AN: Hello, friends! I'm back with more Triskaidekaphobia. This chapter has a few twists and turns on the way to the big battle, which should be coming very soon.

Janice is my beta and cheerleader and idea bouncer-offer and most of all friend.

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Kevin Tran woke with a loud snort, buzzing with adrenaline and sitting up so fast he nearly fell out of the narrow bed. He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to remember the nightmare that had woken him.

No, not anything as simple as a nightmare. This was a special kind of headache, the kind that hurt in a way he couldn't describe. A way that let him know his brain was thinking about one of the tablets. Kevin tried not to dwell on what they were doing to him, but when he did, he was pretty sure that rather than him decoding them, they were reorganizing his brain to make it receptive. He had a feeling that all of it added up to prophets having a short shelf life, especially with their sanity intact.

But whether it was some kind of neurological rewiring or Kevin had simply remembered something after Dean's call the day before, he had new information now.

A series of symbols that looked like a mixture of arrows and wedges jumped out of line and ran around apparently helter-skelter, then, like a marching band moving into formation to spell out their school name, suddenly formed something new. The 72. Angels' Bane. Humbaba. Hell's Excavators. The symbols meant all of those at once and more, though Kevin knew enough to shut off the flow of information before it drowned him.

He staggered to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and ran his wrists under cold water, grounding himself. He could see his reflection, hear the water running, feel coolness on his wrists and under his feet, taste the toothpaste, and smell the pine-scented cleaner he'd used the day before.

If he let himself, he missed the days when his dreams involved playing a duet with Yo-Yo Ma or accepting the Nobel Prize for discovering a cure for cancer. Now his dreams were in all likelihood either killing him or slowly turning him into something not quite human.

And this dream meant he had to talk to Crowley. Because now he knew that while other rulers of Hell had simply left The 72 to their own devices, Crowley had studied them, hoping to harness their power. And then, deciding they were too dangerous, he'd locked them away.

He would have information that nobody else had – or at least nobody else Kevin or the Winchesters had access to.

But Kevin hated him with a vehemence he had never guessed himself capable of. Loathed. Detested. Of course, it was not without just cause. Severed fingers and a murdered mom kind of warranted that level of hate.

Kevin's shoulders slumped. He didn't really have a choice. Dean, usually the king of understatement, had made it clear just how bad it would be if the summoning or whatever worked and all the giants got out of Hell.

"Not to freak you out or anything," he'd said, "but if these guys make it to Earth, it'll be like a Justice League, but for monsters. Godzilla, Mothra, King Kong, Cloverfield, Cthulhu, and all their mutant friends all showing up at once."

Kevin shoved his feet into the too-big slippers somebody (probably Sam) had stuck in his room and shuffled to the kitchen. He made some instant coffee because Dean had brought the good creamer and that was more important than the quality of the coffee itself to Kevin. While he waited, he pulled out the box of Honey Nut Cheerios and started eating them dry. The Hunters weren't touchy-feely types, but he was starting to notice all the little things they did for him. So yeah, he could talk to the asshole in the dungeon to help them save the world.

Kevin leaned against the island and drank his coffee and tried to steel his nerves. Finally, he gave in to the temptation to call Sam.

Sam listened patiently to Kevin's rather roundabout explanation. He understood better than anyone else Kevin knew how the tablets contained information (or unlocked information?) that was living and not simply relegated to the past. That's why it was possible for them to reveal something about Crowley even though he hadn't been even thought of when the tablets were written.

"Yeah, we need to ask him," Sam said thoughtfully, and Kevin's heart sank. He'd known that would be the answer, but he'd hoped… "Listen, I want you to go in there with me on speaker phone and hold the phone out. Don't say a word. If I tell you to walk out, it's not a bluff – I really want you to leave him. We may have enough information without his help anyway, so this won't be a negotiation."

Kevin sighed in relief. He could do that. "Okay. You want to do that right now?" he asked, and Sam agreed. Kevin headed right to the dungeon before the thought of looking at Crowley's smarmy face could make him throw up.

"Well, well, visiting privileges –" the demon started.

"Shut up, Crowley. You're not talking to Kevin, you're talking to me," Sam interrupted through the phone.

"Moose, you must have missed me."

"I want information. You –"

" I want conjugal visits from Kiera Knightly," Crowley interjected with a fake-dreamy smile. "Tit-for-tat. You know the game, ya nyaff."

"Not this time. This is not a negotiation. You give me the info or not – I don't need your help, but it's in your best interest to help this time," Sam responded in a hard voice that Kevin wished he could pull off instead of sounding like a scared chipmunk all the time. "And if you interrupt me once more, Kevin's walking out of there and we'll figure it out without you."

