Sam is on his knees and has drawn a triangle on the floor with symbols in every point and put candles outside every point. In the middle is a circle with a bowl of green, dry herbs in it.

“Ad construgendum ad ligandum eos pariter Et solvendum,” he chants in Latin. He hears a sound behind him and turns around but there's no one there. He turns back, looking up at the roof, sighing. “Et ad congregantum eos coram me.” He picks up a box of matches and strikes one. He watches the flame for a beat and then throws it into the bowl. The contents ignite, fire flares up and then it calms down and burns out. Sam gets up off the floor and slowly turns to look behind him as the floor creaks. There's still nothing there.

“You know, phones work too,” comes a voice from behind him. Sam turns back and sees Ruby leaning against the doorway. She smiles at him. “Hey, Sam. How's tricks?”

“How do you get around so fast?” he asks with an angry scowl.

“I got the Super Bowl jet pack,” Ruby smirks while she begins to walk towards him. “So. You called?”

“Did you know?”

“Uh - gonna need a tiny bit more.”

“About Dean's deal,” Sam snaps at her. “That Lilith holds the contract.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And…what? You didn't think that was important?”

“You weren't ready,” she said simply.

“For what?”

“If I told you, you two yahoos would have just charged after her half-cocked and Lilith would have peeled the meat from your pretty, pretty faces.”

“Well, we're ready now,” Sam’s voice went deathly cold. “I want your knife.”

She looks at him for a moment and then begins walking around him, slowly. “You're right about one thing. You are ready and now's the time, too. Lilith's guard's down.”

“Is that so?”

“She's on shore leave. A little R&R,” Ruby said lightly with a smile on her face.

“The hell's that mean?”

“Trust me, you don't wanna know. You didn't lose those hex bags I gave you?” she asks him with a serious look on her face now.

“We've got 'em.”

“Good. Then she won't sense that you're coming.”

Sam turns around and looks at her as she's gotten behind his back while walking around him. “So you'll give us the knife?” he asks unsure since this conversation seemed to go easier than he thought.

“No.”

“But you just said…”

“You wanna charge in with one little pig sticker? It's a waste of a true-blue window. Like getting Hitler with that exploding briefcase. Forget it,” she dismisses the idea, dead set on getting him to do it her way.

“Okay, then how?” Sam snaps at her angrily.

“I know how to save your brother, Sam.”

“No, you don't! You told Dean you couldn't! You've been lying to me all along, so just give me your damn knife!” he yells at her, finally losing his patience.

“You're not the one I've been lying to.”

“Oh, so you can save him?” he asks sarcastically.

“No. But you can,” Ruby talks to him evenly, trying to dissuade his anger and get him to see reason.

“What?”

“Sam, you've got some God-given talent. Well, not "God"-given but you get the gist.”

“All that psychic crap? That's gone ever since Yellow-eyes died,” he said dismissively.

“Not gone, dormant,” Ruby said with a shake of her head. “And not just visions either. Why do you think Lilith is so scared of you?”

“Right...she's scared of me.”

“If you wanted, you could wipe her off the map without moving a muscle,” she said in a suggestive tone.

“I don't believe you.”

“It's the truth.”

“And you decided to tell me this just now?” Sam asked while still unsure of her intentions.

“Um…demon. Manipulative's kinda in the job description. Fact is, is that you would have never considered it. Not until you were…” she trailed off, knowing he’d understand where she was going with this.

“Desperate enough?” he finished her train of thought.

“You don't like being different,” she exchanges a look with him before she shrugs and turns away. “You hate the way Dean looks at you sometimes. Like you're some kind of sideshow freak. But suck it up because we've got a lot of ground to cover, and we've gotta do it fast. But we can do it.” Sam clenches his jaw, looking at the floor. After a beat he looks up at her. “Look. Call me a bitch, hate me all you want, but I have never lied to you Sam. Not ever. And I'm telling you. You... can save your brother, and I can show you how.”

“So that's you, huh? Our slutty little Yoda,” came a familiar voice from behind.

