【─── Chapter Eight 】

Hunter's Intuition

Serafina settled into the booth, her confidence radiating like a bonfire. She immediately noted their demeanor. Her gaze flickered between the two brothers, amusement clear as day in her eyes. "What juicy secret did I interrupt?" She asked, a playful smile dancing on her lips as she fiddled with the thin straps on her bright green blouse.

Sam opened his mouth and stumbled, the ghost of a smirk on his lips, but Dean took the reins of the conversation, blurting out quickly, "No secrets here." His voice rose an octave. Dean leaned back and attempted a too cool for school posture. His eyes, after a fleeting glance at Sam, landed on Serafina with a lazy smirk, but it didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Oh, hiya sugar." A red-haired server stood next to their table with a large pot of coffee in one hand and three mugs in the other. "I brought you all a pot of our strongest." The woman flicked a glance at Dean, a nervous smile escaping her lips as she set the mugs down on the table. "And here's your half and half, sweetheart." She pulled out a handful of half and half cups from her baby blue apron and set them near Sam's mug.

"I'll be back 'round shortly to check on you."

Serafina didn't waste another second. She snagged the pot of coffee and poured a heaping cup; the aroma filling her with anticipation for that first magical sip. She handed the pot off to Dean before wrapping her hands around the mug, feeling the warmth spread through her body.

Like Frankenstein, that first sip electrified her senses and brought her back to life.

Meanwhile, Dean took a long, hearty sip himself. He savored the bitter taste, letting out a satisfied groan as he smacked his lips loudly. 'Now that's damn good coffee." He glanced at Sam's milky concoction with mock horror. "I don't know how you do it."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "Easy." He took a nonchalant sip of his coffee and said, "Like this."

"Smartass." Dean muttered roughly with a small smile.

Serafina, nestled comfortably in the booth, watched the exchange with bright eyes. A hint of amusement played on her lips, momentarily hidden behind the ceramic rim of her mug as she took another sip.

Dean's attention returned to her. Though this time, his gaze bounced down to the fading bruise on her cheek that resembled a swirl of light colors. He knitted his brows together, clearly confused. She averted his gaze and cleared her throat, placing her mug on the table.

He was extremely perceptive.

As they leisurely sipped their coffee, they engaged in idle small talk. However, Serafina noticed an eager gleam in Sam's eyes, leading her to suspect that he had been patiently waiting for the conversation to circle back to the case that had been keeping her up at night.

"Now that I've had my cup of Joe," Dean drawled as he casually lifted his coffee mug, taking another sip. "We can talk monsters."

Sam, still holding his mug, whispered quietly, "You remember the Midwest throat slasher?" He brought his coffee to his lips and sipped it.

Dean's eyebrows lifted, and his eyes roamed as if he were mentally reviewing the countless cases he had dealt with as a hunter. "Rings a bell." He paused before a look of recognition settled on his features. "Wait, wait. That isn't the one we looked into with the smokin' hot librarian...her, uh, research assistant, had their carotid nearly severed?"

Sam rolled his eyes with a hint of annoyance. "Yeah, that's the one."

Serafina raised an eyebrow with intrigue as she took another sip, savoring the acidic taste. "Got a librarian kink?" she playfully teased, her smirk crossing the table to meet him. 

Dean captured her gaze with a shameless smile. The palpable intensity could send any woman to her knees. "One of many." His words seemed to linger in the air, hot and heavy, before Sam cleared his throat, pulling their attention back to the topic at hand.

Sam interjected politely, "If I may, why are you researching this one? I thought this case was just some crazy serial killer picking random targets. The ritualistic symbols caught our eyes too, but it led nowhere in all the databases. And last we heard, everything went cold.."

"As far as cases go, I remember it being pretty unremarkable," Dean added with a small shrug. "Just some whack job that played too many rounds of dungeons and dragons, and decided he wanted to do some real life blood sacrifices. Gruesome, yeah, but supernatural? Unlikely." He shook his head, looking every bit skeptical.

The waitress came back before Serafina could answer Sam's question. She ordered chocolate chip pancakes with a side of bacon, to which Dean smirked as he ordered a hearty breakfast and added a side of pancakes.

Sam chose a bowl of steel-cut oats and fresh fruit.

As the waitress walked away, Serafina leaned into the table, crossing her arms and resumed their discussion. "On first look, the case seems like a regular nut job the police would handle, but I did some digging on all three victims."

