Chapter: Nine
Notes: The quote is from ‘Dean Man’s Blood’, S1.

~~~~~~~~~~

Jo paced in front of the door where the discussion would be. There was a sign on it that the time had been changed and they now had an hour to kill.

Something had been bothering her since lunch and, as she’d caught a glimpse of Risa at the end of the hall a few minutes earlier, she’d realized what it was.

It was Risa herself that bothered her.

Risa was the name of Abigael’s vessel. She remembered now that Dean had recognized her that first time they’d met Abigael and explained about who she was and how he knew her. He’d used that same explanation here, but the only characteristics this Risa shared with vessel Risa, besides name, were height, build, hair color and a vague resemblance in facial features. This Risa didn’t really look like Abby’s Risa, who Dean had claimed was in Zachariah’s vision of the future, so why had Dean thought this one today was her?

Both women were named Risa, but they weren’t the same. Couldn’t be. This wasn’t a case of Abby’s vessel out and about while Abby did angel business unvesseled. Risa here wasn’t that first Risa Dean had claimed to know from Zachariah’s vision.

Dean was lying about her, but why? Why would he lie about the woman?

Gwen returned, minus the shopping bag and carrying her jacket. “Man, I wish they’d turn on the air in here. I’m sweltering!” She read the sign. “Oh, good, we can go back to look at the dealer tables. I need a new keychain. I sort of like the Impala ones.”

“Sure. Hey, you remember Risa?”

They started back towards the main convention room. “The woman at lunch who marched Chuck to a table?”

“Mm-hmm. Do you remember the last time we were all here in Las Vegas?”

“Of course I remember the last time we were here. I had a bum ankle, Sam and I had a revelation about each other, and Teddy had you and Dean really going.”

“Right, but we met Abigael for the first time.” She raised her brows and waited for Gwen to get her point. It didn’t take long.

“Yeah. Wait,” she pulled her hair back into a ponytail and fanned herself with her program, “wasn’t her vessel named Risa?” She nodded. “She was. I remember. Dean gave the same explanation he did today. Zachariah. But….” Gwen stopped walking. “She doesn’t look like Abigael. Superficially a little maybe, but not like twins separated at birth or anything. This Risa isn’t Abigael’s Risa at all, which means she isn’t the same Risa, right?”

“Exactly. So why did Dean think he saw vessel Risa who he said then was the Risa from the vision?”

“Are you sure he thought he saw her?”

She shook her head, touching Gwen’s arm with one hand. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, are you sure he hadn’t seen this Risa last night or this morning and didn’t think you’d remember that vision Risa was Abigael’s vessel? We’ve never really talked about Risa the vessel. We talk about Abigael and to her. We know her. We never talk about her vessel, like we never talk about Castiel’s vessel or any of the other vessels. Are you positive Dean wasn’t trying to get you worked up?”

“Son of bitch.” As hard as he was trying to sway her? Yes, he’d totally use the name coincidence and physical resemblance to work at her. “That dick.” She crossed her arms. “I will nail him to the wall.”

“At the rate this is going, the ride home is going to be interesting.”

She needed to make sure, but how. An idea hit her. “Let’s settle it before I accuse him of lying.” Jo started back towards the hall they’d just left. Risa had been there a few minutes earlier, so maybe she was still there.

“What are you going to do?” Gwen followed her at a slower pace than she set and Jo slowed down a little.

“Talk to her.”

“And what are you going to say?”

“I’ll be absolutely polite and delightful.”

“Sure.” Gwen sounded like she didn’t believe her.

There she was, sitting on a bench reading a book -- not one of the Supernatural books. “Risa,” Jo called. She called it three more times as they approached. Finally at the last time, the woman looked up and stammered a reply.

“Um…yeah? Hi? Sorry.”

Jo shot Gwen a triumphant look. “You’re name isn’t Risa, is it?”

The woman sighed as though relieved. “Well, it sort of could be. Theresa.” She held up her jacket and pointed to the lapel. The nametag fixed there did read ‘Theresa’. “I usually go by Terri though.”

“Why did you tell Sam your name was Risa?”

“Honestly? The guy at your table, the one with the short hair? Paid me fifty bucks to introduce myself to everyone I met all day as Risa. Said it was some sort of joke. Harmless. Easy fifty bucks, right? I’m not sure what the joke was though.”

Jo drew in a breath, put her hands on her hips, and half turned away from Terri. Unbelievable. Dean was unbelievable. She cleared her throat and turned back. “I’ll give you another fifty to go up to that guy today and tell him you had a vision about you two where it was the end of the world, you were together in some sort of camp, and were going out to kill Lucifer.”

“Kill Lucifer.” Terri’s brows raised. “Is this some sort of Supernatural themed prank war?”

“Something like that,” Gwen told her.

“What if he wants to know details?”

