Notes: You know, when I first started writing I had no intention of ending things this way. Surprise! I fooled myself too.

Don't worry, this obviously isn't the end of the series. I just feel much more comfortable writing each sub-plot as an individual story than one massive saga. Look for single snippets coming soon, and possibly a prequel.

Three hours and Ruby was having a ball. She had danced through practically every boutique on main street, trying on clothes and striking poses for Sam in the dressing room so that he wouldn't get too bored - it was only fair, considering the amount of patience he was showing while she accumulated a wardrobe larger than two sets of shirts and pants. To prove that she appreciated his efforts Ruby was on her best behaviour, rightfully interpreting the shopping spree as her reward for 'growing up' and not complaining about the long drive or the lack of cable in the motel room.

Ruby practically skips down the street, several shopping bags in one hand, the other firmly grasping Sam's forearm to help keep her balance in new boots that made her feet twice as tall as she actually was. Three inch heels used to be nothing, but after so long in nothing but bare feet or flat sandals it was strange to have any extra height.

"Ruby," Sam says, looking down at her and trusting that his imposing height would keep anyone from walking into them, "I know I said that this was your surprise, but we worked out another one."

"Another surprise?" Ruby asks. She looks up at Sam and nearly stumbles on a crack in the sidewalk, caught at the last second and steadied by his hand on her back. "I thought this was enough," she ads, holding up her shopping bags. More to the point, she thought, wasn't the idea to stop her from being so spoiled and not to encourage it?

"This one's different," Sam insists. "You have to promise me you wont freak out, OK?"

"Is it something I should freak out over?"

"No," Sam assures her quickly. "No, it's nothing to freak out over. It's just different."

"OK," Ruby agrees, readily believing anything Sam tells her. She smiles as he leads her down side streets until her feet are sore, when he just scoops her up like it's nothing. Ruby leans against his chest, listening to his heartbeat and letting the world fall away. She doesn't pay attention to where they are until Sam stops and Ruby sees the black beauty parked across the street.

She hears the doors squeak and sees Dean emerge from the driver's seat. A flash of tan, black and steel is Castiel by the boot. He tosses Dean a gun and the Winchester brothers share a grin.

"Lets get this thing done," Dean says, casually sliding the gun into the back of his jeans where it can't be seen.

-

A sudden and dangerous crackling fills the air, obnoxious static emanating from the short waves fitted to the police officers' belts. The air swamped with static electricity, pops and sparks rendering the units useless.

A behemoth of a man fills the kitchen doorway, eyes an impossible shade of bright flashing yellow. Another man appears in the space between dining and living rooms, pistol in hand and a smile on his lips; Flanked by an emotionless shadow with a shining straight razor.

"Dear Lord," Grady Fields breathes, grasping tight to his wife's hand. There was no mistaking these men, Grady had seen their pictures numerous times in the months that Ruby had been missing - two dimensions in black and white, photocopied from arrest records and CCTV recordings.

"Nice guess," Dean Winchester drawls in a voice that seems deceptively friendly, "but God isn't as pretty as we are."

An officer goes for his gun. Two things happen to him at once. The pistol swings around and fires a shot squarely into the man's chest. At the exact same moment Sam Winchester raises his left hand towards the officer and crooks his fingers. The man's neck breaks. He falls into a bleeding heap on the kitchen floor, red soaking the linoleum as the other two officers in the room stare in dumb shock.

"No guns," Sam says. "Guns aren't polite."

For a moment it doesn't register. People's necks don't just spontaneously snap. The human body doesn't move that way, even when shot in the chest by a large calibre handgun.

"Oh my God," Martha whimpers, tightening her grip on her husband's fingers. "What did you do to our daughter?"

"Nothing," Sam replies, in a voice that Martha recognises from over the phone. He sounds so trustworthy, so unlike the picture that his eyes portray. "we brought her to see you." Sam looks back over his shoulder and smiles. "You can come in now, Ruby."

And Ruby, their baby girl, suddenly squeezes her way into the kitchen under Sam's arm. She's wearing new clothes and no makeup, her hair longer than they remember, but it's definitely her. It's so shocking and wonderful to see her alive and well that it takes a few seconds to process the fact that she doesn't look the least bit scared to be in the same room as one dead body and three notorious murderers.

