Okay, so I'm planning on this being a "Spring Break Serial", that is, finishing it before the week is up as an interesting little vacation writing project. But I only want to continue if people are interested and enjoying it, so let me know if I need to go on!

Chapter 1:

"Sounds like our kind of thing." Sam pushed the newspaper across the diner table to his brother, who was wrapped up in devouring a greasy plateful of eggs and sausage.

"Hmm?" Dean mumbled through a mouthful of food. He put down his fork and examined the paper. "Looks sort of odd, I guess."

"Forest Claims Another Victim, Locals Baffled." Sam repeated the headline. "But get this: I did some digging, and people have been vanishing into the woods around the town for over a hundred years, and nobody knows why."

"And people continue to go into the woods because…?" Dean rolled his eyes. He just didn't get people sometimes.

"It's a tourist town. People like the weird. Like Mystery Spot, remember?" Sam shuddered.

"Well, jeez." Dean wiped his hands on his jeans and took a last gulp of coffee. "Vesper, Arkansas, it is. That's only a few hours out from here. If we leave now, we'll make it by the afternoon."

"Uh, Dean…" Sam ventured, his sentence trailing off as his brother scowled at him.

"What, Sam?" Dean bristled, preemptively defensive.

"About that thing back there, with Magnus, um…"

"I'm not having this conversation." Dean said. "Get in the car. We've got things to do."

"Yeah, like find Abaddon." Sam said. "So we can kill her, remember?"

"So I can kill her." Dean corrected, harshly. "Me. Only I can wield the blade. Ring any bells?"

"You don't have to be so defensive about it." Sam countered.

"I'm not defensive. Look, we don't know where to find the bitch. Or Crowley, who took the damn blade. So until we find either of them, I say we take a case."

"Okay." Sam held his hands up in surrender. "I'll not bring it up again."

Dean only huffed and went outside to start the Impala, leaving Sam with the tab.

Scene Break

Vesper, Arkansas was a quiet little town nestled between two forested mountains. It was flanked by a river on one side, and a lake on the other. At the center of town was a quaint main-street, featuring crumbling-yet-charming Victorian architecture, and a long row of gnarled, fiercely green and ancient magnolia trees. Stately marble buildings boasted bathhouses, and many glittering fountains dotted crooked sidewalks, with waves of steam rolling off of oddly warm water.

"This place is full of natural hot springs. Scalding water that just bubbles up from under the ground." Sam informed his brother as the Impala rolled down Main Street. "That's why people settled here. The native Americans thought that the water had magical properties, that it could heal diseases. White pioneers came later and took the land. Turned it into a tourist town."

"Well aren't you just the best little tour guide?" Dean snarked, glancing at the town, unimpressed.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Let's just do what we came here to do."

"Yup." Dean nodded, his expression grave. "Just get the job done."

They found a hotel, the only one in town. It was a sprawling, intimidating thing, 20 stories high and over 100 years old. They walked into the lobby, and even Dean had to pause to notice how nice it was.

"Not too shabby." He let out a low whistle, glancing around the monolithic, blushing marble entryway, accented with huge French windows and decorated with golden crown moldings.

"Looks like the inside of the Titanic." Sam said.

"The weird thing is," Dean thought aloud, "Where are all the people? Sidewalks had hardly any people. Everything is quiet. This whole place looks empty, and there's what, here? Five hundred rooms?"

"Definitely creepy." Sam agreed, wandering over to an unattended front desk. He rang the tiny old-fashioned bell, and no one came around.

He turned back to look at his brother, who was walking toward a similarly unmanned, gleaming mahogany bar area, complete with long rows of backlit liquor bottles and empty tumblers and wine glasses turned upside down.

"Hello?" Dean called, quickly losing his patience. Something was definitely up with this place. But what?

"Hello!" Someone called from across the huge room. The brothers looked over to see a young woman hurrying across the polished marble floor to the front desk. She was petite, hardly taller than Mrs. Tran, but she carried herself with strength like she wasn't a dainty twenty-something. Her pale legs stuck out underneath an exaggerated skirt of black tulle that billowed around her. Her too-high heels clicked against the floor.

"I didn't expect to have any guests today." She arrived at the counter, obviously flustered as she attempted to coax her brown hair back into place in her shimmering long bob. "Sorry, guys."

Large hazel eyes appraised the pair of brothers.

"Business or pleasure?" She asked.

"Business." Sam said.

"With who?" She asked, curiously. "If you don't mind my asking. There's not a ton of new enterprise around here. Small town and all that."

Dean frowned at her. "You'll find out soon enough."

"Oh, you don't want to say." She smiled contritely, but her eyes sparkled with mischief. "That's your prerogative. Not my business."

"No, it's not." Dean affirmed.

"One room, please." Sam said, cutting off his brother's rudeness. "Two beds."

