Great Are the Myths, Pt 2b
Dec. 13th, 2006 10:25 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
vulgarweed.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
go_exchangeFor headers, etc., see Part 1.
Imagine, if you will, two magnets.
Take hold of the south end of one magnet and the north end of the other. Hold them apart, opposite one another, as if a circle separates them. Watch what happens.
The universe creaks. So much strain on such a tiny space . . .
A particularly observant person out for a stroll in this isolated part of St. James’s might at this point notice a speedy evacuation from a certain clump of trees of anything larger than the average amoeba. Mice line up and flee; birds make a beeline for the nearest building. The ground is a moving carpet of ants, some carrying their little pill-white eggs, some carrying queens, all bustling and bursting with intensity and panic.
All of this is done in silence and with unnatural alacrity.
Inside the tiny copse, it’s silent too, but the air tastes of tin, and around the doors there are mad flickers of octarine light. Between them, the visual impression is that of pavement on a hot day: the air comes in waves and runs, looking thicker and heavier than air should.
Like eager puppies tugging at cosmic leashes, the doors inch closer together. The space between them, feeling the strain, starts to gain solidity and, with it, colour, a thick indigo fog.
Slowly, painfully, the doors inch closer. There is a long, drawn-out scream of steel on steel.
The doors slam together, latch, and snag.
---
Aziraphale, concentrating hard on the hopefulness presented by greenery and daylight, knew at once, felt a rip in the fabric of reality. He felt something flash past him, a dense grey shape, and reached out--
--and shot backwards, hand still outstretched, onto hot rock.
He scrambled up, head spinning, and ran for the door. He didn’t look back. He knew what was there.
He was nearly at the door, it was tantalisingly close, when something enormous and wide and heavy landed on his back.
Flat on the ground, he heard: “Good dog.”
---
Moving toward St. James’s, Crowley was preoccupied, in the sense of being completely and utterly furious, and was focussing only on getting back so he could scream about the general idiocy of things to Aziraphale.
Then the light shifted, and something went wrong, and something brushed past him desperately. He tried to turn, wildly searching, and realised that the trip was taking far too long--
--and shut his eyes tightly against the whiteness.
Something slid out of the wall.
“Good day,” it said.
---
There was a rectangle of haze hanging in the air. A few slightly charred woodlice that hadn’t had the opportunity to bugger off heard quiet, staticky voices crackle away from the connected portals before disseminating into the permanent auditory haze that fills all heavily-populated human settlements.
Surely not . . . not even you . . .
. . . thumbscrews territory, then?
That type of thing doezzn’t happen.
--expect me to be afraid of you?
Someone else listened, too, and understood.
---
“Excuse me,” said Aziraphale to the ground, “but would you please get off of me? This is highly undignified.”
There was a howl of laughter from behind him. “You think so?” someone said sarcastically. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Cebs! Get offa him! And dun’t you try nothing funny, you,” it added to Aziraphale, menace packed into every grammatical error.
The weight on Aziraphale’s back withdrew, and he scrambled to his feet, moving into a defensive posture almost unconsciously. Then he stared.
“Good, isn’t he?” said the demon Hastur, and patted the enormous three-headed dog fondly. It snapped at his fingers, looking fed up. He cooed at it.
Aziraphale did quite a good impression of a fish for a minute. Then he said, “You--you have an actual--but wasn’t that just--“
“Yeah, the Greeks,” said Hastur, shrugging. “Mad as Hell, the lot of them, and this is me you’re talking to. Still, the Boss liked the idea. He’s a dog man, really,” he confided.
Aziraphale narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the demon. This didn’t sound at all like the infernal duke Crowley had described, or rather derided, so frequently. He seemed rather . . . cheerful, actually. Something was clearly Up.
Well, to hell with subtlety. “Where’s Crowley?” he asked.
Hastur snorted. “He’s buggered off, like a good little demon,” he sneered. “The Prince let him go, too. Didn’t even tell me he was here. Didn’t want to cause a fuss, he said. Ha!” Hastur said, and he said it, rather than laughed.
“Mm,” agreed Aziraphale, on the basis that it couldn’t hurt.
“Thought I might trot along up here to see if he’d left yet. He did, the worm. You know he got me demoted? Well, he did. Dog walker, me.” Hastur scowled.
“But that dun’t matter, right?” the demon added, grinning a gangrenous, lock-jawed grin. “’Cause now you’re here, and the snake certainly won’t come back, and who Up There is going to come for you?” He let out another surreal bark of laughter. “They know what you did this summer,” he drawled. “And so do I.”
Aziraphale looked toward the portal, and suddenly the guard Cerberus was there, simultaneously growling, drooling, and licking itself somewhere inappropriate. He looked back at Hastur only to find that the demon was directly in his face, shoving him up against the wall.
“You,” growled Hastur, grabbing the angel’s hair and banging his head against the wall as punctuation, “are the most annoying--Cebs, stop that--annoying creature in existence. Except for Crawly. Because you are so stupid, with your correct English and your sweater-vest and, you know, your general proximity to the snake, that just makes you even more annoying, not to mention stupid, stupid, stupid, because I know you helped him, and annoying, because he’s so annoying, and you know what--Cebs, quit it--you know what’s great? I can’t do anything to him, because the Prince said hands off, but you . . . “ He bared his teeth. It was definitely not a smile. “I can do what I want with you. And he likes you. So really, ripping bits of skin off you is almost like ripping bits of skin off him. Isn’t that nice? And maybe I we can learn how to use a fucking ansaphone as w--Cerberus, for the hate of Satan, stop that right now!”
All three of Cerberus’s heads were growling, not at Aziraphale, but at Hastur. In Dog, this particular growl did not mean, “Hey, there’s a threatening man with a knife right behind you,” nor did it mean, “Some complete idiot’s left the stove on again”. This growl, very clearly, meant, “You know what, I really, really don’t like you. I think I shall bite you now.”
One of the heads did so, while the others, demonstrating a lesser-known advantage of being a three-headed hellhound, continued to growl.
Hastur screamed, holding his injured forearm up to his face. Flecks of saliva seeped into his skin and then began to smoke. Hastur screamed some more. Then he hit Cerberus on the bum and shrieked, “Bad dog!”
The dog looked at Aziraphale with six-eyed woe[11], then put its ears back, slunk forward on its belly, and whined.
“Shut up!” shouted Hastur. “Get the angel and let’s go!” His eyes flickered madly, as if lit from within by the entirety of Dante’s imagination. (This was more or less the case.)
Cerberus picked Aziraphale up in its enormous, slavering jaws with surprising gentleness. Until a better idea presented itself, Aziraphale decided, he would hang there and attempt to think canine-sympathetic thoughts. Eyeing a hanging blob of saliva nervously, he rather wished he’d worn a rain jacket.
Hastur started to storm off, away from the hovering portal. The guardian began to follow, but then its ears pricked up and it sat down, looking around expectantly.
“You blessed son of a--!” Hastur began.
“Drop it, Zzerberuzz,” said a voice like flies on carrion, uncomfortably familiar. “Thou know’zzt not where it hazz been.”
---
“ . . . Konnichiwa. Bonjour.”
In the corridors of Heaven, Crowley stared. “Bloody hell,” he muttered, “I thought we came up with this.”
“Welcome to Heaven,” said the voice. “If you are a terrestrial agent, please press one. If you are recently deceased, please press two. If you are an invading demon army, please press three. If you have had your fingers cut off, please bash your head or other appendage against the keypad, and someone will be along to help you momentarily.”
Running down his list of options, which was very, very short, Crowley shrugged and punched three.
He waited, humming tunelessly to himself. Then he punched it again.
