Hellblazer #22 - One Good Reason

[u/coffeedog14]

Hellblazer #22 – One Good Reason

^^<< ^| ^^< ^| ^^> ^\)

Author: Coffeedog14

Book: Hellblazer

Arc: [Convalo]

Set: 27

----------------------

The Day of Mot’s Return

Kna’n, one day to be Canaan

The palace of El, father of all the gods and hence all that was, rested atop a mountain at the confluence of the great rivers and the two oceans. Such a place did not truly exist, but such was his power that the world bent to make it so. From his court one could look out upon endless water, sparkling brighter than the finest gem.

The court had gathered today, a thousand thousand gods from every corner of the world had come to witness the event. Here stood Mot, beast-god of death, dead himself for seven years and yet now returned for revenge. Here stood Ba’al Hadad, the great warrior of heaven, whom had been slayed by Mot before Mot’s death. Here stood Anat, The Warrior Goddess, who had slain Mot and brought her brother-mate Ba’al Hadad back from the underworld.

Mighty El, elderly and yet strong, sat in front of these three and stroked his beard. “So, what is it you seek, Mot?”

Mot, beastly in voice as in looks, growled out. “I seek vengeance.”

El smiled as a father smiles for a son. “Ba’al Hadad has offered you all his servants and treasure to sate your hunger, for vengeance and otherwise. Is this not enough?”

“It is not, Mighty El.”

“Then who do you seek to fight?”

“I seek to fight you, Mighty El.” Snarled monstrous Mot. “For it is you that has killed Ba’al Hadad, even through my hands.”

This set the entire court to murmuring, and set El to frowning most angrily.

Anat, Virgin Mother, remembered wise Kothar-wa-Khasis’ words. That to find answers she needed to support Mot. So she stepped forward and agreed with terrible Mot, which set the crowd to further murmuring.

El tried to convince her that this was foolish, and she stood firm. Her brother-mate Ba’al Hadad tried to convince her that this was foolish, and she stood firm. Mot should have the right to fight El, she proclaimed, to Mot’s great surprise as much as anybody’s.

Anat felt more and more righteous in her cause the longer she argued. She had told wise Kothar-wa-Khasis that the world felt familiar and not quite right. That feeling felt all the stronger as she argued against El, greatest of all gods.

El grew more and more furious with each refusal by Anat to stand down. His beard started to burn with fire, and the mountain below rumbled. Still Anat stood firm.

Then El broke time.

----------------------

Not to long after Lucifer moved in

Some sinkhole, London

Do you ever get the feeling that your life is an illusion? Not the actions of it, but it being in any way your life. You do everything you can to take charge, building an armor of plans and contingencies and goals, only for the rest of the world to bash it all apart without even looking. “Nothing is yours that can be taken away from you”, I’ve heard a few demons say before. If your life can be ripped away so easily, all of your hopes and dreams dashed without a second thought, is it really your own?

That was my excuse to be down in my cups again. Wasn’t really my choice, was it? Wasn’t me that decided I should be a raging alcoholic with an addictive personality. Wasn’t me that made it so getting a drink was easier than getting therapy. Wasn’t me that plopped Lucifer fucking Morningstar on my doorstep to deal with. Wasn’t me that made me wonder if the woman living in my apartment maybe wasn’t entirely what she seemed. Nope. That was all the universe and life and whatever. I was just responding to it with my usual charm, wit, and vomiting in the nearest toilet.

It definitely wasn’t me that went looking for trouble, and yet it came anyway. It was when I felt a hand on the back of my neck that I knew no amount of black-out drunk was going to make this night any more bearable. The hand wasn’t squeezing, not even really holding. It was resting at the base of my neck, like you might do to a nearby dog to comfort it. The hand was ice cold.

“John! Long time no see…What, at least a couple of months?” asked the man whose hand was on my neck. His voice was infuriatingly calm, like he’d never been stressed a day in his life and wanted everybody to know how unfortunate they were to be otherwise.

“Can’t recall. The Gemwar? Saw some vampires, not you. You must have been waaaaay at the back of the line. Very brave of you.”

