Not The Demons You're Looking For - (24 Parts)

[Aprilcot]

*smiles at last two sentances but then feels desperation instead*

Please don't say Dean kills Sammy?!

That's just evil!!

I will cry, Sammy is MINE!!!!!!!! *throws a little temper tantrum*

Sorry bout that... but you cannot kill Sammy otherwise I will be this...

I love your writing, you never know what's going to happen next, and you never dissapoint

MORE!!!!!!!!!

[W.I.N.]

*smiles at last two sentances but then feels desperation instead*

Please don't say Dean kills Sammy?!

That's just evil!!

I will cry, Sammy is MINE!!!!!!!! *throws a little temper tantrum*

Sorry bout that... but you cannot kill Sammy otherwise I will be this...

I love your writing, you never know what's going to happen next, and you never dissapoint

MORE!!!!!!!!!

Don't worry, sweet pea. This fic is set at the end of Season 2 and the show is well into its fifth season. Dean hasn't killed Sammy yet.

~W.I.N.

[Aprilcot]

Whew!!!

You had me going there for a moment!! lol

[W.I.N.]

Heh, no worries. I think half of fandom had a nervous breakdown waiting to see what Dean would do after THAT particular revelation.

The sad part is, far WORSE things have happened to the boys in the meantime...

~W.I.N.

Whew!!!

You had me going there for a moment!! lol

[Aprilcot]

AAAWWWWWWW!!!!!!

I just wanna hug them, even Dean! he is a kickass, but hey, everyone is at times!

Sammy is still mine though!

[LOSTfreak]

You're too good at tugging on my heart strings. Thank you for another beautiful chapter! I'm a horrible person for saying this, but I love when Dean gets so anguished. He's such a closed up person that it's a real treat when he finally lets some emotion out.

[Lady Blessington]

Gah.

The Andy POV. The handful of jellyfish. The rabid-wolf-taming. The tissue-passing. The handful of jellyfish. Yes, it deserved to be in there twice.

[W.I.N.]

AAAWWWWWWW!!!!!!

I just wanna hug them, even Dean! he is a kickass, but hey, everyone is at times!

Sammy is still mine though!

LOL

You may find you have competition there.

You're too good at tugging on my heart strings. Thank you for another beautiful chapter! I'm a horrible person for saying this, but I love when Dean gets so anguished. He's such a closed up person that it's a real treat when he finally lets some emotion out.

I'm a horrible person too, in that case. Dean just hurts so pretty... *cough*

Yeah. Going to hell.

The only way to get Dean to admit to anything is to push him until he breaks, or to mind-control him, apparently.

Gah.

The Andy POV. The handful of jellyfish. The rabid-wolf-taming. The tissue-passing. The handful of jellyfish. Yes, it deserved to be in there twice.

Hee! I quite liked that line myself. I would NOT want to blow my nose in a jellyfish. Can you imagine how much that would sting?

Glad you're liking it.

~W.I.N.

[Tari]

Sorry, there will be no intelligent feedback from me today (ever? ) because Dean is just so freaking adorable that I'm all gooey!!!!!! PLEEEEEEEASE can I borrow him?? Just for a little??

[W.I.N.]

Sorry, there will be no intelligent feedback from me today (ever? ) because Dean is just so freaking adorable that I'm all gooey!!!!!! PLEEEEEEEASE can I borrow him?? Just for a little??

Hee! He's not mine to lend out, alas. Would that he were!

I'm glad you liked it!

~W.I.N.

Okay, folks, I am sorry to do this, but life is crazy, what with Christmas Eve looming and all that. I have to put the story on hiatus until next week, Monday or thereabouts.

I do this to protect the quality and integrity of the writing, I swear! When I start up again I will do my level best to keep up the once-a-day frequency that I was maintaining before.

Thank you for bearing with me thus far!

~W.I.N.

Mod Note: Merged posts ~Mute

[ID2006]

sad day... I'll try to survive. Hope you enjoy the holidays and that your muse gives you plenty of ideas for this over the break.

[Fae]

happy holidays! thanks for making us happy with the delicious story!

