Wanted Dead or Alive | 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐍 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑

13 - TO KILL A PRIEST

SEASON 1, EPISODE 21

On Mara's hands lied the blood of a demon.

Not because she killed a demon, like she'd wanted to when she'd seen Meg's lustrous black eyes, or because she sent a demon back to the pit of raging, blistering fire it came from. Rather, the lines of her palm were painted with the blood of a demon because she was becoming one.

She wasn't literally transforming into a demon, of course. The white of her eyes hadn't been tarnished with the inky black hue of demon eyes, and the purity of her soul hadn't been corrupted with a seed of iniquity, the same seed that grew in the hearts of the citizens of hell, causing their teeth to sharpen and their hearts to harden as they adopted a devilish desire to kill and destroy. But what was happening to Mara's heart - the passageways of her very soul hardening with every misdeed Meg forced her to carry out - was not much better than becoming a demon.

She was learning the ways of sin, and that plucked a string of terror in her heart that she'd thought was too deep to be touched by an object. And yet, as she looked over Meg's shoulder at the red ring that dictated the purity of her soul, she felt a sort of horror that shouldn't have been allowed to pollute the chest of any being.

Despite the transgressions Meg was forcing her to commit, Mara realized she couldn't blame the demoness for every stain on her heart. The black blood that was oozing over her fingertips, too opaque to see through and too heavy to wipe off, was dripping on the floor wherever she went because of her. She was the one who'd lied to the Winchesters. Of course, she could blame her lies on Meg and Azazel. They were the ones who had her under contract, after all. But Mara had more than one chance to tell the Winchesters the truth. They would've helped her - offered her a way out and helped her find a loophole in Azazel's unspoken contract - but she'd chosen to lie to them.

And now, her sins had led her to kill a priest.

Candlelight flickered all around the room as Meg entered the sanctuary. She swung the door open wide, a gesture that suggested a large person would be walking through, only to slither under the archway like the snake she was.

A grand altar stood at the front of the room, its intricate designs adding decoration to the platform it rested on. A priest stood behind the altar. His features, old and wrinkled in their appearance, beamed with benevolent reception as he called "Good morning" out to Meg, unaware of the stench of imminent death that wafted from his skin.

Mara could smell it, though. Even as she stood yards away from the poor man, trapped in the foggy air of the In-Between, she could smell his future. It was close. Too close. So close, in fact, that Mara assumed he would enter his afterlife within the next few minutes. And if Meg hadn't decided to change her killing tactics, Mara would be the one to kill him.

That's why Mara's soul was tainted. Ever since Meg had summoned her last, she'd been forced to follow her around everywhere, unable to do anything but watch as she tortured John Winchester's closest friends. It was her last resort. Though Meg hadn't discovered that Mara had been communicating with the Winchester children, she'd been clever enough to assume that the reaper had failed her mission, so she decided to find John herself. And if his friends didn't tell her where he was, she would force Mara to send them to hell as punishment for her failure.