Work Text:
Sergeant Shadwell could not tell you why he ended up in Louisiana. Sure, at the time, it had all seemed very reasonable. His rooming lady--an avowed Jezebel and witch--was selling her building and moving. One way or the other, the Sergeant was going to move. Probably someplace within his price range, meaning somewhere with an infestation of layabout roommates who never pulled their weight and drank his blood in the night.
Bedbugs.
At least the witch ran a clean place.
But Madame Tracy said that she’d found a place in New Orleans with three apartments over it, and didn’t it just seem like providence? She wanted him to come with her, but she never said those words. Not precisely.
She winked--winked (damn the woman!)--when she said that there were more witches in the States than back home.
Then, she read the forecast for balmy New Orleans in the middle of dreary London February, and reminded Shadwell that his rent included his promise to shovel the slush from the sidewalk.
So, he had gone, predictably (perhaps) to the New World. Following Madame Tracy, and damn the woman for it!
She’d seen to him after the move, but of course she had. What a thing for a witch to brag--having her own Witchfinder! She’d brought him around to meet all of her witchy friends, but they all had but two nipples each. Hippies, playing at witchcraft. Bunch of twattle, that.
Still, Madame Tracy kept feeding him, and he kept the really dangerous sorts away from her. For a bit, the third flat over the Madame’s Shoppe was unoccupied. Then, young Pulsifer had moved in with his own witch.
With the two of them running about, practicing their dark arts but never harming a soul, Shadwell had (grudgingly) accepted the existence of benign (not good, no never good) witches.
It got worse with the DeVille child. He’d met that one because of the cousin, a scarlet-haired boychild who seemed doomed (even at the tender age that Shadwell met him) to grow into the most sinful of homosexualists. He’d met the boy after Anthony Crowley, the devil’s own child, crashed his go-cart into the curb in front of the Shoppe.
While Anthony Crowley had little and less patience for Shadwell, the other one--Remiel, named for a Fallen angel, poor lad--Remy had taken time with Shadwell. Time and books. He patiently explained a variety of medical conditions that accounted for nearly all allegations of witchcraft, vampirism, lycanthropy, and devil worship from the dawn of time.
That child, quiet and polished, inquisitive and serious...he (Shadwell would never get used to the new pronouns) managed to worm his way into Shadwell’s heart and mind in a way that nobody else had.
“But, why Beelzebub?” he’d asked the lad, when he’d changed his name.
“It’s my middle name,” Remiel had said.
“Aye, but a demon?”
“My first name is a demon’s name, too,” he replied.
Remiel took his tea with near as much sugar as Shadwell, and he knew how to make Shadwell’s tea. They sat, drinking tea and eating a pile of fine biscuits at a café table on the gallery above the Shoppe. Traffic passed below, and Beelzebub laid a silken ladyfinger on his tongue.
“Beelzebub is a Prince o’ Hell, though. Boy, ye canno’ be calling yerself after him.”
“I’m not a boy, Mr. Shadwell,” he said, softly. “Dr. Masters is quite certain of how my body is going to develop. I am precisely how I was made.”
“But yer no demon!”
“Ba’al ze Bul was a noble God, kind to his people. He ruled Babylon, until some Christians came along and turned him into the devil. And then Milton demoted him.” The boy chewed a second biscuit thoughtfully, then swallowed. “I like that name and that legacy better than some Archangel who lusted after mortal women and Fell.”
“Could ye not go by yer confirmation name?”
“‘Valentino?’ Nah,” Beelzebub said, with a laugh. “Never thought you’d suggest that I use my ‘Papist’ name...”
“Better than Beelzebub,” he’d said.
And the boy laughed again.
In time, he’d become accustomed to Beelzebub, though he never could abide by Anthony Crowley. He thought the Crowley family had gotten themselves involved with la cosa nostra. Mafia, certainly.
The mafia connections didn’t seem to touch Beelzebub. That one kept his nose clean, but Crowley?
That kid was trouble.
In time, Shadwell had become accustomed to New Orleans heat and to working in the mall. In time, it felt like Beelzebub had always been Beelzebub. In time, it felt like Shadwell might have been born in New Orleans.
