Part 2 of series Seventeen

It's damn near a ghost town when Dean rolls in, but there's still a dive bar open, so he pulls into the lot.

He figures he can get the lay of the land, the local gossip, but when he walks in, the place is almost deserted. There's a single patron holding up the bar. He's a little scruffy, with an untidy mop of dark hair, a leather jacket, and he's scribbling something into a battered notebook.

Figures the only other guy in the place would be another hunter.

Now that he thinks about it, the man seems strangely familiar, and then it hits him. "Harris?"

Dean hasn't seen him since he picked Anya up from the bunker. Must be a year, year and a half ago now.

Xander Harris turns when he hears his name. The expression he wears is closed, guarded, but when he sees Dean, his face lights up and his lips spread into a wide grin. "Dean fucking Winchester. Imagine seeing you here."

"Imagine," Dean says, and pulls up a bar stool. A lone bartender approaches, and Dean lifts his chin in greeting and waggles two fingers at him. "Your best whiskey." Then he adds, "Where is everybody? It's Friday night."

The bartender is a big guy, covered in tattoos and dressed in leather. Not someone who scares easy, Dean's guessing. "What, you don't turn on the TV? Pick up a paper?"

"Just passing through," Dean says, though he's seen the news, it's hard to miss. "Weekend in Vegas, you know the drill. So what's the story? Mill closed, everyone left for the big city? No, I got it, nuclear power plant melted down."

Xander lets out a soft snort, but keeps his eyes lowered.

The bartender doesn't look amused. "People died. Lots of people. Department of Wildlife hasn't been able to do shit. So everyone cleared out."

The news talked about a mountain lion, but near as Dean could tell, no one had laid eyes on it.

At least no one who survived, anyway. There was a woman who lived for a few hours, and there was something in one of the police reports Dean dug up that had her raving about a child, but no one took it seriously.

And Dean's seen the crime scene photos. No way that was a mountain lion.

"I'd be careful if I were you," the bartender says. "It's still out there. Hope you're armed."

"Always," Dean says.

As the bartender moves away, Dean turns to Xander. "It's been a while. How's Anya?"

"She's good. Bought a place in Florida. Nice place. I swing by for a bit of R&R when I can."

"So," Dean says, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. "Are you and her..."

"God no," Xander says. "The age gap is pretty significant now—not that it wasn't before—" He sniggers, and Dean figures he must be referring to Anya's previous existence as a thousand-year-old demon. "But that was a long time ago. For me anyway. People change."

The way he looks at Dean, with one eye, the other socket covered with his signature patch, is heated, telling.

Dean might be imagining it. Wishful thinking is a bitch.

He turns his focus to the job. "So what've you got?" Dean waves at Xander's notebook. "I thought werewolf at first, but the pictures are pretty clear it's not. Hearts weren't missing. Pretty clear it's not a mountain lion, either."

"We thought werewolf, too. But I got something the cops didn't." He pulls his phone out of his pocket. "Reliable eye-witness account." He looks up, checks the bartender across the bar, wiping tables that probably haven't been touched all night.

He opens an app and starts a video.

The volume is low, but the picture is clear. There's a girl on the screen, barely 20, if that. There's blood on her face and her shirt is ripped and she's breathing hard. "*It's not a werewolf, or anything else we know about. Xander, we can't stop it. We can't catch it and we can't kill it, and it got Millie, she's dead—"

Xander pauses the video, freezing the girl onscreen in an aura of exaggerated panic. "This is what I know: It's got claws like Freddy Kruger. It appears and disappears like a ghost. And it looks like a kid. Like a little girl. Who's gonna run away from a little girl?"

Xander's anguish seeps out and penetrates Dean's soul. He can feel it. This Millie must have been a close friend. "I'm sorry for your loss," Dean says. "What about this chick?" He indicates the video. "Where's she at?"

The bartender is nowhere to be seen. Xander taps the screen again. The girl in the video starts screaming, and she drops the phone. It lands on the ground with the camera pointing up, and Dean watches as an acheri demon glitches into existence and rips the girl's belly open.

The girl falls onto the phone and everything goes black, but Dean can hear her gurgling as she dies.

He taps the screen to stop it. "Shit," he says.

"I sent them here," Xander says. "I sent them and now they're dead and it's my fault."

