"An anonymous tip led police to a home in the Central West End, where a S.W.A.T. team discovered a local woman bound and gagged. Her attacker, approximately twenty-four years of age, was discovered hiding inside of her home."
A pencil sketch of a young man with close-cropped hair and a stubbled jaw appeared on screen. Elo looked at him from across a crowded bar. She honed in on the quiet murmur of the news reporter beneath the racket of happy hour. A normal girl wouldn't have been able to hear the television, even sitting directly beneath it at the bar, but Elo was far from ordinary. Her ears were exceptional. She could hear the heartbeat of the man smoking a cigarette outside, a car horn ten blocks away, a moth beating itself to death against a street lamp around the corner.
"If anyone sees this man," the reporter said, "contact authorities immediately. Suspect is believed to be highly dangerous."
The man didn't look all that dangerous to Elo. Pretty boy, she thought, as she sipped her whiskey. She was only eighteen, but no bartender had ever carded her. She could look much older than she was when she wanted to, and considering she had been on her own since she was thirteen, she'd had to grow up faster than most.
As the weekly forecast replaced the sketch, a man slid into the booth across from her. Elo hadn't seen him arrive. She'd been distracted by the news report and cursed herself for letting her guard slip for even a second. He always found her when she did that.
"You should be in St. Louis," said the man. He was older, early fifties maybe, with a leathered face. He could be anyone, just another white man in a sea of millions, only appearances were deceiving. Elo knew that. She had learned how easy it was to be what people wanted to see.
"Too late now," she said. "The boys will be gone by the time I get there. I'm not psychic, you know. I can't know where they'll be before they arrive."
The man leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table, and his eyes burned yellow in the dim bar light. "I'm starting to think you don't want to find them," he said. "I hope you haven't forgotten our agreement."
Elo tossed back the last of her whiskey. Of course she hadn't forgotten. How could she when he kept reminding her? Half the country would be looking for Dean Winchester now. It didn't matter that he hadn't really attacked that woman in St. Louis. Elo's money was on a shape shifter. "What's so special about them, anyhow?" she said, emboldened by the whiskey still burning in her empty stomach. It had been too long since she had fed. She wouldn't be able to put it off for much longer, but she hated how messy it always was.
The bartender arrived with a fresh whiskey for her. He winked one black eye as he set the glass on the table. Demon, thought Elo, cursing herself again for not noticing sooner. She scanned the crowded bar again, seeing flashes of more black eyes, and realized she had been expected here tonight.
"Are you having second thoughts? I hope not," said Azazeal.
"I'm curious, that's all," said Elo.
Azazeal leaned back. His eyes returned to a normal, human color. "Don't worry," he said, giving her a smile that made her skin crawl. "You'll get what you want, if you do your part."
Elo sighed. Oh well, ignorance is bliss. She was better off not knowing what yellow eyes had planned for the Winchester boys. Besides, she didn't care about them. It was their father who interested her more, consumed her, tormented her. She slid out of the booth and slapped a twenty onto the sticky table. Some people called her a monster, but she always tipped, even when the bartender was a demon.
"Want to give me a clue where they'll head next?" she said.
Azazazeal's smile stretched wider. "That's for you to find out," he said. Elo rolled her eyes and stalked off, leaving him alone at the table, slipping through the crowded bar like a ghost, only she felt the dozen or so pairs of black eyes following her out the door into the crisp, cloudless night.
The man who had been smoking, whose heartbeat she'd heard pumping so deliciously, had passed out in the alley. Elo nudged him in the ribs with her foot. He grunted, but didn't come to. He reeked of booze, stale smoke, and piss. Not very appetizing, to say the least, but she had a long road ahead of her.
Elo had been on the run all her life, never staying in the same place for long, and so she was itching to leave Lawrence after a month of waiting for the brothers to show. She knew they would come home eventually, to the place where it had begun for them, to the house where their mother had died. The house itself wasn't what she'd expected. It was perfectly ordinary on the outside. After the fire, most of the second story had been rebuilt. Elo had scoured the local libraries' microfiche records for any mention of the incident and she had found only two brief newspaper blurbs. The first was no more than three paragraphs, giving no known cause for the fire, and not even mentioning the family by name; the next was an obituary for Mary Winchester, loving mother and wife.
