Sam liked Big Sur where he'd once gone camping while he was at Stanford, and added it to his list of reasons why not to go through with the Apocalypse. What was not to like about the sparsely populated and mostly unspoiled area with its hills, mountains, trees, and a Wendigo that was so far out of its territory that it wasn't even funny? On one level, Sam was slightly excited about the hunt since he was getting back into familiar territory after that whole Lucifer being freed from Hell and him and Dean being Lucifer's and Michael's vessels debacle. On another level, he honestly didn't see the point in the hunt, and didn't care all that much about the creature or its victims.

Sam eventually tracked the idiot Wendigo to a hidden seaside cave that was well away from the usual tourist spots and campsites. As he was rescuing some poor homeless man who had decided that since he didn't have a home, he may as well go and see the world starting with the California coast, the Wendigo swiped his flare-gun.

"You know what, screw this." Sam said as he snapped his fingers and painted the walls of the cave with Wendigo guts. "Now to go dick around for the time it would take to book a flight, go through security, and fly to South Dakota."

With that in mind, Sam headed off to a tourist trap to the south called Cambria that he'd once visited when he'd gone on a road trip down the coast while he was at Stanford. Aside from the coast and Hearst Castle, there wasn't much to look at in the area, but it was a good place to waste a few hours, especially without Mich-, er, Dean around to make fun of his choice of leisure activities.

While Sam was off renting a bicycle, a team from the FBI's BAU was arriving to deal with a serial killer who had started killing women in the area in Satanic rituals a couple months earlier. As Sam started on a leisurely ride through town, the team was getting set up at the local police station. As Sam was riding by the police station, determinedly ignoring the increased activity as he did his best to look casual, Agent Reid happened to look out the window.

"Is it just me, or did Sam Winchester just ride by on a bicycle?" Reid asked.

"Sam Winchester? As in the Winchester brothers who died over a year ago when the helicopter that was supposed to transport them exploded?" Morgan asked. "That Sam Winchester?"

"Um, yeah, but I was probably just seeing things." Reid said, looking somewhat embarrassed.

"Probably not." Agent Rossi said. "Dean Winchester has convincingly faked his death before, and a number of Law Enforcement Agencies across the country have reported spotting a Black '67 Impala traveling through their area while they were investigating unusual spikes in the death rate in their region. I think we should follow up on Reid's lead."

Sam noticed the police cars while he was riding down a street that was lined with little shops. You know, one of those little old-fashioned main streets that small towns tend to have with the sorts of shops that the tourists tend to flock to while the locals tend to drive to the next town over or the nearest city to get to Wal-Mart.

"Crap." he said as he pulled over his bicycle, since he wasn't going to be able to outrun them on the two wheeled contraption.

There were several ways Sam could deal with this. None of them seemed like particularly good ideas at the moment. The poor slobs in the cruisers were just doing their jobs, and didn't deserve to have themselves and the town blown up because of it. And, if he simply vanished, it could get out and get back to Bobby or Dean through the Hunter network. The hunters he'd encountered were already leery enough of him as it was after the "Get Lost" incident of a couple days ago. Demons generally don't vanish when you give them a Look and tell them to scram, and the Hunters who'd tried getting him to drink demon blood in order to exorcize them knew it.

Now, where the hell did that come from? Sam thought as he held his hands up, showing the rather scared looking cops who looked a little trigger-happy at the moment that he was unarmed.

Soon, he was handcuffed and in the back of a police car, stewing at the indignity of it all and thinking Dean's not here, I could do it, and probably even get away with it. Dean's not here.

After a short ride during which he'd barely restrained himself from leveling the police car, the street, the town, the county and the state, he found himself at the police station which wasn't just occupied by cops. He vaguely wondered what the FBI was here for, since he hadn't been in town long enough for them to have come for him, or done anything in the region that might catch their attention in the first place, and had chosen to come here mostly on a whim.

He was soon set in an interrogation room where Agent David Rossi who had been a favorite author of his soon arrived to question him.

"Where's your brother?" Rossi asked.

"Which one? There's thousands of the little winged bas- Whoa sorry, I must've spaced out for a second there, can you repeat the question?" Luci-Sam said.

"Where's your brother, Sam?" Rossi asked.

"Kansas." Sam replied before frowning and wondering how he knew that.

"Somehow, I find that hard to believe, since while Dean has worked alone before, you haven't." Rossi replied before using the cliched trick of setting down a file full of crime scene photos before the young man.

The reason Rossi sometimes used this little cop-show cliche was that the reactions the person he was interrogating had to the photographs tended to tell him more about the person, and how they'd react to certain avenues of inquiry. While the satanic imagery in this case fit the Winchesters' all over the place MO to a degree, it didn't entirely fit. Considering the fact that the Winchesters were experts in the area of the occult, even if they weren't responsible for the five killings that had drawn the BAU's attention, Sam Winchester could provide some insight that would give him the clue he needed to catch the Unsub.

