CHAPTER TWELVE

"Nothing is more deadly than a deserted, waiting street."

~Harper Lee; To Kill a Mockingbird

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Dean tracked the form of Damon Salvatore as he skulked at a predatory slowness back into the exam room, a movement that he had seen on countless monsters, and vampires right before they attacked. He grasped his machete, following after Damon.

Sam knelt down at Stefan's bloody body, half of his heart was protruded out of his chest. Sam stared at his lifeless body it with the same shock he felt when he saw Marissa's after he staked her; the brutality of something that should have never happened.

Dean's footsteps lifted Sam's head up to see Damon Salvatore move like a predator back into the exam room. Dean close behind him, but the vampire didn't notice. Dean met Sam's eyes moments before he disappeared into the exam room behind the last living Salvatore.

Elena's voice was reduced to shredded sobs. Sam watched as she lifted one of Stefan's hands to her mouth and kissed it, then his face, choking on a terrible pained cry. He didn't touch her or try to comfort her, at that moment he knew there was nothing he could do but watched as she grieved for the agonizing loss of her friend.

"You've exceeded my expectations," Wes Maxfield's voice rang in a sing song voice, the moment the vampire stepped into the white room that smelled like blood and over pungent herbs. Wes cocked his head to Damon, "Congratulations, you are now the first successful Augustine Vampire."

"You killed my brother," Damon's voice was shocked, but there was an undercurrent of danger in it.

The same kind of voice Dean had heard from himself whenever someone had dared to touch his own brother.

"You finally answered my question," Wes returned with an arrogance that went far and beyond someone should be welded down to a chair in front of a vampire. His gaze turned pitiful like he was indulging a poor idiot child. "And no I didn't. You killed your little brother, Damon, his blood is clearly all over your hands, not mine."

"No actually," Dean moved from the hallway into the steel lined room, machete blade out, glinting in the too bright light, his gun drawn over the blade. "It's not."

Damon turned to him, his eyes almost a solid red from blood, face a mess of wet streaks. "Get out!"

Dean took another step towards the Vampire. "You didn't kill your brother-"

"I will rip your head off if you don't leave!" Damon screamed at Dean, but didn't move to do what he threatened.

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Sam turned his head up and back, the hallway was silent, too silent for a place that housed vampires. He picked his machete up off the ground from where it had been flung, setting a hand on Elena's shoulder. "Stay here with him, alright?"

Her tears caught on his thumb, and they were wiped off when he moved his hand. He stood up in a low crouch, raising his machete out in a fighting stance as he walked down the hallway filled with bloody footprints made from Stefan Salvatore's drying blood.

xxxxXxxxx

Wes blew off Dean's the statement like it was bogus one, tainted in lies instead of blood. "You witnessed a, what do you call them-Vamps? -tear into the flesh of his own brother until his hear was ripped from his body. Explain to me how you think he didn't kill him?"

"Because you did," Dean growled, staring at the arrogant face of Wes. "It's your fingerprints all over the tainted water supply-"

"I only showed him the door" Wes rationalized, staring at the form of Damon Salvatore who looked like he was about to screw any restraint that he had left and kill the doctor outright. "I didn't force him to walk through it."

"How about you just cut the bullshit Doushbag?" Dean raised his gun higher.

Wes laughed, blowing it all off arrogantly. "And what bullshit would that be exactly?"

Dean licked his lower lip, swiping his hand across it angrily. He stepped closer to Wes, the blade razor sharp, only a foot away from Wes's neck. Wes Maxfield tried to hide it, but a moment of fear came across his face when Dean brought the blade down hard, cutting through metal rods holding Wes to the exam table leg.

Wes pulled his arms up and high, rubbing his wrists hard, glancing from Damon to the door like he was calculating an escape route.

Damon looked at Dean with a rage that turned the room molten. "That's not going to help, I'm still going to shred him alive and feed pieces of himself to himself!"

"And I'm not going to stop you."

Both the Vampire and the Vampire torturer stared at Dean, each for a different reason.

Wes blinked up at Dean like he had misheard. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Sam emerged like a ghost. He stood in the doorway, effectively blocking it with his tall frame, his machete hung loosely in his hand. "Did you honestly think that you were just going to get away with what you've done?"

