Tall Tales Taste Like Sour Grapes
You could use a fine tooth comb to get a word from the wise,
Would be a welcome surprise,
Keep an ear to the ground so to drown out the sound of the failures what make me whole
- Fair to Midland
Devi huddled closer to the fireplace, frowning as she leafed through one of Crowley's tomes. Since coming up with the notion of using venom from supernatural creatures, she hadn't had any other ideas on how to make her poison stronger. The library was cold at night, as was rest of the asylum. She had pulled the rug from under a cluster of armchairs nearest the fireplace and laid it right next to the hearth, sitting on a cushion pilfered from an armchair, her back to the blaze and the toes of her socks buried in the weft.
"You'll ruin your eyes, reading in the firelight like that."
The sudden sound of the voice made her jump, and she glared at where Crowley had just appeared in the center of the room. After his abandoning her in the kitchen, Devi hadn't seen the King of Hell for several days. Andrews had implied his master might be looking into the aftereffects of their work in Indiana, but hadn't offered any particulars; apparently, Crowley going off god-knows-where to do god-knows-what for an unspecified amount of time was business as usual.
"Reading in dim light doesn't damage your eyes," she disputed grumpily. "At worst, I'll get a headache."
"And why risk that?" Crowley inquired.
"Because I got tired of not being able to feel my feet," Devi answered. "Let me ask you something: demons come from Hell, which I assume is hotter than here, right?"
"Obviously," Crowley replied, walking towards her.
"Then why is everywhere you work so cold?" she pressed, "You have virtually unlimited resources – would it kill you to turn on the heat?"
Crowley chuckled as he crouched beside her. He took one of her hands and, in a move that unsettled her, laid it on his chest, just inside the lapel of his suit. "Do I feel like I need the heat?" he asked softly.
Devi looked at him in surprise. His body was hot, feverish even. She pulled away.
"Internal furnace" he said, "One of the perks of being me."
"But your hands..." Devi began. When he had touched her in the past, his skin had felt warm, but not inhumanly so. At his center though, it was like holding her hand over a stove.
"Yes, it's not as effective at the extremities," he admitted, holding his hands in front of him as he stood, "but there's a solution for that." He snapped his fingers and a glass of scotch appeared in his other hand.
Devi rolled her eyes. "Alcohol only makes you feel warmer."
"Which is what you want, isn't it?" he countered cheekily, and held out a second glass that had suddenly appeared.
Devi's eyes narrowed as she regarded the glass and the one holding it suspiciously. Crowley smirked and cocked an eyebrow at her in challenge, giving the tumbler a little shake. She reached for the glass, and he pulled it back slightly.
"Wait a moment, how old are you again?" he teased.
Devi gave a little growl of frustration, and snatched the glass from his hand. "Bit late for that, don't you think?"
Crowley chuckled softly and eased himself back into the armchair that still had its cushion, watching the seer. He expected her to make the classic beginner's mistake of taking a large gulp to prove she was tough, at which point she would choke and he would laugh.
Instead, she brought the glass close to her face and took an experimental sniff. Nose still wrinkled, she considered the glass thoughtfully. She took a tentative sip, held it on her tongue for a moment. She did wince a bit when swallowing, but then smacked her lips. "Huh," she said simply.
"Thirty-five year old Craig, and all I get is 'huh,'" Crowley rolled his eyes. "Have you no taste, girl?"
"It's not like I'm used to drinking this sort of stuff," she defended, setting aside the glass. She felt like she could get a taste for it, but something about the smell made her uneasy. "I've been looking into some other types of venom-producing creatures, since basilisk didn't work." She made a wry face, "At least, not like we'd hoped. Did he ever stop screaming?"
"Hasn't so far," Crowley said carelessly. "Pity - it really is debilitating stuff - but if it takes away from the devil's trap, there's really no point, aside from the entertainment value."
Devi gave a disgusted snort, "You should just put him out of his misery."
"But then how would we find out if your original formula wears off or not?" Crowley smiled slyly. "After all, poor sod's highly motivated to ditch the meat as soon as metaphysically possible." Not that it would do him much good - the cell he was being kept in precluded the demon leaving, even if unburdened of his envenomed body.
