Chapter 2: First Blood
[Millbrook, Nebraska — September 2005, Late Night]
Two hours of walking brought Ethan to the outskirts of a town called Millbrook. Population 847, according to a rusted sign that had seen better decades. The kind of place that didn't appear on maps unless you looked hard—gas station, diner, church, bar, hardware store, repeat until death.
The Spirit stirred when he crossed the town line.
It wasn't dramatic at first. Just a low hum in his chest, like an engine idling. Ethan ignored it and kept walking, focused on finding somewhere to hole up until morning. His stomach had started making sounds that meant business, and his throat was dry enough to sand wood.
The hum intensified.
SINNERS.
"Not now." He muttered it under his breath, drawing a strange look from a woman walking her dog on the other side of the street. Small town, late night, stranger talking to himself—not a good combination.
KILLERS. THEY WAIT. THEY FEAST.
The heat in his chest spiked. His feet stopped moving forward and started pulling him sideways, toward an old building at the end of the main street. Boarded windows. Faded sign that might have said "MAC'S BAR" before time and weather did their work.
"No." Ethan forced his legs to keep walking past. "I'm not doing this."
THEY HAVE KILLED. THEY WILL KILL AGAIN.
"I don't care."
YOU DO.
His body pivoted. One second he was walking toward the gas station; the next he was facing the abandoned bar, feet planted on cracked asphalt, hands clenched at his sides.
The Spirit wasn't asking permission.
Inside his chest, something shifted. Not physically—metaphysically. Like a gear engaging, a trigger being pulled, a door being opened that could not be closed.
THE URGE CANNOT BE DENIED. NOT WHEN EVIL IS SO CLOSE. NOT WHEN THE GUILTY BREATHE.
Ethan tried to walk away. His legs refused.
The abandoned bar waited.
"Fine." The word came out through gritted teeth. "Fine. But we do this my way. Controlled. Reconnaissance first."
The Spirit's satisfaction rolled through him like warm honey.
The front door was locked. The side door was locked. The back door had been ripped off its hinges and thrown into a dumpster, which told Ethan more than any amount of reconnaissance would have.
He eased through the opening, shoulders scraping brick. No light except what filtered through cracks in the boarded windows. His eyes adjusted slowly—too slowly for someone walking into a potential hostile situation.
The smell hit him first.
Copper. Rot. Something else underneath, sweet and wrong, like fruit left to decay in summer heat.
Bodies. Three of them, maybe four, piled in the corner of what had been the main bar area. Drained. Pale. Throats torn open, not cut—torn. By teeth.
Vampires.
The word surfaced from his knowledge of the show. Vampires existed here. They weren't the sparkly romance-novel kind; they were predators, monsters, things that fed on human blood and left corpses behind when they were done.
Movement in the basement.
Ethan's combat training screamed at him to retreat, find weapons, call for backup. This was a nest situation, multiple hostiles, terrible terrain advantage—exactly the kind of fight you avoided unless you had no other choice.
The Spirit didn't care about tactical assessments.
THEY ARE GUILTY. THEY WILL BE JUDGED.
Stairs led down into darkness. Wooden, creaking, impossible to descend quietly. Ethan made it three steps before the first vampire appeared.
It came from the shadows like a launched missile—fast, too fast for human reflexes, hands already reaching for his throat. Female, maybe thirty when she'd turned, dried blood crusting the corners of her mouth.
Ethan's body moved without permission.
The transformation hit him like a bomb.
Fire erupted from his skin. His hands ignited, bones emerging through burning flesh, and when they closed around the vampire's wrists, she screamed.
The sound wasn't human. It wasn't even animal. It was the noise of something ancient and predatory realizing, too late, that it had attacked the wrong prey.
Hellfire consumed her in seconds. No staking, no decapitation, no beheading—just fire that burned body and soul together, leaving nothing but ash that scattered on the concrete floor.
Three more vampires emerged from the basement. They saw what had happened to their packmate and hesitated.
Ethan—or the thing Ethan had become—didn't hesitate.
Chains manifested from nowhere. They whipped through the air like living things, wrapping around limbs, torsos, throats. Where they touched vampire flesh, fire followed.
The second vampire died trying to run.
The third made it to the back door before a chain caught her ankle and dragged her back into the flames.