“Hello? Service!” he shouted, mashing the button irritably. “Hey!”
A haloed head poked out of the nearest door, caught sight of him, said “Oh” very quietly, and slammed the door. Crowley caught whispers along the lines of, “You tell him!” “No, you tell him, I told him last time!” Then an angel--he couldn’t tell if it was the same one--scurried out, glancing nervously over its shoulder at Crowley, and opened another door.
There was silence for a moment, and then a scream of rage. A pillar of flame burst from the room, followed by the anxious lesser angel.
“I don’t know,” shouted the Metatron, “is it so much to ask for me to get five minutes of privacy? At this rate I’ll never understand bridge! Why can’t someone else--”
Then it caught sight of Crowley, who was watching it with interest.
“Oh. Poot[12],” it said, and sighed. “All right, then.”
It clapped its hands wearily. Angels burst from every door, armed to the teeth, eyes blank, impossibly perfect. One of them tried to poke Crowley into a corner with, inexplicably, a trident. Crowley snarled at it; it regarded him coolly, not moving.
“Not much of an army, are you?” said the Metatron, who was still sulking. “I don’t know what’s got into your empty little head to make you come up here, but believe me when I say that you will very much regret it.”
“I didn’t want to come up here, you moron!” snapped Crowley, flapping a hand ineffectually at the diverse weapons being waved in his face. “The stupid portal went mad! What have you done with Aziraphale?”
“Aziraphale? Why do you care about Aziraphale?” said the Voice petulantly. “Nobody does. He’s a failure at being.”
Crowley narrowed his eyes. “Being what?”
“Just being.”
Something flickered in Crowley’s head. He tried to stuff it down. This was not the time.
“Look,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets, “just tell me how to get back to London and I’ll leave. Heav--I know that I don’t want to be here.”
The Metatron shrugged. “I would assume you go back through the portal.”
“Thank you, Holmes,” snapped Crowley, “but this portal goes to Hell.”
The assembled angels froze. The Metatron turned slowly to look at him.
“What,” it said carefully, “did you say?”
“This. Portal. Goes. To. Hell,” said Crowley. “It’s supposed to go to London. Some idiot’s messed with the wiring again.”
Spits of flame shot up erratically from the Metatron. “No,” it said, “no, because you shouldn’t be able to . . . you shouldn’t . . . unless--no.” A contorted look flashed over its face. “It’s Aziraphale, isn’t it?” the Metatron growled. “He’s done some sort of--messed with it--broken the barriers--probably didn’t even mean to--klutz--idiot--so many chances to--“
There was, for some reason, a rock in Crowley’s pocket. A tiny rock, more like a pebble, really. And then suddenly it was flying through the air towards the Metatron. It fell through the Voice and landed with a plop on the pristine floor, bubbling slightly.
The Metatron paused, closed its mouth, and regarded him solemnly. “Get him,” it said quietly.
The angels moved faster than even Crowley’s eye could follow. As the ranks closed in around him, Crowley was mildly disgusted to find that, even as the nearest chalk-faced angel drew back its pike to run him through, he was still waiting for a deus ex machina that he was unshakably certain would come.
He was even more disgusted when it did.
For lo, the silence of the multitudes was broken by a Voice, which spake thusly:
HEY! CUT THAT OUT!
The angel currently occupying Crowley’s full attention didn’t seem to hear, but that didn’t actually matter, because unseen hands hoisted it and one of its companions into the air and, in the tradition of bouncers everywhere, banged their heads together.
I SAID, CUT THAT OUT!
One angel hung in the air listlessly; the other said in a flat voice, “It is a demon, Lord. It must be destroyed.”
There was an enormous tsk of annoyance, and the angels flopped to the ground. RIGHT. FORGET COMPASSION. FORGET DO UNTO OTHERS. THAT’S SO LAST MILLENIUM. WHY DO I BOTHER?
The Metatron, which had been gaping in the general direction of the erstwhile attack-angels, finally found its voice and spluttered, “L-lord! What are you--?”
OH, SHUT UP, METATRON.
The Metatron swelled with fury. Crowley was impressed despite himself; he would have opted for cringing and bowing, himself. Not the Voice, though. It was astonishing in its stupidity.
“My Lord,” it said with measured dignity, “You must speak through me, to preserve Your detachment from and objectivity to the world and its souls. It is--“
WELL, THAT WOULD BE JUST LOVELY, said the disembodied voice sarcastically, IF YOU WOULD ACTUALLY SAY WHAT I TELL YOU TO SAY. There was a sigh like a desert gale. I KNEW I SHOULDN’T HAVE GIVEN YOU LOT EGOS.
“But--“ the Metatron began. Then it went cross-eyed and clawed at its mouth, which seemed very disinclined to open.
THAT’S THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS. THEY’RE LIKE PUREBRED DOGS, said the voice philosophically. ALL SPOTS AND SLEEK LINES AND NERVOUSNESS. It chuckled. HELLFIRE AND DALMATIANS. HELLO, BY THE WAY . . . CRAWLY, ISN’T IT? IT’S BEEN AGES.
“Mhn,” said Crowley.
RIGHT, WELL, SORRY, THERE’S BEEN A BIT OF A MISUNDERSTANDING. YOU CAN LEAVE IN PEACE. THEY WON’T HURT YOU NOW.
Crowley nodded numbly and turned to leave. Then he turned back.
The hall was totally silent. All of the angels watched him impassively, their weapons held in limp hands. They didn’t move, not even their eyes.
“Wait a moment,” Crowley said peevishly. He craned his neck in an effort to locate where the voice had come from. “What’s wrong with them? They’re not even snarling! They always used to snarl. Angels like a good snarl. I should know. What’s going on?”
There was a very pointed silence.
Crowley snorted. “Right,” he said. “Ineffable. I forgot. But see, the thing is . . . “ The demon gave his sharpest flash-bastard grin, the one he’d so often practised in the rear-view mirror at stoplights. “Sometimes the Ineffable Plan is the Ineffable Plan, and sometimes it’s just an excuse not to explain how horribly you’ve botched something up, you know what I mean?”
There was another pause. Then:
LEAVE, said the voice. The temperature dropped drastically.
“Where. Is. Aziraphale?” Crowley said levelly.
BELOW.
“You--what? Oh, shit.”
AND WATCH YOUR MOUTH, YOU, the voice added as Crowley scuttled to the portal.
Crowley paused, feet on the edge, and looked back at the Metatron, still staring at him with undisguised fury in its fiery eyes. What a berk, he thought.
Crowley gave it a winning grin and lifted his hand up to his ear, little finger and thumb outstretched, mouthing, “Call me”.
It would be nice to say the Metatron exploded. However, watching its contorted expression as he stepped sideways into the portal, Crowley rather felt that would have been too easy.
God watched him go, shaking a metaphorical head. WHAT A MESS, God said. WHERE’S MY BLOODY GUM?
---
“Hazztur,” said Beelzebub, leaning against a ledge of rock and staring at the duke with his horrible crimson eyes.
“Yes, Lord?” Hastur seemed to be trying to turn himself inside out to avoid the Prince’s gaze.
“What art thou doing, Hazztur?”
“I, er,” said Hastur. “I was, er, patrolling with the dog, like you told me, Lord, and-“
“You felt it neczezzary to zztrike the animal? You wiszh for the Mazzter to become even angrier?” Beelzebub glared. “You are already being puniszhed! Thou know’zzt how He dotezz on the Beazzt! Fool!”
Hastur actually whimpered. Aziraphale, wiping massive amounts of hellhound drool off of his coat, rather wished he’d had the foresight to bring an audio recording device of some sort. Purely for Crowley’s sake, of course.