Elo had copied both articles into her journal, a tattered spiral bound notebook that she'd stolen even though it had only cost ninety-nine cents. She read them over and over, waiting for the brothers, but she never found any answers. Azazeal wasn't any more forthcoming, but he had told her some, and she had heard more from his demonic groupies. The fire that had killed Mary Winchester hadn't been an accident, no electrical shortage, no hair dryer dropped in the bathtub. It was old yellow eyes himself, not for the first time, not for the last. Elo had managed to learn the names of a few of the other special children and they were down in her journal as well. She didn't dare seek them out, however, because Azazeal would surely be watching. She didn't know much and what she did know she'd rather keep secret. It was always good to have leverage when dealing with demons.
Sam was one of the special children, though she was in the dark about what made him so important to yellow eyes, more important than all the rest of his children. Elo had gone to Stanford once, shortly after Azazeal found her, just to see Sam. He was a college boy with the beautiful girlfriend and the happy friends, one of whom was a demon but he'd been blind to that, blind to the fact that Azazeal had been watching him almost from the moment he was born. Why? It was better not knowing, at least that's what Elo told herself, and yet she couldn't stop wondering. Why? Why? Why?
Other than the witness sketch of Dean that had been broadcast after the St. Louis incident, she hadn't seen the man in the flesh, but still she recognized him the moment he walked into the diner where she was serving from behind the counter. "Easy now, girl," said the man whose pie she had just drowned in whipped cream.
"Sorry about that," said Elo. "The more the better, my ma used to say."
Before the man could respond, she ducked under the counter, taking her order pad from her apron pocket, and made a beeline to the table in the far left corner from the door where Dean Winchester had planted himself. Smart, she thought. The seat he had chosen had the best visual range. If you leaned back just right, you could even see into the kitchen, and Elo caught him doing exactly that as she approached.
"Hey there," she said, giving him her sweetest smile. Dean Winchester looked her up and down. "You new in town? I don't think I've seen you before and I've lived here for, well, forever."
"Just visiting," said Dean. The menu was spread open in his hands. "I lived here when I was a kid, a long time ago. Doubt you were even born."
Elo lowered her eyes, the picture of youthful innocence, and she noted the slight bulge of a handgun under his shirt. "We're glad to have you back then," she said, lifting her eyes to his face. He needed a shower and a shave. "I knew as soon as you walked in that you weren't a tourist. They're easy to spot from a mile away. Listen to me going on, though. I talk too much, always have, drives my boss up the wall, and here I am still doing it." She paused to take a breath and poised her pen over the order pad. "What can I get you, mister?"
Dean closed his menu without ever once looking at it. "I'll take the deluxe cheeseburger, extra bacon."
Elo stretched her smile even wider until she thought her face might break. "Easy enough," she said, slipping the order pad back into her apron. "I think I can remember that from here to the kitchen." As soon as she turned her back to him, her smile vanished. She put in his order, refilled some coffee cups, did a round of the diner, and kept an eye on Dean Winchester all the while. He was pouring over a leather bound journal, his brow furrowed, glancing out through the window from time to time, but as soon as she returned with his food he shut the journal and slipped it under his jacket.
"Here you go," she said cheerfully, sliding his plate onto the table. "Best bacon burger in Kansas, but might be I'm biased. You'll have to tell me what you think."
"Smells good," said Dean. He took a bite and nodded his approval. "Tastes even better. I've had a lot of burgers from a lot of places, so I can tell you this is one of the best."
"I knew you were a traveller," said Elo. "Not a touristy one. Is it your work? You one of them travelling salesmen?"
"Something like that," said Dean through his second bite. "My brother and I are in pest control. Family business, you know."
Elo gave an exaggerated shudder. "Yuck," she said. "I hate bugs."
Dean smiled back at her. "You should've seen our last gig in Oklahoma. There was this new housing development, totally empty, no one living there yet, and infested with all kinds of creepy crawlies."
Pest control, thought Elo, amused despite herself. It was a clever cover story, almost the truth. "Let me know if you need anything," she said. "I'll be right over there." She didn't speak to Dean Winchester again. He ate quickly, left some money on the table, and then made his way to the bathroom. Elo snuck through the kitchens. Outside in the back alley, she untied her greasy apron and chucked it into the dumpster. "I quit," she said to herself.
Rounding the building, she checked her watch, knowing she had a good ten minutes at least before Dean came out of the bathroom, thanks to the laxative she had slipped into his deluxe burger. A sleek and shiny black '67 Impala was parked across the streets from the diner. It stuck out like a rusty nail among the mini-vans and Honda Civics. When she reached the car, she bent by the rear wheel, pretending to tie her shoe, while really securing a palm-sized gps tracker to the hub.
