A day of research got us an amulet that somewhat muted the blade's influence, an actual conversation with Jacob but nothing all that much more about the blade or the Goddess. Sam and I managed to distract the blade enough so that Coyote could ask Jacob some more questions that pretty much validated her theory that the blade needed another kill to go dormant. That had been an interesting few hours. Once Sam had found the warding spell Coyote had the idea to test it on Jacob first to see if it would get the blade unhooked from him enough to let her try a soul retrieval. We cobbled together an amulet made of cardboard and rope and put it around his neck, nothing changed. So Sam had the bright idea to have he and I wear it, open the box again and see if that distracted the blade enough to let Coyote do anything. If it hadn't been eight hours into researching Coyote and I probably would have put up more of a fight but by then she and I were both restless, tired of looking at books and not actually doing anything. Which is probably why we tend to get into a lot more trouble on hunts and in life then we should, after awhile we just say screw it and plow right into things.

"Just remember Sam, this was your idea," I told him when we walked into the room.

"Seeing as how I came up with less idea less than an hour ago, don't think I could forget, but thanks, really."

Krissy was stationed just outside the door with her taser that she carried when she was in places she couldn't have a gun. Her job was to knock one of us out if we got out of hand. If whoever wasn't convulsing on the floor went for the other one she had full permission to shoot that one, just preferably aiming for center mass or a leg.

I stayed by the door this time, Sam went to the drawer, "Ready?" he asked.

"As I'll ever be."

He nodded, pulled open the drawer and opened the box. I felt something, but it wasn't as strong. It was more of compulsion to take the blade somewhere then actually be sacrificed or kill someone, but I could handle it.

"Sam?" His eyes were locked onto the box, his hands tight on the lid. He took his right hand off the lid and it started moving towards the blade. "Sam!"

His hand stopped, "I'm...good." His right foot slowly moved back a step, he shifted his weight, pulled his hand away and forced his eyes to meet mine. I knew that look all too well, he was barely holding on, fighting it, but he's always been stronger than most people, including me tended to give him credit for. That was why I let him take the lead this time. One thing the Mark taught me, I'm just too cozy with violence. I'd spent a lot of time over the last year thinking about that and had come to terms with the fact that it's just who I am. I'll never know if I'm a born killer, I don't think that's a thing but I do know that I've always tended to speak with my fists first, unlike Sam. I think if I'd been the one that got the demon blood the Apocalypse would have ended a lot differently, a lot bloodier.

I raised my voice but didn't look away from him, "Coyote? Go, we'll hold out as long as we can." Krissy had an open phone line to Coyote who was in another room with Jacob.

"Got it," I heard her voice come back to me. Then she must have muted her phone because I didn't hear anything else.

"Sam, stay focused on me."

"Trying..."

Sweat started breaking out on his forehead, the compulsion had started getting stronger in my head too. "All right, next step." It seemed stupid when I'd suggested it, I said it as kind of a joke but Coyote thought it could work so Sam and I had decided to try. I made a toss off comment about exorcisms and chanting them and she pointed out that when she has anything psychically assault her that by repeating various chants she's learned over the years it gives her mind something to focus on that's all her. She pointed out that exorcisms are all about sending evil things away and we believe in them so they could help us fight the blade's influence and buy her some extra time to work with Jacob. So we figured what the hell and decided that if we manage to not be immediately blown away by the blade we'd start reciting the exorcism and see if it helped.

Sam forced himself to take another step back, took a deep breath and started.

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus

omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio
infernalis adversarii, omnis legio,
omnis congregatio et secta diabolica.
Ergo draco maledicte [*a]
et omnis legio diabolica
adjuramus te.
Cessa decipere humanas creaturas,
eisque aeternae Perditionis venenum propinare."

I joined in, the compulsion started to fade and I saw Sam relax, not a whole lot, but enough.

We made it through one whole round and started it a second time when Coyote's shout came through the phone, "Guys, put it back! Now!"

Sam jumped, closed the lid, slammed the drawer and sagged against the wall, "That was...damn."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Jacob started reacting, eyes went blank and he tried to attack me. I'm fine."

