Archive of Our Own

The Luggage

Crowley sat slumped on his throne in Hell, chin propped up in his hand as he attempted not to die from boredom. The demon in front of him was head of Supernatural Relations and had been blabbering on for a good fifteen minutes about their werewolf alliances, and how Hell had been working on a preventative for the werewolf flea, which had been especially bad this year and was entirely resistant to the little flea collars you could buy in the human shops. The demon launched into an update on the number of packs that were in ‘partnership’ with Hell along with any and all issues they’d had in the past year, including the fleas, mange, hunters, cattle and chicken shortages, distemper, and Covid-19. Crowley had lost interest sixteen minutes ago, but the head of Supernatural Relations was used to this, and carried on regardless.
The demon was about to launch into a brief summary of their vampire allies, many of whom had recently perished at the hands of hunters, when he heard a scuffle outside the doors. He trailed off, slowly turning as the sound of running feet and shouts grew louder. Crowley sat up straight, listening to a growing cacophony of pounding footsteps and screams. In most parts of Hell, screaming was a good sign, but not here.
A demon burst through the heavy wooden doors and slammed them shut behind him, shouting for the other demons to bolt and bar them. Having heard the commotion outside, the others didn’t hesitate to heed his advice.
“What. Is happening?” Crowley asked the intruder, trying to maintain an air of calm and order on this side of the chaos.
The demon jumped, spinning to face the throne, and stood still for a moment, catching his breath and listening to the commotion outside. “It came in,” he said, panting, “with a new batch of souls. It’s—on a—rampage—”
“What is on a rampage?” Crowley asked, his non-patience already wearing thin. His first assumption was that this was yet another ridiculous assassination attempt. He wondered who he’d get to kill today.
“Looks like a—a big wooden chest. Kind of a—a treasure chest. Big enough to fit a man inside. It’s…It’s fit several already.”
Crowley narrowed his eyes. ”A chest,” he repeated.
The demon nodded, glancing back at the doors as more screams erupted outside. They sounded quite close. “It has…Little legs. Feet. Hundreds of little feet! And it just—Snap! Chomps down on you. It ate Jael and Haster whole!”
Crowley was about to ask if they’d all consumed massive amounts of hallucinogenics, when several dull thumps indicated that more demons had smacked into the doors and were trying to get inside.
“Don’t open the doors!” the demon shrieked as the outsiders pled to be let in.
The shrieks stopped, and they could hear the demons turn and run in opposite directions. Then there was a new sound: It was the sound of many feet, possibly hundreds of them, running toward the doors. The demon who’d just made it inside turned and ran for the far end of the room. He leapt onto a table and pulled himself up onto a chandelier just as the doors shuddered with impact.
The hundreds of feet backed up. The thing stampeded forward and smashed into the doors again, causing the ancient wood to bow and creak.
Crowley stood up and his angel blade slid into his hand. The other demons backed away from the door, each one trying to get behind the others until they were more or less pressed against the walls. The thing outside backed up.
It charged.
The doors exploded inward as the thing burst through. The demons turned away, shielding their faces against the sudden spray of wooden projectiles. When they looked back at the busted doors, there was…
Well, there was a large pile of wood.
The pile of wood shook itself, and the debris fell off to reveal an antique wooden chest. The demon who was now clinging to the chandelier had been accurate in his description: It looked a bit like a treasure chest, but it was massive: Big enough to hold a man inside, at least if he was folded up a bit first. There were a lot of scratches and dings on it, and the metal bindings were tarnished in places. There was a knife stuck in its side, and what looked like teeth that had belonged to a large animal embedded in its lid. The, for want of a better word, ‘face’ of the thing, was stained with blood, some of it old and dark and some of it extremely fresh.
It was standing on hundreds of feet. The feet appeared to be of the human persuasion: They were not made of wood.