"It's the job." Dean wants to know why anyone would send a couple of girls—young girls—on a hunt like this, but he figures that's not what Xander needs to hear right now. "But I know what we're up against. It's a demon. It's called an acheri. Looks like a kid till its ripping your guts out."

There's hope in Xander's expression when he looks up. "You've fought one before?"

"Not for years. They're kinda low in the demon pecking order. Easily controlled by someone with the right mojo. You deal with that person, they go away."

"So we need to find out who benefits if this town is abandoned."

"Bingo," Dean says. "There a decent motel in this town? I'm beat. I wasn't kidding about the weekend in Vegas. I could do with some shut-eye."

---

The lone motel in town has been all but abandoned. The rooms are locked up, but Dean makes short work of a door, and then they've got somewhere to stay.

If he's completely honest, Dean barely knows Xander, but sharing a room is safer than splitting up. It means they've got one room to demon-proof. One doorway to salt, one window.

Out of habit, Dean drops his duffel on the bed closest to the door, then he hits the shower. He's still nursing the results of a three day drunk after his Vegas weekend, and once out of the bathroom, he collapses into bed and he's out.

He wakes in darkness, not really sure at first what roused him, but he's immediately alert. Then he hears it.

There's a sharp scratching sound coming from just outside the room, like knives on glass. Over and over again, claws scrape against the window, and Dean reaches out.

"Harris," he hisses, tapping the mattress of the twin bed only a cabinet's width from his own. "Wake up."

"I'm up." There's a rustling from the direction of Xander's bed, then he goes still. "What the fuck is that? It can't get in, right?"

Dean would have to check the salt lines, but he's guessing the demon wouldn't be fucking with their heads if it could get in. "No. Not yet, anyway."

"What do we do?" Xander sounds genuinely scared. Good. That'll go far to keeping him alive.

"Nothing we can do." Dean's got the demon blade under his pillow, but he's got no idea if it'll even affect the acheri. Maybe if he can get it while it's solid—if it ever even is entirely corporeal. "Wait until it goes away."

"Right," Xander says. "So we're going with the coward offensive. That's something I'm familiar with."

"We're going with the stay alive offensive." Dean counters. "Only thing going out there right now will achieve is us painting the pavement with our guts. We can't help this town if we're dead."

"This town is already screwed," Xander says. "People don't come back when something like this happens."

"Yeah." Dean doesn't know why they would. Maybe once the memory of the horrors here have faded, but this kind of thing tends to stick in people's minds, and the story gets told and retold and then you have a legend.

And then you get tourists.

What seems like hours pass. The sky lightens behind the curtains and birds start singing. Somewhere in the distance a church bell rings. It's probably on a timer.

The scratching stops. Dean sinks back into sleep.

---

Xander's awake when Dean next opens his eyes. Maybe he never went back to sleep.

Dean sits up and rubs his eyes and watches Xander's back. He's got books, piled up on the table and the smell of coffee permeates the room, and is that a box of doughnuts?

"Coffee still hot?" Dean asks.

Xander swings around with—what Dean's coming to think of as—his signature grin. "Just got in. Can you believe there's one of those mobile coffee trucks on the edge of town?"

Dean swings out of bed, and he grabs the coffee cup still in the disposable holder. Its hot, and strong, and black, just the way he likes it.

"Figured you'd need it."

"You figured right. Any sign of the demon?"

"Nothing. I swung by the bar, the bartender is still alive. Don't you think that's weird? One guy still in town, when everyone else is dead or gone?"

It is kind of weird. "Think we should be looking at him?" He rounds the edge of the table and peeks inside the doughnut box. He grabs the one covered in powdered sugar and stuffs as much of it as he can into his mouth.

The way Xander smiles as he watches Dean eat is almost fond, if Dean knows anything about the guy yet. And he knows fond, on Xander's face. It's the same expression he wears when he talks about Anya.

"Maybe? What reason would he have to want the town abandoned, though? It's gotta be killing him to keep the bar open with no customers."

"Why would he keep the bar open at all? I'll bet you a hundred bucks we were the only two in there last night."

Xander grins. Again. "I don't like my odds."

---

It's a little hard to be stealthy when you're the only living people in town. Bonus, it's easy to hide from the only other guy in town when you've got one of you going through the guys trash, and the other on lookout.

