Disclaimer: Sadly, I do not own Supernatural, and I think, damn it.
A/N: No pairing established as of yet. Tell me if you'd like one. By the way, I made a few corrections to this chapter and am in the process of reviewing the second chapter and writing the third.
That Shadowy Figure
Chapter One: Say Goodbye to Your Life, Hunter-At-Arms
Trust in the Winchester brothers to send trouble towards any non-human in a 100-mile radius of where they stand. But it wasn't Sam and Dean that were giving a certain creature a wild chase that night, oh no, but another, much less skilled hunter.
A black wraith swept through the woods of North Dakota, going in an out of focus the faster it traveled. The creature was more than a blur but less than a fully formed figure, at least most of the time. Right then, as it finally ceased all movement and faced its pursuer, the being looked like a shadow without a face and only half-developed extremities. It was slowly beginning to assume a more human form.
The hunter could only stare in awe as the shadow before him rapidly changed into the form of a woman. Without pause, the woman sprouted the teeth of a bloodsucker, gave a sad smile, and lept at the hunter's throat, releasing a bestial snarl.
Though he was not a very experienced hunter, the man moved quickly away from the shards that were the woman's teeth and scrambled for his machete that he had stored, quite stupidly, deep in the recesses of his duffel of hunting paraphernalia. He took the machete in hand and looked up to see the bloodsucker headed for him again. After a short struggle, the hunter made a final swipe with his blade at the creature's neck. The hunter did not see the head fall to the ground, nor the body. Instead, he fell to the ground, his machete landing a few meters away. As he fell, the hunter watched in surprise as the woman's figure faded to darkness, with only a trace of the creature's prior self-evident in that there was a gap where the machete had sliced between the still vaguely humanoid shadow's body and head.
Before the his head was severed from the rest of his body by some unknown force, the hunter caught a glimpse of the shadow—now a formless cloud of black smoke—disappearing beneath the brush. The hunter's head fell upon the leaves and his body went limp. He did not have a last thought, only a very bad feeling, and he was gone…
…At least for a while. The hunter did not know how much time has passed but, suddenly, he was overcome with a sort of bodiless, immaterial feeling. He felt a bit inebriated, actually. "It will pass," a voice said. He maneuvered himself around, searching anxiously for the source of the voice. "The ill, maladjusted feeling, I mean. It will pass. Best to stop doing that, though, you'll just get dizzy." The voice paused as if by coming to a realization. "Ah, of course, you can't see me yet. None of the others could at first either."
"There have been others? What exactly are you and what have you done to me?" The shadow foundling pulsed angrily, sending off waves and making the leaves around them flutter slightly.
The elder shadow drifted around the hunter turned beast. The voice emitted quietly from the whole of the shadow's non-being. "You must calm down or your condition will only escalate. Soon you will be just like me." The voice paused shortly, as if taking a breath, and carried on. "I did not kill you. You killed yourself. Allow me to expl—."
"Enough! I do not need to hear this from some- some monster!"
The voice sighed. "And, still, they don't listen. They sentence themselves to this, I swear." The voice carried on the wind as the shadow leisurely left the presence of the newest abomination. The shadowy stranger had to stop doing this, staying for the disappointment only to leave the problem untended.
The once hunter was left alone to sulk and, sure enough, the very next day, the hunter's shadow passed on the sickness to another unlikely fellow. The parent shadow drifted into an alley to find some momentary rest from the daily stresses of its existence. "I need a pet," the voice commented to itself before relaxing into the darkness.