The minute Lex fell, Dean rushed in.

He didn't bother trying to engage the Djinn in a fight to try to keep it from going after Lex. Dean had already spotted a side entrance to the warehouse. Part of him wanted to confront the Djinn before it could hurt Lex, but he still didn't really know how to kill the thing, and Lex's "dying" wish was that Dean would go save Clark first. Dean wasn't about to dishonor that.

The warehouse was huge, and the fallen machinery was a labyrinth. Dean couldn't exactly call out to Clark, either, if the kid was in some kind of hallucinogenic coma. He dodged his way through piles of debris and peered into each room he passed, careful not to knock anything over—the last thing he wanted to do was to squander Lex's sacrifice by making noise and drawing attention to himself.

Dean spotted Clark in the fourth room he peered into. The kid was passed out along the edge of the wall, his skin deathly pale, almost green. Dean darted into the room and knelt down beside him, feeling for a pulse. It was weak—Dean needed to get him out of here.

"Clark," he whispered, shaking his shoulder gently. "Clark!" He shook it a little harder, but Clark's eyes remained stubbornly closed.

Dean didn't have time to wait for him to wake up. He lifted the kid with both arms and ran out of the warehouse as fast as he could.

As soon as he was outside, he didn't look back. He just ran.

A hundred yards into the cornfield, Clark stirred. Dean slowed to a stop, and Clark scrambled out of his arms, eyes wide with terror. "W-where am I?"

"It's okay, you're safe now. Do you remember anything?"

"I—I fell off my horse . . . there was a guy, with glowing tattoos, and then I was dreaming . . ."

"You okay now?"

Clark nodded. "I'm fine."

Dean gave him a skeptical look and glanced him over, but Clark didn't seem to be lying. Actually, he didn't have a mark on him, not even so much as a bite mark at his neck. Maybe the Djinn had been saving him to feed on him later, though Dean could have sworn he'd seen a few scrapes on the kid when he'd been on the floor.

"Okay," Dean said. "Stay here for a minute, okay?"

"Why?"

"There's something I gotta do."

"What?"

Dean grimaced—Clark didn't know about the monster, not really. If Dean could avoid haunting Clark's nightmares for the rest of his life . . . "It's nothing. Just promise me you won't move from right here."

"Um, okay."

Dean straightened up and began to jog back toward the warehouse. He wasn't sure how long it would take for the Djinn to notice Clark was gone and redouble its vigilance. If it dropped Lex in a room somewhere and left to find more victims, Dean might have a chance of getting Lex out in one piece. If it noticed Clark was gone . . .

Dean picked up the pace. It didn't matter. He had to try—that was what hunters did. That was what Winchesters did.

He made his way into the side entrance to the warehouse, the same way he'd gone before. He started by heading back to the same room where he'd found Clark, but it was empty now. The Djinn was either storing victims separately from each other, or it wasn't thinking much about where to store people at all and was just dumping them randomly. Dean darted into the next room, then the next, resisting the urge to call out Lex's name.

One room had a particularly large pile of debris, but Dean thought he could see some open spaces underneath—he pushed aside a piece of metal as quietly as he could.

The entire pile collapsed with a sound like a thunderclap.

Dean didn't even hear the creature coming over the pounding of his own heart, but he turned to find himself face to face with the Djinn. He whipped out his gun and shot.

The bullet hit the thing right in the head, knocking it back for just long enough for Dean to bolt into the next room. He ran one lap around the fallen debris, leaping over piles of scrap metal as he needed to, before determining there was no one inside and sprinting toward the door again. The Djinn was waiting for him in the doorway.

He shot it in the head again, but this time his hands were shaking, and he missed. He grazed its ear and ran.

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It followed him. It wasn't nearly as fast as it had been before running into Lex, and Dean knew if he wanted to, he could probably make it out of the warehouse and back to the cornfield. But he couldn't leave. Not without Lex.

On his way into the next room, Dean's bad leg caught on a sharp piece of metal. He fell back hard, and the gun skittered from his hand.

The Djinn leaned over him.

Dean scrambled backwards, reaching for the gun, but it had fallen under a big boxy machine.

It reached a tattooed hand toward him.

"Back off! Get away!" Dean's hand closed around the gun, and he pulled it out from under the machine.

"Sleep," the Djinn whispered, lightly touching Dean's neck. "Sleep."

Dean's head fell back, and he fought to stay awake as fogginess overcame him, fumbling with the gun in his hand. His fingers fell open, the gun fell, and his eyelids drooped—

And then the Djinn straightened up, shouting, its tattoos flickering and then going dim. It dropped, and it didn't move.

Sam stood behind it, eyes wide.

"Sam?"

"Dean!"

"Where the hell did you come from?"

Sam held out a hand to help Dean to his feet. "I tried to cover for you, but Mr. and Mrs. Kent got suspicious when they woke up this morning and found everyone gone. They threatened to call the police if I didn't fess up. We all drove over here. I'm glad we did."

