Special delivery for aviss (Part 2)!
Crowley stuffed his hands in his pockets, trying to ward off the London chill that was seeping into his thin coat. His wardrobe was meant for style, not warmth; he could regulate his own temperature at will, or at least, he usually could. Andy - or whatever he was, Crowley was pretty sure he wasn’t exactly human anymore - had figured out a few days ago that he had unlimited access to Crowley’s powers, and had basically stripped them away completely.
Which left Crowley annoyed and damp.
He was pretty sure that Aziraphale had started following him around, trying to figure out what was going on, but with the kid tromping around with his demonic forces, Crowley was unable to sense the angel nearby. Feeling a slight headache coming on, the demon leaned against a telephone pole and tried to imagine that he wasn’t being forced into helping a nineteen year old boy bring about Doomsday.
Crowley was beginning to suspect that Andy was possessed, or at least being influenced by a demon, or maybe a few. In addition to the disconcerting chuckles in the background, the kid had started to take on a permanent smell of sulphur and the air was avoiding him. And while Crowley disliked the idea of working for a human, he liked the idea of working for a demon living inside a human even less.
Demonic possession and influence hadn’t been uncommon back a few centuries ago, but as corporal forms like Crowley’s became more popular and Hell became more interested in the concept of queues, possession became something generally limited to the United States (8). It was rare to see a demon working through a human now, particularly when higher demons could simply create a form for themselves. Clearly, whoever was using Andy was trying to avoid Hell’s notice by using a human to open the gates. Probably trying to hoard the glory and rewards.
Crowley heard something crash in an alleyway to his right and sighed at the sound of someone distinctly not cursing. Turning his head slightly, he said, “Angel, why don’t you just come out already? You’re not very good at this whole lurking thing.”
Aziraphale materialized in the alley, looking as embarrassed and ruffled as an angel was capable of looking. “I never did get a hang of the whole invisibility lark,” he said ruefully.
Crowley pushed his sunglasses a little higher up his nose as he turned away. “Practice makes perfect, or whatever it is they say.”
“Quite.” They stood in silence, the tension slowly drawing out as they communicated in a way that no human could understand. After knowing each other for six millennia, they could read each other perfectly. Every expression and shift in movement was familiar; words were really only a formality by now. Crowley could tell that his friend was worried, mentally begging him to give up and tell him what was going on. Aziraphale could tell that something was very wrong, but also that the demon wasn’t prepared to let up just yet.
After a few moments, Aziraphale just patted Crowley’s shoulder lightly and said, “You look tired, my dear. You should come inside.” Then he turned around and left, hoping that Crowley would follow him and finally tell him what this was all about.
Crowley didn’t. But he wanted to.
“How much longer are you going to draw this out?” Crowley growled, doing his best to loom above the child that had now stripped him of his power and worked him to the point of exhaustion teleporting all over the Earth looking for those blessed flowers. But by now the Kid-Who-Was-Not-Andy was better at looming than Crowley was, so the effect was less extreme than the demon would have liked. The empty mausoleum that had been their headquarters over the last two weeks echoed eerily with their voices, flickering with hellfire and soft cackles.
“The full moon is tomorrow,” the boy said, his eyes staring into Crowley’s sunglasses unblinking. “We’ll complete the ritual then. Tonight, however, we need to procure the blood needed to open the passage.”
Ah, fantastic. Now we were getting to the virgin blood. And this was a new suit. “Who?” Crowley asked. “I mean, any preferences? Or should I just go out and slaughter the first human I see?”
The thin teen sneered, his mouth a bloody slash across his paper features. “No. I have someone particular in mind.”
A blink and they were halfway across London, outside what Crowley guessed was a dorm room. The boy-demon thing turned to him and angled his head toward the building. “In there,” he said, “is a young man named Brady Schmidt. Bring him to me.”
Crowley felt the order twisting inside him, poking and prodding him as it tried to force him into action, but he held back. “Why this kid, specifically?” he asked. “Not that I, er, care, but I was just, wondering.”
For a moment the boy was back, not the demon, a thin, awkward post-adolescent who’d been picked on one too many times and couldn’t figure out how to make life better. His brow lowered, his face cracking with old fury. “He broke my arm when we were seven,” he spat out, and then the demon thing was back, regaining control. The fury faded back under the surface, and blank eyes stared through Crowley. “Bring him. Now,” he added, and Crowley clenched his teeth as the command seared through his being.