Devi frowned, but swallowed back her distaste and changed the subject, "How's work on reconstructing the ceiling coming?"
"They're piecing it together now," Crowley replied. "I expect they'll have it finished by morning." He tilted his head at her. "In the meantime, it might be wise for you to get some rest. You're still healing, after all."
Her head drooped a little. She was tired, there was no denying that, but between her natural suspicion of her surroundings and her demon radar going haywire, getting any sort of restful sleep in the asylum was still difficult. Meditation helped, but was only a stop-gap solution. "I'm not really sleepy," she said finally, and untruthfully.
Crowley's expression suggested he didn't believe that for a moment, but he let the matter lie. He sat quietly, watching the fire pensively and nursing his scotch. As the silence stretched, Devi concluded he was waiting for news in comfort, and decided to broach a subject that she had been wondering about for some time.
"What happened during the Apocalypse?" she said.
Crowley stirred, his train of thought broken. "You're asking me? Haven't the Winchesters regaled you with the tale of their exploits?"
Devi shook her head, "I've only heard about it in passing."
"And you'd trust my version of things?" Crowley pried.
"Not really," she said, crinkling her nose, "but there's nothing either of us really can do until your people report back." She leaned back against the hearth, getting comfortable. "So yeah, tell me a bedtime story."
Crowley regarded her for a moment, but ultimately chose to embrace the distraction. "There's quite a lot of background," he began, "but the short version is that Heaven and Hell had been prepping for the big finish for ages. The boys set the whole thing off, thanks to some artful work on the part of Hell."
Devi's eyes went wide. "What? You mean Sam and Dean started it?"
Crowley smirked, "Left that bit out, did they? Yes, they opened the first and the last seals holding Lucifer prisoner. Not that they know what they were doing, of course. Moose, bless him, had been led to believe that what he did would actually stop it."
"So, Lucifer – that's Satan, right?" the seer interjected. "The Devil? Are they all the same person or...?"
Crowley blinked at her in surprise before chuckling. "Of course, you haven't been to Sunday school. Yes, the Devil himself, caged in the depths of the Pit since Michael threw him out of Heaven."
"And when was that?" Devi asked.
"Quite soon after the Fall – you have heard of the Garden of Eden and all that?" he checked.
"Vaguely – wasn't that supposed to be at the start of human history?" At Crowley's nod, she continued, "So, if Lucifer's been locked up, who's been screwing with humanity all this time?"
Crowley grinned, "Oh, Luci had plenty of 'willing' volunteers, human souls he twisted to suit his preferences, and who went on to do the same to others: the first demons. Now, one of the oldest had been cultivating certain bloodlines for decades, breeding children with preternatural abilities and feeding them on his own blood." He noted the seer's look of horror with some satisfaction before continuing. "Sam was one of these. He was meant to be the vessel of Lucifer, as Dean was intended by Heaven to hold Michael. They would fight to the death, deciding once and for all who would run the human race, Heaven or Hell."
"They wanted to fight each other, and they thought that putting one in each of the Winchesters was a good idea?" Devi said skeptically. "Had they met Sam and Dean?"
"Fair point, duck," Crowley held up a finger, "though at the time, the boys weren't on the best terms. Hell had done it's work well. Even if things between them had been better, there wasn't much that they could do about it once Lucifer was out. It was just a matter of time before one or both of them said yes to his respective angel – if the natural disasters didn't make the destruction of the earth a moot point."
"Why did either side have to wait on them?" Devi interrupted. "Why did they need them at all?"
Crowley narrowed his eyes at her disruption. "Being ridden by an archangel isn't like mere possession – there's a lot more power involved, so only certain people, certain bloodlines can withstand being a vessel. The Winchesters are the result of joining two such bloodlines. Sam had been prepped for Lucifer, which left Dean for the God squad. It was all looking pretty grim until yours truly showed up." He gave a smirk that lacked any trace of modesty.
"What did you do?" Devi sighed, rolling her eyes and trying not to sound interested.
"It was discovered that the keys to the Cage that had imprisoned Lucifer since the beginning were, in fact, rings held by the Four Horsemen. The boys managed to stumble across two, War and Famine, and miraculously survived the encounter. However, they were stymied as to where to find the others. That's where I come in."
