Jake Tully – strength, Army, NC?
Max Miller – telekinesis, Saginaw, MI, father – Jim
Ava Wilson – visions, Peoria, IL
Andy Gallagher – mind control
Anselm Weems – mind control
Lily Noonan – heart attacks
John turns all the lights off except the kitchen one. He's just going downstairs after putting the boys to bed because of course Sammy had been staying up caught between staring at the walls — at Seth Wesson's symbols — and doing his math homework by himself. Even the relief of seeing Sammy just sitting in the living room covering his yawn with one hand hadn't stopped John's heart from pounding the same rate it had been ever since the demon in the house. Plus, Sammy had kicked up a fuss when Seth had retreated into the kitchen without going over Sam's attempts to draw on the walls to match Seth's symbols. John knows that Seth never should have promised Sam anything.
Stomping his way into the kitchen, John sees Seth sitting at the head of the kitchen table, his elbows on the table as his hands fist into his shaggy hair.
"What's the matter with you?" Not that John cares, with the way Seth's been deliberately sketchy about what he did to the demon. But if Seth was injured in that fight, he could be a liability. But then John notices something like a small notebook open in between Seth's elbows. It's not one of Sammy's; it looks more like a business-type-thing they sell at office stores. "What's that?"
"Bruce Wilson's day planner," Seth says without looking up. "I thought I could find out who he's been meeting with—"
John admits that makes some sense. Demons can jump from body to body, so maybe Wilson had been hanging around with someone who had dived too far into something he didn't understand.
"He's got a sister in Peoria. She was supposed to visit this weekend with her husband and their daughter." Seth's voice sounds choked and harsh. "Her name's Ava."
"Does that matter?" John can understand the fear, considering the demon had been talking about destroying families, and even he gets a sick feeling when he sees kids involved in a case — demon or otherwise. But it sounds like the kid's safe now, and it doesn't really have any bearing on the fact they have to find the demon and exorcise it.
Seth's head finally snaps up, and he pins John with a glare, like he's angry with John for not getting it.
"Demons aren't just after souls." Seth frowns so deeply his forehead has grooves in it. "They want something specific. Some of them."
"What?" John plants his hands on the table and leans down to get into Seth's face. "Now they have a plan?" He might not be the expert in exorcisms that Seth apparently is, but he knows what demons are: agents of chaos. "They want to destroy. That's all."
"That's all?!" Seth snaps back, leaning forward to meet John's anger head-on. "These aren't creatures you can hunt and kill. They're smarter, they're stronger, and you can't do this by yourself."
John isn't by himself, though, and if this is supposed to be some argument that Seth needs to become his new partner, John thinks he's doing a shitty job of it.
"What if Dean had gotten possessed?" Seth says. "Would you shoot him?"
"What!"
John can't even comprehend that image. His mind refuses. He focuses instead on what Seth has accused him of.
"What do you think I'm doing?" John crashes into one of the flimsy chairs trying to get to Seth, though he doesn't know yet if he going to shake him by the collar or punch him in the face.
Seth leans back, his expression dialing down from raging anger to a simmer that freezes his features in a hard stare.
"You don't know the first thing about what you're hunting or how to do it," Seth says.
"You're blaming this on me?!" John's hand clenches on the back of the chair, and he remembers he's got two boys sleeping upstairs, and one of them is so enamored with this self-righteous hunter that he pouts when John is the one to put him to bed. "What the hell are you teaching my son behind my back?"
Seth surges to his feet, like this is the thing that offends him.
"I haven't done a thing to Dean!" he shouts. "He's too damn loyal to you!"
John shoves the chair out of the way and stands chest-to-chest with Seth.
"To Sam!" he growls in Seth's face. "You've got him practicing your cryptic symbols until his hand goes numb."
"They're protection symbols!" Seth waves a large hand towards the living room, where his strange lines are still plastered on the walls. "He's going to need them!"
"Why?" John's stomach disappears. "What are you doing to them!"
