CHAPTER TWO: THIS GUILTY BLOOD

THE Beatles song on the radio was trying its best to keep Henrietta Wingrave awake. And so was the wind in her face as she tailed the Impala down I-29 towards Sioux Falls. The thorns of doubt still pricked in her chest but what could these boys do to Henrietta Wingrave? Her cell tossed on the passenger side buzzed for the eighth time. The first time it had been Siobhan, probably calling to check in. Because she hadn't called again, Henrietta had assumed it wasn't important. So she hadn't answered. The rest seven times had been Father Parrish.

Henrietta digressed. She was going to be in eternal gratitude to Father Parrish for giving her a home when she was desperately seeking. He was a good man. Good was such a frequently used word, it had started to lose its impact. But by good, Henrietta meant that Father Parrish had honor, that he was brave and loyal and kind. That he was selfless. Father Parrish was good and the goodness in him was contagious. He brought it to people like a gift.

Henrietta didn't necessarily consider herself good. Yes, she helped people, and yes she saved them from grave danger but goodness was selfless. Henrietta was not.

The phone kept buzzing fervently beside her. Eyes on the road, she reached for it and put it to her ear. Before he could even start, she heard the frustration in his voice. "Ten times."

"Eight," Henrietta quickly corrected then pursed her lips when he drew an angry breath.

"I was about to ask Siobhan to go look for you."

"That would have been futile." Henrietta sighed, "I'm fine." In response, Father Parrish sighed, too. The song on the radio changed. The grip of Henrietta's hands on the staring wheel tightened. Father Parrish knew she was lying. Henrietta knew that he knew she was lying. "Something's wrong." These words were whispered. Like most wrong things, saying it made it more concrete. The thorn of doubt inside her had spread poison and this poison was making her restless. Making her worry.

"What is?" Father Parrish asked.

"Something's wrong with the Hunters." Her voice was like a sparrow trying to escape. "Something's wrong with the wind, the world. I can feel it."

A honking car passed by. Wind slapped Henrietta in the face, tossing her red hair back and forth. The Impala started to slow, its taillight illuminating red. The indicator blinked yellow, turning left towards the service station up ahead.

"What do you want me to do?" He wasn't asking expecting her to command him. She would never. He was asking because there wasn't anything he could do but ask. Putting it out there would make him believe he actually could do something. Saying it to Henrietta might make her believe that she wasn't alone, but that was doubtful. Henrietta's loneliness wasn't material, it was in her bones.

"You believe in God, father. I believe in you. Beyond that? Who knows." Henrietta hung up as they pulled up at the service station. Opening her door, her eyes fell on her wristwatch just as a yawn escaped her. The time was 3:20. She rubbed her eyes to rid them of any lingering sleep as she approached Sam who stepped around the back of the car to fill the tank.

Passing by, her gaze fell of Dean, sleeping peacefully in the passenger seat and for once not looking like a jerk. Stretching her arms above her head, she tried not to imagine the pain in her back from sitting in the car so long, then leaned against the back of the Impala.

"Tired?" Sam asked quietly. The sky was still dark and the world was still sleeping so whispered words were welcomed.

"Didn't get any sleep last night," Henrietta mumbled. "And I've been driving too long."

Sam hummed, checked the tank then glanced at the store. Restroom, Henrietta assumed. She straightened and patted his shoulder, which was hard considering he was much taller. "Go ahead," she said and nodded towards the store. "I'm gonna get something to eat."

Henrietta walked inside the store on a mission. Foraging in the candy aisle, she picked up licorice and candy bars then made her way down towards the chip aisle. Like any mart located in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road and at 3 in the morning, the inside was eerily quiet. Even silence was loud here. The cashier's constant attempts to not fall asleep, the humming sound of the drink cooler, Henrietta could hear them all distinctly.

Even the lights were sickly and green-tinted. They flickered. Henrietta blinked and cocked her head to the side, eyebrows furrowing. They weren't blinking anymore. She must have imagined that in her tiredness. She shook her head as if to throw the sleep out and turned towards the drink cooler.

When she breathed, it turned to fog in front of her. So she hadn't imagined it. She swallowed hard as the glass door of the cooler started to get covered with a foggy mist. She reached forward and wiped it away, bracing herself.

