Chapter 6

Dean lay on the bed in the motel room. His wounds had been cleaned and dressed. The swelling was slowly receding, packs of frozen vegetables and wrapped bundles of crushed ice covering half his face, wrapped around his wrists, resting on his shoulders where the muscles had been most abused. Sam sat on the bed opposite, his arm in a sling, the bruising coming in a dark rainbow over his arm and chest. The side of his face was reddened, skin missing but otherwise, he wasn't in too bad shape.

"They knew who we were from the moment we came into town, didn't they?" Dean asked. The swelling had gone down a little on the eye that still worked, and someone had cleaned the blood from the lashes, making it possible to open it most of the way.

Sam nodded gingerly. His head still hurt, the painkillers slow to kick in. Dean had passed out again in the car, something he'd been grateful for when he and Ellie had gotten him into the room and seen the full extent of the damage done. He hadn't been able to shut down his feelings well enough and after a minute of dabbing at the mess of one of Dean's wrists, Ellie had told him to sit down and look after himself, taking care of his brother with a matter-of-fact lack of fuss.

When his brother had woken an hour ago, he'd told him some of what had happened, while Ellie had gone out to get the frozen packs and ice from the motel cooler. Dean had listened, his face expressionless under the spreading bruises, giving only a very brief description of his time with the demons. Sam'd seen the muscle at the point of his brother's jaw jump once, when he'd told him what Ellie had said about the visions and the psychic abilities. It was a sore point with him, Sam knew. An unknown that made him nervous.

"So from now on, we have to be more careful." Dean turned his head slowly toward Sam.

"We need something to hide us, something like these …" Sam touched the dried blood drawing that sat between his collarbone and the pectoral muscle.

"You need proper protection, both of you," Ellie's voice came acerbically from the bathroom, the door partly open as she shed her water-and-blood soaked clothes and scrubbed the blood from her face and body.

Sam lay back on his bed, closing his eyes. "I guess so."

Turning his head to look at his brother, he caught a glimpse of her, reflected in the mirror through the open bathroom door in the periphery of his vision. He shifted carefully on the bed a little further, focussing as his view improved. She stood straight, wearing only a black bra and pants, three-quarters turned from him. His gaze locked onto the curve of her back. The smooth, pale skin was marred by four wide white scars, running from the top of the shoulder-blade diagonally across her back, tapering off just above the kidney.

His eyes closed as the old memory returned. The dirt-filled wounds and her scream ringing in his ears. His father's drawn expression and the relief he knew they'd both felt when she'd passed out.

And the brief flicker of shame as they'd left her there, alone and unprotected for the cops and the medics to deal with.

It had been the right decision, he'd told himself. Maybe it even had been. But he hadn't been able to rid himself of that feeling for a while after that job. And he'd seen his father differently. Not a lot differently, just a little. It had changed something between them, he thought.

Ellie pulled on a clean denim shirt, buttoning it up. She pulled fresh jeans from her pack, dragging them on, and took out clean, dry socks, wriggling her toes into them and bending to pull on her boots. The chill from the soaking was dissipating and she turned to the mirror, loosening her hair from the tight, flat coronet plait she habitually used to keep it out of the way when she was working, her thoughts circling around the question that had been nagging at her since Sam had told her about the visions. She wondered if either of the men in the other room had had the time to work out why the psychic abilities had been a part of the demon's plans.

As she brushed the long strands out, she heard the tiny tinkles of bits of glass falling from it onto the tiled floor. Fabulous, she thought, shaking it out harder. She could shower later, she decided, somewhere down the road. Putting the brush into her backpack, she picked up her wet clothes and hung them over the shower rail, fingers automatically re-braiding her hair into a single plait as she walked out of the bathroom.

