Constantine (17 page)

“Beeman!” Constantine called. “Beeman!”

Angela stepped back from the flies slipping under the door, a stream of them darting past.

That buzzing sound again, fluctuating.

Constantine felt something tickle his ankle - he shook it, and several large houseflies flew loopily away. More were coming from the openings at the back of the lanes, and under the door, the air darkening with them.

He stepped back, and located the door’s weak point, then kicked it - hard. He had a lot of practice kicking down doors, and it flew open immediately.

Inside the maintenance corridor, what should have been cool darkness was instead a sticky, buzzing heat. They hurried down the lane, past pool after pool of light, till they got to the area that widened for Beeman’s little compartment.

The darkness seemed to thicken around Beeman’s desk. To move there…

Buzzing. Black buzzing.

“Do you see that?” Angela asked. Her voice taut. Constantine pressed forward - and the flies swarmed up at him, as if warning him back, like bees disturbed at their hive. Angela kept up with him, covering her mouth, wanting to scream but only whimpering.

The swarm of flies had a locus, a thicker center. A solid mound of moving flies on the floor.

“Oh Jesus,” Constantine muttered. “No…”

He took off his coat, flung it at the mound, and the swarming flies scattered, becoming a cloud over Beeman’s body - or what was left of it. Mostly eaten away. Flies poured out of Beeman’s mouth and ears.

“Oh God,” Angela choked.

“Who?”
Constantine demanded - of no one in particular. Who had done this to his friend?

The flies began to vanish into the shadows - were almost gone. He had to stop it from escaping…

He pulled his shirtsleeves back, revealing two distinctive tattoos on his forearms that he used for conjuring; when he put them together they made one symmetrically complete image. He slammed the tattoos together and - drawing astral light to project the magic into the air near Beeman’s body, visualizing the symbols - incanted, “Into the light I command thee!” He was having trouble breathing, the sickness in his lungs threatening to betray him at this critical moment. He might still be able to help Beeman, at least in the next world… if he could reveal the demon who’d destroyed him. “Into the light I command thee!”

Don’t cough. Not now. Focus. The moment will be gone and it’ll be too late. Don’t cough!

“Into the light I command thee!”

The air around his outstretched arms seemed to warp as the summoning took hold. Angela stepped back, afraid. The flies buzzed overhead…

“Into the light I command thee! Into the light I-” And then the coughing fit came on. He couldn’t breathe at all. His head swam with weariness, lack of oxygen - and despair, as blood erupted from his lungs into his mouth. He spat… and fell to his knees.

Angela knelt beside him, instinctively putting an arm around his shoulders. The flies were gone. There was only Beeman’s stripped body. And little spots of Constantine’s blood on the floor.

The coughing fit stopped. But it was too late. “This is my fault,” Constantine said hoarsely.

“A damned one-man plague.”

“John… you need a doctor.”

Constantine made a sound of disgust, deep in his throat, and shook his head. “I’ve seen a doctor.”

He stood up - and the room seemed to spin. He was still having trouble getting his breath. He was afraid he was going to fall on his face. Put out his hands to try to keep his balance. Swaying.

Angela stood and tried to help him.

“Stay away,” he told her. Hoping she’d understand.

He wanted to send her somewhere safe - away from him. First Hennessy, then Beeman.

Maybe she’d be next. “Please…”

He looked at Beeman’s desk - wasn’t surprised to see that the scrolls were ashes now.

Angela sighed. She drew out her portable squawk box. “Ten-twelve to base. Officer needs assistance. We’ve got a…”

She looked at Beeman’s body. How did she classify this one? Which number was it in the manual?

“…uh, officer needs assistance.”

Constantine’s apartment. He sat on his window seat, looking out at the street. Watching the police vehicles drive away from the bowling alley.

“It wasn’t just Isabel,” Angela said from the doorway. “I used to see things too, John.”

He looked at her. Hadn’t he told her to stay the hell away from him? Was everyone going to be stupid and walk in front of a juggernaut, whistling a merry tune as they marched blithely to certain death?

