The first eleven months after Danny died were a messy blur. I drove all over the States, hunting like a maniac. Let it be noted that I'm not proud of whom I was then. I was a machine; hardened by the hardships and cruelties that life had bestowed upon me. I had hardened my heart. I stopped trusting everything and everyone, including myself. I pushed my grief so far into myself, so deep into the vast expanses that were my mind that I forgot what love was – I forgot the happiness and joy that Danny brought to me. I didn't remember, and I didn't care. I didn't want to care. All I wanted was my son back, but I couldn't have that. I knew, deep down, that he was better off in heaven than he ever was on earth.

I was alone; alone and hurting and completely ruthless. Whatever I saw that I thought to be a threat to human kind, I would kill. My opponent would enter the fight, but not once did they exit. Some might say that I was good at my job, but I think and I know that what I was went beyond what being a Hunter entailed. I became a monster. And I knew it, too. And that knowledge – that awareness of my own atrocity – would come back to bite me later.

As I grew in monstrosity, I also grew in intellect. I was pretty smart at this point, but there is only so much knowledge that can be gained from books. With the sort of life I was leading, being street smart was far more valuable than being book smart. Not that I'm degrading book-smarts. Being book smart wasn't a bad thing at all. On the contrary, all that time that I had spent reading up on things like nuclear devices and atomic bomb make-up and hydro-nucleics really paid off. Take, for example, mid-August of 2007.

I had been out hunting for about three months when I got wind of a small town that was infested with demons. I got it into my head that I should go take out the entire throng by myself, which was, obviously, a really smart idea of a seventeen-year-old girl. The entirety of my game plan was to build a hydronuclear bomb that would basically douse the entire town with holy water. The impact, I had calculated, would kill probably about seventeen percent of the demons, leaving a grand eighty-three percent of the demons for me to kill or exorcise. And by eighty-three percent, I mean about one hundred ninety-four demons, as opposed to the two hundred thirty-four I would have otherwise.

On a side note, I was fully and completely aware that it was a reckless idea. It was a kamikaze mission. I didn't want to get out alive. I was done. I had seen too many people I had cared about die and I sure as hell had seen too many people – period – die. And a small part of me hated how easy it had become to kill things, even though it was only demons and monsters that I did kill. So I thought it was best if I should go. I had wanted to for a while, but I was too much of a coward to stick a gun to my head and shoot myself. I wasn't my father. So I decided, for once, that I wanted to go down fighting.

So I built this hydro-nuclear bomb right in my car. It took about a week. I didn't bother testing it, because I didn't want to get out alive anyways. While I was building it, I only stopped about twice a day, to eat and go to the bathroom. But other than that, I worked. And slept, I guess. I would fall asleep in the car around one or two in the morning, by the light of a battery-operated lantern, and then I would wake up when the sun came up. I guess that sounds a little weird, sleeping in my car, but it was cheaper and easier than renting a motel room everywhere I went, and besides, I was seventeen, so I wasn't actually able to buy a hotel room. I mean, I guess I could have faked an ID, but I still had some morals, despite my anger and hate. I was already pretending to be someone I wasn't, and I felt like I couldn't go beyond that any more than I already was.

When I finally finished the bomb, I didn't hesitate, I didn't sit back and say, 'Good job, Sara, you did it,' because Sara had been dead for a long time, and soon the Eden that had taken her place was going to be, too. And that felt good. I strapped a gun to my side and sheathed my knife, and held onto the bomb, which was no bigger than a tennis ball, tightly in my hand.

I had decided that I was going to walk into the town; not to be dramatic, but because while I really wanted to die, I didn't, either. There's something marvelous that happens around you when you know that your life is going to end; the world becomes… well, breath-takingly beautiful. The breeze gently blew my hair around my face, the sun shone around me, lighting up the view around me in a splash of unmatched color and light. It was your classic last day on earth. But despite the niceties that were on display before me, my past and my hurt were able to overtake the good, and I trudged on; my death march. I had no qualms about dying. I didn't feel scared, I just felt… relieved. Even though I was barely seventeen, I couldn't take it. I was actually hoping to get killed rather quickly.

As I entered the town, I could practically feel the demonic presence, which sounds a little strange, I know, but I had always been able to tell when things weren't right somewhere. Of course, I figured out later as to why that was, but I didn't know then what I know now.

Walking into town was quiet. No demon came to challenge me. In fact, if I hadn't known better, I would have said that the town was deserted. But it wasn't, I could tell. I knew that the demons were there, but I didn't know where they were. I assumed that they were inside because they didn't know I was there, but in actuality, it was because I was being protected. More on that, later.