She stopped a couple of steps into the room, looking from one bed to the other. The Winchester boys – men, she corrected herself – in the flesh. She'd told Sam the truth. She didn't know that much about them. Michael had talked of their father, John Winchester, on a few occasions, a meeting he'd had with the man years before. In the roadhouse, the times she'd been there to talk to Ellen or to Ash, she'd heard a little about the brothers. They were regarded highly by the hunters that knew of them, some of whom had worked with Dean or his father. Sam was less known, he'd been out of the life for some time had been the rumour she'd heard.

They did need protection. It'd been obvious from what Sam had said that they'd had no idea how widely spread and well-known their family name was, especially to those who wanted them dead. Most hunters weren't, she knew. Well-known to the inhabitants of the other planes. The ones who were generally knew about it and took appropriate precautions, simply to survive.

She walked over to Dean's bed, bending over him and lifting the pack of vegetables on his right shoulder to look at the extensive bruising under it. It would be a few days before he could use either arm without pain, she thought, replacing the pack carefully. She had stronger painkillers in her pack than the ones she'd given his brother.

Dean opened one eye to find Ellie leaning over him, her hands gentle as she resettled the cold pack over his shoulder. The neck of her shirt gaped slightly and he looked along the delicate line of her collarbone. It was there, a small strawberry-coloured birthmark, in the shape of a crescent moon, easily visible against her skin.

She straightened and looked down at him as she became aware of his gaze. Putting a handful of small, white pills on the nightstand beside him, she added, "Those are strong, and you have to take them with food. You're gonna need a good supply of painkillers; your arms are going to hurt like all hell for a few days."

He nodded without much movement, brushing off her concern. "Yeah. I'll be alright."

For a moment, he looked into her face, uncertain if what he wanted to say was the right thing. The past was sometimes better left unstirred. She must have seen the doubt in his expression, because she looked back, one brow rising very slightly.

"What?"

"I have something of yours, something I wanted to give back to you a long time ago," he said, making a small gesture at the floor to one side of the bed. She looked down, then crouched beside the duffle that was half under the bed. He heard the zipper's burr as she opened it.

"What am I looking for?"

"A leather pouch, not big," he told her.

Ellie reached in, pushing her hand through his clothing, his few books, and tapes, feeling around until her fingers felt the smoothness of the pouch. She drew it out and handed it to him. He could hardly move his hands and his mouth twisted slightly as he looked up at her.

"Uh … yeah, can you open it?"

"Sorry." She took it back and opened it, tipping the contents onto the side of the bed. He saw her eyes go immediately to the locket. Saw her reach for it, picking it up by the chain and holding it in front of her.

"I thought I'd lost this," she said softly, catching the locket in one hand, her thumb rubbing lightly over the front. He had the feeling that she'd forgotten him as she stared at it, the impression dispelled as she drew in a breath and turned her head to look at him.

"Where did you get this?"

Her tone was more wondering than accusing, he thought, looking at the confusion that filled her face, seeing her trying to figure out how the hell he could have come by it – and how he'd known it was hers.

"I'm sorry. The chain was broken. I was going to fix it and take it back to you but you were gone from the hospital by the time I got back," he explained, the memories all clear to him now.

She looked blankly from him to the locket.

"What? What do you mean? When you …" she faltered, the words stopping and leaving a silence between them. His brows drew together as he saw a small crease appear between hers.

"You don't remember? What happened to you?"

She shook her head. "I – I never had … no, I can't remember anything around that time."

Looking away, Dean swallowed as he realised he was going to have to tell her about it, relive it again. "We were hunting the thing that attacked your family," he said heavily. "Didn't get there soon enough, not soon enough to save your parents. We found you in the house. You were still alive, barely." He watched the reactions pass over her face.

"You know what did it?" she asked and he nodded.

"A witch," he said, remembering the feeling of being boiled alive in his own skin before his bullet had ended her life and that spell with it. "She created an elemental, sent it after a few families. Grudges, it looked like."

"A grudge?" Ellie asked disbelievingly. "Over what?"

"I don't remember," he said, a bit apologetically. He remembered all too well the petty nature of the witch's motivation against the families she'd sent the fetch to kill. He didn't think it was going to help the woman sitting beside him to hear how trivial a desire had wiped out her parents and had almost killed her.

