The Ballad of Stevie Jane

A/N: The prologue to this story has been retitled to Wolfkind and Winchester and posted separately.

Chapter 1

Earlier

Dean missed his baby. She had been the one true thing in his life for years. Always there. Reliable. Lately he's been forced to accept inferior substitutes and it was beginning to wear thin on his patience.

The alignment on the Dodge, that currently subbed for his beloved Impala, was distinctly off. The gear shift stuck, and he considered the former owner both entirely too short and a giant douche. The California license plate, which Sam had replaced, had read "Chariot 3."

"Chariot...really?" He mused aloud.

His brother groaned. "Dude, seriously, let it go. It's a stolen car. What do you want?"

"Maybe a ride that isn't bright frickin purple? You do realize what I look like driving this car, don't you?"

"You asked for a classic car this time. It's a '71 Challenger. If you want something different, you get to boost next time." Sam replied hooking the cuff of his jacket back across his eyes in a vain attempt at sleep.

Dean just grumbled in response. In all reality the Challenger wasn't that bad. She had nice lines and aside from a bit of a shaky alignment, she handled well. The radio had been tuned to a punk rock station and a Heart tape had been in the cassette player. Dean could appreciate the medium. But still he'd swapped it for a Motley Crue tape, then he felt a bit better. It was being on the run that was really wearing thin. That and he was having the year from hell. Again.

Dean saw a small billboard off to his right that advertised a dive that served, "Cold Beer! Hot Food! and the Best Pie in Utah!" He was in.

"Wakey Wakey Sam." Dean barked. "It's supper time and I wanna get my pie on."

"That just doesn't sound right." Sam grumbled as they took the exit and rolled to a stop in the bar's parking lot.

Dean ordered a Budweiser, a bourbon, a burger, and a slice of boysenberry. He was feeling witty tonight. Sam ordered a chicken caesar salad and a Corona. They talked shop. Monsters. Angels. Demons. Same old same old. What happened next was what their grandfather Samuel would have called an ill wind blowing in.

The girl that walked into the bar had long black hair, cowgirl boots and a stetson hat that obscured her face from view. That didn't stop the Winchesters from taking in her other attributes. She wore fitted jeans, a purple t-shirt and a leather jacket that sported a vaguely military emblem on the back incorporating a wolf and an eagle.

She sat down at the bar and spoke with the bartender, who dropped a glass of dark draught in front of her. It didn't take long for her to be approached. Dean couldn't tell if the guy was local, but he looked at home. He'd come in a group, Sam pointed out. He was drunker and sweatier than the companions he'd left at the pool table nearby. And hadn't had the time to tuck in his shirt today. He had a leer on his face that was not flattering.

Sam and Dean watched and conversed as the man propositioned the woman. They had to give him points for courage. It wasn't as if her body language was welcoming. And she'd clearly turned him down flat. But then they had to deduct points for the guy getting louder and more insistent. Her response, though they could not hear it, had the man's companions and the bartender laughing.

He made a choice comment that they could hear, about what he was going to do to her in the parking lot, and that got Dean out of his seat. He couldn't listen to this crap and eat his pie. Sam didn't try to stop him.

"Hey, why don't you sit down and have another beer, pal?" Dean sidled up to the woman's other side and slapped a ten dollar bill on the bar, sliding it to the other guy. "On me."

"Keep your money." The guy snorted. "I'll keep the girl."

"You will keep your hands and comments to yourself." The woman responded.

She slid the ten back to Dean, and he got his first glimpse of her. Fair skin, ice blue eyes, beautiful and dangerous. Her eyes closed for a second and she inhaled deeply. Dean felt like he was on the edge of a cliff until she opened them again.

"And you may keep your help and your money to yourself. Thank you."

"Yeah, what she said." The drunk guy sneered, grabbing the woman's arm, having obviously forgotten the first part of her ultimatum.

Dean was about to grab the guy, and he could see the rest of the pool table getting up, as well as Sam at his peripheral. But before anyone could make a move, there was a smashing sound, and the guy was sitting on the floor with his back against the bar holding a broken bloody hand and screaming.

