The Angel's Curse

An Explanation

As if she knew, Essie drew away from the demon, grinning. Without looking behind her to see Aziraphale standing in front of the sofa, she straightned up and placed a heavy boot in the center of Crowley's chest to keep him on the floor. Although the demon was free of the incapacitating spell her kiss had been inflicting on him, the shock and horror still rendered him unable to move.

"The angel awakens," she drawled, her green eyes lingering on Crowley's.

"Aziraphale..." began Crowley, weakly.

"Don't. " The angel's voice was colder than Crowely had ever heard it before, and it shut him up immediately. He was really in trouble now.

"Oh, Mr Charming," she sang to the demon on the ground before her. "Did you think you were pure?"

Aziraphale's eyes were fixed on Essie, who turned her head dramatically to meet his gaze. She looked downright gleeful at the tension filling the room with a horrible, static energy.

"You know, you weren't supposed to wake up until I had finished taking care of your pet demon," she continued to Aziraphale with the casually disappointed air of one commenting on how the weather had disrupted their Wednesday evening bicycle ride about town. "Seems I'll have to do this another way, then."

Without warning, she delivered a powerful kick with the steel-toed tip of her boot directly to Crowley's head.

He yipped as stars exploded behind his eyes, accompanied by a deafening thunderclap of pain. An odd, high-pitched buzzing tone sang in his ears and drowned out what happened next.

Essie sprang lithely from the disoriented demon, and went for Aziraphale. She flicked out a switchblade as she crossed the room.

Azi's eyes widened and he instinctively used his still-extended wings to shield himself as she charged him, but he held his ground. He reached out as she raised her blade, and caught her wrist as it came down.

She twisted, not out of his grip, but so that she could reach the bloodstained bandage on his free arm. Aziraphale, taken aback, did not react before she had grabbed it and torn it from his arm. Then she was gone, teleported out of the bookshop and disappeared to God-knew-where, leaving only empty air in Aziraphale's hand.

The angel stared at his palm for a moment, then surveyed the damage to his shop and to the demon lying stunned on the floor.

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Thousands of miles below the Earth, in a deep, stinking hole filled with various vermin, likewise assorted filth, and an unholy amount of bad senses of humor, Essie approached a battered and moth-eaten sofa.

Occupying the sofa was a woman and a man.

"Welcome back, daughter," said the woman. Her voice was delicate, but contained shards of ice and broken glass beneath its breezy surface. "Have you got it?"

"Yup," responded Essie with a grin, handing the angel's bandage to her.

The woman who took the scrap of red-soaked fabric from her had long black hair, pale skin, and she was Essies's mother.

She was also a witch, by birth.

Essie was a demoness, but she was no ordinary demoness. In fact, she was only half demoness. The other half of her as pure, black-magic sorceress. It was why she had been able to cast--well, begin to cast a spell on Crowley to remove him from the equation while she extracted a blood sample from Aziraphale.

The woman, whose name was Veranine, tutted at the bandage in her hand. "I would've preferred it to be fresh," she said with some resignation, "but this will do."

"She took all this time to get it, and it isn't even fresh?" said the man on the couch beside Veranine, his voice sounding unpleasantly like wet leaves being scrunched in a fist.

"Hullo, Duke Hastur," purred Essie.

The senior demon grunted his acknowledgement, then said irritably, "Well, get on with it, witch."

Veranine only gave him a condescending look. "Now, now, Hastur, please do be patient. The Powers that Be understand how important this is, and that it is well worth the time it takes."

"I still don't understand what exactly it is we're doing," whined Hastur, his beady black eyes glinting in the muddy light.

Veranine took the bandage and inspected it, turning it over in her hand. "What we're doing, my incompetent friend, is clipping the wings of an angel."

Hastur smoldered at being called incompetent, whatever that meant, but listened intently to what the witch was saying.

"What our spell is going to do is remove the angelic properties of our dear Aziraphale, and gift him with free will."

The demon shrugged, still not getting it.

Essie rolled her eyes and took over. She may not have the same powerful magic as her mother, but she understood well enough what was happening and why it was significant. "We are going to use this blood to complete an enchantment Mother had cast on Aziraphale a few weeks ago to turn him human. The enchantment is going to strip him of his holiness--" she spat the word with a certain amount of disgust--"and render him a mere human. From there, he'll be harmless. If it works, we can apply the same spell to all the angels of Heaven."

Hastur sniffed. "Awright, then. It'll be a slow process, but that's craftmanship, that is."

Veranine offered him a sly smile, then went to work.