Xander drew the short straw, so he's the one in the dumpster out back of the bar, while Dean watches the back entrance and tries to look nonchalant.

"What am I even looking for in here, anyway," Xander gripes, as he rummages through the overfilled dumpster. Figures the trash collectors cleared out with everyone else.

"Anything that seems hinky. Demon-summony. I dunno, maybe he's a witch. Any dead rabbits in there?"

"Smells like something died in here, that's for sure—hang on, I think I got something." His head pops up over the rim of the dumpster, and he's got something clutched in his hand.

"Is that—?"

"Chicken foot," Xander says, flinging it out onto the ground, and then hauling himself out of the dumpster. "I'm calling it. Please tell me that's enough evidence of witchcraft or demon summoning or whatever. I'm done being the trash guy."

"But you're so good at it." Dean takes a step back. "Yeah you need a shower."

"I'm gonna burn my clothes."

"Just take 'em off, leave them in the trash."

Xander smirks. "Most guys'd buy me dinner first."

Dean almost chokes on his tongue. He recovers quickly, though, hiding behind a fake cough. "Yeah yeah, how 'bout we get the job done first, huh?"

"You're the boss. So. What now?"

Dean pulls his gun from the back of his jeans, checks the magazine. "Witch killing bullets. Don't look at me like that, Harris. I know your history, your friends, but those little girls you sent out here are dead because someone summoned a demon."

Xander's face turns white, and his jaw moves like he's chewing on words. Finally, he speaks. "Yeah. I mean, they aren't—they *weren't—'little girls'—"

"Young women with superpowers. Whatever. They weren't hunters. They didn't know what they were up against."

"And I got them killed."

Dean needs to back off. Those women didn't need to die, and maybe Xander had been going up against whatever kind of monsters they breed in California since he was in high school, maybe he looks like a hunter...

But Xander Harris isn't a hunter. He's not like Dean.

"Drop in the bucket compared to the people I've gotten killed over the years."

Xander shakes his head. "No, I should have—"

"You did what you thought was right at the time. We all do, man. And sometimes we fuck up. Sometimes we fuck up real bad. But we gotta keep on going. Save as many as we can."

"There's no one left here to save."

No, there's not. And maybe they should clear out, leave this shitty little town to the demon and the witch that summoned it, but it doesn't track with Dean's sense of justice.

Someone's gotta pay. For the lives lost, for ones who had to leave everything behind to save themselves.

For the girls Xander sent here to die.

"Come on," Dean says. "Job's not done till the monster's dead." He slides a round into the chamber and kicks open the back door of the bar before he barrels through.

---

"Wait. Dean, wait."

It's too late. Dean's already got the guy in his sights. Soon as the door burst open the bartender was moving, and for a big guy, he can move. He jumped the bar and crouched down behind and came back up with a sawed off shotgun.

Dean could drop him, but if he does, the guy might still get off a shot. At this distance, the buckshot will scatter, and Xander is behind him.

"Dean. It's not him." Xander creeps up behind him slowly. At least he knows enough not to spook a man with a gun in his hands. "Look. Look, dammit."

Dean keeps the gun on the bartender as he takes a few steps back to sneak a quick glance at what Xander's trying to show him.

Set into the floor at the threshold of the back entrance, and glistening in the afternoon sunlight, is salt. Protected under glass, filling a channel cut into the floor.

"That's why he's still alive. That's why he's the only one left. If all the doors and windows are like this—it can't get in, right?"

Dean drops his gun, just a fraction of an inch. "You sleep here? You live on the premises?"

The bartender doesn't move. "Upstairs."

"Fuck." Dean drops his gun. "God-fucking-dammit."

The bartender keeps his gun raised. "Talk," he says. "What the hell do you want with me?"

Dean ignores the question. "What's with the chicken feet, man? What were we supposed to think? Last man standing while a demon's taken over the town? It doesn't look good."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" The guy directs the next question to Xander. "What the fuck is he talking about?"

Dean walks up to the bar. It's not the first time he's had a shotgun pointed at him, and it won't be the last. "It's not a mountain lion. There's a demon in this town, and it killed a bunch of people and it drove the rest out. All except for you. And it turns out your bar is basically demon-proof, but you're gonna tell me you didn't know about the demon?"

