The Known/Unknown Quantity

Chapter 114: Victories, Hollow or Small

Chapter 114: Victories, Hollow or Small

Seventeen minutes earlier, Newt slowly placed the phone down, and regarded the angel's hand covering his own.

"You...healed me!"

Aziraphale shook his head. "No," he said softly. "I just blocked your ability momentarily. It was all I could do. Didn't think it would work. Lucky for us, it did."

"Plan B."

"Last minute, but yes, Plan B."

"I thought Crowley was the last-ditch thinker."

"We seem to be rubbing off on each other, after All Soul's Day."

"But he's not answering."

"I see that."

The phone stopped buzzing, then fell silent. They looked up at each other.

"He'll see it, soon enough," Newt managed, then furrowed his brow. "You called my thing an ability. Not a curse?"

"Well, you're learning to use it to your advantage," the angel smiled weakly, trying not to look expectantly at the infernal device below. "Have you thought about branching out into a new profession?"

"Well, I'm doing the hacking now," Newt grinned, and his eyes sparked. "Ballistics maybe."

"Untapped potential," Aziraphale said in low tones, and then, he started to rise. From underneath his collar, the red glow of the ward blazed as if to set him on fire. Newt bolted up and steadied him as the angel grabbed his chest and gaped.

"Crowley! Oh God in Heaven!"

"What!"

The angel's eyes, shut tight, and he started shaking terribly. And with him, so did the bookshop.

Newt's frantic face lifted to the walls, and the ceiling, up to the skylight where sun and shadow raced with their propulsion into Mayfair.

The young man swallowed. "Oh, this can't be good."

Shadwell nearly had to careen into the corner of the building to stop his speed. His arthritic knees screamed at him, his tired legs burned, his feet felt like pins and needles.

But he arrived.

Flashing a look up to the roof, he searched everywhere. But nothing happened.

Almost inconsequentially, a passerby drifted to his left. And his arm whipped out, and caught her.

He scanned the picture on the phone, and scrutinized the startled face of the nicely dressed middle aged woman he caught by the sleeve. And he found therein his witch, and her stolen treasure, and had enough of the old scruples left to whip it the stolen poem out of her hands.

At first the monster grimaced at him, and he saw a glimpse in her eyes of what she might have in store for any interloper. And then she twitched, and smiled wickedly, dismissing his intrusion as a thing far too late in coming.

Then she slid backwards into the crowd, and disappeared from his grasp.

The remains of the sewing kit landed in an ever-increasing pool of blood.

Well, that was it for the eyes. But Jinny was still ranting in his ears, sending him closer and closer to the edge—

"I told you, Daddy! I told you how you would crawl before me like the worthless snake you are!"

The ears would be easier.

At least for that, he could use one of the angel's gentler tricks...

When the walls of the bookshop stopped shuttering, its door flung open, and the angel hollered, and nearly bent double.

"We're here!" Newt try to reassure him.

"But not close enough!" Aziraphale heaved. With considerable effort, red faced and muscles tensed, he tried to raise his head. "Crowley's still preventing us from getting to him!"

"What now!"

"Stay here!" The angel tried to straighten, and he stumbled backwards. Newt reached out, but was thrown back by a sudden gust of wind, his ears filling the with the sound of a parachute unleashing.

And then, Newt gaped up at a brilliance that made him want to reach out—

"I'm sorry, young man," he heard a trembling voice explain. "Twice already I've unwittily subjected you to this. Soon, enough, I promise. Please remain on the premises."

There was a cry of pain, and the loud ruffling of enormous wings. Wind gusted over Newt before he could register what was happening. Then, nothing.

He lowered his arm. He was alone. The door was shut.

In the eerie quiet of the room, Newt sat on the floor and hugged himself.

"Anathema was right about the wings," he uttered, shaking the intense reaction out of his head.

Crowley felt a pressure ease around his body. A shiver. An ice-cold numbness. He let it take him as he stumbled through his dark silent world, and found the podium of the eagle statue.

Finding some strength to stand, he then collapsed onto it, and clung for half a minute before he slumped back down to leave crimson tracks along its stone feathers.

Crippled, numb, the demon struggled to right himself and lean his back against the wall. He could feel the heat of the ward blazing across his chest.

It's gone. It's safe now. The others will find me right here.

Angel, don't freak.

Jaded humor took him, and he started to snicker. The icy air erupted with a gust of street aromas, and he felt vibrations from rabid footsteps, and muffled reverberations of an argument. The smile remained until he smelled Aziraphale's perspiration and his tears, and Shadwell's damn coat and halitosis.

He tried to remain numb, unthinking, while hands both tender and rough touched his face. It didn't last long. As the sting from the angel's tears fell on his marred face, he felt the tree of his despair spread its branches, and he finally succumb to it, as it put out runners and erupted into an ever-growing thicket of bleakness.