A/N: Hey lookie, the appearance of monsters and things that go bump in the night. See? I told you, you don't have to wait long!
Chapter 2 – Koschei the Deathless
Miss May I – Deathless
The Ukrainian girl woke up, who knows how much time later, in what seemed to be an abandoned warehouse or storage unit of sorts. A few metal shelves were the only furniture in there, and a thick layer of dust coated everything. Old panels of window glass were stacked against the wall on her left, and the permeating smell of mold lingered in the air.
Oh, God, no. They've come for me. They found out that I was in town and now they have taken me and…
"Ivy?" Alla snapped out of her increasing panic as she remembered that she wasn't alone. Her own fate was only secondary. She had been the one playing with fire by coming here, not Ivy. The brunette shouldn't have to suffer through whatever the cult has planned for her. She didn't deserve to be dragged into this.
Her blue eyes spotted her friend lying unconscious on the ground against the wall little ways to her right, seemingly unharmed, but out of it, her hands tied above her head to the pipe running along the wall. Alla just now realized as she tried to get to her that she was bound in a similar fashion too.
As she fought against her restraints, another disturbing fact seeped into her consciousness. They weren't the only two girls down here. Her eyes landed on two sets of ankles towards the far side of the room. She couldn't see more of their bodies because of the poor lighting. Who knew if there were any more of them?
"Hey, are you guys okay?" the blonde called out to them frantically.
No answer came.
A bone-deep chill of dread crawled up her spine right into her brain. Were they dead? She didn't see much skin, but the part that she did was definitely not healthy in color and kind of sunk in too. Almost mummified. The lack of the distinct foul odor that accompanied rotting flesh clued her in that they probably have met their fate quite some time ago as well. Or something sucked them so dry there was nothing left to actually rot.
She was starting to get the feeling that this might not have been the cult's doing after all. Sure, they had plenty of metaphorical skeletons in their closet, but this was definitely stretching the extent to which the organization would go.
Before Alla had any more time to assess their current predicament, something moved from the shadows into the small patch of moonlight filtering in through the windows high above, making her cry out in bewilderment. Had he been there the whole time?!
At first glance, it could have been a man, even if a superannuated one at that. His skin was ashy in color, leathery and sticking to his skeletal frame in wrinkles, a few wisps of silvery white hair falling from his scalp onto his shoulders, which were barely covered by thin scraps of fabric. His hands were deformed into claws, and his eyes glowed with an ethereal blue light. As the creature stepped forwards into the light, Alla's eyes landed on a feature that had her face paling with recognition. A bony crown sat upon his balding head.
"Peezdets'…" the blonde girl swore in her native language, English words failing her at the moment.
The monster looked at her with what could only be interpreted as callous disinterest before turning to Ivy.
Right. In the folklore stories, it always went for the wives… Shout out to all the single ladies to remain just that…
"Leave her the fuck alone!" Alla yelled at it, thrashing uselessly to get its attention, but it just kept going for her friend without so much as a head turn.
It placed its osseous fingers on Ivy's cheeks, bringing her face up to its own. What the creature wanted to do with Ivy, Alla didn't know – the wife was always rescued in the stories before anything terrible could have happened – nor did she ever find out. The door to the cellar – at least that's what Alla assumed it to be now – burst open, the frame and lock mechanism giving way under a powerful, well-placed kick.
If Slavic folklore was anything to go by, Alla would have expected Aaron to be standing there, coming to the rescue of his wife. But first of all, this was no fairy tale, and second, Aaron wasn't the heroic type as far as Alla had deduced from their brief interactions.
No, instead it was a woman, around their age, equipped with a shotgun and various other weapons in her khaki utility jacket, her shoulder-length wavy blond hair whipping around her face as she flung herself against the monster to push it off of Ivy.
Their rescuer dug out a taser – from who knows where – to electrocute the thing, shot it once in the chest then again in the head with her sawed-off shotgun, and then beheaded it with a machete for good measure, before coming to untie the both of them. The whole affair didn't take longer than thirty seconds.
