I'm not a bad tracker but I apparently wasn't seeing half of what Cougar was. He kept his eyes glued to the ground, would kneel down from time to time to look at some leaf or branch then move on. Coyote never once questioned his judgement, I got the impression that they'd been doing this a lot recently. They moved together without hesitation, just like Sam and I do. I felt the hairs go up on the back of my neck just as Roy pulled off a move that I never thought I would see in real life.

I'd been trailing along in the back again, Roy ahead of me and slightly behind Sam then Cougar and Coyote. Out of nowhere Roy lunged forward, jumped, shoved his right foot into Sam's back, pivoted left using Sam's back as a platform as Sam face planted into the dirt and an arrow landed in the ground about three inches from Sam's head. "Trees!" He shouted and we all scattered, I heard arrows flying by me but these guys were nowhere near as good as Oliver or Roy.

Roy'd been walking with an arrow already locked and loaded and when he pivoted off of Sam's back he'd brought the bow up towards the trees and fired. Someone screamed and crashed down to the ground. Sam rolled, got up and ducked behind a tree. I raised my gun up, spotted another one and fired, he dropped, then someone landed on my back knocking me down.

"Dean!" Sam snarled and I heard his gun go off but he must have missed for some reason because the guy on top of me didn't go limp. I'd landed on my side and saw a hand with a knife come flying towards me. I couldn't shoot since I'd landed on that arm so I drove a pretty badly aimed fist at the guy's arm. I got lucky because my fist collided with his wrist and he dropped the knife, then drove his other hand toward my head. I blocked his hand with my forearm, then Roy's boot came out of somewhere and kicked the guy in the head. The guy went flying back, Roy moved on to someone else and the guy's eyes rolled back in his head. He'd be out for awhile.

I took a quick look to see who needed help. Roy was more than holding his own doing some weird flipping, kicking moves that kept him moving in all directions at once. The guys attacking us had no idea how to handle what he was doing. He'd taken Oliver's style and turned it into something a lot more intricate for some reason. Roy's smaller build probably made Oliver's usual hits a lot less devastating so he'd fallen back on his legs and staying out of range of larger people. I didn't watch him for more than ten seconds but in that time he knocked out two more guys and drove a blade into a third. He didn't need help.

Sam must have lost his gun or chose, like I had, not to use it in close quarters like this. Too many chances someone moves at the wrong time and you end up hitting a friend. He'd gotten cornered by two guys, his back was against a tree but he had range, as usual, on the guys he was up against. His fists connected and they dropped. Cougar had already dropped one guy and was just finishing throwing a blade into the back of one that was coming towards me. Coyote was the one that was hardest pressed, she, like Sam had backed up against a tree to keep anyone from getting behind her. She had three guys on her and they looked like the best fighters in the group. Roy was out of my line of fire, Cougar saw her just as I did and Sam had just knocked the last of his people out. I took a chance and fired at the back of one of them. He screamed and fell, Coyote took advantage of his buddies reacting to that and gutted the one directly in front of her. The last one swiped at her just as she brought her blade back around, he missed, she didn't. He was down but not out. She kicked his blade away as soon as he hit the ground, and got out of range of the one she'd just put down. None of them were dead from what I could see.

There was blood spattered all across her white shirt, she probably should have picked a better color to wear. She drove her boot into the chest of the last guy she'd sliced, he screamed but that didn't seem to bother her all that much. "How many more are left?"

"Enough to kill you."

"How many!" She put her weight on his knife wound again, he squirmed but kept his mouth shut. She pressed harder and he started talking in a different language, judging by her reaction she recognized what it was since she barely let him get four words out before driving her knife deep into his chest.

As soon as she yanked the blade back out she looked at us, deep fear in her eyes. "Move now!"

Cougar took off running, we followed. After about fifteen minutes of a dead sprint through the woods my lungs were on fire. I'm not in bad shape but I don't usually run uphill at full speed while several thousand feet above sea level. The air was thinner than I was used to which was starting to become an issue. Maybe I should take up jogging, Sam seemed to be doing a helluva a lot better than I was.

Coyote slowed down and I leaned against a tree, panting. "What the hell was that all about?" I managed to get out in between gasps.

"He was talking to her."

"How?"

"I'm not sure but.." A bone chilling howl cut her off. "She knows we're here."

Three more howls joined in and a whole crap ton of ravens started squawking somewhere nearby.

Cougar pulled a red feathered tomahawk out from under his shirt, he must have had some sort of weapons rig that I hadn't noticed for some reason. "No point in running now." He pointed at a fairly large flat spot, "You can use that spot."

