Hastur's Revenge - Chapter Two
Yep, the two of us finally managed to write another chapter and here it is. Much hurt and exhaustion for all involved.
Title - Hastur's Revenge
Chapter - Two
Authors - DragonEyeZ and SilverWolf7
Disclaimer - Neither of us own these characters. They all belong to Mr Gaiman and Mr Pratchett. We are borrowing them for our own evil purposes, hope they don't mind overly much...
Link to first chapter here.
Chapter Two
It had been a long night, Crowley thought as the sun started to show itself. He tried to move again, but found his body too sluggish at that moment to do much of anything. He had been periodically looking about himself all the night, seeing if they were well enough hidden that no one would spot them. Hopefully they were.
The last thing he wanted was to be found by some idiotic child, stared at like some freak until some adults arrived and carted off with the angel in tow to a zoo. What an exhibit they would make. They may even be shipped off to the circus if zoo life wasn’t for them.
He reached out with a hand again, trying to see if he could touch the angel now, another thing he had been doing periodically throughout the night. The small whimpering sounds Aziraphale made at the small touch made him move his hand away again. That and the painful burning the small touch had inflicted on his own person.
"Go away, Crowley," came the small, whimpered whisper. "Please - leave me alone."
"No can do, angel," the demon replied with a sigh. "I can't even crawl away from here, even if the furnace of holiness you're running is burning me."
There was a long pause, only the faint tremors that still lingered within the angel showing that he had not dropped off into unconsciousness.
"Sorry," came the low reply - and Crowley smiled weakly. The day Aziraphale did not have the energy to apologize would be the day the world would truly come to an end.
“Yeah, well, it’s not like you are in any position to go crawling about yourself. We’re both stuck here until we are found.”
It was a good enough acceptance of the apology, and he was sure that Aziraphale understood what he was trying to say back. That he was sorry that they were both in this place, both suffering and with likely little chance of getting out without havng to keep up a constant show of Power to make people forget they had wings, or were covered in blood or...or were anythign other than normal people really.
It made his head ache even more than it already was. He really wished for someone to come along and save them then. The angel needed special care to help him with what was left of his wings so that they could heal normally and not out of place. He needed a good lay down in a bed and several months worth of sleep. And a few very strong pain killers while he was at it.
* * * * * * *
"I'm telling you, Agnes was wrong!" Newt protested, even as he squinted against the darkness beyond the headlights of the Wasabi.
"Agnes is never wrong," Anathema replied, holding the book in one hand and illuminating its pages with a torchlight held in the other. "We just have to find a house of God that's been soiled with sin, and we'll find the two who needs help outside of it."
"A church that's been sinned in - we've only got a few thousand of those in London," Newt replied with a sigh, when a few white feathers suddenly came into view, gleaming in the glow from the headlights.
Despite its age, the Wasabi had good breaks, and Anathema had, thankfully, just reached the prophesy that told she ought to brace herself against the windshield, thus allowing her to at least remain in her seat.
Once the car had come to a standstill, outside of a church, the two got out and started to jog to where the few feathers were stuck to a bit of fence. It took only a few seconds of peeking around the bushes when they found what they were looking for. Lying on the grass outside the church gates were two miserable looking beings, one with shredded white wings, the other looking as if he had been through Hell and back.
According to the book, he had gotten pretty close to it. Or Heaven at any rate. Hell was where he was from.
As they approached, the demon made a hissing noise, clearly trying to scare them off, and moved a protective arm over the other's waist - with the result that both flinched and pulled away from each other.
"We need to get them somewhere safe," Anathema said, rolling up her sleeves, and moved over - regardless of the hiss-turned-snarl from the demon and hooked her arms under his, before dragging the demon back towards the Wasabi. "Give me a hand here, Newt - I can't carry his whole weight."
"Can we have them both in my car?" Newt asked, obediently lifting the demon's legs - and noticed that he apparently wore snakeskin boots. At least he thought they were boots.
Anathema paused, thinking.
"No. Agnes said we should take the serpent's chariot," she replied, ignoring the protesting whimper from the person...well, man-shaped creature, that they were carrying.
“Well, where is his car then. And didn’t it, you know, catch fire?” Newt asked, making the mistake of looking up a bit and towards the demon’s face. Yellow eyes glared back at him, making him shiver. He felt very vulnerable, regardless of the almost dead weight he was helping carry.
