PROLOGUE

I was camped out at the women's shelter when I finally convinced myself to make the call.

I'd just woken up to find the contents of my bag all dumped out and thrown around like garbage. My cash was gone; laptop—gone. I can't even begin to describe the blow that was, since I had all my ideas saved on there. With a sinking feeling of dread, I knew I'd have to start from scratch… And the thought finally presented itself, 'This is it, Kody; this is your rock bottom.' At long last, I knew I was desperate and miserable enough to ponder my last resort.

A kindly volunteer shelter attendant took pity on me and let me use her phone after assuring her who I was calling and allowing her to be present for the duration. She wished me good luck with a sunny smile, and I remember her teeth stood out a vivid pearly white against the dark of her skin. Little meaningless things surreally brand themselves in my mind when I know my life is about to take an about face pivot—those little turning points in our lives where we take a leap, without knowing what might be lying in wait below…

I dialed the ten numbers slowly, the impact of each button against my finger pad feeling much more dramatic than the action really was. Then I listened with baited breath as it rang shrilly in my ear, once, twice…six times.

"Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system—"

I flipped the phone shut, unable to mask the torn look of dismay on my face. Of course he wouldn't answer, he probably doesn't even have the stupid phone anymore anyway. It's been years and years. Why would he? It's not like I can say I'm surprised. I shouldn't even be disappointed—shouldn't have gotten my hopes up…

"Well," Miranda began, and when I looked up at the attendant she urged, "give it another try."

I bit my lip to keep it from trembling, shaking my head forlornly. "He's not going to answer…"

"You don't know unless you try," she admonished, and put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "Listen girl, I see a lotta troubled folks come through here. But you got a good head on your shoulders. This ain't the sorta place you need t' be." She gave my shoulder another squeeze, and advised, "Try again."

I bit my lip harder and gave a reluctant nod, punching in the number again with slightly tremulous fingers.

This time, it picked up on the first ring.

"Who are you, and how did you get this number?" a hard voice demanded gruffly in my ear.

My eyes widening, almost too afraid to believe it, I faltered out softly, "…Dad?"

"…Kody?" The hard voice softened to one of puzzlement, then abruptly, he asked, "Where are you?"

Haltingly, thickly, I explained my unfortunate situation, unable to keep the tears out of my voice this time. Miranda was at my side giving me one armed hugs and supportive encouragements all the while, and I couldn't express just how grateful I was to the woman. Her motherly kindness was almost like a knife in the heart, but I tried to accept it with grace, even when I felt the knife twisting in even deeper. My own mother hadn't felt maternal towards me since I was ten—like a cute puppy that grows up to be not so cute, and the owner doesn't want it anymore—so warm hugs, and comforting words were relics of my childhood. Despite that, she was still my mother, and I loved her… But that just made it worse. I wished I could hate her—it would be easier to blame her for everything that went wrong in my life. But I couldn't.

By the time Dad showed up in the early hours of the morning, Miranda had already gone home. I left a note for her, thanking the woman for all she had done for me. It seemed such a small thing, letting a stranger use your phone. But to me? Right now? It was everything.

But the reunion between my dad and me wasn't exactly what one could call comfortable.

I hadn't seen him since I was two.

That's when he and Mom split up. She never told me why, exactly; she never talked about it, other than to tell me it was none of my damn business. Though I got the feeling it might have had something to do with the fire. Even after all these years, the burns still disfigured him. As cruel as it was to say it, his face reminded me a little of Sandor Clegane from Game of Thrones. Gruff, rugged, and gruesome, with tarnished remnants of a once handsome man beneath. He'd almost died trying to get me out of that fire in the nursery. Two years later, he'd left a single contact number and hit the road. Sure, I'd get the occasional birthday card or whatever, but those eventually stopped. I used to think of him quite literally as my hero. But after years of zero contact and an increasingly complicated life, the rose-colored glasses gradually came off…

"How'd you get here so fast?" Last I heard, he'd been living somewhere around South Dakoda; this was Miami.

"…Had a job in Louisiana," he grunted, keeping his eye on the road. His weathered hands gripped the steering wheel of the truck a little tighter. "Lucky you called when you did." When he finally glanced at me with a steely look, he asked, "Ya wanna tell me what in the devil you were doing in a homeless shelter, Dakoda? The hell is that mother of yours thinking?"