Nothing.

She could feel her heart in her throat as she exhaled through her mouth. She turned to attest. Her mind was playing tricks on her. This is why you shouldn't stay awake for two days straight. She turned back to the cooler and jumped back so suddenly all the candy from her hands showered down on the tiled floor.

The sight shocked her more than the happenstance of the sight. She was seeing him. The boy was barely brushing eighteen, hair hanging over his forehead in melancholia. He was wearing white hospital clothes ─ mental institution, actually. His face was sunken and yellow and his eyes were painful to look at. Because all she could see in them was innocence. All she could see was helplessness. All she could see was a boy she had once loved.

All she could see was betrayal. 

There was a band on his left wrist from the hospital and in typed letters, it said: GLASS, KIERAN. Trailing upwards, lacerations ran vertically along his wrists. Suddenly Henrietta felt utterly naked and pulled the sleeves of her sweater to her knuckles. 

"Hey, Henry."

His voice crushed her heart and a strangled sob almost left her lips. Voice was the first thing you forgot about a person. You can remember how you felt when they spoke but memories blurred, they became distant, detached and suddenly you're having memories about memories. And with this, a part of you became a memory, too. It became forgotten, you became forgotten.

Kieran's voice ─ it was as if Henrietta remembered herself.

And the self she remembered was the one she despised.

"Key?" She whispered. "No." She reached to brush her hand against his cheek, but it passed through. Her face looked cosmically pained. This wasn't her Kieran, not anymore. On instinct, her hands stretched out either side of her, looking for salt or iron.

"You did this to me," Kieran's ghost accused.

Henrietta stepped back as he advanced towards her. Wobbling and shaking her head. "No." She couldn't understand who she was trying to convince. There wasn't a single thing here that didn't know the truth. The truth was ─

"You killed me!" Kieran shouted.

And Henrietta cried, "No!" Her right hand brushed against the salt carton and she grabbed it, ripping it open and throwing it at Kieran.

He vanished into thin air and left in his wake a Henrietta who felt sick to her stomach. She slapped her hand over her mouth and glanced around. The door illuminated by the EXIT sign was much closer than the restroom. She ran. Her tiredness didn't help at all and she almost tangled herself in her own legs, but she made it out.

The chilled air hit her like a slap across her face and Henrietta gagged. She really hadn't eaten anything so nothing came up. Nothing except the horrible feeling of jolted memories. Her greatest regret or mistake or whatever you wanted to call it. She should have found help sooner. She should have never left him alone. 

Her fingers unconsciously rubbed against her own wrist. It gave her a sense of reality. What's real and what isn't. It made her remember how bad it could get. Lungs desperate for air, she took a shuddering breath in. Out. In. Out. Then she put her head between her legs and tried not to burst into tears.

Unknown to her, a blonde-haired girl dropped down beside her. She was in a waitress uniform, splattered with blood across its pale yellow fabric. A metal name tag sat attached to her that read her name: JOSIE.

Josie ran her fingers across the road and held it up as if to inspect it. Then, she started tapping her foot. Henrietta froze. She lifted her head very slowly, very carefully and her blue eyes met brown ones.

"Rough night, Charlie?" Josie drawled. "Or should I drop all pretenses and just call you Henry?"

Henrietta already had metaphorical ghosts following her, she didn't need them to materialize and haunt her to her actual demise. So she begged. Shaking her head, she begged, "Please stop."

Josie's smile had always managed to make Henrietta's hair stand. This time was no different. A chill settled in her bones. Fear sat inside her like a serpent ready to strike. Josie's menacing and dangerous smile was enough to kill. "It's about to get rougher," she whispered and pounced on Henrietta, slamming her against the ground.

Henrietta realized too late that a punch was coming and her face was already in the dirt, pressing against the ground. Then came another, and another. Sometimes, it felt like she deserved it. This suffering, her pain, her grief ─ this was her crusade, this was her religion. When she was younger, once, very young and had seen her first monster she hadn't stopped crying for hours. They had to put a saline drip in a four-year-old. The next time, she'd tried to claw her eyes out. The point was, she had always assumed, known, the problem was within her and not the world. She had known, she had always known.

