Hi Everyone! This is a new fic that I have been co-authoring with AnastaziaDanielle. She's new to the Supernatural fandom so give her a welcome! She asked me to write this fic with her to get used to the Supernatural setting. This is a Season 1 AU; Sam and Dean have a sister (and a niece!) and you'll just have to read on to see what else happens. We'll be writing alternating chapters. I'll be posting the next chapter later this weekend. For now, I hope you enjoy the prologue and have a Happy Halloween and don't forget the salt! :P

Disclaimer: We do not own Supernatural. Addy Grace and Melissa, however, do belong to us. Please do not use them without our permission. Thanks! -LadyWallace and AnastaziaDanielle

This chapter was written by: LadyWallace

Prologue

Denver, Colorado 2005

Melissa felt like she was being watched.

She was always a bit paranoid, after all, it was only to be expected, after being kidnapped at a young age and taken far from her family before ending up in the foster system, not knowing where or who her real family was anymore. But this was different, she honestly felt a threat, some inner instinct that she had always had told her that something was deeply wrong. Shadowy figures popping up over and over, a car behind her. Perhaps the research she had been doing had been a mistake.

Over the past few months, she had been trying to locate her family. Not only for herself, but for Addy. Being a single mom was hard, and she could use the support and wanted her four-year-old daughter to be able to grow up around more people than just herself. So she had started looking. When she wasn't working or looking after Addy, she was checking birth records, death records, anything she could find that might lead her to her family. And she had finally, at long last, found them.

She had very vague memories of her parents, happy ones, and she felt that they wouldn't have simply given up on her if there had been any hope. Perhaps they were still looking for her. Or her father, at least. She had learned only recently that her mother had died in a house fire twenty-two years before. But her father was still alive, and she had two brothers as well. More than she could ever have hoped for! Now Addy would have a grandfather and two uncles to provide a male influence to her life since her father wasn't around.

But contacting her father had proven difficult. She had tried several numbers she'd found and got nothing. There were no addresses listed except the one in Lawrence, Kansas that she thought might have been the house she had grown up in for those few years she had been with her family. But she had gotten a call while at work that day from one of the people she had contacted for information who came back with a new number, and she was going to try it tonight to see if there was any more luck with that.

But right now, she just had to get Addy and go home where she would feel safer. Away from the unseen eyes that she felt were following her home.

She pulled up at the apartment building she rented and hurried inside, several shopping bags slung over one arm. She went to the third floor first, to the neighbor who watched Addy for her while she was at work.

The kindly elderly lady appeared to her knock with Addy clutching her hand and Melissa opened her arms to her smiling daughter as Addy ran to greet her.

"Mommy, I made cookies with Mrs. Jones today!" she exclaimed excitedly. "Chocolate chip!"

"Sounds delicious, sweetie," Melissa said, turning to Mrs. Jones. "Thank you as always."

"Of course, dear," the motherly woman replied fondly. "Same time tomorrow?"

"Yes, they're keeping me on the longer shift. I'm sorry Addy has to stay with you so long, but she'll be in school in another few months."

"Don't you worry about it, dear, it's no trouble. You do what you have to."

Melissa took Addy's hand as they walked down the hall to the elevator to travel up to the next floor to their own apartment. She sat Addy down with her books while she started dinner, all the time thinking about the phone number that might reach her father, and the strange feeling she'd had earlier. As the pasta was cooking for dinner, she sat down at the kitchen table, which was strewn with her research material. On the top was a very battered photo, the only thing she had to tell her where she came from—she didn't even really know how she had come to have it. It was a picture of her mom and dad, her mother proudly holding a round belly—carrying Melissa. She always felt an ache in her chest when she looked at it. So many years of looking at that picture and wondering who they were and finally finding out now at long last.

She took out another page and smiled fondly at the pictures of her two brothers she had found. They weren't any easier to find than her father, but she really wanted to meet them. To think she had two little brothers she had never known about until a week ago…

"Mommy, can you read to me?" Addy asked, pattering into the kitchen with a book held out in front of her.

"After dinner, sweetie, it's almost done," Melissa said, and got up to stir the pasta before draining it and grabbing two plates from the cupboard. Addy sat at the table eagerly and they enjoyed their meal together. Melissa was reluctant to send Addy to school the next year, especially after what had happened to her, but she knew it would be good for her daughter to get out and meet other children. She only had a couple friends in the apartment building she played with sometimes in the park. Melissa thought she was sometimes a little overly protective, but then again, there was that built in protective instinct that came fiercely out of nowhere—culminating in the pistol she always kept under her mattress, another thing that just felt natural.

After dinner, she bathed Addy and put her to bed, before cuddling up with her and reading the books she wanted. Addy was nodding off by the time she had finished and she kissed her gently on the forehead and tucked her in.

Now she needed to get to work again.

She grabbed her cell phone and found the message, writing down the number and then, after taking a deep breath, she punched it in and waited, her heart pounding in anticipation. The phone rang for several long seconds, then with a leap of her heart she heard a voice, one that sounded vaguely familiar, but then with sudden disappointment she realized it was just a recording.

"This is John Winchester's phone. I'm not able to answer right now, but call my son, Dean; he'll be able to help."

She was so elated that she had finally found something that she missed the cue to leave a message. She quickly dialed back and listened again, only getting her bearings together to jot down Dean's phone number as well before the beep.

She swallowed hard and then opened her mouth. "Um, Dad? Hi, this is…Melissa…"

She forgot the message as a sound outside the apartment door caught her attention. She quickly clicked the phone to end the call and stood up. It was there again, someone trying to work open the lock. Her first thought was the gun under her pillow, but if she went to her room to get it, it would be too close to Addy, and if someone was coming into the apartment, the last thing she wanted was to draw attention to her daughter. So instead, she grabbed a knife from the rack and gripped it tightly, standing on the other side of the wall from the door so she wouldn't be seen.