The fourth—older, stronger, the one who'd probably turned all the others—tried to fight. He had centuries of experience, supernatural speed, the kind of strength that could tear a human apart bare-handed.
None of it mattered.
The Rider's hand closed around his face. Fire pressed against eyes, nose, mouth. The vampire's struggles weakened, then stopped.
LOOK INTO OUR EYES.
Ethan didn't know how to do what the Spirit demanded. It didn't matter. The Penance Stare activated without his permission, just like everything else.
He saw.
Centuries of kills. Thousands of lives ended in pain and terror. Families destroyed. Children orphaned. Blood spilled in alleyways and bedrooms and dark corners of a dozen different cities across a hundred years.
The vampire saw too. Every death, every victim, every sin—reflected back at him through eyes of burning hellfire.
His soul tore itself apart from the inside.
When the Penance Stare ended, there was nothing left but a hollow shell that crumbled to dust.
The bar was on fire.
Ethan stood in the center of it, flames licking at walls and ceiling, smoke rising thick and black toward the sky. The Rider form held for another few seconds—long enough for him to stumble toward the exit, long enough to crash through the back door into the night air.
Then the transformation reversed, and he was human again.
He made it to the alley behind a gas station before his stomach rebelled. Bile and nothing else—he hadn't eaten since dying, which felt like years ago instead of hours.
His hands were covered in ash. Vampire ash. Monster ash.
He'd killed four things tonight. Killed them with fire and chains and a stare that weaponized their own sins against them. Killed them without hesitation, without mercy, without any of the careful rules of engagement that had governed his life as a soldier.
The Spirit purred in his chest, satisfied, glutted, happy.
That scared him more than the vampires had.
The gas station was closed, but the register drawer had been left partially open—small-town laziness that probably kept the local cops employed. Ethan took forty-seven dollars and left a mental IOU that he knew he'd never pay.
The cell phone came from a pickup truck parked behind the diner. Unlocked, prepaid, nothing traceable. Basic model, no GPS, no apps—2005 tech at its finest.
He needed clothes. His current outfit smelled like smoke and something worse. The thrift store donation bin behind the church provided a flannel shirt and a jacket that mostly fit. He changed in the shadows, stuffing his ruined clothes into a dumpster.
By the time dawn painted the eastern horizon orange, Ethan had walked three miles out of Millbrook and found an abandoned pickup truck rusting in a field. The keys were still in the ignition. The engine turned over on the third try.
He pointed the truck west and started driving.
The Spirit stirred occasionally, testing its boundaries, probing at the edges of Ethan's control. He pushed it down each time—not forcefully, but firmly. Like handling a dangerous animal that needed to respect its handler.
YOU PERFORMED WELL.
"I killed four... things. Without any tactical preparation. Without knowing what I was walking into."
THEY WERE GUILTY. THEY DIED. THIS IS THE FUNCTION.
"The function?" Ethan's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Is that what I am now? A function?"
YOU ARE THE BEARER. WE ARE THE SPIRIT. TOGETHER, WE ARE VENGEANCE.
"And if I don't want to be vengeance?"
Silence. Long enough that Ethan thought the Spirit might have retreated into whatever metaphysical space it occupied when it wasn't actively ruining his life.
THEN WE WILL TAKE. THE BOND DOES NOT PERMIT REFUSAL. ONLY CONTROL.
That was almost worse than no answer at all.
Jericho, California was two days away by highway. The show's pilot episode. The Woman in White case. Sam and Dean Winchester working their first hunt together in years.
Ethan didn't know if he should interfere. Didn't know if interference was even possible—maybe this was a fixed timeline, maybe everything would play out exactly as the show depicted regardless of what he did.
But he knew he couldn't just watch.
The Winchesters were good people. Flawed, broken, codependent to an unhealthy degree—but good. They'd spent their whole lives fighting things in the dark so regular people could sleep safely.
They deserved help. They deserved warning about what was coming.
And maybe, just maybe, they could help him figure out what the hell he was supposed to do with a Spirit of Vengeance coiled around his soul.
The truck's radio picked up a classic rock station playing Lynyrd Skynyrd. Ethan let it wash over him, memories of his old life mixing with this strange new reality until he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
The Spirit settled deeper, patient, waiting.
Outside the window, Nebraska gave way to Kansas, and the road stretched toward California like a promise or a threat.
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