The Prince turned his molten gaze on Aziraphale. He looked at the angel blankly for a moment before vague recognition set in. “Oh . . . the Princzipality, izzn’t it? What pozzeszed you, metaphzorically szzpeaking of courzze, to come down here?”
“I assure you, it was not intentional,” Aziraphale replied warily. This was, after all, the Lord of the Flies. He could do far more than haunt pig skulls.
“Oh, another tear in the fabric of szpace-time its-bloody-szelf, izz it?” Beelzebub rolled his eyes. “Happenzz all the time around here. Zzomething else Himself botched up, I might add. All hail Szatan,” he added loyally.
“All hail Satan,” squeaked Hastur, who had retreated to stand behind Beelzebub, practically vibrating with nervous eagerness.
Beelzebub paid him one brief, disgusted glance, then turned back to Aziraphale. “Thou muzzt leave now, light one,” he said. “We have been forbidden to harm you or the sznake, but do not doubt that there are thoze who would disobey even the highezzt orderzz.”
He turned to go.
“Hold on a moment, please!” Aziraphale said.
“Yeszz?” droned the Prince, looking at the angel over his shoulder.
Aziraphale exhaled sharply. He wasn’t happy about what he was about to ask, but what choice did he have?
“I wish to go to Earth,” he said. “This portal leads to Heaven. I don’t think I can open another one here. Do you know how to change the final location on one of these?”
“Heaven?” Beelzebub raised one perfect eyebrow. “That’zz odd. Still . . . everything happenzz for a reazzon, or szo we have been told.” It paused.
“Will you help, then?” Aziraphale said desperately.
“Don’t be ridiculouzz,” snapped Beelzebub. “Juzzt becauzz I am forbidden to harm you doezz not mean that I am allowed to help you, much lesszz that I want to. Besides--“ There was the merest suspicion of a flicker in the Prince’s eye. “--perhapzz Heaven izz the better placze for angelzz at thizz time. Ineffable merczy and all that.”
For a moment, Aziraphale saw again the empty faces of the Heavenly Host, the endless tents in pale grass. He wondered what had happened to the ones that hadn’t wanted to forget.
“I doubt that,” he said aloud. “I sincerely doubt that.”
Beelzebub regarded him impassively. Aziraphale sighed and turned toward the portal, and heard a crunch of rock behind him that signalled Beelzebub’s slow departure.
The only warning was a short, low bark behind him and the sharp snarling of rock on rock, and then Aziraphale was pinned to the wall by his throat.
“Never turn your back,” sneered Hastur.
Aziraphale tried desperately not to struggle, to persuade his body that air was not, strictly speaking, necessary, but bodies generally don’t buy into that sort of thing in the heat of the moment, and his didn’t. He flailed wildly, tugging at the arm pressed to his windpipe.
“Don’t bother,” snarled the demon. “We’ve been forbidden to harm you, remember? So for sure I won’t harm a hair on your lovely, fragile head, right? Ha!” he added, in a tone that fairly easily conveyed the message, ‘Wrong!’
Behind him, Cerberus howled, mournful and high and in eerie harmony with himself.
All across the stones, hellhounds looked up and bayed in response.
“Now you listen to me, you son of the Father,” Hastur growled, shoving his greasy face into Aziraphale’s so that they were nearly knocking foreheads. “I haven’t forgotten. I don’t forget. That snake has it coming. Sooner or later this fuss’ll be over, and then . . . “ He snapped his teeth. “Both of you. It’s only a matter of time. So you had better watch your--“
“Oof!” said Crowley, tumbled head over heels out of the portal.
“What?” Hastur snapped, whipping his head around.
“What?” Crowley said, looking up. “Hey! What are you--Aziraphale!”
Later Aziraphale would look back on the subsequent events and cringe, and Crowley would look back and preen. At that moment, however, Aziraphale’s confused human brain was deprived of oxygen, and he was frightened, and his vision was starting to blur; Crowley, for his part, was riding on rage and fear and hatred and paranoia and something similar to all of the above, which combined into a cocktail of red-hot emotion and adrenaline-fuelled insanity. At least, that was the reason he came up with later.
It was not a dignified blow, nor did it have much strength behind it. It was one of those instinctual bite-me-you-bastard slaps that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. It wouldn’t have in this case, if not for the fact that Hastur wasn’t expecting it and wasn’t nearly as well-versed in human pain as he might have been.
Hastur staggered backward, away from Aziraphale, clutching his cheek, staring at Crowley, who was holding his hand to his chest and swearing creatively. Aziraphale sagged to the stone ground, massaging his neck, and looked at Crowley in shock.
Hastur effectively broke the heavy silence that followed by roaring, “I’m going to kill you!” and leaping at Crowley, claws extended and already beginning to trail maggots.
As Aziraphale shouted something unintelligible and struggled to his feet, there came a moan from behind the nearest rocky pillar. Beelzebub rounded it furiously, started to say, “Hazztur, I am szick of thizz behaviour, do not think that you won’t be reported to the--“, and stopped in his tracks, staring at the tableau before him. His expression hardened; his eyes narrowed.
In the silence, Crowley moved slowly and deliberately to stand between the other demons and Aziraphale.
“Crowley,” the Prince said eventually. “What hast thou--“
“Hit me, Lord,” growled Hastur. “The bastard hit me. Look!” He pointed to the blurred hand mark on his cheek, which was still a mottled purple and seemed to be swelling.
“I know that, you idiot, I was attempting to make a dramatic sztatement!” snapped Beelzebub.
He looked at Crowley. Crowley looked back.
“Inszolencze,” said Beelzebub in a low voice. “Inszolencze and sztupidity. You had a chancze, Crowley. That izz more than anyone elsze hazz ever gotten. But thou hast broken the deal.”
He turned to Hastur. “Do with them azz you will,” it said. “And pleazz do not write up a report.” And he turned to go.
Crowley looked at Hastur. Nothing looked back.
The duke’s arm flew out and grabbed Crowley, dragging him away from the portal and the angel. Crowley frantically scanned the rock-strewn plateau, but there can be no deus ex machina in a godless place.
Something grabbed him from behind and began to drag him back. He craned his neck and saw Aziraphale, wide-eyed and untucked, holding on to his arm for dear life. With a great wrenching motion, Crowley ripped himself out of Hastur’s iron grip and fell backwards onto the angel.
“Thank you,” he said, scrambling up and offering Aziraphale a hand.
“You are a complete and total idiot,” Aziraphale replied, and took it.
The thought ran through both of their minds in an endless marquee: it had nearly worked. Nearly. Nearly.
As each gripped the other’s hand fiercely, dearly, like an anchor, like a lifeline, they saw Beelzebub. He had turned, and was watching them predatorily, his eyes narrowed to slits. His fiery nostrils flared, and he opened his mouth to speak--
Hastur lunged eagerly, hungrily--
Cerberus howled in desperate prayer--
And there was an answering whine, at a much higher pitch, muffled at first, then gaining strength, until at last it was the determined howl of a terrier with a mission.
In the space between stood a golden-haired boy and his dog.
“Hush, Dog,” Adam said. “Good dog.”
Dog wagged his tail and cocked an ear at Cerberus, who grinned in response.
The boy looked at Hastur, who subsequently froze in mid-leap.
“I think you’re supposed to be somewhere else, aren’t you?” Adam said mildly.
Hastur gazed at him blankly, then nodded, relaxed, and wandered off in the direction of the central city’s fires.
Adam shook his head sadly. “You don’t hit dogs,” he said. It sounded like an order to the universe at large, and it probably was.
He glanced over at Beelzebub, whose perfect face was contorted in disgust and fury. “What’s with him?” he asked Crowley and Aziraphale. They looked at one another helplessly, then turned back to Adam and shrugged.