"So, they got the first two by themselves?" Devi noted.
Crowley scowled at her observation. "Who's telling this story?" he said, a tad peevishly.
Devi ducked her head and gestured placatingly for him to continue.
Crowley sighed and readjusted himself in the chair. "At enormous personal risk to myself, I told the boys that the way to get to Pestilence was through his staff. I led Dean to right to Pestilence's stable-boy, but in the end, I had to capture the clot myself. Then, I 'convinced' him to tell us where the Horseman had set up shop."
"Using your typical methods, I bet," Devi made a face.
"Not exactly," Crowley smiled pleasantly. "I knew there would be no forcing him to tell me through pain. He was far too fond of the notion of being on the winning side. So, in a rather brilliant twist on my part, I ensured that was no longer an option."
He paused, and Devi knew he was angling for a response. In the interest of drama, he needed an attentive audience. Grudgingly, she obliged him with a noncommittal "Hmm?"
"I arranged things so that the stable-boy appeared to be an ally of mine, and then some, against Lucifer. Once he realized how deep in it he was, he knew there was no reason to keep his boss's secrets. The Winchesters and their angel put paid to Pestilence, and I moved on to locating Death."
"Wait, you mean death-death? Like, capital "d" Death?" Despite herself, Devi couldn't keep from sounding impressed.
Crowley looked gratified. "Yes, which required a remarkably difficult bit of spellwork on my part. Because of my work, Dean was able to meet with Death, who gave him the final ring. Lucifer got thrown back in the box."
"And with him gone, you could claim Hell," Devi finished for him.
"There were a fair number of his loyalists to mop up, but yes, ultimately, I took the throne."
"Loyalists?" Devi frowned, confused. "There were still demons following Lucifer, after he got locked up again? I thought demons were pragmatists."
Crowley shrugged, "Most had the sense to jump the fence once it became clear who was on top, but you must remember, there was a great deal of grandeur about the Prince of Darkness, a mystique, if you will. Many demons regarded him as something of a messiah for our kind. Thought he would take us to Heaven."
Devi thought she saw a flicker of something that looked almost like regret cross Crowley's face, but it was gone too quickly for her to be sure. She wondered whether he had been as immune as he pretended to be to the lure of what Lucifer had promised. "But you didn't?" she pressed carefully.
"Oh, I put the pieces together quickly enough," he replied with a bitter smile. "Lucifer was aiming for Heaven, alright, but he never meant to bring the demons with him. We were only ever a means to an end. I trust you know by now what demons are?" At her nod, he grimaced, "Now, what got Lucifer thrown downstairs in the first place was his deep and abiding hatred for humanity. So, what do you think was he going to do with a pack of mutilated, degraded, formerly-human souls once he got what he wanted?"
Devi told herself that she didn't feel the least bit sorry for the demon in front of her, despite the disappointment thick in his voice. She tried to imagine what it would be like to have your own kind turn against you, and all because you found out their long-awaited salvation was a sham. "But nobody else figured it out?" she asked.
"No," Crowley snorted softly, "only me." He took another swallow of whiskey. "Of course, my little theory didn't gain much traction with my fellows – I spent half the year on the run from my own kind – but everyone loves a winner."
"Well, it sounds like Lucifer had been pretty played up," Devi pointed out irritably. The inherent unfairness of the situation rankled her, in spite of the actors involved. "I mean, besides convincing a woman to go off her diet and getting booted out of Heaven for it, what's he really done?"
Crowley looked at her, staggered for a moment, and then let out a bark of laughter. "That's quite a way to describe the spiritual ruin of an entire planet." His mood seemed to improve, though. "He did make the first demons. I suppose we must be grateful for that." He grinned at the mutinous expression Devi shot him at that statement. "Now, you really ought to at least try to get some sleep," he admonished.
Devi sighed, but didn't feel like fighting the point. She rose, replaced the cushion she'd been sitting on, and put her books on the table along with her half-empty glass of whiskey. As she headed for the door, she stole a glance back at Crowley. He was still in the armchair, once more staring into the fire, deep in thought. Unless Devi was no judge of expression, he looked weary. She had never before considered that demons, however far they had fallen from humanity, might still be subject to loneliness.
