Don't Feed After Midnight
Chapter 30: Things left behind
Pain was different now, now that the adrenaline rush and the boy prophet's attention were gone. There were new, uneven edges to it Crowley found… unpleasant. Like, the annoying way his flattened foot throbbed with every beat of his hijacked heart; an organ, he now had all the annoying responsibility to keep beating, by himself.
Mr McNeill had departed, as flimsy humans did, leaving him in sole charge of the meatsuit.
It was a strange sensation, to be totally alone inside a physical body, after hundreds of years of background noise from the forgettable procession of people he'd possessed.
Keeping the litarary agent subdued had been harder and less enjoyable since Sam's aborted attempt at the demon cure; so he'd been willing enough to be rid of the man's occasional rustlings, and squirmings about.
It'd been a win win, or so he'd thought in that spur of the moment; when Kevin whacked him upside the head, resulting in a brain haemorrhage and clot which snuffed out Mr McNeill's pseudo-life, and sent him winging on his way to his eternal reward, or damnation.
Crowley hadn't been bothered to try and stop the process, if anything, he'd cheered it on; long ago having lost any interest in tormenting the man behind his meatsuit.
For years now, he'd only kept McNeill locked away down there. In a backwater of his own mind, so the litarary agent would persist manning the mundane switches and toggles of the meatsuit's autonomic bodily functions.
All these years, he hadn't offed the sorry sod, to avoid the trouble of manning those boring bodily bits. Told himself killing the man, or allowing him to be killed, would require expenditure of resources to fix up his favoured meatsuit… And maybe he'd been worried, a trifle uncertain~ whether his original meatsuit owner jumping ship would change things.
But, that had been before the church, before Sam jammed those needles in his neck… and changed something inside of him.
Mr McNeill had been a slick smarmy piece of work, fond of blow, fast cars, and even faster women.
A man who knew the value of a good contract.
The first time Crowley saw the litarary agent, he'd been sat at the bar of some gentleman's club, (the name of which escaped him now.) smoking a cigar, and drinking expensive scotch. A solitary celebration over selling some starry eyed new author on to a major publishing house.
Crowley had been wearing a woman at the time, a petite redhead; a punishment of a sort, for something or other. (Perhaps being cocky about his numbers, or not showing Lilith the deference she believed was her due; it didn't matter really.) Chances were, it was just one of Lilith's little games dressed up as an object lesson.
Perhaps, it had been the unsettling and unwilling reminiscence, sparked by glimpses of those long red curls in every mirror he passed, that drew him to McNeill.
The man appeared to have all the physical attributes Mother had so endlessly lauded.
Lilith hadn't strictly forbidden them from having fun, or drumming up a little business on the side, of their work-a-day duties at the crossroads.
So, when the litarary agent saw him there, eyeing him up. He'd allowed the man to buy him a drink, and brag about his achievements.
One thing had led to another, as he'd planned, and things had progressed to the bedroom.
Coitus was when things had gotten— interesting. People tended to show their true selves at such moments. In McNeill's case, this had been even more illuminating than usual.
As the man reached his completion, Crowley had felt it. Not true love, or multiple orgasms; something far better… Magic.
McNeill had been utterly uncognicient of it, of course, but he had a deep, untapped reservoir of natural magical talent.
Such people were rare, rarer still in the twentieth century, where most believed magic and such, were confined to the fantasy isle of bookstores and video rental establishments.
McNeill unwittingly ticking off all of mother's boxes, had caused him a few moments of pique, and nearly made him squander an opportunity.
But he'd reined himself in, as the thought occurred; that the man might be exactly what he needed to give those hoity-toity hierarchy demons a run for their money, and get Lilith to stop treating him like a whipping boy.
With McNeill as his meatsuit he could rise above the herd, and take his rightful place, as Lilith's favourite, and second in command.
Thanks to Mother, he'd had a head full of arcane magical knowledge from an extremely tender age; knowledge which he'd expanded on extensively over the years, despite his crippling inability to weild said magic for himself.
But, Crowley had read a few things, scattered mentions here and there, which had long led him to wonder if a natural, but untapped or trained magically endowed meatsuit, such as McNeill; so very brash, handsome, and fabulously well endowed (in every sense of the words) was exactly what he required, to finally transform all that knowledge, into dynamic action.
A meatsuit might be considered to be just another magically endowed item, and possession of it could allow the possessee to do all kinds of swell tricks.
He'd been right, as it turned out, and as a result he'd risen high. Higher than he'd first hoped or planned. Cream had a propensity to rise to the top after all.
Now McNeill's soul and spirit were gone, but he could still feel the magic there. Buried inside, bottled up by the shackles and wardings, yet still very much his possession.
Crowley jerked out of his internal reminicence to the sound of the dungeon door scraping open.
"Kev—," he began, but it wasn't the prophet, standing there all pent up and raring for round two of their fun little game.
It was something small, hairy and vulgar. A monkey like thing, with disproportionate ears and eyes.
"No, Not the lad come to free you in exchange for his mother's whereabouts.
Is she even alive, I wonder?" The creature, Crowley could only assume was the gremlin, tilted it's head and ran a wet, pink tongue over it's fangs. "Ah, you don't know, do you? You've been— remiss, and your underlings— are fickle. You don't trust them any further than you can toss them. Do you, your highness?"
Crowley forced a smile. "Are you and Kevin pals now?" He asked, making a low sound of derision in the back of his throat. "And here I was, under the impression, that your lot didn't like team G-O-D."
