The clouds were rolling in, and though the storm was still a few miles out, the air was changing. The wind was kicking up and the chimes that hung on the front porch were chiming in the strengthening breeze. The few animals still on the farm were already beginning to take shelter inside the barn. A moan from the living room pulled Dolores back into the house. Thomas Holliday had been a good father for a long time, so when he insisted that he didn't want to go to a hospital, she had agreed. Kneeling down beside the couch, she took his temperature again. No fever, but he was sweating bullets. No cough, no struggle to breath, but his voice came in a hoarse whisper if it came at all.
"Daddy, it's okay. I'm here." she said, wiping at the tears now leaking from his face.
"She's going to kill him. I can hear them. We have to do something." he groaned. He had been rambling like this for days. "You have to get your things, Emmy." her father insisted, grasping at her hands.
"Dad, I'm Dolly." Dolores said, looking at him carefully. "I'm not Momma."
"You need to help. I can hear them."
"Hear who?" Dolly asked.
"The angels." her father whispered in complete fear. "I know what I said. I know I told you to give it up, but they need someone like you. Someone who knows."
Dolly sat back on her haunches and stared at her father. Emmy Holliday had been reckless and wild and amazing, the polar opposite of her stoic and reliable father. She would disappear more and more as Dolly got older and needed her less, until one day she didn't come back at all. The funeral had been closed casket, the body of a mauling victim too gruesome to be displayed to their small Montana community. Dolly had only been seven.
The diary she had found hadn't made sense. Stories of demons and monsters, the pages flecked with blood and dirt, the handwriting frantic and jagged. When her father had found her with it he had locked it in the trunk along with everything else. That had been a long, long time ago.
A crack of lightening struck down so loud that Dolly stood straight up, just in time to see a patch of grass smoldering in the field out front. She ran to the window and stared in shock. The storm was still far out, too far to have done that, or so she thought. The hair on her arms stood up and she suddenly felt colder. Not an outward chill, but inward, as though someone had injected ice water straight into her heart. Suddenly every light in the room exploded, plunging them into darkness.
"Dolores."
Turning fast she saw her father looking straight at her, standing up with an unnatural glow surrounding him. Another crack of lightening illuminated the room for a moment, and Dolly swore she saw something etched on the wall behind him.
"Daddy?"
"Your father is gone. We only have a few moments and he gave his life so we could deliver this message." he said. Dolores backed away as her father walked closer, fear locking up her legs and making her stumble until she fell back against the door.
"Daddy, you need to lay down."
"I am not your father, Dolores. You have been called." he said. "You are to be a warrior of the Lord."
"You're sick. I'm a bartender and your daughter and that's all."
"You're a Huntress, like your mother. You were chosen for this."
"Chosen for what?!" Dolly screamed in frustration and fear.
"To help protect them."
"Who?"
"The Winchesters."