AN: Nothing much to say here, except when I was having a hard time writing this chapter, all your lovely comments really encouraged me! Muchas gracias.

Oh, yeah, and Janice soothed all my worries and made the whole thing a heck of a lot better!

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If there was one thing that Dean was really good at, it was channeling. Human lives were full of a whole lot of strong and inconvenient emotions, and Dean had learned very young that channeling those into something else (usually violence, sometimes sex) was his preferred way to deal with them. Besides, adrenaline and its friends made you faster and stronger no matter why they were in your blood stream.

And Dave and his cadre had given Dean a massive cocktail of adrenaline soup from pain, fear, worry, and most of all anger as they ignored all reason and betrayed their supposed raison d'etre. And cut Sam up like he was some effed up modern art project and not a living, breathing human being. Made Sammy, his Sammy, bleed. And suffer. So yeah, there was a lot to work with.

Dean channeled all of it as he launched himself at Dave like a torpedo.

Dave's gray hair didn't fool Dean – he had never once underestimated Dad or Bobby due to age, and he wasn't going to fall for that with Dave either. Sometimes the passage of years just made a man harder.

Dean angled himself slightly so he didn't hit the other man directly, but sent them spinning to the floor. A last second dip of his shoulder ensured Dean ended up on top. There was a crunch and a cry off to the side, but neither he nor Dave could spare a second to look over. (But it hadn't been Sam's voice, and that was good enough for Dean.) His right arm with which he was wielding his knife was tangled with Dave's left, and his left hand was busy holding Dave's right wrist so the man couldn't bring the .44 in his hand to bear.

Dean smashed Dave's gun hand into the floor, then caught a knee in his ribs. Ignoring the pain, he banged the wrist down again again but Dave pushed back making the hit too soft to knock the gun free. Dave squeezed off a shot, the bullet going harmlessly under the beds (away from Sam, which was the key here). Dean finally yanked his right arm free and noted a small, sharp pain on his forearm as he did. He ignored it and punched Dave twice with his newly freed hand, trying to twist the gun out of his hand at the same time. Another crunch and a terrible groan of someone who was badly hurt distracted Dean. His own fight was taking all of his concentration and he couldn't see what was happening with Sam, but that didn't stop his head from turning toward the sound instinctively.

Dave took advantage and did something with his shoulder and hip that pushed Dean back a few inches and threw his own punch. No, not punch. There was a small blade sticking out from between Dave's middle and ring fingers, and Dean just barely arched back fast enough to avoid getting slashed across his belly. "Oh, hell no," Dean growled, stabbing down with his weight behind it and impaling Dave's right bicep.

Dave howled and kicked back almost convulsively, knocking Dean back a few feet onto his rear. Almost simultaneously, the front door behind Dean and to his right burst open. It was Paul, carrying a handgun only slightly smaller than Dave's ridiculous Dirty Harry gun. Paul was looking to his right and turning the gun that way, Sam's direction, and Dean wasn't close enough to Dave's gun to get it in time.

Never throw your weapon, Dad's voice said in Dean's ear. Cuz then you don't have your weapon any more. Besides, unless you're damn familiar with the knife and your target's stationary, chances are damn small that you'll actually stab anything.

Dean ignored the oft-repeated lesson and threw his knife. He was damn familiar with the weapon and very good at throwing it. The one problem was that Paul was moving. The knife struck the wrist of his gun hand, as it had been intended to, but instead of cutting him and incapacitating that hand, it hit handle-first and only knocked the gun out of his hand. Paul scrambled to pick it up as Dean similarly dove for Dave's gun. Not great, but it was something. Dean peripherally noted Dave dragging himself like a wounded animal toward the back of the cabin, only paying him enough attention to ensure that he wasn't an immediate threat.

As Dean's hand closed on Dave's gun, a voice behind him said, "Don't move or I'll blow your head off." Bleeding and hurting and pissed off, Dean still couldn't help but smile at the sound of it. He retrieved the gun and turned to take in the rest of the room. Paul was still just inside the door, bent like he'd been reaching for the gun at his feet, frozen in place.

Sam was sitting on the floor, free of the chair and hands loose but ankles still tied. The rifle that must have belonged to Rick was in his hands, pointed steadily at Paul. Off to the side, Rick was lying unmoving in a small but growing puddle of blood, remnants of the broken chair all over him and one large piece, probably a leg, embedded in his abdomen. Dean could tell at a glance that it was not a wound Rick would be recovering from.

