Wanted Dead or Alive | 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐍 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑

1 - HELL HOUSE

SEASON 1, EPISODE 17

For a reaper, time was an exceptionally relative matter. Most reapers measured time by catastrophic events, such as a world war or a particularly devastating earthquake, rather than by a watch or a calendar. Times such as those were their busiest seasons and, consequently, the most memorable.

Mara was an exception to the unspoken rule of death's timing. As opposed to counting the days by the number of souls she ferried to the afterlife, she chose to measure time in accordance with her search for John Winchester.

Ever since Meg's trap for John failed and Sam Winchester shoved her out the window of a building, the intensity surrounding the search had heightened. Azazel was growing anxious. He claimed he needed Sam for reasons he always refused to share, and with John working day and night to find the only weapon that could kill Azazel, it was obvious to anyone that the yellow-eyed demon was running out of time. If John managed to get his hands on the colt before Azazel could finish his so-called business with Sam, Azazel's mission would be over.

Mara had to admit, she wouldn't mind if his mission was terminated sooner than planned. He and his witty blonde-haired servant were forcing her to disrupt the natural order by searching for John. If she had to go through with sending him to hell ahead of schedule...she could only imagine the punishment Death would have waiting for her.

Azazel's growing impatience was why he decided to send Mara out on her own. Her abilities as a reaper allowed her to follow the Winchester children much closer than Meg could, and there was no danger of Mara fleeing her orders as soon as she could. Her freedom was being kept under lock and key until she finished her job.

Having long ago given up all hope of escaping her dreadful sentence, Mara had no choice but to give in to Azazel's orders and trail the Winchesters until they contacted their father. While Meg had simply told her to keep an eye on the hunters, Mara, after a few days of consideration, took it upon herself to search through the Winchesters' piles of crumpled-up papers and bags of weapons for any sign of contact with John. If she was successful in sifting through their belongings, she could track John down herself and be released from Meg's control considerably sooner.

"I thought the legend said Mordecai only goes after chicks," a gruff voice suddenly spoke.

Mara turned her gaze to where Dean Winchester lounged on a queen-size bed, drawing on a complimentary motel notepad. The motel room had been eerily quiet for the past hour, with each of the Winchesters trying to solve the case of Mordecai Murdoch in their own way. Dean was sketching a symbol they'd discovered in the haunted house while Katarina sat at the room's coffee table, hunched over history books she'd picked up while at the local library. Sam, the most technologically inclined of the three siblings, sat across from Kat with his back turned toward Dean, constantly scrolling through webpages on his laptop. Even if they hadn't been so enveloped in their research, not one of them would have noticed the invisible reaper that sat on the chair in the corner of the room.