Author's Note: Characters' swearing may be OOC because I only type baby curse words. Set sometime after the apocalypse has been stopped (Season 5) and Sam is back, but contains no info on the angels, Dean's break from hunting, or what the heck happened to Sam because I have seen none of Season 6. As always, please tell me if my OC starts to go Mary Sue. I don't want to be that writer. Thanks a bunch for reading!

Prologue: Safe

I hunched further into my leather jacket as the wind intensified, roaring over the lonely field outside of town where I had agreed to meet my father. I stood under the area's solitary scraggly tree, hoping it would provide a little shelter from the wind as well as a landmark for John to find me by. I needn't have worried. I was lost in thought wondering what he could possibly have to tell me that was so important I needed to break my promise to Mom never to see him again. He had sounded so urgent on the phone that I had relented and agreed to come. In all the time he had known I existed, we had asked very little of each other, so I knew that for him to come as close to begging as he ever did, it had to be pretty dang serious. I turned from my watch of the lonely dirt road I had ridden to get here to find John's face no more than 3 feet from mine, if that. I jumped with a startled yelp, and then scowled at myself for letting him sneak up and scare me like that.

He, too, looked on with disapproval. "You should be more careful. If I had been a bad guy, you would never have seen me coming. Good instincts on grabbing your weapon, though a little bit late to be a lot of help," He commented.

Always criticizing my survival skills. Despite how much I didn't want to be, I was a little hurt. I was still craving the approval of an absent father after all this time. I didn't even understand why he was always so concerned that I know how to defend myself. This wasn't exactly a crime-ridden town or anything. Did he really expect me to ever need to know how to block an underhanded stab maneuver? I almost rolled my eyes. Instead, I scowled harder and hit him where I knew it would hurt most.

"According to Mom, at least, you are a bad guy," I snapped.

I regretted it when his face fell for a moment. He was back to his normal stony neutral expression in a second, but all the same it unnerved me. Normally he would have covered up with a frown and a snide remark. So whatever he came for was really serious, then. Alright, then. No time to be stubborn and harsh. It was time to listen, so I mumbled an apology and motioned for him to say whatever he'd come here to say. I was nervous, impatient, and colder than the iceberg that took down the Titanic, so I wasn't particularly inclined to wait out here for very long for him to get on with it.

He took in a shuddering breath, then blew it out, pulling at his stubbly beard I used to rub my tiny hands over when he visited. Then he proceeded to tell me something I wished to God I could unhear.

"Every evil thing that you have ever heard stories about, especially the ones in my stories, is real," he said.

"What?" my reply was a choked, panicked whisper.

"Werewolves, vampires, ghosts… demons… all the monsters from my stories are real, and demon activity is up an insane amount. They're working on something big, and I think it involves me and my family. I hope to God that it doesn't include you, but in case it does, you need to know how to protect yourself and your mother. I don't have a lot of time before everything goes down, but I had to make time to make sure you would be okay," John explained.

"You're not making sense," I said. "You're scaring me."

"I'm making perfect sense, and you know it. And you're right to be scared. This crap is scary. It scares me and I've been killing supernatural creeps for over two decades. Point is, I'm sorry to have to dump all this on you. If I had my way, you'd never have to know about the things that go bump in the night, let alone feel responsible for stopping them, but I want you to know how to be safe," John insisted.

I was quiet for a minute, thinking, remembering. "Does this mean that the dream I had when I was little where you saved a lady from a vampire in an alley was real?" I asked. It had always troubled me that it had seemed more like a memory than a dream that my father had chopped a dude's head off on the way home from taking me to Baskin Robbins.

"Yes," he said simply. "That was real. I told you that you had fallen asleep in my arms on the walk home and had dreamed it because I was trying to protect you."

"Protect me? From what?" I asked him.

"From knowing the terrible truth about monsters: that they are real and can absolutely hurt you," John explained, sugarcoating nothing as usual. "But I have some things for you," he said as he extended a durable looking old army pack in my direction.

I took it from him and examined the contents. There were weapons of all kinds, guns and knives and ammunition made of a few different kinds of metals. There was a canister of salt and a bottle of lighter fluid, a small collapsible shovel, and a couple of books. I removed the smaller of the two and looked at the cover. It was simple blue leather with a strange symbol on the cover, a weird circle with a star in the middle and little squiggles in the empty spaces. I opened the book to find line after line of John's neat, cramped handwriting, along with a few careful drawings and diagrams. I looked closer and saw that there were sections, each with the heading proclaiming a different monster with subheadings describing different aspects of the beast: how it looked, what it ate, signs that gave away that it was them killing people, how to spot it in disguise, and most thoroughly: how to trap and kill it. I looked up at John.

