The Dresden Omens (2/2)
Sorry about that whole 'month long delay' thing-- life ate me (a new job and a car wreck in the same week). But for those who're still hanging on, I give you:
Title: The Dresden Omens (2 of 2) (part one here.)
Verse: Bookverse, crossover with Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Rating: PG-15 (for men fighting, swearing and kissing)
Author: Shiplizard
Summary: In which the forces of Evil-ish and Eh, Good Enough unite to keep Chicago in balance.
Word Count: 9494
Warnings: Spoilers for Good Omens, Dresden Files novels through book ten.
Notes: Thanks to betas gehayi and homuxeiku_loff
Stay tuned for the epilogue, which LJ refuses to let me put in this segment!
Part 1
Part 2
Epilogue
So going for the apprentice hadn't been the brightest idea. Crowley had forgotten that Heaven's retirement plan was more forgiving than Hell's; when Satanists fell down on the job, they were lucky if all they got was ignored. Holy Knights and family, on the other hand, were a bit like American presidents, entitled to the holy secret service even after the term was up.
But it hadn't been the wrong angle to play. Humankind could rage against cruel fate, sure, but to get the low-down corrosive anger, you needed a person on the other end. Someone close.
Genesis 4:1-16, a short summation by Crowley: Nobody will do you over like family will do you over.
And Heaven's champion had a brother. Hell had been stingy with information about him, but Crowley knew he was rich; the rich generally wanted to keep getting richer. A little temptation there, get the brother in his pocket, load him up with good intentions, and Crowley would have an in right into his life. Mortals had a giant blind spot for family, as if a bit of shared DNA actually gave them some sort of obligation. Even if you didn't share a last name (and the pair didn't-- that was probably a bit of family drama just itching to be exploited). Heaven's champion struck him as the kind who'd bend over backward for family.
On the other hand, would the brother be cooperative? Crowley suspected he would. Someone who lived in Chicago's Gold Coast would be rich, probably wouldn't talk much to his poorer relative in the dingy basement apartment unless it was to lord being rich over him. Probably liked his money more than his brother, would probably like getting more money. Call it a hunch; it was just a human thing.
Crowley made a phone call to the brother's business-- a very snazzy salon-- and smiled slightly to himself as the startled receptionist found that a time slot had just opened right up.
"Isn't that convenient?" he purred into the phone. "I'll be right over."
The Coiffure Cup fronted as a coffee house, brightly lit and inoffensively decorated, the piped-in techno music cheerful and just a beat shy of danceable. There was an expensive coffee-bar, a few seats, and a curtained doorway that opened occasionally to let out the smell of mango, mint, antiseptic, and perfume.
Crowley, who'd made an appointment, was ushered back at once into the darkened back end of the store; the throbbing music was louder, and a half-dozen high-powered women in expensive clothing were draped in various stages of lounge across reclined chairs, looking-- there was only one word for it-- languorous.
Crowley hadn't ever bothered getting his hair cut before; it did what he told it to. He was wondering if this hadn't been an oversight.
A man sashayed away from where a stock-broker was settling cozily under a helmet-style hair-dryer with a magazine and approached Crowley.
"You must be Ahn-tony," the beautician said, looking him up and down appreciatively. Crowley had met people before who undressed him with their gazes. This one stripped him slowly, ruffled a blooming rose across his skin, rubbed him with oil and handcuffed him to the metaphorical headboard.
"You must be Thomas."
"Mais oui." They stood apart for a moment, sizing one another up, two well-cheekboned men in effortlessly chic clothing, studiously not engaging in a battle to see which of them was cooler. It'd be too obvious.
Then Thomas the beautician batted his long lashes and extended a hand. "So rarely we have men here. Such a pleasure." His brick-thick French accent tortured the word into 'play-zee-are.' It was bizarrely charming, and Crowley wondered how the man made that little smirk of a smile kissable, and not punchable. "You will come sit down? Of course. Yes."
He led Crowley to a beauty station in the center of the room, one with a little sink behind it, swathed him gracefully in an apron, and sat him down in a chair that would not have looked out of place on the bridge of the USS Enterprise (except they might have wondered about the shampoo-sink behind it).
"What can I do to you today?" the man asked, and it was just shy of an obscene invitation.
"Just a trim," Crowley said vaguely. "Why don't I leave it up to you? It's been a while since I've done anything new with it."
"Aah, you trust yourself to me?" Thomas pulled in a little gasp, laying a hand over his heart. "I will try to be worthy."
"I'll take it out in trade if you aren't," Crowley said, flirting baldly, and Thomas' laugh was as rich and dark as treacle.
Thomas reached out to take his glasses away, and Crowley didn't quite flinch-- he managed to bat Thomas' hand away. "No, no, those stay," he said lightly, nudging them back over his eyes. "You understand?"
If the beautician had seen anything that upset him, he wasn't showing it. "Of course, my pet. I should 'ave asked." He laid Crowley back in the chair like a lover, supporting his neck in a padded cut-out in the shampoo sink, and turned the warm water on Crowley's scalp.
Definitely an oversight, Crowley decided, as strong fingers lathered shampoo into his hair. He should have done this years ago.
"You are not from Chicago, I think," Thomas mused.
"No, no. London. Here on business." Something tickled at his awareness, like a moth tasting his skin, and was gone.
"May I ask, what kind of business brings you here? I do not want to pry, of course..."
"Temporary assignment," Crowley euphemised. "Picking up some slack for the company. Tough job. Only I can do it."
"Ooh," Thomas tutted. "I knew you were an important man..." The French accent was cloyingly fake, but the charm was real enough. Crowley was having trouble reconciling this chiselled being as any relation to the scruffy bastard in the basement apartment with the giant malevolent hair-beast. He was also having a bit of trouble thinking, but after what'd happened the day before he thought he more than deserved to relax.
The water shut off, and Crowley gave a little hiss of discontentment-- there was the sound of a pump-bottle, and Thomas began to work something slick and silky into his hair. "To make you shine, Ahn-tony." Mollified, Crowley lay his head back into the strong hands, eyes drifting shut again.
They exchanged banal chatter as his hair was rinsed again, and he was led to a cutting station.
"There's something, on a personal note," Crowley said drowsily. He felt almost drunk-- pleasant and floating as Thomas snipped at his hair. "If I could trouble you."
"Oui?" Thomas' hand stroked the nape of his neck.
He'd meant to come at it from a more oblique angle, but he was having trouble mustering his thoughts, the simpler demands of the body he was wearing drowning out any subtlety. ...Bloody Manchester, he was hard enough to hammer nails, wasn't sure if he wanted to shag something or just sleep for a few years.
"It's about your brother..." he mumbled.
"What do you want with Harry?" Thomas murmured into his ear, his accent melting away like an ice cube under a blow torch. The man talking to Crowley now had been born in this city and wasn't shy about it.
Crowley finally became aware that there was something very wrong, and with an effort dispelled the hormones running rampant through his system. Things snapped into focus very quickly, and he realized that the light, cool touch just under his jaw was in fact a straight razor, and that the demonic influence that had been pumping his body full of happy chemicals had its teeth poised around a very sensitive area of his intangible being.
Incubi and succubi aren't the strongest of the demonic ranks, but they have an unerring ability to aim for the tender bits.
"I think," Crowley said, his voice suddenly clear, but slightly distorted as he tried to speak without moving his jaw, "I've made a mistake."
"Yeah, buddy, I think you have," the incubus said, his perfect lips pulled back in an elegant snarl.
"I think I should leave."
"You're not going anywhere until we talk." The razor blade pressed a little harder. Crowley didn't swallow.
"I could burn this place to the ground," he said conversationally.
"Only if you want to do your unholy chanting in soprano from here on out," the incubus said with a pretty little smirk.
The two beings met one another's eyes in the mirror: Crowley's were just visible over his glasses, slitted and golden; Thomas' were a pure, hungry white.
Family. Go-- Sa-- Simon Cowell smite them. Irrational, stupid...
"People will get hurt," Crowley said tightly. "He wouldn't like that, would he? Just let me walk away, and you have my word I won't kill anyone."
There was a long moment.
The razor disappeared.
"If you touch my little brother, your balls are mine," Thomas whispered, and patted him on the shoulder. "AHN-tony, my sweet," he said, loud enough to be carry through the room. His eyes dimmed back to simple gray, and his accent pranced back across the Atlantic. "You are finished. You are lah-vely. Go, my dear one, but come visit again soo-oon..." He spun Crowley up and out of the chair, whisking him to the door in an improvised tango, and Crowley found himself outside the heavy curtain that led into the boutique, wincing against the brighter light.
A chorus of scandalized female titters made him look for his reflection in the huge pane windows, and gape at what he saw.
After quality time with an incubus it was no shock that his pants were still several sizes too tight around the crotch. But the crew cut, that had been uncalled for.
----
"The brother's an incubus," Crowley said dully. "And they didn't tell me. That's not information you just forget. That's not something you put on a sticky-note and slap on the fridge and hope that someone sees it."
Aziraphale's ansaphone listened patiently.
"They're not even giving me a fair chance; they don't want me going around any back corners. They want him and me going at each other like wasps in a jar, and whoever loses they'll be just as happy. I'm not going to give them the satisfaction, angel." He paused, and said with a certain level of grudging self-awareness. "I'm going to try not to. Anyway. But if it does come down to it..."
He was sitting on a leather-upholstered chair in his hotel room, one hand around his tumbler of Glenlivet, the other holding the phone. He'd grown back his hair as soon as he was in private; Thomas had made him look like an SAS man who sneaked out to drag clubs on the weekend. "I'm not a fighter. I'm going to try to start where Lasciel left off, if I can figure out where that is; get him to demonstrate a bit of Wrath, call the job good, come home." Dark magic was addictive, and if he got the wizard to channel hellfire again it would leave him susceptible to that needy, human ache to be the biggest, most brutal creature around. That kind of desire came from straight from the id, and was as easy to resist as an oncoming glacier. Hell would like it.
The angel wouldn't, but that wasn't what was preying most on Crowley's mind now. "And if I don't come home... I thought you might... I mean we're friends, aren't we? In a way? Obviously, you're my mortal foe, but we've been foe-ing a long time." More than six thousand years. He-- Heav-- Newark, hadn't the angel been the one he went to first, when things all started to get Revelations-shaped eighteen years ago?
"And I thought you might like to know. Er. That I might not coming back, and this could be goodbye." It sounded both soppy and awkward, Crowley realized with disgust, and neither of those things were traditional Crowley traits.
He became aware of a change in the silence on the other end of the line, and managed a hurried "Findgoodhomesfortheplants-" before the beep cut him off and the dial-tone started back up, loud in his ears.
He hung up the phone and sighed. All right.
Lasciel.
----
The Order of the Blackened Denarius was one of Hell's great attempts at modernization, and still held up as an example of such. Considering that the Order had been founded when the world was still in single-digits Anno Domini, this should give the observer an idea of how well Hell took to change.
The idea was a good one, on paper. Plenty of demons, Crowley among them, had been out in the world for a long time, and they'd all reported back that nobody could influence humans quite like humans could. They invented their own virtue and their own evil, and while they were perfectly willing to blame both virtue and evil on one side or another, nine-hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand it was all down to Free Will without the soul ever being so much as ever being spiritually sneezed on by the blasphemous or the sublime.
The agents of Hell, Hell then reasoned, had to be able to think like humans-- but still be demons, or else they'd just be walking around like everyone else, and what would that do to the reputation of the Satanic forces? To that end, a partnership was dreamed up; thirty up-and-coming demons would be bound into thirty pieces of cursed silver, and they would work hand in hand with the damned souls who possessed the coins. It was correctly guessed that having demonic power would be enough of a draw that most of the partnerships were initially voluntary.