[Lady Blessington]

I'll miss you W.I.N.! And Sam and Andy and Dean and damn, have you been posting for three weeks now? I'm SO spoiled! And I look forward to extorting more fic through selective use of bribes and/or karate being spoiled some more when RL settles down some. Hope there are lots of cookies and evergreens and special people in your Christmas, and lots of snow that you don't have to shovel.

Mad

[youkaineko]

Hope you have a very merry Christmas I will miss very much this fic until afterwards, though (of course, I only read it for 2 days, so waiting just under a week isn't as....depressing for me...yet) It will be a great birthday present to see a new chapter

[obsessed]

Mmm, this was adorable. Late comment, but it's the thought that counts, right? Happy Holidays, and hope work goes well.

[W.I.N.]

Aaaaand we're back! A full day earlier than I thought, even!

This is the beginning of the end, folks. Including today, there are four, maybe five chapters left. Also, I am very, very mean to Dean in them. Enjoy.

~W.I.N.

*****

Part 19

Dean wasn't sure how long he slept. What he was sure of was that he was running a fever, which meant that Sam was right (again), and that he was never going to hear the end of it. The only thing that sucked worse than being sicker than the proverbial dog was having Sam be right about how sick he was. He couldn't remember feeling this bad in years, at least not from something that wasn't rooted in the supernatural. He'd broken bones, had more than his fair share of concussions, been electrocuted and nearly died, had had pretty much every manner of injury you could think of doing a job like this, but illness was something that just didn't happen to him. If he'd had the energy, he would have felt kind of insulted at being so very thoroughly knocked on his ass by a virus. He'd had colds, of course, and they had an annoying habit of morphing into sinus infections (and Sam was right about that too, damn him), but he usually managed to shake them off without too much trouble. This whole business of having to go to bed before it was even dark out was a lot for his pride to take.

He dozed on and off, plagued with fever-dreams that had him wandering in circles in the dark, trying frantically to find Sam, who he was sure had been with him only moments before. Other times he was ten years old again, still looking for Sam, whom he'd lost in a forest. Every time, though, he grew more and more frightened, convinced that there was something evil waiting for them both not far away, and as long as he wasn't with Sam he couldn't protect him. After the fourth time he came awake with a start, sweat drenching his borrowed pajamas as well as the sheets, heart hammering, he forced himself up, sitting on the edge of the bed, breathing as hard as if he'd just run ten miles. Andy slipped into the room just as he tried to tug off the pajama top, and hurried over.

“Hey, you shouldn't be up just yet.”

He shook his head, regretted it when the room swam. “Dot gettig up. Too hot.” He fumbled with the buttons, swore under his breath, sneezed wetly into his hands. “HHISHOO!”

“Bless. If I help, do you promise not to rip my arms out of their sockets?”

Dean looked up at him, felt his face break into a grin in spite of himself. “Ab I thad bad?”

“Pretty much,” Andy took his cue, unfastened the buttons and helped him out of the damp fabric. He nudged Dean gently back onto the bed, and his expression was so like Sam's —all focussed and worried— that Dean decided not to fight him on it. The raging headache was something of a motivating factor, too. Andy pressed more Tylenol into his hand, handed him a glass of water, watched expectantly until he swallowed all of it. “Well, you're not being nearly as difficult as Sam said you might, so I suppose I should be thankful.”

“Sbartass. I'b goig to kill hib.” He turned his head to sneeze into the crook of his elbow, his hands being otherwise occupied with the water and Tylenol. “HHEISHH!”

“Bless. Always with the violence. Bad for the blood pressure, you know. Hang on,” he disappeared through the door for a few moments, returned with a wet facecloth and perched next to Dean. “Don't fight me on this, 'kay?” He folded the cloth in half, then in half again, then carefully placed it on his forehead. “It'll help keep your fever down, keep your brain from boiling like an egg.”

Dean squirmed a bit as water trickled into his hair, but he had to admit it felt good to have something counteract the heat and headache, and he felt himself relax with a soft sigh. He didn't even bother moving away when Andy picked up the washcloth again and wiped the sweat from his face, although he did mutter about the cold.