The guy drops his gun. "Demons?"

Dean rolls his eyes and looks back at Xander, almost forgetting for a moment that it's not Sam behind him and he can't just trust that Xander will do the thing.

But Xander gets it. "Demons are real, we fight demons, and we thought you summoned this demon. Sorry about that."

"Demons?"

It's gonna be one of those days. "Take a seat," Dean says. "And a bottle. Sounds like you're gonna need it."

---

"It belonged to my parents." His name is Dave, and he's three shots in before he stops raving about demons and starts talking about the bar. "Don't remember my dad, he died when I was 3. But Mom kept it going. I've only been in town a few months. Came back when she got sick."

"When did she pass?" Dean asks.

"Three weeks ago."

Right about the time people started dying. Dean drags Xander away from the bar, leaving Dave to his whiskey.

"So here's what I'm thinking. Maybe dad was a hunter. Died on a hunt, wouldn't be the first to leave a wife and kid behind. But before he did, he made sure his family was safe. These are the kind of salt lines you don't need to keep laying down. And I'm willing to bet there's devil's traps and iron hiding all over this place."

"You almost shot him," Xander says. "Over a chicken foot."

"Yeah well. I figure he's been tossing Mom's things. She probably knew some stuff, kept some mojo around just in case."

"Maybe not just in case," Xander says. "You don't think it's weird all this started up when she died?"

Dean shakes his head. "Not weird at all." He heads back to the bar. "Hey, Dave. How you doing, buddy?"

Dave shrugs and throws back another shot.

"Your mom say anything before she passed? Did she ever talk about demons, monsters? Ghosts, maybe?"

"She never talked about anything like that. She was odd, sure, with her crystals and charms and shit. But it was all just new age hippy crap, you know?"

"Yeah, maybe not. You throw some of it out recently? Chicken feet? Crap like that?"

Dave shakes his head. "I think those were my dads. There were some really old boxes in the basement. Mom never let me touch them, but you can't keep that shit forever, right? Hell, I never even knew the man."

"Mind if we take a look downstairs?"

"Knock yourself out," Dave says, throwing back another shot. He doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

---

"You still stink like death," Dean says, as they're making their way down the stairs.

Xander snorts. "I've smelled worse."

It's dark, and the single bare bulb hanging from a beam in the ceiling is caked with dust and doesn't put out much light. The burning dust does a little to mask the stink of garbage still clinging to Xander's clothes, but not much.

"Watch your step," Dean says, as he carefully picks his way over the final, broken stair and onto the concrete floor.

It's clear the basement hasn't been used for much more than storage for years, perhaps even decades. There's the old scent of spirits, of rum and whiskey, spilt and gone sticky and sweet. There are dented beer kegs and old crates scattered around, and Dean pulls out a flashlight and looks into dark corners.

When he finds it, it's not even a corner. There's an entire room, walled off with a door that once must have fit flush into the wall. Maybe it used to be hidden, but now it hangs skewed on rusty hinges and its clear it hasn't closed in years.

Dust lies thick over everything, but one wall is covered in newspaper clippings, faded and yellowed and curled at the edges. Some are old xeroxes of older articles and they're all about the 'mountain lion' that rips up townspeople in a weird series of attacks.

This isn't the first time the town has been abandoned.

At the center, there's a sheet of paper that looks as if it could have been torn from one of Bobby's old lore books. Dean gets up close.

When he was a kid, he remembers sneaking downstairs at Bobby's place, while he was supposed to be sleeping. John and Bobby were in the kitchen, working their way through a bottle of whiskey, and didn't notice Dean as he snagged one of the books off Bobby's desk and scampered back upstairs.

He chose the book at random. He didn't even choose it, he just grabbed the first he could without getting caught. But it was the first lore book he ever opened, the first lore book he ever read, and he read it by flashlight under the covers while Sam slept soundly in the other bed.

It was a book of demonology, and it gave him nightmares, but he remembered, and one of the types of demon in the book was acheri and the sheet of paper in the center of the hunters web of research on the wall is the very page from that book, torn out and pinned up with a single thumbtack, long since rusted.

"Dave's dad was a hunter," Dean says. "He must've figured out a way to keep it trapped, or at bay or something. He obviously didn't kill it but he kept it from massacring the town somehow."

