I still don't own Supernatural. Surprise! No profit here, either.

Music blasting, Dean split his attention between the laptop balanced precariously on his knees and the straight expanse of road stretching North. One hand rested on the wheel.

He was tracking a Demon that he had heard about through the grapevine. Some kind of rogue that called himself the 'Reaper.' The dumb ass thought he could pass for a hunter while still throwing around demon voodoo and tearing souls out, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.

The corpses, like bread crumbs, all led back to the same thing.

The demon that had injured Dean and taken Sam only shortly after they had reunited, after Sam had finally left Stanford and embraced the family business- the same demon that had killed that boy with the brown hair and hazel eyes (Not Sam, not Sam, not Sam, Dean's brain insisted) whose urn rested unclaimed beneath that unmarked gravestone- had been following orders. He claimed he was meting out 'God's Wrath,' and 'reaping the wicked' for the one who would come to lead them all. And Dean had a feeling he knew where those orders had come from, who that one was…

The search parameters on his computer- Sam's laptop, the little voice in his mind reminded him, always Sam's- had turned up a hit. Enough deaths in a little shitty town in Iowa to catch his eye. More than that, it was the name of the town.

He slammed on his breaks and did a U-turn. The image of the gravestone flashed in his mind's eye, almost causing him to careen off of the road.

It had to be the Reaper. It had to be him. The one who killed Sam's friend (Not Sam. The face was destroyed, the corpse mauled, but Dean would have known if it was his brother lying there, wouldn't he?) and took Dean's brother away. No other creature knew the significance of that town. No other creature would dare cross the circle of salted earth that stretched for miles around it, Dean's unspoken pledge of protection. It was the safe haven marked for the day that Sam returned.

Dean growled.

The Reaper slammed down another shot, his eyes on the entrancing undulations of the female singer on the bar's stage. The rest of the men were caught by the same gentle, seductive sound. Wordless, her voice rose and fell over her captive audience.

One eyebrow raised sarcastically at the wail. The banshee had loved her alcoholic husband unconditionally when he was sober, but hated him when he drank. Somehow that had manifested into this monstrosity.

Her wail forewarned of death, but, like her husband, the crowd would not listen: so, they would die at her hands.

Tears slipped down the blank face. The grey mourning dress waved as though in a nonexistent wind.

One more shot.

The song was reaching its climax and the tears were falling faster now, but there was no remorse in her eyes.

The man sighed and slid his glass back to the bartender, who took it absentmindedly, unable to tear his eyes from the performer.

Such a shame to waste such a lovely voice.

Two steps and he was at the base of the stage. Her eyes caught the movement.

One stride and his hand was extended, punching into the oddly corporeal specter's throat. He towered over her, reaching down to complete the movement.

One moment and his hand passed through to where the voice box would be. She shuddered slightly, her form going static at the edges.

One hand drew the iron ring belt from around his waist. She seemed to be as frozen by shock that he had escaped the spell of her voice as the crowd was by the presence of their undead entertainment.

One patron blinked and shouted in outraged protest. The iron belt with the rubber cord filled with salt and holy water strung down the center wrapped around the banshee's waist. The man cloaked in darkness and pain, immune to the banshee's caterwaul, pulled her tight to his waist, staring into the eyes of his prey.

The jukebox continued to clatter tuneless in the background. The lights flickered.

The banshee screamed, trapped in place. Pain and unadulterated rage crackled over her figure. The scream cut off while the fist still extended into her throat opened, dropping a rod of iron down through the spirit, who could not flee. She split, trying to break away from the burning iron that surrounded her and pulled her in two even as the rod tore through her diaphanous grey robe and ate at the shadows of what she had been, disintegrating her throat as she stood. Eyes wide in the horror of realization in that final moment, the banshee dissipated into formless smoke, rising in a column where the belt still chained her to this world.

The spell was broken.

Stooping, the Reaper inhaled, taking the vapor in and creating life from the darkness of the remnants of a tortured soul. A baby rattle fell where she had stood, the anchor that had held his victim to this world now broken in two.

She, Anna, had died when her drunken husband crashed their car into oncoming traffic, completely decimating her corpse and her unborn child within it.

The Reaper blinked away the memories and turned away from the stage. A warm wind seemed to sweep through the smoggy atmosphere of the back-end bar.

Dazed patrons shook their clearing heads in the crowd, glancing surreptitiously at their neighbors as the action of the confrontation ended, sure it was a drunken phantasm. Several slid their glasses away, certain they had reached their limits.

But the Reaper was not done.

There was still the bartender, the man's brother, who had let James Herring drive his pregnant wife home after more than half a bottle of whisky.

Anna Herring was not to blame for the monster she had become. She had little choice in the destruction she had caused, the lives she had taken in this shitty little town in Iowa. But this man? His death would be painful.

Faking a drunken wobble in his step, the Reaper stumbled up to the bar. "Keys, please?" he slurred.

Shuddering confoundedly as his brain still refused to process what the stupefied man had just seen, Ben Herring passed the hulking figure his keys from the peg rack on the wall behind him, damning himself by doing so.