“It's meant to be cold. Hold still.” Andy worked the washcloth down over his neck and shoulders, trying to keep the fever at bay. “Didn't anyone ever do this for you before?”

“Sab, sobetibes.”

“I'm guessing you don't cooperate nearly as nicely with him.”

“He's dot as good with his hads,” he said, enjoying Andy's furious blush and look of discomfiture. He laughed, immediately regretted it as his lungs protested. “You bight be eved bore of a girl thad he is. Relax. I'b kiddig. Jeez.”

“Stop talking. You're making my throat hurt just listening to you.”

“Jusd l-ligke S-Sab... HEPTSCHUH! Hih... HEKSCHUH!”

“Bless. Please try to sleep. Sam will kill me if I let you get any worse, and while he's not as scary as you, he's still like three feet taller than me.”

It sounded like a pretty good idea, all told. He let his eyes close, felt Andy pull the blankets back up, and leave the washcloth folded over his eyes. Part of him was still protesting that he was fine, that he didn't need any of this, that he should probably be sucking it up and going to help Sam, but the rest of him just wanted to become part of the bed and never move again. He didn't hear Andy leave, didn't even realize when the Tylenol kicked in again and let him fall asleep.

Andy came and went like a ghost. Not the nasty vengeful-spirit type of ghost, thank goodness, but more like Casper-the-friendly-ghost, all helpful and considerate. Mostly he left Dean alone, but every so often he'd nudge him awake to take more Tylenol, and once he made him sit up and drink a whole mug full of some nasty-tasting lemon-flavoured crap, which actually felt pretty good going down. The fever spiked later in the evening, and Andy started the whole process with the washcloth again while Dean sweated and cursed under his breath, his chest tight with congestion, unable to find a comfortable spot in the bed.

“Sam told me I should let him know if you got worse. Are you sure you don't want me to call him?”

He shook his head. “Dothig he cad do. It's fide.”

“Fine isn't the word I'd use. You sound like a nineteenth-century sanatorium.”

“Your bedside madder sugks,” he wheezed, turned to sneeze into his pillow. “HPKSHH!”

“Bless. And I never said I was Florence Nightingale. Go back to sleep.”

He did slide back into a restless sleep after that, plagued by more nightmares, barely aware of when Andy came in to check on him, tossing uncomfortably and wishing very hard that every part of his body didn't ache quite so much. Reality blurred into his dreams, people and faces appearing and disappearing with alarming regularity. Once he thought he caught sight of his father standing at the foot of the bed, which shocked him so thoroughly that he was on his feet and on the other side of the room before he realized it wasn't real, heart hammering against his ribs, sweat trickling down the sides of his face. He caught himself on the wall, suddenly light-headed, barely kept himself from falling over before he made it back to the bed. Awesome. This was going really well. He collapsed back onto his pillow, coughing and generally praying for a quick death. Dead people didn't feel this crappy, he was sure of it. He threw an arm over his face, willing himself back to sleep, and eventually his thoughts stopped spinning out of control and sank into darkness.

The next thing he knew he was back at Lesley's, standing on the front lawn, the rain pelting down in sheets.

“I know you're here!” he yelled, eyes scanning the area. “Come on out!”

There was a faint tremor of laughter, but the yellow-eyed demon stayed frustratingly invisible. Dean broke into a run, searching outside the house, screaming at the yellow-eyed bastard to show himself, to quit running and hiding like a pussy, the rain all but blinding him. A flash of light came from one of the windows, and his blood ran cold as he realized that it must have broken through Sam's defenses, that it was even now in the house. He sprinted toward the front stairs, taking them two at a time, and threw himself against the door, shouldering it open. The baby was wailing at the top of its lungs, and above the high keening he heard the sound of a woman shrieking in terror. He made it halfway up the stairs to the nursery when he was driven back by a wall of flame, and he threw a hand up in self-defence, kept trying to force his way past the flames, to no avail.

“Sam!” he shouted, blinded by the fire. “Sam!”