"My Dad cleaned out your wounds …" His eyes moved to her shoulder, and she stiffened slightly, as if a memory existed for her of the pain of that moment. Against his palms and fingertips he felt a deep shudder, the sense memory of her reaction when he'd had to hold her down. "We called the cops and the paramedics; but we couldn't stay."

"The doctor at the hospital told me that someone had made sure the wounds were clean," she said distractedly, looking back to the locket in her palm for a moment. Her gaze lifted to him. "He said that was probably why I was still alive when I reached the hospital."

Turning to look at Sam, she added, "Sam said your father died, last year. I'm sorry."

Dean's eyes closed briefly. "Yeah."

He felt her looking at him, tried to keep his face impassive against the grief and the flickering surge of shame that filled him. There was nothing he could do to make that right, to make it how it should've been. Against his hand, he felt the warmth of her fingers, curled around his for a moment. The touch imparted a light shock that tingled through his nervous system, gone as he opened his eyes.

"It's fine," he said, wondering if he'd imagined that light pressure and his reaction to it. She didn't look like she'd moved, her gaze was on her hands, holding the locket in her lap. He remembered something else. "Did your parents know that they were targeted?"

She shook her head, the crease reappearing between her brows. "I don't know. They told me I was unconscious for days after I was brought in, some kind of hairline fracture to my head. I didn't –" she hesitated and he saw it, a tiny, involuntary flinch from some memory or thought. "I didn't know much about my parent's, uh, work life. I was only home to get a letter for the school I'd been at."

She looked away and he recognised the deliberate omissions in the brief account, not sure if she was lying to him or to herself.

"They contacted my aunt, my father's sister. She organised a transfer to Boston," she continued, glancing back at him with a slight shrug.

Dean nodded. "I know. You were gone when I went back." He looked at her, sensing rather than seeing her uncertainties. "We killed the witch, a week later."

He wasn't sure she'd heard that. She'd turned the locket over in her hand, and he watched her reading the inscription. He saw the brightness of her eyes, tears filling them but not spilling over as she opened the locket and looked at the photographs inside.

For a long moment, she sat completely still, her gaze fixed on the images. Then she stood up and walked away from the bed, sitting down at the table near the room's tiny kitchenette, ducking her head into her crossed arms. He couldn't hear her, but he could see her shoulders shaking, the small tremors shivering the braid that lay down her back and catching the light.

Watching her sitting there, he felt his throat closing a little. Everyone he'd met in this life had lost someone. He didn't know why he felt her loss so strongly.

Sam opened his eyes. He felt better for the half-dozing sleep he'd had. He turned his head on the pillow, seeing Dean still lying in the other bed, his eyes closed. His brother's face was pale, the freckles standing out. He wondered if he needed something for the pain. Easing himself into a sitting position, he looked around the silent room. Ellie sat at the table, her face hidden in her arms.

"Dean?" Sam asked softly, unsure of what'd happened in the time he'd been out. Dean's eyes opened, dark and shadowed as he looked over.

"You okay?" Sam asked. He couldn't pinpoint the cause but he was troubled by his brother's expression.

Dean nodded. "Yeah, Sam, I'm fine." His gaze shifted to look at the woman sitting at the table, his voice dropping as he added, "She's not."

Sam looked back at Ellie. He swung his legs off the bed and got to his feet, walking slowly to the table. He pulled one of the chairs around beside Ellie and sat down.

"Ellie?"

She lifted her head from her arms, her eyelids swollen and red-rimmed, the colour washed out of her face. Sam felt a moment's surprise at the sight. He hadn't thought her to be vulnerable. Not vulnerable enough to let anyone else see it, he amended the thought as she straightened in the chair, rubbing the palms of her hands over her face and giving him a slightly wry smile.

"Sorry," she said, drawing in a deep breath. "Just letting go. It's been a long time, but I guess I'm finally letting go." She rubbed her fingertips along the line of her brow, closing her eyes.

