I'm sorry this post is late! I had a ton of homework dumped on me! To make it up to you, I'll be posting tomorrow! Keep your eyes open for a second chapter my cupcakes!

~Christianne

Nikki POV

I was walking through a desert. My feet hurt from the sand in my socks and Converse. I had tried walking barefoot, but it was like walking on lava.

I had my hand up to shield my eyes, not that it did any good. I squinted ahead of me, and wished I had a hair tie on my wrist. My dark hair was heavy and hot against my neck which was, like the rest of me, slick with sweat.

Once I climbed to the top of a hill (a sand dune was more like it), I saw two places I could walk towards; a small city with buildings made out of mud about a mile to my right, or a small speck several miles to my left.

I chose the speck.

About half way there, I found what appeared to be a path over the dry, arid land. I paused before stepping onto it, but did anyway. Not three feet from me, where I had been walking, and a stream appeared. Relief washed over me, and I ran towards it. The second I stepped off the path, the stream disappeared.

I took a slow step back to the path, and the stream appeared.

I crouched down and reach towards the stream. I cupped my hands and dunked them into the icy cool water. I greedily drank from my hands, reveling in the cold water that ran down my wrist. I took several more drinks from my cupped hands before I splashed the water on my face and got as much in my hair as I could.

I stood back on the path, and raised my brows. The speck, which had still seemed miles away, had grown closer in distance and larger in size. Instead of the tiny speck, it became a massive jungle oasis. Palm trees and banana trees, massive ferns and flowered bushes were a cool green against the harsh orange sand.

Ran forward towards them until I crashed into them; I had to make sure they were real. I sighed and rubbed my face against the massive, cool fern as I inhaled the equally cool, humid air instead of the dry, hot air. I giggled as I stumbled happily through the little jungle, stopping now and then to smell a flower.

The jungle broke into a clearing. The ground had thick green grass, and a few feet of white sand as fine as powdered sugar. There was a large, square white tent in the grass. Back in middle school, we'd watch these poorly made movies with actors depicting parts of the bible. They were a little on the boring side, but they were better than listening to Sister Mary Olivia talk for 47 minutes. In those little movies, they always showed tents like these; the types of tents most common in the early first century and the BC era.

I took a step towards the tent, wanting to reach out and touch the soft looking material. Someone stepped out of the jungle and I spun around, reaching for my pocket knife.

I froze.

It was a woman, a little taller than me, wearing a rough looking woolen dress that came down to her sandaled feet, and a mauve, hemp-looking scarf around her shoulders. She didn't see me; she was looking at the various fruit and plants in the basket she was holding. She and I had a similar skin tone; an olive shade that was just a little too pale to be considered tan, though, hers was several shades darker. She pushed the mauve scarf off her head, and dark, curly brown hair tumbled down her shoulders.

When she looked up at me, her kind features morphed into a smile. She had dark eyes like I did. I could see similarities in our faces that as a little girl I had stayed awake imagining. This dark haired woman was a few years older than me; some line around her eyes showed, and on her cheeks when she smiled.

I was still frozen, my hand on my hip. My jaw was clenched, and I kept telling myself it was hallucinating from heat stroke.

The woman set the basket down on the grass, and took a few steps towards me. She briefly had a hand over her mouth before she clasped them together and pressed them to her chest. I watched with a hawk-like gaze as she stopped just a few feet in front of me. She slowly reached out and touched one of my curls, letting out a soft sob.

She gently pushed the curl over my shoulder, and brought her hand back to her chest.

She said something softly. It was something along the lines of 'Cy-lee-a.'

I didn't recognize it, but I recognized her. I spoke in the same soft, breathy voice she did.

"Mom."

24 Hours Earlier

I was cross-legged on the bed, books and old papers around me.

I had overheard what Ruby told Dean a few nights ago, and I didn't believe it for a second; there had to be a way to save Dean. I was going to find it if it killed me.

I'd been crouched over for at least three hours, and my neck was getting a little sore. I sat up and stretched my arms over my head. I let my head loll to the right, and rolled it to the left.

It sounded like someone was crunching gravel under a car tier. I froze, leaving my arms over my head.

Dean, who was sitting at the table on the other side of the motel room, looked over at me in surprise.

"Am I dead?" I asked seriously.

Dean, other than making a delayed, slightly disgusted noise, didn't respond.

I cautiously rolled my neck back to the right, and winced as it made another popcorn sound.

"Are you dead?" Dean asked this time. I snorted and put my arms down. I fell back on the hard motel bed, and giggled.

"Where'd Sam go?" I asked the ceiling. "I need his opinion on stuff."

Dean tossed back the rest of his coffee and grabbed his jacket. "I'll got find him." He said, grabbing his keys. I just grunted as he shut the door.

I pulled myself back up and stared at the stuff in front of me.

I found several different mentions of people breaking deals with demons, but that was back BC (Before Coven).

