Well, now we're getting to the exciting parts! I really wanted to have Nikki run into the Djinn, but I went with this instead...Debating that decision now...Would you guys be completely and totally crushed if I went back and did that? It'd probably be three or four chapters about NIkki's dream world where she's with Sam ect ect ect...asdfghjkl;'';lkjhgfdsasdfghjkl;lkjhgfdsfghjkl;kjhgfdsfgjulidwqNKIWEfMNHIRF

Sorry.
I have a severely fractured motivation.

...~Christianne

Nikki POV

I groaned as I rolled over. I wasn't in the soft bed I fell asleep in. I pinched my eyes shut before opening them. The sun was beating down on me as I sat up.

"Oh no." I sighed, looking around.

Cold Oak. I was in Cold freakin' Oak. I fell asleep in some cushy B&B a few miles down the highway from where Used-to-be-Fake-Chris have me $7,000. It was a bit pricey, but I had $7,000 in cash.

"Yellow-Eyed prick." I muttered, standing up and brushing off my jeans. I felt the pockets of my cargo jacket on the off chance that I had my phone in the pocket instead of in my backpack.

"Damn." I cursed again, not finding it.

"Oh, you think this is funny?" I yelled, turning in a slow circle. "Well ha ha ha! We all had a giggle, now send me back! I had a pancake breakfast at my hotel I was looking forward to!"

Nothing.

I huffed, and started walking towards the town; I was behind the cemetery. If I went the other way, I was in miles and miles of woods that I'm sure the demon filled it with who-knows-what.

As I was about to pass the old school building, I stopped.

"Shit." I cursed, sprinting towards the building, throwing the door open with a wave of my hand and grabbing the iron fire poker leaning on the wall. I grabbed it with both hands and swung it at the acheri standing in front of me.

It dissipated into black smoke and flew out the door.

"What the Hell?" I heard a male voice say. I turned and saw a black man, about my age, in Army fatigues standing in front of a chalk board with 'I will not kill' written over and over on it.

"Acheri." I stated, turning the fire poker over in my hands. "It's a type of demon, presents itself as a little girl to lure people in." I explained, walking over to the guy.

"Hey, I'm Nikki." I introduced myself, holding a hand out. The Army guy just looked at my hand, then back at me. "Ok then." I said under my breath, dropping my hand.

I looked at the name sewn onto the front of his fatigues. "Talley." I read off. "Nice to meet you."

"Are-Are you one'a them?" He asked cautiously.

"One'a what?" I asked back, pulling my sleeve over my hand to get the rust off the grip of the fire poker.

"One'a the psychics, or whatever. With the abilities." Talley clarified.

I shrugged. "Sorta. In a way. Why? Are you?"

He nodded. "Yeah." He muttered.

I started to look around the small school house, wrinkling my nose when I found sulfur. Definitely a demon.

"You said that little girl was a demon?" Talley asked me. He was still standing in the same spot in the middle of the room.

"Yeah." I answered simply, wiping the yellow sulfur dust off my fingers with a dusty rag from the floor.

"This guy, he said that a demon brought us here." He stated.

I straightened up. "'This guy'?" I repeated.

"Yeah, Sam, I think." Talley said with a shrug. "Is he right?"

"Whoa whoa whoa, Sam, when did you meet him? Where?" I asked, walking towards him.

"Like, ten minutes ago. Out there." He pointed out the open window to the rest of the town. "There were a few others, two girls and a guy."

"Show me." I demanded.

"What's your first name?" I asked Talley as we walked towards the center of Cold Oak.

"Jake." He said after a moment of hesitation. I nodded, and kept walking. I looked up at him; his eyes were wide still, and face seemed slack.

"You shouldn't be so scared." I sighed.

"What?" Jake asked, stopping to look at me.

"I said, you shouldn't be so scared." I repeated. "I mean, you're a soldier. You've seen stuff. In my opinion, what you saw in—Let me guess, Afghanistan?—is gonna be way worse than anything else you see."

"I just saw a demon." Jake said, emphasizing the last word.

"Yup." I said, starting to walk again. "Wanna know why Afghanistan is worse?" I didn't wait for an answer. "Here, now, this is demons against people, supernatural against the normal. Over there, it's people against people. They're fighting themselves instead of fighting the demons. And that scares me more than this."

Once we got to the town square, with the bell tower, I saw Sam, Andy, Ava, and another girl. I wanted to run to them, give them all a hug (Even Andy and the girl I didn't know) and smile.

But I was mad. Not at Sam anymore. He didn't know. Now, I was just mad in general.

I was trying so hard, and it just wasn't enough.

"The bell seems familiar…" I heard Sam trail off once we were closer. "But, still doesn't tell us where we are."

"Cold Oak, South Dakota." I said, still walking towards Sam and the group. Sam spun around faster than I thought he ever could, and looked at me in shock. "A town so haunted, by the end, everyone left." I added, coming to a stop next to Ava.

"Swell." Ava said sarcastically. "Good to know we're somewhere so historical."

"Why in the world would that demon or whatever put us here?" the unidentified girl, a blonde in some subtle punk/goth clothing, asked.

"I'm wondering the same thing." Sam said, looking away from me briefly to look at the blonde. He was staring at me like he was either going to yell at me and say I'm crazy, or hug me until I burst.

"You know what? It doesn't matter." She said before turning around to walk away. "The only sane thing to do here is get the Hell out of dodge."

"Wait, Lily, hold on." Sam started as he, seemingly, reluctantly broke his gaze from me.

"Look, the only thing in all directions is through miles of woods filled with God-knows what." I called after her, Lily, apparently.

