A/N: Praise be to Wikipedia for providing quick and easy research into such things as water sprites from around the world and making it possible to pretend I know what the heck I'm writing about.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own the show Supernatural or the character of John Winchester.
Nell lay on the mattress she kept in the back of her van, the curtains of the windows drawn to block out the scorching sun. There was a time when she was a sun worshiper, spending as little time indoors as possible. Her skin had turned nut brown and her hair bleached almost white. Back when she was still human.
It wasn't her idea, becoming a vampire. There were too many things about being a human that she'd loved to want to give up even for a chance at immortality. It would have been so easy to slip into angry bitterness over her lost humanity. On her own, she would have. She pretty much did these last ten years. The upbeat, joking Nell was replaced with a hollow facsimile that only went through the motions of existing because there was nothing else to do. The rut she dug herself into was one of grief and depression. It got easier to live with, but these feelings never really went away. More than once she caught herself idly fantasizing about laying herself across the tracks to let the next passing train decapitate her and put her out of her misery. But then John Winchester attacked and suddenly she discovered she wasn't so eager to die after all. The experience woke her from her decade-long trance and forced her to assess the way her life (or unlife) was going.
It really was curiosity that drove her to stow away underneath John's truck. Despite the fact that Nell herself was a vampire, she never really believed in any of this supernatural stuff. Ghosts and demons and monsters. It just seemed too farfetched. But then she saw the lake girl—something that wasn't human, but wasn't vampire either—and Nell felt a surge of elation she hadn't experienced since she was a little girl and watched her first meteor shower. Only this was way more exciting since the only way a meteor could kill you was if it crashed into you. That lake girl was strong. It took everything Nell had just to break free of her. She couldn't walk away without knowing what kind of creature that was; that'd be like leaving the theater in the middle of a murder-mystery.
But more than that, she couldn't walk away from John. She saw something in those dark eyes of his that was all too familiar; an old pain he carried so long it became a part of him. Nell wondered what that pain could be, and if it was anything like hers.
John spent the entire day poring through his notebooks and reference texts in search of what this water-dwelling creature might be. There were any number of sprites and elementals to be found in cultures throughout the world. John slowly whittled them down to a few that matched what little he knew of the mysterious lake girl.
In Germany there was the Nix: a river merman or mermaid who lured people to drown. The males were said to be shapeshifters, able to take on both human as well as fish or snake form. The females were beautiful women with fish tails, like the ocean-dwelling mermaids, but could take on human form and were recognized by the wet hems of their dresses.
In Greece there was the Ondine, a water spirit found in forest pools or waterfalls. It was immortal and therefore soulless, but could gain a soul if it married a human man and bore him a child. Ondines often lured prospective mates to them through singing. Should the husbands remain faithful, all was well. But if they were foolish enough to cheat, the Ondine that was wronged would lay a curse that caused the faithless husband to stop breathing the next time he slept. John wasn't so sure about this one, but wasn't willing to disregard the possibility altogether. Sometimes the folklore was a little off, such as with vampire legends.
Then there was the Russian rusalka, a female ghost or demon that dwelt in waterways who, like the nixies, lured men into the water and drowned them. In most versions rusalki were unquiet dead beings; people who died violently and before their time, such as young women who committed suicide because they'd been jilted, or unmarried pregnant women. Sometimes they were the illegitimate infants themselves, murdered by their mothers shortly after birth. In every version, the deaths resulted from drowning and the rusalki were doomed to haunt the body of water in which they perished. They could only survive out of water at night and only so long as their hair remained wet.
Something in his gut told John this was the one. The lake girl could still be a nix or ondine, but he didn't think so. There was nothing in his research to indicate the other water spirits were restricted by nightfall, and every disappearance he believed the lake girl responsible for took place only at night. So, rusalka it was.
Okay, now he knew what he was up against. How was he going to kill it?
A knock at the door derailed his train of thought. Who the hell could that be? Even if he'd forgotten to hang the Do Not Disturb sign—which he hadn't—it was way too late for the maid to show up. Sunset had long since come and gone. John stood, picked up a gun from the nightstand, and went to stand beside the door. "Who's there?"
"Room service!" a horribly familiar voice chirped.
John closed his eyes and slowly banged his head against the wall.
Nell rapped on the door again. "C'mon, man. I brought takeout. You don't want it getting cold, do ya?"
"I thought we agreed we'd go our separate ways?" John growled.
"I changed my mind. Woman's prerogative. Not like we shook on it or anything."
