Chapter Text
“Come on, come on. Pick up, pick up, PICK UP-,” Crowley chants quietly, peering toward the office door, and then toward the window, ducking at shadows. The phone rings in his ear a few more times and he wonders if maybe he should have just run before-
“This is A.Z. Fell and Co-“
“Aziraphale. I need help,” Crowley cuts him off, speaking as loudly as he dares.
“Crowley! What’s wrong?”
“Hastur’s here to kill me.”
“What can I do?”
“I don’t have any more holy water. Or a holy weapon. Or anything! He’s much more powerful than me. But together I know we can- AUGH!!”
Hastur has found him.
His side burns as if aflame, and Crowley instantly recognizes the blistering hate of a curse- bonded to a sword that, glancing down, he can see has run him through.
“Crowley?! Crowley?!?” The phone falls from his hands as Hastur jerks the blade back out. A choked cry escapes Crowley as he falls to the floor beside the handset. He clutches at his side as pain creeps out from the point of origin- insidious in a way that a stab wound normally isn’t.
Above him Hastur laughs, “Groveling on the ground once again, Crawly?”
“Angel,” Crowley whispers into the handset. He can hear Aziraphale’s voice still calling for him from the receiver. “Need a distraction.”
There’s a pause, Hastur raises the blade again with the intention of rending more damage upon him.
“Close your eyes, Crowley,” comes the voice through the receiver.
The blade descends. Crowley closes his eyes. The room is suddenly filled with blinding holy light.
Hastur shrieks in pain, the blade falling from his hand. Crowley scuttles into action when it falls to the ground too close to his head.
“Thanks, Angel. Stay there. I’ll come to you.” He murmurs into the handset before taking off, cracking an eye open to confirm it’s safe.
Hastur is groaning and clutching his eyes, staggering around the room.
Crowley hoofs it for the exit.
When he makes it outside he hears the smashing of glass. Crowley glances back to see Hastur leaning out the window and sneering at him through squinted eyes. He needs to get out of here. Crowley reaches for his occult energies, intent on teleporting himself somewhere safe, only to grab ahold of nothing.
The energy is there but it’s nebulous. Crowley tries for a moment in vain to gather it up, only for it to easily slip from his grasp.
He growls in frustration- must be something to do with the curse- and snaps his wings into existence, wincing as their movement pulls on his now aching body. If he can get far enough away, he can slither somewhere into hiding- he knows London much better than Hastur.
Crowley spreads his wings to launch himself away from this situation- and is tackled to the concrete. His sunglasses smash into the ground, pieces of glass cutting gashes beneath his eye, the air leaves his lungs in a rush, and four heavy pressures hold him down. His stab wound throbs in pain.
Crowley is too dazed for a moment to comprehend what’s happening- struggling with his body’s automatic choking and coughing at getting the wind knocked out of him. His first successful breath brings a suffocating smell to him, of cold and rot and the promise of death. He stiffens in fear.
Hellhound.
Hastur’s ugly laughter echoes through the silent road from somewhere behind him and that jolts Crowley back into movement- which is apparently a mistake. Huffy snarling in his ear is all the warning he gets before teeth tear into his left shoulder, burning with cold.
A shout of pain joins the laughter in the night.
“Excuse me, I need a word with the traitor,” Hastur says in mock politeness. Whatever is going on with the hellhound, it seems he and Hastur have an agreement because the weight moves off of Crowley.
This is not good, Crowley thinks rather calmly to himself. His corporation is panting and whimpering on the concrete. His demonic essence is escaping with the leaking blood, damaged by the cursed blade and the hell frost. He can’t access the energy to perform miracles. It isn’t good…but it could be worse.
He pushes himself up on trembling arms, and makes it to his knees, wings pulled tightly to his back.
The Duke of Hell is looking down on him, looking pleased with himself.
“Had to make sure that you couldn’t slither away this time, traitor,” Hastur hisses. “I’ve got quite a plan for you. The eternal punishment of the Serpent of Eden- traitor to the damned and foiler of the Great Plan.”
“All that work for me? You shouldn’t have!” Crowley says with an earnest voice and a brittle grin. He must look rather pitiful because his attitude doesn’t even faze the duke, who scoffs. He needs to try harder.
“And I suppose for killing me they’ll reinstate your authority? I mean, are you still a duke?” Crowley leans his weight back in a more relaxed pose, gesturing with his uninjured arm and does his best “sitting bleeding on the ground unable to do miracles is totally fine with me” impression.
“I AM a Duke of Hell!” Hastur spits, stepping closer to him. “And not even your pathetic efforts could take that away from me.”
And Crowley plays his trump card and hopes for the best.
“Too bad Ligur’s not here to celebrate your victory- oh sorry! Is he still a sore subject?”
And Hastur grabs him by the front of his shirt and hauls him up into the air as if he doesn’t weigh a thing. “You’re going to WISH you could die like Ligur. When I’m through with you you’ll wish you could have FALLEN a THOUSAND TIMES INSTEAD!!”
Crowley’s wings snap back fully extended and give the strongest beat they can manage, pulling him out of Hastur’s grasp and a couple of feet higher in the air.
There is a race between Crowley’s wings and the charging hellhound that the demon wins by only a small margin. He can feel the tendrils of freezing breath on his legs as the dog jumps and snaps at him.
Hastur isn’t screaming after him– which is ominous- but Crowley flies as quickly as his wings can cart his injured body. The adrenaline and terror have narrowed his thought process to fleeing.
Crowley can barely believe he’s managed to escape Hastur again. By the time the Duke pursues him by air Crowley will have ducked into an alley and slithered into the sewers, or an abandoned building, or anywhere where he can lie low before finding help. Aziraphale hopefully hasn’t left the bookshop like he’d asked. If the angel comes to the demon’s apartment now…
All this musing comes to an abrupt end when twisting chains snap his wings to his body and two solid bricks smash into his injured side and right wing and begin to burn. Distantly, as he squirms desperately against the chains, Crowley recognizes the feeling of consecration. The burning pain weakens him, the thick metal holds strong, and he is unable to free himself.
Crowley falls.
-
There is a trail of blood down the alleyway that the injured demon has dragged himself into. He isn’t really hiding anymore.
Hastur can follow the bloody road straight to him at his leisure.
Crowley can’t perform miracles- the curse on the sword he’d been stabbed with had guaranteed that. He can’t fly either, his right wing forearm is broken and bleeding. He can’t even tuck his wings away and transform into a snake. Or move very much at all for that matter, body still partly bound in chains.
All he can do is wait. And hope for a miracle that is on his side for a change.
The hellhound tracks him down first. The twisted dog-shaped shadow that creeps down the alleyway before the fuzzy head even appears is terrifying. Or it would be if Crowley wasn’t both resigned and in too much pain to notice the effect.
He expects the creature growling cold air from behind twisted black fangs to drag him back to the Duke.
He does NOT expect a vehicle to suddenly come barreling down the alleyway and plow into the hellhound in front of him, narrowly missing his legs.
He most CERTAINLY does not expect that car to be his very own Bentley; though now that he can feel it in front of him, he had no idea how he had missed its approach.
And NEVER would he have ever POSSIBLY EXPECTED to see Aziraphale in the driver’s seat.