“So. Charlie. Is that your real name?”
“Nope,” the girl answered cheerily as she wordlessly offered back the bag of popcorn back to Bela. Then the redhead picked up the binoculars again to look down at the street below them as she dangled her legs off the building edge. The effect had her looking more like a child on a swing than anything else.
It would be such a small, simple action to push her off the ledge, Bela allowed herself to think for a moment, before stopping herself. There was no purpose in it, and even as a demon, Bela liked knowing that there was a purpose, a structure, a reason behind the things she did. She still had that need to know that things were neat, that she could force her life to make some kind of sense – so of course as soon as she had heard of Abaddon’s impressive resurrection process she’d looked into it for herself. And because she’d always been good at finding what she needed, Bela now had a new body that was her own. And now, though all she ever heard about being a demon seemed to talk about storms raging inside, Bela couldn’t remember the last time she’d ever felt so at peace.
“And I mean I obviously already knew that Bela is not yours,” the redhead continued, still not looking at her, but for some reason trusting her enough not to make any moves against her. “The books mentioned that, in passing. Which is kind of funny since they didn’t usually give a different point of view, but they did a little, for you. Which was cool – I mean I love the boys, but things could get a little… dull? Sometimes? When it was all just from their perspective…?”
“Oh,” Bela said coolly, not sure she was interested to find out what her ‘perspective’ in these books Charlie had mentioned several times already had been. “So how do I live up to my description?”
“Well… there’s the whole veteran-of-hell thing which I guess makes you seem kinda different… but you’re still super hot. Books didn’t lie about that,” Charlie added, now lowering the binoculars and turning to look at Bela, her eyes wide and looking… honest.
Despite being still in the business of knowing how to look honest while being whatever you wanted inside, Bela preened.
“And I’m willing to bet that you’re still a good shot,” Charlie added, as she narrowed her eyes meaningfully into her binoculars. Catching the look, Bela glanced down at the street below them – and there he was. Just walking down the street like a regular person, and not a monster formed from pieces of them.
But he was nervous – Bela noticed the tight grip he had on his briefcase, her briefcase, and his furtive glances around him. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t think to look up.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry on that front, darling,” Bela murmured, as she took a better grip on her rifle and aimed, then fired at the man’s head.
Before her death, Bela had been a good shot. Now she was comfortable blowing a man’s brain up while he acted as a moving target fifty feet below her.
Charlie let go of her binoculars, an adorably huff frown now dragging at her lips. “Was that really necessary?” Charlie asked, sounding genuinely offended for this man they’d been tracking together for just under a week.
Together, Bela realised she’d thought. Which was strange – she had never been a team player of any kind, not even as a human…
Though the Stynes were hardly her regular quarry, she remembered, mollifying herself. And this hacker friend of the Winchesters she’d picked up, who seemed to know so much about her, so much about everything - well, she was hardly regular either, Bela thought with something close to fondness as she looked back at Charlie and shrugged. “No, but demon – remember?”
And alright, maybe she had been showing off just a little as well, Bela admitted to herself as she checked her light harness was perfectly in place before jumping off the building and gliding down the building side to the bloodied sidewalk. Again, unnecessary. She knew now, after all, how to repair her body. But Bela could still clearly remember the sensation of her body being torn apart, and if she could prevent harm to herself this time around, then she would.
And again, it did little harm for the old aesthetic, gliding down the side of the building like something in a dated spy thriller, Bela thought with a smile as she ignored the corpse suddenly at her feet, and bent down to open the briefcase. And then she took a breath, because even looking at the thing was enough to feel the power radiating from it.
The Book of the Damned.
Bela hadn’t even bothered to line up a buyer before starting her hunt for it – she already knew exactly the kind of money the thing was worth – it was fucking priceless. And anyway, she mused, as she picked it up gingerly, before gently laying the tome back in its casing, who said she couldn’t have a little fun with it first before she sold it on?
“You know,” a rather out-of-breath voice started to point out behind her, “if you’re thinking of going back on our deal you’ll still need someone to translate that thing. And – hey - I thought demons had some kind of code of honour to not back out on deals – what about that?”
Bela took the briefcase in hand and stood up, a smirk tugging at her painted lips. “Three problems there, Miss Bradbury. One, I’m not like most demons. Two, I might need a translator, but I have no reason to think you might be suitable for the job - I still don’t even know what you want with it.”
“You don’t,” Charlie agreed. “But you know me. You know what I’m good at, and you know that I finish what I start. And besides,” the girl added, a smile spreading across her flushed, very much alive face, “I can think of a few good ways we might be able to make working on books of untold creepy evil a little more fun…”
Bela raised an eyebrow as Charlie took a few tentative steps towards her. “Oh can you?”
“Yes… now are you gonna keep me hanging waiting to hear your number three issue?”
Bela stroked a finger along the line of Charlie’s jaw, and watched in appreciation as the woman leant into the touch, almost with a shudder, as she continued to stare up at Bela with smiling eyes.
“Well, I was going to say that we never sealed any deals. Not officially,” Bela said softly.
