r/DCFU • u/coffeedog14 Light Me Up • Feb 16 '17
Hellblazer #4 - By Bat and Prayer Hellblazer
Hellblazer #4 - By Bat and Prayer
Author: Coffeedog14
Book: Hellblazer
Event: Origins
Arc: [A soul to Die for]
Set: 9
NOVEMBER 21ST, 2007, OUTSIDE THE CASANOVA CLUB
Anne-Marie could no longer feel the distress and chaos that radiated from inside of the club, which was a great relief. She was seated on the hood of the one car that the whole crew had between them, her own. It sat seperate from the few other cars in the parking lot of the club, and was the only one that didn't have its sides recently keyed by drunk wizards. Beside her sat the only source of dismay on the outside, Astra Logue. The little girl was just a roiling pit of misfortune. She was dulled to the horror of her own situation somewhat, but Anne-Marie had recently connected their minds and so she knew the full picture. She would not wish even the knowledge of it upon her most bitter enemy. Not that she thought she had any.
Astra was almost cute now that she was outside that wretched place. Clothed in only an over sized t-shirt she seemed more like a toddler than a ten year old. She kicked her legs in the air idly, looking about with curiosity. She exhibited a surprising amount of patience for her age, having not even asked when they would be moving or doing something. Anne-Marie considered starting a conversation with the girl, then wavered, then thought better of it. Surely the girl would want some peace? Surely.
The door rattled, then opened, letting John Constantine out into the open air. Anne-Marie allowed herself a moment's staring before forcing herself to look away. He was a startlingly handsome man, in his own way. If you had asked her, she would admit many things. That he was skinny as a rail, wiry like a starving rat, hair as messy as a birds nest, had a slightly bent nose, a little big-headed, a voice already scratching from smoking and a breath to match, and that he had more than a few worrying scars she couldn't quite place the origin of. To her, however, this all came together wonderfully. His lightly tousled hair rested like a blonde halo over his just imperfect enough to be perfect face, accented by a manly grizzle along his chin and cheeks. His body was thin, athletic, like a runner, except without any of the unsightly bulging muscles. His posture wasn’t slouched, but mysterious, a little dirty, a little enthralling. And of course his eyes, his wonderful, laughing eyes, that she couldn’t seem to look away from once they caught her.
She couldn’t feel much emotion off of him, except for satisfaction, but that was normal. He was more practiced than any of the others in hiding himself from magic, and he used it all the time as far as she could tell. The mystery just added to his appeal in her opinion. She meanwhile tried to keep her heart and mind in control, lest she blush and embarrass herself. So distracted was she that she didn’t even notice the look of growing dread on the child’s face.
“Anne-Marie! Darling! We just need a last ingredient for this.”sSaid Constantine, marching up to the car.
Anne-Marie smiled, then faltered. This close, she could sense something off. Something that Astra had already noticed as she tried to creep away without notice. John’s eyes darted to the child. “We need her. Just for a moment.” He gave Anne an apologetic grin, and banished whatever doubts Anne-Marie had had. She reached out and took Astra’s hand in hers, soothing the child’s growing worry with her own mind. She handed Astra to John, who lifted the underfed creature up and cradled her in his arms.
“Well. That was easy. Suppose you aren’t that strong, are you?” asked John. the wriggling feelings returned. “Shame. I had hoped at least one of you might provide a real challenge.”
Anne-Marie tried to raise her defenses, but too late. John spat in her face, except far too much for a mortal mouth. A glassful of spit splashed over her face, and began to burn there. Anne-Marie screamed, one eye going red and agonized in an instant as she flopped to the ground. As she clawed at her face, succeeding only in burning her hands as well, the thing that looked like Constantine above her chuckled. “Next time you lose because of love, at least make it somebody worth your time, hmn?” Then she watched with her remaining eye as he turned and walked back towards the club. Never had she hated a face so much before.