He came awake with a jolt, nearly knocking over Andy, who'd materialized at his side somehow without his ever realizing it. “Woah! Easy, there. It's a bad dream, that's all,” Andy put out a hand to steady him. “It's okay.” Before Dean could react, he put his hand up to feel his forehead. “Jesus, you're burning up. How are you even upright?”

He sucked in a painful breath, trying to sort out what was nightmare and what reality, became aware that he was shaking as though he was palsied. “We have to go.”

“What? No.” Andy tried to push him back down onto the bed. “You're delirious. You have a fever, and we don't have to go anywhere, I promise. It's just the fever making you not think straight, okay? Fever. Lie back down, please. Please!”

He threw off the covers, swung his legs over the side of the bed, leaned heavily on his hands, head down as he fought aside a wave of dizziness. “Doh, I'b okay. Okay, I'b dot exactly okay, but I'b dot delirious. Help be up. We have to go, trust be od this.”

“Okay, no. A minute ago you were out of your mind, raving about demons and fire and yelling for Sam. You also nearly broke my nose with your flailing. You're sick. You need to stay put.”

He shook his head, frustrated. “You're dot listedig. Sobethig's wrogg, I cad feel it.”

Andy shoved at him ineffectually. “Please don't make me whammy you back into bed. I want to keep living, and the minute you're back on your feet you're going to rip my liver out past my tonsils.” When Dean ignored him he tried a different tack. “Okay, okay. Please please please just don't get up,” he wheedled. “I'll go get the cordless phone from the bedroom, and you can call Sam and he'll tell you he's fine. How about that?”

Dean let his head sink into his hands. “Okay. Just... hurry up.”

Andy scrambled out of the room, and Dean heard him picking up the phone and dialling. There was a pause. “Hey, Sam? It's Andy. Yeah, look,” he came back into the room, “uh, Dean kind of... no, no he's fine. He just... he got worried, so I thought I'd call so you can talk to him, okay? … Yeah, okay. Hang on, I'll give him the phone.” He handed the receiver to Dean. “He's fine.”

“Sab?”

“Dean, what's wrong?” Sam sounded worried.

“You okay?”

“I'm fine. It's taking longer than I thought to get things secured here. Seriously, are you okay?”

“Yeah. Look... sobethig's dot right. I'be got a bad feelig, ad I hate it whed I get bad feeligs, it dever beads adythig good. Are you dearly dode?”

“What do you—” there was a pause, and Dean heard something in the background that he couldn't quite identify. “Dean, I have to call you back.”

“Sab? Sab! What's goig od? Sab, adswer be! Sab!” he broke into a fit of coughing, and when he caught his breath all he could hear on the other end of the line was a muffled shout.

Then the line went dead.

Dean almost dropped the phone in his haste to get up. “Addy! We have to go dow!”

*****

[obsessed]

... you are an amazing writer.

Hope your holidays treated you well. :DDD

[Lady Blessington]

YAYYYY!!!

I'm gonna miss this fic so much. It's deeply good.

I loved Dean's confusion in this chapter and his dizzy sweaty panic. Casper!Andy freaking stole my heart. The cool cloth... the phone call to Sam... the forehead feel? Awesome. And sneezes still!!

[crazy_cat_girl]

This chapter was amazing! Poor Dean fighting that fever and the weakness and the dizziness...

And now he's going to go try and save Sam!

I love Andy in this, too. He's freaking adorable.

Love it!

[iluvsneezes]

Omg, that was so exciting!! I can't wait to find out what happens next.

[W.I.N.]

... you are an amazing writer.

Hope your holidays treated you well. :DDD

Thank you!

My holidays were nice, but spent mostly at work. Hope yours treated you well too!

YAYYYY!!!

I'm gonna miss this fic so much. It's deeply good.

I loved Dean's confusion in this chapter and his dizzy sweaty panic. Casper!Andy freaking stole my heart. The cool cloth... the phone call to Sam... the forehead feel? Awesome. And sneezes still!!

Thank you! I'm really glad the fic is working out. (Jesus it turned out long, though!) Andy is turning into a real sweetheart on me. I'm kind of conflicted, now, because I know how it all turns out for him, and I'm even sadder than I first was.

