In The Shadows

"Well, this isn't the end yet, is it? I do not know how tales are told in your land, but when the people finally do 'arrive' somewhere, it is usually at the end of their journey, and we have much to do yet. Will we actually ever arrive somewhere, and stay there forever, before we die? Life is made of 'goings' on our part, the 'coming' is part of the ending." – Boromir, "Prophecy" by Narnian Sprite

Prologue:

Open Every Door

"Hey Taylor, thanks for coming with me."

Taylor Harding gave Ryan a quick grin as she shoved her hands deep in the pockets of the jeans she was wearing before looking away. She could hardly believe her luck; she'd had a horrible crush on Ryan since her senior year of high school, and all of a sudden he had come up to her as she left her history class that afternoon and asked if she wanted to go hiking with him.

It was almost like a dream come true, although her feelings for him had gone from 'crush' to 'Yeah, he's attractive, but does his personality match too?' over the past five years.

Fortunately for her, five years was the difference between a love-struck teenager who longed for romance and a senior in college with a more practical idea about relationships. It was also what kept her from blushing like a schoolgirl as Ryan fixed her with his intense gray gaze.

"It's no problem," she offered, hesitantly reaching up to brush several flyaway strands of her light brown hair out of her face. "I was just a little surprised, that's all."

Ryan arched a dark eyebrow questioningly at her comment, his lips pursing slightly. "And why would that be?"

"Well… I always pegged you for hanging out with the more popular crowd, that's all," Taylor pointed out with a shrug, although inwardly she started kicking herself the moment the words left her lips. Oh no, she didn't sound snarky at all. Trust her to open her big mouth and say something really stupid right when everything seemed to be going her way.

Surprisingly, Ryan just chuckled at her comment as he shook his head, fiddling almost absentmindedly with something in his jacket pocket.

"Yeah, I could see how you got that idea," he admitted somewhat sheepishly as he reached up and ran a hand through his messy black hair. "I've never really been known for stepping outside my circle of friends."

"I know how that one goes," Taylor offered as she flashed a reassuring grin at the taller man and raised her right hand, cheerfully indicating that she had done the same thing at least once. Ryan smirked slightly at her before he reached out and tugged teasingly on a lock of her long hair, earning a startled yelp from the young woman.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're way too jumpy?" he asked with a teasing grin before he slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her up close to his lean chest. Taylor swore that her face turned the color of the russet button-up flannel shirt she was wearing, but immediately ducked her head down so that her long bangs fell into her face to conceal the unwanted blush.

"My brother's mentioned that on more than one occasion, although he was always the one thinking up ways to scare the ever-living crap out of me when we were kids," she muttered softly. "One time he told me a really scary story right before I had to go to bed, and then went and hid in my closet while I was brushing my teeth. He jumped out and yelled 'I'm gonna eat ya!' right after my mom had turned off the light and left."

Ryan snickered softly as they continued down the dirt trail, their hiking boots scuffing softly against the damp ground.

"And what did you do?"

"Well, seeing as I was about six when he pulled this, I bolted out of bed and ran out into the hall screaming for my dad. He didn't really figure out what had happened, especially since I was babbling something about a monster in my closet, until he heard Mikey laughing his ass off in my room."

"So… you and your brother don't get along very well then, huh?" Ryan ventured, only to have Taylor let out a skeptical snort as she straightened up.

"Actually, he's one of my best friends," she admitted with a smile, turning around slightly to face the taller man. "Once he grew out of the stage where he'd ignore me all the time, we became pretty close, even though he's six years older than me. I had just gotten off the phone with him not too long before you came to pick me up."

The track runner hesitated for a moment before he gave a small shrug and gently pulled away from her.

"Oh. So you told him about me?"

"Yeah, I did. I also told him that we were going out hiking before it got dark."

A flicker of unease crossed Ryan's face at this statement, but it disappeared so fast that Taylor could have sworn that she had imagined it.

"Okay, that's cool."

Taylor arched an eyebrow skeptically at Ryan, a small frown twitching across her lips as she looked at him before she forced it into a teasing grin, although the impish light didn't quite reach her hazel eyes like it usually did.