Elo tailed the brothers to Rockford, Illinois, where they spent three days tackling the angry spirit of a psych doctor in a long abandoned asylum. To pass the time, she had worked the case herself from the sidelines, but the boys hadn't needed any intervention. They had moved on, stopping overnight at a motel on the border of Kentucky. She spent the night in the little dodge jeep she'd stolen from her old boss back at the diner in Lawrence. It served him right for all those times he'd tried to cop a feel and the shit wages he offered.
Come morning, she watched Sam storm out of the motel room, a backpack slung over his shoulder. He spoke to a grizzled truck driver in the parking lot for awhile and then both of them climbed into the man's eighteen wheeler and rumbled off. Not long after, Dean emerged, stomping to the Impala, and sped away in the opposite direction. Shit. Shit. Shit. Elo pounded the steering wheel with her fist. Now what? Azazeal hadn't told her which brother to follow if the idiots parted ways.
Almost as if he'd heard her think his name, which he probably had, the yellow-eyed demon knocked on the driver's window, making her leap a foot off the seat and slam her head into the roof of the car. Without asking for permission, Azazeal slid into the passenger seat.
"Looks like they had a lovers' quarrel," said Elo. "They haven't noticed the tracker, so we'll know where Dean is heading, but Sam…"
"Don't worry about Sam for now," said Azazeal. "I know where he's going."
"Are you going to tell me?"
"Meg will be there to meet him," said yellow eyes. Elo shrugged, as if she didn't care about being kept in the dark, but she felt a faint flicker of pity for Sam Winchester. She was no angel, but compared to Meg she might as well be. "You just keep an eye on Dean for me," said Azazeal. "Make sure he doesn't get into any trouble."
"He's a hunter," said Elo. "Of course he'll get into trouble."
Quick as a flash, Azazeal gripped her face in his hand, whipping her head around to look at him, those yellow eyes burning into her, his fingers digging into her cheeks. "If he dies, you'll wish you were lucky enough to die with him," said the demon. Then he smiled that skin crawling smile and let her go. Elo rubbed at her sore cheeks. His nails had drawn blood. She knew it was best if she sealed her lips now, and yet her lips moved, the words coming out frigid and unafraid.
"Why does it matter to you if Dean Winchester lives or dies? He isn't one of your's."
"Leverage," said Azazeal. Then he was gone. Elo wiped the blood from her face with her t-shirt before turning the key in the ignition. She checked her phone for Dean's location and turned right out of the parking lot.
I know what you want, Azazeal had said to her that first night when he appeared, finding her in Chicago in the crypt where she had taken shelter. I know what you want more than anything in this world and I can give it to you. For a price. He hadn't asked for her soul, because she supposed it wasn't worth much. She wished it had been that simple now.
Welcome to Burkittsville, Indiana! Where vacationing couples mysteriously go missing, thought Elo. She was taping a missing persons flyer for the two who had vanished last year into her journal. No doubt they were why Dean Winchester had come to this tiny spot in the middle of farm country nowhere. She had followed him to the diner, then to the orchard, and now she sat outside of the local community college, waiting for Dean to reemerge. Her eyes burned. She longed to close them, take a quick nap, unable to remember when was the last time she'd slept more than an hour. She rubbed at her eyes furiously, until her vision blurred, and once it cleared she saw two men, the sheriff and one of his deputies, come out of the building with Dean slumped between them, unconscious.
Elo straightened up behind the wheel, no longer tired as she watched the pair of police officers drag Dean's limp body to a squad car. That's just great, she thought, following behind them at a distance, You just had to get yourself kidnapped, idiot. The squad car left the town proper, past the orchard, to an old fashioned farmhouse, where they dragged the still unconscious Dean inside. Elo ditched the dodge jeep at the end of the street and walked. She found a tall elm tree and shimmed up about halfway, parting the branches to see the house. Soon enough, she heard a woman scream, but the sound didn't last long, and then the cars started to arrive, one after the other, the whole town it seemed.
As twilight gathered in the woods, the police officers exited the house, once more with Dean, only he was awake now. Two more men filed close behind with a young woman strung between, the same woman who had been working at the diner. "Please, please," the woman sobbed, "Why are you doing this?" The townspeople seemed not to hear her. Dean was silent as they were led into the woods. Though she didn't want to follow them, Elo dropped down from her tree, and crept through the underbrush, quiet as a mouse, following the sound of the larger crowd beating their way through the close packed trees.
