Dean leaned against the wall in a gas station men's room, his phone pressed to his ear. He'd gotten Manny's voice mail at first, but he called again, and again, until Manny finally picked up.

"Dean?"

"You fucked up, Manny." Growling, Dean pushed off the wall to pace the confines of the men's room. "You really fucked up this time."

"Can you be less obtuse?"

"He's a vampire, you shit. You turned my brother into a fucking vampire!"

"What? That's impossible."

Dean laughed shakily. "Oh, it's possible." He stopped and slammed a hand into the bathroom stall with a bang. "I've hunted enough of them to know what one looks like, Manny. Don't tell me I'm imagining this."

"Dean, I swear, I take every precaution to avoid that kind of contamination, and in Sam's case I made damn sure due to the blood loss he suffered."

"He's not a blood sucker."

"Then what are you talking about?"

"Negative emotions, Manny. He's a fucking psivamp. He's been snacking on me since we left your house, and he just took in the blue plate special by scaring the shit out of some woman over here!"

The other end of the line went silent for a long moment, before Dean heard Manford curse.

"You had me reanimate a psychic? You idiot!"

"Why didn't you ask first?"

"Why didn't you just tell me? You're the paranormal expert!"

Dean punched the stall door again. It didn't make him feel better. "I wasn't exactly thinking straight at the time, Manford. You're the doctor, you should have had a handy little questionnaire for me to fill out!"

Manny spluttered indignantly.

Dean hung up on him and burst out of the bathroom with a snarl.

Around the corner Sam was leaning against the hood of the Impala, his arms crossed, looking for all the world like nothing at all was wrong. Dean's pace slowed and he felt the ache of loss return to his chest.

People can't play God, there are always consequences.

As he neared the car he heard the sound of raised voices. Following Sam's steady gaze, Dean saw a man and a woman arguing outside of the nightclub next door to the gas station. The scene shattered the sense of normalcy Dean had felt only moments before, as it was obvious from his bemused expression that Sam was thoroughly enjoying the confrontation.

"Midnight snack?" Dean inquired archly.

Sam didn't look at him. "More like an after dinner mint."

"Terrific."

The couple concluded their row by stalking off in opposite directions. The man went back into the bar, the girl went to her car and sat inside, crying.

"Now see," Sam said, finally looking over at his brother. "If I were really despicable I'd go over there and hit on her."

"Get in the car, Sam."

"She is kind of cute..."

"Get in the car!"

Sam smiled and wrinkled his nose. "Getting in the car," he joked and did just that.

Dean slid into the driver's seat and turned the key. The Impala roared to life. Her tires screeched as she peeled out onto the highway.

"So," Sam said, casually flipping through Dean's box of cassettes. "What tipped you off?"

"Slight of hand," Dean muttered.

"Care to elaborate?"

"You move too fast."

"Hmm, yeah, that would do it." Stowing the box back under his seat, Sam idly drummed his fingers on the armrest as he took in the dark fields flying by the car windows. "Still thinking you did the right thing?"

"Don't."

"Don't what? I'm just asking."

Dean tightened his grip around the steering wheel. "What's done is done. It doesn't matter if I did the right thing or not."

Sam snorted. "Of course it does, because now you've got another decision to make."

After a moment's silence, Dean said quietly, "I can't kill you, Sammy."

"I'll agree with that," Sam replied coolly.

"But don't push me."

"Come on, Dean. You couldn't even put a bullet into the bastard that did this to me in the first place. How can I take that threat seriously?"

Dean didn't answer.

Sam leaned back in his seat. His voice was soft, that of the old, gentle Sam. "You should never have taken me to Manny," he said.

"I know."

There was another long pause before he spoke again. His voice didn't change. It made his words even more frightening.

"If you try to kill me I'll break your neck, Dean."

"I know," Dean said roughly. He glanced over at him quickly. Sam was looking at him with a pained expression, hinting that a small spark of conscience remained in him. A little of the tension left Dean's shoulders and he managed to lighten the mood. "But do me a favor, if you do kill me, don't take me to Manny afterward, will ya?"

Sam sighed and looked away with the faintest of smiles. "Sure," he said. "It's a deal."

Dean fell asleep reading the journal. He'd heard of, but never encountered, a psychic vampire before. The blood sucking kind he was more familiar with, and had staked more than a few over the years, but the psivamp was a whole different animal. John's notes on the subject were sketchy and like all of their father's writing, transcribed not only in a nearly indecipherable hand, but also in language that read like code. Dean lay on his bed trying to make sense of it while elsewhere in the room Sam flipped rapidly through all the television channels the hotel cable had to offer.

John's notes made Dean decidedly uneasy about his current situation. Blood sucking vampires, and their cousins the zombies, drank blood and ate flesh to survive. Vampires did not always inflict permanent harm or death on their victims. Zombies did, but their kind were few and far between, mostly found down in the Caribbean (where Manny collected the base virus he used for his revenant serum) and they were fairly easy to dispatch.

A psivamp was different. They didn't rely on blood or flesh to sustain them. They were not susceptible to sunlight, silver or a wooden stake. Like zombies, their destruction came through decapitation, dismemberment, or complete annihilation by fire. Unlike zombies, they were smart, fast, and usually knew you were coming way ahead of time, making them extremely difficult to kill. It was their psychic abilities that really made them different. Instead of blood, they thrived on negative energy, most commonly the negative energy produced by intense human emotions. A psivamp got off on anger, grief and pain.

