Chapter Three: Seven Seven Seven

Crowley remained motionless at the table. His hands had not moved from their delicately steepled position atop the table. His menacing smile, however had slipped into a deadpan mask of aggression at how unreasonably poorly that had gone. He had been millimeters from the face of a barely grown, unarmed librarian wearing a skirt covered in pink zinnias, and he had been unable to frighten her. He was frightening. He had frightened the Winchesters. He had frightened Bobby Singer. He. Was. Frightening. But not to the bookish flower bitch apparently.

But, of course, as he had decided, she was a monster, not an innocent human girl. So any odd thoughts he may have had about her were the result of her dark and manipulative magic.

He rose. The Brawny Boys would be hunting her, meaning she must be killing. He smirked to himself as he left the café. He couldn't quite prevent himself from thinking of her holding a machete with blood spackled across her pretty floral dress laughing. That would be delightful.

He straightened his tie and clicked his fingers. He would have to keep a close eye on those Winchesters.

XXXXX

When his form reconstituted he was in a dingy little motel room with green spangled wallpapering that glowered down at him.

"Hello, boys."

They spun around, Sam clutching his computer, perched on the edge of a bed Crowley would much prefer to never touch, and Dean aiming a pistol at his head. He raised an eyebrow at the pistol and Dean lowered it, scowling.

"What the hell, Crowley?"

"I am here to report that I am very near finding the blade, it's out of the ocean. I am tracking it now."

Dean made an angry monkey face at him, "So go and get it."

Crowley did his best to look at Dean as though he were a baby who had slobbered on something very important. "If there were something I could be contributing to the cause at this moment I would be."

Sam cut in before Dean could bark out whatever brutish and unimaginative reply he was sure to come up with. "Ok, thanks for the update, Crowley, let us know when you've found it."

He inclined his head at Sam then stepped delicately across the room and settled into a chair, looking at the Baffled Bambinos expectantly.

"Well, boys, what are we hunting?"

They stared at him and, quite calmly, he stared back. Having been warmed up on the staring front by 'Mary' the floral darling, he could handle these boys without issue.

"We," Snarly Squirrel said with a growl, motioning between himself and Crowley, "Are not hunting anything.

Crowley himself wasn't particularly keen to go off chasing ghosts with the Wonder Boys but he was interested to know what they were hunting, in case it was that ridiculous girl. He wasn't about to stand by and watch them rip her to pieces…. Because he was going to rip her to pieces. Obviously.

Sam gaped at him with an expression appropriate for a six year old girl who had been told she had to invite everyone to her birthday whether they ate glue or not. "You want to hunt with us?"

Crowley shrugged, "You've gone hunting with Castiel, isn't it only appropriate that you give the opposition equal play time? Perhaps you'll even find I'm more useful, not that that would be hard. How long has it been since dear Cas has answered your prayers?"

Not Moose gave him a dark snarl, "Get out, Crowley."

Crowley held up his hands in mock innocence, "Your loss, boys." He clicked his fingers.

XXXXX

He rematerialized right where he was, an hour later, after the Winchesters had temporarily vacated the premises, he glanced around, peering through the smell of microwaved food and unwashed testosterone for something about their research. .

They had the article he had read pinned to the wall. Next to it were three others, from different towns in different states.

"Seven have been killed so far in what the police are calling the most brutal acts of killing they have ever seen…"

"With seven bodies found, mutilated beyond recognition…"

"The police have yet to find a connection between the seven dead, mutilated, bodies found in the last month…"

He turned away from the newspaper clippings and picked up a manila folder. He flipped it open and looked at the page sized pictures it contained, crime scene pictures, as well as reports from police officers. The pictures were vicious. Pieces of bodies were strewn the length of the room, a torso left in the middle, ribs cracked upwards, like a crown in the center of their dead chests, each picture was the same. Crowley glanced through the reports, those too were eerily similar:

"the bodies were…strange."

"I couldn't put my finger on it, aside from the gore...it was something."

"There was something wrong with those bodies, yeah they were torn apart, but there was something wrong, something I don't have a name for."

Crowley arced and eyebrow and set the folder back down on the table. This was one hell of a girl.

XXXXX

She had said she was a librarian. That meant she worked in a library. This was a small enough town, as per every town the Winchesters found themselves in. Why there weren't more hauntings in major cities he wasn't certain. But in this, it worked in his favor, there was only one library.

He strode triumphantly into the library and stalked to the information desk. He couldn't imagine a library of this size would have any more than one or two librarians. He would be upon her soon. Behind the information desk sat a teeteringly old woman with glasses thicker than Squirrel's skull.

"Hello, darling," he said smiling at her charmingly and leaning on the desk. "I would like to inquire about the librarians who work here-"

She fixed him with a confused stare through eyes made the size of saucers from her glasses, "I'm the librarian, little dearie."

