A/N: This series of fics takes place before the events of Supernatural. It uses Harvelle's Roadhouse as a framing device for one-shots within the Supernatural world. Each new chapter will feature a different original character. If the timeline makes sense, I might throw in references to canon characters, but for the most part the only ones you'll recognize are Ellen and Jo.

This fic is rated for language and violence.

For one reason or another, there weren't nearly as many female hunters as male. Jo often wondered why that was. The popular theory was that women just weren't cut out for the life, but Jo rejected that out of hand. After all, she was as tough as any boy, and her mother was tougher than any Hunter she knew. If women were avoiding the profession, it wasn't because they were incapable of it.

Jo preferred to think that there were lots of female Hunters out there who were just good at laying low and minding their own business. The network of Hunters that she was familiar with was so male-dominated; Jo was sure that if she hadn't been raised in it, she wouldn't have wanted to join it. For all that it provided contacts, allies, and backup when you needed it, the Hunter lifestyle was often a dick-measuring contest of epic proportions. There were the legends – everyone knew the names of Harvelle, Winchester, Elkins, and Singer. There were the ones who had fallen from grace – who had lost their edge or withdrawn from the community – like Rufus Turner. There were the younger men who had made a name for themselves; Gordon Walker was among their number. And then there were the kids just starting out, who didn't usually last long. They either backed out when things got too tough, or fought to their deaths like poor Cam Isles. In a hierarchy like that, where there were so many unwritten rules, so much bad blood and veiled history, and so much macho posturing, Jo didn't blame any woman who looked at it and decided to go her own way.

Jo knew of a few women who would help a Hunter if asked, but who played by their own rules, like Missouri and Barnes. But she had never met them, and precious few women ever walked through the doors of the Roadhouse.

That was why Jo was delighted to see Suzanne and Marietta Kingfisher duck in out of the wind on a slow Monday afternoon. The bar was quiet and almost empty, just the way Suzanne liked it.

Suzanne was a big woman with dark coloring and hard, humorless eyes. Jo had gleaned over the years that she was half-Cherokee, and had been raised on the reservation in North Carolina. Marietta was her daughter, and she looked almost like a miniature copy of her mother except that her black hair had notes of orange in it. Marietta had never called a reservation home; Suzanne had raised her on the road. Despite the hard upbringing, Marietta was generally friendlier than her mother, and she gave Ellen and Jo a smile and a nod as she followed Suzanne inside.

Ellen nodded back. "Hi Mary," she said, "Sue. What'll it be?"

"Whiskey, straight," said Suzanne as she sat down at the bar. She met Ellen's eyes for a second, and for the first time Jo got the strange feeling that they didn't like each other very much. She supposed that female Hunters were just as capable of having tangled histories and strained relationships as the men. "And a ginger ale for her," Suzanne added, indicating her daughter. Marietta sat beside her, keeping uncharacteristically silent.

While Ellen got their drinks, Jo slid up beside Marietta. They didn't see each other very often, but Jo had always been fascinated by the older girl. She was, perhaps, what Jo could have been if she had been allowed to hunt alongside her mother. Maybe if her father hadn't died…

"It's good to see you," said Jo shyly, "How long's it been? A year?"

She expected Marietta to strike up a conversation, but it was Suzanne who answered her. The older woman's voice had more warmth in it than Jo remembered. "More than that," she said, "We don't seem to make it out here much, though I like the place just fine. We happened to be working a job nearby." She smiled, and Jo's nervousness melted away. "I suppose you want to hear about it."

Jo nearly shouted, "Yeah!" at the same time that her mother returned with the drinks and chimed in, "Come on, Sue, don't go putting ideas in her head."

Suzanne drank half her whiskey in one gulp. "You think you can protect her from all this, even while you raise her here in the Roadhouse? Don't be naïve. Besides, hunting is in her blood."

Ellen bristled. "And I suppose dragging her out on hunts would be better parenting on my part?" she said, trying and failing to sound disinterested, "A mother ought to protect her kids better than that."

