Chapter Two

"Good thing you caught her, Sammy."

"It had her right up that tree. I didn't even see her."

"Neither did I, dude. Don't beat yourself up over it."

"We could've gotten her killed."

"Sammy…"

The strange girl who fell out of the tree groaned. "Stop…stop shouting," she mumbled, shaking her head.

Dean and Sam exchanged a puzzled glance. They weren't shouting. What also puzzled them was her voice. There was a strange lilt to it, an accent that most definitely did not come from any part of America.

"Hey," Sam said gently, dropping his voice to a murmur. "Hey, are you okay?"

"I…I think so," she replied. She slowly opened her eyes and blinked several times.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" Sam asked, pointing to the sky.

"One." She shut her eyes and breathed deeply. "What happened?"

"Don't worry about anything," Dean said. "We got that hellcat that had you up the tree. It's taken care of."

"Good…" She sighed and opened her eyes again, fixing them with a perturbed look. "Where the hell did you come from?"

Sam and Dean looked at each other. "Well, uh," Sam started.

"We were just…" Dean's voice trailed off and he coughed.

The girl sat up slowly, flexing her limbs cautiously and brushing moss, dirt, and pine needless of her jacket. She raked her hands through her hair, pulling it away from her face which – both brothers were relieved to see – was finally regaining some colour.

She cleared her throat and rubbed her eyes before surveying the clearing. The charred, smoking remains of the dire-cougar lay where Dean had shot it down across the clearing. She bit her lip and exhaled, rubbing her left temple. Sam offered her a hand up, and she accepted, smiling her thanks and straightening out her clothes once she was steady on her feet.

"I'm Ivy, Ivy Griffin," she said. Dean couldn't get past that strange musical intonation in her voice. It sounded familiar to his ears, but he couldn't place it. He and Sam exchanged a brief glance before responding.

"Dean."

"Sam."

She was scanning the ground quickly, but upon hearing their names stopped and looked at them with a raised eyebrow. "Ah, the Winchesters." She averted her gaze back to the ground, and almost immediately found what she was looking for. Ivy dropped to one knee and took a hold of the shotgun that lay between two of the tree's roots.

Dean was immediately on guard. "How do you know us?" he demanded, his eyes narrowing slightly and his jaw setting.

Ivy looked up from inspecting her shotgun, cocking her head to one side. "As if you lads were anonymous among hunters," she said flatly.

The brothers were flabbergasted. "Say what?" Dean sputtered. "You're a…a hunter? What the hell kind of game were you playing up in that tree, then?"

"Of course I'm a hunter. What else would I be doing up a tree with a sawed-off full of iron bullets laced with rock salt and baby tears?" Ivy retorted, rising to both feet again. Her voice was a bit sharper, the lilt more pronounced. "I was just about to blast that dire-cougar when you pair showed up."

Dean frowned at her. "Forgive me," he said tersely, "but it didn't seem like you had it under control." He didn't like how this was playing out with this girl. You don't leave her stranded out here, and this is the thanks you get.

"Dean," Sam interjected, a note of caution in his voice.

"It's fine," Ivy reassured him. She turned to Dean. "You ought to be a little more careful on the hunt."

"Oh? What's that supposed to mean, sister?"

"It means, you nearly got me killed! Who sent you out here in the first place?"

"That's none of your business!"

"You're on my turf!"

Sam stepped in between them before the situation could escalate. "Look, you two," he said, "we're all a bit…tense…so let's just back down and cool off, okay?"

"Sounds fine to me," Dean said with a sardonic tone in his voice, his jade-green eyes flashing. He turned on his heel and started striding back across the clearing. "Come on, Sammy."

Sam sighed and rolled his eyes. He turned back to Ivy, who was poker-faced as she removed the shots from her gun. "Listen," Sam said hastily, "he's not so bad, really. Just…" He stopped mid-sentence. "What I mean to say is," he began again, "I'm sorry for all this. I really am."

Ivy blew a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. "It's alright," she said, her voice much softer now. "It's been a long day."

"Sam!"

Sam let loose an exasperated sound and called out after Dean's retreating back. "Just a sec Dean!" He turned back to Ivy. "We kind of just got here…didn't haven time to check into a motel or anything. Could tell us where it is?"