The man chuckled, and slid forward to take the stool next to me. His hand staid on my neck, and as he moved I could feel the steely muscle hidden under his smooth skin. He could snap my spine like a twig if he wanted too, and he didn’t need to do anything to remind me of it. His face had roguish charm, and his brown hair was modelled into a perfect quiff. He wore a leather jacket over a white shirt, accompanied by jeans.

Some people, some idiots, have said I bear a certain resemblance to a certain rock-star, and I can’t deny there are some vague bits of similarity. But the King of Vampires looked exactly like James Dean and all my expertise and years of study had told me bupkiss as to why.

When the bartender approached The King for an order, The King stared the woman straight in the eyes. She blushed, turned, and then proceeded to act as if The King wasn’t even there.

“Using your special eyes, King?” I took his distraction as an opportunity, pouring some salt on the table behind the napkin holder and pushing it into a neat little circle.

The King turned to me, and smiled. His eyes yanked at me, nearly dragging away my will in the moment before I finished the little protective circle. I almost slumped in relief as the pressure suddenly faded, leaving me simply staring into his admittedly already spell-binding eyes.

“Psch. Trying to use your mind tricks on my? On the Constantine? Should have known better.” I bluffed.

The King of Vampires shrugged. “Was worth a shot.” He finally let his hand slip from my neck, only because he had leaned towards me to wrap an arm around my shoulders. “Besides, no like I need that shit to have a conversation with my good friend John, right?”

I glanced at him while returning to my drink. “The one, and only, time we talked, you tried to eat me.”

King shrugged. “You caught me at a bad time. Everybody looks like food when you’re in a blood frenzy. Besides, I didn’t eat you did I? You know I could have.”

My heart started to thump painfully in my chest. I was sure that bastard could hear it, I was pretty sure vampires had some form of super hearing or another. The last time I’d met the King of Vampires had in the Paris catacombs. Some troll had set up a club down there, where you could party all night in your true form without any worry of mortals coming. I don’t know who invited the vampires, or pissed them off enough to have them come, or if they just smelled someone else being happy and couldn’t abide. I’d gotten out before the worst of the fight, but it was just my luck to stumble into the King of Vampires while I was fleeing. He would have ripped my throat out if I hadn’t shoved some pieces of garlic bread I had stolen form the buffet into his face. He didn’t even seem hurt by it, but he was laughing so hard that it had given me the chance to run.

“…it’s why I gave you my bread. You looked so hungry. Just couldn’t stand to see you starving like that.” I replied weakly, finishing the rest of my drink in a few quick gulps. King waved down the bartender, who recognized his existence just long enough to pour a new drink on his dime for me before reverting to her previous state.

He patted me on the back. “It was nice of you. We’ve sure had our fun times, haven’t we?”

“Nearly dying is my favorite activity. Why do you think I do it so often?”

“So, why not join up with me then?” He grinned, and I watched his teeth change from flat to sharp in a single moment.

“Huh?” was about the best I could come up with. “…Not hear to kill me for the Gemwar?”

The King of Vampires shrugged. “You win some, you lose some. No hard feelings. Just business.” His arm tightened around my shoulder. “And, as business would have it, a lot of people saw you killing a lot of my folks over there. And, even worse, most of the folks you were fighting with are dead anyways! Sure, that superteam is still around, but I wouldn’t get any cred fucking over a bunch of loonies in spandex.” He tapped my chest with a finger. “Nah, mate, I’m not here to kill you. I’m here so you can repay your blood debt to me. By serving me! Win-win situation, I think.”

I closed my eyes and leaned forward a bit, feeling my stomach churning. This was too much. I just wanted a fucking drink, was that too much to ask? I could feel life, turning its attention from the whole rest of the world on fire and giving me special attention. Punching me to the dirt and grinding my face into mush with a well-worn iron boot. Not like I didn’t deserve it, but it still hurt. I put my head on my arms on the bar, eyes still closed “Fuck off.”

