Disclaimer: Aziraphale, Crowley, and Good Omens are created and copyrighted by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. This is a fanfic, intended only in the spirit of fun. Tons of love and thanks is owed to the amazing and wonderful Daegaer, who provided tons of feedback for the first half of the fic, and then ended upsomehow volunteering herself as a beta-reader and a proofreader, and who helped me correct many of my Americanisms with proper British English. And thanks to y'all for reading!
Ordinary Miracles
by Nenena
Chapter 07
Amantea, Carlos A. 1992. The Blob that Ate Oaxaca & Other Travel Tales. Mho & Mho Works, San Diego, California. G465.A49
They returned home only to be greeted by the sound of a dog barking.
Aziraphale turned his key in the lock, pushed open the front door, and was nearly bowled over by the 150-pound St. Bernard that jumped up onto his chest and licked his tie.
"Oh," he said, "Oh no."
Theo pushed around the two of them and rushed into the bookshop. He glanced around quickly. Everything still looked the same, but--
"Margie, get down!" the angel commanded. The dog obediently settled back on her four paws. Aziraphale stepped fully inside, slammed the door shut behind him, and glared at Theo.
"Um, I think it was here," Theo said lamely. "The miracle, that is."
"I can see that." Aziraphale glanced over at the massive dog, and sighed. "I can't even begin to think how I'll explain this to Mr. Edwards." He stepped around the drooling mass of fur and made as if he were going toward the ansaphone, on which the little red light was blinking, indicating that he had another message (the second one of his entire life, in fact). Then, all of a sudden, he froze. "Theo... Do you hear that?"
"Hear wh--?"
"Shh!" Aziraphale reached over toward Theo, grasped the sleeve of his coat, and wrenched him in the direction of the door. "Stay quiet. Get ready to run."
"What?!" Theo squeaked.
Then he heard it.
Something was slumping around the upper level above them.
Thmp-slee, thmp-slee, thmp-slee.
"It's still here," Aziraphale said quietly, and very calmly. "And it sounds as if it must be absolutely enormous."
Margie sat down on the dusty floor, looked up at them both, wagged her tail, and made a deep, low, inquisitive sound in her throat.
"No," Aziraphale answered her testily, "I most certainly am not going to check my messages right now. There are only two things that it could be, anyway - either Mr. Edwards calling to say he's finally ready to come home and pick you up, or Crowley calling to say that he detected the misfired miracle going off and he wants to know what the Heaven is going on. Either way, bad news for me." He pushed Theo further back toward the door. "I'm going up. If that thing comes down here, Theo, I want you to take Margie and run. Get away as fast as you can. Don't let it touch you."
"But what are you going to do?!"
"Kill it right quick. I hope." Aziraphale crept across the shop until he was behind the counter with the cash register on it, always keeping one eye nervously trained on the entrance to the back room, where the stairs were. He fumbled for something in one of the drawers behind the counter. "Ah, yes, here we go." He triumphantly pulled out a small, sleek handgun.
Theo gaped at him. "You... You keep... That's... "
Aziraphale loaded a clip and then glanced guiltily over at Theo. "I know it's not safe with children in the house, but... Er... Well, yes, just not safe. Please don't ever touch."
"You're going to shoot my miracle?!"
"Well, obviously."
"The neighbors will hear that thing!"
"Not with the silencer on."
"Will that really stop it?"
"If I can hit something vital, like the core of the central division equation, then yes."
"But can you aim that thing? Have you ever--?"
Aziraphale turned, raised the gun, and pulled the trigger. A single leaf snapped off one of the plants closest to Theo, and the bullet buried itself in the wooden window frame just millimeters from where it would have otherwise broken glass.
Margie barked angrily at the angel.
"Sorry, sorry, didn't mean to startle you," Aziraphale apologized guiltily. "It's just, er, well, it's just a little hobby of mine... Going out to the shooting ranges every now and then... I've found that it's a delightful and constructive way to relieve stress." Then he turned to the plants and bowed his head guiltily. "I'm sorry to have done that to you, too. But that leaf was rotting anyway. Feels better to be rid of it, doesn't it?"
Theo gaped at him, again.
Aziraphale took a deep breath. "Right, then. Off I go." He headed toward the back room. "Get ready to run," he repeated as he turned one last time to glance at Theo over his shoulder.
Theo could hear the noises - thmp-slee, thmp-slee, thmp-slee - growing louder. The thing was already making its way down the stairs.
Truth to be told, there were actually two messages, not just one, on the angel's ansaphone. Not that the single red blinking light would have indicated either way. But, to be fair, both messages were exactly what Aziraphale had predicted them to be. One was Mr. Edwards, calling to say that he would be returning home tomorrow morning, and would finally be ready to take Margie off Aziraphale's hands. The other message was from Crowley, and contained quite a lot of swearing. He had indeed detected the execution of a massively misfired miracle a short while ago, even though he had been miles away from the epicenter at the time, and he wanted to know, exactly and precisely, in his own words, what sort of neck-deep shit the angel had just fallen into.
