Mirai gathered together the season's worth of work. She was loading items, some she wrapped in silk, others were packed in specially designed padded metal boxes, many were just tossed into the car trunk. This was her biggest collection yet. She had spent a full year in the studio and on the anvil instead of her normal 6 months. The last few years had been a little too good for business. She toyed with the idea of hunting down the Winchesters but wasn't sure if she would thank them or "gank" them. Ugh, she hated that term and thanks to their popularity it was spreading. At least money was no real problem anymore. She had more cash flow now than ever. She pulled her hair back while she worked, letting the cool spring air hit her face. Her eyes were squinting in the bright light, the pupils lost in the dark gray. This was usually the first thing people noticed about her. Of course nothing else was really all that special. She had an athletic build with large shoulders and arms. Her hair was brown, her skin had a natural tan, more like cafe au lait then anything else. She was, other than her talent for metal work, quite normal. Well, if you ignored what she spent her winters creating. She managed to blend in every where she went but, sometimes, she wished it were different.
Who would have thought a chance encounter with a guy looking for a repair to his knife would change her life so much. She had joked that day about how life changing a choice it was to pick between the cranberry scone or the blueberry muffin. After she chose the cranberry the guy at the coffee shop laughed and said, "uh oh, wrong choice." Little did they both know how right he was, and how wrong. She would never change her life now and yet sometimes she wished she could go back to that simpler time in her life. A time when she didn't know about monsters, demons and all the evils of the world. Of course memory tended to cloud things and make the past look nicer. Her prior life hadn't exactly been all roses and sunshine. She had grown up being tossed from foster home to foster home. She never did have a sense of family or belonging. School was a waste of time. Other than her art and auto shop classes she pretty much failed everything and dropped out during her Junior year. She had been living from one art show to another, dabbling in drugs and drinking hardcore until she found this life.
She snapped out of her reverie and kept on loading boxes and items into the trunk of her baby. This was the one real joy of her life and she spent most of her hard earned money keeping it running and adding the special equipment. She shut the trunk on the car and went inside to grab a last few items and lock up the house. Stepping out on the front porch of her tiny house she paused a moment to enjoy the beauty of her 1968 Pontiac GTO. The midnight blue paint job with the spattering of stars under the thick layers of top coat gleamed in the sun. It was like looking at a midnight sky. She had spent most of yesterday cleaning, waxing and polishing the old girl for the start of her busy season. Against the background of rusted old rail-yard buildings and junk cars littered around her yard the GTO looked quite out of place.
The door swung open with ease; the freshly oiled hinges working smoothly. The smell of polished leather made her smile as the engine roared to life under her hands. Every part of the car had been modified to some degree or another. She had souped up the engine, upgraded the interior carpet and upholstery. Anti-angel and demon sigils were carved into the frame, the engine block, stitched into the seats and layered under the paint. It had every protection spell she could find added to it. A state of the art security system finished up the protection.
Including the hidden spot under the trunk, there were various hidden holes throughout the car where she stored some of her goods for sale as well as self-defense items, cash, whiskey, etc. Early on in this career she would transport things for various people to earn extra cash. She wasn't too proud to admit she had been a mule. She ran moonshine in the blue counties in the south, pot for the dopers in the Pacific northwest, and cocaine for the cartels in the Southwest. She felt you did what you had to in order to survive. The smartest investment she made was to add an MP3 dock and update the speakers. The dock was hidden in the glove box so at first glance this was simply a beautifully restored stock car. The downside to having it there was she couldn't reach it while driving. Generally she just plugged in her 64 gigabytes of music, put it on shuffle and hoped for the best.
She timed her sales trips with the car show circuit; no one gave a second glance at someone driving a classic car through town during those Well, actually they did but no more so than any other classic car out and about during that time. It was a lot of fun to check out all the cars out course she wouldn't submit her darling to scrutiny of actually entering a show but she enjoyed visiting them anyway. With Five Finger Death punch screaming from her Crutchfield high performance speakers she spun out of the gravel lot in front of her home and headed down the long drive to the gate entrance.
