Pre A/N: Merry Christmas y'all! Sorry so long, work has been crazy and I've picked up my weekend job again. Next chapter is in early stages. I'll do my best to make it a New Year's present. Thanks for reading and for your comments. :)

A/N: I probably should have included this information earlier, but since the deviations started in the last scene of the last chapter, close enough. ;) Up until now, the Navajo information has been as fact based as I can be. The creation story (though greatly abbreviated in my version), and about the Hero Twins are ones you can find in books and online. Of course there are ceremonies and blessings, but the content isn't something I've found shared. Thus I didn't describe them because I only know of the existence of such rituals and nothing about the content. And that content is sacred besides. The legends about the skin walkers and the animal forms they can take and animals associated with them and owls being a death omen are all based on Navajo legends. From the powder that Jacob blew at Dean and Lizzie, things take a turn into my imagination and from here on out any resemblance to actual Navajo legends, beliefs, etc., is pure serendipity.

Chapter 12

When his ashes hit the flames the heat made them coalesce and he reformed from the inside out. Bones then organs and muscles then flesh. And he was on the rack again. Flames licked at his flesh and he recognized the hulking silhouette that bent over him; a shudder convulsed his body as the figure scooped out one of his eyes. He screamed in pain, but mostly in fear. This was familiar, and the fear of what was to come drew a whimper that turned to another agonized scream when his other eye went dark. He knew what followed. Next his tongue, roughly gripped and pulled from his mouth, was severed by an edgeless blade sawing it from its roots. Then choking, choking as his life's blood ran down his throat, bubbling, gurgling. As always, his tormentor made sure he could still hear. He could hear every gurgling scream, every defeated whimper and in the utter darkness he was taunted between slashes that flayed his flesh layer by layer to his bones. But he didn't die; he never died. He couldn't die. There was no end, no release. Just the continued agony until the flames reformed him and it began again.

Dean! It filtered in, the voice barely audible, not recognizable. Dean! And his bones shook and he could feel bits of flesh falling away, slithering down what was left of his limbs to splatter wetly on the gore coated floor beneath him. Come on Dean. Whatever it is, man, it's not real! He strained to hear this voice, his tongueless mouth closing around rubbery blood clots as his lips formed a single word in reply. Sam? Somehow he knew that was wrong. He was in Hell, and if Sam was somehow still alive he was on Earth and couldn't reach him. And if Sam was dead, he was in Heaven and they were locked apart forever.

He shook his head, and waves of nausea shuddered through him seeming to last forever. Coughing racked his chest and when it finally ended he felt like a rag doll, his body weak and limp. He hit his head roughly on the gritty surface beneath him as he coughed again and retched globs of congealed blood and the contents of his stomach.

"Take it easy. Easy."

He continued coughing, curling into himself, gagging and retching again. Something was pushing him, and he rolled further to his side, the retching easing. And after a moment, when he could hold himself still, he felt a hand against his back, patting gently as the final coughs escaped his throat. He became aware of the pounding in his head, an incessant drumbeat of agony that threatened to split his skull. Eyes slitted to take in dim light and a rock wall, and he smelt more than saw a pool of his own sick mere inches from his face. He jerked back right into Lizzie who knelt behind him.

"Yeah," she said sympathetically, "sometimes peyote makes me hurl, too."

She helped him sit up, waited while he oriented himself, looking around the room and wiping his mouth on the forearm of his jacket.

"Peyote?" He coughed again because of the roughness of his throat. Surprised he could feel his tongue again and speak, but realizing he was free of the dream now. Wasn't he? Free of Hell? "Wha-what about peyote?"

"That's what Jacob dosed us with. I mean, among other things."

Gingerly Dean slid and twisted to put his back against a wall and rolled his head back and side to side, trying to loosen his neck, still taking in his surroundings. They sat in deep shadows and above them mere slips of light seeped between the logs that made up the ceiling. "Son of a motherfucking bitch! We're in that kiva again!"

"Well, you're in it again. This is my first time."

"This is my last time!" he growled and started shakily to rise.

"Take it easy!" Lizzie tried to steady him, half rising none too steadily herself. "Takes a while to wear off. We're better just to rest a bit, take it a step at a time."

Dean stared down at her, eyes narrowing. "You're awfully damn calm..." And he broke off as she loomed toward him morphing into his tormentor, the demon's deep voice clawing into his brain and congealing his blood.

Grabbing his arm, Lizzie pulled him down as she sat again, making a little oof! noise as she hit the dirt hard. Dean sat heavily beside her, placing his head in his hands.

