Disclaimer: I own nothing save the unfortunate redhead.
AN: Be warned, this fic is a direct sequel to my Red Skye at Morning, which in turn in a companion fic for MissAnnTropic's Memory of Skye. So if you haven't read those…you're gonna want to, unless you enjoy being painfully dazed and confused. Also, a quick flick through Jo's Blog on Supernaturalwiki wouldn't hurt either, as some of the events there are referenced here.
If you have read the Skyeverse series, then all you really need to know about this fic is that it's a road trip of the female variety with girls going wild, moonlit rampages, gore, guts and gallant heroines by the names of Pepper and Jo (also known as Red and Glow) and that when the chips are down and the odds suck…it pays to have your best friend beside you.
Chapter One
I'm not a stone,
I bleed just like you do
I'm flesh and bone,
I feel just like you do.
– Stellar*, 'What You Do (Bastard)' –
It wasn't an extraordinary night, really.
The Roadhouse wasn't overly busy or particularly quiet. Just the right amount of rush and still moments, Jo thought.
The clientele was the same as ever, too; the same eddying stream of hunters, hustlers and the odd bunch of rough-around-the-edges road trippers all looking for a drink.
Ellen served from behind the bar, cracked jokes and listened to woes, sent the occasional troublemaker off with sharp words ringing in his ears, and generally kept things going. Jo swung through the tables, clearing empties, delivering drinks to the pool players and the card ring, and fending off the inevitable advances from a few patrons too drunk to know better.
The sober ones hardly ever tried; one didn't get word of Harvelle's Roadhouse without also getting word of the little blonde who broke the fingers of odious George Fell's right hand and gave him a mild concussion with an empty beer bottle when he tried to put said hand up her shirt.
And yet, right now, one wouldn't know that this was the same blonde.
Jo was tired.
Not the kind of twelve-hours-working-the-floor-oh-God-I-think-I'm-gonna-faceplant-the-bar tired that usually got her, more the let-him-be-okay-let-him-be-breathing-oh-please-oh-please-oh-please tired that came from stilted, guilty grief and lack of closure.
Her mother had taken one look at her and sent her out onto the small porch at the bar's front entrance. Jo had gone gladly, taking her phone with her and hopelessly checking her voicemail.
"You have – no – new – messages," the automated voice on the other end of the line told her.
She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, taking one long, rough breath.
Nothing.
Just like yesterday.
And the day before, and the day before that and every day since September.
Rick, where are you…?
Her breath caught in her chest as she let it out and the night closed its arms around her. The faint chill in the clean air brushed goose bumps over her arms. A small breeze carried the smell of ticking metal from the cars of recent arrivals and blew about more of the dust that was spread across the porch from so many scuffed hunters' boots, dust that ground under her heels as she shifted her feet. She could hear the sound of night birds from the trees in the copse nearby, the muffled roar of the bar's interior behind her…
There was a lull between jukebox songs and for a moment…for a moment she thought she heard something else.
It sounded like crying.
Frowning, Jo grabbed the iron bar that lived wedged under the bench and got to her feet. She cautiously made her way between the cars parked in front of the Roadhouse and listened intently. There was Fell's Hyundai and O'Neil's glossy black SUV, that rangy Hilux of Calvert's and –
Holy shit.
What was he doing back here?
Gordon Walker's red El Camino sat at the edge of the parking area, covered in road dust and with the cover drawn over the tray.
Jo's dark eyes narrowed.
It had taken her a while, but after Rick disappeared she'd realized just what kind of man Gordon was. He'd taken her on her first hunt…or rather he'd taken her on one of his hunts and used her as bait for the rawhead he was after.
Her mother had tracked them down and caught Jo just as she'd bolted out of the warehouse where Gordon had told her to hide. She'd been grounded for a month and, at sixteen and stupid, champing at the bit to get out and hunt ever since.
But life as a hunter gave no guarantees that that life was going to be long and fruitful…as evidenced by her dead father and missing boyfriend.
In any case, Ellen had set Gordon on his ass and promised to do awful, awful things to him if he ever came near her family again.
Apparently, Gordon thought one of two things; that he was smarter than Ellen Harvelle, or that she wouldn't come good on her threats.
Of course, believing either of those things made him monumentally stupid –
There it was again!
The sound of low, desperate crying came again, and – surprise, surprise – it emanated from the El Camino.
Jo edged toward the car, the iron bar raised high in a baseball bat grip. When she got close enough, she reached out one hand and carefully began unhooking the cover.
She got about a foot of it off…and froze.
In the pale starlight she could see a girl's bare feet, ankles bound together with a length of blessed rope, the silvery prayer ribbons wound through the hemp catching the light. There was blood crusted under the knots, and one foot was missing two toenails.
