rolls in from the dust outside. I ...appreciate all of your support guys. Please enjoy another chapter of "demon ruins local girl's life"
This was the third call she had placed to this number. Why bother giving her a number if it wasn't going to work when she called? She felt like a mother, upset with her teenage child for toting a phone everywhere but neglecting to pick up when she called. Although, their situation tilted sharply past annoying-ville, and down the stream of dire-river.
Over the past few years, random pains akin to what she had assumed to be "lady issues", including burning up from head to toe and feeling as if she had been chucked across the room, could all accredited to one thing—one demon. Her alleged hot flash had apparently been Crowley setting himself on fire... voluntarily. The abrupt onset fatal indigestion? Crowley getting stabbed.
Finally, there was a rubbing sound on the other end, without her having to hear his ridiculous voicemail message, which she honestly found to simultaneously childish and pompous. It was something along the lines of "Too busy inflicting pain right now to answer".
"Hey, so why did you give—" A blood-curdling scream exploded through the phone, nearly causing her to drop it from how uncalled for the noise had been "J—" Reluctantly, she brought the phone back to her ear.
"Sorry, love." Mouth agape in shock, Nysza massaged her temple before shouting back into the phone with a screech that suggested ultimate betrayal.
"Sorry? You're paying for my otolaryngologist!" There was a chuckle on the other end. "I'm not kidding" She pressed her lips against the speaker and spoke in the most threatening pitchy tone she could mimic.
"Your wh—hold on." There was another scream of helpless agony that sent a tremble of fear up and down her spine. "What was it you needed, I'm right in the middle of something."
"….are you… torturing someone?" The questions she had been asking as of late were sheer gold. Her entire scenery changed upon hearing the snap of two fingers. She gasped at the sight before her of a beautiful wooden desk in a study and Crowley with his hand, literally, inside of a live man's ribcage. Covering her mouth, the woman turned away.
"Does this answer your question, darling?" He grunted as he dug around, attempting to search for something within. "Bad reception over here. Figure it'd be a bonus if I got to see your pretty face too." The man was bleeding profusely from the gaping hole in his torso, not counting his mouth and nose. Bones cracked and crunched at how mercilessly the demon worked. How was he clinging to life with this much blood loss and agony?
"I wanted to see if the number worked! Just put me back." She ventured a peek, "Castiel…" It was the angel, bleeding and groaning out from the invasion. Castiel yelled out hoarsely, unable to neither channel the pain nor stop what was happening.
"I'm just about done here." Wrenching out a bloody whole stone tablet, Crowley held it up for inspection. "Aha." Like a child who had found his way into the candy jar, he laughed in sheer triumph, "Oh you're a pip, you are." Seeing as he wasn't snapping his fingers to zap her out of the room anytime soon, Nysza started inching her way to the nearest door. "Don't hop away just yet, Rabbit" She made a noise against her hand, which turned into a startled squeak as his phone rang. "Ah." Switching his most recent find to his other hand, he pulled the phone from his pocket and pressed a button to answer it, "This is the King." The girl almost rolled her eyes, but was unable to take them off the angel gritting his teeth and attempting to remain conscious in the chair. So he was going to promptly answer this phone call with a chirpy tune, but not hers. Arms automatically crossed over her chest, she huffed.
"You Jackasses. You're ruining my streak!" Her attention snapped back to the demon who had clearly just received unfavorable news on the other end. Crowley looked from the small human to his one henchman in the room. "Watch him. I'll be right back." He figured Nysza could pop along for one short detour. Maybe she'd be granted the pleasure of seeing him reduce another of her fellow human beings to stringy sinews. Her reaction was sure to be a treat.
"Look. You can send me back. I'll just text you next time. Or a summoning circle, whichever you prefer..." They were near a dock, but his steps were purposeful as he walked, unresponsive to her plight. She knew not to provoke the demon when he was so clearly pissed off, but she was going to miss work if she didn't speak up. "Y-You have a plan, right?" Charging anywhere impulsively would not bode a favorable outcome.
"Oh, indeed I do. Who do you think I am?" The demon wasn't one to set foot anywhere without having the knowledge to ruin the lives of everyone within a two mile radius.
"One that doesn't involve mass homicide?" Halting before a large metal door, Crowley stopped halfway through the breath that carried his retort. Scratch that.
"In that case, I guess I don't have a plan." He snapped, still relatively pleased with himself.
A solid metal 3hz vault door was blown forward with a single wave of his hand. It collapsed like a playing card to the floor with a booming thud. Stepping inside, Crowley glared at the teen sitting with a cheeky grin at the table.
"You little prat." He snarled, red-stained tablet still gripped in his right hand. Walking inside, the man slammed the tablet down on the nearest surface he could find, "You having fun yet?" Kevin chewed thoughtfully on his meal. Nysza opted to remain at the door, unwilling to think about what she had caused with his girlfriend.
"Screw you." There was flagrance in his voice. It was the disregard of someone who had nothing else left to lose. The prophet had been caught again, and placed in a holding room. Two demons had been charmed to look like Dean and Sam, drawing information about the tablet from the boy. Clearly, he had figured it out and sent his babysitters into a trap. The call informed Crowley of just that.
