Dean and Sam moved through the forest taking in its details with honed eyes. Time had passed, and the sun was bleeding shades of pink and orange into the sky as night drew closer. Shadows grew and stretched across the ground and trees, casting the woods into eerie half-light.

As the sky darkened above them, they pressed on through the trees, moving further south, still hoping for some sign or explanation. But they had found no signs, markings, nor talismans, and the only tracks they'd seen had belonged to animals – not demons.

Sam followed a few steps behind his brother, who, in contrast to last night, was being remarkably quiet. After the earlier argument Sam would have preferred Dean's incessant rambling to the pervading silence he was now being treated to under pretense of hunting. He had tried to pull Dean into conversation, but after a few failed attempts, Sam finally resigned himself to the unnerving silence.

This wasn't the first time Sam and Dean had fought while on a hunt, and it certainly wouldn't be the last. Arguing and hunting was simply a way of life between the two, which led Sam to believe that the current unease he felt had more to do with the hunt rather than the tension between Dean and himself. A short while ago, a feeling of not-right had settled over Sam, and it had been dogging his steps ever since.

Sam glanced over his shoulder, scanning the trees at his back and looking for…he wasn't sure what, but seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he turned his gaze forward again. He had this nagging sense, familiar almost, like he'd forgotten to lock the door on the Impala or he'd picked up the wrong ingredients for a spell or—

"Hey, Dean?" Sam called out. Dean made no reply, but Sam continued regardless, "Do you ever get that feeling that you've missed your turn and now you're suddenly driving the wrong way in oncoming traffic?"

Dean's steps stuttered, and he gave Sam a startled look over his shoulder. "Dude, what the hell have you been doing in my car?"

Confusion stole across Sam's features as he ineloquently replied, "Huh?"

"If you can't manage to read a big red sign that says 'Wrong Way', then I'm revoking your driving privileges." The expression on Dean's face suggested that Sam had committed some form of sacrilege in his book.

Sam finally realized that Dean had taken his statement a little too literally, and he glared at the back of Dean's head. "Dude, you're missing the point. I'm just talking about that feeling you get when you did something wrong or forgot to do something."

"If you've damaged my car somehow…" Dean trailed off, letting the threat hang in the air.

Dean was obviously still missing the point, and Sam guessed he should have known better than to use Dean's beloved car in any kind of example. He sighed in exasperation. "Dean, would you forget the car for a minute? I'm being serious here."

"Seriously?" Dean said, mockingly throwing the word back at Sam as he stopped and turned to glare at him. "I think you should be paying a little more attention to what we're doing now." Dean gave him one last, stern look before turning around and continuing his march through the woods.

Sam resisted the urge to roll his eyes, knowing the gesture would go unseen by Dean, and slowly trudged after his brother. His steps felt heavy, each one causing his sense of wrongness to increase. After a few more minutes of walking, that insistent nagging feeling became almost unbearable. What had started out like someone blowing on the back of his neck, little more than an annoyance, was now more akin to fingers thumping the back of his head. If he weren't able see his brother in front of him to rule out the possibility, he would have suspected Dean of doing exactly that.

Then, like a flash of lightening had illuminated the landscape, Sam had a brief moment of clarity, a sudden sense of certainty that he and Dean were without question heading the wrong way. Sam stopped dead in his tracks.

Intellectually, Sam knew there was no reason to feel that way. They had already searched the northern part of the woods and found nothing, and all the evidence they'd found so far suggested any new attacks would happen further south. Still, Sam felt a tug that clearly said they were moving away from what they were seeking rather than toward. With all logic suggesting the answer should be otherwise, Sam had to assume this new knowledge had more to do with instinct. Maybe his other instincts.

"Dean," Sam called out again, his voice pitched low and tense.

Dean halted and spun around to face him, frustration radiating in his movements. "Sam—" he started then stopped, surprise registering on his face when he saw that Sam was several paces further behind him than he had expected.

"We're going the wrong way," Sam told him once he had his brother's undivided attention.

Confused, Dean glanced around as if checking that he hadn't somehow lost his bearings. Satisfied that they were heading in the direction he'd intended, Dean shook his head. "No we're not," he denied.

Sam nodded that Dean was partially correct, and said, "I know we agreed to head south, but I really think we should be going north."

Dean took a few steps to stand in front of Sam. "What? Why? We just came from there, and we didn't see anything."

Sam grimaced, knowing Dean was not going to like the next words that came out of his mouth. "It's just – It's a feeling I've got," Sam said darkly, putting as much meaning behind the words as he could.

"Whoa, whoa. A feeling?" Dean asked, catching Sam's intention behind the words, his face registering the displeasure Sam had expected. "What – are you channeling Miss Cleo again or something? Had a little dream about us in the woods? 'Cause let me tell you, if dreams of me and you in the woods at night are the best your subconscious can come up with, then you really need to—"

"Dean," Sam cut in, his tone stating that's Dean's humor was not appreciated. "I can't explain it; I just feel like we're heading the wrong way."

Dean looked behind him as if searching the expanse of woods for some kind of clue as to how to handle the situation. He turned back to Sam, none the wiser.

Sam understood his reluctance; he didn't feel any better about his newfound intuition than Dean did, and Sam was the one having to actually experience it. He could see it in Dean's eyes the moment his brother gave in.

"All right," Dean said, giving a heavy sigh. He started moving in the direction from which they'd just come. "We'll head north."

When Dean drew even with him, Sam turned and started walking with him, by his side this time rather than behind him, and Dean watched him from the corner of his eye, taking his directional cues from Sam. Sam only wished he knew more about what they were walking into than just a feeling.

*****

The first thing Xander noticed upon regaining consciousness was an overwhelming stench. The second was that he couldn't feel his arms, quickly followed by a persistent ache in his stomach reminding him about those chicken tenders he'd never gotten and those cookies of Martha's that he had, regretfully, chosen not to eat. In hindsight, a very bad idea.

He gingerly pried his eyes open and immediately winced at the light, a dull throb making its presence known at the back of his head. He tried to take in his surroundings, but his vision swam and tilted, and he clenched his eyes shut again, suddenly grateful that his stomach was empty as he fought down a wave of nausea.