"You won't shoot me," Paul stated to Sam, not sounding at all certain about it, his eyes flicking back and forth between the teen and his own fallen comrade.

"If he doesn't, I will," Dean promised darkly. Sam never took his eyes off of Paul, but Dean could see his shoulders sag in relief at the sound of his voice. Behind Dean, the door opened and closed. He probably should be worried about Dave, but the width of the smear of blood he'd left behind him made it unlikely that he'd be much of a threat anytime soon.

"Okay. Okay." Paul stood slowly, showing his palms.

"Kick your gun to me and the knife to Sam. Gently," Dean ordered, keeping his eyes from Rick and his gruesome injury. Sam didn't have the strength to stab someone like that, even if he would try. His body weight must have done it as the chair shattered, and Dean wondered if Sam had really seen his accidental handiwork yet. And suddenly, he hated this twisted family more for making Sam do that than for torturing them both. Accident or not, the kid had killed a human being, and Dean knew Sam well enough to know what that was going to do to his brother for a long time.

Paul complied. "You really are Hunters, aren't you?" he asked.

Before Dean could answer, Dave's voice, gritty with pain, called from outside, "Come out in one minute or we'll blow the whole damn place up."

Paul looked...resigned. Not even afraid. "He will," he confirmed. "And it's not like Steve or Lance will stop him. And Mike won't stand up to him."

"Wait...didn't he send a couple of those guys to town?" asked Dean, frustrated and pissed with all of the adrenaline soup still swirling through his body.

"He sent the two you didn't see," Paul answered, and if he hadn't sounded so fatalistic, Dean wouldn't have believed him, would have thought he was just trying to get them to believe that there was no point in trying to get out. "He'll have two men watching the back door to gun you down if you try to leave, but there's an RPG in the Jeep."

"And he'll just...just kill you, too, even though you're –" Sam asked, a little high-pitched. He was trying to saw through the ropes on his ankles without putting the rifle down.

"– his brother. And Rick is his son. But, yes. He'll just convince himself that it's your fault we're dead." Paul looked at both of them, then squeezed his eyes shut after they skated over Rick. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I'm the only one who had a chance to stop him, but I let him intimidate me."

"Thirty seconds!" That was Steve, and he sounded downright gleeful.

An RPG? No wonder the psycho was excited. If they ever got out of this, Dean was so going to try to get one for their arsenal.

"Wait. Where's the bolt-hole?" Dean asked. "I've been in safe houses like this before. There's always another way out."

Paul's eyes widened fractionally. "Keypad on the back wall under the sink. 311692. Hurry – it's practically a bunker under this place and you might survive." He raised his voice. "Dave! Steve! Wait – let me negotiate with them."

Huh. There was a chance, a small chance, that Paul was actually working with them, at least to save his own skin. Dean gave Sam a quick glance, tilting his chin toward Paul, knowing his brother would get the message to keep Paul covered.

"Sorry, Paul. I can't do that," Dave called back. "You know we can't let the witches past the protections."

Dean found the keypad and as soon as he'd entered the numbers, a section of the floor made a noise like suction breaking and popped up marginally. "Sammy, get the hell in here! Paul too," Dean called.

He pried up the (damn heavy) trapdoor and herded the other two ahead of him. Sam stopped on the second step and Dean almost knocked all three of them down.

"Dean, what about Rick?" Sam asked suddenly.

Rick had stopped bleeding, which meant that he was already gone, but Dean wasn't about to tell Sam that. "We don't have time to get him down here, Sammy. I'm sorry. You gotta move it!"

He took three more steps and Dean had barely cleared the trapdoor behind him when Paul, at the foot of the cement stairs, hit a literal red button on the wall and the door closed behind Dean with a pneumatic hiss. Startled, Dean pointed his gun at Paul but before he said anything, the entire room shook with a muffled but loud crash. More crashes sounded above them and the ground trembled. The meager lights went out, but others came on almost immediately. Structural groans and smaller crashes continued for an interminable time, and Dean kept Paul covered the entire time.

Finally, the noise stopped and Dean could actually take a little bit of stock of their surroundings.

They were in a claustrophobic basement. The ceiling was barely higher than Dean's head, and it and the walls were all smooth concrete. There were lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling at regular intervals, but after the initial crash, they'd gone out and all light came from a handful of trouble lights scattered throughout and plugged in to the top of a generator that growled softly in the space under the stairs. It was a large room, perhaps half the footprint of the entire cabin, and there were shelves and shelves of supplies, from cans of food and bottles of water to camping lanterns. A pair of metal cots with bedrolls sat at either end of the long room. If the cabin was a safehouse, this was a survivalist's bomb shelter.

