Chapter one: Bentley state of mind
Once upon a time, there was a town called London.
London had a lot of advantages. For example, the national dish named Fish 'n Chips – very nutritious and healthy food. Also, there were a lot of fancy hotels, like, for instance, the Ritz. In fact, that specific hotel often attracted the most interesting clientele of customers, a fact that only added to its general appeal.
And then there was the parking lot.
This specific parking lot was shaped like a square. This was nothing out of the ordinary, of course, but still. The spaces in which you were supposed to park your eventual car were rectangular to their form, and looked a bit too small. You could easily imagine that the one who had drawn the lines had had difficulty following written, specified measures upon looking at them. Maybe it'd been an illiterate person. Or maybe not.
This all, of course, is beside the point.
"Bloody hell!"
A voice clad in icy surprise pierced through the delicacy of the early morning air like a poisonous dart. It sounded hollow, like an echo spreading through an empty cave.
The voice belonged to what appeared to be a young man in his early twenties. Dark-haired, slender, and he had a sort of strange grace about him. Appealing, and yet strangely repulsive. It just came off like a pose he'd tried out in front of his bathroom mirror, trying to get it right. He'd been successful, but still, it just seemed fake and composed.
His eyes were covered by sunglasses the shade of midnight mist, but as he lowered them to gaze upon the Unspeakable, they proved to be yellowish in a reptile sort of way.
"Bloody, freakin' hell."
The man stood absolutely still. The only things slightly moving were his eyes, trying to find something soothing to rest upon, but not finding it.
They were glowing.
This was not a good sign.
"Hello, this is Aziraphale speaking. How may I help you?"
"Angel?" The man's voice was not shaking; he'd made absolutely sure of that before dialling. He didn't want to appear weak in front of anyone. He had to remain strong, had to hold up his facade.
The voice in the other end answered him. "Crowley? Is that you?"
"Of course it's me! Exactly how many other callers do you get per day referring to you as 'angel'?"
"Well, actually, I got a call from Uriel the other day, and he..."
Crowley let out a deep, irritable sigh. "Angel, I didn't really want to know."
"Oh." Aziraphale seemed a bit disappointed. But he recuperated quickly. "I suppose it was a... oh dear, what do you call it... a rhetorical question?"
"Must've been. Anyway, could you get here ASAP? It's urgent, very urgent."
"Oh, my. That certainly sounds serious." There was no trace of irony or sarcasm in his voice – it just wasn't in him. "Well, I suppose so. Where are you at?"
Crowley looked around. Concrete garden, he thought to himself, but didn't say. "I'm... err... I'm outside a strip-club. Near the Ritz."
"There are strip-clubs near the Ritz?!"
"There is one now."
Making people commit one of the Deadly Sins, and better yet: making them LIKE it... ah, it had been a wonderful day at work. Demonic schemes had never looked or felt so good.
"CROWLEY!"
"Hey, I'm just doing my job. You know that. So, are you coming or not?"
"Well, I have some things to take care of first. Let me just wrap things up around here... give me half an hour."
"See you then." Crowley hung up the phone. He took out a pack of cigarettes from the inner pocket of his black, slim coat, and lit one with a snap of his fingers. He pursed it through his lips, drew breath and then exhaled. Ah, sweet pollution.
Pollution? Now where had he heard that before? He pondered a moment, then snapped his fingers (but this time, nothing happened.).
Pollution... right! Thin, slippery fellow. He had had a nice crown. Crowley had rather fancied it, although not enough to motivate stealing it. He tried to resist lusting for things as much as possible these days; it wasn't good for him and his psyche; it distracted him. And yet, here he was.
He sighed. Marvellous, just marvellous. You'd think I'd learnt my lesson, but oh no! Nearly three years after Mishap Armageddon, and still, I'm lusting for nice jewellery and pretty angels.
Wait.
Did I say that out loud?
Crowley violently shook the uncomfortable thoughts off himself, and resolutely sat down on the asphalt. He'd soon closed his eyes, drifting off into Land Oblivion. It had been a hard night. He hadn't been in the mood for tempting, and yet, he had to – as he'd said earlier to Aziraphale, after all, it was his job. And why neglect it?
Why indeed.
A scene played behind his closed eyelids. A summer morning, the dew resting like small precious pearls upon the grass. The sun, just about to rise above the trees. And beneath a big, old tree, two shapes seemingly made out of darkness and light lay beside one another, looking up at the brightly pastel coloured sky through the branches.
"Look," said one of them. "All I'm saying is that if I wanted to, I could easily make you Fall."
