Please note, this is NOT a sequel to Left Turn of Fate. The two stories share a base premise, that Azazel decided to take action after meeting Dean in 1973, but they are not connected in any way. This is its own story and will have its own sequels. Worry not, the sequel to LTF is coming, but it won't be now.

It is also longer than the preview that was in Left Turn of Fate before I posted this, so read past. FYI, the preview ended mid-paragraph, so be careful if you skim to find it. New stuff doesn't start in a new paragraph.

Chapter 1

Sam balanced two bags of groceries in one arm, a gallon of milk dangling from those fingers, and snaked his key out of his front pocket. After wrangling the door open, he stepped through and kicked it shut behind him, figuring he'd lock it in a minute. He walked across the old rag rug that Jessica had brought from home and went into the kitchen to deposit the grocery bags on the counter. He opened the fridge and put the milk inside, then started rifling through the bags to find the meat and veggies and other things that needed to be refrigerated.

He had to have everything perfect tonight. In his sock drawer a small box awaited the right moment, and he thought the time had come. Nervously contemplating his plans for the evening, he initially took his unease for bachelor jitters, but then he heard a noise coming from the living room.

Dropping into a crouch, he reached up and slipped a knife soundlessly from the wood block, then crept towards the kitchen door. He could hear loud footsteps, almost as if the intruder was announcing himself. "Who's there?" he asked, reaching into his pocket with his free hand and pulling out his cell phone. Silently flipping it open, he dialed three digits and hovered his thumb over the Send button.

"Sam?" The familiar voice brought all of Sam's buried rage to the forefront again. He snapped the phone shut, dropped the knife to his side and stepped around the wall that separated the kitchen from the living room. "What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded, glaring at his father. Dad looked good, not nearly as old as he actually was, and all the anger and rage Sam had felt during their last confrontation came back in a rush, making it hard for him to keep his composure. He locked it down and gazed coldly at his father.

"Nice to see you, too, Sammy," John said, his eyes taking everything in, from the phone to the knife and Sam's casual attire. "Calling the cops, huh? What if I'd been something they couldn't handle?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "It's Sam, and strangely enough, I haven't seen anything supernatural since I left. Why are you here?" Shoving the phone in his pocket, he crossed his arms, careful of the knife.

"We have to talk," John replied.

"What happened to 'if you leave, you'd better stay gone'?" Sam asked bitterly. His father didn't immediately respond. Shaking his head, Sam went back into the kitchen, put the knife away and returned to his groceries. "Look, Dad, I've got things to do. We haven't spoken in three years, why change the pattern now?"

"This is important," John said.

"Right." Sam snorted. "It's important to you, therefore it must be the most earth shattering news of the century. I'm busy, Dad. Having my father show up out of the blue and break into my apartment was not in my plans for today."

"I wanted to talk to you about that," John said, and Sam looked at him dubiously. "That lock is a joke. You can't trust your safety to something that chintzy."

"It came with the apartment," Sam replied shortly.

"Then you should have replaced it."

"Whatever. Is that the important thing you had to talk to me about? Because if so, I've got –"

His father spoke abruptly, breaking into Sam's rant. "Dean is missing."

Three words, simple, direct, and Sam felt them like a punch in the gut. He turned around and stared at his Dad. When he saw the calculation in those brown eyes, fury surged through him. Manipulation, Dad's stock in trade. "You sure he's not with some girl?" he asked scornfully.

"Do you really think I couldn't find him if he was with a girl?" John demanded harshly.

"I really think you're pissed that I didn't come running back with my tail between my legs after six months," Sam retorted, aware that he was riding the line between stupid and right. With his father, that could be a narrow, blurry line, and Sam didn't want to deal with this crap. "And I really think you'd leap at anything to drag me back into that crappy life."

"That's not what this is about," John growled. "This is about your brother. And I wouldn't have come to you if I had any kind of a choice."

"Right!" Sam snapped. "Well, if you can't find him, what makes you think I'll be able to?"

"Finding him isn't the problem," John replied. "I –"

"You just said he was missing," Sam retorted. "You can't have it both ways." He put the corn flakes away in the cupboard, shutting the door with a little more force than necessary. He started folding the paper grocery bags and putting them away for later use. "Dean can take care of himself. You saw to it that both your boys could take care of themselves, with the result that normal people find us weird and terrifying. You have no idea how long it took me to mute my reactions to every sound and movement."

"Sammy, I –"

"My name is Sam." Without waiting for any kind of a response, Sam went out into the living room. He had two hours at most to render the apartment a romantic space, and his father's presence wasn't helping. He filled Jessica's 5-disk CD changer with Barry White, Enya and Celine Dion, and then started picking up the slight mess she always left behind her everywhere she went. With Dean, he'd found that habit irritating, but somehow in Jess it was cute. Endearing, even. Dean . . . Sam turned around to find his father standing the doorway to the living room, watching him. "How long has he been missing?" he asked.

"I'm not altogether certain," John said, and Sam raised his eyebrows. "He's mostly been hunting on his own for about a year now, so I just realized over a matter of a couple of months that I should have heard from him. I finally tracked the Impala down to an impound lot in Nebraska. It's been there since September 9th."