"What, don't tell me that you're afraid of my big brother?" she joked as she fell back a few steps so Ryan could lead the way to wherever they were going. "I mean, c'mon. It's Halloween tonight; there are a bunch of things that are going to be out and about tonight that are way scarier than he is. Besides, he's married and has a kid on the way, so it's not like he's going to pop out from nowhere and demand to know everything about you."

The lighthearted comment didn't lighten the mood like she had wanted it to, but at least the atmosphere wasn't so tense. Unfortunately, Taylor was now wondering why her words had caused Ryan to clam up. Maybe he was just nervous around the topic of meeting her family.

It would definitely make sense though. She distinctly remembered Mikey being a nervous wreck right before he had to go over to Carla's house to meet her parents for the first time.

The two young adults followed the path for a little bit longer as the setting sun slowly turned the red and gold leaves on the trees around them into stunning shades of crimson, never stopping, until Ryan finally paused in front of a slight gap in the trees. He only hesitated for a moment before he calmly strode off the trail.

"Hey, are you gonna just stand there or do you want to see what I wanted to show you?" he called out over his shoulder, prompting Taylor to hurry after him so she didn't lose the man in the steadily deepening gloom that only an Oregon forest could provide.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she muttered dryly with a good-natured roll of her eyes. "No need to lose your head."

"I'm not losing my head, I just don't want to lose you," Ryan pointed out as he reached out and shoved the obstructing branches out of the way easily. He also didn't hold them out of the way until Taylor had passed, earning a huff of annoyance from the woman as she repeatedly brought her forearms up to keep the springy branches from whipping across her face.

"Ryan, what are we looking for anyways?"

"You'll find out when we get there."

Taylor arched an eyebrow, but managed to bite back the sarcastic 'are we there yet?' that came to mind. What was up with all of the secrecy anyways?

With a soft sigh the woman focused on following Ryan, occasionally ducking underneath a low-hanging branch belonging to some of the older trees as she tried to keep the dark-haired man in sight.

"So, when you mentioned that there were going to be scarier things out tonight than your brother, what did you mean?" Ryan finally asked, breaking the silence that hung around them. "Were you talking about ghosts and vampires and all that stuff?"

"Yeah, kind of," Taylor admitted with a chuckle, earning an appreciative whistle from Ryan as he glanced back at her.

"Are you Wiccan or something then?"

"Excuse me?" she sputtered angrily, her eyes narrowing slightly at the comment. "Just where exactly are you trying to go with that?"

Ryan had the classic 'oh shit' look on his face that every guy has once they realize that they've said something very stupid, and promptly started trying to dig his way out of the very deep hole that he had already dug for himself.

"Well… I just thought that since you read all of those ghost books and stuff that you were into that kind of thing," he stammered apologetically, gray eyes wide as he adopted a pleading expression.

"Since when does the fact that I enjoy reading ghost stories and mythology mean that I'm a Wiccan?" Taylor asked dryly as she crossed her arms over her chest. "I read them for the stories, not because I actually believe in that crap."

"But what about the ghosts and…"

"I was being sarcastic," she pointed out bluntly. "It was supposed to be a joke. There's no such thing as ghosts, vampires, werewolves, or the monster in your closet. They're all just a bunch of stories made up by the superstitious in the Dark Ages to explain things that they didn't understand, or stories told by parents to make their children behave."

An odd look flickered across Ryan's face before he turned around and started heading into the woods towards his unknown destination once more.

"I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have assumed."

"It's okay. Besides, you know what they say about assumptions."

She actually managed to make Ryan laugh at that one and the tension between them eased considerably after that. There was still quite a bit of awkward silence hanging around them though, and it took a few minutes for Ryan to finally get the courage to break it.

"So, do you watch horror movies then?"

"No, not really," Taylor admitted with a shrug. "I think it's mostly a bunch of el cheapo blood and guts, and some of the stuff they come up with is either weirder than shit or completely inaccurate from the legends that they're based off of. Plus, I'm not one of those people who enjoys being scared shitless for no reason, so I tend to change the channel when a horror movie comes on."