Patience, however, had never been one of Crowley's virtues. Some time after calling Aziraphale's phone, he finally told himself, "Bugger this," hopped into his car, and decided to drive over to the bookshop to confront the angel face-to-face. Maybe give that brat kid a piece of his mind, and a right good scaring, while he was at it. Crowley wasn't stupid; he had a pretty good idea which of the two of them must have been the one who made such a spectacularly incompetent mistake.
Kids, he thought darkly as he barreled through the crowded city streets. Stupid punk kids. Think they know everything...
The Bentley was pulling up to the curb outside the bookshop at the exact same moment that Aziraphale, gun held in front of him exactly like he had seen it done in thousands of cop movies and television shows that he had suffered through with Crowley, stepped into the back room.
Aziraphale could see the front end of it oozing down the stairs toward him. It was huge - bigger than he had imagined. Streams of writhing, tangled thirteen-dimensional differential equations twisted and slithered down the stairs, surrounded on all sides and contained within a shimmering, gelatinous mass. This was not something, mind you, that any human eyes ever could have seen. But to the angel, it looked something like the Blob, that famous creature from the old 1958 horror movie, only sparklier, glowing faintly with holy light, and shot through with ropy strings of equations that formed its central support system. It was studded with jumbled numbers, and bits and pieces of equations, like some sort of gelatin salad with bits of fruit in it. But those were only the incomplete bits, the leftovers. The real numbers - and the whole, finished equations - were tangled up in those slimy, twisted ropes of numbers in the center of the thing.
The thing paused, as if sensing the presence of the angel - and his gun. It had no eyes, per se, but it certainly did see Aziraphale. And it was already possessed with a sort of rudimentary intelligence.
It froze on the stairs. Aziraphale raised his gun. The miracle had paused to think, so now was the ideal time to shoot...
But it was no good. There was nothing to aim at, no killing shot to be made. Aziraphale ran his eyes up and down the length of the thing visible on the stairs, and saw no equations that even came close to being vital to the monster's existence.
Oh dear, he thought. "Oh, fuck," he said.
The length of the monster currently running down the stairs was, Aziraphale realized gloomily, nothing more than an exploratory pseudopod. The bulk of the creature must still be taking up most of the top level. Goodness, thought Aziraphale with some amazement, the thing must be absolutely gigantic.
He was, for a moment, pleasantly surprised - and impressed - that his apprentice had managed to produce a miracle of such size. Pity it was a mutant and had to be put down, though.
Aziraphale thought quickly. He could retreat, exit the shop with Theo and Margie, run around to the back alley, and fly up to the second story window - Theo's bedroom. If he could get a good shot at some important part of the miracle through Theo's bedroom window, perhaps he could--
The monster caught Aziraphale completely by surprise by demonstrating that it could suddenly move very, very fast.
Theo felt every hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Margie growled, low in her throat.
A demon!
Theo whirled around, and through the front window, caught a glimpse of the Bentley parked at the curb, already sans driver. Oh, shit, he's here!
Crowley threw open the front door and nearly knocked over Theo, who had been cowering near it. "Angel--!! Eh? When'd you get a dog?" He spared Theo only a moment's glance. "Where's your angel, kid?"
Theo pointed toward the back room. "In there, with a gun."
"With a what now?" And then, pleadingly, "Please tell me he's trying to shoot whatever it is that he baked this morning."
"Nope. He went miracle-poaching."
"That idiot!" Crowley furiously stomped toward the back room.
He was stopped cold about three steps short, however, when a wriggling mass of mutated thirteen-dimensional equations suddenly slammed into him.
Theo saw the demon go under while uttering a strangled cry, and saw the tidal wave of glittering, blobbish numbers rushing toward him. At that moment, he stopped thinking, and instinct kicked in. He grabbed Margie's collar, yanked her viciously out the front door (courteously left open by the intruding demon), and ran.
He pelted down the sidewalk and halfway down the block before he stopped and turned around, breathing heavily.
He was just in time to see what happened to the Bentley.
Like toothpaste being squeezed out of a tube, the gelatinous mutant miracle squeezed and gushed out the front door of the book shop. The front part of it momentarily divided itself into several psuedopod-like antenna and paused, as if sniffing the air, searching for something - or someone - to target. Then the front feelers of the miracle dove into the parked Bentley, and the rest of the gooey mass followed suit.
Margie sat down next to Theo and patiently stared up at the street at the Bentley. She then looked up at Theo and blinked, confused, because she couldn't quite tell what Theo saw going on up there that was so absolutely fascinating. It just looked like a plain old car, to her dog eyes.
The blobbish, sparkling, glowing miracle, most of its mass still rushing out the front of the bookshop, was wrapping itself around the Bentley as if it had every intention of absorbing the car like some sort of monstrous amoeba. Theo watched, transfixed, as more and more of those twisted ropes of tangled equations wrapped around the vehicle, as more and more of the gelatinous blob carrying the ropes gushed out of the bookshop. It seemed to be taking hours for the whole thing to excrete itself from the building. It must, Theo thought numbly, be absolutely enormous. There's more of it on the Bentley now than there is room in the upper level of the shop... And there's more of it still coming out.