"An impound lot?" Sam exclaimed. It was now November 10th. That was just more than two months. Dean loved that car, he treated it like a member of the family. "Dean would never leave the Impala behind."

"Not only that, but there were no reports of contraband found in the car, no rumors, nothing, and the trunk was empty of weapons."

"Maybe he found a car he liked better," Sam said, but he knew it made no sense.

"Yeah, right," John replied sarcastically, and Sam shrugged. "When was the last time you heard from him?"

"Not since . . . I'm not sure. It's been months." Sam thought about it. "I've moved twice since the last time I heard from him, so it's got to be at least a year."

John stared at him, blinking. "Maybe you're the wrong person to come to for this," he said, his eyes boring into Sam's. "I need someone who can back me up, someone who gives enough of a damn to stop at nothing to get your brother back."

Sam glowered at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

John shook his head. "I know Dean wanted to keep in touch with you, so if you haven't heard from him, it's because you rejected him." Sam looked away, recalling the unreturned messages and the calls he'd let ring through to voicemail on his cell phone. "If you don't even want contact with your brother, I don't know why I should think you'd want to help get him back."

Sam's head snapped around. "No, don't you put that off on me," he snarled. "I knew you'd try to use him to get to me, and you did, more than once. Hell, you're doing it now!"

"This is not about you hunting, Sammy!" John took a deep breath and modulated his tone. He looked away, and to Sam's astonishment, he could see that his father was repressing emotion. Unable to cope with that, Sam turned and continued cleaning. John remained silent for several moments, and Sam carried the various things that Jess had left lying around and put them where they belonged. He was just closing her desk drawer when he heard his father's voice behind him. "I know what killed your mother."

Sam whirled and gaped at John. As news it was stunning. As a non sequitur it was infuriating. He closed his mouth with a snap. "You do?" he asked. John nodded. "So what? I thought this was about Dean."

"It's a demon," John said, seemingly ignoring Sam's question. "Azazel. I don't know much about yet, but every reference I've found to it – and there aren't many – say it has yellow eyes."

"I thought demon eyes were black," Sam said, drawn in despite himself. He shook his head. "What's this got to do with Dean?"

"The demon took Dean, Sammy," John said. Sam stared at him. "I think I was getting too close, so it went after Dean."

"How do you know? You just said you didn't even know when he disappeared."

"There was sulfur in the trunk, sulfur in the foot wells, and I exorcised a demon last week. He told me that Yellow Eyes has Dean."

"Don't demons lie, Dad?" Sam asked.

"Not when they're being tortured," John replied. "Not when they make a deal to stop the torture."

Sam swallowed a painful lump that had risen in his throat. "Why would a demon kill Mom? Why would he take Dean? It makes no sense!"

"I know." Crossing his arms, John cleared his throat, but Sam wasn't done.

"All you've got is a lack of phone calls, an empty car and a demon who might be lying," Sam said. "Did he even give you a direction?"

Sam could see his father taking a deep breath as if to calm himself. "The car wasn't entirely empty."

"Sulfur, yeah."

John had reached into his pocket. "No, there was something else, in the floorboards of the back seat." He pulled out something in a plastic bag, something on a cord.

Sam's eyes widened. He walked forward and took the thing from his father's hand, yanking when John didn't immediately let go. "He wouldn't leave this behind either," Sam said, examining the little amulet through the plastic. The cord was snapped, and the dark red chunks that were also in the bag had clearly flaked off it because Sam could still see some attached to the face. "Blood?" he asked, gulping.

His father nodded.

"And, as a note, I didn't ask the demon if he knew where Dean was, I asked him if he knew where the yellow-eyed demon was. He said that the 'big guy,' his words, not mine, was wasting his time torturing some penny ante hunter."

Sam looked up from his scrutiny of Dean's necklace. "Torturing?"

"Yeah. I asked him a few more questions, and it came clear real fast that it was Dean."

"How?"

"Apparently, he also said that this penny ante hunter's family had been tracking him for twenty years."

Sam had heard enough. He stuffed the amulet, plastic baggy and all, into his pocket and strode out of the room he and Jessica used as their joint office. He went into his bedroom and stopped, staring. His duffel sat open on the bed, already halfway packed.

"I put the weapons on the bottom," John said behind him. "What did your college friends think of them?"

"Most of them have never seen them," Sam replied curtly, looking through the bag. Good old Dad, taking control as always. Sam grimaced. He'd done a reasonable job. Jeans, t-shirts, underwear, socks. "What else did you dig into?" he demanded.

"I couldn't figure out whose toiletries were whose." John tapped on the bathroom door. "I mean, razors and deodorant are usually pretty obvious, but one toothbrush looks like another, and there's nothing in here I recognize as shampoo." Unspoken was the criticism that Sam should always have a toiletries bag prepped and ready to go.

Ignoring his father, he shoved past him into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. He pulled a zip bag out from under the sink and began loading it up with his stuff. Dean. Missing. It was hard to take in. Dean had always been a pillar of his life. Dean being tortured by a demon . . .