Something cool touched Xander's forehead, and he flinched back reflexively. He blinked his eyes open again to find Avery crouching in front of him, her face a mask of concern and her hand still poised near his head.

"Xander? Are you okay?"

Xander blinked again, fighting to keep his eyes open in spite of his dizziness. "I've been worse," Xander said, swallowing thickly before adding, "I think."

"You were out for so long I was starting to worry." Avery reached her hand out to brush the hair off Xander's forehead, and though Xander was still tense, he allowed the touch this time.

"What happened?" Xander questioned groggily.

"You don't remember?" she turned the question back on him.

Xander gave a moment's consideration. His memory was difficult to pin down through the fog of pain currently engulfing his head, but he seemed to recall being on the phone with Willow. He'd heard a noise, and then—

"Something hit me," Xander remembered. Which would explain why his skull felt like it'd been used as a basketball.

"Yeah," Avery gave a murmured confirmation. "You might have a concussion. How does your head feel?"

"Like someone used it as a piñata, only there was no candy surprise." Xander made an instinctive move to touch the back of his head, then suddenly realized he couldn't. Giving a few experimental tugs, Xander concluded that his arms were bound behind his back, tied off at the wrists. Kidnapped, great. Xander didn't even want to guess how he was going to explain this to Sam and Dean. Although considering how closed-mouth they were with him, he didn't see any reason to be forthcoming. In fact, if he could get out of this on his own, they never even needed to know.

It occurred to Xander then that Avery wasn't incapacitated like he was, and realizing she must have somehow managed to free herself, he asked, "Think you could untie me?" He surveyed his surroundings, trying to place the location but coming up blank. "Where are we anyway?" It looked like the typical living room of any house, but it wasn't overly familiar to Xander, and he didn't think it was any room he'd seen at Martha's. At that thought, he remembered Martha and hoped that she was all right.

"We're at my house," Avery answered in an even, knowledgeable tone.

Xander brought his eyes back to Avery, and he noticed that she'd made no move to untie him. Instead, she was perched with perfect stillness, head cocked to the side as she watched him with an air of expectation.

"I'm sorry, but I needed your help," Avery said, the words coming out in an offhand sort of way.

Xander was confused. The statement seemed extremely incongruous considering he was tied up and concussed while Avery was free and seemingly unharmed. But as Avery continued to stare at him with an unblinking gaze, Xander's confusion gave way to unease and dread.

"When you say you need my help, you don't mean in a damsel-in-distress sort of way, do you?" Xander cringed as he said the words, already suspecting her answer.

Her lips quirked in an enigmatic smile, and she moved to stand. "It's all your brothers' fault," she began conversationally, reaching down to grab hold of one his legs.

Xander only had a few seconds to ponder what she meant by that before she started dragging him to the center of the room with surprising strength and speed. Without the wall at his back, he tumbled backward, his head smacking the floor, adding further insult to injury.

She abruptly let go of his leg, and Xander struggled to sit up, fighting back the renewed throbbing echoing through his skull. "This can't be good," he muttered quietly to himself. Xander found himself sitting inside a circle of intricate symbols that had been craved into the hardwood floor beneath him, and while he didn't know the exact meaning of the symbols, he was fairly certain their presence didn't bode well for him.

The words she'd just said came back to him, and he asked, "What do my brothers have to do with this?"

Avery gave him a hard look. "Don't you know?"

"Does this have something to do with that botched paint job from the other night?" Xander asked. He continued to stare at her uncomprehendingly, and she moved over to the side of the room where a tarp-covered, body-shaped lump had been laid, something he had not previously noticed.

She reached down, grabbed the corner of the tarp, and pulled it back with a flourish. Xander's face scrunched with disgust as he viewed what looked to be a demon corpse, and he'd lived in Sunnydale long enough to know one when he saw it. At least now he knew what the source of that stench was.

Avery turned back to face him with a hand on her hip and a venomous glare on her face. "Do you see what your brother's have done to Razor?"

Xander's eyebrows rose in disbelief. "That's Razor?"

Avery gave Xander a frustrated look as though he were clearly missing her point and gestured to the scaly, green corpse on the floor. "Those brothers of yours," she spat, "killed him."

Moving past the fact that Razor had apparently been a demon this whole time – and an ugly one at that, Xander tried to focus on that other piece of information. "Sam and Dean did this?"

Xander must have looked genuinely confused because Avery's glare melted to a look of wary consideration. "You really didn't know anything about this?"

Xander shook his head, and Avery sighed, crouching down next to the demon and running a gentle hand over its slimy face, which caused Xander to grimace in disgust and look away.

"Those brothers of yours," she started explaining, and Xander wished she'd stop saying the word 'brother' as if it were some sort of curse, "are demon hunters."

With as many times as Xander had been the victim of a head injury during his tenure on the Hellmouth, one would think he would have adapted and become capable of thinking clearly despite the fuzzy-headedness that came with such injuries. However, the most intelligent reply Xander could manage to Avery's revelation was a simply stated, "Huh," as though she'd merely given him the day's weather forecast.

But as the puzzle started to piece itself together in Xander's injury-addled brain, he realized it actually explained a lot. The secrecy they had about their work, the lack of workman's tools, how Sam had gotten so beat up on the 'job'. And Xander knew that bad-paint smell had seemed familiar. It would seem that Xander and his newfound brothers had more in common than any of them could have imagined.

"They destroyed my creation."

The softly spoken words drew Xander's attention back to Avery, and once again he found her caressing the creature's face with mournful reverence.

"It doesn't matter though," she continued, and Xander wasn't sure if she were talking to him or the deceased demon. "Fang will take care of them."

Those words made Xander's heart stutter with worry, and he asked with a creeping sense of dread, "Fang?"

"Another one of my creations," Avery explained. "Your brothers are out looking for him right now. Little do they know, while they're hunting him, he's actually hunting them. They won't be able to catch him off guard like they did Razor."

Avery turned her face toward him then, and Xander startled at the sight of her. He had once thought her pretty, but now anger twisted her face and marred whatever beauty she'd once held. Her lips curled in a fierce scowl, teeth bared, and all the color seemed to have drained from her irises, leaving her eyes white except for her large black pupils.

