The next time the boys encountered vampires: John was dead, the Impala had been destroyed and then restored, and the boys just recently befriended Jo and Ellen Harvelle. The boys are once again travelling and hunting on their own. It's more peaceful now that John wasn't around to argue with Sam or belittle Dean. But his death did hang in the air around them; occasionally suffocating them during the silent moments.

This was not one of those moments.

It was one of the rare times when Dean was positively giddy. He was behind the wheel of his Baby, headed to Red Lodge, Montana. His little brother was at his side, bobbing his head along to ACDC. And! They had a case.

Cow mutilations. And beheadings! This had Satanic written all over it.

The sheriff didn't seem to think so.

He kicked the boys out of his office after a short interview regarding the murders. When asked about the cows, the sheriff brushed it off.

"There's no such thing as cow mutilations," he dismissed.

Normal people dismiss the unimaginable so easily.

Following the normal investigation routine, the boys headed to the morgue to check out the beheaded bodies. Dean was able to scare off the intern, leaving them alone in the morgue with dead bodies. Ten points for the professional liars!

Now, sometimes satanic bastards, or really fucked up kids, will stuff things down their victims throats. Whether it's to keep the victim quiet, or part of some bullshit ritual doesn't matter. But seeing if there is something gagging the vic can sometimes help in figuring get out just how intense of guys the boys will be dealing with.

"Dean get me a bucket." Sam said as he inspected the head of the dead girl.

"You find somethin'?" Dean asked, leaning closer to take a look.

"No. I'm gonna puke." Sam looked away from the head, his hands shaking as they withdrew from the girls mouth.

Dean paused, "Wait, lift the lip again?"

"What? You want me to throw up, is that it?" Sam grumbled.

"No, no, no, I think I saw something." Dean said as he pulled back the girl's lip. "What is that, a hole?"

What kind of creature just randomly has a hole in it's gum?

Dean roughly pressed against the gum and a long, narrow tooth slid out from the top of the gum. Oh. That kind of creature.

"It's a tooth." Sam observed, slightly confused.

"Sam, that's a fang. Retractable set of vampire fangs." Dean removed his hand, groaning. "You gotta be kidding me."

"Well, this changes things."

"Ya think?"

They weren't victims. They were monsters. There were monsters in this town, and someone was hunting them down. That should've made things easier. Somehow, it only made things worse.

Gordon Walker was a monster. Vamps thought so, humans thought so, I thought so. If you could see his soul, you would be disgusted by the swirling dark abyss that hung in his chest. Gordon Walker is what happens to someone when they let the life take over their life. Gordon Walker is a demon without black eyes.

And Dean was spilling his heart to him.

"Sorry about your sister." Dean mumbled after Gordon explained how he got into the life.

"Yeah. She was beautiful. I can still see her, you know? The way she was." "But hey, that was a long time ago. I mean, your dad. It's gotta be rough."
"Yeah. Yeah, you know. He was just one of those guys. Took some terrible beatings, just kept coming. So you're always thinking to yourself, he's indestructible. He'll always be around... nothing can kill my dad. Then just like that," Dean snaps his fingers, "he's gone. ...I can't talk about this to Sammy. You know, I gotta keep my game face on."

The older Winchester has had it drilled into his head that tears is weakness and no one needs that hanging around them, least of all Sam. So Dean always puts on a brave face. Because that's what Sam needs.

Dean clears his throat, looking away from the other hunter, "But, uh, the truth is I'm not handling it very well. Feel like I have this-"

"Hole inside you?" Gordon interrupts, "And it just gets bigger and bigger and darker and darker?" At Dean's nod he continued, "Good. You can use it. Keeps you hungry. Trust me. There's plenty out there needs killing, and this'll help you do it. Dean, it's not a crime to need your job."

After a few quiet moments of Dean contemplating Gordon's statements, the crueler hunter commented, "You know why I love this life?"

"Hmm?" Dean hummed, looking up at Gordon.

"It's all black and white. There's no maybe. You find the bad thing, kill it." Gordon nodded, satisfied with the life he lives, "See, most people spend their lives in shades of gray. Is this right? Is that wrong? Not us."

"Not sure Sammy would agree with you, but uh…" Dean trailed off. He was about to agree with Gordon, but the other hunter cut him off.

