"So what will you do, Sammy? Keep exchanging one brother for the other for all of eternity? Here's something for nothing: deal with the devil or not, Dean would have ended up down below eventually anyway."
She woke up. Several cars whooshed past the curb, horns blaring. One guy stuck his head out the window and bellowed some profanity at her that was lost in the flow of traffic.
"Bite me, numbnuts." She growled, before reaching into her pocket for her phone. There were three messages left on her voicemail.
'Hey, JB. Listen, I covered for you at the bar today. Told Dennis you were off sick, and um… JB, you know I love you like my own sister, but you can't keep running out on your responsibilities. I know you've had it awful hard lately with your Mom and all, but you gotta get yourself some staying power. What I mean is… if you duck out of work again, I ain't bailing you out. Later.'
'JB, babe. Missed you today, sorry I didn't pick you up after work like I said I would. I'll make up for it and take you somewhere nice. How about that place downtown? I know you said it would be too expensive, but I think I can just make it. Love you.'
The third message was a bit more cryptic.
'Call me.'
With the phone in one hand and the carkeys in the other, she got out and made a small show of walking around and kicking the dust of the curb. Finally, she dialled the number of the last caller.
"Hey."
"Hey." He replied.
"Missed your call."
"Yeah."
She remembered when she first met Decon Ridgeway. She fractured his jaw in a pub in LA.
"I've got it. Come around tonight."
"Cool." Jo grinned. "I'll bring the popcorn." She snapped her phone shut. Time was a'wastin'.
No matter how long Jo worked this job, it always came as a surprise to her exactly how many empty, derelict warehouses there were in America. That and the fact that so many of these nasties preferred these empty, derelict warehouses.
She reached the top of the gate and dropped to the ground. Deacon's boots hit the pavement behind her. "You know, one day we'll get a demon who lives in Penthouse at the Bahamas. That'll be a nice change."
Jo glanced at him. In the half-light she could see the sparkle of his revolver and the glint in his red hair. "You know, you should really get a dye job or something for that mop. It's like a beacon, Deacon."
"Ho ho, she's making bad jokes. Feeling better, JB?"
JB. So much scarier than Jo. How many creatures would shudder at the name Joanna Beth on a hunter? The old Jo had been left by the side of the highway, along with the rest of her old life.
"Let's roll." She said.
Deacon cut through the chains on the doors, slipping the wire cutters into the waistband of his jeans.
Jo cocked her pistol, torch in the other hand. She nodded and Deacon's foot flashed out. The doors clanged open.
The place had once been an old meatworks, an abattoir. Giant meat hooks still hung from the ceiling. Some were covered in dust and rust and dried blood, but there were others that seemed to be dripping something onto the cement floor.
Jo nudged Deacon. "Reckon those are still used?"
He sniffed the air. "Certainly smells a bit rank. Apparently, it stores its victims up to months at a time."
"And makes them like itself?"
"Sometimes it just… plays with them."
She stared at him. "I really need to brush up on my demons, don't I?"
"Technically, its more of a parasitical life form that latches onto a woman's psyche. That's why you should have let me handle this one."
"Bull."
"JB-"
"Is there anyone there? Help me!"
Deacon's hand curled around the handle of a huge door set into the wall. It opened grudgingly with the screeching of metallic hinges. "Meat locker." He said softly. She gave him a look. "My granddad was a butcher." He explained.
"Who's there?" The girl was hysterical to the point of screaming.
"I'm JB." Jo called. "Don't worry, me and my friend are gonna get you out."
Deacon gave her a sour look. "So much for 'it doesn't know we're coming'."
"What was I supposed to do? There isn't actually a guide for this crap." She hissed back.
"JB, go away. Stay away! He'll eat you alive!"
Deacon and Jo glanced at each other, startled. He?
Something slowly crossed the floor in front of them with wide, gaiting steps. Deacon peered through a grill to watch it as it passed. With each step there were clicks of cloven hooves upon the ground.
Jo switched off her torch. All they could see was a silhouette of the creature, but the silhouette was just as shocking. Whatever it was had a massive bull's head with dangerously sharp horns, a man's torso and knees that bent the wrong way.
"That's not a Valkyrie."
"No."
And it looked at them then. Really looked at them, like it was seeing through the strewn equipment right to the intruders in its lair. As they watched, it threw back its head and bellowed its war cry.
"FEAR THE MINOTAUR!"
"Oh, you have so got to be kidding me!" Jo cried, jumping from her hiding place. Deacon dropped to his stomach and rolled behind an old stainless steel workbench, splitting and minimising the target.