He paused for a moment, unsure how to respond to being called a little dearie by someone he wasn't really in the position to maim. He elected to pretend she hadn't. "What about a young woman in a floral skirt who puts people ill at ease?"

"No no, dearie do, it's just me."

He took a second to get a hold on himself and allow himself to let her blood remain inside her body. And then he saw her. That stupidly bright skirt was trying in vain to hide behind a row of shelves. He stalked toward her, snatching a newspaper from the shelf of periodicals on his way. He circled around the shelves so he would come up behind her. She had her legs tucked up under her and was curled in a bland lounge chair. She had her hair tied up in an unskillfully executed bun that did nothing for her and was reading, her nose tucked close to the book.

He waited behind her for a few moments, sure that she would become uneasy.

Without glancing up she said quietly, "I'm sure stalking me would be more comfortable sitting down."

He sneered, but bit his tongue and sat at the chair across from her. "Just here for the paper, love."

"mhm." She said, not looking up.

He watched her, over the top of his paper, close her eyes briefly and take a long strained breath. Her eyebrows pulled themselves together and her jaw thickened as she tightened it together. She looked back down at her book. The edges of her lips were torn down like a twist. Crowley himself narrowed his eyes. Perhaps she really was the killer the Winchesters were hunting. With her face like that, she looked the part. He looked down at his paper.

It did not take long to find the object o his search. This was a small town and what had happened was big news. He read the article briefly. Fierce look or no, it seemed hardly possible that someone such as her was responsible for what he was reading about. She was so small. He reconsidered. The floral skirts and enchanted laughter made her seem small, feminine, something to be protected. But, he glanced at her again. She was not small. Not particularly tall, though not remarkably short either, but well muscled, nearly bulky. He thought of her when she had stridden from the café. Sure of her motions, precise. He looked back at the highlights of the paper's article.

Six bodies. Ripped to pieces. Unidentifiable.

He looked back at her, imagining her ripping bodies to pieces, pulling them apart, six of them. Having ripped bodies apart, he knew it was no small task. But she could have done it. With the right tools it was a feat of gumption rather than brawn. He tried to steal another glance at her but she had beaten him to it. He looked over his paper into her eyes which were already busy pulling him apart. She looked away, back to her book. He smiled to himself and opened his mouth but before he had so much as begun she spoke.

"We're in a library; this isn't the time for snarky retorts."

He closed his mouth and stared at her. Baffled and irritated. H e had had enough of her, he was going to investigate those bodies. Determine if it was she who had destroyed them. He stood slowly, watching her. She looked up at him and let her eyes settle on his.

"This has been fun, love, really, but I have work to do." He folded the paper carefully and dropped it on her lap then, never breaking eye contact with her, and – she clicked her fingers.

He looked back and forth between her, who was not looking unamusedly at him, and his own hand, raised to click his fingers before his getaway.

Fury rose in his cheeks and he curled down, a hand on both of the arms of her chair, framing her in, his face inches from hers. He spoke in a low snarl, quite as a snake, "How do you know me?"

She matched him look for look, her eyes shined darkly with emotion, brewing angrily, "I don't know you." She stood, backing him up and away from her. For each hasty step he took back she matched him, walking him backwards until he was pressed right up against a shelf. In a mockery of him, she put her hands on either side of him, gripping the shelves next to his head on either side and leaning near him.

"I don't know you because you are not worth knowing. You are a secondhand copy. You are a radio edit. You are Mr. Tab. You are Roseart." She was laughing now, but not the beautiful, mirthful laugh of before. It was fragmented, angry, mad. She continued in a low snarl the reverberated in his sternum, "You are a boy King of a broken kingdom. I don't know you."

By the end of her eyes were blazing, her nose less than a centimeter from his own, her cheeks were bright, labored breath burning across Crowley's face. He snarled back at her and seized her wrists, gripping them harshly. He pulled her left wrist forward and down, causing her to stumble. He had regained the upperhand, hovering over her, their bodies pressed together, his face tilted above hers.

"You think I am a boy King?" twisting her wrists hard.

She gave him a twisting, ruthless smile, and spat her next word up at him, so close to him he could feel the word brush against his lips, "Yes."

"I am the King of Hell!"

Her smile untwisted, her face softened, her eyes wide and wet and deep. For a moment she didn't respond, but let her eyes close and, tilting her head so it was nearly in the crook of Crowley's neck, very softly, smelled him. Turning her head and inhaling from the base of his neck until he could almost feel her lips against his ear.

In barely more than a breath she said, "I know you are."

Then she stepped out of the grip Crowley hadn't realized he had loosened and slipped away.

AN: Thank you all for reading and a special shout out to my beautiful reviewers who keep my writing fire burning!