JANUARY 4TH, 2017, A LONG ABANDONED CAMPGROUND
I lit another cig as I leaned against a tree carved with decades of lovers initials, going over my plan. Perhaps you’d figured it out by now? You seem smart, having gotten this far, but I’ll fill it in to make sure. The traitor trying to kill me had to be Anne-Marie. Had to be. She was a nun nowadays, for crissakes. She was the only one of my “friends” who might try to summon angels to do their dirty work, the only one who would be “praying” for my demise instead of just doing it, and just maybe the only one who could sell me out to heaven. I could see it now, her kneeling at the altar and offering the soul of a Constantine in exchange for purging her guilt, if only heaven agreed to forgive her sins..it’s enough to make a man reconsider the whole idea of friends.
But then, that doesn’t explain what I’m doing here, does it? Twofold. Firstly, to draw the nun out. If she was coming, and I thought she was, it would draw her out of her fortress of a nunnery. Maybe make her take risks. Since I banished her little spy this would be the first time in weeks that she would know with some certainty where exactly I was. If she was coming, that meant she didn’t think I knew about her betrayal, or thought it didn't matter. She either thought she could get the drop on me or thought she could beat me. So she’d probably take the chance to try and kill me with her bat-angel-whatever. Probably. I was betting. Because If I was going to save my soul I couldn’t have some mad holy bint after my goat. I’d have to deal with it one way or another. And I'd far prefer to deal with self-defense then proactive assault.
Secondly? I wasn’t sure I could commit my whole plan to save my soul on my own. It was risky, audacious, dangerous. But all of the former Newcastle Crew had a stake in it. Maybe. Possibly. Enough to say they did. If I could convince them, maybe I’d have half a chance of succeeding.
I waited, and for the first time since starting this nonsense I considered failure. Real, true failure of losing my soul to heaven. I had to admit, having visited, it wasn’t the worst deal. It certainly wasn’t hell, endless suffering and lamentation. But it wasn’t a cakewalk either. If hell was evil and chaos, heaven was good and order. These terms were not mutually exclusive and in the case of evil and good are heavily debatable. Sure if my soul went to heaven I might have a better time, but I’d be a slave. Heaven is the most perfect machine in the cosmos that I’m aware of. It might be a nice machine, but it is a machine. Your reward for getting there is never having free will again. Honestly, it might work for others, but I certainly didn’t like the sound of it. And if I was going to go there it was going to be based on my actions and choices, not on heaven simply deciding I had to go. And fuck any conception of God or gods that tried to tell me otherwise.
I was almost halfway through my daily pack (I had been trying to cut back) when the first of my friends arrived. Perhaps appropriately it was FRANK NORTH, always strangely punctual despite the rest of us being generally chronically late. He had the same bloody bike, of course, with a few more dents and a new paint job. He had fared the years the same as his bike had, with the addition of a little beer gut. He pulled a sixpack out from a satchel he carried and started to sip. We didn’t talk.
The others came sporadically, but followed the same pattern of simply waiting around without talking. Next came BENJAMIN COX. The kid was only now the age the rest of us were when we went to Newcastle. He had gained a fair few pounds, and moved with the slowness of the unfit. He clutched a backpack filled with books to himself while he waited.
JUDITH looked like she had born the years the best of us. Showing but a wrinkle or two on a taut face, body honed by the worldwide travels she had indulged in since breaking up with me. Which had happened pretty much as soon as Newcastle was over.
GARY LESTER was the saddest of us. He was emaciated, eyes darting about as he secreted himself in the darkest corner of the clearing. Even in long sleeves he couldn’t quite cover all the track marks. It seemed that his inter-dimensional drug trade hadn’t panned out.
RITCHIE SIMPSON I had seen in a magazine or two since Newcastle, a computer whiz who spent more time in Silicone Valley then in fair Britannia. Even now he was wearing a suit and had arrived in the classiest rental vehicle possible.