"Pfft. Amateur." Sam said as he flipped through the images from the scenes of the first two killings which had taken place in isolated areas near the town which seemed to be the center of the Unsub's comfort zone. "That's a devil's trap you flipping moron. No self-respecting demon is going to walk into it no matter how many times you try to summon him."

After flipping over the last photograph from the second crime scene, Sam found himself gripping the pictures tighter. The woman in these photos looked like Jess. Jess who he'd loved. Jess who was one of the few things in the universe aside from Dean that he cared about. If Azazel weren't already dead, he would've been spending eternity in torment for arranging for him to meet her, and arranging her death. Actually, Azazel had alot to answer for, the death of his human mother Mary, and his crap childhood included.

"I can help you bring this guy in. Just bring me along, and let me speak to him. He'll come quietly." Sam said as he set the rest of the photographs aside, not wanting to look at them, not wanting to be reminded of Jess any further.

"How can I trust you? You've escaped from custody before." Rossi replied, as he scooped all of the photographs into the folder, placing the ones of Jess' look-alike on top.

"I know where he is." Sam said with a vicious smile that sent chills up Rossi's spine before rattling off an address. He'd seen evil before, but not like this. After seeing the look on Sam Winchester's face, he could understand why Henricksen had chased the Winchesters to his death in the vain hope of getting them off the street.

It had been against his better judgement that he'd brought Winchester along. The Unsub had taken another victim, and if there was any chance of getting the girl back alive, he'd take it. They eventually ended up at a slightly run-down summer vacation home at the edge of town. The scream they heard when they pulled up alerted them to the fact that they'd gotten the right house. Sam, who had been shackled as well as handcuffed, was escorted out of the SUV and into view of he house. With a snap of Sam's fingers, the cuffs and shackles vanished as if they had never existed, and Sam was wearing a rather smart white suit.

"Dennis, Den-nis." Sam Winchester called to the house in a sing-song voice that sent chills up the spines of all who heard it. "I've heard your call, and have chosen to answer."

The only response was another scream from the house.

"Dennis." Winchester said more firmly. "You do not want to hide from my sight."

The man who was renting the house, a Dennis Mailer, came out to the porch, holding a knife to the neck of a young red-haired girl.

"What do you want?" the man yelled.

"It's more of a question of 'What do you want?'." Winchester replied with a smile that was full of malice.

"You expect me to believe that you're the demon Azazel?" Dennis replied.

"Didn't you get the memo Dennis?" Winchester replied mockingly. "Azazel died a couple of years ago. I'm Lucifer."

Well, that's a new one. Rossi thought. Nowhere in that odd mish-mash that was the Winchesters' file had it hinted that Sam believed himself to be the devil.

"Yeah, righ..." Mailer said before dropping his knife and letting go of his captive.

The reason for this had been the massive wing shadow that showed up on the lawn and on the cars and on the street behind the Winchester as the officers' radios squealed and the flashing lights on the cars exploded.

Mailer fell to his knees and started crawling towards Winche- er, Lucifer.

"Like I said before Dennis, what is it you want?" the devil asked as he looked down at the Unsub with an almost beatific expression on his face.

"To serve at your side my lord." Mailer replied as he knelt in front of the Great Adversary.

"Request denied." Lucifer said coldly, looking at Mailer in disgust as if he were a particularly loathsome species of insect, before snapping his fingers.

The Satanic serial killer whom the team had been chasing, had been led to rather, exploded and Sam Winchester disappeared with the sound of fluttering wings.

The group turned, looked at each-other, and raced back to their vehicles.

"Where are you guys going?" a shocked police officer who wouldn't have believed what he saw if it weren't for the chunky bits of Unsub decorating the lawn asked.

"Church." the BAU team replied in unison.

"I'm coming with you." the officer replied as he hopped into his police cruiser before he squealed out of his parking spot and sped off down the road at the head of a procession of law enforcement vehicles.

Epilogue:

"What's this I heard about Lucifer showing up in Cambria, California and looking just like you?" Dean asked his brother the instant they were back together.

"Um, Lucifer's current vessel disguised himself as me in an attempt to split us." Sam said evasively.

"Okay, I'll buy that." Dean said. "Hop in, we've got a potential hunt in Canton, Ohio."

As the Impala blew down the highway at about a hundred miles an hour while Sam and Dean wished it would go faster, an airplane flew towards Quantico, Virginia carrying a certain team from the BAU.

"Do you think that really was Lucifer?" Reid asked, bringing up the thing the team had not wanted to discuss about that last job.

The poor pastor at the church the BAU team and the local police had raced to would probably be scarred for life. Seeing a bunch of Law Enforcement Agents pull into your parking lot and race into your church en masse would give just about anyone a heart-attack. He'd looked bewildered as hell when a Catholic member of the group had requested that he call the local priest over, and a Jewish member of the group that had descended on the closest church to Mailer's residence asked for a ride to the nearest Synagogue.

"I don't know, and I don't want to think about it." Morgan replied. "I just wish we could forget this whole thing ever happened."