Theo wondered how the gigantic mutant miracle had ever managed to squeeze its entire self into the bookshop in the first place.
Finally, with a tremendous, wet, slurping sound, the last of the miracle popped out of the doorway and retracted to fold into the blob-like mass engulfing the car. It jiggled for a moment, and then was still. It glittered and glowed with the light of a miracle about to happen.
And then nothing happened.
Theo stood for a few moments, staring at the sight in front of him.
It's like an avant-garde art piece. I'd title it 'Car Encased in Holy Jell-o.'
Margie, as a way of indicating that she was painfully bored, started sniffing herself.
There were people out there, too, on the sidewalk. Not many of them, and most of them were at the opposite ends of the block. But there were people, out there going about their daily business, nevertheless. None of them that passed within eyesight of the car so much as blinked an eye. None of the humans could see anything thirteen-dimensional going on the immediate vicinity. One young woman paused to take a second glance at Theo, wondering what he was staring at so fixedly. Then she saw the antique car parked neatly at the curb up the street, and grinned inwardly. Boys and their love for cars...
Theo stood on the sidewalk, fretting. He didn't know what to do next. The miracle didn't look like it was going anywhere, but he couldn't be sure. He was afraid to step any closer to it. And then there was the problem of the angel and the demon, who were certainly still inside the bookshop, although Theo had no idea what the miracle had done to them. If he had to hazard a guess, then... He supposed, based on what he had seen happen to Margie, that they would have been turned into dogs. Which, in turn, would present a whole host of interesting new problems...
Theo knew that he couldn't afford to wait outside any longer. He had to see what had happened inside the bookshop. He crept one slow step forward, and then another, and then another.
The miracle exploded.
It burst forth from all around the Bentley in a shower of glitter and sparkles and thirteen-dimensional numbers and holy light. Shimmering slime and fragments of equations rained down all over the street. Theo cried out and raised his arm in an attempt to shield himself from the miraculous debris. He glanced up again just in time to see the main bulk of the blob sliding off the Bentley, recollecting itself, and pooling in the middle of the street. Strangely, bizarrely, the street was, for the moment at least, completely deserted - not a single car running back or forth along its surface. The miracle seemed to gather itself up for a moment, as if rearing, pulling itself up to its full height, shaping itself into an intimidating mountain of wiggling slime and writhing ropes of equations.
And then it plunged itself into the street.
Down, down through the pavement it disappeared. It seemed to slide down into nothingness, passing through the concrete as if it were no more substantial than air. And, as it had before, the miracle moved fast. Within nearly a split second, it was gone.
The street was empty, save for a few pieces of numerical debris scattered here and there, and a few unfortunate drops of slime. A moment later, as if on cue, cars began rounding the corners at both ends of the street and driving back and forth down its length again.
Theo winced and brushed a stray number off his coat. He rushed forward toward the Bentley. It still looked like a car, at least - and it wasn't barking, yet. Margie ran after him, panting excitedly. Theo ran right up to the car and paused, examining it tentatively. Yes, definitely still a car. But it was gross, still covered in its entirety with a thin layer of leftover slime, although the holy glow from the slime was definitely fading. A few stray thirteen-dimensional numbers were stuck to the slime, a few jammed down between the front seats, and one particularly nasty bit of equation looked like it was crunched up inside the front left tire well.
Strangely, the license plates seemed to have vanished.
Theo reached out and tentatively ran his fingers through the slime on the car's gleaming black hood. He felt nothing, save for the faint trace of an echo of a past miracle performed, although the echo was rapidly fading into nothingness.
"So the miracle did do something here," he breathed. But whatever had been done to the car, Theo couldn't tell. It was apparently not something that he could tell by looking at it, at least.
Still, the car was a mess. It was the demon's fault for driving a topless car, Theo thought, but still, he wasn't going to be happy when he saw that the leather seats in the interior were drenched in cold, jiggly holy slime.
Margie raised one leg idly and urinated on the car. Theo turned away from her, blushing, embarrassed. It seemed as though Margie was no longer a her anymore, either.
Theo entered the dark bookshop hesitantly, bracing himself, thinking that at any moment he was about to be mauled alive by a demon-turned-pit-bull. "Hello?" he called out as he stood in the doorway, Margie panting at his heels. "Mr. Crowley? Mr. Aziraphale?" The inside of the bookshop was clean as it had ever been - which is to say, dusty and dark and damp. But nothing, not a single whit of the dust that coated the place, looked disturbed. It was if the miracle had never passed through there at all.
Theo heard a groan, peered farther back into the bookshop, and saw the shape of the demon - the very human shape of the demon - lying on the floor, just a few feet in front of the entrance to the back room.
Theo rushed over to his side and knelt down. "Hello? Mr. Crowley?"
