The Known/Unknown Quantity

Chapter 83: The Gallant and the Grizzly

Chapter 83: The Gallant and the Grizzly

In desperation, Crowley flung his gaze to his real angel on the hill. "Now! Stop it now!"

Aziraphale started to fidget. He raised a hand.

"Fuck, wait!" Crowley snarled, emboldened himself, and shook it off. "No, no, don't. I'm sorry. I need to see this. You pulled me out of my self-made hell. The least I can do—" he turned back, "is watch your morality play."

From a distance he heard,"...puppets, shades...."

"I know," Crowley moaned, pressing his face to the barrier. "I know. I told you that. Nothing more than shadows to confront, to step over, to move on from." And the angel had this thing cycling in his head for so long, worrying and fretting. All that must end today!

"Crowley?"

"Go, angel! Let's finish what we started. No homunculus or any other terror is going to rule you, so long as I have something to say about it!"

"Alright.....Anthony....."

AURGH!!!

Willard seemed to take delight in having an audience. It wouldn't change the performance, would not add or take away from it. But Crowley didn't want to be acknowledged by the hateful ghost. And it was enjoying itself immensely.

"You know," Willard mused idlily, tapping his chin with his finger, "We need something more, don't you think?" Now he turned to Chaz, who was so far gone he couldn't even answer. So, Willard grabbed him by the top of his downy hair and wrenched back, making the poor creature scream raggedly. He could still breathe, but his broken neck was supported by the very thing that had snapped it, and he couldn't move his head any further than where it was already. All that came out was a hissing wheeze. And yet he still gave Willard his attention when he could, and it was all love and obedience and, Crowley wanted to spit, worship.

"What do you say, you mindless slave," Willard simpered, "a couple of more ornaments?"

Through his agony Chaz struggled to smile.

"I know what you need: to be closed up permanently, and amply."

Crowley's shoulder rammed against the wall. "Oi, here it comes."

"Can't let anyone else having access to you, can we?"

Willard snapped his fingers, and something large suddenly rested in his upraised palm.

At first, Crowley thought it was a thermos. It was near the right shape and size, and bulk. But—

The top was tapered. And not nearly enough.

Willard snapped his fingers again and it disappeared. The next moment Chaz's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. A low keening escaped thru his teeth, and turned into a loud and strangled moan ending in a cough as his chest was unable to contain enough air to supply it. He nearly collapsed, his bugged eyes finally shutting tight, and unable to open again. Blood began to flow, then pool between his legs, adding to the gore already drying on his bruised body.

Crowley realized he was clawing at the wall now, leaving huge scrapes in its surface that just hung in the air. He was shaking, ready to spring, lactic acid burning his cramping muscles. And still, he held his ground.

"One more thing we need, one more item." Willard sauntered around his creation once more, testing this or that to induce more suffering, when at last he clownishly whipped up and stuck his finger in the air. "I've got it!" He shook his head in a patronizing way, the snaky coils whirling around his head. "You talk too much, angel. We need to put a stop to this, once and for all."

"Here it comes," Crowley snarled. "It's not real, it's not real, it's not real..."

"Watch this!" Willard laughed, then turned around, and snapped again. A curved tube with a small hole centered at the bottom materialized in his hands. He gripped the yielding angel's chin, yanked opened his mouth, and thrust it down his throat as he gasped like a drowning man.

Crowley went insane. "STOP IT! YOU'RE KILLING HIM!!!"

"You can't kill an angel, fool!" Willard mocked as he now placed his fingers into the poor creature's gaping jaws and threaded his tongue thru the hole. Now he gloried in the completion of his work. "So many possibilities, with flesh like this. Perfection, at last." He folded his arms and looked directly, even connivingly, at Crowley.

"Don't you approve?" he chuckled.

Crowley felt his nails sliding past his cuticles, growing thickly into claws edgy to slash. His fangs lengthened to deadly sharpness.

Then he looked Willard in his accursed green eyes and simply said," Fin."

Willard pursed his lips and leaned back. "Come again?"

Crowley turned slowly back to Aziraphale. The angel's hand remained upraised, his arm shaking.

"Now, Anthony?" he declared loudly.

"NNNNOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!"

It was the howl of an animal. He threw back his head and he roared. And Willard actually looked back in alarm.

The angel snapped his fingers. All evidence of the barrier's marred surface disappeared. Crowley eased back around. His eyes were huge burning embers.

His face was a mask of vengeful glee. His fangs gleamed like lightening, a shark with a mind like a steel trap. Willard gaped at him, and took a step backward. And Crowley didn't wait to test the wall. He just laughed like a madman, and launched into the air.

It happened so fast. Within a micro second, Crowley gripped the shade by its collar and flung it brutally down like a ragdoll.

Then, he set his teeth and claws to work. The angel winced and turned away, barely catching a glimpse of flashing incisors and claws and limbs, hands held up against the frenzy to no avail, to no mercy, for how much at it given its own victim? Just a cloud of action and gore and screams ending suddenly in one last gurgling choke of a gasp.

When the blood lust was satisfied, Crowley rose. He called out to his angel, who was trembling so terribly he refused to even turn around.

"He's gone, Aziraphale," Crowley called flatly. "All he was, even the remnants."

The angel dared a look over his shoulder. There was no sign of the violent act of fast-forwarded attrition. "Gone," he whispered.

"Yes, gone."

"You massacred yourself, Crowley."

The demon shrugged. Then he came up the hill, and offered the angel his hand.

"Dare you touch me after that violent act?"

There was no sign of the thing, not even its blood on Crowley's clothes, or splashes across his haggard face. "You look so spent, my love," the angel told him. Another shrug. Aziraphale regarded the proffered hand, then turned bodily around and embraced him hard, nearly sending them both tumbling backward.

Crowley just took the hug, his hand still in the air. Slowly, it descended on the back of the angel's soft hair, and he caressed it, and let his head fall into the hollow of his shoulder.

"I thought you were the one determining when we finished," Crowley told him.

"Crowley," the angel exclaimed, nearly crushing him in his clinching arms, "I realized I had to leave this part up to you." He looked around. "Where is the sword!"

Crowley held up his claws, displayed his fangs. They were pulsing blue light, and a halo of flame shimmered at the edge of vision.

"I became the sword, angel. I wanted that thing DEAD."