Anathema sighed as she moved closer towards the Wasabi, and where her Book was sitting in the passenger seat. She didn’t need it to find the car. She would remember the look of the old fashioned thing anywhere, and she saw it parked just a little further up the road from where Newt’s car was currently sitting half on the grass and half on the road. It was better parked than the Bentley.
“No one but me drives my car,” came an agry hissing of words. Both Anathema and Newt glanced down.
"And, pray tell, would you call yourself in any state that equals being capable of driving a car?" Anathema asked, before opening the door to the Bentley and, through hers and Newt's combined efforts, managed to get the demon into the passenger's seat. "You think you can find the keys while we fetch your friend?"
"'S got no keyss..," came the hissed reply.
"Good. Then you'll have to start it, Newt," Anathema concluded, and turned to walk back towards where the angel lay.
Behind her, the demon paled even more than he was, and, with a roar and a cough, the Bentley's engine started.
Anathema merely smiled. It usually had that effect on people, she thought, while loosely looping the injured angel's arm around her neck and lifting him - concluding that he was quite a bit heavier than the demon.
"So, where to?" Newt asked a few minutes later, after he had managed to get the Bentley onto the street, and was heading towards the central London.
"Anges says that we should be going towards a bookshop," Anathema replied from her seat at the back, which also served to hold the angel.
"Turn left here," the demon hissed, his knuckles white where he held onto the seat and a few droplets of sweat trickled down his temples as he clearly struggled to keep the old car running.
It took an agonising five minutes before they reached the road that Aziraphale lived on. If Crowley had been in better shape, he would have gotten them there in one. He just didn’t want his car to be ruined. All he knew was that Newt better start flawing it, becuase he was losing energy to keep the car running.
“Juss’ two more t’go,” he stated, before whatever was keeping the car running failed and they slowly came to a halt a few stores away from the one they wanted.
Crowley was about to swear out loud and keep it up for as long as he possibly could when Newt took his foot off the gas pedal. The car began to make its usually so comforting tink-tink sounds that suggested its engine was cooling down. He tried to do the same, wiping the sweat that was running down his face away. He had barely enough energy left to lift his arm that high, and he let it flop lifelessly back to his side afterwards.
“Sorry, couldn’t get us all the way there,” he stated.
"It's shorter than we dragged you to the car," Newt replied with a sigh. "I just hope we won't run into anyone - especially not with your friend."
Thankfully, they did not, and, after a few trips back and forth, both angel and demon had been moved inside the shop - by some sheer luck, it had not been locked, nor had any of the usual wards been put up.
Newt and Anathema were at the angel’s side, trying to coax said hurt being into letting them see his wings properly, as they were a mess and needed to be put back into the right order before anything could even begin to heal. Aziraphale was being very adamant about no one touching him there though and, with a few more failed attempts, they decided to leave him be for the time being.
Aziraphale was left on the couch, what was left of once beautiful white wings facing away from the back of the furniture so as to touch nothing but air. Crowley, who was in a comfortably old armchair that the angel was extremely fond of and refused to get a new one, was then approached.
Anathema stopped before the hissing being, not being intimidated by the show. Agnes had told her that his bite wasn’t poisonous, but that he may snap at her. She didn’t mind really. Anyone or anything that was injured usually had that fight or flight reaction.
“Now, you stop that noise. We saved you didn’t we? You should be thanking us.”
The noise stopped. Crowley cocked his head to one side. He was silent a long time, before he lowered his head. “Yeah you did. Thanks, I guess.”
"That's a good boy," Anathema said, before crouching before the demon. "Now let me take a look at you - I want to make sure that you're okay. Agnes did say that you weren't as physically wounded as your friend, but judging from the fight she described, I'd be damned if you haven't gotten at least a few bruises."
After much growling, hissing and snarling, Crowley found himself with a bandage around his chest to keep a few bent ribs in place and was told to keep his right leg up as much as he could to allow it to heal.
All in all he was much better off physically than the angel was. It didn’t stop him from feeling he had been dragged around Heaven a few times as a trophy to the other side.
He was more metaphysically injured and that kind of thing didn’t leave a mark. Well, one that was visible to most beings anyway.
**********
Newt had stayed by Aziraphale’s side throughout that little exchange between his girlfriend (and just thinking that word made him grin like an idiot) and the demon, thanking God that it wasn’t him. Well, at least he knew God really did exist. It even explained a few things, like why he was hopeless with technology of almost all kinds.