Initially voluntary. That was the snag, as far as Crowley was concerned; the Denarians might be in human bodies, with input from human minds, but they were still thinking exactly like demons, and equal partnerships quickly became horrific slavery on the human host's part. Which was all well and good and in keeping with Hellish aesthetics, but it didn't actually fix the problems. Now you just had demons in human suits. More powerful than your average corporeal demon, absolutely, more sturdy, because the coins could survive dunking in holy water, but still demons. It didn't help that most of the Order tended to choose black-hearted criminals or fallen heroes for hosts, and doing so missed the entire human experience. Real temptation, real redemption, the truest test of the human will, Crowley knew, was not in the heart of the gibbering serial killer or the pious king, but waged in the soul of the man in his front yard, eyeing his neighbour’s throat while gripping his garden shears and thinking if that dog of his gets into the begonias one more time...
The Order had passed year to year, century to century, and while it gained followers, resources, and knowledge, it had rarely gained insight. Only a very few of the bunch had actually learned anything about humanity. One of those was the head of the Order himself-- the partnership of Nicodemus and Anduriel had been productive and mutually-educational enough to make Crowley's skin crawl. A wistful demoness who'd picked up the name Rosanna somewhere had also picked up a few pointers on what made the human male tick.
One of the others who understood, who really understood, was Lasciel.
By the time of the death of Christ, Crowley had already fallen from Hell's attention. He was the first tempter, certainly, arguably the most important-- but demons following in his footsteps had discovered how much more difficult it was to do anything with the recalcitrant monkeys now that they actually knew the difference between good and evil, and he'd earned nothing a healthy dose of resentment for his pioneering efforts.
Just the same, Lasciel came to talk to him. Before her assignment, she came to talk to everyone who'd worked with humans-- she was ambitious; she was Doing Her Homework, almost earnest about the business of damnation. She'd looked him up in a bar in Israel, a little hole in the wall with a few rude chairs, an equally rude owner, and a big jar of wine that was exactly as hot as the miserable day outside.
He'd sat her down across a table and he'd explained, or he'd tried. And she'd listened, really listened, keenly taking in everything he said. But the things he didn't say had escaped her, he was almost certain. She'd missed the bits between the lines that couldn't be spoken out loud if you liked your cushy assignment on Earth better than, say, being tortured horribly in the bowels of Hell for your insolence. The most important bits. 'The Management can't be expected to understand everything,' that was one. 'Sometimes you have to do what they say, not what they mean.' More damning: 'sometimes the Management is just wrong.' And about humans-- 'it's not just their souls, no matter what Hell says. It's the glands, and the breathing, and the heartbeat, and you won't understand them if you don't stop sometimes, take a deep breath, and remember how heavy gravity is.'
Of course a few centuries later and everyone was calling her Lasciel the Temptress, so she must have gotten something out of all her research. She'd never failed before, never had a setback like this, but she'd been working on this hero-type, and she wouldn't have been doing it stupidly.
A little groundwork, and Crowley would pick up the loose thread. What peeved the champion? What got him angry? What made him feel small and helpless? What would make him need to feel powerful?
He finished his Glenlivet and stared at the wall for a while. Then he nodded to himself, and wrote a letter, signing it with an ancient and powerful symbol that made the eyes water just to look at it. Once the letter was sealed and sent, he stood, pulled on his new boots and coat, summoned a thick, chic scarf out of the firmament, and left.
--------
Independent research had been key. Once Crowley had stopped trusting Hell's information and done his own, the pieces fell more solidly into place. A little snooping in Chicago's vast supernatural underworld quickly convinced Crowley that direct action wasn't wise. There were werewolves to deal with if he stepped wrong, and at least one department of the local police knew entirely too much for its own good. On the other hand, it turned up exactly what he'd needed; someone for the champion to get good and furious at who wasn't Crowley.
It always came back to humans. In this case, the local Mafia don, with whom the champion had a long-running feud, and to whom he kept doing massive amounts of anger-fueled property damage. The fireball that had demolished a dumpster (and several stores in a building the mafioso owned) had to have had Lasciel's hand in it. Always good at playing with a man's temper, that Lasciel.
So give the wizard something good and wicked to get righteous about, set him on an innocent (at least in this particular case) man, let THEM go at it like wasps in a bottle. The champion worked for the police, they were sure to call him if they found something odd enough...
That was where Joe Piarelli came in. Until roughly four pm that afternoon, Joe Piarelli had been an independent pimp, establishing himself defiantly in taken territory. At four pm, he had had a tragic accident in which he slipped off an icy pier, breaking his neck on the way down. No fewer than a dozen people were willing to swear to this. His body had vanished into Lake Michigan, not to be seen again.
At least until four-thirty pm, when an ancient summons called his body out of the water and to Crowley. A snap of his fingers, and the man had sprouted a bullet-hole that the police would find to be a match with the gun of a highly-ranked enforcer of the local mafia. But that kind of thing happened every day, and the lawyers would be used to it. Crowley was just adding the extra wrinkle now, tracing hellfire over the corpse's bare chest, branding him with the sigil of a powerful demon. (It had once summoned Ligur, Duke of Hell. But nearly twenty years ago, Ligur had died as finally as a demon can under a bucket of holy water, and the symbol was now, as they said in the Business, available.)
"Hey, pal, what're you doing?"
Crowley looked up in irritation. The man at the mouth of the alley looked down at him-- he recognized him as the thug who'd 'helped' Piarelli off the pier. He was built like a brick wall, his hair was about the same color as one, and he was holding a very large gun.
"I knew I saw someone," he grunted, his narrow, piggy eyes getting narrower and piggier. The muzzle of the gun swung up to point due Crowley.
Crowley hissed and made a gesture with his blood-stained fingers.
The man looked down at what his riot-gun had become, and then-- Crowley had to give him grudging points for not dropping it and running-- threw it at him. Crowley dodged out of the way; it hit the ground behind him with a sickly squelch.
The big man had a sterner stomach than most of the hired help Crowley had ever had to deal with, but there wasn't so much of a glimmer of supernatural protection anywhere on him. Crowley snapped his fingers, and the man relaxed, his face going slack and a bit sullen. "In thirty seconds you will wake up. You will go away and leave the body," he said cheerfully, and then as an afterthought-- "And don't tell your boss."
He finished up his work, adding a bit of realistic detail so that a competent mortician would determine that the branding had taken place before death. That ought to do it. Then he trudged back to the pay lot where he'd left the Bentley, knocking off his boots before he slid in with a sigh of comfort. The interior immediately heated, the windows de-iced themselves, and the snow sizzled off. Crowley relaxed, and tooled out into the near-deserted streets to find something worth stopping for.
Behind him, crouched in an alley, Mister Hendricks reached into his coat again, and pulled out a sleek, deadly piece of technology. He aimed at the side of the Bentley, and shot.
The little phone whirred and clicked as it captured a perfect picture of the car. Then Hendricks dialled.
"I need you boys to find this car," he said, without preamble, when the other end was picked up. He hit the button to send the picture to the equally sleek cell-phone on the other end, and waited.
There was an indrawn breath. "That's a twenty-six Bentley. It's like new. I didn't know there were any in the US-- why does it need found?"
The big man's brows beetled up as he searched for words. "The driver could be a trouble-maker. Pretty sure he saw the Piarelli hit."
The voice on the other end swore, blasphemously. "Jesus Christ, shit, you want we should get the boss?"
"No!" Hendricks said sharply, his nerves suddenly jangling with don't tell the boss. He'd been able to convince himself 'go away' meant 'go away from the body' so he could still follow the creep to his car, but this one he couldn't shake. "You know he said not to be disturbed today."
"Unless it was an emergency. This sounds like a fuckin' emergency, my friend."
"No," Hendricks said, squeezing the bridge of his nose between two big fingers as the compulsion in his head worked up to a threatening headache. "No, just... just find me the car, and I'll-" Clarity came. The headache disappeared. "And I'll call in a guy to talk to him. I'm sure they can work it out."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure. You know how the boss is about trying to negotiate first."
"Yeah, I know. Where'd you see this clown last?"
"He was goin' west on Division, away from the lake. No hurry. Wait till he parks somewhere, call me back ASAP, and tail him wherever he goes."
"You got it."
Hendricks pressed the little red button to disconnect the call, and started-- with surprising dexterity-- to scroll through the menus, looking at his list of saved numbers. When the one he wanted failed to turn up, he swore to himself, and looked around. There, just up the road, that was what he needed; gas station. He bustled inside, shaking the snow off, and made straight for their pay phone, and the phonebook under it. Turning to 'W', he cupped his little phone in the other hand and dialled again.
Crowley had cruised around the empty streets a bit, smugly enjoying watching weather happen to other people and listening to the impotent patter of snow on the Bentley's roof, before he found the restaurant. The classy lettering drew him in; the lure of dangerous sushi kept him there. There was something unholy about sushi involving beef and asparagus; it was fantastic. He wished, briefly, that he could show the angel. Aziraphale had a mortal weakness for sashimi that Crowley was proud of.
He spent two hours sampling everything, amusing himself by occasionally sending plates back to the kitchen along with vitriolic and absurd critiques (he wasn't too jaded to tell the chef that his sashimi was raw and he should be ashamed of himself), and left in a very good mood.
There was a human sitting on the hood of the Bentley. Deliberately sitting on it, feet propped on one moulded wheel-well, elbows resting on his long legs, a long staff across his lap. He was tall, and obviously skinny even under the protective layers of leather and knitwear. Needed a shave. Needed some sleep. Needed a sandwich. Needed to get his sneakers off of Crowley's car. Right Now.
Harry Dresden, private investigator and Heaven's alleged champion, smiled at Crowley.
"You're the demon who was bothering my apprentice, aren't you?" he asked, with an air of cheerful menace.
"Get off my car." Crowley hissed.
"You wrote that letter of complaint to get my dog taken away, too, right?"
"That thing's a menace," Crowley said darkly. "Get off my car."
"What can I say? He's an excellent judge of character. Don't worry, I destroyed the binding rune on your letter. No more hypnotized government drones, and I get him back next week." The wizard was, in Crowley's estimation, insufferably pleased with himself.
"We have no quarrel, wizard," Crowley said haughtily, in the face of all evidence, trying to suppress his annoyance. "I'm in town on business. Do not busy yourself in my affairs, and you won't be hurt."
"Business, huh?" The wizard scowled. "With Gentleman Johnny? Is that it? You're working for the mob?"
Crowley's face melted into an innocent little smile. "I'm sure I wouldn't tell."
"I bet you are," the wizard pushed. "I bet you're secretly in cahoots." He said it with pride, like a dog who'd learned a trick.
Crowley's smirk grew wider.
"...only not really. Oh, man, did YOU not do your homework. Not to mention one of his enforcers brought me in on this." The earnest, vaguely idiotic look disappeared, and an iron core of cynicism stared out at Crowley. Crowley felt his expression solidifying.
"Get off of my car," he said again, with a chillness that rivaled the weather around them. He was surprised when the wizard actually hopped off-- leaving muddy footprints on his fender.
"One more thing I just have to know," the wizard said. "When my tires got slashed. That was you, right?"
Crowley simply nodded.
"Thought so." One of the wizard's gloved hands tightened on his staff.
