AUTHOR'S NOTE: Update update update. Hope you all enjoy!
Set Pre-SPN Satanpocalypse, Post-Ghost Story, with flashbacks circa Storm Front. This particular tale takes place during (and is written in the same style as) the events of Unfinished Business.
This chapter is set circa Storm Front.
[Fifteen Years Earlier]
It had rushed them – the thing, whatever it was, silently moving out of the shadows at the edge of the roof before leaping like an animal in old, stained jeans and a gray hoodie. Dark, greasy matted hair hung down in its eyes, features too eroded to tell whether it had been a male or female.
Karrin had frozen, staring at it, trying to will her hands to move while her brain was still trying to figure out what it was. Her heartbeat thundered in her head and everything seemed to slow down. Something had hit her...
Her palms and temple scraped the gravel-and-tar pavement of the roof. She looked up.
Carmichael had shoved her out of the way; he was emptying his pistol into the monster's chest. The slide of his Colt locked open. He tossed it down and picked up her shotgun. In the dark, every blast from the barrel lit up the roof in strobes of orange and white. The buckshot staggered it, but only just enough to hold it off.
"No, no, no, no," said the injured man, gritting his teeth. Their John Doe was awake and wide-eyed now, breathing hard. Murphy righted herself, grabbed him by his jacket and pulled with every bit of strength she had, both of them scrambling backwards on their heels. He probably weighed more than twice what she did.
"That's not gonna do anything." He gestured wildly toward the one he had killed, a few feet away. "You have to—" He gasped for breath and pressed a hand to the gauze on his shoulder. He smelled like booze and blood, he was clearly exhausted.
Who the hell was this guy? Was there more than one weirdo wizard running around Chicago?
"Stake?"
"More in the bag," he wheezed. But the bag was across the roof.
The shotgun jammed – the empty shell failed to eject. Ron took a quick step forward, whipped the stock of the gun up into the jaw of the thing and its head snapped back with a pop of bone on bone, the angle of its neck distorted and painful to look at.
It shook it off and kept on coming, hissing like it was trying to talk through its sideways jaw.
Monsters. They don't know when to quit. Carmichael was fast for a big guy, but Karrin was much smaller, much faster. She scrambled over John Doe, ripped the stake out of the chest of the deadest dead thing and dodged between her partner and his attacker, spinning the pointed end up to lodge beneath its sternum, wishing she had a nice, sharp wakizashi instead.
Maybe she should start keeping one with her riot gear. The mounted cops in L.A. carried bokken instead of batons, or so she had heard.
Gore leaked out of the chest wound, not fast enough for a heart to be pumping, not warm as it dripped on her hands, dark but not the right color to be blood. The thing blinked down at her with filmy, intelligent eyes, then grabbed her by the front of her Kevlar and pitched her over its shoulder with creepy monster strength, howling with rage.
Being small has its disadvantages.
Murphy landed in the middle of the rusted, grimy skylight in the center of the roof – it held for a moment, creaking, before the glass gave out beneath her in razor-edged splinters and she fell into the abandoned apartment below.
Years of practicing falls helped her avoid getting a face full of floor or a broken ankle; you learn to land the right way in martial arts. But it was a long way down to the old, cracked linoleum. Pain seared through her arm when she tried to push herself up on her left hand. Her wrist was dislocated. Her jacket and vest had protected her from most of the glass and metal but there were cuts through her pants and her face and hands stung. The latex gloves she had been wearing were shredded.
There wasn't enough time for her to catch her breath before John Doe came crashing through what was left of the glass, riding the undead creature down and screaming in...Latin? Faint white light shone out of his hands, clenched around the thing's throat.
They landed hard on a kitchen table. Wood and bone cracked, the table snapped in half. It gurgled, struggled, but seemed less creepy-strong than before. The man let go, panting, drew a kukri blade from under his coat and took its head off in one swing. The severed head hit the linoleum with a sick thud and rolled, teeth snapping.
He staggered to his feet, moving away until his back hit the wall and he slid down to sit next to her, his breathing labored. He held out a scraped, bruised hand.
"You dropped this."
Something was pooled in his palm, red beads and silver chain glittering in the faint light that filtered through the broken glass – she recognized it.
Her rosary. Karrin took it. One of the links had broken - it must have slipped off her neck when the monster threw her.
"Thanks."
He nodded. And then he passed out, slumped against the peeling wallpaper before she could ask him anything or read him his rights. Karrin checked his pulse. Stronger than before, but he was out.