Xander's heart dropped into the empty pit of his stomach as the direness of his situation finally hit home. The delayed reaction could be chalked up again to his skull-numbing head injury, but, regardless of the delay, panic was starting to crawl its way over his skin. Not only were his brothers in danger, but Xander was in quite a fix himself, and it appeared the only people capable of coming to his rescue were about to walk into a trap of their own.

Avery stood and began moving toward Xander as she continued, "You see, I didn't want Razor to be lonely, so I created Fang."

Avery's words about not wanting Razor to be lonely sparked a memory in Xander, and his stomach gave a sick twist as he thought about the spotted puppy she'd taken home just yesterday. "Dare I ask what happened to Spot?" Xander questioned even though he doubted that he would like the answer.

Avery's lips slid into a sly smile, and she favored Xander with an expression of fond amusement as though he were merely a naïve child. "Razor was very amused," she told him playfully. "He howled for hours as he chased Spot around the house."

Xander's face fell as he imagined the terrifying experience the puppy must have had before probably getting eaten by the demon. He had very little time to give it consideration, though, as Avery crouched down next to him. Xander tried vainly to shuffle back away from her, but her hand quickly shot out and grabbed onto his ankle in a steel-like grasp.

"I don't want Fang to be alone anymore than I did Razor," Avery's voice was almost pleading as though she truly wanted Xander to understand her motives. "They're more than just creations, Xander. They're the only family I really have."

She had yet again referred to them as creations, and this time the word tugged at Xander's thoughts, some important detail flitting at the edges of his memory, just out of reach.

"Luckily," Avery continued, her grip on his ankle tightening almost to the point of pain, "you're exactly what I need to remedy the situation."

With an impending sense of doom, Xander reluctantly asked, "Am I supposed to be some kind of sacrifice?"

Avery's head tilted slowly to the side causing her eyes to glint in a completely inhuman way. "Not exactly," she answered vaguely.

Her lips stretched widely in a macabre, teeth-baring grin, and Xander decided that maybe he was better off not knowing the details of the gruesome fashion in which this was likely to end. However, he could not escape the blatant irony of the situation. It just figured that he would survive four years of high school on a Hellmouth only to die at the hands of a demon on the opposite side of the continent away from said Hellmouth.

*****

"You pickin' up anything on that psychic-radar of yours, geek-boy?"

Sam gritted his teeth in frustration, tried counting to ten in an effort to find his calm, and then tried to think of all the reasons fratricide was a bad thing. Maybe it was because Dean's annoying remarks kept interrupting his thought process, but he was drawing a blank on that last one.

"It doesn't work like that," Sam explained tiredly, drawing on the last reserves of his patience.

Dean hefted his shotgun, letting the barrel rest on his shoulder, the movement causing moonlight to glint off the dark metal. "Doesn't work like what? 'Cause it seemed to be working well enough just a little while ago when you had us hauling ass back to square one."

Truthfully, they'd hit square one at the northern edge of the forest where they'd first started searching and, at Sam's insistence, kept right on going. Now they found themselves in a field, dangerously out in the open, covered only by darkness, and seemingly no closer to finding this demon than they had been several hours ago.

"You know, maybe we need to get you The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being Psychic, ‘cause if this is the best you can do, we’d have better luck calling up Sylvia Brown and asking her where to find-"

"Damnit, Dean!" Sam's patience finally snapped, and he stopped abruptly, turning toward his brother so that he could confront him face-on. "What the hell do expect me to do here? I wish I could control this, but I can't. If you think this is frustrating, you should try being me for a while and see how you…" Sam trailed off as he spotted something over Dean's shoulder, across the field and just barely visible from where they were standing. "Is that a house?" Sam asked, gesturing behind Dean.

Sure enough, a few hundred yards away, half-hidden by the slope of the land and a small copse of trees, was what appeared to be a small, white house. Dean studied it over his shoulder for a moment before turning back to look askance at Sam. Sam interpreted his look as 'Is this what we're looking for?' and gave a half-shrug in return that seemed to say 'Maybe' in the same brother-speak. Together, they began making their way toward the house, moving as inconspicuously as they possibly could across the wide-open landscape.

In only a few short minutes, they drew up close to the house, lowering themselves closer to the ground – below window level – and moving alongside the house's outer walls with practiced stealth. On the house's opposite side, they found a large, lit window that came down to a couple feet above the ground and stretched high above their heads.

They put their backs to the wall, slid down low so that they were almost sitting on the ground, and crouched shoulder to shoulder next to the window. Dean was the closer of the two, and with great care he craned his neck to get a glimpse of what lay inside.

"Is that—" Dean started, then leaned in further to get a better view.

Curious about what had drawn Dean's attention, Sam used his height to lever himself above his brother and peer around for himself. Sam frowned at what he saw. "Is that Xander?"

Dean leaned over even further, putting himself in almost full-view of the window. "What the fu—"

Sam grabbed Dean by the shoulders and jerked him back just as someone else came into view, cutting his brother off mid-sentence and causing them both to fall to the ground.

"Was that Avery?" Sam questioned of the other presence he had seen.

"I told him to stay put," Dean groused, peeking through the window again and taking care not to be seen. "Obviously he follows orders about as well as you do."

"Any ideas?" Sam asked, prodding his brother with an elbow in hopes that this question would actually be answered this time.

"Looks like Xander's tied up and Avery isn't, so I'm going to assume that our friendly neighborhood waitress isn't so friendly after all. That, or we've got to learn to tip better."

"Do you see anyone or anything else in there?"

Dean stilled for a moment, then in a sudden burst of movement, he bolted to the other side of the window, quickly resuming a stance similar to before with his back pressed to the wall. He shook his head and answered, "Looks like it's just him and her."

Sam shuffled closer to the window, taking up the space his brother had just vacated. He shot a quick look into the window before giving his brother a sidelong glance. "Think this has something to do with the demon attacks?"

Dean shifted impatiently, hands clenching in fists around his shotgun. His expression was strained as he monitored the goings-on in the room beyond the glass. "Maybe. But we can sort that out later; right now we need to get Xander out of there."

"Any bright ideas on how we go about doing that?" Sam asked in a cynical tone, his ire directed more toward their situation than his brother. Sam leaned around a bit to get a better view of the room's layout. Avery had her back to them now and was crouched down next to Xander with a hand grasping his ankle. Xander struggled but was unable to free himself from her grip, and it worried Sam that she seemed capable of holding him with such apparent ease.

