Chapter 5: Not Nearly as Straightforward as He Would Like

Crowley also followed the screams, albeit with a bit less vehemence than the girl was showing. He had no real intention of stopping whatever was happening to the screaming humans per say, just, watching what the girl did. He grimaced slightly when he considered the girl. He had a churning uncertain feeling about what he had just done to her, her eyes at the end had been so lost. Not that she hadn't deserved anything he might give to her, and it wasn't as though he didn't have the right to impose on anyone. He was the King of Hell. But when he considered the way she had looked at him when the spell had been broken he felt guilty.

These, however, were feelings to focus on at some other time, or at no other time because they were ridiculous. But regardless, they were nearing the screams. They had gone up the alley, crossed a sidestreet and up the adjacent alley. They were behind a series of shops. She didn't pause at the door as he thought she might but careened right passed it, disinterested. He continued after her, interested in her plan to save the screaming people. Perhaps she was going to slip around the building. She glanced behind her and sped up, taking a sharp corner. Oh. She was just running away from him. He stopped. She glanced back again, she kept running, but had slowed to a lope she could prolong for longer.

Crowley frowned and looked at the door through which the screams were leaking. Was she not going to fight the monster again? He was certain she had been fighting some kind of monster. She couldn't be a monster. He scowled at himself. Of course she was a monster, whether or not she ripped people apart. Irate, he flicked his hand and the door flew off its hinges, revealing the scene inside. He had expected a carnage filled monster fight. However, it seemed to be a particularly mundane robbery. He clicked his fingers and disappeared, leaving the gun wielding ruffians to their business.

XXXXX

Nine days later, Crowley, unhappily dressed in a mediocre suit and drab tie, flashed a forged badge at a police officer and made his way into the gore strewn slice of Purgatory. The 'disguise' had been embarrassingly easy to procure. No wonder the Winchesters could manage it so frequently. He gazed around the scene and thought vaguely that it had been, perhaps, a good thing he had thought not to wear his good shoes.

There were body pieces everywhere, strewn wantonly. From only one body though, he noticed, although other bodies were there. This was a deviation from the previous killings. What seemed to have once been a young man was decorating the walls, but there were three other bodies, which interested him a good deal more. These were relatively unharmed. One clean slit across their throats, and, oddly, a handful of dirt tossed across each of their chests. All crowded around the back door.

Finally, he crouched next to what was left of the first body. In the other corner of the room his chest remained, ribs broken open like a crown. There was something unsettling about this body and he immediately understood the reports he had read about the other bodies. This body was strange. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but it was an uneasy feeling that crept slowly across him. A tap on his shoulder interrupted him and, unhappily, he looked up to the human police officer standing over him.

"Got the security tapes if yah wanna take a look, sir." He said, he was covering his mouth and nose with the back of his arm, even Crowley could hardly blame him. He hoped these were of more use than the one he had seen before.

He followed the human to the consol in the store's back room. A technical assistant was there, who played the tape for him. The store had had two cameras, only one of them had caught anything, the other had blacked out immediately, as had happened before. The first camera, the broken one, was intended to be watching the store itself, which had apparently been mostly empty at the time of night the attack happened. The other camera was pointed at the back door. This was the film he could see.

On the tape the three unmutilated bodies – still alive at this point – come sprinting into view, heading for the door. They were clearly terrified, screaming and pushing. They hit the door at a run and scrabbled at it, pushing and clawing. The door, unfortunately for them, would not budge, it must have been blocked from behind. One of them, a young and very pretty girl turned from the door and screamed, begging and crying. The other two, a pale skinned boy suffering from rather severe acne and an older man continued battering the door. Then Mary came into view. She looked icy and severe. Her eyes were dark and cruel.

She walked toward them with purpose, that slender blade held in her hand. Purposefully, and without hesitation, she walked to the girl and slit her throat. The man turned to her and tried to defend himself. Unfazed, eyes retaining that cold glinting look, she twisted away the man's hand and killed him as she had the girl. She disposed of the young man the same way. Then, before turning away, she dug a handful of dirt out of a pouch and sprinkled it across them almost reverently. Then, she turned and walked out of the camera's viewing angle.

Crowley frowned. So it had been her? He hadn't seen her since his stunt in the alleyway, which didn't bother him at all. He crossed his arms, this was going to put her solidly onto the Winchester's hit list, which considerably shortened her lifespan. He looked down at the technical assistant.

"If two hulking, dim agents come here, - "

The assistant cut him off, "You mean Agents Hetfield and Burton? They've already seen it, they were here an hour ago."

Crowley nearly murdered the man right there, without another word he swept off, clicking himself away the second his was out of sight of humans.

XXXXX

He had to wait three weeks before there was anything more to do. He occupied himself looking for the first blade then reprimanded himself for calling it occupying himself. Finding that blade was the most important thing. But he couldn't shake the memory of the girl, staring at him in the alley like he had betrayed her, like he had ripped her heart out and eaten it in front of her. He couldn't stop the guilt that had been digging itself into his marrow. No more than he could stop his hunger for human blood.