Ryan let out a deep, booming laugh at her commentary, effectively startling Taylor, before he came to a halt and indicated to a medium-sized clearing that lay just beyond a thick ring of underbrush.

"Here we are. All we have to do is get through the bushes and we're good," he announced before he plunged into the shrubbery, leaving the young woman behind. She shook her head and muttered something under her breath about common courtesy being just as dead as chivalry before she started to make her way through the prickly bushes. Unfortunately, right before she reached the edge of the barrier, a particularly whippy branch that she had pushed back slipped from her hand and caught her right across the cheek.

"Son of a bitch!" Taylor snarled as she shoved her way through the last of the bushes and stumbled into the clearing before she put her hand up to her right cheek. She wasn't surprised to see that her fingers came away bloody when she lifted her hand away from her face and examined them.

"You okay?" Ryan called over his shoulder as he crouched down next to one of the many large rocks lining the clearing and pulled what looked like a Sharpie out of his jacket pocket before he started scribbling something on the rock.

"I'm fine; I just got bitch-slapped by a tree, that's all."

He snickered audibly at the annoyance in Taylor's voice before he stood up and walked over next to where she was standing and slowly unbuttoning her shirt, revealing the white tank top that she wore underneath.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm hot, but I don't want to take my shirt off. Hence why I'm unbuttoning it."

Ryan just shook his head and sighed before he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and scanned the clearing with a satisfied grin.

"So, what do you think?" he asked as he slung an arm carelessly over Taylor's shoulder, earning an arched eyebrow from the shorter woman.

"It's a rock," she stated flatly as she gave him a look that plainly stated 'you can't be serious'. "You doodled on it with a Sharpie. What am I supposed to think?"

There was no response from Ryan for several long moments before he gave Taylor a dark smirk, and she immediately took a precautionary step backwards, putting herself closer to the center of the clearing.

"You know what I think?" he asked quietly. "I think that you should look before you leap."

Taylor frowned as she glanced around her, and immediately drew in a shocked breath as she registered just what exactly was drawn on the rocks that ringed the clearing in a perfect circle. Different symbols were sketched onto the rough rock in permanent ink, some of them runes, and a few other occult symbols that even an idiot could recognize. It almost looked as though someone had taken signs from every pagan religion in the world and combined them all into this single area. She couldn't be sure though, especially since she didn't even know what half of the symbols were. The pentagram on one of the rocks was a big tipoff though.

As were the Celtic runes painted onto some of the other rocks.

"Just what in the hell are you playing at?!" she snarled as she whipped back around to face Ryan. "Do you even have any idea what half of this shit is? If this is supposed to be a joke, it's not funny."

"It's not a joke," he stated calmly. "I just figured that you're smart, that you could probably help us find some stuff that even we haven't been able to locate before. You even said it yourself; you enjoy reading about myths and legends from all over the place."

"Yeah, but I never joined a cult."

"Are you sure? You never know what could happen."

Taylor let out a sarcastic snort as she glanced around her, more than ready to make a break for it the second she got the chance.

"Sorry, not interested," she stated flatly, her tone hard. "I don't do devil worship."

Ryan didn't look impressed as he deliberately stalked towards her, his face set in a mask of anger as he reached into his jacket pocket for something. Taylor swore quietly under her breath as she took another step backwards, only for her foot to land right on a fallen branch, sending her foot flying out from under her. She didn't even have time to spew out the impressive list of curses that all came to mind as her back connected with the unforgiving dirt, although what happened next was something that she wouldn't forget for a long time.

For one brief, split second she could feel the rough ground under her as she splayed her hands out in an attempt to push her back up to her feet before Ryan was in grabbing range, felt the rocks and sticks on the ground dig into her legs and back through her clothing. Then it was as though the very ground beneath her had turned into water as she felt her stomach plunge down to somewhere in the vicinity of her boots.

Taylor didn't even bother to restrain herself as she let a long string of obscenities fly out, catching one last glimpse of the remaining light left by the setting sun, as well as the look of stunned disbelief on Ryan's face, right before she felt herself start falling.