Ivy smirked. "You drove in through Spruce Street off the highway, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"You basically drove through town. There's no motel here."

"How can a town not have a motel?!" Dean exploded. He stomped through the underbrush, viciously hacking aside stray foliage with the barrel of his shotgun. This was definitely not his day.

"At least none that isn't three hours out in any given direction," Sam corrected, trying to inject a soothing note into his voice.

Ivy was walking ahead of them, but she was keeping one ear on the forest sounds and the other on the brothers' conversation. She rolled her eyes at the pissed-off sounding grunt Dean replied with.

"Oh, don't tell me you'd rather sleep in the car out here," Sam said.

"Never said that," Dean retorted.

They fell into silence for a few minutes, trailing behind Ivy. Dean regarded her from behind, trying to sort her out before she had a chance to do the same to him. Her about-face attitude grated against his nerves, but at least physically she was okay. More than okay, actually, he decided. She wasn't tall at all, but her legs and rear end looked pretty good in the form-fitting grey jeans she wore tucked into her knee-high black boots. The black tank top she had on under her leather jacket was cut just low enough in front in a V-neck to show off her forward-facing assets. Her hair was a dark shade of auburn, and she wore it pulled back from her face in a messy knot. She wasn't death-white, but her skin was pale with just a hint of colour in her cheeks, and her body was clearly fit and conditioned. The way she'd held her shotgun and now, the way she carried it – in what looked to Dean like a custom-made back holster – told him that it was an extension of her body; it told him she'd known how to use one since an early age.

And then there was that voice of hers. He was still trying to place that strange accent.

They reached the edge of the woods where the brothers had parked their Impala. After driving through the minute village that was Pine Valley, they had taken the narrow two-lane road up the mountain and had turned off onto the gravel one that they'd parked on.

There was no other vehicle in sight.

"How'd you get up here?" Dean asked.

"I walked," Ivy replied.

Dean stared at her. "It's six miles away!"

Ivy raised her eyebrow again at him. That was starting to bug Dean – a lot. "You're so easy to take the piss out of," she laughed, crossing the gravel road and disappearing down a narrow dirt path on the other side. In a moment they heard the deep purr of an engine, and she emerged from the shelter of the trees in a black Cadillac. She stopped by the brothers and leaned out the window.

"Just follow me down," she said. "Like I said, there's no motel in town, but I think I know a place where you can stay."

"Looks like rain," Sam mused, staring at the sky from the passenger seat of the Impala. The sky was overcast and in the distant east, angry-looking clouds were looming.

"You don't say," Dean grunted. "Who the hell drives a '67 deVille in the middle of nowhere?"

"I'm pretty sure some people say the same about a '67 Impala," Sam replied wryly. Dean gave him a dark sidelong glare.

The drive passed by fairly quickly and soon they were back on Spruce Street. Dean and Sam noted, with some amusement, that almost everyone who was still out stopped to wave at Ivy as she drove by.

"I'm still getting over the fact that they've got sidewalks," Dean said. "Strangest little town I've ever seen, and God knows how many we've gone through by now."

"Stop whining, jerk."

"Make me, bitch."

They drove straight through the town proper and turned off Spruce Street onto a smaller road. There weren't that many houses in the actual area; the ones that were there were small and situated in clusters on side-streets. The Winchesters figured that most people in Pine Valley lived farther out in the surrounding woods. Personally, Dean couldn't see why anyone would want to do that, especially with possessed mountain cats wandering around.

They drove right out of the actual town and continued ten more minutes into the woods. It was getting dark, but Dean could make out a bridge up ahead. They crossed it, and the brothers looked out their windows on either side. There was a long drop into a canyon below, which had a river running through it at the bottom.

"Charming," Dean remarked.

Five more minutes of driving, and they pulled out of the woods into a large clearing with three buildings. An old-fashioned log cabin stood in the middle, flanked by what looked like a barn on one side and a detached garage on the other. The garage was well-lit and the doors were open; inside, there was a dark blue Dodge Ram and what looked like a couple of motorcycles under canvas tarps. The Ram's doors were open and the hood was up; Dean could make out the shape of somebody working underneath it.