Crowley's eyes narrowed like he was gauging how serious Sam was, then sighed dramatically, slumping in his chair like a toddler denied dessert. "Fine. Ask. Maybe I'll be in a giving mood, maybe not."

There was a pause and Kevin could picture Sam stretching his back as he collected his thoughts. "Somebody summoned one of your old friends – one of the 72 – to Earth and he's got a spell in the works to bring the rest. Bear in mind that if they make it, the first thing we'll do is deliver you to them on a silver platter."

Crowley didn't give much away with his expression, but Kevin saw a flicker of something when Sam said 'the 72.'

"Well, what did you do to get one of those brutes topside?" Crowley asked and Kevin thought he was trying to sound snarky but didn't quite manage.

"Not us this time," Sam said wryly.. "Just trying to fix it. So you have anything to help or not?" He sounded weary and annoyed. "All I've got is that copper hurts them and they're hard as hell to kill. And that you locked them up because you were afraid of them."

Crowley scoffed and that, too, fell a little short. "Cautious, Moose. Not afraid. They make Cro-Magnons look like geniuses. But they are hard to kill and like to challenge my demons. So –"

"And?"

"And all I really have on them is an old rhyme." Crowley leaned back in his chair. "One of the few things my mother bothered to teach me." He paused uncharacteristically. "You know, if they really do come to Earth, they will kill humans like mosquitoes." Kevin's body went cold.

"I've heard. Tell me your rhyme and whatever else you've got. I'm a little busy here." Kevin knew that Sam wasn't unaffected, but damned if Kevin could hear any fear in his voice.

"You've heard 'one for sorrow, two for joy' I assume? Well, the real rhyme isn't about ornithomancy," Crowley didn't wait for an answer before he started to recite a childish poem in a strange faraway voice:

"One for pain

Two for fear

Three for panic

Four for tears

Five for vengeance

Six steals breath

Seven for cruelty

Eight for death

Nine for pyres

Ten for gore

Eleven for cunning

Twelve for war

One day all 13 remaining will rise

Once more beneath the star-filled skies

Forged in fire and hard as stone

Unstoppable once they are blood and bone."

As simple as it was, the rhyme sent a shiver down Kevin's spine, and he knew with 100% certainty that the words had power or meaning. Though what it meant, he had no idea.

"Really, Crowley? I give you a chance to help us defeat something that has a personal grudge against you and you give me cryptic nursery rhymes?" Sam was beyond irritated now.

"That's all there is to find – I've looked. And it isn't just words," the demon protested.

"It's a prophecy," Kevin added, the first words he'd spoken since walking into the dungeon.

"See? I'm helping," Crowley protested. "I think I deserve a reward, don't you?"

"Time to leave, Kevin," Sam directed.

With relief, Kevin turned his back, ignoring Crowley's protests behind him.

"I need better socks! My feet are used to luxury. They deserve it! There are these socks made from vicuna hair that –"

"Thanks, Kevin," Sam once the dungeon door had closed. "I know you don't want to deal with him."

"I swear I could feel something about those words was important or prophetic or whatever. But...does it actually help?" Kevin asked doubtfully.

"I don't know yet, but I appreciate the help. Look, I gotta go. Get some rest, huh?"

Yeah, sure. "Talk to you later."

WINCHESTER * WINCHESTER

Sam waited until Dean left to rub at his chest. He didn't want to acknowledge it, even to himself, but he recognized the sensation. It felt like there were hundreds of tiny tacks pushing into his lungs. The only time he'd felt this before was when he was undergoing the trials, but he hadn't felt it since he'd been released from the hospital months before.

The weariness Sam could ignore or explain away. The same was true for the feverish feeling and whole-body ache and the way simple injuries like a burn on his arm were far more debilitating than they normally would be. Maybe I caught a virus. I'm tired and dehydrated. We've done back-to-back hunts and I'm used to a good mattress and consistent schedule.

But the unique and unforgettable feeling of his lungs being used like pincushions even he couldn't explain away. Whatever spell or curse Humbaba had cast on him had definitely done something even if it hadn't been obvious at the time. Memory lapses and lost time aside, he'd finally gotten used to feeling good. Feeling mostly normal.

To say that this sudden and significant regression was disheartening was an understatement. Sam sighed and it made him cough. He was grateful there was no blood, he supposed, taking a sip of water to try to soothe his throat.