And it wasn't as though she had fallen down a hole or something. It felt like some cosmic force had suddenly tossed her into a pitch-black tunnel without any light at either end and just decided to let her fall for all eternity. Taylor managed to force out a frightened whimper as she tried not to think about what would happen once she hit the bottom.

It was funny; she absolutely adored thrill rides, especially the 'Tower of Terror' at Disneyland, but falling unrestrained through a dark void was completely different from sitting in a fake elevator that was on a track.

Maybe it was the fact that she knew she wasn't going to die when the ride ended.

The twenty-three-year old had just reached the point where she was about to start hyperventilating when the Department of Weird Shit decided that she hadn't already been traumatized enough already and threw in some sound effects for the hell of it. At first the sounds were nothing more than wordless muttering, accompanied by the disconcerting 'swoosh' of air rushing by her. Unfortunately that didn't last very long. Soon the muttering turned into actual conversations, and Taylor found that she could actually make out what was being said.

"In almost two years I never bothered you, never asked you for a thing."

"I swear, man, you gotta update your cassette tape collection."

"Chow time, you freaky bastard! Yeah, that's right, bring it on baby, I taste gooood!"

"You're not gonna let me die in peace, are you?"

"I'm not gonna let you die period."

"Oh, these locks look like they're gonna be a bitch."

"The scarecrow crawled off its cross?"

"I'm telling you, Burkitsville, Indiana – Fun Town."

"Ooh, look – it's the evil root cellar. Where Satan cans all of his vegetables."

"You hate me that much? You think you could kill your own brother? Then go ahead. Pull the trigger. Do it!"

"I take it I was having another nightmare."

"Yeah. Another one."

"At least I got some sleep."

"It kinda makes you wonder. Of all the things we've hunted, how many exist just because people believed in them?"

"Vampires! Gets funnier every time I hear it."

"It's very unseemly, making deals with devils."

"This is a whole new level of moronic, even for you."

Then, almost as though someone had pulled a plug somewhere, the voices stopped. In some strange way, the dead silence was even creepier than the voices from nowhere. Before Taylor could even wonder why the voices had disappeared, she suddenly felt her body go through something, almost like ripping through a thin piece of fabric before she slammed into a floor of some kind with a loud 'thud'.

It felt like someone had tossed her off the high dive so she did a back flop, only instead of hitting water she fell into a pool full of concrete.

"Ow, son of a bitch that hurts," she hissed through clenched teeth as she tried not to cry out in agony. "Pain."

It took Taylor several long moments to recover enough before she felt that she was able to sit up without cussing up a storm, much less open her eyes. Once she did she was relatively surprised to find that she was sitting in some kind of room, with absolutely no lights on. The woman frowned as she reached up to gently rub at the spot where her head had hit the floor while she slowly looked around her, patiently waiting for her eyes to adjust to the room's lack of light.

Just when her night vision started to kick in and Taylor figured that she'd be able to make it across the room without smacking her shin on something, she heard the unmistakable sound of a someone removing the safety to a gun right behind her.

"Please tell me that isn't what I think it is," she whispered fervently as she winced, not wanting to turn around to face this new problem.

"I don't know, what do you think it is?" a male voice asked sarcastically before he prodded Taylor right between her shoulder blades with the barrel of the gun. The woman hissed out a curse, but didn't move from where she was seated.

She had thought that today couldn't get any worse. Apparently the universe really enjoyed proving her wrong.

"Who the hell are you?"

The demand, accompanied by the distinctive sound of a shotgun being pumped, was not the most reassuring thing to hear. Taylor winced, but refused to look up into the eyes of the man holding the shotgun that was most definitely aimed at her person, praying that what she had heard was merely a hallucination as she slowly stood ramrod straight with her hands raised slightly in the air in the universal sign of submission.

Unfortunately, the universe apparently neglected to inform the man pointing a gun at her of that vital tidbit of information.

"I said, who are you?" the man growled, apparently losing what little patience he had with her. Taylor said nothing, silently praying that this whole mess was nothing more than a dream, or at least one hell of a hallucination brought on by hitting her head.

Anything was better than this actually being real. She hadn't even done anything to warrant getting a gun aimed at her in the first place for Pete's sake!

