Disclaimer: I don't own or profit from Supernatural. Thanks to Starliteyes for looking this over for me.

Hell Is Where The Heart Is

Chapter Two

Dean Winchester was Pissed with a capital P. His sixteen year-old hormones, combined with limited emotional coping skills made him into a ticking time bomb with a very, very short fuse. Thankfully, the health and welfare of the populace around him were relatively safe the majority of the time. At least from physical violence. There was nothing between here and Hell that could keep a civil tongue in the boy's head and that left most people bleeding in the streets while glaring at his retreating back. However, there was one thing that was sure to light Dean's fuse every time, and that was an endangered Sammy.

One of the first things that bullies learned when they moved to a new town was that Sam Winchester was off limits. That meant no taunting, no threatening, and if Dean really had a hair up his ass, that meant no breathing within a fifty foot radius of his little brother. That included everyone, not just the bullies at school, but the ones loitering on street corners as well.

They had never lived in suburbia and if it wasn't for the occasional ghost-busting gig on the other side of the tracks, Dean would have never laid eyes on a house that actually had a white picket fence unless it was on T.V. The hoods that they moved into were dirty and mean, and Dean was sure to build his street cred with quick efficiency. Not so much for himself as for Sam. Dean took care of Sam, and that meant anticipating his needs before he even knew that he needed them. To that effect, Dean always made Sam's transitions into their new ghetto home as painless as possible.

While on a hunt, Dean made sure that Sam was safe. That was his job first and foremost. His second priority was watching his dad's back. Both of which he did with the skill and finesse that no normal sixteen year-old boy should be capable of. But Dean wasn't just any teenage boy, he was a Winchester, and his mad skills were legendary. Even if those legendary skills were only whispered about by his little brother, who thought Dean was a super hero. And that was enough for Dean. He didn't need to show off for anyone else. Well, his dad, but that wasn't showing off, that was all about proving his worth as a man.

So, yeah. On a hunt, if anything fucked with Sam, it got ventilated. Then it got salted and burned as a precaution. And if really pissed off Dean, then maybe he lit up anything that might resemble a nest for good measure. He was dangerous, he was predatory, and he was disciplined. All that blowing off steam made him exceptionally calm for a hormonal, socially challenged teen, much to his numerous teacher's and counselor's amazement.

As a necessary survival tactic, the many economically deprived school systems Dean had entered into over the years were quick to identify him as a high-risk teen, and watched him like a hawk for even the smallest hint of mental combustion. But Dean wasn't a trouble-starter; he was, one biology teacher commented to a room of like-minded faculty, a trouble-ender. As in, if another kid started shit with either him or his little brother, they got ended with extreme prejudice.

Teenage boys by nature were a little arrogant and a whole lot cocky. Fights were bound to happen when you lumped them together for eight hours at a time with newly developing teenage girls who were just figuring out that they had assets, and how shaking them degenerated a room full of boys into slobbering Neanderthals. More than once it had been tempting for Dean to flex his bad-ass battle techniques for the ladies, and as a result he had been sent home a couple of times for brawling, but not once had he put another kid in the hospital. That was pretty damn impressive, considering his mad skills and all.

Of course, the fact that injuring another kid would piss off his dad to no end had a lot to do with it as well.

So when Sam didn't make it home from school, Dean's fuse got lit, but it was a slow burn. Their house was only four blocks away, a short enough distance that his twelve year-old brother didn't need an escort. After all, even though he was the baby of the family, he was a Winchester, and that was saying a whole hell of a lot.

When a search of the street in between their house and the school turned up nothing, Dean widened his perimeter to include all surrounding areas like heavily concealed back yards and the one nearby park. When he came up empty, he knew it was time to call his dad, because there was no way that Sam had just overlooked the time and was hanging out at the local library, though Dean did check just for the sake of thoroughness. No, Sam was gone, which meant something had taken him, and just like that Dean's fuse went from slow burn to nuclear.