"I'm sorry-" Wes stared from Sam in the doorway to Dean like he was trying to decide between punishing one stupid thing or another stupid thing. "My impression of hunters were that they were smart- Guess you two broke the mold-"

Dean laughed, low and quiet, dropping his head, he raised it back up to stare at Wes staring at him. "Mad scientist dousbag dicks, I tell ya; they really don't get it do they Sammy?"

"No they don't Dean," Sam returned in the low rumbled voice that was like a deadly thing.

Dean continued to stare down Wes. ""I have zero loyalty to Vamps-I'll put every one of those sons-of-bitches to my blade when they're stupid enough to get in my way, but that's what this is about."

From the doorway, Sam sheathed his machete up his coat in one slow long movement, then drew out his black vector, aiming it squarely at Wes.

Wes looked like he was done with all the shit in his lab, he even looked three seconds away from crossing his arms in arrogant petulance. "How about you stow the theatrics then gentlemen and just tell me what it's about then? Since you seem to know better than me."

"You. killed his brother-" Dean shot a glance to Damon who remained silent. In the brief few moments that Dean had heard him speak he knew it wasn't in the vampire's nature to stay shut up. Damon's eyes were instead darting around the room, in silent calculation, like he was calculating the threats, deciding which one was the best one to take, and would only speak once that decision was reached. "And you're going to pay for that."

"What are you going to do?" Wes snapped. "Shoot me?" He rolled his eyes at seemingly endless amount of arrogance in one small room. "Turn your back on your own race?"

"Don't talk about race like we're on the same side Maxfield," Sam's thunderous voice returned. "We're nothing like you! And we're not going to shoot you."

Wes turned to Dean, then to Sam, a look of bafflement on his face, watching as both brothers lowered their weapons off him, but not their eyes. "That's it? After all your vampire loyalty openers, you two are really just letting me go?"

"Yeah, we are-" Dean cut into the amused, sarcastic rant of the man that had cost one of the two only decent vampires he knew.

The sound of the door squeaking turned Wes around and he watched Sam shut it and locked the steel triple deadbolt in place.

"-Because this retribution isn't ours to give."

Sam's eyes met Dean's over the smell of cloying blood, everything else blurred except the reality of understanding a loss that could swallow oceans.

The solitary vampire in the room listened to the sound of the closing door the finality that it was. Dean lowered his gun at the same moment Sam did, backing away slowly to stand beside Sam.

"I could've done without the hunter theatrics too Wes," A tiny mote of amusement crossed the vampire's face, "But I could've also done with my brothernot lying out there in a pile of blood!" Damon's veins filled high into his face. His fangs lowered with a sound like kindling falling into an open flame. He circled Wes, rage in his eyes, amplified a thousand fold.

Wes moved to back away, but Damon was on him in a blur throwing him down hard on the exam table, half of Wes' vertebra broke and snapped, the doctor screamed, and it became louder as Damon ratcheted Wes' head back in a broken angle "This will hurt-" He pried open Wes' eyelids, nails digging into his flesh, drawing his face down millimeters next to his. "I promise-" He grabbed a set of scalpels off the exam table and jammed them into Wes' eyes.

Wes screamed and bucked a horrible sounding noise, legs flailing like an animal about to be slaughtered, blood pooling in mass rivers out of his spiked eyes. The noise was ear splitting, but Sam only flinched once, and Dean didn't flinch at all, staring at Maxfield dead on as he was torn and shredded.

Damon reached deep into his ribcage and pulled up and out, Maxfield's heart now clutched in his hand. He let the heart fall out of his fingers to thud and stain the tile in a splotches of bright red; staring down at the very dead Wes Maxfield like he couldn't comprehend what he was looking at now that his end had happened. He turned to Dean in an almost drunken daze, staring at the blade in Dean's hand, an almost lazy amusement on his face.

Dean watched the vampire watching him, and gripped the blade tighter. The look on Damon's face was unhinged, blown to fragments, the face of someone who had nothing left to lose.

"Now that that's done, how about we realign the cosmos?"

Damon blurred around to Dean so fast that Dean's machete blade swung at empty air. He felt the rush wind that came up behind him; he swung in a backwards arch. The blade was caught in the vampire's hand and was pulled up and drawn tight across Dean's shoulders.

"Dean!" Sam ran at Damon, blade raised to strike; but stopped in an abrupt stalemate when Damon bent his arm back and up into Dean's neck, throttling the air out of his lungs.

