by John Shirley
--
In the hydrotherapy room, Angela was awake, lying on the floor, weak but breathing - and at the same time she was in a kind of dream state, a condition of psychic receptivity that brought about visions. True visions.
So it was that she found herself with her sister again, the two of them once more little girls on a swing set in the park. The swings were moving together, and Angela and Isabel, two little girls, were holding hands as they swung… looking at one another, waiting for the right moment to let go. The two of them, holding hands, would jump as they had so many times from the swing, to land together laughing in the soft dirt…
Now! Up they went, out of the swing, holding hands for a moment in midair.
Angela was coming down, about to land on her feet - but Isabel kept going upward, kept flying up, slowly, into the air, like a helium balloon released to ease into the sky. She kept the grip with her sister’s fingers for just a moment. Beaming at her…
And then Angela let go - knowing she was doing something for her sister by letting go. And Isabel drifted upward, spiraling slowly into the sky, into a blue that was unimaginably deep, astonishingly perfect.
--
Things were accomplished, in that pause, after Satan said, Fine.
A spirit was released from Hell - and found itself in Heaven, where there was celebration at her arrival, and many things came clear to her at last…
“Welcome, Isabel,” said her grandmother. “Welcome, my darling. I’d like you to meet some friends of mine - and I don’t think you ever met your grandfather… Oh - and here’s a friend of a friend. His name is Chaz… “
--
“…it’s done,” Satan finished. He looked at Constantine - and it was a look that contained a continuum of torment. “Time to go.”
Constantine nodded. All he could manage. Lifted one hand, just a little, toward Satan - to show his readiness.
Satan reached down and took his hand, pulled him toward him, toward the doors. On the other side of the doors was something other than more hospital. It was now a doorway to Hades.
Satan drew Constantine after him…
…but the corridor seemed to stretch out on the way to the door. They couldn’t seem to get there. They moved, and yet the door remained the same distance away. They weren’t really going anywhere at all.
Constantine’s other hand lifted up - something was pulling him in another direction. Away from Hell. Constantine’s other hand was held by someone else.
His hand was in God’s.
Satan dropped Constantine’s hand - recoiling in ineffable, infinite, space-spanning anger.
“The sacrifice!” Satan roared. Realizing that Constantine’s willingness to sacrifice himself for Isabel had been noticed: had saved him. Constantine was dying, nearly dead - but he wasn’t going to Hell. He was going to Heaven. Satan was to be cheated.
Satan shook his fist at the light shining from above.
“No! This one belongs to me!”
Constantine’s rising hand - drifting up toward Heaven - now drifted down toward Satan for a moment, middle finger extended.
But it wasn’t Constantine doing it - God was giving Satan the finger.
Satan combusted with rage, lifting his fists and igniting into a figure of fire. He pointed a flaming finger at Constantine. “You will live, John Constantine! You will live so you will have the chance to prove that your soul truly belongs in Hell. Damn you - you will live!”
Satan plunged his blazing etheric hand into Constantine’s body, deep into his breast, lifting him up off the floor with the thrust.
Constantine screamed in agony as Satan scooped the cancer from his lungs, ripping out a mass of diseased tissue with a nasty yank, trying to make it as painful as possible. He released Constantine…
…and Constantine dropped to the floor in a heap.
On his hands and knees, Constantine felt strength pour into him. He took a deep breath… filling healthy lungs for the first time in years.
He looked at his wrists. They had sealed up - he was healed top to bottom. Satan had given him a new lease on life - but he’d done it only so that he could one day try to get an eviction.
Constantine heard Satan’s voice in his mind as the dark angel went through the door, back to brood at home - and to heat his son.
I’ll have your ass sooner or later, Constantine. What’s a few more years to me? You’re a fuckup. And you’re mine.
And then Satan was gone - as much as he ever is. Constantine looked around. Didn’t see any heavenly glows. Didn’t feel that divine touch that’d been so exquisite, moments ago. God was gone too.
But then again - He never is.
--
Constantine walked into the hydrotherapy room, looking for Angela… and seeing her against one wall, sitting up, hugging her knees. But smiling at him. Alive.
