Dean knows everything is going to turn out crappy when the witch latches onto him. Not physically grabbing him, but opening its mouth wide and inhaling.

He falls to his knees, suddenly feeling like a claw has reached inside his chest and grabbed a handful of something vitally important. And it's twisting. He gasps for breath, wanting to scream, and his Glock clatters to the ground.

Sam is firing nonstop at the thing's head, eyes flashing like the gun in his hands.

"Sam!" Dean chokes out. "At the mouth."

Apparently, Sam hears him over the din of gunfire. "It has two!" he shouts.

That's when Dean sees that the witch has opened up its cloak, and oh fuck it has another mouth, right there, in the center of its stomach.

Dean's eyes roll back in his head. He can't focus. He feels like all his energy is draining out of him � a tidal wave pouring out that he can't stop. He falls to the ground.

They knew this would happen � shit, this thing likes young men � they knew, but goddamn, two mouths?!

Dean sees Sam collapse beside him, gun arm wavering, eyes blank, and no no no this shit isn't happening. It is. Not. Happening.

Scrabbling to his knees, Dean grabs his gun and fires two shots. He can't even really see straight, but all that training in his life wasn't for nothing. The witch explodes in a burst of unnatural light, blowing debris and dust everywhere.

"Shove that in your cakeholes," Dean grunts before falling unconscious.

* * *

When Dean wakes up, he pats himself over to check the damage. He's not actually injured, but he feels like he should be. A phantom ache resounds in his chest, sort of like heartburn, but deeper. He spits grass and dirt off of his mouth.

He checks his watch and realizes he's only been out of it for half an hour, tops.

Sam is a motionless heap beside him � Christ, Dean will never be able to keep his blood from freezing and his heart from stopping dead in its tracks whenever Sam looks like that � but he's breathing, and Dean shakes his brother awake.

"Sam! Sam!"

Groaning, Sam bats Dean's hand away. "I-I'm okay." He sits up as well, blinking, looking a little confused. "We killed it, right?"

Dean manages a weak laugh. "Yeah."

"Oh. Good." Then Sam points at something over Dean's shoulder, raising an eyebrow. "What are those?"

Only now does Dean notice the two forms lying on the ground before them. One is a small gray wolf. The other is a hawk with blue-gray feathers and a wicked hooked beak. They look like they're dead.

"Where did they come from?" Dean wonders. He stands, and prods at the wolf's still body with the toe of his boot. He nearly jumps out of his skin when the wolf suddenly leaps to its feet and snaps its jaws at him, snarling. "What the fuck?"

The wolf stops snarling and somehow manages to look sarcastic, yellow eyes glinting with a strangely human expression. It grins, revealing feral white teeth. "After all this time, that's the greeting I get when we finally meet?"

"Sam, did you just hear the wolf talk?" Dean asks out of the side of his mouth.

"I did if you did." Sam looks equally bewildered.

The wolf pads closer to Dean, circling him, tail lazily flicking this way and that. "You've seen a lot worse. Talking wolves shouldn't be that much of a stretch."

And how does this wolf know about them?

Trying to pretend like talking animals are par for course in his life, which they sort of are, Dean asks slowly, "What do you mean, 'after all this time'?"

"I'm your soul. That whackjob's mojo split us apart. And here I am." The wolf heels at Dean's feet, head barely coming up to Dean's thigh, and looks up at him. Dean looks back, into those strangely human eyes, and can't help but believe. He pets the wolf's head, and the wolf lets him, leaning into his hand like an obedient dog.

It just� it feels right. It's like meeting your best friend for the first time. An instant connection.

Dean only had this feeling at one other time in his life, and that was when his mom put a little bundle in his arms and said, Look, Dean. I think he likes you.

The wolf adds, "I'm Soran."

"How come my soul is a chick?" Dean has to ask. The voice coming out of the wolf's mouth is most definitely female. In fact, Soran's voice sort of reminds him of April Stevens, a girl he had dated for a couple of months in high school. Dean wonders where April is now. She had a great rack, and an even better ass.

Soran stands up on four legs and trots over to Sam, ignoring the question.

Dean raises an eyebrow at Sam, and Sam shrugs.

Doesn't that say something if your own soul is ignoring you? Then again, Dean isn't too surprised that his soul is somewhat of a bitch. Yes, yes, ha ha, a bitch.

"Hey girl," Sam says. He grins, infinitely amused, and scratches Soran behind the ears. "You know, I've heard of familiars, but this isn't exactly the same thing, is it?"

"No, not really. We're a part of you, not just animals." Soran closes her eyes as Sam continues to pet her, looking blissful. "You should wake up yours."

"What? That's�?" Sam stands and goes to the hawk, which still hasn't moved an inch. He bends down and picks the bird up, cradling it like a baby. As soon as Sam does so, the hawk lets out a screech and flies out of Sam's arms, violently flapping its wings. It perches on a crumbling gravestone.