"You're hunters, I'm a vampire!" Damon squeezed harder like he was juicing an orange. "Let's stop the friend requests and actlike who we're supposed to be-"

"Let him go!" Sam's voice was as large as the room, with enough seismic noise to crack the concrete walls. Dean's neck was firmly in Damon's grasp, there was no way Sam could pull off a move in time that wouldn't end with some part of Dean's body being slit open of a lot of blood.

Damon stared down at Wes dead body splayed out limply on the exam table, chest a massive bloody crater, fingers hanging low beside his congealing heart. "That was right, there's a rhythm to life, a natural order to things!"

Sam heard his brother gasp, choking for air that wouldn't come.

Damon applied more pressure, releasing the machete with a clatter to the floor like he would no longer need it above his own strength. He stared at the last remaining blade gripped by a hunter. "You have three seconds to use that blade before I snap his neck like paper Mache- One-!"

Sam knew that Damon Salvatore was on edge, was a loaded gun in the hand of a crazy person, but everything blew away and apart except for the single image of Dean not being able to breathe; of how there was no line between the moment like this and what Sam would do, there never had been. "Let him go now!"

"Twothree-" Damon torqued his hand back.

"Don't!" Sam's voice was thunderous and loud. "Killing people's not going to bring your brother back!" It was a stall, and Sam knew the vampire knew it too, but it wasn't untrue.

Damon's torqued move stalled midway, fingers digging hard into Dean's neck. Sam saw Dean's consciousness a hair's away from caving in; Dean's grip high was on the vampire's arm, fingers trying to create enough of a wedge to keep the pressure off of his neck.

Damon stared at Sam like he'd grown a second head, and a third one for having dared talk about Stefan.

"You didn't want to kill him- But Stefan wanted to come; he wanted, to save you!-" Sam kept his machete blade high, voice to the vampire, but his gaze on Dean, who's skin was now an ashen gray. Sam didn't even think, didn't even bother thinking about Dean having Vampire blood in his body, and what that meant in a moment like this. All he saw was Dean's life a millimeter from ebbing away, and nothing else mattered. "But if you hurt my brother I'm going to chop your head off-" There was no exclamation at the end of Sam's words, because it was a statement.

"So go ahead," Damon's green eyes stared at him. "I want you to kill me, I want you to plunge that machete into my heart until comes out the other side! And you want to know why? –Because MY LITTLE BROTHER IS DEAD!-" Damon's face shattered apart at the admittance, of saying it out loud. He dropped his arm, and released Dean like a cast off fish back, throwing him so hard onto the floor that he slid across the tile.

"Dean!" Sam ran to where he landed inches beside Wes' corpse. Hey-come here, look at me!-" Sam grabbed Dean's arm and pulled him back, hand instantly going to Dean's throat. "You alright?"

Dean did the same, choking out a mass amount of spit and choking in a mass amount of air.
Both watched as Damon bent low to the floor, remaining there for a long moment.

Dean reached down by Damon's feet and picked up his fallen machete, Damon made no move to stop him, suicidal or otherwise.

Being thrown to the ground one too many times had loosened a thick trail of blood down Dean's hairline and blinked blood out of his eyes, but didn't wipe it away instead staring at the vampire who had tried to kill him. "Look, you don't trust hunters, and we don't trust vamps, that's the way it ought to be," Dean's voice was rough and reedy. "But I'm telling you the truth when I say I'm sorry about your brother. He saved our lives out there, more than once, he didn't deserve to go down like that-"

Damon reached down by Wes' body and snatched something off the ground: the carved wooden stake made out of oak. He rolled the wood around in his hand like he was testing the weight of it. "I taught Stefan how to whittle when he was 8-years-old." He ran his fingers down where the carved wood slopped up high into a tight, sharp point. "He would've done this a lot better than the late Dr. Maxfield down there-" Damon stepped on the dead fingers of Wes Maxfield, the bones crushing under the soles of his shoes. He flipped the stake around, aiming at the center of his chest.

"Don't do this-" Sam said. "Darius, and Wes, your death would let them win, and it would waste both your lives!"

"I don't care about winning-" Despite the fired, barbed retort Damon's eyes weren't red anymore, or even green, they were growing dull, like a vital part of him had died when his brother did. He looked around the room for the absent thing that he wanted to find, then flicked his eyes back up "I don't care about anything anymore-there's nothing left of my life to waste-" Damon drew the stake past the sharpened point.

