Gotta Have Faith

“Always a pleasure, Mrs. Johnson.” As soon as the door closed behind the old woman’s wrinkly ass, Betty Hogan fell to her knees and looked down at the way her fingers spread over the tiled floor. She was breathing like a bull preparing to charge, and a piece of brown hair was tickling her nose as it swayed. She can fight this. She can. She put this part of her life behind her, and she’s normal now. She lives in a small town, she walks around her front yard in her bare feet, she owns a flower shop, and she’s a normal fucking person goddammit!

“I’m done dealin’ with your bullshit! Do ya hear me, Father?! I. AM. RETIRED!”

Just to prove her wrong, a pulse moved through her skull so hard that her forehead bounced off the counter in front of her and she slumped to the side. It was still moving through her mind, trying to break down the walls that she worked so hard on building, and it burns. Burns like a wildfire made out of ice, and she’s getting blood in her eyes and in her hair. It’s gonna ruin her pretty dress, and hasn’t she done enough? Hasn’t she seen enough? Killed enough? Saved enough? All she wanted was to live a quiet life and die peacefully. No more washing blood off her hands after receiving messages that tore her temples apart and tap danced across her gray matter.

“You can’t make me.” Her throaty voice was even thicker than usual as she stared unseeing up at the ceiling, and that pounding in her skull only got louder. She can’t fight it forever. She can already feel blood from her nose tickling her upper lip. Her ears will bleed next. Maybe her eyes. Best to get it over with. Just let it end. One little look and that’s it.

Creatures in the streets. People running, screaming, dying. The world isn’t gonna end in fire or ice. It’s gonna end in blood.

They’re fighting. They’re fighting so hard, but it won’t be enough. One little hunter goes down. Two hunting gods get ripped apart. No angels left to save you now.

Hell is empty, and all the devils are here. They’re wearing your little girl and ripping your heart out, and there’s no one left to save us now.

Her hair is red and she wears her heart on her wrist. She must be there to warn them, to get their attention, and placed somewhere safe. Has to be kept safe, until she’s needed. They will save her, but she’s gotta get to them first. This is where you come in, Betty Fay, you gotta get her there. Drive her right into their path. Gotta leave now if you’re gonna make it in time. Go now. Go!

“Fuck!” Her heart was trying to beat its way past her ribcage, and the blood in her temples was dancing to an eclectic beat that made her want to shoot something. She really hates the whole Apocalypse thing. Can’t the world end without ruining her week?

Her legs were shaky as she pulled herself to her feet, but she managed to stumble her way into the bathroom. It was small, but it’s got a sink and a mirror. Half of her face is covered in blood, and she won’t make it three steps out the shop’s door without someone stopping her. They’ll ask her if she’s okay, what happened, does she need a ride to the hospital…yeah, she doesn’t have time for smalltown niceties. And it’s not like she can tell the good people of Justice, Wyoming that this little bit of blood ranks really small on her list of injuries. You haven’t hit the big times until you can see your own insides and then have to stitch yourself back together. Luckily for her, she was friends with a nice little demon that healed her all up when she decided it was time for her to kick her feet up. Of course, she still killed him once she was all sparkly again, but he should have seen it coming.

She got most of the blood off, and the small cut on her head wasn’t bleeding quite as bad. She has a first aid kit here in the shop, but it doesn’t have a bandage big enough for her head wound. She’ll have to take care of it at the house. No one stopped her as she locked up the shop and hurried to her Jeep, and she quickly pulled herself up into the big vehicle and pulled off. She doesn’t live in town in one of the little suburbs, because she likes her privacy, but she does still live within town limits. The place she calls home is on a smooth dirt road off the main road leading into town, and the only other person who lives down this stretch of dirt is an elderly couple and their even older cow. No one bothers her out here, so she doesn’t have to worry about anyone hearing her cussing up a storm as the Jeep bounces its way up the driveway.

A big furry head butted against her thigh as soon as she was out of the Jeep, and she reached down to scratch behind a floppy ear. The big fuzz ball could probably smell the blood still stuck to her skin, and he’s the protective type. He trotted faithfully by her side as she moved up the front steps and into the house, and she paused for a moment to just take a look around. This house seemed like a gift for all the shit she’d put up with since birth. This house was her reward for getting out. It was two floors and had a very open floor plan. Hardly any walls to speak of, large windows nearly all the way around to let in some natural light, and the steps leading to her bedroom looked like a wooden ladder. It’s more like a loft, really. If she tips her head back enough, she can see her bed over the kitchen. This is her home, and she’s happy here. She doesn’t want to go out and do some absent asshole’s bidding, but she has to. End of the world shit.