The property had been an amazing find. She had been lucky enough to come across a building made out of mostly iron surrounded by iron. Apparently at some point this was a rail house where they turned the trains around, it was used for a while as a church by some hippie cult and was now Mirai's home and studio. During the housing crash she had picked it up for a song. It wasn't pretty, or comfortable, or even very warm but it was secluded and safe. She checked the surveillance feed built into her phone and made sure no one was waiting outside the boundaries as she headed out. It seemed a little over the top but when you are one of a few people in the world capable of creating weapons needed to banish a demon or kill a monster, you have to be careful. Her home in the mountains wasn't always the nicest place to be but there was no place safer that she could find.
The spring air still held a hint of snow as she took the curving roads towards the nearest place that passed for civilization in this area. The mountains were still covered in snow and there were pockets of snow under some of the larger trees but she was heading out to California where the spring meant sunshine and warmth, not snow and mud. As much as she loved the solitude that winters up here gave her, she did get sick of the cold by the end of April and was looking forward to sunshine. She sometimes wondered if her there was some force, god or whatever that would guide her shuffle. It seemed too often to be fate, not luck that picked the songs. "Remember Everything" by 5FDP shuffled into "Cemetery Gates" by the Smiths. Morrissey signing about the dreaded sunny day was a little too fitting to just be luck she thought as she drove down toward the mountain town of Sunshine. Why they named it Sunshine when they got maybe 10 days of sun a year, she never knew. Had she ever bothered to do more than buy gas or groceries there she might have learned it was named Sunshine after the daughter of the town finder. Sunshine had been a bright spot in her father's life until some wild creature had stolen her from him. Shortly after the naming was official, he had thrown himself off the railroad trestle that still crossed a ravine at the far east end of Mirai's property. Of course she avoided town so she never learned the truth of the town or her home. Instead she filled up the huge gas tank and headed east and out of the mountains.
Mirai's first official stop was San Rafael, CA. This was usually just a warm up stop for Mirai. Not many hunters worked California on a regular basis so she didn't have a lot of business there. There just weren't as many ghosts and ghoulies out there. Something about the lack of history or the general energy of the people there kept it quiet. Mirai had taken a few days to get to the city taking every round about route available so this wasn't really her first stop, just the first official one. She wanted to make sure no one could trace her path. Sure it was paranoia but just because you were paranoid didn't mean the world wasn't out to get you.
San Rafael was home to the California Mille, a tribute to Italy's most-famous open road race, the Mille Miglia (thousand mile) race. They always kicked it off with an amazing car show. It was generally European higher end cars like Alfa Romeos but as hers wouldn't stand out too much in town. Mirai was looking forward to this show. She had one delivery and then she could just enjoy the show. She found it was best for her to ease into dealing with the crowds and interacting with people as she had been alone for the past 12 months.
She generally purchased two or three months of food at a time. Partially so she could have minimal human interaction and partially because there were simply some months she couldn't make it out of her secluded property. She survived mostly on coffee and whiskey while she created anyway. Sometimes forgetting to sleep until exhaustion overtook her and usually forgetting to eat until a piece was done. She worked best and was her most creative when she had no distractions. The most she would interact was through her website where she would accept orders from a few businesses and individuals. As far as the world knew, Milagro Designs was a small business with one salesperson, Lanie Smith who also made some of the smaller jewelery items; a fictional blacksmith, named Marcus was the person behind all of the weapons and other larger items. It was implied that he was her father and a recluse that refused to meet with people preferring to simply work on his artwork. Mirai had done a good job over the years of creating this myth. It was a habit now to live with her cover. She even reacted to her fake name more readily than her real name.
Her drop off was to a small antique's shop, one of the few orders that was not hunter specific. This store wanted a nice cast iron rack to display their collection of medieval swords. This was the one of the few items not locked under the secret hatch in her trunk as no one would question her on it or the other true art type items she carried. True to her training though, Mirai added some protection charms in the design of everything she did including the sword rack. The wrought iron was the perfect material to create protection from most supernatural creatures. The designs worked into the cross pieces of the stand would simply look decorative to most people. The few who would recognize them would assume it was done to make the piece look more authentic.
