CHAPTER TWENTY

Sam pulls the car up to the place where this specialist​ works, and they all start getting out of the car. Elena's relieved because she's been stuck between Sam and John in the front seat for the entire ride. Nyx climbs out of the Impala, and then Dean follows after her.

"You're both liars." Dean says, obviously annoyed. "I thought you said we were going to see a doctor."

"He said specialist​." She corrects him.

"I really hate when you two team up against me." He says. "The last time you took his side was in St. Louis and look how that turned out."

"No, I'm pretty sure we were on the same side in Rockford too." Nyx tells him.

"And Indiana. She just went with you because you clearly need more help than I do." Sam says, and she chuckles as she looks at him. "This guy is supposed to be the real deal." He tells his brother as they start walking.

"I can't believe you two brought me here to see some guy who heals people out of a tent." Dean complains.

"Neither can I." John says.

"Shut up, John." The twins say in unison.

"Reverend Le Grange is a great man." A woman says as she walks by them.

"Yeah, that's nice." Dean says sarcastically.

"Please don't let this be anything like the last time we worked a job involving a reverend." Nyx mutters.

"Or at least let there be another hot reverend's daughter for Sam." He says, and she gives him a deflated look. "What? You're not gonna hit me now? Afraid you'll kill me?" He asks, and she punches his arm. He chuckles, and she shakes her head. "There's my girl."

"I have a right to protest. This man is a fraud. He's bilking all these people out of their hard-earned money." A man says to a cop as they walk past them.

"I take it he's not part of the flock." Dean says as their group gets closer to the tent.

"Well, when people see things they can't explain, there's controversy." Sam reasons.

"Yeah, but come on, Sam. A faith healer." He questions.

"Maybe it's time to have a little faith, Dean."

"You know what I got faith in? Reality, knowing what's really going on." He argues, and Nyx makes him stop walking.

"You three go in. I wanna talk to Dean for a minute." She says, and they all look at her. "Go."

Elena pulls John into the tent, and Sam follows after them. Dean then looks down at the brunette still with him.

"I get it — the skepticism that this might actually work. But I've already lost so much, Dean. I don't want to lose you too." She tells him. "So, please, just go with it for a little bit. Humor me. Me and your brother, who've been through a lot too, I might add."

"We all have." He says, and she nod​s.

"Exactly. So... Just let us have a little bit of hope." She says, and he sighs as he looks at her.

"Alright, I'll entertain this ridiculous idea for now." He says, and she smiles.

"Thank you." She says, and they go inside.

"Sam got two seats at the front." Elena says as they walk over to her and John.

Dean looks at Nyx. "You promised." She says, and he sighs before walking over to sit next to his brother.

Nycole stands at the back with Elena and John, and as they wait for this thing to start. The older of the girls is getting anxious, and her sister's trying to keep her from bouncing on her feet.

"Each morning, my wife, Sue Ann, reads me the news." The man on the stage, Roy, starts talking and they all turn their attention to him. "Never seems good, does it? Seems like there's always someone committing some immoral, unspeakable act. But I say to you, God is watching. And God rewards the good, and He punishes the corrupt. It is the Lord who does the healing here, friends, the Lord who guides me in choosing who to heal by helping me see into people's hearts."

"Or into their wallets." Dean says, and Nyx sighs as she closes her eyes. She barely heard him, but it was still enough that she could make out what he said.

"You think so, young man?" Roy asks, and she shakes her head.

"Sorry." He says, and Elena links her arm with her sister's.

"No, no. Don't be. Just watch what you say around a blind man. We got real sharp ears." He tells him, and the crowd chuckles. "What's your name, son?"

"Dean."

"Dean." Roy repeats. "I want you to come up here with me." He says, and people start clapping.

Nyx, Elena, and John all look at each other because none of them know what's going on or what to expect from this.

"No, it's okay." Dean says, not getting up.

Sam whispers something that the rest of them don't hear. Nyx watches him talking to his older brother, silently calling him an idiot in her mind because she knows he really wants to refuse this man's help.

"You've come to be healed, haven't you?" Roy asks.

