Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica.

John slows the Impala to a stop just behind Bobby's beat-up Toyota, but he still doesn't really see anything that's supposed to be Seth's "bunker." He tosses a glance at Dean in the front seat.

"You boys stay here for now," he says.

"Yes, sir." Dean fiddles with the brace on his wrist, covering up the sprain Azazel gave him.

John lays one arm against the long seat and looks at the back seat.

"You got that, Sam?"

Sam just nods and keeps his eyes on the kid's glove in his lap. He's been holding that stupid thing since they left Bobby's. John's starting to hate that glove, with its permanent ink scrawled into the side. With a sigh, John punches open the door and climbed out of the car to where Bobby is already heading for a set of steps that lead further down to a small dip in the flat horizon.

"This is the bunker?" John looks around at the door embedded into the ground, like a sod house.

"It's where Seth said it would be," says Bobby. He pulls a keychain out of his pocket — left behind with the rest of Seth's things when the demon had taken him — and slides a heavy key into the door with a click. The door swings open easily, and John goes in first, hand on his gun just in case.

At first, it's so dark inside that all John can make out is an iron railing in front of him as he steps onto a wooden floor. He senses Bobby behind him, and then lights flick on with a distinct snap and the crackle of electricity.

This place is a lot bigger than John had thought.

The iron railing in front of him is actually part of a large balcony with a staircase going down to what looks like a library. Even Bobby doesn't have this many books. Beyond the library, there's an open doorway that leads to something that looks like a kitchen. A really big kitchen.

Bobby whistles lowly and nearly drops the flashlight. John keeps his gun at his side, but he's still gaping around the building. There's an obvious hallway on the wall opposite of the kitchen, and he has no idea what's behind there because there's also a staircase that continues down to another level past the rows and rows of books in front of him. How much room does one man need?

"Whoa."

John jerks around at the soft voice because dammit he told his boys to stay in the car. Sammy doesn't look one bit apologetic as he cranes his head to stare at the ceiling.

"I told you to stay put." John frowns at Dean because Dean at least should know better and make sure he has a handle on his brother.

"Yeah, that worked out real well last time," Dean mutters through his teeth.

The kid flinches immediately after, but it's enough for John to remember his body hitting the wall of Bobby's panic room, crawling slowly up towards the ceiling without being able to breathe.

"We don't know if this place is safe yet," John says.

"No, it's okay, Dad," Sammy says immediately. "See, they got Enochian on the ceiling."

John lifts his eyes just enough to eye the roof above him. Sure enough, the tiles above him have dark symbols along the edges where the walls meet the ceiling.

"Balls," Bobby whispers. "I need a new dictionary."

"You know what they say, Sammy?"

After all, Sammy's the one who's been excited about Seth's nightly lessons. Sam raises the hand not holding the baseball glove and points at the far west corner.

"That one is 'eyes'," Sam says easily. "And ... trian is shall be, like in the Bible. I think that one means shield, so it's shielding eyes? Or a shield against eyes? It keeps anything from seeing inside here."

"Kid knows what he's doing," Bobby says appreciatively.

John doesn't know if he's talking about Sammy or Seth.

"What's over there?" Sam points at the hallway John saw earlier.

John just shakes his head; it's not like he knows any better than Sam. He just got here five seconds before his boys.

"You boys want to go exploring?" Bobby asks.

Sammy practically lights up even though John shoots Bobby a glare. Bobby looks right back at John as if he's two seconds away from calling him an "idjit" again. John sighs and turns back to the two boys by the door.

"Stay with your brother," he tells Sammy, but both of them nod.

Dean still holds his body tense and his shoulders up. John doesn't know if he doesn't trust the bunker they've found or if he's just still upset about what happened at Bobby's. Either way, Dean doesn't need John to interfere.

The boys turn almost as one, and Sammy leads the way through the open door to the hallway. John turns deliberately to face Bobby. Bobby just shrugs.

"Keep them outa our hair while we see what we're gonna need here."

Okay, Bobby has a point there. John nods curtly and walks into the rows of books while Bobby wonders through the doors to the kitchen.

The bookshelves really do work like a library. John's half-surprised when he finds they're labeled. Thin white stickers have words like "Mythology," "Creatures," and "Angels" with hand-drawn arrows pointing down the length of the shelves. John taps his fingers against a sticker that says "Crossroads Demons/Deals" and keeps going. He finally finds an entire shelf labeled "Demonology" on the end, like a library would put up signs for fiction or non-fiction. He walks down between the shelves and wonders where to start. But then he catches the sight of a framed photograph lying at the end of the shelf, reaching out to take it.