The city grew on you, in that fashion. In the fashion of a fungus.
Everybody becomes a native, eventually. And he liked it a great deal better than London.
The mall made him a veteran. He’d seen it on the paperwork, but he hadn’t said anything. That sketchy accountant had changed him from a Sergeant of the WFA into a Sergeant of the RAF. Shadwell had no cause for complaint. He was paid well and his doctor told him that having a job was good for a man his age.
(The doctor was another of Jezebel’s demands on Shadwell. He refused the hospital, but that young Dr. Masters made house calls. Sergeant Shadwell liked him well enough--completely unaware that Dr. Masters classified Sergeant Shadwell as a familiar of Madame Tracy’s and somewhat resented being pressed into veterinary work, even if the pay was good.)
Mall work was calm. Sedate. For all of his bellowing about the need for vigilance, Shadwell had never seen any serious action working here. The worst was the occasional stolen purse or lost child. Once, he’d gotten to use his lockpicking skills to help with a busted gate for the Yankee Candle Company. Otherwise, he rode his Segway around the mall and enjoyed the comfort of the air conditioning.
Crowley, who’d grown into his nature--a creature made of sin and shadows, flaunting himself in women's clothing and spreading all manner of temptation and damnation--had the gall to call Sergeant Shadwell a “visual deterrent”.
HA!
Sergeant Shadwell was on the move. His trusty Segway hummed beneath him as he rode it into his first real situation.
A visual deterrent. Sergeant Shadwell was a hardened criminal in his youth, and a Witchfinder after. He was well-acquainted with evil and the best way to dispatch said evil.
We’ll see who’s the visual deterrent, he thought as he urged his Segway faster, faster.
He could hear the ruckus before he saw it.
Last he’d heard from young Pulsifer was that it was a fight. What it turned out to be was a riot!
People punching, stomping, and screaming. Slapping each other with...pool noodles? The roar was like a beast unleashed from some horrible pen.
Out of nowhere, young Warlock Dowling (the diplomat’s son), sprinted from the crowd and hollered up. The Them, miscreants, looked down at him from the Center Court. Warlock tossed four bright yellow plastic bats up to The Them.
The kids caught the bats and began wailing on some innocent patrons.
Shadwell stepped lightly from his Segway and went for the metal stairs--storming angrily up to The Them--but stopped.
He heard her screaming. Heard her screaming his name.
“Mister Shadwell!” Madame Tracy cried, as a boy in a Tulane shirt swung a black pool noodle at her.
Sergeant Shadwell roared, and launched himself into the slapping, screaming, roiling mass of shoppers and loiterers. His progress was slow.
“Move!” he barked. “MOVE! Ya puddings! MOVE!”
He slogged through the crowd, feeling the sting of closed-cell foam across his back. A bit of hard plastic clipped his knee, but falling here would surely mean he couldn’t get back up. And he could hear her, squealing, not far. Not far!
Hard plastic struck his ear, but he barely felt it. She was so close now, in her soft silk shirt (the aqua one that brought out her eyes). He reached, but some teenaged idiot shoved him back.
He half spun with the force, and caught a glimpse of young Aziraphale scooping up the little Black girl who ran with The Them. Good--she was always the violent one. Pulsifer had the little prissy one under one arm. (The little prissy one looked decidedly unprissy--clothes mussed and glasses askew on his breathless face.) Newt was pulling Brian off of another shopper with his free hand. The other shopper, a Black fellow, was bleeding from his mouth.
Adam, their leader, was thrown over one of the café tables, and a man in...a helmet? A man in a mirrored motorcycle helmet held him down by the throat. Newt shouted at the helmet, and somehow (Shadwell never knew how) that mirrored helmet fled into the crowd, and disappeared.
Shadwell turned back, and Madame Tracy was screaming. Someone had shoved her down, and he couldn’t see her anywhere. That’s when he pulled it from the holster. Pulled it, aimed up, and squeezed the trigger.
The gunshot was very loud.
The riot stopped. It was as if Shadwell had slapped each of the participants, very hard. They stood, knelt, and sat in silence, but only for a moment. Then, like children waking from a nightmare, the crowd gave a great shout. They screamed like a cage of monkeys as they grabbed their purchases, their purses, their children, and ran.