"Beats hanging out with demons." Lily responded.

"We don't even know what's going on yet." Sam called. "Like Nikki said, we don't know what's out there."

"Yeah, he's right." Jake started. "We should—"

"Don't say 'we.' I'm not part of 'we!'" Lily snapped, walking back to the little group. "I have nothing in common with any of you!"

"Ok, look. I know—" Sam started.

"You don't know anything!" Lilly cut Sam off, her voice getting a little desperate. "I to—I accidently touched my girlfriend."

My eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and I glanced at Andy, who was on the other side. "Uh, she touches people, their hearts stop." Andy said in a hushed voice. I nodded, more in the loop.

"I'm sorry." Sam said honestly. I swallowed thickly, looking at him out of the corner of my eye. I hadn't seen him in almost a month. He wasn't getting much sleep; he had dark bags under his eyes.

"I feel like I'm in a nightmare, and it just keeps getting worse and worse." Lilly said, her voice shaking.

Sam looked at her sympathetically.

"You're not the only one who's lost people." I said, feeling suddenly defensive. "I lost the three people closest to me, and have shoved the breathing ones to the side so they don't join the dead ones." I said, grasping Chris's dogtags tightly.

"Yeah…" Sam said softly, looking at me with an almost pensive look in his eye. "I have a brother out there right now. He could be dead for all I know…We're all in bad shape." He glanced at me. "But I'm telling you, the best way out of this is to stick together."

Lilly looked at the ground briefly. "Fine."

"That building." I said, pointing towards a not-so-run down structure on the other side of the bell tower. "That's the last inhabited building. 1951. Anything left here would be in there."

Sam nodded once, and started towards it. "We're looking for iron, silver, salt—any kind of weapon." Sam said in that authoritative tone of his.

"Salt is a weapon?" Jake asked.

"It's a brave new world, privet." I said, a small smirk on my face.

"Well hopefully there's food in your world, cause I'm freakin' starving." Andy muttered.

"I'll see if I can find a cellar. You guys check the kitchen for canned food and the upstairs for blankets, flint and anything else." I said, walking towards the back room, where most cellars in buildings from this time period were.

I walked slowly around the floor, listening for hollow sounds.

"You cut your hair."

I almost jumped when I heard Sam's voice. I looked up and saw him standing awkwardly, with his hands jammed in his pockets, in the doorway.

"Yeah." I said quietly, running a hand through my shorter, curly strands.

"Why?" He asked, sounding genuinely confused. "Dean told you to cut it dozens of times."

"Yeah, well I had a spirit try to hang me with my fishtail braid, so…" I trailed off, moving into the next room, this one was carpeted.

"…A spirit?" Sam asked, following me.

"Yeah, remember Kory? There was some pissed off dude killing people who went to the movies." I said, stomping lightly on a few places. "Had to call Bobby a few times. Burned two bodies before we finally got him."

"Why didn't you call?" Sam asked. I looked up from where I was kneeling on the floor, knocking on the matted rug with my knuckles. I looked at him, unable to respond.

"I-I mean for help." Sam added quickly. "With the spirit."

I shook my head. "I handled it." I said, finally hitting a spot that sounded different.

I still had the pocket knife I'd had in my jacket pocket; I grabbed it, flicked it open at my side (I spent a good 45 minutes in a motel room practicing how to open it with a flick of my wrist without looking, like I'd seen Dean do) and stuck the blade into a groove in the floor, where some floor boards met. I dragged it along, ripping the carpet and bringing up decades of dust.

"Hey, gimmie a hand?" I asked, grabbing the edges of the carpet. Sam got down on his knees next to me and grabbed the carpet. We ripped it up, and revealed a door to the cellar.

"And, you know, you could have called…just to, you know…talk." Sam said, leaning back so he was sitting on his heels.

I copied his pose and looked at the door, suddenly feeling nervous. When I was around Sam all the time, I'd gotten better and holding the feeling in. But now, under his burning hazely-blue gaze, I had butterflies in my stomach. "Yeah?" I managed to get out.

"Yeah." Sam confirmed, nodding a little too quickly. "I-I mean, I get why you-you didn't…"

"I'm not mad at you, Sam." I blurted out. He didn't say anything, so I peeked up at him. His brows were drawn together slightly; he was confused. "I mean…I was, not anymore-"

Sam cut me off by throwing his arms around me in a tight hug. His head was buried in my hair and one of his arms wound under my arm and held the back of my head. The other held my waist tightly. Sam pulled me towards him a little, so our chests were pressed flush together.

I held him tightly around his neck, pressing my face into his neck as I wrapped my other hand around his shoulders and grabbed a fistful of his jacket. I inhaled deeply a few times, my mind swam with his woodsy, musky smell laced with cheap motel soap. I could actually feel the tension and stress melt off my shoulders as I continued to hold onto him like he'd disappear.

"I missed you." Sam mumbled into my shoulder. I smiled a little. "I forgot how irritating Dean can be."

I smiled a little more, and buried my face more into Sam's shoulder. "I'm sure he wasn't that bad." God I missed you. "If he's got enough liquor in 'im he can be kinda funny." I felt Sam chuckle, and his lips spread into a smile against my shoulder.

"Hey! Guys—Oh."

Sam and I each jumped back, landing on our asses as we looked at Andy. I don't know about Sam, but I was blushing.

I cleared my throat and smoothed the hair on the side Sam had been pressing his face into. "Uh, what's up Andy?" I asked, sitting up from the floor.

"Nothing." Andy said, jamming his hands in his pockets. "Just…Wondering if you found any food."