The photo is the grainy kind of color of at least three decades ago. A group of men in suits, along with two in priests' robes, stand side by side like some kind of membership photo for a yearbook. John's eyes zero in on one particular man in the group, and he swallows hard.

"Looks like Seth cleaned up before he came up to my place," Bobby says, re-entering the library room. "But there's some food in the fridge."

John really doesn't have it in him to think about eating.

He steps carefully out from the shelves to find Bobby standing next to the large table, surveying the library like a kid on Christmas. He finally looks at John and frowns.

"What'd you find?" Bobby nods at the frame in John's hands.

"Nothing." John tosses the photo on the table, and it skids hard enough to crack the glass.

Bobby watches the photo slide over the table then snaps back to looking at John, but then Dean comes thundering into the room, looking like he's just run two flights of stairs.

"Dad, Dad!" Dean never gets this excited. "They have a shooting range. I'm not kidding."

His eyes are wide like even he has a hard time believing there's a shooting range indoors, underneath this whole thing. Funnily enough, the idea of a shooting range for a group of hunters is something John can get behind.

"Hey, I found the bedrooms." Sammy's voice comes from the hallway past the library. "I think I can have my own room!"

Dean blinks down from his wide-eyed awe suddenly and casts a wary glance at John.

"Were we staying?" he asks slowly. He looks like he's actually trying to ask if he has to talk to Sammy again about why they can't stay.

John just rolls his head, not really shaking his head yet because he doesn't actually know what's going to happen with this hunt and how it's going to end. Never mind what they're going to do once it's over. John brushes past Dean on his way to the hallway, with Bobby following at a trudge.

It's not that hard to find where Sammy is. The hallway leads into several different bedrooms, and it looks like a home instead of a research facility or even a hunting outpost. John really has no idea what to make of this place. Sam stands in the doorway of the bedroom closest to the library room, like he doesn't dare enter it.

"What's this?" John says, coming up to stand behind Sam.

Sammy just shrugs.

"I dunno."

He's a little subdued, like he found something he doesn't actually like. John walks into the room while Sammy stays where he is, one hand clinging to the door jam. The bedroom is pretty plain, even in terms of furniture: a bed, a nightstand with a lamp, and a short bookshelf that's mostly empty are the only things in the room. The bed is mostly made but still has the crinkled sheets of the unwashed. John passes over the nightstand — the only other thing there is an alarm clock — and goes for the bookcase. Right on the top is a stack of paperwork, all with either Social Services or the CPS stamp on the letterhead. John only recognizes some of the names because that stupid list is burned into his mind. "Max Miller" is the subject of a report for domestic violence that's at least five pages long. The kid is Sammy's age.

There's also a thick black leather book on top of the bookcase, and it isn't until John opens it and sees the tissue-thin paper pages that he realizes it's a Bible. It has the aged look of a family heirloom, but there's no writing or notes in it as John thumbs his way through it, letting the pages fall from his fingers. Then, the Bible flops open where a newspaper clipping is tucked in between the pages, somewhere in the middle of Job. John stares down at his own face, nearly twenty years younger. His wife, young and fresh, smiles back at him from the yellow piece of newspaper.

"There's two other beds." Bobby passes Sammy in the doorway and nudges the kid's hair a little. "Don't look like they've been slept in."

Sammy won't get his own room, is all that goes through John's mind at this. He turns enough so that he can see Bobby approaching him while Dean hangs back with Sammy by the door. John closes the Bible but keeps his hands over the worn cover.

"I want you boys to find all the books you can that have Enochian," he says, nodding at Dean and Sammy. "See if you can translate what's around the library ceiling."

"Okay." Sammy nods solemnly and turns immediately to get started on his important task.

Dean frowns at John. He's smart enough to know that translating symbols that are clearly meant as a barrier, to protect, isn't going to help them find Seth or the Demon.

From Bobby's frown as the boys leave, John guesses that the other man knows it, too. But at least Bobby nods the boys on their way before he steps into the bedroom with John and nods at the Bible in his hands.

"What'd you find?"

John rubs the palm of his hand over the leather, feeling the smoothness that age provides.

"Is Seth related to you?" he asks Bobby. Bobby frowns as if he doesn't understand the question, and John rolls his eyes and prods, "Is he family?"

Bobby's frown grows deeper.

"You know he isn't."

Right, John and Bobby have their start in hunting in common. Two dead wives between them. John hadn't really been expecting Seth to be related to Bobby anyway. Not anymore.

"What are you thinking?" Bobby eyes John half-sideways as he turns to take in the stark bedroom.