I've managed to have only one chapter with no sneezing at all in it. I'm quite proud of myself. Unfortunately, it's the next chapter.

This chapter was amazing! Poor Dean fighting that fever and the weakness and the dizziness...

And now he's going to go try and save Sam!

I love Andy in this, too. He's freaking adorable.

Love it!

Yeah, Andy really kind of got sweet there. I dunno what happened, but I suspect it's because he's a good kid at heart.

Poor Dean. I am really, really mean to him. Of course he's going to go save Sam, it's what he does.

Omg, that was so exciting!! I can't wait to find out what happens next.

Thank you! I'm looking forward to wrapping up the story, although I'm a little sad it's coming to an end, too. I spent a whole month with this story, it feels like an old friend.

~W.I.N.

[LOSTfreak]

An update! I wasn't expecting this until Monday. You're a seriously awesome person! Sorry, I just woke up 5 minutes ago, haven't had any coffee yet, and can't think of anything intelligent to say. I love when Dean gets tortured. The next chapters will most likely make me just as ecstatic as the previous ones with the promise of being mean to Dean. Poor baby boy. I feel so bad for him.

[Tari]

I think I love you *nodnods seriously*

[W.I.N.]

An update! I wasn't expecting this until Monday. You're a seriously awesome person! Sorry, I just woke up 5 minutes ago, haven't had any coffee yet, and can't think of anything intelligent to say. I love when Dean gets tortured. The next chapters will most likely make me just as ecstatic as the previous ones with the promise of being mean to Dean. Poor baby boy. I feel so bad for him.

Yeah, I actually got my act together and got a few new chapters written. I have enough of a buffer now that I'm pretty sure I'll be able to post all the final chapters in quick succession. I'm almost done, not sure if the last part is going to need to be split into two or not.

I feel bad for Dean too, but apparently that hasn't prevented me from doing truly atrocious things to him anyway.

I think I love you *nodnods seriously*

Aww, shucks!

I'm glad you liked it!

~W.I.N.

[W.I.N.]

And ever onward, faithful readers!

I am having a bloody fight to the finish with what looks like it'll be the last chapter of this thing. I am very unhappy with it, but hopefully I will have it wrestled into submission by the time it's time to post it.

This is the ONLY chapter with no sneezing, 'cause it's from Sam's POV and he's not with Dean. I'm really sorry, but I couldn't make the story work otherwise.

Thanks for all the lovely feedback! It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

~W.I.N.

*****

Part 20

In spite of his assurances to Andy, Sam wasn't sure at all about leaving Dean behind. He kept telling himself that it was just a cold, that it wasn't even the first time he'd been sick. Far from it. Dean specialized in sinus infections. It was just that Sam hadn't seen him this sick since his last year of high school, when hunting and final exams had taken their toll and confined him to his bed for a week, where he'd driven both John and Sam to distraction. Dean was a terrible patient at the best of times, and he'd been bored, feverish and irritable, until finally John had dragged him to a clinic where they'd prescribed heavy-duty antibiotics to clear up the infection, and he'd finally been able to go back to school. Since then? Sam could count on the fingers of one hand the times he'd seen Dean get so much as a sniffle, and although he had no way of knowing what had happened in the four years he was away at Stanford, he was pretty sure that Dean hadn't been sick during that time either.

He hesitated, debated with himself, finally decided that Dean would be more annoyed with him for staying and mother-henning him while leaving a civilian in danger. If anything came up in the meantime, he could count on Andy to call him, he was quite sure of it. Andy was a reliable kid, and even if he was a little wet behind the ears, taking care of someone with a cold wasn't exactly rocket science, even if it was Dean. So he left Andy with a couple of last-minute instructions on how to deal with Dean at his worst, most of which was friendly advice not to let himself be bullied, and slid behind the wheel of the Impala, pushing back the seat to accommodate his longer legs. Dean would bitch, but then Dean always bitched when he so much as touched his beloved baby, so that would be nothing new.