"I'm Mary. You guys are going to be alright, okay?" the mystery woman talked to Alla in a soothing voice, which gave a fascinating contrast to the previous, very gung-ho and violent demeanor she had exhibited. It was almost hard to believe that the behavior belonged to the same person.
"It's not dead," the Ukrainian girl stated with a shaky voice, rubbing her wrists as Mary moved from her to Ivy, cutting her ropes too, then going to check on the other two. The fact that she came back pretty quickly with a grave expression on her face confirmed Alla's earlier suspicions.
"I'm going to set fire to the room just to make sure, but believe me, it is dead. Can you help me get her out of here?" the woman seemed pretty confident, and she had a point. Getting the hell out of Dodge was more critical at the moment, yet Alla had this nagging feeling that flames weren't going to solve the issue either.
Alla crawled over to her friend, patting her face lightly. "Ivy, wake up."
"What…? What happened?" she slowly came to, noting the unfamiliarity of her surroundings with frightened eyes.
"I'll explain, I promise, but let's get a move on," Mary insisted, her eyes trained on the monster the whole time as if expecting it to reanimate itself at any moment.
Ivy glanced at Alla, looking for confirmation that they could trust this person. The Ukrainian girl nodded slightly. As far she was concerned this woman had just saved their lives. She helped the brunette to her feet, and they hobbled with trembling limbs to the stairs leading up to the exit.
As they resurfaced, it became evident that they had been in the basement of an abandoned house, one that had a separate entrance from the outside too. Surrounded by quite a bit of land, no neighbors in sight. Alla silently watched Mary pour lighter fluid – and salt? – all over, then flick a lit match to the trail of gasoline with impeccable aim. The flames raced over the tiny path that led from where they stood to the cellar entrance, then enveloped everything inside their former lockup, soon spreading to the upper structure too.
"It's not dead, you know," Alla repeated now that the immediate danger seemed somewhat lessened. Her hold on Ivy tightened, whom she had been keeping upright this whole time. The brunette hadn't said anything, not a word of complaint leaving her mouth, but she seemed a bit worse for the wear. The smoke and whatever was down there was finally getting to her.
"What is not dead?" Ivy's head jerked up in alarm.
"Sweetie, I know you are probably shaken up right now. That thing was a monster, a supernatural being. I am a hunter. I kill these things professionally. Trust me. It is dead, you are safe now," Mary tried to placate the girl who was obviously in distress about the whole ordeal.
This was the part she hated the most about hunting, even if she was naturally good at it. Giving the talk to the victims and making sure they would be able to get past it. This isn't a trauma you can turn to professional psychiatrists with, and expect them not to lock you up, claiming delusions.
"If you do this professionally, then you can tell me the name of it, right?" the Ukrainian girl challenged her with a steady gaze, definitely not the behavior you envision from people in a state of shock.
"It was a rawhead. It usually preys on children, but you guys are young enough to confuse it," the blond woman stated, slightly unsure of her own assessment. The MO was a bit off. It should be children, not married women – mostly – even if they were relatively young. And the electric shock should have taken care of him the first time…
"I'll take that as a compliment, but you are wrong. That was Kostiy," Alla stated with conviction, pointing back at the house that was ablaze now.
Her adamancy was enough for Mary to at least consider the possibility, especially since the girl had given her a name for the creature. Something she could research and verify.
"Have you had experiences with the supernatural before?" the hunter tentatively asked, checking the facts. She was still skeptical after all.
"No, but it looked just like the monster from our folklore. Parents scare young children, especially girls with Kostiy to keep them from wandering off at night. It is immortal. I'm pretty sure the thing in there is not dead," the blonde insisted, getting a bit worked up since she was getting the feeling that she was not being taken seriously. Even her accent became a little more pronounced. It didn't evade Mary's attention either, as well as the pronouns she used, referring to a group of people with a clear distinction she was a part of and considered separate from those she was among now.