The Bentley exploded as the air in the cab and tires was suddenly raised to inferno temperatures; the expanding air blew out rubber and shattered every window, catching fire because it was too hot not to. Crowley stared at the fireball that had been his car, his mouth hanging open. A red mist rose in front of his vision. The wizard was still smirking.
An eldritch howl started somewhere in the depths of Hell and boiled up out of Crowley's mouth as he flung himself at the wizard, his gloves shredding as his fingers turned into heavy, tearing claws. The wizard closed his eyes-- and seemed to grow a foot in every direction as a silver light poured from his skin and formed a protective shield around him. Amorphous silver arms closed around Crowley, and squeezed; his claws raked ineffectively over the silver mask where the face should have been. It got a manic laugh and no other response, the wizard's angry smile half-visible. A judicious knee to the groin had the same lack of effect--he might as well have been wrestling a sumo made of kevlar balloons. He didn't have the chance to take another shot; the silver construct lifted him above its head and slammed him into the concrete hard enough to send cracks racing away, and then knelt heavily on top of him.
"All right. Start talking. Who sent you?"
If it were just a question of physical weight, Crowley could have miracled himself away, but the force bearing down on him and the blobby hand closing over his throat were something else entirely. Soulfire. That utter rat bastard Uriel had taught the wizard how to shore up his magic with spiritual energy and it hurt like hell-
He hadn't answered fast enough; a wicked knee to the kidneys made him convulse.
"Was it Anduriel?"
"I don't work for him! It was HELL, you idiot," he rasped. "The bloody management!"
"Why?" the wizard barked. "What do they want?"
"A paper and a pack of crisps, what do you THINK-?" Added weight told him that sarcasm was not appreciated. He thrashed frantically, claws scrabbling at the freezing concrete, ripping up shreds of it. He got a vicious kick in the side and rolled, fetching up against a fire hydrant. The wizard, still encased in silver armour, set a foot on his back.
"What. Do they want," the wizard growled.
There was a moment of stillness. Then Crowley rolled sharply to the side and lashed out at the fire hydrant, clawing away the nozzle. The thick metal sheared like butter under his talons, and a single syllable in a long-forgotten language called the water to come boiling up from under the ground, breaking through the valves, and smash into the human who stood astride Crowley.
The wizard was flung back down the icy sidewalk and into the street, his staff clattering away, rolling into a gutter. The running water stripped his silver armor away, carrying off his magic even as he tried to muster it. Crowley staggered to his feet, leaning on the building behind him.
And it was going so well, he realized. The champion was furious. Using a bit of heavenly power, it had to be admitted, but Soulfire couldn't be sustained forever. The spiritual batteries would go dry, and the user would pay in exhaustion and pain. And then, when Heaven had apparently deserted him, he'd call for power from another source, power that he didn't have to force out of himself, power that was easy... Surely he would? And they could end this thing and both go home.
The wizard had crawled out of the spray from the hydrant, but he was looking much the worse for wear. There was a red trail running down his face where he'd taken the impact of the road with his forehead, and he was soaked to the bone-- no joke in this weather, not at all. Hellfire, Crowley urged him, trying to pound the idea through his defences and into his gray matter. It's HOT. You're COLD. Do the math!
"You cannot harm me, mortal," he shouted above the wind. "When I have been burnt by the fires of Hell, your paltry-" was it paltry? Yeah, that was it, "-magics are nothing to me."
"You looked pretty harmed to me," the wizard rasped back, missing Crowley's subtle hint completely, and starting to take his feet.
The SUV came out of the darkness, headlights blinding, engine roaring. Whoever the driver was, they didn't care that it was snowing out; there was salt on the roads, wasn't there? So other cars were safely at home and not trying to drive on an inch of ice; sissy little compacts all of them. Not this car. What else was an Escalade for?
The wizard had enough warning to throw himself flat, wrist held in front of him. The car braked, which did absolutely nothing on the iced-over road, and skidded... up and over him, tracing the course of a gentle speed bump.
A moment later, the wizard raised his head, the streamlined magic shield he'd erected over himself vanishing like a bubble. He staggered unsteadily to his feet, looked at Crowley, and appeared to come to a decision.
"Vento Giostrus!"
Crowley felt the change in the air-- the cold wind took on a purpose, boiling up and turning on itself. It churned into a cyclone, howling down between the buildings around them, hammering into the ground around Crowley and whipping back up. The world went grayish-white and sharp all over as snow and rock salt and trash were kicked up by the gale.
Crowley flattened himself against the brick wall behind him with a wince, casting about in the mess of magic and debris for the wizard's presence. He was half blinded and the wizard was desperate; the blow could come at any time, and meanwhile he was taking little cuts and scrapes as things whizzed past him. He should have been able to block all the little bits and pieces-- but he hurt. Bloody Manchester, he hurt all over, and he couldn't miracle away the bruises where the Soulfire-shield had bludgeoned him. Still no sign of the wizard, not that he could see more than a foot in front of his face, or hear anything over the shriek of the wind...
He knelt on the ground, the icy cold seeping up into his knees, and curled up flat. His recently-acquired jacket burst at the seams as his wings unfurled, and he tucked them around himself as a shield. In his quiet little pocket of comparative warmth and safety, he summoned his strength.
His muscles strained, and the glossy-white wings flapped, once. (And they were white. As noted elsewhere, demons' wings look nearly exactly like those of angels, except that the demons preen more.) A burst of hellishly-hot, brimstone-perfumed air hit the cyclone, which fragmented and dissipated into a fine mist of melted snow. Rock salt pattered to the ground in the ensuing stillness.
Crowley's sunglasses had cracked a lens when a pebble smashed into them, and he tucked them away into the breast pocket of his ruined jacket, his eyes casting an angry red light as he scanned the area. The wizard was nowhere in sight, nowhere to be heard.
He scowled, and ventured further out onto the street, met with a resounding emptiness. He almost didn't see it, the little dark patch-- a bloody handprint, where someone had stumbled. Footprints, leading into an alley and out the other side, far apart. Long, long strides.
The insufferable little bastard had run away. And he'd had a good five minutes head start on Crowley. The city was a maze. No more than London, really, but it was the wizard's maze and he knew it better than Crowley. He could be anywhere.
Crowley sprung into the air, wings pumping, and rose up along the buildings, looking for movement. His eyes lit on the great dome of a cathedral, and he knew where the wizard was going.
It wasn't far, as the demon flew; he was a moment behind the loping figure, landing on one side of the wrought-iron fence in a flurry of snow just as a dark figure took the stairs two at a time up. The fleeing wizard skidded on the ice, once, turned it into a roll, and half crawled through the door.
Now what.
He could bide his time, try another disastrous scheme-- against a champion who'd be prepared for him with Soulfire, and who wouldn't make that hydrant mistake twice. Or he could stop, leave now, go back to London and tell Hell that he couldn't and wouldn't do the job. They would take that so well. Or, the last option, he could go forward, and finish it. The wizard was scared, obviously in pain. Prime wrath condition. It would hurt, walking into that holy place, but Crowley had lived among humans so long that he nearly was one-- he could handle it long enough to try.
He winched in his wings, summoning them back into the fabric of his being. The red glow of his eyes faded as he pulled back, hiding as far inside his mortal-ish body as he could. His sunglasses became whole again, with a moment's concentration; he put them on. Head up. Shoulders back. He sauntered up the stairs, making no sign of the effort involved in each step, pulled open the door with the tatters of his leather jacket wrapped around one hand, and stepped inside.
Imagine the feeling of a thousand cuts.
Now imagine stepping into a refreshing lemon juice shower.
Crowley hissed involuntarily as he stepped in, the Cathedral warmly lit and damnedly Holy. Belief echoed around him, protection. The church's threshold dragged at him, stripping down his power, trying to drive him out. He stepped forward, boots loud on the marble floor. Halfway up the row, the wizard was supporting himself along the wall; he looked up, and his face, for a moment, showed surprise, fear. GOOD. Crowley's fists clenched, the Bentley exploding again behind his eyes. He wanted to see the little bastard scared so shitless that all he could do was compromise himself and call on Hell to protect him. He wanted him afraid.
He stalked down the aisle, picking his way carefully through the pews after the wizard, who was trying not to look like he was looking around for anyone to help. Nothing doing. The church seemed hollow and empty...
No, wait, that wasn't right. There was the murmur of voices. The wizard had heard them, too, and was now fervently ignoring them, trying not to draw attention to ... the confessional, set back in a transept. Crowley snuck a glance and it and bit back a snarl. Whatever was in there he wanted no part of; a bubble of holy influence surrounded the little booth. As they backed up, the voices grew clearer, enough to make it clear that the penitent was in fact arguing with the man taking his confession.
The wizard looked back, startled by that, and Crowley took his chance and leapt at him, going for the throat. The wizard heard him leap and turn back, blocking his lunge with the staff-- which twisted out of his grip and rolled away across the floor as they hit the floor together. Crowley waited for the blast of magic, but getting hit by a car had apparently put a dent in the man's psychic reserve. What he got instead was punch in the solar plexus and the wizard scrabbling for something that clattered, metallic, against the floor.
None of that. Crowley elbowed the wizard in the gut, and used his cringing moment of pain to grab his wrist and slam it against the floor until the pistol fell out of the wizard's hand. He swiped away; it skidded under a long row of pews. Instead of scrabbling for it, the wizard philosophically let it go, and equally philosophically threw a punch that would have done something painful to Crowley's jaw if it had been shaped entirely like a human's.
They rolled across the floor, the only sound the wet slap of their clothing against the marble, the occasional thump of a fist into meat, the murmuring from the confessional. The penitent was getting angrier, his voice loud enough to be understood in bits and pieces.
-my own soul? And it will be all right? Do you know how big this city is?
One of the wizard's long legs kicked out and found purchase against a pew-- he shoved himself at Crowley, trying to pin him, and Crowley snarled and jabbed the heel of his hand under the wizard's chin, making his head snap back with a clack of teeth. The wizard retaliated with a rabbit punch that made Crowley curl in on himself for a moment, and then try to claw the wizard's face off with blunt, human fingernails.
Murmur, Murmur said the priest in the confessional.
No, I want a conversion factor. How many lives is one soul worth? How many people should I let suffer so that one soul goes to heaven?
The wizard twisted out of the way; Crowley's thumbnail took a strip of skin off his face. The wizard tried to punch him and they rolled again, finding no traction on slick marble.
One? Five? Fifty? A thousand? No, I am NOT being glib. Do you see another way? TELL me. The penitent's voice rose in raw agony.
The wizard's head cracked against the stairs leading to the altar, and Crowley used his dazed moment to get on top of him, hands wrapping around his throat, thoughts of temptation forgotten. He was full of that bloodlust that comes straight from the glands, the hormones, the body itself. It was human, transcendentally human.
I don't get much sleep, I could count the people I know I can actually trust on the fingers of one hand. Temptation? I'm not doing this because I'm TEMPTED-
The wizard stopped clutching at his hands, and instead jabbed two fingers into the crease of Crowley's elbow in just the right spot. The sudden, jangling pain loosened his grip, and the wizard broke free by bringing his arms up inside of Crowley's and hammering outward, an obviously often-studied self-defense move. Crowley rocked back and the wizard wriggled like an underfed eel out from beneath him, crawling up the steps. Crowley gathered himself, sprung after him.
-is to quit. To walk away and leave this job behind, to just go live somewhere quiet. To diminish into the Goddamn West -!
Murmur.
I'm sorry, Father. I'm ... tired.
Crowley hit the wizard in the midsection with his shoulder, slamming him up against the stone baptismal font on the altar. It sloshed. The wizard rolled to one side, flung out his hand, and with great effort ground out a single word:
"Forzare."