I frowned, and looked down at my feet with a slow sigh.

"…It's a long story."

He made an expression that might have included an arched brow if he still had them.

"Long road home, kid," the corner of his permanent grimace twitched into what once could have been a charming smile—now only made him look more menacing. "We got time."

I could only focus on the word home, and how there was no way it could be this easy.

Turns out, I was right.

My introduction to the life of hunting was not a smooth transition.

It came at a rest stop in Kansas when I was headed to the restroom out back. A creep tried to grab me, and Dad chopped his head off. No, I mean he literally chopped his head off. I was so shocked I couldn't even scream. At that point Dad dragged both me and the…body into the restroom and very matter-of-factly gave me 'The talk.' Apparently, Dad had missed the vampire—because those actually exist outside of Anne Rice and Twilight—on his last hunt, and it had followed him all the way from Louisiana—which was just too much—for revenge.

"No," I said, my freak-out level reaching overdrive heights, "no fucking way. You're out of your mind—"

In lieu of words, Dad quickly held up the severed head in my face and pressed down a certain way on its gums. This time, I did scream when a few needle-like teeth distended overtop of normal ones.

"Lesson one," he recited as I held a horrified hand over my mouth. "To kill a vampire, cut off the head."

I'll admit, I seriously considered hitchhiking back to Miami at that point. But then the thought occurred to me that I'd be right back in the sorry situation I'd just left, only with an entire world of bad out there that I had absolutely no idea how to confront. Ignorance truly is bliss. And I didn't dare leave Dad when he was the only resource willing to teach me how to fight these things. And though he was bleak and grim faced about it as he was towards just about anything, he saw the necessity in it just as much as I did.

"The hell was your mother thinking?" he muttered again, like a curse. "Putting you out on the streets when she knows what hunts little girls at night… Next time I'm in Florida I might have to pay her a visit."

"Wait," I interjected incredulously, "she knew?!"

Dad's grim countenance became even more severe as he rumbled, "Oh, she knew. Knew even before I did…"

"What does that mean?" I asked, then again more hesitantly, "Is…is it the reason you guys broke up?"

Dad glanced at me out of the corner of his good eye and huffed, "We split for a bunch of reasons, kid…"

A surge of righteous anger had me protesting, "I'm not a kid—I'm twenty-three fucking years old. I'd like to think I'm old enough to know why I grew up without a father."

"You grew up without a father because I lost the custody battle," he snapped. "If you think I would've left you with that demon dealing witch for any other reason…" he trailed off painfully, and declared. "I'm no kidnapper, Dakoda."

After a tentative silence, I asked, "When you say 'witch,' do you mean that figuratively, or…?"

He snorted softly and shook his head, "Wish I did."

"Mom's a witch?" I wanted confirmation.

"More of a hedge witch now," he shrugged helplessly. "Back to her love potions, I suspect…" He stared out the windshield stonily. "Lesson two: If a witch ain't hurting anyone, leave them be."

I thought of the vile concoctions she always had me help her with in the kitchen. She made her husband Bill drink them, 'for his health.' I always just watched on in sick amusement whenever he was forced to drink the cocktail of ingredients. (Which, incidentally, included distilled cat piss). But with this new revelation, my eyes widened in alarm.

"No…" I gasped, then looked at Dad. "Did she use it on you too?"

His sullen silence spoke loud enough.

"Oh my god…" I shook my head. "That's…how is that not hurting anyone? And, what did you mean by demon-dealing?"

Dad didn't answer my first question, but in response to the second, he merely recited, "Lesson three: A witch can gain more power by making a deal with a demon."

"Demons are real…" I muttered, not exactly surprised at this point. "Is there anything that isn't real?"

Dad thought about that for a moment and shrugged. "The Easter bunny?"

"Why does that sound like a question?" I demanded hotly.

He shrugged yet again.

"Lesson four: Question everything."

In the months following, my life was completely derailed. We didn't actually make it to North Dakoda until a couple weeks later because Dad got a tipoff from a friend about a werewolf causing some havoc in Bumfuck, Nevada. Yes, that was the actual name of the town—something that actually got a laugh out of Dad when he saw the look on my face. I suppose as far as road trip partners go, he wasn't the worst. We had a similar taste in music, and I could tell which songs he liked the most because he would sing softly along with the radio whenever one of them played. You wouldn't be able to tell by his face because of how gruesome it looked, and how gruff he always sounded, but Dad had an amazing singing voice.