“Thizz izz not your affair, boy,” snarled Beelzebub. “Crowley hazz . . . he . . . muzzt be punishzed. Go home.”
Adam took in his surroundings at a glance, the barren rock and singed, scrubby bushes, the charcoal and the flames. “I thought you thought this was my home,” he said.
“Oh, dear,” said Aziraphale under his breath. Crowley clamped his hand like a vise, keeping his eyes on Adam.
There were practically heat waves rising from the Prince’s immortal form. “Juzzt go!” he shouted. “Thisz doezz not conczern you!”
“Don’t see why you’re gettin’ so upset,” said Adam. “I haven’t done anythin’ yet. Why’re you gettin’ so upset? It’s a waste of energy, gettin’ all upset like that. Maybe you should bring my Father down so we can sort this out without you gettin’ all upset.”
“Do not try to intimidate me, Adam Young!” Crowley was highly reminded of the Metatron’s temper tantrum; Beelzebub wore precisely the same expression. “Your Father izz not pleazzed with you; He will not vouch for you!”
“See, though, I think he would,” replied Adam calmly. “He left them alone, didn’t he?” He nodded at Crowley and Aziraphale. “An’ he doesn’t really care about them, does he? Whereas me . . . “ Adam shrugged. “I’m just sayin’, maybe we should get him.”
The boy’s tone snapped into an iron wall. “Or maybe you should leave.”
Beelzebub was visibly shaken, but recovered himself quickly. “Fine,” he said. “I will not dezztroy you. Not now. But do not try this again, boy. We do not have infinite patiencze.”
He turned to Crowley. “Do not come back,” the Lord of the Flies buzzed at him. “He will not be szo eager to protect you szoon.”
He gave Aziraphale a cursory glance and sneered. “If ever you Fall,” he said, laughing like a chainsaw, “I shall be the firszt to the kill. Depend upon it.”
“Bye,” said Adam, and Beelzebub was gone.
“Oh, dear God,” said Aziraphale hollowly.
“Shut up!” hissed Crowley. He tried with moderate success to suppress a fit of terrified giggles.
The boy turned to Crowley and Aziraphale. Relief immediately evaporated, to be replaced by pants-wetting terror. They had never seen anyone look so angry.
“I told you not to do this,” he said flatly. “I told you not to worry about it. You just don’t listen. Why d’you think I said it if I didn’t mean it?”
“Er,” said Crowley.
“Ah,” said Aziraphale.
“You see--“
“Look, I--I know what it’s like to not understand stuff,” Adam said in a strained voice. “My whole life is practic’ly not understandin’ stuff. But haven’t you ever had to just trust somebody?”
They looked at each other.
“No,” said Aziraphale. “I don’t think I ever have.”
“Trusting demons would be a bit stupid, really,” said Crowley.
“What, never?”
They shook their heads.
Adam sighed. “Well, you’re gonna have to start,” he said, “because you’re done around here, you know. Not much use tryin’ to go to the top.”
“Yeah,” Crowley said morosely. “We’ve been to the top. Didn’t help.”
“Not one of my better ideas,” Aziraphale admitted.
Adam shrugged and sat down Indian-style on the warm stones. “I kinda thought you might do somethin’ like this. Grown-ups never listen to kids. It’s really wossname, typical behaviour. Thing.”
“We’re not--“ Aziraphale began.
“Yeah, all right, but you see what I mean,” said Adam. He scratched Dog’s ears. “And it wouldn’t’ve been so bad, either, if you hadn’t done that stupid thing with the doors.”
As one, the demon, the angel, the hounds, and the boy turned to look at the portal, still hanging in the air. It still flickered with vaguely purplish lights and generally maintained an appearance that would cost about three thousand pounds worth of CGI to create on Earth.
“Not to, er, break the dramatic flow or anything,” Crowley said, “but what exactly did we do?”
Dog, sensing his master’s mood, gave the demon the scathing look that Adam was too polite to indulge in.
“See? That’s what I mean,” Adam said. “Stupid. I bet you weren’t ever taught how to open a door without the circle,” he added, nodding to Aziraphale, “an’ somebody just showed you the motions of it an’ none of the safety stuff.” He glanced at Crowley. “Right?”
“Broadly,” said Crowley.
“Specifically, actually,” said Aziraphale.
Adam exhaled sharply and absentmindedly finger-combed his hair. “Well, I can’t explain it that well, ‘cos I wasn’t never taught about it.” He made a face. “We learned about jography and cirrus clouds instead. But basic’ly you can’t open a door to Heaven right next to a door to Hell, or else they get sort of . . . stuck together, right? Like if you're making jam toast and peanut butter toast and you pick up the peanut butter toast to eat it, but you drop it an' it lands on the jam and they get all stuck together.” He looked at their politely confused expressions. “Never mind. The point is, they turn into just one door, from Heaven to Hell, and the defences from the one door cancel out the ones on the other, and vicey versey.” He gave a derisive sniff. “Not that they’re very good anyway. I could do better.”
“Why in God’s--“ Aziraphale stopped, glancing around nervously, before continuing: “Why weren’t we told? It’s rather important!”
“Dunno,” said Adam, shrugging. “Like I said, I could do better, but it’s not my place.” He grinned. “Now, if it were me, I’d maybe make it so Heaven an’ Hell an’ Earth were all together in one place. Then we could just use trains an’ things, and things wouldn’t get so messed up all the time.”
Crowley snorted. “You don’t use public transportation much, do you?” he said dryly.
“Anyway.” Adam sighed. “What’re you guys gonna do? You can’t come back here, or go Upstairs. Where--“
They looked at the boy in astonishment. He shrugged again.
“I heard all of it,” he said. “Shouting all up an’ down all over the place. Gave Dog a headache. The Metatron’s pretty loud, isn’t it?” He laughed, the joyful, not-so-innocent laugh of a child enjoying a prank. “Did you really throw a rock at it?”
Aziraphale looked shocked. “Did you?” he asked Crowley reproachfully.
“It’s really annoying,” muttered Crowley.
“Oh my.” Aziraphale covered his eyes with one hand. “I will never be able to show my face in Heaven again.”
“I didn’t get the impression that they particularly wanted you to, angel,” said Crowley.
“That’s what I was sayin’,” Adam interjected. “You’re out. You could’ve just gone on for a while, you know, not knowin’, but sooner or later you’d’ve been tossed. It turned out to be sooner, I guess. So where d’you want to go?”
Aziraphale looked at Crowley, a question in his eyes. The demon grinned.
“St. James’s Park,” he said.
“Where?” said Adam blankly.
“In London,” said Aziraphale. “It’s where we started from.”
“Oh,” said Adam. He looked from one to the other, then nodded.
Dog rolled his eyes at Cerberus. He meant, What drama, eh?
Cerberus gave him a nudge. He meant, You have no idea.
“Let’s go, then,” Adam said.
This time it worked. Aziraphale could hear the ducks over the roar of their passage, and Crowley tasted the hint of London traffic in the air.
They left the portal open, winking occasionally, floating amiably in a crevice of Hell.
______________________
8. If he had been wearing a trenchcoat at this juncture and had mentioned the word ‘basement’ in this sentence somewhere, this sequence could have gone an entirely different way.
9. No, not the heads of the VISA Corporation.
10. A surprisingly contagious habit.
11. Which is three times more soulful than the usual doggie kind, and highly toxic, particularly to demons and damned souls. As a result, Cerberus was quite spoilt.
12. Part of the reason for the Metatron’s obvious emotional imbalance was the fact that it refused to curse, even in situations in which expletives were very much warranted, such as, for example, when Heaven is being invaded. Saying ‘fiddlesticks’ very rarely helps in these circumstances.
