"The hunters. Some operate in teams, though a lot of them run their gigs alone. All the resources I've ever looked through, there was never a time when there weren't our kind running around. That's our job. To hunt. To take these creatures down before they hurt our world."
John was silent, simply listening. It really felt like he should already know this stuff. "Sometimes they die. Sometimes we die. Sometimes we become so empty and unfeeling that it doesn't matter if we live or not. They're the worst and the most dangerous hunters you could ever come across. The ones that don't care anymore. There are groups, places where you'd least expect them that look after hunters. We're an underground community, John."
She flicked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I lot of us wouldn't think of it, but they're heroes. They – we – give up any chance of a normal life so others can live out theirs. That takes guts. You have to believe that you can make a difference. That you matter. If you don't believe you can do it, you'll be one of the shortest-lived hunters ever."
Gabby crossed her legs. "As for me, I'm running alone because no one else I've met can really keep up with me. I guess I'm kinda crazy."
"You're not crazy." John said.
"Reassuring, coming from you." She said dryly. "I've killed creatures. I've killed men who were working with demons. I've killed hunters who've been trying to kill me. I've done some damn untasteful things. I'm probably on the Hunter's Most Wanted now. Grossed you out yet?"
"You'll have to try better than that." He looked out the window toward the open road. Suddenly he was almost certain he could hear strains of Back in Black.
"Do you know Cerberus, John?" Gabby asked seriously.
Cerberus.
'Do you remember who you are?'
"Not personally." He answered. "That's the three headed dog that guards Hell, right?"
"Right." She nodded. "Also interchangeable with several other mythical beings around the world. Who all happen to guard Hell. Since I don't really know who he/she/it is, for the sake of the conversation, I'll call it the Guardian. With me so far?"
John just gave her a look. "You've been hunting this Guardian?"
"Kind of. I suppose you could say its tradition."
"What?"
"My family hunts its family. My father went after its father; my grandmother went after its grandmother. It's a tangled web we weave."
He was quiet for a long moment. "Why do you trust me?" He asked finally.
Gabby bit her bottom lip. "I suppose," she said. "I feel like I owe you something."
"How do you figure that?"
"The night you stopped being the old you." She said. "You must have been following the trail of something else and I was stalking my Guardian. I'd known for a while that there were other hunters not that far from me and normally I would have poked around to find out who they were. I didn't because I was running out of time."
John was listening intently. She kept him around because she thought his amnesia was partly her fault.
"Somewhere there our paths must have crossed. You got in the way, and –BAM." She finished. "I was thinking to take you to hospital but I realised that probably wasn't a good idea."
"Why?"
"Hunters get in trouble. Civilians getting in the way, thinking they know better than we do. Occasionally we go down for it. If you really can't remember who you were, I thought I better not…"
"Dump me in it?" John offered.
"More or less. You're a good kid, and I think I like you. But I didn't think I could really forgive myself if the government found something to charge you on. Several good men I knew were given the chair for protecting people. How do you convince a judge that you were hunting vampires, or putting down a werewolf? I don't want to see you take a bullet in the back."
John was touched by her sincerity. "You mean that?"
"Don't get complacent, kid." There was a smile in Gabby's voice. "I'd do the same thing for Kat."
"But Kat's your sister. Family is different, isn't it? You're supposed to protect your family."
'You and me. We're all that's left.'
"Kat is only one sliver of the family tree. You haven't seen the rest." She sounded tired. "I'm going to bed. Do you want the left side or the right?"
John blushed as she proceeded to take her top off. "I'll get changed in the bathroom." She shrugged nonchalantly.
John walked back down the hall to the small bathroom he had spotted when Kat had lead them through the house. Something was hanging on the wall near what seemed to be another bedroom caught his eye and he stepped forward to take a closer look.
It was a family photograph. He spotted the lean, auburn-haired Gabby at once, standing in the centre of the group, smiling cheekily. She would have had to be around fifteen or sixteen. The dark-haired Kat was by her side, trying to teasingly elbow her out of the frame.
And there was a father, with neatly parted brown hair that always seemed to look untidy, standing with a hand on both his boys' shoulders. And there should have been a tall blonde woman beaming by his side, fierce and proud.
But she wasn't there anymore. Neither was the father. They had given themselves up for something greater.
John took a step back, blinked, and shook his head tiredly. "Never again." He muttered. "Never again eat Burritos before bed."
Kat Rosalini was up long before he and Gabby made it to the kitchen for some breakfast. She was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and the morning newspaper. "Good morning." She said archly.
Her sister just grunted in reply, pulling a box of Lucky Charms from the cupboard.
Lucky Charms. There's something about that cereal. John sat down, running a hand over his freshly shaven chin. He felt a bit cleaner now he wasn't quite so… furry.
"Gee seems to have found the cupboard." Kat said conversationally. "You might as well go and see what you can find."
"Ah, thank you."
"And he's polite too! Much better than that last thing you went hunting with." She said to her sister. "You remember that older guy that you beat to a pulp because he tried to sell you out?"
Gabby frowned darkly. "I remember." She returned to the table with a bowl and some milk. "So, what's the sitch?"
Kat spread out the paper before her. The headline blared 'Ed the butcher to go down in murder/mutilation case'. Gabby grimaced as she read the beginning paragraph.
"Please tell me this isn't your new case."
"Hey, you don't see me telling you how to do your job." Kat retorted flatly. "This man, Eddie Jenkins, is being charged with murder in the first degree of Detective Inspector Paul Barrett."