A burst of magic, unstable and coming in spurts, hammered at the top of the stone column. The font tipped towards Crowley, rocked back, tipped again, further, leaning--
Crowley scrambled out of the way as it fell with a massive bang, leaving webbed cracks in the marble stairs and oh bless it no spilling a little wave of water down the stairs toward him. He leapt to his feet-- every muscle in his body protested-- and staggered.
The water pooled around his mortal-made shoes, with their thick, thick tread and was quiescent.
He only gaped for a second. This was it. He drew himself up to his full height, and let his wings extend, biting his tongue to keep from shouting at how THAT hurt in THIS place.
"Little fool, I am done playing with you," he intoned, disguising the hoarseness of his voice under a demonic rasp. The wizard stared at him, trying to make sense of this; he was dazed, his eyes slipping in and out of focus. "Nothing in this place can hurt me." TAKE THE HINT, Crowley bellowed mentally. You're about to freeze to death, you've got to have a concussion, just DO it. Lasciel taught you how, she must have! I swear, I'll scream and there'll be black smoke and then I'll be out of this place and back in London, you'll never see me again if you just give IN!
The penitent's voice said, much closer and clearer: "He's wearing rubber-soled shoes, Mister Dresden," and the doubt in the wizard's eyes vanished in a burst of clarity. He scooped a thin film of water in his hands and splashed it at Crowley, who leapt out of the way and nearly fell as he came down badly on an abused knee. A single feather fluttered out of his wing and landed in the pool of water, where it flared like a lighting match and melted into a little smear.
Crowley took an unsteady step backward, then another, eyes flicking from the dazed wizard to the penitent-- a man in a very good suit, with a polite, bland expression on his face and something hiding in his washed-out green eyes that made Crowley think 'angry tomcat.' ...that impression might well have been exacerbated by the very unprofessional notch out of his ear.
"I understood that the church was empty," the penitent said, his eyes locked on Crowley. The raw, hurting voice had acquired several layers of polish and a smooth smile in a hurry. "But then, one really does never know what sort of riff-raff will wander in. I assume Nicodemus sent you?"
"Nope," the wizard interjected, his voice ragged. "Different department. ...dragged your friend Piarelli out of the river. Carved... symbol." He coughed, wet and ugly, and sat up. "He's trying to frame you for demonomancy, John."
"Really." The penitent, John, looked Crowley up and down again, with an air of puzzlement. "You're not looking very well."
Crowley hissed at him, and took another step back. The man ignored it, and stooped next to the puddle of water, whisking out a handkerchief to dip in it.
"It's possible," the penitent mused, "that you're not the most purely demonic entity in the city, and that's how you've managed to enter a church. While looking, I am afraid to tell you, like something the cat dragged in. You could simply be very bad at being a demon." A switchblade knife appeared in his hand from nowhere, and he wiped it over with the handkerchief, leaving the dark blade gleaming and beaded with moisture. "Or you could be unimaginably strong." He shifted back, his arm poised to throw the knife. "I'm sorry. I can't take that chance."
"John, dear, that really won't be necessary."
If Crowley had been bothering about keeping his heart beating, he reflected in a moment of wild indignation, it might have stopped.
The priest had stepped out of the confessional, now, so that was everyone accounted for. The confessor was kind-faced, on the short side, fluffy blond hair, indeterminable age between thirty and fifty, plumpish hands, and so familiar that it had struck Crowley dumb. His accent, like Crowley's, was British, setting him square in the middle of Soho if either of the other men in the room had known anything about English accents.
"Father, you do realize that this is an actual demon," the penitent said, with a certain amount of deference.
"Yes, John. Put the knife down." There were strange echoes to the last word; Crowley clapped his hands over his ears in pain, and the switchblade clattered to the floor.
The wizard boggled. The penitent took the development with a cold, nearly catlike aplomb. "Are you a demon, too?" he asked, all polite curiosity.
The priest sighed. "Actually, I'm an angel."
Further boggle from the wizard. A slight furrowing of the penitent's brow, and the faintest hint of a bemused frown. He pondered this. "You aren't very good at it, either," he opined, in the tone of someone giving a regretful piece of news.
Oh, YEAH? Crowley almost snapped. How many times have YOU stopped Armageddon, pal? (Once, actually, the same as everyone else in the cathedral at the moment.)
The priest took this job critique with a gentle smile. He stepped forward, putting his hand to the penitent's shoulder. "Perhaps you should sleep. Poor thing."
The penitent didn't even get the objection out before he was folding slowly to the ground with a long sigh, the green eyes closing.
"You, too, it's all right."
The boggle quotient significantly diminished as the wizard slumped into a peaceful sleep, limp across the altar stairs. The priest looked at them both. "In sixty seconds you'll wake, feeling completely refreshed, and you'll have had a lovely dream about whatever you like best-- and John, for Heaven's sake, please go have a cup of tea. And relax. And think very, very hard, all right?"
Crowley, seeing his last chance, added to the other supine figure: "You. Dresden. Lusssst." He'd had time to come to the conclusion that Wrath and the wizard were a potentially deadly combination. Worse, deadly to HIM. He thought he'd play it safe.
The priest gave him an annoyed look. "My dear boy, was that nec-" but the pain and weariness had crept up behind his eyes and the church floor was rising up to meet him. Before the world went black, he vaguely remembered being surprised when the floor felt like somebody's arms.
Crowley slowly came back to consciousness propped against something cold. He shifted; there was tread under his back. The tire of a pickup or some other large automotive thing. The wind was blowing and the snow had started again, but a pair of wide white wings were spread over him like an umbrella. They were attached to the priest, who was crouching over him, and they were safely outside the wrought-iron fence around the church.
"'Ziraphale." He blinked.
The angel gave him a relieved smile. "Oh, good. You had me worried a moment. What on Earth were you doing in a church? I mean-- why are you in Chicago at all?"
"Temptation job," Crowley said. "Tall bastard. Long coat. What are you doing in Chicago?"
The angel sighed. "Redemption job. Angry man. Nice suit."
"How'ss it going?"
"Miserably. You?"
"Worse." Crowley shut his eyes again. "The Bentley."
There was a gentle inhalation-- more out of habit on Aziraphale's part, he knew. The angel spoke softly and with a considerable amount of distress: "Oh, Crowley. Can it-- is there anything?"
"Don't know yet. Patina's ruined. The best they could do is make it like new." Crowley had been with his car for more than eighty years. He had liked it like old. "Every time things get apocalyptic. Always the car. It isn't fair."
His eyes snapped open again as the big church doors slammed open-- from under Aziraphale's wing he could see the wizard with his staff, the mafioso-penitent with a gun out. Crowley flinched.
"They can't see us," Aziraphale said quietly, patting his shoulder soothingly. "I've made sure." His wings furled a bit tighter around the both of them.
As promised, the wizard's searching gaze skimmed right over the both of them. Crowley and Aziraphale stayed quiet and still, huddled against the snowed-over car.
"Where the hell did they go?" asked the wizard, bewildered, taking a few steps out to the stairs and peering around the snowy street.
"Probably," said the mafioso, although he didn't holster his gun. "The Nevernever is vast."
"Dammit!"
"You're on church grounds, Mister Dresden," the suited man said sharply.
The wizard muttered something inaudible that looked like 'didn't stop you,' which got him an angry glare from the mafioso, the first real sign of emotion Crowley had seen on the man since he'd stepped out of the confessional.
"I suggest you go home. Where's that unfortunate assemblage you call a car?"
The wizard waved back towards the long-abandoned sushi restaurant. "About a mile that way."
"And you're soaking wet. And bleeding." There was a moment of resigned silence. "I'll give you a ride. And refrain from sending you the bill for the leather interior."
The effect was instant; the wizard stood up straighter, supporting himself on his staff, and his voice went frigid. "I'll walk, thanks."
"Oh, really, Mister Dresden, do we have to go through this ridiculous charade? It's a ride. It doesn't come with a price. I will not be calling on you to deliver suspicious parcels or surrender your first born."
"No, no, John. Leather interior. Wouldn't want to sully it," the wizard said, with the same mock-cheerfulness he'd displayed right before he'd blown out the windows of the Bentley.
"You pubescent idiot." The crime lord's gun vanished into his suit, and he lifted both hands to massage his temples. "You know that I don't mean you any harm. Why are you making this difficult?"
"It's the principle of the thing."
"The principle of the thing is acting as if I have cooties?" At a startled glance: "I'm trying to speak to you in your native language, in order to facilitate communication. Should I be using smaller words?"
"Fuck off, John," the wizard suggested.
"Is it so unreasonable for me to not allow you to die out there like some elongated match girl? Mister Dresden, words of one syllable: There Are No Strings. Get In The Car."
"Oh, right. The local Godfather is making me an offer. With no strings attached. That you're just going to forget about, of course. Never mind that you've told me yourself that everyone has a price," the wizard sneered. The other man's green eyes narrowed dangerously.
Crowley watched, fascinated; the wizard had dug under the mafioso's skin in exactly the way that a trifling little thing like a marauding demon had completely failed to do.
"And you expect me to believe that you're not trying to soften me up now so that you can get to me later? You expect me to believe this won't come up again? You expect-"
"NO, Mister Bond, I expect you to die!"
The wizard cut off mid-sentence, looking shocked.
The calm exterior sloughed off, showing the same raw openness that Crowley had heard from the confessional. The mafioso's shoulders tightened; he appeared to be trying to loom over the wizard despite being a good six inches shorter. More, he appeared to be succeeding. "I APOLOGIZE," he bellowed, "I seem to have left my death ray and my white Persian cat in my OTHER PANTS, so much for THAT plan for world domination, now since I didn't have anything else planned for tonight, may I DRIVE YOU TO YOUR DAMN CAR!"
"Swearing on Church grounds," Crowley muttered.
The wizard stared at the enraged mafioso as if he'd never seen him before; then his eyes went slightly glassy and he shoved the shorter man against the wall of the church, leaning down to kiss him soundly.
"Oops," said Crowley, mustering a bit of a smirk.
"Oh, dear," murmured Aziraphale, who'd craned his head to watch over his shoulder. "Er. I may have pushed a bit hard... He was so walled off, though, the poor thing was stifling-"
"Now that's just cliché," Crowley objected, as the kiss on the steps deepened, one of the mafioso's hands slipping into the wizard's wet, matted hair.
"Oh, this isn't good at all," the angel fretted.
"Do the button men of Chicago know that their boss is as gay as a little pink lamb with a bow on?" Crowley asked curiously.
"He's not-- he's equal opportunity-- it, it's not important to him, the CITY is important to him."
"Really. That looks pretty important to him, that there."
"Oh no."
"They're both going to catch trouble for this, aren't they?"
"Probably," the angel sighed.
"Good."
The two men on the steps had parted, but instead of the narratively required moment of shock, violence, and/or further crazed lust they seemed to be slumped against one another for support. They rested quietly for a minute, then the mafioso said something that was too low to be heard, the wizard nodding in silent agreement. And then both men slipped back inside the church.
"Oh..." Aziraphale said, deflating, his wings drooping a bit.
"Come on, angel," Crowley said, reaching up to pat him gingerly on the shoulder. "I've got a nice warm hotel room and the scotch isn't bad. Come on. Then we could head home in the morning."
Aziraphale looked at the church door and nodded. "I don't think I've done anything here. This isn't the right place for us."
"Oh, you don't know the half of it." And Crowley didn't intend to tell him, especially about the crew cut. Leaning a bit on Aziraphale, he got to his feet. "Ineffable, this whole bloody city. Let's go."