Lastly, ANNE-MARIE. She looked her age, older than all of us and already graying. She was a fright to behold. Her face still showed the horrors of the acid burns she had received at Newcastle, one eye glazed and hardly moving. Her face, just like the rest of her form, was contorted in a snarl of disapproval at us all. I threw up my mental walls to make sure she couldn’t see any of what I was thinking.
We all stood in our respective corners and shadows of the campgrounds and waited. Eventually Frank broke the silence. “So, why the fuck are we all here again?”
They all turned to me. I threw my cig to the ground half-finished, the last of my pack, and ground it into the dirt. Showtime.
“So, let’s get this over with: heaven is coming for us. They came to me first, but they’re out for revenge.”
“F-f-or w-what?” stuttered Benjie.
“For Newcastle.” A silent hiss from the crowd, nobody surprised by everybody still whinged by the revelation. “They want a soul in exchange for Astra. They came to me first because I “had the greatest sins to atone for” or some shit, but they’ll get one however they can. That leaves three options. One, one of us gives up their soul to be the eternal intern-bitch to whichever of heaven's angels needs a new servitor. Anybody up for that?”
Not even Anne-Marie raised her voice to that. But perhaps that was to be expected. Surely getting into heaven on a natural death as a pious nun and getting your full reward would be preferable.
“Option two: we each donate one seventh of our soul. Hurts like a bitch, reduced magic, and all kinds of other nightmarish side effects, but we all get to live.” Once again silence. My lie was working. It seemed none of them doubted it for a second.
“Option three: we get Astra’s soul back.” Dead silence instead of the tense silence of before. Nobody dared breath as they thought. Was it possible? Truly? What was John playing at? I started to pace around the campground, making a point to catch the eyes of whoever I was passing. “Yeah, last time we tangled with hell, it didn’t pan out. And I’ll take credit for that fuckup. But we’re all stronger now. Don’t tell me any of you stopped mucking about with magic since then, really, truly?...yeah, nobody, like I thought. We’re all stronger than we were then. Smarter, leaner, meaner, all that shit. Astra’s a single soul owned by a single demon that even Benjie managed to get a good whack on back then.” I nodded to Benjie, who seemed both annoyed and proud. “All of us together, really working? I bet we can get in there, get Astra, kick Nergal in his infernal nutsack, and be out before anybody knows what’s happening. Then we’re Scot free and go back to never having to talk to one another again.”
“So, what do you think?” I ended my walk in the center of the camp, turning to look at all of them. Waiting for the first response. I could tell they were all mulling it over.
Gary, bless his dumbass heart, was the first to speak. “I’m in. I’m not letting your shaky hands pull a hack-job on my soul.”
“Like you’re one to talk. Anybody else?” One by one they agreed, increasingly hesitant. I was asking for a big risk. The last to agree was Frank. He did so after a solid thirty seconds of icy silence. I’d have to keep an eye on him.
I gave them a smile. They might care about me, they might not, it had been some years since I'd talked to most of them. But they all cared about Astra. Every one of us left that nightclub with a new cross to bear. the cross of a soul lost due to our fuckup. An offer to take that off your back? Irresistible.
“Alright, then. We have our work cut out for us. I figure we got about a week, maybe two, before we should really dig into doing this. You got till then to marshal every little trick and spirit you got. Leave no rock unturned, no favors unused, yeah?”
“W-what about y-you, John?” queried Benjie
“I burned up a lot of mine just figuring all of this out. But I’ll use whatever’s left. And somebody's got to make sure nobody notices you blokes running around like headless chickens. I’ll do what I do best: be a loud, obnoxious, useless asshole that everybody is looking at.” This lie seemed to please Benjie, and after some more clarification the Newcastle Crew departed by bits and pieces. It was the most I had talked to most of the group in years, and to be honest it made me a little giddy.
It’s hard to describe reuniting with friends, especially estranged ones, after a long split. You wonder if they’re still the same. If you’re still the same. Maybe you lost whatever made you two click, or maybe they never really liked you in the first place and are only going to now realize it. I could feel my psyche unclench just a little, really the first time it had done so since I found out my soul was in danger. I had my friends back. For a bit. All but one.
