CHAPTER FOUR

"Don't you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct."

-Barbara Corcoran

xxxxXxxx

Chicago, Illinois

2009

The bar was bright and alive, packed with people, and had the cloying aroma of 20 different varieties of alcohol. The bar part of the bar was a long black mahogany thing filled from end to end. A woman sat in the middle of it all: brunette, in a short black silk thing and sky high heels, sipping on a tumbler dark with rum.

"So I take it the way you're staring at her ass the recon went well," Samuel questioned.

Sam looked away from the woman and back over to his grandfather across the cramped table where they were sitting, shoved into a corner amidst a fog of cigarette smoke. "She gave up the goods about her last 'boyfriend' who dumped her; I managed to track him down to the city morgue."

"Did you get his blood?"

Sam reached into his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a syringe half full of dark blood. "The guard at the door wasn't too happy about the FBI heading there after hours, but I convinced him to look the other way."

"I'm not even gonna ask," Samuel returned. He'd only been hunting with his grandson for three months, but the things he had seen Sam do in that time were amazingly tactical, skilled, and ruthless. "We need to draw her out, we can't get a clean shot at the bar, too many people watching."

"That won't be a problem," Sam said clinically, hiding away the vial of blood up under his jacket sleeve.

Samuel looked half impressed, half disgusted at Sam. "Son, you have a couple of brass ones to sleep with a Vamp."

"I needed a way to distract her," Sam returned, glancing back up over to the bar, watching Katherine Pierce sip her drink in a silhouette of full breasts and full curves. "These things tend to get cocky when they think they're dominating." He continued to stare until she turned and caught him.

She set her drink down on the bar, slinking slowly to him. "Hey there," She slowed her pace even more, dropping her voice to full on molasses mode, smelling like sex, and blood.

He stood up to meet her and she smiled up at him appreciatively.

"Back for more handsome?" One of her hands trailed down his chest. Sam didn't hesitate, he jabbed the syringe into her leg.

She gasped, and pulled back in shock, and by the time she looked back up, he had his knife at her throat, concealing it from the view of the bar patrons.

"Hey yourself."

She growled and slumped against him a second later.

xxxxxXxxxx

Light is what Sam came back into consciousness too, his head rang with that sensation he felt too many times from repeated concussions. He shook his head, regretting it when it ramped up the pain behind his eyes even more. His body felt tight, and a tug of his arms and a glance down revealed him to be lashed to one of the bar table chairs with a piece of extension cord.

"Glad you could join us," the voice spoke to Sam's right, and he traced it over to the form of Katherine Pierce, in all black, she was holding out his knife, using it to file her nails. Beside her the kid from the bar had his gun out and was aiming it at him.

"Trying to kill me twice can wear anyone one out so your break from reality is understandable," Katherine said to Sam.

"I helped you tie him up Katherine," Matt Donovan pointed the gun with a hard jerk at Sam. "Now you need to tell me why the hell I'm holding an FBI agent hostage."

"Because he's not an FBI agent Mattie," Katherine stopped filing her nail's with Sam's blade and pointed it at him. "He's a hunter."

Sam blinked hard from the pain in his head. After having his skull drilled manually with screws by Crowley, he didn't know how much more abuse his skull could actually take. He watched the brunette approach him as slowly as that time in the bar. "Yeah, and you're still a Vampire."

"Actually I'm not anymore," Katherine returned. "But that's another story for another time."

"What are you talking about he's a hunter?-" Matt turned to Sam then Katherine in bewilderment.

Sam stared at Katherine, trying to process what she had just said about not being a Vampire, knowing that she was most likely weaving a huge ass sort of manipulative lie. And like his head bashing, he had had enough of manipulative lies, so he dropped it in favor of focusing on the shit of a predicament he was currently in.

The front door opened, pouring in a stream of daylight, cutting off Matt's voice and Sam's thoughts. Sam turned, already trying to figure out a way to get whoever it was to get the hell out before they got themselves killed.