The rain had redoubled, and Sam was pretty sure there ought to be a flood warning in effect. How on earth could it rain non-stop for two days at this rate? It wasn't natural. Actually, come to think of it, it probably wasn't natural. At this point, he was past feeling fear about the whole impending demon-induced-doom thing, and the thought just depressed him. God, what a week this was turning out to be. He parked the car outside of Lesley's house, pulled his jacket over his head and made a dash for the front porch. He stood, dripping water, and shook his head like a wet dog before ringing the doorbell.

Lesley pulled open the door seconds later. She'd pulled her hair up into a messy bun at the nape of her neck, and her hands and the cuffs of her pants were white with salt. “You're back! Thank God. You're by yourself?”

Sam bit back a sigh. Maybe one of these days someone would take him seriously without his big brother to back him up. “Yeah. Dean's pretty sick, and Andy said he'd keep an eye on him for me.”

“Right. He was in pretty bad shape before. Will he be okay?” She stood back, opening the way for him, and he stepped in, noting the line of salt across the threshold immediately.

“Yeah, I think so. If he's not better by tomorrow I'm taking him to a clinic. Uh... you started already. That's good. But we should spread the salt thicker.”

“I ran out.” Lesley looked stricken, and Sam grinned.

“Are you kidding? Dean and I stockpile the stuff. I'll get it from the car.”

He brought in two of the large bags of rock salt they kept in the trunk, not unaware of how odd it must look to an outsider that two of the things they were always sure to have on them were rock salt and lighter fluid. Then there were the dry matches (always a necessity in case the Zippo lighter was lost or out of commission for some reason), and the veritable arsenal of weaponry on top of it all. There was a reason, he thought wryly, that they kept most of it in a secret compartment under the main compartment of the trunk.

Steven was sprawled on the living room floor, pushing a toy train around on the carpet and narrating what appeared to be a complex story to himself about what the train was doing. He looked up as Sam came in. “Mom says you're going to play a game with us.”

Sam put down the two bags of salt. “Uh, yeah, sure. Do you like digging in the sandbox, Steven?”

Steven shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. It's raining, though.”

“Do you have a shovel?”

“Yeah. Mom keeps them in the closet.”

“Okay, well, your mom has given us permission, just this once, to play like there's a sandbox in the house.” That caught the boy's interest.

“In the house?”

“That's right. Only we're going to do it with salt instead of sand, and there are a couple of really, really important rules, or else we have start over. Are you good at following rules?”

The kid gave him a solemn nod. “Uh-huh. My teacher says I'm really good at it.”

“Awesome. How about we go get your shovel and get started, then? We'll have a race with your mom, see who can get done first.”

Steven scrambled to his feet, excited at the prospect of being allowed to make a mess inside the house with his mother's blessing. He showed Sam to the hall closet, where there was an assortment of plastic pails and shovels in bright yellows, reds and greens. The kind of stuff regular kids took to the park in order to dig in the sandbox, the kind they took to the beach and built sand castles with before jumping into the salt waves and building up an appetite for the sandwiches their parents packed in a picnic basket. Sam fought down the twinge of guilt as he filled a yellow bucket with rock salt and showed Steven how to painstakingly pour a salt line across the door thresholds, how to make sure every windowsill was properly covered in salt, leaving no room for a supernatural being to cross over.

“Okay, Steven. You're in charge of this section,” Sam said, lending as much solemnity to his voice as possible. “I am going to go see how your Mom's getting on, and then I have to finish up the game with some pictures, but you're doing the most important part here, so we're counting on you to finish it all, got it?”

Steven nodded, brown eyes staring earnestly up at him. “Is Dean going to come back and play with me too?”

Sam quirked a smile. “No, I'm afraid not. Dean's pretty sick, so he's in bed resting.”

“Okay.” Obviously being sick in bed was something Steven had no trouble wrapping his mind around, and Dean had already been sick when they'd been there earlier that day.

He trotted upstairs, found Lesley in Dylan's room, liberally spreading what was left of her bag of salt along the windowsill in the bedroom. Dylan was awake and cooing in his crib, kicking his feet in that odd frog-like way that small babies have. He really was cute, Sam had to admit, pausing to smile into the crib. Dylan's small fists came up, waved in the air, tiny fingers stretching up toward the mobile.

“How's it coming?”