He had naturally been made to help stop certain events that were still fuzzy, but were coming back to him.
These two had decided to show up unannounced in his head in their full winged glory one night in his dream. He had gotten up to try and make some coffee to try and shake away such strange images, before he saw a certain book of prophecies lying open at a page that stated that memories of certain events would come back to all who had forgotten.
That was one of those things that he still had difficulties accepting, even more than that of angels and demons being real. That a book knew everything about his life, and of the future.
Although, as he glanced at the two wounded, celestial and hellish beings, he wondered briefly what would have happened with those two - and himself - had the book and its sequel not existed. Most likely, the world had faced its end.
**********
Anathema reached for the angel next, but, as before, he merely curled up into a ball, refusing to cooporate with her, and no amount of coaxing made him even relax.
Crowley sighed. Aziraphale was never going to forgive him for this, but it was needed.
"Angel..," he began. "If you don't let them, I'll set fire to your collection of bibles."
The angel's head snapped up immediately, eyes wide with shock and terror. The demon, although he barely had the strenght needed, briefly searched through his pocket, and located the small lighter he always carried on him - for no other reason than that it was made of steel, was sleek and looked like something from the 23th century. The first click, striking a spark, caused the angel's wings to tremble and loosen. The second, causing a small flare, made them open further to a normal position. The third, keeping life in the small flame, caused the angelic being to bolt upright, throw his legs over the side of the couch so he sat up, and the wings unfolding completely to their full span - nearly knocking Newt over.
"Good. Now sit still," Crowley said with a sigh, letting the fire die out and his hand fall back to his side.
The angel groaned and hid his face in his hands as Anathema and Newt cautiously moved around him, and took in the damage done. It was a long work, as bones had to be reset, the few remaining feathers had to be plucked to allow the torn skin to heal, and the still bleeding wounds had to be stopped.
The angel whimpered at every touch to his mutilated wings, tremors shaking his body and, when Anathema took hold of the leading edge and gave a tug to set the bone back in place, a scream was torn from the angel's lips, before he fell forward in unconsciousness, barely managing to be caught by Newt.
"Well... This will make it easier," Anathema said with a light sigh, before continuing her work.
Crowley made a light sigh, feeling exhausted, and allowed his head to drop backwards as he followed the angel into oblivion.
Title - Hastur's Revenge
Chapter - Two
Authors - DragonEyeZ and SilverWolf7
Disclaimer - Neither of us own these characters. They all belong to Mr Gaiman and Mr Pratchett. We are borrowing them for our own evil purposes, hope they don't mind overly much...
Link to first chapter here.
Chapter Two
It had been a long night, Crowley thought as the sun started to show itself. He tried to move again, but found his body too sluggish at that moment to do much of anything. He had been periodically looking about himself all the night, seeing if they were well enough hidden that no one would spot them. Hopefully they were.
The last thing he wanted was to be found by some idiotic child, stared at like some freak until some adults arrived and carted off with the angel in tow to a zoo. What an exhibit they would make. They may even be shipped off to the circus if zoo life wasn’t for them.
He reached out with a hand again, trying to see if he could touch the angel now, another thing he had been doing periodically throughout the night. The small whimpering sounds Aziraphale made at the small touch made him move his hand away again. That and the painful burning the small touch had inflicted on his own person.
"Go away, Crowley," came the small, whimpered whisper. "Please - leave me alone."
"No can do, angel," the demon replied with a sigh. "I can't even crawl away from here, even if the furnace of holiness you're running is burning me."
There was a long pause, only the faint tremors that still lingered within the angel showing that he had not dropped off into unconsciousness.
"Sorry," came the low reply - and Crowley smiled weakly. The day Aziraphale did not have the energy to apologize would be the day the world would truly come to an end.
“Yeah, well, it’s not like you are in any position to go crawling about yourself. We’re both stuck here until we are found.”
It was a good enough acceptance of the apology, and he was sure that Aziraphale understood what he was trying to say back. That he was sorry that they were both in this place, both suffering and with likely little chance of getting out without havng to keep up a constant show of Power to make people forget they had wings, or were covered in blood or...or were anythign other than normal people really.
It made his head ache even more than it already was. He really wished for someone to come along and save them then. The angel needed special care to help him with what was left of his wings so that they could heal normally and not out of place. He needed a good lay down in a bed and several months worth of sleep. And a few very strong pain killers while he was at it.
