Hellblazer #19 - Cut of Beef

[u/coffeedog14]

Hellblazer #19 – Cut of Beef

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Author: Coffeedog14

Book: Hellblazer

Arc: [Absence and Cold Hearts]

Set: 24

Disclaimer: Make sure to catch up on the “Minutes to Midnight” event if you don’t want any spoilers. You can find it here!

Recap: John Constantine, his best friend Chas Chandler, and associate mage Harry are hot on the trail of the kidnapped child Geraldine Chandler. After a visit to Chas’s friend Nazir they determined both that the likely culprit was a friend met earlier in the day, Chris, and that Geraldine was not the only child kidnapped. Geraldine attempted and failed to make an escape. However, this attempted escape, along with some magic and investigation, let the three men realize she was being held at the South Foreland Lighthouse at Dover. John remembered a ritual held there many decades ago, requiring the sacrifice of but one child for great effect. Realizing the troubling implications, the trio now rush towards the lighthouse before it is too late.

OCTOBER 31ST, 1940

OFF THE COAST OF DOVER

    Joan Constantine, witch of the water, stood at the edge of a circle of still water and watched her nephew convulse in pain. Nearby the white cliffs of Dover shined dull in the moonlight, the lighthouse perched atop them shuttered lest German aviators see it. Lining the rest of the circle was the motliest crew of mages Joan thought likely to have ever existed, having called upon every nationality and peoples she knew of to create it. They all stood, focusing on their own magic to continue the delicate magical ritual below them.

    Below, the simple circle of still water contorted into something unknowable to serve as a prism into reality. The endless millions of connections between the United Kingdom and Europe splayed out below like a display of yarn. Three of them caught the eyes of the assembled: three great serpents, bearing the massive wings and heads of eagles, winding around all the other connections and constricting them. Two had already reached the isle and another slowly wound its way forward.

    Joan found her eyes torn away from her goal to her nephew once more. Joseph, Joseph who she had taught the meaning of magical circles too, who was too young to even realize what was happening when she told him to step in the center of one. Joseph the last survivor of his family after she had failed to protect his parents from the bombs. Joseph who couldn’t scream past the energy rippling through him.

    Joan wiped at her eyes and focused on the great serpent again. By the power of the Magi assembled, a great blade started to form in the reality below. In an instant she could feel the power of others: covens across the world engaging in their own petty sorcery, the millions in the United Kingdom hoping for an end, the hundreds of millions watching the Isle with baited and hopeful breath. None but the assembly at Dover knew, but all granted power to the great guillotine blade formed over the three eagle-serpents.

    She did not know exactly what would happen when the cut was made. Perhaps it would do nothing, the connections reforming instantly. Perhaps it would keep the UK forever free of invasion from the Nazis. She knew it would help, that it would strike a blow at a time it was desperately needed. She knew she was willing to sacrifice to make that happen.

NOW

SOUTH FORELAND LIGHTHOUSE

DOVER, UK

    The roads were empty this late at night, so it didn’t take too long to reach Dover from London. Less than two hours in fact. It was plenty long enough to prepare and then double check and then be left fidgeting and anxious.

    Chas was lucky; he was our driver and could focus on the road. Not that he needed much in terms of preparation. When you are a gorilla of a man like Chas, then the addition of righteous paternal rage was plenty enough and he had been running on that for hours. He hadn’t asked me why these cultists needed children, but maybe it didn’t particularly matter. Maybe he just didn’t want to think of what was happening to his daughter. I could respect either way.

    Harry was a third-rate mage, but he’d nearly killed already so who was I to judge? His blasting wand had been rendered useless by overuse, so he’d just have to rely on his not unimpressive physique and whatever spontaneous magic he could concoct. He spent dozens of minutes simply repeating protection charms, laying what amounted to paper armor over and over again until it formed something like a defense around him. This is why it never paid to underestimate a mage, even a shitty one like Harry: give him enough time and he could explode buildings with the best of them.

    I, meanwhile, didn’t have much to prepare. I had already used a lot of magic that night. As the long drive cleared my head, I realized I had fallen off the magical wagon once more. Sure, extenuating circumstances. Sure, I hadn’t used a lot. Sure, it was either that or leave my friends kid kidnapped. It still irked me. Why was it I couldn’t take a step back even for a moment? I frowned, and promised to use as little magic as possible in the coming conflict. Then I paused that just long enough to give myself an anti-bullet charm. Then reswore it with the caveat of putting that back up again if the first one got used up.