“Dean,” she turns around, looking at him and all the softness in her voice that she directed at Sam is gone. “Charming as ever.”

“Aw, I knew you'd show up. Because I knew Sam wouldn't listen,” Dean said as he walked towards her and his brother. Sam looks at him on that note but looks away quickly. “But you're not gonna teach him anything, you understand me? Over my dead body,” he grates out.

“Oh. Well, you're right about that.”

“What you are gonna do is give me that knife. And then you can just go crawl back into whatever slop you came from and never bother me or my brother again. Are we clear?” he practically growls at her.

“Your brother is carrying a bomb inside of him and we'd be stupid not to use it.”

“Dean, look, just hold on for one…”

“Sam! Don't,” Dean yells angrily. “Come on, man. What, are you blind? Can't you see that this is a trick?”

“That's not true,” Ruby interjects quickly.

“She wants you to give into this whole demonic psychic whatever, okay. I mean hell, she probably wants you to become her little anti-Christ Super Star,” Dean continues, ignoring her.

“I want Lilith dead,” she snaps at them. “That's all.”

“Why?” Dean levels a dark look at her.

“I've told you why!”

“Oh, right, yeah. Because you were human once and you liked kittens and long walks on the beach,” Dean says in a mocking tone.

“You know, I am so sick of proving myself to you. You wanna save yourself, this is how. You dumb, spineless dick,” she hisses at him.

Dean looks at her, and then turns around as if to leave but instead comes back swinging a right cross and punching her in the face, looking pissed. Sam backs away a bit, surprised by the hit. Ruby takes a few steps back from the blow, looks up at him as she wipes blood from her lip and after a beat hits him once with her right fist and then her left.

“Ruby, hey!” Sam yells at her, trying to defuse this encounter before it goes too far.

She spins around, hits him in the back causing him to double over. She then knees him in the face, sending him into a beam and sliding to the floor. As she turns around to Dean, he hits her in the face once with his left and as he's about to hit with his right she ducks out of the way and going with his momentum knees him in the stomach.

Alex jumps down the stairs leading into the basement to find Sam on the floor holding a hand over his mouth. She glances up when she hears more punches being thrown by Ruby. Her vision turns red when she sees Ruby kick Dean in the face causing him to fall to the floor. He tries to get up but she walks over and kicks him hard in the stomach sending him rolling over the floor. He starts to get up and she comes over to take hold of him, but Alex grabs her arm, spins her around and delivers a blow strong enough to send the demon reeling.

As she stands looking at him, he starts grinning and slowly rises to his feet to stand by Alex’s side. “The hell are you grinning at?” she snaps angrily.

“Missing something?” He pulls up her knife in front of his face.

“I'll kill you, you son of a bitch,” Ruby hisses when she realizes that Dean set up the whole fight to steal her weapon. She rushes towards him but midway there she is stopped dead in her tracks. She tries to walk past it once as Dean just looks at her. She looks at him and then looks up at the ceiling to find a painted Devil’s Trap overhead.

Sam takes his hand from his mouth, surprised by this. Ruby looks at Dean again, pissed. He smiles a little, looking at the trap and then he looks at her, still holding up the knife.

“Like I said...” he pockets the knife, “I knew you'd come.”

He walks away from her, towards the staircase with his lover in tow. She follows him with her eyes. “Wait! You're just gonna leave me here?” the angry blond asks with a tinge of disbelief and desperation in her voice.

Dean stops, waiting for Sam and ignoring Ruby. “Let's go Sam.” Sam comes over as Dean takes a deep breath, blinking hard and then he starts up the steps with Alex followed by Sam.

“Oh, oh you- so you're just too stupid to live, is that it? Then fine! You deserve hell! I wish I could be there, Dean. I wish I could smell the flesh sizzle off your bones! I WISH I COULD BE THERE TO HEAR YOU SCREAM!!” the trapped demon yells at the top of her lungs.

“And I wish you'd shut your pie hole, but we don't always get what we want,” Dean mutters as the walk up the stairs, leaving her behind.