"Doesn't seem like your brother's much like us." Gordon comments. At Dean's startled look, he quickly clarifies, "I'm not saying he's wrong. Just different. But you and me? We were born to do this. It's in our blood."

John would agree.

November 14, 1985,

Took Dean shooting. If he's big enough to try to comfort me, he's big enough to start learning the tools of the trade. I only let him let him fire the .22, but he is a deadeye marksman. My drill sergeant would have taken him over me in a second. Times like this, I sure am proud of my boy. I have a feeling it'll be different with Sammy. Maybe he's just too young to show it, but I don't think he's got the same kind of killer instinct.

Dean was six when John wrote that. Even back then, at least, according to his father, he was a cold-stone killer. And Sam, precious baby Sam, simply was not. He needed to be protected, because he wouldn't be able to shoot first, ask questions second like Dean could.

That's probably why the vampires took Sam.

But see, these vampires were different.

They were a dying breed.

Because of people like Daniel Elkins and Gordon Walker and just about any other hunter with a machete, vampires were quickly falling off the map. If things didn't change, they'd soon be the dodo birds of the supernatural world. These creatures, humans with fangs, that's all they were, would all be gone.

That's what Lenore, the lead vamp of this pack, was trying to explain to Sam.

"We're not like the others. We don't kill humans, and we don't drink their blood. We haven't for a long time." Lenore said to a tied-down Sam.

The hunter rolled his eyes, "What is this, some kind of joke?"

"Notice you're still alive." Lenore bit quickly.

"Okay, uh, why?" Sam asked, shifting in the chair slightly.

"Survival. No deaths, no missing locals, no reason for people like you to come looking for people like us. We blend in. Our kind is practically extinct." She paused, her voice full of pain as she mumbled, "Turns out we weren't quite as high up the food chain as we imagined."

They used to be.

Vampires used to be on the top of the world, no one knew how to hurt them, no one knew how to kill them. Then the hunters rose up from the crowds. And vampires had to learn how to watch their backs; cover their tracks. Gone were the times of the Alpha freely walking down the street with Dracula and Carmilla at his side. Gone where the peace times.

The oldest of the vampires know the transition well.

From happiness to fear.

Joy to panic.

Hunters to being hunted.

"What's done is done. We're leaving this town tonight." Lenore said in finality.

Sam couldn't help but ask, "Then why did you bring me here? Why are you even talking to me?"

Lenore spoke with authority, the kind of tone that is earned over years of making hard decisions, "Believe me, I'd rather not. But I know your kind. Once you have the scent you'll keep tracking us. It doesn't matter where we go. Hunters will find us."

"So you're asking us not to follow you." Sam clarified.

"We have a right to live. We're not hurting anyone." Lenore said, crossing her arms.

"Right, so you keep saying, but give me one good reason why I should believe you." Everything inside Sam was telling him to run. This thing wasn't human. It drank blood. And it had him trapped. He was vulnerable. John would kill him if he saw this.

"Fine." The vampire leans close into Sam's face. "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to let you go."

And she did.

Her vamps put a sack over Sam's head and dropped him right off where they picked him up. Not a single hair misplaced on his head.

Sam's mind swirled in shock and confusion.

A monster that wasn't monstrous.

Jesus Christ.

Convincing Dean that these vampires were good was just about as hard as a pornstar's dick in the middle of filming a particularly exciting video.

"What part of 'vampires' don't you understand, Sam? If it's supernatural, we kill it, end of story. That's our job." The hunter was practically shouting in the motel parking lot.

"No, Dean. That is not our job. Our job is hunting evil. And if these things aren't killing people, they're not evil!" Sam argued.

"Of course they're killing people, that's what they do. They're all the same, Sam. They're not human, okay? We have to exterminate every last one of them." Dean was sticking to his perspective because if he, just for a second, saw it Sam's way, that would ruin everything he's ever been taught.

"No, Dean, I don't think so, all right? Not this time." Sam said.

Dean was determined to stick with what he knew. And what he knew was shoot first, ask questions later. Black and white, no gray. They're the hunters, they kill the monsters. Simple as that.

And he was adamant about that.

Until they found Lenore tied up and tortured by Gordon.

"Gordon, I'm letting her go." Sam said, stepping forward.