"Hi," says Sam to the hawk.

The bird tilts head first one way, then the other, blinking its red-gold eyes and staring at Sam, measuring him up. It opens its beak and says, "Oh, it's you." But it sounds pleased.

"Your soul is a girl, too," Dean says, somewhat relieved that it isn't just him.

Sam looks startled. "You sound like�"

"Jess?" The hawk flaps her wings open once, twice. The gesture looks somewhat like she's shrugging. If birds could shrug. "I think that's why you loved her. She spoke to you. She spoke to me. I loved her too, you know."

Rubbing a hand over his face, Sam says, "This is� heavy stuff."

The hawk swivels her head to look at Soran. "Hey, I know you."

"Hey," says Soran, lifting her head in acknowledgement, like they're old buddies that haven't seen each other in a while. Dean doesn't know whether or not he should be disturbed by this.

"I know you, too," the hawk adds, cocking its head to look at Dean with its sharp eyes.

Okay, a little disturbed.

Sam holds out his arm, crooking his elbow, and the hawk flies over and lands on his forearm. "What's your name?" Sam asks. He strokes his fingers over the hawk's downy breast.

"You know it," the hawk says.

"I really have no id�" Sam trails off in the middle of his disagreement. "Danix?"

"See?" says Danix, leaning back, looking proud � and wow, Dean really must be going crazy if he thinks he's seeing human expressions in animal faces. "You've got it in you."

"So, what do we do now?" Sam asks, looking around.

Dean shrugs. He takes a mental inventory. Two humans, a talking wolf, a talking hawk, and a pile of dust in a graveyard. It's like the punch line of a terrifically bad joke. Or an episode of Buffy.

Soran trots over to Dean, and presses her nose into his knee. "We've got to find a way to put us back. And soon. Or we'll die. And then you'll die."

"Oh, is that all?" Dean says weakly.

* * *

When Dean gets out of the bathroom, he finds Sam in the same position he left him in � sitting on his bed, books and notes and laptop spread out in front of him. Soran is sniffing through their bags, stalking around the room, and Danix is flying somewhere outside. They left the window open for her.

"Anything new?" Dean says, scrubbing a towel through his hair.

"Nope." Sam takes a sip of his coffee. "There are tons of spells to create doppelgangers and familiars, and to reverse them. But doppelgangers aren't the entire soul � only portions of it � and familiars already exist on their own, as animals. Nothing seems like it matches our situation."

"How long do we have, exactly, before you start to fade?" Dean asks Soran. He nudges her aside so he can look through his duffel for a t-shirt.

That had been Soran and Danix's word for it � "fade." Like Dean and Sam's souls could just disappear like a cheesy special effect in a bad sci-fi movie. The idea seems ridiculous, but it's also a little frightening. Where would they fade to? Would they just cease to exist forever?

"I really don't know." Soran leaps onto Dean's bed. "I'll tell you if I start to feel different."

"But it'll be too late at that point," Dean says, pulling his shirt on.

Danix swoops inside then, coming to land beside Soran on Dean's bed. Dean leans over and latches the window shut.

"Well?" Danix asks, but it seems like she's directing the question at Soran.

Soran just shakes her head from side to side. She licks at her paw.

"Hey, maybe Missouri has some ideas," says Dean. "We should call her or�"

The laptop bleeps. Sam raises his eyebrow and clicks on something. "She e-mailed us."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Very tech-savvy of her."

"Sorry boys, I can't help you," Sam reads. "But it's important that you put yourselves together soon. Go to my friend, Susan Fields. She might know a thing or two. She's in Arkansas, and it'll take a couple of days for you to get there, but I think you have enough time." Sam looks up at Dean. "She gave us an address."

"Great," says Dean. He rubs a hand over his eyes. Ever since the incident in the graveyard, Dean just hasn't been feeling right. That phantom ache in his chest is still there, and he guesses that makes sense if the witch sucked his soul out of him, but it's also� fucking tiring. "We'll go in the morning. I seriously need to crash right now."

"Slight problem," says Sam, nodding over Dean's shoulder. "They might be in the way."

Soran is sleeping in the middle of Dean's bed, lying on top of the covers. Danix is tucked inside the curl of Soran's body, and she has her head burrowed under one wing, also sleeping.

"It's sort of cute," says Sam, grinning, tilting his head to one side and watching the two animals sleep.

Dean rolls his eyes. "Oh God, spare me, Dr. Doolittle."

He goes over to his bed and swats at Soran. As soon as he does so, Soran leaps up and snaps at him. Dean is expecting it this time, so he pulls his hand back before she can do any damage. "Come on, girls, off."

Danix fluffs her feathers, spreading her wings wide before fluttering up to perch on the back of a chair. She folds her head down and is asleep again almost instantly. Soran circles around in place a few times in the space between the beds before settling down and going back to sleep.