John glanced at the gun in his hand, but decided against it. Not as if it would kill her, and besides, he'd have to open the door to use it, which meant giving her the opportunity to slip in. Never mind that Nell could easily bust down the flimsy door. She obviously wasn't interested in causing that kind of mayhem. John decided to ignore her instead. If he ignored her long enough, maybe she'd finally get it through her thick skull he didn't want her around and go away.
As if reading his mind, Nell warned, "If you don't open this door soon I'm gonna make a scene. You're all about keeping a low profile, right?" Her tone suddenly changed to desperate and wheedling, "C'mon, baby, lemme in! I'm sorry I said no to the threesome! Please, honey, think of the kids! They'll be heartbroken if another daddy runs out on 'em! Open the door! Boo-hoo-hoo!" she wailed.
John couldn't help it, she sounded so ridiculous that laughter started bubbling up in him. He managed to get it under control, but it wasn't easy. He was starting to like her and that scared him. He couldn't afford to like her. But he also couldn't afford letting her wake up the entire motel and probably getting the management involved. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he opened the door. "Get in here."
"Thanks!" Beaming, Nell practically skipped into the room, a white paper bag in each hand. As John shut the door she turned and thrust both bags towards him. "I brought kung pao chicken and sweet and sour pork. I love either one, so whichever you pick's cool with me."
John's eyebrows rose. "You're gonna eat?"
"Well, yeah," she rolled her eyes, "Why d'you think I got two meals?"
"I thought vampires couldn't eat normal food."
"Sure we can, it's just most don't bother because we can't absorb any nutrients from it. Personally, I think it's great. I can eat whatever I want and don't have to worry about my ass getting bigger." She grinned. "It's awesome."
The smell of the Chinese food reminded John that he hadn't eaten anything all day. His stomach groaned and he took the kung pao chicken, muttering, "Least if you stuff your face you might shut up for a few minutes."
Nell laughed and went to flop down in the couch, opening her takeout bag. "Sweet! They gave me an extra egg roll."
John stared at her for a moment, looked down at the gun still in his hand, then sighed and returned the weapon to the nightstand. He sat on the edge of the bed and opened the paper bag, pulling out the box of takeout and a pair of chopsticks. They ate in silence, for which John was grateful. Nell seemed content to focus all her attention on her meal. Pretty soon John did the same as he let his hunger take over. He was so intent on filling his stomach he didn't notice when Nell finished. She set her empty box aside, stood up, and wandered over to the table where the research materials were still scattered. "What's all this?"
John looked up with a start and felt an urge to snap at her to keep her hands off, like he sometimes did when his boys were little. He felt it again when Nell picked up a piece of paper covered in notes he scribbled down.
"Rusalka? What's that?"
John glared resentfully. "A Russian water spirit."
"Oh. Is that what you think the lake girl is?"
"Fits what we saw." John winced at his use of the word "we", worried it might encourage Nell to stick around. Not that she looked like she planned to leave anytime soon.
Nell dug her smartphone out of her jacket pocket and started tapping the screen. John frowned. "What're you doing?"
"Checking out a little miracle of the modern age known as Wikipedia." At John's puzzled look, she smirked and said, "Get with the twenty-first century, cowboy." It was only a matter of minutes before she knew almost as much about rusalki as he did. "So, how're we gonna take out the lake girl?"
"We?" John stood as his anger started to return. "There's no we in this. I work alone."
He towered over her, but Nell wasn't intimidated. She could've easily picked him with one hand if she wanted. "Working alone almost got you drowned," she reminded him, "C'mon, it'll be fun. You'll be the brains and I'll be the muscle!"
"No!" John shouted so abruptly Nell jumped in surprise. He moved closer and she almost took a step back, but stubbornly held her ground instead. John's brown eyes were almost black with the emotions roiling in them. When his mouth opened, Nell expected a tirade. Instead, he spoke barely above a whisper, "Last time I worked with a partner a good man died. I haven't been responsible for anyone's life but my own since then." Not entirely true, considering he teamed up with his sons last year. But she didn't need to know that. "There...is...no...we."
Nell tilted her head, gazing thoughtfully up at him. "I don't die so easily, you know. And I don't remember seeing the lake girl swinging an axe, so I'm pretty sure my head's safe. The only life you really oughta worry about is yours."
"I don't care about your life," he growled.
"That's not what it sounded like a second ago."
John turned away. He stormed over to the door and opened it, a clear indication that Nell had worn out her welcome. Still, she didn't budge.
