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Chapter Nine: Look This Is A Misunderstanding
"...bait?" Crowley repeated the word, seemingly not quite sure whether he should be offended at this. He hoped he was supposed to be bait of the live sort, anyway. "To catch what?"
"Some sort of angel is helping you." Dean stepped closer to him, inside the devil's trap Sam had almost finished drawing. "And an angel who has struck a deal with a demon is far more interesting for a particular friend of ours than a small fry hell spawn like you could ever be."
Crowley could feel his blood turn cold instantly, too shocked by this new development that he could even protest at the 'small fry' bit. "What?" he asked hoarsely. "No! There is no deal-!"
"Ohh, but there is," Dean grinned at him triumphantly "Why else would Alastair and his playmate have grabbed you? You're some sort of double agent," he said, sounding pleased. "So, while we wait for your feathered traitor friend to show up..." Dean leaned in and his eyes narrowed.
"What are you doing here? Are you working for Crowley?"
That provoked a very long stare from the demon.
"Am I...working for myself? Let me think. That sounds metaphysical."
The next thing that happened was a slap across the face. Yellow eyes instantly started glowing with anger.
"You think this is funny?!" Dean barked. "Are you working for Crowley or not?"
Crowley glared at him. "I am Crowley."
"Uh. No, you're not," Sam said, having finished the devil's trap and joining his brother's side. Crowley looked at them both, now a bit confused.
"Er. Yes, I am."
Although this was kind of the first time this had happened when introducing himself.
"No." Dean shook his head. "No, we've met Crowley. You're not him." Then he looked kind of thoughtful. "Though you've got the same accent. And you're also both kinda slimy."
"Except the real Crowley wouldn't have been stupid enough to be caught by other demons," Sam added helpfully.
Crowley at this point decided that whoever this other Crowley was, he already didn't like him.
"I'm telling you, my name is Anthony J. Crowley, and I've had this name for close to 6000 years," he said testily. "And I've only added the first name when having two names became the fashion among you lot."
"Okay." Dean held his hands up. "You know what? I don't care who you are, you can save that for when Cas gets here. For now I just want to know who told you to kill us."
"...what now?"
This question had gotten them another uncomprehending expression. By now both Winchesters would have had to admit that this was easily the most confused demon they had ever seen.
"You...attacked us in that store with the plants," Sam said, trying not to feel as if he was giving a particularly dense fellow student his notes after they hadn't been paying attention in class.
The perplexed expression changed into a frown.
"No, I didn't."
"Hell, yeah!" Dean protested. At that day he had had plant vines in terrible places, and this demon wasn't wriggling out of this now.
"I'm telling you, no," Crowley protested. "I was the one being attacked. You were just there, I don't even know why." the demon was now giving off a 'Look, do you even have any idea what you're doing here'-vibe and it was somewhat unsettling.
Dean attempted to get this situation back under control.
"You possessed a waitress in that café!"
"I didn't. Posessions are unsanitary. Which café?"
Dean sighed. "The one next to the cake shop that you spent an hour sitting in front of while having a coin glued to the floor." He had to admit to himself, when saying it out loud it sounded somewhat silly in an interrogation. The demon looked exasperated in his torture rack now.
"I'm telling you, no. And look, I don't even know you!"
"Yeah, right." Dean scoffed. "A demon not knowing us. Sounds legit."
"No, seriously. Who are you even supposed to be?" Crowley asked again, biting his forked tongue before he could be tempted to add 'Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy?' to that last question.
Dean gave him a long, hard look. Then he glanced at his brother, who shrugged, before finally turning back to Crowley.
"The Winchesters. We're Sam and Dean Winchester."
Crowley blinked. Then he got the impression that the brothers for some reason seemed to have expected more.
"That's a...nice name?" He tried. "Very...uh, buff."
"Dean, there's no point." Sam laid a hand on his brother's shoulder. "He's making fun of us. Or plain lying."
The older Winchester grunted "Yeah, I know. Should we wait for Cas, then or make him talk?"
Even with his wrists bound tightly to the torture rack, Crowley managed to raise a finger.
"You know, I don't think I like where this is going."
"You're not supposed to," Dean replied coldly. Turning back to the implements they had left on the floor, he said: "Alright then, let's start with the holy water."