And they did.
Title: The Dresden Omens (2 of 2) (part one here.)
Verse: Bookverse, crossover with Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Rating: PG-15 (for men fighting, swearing and kissing)
Author: Shiplizard
Summary: In which the forces of Evil-ish and Eh, Good Enough unite to keep Chicago in balance.
Word Count: 9494
Warnings: Spoilers for Good Omens, Dresden Files novels through book ten.
Notes: Thanks to betas gehayi and homuxeiku_loff
Stay tuned for the epilogue, which LJ refuses to let me put in this segment!
Part 1
Part 2
Epilogue
So going for the apprentice hadn't been the brightest idea. Crowley had forgotten that Heaven's retirement plan was more forgiving than Hell's; when Satanists fell down on the job, they were lucky if all they got was ignored. Holy Knights and family, on the other hand, were a bit like American presidents, entitled to the holy secret service even after the term was up.
But it hadn't been the wrong angle to play. Humankind could rage against cruel fate, sure, but to get the low-down corrosive anger, you needed a person on the other end. Someone close.
Genesis 4:1-16, a short summation by Crowley: Nobody will do you over like family will do you over.
And Heaven's champion had a brother. Hell had been stingy with information about him, but Crowley knew he was rich; the rich generally wanted to keep getting richer. A little temptation there, get the brother in his pocket, load him up with good intentions, and Crowley would have an in right into his life. Mortals had a giant blind spot for family, as if a bit of shared DNA actually gave them some sort of obligation. Even if you didn't share a last name (and the pair didn't-- that was probably a bit of family drama just itching to be exploited). Heaven's champion struck him as the kind who'd bend over backward for family.
On the other hand, would the brother be cooperative? Crowley suspected he would. Someone who lived in Chicago's Gold Coast would be rich, probably wouldn't talk much to his poorer relative in the dingy basement apartment unless it was to lord being rich over him. Probably liked his money more than his brother, would probably like getting more money. Call it a hunch; it was just a human thing.
Crowley made a phone call to the brother's business-- a very snazzy salon-- and smiled slightly to himself as the startled receptionist found that a time slot had just opened right up.
"Isn't that convenient?" he purred into the phone. "I'll be right over."
The Coiffure Cup fronted as a coffee house, brightly lit and inoffensively decorated, the piped-in techno music cheerful and just a beat shy of danceable. There was an expensive coffee-bar, a few seats, and a curtained doorway that opened occasionally to let out the smell of mango, mint, antiseptic, and perfume.
Crowley, who'd made an appointment, was ushered back at once into the darkened back end of the store; the throbbing music was louder, and a half-dozen high-powered women in expensive clothing were draped in various stages of lounge across reclined chairs, looking-- there was only one word for it-- languorous.
Crowley hadn't ever bothered getting his hair cut before; it did what he told it to. He was wondering if this hadn't been an oversight.
A man sashayed away from where a stock-broker was settling cozily under a helmet-style hair-dryer with a magazine and approached Crowley.
"You must be Ahn-tony," the beautician said, looking him up and down appreciatively. Crowley had met people before who undressed him with their gazes. This one stripped him slowly, ruffled a blooming rose across his skin, rubbed him with oil and handcuffed him to the metaphorical headboard.
"You must be Thomas."
"Mais oui." They stood apart for a moment, sizing one another up, two well-cheekboned men in effortlessly chic clothing, studiously not engaging in a battle to see which of them was cooler. It'd be too obvious.
Then Thomas the beautician batted his long lashes and extended a hand. "So rarely we have men here. Such a pleasure." His brick-thick French accent tortured the word into 'play-zee-are.' It was bizarrely charming, and Crowley wondered how the man made that little smirk of a smile kissable, and not punchable. "You will come sit down? Of course. Yes."
He led Crowley to a beauty station in the center of the room, one with a little sink behind it, swathed him gracefully in an apron, and sat him down in a chair that would not have looked out of place on the bridge of the USS Enterprise (except they might have wondered about the shampoo-sink behind it).
"What can I do to you today?" the man asked, and it was just shy of an obscene invitation.
"Just a trim," Crowley said vaguely. "Why don't I leave it up to you? It's been a while since I've done anything new with it."
"Aah, you trust yourself to me?" Thomas pulled in a little gasp, laying a hand over his heart. "I will try to be worthy."
"I'll take it out in trade if you aren't," Crowley said, flirting baldly, and Thomas' laugh was as rich and dark as treacle.
Thomas reached out to take his glasses away, and Crowley didn't quite flinch-- he managed to bat Thomas' hand away. "No, no, those stay," he said lightly, nudging them back over his eyes. "You understand?"
If the beautician had seen anything that upset him, he wasn't showing it. "Of course, my pet. I should 'ave asked." He laid Crowley back in the chair like a lover, supporting his neck in a padded cut-out in the shampoo sink, and turned the warm water on Crowley's scalp.
Definitely an oversight, Crowley decided, as strong fingers lathered shampoo into his hair. He should have done this years ago.
"You are not from Chicago, I think," Thomas mused.
"No, no. London. Here on business." Something tickled at his awareness, like a moth tasting his skin, and was gone.
"May I ask, what kind of business brings you here? I do not want to pry, of course..."
"Temporary assignment," Crowley euphemised. "Picking up some slack for the company. Tough job. Only I can do it."
"Ooh," Thomas tutted. "I knew you were an important man..." The French accent was cloyingly fake, but the charm was real enough. Crowley was having trouble reconciling this chiselled being as any relation to the scruffy bastard in the basement apartment with the giant malevolent hair-beast. He was also having a bit of trouble thinking, but after what'd happened the day before he thought he more than deserved to relax.
The water shut off, and Crowley gave a little hiss of discontentment-- there was the sound of a pump-bottle, and Thomas began to work something slick and silky into his hair. "To make you shine, Ahn-tony." Mollified, Crowley lay his head back into the strong hands, eyes drifting shut again.
They exchanged banal chatter as his hair was rinsed again, and he was led to a cutting station.
"There's something, on a personal note," Crowley said drowsily. He felt almost drunk-- pleasant and floating as Thomas snipped at his hair. "If I could trouble you."
"Oui?" Thomas' hand stroked the nape of his neck.
He'd meant to come at it from a more oblique angle, but he was having trouble mustering his thoughts, the simpler demands of the body he was wearing drowning out any subtlety. ...Bloody Manchester, he was hard enough to hammer nails, wasn't sure if he wanted to shag something or just sleep for a few years.
"It's about your brother..." he mumbled.
"What do you want with Harry?" Thomas murmured into his ear, his accent melting away like an ice cube under a blow torch. The man talking to Crowley now had been born in this city and wasn't shy about it.
Crowley finally became aware that there was something very wrong, and with an effort dispelled the hormones running rampant through his system. Things snapped into focus very quickly, and he realized that the light, cool touch just under his jaw was in fact a straight razor, and that the demonic influence that had been pumping his body full of happy chemicals had its teeth poised around a very sensitive area of his intangible being.
Incubi and succubi aren't the strongest of the demonic ranks, but they have an unerring ability to aim for the tender bits.
"I think," Crowley said, his voice suddenly clear, but slightly distorted as he tried to speak without moving his jaw, "I've made a mistake."
"Yeah, buddy, I think you have," the incubus said, his perfect lips pulled back in an elegant snarl.
"I think I should leave."
"You're not going anywhere until we talk." The razor blade pressed a little harder. Crowley didn't swallow.
"I could burn this place to the ground," he said conversationally.
"Only if you want to do your unholy chanting in soprano from here on out," the incubus said with a pretty little smirk.
The two beings met one another's eyes in the mirror: Crowley's were just visible over his glasses, slitted and golden; Thomas' were a pure, hungry white.
Family. Go-- Sa-- Simon Cowell smite them. Irrational, stupid...
"People will get hurt," Crowley said tightly. "He wouldn't like that, would he? Just let me walk away, and you have my word I won't kill anyone."
There was a long moment.
The razor disappeared.
"If you touch my little brother, your balls are mine," Thomas whispered, and patted him on the shoulder. "AHN-tony, my sweet," he said, loud enough to be carry through the room. His eyes dimmed back to simple gray, and his accent pranced back across the Atlantic. "You are finished. You are lah-vely. Go, my dear one, but come visit again soo-oon..." He spun Crowley up and out of the chair, whisking him to the door in an improvised tango, and Crowley found himself outside the heavy curtain that led into the boutique, wincing against the brighter light.
A chorus of scandalized female titters made him look for his reflection in the huge pane windows, and gape at what he saw.
After quality time with an incubus it was no shock that his pants were still several sizes too tight around the crotch. But the crew cut, that had been uncalled for.
----
"The brother's an incubus," Crowley said dully. "And they didn't tell me. That's not information you just forget. That's not something you put on a sticky-note and slap on the fridge and hope that someone sees it."
Aziraphale's ansaphone listened patiently.
"They're not even giving me a fair chance; they don't want me going around any back corners. They want him and me going at each other like wasps in a jar, and whoever loses they'll be just as happy. I'm not going to give them the satisfaction, angel." He paused, and said with a certain level of grudging self-awareness. "I'm going to try not to. Anyway. But if it does come down to it..."
He was sitting on a leather-upholstered chair in his hotel room, one hand around his tumbler of Glenlivet, the other holding the phone. He'd grown back his hair as soon as he was in private; Thomas had made him look like an SAS man who sneaked out to drag clubs on the weekend. "I'm not a fighter. I'm going to try to start where Lasciel left off, if I can figure out where that is; get him to demonstrate a bit of Wrath, call the job good, come home." Dark magic was addictive, and if he got the wizard to channel hellfire again it would leave him susceptible to that needy, human ache to be the biggest, most brutal creature around. That kind of desire came from straight from the id, and was as easy to resist as an oncoming glacier. Hell would like it.
The angel wouldn't, but that wasn't what was preying most on Crowley's mind now. "And if I don't come home... I thought you might... I mean we're friends, aren't we? In a way? Obviously, you're my mortal foe, but we've been foe-ing a long time." More than six thousand years. He-- Heav-- Newark, hadn't the angel been the one he went to first, when things all started to get Revelations-shaped eighteen years ago?
"And I thought you might like to know. Er. That I might not coming back, and this could be goodbye." It sounded both soppy and awkward, Crowley realized with disgust, and neither of those things were traditional Crowley traits.
He became aware of a change in the silence on the other end of the line, and managed a hurried "Findgoodhomesfortheplants-" before the beep cut him off and the dial-tone started back up, loud in his ears.
He hung up the phone and sighed. All right.
Lasciel.
----
The Order of the Blackened Denarius was one of Hell's great attempts at modernization, and still held up as an example of such. Considering that the Order had been founded when the world was still in single-digits Anno Domini, this should give the observer an idea of how well Hell took to change.
The idea was a good one, on paper. Plenty of demons, Crowley among them, had been out in the world for a long time, and they'd all reported back that nobody could influence humans quite like humans could. They invented their own virtue and their own evil, and while they were perfectly willing to blame both virtue and evil on one side or another, nine-hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand it was all down to Free Will without the soul ever being so much as ever being spiritually sneezed on by the blasphemous or the sublime.
The agents of Hell, Hell then reasoned, had to be able to think like humans-- but still be demons, or else they'd just be walking around like everyone else, and what would that do to the reputation of the Satanic forces? To that end, a partnership was dreamed up; thirty up-and-coming demons would be bound into thirty pieces of cursed silver, and they would work hand in hand with the damned souls who possessed the coins. It was correctly guessed that having demonic power would be enough of a draw that most of the partnerships were initially voluntary.