"No, that's not true," the other one retorted. He seemed very decisive. The gentle rays of the morning sun caressed his silhouette. He was really a very ordinary-looking man, but his eyes radiated compassion and serenity. That, at least, counted for something.
"Is too. Tempting IS my job, remember?"
Crowley almost woke up from his trance-like state of mind. Now, where had he seen this before? It all seemed awfully familiar, somehow.
"That's not the point, Crowley."
A-ha. So that was the case. Crowley quickly disposed of the memory in the manner that you get rid of the spinach you don't want to eat, but your mum's persistently trying to shove down your throat; he swept it under the table. That is to say, his mental table.
Normally, memories like these didn't really bother him. It was just that in a situation like this, it was a bad idea to cloud your mind with things like that. Better to keep your focus on the real matter of concern.
This fact, however, did not stop him from taking a couple of sips from the bourbon-filled flask that appeared on his command. Sorrow and distress, he figured, had to be dealt with in a comfortable way.
When Aziraphale arrived at the scene, the couple of innocent-enough-sips had multiplied, and had now grown into five and a half bottles of bourbon, a miniature carafe of sherry and numerous whiskeys. Crowley was still sitting on the ground, in the exact same position as he'd been before, staring dully straight out into thin air.
It was night-time now. The clock was nearing half past eleven, and Aziraphale had a guilty expression on his face as he approached him.
"Sorry I took so long. I was delayed by... oh, dear."
Aziraphale cut off his sentence when he saw the mess in front of him. Not only did Crowley look like he'd just been vigorously hugged, snuggled and left with only his humiliation by a malicious hoard of Teletubbies – the disaster standing, or rather laying in pieces, beside him was even more terrifying.
It was a car. A Bentley, to be exact, of 1926 year's model. Crowley's most precious possession, all categories concerned. And it had been brutally savaged.
The black car's paintwork had been scratched, multiple times, in what seemed to be some sort of occult pattern. Aziraphale didn't know exactly what it meant, though; after all, he was ethereal, not an occult being.
Furthermore, and possibly most upsetting of it all, the car had also been vandalised using spraycans. The messages varied, though everything was obscene and – Aziraphale shuddered slightly – very inappropriate. Also, he was quite sure of the fact that almost everything that was spelled out there had to be fake. He'd most certainly never seen Crowley being intimate with anything possessing four legs, anyway.
Crowley remained apathetic and frozen in that same position. The only thing that made Aziraphale sure that Crowley was still inside that fragile shell of flesh and bones was that he lifted the last bottle of bourbon to his mouth to drink now and then.
"I think you've had quite enough of that," Aziraphale proclaimed. He reached down to Crowley and jerked the flask out of his hand. Crowley didn't protest an awful much, although in his defence, you had to say he really did try. It's just hard to hit a target when you see double of everything, and the world is swaying from side to side like an old-fashioned swing.
"Hey you... you...! I was... well... that thing you do with your mouth... err... I was... ah, bloody hell." He gave up.
"Would you sober up? You're of no use when you're wasted. I thought we'd gone over this before."
"Wh... why are you screaming? Just... keep it down, why don't you. And would you kindly tell the little green men to buzz off."
"You're so pathetic right now, I'm thinking of putting you out of your misery." He really wasn't. Angels didn't do that sort of thing, and particularly not this angel. But he was willing to say what ever was necessary at this point. "Stop being so bloody drunk! I know you can understand me, just listen. You have to help me find whoever did this, okay?"
"Pretty, pretty stars..." Crowley had now turned his head to the sky, pointing towards it. "I bet you... I bet you know all of their names."
"Crowley, have you been sitting here all day?"
He got a nodded response. Aziraphale decided that it was time to try threat as a method of persuasion. He didn't really like it, but what could you do. Sometimes you just had to do things that were wrong.
He took a deep breath, and then he tried to get the following sentence to sound as serious and cold-hearted as he could. "Well, you're sobering up now, whether you like it or not. Or else I will go away and never contact you again. And there will be no one for you to talk to except yourself. You know how boring that'll get. And then, They'll send a replacement, and I suspect you won't like that very much either. No Aziraphale, no Agreement. Do you get me?"
Slowly, Crowley turned his head and looked him straight in the eye. His face had no particular expression, it was just... blank. Like a white sheet of paper.
He blinked, then shuddered as the alcohol disappeared miraculously out of his system.
"I found it like this. Have absolutely no idea who could've done it. I'd been working all night, you know, as usual, and then I come out to see this."
Aziraphale nodded, and sat down beside him. Carefully, he put his hand on Crowley's shoulder. This situation, he realised, had to be dealt with some refinement.