“We could fix that.”
And suddenly the redhead had leant up on her toes to close Bela’s mouth with her own. And though it was hardly necessary, Bela let her.
*
“You know… Sam found a cure for demons,” Charlie said one morning out of nowhere. Bela had just walked in to find the hunter sitting up in bed, still naked, but already, of course, with her laptop balanced on her knees, Bela noticed with that feeling of fond exasperation which was becoming frustratingly familiar. Frustrating, because even as a human she couldn’t remember being at such domestic levels of ease… ever.
But she’d be lying if she said that it hadn’t been all the fun that Charlie had promised.
Bela snorted as she lay across the bed next to the girl, glass of champagne already in hand. Because much as this was work, it was still decidedly a celebratory holiday. This was a find, even if it was still unreadable, that was better than the grail. Better, because what practical use could a cup a few thousand years old possibly have?
“He always was the smart one,” Bela noted lazily.
“Dean has his moments too,” Charlie put in vaguely, still looking at her laptop before eventually glancing down at Bela with considerable concentration.
“Would you ever want that?”
“Want what?”
“To be human again.”
Bela wrinkled her nose. “For what? This way I get to live forever, without having to keep concerned about the management above or below. This suits me.”
Charlie stared down at her for a long time after that, almost for long enough for it to feel unnerving. “I guess it does,” she stated eventually, and looked away, leaving Bela feeling oddly as though she’d just failed some kind of test.
“I’m not saying it’s not information I’m interested in though,” Bela added, putting down her glass on the floor. “It could be lucrative. It might be something I’ll have to plough you on.”
“Oh? And how were you planning to go about ‘ploughing me’, huh?”
Bela’s eyes glimmered wickedly as she pulled Charlie down for a kiss, ignoring the other woman’s squeals ordering her to watch the laptop. Obediently, Bela folded it and pushed it away from them, as she turned her complete attention to its owner, moving her mouth down Charlie’s body in a line of kisses, some, she knew, which would leave bruises, that had the hacker groaning under her touch…
*
Charlie disappeared less than a day later.
Nothing for a long time had left Bela feeling so demonic, so out of control with rage, so, so – so used.
Bela felt used.
She would claw that smirking little bitch’s face off until there was nothing left but her staring eyeballs; Bela would follow her across the Earth if she had to, she would make Charlie Bradbury regret the day she’d ever even heard of the fucking book. She would –
Bela had trashed the hotel room in it’s entirely before she breathed - unnecessarily, but the action calmed her. And then she read the note again.
Bells,
I hate to leave things like this, and I really AM gonna catch up with you and come through on that deal. Consider it translated… just… maybe not entirely by me. And I’m gonna need the book to help Dean first, and I just wasn’t sure how cool you’d be with that. Plough me later?
Charlie
Bela ripped the note into shreds, but she did so carefully, deliberately.
She was not quite so calm when she found out about all of her credit cards that Charlie had apparently spent a lot of time cancelling.
*
It was too late to do any clawing, or ploughing, or anything else Bela might have had in mind when she finally caught up with Charlie. The Winchesters – always with the damn Winchesters – had already burned the little hacker’s body on a woodpile. The whole effect, alone in a wooded clearing, came off as tacky, and tired. And strange, to see the two boys – men – themselves, standing there as the woman’s only friends.
Had they been? Bela wondered as she watched Dean sniped at Sam in a way that seemed familiar, but now his voice was laced with years of bitterness and weariness, and new hurts. And something else, something else was changed about him… Maybe that meant that Charlie had succeeded in ‘helping’ him – or maybe she’d failed, and now she’d died for nothing.
And the thought of that felt not only messy, but almost nauseatingly unnecessary.
The thought that these two, and the unseen demon, were all that were left to remember the woman whose body was now burning, also felt wrong. Surely someone with such a painfully cheerful disposition and easy-going manner had to have more friends.
But Bela knew better than any how simple it could become to act a part, and she also remembered how private Charlie had been. And when she’d once brought up Bela’s past, Bela has let it slide, because the other woman had spoken out of empathy, and not pity. Anyone who thought they could understand Bela couldn’t really be all that much of a people person. And though Charlie might not have been comfortable with killing, she’d certainly known how to.
But whatever Charlie’s past might have been before Bela had briefly come to know her, Bela was certain that it would not be Hell the woman’s soul would have been confined to. The possibility wasn’t even something Bela could accept, although…
Although where would she have gone? Bela hadn’t paid all that much attention to the rumours of Heaven closing its gates, but most still seemed to agree that the transfer of souls had become… messy, over the last year or so. And a mess meant something malleable, for those who had some knowledge.
So. A soul that could be negotiated for, a body in no worse a shape than Bela’s had been, than Abaddon’s had been, and a deal that Bela hadn’t finished cashing in yet, Bela thought with a smile as she approached the still smouldering pyre.
If she ever saw the Winchesters again, she would enjoy rubbing this in. Maybe she – maybe they – could make a point of dropping in for a visit. Because it might be nice, being a ‘they’.
*