"Maybe…" Dean started, pausing a moment for thought, "maybe we can find another way in. Catch her by surprise. I mean, if it's just her, how difficult could—"

Dean stopped suddenly as Avery stood, determination and menace radiating in her movements. Both brothers tensed, prepared to take action at the slightest indication that their brother was about to be harmed – plan or no plan be damned.

Then, with a nonchalance that seemed to contradict the situation, Avery skirted around Xander and calmly walked out of the room without a second glance back.

Sam and Dean caught each other's eyes, seeming to convey 'here's our chance' in that split-second glance. Dean moved to lift the window, and Sam turned his eyes to Xander who had started squirming on the floor, struggling futilely to get out of his bonds.

"Dude, you're going to have to help me out here," Dean said through gritted teeth as he continued trying to shove the window open. "I think it's stuck."

Sam moved to help, bracing his hands on the upper frame of the lower windowpane. They pushed upward on the window together, putting as much force behind it as they could, and with a wheezy scrape the window lifted – but only by two inches.

"Damnit," Dean growled out. "Okay," he sighed, crouching down at the bottom of the window and wriggling his fingers under the open portion of the window. "You push at the top, and I'll pull at the bottom.

A low rumbling, similar to the noise the window had made, sounded before they could put the plan into action, and both frowned in confusion – first at the window, then at each other – then with dawning dread they turned their heads in synchronized, comic slowness to look behind them.

What stared back at them was a pair of round, yellow eyes that glowed like overgrown fireflies, a gaping maw that housed a double-row of glistening fangs better suited for a great white, and coarse fur, filthy with dirt.

A mere second passed between Sam's laying eyes on the creature and reaching down to pull his brother up, but it was a second too long. By the time he'd dragged his brother to a standing position, the creature had already launched itself airborne toward them. It collided with the two brothers and sent all three crashing through the window in a spray of shattered glass and splintered wood. What happened after that can only be best described as utter chaos.

Sam landed hard on the floor, glass crunching beneath him, and he reflexively brought his arms up to shield his head as more shards rained down on him. He quickly pulled his arms away, eyes darting to the side just in time to see that the creature was nearly upon him. It's jaws stretched wide as it lunged for his throat, but seconds before it made deadly contact, Dean barreled into it from the side, knocking the creature to the ground and sending it sliding several feet and into the wall.

Dean reached down and grabbed a handful of Sam's shirt, dragging him upright. "Get Xander," he ordered Sam urgently before bracing his shotgun against his shoulder and taking aim at the creature, which was already preparing for another attack.

Sam hurried over to Xander, fishing out his pocketknife as he knelt down next to the younger man. Sam looked his half-brother over while he reached behind Xander to cut through the bindings on his hands. He looked a little banged up and out of sorts but seemed to be intact, for the most part.

"Are you all right?" Sam asked, even though the answer seemed self-evident. Who in their right mind would be all right after being roughed up and kidnapped?

"I've had worse," Xander returned somewhat groggily.

Sam felt that was highly unlikely but let the statement stand.

"We should probably hurry," Xander said unnecessarily, twisting his neck around to look past Sam toward Dean.

Sam turned his attention away from what his hands were doing to glance at Dean as well. His older brother was firing off rounds at the creature, but so far it was proving to be too fast for Dean. With inhuman speed it managed to dodge each of Dean's shots, and at best his brother only managed to keep the creature at bay.

Sam was almost finished cutting through the rope around Xander's wrists when the younger man suddenly startled.

"Sam, look out!" he shouted.

Sam turned and was tackled violently to the floor, his head colliding painfully with the hardwood. Avery, whom he'd forgotten about in all the action, was leaning over him now, eyes white with fury and lips curled in a venomous snarl.

"You killed Razor," she bit out malevolently. Her hands came up and encircled his neck in her viselike grip as if literally trying to squeeze the life from him, effortlessly cutting off his air supply with deadly sufficiency.

Sam gasped for air and seized her wrists, trying and failing to pry her hands from his throat. The seconds seemed to drag slowly as they struggled, and Sam's eyes watered as the need for oxygen started reaching desperate levels.

Over the blood pounding in his ears, Sam heard the crack of Dean's shotgun this time followed by an ear-splitting wail. The sound drew Avery's attention across the room, and her hold on his neck loosened.

Sam used the distraction to his advantage; he twisted Avery's wrists, completely severing her hold on him, while at the same time drawing his knees to his chest and planting his feet onto Avery's stomach. With all his strength he kicked outward, sending a surprised Avery flying into a bookshelf which tilted with the impact and toppled over on her.

Xander suddenly appeared at his side, apparently having managed to finish untying himself, and with a firm hand on Sam's arm, the younger man pulled Sam to his feet.

Xander kept a steadying hand on him as Sam gratefully sucked in a deep lungful of air, trying to shake off his oxygen-deprived dizziness.

Dean came up on Sam's other side, one hand reaching up to grasp tightly at Sam's shoulder. "Are you two all right?" he asked, his concerned gaze flicking back and forth between the two younger men.

Before either men could answer, the bookshelf started moving, Avery already stirring and trying to shift its weight off her.

Dean stared in wide-eyed surprise at the impending danger for a moment before turning to Sam and Xander. "Let's get the hell out of here."

The two younger men silently nodded their assent, and despite Sam's lingering lightheadedness, they quickly began making their way out of the house. Dean and Xander flanked Sam on either side as they moved, ready to catch him should the taller man sway too far to either side.

The creature snarled at them as they passed by but seemed too injured to attack them; it lay trembling near the wall, a widening pool of dark bluish sludge spilling out from beneath it and spreading across the floor.

Dean motioned for Xander to climb out the broken window first, then helped Sam out and followed after them. They set off back across the field at a brisk pace, moving even faster as Sam's lightheadedness finally wore off.

They didn't speak as they walked, too preoccupied with getting as far away from Avery and that house as fast as they could. An underlying thrum of tension quickly filled the atmosphere, however, as the silence became thick with unspoken concerns about the situation.

