Chapter 9: Hunted

Two months later.

Melanie Harker knew exactly what the yellow-green powder was before she touched it. She knew how it would smell before her fingers rose to her nose. She knew there had been two of them.

What she didn't know was why one of them had used a knife.

"Anything else I can help you with, Agent?"

God, that officer had an annoying voice. She straightened up with a smile painted across her lips. "No thanks, Officer Davids. I think I've seen all I need to."

Clearly the smile had convinced him. Or else he was just stupid. Either way, he answered in an aggressively cheery voice, "Well, if there's anything else I can do for you, you just let me know." Ugh, God, who has teeth like that? They were way too straight, even if he'd had braces as a kid.

"I'll be sure to do that."

Not bothering to thank him or listen to him babble on about lost souls and unhappy accidents in that too-happy tone, Melanie tucked a wayward strand of her long brown hair back behind her ear, and walked smoothly out of the crime scene, avoiding the pools of dried blood that covered most of the warehouse floor.

She made her way carefully to her car, skilfully avoiding any contact with the officers and 'concerned' civilians waiting pointlessly outside the building. She drove a silver 2000 Ford Mondeo, and had for eight years now. It was a boring, but reliable car. The kind you'd see in a shopping centre parking lot and forget as soon as your eyes moved on. Which was, of course, the point.

Melanie Harker was a skilled hunter, and demons were her specialty. She was sure the warehouse workers had been killed by the same demon that murdered Max. She was also certain that every worker in the factory had been a demon. Even dead, their possessed bodies reacted to holy water, though not as dramatically as they do while the demon lived And, of course, the stench of sulphur lingered.

Demons fighting demons was hardly new. For the last year or so, demons had been at war with one another, fighting for their lives and their leaders. Melanie had interrogated enough demons on both sides to learn the story.

One leader was Crowley. He'd been 'the King of Hell' for a few years now, until he'd disappeared for months with no warning. A lot of the demons had thought he'd been killed by the opposition. Turns out he was alive and follower-less, struggling to walk down a street without being gutted by Abaddon's loyalists.

That was the other leader: Abaddon. She was something called a Knight of Hell: immortal, immoral – even for a demon – and terrifying enough to have the majority of demonkind on her side in six months. She was ruthless, cunning, and enjoyed getting her hands dirty.

She was also dead. Killed by one of the Winchesters.

Until recently, Melanie had been satisfied just knowing the Knight was dead, though she had of course been curious as to how it had been done. She didn't know the Winchesters, but she'd heard enough about them from other hunters not to doubt an outrageous-sounding claim, like killing the unkillable. They'd done it before, according to Rupert.

Now, however, she needed to know. Whatever had attacked the warehouses, the crack dens, the convents, and the random houses – it was more than just a run-of-the-mill demon having fun. It was powerful, so far untraceable, and it used a knife.

Why a knife?

That was the most annoying detail, the one that, to Melanie, proved this was no ordinary demon, but gave no clues as to what the hell it was. Demons only used knives if they were torturing. They didn't use them as murder weapons, not this consistently, not with such a strange blade. According to three almost-identical coroners' reports, whatever had penetrated the victims hadn't been metal. There was no such residue on their bones. But whatever had sliced through them had been sharp enough to slice through ribcages as if they were no more substantial than air.

What sort of demon kills with a knife?

Sitting in her car, she withdrew the last two autopsy reports from the latest batch of victims. Apparently one had suffered a fatal bullet wound. About thirty years ago. Demon – point one for Mel. The second had been possessed more recently, she gathered. The coroner, who'd clearly either been extremely bored or pathetically caring, had gone to extra lengths to try and identify the murder weapon. Using some camera thing Melanie couldn't pronounce the name of but was pretty sure she'd seen on Bones, Doctor Wills had gotten a high-def picture of the victim's sternum. The blade the demon had used had pierced right through it, straight to the heart. Like all the others, there were no blade fragments left behind, which, the good doctor noted, was odd. So he'd zoomed in on his bone-tastic camera and decided that, because of the microscopic scratches left around the edges of the broken bone, that the dead demon had been stabbed with—

Bone?

Melanie looked up from the file, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Bone? Who makes a blade from bone? What kind of bone is strong enough to slice through sternums and craniums so easily? Clearly it was in some way magical, but—

Melanie's mouth fell open.

Magic bone. Murder weapon.

Well, she owed Rupert a beer.

A satisfied smile replaced the shock on her face, and she threw the files onto the passenger seat. Turning the key in the ignition, she ran through everything she knew about what she was up against. He was old, very old. And dangerous. He was gonna be hard to kill, that was for sure. She'd need help.

Despite how enormous the task she faced suddenly seemed, the smile did not fade from her lips.

She had a name, at last, after weeks of tracking.

What sort of demon killed with a knife?

The kind that always had.

The first killer.

Cain.