A/N: Sorry this chapter is a day late. If any of you have an in with real life would you please tell it enough already? And if it behaves I will make it pie. Thanks to TraSan.

Scream of the Butterfly

Chapter Six

It was silent when Sam jerked into consciousness. The first light of dawn was lighting the eastern sky with bright red, bathing the cliffs in blood. There were still a few stars sparkling over head, a single wisp of bright cloud slashing across the sky. He was chilled, the cold seeping up from the ground, making the blood on his face ice cold. He'd been watching the cloud track slowly across the stars when he realized he was on his back. He wondered how and when that had happened.

“Sammy?” a distressed mumble from beside him brought him to full awareness in a heartbeat. “Sammy?” A cold, shaking hand was lying on his forehead.

“Dean?” Sam blinked and focused on Dean, his brother was kneeling beside him, his face sheet-white, blood trickling from scratches on his face. His brain caught up with everything else. “What are you doing?” Sam sat up and grabbed his brother's shoulders, ignoring a wave of dizziness and a throbbing ache in his head.

“You screamed,” Dean said indistinctly as Sam guided him back to the blankets. “I think. Joe said you were hurt.”

“I'm okay,” Sam said,as he checked over his brother's injuries. Oh god. The wound on Dean's side was looking bad, very bad and his brother's leg was seriously swollen.

“You're bleeding.”

“So are you.” Sam hoped using Dean's “distract them” technique would work. “You shouldn't have gotten up.”

“Joe said...” Dean focused glassy eyes on Sam. “He said they were back.”

“Who's back?” Sam asked pulling the blanket over his brother. There were tears where it had covered Dean's head.

“The evil that was here, that walked when they arrived.”

“What?” Sam frowned at him, that was a little poetic for Dean. The panic throbbing in his chest ramped up when the word “possession” crept into his head. That hadn't occurred to him until just this moment. He'd assumed Joe was a result of the fever. Dean got delusional with fevers, Sam still remembered the time Dean thought Sam had been kidnapped by pixies and had gone searching for him. Then there were the talking trees, the unicorn, the list went on and on. Possession hadn't been a worry, but that line, even for a delusional Dean... He was reaching for small container of holy water in his jacket pocket when he heard a groan. Looking up, he could see bodies stretched out on the ground, their clothing pale against the dark land.

“I'll be right back,” he said, waiting for Dean to nod before running to where Rich lay. Sam turned the archaeologist over, checking for a pulse. The man was alive. Sam moved to Jeff, he was alive too, scratching marring his face, a dark bruise forming on his temple.

Jeff's eyes fluttered as Sam bent over him, the man blinked then focused on Sam. “What...? My god, is it getting light?”

“Yeah.”

“Help me up,” Jeff said, holding his hand out.

“Maybe you shouldn't move.”

“Not a lot of choice, is there?”

“No, not really.” Sam pulled Jeff onto his feet then steadied him for a moment.

“How bad is Rich hurt?”

“I don't know, I checked to make sure he was alive, but that's all. He's not the only one down,” Sam said, gesturing to the bodies becoming more visible in the morning light.

“What's happening?” Jeff's voice reflected Sam's growing horror as they set out to check on the other members of the staff.

Two hours later, the rock shelters were full of dazed and injured workers. Rich regained consciousness and grumbled about lighting fires, but Jeff had directed the process and kept the fire rings outside the dig areas. Three people were seriously hurt, not including Dean, two were dead and one was beyond dead. Sam and Jeff had put the bodies in one of the tents and covered the tent with a heavy tarp, but the scavengers were still circling over-head and a line of ants had found their way in and were swarming over the bodies. Sam had no idea how the ants had gotten in, the zipper on the tent's door was functioning correctly, it was almost like they appeared from nowhere to consume the bodies.

Dean was getting worse, his fever rising, the wound beginning to show the first signs of a very serious infection and his injured ankle had turned an odd shade of greenish-purple. He slid between moments of lucidity and delirium, twice having conversations with people who weren't there, and once screaming in pain, clawing at his arm saying it was on fire.

