The hunter's blood mixed with the poison of the silver and Dean Winchester's guts felt as if they were being skewered by knitting needles. He let the woman drop with a sickening thud and sat down on the edge of the bed. Through his pain he heard his companion say, "I just love breakfast in bed," and, stretching out her shapely leg, she pushed the corpse of the male hunter off of the bed.

"His name was Bill and this," Dean told her pointing to the weak but still very much in the world of the living hunter, "is Ellen."

"You son of a bitch," Ellen whispered and swallowed painfully tasting her own blood in her throat as she looked at her husband's body.

His insides roiling, Dean grimaced in pain and doubled over and told her, "I could have stopped her if you hadn't gut shot me." He nodded toward the woman's husband, Bill Harvelle, a friend of his father's.

"Well, you're pretty much fucked anyway," Ellen said and tried to sit up. She recoiled from his outstretched helping hand and hissed, "Don't touch me."

"I'll finish her if you can't," his companion offered and Dean chuckled between stabs of agonizing pain. "Thanks, Ali, but I think I'm gonna let her go."

"What? Are you nuts?" The vampire pushed her hair out of her face and scooted closer to Dean to get a better look at the steaming wounds on his body. She pinched a silver shard not too deeply buried and quickly pulled her fingers away as the metal seared her skin. "Oh, baby, that's really gotta hurt."

He gave her a "no, duh" look and closed his eyes as a shiver ran the length of his body.

"She's right, you know. If you let me go, I'm gonna come after you again...for Bill," Ellen vowed weakly.

Dean turned feral eyes on her and told her, "We're gonna take you to Bobby Singer's and dump you there and, when you're strong enough, you're gonna try and beat me to wherever it is that you've hidden Jo." At the mention of her daughter Dean could see the panic and fear in Ellen's eyes. It was just the reaction he wanted.

From the first moment she'd met him Joanna Beth Harvelle, now twenty, had had a major crush on Dean Winchester and, although she put up a good front, she was still just a hunter wannabe. Always ensconced somewhere safe while her parents hunted down the evils of the world, Jo Harvelle had no practical training or field experience and when he'd first met her he'd blown off the ten year old tag along, just like any other self respecting fifteen year old seasoned hunter would have done.

But he was older and wiser and a vampire now, all the things that should have struck fear into Ellen's heart and the thought of vengeance from her mind and, when the monstrous events that had just transpired finally hit home, he was fairly certain he would never see either of them again in his lifetime. Not because it was the smart thing for Ellen to do but because he was fairly certain he was going to die.

"Who's Bobby Singer?" Ali asked running her pink tongue over her bloody teeth.

"Someone who means a lot to me so you just behave and keep your hands to yourself," he warned her and she curled up her lip at him, her eyes darkening.

Alison Whitehall was thirty, would be thirty until the end of time if she were lucky. She was four years older than Dean Winchester and, at times, sorely resented him when he bossed her around. She also hated his ridiculous code of conduct, of misguided honor and loyalty. 'No, you can't eat him, Ali,' 'No, you can't just rip her head off, Ali,' 'Ali no, leave them alone, they're only kids'.

It was infuriating, almost like living with her piece of crap ex-husband again, only his code of conduct, when broken, resulted in severe beatings for every infraction as well as time spent locked in a closet. Ali had made Dean Winchester and he owed her his life, such as it was, but he never seemed to really appreciate it. It was something he never really freely embraced but he was vampire nonetheless and should act like one, like her, like her maker.

If he hadn't been shot, Ali was sure that Dean would have tried to stop her from killing the man even though the hardened hunter would have staked them both without a second thought. And even Dean had to admit that human blood tasted so much better than cow's blood, or pig's blood or bloody chipmunk's blood. In her mind, everybody was fair game and when she got up on all fours to make her way to the edge of the bed where Ellen Harvelle rested, he grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her back with all his remaining strength. She flew off of the bed and across the room crashing into the rotted frame of what had once been a dresser.

Thoroughly pissed off now she literately flew at him and knocked him onto the floor. As she lay on top of him her face inches from his, the silver pieces embedded in his skin searing hers and her razor sharp teeth bared like a rabid dog's, she reminded him in a harsh whisper, "I'm your maker."

"Then act like it," he hissed back and grabbing the back of her head he kissed her passionately, hungrily and demanded, "and give me what I need."

Despite the pain of the silver, her body responded to his and he rolled her over and covered her. She eased her head back, closed her eyes and offered up her graceful neck, moaning when he sank his teeth into her artery. Dean drank headily, hoping her preternatural blood would keep him alive until he could absorb the silver into his system, if that was even possible, or until they could get it all out.

Unable to move Ellen watched the lurid moonlit love affair as it played out before her. She quickly looked around in the darkness for one of the stakes. Even if she'd found one she was still too weak to use it so she just closed her eyes and tried not to envision Jo in the place of the brunette from which Dean fed. It was hard because her headstrong daughter would more than likely find the new and improved Dean Winchester all the more appealing. What young woman, after reading Dracula, hadn't fallen in love with the count or with Anne Rice's Lestat de Lioncourt or Louis de Pointe du Lac despite what they were and the heinousness of their deeds?

No, she wouldn't kill him, Ellen decided. What she would do was tell John Winchester that his precious first-born had helped kill his best friend and that Dean was no better than all the other evil they sought to destroy. Then she would go to her daughter and make sure she never laid eyes on Dean Winchester again.

Finished feeding and fornicating Dean rolled off of Ali and the two of them lay together on the floor, their glowing bodies bathed in moonlight. As satiated as he was, the beautiful metal in him continued to leak its deadly poison and he sat up laboriously and smacked Ali's bare ass. "We gotta get going. It'll take at least twenty hours to get to Bobby's."

"We're driving?" she asked and wondered why they couldn't fly...just once.

"I'd never make it through the metal detector," he told her, "And besides..."

"You could never leave the love of your life behind," she finished for him and as she got up off of the floor she looking down on him and added, "Sometimes I think you love that damned car more than me."

"I love you, Ali," he told her honestly, "but for all the wrong reasons". Alison Whitehall was his maker and that fact in itself commanded his love but for the rest of his life he would regret that night, three weeks earlier, when he'd first met her. The night he'd walked into Saints and Sinners.