Sam found a flashlight on one shelf and flicked it on to study everything carefully.

For one minute, Dean was crushed by indecision on what to do next. He needed to look Sam over and get them both cleaned up and warmed up. None of their injuries were critical, but there were a lot of them, and combined with the cold, shock was a very real risk. He needed Paul secured. Granted the guy had helped them out with that whole combination thing, but that was probably as much to save himself as them and there was no way in hell it earned him their trust beyond letting him join them in the bunker. And there were potential weapons everywhere. They needed to inventory the place, make sure that nobody could come in, and find a way that they could get out. They needed an exit strategy and a way to communicate with the outside world. Dean might be beyond furious at the blind, sadistic torture, but he was more than ready to call in the cavalry to deal with Dave and company. The thought of just what Dad, Bobby, and Caleb would do to them brought a strange calm to Dean despite the fact that nothing had actually changed. With the calm came clarity. He knew what to do next.

"Cover me a sec," he told Sam, setting the guns he was carrying on a shelf and picking up a fine rope from the same. Dean directed Paul to walk to the cot that was the farthest from any of the many shelves. "You may not believe Sam would shoot you," Dean said conversationally to the man. "Or at least you might think that he'd hesitate, but you don't wanna test that. See, once we killed a barghest and didn't realize it had a puppy. The full-grown things are ugly mofos, but the puppies look like, well, puppies. Baby Cujo jumped at me and Sammy, who like dogs a whole lot more than he likes people, blew it right outta the air. So trust me – if I was in danger, he'd blew you away just as fast."

Of course, if a barghest bite broke the skin, it was 100% fatal, but Paul didn't need to know that. He just might need a little more incentive to behave, that was all.

Paul confessed that he had a boot knife and was compliant as Dean frisked him for anything else, had him sit on the edge of the cot, and tied his wrists together, palms together. Dean then tied the rope to the head of the cot, loosely enough for Paul to sit in the middle. He might be able to get out of that, but it would definitely take him time and effort. At least if Dean and Sam had a chance to make a break for it, they would have left him in a position where he could eventually free himself and not be trapped underground uable to escape. But he also couldn't jump them.

Paul also asserted that they were far enough into the wilderness that anyone who might possibly have heard the explosion would most likely just think it was a gunshot from a hunter, small h.

By the time Dean finished, Sam was shivering, though he'd never let the rifle dip from Paul the entire time Dean had worked.

"Medical supplies are over there," Paul said, unasked, tilting his head. He looked a little queasy whenever he really looked at the brothers, though if it was from the blood, he'd more than had his chances to do something about it while it was happening. (Or maybe he blamed them for Rick's death, something Dean would deal with...later. Or never.) Paul was right about the medical supplies – there were plenty, and for far worse injuries than they had.

But next, Dean needed to make certain that nobody was getting in. "They gonna be able to get that open once they dig it out?" he asked Paul, pointing to the oversized trapdoor.

"Not without power. It weighs at least a ton, and there are hydraulics to help it open," Paul said readily. "But there's a tunnel, about twenty feet long, at the far end of the room. Opens in the woods. But...Dave's too smart to not have it watched." He sighed. "He doesn't have any more grenades, but the Jeep's full of guns and some explosives."

Dean swore, but found himself believing Paul. He had a world-weary air that couldn't be faked. "So there are four guys out there, right?" he confirmed. "Assuming none of them blew themselves up with that stunt?" Paul nodded and Dean glared at him for a second. "And you're helping us why, exactly? You want us to waste your paranoid, batshit family?"

"No, of course not. Dave may be...everything you say, but he's still my brother. But it's obvious that you aren't witches, and I can't let him kill you if I can help it." Paul looked like he'd aged twenty years. "Dave blew up the cabin without knowing if his own son was dead or alive. I didn't realize until then...I was fooling myself that he'd let you go when he figured out...but he's lost it." His eyes were wet. "I hope you don't have to kill anyone, but lord knows we deserve it."

Dean didn't want to feel sympathy Paul, but the guy seemed sincere and he kind of did. He shook it off. "I know you're cold, Sammy, but watch him a little longer while I make sure the tunnel is secure, okay?"