The image of the boy was imprinted in his mind, Andy’s memories of the kid allowing Crowley to transport himself right into Brady's room. He was sleeping, still clothed, spread-eagle on the bed, passed out drunk. Crowley pressed a finger to the boy’s forehead, pulling them both back outside. The trip woke Brady up, and Crowley watched with mild amusement as the boy fell to the ground in a daze.
“What the hell...” he muttered, staring up at the demon and the Thing-That-Was-Not-Andy. “Pinewood? Is that you? What are you doing out here?”
Andy grinned, and the expression was so daunting that even Crowley had to shiver at it. “Hello Mr. Schmidt. I’m afraid I need to borrow you for something. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
Crowley highly doubted that Not-Andy was sorry about anything.
“You see,” continued the Andy thing, “I’m trying to bring about the enslavement of human kind, but I need a blood sacrifice first.”
Crowley wondered if, perhaps, it was time to tell Aziraphale.
“And when I thought about who I most wanted dead on Earth, I thought you were probably the best bet. So my demon friend here is going to rip open your throat.”
Well, that sounded a bit rough. He certainly hoped that there wouldn’t have to be too much ripping.
“And then tomorrow, I’m going to use your blood to unleash Hell upon this land.”
Yes, well, this was going well. Definitely time to tell Aziraphale. If only because this was definitely demonic activity, and it would be contrary to the spirit of the Arrangement to keep it from the angel any longer.
Andy handed Crowley a long, black knife. The kid sitting on the ground still just looked blatantly confused. He was babbling, but it was hard to hear over the laughing in the background.
Come to think of it, keeping this from Aziraphale would most certainly be a violation of the Arrangement. Now would be a fantastic time to bring him up to speed.
The Not-Andy creature nodded once to Crowley and said, “Kill him.”
It had been a long time since Crowley had killed anyone outright. In fact, he couldn’t even remember the last time. It must have been sometime post Rome, or maybe even Greece. He’d done his fair share of indirect killings; causing devastating traffic pileups, getting humans to murder each other, not to mention the M25 when it had lit on fire during the Apocawasn’t. But actually slicing across someone’s throat and letting their blood spill all over your hands is another thing altogether. It just wasn’t what Crowley did. It was human stuff, violence without finesse, bloodshed without vision.
Plus, he really just hated the feeling of someone’s soul pouring out over his fingers. It was different than when he discorporated Aziraphale; then he knew that the angel would come back, and usually he was in the process of being discorporated himself. But this unprepared human clutching at his throat as the Thing-That-Was-Not-Andy caught a few drops in a glass was never coming back. Crowley looked away from the red blade and caught a blank mask looking back at him, out of the dark and the infinite space of time.
TREAD CAREFULLY, it said, and disappeared, along with another human soul.
Really, Crowley thought, it wouldn’t be going against the grain to tell Aziraphale now. He was, in fact, rather obligated by the Arrangement to let the angel know what was going on.
No, it wouldn’t be unreasonable at all.
It was going to take Aziraphale ages to get the blood out of his cushions.
Crowley had teleported directly into the angel’s sitting room, looking pale and gaunt in contrast to the red staining his hands and clothes. Aziraphale had nearly dropped a new snuffbox when he’d seen the demon - nearly. Not quite. It was hard to come by a good snuffbox nowadays, after all.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, his eyebrows raised high, “you really must stop appearing on my couch at odd hours of the night.”
The demon barked a laugh. “Right. Sorry.” He stood, brushing his hands over his pants, grimacing when it did little to help his situation. He sat down again. “Ran into some problems.”
Aziraphale conjured a moist towelette in one hand and a mug of tea in the other, remembering to add brandy this time. Handing the first to the demon, he said, “I’m guessing someone is binding you?”
Crowley nodded miserably as he attempted to scrape the blood off his hands, intensely relieved that the angel hadn’t asked about the red that covered his skin. “Some kid who’s gotten himself possessed. It’s been fantastic.”
Aziraphale frowned as he accepted the now pink towel, miracling it away. “You’re being controlled by a demon? What in Heaven’s good name would the point of that be?”
“Dunno. Pretty sure it’s just to avoid notice Downstairs. Using a human as a vessel wouldn’t draw any attention. And they can blame me when it all goes to He- Cardiff.” Crowley tweaked the brandy-to-tea ratio in favour of the brandy before taking a large mouthful. “I’ll handle it,” the demon said. “It’s just taking a bit of planning.”
Aziraphale eyed the dark rings under the demon’s eyes and the strained look on his face and realized that Crowley’s Presence in his mind was practically nonexistent. Tsking, he said, “You let this boy have your powers, didn’t you?”
“Not my fault,” Crowley muttered into his cup. “I don’t exactly have any say in the matter. You know that.”