The chest gave the impression that it was taking in its new surroundings, which must have been difficult because it didn’t have any visible eyes. Its lid creaked open, revealing rows of sharp teeth that were definitely not made of wood. It made a low chuffing sound, like it was sniffing the air, and finally seemed to focus its attention on Crowley.
Crowley sheathed the angel blade. Pointy things were obviously not the solution here. He pulled a little cloth bag out of his pocket and tossed it toward the chest.
The chest opened its lid wider, revealing a massive pink tongue. It caught the bag and the lid snapped shut. It stood still for just a moment, then its hundreds of feet began propelling it toward the throne.
“Sisto!”
The chest froze.
Crowley strode toward it, one hand in his pocket in case it required further hexing. The rest of the court shuffled forward minutely, curious but not suicidal.
Up close, he could see a little brass nameplate beside the front latches. It read, Philip Sherman.
“Who the hell is Philip Sherman?”
Hushed whispers passed around the room, until finally one demon stepped forward. Crowley recognized him as the head of the Intake department.
“There was a Philip Sherman admitted today, sire. A few hours before this…This showed up,” he said.
“Bring him here,” Crowley snapped. “Now.”
The demon vanished, reappearing after a very tense minute in which nothing in the throne room moved. When he returned, he had with him an old man, tanned and wrinkled, who had the wide-eyed look of someone who still doesn’t quite understand that they’ve died and gone to Hell.
“Philip Sherman?”
“Er…Yes?”
Crowley gestured to the chest. “Is this yours?”
A nervous grin broke out on the man’s face, which slowly gave way to relief. “Oh! You’re here,” he said to the box. “I must be dreaming, then, because I doubt even you could follow me to Hell.” He patted the lid affectionately. “Uh…” He looked back at Crowley. “What--?”
“Why isn’t it moving? Because it tore through Hell and slaughtered a handful of my demons.” He snapped his fingers and Philip Sherman doubled over, groaning in pain. “Ever feel pain like that in a dream? You’re very much awake, dead, and your soul’s gone to Hell. Now tell me about your box, and how to make it go away.”
The man gasped, clutching at his stomach, then his head, trying to speak through the pain but only managing a soft whimper. Crowley rolled his eyes in annoyance and waved a hand dismissively; Philip righted himself, visibly relieved.
“It’s called the Luggage. Because it’s…Well, it’s…Luggage. Um. Got it ages ago from a—I guess you’d call him a witch doctor?” He stood up on shaky legs, using the Luggage for support. “It holds your things for you, like a regular suitcase—” he went to open the lid further, but it was hexed shut. “Um. If you could un-freeze it, I can show you—it won’t attack you now that I’m here, it just gets upset when it can’t get to me, you see, and has a tendency to, um…Trample people, or eat them. But it’s perfectly safe now.”
Crowley snapped his fingers, and the demon court, which had been slowly shuffling toward them, now leapt back as one. The chest creaked and moved its hundreds of feet, turning so the front of it was facing Philip.
“Open,” said Philip.
The Luggage opened to reveal a perfectly ordinary suitcase interior, lined with red satin and packed with normal things like soap, a shaving kit, and neatly folded laundry. The demons leaned forward, curiosity getting the better of them.
“It does your laundry for you,” Philip explained. “Just toss the dirty stuff in, and when you open it later it’ll be clean and…Folded…” He remembered that he was in Hell, and a quick glance around the room suggested that laundry was not the primary interest here. “So are you all, uh, demons, or…?”
Because the man was dead and in Hell, Crowley was able to snap his fingers and show him what they all looked like under the meat-suits. Philip made a strangled noise in the back of his throat and his eyes widened. Another snap and everyone looked human again.
Philip coughed, shivered, and straightened. “Right. Okay. Yes.”
“It had a mouth with lots of teeth before,” Crowley prompted.
“Yes. It, uh…Has a lot of different insides. It holds your things, right, but it also has a mouth, or it can be empty so you can hide in it, and sometimes it lures people in with gold and then eats them…Um. That’s…Those are the things I’ve seen it do, at least.”