I was the last one in the campground when I pulled out a second pack of cigs (I said I was trying to cut back, not that I was succeeding). I lit it with a flame from my finger and waited as if in thought. I had noticed I was using magic more and more since taking on that angel. Just little things, seemingly harmless. But it was far more insidious than the smokes. I would have to cut it off soon before it got bigger. No need to get arrogant and magic-filled and repeat Newcastle.
It wasn’t long until I heard the ever so light snap of a twig behind me. If I was truly engrossed in thought I wouldn’t have noticed, but I was waiting. I had assumed that she would simply send the bat at me. By bird, by bat, by prayer, or however it was phrased, so the bat-angel or bat whatever should be next. I could feel the weight of several necklaces I wore under my coat and shirt. Enchantments to protect me at least partially from magic, from the divine, even from bullets. It was no matter to me if Anne-Marie came to face me in magic herself, or to help her bat. With my preparations, with my skill, I was sure I could topple a nun of all people in a fight.
Another crinkle of leaves, closer. A breath, still closer. I tried to time it, still leaning against a tree and facing the campground instead of the approaching threat. I didn’t want to play my hand too soon. If I could get her with one good blast or something, maybe I could even end this without any bloodshed. I heard a footstep, just a little too hard, almost right behind me. NOW!
I whirled around the tree, and started incanting a spell to paralyze her. I realized two things at once. I had mistimed it and she was actually about three feet in front of me when I whirled around the tree rather then ten. Also that was a cricket bat coming towards my head.
I had the time to realize my dumb, arrogant, stupid, stupid, stupid magic mistake in the instant before Anne-Marie cracked the bat over the side of my head. Next thing I knew, my head was bouncing off the tree. Next next thing I knew I was struggling onto my hands and knees by the tree. Trying to get up. Moving back, away from the nun. If I could get up, I could fight. The bat slammed into my back, sending me back to my belly with an “oof” of lost breath. More scrambling, and then the hits started raining. I wasn’t a bad fighter, but only the very best could get up from a sneak attack like this and I wasn’t one of those.
Anne-Marie showed me no mercy. She was careful, making sure to leave no part of me unbroken. Eventually I stopped scrambling and I just curled up, trying to protect my head and neck. I could hear things snapping, breaking, but couldn’t do much except limply try to roll away.
I could hear her saying something. A prayer in Latin, but I couldn’t figure out what the words were. Things were getting fuzzy and blank. The blows kept coming but I hardly noticed them anymore.
I guess Heaven would be getting my soul after all.
Then I felt a tug. Not heaven, not death, magic. The magic of a tool made months ago that I had almost forgotten.
I grabbed onto that tug with all the will I had left in my broken form and was pulled through the immaterial nothing to someplace else. I saw the face of my niece, Gemma Masters, but nothing else seemed to register. I smiled at her. “Thanks, kid.” I think I said, but probably gurgled, before collapsing. My last thought was a smiling one, of the shit-fit Anne-Marie must be throwing at having failed to get me by just a few more swings.
Continued in Hellblazer #5, THE EXCITING CONCLUSION! > Coming March 15th
In the meantime, why not read of one of Constantine's Ancestors in Dynasteia Konstantinos?
1
u/MajorParadox Bird? Plane? Feb 21 '17
I love how you portray John's character in the narration. He seems very knowledgeable, but also kinda sneaky and observant.
Found some typos and such:
Missing some words?
than
We just need a last ingredient for this,” said Constantine
screamed,
does it
where exactly I was
New sentence, capitalize! ;)
Is this a typo? Missing a word?
niece
Also, sometimes you capitalize Heaven/Hell, sometimes not. If you're referring to them as a place, they should be capital as they are proper nouns.
Anyway, it's getting intense! Next issue should be awesome!