“Sorry, my dear. It’s been a bit since we’ve had to deal with summonings.” Aziraphale began poking and prodding at Crowley’s clothes, absentmindedly miracling away the blood stains. Crowley was uncharacteristically nonresistant. “So you have little to no demonic energy at your disposal, and this demon possessing the boy is planning to do... what now?” The angel glanced at the demon imploringly.
“Open the gates of Hell,” Crowley muttered tiredly. “Tomorrow. Full moon, more power. You know how that is. He already has the blood sacrifice.” He glanced down at his red shirt with something that Aziraphale could have sworn was guilt. “It’ll be a massive war between Earth and Hell, and you just know Heaven will want in on the action.”
Aziraphale grimaced lightly. “We do not condone violence. You know that perfectly well.”
“Whatever, angel. Your side was just as willing to dash into the Apocalypse as mine was. Either way, it’ll be even worse than the first Armageddon would have been.”
Aziraphale nodded slowly. “Well, I suppose we’d better put a stop to that then.”
Crowley ran a hand through his hair and used a few remaining drops of magic to miracle his clothes back into pristine condition, adding a pair of sunglasses, which had gotten lost somewhere along the way to Soho. Pushing them onto his face and straightening, he said, “Thought you might feel that way. I have a plan.” He shrugged. “Mostly.”
Aziraphale nodded for him to go on, and Crowley explained.
It was a simple plan, but dangerous. It involved nearly opening the gates to Hell, nearly getting Crowley permanently discorporated, and nearly causing Andy to spontaneously combust. If all went well, though, none of those things would happen. Andy might even walk away, and if Crowley had anything to say about it, he would have learned a few lessons as well.
First, though, he had to help the kid open the gates to the Below.
It wasn’t easy. It involved a liter of human blood, eighteen different herbs prepared in particular and peculiar ways, and a power source comparable to a star exploding. The Andything handled the first two; Crowley was the last.
The gates to Hell, contrary to popular belief, are not located anywhere specifically on Earth. There are, however, places where it is much easier to break through the barrier that thinly separates the two planes of existence. All of Iceland, for one, as well as the state of New York and most of Hollywood (9). London had a few areas that could easily be used as a gate, and Andy chose the one that Crowley was most fond of: the church.
I mean, the irony.
It was no longer a consecrated church; it had been abandoned long ago and left to crumble to dust. Left alone, the small rift there grew until the entire church was practically sitting on top of Hell, ready to fall in if you stepped on one of the floorboards wrong. When Crowley met Andy there, he discovered that the boy had already begun to set up the area, using white chalk to sketch complex, squiggly designs on the floor that would have made human eyes ache. In his mind, Crowley could feel them weighing heavily on the thin sheet keeping Hell at bay. Swallowing something that felt dangerously close to panic, he hoped that Aziraphale was ready.
“So,” he said, trying to look nonchalant, “we finally doing this?”
The Not-Andy thing stood up, looking over its work. “Indeed. The moon has reached its zenith; now is the time.” He nodded Crowley forward. “When you open the gate, there will be an initial pull that will take you back to Hell. After the draw fades, you and your kind will be free to roam the Earth as you wish.”
Crowley eyed the circle on the floor, which he presumed he was supposed to step in, if he knew anything about the occult arts - which he did. “Right. Good. Er. I suppose I’ll just... nip in, then.” He stepped over the chalk line and blinked a few times as he felt the sigils latch onto his power, which had been restored by Andy. Muttering a few blessings, he thought, Angel, you’d better be ready for this.
Then he opened the gates.
Aziraphale felt it from the air.
He was hovering, wings spread out around him, about twenty feet above the church - Really, they would have to do something about that, it just wasn’t proper to have a gate to Hell in a church - when something rippled through the air around him. Folding his wings, he dropped to the roof and floated down to the front steps. The air here was even thinner, as if all the oxygen had been sucked away. Pushing open the doors, Aziraphale wished for his flaming sword for the first time since Almostageddon.
Crowley was standing in a glowing chalk circle just before the altar, his dark hair fluttering in some unfelt breeze. His jaw was tight and red light seeped out from behind his sunglasses. Aziraphale saw the boy, which wasn’t a boy at all, his face was wrong, standing before the demon, holding onto a pew as if feeling drawn to the circle. Cracks were appearing in the floor, heat and sick yellow light drifting from them. The air seemed to have cracks in it too, pushing and tearing at itself.
Aziraphale launched himself towards the boy-who-wasn’t-a-boy, grabbing onto the back of the loose sweatshirt. Crowley had explained that, in possession of a human body, the gate to Hell wouldn’t pull the demon in Andy away, as it would all the other demons. A Hell gate, the demon had said, will draw in every demon in a ten mile radius before they begin to crawl out again. And when they did, they would swarm out and cover the Earth.