Sam didn't think it was possible for things to get more screwed up than they currently were. Even as he wracked his brain for excuses, some way to salvage the wreck that had just been made, Sam knew he'd never be able to come up with a plausible explanation this time. Everything had changed. Sam and Dean couldn't pass this off as a misunderstanding this time; they couldn't keep pretending to be a couple of normal guys. Their oh-so-brilliant plan to keep Xander safe and in the dark had backfired in spectacular Winchester fashion.

If the heavy set of Dean's shoulders was any indication, his brother was just as aware of that fact.

Sam hoped for Dean's sake that Xander took the earth-shattering revelation better than they expected. Dean had already watched one brother run away in search of something that better resembled normal. Sam hoped the younger man wouldn't end up following his example.

For his part Xander didn't seem overly panicked, merely darted curious glances at them when he didn't think they were looking. Sam optimistically took it as a good sign that Xander hadn't already freaked out or tried to run off.

Eventually they returned to where Sam and Dean had left the Impala, getting into the car without any verbal communication. Dean started up the ignition, shifted into drive, and sped off, fishtailing a little as he went. Sam glanced in the back at Xander, who grabbed at the car door's armrest just in time to keep from sliding across the backseat due to Dean's sharp turn.

Sam looked at Dean from the corner of his eye. He hoped, for once, that his older brother would let him do the talking when they finally discussed things with Xander; however, as his brother took another sharp turn that had Sam, himself, clutching at his armrest, he got the feeling it was too much to hope for.

*****

Xander jumped out of the car as soon as they pulled up in front of Martha's and fought the urge to kiss the ground. For a while there he worried that they had escaped demonic peril only to wind up twisted around a light post thanks to Dean's dreams of a becoming a driver at the Indy 500. However, they managed to arrive safely, car and all, despite narrowly avoiding every ditch they drove past.

He followed Sam and Dean up the sidewalk to the front door, and they slipped quietly into the building. The lights were dimmed, and the area behind the check-in desk was empty. Xander fearfully wondered where Martha was and surged in the direction of the back room, but Dean grabbed him by the shirt before he could get very far.

"Where do you think you're going?" the older man hissed quietly.

Xander lightly tried to tug himself free, but Dean held tight. "We need to check on Martha," he hissed back.

Dean shook his head but released his hold on Xander's shirt. "You stay here," he whispered sternly. "I'll go check on her."

As he moved toward the hallway, Dean gave Sam a look, and Xander got the impression that Dean was telling the older man to keep an eye on him. Xander bristled a little at that. Just because he'd managed to get kidnapped by a demon didn't mean he needed looking after like some five-year-old. Things like that happened to him all the time…although maybe that wasn't the best argument with which to defend himself.

Dean came back a moment later, shaking his head with a perplexed expression. "She's sleeping. She appears to be fine, not that you could tell from that buzz saw noise she's making," Dean told them, no longer bothering to keep his voice lowered. Apparently he felt that if Martha's own snoring couldn't wake her, then they didn't stand a chance either.

"She'll probably be heartbroken if she finds out that you were in her bedroom and she missed her opportunity to have her way with you," Xander remarked, still stinging from being bossed around as if anything that had happened had been his fault. From the look Dean sent him, he gathered the older man didn't appreciate the comment.

They went up the staircase, making no effort to tread lightly, then trudged down the hall to their room. The moment the door closed behind them, Dean whirled on Xander.

"What part of 'stay put' did you not understand?" Dean demanded.

Xander gaped at the older man's audacity, and Sam's eyes rolled upward, gaze rising to the ceiling as if to ask God, 'Why me?'

Xander quickly shook off his astonishment and retorted with heavy sarcasm, "Oh, I'm sorry. The next time some crazy chick wants to knock me out and drag me back to her satanic playhouse for some ritual fun, I'll be sure to let her know that she has to ask my big brother first." The way Xander spit out the word 'brother' it didn't come off sounding at all flattering, and Xander was slightly gratified to see Dean flinch, guilt coloring his face.

Sam held his hands up in a placating gesture. "Look, we're sorry, it's just…" he trailed off, sighing heavily and glancing anxiously at Dean, who returned a similar look. Their postures both screamed of nervousness. Sam turned his attention back to Xander, swallowing thickly before pressing on, "This is just a little awkward. You see…we're not really traveling repairmen."

"Uh huh." Xander managed to keep his voice non-committal, his expression bland. He already had a pretty clear guess about where Sam was going with all this, but he didn't feel particularly inclined to let them off the hook just yet. After all, if they had simply told him from the start that they were here to hunt demons, he might have been able to avoid becoming demon bait.

"You see, demons and spirits and other creatures? They're real." Sam paused as though giving Xander time to process that revelation. "And Dean and I…we hunt them."

Xander waited a beat before nodding slowly and drawling out, "Yeah, I know." He couldn't have had a less surprised reaction if Sam had just told him the grass was green and the sky was blue.

Sam reeled back with a stunned expression as if Xander had just stomped all over the punch line of his favorite joke. "Wait, what? How did you— I mean…" Sam seemed completely flustered as if he'd been so prepared for Xander to freak out that it had never even occurred to him that Xander just might take the news well – that he might already know, and now he had no clue how to handle Xander's complete non-reaction.

Dean, on the other hand, eyed him warily as if he didn't quite believe him. "You know?" he asked doubtfully, like he thought maybe Xander was taking the news so well not because he already knew but rather because he thought they were crazy and that it was in his best interest to merely humor them until he could get away the loonies.

"Yeah, Avery's the one who let the cat out of the bag, actually," Xander explained. "Which by the way," he started in an indignant tone, "if you guys had just told me you were here to hunt demons, maybe Avery wouldn't have caught me off guard."

"So you know about demons," Dean pressed more firmly, like he was still thought that Xander's calm might be because he was either feigning belief or in deep denial.

"Yes," Xander reiterated. "I've known about them for three years now. I've lived my whole life on the Hellmouth. The mayor turned into a giant snake-demon at my graduation and started munching on my classmates."

"Uh, that…" Sam's tongue stumbled over the words, his eyebrows arching toward his hairline, face marred by an expression of total bafflement as if his brain couldn't quite puzzle out what to do with Xander's last statement.

"A Hellmouth?" Dean questioned suspiciously, catching on to the earlier part of Xander's diatribe. "I thought that was just a myth."