He jerked the bathroom door open and found that his father was examining the closet. "I think we'd better bring this suit, we might need to pose as FBI or something like that." He pulled out the suit that Sam had worn for his law school interview, still shrouded in the dry cleaners bag.

"Yeah, you look like law enforcement with that shaggy beard and –" Sam broke off, shaking his head. "I've got a few phone calls to make."

"Phone calls?"

"If I'm going to be welcome back here again, I'm going to have to make a few excuses." Sam walked back into the office and dialed The Graduate's number. After three rings, Luis picked up. "Can I talk to Marco?" Sam said.

The line went dead in that way that meant he was on hold, and a minute later, Marco picked up. "Sam? What's up?"

"I'm going to have to . . . to quit, Marco," Sam said. He had no idea how soon he'd be back. "I've got a family emergency, out of town, and I don't know how long it's going to take."

"You got a family?" Marco asked, sounding faintly amused, but then his voice got serious. "Sorry, buddy, I just never heard you talk about them. Sure, take as much time as you need. Call me when you're back in town."

"Thanks," Sam said. "I appreciate it. Hey, I think Troy's available tonight."

"I got it, Sam, you take care of your thing."

"Thanks." Sam hung up and thought hurriedly. He wouldn't have to do anything about school for another few weeks, so he was safe there. All he had left that he really had to do was tell Jess. He glanced at the clock. She should be here any minute now.

"I'm going to go load your stuff in the truck," John said. "Back in a minute."

Sam nodded. "Sure, Dad." He turned to his desk and opened the drawer. Underneath the minutiae of paperclips and pens he'd placed an inconspicuous box that had a couple thousand tucked away in it. Some of the old habits died hard, and always being short of money while Dad was gone had made him something of a cash hoarder. He pulled it out and tucked into his pocket. He'd better give that to Jess to cover his rent for the next month or so. He hoped she'd understand why he had to go, especially since he'd never talked about his family.

"Sam?"

Sam looked up at the familiar voice. He hurried out into the living room. "Jess, I'm glad you're home. I have to –" He stopped, staring. She was standing in the middle of the rug she'd inherited from her grandmother, looking upset. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

She glowered at him. "What did I do?" she demanded, her voice full of venom. His jaw dropped. "I thought I was the perfect little girlfriend, supportive, fuckable, everything a red-blooded American boy could want. Where did I screw up?"

Sam shook his head, utterly appalled. He took a step towards her. "Jess, I don't understand. What are you –"

At that moment, his father opened the door. "Sam, everything's just about – don't take another step!"

Sam froze in his tracks, not as a result of his father's order, but because, at the sound of his father's voice, Jessica's eyes turned totally black, no whites, no irises, just shiny, jet black. "I should have known," she said, turning around to face John. "Little Sammy's far too stupid to have caught on to me."

"Dad?" Sam exclaimed.

"She's a demon, Sam," he said, shutting and locking the door.

He wanted to deny it, but the proof was right in front of his eyes. "How long?"

The demon turned on him. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Sam took an involuntary step backwards. He'd slept with that . . . that thing . . . unless, maybe it took her today? He clung desperately to that impossible hope.

Sam saw his father squat down and slide something out from behind the plant stand by the door. His journal. Sam shook his head. "Dad, what's going on?"

"I think the yellow-eyed demon sent someone to keep watch on you," John said. "I'm going to exorcise her. It won't be pretty, so maybe you'd better go in the other room."

Sam straightened his back. "No. If this has to happen, I am not walking away from it."

John looked him in the eye, nodded once and then started. "Exorcisamus te, omnis immundus spiritus . . ."

As John recited the ritual for exorcism, he couldn't help watching his son watching the girl he'd been living with writhe and growl and scream obscenities. They were very lucky that no one came to check up and see what was going on, because the demon was by no means quiet in its departure.

Finally, John spoke the last words of the ritual. ". . . te rogamus, audi nos." The girl dropped like a stone, and Sam started to surge forward, then hesitated.

"Is she . . . ?" Sam asked, looking down at her, his expression appalled.

"I don't know," John replied wearily, wondering how fast he could get Sammy packed and ready to go. If this Jessica was dead, they'd have to hightail it because explaining could be pretty near impossible, and they had more important things to do than account for the death of some college girl Sam probably didn't even know.

"Can I –"

"The demon's gone," John said, cutting in on Sam's words. "We need to be going."

Sam lunged across the braided rug to the girl, checking her pulse and then scooping her up. "We can't leave yet," he announced.

"Is she alive?" John asked.

"Yes."

"Then so much the better. We –"

"I am not leaving her to wake up alone after this, Dad," Sam declared, and he strode off through the apartment towards the bedroom.

John had to admire the resolution, but he wished his son had a little better grasp of priorities. At the moment, however, arguing would only make things worse. He continued packing up the truck, checking through all of the rooms to make sure Sam hadn't left anything questionable behind. Then he started scrubbing up the Key of Solomon on the floor, not wanting someone to ask questions if Jessica decided to be a hysteric.

He grudged every second, but Sam was every bit as stubborn as Mary had ever been. Dismissing the brief pain that thought gave him, he bent to scrubbing again.