Aziraphale, being a host of Heaven, was obliged to not let this happen. He might have warned his superiors, but he figured that would be what Crowley called overkill.
His job, Crowley had said, was to get the demon out of the kid. Once out, he would be pulled back into Hell, and Crowley could hopefully close the gate. The problem was that, if Crowley fell through as well, it would close around both him and Andy’s demon, leaving him to face the threat alone. And for all he knew, the demon was much more powerful that he was.
The goal was to avoid falling through.
It was no easy task to pull a demon out of a possessed host. It took practice, and Aziraphale hadn’t been forced to do it in nearly fifteen hundred years, give or take. Reaching into someone soul and pulling bits off that sometimes looked nearly the same was a difficult skill to master.
Luckily, this demon was a powerful one, which meant that it showed up quite clearly against the gentle light of the human soul. Aziraphale pulled and twisted at it with all the physical and mental power he could muster, finally wrenching the thing away just as the air was rent open.
Crowley automatically lunged backwards and grabbed the edge of the altar, feeling the gate trying to drag him back into Hell. He dimly saw Aziraphale wrestle some dark form out of the chest of the boy, but he was mostly focused on keeping himself in this plane.
The demon was strong, but it wasn’t any match for a Principality, even one as out of practice as Aziraphale. As Crowley fought to keep his hold on Earth, Aziraphale turned to the glowing split in the atoms of the air and shoved the dark, wriggling form of the demon through it. A set of talons ripped across his arm in an effort to hold on, but Aziraphale simply grimaced and tossed an orb of holy light in after the demon, figuring that it would stun the thing long enough for Crowley to close the gate.
Crowley felt the demon pass through the gate and began to stitch up the fabric of the world around him before it could slip back through. His brows knitted in concentration, and in a single moment he loosened his grip on the altar and stumbled forward a step or two. Feeling the pull of Hell tighten around his chest, he only had time to think Oh shiii-
Something grabbed onto the back of his shirt. The gate snapped shut, and Crowley realized, shockingly, that he was still standing in the church. He was quite pleased by this.
The hand released his shirt, and Aziraphale said, “You really should be more careful, my dear.”
Crowley turned to look at the angel, feeling worn and ruffled but alive. “Understatement. Thanks for that.”
Aziraphale smiled at the demon. “Any time.”
It didn’t take them long to get Andy home. It appeared that the boy didn’t remember anything about the last few weeks, and Aziraphale figured that he would sleep for a while and forget that anything strange had happened at all.
And if he woke up to find that all of his right socks had been stolen and someone had dyed his hair permanently blue, Crowley thought, well, all the better.
Aziraphale found the book amongst Andy's things. Crowley wasn't sure what the angel did with it, but he was sure that no one would be using it again.
Crowley also spent the next few days asleep, figuring that he owed himself a good century or two after all the trouble he’d just been through. In the end, though, he only slept for a handful of days, because there was still an angel moaning about the cat scratches on his wrist, and there were pennies that needed glued down to the sidewalk, and tea that needed drinking. There were souls to snatch and people to tempt. Things to be done.
“Hey angel,” Crowley said as they sat on the park bench, feeding the ducks a week or so later.
“Mmm?” Aziraphale said, tossing a chunk of bread to a large drake.
“How’d you know, before, that someone was controlling me?” Crowley glanced at his friend over his sunglasses. “I never let on...”
Aziraphale shrugged. "I suppose I guessed, in the end. You didn't appear yourself."
"Well," Crowley said. "Um. You know. Thanks."
Aziraphale patted his hand. "As I said. Any time, my dear. Any time."
Crowley smiled.
It was a good day.
1. Which of course had the good sense to adhere strictly to the pavement and set themselves to the task of never moving again.
2. You could never have too much bad luck, after all.
3. It was sort of a “We’re the boss of YOU, not the other way around” type deal. Pride, you see. Demons tend to have an abundance of it.
4. Due to the fact that humans pay basically no attention to anything while they eat, this ended up being a relatively small number of people. Apparently putting food into the mouth and chewing takes up a lot of energy and concentration.
5. Which set off quite a few car alarms down the road and had every cat within a five mile radius screaming.
6. Well, he liked himself, but that was a different matter altogether.
7. It was mostly stuff about how best to avoid them and phrases like “Get thee behind me, demon!”
8. The sociopathic politicians were not a cause nor result of this.
9. This surprised almost exactly zero people.