There was plenty of anger, grief and pain in the world. Unfortunately the more a psivamp got, the more it wanted, like a junkie on crack. Sam had been toying with Dean since they'd left Pennsylvania, flaming his doubts, compounding his grief, and just generally being an irritating little prick. Pissing Dean off had gotten him by until the encounter with the lycan and his wife. There Sam had gotten a good taste of Connie's raw, unfettered emotion and had obviously liked it.

That's when Dean knew for sure what he had on his hands. A psivamp would torture a person for hours, even days, feeding off their pain and fear. In the end they would kill, partially to soak up that last surge of terror and partially so they could also prey on their victim's friends and family. Grief made an excellent dessert.

Dean didn't want to think about what Sam might have done to the girl had he not been there.

Those thoughts, however, followed him into sleep. He had nightmares. Sam died in his arms again and again. The blood wouldn't wash off his hands no matter how he tried to remove it. His father's voice came to him from out of the darkness telling him it wasn't Sam's blood at all, but that of Sam's victims.

"It's all your fault, Dean. Didn't you pay attention to anything I taught you?"

He woke with a cry. The journal fell from his chest, loose papers fluttering down to the bed like butterflies. A thin strip of light eased in through the drawn curtains from a street lamp outside. It was just enough light to reveal a picture that had fallen from the journal's pages. Two young boys grinned into the camera. Dean was missing his two front teeth. Five-year-old Sam sported a dimpled grin and a milk mustache. Dean's arm was around his shoulder.

Just beyond where the picture lay a pair of eyes glittered in the darkness. Shadow shifted against shadow. Wordlessly Dean retrieved the photograph, and all the scattered pages.

"You were having a nightmare," Sam said quietly.

"Felt that did you?" Dean growled. "You know, I'm not your private snack bar."

"I could go out. I'm sure there are a few bars still open even at this hour."

"No!"

There was a rustling sound. Sam reached out a hand to turn on the light over the table where he sat. The laptop was there too. "I thought you would say that," he smirked. "I've found our next gig."

Dean scrubbed his face with a hand, sighed and swung his legs off the bed. "What makes you think we're going on another hunt?" Standing, he made his way toward the bathroom.

Sam's voice held honest surprise. "Why wouldn't we?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe because I don't feel like it. Or it might be the whole out of control zombie brother deal we ran into the last time." Dean turned, regarding his brother with a completely feigned look of shock. "Oh, my god. I think that's it!"

"I'm not a zombie."

"My bad. The undead all look alike to me."

Dean blinked, and then Sam was in his face, slamming him up against the wall with the side of one arm pressed tightly against his throat. The other held a knife, the knife Dean usually kept under his pillow, blade first against his belly. Sam could easily disembowel him in one quick stroke. That would be a unpleasantly slow way to die to be sure.

Regardless, Dean smarted off again, managing to force his words past the pressure threatening to choke off his breath.

"Feeling peckish?"

The pressure eased a little, but Sam didn't remove his arm, nor move the knife. He cocked his head ever-so-slightly.

"You're not scared."

"No, not really," Dean said, and was actually surprised to find it true. At this juncture he was fairly certain Sam wouldn't hurt him.

Sam's eyes narrowed.

The fair certainty slid askew in the next breath as Sam repositioned the knife between his legs and pressed the flat of the blade hard against his balls. Dean stiffened as Sam reminded him just how sharp it was by tipping it up on edge. Cloth parted beneath the razor sharp blade until it was just a fraction of an inch away from skin, and Dean would have gone up on his toes if Sam's arm hadn't held him firmly in place. Despite his best efforts, he felt his pulse quicken.

"Now you are," Sam drawled.

Sweat broke out across Dean's forehead. "Oh, come on, Sam! That's hitting way below the belt, literally!"

"Either we hunt, or I feed exclusively off you, which I promise won't be pleasant. You make the choice."

Dean swallowed heavily. "What kind of choice is that?" he grated.

"Should be an easy one," Sam said casually, as if he weren't threatening his brother with imminent castration. "I mean, why did you bring me back, if not to help you on this noble quest, huh?"

"I brought you back because you're my brother!" Dean punched the arm pinning him to the wall. It was like hitting an iron bar. He froze when knife slit through just a little more cloth.

"And?"

"And what? There is no more." The knife penetrated deeper, tripping Dean's panic button. His voice went up an octave and the words spilled out at a rapid pace."If you cut me, Sam, I swear to god I'll tear your head off with my bare hands and stuff it down your throat!" A second later Sam did cut him and Dean went completely over the edge. "You're my brother and I love you!" he shrieked.

Sam let him go.

Dean slid down the wall to the floor, his heart pounding and his chest heaving as he fought to catch his breath. Tactile exploration revealed a shallow, but startlingly bloody cut among the family jewels. That knife was extremely sharp; Dean had made it so himself. He stared at the blood on his trembling fingers and couldn't believe what had just happened.

"Son of a bitch," he breathed. "You did cut me."

The knife blade thudded into the wood of the table top as Sam sat back down and flipped open the laptop. "Lake Fondant, Kentucky." His voice was incongruously chipper. "Unexplained drownings. I think it's a Lady of the Lake."