Sam looked at the screen with the information Kevin had sent him. He just had to figure this out so they could kill Humbaba and break the spell. He flexed his fingers and ignored the way they ached and had a bruised look around the cuticles. Or he tried to ignore them, but his gaze drifted away from the computer screen as a memory snuck up on him.

He'd been so very disappointed that Dad and Dean had left him behind. He was 10 now, big enough to be a real help to them. He could read as well as Dean – English and Latin both – and Uncle Bobby said that even though he was small, he had "good instincts" when it came to fighting. All he wanted was the chance to prove himself.

Besides, he was pretty sure the landlord was some kind of monster. He'd seen some of the Phantasm movies and thought old Mr. Pushkin looked kind of like one of those undead lurkers. Even his name sounded like a Bond villain! But Dean and Dad had taken off anyway. Worse, Mr. Pushkin knew Sam was alone. Why had Dad chosen to trust this guy out of anyone?

And then, with the rest of his family half a country away, Sam got sick.

He went to bed just fine and woke up feeling like everything hurt, up to and including his eyeballs. His mouth was dry and despite the window air conditioner doing its best, he was sweaty and hot. His legs felt shaky just walking to the bathroom to piss and drink some water from his cupped hand. Sam looked at himself in the small mirror. It gave everything a greenish tint, but even knowing that, he could tell he was pale.

Sam had plenty of food, but nothing sounded good except going back to bed, so he did. He went back to sleep for a while but mostly tossed and turned, achy and uncomfortable.

"Sam? Your brother is on the phone." Mr. Pushkin's creaky old voice startled Sam awake. He was even more startled to see that the sun was well on its way across the western sky. He'd slept the whole morning away, not eating anything.

"Coming," he called back, his voice scratchier than the old man's. He wasn't sure he could make it downstairs to the main part of the house, but he wasn't about to miss talking to Dean. Who knew when he'd get a chance to call again?

Still in sleep pants and a Philadelphia 76er's shirt that a laundromat dryer had tried to eat once, leaving a pattern of holes up one side, Sam shuffled down the stairs. He could feel how much his hair was sticking up, but he didn't care. He cleared his throat and rubbed at his gummy eyes as he took the phone from Pushkin.

It was olive green and had only a short cord, so Sam was grateful when the man pushed an old kitchen chair where Sam could sit to talk and wandered out of the room.

"Dean?"

"Hey, Sammy!" It wasn't a great connection, but the sound of his brother's too-cheerful voice still made Sam smile, even when he added, "You took forever to get to the phone! Were you taking a dump or something?"

"Nah, just...fell asleep," Sam hedged.

"Oh, huh. Yeah, you sound tired. Up all night reading again, you little geek?"

Sam hummed in response. As desperately as he wished his brother was there with him, he didn't want Dean to know he didn't feel good or he'd feel guilty the whole time they were gone. They couldn't come back anyway, not when they were in the middle of a hunt.

Almost on cue, Sam could hear Dad's voice in the background. "I got it, Dean. We've gotta go."

Dean muttered something, then said, "I gotta go, kiddo. Dad says 'hi.'"

"Yeah, yeah, I heard." Sam rubbed his eyes again. He just had a little bug. There was no reason to cry like a baby to Dean, who was out there saving lives. "Be careful, 'kay?"

"Always am. See ya, bro!"

Then he was gone and Sam's head hurt and his throat hurt and he had to walk up the stairs again and he was really worried he'd start to cry before he got there.

He didn't realize he was just sitting there until Mr. Pushkin gently took the phone out of his hand and told him he was welcome to come down to the basement where it was nice and cool.

"Don't go in the basement with the creepy old guy" warred with "nice and cool" in Sam's mind for all of a minute before he agreed.

It turned out it was nice and cool, and there was a really comfortable couch for Sam to lie on. Mr. Pushkin brought him a great big glass of cold water and Sam discovered he was incredibly thirsty.

He also discovered that his landlord was a brilliant and fascinating man. Born in Russia, he'd come to the United States to get an education in the then relatively new field of genomic microbiology and had never left, not wanting his research constantly controlled by the government. Late in his career, while working at Texas A and M University, he'd encountered a chupacabra. Much more open-minded about the existence of cryptids than his colleagues, he'd studied its DNA. And suddenly, he found himself working as a resource for Hunters.

"I know so little," he admitted. "Samples degrade so much faster than for viderids." The word 'viderid' was one he'd coined himself, simply referring to any living corporeal entity that was not a cryptid. "And I am running out of time."

"Time for what?" Sam asked, confused. "Do you work for somebody that needs you to finish?"