"Surprise, baby," Sam says to Ruby as she rushes over to hug her parents, acting as if she was only coming back after a holiday and not after having been kidnapped. "We set it up so you could say hello to your parents before we go."

"Go," Grady repeats flatly.

"You've done enough," Martha ads, her arms wrapped tightly around their baby girl. "You brought our little girl back to us. I think it's time that you leave now."

Sam shrugs. "OK," he says calmly. "If that's what you want." He turns to leave, adding over his shoulder; "We'll be waiting in the car, ok Ruby?"

"Sure," Ruby says, at the exact same time that her mother says very sharply; "What?"

Things happen very quickly after that, time moves in a manner discordant with reality.

-

The body lolls lifelessly in the back seat, eyes unfocused and pulse faint but steady. There could be blood pooling in the skull for all they know, but there's blood enough on their hands that one more slow death wont cause much alarm. It's the wasted time that's so galling, the shattered pride. It stings, salting the wounds. Pride, as they say, comes before the fall.

Sam fumes in the front passenger seat, his eyes glowing like a cat's in the darkness. The air around him smells metallic. A scent like singed hair clings to the inside of the car; Pervasive, inescapable. Not even open windows could chase the smell away.

A hand reaches for the radio dial and turns the knob only to give up when all that reaches the speakers is static. "Sam..."

"Just shut up, Dean."

The silence lasts for barely a minute before he tries again. "Look, it's not the end of the world. So she didn't take the bait, we've still got her body."

"Fuck you."

"Don't tell me you actually cared about the little bitch?"

"Dean..."

"I mean she had her moments, but it was like living with a spoiled preteen. You want a preteen, Sammy? 'Cause we can stop at any middle school you want and you can pick out some dumb cheerleader."

"Try again." Castiel voices the suggestion from the back seat, carefully keeping the Ruby-body's head from thunking against the window on a sharp turn. "Perhaps killing her parents was too much."

"The angelface is right," Dean nods to his brother. "If we try again we could start slow, arrange a mugging or something." The green-eyed murderer takes one of his hands off the steering wheel and reaches over to touch his brother's wrist. Sam's eyes blaze, then fade to a duller, more neutral colour.

"You're right," he says finally, the anger slowly draining from his body. "It was asking too much. We have the body. Dean... I want to try something else."

"Demon with a human fetish?" Dean smirks. "Have body, will travel."

Castiel shifts in the back seat, fingers flitting from the body's wrist to its neck. "She's not going to last much longer."

The body rattles a long drawn out breath to emphasise his point. For a moment the barest hint of recognition lingers in its eyes. Then the eyelids draw closed and the breath becomes shallow.

The brothers exchange glances in the front seat. This was not ideal, plans shot to pieces. "You cool with a dead host?" Dean asks.

Sam swears softly.

"Alright, necrophilia aint your style." Dean shakes his head, "We can't pull over, man. We're not far enough away from the crime scene."

"Backseat voudou," Sam says, glancing over at Castiel and the unconscious body. "This should be interesting."

The younger Winchester unbuckles his seat belt and turns, sitting sideways on the leather. One of his knees presses into Dean's thigh, the rest of him as far to the right as possible to give him adequate room to move. In the back seat, Castiel shifts his weight, manhandling the unconscious young woman who used to be Ruby into a vaguely horizontal slump against the back seat. He reaches for a cloth bag stuffed under the front seat and hands it to Sam.

The first thing Sam draws out is a bundle of herbs, closely followed by a box of wooden matches. "I can never get over," he says to himself, "the irony of performing a blessing before invoking demons."

The smell of singed hair is replaced by burning sage and angelica. Blood and oil mixes together into a pinkish mess and is smeared across the body's forehead. Three separate sigils, the largest above the third eye.

Sam does the chanting. It's him who knows the words; He has the power to give it an extra jolt. Dean just keeps driving, eyes on the road, flicking his gaze to the rearview every few seconds. The words have to be perfect, the timing precise. The final word falls from Sam's lips accompanied by a crackle of energy.

Nothing happens.

The silence carries on for a full three minutes before Sam says anything else. "Fuck."

"Demons," Dean shakes his head. "Never can trust them."

"Perhaps," Castiel says carefully, still monitoring the body's pulse. "If you didn't insist on mutilating every demon you find."