"Where are you from?" she asked with a kind smile, assuming that she was a foreigner, possibly only visiting the States for a short time. Though people who had permanently relocated to the country in pursuit of the American Dream still retained that us against them mentality too.
"Ukraine," Alla admitted, a tiny bit of hope rising in her that her theory wouldn't be outright dismissed.
"So Slavic folklore, right?" the hunter probed contemplatively. That she wasn't familiar with. Not in depth at least. Technically there was so much out there that even those in the life never encountered. Up until a month ago, she didn't believe angels really existed either. Being closed-minded could quickly become the death of her.
"Yeah," the girl nodded.
"Okay, let's get into my car and discuss this further. The fire department will be dispatched soon, and we need to get out of here by then," Mary announced as she came to her conclusion, ushering the two girls away from the burning house.
It was starting to dawn by the time they got Ivy situated on the back seat with a plastic bag she could puke into if it came to that. She looked really ill, which worried Alla to no end. The headaches were reaching migraine levels, strong enough to trigger nausea. The only thing keeping Ivy from vomiting was probably the general exhaustion that came after the adrenalin crash. This was just way too much excitement for her, the stress worsening everything tenfold.
"Did the thing get to her?" Mary asked the Ukrainian girl. She had no idea how to treat someone supernaturally poisoned by Kostiy or a rawhead or whichever. She didn't know if a case of poisoning was even possible from these entities, but better have her facts straight just in case they needed to jump into research as soon as they got back to a motel.
"Uhm, no. Ivy… she is chronically ill. She is sensitive to chemicals, so whatever coated the surfaces down there besides the dust, and the smoke from the fire, her system can't flush it out like ours through the kidneys and liver… and sweating. It's making her ill," Alla explained as she got into the passenger seat of the Ford Sierra.
"Do you guys have medication or something? Where are you staying?" the hunter already had the engine running and backing away from the house onto a dirt road.
"Down by the beach in Clearwater… Sand Point or Silver Sands…" honestly she hadn't been paying that much attention last night where Ivy had checked them into, she was too preoccupied with her emotions regarding the cult. That seemed like such a distant worry now. "Something sand motel, but no, we don't have pills for this. Medicine and drugs are essentially just chemicals again, they will generally just make her feel worse."
"So what can you do?" the blonde behind the wheel inquired, practically getting more concerned for Ivy's well-being than Alla, which was saying a lot, given that she didn't even know the girl and that Alla was just about out of her mind with worry.
"Letting her rest up and ride it out. It's like the flu for her really right now. Maybe getting her in the shower to get the chemicals she hasn't absorbed yet off of her skin," Alla mused out loud. Hopefully, they can get Ivy to wake up or be coherent enough to tell them what she needed once they got back to the motel.
"Okay. Okay, that we can do," Mary exhaled heavily, somewhat calmed by the fact that they had a game plan, even if a weak one.
After a few minutes, they reached the end of the dirt driveway that led to the abandoned house. Once they were back on the paved road, the hunter returned to their original issue. The monster.
"So… uhm…" she began tentatively, regretting that she had to broach the subject again when the emotional trauma was still so fresh, but it had to be done.
"Alla," the Ukrainian girl supplied her name, realizing that she had never introduced herself. She internally cringed, anticipating the question for clarification that was sure to follow.
"Alla, what made you think that thing was Kostiy?" Mary inquired encouragingly, wanting to understand the whole thought process. Maybe there were some clues in those folklore stories that she could use now to gank the fucker.
The hunter had the Ukrainian girl's name rolling off her tongue like it was the most common name ever, no sign whatsoever on her face that would have indicated that she had made that abhorred association. It made Alla warm up to her instantly. She was starting to get the feeling that she had just been surrounded by very shitty people before and decent human beings did not start making fun of you based on just your unusual name here in States either.