Ivy pulled into the garage next to the Ram and got out. Dean idled the Impala, watching as Ivy crouched down next to the Ram to have a word with whoever was underneath. A moment later, she straightened up and motioned for them to park next to the deVille.

They exited the car, and Ivy's companion under the Ram scooted out and got to her feet.

"Dean, Sam," Ivy said, "this is Charlie Griffin, my cousin. Char, the Winchesters."

"Wasn't aware you were coming into town," Charlie said, her voice lilting in the same way as Ivy's. She grinned wryly, wiping her hands off on a jaycloth. She was taller than Ivy, with blonde hair pulled away from her face in a long ponytail and paler skin than her cousin's, with a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her faded blue jeans were torn and streaked with engine grease in several places, and her grey T-shirt had seen better days in the garage for sure.

Sam frowned and Dean went on the offensive immediately. "Sending out a news bulletin isn't the way we normally work," he snapped.

"Whoa, there," Charlie laughed, holding up her hands in surrender fashion. "All I'm saying is that we usually have a heads up on other hunters strolling into our turf."

"Your turf?" Sam repeated. There was that phrase again.

Charlie nodded. Ivy, meanwhile, removed her back-holster and opened the trunk of her car.

"We're permanent-residence hunters," Charlie explained, tossing her jaycloth aside and stretching her back. "We do all our hunting out of this place."

"Around here, we've got your everyday, run-of-the-mill forest-types," Ivy added.

"And some of your not-so-ordinary ones," Charlie said without missing a bet. "How'd that dire-cougar turn out, by the way?"

"We got it," Dean said.

Charlie and Ivy both cast dark looks at him.

"What?" he exclaimed. "It's the truth. That thing had Ivy up a tree. We kind of saved her ass."

"You call nearly getting me killed 'saving my ass'?" Ivy demanded.

Charlie's grey-blue eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, 'nearly getting you killed'?"

"They came in, guns blazing. I lost my focus."

Charlie fixed Dean with a death glare. "You made her lose focus," she said angrily, "while she was hunting a dire-cougar?"

"To be fair," Sam cut in hastily, "we didn't know she was there."

Charlie pursed her lips, but she silently acquiesced. After a moment she said, "Ivy tells me you boys are going to be needing a place to stay for a bit?"

"That's right," Sam confirmed before Dean could get a word in edgewise on the subject of lodgings.

"We've got room up here," Charlie said. "You're welcome to stay here with us as long as you need to."

Sam smiled his thanks, but Dean was still steely-eyed. He didn't like the undercurrents of aggression and hostility that were running through this pair. Frankly, he didn't feel too welcome at all, but he resigned himself quickly to their fate and voiced his thanks – albeit, slightly begrudgingly.

Charlie nodded. "Well, then," she said briskly. "If you're all ready, then, I guess we can go up to the house now. I'm done here for the night. Ivy?"

"Yeah." Ivy closed her trunk and let her hair down. Shaking it out, she added, "That storm we've been expecting is coming."

Charlie raised her eyebrows. "They've been forecasting this storm for a week now," she explained. "Apparently it's going to be huge. Hope you guys brought an ark," she added jokingly.

"Noah was told humans would only need an ark that one time."

All four hunters whirled around to face the garage door. Ivy and Charlie stood in defensive positions – Ivy had pulled a knife from the sheath she wore under her shirt at the small of her back, and Charlie had grabbed hers out of her boot.

"Cas?" Dean exclaimed. "What the hell is wrong with your phone this time? I told you to call me when you came in."

"The voice told me I was out of minutes."

"What the hell is going on here?" Charlie fumed.

"Ivy, Charlie," Sam said, "this is Castiel."

"We're playing hostess to the Winchesters and a freakin' angel now, too?" Charlie demanded.

Castiel regarded her quizzically. "I don't understand your anger," he mused. Charlie fixed him with what Dean and Sam could already identify as the trademark Griffin angry-face.

Ivy, on the other hand, had relaxed and was now looking intently at Castiel. Castiel, feeling her gaze upon him, turned to her. They stared into each other's eyes for what felt like an eternity.

"Ivy?" Charlie quipped.

"It's cool," Ivy said. "Come on. Let's get inside…Castiel has something important to tell us."