"Damn it!" Krissy said, "Is he back to how he was when we first showed up?"

"No, he's crying but still with is. I got some answers. I'll try to get him to sleep again then we can talk."

"I'll be there in a second," Krissy said. She hung up, Krissy jogged down the hall and I walked over to Sam.

"You all right?"

He gave me a shaky smile, "Yeah, nothing I haven't been through before. Just need a second to let it clear."

"Know what you mean." I was still shaking the urge to pull the blade back out and run with it. "It was different this time, it just wanted me to take it to someone, not to you specifically. What did you see?"

There was a hint of how he'd looked when he was soul less in his face, this cold, calculating gaze that had been my first clue something was wrong with him when Cas had brought him back from the Cage. "Let's just say being a goddess of the hunt can mean a lot of different things. It's not important." The coldness faded and he stood up.

"Let's have Coyote give us both the once over when we get back," I suggested, "Just in case."

"Sure."

She assured us we were fine and told us that getting the blade unhooked from Jacob while it was still in this state was probably beyond her abilities, even with guides and she wasn't too happy to admit that either. "It's just too deeply embedded in him. Even in a warded room and him being far away it still affected him, I'm sorry."

"Guess we're hitting the road Sam," I said.

"No," Krissy objected, "I can't let you do that Dean. You're out, stay out. I'll handle this, he's my responsibility."

"I can call Roy or another hunter," Sam added, "Get some vamps, bring them back and then Coyote can come back and do what she can when the blade's turned off."

I was getting a bit tired of this, "Roy's on vacation with Thea and there's no point to have Coyote and I head home just to have her come back later. I'm not crippled, emotionally traumatized or so broken that I can't hunt a few vamps. Seriously! This whole option was my idea, I'm going to see it through so shove the concern and let's find some vamps." Sam and Coyote's eyebrows both went up at the same time, and Krissy crossed her arms. I took a step towards them and shoved a finger into Sam's chest, "Don't make me pull rank and age here people. I'm the oldest and I was hunting way before some of you were even born, so we're doing this my way, got it?"

This crooked half smile broke out on Sam's face, "I'm not sure if I've missed that attitude because my life's gotten kind of dull lately or because that whole birthday party made me nostalgic and I kind of want to hit the road with an obnoxious jerk again."

Coyote's shoulders started shaking even though she was managing to keep a straight face, "He always was cute when he got all belligerent and cranky."

Krissy finally just laughed, "Aww, grumpy old step dad is back."

I'd expected a bit more of a fight but I wasn't going to push my luck, "Damn straight. So let's hit the net, find some weird kills."

"Don't have to," Sam said, "I'll send out an email to the hunters, see if someone is on a trail of a nest and if we can take over."

"What?"

He winked, "I've been hanging out with Felicity for the last year, I'm all about tech and efficiency now. Organized a mailing list of everyone, we update each other on what's going on, team up, exchange ideas all that. Takes a lot of the tedium out of this. How do you think Roy and I can pull off three hunts in two weeks? We've got some hunters that all they do is scour the net for leads on jobs. Instead of driving all the way across three states we can hit two or three in the same state, go home and take a break."

"Wow, really? Show me." I sat next to him and scanned all the emails, there were lists of links organized by state, possible monsters and a bunch of other things. Some hunters seemed to be just staying in certain areas, others traveled all over the place. On the one hand it was awesome to see how much good was getting done and on the other it was eye opening to see just how many monsters were out there. "They just don't ever seem to end. I mean look at all these hunts. You'd think we'd run out of monsters eventually."

"You'd think," Sam agreed. "Let me scroll through, see if I can find any likely nests close by."

I let him take over the keyboard and looked up at Coyote, she looked pensive, which isn't a normal thing for her. I was about to ask what she was thinking about when Sam spoke up.

"Found one,"

"That fast?" Damn, things had changed a lot over the last year.

"Yup, your buddy Gerald has a pretty good lead on a nest over in Oklahoma. I told him we need some vamps to save a kid from a curse," he paused and let out a sharp, quick laugh, "he apparently knows you pretty well. He asked if you were in on this, said he missed you and Coyote out at the construction site and all the Natives were pretty clueless as to where you guys were. All they said was you'd had to leave for a family thing. Should I tell him?"