The form in the door became the shape of Stefan Salvatore. He stepped into the shadow of the bar created by the backlit sunlight that shone behind him. Sam opened his mouth to tell the kid to get out, but he was beaten to it, by Katherine:

"Stefan," Katherine smiled on her face.

Stefan surveyed the scene in front of him, Sam tied to a chair, having weapons pointed at him, but the look in his eyes wasn't complete freaking out as to a hostage situation, they were something else. Like he was used to things like this.

"Katherine what the hell are you doing?" Stefan shut the door closed with a thud of a sound.

"Negotiating on your behalf," Katherine responded like it was a common answer. "Sorry," she waved the knife blade around like a conductor's baton. "Where are my manners? Stefan Salvatore," She pointed the knife at Sam, doing a little courtly kind of bow. "This is 'Agent Miller', or if you want, 'Agent Jennings' as he called himself back in 2009. Though I take it neither one of those is your actual name, so that leaves me at a bit of a loss as to what to carve on your tombstone-"

"He's a Hunter," Matt spoke to Stefan, and Sam saw that the other teenage guy react with more than a: 'what the hell is that?' curiosity at his words.

"Not Hunter with a capital H, Matt," Katherine insisted like Matt was stupid. "A hunter."

"What are you talking about?" Stefan asked. His dark eyes moved over to Sam, who felt again the intensity of the gaze that was way older than 17, and now he knew why.

"Hunters aren't Vampire specific," Katherine Pierce stated like it was a fact she had picked up in history class, casting looks at both Matt and Stefan. "They kill everything supernatural that crosses their paths: vampires, witches, werewolves, I've heard even ghosts, but that's a bit of a stretch even for me."

Stefan Salvatore's eyes turned dark, the shade Sam had seen far too much when something supernatural was about to do something supernatural.

"What do you know about my brother?" Stefan made a move that could only be described as a lunge at Sam, but was held back by Katherine.

"Relax, Stefan," Katherine held her hand to his chest, blocking his path. "If you kill him too early we're never going to find out what he knows-"

"I don't know anything!" Sam retorted, his anger going from present to full on at the debates on how to kill him like he was a marked animal. "I've never even heard of your brother until yesterday." he looked up at Stefan, then to Katherine. "But assuming that your family and your girlfriend are the same species I get what killed Jessie Turner, why you're covering up your brother's tracks-"

A hand grabbed Sam's neck, choking off the air in his lungs, he saw Stefan standing over him, with spider webbed veins running down his face, a set of fangs, not retractable teeth, bared in front of him.

"Stop lying!"

Sam had seconds before he knew he was going to black out, something that was proven extremely bad to do in a nest of vampires. Katherine had his knife, so using it to cut through the wires was out, so was trying to break the physical hold Stefan had on his neck. That left option three:

"Then who?" Sam's voice was raspy from lack of air and tracheal pressure. "Who killed that kid if it wasn't your brother?"

Stefan hadn't lied to Sam and Dean about the things that he knew, he had withheld them. As much as Sam knew that basically spelled out a hell of a problem, he had the tiniest bit of respect that Stefan wasn't a stupid Vampire, he knew how to keep himself hidden. But watching him a few hours ago- Sam knew from years of reading people that Stefan's PTSD cycle hadn't been an act, and his brother was a trigger.

Sam felt his neck being released and he choked massively, coughing up a bit of blood from where he'd bitten through his tongue, he spat the dribble down his chin and stared up at the vampire. "You want to find your brother, you tell me what I need to know."

Stefan lowered his hands onto the arms of the chair, getting right up into Sam's face. "Or you tell me what I need to know."

There was a brief sensation of losing control, like Sam had felt when he had taken that hit of street drugs in the alleyway to try to combat Lucifer enhanced sleep deprivation, but then the feeling fell away like a melting glacier.

"It won't work, Stefan," Katherine's face emerged from behind Stefan. She reached down, pulling up the left side of Sam's jacket, then ripped half the buttons off of his button up shirt exposing the black tattoo on his upper chest that he had re inked after Cas had removed it.