She straightened, smoothed out her sweater, heedless of the white streaks she left on the material. “Uh, fine, I guess. You? Where's Steven?”

“Still playing with the salt in the living room. I'm going back down in a second. I've had an idea, though. You must have water-based paints, right? For Steven? Gouache paint?”

She frowned. “Yes. Why?”

He smiled sheepishly. “I thought of a way not to wreck your floors. I have to paint some symbols, something that'll trap the demon if it gets in. Where do you keep the paint?”

“In the studio in the back room. There's a small pine cabinet. Do you want me to show you or can you find it?”

“I think I can manage, thanks. I brought you an extra bag of salt.” He left the bag leaning in the doorway, hurried back down the steps, pausing to make sure Steven was still safe and cheerfully scooping salt onto the floor by the back door. He even managed not to feel too guilty about passing on the salt-the-threshold game to a new generation. With any luck, this would be the only time Steven and his family would ever have to play that particular game.

Painting the devil's traps took a lot longer than Sam anticipated. Normally he had Dean to help him with this stuff, and by the time he'd finished with the downstairs he had decided that he'd never known a house to have so many freaking windows. His knees were bruised and aching, his back felt as though it was on fire, and he had to stop and crack his neck every few minutes to prevent his whole spine from seizing up. This definitely wasn't a job for someone of his height. It was well past dark, and Lesley had long since stopped what she was doing to get Steven fed, bathed, and put to bed, clad in blue footie pajamas with —what else? Sam grinned to himself— trains on them. That meant that he was left to finish up the prep work on his own, and while he had no objection to doing it per se, he couldn't shake the uneasy feeling since he'd had since making the decision to come back early and help Lesley turn her house into the equivalent of a demon-proof fortress.

He was putting the finishing touches on the devil's trap on the kitchen floor, his hands covered in red finger paint that looked uncomfortably like blood, painting careful swirls with a child's plastic brush, when his cell phone rang.

“Hey, Sam? It's Andy.”

“Andy?”

“Yeah, look,” the worry was palpable in Andy's voice. “Uh, Dean kind of—”

Anxiety made his chest constrict. “Is he worse?”

“No, no he's fine. He just... he got worried, so I thought I'd call so you can talk to him, okay?” Sam could only imagine the state Dean had worked himself into in order for Andy to call, always worried when his kid brother was out of his field of vision for too long. He sighed, rolled his eyes.

“Okay, why don't you put him on and I'll talk to him? Everything's fine, here, you don't have to worry.”

“Yeah, okay. Hang on, I'll give him the phone.” Sam heard him talking to Dean, his voice tinny and far away. “He's fine.” Dean came on the line, his voice a hoarse croak, barely audible.

“Sab?”

“Dean, what's wrong?” Sam felt his own anxiety ratchet up several notches at his brother's tone.

“You okay?”

“I'm fine. It's taking longer than I thought to get things secured here. Seriously, are you okay?” He didn't like the sound of his brother's voice. Maybe they'd have to get Dean to a doctor before the next day, and mentally he began reviewing what I.D.s they had that were still valid, whether or not they could manage to swing the expense without any insurance to speak of.

“Yeah. Look... sobethig's dot right. I'be got a bad feelig, ad I hate it whed I get bad feeligs, it dever beads adythig good. Are you dearly dode?”

“What do you—” There was a crash from upstairs, the unmistakable tinkle of breaking glass. He heard the baby start to cry, and felt his stomach twist, his blood run cold.

“Dean, I have to call you back.”

He could hear Dean still yelling at him as he sprinted up the stairs, but there was no time to answer. He almost tripped on the landing, staggered off-balance toward Dylan's room, where he saw the window hanging off its shutters, glass littering the floor. A figure stood a few steps past the doorway, its coat buffeted by the wind and rain. Lesley was pressed up against the far wall, clutching Dylan to her chest, trying to twist away.

“No! You can't have him!”

The vision was coming true, same as the others. “Hey! Leave them alone!”

The figure turned, and Sam caught sight of a flash of yellow, a wolfish grin. “Well well well, if it isn't Sammy Winchester. I've been waiting for you.”

*****