The Family Business
Jay sat cross legged on the floor, positioned so that her bed would hide her from the view of any nosy brothers who may enter her room. She huffed and slumped even further down the wall until her back was arched like a cat's and her shoulder-length brown hair was sandwiched scratchily between the wall and her neck.
The tablet screen on her lap, a gift from Charlie, flashed the bold letters and grainy photos of the news article she had been reading towards the ceiling.
"Victims have been discovered behind dumpsters or abandoned buildings." Okay, so they don't want to be seen. What's new?
"… gash in the neck…" Could be a vampire, maybe a witch.
"Medical examiner has determined the primary cause of death to be exsanguination." Almost certainly vampire.
Vampires were easy. Sam and Dean had been on countless vampire hunts. Even wiped out a few nests. A machete to the neck, maybe some dead man's blood if the situation gets sticky, and the job would be done. This would be the perfect first hunt. Well, first real hunt, that is.
Having two older brothers who also happened to be hunters meant that Jay had always been protected from the world– and stiflingly so. The family business made her aware of all the things that go bump in the night, but after their father's death, Sam and Dean had made the executive decision to exclude Jay from the hunter's life, a decision that had caused countless disputes between Jay and her brothers for the years to follow.
Jay was often in charge of research during hunts, or patching her brothers up after a nasty fight, or driving Baby when a quick getaway was necessary, but never had she had the pleasure of personally ridding the world of one more monster. She was certainly capable. While her brothers would never allow her to fight alongside them on a hunt, they had made sure years ago that she knew how to defend herself against any monster (or human) should the need arise.
Jay slid the rest of the way down the wall until she was lying on the ground, legs extended and eyes following the rotation of her ceiling fan. Around. And around. And around. And around. That is how conversations with Sam and Dean about hunting always went.
"I'm sixteen years old and just as capable of ganking some supernatural sons of bitches as the two of you."
"Sixteen ain't old enough kiddo. The day you no longer have to live under our roof, Sam and I'll take you on a hunt. Just give it a couple more years."
"Besides, you've got so much to look forward to in the next year," Sam would chime in with a fond nudge to Jay's shoulder. "You'll be sending out college applications around this time next fall and then finishing up school in the spring. It's almost time for you to start a new chapter of your life."
"Sam, I hate homeschooling. I only do it because you make me. Why would I want to go to college?"
"I know your current school situation sucks, but I promise it will be better once you go to college. I had the time of my life at Stanford. You know what? You should think about applying there."
There was no way Jay would get into Stanford. She knew it. She was pretty sure Dean did too. "And then you left Stanford to hunt. That's what I want to do, too. You know, saving people, hunting things, the family business. I might as well start now."
"Still ain't old enough…"
And around. And around. And around.
When the watching the fan blades began to make her dizzy, Jay sat up again and saved the news article on her tablet. She scooted over to her bed and rummaged around underneath it until her hand pulled out an empty, brown duffle bag. Supplies. She was going to need a machete, a couple syringes, some dead man's blood, and… the keys to Baby. That last one was going to be the most difficult. The only chance she had of escaping without her brothers' notice would be in the middle of the night, which was not ideal for hunting vampires. Jay shook her head in frustration at the little voice of doubt in her head. She was going on this hunt whether conditions were ideal or not. When she finished this job, then maybe, maybe Sam and Dean would finally see her as a hunter. She would finally be a true Winchester.
Jay padded back through the dark corridor towards her room and pressed the button to light up the face of her watch. 1:18 am. Sure as hell took long enough. Jay had proposed a night in to her brothers with greasy takeout food and a cheesy action flick, quite the brilliant idea if Jay were to say so herself because now Sam and Dean were passed out on the couch together next to several empty beer bottles and fast food boxes. She reveled in the weight of the keys in her pocket, jingling lightly with each step. As long as she snuck them back into Dean's jacket pocket before he woke up, he'd never miss them.
Opening the door gently on its old, squeaky hinges, Jay tiptoed to the other side of her room and retrieved the full duffel bag from its hiding place beneath her bed. She had spent the day smuggling supplies from the armory and archives to her room beneath her brothers' nose. Slinging the weight over her shoulder, she slipped back into the hallway and slunk back the direction she had come from towards the garage. Jay paused a moment in the main room to check on her brothers. She huffed a silent chuckle through her nose at Dean's mouth hanging wide open. They should be out until sunrise at the very least. Leaving the TV running softly to cover the sound of her movement, Jay crossed to the other side of the room, down the short corridor, and into the garage.
Jay threw her duffel into Baby's truck and slid into the driver's seat with her tablet to pull up directions to the last location a body had been discovered according to police reports, behind an empty warehouse on the outskirts of Phillipsburg, a relatively local case she was surprised Sam and Dean hadn't caught wind of yet. It was no matter; Jay had noticed, and she was going to take care of it.
The weather took a turn for the worse about twenty minutes into the drive. Fat raindrops pelting the windshield made it impossible for Jay to make out the edges of the dark highway. Dammit. She would be fucked if she wasn't fast enough to make it back to the bunker before her brothers woke up. But arguably, she'd be more fucked if she wrecked Baby due to reckless driving in bad conditions. So, she slowed down to the speed limit and took special care to stay on the road.