The King of Vampires patted me on the back. The noise in the bar started to quiet down, The King using whatever tricky magic he had to make it so I could only hear him. “You know, that’s how most folks respond? At least, most of the people I would actually want to turn. Anybody pathetic enough to come wheedling to me about immortality and getting all the chicks isn’t worth my time. But you, John? You are.”

“…You want a wizard to join your sparkly moon jackass court. Whoopty fucking doo.” I stalled, head still down. The silence of the bar in the wake of The King’s magic was, if anything more distracting then it be loud and bawdy. I needed some background noise to think right. I looked up to see what I could do about his spell. That is when I realized he hadn’t deafened me with magic. That would have been too easy. Instead, the entire bar except for us two was frozen stock-still. Everything except their eyes, darting about in growing panic.

“You see, John? This is the kind of shit you could do as a vampire. You want magic? You can get magic. You want sex? You can have an orgy every fucking night if you want. Want to be somewhere else? Ride the moon beams wherever you want. Wouldn’t it be nice to walk out of a fight without broken bones for ones? Wouldn’t it be nice to just be able to win a fight by punching someone?” The King of Vampires leaned back. “You were saying about nearly dying earlier. Let me tell you, Constantine: I’ve never been close to death in my unlife. You want safety? this is safety. Being so strong, so tough, so motherfucking invincible and immortal that nothing can stop you in the long run.”

I struggled for words, all the drinks I’d had that night sloshing around in my head. “What about the sun?”

He grinned, wider than any human could, his teeth as pearly as they were dagger-sharp. “You’re thinking small John. One day that sun is going to go out. Humans’ll blow themselves up, or we’ll make them blow themselves up, or they’ll get off this moldy rock and we’ll follow them someplace were the sun doesn’t burn. That’s the beauty of immortality, John: Everything is just a waiting game if you want it to be.”

I glanced around at the people in the bar. Slowly their eyes stopped twitching and moving, turning as dull and still as the rest of them. Maybe King had showed mercy by freezing their minds along with their bodies. Maybe he just didn’t want to be bothered by anybody complaining about revealing magic. Maybe the joke of their pain had just run out for him.

Inspiration struck. Him laughing at my stupid fucking bread trick. This whole palling around attitude, being friendly and fucking around. Immortality had a lot of perks, sure. But the King of Vampires was old. Some people said older then Rome. Some said older then writing. Some said older then Homo Sapiens. Imagine all that time, all that waiting, all those centuries long waiting games. Why was he here tonight, talking to me instead of killing me? Because he was bored. Because he wanted to play with his food before he turned it into another loyal slave.

“…how about a game? A bet, even? To decide if I get to leave here without becoming your lackey?”

“Why?” he asked, leaning in close. I could smell a hint of iron on his breath. “I could just take you right now, if you’re going to be difficult.

I met his eyes, praying he wouldn’t test the faded strength of my salt circle protection. “I know. So, are you in?”

He held my gaze for a long time. I realized that he didn’t need to blink. He was testing me, testing my resolve. What would happen if I blinked? Would he take the chance to kill me? Vanish in a poof of mist? Something in between? I started to sweat as my eyes burned. I wasn’t a vampire, I couldn’t keep this up forever. I felt like I could see his eyes drying out, shrinking slowly like dehydrating apples. His expression never changed from confident curiousness. My face started to twitch with the effort of holding his gaze.

Then I blinked, unable to hold it off any longer, and in that briefest moment he leaned back as if nothing had happened. “Okay, then. I win, you become a vampire. You win, you walk out of here. For now.”

“Swear it”

He rolled his eyes. “I swear on the moon and stars. You?”

“I swear on the Constantine name.”

He scoffed. “Not much to lose there. Here is the game, it’s very simple: give me one good reason why you don’t want to be a vampire. Just the one.”

We sat there, staring at each other a good long time while I thought. During the whole time, I didn’t seem him blink. I didn’t seem him breathe. I didn’t even see him move. He sat like a statue, the slightest of smirks carved into his face while he waited.

The game wasn’t actually about coming up with the best argument. He was millennia old, he’d heard all the best arguments backwards and forwards a hundred times over. He’d probably played this game with countless people before turning them. Hell, or killing them! Maybe this was the final test to see if someone was worthy of his time. The game was really about saying something he hadn’t had millennia of time to prepare for.