~*~

The three hunters are upstairs in their room with their weapons laid out before them. Dean checks the clip for his pearl handle .45 while Sam preps his guns. Alex is polishing a newly etched engraving in her steel katana while her cousin looks on. Kevin knows they’re preparing for war and feels his stomach knot with the knowledge of it.

“We're just gonna let Ruby rot down there?” Sam sighs heavily, knowing what his brother’s answer is going to be.

“That's the idea.”

“Dean, what if uh...” Sam stammers uncomfortably. “What if Ruby's right? What if I can take out Lilith?”

Dean looks up at him with an angry, doubting look.

“Quit looking at me like that,” Sam says a little self-consciously.

“What, are you gonna give her the Carrie-stare and Lilith goes "poof"?”

“I don't know what Ruby meant. You know, maybe we should just go ask her.”

“Sam, you wanted the knife - I got you the knife,” Dean gives him the ‘older brother’ look before he walks over to another table.

“Dean, just listen to me for a second. Last time Lilith snapped her fingers and put thirty demons on our ass, and all we got's one little knife? I mean, like you said, we go in smart or we don't go in at all.”

“Well, this ain't smart.”

“We got one shot at this, Dean. Just one. So if there's a surefire way then maybe we should just talk about it.”

“Sam,” Dean walks up to him as he speaks. “We are not gonna make the same mistake all over again.”

“You said that but what does it even mean?”

“Don't you see a pattern here? Dad's deal, my deal, now this? I mean every time one of us is-is-is up the creek the other is begging to sell their soul. That's all this is, man. Ruby's just jerking your chain down the road. You know what it's paved with and you know where it's going,” he turns around, sits down against a table and picks up the weapons again.

Sam shakes his head a bit and walks around to the other side of the table. “Dean,” he sits down next to his brother, looking at him as he continues to assemble the weapon. “What do you think is gonna happen? This is me, I can handle it.” Dean stops what he's doing, looking at the floor and shakes his head. “And if it'll save you...”

“Why even risk it?” he looks up at him.

Sam looks away for a second and then back at him with the obvious answer. “Because you're my brother. Because you did the same thing for me,” he said sadly.

“I know...” Dean scoffs. “And look how that turned out.” He glances at him and Sam looks away at this. “All I'm saying…” he chokes up a little. “Sammy, all I'm saying is that you're my weak spot.” Both Sam and Alex look over at him at this, having heard these words before but from a different source. “You are. And I'm yours.”

“You don't mean that, we're…we're family,” Sam replies with tears building in his eyes.

“I know. And those evil sons of bitches know it too. I mean, what we'll do for each other, you know, how far we'll go? They're using it against us.”

“So what? We just stop looking out for each other?”

“No, we stop being martyrs, man. We-we-we stop spreading it for these demons,” he glances between his brother and his lover as they stare into each other’s eyes. He picks up Ruby's knife and holds it up. “We take this knife, and we go after Lilith our way. The way dad taught us to. And if we go down, then uh... then we go down swinging.” Sam just looks at him. “What do you think?”

Sam looks down at the floor, thinking, and then he glances back up at Dean. “I think you totally should have been jamming "Eye of the Tiger" right there,” he laughs softly, breaking the tension.

“Oh, bite me,” Dean rises from his chair. “I totally rehearsed that speech, too.”

“So, Indiana huh?” Sam smiles at his brother.

“Yeah, where Lilith's on shore-leave.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Sam shrugs his shoulders.

“Tell me something,” Dean says questioningly until Sam looks up at him. “The hell's a demon do for fun?”

“Wait for us here, okay?” Alex whispers to her cousin, taking his hands in hers after she placed her blade in the scabbard across her back. “You’re the only family I have left in this world besides them,” she tilts her head towards the men standing by the door. “I don’t want you near this.”

“What if…” Kevin’s throat closes up on him, choking him just thinking about it. “What if something happens? I won’t know.”

“You’ll know,” she whispers in his ear before she kisses his cheek and turns to follow her men out the door.