And yet... And yet, she could still remember the savage triumph in his eyes when he told her she had sold herself and her family to him. She could still remember the expression of hateful delight on his face as he stood over her with a hot knife, pinning her down with arcane energy as he took his twisted pleasures. She remembered the ghastly, abhorrent, ruined thing she had seen through the fireplace, and the devouring black pit she'd felt on the Indiana mountainside.
Devi shook her head, trying to clear her mind as she headed down the darkened hall. It was so easy to let her guard down, to take what she could see and hear and touch at face value, but it was an illusion. Even if he'd believed what he'd said, hell, even if it was true in some measure, it didn't change things. However sincere, or sympathetic, or human he might appear, she couldn't let herself forget what he really was: a monster.
Devi slept late the next morning, and would have slept later if she hadn't been roused by the sound of someone knocking on her door. She hauled herself out of bed, throwing on a sweatshirt before opening the door to find Andrews standing there.
"Good morning, Miss Chaudhuri," he said, holding out the tray he was carrying. "I thought you might like some breakfast."
"What time is it?" Devi asked, confused. Andrews had either brought or sent her breakfast to the library since she'd come to the asylum, never to her room.
"Half nine, miss," Andrews replied.
"Is that half 'til nine or half past nine?" Her mind was still fuzzy from sleep, but the brightness of the morning light outside was enough to tell her that it was past the time she was usually up.
There was a ghost of a smile in the corners of Andrew's mouth as he informed her it was half past nine o'clock.
"Damn, I'm sorry," Devi ran a distracted hand through her hair, further disheveling what a night's sleep had done. "You didn't have to bring it up. I would have come down eventually."
"It would have gotten cold," he said simply.
"Thank you, Andrews, that was…" Devi stopped herself. She was going to say "nice," but Andrews was a demon - would that be insulting? "Kind" wasn't any better, and "good of you" was out of the question. "I appreciate it," she said by way of compromise, taking the tray from him. The warm, promising smells coming from under the cover made her glad she'd be able to enjoy the food while it was still hot and fresh.
As she turned back inside, Andrews spoke again, "The King requests you join him in the study once you've finished breakfast."
Devi let out a groan, dropping her head back to glare at the ceiling in frustration. "Fine, tell 'his nibs' I'll be down shortly," she said at last.
Andrews gave a slight bow of his head and turned to go, that ghost of a smile again haunting his expression.
Devi set the tray on the ottoman, and settled into the armchair behind it, lifting the lid to let the fragrant steam rise to meet her face. A perfectly fluffy omelette, studded with tomatoes and green onions and oozing cheese, lay next to slices of wheat toast, with a little pot of marmalade and another of whipped butter alongside. A bowl of fruit salad was set near the edge of the tray so as not to take on heat from the plate. Devi wondered, not for the first time, where Andrews managed to get such flavorful strawberries at this time of year. And of course, there was a pot of black tea and pitcher of milk. She took her time with the meal, savoring it both to spite Crowley and as tribute to Andrews' work.
She had expected the butler to be irate, or at least annoyed when he found her adrift in his kitchen the other day. When Crowley had left her there after rebandaging her arm, Devi had been at loose ends. She had managed to fill the kettle and get it on the stove, but she wasn't easily able to reach the high shelves of the cupboards. Andrews had walked in just as the kettle started shrieking, his arms full of groceries, to find her balanced precariously on a kitchen stool. He had recovered from his initial shock quickly - during which time Devi apologized profusely - set down the bags, switched off the stove, and wordlessly began making tea. He'd set the cup on the island counter, and mildly asked her if she'd like something to eat, as if he hadn't just caught her rifling through his cupboards.
Devi had sat quietly, sipping her tea as she watched him work. After putting the groceries away, he'd begun chopping vegetables, the quick, steady staccato of the knife against the board the only sound between them. Before the silence weighed too heavily, however, he had turned on an old-fashioned radio on the counter behind him. Devi didn't recognize the music at first, but then a familiar motif came through the speaker.
"Barber of Seville," she said, half to herself.
Andrews looked up from his work, one eyebrow raised, "You are familiar with it?"
