Blaze

Then he pushed open the door, and stepped into an inferno.

The whole bookshop was ablaze. "Aziraphale!" he called.

"Aziraphale, you-you stupid Aziraphale? Are you here?"

No answer. Just the crackle of burning paper, the splintering of glass as the fire reached the upstairs rooms, the crash of collapsing timbers.

He scanned the shop urgently, desperately, looking for the angel, looking for help.

In the far corner a bookshelf toppled over, cascading flaming books across the floor. The fire was all around him, and Crowley ignored it. His left trouser leg began to smolder; he stopped it with a glance.

"Hello? Aziraphale! For Go-, for Sa-, for somebody's sake! Aziraphale!"

The shop window was smashed from outside. Crowley turned, startled, and an unexpected jet of water struck him full in the chest, knocking him to the ground.

His shades flew to a far corner of the room, and became a puddle of burning plastic. Yellow eyes with slitted vertical pupils were revealed. Wet and steaming, face ash-blackened, as far from cool as it was possible for him to be, on all fours in the blazing bookshop, Crowley cursed Aziraphale, and the ineffable plan, and Above, and Below.

Then he looked down, and saw it. The book. The book that the girl had left in the car in Tadfield, on Wednesday night. It was slightly scorched around the cover, but miraculously unharmed. He picked it up, stuffed it into his jacket pocket, stood up, unsteadily, and brushed himself off.

The floor above him collapsed. With a roar and gargantuan shrug the building fell in on itself, in a rain of brick and timber and flaming debris.

Outside, the passersby were being herded back by the police, and a fireman was explaining to
anyone who would listen, "I couldn't stop him. He must have been mad. Or drunk. Just ran in. I couldn't stop him. Mad. Ran straight in. Horrible way to die. Horrible, horrible. Just ran straight in . . .”

Then Crowley came out of the flames.

The police and the firemen looked at him, saw the expression on his face, and stayed exactly where they were.

***

Good Omens - Saturday