While Laine had said she was going to go in head first, she is doing the opposite now by leaning against the back of the car. Apparently, their sudden stop had thrown their pursuers for a loop.

Her arm hangs at her side, gun glinting in the sun, and she watches with calculating eyes as the van skids to a stop. Six men climb out and move towards them, intent to attack evident on their faces. They are stopped in their tracks by the gun rising to aim at them.

"Not another step, gentlemen," Laine says, lining her shot up with the one directly across from her. Next to her, Dean's gun cocks as he raises his arm to aim. They all share looks between their ranks, a couple of laughs escaping when they look back towards her.

"Come with us and your human can live. Maybe." The one standing closest to them says, a malicious smile forming on his face as he glances between her and Dean.

She grins back, finger hovering over the trigger. "Yeah, don't think so, buddy."

Without warning, she pulls the trigger.

Thankfully, Dean reacts instantly and fires his own shot, dropping another enemy. Only four left.

The men don't even look at their fallen comrades before they launch at her and Dean, vicious snarls ripping from their throats as two head for Dean and one for her.

She manages to dodge the fist aimed at her face and with that opening, she launches the butt of her gun towards his face. He catches her arm mid-swing and twists her around, arms wrapping around her. A growl builds in her throat and she throws back her head, connecting with his face. It sends him reeling backwards as blood spurts from his nose, and she doesn't hesitate to turn and kick him square in the chest.

He stumbles backwards and loses his footing, body falling backwards to the ground. He doesn't have time to rise to his feet before Laine puts a bullet in his head.

Her victory is short lived as hands grab at her jacket and toss her towards the car. Her body connects with the rear end of the vehicle, momentarily stunned. She spares a quick look behind her, rolling away just in time to miss the knife slashed down at her. She goes to raise her hand to fire a shot, but her gun is no longer in her grasp.

Looking around, she notes it sitting on the ground behind the approaching attacker. The fight just got personal.

Leaping to her feet, she blocks the knife coming towards her and grasps his arm. Using all her strength, she twists his arm and flips him over, his body landing with a thud on the ground. Not wasting a moment, Laine makes a lunge for her gun, but a hand catches her ankle.

She plummets to the ground, gravel digging into her skin, and is dazed from the impact. A groan escapes her as she rolls over, pain shooting through her body. Before she can attempt to climb back to her feet, her enemy climbs on top of her with the blade coming to rest against her neck.

"You're ours now." He laughs, the press of the knife firm against her skin. This was one of the men who had first gone after Dean; apparently, he doesn't like waiting.

Laine glances down for a moment, all possible options of escape buzzing through her mind, before looking back up with a daring grin tugging at her lips. "I don't think so."

Planting her foot near her butt, she launches her hips upwards and knocks him aside. Without pause, Laine rolls onto him and snatches the knife out of his slackened hand. She grips the knife and slashes it across his throat, refusing to give him a chance to plead or attempt to fight back.

Sliding off of him, she drops the blade as she sits back and glances towards Dean, seeing that he has just put a bullet into the head of his second attacker. A relieved expression starts to form on her face at the notion that they have taken out all the enemies, but movement out of the corner of her eye has her freezing.

She forgot one.

Instinct takes over and Laine turns, gaze zeroing in on the approaching figure, as her hand reaches out for the gun a mere foot away. She scoops it off the ground and jumps up to fire off four shots in quick succession, each of them aimed at the chest. They don't even slow him down a bit, the bullets doing nothing other than irritate the man.

He pauses in his approach, glancing down to his torso to inspect the projectiles that were aimed at him, before looking back up with a wide grin on his face. "Nice try."

"Demon. Great," Laine mutters as she snatches her knife out of her boot. She rises too late to dodge the man lunging at her and is rammed against the side of the car, her body connecting with force.

A hand comes up to her throat and she struggles against the grip. Bringing her knee up, she slams it into his gut and shoves him back, wasting no time in going after him. Her hand tightens around the blade as she grabs his shoulder, bringing him closer for an attack.

Before he has time to recover, she rams the blade into his heart and twists, the silver of the knife brightening to a searing red. A surge of heat swells out from the wound as the power of the weapon destroys the corrupted soul, the body of the demon dying soon after.

Laine removes the blade and turns to look over her shoulder, gaze drawn towards Dean who is lying next to the body of a dead half-demon. His gun is held limp in his hand and his breath is ragged, a bruise budding on his cheek, but the monster is dead and he's still alive.

