," Dean snapped back sullenly.

Scully cleared her throat. "Credit cards," she said carefully.

It was a bit of a non-sequitur, but Mulder jumped on it right away. "Nine of the people on your list bought dinner here February 28th. Some sort of Mardi Gras 'buy one, get one free deal'."

Dean whistled. "No shit?"

Mulder smirked back. "Fancy FBI work."

Sam ignored the two of them, more focused on the problem. "That was more than three weeks ago." When no one else responded, he continued quickly. "If our theory is right, if their abducting one person a day, then returning them without any memories of having gone missing, that means more than twenty people have been taken."

Scully was shaking her head. "Someone would have noticed," she whispered.

"Not necessarily," Dean argued. "If you're a fall down drunk, you wouldn't think much of a few hours gone. Or say you lived alone and no one noticed. You'd think you just dozed off on the couch or something."

"Three of the people on your list are still missing," Mulder add. "The Sheriff implied they were either drunks or drug addicts. I doubt anyone would have noticed if they had disappeared for any length of time. But the Sheriff hadn't seen them around in a while."

Sam flinched. Right. So probably three more dead people to add to their list.

"The bodies," Scully managed, her voice still raw but getting better. "Where are they? Why what happen to Haymond?"

"We spooked them somehow. They only got violent the day after we arrived." Sam answered. It was the only thing that made sense. If the demon's had been running this little operation for over three weeks then they had been doing a very good job of hiding their tracks. If Cas hadn't clued them in that something weird was going on in this area, it was likely no one would have noticed. "The demons must have known we were here from the beginning."

"About that," Mulder interrupted. "How did you know?"

Dean scowled. "Cas," he answered, like that would make any sense to someone else. When the two agents just kept staring at him, he sighed loudly. "An angel, alright? A real pain in the ass. But he got the word something was happening up here and he sent us after it."

"That's what Haymond was for!" Sam exclaimed. "All those symbols. The common element was silence and containment. If you were trying to hide something from the entire heavenly host it would take a lot of power and some complicated work."

Dean grimaced, follow his line of reasoning easily. "You think they did some kind of ritual when they killed him to increase the strength of their wards. Poor fuck."

Scully was shaking her head. "His wounds. He carved them."

"Really poor fuck," Dean corrected with only a slight flinch at the very idea. They had seen upclose what damage a demon could inflict on its host for nothing else than the pleasure of maiming something. "Demon possession, I'd guess. They can make you do anything when they've got control of you, including killing yourself."

Everyone flinched at that. Of all the ways to go, that was certainly low on Sam's list. That was a special kind of torture all its own and one his family had been too close to too many times.

"And Mr. Nelson?"

"Collateral," Dean answered. "They couldn't hide it, so killing him would be the easiest."

"Someone snapped his neck."

"Sure," Dean agreed with a shrug. "Demon could use a host to do that to itself easy enough."

"Himself," Sam muttered.

Dean flushed angrily but kept his voice level. "Whatever. Poor bastard's still dead." And using pronouns might make it more difficult to think about, but Sam wasn't comfortable with glossing over the fact that Mr. Nelson had been a person at one point, even if he hadn't died that way.

Both agents looked a bit sick at the notion that their murder victim may have calmly snapped his own neck. "How do we stop it?" Scully demanded. "We can't arrest someone for being a demon."

Dean snorted at the very idea.

"And you said we can't kill it," Mulder added.

"You can't," Dean clarified, more than a bit smug. "We can." He pulled out the knife. "Special gift from hell. Don't ask where we got it from. It works. Only problem is, ya got to get close enough to make it work. And they don't exactly make that easy."

"And now the demon could be anyone," Sam added.

"So we're back to square one. Thanks to you guys for rushing in blindly."

Mulder scowled back, the criticism clearly striking a nerve. But he managed to cover it up with a fake grin. "If I didn't rush blindly into things, I wouldn't ever get anything done," he returned glibly. "And we're not all the way back to square one. This restaurant is owned by Mr. Joseph Jacobson, 52 years old, divorced, lives alone and owns two other pieces of property. His house and an old diner about an hour out of town. The diner has been closed since before he bought it and it's about the only things for 20 minutes in either direction off of one of the roads leading south. I may not know much about demons, but I know criminals. If you plan on kidnapping people at all hours of the day, you don't do it at an upscale steak house. You use the most abandoned area you have access to, and Mr. Jacobson owned exactly what a murder would need. How about that for fancy police work?"

"We're coming."

"The hell you are."

"This is an official case."

"Well then, you can officially kiss my ass."

"You can't stop us from going."

"Don't tempt me," Dean muttered. "I will so lock your ass in a closet. I might even call somebody to come find you in few hours if I'm feeling generous."

Mulder scowled back at him. The two of them had been arguing about this since they'd started on the new plan. Just because the Feds came up with a good lead on where the demon might retreat to did not mean it was a good idea to bring two brand spankin' new newbs on a demon hunt. "You don't know what you might be dealing with. What if there's more than one? What if whatever they're doing works against you? You need all the help you can get. If nothing else, we can make sure no one like the Sheriff gets in the way. Having an official presence with you will go a long way to keeping you out of trouble."