"Sunnydale," Sam stated wonderingly before Xander could reply. A dawning look of understanding stole across Sam features now, an expression Xander had seen grace Willow's face numerous times when she finally realized something that she should have known all along. "I knew that sounded familiar."

"Wait a second," Dean interrupted, turning to Sam with a look of betrayal as though Sam had been deliberately holding out on him. "You knew about this?"

"Yeah, it's not a myth," Sam said, turning to the older man. "Dad wrote about it in his journal."

"Dad knew about this? Unbelievable!" Dean shouted, throwing his arms up in frustration. "Am I the only one who didn't know?"

Sam, who seemed to have gotten over Xander's lack of surprise and regained his composure, ignored Dean's outburst and turned his attention to the younger man. "Xander, do you have any idea why Avery might have gone after you?"

"Well, she said she needed my help to create another—" Something that had been nagging at Xander's mind since his encounter with Avery finally clicked, like a giant breaker had been flipped and turned on the floodlights. His mind pulled forth a conversation he, Willow, and Giles had had several weeks ago when they were still trying to learn about the ascension. Xander snapped his fingers and assumed the eureka-pose that had been perfected by Rupert Giles. "She's a gift-wrap demon," he blurted out excitedly.

Sam and Dean simultaneously frowned with twin expressions of 'What the fuck?'

"A gift-wrap demon?" Dean echoed incredulously, his tone making the sentence come out sounding more like 'Oh yeah, you're crazy.'

Xander rolled his eyes and waved his hands wildly in front of him. "Okay, not gift-wrap, it was gurgle-rock or grilled-frog, or – something I can't pronounce. Look, the point is she's like the Doctor Frankenstein of the demon world. She creates other demons by using—" and there Xander's theory hit a snag. "Damnit!"

"What?" Dean asked needlessly.

"Those demons use the demonic energy of the Hellmouth to make their creations, and since the Hellmouth is currently on the other side of the continent, there's no way Avery can be using it to create demons," Xander explained, disappointed that his theory was a bust.

Sam's brow furrowed in thought, the wheels almost visibly turning in his head. "If all Avery needs is demonic energy, she wouldn't necessarily have to get it directly from the Hellmouth."

Xander and Dean shared a glance then looked inquisitively toward him, urging him to elaborate.

Sam continued, "Sometimes, certain mystical objects – gems, talismans, orbs – can soak up energy and be used as a sort of retainer or conduit until someone's ready to use that energy."

"Like, say, a creepy black and red rock that Avery got in the mail?" Xander pitched in, thinking back to the package Avery had been so excited to receive.

"That sounds about right," Sam agreed.

"But that still doesn't explain why she'd need Xander," Dean pointed out.

Sam, it seemed, had an idea about that too. "Well, several theories adhere to the idea that all living matter is mystic to at least a small degree, which would make them capable of acting as a retainer. Theoretically, if a person spent a long enough time in close proximity to a demonic hotspot, they'd eventually become tainted by that energy and end up as a sort of human storage box.

"Like I said, though, close proximity would be needed. It'd take more than just living in the same town as the Hellmouth, you'd have to spend large amounts of time at the exact site of the Hellmouth."

Xander cleared his throat and shuffled embarrassedly. "So let's say I spent the majority of three years researching demons in my high school library, which just so happened to sit directly on top of the mouth of hell?"

"Then I'd say you’re a prime candidate for a retainer of demonic energy," Sam sighed in resigned disappointment as though he had hoped Xander wouldn't say that but was completely unsurprised by the affirmation.

Dean regarded Xander quizzically, his following words laced with sarcasm, "You spent three years sitting around on top of a Hellmouth, and it never once occurred to you that that might be a bad idea?"

Xander gave Dean a sullen glare, not needing the older man point out just what a mistake that had been. "Great," Xander huffed out in aggravation. "So Avery wants to use me as a demonic battery to resurrect her Franken-demon. Seriously, the chicks I attract… I always thought it was a joke when I said I was a demon magnet, now it turns out to be true?"

"Yeah, you really do have crap taste in women," Dean threw in helpfully.

"You have no idea," Xander asserted. "The first girl I dated, turned out to be an Incan Mummy, and then that substitute teacher who turned out to be a giant preying mantis—"

"Dude, you bagged a teacher?" Dean asked with a sly grin, something like pride tingeing his voice.

"Ugh, don't even ask about that one," Xander warned with a shudder, not at all impressed by the memory. "After that was Cordelia – well, she's in a league of her own, and then there's Anya, who's an ex- Vengeance Demon. I have some kind of dating curse. I should have known that Avery was a demon the second she asked me out."

"Yeah," Dean commiserated. "She took one look at me and went straight for you, that should have clued me with warning bells, right then. 'Cause any chick that wouldn't go for this," Dean made a 'check me out' gesture, then finished in a tone of absolute certainty, "is clearly evil."

"Guys!" Sam cut in sharply, frustration elevating the pitch of his voice. Xander and Dean turned their attention to Sam, who was looking back and forth between the two of them as if they'd both lost their minds. "Can we focus, please?"

"Right." "Sorry." Dean and Xander said, respectively, in unison.

Dean leaned over and whispered conspiratorially to Xander, his voice still loud enough for Sam to catch his words and his tone deadly serious, "That's Sammy's bitch-voice. You've gotta watch out for that."

The corner of Xander's mouth twitched at that, and Sam glared at both them, his expression a study in supreme irritation like a man who'd been tasked to run a marathon while he had two preschoolers tied to each leg.

"So we just have to figure out what to do now," Sam stated.

"Well, we know what Avery wants," Dean started, finally getting serious. "Now we just need to figure out how to stop her."

Xander perked up suddenly. "I know just who to call," he said brightly.

Dean looked at him worriedly. "Oh, dude, if you say Ghostbusters…"

"No," Xander assured him. "I mean my high school librarian."

Dean frowned at him. "I think that's actually worse."

Xander rolled his eyes at Dean's reluctance and moved over to the phone. "Seriously, if there's anyone that knows how to stop Avery, it's Giles."

"Are you sure we can't just go in guns ablazin' and blast her full of buckshot?" Dean whined. "You'd be surprised how many things that will kill."