Years ago, 20, 30, someone did the research. They figured out what it was and what had to be done, because 20 or 30 years ago, the town wasn't abandoned, and from the clippings on the wall only a few people were killed.

Dean swings his flashlight around the room that isn't much more than an alcove, or a broom cupboard. Against the back wall, there's a stack of crates, and everything is covered in dust except for a crate-sized section of the floor.

Xander crouches and runs his fingers over the rough concrete. "There's markings here. Paint, or chalk. Here. Help me." He hefts a crate from atop the pile, and makes his way past Dean, through the door hanging off its hinges, and disappears into the gloom.

Some kind of sigil disappears beneath the remaining crates. Dean follows Xander's example and grabs another.

The sigil is painted onto the floor. Paint lasts longer than chalk, which can be rubbed or even weathered away in just a short space of time.

Paint is what you use when you need it to last. Of course that relies on the surface its painted onto lasting, and the concrete floor is rough, bumpy, full of stones.

When the first crates were moved, some of the stones came loose, and the sigil was broken.

"He let it out," Xander says, on his knees again, fingertips in the holes made by the shifted pebbles. "While he was cleaning up, he let it loose."

"You recognize this mark?" Dean says. It's vaguely familiar, some kind of intricate binding rune, but he'll have to look it up to be sure.

Xander shakes his head, but he pulls out his phone. The flash goes off as he takes a picture. "No, but I'll get a friend to take a look at it."

He's got witches among his people, Dean knows, but he'll feel better if he does his own due diligence, so he does the same thing and fires it off in an email to Sam.

"Right," he says, when they're done. "You need a fucking shower. And I could do with some food. We'll hit the gas station on the way back to the motel."

"We'd be safer staying here," Xander says.

He's right, but Dean's gear is at the motel, and once they're inside, it'll be as safe as the bar. "You can stay if you want. Think Dave'll lend you something to wear? Because I wasn't kidding earlier. You need to trash those clothes. Ain't nothing'll get that stink out."

---

While Xander showers, Dean looks over the research Xander left in the room. They're not something Xander could have brought with him, not something you'd find in any old public library.

They had to have come from here, from the local library, or historical society, or museum or the mayor's office or something.

There are maps and newspapers, old ledgers with crumbling covers, and a few books.

One book was written by a local. Probably self-published and with a print run of a dozen or so copies. This one is dog-eared and worn, but the index card in the back pocket has only a handful of stamps, so perhaps it was shuffled about a lot but not lent out, and Dean can understand why, the text inside is as dry as dust, and there's hardly any pictures.

Dean lifts a newspaper and recognizes the book immediately. It's the lore book he read when he was a kid, a more recent edition perhaps, but it's unmistakable.

He opens it up and flicks through the pages and sure enough, the acheri entry has been torn out.

Dean swings around as the bathroom door bursts open. A cloud of steam escapes, and Xander emerges, and his skin is bright red, almost raw looking.

"There are easier ways to boil yourself alive," Dean says.

Xander shudders. "I still feel dirty."

He's standing there in just a towel. He reaches for his bag, rifles through it as Dean puts down the lore book and steps closer.

He risks a sniff. "The death stink has gone." He inhales again. Not only gone, but Dean kinda likes what is there, even if its cheap motel soap mixed with cheaper motel shampoo, and there's a hint of cinnamon that may or may not be Xander himself. "Not bad, Harris."

"Yeah?" Xander seems pleased. "Good, I mean, good that the smell of death is gone." it's impossible to tell if he's blushing because his entire body is still glowing red, but maybe— "You're still sniffing me."

Dean jerks back. "So I am." Now he's blushing, and he doesn't have the excuse of having just gotten out of a scalding shower. "Sorry. You smell nice. I mean, clean. You smell clean."

Xander smirks and pulls a pair of boxer shorts on underneath his towel before dropping it. "You hear back from your people yet?"

"Nah," Dean says as he turns away, giving Xander some privacy. "Been through some of your research, though. I think the stuff we need is probably back at the bar. Should'a grabbed the crap off the walls."

Xander walks into Dean's view, still buttoning his shirt closed. "One of those crates... I didn't think much of it, just looked like old papers. Maybe there's something there."