The expression on Suzanne's face reminded Jo of why she had always remembered her as being so intimidating. "Plenty of your customers are raising their kids on the job. Did you ever give Hart, Lee, or Winchester shit about the way they're bringing up their sons? Because I'm doing a hell of a better job than any of them."

"You bet I give them shit for it, and I'll do the same to you if I feel like it," said Ellen, "And don't you mention John Winchester to me. That's just low and you know it."

Jo spoke up in the hope of forestalling a serious fight, "Mom, I won't get any ideas. I just want to hear the story."

Ellen hesitated but, finding herself outnumbered and not wanting to come to blows with the much larger Suzanne, she spat, "Fine." She wandered farther down the bar, not looking pleased with the situation at all.

As Marietta sipped her soda in respectful silence, Suzanne told their story.

A month ago, not far from here, a man went out into the woods (said Suzanne). When he returned, he had lost his wits. He was wild and violent, and he spoke nonsense. All anyone could get out of him was that he had encountered some sort of beast in the woods, and that he was greatly afraid for his life.

I didn't think much of the story until I heard that the man had died exactly three days later. It wasn't that the creature had caught up with him – he just dropped dead as he was leaving the hospital. He had just been released. Remember this, Joanna: if you hear about someone who has seen an apparition, suddenly gone insane, and then dropped dead for no reason, look into it. You're probably dealing with a harbinger of death. Black Dogs, Radiant Boys, ghosts who have become Death Omens, that sort of thing. You've probably heard of them from the Hunters around here, though you probably don't know about the thing we ended up chasing.

By the time Marietta and I had gotten tickets and flown into Nebraska, there were two more victims. Both had come out of the forest, crazy and gibbering about a terrible beast just like the first man. One died just as we arrived, exactly three days after his brush with this mysterious creature. The other, if the pattern held, had one day left.

Her name was Erin. We found her in the psych ward of the hospital, where the other two victims had also been. The same doctor had treated all three, and she was nearly at her wit's end. She didn't know what to make of the cases, and I think she was glad to hand the matter over to me when I posed as a CDC inspector. I met Erin. She wasn't as crazy as everyone thought. Don't get me wrong; she wasn't at all right in the head. But she was much more understandable if you started from the assumption that she had seen a harbinger of death, which is what I did.

I knew right away that there was nothing I could do for her. It's very difficult to stop a person's death after they've already encountered a harbinger, and Erin only had a day left. There was just no time.

I wasn't there to help Erin. I just needed her story.

At that point my theory was that someone had harnessed a Black Dog and was setting it on people in the woods. Black Dogs usually strike once and then slink away, and if they're left alone they usually keep to themselves. My plan was to break whatever bond was holding the Dog in the woods out there, and let it run off somewhere less populated.

But you should never make assumptions before you have all the facts. I coaxed Erin into telling me about the creature she saw, and when she finally managed it she didn't describe a dog at all. She told me about a giant cat, the size of a lion, with the face of a brown-skinned woman.

You look confused, Joanna. Don't be embarrassed. Most Hunters, even the good ones, probably wouldn't recognize a description like that either. But I did. It's an old Cherokee legend, called an Ewah. You might have heard it called a Wampus Cat. They're very rare. This was only the second one I've ever hunted, and I'm as close as there is to an expert on them.

You're probably wondering where Marietta was during all this. She's still a bit young to start pulling off fake IDs, so she was waiting for me in the car. At least, she was supposed to. I left the hospital to find the car and my daughter missing. I don't expect you to understand what that felt like for me. Hunters do not make the best parents, not because we do not love our children, but because we love them too much. And we know what is out there, and what it can do to them. Suffice to say, any number of horrible possibilities came to mind before I realized that I had a text message waiting on my phone.

I still have it. Let me read it for you: "Going to the woods. I know it's a Black Dog, and I can handle it. I'm old enough for a solo hunt now, even though you don't think I am. Don't worry. I'm armed. Please don't be mad at me."