"None of your damn business," she finally forced out as she slowly looked up at her… what do you call someone pointing a gun at you for no particular reason? He hadn't fired it yet, so not attacker… threatener was probably a better word, if it even was a word.

"I think this is very much my business, sweetheart." There was no mistaking the sarcasm in the man's voice as he stared at her with narrowed green eyes. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that it's not polite to just appear in someone's hotel room in the middle of the night?"

Taylor opened her mouth to fire back a scathing retort, only to have the words die in her throat as the sound of another gun, this one a pistol from the sounds of things, having its safety removed from somewhere off to her right.

"Well crap." Apparently there were two of them.

As Taylor quietly stood there so she wouldn't give the president and V.P of the Itchy Trigger Finger Club an excuse to turn her into Swiss cheese, she tried to come up with a logical reason as to why she would be standing in a room with two men. The only thing that she could come up with was that this whole mess was somehow all Ryan's fault.

"Oh, I am going to strangle him for this," she muttered darkly under her breath. "I swear to god if he shot me up with something I'll hang him from the rafters of the front hall by his testicles. Fucking bastard."

"Now now, that's not very nice," the man with the short hair admonished as he waved the barrel of his shotgun right under her nose, causing Taylor to stiffen up noticeably as she stared at the firearm with impossibly wide eyes. "Even if you are a demon bitch, you still shouldn't threaten a guy's junk."

"Wait, what? What did you just call me?"

"You mean bitch?" The man arched an eyebrow before he gave her a shit-eating smirk. "Sorry honey, but I just call 'em like I see 'em."

Taylor frowned as she stared incredulously at the man before glancing over at the guy off to her right who was still aiming his pistol at her. He was taller than the other man, but his hair was longer and he looked like he was roughly around the same age as Taylor.

"Is this a joke?" she finally asked, looking between the two men with obvious confusion. "Am I on Punked or Candid Camera or some shit like that? Because if this is all just some kind of sick joke cooked up by Ryan and his buddies, I swear to God that you two will be in a whole world of hurt. The whole 'would you like to join my cult?' thing was bad enough, but shooting me up with some kind of hallucinogen and taking me to a hotel room in who knows where goes above and beyond any previously known levels of assholery."

Taylor realized by that point that she was babbling and quickly cut herself off as she sucked in a deep breath, struggling to force down the cold feeling of absolute terror that was slowly welling up in the pit of her stomach. She was alone in a hotel room with two guys, who were both armed.

Either this was all just one stupid prank cooked up by Ryan and his buddies because they found out that she liked him, or they were going to kill her because she had pretty much told Ryan to fuck off after the cult offer.

Judging from the confused looks that both men were giving her, she seriously doubted that this was all just some elaborate hoax.

The taller man slowly lowered his gun, a contemplative frown on his face, before he looked over at the man with the shotgun.

"Dean, I don't think that she's-"

"Sam, she managed to get in here even with the salt and she appeared from out of nowhere. I think we've already established that doesn't exactly scream 'human'."

Taylor looked between the two men for a few seconds, her eyes wide with uncertainty, before she made the decision that it was probably a really good idea to get the hell out of there before she got shot. She had no clue what the hell they were talking about, and she had absolutely no intention whatsoever of sticking around long enough to find out. Slowly and deliberately, she turned her head to face a point right in between the two men before she made her eyes go almost impossibly wide and let an expression of absolute terror wash across her face.

"Holy shit," she hissed as she recoiled slightly from where she was staring at the wall. "What the hell is that?"

Both men immediately whipped around with their guns raised to face whatever perceived threat Taylor was talking about, and she used their momentary distraction to bolt for the door to the room. Frantically throwing the deadbolt aside, she wrapped her hands around the handle and jerked the hotel room door open before she slipped out. Just when she was about to slam the door shut, 'Dean' managed to grab the edge of the door and keep her from shutting it.

"And where do you think you're going?" he demanded sharply as he tried to force the door open. Taylor let out a wordless yelp as she jerked backwards and slammed the door on his hand, causing him to jerk his hand back inside as he let fly an impressive array of profanities.

