𝐃𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐕𝐀𝐍

𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐘-𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓

"You're sure this is the right place?" Katherine asks, glancing up at the dilapidated building as she pulls the sealed jar of lamb's blood from the bag. Dean nods. She lets out a heavy sigh, shaking her head a bit, and unscrews the top of the jar. 

"You think something's in there?" Sam skeptically questions.

"I know it is," Dean answers.

"You sure you don't wanna stay in the car?" Katherine asks, dipping a silver dagger into the jar of blood. Sam shakes his head, not entirely sure her tone isn't patronizing...not entirely sure he isn't going to throw up. "Then stay behind me. Dean, you flank." She hands the dagger to him. "You see it, you fight your way close, stab it in the heart. And don't get yourself hurt." She pulls another knife from inside her jacket, coats that in blood, seals up the jar, and the three start into the building. Sam stays between the two, something that, in hindsight, was perhaps not the best idea. So Dean walks a bit to the side, Katherine ahead, with that bloody knife gripped tight in her hand.

Observing objectively, she looks absolutely lethal. All of her movements are carefully calculated. Her eyes dart around and her ears reach for sounds, even the smallest scurrying of rats. Each one of her steps are nearly silent. She's careful, but she's quick.

"See?" Sam murmurs. "There's nothing here."

Dean watches as Katherine rounds the corner. The very one she was attacked after. Dean's throat tightens.

"Carmen's got to be worried sick about you," the younger brother continues. Katherine's fist tightens around the handle of her knife.

"Shh," she hisses, holding a finger up to the brothers.

In the silence, the three can hear soft whimpers.

"What the hell is that?"

"Stay behind me," Katherine murmurs, continuing forward. "And keep your mouths shut."

It comes from further down the hall and around the other divider, the part neither Katherine or Dean had gotten the opportunity to clear. Around that bend are two corpses, practically skeletons, with their clothing still intact. They're bound at the wrists and strung up with rope dangling from the ceiling, hooked up to what could be a blood bag.

"What the hell?" Sam mutters.

There are more corpses. But there's also a girl, barely alive but still enough so that she could make a noise. Her clothes and fair skin are dirty, her hair is matted, but Dean recognizes her. He doesn't need Phantom Katherine prodding at his elbow and telling him that it's the girl that stared at him at the university because he already knows it to be true.

"It's her."

Katherine glances to Dean with furrowed brows. "Who?" She asks.

"Dean, what's going—?!"

Katherine clamps a hand over Sam's mouth, watching a shadow disturb the curtain not too far off. She turns on her toes and leaps away, trotting on the balls of her shoes as she does to keep quiet. Sam and Dean follow after her.

Around the corner comes the djinn, huge and bald and pale with dark swirls of patterns across his skin.

"Where's my dad?" The girl quietly whimpers.

"Sleep," the creature whispers to her, touching a hand to her cheek. Katherine's eyes narrow, studying the way he does it. The mist from his purple palm. Then he moves to the blood bag, pulls the tubing, and lets the blood ooze into his mouth. Sam grunts in disgust and the creature turns to the rack they hide behind with blazing blue eyes. Katherine tugs on Sam's hair, pushing him below eye level, and creeps around the rack as the djinn circles the other way, the Winchesters following quickly and closely behind her.