Once Dean involved his father, things progressed fairly quickly. They re-searched the area, just to make sure nothing had been missed. John made a few calls, asked some questions, and half an hour later he received one call back. Dean didn't hear the words, but he saw his father's face as he listened to the caller.

Dean knew mad. There was something about becoming an adolescent that made most teenagers into experts on the subject. Now while he was damn sure to keep a respectful tongue in his head around his father, he had been known to tell a few asshole authority figures exactly what he thought of them and their mamas. It helped to alleviate his own inner turmoil when someone else's head, especially an adult's, turned into a tomato and exploded. Since he didn't get to play the, piss off the parents, card that his peers got to, he took a great deal of pleasure in torturing most everyone else around him. After all John Winchester's version of smacking the sass out of your mouth meant an hours on end training session where if it didn't leave something broke, then it sure as hell felt like it.

So yeah, he knew what anger looked like. What he saw on his dad's face wasn't anger though. It was rage. White-hot, blinding, not only am I going to kill you, but I'm going to take out everyone you love, fury. Dean was at least twenty feet away, but he took another step back just in case. Never in his lifetime had he seen his dad so mad. Not even when Dean had fucked up on a hunt and almost gotten them all wasted.

Dad snapped his phone closed without a word and stalked by him into the house. Uncertain of what to do, Dean stood still, waiting for an order to be barked his way. John returned in record time, carrying the M40 weapon case with him. Every nerve in Dean's body went bow-string taut at the sight of it.

John had just recently started training him on the sniper rifle, and not unsurprisingly he was a natural at it. The first time he used in the field it had been on a werewolf. He missed his mark by several inches, severing the monster's carotid artery instead of striking its heart. The thing had bled like a bitch, but hadn't outright died.

His dad had marched him down the hill like a recalcitrant toddler and made Dean stand over the wolf as it thrashed around on the forest floor, blood and shit splattering him and soaking into the deadfall. Most people didn't know that the bowels were one of the first things to go in the middle of death throes. It was a mess to watch and the stink was nearly as bad as three day-old decomp. Dad made him watch as the thing morphed from a monster into a man, made him watch as the guy choked on his own blood, his eyes so wide and dilated with shock that Dean couldn't see any other color except for black with just the barest rim of white.

Then wordlessly, John took out his .45 and shot the man through the heart with a silver bullet, turning away and leaving Dean to salt and burn the body on his own. John hadn't needed to say anything, Dean had learned his lesson. Don't ever miss. A miss could not only cost him his life, Dad's or God-forbid Sammy's, but it could also mean torturing some pathetic, backwoods monster that maybe, just maybe didn't deserve it.

The second time he took out the M40, he saw the pink mist and his dad patted him silently on the back. He learned his lesson, and his father was proud of him for doing so.

John stowed the gun case in the trunk of the Impala and slid into the front seat. Dean joined him hurriedly, knowing his father would clue him in when he was ready. Even though they were family, they still worked as a military unit. John was the general, and Dean was on a need to know basis.

Dean wanted to rally all of his unused teenage angst and demand that his father tell him what was going on with all the petulance of a boy trying to find his way to manhood, but the rage was still stamped on John's face, and Dean was as willing to go up against his father as he was a den of wyverns.

They drove out towards the waterfront, leaving behind the commercial district and continued on to the warehouses that were settled along the bay like vultures on a corpse. It was deserted on a Sunday afternoon, but Dean was pretty sure that even if they were there on a Monday, the place would be empty. The lots around them looked unused and worn down, inhabitable only by the homeless and only if they were desperate.

John pulled the Impala to a stop, and Dean glanced at him from the corner of his eye. What he saw only made the cold, hard despair in the pit of his stomach harden into an obsidian ball. His dad's hands were wrapped around the wheel so tightly that his knuckles had been bleached white to the bone. His lips pressed into a colorless line that stood out starkly against the dark stubble on his face, but it was John's eyes that worried Dean the most. They had darkened into black, hard stone.