"Oh, no, I mean, not the whole thing - I've heard bits and pieces of it," Devi answered, choosing not to reveal that her exposure to the opera consisted entirely of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
Andrews had gone on to relate not only the plot of the opera, but its background, composition, and his personal experience of seeing it performed for the first time in London, at the King's Theatre in 1818. By the time he'd finished his narrative, the vegetables he'd been cutting had been sauteed with garlic, simmered in crushed tomatoes, and seasoned with fresh herbs. He'd put the bowl in front of Devi, along with several thick slices of crusty bread, and lapsed back into silence, turning the radio up a little so he could hear it over the clatter of cookware as he washed up.
They hadn't spoken any further that day, but Devi thought she noticed a subtle shift in their interactions since. For one thing, Andrews seemed to look at her directly more. Previously, his gaze had tended to slide over her, as if she was one more item to note on his list of things to do, but now he seemed to register her presence as, well, if not a person, at least an active element of the room. That might be the best Devi could hope for.
She had half a mind to take a shower after breakfast, just to irk Crowley further, but she decided against it. Better to get an unpleasant task over with and out of the way. She dressed, ran her fingers through her hair in a desultory way, and headed downstairs, considering, weighing, and dismissing the hope that Crowley might actually have something useful to contribute to her project as she went. By the time she got the study, she had sunk herself to a level of cynicism usually reserved for hard-bitten, film-noire detectives and Oscar Wilde characters.
"You took your time," Crowley observed she opened the door, scarcely looking up from the sheaves of maps and print-outs scattered across his desk.
"Yes, I did," Devi agreed without a hint of apology. "Is there a reason you called me down here?"
"The incompetents better known as my staff have finally finished piecing together that jigsaw puzzle we took off the ceiling in Indiana," he replied, rising and heading toward the door, waving for her to follow.
"Does all this," Devi gestured to the half-buried desk, "have to do with that?"
"Later, darling," he waved her on again. "I want you to see what we have so far without any presumption. I need a fresh, unjaded perspective."
"If you wanted me unjaded, you're going at it completely wrong," Devi grumbled as she followed him out, tossing her bangs out of her eyes as she did so.
"You need a haircut," Crowley observed, having caught the movement out of the corner of his eye.
Devi shook her head. "I'm growing it out," she replied distractedly, trying to brush it back behind her ear. After the briefest reflection, she snapped "On second thought, screw you, no one asked your opinion!"
Crowley chuckled to himself, leading her in the opposite direction from the library to a part of the asylum she wasn't familiar with. He opened a door off the dark hallway and showed her into large, open room, well-lit by the numerous large, barred windows in the far wall. Devi guessed this might have once been the cafeteria. The ceiling was of average height, but the length of the room made it seem lower, giving a bizarre sense of claustrophobia to the space.
The room's floor, tiled in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern, was mostly obscured by a huge stretch of canvas cloth, on which lay dozens of enlarged pictures of the cave ceiling from the vetala's lair. Half a dozen demons were darting about, adjusting a picture's orientation or swapping it for a different one, dashing back to the edge of the cloth to examine their work or study wider shots of the original whole before jumping back in to correct what they'd done or reposition another element.
Despite their last-minute alterations, Devi could clearly make out the general view. "It's a map," she concluded, walking slowly along the edge of the canvas.
"True, but I was hoping for something a little deeper," Crowley grinned lazily.
Devi rolled her eyes at him. "They've used some of the same symbols repeatedly. Is each supposed to be a certain kind of landmark?"
Crowley nodded, coming alongside her and pointing at the main feature of the image, the long, twisted length of beaten copper, "And what do you make of that?"
"The river?" Devi guessed, for that's what it looked like to her.
"Not just a river," Crowley said, shepherding her to the far end of the reconstruction.
Devi caught her breath at the sight of the huge serpentine head at the end of the metal trail: there were clearly antlers, lovingly crafted out of filaments of hammered copper. Two carved shell gorgets served as eyes, and a piece of crystalline quartz was set in the center of the snake's head. She felt Crowley's eyes on her, and immediately latched on to the most obvious and banal thing she could allow herself to say. "Big snake," she noted in what she hoped was a detached tone.
"How familiar are you with the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex?" Crowley asked.