"How the hell do you kill a minotaur?!"
"I know this one, learnt it in eighth grade history… According to Greek mythology, Prince Theseus killed the Minotaur by cutting off its head with a broadsword."
"I don't suppose you happen to have a broadsword on you?" Deacon was silent. "I thought not."
The minotaur roared, lowered its head and charged.
"Now." Jo said testily. They fired. Deacon repeatedly popped bullets into the barrel. Jo snapped another clip into the chamber. The minotaur slowly stumbled to a stop. Jo opened her mouth to make an exclamation of triumph.
The creature shook its head. Empty shells cascaded around its shoulders. Spinning on a hoof, snorting, it charged the larger attacking mass, which happened to be Deacon. He darted aside and threw up his revolver. It clashed with horns in a spray of sparks. "Deacon!"
"Get the girl!" He ordered.
She sprang past him, out of the meat locker. "I'll be back."
"Sure." He grunted.
She passed long stretches of counters as she walked into the wide expanse of warehouse. More wickedly curved hooks hung from the ceiling. "Are you there?" She called, half not expecting a reply.
"Here." It was no more than a whisper. Jo opened another freezer door, smaller this time, and ventured in. "Hello?" She held the torch over her head. Finally she spotted something at the far end, slowly swinging from side to side. A girl.
But she was dead. And had been for some time.
It was then Jo realised that they'd been duped. The true enemy was not out there grappling with Deacon; it was in here with her. "What do you want?"
"Why do you chase us? Why do you always chase us?" Jo spun. There was a woman standing behind her, one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. Dark haired and dark skinned, bare-footed under a sheer blue robe.
"Valkyrie." Jo breathed.
"Why can't you ever leave us alone? We haven't done anything to you. Why can't your kind leave us be?" And then it dropped.
"All those dead people… they've been hunters."
"You should have left us alone. They should have all left us alone!" And then her beautiful face distorted into something hideous and otherworldly. "They should have minded their own business!"
'An iron round to the heart, and iron round to the heart,' Jo kept repeating the mantra to herself as the creature rounded on her. "I am a Valkyrie, Joanna Beth Harvelle. My first duty is to recruit the strongest for the coming of Ragnarok."
"What?"
"The apocalypse." She reached out a hand to her. Jo was compelled to touch the fine skin, grasp the graceful fingers. She was so beautiful. "You think it is over. It has hardly begun."
Then Deacon fired, breaking the enchantment around her. The Valkyrie's hand fell limp and her urethral form sank gracefully to the ground.
Jo gasped, it was as if someone had poured a bucket of cold water over her head. "What the hell did you do that for?"
Deacon stood wavering it the doorway. He was grasping his backup colt in one hand and an old, stained meat cleaver in the other. The front of his shirt was torn open and there was blood on his chest.
"Well, excuse me from stopping you from going to happy land." He snarled.
Jo stared at him coldly. "I was getting information from her."
"By pretending you were high? Nice use of your skills, Scully." He staggered and lent again a workbench. Jo's annoyance evaporated in a second as she told him to sit.
Looking up over his head she stared out into the factory. It was suddenly very quiet. She lanced back down at him. "Mulder, tell me that you didn't cut a minotaur's head off with a carving knife just then."
"Fine. 'I didn't cut a minotaur's head off with a carving knife just then'."
"Geek."
"Loser."
Jo began to pace back and forth, arms crossed. "She said she wasn't here to hurt us, and she only killed those people because they came trying to hunt her. She said that she was here to gather recruits for an army-"
"Sounds like an eerily familiar concept." Deacon grumbled. Jo ignored him, though the remark stung.
"-For the coming of Ragnarok."
"'The battle at the end of the world'. Also known as the 'fate of the gods'."
She shrugged. "It's all Greek to me."
"Oh, that's bad, that's really bad. You know, Valkyries and Ragnarok are actually Norse legends, not Greek." He carefully placed the cleaver on the bench and wiped the handle with his jacket sleeve. "I popped a lot of shells back there. We better go pick 'em up before some jumped-up junior PC decides he can hit the big time."
"Don't you want your own FBI squad?"
"Bite me."
Jo drove them back to the hotel Deacon was staying at. She kept imagining how the police, FBI, CIA, NSA and anyone else they called in would handle the case of the robed nymph and the decapitated bull-man. Each scenario ran through her mind, each one more ludicrous than the last.
Who would look for someone that had killed two mythological beasts? And what would, could, they possibly look for? The tension in her shoulders eased as she realised that for the moment they were safe.
"Good thing we really don't have Mulder and Scully on the case." She said softly.