The parish was dark by the time Mary arrived outside. There were no other cars in the parking lot. Breathing quietly without even really realizing she was doing it, Mary made her way to the front door of the church. Unsurprisingly, it was unlocked. Jim never had the doors closed when he was there—something about always being there to offer counsel if someone needed it.
"Come on, Jim," she muttered under her breath, pushing the door open.
Creeping into the church in the semidarkness was every bit as creepy as Mary had anticipated. Without the sunlight filtering through the stained glass, the images looked dead, drained of color. The pews creaked every few steps.
"Jim?" she called out quietly.
No answer. A sick feeling had settled in the pit of Mary's stomach without her permission. Slowly, she made her way up the aisle, turning her head from side to side. Dimly she recognized that Jim would have called her back if he had made it out okay, but the other half of her couldn't help the hope.
She found him in the back room of the church. Blood dripped slowly from his slit throat. Mary covered her mouth with her hand to strangle the soft cry that escaped. Unable to believe it, she knelt and felt for his pulse.
Nothing.
"Jim, please, come on. Get up. It's all right. You're fine. Barely a scratch."
He'd been a family friend for years, he'd been there for her when she needed a spare hand whether it was gathering fresh information or videotaping Sam's play's performance because she had to miss it.
She picked up her cell phone and dialed Dean's number without actually thinking about it. He was the only person that she wanted to talk to right now.
"Mom—I've been calling—"
"Jim's dead."
"Look, there's something I need to tell you abo—what?"
"I asked him to give me information on the demon and I think-I think." Mary choked back another sob. "I think they killed him because of it."
She cast another look down at Jim's body. The sick feeling in her stomach settled as she fell into the familiar routine. This was just a hunt. Jim was just another victim. She had to disconnect.
"What's wrong?"
Another problem. A distraction. Mary turned away from Jim's body and took a deep breath. She'd get through this, for him.
"Sam's been having these dreams. I know, I know, sometimes dreams are just dreams that's what I thought but this one...Mom, he dragged me out to Michigan and everything happened just like he said it would. And there was a kid, Max. He's dead, but he was psychic too. More powerful but I have a bad feeling about this."
Mary didn't trust much in the hunting business. Information could be wrong or incomplete or a flat-out lie. Good intentions could result in anything but. Gut feelings? She trusted that.
"Is Sam okay?"
"He's asleep right now. The thing with Max, it shook him up pretty bad. He's gonna need a little time."
Mary looked down at Jim's body. His eyes were slightly open and his mouth gaped. The phone he had been using to call her was crushed beneath his foot. Mary had no doubt that he had destroyed it rather than let the demon see who he had been contacting.
"Look, Dean, about my leaving—"
"We can talk about this later." He sounded so old, like the world rested on his shoulders. "The thing is, Max's mother died in a house fire when he was a baby."
Mary's breath caught in her throat. "You mean like—"
"She was pinned to the ceiling."
She closed her eyes. Here she'd abandoned her sons—again—to chase her husband's killer and they'd managed to find out more than she had without even really looking for it.
"Okay. Dean, Pastor Jim told me about a way we can kill this thing."
Mary could almost see him arching his eyebrow. "We?"
"Yes, we. I messed up, all right? I need you two. We're family. We can do this together. A hunter named Danny Elkins has a gun that can kill anything. Think you two can meet me in Manning, Colorado?"
"I don't like the feel of this."
"Neither do I. I'm gonna call in some backup and see what I can get."
/
"Well, if it ain't Mary Winchester. It's been a long time."
The Roadhouse had never been a haunt of Mary's, but she was particularly close with the owner. Ellen's husband, Bill, had died on the hunt nearly a decade and a half ago. Call them crazy, but they'd bonded over it.
"Good to see you too, Ellen."
She slid on to a barstool. Ellen ignored a man's call for another drink and planted herself in front of Mary. Her daughter, Jo, looked up from her pool game, but only for the barest of moments. Her next shot won her the game.
"What brings you into my neck of the woods?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. "Must be something important, you never drop by anymore."
Mary knew better than to let Ellen make her feel guilty. "Don't look at me. Blame the boys. I've been chasing them all over the country for the last six months or so."
Ellen craned her neck, peering about the bar as if she could summon Sam or Dean just by looking. "Thought they were college boys now."
"Nope. There's a story there, but—"
She'd been about to say that she didn't have time to tell it, but Ellen's next look stopped her dead in her tracks. Sighing, Mary relayed the story of the last few months: how she'd thought she'd had a lead on the thing that killed John and failed to call Dean, how they'd come back to Stanford to find Jessica dead, the latest revelation about the name of the demon and Jim's death.
"Never thought he'd go out like that," Ellen said, shaking her head. "All right, Mary, you didn't just drop in here to chat. Spit."
"I thought you'd like to come along. Truth is, I could use a few extra hands on deck and Bobby won't leave that salvage yard of his, so—"
"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm retired!"
