CHAPTER TWO

"Are we almost there?" Jenna asks from the backseat of the car that they stole, and Nyx looks at her. She's in the passenger seat next to Damon.

"We're close." She tells her aunt.

"What am I looking​ for?" Damon asks, getting her attention. He's the one driving them to Wisconsin. "Where were they staying?"

"Kingpin Motel."

"Tell me more about this thing. What was it called again?" Jess asks.

"Shtriga." Nyx tells her. "According to the lore surrounding it, it's some kind of witch, but it's nothing like Bonnie. It doesn't use magic or cast spells."

"So, then, what does it do?" Jenna asks, and Damon looks at Nyx after she hesitates.

"It feeds on a person's life force — that's how it survives."

"Nycole?" Bonnie looks at her.

"It can feed on anyone, but it has a...preference." She sighs. "Kids."

"Oh my God." Jess mumbles.

"Our theory was that a kids' life force is stronger because they're younger. This thing killed hundreds of kids." She tells them.

"Our theory?" Damon glances at her again. "You didn't know them in '90. You were two."

"John was hunting it in 1990, but he didn't kill it." She explains. "He left the boys alone in a motel, and Dean was supposed to be watching Sam, like he always did. John was gone for three days, and the boys hadn't left the room once. Dean went to the arcade to blow off some steam for a couple hours, and when he got back..."

"It was there?"

"About to feed on Sam. John came storming in — he tried to kill it, but it went out the window before he could." She tells them. "He was pissed and spooked. He took the boys and drove them three hours away to a friend of his. By the time he got back, it was long gone."

"You and the boys found it?" Bonnie asks, and she nods.

"In '06. It only feeds every...fifteen to twenty years, I think. So, when John found it again, he sent Dean the coordinates. Fitchburg."

"Fitchburg? Jeremy was with you."

"Yeah." Nyx nods. "It was the first hunt of ours that he saw. We killed the Shtriga — Dean did."

"What kind of a father leaves his kids alone in a motel room for three days?" Jess questions, and Nyx chuckles.

"My point exactly." The brunette nods.

"Sam was only seven."

"And Dean was eleven." Nyx says. "He blamed himself​ for Sam almost getting hurt, and for​ all the kids who were hurt after."

"That's hardly his fault." Damon says. "I mean, yeah, take care of your brother when your dad's gone, but he shouldn't have been gone that long."

"Was it always like that?" Jessica asks, and Nyx just looks at her in the backseat. "That's why Sam left, that's why he hated hunting. Why he never talked about his family."

"John loved the boys, but losing Mary... I think it broke something inside of him." Nycole tells her. "He told Sam once that all he saw was the monsters, all the things that could hurt people. He wanted to protect them."

"Him and his one man army?" Damon questions.

"Hardly." She shakes her head. "We ran into other hunters from time to time. They all had a story, the reason they started hunting in the first place. Hell, even I have one."

"What's yours?" Jess asks.

"I was out one night, it was late and the street was empty. I was walking out of this little cafe in North Carolina, and this man attacked me — he bit my neck. I struggled, tried to get away from him, but he was too strong." She's​ telling​ her story, and Jess notices that the look on her face is like she's reliving it. "All of a sudden, he stopped. I remember looking at his face and seeing the color literally drain away. He fell to the ground, and someone else was standing there. I looked at the man who had attacked me, and he was completely gray and covered in veins. I asked the man who saved me what happened, and he told me that it was a vampire."

"That's how you met Dean?" Jenna asks, and she nods.

"He's the one who saved me." She tells her. "He helped me get cleaned up, explained that there were all kinds of monsters out there, and I should be more careful traveling on my own. He gave me a place to sleep for the night, bought me breakfast, and tried to ditch me while I was in the bathroom. Didn't work." She chuckles.

"You said that you've met other hunters?" Jess asks, and she nods.

"The first I met — besides the Winchesters — was Bobby. I know his story, but he didn't tell me. I was on the Other Side, and I saw a hunt that they were on. Dean puzzled the pieces together, and Bobby told him a little more later." She says. "A demon possessed his wife, before he knew that they even existed. He killed her, but he didn't​ mean to. He didn't know what was happening and he was scared."

"And that's the one that lives in South Dakota?" Damon asks, and she nods. "He have anything that might be useful at his place? Was he a hunter in 1990?"

"Yeah." She nods. "Yeah, he was already a hunter then."

"You know how to get there?"

"Couldn't​ forget if I wanted to."

"Any other hunters?" Bonnie asks.

"Gordon." Nyx says. "His sister was kidnapped from her bedroom by a vampire, but it wasn't one like Damon and I."

"There's more than one kind?" Jess asks, and she nods.

"Yeah. These can walk in the sunlight, though they prefer not to. It burns, but it doesn't​ kill them. Like us, crosses and holy don't do anything, but neither does vervain." She says. "Dead man's blood is poisonous to them like vervain is to us."