Part 3
Imagine, if you will, two magnets.
Take hold of the south end of one magnet and the north end of the other. Hold them apart, opposite one another, as if a circle separates them. Watch what happens.
The universe creaks. So much strain on such a tiny space . . .
A particularly observant person out for a stroll in this isolated part of St. James’s might at this point notice a speedy evacuation from a certain clump of trees of anything larger than the average amoeba. Mice line up and flee; birds make a beeline for the nearest building. The ground is a moving carpet of ants, some carrying their little pill-white eggs, some carrying queens, all bustling and bursting with intensity and panic.
All of this is done in silence and with unnatural alacrity.
Inside the tiny copse, it’s silent too, but the air tastes of tin, and around the doors there are mad flickers of octarine light. Between them, the visual impression is that of pavement on a hot day: the air comes in waves and runs, looking thicker and heavier than air should.
Like eager puppies tugging at cosmic leashes, the doors inch closer together. The space between them, feeling the strain, starts to gain solidity and, with it, colour, a thick indigo fog.
Slowly, painfully, the doors inch closer. There is a long, drawn-out scream of steel on steel.
The doors slam together, latch, and snag.
---
Aziraphale, concentrating hard on the hopefulness presented by greenery and daylight, knew at once, felt a rip in the fabric of reality. He felt something flash past him, a dense grey shape, and reached out--
--and shot backwards, hand still outstretched, onto hot rock.
He scrambled up, head spinning, and ran for the door. He didn’t look back. He knew what was there.
He was nearly at the door, it was tantalisingly close, when something enormous and wide and heavy landed on his back.
Flat on the ground, he heard: “Good dog.”
---
Moving toward St. James’s, Crowley was preoccupied, in the sense of being completely and utterly furious, and was focussing only on getting back so he could scream about the general idiocy of things to Aziraphale.
Then the light shifted, and something went wrong, and something brushed past him desperately. He tried to turn, wildly searching, and realised that the trip was taking far too long--
--and shut his eyes tightly against the whiteness.
Something slid out of the wall.
“Good day,” it said.
---
There was a rectangle of haze hanging in the air. A few slightly charred woodlice that hadn’t had the opportunity to bugger off heard quiet, staticky voices crackle away from the connected portals before disseminating into the permanent auditory haze that fills all heavily-populated human settlements.
Surely not . . . not even you . . .
. . . thumbscrews territory, then?
That type of thing doezzn’t happen.
--expect me to be afraid of you?
Someone else listened, too, and understood.
---
“Excuse me,” said Aziraphale to the ground, “but would you please get off of me? This is highly undignified.”
There was a howl of laughter from behind him. “You think so?” someone said sarcastically. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Cebs! Get offa him! And dun’t you try nothing funny, you,” it added to Aziraphale, menace packed into every grammatical error.
The weight on Aziraphale’s back withdrew, and he scrambled to his feet, moving into a defensive posture almost unconsciously. Then he stared.
“Good, isn’t he?” said the demon Hastur, and patted the enormous three-headed dog fondly. It snapped at his fingers, looking fed up. He cooed at it.
Aziraphale did quite a good impression of a fish for a minute. Then he said, “You--you have an actual--but wasn’t that just--“
“Yeah, the Greeks,” said Hastur, shrugging. “Mad as Hell, the lot of them, and this is me you’re talking to. Still, the Boss liked the idea. He’s a dog man, really,” he confided.
Aziraphale narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the demon. This didn’t sound at all like the infernal duke Crowley had described, or rather derided, so frequently. He seemed rather . . . cheerful, actually. Something was clearly Up.
Well, to hell with subtlety. “Where’s Crowley?” he asked.
Hastur snorted. “He’s buggered off, like a good little demon,” he sneered. “The Prince let him go, too. Didn’t even tell me he was here. Didn’t want to cause a fuss, he said. Ha!” Hastur said, and he said it, rather than laughed.
“Mm,” agreed Aziraphale, on the basis that it couldn’t hurt.
“Thought I might trot along up here to see if he’d left yet. He did, the worm. You know he got me demoted? Well, he did. Dog walker, me.” Hastur scowled.
“But that dun’t matter, right?” the demon added, grinning a gangrenous, lock-jawed grin. “’Cause now you’re here, and the snake certainly won’t come back, and who Up There is going to come for you?” He let out another surreal bark of laughter. “They know what you did this summer,” he drawled. “And so do I.”
Aziraphale looked toward the portal, and suddenly the guard Cerberus was there, simultaneously growling, drooling, and licking itself somewhere inappropriate. He looked back at Hastur only to find that the demon was directly in his face, shoving him up against the wall.
“You,” growled Hastur, grabbing the angel’s hair and banging his head against the wall as punctuation, “are the most annoying--Cebs, stop that--annoying creature in existence. Except for Crawly. Because you are so stupid, with your correct English and your sweater-vest and, you know, your general proximity to the snake, that just makes you even more annoying, not to mention stupid, stupid, stupid, because I know you helped him, and annoying, because he’s so annoying, and you know what--Cebs, quit it--you know what’s great? I can’t do anything to him, because the Prince said hands off, but you . . . “ He bared his teeth. It was definitely not a smile. “I can do what I want with you. And he likes you. So really, ripping bits of skin off you is almost like ripping bits of skin off him. Isn’t that nice? And maybe I we can learn how to use a fucking ansaphone as w--Cerberus, for the hate of Satan, stop that right now!”
All three of Cerberus’s heads were growling, not at Aziraphale, but at Hastur. In Dog, this particular growl did not mean, “Hey, there’s a threatening man with a knife right behind you,” nor did it mean, “Some complete idiot’s left the stove on again”. This growl, very clearly, meant, “You know what, I really, really don’t like you. I think I shall bite you now.”
One of the heads did so, while the others, demonstrating a lesser-known advantage of being a three-headed hellhound, continued to growl.
Hastur screamed, holding his injured forearm up to his face. Flecks of saliva seeped into his skin and then began to smoke. Hastur screamed some more. Then he hit Cerberus on the bum and shrieked, “Bad dog!”
The dog looked at Aziraphale with six-eyed woe[11], then put its ears back, slunk forward on its belly, and whined.
“Shut up!” shouted Hastur. “Get the angel and let’s go!” His eyes flickered madly, as if lit from within by the entirety of Dante’s imagination. (This was more or less the case.)
Cerberus picked Aziraphale up in its enormous, slavering jaws with surprising gentleness. Until a better idea presented itself, Aziraphale decided, he would hang there and attempt to think canine-sympathetic thoughts. Eyeing a hanging blob of saliva nervously, he rather wished he’d worn a rain jacket.
Hastur started to storm off, away from the hovering portal. The guardian began to follow, but then its ears pricked up and it sat down, looking around expectantly.
“You blessed son of a--!” Hastur began.
“Drop it, Zzerberuzz,” said a voice like flies on carrion, uncomfortably familiar. “Thou know’zzt not where it hazz been.”
---
“ . . . Konnichiwa. Bonjour.”
In the corridors of Heaven, Crowley stared. “Bloody hell,” he muttered, “I thought we came up with this.”
“Welcome to Heaven,” said the voice. “If you are a terrestrial agent, please press one. If you are recently deceased, please press two. If you are an invading demon army, please press three. If you have had your fingers cut off, please bash your head or other appendage against the keypad, and someone will be along to help you momentarily.”
Running down his list of options, which was very, very short, Crowley shrugged and punched three.
He waited, humming tunelessly to himself. Then he punched it again.
“Hello? Service!” he shouted, mashing the button irritably. “Hey!”