"Well, yeah, but, uh..." He says, and people clap again. "Maybe you should just pick someone else."

"Oh, no. No." He chuckles. "I-I didn't pick you, Dean. The Lord did."

Sam tells his brother to get up there, but Dean turns around and looks at Nyx. "Please." She mouths, and he reluctantly gets to his feet.

He walks up onto the stage and stands beside Roy. "Ready?" Roy asks him.

Dean says something quietly to him, and the twins glance at each other, both more than a little uneasy. John's watching everything carefully​, and Nyx looks back over at Dean and Roy.

"Pray with me, friends." Roy says.

He raises his hands into the air and then places one on the side of Dean's head. Nyx grips Elena's arm as she watches what's happening. Dean looks at Nyx for a second before he seems to get light headed. He drops down to his knees, and Sam moves forward in his seat as Nycole grabs tighter onto her sister's arm. Dean suddenly collapses completely onto the stage.

"Dean." Nyx lets go of Elena, and both she and Sam rush over to his brother.

"Hey, hey." Sam shakes him. "Say something." He says as Dean opens his eyes and starts looking around.

—

Sam and Dean come out of the doctor's office, and Nyx quickly walks over to them. "So?" She asks, and they both look down at her.

"I'm fine. There's no sign that I had anything wrong with my heart." Dean says, but he seems mad.

"That— That's good." She says. "What am I missing here?"

"You and Elena go with Sam. I think your uncle and I could both use some answers on this one."

"Wait. Where are you and John going?"

"To talk to the reverend." He says and then walks away from them. John looks at the twins for a second before following after him.

Nyx looks at Sam. "Come on, I'll explain on the way." He says, and the girls leave the doctor's office with him.

They get to the public pool where a man died yesterday. He had a heart attack, and nobody understands how it happened.

"I'm telling you, he seemed healthy. Swam every day, didn't smoke. So, a heart attack just kind of seemed bizarre." A man who knew the guy is telling them.

"And you said he was running right before he collapsed?" Nyx asks as they walk out by a pool.

"Yeah. Yeah, he was freaking out. He said that something was after him."

"Did he say what?" Sam asks.

"Thin air is what. There wasn't​ anything." He says, and they both nod.

"Alright, thanks." He says, and the three of them start to leave.

"Hey, your clock's not working." Elena tells the man, and they all look at it before turning​ to him.

"Yeah. We can't get it working. It just froze at four-seventeen." He tells them.

"Is that the same time that Marshall died?" Nyx asks.

"How'd you know?" He asks, and she looks at Sam.

The three of them leave after that, and go to the boys' motel room. The twins and John have their own. The three of them start doing some research, and Nyx looks at Sam.

"What do you think?" She asks him. "A spirit like the Hook Man?"

"I don't know. When the Hook Man killed the first person, nobody saw him." He says. "Marshall saw whatever came after him."

Dean and John walk into the room then, and he throws his keys down as they both take off their jackets. "What'd you find out?" Dean asks them.

"I'm sorry." Sam says, and Nyx looks down.

"Sorry about what?"

"Marshall Hall..."

"He died at four-seventeen." She finishes the sentence for Sam, knowing he's having a hard time with this because he knows how upset his brother's gonna be.

"The exact same time I was healed." Dean says, and she nods as she looks up at him.

"Yeah."

"So, I put together a list of everyone Roy has healed — six people over the past year — and I cross-checked them with local obits." Sam tells his brother as he hands him what they've found so far. "Every time someone was healed, someone else died. And each time, the victim died of the same symptom Le Grange was healing at the time."

"Someone's healed of cancer, someone else dies of cancer?" Dean asks.

"Somehow Le Grange is trading one life for another." Nyx says.

"Wait, wait, wait. So, Marshall Hall died to save me?" He questions.

"Dean..." Sam starts. "The guy probably would've died anyway, and someone else would've been healed."

"You two never should've brought me here." He says as he stands up from where he sat while they were telling him what they found.

"Dean, we were just trying to save your life."

"Sam, some guy is dead now because of me." He argues.