He could have sworn he'd heard the demon groan. But Mr. Crowley was lying very, very still, and Theo could see that his chest was neither rising nor falling. Uh-oh, he thought, feeling the first tendrils of panic beginning to creep into his stomach. The demon, like his car, was covered from head to toe in a thin layer of sparkling slime. Theo could see bits and pieces of thirteen-dimensional numbers stuck to him, here and there. The demon's shades were gone, apparently having been knocked off his face, and his eyes were closed, dark lashes lying still against pale, slime-drenched cheeks. It had been a bad day for the demon to choose to be wearing a leather jacket, Theo thought ruefully. The jacket - like the rest of his clothes - was probably ruined.
Served him right for wearing leather, though.
Theo reached for the demon's slimy wrist, pushed aside his expensive watch, and pressed his fingers down. He waited, counting. But there was no pulse.
Oh, shit.
Margie padded up to Theo's side and sat down heavily, regarding him with her - that is, with his - dark, mournful brown St. Bernard eyes. You know what you have to do now, those expressive dog eyes told him.
"No way."
Yes way.
"I'm going to hate myself for this in a moment." Still, Theo had taken enough first-aid classes throughout all of his summer camp years to know a drowning victim when he saw one. He had to get the demon breathing again, he had to get the demon's heart going again.
Theo stood up, straddled the demon, knelt down, clasped his hands properly, and began thrusting the heel of his hand against the demon's chest. One, two, three thrusts. Then he took a deep breath, and leaned forward toward the demon's mouth--
Crowley's eyes flew open.
He took one look up at Theo, and his yellow eyes widened with panic. He cried out wordlessly, and with one swipe of his slimy arm, knocked the boy right off him and into the dusty floor. "What the HELL do you think you're DOING?!" He scrambled away from Theo and into a standing position, wiping his dark, gooey bangs away from his eyes.
"That hurt!" Theo said angrily, recollecting himself and forcing himself painfully back into a standing position. Because he had touched the demon, he was now quite slimy himself, although at the moment, he didn't care - he had other things to worry about. "Ow... What were you trying to do, kill me?! I was trying to help you!"
"That's not help - that's a perversion!"
"But you weren't breathing!"
"I don't NEED to breathe!" Crowley glanced around himself frantically. "Where'd my glasses go?"
"I think the blob ate them."
"Was I hit?" And then, as if to answer himself, Crowley suddenly coughed violently, doubled over for a moment, made a few gasping, choking sounds, and then, a split second later, hacked up a horribly jagged thirteen-dimensional number. He coughed some more, spit up a stringy mess of an equation, then thumped his chest with his fist, stood back upright shakily, cleared his throat, and said somewhat guiltily, "Er, excuse me."
"You okay?"
"I think I swallowed some numbers," Crowley winced, "But I'm fine. A mess, but I'm fine." He snapped his fingers, and then the slime was gone, his clothes looked fresh and dry and new, and a new pair of shades was perched on his nose. "That's the second pair I've lost in here today. Between you and that idiot angel, I don't know what to do anymore."
Theo's hand flew to his mouth, and he gasped. "Oh, no - I forgot all about the idiot angel!"
"Bless it." Crowley turned toward the back room. "Was he in there?"
"He was."
"You think the miracle got him?"
"Probably."
Crowley beckoned Theo closer with a wave of his hand. "Stay close to me, kid. No telling what that monster of yours might have done to him."
Theo, however, wouldn't come any closer to the demon. "But what about you?"
"Say what now?"
"I mean, if my miracle turned Margie into a dog - and into a, uh, guy dog at that - then wouldn't it have done something to you, too?" Theo peered at the demon suspiciously. "Aziraphale told me not to let it touch me. But it practically ate you. So, um... Don't you... Um, don't you feel any different?"
Crowley glared at Theo - again, Theo could tell that he was glaring, even from behind the sunglasses. "Kid, I hate your guts. This has been the worse day I've had in a long time, and I just spent an involuntary vacation being slow-roasted down in the barbecue pits of Hell. I am so pissed at you right now, that the only thing stopping me from sinking my claws into your scrawny little neck is the knowledge that the bloody stupid idiot angel would never, ever forgive me if I cost him his apprentice. I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm overstressed, I want a drink, and I want to go run down some pedestrians in my car. So, in short, I feel just like I always do, only slightly more homicidally enraged than normal, which is understandable, considering the circumstances. Do I sound like a changed man to you?"
"No," Theo admitted, "You sound just as awful as always."
"Thank you."
"But why?"
"No matter how big a miracle may be," Crowley said, with a vague wave of his hand, "Most miracles can only affect mortal creatures. We immortals tend to be more stubborn, and more resistant to change, than most." But then, Crowley cast a worried glance in the direction of the back room. "Still... You never know... I think the angel caught the worst of it."
Feeling his stomach twist with unease, Theo crept closer to the demon's side, as the two of them ventured forth into the back room.
They found Aziraphale, looking as unchanged and Aziraphale-like as ever, lying on the floor in front of the bottom of the stairs, coated, as Crowley had been, in glittering slime from the golden curls on top of his head to the scuffed and worn shoes on his feet. One of his arms was flopped on the floor, slightly extended from his body, and his hand and fingers seemed frozen in the position of holding the grip of a gun and preparing to pull the trigger. The handgun, however, was nowhere to be found.