"They started it."

Suddenly the car is engulfed in blackness. The car swerves as Dean reacts with violent swearing, barely avoiding an oncoming truck. The darkness clears; Ruby's body arches in the backseat, her mouth open in a gasp that sounds like a death rattle in reverse.

"Sam Winchester," the demon in the body says. "Your accent sucks."

"You know what I summoned you for, right?" Sam asks. The atmosphere in the car is tense, wariness hanging in the air with the lingering smell of charring herbs. For the moment, at least, Sam is willing to give the demon the benefit of the doubt.

"Yes," it says eventually, resettling Ruby's body on the seat and crossing her legs. "You made your intentions clear even through that parochial accent. I'm curious, you know. You and your brother, you've made it clear that you like us as much as hunters do, so why would you summon one of us..." The demon pauses a beat, letting the words sink in, "for companionship?"

"Hey," Dean butts in impatiently, watching the differences in body language in the mirror. "You're the ones who started it."

"You seem to have a real problem with me and my brother," Sam adds, slowly stretching out his mind to feel the strength of the being inhabiting Ruby's body. It's a fairly low ranking demon, new enough in the grand scheme of things and only freshly released from Hell. Sam could send it back there if he wanted to. "Winchester Half-breed, right? Back before we ever started picking fights demons were out to kill me."

It - she - shrugs and raises one of Ruby's elegant hands to wipe the sigils from her forehead. "You're powerful," she says casually, "you're threatening. There are legends about you. Sam Winchester, Azazel's best failed plan and the boy king of Hell. None of it is true, of course, but you are something special. Half-breeds are a once in a millenia kind of thing. You could raise Lucifer, if you wanted."

"So you want to take Ruby's place as my companion?" Sam asks, bringing them back to the point. "Travel with us, kill things with us? We're exiles in both worlds. Demons hate us, hunters hate us, normal people want to see us behind bars."

"As if that would stop you." The demon smiles. It flexes the hand smeared with ritual blood and oil, looks down at Ruby's body. "Yes," she says eventually. She levels a calculated gaze at the younger Winchester. There's no trace of the girl left in the body, only the demon now. "Azazel was my father too. You can call me Ruby, Sam. I think it could be fun, being with you."

Sam smiles back. She doesn't love him, doesn't even care about him yet, but the demon is several steps closer to an equal than the other Ruby ever could have been. "Alright." Sam lets his eyes show yellow for her. "It's nice to meet you, Ruby. This is Castiel, and my brother Dean."

"Charming." Ruby's eyes flicker between black and brown. She shows no distaste for either human.

"Sweet," Dean grins, showing none of the wariness that Sam knows will be there until Ruby proves herself. "Demon girlfriend, Sammy. What did I tell you?"

"An entire ten months," Castiel observes, absently stroking his razor as he stares straight ahead through the windshield. "Completely pointless."

"Think of it as an exercise in psychology," Sam suggests."The other Ruby wasn't a complete failure."

"She was a spoiled freaking brat and you know it."

A natural silence descends on the black beauty. Its occupants keep their thoughts to themselves, alert in their strange and new company. After a moment Dean pushes a tape into the player, filling the silence with the sounds of classic rock. Ruby nods her appreciation, turning a little to look out the window at the passing scenery.

"I could live with this."

-

"There," Sam taps the spot on the map, one of the last places in the area that they hadn't yet canvassed. "Manning, Colorado."

"It's the last town, Sammy," Dean points out, flicking through their collection of maps until he finds the apropriate street directory for the township. "So if that tip turns out to be a false lead, we might as well forget about it."

"According to Dad's old journal there's a hunter there. Elkins, specialises in vampires."

"Tough shit. He'll never see us coming."

There's a noise from the other room. Sam looks out through the open door in time to watch Castiel lead a tired, mopey Ruby back into the cabin, her most recent stay in the woodshed just barely ended. Sam rolls up the map again and stands, leaving Dean sitting alone on the bed.

"We'll finish this first," he says, and they both know he means the girl. "We can come back afterwards."

"Great. If it goes to plan we got a fourth, if it all ends in shit we've got somewhere to run."

-

Two humans, a demon and a half-breed. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.

Dean grins. He'd always had an affinity for bad jokes.