Mary was about to protest, but Jo flopped on to the barstool next to her before she got the chance. It didn't take a genius to gather that she'd been listening in the entire time. Looking at the wad of cash she'd apparently won off the guys she'd been playing pool with—or, more accurately, scamming—Mary wasn't too surprised.
"Come on, Mom, what if you were close to the thing that killed Dad? Wouldn't you want to get it?"
Ellen's mouth hardened into a thin line. Jo shot a not-so-covert wink Mary's way. She knew exactly the buttons to push to get what she wanted. Mary had met Bill and Ellen while on her four month murder spree following John's death and had gotten pretty close as far as hunters went. Thanks to her self-imposed 'no further than one hundred miles from home' rule, she hadn't even met Jo until the girl was seventeen and both her boys were off at school. From what she'd gathered about Jo, she was determined to be a hunter even if it wasn't what her mother wanted.
"Fine."
/
Night had long since fallen in the mountains by the time that Mary, Jo and Ellen reached Manning. Danny Elkins was an old contact of Bobby's, but most hunters kept their distance from him. He fancied himself a vampire hunter and almost exclusively went after them. As such, he had unintentionally drawn a line between himself and the others. They chased everything. He had specifications.
They pulled in town, Ellen and Jo in Ellen's truck and Mary in her minivan, just in time to see the familiar shape of the Impala inch its way back onto paved road again. Dean leaned out of the window.
"Who's that?"
"Ellen, Jo, my boys."
She'd certainly talked about them enough for Ellen and Jo not to need an introduction. Mary noticed Jo scrutinizing her son very carefully. Oh dear. That probably wasn't going to end very well.
"Elkins is dead. They were thinking bear attack, but…"
"But you don't think so," Mary finished.
Dean shook his head. "Coroner's report said—"
"Slit throat?" Jo guessed.
Her son looked impressed when he replied. "Yeah."
Ellen started her engine again. "Meet up at the motel?"
It didn't take very long to get everyone checked in. The woman at the check-in desk looked a little flustered, as if she'd never seen so many people before. Honestly, with a job like that and town like this, Mary wasn't surprised.
They ended up in Mary's room, using the empty bed as a strategy table. Ellen had a few roadmaps from the area spread out near the headboard and Sam had perched himself on the end, laptop on his lap.
"What are we looking for?" he asked.
Ellen shrugged. "Abandoned areas, probably far from human contact. They don't want to answer questions about not going out in the daylight."
Dean looked up from the map. "What, it burns them?"
Jo jumped in. "Naw, just gives 'em a nasty sunburn feeling."
Sam pointed at a place on the map, probably about ten minutes down the next exit off the highway. He swiveled around the laptop to show a decrepit house. The article beneath it talked about whether or not to save the historic site, but Mary had no interest in that.
She grinned. "Yahtzee."
/
The combination of the cabin ahead and the muggy summer air made it almost feel like they were camping. Mary nearly snorted at the thought. Usually, campers weren't carrying machetes.
"I'll have my eye on Jo," she muttered under her breath to Ellen.
Jo and the boys were up ahead. It hadn't taken them very long to start getting along. Ellen had noted that it had been too long since Jo had had some friends her own age. It was just as true for Sam and Dean. They cared about each other, but sometimes they needed a little breathing room.
"Nobody's dying on my watch," Ellen promised.
Jo, the quietest, was chosen to scope out the scene. She stole up to a window and took a good long look inside. Just as softly, she hurried back to them.
"There's at least ten of them, plus at least one civilian," she whispered.
Mary shrugged. They'd had worse odds. At the jerk of her head, the group moved in. Mary focused on her breathing, in and out. She avoided the creaky floorboards by mere guesswork. Around her, the others did the same. The vampires must have been filled up on blood, because none of them stirred. On Ellen's signal, they all raised their weapons as one. Chaos broke out.
Mary stopped thinking, stopped strategizing. She allowed herself to go on autopilot, swinging and hacking with everything that she had. Across the room, Ellen dragged Sam out of the way of one of the monsters. Jo and Dean had somehow wound up back to back, fighting as if they'd done it like that all their life. Mary ducked a wild swing from one of the creatures, sending herself forward into a roll.
God, she was too old for this.
Just as she came up from the tuck, she noticed one of the vampires holding a gun in one of his hands. The other held a knife. Mary dove for his knees, sending them both down in a tangle of arms and legs.
She wrestled with him for a brief moment before snagging the gun. She opened her mouth to tell everyone to move out when—
"Stop, now!"
One of the vampires had his arm wrapped securely around Sam's throat. Her son struggled, but each strike was becoming weaker. Judging by the dazed look in his eyes, it wasn't long before he passed out.
"Yeah, about that," Mary said.
She raised the gun and fired.
The shot was perfect, hitting him directly between the eyes. Both he and Sam dropped. The other vampires took one look at each other before racing off. Ellen, hand on her heart, raised her eyes to the sky.
"You, Mary Winchester, are going to be the death of me."