"We didn't know." Nyx says, and he looks at her. "Look, I know this is hard, but—"

"Oh, you know, do you?" He cuts her off. "You know how hard this is?"

"You know damn well that I do." She says as she stands up, and his expression softens.

"It's not the same." He shakes his head.

"It's not the same as what? As Stefan pulling me and Elena out of the car instead of our parents? Or as you getting electrocuted instead of me while I was three feet away from you?" She questions, and he just looks at her.

"Guys, come on." Sam says, and Nyx turns around and walks a few steps away from him. "The thing that I don't understand is how is Roy doing it?" He asks. "How is he trading a life for a life?"

"He's not doing it." Dean says. "Something else is doing it for him."

"What do you mean?"

"The old man I saw on stage." He says, and Nyx looks back at him. "I didn't want to believe it, but deep down I knew."

"What are you talking about?" She asks.

"There's only one thing that can give and take life like that." He says. "We're dealing with a reaper."

"A reaper?" John questions.

—

Nyx is laying on Dean's bed as she reads through some of the research that the boys have printed up. She's slouched into the pillows, and she's obviously in a bad mood as she crumples up a paper and throws it at John. It bounces off the back of his head, and Elena stifles a laugh when he turns to look at her.

"You really think it's the Grim Reaper?" Sam asks, either ignoring her or not realizing what just happened. "Like angel of death, collect your soul, the whole deal?" He asks as they go through different lore.

"No, no. Not the reaper. A reaper." He tells his brother. "There's reaper lore in every culture on Earth. They go by a hundred different names. It's possible that there's more than one."

"You said you saw a dude in a suit."

"You think he should've been working the black robe thing?" He questions, and Nyx rolls her eyes at the comment. "You said it yourself, the clock stopped, right? Reapers stop time. You can only see them when they're coming at you, which is why I could see it and none of you could."

"Maybe." Sam mumbles as Nycole gets up from the bed and walks over to the table where they have more of the reaper research spread out.

"There's nothing else it could be. The question is, how is Roy controlling the damn thing?"

"The cross."

"What?" Dean asks as he looks back at him.

"There was this cross. I noticed it in the church tent. I knew I had seen it before." He says as he starts going​ through something.

"A tarot?" Nyx asks as she looks at the card he just handed his brother.

"I saw that cross when we were in there." John says as he looks over her shoulder. "It was on a table with other stuff that I thought was strange."

"It makes sense." Sam says. "Tarot dates back to the early Christian era, when some priests were using magic and a few veered into the dark stuff. Necromancy and how to push death away​, how to cause it."

"Has anyone ever told you that your head is full of weird and sometimes scary information?" Nyx asks Sam, and his brother nods.

"So, Roy's using black magic to bind the reaper?" Dean asks.

"If he is, he's riding the whirlwind." Sam says. "It's like putting a dog leash on a Great White."

"Great." She says, and Dean gets up.

He puts his cup in the sink, and Nyx sits where he had been and looks at the lore that he pulled up on the laptop on reapers.

"Okay, then we stop Roy." He says.

"How?" Sam asks.

"You know how."

"What the hell are you talking about? We can't kill Roy."

"Dean." Nyx looks up at him.

"The guy is playing God, deciding who lives and who dies. That's a monster in my book." Dean says.

"And going straight to murder rather than trying to find a better way to solve the problem sounds like a monster in my book." She tells him. "Actually that sounds like Damon. You know, before he became all reformed and good."

"We're not gonna kill a human." Sam says. "We do that, we're no better than he is."

"Okay, we can't kill Roy. We can't kill Death." Dean says. "Any bright ideas, college boy? You, miss genius?"

"I'm thinking about kicking your ass." She tells him, and he laughs. "What, you don't think I can?"

"No, I know you can. " He says. "And the fact that I wouldn't hit you isn't the only reason either."

"If Roy's using some kind of black spell on the reaper, we got to figure out what it is and how to break it." Sam says, and they look at him.

"Look at that, a real suggestion." Nyx says as she looks back at Dean. "How exactly did you survive without us before?"

Dean just looks at her, annoyed.