The boys fell silent as she started talking.

"So, we have Martha Dunford. She was killed first. Following her, we have two other victims with the same name, Gary Pullman. The research assistant, we'll call him Gary number one, had their throat slashed like everyone else, but he had all of his blood intact."

With a furrowed brow, Sam questioned, "Wait, so you're telling me that two of the victims were almost drained, but the research assistant wasn't?"

Even though the crimes were quite gruesome, Serafina couldn't help but smile coyly. "Martha Dunford and the other Gary Pullman mysteriously lost about three pints of blood from their bodies. However, this crucial detail was kept sealed from the public."

The Winchester brothers exchanged a look of shock.

Dean tilted his head curiously, though a look of disbelief gleamed in his eyes. "How did you get that information? That wasn't in any of the reports."

Serafina was a mask of mystery as she smirked across the table at him. "I have my ways."

"Okay, so two victims were missing blood, and the research assistant wasn't.." Dean tried to see the connection to their world, but was coming up empty-handed, his skepticism growing by the second. "What makes this case more than a normal nut job?"

Serafina grabbed the coffeepot and poured herself another mug of liquid adrenaline.

"Follow me on this." Once she finished, she set it back down and sighed. "The two victims who were found missing three pints of blood went to the same pre-k school together."

She pulled out her cellphone, flipped through the case file photo album, and then slid the phone across the table.The brothers leaned in and pulled the phone closer to them to inspect.

"It took forever for me to piece things together because the school had a terrible fire about five years ago, and many of the records were lost." She motioned towards the phone with her free hand, "The only class photo that was salvaged, coincidentally, was taken their first day of pre-k. A section of the photo got burned in the fire, so it's not complete,"

The brothers scanned the photo as Sam's index finger tapped where Gary and Martha stood next to one another. He looked up at her, his ever blooming curiosity growing more intense by the second. "So, what about the research assistant? How does he figure into all of this?"

Dean slid her phone back across the table to her.

"He doesn't." Upon seeing their puzzled expressions, she continued. "He has no connection to the other two victims, so I'm almost certain they killed the wrong Gary, realized it rather quickly, and bailed. He's, unfortunately, a case of mistaken identity."

Serafina gripped her mug so tightly her knuckles threatened to pop, turning a sickly shade of white. Coffee sloshed precariously near the rim, threatening to overflow with the tremor that ran through her hand. 

"The two main victims are connected, though," she finally choked out, her voice strained. "And the ritualistic symbols...they..." Her voice trailed off, replaced by a heavy silence. She glanced nervously between the brothers, gauging their reaction.

"They what?" Dean demanded, leaning forward in the booth. Sam mirrored the urgency in his voice, both brothers hanging onto her next words.

"When I was investigating Gary's crime scene," she continued, her voice barely a whisper. "The real Gary, not the poor sap they killed by accident..." She trailed off again, her fingers tracing anxious circles around the lip of the mug.

Taking a deep breath, she blurted out, "The markings glowed."

She had never told anyone about her encounter with the glowing symbols, but here she was, vomiting of the mouth without hesitation in front of the Winchester brothers.

"Glowed?" Dean repeated, incredulity lacing his tone. "What the hell do you mean by glowed?" 

"Glowed as in," she spat out, her voice gaining strength, "they lit up like a freaking Christmas tree! But it wasn't festive, not by a long shot." Her voice dropped low again, a tremor running through it. "I know what I saw, and it definitely wasn't...normal. It felt...ancient. Evil."

The weight of her words hung heavy in the air. This wasn't just your run-of-the-mill monster. 

This was something far more dangerous.

The memory, still fresh in her mind, gave her pause as she averted her gaze from the brothers, who were alternating between looks of disbelief and curiosity.

Serafina couldn't shake off the memory of the excruciating headache that had immediately followed the glowing symbols. It was accompanied by a chilling sensation that seemed to consume her entire being, and a whisper of an unfamiliar power unlike anything she had encountered in her years of monster hunting. However, she decided to keep the revelation of this strange power to herself, as Dean appeared to be grappling with the concept that the markings had truly emitted the described glow.

"So, where does this leave the case, then?" Sam asked gently, his face holding quiet concern.

"Open," Serafina responded with a sigh. "Not cold, but definitely not your typical serial killer situation."

At that very moment, the waitress appeared, skillfully balancing a stack of plates in her arms.