The moment for Damon Salvatore to impale himself through the heart was interrupted by the sound of a body hitting solid glass. The back of Elena's head hit the slit of a window in the door, cracking it in a jagged vertical line before her dark hair slid out of sight like a bleeding paint stain.

The sight of the violence seemed to draw Damon back into his surroundings like a rubber band. He pulled the stake back out of his body, throwing it on the ground, moving to the door. He forewent the locks and ripped the door handle off, then the door itself, leaving it to fall backwards like a toppling house of cards.

The first thing Dean smelled when he and Sam ran out into the hallway with Damon was blood.

Elena was thrown back against the stone wall in a tangle of her arms and legs. Her hand was pressed to a gash in her forehead that leaked a heavy trail of blood.

"Elena-" Damon said her voice like was trying to swallow a cloud that melted to vapor in his mouth. He grabbed her free hand and Elena pulled herself up along the wall, releasing the blood on her skin to gravity.

At her feet was even more blood, in a long dragline across the concrete. It bled to a curved trail and up the pant legs of the Alpha Vamp, who was holding Stefan's limp body like a sack of corn meal.

"Let him go!" Elena demanded.

"Your grief misguides you Elena," Darius spoke in almost dulcet tones. "I'm not doing what your thinking-"

"You heard her-," Damon's voice was feral, angry. "Let my brother go Darius or I'll kill you without one grain of humanity inside me!-"

Darius cast a glance to Dean, eyeing him up and down as one might eye the owner of an ill-tempered dog. "You and Sam may have adopted three favorite new pets, Dean, but it might do for you to teach them some manners-"

"Enough!-" Dean locked his gun on the Alpha's face. "You son-of-a-bitch-" He drew a bead right on the curved orifice in between Daruis' nasal bones.

"You misunderstand me too, Dean," Darius returned, Stefan's gray, lifeless body in his grasp.

"No see I understand you perfectly," Dean's voice was deadlier than one of the deadliest vampires of all. "You think some, demon hodoo gives you a one up on your own species? Well I'm here to tell you, you're wrong-"

Darius stared at Stefan like he was cast off goods, then blinked back up to Dean without a word, but the vampire's gaze dripped in the phrase 'am I?'

Damon jumped like a raging pit bull, with a dark, grief torn, manic expression in his eyes, but Darius deflected the attack, slamming Damon into the wall without losing his grip on Stefan's body.

Darius surveyed them all, a wisp of a look came over his face, like things would be more amusing had he had time for them. He set Stefan's body down and dropped his hand low into his open chest cavity, squelching it deep inside the blood.

Sam's click on his gun was audible, echoing. "You started this whole experimental crap, but you don't get to end it!"

"You're right," Darius pulled his hand out dripping with dark black arterial blood. "That's why I'm not." Darius shoved Stefan's heart back through his torn ribcage with an audible cracking.

Damon roared a horrible noise when Stefan's ribcage sang like a broken xylophone.

"You mind your tone Master Damon," Darius returned, before turning to Sam like it was a parent teacher conference meeting, hand inside Stefan's chest cavity. "Tell your hotheaded friend that I will feed him his dead brother's heart if he breaks decorum again-"

"Tell him yourself you dick," Sam snapped. "You gave him enough juice for him to kill you, did you really think it was gonna end any differently?"

Darius had been watching them for a long, long time. But the next look that he gave them all, was like he was seeing them for the first time. "Vampire. Hunter- you're all more alike than you know. You cling to the last remaining pieces of your family so hard that you break them apart and we end up here - As long as the dysfunctional among mine and yours remain so overzealously loyal, we will always wind up here- but you already knew that didn't you Sam?" Darius looked down at Stefan's dead body like it was a recently unearthed relic. He ran one yellowed nail across Stefan's now gray skin, His tracing left a pattern of blood across Stefan's sallow kin.

It wasn't an idle tracing, but a pattern, a set of circles and lines going across his forehead.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sam's demand was backed with the aim of his gun and the sharpness of his blade.

The Alpha Vamp continued to draw with fingerprints of Stefan's blood on Stefan's body, ignoring the existence of Sam's weapon and of Sam. "The demon that sired the witch who turned me like to possess her from time to time-"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Elena's voice was a shriek.