Jo bit her lip, trying to remember everything Dean had ever told her about that vision. “Tell him Cas was there, only not like he is now. A hippy almost. And Chuck was there, but Sam wasn’t.” She continued on, giving her details Dean had mentioned.

Gwen laughed. “This is only going to escalate, isn’t it?”

“Hey, he’s the douche who paid a woman to pretend to be someone else, then convinced another to bother me all day. I think a little payback is in order.” She pulled several folded bills from her pocket, separated a fifty and held it out to Terri.

After a moment, Terri took it and slipped it into her jeans pocket. “It’s your money, lady.”

“You remember what he looks like?”

“Sure. Sort of like David Angle only not as good looking.”

“Not as….” She forced herself not to say that Dave was the one not as good looking as Dean. “Right. Next time you see him, okay?”

“Definitely.”

Action taken, Jo started back towards the main room.

Gwen fell in step beside her. “You trying to freak him out now?”

“No. He’ll know I put her up to it and know I’m on to him. Maybe then he’ll stop.”

“Think about what you just said. He won’t stop until he thinks his point has been made and he won’t think his point has been made until you’re wanting to both stop Chuck publishing and leave.”

She was right and Jo knew it. “I don’t care if Chuck publishes for awhile longer.”

“But…?”

“But I kind of get what Dean might be thinking. If this goes really mainstream, like it could be heading into because of the movie coming out, it could be bad for us all. I mean, look at Becky’s reaction to you and --” At the doorway into the room, Jo stopped her. There, looking around like she was searching for someone, was Marissa. She dragged Gwen to one side, out of Marissa’s sight. “Damn it. I’m not ready to have her badgering me again.” She snatched the program from Gwen and flipped through it, searching for the page for Saturday. There had to be something else they could do until time for the discussion.

“Her reaction to me and Sam. Yeah, not good. Others might start figuring out that it’s real. Their names and subject matter once is coincidence, but more than that? Something going on.” Gwen leaned against the wall. “And eventually, if it went on long enough, he’d get to the part about our kids and then they’d be in there.” She frowned. “Jo, I just don’t see him being able to publish all of those manuscripts he has in backlog before public interest in the series dies out. If he stopped when Dean went to hell, then that’s a lot of time that’s gone by. That’d be a lot of manuscripts. It’d take years to even get to where I entered the picture and where Castiel found you.”

“There was enough interest for him to start up again and be moderately successful this time around and interest could keep up. The horror genre is big and has been for a long time. Look at some other prolific authors out there. I mean not just in the genre. James Patterson always has a new book coming out.”

“True, but is Chuck any good? If he’s good, there’s more of a chance of him being able to continue a long time. Have you read any of the books?”

“No, just the part I saw in the one I picked up last night while Dean was going ballistic. Born Under a Bad Sign. Takes place when I was on my own, before Mom found me. Sam was possessed --”

“How? He has a tattoo.”

“Before they got those.”

“Oh. I’d thought their dad insisted they get them when they were old enough.”

“No, no. As far as I know, John didn’t have a protection tattoo. He hadn’t thought of that. What I read was okay. Not great literature, of course, but, you know, average for the genre.”

“You know the genre better than I do.”

“True. You’ve read some horror, though. You read that zombie series.”

“Only because it was the only halfway decent reading material we had on the cruise and I wanted to see what happened to the characters in the end. I had to read all three books.” Gwen peered around the corner. “She’s still there, but Chuck’s at his table. You stay here. I’ll be right back.” She returned in a few minutes, carrying a paper sack. “I got a selection of his work. A couple from before they met you and Ellen, a couple right after, and a couple with that Bela girl. Teddy gave me Tall Tales earlier, but it’s back in the room.”

“You asked Chuck for books?”

“Sure. Why not? It’s our husband’s lives. I think we need to know how big a threat this,” she gestured around them, “could actually be if he continues publishing. One way to do that is to start assessing his writing, see how good he is. Then, we can talk to Becky, if we can find her, since she seems to be the go-to person for all things Supernatural fandom. She might be able to extrapolate what could happen based on sales and the current state of the fandom.”

“We could also talk to that woman that was manning Chuck’s table last night. She seemed pretty knowledgeable.”

“It’s a plan.” She rubbed a hand across her stomach. “I’m hungry. Let’s go get a sandwich or something while we look at the books.”

Jo eyed Gwen’s stomach. She kept expecting Gwen to gain weight like she had, but so far she hadn’t. “Sure. Why not? It’s away from Marissa.”

Once they were seated and had decide to split a sandwich and sweet potato fries between them, Gwen laid out the books evenly between them. “You glance through those and I’ll take these, see what we can see before the discussion starts.”

They had forty minutes.

