Constantine

by John Shirley

  Constantine grabbed her head, shoved her face directly into the spouting of a sprinkler right overhead. She flailed . . . and stopped moving, disintegrating into mucky ash. Her wet clothes slithered off him to the floor—empty.

  “See you there, kid,” Constantine said, sadly.

  And then the water stopped spraying. The tank had run dry . . . and the demons were still coming. Some of them had died, but others, better covered with clothing, remained somewhat intact. Once it struck the ground the water was no longer holy, so the puddles couldn’t help him.

  And the demons were still coming.

  He backed up, circled them, heading toward a farther door—

  Saw a sign on the door: HYDROTHERAPY. That’s where the Spanish guy with the Spear of Destiny had gone, wasn’t it?

  Constantine sprinted that way, got to the door, went through, started down the hallway—and heard a thudding, a phlegmy gasping, a clattering of bone on bone, behind him. He turned to see the surviving demons shambling after him, coming through the door. Some of them were mumbling castings, so that they were lifted up supernaturally, began to float down the hallway toward him, still falling apart as they came—a lower jaw falling off one of them to clump bouncing onto the floor, another’s leg falling from where the demon floated near the ceiling, the limb breaking messily apart as it hit the floor, flesh and veins unraveling to bare bone.

  Constantine stayed where he was, not wanting to lure them to Angela. He raised the shotgun to his shoulder, aimed at the nearest demon, cantering along on three limbs . . . He fired, and blew it apart, but others were coming, demon after demon, rotting but still lethal, levitating and crawling down the hall, some of them muttering his name, over and over:

  “Constantine . . . John Constantine . . .”

  He fired the shotgun, again and again. One of them was crawling along the ceiling upside down, flipping to drop at him, he fired right into its gaping mouth and the round traveled through the back of its throat and down its spinal column, sending the vertebrae flying like dominos, and the demon flew apart into shrieking ashes. Another leapt at him from the floor like a jumping spider, and he had to knock it backward with the butt of the gun before he had time to pump the shotgun and send a round into the back of its neck. It spasmed, a broken thing, before quivering itself apart. And still the demons came on . . .

  ~

  Angela heard a low thudding, realized it was gunshots—sounded like a shotgun—from another part of the building, not far away.

  The scavenger heard it too, and looked away from her in the direction of the shots, distraction loosening his grip on her neck.

  That was her chance. She struck up at his wrist with the heel of her right hand in a tae kwon do move, knocking his hand loose from her, while striking at his jaw with her left fist, the blow coming straight from the shoulder as she’d been taught.

  But he dodged and she caught him only glancingly, so that he staggered back but kept his feet, digging at his pocket for the iron spike.

  She tried to climb out of the pool, hoping to get to her gun: He’d thrown it into a corner. But he grabbed her around the waist in snarling fury, pulled her back, and—off balance—they both fell backward into the water, thrashing.

  Angela felt water invade her lungs, chlorine stinging her sinuses as Francisco rolled on top of her, straddled her, and forced her down. She heard him say something, the sound mostly muted by the water—and she didn’t think he was speaking to her. She sensed that he’d been given the go-ahead: The time had come to kill her. He pressed his open hand down on her face, forcing her almost to the floor of the pool.

  He had the other hand on the spearhead now, and she could feel the strength pour into him. She knew she was done for: She was drowning. Her lungs felt like they were about to explode. She thrashed helplessly, trying to get leverage, to find a way out, but it was no use; it felt as if every evil in the world had lumped together into a single weight just to hold her down. She saw her executioner’s face up there, warped by the watery surface, and for a moment its shifting seemed to reveal an angry child, acting out over its abandonment.

  After that the darkness began to close in on her. She couldn’t see him anymore. She saw only shafts of light through shadow; blue darkening to indigo.

  God, help me. I was trying to do your work on Earth. Can’t you send someone to help me?

  It was a heartfelt prayer. But the only response was darkness, a deeper darkness yet . . .

  But then came light—only it wasn’t the light of redemption, it was the light of transition, of white-hot fire coming at her, to engulf her.

  She screamed . . . and fell spinning, endlessly falling, sucked down and down. And then beyond up and down . . .