Bless Charlie and her generous gift because Jay never would have been able to find the gravel road in the dead of night beneath torrential downpour without the GPS on her tablet. She slowed as a looming, lopsided shadow became visible at the end of the road. "Warehouse" was a generous term. The dilapidated building was more accurately an oversized barn with half the roof torn away. It swayed in the wind, and Jay struggled silently to swallow her unease. She turned off the headlights immediately, unable to shake the feeling she was being watched.
Jesus Christ, pull yourself together. There was absolutely nothing unusual about an old, rickety building in this part of Kansas. Perhaps the nerves of going her first solo hunt were finally starting to get to her. She took another deep breath and ran through her plan. Park Baby somewhere off the road, close enough to make a quick escape. Grab vamp-killing gear. Investigate. Super easy.
She drove around the back of the warehouse and parked on a drier patch of earth beneath a sheet of metal roof that jutted off the side of the building a little bit farther than it was probably supposed to. She grabbed a flashlight and machete from her duffel in the trunk then stuffed a syringe of dead man's blood into her jacket pocket before gently shutting the door.
Even beneath the overhanging roof, Jay was already soaked to the bone. The violent winds howled and pounded her back with rain. Eager to get out of the storm, she scurried to an opening in the building where the door swayed, only half attached to its hinges, and cautiously stepped inside. She switched on her flashlight and examined her surroundings. Most of the space Jay could see was crammed with rusted heavy machinery she couldn't identify, and the ground was littered with random metal parts, bolts, and screws. The air was thick and musty with a strong scent of stale gasoline and copper. Every gust of wind caused the metal frame of the warehouse to buckle and groan, an almost human sound that made her hackles rise. Fine dust particles danced in the beam of her flashlight as she roamed around the first room of the building.
She reached the edge of the room on the left and gently pushed open a door. A grating screech pierced the room and Jay froze. Fuck. If only she'd thought to pack some WD-40, then maybe she'd have lubricated these squeaky door hinges and not alerted every goddamn creature in this joint to her presence. She held her breath and remained motionless for a full minute, only releasing a sigh after hearing nothing but the rain. Not willing to risk opening the door any further, she squeezed through the small opening and into a corridor.
Jay wrinkled her nose. The copper smell was much stronger, and she could detect the faint scent of rot. God, something must have died in here. Given the circumstances, this made Jay all the more wary. She scanned the room with her flashlight and rested the beam on a small, dark mass in the far corner next to the door on the other end of the hallway. Creeping closer to investigate, she bit back a laugh at the irony. A squirrel. It was just a dead squirrel that had probably crawled in some time ago and gotten trapped. She released yet another sigh of relief and turned towards the door. Much slower than last time, she turned the handle and pushed the door open with only a soft creak of the hinges.
The door stopped moving halfway as it hit something heavy on the other side. Jay slipped through the opening and halted. The copper smell was overpowering in this room. She took another step and heard a splash. Looking down, she saw she was standing in a puddle. Not a rain puddle. The liquid was too dark. Ignoring the building lump in her throat, she pointed her flashlight towards her feet. Red. She was standing in blood. Her stomach churned as she traced the pool of blood with her flashlight to its source, a large dead man laying behind the door, the heavy object that had kept her from opening it any farther.
Jay's hands began to tremble, and she tightened her grip on her machete. Okay, a dead body. This was to be expected. It just means she's in the right place. She stepped out of the pool of blood and forced herself to look away from the corpse towards the rest of the room. It was immediately obvious that the man by the door had not been the first to die in this room. Rust-colored stains spattered the walls and floor. Several of the wooden posts throughout the room that supported the sagging roof had frayed ropes coiled around them and sported long scratches that looked suspiciously like fingernail marks.
A booming clap of thunder made Jay leap out of her skin. Heart pounding and palms sweating she scolded herself under her breath, "Get yourself together, Winchester. You can handle some dumb fucking vampires and a little rain."
"Is that right, dearie?"
Jay whirled around to face a skinny, pale figure near the broken window and his malicious grin. His unnaturally pointed teeth glinted in the light from her flashlight. His grin grew even wider at the look of shock on Jay's face and he pounced towards her with a growl. Jay dropped the flashlight in panic and swung her machete blindly in a wide arc in front of her face. She felt the blade make contact with something hard and a warm liquid splattered her face. Two dull thumps sounded one after the other and then there was silence.
Adrenaline still pulsing through her veins, Jay scrambled to pick up the flashlight she had abandoned and pointed it towards the decapitated vampire body and its head a few feet away. Holy shit. She had done it. She had killed her very first monster. A breathless laugh left her chest as she doubled over and placed her hands on her knees in that post-adrenaline exhaustion.
She stood back up and turned away from the dead vampire intent on examining the rest of the warehouse just in case there were any more vampires to get rid of. With a newfound confidence in her step, she strode past a large machine and turned a corner. Her foot hit something small and hard, and a metallic clang echoed off the walls as the random, metal part bounced into the other half of the room she hadn't yet explored. Oops.
"You should really watch your step, love" growled a voice in the darkness.
Jay snapped the beam of her flashlight towards the voice and froze. Not one, not two, but six toothy mouths grinned back at her.
"Fuck."
A/N: Hey folks! Thank you so much for reading the first chapter of my first ever fanfiction. I'm a long-time fanfic addict, but being on the writer-end of a story is very new for me. Please feel free to comment any constructive criticism, as I am always looking to improve, or let me know what you liked. I'll try to update this story soon.
-Jo