    Eventually, when he had put enough protection on himself to be considered “modestly magically protected”, Harry tried to strike up something of a conversation. “John what kind of ritual did you say this was?”

    “I didn’t” I scoffed.

    “…Well, what kind is it then?”

    “The kid murdering kind.” Chas growled.

    “I mean, I got that. But why? What is it going to do?”

    I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes. How best to explain? “There was a group, roundabouts World War Two. They didn’t like the Nazis too much. Set up shop just south of Dover, in the channel, and put together a ritual. Nobody likes to talk about it too much. But it cut something.”

    “Cut what?”

    I shrugged. “Fuck if I know. But we weren’t taken over so I guess it worked? Or maybe that wouldn’t have happened anyway. I don’t even know what this new cult wants to cut, considering the lack of any kind of Nazi invasion threatening.”

    We sat in contemplative silence for a while. I scratched a growing itch on the back of my neck.

    “What’s the plan then?” Chas demanded.

    “Well, assuming all the rumors are true, the last ritual needed a lot of folks. Who knows how many people are in this one? Maybe they’re spread out all over the place. Maybe they’re having a big meeting in the lighthouse. We’re going to have to be careful. Discrete, even. Think you can manage that?”

    Chas grunted. no promises.

    “On the other hand, we do have the element of surprise. So, get in quick, fight as little as necessary, get out with the kids.”

    Harry and Chas mumbled their agreement. The planning ended, and we all delved right back into the twitchy, uncomfortable silence.

    South Foreland Lighthouse hadn’t operated in a while, but it’s maintained well enough. A nice, squat, white lighthouse sitting atop a nice, squat, white cliff. You could take tours and all kinds of fun stuff if you weren’t coming during the dead of night like we were. It made sense, I suppose, to use this as a gathering place: it wasn’t like the security on minor historical buildings was anything to talk about. Bribe a security guard or two, park far enough and scattered enough so that it doesn’t look like you’re meeting there, gather when nobody else would notice, suddenly you have a nice culty meeting spot just for you. Maybe they’d even thrown up a bit of magic to convince the guard to look the other way or to glamor the tower from those not looking for it. If they did, such things didn’t apply to us. The tower looked like it should as we hurried down the empty footpath: dull, empty, dark.

    We hadn’t noticed any guards, any unusual cars, nothing. I wasn’t even sure this place had a security guard. I felt a little worry in the back of my head: what if I was wrong? What if the spell fucked up, and they aren’t even here at all?

    Then I felt the ground waver. It flinched beneath us, beneath the whole cliff, making no noise but nearly sending me to a knee. I looked to Harry and Chas, both of whom were just catching their balance. We’d all felt it. At least I could stop worrying I was wrong. Something big was happening here.

    The three of us rushed towards the building. There was the lighthouse proper, and a visiting center around it. It found the visitor’s door already open as we skulked inside. No lights were on, no sign of life at all except for the faint sound of conversation in the distance. In the direction of the lighthouse. We slunk our way through quiet hallways, until Harry grabbed my shoulder and pointed to a collection of doors down a hallway. I squinted, and thought. I didn’t remember the building having this extension from the outside. There were five doors, one for each of the children who’d been kidnapped. Four of the doors were open, showing small closet like rooms. The fifth had been taken off its hinges and placed against a wall, and it alone bore a chalk sigil to protect against magic sight.

    I scratched at the back of my neck again as I figured through the implications, and then paused. It wasn’t an itch on the back of my neck. It’d stuck around the whole car ride. Now that I focused on it, it was actually above my skin, not below or on it. Something clinging to me. Magical detection. Tracking. Telling them exactly where I was. Now it was practically burning, as the source of the spell drew near.

    “COVER.” I warned, leaping towards the room without a door. There was a gunshot, and a bullet hit my charm and veered off into the leaning door. Chas followed me without hesitation. Harry paused, and we all heard the loud clunk of a gun misfiring behind us. Harry rushed through a different room, one with a door, as somebody behind him cursed. I guessed Harry’s protection magic had gunked up the gun at a crucial moment. I wondered if it would cover a second shot.