  And found herself sitting alone, on the bone-dry floor of the pool. Only this wasn’t exactly the same pool, the same therapy room. This was Hell’s version of that room, she realized, looking around. The air was suffused with Hell’s ubiquitous noise, overwhelming even the chorus of screams: the wet multitudinous gnashing of millions of jaws chewing at human flesh. She stood up and saw that the tubs in the room were full—with blood. The walls were cracked; she could see flame through the cracks, making them waver; the air was foul with ash and despair.

  She knew she was not here as one of the condemned but as a visitor, with a connection to Earth that the condemned didn’t have; she was the kind of specialized traveler to Hell she’d been once before—only this time she had been brought against her will. By whom?

  Francisco was gone. But someone else was nearby, someone who was looking right at her. Someone behind her. He was coming at her from behind, focusing his terrible attention on her.

  “Angela . . . ,” came the rasping voice. He repeated her name, almost lovingly, the syllables oozing with slime. “An . . . gel . . . a . . .” Somehow when he spoke her name he turned it into an obscenity. But then, any human word that Mammon spoke became an obscenity.

  She made herself turn and look at him.

  She was a strong woman. There weren’t any stronger women. And she’d seen some terrible things, in her short life as a cop, that hadn’t made her scream. She’d screamed only once before, seeing Hell. She didn’t scream easily.

  But right now, seeing Mammon, Angela Dodson screamed long and loud.

  ~

  There were three demons still coming at Constantine, slavering for blood, flesh, and soul—when his shotgun jammed.

  One of them, in a priest’s collar, crouched like a cat about to leap at a mouse, grinned at him . . . teeth falling out of the grin, the right side of its face sloughing off with the effort at facial expression.

  “Now you’re mine, my boy . . . ,” it said, its voice thickly distorted by its rotting tongue.

  Constantine recognized that voice. It was the priest who’d stood by when the other one had tried to exorcise him, in his boyhood. The demon masquerading as a man of God.

  Constantine shouted and tried furiously to clear his weapon—he wanted with all his heart to blow the demon priest to Hell . . .

  But it leapt at his throat, as the others came at him from the right and left, yowling with murderous delight.

  Constantine couldn’t get the gun unjammed in time. He was fucked.

  But someone fired a gun from behind the demon and it exploded into wet ashes in midair. Constantine stepped back, striking out with his shotgun butt at the one on his right, stoving its skull in, as the other exploded from another shotgun blast.

  Both demons fell away—one spasming, clawing at the air, as Constantine bashed its head to a pulp, the other flying into shrieking fragments.

  Gasping for air, heart thudding, Constantine turned to see Chaz, his own smoking shotgun in hand, grinning from the doorway.

  It was eerily quiet for a moment as they looked at one another—except for the sound of the shadows whispering . . .

  Then Constantine nodded his thanks, and got the bent shell cleared from his shotgun. It would fire now. He hoped.
>
  “John . . .” Chaz said. “You okay?”

  Constantine looked at him deadpan. “Why do you ask?”

  NINETEEN

  Constantine and Chaz burst into the hydrotherapy room, crossed to the pool, and hesitated, taking in the scavenger—standing in the therapeutic pool, his hands trailing in the water—and Angela: floating . . . unmoving, inert, her hair swirling across the surface like seaweed.

  She was floating facedown. Drowned, Constantine realized. Murdered.

  Constantine pointed the shotgun at the scavenger, desperate for an excuse to fire. “Move! Get away from her, now!”

  The scavenger looked at him—just a confused, frightened man without the spearhead. Constantine sensed the power had gone out of the man, as he no longer had the Spear of Destiny.

  So who did?

  The scavenger backed away from Angela’s body . . . got out of the pool, continuing to move backward . . .

  Constantine thought he ought to knock this guy out, see if he could do anything for Angela. Wondering if it was too late for CPR, or if maybe a real doctor could be found.

  Then he heard a thrashing in the water, turned to see Angela stand up in the pool—she was looking right into his eyes.

  But hers were black, solid black without whites.

  “Shit,” Constantine said, as she snarled at him.