Mirai pulled up in front of the store on a little side street in San was impressed that she had managed to find the little shop in the city. Traffic and the multiple tourist gawkers in the area had slowed her down and made her wish she hadn't said yes to this order. She sat a moment in the car, letting "Hate My Life" by Theory of a Deadman play out and soothe her. The little store in a small strip of shops looked like every other antique store she had ever seen. She knew before she even walked in, it would be crammed with delicate pieces of furniture; there would be china figurines, tea cups and plates on every surface; and tons of Tiffany style lamps. She was mostly correct, however near the back end of the store was a wall devoted to various medieval weapons. The shop owner turned out to be a very sweet little old lady who insisted on getting the barber from the shop next door to unload the rack. People had a tendency to underestimate Mirai's strength. Her steady diet of Jameson's and coffee left her on the slender side but the daily work with a 6 pound hammer and chunks of hot steel made her strong. In addition her habit of wearing oversize men's shirts and leather jackets hid most of the bulk in her shoulders and arms. She also trained regularly at Jujitsu. Traveling alone, she needed to depend on herself for safety and sometimes it was better to knock some idiot out rather than drive a 6" blade into their gut or shoot them.
Mirai had changed a lot from her old life. Back then she had been overweight and more of a party girl. She traveled the arts and craft circuit selling mostly jewelry and few custom knives. That day in the coffee shop she had been trying to recover from a wild party the night, well really the entire weekend, before. She had grabbed her Cranberry Orange scone and triple shot Hammerhead, (three shots espresso topped off with very strong black coffee) and had headed over to the only open spot at the long electronics bar. She sat down to play a little bit of Minecraft and catch up on her emails. It was busy as usual and she felt comfortable there, no one looked at you strange and no-one expected any interaction especially with headphones in. Punk music echoed through her ear buds while she constructed another section of her island on Sky Block and then moved to Twitter to catch up on the latest. She had a lot of time to kill so she had shifted to a website on sword making. Early in her life she had lived with a blacksmith and learned a few of the basics to forging and she continued to do so as a part of her business but mostly as a hobby. An older, scarred man was sitting next to her and tapped her on the arm. She almost fell off the stool when she jumped. "Oh, sorry, didn't mean to scare you but do you make those?" he asked pointing at the knife on screen.
"I just am a little jumpy, this is like my third triple so sorry a little jumpy, but yes, I do make those, just not quite as pretty. I am still learning some of the tricks." Mirai cursed herself for how crazed she sounded, babbling like an idiot and internally swearing she would cut down on the caffeine and maybe some of the other things she had experimented with that weekend.
"Can you fix them?"
Her answer at that point was life changing. "Yes, I think I can'" she told him, feeling a ridiculous kinship to him when she saw the cranberry scone half-eaten on his plate.
She blinked out of the memory realizing it had been triggered by the sight of the barber who came out to help unload the rack. He had very similar eyes bright blue with lots of laugh lines and the same tightly trimmed ginger beard. He pulled out the stand and hauled it in like it was made of plywood and not cast iron. His flannel shirt and barbers apron disguised what must have been a very strong body. He refused to take any cash for helping, smiling over at the old lady fondly. Mirai realized they must be somehow related so she let it drop.
"Miss Marge, I was hoping you would be able to pay me cash instead." she smiled at the older lady as the woman tried to hand her a handwritten check. "I am headed to San Francisco for a bit of a vacation and it would be so much nicer if I didn't have to stop at a bank."
"Oh, I can't give you cash, think how dangerous it would be for you to carry around all that cash. Why a pretty little slip of a thing like you could end up getting mugged... or worse" came the worried response. The little woman apparently ignored the fact that Mirai was at least 4 inches taller and much bulkier than she was.