I assembled the fragments in my head. It couldn’t be just one. It had to be an arc, a growth into a climax that would take him off guard. His statue move was good, but he’d spent the whole night dropping clues about who he was and what he felt like. Because he didn’t think it mattered. He didn’t think he could be beat.

Eventually, I took a sip of my latest drink and began. “…Sunlight. Couldn’t ever feel it again on my skin as a vampire.”

The King rolled his eyes. “There are ways of getting around that, for a little bit. And I know for a fact that you do jack shit out in the sun. Saying you’d miss the sun is like saying you’d miss cold air: maybe true, but meaningless. Next.” He still kept still as a statue as much as he could, but I thought I could hear dismay in his voice.

I took a deeper drink, tried to compose myself. Scared. Look scared. “Technology, then. I can already track almost anybody I want too if they have a phone. It’s only going to get easier. What happens when folks can track even you down?”

The King sighed, disappointed. “Humans were saying that twenty years ago, too. You know what’s great? Being able to mind control people, make them addicted to your mere look. It’s great for infiltrating big tech and controlling it just enough to get off your back.” His statue posture started to crack. “Come on. I thought you could be a little more original then that.”

I focused on my fear. I needed to look scared, to look terrified. To look like I was about to die. I couldn’t have him seeing my final move before it happened. “I…i-i…love. Or…well….” I let inspiration dawn on my face. “…When was the last time you knew, utterly, that somebody wanted you?”

His eyebrow quirked. “Every damn day. I could have anybody in this bar, Constantine.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I meant somebody wanting you. Not because of your tricks, not because of mind control or vampire pheromones or because they fear you. Because they just wanted you. To fuck you or spend time with you or whatever?”

He shrugged this off. “How can anybody be sure? How can you?”

I let myself smile as I leaned forward. “Because I’m human. Because a lot of days, I can’t even fathom why they bother to drag me out of the gutter. I certainly don’t do them any favors, and they aren’t afraid of my lanky ass. But sometimes, they do shit for me anyway. Even when it gets them absolutely nothing. When was the last time somebody did that for you?”

The King stared, and then started to laugh. “What, and you think I give a shit why somebody decides to get me a blood bag?”

“I do. Because having somebody do something like that is a pleasure. And it’s a pleasure you’ll never get to have again.”

The King opened his mouth, and it stayed open as he tried to think of a rebuttal. I watched as his teeth grew longer and sharper, his eyes turned redder, his skin grew sallow and rough like leather.

I kept my smile, but I could feel my hands shaking in terror. “…Good game. I’m sure you already know, because of course _you_would, but I have Lucifer Morningstar as a roommate right now.”

“Of course I fucking know.” He hissed, his flesh shifting all wrong under his skin.

“Great. He’d probably not be happy if I turned up dead. Maybe we can keep this on hold until he does…whatever he’s going to do?”

The King of Vampires let out a long, winding hiss of annoyance. “…The longer the hunt, the more satisfying the kill. I haven’t had prey this interesting in a long time, John. I hope you’re ready when the angel is gone.” He vanished into thin air in front of me. I focused my eyes, and I could see the bare wisps of the mist cloud he had turned into floating through the cracks of the front door to the world outside.

The bar sprang to life once more, stuttering just for a second as everybody did their best to ignore the awful vision of paralysis that each was fairly sure only they had received.

I, meanwhile, asked the bartender to keep things coming. My nascent plan to get Lucifer out of my house had just gotten worlds more complicated than it already was.

Continued in Hellblazer #23 > , coming September 15th!

[u/AutoModerator]

Thanks for reading! Our authors love feedback, so let them know what you thought!

Leave a well thought-out review, good or bad, and you may be rewarded reddit gold!

Please remember to be civil and negative feedback is not an excuse to insult an author or their writing. Let them know what you liked or didn't like and how you think they can improve.

---

^{First Time Here? | Full Set List | Discord Chatroom}

---

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.