"Well..." Aziraphale harboured some unanswered questions and doubts as to why Crowley hadn't used his demonic and all-day-all-night-available powers to fix these small problems. After all, with just a mere snap of his fingers, wasn't he able to restore practically anything to normal form? "I'm just wondering... why haven't you... you know... fixed it already?"
"You mean with dark, demonic force."
"Exactly."
"Don't think for a second that I haven't tried. But there's something protecting this damage." After speaking, he suddenly lit up like a small candle. "Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't you give it a go?"
"Me?" Aziraphale looked horrified. "You've got to be joking. Me, using up a Miracle to help a demon? No offense," he assured his companion quickly, "but I don't think that'lll sit too well with the people Upstairs."
"Oh, come on, Angel! You've helped me before – what's holding you back now?"
"But those were ordinary Miracles. Small, insignificant to the great Ineffability. This is different. Plus, I would be helping you sustain a Deadly Sin."
"Not following here." Crowley gave him a confused look.
"Vanity. Ring a bell? You know what they say about men and their cars."
Crowley rolled his eyes behind his protective, black windows of glass. "I'm not a man, I'm a demon."
"Even worse." Azirahaple was resisting his urge to slap Crowley. He knew perfectly well what the angel was talking about – why was he being so damned stubborn? "And besides, if your "dark, demonic force" didn't do the trick, what makes you think that I can contribute in any way?"
"Because I've heard that the best way to get cloth stained by red wine clean is to pour white wine all over it."
It took Aziraphale a while to understand what point Crowley was trying to get across. While he was trying to catch up, Crowley lit another cigarette. Considerately – and very uncharacteristically – he blew the smoke the other way, sparing Aziraphale all the coughing and choking.
Finally, the angel understood the full meaning of what Crowley had said.
"Ah. So you think this was done by demons or other evils. Am I correct?"
"Pardon the expression, but hell yes. I do. Why, isn't it obvious?"
Aziraphale gave him a blank stare. "Crowley, I'm not supposed to keep track of what all of your rivals and enemies are up to. Technically, I'm one of them, remember? If it hadn't been for the Agreement, we'd probably be at each others throats right now."
"Right. You know, I seem to forget that sometimes. But that's a discussion for another time and place. Right now, we shall have to discuss more serious matters. Like who the Hell trashed my car."
"That's an appropriate expression, considering the matter. Okey then. Give me a list of potential suspects."
Crowley pondered for a moment. He seemed distracted, somehow, and Aziraphale did not particularly like the way the demon's eyes kept seeking his.
Some minutes later, Crowley opened his thin lips to speak. Aziraphale was awaiting his answer eagerly; he didn't like to be kept on hold.
"Well," Crowley finally said, thoughtfully. Apparently, he'd gone over his retort carefully. "At first, it all just screamed 'lower-level imp', but I've decided to look past the obvious and research more in depth whom might have brutally savaged my car in this manner."
"Aha." The angel could do nothing but nod silently. This was really not his territory; he considered himself an unwilling passenger on a train, taking him to the cosy madness that was Crowley's mind.
"So," continued the demon. "As you may or may not know, I can be pretty sarcastic sometimes... in a well-meaning way, of course. And this doesn't sit too well with the folks Downstairs. A cocky minion is the last thing They need, you know – They, much like your people, like their subordinates evil in a quiet and obedient way. And you know how much trouble Mishap Armageddon caused me – well, caused us both. The point is..."
Aziraphale's deep sigh interrupted the demon's speech. "Yes, Crowley? Is there a point? This is starting to sound like just another one of your pointless, mindless ramblings."
Again, Crowley rolled his eyes in disgust. Clearly, this heavenly being just didn't get it. "Angel, I'm not drunk, and we're not discussing advanced metaphysics, so would you let me make my point clear without you cutting me off to criticise my way of explaining things?"
The angel quickly decided to shut the hell up. This, he figured, was in his best interest. "By all means, continue. This is fascinating."
"Glad you like it. Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that it has to be a pretty high-ranking demon. Fallen angel-type. Obviously quite pissed off by something. And you know that there's only one fiend matching that profile."
"The president of the United States? You know, he hasn't come over that thing with you spilling blood all over his Chinese imported rug."
"That wasn't my fault," muttered Crowley, almost inaudibly. "Those politicians were begging for it. But no, I wasn't thinking of him. Think... smaller, yet classier. White hat."
"Ah, Michael Jackson!"
Crowley resisted his instant impulse to hit the angel with something very big, very hard. After all, hadn't he always tried to uphold the Agreement between them? And hadn't the angel always stood by his side when he'd really needed him? Brace yourself, you old serpent, he thought to himself.