"What the hell is that?" Matt finally broke his silence and stared, gun still aimed at Sam.

"It's a warding symbol against supernatural possession." Katherine held Sam's shirt open like a prize. "It was hard to notice at first, it was a little too dark to notice much of anything outside the sense of touch," Katherine adapted a smug smile, looking at Stefan. "No offense Stefan, you will always be amazing, but you," Katherine turned a seducing eye towards Sam. "You were rougher than sandpaper."

"Can you just skip that part Katherine?" Stefan cut in at the same time Matt made a grunted sound of displeasure.

"The tattoo's like permanent vervain," Katherine returned, finally releasing Sam's shirt with a jerk like she was dropping foul smelling rags into the incinerator, locking eyes with him. "It makes him immune to compulsion, which I found out later on when you stabbed me in the leg with that syringe of Dead Man's Blood."

"Which should have ended you-" Sam retorted. "Which is the part that I don't understand."

"That's not possible; Dead Man's Blood is just a myth," Stefan said it like he was talking about the the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.

"Tell that to the other vampires that I killed with it," Sam retorted.

Stefan was most likely incredibly older than Sam, but Sam was also older in his own right; not permanently stuck as a teenager and with 9 years of a Hunters life and 180 years in Hell. Things that didn't just leave one unmarked. Both of their hostiles met each other, circling, waiting for the moment for the jugular shot to be claimed.

"The blood of dead bodies breaks down into an unstable carbon acid Stefan," Katherine informed. "It's not lethal to a vampire, but it can be used to keep them down long enough so that someone like this can chop their heads off. More of a flashier way to do it then a stake through the heart," she pressed the knife blade against Sam's neck. "I never got to thank you for almost killing me." The knife blade drew a line of blood down Sam's neck.

"If you wanted to kill me you would've done it by now," Sam retorted, having enough experience as to how these things went. "So how about you stop with the theatrics and get to the point?"

This produced a smile from Katherine. "Ooh," she pouted her lips into the word. "Still so feisty."

"Alright Katherine enough!" Stefan intervened, but he didn't exactly sound like he was doing so for Sam's behalf. He lowered his arms and backed up about half a foot, looking down at him. "You're partner, I'm assuming he a hunter too?" When Sam chose not to answer he got right down in front of Sam's face again, the webbed lines of dark blood exposing his veins on the surface of his face. "I can't compel you, but I can kill you, so I suggest you answer the question."

"Stefan, as hot as your bad cop routine is," Katherine reached into Sam's jacket, and pulled out his cellphone. "I think you should just do things the easy way," she tossed Stefan the phone.

The other Vampire caught the phone and began to flip through the contacts in it. Sam watched as he opted to press the first speed dial number.

Sam listened to the ring, only once before the call connected.

"Hey, where the hell are you?-"

Sam heard Dean's voice being very loud through his phone.

"We need to talk," Stefan said into the phone, turning to watch Sam watching him.

xxxxXxxx

Dean was trying to watch TV, a grainy version of Casa Erotica 12 in 3D (only without the 3D because it was a rabbit eared set). The hotel he found had a surprisingly spectacular view of the actual Mystic Falls, a giant double set of water falls that threw themselves down over 500 feet of a tan rock face quarry into a basin of turquoise water below.

When he first got there he had taken a quick shower, combed through the police records of all the disappearances, all of them except the one concerning Damon Salvatore were out and baited to the local media, families pleading for the return of their missing loved ones, the whole nine. He called several of the Sherriff's deputies, but they were as tight lipped as the woman herself. Whatever it was they were hiding, they made damn sure to cover their bases.