* * * * * * *
"I'm telling you, Agnes was wrong!" Newt protested, even as he squinted against the darkness beyond the headlights of the Wasabi.
"Agnes is never wrong," Anathema replied, holding the book in one hand and illuminating its pages with a torchlight held in the other. "We just have to find a house of God that's been soiled with sin, and we'll find the two who needs help outside of it."
"A church that's been sinned in - we've only got a few thousand of those in London," Newt replied with a sigh, when a few white feathers suddenly came into view, gleaming in the glow from the headlights.
Despite its age, the Wasabi had good breaks, and Anathema had, thankfully, just reached the prophesy that told she ought to brace herself against the windshield, thus allowing her to at least remain in her seat.
Once the car had come to a standstill, outside of a church, the two got out and started to jog to where the few feathers were stuck to a bit of fence. It took only a few seconds of peeking around the bushes when they found what they were looking for. Lying on the grass outside the church gates were two miserable looking beings, one with shredded white wings, the other looking as if he had been through Hell and back.
According to the book, he had gotten pretty close to it. Or Heaven at any rate. Hell was where he was from.
As they approached, the demon made a hissing noise, clearly trying to scare them off, and moved a protective arm over the other's waist - with the result that both flinched and pulled away from each other.
"We need to get them somewhere safe," Anathema said, rolling up her sleeves, and moved over - regardless of the hiss-turned-snarl from the demon and hooked her arms under his, before dragging the demon back towards the Wasabi. "Give me a hand here, Newt - I can't carry his whole weight."
"Can we have them both in my car?" Newt asked, obediently lifting the demon's legs - and noticed that he apparently wore snakeskin boots. At least he thought they were boots.
Anathema paused, thinking.
"No. Agnes said we should take the serpent's chariot," she replied, ignoring the protesting whimper from the person...well, man-shaped creature, that they were carrying.
“Well, where is his car then. And didn’t it, you know, catch fire?” Newt asked, making the mistake of looking up a bit and towards the demon’s face. Yellow eyes glared back at him, making him shiver. He felt very vulnerable, regardless of the almost dead weight he was helping carry.
Anathema sighed as she moved closer towards the Wasabi, and where her Book was sitting in the passenger seat. She didn’t need it to find the car. She would remember the look of the old fashioned thing anywhere, and she saw it parked just a little further up the road from where Newt’s car was currently sitting half on the grass and half on the road. It was better parked than the Bentley.
“No one but me drives my car,” came an agry hissing of words. Both Anathema and Newt glanced down.
"And, pray tell, would you call yourself in any state that equals being capable of driving a car?" Anathema asked, before opening the door to the Bentley and, through hers and Newt's combined efforts, managed to get the demon into the passenger's seat. "You think you can find the keys while we fetch your friend?"
"'S got no keyss..," came the hissed reply.
"Good. Then you'll have to start it, Newt," Anathema concluded, and turned to walk back towards where the angel lay.
Behind her, the demon paled even more than he was, and, with a roar and a cough, the Bentley's engine started.
Anathema merely smiled. It usually had that effect on people, she thought, while loosely looping the injured angel's arm around her neck and lifting him - concluding that he was quite a bit heavier than the demon.
"So, where to?" Newt asked a few minutes later, after he had managed to get the Bentley onto the street, and was heading towards the central London.
"Anges says that we should be going towards a bookshop," Anathema replied from her seat at the back, which also served to hold the angel.
"Turn left here," the demon hissed, his knuckles white where he held onto the seat and a few droplets of sweat trickled down his temples as he clearly struggled to keep the old car running.
It took an agonising five minutes before they reached the road that Aziraphale lived on. If Crowley had been in better shape, he would have gotten them there in one. He just didn’t want his car to be ruined. All he knew was that Newt better start flawing it, becuase he was losing energy to keep the car running.
“Juss’ two more t’go,” he stated, before whatever was keeping the car running failed and they slowly came to a halt a few stores away from the one they wanted.
Crowley was about to swear out loud and keep it up for as long as he possibly could when Newt took his foot off the gas pedal. The car began to make its usually so comforting tink-tink sounds that suggested its engine was cooling down. He tried to do the same, wiping the sweat that was running down his face away. He had barely enough energy left to lift his arm that high, and he let it flop lifelessly back to his side afterwards.
“Sorry, couldn’t get us all the way there,” he stated.
"It's shorter than we dragged you to the car," Newt replied with a sigh. "I just hope we won't run into anyone - especially not with your friend."