Her breath comes out in short puffs as she wipes at her brow, removing the small bead of sweat and blood gathered there. She reaches down and wipes the blood from her knuckles and palms onto one of the dead man's jacket, cleaning off what she can without the assistance of soap or water. Shoving her knife back into her boot, Laine looks up to see Dean now standing across from her with his eyes trained on the bodies surrounding them.

"Cambions, if you're wondering." His head lifts up at her statement, gaze still burning with the adrenaline from the fight.

"I haven't seen them in years. Last time was when me and Zach took out a group of them," Dean explains and kicks a rock off into the distance, arms crossed over his chest. "You've been running from these things?"

"It's been worse since the incident with Ryan. They're not that hard to take out, but if they can use their demon juju, they put up a bit of fight. I've gotten lucky, so far."

An image of a passage from a lore book flashes through her mind, and she recalls the time she studied the demon-human offspring. While Cambions were not full-fledged demons, they still shared many of the abilities of demons and could get quite powerful, but there were times that the human side rejected the demonic corruption and the Cambion's body would begin to kill itself. It's a rare outcome, but still happens often enough, leading to demons producing more of the creatures.

"Yeah, lucky." With a shrug, Dean uncrosses his arms and turns to face Laine. "Ready?"

Nodding, she starts to walk back to the car, but Dean's lingering gaze has her stopping in her tracks. She turns and faces him, shoving her hands into the back pockets on her jeans. "What?"

"Why didn't you call us when this first started? We would have helped. I would have helped you," he says with a strained look on his face, the words barely reaching her ears with how quiet they are. If she hadn't of seen his mouth move, she never would have known he'd said something.

"We hadn't seen each other in nearly four years and it wasn't... I couldn't bring myself to call you. I wanted to tell you after your dad's funeral, but it just didn't seem right to drag you and Zach into my shit, so I kept my mouth shut and left." Laine rests her hand on the handle of the car, not daring to look up at Dean as she speaks.

Silence from Dean has her glancing up after a moment. He shoots her a look over the top of the car, the corners of his mouth tugging downwards as his face takes on an expression of confusion and something broken settles behind his eyes.

"You should have talked to me." His words and the look in his eyes sends emotions racing through Laine, and not the good sort. Her blood begins to boil in her veins and her hands clench, the metal of the door handle digging into her palm.

"Would you have talked to me if you'd of been in the same situation?" She pauses and takes a breath, waiting for his response, but knowing she won't receive one, she continues. "You know you wouldn't have, so why do you expect me to? I can handle myself. I've made it this far without your help."

Before she can say more that she will regret later, she shakes her head to clear the heat building inside and steps away from the car. Turning her back to Dean, Laine glances up at the clear sky.

She knows she shouldn't have said what she did, but she couldn't stop her mouth from running – not with Dean chastising her for not running to him for help. Although she understands where he is coming from, he can't expect her to turn to him in her times of need when he won't turn to her, or anyone for that matter, when he needs help.

With a deep breath to calm herself, Laine turns back around, the fire in her chest already subsiding and buried back down inside of her. She can address those emotions another day. "I shouldn't have said that. Sorry."

Dean vocalizes his response with a grunt at her apology and climbs into the car, completely dropping the conversation.

Laine hurries to open the door and slides into the seat, turning to face him with a frown tugging at the edges of her mouth. Confusion swarms her mind as she stares at him.

"Dean?"

He doesn't answer, doesn't even look her way to show her that he heard her words, and instead starts the engine, flashing one look over his shoulder before pulling away from the horde of bodies on the ground.

"Hey, c'mon. I'm sorry for what I said." Her voice is quiet and gentle, eyebrows knitting together. What she said was slightly uncalled for and rude, she'll admit that much. Regardless of her words or his, she can't understand why he is acting this way, as their arguments were usually solved with an apology and a joke on either of their parts. "Hey, look at me."

Dean appears to hesitate for a moment before he turns his head a fraction of an inch in her direction, casting his eyes towards her for only a second. "What?"

"What's wrong?"

He shakes his head at her question, a silent, unamused chuckles leaving his lips. "Nothing's wrong."

A snort of disbelief is her response and the look she gives him matches it. He looks over at once again, this time for a few seconds longer than the last.