"Things your simple mutated mind can't possibly understand girl-"

"You're finger painting in blood on my brother's face, stop lying about things and answer her questions!" Damon hissed, seeming to be frozen in place at the shock of Darius maiming his brother's body.

"Demons are very real-Damon, I assure you of that," Darius' dark brown eyes flicked to Sam and Dean like the barbed tongue of a snake. "Just ask your cohort. We all had to come from somewhere, consider yourself lucky that my somewhere was her- she taught me things."

"How about you drop the hard sell demon crap-" Dean snapped. "Don't forget who met and ganked your mommy-"

Darius chucked in a low amusement that cracked liked bone dry kindling. "I assure you Dean, the things that I know that you don't could fill more libraries than exist on this planet." Darius dropped the conversation like a hot pan. He placed a palm over Stefan's forehead started to chant a low sounding series of syllables that sounded like a combination of Sanskrit and Enochian.

Elena stepped forward then backwards on the balls of her feet like invisible strings were controlling her movement like she wanted to attack, but didn't want to cause any more maiming of her dead friend.

The air rose thick with the smell of a rotting decay, as the visible blood stains on Stefan's gray dead skin turned black as volcanic ash. The smell was hot and thick, and blew up Sam and Dean's nostrils like an over powering burn.

Stefan's body jerked like it was being defribulated, flung up and slammed back down in the sticky blood that his death had created.

"STOP!" Damon's cry reached out with piercing fingers and choked the air tightly.

Darius didn't let up from his chanting, and pressed his head harder into Stefan's forehead; his body jerked again, this time like he was still living and in the throes of a seizure.

"Dean!" Sam tossed Dean a silver flask with a hammered metal cross on its surface. Dean caught it and doused his knife blade it with holy water, then squirted a crimson line of blood from the syringe in his pocket. He aimed a throw with the blade, curving it high, catching the back of Darius as he turned to meet the blade.

The knife sunk deep below the Alpha's shoulder with a hiss of contact that melted the flesh. Darius reared back in a roar, turning to face Dean's stone faced look. "You're too late – it's done."

The air seemed to ignite in anticipation of what was about to be born.

This time when Stefan's body lurched, it was on a gasp, propelling him upwards in a terrible sound, but one that drew breath.

"Stefan?" Elena fell to her knees beside him

His eyes snapped open, going from a milky white to a shock of green in the depths of gray skin.

Elena drew back in a shock, Damon remained still, like what he saw could not be described, nor comprehended.

Stefan continued to gasp, lurching like a landed fish, his skin did not lighten at all from its dark gray shade of death, and a spray of black blood flew out of his mouth.

Sam stared at what looked like nothing but a reanimated corpse. "What the hell did you do?"

"Give it time," Darius spoke like he was at a lectern. "It's a blood spell." one hand grasped his wounded shoulder. "Similar to that old legend of a vampire being revived by the blood of his killer, only this one is real." Darius's eyes flicked over to Damon. "You're his killer Damon, but your blood is his blood, so it was all I needed."

Stefan lurched up like no amount of air would ever be enough to fill his lungs, his hands shook violently over the shredded hole in his chest.

"It's okay-" Elena pressed both hands over his torn chest cavity, "It's okay-" Elena tore her eyes up to Damon not believing what she was saying.

"What the hell kind of masochistic jerk off are you getting out of this?" Dean saw how Stefan still looked dead, like someone who had their heart ripped out of their chest, flailing in agony, half alive, half gone. "If you have the juice to bring him back, bring him back, or just kill him!"

"I've brought him back, you simpering ape," Darius returned slowly and syrupy. "The spell is 1200 years old, and I'm neither witch nor demon, therefore. It. takes. Time."

"Elena," Stefan's voice was weaker than thin air, blown out between bouts of trying to breathe, blood spraying Elena's face in a pattern of red dots.

"You best tend to your brother before your respite is up Damon," Darius said to Damon. "It won't be a very long break."

Damon watched Elena haul Stefan to his feet like he was a collection of tent poles, the toes of Stefan's shoes scraped the ground, he didn't support his own weight at al. He made no move to touch him, but still stood by him protectively.