"Come on, man, just take it easy. Peyote's a hallucinogen, it's gonna take some time to come all the way down." She stared at Dean for a moment, assessing. "And we need a plan. Jacob's not gonna leave us here forever."

They sat for a moment, side by side, shoulders brushing. Dean's mind churned, jumping between twisted memories and the present. He knew she was right, but it was galling. Without looking up he asked, "You've been through this before? And what was he saying to you?"

He felt Lizzie jerk next to him, her shoulder and arm bumping him and jerking away as if he were a hot stove.

"I've had peyote before."

That wasn't enough but Dean could only shake his head as a wave of nausea ran through him. He couldn't risk opening his mouth.

"He was saying we needed to leave. I asked him why he and Matthew weren't in Teec Nos Pas and he got mad." She shrugged, "I've never really gotten along with my Uncles. Nobody has."

They fell silent for a few minutes, Dean swallowing repeatedly against the nausea. Thunder rumbled overhead and lightening strobed through the chinks in the log ceiling. Dean realized he couldn't feel his pistol against the small of his back. Sonuvabitch! Of course, what did he expect? He dropped it when Jacob flung the powder into his face. His duffle was MIA as well. Dean slapped weakly at his pockets, then reached into an inside pocket and grabbed his flashlight. Well, seemed Jacob hadn't actually searched him. Again. As he clicked the light on Lizzie jerked against his shoulder. He ran the beam around the room and the ceiling just as lightening flashed again and a loud crash of thunder seemed to shake everything around them.

They sat quiet, each lost in their own bad memories. Then, "All that stuff you and Sam told me about growing up. Was that real?"

Dean hesitated and finally answered, "Yeah." Softly. Sadly.

Then Lizzie began slowly, "Things were pretty bad when I was a kid, too. My dad drank a lot and everyone fought. It was shitty. Not quite your kinda shitty, but you know. Then my uncles got into a lot of trouble and it tainted the entire family."

They both fell silent, Dean could feel Lizzie's shoulder twitching against his and he looked over at her to see her eyes screwed tightly closed, lips moving as she whispered to herself. He leaned into her a little, "You okay?"

A moment, then her features relaxed. "Yeah, yeah. Okay." He knew she was dealing with her own demons.

"There's more. Things I should tell you. Need to tell you." She sighed drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. Her face was lowered toward her knees and her voice was little louder than a whisper. "Some of my family are into some bad shit. I joined the Army so I could get away and to honor my grandfather. When I finish my tour I'm not coming back. I only came back now because grandma is sick and dying. But I can't really protect her anymore.

"Jacob and Matthew, they started a feud with a nearby rancher. A white guy with a bad attitude. I mean, the guy pissed me off, too, he was really racist. My grandpa was a code talker in World War Two. My mom helped him write a book about it and it did pretty well. He and grandma used the money to buy this ranch and get the family away from the rez, have a better life. But Sandler, he hated that they bought the land next to his and he started making trouble. Cutting fences and driving the sheep off. Blocking up the creek so they couldn't water the flock. Then his oldest boy started coming by the house, late, and harassing my grandparents or sneaking in and messing with the generator or anything that would cause problems or cost them money.

"That's why I wasn't too happy to see you at first, I thought he'd sent you to cause more trouble. All that trouble killed my grandpa a few years ago and now that old man Sandler is gone his son and his kids are keeping up the family tradition.

"And to make matters worse, Jake and Matt started doing the same kind of shit to the Sandlers. It just escalated, of course, but they wouldn't stop. They were always trying to pay it back. Which was stupid cause guess who the sheriff always believed, ya know." She paused for a beat, "Well, you probably don't know first hand, but I'm betting you can guess. Anyway, they got into some bad stuff. Spooky stuff. You get my drift?"

Dean nodded, then realizing she wasn't looking at him said, "I think so." She seemed so reluctant to put it to words that he decided to cut to the chase. "This spooky shit. Anything we're dealing with now?"

"Maybe," she answered slowly, raising her head to look at him. "I mean, I'm not a hundred percent. But what Jacob just used on us, that powder? It's bad magic. So either he is a witch, or he's thrown in with one to get it."

"You said it was peyote?"

"Yeah, partly. I recognize the effects. It used for ceremonies, and to help with a Spirit Walk. We use it in a ceremony when we have a big decision to make. It shows us our innermost dreams and what to do with them. Our path, you know?" She paused for a moment, and after a few sharp breaths continued. "But I'm getting bad memories, that are being twisted and... Well, it's mixed with something that put our lights out, and something that pulls bad stuff out of us."