~~~~~~~~~~

Sam was glad to be out of the hotel and away from the convention. He felt like his head was clearer, like he could think. Too bad Dean had declined to join him. He thought it would’ve been good for him to work a case instead of working on Jo. Actually, he sort of wished that Gwen had blown off the convention and come with him on this like she would under normal circumstances.

She was enjoying herself though. He hadn’t lied when he’d told Dean that. Gwen was having fun. Sam wondered if she’d still have fun if she was in their place. Would she like it if she saw people pretending to be her? Idolizing her even?

He took a last glance at the headless male corpse on the rolling drawer. There were four victims, three male, one female. “Have you been able to identify any of them yet?” He glanced at the young man, Carl, assisting him.

“Well,” Carl closed one drawer and reached for the door to the next one, “we found one of the heads this morning. Gail Stone. Missing from Utah for three years.”

“May I see it?”

“Sure.” He pulled out the drawer. “The three men aren’t in the system that we’ve found. Just her.”

Carl was called away and Sam took the opportunity to check for fangs. They were there. This was the work of a hunter. It was all he needed to know and he left, intending on taking a quick look at that magic act using the cursed object. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon. The tension in his neck and shoulders was draining away in steady degrees and he felt more relaxed the longer he was away from the convention.

~~~~~~~~~~

This was the day from hell.

There had been nothing but problems from the moment Becky had woken up and she still had to sit down with Sam and Gwen sometime and apologize. It was a daunting task to consider. Sam wasn’t going to forgive her easily and she wasn’t sure about Gwen. Without having any of the fiction featuring her to go by, she didn’t know how she’d react.

Becky smothered a yawn.

She’d chased down staff members who’d decided not to perform their jobs, made certain Dave had a quiet place to eat lunch that wasn’t his room, smoothed over scheduling disasters, renegotiated with hotel management on a few contract details, and checked in with the vendors -- among other things. Running this convention wasn’t quite what she’d imagined it would be. She’d discovered that some jobs she’d thought weren’t hers to do really were and that other jobs could be easily delegated.

Her feet hurt, her head still throbbed with a headache, and she just realized that while she’d made sure Dave had lunch, she hadn’t actually taken time to eat and it was the middle of the afternoon. She closed her eyes a moment, then reopened them to watch Molly, their most successful vendor, straighten her booth.

Molly was psyched to be playing Ellen later. “Should I straighten my hair, you think? I brought my flatiron just in case, but if I do that, I need to go get started. This mess takes time to tame.” She gestured at her head and the curls she had pinned up.

“Up to you. How accurate do you want to be?” Once, Becky had wanted to have hair like that, but a disastrous perm in high school had cured her of that wish. Well, that and the comments from her classmates over it.

“Accurate. As true to the books as possible. Which reminds me….” She leaned over a little. “Can you arrange to have that LARPer I’ve heard people talking about come be Jo for me? The one who doesn’t break character, I mean. People are telling me she’s real good and I want this shindig tonight to be as memorable as the Browncoat event I attended a few weeks ago.”

“Um….” She meant Jo, didn’t she? The real Jo. “I’ll ask her if I see her.” Molly wasn’t old enough to be Jo’s mother, only about seven or eight years older than Jo herself, but maybe she could pull it off if Jo was willing.

“Thanks, Becks.”

“You have everything you need?”

“For the moment.” She paused in folding shirts. “Hey, did you ever eat today?”

“I’ll go in a minute. I need to straighten up the books.”

“That’s not your job. Go eat.”

“Someone has to do it. They look terrible.” Going to the books, she started straightening them only to be shoved aside by a dark haired woman. Becky got a weird vibe off the woman. She looked like some biker chick who’d wandered into the wrong building. While it was possible she was a fan, Becky didn’t think so. The woman just looked…wrong. She chastised her for being rude, her words met with amusement.

For a second, she thought she saw a weird flash in the woman’s eyes and that flash sent fear rushing through her. She was honestly afraid, though all the woman had done was say a few words and smile. Becky hurried across the room where she could keep a covert eye on her.

But when she turned, the woman was gone.

Becky pressed a hand to her chest and took a long breath, blowing it out with a shake of her head. “I’ve been reading these books far too long.” Not to mention she was feeling shaky now from hunger.

She went to get some food and convinced herself her imagination was working overtime with Sam and Dean actually in the building somewhere.

~~~~~~~~~~

While she hated daylight, it was necessary to be out in it at present.

The vampire kept to the shadowed part of the street, her strides purposeful. She smelled them, the ones who’d killed her fledgling pack, tracking the strongest scent to one hotel, vengeance on her mind. Kate had discovered she wasn’t nearly as good at keeping them safe as Luther had been. He’d had the knack for knowing when to move on and when hunters might be closing in. She, regrettably, didn’t have that knack.