Xander continued dialing, ignoring Dean's protests. After a couple rings a familiar British voice answered, "Hello?"

"Giles, hey, it's Xander. I need—"

"Xander? Good lord! Are you all right?" Giles asked urgently.

Xander startled, surprised at this seemingly unprovoked show of concern. He hadn't thought the hour was all that late, and it should be even earlier over in California right now. "Um…yeah, I'm fine. Why—"

"Willow's been frantic," Giles told him, the reprimand clear in his voice now that his worry had been appeased.

Crap, Xander thought, having completely forgotten that he'd been on the phone with Willow when he'd done his spectacular knocked-out-and-kidnapped routine.

"She said you—"

Giles was abruptly cut off, and suddenly Willow's voice came screeching down the line, "Xander! My God, I was so worried. Are you okay? I thought something might have happen to you? Did something happen? Why didn't you call?"

"Whoa, Willow, calm down."

Dean and Sam both watched him curiously as he talked. He turned his back to them, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

"Calm down?" Willow's voice burned with disbelief. "Xander, I thought you might be in some serious trouble. We were almost ready to call Buffy and come to North Carolina ourselves. What happened?"

Xander was relieved that they hadn't called Buffy yet. The slayer could be quite fearsome when her friends were in danger. "Actually, I was in trouble," Xander confirmed. "But my brothers helped me out." It occurred to Xander that that was the first time he had actually called them brothers – and actually mean it – when the older men were nearby to hear it. He wanted to glance over his shoulder to see if it had sparked any kind of reaction but managed to restrain himself.

"Look, it's a long story, and I promise I'll explain everything later, but right now we need your help."

Xander's plea for help quickly refocused Willow's attention, and just as he would have expected of his best friend, she was ever-ready to lend a hand. "What do you need?" she asked eagerly.

"Do you remember back before the ascension when we were playing 'Top-This-Demon' and we talked about the Doctor Frankenstein of the demon world?" Xander reminded.

"The gwuerlfrawk?" Willow asked immediately.

Xander shook his head at the name again; something really had to have gotten lost in translation on that one. "Completely unpronounceable; yeah, that sounds about right. Anyway, we've kind of run into a situation with one here."

As Xander continued filling Willow in on the details, Sam and Dean went about dragging out various weapons, laying them out across one of the beds and taking stock of what supplies they had and might need. Xander had to pause several times in his telling – especially when he reached that part about Avery wanting him as a demonic battery – to remind her that yes, he was fine and yes, his brothers were fine too. He thought it best not to mention his concussion and Sam's bout with near-strangulation. Willow was already half-primed to come to Waiverton as it was.

Once Xander had thoroughly convinced Willow that they were fine and could handle this on their own and after she'd relayed everything he'd told her to Giles, she passed the phone back off to the Watcher.

Giles explained about the gwuerlfrawks and how to go about killing them, then questioned Xander curiously, "Willow said this demon wanted to use you in its creation ritual?"

"Yeah, it turns out all that time spent studying on the Hellmouth turned me into a mystical Energizer Bunny," Xander returned bitterly.

"Yes, well, that can be easily remedied with a simple purification rite," Giles mentioned nonchalantly.

"Wait a second!" Xander blurted out, upset. "Did you know about all this energy storage stuff?"

"Of course," Giles returned matter-of-factly. "The idea of living creatures being capable retaining mystical energy is a fascinating subject."

"No. Not fascinating, disturbing," Xander denied in a high-strung voice. "You couldn't have mentioned this before I went traveling around the country looking like a demon goody bag?"

"I am terribly sorry," Giles stated with complete sincerity. "I should have thought of it sooner, but it honestly hadn't occurred to me."

"Hadn't occ—" Xander started indignantly before biting off his sentence, a frustrated noise getting caught in the back of his throat. "All right, so this purification thing?"

"Yes, it's a simple spell designed to cleanse one's aura. It should be able to eradicate whatever demonic energy you've acquired," Giles explained.

"So, basically, you're saying I need a mystical bath?" Xander asked, summing things up quite nicely, he thought.

Giles gave a put-upon sigh. "Yes. As always you've managed to boil things down to their simplest form. I'll give you back to Willow now; she can explain the details of the spell to you."

Willow came back on the line, and Xander took notes as Willow began listing the spell's ingredients and the incantations that would need to be spoken. Willow had Xander read the ingredient list and instructions back to her to make sure he'd written it all down correctly, then asked again, "Are you sure you guys can handle this by yourselves?"

"Yeah, we'll be fine," Xander stated, his voice infused with assurance.

"'Cause we could grab Buffy, get on a plane, and be in Waiverton in ten hours. Maybe less," Willow added.

Xander grinned at Willow's persistence and answered, "Really, we can't handle it."

"It's just…" Willow started, paused, then let the rest of the words tumble out in an anxious rush. "What about the spell? I mean it's not a difficult spell or anything, and not that I'm good at doing difficult spells, which this isn't, but you can't do this by yourself; and what if your brothers haven't ever done a spell before? Not that you'll turn into a frog if they do it wrong or anything, and it's a fairly fail-safe spell, but it's important to get it right if there's a demon looking to use you. And I know I gave the spell in English, which is fine, but they're always better if they're done in Latin and if I were there I could translate the Latin, not that it has to be Latin to work, and some of those ingredients might be difficult to find, and I—"

"Willow!" Xander cut in loudly, then commanded, "Breathe."

Willow sucked in a deep breath, then slowly let it out. "Okay," she conceded reluctantly, the pout palpable in her voice. "But you have to promise me that you'll be careful and that you'll call as soon as this is all over with."

"I will, I promise," Xander said, putting as much surety into the vow as possible. "We're going to be fine, Willow. Try not to worry."

"Easy for you to say, I'm not the one in danger," Willow griped, and Xander could picture the frown she was wearing.

"Wills, you're sitting on top of the Hellmouth; that's the very definition of danger," Xander argued.

"Yeah, well…I guess," Willow hedged.

Xander was willing to bet that her nose was scrunched up in an anxious expression, hesitant to let him hang up the phone and go where she couldn't be sure of what was happening to him. He hated leaving her in a nervous state, but he also didn't want to keep his brothers waiting. "I've gotta go," he told her grudgingly, trying to mask some of his own anxiety that he was starting to feel. "I'll talk to you soon."

