A/N: Sorry for the time it took me on this, school is almost over which means dreaded exams and classes are getting really tough and the homework has doubled (which is worse than you think since I already spend 5-6 hours on it normally). So I really want to work on fanfics but I just can't find the time, but school is ending soon so I will have time during the summer to work on them :) here's the next chapter, ugh season 9 only has 4 eps left, at least season 10 has been confirmed...here you go, hope you enjoy! (this chapter is an apt description of how I feel now haha)
Chapter 3: In Over My Head
At the sight of the sickly yellow granules my eyes widened, my whole mind and body telling me to run for my life, to get the hell out of that place. Even though my instincts were screaming I didn't turn and run, though I wished I had brought holy water. I frantically ran over in my mind what I could use against demons: not much. Holy water was my best option, I didn't have any on me, I knew a few spells that would slow a demon down, but I didn't know a full exorcism, I could draw excellent sigils and Devil's Traps, yet had nothing to draw them with, salt was only a weak solution. Overall I found myself sorely unprepared to face anything this powerful on a job, this job in particular. I had shrouded myself with confidence that it was nothing other than a simple spirit that could be dealt with by normal means. Slowly turning around, prepared for anything, I walked out of the furnace room toward the decaying staircase at the end of the long hall. The whole way to the stairs questions bombarded my mind. What would a demon want with a school? Why would it make the furnace explode? Was the furnace explosion a cover up for the demon's work, and, if so, why would it need a cover-up?
I placed my hand on the wooden railing of the staircase, trying to make as little noise as possible going up the snapping and creaking stairs. Odds were that the demon was long gone, but there was a sliver of doubt in my mind that made me uneasy. My hands were tight around my shotgun as I came off the top of the third flight of stairs into the long corridor of the second floor. I could see the gaping hole in the floor where I had fallen through at the other end, debris was still sliding down through it. I started down the hallway, stealing glances through the open classroom door-frames on either side of me, trying to make sure something wasn't waiting for me to pass it by. A loud crash of debris hitting the basement floor made me jump and almost pull the trigger on the shotgun. My father and brother had both warned me about demons countless times on countless hunts, warned me about their power and their danger. If a demon was still here I was utterly screwed with no weapons against it. In fact I was so worried about the demon now that I almost had forgotten there was a legitimate spirit threat here. I felt cold air settle over the hallway, stopping me in my tracks, I wheeled around and was facing a pale, almost translucent face.
I jumped back from the form of the woman, leveling the salt-filled shotgun with the spirit. It was a younger woman with long dark hair that contrasted with the white uniform dress I had seen in pictures of this school, a dress teachers wore. It took me only a second to pull the trigger on the shotgun to propel the salt-filled shell at the spirit. It disappeared like a swirl of dust in a breeze and I started to run. The salt would only anger the spirit, causing it to come back at me with stronger force, I wasn't about to stick around for that. I had definitely recognized the woman spirit before I blew her to oblivion though I couldn't quite place where I had seen her. My headlong dash for the stairs that led back to the first floor was stopped stone-cold after what I first thought was my foot catching on debris. My whole body clenched in dread as I realized I hadn't tripped on anything: I couldn't move. I barely caught a glimpse of what looked like a human before I was thrown by an invisible force through a classroom door on my left. The force subsided for a split-second, dropping me hard to the floor of the large classroom. To my complete horror I was picked up by the force again, heaved into the air, and thrown to the back of the classroom. Without dropping me again the force threw me backwards once more, I heard and felt the crash of breaking glass against my back as I was put through a back window. The force disappeared again, dropping me from the air to what I thought would be my death two stories below, but I flung out my arms and was able to catch the edge of the white window sill.
It felt like several minutes before I was assured the force would not come back, several minutes of holding onto the edge of a windowsill to the bare agony of my arms. I gathered all the upper body strength I had left and heaved myself back up through the window. Still in shock from what had just happened I didn't even notice when I cut myself on the many jagged pieces of glass littered by the window. Right now my only thought was to get out of this place as fast as my legs would carry me. I now was limping from the shooting pain of a glass cut on my leg, but I managed to get out of the classroom with no difficulty. I picked up my shotgun from where it had fallen in the hallway and continued on at a quick pace to the first floor stairs, wincing in pain as I descended them. The force that had thrown me was not the power of any spirit, I had been tossed about by a spirit before, this force had been darker, much darker. I jumped the last two stairs, much to the dismay of my leg, and pushed out of the massive front doors with haste. The sun hung low in the sky now, which meant I had been in that school for a good few hours of whose passing I barely noticed. Nothing outside had changed since I left it earlier, my car had remained untouched to my grateful pleasure. I still had one thing I needed to get done this night before I called Mike for the first time since I got this job. I slid into my car, throwing a towel over my shotgun that I had tossed in the backseat, and drove off.