"Look, I know I shouldn't have said what I did and I probably should have contacted you sooner for help, but that's in the past now. We can't change it, so please, stop dodging and tell me what's really bothering you." Laine rushes the words out, seriousness the only emotion present on her soft features. Her heart races inside her chest and the breath is caught in her lungs as she waits for Dean's response.

"I get why you didn't come to me for help, believe me, I do. I just..." He trails off and his jaw clenches, grip tightening on the steering wheel. "I keep thinking if you had stayed back then, you might not be in this situation in the first place."

Laine's eyes widen as she realizes he is blaming himself for the situation she is in. The more she thinks about it, the harder it is to fathom how long this blame has been resting inside of him.

"This isn't your fault, Dean. Even if I had stayed, I probably would have ended up in this situation anyway. You think you could've prevented this, but you couldn't have. No one could have." She glances over at him, barely able to contain her emotions as more memories surface and flood her mind's eyes – memories she wants to keep buried. "You can't blame yourself for anything that's happened since I left, okay?"

"Why shouldn't I blame myself?" he spits, eyes glued on the road ahead. "I'm not surprised you never came back with the way I acted when you were leaving. I was such an asshole just because you were taking the chance to get the Hell out of this life. I was pissed and confused that when you saw a normal life for yourself, it didn't include me or Zach. I didn't get it, and instead of talking to you about it, I shut down and pushed you away. So yeah, I do blame myself. I blame myself every day, knowing I made it so you didn't want to come back at all."

Laine had expected him to argue with her, to say that it's his fault, but she never expected him to explode on her with a guilt-ridded look thrown her way.

"My life will always include you and Zach – I have no doubts about that – but at the time, I needed to go and be on my own, and I knew you wouldn't come with me," she says, voice quiet and gentle. Her chest clenches, a coldness settling in her stomach as his words replay in her mind. "This is the only life you've ever known, and I couldn't take that from you, even if it would have been for the best. And I doubt your father would have let you come with me, anyways."

Laine intends to say more, but Dean reaches over and places his hand on top of her, his fingers warm around her chilled skin. Her voice gets stuck in her throat at the sudden contact and her surprise almost has her forgetting to breath.

"I did some stupid shit after you left, and I mean really stupid – you'd probably kill me if you knew all the things I did. Hell, I still can't forgive myself for certain things, but that's not the point. Point is, seeing you now, alive and happy and functioning, it's fucking with me real bad. I want to sweep it all under the rug and say everything is fine, but we both know that ain't the case."

His words tug at her heart and her eyes burn, but Laine bites back the oncoming tears and twists her hand around so she can grasp his fingers between hers.

As she mulls over his words, her head dips low and her voice gains a hushed tone. "Leaving wasn't easy for me, either, Dean. You have to know that it was one of the hardest decisions of my life, but I had to do it. I probably wouldn't be here if I had stayed, and you're not the reason I never came back, so you can stop beating yourself up over it. I know you might not like to hear this, but getting out – even temporarily – was the best damn decision I ever made."

Dean glances over at her, mouth set in a firm line and eyes hard, as is per usual when he tries to bury his emotions, before looking back to the road. "What about now? Once this whole thing is dealt with and we get those pricks off your tail, are you gonna go back to a normal life? Will you leave us behind again?"

Laine's hand slips from his and she clasps hers together in her lap, fingers twining together as she ponders his questions. She ignores his last comment, knowing that if she takes it to heart and allows it to affect her in the way she knows it will, she won't be able to leave again. She opens her mouth a few times, only to close it again right after, but after a few moments, she lifts her eyes from the floor.

"I really don't know." He doesn't say anything in response, just nods and focuses intently on the empty road. Sighing, she turns and gazes out the window, watching the passing trees and fallen leaves scattered on the ground from the changing of the seasons. "Hell, I might not even make it out of this alive, and if I do, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get out again. Last time was a lucky shot, and not everyone has my fortune, so let's just cross that bridge when we come to it, 'kay?"

Silence from Dean has her looking towards him, curious as to his sudden quietness. The expression on his face sends apprehension and fear through her almost immediately, her statement and their conversation long forgotten.

Laine follows his line of sight to see they are stopped out of the gates that hide her house from the road, except it isn't doing its job. The gates are wide open and a black truck is parked a few meters from the entrance, right in the middle of the road with all doors open.

"Dean?" Her voice is calm and steady, although she feels anything but.

"Yeah?"

"We need to go. Now."