Sam nodded, shivering. Dean looked at him assessingly for a moment. Sam looked cold and tired but not like he was going into shock (and the fact he had to leave Sam like that for even a minute kind of made Dean hate the whole world).

The tunnel was cement, too, but unlit and only about five feet high. Just being in it made Dean's teeth itch and his eyes water with the need to get out. He breathed slowly through his nose and recited a list of movie stars he thought had the best racks to distract himself from the feeling that the air was getting thinner the farther he went. He had to bite down hard to keep himself from pushing the small steel door open at the end of the tunnel to run outside and damn the consequences. He rested a hand on the door for a second, wishing he could at least see out there. But Sam was waiting.

Dean made it back to the main room a lot faster than he'd made it to the end of the tunnel.

"Nobody's getting in without a lot of work," he reported to Sam, hoping that Dave wouldn't be in a hurry to utilize those explosives, at least until he knew for sure that they hadn't actually died in the explosion he'd already set off. His attention should be split, too, having a monster on the loose and waiting for word back from the guys searching the library.

Next, Sam and Dean cleaned up each other and Sam wanted to stitch the cut on Dean's arm from Dave's push dagger, but Dean didn't let him take the time, just wrapping it tightly.

Paul pointed out footlockers full of clothes then, and the boys gratefully piled on layers of shirts. Sam even tucked himself into a drab green coat that hung down to his knuckles.

They drank some water and ate jerky and dried fruit (though Dean personally would have stocked an end-of-times lair with good stuff like M M's) and Sam shared some with Paul, who told them about how much trouble he'd gotten in for playing down here when he was a kid. Turned out, in his family, the inculcation started awfully young – the adults would choose which boys (never girls) would become the next generation of witch hunters. From then on, their lives revolved around training and learning about their quarry (which sounded more familiar than Dean was comfortable with), though some of the boys were encouraged to get regular jobs to support their efforts.

Paul kept answering Sam's questions while Sam and Dean went back to exploring what they had at their disposal, but Dean only half listened. The buzz under his skin that said they needed to do something was growing by the minute. But bursting out half-cocked in the dark to face up to four armed opponents who knew the area was no better than suicide.

"How is there no way to contact anyone outside from here?!" Dean demanded after opening like the fiftieth useless box. (Emergency rations so old the cans were rusting? Check. Clothes that belonged in the previous century? Check. Knitting supplies? Dog food? Enough cat's eye shells to pave the place? Check, check, and check. Cell phone, landline, two-way radio, freaking telegraph machine? Zilch. Nada. Bupkis. Jackshit.)

"I don't know," Paul admitted with a frown. "There used to be a ham radio by the generator. I don't know why it's gone."

"Hey!" Sam called excitedly, digging into one of those old trunks that people used to strap to the back of stagecoaches. "There's all kinds of research here from some guy named Elias."

Dean rolled his eyes. Research wouldn't take care of the armed guys just looking to bag a Winchester, nor would it get out an SOS, nor would it get them back to relative civilization, so it seemed as useless as the dried-out baby wipes Dean was holding at the moment. It didn't help that when Sam came up with his arms full of papers and books, he also released a ton of dust.

Dean sneezed three times. "Goodie," he said as soon as he could, his voice completely flat. "Just as good as a fifty-cal." He pronounced it fiddy-cale, which made him think of Caleb and curse himself for lying to the Hunter about where they were.

Sam, bloody and exhausted and trapped, looked way too happy about his find given their circumstances and ignored Dean. "Hey," he called again a minute later as Dean was considering more and more unlikely plans for getting out of there safely.

"Hey, Dean, this Elias guy thought he figured out where the monster would go if it hatched," Sam tried again. He had the same tone of voice he used to use when he'd figured out a new trick on the monkey bars, and Dean half expected Sam to say 'lookit' next.

"Sound like he had a Greek text too, but I don't see it. But anyway, his book that said if the egg wasn't destroyed, the monster would head for a koúnia, which literally translates as cradle, but he thought that that meant cradle like 'cradle of civilization.' You know, like historians call the place where those two rivers – Tigris and Euphrates, I think – come together." Sam was talking so fast Dean could hardly keep up. "He said that the monster would feed where two streams come together."

"Look at you." Dean's growing worry didn't abate, but he was still proud and impressed. A thought hit him. "It has to be in the shadow of Mount Greylock or something, right? That's what that prophecy said? If we find a good map, I bet we can figure it out."