He nodded, his gaze going to the locket on the table. There was something about it that seemed familiar. "Your parents?"

Ellie followed his gaze. "Yeah. I … uh, thank you, both …" She turned in the chair to look at Dean. "… of you. For what you did."

Sam glanced at Dean, seeing him turn his head away. He looked back at Ellie.

"What we did?" he asked. He looked down at the locket, recognising it belatedly. Dean had asked him what the inscription said, not long after they'd left Palo Alto. He hadn't told Sam where he'd found it until a few months after that. "Wait a minute – you're the –"

"The elemental job, in Spokane," Dean said, and Sam looked back at Ellie.

"Why'd you become a hunter, after that?" Sam asked her, his forehead furrowing up. She'd been a kid, and she'd had some family, Dean'd said.

She seemed to consider her answer, finally looking at him with a tired smile. "I couldn't sleep."

He stared at her and she shrugged.

"It's true, I couldn't remember what'd happened, but things came out when I was sleeping and eventually I stopped getting more than a couple of hours a night," she said. "My aunt was frantic, she tried everything. I must have been the most costly eleven-year old orphan ever."

"So you became a hunter?" Sam asked again, his tone dubious as he tried to see the connection.

"I started to read," she corrected him absently, her gaze a little unfocussed. "Everything I could find on the unexplained, mythology, even psychopaths since the police refused to rule that out. Can't say it helped much with sleeping but I found a place that specialised in old books and the owner helped me out a lot, had a lot of contacts overseas and, I found out a lot later, some experience with what'd happened to my parents."

She was silent for a moment and Sam slid a sideways glance at his brother. Dean was lying back against the pillows, his eyes closed. Sam could see he was listening, the particular tension in his brother's frame obvious to him if probably not to anyone else.

"I read everything I could find," she said finally. "And I learned whatever I could from whoever would teach me."

"You taught yourself to hunt?" Sam asked disbelievingly.

"No, I found teachers," she said, her expression a little distant. "Some of them weren't in the life, they just knew things that I thought it would be useful to know. Some of them were and they tried their damnedest to get me to quit. My aunt was horrified by the things she found me studying." She shook her head at the memory of that conversation. "But she understood that I needed it to be stronger, needed it to feel safer. I didn't tell her what it was all for."

She looked back at him, shrugging slightly. "I was lucky. I made a lot of mistakes the first couple of years. Someone was looking out for me, because I probably should have died the first time out. And I didn't really think there were any others like me, not when I started. I thought I was alone."

Sam looked at Dean. They'd known there was a community out there, far-flung and paranoid and most of them too distorted by what had happened to them to be comfortable with other people. He thought of his father. When he'd started, he must have felt that way as well. At least, until he'd found Missouri.

"The police told me that they had no idea of what had killed my parents. I could see from their eyes that they'd never seen anything like it. They wouldn't let me see the bodies – or what was left of them. The funerals were held before I got out of the hospital, their remains cremated and scattered over the sea." Her face had closed up, hiding her emotions. "I met a few people who knew a few people, and I got better. I met Michael when I was seventeen, and I worked with him until he died."

Sam blinked at that. Seventeen. And she'd been hunting before that, on her own. She hadn't been kidding when she'd said she'd been lucky. His father had told them, over and over, luck always ran out. It was knowledge and skill and experience that took care of business when luck decided to disappear. How much of those could she have had at fifteen? Sixteen?

She closed her eyes, pushing aside the memories that lurked, that she didn't want to look at or think about. "If I'm moderately successful at what I do, it's because of him."

Exhaling softly, she opened her eyes, looking at him as she said, "Michael's the reason I've been hunting demons. He was an expert, possibly more so than Bill Harvelle. He'd been – he knew things that most hunters never dreamed of. He told me that something was coming, something big. He said that for a thousand years, demons couldn't break through to our world; they could influence our minds, our decisions, yes. The least powerful could creep through the cracks and possess the weak, people whose mental state is battered, or broken. But walking around as they are now? No. He said it was impossible."