The woman swung herself cleanly off the bar stool and into a crouch, in front of her would-be-suitor. "Hey" was all she said, and it was just to get his attention. The guy locked eyes with her, his growing wide. His pained screams turned into whimpers and he started scooting away. He crab walked toward the pool table, crawled, and then ran for the bathroom. Ran like the fear of god had been put into him.

The woman stood up slowly, making eye contact with each one of the men at the pool table. Like a wave, they all averted their eyes in turn. Then she turned and calmly paid the bartender. The bartender took her money as she chugged the rest of her drink. The bartender exchanged looks with Dean and Sam and uncomfortably addressed her. "I'm gonna have to ask you to leave, ma'am."

She shrugged. "Yeah, I figured. Thanks anyway."

She set her empty glass down, tipped the bartender, tipped her hat to Dean, and breezed out just as quickly as she'd come in. Sam and Dean followed her out to the parking lot. But as soon as they cleared the door, she'd vanished.

They went back inside, sat down, and finished their meal without further disturbance. They only discussed the incident briefly before moving on to more shop talk.

It was dark when they got back to the car and both were tired. It was a sign of their fatigue that neither checked the backseat before climbing in and driving off. They didn't get a mile before Sam happened to look in the rearview mirror to find the woman in the stetson staring back at him. He shouted and jumped halfway out of his seat. This caused Dean to look, which caused him to veer past the center line and almost take out an Audi going the opposite direction.

"What the hell?!" Dean shouted as he pulled off onto the shoulder going the wrong way.

Both Winchesters drew their guns on her, to which she looked supremely un-impressed. "Smooth. Very smooth. And just who taught you to drive?"

Dean growled. "What the hell are you?"

"And so eloquent too. You kiss your mother with that mouth, handsome?"

Sam put a hand on his brother's shoulder. "What he means to say is who are you? And what the hell are you doing in our car?"

The woman tipped her hat up so they could see her eyes. Little lightning bolts danced across them, but that could have been the headlights flashing from oncoming cars. "I could ask you the same question."

"Listen lady, you better cut the cryptic crap before I..."

"What? Slice me with your rapier sharp wit?" She cut Dean off, looking less than amused.

"Get out of my car!"

"A valid request, if this happened to be your car. Which it isn't."

"Wait." Sam interrupted. "What makes you think this isn't our car?"

"Pop the glove box and take out the registration." She said reaching into her back pocket.

Sam looked at Dean, who grumbled and glared at her but nodded. He read the registration aloud. "Stevie J. Lupaventus."

She flashed them the badge that she'd fished out of her pocket.

"Our cousin Stevie." Dean offered. "Great guy, but down on his luck. He asked us to drive the car to Arizona. We're supposed to meet him in Phoenix by the end of the week. I have his number if you'd like to call him, officer." He gave her his best cute/innocent/flirtatious look.

"How very nice of you." She smiled. "And I'll grant you adorable. But obviously you don't read as well as you B.S." She tossed the badge into his lap.

Dean read the badge and cursed. He glared at Sam, who was looking clueless. "Dude! It's a cop car! Worse, it's a chick car!"

Sam read the badge.

Deputy - Office of the Sheriff

Township of Haven, MO

Her identification card read:

Stevie J. Lupaventus

Deputy Sheriff

Commanding Officer: Sheriff Wyatt Carmichael

"You're Stevie? Like Nicks?" Sam offered.

"I've tracked you two through two states, to get this car back. So, I prefer to think of myself as the daughter McQueen always wanted. But that's neither here nor there. You boys are under arrest."

"How do we know that badge is even real?" Dean stalled. "Maybe you stole it?"

"Aw, well darlin the badge could be fake. I'll grant you that. But I assure you the gun and the handcuffs are real enough to satisfy." She dangled two pairs of handcuffs at them and Dean felt a familiar cylindrical pressure pushed into the seat at the base of his spine.

"We're both armed." Sam retaliated.