"Do I even want to know what that is?"

"It's exactly what it sounds like — blood from a dead man." She looks at her again. "Still want to keep learning? This job isn't for everyone, Jess. And that's okay."

"I want to learn." She tells her. "Doesn't​ mean I'm gonna like everything that I hear."

Nyx smiles. "Sounds like me when I first started." She says. "I just hope I can do better by you than I did myself."

"I just hate to think that I'm part of Sam's story." She says. "That my death drove him back to this."

"It wasn't you, Jess. It was Yellow-Eyes, or Azazel." She rolls her eyes. "Sam's story started when he was six months old. When that son of a bitch killed Mary. He said that he had plans for Sam and the other children like him. And that you and Mary got in the way of those plans."

"Children like him?"

"Sam's psychic. He had premonitions, visions of the future." She explains. "There were others​ too. Max had...telekinesis, I guess. Andy and his brother had mind control. Ava also had premonitions. One guy could electrocute people through touch, another girl had something similar. She accidentally killed her girlfriend. And the guy who killed Sam had super strength."

"So, Sam's the only one left?" She asks, and Nyx nods.

"Yeah, but he doesn't have his premonitions anymore. Not since Dean killed Yellow-Eyes."

Damon turns into a parking lot. "Here we are — Kingpin Motel." He says as he parks.

"Do you know what room they were in?" Jess asks, and Nyx shakes her head.

"Well, then, let's start looking."

They all check a few rooms, and then Nyx gets to room 768. She picks the lock and goes inside, and she knows that she has the right place. She sees John's leather jacket draped over the back of the couch and his research on the case on the table.

Nyx walks over to the table and looks at a picture that's there. It's of a skeletal handprint in a piece of wood. Where the thin fingers touched it, it's rotted away. She looks over the different​ pages and moves some stuff around to see it more clearly.

"You found it?" Damon asks as he walks up behind her.

"This was their room." She nods.

The other girls walk in, having heard when he whistled after finding Nyx. They all walk over to the table.

"The Shtriga left this mark?" Jess asks as she looks at the picture.

Nyx nods. "It would break into kids' rooms at night, come in through the window. The kids went to bed perfectly healthy, and then their parents found them sick the next morning. They'd take them to the hospital, and the doctors would say pneumonia. They didn't have another answer."

"And then the kids just died?"

"Slowly." She nods. "Their bodies wouldn't function properly and eventually​...they'd all just give out."

"What about in Fitchburg?" She asks.

"Same thing was happening. Only the doctor there knew exactly what was going on. He was the Shtriga." She tells them, and Jess' eyes widen. "Sam did research and found him in an article about something similar happening in the 1800's. He stuck around to watch them all die."

"That's sick." Damon says.

"At the motel we were staying at, the owner's younger son was attacked. And the next night, it came for his brother. But we knew it was coming, and we talked to the kid. We didn't want to, but we told him what was happening, and he helped us. He was the bait." She sighs as she looks away from the picture. "Dean killed the Shtriga, and all of the kids got better."

"That's amazing." Jess says.

"But we don't save everyone. And those losses... They can be really hard to deal with." She tells her. "I've definitely lost my fair share of sleep from the things that we've seen."

"Is the journal here?" Damon asks, and Nyx starts looking around. Her gaze falls to the​ jacket on the couch, and she walks over to it.

"Bingo." She pulls the journal from the inside pocket where Dean always kept it, then she looks back at Jess. "So, you ready to dive in head first?"

"Yeah." The blonde hesitantly nods, and Nyx hands her the journal.

"Start reading. Let me know when you have any questions." She tells her. "I've read that thing more times than I can count."

—

"I'm starting to think your friend was a packrat." Damon says as they look through the stuff at Bobby's place.

"Shut up and keep reading." Nyx tells him as she looks back over at Jess and Jenna. "Wendigo."

"Fire." Jenna says.

"Spirits."

"Salt and burn their remains." Jess answers.

"Shtriga."

"Consecrated iron rounds while they're feeding." They both say in unison, and Nyx smiles at how in sync they are.

She's been teaching the two of them for weeks, and they exhausted the information in John's journal a while ago. So, now they're going through what Bobby has at his house, but Nyx keeps going back to what they read in the journal and the stories she's told.

"What do you need to make holy water?"

"A rosary and the proper ritual." Jess says quickly, and Nyx nods.

"And the colt can..."

"Kill any supernatural creature." Jenna answers first. "John used it to kill a vampire, and Dean killed two demons with it."

"Damn. You​ guys are learning fast." Nyx says, and they both smile.

"Can you guys help me and Bonnie look for a way out of here now?" Damon asks, and she sighs as she looks at him.

"Yeah." She nods and then motions for Jess and Jenna to join the other two.