"Take care, Xander," she demanded then whispered, "bye."

Xander said his own goodbye, then turned to face Sam and Dean. "Well, it's a good thing we didn't go in guns ablazin'."

"Why's that?" Dean asked with a wryly arched brow.

"Avery's pretty much SuperGirl when she's in her human form. Giles said you could drop a grand piano on her and she wouldn't feel a thing." Xander paused then amended, "Okay, so what he really said was that she's impervious to all forms of physical and magical attack and has uncharted regenerative powers, but I really felt my 'grand piano' explanation summed it up nicely."

"Well, that's great," Dean said, clearly unhappy at this turn of events. "Did he have any information that might actually be useful?"

"Yes," Xander retorted, glaring at the interruption. "She's vulnerable when she's in a her true form."

"Her true form?" Sam inquired from where he was leaning against the wall.

Xander nodded. "Yep. Under that cute-girl façade there's a frightening amount of slime and tentacles. I've seen the pictures; believe me, it's not pretty."

"What was that other stuff about?" Sam asked, gesturing to the paper in Xander's hand.

"Oh, that's a spell Willow gave me that's supposed to get rid of my Hellmouthy vibe."

"Do you mind if I take a look?" Sam asked, pulling away from the wall and stepping closer to Xander.

"Sure." Xander handed over the list, adding as he did, "I don't suppose either of you speak Latin, do you? She said it didn't have to be in Latin but that it would be better if it were."

"Yeah, actually," Sam murmured offhandedly as he continued reading. "It shouldn't be too difficult to translate this."

"Good," Dean piped in. He picked up one of his guns and began going through the motions of cleaning it. "We'll take care of that first, get that out of the way so we don't have any surprises, and then we'll figure out what to do about Avery. Either of you have any suggestions on how to get Avery to switch forms?" he asked, briefly glancing up at them before returning his attention to cleaning the gun.

"Um, actually, that's the thing," Xander began tentatively. "Giles said the only time these gruelfrocks, or whatever, take their true form is when they're making their creations. So I figure we'll just wait till after to do that spell, and we'll use me as bait."

Dean's hands stilled, and he flicked his gaze up to Xander. A dark frown marred his features, and he stared at the younger man for a few seconds before stating flatly, "No. Not gonna happen."

"Why not?" Xander blurted out in surprise. Okay, so maybe it wasn't the greatest plan ever, but it made sense to him, even if he did say so himself. "We need to get Avery in her true form, and she needs me in order to create more demons. Giles said she should be pretty easy to kill once she changes, so as soon she does, we go with your guns ablazin' plan before she has a chance to suck the energy out of me or whatever, and then – there ya go. Waiverton's demon problems are history."

"He has a point," Sam backed up him.

Dean's uncompromising gaze shot over to Sam. "No, he doesn't."

"Look, we may have to hold off on this spell anyway," Sam argued, holding up the paper in his hands. "Some of these ingredients I know we won't find here in town."

"Then we'll just go somewhere we can find them and then come back," Dean reasoned.

"Dean," Sam's voice rang out reproachfully. "Who knows what Avery could do during all that time. She seemed pretty pissed about that first demon we killed, and now that you shot that second one, there's no telling what she might be desperate enough to do."

"Sam, we're not using him as bait," Dean threw back, nearly shouting.

"Well, then, what's your brilliant plan?" Sam asked, voice raising to match Dean's. "Without Xander how do you suggest we get Avery to change form?"

Dean fumbled for an answer, face contorting in frustration. "We'll come up with something," he said finally, at a loss.

Sam paused to take a calming breath. "Look, Dean, it's not anything either one of us hasn't done at some time or another. And it's not like he's going to be by himself in this. We'll come up with some sort of plan to minimize the risks."

Dean glared stonily at the younger man, looking as if he had no intention of backing down, and Sam stared back with his own imploring expression, lips pressed together in a thin line. Xander got the feeling that the argument was still ongoing as they stared each other down, fought out now in some language of silence and jaw-clenching that Xander wasn't privy to.

Finally, Dean shook his head in aggravation and turned to Xander. "Do you even know how to use a gun?"

Xander moved over to the bed where Dean had spread out their mini-arsenal. He picked up a clip and one of the handguns. Expertly, he loaded the clip into the gun, pulled back the slide to chamber a round, and flicked the safety off. His movements seemed practiced and efficient, as if he'd dealt with guns his whole life.

He turned turn back to his brothers. "And I'm a fair shot, too," he added.

The two older men shared sidelong glances before looking back toward Xander, their expressions equal parts impressed and surprised.

Xander lazily shrugged a shoulder and explained, "One time at Halloween we all got turned into our costumes, and I was an army guy. After the spell was over, all the army info kind of stuck, and it's turned out to be pretty damn useful."

Sam blinked and stared at Xander with a confounded expression.

Dean stared at him too, expression indecipherable. "You know we're going to have a long talk about all this when this is over, right?"

"Yeah, I figured that," Xander agreed.

Dean stared a beat longer then clapped his hands together and said, "All right, if we're going to do this, we need to start working it out. Avery already knows we're on to her, which means the element of surprise is shot. She's gonna see us coming a mile away, so we've gotta come up with a damn good plan."

"Yeah," Sam agreed.

Dean moved to the side of the room, leaned against the wall, and crossed his arms over his chest, favoring Sam with an expectant look.

Xander, following Dean's lead, turned toward Sam with his own look of anticipation.

It took Sam a couple of seconds to notice their staring, his eyes flitting back and forth between the two before it occurred to him what they were waiting on. "Right, so I guess I'll just get working on that plan."

"Great." Dean jumped away from the wall. "Xander and I will go raid the kitchen for some food while you get on that."

"Thank God," Xander sighed in relief. "I haven't eaten all day."

Dean gave Sam a grin and a slap on the shoulder as he passed him on the way to the door, saying, "Don't worry, Sammy. We'll bring something back for too."

"It's Sam," he called after them.

Xander barely caught the words as he eagerly trailed out the door after Dean. The big talk was over, they were halfway ready to get rid of Avery the demon-bitch, and Xander was about to remedy that hunger problem that he'd been dealing with all day. All in all, he felt his night was improving.

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