The name of the woman had come to me as I was exiting the house, the spirit I saw was Mary O'Donnell, Harry O'Donnell's mother. The spirit theory was true then because I had seen the horrid burn marks all over her scorched body, just like the recent victims' wounds, but where the demon came into the story I hadn't the slightest clue. I drove fast, pushing far over the speed limit and hoping I would not get caught on this important task. Papers with information I had gotten earlier in this job lay scattered across the passenger's seat. I rummaged through them with one hand, keeping the other on the steering wheel, until I found the one I wanted. I glanced at the particulars of Mary O'Donnell's death and burial, only looking for one thing. Finding what I wanted I tossed the paper back in the seat and focused on driving. Within the hour I was at the local cemetery and, driving through the small lanes for some time, found the general lot where Mrs. O'Donnell was buried. I carefully got out of my car, shut the door with almost no sound from it, grabbed the essentials, salt, my lighter, flashlight, and shovel, and headed out into the lot. I didn't have to search too long before I found the grave site I was looking for. I placed the salt container and my lighter in a safe place I would not lose them and with the shovel in hand, flashlight at my belt, started to dig.
The sun had been down awhile before the shovel struck the top of a locked casket. I broke the lock with a blow from the shovel and pulled open the lid. I was able to scramble out of the massive hole I had dug to retrieve the lighter and salt. I stood beside the dug up grave, pouring salt all over the now-exposed, almost fully-decayed corpse, while I held my lighter ready. After the body was fully covered I dropped the lighter into the grave and watched the flames rear up out of the hole as if trying to pull me back in. Suddenly, the wind gained a slight chill to it, switching the direction from which it was blowing. The flames in the grave flickered in odd, jerking movements that were not at all normal for fire. I pulled my pistol out of my belt, loading it and preparing for an attack. Odd lightning streaked across the sky for a second before disappearing again, but held long enough for me to see the same human figure from the school standing some feet away. This time I didn't question my body's screaming, I picked up my items and made a headlong dash for my car. I slammed the door -into which various sigils were carved- tightly shut, feeling slightly safer.
"I'm calling Mike as soon as I get back to the hotel," I said to the air around me, trying to calm myself down before I had to call my contact. I pulled out of the cemetery hastily, the flames from the grave were quickly receding in my rear-view mirror as I put more distance between me and that ghost or demon or whatever it was.
It was very late by the time I got back to the hotel, far past the time any normal person would be up on a weekday. I threw my notebook filled with papers from this job and notes on others onto the bed
before opening a beer I had gotten out of the cooler I kept in the back floorboard of my car. I wasn't one to drink myself into oblivion, especially when on a job, though tonight I needed something to calm my nerves. I stopped drinking after I noticed the room had started to shift ever so subtly, a sign that I was certainly tipsy, I still needed my total awareness tomorrow in case I had to go back to that school. I picked up my phone and dialed a number I had called so many times before. I knew he would be up even at this hour, in fact, he had probably drinking himself.
"Hello?" a man's voice answered, slightly groggily, after only a few rings.
"You so owe me for this," I said sarcastically. "I've almost died three times already and I haven't even gotten to the good part."
"Lara? You still in Florida?" his voice seemed to lose its earlier grogginess as he realized who it was calling.
"Yep, just getting a nice tan at the beach before I set off back north, what about you?" I remarked sarcastically.
"You're still on the case aren't you?"
"Well, that's why I'm calling, Mike. I burnt the corpse of the ghost-"
"Good! You're done then. There was only a ghost problem, wasn't there?"
"If you would just let me finish-"
"Sorry."
"If you can go just a few minutes without interrupting me then I'll tell you why I called, otherwise you're coming down here yourself to deal with it and I'm out of here, okay?"
In just a few minutes I was able to explain the details of the case, telling him all about the "accident" at the school and the force throwing me out of the window, up until the burning of the corpse. I noticed at times my words had a slight slur to them as a result of the alcohol of course, but I honestly think he didn't even notice.
"A demon? Are you sure?"