The old man smiled ruefully. "No, nothing so prosaic. It's just that I did not get started until I was old, and I have reason to believe I won't be here much longer." When Sam protested that he seemed pretty healthy (for an old geezer, though he was too polite to add that), he showed Sam a bruise on the back of one wrist that was nearly black in color. "I barely bump against anything and my skin just tears. A few months ago, it was much more resilient, and when physiological signs of aging suddenly increase, a body is likely near death."

While Sam did his best to follow along, Mr. Pushkin explained that every cell in our body has a DNA strand with something called telomeres on its ends. "Cells don't last that long, so they divide and make duplicates of themselves when they get close to the end," Pushkin explained, drawing rounded shapes in the air. "But every time a cell divides, those telomeres are the tiniest bit shorter – and that is what causes aging."

The scientist went on to coax Sam into eating popcicles and drinking juice and even taking some pills. And he talked about alleles and the differences between phenotypic and genetic mutations and a whole lot of other things that Sam didn't understand until Sam fell asleep again.

Sam stared at his hands again. Instinct and experience agreed – such a rapid change probably meant that he was dying. The fascinating Mr. Pushkin had been right that he wasn't long for the world and there was no way he'd had as rapid a decline as Sam was seeing now. Maybe Dean was acting so weird lately because he sensed it too. It would be just like him to not tell Sam something so huge, wanting to protect him somehow. Maybe –

The ring of Sam's phone startled him out of his reverie and he answered it mindlessly, snapping into hunter mode when Kevin explained his dream.

His conversation with Crowley only frustrated him. He jotted down the nonsense rhyme, wondering if the demon was messing with him for his own amusement. But Kevin had said there was weight behind the words somehow, though he couldn't explain it, and Sam trusted his word. Not only was he a prophet, he also had good instincts.

Chewing on his thumbnail, Sam looked up the 'one for sorrow, one for joy' nursery rhyme, which supposedly explained the portents of any different number of magpies (or crows, depending on what version you found) sitting in one tree meant. Of course, there were tons of versions but the oldest he found made a shiver run down his spine when he read:

Eleven for health

Twelve for wealth

Thirteen as wicked as the devil himself.

Sam started to cough and hadn't even caught his breath when, in spite of the clear sky outside, the tornado sirens went off.

* * *

AN: Ornithomancy is exactly what Sam looked up – supposedly predicting future events or luck based on the activities or number of certain birds.

Colby's girl: I'm always quick to steal borrow great ideas from readers and I loved Hubba Bubba. I also love that you thought of copper plumbing right away. I honestly didn't until after I'd chosen the weakness, then I was like, dang, where are they supposed to get that?! LOL. I'm afraid I didn't resolve anything yet, but it's coming soon!

Jenjoremy: I can't do spooky or gross for very long before it somehow turns into funny or absurd! And I just can't help myself with the mental eye candy sometimes. Wouldn't it be fun to have the guys chasing a group of weird-shaped giants for a few episodes or even a season?

Janice: Well, hello! Sometimes those creepy sections just kind of show up when I'm writing. It's kind of like trying to steer a herd of cats sometimes. (Wait, no, no, bad muse! The story wasn't supposed to go that direction!) Also, your comment made me snort coffee out of my nose and you know very well why.

ncsupnatfan: Thanks! Help (maybe) came from a very different source. It is a lot of fun to read speculation and more than once I've taken ideas from the readers' comments, even making changes to the stories in light of something interesting or fun. I feel so bad for the guys too. We didn't see Dean here, but he's got his own challenges going on at the moment!

Timelady66: Thanks! The shirtlessness was completely gratuitous and I'm not even sorry. Hehe. The guys are both working in their respective areas of expertise, and it looks like they will definitely not have to wait until midnight for everything to start happening.

Natylop: Nah, you're always nice! Very nice guess – we got at least a little bit of Crowley in this one. I was going to do it from his point of view but Kevin seemed like a better fit for some reason. I don't think you're missing anything as you usually catch what's going on really early – it's just a strange and convoluted story. LOL

muffinroo: Unusual restraint, huh? Heh. Stay tuned! This chapter also (in my opinion) is kind of cliffie-light, but maybe you'll think different. I may have to use "humbug infestation." It definitely sounds like something Dean would say.

Kathy: I agree completely on wondering why Dean doesn't have something covering Baby's seats most of the time given how obsessed he is with "her." I had to deactivate Zeke so to speak to make it more dramatic and hard to fight off Humbaba and company. One thing's for sure – things about to get even more hairy and nothing will come easy!