The Joys of Being a Winchester

Chapter 21

"Bobby, is this really necessary?"

"Just a belt of Holy Water, shouldn't hurt." The two hunters sat across from each other, Sam, Dean and Jayde standing around the table. Jayde had hardly said a word to Ellen, but simply let her rant out to the people she knew. So far, the only thing she knew about her was that she was the sole survivor of the Roadhouse fire, somehow evading the demons and getting to Bobby's as a first resort. She threw the shot of Holy Water down her throat, and pushed the shot glass back across the table.

"Whiskey now, if you don't mind." she smiled, but there was nothing behind, just a flash of a smirk, a bit of snarky attitude.

"Ellen, what happened? How'd you get out?" Dean was concerned, the same concern he showed when his brother or sister got injured during a fight or hunt.

"I wasn't supposed to. I was supposed to be in there with everybody else." She scoffed, shaking her head. "But we ran out of pretzels, of all things. It was dumb luck." She threw more liquid down her throat, this time the honey-coloured whiskey dancing and stinging on her taste buds. She exhaled sharply and let the shot glass fall to the wooden table top with a gentle clink. "Anyway, that's when Ash called. Panic in his voice." She sighed. "He told me to look in the safe. Then the call cut out. By the time I got back, the flames were sky-high. And everybody was dead. I couldn't have been gone more than fifteen minutes."

"I'm sorry Ellen." Sam tried but his small mutter of apology hardly seemed effective.

"A lot of good people died in there. And I got to live." She scoffed again, her tone changing to one dripping in sarcasm. "Lucky me."

"Ellen, you mentioned a safe." Bobby questioned.

"A hidden safe we keep in the basement."

"Demons get what was in it?"

"No," She pulled out a thick piece of paper from her back pocket, unfolding it and flattening the creases along the table. The map looked like Wyoming once again, Jayde eyeing the similar road trails and county names. The only difference however, was that there were 5 black X's marked in different places all across the state, but it wasn't an irregular pattern.

"Wyoming. What does that mean?" Dean traced a line from one point to another, confused and curious. The longer she looked, the more confused Jayde felt. The only possible connection she could see that each mark looked like the corner of a pentagram, the simple 5 sided shape. It didn't make any sense as to why though, or what was there. More importantly, why are the demons so attracted to it?

***

It was at least an hour later when Bobby spoke up. "I don't believe it." He said, setting a very large book on the main desk. Jayde was exhausted from the extensive research, jumping from book to book in hopes of finding anything related to demons surrounding this state, any state, ever. Hearing that there was something new however sparked enough interest to get her up and energised once again, now meeting Sam at the table and leaning against the desk, glaring down at the open book page and map of Wyoming.

"What, you got something?" Sam was staring down at the two items, Bobby's hand suddenly appearing to circle each of the black points with his finger.

"A lot more than that. Each of these X's is an abandoned frontier church-- all mid 19th century. And all of them built by Samuel Colt."

"Samuel Colt--the demon-killing, gun-making Samuel Colt?" Dean looked up, racking his brain for anything else on the man, but Jayde covered him.

"He was one of the first greatest hunters. Prevention, hunting, killing, he was one of those systematic freaks who just got everything done. But why build churches?"