"Impossible is getting to be a word that might need its definition changed," Sam commented.

"Yeah. You're in the middle of it. You two, and the people who are close to you," she told him. "I don't know how or why, but it's your name that comes up, and it's not just the demons I've questioned. Some of the other hunters have heard it too."

Sam nodded. "We know."

"What do you know about it, Ellie?" Dean asked softly from the bed. She turned in the chair to look at him.

"Not much," she said apologetically. "Demon whispers, mostly. There are too many to discount now. They talk about an army, and human leaders. Two of the demons are fighting for the command of Hell, or something worse. It's vague and some of what they say is contradictory." She turned to look back at Sam. "I've been looking for a year, but all I've found is that one of the demons is probably a Fallen and the other is near the top of the tree in Hell's upper management."

"Yellow Eyes," Sam said, looking at his brother. "Ellie thinks that he's one of the Fallen."

"What are the 'Fallen'?" Dean asked.

"The Fallen were the angels who supported Lucifer, when he was cast down from Heaven," Ellie said, getting to her feet. "They were imprisoned with him in Hell."

She walked to the bathroom, pushing the door wide and turning on the tap, splashing cold water over her face and neck. Turning the tap off and drying her face, she looked briefly at her reflection in the mirror. The redness was fading from her eyes, but the lids would be swollen for hours.

Shock, she told herself as she saw the faint tremor in her fingers as she pushed a loose strand of hair back and tucked it behind her ear. Just shock at finally learning what had happened, meeting the men who'd been there, who knew about it. She couldn't stay here any longer, though. She needed time to deal with the mess, with whatever came back. She thought of the fragment of memory that had hit her in Ellen's place and pushed it aside impatiently. Not the time, not the place.

Pulling her clothes down from the rail, she rolled them up and shoved them into the bulky leather pack, picking it up and slinging it over her shoulder. Inside it, wrapped up in several pieces of clothing, the knife that could kill demons weighed heavily. It was a potent weapon. She thought they needed it more than she did.

She came out of the bathroom and stood by the table, looking from Dean to Sam.

"That demon had a knife," she said, reaching into her pack for the bundled blade. "A knife that can kill demons. I think you should keep it."

Unwrapping the knife, she sat on the edge of Dean's bed, holding it flat on her palm for them to look at. Sam got up from his chair, leaning over her.

The blade was long and tapered, the cutting edge curving upwards. The tang ran the full length of the hilt, the dark, oily-looking metal visible at the base. Sam lifted it, brows lifting a little as he felt the balance. Looking at him, Ellie nodded.

"Like a throwing knife, the hilt doesn't add much to the weight," she commented.

The hilt was bone, he thought as he passed it to his brother, polished and smooth.

"What's that?" Dean angled the blade awkwardly in front of his non-swollen eye and Ellie leaned closer, seeing the fine markings etched around the base of the knife near the hilt.

"No clue," she told him. "I don't know what it's made of either. It's got very little flex, but if it's steel it's been forged in a way I never heard of." She looked from the knife to his face. "It's a one-stop, you need it."

Sam shook his head, glancing to his brother for confirmation. "No. You're hunting on your own. You need it more than we do."

"Sam, not true. I'm not … noticed … like you two are. I'm not on their hit list."

"Maybe," Dean said, his voice deeper than usual, thickened by some emotion that wasn't evident on his face. "After today, you might be. I agree with Sam, you need to keep it."

He held it out, the fine muscles around his eyes tensing with the effort of lifting it.

She looked at him, her expression troubled as she took it back from him. "They'll come after you, eventually. They won't leave you alone."

He nodded. He knew that. Sam knew it too.

She stood up and walked to her pack, opening the front pocket. Pulling out a small silk bag, she untied the drawstring, and pulled out two flat stones. They were black, highly polished, engraved with a complex sigil that couldn't be seen unless the stones were held obliquely to the light. She laid them on the table.