As they got situated with their food, Serafina picked a piece of crispy bacon from the stack and popped it into her mouth, savoring the taste with a low hum of contentment. Her tongue snaked out to lick her bottom lip free of crumbs. 

Dean's gaze flickered toward her, his eyes bouncing from her mouth back up to her eyes, a devilish smirk teasing the edges of his lips all the while. He poured maple syrup on his stack pancakes before asking, "Alright, let's hear it. I mean, what are we dealing with here? Some kind of cult that got their hands on Phoebe Halliwell's spell book?" 

Sam shot him a look, to which Dean shrugged, unabashed, "That show was for research purposes." 

Serafina threw him a playful eye roll, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. 

She chewed a bite of her chocolate chip pancakes, enjoying the sweetness as she tapped her fingers on the table, a thoughtful frown creasing her brow. "Those symbols...I scoured every database I could access, even had a couple of my hunter contacts take a crack at them. Came up with nothing. But you know," she continued, her eyes locking with theirs, "a hunter's intuition is a powerful thing. You Winchesters know that better than anyone. And mine is screaming that something's seriously messed up here."

After chewing, Sam paused, his spoon dipped halfway into his bowl of oats. "Maybe we could help." Sam ventured optimistically, his words hanging in the air. His thoughtful eyes bounced from Dean and then back to Serafina. 

She stabbed a forkful of pancakes, pausing with curiosity. "How so?" 

Sam glanced at Dean, a silent conversation passing between them in a flicker of their eyes. Dean sighed, a hint of resignation in his posture. Sam cleared his throat and continued, "We know someone with...resources. Someone who might be able to shed some light on those symbols."

Dean snorted, a hint of a smile playing on his own lips. "Yeah, Bobby would probably get a kick out of this."

"Who is Bobby?" Serafina inquired, a flicker of curiosity sparking in her eyes despite her initial confusion.

"He's a friend of the family, and a fellow hunter" Dean answered before shoving a few pieces of bacon into his mouth, mumbling around his food, "Though Bobby's more like a grumpy uncle we can't get rid of, even if we wanted to." 

He glanced at Sam with a smirk. "Right, Sammy?"

Sam, wiping his mouth with a napkin, elaborated further with a nod. "Trust me, Serafina, when it comes to glowing symbols and weird supernatural stuff, Bobby's your man."

Serafina pondered the situation, her face showing hesitation. 

This case held deep personal significance for her, for reasons she couldn't quite articulate. The crux of it all revolved around the glowing symbols. She had spent countless sleepless nights poring over the case file, yet she still felt unsatisfied with the progress she had made. 

The Winchester brothers were there, offering their help. 

She struggled with the urge to handle everything on her own, like a lone wolf. She had already broken her own rules by spending more time with the two hunters than she should have. 

Serafina was conscious of her connection with John, and she found herself naturally aligning with the brothers. However, this did little to quell her protective instincts. 

But it was incredibly hard to say no to their earnest gazes, those easy-going smiles....not when it meant she could make progress on the case that had been the bane of her existence for so long. 

"I think another team up is in order," Dean finally broke the suffocating silence, his mischievous eyebrows wiggling up and down playfully as a sly smirk danced on his lips.

"Alright, alright, settle down, Casanova," she teased, leaning back against the worn leather booth. 

Dean's smirk widened as he exchanged a glance with Sam.

Reluctantly, she sighed, her inner lone wolf protesting, and nodded begrudgingly. The thought of another night confined in a dead end motel room, tackling the case alone, was almost unbearable. A weighted truth that she wouldn't dare admit, though.

Despite the risks and the potential danger, the predatory part of her that thrived on the hunt stirred with an excitement that was hard to deny. 

"Fine," she conceded with a tinge of resignation. "Let's go meet with Bobby." 

Author's Note: 

Was there ever any doubt that our girl was going to be able to get away from the Winchester's that quick? LOL Of course not !!! Another team up is in order!!! ;)

I love the dynamics between the three, and even if Serafina is only going along with the brothers to get more information for the case, we all know deep down she's secretly enjoying the camaraderie with the brothers. 

Sammy is such a sweetheart. I just love that big moose that wears his heart on his sleeve! I can already see their friendship blossoming.

And I really love the brief moments between her and Dean...the looks, the teasing... and playful smiles.  These two have my whole heart and I can't wait to continue exploring their dynamic more!