"Pick up the pace, boys."

Caleb rolled his eyes at John Winchesters command. He wasn't sure how the Knight expected him to jog through the dimly lit woods, and focus on the link he'd picked up with the Beira's staff. It was faint, but Mac had been right. If he focused on Dean the signal seemed to strengthen so Caleb had at least been able to point them in a direction from the last place John had seen Sam and Dean. From there John had taken the lead, counting on Caleb to tell him if they were off track.

"So you really have like a navigational system in your head?" Hollis huffed beside him.

"No."Caleb sighed. Hollis Newberry's inquiring chatter wasn't helping.

"Then how exactly does your whole psychic thing work?" Hollis made a whirling motion beside his own temple. "How are you acting as Winchester's personal compass?"

Caleb's first inclination was to tell Hollis it was none of his damn business. He wasn't exactly in the habit of sharing when it came to his gifts, nor did he like the insinuation he was at John's beck and call. But it was as if he could feel Pastor Jim's penetrating blue gaze targeting the center of his spine. It was impossible because he knew Jim and Bobby were several yards behind them. Caleb could feel them.

Mac was up ahead with John. It was a rare day when Caleb, or any hunter for that fact, got to witness the entire Triad on a hunt. The novelty was temporarily overshadowed. Jim seemed to be in Caleb's head. He could almost hear the Pastor's words from a few weeks ago. Caleb had disobeyed an order when he'd succumbed to curiosity about the parcel he and Dean had been sent to retrieve. He later worried it might have been something more dastardly on his part, something possibly devilish in nature. The Guardian had found him at midnight nursing a glass of milk and the last remnants of Missouri Mosley's butterscotch pie.

Jim had looked him square in the eye and told him not to be overcome by the possibility of evil, but to overcome all thoughts of evil with every chance at good. It had made Caleb's head hurt worse at the time. With most of Jim's insights, it was starting to sink in. Caleb didn't often run across hunters curious about what his true abilities were, in fact he found most of them preferred their assumptions however incorrect they might be. Sometimes he even encouraged their flawed thinking. Mac called it a defense mechanism, Caleb preferred to see it more as a survival skill. Hollis was offering him a chance to shed some light.

"Every person, everything in nature emits energy, a unique signal that belongs only to them." Caleb sent another quick glance to Hollis. "Some of us, psychics, mediums, telepaths for lack of a better term, are better at picking up on those signals. We can connect to them and use them in ways other people aren't able."

"Like a human EMF?"

It was something Dean would have joked about, comparing Caleb to a device they used to pick up on spiritual activity, but Newberry was completely serious. It was as good an explanation as any. "In some ways, I guess."

"So you could track me if I got lost?"

"Not necessarily." Caleb wasn't sure how to make what was so natural to him, understandable to an outsider. "Have you ever done any sailing, Newberry?"

Hollis grunted loudly. "My daddy is a dirt farmer from Star, Mississippi, Reaves. What do you think?"

"How about star gazing? Even the most backwoods redneck can get a gander of the sky, right?" Caleb knew he deserved the rude hand gesture he was awarded. At least he'd made an effort to make the latest slight seem a bit more jest than insult. After all, Caleb, despite having a very wealthy father and grandfather, was far from a snob. He'd done most of his growing up in the swamps of Louisiana.

"The stars we have."

"Then think of my abilities sort of like a map of the sky. Mac calls it asterism." The term meant marked by the stars and Caleb understood it was a father's attempts to put a positive spin on something his fourteen year old child had found extremely frightening at the time.

"Is that like astrology?"

"No," Caleb knew being patient wasn't his strong suit, but Jim obviously thought him capable. "More like astronomy."

"The constellations."

"Exactly." Caleb momentarily took his gaze from the trail to look heavenward, the winter sky not quite dark enough to see any hint of stars, not even Polaris. He found it ironic that the North Star was hidden seeing as how Dean and Sam tended to hold that placement in the schematics of his psyche. "Some are more familiar to us. They stand out brighter, are easily picked up with the naked eye out of the billions of lights that are actually out there all around us. Others require telescopes and some are some are hidden completely even though we know they are there.

"So your average hunter isn't exactly on your radar."

"Not if they aren't psychic, or I haven't connected with them, or read them. Something I don't do without permission or damn good reason," Caleb was quick to add. "So you could have skipped the obsidian necklace and bracelets."

"How does all that tie into your death visions?" Hollis didn't bother with a denial about the psychic blocking jewelry he was sporting, expertly turning the tables on Caleb instead.

Caleb stumbled, cursed the rocky terrain they were covering now that they had come alongside the French Broad River. He hadn't noticed the roar of the white water until now. It was too much to hope Newberry wouldn't want the low down on the visions, especially after what he'd witnessed at the farm. Caleb had the familiar urge to play them down as he usually did or to revert back to his earlier instincts of rebuffing the question with attitude.

"Jim says it's a heads up that someone needs saving, an S.O.S from the good guys." Caleb had heard other theories form his father and Missouri Mosley, but he liked The Guardian's the best. Jim believed it was a way to keep balance between light and dark. Caleb chose to focus on being a force for good, however a naïve a notion.

"The Pastor thinks they're like an elaborate bat signal from God?"

Caleb snorted despite himself. That was probably exactly what Jim thought. The Guardian believed God loved to give people the chance to do His work, to exercise His strength through their weak vessels.

"That's one theory."

"Huh, it's not the one I've heard."

Caleb slowed his pace, could hear Bobby and Jim's footsteps as they quickly closed the distance between them. He worked hard to keep his voice light. "What have you heard?"