“But you knew that,” she went on. “Didn’t you.” He had suspected. But he said nothing. She took a step into his room. There was something about that step - like crossing a line. Coming over to his side, in someway.

“You see something in me,” she said. “Something Isabel had…”

“Go home, Angela.” Constantine looked at the cigarette in his hand. Almost burned out. The way he felt, he identified with the cigarette.

Angela came in, wandered around, looking at the oddities that constituted his “interior decorating.”

“I need to understand, John.”

Constantine just shook his head. “You don’t want to know what’s out there. Trust me on this.”

“I’m not Isabel.”

“No. She embraced her gift. You denied yours. Denial is a better idea. It’s why you’re still alive. Stick with me, that’ll change. I don’t need another ghost following me around.”

Another ghost,
he thought,
staring at me reproachfully, asking, “Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you save me?”

Constantine got up, and started toward the door. If she wouldn’t leave, then he would. Maybe she’d have a few more days before the end… if she stayed away from John Constantine.

“Dammit, John - they killed my sister!”

He stopped for that one. Sensing she’d go on without him, with that kind of motivation.

Angela continued, softly, meaning it: “I’d trade places with her if I could.”

He just looked at her, waiting.

She went on, “I used to pretend I didn’t. See things, I mean. By the time we were ten, they started forcing her to take pills, have treatments. They’d come for her and she’d look at me and say: ‘Tell them. Tell them, Angie. You can see ‘em too.’ “

Tears were streaming down her face now. But her eyes had a hard gleam to them behind the tears.

“But I lied. I said I didn’t see anything. And then one day, I finally stopped seeing. I left her, John. All alone.” She turned away. Took a deep breath. And added, with finality: “I can’t look away anymore.”

She turned to him. It was there in her face: She was determined to go on, investigating this thing. And though she was clearly afraid to do it alone, she was going to do it, with him or without him. Either way, the Enemy would take notice of her. But if it took notice of her without Constantine around, she’d be a sitting duck. Defenseless. He sighed. He was left with no real option…

“You do this,” Constantine said slowly, “and there’s no turning back. You see them - they see you. Understand?”

Angela just nodded.

--

The car had broken down on a surface street, near the Los Angeles airport, and Francisco had flagged down a taxi, which cruised through the early evening past a row of high-rise hotels. The yellow taxi was driven by a rangy, wide-mouthed black man with a dollar sign shaved into either side of his head and a Raiders jacket that seemed three sizes too large for him. The man was listening to something on the radio. Talking rather than singing, but to a beat.

Francisco had heard some variant of this music in Chihuahua. Irritating stuff, but it interested him in a way. He touched the iron spike and listened. Something about slapping female dogs, and making them work as whores for him.
Ah! This word for female dogs must mean women.

Something about ruling the neighborhood, annihilating enemies, giving the biggest parties, getting two women into bed and putting money in their cleavage and kicking them out when you were tired of them…

Francisco decided he was going to like America. But the whispering cautioned him:

Francisco, you are in danger… This man cannot be trusted.
…
Look at the photo on the dashboard.

Francisco looked. The licensing photo on the dashboard was of another man entirely.

“Say now, man, you got American cash, right?” the taxi driver asked. “I don’t want no pesos and with you not speaking English and the way you looking around, it’s like somebody just got here…” And as he finished the sentence he pulled the car into a side street near a parking lot full of rental cars. No one was around.

Francisco had his hand on the iron spike, and understood. But he could not speak English, and he replied in Spanish. “I have yet to change my money.”

The man shook his head. “Fool, I can’t understand what you saying. You got…” He rubbed his fingers together in the universal sign for money. “American?”

Francisco shook his head.

“Motherfucker, that some scandalous shit you trying to pull. I don’t wait around while you change your money. We going to see what you got on you and then you give all you got and you say thank you, Baley, for not shooting my motherfucking head off. Now get out the car.”

He pointed at the door. Francisco shrugged and got out. The driver came around to his side, opening his coat to show a revolver in a shoulder holster. He put one hand on the gun and stuck the other one out. “I’m gonna kick your motherfuckin’ ass anyway, wetback - you pissing me off, looking like that. Maybe we take you somewhere, find out do you got some relatives can pay your way, but there going to be big interest, cocksucker-”

“I’m no wetback. I came across the desert, not that river in Texas,” Francisco said, in his own language. He pulled out the spike, and slashed downward with it.

