II — An Uncomfortable Ride
It had been the boy who'd clamped the cuffs on him. All the squiggly lines on the ground in the world couldn't do much to hold Crowley if he was in a mood, but cuffs meant to restrain the nigh-on limitless celestial abilities of angels, well, that put a damper on things. Sure, he wasn't an angel now, but a lot of the same bits and pieces were there, more's the pity.
Crowley had been on about something—mainly trying to figure out where the devil he was and how he could get back to his angel and his danish—when he'd felt the cold, consecrated steel clamp over his wrists. He'd been focused on the big hulking piles of lumber and Discount Colombo, ignoring the timid teenager hiding behind them. Mistake, apparently, because now he was in a bloody trunk(1) headed off to parts unknown.
There was all kinds of things back here, though. Enough supernatural weaponry to kill every pretty vampire and werewolf in any urban fantasy-esque media that had been created in the past twenty years(2). Crowley idly picked up a wooden stake, twirling it in his fingers. Very old school. So, the big blighters, they were hunters. Great. Human hunters had always been not necessarily the bane of his existence, but certainly an ever-present annoyance. It was rare that they were actually able to figure out that he was far from human, and then they'd try the exorcisms and the chanting and UGH. All so irritating. Can't exorcise a body that isn't possessed, and his was quite fully his own. Picked out the cheek bones and everything.
Crowley hissed loudly when he found a water bottle with a Sharpie cross scribbled on it. Surely, it couldn't be...? He carefully cracked the top and gave it a sniff. Another hiss, even more panicked that time. He closed it swiftly and chucked it to the other side of the trunk, heartbeat picking up in his chest. Oh, this just turned from an inconvenience into something very, very bad. They could kill him with that stuff! Maybe not that little, but if there was one bottle, there was more, or at least the potential to make more.
"Aziraphale," Crowley murmured under his breath, slipping his extra pair of sunglasses out of his jacket pocket and settling them on his face. "Come on, angel. When you're in trouble, I can feel it. Well now I'm in trouble, and I need you to feel it!"
Anathema and Newt, much like Crowley and Aziraphale, had come together under one roof without much discussion. Predestination tended to speed things up in terms of a relationship. To Newt's credit, he had been the ideal house guest. He made very little mess, especially for a man, and frequently helped her tidy the house and cook meals, even going so far as to help her with various spells she worked, even if that only meant holding a notebook open while her eyes scanned through rough translations or ingredient lists and her hands stirred a cauldron.
He hadn't even left the toilet seat up—not once! He'd done nothing approaching offensive, with the exception of bricking her cell phone the one time she asked him to Google something for her. Apparently his absolutely destructive touch with computers didn't reserve itself to just PCs.
She decided, ultimately, that life was better with Newton Pulsifer than without. He seemed to be in agreement with her, overwhelmingly so. He'd hardly stopped grinning in the past month and a half. She wondered if his face ever got sore.
The cottage had gone from a reprieve for a witch trying to save the world with a dusty old book, to a happy, lived-in place, often filled with the laughter and chatter of the Them, as they'd taken to coming over whenever their usual games bored them. Pepper had taken to the New Aquarian with the same passion as Adam, and soaked up Anathema's lessons about environmental conservation and the damned Tibetans like sponges. Wensley and Brian found this less interesting than the other half of their party, but they'd found common ground with Newt in video games and comics. Especially video games. Brian's Xbox One now took up residence in their living room, and the Them took thorough pleasure in destroying Newt at whatever they played.
"Well, I've always liked video games," Newt had confessed one sunny afternoon(3). "I'm rubbish at them, but I do like them. It never mattered much to me whether I won or not."
As long as he didn't explode Brian's Xbox, thus incurring a call from his enraged parents, she encouraged his playtime. Anathema had inquired with Adam as to whether his parents were alright with the Them spending time at Jasmine Cottage, but Adam had quickly assuaged her fears.
"My parents don't mind. They just think they've met you through work or something and can't remember who you are and they're too polite to ask. Same with Aziraphale and Crowley," Adam said with an unaffected shrug of one shoulder.
"How...British of them," had been Anathema's only response.
The angel and demon had been in and out as well, though not nearly as frequently as the Them. She assumed their concerns lay mostly with making sure Heaven and Hell kept their respective grimy hands off of Adam, and that the Antichrist continued to be very un-Antichrist like. There was a paternal concern for the boy from both of them, and she found that both endearing and surprising.
She still wasn't sure what to make of either of them. She was sure of only two things: one, that they had only humanity's best interest at heart, and two, that they were gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.
So, it did not surprise her when in early October, just as the leaves started to change, that Aziraphale presented himself at her door. It did surprise her, however, that the angel was in an absolute fit of panic. He'd been the picture of content since the apocalypse was averted.