“Can you make it go away?”
“Um. No, I don’t think so.” He glanced at the murderous look in Crowley’s eyes and remembered quite vividly both the pain he’d inflicted as well as what he’d looked like when he wasn’t disguised as a human. “The Luggage is loyal to its owner,” he said quickly. “It will follow me anywhere, though I didn’t know it could do the afterlife. It does wander off sometimes, but it always comes back, like a boomerang.”
The thought of the Luggage reappearing suddenly at some point in the future was unappealing. Crowley scowled.
“I’m sure I can find a way to destroy it, then.”
“You could, I’m sure,” Philip said with a forlorn look at the big chest. “I’m sure you have all sorts of ways to destroy things, including magical chests.” He brightened. “There’s really no need for that, though. I could—I could give it to you. Transference of ownership. Then it would follow you, and obey you. Well, mostly obey—it does have a mind of its own, or whatever passes for a ‘mind’ when you’re a few slabs of wood—”
“Would it stop eating my demons then?”
“Oh yes! It’s psychically linked to its owner, so it would only attack people you wanted it to attack, or…Well, anyone it thought was a threat to you. Normally it just hibernates at the foot of your bed—er, throne, I suppose,” Philip corrected, glancing at the ornate chair. “I don’t suppose demons sleep much.”
“Not if they want to continue existing.” Now that the threat of being eaten by a magic suitcase had lessened, Crowley was starting to get an uneasy feeling about the dead man. Something about the way he existed seemed off. “You said you acquired it from a witch doctor. How?”
“I was in Senegal at the time. Or—no, it was the Congo. Doctors Without Borders—we went everywhere, it’s hard to keep track. Yes, it was the Congo. There was an outbreak of the Marburg virus—it’s a hemorrhagic fever, very high death rate in these remote places. We lost our other doctor and five nurses…Good people. We only managed to save about half the villagers, but two of them were the witch-doctor and his son, and he was so grateful that he gifted me the Luggage. It’s been incredibly useful—you can fit an entire hospital’s worth of medicine and equipment in it, and the TSA won’t mess with it. Stopped theft at Customs entirely, which is normally quite high. It’s saved my life on many occasions. Even saved a whole town from guerilla fighters.” He cocked his head and smiled faintly, remembering. “Saved me from an actual gorilla, too.”
There were whispers among the gathered demons of “saved a village?” and “Doctors Without Borders?”
Crowley’s eyes narrowed. “Do you know why you’ve been damned to Hell?”
Philip looked at him with big puppydog eyes. “Is it because, deep down, I never believed in God?”
There were snorts of laughter from the edges of the room.
Philip glanced around at the sneering demons and his eyes began to water. “Um. Too many of my patients died? I cut people off in traffic? Don’t tell me it’s the masturbation thing, because every man on the planet would be down here.”
There were more giggles and whispers. Could the man not think of anything bad he’d done?”
“Intake?” Crowley snapped, and the Head of Intake appeared beside him. “Show me his papers.”
The demon passed him a black file folder. Crowley opened it and started to read.
“It says here your soul has been sentenced to eternal damnation for killing 211 people.”
Philip’s jaw dropped. There were more whispers around the room, but now along the lines of “not bad” and “can’t say I’ve done that many as a demon. I better get cracking!”
“Sorry, um, does it say how? Because I know I’ve lost a number of patients over the years, but I did try to save them all. I thought that ‘killing’ had to be, well, purposeful.”
Crowley turned the page. “T’bok Ma!med,” he read, “killed May 5, 1976 via Luggage.” His brow furrowed. “Hold on. Debok M’banu, May 5, 1976, via Luggage. Janes Adeyama, blah blah blah…Luggage.” He ran a finger down the page. “Luggage, Luggage, Luggage…” He turned page. And turned it again. “Every kill was ‘via Luggage.’” He handed the file to his right-hand, Gerald, and addressed Philip: “It seems that, because you own the Luggage, the…Algorithm, as it were, that the Higher Powers use to determine if you’ve been a Good or Bad Boy, has categorized it as a weapon, and therefore you would be responsible for wielding it. And you did say that it has a psychic link with you, and knows when you want it to kill someone.”