"Nothing!" Seth throws both hands up in the air, not even trying to hit John. He stares at John coldly. "You hunt the damn demon however you want."
With that, Seth spins on a heel and leaves the kitchen so fast that he's almost running away.
"Where are you going?" John follows him into the living room and watches him pick up his bag on his way to the door.
"For a walk!" Seth jerks the front door open and slams it shut behind him.
John scrubs a hand over the top of his head, his body still tense with adrenaline that doesn't have anything to do now. The house is strangely quiet, and John casts a glance at the stairs. It's probably too much that both Sam and Dean slept through that, and now John is down a man for the rest of the demon hunt.
John goes back into the kitchen for the jar of salt that's ever-present in a Winchester house and starts going around the windows, making sure nothing can get in. No demon is coming after his family again. He pauses in the living room and stares at the chalk symbols on the walls. His fingers itch to peel the wallpaper straight off the walls, but if they're really protection symbols, that might mean something could happen if he takes them down. John lays down a straight salt line around the entire room and leaves it, taking his revolver with him as he shuts the door to his room.
o0O0o
Seth doesn't come back that night. Or in the morning. Dean tries to argue from staying home from school, but John can't justify too many absences without the system getting suspicious so he sends the boys off with the usual words to Dean, Watch out for your brother.
John isn't foolish enough to go out looking for the demon by himself, so he just drives to the store to pick up some boxed macaroni and cheese for dinner. There's no time for anything else. When he pulls back up to the house, Seth Wesson's car is sitting by the curb, empty. John leaves the groceries in the car and cautiously goes to the house with his gun in his free hand. Seth's bag is sitting next to the door when John opens it, and Seth sits in the same chair at the kitchen table he's claimed before, bent over his open journal like he's supposed to be there waiting for John to get back.
John lowers the hammer on his gun and feels a sharp spike of something like smug pride when Seth jumps in his seat and raises wide eyes to John.
"Good walk?" John asks, his back rigidly straight.
Seth's mouth twitches nervously, and he ducks his head down to his journal. John lowers the gun and walks into the kitchen to stand close to the table.
"I was doing some research." Seth rubs his fingers over the open pages of his journal.
The journal is a little sideways because of where he's standing, but John can read enough without craning his neck to make out a list.
Jake Tully
Max Miller
Ava Wilson
Seth closes the journal with one hand before John gets any further, but then Seth rubs at his eyes with his fingertips, so John doesn't think he's noticed John's snooping. Seth sighs as he drops his hands again.
"Look, I'm not a danger to you, or to Dean or Sam," he says. "I just know more about the way Hell works."
It's not exactly an apology, but John has a feeling he's never going to hear the words I'm sorry from Seth.
"Hell isn't just chaos," Seth continues, despite the fact John doesn't sit down or take his hand from his gun. "It's mostly chaos with tyrants ruling it. The thing we saw yesterday, that was an imp, at best. He's got no power in the Pit, but he'll grab whatever he can, kiss up to whatever red-eyed boss he needs to."
"Red eyes?" John shakes his head without thinking. "Demons have black eyes."
"Not all."
John almost opens his mouth to argue again because he's learned the rules of this game, but then he freezes.
"There are different eyes?" he asks.
"Not a lot." Seth doesn't even look reluctant to share information. "Crossroad demons have red eyes. They're pretty low on the totem, but whoever's King of the Crossroads has an in with the higher-ups."
Some of this is making a hell of a lot of sense to John. He sinks slowly into the chair next to Seth and lays his gun on the table in front of him.
"How high would a demon have to be to have yellow eyes?"
Seth blinks away his sudden surprise as his eyebrows do something that looks like he's trying not to frown. It makes him look confused more than anything.
"Pretty damn high," Seth says cautiously. His words come slower now, so that he sounds like a kid who knows he's not supposed to be talking about something. "The highest— the most powerful demons, both there and on Earth, are the ones that served Lucifer when he fell."