He managed to do all of this in the 40 minutes Sam had been out getting the story on the bus boy at the restaurant. Dean had called Sam 5 minutes after that, then five minutes after that , but both calls had gone straight to voicemail, Dean has assumed Sam had shut the phone off to look more "professional" in front of the teenager. He had 'assumed' all of this while he tried not to over react and think that something had gone wrong. Even with all the shit that had blown up in between them Dean could not turn off the part of him that overreacted when it came to Sam, he couldn't help it. He'd been the kid's protector since he ran out of the house with him after the fire. It had morphed since that time, from obligation to reason. Sam hating him did nothing to change that.

Dean tried to distract himself by trying to see the things he was supposed to see through the 5 pixels on the television, but Casa Erotica had been sans Erotica so he had flipped off the TV with the ancient looking remote, throwing it down on the white washed table top. His phone was beside a brochure talking about the water falls that were about 20 feet in front of his face. "Screw it," He picked up the phone, which lit up in his hand a second later with Sam's number on the contact ID.

He answered the call. "Hey, where the hell are you?"

"We need to talk."

Dean was hit with the sensation of someone pouring needles down his spine. "Who is this?" The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but the only thing that Dean was thinking about was that the person answering Sam's phone wasn't Sam.

"That's not important. The only thing you need to know is that I have your partner, and you have 20 minutes to come meet him before there's nothing left of him to meet."

The needle sensation was replaced by something more feral, primal. His mind whirred to a week ago, to Sam strapped to a chair, screaming as screws were being twisted into his brain. "Look, I don't know who the hell you are but if you do anything to him!-"

"He's at the Mystic Grill, one block from the clock tower in the center of town, you now have 19 minutes." The call disconnected.

Dean stared at the phone in a shock that no one was around to see except his heated emotions. "Damnit!" He grabbed his gun from off the top of the TV. He had no idea who he was up against so he added a six inch bowie knife, concealing it in his jacket pocket, grabbed his keys and ran out the door. The Impala was parked on a lower level parking lot of log bumpers and dirt. He climbed in the car, and floored the accelerator pulling out so fast that half the parking lot was gone under his tires. He continued at this speed, barely having time to notice that not one of Sheriff Forbes' deputies were stopping him, not that he would have let that happen regardless.

The structures of the town blew by in the much less than 20 minutes it took for Dean to drive to the Mystic Grill. He slanted the Impala into the parking lot of the building across the street from the restaurant. Peeled worn lettering revealed the building to a former physician's office. Unlike before, the town was busy. People crowded the streets: teenagers, young couples with families in strollers and held in hands of parents. Dean walked past the people at as normal of a pace as possible until he reached the restaurant /bar he and Sam had been at not five hours before.

He bypassed the front door, using a crowd of teenagers as cover and ducked behind the alleyway that led to the service entrance. He was more concealed here than on the street, but the disadvantage lay in the fact that the back structure of the bar was absent of any windows. Dean made his way up the ramp, pressing his ear to the door, but it was solid concrete and no sound from what was going on inside reached him. He placed a hand to the door knob and twisted.

"Agent Ryson-"

The voice turned Dean around to see Elena Gilbert standing at the base of the ramp, a denim jacket thrown over a red shirt and jeans that had replaced her mini dress. She watched him with dark eyes and started to walk up the ramp, "I was just meeting Stefan for lunch," her heels clicked as she ascended higher until she reached the level where Dean stood. "Is there something wrong?"

What Elena said set a cog in motion in Dean's head, the voice on the phone, Dean was too busy thinking about other things to put the sound at the forefront an hour ago, but now he knew where he had heard it before. "You're saying Stefan's in there?"

Something seemed to click with Elena, like she had realized her mistake too late to take it back. "Yeah, we're just meet-"

"Alright enough," Dean took half a second to look behind him before he pulled out his silver colt and cocked it at her, concealing the gesture under the hem of her jacket.

Elena started at the sight of the gun. "What are you doing?!"

"I'm not going to hurt you," Dean returned, keeping his voice low. No one was around but them, but he was pretty sure that wasn't the case inside Mystic Grill. "You're walking in there with me like nothing's going on, no tricks, no tip offs to your friend inside understand?"