Philip wrung his hands together. He’d taken his oath as a doctor seriously to “do no harm,” but when there were so many angry people trying to kill him, it had been awfully nice when the Luggage had…Well, eliminated the problem. Somehow, he’d never seen the Luggage killing mercenaries, thugs, and psychotic child rapists trying to break into the pediatric ward as being bad. Yes, technically, they were people too, but they were very bad people, and they usually wanted to kill him, the other DWB staff and volunteers, and sometimes the entire village. The way he’d seen it at the time, the Luggage was saving lives, just like the doctors were. He’d be the first to admit that, once in a while, it got a bit carried away, like the time it ran into the mercenaries’ airplane as it was taxiing down the runway and killed everyone inside, despite the fact that they were fleeing (from the Luggage); or the time when he and a group of children accidentally stumbled into a poacher’s camp and the Luggage not only ate the two poachers who were hanging out (they had, to be fair, threatened to gut Philip and all the children and mount their heads on their Jeep), but it then refused to return with Philip and laid in wait at the poachers’ camp for the others to come back that night, and it must have gotten them because it returned the next day looking proud of itself and burped out two fresh pairs of boots and a large-game hunting rifle.
“I…Suppose they were my fault,” Philip sighed, hanging his head in shame. Had his whole career been a lie, then? Between him and the Luggage, they’d saved hundreds of lives—but killing ‘bad guys’ was still killing, and ‘thou shalt not kill’ was a rather important commandment. The Luggage wouldn’t have killed all those people without Philip—well, it probably wouldn’t have killed most of them without him, he thought.
Crowley had seen other things in the man’s file, too. He’d saved so many people in his long life, sometimes at great risk to his own life (though that risk seemed to have decreased sharply when he acquired the Luggage). He had been a Good Man, a man who was always there to lift the spirits of others, lend a word of encouragement, and above all Never Give up Hope. That sort of thing was dangerous in Hell. If you had someone on the racks shouting, “You can do this! Just five more hours till their shift ends and we get a break!” and “You’re gonna be alright, Earl! When he slams that poker up your backside again, just pretend it’s your late husband getting frisky with you,” it made torture more difficult. No—he couldn’t have anyone being kind in Hell. Not only did it ruin the mood, if it became contagious, he’d have one hell of a time getting things back to normal.
“Gerald,” Crowley said. “I need form…Form, uh…”
“Form 36 B,” said Gerald, who’d managed to stay alive as Crowley’s right-hand man by developing borderline clairvoyance of his boss’s next move. “I’m halfway through it, sire. We’ll have him up to Heaven in no time.”
Crowley nodded. “Now, you said you could give me ownership of this box?”
Philip blinked, looking from one demon to the other. “Heav--?”
“Yes, just a little computing error. Angels aren’t very intelligent, but unfortunately, they run the show. Anyway, it’s obvious from your file that you’re a—a good person,” he said, involuntarily sneering a bit as he said it, “And you don’t belong here. It’s an easy enough fix, though—we’ll send you up with the right paperwork, and you can enjoy eternity reliving your happiest moments instead of being boiled in sulfur. You won’t need the box anymore, of course…”
Philip’s head was spinning. He’d just found out he was dead and in Hell; then, that he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of (admittedly bad) people; and now…Well, he was still dead, but they wanted to send him somewhere much nicer. But if he was in Hell, then…Was it all a trick? A demon prank they played on the new souls? ‘It’s all been a mistake, off you go to Heaven’ and then ‘hahahaha, just kidding, “Heaven” is our name for the pit full of scorpions and sulfur and pointy things that climb into your eyeballs!’