"Anathema," he said immediately upon her opening the door. "I need your help. Crowley's gone."
"Gone...where?" she asked slowly. The sun had just risen, and her and Newt were barely past the point of having their morning coffee. She was still in her bathrobe.
"That's what I'm trying to determine!" She ushered the anxious angel inside while he continued to explain at a breakneck pace, "He disappeared right in front of me. I've searched high and low for him, but I can't find him—I can't feel him," Aziraphale stressed emphatically. "And usually, you see, no matter how far Crowley is from me, there's always this sense that he's...around. Part of being the, ah, yang to my yin, as they say. Universal balance has to be maintained. I've never, not once, not been able to feel him."
"And you say he just...disappeared? Could he be in Hell?"
Aziraphale paled visibly. "That's what I fear may have happened. Is there anything you could do that could tell me where he is?"
Anathema took a deep breath. "Give me ten minutes."
"What. The hell. Is he," Dean repeated for the third time.
"His true form is just one massive, winged, black serpent," Cas said in answer, again, sounding substantially more irritated than last time.
"Are those cuffs going to hold him?" Sam pressed.
"You two keeping asking as if I could somehow know," Cas snapped irritably. "I can only tell you what I see. I have never encountered anything like this demon before. My best and only theory, is that he's...not from here."
"Like an alien?" Jack asked, perking up. Dean suppressed an eye-roll. Sammy had gotten the kid binge-watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, and now he kept hoping every case would turn out to be an alien, no matter how many times Dean stressed the 'everything's real BUT aliens and bigfoot' rule to him.(4)
"Like from another universe," Cas elaborated. "A universe where Lucifer wasn't the serpent. A universe where there was never a King of Hell named Crowley. A universe where devil's traps are not infallible."
"I don't like the sound of that universe," Dean said evenly. "How the hell do we put him back?"
Jack patted the pile of notebooks and grimoires they'd liberated from Rowena's barn. "Maybe something in here will tell us?" Dean had hoped Rowena would've been freaked out enough by Bizarro Crowley to leave the Book of the Damned behind, but no such luck. Still, maybe they could dig up something from her notes, if any of them could ever make out her handwriting.
"Rowena summoned this Crowley by accident. It's a resurrection ritual, clearly gone awry—repeating it won't reverse it. We have to find which universe he originally came from and attempt to open up a portal."
"Too bad we're fresh out of Archangel Grace," Dean said with a grimace. "And I don't think Michael's in the giving mood. Not that we know where the bastard is, anyway."
"That Russian guy, Sergei. He had some of Gabriel's Grace. Maybe he has more?" Sam suggested.
"I won't deal with Sergei again. He was...I believe the word is 'shady'...and I doubt he has another vial, I'm amazed he was able to get the first." Cas shifted in the backseat, worry obvious in the crease of his brow. Cas's expression echoed what Dean was thinking: when are we gonna catch a fucking break?
"Should we just kill him?" Dean suggested tiredly. "We have no clue how strong this guy is. He could be a serious problem."
"Shouldn't we at least figure that out before we murder him?" Jack asked, and Dean could practically feel the judgement rolling off of him. It's not like murder was the first or best option, but demons with weird-ass snake eyes that couldn't be trapped freaked him out! They didn't need another world-ending otherworldly threat on their plate, they already had one of those.
"Assuming we can hold him," Sam pointed out darkly. "There's no telling whether—"
Just then, the Impala veered violently sideways, a concussive force rolling the car once, then twice, ending with the roof flat against the rural highway, and the boys dangling from their seat-belts, bloodied and bruised, but not seriously hurt.
"I—don't think the cuffs held him," Dean managed, vision blurring in front of him. More concerning than the possible concussion was the amount of damage that had just been done to Baby. "That settles it. We're killing him."
"WHO CARRIES BOMBS IN THE BACK OF THEIR CAR!" Dean heard a loud shout from behind the Impala. Bizarro Crowley. Dean cut himself out of his seatbelt with Ruby's knife and crawled out from underneath the Impala, Sam close behind. Cas was checking a large cut across Jack's forehead. The young Nephilim seemed disoriented, but otherwise fine.
Dean forced himself to his feet, staggering several steps as the world did a high-speed 360 around him. Okay, not possible concussion, definite concussion. Thankfully, Bizarro Crowley struck a noticeable black silhouette against the hazy blue Kansas sky. Dean fired off a shot at his head without hesitation.
The bullet stopped and fell before it could even hit Crowley. Crowley, who, now that his vision had cleared, looked like he'd been half lit on fire. He also still had the angel cuffs on.
"The cuffs don't work," Dean said immediately to Sam, Cas, and Jack. "He was bluffing us."