She was shaking all over, her nerves jittery, her palms sweating so that she could hardly hold the knife. The doorknob rattled and then she heard it open. She closed her eyes, trying to calm her breathing. She took a step further into the shadows, hearing the intruder's footsteps. They hesitated a moment, then turned aside. She breathed a sigh of relief, before she realized what that meant. They were going toward Addy!

Instantly springing into action, she came out from behind the wall and saw the back of the intruder right in front of her, wearing a dark hooded jacket so she could barely see his features. She didn't hesitate, lunging forward as he stiffened seeming to sense something, and stabbed the knife into his back, hardly believing what she was doing.

To her horror, the knife hardly fazed the man at all. He just turned around with a smile forming on his lips.

"Hello, Melissa," he said as she backed away, searching for another weapon. What was going on here? By rights he should be dead or at least in agony.

"How do you know me?" she whispered, groping for a vase that was on the table behind her.

"I know your father," the man said. "I came to give you his love. You see, he took something from me, so I decided to take something from him too." He advanced slowly, but there was no need for speed, because Melissa was trapped against the wall.

"You know my father?" she couldn't help but ask, casting a quick glance to the papers on the table in the next room.

"Oh yes," the man said, a growl in his voice.

"Where is he?"

"Now? He could be anywhere. But when I kill you…well, I hope he'll come to find me. He was looking into you, trying to locate you, and so I decided to take advantage of that."

"Get out of my house," Melissa told him firmly, trying to keep from showing fear. The knife was still sticking from the man's back. Was he wearing body armor?

He chuckled and his mouth widened with a cruel grin. "Oh, and your daughter? She's beautiful; I think I'll take her when I'm done with you. Don't worry; she'll have a good home. A family who will love her."

"You stay away from her!" Melissa shouted, throwing the vase at the man and running into the kitchen again as he was distracted, grabbing her phone to call 911.

She was barely able to send the call before the man grabbed her from behind and tackled her to the floor, with a crash, taking one of the chairs down with them. Melissa cried out in pain, her head cracking on the floor and dazing her for a minute. When her sight cleared, the man was grinning at her again, but his teeth were strange, growing long and fang-like.

"What…?" she gasped but her question was cut off with a scream as he lurched forward and bit into the side of her neck. She thrashed, reaching up and grabbing the knife still in his back, driving it deeper until it showed out his chest. She felt her life draining away, her struggles becoming weaker and then suddenly, a new horror appeared.

"Mommy!"

The thin, confused wail sounded from the doorway, and the man, or whatever it was, drew back and turned to grin at Addy with his bloody mouth. She screamed and ran away, and Melissa tried to sit up, but could hardly move. Blood continued to pour out of her neck and the man turned back to her with a smug expression.

"Now your father and I are equal. He killed my daughter, I'll kill his. And I'll take yours to replace her."

She gurgled, reaching weakly for him, sadness and horror overtaking her even as she fought to stay conscious. He stood and grimaced as he reached around and drew the knife from his back, letting it clatter to the floor.

"Time for me to leave."

Sirens sounded outside. The call must have gone through after all. Melissa felt a bit better. Maybe they would get there in time. The man hissed angrily.

"I'll be back for your daughter. She will become one of us, but you'll hardly care now, because you'll not be around." He then turned and crashed out of the window, clattering down the fire escape.

Melissa heard shouting out in the hallways, but she couldn't care. She knew it was too late for her. Tears leaked from her eyes to join the blood on the ground.

"Mommy," there was frightened sobbing, and she wished she could do something about it, but she couldn't. She couldn't move.

She was already gone by the time the police burst into the room.

Officer Hale had been on the job for too many years in his opinion, but this made him sicker than anything he had seen before, and he had seen a lot in his twenty years on the force.

"What kind of monster would break into a woman's house and kill her in front of her own daughter?" he muttered to himself, trying to fight away the bile as he watched the ME stooping over the body. "Much less like this."

He stepped over a puddle of blood with a crime scene marker on it to look at the papers on the table, wondering if they would give him a clue as to why Melissa Winchester had been murdered.

"What is all that?" his partner, John Wilson asked as the young man stepped over to him, looking just as pale as he felt.

Hale frowned as he shuffled through the papers. "Looks like she was researching her family. What did you find on her?"

"From what we can tell, Melissa Winchester disappeared twenty-eight years ago from Lawrence Kansas at the age of two. I don't know how she wasn't found before, but, it was a cold case that was never solved. She has been presumed dead for years."

Hale looked at the papers again. "Well, it looks like she was trying to locate her family. Shame she never did. Maybe the person who took her in the first place came back for revenge?"

Wilson shrugged. "Too early to hazard a guess, sir. The detectives are on their way. But, sir…what are we going to do about the daughter?"

His voice dropped and Hale turned almost reluctantly to the pitiful little figure standing off to one side with one of his female officers and several neighbors, shocked into silence, covered in blood. He shivered as he recalled the scene they had come upon after entering the room; the little girl just sitting next to her mother's body, shaking her as if trying to wake her up. Sometimes this job was just too much for him.

He looked back down at the papers and saw several phone numbers jotted down on the top of the pile, resting next to a picture of a man and expecting woman.

"I guess we'll try to contact her nearest relations. It looks like Melissa has a father and two younger brothers still living."

Wilson nodded and said he'd make the calls as Hale turned to inform the detectives who had just come in about what had happened.

He cast one more glance at the little girl and decided that this job really was too much for him sometimes.

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