The Coven was like the magic police. They popped up around 666 AD (ironically), cracked down on the magic in the world. They tried to wipe out black magic as a whole, but it didn't turn out so well. With all the black magic out, white magic served no purpose. Healers lost their shops, military shamans were rendered unnecessary and the Wiccan community got bored. Not to mention the new rules forbade interaction with demons. No black magic, no summoning crossroad demons, no deals, no souls for Hell.

Spells that killed demons, rendered contracts void and just screwed with them were also banned.

This would be a snap back then. Now, it was more complicated.

A couple minutes later, I called Bobby. I wanted to know just how bad he thought the punishments the Coven doled out for forbidden magic use would be. It rang and rang before it went to voicemail.

I called again, but that was when Sam and Dean got back.

"What's the diagnosis?" I asked, rushing to where Sam and Dean were already standing. I could barely look down at the man in the hospital bed.

"We've tested everything we can think to test. He seems perfectly healthy." The doctor said.

"Except he's comatose." Dean said, nodding towards Bobby.

"Mr. Snyderson, you're his emergency contact." The doctor said simply, looking at Dean. "Anything we should know? Any illnesses?"

"No," Dean said, shaking his head and shrugging. "No, he never gets sick. I mean, he doesn't even catch a cold."

Sam spoke up. "Doctor, is there anything you can do?"

"Look, I'm sorry," he sighed. "But we don't know what's causing it so we don't know how to treat it. He's just…went to sleep and didn't wake up." He paused briefly.

After that, he left.

I grabbed a small bottle from my pocket. "Guard the door." I said, going to Bobby's other side.

"Nik, what are you doing?" Dean asked as Sam shut and locked the door.

I got out my pocket knife and pushed the sleeve of Bobby's hospital gown up to reveal his elbow. "Did you know the outside of the human elbow, compared to other parts of the body, has very few nerves?" I asked, popping the cork of the small vial.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked, rushing over when he heard me flick out the blade.

"Everything you need to know about the human body is in the blood." I said as I carefully pierced some of the dry, slightly wrinkled skin of Bobby's elbow. I held the vial under the cut and gently pressed over it to get a few drops of blood into it.

I put my knife away and put the cork back in. I looked up at Sam and Dean. "Give me time, I'll know exactly what's wrong with him."

"So, what was Bobby doing in Pittsburgh?" Sam asked as we walked into Bobby's motel room.

"I don't know," Dean admitted. "Unless he was taking an extremely lame vacation." I snorted, but bit my cheek in an effort not to laugh.

"He had to be working a job, right?" I asked, looking between the two as I looked at the stuff on the nightstand. "Wouldn't there be, like, stuff?" I asked, looking around the bare walls.

Sam and Dean stopped what they were doing to look around as well.

"I mean, you two go all Beautiful Mind on a hunt; research, news clippings, notes tacked on the walls 'n stuff. I can only imagine that Bobby would be worse." I said with a shrug.

"Or a friggin' pizza box or beer can or sumthin'." Dean put in, slamming the empty dresser drawers shut.

I was standing behind Sam, paging through the Bible when Sam opened the closet; just jeans and shirts, until Sam pushed the hangers out of the way, that is.

My eyebrows raised as I looked at the back wall of the closet. Notes, news clippings and research. I smiled a little.

"Nice one Bobby," I chuckled. "Very John Nash."

"You make heads or tails of any'a this?" Sam asked. I shook my head, Dean reached forward and pulled a page off the wall.

"Silene capensis," Dean read off. "Which of course means absolutely nothing to me."

"Here. Obit." Sam said, pulling a clipping off the wall. I took the page from Dean, examining the flower.

"Dr. Walter Gregg, 64, university neurologist…" Sam read the obituary, and none of us gained anything from, until Dean asked how the guy kicked it.

He went to sleep and didn't wake up.

We went our separate ways. Well, Dean did; he went to see the doctor's body and the morgue. Sam stayed to look at the back wall, I stayed to look through my herb book.

"This silene capensis," I said out loud, getting Sam's attention. "It sounds familiar."

"Where from?" He asked.

"No idea," I sighed with a shrug.

I took a break from the book and got out the vial of Bobby's blood. I got out a square piece of leather from my bag, and spread it out on the floor under the window, in the sun. I reached back on the bed and grabbed my plastic water bottle.

The leather square had many creases pressed into it, making an intricate maze of needle thin troughs that stared from the corners and ended in the middle.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked curiously, squatting down next to me.

"It's a technique from Japan." I told him, carefully pouring a small amount of water in the corners; just enough so all the troughs were filled. "You used the hide of a still born, albino ox and press the pattern into it."

I uncorked the vial. "You put one drop of blood in the corners," I said as I carefully did so. "And put it in the sun until the water evaporates."