A haloed head poked out of the nearest door, caught sight of him, said “Oh” very quietly, and slammed the door. Crowley caught whispers along the lines of, “You tell him!” “No, you tell him, I told him last time!” Then an angel--he couldn’t tell if it was the same one--scurried out, glancing nervously over its shoulder at Crowley, and opened another door.
There was silence for a moment, and then a scream of rage. A pillar of flame burst from the room, followed by the anxious lesser angel.
“I don’t know,” shouted the Metatron, “is it so much to ask for me to get five minutes of privacy? At this rate I’ll never understand bridge! Why can’t someone else--”
Then it caught sight of Crowley, who was watching it with interest.
“Oh. Poot[12],” it said, and sighed. “All right, then.”
It clapped its hands wearily. Angels burst from every door, armed to the teeth, eyes blank, impossibly perfect. One of them tried to poke Crowley into a corner with, inexplicably, a trident. Crowley snarled at it; it regarded him coolly, not moving.
“Not much of an army, are you?” said the Metatron, who was still sulking. “I don’t know what’s got into your empty little head to make you come up here, but believe me when I say that you will very much regret it.”
“I didn’t want to come up here, you moron!” snapped Crowley, flapping a hand ineffectually at the diverse weapons being waved in his face. “The stupid portal went mad! What have you done with Aziraphale?”
“Aziraphale? Why do you care about Aziraphale?” said the Voice petulantly. “Nobody does. He’s a failure at being.”
Crowley narrowed his eyes. “Being what?”
“Just being.”
Something flickered in Crowley’s head. He tried to stuff it down. This was not the time.
“Look,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets, “just tell me how to get back to London and I’ll leave. Heav--I know that I don’t want to be here.”
The Metatron shrugged. “I would assume you go back through the portal.”
“Thank you, Holmes,” snapped Crowley, “but this portal goes to Hell.”
The assembled angels froze. The Metatron turned slowly to look at him.
“What,” it said carefully, “did you say?”
“This. Portal. Goes. To. Hell,” said Crowley. “It’s supposed to go to London. Some idiot’s messed with the wiring again.”
Spits of flame shot up erratically from the Metatron. “No,” it said, “no, because you shouldn’t be able to . . . you shouldn’t . . . unless--no.” A contorted look flashed over its face. “It’s Aziraphale, isn’t it?” the Metatron growled. “He’s done some sort of--messed with it--broken the barriers--probably didn’t even mean to--klutz--idiot--so many chances to--“
There was, for some reason, a rock in Crowley’s pocket. A tiny rock, more like a pebble, really. And then suddenly it was flying through the air towards the Metatron. It fell through the Voice and landed with a plop on the pristine floor, bubbling slightly.
The Metatron paused, closed its mouth, and regarded him solemnly. “Get him,” it said quietly.
The angels moved faster than even Crowley’s eye could follow. As the ranks closed in around him, Crowley was mildly disgusted to find that, even as the nearest chalk-faced angel drew back its pike to run him through, he was still waiting for a deus ex machina that he was unshakably certain would come.
He was even more disgusted when it did.
For lo, the silence of the multitudes was broken by a Voice, which spake thusly:
HEY! CUT THAT OUT!
The angel currently occupying Crowley’s full attention didn’t seem to hear, but that didn’t actually matter, because unseen hands hoisted it and one of its companions into the air and, in the tradition of bouncers everywhere, banged their heads together.
I SAID, CUT THAT OUT!
One angel hung in the air listlessly; the other said in a flat voice, “It is a demon, Lord. It must be destroyed.”
There was an enormous tsk of annoyance, and the angels flopped to the ground. RIGHT. FORGET COMPASSION. FORGET DO UNTO OTHERS. THAT’S SO LAST MILLENIUM. WHY DO I BOTHER?
The Metatron, which had been gaping in the general direction of the erstwhile attack-angels, finally found its voice and spluttered, “L-lord! What are you--?”
OH, SHUT UP, METATRON.
The Metatron swelled with fury. Crowley was impressed despite himself; he would have opted for cringing and bowing, himself. Not the Voice, though. It was astonishing in its stupidity.
“My Lord,” it said with measured dignity, “You must speak through me, to preserve Your detachment from and objectivity to the world and its souls. It is--“
WELL, THAT WOULD BE JUST LOVELY, said the disembodied voice sarcastically, IF YOU WOULD ACTUALLY SAY WHAT I TELL YOU TO SAY. There was a sigh like a desert gale. I KNEW I SHOULDN’T HAVE GIVEN YOU LOT EGOS.
“But--“ the Metatron began. Then it went cross-eyed and clawed at its mouth, which seemed very disinclined to open.
THAT’S THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS. THEY’RE LIKE PUREBRED DOGS, said the voice philosophically. ALL SPOTS AND SLEEK LINES AND NERVOUSNESS. It chuckled. HELLFIRE AND DALMATIANS. HELLO, BY THE WAY . . . CRAWLY, ISN’T IT? IT’S BEEN AGES.
“Mhn,” said Crowley.
RIGHT, WELL, SORRY, THERE’S BEEN A BIT OF A MISUNDERSTANDING. YOU CAN LEAVE IN PEACE. THEY WON’T HURT YOU NOW.
Crowley nodded numbly and turned to leave. Then he turned back.
The hall was totally silent. All of the angels watched him impassively, their weapons held in limp hands. They didn’t move, not even their eyes.
“Wait a moment,” Crowley said peevishly. He craned his neck in an effort to locate where the voice had come from. “What’s wrong with them? They’re not even snarling! They always used to snarl. Angels like a good snarl. I should know. What’s going on?”
There was a very pointed silence.
Crowley snorted. “Right,” he said. “Ineffable. I forgot. But see, the thing is . . . “ The demon gave his sharpest flash-bastard grin, the one he’d so often practised in the rear-view mirror at stoplights. “Sometimes the Ineffable Plan is the Ineffable Plan, and sometimes it’s just an excuse not to explain how horribly you’ve botched something up, you know what I mean?”
There was another pause. Then:
LEAVE, said the voice. The temperature dropped drastically.
“Where. Is. Aziraphale?” Crowley said levelly.
BELOW.
“You--what? Oh, shit.”
AND WATCH YOUR MOUTH, YOU, the voice added as Crowley scuttled to the portal.
Crowley paused, feet on the edge, and looked back at the Metatron, still staring at him with undisguised fury in its fiery eyes. What a berk, he thought.
Crowley gave it a winning grin and lifted his hand up to his ear, little finger and thumb outstretched, mouthing, “Call me”.
It would be nice to say the Metatron exploded. However, watching its contorted expression as he stepped sideways into the portal, Crowley rather felt that would have been too easy.
God watched him go, shaking a metaphorical head. WHAT A MESS, God said. WHERE’S MY BLOODY GUM?
---
“Hazztur,” said Beelzebub, leaning against a ledge of rock and staring at the duke with his horrible crimson eyes.
“Yes, Lord?” Hastur seemed to be trying to turn himself inside out to avoid the Prince’s gaze.
“What art thou doing, Hazztur?”
“I, er,” said Hastur. “I was, er, patrolling with the dog, like you told me, Lord, and-“
“You felt it neczezzary to zztrike the animal? You wiszh for the Mazzter to become even angrier?” Beelzebub glared. “You are already being puniszhed! Thou know’zzt how He dotezz on the Beazzt! Fool!”
Hastur actually whimpered. Aziraphale, wiping massive amounts of hellhound drool off of his coat, rather wished he’d had the foresight to bring an audio recording device of some sort. Purely for Crowley’s sake, of course.