"Just let me see this through," she implored, "This one thing and then you'll never have to see my ugly face again. Please?"
John stared at her for a long while, his expression unreadable. Finally, he let the door swing closed. "You could've said I owed you one."
The corner of Nell's mouth quirked. "Actually, you owe me two. But that's not how I roll." She shoved her hands into the pockets of her black denim jacket. "So, what's the plan?"
The plan, as it turned out, was more research, this time this time of local drownings or disappearances of young women or infants who fit the rusalka legend. They went to the local library and started sifting through archived newspapers in search of any likely events that occurred in or around the lake. Much to Nell's regret, this information wasn't available on a computer. The two of them spent long hours poring through reels of microfilm of the local newspaper. Even worse, they had to do this during the day since the library closed early in the evenings. Nell slouched in her chair, a pair of dark sunglasses shielding her oversensitive eyes even though they were indoors. She looked hungover.
"Why are we bothering with this?" she mumbled dully.
John smirked at her irritation, thinking it nothing short of karmic. "'Cause direct confrontation didn't go so well. Besides, it knows we're after it. It'll keep its distance from us now."
"Makes sense."
"Which means we gotta turn to the legend's other options. If this rusalka's the spirit of a jilted woman who committed suicide or a woman who was murdered, it'll want revenge on whoever was responsible."
"And if it's a drowned illegitimate newborn she'll wanna get baptized?" Nell asked dubiously, recalling what her research said. "I gotta say, that part of the legend sounds kind of iffy."
"You'd be surprised how much iffy folklore turns out to be true."
Nell mulled over this. "If it turns out she was a woman who drowned, what do we do then? How're we supposed to avenge her? Kill the guy responsible? Drag him out to the lake and throw him to her?"
"We'll figure it out," John replied calmly.
"First you go charging in, now you're studying," she grumbled as she wrestled a new reel into the machine, "I can't help but wonder if you're trying to drive me away with boredom."
"It's not all about you." Though partly.
Nell suddenly perked up. She pointed at the screen. "Hey, check it out. I think I found her."
John got up from his chair and went to look over her shoulder. The page depicted was taken from an issue that ran eighteen months ago. The article that had their attention was only a single column with a small, grainy photo of a young twenty-something woman. Despite the poor quality of the picture, they recognized the woman as their very own lake girl.
LOCAL WOMAN DROWNS HERSELF, the headline read. The article said the woman's name was Helena Lukyanenko-Keene, a Russian immigrant who'd come to the States to marry a man she met on a matchmaking website. It went on to mention that she and her husband were recently separated at the time of her death. Her body was never recovered; all that was found were her shoes with a suicide note stuffed into one of them and an empty bottle of sleeping pills, all left neatly along the lake's shore.
"Wow," Nell remarked drily, "Sounds like a bad soap opera: Russian mail-order bride comes to the USA hoping to find a better life, gets dumped by her hubby and throws herself off a bridge in her grief."
"Actually, she just took some pills and went for a swim," John pointed out.
Nell shook her head and squinted behind the lenses of her shades as she scrutinized the article. "Says she was nine weeks pregnant at the time, too," she scoffed, "The shit people do to themselves. Like getting dumped is the end of the world. I betcha if she'd lived she would've looked back five years from now and wondered what the hell she even saw in the guy. Besides a green card, I mean."
John ignored her rambling and leaned closer, crowding her so she had to tilt her body aside to give him room. "Looking for something?" she asked.
John pointed, "The husband's name. Benjamin Keene."
"What're you gonna do? Go confront him? Tell him he's gotta do some kind of penance so his dead ex can stop killing people?"
"Not exactly." Something in his tone was distinctly ominous. Nell eyed him suspiciously as he straightened and headed for the exit without even bothering to shut down his microfilm reader. She was tempted to follow, but her do-gooder conscience insisted she put all the microfilm reels back first. She did so quickly and hurried after him.
Nell recoiled as the sunlight hit her full blast. She pulled a baseball cap out of her back pocket and put it on, pulling the brim low to further shield her eyes. John was already waiting for her in his pickup, the engine humming patiently. Nell jogged over and climbed into the passenger side, slamming the door with a sigh of relief. "Thank god for tinted windows. So, what're you planning? It's got something to do with the husband, right?"
John put the truck in gear and pulled out into traffic. When he didn't answer right away, Nell prodded his shoulder. "Well?"
"We're gonna use the husband."
Nell frowned. "Do what now? Use him how?"
John finally looked at her, his gaze unwavering. "As bait."