"That's for damn sure," Dean said softly, more to himself than to Lizzie.

"Mmm." She answered and her face screwed up in pain and fear.

Dean watched as she clenched her teeth against crying out and jerked repeatedly as if startled. He could still see red behind his eyes but focussing on Lizzie was helping him to stay in the here and now. He leaned into her shoulder again slightly, trying to let her know she wasn't alone and waited until she relaxed and the memories had passed. They waited in silence for a few moments, listening to the wind pick up above them punctuated by more crashing thunder. On the tail end of another loud rumble lightening flashed again and heavy rain began to beat the logs above them. Dean played the beam of the flashlight across the log ceiling holding it above him as he looked for the trap door. The flap was still torn out from his last visit. And he could see the heavy slab of stone now covered the opening completely. Dammit. No way he could slide that rock without a way to grasp it. There was no way to get ahold of the edges of the opening.

Dean stood slowly, then strode back and forth, flashlight held high, the beam a bright oval against the logs. He spent a couple of minutes looking, for another door, or a weak spot in a log, something, anything. But he'd known before he started that they'd need a chainsaw to get through. He dodged the rain that was starting to slip between the logs in increasingly steady streams and found a dry spot against the opposite wall. "So what's the end game? Why'd he put us in here?"

Lizzie was little more than a dark shape across from him, the pool of light from the beam now pointed at the floor dying out before it reached her. "I wish I knew."

"Sam and I came here because of people disappearing on the road. You think your uncles have anything to do with that?"

"I don't know. I don't know..." Lizzie got up and began pacing.

Dean could hear her footsteps on the hard earth floor, the occasional slap when she hit a new puddle. And for a few moments he watch her dark form pace the small kiva.

"Can I use your light?" She loomed out of the dark into the beam, and he handed it over readily.

Lizzie took a deep breath and looked around, considering. "When I was a kid," she started slowly, "sometimes adults would bring us into a kiva like this on the rez and tell us the histories. The creation stories, stuff like that."

There was a long pause as she scrutinized the whole of the room as best she could with the small light. Dean wondered if she was waiting for some reply from him, when she continued. "See, a lot of the stories were acted out, and someone would wear a costume and speak for Coyote or Bear or Rabbit. But they weren't in the room when the kids entered. They just appeared when their names were called. Somehow Coyote would just be there. Like magic. It used to puzzle me when I was a kid and I always tried to figure out how they did it. Everyone I asked said it was magic and when I watched closely I could only see the Spirit Animal emerge from the dark near the alter they'd set up."

She walked slowly around the perimeter, holding Dean's lighter down close to the low bench. As she went she periodically kicked at the front wall of the bench. "When I got older, and stopped believing in magic, I stopped worrying about it. I just figured it was an illusion or something." She shrugged, pausing and turning to Dean who was following her a couple of steps behind.

"Yeah? So?"

"I stopped believing in magic. Kid stuff, like believing in Santa Clause. It wasn't like how magic really is, ya know."

He nodded. "And?"

"So," and she went back to walking and kicking, "Ah!" Her latest kick had produced a different sound from the others. She knelt and ran her fingertips in the crack where the rock slab forming a seat fit together with the front of the bench. Then with a grunt and a scraping sound from the rocks, she managed to free the front of the slab and raise it revealing a space below.

Dean was leaning forward, watching her intently, "So you're thinking -"

"Trick magic, not real magic." She motioned to him to help her move the rock slab aside then thrust the hand holding the flashlight as far down into the darkness as she could. "Can't see a thing." She handed off the light and placed one hand each on the seats either side of the hole and began to step in, intending to lower herself into the dark maw.

"Wait, slow your roll," Dean placed a hand on Lizzie's nearest shoulder and she paused, one boot poised in midair, "just what do you think is down there?"

Lizzie shrugged awkwardly, "I'm hoping a tunnel." And she lowered herself down and dropped into the darkness.

Dean heard her hit the bottom with a grunt. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she called up. "Toss me the light."

He dropped the light into her waiting hands and prepared to drop into the opening himself.

"Ground's kinda uneven down here, watch your leg." Lizzie warned. "Yeah, there's a tunnel!"

"Why? Is it gonna do a trick?" he muttered under his breath, then louder, "Yeah, yeah."

He hit the ground hard and his left leg did buckle beneath him and he landed on one knee.

"Nice trick." Lizzie grabbed his arm, pulling him back upright. She shone the flashlight down a low, narrow tunnel with an uneven floor and a lopsided arch above. "Whatcha think?"

Dean grunted. "Goonies never say die."