"If we can find the one he originally used, replace it, make sure Dave knows it's gotta stay, we should be golden. I don't like our chances of finding the guy that summoned the damn thing in the first place. Not after all this time. So we trap the demon again, job done, and we can get the hell out of this town."

---

Back at the bar, Dean and Xander are in the basement again. This time they're rummaging through the crates, picking the ones filled with paperwork. There are stacks of books and paper spread out around them.

Already, they've discarded the boxes filled with old receipts, accounts, tax records. They've narrowed it down to a couple containing obvious hunters research.

Most of it is irrelevant. Dave's dad was a werewolf specialist, by the looks of it. Dean's already figured out that he knew about pureblood werewolves back in the 70's, decades before anyone Dean ever knew had even heard of them. He even went up against the alpha at one point, barely getting away with his life.

Finally, buried at the very bottom of one of the crates, Xander holds up a battered and ancient composition book. "Eureka," he says. "Acheri. Fuck, I fucking hate research."

Dean snorts and reaches for the book. "I dunno, man. There's some valuable shit here. I've got a mind to ask Dave if I can take some of it back to the bunker. Sam'll sort it all out—he loves doing librarian shit."

"That makes one of us," Xander says. "Okay. So what've we got?"

Dean flicks through the book until he sees pictures. "Shit. There's about a dozen different sigils in here. I got no idea which is the right one."

"You mean we have to read?"

"I'll do it," Dean says. "On one condition. You go upstairs. I figure Dave won't begrudge us a bottle or two for cleaning up this mess."

When Xander returns, with a bottle and two glasses, Dean's got a better understanding of what was going on way back then. Looks like Dave's parents had just purchased the bar—it didn't yet have the special demon protections it has now, and the acheri got in. They'd all be dead if Dave's dad hadn't been raised a hunter.

"Thanks," Dean says, taking the glass of booze gratefully. "Dave's dad left the life," he says. "He was trying to settle down, start over with his new wife, start a family. This demon dragged him back in, cos he picked the wrong town to settle in. Poor bastard threw himself right back into it afterward, and it got him killed."

"Did you find it?"

Dean nods. He spreads the notebook out flat on the floor. "This is the one he eventually went with. Tried a bunch of others first, nothing worked. He was just about to give up, take his family and clear out, when he found this one." Dean points at a heavily detailed sigil on one of the final pages in the book. "It worked. Bound the demon, and the attacks stopped. People started coming back into town."

"So we just gotta paint that on the floor, and we're done?"

"There's a whole spell-ritual thing we gotta do, too." Dean peers closely at the book. One of these days he'll accept he's getting older and get himself some reading glasses. "Candles, blood... Urgh. Chicken feet."

"Dumpster chicken feet? Death stench chicken feet? Bags not," Xander says.

"There's gotta be a butcher in town. Maybe they have some in the freezer."

"You think frozen chicken feet are as good as fresh?"

Dean shrugs. "Worth a shot."

---

After raiding the butcher shop for chicken feet, and the hardware store for a fresh can of paint and some brushes, they return to the basement.

The sigil is so intricate, it takes Xander to hold the book and Dean the brush, referring to the book every few brush strokes as Xander follows him around.

Finally, though, it's done. Dean's closing up the paint can when his phone rings.

"Sammy," Dean says. "How you doing?"

"I'm wasted," Sam says. "Been up all night looking for this sigil of yours. I can't find a thing."

Dean looks down at the fresh paint and cringes. "Yeah, sorry Sammy. We got it. Should'a given you the heads up. It's been busy,"

"It's done?" Sam pivots fast from pissed to concerned.

"Not quite. Still got some candles to light, chicken feet to shake. You know the drill... Okay, Sammy. Will do."

He hangs up. "Yeah, you should probably tell your people we got the thing."

"Already done," Xander says. "Emailed them when you were getting the paint."

Dean nods. "Good. Okay, I guess it's candle time." He pulls his zippo out of his pocket and flicks it into flame. "Liga daemonium, non laedere," he chants, as he lights each of the 13 candles placed strategically around the sigil. "Liga daemonium, non laedere."

Once all the candles are lit, he holds out a hand for the next step. Xander slaps a chicken foot into it.

"Eww," Dean says. It's still a little cold, and definitely crispy from the freezer. It crackles as he gives it a shake as he inscribes a pattern over the candles and chants a bit more, before handing the foot back to Xander.