"That's not a bad thought," Sam piped up, the traitor. He was working with Scully to figure out the exact location of this old diner and how best to approach it. Apparently there were snow mobile tracks all over this part of the country and they made for good emergency roads in a pinch. It might give them the element of surprise, approaching from a different direction than the main road. "Besides," Sam continued, gesturing to the map he was working with. "You can't exactly drive the Impala through this. They've got four wheel drive and a higher clearance."

"The Impala has all of our tools!" Dean objected.

Sam rolled his eyes. "So pack 'em up."

And damnit, but his brother was right. Their car wasn't meant for conditions like these. Plus, if the demons knew the brothers on sight, there was the possibility they'd recognize the car from a mile off. Dean didn't actually agree with anything, but he stomped off to his baby. He had a couple of empty duffels in the trunk for exactly this sort of contingency and he shook them out before popping open the second hidden latch in the trunk.

"Oh, wow."

Agent Mulder was hovering right over Dean's shoulder, way too close for personal space. Dean knocked him back with an elbow. "Ya mind?" he grumbled before getting to work. They'd need guns. They'd need salt. Something to mark with, just in case. As much holy water as they could carry. An extra bible and rosary. More guns. Lighter fluid and matches, for cleanup.

"Is that a crossbow?" Mulder asked, fidgeting around behind Dean, trying to see around his head and arms as Dean tried to get some work done. He tried to touch something and Dean had to smack his hand away. Nobody with light fingers was walking off with any of his toys. Mulder just ignored him and went back to sticking his nose into things. "Why are you bringing handcuffs?" he asked.

Dean grunted. "We might get lucky."

It took him a moment to realize that was really poor choice of words. "Interrogation," he hastily clarified. "If we can catch it alive and before it smokes out, we can ask some questions. We need to know what they were trying to do here and how to stop it from happening anywhere else."

Mulder seemed to calm down at that. "You think it could happen again? Won't we stop that if we stop the demon?"

Dean shook his head, wishing it was that fucking simple. "No. This is just one demon. There's hundreds of them. Thousands. Maybe more. Legion and all that. And whatever they are trying to do here, it unlocks a seal. You remember those?" he asked, shooting the man another smug look. "I told ya all about them when you said you wanted to listen."

The man flushed. Clearly he hadn't believed a word at the time.

Dean took pity on him and explained the basics. "Demons need to break these seals to get their boss out of prison and start that little thing the apocalypse. We have to stop them. But there's a lot of possible seals, and it's impossible to protect all of them. But a lot of them have very specific requirements. If we can, I'd like to make sure this one is as limited as possible."

Mulder was watching him now, which was damn disconcerting. "How many have they broken?"

Dean grimaced. "We don't know."

"How many have you stopped?"

Dean shrugged. "A couple dozen? I think. Sammy would know better. He remembers shit like that."

"Must keep you busy."

"You have no fucking idea. I miss the days when ghost hunts were a full time job, with the occasional wendigo just to mix things up." It was the truth, but he maybe brought it up for the pleasure of seeing Mr. Agent loose his shit more at finding out how many things went bump in the night.

But the other man just nodded solemnly. "I know what you mean," he said like he actually had a clue.

Dean stopped, one heavy duffle on each shoulder and the trunk once more secured. Sure, the guy was kind of a smart ass, but he seemed sincere. "No shit?" Dean asked. "Huh. Guess maybe we ought to talk shop some time. Our Dad took pretty good notes of most of his hunts."

"Really?" And like a light switch, the guy was back to bright smiles and eagerness. "Can I make copies?"

"No." The response was automatic and firm.

"Why not?"

"It's my Dad' journal."

"So?"

"It's personal."

"But how else am I supposed to learn about things?"

"Christ. You wanna see my medical records too?" Dean demanded, knowing it was stupid. It wasn't like Dad's book was some holy artifact or anything. But it had been Dad's. And the only other person they ever shared it with was Bobby.

Dean ended the conversation by the tried and true tactic of walking away. He should have realized the guy wouldn't give up that easily.

"Sam. This book of your Dad's, it's got important information in it, right? I ought to make some copies of it. For the record."

Great. Sam the uber dork, with his fixation on research and modernizing hunting and networking… Of course he was going to say yes.

"Hell no," Sam answered without even looking up.

Or maybe he wouldn't. Dean grinned at him proudly. Apparently, there were some things they could agree on.

"We can discuss information exchange latter," Sam added, bursting some of Dean's bubble. Yeah, it was cool that the FBI was actually on their side in this case, but they were still Feds. Still the man. Still government lackeys with sticks up their butts and not hunters and there was no reason to be getting all friendly with them.

"Whatever. Let's go get ourselves a demon."

'Cause if you couldn't fix a problem, ignore the hell out of it and maybe it'll go away. A perfectly sound plan. After all, that was how Dean had survived this far.