"I realize that, what with the guns in the front seat, and all the ones you managed to fit in my trunk. Kudos on that by the way. And I realize that I don't know what you're capable of. But I'm willing to bet two brothers who are willing to stand up for a lady in a bar wouldn't be willing to shoot her on the side of the road. And, if not, I'm willing to bet that despite all evidence to the contrary, you boys aren't stupid enough to shoot a cop over a muscle car…. when you're not certain she hasn't called you in already."

"We're a long way from Montana." Dean countered, figuring that she was bluffing.

"But just two miles from the county sheriff's station." Stevie smiled. "You've gotta love cooperation in law enforcement. Now, if you'd both please follow your own advice and get the hell out of my car."

She forced them to relinquish their guns and rearrange so that they were both handcuffed in the backseat. She pointedly ejected Dean's Crue tape and threw Heart back in.

"Aw, come on!" Dean grumbled. "If you're going to take us in, at least don't make us listen to chick music on the way."

"Driver chooses the music. Backseat shuts his cakehole!" Stevie retorted. Sam's eyebrows leaped and he gave Dean an amused look.

"Shut it!" Dean mouthed at him. The Winchester boys were in deep now. They had a rap sheet a mile long, which included numerous occasions of being wanted for murder, and their own death certificates. Stevie rolled her eyes and turned the music up.

A second later, there was a whooshing sound and a figure appeared in the passenger's seat. Dean almost jumped again. "Cas!"

"Hello Dean. Sam... Stevie." Castiel greeted. The fallen, former Angel of the Lord, looked liked he'd seen better days. But for Cas, that was pretty much par for the course.

"You got a lot of nerve showing your winged monkey ass around me, Castiel." Stevie growled. It was a low rumbling sound that seethed fury. She killed the music.

"Stevie. You cannot arrest these men." Cas replied.

"You two know each other?" Dean asked incredulously.

"Stevie Jane is a... friend."

"Friend my ass!" She laughed. "Friends don't bribe or blackmail friends into helping them, only to bag out on their end of the deal."

"So," Sam ventured. "Not friends then."

"You cannot take the Winchesters into custody."

"They stole my car! Last time I checked, that is a crime in the human world." Stevie growled. Her eyes stayed pointedly on the road and her knuckles turned white gripping the steering wheel. "And you have officially run out of favors from me!"

"What happened before was not my call. There were other concerns."

"Would somebody tell me what's going on? Cas?" Dean grumbled shaking his cuffed hands. He'd briefly debated trying to pick the cuffs, but when Cas showed up he'd decided to stick around. That, and he remembered that Stevie had found his lockpicks.

"It would seem that Stevie is reluctant to release you and Sam out of revenge against me."

"Oh." Dean said, exchanging a glance with Sam. As a general rule, when Cas got cryptic, Dean had always taken a hard line approach. But something about this girl hinted at that not being the best approach. "What did you do?"

"I promised her something important in exchange for her help."

"And you didn't deliver?" Sam ventured.

"Not at the time."

"Or anytime since!" Stevie breathed. "But thankfully, it doesn't matter. This is an easy case. They committed grand theft auto. I take them in. I fill out some paperwork. I take my car, and go home. No muss, no fuss."

"You cannot arrest these men." He repeated. Evidently he didn't want to mention the whole "wanted for murder" bit. Both Sam and Dean were grateful for this.

Stevie Jane just seethed silently, ignoring Castiel. Cas didn't elaborate. Dean poked Sam, and nodded toward the front seat. Sam shook his head, pointed to Dean, and nodded at the front seat. Dean raised a fist, pointed at Sam, and nodded toward the front seat. Sam gave in.

"Cas, why shouldn't Stevie arrest us?"

"I didn't say she shouldn't. I said she can't. Because, among other reasons, it would be counterproductive." Then Cas was silent again. Both men glared. He was killing their chance to get out of going to prison. All he had to do was make up a believable excuse, but apparently that wasn't part of his plan.

After a while, Stevie couldn't take the silence anymore. "Okay, I'll bite. Why would it be counterproductive for me to arrest these guys?"

"Because Dean IS what I promised you." Cas replied, as if it was of no consequence.