"Oh, super-familiar, I read up on it every night before bed." She pursed her lips at him, "Can we just skip to the part where you tell us all why we're here?"
Crowley looked a little irked at being undercut, but pressed on, "One of the more widespread cultural elements among Indians of the Ohio River Valley, as well as the American Southeast, is the belief in a being called the Horned Serpent, a creature that inhabits the Underworld. Besides being a general representatives of the mysterious and chaotic forces of that realm, it was also associated with water."
"So, this is reverential art," Devi gestured at the canvas. "Do you think that cave was a temple or something?"
"No, for several reasons," Crowley went on. "One, the Serpent was more generally feared than revered by the nearest civilizations. They preferred the falcon deities of the Upper World, which represented and guarded their noble elite. Two, those tribes mostly kept to the river valleys, and cave art was a form of expression not generally used by them, though they were capable of carving stone."
"So why would someone hike all the way up into the woods and put a map in a cave if no one was going to see it?" Devi reasoned. "Unless that was the point: that they were trying to hide it."
"Possibly," Crowley nodded, "which would mean either this kind of thing was not allowed by the mainstream religious authorities, or this was secret knowledge to be imparted only to a select few."
"Either way, the real question is why would Abbadon care?" Devi prodded.
"I'm getting to that - stop interrupting. Though it was regarded as dangerous, there were benefits to pursuing the Underworld, particularly in terms of attaining arcane knowledge, visions, and the like. Now, these symbols," he pointed to the map, at a motif that looked like a pointed oval with a circle inside, "represent places that provided access to the Underworld."
"So, you think Abbadon's trying to get to the Underworld?" Devi pressed. She wasn't really getting his point.
"No, I think she's trying to get at the Serpents," Crowley concluded.
"Wait, Serpents plural?" she held up her hand. "There's more than one?"
"Naturally - very hard to have a species with just one individual, you know," he noted wryly. "And those symbols," he gestured to the floor again, "are likely places where the native peoples had encountered them."
"What would Abbadon want with a creature like that?" She felt her anxiety rising.
"Well, there's the obvious benefits that may be derived from an enormous, carnivorous reptile with power over water and a general propensity towards chaos," Crowley noted.
She'd want to use it as a weapon, Devi realized. Well, bad luck to her. However, even if the Serpent refused, as it certainly would, Abbadon had enough resources, enough demons on her side to pose a threat to it, or any others of its kind she could locate.
"But my concern is that her interests are more particular," Crowley went on. "The Red Scare and I are currently in something of a stand-off. She wants to press a confrontation on her own terms, but I've been less than accommodating. By this point, I assume she's run through all the more reliable methods for locating someone, and may be willing to try something more esoteric." He shrugged, "Of course, that's all guesswork. Her man that we captured didn't have much in the way of particulars, other than that Abbadon wanted the map."
"So, she might send someone to try the cave again?" Devi straightened. "They could be there right now!"
"Doubtful, seeing as there's no cave anymore," Crowley smirked, explaining further at the sight of her confused expression. "I took the liberty of having the place dynamited after we left. That entire room is a pile of subterranean rubble now."
Normally, Devi would have been annoyed both at the wanton destruction of a historical artifact and use of explosives in a national park, but at the moment, she was just relieved. "So, that's that, then. No more map, no weaponized magic snake."
"But we have the map now," Crowley grinned.
Damn it, of course he'd be interested too. Devi thought fast. "It's a bit of a long shot, isn't it? I mean, no one's seen any of these things in centuries, right? They're probably not even around anymore."
"True," Crowley agreed, looking a bit subdued. "It's entirely possible the whole lot of them are extinct. Strange, though… Abbadon's not one for chasing fairy tales. It seems odd she'd expend effort on something like this without prior authentication." He shook his head, "Still, she has a lot of irons in the fire. This may have been a gamble that just didn't pay off."
"Well, here's hoping her bad luck holds a while longer," she concluded. "Will that be all? I have work to do."
Crowley dismissed her with a distracted wave of his hand, still looking thoughtful. Devi forced herself to leave the room at a casual pace, taking one last glance at the gleaming copper image. She needed to calm down and get her head on straight if she was going to reach the Serpent's mind. It had to be warned.