"Lucifer?"
Seth has said the name twice now, but still, John shakes his head. Seth shrugs and slumps in his chair, a man tired and defeated.
"Bible at least got the names right, if not the story," Seth says, his eyes on the table in front of John. "Lucifer's locked away; he can't get out of Hell. But he can get others to do his bidding." His eyes flicker up, cautious and guarded. "They call them Knights of Hell, and they're some of the most powerful bastards in the Pit. Holy water doesn't stop them, or salt lines. But they can't cross iron."
John wonders just how Seth came by this knowledge and what his experience with demons really was. John hasn't even heard of hunters crossing paths with high-up demons; no one else knows anything about a Demon with yellow eyes. Now he knows that a Big Bad from the Pit — a Knight of Hell — killed his wife. John swallows down against the heavy pressure that rests right on his lungs. He needs to keep his head.
"What about the symbols you're drawing on my walls?" he asks Seth.
He'll deal with the Knight of Hell later, once he feels more like he can breathe. Besides, he's wanted to know what Seth's teaching Sammy for two days now, and he knows Seth can give him those answers, at least.
"They're protection—"
"That's what Sam said." John's hand comes down on the edge of the table hard. "Protection from what?"
"From Lucifer and his Knights," Seth says immediately. "It's Enochian, and it's strong enough to keep anyone with that kind of power from seeing you or hearing you."
John waits, but Seth doesn't say anything more.
"No catches?" he asks.
If Seth has something that powerful, why would he teach it to an eleven-year-old and not to John as a fellow hunter? And John hasn't said anything about why he wants to know about demons with yellow eyes, so how does Seth know that Sam and Dean need that kind of protection?
John has to swallow again at the thought of the Demon going after his sons, and he focuses on Seth.
"Why'd you give them to Sam?"
"Because if he can't live a normal life, he at least needs to feel like he can be useful." Seth's voice practically cuts the words out of his mouth, it's so sharp. Even his eyes stare at John pointedly. "You're going out killing monsters, and half the time Dean's with you, and where does that leave Sam? Hiding under his covers, waiting to hear how badly you've been hurt this time?"
There's something hard and hurt under Seth's words, but John is already thinking of waking up on a motel with Sammy pressed into his side because the boy wanted to make sure his dad was alright.
"And you know this just from one day with my boy?" he asks to cover up how much he already knows it's true. He doesn't want anyone else reading that much into his son.
"I know because my dad did the same thing." Seth's hand clenches on top of his journal, but he won't meet John's eyes. "He'd leave on his missions, and I'd sit on the bed and wonder if he was coming back, every time."
John runs his fingers over the barrel of his gun and takes in the silence of the house. He knows his boys don't have a normal life, but the Demon stole that away from them all years ago. If there wasn't such an active enemy out there somewhere, John wouldn't even consider making gun cleaning a regular part of Sammy's life or teaching Dean how to hunt when he's only fifteen and should be more concerned with learning how to drive. But John knows that the Demon attacked his home, and with Seth's new information, it sounds like this Demon is somewhere high up in Hell's hierarchy.
"How do we find out what this imp-thing wants with Wilson?" John asks. Best to focus on the hunt they're on now. When they're done and safe, then John can interrogate Seth more about the Knights of Hell and whether or not they actually have yellow eyes.
"We can try to trap it, but we'd have to lure it to someplace we have a devil's trap," says Seth. "Unless you can draw one in less than thirty seconds."
"Can you?" John glares, just in case Seth is trying to show off, like with the exorcism.
"No human can do that."
Oh, great. Now Seth's back to rolling his eyes at John.
"Good enough," he says, ignoring the insubordination for now. "I guess one of us would be the best bait."
"Better me than you," Seth says.
John might take issue with that, especially since now the demon knows that it can't possess Seth because of that stupid tattoo. That's another thing John's going to have to look into. Maybe he should be keeping a list.
"Show me the devil's trap first."