The blob took it, Theo realized as he watched Crowley kneel down beside the still angel. It was an offering. He turned and glanced at Margie who, as a cat, had previously been wearing a collar. Now, as a St. Bernard, Margie was wearing nothing at all around his neck. Margie's
collar, Aziraphale's gun, Crowley's glasses, and the Bentley's license plates. It takes an offering and performs a miracle on each of its victims...
"Come on, angel, snap out of it!" Crowley had gathered Aziraphale's slimy body in his arms and was briskly slapping the angel's goo-coated cheeks. This was producing a distinctly unpleasant, wet, meaty sound. It was also succeeding in getting Crowley just as messy and goo-covered
himself as he had been a minute ago anyway. "Come on, you idiot angel, open your eyes--"
"You don't have to hurt him like that," Theo said angrily.
"But he's not waking up!"
"Try CPR."
"I told you, he doesn't need to breathe."
"But what if he's dead?!"
"Then making out isn't going to help any." Crowley drew back his hand as far as it would go. "Sorry, angel, but I gotta do this." The resulting slap resounded loudly through the back room. "Wake UP, Aziraphale!"
"Gah!" The angel jerked in Crowley's arms, and his eyes flew open. One arm flew up and whacked Crowley, hard, across his face. His sunglasses bent inward slightly. "Ow," Crowley said.
Aziraphale gasped. "Oh, Crowley - is that you?"
"Who did you think it was?!"
The angel's eyes flew wildly around the room. "Theo - are you all right?" He struggled to push himself away from Crowley and stand up. "Where - Where did the miracle go?" But he wobbled on his legs; he couldn't make it all the way up. Crowley stood up swiftly and caught the angel as he swooned. "Oh," Aziraphale moaned as he leaned against
Crowley's shoulder (splattering more slime against him yet again), "I don't feel so good..."
Crowley steered the slimy angel toward a chair. "I know that this is nearly a rhetorical question, but are you all right?"
"No." Aziraphale raised one hand to his forehead as Crowley helped him sit down. "My head is pounding something awful. And I feel like I'm covered in fruit gelatin." He ran his fingers through his slimy hair and pulled out chunks of thirteen-dimensional numbers from his curls. "Oh, dear. I'm a mess, aren't I?"
"Absolutely." Crowley beckoned for Theo again. "Hey, kid, come here. I need your help."
"About what?"
"You know about first aid and stuff, right? So what are you supposed to do when someone gets a bad bump to their head?"
"Oh, you ask them questions, like, what year is it right now, who the president is, what their name is, and all that. You hold up fingers and ask them how many you're holding up, and you have to see if their eyes can follow your fingers when you move them. It's to see if they can still see and think straight." He walked over toward Aziraphale. "So, um, just to be safe... What's your name?"
"Aziraphale."
"And what year is it right now?"
"That's no good. Don't ask him that," interrupted Crowley impatiently, dismissing Theo's advice with a contemptuous wave of his hand. "This angel always gets confused about what year it is." Then a thought occurred to him. "Hey, angel - what day of the week did Saint Michael's Day fall on in the year 1596?"
"Tuesday," Aziraphale answered promptly.
" 'Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, there is a man child conceived.' That's from--?"
"Job, chapter three, verse three."
"Best tiramisu in town?"
"Giotto."
Crowley slapped the angel triumphantly on the back (causing him to pitch forward and nearly fall out of his seat). "See?" he said to Theo. "He's fine."
"It has a self-replenishing feedback loop," Aziraphale managed to gasp out.
"Sure, fine, except that now he's speaking gibberish," Theo pointed out.
"No, no, no." Aziraphale shook his head. "Your miracle. It has a self-replenishing feedback loop. That's why it took my gun." His hands were trembling; he looked very pale.
Crowley whistled. "Now that's some sophisticated coding. When you'd teach the kid how to do that?"
"I didn't."
Theo glanced back and forth between them, feeling very confused, and very left out. "Wait a minute. I did what?"
"A really neat trick. Or at least, it would be under different circumstances." Aziraphale shifted in his seat, and winced as he heard the distinct squelching sound of his slimy clothes further coating the upholstery of his chair in divine goo. "Enough of this," he sighed, and, like Crowley had, snapped his fingers. In an instant, the goo was gone. "Don't smirk at me like that Crowley, I swore I would never snap my fingers or take shortcuts like that, and it's the first time I've broken that promise in three thousand years. Wipe that idiot grin off your face! I am not feeling testy about it at all, not a whit. Now, er, Theo, about your... ah, creation. Under normal circumstances, the miracle - which, usually, I feel I must comment, tends to be much smaller than that one - would only have enough mass to last through one, two, or maybe three targets. At each target that it hits, its mass converts to divine energy, and therein a miracle is performed. With each target that it touches it would lose more mass; eventually, it would pittle away to nothing, and not be a threat anymore. But not this one. This one has a self-replenishing feedback loop coded into the central matrix. From each target that it touches, it takes some mass to replenish the mass that it loses in performing the requisite miracle."
