++++++ I have a problem, I can't help it lol.
Yes I started another fic.
This has been co-written with Suki Uchiha Lamprouge and has been planned for a while.
I hope you enjoy.
Artemis belongs to me.
Monica is Suki's
I do not own Supernatural
Chapter One
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you
Friedrich Nietzsche
She happened to be lying on a bed in some shitty hotel room at the point between sleeping and waking. There was a shitty two a.m sit com on the TV in the background, a bottle of Jack Daniel's was just falling from her loosening fingers when her phone rang. AC/DC's Back in Black pierced the silence like a light piercing the veil of darkness.
She yawned, fumbling blindly for the phone on the bedside table and answered it without looking. "This had better be good," she growled. "I was about to undress an insanely beautiful woman."
"It's Jenny," came the voice on the other end of the line belonging to the woman she simply knew as Jenny. "Catch you at a bad time, Art?"
She sat up, stifling a yawn. "I was catching up on my affair with my long-lost lover sleep-what's up Jenny?" she asked, struggling to wake herself up.
"Got a call from an cop buddy of mine in Sioux Falls, South Dakota," Jenny answered. "Seems to think that something bad is going down. Johnny got wind of a couple of young women going missing, showing up dead. All got brown hair, green or blue eyes. Johnny seems to think it's a team of three or four. They're hunting something."
"Why you calling me, Jenny?" Art questioned, running a hair through her long, tangled mess of ebony hair with a sigh. "Sioux Falls is Bobby Singer territory."
The yawning hunter spoke in kind of Bobby Singer, owner of Singer Salvage Yard and a kind of parental figure to Art. He'd been the only constant thing in her life aside from Jenny, the voice on the other end of the phone.
Artemis 'Art' Moran was born the youngest daughter of George and Melissa Moran, she had two sisters, Hecate and Persephone who Art knew were both married by now. Once upon a time, her father used to be a hunter but he retired and gave it all up to marry the woman of his dreams. It was funny that she was living the life her father had once lived at the cost of her whole family. Melissa didn't want that shit in her life so she kicked her out of it.
That was one of the reasons that Art was in another shitty hotel in another shitty town after a crappy haunting.
Jenny sighed. "I tried Bobby but he's on a hunt across country or some shit like that. Tried the Winchester's but I can't get a hold of them. You're only an eight-hour drive away, the closest hunter in the area."
Art sighed. "Okay, Jenny. I'll look into it-no promises." She hung up before she could say anything else to her. She threw her legs over the side of the bed and looked at the time.
It was three in the morning.
At least she'd managed to get a couple hour's sleep.
Art stood up and crossed the room to take a shower. She put her hand on the door handle but stopped, every hair on her body was standing to attention. The hunter stopped and coughed, clearing her throat as she continued on into the bathroom.
Carefully Art closed the door and took her hunting knife out of the bag she kept sitting on the toilet. She came back out into the room, spying nothing but shitty shag carpet, her Jack Daniels and last night's Chinese as the only disturbing thing here.
She would have lowered the knife but her hair still stood on end. "I'm tired!" Art hissed. "If you're gonna try and kill me just get it over with."
Suddenly Art was thrown across the room. She slammed into the wall with enough force to knock her shoulder from the socket. The hunter grunted in pain as she struggled to her feet. The room was empty of any force, there was salt in every nook and every cranny so it wasn't a ghost.
It had to be a demon.
Art scrambled across the room for her knife only to be kicked to the ground. Her head hit the ground with a harsh thud.
Dazed, the girl looked up to see a man in a suit standing above her. "Oh look," she joked, "Jehovah's Witnesses. Sorry dude but your god can go suck himself."
He reached down and grabbed her around the throat. "You don't look like much."
Art laughed and spat in his face. "Neither does dynamite but it sure packs a punch." She head-butted him in the face forcing him to drop her. Art hit the ground and rolled, she ducked to the side and headed for the bathroom.
There was a woman standing in the doorway.
"Fucking Jehovah's!"
The man kicked her in the back of the knees, forcing her to the ground. "Report back to Zachariah. Tell him we've found her."
Art's eyes widened as the woman vanished in a flurry of feathers. "What the hell are you?"
"I am an Angel of the Lord."
"Yeah and I'm the pope!" Art elbowed the suited man in the balls, sending him to his knees. She jumped to her feet and slapped the silver blade out of his hand. "What the fuck do you want?" she hissed.
He stared at her defiantly. "Amitiel needs her vessel."
"Whoever the fuck Amitiel is, she can suck my breasticles!"
The man lunged at her and they hit the ground, hard. Raising his fist, he went to punch her in the face. Art pulled her head to the left and punched him in the side of the neck. "Get. The. Fuck. Off. Me!"
Art kneed the man in the groin again. Pushing him off her, she wriggled out from underneath him and made a beeline for the silver blade he'd brought with him. The hunter twirled it around in her hands and held it up as she took a defensive stance.