For awhile, it had seemed like there was going to be some big war on humanity, with all vampires banding together, but it had fizzled out, she wasn’t sure why. Didn’t particularly care, either, because that fizzle had meant they could return to getting blood the old fashioned way.

As she approached, she caught a whiff of two other familiar scents. It was the two who’d taken Luther from her, minus the third man.

A wave of grief welled up inside her. She’d never really gotten over losing Luther. Even now, she still recalled how it had felt to be wrapped in his arms. He’d made this life perfect. Without him she was lacking.

Kate had spent the years slowly rebuilding the pack they’d had, choosing additions with care. Occasionally, a few would be caught by hunters, bringing their number down, and after the last brutal attack on them, she’d brought the remainder here, only to lose the rest of them. She was the last and had nothing left to lose.

Her upper lip curled in a snarl.

Vengeance would be served.

Damn all hunters.

Revenge isn’t worth much if you end up dead, spoke Luther’s voice in her mind.

She didn’t care. There was no one left to care about and if she could kill these hunters who’d killed Luther it’d be worth dying.

“I’ll do it for you, baby,” she whispered, and strode into the hotel, first to the bar, then to the other rooms on the main level, pausing just inside the room of some fan convention. Kate stood a long while, watching the people, taking it all in before she moved to look at the books on one rack. She shoved a blond woman aside.

“Hey! Use manners, lady, or I’ll have security escort you out.”

Kate couldn’t help smiling at the irate tone. She glanced at the woman’s nametag. “You’re welcome to try…Becky, but I’m not going anywhere. Not yet anyway. Not until I’ve found who I’m looking for.” Automatically, she assessed the woman. Perhaps she’d take her to replace one of her lost pack members, start rebuilding tonight. Becky was a little mousy, nerdy even, but she had potential. She had fire in her. Kate could see that bit of fire in the determined glare and how she motioned to two geeks with security badges to watch her. Fire was good. It meant she’d probably make a very good vampire once she accepted what she’d become.

“There’s no need to be rude.” Becky retreated across the room and Kate shadowed her, watching Becky until she left the room. By the time Becky stepped into the hall, Kate had taken note of her scent and made up her mind.

Becky was going to be the first addition to her new pack.

The matter decided, she returned her attention to the books, reading the titles. They all appeared to be horror books. Kate was about to reach for Dean Man’s Blood -- certainly a provocative title given what she knew personally of the stuff -- when she smelled them again, those two hunters whose names she didn’t know. It was a remnant of scent, not on them, but on someone else. She turned.

Two women walked by, carrying the trace scent she smelled. One was blond, the other brunette. The brunette was pregnant, carrying a paper sack in her hands.

“Jo, you don’t start a fight in a discussion group.”

“She insulted me, Gwen. How could I not call her out?”

“No, she insulted the character, which while it is you, isn’t you as you are now. You said yourself you were snotty and annoying back then.”

“I can say that. It’s me. I know myself. I have the right to say that.” Jo paused beside the t-shirt table. “I still really want the ‘I love Dean’ shirt in light pink.”

“So buy it. You’ve got to step back over this and quit taking it all so damn personally.”

Kate blinked. The conversation made no sense, though it wasn’t the strangest conversation she’d ever overheard.

“The more I sober up, the more I want to drink.”

She could relate to that statement and moved closer to study the women. They wore wedding bands and engagement rings on their left hands.

Jo flipped through the stack of shirts. “They don’t have my size.”

“Get it in blue. Or purple.”

“I don’t like the blue or purple.” She sighed.

Gwen gasped, pressed a hand to her stomach, and said, “I’ll be back. Junior just kicked my bladder again.”

“Has it been ten minutes already?”

“Cute. You’re almost as funny as Dean.” Gwen smiled and went into the hall.

Kate moved closer, watching Jo. Who were the two to the hunters? Were they wives? Relatives? Friends? She was willing to bet that they could be wives.

The vendor turned and smiled at Jo. “Hi. I was hoping you’d come back.”

Jo looked up, surprise in her eyes. “Me?”

“Yup.”

“Okay. Why?” She tapped a finger to the stack of pink shirts. “Do you have this in a small?”

“No, sorry. Carver Edlund bought my last small in that design and color last night.”

“Hmm. I didn’t think pink was his color.”

The vendor laughed. “I see him in purple myself. I’m Molly, by the way.”

“Jo.”

“I know. Becks said she’d ask you if she saw you, but since you’re here now…. You planning on coming to the mixer?”

“We’ve got tickets.”

“Great. Would you be willing to be Jo for me? I’m supposed to be portraying Ellen and I really think I need a Jo there. To be real, you know? I’ve heard a lot of comments about your portrayal and I think we’d be a good team for the event.”

Gwen returned and Kate left them, intending on following her nose to the nearest hunter.