"Like some sort of offering?"
"Precisely."
I was right, thought Theo grimly, it was taking offerings.
"But that means, unfortunately, that this particular miracle will never run itself out. Crowley, would you be a dear and break out the Beefeater? It's in the top cupboard on the left. Dear me, I can't seem to stop my hands from shaking. Theo, darling, are you sure that you're all right? It didn't manage touch you, did it?"
Instead of answering, Theo stepped over close to the angel and placed his hand on Aziraphale's forehead. "You're burning up," he said. "You've got a fever."
"I don't feel well at all," Aziraphale admitted. But he gave Theo a wan smile. "Just give me a few moments to recover, all right? We have bigger problems to--"
"But you said the blob performed a miracle on you. Didn't that DO something to you?"
"Most likely." Aziraphale was still forcing himself to give that small, uneasy smile to Theo. "I don't, however, feel any different than I normally do, other than feeling like I was just run over by a train. Do I seem any different to you?"
"I dunno. You don't, uh, feel the urge to sniff fire hydrants or go chew on steak bones or anything, do you?"
"Nothing of the sort. Thank you," he said as Crowley handed him a glass filled with gin. Aziraphale seemed to have gotten his trembling hands back under control; he held his glass steady, took a polite sip, and asked courteously, "Theo, would you care for something to drink?"
Theo felt a sudden wave of relief loosening the knot in his stomach. "No. Thanks. I'm fine, really. And you sound the same as ever, thank God."
"It wouldn't have affected us, angel," Crowley added, after taking a swig from his own glass. "No way that thing could have changed us in any way. I'm sorry about your neighbor's cat, but we - you and I - we're a different story."
"Tsk." Aziraphale played with his glass in his hands, swirling his drink thoughtfully. Or maybe that was the result of his hands shaking again. "I wouldn't be too sure, Crowley. In fact, I believe that you're wrong entirely. You saw the size of that thing... And it took my gun, and your glasses. It must have performed some miracle on us."
"So what's its central code?" Crowley poured himself another drink. "Does it turn everyone into dogs? If that's the case, then maybe it tried that on us, but it didn't work." Again, smug. "That would be a useful miracle, though, I'll give you that, kid."
"I wasn't trying to turn people into dogs," Theo said angrily. "I just wanted to make things different for someone."
"Okay, so, what was the central code?" Crowley asked again.
"Er... That was the central code."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, all I did was... I just told it to make things different."
Crowley nearly spat out his drink. "THAT was your central code?!"
"We don't know that," said Aziraphale sharply. "We don't know what it actually does. It has only hit three targets yet, and against you and me there appears to be a null effect. So far. Crowley, I am worried. What if you and I changed somehow, but we don't realize it? Poor Margie doesn't seem to remember that she ever was a dear little kitten."
"Um," said Theo suddenly.
Aziraphale immediately picked up on the guilty tone of voice behind Theo's single-syllable utterance. " 'Um' what?" he asked.
"Um, it's actually hit four targets so far," Theo said in a very small voice.
"Theo..."
"I was going to bring this up, um, in just a second anyway," Theo said quickly, rushing on toward the inevitable. "But I saw it - after it left the bookshop - the first thing it hit was Mr. Crowley's car."
There was the sound of glass breaking. That was Crowley dropping his glass from between his suddenly numb fingers. And then, the sound of heavy footsteps pounding furiously away, toward the street outside.
"Crowley, wait!" Aziraphale tried to get up out of his seat and follow, but he only seemed to be able to get to his feet very, very shakily. He wobbled on his feet, stumbled forward, and paused to rest against the table, breathing heavily.
Theo instinctively reached out and grasped the angel's hand. "You're hurt!" he gasped.
"Not hurt. Just," Aziraphale winced, "tired."
"You should sit down."
"No. I want to see this. Er, the car, that is."
"Then I'll help you," Theo said, taking his position by the angel's side, holding one of the angel's arms. "If you lean on me, can you walk?"
"But you're so short!"
"Oh, come off it. You're not so very tall."
Aziraphale flashed him a beautifully grateful smile. "No, I suppose I'm not, am I?" He leaned himself against Theo, and the two of them shuffled forward slowly.
"It still looks like a car," Crowley was saying as the other two emerged from the bookshop. "But it was here, all right - just look at this!" He waved the stringy remains of a half-finished thirteen-dimensional algebraic equation angrily at them. "Found it jammed in the tire well!" He threw down the equation angrily; it vanished before it even hit the ground. "There was glitter everywhere, too. I had a horrible time snapping it all away."
"I told you," said Theo, "The blob swallowed your whole car. I saw it." Although, Theo noted, any trace of glittering goo left behind by the blob was now gone completely. More finger-snapping, as Crowley had said. Theo led the angel down to the curb.
"Have you checked under the hood?" Aziraphale asked. His voice was beginning to sound stronger; he was leaning far less heavily against Theo than he had been a few steps back. "Might be, er, a dog or something, instead of the engine."