She didn't waste any time dashing down the outside balcony of the hotel towards the stairwell, trying to put as much distance between her and the men behind her as possible. And said men were now charging out of the hotel room after her, although apparently they deemed it necessary to hide their firearms somewhere.

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit," Taylor muttered frantically as she hit the stairwell and ran down it as fast as she dared to while praying that she didn't trip and fall. Right before she hit the landing where the stairwell turned she used her momentum to vault over the railing and land on the next set of stairs, hoping to put a few extra feet between her and her pursuers. She repeated the process three more times at the bends in the stairwell before she hit the ground floor and stumbled out into the parking lot of some kind of motel with a glowing neon sign that proudly proclaimed that it was 'the best in town'.

A shout from the stairwell told her that one of the men had pulled ahead enough to see her, and the woman promptly bolted across the parking lot towards the thick hedge that separated the seedy motel from a patch of forest. Taylor didn't risk glancing back behind her to see how close her pursuer was as she ran right alongside the towering hedge, her breath coming in short, frantic gasps. Even though she was in fairly good condition – being on the swim team at Portland University, where the coach was obsessed, kind of did that to you – she was starting to get slightly winded. Maybe it was because she was scared out of her mind.

Unfortunately, she didn't manage to get very far before her foot snagged on a slightly raised tree root and sent her crashing to the ground.

"Fuck!" Taylor snarled as she scrabbled to get back to her feet, ignoring the stinging cuts on her hands left behind by the rough gravel on the ground. If she was going to go down, she'd go down kicking and screaming, not by tripping over some damn rock. The woman let out a low growl of frustration just as she noticed something odd out of the corner of her eye. There was a gap under the hedge, at least large enough for her to fit under if she crawled.

Taylor didn't even hesitate before she threw herself bodily under the hedge and started to crawl as fast as she could to the other side, trying to fit the majority of her lanky 5'7 frame under the shrubbery before the man closest to her caught up. She had managed to worm most of her way through the prickly branches when a large hand suddenly wrapped around her left ankle and pulled her up short. Taylor immediately looked over her shoulder to see the man that had been identified earlier as Sam lying on the ground, looking as though he had performed a dive face-first into the dirt to catch her before she vanished completely within the hedge, all while holding her foot firmly in his grasp.

"Let go of me!" she yelped as she tried to squirm out of his grip, although she managed to keep herself from kicking him in the face. Even if they were complete assholes, no one deserved to be kicked in the face by someone wearing hiking boots.

"Look, if you just come out maybe we can talk this whole thing over…" Sam began in what was supposed to be a reassuring manner, although it all fell apart like shattered glass when Taylor heard his friend yell something directed at the tall man.

"Sammy, don't let her get away!"

Taylor spat out a vile curse as she drew back her foot and kicked Sam right in the shoulder, causing the man to yelp as he automatically jerked backwards, and then swear as the dry branches inside the hedge raked across his face.

The twenty-three-year old really didn't want to stick around long enough to see what kind of damage she had caused the man, and promptly crawled over to the other side of the hedge before Sam or his trigger-happy buddy decided to haul her out by her ankles. The moment she was fully out in the forest, she stood up and hastily brushed herself off before she took off at a dead sprint towards where she remembered catching sight of a street.

Hopefully, if she was insanely lucky, the two men wouldn't think about going around the hedge until she was long gone.

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Hello everyone. Thanks for taking the time to read my story, especially if you give me some feedback on the details incorporated in here. I'm Wandering Hitokiri, and this is my first Supernatural fanfic, so please be nice, and if I make a mistake I would greatly appreciate it if you would let me know. No flaming though, please. If you want to know my policy on flamers, please see my profile. There's an entire section entitled 'Fire Hose' for the sole purpose of informing people who are less than kind in their reviews just what exactly they're getting themselves into.

For those of you who have read some of my other works, I know that I've probably scared the crap out of you because I'm writing something that's not anime. No, I have not lost my mind. I just needed a change of pace, especially since I've been writing anime-based fanfics for three years now.

Anyways, now that I've assured you of my very firm grip on my sanity… even though other people would probably beg to differ, I'll say goodbye and see you later. The next chapter will be out soon, since I'm almost done with it.