Once, a song I loved by Silverchair came on, and I heard him humming along to the intro, almost too soft to hear. I'd noticed Dad only sang loud enough to be just heard over the music, and so, curious, I'd reached over and turned the volume up. He'd paused and sent me a fierce look, which I returned merely with a mischievous little smile, and turned the volume up a little higher with a challengingly raised brow.

With an amused sniff and a shake of his head, he began, "It's twelve-o-clock, and it's a wonderful day…I know you hate me, but I'll ask anyway…"

Starting to grin, I joined in with, "Won't you come with me, to a place in a little town…the only way to get there is to go straight down…"

And so it went, driving down the road, singing, "Yoooooou, wait 'til tomorrooooow!" at the tops of our lungs.

Stupid as it was, I think that was the moment when I really started to love my dad—despite whatever else came with the package. Hunting monsters really was a small price to pay I decided, when the ever-present chill in my heart started to thaw. I learned Dad and I had more in common than I ever did with my mom. We were both quiet, and had the same black sense of humor. Was this what it was supposed to feel like, I wondered. Sure, Dad was strict, and barked orders like a drill sergeant sometimes, but I understood why he did it. I'd make mistakes, and he'd shout himself hoarse, but he did it because he didn't want me to get hurt. He didn't seem to love me any less, even if I was the clumsiest hunter in existence. He acted annoyed and surly when really, he was just worried.

When we finally made it to Sioux Falls, where Dad lived, after taking on a pack of werewolves—which, I might add, was scary as hell—it was just our luck we got pulled over in the middle of the night. I looked at Dad nervously as the red and blue lights flashed, illuminating his shiny burnt skin in odd ways. His covered truck bed was full of things like machetes and shotguns, fake IDs, and god knows what else. If we got searched under probable cause, we were fucked.

And my eyes must've been screaming this at him because Dad just kept up his grim poker face and said, "Keep your mouth shut."

I was nodding hurriedly when there was a metallic tap on his window, apprehension building in my chest at the sharp command, "Can you step out of the vehicle, Sir?"

I tried to focus on the swinging dream catcher swaying to-and-fro from the rearview mirror, averting my eyes from the situation as sweat gathered in my clenched fists. Dad compliantly opened his door and got out, only to be assaulted.

I just about reached for the gun in the glove compartment before I realized the officer was hugging dad.

"Mav! Where have you been?" she exclaimed warmly, patting him on the back. Then, spotting me, she asked, "And who's this?"

"My daughter, Dakoda," he grunted unaffectedly, unfazed by the bubbly officer. Clearly, they knew each other.

Not one to be rude, despite Dad's order to keep my mouth shut, I slid over and held out my hand, "Call me Kody."

"Sheriff Jodi Mills," she grinned, clasping my hand in a warm, friendly shake. She turned back to Dad, and remarked, "I didn't know you had a daughter, Mav."

"Been havin' some trouble with her mom," Dad explained with his habitual shrug. "She'll be staying with me for a while. Teachin' her some of the trade."

"Oh, you're interested in fixing up cars too, huh?" Jodi asked me cheerfully.

After a moment of uncertainty, and a glare from Dad, I nodded my head hurriedly. "Oh, yeah. I love cars."

I couldn't give a rat's ass about cars.

"Well," Jodi said, patting Dad's shoulder with a grin, even if she had to reach up pretty far to do it, "there isn't a better teacher than your Daddy. Best mechanic in town. Pretty good handyman, too. Everyone here knows, if there's a problem, call Mav."

The Ghostbusters theme started playing unhelpfully on a loop in my head.

"Yep…" I faltered out, my own grin a little too wide. "That's Dad, alright."

"Welcome to Sioux Falls!"

So, I'm having some major troubles with Not About Angels—probably going to have to reboot it.

Until then, I hope you enjoy Kody and her story. This was just an introduction of sorts, so lots more action and character development next chapter due to a minor time jump. You'll get a better idea of where we are in the continuity of Sam and Dean too, because Sam makes an appearance.

If you're reading this, thanks for giving this story a try. And if you like it...

PLEASE REVIEW!

(Anything helps!)