Elena looked like she wanted to protest, eyeing the gun like she wanted to do something violent despite its presence, but she didn't act on the emotion. Dean opened the door, and held it open for her, not pushing her inside because it would be too obvious if someone came upon them, and despite the situation, she wasn't a hostage. He didn't take pleasure in what he was doing, but if she were somehow involved in what was happening to Sam, he wasn't about to take chances either.

Elena move under his arm, and he came in close behind, moving the gun behind her back, stepping into the bar that swallowed his vision in shadow.

"Stefan?"

Elena called out Stefan's name as Dean's vision returned to color in increments. He entered the bar the same way he had before, past a partitioned section of doors for the restrooms and the kitchen. A handful of feet later the partition spilled out into the opened dining area.

Stefan Salvatore first noticed Elena, at the same time Dean noticed Sam.

Who was tied to a chair with extension cord, face a bloody mess with his own gun and knife pointed at him by the blonde bus boy and a woman that looked exactly like Elena Gilbert.

Sam locked eyes with Dean, not angry or hostile, but a look that let Dean know that something more was going on then what he was just seeing.

"What the hell's going on?" Elena pushed her way past Dean for two steps, but he yanked her back by her arm and pulled his gun out from behind her back, pointing it at Stefan Salvatore.

"That's exactly what I want to know," Dean retorted, gun aimed right at Stefan's chest, looking over at the woman who could be Elena's sister.

"Let Elena go," Stefan spoke calmly but his voice had that same undercurrent that Dean had heard earlier, that predatory growl underneath all the words. "She has nothing to do with this."

"Oh she has something to do with this if she's walking in here to meet you when all this is going down!" Dean barked, waving the gun at Stefan.

"I didn't know that this was happening!" Elena protested, struggling slightly against Dean's grip. But Dean had been in enough fights and situations like this one and had developed an instinct about them, and he could tell that Elena Gilbert was holding back.

"There's no such thing as coincidence when someone's tied to a chair with a gun pointed at them!" Dean retorted.

"You're echoing my exact same sentiment," Stefan replied, his voice moving from its calm from earlier to something a little angrier. "So why don't you let Elena go before things turn uglier then you want them to?"

"What happened to PTSD Boy?" Dean drew out his words longer than necessary to give him a chance to figure out how to draw the bead off of Sam. "You trade it all in for bad ass kidnapping and twin hook ups?"

"Okay, that's insulting-" the other woman who looked exactly like Elena pointed a finger at Dean, one hand on the knife as it move to Sam's neck. "It's going to cost your friend here a pint of blood," she sliced a line through Sam's neck, and he grunted out a scream.

"Katherine," Stefan finally said the woman's name, "enough!-"

Dean raised the gun up and aimed it at Elena Gilbert's neck.

"Stefan!"

"They're Vamps!" Sam shouted it like a bad high school play, like he didn't know how to verbally communicate with Dean now that he was this angry at him.

Elena and Sam's words tripped on each other, but it was Sam's that Dean recognized first. Dean shot Sam a half second look that said: why the fuck didn't you tell me sooner? He reached around for the knife he had in his jacket, it wasn't the machete he wanted, and now actually longed for, but it wasn't like he had a choice. He drew the knife out and aimed the blade in Stefan's direction.

"You need to put that down," Stefan said it like an order to reprimand a wayward toddler, taking almost a lazy step towards Dean. "Hunter or not, you're out numbered and you know it."

"Outnumbered or not," Dean's voice dropped as cold as ice. "If your little doppelganger girlfriend makes a move on my brother again I will kill you before you can blink once."

'Katherine' made a noise of shock, looking to Sam like they were old friends. "You never told me you had a brother, I'm hurt," She dug the knife in deeper making the blood leak a trail down Sam's neck.

Dean's vision went blood red, he shoved Elena, had barely enough time to notice how she was hardly affected by such a forceful blow, lunging with the knife blade at Stefan Salvatore's form, who was there one moment, then gone at a high velocity speed. But Dean had spent an entire year fighting vampires and other monsters in Purgatory, so his gaze managed to track Stefan's final location, and aim the blade right into his stomach.