The effect was immediate. Yellow eyes widened, and the demon's skin turned ashen. "NO! Uh, I mean please. Don't."
Sam raised an eye brow. The captured demon now looked genuinely worried, which was new. Usually, they had a habit of remaining obnoxiously smug until the end, but this one... Sam frowned. With the confusion, the insistence on his name, and now the pure nervousness he displayed, it...he...seemed somehow more human. Except for the snake eyes, anyway.
"Okay, listen. I'll do anything. Or say anything. 'Winchester' is the prettiest name in the universe, honesst." the demon said, curiously hissing a little now.
Dean, ignoring that, scoffed. "Yeah right. You're lucky we still need you to make your feathery pal come here. I suspect he has a better chance of finding you while you're still alive."
Sam looked at his watch at that.
"Yeah, talking about that, it's been a while." He looked up at Crowley, frowning. "Is that angel you've struck a deal with one of the slow sort?"
xxx
"No, look, I need his location NOW!"
"Sure, sure, no need to shout, I am looking for him, but I'm an angel, not a miracle worker..."
"Ezekiel, please-"
"Yes, yes, yes. Everyone always needs locations now, don't they? Five minutes ago it was that tie-wearing upstart, now it's the Principality who hasn't bothered to say hello up here in almost 400 years-"
Aziraphale groaned and tried to resist the temptation to bite into his own wing. Ezekiel, who he was currently talking to through a portal in the bookshop, was very diligent about tracking movements of all angels and demons on this world, but someone who could hurry, he was not.
xxx
"Okay." The taller man had stood, rocking on his feet a little. "So, we...wait."
At the warehouse, not much time had passed, perhaps fifteen minutes or so, during which the two brothers had been busy pouring something that Crowley couldn't quite recognize on the floor. But it had been enough for all three of them to start becoming actually bored.
"Damn angels. Supposed to be punctual." Dean grumbled. Then, something seemed to occur to him. "Wait. There's something I've been meaning to try with a captured demon." Again, he grinned in a way that made Crowley think that if he hadn't been currently caught in a devil's trap, people might be hard-pressed to tell who exactly was the demon around here. That man had something of hell about him for sure...
Crowley suddenly thought that he might prefer to stay bored instead.
Dean had pulled out a small, tattered book from his jacket and was now leafing through it, talking quietly to himself.
"Just something to pass the time..."
"What do you want to try?" his brother asked him, also poking his nose in the small journal, his tone oddly akin as if they were currently studying nothing but the menu at some blessed restaurant. Crowley once again wondered who the hell he was even dealing with, here. He had tried, really tried, but could only recall the name 'Winchester' as the label of an arm's manufacturer and a small carpentry business at the south end of London. He somehow doubted these two had come here to build him some shelves.
"This is a spell dad found at some church in the midwest. It's supposed to force demons and other monsters that can control how they look to reveal their true form. I've been meaning to try it," Dean said. "Freakin' hate shifters."
"Don't. You will regret thiss," Crowley said, but in truth was getting more than a little nervous now. His instances of nerves, if you discounted that whole apocalypse business over twenty years ago, had actually been few and far between. That time when he had seen that expression in Aziraphale's eyes when he'd accidentally burnt down the library of Alexandria came to mind, for instance. But being trapped by two humans who for some reason seemed to know way more than they should was rapidly coming close.
"You really want to try this now?" Sam asked. "Shouldn't we just wait for Cas or that one's angel pal?"
"Hey, I think this mumbo jumbo could come in handy, and I wanna see if it works," Dean replied. "And since we have little yellow eyes 2.0 here pretty much bent over and waiting to take it, I don't think we'll be getting a better opportunity any time soon."
"Okay, fine," the taller one seemed to give up and throw his hands into the air, and once again Crowley wondered whether he had maybe been caught by a married couple who were arguing over the telly programme.
But then Dean started reading and Crowley immediately was in more pain than even watching reality TV could produce.
"In nomine patris..."
"Aaah!" Crowley gasped and threw his head back, could feel his muscles cramping up and bones shifting. None of these processes would have hurt him per se, but it was the unexpectedness with which it was forced upon him and the pain of the holy words that accompanied it, reminding him sharply of that home he had left so long ago.