The Prince turned his molten gaze on Aziraphale. He looked at the angel blankly for a moment before vague recognition set in. “Oh . . . the Princzipality, izzn’t it? What pozzeszed you, metaphzorically szzpeaking of courzze, to come down here?”
“I assure you, it was not intentional,” Aziraphale replied warily. This was, after all, the Lord of the Flies. He could do far more than haunt pig skulls.
“Oh, another tear in the fabric of szpace-time its-bloody-szelf, izz it?” Beelzebub rolled his eyes. “Happenzz all the time around here. Zzomething else Himself botched up, I might add. All hail Szatan,” he added loyally.
“All hail Satan,” squeaked Hastur, who had retreated to stand behind Beelzebub, practically vibrating with nervous eagerness.
Beelzebub paid him one brief, disgusted glance, then turned back to Aziraphale. “Thou muzzt leave now, light one,” he said. “We have been forbidden to harm you or the sznake, but do not doubt that there are thoze who would disobey even the highezzt orderzz.”
He turned to go.
“Hold on a moment, please!” Aziraphale said.
“Yeszz?” droned the Prince, looking at the angel over his shoulder.
Aziraphale exhaled sharply. He wasn’t happy about what he was about to ask, but what choice did he have?
“I wish to go to Earth,” he said. “This portal leads to Heaven. I don’t think I can open another one here. Do you know how to change the final location on one of these?”
“Heaven?” Beelzebub raised one perfect eyebrow. “That’zz odd. Still . . . everything happenzz for a reazzon, or szo we have been told.” It paused.
“Will you help, then?” Aziraphale said desperately.
“Don’t be ridiculouzz,” snapped Beelzebub. “Juzzt becauzz I am forbidden to harm you doezz not mean that I am allowed to help you, much lesszz that I want to. Besides--“ There was the merest suspicion of a flicker in the Prince’s eye. “--perhapzz Heaven izz the better placze for angelzz at thizz time. Ineffable merczy and all that.”
For a moment, Aziraphale saw again the empty faces of the Heavenly Host, the endless tents in pale grass. He wondered what had happened to the ones that hadn’t wanted to forget.
“I doubt that,” he said aloud. “I sincerely doubt that.”
Beelzebub regarded him impassively. Aziraphale sighed and turned toward the portal, and heard a crunch of rock behind him that signalled Beelzebub’s slow departure.
The only warning was a short, low bark behind him and the sharp snarling of rock on rock, and then Aziraphale was pinned to the wall by his throat.
“Never turn your back,” sneered Hastur.
Aziraphale tried desperately not to struggle, to persuade his body that air was not, strictly speaking, necessary, but bodies generally don’t buy into that sort of thing in the heat of the moment, and his didn’t. He flailed wildly, tugging at the arm pressed to his windpipe.
“Don’t bother,” snarled the demon. “We’ve been forbidden to harm you, remember? So for sure I won’t harm a hair on your lovely, fragile head, right? Ha!” he added, in a tone that fairly easily conveyed the message, ‘Wrong!’
Behind him, Cerberus howled, mournful and high and in eerie harmony with himself.
All across the stones, hellhounds looked up and bayed in response.
“Now you listen to me, you son of the Father,” Hastur growled, shoving his greasy face into Aziraphale’s so that they were nearly knocking foreheads. “I haven’t forgotten. I don’t forget. That snake has it coming. Sooner or later this fuss’ll be over, and then . . . “ He snapped his teeth. “Both of you. It’s only a matter of time. So you had better watch your--“
“Oof!” said Crowley, tumbled head over heels out of the portal.
“What?” Hastur snapped, whipping his head around.
“What?” Crowley said, looking up. “Hey! What are you--Aziraphale!”
Later Aziraphale would look back on the subsequent events and cringe, and Crowley would look back and preen. At that moment, however, Aziraphale’s confused human brain was deprived of oxygen, and he was frightened, and his vision was starting to blur; Crowley, for his part, was riding on rage and fear and hatred and paranoia and something similar to all of the above, which combined into a cocktail of red-hot emotion and adrenaline-fuelled insanity. At least, that was the reason he came up with later.
It was not a dignified blow, nor did it have much strength behind it. It was one of those instinctual bite-me-you-bastard slaps that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. It wouldn’t have in this case, if not for the fact that Hastur wasn’t expecting it and wasn’t nearly as well-versed in human pain as he might have been.
Hastur staggered backward, away from Aziraphale, clutching his cheek, staring at Crowley, who was holding his hand to his chest and swearing creatively. Aziraphale sagged to the stone ground, massaging his neck, and looked at Crowley in shock.
Hastur effectively broke the heavy silence that followed by roaring, “I’m going to kill you!” and leaping at Crowley, claws extended and already beginning to trail maggots.
As Aziraphale shouted something unintelligible and struggled to his feet, there came a moan from behind the nearest rocky pillar. Beelzebub rounded it furiously, started to say, “Hazztur, I am szick of thizz behaviour, do not think that you won’t be reported to the--“, and stopped in his tracks, staring at the tableau before him. His expression hardened; his eyes narrowed.
In the silence, Crowley moved slowly and deliberately to stand between the other demons and Aziraphale.
“Crowley,” the Prince said eventually. “What hast thou--“
“Hit me, Lord,” growled Hastur. “The bastard hit me. Look!” He pointed to the blurred hand mark on his cheek, which was still a mottled purple and seemed to be swelling.
“I know that, you idiot, I was attempting to make a dramatic sztatement!” snapped Beelzebub.
He looked at Crowley. Crowley looked back.
“Inszolencze,” said Beelzebub in a low voice. “Inszolencze and sztupidity. You had a chancze, Crowley. That izz more than anyone elsze hazz ever gotten. But thou hast broken the deal.”
He turned to Hastur. “Do with them azz you will,” it said. “And pleazz do not write up a report.” And he turned to go.
Crowley looked at Hastur. Nothing looked back.
The duke’s arm flew out and grabbed Crowley, dragging him away from the portal and the angel. Crowley frantically scanned the rock-strewn plateau, but there can be no deus ex machina in a godless place.
Something grabbed him from behind and began to drag him back. He craned his neck and saw Aziraphale, wide-eyed and untucked, holding on to his arm for dear life. With a great wrenching motion, Crowley ripped himself out of Hastur’s iron grip and fell backwards onto the angel.
“Thank you,” he said, scrambling up and offering Aziraphale a hand.
“You are a complete and total idiot,” Aziraphale replied, and took it.
The thought ran through both of their minds in an endless marquee: it had nearly worked. Nearly. Nearly.
As each gripped the other’s hand fiercely, dearly, like an anchor, like a lifeline, they saw Beelzebub. He had turned, and was watching them predatorily, his eyes narrowed to slits. His fiery nostrils flared, and he opened his mouth to speak--
Hastur lunged eagerly, hungrily--
Cerberus howled in desperate prayer--
And there was an answering whine, at a much higher pitch, muffled at first, then gaining strength, until at last it was the determined howl of a terrier with a mission.
In the space between stood a golden-haired boy and his dog.
“Hush, Dog,” Adam said. “Good dog.”
Dog wagged his tail and cocked an ear at Cerberus, who grinned in response.
The boy looked at Hastur, who subsequently froze in mid-leap.
“I think you’re supposed to be somewhere else, aren’t you?” Adam said mildly.
Hastur gazed at him blankly, then nodded, relaxed, and wandered off in the direction of the central city’s fires.
Adam shook his head sadly. “You don’t hit dogs,” he said. It sounded like an order to the universe at large, and it probably was.
He glanced over at Beelzebub, whose perfect face was contorted in disgust and fury. “What’s with him?” he asked Crowley and Aziraphale. They looked at one another helplessly, then turned back to Adam and shrugged.