Stefan dropped, choking. Vampires weren't easy things to kill, normally nothing would keep them down for long, so Dean was surprised by such a reaction from the vampire.

"Stefan!" Elena Gilbert's cry tore through the air like she had a knife of her own, and then she became a blur and all of Dean's reaction that something wasn't right about her came to fruition when she appeared right in front of him, next to Stefan, fangs bared right in Dean's face.

Dean aimed his gun at her, but she managed to duck from the bullets which tore into the post above Sam's head. Dean had only a moment to catch a breath from the bullet which had missed Sam's head by inches, when he heard Sam call out his name, in that voice that he used when he meant: "turn around."

Which Dean did in time to see Elena behind him, grabbing the gun and yanking it out of his hand with a hard torque of his wrist, his colt was sent skittering somewhere behind the bar. Dean ducked a blow from Elena that would've snapped his neck, and came back up holding out his zippo lighter, flame tip out to a newspaper, the orange light lit up the paper in a smolder.

Dean held out the burning paper like an Olympic torch towards Stefan who was still writhing on the ground. "Make one more move Vamperella and I'm going to see if it's true what they say about fire and vampires."

Elena backed off. "You can't!-"

Dean watched as Elena's eyes flicked to Stefan then to Matt Donovan who had lowered Sam's gun at the sight of the open flame.

"Not all of us are Vampires!" Elena insisted. "If you drop that you'll kill innocent people!"

"Then you need to make a decision real fast kid," Dean said to her. "Cause you won't like it when I do it for you."

Elena's fangs lowered back into her mouth and she backed away, moving over to Sam, which was an action Dean watched like she was about to drop a live grenade on his brother's head. There was the hard sound of breaking wire as Elena broke the bindings that held Sam to the chair, the noise echoed simultaneously with the sound of Stefan pulling the knife out of his stomach.

Elena's twin (which was a fact that was making Dean's head spin) glared at her. "What the hell are you doing?!"

"What does it look like?" Elena dropped the broken pieces of extension cord to the ground.

Once he was freed Sam rose to his feet, all the while Dean checked his brother over silently not giving away any indication of a weakness because he still wasn't sure what the full threat level of the room was.

Elena glanced over at Dean, and he was at least sure of one thing, she had made her decision. Dean dropped the flaming paper into a plastic basin half full of water and dirty dishes.

Sam approached Matt. "I'm gonna need that back." He held out his hand for his weapon. Matt Donovan wasn't an idiot and backed away from Sam's reach, but Dean knew his brother, and Sam's intimidation factor wasn't one that was to be messed with. After only a few seconds of staring down the kid Matt lowered the gun and dropped it into Sam's hands.

"It looks to me like Elena Gilbert is martyring herself out again," Elena's doppelganger finally snarked an answer to Elena's question, "and the rest of us are just caught in the crossfire again."

"Can we do this later?" Stefan had gotten to his feet, a blooming bloodstain on his gray shirt the only indication that he had been stabbed at all. Elena moved towards him; Dean watched as she didn't touch him, but the concern in her eyes was evident.

The kid's (or rather however hell the many years old he was), turned to Dean and Sam. "You're clearly not above killing us, and we're more than capable of killing you-"

"Don't sell us short," Dean retorted. "We're more than capable of killing your vampire asses too-"

"Which leaves us at a stalemate," Stefan returned, with a calmness that Dean wanted to smack off of his face. "So how about we ceasefire for a moment and lay this all out? Why'd you pose as FBI agents?"

"Why you pose as people?" Dean returned. "You think no one's gonna notice that some of the locals are a few quarts low?"

Stefan didn't respond to that. "What do you know about Damon?"

"Only what your master cover up sheriff let me know, Dean retaliated. "Believe me, if we knew that you and your brother and your associates were vampires, we would've been less subtle about the way we handled things."