They took most of the pool noodles and yellow bats as well. The result gave the impression of a ruffled phalanx in full retreat, spears wobbling as they ran.
Shadwell holstered his gun. It had done its job.
The corridor emptied quickly, until all that was left was a few store owners and managers, hovering near their shop. A few leftover black pool noodles littered the cobblestones, and yellow bats glowed malevolently in the afternoon sun that streamed from the skylights.
After the flurry of fleeing shoppers, Shadwell ran to Madame Tracy. She was sprawled on the ground, and her wig was askew. Otherwise, she seemed unharmed as he helped her to her feet.
As she threw herself into his arms and kissed him, full on the lips.
Sergeant Shadwell startled. He’d been a good-looking man in his youth, but he was more interested in chasing heists than in chasing skirts.
And so, in the fractured light of the skylight that had unfortunately taken a bullet (but fortunately had not shattered), Sergeant Shadwell enjoyed the third kiss of his entire life, and the best of the three.
When Madame Tracy broke the kiss, she ran her hands over his shoulders and arms, up his chest to cup his face.
“Oh, Mr. Shadwell, you’re my hero!” she cooed. “I was terrified.”
“Jus’ doin’ my job,” he said, shyly. “Jus’ my job.”
“Where are the kids?” she asked. “I think I saw little Warlock, before it all went crazy!”
“Warlock, this is at least mostly his fault!” Shadwell exclaimed. “He handed out the weapons!”
“Weapons!” Madame Tracy laughed, and picked up a pool noodle from the ground. “These are toys!”
“Tracy!” Anathema cried as she crawled from beneath a nearby bench. “Tracy, are you alright?”
“I’m fine, dear,” Madame Tracy said. “My hair’s a bit crooked, I think.”
“Oh,” Anathema clucked, as she helped Madame Tracy straighten and re-pin her blonde wig. “Better now.”
“Thank you, dear.”
Newt Pulsifer went to Anathema. He was dragging two of The Them along with him, and Adam trailed him. “Sergeant,” he said, softly. “Madame Tracy. Anathema.”
“Adam!” Anathema shouted. “What happened? What happened to you?”
She was on him, smoothing his hair and fussing around his throat. Shadwell saw it then, the red mark of a hand across the boy’s tender flesh.
“He got the best of me,” Adam whispered. “Couldn’t get passed the helmet. He just knocked the bat out of my hands. Then he choked me!”
“Who? Who did this to you?”
“Death,” he said, and handed Anathema a card. “He said this was for you.”
Shadwell recognized the card immediately. It was a tarot card. Major Arcana, number 13. Death grinned from his pale horse, hoisting his standard--the white rose on the black field.
Anathema took the card from Adam’s shaking hand, kissed him on the head, and then turned on the heel of her dark brown granny boots. She went into her shop, and a horrible wail came out of it.
Newt set the kids on the nearest bench and ran after her.
Aziraphale sat beside the boys, still cradling the little girl.
“What’s wrong with her, DiAngelo?” Shadwell asked.
“I have no idea, sir,” Aziraphale responded. “She won’t say anything.”
“Pepper?” asked the prissy one.
“She’s fine,” Adam croaked. “She just needs some time.”
“I’m fine!” Pepper shouted. “Are they gone?”
Adam nodded, and Pepper clung tighter to young Aziraphale.
“I want to go home!” she wailed into his chest.
Aziraphale held her tighter, rocked her as she wept, and began to hum. It was an old song, Italian. A folk song, and a prayer. Shadwell did not know the words, but he’d heard Lucia DiAngelo, the mater familia of the DiAngelo clan, sing it in Madame Tracy’s Shoppe.
Aziraphale was still humming and Shadwell was still watching him when Anathema and Newt returned from their shop.
Warlock Dowling walked just behind them, looking pale, but unharmed.
“You’ve got a lot to answer for, young man,” Shadwell said, sternly.
Warlock stared at him, but only for a moment. In that moment, Sergeant Shadwell swore he saw the devil’s own son.
But after that realization, young Warlock broke into a run, towards the Information Kiosk and out of Sergeant Shadwell’s reach.