"Nothing," John says quickly. He puts the Bible down deliberately and steps back to look at the rest of the bookcase. "Don't know how you got him to call you sir."

Bobby chuckles behind John's back.

"Beats me. He came up to me that way; said he heard my reputation."

How does that make sense? If Seth had known—Why go to Bobby and not John? But John pushes that from his mind and forces a smirk on his face as he turns around again.

"You got a reputation, Singer?" He lets his eyes go wide enough to fake a bit of awe.

Bobby rolls his eyes.

"Shut up." He glowers at John and then waves one hand around the room. "You see anything in here we can use?"

John turns his head to look around the room, like a monastery cell if it wasn't for that lamp and clock. He knows his eyes linger when they reach the bookcase, but he can't help but think of the wedding announcement for John and Mary Winchester, clipped carefully from a newspaper and tucked away in a Bible.

"No," he says. "Let's go back to the books."

o0O0o

John flips a few pages in the Kansas atlas he's found. This place has practically everything, and it's hard to stay as cynical as he wants to in the face of a bunker dedicated to hunting. His finger drags down the list of cities in the index until he finds what he's looking for and goes back to the map.

"Stull is only about three hundred miles away," he says.

His finger almost brushes against the edges of Lawrence, but he ignores that. Bobby lifts his head, his glasses slipping to the tip of his nose, and frowns above the thick demonology text he has one hand on.

"Have you seen the notes he kept on that place?" Bobby pushes the leather journal open between the two of them closer to John.

John turns the journal around so that he can read it. They've been working out of Seth's journal since the man disappeared, but there's just too much. It's not just the list of kids' names — Sammy's included — or the list of what looks like demon names; Seth has about a dozen lists in the back of his journal, none of them labeled. Trying to determine which are useful is starting to feel like trying to play "What Do These Things Have in Common?"

Stull Cemetery is near the bottom of a list that starts with Pestilence and Famine and includes Lucifer and Michael. John grinds his teeth together and tries to think of what to say to Bobby that won't sound crazy.

"Sounds like the End of Days," Bobby says before John can think of something that doesn't sound like it's from Revelations.

He hates that book.

"Look here." Bobby reaches over and drags his fingernails under the pages in the journal, flipping to something closer to the front of the journal. "There's a place in Wyoming, somewhere around Rawlins, that he marked with a devil's trap. A big one."

The map actually looks hand-drawn as opposed to cut out and pasted into the journal like John would have done. Waste of time, if Seth had ever bothered to ask John. And why would Seth bother to ask John? It's not like—John scratches his fingernails against his scalp and squeezes his eyes shut hard.

"Does it have anything to do with Azazel?" he finally asks.

"He's got a note here about railroads." Bobby lays a finger on the scrawled word in one corner of the page.

Railroads do not have anything to do with the scapegoat demon.

"Then forget it," John says.

He needs to stay focused. It's not like Seth did any organizing, for all the shelves and shelves of books are labeled. Couldn't the guy have just collected all the information he had on Azazel and actually put it somewhere together? It doesn't make any sense.

Bobby takes the journal back and drags his thumb over the edges of the pages until he's only about two-thirds of the way through it.

"What about this?" Bobby leans forward and spins the notebook in his hand around so John can read it. "St. Mary's Convent in Ilchester, Maaryland."

The name of the place is scrawled across the top of the page in black ink, and underlined. It's important to Seth, obviously, but John can't see anything that would tell him why it's important. He's starting to hate the way Seth takes notes. Underneath St. Mary's Convent is a mark with the name Lilith - #66.

"That's a different name," John says, running a finger over Seth's notes. "The demon's name is Azazel. There wasn't anything in the text about a connection to Lilith."

Actually, the only name the demonology text lists along with Azazel is Lucifer's, and John still doesn't know what to make of that. Bobby huffs and pulls another paper from the stack between the two of them while John flips backwards through the notebook. There are other names by numbers, slowly counting down from the sixty-six he saw by Lilith's name. Some places skip a number or two, but none of them have anything to do with the demon that took Seth. And some are the same vague language that John's growing to hate. Why would a Righteous Man be in hell, anyway?

"Hey, Dad."

Sammy enters the work room — John is not calling it a library because that makes him feel like he's inside a mansion — with a large book cradled in both hands and one of his school notebooks balanced on top of that.

"Can I study in here?" Sammy eyes the table cautiously.

"Sure," John says then turns back to Seth's journal.