"I doubt the prophet would think of us as friends, no. Mostly, my lot, don't like arrogant or rude individuals… Or rather we do—" the thing smirked up at him, strutting across the magnetite lines of the wardings as if they weren't there. "They are such delightful fun. Breaking down individuals like the Lad, that's far too easy. I myself, prefer a challenge."
"You, want to take me on?"
"Oh—" the gremlin walked right up to him and crouched down by his flattened foot, head tilted, ears flicked back. "There's a definite level of arrogance to you, your Majesty. Thinking you're in a better position than the prophet." It mocked. "After all, he's comfortable in the guest room, whilest you're down here, chained in the dark, injured and bleeding."
"I goaded him into it,"Crowley demured smugly, "I made him do this. I wanted it."
"Oh, I know you did. Like the younger legacy said. 'Bad attention for something like Crowley, is better than no attention at all.' But it's more than that, isn't it, your Highness?"
"Kink shaming? I'd heard, the fae were more open minded than that." He tutted, eyebrow cocked mockingly. "I do suppose, being somewhat unendowed, I guess your lot could be expected to display something of a narrow minded, puratain mindset." He shrugged. "I'm a massocist. Comes from my formative education on the rack. Hardly the biggest secret, that I like it rough, now is it?" He leaned back theatrically in his makeshift throne.
"Oh, that's the smoke screen you are using. Maybe even to yourself. But, you wanted the boy to punish you. Not for any kind of sexual gratification, but, because part of you hoped, that if you paid some of your debt to him you'd stop feeling that good old fashioned human emotion, of guilt. You hope Mrs Tran is alive, not because she's a useful bargaining chip, but because if she is, her death won't be another thing dragging on your concience."
Crowley clenched his fists at the tone and those digs, he wanted to rip the ugly little things head off, and piss down it's neck.
"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm a demon you insufferable little git! I don't have a bloody concience!"
"Oh, but you do. It's a sickly blighted thing, and I'm sure you'll do your damnedest to snuff it out of exsistance. But, right now, it's like a splinter in your paw, you can't see it or remove it, but you feel it every time you take a step."
Crowley let a slow breath leak from his nostrils, pretending boredom.
Was the creature right? Was he infected with some shrivelled sliver of a concience?
Was that what the botched demon cure had done to him, what it had left him with?
Could he stamp it out, could he snuff it from existence and go back to being himself again?
Without meaning to, he caught his lower lip between his teeth, and began worrying on it. Then realised what he was doing, and forced himself to halt.
Was such a thing possible?
He'd always assumed a concience was something that cohabited with a man's soul, but he didn't have a soul. They'd flayed it out of him on the racks.
He'd slaughtered the last vestiges of the ragged wizened thing, when he picked up a blade and turned it on the next bugger in the infinite productionline of hell.
Gone was gone and there was no going back… or was there?
Crowley broke out of his thoughts, suddenly aware he'd let the silence stretch for too long.
The gremlin was staring up at him with lambent yellow eyes, head tilted sideways; almost like the Winchester's pet angel did whenever Dean tossed some pop culture reference at him.
"Demon's don't have conciences." He reiterated once more, voice sullen.
"Hmm, that begs the question then, doesn't it?" Another flash of those small white fangs split that ugly monkey face. "What exactly are you?"
…ooo0ooo…
"Ha, told you it was here!" Dean held up Brennan's book triumphantly and Sam stifled the urge to roll his eyes at his brother.
Dean'd been telling him the book was 'here' for the past half hour, but his rapidly escalating agitation hadn't exactly inspired confidence.
"Yeah, Dean, you did." Sam said, keeping his voice neutral.
Dean tossed him the book. "So what's this sayonara Spike spell need, virgin blood? A few shiny rocks? Wing of bat and tail of newt? Kevin'd probably be down to donate for the cause. Sooner we evict that little asshat from our home, the better..."
Sam looked down at the book in his hands while his brother rambled on. A sick swoop of déjà vu made his gut clench and his head spin, holding the thing again.
He was assaulted by visceral memories… Of the leprechaun sitting cross legged on the floor counting spilled salt from the shotgun round, as he cooley leaned down over the same book, to read off the spell, from where Brennan'd left off, after the leprechaun stabbed him.
He'd totally ignored Brennan there, bleeding out on the floor by his feet… felt absolutely nothing.
He'd been such an utter psychopath; and while no one seemed to blame him, for all the callous, wrong and evil things he'd done in that year and a half.
He blamed himself.
He preferred clinging to his memories of the cage. At least, there, he'd been the one getting hurt, not the one destroying everything, turning on the people he loved. Dean, Bobby … and how many others?
Breathing raggedly around another wave of awful, belated guilt, he started leafing through the book.
Until, he found the page he remembered reading the banishing spell from. Leafed backwards again to the start of the ritual, running his eyes over the page. And swore.
Dean looked up from the box he was poking through. "What?" He asked.
"Well, according to this, the banishing ritual has to be started on the last day of a waning moon, the day before a new moon."
"And?"
"The moon's pretty much full at the moment, Dean. A lunar cycle is 29.5— Uh, 30 days. The time between a full moon and a new moon is half of that…"
"Two weeks? You're tellin' me we got two more fricking weeks before we can kick that Sonofabitch to the curb. You've got to be freaking kidding me."
Sam wished he was.