Crowley checked. "Looks like an engine to me," he said as he lowered the hood down again.
"Try the... whatchacallit... ignition. Can't be sure until you try that."
Crowley hopped into the driver's seat and placed his keys in the ignition. "Hold your breath," he said darkly. "In gangster movies, this is always the part where the car explodes."
He turned the keys.
The Bentley roared to life, sounding exactly, perfectly, wonderfully the same way that it always did. Crowley seemed to sink back into his seat with relief. "There. It doesn't seem changed at all, does it? Good for you, Theo - now I don't have to kill you."
"Try the radio," Aziraphale insisted.
Crowley turned on the radio and fiddled with the tuner; it worked fine, and picked up every station.
"Try the tape deck," Aziraphale pressed on.
"Aren't you sick of Queen yet?" Crowley mumbled as he fumbled for a tape and pushed it into his Blaupunkt. He pressed play, and the sweet, soothing sounds of Mozart, performed by the Warsaw Philharmonic, filled the air.
Crowley sat slowly back in his seat. The expression on his face, even barely visible from behind his shades, was that of a man who was absolutely astounded.
After a moment, Aziraphale said slowly, "That doesn't sound like Queen at all."
"No. It doesn't." Crowley, moving slowly, as though he were moving through a dream, ejected the first tape, and tried a second one. This time it was Beethoven, on the piano. He listened for a moment, then tried a third tape. It was Carmen - tuned up to the Habanera, no less.
"I thought you had nothing but Queen tapes," Aziraphale finally said.
"I did. But before that, I had... this stuff," Crowley said slowly. He sounded as if he couldn't quite believe it himself.
"Personally, I never would have pegged you as someone who listened to opera," Theo said, for lack of anything better to say. He couldn't understand for the life of him just why Crowley seemed so surprised to suddenly be in the possession of a collection of tapes full of classical music. "What are you so worked up about?"
"Theo," said Crowley, in that same slow, dreamy voice, "I could just about kiss you right now."
"Don't even think about it," Aziraphale said quickly. Then, to Theo, "Your miracle fixed his car. Apparently, your miracle was able to do away with a curse that neither of us has been able to lift for the past sixty years."
"What curse?"
"The curse of Freddie Mercury," Crowley said, his voice low and full of doom. Then he instantly brightened up again. "Still, it will be nice to listen to some light opera next time I feel like committing vehicular homicide. Thank you, Theo. I mean it. Really, really. Thank you. You've just made my day."
Theo shook his head. "No, don't thank me. I don't understand at
all. But then again, I don't even really want to know..."
"So." Crowley leaned back in his seat; the car's engine was still idling as Leontyne Price sang opera on the cassette player. "I gotta run, angels, but before I go - the million-dollar question. Theo, you said you saw the miracle eat my car. Did you see where it went after that?"
Theo pointed out into the street. "Out there," he said. "And then it went down."
"What do you mean, down?"
"It went down through the pavement. Right through the street, like there was nothing there at all. But it didn't touch anyone or anything else. It was weird. There were, like, no cars on the street. But just until the miracle left; then they all came back."
All of the good cheer seemed to instantly vanish from Crowley's face. "What?" he asked flatly.
"I said, it went down. Maybe into the sewers, or, whatever you have under the street here. I don't know."
"Oh dear," said Aziraphale, who by that time was standing completely on his own. He instantly dropped to his knees and lowered his head to the ground. He brushed away some leftover slush and snow, ignored Theo's gasp of surprise, then pressed his ear against the cold concrete, and appeared to be listening, frowning. Theo glanced up and down the street frantically, hoping that nobody was watching--
"I can't hear it," Aziraphale said. His frown deepened. "I can't hear any trace of the miracle. But I can hear... something else."
From inside the car, Crowley slapped his face and groaned. "Does it sound like a huge gaping hole in reality that opens up on a deep pit full of flames and screaming voices slowly closing up on itself?"
"Exactly that."
"Unbelievable. Fucking unbelievable."
"What, it went to HELL?!" Theo asked, his voice squeaking.
"Sure. If it can pass down through the surface of the street, why not pass Down through the boundaries of this mortal plane altogether?" Aziraphale straightened himself up, wincing as the joints in his back creaked. He already seemed much, much more steady on his feet than he had in the bookshop. "There's no way we can follow it now. Crowley?"
"We are so fucked," Crowley moaned. "It won't get far - it can't get far - they'll kill it good before it gets the chance to do too much damage. But they'll want to know where it came from and how it got Down There in the first place, and they'll be asking me about it, naturally, and there's no way I can cover your asses on this one, absolutely no way, because there's nobody else that I can peg a giant mutant miracle on save for you two--"
"Hey!" Theo was surprised to find himself so suddenly angry at the demon. "I fixed your car, you ungrateful monster! You can't go squealing to your superiors about us--"
"Yes, he can," Aziraphale said at the exact same time that Crowley said "Yes, I will."