The young woman shook her head. "No can do, unfortunately. This place pretty, sure, but they just found asbestos in the walls. Closed for renovation. That's why no one's here. Spring break is usually busy season, but this is the only hotel in town, so no one came."

"We'll try our luck the next town over. Thank you, miss, uh…" Sam looked for a nametag, but she wasn't wearing one.

"Waverly. Waverly Tate. But there isn't any need for you two to go off to Isleton. That town sucks. Majorly. Stay at my place. I've got several guest rooms."

"You would let strangers stay in your house?" Dean asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Well, yeah. You guys are hunters, right? Hunters don't hurt people. Mostly." She winked at them.

"What's a hunter?" Sam asked, surprised.

"Oh, don't play dumb with me. You live long enough in Vesper, and eventually you learn to spot hunters. Flannel shirts, knives tucked in boots and they think no one notices. World-weary look and a bunch of odd scars? Weird shit happens here. All the time. And you two practically have "hunter" tattooed on your foreheads. So…the woods, huh? It's not advisable that you guys go in there."

"Why not?" Dean asked.
"Well, obvious reasons, I think." Waverly rolled her eyes. "Something keeps nabbing people. Here, I can fill you guys in. Come over to the bar; let's do this over drinks. What's your poison?"

She hurried over the antique bar. Sam and Dean exchanged a look, then shrugged and decided to follow the somewhat odd woman. Who else did they have to interrogate? No one else was around, and she certainly seemed chatty enough.

Waverly poured whiskey into three tumblers, and placed them in front of the brothers as they took their seats at the bar.

"This is good booze," she said as she downed hers. "But this bar sucks. My friend Alan runs a place down here. It's above the old cigar shop, so it's pretty shabby, but it has a sort of character." She poured herself another, and Dean raised his eyebrows at her.

"How old are you, anyway?"

"Oh, now who's in who's business?" Waverly smirked. "Twenty-six, if you must know."

"Okay, uh, Waverly," Dean didn't necessarily care for her strange name. "What's up with this place, and how do we stop it? People can't keep dying."

"You'd be surprised." Waverly muttered under her breath, her cheerful demeanor falling a bit. "Just when you think it has to stop, it keeps on. Until you almost get used to it. Most people here are just used to it. You boys pass a cemetery on the way here?"

"We passed four, actually." Sam said.

Waverly pointedly looked at him. "See? Four full cemeteries in a town of less than a thousand people. We have three independent funeral homes, for godssake. It's not a safe place. But we have people who try hard to make it that way. People not you. So the best thing ya'll could do is to get back in your car and leave this helltown in your rearview. Capiche?"

"Lady, we're the Winchesters." Dean said, as if it had some special significance she ought to know about. "We don't leave when people are dying."

"You can stem the worst of it." Waverly said. "But it's not a pit stop. It's not one job. It's an ongoing thing. All your life. So unless you're thinking of buying a house and living here forever, which I can't in good conscience advise, you'd be better off getting out of here before you get hurt."

"Look, we're not hotel clerks, no offense." Dean said, and the woman smirked at his careless comment. "We save people. And we're not leaving this town until we save everyone from whatever keeps killing them."

"Well, then," Waverly smiled mysteriously. "Welcome to Vesper. I imagine you'll be here awhile."

Scene Break

"You're really pumped for this job." Sam coolly observed from the passenger seat as Dean drove down a stretch of wooded highway. They were following the lady from the hotel to her house, after Dean decided to take a risk. She was all of a hundred pounds, anyway. What danger could a woman like that be?

Sam had questioned this decision, since she could be a demon or a veela or a witch or anything number of things, but Dean had remained obstinate.

"We're supposed to help people, Sam. And I can help them sleeping in the car, or on a real mattress. I choose mattress."

"Sure you're not choosing a pretty girl?" Sam pointed out, and Dean had frowned.

At one time, yes, Dean would have hit on the woman so quickly that her head would have spun, but there were bigger issues now. He had better things to worry about than a pretty woman in a pair of heels with great eyes and a cleverly low-cut shirt and….well, he wasn't blind, at least. He just figured that he'd become more mature. There were more pressing matters than a one-night stand to tend to.

Dean unconsciously tugged at his shirtsleeve, pulling further over the Mark of Cain, feeling a tingle of sensation where the fabric shifted over the red, raised skin. He remembered the surge of pure, unadulterated power he'd felt when he held the blade. He could vividly recall the out-of-body feeling as rage, elemental and untempered, overtook his entire being. He shuddered, and Sam made note of it, but pretend not to have seen.

"You okay?" He asked his brother, who was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were turning white.

"Yeah, man, I'm good." Dean said, flipping on the radio. "Totally fine."

Okay, that's just a taste of this story! I plan on making this sort of short, like, perhaps the duration of a single episode, or maybe two at most. What do you guys think? I don't want to continue on if there's no interest. Let me know, and I'll the next chapter out before the weekend is up.