"It's far from a complete encyclopedia of every monster out there, but it's darn close to every one I've encountered and beaten. I put together a sort of guide for you, tried to cover all the bases, but the thing you'll probably need to know the most about is demons. I put them at the front. They're the ones behind a lot of the supernatural activity out there. If you see something you don't recognize from the guide, then be careful looking it up. Not only is it hard to separate credible lore from cheap entertainment, but you could attract the wrong kind of attention," John said. "On that topic, I am absolutely not encouraging you to go out looking for trouble. By no means am I asking you to be a hunter. That's no kind of life for a bright girl like you. I tried to get my younger son to stay away from all this nonsense at Stanford. He was real smart, too. Was gonna be a lawyer. But he got dragged back into the life. I don't want that for you. I don't."

"Because I'm a girl? Or because I'm not your real, legitimate kid? Am I not good enough to fight what's out there in the dark?" I practically yelled. Since when was he so dang concerned for my freaking safety? He's the one who taught me how to fight like a boxer in a bar brawl when I was ten.

"No," he barked, a little harshly. I was tempted to lean back when he reached for me, but I held my ground as he placed his hands on my shoulders, his head bowed. "I don't want that for you because you have a chance to live peacefully the way my sons didn't. A demon killed their mother and I dragged them with me on the road, so lost in my grief that I didn't notice that I was pulling them down a path they could never turn back from, full of violence and death and lies and unimaginable horror… and loss. Not until it was too late. You're smart and you didn't grow up killing things that look for all the world like other people, like your friends, neighbors, lovers. You don't have to be what I've been for too long now. This life, it makes you tired, so tired. I think it was because you didn't grow up with me around that you turned out as well as you did. I wish I didn't have to burden you with this, but I want you to be safe in case I can't be the one to save you."

He took his hands off my shoulders and reached into the side pocket of the army pack and pulled out a necklace. He held it out to me. I took it from him and examined it. It was a dull metal pendant on a simple silver chain, the pendant shaped like another weird symbol. It was a star inside a circle that had wavy lines coming out from it like the rays of the sun. I raised an eyebrow at him.

"It's made of pure silver and iron. The symbol wards off demonic possession. It's not as effective as getting it tattooed on, but it's the best I could do for you. Put it on and never take it off. You understand me? Not to shower, not to work out, not to sleep. Never. Take. It. Off. Promise me, Echo," he insisted.

Like I said, we'd never asked much of each other before. I was still pretty uncertain if I believed all of this 'demons are real' craziness. I was still confused about why my mom had banned him from seeing me ever again. I was more than a little terrified and overwhelmed. But I was still a Winchester, so I sucked it up. My father was pleading with me. This was beyond important to him, so it didn't matter if I didn't understand a word of it. I'd wear the necklace, keep it on at all times, and read the book. When I made a promise, I kept it, so when I said, "I promise," I meant it.

I put the necklace on and locked the clasp in place. John nodded in approval. Then he leaned forward and kissed my forehead at the hairline like he'd done when I was little.

"Happy 17th birthday, Echo. Be good. Be safe. Love you," my father said.

"I will. Love you, too," I replied.

That was the last thing I ever said to him.

He turned and walked away in the opposite direction of the road I'd come in on, and I stood there under the scraggly tree until I heard the sound of an engine, then I turned away and walked back to my bike. Mom didn't approve of the motorcycle, but I had bought and insured it with my own money, so there wasn't a lot she could do. I didn't fight her on much, but I fought for Bluebird with ferocity. I had been in love since I saw her on the lot, sky blue paint job, gray leather saddlebags, and a sticker for The Clash that refused to come off the exhaust pipe. She wasn't much, but she was mine. I kicked her into gear and rode into the night with the army pack slung over my back full of weapons and my mind full of questions without answers.

It would be a while before I really believed John about the demons, but I read the book faithfully, kept the pack with me at all times that I could manage it, and practiced my moves pretty much every day. I never took that darn necklace off once, either. It would take nearly five years for anything supernatural to roll into my town, but when it did, I was ready.

Sort of.

-End Prologue-