Another punch came like a bearer of truth. Henrietta tasted blood. I should do something. Move.

Henrietta raised her hand only for it to get pinned down by Josie's knee. She gasped at the pain but stared straight at Josie. "Stop!" she protested. "Jo, it's me!"

Josie seemed to pause. Everything seemed to pause. Josie said, "I know," and sent another punch flying across Henrietta's jaw. A red bruise was blossoming beside her lip as she grabbed the redhead's face and brought it closer to her. Mouth to ear, she whispered, "That's what makes this so fun." And she unmounted Henrietta, grabbed her by the lapels of her jacket, and pulled her to her feet. She winked her shining brown eyes at the girl then shoved her with immense force.

Henrietta crashed loudly against the trash bins and landed grunting in pain. She gazed up, catching Josie's advance and scrambled, hand extending for something. Anything. Her fingers brushed something cold and metal and she grabbed it. Crowbar. As Josie leaned closer, she swung it at her, the ghost immediately disappearing.

Henrietta exhaled. Balancing herself, she stood and spat blood on the pavement. Her shoulders tensed when she heard fast-approaching footsteps. She turned, sudden but afflicted and squinted when the flashlight hit her eye, blinking to find: 

"Hey, woah, woah, woah! Not a ghost."

Just Dean. She had never been more relieved that it was him.

Dean had paused in his steps, his flashlight still pointed at Henrietta. She was holding a crowbar above her head like a lethal weapon. Breathless, her mouth slacked slightly open, all her teeth colored with her blood.

She dropped the crowbar. The sound was so sudden and loud, Dean winced. He lowered the flashlight. For the first time, he was looking at her in some other way than mocking or condescending. He took the first few steps cautiously, then hurried towards her and grabbed her by her elbows. "Come on," his voice was quiet and urgent. He tugged on her jacket. "Let's get you an ice pack."

The coldness of the ice pack numbed her lip and jaw and to be frank, most of the left side of her face. She touched her busted and swollen lip on the right corner and winced. Sam, not looking much better than her, held his very own ice pack to his orbital bone. He was leaning against the back of the Impala, face pulled down in a deep frown.

Henrietta fumed and slapped the back of his head with her ice pack. "What the hell was that?" She asked annoyed like he had something to do with it. Sam looked up at her with an offended face.

His retort was put on hold when Dean kicked the tire of the car in frustration. "Dammit, Bobby, pick up." The other two battered individuals stared, waiting and Henrietta raised her eyebrows in inquisition when Dean pulled the phone away from his ear. "Crap," he said, both his expression and voice unsettled. "Come on. He's not picking up."

Henrietta gritted her teeth. She did not know why she had seen Kieran or Josie. Sam had told her he had seen a friend (sort of) that he wasn't able to save. And despite Dean's verbal opposition to this, Henrietta actually believed Sam. It explained her ghosts.

Henrietta wasn't good.

She had killed people. She was the reason people had died. All her friends, with the exception of Father Parrish and Siobhan, were dead. Something was just out to get her, and everyone she cared about.

Because Henrietta was scared, she was not good. Because Henrietta needed to be saved, she was not good. Because Henrietta needed to save people, she was not good.

"Let's go then," she said and threw the ice pack straight at Dean's face in a perfect arc.

Because Henrietta was not good, she said so for all the selfish reasons.

Dean, catching the ice pack, stared after the redhead as she strode towards her car. "Hey, hey, hey, wait." Henrietta paused misstep and twirled around in question. "You sure you're okay to drive?"

She cocked her head to the side. "I've had worse. I've driven in worse. Besides," she jutted her thumb towards her black cherry Chevelle, "I'm not leaving Zep."

"Zep?" Dean made a face and glanced at her car. "You named your car Zepplin?"

Henrietta placed her hand on her hips and looked like an angry porcupine. "You got a problem with it?"

"Guys," Sam interrupted exhausted. "Bobby."

Dean huffed. "Yes, alright, okay." He pointed at Henrietta. "Follow close."

Henrietta poked her tongue at him. "Better watch your taillight, then," she called after and she jerked open her car door.