He knelt beside her. Saw the spear lying near her. The Spear of Destiny itself.
“Thank you,” Angela said.
“No problem,” Constantine replied, as casually as he could manage.
She couldn’t help but smile at that. He couldn’t help but smile back.
He heard a moan, turned to see Gabriel, hunched up, shaking near the opposite wall. Stumps of torn cartilage protruded from his back. A pattern of sinew and bone, burned into the floor near him, was all that remained of his wings.
There was red blood, very human blood, dripping from the stumps of the angel’s wings.
Constantine grinned in satisfaction, as he retrieved his Holy Shotgun from the floor.
“Human…!” Constantine chuckled.
Gabriel grimaced at that verdict. But didn’t deny it. He had been punished by being turned into a mortal. Without God’s protection - withdrawn when he made the pact with Mammon - he’d been subject to Satan’s superior magical powers… and Satan had punished him by turning him into one of those he despised. A human being.
“You don’t deserve to be human,” Constantine remarked, hefting his shotgun thoughtfully, approaching the erstwhile angel.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “Then… pass judgment on me now.”
Constantine set the muzzle of the gun against Gabriel’s forehead. He was going to enjoy this…
“Do it,” Gabriel urged. “Seek revenge! End my life.”
Constantine’s finger tightened on the trigger. He needed to put only a micromillimeter more squeeze on that trigger…
“Pull the trigger!” Gabriel begged. “Be the Hand of God!”
Constantine’s finger relaxed. He understood, then, what Gabriel was trying to pull. I shoot him - and I’ll be condemned again.
Still… Constantine wanted to pull the trigger more than he’d wanted his first sex with a real live girl - and that was a lot. He wanted it as much as he wanted to live.
But he lowered the gun. Knowing that Satan was behind this - had whispered the suggestion to Gabriel. The First of the Fallen was trying to trap Constantine, already. To trick him into condemning himself to Hell once more.
Constantine looked at Gabriel for a moment… shifting his gun to his other hand…
And then hit the former angel hard in the face with a right. Gabriel was knocked back against the wall, slamming hard into the concrete. He slumped, stunned.
“That’s called pain,” Constantine said. “Get used to it.”
Gabriel surprised Constantine by smiling. “You could have shot me, John. But you chose the higher path instead.”
Constantine turned and went to Angela.
“My plan’s already working,” Gabriel said. “Look how well you’re doing.”
She gazed up at him, lips parted…
Constantine bent toward her and picked up the Spear of Destiny, lying at her feet.
Straightened up, smiling at her. He could tell - he could feel it - she knew about Isabel being set free from Hell.
Gabriel was looking upward. As if right through the ceiling. Speaking to God. “No recompense for such love. And who wil
l keep your dominion now.”
But he did have a problem - nothing he couldn’t handle. The time barrier had dropped from the building. Xavier was coming in with Officer Yee and at least five other cops.
They were going to want an explanation. He was tempted to tell them the truth.
Let them put that in their report.
He put his arm around Angela and led her out of the room.
Behind them, Gabriel shuddered, sensing the opening of a doorway…
And the room filled with light. A silhouetted figure appeared, in a shimmering doorway.
Heaven illuminated behind him with higher-dimensional clarity. Heaven’s newest half-angel: It was Chaz, adjusting his cap, casually. Smiling sardonically at Gabriel. “S’up, Gabie.”
Chaz robbed his hands together. He had a lot of work to do in his new gig, and he was looking forward to it. “P.S., man,” Chaz said to Gabriel, walking past him. “You have one shitload of explaining to do.”
--
Another L.A. night on the rooftop of another building - Constantine’s building. Standing near the edge of the roof, Constantine gazed at the electric tapestry of city lights. Leaning on the roof’s rim near him was the Holy Shotgun.
He wasn’t surprised when Angela came up the fire escape: He’d asked her to meet him here.
She looked around at the damp, tarry roof littered with old paint cans. “Nice spot,” she said.
Constantine smiled at her. “Got something for you.”