“Come on, Lazarus. Mama’s gotta make a basement trip.” The big St. Bernard whined quietly at the B-word but followed after her anyway. The basement door is in the kitchen and hidden by her giant refrigerator, which is a hideous shade of yellow but it grew on her. Once she managed to get the fridge out of the way, she punched in a key code where the door knob should have been and finally slipped inside. The basement is the exact opposite of the rest of the house. It’s completely closed in, dark, and cold. Not cold in the physical sense, it’s a little balmy actually, but she still gets a shiver whenever she walks down the metal stairs.

Symbols painted in her own blood are everywhere. Anti-demon, anti-angel, anti-everything. She’s even got wards against the more cuddly supernatural creatures, because she’s learned not to trust anything. There’s no books downstairs. There’s a single computer with all of her research on it, and it’s password protected and will blow up if the wrong password is entered. If something happens to the computer here, she’s got six spares hidden all over the country and one more in Switzerland. She used to have one in Nepal too, but there was a Yeti incident and that one’s gone now. The room is far from bare though. There’s a small bed with crisp white sheets and an open bathroom stocked with everything from Band-Aids to sterilized sewing needles. Then there’s the weapons. It’s like a small arsenal.

“Don’t look at me like that, boy. It’s not like I want to be here.” The big dog was sitting on the last stair and just looking at her, and Betty shrugged as she walked over to the bathroom. She doesn’t have time to stand around and let her dog judge her. He can do that when she gets back. First things first, cleaning the cut on her head and putting an actual bandage on it before it starts up bleeding again. Head wounds are so fussy.

Elizabeth Faith Hogan’s first memory isn’t even her own. She thinks she was three, and she saw a man with black eyes laughing as he set another man on fire. She screamed and cried, and her mother just shushed her and told her everything would be okay. A few days later, after a nice little road trip, she was dumped off on some church steps and never saw her parents again. (She had a big brother, she thinks, but she hasn’t seen him since then either.) The church had its own orphanage, and she was shuffled in. She wasn’t even in the same state she’d been born in. When she started screaming about a lady with sharp teeth eating a boy’s heart, one of the nuns took her away from the orphanage. She was then given to Josephine, a witch and a hunter, and the real nightmare began.

Psychic. There’s movies and TV shows about it, songs and poems, and it’s all a load of bullshit. Betty Fay, as Josie used to call her, is a true blue psychic. She can see the past, the present, and the future. She can talk to the dead and took to witchcraft like a fish to water, and she’s damn deadly with a gun in her hand. Josie used to say that she was born to be a hunter; killing the supernatural was her destiny. Betty’s not so sure about that, but it didn’t stop her from hunting. Josie used to say that the visions were a gift from God, so that’s who Betty railed at when Josie died and left her in this fucked up world alone. For years, she’d get a vision and do what needed to be done. There’s not much that she hasn’t killed, and she hates it all. Hates the pain and suffering, the tears and begging, the cries and apologies. Six years ago, at the ripe age of twenty-six, she gave it up.

Her last vision was of a little boy. A beautiful little thing with big eyes and a crooked smile. According to her vision, he was gonna grow up to become one of the world’s most renowned serial killers. He wouldn’t be caught until he was in his sixties, and by that point ninety-three lives would have been ended by his hands. (Horrible, gruesome deaths, because sometimes humans are the monsters.) The little boy had to die, and she was gonna be the one to do it. He’d only been six when she found him, sitting in a nicely kept park at dusk. His mother was down the street on her knees, and the little boy knew to stay on the swings until she got back. Looking at him then, with his soft brown curls, it was hard to picture him killing anyone. (But she’d seen the broken bodies, heard the screams as they cried for help.) He let her hold him in her lap as she swung slowly, and he had one round cheek pressed against the top of her chest when she slipped the needle into his neck. He died quickly and silently, and Betty spent the next two weeks in a drunken stupor.

Once she sobered up, she decided that she’d had enough. No more visions. No more killing to save lives. She was done. She tracked down a demon that owed her a favor, got all of her skin scrubbed clean of all the scars that would raise questions, and killed one last demon. (He might’ve owed her a favor, but he still killed a hunting party of five. Tit for tat and all of that.) All of her scars were gone, and she felt washed clean. Of course, she still had invisible tattoos inked into the skin of her back. Protection symbols to keep away all things harmful, and they only showed up under the right kinds of light. Her entire house is covered in similar symbols; they’re carved into the wood and painted over, so that they can’t be seen but can still be useful. She’s retired, not stupid. Then she built the wall. A thick heavy wall inside of her mind to keep out all unwanted visions, and it’s held up for the past six years without fail. Until now.