"Sure."

Sam typed something and then smiled, "He says he'll share this time and he hopes your out of shape ass stays safe. Wants you to call him when we're done to check in."

Since I have Gerald's contact info I texted him, "Shut up asshole. I'll still take you down any day."

"You wish," he sent back. "Keep an eye peeled. This nest is cagey."

"Got it." I replied. "He says this nest is a bit smarter than most, so to keep our eyes peeled."

Sam usually doesn't do smug or over confident, but this time he did. "Well, we've gotten a bit smarter too."

It'd been a long time since my adrenaline had spiked this way, it wasn't fear based really. Sam's smile and the glimpse I'd gotten into the new way he'd been handling things got me curious, and kind of excited to see what he had up his sleeve. "New toys?"

"There are perks to knowing a millionaire vigilante who works with a tech genius. C'mon."

"Coming darlin'?" I asked Coyote.

She shook her head, the pensive look cleared but wasn't replaced by a smile, "No, you go ahead. I'm kind of beat. Didn't sleep really well last night. I'm going to go lay down while you go drool over Sam's toys."

That bothered me, "You feeling all right?"

"Yeah, just long drive yesterday, long day today." She gave me a quick kiss, "Go play. Wake me up later."

"I'll go keep an eye on Jacob," Krissy said. "Check in before you take off."

"Okay. Lead the way Sam," I had noticed some new things in the back of Baby when we'd moved everything to his car but hadn't really been in the mood to ask, now things were a bit different. I followed him into the room he'd turned into an armory and for a second there I thought I was in Oliver's club. It was spotless, there were arrows and a bow lining one wall, a couple of crossbows, a bunch of odd looking bullets, some things that looked like darts and a few other weapon-ish looking odds and ends that I had no clue what they were for. "Oh man, you've got to give me the tour." I felt like a kid at Christmas.

"The bow is Roy's of course,"

"He's still not using guns?" That kind of surprised me.

Sam shrugged, "He's better with a bow. Some of those are silver arrow heads for weres and such, some are iron tipped and we even engraved Devil's traps on a few just in case we do come head to head with a demon. So far we haven't had to use those. Felicity found a place where we can custom order bullets so I don't have to sit here and make them which is nice, so I've got bullets for pretty much any occasion already made. Those dart looking things we can shoot from a shotgun, we fill those up with Dead Man's blood and get a couple in our vamps to take them down, or if you want to go old school we have some of the arrows Oliver uses for his tranquilizer arrows that we can use. They're empty, all we have to do is dump the blood into them. Then some of this stuff is defensive, she worked with this engineer to create a quick release protection circle." He picked up this metal tube thing, "Stand back a few feet." I moved back, he pushed a button, set it on the ground and stepped back a few feet. A few seconds later a thin strand of something shot out in a perfect circle. "Pure iron chain, really thin but that's all you need to keep ghosts out, no need to carry boxes of salt around."

"And they can't stir the wind up and break it either," I was almost jealous of him having all the new toys. "Nice!"

"Oh and some of those arrows have iron cable in them so Roy can shoot them across a room, tie off the other end and we can block them from entering a room too."

"Oh man! That I gotta see!"

"Sure." He picked up one of the crossbows, selected an arrow, set it in the bow, clipped something to a hook on the back of the bow, aimed it at a spot of empty wall across the room and fired. I heard this hiss as the arrow flew by me and saw it trailing a very thin line. It hit the wall and dug in deep. He unhooked the line and hooked it around an arrow that was still in the rack.

I saw a problem though, "What if you don't have something to hang that other end on?"

He smiled, "We carry staple guns. Two seconds. Even brick houses have some sort of wood in them. Cool huh?"

"Wow," I was starting to understand how they'd managed to make it through the last year unscathed, "I'm seriously jealous right now."