"Well, I am a bit stronger than I look, and the blacksmith I work for, Marcus, has given me some self-defense training. I will be staying in a very nice hotel, its the Ritz by the bay and I am sure they will have a safe and are very secure. It's just that it is always such a hassle to cash a check, deal with the debit card and everything else, and then my bank is in Kentucky so they always charge me a fee here. It would be really helpful, but I understand if you can't." Mirai was eventually able convince the woman to pay her in cash. She walked out the door with $5,000, which would fund most of her trip this year. She generally picked out of the way cheaper no-tell motels and basic diners for most of the trip to save funds. This stop was the one exception. She had already planned out her first good meal of the year at Sol Food in San Rafael. She really enjoyed a good Puerto Rican Jibaro and they had some of the best in the area. She would also be staying at a nicer resort as a splurge. Her little home was safe and secluded but it had no bathtub, only a shower and she never managed to get really hot water. She really wanted to have at least one nice jacuzzi tub during her trip.
It felt good to be out on the city streets with the window down and to feel of the rush of air as she cruised the town to the one nice hotel she would stay in this trip as she thought back to the day all of this started.
It had been a perfect spring day in early May, maybe that was why she found herself thinking about it so much today. She had been in Flagstaff, Arizona killing some time before she headed out on another sales trip. She rented a small cabin up there where she would work through the winter to prepare for the craft show season. The man, who said his name was Jeb, explained he had a knife that was something he used quite often and needed a little repair to it. The handle had cracked and blade had some nicks he couldn't just hone out. It seemed basic enough so she agreed to go check it in the parking lot. The parking lot was busy, it was the middle of the afternoon and she felt pretty safe. After all it was just one old guy, plus they liked the same scones. He had an honest face. Looking back now she realized how naive and silly she was back then.
He led the way to a beat up old truck. It was a 1970's Dodge Ram with more dents than paint and looked like it belonged in a junkyard. It made her a little hesitant and she slowed down a bit. He smiled at her, "it's just my hunting truck, sorry I don't tend to care about how it looks since it gets all scratched up in the woods anyway." Although this made sense, she waited by the tail gate anyway, feeling it would be better to be in the open as much as possible, as he went to the cab and got out the knife. It was a simple, single edged, 8" hunting knife with an elk horn hilt but it was inlaid with some intricate silverwork. It looked like he had tried to cut open a steel can with it there were so many nicks and marks on the blade. Mirai looked it over, assessing the damage while he sat on the tailgate watching her.
"I can do this probably just under an hour or so. Do you want to just meet back here?"
"I ain't letting you take that out of my sight, honey. How do I know you won't just drive off with it? My father gave me that blade the day he died."
"Well, it would be stupid of me to take some strange man to my house so never mind, I can't help you" she reached the knife back to him.
"Look this was my father's, please I really want to get it fixed up. Can you maybe work on it somewhere else? Maybe some spot where you would feel safe bringing me?"
"Oh, yes, because their are places with that kind of equipment all over the place. Look, try the kitchen shop downtown, they might know someone."
"I've tried those places, they don't know what they are doing and they want to ship it out somewhere."
"Well, I am sorry but it just seems a bad idea," she started to back away a little. She did feel really bad that she wouldn't be helping him but couldn't think of any way to do it and still be safe.
She turned to walk back to the coffee shop when she saw a sign for the local university. Of course, she remembered, they had a jewelry studio there since they taught classes. One of her friends was even taking a class there so maybe she could use the studio there. It would be public and therefore still safe. She turned around to see the old guy getting ready to back out.
"Hey, she yelled at him since his window was rolled down.
"Yep"
"I think I know a way, let me call a buddy of mine and we can maybe do this at the university."
Her friend was working on something in that studio and was thrilled to have Mirai come and help her out. She gave the guy directions and agreed to meet him there in an hour. That way she would have time to help her friend Jennifer first.
It took a little less than an hour to fix all the nicks in the blade, the handle had to be replaced but she had a similar bone so it went pretty smoothly. As she worked she thought about how much the man must of loved his father and how much love the blade carried especially with his father giving it to him on his death bed. She found herself singing a little chant like song she had heard her foster father use when he was working. "panav Adonai yisa ratson yehi ken". Later she would learn this was from a Hebrew priestly blessing that meant May the Lord lift up His face, yes may it be his will". At the time it was just part of how she learned to make things. Overall she was very proud of her handy work when she finished. It gleamed in the sunlight to the point it almost looked like the silver was glowing.