"Am I seeing this?" Kevin licked the flavor from his fingers and tilted his head. "How did you figure it out?"
"It started when they forgot my secret knock." That would do it for most, "But really it—it was the way they acted. I don't think on their best day, Sam and Dean would go into town and get me barbecue dinner," He glanced down at the box of ribs in front of him, "N-not when there are left over burritos in the fridge." Crowley had slipped both of his hands into his pockets. The demon stepped close enough to stand about an inch in front of the table Kevin was sitting across from.
"So…" Glowering down at the boy, he knit his brow, "My demons were too… polite?"
"Yeah." He chuckled. Honestly, Nysza wished he had sent her back by now.
"Well, I'll be a son of a whore." Crowley turned away and began ambling about the room, pacing as he occasionally did when something troubled him.
"You know the Winchesters are up to the third trial?" The boy tore off another small piece of meat and savored it for a moment, "You know they're gonna shut the door on hell?"
"I'm not worried, kid." There was a part of him that obviously was, in spite of his poker face. Kevin was smiling now as he reached for a piece of the tablet he had been deciphering.
"You have no idea what's on this demon tablet. All right… the power you could have gotten with this…" Slowly, he rose from his seat to face the demon eye-to-eye. "If you weren't running around like a chicken with his head cut off."
"You think I can't make you tell?" Nysza inhaled sharply at the animosity burned into his words. She finally stepped into the room, unbeknownst to the two.
"I know you can't, and you do too." The prophet looked disheveled since she had last seen him. From his behavior and word choice, there was far more dispiritedness imbued into them.
"You know what? I've already won." His voice was low, ominous in nature. "I have the angel tablet, you little smudge." Crowley's lip curled into a sneer as he boasted the achievement. "And I've got deals and plans up the jacksie." Without warning, his arm shot forth, hand curling around the boy's neck. "And I don't…." With ease, he lifted the prophet from the ground, pinning him to the wall behind him, "need… you!"
Nysza nearly tripped on the step leading into the room as she tried to stop what was happening. There was nothing she could do, but given her presence, she wasn't going to stand like a lump on a log. "Wait, wait!" A bright light emanated from where the two were, blinding her momentarily, forcing her to duck behind the table from how overwhelming the glow was. For whatever reason, a burning sensation tingled against her cheeks, down her jaw and over her hands. There was no evidence to indicate injury on her person, but the sensation would not subside.
The woman covered her eyes with her arms, only opening them when she heard a strained cry of pain and a crash of a body slamming into the ground. Turning, she felt the air punched from her lungs as she acted quickly on her own instinct.
Kevin was nowhere to be seen, but the demon remained on the floor of the room, writhing from the unprecedented blast of glaring white light. She dropped to her knees next to him, finding that his face and hands were deeply seared. Growling in pain, he grit his teeth as Nysza watched the wound sizzle and emit some small amounts of smoke. "Oh—g—." Pushing herself up, she ran to the fridge, dumping ice into a cloth and soaking it in freezing water. In a flash, she returned, "This'll heal itself right?" He had explained to her the extent of injuries he had received before, knowing that fatal injuries became her burden, so the best thing she could provide at this point was relief. His hands shook with both fury and an unimaginable sweltering as she wrapped the ice-packed cloth around it. The process was not without complications as he resorted to smacking her hands away like a child, learning that it only amplified how much it hurt.
The hiss on his skin intensified in sound as he made multiple sounds of protest, "Are you alright?"
"Ow! AhH! Do I bloody look alright?" Grimacing at the flesh peeling away from his face, he saw relief spread across her visage at the fact that he was able to respond. "Wipe that smile off your face." Crowley seethed as she moved to help him sit up. The demon didn't help her, remaining a dead weight for her to hold up and gently lean against the nearest wall. Thankfully, from the amount of obstinate patients she had, this was no foreign concept.
"Do your hands feel better?" She opted to treat him like one of her more difficult patients. Breathing heavily, he hesitated, still combating the unwanted physical sensation that was the equivalent of pressing his face onto a hot stove. She wrinkled her nose, combating the similar burning sensation on her face... in almost the same spots.
"Yes." The symptoms had gone down enough to be less of a bother during his expedited healing process. Cautiously, she pressed the tip of her finger to her own cheek. It neither increased nor decreased the itch, leading her to believe it was underneath her skin.
"Do you want some for your face?" His chin was blistering badly from the celestial light.
"….yes." Very glad she had taken cover when the burning light filled the room, Nysza performed the same process with another cloth she found. Sitting cross-legged next to him, she pressed the icy temperature set towel to his face, eliciting a shaky exhale. As suspected, the affliction was already starting to heal, and he would be up and about within a few seconds or so. With his back against the wall and his wrapped hands resting in his lap, Crowley remained completely still, deliberating his next strategy. He eventually spared a glance at the young woman moving a frigid towel along his face, minimizing the discomfort more than he would have guessed.
It did nothing. He had healed entirely from the affliction, but he couldn't deny how … soothing her company and practiced actions were.
Thankfully, both of them preferred the silence.
Thank you everyone!