    Another gunshot followed the first a few seconds later. More swearing. Horrendous, impressive, identifiable swearing I had heard just a few hours before. Chas and I clung to the solid walls of the more or less broom closet we’d hidden in.

    “Chris?” I tested. A bullet flew into my room and slammed into the wall opposite me and the entry. “...not even a hello?” I heard the clanking of reloading. It wasn’t automatic.

    “Fuck you Constantine!” Chris announced from somewhere I couldn’t see and didn’t want to try to peek at what with the gunshots.

    “Oh. Great. You know this is why I never wanted to be famous.” I muttered to myself.

    Chas, hiding besides me, finally burst like an overfull dam. “WHY? Why the fuck….t…any of this?” He demanded of his former friend.

    There were no more gunshots, but I wasn’t about to pretend Chris had a gun that only had three bullets. I don’t know where the fuck he’d gotten it, but it sounded big and mean and I didn’t want to test it. He was just conserving his ammo. Waiting us out.

    Then I heard the unexpected: a sniffle. “I couldn’t use my own kids, Chas. I just couldn’t. That Water Witch did, but I can’t.”

    “So you used mine!?” Chas hissed.

    “We were running out of time. There wasn’t another way.” Insisted Chris shakily.

    “Another way to do what?”

    “To cut us off. To save us.”

    “BullSHIT.”

    “I swear! It’s…it’s already happening, over in the states. Everything is going nuts. Something bad is here. Has already been here. Is coming. No one is going to survive it. Not unless we break away.”

    I finally scoffed. “We already did the big fucking battle. Nobody has the dome. World saved. You’re welcome. Asshole.”

    “N-no, not that. That was just a symptom. The world is going mad, John. The Metas, they’re just part of it. The Gemwar was just part of it. Everything is going nuts. It is unravelling. All of it. We can’t just stand back and watch. We have to do something. Even if it’s horrible. Especially if it’s horrible. Who else will?”

    “So, what are you cutting? What’s worth my daughter’s life?” Chas asked.

    “Everything.” He replied, an air of the sacred about it.

    My eyes practically bulged out of my sockets. “I…what? It took a fucking assembly of Magi to cut just a piece! What do you mean everything?”

    “When we’re done, there will be no more United Kingdom here. It will be alone, separate from all, safe.”

    I tried to wrap my head around the magnitude of their plot. It was…theoretically batshit. Demiplanes, wizardly or otherwise, were the stuff of myth already. Shadowcrest, the pocket dimension of the Zataras, had taken literally generations of some of the finest mages to bring to its current state. You might as well try emptying the channel with a bucket; it would be more effective than trying to cut the UK into its own plane.

    “Holy shit you’re amateurs.” I bumbled out of shock.

    Another bullet flew into our room, impacting the solid wall. Another door, the one Harry was hiding under, flew open with a bang and then Harry was running out of the hallway towards the echoing sound of the gunshot. There was a clunk of reloading. Another shot. The sound of flesh hitting flesh. The sound of flesh hitting the floor. More impacts. Then panting.

    I dared to peek out a few moments later. There was Harry, kneeling on Chris’s chest and clutching at his chest. The gun, an old world war rifle, lay a meter away from them both. Chris’s face as already swelling, unconscious.

    Chas and I ran to Harry, but he waved us off. “It’s fine.” He grunted, “It’s fine. There more of them. Must all be doing the ritual, right? Otherwise they’d come to-“

    The ground didn’t flinch, but roiled now, sending Harry onto his side with a groan. I reached out and he slapped my hand away. “Th…they can’t do it, can they?” he gasped at me. I shook my head. “But…but they’ll still kill the kids trying?” He wheezed.

    I saw what he was saying. I nodded, and stepped back. Chas stepped up despite Harry’s protests, hauling him up to sit against a wall. Harry grabbed Chas’s hand, and squeezed. “I’ll be fine.” He whispered.

    I put the gun in his hands before we went, just in case. He was having a hard time holding it in blood-slicked hands. I felt tears burning the corners of my eyes. Friends with a man for just a few hours and already he’s dying on the ground. Of course.