"You too, dude. Get some sleep," says Dean, pulling back the covers. He makes a half-hearted attempt at it, only getting them halfway down before deciding to just collapse into bed.

"In a second." Sam is still typing on the laptop. "I'm e-mailing Missouri back. And checking up on a couple more things."

"Sleeeep."

Sam clicks a button and switches the laptop off before picking up a book, flipping through it. "Don't you wonder what determines a soul's shape? Why is yours a wolf and mine a hawk?"

"Because we're badasses?" Dean punches his pillow before burying his face in it. "Honestly," he says, voice muffled in the pillow, but he knows Sam can hear him, "I would've expected yours to be a bunny rabbit. Or a gopher. Or maybe a platypus."

Something hard and heavy � a book � hits Dean in the ass and Dean snickers to himself before falling dead asleep.

* * *

"Dean," a voice growls. "Dean, wake up."

When Dean sits up, rubbing his eyes, the bedside clock reads 3:19 in the morning. Then he sees Soran, a small shape in the dark, standing in front of the door to their room. Her ears are flat back on her head and her teeth are bared in a silent snarl.

Instinctively, Dean rolls out of bed, grabbing the semi-automatic from his duffel on the way. He crouches behind the foot of his bed, using it as cover.

"What is it?" he murmurs. Sam and Danix are still sleeping; Sam with one arm thrown over his eyes, Danix with her head under one wing.

"A vampire or a zombie," says Soran softly. "I smell a corpse. Coming closer."

"Wonderful," Dean mutters.

"It should be here in� three, two�"

The door bursts open and only then does the faint scent of decay hit Dean's nose. He unloads an entire clip into the zombie before it even gets one step over the threshold.

At the sound of gunfire, Sam and Danix startle awake, and in the corner of his eye, Dean sees Sam fly off of his bed and land on the carpet in a crouch.

The bullets throw the zombie off for a second. He staggers backwards a few steps, gray skin flying off in pieces like tattered clothing, but no blood. Zombies don't have blood.

But once the gun is emptied, the zombie continues its shuffling walk, inexorably forward.

Soran snarls and leaps, latching onto the zombie's neck, going for the jugular instinctively, but it doesn't do any good. In fact, the zombie seems to regard Soran as a new unusual sort of necklace, totally disregarding any pain � if zombies feel pain at all. He clutches at Soran and then turns, leaving the room with Soran still attached to his neck. She whines, struggling to get away.

"Hey! What the hell are you doing?" Dean scrambles to his feet, running after the zombie, but not sure what else he can do except punch the motherfucker's head off for laying his rotting hands on Soran.

Danix streaks ahead, a blue-gray bullet, and rakes the zombie's face with her talons. It grunts in pain but doesn't let Soran go.

"Dean, get down!" Sam's voice shouts from behind him, and Dean drops flat onto his belly.

The flare gun goes off, smoking and burning. The flare flies over Dean's head and shoots out into the parking lot, before embedding itself in the zombie's back. The zombie drops Soran and then goes up in a burst of flames, decaying into dust.

"A zombie?" Dean says in disbelief, staring at the aftermath.

Soran trots up to him, nuzzling his leg, and Dean strokes her head, so relieved she's not hurt that the feeling is indescribable.

"And why only one? Don't they usually attack in groups?" Sam asks. He's already packing up their stuff, cramming his clothes into a duffel bag. "C'mon, Dean, we have to go. I'm surprised someone didn't call management on us already, after all those gunshots."

"Danix," Dean calls to the hawk, who is still circling the parking lot, on the lookout for more trouble. Danix flies over and perches on Dean's shoulder. He winces, because the talons are digging into his shoulder with nothing more than a t-shirt to protect his skin, and Danix seems to notice, because her grip eases a little. "Can you fly ahead and keep an eye out? We'll be leaving in a second. Tell us if you see any more Night of the Living Dead extras."

The hawk looks at Dean, blinking her red-gold eyes blankly, and Dean clarifies, "Zombies. Tell us if you see any more zombies."

"That, I can do." Danix takes wing and flies off into the night sky.

Dean goes back in the room, followed by Soran. He starts packing up his own clothes. "Seriously, what the hell was that?"

Soran looks a little guilty. She goes to hide behind Sam's legs, peering out at Dean. "Well, I guess I haven't told you everything. But we better get to the car before we talk."

"You've been holding out on us?" Dean demands. How is it possible that your soul knows things you don't? How can your soul keep secrets from you?

Soran bows her head.

"Come on, don't look like that," says Sam, crouching down and running his hands over her head. Soran seems to perk up, licking at Sam's fingers. Sam adds in a stage whisper, "He's not really angry."

Dean pulls on his jacket and slings his duffel over his shoulder. "But no Scooby-snack for you."

"Aw, man," says Soran, sounding like a petulant child, and Sam smothers a laugh.

On the way out, Dean kicks at the pile of former-zombie dust, sending the gray grit flying all over the asphalt. It makes him feel better. A little.