She raised an eyebrow as she joined him. “I’m guessing you’re not a flowers kind of guy.”
Constantine reached into his coat pocket. Handed her an object wrapped in cloth. She opened it, but she already knew what it was by the feel, the weight, the tingle. The vibratory association with both suffering and the transcendence of suffering: the Spear of Destiny.
“Why the hell are you giving me this?”
Constantine’s smile became rueful. “Rules.”
He couldn’t keep it - it was something he could never bring himself to try to conjure with.
And he knew that a genuinely holy relic should be disposed of - or “put away” - according to the rules of the tradition it sprang from. Angela was closer to that tradition than he was.
“Hide it,” he advised, with a heartfelt solemnity. “Somewhere no one will ever be able to find it.”
“And I’m supposed to know where that is… exactly how?”
“Hey. The son of the Devil didn’t want me for my psychic ability.” His was minor-league compared with hers.
“Always a catch,” she said.
He looked at her. Thinking that he wanted to go the next step with her, if she wanted that too.
But there were things he had to do first. And maybe she wouldn’t be interested anyway - could be he was just putting off, the inevitable rejection. A relationship with him would be a constant reminder of things she’d want to put behind her. Literally: her time in Hell, among other things.
Still… she wasn’t looking at him like she wanted to put John Constantine behind her.
“So?” Angela prompted.
“I’ve got some cleaning up to do.”
She looked at the Holy Shotgun. She nodded. “See you around?”
He smiled. Feeling real relief. Seemed to him that was an invitation. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
She wrapped the relic up again, put it in her purse. She walked away, and he watched her go down the fire escape: a woman carrying the spearhead that pierced Jesus Christ in a purse she’d bought at Neiman Marcus.
Constantine turned and looked at the city. Wondering what he’d say to that city, if its inhabitants could hear him, right now… Maybe:
I’m everything that never happened to you. I’ve seen young boys strong enough to snap your neck in one hand. And women sell their babies for the promise of a throne of fire. I’ve seen Hell blaze through these streets. I don’t have the usual map of L.A. in my head, not the one everyone else has. L.A.’s got a different geography for me. Spilling blood and the last breath before dying mark it all out, in dark wet borders. And no one giving a damn about it. No one at all.
Constantine took a pack of cigarettes from his coat. Looked at them. And crumpled them up, tossed them over the edge. Then he took something else from his coat pocket: two special shotgun shells. Their casings embossed with arcane symbols.
God has a plan for all of us. I had to die. Twice. Just to figure that out.
He loaded the shotgun shells into the gun’s chamber. Backed the shotgun.
Like the Book says, He works His work in mysterious ways.
He peered down over the roof. The lure he’d arranged earlier was working. The thing was coming…
Wait - he lost sight of it for a moment.
“John-”
He glanced at Angela at the door. She pointed. “On your left!”
He stepped back, aimed the shotgun as she went through the door.
Some people like it…
The winged demon swooped down at him - the one that had gotten away at the mission downtown…
Over his head now, angling down, coming right for him… He saw its teeth plainly in the streetlight shine, gleaming as it opened its jaws, preparing to tear into him…
… Some people don’t.
The demon came right at him. He had just time to aim the shotgun…
And he blew the demon into leathery fragments. Two rounds, just to be sure. Then he blew the smoke away, and went to the fire escape. There was still more for him to do out there, this night… but he couldn’t get Angela out of his mind.
The way she’d said it… See you around?
Just a tone of voice, but definitely: an invitation.
And going down the fire escape, thinking about Angela and God and Heaven, John Constantine had a strange sensation, a strange feeling deep inside him. What was it exactly? It was something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time, and it took him a while to recognize the feeling.
It was hope.
About the Author
JOHN SHIRLEY is the author of numerous novels, including Crawlers, Demons, and Wetbones, and story collections, including Really Really Really Really Weird Stories and the Bram Stoker Award-winning collection Black Butterflies. He also writes scripts for television and film, and was coscreenwriter for The Crow. His authorized fan-created website is www.darkeeho.com/JohnShirley.