Sammy jogs up to the table and slams his books down before pulling out a chair on the opposite end of the table as John. He settles in, then, tucking his legs up underneath him to get a little more height above his book. John thinks something about boys playing at going to the office like their dads, and he swallows.

"Hey, I found his old cases," Bobby says.

Bobby holds up a handful of looseleaf papers and squints at them.

"Recent ones?" Seth had to be doing something in that time between Joliet and Bobby's house with the panic room idea.

"How should I know?" Bobby scowls at the papers. "He doesn't date anything."

John vindictively smiles at the thought that Bobby can't make heads or tails of Seth's organizing system either.

"Here's something he was looking into in Lawrence." Bobby pulls one paper out of the stack and holds it up to the light. "Looks like a haunting. Poltergeist, probably."

John has to work for a moment to pry his teeth open before he can talk.

"Lawrence, Kansas?"

"Yup," Bobby says as if it doesn't cost him anything. "Got an address here—"

John snatches the paper out of Bobby's hand, half-standing already. The paper looks like a police report, dated back in February, actually, so it's not too recent like Bobby thought. John's eyes travel across the paper, trying to take in all the words filling in the boxes like answers on a test. Then he stops short at the location.

It's his old address.

Well, his and Mary's. It's the house that burned to the ground with his wife inside. Why is Seth investigating there? There's nothing left.

"Dad?"

John jerks when Dean calls him and slams the paper face down onto the table. Dean walks up to the table and stands shoulder to shoulder with John. He holds up a road map book, the kind that has a state on each page, and braces it against his bandaged wrist.

"This place has a war room." Dean grins widely. "Really, it's like something out of James Bond, with the control board and—"

"Not now, Dean," John says.

His heart is beating somewhere down in his gut.

"No, it's just, I found a map down there I think Seth was working on," Dean says. He doesn't look down to where John has one hand covering the police report. "Look, these are all cattle mutilations in Nebraska and—" His fingers trace a line of red x's across the panhandle of the two-page state, dotted in between scarcer blue x's.

"Dean, shut up."

John can hardly get the necessary oxygen in his lungs, but he forces the words out. Dean jerks suddenly, one of his arms going backwards so that he's not actually brushing John, but he's quiet, and that's all he wants for now. Bobby's staring at him with a strange frown, and Sammy is on his knees staring down the length of the table instead of at his notebook. John taps his fingers on the upside down police report and eyes Bobby.

"We're going here."

And Bobby frowns even harder.

"What for?" His mouth twists in some sort of confused grimace. "The case is over. It was just a spirit."

"We're going," John says with gravel in his throat. He swallows hard because he can't clear his throat without sounding like something's wrong. "That sounds like Seth's last case; we should find out if it had anything to do with what's happening now."

It sounds like a legitimate reason, at least, and John glares at Bobby until he gets with the program. Except Bobby just keeps frowning back.

"Some of those demons can control the dead," John tosses out.

Bobby crosses his arms and huffs.

"I thought you said Azazel didn't have ties with the other demons."

John is going to strangle Bobby. But then Bobby pushes himself to stand and rubs at the back of his neck.

"Guess we're going to Lawrence," he says.

John nearly slugs him. He hadn't wanted his boys to know about this. Sammy may have been a baby, but Dean was four already when he carried—

John's heart moves from his gut to his throat. He turns away from Sam, who's glancing between the three at the other end of the table with wide eyes, but he can't look at Dean. He can feel the way Dean's entire body is tense, can see from the corner of his eye Dean's hands still on the map of Nebraska.

"Dad?"

And, dammit, his son's voice should never be that unsure of itself.

"Sam, Dean," John says, "you stay here."

He still can't really look at Dean, but he has to shoulder past Dean to actually get out from between the chair and the table. Bobby slips the paper out of his hands while John is focused on not looking at Dean.

"You want us to look into what happened in Nebraska?" Sam asks, still on his knees.

"I'm not interested in a werewolf eating cows," John snaps.

Sammy flinches — actually flinches — and sits back down in his chair. John pinches the bridge of his nose and starts to tell Bobby that it's time to go. Dean is standing right beside Bobby, reading the police report over Bobby's shoulder. Then, Dean glances up, and John doesn't even know what to do with the kid's face.

"Stay here," John orders one more time.

He doesn't want Dean anywhere near that cursed ground.

A/N: I really am late with the start of this, and I apologize, but I've been working hard on the story itself and trying to get it right, as it will likely be the finale of the Fraternity series. Expect a few bad things. Okay, let's be honest, we're dealing with Supernatural; expect a lot of bad things. Hopefully, I bring you all to a satisfying end.

Sincerely,

Fia