"If I'd known it was one of yours, I would've said something," Bobby said, softly. "You know that, right?"
McKenna nodded, but continued to stare off the porch, into the oncoming evening twilight. She didn't want to breathe, much less even talk, but the words came spilling out of her mouth, completely against her will.
"You know, I don't even remember all of their names, Bobby," she began. "I've blocked a lot of that out, but I remember their eyes…and every single thing they did to us."
Bobby reached out and placed a gentle hand on McKenna's knee. She initially jerked at the contact, but he refused to remove the innocent touch. After a few seconds she relaxed, and even placed her hand over his, allowing the comfort he was offering to flow into her body.
"I hit Dean," she said, suddenly. "Clocked him right in the face."
Bobby stared at her for a moment, his eyes wide with wonder, before cracking up into hysterical laughter. "Well, if you hit him, I'm sure he deserved it."
"He didn't," McKenna argued. "He and Sam heard what the demon said to me. They knew right away that it knew me, and that I had tussled with it before. They figured it out, and started asking questions. I got mad, hit Dean, and drove here as fast as I could."
Bobby squeezed his hand around her knee. "Then you know they'll be right behind you. Those boys are probably on their way here, right now, as we speak."
"Then I better be on my way," McKenna groaned, and stood to her feet.
"Kenna, I think you should tell 'em."
She turned back and stared at Bobby. "All this time in that wheelchair must be making you senile, old man," she chuckled.
"I'm serious," Bobby said. "I think you should tell 'em."
"Bobby, they'd never understand."
"Yes, they would," he argued, gently. "You went through hell, Kenna. And believe me, those boys know an awful lot about that."
McKenna stood there silently, embracing the night's darkness, for a very long time. Finally, she glanced over at her bike in the driveway and smiled.
"Bobby, I'm going to go for a little ride," she said, silently giving him permission to tell Sam and Dean where to find her when they showed up. "You know where I'll be."
~~~~~*****~~~~~
A half hour later, Dean pulled onto a gravel road, and followed it all the way to the dead end Bobby said they would find. Though describing it as a dead end was really pushing it. Sheer cliff suited it a little better. The Impala's headlights shone across a familiar Harley as Dean brought the car to a stop. He turned the engine off, but left the lights on.
Sam craned his neck out the passenger side window, and looked as far ahead into the darkness as the headlights would allow. "It looks like there used to be a bridge here."
"Yeah, that's what Bobby said," Dean agreed. "He said they tore this one down and built a new one a few miles away, on the main road. He said McKenna comes here a lot to think."
Sam and Dean climbed out of the car, each grabbed a flashlight, and began to walk toward the edge of the cliff, finding the telltale remains of what used to be the old bridge as they went. On the last trestle, they finally found who they were looking for.
McKenna was sitting on the long beam, legs bent and pulled up to her chest, her chin resting on her knees.
Dean frowned. She looked so small, so broken, and alone.
"Kenna?" Sam questioned, softly. For a long time, she didn't say anything. Her eyes just remained steady, staring out over the ravine, out into the darkness. As her silence continued, Sam pulled a picture from his back pocket and crouched down next to her. "Bobby told us to give this to you."
McKenna reached out, took the photo from his hands, and looked at it. Staring back was a little girl of about nine years of age. Surrounding her was a large group of robed men, two of them resting a hand on each of her shoulders. The little girl was smiling, but to the trained eye, it was obvious that she didn't mean it.
"You guys know anything about the bridge that used to be here?" she asked, suddenly. "About where it used to go?'
Sam shook his head as Dean sat, joining his fellow hunters on the ground.
"There used to be an old, religious sect across the ravine," McKenna began. "A group of men who called themselves the Brothers."
A light went on in Dean's eyes. "I've heard of them," he said. "Bobby mentioned it once. They were some of the sickest devil worshippers on the planet. I thought it was all just hunter legend, though."
"It was far from legend, Dean," McKenna whispered, and glanced back, over her shoulder at the brothers. They were both now sitting on the trestle with her, their eyes steady on nothing else but her.
"Seven years ago, after rumors spread about the Brothers being involved in some…" she paused, pursed her lips in disgust, and forced herself to continue. "Unscrupulous activities. The local cops never had enough evidence, but a renegade group of hunters knew better. They believed that the Brothers weren't human. They believed they were demons. And they were right. The Compound was finally raided on May 23, 2002 and fourteen children were found. All of them girls. All of them under the age of fifteen."
Sam and Dean glanced at one another for a long, silent moment. They each knew what the other was thinking. They each knew, or at least had some sick idea, of what must have happened to the girls.
"Whose children were they?" Sam asked.
"They were all kidnapped," McKenna whispered. "From all over the country. Taken from their beds at night, and their parents savagely killed. Then, they were taken to the Compound, and never seen again."
Tears stung at her eyes, and after seven long years of fighting them off, McKenna couldn't hold them back any longer.
"The things that were done to those girls," she sobbed. "They were things you wouldn't do to an animal, much less another human being, much less a little girl. Things two consenting adults would never even think of doing…"
The brothers closed their eyes and looked away, both unsure if they could take much more. But, Dean had to ask. He had to know. She couldn't have been one of the hunters. She would have been too young…
"Kenna, were you one of the hunters that raided the Compound?"
"No," she answered, softly, as if in a daze. "I was one of the girls they took."
A tear slid down Sam's cheek, and one from Dean quickly followed.