Horrified, Jo dropped the iron bar into the dust and unhooked the rest of the cover.
The girl underneath it was a mess.
Her shirt was torn and smeared with blood and dirt. There was more dried blood and crusted tear tracks on what Jo could see of her face. It looked like a few of her fingers might be broken and there were multi-colored bruises on her exposed forearms. Her jeans were ripped at the ankles, presumably so they wouldn't impede the rope that bound her, and messily shredded at the knees, as though she'd been thrown down and forced to kneel on rough ground. In fact, that was probably just what had happened; Jo could see dirtied grazes on her skin through the tears in the denim.
Taking a breath and holding it for a few seconds, Jo cautiously climbed into the tray with the girl, kneeling down beside her and brushing the ragged mane of red hair back from her eyes. They were barely open, only crescents of white showing, tears flowing unheeded from their corners. She didn't stir when Jo touched her, just shuddered as she cried in what was evidently some kind of drugged sleep.
Stepping quiet as a cat, Jo backed away from her and got down from the tray.
It was an appalling sight, but that didn't mean that was an actual girl in Gordon's car. She bit her lip and looked back at the bar. There was no sign of Gordon, and the lack of yelling and shotgun blasts meant that her mother hadn't caught sight of him either. Wherever he was, it wasn't anywhere near either of the Harvelle women.
With renewed determination, Jo picked up the iron bar and made her way back to the bar. Instead of going through the front, she snuck around the back and into the living quarters she and her mother used when it was easier than driving back to their house in town.
The Roadhouse's small attic was home to the majority of her father's old hunting gear, where her mother could, on very rare occasion, put it to use or loan it to some of his friends when they came by. Jo knew every item of it like the faint freckles on the back of her hands and where they were all stored. She put together a mental checklist and went to work.
Just under ten minutes later she was making her way not back to the El Camino but the family Bronco.
She shoved her pack, laptop bag and a duffle that she had to take great care not to rattle into the backseat floorboards of the old Ford. Just in case.
That done, she took the first aid kit, a metal coat hanger and a large leather wallet and strode light-footed back to the El Camino.
First order of business was to unbend the coat hanger and jimmy the driver's door. She froze when the lock made a contrary clunk as it unlocked, but the only sounds were still the distant call-and-roar of the bar and the soft sobbing from the back of the Camino.
Jo winced. It felt cruel to just leave the girl like that, but the debacle with the rawhead hunt had taught her the belated lesson that nothing is as it seems. She'd be damned if she made that mistake again. There was however, the issue of whatever drug Gordon was using to keep his prey locked into a sleep state. If Jo knew what it was, there was a possibility she could figure out how to treat it…
A quick rifle through the cab revealed Gordon's first aid kit and a box of morphine vials. A box with lots of empty morphine vials.
Jo swallowed hard, fists clenching.
The girl's state made more sense now; she was out of it, but not far enough to escape the bad trip opiates could deal out. Whatever horrors she had suffered, they had followed her into sleep and morphed into a drug-fueled nightmare.
Gordon, you fucker…
She put everything back where she had found it, but left the doors unlocked…for now.
Climbing back into the tray, Jo opened the leather wallet and spread it before her. Needles and small blades of every conceivable type of metal winking at her in the meager light, precisely carved evergreen splinters gleamed dully from their clear plastic packet and a vial of holy water nestled shoulder-to-glass-shoulder with a bottle of dead man's blood.
Her dad had put together this testing kit when she was seven, and ten years later her Uncle Shawn had taught her how to use it.
This wasn't something she was looking forward to. But it had to be done.
She pulled out the silver needle first, drawing it at an angle across the girl's exposed forearm so that the tip scored the pale, freckled skin and left a hair-fine graze. Tiny spots of blood bloomed, but there was no blackening that would have indicated a shapeshifter of any kind.
Next was a bronze pin, and no blistering, so 'negative' for her being a Siren.
After that a brass blade and the skin didn't start to dissolve, so she wasn't an evil, people-eating Rakshasa.
Iron and holy water didn't draw smoke from her, making her happily demon-free (Jo wasn't sure she could cope with something that).
Dead man's blood didn't bring the veins to the surface of her arm, which meant a big 'no' for vampire.
And, last but by no means least, pricks from the evergreen splinters didn't show a hidden face that might have indicated a Pagan God.
No reactions at all.
This girl was human.
Jo began to get really angry.
She grabbed the first aid kit and withdrew a syringe of naloxon. In hospital and clinics they used it to counter morphine overdoses. A smaller dose augmented with chupacabra anti-venom would wake her up enough to get her moving and keep her from going into shock.
Jo tied off the girl's upper arm with her belt as a rudimentary tourniquet and rubbed alcohol over the vein in the bend of her elbow.
