Anna Exeter turned and watched Dean slip to the floor, his back resting against the bed. She crossed the room to sit down beside him.

"Anna, please help me," he begged her, his voice thin and tight, his pain unbearable.

"I will but I think you know what my help entails," she said touching his leg gently.

"I don't care. I just don't care anymore. I can't go through life like this," he said pointing to his face.

"If you don't find a way out of your deal it will be a short life anyway," she reminded him, "and in hell no one cares what you look like."

"But if I do find a way..." he started, his words trailing off.

She was offering him a way to save face, literally, and to break his deal at the same time. She had dangled it in front of him since the first night in the barn. If he was immortal 'they' couldn't have his soul.

"But there are strings attached," he reminded her.

"To the deal? A mere technicality," she said gently smoothing back his hair as if soothing a freighted child, "Only if you welsh on the deal, does Sam die instead. You're left with natural causes, accidents, murder and life everlasting."

"And they all equal dead, one way or another."

"But one doesn't result in eternal damnation."

"What you're suggesting is a kind of eternal damnation. No cheeseburgers, no beer, no pork rinds, no tacos, no..."

"No swallow stuffed peacock, no whale roe, no stag heart." she cut in mischievously.

"Damn, girl," Dean's eyes widened and he laugh quietly despite the pain, "You've never had a cheeseburger, have you?"

She shook her head and reminded him, "And you haven't eaten in over three days."

Anna was right. He'd gone without food, without even thinking of food, or even of blood, for longer than he could ever remember. Maybe he wouldn't miss the little things in life like food, beer...and the sun. She took his hand and pressed something into it. He opened it and a thimble with a sharp pointed crown lay in his palm. He looked at her questioningly and she drew her finger in a slicing motion across her neck but he only sat and stared.

"Would it be easier for you if I were to just bleed into a beer bottle?" she suggested half way sincere.

Dean snorted and shook his head. His feelings were at war. Fear, loathing, pain and desperation all fighting within him and he simply couldn't put his thoughts into words. He didn't want to be hideously disfigured and he didn't want to suffer interminable torment in hell but it went against all he believed in to become a vampire.

Anna took pity on him and drew him close and whispered seductively, "Trust me, Dean Winchester."

He started to laugh incredulously, almost manically, until she took the thimble and pressed it gently into her jugular. Blood started to run down her neck and his laughter died. He cupped her face with his hands and forced her head to one side and watched the blood as it pulsed from the puncture wound. He was repulsed and at the same time drawn to the texture, the color and most especially the smell of it.

He dipped his head and inhaled deeply. The vampire remained still, regulating the flow of blood now staining the front of her blouse. She felt his breath, feather light on her skin as he hesitated and then felt the warmth of his lips as he kissed her neck and licked tentatively at the blood. She hissed a breath as his blunt teeth tore and ripped at tender skin and, urged on by her moan...and his own new-found lust for blood, he drew in great mouthfuls from her preternatural fount.

Dean wanted to drink from her forever but the vampire shoved him bodily away. They both stood, Dean glaring at her, breathing harshly, wanting more of what she had offered freely only moments before then cruelly snatched away. Anna watched him warily as he took a step toward her and she pushed him back again. He came at her a second time and this time she grabbed him by the throat and squeezed until he began to gasp for air.

"Enough!" she commanded and, when she finally felt him stop resisting, she let him go.

Dean wanted more but the pain of his burned face, instead of lessening, kicked up tenfold and he screamed and tore at his cheeks wanting to pull the flesh from his skull. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. Half mad with fear and pain he was afraid he'd been duped.

"Let the blood heal you," she told him firmly and walked to the far side of the room.

Anna was weak from the bloodletting and didn't want to have to keep fighting him off. Soon he would be almost as strong as she and as handsome as ever but the healing took time.

"God, what have I done?" Dean ground out.

"What you had to," she answered firmly, "No time for regrets or for making amends to God, Dean."

But Dean Winchester did have regrets. He wanted the past few minutes back. He wanted to undue his monumental mistake but knew he couldn't. He was, in effect, screwed.

Eventually the pain lessened only to be replaced by a god-awful itching which also stopped after a time. He scrubbed his hands down his face and found that it was no longer pitted with gaping holes or dripping bodily fluids. His hands came away clean and he began to relax, to enjoy the sensations washing over him.

His senses were heightened many times over those of the first night in the barn. He walked out onto the balcony and looked up into the heavens, sure that he could see stars being born. The night feeders screeched, hooted, howled and yipped, setting up a ruckus that was almost deafening and he found himself connecting with night itself. Taking in a deep breath, he smiled, his newly elongated k-nines scraping along his lower lip. He no longer feared what went bump in the night; he was what went bump in the night.

"You weren't afraid I'd turn out like Gerard?" he asked when Anna came outside to stand next to him.

She shook her head. "You've spent your entire life around all that truly goes against God. It was through faith alone that Gerard believed in Lucifer and his fallen angels. Unlike you, he never knew that evil walks the earth in all its many true forms."

"Until you."

She nodded, her smile sad. "Until me."

Dean turned to face her, ran his hands up her arms and squeezed gently.

"Well, Annalise of Exeter, what's next?"

She smiled radiantly.

"Let's have some fun, Dean Winchester."