  She was possessed. By something powerful . . . and he suspected he knew who it was.

  Mammon himself.

  Constantine dropped the shotgun and jumped feet-first into the pool, charging her, shoving her hard with his forearm across her chest, trying to knock her off balance. If he gave her half a chance, she’d claw his eyes out, or bite right through his jugular vein with a single snap.

  She staggered back, hissing, and he pressed her against the inner wall of the pool, with his free hand dragging out his key chain. He pressed an exorcism charm—the St. Anthony—to the side of her head, wondering if he could really pull off an exorcism on the fly. Her flesh sizzled and she flailed and roared in pain.

  “In nomine Patris et Fili et Spiritus Sancti extinguatur in te ominus virtus diaboli!” Constantine cried, putting all his personal force in the words. “In nomine Patris et Fili et Spiritus Sancti extinguatur in te ominus . . .”

  Mammon reacted by trying to come through into the human world, instead of allowing himself to be propelled back into Hell. All along he had envisioned Angela as the doorway into the human world, the spearhead as the key to that door.

  Now her body undulated as his shape tried to come through: grotesque, gnarled, and textured like a housefly, but with the face of an obscenely evil youth. The image pulsated in and out of visibility in her arms, her chest—and her face.

  It made Constantine feel sick to see Mammon’s visage forcing itself over the face of the woman he’d been falling in love with . . .

  “In nomine Patris et Fili—!” Constantine shouted, ever more insistently. “Et Spiritus Sancti—”

  But it was so hard to hold her—to hold her and concentrate—he was losing control—

  Suddenly Chaz was there, rushing into the room, jumping into the pool. Chaz helped him drag her thrashing to the concrete floor near the pool, the two of them pushing her thrashing body down onto her back. Chaz slapped his own hand to Angela’s forehead, intoning: “Per impositionem manum nostrarum et per invoctionem . . .”

  John held her down, chanting with Chaz, “Gloriosae et sanctae dei genetricis virginis Mariae. In nomine Patris et Fili et Spiritus Sancti . . .”

  Feeling a strange connection with Chaz, then. Something ancient, a communing going back before there were Latin invocations—to the earliest time men called, together, for the help of Someone Higher.

  Angela—or Mammon—must have felt driven back, toward Hell. In desperation she turned her head and bit into Constantine’s palm. Constantine recoiled, gasping with pain. She shoved him ferociously and he fell back against the tile of the steps into the pool, struck the back of his head, felt his scalp split.

  Dizzy, struggling to stay conscious, he heard Chaz yell a warning at Francisco—then his shotgun blast. Francisco had tried to jump him . . .

  Angela leapt out of the pool, past Constantine. He heard Chaz shout wordlessly—

  His head cleared, except for the pain. He got up, wincing, and turned to see Chaz struggling with Angela, holding her from behind. Francisco’s body lay crumpled to one side—shot through the heart.

  “Finish it!” Chaz shouted as Angela thrashed in his grip.

  Constantine staggered to her, feeling dizzy from the blow on the head. He forced himself to focus his mind and his psychic energy, and put his hand to her forehead. He incanted:

  “El separatur a plasmate tuo”—he struggled to keep a coughing fit down, and went on—“ut num quam laedatur amorsu antiqui serpentes! In nomine Patris et Fili et Spiritus Sancti—”

  Once more Chaz intoning, with him: “extinguatur in te ominus virtus diaboli per . . .”

  And then Angela gave a great shudder, a gasp—and went limp. The darkness in her eyes began to fade. But Constantine sensed that Mammon was still there—just retrenching, building his strength for another assault.

  Angela blinked and looked at Constantine—spoke hoarsely. “Oh God, no, get it out of me, John—get it out!” And then her eyes darkened again—she began to spasm.

  Constantine nodded to Chaz and together, in a fast whisper, they chanted—voices soft but inwardly roaring with all their spirit:

  “In nomine Patris et Fili et Spiritus Sancti extinguatur in te ominus virtus diaboli per . . . !”

  Angela quivered . . . and slumped, sighing. The shape that sometimes rollicked the skin under her face receded—and was gone.