I walked to the very center of the town, feeling more and more uncertain with each step; was this a good idea? Did I really want to die? I mean, I half-expected to die from the initial blast of the bomb – it wasn't just designed to hurt demons, it was meant to destroy, and that sort of included me. As I thought harder, I finally admitted to myself that it was a bad idea, not because I would hurt myself most definitely, but because it was selfish. I wanted to die for me, not for the protection of human kind. Ironically, that thought sort of solidified my belief that I needed to die.

I sat down on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the town. It was a Greek woman holding a –

"What do you want, Hunter?"

I swung around, drawing my knife, tensing up. It was a young woman, very petite, pretty. She had ash-blonde hair and a small, upturned nose and sparkling blue eyes. Except, in a moment, those blue eyes had pooled to black.

Demon. Not that I hadn't figured that before.

My voice, after months of being unused, came out surprisingly smooth, "I was just passing through. I don't mean any trouble."

The demon grinned, "No, you won't be," and she jumped me.

I was ready, though. I dropped the bomb on the ground, letting it roll behind me while I put my knife to the demon's throat as we tumbled to the ground. I managed to turn us in mid-air, so she ended up hitting her head against the fountain in the square, cracking it with a sickening thud against the base. She screamed at first, the initial impact. And then her scream turned to laughter as she grabbed my arms and flipped me over onto my back. "Do you really think," she asked quietly as blood ran down her head, "that we are scared of you? It doesn't matter who's watching over you; we are many, and you are few."

Flipping her backwards, over my head, I got up, doing my best not to look confused as I said scathingly, "Watching over me? No one is watching over me. No one ever has, and no one ever will. So you're right; I am few; all by myself." I smiled at her and said, "So why are you all hiding? What's the point in that? I know there are many more of you here."

The demon had gotten up and was regarding me with a small devious smile and she said decidedly, "You're crazy."

I shrug and responded with a, "Maybe so. But at least I'm not dead. Yet," and with that I threw my knife at her, harder and faster than I had anticipated, the knife ripping through her body, leaving her with a gaping hole in her chest, and a surprised look on her face as she died.

I got that a lot, demons looking surprised when I killed them with a knife. It was uncommon, I know. A regular old knife couldn't just kill a demon, so why should some little girl be able to kill demons with a knife?

The knife was something I had gotten from my mom's trunk – a present from my dad. I hadn't seen or heard of it before I scooped it out of the old wooden box, but there was a letter that was lying just underneath it, a letter. I had hesitated before I opened it, recognizing my father's handwriting,

'My dearest Eden,

I found this in the ruins of a nest and thought of you, at home, with Sarah. I hope to God that you will never need to use it, but it would be quicker and faster than an exorcism. This kills them, Eden. It kills the demons. I don't know what it's made of, for none of my brothers or sisters have seen a thing like it before. But it works. And I all I ask is that you use it if the need arises, which I pray it never will.

Give Sara my love. I hope to be home soon.

Yours,

Peter'

The letter had been dated July of 1990, just about ten months after I had been born, so it made sense that my mother would still have been home with me. She didn't start hunting again until I was about three, old enough for me to remember.

All of this I thought about as I walked past the decimated body and yanked my knife out of the ground, where it had stuck, surrounded by pools of black blood and mutilated organs.

I heard them before I saw them, then. As I was picking up the knife, I felt them. Pouring out of the houses, and I was (probably stupidly) interested as to why they hadn't made an appearance before. But I smiled to myself as I straightened up and turned around. I wasn't surprised by how many there were because, as I said before, I had calculated there would be near two hundred. What did surprise, me, however, was that none of them seemed particularly angry. They actually seemed a bit… scared, which made me want to laugh because the first demon had been adamant that they weren't scared of me. I didn't really stop to dwell on why they had a reason to be scared of me. My adrenaline was up. My heart was pounding, but not from nerves. It was anticipation.

I was about to die.

I let the people, the demons, continue to flood into the square, until they all stopped and surrounded me. I had noticed that the bomb had landed in the fountain, and was standing in the fountain in such a way that the bomb wouldn't be noticed. Thus being said, it was almost certain I would be blown apart by the detonation. So that's why I need to needed to get as many demons into the square as I possibly could- to take out that seventeen percent.

I leaned casually against fountain, which was a male angel with a sword that spewed out water from the point. There was an inscription on the base that read Divinus Patronus, or 'Divine Protector' in English. A question tugged somewhere in the back of my mind – wasn't the statue a woman before? – but I pushed it down, not wanting to focus on something trivial like my apparently bad eyesight, to instead focus on one of the demons who had stepped forward – another woman.