Then all of a sudden, people were dying again. He was there immediately. But his time, he avoided the crime scene, he didn't want to bring himself to the attention of the Winchesters just yet. Instead he began scouring the town for her immediately. And he found her. And felt no hint of relief when he did.

She had taken up residence in a horrible little motel in which she looked terribly out of place. He remained unseen, watching her through a window. She was curled up in a chair, she was not wearing her normal dress, but was clad in pajamas, her hair ruffled and knotted. The look suited her. She was reading, a paperback as she had been reading every time he had seen her. He was vaguely curious what it was, but that wasn't on the top of his priorities.

He had been watching her for no more than a few minutes when he saw, through the back window next to her room, the door open on the other side of the room, and two familiar, all together too tall, hunters enter the room adjacent hers. He scowled, that was a set of miraculously convenient circumstances he didn't trust to fate. But he wasn't required to for long.

Inside, the girl perked up and set down the book, leaving it propped open upside down to mark her page. She slipped off her chair and went to the wall shared between her and the Winchesters, settled herself on the floor and pressed her ear to the wall. Crowley crept closer. He flicked his eyes over to the Winchester window and saw Dean talking animatedly. He glanced back to her. She had pressed herself closer and her face looked odd. She looked glowing, excited, and sad too. It was a look Crowley had a hard time interpreting. He crept closer still. He could see the book she had been reading on the window sill, now close enough to examine. He did a double take.

The book's cover was taken over by two shirtless and unnecessarily muscular men with shotguns hung lazily across their shoulders. It was a cover he knew because it was a book he had read for leverage. It was a Supernatural book by Carver Edlund. He sat back on his heels, unsure of what to make of this particular discovery. While he brooded he continued to watch.

This did not improve his mood. Dean and Sam were clearly discussing something, he watched the girl grow despondent when Sam spoke for too long, but whenever Dean opened his gargantuan and uncouth mouth, her whole face lit up, she burrowed closer to the wall. At the moment Dean was telling some long and complicated something and she had pulled her eyes shut tight, pressing herself desperately against the wall. His stomach roiled. Watching her look mysteriously desperate for him had been an enjoyable experience, watching her care so much about one of the Brawling Brats made his skin crawl.

He focused away from that particular spike of something that felt quite a bit like jealousy but obviously wasn't. She looked very soft curled up on the floor there, listening so sweetly to something. Crowley had a hard time reconciling the creature who had so coldly murdered those humans with the, so mortal looking, girl curled up in her pajamas, mooning against a wall.

Her mooning had inspired a very short lived temptation to alert the Guntoting Galoots to her presence, but he quashed the urge. Telling them she was listening in on them, and in the very next room, would end her life quite quickly, and he wasn't certain he wanted to give her up just yet.

It wasn't so much that he enjoyed being around her, she mostly drove him mad. But the way she looked at him pierced him in some part made soft by his human habit that he could not shake. When she smelled him, leaned into him in that alley, it had made him feel like some primal part of her, some backbone of her character needed him. And he wanted desperately to be needed.

He considered that for a moment. He did want to be needed, and as ridiculous and it was, he wanted someone to enjoy his company. While he was certain this was an effect of the human blood, why should he fight it? He was the King of Hell. If he wasn't in a position to indulge his, even undignified, desires, who was? And he had an idea.

Partly because he didn't want to be caught and partly because he had to stop watching the girl look so softly at the wall while the 'short' Winchester was talking, he disappeared.

XXXXX

He came back to the same motel at night, deep night. He crept close to the window and carefully looked within. He wasn't sure exactly what she was so he hadn't been sure it would work, but there she lay, curled up and sleeping on the motel bed. He grinned to himself and rematerialized inside her motel room. Silently, he crept to the side of her bed and waited above her, watching carefully to see if she woke. He had dressed appropriately for the occasion, wearing only his silken pajamas. Very slowly, trying not to jostle the cheap bed, he sat next to her, precariously at first. She didn't move. He inched himself up onto the bed, slow movement by slow movement. Finally he was settled, leaning against the headboard with his feet stretched out in front of him. She was curled away from him on the other side of the bed. He didn't make a move, only waited.

He did not have to wait long, she turned, as if on instinct, although still sleeping, and curled up against him, her face not so much on his lap but burrowed into his side. She was on her side, one arm tucked up under her and the other curled around him, snug about his waist. Warm tingled rose within him and, smiling a little, though still moving cautiously, he let a hand fall to her hair, she shifted and he froze, terrified she would wake. But she didn't, merely wormed her head softly against his hand and made a small contented noise.

With utmost softness, Crowley began running his fingers through her hair, stroking it more tenderly than he had, perhaps, stroked anything. To prepare himself he had freshly dosed himself with human blood before coming, and when she squirmed happily against him and tightened her grip about his waist, he could feel that human blood pumping in his veins, warm and sure.

He remained, stroking her hair on and off, the length of the night. Come morning he watched her carefully and as she began to stir, he disappeared.

AN/ There you, my lovelies, THINGS ARE GETTING REAL! I hope you guys enjoyed it. Please let me know what you liked (and what you didn't) so I can do fun things like improve! GOODNIGHT MY FANFICTION BEAUTIES.