"Well, the thing that made me instantly jump to my childhood bedtime stories was the bone crown. Every illustration I ever saw in fairy tale books had that. The ugly, senile, skeleton-like appearance, plus the fact that it is menacing young women, especially wives, just cemented it. Ivy is married, by the way, she was taken first. I think I was just an afterthought," the foreign girl recounted after a big sigh, guilt coloring her demeanor again. Ivy was only down here in Florida because of her. The brunette could have avoided this whole experience if she had stayed home, but Alla had dragged her along on this stupid quest for closure.
"So how do you kill Kostiy?" the hunter asked the most crucial question, at least in her line of work.
"Well, in all the stories one thing is common. It cannot be killed by conventional means targeting its body. Like physical attacks. That's why I said it isn't dead. Its soul is hidden separate from its body inside a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a hare, which is in an iron chest, which is buried under a green oak tree, which is on the island of Buyan, in the ocean. As long as its soul is safe, it cannot die," Alla recited from her memories, barely pausing to breathe in between sentences.
"Talk about convoluted bedtime stories…" Mary sardonically remarked.
"Also, if the chest is dug up and opened, the rabbit will bolt away. If it is killed, the duck will emerge and try to fly off. It is said that anyone possessing the egg has Kostiy in their power. If the egg or needle is broken, Kostiy will die. In some tales the egg must specifically be smashed against Kostiy's forehead to take effect," the Ukrainian girl continued, concentrating on a faraway point ahead of her to keep her motion sickness at bay on the bumpy road. Mary sure had a dynamic driving style. At least she got to sit shotgun. The back seat would have been a recipe for disaster.
"Wow, you know your lore," the other blonde stared at her with wide eyes.
"Not really… I just have a near eidetic memory. My brain is littered with useless trivia," Alla shrugged. Usually, people thought that she was a know-it-all, so she learned not to open her mouth most of the time if she didn't want to alienate others.
"I'd say it isn't useless right now," the hunter refuted gently.
"Yeah, who knew this crap was real…" the girl huffed, the acerbic tone taking even herself by surprise. Though given what a day she had had, it was understandable.
"So… how do you get to Buyan?" Mary chose not to comment on the outburst, instead redirected their talk back to the practicalities.
"It's a mythical island. So magic, I guess… Other than that, I have no idea. Children's stories don't typically get that specific," Alla rubbed her forehead tiredly. She wished she knew. Maybe that mythology class at university that she had decided not to take would have come in handy right now.
"I think it's time I called the cavalry of lore research," the woman from the driver seat suggested, not at all perturbed by the momentary hiccup.
"Who is that?" she inquired, genuinely interested. Who would a person like Mary, a hunter of the supernatural, trust?
"My sons. They have a bunker full of books on supernatural lore and research. If someone can dig up what we are looking for, it's them," Mary stated with conviction, already dialing.
"Wait… you are twenty-something like us, thirty at most, how can your sons be old enough…" Alla trailed off, puzzled, to say the least as to how this could be possible. Even if she had become a mom at a very young age, the boys couldn't be older than fifteen by her calculations. Sure, kids these days were like wizards with a computer. Theoretically, that's all you'd need for research, but drawing them into a dangerous profession like this at such a young age seemed outrageous to her, especially considering her own history.
"It's complicated…" the hunter tried to explain, but suddenly someone picked up at the other end of the line. "Hey, Sam!"
"Mom?" the very masculine, thick with sleep and definitely not teenager voice of a man came from the speaker of the phone, baffling Alla even further. There was just no way in hell this voice belonged to someone below twenty, but she guessed he had to be at least their age if not older.
"I have you on speaker, sweetie," Mary informed him, simultaneously hinting that she was not alone. Internally she kicked herself for not realizing that it would probably be even earlier for the boys, disturbing their much-needed sleep.
"Uhm, okay. What's up?" Sam asked, his tone indicative of his astonishment and curiosity. Whether it was the fact that Mary had called him or that she wasn't alone, or he was just interested as to what she wanted, Alla couldn't even begin to guess at. There was definitely some unresolved tension between mother and son, but the fact that they loved each other dearly was evident.
