Clark still wasn't used to so many people knowing his secret. Sam had been the first to know, when they were kids. Lex and Dean had found out when Clark was in high school. Chloe had figured it out shortly after they graduated. Now, the only person in the room who didn't know was Madison.
Since he was five years old, Clark had been told over and over again that if anyone found out about his powers, he would end up on in a lab, or worse. In a way, it had turned out to be true—he had spent time in Lex's lab. Lex had run some tests, with Clark's permission, and he periodically ran tests on everyone on their team. But he didn't experiment on Clark the way he did with monsters, and Clark was convinced, now, he was safer with people knowing than without.
The truth was, when his parents had discovered his powers, they'd thought he was all there was—the only impossible being on the planet. Now, Clark saw the impossible every day. His secret seemed less impressive, and maybe less dangerous.
Still, he wasn't sure whether to bring another person in on it.
The six of them—Lex and Madison, Sam and Dean, Clark and Chloe—sat in the living room of Sam and Dean's cabin. It felt good to all be working together on something, even if the reasons were grim.
"Sam and Dean," Lex said at the start the meeting, "any news on my father's serum?"
"Uh, we weren't able to officially confirm whether it's your father's," Sam said. "But I passed on the case to Clark, after my . . . incident."
Lex's gaze shifted over to Clark, and Clark knew the look on his face. Lex didn't like for Clark to work on Smallville cases because of the risk of Kryptonite. But he wasn't going to say that in front of Madison, who didn't know Clark's secret or his weakness.
"I only just started working on it," Clark admitted. "But I was able to talk to a girl who had taken it, and the rumors are true. She was able to talk to her sister, who had passed away a few years ago."
"Was she able to describe her supplier?"
"No, but she gave me an address. I checked it out, but it wasn't a lab or anything, must have just been a meeting place."
Chloe frowned. "Someone's bringing the supply from somewhere."
"I was able to stake it out last night, and I followed the supplier back to the source in Metropolis. He looked like one of Lionel's people, but I couldn't be sure."
"You can give me an address?"
"Yeah. Uh, another thing. I was only able to check in with one of the leads Sam gave me. The others went missing."
"That's encouraging," Lex muttered. "Sam, you haven't . . . seen anything else? Something that might help us with this?"
Sam shook his head. "Nothing since the first vision. Were you able to run the tests?"
Lex frowned. "Do you want me to share the results with . . . everyone?"
"Might as well. We should all be on the same page." Sam didn't glance pointedly at Clark, but he might as well have. Clark knew how Sam felt about Clark having kept his secret for so long. He liked to think Sam had forgiven him, but they remained in disagreement about the whole issue.
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"Negative test results for everything. No meteor mutation, no supernatural infection. Except . . ."
"Except what?"
" . . . You seem to have a few demon blood cells."
"Whoa, wait." Dean straightened up. "Sam is possessed?"
"No, no." Lex shook his head. "It's a very trace amount."
"Could it cause visions?" Sam asked. His voice sounded strained, more than a little afraid.
"I've never seen anything like it. I don't know what it could cause. But unless you were injected with demon blood the day before I took the test, I'd have to guess this has been in you for a while."
"How does that even happen?" Dean burst out.
"That's what we have to figure out," Lex said. "Chloe, I want every book on the effects of demon blood in my office."
"Should be no problem," she said. "Bobby's still in town, right?"
"Right. Sam, any time you see anything, I want an update."
"Of course," Sam said.
Clark looked toward Madison, then back to Lex. "Do you think it's possible there's a connection to Madison? I mean, of all the people Sam might have had visions about, he just happened to see the person hunting a pack of werewolves?"
"I wasn't chasing after werewolves when I got bitten," Madison said. "I was going after Helen."
Clark's breath caught. All eyes turned toward her.
She sighed. "I know you all have . . . a lot going on."
"We're here to collect all the information we can," Lex said. "This is kind of what we do."
Clark hadn't felt totally satisfied with his lot in life over the past few months; he knew Sam and Dean were the same way. But something about the way Lex said that made him feel a little more settled. Together, they'd all been hunting, researching, collecting, doing anything they needed to do to save people, since Clark was just a kid. It was just what they did.
Madison gave a slight nod. "Um, the last demon I exorcised didn't have any intel on Helen, but he pointed me to a place in Metropolis. Said there was a demon living there who had a bunch of other demons in his employ, and I might check it out."
"Didn't tell you the place was guarded?" Clark asked.
Madison smiled wryly. "It didn't come up."
"He had werewolf guards?" Sam asked.
Madison nodded. "I was prepared to fight demons, not monsters."
"Did you get any other information about the demon you were looking for?" Sam asked. "Any sort of description, a name?"
"No name. And I didn't ask for a description of the host. Figured he could possess anyone." She frowned. "But . . . there was one thing. He has yellow eyes."
Sam's jaw dropped, and Dean's face went stony.
Clark blinked. He had read Lex's research summaries. He knew most demons had black eyes, and that crossroads demons had red eyes. He knew demons infected with Kryptonite had green eyes. Yellow was a new color, but it didn't surprise him there were others.
Apparently Sam and Dean didn't see it the same way. "What does that mean?" Clark asked.
"Our, ah—" Sam's voice caught. "Our mother was killed by a yellow-eyed demon."
"Do you think it's the same one?" Madison asked.
Sam cleared his throat. "We . . . we don't . . ."
"You ever heard of a yellow-eyed demon before?" Dean asked.
"You tell me," Madison said. "You guys have been doing this a lot longer than I have."
"It's worth looking into," Lex said before Dean could get any further. "Madison, what's the address of that place in Metropolis?"
She reached into her purse and pulled out a post-it with something scribbled onto it, and she handed it to Lex.
"Let's make a plan for investigating this place," he said, and he handed the post-it to Clark. "Think you can scope it out?"
Clark glanced at the address, and he almost dropped the paper.
"What?" Lex asked.
"Lex . . . this is the same address I have."
"For what?"
"For that serum."
"Wait," Chloe jumped in. "Lionel Luthor and . . . that yellow-eyed demon who killed Sam and Dean's parents. Do you think they could be working together?"
Lex's jaw pulsed. "Drawing in people with some kind of supernatural serum that lets people hallucinate their loved ones? Putting together a meteor-infected werewolf militia to guard their base of operations?"
All at once, Clark wasn't sure how he felt about this whole situation. He himself could probably take on a pack of werewolves—even when he was a child, he'd fought off a few that had been infected by Kryptonite. Everyone else here was mortal—this was dangerous, far more than any other fight they'd had.
"Lionel and a boss demon," Clark said, giving Lex a look. "This is the kind of fight you usually tell us to stay out of."
Lex looked over at Clark, then he looked around at everyone in the room. For a moment, Clark thought he was going to agree, though by the look in Dean's eyes, Clark figured there would be quite a fight.
Finally, Lex said, "Then we better go in with a plan."