Gordon points his long knife at Sam's chest, stopping him in his tracks. "You're not doing a damn thing."

Dean immediately took Gordon's attention away from Sam, "Hey, hey, hey, Gordon, let's talk about this."

"What's there to talk about? It's like I said, Dean. No shades of gray." Gordon's voice was that of a man with no light; no happiness or morals.

"Yeah. I hear ya. And I know how you feel." Dean held his hands up a placating manner.

"Do you?"

"That vampire that killed your sister deserved to die, but this one…" Dean glanced at Lenore, who had more blood covering her face than actual skin.

Gordon's bitter laugh stole Dean's attention again, "Killed my sister? That filthy fang didn't kill my sister. It turned her. It made her one of them. So I hunted her down, and I killed her myself."

Dean's heart stopped. "You did what?"

"It wasn't my sister anymore, it wasn't human. I didn't blink. And neither would you."

The thought - just the thought - of Dean doing something like that to Sam, even if he was a monster, was enough to bring bile to the back of Dean's throat.

So it was pretty reasonable for Dean to beat the living shit out of Gordon once Sam escaped with a half-conscious Lenore.

"You're not like your brother." Gordon hissed while they were fighting, "You're a killer, like me."

Dean tightens his jaw at the comment and slams Gordon's head against the wall, effectively knocking him out.

"Oh, sorry." He said sarcastically, as he pulls Gordon's lip body onto a chair. As he tied him up, he said, "You know, I might be like you, and I might not. But you're the one tied up right now."

Dean promised to himself that he would never become like Gordon. That son of a bitch had a crossed a line long ago, when he killed his sister, and Dean would never even approach that same line. He'd make sure of it.

See, the main problem Dean had with Gordon, above all the other problems with Gordon, was the fact that Gordon torchured Lenore for fun.

When you begins to enjoy inflicting pain - which isn't the same as the grim satisfaction you take from eliminating evil - you've turned into something else. Something bad - maybe just as bad as the things you're trying to hunt. You look into the abyss, and the abyss looks back.

The thought of enjoying making someone else feel pain. How could anyone feel satisfied or even joy with the concept of spilling innocent blood unnecessarily?

"I wish we never took this job. It's jacked everything up." Dean tells Sam later.

His brother looks at him over the top of the Impala, "What do you mean?"

"Think about all the hunts we went on, Sammy, our whole lives." Dean specifically remembered one hunt in Minnesota involving two young werewolves. God, they weren't even bigger than Dean. They had no idea what they were or how to control it. And John…

It could've ended differently. That's all Dean would say about it.

"Okay."

"What if we killed things that didn't deserve killing? You know? I mean, the way Dad raised us…" Dean said. There had to be at least one. More than just those two werewolves. God. What if there were a ton? What if in the beginning, John was still learning, he couldn't've know what was okay and what was evil… Could he? Would he have cared?

"Dean, after what happened to Mom, Dad did the best he could." Sam, for once, defended their dad.

"I know he did. But the man wasn't perfect. And the way he raised us, to hate those things; and man, I hate 'em. I do. When I killed that vampire at the mill I didn't even think about it; hell, I even enjoyed it." Dean swallowed painfully at the admission. He killed a vamp that should be alive right now.

"You didn't kill Lenore." Sam reminded him.

"No, but every instinct told me to. I was gonna kill her. I was gonna kill 'em all."

Bloodthirsty.

Killer.

Like Gordon.

A monster in a man's skin.

"Yeah, Dean, but you didn't. And that's what matters." Sam forced Dean to see reason.

Hero.

Brother.

Like Sam.

Dean ducked his head, "Yeah. Well, 'cause you're a pain in my ass."

"Guess I might have to stick around to be a pain in the ass, then." Sam said, glancing away from the house they just excited to look at Dean. The hidden message of that statement wasn't really all that hidden.

I promise I'll stay. A little longer. You won't be alone.

"Thanks." Dean mumbled.

Thanks for staying.

Thanks for saving those people's lives.

Thanks for not letting me be like Gordon.

"Don't mention it." Sam ducked into the Impala to get ready for their next hunt.

Hopefully this one will actually involve something evil. Something that isn't another person. And the boys' world can make sense again.

Tell me what you think!