"Put that down."
"Must be valuable," Art frowned. She spun around as the woman returned to the room. Without overly thinking about it, she thrust the blade through the woman's chest, piercing her heart.
"Haniel!"
Art stepped back as the woman's eyes and mouth started revealing a flickering light. She stayed that way for what seemed like forever before she collapsed. A small gasp escaped Art's mouth. Her eyes flickered over the burnt wing pattern on the ground, coming from the woman's back. "Oh bloody hell!"
Art turned around to see the other one was gone. She took a moment to settle herself before she went to search the woman's pockets. There was nothing to identify the woman lying dead on the hotel room floor only another sleek, silver blade like the one she'd used to kill her. Art didn't care about that though-the only thing she cared about was the fact that angels were real and she'd just killed one.
With shaky hands, Art scrambled over to her cell phone and dialled Bobby. If there was anyone in this community that knew was going on and was involved, it was Bobby Singer and those damn Winchester's.
"This is Bobby Singer's direct hotline. You should not have this number."
"Fuck you, Bobby Singer!" Art practically shouted into the phone. "Have you got something to tell me? I just got attacked by not one, but two angels! Angels! Angels are real! Call me back when you get this Bobby! I just killed one!"
She hung up and looked at the woman lying on the floor. Immediately Art started to pack up her stuff. Knives, guns, leftovers, everything went in her duffle. She even kept the fancy knives. Once she was finished packing and was dressed, Art rolled the body up in the hotel sheets and dragged it outside to hide in her trunk. When she was clear enough outside of town, the hunter would salt and burn the corpse to be on the safe side.
Internally her mind was screaming at her, asking how dare she sully her baby with a body in the trunk? Art loved her 1968 Dodge Charger-it used to be her father's until he gave it to her before she was kicked out of home.
It was thanks to him and his hunter's arsenal that she even had a good start at all.
Art opened the glove box to stick wrapped hunter's journals inside-there was her leather bound blue and silver journal and her dad's brown leather journal that she was painfully transferring into hers because it was falling apart.
She slammed the door behind her and sent a silent prayer to the powers that be hoping that she wouldn't get pulled over with a body in the trunk of her car and an arsenal hidden underneath.
-XXX-
After what could only be described as the perfect salt and burn/body dump, Art took the eight-hour drive with style and flare. She stopped a few times for gas and snacks but arrived in Sioux Falls not long after lunch.
Art pulled the Charger into the parking lot out the front of Phillips Avenue Diner in Sioux Falls. She needed a bed and a good night's sleep but first everything a growing hunter needs...food.
Hunter need food. Food in belly.
She climbed out of the car and headed on inside. The diner was almost empty apart from two ladies behind the counter, a fry cook, some truckers and two boys sitting at a booth. The shorter one with a piece of bacon midway to his mouth stopped and watched her sit down.
A lot of the time the all black clothes turned people off.
She sat down away from pretty much everyone and pulled out her laptop to start looking into the murders. Art flagged down a waitress wearing a hideous yellow diner dress with an apron. The name on her badge read Monica.
"Welcome to Phillips, I'll be your waitress, Monica. How can I help you?"
Art pointed to the specials board. "Breakfast all day?"
The waitress nodded. "Sure do, hun."
"Full breakfast, no beans, extra bacon," she ordered, "coffee black like my soul and a caramel thick-shake."
Monica wrote the order down with a look on her face that said I'd rather be in hell than here right now.
The hunter returned to her work, pulling up anything and everything that she could about the murders happening. Jenny was right-all the women were the same, light brown hair, blue or green eyes. It was a single type of victim.
"Here's your coffee."
A mug of black coffee was placed in front of her and as Monica walked away, Art watched her go. It was at that point that Art had a sudden and awful idea. The waitress would be perfect bait for the demons plaguing this town.
-XXX-
The waitress had just put the latest order in at the counter with a sigh. She took a moment to wipe the sweat off her brow and rang the bell to let Smith know there was another order. She had only just gotten to work over an hour ago but the feeling was there that it was going to be a bloody long night. She was already far too much on edge.
This morning when Monica Grant had gotten up the first things she'd done was turn on the TV to listen to the news. Sadness. Pain. Rape. Murder. That's all that ever filled the airwaves and today was no different.
"Smith we got another order up!"
"I heard the bloody bell, woman!"
Eyebrow raised, Monica watched Smith when he grabbed the docket off the counted before she went to clean up the table from a bunch of truckers that had just left. They had already paid and left a tip for her (5% was a good tip), she picked up the plates and headed out the back to put the dishes in the back. Ian was just about to put a load in the dishwasher.
The inappropriately named dish boy winked at her before he turned the machine on. "Seen the news, Monica? Another girl's gone missing. Better be careful. Those girls look like you."
The news was on in the back as she quickly turned and headed back up to the front.
