We sit in his office in California, a pile of bones on the desk. Crowley's. He wants every possible weakness eradicated. This is the next one. We weren't certain if the contracts would cover this type of death. They should, but we couldn't be sure. That's why he had waited a bit longer, about a year, while he did all the research he could. It didn't help.

His new meat suit is a bit bloody, after all he had to make sure there wasn't a soul in it to tell anyone about his plans when they died. So the person of course had to die first. The middle aged African American man was brought in by a group of demons who were then dismissed completely. Only the guards outside the house remain.

"So what did you recommend I do? Exactly?" He asks. I repeat my earlier thought that I'd grind em up. Can't burn something scattered to the four winds. "There are certain spells…" Then you have to burn em yourself Crowley, in a controlled experiment. "I know!" He sighs. He looks in the corner, at his preferred meat suit, sitting in a chair surrounded by a protective circle. Sure he had 'killed' himself before, but this was different, this was a bit more personal. Saying goodbye to the past, albeit a past he hated, it is still a tad difficult. He steels himself and looks at his bones.

"Goodbye Fergus." He snaps and the bones ignite.

And so do we.

The last thing I remember is pain, all encompassing like the first time he took refuge in my soul. Then darkness.

Right now however, there is just whistling and a feeling of freedom, but that vanishes and I am confined again briefly before my consciousness fades again.

When I awake once more it is late evening, probably nine or ten, and some of the lamp lights over head flicker as Crowley passes beneath them.

"Good of you to finally join us." His voice is light, recognizable. The artist from earlier. "Yes, sad that it happened this soon, but the saying "15 minutes of fame" came from somewhere. People just don't take it literally enough." I shudder, a feeling, an idea, a memory, but I shudder as best someone without a body can. The contracts for every soul after me were twice as convoluted with three times as many loopholes and ways for Crowley to collect early. It was a loophole I had fortunately found, but in my contract it didn't include a subsection mandating that if Crowley left a person's vessel with their soul at any time, he had freeheld ownership.

And that's what he is about to do. This young artist's body would have fame for as long as it survived, but their soul would be quite gone. If I could feel sick I would. I knew for a fact that if I hadn't gone over my contract with him in such detail he wouldn't have asked me for suggestions on how to better utilize and hide the loopholes I had found, and gotten rid of, in mine.

Of course if I hadn't been so thorough we might be in a different situation right now. ...Perhaps I could help the woman. She could take over the role I had when I was alive. Get the guards and care I had, she'd need the carvings in her bones and-

"I'm not wasting time training a new bitch when I already have one who heels on command darling." Well, at least I tried. "You did, even if it was just to placate your guilty conscience." I mean, he isn't wrong, but that's half of the reason people do things; because otherwise you feel guilty. I guess demons don't really feel guilt. "Guilt free for over 300 years." He walks, looking at the lights fizzle and flicker with the energy he is exuding, I wonder if three full untainted souls would be too much. Too much information, too many choices, too many voices. Crowley ignores my pondering, confident in his abilities, more than I was.

It was true he couldn't let go of this soul, not unless he wanted to spend resources protecting her, not unless he trusted her fear of him to keep her quiet. She probably didn't fear or respect him like I did, didn't have the strange twisted Stockholm syndrome I had developed over the years. She might break and he can't have that, not yet. I can feel his intentions, and I weep for the young girl.

Crowley smokes out of the vessel in a nearby ally, taking three bright lights with him and leaving an angry husk. The night air whips up wisps of his red smoke and the bits of souls glitter like stars as they are tossed about. He rushes up the side of the building and from the roof begins the journey back to his office.

It's a short trek, and the two demon guards stand aside as the telltale red smoke of their king rushes through the side doors.

Both guards die not long after, and for good reason. There's one too many empty chairs in his office.

Crowley's favorite meat suit is gone.

His office is in ruins, the smoke alarms are going off, two demons are dead, and Crowley is furious. He knew the body had been taken, and he did not know by who, where it was, or why. For once he is completely in the dark and he does not like it. He has research to do.

Fifteen minutes later we are back in the artist. He finds her about to destroy half of her paintings, getting a cruel glee from ripping apart canvas. The soul beside me rejoices when we just manage to stop her in time, Crowley doesn't care. He leaves immediately and walks back to the office where his meat suit was and grabs his phone from his desk. He dials the number and informs his personal clean up crew to come remove any trace of bodies and his personal forensics crew to look for any trace evidence before hand. He then sits and thinks. Who would dare do this to the King of Hell? Who would dare do this after the show a power he had just given? Someone who is afraid, someone who wanted that power for themself? Perhaps someone who remembered the frequent turmoil and changes of power in the late 1900s when the Hunter family commonly known as the Winchesters was about. How easily power trades hands back then, it hadn't for sometime now but that didn't mean it couldn't again. He listens to my musings and fumes. He had already asked me what my opinion was, and I said I didn't even begin to have enough information about these demons to help. We can't put out an apb. We can't gather the demons together to search for them without knowing who they are. We can't torture it out of anyone, and the guards, who hadn't seen anything anyway, are dead.

Still, someone will pay. A lot of people will probably pay actually. He just has to find them first. He takes the computer out from his desk and hooks into the Wi-Fi. From there he goes to the security cameras within and without the house, and enters his very long password. The footage from the last three hours or so pops up and with a glass of some red drink, he begins the long process of watching it.

About an hour and a half in the forensics crew arrives and they begin sweeping the office, the stairs, the hallways outside ,everything. If evidence of anyone other than the myriad of dead people that were in here since the last deep clean two days ago was here...they would find it. Crowley smartly ground the remains of his burnt bones to dust like I suggested. They weren't of any use anymore now that they had been burned once anyway, but he wasn't about to take chances. So dust and to the winds.

He ignores the crew while they go about and continues watching the tape. About two hours in three trails of black smoke enter through the back window. They circle around before one attempts to enter the protective circle to get at Crowley's preferred meat suit. Of course it doesn't work. Crowley had made the circle specifically to prevent things from getting in, especially demons. One trail of black smoke leaves and there's a crash from the back window about three minutes later and a man with red hair walks in and scratches the edge of the circle. Crowley fumes as one of the other trails of smoke enters his preferred body. They all leave through the back broken window and I can feel Crowley flinch at the sight of his suit being torn on the glass.

He should've posted more guards, but he didn't want anyone to know what he was messing with at the time; didn't want anyone to even have a chance of glimpsing in the back windows to see that he was burning his own bones. He didn't need anyone to know about that kind of power yet. And he didn't trust anyone else to guard his body, with good reason apparently. This was proved doubly true if these demons were so power-hungry or afraid that they would risk stealing their own king's preferred body to find out what was going on.

Fortunately the body had been dead for years and didn't have any new memories to latch onto with a brain that wasn't exactly firing neurons. But the brain still remembered things from when it was alive, when that first contract happened. And apparently a soul in the wrong body doesn't form new memories. I didn't know if the demons could access the body's original memories at all.

"Depends on the demon." Well that is so helpful. Crowley sighs. He downloads the footage onto his phone and his personal private server in the cloud and deletes it everywhere else. He stands and scowls.

"Let's go visit mummy dearest, shall we?"

….Wait...What?

(Thanks for reading everyone! I hope you're enjoying the art and the descent into madness!)