"You've finally fully fed Damon," Darius said. "You won't crave vampire blood for a full day, it gives you time to make your choices. – Me as well. I see now that Wes was a poor, delusional choice to run this place-"

"Nice timing with the break through," Damon retorted.

"He was nothing like Abilene- you remember Adeline don't you? Charming, charismatic? Ostracized by the town because she refused to marry again after her first husband abused her and she had to lie to cover the real events of his death. She was not unlike myself." An almost wistful looking smile crossed across Darius features. "The night before I was 'killed'- she asked me to turn her, she knew what I was from the beginning Damon. She accepted it, she welcomed it.-"

"So you were Romeo and Juliet with Monsters?" Dean cut in. "Let me guess?-After you faked your death you never saw her again for a love bite did you?"

Darius eyes flicked from wistful to cold. "I loved her - She was long my original choice for a partner in this remarkable project. But by the time I was through killing my capturers, her idiot of a sister carted her away to Kentucky to purify her of her sins with me. By the time I reached her she had died from distemper caught on the journey. And her sister, shedied from me."

Dean had heard enough monster monologues to know when one was coming to a point. And given what the Darius was, the first created, by his own hand, vampire of his species – the point was going to be far from arbitrary.

"The Augustine project is a failure," Darius glossed a look over Damon like he was a broken down car he was unable to fix. "It will need to be eradicated."

A series of rumbled noises shook the floor like an earthquake, pieces of concrete that had been knocked loose from the earlier melee between Stefan and his brother jumped like erratic heartbeats.

The hallway they stood in was narrow, like the hallways of an overcrowded high school, but long, both visual ends dissolving into shadow and rock. The shadow at the end of the hallway on the right errupted into hissing that echoed endlessly. The black shadows took on the shapes of a throng of vampires, 20 thick, moving like one body.

The hissing sound echoed again from behind them, and another thicket of vampires equal in number to the first came unglued from the darkness, moving towards them.

"Oh you gotta be kidding me!-"Dean hated being right.

"I told you this would not be easy," Darius gaze over them was like warm honey being scorched over open flame.

Sam's eyes moved between heartbeats to both sets of vampires, one of the faces from the stables emerged, her murderous eyes lost in the menagerie of murderous eyes.

"My blood is the only thing that can cure Damon of his rabidness towards his own family," Darius eyes moved to Sam and Dean like weaving thread. "But as the Winchesters already know, I do not bleed easily."

Elena's eyes moved to Darius, then to Sam's who watched her back, her shoulders bowing under the weight of Stefan's dragging form.

"But I'm inclined to deal-"

Dean's gripped the handle of his machete fingers tearing into the worn groves of the leather and wood handle.

"Survive this," Darius blinked, then shifted his gaze to encompass both sets of vampires closed in on them all like a vice about to be activated. "And I'll grant your pardon. Don't, and- you don't."

Darius turned to his right and the troop of vampires eroded to let him pass, then just as quickly closed again like sand falling into a hole.

"Elena," Stefan said Elena's name again, his voice like rocks tumbling into marbles. "Damon-" His head dropped to his chin like the weight of it was too heavy for him to lift.

Damon came alive at the sound of Stefan calling his name. "Hey!" he jerked Stefan's chin back up. "Now's really crappy timing to fall asleep Brother."

Stefan's eyes were open, but barely, his skin still a light sheen of gray.

The throng of vampires pushed closer, their hissing turning from individual into one massive thing.

Damon turned his eyes to Sam and Dean. "New plan. The status quo is null and void until the body count is high, and not made of me, Elena, or my brother – and you two, I guess."

"Then you might want to shut up and get started." Dean snapped, watching as the vampires on either side moved slowly forward, in narrow formation like an advancing first Legion. He gripped hard to the blade of his last remaining blade, the other hand tight on the trigger of his gun. The latter couldn't kill vampires, but he planned to damn well try to give it a chance too.

Sam closed in on Dean's back, blade out, raised inches above his own gun, like a bayonet.

Elena's dark hair darted this way and that over the sea of fanged faces, her arms gripped tightly to Stefan to hold him up.

Dean raised his blade out, "Come on-"

The sound of fangs lowering crackled all around them.

Damon turned and moved, back to his brother, the same way Sam was to Dean.

Dean stared down the closet vamp, a brunette with a thicket of curls, fangs full extended and bared at him. "Come on!"

She leapt at his throat.