It was the same news that had been on this morning.
Monica had been fixing herself some food when the latest breaking news had come on. She'd sat down at the table and she watched it.
There was an older woman in her early fifties on the news holding a picture of her daughter whilst sobbing. "Please, whoever you are, enough. You've taken everything from us. I just want my baby girl back. I want my daughter. My angel."
Monica's hand had gone straight to her mouth in shock where the other went to her crucifix necklace. All the girls looked so much like her it was scary. The fear she knew was real, and not knowing who was really killing these people made her worry more.
Ding!
The bell for the food brought her back to see Smith practically toss a plate on the counter. "Order up!"
She went and picked up the food bringing it back to one of the patrons. She sat the plate down on the table. "Do you want anything else or do you want to wait until you are done eating?"
The customer just dug right into the food as she headed to the restroom. It was one of the only places that she could think. Thoughts of what had happened years ago came into play when she thought about that person who attacked her when she was sixteen. Even now, it felt so fresh in her mind. The boy who came at her that day after school scared her. When the boy had come at her with the blade, a blade she had never seen before, she held up her hands in hopes of protecting herself only she pushed the boy away. He'd screamed as she touched him, having only just said her prayers in the garden and accidentally spilling Holy Water all over her school uniform.
She was brought back to the present when she heard someone scream, Monica ran out of the restroom to see that one of the other waitresses had dropped some plates and screamed out of shock, not fear. Her hands were shaking as she ran over to help her pick the pieces up and seen her hands were bleeding. She looked up to see that another patron was waving for her bill, Monica slowly took the other waitress to the restroom to clean up the cuts she had on her hands.
She rinsed her hands off as she looked over at the waitress who had a nametag that said Sophia on it. She looked up at her stroking her back gently. She remembered that the girl was new still-all thumbs just like Monica was the first time she ever took orders all those years ago.
"Sophia hun, you sure you don't want to go home?" Monica smiled sweetly. "It might be better if you did go get some rest at home. You have been taking double shifts here lately and you look like you need some sleep."
Sophia shook her head as she looked up at Monica. "Mum's sick, cancer. I need the money. Her treatment isn't cheap. Thanks for the offer Monica. You're a true friend."
Monica shook her head. "Go home. Smith will send one of us home and, well, at least you've a mum to sit there with." Speaking of mothers or family was usually a hard subject for Monica, she tended to avoid mother's day or father's day or any holiday that was about family. The waitress had grown up in a Catholic Orphanage, raised by the sisters of Saint Mary's Church with about thirty other girls from infancy to eighteen. Her mother had died when she was only a baby, someone had been kind enough to leave her on the doorstep of the orphanage with a note pinned to her pink blanket asking for the sisters to look after her. There wasn't much left of the blanket anymore, what she did have, was framed and hung on the wall.
"You sure, Monica?" Sophia asked.
Monica nodded. "Sure. Go home. It's a dead shift anyway. I don't know why Smith put the two of us on."
Sophia smiled. "Thank you, Monica. You're a lifesaver."
Monica followed the girl out just as two men came into the diner. They were practically pushing and shoving each other in an effort to get to the booth first. Suddenly she regretted telling Sophia to go home. With a sigh, the waitress took her order pad and pencil from her pocket and cross the floor.
"Welcome to Phillips, I'll be your waitress, Monica. How can I help you?"
"Afternoon, Monica." The short one looked her up and down and winked at her. "Religious?" He was motioning to Monica's cross around her neck.
"Dean!" the taller one snapped.
At that point Monica was trying her hardest to ignore the fact that the taller one looked like the first boy she'd ever kissed. "Menu?" she asked.
"I'll take the special."
"Just some coffee for the two of us to start," the taller one cut in. "Thanks Monica."
Monica raised an eyebrow and went back to get them a cup of coffee.
Sophia gave Monica a quick hug from behind muttering her thanks to the girl before she fled via the back door.
"Gave Sophie the rest of the day?" Ian asked.
"Yeah she needed it," Monica sighed. "Poor thing is all thumbs."
"Bet you wish you never sent her home now," he chuckled.
In through the door came a young woman around the same age as Monica. She was wearing black biker boots, dark jeans, a blood red shirt with a black hoodie partially zipped up. To Monica it felt as though she belonged with the other two. She took her jacket off, there was a series of tattoos all up and down her arm-the flesh was painted with weird symbols and old scars. She hated to admit it, but biker chicks frightened Monica at the same time she admired them for their ability not to give a crap.
"Hey we wanna order!"
Monica crossed over to the two men in the booth and took their order of a Double Bacon Burger with extra bacon and Chili Fries and a shake whilst the other ordered a Caesar Salad with a black coffee.
It occurred to Monica at least three times a day that she hated her life at the moment it was in. She stopped to look at the TV once more and continued on with her day because as far as she knew, that was as good as it was gonna get.