"When I was five, I was taken from my own home, from my own bed, in the middle of the night by two robed men," McKenna cried. "They killed my parents right in front of me, and took me to the Compound. There were other little girls there. Some of them older than me, and believe it or not, some of them, younger, too. They brought me across the bridge, and I lived there for ten years. Ten long years."
Dean watched her, wanted to reach out and comfort somehow, but there was nothing he could offer that would ever be enough.
"Over the years, girls would come and go a lot," McKenna went on. "Usually by the time they reached their fourteenth birthdays, they disappeared."
"But you said you were fifteen," Sam argued, gently.
"The Brothers always told me that I was special. That I was their favorite. So, when my fourteenth birthday came and went, I was pretty surprised that I was still alive. They kept me around for a full extra year, probably longer if the hunters hadn't shown up."
McKenna stopped for a moment, wiped her eyes with already wet fingers, and kept going. "I used that extra time to plot an escape plan, to get me, and the rest of the girls out of there. They usually kept us down in the cellar, away from the light of day, but one day, I heard a bunch of trucks pull up, and heard people talking. I grabbed the rest of the girls, and got them out through the old vent shafts in the ceiling."
Sam and Dean wanted to stop her, wanted to tell her that the rest could wait for another day, but the words kept coming, and they somehow seemed to be healing her.
"When we got outside, there were people running around everywhere. Red and blue lights were flashing from the cop cars. The EMTs grabbed up the other girls, and took them to the hospital. I stayed behind. I had to make sure the other girls were taken care of, first."
"Where were the Brothers?" Dean asked.
"Gone," McKenna whispered. "Just…gone. There were nine of them, and somehow, they all managed to just slip away."
She glanced down at the picture that Sam had given her earlier.
"That little girl was me," she whispered and reached up, spreading her right hand across her bare collarbone. Her left went down and reverently touched the photo.
"I miss that necklace," she said, pointing to the silver and turquoise butterfly charm the little girl was wearing. "I must've lost it when I broke out of the Compound, because I never saw it again after that."
"But, what happened, McKenna?" Sam questioned, suddenly. "What happened to you after you got out?"
McKenna smiled softly, and almost chuckled as a new memory popped into her head. "I had finally gotten the last girl into the ambulance, and I was so tired. I was all but dead on my feet, when all of a sudden, this man came out of nowhere. He picked me up, carried me to his truck, and took me to the hospital, himself."
She stopped, looked at the boys, and actually smiled. "He said his name was Bobby Singer."
Sam and Dean looked up and just stared at each other. It had all come full circle. How Bobby knew her. How he'd come to be so protective of her, and how he kept her hidden from other hunters.
But there was still one question that hadn't been answered. One thing that still didn't make sense…
"Kenna, how did you become a hunter?" Sam asked.
"I blamed myself for the Brothers getting away, Sam," she began, softly. "The last couple years that I was at the Compound, the Brothers started letting me have more freedom. They let me go into town to get supplies by myself. I started mentioning to people where I was from. And that's what started the suspicions toward the Brothers, and what finally brought the cops and hunters in. But they got away anyway, and it was all my fault."
"That's not true, Kenna," Dean said. "You saved all those girls."
"No, I didn't, Dean," she sniffed, and tried to wipe a few tears away. Sam and Dean looked at her, a frown etched over both of their faces.
"The fourteen girls I saved? They're all dead now. Car wreaks, freak accidents, Murders, Cancer, other illnesses. Each of them died very painful, very tragic deaths. And all within only three months of us walking out of the Compound."
"But, why? I don't understand," Sam whispered.
"Neither did I. Heck, I still don't," McKenna agreed. "All I knew was that I had to get those filthy demons for what they did to my girls…and what they did to me."
"So you went to Bobby," Dean stated. "And he taught you everything he knew."
"That's right. But I went out on my own, and learned more, too. Like the ritual we performed today. That demon's back in hell now, and it will never come out again."
"How many more do you have left? And how have you been tracking them all these years?" Sam wondered, aloud.
"After today, I have three left," McKenna clarified, quickly. "And they're still up to their old tricks. They follow what they're attracted to most: Little girls. I keep an eye out for child abuse cases, mostly. Follow the kids, find my demons."
Sam and Dean nodded. No wonder she worked so well with children. They were all she knew, all she truly cared about. And she would clearly stop at nothing to save a child from the hell she went through.
"Yes, hell, Dean," a familiar voice suddenly echoed into Dean's ears. He glanced up, looking to Sam and McKenna, though he already knew that they hadn't heard it.
Cas, he thought.
"McKenna has come into your life for a reason, Dean."
Dean said nothing, attempting to appear normal to his fellow hunters. He tried his best to ignore the angels' words, but Cas continued to speak.
"She experienced hell, Dean. Just like you did. The only difference is that McKenna didn't die. She lived through it, and is still suffering."
Dean nodded emphatically as Sam and McKenna continued to talk, though he didn't really hear one word of it.
"McKenna is very special, Dean. There's a much bigger picture, here. And it's your job to find out what it is…"
Behind him, Dean felt a gust of wind brush the back of his neck. He turned, but saw nothing.
Sam looked up and his brother and frowned. He had felt it, too. He glanced at Dean and mouthed one word, "Cas?"
Dean nodded, and pulled himself up to his feet. Sam followed, and gently pulled McKenna up with him. Her tears were falling freely now, and Sam hesitantly reached up, placed a gentle arm around her shoulders, and led her toward the Impala. She jerked at his touch, at first, but then seemed to accept it.
McKenna is very special…Dean closed his eyes, and wondered at what Cas had said…and what it all really meant.