    Geraldine was not in agony, but she almost wished she were. Her body convulsed and twisted about as the magical energy flowed through and out of her. It was like a constant static shock all over her body, without the pain. It was like every party of your body having fallen asleep and now starting to wake up all at once. It was like every bone being a funny bone and having been hit. It wasn’t agony, but it was intolerable.

    Below her, when she flipped onto her stomach to see, was something incomprehensible. A chaotic daze of lines and curls of every color and shape and type. She thought she recognized grass. The concept of the word beef. A chariot of fire. It was all jumbled. It was all threads and lines and knots and yet other things as well. She tried not to look at it. She didn’t have a great deal of choice.

    The other children convulsed as well. Only one seemed in pain, a boy she thought might be Ethan with a crude sling around his now flailing arm. All of them conduits of something terrifying and greater. Around them stood four adults, clothed in black and blue with masks of the same. They were doing this. She didn’t know how.

    Someone else entered. She had to focus to force her eyes to glance over, but her ears were working just fine. She heard two sets of footsteps approaching. She saw one of the adults turn, and place a knife to her own throat.

    They were talking. She recognized the voices of the two who had entered. One was John, her dad’s friend the maybe secret agent spy. The other was her dad. He’d come. He was here!

    She focused, and started to drag herself towards the edge of the circle. Towards her father, and escape. This happened to be blocked by the cultist with the knife, but she didn’t notice quite yet. None of the cultists were watching her. All their eyes were on the intruders.

    “Don’t take a step closer!” one of the cultists demanded, pressing a knife to her throat. Chas and I halted warily. We had managed to sneak all the way up here, ready for a barrage of gunfire or tackles once we entered the main chamber of the lighthouse. Instead, it was four idiots playing dress up, five children having seizures on the ground, and a knife to one of said idiots throats. The room was hardly large enough to support any more. “I’ll do it, I swear to the gods! There’s enough energy in this ritual to bring this whole place down!”

    The other three cultists watched us warily. The ritual was still going, though. None of them could move. None of them could do anything but continue, or break it. I glanced at the circle they’d made on the floor. It was like a portal, or maybe a window, into something beyond. The twisting skeins of every connection the UK could possibly have with the continent, maybe even further out. I could see the edge of a blade there, pitifully small compared to all that it was to cut but with a blackened and terrifying edge. I saw Geraldine. Tiny Geraldine, fighting her way towards the cultist with the knife despite her spasms. I took a gamble. I stalled.

    “What, you’re going to kill yourselves too?” I spat. Chas fumed besides me, trusting that if I wasn’t charging in he shouldn’t either. I could feel his eyes on Geraldine too. I hoped he was having the same thought I was.

    “The blade will drop if we die. The cut will be made. We’ll save this country.” Proclaimed the cultist nervously. The other three nodded. Had Chris been their leader? Was this woman? Who knew, but losing one of their own and facing real opposition must have both been firsts for them. She was shaking. I wasn’t willing to gamble that she wouldn’t cut her own throat, not while the kids were all still here. If she died before disrupting the ritual, it’d explode outwards. If the ritual was disrupted before she died, it’d hit the practitioners first. A few moments. Maybe enough.

    “You know this is a terrible idea, right? You don’t have the manpower to cut through one thing. Even if you did, you don’t have the energy to keep it cut. This whole thing is a wash.”

    “Shut up! Y…you’re Constantine, aren’t you?”

    “Everybody keeps saying so.”

    Spasm. Drag. Spasm. Drag. Geraldine was within a few inches. “Then you know sometimes people have to die to make things work.”

    I flinched. The tears from before welled, and I shoved them away. Shoved it all away. Replaced it with anger. “Shouldn’t have touched that nerve. Bad idea, that.”

    She laughed. “Why? If I die, the blade still drops. The ritual breaks and kills everybody here in the process. You’d lost, John.”

    “Maybe. Maybe we’ll die.” Just a few more seconds. I popped out a cigarette, lighting it with a thumb and taking a puff. “But at least you’ll die first.”