"Here you go Jeb, but really, with a blade this pretty, maybe you should just use it for show, I mean the silverwork will eventually get ruined if you keep opening steel cans with it." She thought she heard him say something about the silver was important for killing shifters but it was muttered under his breath and she wasn't sure. Out loud he just laughed and said he would remember to avoid the cans from now on. He handed her a $100 bill. She tried to hand him back the money, she really had just done it out of boredom and she admired and even envied people who had family. Her own mother had abandoned her at a fire station here in town with a note pinned to her blanket that read, "This is my little Mirai, please find someone who can take care of her." That's where she got her name, Mirai Highland her first name from the note and her last name from the fire station she was dumped at. He fought her over it and finally she agreed to let him buy her dinner that night instead. She just felt she could trust him, maybe if she had chosen the blueberry muffin she wouldn't have but it was too late, decisions were made and she had to live with them.
They met at a small restaurant called Tacos Los Altos, it was a popular college hangout so she knew it would be busy. Trust only took her so far, she hadn't had a perfect life so she was at least a little careful especially as the after effects of her drug weekend slowly faded from her system. Jeb turned out to be a fun dinner companion. He said he was a traveling salesman and had all sorts of fun stories about being on the road and the various places he had been and things he had seen. Since she traveled so much to different art shows to sell her work they ended up having a lot in common. After dinner he walked her to her car. He was very much like she would have wanted a grandfather to be. Her van was parked under a streetlamp, but just her luck the light was burnt out so her van sat in a puddle of darkness. She could see Jebs truck parked just a few spaces away. As they approached her van he suddenly grabbed her arm and pulled her behind him. She was about to protest when she saw the figure coming out of the shadow next to her van. It was a man, but something was wrong, his eyes weren't human. They were black, all black, no whites, no Irises, nothing but black. In that moment she realized that what she was looking at was pure evil.
"So Jeb, you found a new little friend, don't you remember what happened to the last one? She was delicious, this one is a whole lot plumper, in fact, I think you have brought me a full meal for a change" The voice was dripping with cold pure hatred. She had never met anyone that scared her down to the bone the way this man did, she started to pull back planning on running, no plan as to where, just away, but in a heartbeat the creep appeared in front of her. He grabbed her by the chin and pulled her face close in to his. She knew in that minute this was it, her first thought was that she didn't want to die in some crappy parking lot, a moment later she was watching the guys face erupt in a bright gold light as he screamed. Jeb was behind the guy with the hunting knife she had repaired dripping blood as he pulled it out of the creeps back. The body that fell to the ground suddenly seemed very human and the eyes were normal, not black at all, in fact they were a very pale blue and he looked so young laying there dead at her feet. Jeb took a step toward her and she took a step back.
"You killed him? He's dead! Oh shit, what have I gotten into, don't get near me, get away!"
"Shh you silly girl, he would have tortured you just for fun and kept you alive only long enough to steal your soul, I saved your ass and if you aren't quiet you are going to get us both sent to jail. I can't protect you there. They will be after you now, dammit I am sorry I didn't realize you were a "Smith" I thought you were just a normal person. What the hell did you do with my knife, I have never seen a simple blade kill a demon like that."
"I am just a normal person and you killed someone in front of me! I didn't do anything to your knife, what do you mean demon? How crazy are you?" She screeched, still in shock as he dragged the body to the side of the nearest vehicle.
"Look, you trusted me before, all I am asking is for you to trust me a little bit longer let me get you someplace safe and I will explain all of this. Please, I don't want to be responsible for your death."
Something in his voice, or maybe it was the memory of the orange fire, or maybe it was the glowing silver on the knife, or maybe it was insanity setting in, but something made her agree. She climbed into his beater and gave him directions to her house. He took more twists and turns than she had ever seen anyone do. The normal 20 minute drive ending up taking over an hour. She sat huddled next to the door still in shock. He assured her he was just driving around a bit to keep someone from following them. As they got out at her cabin, she started to have second thoughts but figured in for a penny, in for a pound. Maybe once she was in the house she could come up with a plan.