Sam finally had the chance to sit back down beside his brother, the aches and pains of his own injuries beginning to make themselves known. He laid a hand on his brother's forehead—Dean's fever was still climbing. Jeff settled down across from him, starting a pot of coffee while Rich muttered direction to one of the few mobile staff members.

A small pop by where the ranch house had once stood signaled the destruction of another box of artifacts. Three had been destroyed since the sun had come up, they exploded in a ball of flames that burned so hot nothing could stop it. One of the fatalities had happened while a staff member had tried to move a box. It had blast apart and by the time they could get to him, there was nothing left but nearly fleshless charred bones.

“I was thinking about Scott,” Jeff said as he pulled the coffee pot out of the fire.

“Scott?” Sam asked.

“The one who burned,” Rich said his voice tight with grief. “Masters student, working on his thesis on pre-Anasazi settlements.”

“What about him?” Sam tried to push the image of those burned remains out of his head.

“One of the burials we found, it had been burned, we thought it might have been the result of a cooking process, since the charring was more than surface deep.”

“You think that body was like Scott?” Dean mumbled.

“Dean? You there?” Sam put his hand on his brother's arm.

“No, I'm talking in my sleep.” The words were slurred together, but they made sense—at least to Sam. Rich and Jeff were frowning at him.

“Was the body like Scott?” Sam asked, translating Dean's mumble just in case.

“It might have been. We didn't think about it in that context, obviously,” Jeff said.

“Obviously,” Rich echoed.

“Egg heads,” Dean muttered, then was quiet.

“But if it was like Scott what would it mean?” Rich asked, glancing at Jeff.

“I don't know,” Jeff answered.

“What have I done?” Rich said desperately.

“This isn't your fault, Rich,” Jeff said gently.

“What was in the boxes that were destroyed?” Sam said.

“Artifacts.”

“Yeah, but what kind?” An idea was beginning to form.

“Boxes from three and five, I think,” Jeff offered.

“Three and five?” Rich said. “Those are burials, one of them from next to the mummy. I know one had several points, a bones, seven beads and two of those micro-petroglyphs we found.”

“Micro-petroglyphs?”

“Yes, we found several, small stones with glyphs pecked into them, completely out of place here, of course.”

“What was on them?”

“Spirals, a possible sun image and what could have been a lunar calendar.”

“Wow, vague much,” Dean mumbled.

“Dean?” Sam squeezed Dean's arm.

“Listening,” his brother replied.

“We had four that were surface finds up along the mesa. One on its own and then three by the metates at the edge of the cliff.”

“We don't think they date from the same time period, it's all part of the weird overlaps we have at this site.”

“Like the mammoth bones and the pottery?” Sam said. Movement at the top of the cliff caught his eye and he tracked the shadow slipping along the edge of the mesa.

“Yeah, and the mummy and the burials,” Jeff added.

“Huh. I'll be right back,” Sam said, giving Den a pat on the chest, then standing. He walked along the wall of the rock shelter, eyes on the ground, not even sure what he was looking for—or even why he was looking. When he reached the point where Jeff had been working the night before—or was it two nights?—Sam squatted down and looking at the area he'd excavated. Some of the objects were still in situ, the femur that had been under the rock face was missing, a dark mark where it had been. Glancing around for any other disturbance, Sam got up and walked further, skirting the mouth of the cave and heading towards the rock shelter that had several finds in it.

He stopped and leaned against the cliff, the warmth of the rock seeping through his clothes and easing an ache in his shoulders. The pieces were beginning to come together, he just wasn't sure what it meant. He watched the circling buzzards, letting his mind wander from piece to piece. Part of it still felt almost like a haunting, but bones were being burned right and left, so who was haunting the place? Dean's disappearance, along with the cave, had to be part of it. In one of his brief moments of actual awareness, Dean had said something about the sacrifices, but hadn't clarified what he meant before he'd started mumbling about Joe and how they needed to stop it and help to fix it and bring it back into balance.

What did that mean?