Initially voluntary. That was the snag, as far as Crowley was concerned; the Denarians might be in human bodies, with input from human minds, but they were still thinking exactly like demons, and equal partnerships quickly became horrific slavery on the human host's part. Which was all well and good and in keeping with Hellish aesthetics, but it didn't actually fix the problems. Now you just had demons in human suits. More powerful than your average corporeal demon, absolutely, more sturdy, because the coins could survive dunking in holy water, but still demons. It didn't help that most of the Order tended to choose black-hearted criminals or fallen heroes for hosts, and doing so missed the entire human experience. Real temptation, real redemption, the truest test of the human will, Crowley knew, was not in the heart of the gibbering serial killer or the pious king, but waged in the soul of the man in his front yard, eyeing his neighbour’s throat while gripping his garden shears and thinking if that dog of his gets into the begonias one more time...
The Order had passed year to year, century to century, and while it gained followers, resources, and knowledge, it had rarely gained insight. Only a very few of the bunch had actually learned anything about humanity. One of those was the head of the Order himself-- the partnership of Nicodemus and Anduriel had been productive and mutually-educational enough to make Crowley's skin crawl. A wistful demoness who'd picked up the name Rosanna somewhere had also picked up a few pointers on what made the human male tick.
One of the others who understood, who really understood, was Lasciel.
By the time of the death of Christ, Crowley had already fallen from Hell's attention. He was the first tempter, certainly, arguably the most important-- but demons following in his footsteps had discovered how much more difficult it was to do anything with the recalcitrant monkeys now that they actually knew the difference between good and evil, and he'd earned nothing a healthy dose of resentment for his pioneering efforts.
Just the same, Lasciel came to talk to him. Before her assignment, she came to talk to everyone who'd worked with humans-- she was ambitious; she was Doing Her Homework, almost earnest about the business of damnation. She'd looked him up in a bar in Israel, a little hole in the wall with a few rude chairs, an equally rude owner, and a big jar of wine that was exactly as hot as the miserable day outside.
He'd sat her down across a table and he'd explained, or he'd tried. And she'd listened, really listened, keenly taking in everything he said. But the things he didn't say had escaped her, he was almost certain. She'd missed the bits between the lines that couldn't be spoken out loud if you liked your cushy assignment on Earth better than, say, being tortured horribly in the bowels of Hell for your insolence. The most important bits. 'The Management can't be expected to understand everything,' that was one. 'Sometimes you have to do what they say, not what they mean.' More damning: 'sometimes the Management is just wrong.' And about humans-- 'it's not just their souls, no matter what Hell says. It's the glands, and the breathing, and the heartbeat, and you won't understand them if you don't stop sometimes, take a deep breath, and remember how heavy gravity is.'
Of course a few centuries later and everyone was calling her Lasciel the Temptress, so she must have gotten something out of all her research. She'd never failed before, never had a setback like this, but she'd been working on this hero-type, and she wouldn't have been doing it stupidly.
A little groundwork, and Crowley would pick up the loose thread. What peeved the champion? What got him angry? What made him feel small and helpless? What would make him need to feel powerful?
He finished his Glenlivet and stared at the wall for a while. Then he nodded to himself, and wrote a letter, signing it with an ancient and powerful symbol that made the eyes water just to look at it. Once the letter was sealed and sent, he stood, pulled on his new boots and coat, summoned a thick, chic scarf out of the firmament, and left.
--------
Independent research had been key. Once Crowley had stopped trusting Hell's information and done his own, the pieces fell more solidly into place. A little snooping in Chicago's vast supernatural underworld quickly convinced Crowley that direct action wasn't wise. There were werewolves to deal with if he stepped wrong, and at least one department of the local police knew entirely too much for its own good. On the other hand, it turned up exactly what he'd needed; someone for the champion to get good and furious at who wasn't Crowley.
It always came back to humans. In this case, the local Mafia don, with whom the champion had a long-running feud, and to whom he kept doing massive amounts of anger-fueled property damage. The fireball that had demolished a dumpster (and several stores in a building the mafioso owned) had to have had Lasciel's hand in it. Always good at playing with a man's temper, that Lasciel.
So give the wizard something good and wicked to get righteous about, set him on an innocent (at least in this particular case) man, let THEM go at it like wasps in a bottle. The champion worked for the police, they were sure to call him if they found something odd enough...
That was where Joe Piarelli came in. Until roughly four pm that afternoon, Joe Piarelli had been an independent pimp, establishing himself defiantly in taken territory. At four pm, he had had a tragic accident in which he slipped off an icy pier, breaking his neck on the way down. No fewer than a dozen people were willing to swear to this. His body had vanished into Lake Michigan, not to be seen again.
At least until four-thirty pm, when an ancient summons called his body out of the water and to Crowley. A snap of his fingers, and the man had sprouted a bullet-hole that the police would find to be a match with the gun of a highly-ranked enforcer of the local mafia. But that kind of thing happened every day, and the lawyers would be used to it. Crowley was just adding the extra wrinkle now, tracing hellfire over the corpse's bare chest, branding him with the sigil of a powerful demon. (It had once summoned Ligur, Duke of Hell. But nearly twenty years ago, Ligur had died as finally as a demon can under a bucket of holy water, and the symbol was now, as they said in the Business, available.)
"Hey, pal, what're you doing?"
Crowley looked up in irritation. The man at the mouth of the alley looked down at him-- he recognized him as the thug who'd 'helped' Piarelli off the pier. He was built like a brick wall, his hair was about the same color as one, and he was holding a very large gun.
"I knew I saw someone," he grunted, his narrow, piggy eyes getting narrower and piggier. The muzzle of the gun swung up to point due Crowley.
Crowley hissed and made a gesture with his blood-stained fingers.
The man looked down at what his riot-gun had become, and then-- Crowley had to give him grudging points for not dropping it and running-- threw it at him. Crowley dodged out of the way; it hit the ground behind him with a sickly squelch.
The big man had a sterner stomach than most of the hired help Crowley had ever had to deal with, but there wasn't so much of a glimmer of supernatural protection anywhere on him. Crowley snapped his fingers, and the man relaxed, his face going slack and a bit sullen. "In thirty seconds you will wake up. You will go away and leave the body," he said cheerfully, and then as an afterthought-- "And don't tell your boss."
He finished up his work, adding a bit of realistic detail so that a competent mortician would determine that the branding had taken place before death. That ought to do it. Then he trudged back to the pay lot where he'd left the Bentley, knocking off his boots before he slid in with a sigh of comfort. The interior immediately heated, the windows de-iced themselves, and the snow sizzled off. Crowley relaxed, and tooled out into the near-deserted streets to find something worth stopping for.
Behind him, crouched in an alley, Mister Hendricks reached into his coat again, and pulled out a sleek, deadly piece of technology. He aimed at the side of the Bentley, and shot.
The little phone whirred and clicked as it captured a perfect picture of the car. Then Hendricks dialled.
"I need you boys to find this car," he said, without preamble, when the other end was picked up. He hit the button to send the picture to the equally sleek cell-phone on the other end, and waited.
There was an indrawn breath. "That's a twenty-six Bentley. It's like new. I didn't know there were any in the US-- why does it need found?"
The big man's brows beetled up as he searched for words. "The driver could be a trouble-maker. Pretty sure he saw the Piarelli hit."
The voice on the other end swore, blasphemously. "Jesus Christ, shit, you want we should get the boss?"
"No!" Hendricks said sharply, his nerves suddenly jangling with don't tell the boss. He'd been able to convince himself 'go away' meant 'go away from the body' so he could still follow the creep to his car, but this one he couldn't shake. "You know he said not to be disturbed today."
"Unless it was an emergency. This sounds like a fuckin' emergency, my friend."
"No," Hendricks said, squeezing the bridge of his nose between two big fingers as the compulsion in his head worked up to a threatening headache. "No, just... just find me the car, and I'll-" Clarity came. The headache disappeared. "And I'll call in a guy to talk to him. I'm sure they can work it out."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure. You know how the boss is about trying to negotiate first."
"Yeah, I know. Where'd you see this clown last?"
"He was goin' west on Division, away from the lake. No hurry. Wait till he parks somewhere, call me back ASAP, and tail him wherever he goes."
"You got it."
Hendricks pressed the little red button to disconnect the call, and started-- with surprising dexterity-- to scroll through the menus, looking at his list of saved numbers. When the one he wanted failed to turn up, he swore to himself, and looked around. There, just up the road, that was what he needed; gas station. He bustled inside, shaking the snow off, and made straight for their pay phone, and the phonebook under it. Turning to 'W', he cupped his little phone in the other hand and dialled again.
Crowley had cruised around the empty streets a bit, smugly enjoying watching weather happen to other people and listening to the impotent patter of snow on the Bentley's roof, before he found the restaurant. The classy lettering drew him in; the lure of dangerous sushi kept him there. There was something unholy about sushi involving beef and asparagus; it was fantastic. He wished, briefly, that he could show the angel. Aziraphale had a mortal weakness for sashimi that Crowley was proud of.
He spent two hours sampling everything, amusing himself by occasionally sending plates back to the kitchen along with vitriolic and absurd critiques (he wasn't too jaded to tell the chef that his sashimi was raw and he should be ashamed of himself), and left in a very good mood.
There was a human sitting on the hood of the Bentley. Deliberately sitting on it, feet propped on one moulded wheel-well, elbows resting on his long legs, a long staff across his lap. He was tall, and obviously skinny even under the protective layers of leather and knitwear. Needed a shave. Needed some sleep. Needed a sandwich. Needed to get his sneakers off of Crowley's car. Right Now.
Harry Dresden, private investigator and Heaven's alleged champion, smiled at Crowley.
"You're the demon who was bothering my apprentice, aren't you?" he asked, with an air of cheerful menace.
"Get off my car." Crowley hissed.
"You wrote that letter of complaint to get my dog taken away, too, right?"
"That thing's a menace," Crowley said darkly. "Get off my car."
"What can I say? He's an excellent judge of character. Don't worry, I destroyed the binding rune on your letter. No more hypnotized government drones, and I get him back next week." The wizard was, in Crowley's estimation, insufferably pleased with himself.
"We have no quarrel, wizard," Crowley said haughtily, in the face of all evidence, trying to suppress his annoyance. "I'm in town on business. Do not busy yourself in my affairs, and you won't be hurt."
"Business, huh?" The wizard scowled. "With Gentleman Johnny? Is that it? You're working for the mob?"
Crowley's face melted into an innocent little smile. "I'm sure I wouldn't tell."
"I bet you are," the wizard pushed. "I bet you're secretly in cahoots." He said it with pride, like a dog who'd learned a trick.
Crowley's smirk grew wider.
"...only not really. Oh, man, did YOU not do your homework. Not to mention one of his enforcers brought me in on this." The earnest, vaguely idiotic look disappeared, and an iron core of cynicism stared out at Crowley. Crowley felt his expression solidifying.
"Get off of my car," he said again, with a chillness that rivaled the weather around them. He was surprised when the wizard actually hopped off-- leaving muddy footprints on his fender.
"One more thing I just have to know," the wizard said. "When my tires got slashed. That was you, right?"
Crowley simply nodded.
"Thought so." One of the wizard's gloved hands tightened on his staff.
The Bentley exploded as the air in the cab and tires was suddenly raised to inferno temperatures; the expanding air blew out rubber and shattered every window, catching fire because it was too hot not to. Crowley stared at the fireball that had been his car, his mouth hanging open. A red mist rose in front of his vision. The wizard was still smirking.