A shadow appeared at the edge of the hole in the skylight. "Murph?"
"Yeah?"
A flashlight beam swept down over her. There was gruff worry in Ron's voice. "Just wanted to make sure you weren't turning into a zombie or nothing."
"Jerk." She flipped him off with the hand that was still working. "If you're not too busy, how about an ETA on that medic?"
She rode to Cook County General in the back of the ambulance with John Doe. The bullet in his shoulder was small, twenty-two, and hadn't done much damage. He had lost some blood and was severely dehydrated.
Murphy was there when he woke up from surgery a few hours later, after a nurse had given her some Tylenol, cleaned up her cuts, bandaged and iced her wrist.
A set of military dog tags on a steel chain rested on the bedside table. A Marine. That was the only identification the man had been carrying. She had texted the name and numbers stamped into the metal to Carmichael.
"Lady cop." John - his actual name, if the dog tags were accurate - blinked blearily. The nurses had cleaned the blood and dirt from his face and hands. He wore a silver wedding ring. "What are you doing here?"
"That's Lieutenant Lady Cop to you, buddy." Karrin slid the glass-and-metal door shut with her boot, one arm in a sling, one hand holding a paper cup of hot coffee.
"You haven't read me my rights yet."
"Not yet." She sat in the chair next to the bed, cradling her coffee. She took a long drink. "I was going to ask you what you were doing there, on that roof. And then I saw you kill that...zombie thing."
"You know?" He propped himself up a little and peered at her, smiling just a little. "You know."
"Only enough to get myself in trouble. What were those things?"
He shrugged, then winced as he reached for his dog tags and fumbled them around his neck. The painkillers were wearing off. "Don't know. Seemed to react to objects of faith, though. Some kind of vampire, maybe."
"Is that what happened?"
"When I held your rosary on it? Yeah. They don't like that."
"You were tracking them? Is that what you do, kill monsters? We looked through your bag, my partner and me. Had some weird stuff in there."
He didn't say anything. She was in the know about the paranormal, kind of, but she was still a cop. People didn't like cops, on principle, and people who did quasi-illegal things liked cops even less. He wasn't going to admit anything, on the record or off.
Karrin's phone buzzed.
John Winchester. Sounds made up - Carmichael texted again a few minutes later - Can't find anything except military discharge record. From Kansas. Married, wife deceased - house fire. Two kids. A few previous arrests. Nothing major enough to hold him for anything. I'll print it out and bring it up.
"Well, we're only going to hold you for as long as it takes to process you." It was quiet for a moment, except for the hum of monitors and the drip of the IV. "From what my partner and I saw, we're certain you didn't have anything to do with the bodies in the apartment, but we still have to follow procedure."
He snorted.
"You were found at a crime scene. I know you didn't kill those people, from what I could tell you were trying to stop it. You still have to get processed."
He grunted. Chatty son of a bitch.
"If you hadn't saved our asses, I would throw you in lockup faster than you could say 'hocus pocus,' and dig up every bit of dirt I could on you.'" Murphy shifted in her chair. Her broken rosary was a strange weight in her jacket pocket, usually warm around her neck. It made her uncomfortable that people like this guy and Dresden operated outside the law. Harry tried, God help him, he tried. It made her more uncomfortable that it seemed more and more necessary to work outside the law, the more things went on like they did. "But I believe that karma can be a bigger bitch than I can, and that you helped me. I owe you for that, and for shutting down those creeps last night."
John frowned. "If you think those were the only ones around, you're kidding yourself."
"Definitely not. But I know what it looks like, now."
He nodded, thoughtful.
"And if you cooperate," she said, smiling as she stood, "I'll pretend I didn't see that bag full of felonious Buffy The Vampire Slayer shit. Deal?'
John stared balefully away for a moment, then up at the IV, slowly dripping. He sighed. "I'll get my gear back?"
"Sure. It found its way into the fridge in that apartment we fell in. Forensics should be done with the scene in a day or so." Karrin picked up a pen and wrote down her contact information on a piece of paper from the table. "Call if you need anything. Or if you think of anything you need to tell me...?"
He peered at the words in the low light. "I think that's it, Lieutenant."
"Rest up. You'll be transported to Special Investigations this afternoon, where you'll give your account of the attack."
"And who do I tell my monster story to, at this 'Special Investigations?'"
"Me."
He laughed. "And what goes down in the official report?"
"Whatever the hell I decide to write. It's my department."
John stared at her with round eyes as she shut the door.
stay tuned...