Blood free and pissed off at the world, she stalked back into the main part of the basement and stripped off her dress. Her sandals were kicked to the side, and she stared down into her trunk of clothes. Hunting clothes. Thick tight-fitting clothes that she could move easily in and dark colors to hide the blood stains. She hasn’t missed the hunting attire; she’s gotten used to her pretty sundresses, but you can’t intimidate someone in a dress. She yanked on black cargo pants, a white tank top, and pushed her feet into heavy black boots. She’ll take a black jacket with her to put on later. This isn’t a hunting trip, so she doesn’t need a lot of weapons, but a few knives and guns never hurt anyone. It’s nice to be prepared. Once she was loaded down and ready to go, she turned around to sit on the small bed and smiled over at Lazarus.

“Six years is a good run, buddy, so don’t give me that look. I’m lucky I made it this long.” Her rough voice sounded thick, but she wasn’t going to cry. She gave up crying over the visions and the unwanted thoughts a very long time ago. Besides, she’s got a job to do. “Winchesters, huh? I haven’t had a vision about them since I was thirteen. They saved the world, Laz, just like I saw. I guess they’re gonna need a little more help this time around.”

She pulled out her usual cell phone and called her shop assistant, Mimi. She’s sixteen and mad at the world, and Betty loves the kid. She can run the register at the shop when Betty’s working with the flowers and she does most of the deliveries, and Betty has known the kid since she was eleven and used to come into the shop just to poke the flowers. Betty can trust the kid to keep an eye on her flowers and to come feed Lazarus while she’s gone for a couple of days. Once the call was over, Betty squatted down to hug Laz and told him she’d be home soon. She’s not sure if the dog can actually understand her, but he’s smart for being such a big fluff ball.

There’s no way she’s taking her precious Jeep on this road trip, so it’s gotta be the SUV that she keeps hidden in the barn. It’s perfect for hunts. Hidden compartments for weapons and a wide open space in the back that’s just right for a body. Or parts of one. She doesn’t take it out very often, because it’s black and the dark tint shuts out everything around her. These days, she prefers the Jeep where she can let the wind in and feel the sun on her skin. Now’s not the time to be thinking about that though. She’s got a job to do.


The neon sign above the comic book store was cute; it was probably even cuter when it was lit up. Right now, the sun is just starting to hit the horizon and the store won’t open for a few more hours. The girl she’s looking for couldn’t sleep so she came into work early, and she’s the only one inside. Betty would be able to see if there was anyone else inside. She zipped her jacket up the rest of the way, pulled her cap on and tucked all her hair in, and made her way to the front door. It’s a small store in a small town, nothing bad happens here, and the door is unlocked. Of course it is. Betty stepped inside, locked the door behind her, and closed all the blinds just to be on the safe side. She’s gotta find the girl and give the poor thing a vision that she hasn’t even seen yet. They’ll get to see it together.

There was shuffling coming from the back of the store, and Betty’s heavy boots didn’t make a sound as she weaved through shelves to get to the back. Once she found the girl, she just stood still and watched her. Long red hair swayed just over a strip of pale skin on the girl’s waist; her shirt must have ridden up from all the dancing. The girl’s whole body was in motion as she moved to the music coming through her earphones, and Betty tracked the movement of the girl’s arms as they raised in the air. On her right wrist was a small dark red birthmark, in the shape of a tiny little heart. She wears her heart on her wrist.

Betty’s gloved hand grabbed the back of the girl’s neck, and she pushed the girl up against a bookshelf as gently as she could. The girl bucked and tried to twist away, and Betty pressed herself against the length of the girl’s body to hold her still. Her legs trapped the other girl’s, and she squeezed her fingers the tiniest bit. The girl’s going to have a bruise, but that can’t be helped. With her other hand, Betty reached up and pulled out the earphones. The girl stopped struggling, and Betty listened to her quick breathing.

“Please, don’t hurt me. There’s cash in the register. Not much, but it’s all yours, just don’t hurt me,” the girl babbled quietly.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I have a message for the Winchesters.”

“The who now?” No time to explain. Her instructions were clear. Deliver the message, make sure it gets delivered, and get out.

“What’s your name, kid?” Several different names swirled in the girl’s brain, and Betty looked at them all. Maybe this girl isn’t so normal after all. Good. That should help.

