The Known/Unknown Quantity

Chapter 51: A Poser's Obsession

Chapter 51: A Poser's Obsession

Crowley thought he'd lost his binocular vision.

Instead, he realized, the landscape 30 feet in front of him had become the surface of a giant mirror. A mirror with big cracks. Big black, immense cracks, oozing slightly from one side of the horizon to the other. Emitting a terrible sound like an iceberg breaking to pieces, the thundering echoed through the air as each fracture formed, warbling both the air and the mirror. Crowley had to fight not to cover his ears.

Then, it paused, and he studied the pattern in the cracks. With a vicious yank he tore off his glasses to expose eyes so large and so bright they began to flame. What formed before him resembled a mammoth version of Jinny's old death wounds. It was enough to cause a burning in his chest, a swell of pain and fury that erupted from his throat as a roar.

And as the timbre of that shout struck the glass surface, the giant mocking wounds bled. Black clumps and strings slithered out, and metastasized, bleeding out much slower than the fountain that had erupted from the broken hearts of his little girl.

Another holler burst out of him, promising utter annellation and turning his face into a mask of unadulterated rage. Crowley was seeing red.

And as if to mock him, laughter trickled down with the masses that congealed together in a heap onto the browning grass. The snaking clumps slithered in and out of each other, knots of them, millions of them, emitting scornful merriment in tiny shrill voices.

At last, they twisted together, and melted down like a candle under a propane torch.

And formed, for all intents and purposes, into "Jinny." Well, not exactly. More like Kat again. The visage was so random that it caught Crowley's yell in his throat.

She didn't move. She grinned at him, and then sighed. And with that the mirrored wall quivered, and like the Walls of Jericho, crumbled.

The demon covered his face with his arms and his body with his wings while enormous broken glass rained down from above. Somehow he was able to push himself back with a few flaps of his wings. His legs struggled to stay beneath him with the rumbling impact. It was like ground zero to a building implosion.

Chaos governed for a few eternal minutes. And when at last it stopped, he dared to raise his head. Nothing was there. Just him. Just Kat, twenty paces between them.

"Get rid of that form!" he bellowed. "It's insulting to buddy sitcoms everywhere!"

"This?" the piping girl giggled lyrically. "I thought you would like this. I know this is how you picture her, if she belonged to you and your angel."

Crowley staggered on his feet, gritting his teeth and hissing.

"You didn't think I knew, did you?" she laughed. "Demon, you're a house of mirrors, or monitors, really. I know your fantasies. What do you think? Amazing how the angel's nose sets so primly in this gorgeous face."

"Change it!!!!"

"Are you really in a position to make demands?" She tilted her head, and the face...swam. Like a film projector played on the blank canvas of its surface. And then he realized, that's all it was. A blank canvas, and the images sliding across weren't real!

The countenance of his daughter tried to swim into focus. It was getting ready to form, to laugh at him, and his seething pain. But something happened, and the homunculus jerked. The face shifted.

Became the tyrant's.

A pinched nose, eyes large and wide apart, and a full very wide mouth with a firm jaw. Now it was set, as was the small but rounded brow.