“Thizz izz not your affair, boy,” snarled Beelzebub. “Crowley hazz . . . he . . . muzzt be punishzed. Go home.”
Adam took in his surroundings at a glance, the barren rock and singed, scrubby bushes, the charcoal and the flames. “I thought you thought this was my home,” he said.
“Oh, dear,” said Aziraphale under his breath. Crowley clamped his hand like a vise, keeping his eyes on Adam.
There were practically heat waves rising from the Prince’s immortal form. “Juzzt go!” he shouted. “Thisz doezz not conczern you!”
“Don’t see why you’re gettin’ so upset,” said Adam. “I haven’t done anythin’ yet. Why’re you gettin’ so upset? It’s a waste of energy, gettin’ all upset like that. Maybe you should bring my Father down so we can sort this out without you gettin’ all upset.”
“Do not try to intimidate me, Adam Young!” Crowley was highly reminded of the Metatron’s temper tantrum; Beelzebub wore precisely the same expression. “Your Father izz not pleazzed with you; He will not vouch for you!”
“See, though, I think he would,” replied Adam calmly. “He left them alone, didn’t he?” He nodded at Crowley and Aziraphale. “An’ he doesn’t really care about them, does he? Whereas me . . . “ Adam shrugged. “I’m just sayin’, maybe we should get him.”
The boy’s tone snapped into an iron wall. “Or maybe you should leave.”
Beelzebub was visibly shaken, but recovered himself quickly. “Fine,” he said. “I will not dezztroy you. Not now. But do not try this again, boy. We do not have infinite patiencze.”
He turned to Crowley. “Do not come back,” the Lord of the Flies buzzed at him. “He will not be szo eager to protect you szoon.”
He gave Aziraphale a cursory glance and sneered. “If ever you Fall,” he said, laughing like a chainsaw, “I shall be the firszt to the kill. Depend upon it.”
“Bye,” said Adam, and Beelzebub was gone.
“Oh, dear God,” said Aziraphale hollowly.
“Shut up!” hissed Crowley. He tried with moderate success to suppress a fit of terrified giggles.
The boy turned to Crowley and Aziraphale. Relief immediately evaporated, to be replaced by pants-wetting terror. They had never seen anyone look so angry.
“I told you not to do this,” he said flatly. “I told you not to worry about it. You just don’t listen. Why d’you think I said it if I didn’t mean it?”
“Er,” said Crowley.
“Ah,” said Aziraphale.
“You see--“
“Look, I--I know what it’s like to not understand stuff,” Adam said in a strained voice. “My whole life is practic’ly not understandin’ stuff. But haven’t you ever had to just trust somebody?”
They looked at each other.
“No,” said Aziraphale. “I don’t think I ever have.”
“Trusting demons would be a bit stupid, really,” said Crowley.
“What, never?”
They shook their heads.
Adam sighed. “Well, you’re gonna have to start,” he said, “because you’re done around here, you know. Not much use tryin’ to go to the top.”
“Yeah,” Crowley said morosely. “We’ve been to the top. Didn’t help.”
“Not one of my better ideas,” Aziraphale admitted.
Adam shrugged and sat down Indian-style on the warm stones. “I kinda thought you might do somethin’ like this. Grown-ups never listen to kids. It’s really wossname, typical behaviour. Thing.”
“We’re not--“ Aziraphale began.
“Yeah, all right, but you see what I mean,” said Adam. He scratched Dog’s ears. “And it wouldn’t’ve been so bad, either, if you hadn’t done that stupid thing with the doors.”
As one, the demon, the angel, the hounds, and the boy turned to look at the portal, still hanging in the air. It still flickered with vaguely purplish lights and generally maintained an appearance that would cost about three thousand pounds worth of CGI to create on Earth.
“Not to, er, break the dramatic flow or anything,” Crowley said, “but what exactly did we do?”
Dog, sensing his master’s mood, gave the demon the scathing look that Adam was too polite to indulge in.
“See? That’s what I mean,” Adam said. “Stupid. I bet you weren’t ever taught how to open a door without the circle,” he added, nodding to Aziraphale, “an’ somebody just showed you the motions of it an’ none of the safety stuff.” He glanced at Crowley. “Right?”
“Broadly,” said Crowley.
“Specifically, actually,” said Aziraphale.
Adam exhaled sharply and absentmindedly finger-combed his hair. “Well, I can’t explain it that well, ‘cos I wasn’t never taught about it.” He made a face. “We learned about jography and cirrus clouds instead. But basic’ly you can’t open a door to Heaven right next to a door to Hell, or else they get sort of . . . stuck together, right? Like if you're making jam toast and peanut butter toast and you pick up the peanut butter toast to eat it, but you drop it an' it lands on the jam and they get all stuck together.” He looked at their politely confused expressions. “Never mind. The point is, they turn into just one door, from Heaven to Hell, and the defences from the one door cancel out the ones on the other, and vicey versey.” He gave a derisive sniff. “Not that they’re very good anyway. I could do better.”
“Why in God’s--“ Aziraphale stopped, glancing around nervously, before continuing: “Why weren’t we told? It’s rather important!”
“Dunno,” said Adam, shrugging. “Like I said, I could do better, but it’s not my place.” He grinned. “Now, if it were me, I’d maybe make it so Heaven an’ Hell an’ Earth were all together in one place. Then we could just use trains an’ things, and things wouldn’t get so messed up all the time.”
Crowley snorted. “You don’t use public transportation much, do you?” he said dryly.
“Anyway.” Adam sighed. “What’re you guys gonna do? You can’t come back here, or go Upstairs. Where--“
They looked at the boy in astonishment. He shrugged again.
“I heard all of it,” he said. “Shouting all up an’ down all over the place. Gave Dog a headache. The Metatron’s pretty loud, isn’t it?” He laughed, the joyful, not-so-innocent laugh of a child enjoying a prank. “Did you really throw a rock at it?”
Aziraphale looked shocked. “Did you?” he asked Crowley reproachfully.
“It’s really annoying,” muttered Crowley.
“Oh my.” Aziraphale covered his eyes with one hand. “I will never be able to show my face in Heaven again.”
“I didn’t get the impression that they particularly wanted you to, angel,” said Crowley.
“That’s what I was sayin’,” Adam interjected. “You’re out. You could’ve just gone on for a while, you know, not knowin’, but sooner or later you’d’ve been tossed. It turned out to be sooner, I guess. So where d’you want to go?”
Aziraphale looked at Crowley, a question in his eyes. The demon grinned.
“St. James’s Park,” he said.
“Where?” said Adam blankly.
“In London,” said Aziraphale. “It’s where we started from.”
“Oh,” said Adam. He looked from one to the other, then nodded.
Dog rolled his eyes at Cerberus. He meant, What drama, eh?
Cerberus gave him a nudge. He meant, You have no idea.
“Let’s go, then,” Adam said.
This time it worked. Aziraphale could hear the ducks over the roar of their passage, and Crowley tasted the hint of London traffic in the air.
They left the portal open, winking occasionally, floating amiably in a crevice of Hell.
______________________
8. If he had been wearing a trenchcoat at this juncture and had mentioned the word ‘basement’ in this sentence somewhere, this sequence could have gone an entirely different way.
9. No, not the heads of the VISA Corporation.
10. A surprisingly contagious habit.
11. Which is three times more soulful than the usual doggie kind, and highly toxic, particularly to demons and damned souls. As a result, Cerberus was quite spoilt.
12. Part of the reason for the Metatron’s obvious emotional imbalance was the fact that it refused to curse, even in situations in which expletives were very much warranted, such as, for example, when Heaven is being invaded. Saying ‘fiddlesticks’ very rarely helps in these circumstances.
Part 3
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}