An eldritch howl started somewhere in the depths of Hell and boiled up out of Crowley's mouth as he flung himself at the wizard, his gloves shredding as his fingers turned into heavy, tearing claws. The wizard closed his eyes-- and seemed to grow a foot in every direction as a silver light poured from his skin and formed a protective shield around him. Amorphous silver arms closed around Crowley, and squeezed; his claws raked ineffectively over the silver mask where the face should have been. It got a manic laugh and no other response, the wizard's angry smile half-visible. A judicious knee to the groin had the same lack of effect--he might as well have been wrestling a sumo made of kevlar balloons. He didn't have the chance to take another shot; the silver construct lifted him above its head and slammed him into the concrete hard enough to send cracks racing away, and then knelt heavily on top of him.
"All right. Start talking. Who sent you?"
If it were just a question of physical weight, Crowley could have miracled himself away, but the force bearing down on him and the blobby hand closing over his throat were something else entirely. Soulfire. That utter rat bastard Uriel had taught the wizard how to shore up his magic with spiritual energy and it hurt like hell-
He hadn't answered fast enough; a wicked knee to the kidneys made him convulse.
"Was it Anduriel?"
"I don't work for him! It was HELL, you idiot," he rasped. "The bloody management!"
"Why?" the wizard barked. "What do they want?"
"A paper and a pack of crisps, what do you THINK-?" Added weight told him that sarcasm was not appreciated. He thrashed frantically, claws scrabbling at the freezing concrete, ripping up shreds of it. He got a vicious kick in the side and rolled, fetching up against a fire hydrant. The wizard, still encased in silver armour, set a foot on his back.
"What. Do they want," the wizard growled.
There was a moment of stillness. Then Crowley rolled sharply to the side and lashed out at the fire hydrant, clawing away the nozzle. The thick metal sheared like butter under his talons, and a single syllable in a long-forgotten language called the water to come boiling up from under the ground, breaking through the valves, and smash into the human who stood astride Crowley.
The wizard was flung back down the icy sidewalk and into the street, his staff clattering away, rolling into a gutter. The running water stripped his silver armor away, carrying off his magic even as he tried to muster it. Crowley staggered to his feet, leaning on the building behind him.
And it was going so well, he realized. The champion was furious. Using a bit of heavenly power, it had to be admitted, but Soulfire couldn't be sustained forever. The spiritual batteries would go dry, and the user would pay in exhaustion and pain. And then, when Heaven had apparently deserted him, he'd call for power from another source, power that he didn't have to force out of himself, power that was easy... Surely he would? And they could end this thing and both go home.
The wizard had crawled out of the spray from the hydrant, but he was looking much the worse for wear. There was a red trail running down his face where he'd taken the impact of the road with his forehead, and he was soaked to the bone-- no joke in this weather, not at all. Hellfire, Crowley urged him, trying to pound the idea through his defences and into his gray matter. It's HOT. You're COLD. Do the math!
"You cannot harm me, mortal," he shouted above the wind. "When I have been burnt by the fires of Hell, your paltry-" was it paltry? Yeah, that was it, "-magics are nothing to me."
"You looked pretty harmed to me," the wizard rasped back, missing Crowley's subtle hint completely, and starting to take his feet.
The SUV came out of the darkness, headlights blinding, engine roaring. Whoever the driver was, they didn't care that it was snowing out; there was salt on the roads, wasn't there? So other cars were safely at home and not trying to drive on an inch of ice; sissy little compacts all of them. Not this car. What else was an Escalade for?
The wizard had enough warning to throw himself flat, wrist held in front of him. The car braked, which did absolutely nothing on the iced-over road, and skidded... up and over him, tracing the course of a gentle speed bump.
A moment later, the wizard raised his head, the streamlined magic shield he'd erected over himself vanishing like a bubble. He staggered unsteadily to his feet, looked at Crowley, and appeared to come to a decision.
"Vento Giostrus!"
Crowley felt the change in the air-- the cold wind took on a purpose, boiling up and turning on itself. It churned into a cyclone, howling down between the buildings around them, hammering into the ground around Crowley and whipping back up. The world went grayish-white and sharp all over as snow and rock salt and trash were kicked up by the gale.
Crowley flattened himself against the brick wall behind him with a wince, casting about in the mess of magic and debris for the wizard's presence. He was half blinded and the wizard was desperate; the blow could come at any time, and meanwhile he was taking little cuts and scrapes as things whizzed past him. He should have been able to block all the little bits and pieces-- but he hurt. Bloody Manchester, he hurt all over, and he couldn't miracle away the bruises where the Soulfire-shield had bludgeoned him. Still no sign of the wizard, not that he could see more than a foot in front of his face, or hear anything over the shriek of the wind...
He knelt on the ground, the icy cold seeping up into his knees, and curled up flat. His recently-acquired jacket burst at the seams as his wings unfurled, and he tucked them around himself as a shield. In his quiet little pocket of comparative warmth and safety, he summoned his strength.
His muscles strained, and the glossy-white wings flapped, once. (And they were white. As noted elsewhere, demons' wings look nearly exactly like those of angels, except that the demons preen more.) A burst of hellishly-hot, brimstone-perfumed air hit the cyclone, which fragmented and dissipated into a fine mist of melted snow. Rock salt pattered to the ground in the ensuing stillness.
Crowley's sunglasses had cracked a lens when a pebble smashed into them, and he tucked them away into the breast pocket of his ruined jacket, his eyes casting an angry red light as he scanned the area. The wizard was nowhere in sight, nowhere to be heard.
He scowled, and ventured further out onto the street, met with a resounding emptiness. He almost didn't see it, the little dark patch-- a bloody handprint, where someone had stumbled. Footprints, leading into an alley and out the other side, far apart. Long, long strides.
The insufferable little bastard had run away. And he'd had a good five minutes head start on Crowley. The city was a maze. No more than London, really, but it was the wizard's maze and he knew it better than Crowley. He could be anywhere.
Crowley sprung into the air, wings pumping, and rose up along the buildings, looking for movement. His eyes lit on the great dome of a cathedral, and he knew where the wizard was going.
It wasn't far, as the demon flew; he was a moment behind the loping figure, landing on one side of the wrought-iron fence in a flurry of snow just as a dark figure took the stairs two at a time up. The fleeing wizard skidded on the ice, once, turned it into a roll, and half crawled through the door.
Now what.
He could bide his time, try another disastrous scheme-- against a champion who'd be prepared for him with Soulfire, and who wouldn't make that hydrant mistake twice. Or he could stop, leave now, go back to London and tell Hell that he couldn't and wouldn't do the job. They would take that so well. Or, the last option, he could go forward, and finish it. The wizard was scared, obviously in pain. Prime wrath condition. It would hurt, walking into that holy place, but Crowley had lived among humans so long that he nearly was one-- he could handle it long enough to try.
He winched in his wings, summoning them back into the fabric of his being. The red glow of his eyes faded as he pulled back, hiding as far inside his mortal-ish body as he could. His sunglasses became whole again, with a moment's concentration; he put them on. Head up. Shoulders back. He sauntered up the stairs, making no sign of the effort involved in each step, pulled open the door with the tatters of his leather jacket wrapped around one hand, and stepped inside.
Imagine the feeling of a thousand cuts.
Now imagine stepping into a refreshing lemon juice shower.
Crowley hissed involuntarily as he stepped in, the Cathedral warmly lit and damnedly Holy. Belief echoed around him, protection. The church's threshold dragged at him, stripping down his power, trying to drive him out. He stepped forward, boots loud on the marble floor. Halfway up the row, the wizard was supporting himself along the wall; he looked up, and his face, for a moment, showed surprise, fear. GOOD. Crowley's fists clenched, the Bentley exploding again behind his eyes. He wanted to see the little bastard scared so shitless that all he could do was compromise himself and call on Hell to protect him. He wanted him afraid.
He stalked down the aisle, picking his way carefully through the pews after the wizard, who was trying not to look like he was looking around for anyone to help. Nothing doing. The church seemed hollow and empty...
No, wait, that wasn't right. There was the murmur of voices. The wizard had heard them, too, and was now fervently ignoring them, trying not to draw attention to ... the confessional, set back in a transept. Crowley snuck a glance and it and bit back a snarl. Whatever was in there he wanted no part of; a bubble of holy influence surrounded the little booth. As they backed up, the voices grew clearer, enough to make it clear that the penitent was in fact arguing with the man taking his confession.
The wizard looked back, startled by that, and Crowley took his chance and leapt at him, going for the throat. The wizard heard him leap and turn back, blocking his lunge with the staff-- which twisted out of his grip and rolled away across the floor as they hit the floor together. Crowley waited for the blast of magic, but getting hit by a car had apparently put a dent in the man's psychic reserve. What he got instead was punch in the solar plexus and the wizard scrabbling for something that clattered, metallic, against the floor.
None of that. Crowley elbowed the wizard in the gut, and used his cringing moment of pain to grab his wrist and slam it against the floor until the pistol fell out of the wizard's hand. He swiped away; it skidded under a long row of pews. Instead of scrabbling for it, the wizard philosophically let it go, and equally philosophically threw a punch that would have done something painful to Crowley's jaw if it had been shaped entirely like a human's.
They rolled across the floor, the only sound the wet slap of their clothing against the marble, the occasional thump of a fist into meat, the murmuring from the confessional. The penitent was getting angrier, his voice loud enough to be understood in bits and pieces.
-my own soul? And it will be all right? Do you know how big this city is?
One of the wizard's long legs kicked out and found purchase against a pew-- he shoved himself at Crowley, trying to pin him, and Crowley snarled and jabbed the heel of his hand under the wizard's chin, making his head snap back with a clack of teeth. The wizard retaliated with a rabbit punch that made Crowley curl in on himself for a moment, and then try to claw the wizard's face off with blunt, human fingernails.
Murmur, Murmur said the priest in the confessional.
No, I want a conversion factor. How many lives is one soul worth? How many people should I let suffer so that one soul goes to heaven?
The wizard twisted out of the way; Crowley's thumbnail took a strip of skin off his face. The wizard tried to punch him and they rolled again, finding no traction on slick marble.
One? Five? Fifty? A thousand? No, I am NOT being glib. Do you see another way? TELL me. The penitent's voice rose in raw agony.
The wizard's head cracked against the stairs leading to the altar, and Crowley used his dazed moment to get on top of him, hands wrapping around his throat, thoughts of temptation forgotten. He was full of that bloodlust that comes straight from the glands, the hormones, the body itself. It was human, transcendentally human.
I don't get much sleep, I could count the people I know I can actually trust on the fingers of one hand. Temptation? I'm not doing this because I'm TEMPTED-
The wizard stopped clutching at his hands, and instead jabbed two fingers into the crease of Crowley's elbow in just the right spot. The sudden, jangling pain loosened his grip, and the wizard broke free by bringing his arms up inside of Crowley's and hammering outward, an obviously often-studied self-defense move. Crowley rocked back and the wizard wriggled like an underfed eel out from beneath him, crawling up the steps. Crowley gathered himself, sprung after him.
-is to quit. To walk away and leave this job behind, to just go live somewhere quiet. To diminish into the Goddamn West -!
Murmur.
I'm sorry, Father. I'm ... tired.
Crowley hit the wizard in the midsection with his shoulder, slamming him up against the stone baptismal font on the altar. It sloshed. The wizard rolled to one side, flung out his hand, and with great effort ground out a single word:
"Forzare."