"And you think he's innocent?"
"I've interviewed witnesses that back up Ed's story that he was in Manhattan at the time of the murders. One's a casino owner who remembers having him thrown out after he was caught cheating at cards, another is s retired schoolteacher who he helped run down a bag-snatcher for her, and the third is DC April McCaan."
"The woman you saw yesterday." John remarked.
Kat nodded. "But I've also got video surveillance showing Ed beating the crap out of the cop with a knife in his hand."
"Has he got a twin?" Gabby suggested half-heartedly as she drizzled milk on her cereal.
"Only child."
"Maybe he's just bought a very good alibi."
"I went to school with Ed." Another startling revelation. "He never minded going down for something as long as he was definitely at fault."
"Damn, Kat. You're going all personal on us."
She gave her sister a poisonous look. "Are you trying to tell me something?"
"Maybe for once this isn't my sort of thing."
"Since when is it ever 'not your sort of thing'?" Kat rose, her chair pushed back with a screech. Looking disgusted, she walked out of the room.
"I think you pissed her off."
"Eh. What are older siblings for?"
'I'm the oldest, which means I know best.'
"Yeah." John said. A moment later, the kitchen door swung open again, and Kat marched back through it. There was a tape clutched in her slim hand.
"What are you doing this time?" Gabby asked with exaggerated exasperation.
"I thought you might like to see the CCTV tape." Kat said, before slipping the tape into the small television on the countertop. Gabby watched, still chewing her breakfast, completely unimpressed. Kat frowned and fast-forwarded it before letting it play normally.
"That's supposedly Ed." She pointed to a tall man with black hair. He walked across the street casually until he was right under the camera. He glanced up at the lens before walking away. Kat rewound and then paused.
"There! Does that look like any camera flare you've ever seen before?"
The pupils of his eyes were completely lit up. John suddenly went very still.
'He's walking around with my face. I'd say it's a bit personal!'
Gabby frowned, staring at the television. "John, I think we've got a-"
"Shapeshifter." He growled.
"Um, yeah."
Kat Rosalini lived in a nice place with putrid-smelling flowers out the front. The Impala crawled into a park across the street.
"Now what do we do?" Jo asked. "Pretend we're cops?"
"She's a criminal lawyer, Jo. She'd know all the police around here. Same with the FBI." There was a deep frown etched on his face. Jo knew he had an impulse to walk up to the door and shake the lawyer until the information he wanted fell out of her.
"We have to make sure Dean's actually here." Sam said. "So that means…"
"We wait?"
"Yeah. We wait."
"Man, that sucks."
One hour passed, then two. Jo started playing with her phone but Sam stayed fixated on the door. Finally it swung open and he pinched Jo's arm to get her attention. "Look."
A woman with short, auburn hair and a freckled nose walked down the front steps, bag over her shoulder. The duo watched as she turned back. "Get a move on, John!" They heard her say.
"Alright." A man said exasperatedly. He followed behind her, hands in his pockets, as she went to the garage and wheeled out her motorbike. Jo and Sam both gasped as he turned to the sun and both clearly saw his face.
Sam didn't think he'd seen his brother cleanly shaven since he had been trying really hard to impress that girl in his last year of high school. Gone too were the ripped jeans, and his hair was even combed.
He couldn't help it. "What have they done to him?"
There was no mistaking Dean Winchester, his confident walk and his always-amused grin.
But there was something wrong with the way he held himself, and the way he was talking to the girl. In hindsight, she was fairly good-looking, but the way he spoke to her held no sexual overtones.
And the woman had called him 'John'.
"God, what's going on?" Sam whispered.
"Let's go find out." Jo said, starting the engine as Kat's sister Gabrielle and Dean left on the bike. The Impala roared into action as it followed them down the street.
"Okay, Kat said we didn't have any CCTV of Ed actually coming down the other end of the street." Gabby said. Since her small disagreement with her little sister, she had slipped back into 'professional' mode. "He would have had to, to reach Paul Barrett's house. But we do have a tape of him turning up on Barrett's doorstep."
"So it's hideaway must be somewhere between Barrett's place and the spot where the camera is."
"Very good." She said. "You must have done this before."
"I don't remember." He said automatically.
'I think this might be the place.'
'Why do you say that?'
'Because there's another puke-inducing pile by your face.'
"Sewers." He said. "Try the sewer system."
Gabby narrowed her eyes at the tone of certainty in his voice. "Alright. We'll try the sewers."
They were careful to be sure that no one was watching as John pried up the manhole cover. Gabby went down first, shining the torch below her. John stepped onto the rung behind her, pulling the cover closed over his head.
Sealing them in.
"I don't like this." He said.
"Your honesty is touching, but shut up." They proceeded along the length of the tunnel, water sloshing over their boots.
Something was splashing in the water in front of them and Gabby shone her torch along the stretch of tunnel. A small, damp creature was swimming away from the intruders, squeaking all the way.
"Rats."
"You don't like rats?"
"I remember that."
Just then, something else hit the water, hard. Too large to be another rat or other rodent. John withdrew his gun, his finger tightening on the trigger as the pair of them came to a stop. It was coming toward them, creating ripples.
Gabby swung her torch in a wide arc. "Come out, come out, wherever you are." She sung out softly.
Nothing.
"But it was here," John said. "It couldn't have just-"
"John, look out!"
He didn't even get to turn as something heavy crashed across the back of his head. All he saw was Gabby's surprised expression, and then he was gone.