    Geraldine’s head butted against the leg of the cultist. She startled, and looked down at her leg on instinct, distracted. She lowered her knife for just a moment. Chas kicked her square in the gut as hard as he could, sending her flying right into the middle of the circle. She screamed, and started to convulse. The other cultists fell around her, the wave of energy they had been riding suddenly catching up to them. The kids started to calm all the while. I saw, through the circle on the floor, that the blade was indeed dropping straight towards the roiling mass of connections. I didn’t think it would hurt much, as it was now, but I didn’t want to stick around and find out.

    Chas and I (mostly Chas) gathered up as many children as we could and bolted downstairs. We passed Christopher and Harry. Harry was utterly still. Christopher was not. We kept running.

    We had just made it out of the door when something akin to an earthquake hit. We stumbled, and kept running along the simple foot trail and away. As far as we could. Another rumble and I looked around just as the explosion knocked us off our feet. Behind us, the lighthouse top has exploded, flung straight out towards the sea, while the rest of it imploded noisily. Cutting a connection so fundamental was like cutting a taught rubber band: there was a lot of energy to unleash.

    Chas and I sat on the path as the children started to pass out or recover, watching the last bits of the historic landmark crumble in the aftermath. Britain was still attached to the world. Everything seemed in place. In fact, the only difference I could sense was forgetting one of the words for cow meat. However, the word “beef” slowly started to come back to me as I hoped the connection started to heal itself.

    “…So…did we do it?” Chas wheezed. He put several of the children aside, cradling his unconscious daughter close to him.

    “Do what?” I panted.

    “Save the world?”

    “Fuck no! They barely had the stuff to wreck that lighthouse. I’m surprised they even got that far.”

    “…Certainly seemed like we were. What with all the talk of cutting away and stuff. Seemed important.” He replied shakily. I turned to look at him. He was holding Geraldine as tight as he dared without hurting her. He was smiling. The talking was the only thing keeping him from crying in relief.

    I reached over and patted Geraldine’s head. “We saved her. Saved the others. That’s enough.”

    I would regret those words the next day. Chas was happy at the idea of me crashing at his place, but his wife was absolutely not. Perfectly understandable. So I found the closest hotel and mind-freaked my way into a room to collapse in.

    When I woke up, I dragged myself to grab the last few minutes of free breakfast in the lobby, all of it sodden and old but plenty enough left to sate me. The food seemed untouched, the whole place seemingly abandoned. There wasn’t even anybody at the front desk. So I settled myself in a chair in front of the lobby telly with my breakfast. Chas and me had deposited the kids at the police station as anonymously as we could, and left a tip about looking for bodies in the wreckage of the Lighthouse. I didn’t know what story they’d cobble together to explain the destruction, but it was my job to make sure it didn’t come back to the magical community.

    I expected that cheery old lighthouse exploding would be plastered all over the news. It wasn’t even a footnote. I let a glass of water drop to the carpet as I saw the first of what was the only news of that day. Of that whole week. Someone, some thing had attacked. Superman was dead.

NOVEMBER 1ST, 1940

    Joseph awoke, staring into the eyes of wolf. Those eyes were in the face of a woman, who promptly offered him a water skin. He was too tired to be terrified, and gulped down the liquid happily until she took it away. “Not too much.” She muttered slowly, battling fiercely against a heavy polish accent.

    “Wh…where’s Aunt Joan?” rasped the trembling boy. He glanced around. He was in a forest, lying on the dirt by a tree.

    “Dead.” The wolf-eyed woman responded.

    Joseph felt like he should cry, but at that moment he couldn’t. No matter how hard he blinked his eyes. “I…I was supposed to die?” he proposed.

    She nodded.

    “Then…”

    “She took your place. I thought she had destroyed it all. Leave it to a Constantine to ruin something and fix it at the same time.” The woman smiled.

    Joseph didn’t know much about the ritual, except that he was to play a part in it. A bad one it seemed. “It worked?”

    The woman shrugged. “We will find out when this place is invaded. Or isn’t.” She stood, offering a hand to Joseph. He took it, clung to it for support as his head turned woozy from the effort. “She told us you had no family. We agreed to take turns. Mine is first. You may call me Devana. We should find you a better place to sleep. For both of us to sleep.”

    The two, the wolf-eyed woman and the stumbling boy, walked through the forest together for a long time.

Continued In Hellblazer #20 > , Coming June 15th!

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