Oh, well. It’s not as if he had a choice. Best, then, to go along with them and brace himself for the Pit of Doom. “Yes, the Luggage. Um. It’s been a long time since it was given to me, you understand, so I might not recall exactly how…But…” He cleared his throat and turned to address the Luggage. “Right. I’m dead, so there’s no point in keeping you anymore. You belong to—” He turned to Crowley “Um, I never got your name—”
“Crowley.”
“You belong to Crowley. Okay?” He patted the weathered wood fondly, one last time. “Be good.”
The Luggage creaked and turned to face Crowley. The letters on its little brass nameplate swirled and changed from Philip Sherman to Crowley. A crown appeared next to his name.
“There. All yours,” Philip said with a sniffle.
Gerald handed Form 36B to Crowley to sign, which he did, then sealed the form and Philip’s file in a large black envelope. He stepped forward, handing the envelope to the man and grabbing his arm just above the elbow. “Haven’t gotten to do this in 80 years,” Gerald said cheerfully. “I hope the winged bastards don’t give me any trouble. Would be a shame if I had to slit their smug angelic throats.”
Gerald vanished with Philip, and the other demons began to chat amongst themselves. The one who’d been up in the chandelier the entire time finally chanced coming down, and was relieved when the Luggage didn’t even look as though it had noticed. Crowley eyed it thoughtfully, ideas turning in his head faster than he could keep up with them.
Gerald returned, and Crowley turned his attention to him.
“No trouble, sire,” Gerald said.
Crowley smirked. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Next time, I bet. Another 80 years, I’m sure another good one’ll slip through the cracks, and I bet they’ll give me Hell when I send ‘im back.” Though demons feared angels, they also longed for a clean shot at killing one of them, which was generally frowned upon from a Public Relations standpoint unless the angel was giving him shit first.
“Get them to clean up the mess,” Crowley said, reverting back to business. “The main doors will need replacing, as will these. If it trampled anyone, they can apply for new meat-suits or send theirs in for repairs. I’m adjourning court for the day.”
“Yes, sire.”
Crowley vanished, taking the Luggage with him.

Crowley’s main HQ topside was not exactly homey from a human perspective. It was located in an abandoned asylum, so abandoned that there was no longer a visible road leading up to it. The interior looked a lot like Hell, which made it homey to the demons, and his Earth courtroom was set up almost identically to the one in Hell. The main difference was that there was dust on the furniture on Earth, and ash on the furniture in Hell.
He ported into his private chamber with the Luggage, using his power to move it so that it wouldn’t accidentally destroy the rest of Hell and his HQ trying to get to him. He’d have to experiment with its abilities. For now, he just wanted to relax.
The Luggage looked at home in the dimly lit room. There was an ancient-looking desk covered in yellowing papers and leather-bound books (and some books bound in other types of skin, but it’s best not to think about those), and a chair in front of it that looked like a smaller, less impressive version of his throne. There was a massive wardrobe, the kind that children liked to climb inside in case it lead to another dimension. And there was a large, four-poster bed that looked like it had been taken straight from the set of Game of Thrones. Though Crowley seldom slept (it was a lot easier for someone to kill you when you were sleeping), he liked to lie on it and close his eyes and think.
“Make yourself at home,” he said to the Luggage.
It took in the room, then pattered over to the foot of the bed, turned so its back was against the footboard, and settled down, its feet disappearing into…Wherever its feet went. Crowley laid down on the bed, and the Luggage began to snore gently.
I should have asked if it needs to eat, he thought. He wondered if it was flammable, since it was made of wood, though given its battle-marked surface, it looked like it had been through much worse than a fire and come out unscathed. He wondered what it would have done if Philip Sherman had been sent straight to Heaven as he should have been: Would it have found its way there, too? He pictured it charging down hallways and knocking over ornate, tacky statues, angel blades embedded uselessly in its trunk as it ran amok, feathers clinging to its lid and stuck in its teeth. He smiled.