The howls seemed to be getting closer, "Coyote? Be real nice if we knew what the hell those were. I'm guessing not the usual wolf you find in these parts."

"No." An eagle screamed somewhere and we looked up just as a huge frigging eagle of all things dove towards us, then flared it's wings, swooped back up and disappeared. As in gone, not flew away out of sight, just gone.

Roy had held it together pretty well until then, "What the fuck was that?" He kept spinning around in response to the howls, trying to target the not wolves we were hearing.

"That," I answered for her, "was an omen. I'm taking a shot in the dark here that this is the place to do whatever it is we're supposed to do?"

She was scared, and not just for us. Coyote usually doesn't do scared, she does angry, belligerent, cocky and nervous. I'd never seen her scared. She knew something about what was going to happen, I watched as she shoved the fear down, she turned away from me and as she did I saw it. The reason she'd been playing things so close, holding on to information she'd usually share, why Cougar was so pissed off. She didn't think she'd make it out of this. Oh hell no.

"What did you see?" I asked.

She stopped moving, she knew what I was asking "Not the time. I need you."

"You know I'll help, but.."

When she looked back I knew there was no point in arguing. I knew because she'd made her choice, just like I had over and over. "Damn it Coyote!"

"Dean, Sam, Roy, Leaping Deer is fighting us in two worlds. Those howls, they are not wolves. They are Spirits of men who are still alive. She will send both the Spirits and the men at us. It doubles her forces. We can't fight them as we are now."

"You need our Spirits too," Sam said.

"Yes, they will return to you if we succeed. If not..."

"We die."

"Possibly, or you'll be wondering the world without a Spirit."

It says something about my life that the first thing that came to mind was; really? Again? Great.

"I'm pretty sure you guys told me to make sure I kept my soul where it was at some point," Roy nervously pointed out.

"Yeah, well things change. Sam?"

"This isn't possession we're talking about, right?" He clarified, which also says something rather disturbing about our lives.

"No, your Spirit will fight the other Spirits, hopefully win. Meanwhile we have to fight the physical bodies of the men until she shows herself and I take her out which will end the spell."

I had no idea how well that would go, "Well that's a new twist. Do what you have to."

"Guys!" Roy shouted as a huge brown wolf came barreling towards us. He shot an arrow at it. It was a perfect shot, hit the wolf between the eyes and soared right through the wolf's head and out the other side. The wolf kept coming, there was no blood. The wolf hadn't even flinched. Cougar lunged forward and brought the tomahawk down on it's back. It shrieked in pain, then a red and green glowing cloud surrounded it and we heard a agony filled human scream come from the woods. The wolf flickered a few times then exploded into a mass of of multicolored bits of light and faded. Roy pretty much lost it at that point and staggered back. "Did you just..."

"Yes." Cougar wasn't the least bit proud of what he'd just done and it showed. "Him or I. It's the cost of fighting evil."

"I can't.."

"Don't have time for this," I interrupted. "Roy, pull it together! Coyote, if he's up in the trees will he be out of range of whatever you're doing?"

"Yes."

"Good, Roy! Look at me." He was still staring at the space where the wolf had been. I grabbed the front of his shirt and shook him. He finally got his eyes on me instead of empty air, "You, trees, cover fire. Got it?"

"Ye..yeah."

"Good, go. Shoot anything that looks human. Move when you have to." He nodded, ran to the nearest tree and started climbing.

"Sam and I are used to shit like this, he's not. He'll be safer up there. Sam? In or out?"

"In."

I figured he'd say that after seeing the wolf explode. We'd heard at least three wolves, that didn't mean that was all there were. Throw in another five or six humans, plus an evil shaman and we'd definitely need more than just us. Sure we'd taken out a few people already but we'd gotten lucky finding the traps and reversing the ambush on the first batch and the second batch were just people. Wolves that you have to hit with blessed weapons coming at you while you try to fend off a bunch of people on top of that is a whole other ball game. Coyote drew a quick circle on the flat piece of ground and started doing a weird shuffle dance while singing and tossing herbs from her pouches into the air.

"Concealing spell, it will confuse the Spirits," Cougar explained.

The song she was singing shifted, Cougar grabbed Sam's hand, sliced a small cut into Sam's finger, I held out my hand, he did the same thing then sliced his finger. Coyote reached her hand out and Cougar wiped some of his blood on her hand, Sam and I copied him. Coyote closed her hand and the oddest feeling ever came over me.