Hi, I'm L.S. Blue. Thank you again for the comments! If you want more of my writing, I have an account on under the same pen name (Its original work, no fanfiction). Please leave reviews.
Enjoy.
At the push of the doorbell, a chime set off through the house, loud enough to be heard across the street. Feet pummeled on a stairway before an elderly lady pulled open the door with a yank.
"What?" She demanded, with a scowl of her thick white brows. Gray hair was clumped on top of her head in a somewhat stylish manner, where the rest of her looked like… well, trash. Brown, drab clothes hung limp from her body, tears and holes sewn back together. Dirt streaked her face, and the horrible mixed odor of sweat and vegetables came off her in waves.
"Ahh…" Sam was at a lost. When she looked up Janet Renalds, Dalton Renalds mother, on line she saw a rich woman with maids and a cool temper, not this dirty, scathing woman before her. And now she was here alone, caught dumbfounded, at a loss of what to say.
"Get on with it, child, I've not got all day!" Mrs. Renalds exclaimed.
"Uhm, Ma'am," here the lady scowled, as if this was not worth her precious time, "I'm from Homeland Security, and I was just wondering if I could ask you a few questions about the death of your son, Dalton Renalds?" As Sam held out her fake badge, Mrs. Renalds' scowl softened into something close to tears. Sam kept an unreadable face the whole time, and when the woman's features hardened up enough, she invited Sam in, complemented her on her young looking skin, and told her to sit on the couch while she cleaned herself up.
Sam took this opportunity to look around. She had already gone to Dalton's own house, and found nothing at all except for a bloody mess, no weapons, and no clues as to what his cause of death was. Nothing. It was almost disappointing, really, to think that it might just be a normal, everyday case. But that was the problem, because when hunter's started on a trail, it was never a normal, everyday case. There's always something there, hidden in the depths.
Looking around now, everything seemed fine. Sam peaked in drawers, trash cans, under furniture, everything was perfect. Problem number one. Sam wondered if Mrs. Renalds knew what her son was, and if she partook in the hunter's line of duty.
When Mrs. Renalds came down, she found Sam sitting quietly on the couch. This time, soft, silky linens covered her from shoulder to toe, a nice purple hat to go along with it. She sat herself on a comfy looking armchair across from Sam.
"If I find any more hunters on my doorstep I think I might just explode," she said, startling Sam. "Oh please, dear, you really expect to pass as an official when you're that young? I know you hunters come with some guts, but my gosh, you can't be any older than seventeen."
"Sixteen, ma'am," Sam replied. She gave up being surprised. Obviously this Mrs. Renalds was more educated than she let on. "How-"
"My son always told me that if something ever got him I would have you people breaking down my door. So what do you want to know? Get on with it, girl, I've got places to be, people to see, flowers to plant." Well, this really wasn't what she had planned. Sobs and accusations were the usually jig, but Sam just figured this would be an easier way to pick out the details she needed.
"Mrs. Renalds, please excuse me for interrupting your day, but it's important. Do you know if Dalton- er, Mr. Renalds- was hunting anything recently? Or if there was anyone who might want to harm him?"
She sighed. "Yes, he was. A vengeful spirit that was haunting a house down in southern Oklahoma. Easy work, or so he claimed, but I could tell something was horribly wrong." Her face crumbled like rocks at the sad memory of her dead son.
"He never told you what it was?"
"No," at this her eyes brightened, "but I found out anyway. Old Dalton never was a good liar. Turns out, he'd met up with a friend to bring down the spirit, but things went wrong when they tried to burn the body. In the end, Dalton's friend was killed. Bloody and none too pleasant. It haunted him for weeks, thinking it was his fault. And then it got him."
"… It?"
Janet Renalds gave Sam a cold, calculating look. Her face wore the look of disgust, sorrow, and guilt all at once.
"My dear, something is picking off hunters."
Cold claws gripped Sam's heart. Danger signs flashed in her head. She believed Mrs. Renalds because there was no reason not to, it fit like a puzzle piece. Two men, dead, was not a coincidence.
Becoming a hunter automatically put a price on your head from every vampire to ghoul. And something had finally decided enough was enough.
There was always fear. It was inevitable, like Sam and Dean had discussed last night. On this job, you could act tough and glide through a hunt without a tear, but at some point it had to come out. That moment, for Sam, was now. Was it because now there were so many people she cared about, located in this horrible death spot? Yes. Her mother, Lauren, Dean…
It suddenly came to her attention that her mother and Lauren had no idea where she was. Sam had snuck away to see Mrs. Renalds. Her mother was against this case, stating matter-of-factly that the Winchesters were on the job. And being who she was, Sam had come anyway.
"Calm down, child, you look like you're about to blow a gasket. These are knew furnishings, if you haven't notice. I'll not see you to their ruin," Mrs. Renalds' derisive words had a calming effect on Sam, smoothing out her nerves. The sudden need to see her family refused to dissipate, though.
"Do you know…?" Sam let the sentence hover in the air. While she didn't want to know what it was, she needed too if she was going to kill it.
She sighed a heavy, burdened sigh. "No, I don't. I've done my research, checked in on a few people. Now don't you go giving me that look missy, my son taught me all about this business, bless his soul. If not for him, I'd be six feet deep already. Dalton loved his mummy, yes he did." For a moment, her eyes wavered on the edge of despair, and then it passed as quickly as it had come. "I have nothing, except a very small, miscellaneous lead." Sam leaned in, waiting for the punch line that would solve her problems.
"Mandy Peroga. Another stay-at-home hunter. Dalton and her are really the only permanent hunters in the area; Dalton's other friend being a traveler, like I assume you to be. I hear the three were good friends; at some points in their life, anyway, so once again an assumption, I assume poor Mandy to be the next victim." Mandy Peroga… the name struck familiar bells within Sam, but she couldn't pinpoint her memory. She did, however, know this woman was important.