Thankfully, they did not, and, after a few trips back and forth, both angel and demon had been moved inside the shop - by some sheer luck, it had not been locked, nor had any of the usual wards been put up.
Newt and Anathema were at the angel’s side, trying to coax said hurt being into letting them see his wings properly, as they were a mess and needed to be put back into the right order before anything could even begin to heal. Aziraphale was being very adamant about no one touching him there though and, with a few more failed attempts, they decided to leave him be for the time being.
Aziraphale was left on the couch, what was left of once beautiful white wings facing away from the back of the furniture so as to touch nothing but air. Crowley, who was in a comfortably old armchair that the angel was extremely fond of and refused to get a new one, was then approached.
Anathema stopped before the hissing being, not being intimidated by the show. Agnes had told her that his bite wasn’t poisonous, but that he may snap at her. She didn’t mind really. Anyone or anything that was injured usually had that fight or flight reaction.
“Now, you stop that noise. We saved you didn’t we? You should be thanking us.”
The noise stopped. Crowley cocked his head to one side. He was silent a long time, before he lowered his head. “Yeah you did. Thanks, I guess.”
"That's a good boy," Anathema said, before crouching before the demon. "Now let me take a look at you - I want to make sure that you're okay. Agnes did say that you weren't as physically wounded as your friend, but judging from the fight she described, I'd be damned if you haven't gotten at least a few bruises."
After much growling, hissing and snarling, Crowley found himself with a bandage around his chest to keep a few bent ribs in place and was told to keep his right leg up as much as he could to allow it to heal.
All in all he was much better off physically than the angel was. It didn’t stop him from feeling he had been dragged around Heaven a few times as a trophy to the other side.
He was more metaphysically injured and that kind of thing didn’t leave a mark. Well, one that was visible to most beings anyway.
**********
Newt had stayed by Aziraphale’s side throughout that little exchange between his girlfriend (and just thinking that word made him grin like an idiot) and the demon, thanking God that it wasn’t him. Well, at least he knew God really did exist. It even explained a few things, like why he was hopeless with technology of almost all kinds.
He had naturally been made to help stop certain events that were still fuzzy, but were coming back to him.
These two had decided to show up unannounced in his head in their full winged glory one night in his dream. He had gotten up to try and make some coffee to try and shake away such strange images, before he saw a certain book of prophecies lying open at a page that stated that memories of certain events would come back to all who had forgotten.
That was one of those things that he still had difficulties accepting, even more than that of angels and demons being real. That a book knew everything about his life, and of the future.
Although, as he glanced at the two wounded, celestial and hellish beings, he wondered briefly what would have happened with those two - and himself - had the book and its sequel not existed. Most likely, the world had faced its end.
**********
Anathema reached for the angel next, but, as before, he merely curled up into a ball, refusing to cooporate with her, and no amount of coaxing made him even relax.
Crowley sighed. Aziraphale was never going to forgive him for this, but it was needed.
"Angel..," he began. "If you don't let them, I'll set fire to your collection of bibles."
The angel's head snapped up immediately, eyes wide with shock and terror. The demon, although he barely had the strenght needed, briefly searched through his pocket, and located the small lighter he always carried on him - for no other reason than that it was made of steel, was sleek and looked like something from the 23th century. The first click, striking a spark, caused the angel's wings to tremble and loosen. The second, causing a small flare, made them open further to a normal position. The third, keeping life in the small flame, caused the angelic being to bolt upright, throw his legs over the side of the couch so he sat up, and the wings unfolding completely to their full span - nearly knocking Newt over.
"Good. Now sit still," Crowley said with a sigh, letting the fire die out and his hand fall back to his side.
The angel groaned and hid his face in his hands as Anathema and Newt cautiously moved around him, and took in the damage done. It was a long work, as bones had to be reset, the few remaining feathers had to be plucked to allow the torn skin to heal, and the still bleeding wounds had to be stopped.
The angel whimpered at every touch to his mutilated wings, tremors shaking his body and, when Anathema took hold of the leading edge and gave a tug to set the bone back in place, a scream was torn from the angel's lips, before he fell forward in unconsciousness, barely managing to be caught by Newt.
"Well... This will make it easier," Anathema said with a light sigh, before continuing her work.
Crowley made a light sigh, feeling exhausted, and allowed his head to drop backwards as he followed the angel into oblivion.