"Put these with something you carry all the time. They'll hide you from random notice," she said, replacing the bag in the pack. "They're not powerful enough to avoid a determined search for you, but they deflect casual attention."

Sam picked one up. It felt cool and smooth against his fingertips. "Where are they from?"

"Originally? I don't know," she said, looking at him. "I was in Morocco, a few years ago, and I met an old man in the desert south of Tangiers. He gave me five of them. They worked pretty well. I'm still alive."

Sam felt a bubble of questions rising at the casual explanation but he shook his head and nodded instead of letting them out. If the stones could keep her alive, they sure couldn't hurt to carry around.

"Thanks."

"Keep the knife. I'd feel better if I knew you had it," Dean said, his gaze steady on her face. He didn't want to argue about it. His brother had filled him a little on what had happened after he'd been taken, her showing up, figuring out where he'd be, working out how to take the demons down. The way he saw it, he thought that maybe they owed her. And hunting alone was a fool's job, his father had said, dryly acknowledging that he'd been doing it for too many years himself.

She might've been lucky, she might be good, he thought. But he found he didn't want to hear from Ellen she'd gone down in a fight where that knife might've made the difference.

"Until you need it then," she countered mildly, seeing the determination in the lines bracketing his mouth. "If you do, you can contact me through Ellen. She'll pass on a message."

She lifted the pack and settled it comfortably on her shoulder, turning and walking for the door.

"You're leaving now?"

Sam saw his brother struggling to sit up, Dean's face screwing up with the pain that the movement stirred. "Wait, uh, just – look, maybe we can help each other out?"

Ellie turned around, shaking her head. "You know as much as I do now," she told them bluntly.

"I've got, uh, other commitments right now. And I guess you do too." She looked down, hesitating for a moment, her hand resting on the door knob. "If I hear anything, or find anything that you can use, I'll call."

She opened the door then turned back to them again as she paused on the threshold. "But be more careful from now on, okay? Next time you might not have someone around to save your asses."

Sam grinned in rueful acknowledgement, his gaze flicking to his brother. He turned back to see Ellie smile suddenly, a smile that seemed to light up her eyes and face, banishing the hunter and leaving a young woman of striking beauty before it disappeared. She turned away and closed the door behind her.

Looking back at his brother, he saw something in Dean's face as his brother stared at the door, uncertain of what it was. "You okay?"

Dean blinked and turned to look at him, the unknown expression replaced by a slightly sardonic look.

"No, I'm starving," he said, looking at the pills on the nightstand. "I'm supposed to eat something before I can take those."

Sam nodded, automatically getting up. "What do you want?"

"Anything," his brother replied vaguely, his eyes closing.

Dean opened his eyes as the door closed behind his brother, hearing the familiar rumble of the car starting up.

He'd known that the demons knew them, some of them. Most of them, he thought, his mental tone disparaging. They'd taken him easily and he hadn't told his brother that he'd just been bait. Hadn't told him what the demon had said. Easing himself against the pain of his shoulders, he thought that Sam probably knew anyway. He had no idea of how he was supposed to obey his father's last command and protect his brother against the demons. They could run, keep on the move, try and find out more about what the hell was happening, but the weapon they needed was gone and Yellow Eyes was still around and it felt like the whole fucking world was against them.

He thought of what Ellie had said, about the demons she'd been questioning. How long would it be before another hunter found out the same things? A hunter who might not be inclined to help them, who would think that Sam was a danger to humanity? If he had to protect his brother against his own kind as well …

Since their father had gone, the responsibility had become unbearable. He didn't think of it most of the time, tried to ignore it, tried to keep his game face on for Sammy. He didn't know how long he could keep doing that, hiding it from his brother, trying to hide it from himself. He was so goddamned tired.

AN: This story is the first in a series, introducing Ellie Morgan. The series attempts to fit the additional stories in between the canon episodes of the show without disturbing the storylines already present. Some leeway has been taken with the canon, however, for the purposes of expanding the potential of the story. The next in the series is One Night. I hope you're enjoying the ride.