"I'm really sorry about this," she muttered.
In went the needle. Down went the plunger.
Up went the girl.
She sat bolt upright, eyes so wide the whites showed. Jo heard the cry struggling to be born in her throat and clamped a hand over the redhead's mouth.
"Shhh," she hissed desperately. "You have to be quiet! I'm trying to help you."
The girl sagged back, chest heaving. Her eyes focused on Jo finally, still big as saucers and full of fear.
The drugs in her system had blown her pupils wide, but Jo could still make out the rich amber of her irises, like thin rings of deep, deep gold glinting in the thin starlight. They conspired with her pale skin and fiery hair to make her look almost otherworldly.
For a moment Jo wondered if there was some other test she forgot to do, but she shook it away and pulled her father's knife from her boot, ignoring the girl's flinch.
The blade made short work of the rope and Jo peeled it as gently as she could from her companion's wrists.
"Why…?"
Jo looked up from cutting the girl's ankles free.
The redhead swallowed hard, blinking and crushing her eyes closed as she fought the drugs and tried to focus.
"Why are you…?"
"Helping you?"
She nodded.
"It's the right thing to do. You're not some supernatural man-eater to be put down like a dog." Jo ground her teeth. "Evidently Gordon's finally come off his rocker."
"You know him?"
"You're not the first person he's hurt," Jo muttered. "The best we can hope for now is that my mom finds him and keeps her promise to put a round through both his kneecaps."
When she threw away the rope and looked back up at the girl's face her eyes had gone wide again, although this time it was more awe than fear.
"What can I say," Jo said with rueful smile, "Harvelles don't do things by halves. I'm Jo, by the way."
"I'm Pepper," the redhead said. "Pepper Montgomery."
It was an exercise in terror getting Pepper from the El Camino to the Harvelle family Bronco.
While the naloxon and anti-venom were doing their respective jobs and keeping Pepper from shutting down completely, her legs were still having trouble supporting her weight. She ended up clinging to Jo as the two girls limped across the parking area with their hearts in their mouths, hoping no one heard them and fighting to keep quiet.
When they got to the Bronco, Pepper was shaking hard, eyes rolling with pain, her breath rasping hard in her throat. Jo spoon fed her into the backseat and covered her with an emergency blanket from the first aid kit.
"I'll be back in a minute," she told the rescuee. "Don't go anywhere."
"N-no fear of that," Pepper managed. "What're you going to – to do?"
"Gordon might be a rampaging psycho, but he's tenacious too," Jo explained. "I have to get you away from here, and I have to make sure we get as big a lead as possible."
Ellen Harvelle had become a hard woman because she had been given a hard life, but if there was one thing that could bring out her soft side it was her daughter.
There was much of Bill in their girl, but Jo had always taken very strongly after her mother, and as a result the two of them were apt to butt heads. The tension between them could be drawn out for months and come to a head in a spectacular shouting match, but after the air cleared you couldn't find two people who got on better.
When Rick went missing, Ellen found that her daughter might take after her in a way she never wanted.
Ellen knew she would do just about anything to spare her girl more grief…and Gordon Walker was without a doubt someone who would cause both of them more grief.
Therefore, it wasn't surprising in the least that the moment he set foot in her bar, he found himself staring down the barrel of Ellen's favorite shotgun.
"Gordon," she said levelly, watching him down its gleaming length.
"Ellen," he returned, matching her tone.
"That's Mrs. Harvelle to you," she said. "You remember what I said I'd do if I ever laid eyes on you again?"
"I do."
"Good." Without taking her eyes off him she said, "Jake, Shawn."
The two hunters sitting up at the bar looked up from their drinks.
"Yeah, Ellen?" said Jake.
"Hogtie him."
Gordon took an unconscious step back. "What the hell?"
Shawn Connolly had taught Jo her Latin, how to throw a punch when she was twelve and been teaching her everything he knew ever since. Jake Reilly had hunted with both Bill and Rick, always brought them home whole and cheerfully bullied Jo into finishing high school. If there was ever a pair she would have let her girl go a-hunting with it was these two.
Gordon probably didn't know most of this, however, and even if he had it wouldn't have meant much to him.
What he did know was that Shawn and Jake were advancing on him with wide, shark-toothed grins on their faces.
Shawn caught a length of rope Ash tossed him from behind the bar and Jake said, feral smile wide, "Hey Gordy, long time no see."
Sabotaging a car was something Jo had never had opportunity to try, but always wanted to do. Just to see if she could actually pull it off.
No better time like the present…
She crept back to the El Camino with the Bronco's emergency kit and a savage gleam in her eye.
First, she put the tray cover back in place and wedged a handful of repair putty into the exhaust pipe, then skipped to the passenger's door and found the spare key taped to the inside of the wheel well – real original, Gordy.