Aziraphale dusted off his hands on his coat. "Well, that's that, then. It's out of our hands now. The good news, Theo, is that you and I are no longer immediately responsible for tracking down the miracle and destroying it ourselves. The bad news is that now we have nothing to do but to sit around and wait for somebody Up There to find out about this, and give us our punishment."
"See you later, then," Crowley said cheerfully as he pulled away from the curb. "Try not to lose your job over this one, angel," was the last thing he said before he roared away.
Theo stood silently beside Aziraphale, watching the demon leave. "So, um, it's really gone?" he finally asked.
"Theo, I am one hundred percent certain that your miracle took a swan dive straight Down There. Why, I couldn't fathom - nobody knows how these mutants think - but I can guarantee you that by now, it must be nearly barbecued into oblivion. Demons don't let holy things last very long down there. They like to stab things and set them on fire." He gave Theo a brilliant smile. "Still, like I said, out of our hands, right?"
Theo gulped.
Aziraphale took his hand and began pulling him away from the curb. "I imagine we'll be hearing from Nathanael, or perhaps even Michael, very shortly." Suddenly, all of the smile seemed to have left his voice.
"Are you going to get into trouble?" Theo asked as he allowed the angel to pull him back into the bookshop.
"We are going to get into trouble," Aziraphale said very slowly, enunciating each word. Margie was there, waiting for them, wagging his tail and panting gently. Aziraphale reached over and absent-mindedly scratched him behind the ears. "I can't, for the life of me, seem to be able to change this poor thing back to the way she was. You certainly coded one amazingly sophisticated miracle, Theo. And a very powerful one, too. Unfortunately, it was a mistake - the type of mistake, I'm afraid, that could cost you your apprenticeship."
"What?" asked Theo, very quietly.
"Listen," said Aziraphale, and then opened his mouth as if he were about to say something else, but he took one look at Theo's face, and it seemed as though his voice suddenly failed him. He coughed, self-consciously. Then he said, "Let's go back. Ah, I think you should sit down for this."
In the back room, Theo felt as though he were in a daze. He didn't even realize that he was sitting in the chair he had seen Crowley using earlier that day - a thought that normally would have repulsed him. Aziraphale had poured him a soda and was sitting down across from him and was trying to speak as normally as he usually did, but nothing, unfortunately, could mask the apprehension in his voice. "I will try to take the blame for this," he said, after taking a deep breath. "It's my fault, really, for not teaching you the proper safety precautions that go along with miracling. And I believe that I can make a persuasive case on your behalf. It truly was a spectacular miracle, very sophisticated coding, and you've certainly demonstrated on other occasions that you have no trouble executing any other miracles, big or small, you just have to practice more, er, precision... Yes, that's the word. Precision. No, I mean, er, practice. You need more practice. I'll tell Nathanael that, you just need more practice. They--"
"They don't give out second chances, do they?" Theo interrupted. The words had slipped out of his mouth before he could stop himself. His stomach sank to his knees as he watched the angel's face fall.
"No," the angel said miserably, "they don't. They never have. That's why good angels Fall."
"So I'm not going to get my wings," Theo said, in the flat, fatalistic tones of someone who knew what fate was about to dole out, yet could not quite bring himself to believe that it was reality yet. "And
because I'm not going to get my wings, you'll... you'll... Crowley was saying this morning that you'll..."
"I'll be all right, Theo. They wouldn't fire me." The tone of Aziraphale's voice was utterly unconvincing, but at least he was trying.
Outside, the sun was setting. Inside the bookshop, Margie was playing in his former litter box as if it were his new sandbox. The first day of the new year was ending. Theo could see the metaphorical doors slamming shut on his career as an angel just as plainly as he could see the sorrow and the guilt lining Aziraphale's ancient, ancient face. "It's my fault, I'm so sorry, it's all my fault," the angel was saying again, but Theo wasn't listening anymore. He didn't care whose fault it was. Maybe it was Nicki's fault for kissing him, maybe it was his fault for breaking his concentration and not finishing his codes, maybe it was the bloody stupid angel's fault for not teaching him that he wasn't supposed to do that in the first place. He kept thinking of the demon's words this morning. Maybe they were true. Maybe he had been set up for failure from the very first moment. Maybe that was his fault, for not being good enough to be an angel in the end, anyway. Maybe it had all been a mistake in the first place - maybe he had been a mistake from the first place. As if he was never supposed to have been chosen to become an angel at all.
It was all so wrong. It wasn't supposed to end like this - all because of some stupid, stupid kiss and some stupid, stupid mistake. Theo's vision blurred and he could feel tears rolling down his cheeks even before he realized what was happening. The phone call from Above would come any minute now, and then it would all be over, for both of them--
Suddenly, the angel's arms were around him. That helped, a lot. It was warm and close and good inside the angel's embrace, and Theo took a deep, hitching breath, breathing in the scent of cinnamon rolls and hazelnut coffee. Aziraphale was touching his hair and whispering into his ear, telling him to hush, telling him to calm down, telling him that everything would be all right, and that was good, too. Good, but not good enough. Theo knew that it was already over for him, and so he wept, nevertheless.
Continued.