Baley had drawn the gun, and the iron point smashed into his hand - shattering the gun and hand both, stabbing right through skin and bone, even though the point wasn’t sharp enough to cut through paper, let alone flesh. The driver screamed and tried to jerk his hand away, but only succeeded in tearing it up more on the iron spike clutched firmly in Francisco’s fist.

Francisco kicked out - angry now, wanting to feel some part of his body striking this lowlife.

He struck the man’s groin, hard, making him buckle over - as if the man were bowing to him.

“Yes, bow to me!” Francisco shouted. “You should bow! You are scum! You dare to rob me? I will take all of this city for my own! I will be king of the thieves!”

As he spoke, Francisco raised the spike again, swinging his arm all the way around in a cartwheeling motion to bring it down into the back of Baley’s head, and the spike seemed to carry a terrible momentum, as if energized by its own inner hunger, as it stabbed through the man’s skull like a nail through a boiled egg.

The driver fell, twitching. Francisco examined the iron spike - and as he watched the driver’s blood beaded like mercury and ran off it, as if in a hurry to be away. In a second the spike was dry.

He grunted in satisfaction and put it away in his pocket. He found a small roll of bills on the driver and got into the taxi, where he discovered the key in the ignition. He started it and drove away.

But where to? Anywhere! Perhaps a bank - the Spike could break open a bank vault…

Plenty of time for that. First, follow your instincts. You will be guided. There
is
somewhere else you must go…

Yes, plenty of time for robbery later. He would just drive to the east… that’s what felt right.

There was something there, in the eastern part of this great city. There was a place, someplace special, that called to him.

--

Constantine and Angela slept for a murky, uncertain while, fully clothed, spooning in his rumpled bed. He was sorry he hadn’t changed the sheets lately, but she didn’t seem to care.

Later…

After he took some medication. After they ate a spare breakfast. After what seemed like a gallon of coffee… They talked. Made certain determinations.

They didn’t have a plan exactly. But they had a direction. Like when you’re lost in the wilderness, and you decide to head downhill, following a stream, reasoning it’ll take you to civilization. They’d follow water down… to Hell.

So Constantine filled the old-fashioned porcelain bathtub. The kind with clawed feet on it that looked like they were going to run away with you once you were in the tub.

Angela cleared her throat behind him. “Um - John? Do I take off my clothes or leave them on?”

He smiled, making her wait.

“John?”

“I’m thinking… “

“John!”

There, he almost made her laugh with that one.

“On is fine.”

She stood there chewing her lip as he turned off the water. Talking to keep fear from taking her over. “Why water?”

“Water is the universal conduit. Lubricates the transition from one plane to another. Now ask me if there’s water in Hell.” She didn’t, so he said: “Sit.”

She grabbed his shoulder for balance, lowered herself in the lukewarm water, fully clothed.

Immersed all the way to her neck.

“Normally,” Constantine said, “only a portion of the body has to be suspended, but you wanted the crash course… “

“Couldn’t you have made it warmer?”

“It’ll be plenty warm soon enough.”

“What will I see?”

There was no way to prepare her for that. But she seemed to get a glimpse in his eyes of what he might see. She swallowed.

“Lie down, farther,” he said.

“Lie down?”

“You have to be fully submerged - you being an amateur.”

She blinked at him. He could see the decisive moment when she decided to fully trust him.

She nodded. “For how long?”

“As long as it takes. Here…”

He bent and cupped the back of her neck, held her face just above the water as she submerged herself farther. Breathing hard, through her nose. He could feel her pulse in her neck, thumping fast.

“Last chance,” he said.

She just shook her head, once. “Then… take a deep one.”

She took a deep breath and held it. He pulled his hand away gently and she settled to the bottom of the tub, her eyes watching him from under the water. He kept hold of her arm, firmly gripping her bare skin just above the elbow.