He shifted his gaze from the scavengers to the ground, his eye following the progress of a stink beetle as it wandered through the sparse vegetation. It waddled under a sagebrush bush and out the other side, detouring around a smooth black stone. Sam watched it a moment longer, but his eyes were drawn back to the stone. It looked a lot like the one he'd seen just as the truck exploded while they were looking for his brother. He picked it up and turned it over, it was smooth on one side, almost like it have been polished, but on the other side was a spiral made up of thirteen distinct holes. Sam ran his thumb over it. It must be one of the mirco-petroglyphs.

He was considering putting it back, regretting disturbing an archaeological site, when a roar from behind him caused him to turn towards the cave entrance. A cloud of bats boiled out, heading straight towards him, his mind barely having a chance to register the movement before they were on him, swarming around him like a mad whirlwind.

They didn't touch him.

Sam stood, the stone clutched in his hand, as the angry creatures whirled around him, the rustling of their wings and their furious squeaks filling the air around him, until, with a final pass, they disappeared. One moment they were there, the next gone as if they hadn't existed at all. Sam looked down at the rock he was holding, it was starting to get warm. He dropped it with a gasp and ran, he made it to the rock shelter where Dean was before it exploded, the tiny shards of rock blasting apart. Sam shielded his brother from the flying shards.

“Have to fix it,” Dean slurred when Sam pushed himself off his brother.

“Fix what?”

“Out of balance, Sammy, have to fix it.”

“How, Dean?”

“Joe protected his people.”

“Joe?” Sam huffed. Great, now his brother's delusions were... What if it wasn't? Someone had tended his wounds, lit the fire in the cave. Jeff said there had been a spirit here. “Jeff?”

“Yeah, Sam?”

“You said you saw a spirit?”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

“Joe,” Dean corrected.

“When was the last time you saw him?” Sam asked, meeting the other's eyes, knowing there was more there.

“Not for a couple of months,” Jeff admitted.

“You saw a ghost? And didn't mention it?” Rich demanded.

“Yes.”

“Why?” Rich snapped.

“I hoped he would help stop the developers, help drive them away if they came.”

“You were working with him?” Sam asked incredulously, things were starting to make sense.

“I hoped to.”

“But?” Dean muttered.

“He wouldn't come, I tried to tell him what was happening, but it's like he didn't want to help.”

“Things would remain in balance,” Dean said dreamily.

“What happened?” Sam looked at his brother, then back at Jeff.

“I'm not sure, he disappeared, the next day the accidents started.”

“Told you, protector.” Dean smirked.

“But you saw him,” Sam pointed out.

“Only in the cave, safe there.”

“It's safe?”

“Where the fire was, Joe told me it was safe,” Dean said, his glassy eyes focused on Sam's face.

Sam stared at his brother, not really seeing him as he thought about what was happening. The picture he'd started to get was blown apart, and something else replaced it. Was that the answer? He ran over the facts again, what they'd been told when they arrived and the events since. If he wasn't right, he was close.

A sudden gust of wind brought his attention back. He looked up, a dark storm cloud was forming over the cliffs. He heard Jeff said it looked like a bad squall when the reality of what it was hit Sam. He stood. Oh god.

“Get everyone into the cave! Back as far as they can go, back where we found Dean. Don't let them stop till they get there!” he shouted. Sam bent over Dean. “I've got to get you back there.”

“That's going to hurt.”

“Yeah.” Sam dragged his brother onto his feet, watching the others race into the cave in front of him.

The squall was approaching fast, the wind sounding like a monsters roar. Sam cast a wild glance behind him at the wall of black racing across the canyon, as he ran towards the cave. The bats swirled around him as he ran, he could hear the others shouting from inside the cave as they tried to get back the swarming creatures. He nearly stopped when he heard Dean cry out in pain.

But he kept going, aware of that approaching cloud behind him, the howling wind whipping around the cliffs.

It all made sense, he knew what he needed to do.

The black wall started to engulf him, the entrance to the cave close, but still it felt like it was miles away.

He knew what he needed to do.

But it was too late.

To Be Continued

A/N II: My update next week might be late, I am going to the Con in Chicago and there is a good chance I will squee myself into a squeeful coma which I will rouse from with only brief, pathetic squees. If anyone is going to be there, I would love the chance to meet you!