Isn't that a laugh? I was spitting mad before I had even finished reading it.

Since Marietta had taken my car, I had to convince the sheriff that there was some kind of neurotoxin in the forest that was making people go insane and die. I honestly can't remember exactly what I said or if it even sounded remotely plausible, but apparently my fake CDC badge was enough to convince him. He gave me a ride out to the woods so we could talk to the Forest Service men into blocking road access. Of course, it was too late to stop Marietta. I found the car parked near a trailhead. After making some excuse to the sheriff about why I was running off into the forest that I'd just told him was full of poison, not to mention why I had an arsenal in my back seat, I grabbed some gear and went looking for Marietta.

While I hiked into the trees, I tried to remember the legends about Ewah. I encountered my first one when I was a little girl. My daddy and I trapped it, and I never found out what exactly he did with it, so even though it was my second hunt I didn't really know how to fight this thing. It wasn't as if I had time to set another trap; my daughter was in danger.

Here's what I remembered from the legend. The first Ewah was a Cherokee woman who spied on the men of her tribe by disguising herself in the skin of a mountain lion. As punishment, she was merged with her costume, and made into a half-cat-half-human monster. Since then, she has roamed the hills and forests, and anyone who meets her is driven insane. I had also heard that if you heard her yowl, you would die within three days, but I hadn't been sure of that until seeing what happened to Erin and the other two.

The only lead I had on defeating an Ewah was another legend. In it, a man was driven insane by an Ewah, and his wife went out to avenge him. She stalked up behind the Ewah while wearing a mask, and she scared it so badly that it ran away and never returned. It sounded silly to me. It's good to go into a hunt knowing that iron or silver or holy water will hurt whatever it is you're hunting. When you go in blind, especially when your only strategy is to wear a mask and hope your prey is scared of you, it's more than a little nerve-wracking.

But it was all I had to go on, so I improvised. Under my blouse I was wearing a t-shirt with a wolf's head on it. It was one of those ridiculous faux-Indian looking designs that doesn't actually have anything to do with Native American culture, but when your job pays as poorly as hunting does you don't throw away clothes just because you don't like the picture on the front.

I tore the front out of the shirt so I had a piece of fabric with a wolf's face printed on it. Then I stretched the fabric over a piece of bark and tied the whole thing to my forehead with strips of cloth from the rest of the shirt. So by that time, I was down to my bra and jeans, with an ugly makeshift wolf-mask strapped to my head. All I could think about was the fact that if I died, I would make the most embarrassing corpse possible.

I had the mask pushed up so I could see underneath it, and that way I sneaked through the trees. I could read Marietta's trail plain and day from where she had left the car, so it was just a matter of finding her before the Ewah found either of us.

I didn't have to go all that far before I came across a sight that made my blood freeze.

In a clearing, Marietta was lying on her back, like she had fallen. Her eyes were closed, and there was a bruise on her forehead that was bleeding a little. She could have been dead already for all I knew. And there was a creature crouching over her as if it meant to tear out her throat. I almost cried out and ran in to save her when I realized that the creature wasn't attacking her. It was staring at her face.

It took all my willpower, but I stayed silent and watched. Just like Erin had said, the creature was a cat with the face of a woman. Her body was that of a mountain lion, and it was just slightly humanoid, as if she might be able to walk upright if she wanted. I could just see her face. It had been a long time, but I could see that she wasn't the same Ewah that I had trapped with my father. She was younger, and quite pretty.

She was still staring at Marietta. I was trying to figure out a way to approach it without letting it hurt her when it made a sort of sound. At first I was afraid that I had heard its call, and that I would die just like the others, but that wasn't the case. I'd heard mountain lions scream before, and it wasn't the same sound. It was loud, but calm, like it was speaking to someone.