  Constantine sensed that Mammon was still connected with Angela, hovering between her and Hell. But he was weakened. It would take more to release him . . . it would take the spear. They had bought some valuable time.

  He looked at Chaz and nodded. “Not bad, kid.”

  Chaz grinned. Paraphrasing Constantine, another time: “This is Kramer. Chaz Kramer, asshole—”

  But then his face tightened as he was lifted off his feet, by something unseen.

  Then Chaz shouted in pain as he was pulled by the neck up into the air—pulled by the invisible.

  Angela fell from his grasp, slipped to the floor, unconscious.

  Constantine watched helplessly as Chaz was yanked up and up—and then slammed into the ceiling.

  The invisible force twisted Chaz in midair, the way a farmer’s wife spins a chicken to break its neck. It paused a split second . . .

  And then it threw him with bone-crunching force to the floor.

  Constantine walked numbly over to Chaz, who looked up at him, the light going from his eyes much the way the darkness had gone from Angela’s. He was trying to speak. But the words died on his lips.

  Careful what you wish for, young man, Constantine thought. You wanted to know the supernatural world—to really know it. Now you know it as even I cannot . . .

  Constantine felt a bubbling rage rise up in him, a sense of grief and loss that surprised him. He hadn’t realized till that moment how attached he’d been to Chaz. His last real friend.

  The grief and anger came out of him in one long scream—a scream that escalated into a roar. He turned, looking for his enemy, but saw no one. The killer was still invisible. There was only one trace: a shadow on the wall, cast by no one at all. A vaguely man-shaped shadow with perhaps the suggestion of wings.

  Constantine rolled up his sleeves, exposing his conjuring tattoos, and slammed them together, roaring out:

  “Into the light I command thee!” All his will invested in an effort to force his enemy into visibility. “Into the light I command thee!”

  He could feel something resisting the spell . . .

  He marshaled all the force of his being, the very energy of his soul, and focused it into the words:

  “INTO THE LIGHT I COMMAND THEE!”


  The air seemed to thicken, and there was a shape like bottle glass outlining a man, floating above him . . .

  “Your ego is astounding,” the voice echoed to him. A resonant voice, with something androgynous about it.

  Constantine looked at the shape in the air, as definition seeped into it: a set of wings, two icy, ironic eyes.

  “Gabriel?” Constantine said. He was shaken at the thought. The implications of it. But come to think of it . . . “Figures.”

  And he realized he’d been wrong to think it was an elemental sent by Mammon who’d snatched Angela away in the BZR building and carried her off to Ravenscar. It had been Gabriel.

  Gabriel settled onto the ground in front of Constantine, alighting as gently as a butterfly, fully materialized now. In his hand was the Spear of Destiny.

  “And the wicked shall inherit the Earth,” Constantine said.

  “You presume to judge me, John?”

  Constantine snorted. “Betrayal . . . murder . . . genocide? Call me provincial.” He was shaking with fury, trying to control it, to think of a way to get the upper hand. But to win over Gabriel? To beat an angel?

  Especially an angel in league with the only begotten son of the First of the Fallen.

  “I am seeking to inspire humankind to be all that was intended,” Gabriel said gravely.

  “By handing the Earth over to the son of the Devil?” Constantine said. “Help me here.”

  Gabriel’s wings folded behind him as he walked around behind Constantine—walking by the body of the man he’d just casually murdered.

  “Why?” Gabriel said, seeming to enjoy the ring of rhetoric in the question. “Why are you given this precious gift, each of you offered redemption from the Creator?” There it was—a surprisingly human tinge of resentment and envy in his voice. “Murderers, rapists, molesters alike, you have only to believe and God takes you unto his bosom. In all the worlds, in all the universe, no other creature can make such a boast. None is loved so, is forgiven so, save man. And what do you do with this gift?” He smiled thinly, not much taller than Constantine but seeming to look down at him from a great height as he went on, “You wallow in lazy slaughter. You take His grace, His undying acceptance, and you defile it, commit upon each other atrocity after atrocity of both body and soul, confident that at the end of your days a simple skyward Forgive-me-Lord will grant you acceptance unto His Kingdom . . .