#galacticmenace

Maybe there is something to the idea of letting heaven and hell war it out after all, if only so another trapped human soul doesn’t have to wail for eternity in the drywall.

But here he is, wrists weighted in chains, three demons behind him and two ahead and one who’d been hanging upside-down from the ceiling in the lift, who crawls down so that she can leer at him through the bars of the gate. It brings her close enough for her to smell her breath. She has a squashed bat’s face, upturned nose and needle-thin teeth, and webbing that folds between her fingers when she points one at him and gives it a shake.

He leans away. Darts his eyes at her, a quick downward flick.

The jeering he expected. What he doesn’t expect is for her to open her mouth and say, “I don’t know what you thought was going to happen,” because the thing in her voice —

Is pity.

He checks over his shoulder. She’s not talking to him, right?

She grabs onto the bars, leaning in to hiss, “How could you be so stupid, Master Crowley?” with something uncomfortably close to panic. “They don’t fall for us. They don’t fall. No one wants to kiss a snake, much less one of them!”

Which is … which is so bizarre that, without thinking, he opens his mouth.

“That’s — that’s not really what I’m on trial for.”

“Isn’t it?” she says, and then the thick metal door at the end of the hallway swings open with a wail of its damned hinges.