The Winchesters watched with wide eyes and fingers tensing around their weapons as the demon's face screwed up in a grimace, body straining against the manacles as the slender form stretched itself like a bowstring...until finally cloth tore and brilliantly white wings burst forth from the demon's back, now trapping him even more painfully in the rack, like a cruel bird cage too small to hold its captive.
"...white wings?!" Sam managed to regain his speech back first.
"Of coursse they're bloody white, you idiot," Crowley, now more hanging in the manacles than standing, grunted in pain. "I was an angel once, you know."
"Yeah, right!" Dean seemed to have recovered as well and snorted. "Real angels' wings are black. Like, everyone knows that."
Crowley seemed to mutter something along the lines of 'who died and made you the expert on plumage', but Sam cut him off:
"Yeah. Also, if you really were an angel, those wings would have burned our eyes out."
"Excuse me?"Crowley had managed to get his feet under himself again and now seemed more offended than in pain. "Only a complete beginner with no idea how to handle himself in a corporeal form would accidentally burn a mortal's eyes out. I have some professional pride, you know?" He had managed to fold one wing somewhat awkwardly on his back, leaving the other half-stretched out where the rack in his back prevented him from getting it into a more comfortable position.
"Although," he added somewhat waspishly, "If you take into account how rarely that whole stuck-up bunch actually venture out of heaven, I wouldn't be surprised if most of them actually did go around making ocular barbeques a habit," he grumbled. "Bloody amateurs."
He looked up. Sam and Dean were staring at him.
"...what?"
Then Dean simply reached out and plucked a feather.
"Ow! Hey!" (To be fair, by now he actually would have wanted to burn their eyes out, but that was made a bit difficult by the devil's trap.)
"Dean? What are you doing?"
"Angel feathers. Or crazy-demon feathers," the shorter one said, shrugging. "Dunno, could come in handy at some point."
"You could at least ask,"Crowley complained, but then shut up rather quickly as Dean went back to the small old book and seemed to focus on something on the page again.
"Okay. Whatever. Now, interesting thing is that this spell actually also has a second stage-"
"Oh, come on-" the thing with the wings started to protest, but was once again cut off by its own pained gasp as Dean began reciting again. And this time, the transformation seemed a little bit more dramatic.
"Woah!" Sam called out as the man in the suit now seemed to collapse in on himself, even smoke emanating as he grew smaller when he fell to the ground, manacles suddenly clinking uselessly against the frame as arms and legs disappeared, the wings bursting apart like a magic trick, until the only thing that remained...
...was a large black snake, coiled in the centre of the devil's trap, regarding them with absolute poison. Only its eyes had stayed the exact same.
"I disslike not having opposssable thumbsss, pal," it hissed. Sam noted that apparently, it had kept its accent as well. Dean had cocked his head in interest as he regarded the reptile, and was about to shrug in a 'tough luck' manner, but then the serpent actually smiled.
"And it'ss not the sssmartest idea to give a demon back hiss true form," the snake said and then reared up and spat poison right at Sam's chest.
"Aaah!" The taller man yelled, but interestingly, Dean yelled, too, and at that instant Crowley thought the last time he had seen the expression that Dean wore now, it had been on the face of a grizzly bear parent that had just watched its cub get shot.
It dawned on Crowley right as the holy water was flung at him that perhaps this last action had been a rather grave mistake. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the searing pain -
"YOU WILL STOP IT AT ONCE!"
...and opened them again when Aziraphale's voice boomed through the warehouse, the angel's tattered wings spread wide in front of him and shielding him from the holy water which pearled off divine feathers harmlessly.
"Azi-!"
And that was as far as Crowley got, because then Sam on the floor yelled, "Dean, NOW!" and the unhurt one of the brothers threw a lighter.
And one pair of yellow and one pair of blue eyes were just as wide and just as shocked as a ring of holy fire reared up instantly, reflected off scales as black as night and wings as white as clouds, and ended up trapping the angel Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden, Principality of the British subcontinent, and part time book store owner.
To be continued...
Heyyy, there you go :3 Hope you all made it okay into the New Year, and those of you in the US haven't yet frozen to death. Next week SPN comes back from winter break, though, so that's something to look forward to, right? :3 Hope you liked, and if you read, please review? ;)