"Take the M40 to the roof. Our target is in the warehouse to the west." John's voice was brittle, and Dean could barely suppress the shiver that rattled down his spine. He handed Dean the keys so he could open the trunk.

"Dad, what's going on?"

"Just do as I say," John barked and Dean nearly leapt out of his skin.

Dean scrambled to do as he was told, almost out of the car before his father's deadly soft voice stopped him.

"I don't know how many of them there are, but don't shoot them, son."

"What?" Dean was incredulous. Why was he going up onto the roof it he wasn't going to be able to shoot the monsters that stole Sam? He hadn't quite decided what form of thing had taken his little brother, but he was damn sure positive that it was evil, and it needed to be made dead real fucking quick.

His dad turned his hard, furious gaze onto him, and Dean felt his entire body flush hot then cold.

"Listen to me, Dean. Unless you see Sammy or me in direct, eminent danger you are not to shoot. Do you understand me?"

Dean quivered a little and he felt the rage trickle back. He wanted to do the unthinkable and argue with his father, but he couldn't. So he did all he could do, he nodded and slammed the door. He stalked to the back of the Impala, retrieving the case before circling around to the driver side.

Wordlessly, he handed the keys back to his father through the open window without looking at him.

As he turned to walk away, he heard his father issue the command again. "Do as I say, Dean."

Dean hunched his shoulders and kept walking.

He scaled the fire escape effortlessly, landing on the roof of the building without a sound. He padded over to the west wall, hunching down so he couldn't be seen. Methodically he unpacked the M40, his sure hands assembling the weapon with skill. Getting the rifle locked and loaded was something he could do blindfolded in twenty-seven seconds. He knew because his dad timed him.

He slid the slender bullet into the breach, and nosed the barrel over the lip of the wall. He found the warehouse where Sammy was being kept, and he adjusted the sight as he looked for any windows that would give him a clear line of contact. From the east side the building was completely sealed, a sheet metal box with only one entrance.

Dean cussed under his breath focusing on the double doors where a late model, white van was parked. He saw movement, and he released a breath when the outer doors started to open. Finally he was catching a break. John's order had been clear, but he knew that he would disregard it if he even so much as had an inkling that Sam was in danger. He tightened his finger around the trigger, and waited for the monster to appear.

The doors swung open, and Dean's finger quivered then loosened. It was a man. Just a man.

John Winchester's Golden Rule bulleted through his brain as the man backed away from the door and sunk back into the shadows.

Thou shall not kill…humans.

Dean eased his finger off the trigger and waited. Never had he dreamed that they would be hunting humans. What was Sammy thinking anyways, allowing himself to be taken by some dude? Sam should have put the guy down easy, but instead he was being held captive by some freak.

His body tensed as he realized what a normal human man would want with a little boy. He slipped his finger back on the trigger, his jaw tight with barely contained anger. It was then that Dean decided that there were all kinds of monsters in the world. Some of them had claws, some had freaky-ass tentacles, and some of them were just men. In his black-and-white teenaged mind where right was right, and wrong was wrong, they all deserved the same patented Winchester treatment.

Salt and burn, baby, Dean thought and sighted his scope steadily on the open door and waited for his chance.

A half an hour passed, and there was no movement from inside the warehouse. Dean didn't know where his father had gotten off to, but he knew that he had to be around somewhere. He wiped the sweat from his brow, and retook aim, his breathing shuddering to a stop when he saw the warehouse light up like the Fourth of July from the inside. Orange and red light poured out the aged cracks and the bullet holes made by gang bangers looking for a makeshift firing range. From where he was sitting it looked like flames, but that couldn't be right. Who in their right mind would set fire to a building while they were in it?

Just then the man came barreling out of the building at full tilt. Dean tracked him, his finger on the trigger, but his dad's warning, coupled with the echoes of the Golden Rule kept him from squeezing. The man ducked inside the van, and Dean growled at his lost chance.

He was panning back to the warehouse to look for more details when an eardrum shattering explosion nearly knocked him on his ass.

TBC…