“Charlie.”

“I’m really sorry about this, Charlie.”

“Sorry about wha—” The girl’s adrenaline had been pumping so much that she never even felt the needle in her exposed hip, and Betty carefully picked her up. The streets were still empty when they got outside, and Betty gently placed the girl in the backseat of the SUV. Just to be safe, she wrapped a blindfold around the girl’s eyes and started driving.


Six hours later, Betty was parked in some trees and staring at a strip of highway in the middle of nowhere. Soon, a black car will come around a curve and start down this stretch of empty road. Betty’s gotta be ready for it, and so does Charlie. Right on schedule, the redhead started stirring. Betty didn’t wait for her to get her bearings, she just pulled her out of the backseat and walked her to the front of the vehicle. The blindfold was still in place, which will make all of this easier. The girl was still sluggish from the knockout drug, but she was starting to shake. Betty hates scaring people, but this is necessary. She’s got a message to deliver.

“Are you going to kill me? Because I’m really not worth the potential prison time,” Charlie said quickly.

“I’m not going to kill you. Just hold still and don’t fight it, okay?” The girl whined and tensed up, like she was preparing for a killing blow, and Betty thought for a moment that killing her might be the nice thing to do. This girl is getting thrown into a situation that can’t possibly end peacefully, but she has to do this.

Betty pressed gloved hands against the girl’s flushed cheeks and leaned forward just enough to touch their foreheads together. Then she let the vision that was scratching at her mind out.

He’s tall and handsome, and there’s a raging fire in his eyes that contrasts his calm face. The women standing at his sides are madness in the truest sense of the word. Red hair, dark hair, death in their eyes. They are here to destroy and ruin. The three are standing in the house that the brother’s built, and they are finally making their move. No more waiting in the shadows. No more hiding behind demons. The walls are painted in red and the floor is made of bone.

They’re coming! They’re coming! They’re coming!

Betty pulled out of the vision with a full body shudder, but she stayed close to Charlie. She can feel the girl shivering against her as her mind tries to accept what it’s just seen, and it’s a lot to take in. To Betty, the whole scene makes perfect sense. To Charlie, who’s never had to deal with visions, it’s probably nothing but riddles. Except for the last part. That’s pretty clear, because they’re coming. The Winchesters will know who Charlie is talking about, so there’s no point in explaining. She’s got one last thing to do now before sending the girl on her way. Betty tightened her hold and spoke quietly, and she felt her mind flexing out muscles that have grown slack with disuse.

“You won’t remember the car ride or anything about me. Someone grabbed you from work and then you were in the woods. All you know is that you must find the Winchesters and give them the message. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she whispered. The car is coming any second now.

“Go!” Betty ripped off the blindfold, and Charlie immediately moved out of the tree line. Betty held herself in the shadow of a grouping of trees so she could watch Charlie stagger into the road. There was a loud squeal as rubber was torn off by asphalt, and Betty watched the way that the car slid to a stop right in front of the shaking redhead. A man moved from the driver’s seat in one fluid motion and stalked towards the girl, and Betty saw Charlie’s lips forming the word “Winchester.” The man, who Betty knows is Dean Winchester from long ago visions, tensed up and glared at the girl. Dean won’t kill Charlie. He’ll save her.

“Cas!” Another man appeared at Dean’s side, an angel if the light is anything to go by, and Betty knows this angel too. Castiel. He helped the Winchesters end the last Apocalypse, and it looks like he’s along for the ride this time too. Charlie kept repeating a single phrase and then the stress of it all finally hit her. Her body started to fall, and Dean quickly moved forward to grab her. He easily lifted her up into his arms and held her close to his body, and he spent the next couple of minutes talking to the angel. They finally reached a decision, and Dean walked the girl over to his car and placed her in the backseat.

Betty stuck around until the car was out of sight, and she slumped against a tree. Elijah, Abaddon, and Eve were all free. She had dreams about them when she was little, and they always scared her. Abaddon is blood and chaos all packed into a meat suit and just waiting for a chance to let go. Eve was driven insane by the darkness, until she let it in and brought her nightmares to life. As for Elijah, he’s pissed. He wants his son back, the Nephilim, Simon. Betty remembers Simon too. A beautiful child that they kept trying to kill, until he eventually became the monster that the angels wanted him to be. What are they planning though? What’s happening?

Not that it matters. Betty has done her part, and she’s going home now. If the world ends, it’ll end while she’s none the wiser, just like everyone else. As of right now, she’s retired. Again.