Elo realized where they were headed. Sure enough, the townsfolk stopped their twilight procession in the orchard. Whatever was happening in this town, this place was the epicenter. She watched from the shadows as Dean and the young woman were bound to two of the apple trees.
"Uncle Harley, please," the woman said. "Aunt Stacy, I don't understand, I'm your family."
An older woman, presumably Aunt Stacy, shook her head sadly as she looked up at the young woman strung up in the tree. "Sweetheart, that's what sacrifice means," she said. "Giving up something you love for the greater good. The town needs to be safe. The good of the many outweighs the good of the one."
"I hope your apple pie is fucking worth it!" Dean shouted after them as the townsfolk melted into the dark, leaving them behind. But for what? Elo looked around, the hair on the back of her neck raised, and realized the position she'd put herself in. Something was in the orchard with them, though she hadn't had time to figure out what, which left her uncomfortably defenseless. She weighed her options. There didn't seem to be a way to get Dean out of his current predicament without revealing herself. If she saved him now, then he would have questions for her later, questions she would not and some she could not answer. If she left him for whatever was coming, then old yellow eyes would flay her alive or worse. She wasn't thrilled with either option, but she didn't really have a choice between the two.
Elo darted out of the shadows and sprinted to the two trees where Dean and the young woman were struggling against the ropes holding them to the gnarled old trunks. "Who's there?" Dean shouted.
"A friend," said Elo, almost a whisper, as she appeared before him. She flipped open her pocket knife and held it out for him to see, the metal glinting in a beam of moonlight. "I'm going to cut you loose. Hold still."
"The girl first," said Dean. He was looking at her curiously, as if trying to place where he had seen her face before, and she hoped the shadows would be enough to disguise her. Cut them loose and run, she told herself, before he recognizes you. "Who are you?"
Elo sawed at the rope binding the woman's ankles and ignored his question. Now was not the time for a conversation. She heard rustling in the leaves, dragging feet, but the steps were too light for a normal human. Not to mention she could only hear three heartbeats in the orchard- Dean's, the young woman's pounding like a drum, and her own. No, whatever was coming for them certainly was not human. Once the woman was freed, Elo started on Dean's ropes, which were much tighter. She didn't enjoy being so close to him, knowing that he could see her face too clearly in the streaks of moonlight, even though she tried to keep it turned to the shadows.
"I know you," he said.
"I hear something," said the woman at the same time. The source of the shuffling sound was just out of sight. Dean could hear it, too, but he kept his eyes on the mysterious girl who'd appeared from nowhere to save him at the last minute.
"We've met before," he insisted. It came to him just as the ropes fell away and landed at his feet with a soft thud. Elo was already turning to flee, but he caught her by the wrist, holding her. Their eyes met, green on gray, and she saw his recognition before he spoke. "You're that waitress, the one from Kansas."
The young woman screamed. Elo and Dean whipped their heads around and saw….a scarecrow? She didn't pause to try and rationalize what she was seeing. Instead she used Dean's distraction to break away and she sprinted off into the apple trees, her feet pounding the soft earth. Behind her, the woman screamed again, Dean shouted, the scarecrow didn't make a peep. Elo assumed that Dean could handle it from here, now that he was free, or at least she hoped he wasn't completely incompetent.
She kept running until she was out of the orchard, back on the road leading to the farmhouse, and finally stopped. She wasn't even out of breath. Once she had run fifty miles straight, just to see how far she could go before she became winded, and still she didn't know. I could run forever, she told herself. Her legs itched to do just that. Her mind screamed at her to find the dodge jeep and get the hell out of town, but she waited at the edge of the orchard, her ears perked. When she heard the two heartbeats coming close, she shimmied up another tree, all the way to the top, and looked down as Dean and the young woman emerged from the orchard, scraped and bloody, but alive.
Elo watched Dean pause, looking behind him, and then ahead, searching for her no doubt. He never thought to look up. Too close, she thought once the pair finally moved on, getting smaller as they moved down the silvery moon splattered road. Dean glanced back every few seconds and she didn't dare move even long after she lost sight of them. He had seen her, he had recognized her, he was sharper than she had given him credit for. Elo knew she would have to be more careful from now on. It wouldn't do for the brothers to become curious about her, to start asking those uncomfortable questions, not yet and hopefully not ever. Keep them alive, that's what old yellow eyes had told her to do, but if the brothers discovered who she was, what she was, then she doubted she would live long enough to get her reward from the demon. She supposed that, maybe, that was Azazeal's plan.