"No, the King of Pop isn't high-ranking. Besides, I told him to get rid of that hat a long time ago. It doesn't go with his colours."
Aziraphale groaned. "I don't have a clue, Crowley. Could you please tell me, so we can get on with things? My back is starting to hurt."
"The path of the righteous is filled with divine pain, dear."
"Shut up."
"Okay." Crowley took out his pack of cigarettes, and offered Aziraphale one. He declined.
"You know I don't like those things. They're not healthy."
"And drinking ten cups of hot chocolate o' day is?" Crowley smirked. They both knew each other all to well by now. The conversation dropped.
A new day was arriving. If there had been treetops anywhere near the urbanised parking lot, the sun would have begun climbing up towards them, struggling to become visible. The sky was turning a mild shade of purple, and there was a vague hint of morning mist in the air.
This all was, of course, quite beautiful. The demon didn't notice.
The angel, on the other hand, was enjoying to its full extent.
"Isn't this just radiant, Crowley? The world, the dawn of a new day. A new beginning."
"One might say so," Crowley said in a nonchalant sort of way. "One might also point out that it's the beginning of yet another day of destruction for mankind. I don't really see the point in sunsets, anyway. Just a mere decoration, something to lure humans into believing that this world is, in fact, a beautiful thing."
The angel sighed. "You don't fool me, Crowley. You like the world."
"Yes," the demon said thoughtfully. "But it isn't beautiful. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, though," he hurried to add. "All the more sins provoked by this place and its inhabitants, all the more advantages for my side. I'm just saying, it's pointless to try and embellish your mistakes. It's better to stand up for what you've created, what you've done."
Aziraphale nodded slowly. Suddenly, everything Crowley said fell into place. He hesitated, then cautiously asked him: "You're talking about Him now, aren't you? You're talking about God."
"Yes."
"I thought we were going to find and punish the ones who did this to your car." The angel had suddenly found himself in a situation he was not comfortable with. It's all right for a demon to be blasphemous – after all, that is its job – but if he were to agree, that would be an entirely different thing. After all, hadn't the Morningstar's Fall begun just like that? With mere blasphemy? He was better off with his mouth shut – one misdirected word could mean his own Fall. He stood up, with more than a little discomfort down his back in the process, and grabbed hold of Crowley's hand – the one not holding a lit cigarette. "Come on. We'd better get moving."
Crowley narrowed his eyes until they were but two mildly glowing slits. He refused standing up, and the angel felt quite powerless against his will. "You're acting awfully avoiding, angel. What are you up to?"
Aziraphale let go of the demon's hand. "I am not. I just think that we should start looking. And besides, you're the one who has been avoiding the real matter of concern here. You still haven't told me who your likely suspect is."
"That's because I'm not sure, angel. I can't be sure of anything. Let's say I find the one who did this. And then what? Huh? Kill him? It'll only mean more trouble for me Downstairs. If it is indeed a demon, he'll need a new body, won't he? And when he tells his, and my, superiors who made him leave his body, what will I have left for a defence?"
"You have managed once," Aziraphale pointed out. "You did kill Ligur. And you trapped Hastur in the phone."
"I did." Crowley smiled faintly in remembrance of his great success, but then, he returned to his previous and well-operating mood: upset, angry and blunt. "I sure did, but I was lucky to have managed it. Don't you get it? I can't expect to get away with that stunt twice. What would you have done? Would you have faced up to your superiors and defied them to such an extent? Killing your own kind – would you have the guts? They're already suspicious of you and your morals for fraternising with me."
The angel hesitated. He hadn't been prepared for such questions. He wasn't even sure if he had the answers to them.
"I don't have a lot of worldly possessions. Not a lot I would sacrifice my existence for, anyway."
"How about the book-shop?"
Aziraphale thought about this for a second. His first edition script of the Holy Bible, hidden away in a secret vault. His old scrolls, originating God knows where and when. And the elegantly bound copy of the Koran, its pages marked only insignificantly by time, though it had been created long before mankind even had had a proper name for it.
"What's your point?" he murmured.
"My point is..." He cut the sentence off, and became quiet. It was as though he was thinking carefully through what he was gaining by arguing with Aziraphale at a time like this. Gain was important. Without gain, there was only loss, and speaking of loss, he'd had enough of that already today. And speaking of today, today was already tomorrow; he had wasted a whole day just sitting about doing nothing, and he still hadn't punished the demon, possibly person, who had done this to his beloved automobile.
He grunted. "We should get going."
The angel standing beside him smiled a serene smile. "That's more like it."
"Shut up, angel."
"Okay."