"This was here all along?" asked Paul who Dean had nearly forgotten. (He never completely forgot a potential threat, he just hadn't thought about Paul overhearing them.) Paul looked sick again. "All of this time and everything they've – we've – given up and done, and what we needed was right here." His stunned eyes traced the cuts on Sam's and Dean's faces and he looked sick all over again.

Silence laid over everything for a long minute, Sam and Dean meeting each other's eyes while Paul stared at nothing. What could they say to the man? They had no absolution for him or his family. Nothing that would give him back the generations devoted to one thing to the point that they left morality and sanity far behind them.

Then Paul shook himself. "I know where that is, the streams coming together. It's less than a mile due north of here. We were always so close…" he trailed off again.

Sam went back to his books and Dean went back to his useless searching, used to letting ugly truths languish in silence, to pretending they didn't exist until you could find something to distract yourself.

Dean wasn't expecting Paul to say, "There are weapons."

There were, indeed, weapons, in a massive hidden compartment in the already hidden bunker beneath a miles-from-anywhere safehouse. It implied to a level of paranoia that even impressed Dean as a nearly life-long Hunter. It sort of reminded him of a Hunter Caleb had told him about once who carried cyanide capsules with him in case he was bitten by a werewolf or captured by monsters.

Dean was quickly distracted from those thoughts by the sheer size, variety, and badassery of the cache. A blunderbuss hung next to a pair of AK 47's. A two-handed sword with a wavy black blade leaned against the wall next to a shoebox full of tiny, snub-nosed revolvers. The former had to be nearly five feet long counting the heavy hilt. There were even bundles of paper-wrapped dynamite sticks. Dean could hardly contain himself. "This...okay, so there is a whole lot of suck right now, but this is freaking awesome!" He picked up a mirrored dagger with a handle that looked like a bunch of twisted up snakes and made a practice parry with it. "Oh man, so cool. I'm totally keeping this!"

Sam snickered. "Think you can use any of that stuff to get us out of here?"

Dean eyed a plastic grocery bag full of what he was pretty sure were flash-bang grenades. "Yeah, I think so."

Even though it hurt the cuts on his cheeks, Dean couldn't stop a wide grin from spreading over his face as he surveyed the weapons again. And Sam, while he could sometimes act like a prissy old lady, was still a 15-year-old boy, so he couldn't help grinning in answer.

"Ready for the big showdown, Sundance?" Dean asked with a swagger.

"Sure am, Butch."

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AN: References, as usual.

Dirty Harry is a character in a movie of the same name. One of the things he's famous for was his big handgun.

Cujo is a rabid dog in a Stephen King book (and movie) of the same name.

An RPG is a rocket-propelled grenade in this context.

Butch and Sundance were famous outlaws in the wild west.

Christine: Yeah, I think Dave is even worse! It's a fun thought that other Hunters recognize (and fear) the name Winchester, isn't it? I may have to do something with that.

Colby's girl: Yup, then you had to wait for this one. I'm glad you like the silent dialogue and nod to Sam's fascination for serial killers. I don't like Dave, either. Talk about unreasonable! I sort of imagine that his grandpa kind of raised him and was an obsessed, abusive a-hole, but that doesn't excuse Dave's actions. I know I warned about a violent chapter, but apparently, that's going to be the next chapter rather than this one since I got caught up in the underground bomb shelter thingie.

BruisedBloodyBroken: Sorry to make you wait! This chapter gave me absolute fits. I rewrote it a couple times. This is the third (very different) iteration, I think. I love reading about German swearwords! I remember my grandma, who was Dutch, not German, sayingpotverdoriewhich I understand is lot saying gosh darnit instead of the real words. LOL

sylvia37: Of course he will! You'll just need to wait and see how.

Kathy: Thanks! Did you quoteThe Princess Bridein your comment or did I imagine it? Such a great movie...I hope you really did mean to, because Inigo Montoya is so fabulous. It makes me think that Dave and his ancestors are a little bit like the Dread Pirate Roberts. Heh. Like you, I love the way the guys communicate without words, too, as you probably can tell from reading my stuff. That connection is part of what we love so much about the guys, after all. I am SO happy you liked the knife trick. The first way I wrote it was just terrible and I'm so glad that Janice encouraged me (nicely!) to rework it. It makes a lot more sense than it initially did!

radpineapple: Yay! Your comment makes me so happy! Thank you. This chapter didn't come easily...I hope you enjoy it too. I think you'll like the monster once it's revealed but no hints. I have a feeling I'll be falling down the SCP rabbit hole A LOT. Thanks for turning me on to it!