"Hunter's are so cocky-" Elena's double said, in almost a bored sounding kind of tone.

"No one asked you to talk, Katherine," Sam snapped to the woman.

"Funny," 'Katherine' said, eyeing up Sam. "You never asked me to keep my mouth shut before."

Dean made a wide eyed look at both of them. "I'm sorry, you two know each other?"

"She was a Vamp Samuel and I tracked in Chicago back in 09," Sam responded, not taking his eyes off of Katherine Pierce.

"And by tracked your brother here means 'manipulated through sex'."

Dean cut Sam a look that was half disgusted, half 'what the hell?" as to the vampire's confession about Sam. She was balls out insanely attractive, undead predatory species or not. But still the thought of the line Sam crossed, that Dean hadn't heard of him crossing since those dark days with Ruby, it wasn't exactly sitting well with him.

"We put her down with Dead Man's Blood," Sam ignored Katherine's remark, and ignored Dean's disgust. His brother had no room to talk about doing such outlandish kinds of things.

"Which didn't work; obviously."

Sam had forgotten what a live wire Katherine Pierce's mouth could be until the second he heard her open it again.

"Alright, that's enough," Dean growled, pointed the razor sharp blade of his knife at Katherine. "I don't know what kind of game your little nest of friends are trying to pull bitch, but your next words better be merit worthy, or you're going to lose your ability to talk real fast."

"That goes both ways," Stefan growled in a dead panned sounding voice. He took a swipe at the puddle of blood on his shirt like it was a small bleeding paper cut. "The only thing that's keeping me from ripping both your throats out is the fact that Hunters lie about things and I need to get the truth out of you-"

"We wouldn't waste time lying to a bunch of vamps," Dean snapped.

"And we're just supposed to believe that's true?" Elena Gilbert was young, probably only 18, and Vampire or not, it was evident in her voice. She walked over to Dean with a click of heeled boots.

"You believe what you want Bella Swan, it's still the truth." Dean watched Elena like she was a predatory species. "And personally I don't care about the trust issues of a Vamp-"

Katherine Pierce looked at Dean incredulous. She was Elena Gilbert's carbon copy, only with thicker hair and more sluttiness. "Hunters come into town less than a week after Damon is taken, and we're just supposed to believe that you two know absolutely nothing about it or this creepy Augustine Vampire that's allegedly running around-" Katherine dropped off her words when a look passed over Sam's face that he couldn't hide in time. She cocked her head at him. "Oh wait that's right, you do know something-"

Sam hadn't heard that name in years. But the moment it was uttered from Katherine's mouth, the memories behind the name. "Shut up!-" Sam jerked Katherine's arm and placed the blade at her neck, able to do so surprisingly quickly, pointing the knife blade to her throat.

Sam's knife was jerked out of his arm and he was flung against the opposite wall, back ramming into a structural wooden support beam behind the bar. Stefan was inches from his face, fangs retracted, squeezing all the air out of his throat like he was juicing an orange.

"Sam!" Dean shouted out his brother's name, finally using his true name for the first time since he had come into the bar. He aimed his gun at Stefan's back, knowing that it wasn't a lethal shot, but a bullet straight through a Vampire's heart would do more than just sting him. He pulled the trigger, his shot was thrown high by Elena Gilbert knocking him to the ground. The bullet winged off a rafter roof and a second later he heard Sam grunt from where it made contact somewhere on him.

Dean's anger turned bright red, but was halted by Sam's next words:

"I know where your brother is," Sam gasped out to Stefan from the pressure on his neck. He felt blood pouring down the front of his right leg from where Dean's bullet had grazed it. "Kill me and you won't," Sam grunted out another breath, feeling his consciousness slipping, but he saw the shift of the look on Stefan's face like a lose river rock about to damn up the last remaining access through a blockage in the water. "You want me, or him?"

Sam felt his neck being released like a noose had been dropped from a hanging rope. He fell to the ground gasping. A second later Dean was hauling him to his feet amidst the glares of the multiple vampires in the room.