The hand that tugged away the key ring never stopped shaking as it jammed downwards, stabbing with such force that the jagged keys pushed their way through the man's outstretched palm, crunching ligaments and bones, exposing flesh in torn chunks, until, with a spray of blood, they emerged from the back of the screaming man's hand.

"I hunt for those whom you have unrighteously condemned. You do not deserve to be saved when others far greater have died in your stead." The voice was steady even as pandemonium erupted behind the Reaper's gory masterpiece.

Five miles away a 'far greater' man approached in an Impala running at breakneck speeds, his heart leaping at the chance to catch a demon, a murderer, never realizing that the one he hunted was also the one for whom he most desperately longed.

Hazel eyes swirled into a black abyss as rough fingers gripped Ben Herring's face, staring at the unwitting killer as he fluttered on the edge of unconsciousness, wracked by moans of agony.

"Ah, Lucifero, patrono meo, vici ut te damnas hoc monstrum qui venena fratris sui," the Reaper snarled, and then his mouth opened and a pulsing gold light streaked with darkness swarmed from the mouth, eyes, and chest of the Reaper's terrified victim.

With a manic giggle the towering man with blood-splattered hands directed the light to his glass, still wet with the residue of whiskey, then drank it while a horrifying scream echoed somewhere in the distance, complimented by the faint, but rising, call of sirens.

As the blackness faded from his eyes and the sound of sirens rose in the distance, the Reaper slumped slightly, his eyes glazing over as he stared at his latest victim, whose corpse was pinned to the wall (by broken beer bottles, butter knives, and keys) in crucifixion with his arms open wide, tears of blood still dripping from empty eye sockets where the eyeballs had burst from the pressure of the sudden evacuation of the victim's soul from his human body.

He sighed.

"You didn't value your brother when you had him. It's your fault, your debt."

The words sounded scratchy, his throat unused to speech. While an Impala screeched into the parking lot outside, the Reaper began to shake.

"If I could take your place, I would. I deserve this. For him." With one last glance at the whisky (was that perhaps the reason for his nostalgia? But no, the blank headstone still dominated his thoughts), the Reaper strode to the back door, seeking to further his quest of justice. He didn't notice that the building warped with each step he took or that the patrons had all run screaming in shock through the streets. Almost all.

He almost didn't notice the knife that the desperate barmaid jammed into the thick muscles of his shoulder after emerging from her hiding place beside the cacophonous juke box. But he did. With an impossibly disdainful glance, he looked at the figure.

She stared up, her whole body trembling. He was like an avenging angel, silhouetted by sunlight from the partially open exit.

"I'm sorry," he yanked the knife out, looking genuinely repentant. "I can't die. Don't you think I've tried?" He handed it back, and gently deposited the shuddering woman on a stool before she could fall completely to pieces.

Half-lidded eyes locked onto hazel- no, gold?- irises. Feet clattered against the sticky wood flooring as she shook.

"Here," he glanced at her nametag, "Bethany." With a single moment of narrow-eyed concentration, he shed his jacket, the droplets of blood scattered on the surface rising into the air, coming together, and zipping back to the corpse decorating the wall, as though time had reversed. Then he laid the jacket across the nearly-insensate woman's shoulders and yanked the door the rest of the way open, leaving as suddenly and inconspicuously as he had arrived.

"Devils and angels," Beth whispered, clutching the leather to her chest, her eyes unfocused.

A lean blond man in a suit sprinted in through the front door as the glass screeching at the impact against the wood-paneled wall as he forced his way inside; simultaneously, with a degree of finality, the back door finally juddered closed.

Two harried looking police officers with guns raised followed on the dirty blonde's heels. With a degree of disinterest, Beth noted the wide green eyes and crumpled lines on the man's suit, the desperation that tailored his every feature.

"Where is he?" Dean Winchester gasped. A raised finger led him to the back exit.

But the window of opportunity had closed.

"Angels," Beth gasped again, as, for a moment, the man charging through the back door was outlined in sunshine, his dirty blond hair strewn into a halo. It was a beautiful parody of the man who came before, bringing death on his heels. The man's eyes cast back to her, the corpse behind her, the open door…

One of the police officers behind him knelt in a growing pool of vomit, at the sight of the crime scene. The other fell heavily against the wall, unable to look away.

Beth realized she couldn't even hear the sirens over the jarring pound of her own heartbeat.

"I-He-I…" She stuttered.

And then the jacket on her back caught the blond man's eyes.

"Sam!" The exclamation came on a breath so soft that she was amazed to hear it over the throbbing pulse that was growing ever louder in her ears. Confused she glanced around. But it wasn't her he spoke to, but the worn leather that the angel, the killer, had strewn over her back.

A hand touched her shoulder. "Sam!" Louder this time.

And then the pulse of her heartbeat was too loud and Beth fainted to the sight of the longing in those eyes, the need for something, something indescribably important that she could not name.

"Angel."

She collapsed in his arms.

He caught her, but Sam Winchester, the Reaper, got away.