"Well," he says, wiping chicken juice off his hands onto his jeans. "That should do it."

---

"So it's done?" Dave pours whiskey into three shot glasses lined up on the bar. "It's over, then?"

"It's over," Dean says. "We followed your dad's recipe to the letter."

"There was a recipe in one of those boxes?" Xander jokes. "I hope it was for chocolate chip cookies. I love a good chocolate chip cookie."

Dean rolls his eyes, but smirks, and clinks his glass against the other two. "Cheers," he says, as he throws it back.

---

A little drunk—maybe more than a little—Dean and Xander leave the bar some time later. There's a cool mist hanging in the air, and Dean shivers in his jacket.

"I'd offer you mine," Xander says, pulling his own jacket close around him. "But then I'd be cold, and I really don't like the cold." He pauses, head down and watching his feet, as though careful not to trip as he walks. "I could offer you a little body heat, though."

Dean grins to himself. "Yeah?"

Xander lifts his head, looks over at Dean. He stumbles, laughing as Dean grabs on to him before he falls. "Yeah."

"You're drunk," Dean says.

Xander stops walking. "So are you."

Dean grabs onto the front of Xander's jacket, uses him as an anchor as he turns, then pulls himself close. He's about to say something, but the words die in his throat. He can feel the heat of Xander's body through his clothes, the warmth of Xander's breath on his cheek. "Fuck it," he says, and presses his mouth against Xander's.

Xander opens up immediately. He tastes like whiskey and cinnamon gum, and he kisses like he's all in. He wraps his hand around the back of Dean's neck and pulls Dean in closer, so they're connected from chest to knee, and he kisses Dean hard, deep, holding on tight like Dean's a possession.

Maybe it's the drink, but Dean goes weak at the knees. "Come on," he says, pulling away. "Let's get the fuck out of here and into somewhere that has a bed."

"That's a fantastic—" Xander freezes. He goes silent and still, in the middle of a sentence. "There's a little girl in the street."

Dean jerks his head around, and there it is. The acheri, the creepy little fucking acheri, is standing in the road. From a distance, Dean can't see if it's spotted them—

It moves. Fast, like a blur. Dean's head spins, and he wishes he hadn't drunk quite so much, but he's a hunter, trained from childhood to be ready, to respond.

Without much thought, the demon blade is in his hand. He still doesn't know if it'll even work, but it's their last shot, because the damn thing moves faster than they can run, and it's close enough now that Dean can see the claws are out, and it's coming for them.

"Xander, go," Dean shouts, as he rushes the damn thing, and then all he knows is white hot pain as it slices across his belly.

But at the same time, Dean's blade sinks into something solid. The creature sparks and fizzes and glows red, and Dean shoves away from it as it dies.

He falls back, blade still in his hand. It's come away clean, no blood, and that's different. He expects to fall onto the road, but someone catches him. Dean looks up, into a single dark eye. "I told you to get out of here," he says.

"You think I'm gonna leave you to get chopped up by that thing?" Xander shakes his head as he puts Dean back on his feet. "Let me have a look at that."

Dean looks down at himself, fingers searching his belly to assess the damage. "It's not deep," he says. "Might not even need stitches. How are you with a needle and thread?"

"Terrible," Xander says. "So your guts aren't about to fall out onto the pavement? Good. Mind if I make a quick call?"

Dean nods Xander to go on, lets him walk up ahead and breathes, deep. It all happened so fast, and he still can't believe the blade worked, but it did. Dean felt it go in, felt the sparking of the demon as it died.

But the very fact it was there means the sigil, the whole ritual, didn't work. He was so sure—"

"Hey," Xander says into his phone. "Yeah, just one question. Frozen chicken feet still good for magic, or do they have to be... Fresh. Okay. Yeah, thanks. Good to know. Bye."

"It was the fucking chicken foot," Dean spits. "Goddammit."

"But it's dead now, right?" Xander asks.

Dean staggers a little. "Yeah, it's dead." He waves the knife. "Good old Kurdish craftsmanship."

"You saved my life." Xander gets an arm beneath Dean's shoulders, and they make much better time that way. "Let's get you looked at, then we can see what I come up with to repay you, huh?"

Dean laughs, and winces. "Oh god. That hurts. Whatever you decide, just make sure it's low impact."

fin