"What are you doing here?" she seethed.

I shrugged, "Same as you, I imagine. To destroy. But I think we have slightly different targets."

The demon glared at me a moment, then laughed, "To destroy? No, Hunter, that is not our goal. We are to sit and wait."

Stupidly, I asked, 'For what?"

She grinned maliciously and said with a sweet voice that stilled managed to be full of venom, "For you, of course." And they surged forward, but there was something that can only be described as hesitant.

I laughed, "What? Are you scared of me? A small, seventeen-year-old girl with no back up?" I rolled my eyes and snapped, "Well that's rich." The demons looked somewhat uncertain of themselves and I looked up at the sky and sighed. I pressed then the detonator.

The blast was incredible. It was a lot stronger than I anticipated. Of course, it wasn't nearly as strong as an atomic bomb, like when America had bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki back in the Second World War, and it wasn't as strong as a hydrogen bomb, or even a regular nuclear bomb, since it was powered by water, but it was definitely a strong blast.

The first few rows of demons were vaporized right on the spot, as the water hit them full force. Black smoke poured from their mouths, while the rest fell to the ground, screaming and writhing in pain. As for me, I was thrown backwards, high into the sky, and landed on the roof with a back cracking thud, hitting my head against the weathervane. Every part of my body was on fire, I felt like all my bones had been broken, my head bleeding painfully where it has struck the metal. My vision spotted, and I felt myself passing out. All of a sudden, the square filled with a light- a white light, so bright that it seemed impossible. Blearily watching what was happening, upside down, I saw the angel from the fountain move. It swung at the demons, cutting them down one by one. A voice filled the air, one so loud and deep and commanding that my ears ached. The voice spoke in a language that I did not know, and yet, it was one I recognized. I could tell that the angel was commanding the demons leave the bodies that they had possessed, in the name of the Lord, and that they return to hell from whence they came.

The light died as black smoke filled the air. It hung briefly, a black demonic cloud that soon was sucked back into the earth. My rapidly fading vision desperately sought the angel, but there was no one. Just a fountain. Just a fountain.

Then I blacked out.

I am not going to lie to you and say that I wasn't upset when I woke up, obviously not dead. I was splayed on the rooftop where I had landed, and hurting all over. I was aware of the pain before I was aware of where I was, actually, which always makes for a fun time. I lay there awhile, trying to figure out whether I could move, or if I had broken every bone in my body. I finally came to the decision that if I had broken every bone in my body, then I probably would be in a lot more pain. So to punish myself for being alive, I sat up. I screamed, and then quickly stifled my voice, sobbing. My neck cracking, I looked to around at the area to find that there wasn't anyone there. No bodies, no nothing. Just me and the fountain.

That freaking fountain. I had to go see what was up with that. I gingerly leaned forward, wincing as my back crack loudly and painfully. I apprehensively looked around, trying to find a way off the roof. A trellis. A strangely large trellis, too; one that was tall enough to reach the roof that I was on. I hoisted myself up, gasping as pain sliced through my body, fireworks erupting behind my eyes.

It took me almost ten minutes to get down the trellis, which was as tall as the one-story house. Normally, I probably would have jumped, but I had definitely bruised some ribs, not to mention the huge gash on my forehead from my battle with the weathervane earlier.

My feet finally touching solid ground, I collapsed against the side of the house, breathing heavily. I stood there for a bit, utterly spent, waiting for my breathing to slow down and even out. Even breathing was painful. Eventually, I was able to drag myself over to the fountain, and I looked long and hard at it. It was a prettily carved Greek woman, holding a fruit basket in one left arm, and a sheaf of grain in her right hand, water spouting from each of the individual blades of wheat. I shook my head slowly, to see if that's what was actually there. I gingerly smacked the stone, and it was solid.

I sat down on the fountain's edge, thinking. If the fountain was really a woman, then where had that angel come from? I looked at the base where it had earlier read Divinus Patronus, but now there was nothing. So what, I wondered, was that? Was I so crazily caught up in my longing for death that I started seeing things? Were the demons fake, too? I glanced down at myself, and say black blood all over me, and saw that the demons, at least, were real.

So that meant my bomb had worked, and I hadn't just gone insane and somehow ended up on the roof. I sighed. Divine Protector.

I slowly stood up and walked back to my car, wondering the entire time about guardian angels and if I was crazy enough to believe that I actually had one.