He laughed, "Good. I don't get to show the toys off all that often so I'm glad you approve. Oh we have one like this made of out silver too, werewolves tend to not like it all that much. If we get chased we lay it out across a path and hope they hit it. I keep asking for a silver net arrow thing but since there's really no way to reload that Oliver keeps telling us no. He's funded a lot of this so having to pay for a few nets made out of silver is a bit more than he's willing to dish out. Roy was pretty bummed about that."

"Oh you were bummed too, I'm sure."

"Well, yeah, maybe a little."

I laughed and took a closer look at the weapons stash, it was a lot different than when I'd been hunting but more useful in a lot of ways. Sam and I had relied a lot on blades and bullets which made sense for our style of fighting back then, up close and in your face. Roy was drawing ideas from how Oliver trained him to fight and Sam was using all his resources to adapt tools to work with Roy's strengths. It seemed to be working pretty damn well actually.

"Those darts have got to make taking a nest out pretty easy. You shoot them up from a distance, wait till it takes affect and go in with machetes."

"Usually."

"Guess we need to get to a morgue then, get us some blood."

He walked to a small fridge that I'd been too distracted by the weapons to notice, "Not really. Another perk of working with Oliver." He opened it up and there were several bags of blood.

"They raiding morgues for you now too?"

All the humor left his face, "No. Roy gets it."

That sent a chill through me, Roy wasn't a killer and I hoped to hell he hadn't become one.

"Explain."

"There are always those criminals that keep getting released back out into society, for whatever reason. They tend to get back into trouble, if Roy happens to come across a dispute between them and some other member of the criminal element that gets violent, well, let's just say he draws his arrows out a lot slower then usual." His face was dead serious, "His view is that if their blood can be used to stop monsters they're finally doing some good in the world. Some people are more useful dead than alive."

"But he's not killing them."

"Not as far as I know."

There were quite a few bags of blood and I knew that they'd been concentrating on vamps a lot more, "Good and he's probably right."

Sam nodded, closed the door and leaned against the counter, "All the toys and everything aside Dean are you sure you want to hunt with me again? I do things a lot differently now and I don't intend to go back to our old way just because you're riding with me on this one."

It was a fair question, "You said it yourself, you and Roy have made it through a year with no real problems. I'm not planning to come back for the long haul, just this job. Sure it was my idea but this will be your hunt. You run it, I'll back you."

Some sort of tension that I hadn't noticed left him, "Honestly?"

"This old dog's willing to learn a few new tricks. Plus you have new toys, you think I'm not going to want to play with them?"

He chuckled, "We're not hunting ghosts Dean."

I shrugged, "Well, if we happen to find one along the way..."

"Coyote's going to kill me."

"Nah, she'll want to play with it too."

"Probably." He looked at his watch, "Do you want to head out now or tomorrow? It's getting late, probably an eight hour drive too."

"Let's get some sleep, head out early."

"All right."

We started to leave the armory when I stopped him, "Hey, question."

"Yeah?"

"You all seemed to give in pretty quick on letting me do this all of a sudden. Why?"

"Because you're thinking, not reacting. The thing with the Coyote and her guides, this whole plan, having Krissy watch us when we went in to look at the blade and now, letting me run things. You've changed how you view hunting. Coyote, Krissy and I have been talking about it all day when you'd leave the room. We all knew you'd want to hunt the vamps but since you've been smart about things we're not as worried about you. We didn't want to just roll over and say yes though, pushing your buttons was more fun."

"Gee thanks," Oddly enough though, I was a lot more relaxed about the thought of going on a hunt that I'd thought I'd be. I didn't know if it was good or bad necessarily but it was different. Maybe because the pressure wasn't on me like it always had been before. Whether or not other things put the pressure on me or I put it on myself I wasn't feeling it, and that at least felt good. "Guess I'm riding shotgun then since we're taking your car."

"Yes!" He actually jumped up and pumped his fist in the air when he said that, "I get to pick the music, fucking finally!"

"Don't get too.."

"Hey! Driver picks the music, shotgun does what?"

"Shuts his cakehole," I grumbled, while trying not to laugh.

"Exactly! Not a word Dean. Not one word."

"Don't you pick the music when you and Roy go hunt?"

"Not the same, and you know it."

Fine, whatever." Tomorrow was going to be interesting, that's for sure.