He seemed to realize she was still nervous and kept his distance following her into the house and sitting down at the kitchen table. the cabin was only about 300 sq feet so it was all combined into one room, bedroom, kitchen and living room. Even with her nerves, she noticed he had picked the only chair that had a view of both doors and all the large windows. She immediately began making coffee. The process soothed her nerves even as she ground the coffee in her little hand grinder she was realizing how odd it was she had just watched a man get stabbed and that his eyes seemed to burn bright orange and now she was making coffee for the killer. It must be the shock she thought; why else would I have seen that? She would play nice until she could sneak a call to 911, that's it. She made a triple shot in her Aero Press and split it out between two cups, snagging the bottle of stolen whiskey out of the cabinet to help soothe her nerves, who knows maybe she could get him drunk and then slip out to safety.
Here in her kitchen she realized she must have imagined the black eyes, the evil voice, it was just a mugger and this guy had killed him. The bright orange cabinets made the darkness of the night seem to fade. She sat down as far from him as possible and as close to the phone as possible. He was watching her closely, so she forced herself to sit still and listen to his story. Years later she would wonder what her life would have been if she had ignored him and just dialed 911. It was that night that she learned demons were real, as were shape shifters, vampires and a myriad of other ghoulies.
Jeb told her he was a Hunter, and his family had always pursued evil and killed it. She nodded her head thinking he was crazier and crazier as the night went on. When he told her she was special, something called a Smith, a natural at creating weapons to kill these creatures she couldn't help but laugh. "Now I know you are over the deep end. I am an artist, I make pretty things to sell, that's it. This knife work stuff is just something fun I picked up from one of my foster fathers, nothing else."
"This blade was just a knife, until you fixed it! Can't you see it glowing, you did something to silverwork, and now it's special, special enough to banish a demon. You are special, and you are in danger. Now that one knows about you the rest will hear of it. They will hunt you down and either kill you or turn you. Everyone you know is in danger. They will use them to get to you and sooner or later they will get you unless you listen to me. I know another Smith, he can help you, he can train you and teach you how to be safe."
She was ready to ignore him when the window behind him exploded inward and something not quite human crawled through. Jeb leaped across the small kitchen and drove the knife into it's chest and the creature exploded into flames.
Moments later she followed him out to the truck with the house burning down behind her. She would be declared dead as they never were able to identify the bones found in the burnt out kitchen. He explained it would be best if her family thought her lost forever. She and they would be safer. He didn't know at the time that she had no family so there really was no loss there.
She pulled out of her daydream to the sound of a car honking. The light had changed and she hadn't moved. She hit the gas and peeled out heading the rest of the short way to her hotel. The memory and all the ones that followed it changed her dinner plans. All she wanted was a hot bath and a soft bed.
While she soaked in the hot water she thought back to that trip and meeting this infamous Smith that Jeb was speaking about. They drove almost non-stop to Berea, Kentucky, filling up the truck at out of the way truck stops and eating food on the run. In less than 30 hours they were in the small town. Mirai was familiar with Berea as it was a hub for arts and crafts festivals. Just down a quiet neighborhood street they pulled up in front of typical southern home with a large wrap around porch. This place had a huge lawn and a white picket fence with a picturesque tree in the middle. Mirai looked at Jeb like he had gone crazy. What the hell was she going to do living in some white suburbia dream?
She was exhausted, frightened and beginning to question why she let him drag her all this way. The events of the day before were already fading and she was regretting this decision. As she climbed out of the truck she could see a figure stepping out onto the dawnlit porch. She couldn't believe it, it was Marcus. Marcus had been the one foster parent she actually really liked. He had been the one that had taught her about forging steel and trained her to make jewelery and knives. She ran up the porch steps and gave him a huge bear hug realizing that life was about to get better. She smiled at the memory of that gruff bear of a man hugging her back in those early morning hours. She climbed out of the cold bath trying hard to hold onto that good memory. It didn't really work, that night she slept fitfully and woke to a pounding headache. Oh well a day of staring at classic cars would do her some good, she thought.