The Known/Unknown Quantity

Chapter 24: A Few Dropped Feathers

Chapter 24: A Few Dropped Feathers

Another week went by. There was no word from their friends in Tadfield. Madame Tracy had her weekly teas with the angel, and that revealed nothing more than idle prattle and the goings-on of house hunting. Crowley gained some humor over hearing the antics of the former Witchfinder as he and Newt schemed together at the local pubs. Private Occult Investigators? Maybe. But picturing the two of them with ghostbuster gear, well..................no.

Crowley told himself there was nothing to worry about. But his eyes still scanned crowds wherever they went. Looking for what? Looking for who?

Certainly not her. She was a thing so far gone, so far away. As far away as he was from Heaven. And though she had been born out of tragedy, he mused, all she ever gave was light. She certainly wouldn't perpetrate this!

Obstinate, obtuse at times. Wouldn't eat her peas...But there wasn't a day that went by in her brief life when she hadn't looked upon him with absolute love, and the name of Crowley was turned in her mouth into something that was closer to—

"Father," the angel piped up, laying out a book. Crowley jumped back and hissed. Aziraphale pointed to something in the old tomb. "We find the father."

"The father?" Crowley exclaimed, wiping the spilt drink from his hand. "Whose father? What are you blathering about?" He looked at the drink, then thru it back hard. The instant burn felt so good...

"It's a Nephilim, it's got to be!" the angel plowed on, raising the book to his bespectacled face and flipping through its pages. "Look, here, and here. Something forming? Something in a fog? Maybe it's a child yet unborn! We just have to find the progenerator."

"You made that word up."

"I did not!"

"You're grasping at straws, angel," the demon hiccupped. Fucking dreams again. He'd drowned a little of his sorrows, and the angel had politely removed the rest of the vintage. But Crowley was turning it to the strongest thing he could think of when it entered his mouth. "What is that, the seventh book you've picked up? It's, (Bo-wa) It's pointless to go on like this until they call us."

The angel paused with his back to him. He closed the book, and nodded. "Perhaps you're right."

Aziraphale turned, and removed his glasses, tapping them to his chin, He regarded Crowley, and then making a show of removing his cotton gloves, sat down. "You don't think it's a half-breed."

Crowley shook his head before it fell to the table top. "M'na. Not their modus operandi."

"Well, what do you think it is?"

Crowley shouldn't have answered. But he had gone past the place of caution for a few woozy moments. "A poser."

The angel straightened; his eyes bright. "H'mph! What a novel idea. But why pretend to be a Nephilim? And what nature would it be if it wasn't?"

"Angel," the muffled response came, "Nephilim are doomed creations. Is like—" Crowley rose his head and struggled to explain, "they got a sniper dot on their foreheads from the moment they're born. The universe HATES them. Tries to rub them out of existence."

The angel gave his friend his undivided attention. "Oh?"

Crowley's head lolled and his hands spun as he tried to find the words," Is like they don't belong, right? So, they have REALLY bad luck, or self-destructive behaviors, or very short lives—"he glared out into the mid space with that one. The angel cupped his hand, and he looked at it drunkenly.