Crowley was just wrapping up another dull day at Demon Court when his phone rang. The ID said, “Not Moose.”
“Squirrel.”
“Crowley. We need…your help,” Dean said, reluctantly.
“What a surprise.”
“It’s witches.”
“I think you’ll find my mother is better at dealing with those.”
“Yeah, we tried that.”
“And?”
“She went after them two days ago. We haven’t heard from her since. Don’t think they killed her, but it’s not looking good.”
Crowley sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What about the angel?”
“Yeah…After we lost contact with Rowena, he went to get her back…That was about 12 hours ago. Believe me, you’re our last choice.”
“What’s so special about these witches? Mother can usually take down a coven in her sleep.”
“Search me. But I know you want to be the one to kill her in the end.”
“That’s not necessarily true. If someone else did it, I’d send them a lovely card. Maybe some flowers.”
“Uh-huh.”
Alright, so he wanted to kill the bitch himself. But did he really want to get involved in another Winchester hunt? He really hated witches.
The Luggage creaked as it stood and stretched, its lid yawning open.
“Look, this is too big for me an’ Sam. They’ve got some major mojo that we can’t compete with. They’ve raised every dead body buried in the town’s three cemeteries. There’s zombies runnin’—well, lurching around everywhere.”
“Zombies, eh? And what are they doing?”
“Uh…Well, so far, they’ve broken into a jewelry store, a car dealership, and a Target—”
“They’re stealing things for the coven?”
“And they’ve gone after some people with loose ties to the coven. Seems to be people they went to school or work with. Evidently not people they liked.”
Crowley stared at the Luggage. Most zombies couldn’t move that fast. It might be a good way to see just what it was capable of. “So you want me to come to…Where are you, exactly?”
“Pensacola.”
Ah, the taint of America. “You want me to waltz into a swamp, round up a zombie army, and take out a coven of witches that have already bested Castiel and my mother. And I’d agree to help you why?”
There was silence on the other line. Then: “What do you want?”
“Nothing right now. But you’ll owe me one.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll give you my firstborn, just get your ass over here and help us out.” He paused. “Please.”
“I do love it when you beg,” Crowley said with a grin.

Crowley found the boys hunkered down in the kind of motel room that can be rented by the hour, day, or week depending on what business the occupant had there. The dingy carpet was littered with dirty laundry and the table was piled with beer bottles and police files.
“Hello, boys.”
They didn’t look thrilled to see him. They also didn’t look like they’d slept in the last 24 hours.
“Oh. Good. He’s here,” Sam said flatly.
“I didn’t hear you offering any other ideas,” Dean snapped.
“Let’s just get this over with,” the big moose said with a sigh.
They gathered around the table: Sam cleared the beer bottles while Dean grabbed himself a fresh beer, and Crowley snapped himself a glass of Craig. Sam had many tabs open on his laptop, from Google Maps to witchcraft supplies to zombie hunting.
Crowley clicked through the tabs. There were five Facebook profiles pulled up of local women, ranging in age from early 20’s to late 60’s. He pulled out his phone and texted the names to Gerald: It was unlikely that all five of them would be naturally talented witches, which meant that some of them would get their power through a demon. And the hand that giveth…Blah, blah, blah.
They jumped at the sound of gunfire outside. Sam crept to the window cautiously and peered out through the dingy curtains. “Shit,” he hissed. “They’re here.”
“When the zombies aren’t actively doing the witches’ bidding,” Dean explained, “they tend to get a bit…Rambunctious.”
“They wander in packs,” Sam said. “They don’t usually go after people unless they freak out or try to fight them. And when someone tries to attack them…”
“They fight back,” Crowley nodded.
“And of course people try to attack them, because they’re zombies.”