"Well now that I've had my stroll down memory lane, I believe I have somewhere to be," Mrs. Renalds said, standing up. With the sun shining in on her she looked almost godly, and Sam was glad to have met this woman, as articulate as she is.
Before they walked to the door, though, one more question popped into Samantha's head. "Mrs. Renalds, is there anything else that you learned? Anything important?"
She considered this for a second. "Important, no, though I did learn that my Dalton had a knack for Puerto Rican woman."
A little dazed by the weird statement, Sam followed Mrs. Renalds to the front door, realizing again how clean and precise her house was. She must not be home that much to take care of it.
As she opened the door, she exclaimed in a high pitched, angry voice, "Not another one! I swear to the devil himself, I'm done with you people!" Sam peaked around the stout woman to see who it was.
Dean, in all his glory as Homeland Security, was standing on the front step, one hand poised to knock, the other gripping his ID. His jaw was agape, surprised about being yelled at. He had slicked back his hair to look older, which really made him look like a greasy haired idiot. Then he spied Sam in the corner, and his eyes stretched wide. Oh, what a glorious picture it would have made.
"Shut your mouth boy, you're in the presence of a lady and a young child." Sam scowled at being called a young child but at the sight of Dean's continuously perplexed face her smile came back to life.
"Young'uns these days," she chided, "seem to grow hazy at the line of respect and informality. Then again, I don't recall dropping your jaw like an ape to be regularly accepted by the populace." Sam snorted.
"Don't snort you sound like an overfed pig."
Dean couldn't seem to comprehend what this woman was getting at. "Excuse me?" he asked rudely.
"Excuse you." And with that she was off, hobbling toward her beat down beetle car. Sam closed the door and stepped onto the step. Both of them watched her drive off down the street.
"Well then." Sam couldn't agree more. Mrs. Renalds was more unpredictable than an earthquake.
"I'm not going to ask why you're even here, because I'm thinking I might not want to know," Dean started. "But I will ask what you learned."
Sam retold Dean everything she knew after her short visit and his pallor grew sickly. He questioned her periodically, but for the most part didn't interrupt. When she was done, they walked over to his car and got in.
"I need to tell my father, he'll want to know. This job needs a quick fix before someone else dies. I'll drive you home."
Slowly Dean pulled the old Impala around and started toward the hotel. Now that things were quiet, she wanted to confront him about last night. There were some things left unsaid and she wanted them out on the table. Now seemed like a good time to say this, but her words stuck in her throat like honey. Sam guessed this was what people called love games.
Listen to me, Sam thought. Raving about love games. Hah! Love isn't part of the equation, not this time. Or so she told herself.
"Dean, I-"
"Sam, I-" they both said at the same time.
"You go first," Sam said.
He looked nervous. "Sam, I'm sorry about last night. I didn't mean to lead you on or send out any kind of signals, I was just trying to thank you for listening to me prattle on about my life story." Oh. So he didn't share what Sam felt…
No. It's better like this. No attachments to unstable things. No Romeo and Juliet love stories. "I didn't take it like that, don't worry," she lied. "And I was just going to say how much I liked your car." At this he smiled and pressed on the gas. Sam let her wishes fly out the window, sure they would not return for some time.
Her mother walked out of the hotel the minute Dean drove away. She gave Sam a stern look and led the way inside where Lauren sat, as predicted, with a voluminous book in her hands. The day she stopped reading would be the day the earth stood still. She didn't even bat an eye as Sam sat heavily at the table. Ellen stood, foot tapping, lips pursed, but didn't say a thing. Before she could question her, Sam asked something that had been itching its way to the surface.
"How do you know the Winchesters?"
Ellen froze, her eyes drifting toward her now non-tapping foot. Even Lauren spared a glance over the ever enticing book, but was sucked back down within seconds. Apparently this conversation wasn't enough to her liking.
"And how exactly did you know they were coming?" Sam stood up, displeased with the way her mother was acting. She put herself in what would have been Ellen's line of vision had she not been looking at the floor.
"Mom, tell me!" a whine sneaked up on Sam just then, reminding her of what Mrs. Renalds said about her being a small child. Strangely this time she didn't care.
Her mother seemed to strengthen then. She gazed up at Sam with hard, steely eyes and clamped her hands into fists. The very air seemed to change into a frosty danger zone. Sam took a step back.
"That is private business, Samantha Sno. I do not want my children knowing every detail of my life. Now where were you today?"
Rather than risk an argument with her mom, she decided to let her questions drop and tell her that she had been shopping for new clothes and that Dean had found her walking home and offered a ride. Lauren looked up.
"You liked your clothes so much you wore them home?" She asked.
"As a matter of fact, I did." Sam held her head high and marched into the private bedroom, closing the door behind her.
She didn't think her little ploy would get past them for long. They were both smart, and Sam sucked at lying. She was surprised that she had actually succeeded in straying away from the truth this once. She laughed at the fact that she might be getting better. Let's not lie to ourselves, here. They're simply tired.
Days passed slowly after that, boring and lacking anything of interest. Her mother fretted, Lauren read, Sam daydreamed. About Dean, mostly. About things that could never be, things that fluttered in the wind.
Dean had called Sam the day she went to Mrs. Renalds' house. He told her not to worry about the job because the Winchesters had it under control. He had told her they were on the trail of the monster. Sam found comfort in the fact that whatever it was it would be hiding itself, not hunting down her or her family. Plus, they were good, right? Famous for killing. Or so John was; she didn't know about Dean or Sammy. Too young to tell, she guessed. But everything would be fine.