AN: So...I'm gonna plug something here. I just published my first book this week. Go to Amazon and search for Version 2.0 by C.M. Adams. Check it out and lemme know what you think :)

*~.~*

Back at the hotel...

After a couple reunion hug-greetings, Jody Mills followed the Winchester brothers into their hotel room. "It's really good to see you boys," she told them.

"Good to see you, too," Sam replied for them.

"How is it that you knew exactly where to be tonight?" Dean asked her. "How long have you been in town, and why didn't you call us before you knew we were already here?"

"It was a time thing," she told him. "I wasn't sure what you might be in the middle of, and as soon as I found out, I knew I needed to act pretty fast. I thought I could handle this on my own, when I first headed out."

"What is it we're dealing with?" Sam asked. "And how is it that you know?"

Salvage Yard, Sioux Falls, SD. 24 hours ago...

Sheriff Jody Mills had been going to Bobby Singer's shambles of a house every couple of weeks since his passing. Well, since she'd helped out Sam in finding Dean, anyway. Her intentions had been to clean everything up and out and maybe try and rebuild; bring back a piece of something that was really the only inanimate thing on the planet that still made you think of the man. Granted, even in its current state, it did that. But that wasn't the point.

She missed Bobby something terrible. There was so much left unsaid; so many things she wished that she'd done when it would've mattered. Helping him, for one. It had been thrilling to help out, and it had made her feel like that was her place. Like Bobby would want her to be helping the boys. And she knew how much Bobby loved the Winchesters, like they were his own. It made her love them, too.

So her mission had quickly evolved into trying to learn whatever she could through the salvaged items she had slowly been collecting from the debris. The collection, she admitted, was quite small in comparison to what used to line the walls of this place. Jody had found a dozen books that weren't completely destroyed, on the ground level. There were jars of things that she couldn't quite identify. Though the labels could be closely analyzed if she had the proper equipment.

Today had been the first day in a three-day weekend off of work. She'd been at the house all day, and had officially finished the ground floor. It was then that she realized that she could get into the basement; that the stairs hadn't been too awfully licked by flames. She was still cautious while descending them, though.

There was this strange creaking noise coming from somewhere down there. She pulled out her flashlight and pointed it around the dim lower level. The sound was almost as if a cricket had made its way in, where nothing else could. And that's what she'd thought it was for a moment or two, until she realized that the sound was too precise in pattern. She began to follow the noise, and it led her to a large iron door. Unhooking the latch wasn't too difficult, but her heart was racing, still, with not knowing exactly what in the hell might be in this next room.

Jody pushed the door, standing back as it opened with the typical horror-movie screeching of metal. She aimed her flashlight around the entire room before entering. "Okay, yeah," she said to herself. "No way I'm going in there without a lot more light." She turned with intention to go back up to her vehicle, but spotted several lanterns on what used to be a functional work bench. Somehow, they'd managed to escape the flames. Most of the basement had, really.

Jody picked up one of the lanterns and turned the self-lighting knob on the side. When it glowed to life, she smiled. "Bobby, you're still my hero."

Within five minutes, the panic room as she had come to figure out was its purpose, was lit up with every lantern she could manage to find. She traced the sound which, now that she was in the room, was more like a beeping, to a locker. A locker with a lock on it. An obstacle that was a mere time setback, as there were some bolt cutters out on the work bench.

Jody made quick work of the lock and pulled open the locker, backing up as if she'd expected bats to come flying out of it. Instead, she found it to be stacked with books and small boxes. She was actually kind of thrilled. Bobby had managed to save another small portion of his library and whatever was in these boxes. And whatever was making that incessant beeping noise. She set out to find its origin before attempting to look through everything in the locker.

Books were pulled out, hurriedly, and placed on the table beside the locker, until she came to a cigar box that was obviously housing the culprit of the sound. She carefully pulled the box from the locker and walked to the table with it. Hands on the lid, for a fleeting moment, she wondered if this thing would explode if she opened it.

"If this thing kills me, I am so kicking your ass on the other side," she said toward the sky, before looking back down at the box and carefully lifting the lid...

Hotel...present time...

"There was an old watch, somehow rigged to go off at least a few days before I ever found it," Jody explained. "And newspaper clippings from over twenty years ago, and then some from over forty years ago. All of them surrounding Hooker, Oklahoma. And this," she handed a small notebook to Sam, which he opened to the first page, immediately recognizing Bobby's handwriting.

"Bobby's handwriting," Dean confirmed over Sam's shoulder.

Jody nodded, "He'd been researching it, apparently."

"He put all of this together, and never said anything to us?" Sam furrowed his brows.

"Give 'im some credit, Sam," Dean defended. "I'm sure he didn't think he'd be dead. That and obviously he figured out there'd be a long waiting period before this thing started up again."

"He planned on being here," Jody told them. "Trip is all planned out in the back of that thing." There was a sad look in her eyes. "So I decided to do it in his place."

"You never considered calling us?" Dean asked, a fraction of annoyance in his voice.

"Actually, I did consider it. Especially after I crossed into the city limits."

"Do we even know what it is? Does the book say how to kill it?" he asked.

"Not exactly," Jody took the book from Sam and started flipping through it as she sank down to sit on the edge of one of the beds. Sam sat down beside her as Dean paced. "But he did say that he was pretty sure it had something to do with the Cherokee presence in the city. He was on to something, but it seems like he didn't have the time to dig further into it, when he'd discovered all of this, which seems perfectly understandable."

"Understatement," Dean mumbled. He stopped his pacing when he saw Sam's 'thinking' face. "What is it?"

"I don't..." his sentence tapered off as he headed for his laptop at the table and pulled it out of hibernation. Jody and Dean both headed over, curious as to what Sam was doing. He began typing and clicking away, and within moments, his face muscles relaxed and morphed a bit into what Dean had come to know as his 'I should've known' face. "Of course," Sam shook his head. "I can't believe I didn't consider the Cherokee connection."

"What'd you find?" Dean asked.

"If you Wiki shadow man, there's a link to this blog. 'Raven Mockers are the most feared type of witches of the Cherokee people. Raven Mockers are a form of vampiric-witch that sucks the life from its victims, as well as consumes human hearts'," Sam read and then looked up at Dean.

"So we're dealing with a witch," Dean leaned over Sam's shoulder. "Explains why no EMF readings. But I've never seen a witch do that kinda stuff."

"By day," Sam continued skimming the page and reiterating back to Dean and Jody, "It appears as a normal human being. By night, it can transform into a ball of fire or light and then roam the land in search of its victims."

"But this one looks like a shadow most of the time," Dean mentioned.

"Can't have a shadow without light," Sam shrugged.

"What else does it say?" Jody asked.

"Uh..." Sam scanned over the page some more, "Raven Mockers also have the ability of invisibility and flight."

"This sounds more like a DC comic book villain than a witch," Jody commented.

"Any way to kill it, mentioned in this thing?" Dean asked.

"It says the easiest way to kill it is to recognize it in its human form."

"Well...that should be easy, right? This thing is at least a hundred years old."

"But it might not necessarily look it," Sam said. "It says when the Raven Mocker consumes the heart of it's victim it automatically absorbs the remaining years of that person's life. Because of this, Raven Mockers are near immortal."

"So this thing could be anyone in town," Jody said aloud.

"And it could be anywhere," Sam added.

"Well that's just awesome," Dean sighed. "Anyone up for a beer? I could definitely go for a few. And possibly taking my frustrations out on a few douche-bags. I know a place with plenty of both..."

Tbc...