"That your abilities are from a demon." Hollis came to a complete stop, allowing Caleb to do the same. Newberry bent over at his waist, his hands were resting on his knees. He was panting, dripping sweat. He tilted his head to look at Caleb. "That maybe you're as bad as the things we hunt."

It was one thing to catch bits and pieces of rumors, and another to have someone speak the ugly right out loud. Caleb wasn't sure if Newberry was really dumb or really brave. Maybe he was having a heat stroke or a heart attack. No matter, it was his lucky day because now, like at the farm, was not the time for Caleb to knock him on his ass. "I bet that's a real popular one among the ranks, right?"

Hollis shrugged his shoulder. "It makes hunters nervous, especially when they think you're being groomed to be the next Knight."

"I'm not vying for any fucking position in the next Triad, Newberry." Caleb used the tail of his t-shirt to mop the sweat from his face, cursing the freakish humidity. It was worse than an August day in Louisiana. He shook his head. "If you haven't noticed, I'm about as low as a man can be on the totem pole and not be buried in the dirt. I just do what John Winchester tells me to do."

"I get that now." Hollis straightened up, jerked his chin to the trail in front of them where John was no doubt already a couple of clicks ahead. "And if you ask me, that is what should make the guys in the ranks nervous. Forget the demon shit, Winchester is a maniac."

Caleb stared at Hollis for a minute. The guy's eyes were as big as saucers in his shiny red face. As John's protégé, he should have come off with some sort of reprimand in defense of The Knight, but instead Caleb laughed. He couldn't help himself.

"I'm serious, Reaves," Hollis continued, making it worse. "He scares the hell out of me. Like 'shit my pants, shrivel my dick' kind of scared."

It made Caleb laugh harder. Now he was the one bent over, unable to catch his breath. He decided then and there that he liked Hollis Newberry, dumb ass or not. If Dean and Sam made it out of this mess okay, he might even buy the guy a beer.

"What the hell is wrong with you two idgits?" Bobby pulled up behind them, his breath almost as loud as Hollis's.

"Caleb, my boy?" Jim's hand gripped Caleb's shoulder. "Is it a vision?"

"No," Caleb stood up right, facing the Pastor. The Guardian's look of concern was sobering, reminding him of what was at risk. He felt guilty and glanced at Hollis, who had grown quiet in The Guardian's presence. Caleb was pretty sure the guy was even sucking in his gut, holding his breath and might even be tempted to salute. John might be scary, but Jim commanded a different kind of respect. "Newberry and I just needed to catch our breath."

"Maybe John should step up your conditioning, Junior," Bobby grumbled, pulling off his ball cap to run the back of his arm over his brow. Caleb noted the mechanic didn't make a move to start running again. "Sitting behind a drawing desk is making you soft."

Jim squeezed Caleb's shoulder. "I believe we could all do with a short break, a chance to regroup."

"Tell that to the Knight and Scholar," Bobby said.

"Yes, please do, Robert. You run along and report seeing as how you are in tip top shape." Jim waved the mechanic on. "Tell them I said to stand down and we'll catch up."

Bobby's incredulous look almost had Caleb smiling again. The mechanic was no doubt prepared to lament his cause but running footsteps stopped him midsentence. Mac broke through the tree-line his eyes seeking out Caleb first and then holding Jim's gaze.

"We found something."

The something was Dean's radio, his and Sam's weapons. Caleb watched Mac solemnly slip the guns in his pack before moving to where John was knelt by the smashed radio. The encroaching darkness didn't hide the blood stain on the ground at The Knight's feet. In Caleb's mind it glowed as green as a chunk of Kryptonite might. There was something about the spilled blood of someone you loved, someone you were sworn to protect. It had power, real and throbbing as if it still flowed lush and black through veins and arteries giving life instead of stinking of copper and looking as if someone had tried to paint the forest floor with cadmium red.

John glanced at him. "Dean's."

A flash of the vision blazed through Caleb's mind like a streak of lightning. He swallowed thickly, nodded.

"The trail should be easy to follow from here," Jim spoke. "Especially if the darkling intends for us to find him."

"Maybe if I'd kept looking before…" John started, seeing his son's spilled blood stealing some of his typical self assurance.

"You did the right thing," Mac cut him off. "You and Hollis could have spent even more hours back tracking. You were too close to the farm not to get back up."

Caleb looked at John, recognizing the struggle on his mentor's face. It was not the Winchester way to ask for help. John had always depended on himself first and foremost. Reaching out to The Brotherhood after his wife died was a last ditch effort to avenge Mary, to destroy the monster who had wrecked his life, to protect his sons. Despite the fact Caleb knew John was loyal to them, loved them, Caleb also understood The Knight sometimes worried he'd made a terrible error that night in Ohio when Mac and Caleb had come to him with a proposition from Jim Murphy. At the time it had seemed brilliant tactical strategy on his part, maybe the only strategy left to him. Caleb recognized, whether his father did or not, that John had not come to the farm this time out of protocol, or even out of a desire to reach out to his Triad. John had come because he believed his best chance in finding the boys quickly and in one piece was if Caleb could connect with them.

"Forget the trail. I know exactly where they are." Caleb spoke directly to The Knight. He lifted his hand, now smeared with Dean's blood. Spilled or not, it was still a part of Dean, organic material and tangible as a chunk of fallen meteorite. Images of the building Sam and Dean were being held in came to him along with Dean's misery as soon as Caleb had convinced himself to touch it. Whatever warding the darkling had used crumbled underneath its power, as useless as Hollis's obsidian beads in blocking Caleb. The bridge between Caleb and Dean instantly restored. Caleb could not only now communicate with Dean. He could have run blindfolded straight to the place where the boys were being held. "We have to go. Now. I'll show you."

TBC…sometime next week;-)