Sure enough, someone answered. A mountain lion – a real one this time – emerged out of the bushes and approached Marietta and the Ewah. And in that moment I figured it out. The Ewah didn't mean to kill Marietta. I wanted to make her one of them. It had even called a mountain lion, which normally wouldn't come this far East, to merge with her. Once the notion came to me, it made sense. Of course the girl who became the first Ewah would want to make companions for herself. She was punished harshly, and doomed to be feared and lonely. And of course she would see much of herself in Marietta. A young woman of Cherokee blood, headstrong, bold, curious…

Even as these thoughts raced through my head, I was creeping closer and closer. I didn't care about killing the thing or completing the hunt. I just had to get it away from Marietta before it turned her. Luckily my daddy taught me to stalk just like a cat, and I was completely silent until I was close enough to reach out my hand and touch the thing.

And that's what I did. I put my hand on its shoulder just like I was greeting a friend. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I had figured that if it was scared of my stupid mask, then good, and if it wasn't, then I would be dead either way. So I grabbed its shoulder, spun it around, and ducked my head so my mask was pointed right at it.

It was gone so fast that I could have sworn that it dissolved into thin air. I didn't even feel its shoulder move from under my hand; I was just suddenly aware that it wasn't there anymore. I looked up just in time to see its tail disappearing into the bushes, and in a matter of seconds I couldn't even heard it anymore. The real mountain lion looked almost shocked, as if it didn't quite know where it was, but it soon ran away too. Good thing. It would have been truly pathetic to have chased off an Ewah only to be killed by an ordinary cougar.

My heart was still pounding when I knelt to check on Marietta. After all, everyone else who had seen the Ewah had ended up in a psych ward. It would have broken my heart if she were left with anything less than her own brilliant mind. I shook her gently and called her name.

And to my relief, she opened her eyes. As soon as she spoke, I could tell that she was going to be alright. Her voice was muddled and confused, but perfectly sane, when she said, "Mom, that wasn't any Black Dog!"

"Marietta spent a few days in a hotel room nursing a concussion," Suzanne said as her story drew to a close, "I kept an eye on the news, but no new cases of insanity or unexplainable death cropped up. I guess the Ewah moved on. It's a pity I couldn't stop it once and for all, but under the circumstances I'm just glad we got out of it each in one piece."

Jo listened, rapt, in case there was any more to the story. But Suzanne was finished. The only sound for several seconds was Marietta sucking the last drops of her soda through her straw. Now Jo understood why she had been so uncommonly quiet. She was embarrassed because she had screwed up the hunt. Not to mention the unholy scolding Jo was sure she had gotten from her mother.

When Marietta finally did speak, her voice was softer and more pensive than Jo remembered. "I've got a lot to learn," she said, "If that's all you learn from this, Jo, then that's enough. Don't rush in half-cocked. And listen to your mother." Suzanne nodded approvingly.

"Time for us to go," said Suzanne. They hadn't talked to anyone else in the bar, and they had only had one drink each, which made Jo wonder if they hadn't stopped by just to see her. After all, everyone knew how much Jo loved hearing hunting stories.

As Suzanne stood to leave, she added, "Ellen. I'm sorry I tried to lecture you about Joanna. We're both trying to do the best we can for our daughters. I understand that. And you're doing good by her. She's a good kid."

Ellen had been washing glasses furiously throughout the story, but at Suzanne's words her posture softened a little. She gave Suzanne a curt nod. "Damn right she is," Ellen said. Then, as if holding out a peace offering, she said, "Try to come visit us more than once every other year, would you?"

Suzanne gave a tiny smile as she left, Marietta in tow.

Jo stayed silent for a respectable several minutes before saying, "That's pretty cool, isn't it? A mother-daughter hunting team? I'll bet we'd make a good team." She glanced at her mother hopefully. It wasn't the first time she had brought it up, but she always hoped the answer would be different this time. After all, Jo was thirteen now – more than old enough to start training as a Hunter.

Ellen stared at her daughter, an unreadable expression on her face. "Go do your homework," she said.