"Are you guys at the Bunker?" the blond woman inquired, hoping that they were. Time was definitely of the essence in this case if their monster was indeed unharmed and out there, free to terrorize women.
"Yeah, are you coming by?" there was a longing in his voice, so palpable that Alla's heart broke a little. Had Mary abandoned them? Was that the reason behind the tension? Or the inexplicable circumstances that apparently made Mary younger than her own sons?
"No, I'm sorry. I got sort of stumped on a case down in Florida. Could you guys dig up whatever you can find on Slavic folklore, especially Kostiy, means to kill it, and the island of Buyan, possibly how to reach it? My guess is that there's some spell of sorts involved."
"It's possible that the creature will go under Koschei or Koshchei, those are the more popular anglicized variations from the Russian name," the Ukrainian girl commented, the idea that her native spelling and name of the monster was actually not the most common one just occurring to her.
Sam stayed silent for a moment, and Alla almost apologized for butting into the conversation uninvited, but then he shook his shock off.
"Yeah, uhm, sure we can do that. I'll get back to you in a bit. Stay safe till then," Sam said quickly before hanging up.
Sam stared at his phone for a while, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Mary was hunting. That was for certain. He was pulled from his reverie as Dean waltzed into his room, tired and groggy, only his robe flung over his sleepwear to keep him from getting chilled in the cold hallways.
"Who's calling you this early?" the older hunter grunted, apparently having been woken by the loud ringtone echoing through the tiled corridors.
"Mom," Sam revealed, feeling just as puzzled as Dean seemed to be.
The older hunter stayed quiet for a few seconds, trying to process that information and the implications it might have.
"Is she okay?" he asked his tone hard with just a hint of worry. He was still upset that Mary just walked out on them. It was akin to losing her all over again and gave him severe trust and self-worth issues. Were they not good enough for her?
"Yeah, uhm, she is hunting. She needs some help with research," the younger Winchester supplied, feeling uncomfortable with being the one to deliver this piece of news. Why hadn't Mary tried calling Dean instead? He was the older son and honestly the better hunter. Though admittedly research was more Sam's domain. He just wasn't sure Mary had realized that in the terribly short time she had spent with them.
"Hunting? Alone?" his green eyes flashed with outrage at her recklessness, even though his tone remained level if not a bit grouchy. She had just been getting settled back into being a part of the living world, using technology and relearning how society worked nowadays after a more than thirty-year hiatus. Going on a hunt without help in this state was like sending a baby seal into a lion's den in his opinion.
"Well, she wasn't alone, that's for sure. There was a woman with her," Sam commented. Thinking back, she might have been a hunter, or someone at least partially familiar with Slavic folklore if nothing else. Maybe a professor or an expert Mary sought out for research? Just how aware was the mystery woman of the supernatural? She had a cute voice though, he mused internally without realizing where his thoughts had taken him. There was just a very slight hint of an accent there that had him intrigued. She couldn't be too old either.
In the meanwhile, Dean's face went from perplexed to contemplative, then whatever occurred to him had his ears turning slightly red.
"Well, khm, I guess it's not our business who she decides to share her bed with," the older hunter remarked, apparently embarrassed at saying something like that.
"I'm pretty sure Mom doesn't swing that way, Dean," Sam threw him an unamused glare, bordering on his bitchface. Seriously, dude, you wanna go there?
"Alright let's freaking drop Mom's sex life as a topic altogether," Dean suggested, gesturing that he considered the subject closed with his hands too.
"Good idea," his younger brother huffed derisively, rolling his eyes.
The older Winchester was about to leave when he turned back to ask something as if it was just a passing thought now occurring to him. "What are we researching again?"
"Slavic mythology," Sam revealed.
"Awesome," Dean's tone suggested just the opposite, and he made his way towards the kitchen to put on some coffee to brew. He had a feeling this was going to be a long day.