A burst of magic, unstable and coming in spurts, hammered at the top of the stone column. The font tipped towards Crowley, rocked back, tipped again, further, leaning--
Crowley scrambled out of the way as it fell with a massive bang, leaving webbed cracks in the marble stairs and oh bless it no spilling a little wave of water down the stairs toward him. He leapt to his feet-- every muscle in his body protested-- and staggered.
The water pooled around his mortal-made shoes, with their thick, thick tread and was quiescent.
He only gaped for a second. This was it. He drew himself up to his full height, and let his wings extend, biting his tongue to keep from shouting at how THAT hurt in THIS place.
"Little fool, I am done playing with you," he intoned, disguising the hoarseness of his voice under a demonic rasp. The wizard stared at him, trying to make sense of this; he was dazed, his eyes slipping in and out of focus. "Nothing in this place can hurt me." TAKE THE HINT, Crowley bellowed mentally. You're about to freeze to death, you've got to have a concussion, just DO it. Lasciel taught you how, she must have! I swear, I'll scream and there'll be black smoke and then I'll be out of this place and back in London, you'll never see me again if you just give IN!
The penitent's voice said, much closer and clearer: "He's wearing rubber-soled shoes, Mister Dresden," and the doubt in the wizard's eyes vanished in a burst of clarity. He scooped a thin film of water in his hands and splashed it at Crowley, who leapt out of the way and nearly fell as he came down badly on an abused knee. A single feather fluttered out of his wing and landed in the pool of water, where it flared like a lighting match and melted into a little smear.
Crowley took an unsteady step backward, then another, eyes flicking from the dazed wizard to the penitent-- a man in a very good suit, with a polite, bland expression on his face and something hiding in his washed-out green eyes that made Crowley think 'angry tomcat.' ...that impression might well have been exacerbated by the very unprofessional notch out of his ear.
"I understood that the church was empty," the penitent said, his eyes locked on Crowley. The raw, hurting voice had acquired several layers of polish and a smooth smile in a hurry. "But then, one really does never know what sort of riff-raff will wander in. I assume Nicodemus sent you?"
"Nope," the wizard interjected, his voice ragged. "Different department. ...dragged your friend Piarelli out of the river. Carved... symbol." He coughed, wet and ugly, and sat up. "He's trying to frame you for demonomancy, John."
"Really." The penitent, John, looked Crowley up and down again, with an air of puzzlement. "You're not looking very well."
Crowley hissed at him, and took another step back. The man ignored it, and stooped next to the puddle of water, whisking out a handkerchief to dip in it.
"It's possible," the penitent mused, "that you're not the most purely demonic entity in the city, and that's how you've managed to enter a church. While looking, I am afraid to tell you, like something the cat dragged in. You could simply be very bad at being a demon." A switchblade knife appeared in his hand from nowhere, and he wiped it over with the handkerchief, leaving the dark blade gleaming and beaded with moisture. "Or you could be unimaginably strong." He shifted back, his arm poised to throw the knife. "I'm sorry. I can't take that chance."
"John, dear, that really won't be necessary."
If Crowley had been bothering about keeping his heart beating, he reflected in a moment of wild indignation, it might have stopped.
The priest had stepped out of the confessional, now, so that was everyone accounted for. The confessor was kind-faced, on the short side, fluffy blond hair, indeterminable age between thirty and fifty, plumpish hands, and so familiar that it had struck Crowley dumb. His accent, like Crowley's, was British, setting him square in the middle of Soho if either of the other men in the room had known anything about English accents.
"Father, you do realize that this is an actual demon," the penitent said, with a certain amount of deference.
"Yes, John. Put the knife down." There were strange echoes to the last word; Crowley clapped his hands over his ears in pain, and the switchblade clattered to the floor.
The wizard boggled. The penitent took the development with a cold, nearly catlike aplomb. "Are you a demon, too?" he asked, all polite curiosity.
The priest sighed. "Actually, I'm an angel."
Further boggle from the wizard. A slight furrowing of the penitent's brow, and the faintest hint of a bemused frown. He pondered this. "You aren't very good at it, either," he opined, in the tone of someone giving a regretful piece of news.
Oh, YEAH? Crowley almost snapped. How many times have YOU stopped Armageddon, pal? (Once, actually, the same as everyone else in the cathedral at the moment.)
The priest took this job critique with a gentle smile. He stepped forward, putting his hand to the penitent's shoulder. "Perhaps you should sleep. Poor thing."
The penitent didn't even get the objection out before he was folding slowly to the ground with a long sigh, the green eyes closing.
"You, too, it's all right."
The boggle quotient significantly diminished as the wizard slumped into a peaceful sleep, limp across the altar stairs. The priest looked at them both. "In sixty seconds you'll wake, feeling completely refreshed, and you'll have had a lovely dream about whatever you like best-- and John, for Heaven's sake, please go have a cup of tea. And relax. And think very, very hard, all right?"
Crowley, seeing his last chance, added to the other supine figure: "You. Dresden. Lusssst." He'd had time to come to the conclusion that Wrath and the wizard were a potentially deadly combination. Worse, deadly to HIM. He thought he'd play it safe.
The priest gave him an annoyed look. "My dear boy, was that nec-" but the pain and weariness had crept up behind his eyes and the church floor was rising up to meet him. Before the world went black, he vaguely remembered being surprised when the floor felt like somebody's arms.
Crowley slowly came back to consciousness propped against something cold. He shifted; there was tread under his back. The tire of a pickup or some other large automotive thing. The wind was blowing and the snow had started again, but a pair of wide white wings were spread over him like an umbrella. They were attached to the priest, who was crouching over him, and they were safely outside the wrought-iron fence around the church.
"'Ziraphale." He blinked.
The angel gave him a relieved smile. "Oh, good. You had me worried a moment. What on Earth were you doing in a church? I mean-- why are you in Chicago at all?"
"Temptation job," Crowley said. "Tall bastard. Long coat. What are you doing in Chicago?"
The angel sighed. "Redemption job. Angry man. Nice suit."
"How'ss it going?"
"Miserably. You?"
"Worse." Crowley shut his eyes again. "The Bentley."
There was a gentle inhalation-- more out of habit on Aziraphale's part, he knew. The angel spoke softly and with a considerable amount of distress: "Oh, Crowley. Can it-- is there anything?"
"Don't know yet. Patina's ruined. The best they could do is make it like new." Crowley had been with his car for more than eighty years. He had liked it like old. "Every time things get apocalyptic. Always the car. It isn't fair."
His eyes snapped open again as the big church doors slammed open-- from under Aziraphale's wing he could see the wizard with his staff, the mafioso-penitent with a gun out. Crowley flinched.
"They can't see us," Aziraphale said quietly, patting his shoulder soothingly. "I've made sure." His wings furled a bit tighter around the both of them.
As promised, the wizard's searching gaze skimmed right over the both of them. Crowley and Aziraphale stayed quiet and still, huddled against the snowed-over car.
"Where the hell did they go?" asked the wizard, bewildered, taking a few steps out to the stairs and peering around the snowy street.
"Probably," said the mafioso, although he didn't holster his gun. "The Nevernever is vast."
"Dammit!"
"You're on church grounds, Mister Dresden," the suited man said sharply.
The wizard muttered something inaudible that looked like 'didn't stop you,' which got him an angry glare from the mafioso, the first real sign of emotion Crowley had seen on the man since he'd stepped out of the confessional.
"I suggest you go home. Where's that unfortunate assemblage you call a car?"
The wizard waved back towards the long-abandoned sushi restaurant. "About a mile that way."
"And you're soaking wet. And bleeding." There was a moment of resigned silence. "I'll give you a ride. And refrain from sending you the bill for the leather interior."
The effect was instant; the wizard stood up straighter, supporting himself on his staff, and his voice went frigid. "I'll walk, thanks."
"Oh, really, Mister Dresden, do we have to go through this ridiculous charade? It's a ride. It doesn't come with a price. I will not be calling on you to deliver suspicious parcels or surrender your first born."
"No, no, John. Leather interior. Wouldn't want to sully it," the wizard said, with the same mock-cheerfulness he'd displayed right before he'd blown out the windows of the Bentley.
"You pubescent idiot." The crime lord's gun vanished into his suit, and he lifted both hands to massage his temples. "You know that I don't mean you any harm. Why are you making this difficult?"
"It's the principle of the thing."
"The principle of the thing is acting as if I have cooties?" At a startled glance: "I'm trying to speak to you in your native language, in order to facilitate communication. Should I be using smaller words?"
"Fuck off, John," the wizard suggested.
"Is it so unreasonable for me to not allow you to die out there like some elongated match girl? Mister Dresden, words of one syllable: There Are No Strings. Get In The Car."
"Oh, right. The local Godfather is making me an offer. With no strings attached. That you're just going to forget about, of course. Never mind that you've told me yourself that everyone has a price," the wizard sneered. The other man's green eyes narrowed dangerously.
Crowley watched, fascinated; the wizard had dug under the mafioso's skin in exactly the way that a trifling little thing like a marauding demon had completely failed to do.
"And you expect me to believe that you're not trying to soften me up now so that you can get to me later? You expect me to believe this won't come up again? You expect-"
"NO, Mister Bond, I expect you to die!"
The wizard cut off mid-sentence, looking shocked.
The calm exterior sloughed off, showing the same raw openness that Crowley had heard from the confessional. The mafioso's shoulders tightened; he appeared to be trying to loom over the wizard despite being a good six inches shorter. More, he appeared to be succeeding. "I APOLOGIZE," he bellowed, "I seem to have left my death ray and my white Persian cat in my OTHER PANTS, so much for THAT plan for world domination, now since I didn't have anything else planned for tonight, may I DRIVE YOU TO YOUR DAMN CAR!"
"Swearing on Church grounds," Crowley muttered.
The wizard stared at the enraged mafioso as if he'd never seen him before; then his eyes went slightly glassy and he shoved the shorter man against the wall of the church, leaning down to kiss him soundly.
"Oops," said Crowley, mustering a bit of a smirk.
"Oh, dear," murmured Aziraphale, who'd craned his head to watch over his shoulder. "Er. I may have pushed a bit hard... He was so walled off, though, the poor thing was stifling-"
"Now that's just cliché," Crowley objected, as the kiss on the steps deepened, one of the mafioso's hands slipping into the wizard's wet, matted hair.
"Oh, this isn't good at all," the angel fretted.
"Do the button men of Chicago know that their boss is as gay as a little pink lamb with a bow on?" Crowley asked curiously.
"He's not-- he's equal opportunity-- it, it's not important to him, the CITY is important to him."
"Really. That looks pretty important to him, that there."
"Oh no."
"They're both going to catch trouble for this, aren't they?"
"Probably," the angel sighed.
"Good."
The two men on the steps had parted, but instead of the narratively required moment of shock, violence, and/or further crazed lust they seemed to be slumped against one another for support. They rested quietly for a minute, then the mafioso said something that was too low to be heard, the wizard nodding in silent agreement. And then both men slipped back inside the church.
"Oh..." Aziraphale said, deflating, his wings drooping a bit.
"Come on, angel," Crowley said, reaching up to pat him gingerly on the shoulder. "I've got a nice warm hotel room and the scotch isn't bad. Come on. Then we could head home in the morning."
Aziraphale looked at the church door and nodded. "I don't think I've done anything here. This isn't the right place for us."
"Oh, you don't know the half of it." And Crowley didn't intend to tell him, especially about the crew cut. Leaning a bit on Aziraphale, he got to his feet. "Ineffable, this whole bloody city. Let's go."
And they did.