"See, I knew you were going to ask that, of course I am! I'm not an idiot, I saw the sulfur, quite a bit of it I might add, and the feeling I got when that force had me was just pure evil. I've never felt anything like that before, not a poltergeist, not a ghost, nothing like it, so, yeah, I'm pretty damn sure it was a demon."
"Geez, aren't we touchy tonight?-"
"I almost died! Three times! That's a lot considering I haven't even been on the case that long..."
"What do you want me to do about it? You're a good hunter, besides, I'm too far away to come help you. Can't you handle one demon?"
The simple question put ice in my chest, making me feel as if there was a ghost in the room now, even though I knew there wasn't. "One" anything else, yes, I could handle that very well, however, "one" demon put my body in such a great tangle of fear I felt I was suffocating. My silence had obviously gone noticed by Mike, who then countered his question with an unyielding tone of regret.
"Lara, I'm so very sorry, I didn't mean that. Demons are hard, they're tough to kill, in fact you can't kill them really, only exorcise them, which is also hard because you have to trap them and-"
"Mike, you're rambling, get to the point, please."
"Sorry, hang on, let me call some of my contacts, I'll see if any of them are, or or know of anyone, close to your area. I'll call you back in a few minutes."
"Thanks, Mike."
"No problemo," he said hanging up the phone to call other hunters.
Mike was a good friend of my dad's, an old friend, they had known each other since high school and somehow both of them had gotten into hunting about the same time. My father never did tell me how, he never told me much of anything about how he became a hunter, especially why. Hunters typically aren't very sociable people, always hiding things from people in order to keep them safe or ensure they themselves aren't thought of as crazy for bringing up things such as monsters. However, hunters usually know of one another and some hunters, often the older hunters, know a good number of hunters, enough of them to refer them to one another for help or for jobs. Mike is one of those hunters, usually only consulted as a contact for hunters, who knows a great number of hunters ranging from all levels of experience. Therefore, I was confident he would find another hunter closer to me who had better experience with demons than I did. Demons are rare to come across anyways, unless something monumental was happening, they usually try to stay out of the targets of hunters, though not out of fear of us. Occasionally there's something in the papers or on television that gives hunters the idea there's been a possession of some kind, but no hunter like me would dare to go after a demon alone if they had any sense. Demons are one of the most powerful beings for a hunter to hunt, they have a weakness to salt and iron like ghosts, but are not as easy to get rid of, as there are no bones to burn. In some of my dad's notes he said even some demons were not effected by salt or iron, rendering it completely useless. He always told me that being a hunter meant you must be tough and strong, yet you must always know when you're out of your league, when you need help. Now was a time when I knew I needed help, when I knew I had to put aside my aversion to working with other hunters and put aside my pride of being good at my job by myself, to make sure I kept this town and its people safe.
It was a little over an hour before Mike called me back, by then I had taken a most-needed shower and had been able to eat a small dinner. I had also bandaged the long and shallow cut on my leg , along with taking a few painkillers for the soreness from my fall. I'd be very lucky if I could move tomorrow. I had redone the salt lines as soon as I had gotten into the room earlier so those weren't something else I had to worry about. I was now sitting up on the hotel bed, my papers and research from the job spread out in front of me on the tan sheets. It had started to rain again, which a normal person might have attributed to the usual weather of the south, I knew, however, that it might be a sign, an omen as others call it, from the demon being here. A few minutes after the rain started up again my phone rang, playing its ordinary tune, before I picked it up, scattering some of the papers on the floor. It was, of course, Mike, hopefully with good news.
"Hey, Mike, find anything?" I answered.
"Well aren't you just lucky today-"
"Uh, not really, no," I said, giving a small laugh.
"I meant, you're lucky because I'm so very good at what I do, I found two hunters who are about a day's drive from you."
I smiled at the good news, getting up from the bed to pick up the papers that had dropped to the floor.
"Great, would I have ever heard of them? And, two? I really only need one extra hand in this," I said picking up some of the papers.
"You might have, and they sorta come as a package deal," Mike said, I could tell he was holding back something.
"Alright, you gonna tell me who they are or am I going to have to read your mind?" I asked sarcastically.
"You ever heard of Sam and Dean Winchester?"
A/N: Bet most of you saw that coming, yes, of course I'm going to bring the boys into it :) they won't *always * be in this fic, but they will be in it a lot. Hope you enjoyed the chapter that has been long over-due! Hopefully I'll have some time to write but I seriously doubt it :(