I grabbed a small booklet with pages as thin as onion skin. "Once it's done, each little piece-" I pointed to the small shapes made by the troughs. "-will be a different color, like a mosaic. They all mean different things."

"And it'll tell us what's wrong with Bobby." Sam finished for me.

I turned and grinned up at him. "You catch on quick." I commented, leaning back to rest on my hands.

Sam was smiling back at me, but after a second, something seemed to change. He was still smiling, but he pressed his lips together briefly before putting it back on. His hazel/blue eyes seemed to darken with something, and that's when I stood up.

"It'll take a few hours," I said, sitting back on the bed. I grinned again. "Plenty of time for research."

Sam chuckled and rolled his eyes.

"How is he?" I asked, walking into Bobby's hospital room, Sam was close behind me.

"Same." Dean said, standing up from the chair next to the bed. "What'd you get?" He asked; Sam had dropped a large file on the table, and I'd put the leather square, the booklet and my herb book.

"Well, considering what you told us about the doc's experiments, Bobby's wall started to make a hell of a lot more sense." Sam started out.

"I knew this plant, silene capensis, sounded familiar," I said, opening to a page in my herb book. "I know it as African dream root." I said, turning the book so they could see the drawing.

"It's been used by shamans and medicine people-" I shot a look at Sam, who rolled his eyes as a light flush crawled up his cheeks. Earlier, he kept saying medicine men, when in fact there were just as many, if not more, medicine women. "-for centuries."

"Let me guess—they dose up, bust out on their didgeridoos and start kicking around the hacky." Dean said with only a little sarcasm.

Sam snorted. "No, not really," I said, putting my book down. "If you believe the legends, it's used for dream walking. Like, literally entering another person's dreams, poking around their heads 'n stuff.

"I take it we believe the legends." Dean said, looking between us.

"When don't we?" Sam asked.

Dean nodded towards the colorful leather square. "What's that?"

I laid it out for us all to see. "Long story," I said, getting to the folded page in the booklet. "Basically, it confirms the dream root drugging. This part-" I pointed to the purple octagon. "-would be where dream root would show up, and since it's purple, it's in his system."

"The doctor was right, by the way," I said as I put the square away. "He's in really good health. His cholesterol is a little high though. He should cut down on the bacon."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Back to the dream root," he said. "Dream-walking is just the tip of the iceberg. This is some serious mojo."

"If you take enough of it, and get enough practice, you can become Freddy Kruger Junior." I said, leaning my hip on the table. "You can control the dreams. Turn good dreams bad, bad dreams good, even kill people in their sleep." Dean's brows rose up with that one.

"So, how do we find our little homicidal Sandman?" Dean asked as we left the hospital.

"It could be anyone." Sam sighed.

"And you're sure you can't cure him." Dean asked me.

I nodded sadly. "I could, but not in the time we have. He'll last a week like this, tops. I'd have to go to the four corners of the world to get what I need for the spell, and even then it's a long shot that it'd work anyway."

"Anyone who knew the doctor had access to his dream shrooms." Dean said, clearly getting frustrated.

"Maybe one of his test subjects or something?" Sam suggested.

"Maybe, but his research is pretty sketchy." Dean admitted. "I mean, we don't know how many subjects he had, or who all of them are."

Sam scoffed and shook his head. "What?" I asked him, nudging his forearm with my elbow.

"In any other case, we'd be calling Bobby and asking for his help right now." Sam said with a sad smile.

I stopped, grabbing both Sam and Dean's jackets. "What if we can?" I asked them.

"What're you talking about?" Dean asked, shaking my grip off.

"He's asleep, he's not dead." I pointed out, finding it odd that Sam hadn't shaken my grip off either. "If we're tripping on enough dream root we can talk to him all we want."

Sam looked at me like I was crazy, Dean looked like he was considering it. "You wanna go dream walking in Bobby's head?" '

"Well, I don't want to, per-say, but what other option do we have?" I asked.

"We have no idea what's crawling around in his head," Sam pointed out. "It could get bad." Sam reminded me.

"Yeah, but its Bobby," I said with a shrug. "I don't even know him half as well as you two do, and I'm willing to risk it."

Dean nodded in agreement, and we both stared at Sam, who caved.

"One problem though," Sam scoffed. "We don't have any African dream root."

"I'll make a few calls," I told them, already digging out my phone. "I know Jane had a few contacts out here, I'll see if they're still in business."

"Good." Dean said with a nod. "What if they aren't?" He asked me.

I opened my mouth to say something, but shut it and shrugged. "Anyone have a plan B?"

A look was shared a look between the three of us, and Dean broke it when he closed his eyes. "Crap." He sighed. "Bela."

My brows shot up. "Bela?" Sam and I asked at the same time.

"Bela." Dean confirmed.

"Crap." Sam sighed.

I was swearing in my head.

"I'm going to call some places," I huffed, walking away.