Dean should have expected that. "Where are they?"

"We split up when we got here," Sam said. "This warehouse is enormous."

"Tell me about it." Dean rubbed the back of his neck. "How'd you kill the thing?"

"Found this bloody silver knife." Sam knelt down beside the Djinn to pull the knife out of its back, wincing the whole time. "I'm guessing it's lamb's blood or something?"

"Uh . . . yeah, that and Lex's blood, I guess."

Sam gasped. "Is Lex okay?"

"It was just a cut. I think he's alright, just need to find him." Dean squinted. "But that knife didn't kill it before."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I stuck that knife in its chest last night and the thing pulled it out, cut Lex, and kept going."

"Oh." Sam shrugged. "Maybe you missed its heart yesterday?"

Dean shook his head—he was sure he hadn't, but they could figure it out later. There were more pressing issues at hand. "Ah, you haven't seen dad, have you?"

"No. Nowhere." Sam's eyes became shiny. "Where do you think he is?"

Dean let his breath out. "My guess? He came in here to fight this thing, got himself injured, and went to regroup. That's what's taking him so long. If he was dead, we'd have found his body."

"Then . . . he's going to come get us, now?"

Dean nodded. "We should wait for him at the cabin."

"We left a note there."

"Sam—"

"It could be a few days before he figures out what happened. And the Kents aren't going to let us go back to the cabin, unless we explain everything that happened here."

Dean groaned. "The Kents are going to kill us, aren't they?"

Sam smirked. "Yeah, probably."

Footsteps sounded from the next room, and Lex stumbled out from behind a pile of scrap metal.

"Luthor!" Dean actually had to resist the urge to run over and check on him. "Been looking all over for you." He made sure his voice sounded accusing rather than worried.

"Sorry. Next time I'm kidnapped by a mutated blood-sucking monster, I'll make sure to ask it to hide my unconscious body in a more convenient location."

"Yeah, you'd better." Dean fought back a smile.

Lex limped over to join them, eyes locked on the fallen Djinn. "Is Clark safe?"

"Yes," Dean said.

Lex nodded, still looking at the Djinn. "Is it dead?"

"Yeah." Sam smiled.

"You use the knife?" Lex asked.

"Yes," Sam said.

"I don't know why it worked this time," Dean said. "Only difference was . . ."

Lex spoke so quietly that Dean almost didn't hear him: "My blood."

That didn't add up to Dean. Lex's earlier theory had made more sense. "What, a meteor-infected Djinn needs human blood instead of lamb?"

"No." Lex frowned down at the fallen body. "A meteor-infected lamb."

"What?"

Lex began to pace. "Lambs are usually symbolic in mythology. They refer to creatures of sacrifice."

"You mean, like, a sacrificial lamb?" Sam asked.

Dean shook his head. "So, when you went to save Clark, that made you count as a lamb? So your blood worked?"

"Guess so."

It still didn't add up. "So, what? You're infected with the meteors now?"

Lex's eyes met Dean's. "One of these days, remind me to tell you how I lost my hair."

Dean blinked a couple of times.

Sam tugged on Dean's arm. "We should find the Kents before they see the dead Djinn and start asking questions."

Dean nodded and turned to Lex. "You okay to walk?"

"Yeah. You?"

"I'm fine," Dean said, and the three of them started toward the exit.

----------------------------------------

Clark sighed in the front seat of his dad's truck, squeezed in between Lex and his mom. There really wasn't enough room for the six of them in the truck, but he didn't mind being close to his parents and his brothers.

No, not his brothers. Just his friends.

Waking up from that dream was really sad. He'd really thought that he was going to have three new brothers, and he'd wanted that so badly.

But even though he knew it wasn't true, it still felt like he had three new brothers. After Dean had come back to find him in the cornfield, they'd all walked from the clearing back to the truck together. They hadn't said very much on the walk over. Clark didn't know exactly what had happened; his parents didn't seem to know, either.

On the way back, Clark's dad had given Dean and Lex each a light smack on the back of the head ("For breaking your grounding"), one to Sam ("For lying"), and one to Clark ("For scaring me"). Clark didn't like it exactly, but it did make it feel like they were all family, and his dad was especially gentle on Lex, who didn't have hair to cover his skin. Clark appreciated that.

Before they piled into the truck, his mom had given each of them a nice, long hug. Clark would have been embarrassed that she kissed him on the cheek in front of his friends, except that she did it to them, too. His mom didn't even do that to Pete.

Settled into his seat, Clark glanced over at Sam, who gave him a small smile. At Dean, who gave him a slight nod. Then at Lex, who wrapped an arm around him and squeezed him tightly.

Yeah, Clark still had what he wanted. Even if it was just for a little while.

Clark smiled, rested his head on Lex's shoulder, and let his eyes fall closed.