"Oh, they work a bit. Kinda like putting a muzzle on me. I can still growl, just not bark," the demon explained, still looking incredibly harried. "And also, in my own defense, I didn't even know what it was, the bomb, that is, I was just messing about with it—not a whole lot to do when you're locked against your will in a trunk—and it blew!"
"Demon bombs," Sam coughed out, pinching the bridge of his nose. "The demon bombs Kevin made, we had spares back there."
Dean whirled on Sam, nearly losing his footing in the process. "You're telling me he just blew up a demon bomb in his bare fucking hands and he's FINE?"
"Demon bombs? Those exist? Why? Not like you can kill demons," Bizarro Crowley said, shaking ash out of his hair.
Dean made for the demon with Ruby's knife still gripped tight in his hand. "Wanna bet?"
"Ah-ah! What did I ever even do to you lot?" Bizarro Crowley burst out, lifting up his hands. "I don't even want to be here! Just send me wherever that ginger witch pulled me out of and we can all live happily ever after!"
"We don't know how to send you back, but I can definitely make it so you're not my problem anymore."
"Look mate, I'm begging you, please. Don't discorporate me. I worked hard on this body. A one time stroke of inspiration," Bizarro Crowley pleaded.
"If he's as powerful as he seems, why is he begging?" Castiel questioned, helping Jack out of the car.
"He said the angel cuffs muzzle him," Sam reminded them. "Maybe he's only got one death save."
Hopefully, Dean thought. "Give me one good reason not to kill you," he said. Assuming he could kill the demon at all, which was pretty up in the air at this point.
"I—I—" the demon whipped off his sunglasses dramatically, as if an idea had just hit him. "I can fix your car!"
"You're the one who broke it!"
"No, but I mean I can just—" Crowley snapped his fingers. "I mean, obviously nothing happened that time, because you have me chained, but if you unchain me, I can put it right as rain, good as new—"
"We're not taking your cuffs off! Forget it!" Sam shouted, retrieving his sawed-off from where it was stored at the small of his back and pointing it at Crowley's head.
"Guns. Never liked guns." He eyed Ruby's knife with a raised eyebrow. "Weapons...weapons in general, not a fan."
Dean hesitated, lowering the knife ever-so-slightly. "Well..." he looked beseechingly at Sam. "We should hear him out."
"Dean! We can fix the Impala! We've done it before!" Sam burst out, incredulous.
"Dude, do you know what a pain in the ass it is to fix body damage?"
Cas and Jack flanked Sam and Dean, but Cas seemed less concerned and more confused. "He's awfully cowardly for a demon as powerful as him."
"Maybe he's not actually that powerful," Jack suggested.
"No, he has power. His aura is..." Cas shook his head, seeming to have trouble finding the words. "Large. Gold. Flashy. Jam-packed tightly with infernal energy."
"Look," Crowley's hands were still raised, "I'm a lover, not a fighter."
Dean looked sharply at Cas. "Are you SURE this isn't our Crowley?"
"Our Crowley was a lot of things, but I wouldn't say he was a coward. He proved that much in the end."
"Coward is a bit of a strong word..."
Crowley jumped when Cas put the tip of his angel blade to the demon's throat. "If angel cuffs will hold him, an angel blade should kill him. Release him...one false move, and I'll end this."
Bizarro Crowley eyed Castiel with distaste. "You're an odd duck, aren't you? An angel palling around with humans. I've got a friend that would just love you."
"Shut up." Cas met Dean's eyes, and Dean nodded, moving forward swiftly. With a quick click of the key, the angel cuffs were off. Dean took one step back, cautiously.
Bizarro Crowley massaged his wrists. "Now THAT'S better," he said with a half-mad grin. "Check this out." He did jazzhands, and then snapped his fingers. The Impala immediately righted itself, worked out its own dents, unbent its hood and roof, and washed itself within a matter of seconds.
Dean gaped.
"Now," the demon set one hand on Castiel's shoulder and one hand on Dean's. "How about you let me sit in the backseat the rest of the way?"
1. Granted, it was a '67 black Chevy Impala four-door hardtop, so as far as trunks to be trapped in...could be worse.
2. He never did understand what was so sexy about vampires. Werewolves, maybe—they knew how to party—but vampires? Absolutely dull. And he was perpetually irritated when people thought he was a vampire. Just because he was a touch pale and had funny eyes. Honestly, nothing's ruder than assuming someone's species.
3. In Lower Tadfield, every afternoon of the past eleven years had been sunny, but that one had been extra sunny.
4. Dean had wanted to get Jack watching Game of Thrones, but Sam and Cas had both insisted it wasn't age appropriate, whatever that meant for a kid who wasn't even two yet.