~*~

Sam and Dean quietly load their gear in the Impala while Alex throws her bag in the trunk but keeps her blade with her. The boys walk on eggshells after her emotional goodbye with Kevin and keep a close eye on her. Dean tries to start up the car but the engine won’t turn over. Both he and Sam look a bit worried and exchange the "what's going on" faces. Suddenly Bobby shows up outside Dean's door, scaring the boys with his sudden appearance.

“Where do you think you're going?” the old hunter asks with a knowing look.

Dean glances at him and the distributor cap he holds in his hand. After a split second, he and Sam get out of the car and walk up to Bobby; who's not looking happy. But then neither is Dean.

“We got the knife.”

“And you intend to use it without me,” it wasn’t a question and Bobby showed his irritation plainly.

Sam comes from around the car and stands in the middle of Dean and Bobby, watching them.

“Do I look like a ditchable prom-date to you?” Bobby said in a sarcastic tone.

“No Bobby,” Sam tries to reason with him. “Of course not.”

“This is about me...and Sam. Ok? This isn't your fight,” Dean said in an attempt to dissuade his long-time family friend. He doesn’t want any harm to befall him. Hell, he’d leave Sam and Alex behind if he could.

Bobby walks up to Dean, furious by those words. “The hell it isn't!” he snaps loudly. Dean looks at him, taken aback by this. “Family don't end with blood, boy. Besides, you need me.”

“Bobby…”

“You're playing wounded. Tell me, how many hallucinations have you had so far?” Bobby narrows his eyes on him and sees him fidget uncomfortably.

Sam and Alex look at him, a bit confused by this. They cast their gaze at Dean who turns to look at them, tilts his head one time and then turns back to Bobby.

“How'd you know?”

“Because that's what happens when you've got hellhounds on your butt,” he said with a tone before he lightened it up a bit. “And because I'm smart.” Dean looks down at the ground, as Sam watches him. Bobby hands Dean the distributor cap. “I'll follow.” He walks away from the boys, over to his own car. After a moment Dean opens the hood of his car, ready to replace the part. “Don't be stopping to pee every ten minutes either.”

Dean stops in his tracks, shakes his head a bit with raised brow. He turns around looking back at Sam who looks at him and sighs. “He’s good,” Alex began to laugh from the backseat.

~*~

“Hey Dean?” Sam said softly, almost unsure.

“Yeah?”

“You know if this doesn't uh... this doesn't go the way we want, I want you to know…”

“No. No-no-no-no,” Dean heads him off, glancing briefly into Alex’s dark eyes in the rearview mirror.

“No what?”

Dean glances over at Sam. “No, you're not gonna bust out the misty good-bye speech, ok? And if this is my last day on earth, I do not want it to be socially awkward.” Sam looks down and out the window and Dean turns back to the road. “You know what I do want?” He reaches down to the radio and starts up Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive".

“Bon Jovi?” Sam makes a face as the song plays.

“Bon Jovi rocks, on occasion,” he looks over at Sam to reinforce his statement. When Sam looks away, Dean turns his attention back to the road and begins to sing along. “And I walk these streets, a loaded six-string on my back. I play for keeps,” he turns to his brother and nudges him. “Come on,” he urges him before he glances at Alex in the mirror again. “'Cause I might not make it back. Been everywhere…”

“Oh yeah,” Sam joins in.

“Still I'm standing tall,” Dean sings back. Sam laughs and sings along with him, joined by Alex as she rests her arms on the back of the seat. “I've seen a million faces and I rocked them all. 'Cause I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride. I'm wanted,” Dean looks over at Sam who's really getting into it.

“WANTED!” Sam tosses his head back and sings Ritchie Sambora’s line alone.

Dean turns back to the road and Sam smiles as the three of them sing. “Dead or alive.”

“Dead or alive,” Sam continues on alone when Dean and Alex begin to lose the will to sing and their smiles begin to fade. Sam keeps up the tune, laughing and smiling, not noticing how his family is suddenly taking in the lyrics, realizing how much they actually fit Dean and what is about to come. His and Alex’s smiles completely vanish, as they stare out on the long road. “Dead or alive. Dead or alive. Dead or alive.”

~*~