Once inside the cab she jammed the key into the ignition, grabbed a screwdriver from the kit, planted the butt of it against the side of the key's head and shoved. The key obligingly snapped, leaving its teeth behind in the ignition while the head fell to the floor.
Screwdriver still in hand, slipped out of the cab and locked the door behind her. With exaggerated care, she pulled up the Camino's hood and peered at the engine, biting her lip thoughtfully.
"Well," she murmured, "it's not like you actually need those sparkplugs, Gordy. Why don't I take 'em off your hands…?"
The change shivered over her like blood rushing back to a pinched limb. A faint breath of fever, the distant hum of her body reconfiguring and she was wolf shaped.
Her clothes felt wrong like this, tight and constricting over her thick pelt, but the constant pain of her injuries began to melt away a little at a time.
She didn't stay lupine long; there was no telling when her savior would come back.
Heaving a sigh, she slipped back into her human form. Cautiously, she flexed her renewed hands and drew deep breath that didn't leave her ribs burning.
She tentatively sat up and crawled into the front passenger seat to wait for Jo.
It took Shawn and Jake barely five minutes to truss Gordon up like a Christmas turkey.
Which made sense, really, what with Jake being an ex-rodeo champ and all. The man could hogtie, brand and castrate an animal in a hundred-and-twenty seconds flat (it would be a minute, but field castration was a little tricky…)
"Ash, watch the bar," Ellen said, and followed the men as they dragged the disgraced hunter to the back rooms.
Before Jo was born, she and Bill had had a notion to serve more in the way of food and perhaps a little less in the way of booze. They'd upgraded the kitchen and put in one of those industrial walk-in fridges. A cook was hired to come out and try to serve food to their shady clientele. It had worked, right up until the shady clientele started talking shop and polishing firearms at the card table…
Since then the walk-in fridge was kept switched off and mostly used as a holding cell for the occasional destructive drunk that couldn't be gotten rid of, seeing as how the door locked from the outside.
Now, it would serve as a place to keep Gordon until Ellen was ready to deal with him. She watched as Jake and Shawn pitched him in while she stood with the shotgun still cradled in her arms.
"Gonna make good on those promises, Mrs. Harvelle?" he mocked her, face barely off the floor.
Ellen smiled. "Please," she said. "I've got drinks to serve."
She turned to leave.
"You're just going to leave me here?" he shouted, outraged and struggling furiously.
"Your kneecaps'll keep," she threw over her shoulder and stepped out of the room.
Shawn swung the door closed behind her and Jake called out, "see ya, Gordy," just before the big steel bolt slid home.
When Jo climbed behind the Bronco's wheel, it was to see Pepper sitting in the front passenger seat.
Jo raised her eyebrows in mild surprise.
"You sure you're okay to sit up front? You can stay in the back and sleep if you want…"
Pepper shook her head, copper hair falling over her shoulders.
"I've slept enough," she murmured, "and I do feel better, really."
She looked better too; there was more color in her face, and Jo figured it must have been all the dried blood that made her wounds look so bad. It looked like her fingers weren't broken either, just contorted from loss of blood circulation when Goddamned Gordon had tied the ropes so tight. Her pupils weren't as dilated now, and Jo could see more of their extraordinary amber color.
Jo nodded and started the truck. "Okay. Let's get out of here."
"Where're we going?" Pepper asked.
Jo smiled. "I have no idea, but hopefully, that'll make us harder to find."
They pulled out of the parking area and hit the open road, dust rising in a ghost-pale plume behind them.
Ellen had been polishing the same beer glass for the past two minutes.
"She's been out there a while," she murmured.
Jake and Shawn exchanged looks.
Ellen scowled at them. "She has. And you'd think she would have come in where she heard you two scuffling with Gordon."
"True," Jake murmured, taking another sip of his beer.
Shawn downed the last of his and got to his feet. "She's probably taken the bar from under the bench and gone for a little stroll. I'll see check on her, El, no need to fret."
Ellen nodded and watched him go, the door clapping shut behind him.
"He's right, you know, Ellen," Jake said quietly. "Your Jo can take care of herself."
Ellen didn't answer. Since she'd laid eyes on Gordon a familiar creeping cold had been making its way up and down her spine; a kind of dread that sank through her nerves and left her fingers tingling with unwelcome sensation. She'd gotten it just before John Winchester walked in with news of her husband's death, too.
When Shawn crashed back into the Roadhouse her heart was already in her mouth.
"She's gone," he rasped, face seeming to have aged a decade in under an hour. "Ellen, she's gone, and so is your Bronco."
Ellen reached for the shotgun.
It was time to see to Gordon Walker's kneecaps.
AN2: Reviews are made of win…