Crowley ducked under Sam to look out through the curtain as well. There were three cops walking backwards slowly in the street as a horde of zombies shuffled toward them. The zombies were not in great shape: One’s jaw hung down to its chest, and another was holding its left arm in its right, because it was no longer attached to its body. When the witches reanimated them, they hadn’t rebuilt them very well. A few were little more than skeletons, held together by a few tendons and sheer magic will.
“Do they bite?”
“Mostly they grab people and rip them apart,” Dean said. “They’re not big on biting or eating. I know it looks like you could knock ‘em out by sneezing at ‘em, but they’re tough sons of bitches. It’s not a very attractive magic, but it’s strong.”
“Mmm. Alright, let’s see how strong they are.”
Crowley ported into the street, off to the side of the action about halfway between the police and the horde. He snapped his fingers and the Luggage appeared beside him. He whistled loudly, and as one unit the horde turned to look at him. The police kept their guns trained on the zombies, eyeing Crowley and the Luggage wearily.
“Not to worry, folks,” Crowley said to the cops. “Just your friendly neighborhood supernatural entity, here to help. I suggest not firing at the Luggage, or it will eat you. And now…You might want to get out of the way.”
The Luggage took in the horde in front of it. It felt Crowley’s will to destroy them.
It charged.
The zombies turned sluggishly and began to advance toward Crowley. A few continued toward the policemen, who managed to position themselves behind a row of parked cars. One of them fired and scored a perfect head-shot, but the zombie didn’t go down. With reanimation by magic, beheading was usually required to stop one of the things, and even that wasn’t guaranteed. Sometimes they carried on headless, and you had to lop off the arms and legs before they’d stop.
The Luggage plowed into them, and though it had no way of showing emotion, it seemed to Crowley that it was quite happy. Perhaps it was the psychic connection, he mused. Or maybe Crowley was just happy to watch the Luggage stomp on walking corpses. It was very athletic for a wooden chest, especially given its lack of knees. It could jump to head-height with apparent ease; it could somersault; it could even parkour sideways off of bodies.
Sam and Dean ran out of the motel wielding machetes.
“What is that?”
“The Luggage,” Crowley replied. “It’s a recent acquisition.”
“Is it dangerous? To us, I mean,” Sam clarified as he watched it chomp down on one of the undead.
“Only if it thinks you’re a threat to it or me. I wouldn’t go waving that at it, for example.” He gestured to the machete.
“Uh. Good. Good. What if we go and—and help it? It’s not gonna mistake us for zombie chow?”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
“Your confidence is inspiring,” Dean said sarcastically.
“I’ve only had it for a week,” Crowley replied. “But it’s connected to me. Right now, I want it to fight the dead people, so that’s what it’s doing. I don’t think it’ll hurt you unless I want it to hurt you.”
Somehow, the boys didn’t find that much more reassuring. Crowley often wanted to hurt them. But they were on a job right now, and he’d agreed to help them, and although he was a slimy scumball, he did keep his word. Dean caught Sam’s eye and nodded. Sam nodded back. They ran into the horde.
The zombies were only really dangerous if they could get their hands on you. The magic gave them supernatural strength, allowing them to rip your arms off like they were tearing a piece of paper. Dodging one was fairly easy, but they tended to come in hordes, and once you were surrounded it was almost impossible to get away in one piece. Thanks to the Luggage, the horde had been greatly thinned, mostly spread across the pavement in pieces, or spread out enough in the street that they couldn’t all surround the boys at once. Sam and Dean lopped off heads, arms, and legs, both on the zombies who were still standing and the ones on the ground (which would eventually reanimate if not separated into pieces).
Growing bored, Crowley took out his phone. There was a message from Gerald.
Tracy Anderson, Ellie Bragdon, Joan Dewitt, the first message said. Then: Wesley.
Crowley smiled, slipping the phone back in his pocket. Three of the five witches were demon-powered. The other two could be problematic, sure, but there were only two of them. And there was an infinite amount of space in the Luggage.